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Finnish Orthodox Church Endorses LGBT And Gender Rights

Does Finnish laws require that they "fall in-line" with certain precepts in order to maintain certain tax benefits or receive certain grants?

That's an honest question, I'm not familiar with those kinds of legal frameworks for Finland.

I know for Denmark, they passed a law in 2012 that said that a State church (any that carry the label of Church of Denmark) isn't allowed to opt out of performing Same Sex marriages, and if a particular clergymen refuses, the local bishop has to appoint a replacement.

But wasn't sure if all of the nordic countries were the same in that regard.
From my understanding not even the Lutheran protestant church in Finland requires churches to marry same-sex couples. In Sweden the Lutheran church does, but not because they are required by law (it's no longer a state church, it was decided in Kyrkomötet.). No churches are by law forced to marry same-sex couples, neither Orthodox or Catholic churches does it and I can only recall one imam that does it. I think the Norwegian church also does marry same-sex, however I'm not certain if they are required by law (I don't believe so, because they are not longer a state church either iirc).

Edited to add.
No law in Norway either, the Norwegian church decided to do same-sex marriages in a vote in 2016.

I think that the danish state church, is the only one that is an actual state church today. In the other countries the largest churches have a kind of de facto position in society due to their size, and long history, and old buildings etc. In Finland there is also a higher position for the Orthodox church I guess due to the shared history with Russia before independence (but it is very small).
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Moe's name calling skills

We didn't come to borrow any money,
We didn't come to borrow any dough,
We didn't come to borrow any trouble,
We just dropped in to say hello,

Hellllll-o to you Mr. Manny,
Please don't think that we are hammy,
We just dropped in from Alabammy,
We just dropped in to say Hello!

Oh boy you said it!

Manny Weeks: Good Bye!
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If We Love Jesus Christ

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’” “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” ”He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.’” (John 14:6,15,21,23,24 NASB1995)

Our God, the one and only true God of the universe, is Father, Son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit. So, not one of us can believe in God the Father and not believe in Jesus Christ, God the Son. So all who profess to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but who reject Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, do not truly believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So, all Jews who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah do not believe in the same God as we do who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Master.

For no one can come to God the Father except through Jesus Christ, and none of us can believe in Jesus Christ unless God the Father first draws us to Christ, i.e. unless he first persuades us as to his holiness and righteousness, and of our sinfulness, and of our need to die to sin and to obey God, as those who profess faith in our Lord Jesus. For faith in Jesus Christ requires that we deny self, die daily to sin, and that we walk (in conduct, in practice) in obedience to our Lord and to his commands under the New Covenant.

[Hebrews 12:1-2; Ephesians 2:8-10; John 6:44; Luke 9:23-26; Acts 26:18]

Now there are many people today who are teaching a gospel of salvation absent of death to sin and walks of obedience to our Lord and to his commands. For they are teaching that we are saved and on our way to heaven based merely on a verbal confession of Christ as Lord and belief that God raised him from the dead. But that is being taught out of context, and it ignores the bulk of the teachings on the gospel of our salvation which insist that we must deny self, die to sin, and follow our Lord in obedience.

But if we love Jesus, we will obey his commandments, and we will be loved by him and by God the Father. But if sin is what we obey, and not God’s commandments, then we do not love God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and we don’t know God, and we are not in fellowship with Jesus Christ. And so we don’t have salvation from sin and eternal life with God, which is promised to all who believe in Jesus, who are dying to sin daily (in practice), and who are following our Lord in walks of obedience to his commands.

For our faith in Jesus Christ is not based on the teachings of other humans, many of which distort and alter the truths of the Scriptures to make them less offensive and more attractive to human flesh and to the world. But our faith in Jesus must be based on the teachings of the Scriptures taught by Jesus Christ and by his New Testament apostles, taught in their correct biblical context, and not out of context which many do in order to deceive. And then we will know the right way in which we are to go by faith in God.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

So, please read the Scriptures in their appropriate biblical context so that you are learning the truth spoken by Jesus Christ and by his New Testament apostles, and so you are not relying upon other human beings in our day and time to actually teach you the truth of what God’s word teaches us.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:5-10; Romans 3:23; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 10:19-39; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22]

My Sheep

Based off John 10:1-30 NIV
An Original Work / June 24, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love


My sheep hear me. They know me.
They listen to my voice and obey.
I call them and lead them.
They know my voice, so they follow me.
They will never follow strangers.
They will run away from them.
The voice of a stranger they know not;
They do not follow him.

So, I tell you the truth that
I am the gate, so you enter in.
Whoever does enter
Will find forgiveness and will be saved.
Nonetheless whoever enters
Not by the gate; other way,
He is the thief and a robber.
Listen not, the sheep to him.

Oh, I am the Good Shepherd,
Who laid his own life down for the sheep.
I know them. They know me.
They will live with me eternally.
The thief only comes to steal and
Kill and to destroy the church.
I have come to give you life that
You may have it to the full…

They know my voice, so they follow me.

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If We Love Jesus Christ
An Original Work / December 8, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Rep. Ilhan Omar: Any link between alleged Somali fraud and terrorism would be a "failure of the FBI"

I think what they will find will shock the US. The ideology that was pushed that caused so much insanity internally as far as unreal ideas has to have spread beyond the borders.

If its all about identity and protecting people based on identity to garner support then there will be corruption no doubt about that. Information hidden, bad actors protected, buying power and exploiting power. All the red flags were there and they hid them because they controlled that information.
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Chains of Bondage

The old covenant ended at the cross, where the new covenant began through the blood of Jesus. “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:20. The new covenant was made with the descendants of Jacob. But later, into THAT covenant, we who have turned from paganism also became included. This is the covenant mentioned in Jeremiah 31:31-33.
God's character traits are eternal, so any instructions that God has ever given for how to know Him by being in His likeness by through embodying His character traits are eternally and cumulatively valid regardless of which covenant someone is under. For example, God's righteousness is eternal (Psalms 119:142), therefore all of God's righteous laws are also eternal (Psalms 119:160). It was in accordance with God's righteousness to be a doer of charity before He made any covenants with man, so that is an eternally valid way to know God regardless of which covenant someone is under. Sin was in the world before the law was given (Romans 5:13), so there were no actions that became righteous or unrighteous when the law was given, but rather it revealed what has always been and will always be the way to do that. The New Covenant is made with the same God with the same eternal character traits and therefore the same eternal and cumulatively valid instructions for how to embody His character traits (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).

In Matthew 4:15-23, Jesus began his ministry with the Gospel message to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, which was a light to the Gentiles, and the Torah was how his audience knew what sin is (Romans 3:20), so repenting from our disobedience to it is a central part of the Gospel of the Kingdom/Grace. Jesus also set a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Torah and we are told to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22) and that those who are in Christ are obligated to walk in the same way that he walked (1 John 2:6). So Jesus seen this ministry teaching his followers to obey the Torah by word and by example, and in Matthew 28:16-20, he commissioned his disciples to teach to the nations everything that he taught them, so did not intended for what he spent his ministry teaching to be nullified with is death. In Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so the way to believe in the Gospel that Jesus spent his ministry teaching and in what he accomplished through the cross us by repenting and becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Torah (Acts 21:20). The reason why Jesus established the New Covenant was not to nullify anything that he spent his ministry teaching, in order to nullify what he accomplished through the cross, or so that we could continue to have the same lawlessness that caused the New Covenant to be needed in the first place, but rather the New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).

In Galatian 3:16-19, there is a principle that new covenants do not nullify the promises of covenants that have already been ratified, so all of God's covenants and eternally and cumulatively valid. One thing can only make another thing obsolete to the extent that it has cumulative functionality, so a computer makes a typewriter obsolete but does not make a plow obsolete, which mens that if the New Covenant were something different that was not cumulative with the Mosaic Covenant, then it could not make it obsolete. So the New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Hebrews 8:10) plus it is cumulatively based on better promises and has a superior mediator (Hebrews 8:6). The fault that God found with he Mosaic Covenant was not with the Torah but with the people for not continuing in their covenant, so the solution to the problem was not to do away with the Torah but to do away with what was hindering us from obeying it. This is why the New Covenant involves God sending His Son to free us from sin so that we might be free to meet the righteous requirement of the Torah (Romans 8:3-4) and God putting the Torah in our minds, writing it on our hearts, taking away our hearts of stone, giving us hearts of flesh, and sending His Spirit to lead us in obedience to the Torah (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27).

In Deuteronomy 30, it forms the basis for the New Covenant by prophesying about a time when the Israelites would return from exile, God would circumcise their hearts, and they would return to obedience to the Torah, which is what the context of Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27 is in regard to.

If God saved the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt in order to put them under bondage to the Torah, then it would be for bondage that God sets us free, however, Galatians 5:1 says that it is for freedom that God sets us free. In Psalms 119:142, the Torah is truth, and in John 8:31-36, it is the transgression of the Torah that puts us into bondage while the truth sets us free. Moreover, the Torah came through the line of the free woman, so that should impact how to correctly understand Galatians 4:21-31.

In Acts 15:6-7, Peter argued that Gentiles had heard and believed the Gospel message, which calls for our obedience to the Torah (Matthew 4:15-23). so he was agreeing with the Pharisees from long the believers in Acts 15:5. Likewise, in Acts 15:8-9, Peter argued that Gentiles had received the Spirit and had their hearts cleanse, so he was again affirming that Gentiles should obey the Torah (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It is contradictory to treat Acts 15:19-21 as containing an exhaustive list for mature believers in order to limit which laws Gentiles should follow while also treating it as being an non-exhaustive list by taking the position that there are obviously other laws that Gentiles should follow. It was not given as an exhaustive list for mature believers but as a list intended to avoid making things too difficult for new believers, which they excused with the expectation that Gentiles would continue to learn about how to obey Moses by hearing him taught every Sabbath in the synagogues.

In Ephesians 2:11-22, Gentiles were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, and without hope and God in this world, all of which is in accordance with Gentiles at one time not being doers of the Torah, but through faith in Christ all of that is no longer true in that Gentiles are no longer strangers or aliens but are fellow citizens of Israel along with the saints in the household of God, all of which is in accordance with Gentiles becoming doers of the Torah.

In Psalms 40:8, it again supports obedience to the Torah.

In James 2:1-11, we we break any law and become a lawbreaker, then we need to repent and to return to obedience, which is what James was encouraging them to do.

"To fulfill the law" means "to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be" (NAS Greek Lexicon: pleroo), so Jesus fulfilled the Torah by teaching us how to correctly obey it.

In Galatians 3:10, Paul said that cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything in the Book of the Law, so we should continue to do everything in the Book of the Law.

In John 7:19, the fact that the people that Jesus was speaking to did not keep the Torah does not mean that no one has been able to keep it, but rather there are many people who did keep it such as with those in Joshua 22:1-3 or Luke 1:5-6.

God wanted His children to repent and to return to obedience to the Torah all throughout the Bible and even Jesus began his ministry with that Gospel message, so it would be absurd to interpret Galatians 5:4 as Paul warning against obeying God and saying that we will be cut off from Christ if we repent and believe the Gospel of Christ. In Psalms 119:29-30, he wanted to put false ways far from him, for God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey the Torah, and he chose the way of faith by setting it before him, so this has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith, this is what it means to be under grace, and it would again be absurd to interpret this as him wanting God to be gracious to him by teaching him how to fall from grace, so you are not correctly identifying what Paul was speaking against in this passage.

In Romans 10:5-8, Paul referred to Deuteronomy 30 as the word of faith that we proclaim in regard to proclaiming that the Torah is not too difficult for us to keep and that obedience to it brings life and a blessing while disobedience brings death and a curse, so choose life!

Everything in the Torah is either in regard to how to love God or how to love our neighbor, which is why Jesus said in Matthew 22:36-40 that those are the greatest two commandments and that all of the other commandments hang on them, so the position that we should obey the greater two commandments is also the position that we should obey the rest of the Torah and love is not doing something that is not in accordance with the Torah.

You are blatantly using Isaiah 1:14 out of context. Do you also think that Isaiah 1:15 means that we shouldn't pray?

In Romans 7:21-8:7, Paul delighted in obeying the Torah and served it with his mind in contrast with the law of sin, which was working within his members to cause him not to do the good tha the wanted to do, which was waging war against the law of his mind, which he served with his flesh, which held him captive, and which the law of the Spirit has free us from. Moreover, Paul contrasted those who walk in the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God who refuse to submit to the Torah. In Galatians 5:16-23, Paul contrasted the desires of the flesh with the desires of the Spirit and everything that he listed as works of the flesh that are against the Spirit are also against the Torah while all of the fruits of the Spirit are in accordance with it. The desires of the flesh causing us not to do the good that we want to do is how Paul described his struggle with the law of sin, which the Law of the Spirit has freed us from, so that is the law that we are not under when we are led by the Spirit. The Torah was given by God and the Spirit is God, so it would be contradictory to interpret Galatians 5:18 as saying that we are not led by God when we are led by God. We need to die to the law of sin in order to be free to obey the Torah, not the other way around.

Christ lived in obedience to the Torah, so that is also the way that we live when he is living in us (Galatians 2:19-20). Grace and truth came through Jesus began he seent his ministry teaching us to obey the Torah by word and by example. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus was inviting people to come to him for rest and to learn from him, not inviting people to come to him for rest instead of learning from his example. Moreover, by Jesus saying that we would find rest for our souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where the Torah is described as the good way where we will find rest for our souls, but they did not want to walk in it. In Hebrews 3:18-19, they did not enter into God's rest because of their disobedience/unbelief, and in Ezekiel 20:13, the greatly profaned God's Sabbaths, so you should not think that you can have the same disobedience to the Torah that prevented the Israelites from entering into God's rest and that it will go differently for you. In Hebrews 4:9-11, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, we should rest from our work as God rested from his, and we should be careful to enter into that rest so that no one might fall away by the same sort of disobedience, so we should continue to keep the Sabbath holy.

In Romans 14:1, the topic of the chapter is in regard to how to handle disputable matters of opinion in which God has given no command, not in regard to whether followers of God should follow God, so nothing in the chapter should be interpreted as speaking against following God. Paul did not mention the Sabbath anywhere in Romans 14 precisely because it had nothing to do with the topic tha the wars discussing.
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1 Enochs astronomy mathematics

⭐ THE VERSE: “At night it appears … like a man”​


In 1 Enoch 78:17, the Ethiopic reads (in most manuscripts):


“At night it appears every twenty (days) like a man,
and at daytime like the sky because there is nothing else in it except its light.”

This sentence contains two ideas:


  1. “At night it appears … like a man.”
  2. During the day it looks like the sky (i.e., invisible).

So yes — the text does describe the moon as showing a human-like face.




⭐ WHAT DOES “LIKE A MAN” REFER TO?​


Assuming the text is describing real lunar appearance:


✔ It refers to the common visual impression that the full moon shows a face.​


Ancient cultures noticed:


  • The darker maria (lunar seas)
  • The brighter highlands
  • The arrangement looks like two eyes, a nose, and a mouth

This is so universal that:


  • Europeans called it the Man in the Moon
  • Jews sometimes said “the face of the moon”
  • Mesopotamians noted markings on the moon
  • Chinese saw a rabbit; others saw a man
  • Romans saw “the face of Selene”

Enoch 78:17 matches this universal observation.




⭐ WHY “EVERY TWENTY DAYS”?​


The text says:


every twenty (days) like a man”

This likely refers to the part of the lunar cycle where the moon’s illuminated portion resembles a face — this would be:


  • Waxing gibbous → full moon → waning gibbous

That segment lasts roughly 20 days (about two-thirds of the lunar month).


So the text is saying:


✔ During the part of the month when the moon is mostly lit, its markings resemble a human face.​




⭐ IS THIS A LITERAL DESCRIPTION?​


If we assume nothing in 1 Enoch is fictional, then:


✔ The text is reporting exactly what humans still see today —​


the facial-like pattern on the lunar near side.


This is not symbolic.
This is observational astronomy.
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A perspective on Baptism and the plan of salvation that I have not heard before

We are born into a sinful world .... we will indeed sin. But it is God who will judge and will hole each of us according to our accountability. there is an age of accountability. The Bible does not mention an explicit age of accountability, but it does speak of personal responsibility and accountability based on one’s ability to understand and respond to God’s message. The age of accountability may vary with individuals, but it is related to their spiritual and mental development and their response to the gospel message.

Regarding how we will be judged, the Bible teaches that God will judge everyone according to their deeds. Those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior will be judged according to their faith in Him, while those who have rejected Him will be judged according to their works. The Bible also teaches that God is just and merciful, and that He will judge everyone fairly. Bible verses that speak about accountability and judgment:

  • Innocence Before Knowledge:
    Deuteronomy 1:39 states that the children of Israel were spared from captivity because they "did not yet know good from bad". This implies a state of innocence before moral discernment.

  • Conscious Choice:
    Isaiah 7:16 suggests a child will know "enough to reject the wrong and choose the right" before a land is laid waste. This highlights the importance of conscious choice in the concept of accountability.

  • Grace for Children:
    Jesus' statement in Matthew 19:14, "Let the little children come to me... for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these," demonstrates a special compassion for children and a belief they are under God's grace until they become accountable.

  • Individual Accountability:
    Romans 14:12 reminds us that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God".

  • Divine Discretion:
    While the Bible teaches children are not held accountable in the same way as adults, God is the only one who truly knows the exact moment a child crosses the threshold into conscious sin and rejection of Him.

Most certainly Mary being an adult was at the age of accountability.
The Age of Accountability belief says God won't hold your sin against you until you're old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong. Until the AoA you get a free pass to heaven.

Yet God held Adam & Eve's sin against them. They didn't understand good and evil until after they ate the fruit. This pretty much falsifies AoA belief for me.
  • Agree
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Trump Says US Will Permanently Pause Migration From 'Third World Countries'

According to the newspaper article yes, 1200 reported cases in Glasgow.
Wow. That’s sickening. I read up on it. To make things worse, some of these cases (I don’t know about in Scotland) are done without anesthesia or numbing agents and with broken glass, sharp rocks, fingernails and more. The same “instruments” are re-used on numbers of girls without sterilization. Absolutely barbaric.
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And Now, an Argument In Favor of a Flat Earth

Lake Baikal is flat & frozen flat many months of the years (80kmX600km)
If you sat on the edge of the lake with a 100km range powerful tripod telescope approx 1 meter above the ice, how far away on the flat ice would I have to be before you could no longer see me ?
Cold dense air above the ice would cause light to refract more than usual, so you will likely be able to see further in Winter than during Summer.
Similar experiments have been done using laser light, without taking into account atmospheric refraction. The laser light actually bends downwards due to the density gradient of the atmosphere.
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Barron Trump interested in supernatural dreams, 'very close' to becoming Christian: pastor

Pastor Stuart Knechtle recently claimed that President Donald Trump's 19-year-old son, Barron, is interested in claims of supernatural dreams about Jesus Christ in the Muslim world and is "very close" to becoming a Christian.

Knechtle, who has 2.4 million followerson TikTok and serves as assistant pastor at Grace Community Church in New Canaan, Connecticut, shared Thursday on "The George Janko Show" that he recently witnessed to Barron on the phone at 12:30 a.m. about Christianity.

“I thought I was hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink when it came to all the evidence for God and Christianity," Knechtle said.

"I thought I was really on, I was pumped," he said. "And at the very end, I came up pretty much totally open-handed with nothing. But I brought up dreams and revelations."

Knechtle claimed Barron was fascinated when he brought up reports that have circulated in recent years of many Muslims experiencing striking encounters with Jesus Christ in their dreams. Mission Frontiers magazine reported that a quarter of Muslim conversions to Christianity are because of such experiences.

Continued below.
It sure would be great to see Barron give himself to Jesus. Maybe his conversion would help other family members follow suit.
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The New Testament begins in Acts not Matthew chapter one.

The New Testament Begins in Acts Not Matthew​

When you read the Gospels in the Bible, such as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do they sometimes seem to contradict other parts of the New Testament Scripture? For example, in Matthew 6:15, Jesus said, “If you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Yet, in Colossians 2:13, the Apostle Paul wrote, “…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.” How can there be two different perspectives written in the same New Testament?

Many Christians experience confusion because they think all of Jesus’ teachings are part of the New Testament, also known as the “New Covenant.” However most of them are not. The New Testament, which is God’s New Covenant with mankind, actually starts in the book of Acts, not Matthew. How do we know this fact is true?

When reading the New Testament, ask yourself this question, “Had Jesus died yet when this was written?” If not, then those writings are part of the Old Covenant in most cases. If the writings are after Jesus died, then it’s part of the New Covenant.

Exactly.

People get easily confused by the gospels in that sense. That don't know how to correctly apply the symbology that Jesus used, and who the audience His words were directed at.
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Rosie O’Donnell’s Trump ‘Fixation’ Made Her Therapist Challenge Her to Go Two Days Without Posting About Him — She Made It a Few Hours

Rosie O’Donnell’s hatred of President Donald Trump led her therapist to recently plead with her to go two days without posting anything about the president on social media; O’Donnell, according to a Washington Post profile on Saturday, only lasted “a few hours” before she was compelled to post about Trump again.

The comic’s “fixation” on the president, as WaPo put it, has also become a concern for her longtime friends. One of those friends, Jeanne Kopetic, insisted O’Donnell has “got to disconnect” from following the news, because she is so consumed by what Trump does.

Continued below.
That's funny. She and Trump are two of a kind.
  • Haha
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Zions New Children

We Christian peoples are those who already occupy the Holy Lands
Jeremiah 32:6-15 The Lord tells Jeremiah to buy a field and hide the deed of purchase in a sealed jar, to be preserved for a long time to come.
Verse 30 Israel and Judah provoked My anger by their idolatry, therefore...
Verse 36 .... the Land is given over to the sword, famine and pestilence.
Verse 37-43 God’s people, all the Israelites of God, gathered from all the lands to which I banished them. They will be My people and I shall be their God. [They became Christians and prospered, as Jacob and Moses Prophesied]
Verse 44 Then, once again, property will be bought and sold.

I would love to think that sometime soon, that jar will be found and proof of the Holy Land ownership established forever. Psalms 37:29, Matthew 5:5
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What of these passages, do they make you think?

Maybe you are right. I myself am not sold on a position. So when I read something in Bible passages bringing it up, why should I not bring it here? If you are sure of your position, why don't you explain it? What do you think of this?

Isaiah 56:
1-2
Thus says Yahweh:Keep justice, and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come,
And My righteousness to be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who lays hold on it;
Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.
6-8
Also the sons of the foreigner
Who join themselves to Yahweh, to serve Him,
And to love the name of Yahweh, to be His servants
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And holds fast My covenant
Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.
The Lord Yahweh, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says,
Yet I will gather to him
Others besides those who are gathered to him.


There was application for foreigners in the times of the old covenant, that is fair to say. But the context of these passages is prophetic, when salvation is to come and righteousness will be revealed, even when they will come to God's holy mountain, where the vision of the everlasting times in the end applies, with no more suffering and no more death. For this gentiles, those not born of the people of Israel, are with their faith in Yahweh God through Christ grafted in with Israel, those of which who remain in the end will all be saved, in the latter times, when there is God's house of prayer for all nations.
You're reading Isaiah 56 as if it's giving a future Christian obligation to keep the Sabbath, but that’s not really what the text is doing.

Isaiah is talking to Israel under the Old Covenant, and the blessing he describes assumes that same covenant framework: Sabbath-keeping and sacrifices and the Temple system (“burnt offerings,” “My altar,” “My holy mountain”). If you take the Sabbath part as binding for Christians today, you’d need to be consistent and also take the sacrificial system and covenantal markers with it, because the passage treats them as a single package.

The prophetic hope Isaiah points to (“My salvation is about to come”) is fulfilled in Christ, not in a return to the Mosaic system. The NT consistently reads these “house of prayer for all nations” promises as fulfilled through Christ’s body, not through the continuation of Israel’s ritual law (cf. Mark 11:17, Eph 2:11–22).

Foreigners joining Israel under the Old Covenant is totally true, but the NT makes a big deal that Gentiles are now included without taking on Torah markers (Sabbath, circumcision, dietary laws). Acts 15 is basically the Church settling this exact question.

So Isaiah 56 is beautiful, but it’s not prescribing Sabbath-keeping for Christians in the end times, it’s describing the inclusivity of God’s salvation as it looked from within the Old Covenant categories. If someone wants to argue Sabbath is binding today, they need to do it from the New Testament, not by importing Moses + temple + altar + sacrifices into the church age.
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What would you do differently?

I have a Bachelor's degree too. I had thought about going to a technical college when I was in the college age, but I was discouraged by family members, claiming that it was not legit and wouldn't get me a job. Sometimes I wonder if they were wrong. Because how do other people get computer jobs? (I wanted to repair computers.)

I wonder if having a technical degree would've helped me. Because my Bachelor's degree sure didn't. Not to get off topic and rant, but I do blame my mom quite a bit on this issue.
Yes, somewhere along the line I was influenced to get a Bachelor’s too! It seemed like what I was supposed to do. I really didn’t know what I was doing. My mom actually influenced me to go back to tech school and get the degree I got, which made my whole career work out. I think Bachelor’s degrees must have seemed like the ultimate goal back then. Yet mine did nothing for me, it was a more generic degree. I wish I would have picked something more specific, like accounting or something. Or stuck with my original choice of music.

It’s really too bad how one person’s influence can really throw one’s life off course.
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Top 10 Myths About Evolution

The sun increases the rate of entropy.
Perhaps you don't know what "entropy" means. What do you think it means?
Nothing becomes more
complex or increases in information due to the sun.
Plants, weather systems, river valleys, animal populations. Would you like to learn about specific examples?
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