johansen said:

I do..

But on a serious note: why do christians think that sexual desires cant be changed?

Click to expand...

Michie said:

Never heard of them but would love more info to read if you have a link.

Click to expand...

Augustana Catholic Church - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

AACJ said:

Although you claim it’s not “unobservable, untestable, and beyond empirical science,” the evidence you provide is speculative at best. Eternal inflation and bubble universe collisions, as you mention in your cited studies (Aguirre, Johnson, and Shomer, 2007), rely on unproven assumptions about quantum field theory and inflation duration, with collision probabilities ranging from low to negligible (Freivogel et al., 2009; Kleban et al., 2011). The CMB “cold spot” you mention is widely attributed to a supervoid, not a collision, which undermines your argument (Szapudi, I., et al., 2015). The multiverse remains untestable since we cannot directly observe other universes, making it a faith-based construct, not science (Craig, Reasonable Faith)[1]. It’s a super-natural appeal, a desperate handwaving surrogate “God of the Gaps” for naturalism.

Click to expand...

AACJ said:

Underlying presuppositions that are conducive to supporting the Multiverse Hypothesis:

1) rejecting supernatural causation, denying a Creator and seeking explanations such as the multiverse for fine-tuning; 2) a prior commitment to materialistic explanations, assuming only physical processes can account for reality; 3) asserting science’s epistemic superiority (i.e., only valid source of knowledge), favoring speculative theories over design; 4) denying purpose or design, viewing fine-tuning as chance within a multiverse; and 5) accepting probabilistic reasoning over ultimate causes, using multiple universes to avoid a singular origin (Craig, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology; Manson, God and Design).

Click to expand...

Always in His Presence said:

combined that with the fact he LOST billions during his first erm - show the weakness of your claim.

Click to expand...

Trump’s Business Hauled In $2.4 Billion During Four Years He Served As President

Forbes estimates the pandemic helped wipe about $200 million off Trump’s top line last year.

www.forbes.com

Lukaris said:

Gibbon knew of the plague during the reign of Justinian but perhaps not its extent or downplayed it. Not that Justinian was anything to write home about or many of the conclusions drawn from Gibbon here attached to scripture either. Per AI search re Gibbon & the plague that weakened the Roman apparatus.




AI Overview

+3


Yes,
Edward Gibbon did mention the Plague of Justinian in his monumental work, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". In fact, he featured the description of the plague's assault on Constantinople in 542 CE, during Justinian's reign, using accounts like that of Procopius.
While Gibbon didn't focus on the plague as the primary cause for the Roman Empire's decline (instead attributing it to factors like barbarian invasions, loss of Roman civic virtue, and the rise of Christianity), he did acknowledge its contribution to the overall calamities and depopulation.
However, Gibbon's treatment of the Justinianic Plague is now considered brief and understated compared to more recent historical analysis. Modern research, incorporating archaeological evidence and genetic analysis, has revealed the devastating extent of the plague, suggesting its impact may have been far greater than Gibbon realized. Some modern historians consider it a pivotal event that significantly weakened the Byzantine Empire, hindering its ability to defend against invasions and ultimately contributing to its eventual decline.
In essence, while Gibbon recognized the plague, its profound and lasting influence on the decline of the Byzantine Empire has become a central focus of more recent scholarship.

did gibbon mention the plague at the time of justinian - Google Search

Click to expand...

III. Æthiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized, in every age, as the original source and seminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors, first appeared in the neighborhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the color of the patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear; and when these buboes or tumors were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humor. But if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and in the constitutions too feeble to produce an irruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected fetus. Youth was the most perilous season; and the female sex was less susceptible than the male: but every rank and profession was attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful; but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of sepulchres, were confounded: those who were left without friends or servants, lay unburied in the streets, or in their desolate houses; and a magistrate was authorized to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger, and the prospect of public distress, awakened some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of mankind: the confidence of health again revived their passions and habits; but philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favor of fortune or Providence. He forgot, or perhaps he secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the person of Justinian himself; but the abstemious diet of the emperor may suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and honorable cause for his recovery. During his sickness, the public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens; and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East.

Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague; which, by mutual respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular, that the existence of a real danger should have been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the closest conversation: and this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion; and those salutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces: from Persia to France, the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigrations; and the pestilential odor which lurks for years in a bale of cotton was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. The mode of its propagation is explained by the remark of Procopius himself, that it always spread from the sea-coast to the inland country: the most sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might diffuse that subtile venom; but unless the atmosphere be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon expire in the cold or temperate climates of the earth. Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years, that mankind recovered their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find, that during three months, five, and at length ten, thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; that many cities of the East were left vacant, and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine, afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced by the visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe.

(The History of the decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 4, Chap. 43, pgs. 415-419 of the Everyman's Library edition)

Click to expand...

Pommer said:

President Trump is not “conservative”; President Trump is right-wing populist.

Click to expand...

Dan Perez said:

And I believe that in 1 Thess 4:13 and 14 mesh together and are in what Paul , 2 Cor 12:4 calls PARADISE and God

though Jesus bring with Him .

Then verse 15 then the surviving ones unto the the coming of the Lord , by no means may precede the ones having

been fallen asleep

Then in verse 16 , and nthe dead in Christ will RAISE up First .

Then in verse 17 , then we the living ones , , the surviving ones will be CAUGHT away at the same time with them

in the Clouds for a meeting of the Lord into the AIR , as so will at all times be with the Lord ,

dan p

Click to expand...

johansen said:

The Good Lord knows when earthquakes happen before they do, and there would not be an 11 day time difference between a significant but otherwise average magnitude 7 quake on march 31. Vs the specific date given in a dream.

Click to expand...

jas3 said:

The Ukrainian Orthodox referred to in the report are specifically the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which as I understand it was formed a few years ago out of Ukrainian nationalist sentiment. The canonical church there is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which Russia doesn't have a problem with, although the report disingenuously refers to the UOC as the "Russian Orthodox Church," even though the ROC is a distinct body.
Also noteworthy is that Ukraine itself isn't exactly a bastion of religious freedom; the Ukrainian government recently outlawed the UOC.

There's also the question of whether religious freedom as the USCIRF defines it is a good thing. Personally, I'm not too broken up about JWs not being able to evangelize their brand of Arianism to Christians, but that's just me.

Click to expand...

public hermit said:

Yes, the Bible certainly informs my own theology. I've always thought the Wesleyan Quadrilateral was a helpful heuristic; although, it needs to be emphasized that Wesley was adamant about the primacy of scripture (hence its place at the "foundation" of the quadrilateral).

View attachment 367011

Click to expand...

Akita Suggagaki said:

Don't you see a sequence presented in the creation accounts that culminates in Adam and Eve?

Click to expand...

YeshuaFan said:

We get our theology from the Epistles written to us by the Inspired Apostles of the Risen Christ

Click to expand...

fhansen said:

Well, we take all of Scripture into account, and don't discount the historic understanding of the churches and ECFS as well. Salvation is spoken of in past, present, and future tenses in Scripture. We don't presume to be saved in the absolute sense. We can compromise our state of justice, by living unjustly. We can turn back away from God, and to the flesh. To put it another way, until we're perfected in love- of God and neighbor- we may still choose against love, we can still fail to choose good over evil. Salvation isn't some carte blanche irrevocable gift regardless of how we live our lives. God desires none to perish, but some will. Etc.

There're just a lot of ways to say it. Grace is resistble; if we continue to embrace it, we'll persevere.

Click to expand...

Jan001 said:

The first coming of Jesus was in the first century AD. The event that some Christians call "the Rapture" is actually Jesus' second coming to earth.

At the last trumpet blast, the Christians who are alive on earth will rise to meet Jesus in the air, and then they will follow him to the Kidron Valley/Jehoshaphat Valley for the final judgment, aka the white throne/sheep and goats judgment.

The people who died before Jesus' second coming will rise from the dead at the trumpet blast, and the righteous ones of this group will then accompany Jesus to earth to meet with the righteous ones who will ascend to meet them in the air.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore, console one another with these words.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53 Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality.

John 5:28-29 Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.

Jesus' first coming to earth was at his incarnation. Jesus will physically return to earth only once more, and it will be at the end of time.

Hebrews 9:27-28 Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, 28 so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.

Click to expand...