::: Area #0 (Private mail)
Message: #59757 (Read 2 times, has 0 replies, 6554 bytes)
Date:    Fri, 23 Jan 1998 14:35:26 -0500
From:    O F Carter <ofcalba@compuserve.com>
Subject: Parables
To:      "Charman/Elidh@Stunix" <emc04@students.stirling.ac.uk>,

Hope y'all like this! Owain

Electronic Parables - The Kingdom of God is like this ....

When a man retrieves his e-mail, he looks closely at them to see what they
are. He takes the junk mail and dumps it quickly into the recycle bin to
be deleted. He then takes the e-mail that is of use to him and prints it,
so that it becomes real, and will be with him..

A man who had a number of programs working on his computer found that one
of them had a bug in it. He worked on that one piece of software day and
night until it was fully operational again. Jesus <might have> said "I am
the good computer administrator".

A boss was going away for a time, and before he left, he bought each of
his three employees a computer. To one he gave a pentium 233MMX with 64 Mb
Ram, 5Gb Hard Disk and a complete range of multimedia add-ons - CD-Rom
Drive, Modem etc. To another, he gave a Pentium 100 with 16Mb Ram and 1Gb
Hard Drive, and to the other, he gave an old 286 with DOS and a Word
Processor.

The man with the multimedia computer devised a really cool interactive
CD-Rom, which he published and marketed over the Internet, and made a
packet. The man with the P100 wrote loads of articles for magazines, and
was halfway through a book when his boss turned up again. But the guy with
the Dos machine couldn't be bothered to use it, even though it had a word
processor on it, and so he just kept it switched off.

When the boss returned, he asked each one what they had done. To the first
he said - cool CD-Rom - well done - you can look after this mainframe I
have just bought. To the second he said - well done, I want to put you in
charge of our electronic publishing department - for to everyone who has
will be given more. 

The third employee said - look! Here is your computer - see - it's all
working OK, and nothing has gone wrong. The boss said - you useless idiot
- you were supposed to do something with that computer - you could have
done any number of useful and interesting things. Instead, you wasted your
time. You're sacked.

At the end of the world, the kingdom of heaven will look like this; 10
journalists were staking out a story outside an embassy. They were all in
contact with their office via their mobile phones. Five of them were wise,
five foolish. The story was taking ages to come out, so they had to stay
overnight. Suddenly, the press officer came out and announced that the
ambassador would make a statement in a few minutes. The five foolish
journalists suddenly realised that the batteries on their mobile phones
had run out, so they pleaded to the other five "lend  us some batteries",
but the other five refused. They then rushed off to get more batteries,
but by the time they had returned, the ambassador had made his statement,
and the news was already around the world. They pleaded with the press
officer to ask some questions, but he said no - you should have been here
an hour ago.

A dad asked his two sons to stop watching the telly and help him in the
garden. The first son said "Sure Dad, I'll be there in a minute." But just
then, "The Simpsons" came on TV, and he forgot about it. The second son
said "No, the Simpsons are on next", but later changed his mind and went
out to help his dad. Which one did what his dad asked?

The kingdom of heaven is like an computer operating system that never
crashes. A man found it tucked away in a corner of the World Wide Web and
cleared his entire Hard Disk so that he could download it.

The kingdom of heaven is like the Internet. Many good folk put all kinds 
of useful information onto it, it is an invaluable source of communication
for many, many people, and it has the potential for so much good. But
while these things are put onto the Internet, evil folk corrupt it with
violence, pornography, paedophilia, and others use it to plan their
crimes. At the end of the world, God will reap a harvest, downloading all
the good stuff and destroying the bad stuff with the 'Armageddon Virus'.

The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man posted one of those really
annoying e-mails that you get telling you how to make loads of money. Only
this one really worked. The catch was that you got money by giving it
away. Some people found the e-mail and deleted it before they even read
it. Others read it, thought "whoopee", and decided to do it, but work
pressure got in the way, and they never really got it together. Others
found it and gave it a go for a while, found that it worked, and even
tried to tell others about it, but their friends ridiculed them and in the
end they gave up. Still others found it, gave it a go, and kept on going
even when others told them they were mad, and even when they seemed to be
losing money. They found riches beyond their wildest dreams.

Copyright Tom Beardshaw 101776,1636@Compuserve.com 1997