Evil exists in this world, but we should not be cowed by it. How can this be inspirational, you might ask?

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

HACKED BY VEZiR.04

What happened is this... This site is powered by a popular open source content management system called "Joomla!" Someone apparently recently discovered a means to exploit the Joomla! admin user's login to change the admin user's password, locking the administrator out of the back end of the site, and changing the content to whatever they wanted to change it to. This exploit has been happening across the web to owners of Joomla! sites all over the world. It was brought to my attention by a fellow website developer one of who's customer sites was hacked. The content of this article was changed to read what you see in the quoted text above, and since the alteration occurred at the database level, and since I wrote the original article on the fly, I can't recover what was here before. Let that be OK.

I googled the phrase "VEZiR.04" and came up with literally thousands of hits. My friend who notified me about his site was able to track the hacker's IP address to Turkey - an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Many of the websites that I saw that were attacked were either Christian or Jewish. Many others were discussion boards where the exercise of free speech takes place. There can be no doubt that VEZiR.04 is evil. Hackers and virusware writers will often try and justify what they do as being vigilant and forcing website owners to improve the "genetic" code of their sites, and that they therefore are providing a great service. The truth is that they are small minded vandals with the morals of of a wolverine, and what they do is motivated out of nothing more than simple base pride. There is nothing altruistic in it at all. It is the sin of pride, and the sin of pride is what all other sin comes from. The scope of this attack is so large as to be mind boggling; and there are so many victims whose sites were basically destroyed that it is difficult for me to get that angry about it. I'm just glad that I was able to secure my customers' websites before they got fragged.

But here's the thing, although there is reason to suspect that this is more than just simple vandalism, entering even into the realm of cyber-warfare, it's OK. It really is. You see, I've read the entire Bible, cover to cover, and I believe that it is the inspired Word of the one true, only, and almighty God. There is no god above or over Him. He is the Alpha, and the Omega. Compared to Him, an Internet hacker is not even a tiny buzzing insect. Not even a mote of dust. Not even a germ. Neither am I, by the way, but because I know my God, and place Him first in my life above all other things and worship His son as the risen Savior and Messiah, my insignificance is transient. C.S. Lewis famously said:

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.  

Our bodies are temporary, but our souls are eternal. The only open question is, "where will you spend your eternity?" There are only two possibilities, heaven or hell, and where you will spend yours is entirely dependent upon what you do with your temporary human experience while you are still having it. Some day, I will stand in God's presence because of the things that I believe. THAT is my inspiration, and it can be your's too.

No matter how you interpret the sequence of events in John's book of Revelation, there can be no doubt that it ends with God's victory over all evil. In very fact, since God is both the beginning and the end and is not governed by time, He is already victorious. We, being bound to time, simply haven't seen it yet.

Do not let life's hackers derail you from your pursuit of excellence or from walking humbly with your God. He wins in the end, and the hackers lose unless they repent before it is too late. I wrote at the top of this story that the hacker is to be pitied. He is. If he were saved, he would not have done what he did. We are known by the fruit we produce (Matthew 7:16). VEZiR.04 is known by the fruit of destruction. He is bound for the fire and should be pitied and prayed for.