What if Jesus used Facebook? check it out.
(hat-tip Ben Witherington)
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Category Archives: Reflections
How Turkish is Facebook?
An interest in using Facebook to help advertise an evangelistic website led me to do a little investigating into some things on the site that you might not realise.
By now most of us know that Facebook started as first a Harvard website, and then the Ivy League schools, then America, then the world. But who is on Facebook now? And who uses Facebook. The answer might surprise you.
If you are on Facebook you have probably registered as a ‘Fan’ of a page of some sort. Well, you can have a look at the pages, broken up into categories to see which are the most popular things or people that Facebook users are fans of.
By now most everyone has heard of how Barack Obama used Facebook to build up a legion of fans (at latest count 5,856,606 supporters), only about 5 million more than number two on the list – John McCain, who is just ahead of Sarah Palin, poor old Joe Biden languishes down in tenth spot. But who is in number four and number 7? Well, it is the same person for a start and he has been dead for half a century (There are two pages for him). Okay, who’s guessing now that it is Winston Churchill? You’d be dead wrong? JFK? Nope. It is none other than the founder of the modern nation of Turkey – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with 465,431 and 261,184 supporters respectively on those two pages.
Okay, so I’ve given you one surprise. do I have any more? Well, what do you think the most popular sports team would be on Facebook? Given its American roots you might suggest a baseball, basketball or American football team, but the most popular American team is the New York Yankees, which is only 15th most popular overall with 244,000 fans. If you’re smart you will know that the global game is soccer and would suggest probably the most famous soccer team in the world – Manchester United. With that guess you’d be very close. Manchester United has 679,748 fans, which is just fewer than the 686,488 fans of Fenerbahce. “Fenerbahce, who are they?!” I hear you say. Well, if you were Turkish you would know that they are one of the top Turkish soccer teams.
The other language which makes a big impression on the Facebook pages is rather more predicably Spanish. (Given that Spanish is spoken in most of Latin America, and actually the names of these pages may even be the same in Portuguese which adds a few hundred million Brazilians to the mix as well.) The most popular TV programme is Los Simpsons (1.9 million) with almost twice as many fans as The Simpsons (1.0 million). The most popular service is Dormir (2.0 million) which is Spanish for sleep.
There are more peculiarities in the Facebook pages. The number three TV programme is House with 1.6 million fans. But the number one celebrity with 2.7 million fans is Dr. House, and the number two shop with 1.5 million fans is Dr Gregory House. Poor old Hugh Laurie has to settle for only 428,000 fans.
BobMarley (omitting the space is important) the shop has 1.7 million fans (and in number one). Bib Marley Foundation in Lebanon has 100,000 fans and Bob Marley songs the musician has only 40,000 fans.
The most popular organisation is Ka’aba – The House of Allah with 800,000 fans, and there are several other Muslim religious organisations in the most popular list. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the university student origins of Facebook, Alcool and Getting Drunk! are two of the three most popular non-Muslim religious organisations. I Love Jesus runs in third place.
Perhaps more expected are McDonald’s and Coca-Cola being the most popular restaurant and food respectively.
Still, for me, the real surprise in this is the dominance of the Turkish community on Facebook. English and Spanish are global languages so it can be expected that pages for speakers of these languages will dominate, but Turkish is spoken outside of Turkey mainly in immigrant communities in Germany and other countries. It is definitely a surprise for me to see Turkish pages featuring so prominently.
You can find all this information and more yourself at www.facebook.com/pages.
Earthquakes and Endtimes
Jesus said in Matthew 24:7 that earthquakes would be a sign of the approaching endtimes. In the last few months I have heard a few people say that they have been analysing earthquake records and they show that the earthquakes, or large earthquakes are on the rise. (One of the times I heard this they announced that there had just that day been a large earthquake in New Zealand – it turned out that it was in the ocean 3000km north of New Zealand! I was worried at first but when I couldn’t find anything on the NZ news websites about the earthquake I figured it must have either been very deep, remote, weak or a combination of all three.)
Anyway, I was already a bit skeptical about the claims of earthquakes increasing and had meant to do a bit of research to see if this was the case. Anyhow I found the US Geological Survey website and they have a FAQ devoted to the subject of whether earthquakes are increasing, as well as some graphs. Interestingly enough, since 1995, no year has exceeded that year’s total for earthquakes in any of the 6.0-6.9, 7.0-7.9 or 8.0+ ranges, so we can quite accurately say that earthquakes are definitely not on the increase right now. What’s more the USGS specifically state that the frequency of large earthquakes has been pretty constant over the last hundred years.
What was probably behind this perception that earthquakes have been rising (at least in HK) has been the Sichuan earthquake, which is the second most deadly earthquake in our generation (the most deadly being the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. while both of these disasters are firmly implanted in people’s minds, most have probably forgotten about the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan which killed almost as many people as the Sichuan earthquake.
So, if we approach this question from another angle “Are earthquakes killing more people today?” what answer do we get? Well, 1920 and 1976 saw earthquakes in China that killed over 200,000 people. And there were about a dozen earthquakes i total in the last millennium that each killed over 100,000 people. And when we remember that Jesus in that verse spoke of “famines and earthquakes” and that the most deadly famine recorded in history occurred over 50 years ago then we have to conclude that earthquakes and famines are telling us nothing in particular about these times being the endtimes.
What is possible is that Jesus meaning was that wars, earthquakes and famines are always occurring and he explains that these are just birth pains – they are not the real trouble of the endtimes. In which case people who are seeking to calculate the endtimes by counting earthquakes are mistaken in their approach anyway.
Until The Day Is Done
I showed this video last month when I gave a talk about the real meaning of Christmas. I talked about how God’s answer to all the trouble in the world was to step in and be in this world with us – Immanuel.
[hat-tip to Dave at bignews for this video]
Same Bible, Different Wrappings?
I just read about two new Bibles that have been released. One is designed as a coffee-table book complete with full-colour photographs alongside the text. The other is made entirely from recyclable material and has all verses related to environmental issues highlighted in green.
Is this a case of the same Bible just in a different wrapping? Or is the message of the Bible being confused by being presented in such a way?
In any cases, I’m glad to hear that these Bibles are causing people who perhaps wouldn’t read the Bible to open it up. If that’s the end result, I think it’s a good thing.
Deovox
Recently I have been listening to the deovox podcast. They are short (10 min) devotionals that work through a Bible passage. I have just finished listening to a series on James. They are very practical and do a good job of linking the Scriptures with real life and also with modern media such as films and songs. As well as the website, you can download the podcast for free using iTunes.