It is interesting during Philip's ministry in Samaria where there was a mighty revival, and Peter and John came to impart the Holy Spirit to the converts. Simon the Sorcerer offered money to the Apostles for the power of the Spirit, but Peter turned him down flat, and gave him a severe rebuke, saying that basically that he was a false convert.

I reckon that if it were Benny Hinn instead of Peter, he would have taken the money from Simon as a "seed offering" for the filling of the Holy Spirit and the power that went with him.

Lock the doors. If the doors are locked he can't get in.

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. The verdict appears to have energized his supporters, however, as the campaign's donation page crashed, evidently due to the volume of traffic.

The campaign on Friday initially announced it had brought in $34.8 million in small dollar donations, marking a near-doubling of its single largest day total on WinRed. Later, it updated the total to $52.8 million raised in the 24 hours following the verdict.

“In the 24 hours since Crooked Joe Biden and his New York henchmen got their sham trial verdict, the Trump Campaign has raised $52.8 million through the online digital fundraising platform,” the campaign said in a statement reported by the Daily Wire. “THAT’S MORE THAN $2 MILLION PER HOUR!”

There is no longer a Democratic majority in the Senate

Vanity of vanities.

I studied the phenomena of NDE:s and made an interesting find.

First of all, you may notice that no two NDE:s are the same. Whether they are good or bad, they are never in the same universe.

Also, here are spirits who say they are able to tailor, in their words, a character to the person.

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However I would suggest they do more than that.

Thus we enter the CUBE, also known as the flower of life, or marriage.

As some of you may already know, the cube can be unfolded into a cross. As well as the hypercube.

Thus we conclude, that when transitioning, both at the time of death and in the body, there is room for only one spirit and one reality.

Hello Christians!

I read the Bible often, not only in English but also in Greek and sometimes Hebrew. I've recently finished reading Romans with the assistance of commentaries by Cranfield and Bruce, and I'm now reading Paul R House's commentary on the beautiful book of Daniel. So far I've never got around to learning Aramaic, but I could reasonably be described as an expert on the Bible, in comparison with most people. I'm also aware that one of the things the Bible teaches is that my scholarly knowledge is nothing to be proud of!

I want to be a Christian. I try to live as a Christian. I pray, sometimes for hours and hours...

But the end result is always that I think: none of it is true, is it?

So I'm joining your forum as a sympathetic and knowledgeable atheist. I hope you don't mind.

Nov 2016 the vote was cast for the Presidential term that started in 2017​

from: Hush money, catch and kill and more: A guide to unique terms used at Trump’s New York criminal trial ​

FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS​

==================== next the 30,000 payment

from: $30,000 rumor? Tabloid paid for, spiked, salacious Trump tip

By JAKE PEARSON and JEFF HORWITZ Published 4:23 PM EDT, (Thursday) April 12, 2018



==================== Next the 130,000 payment stormy was supposed to pay back


==========================end quote

Wanted Daniels to repay 130k??

In any case, all of this is about "incorrect business records" (which is not legal, possibly misdemeanor, like jaywalking) not about "paying hush money" (which the article says is not illegal)

So then when is jaywalking a felony? Answer: "when one is jaywalking in order to rob a bank".
IN other words - all the "talk" was supposed to be about how problems with business records - was on the way to "robbing bank" and would mean that they should be pushing the crime of "robbing the bank" and not the crime of hush money or incorrect bank records.

So where has all the "Robbing the bank" sort of news been all this time??

Seems to be conspicuously absent.

This song has honestly wrecked me in the best way possible. "The Truth is I am my Father's Child..." is a line in the song that I think we forget to reflect on so often. Would love to know your thoughts! Login to view embedded media

I am feeling so far down right now, it’s so bad that I don’t have any energy to go to work. I just want to stay in bed all day. I awoke to no paycheck (long story) and I am now feeling like a failure to my family to keep us going. I don’t know how to. I’m just wanting to hunker down and stay in my bed all day. No energy to work or clean or anything like that. I just can’t do this anymore.

I am wondering whether Mr. Trump's conviction will give the less ideological members of the Court to take limits on presidential immunity more seriously.
I recognize two are unreachable, but last week the Court was evaluating the case based on their faith in the relative integrity of our 46 presidents.
They can no longer assume that to be true. We now have a convicted felon among the 46, who through aggressive defense delay tactics, still has three more serious cases pending.
I wonder if those judges who want to preserve our union will realize that integrity, now or in the future, can't be assumed, and that significant limits need to be placed on immunity.

See How old is the earth?

The Rapture and Jewish Weddings

There is an interesting parallel between a Jewish wedding and the Rapture. Only a Pre-Tribulation Rapture will fit into this scenario.
Three groups of people were present at every Jewish wedding—the groom, the bride, and the invited guests.
Three groups of people will also be involved in the marriage of the Lamb.

1. The Groom—this is Jesus (2 Cor. 11:2, Eph. 5:23-27)
2. The Bride—this is the Church (2 Cor. 11:2, Eph. 5:22-32, Rev. 21:9-10)
3. The Guests—these are people saved after the Rapture (Matt. 25:1-10).

Some people have mistakenly interpreted the 10 virgins as the Church.
However, they are the guests invited to the wedding feast and are not the bride.

Three Aspects of a Jewish Wedding
There were also three aspects of every Jewish wedding. The same is true with the marriage of the Lamb.

1. The Wedding Contract (Betrothal).
This is when a person is saved (2 Cor. 11:2).

2. The Wedding Ceremony (Groom receives Bride).
This is the Rapture (John 14:2-3). Revelation 19:7 literally reads, "The marriage of the Lamb came and His wife prepared herself." The wedding already occurred at the Rapture, and now the Lamb and the Church are about to return to earth for the wedding feast. This parallels what Jesus said in Luke 12:36, "And be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding…
” (It should read “wedding,” not "wedding feast" as some versions say. Why would someone wait after the wedding feast when the celebration is over?)

3. The Wedding Feast (Guests are invited to the celebration).
This is the Second Coming (Matt. 25:1-10) "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:9). A bride is not invited to her own wedding! The Church was married to Christ at the Rapture and the wedding feast will occur on earth after the Second Coming. Those people saved after the Rapture (the tribulation saints) will be invited to participate in the wedding feast.

And here's one more thought to ponder…

Three Times of Redemption (“Redemption" means "to purchase.”)

1. When you were saved by receiving Jesus as your Lord, He redeemed your spirit. (1 Peter 1:18, Eph. 1:7)
2. At the Rapture, Jesus will redeem your body. (Rom. 8:23, Eph. 1:14, 4:30).
3. At the Second Coming, Jesus will redeem the earth. (Rom. 8:19-22) At this time, the curse which was placed on it because of the fall of man (Gen. 3:17-19) will be lifted (Zech. 14:11).

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/28/venezuela-glaciers-global-warming-climate-change





This is bad news for Venezuela.

Right-wing media figures vow revenge after Trump‘s conviction​

While not surprising, the furious bluster reverberating across right-wing media still carried its intended effect, burning away public trust in America’s core institutions and leaving a lasting impact on the legitimacy of the rule of law in the United States.

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who commands a following of millions of subscribers on YouTube and social media, said after the verdict that Trump “should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office.”

The Federalist chief executive Sean Davis said he wants “to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison.”

Gee, at least Nixon had the good sense to keep his enemies list secret. But the projection among some of Trump's fans is pretty obvious. They secretly openly long to make arrests motivated by politics rather than the impartial application of the law.

The perpetual virginity of Mary is a Christian doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin "before, during and after" the birth of Christ.[2] In Western Christianity, the Catholic Church adheres to the doctrine, as do some Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed, and other Protestants.[3][4][5][6][7] The Oriental Orthodox Churches also adhere to this doctrine as part of their ongoing tradition,[8] and Eastern Orthodox churches recognize Mary as Aeiparthenos, meaning "ever-virgin".[9] It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church.[10] Most modern nonconformist Protestants reject the doctrine.[11]

How can I stop myself being addicted to conspiracies ?

Ever since I was a kid I've rebelled against authority & I love to join all the dots.
I was only 10 years old when I tried to join the dots concerning the book of Revelation.

As I grew older I would buy any conspiracy book I could get my hands on & even joined forums such as 'David Icke' which was wrong as most members on there are far from being Christians.

It was only when I discovered that earth is flat that I truly became a Christian & have read the Bible numerous of times, & the fact that I should be dead right now if God hadn't give me a second chance.

I have truly prayed about my addiction but God has truly laid it on my heart heavy about the shape of the earth.

I thank you for listening to me

I just love the smell of napalm in the morning. Don't you? https://myfox8.com/news/politics/nc...ump-with-independents-in-3-states-poll-finds/

What a time to be alive to experience democracy in action. Does anyone who is not a rabid Democrat think that was a fair trial? Let's list here the many reasons this will be overturned on appeal. We've reduced ourselves to a 3rd world banana republic, using the levers of power against political opponents.I suspect poll numbers and donations to Trump will rise after this display, which was a forgone conclusion. This will be glorious.

I try not to eat meat on Friday even non-Lent but if I do, what kind of penance would be suitable?

There are movies everybody has seen. Things like the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, Jaws, the Ten Commandments, the Avengers, the Terminator, Alien, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Rocky, The Magnificent Seven (the one with Yul Brynner), Dirty Harry, the Planet of the Apes (the one with Charleton Heston), the Dark Knight, Independence Day, Back to the Future, etc. What? You haven't seen some of those? What's wrong with you?? Those are legends! People are going to look at you funny if you say you haven't seen them.

Well, we all have different tastes. Some movies can offend your sensibilities. Younger folks may have missed out on the older stuff. And sometimes we just never get around to seeing something, especially if it would cost money. Personally, I'm not much of a movie watcher, although looking back at things I'm surprised at how many classics I've seen. Citizen Kane? The Sound of Music? Gone with the Wind? Yeah, things happen.

Here are some of the big-name movies that I could just never get motivated to watch:

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Pulp Fiction
Friday the 13th and its sequels
Psycho
The Shawshank Redemption
Twilight and its sequels
Casablanca
On the Waterfront
Rebel Without a Cause
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Grease

This question actually stems from my pondering of the notion of free will. But in the process of thinking about free will I was forced to consider the concepts of quantum indeterminacy and wave function collapse, and those questions are better suited for a sciencey forum like this one.

So here goes.

I only have a 9th grade education so I tend to be a visual thinker. Give me a good gedankenexperiment and I can be lost for hours of pointless mental meandering. A good example of this is 'Schrodinger's cat'. But the more that I consider this seemingly elegant thought experiment, the more confused I get.

One of the main sticking points of Schrodinger's cat is the question of whether the cat is dead, alive, or a combination thereof, before we open the box. There are those who'll argue that the cat was either dead or alive long before we opened the box, for the simple reason that the 'environment causes collapse'. Initially this seems like a logical explanation because the box is full of stuff to interact with... there's the cat, and the detector, and the bottle of poison, and the hammer, and the emitter, and the walls of the box, and the air... that's a lot of stuff for a radioactive decay particle to weave its way through undetected.

Thus the dilemma is resolved, the environment causes collapse, there is no dead and alive cat.

But if you're anything like me then your stupid brain won't stop thinking, and here's what my stupid brain thinks. It's easy to consider the environment as all of this physical 'stuff', but in reality everything in the box, and even the box itself is nothing more than a bunch of indeterminate particles, absolutely no different from the one that I'm concerned about measuring. There's nothing special about those other particles. They're no more entangled with the environment than the particle that I'm concerned about measuring. That radioactive decay particle was emitted by the environment just like all those other particles were. So if those particles are entangled with the environment, then by the same reasoning, so is that radioactive decay particle. But instead, everything inside that box is one big indeterminate cloud of particles.

So that's the first thing that my brain starts to do. It stops visualizing the environment as a bunch of stuff, and starts visualizing it for what it really is, a nebulous cloud of probability. There's nothing different or special about my radioactive decay particle, compared to any other particle.

The second thing that my brain gets confused about is the state of the radioactive emitter. Because until something happens to collapse the wave function, the emitter is also in a state of indeterminacy, of having both emitted, and not emitted a particle. Which means that it has always emitted a particle. There's never a point in time when it isn't in an indeterminate state of having emitted a particle. And this idea can be extended to every other particle in the box. They're all in an indeterminate state of having interacted with that potential radioactive decay particle, and not interacted with that radioactive decay particle. There's never a time when that potential radioactive decay particle isn't being interacted with by a practically infinite number of other indeterminate particles.

This is the point at which my brain gets really confused, because if every particle in the box can be said to have potentially interacted with every other particle in the box, with a greater or lesser degree of probability, then what makes one particular interaction of such preeminent importance that it collapses the entire wave function, and we go from an infinite number of possibilities to just one?

What is it about one particular arrangement of that cloud that makes it collapse the wave function when none of the others do, and if none of them have any particular significance, then what makes it reasonable to assume that one of them just randomly will?

This is where we come full circle back to the question of free will, and the significance of an observer. Because the observer is the only thing that would seem to have a unique perspective that nothing else does... at least relative to me. And if I'm not the cause of the collapse, then that collapse would appear to be random, and how do random events create a determinate reality? @Bradskii, a la Schrodinger, we've got a cat walking around for no other reason than sheer dumb luck.

Now I'm pretty darn sure that me and my 9th grade education have screwed something up in this... I'm just wondering what the heck it is. I'm not here to argue. I'm here to find out where I'm wrong.

ENTER BY THE NARROW GATE

So it is becoming clear to me, that time is the root of all evil. By believing in time, the individual believes in his own works, good or bad, and has to account for all his works, good or bad, and has to be dependent on his own works, good or bad. Faith goes out the window, because time somehow gives the individual a sense of autonomy, as long as he has "time". The final mockery then, when God says, that the man has 120 years.

This also affects how you read the Bible. If there is no time, then the number before a "day" simply denotes it's character. This will unlock other meanings. Such as, what is an hour with the Beast?

An hour is one of the Twelve. We know that Judas betrayed Christ. Why did he do that? Maybe he thought, by the deception of time in him, that suffering for the sake of the gospel was unnecessary, as he could betray Christ and buy a plot of land to retire on, having a peaceful future, which of course, was just a fantasy from the devil.

Or in other words, a "short" time. Short in comparison to eternity, and short in the grace of God.

So while it may look from our perspective that the moment is just a sliver in time, as if an hour on the clock, it is only done so by the illusion of time, while the reality is that the moment is eternal, and the life that you live in the illusion of time is nothing but a sliver in eternity.

So in other words, an hour with the Beast, is simply the time the individual spends in captivity of him.

Erm.... Seriously? Easiest guilty verdict ever!

Ok so pretty much ever since i was a kid until about seven years ago i had a big, big problem with sexual immorality. Big problem. But, God changed me and i havent engaged in sexual immorality in about seven-eight years now.

That's the good news. Now? I'm stuck with another really, really bad and big sin. I'm a pathological liar and oftentimes I'll lie without even thinking about it or caring about the consequences. I lie a lot of times to cover up my other lies to cover up those lies to cover up... well you get the idea. It doesn't matter how hard I try I can't kick this habit and the Bible says there's always a way of escape but I just don't see it. All I see are lies to cover up my other lies.



I've talked to my pastor about it and he told me that since I've been making zero progress in my pathological lying that I need to repent and accept Jesus. Great advice, no really I'm not being sarcastic. But I can repent and accept Jesus until the cows come home and my lying doesn't get any better. In fact, many times I lie without even thinking about the consequences or caring that God hates it and that God will judge all who love to lie. Only I hate to lie, I just do it pathologically without thinking. But it's like my pastor said, no sin is outside of God's control and God's ability to forgive and to change even the pathological ones. But, when I kicked my sexual immorality habbit it wasn't due to any effort of my own I just one day stopped sinning and stopped engaging in sexual immorality. I thought it was a sin that I would never break yet, God broke it for me. But, I can't rely on God to break my every sin. The Bible says that part of our victory over sin is obtainable on our own with God's help. But, I do really like that I didn't lie today. And that I'm not lying now at least sometimes I'm capable of the truth...

Well, I think we might have a problem, or a few.

So the first problem, language barriers. YHWH doesn't say much in our language, but in the original, YHWH means by it's individual letters "behold the hand behold the nail", but together as word it means any and all forms of "to be" as in this passage.

Second problem then, translation. LORD doesn't translate any of the meanings in the original.

Third problem, the name of his Son. If we say, Yahshua, we use Yah as the root and arrive at the meaning "YHWH saves". But Jesus? Is he the son of Zeus?

But the fourth problem, whether we use Jesus or Yahshua, Lord or Yah, are we hallowing his name by using the right letters and phonetics, or by understanding his will, work and presence? Is succeeding at the former, but failing in the latter, an example of straining out a gnat but swallowing the camel?

In other words, do we gain or lose anything regarding what letters and phonetics we use, or is the only value in the kind of character that he is, or should I say, "the number of his name", sum total value, having taking everything into account?

What would then be some important characteristics, that we should not overlook?