Heres why I say "aliens" have a place in the bible. Long post alert.
What we know from actual biblical descriptions of "angels", when veiwed from a modern lens, does infact qualify angels as "extraterrestrial".
According to Jude, angels number atleast 100 million. Angels literally come down from way above, as in genesis, the vision of ezekiel, and the fiery chariot of elijah, and new jerusalem in revelation.
Ezekiel and elijiah both display transportation craft, even if they are a "lightform" structure. Even the idea of God having a mobile throne, does, infact, show transportaion.
The watchers of genesis were physical beings. They came down from above the sky, probably in crafts, and took wives, having hybrid children thru intercourse. They were physical beings.
They taught humans all kinds of sciences and things, and ways to satisfy desires. Yes it was bad for us, but thats not the point here. The "angels" were already knowledgeable before they came here, making us a strong civilization. This implies that they came from a different strong civilization, that knew and used all such things already. This implies industriusness, as metallurgy and war were things they taught, so wherever they came from, must have been a place that already mastered such things.
Now thats just the watchers. Other angels appear like men, and can eat and drink. Other angels really do seem to be nonphysical, whatever that means. They also have powers.
The super powers of God, Angels and Spirits are numerous and definitely worth a mention.
Spoken creation, or thought manifestation, would be pretty cool, tho Im pretty sure only God and Jesus have displayed it. Instant transmission. The tree that withered after Jesus shamed it. Transmutation of substances. Control of weather and animals/swarms. Calling fire down from heaven. Calling forth plaques and famines and draughts. Healing the sick and the broken. RAISING THE DEAD!!!
The "heavenly body", which the angels disrobed from to come down, which we believers eagerly await for at the ressurection, is basically like going super saiyan. We'll be given immortal, super powered physical bodies, that will be our living bodies but made perfect by The Lord.
As for visions and abilities.
Meditation is used to achieve contact with spirit, and to develop your own sensitivity to spirit. God is a spirit, and desires worshipers to worship him in truth and in spirit, and truth is, meditation is the pathway to contact with spirit. It is inside us. Period.
The voice of God can be heard as a still small voice in the silence of your mind, when you can control ur thoughts and mind to the point of maintaining silent blackness in ur mind for several minutes.
The spirit of God/Jesus inhabits us because we are the new temple. Ur mind is the holy of holies were the Lord is found. Jesus, who is our high priest, lives in our hearts, which is the holy place, where our high priest makes acceptable sacrifices to the Lord on our behalf, sacrifices being the things we do for God and the kindness we show others in his name. We are the lower priest, whose job is to take care of the temple and its needs, and to obey our high priests commands. This is to be taken literally, not metaphorically.
This is the basis behind visions from The Lord.
After mastering the still silent blackness in ur mind, we master the ability to hold a single image in that blackness, often a candle or rose or apple. After mastering the ability to hold images, the next step is the screen.
In the still silent blackness, we hold the image of a screen before our sight. Make the border as u wish, but upon holding the blank screen, The Lord will flash images and pictures, OUT OF UR CONTROL, across the screen u r imagining.
This is all done in ur imagination, with ur eyes closed, while in a trance, while meditating.
These images that The Lord flashes across ur imaginary screen, are infact messages from God, but just like with dreams, the images need to be interpreted. The images come from same part of brain as dreams, and therefore have to be interpreted just like dreams do.
This is called clairvoyancy. The exact same process can be used to recieve info from other spirits as well, including the false and lying gods, as the pagan priests did, and its that abusability that has led to people not understanding it and thinking all psychic stuff is of the devil, when we r the ones made in Gods image.
Its the trance-like states of the mind, that connects us fully to spirit. Everyone and everything is connected to spirit. When a person falls into the correct state, speaking in tongues is possible thru connecting in ur spirits, itll allow ur brain to control ur mouth in that persons language. Falling into these certain states of mind, is something The Lord brings about on anyone he so chooses.
Daniel was in a meditative state when he was praying and had an angel visit him and show him a vision and tell him its meaning, as it had to be interpreted.
Apostle Peter was deep in meditative trance by himself on the 2nd floor of the house, when he had a vision of animals in a large sheet, lowered down by its corners, God told him the meaning, then an angel told him theres dudes at the door. True story. He came out of meditation, opened his eyes and opened the door and there they were.
Apostle Paul had an out of body experience, prob during meditation. Heck, all of revelation is basically the trance visions of Apostle John while he lived on patmos.
Btw, u can go in trance while wide awake and doing stuff. Stare at something for 10 mins and ull go into a light trance. The same thing happens while driving, its called highway hypnosis.
It happens uncontrollably here and there, and thats one reason why most people have few spiritual experiences in their lives. But it can be controlled and improved upon. Like a muscle, it can be made strong and resilient. With proper practice, anybody can learn to develop the abilities that God has given u.
Check out youtube channel: livetoglorify.
Seeing auras is developed with certain eyeball exercises to strengthen yes the muscles, but particularly the rods and cones. They r the light and color receptor cells, and by using color opposites and ghost images(seeing a color, lookin away and seein its opposite as a cloud in ur vision) u can increase their sensitivity to a wider range of the light spectrum, thereby letting u see auras. That has nothing to do with psychic powers, its just eyeball exercises!
Anyways, this brings me to the end of this horribly too long post haha, but thanks for reading it, i know it took time. God bless all of u reading this, and may Jesus bless u and ur families and yalls finances and properties and animals and supplies. God bless u all. Much love.

GODLY FATHERS

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever…Psalm 23.”

There are no perfect dads in this world but the 23rd psalm paints a beautiful picture of those dads desiring to live godly lives before their children. Like our heavenly Father, a godly dad does not desire his family to be in want. Within his capability, he will not withhold any good thing from his family even if it means lying down self-interest and sacrifice on his part. He is the protector of his wife and children and wants them to feel safe and secure. He believes the effective prayer of a righteous person can accomplish much and daily intercedes for the Lord to watch over his family. Understanding the power in prayer, a godly dad takes joy in praying for the physical, emotional, moral, and spiritual health of his family.

Such a dad understands spiritual guidance involves loving instruction (Proverbs 1:8-9), discipline (Hebrews 12:7-9), and being there for his wife and kids during the good and bad times. He has learned the importance of living the Christian life before his family for the greatest gift you can give your kids is your time. He trusts if you train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it. Therefore, he challenges his children as he shares with them the truth in love.

A godly dad capitalizes on those teachable moments (Deut. 6:4-9) God grants to point his children to Jesus. He makes a special effort to speak to each about their future here and in the hereafter. And he deals with each child personally, loves each child uniquely, and lives in the hope each of them will live their lives with integrity. His hope is they will store treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. (Matthew 6:20)

Such a dad is transparent and honest about his own weaknesses. He knows he is far from perfect and takes comfort in knowing he serves a perfect God. He thanks the Lord each day for showing him the best way to encourage his children (Ephesians 6:4) as he hopes to invest the Christ in his life into the life of each of them. He knows when his wife and children are relying on and depending on the Lord, his goal is accomplished. And if the Lord calls him home first, God’s goodness and lovingkindness which followed him will follow them all the days of their lives and they will dwell with him in the house of the Lord forever.

Sometimes God has to go to extreme measures to get our undivided attention.

This happened with Jonah and Balaam, not to mention others.

Storms in our life may be as a result of God trying to get your attention.

Feel free to watch the latest video on this topic here.


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I've been watching a few video online of revivals that took place in the 1990s. I don't belong to any church at the moment, but in the church I grew up in there was nothing like what I am seeing in these videos. I refer to people shaking, falling under the power of the Holy Spirit, loud crying out to God (I think this was intercession), people coming forward in droves to the front. Does this always accompany revival, or can revival happen in a more quiet manner?

For black folks according to this study...... Fascinating stuff REALLY.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178...-first-45-words-are-a-portent-of-whats-to-com

"It's not really a function of a few officers driving this pattern," says Rho.

The words or actions of the person behind the wheel of the car didn't seem to contribute to escalation.

"The drivers are just answering the officers' questions and explaining what's going on," says Eberhardt. "They're cooperative."

Click to expand...

What this makes fascinating is that (surprise, surprise) it is the action of the cops that dictates how these situations go. And it makes COMPLETE sense: If the FIRST thing the police tells you is a command instead of a reason for interacting with you at all. The cop is the person with power who gets to dictate the flow and direction of the conversation. That this "flow and direction" is established RIGHT at the start of the interaction is just common sense.

Direct link to the study:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216162120

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This just in America: The first step to creating a better police for is....The findings reported here not only inform approaches to de-escalation but also demonstrate the power and promise of systematic footage review more broadly. To improve police–community interactions, we could start by examining them.

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Jesus is God's word made flesh (John 1:14), or in other words, he is the embodiment of God word, so salvation through us embodying God's word through faith is the same as salvation through faith in the one who is the embodiment of God's word. In other words, the way to have faith in God with all of our heart to correctly divide between right and wrong through His word is by obeying/embodying it and that is the same as having faith in the one who is the embodiment of God's word as being the guide for how we should live our lives. Yet there are many people who say that we are saved through God's word made flesh while deny that we are saved through God word, which is contradictory.

Chick-fil-A faces a conservative revolt

The popular restaurant has gone "woke" for a new focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to critics.

www.newsweek.com

"Chick-fil-A is receiving an onslaught of conservative ire after the company's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiative spread across social media."


LOL

I would love to see them 'cancelled', but not for political reasons. Their chicken sandwich is unhealthy, bland and unappetizing. The waffle fries are just as bad and unhealthy. For Chick-fil-a, I wish every day was Sunday

2 Cor 3:6 reads , Who also rendered us fit ( as ) servants of a NEW TESTAMENT / DIATHEKE , not of writing BUT of the Spirit, for the writing KILLS but the Spirit makes ALIVE .

#1 Is the Greek word DIATHEKE mean the NEW COVENANAT ?

#2 What is its meaning if you disagree with NEW COVENANT ?


#3 What is the meaning that the LETTER KILLS ?

#4 What then are your thinking of , but the Spirit makes ALIVE ?

My things is that DIATHEKE does NOT MEAN , NEW COVENANT , PERIOD !!

dan p

I have known Touhou ever since Jan. 2020, and would like to know if it is okay to play it.

This is Dave Darling, I felt like I should share my story regarding my speech problem, I already shared it with Dr. Enos Martin as he is a psychiatrist and might know some things about what happened to me, my story is below:

Back in 2005 I was in the psych ward at Hershey Medical Center with symptoms of schizoaffective disorder. My doctor in the psych ward actually did something very suspicious. Apparently she was a devout muslim and I overheard one of the med students in the ward saying that she hated me and had called me an infidel, she knew that I was a Christian. On the day that I was discharged she showed up in my room with my meds and told me to take them, she was not supposed to do this, only the psych nurse was supposed to dispense medication. It was a gelcap, the kind that you can pull apart. For some reason I did not trust her, but I took the meds anyway. Several hours later I became extremely ill, I had a very sick feeling mentally, I though it was just the meds and I tried to go back to my room to sleep it off, however when I woke up later the feeling was still there. They discharged me that night and I went home and went to bed, when I woke up the next morning I was suddenly unable to speak. I was like that for 17 years but was miraculously cured by methoxyisoflavone. I have tried to track my doctor in the ward down but it seems that she has moved on from Hershey Med and that her whereabouts are unknown, I do not know her name. You might not believe this, but God spoke to me nearly 20 years ago and shared some things with me. He said someone was going to poison me and that I was going to develop a speech impediment and it was going to be cured by methoxyisoflavone, the voice also said I was going to be contacted by the police and there was going to be an investigation and then a criminal trial and that I was going to receive compensation of nearly 1 million dollars when it was all said and done! The voice also told me several things that were going to happen in the future, the voice said I was going to attend grad school for a master's degree and this came to pass, I had forgotten that God told me this until after I had completed this! However for whatever reason all of the bad things the voice told me about came to pass but none of the good things. I did develop a severe speech problem like the voice said and this seemed totally off the wall at the time, I was speaking fine, but it happened, but I was never contacted by the police, there was no investigation or trial, and I was never compensated. I have been praying every day that if I am in need of justice that there would be justice, but nothing has happened so far.

Hi everybody, I'm a new member and new to Christianity... Well, not entirely true. I was raised Southern Baptist, in the Ozarks in Arkansas. Now this is where things get wiley. At 14 (God forgive me) I found wicca, or well a psudo version of it, but it was enough to start me down a poisonous path. I moved from that to what is called Celtic Reconstructionism. Worse yet some of us worked on reconstructing a Druid's way. Not healthy! This went on until just a few yrs ago, when I at last saw the light of God - Amen! Now I struggle to find God's forginess, as i try to recall my sins, for they are many and varied! I want to one day get passed the part of my brain that demands proof, to cure my blindness to a world of color and light, to find my mother's unshakable faith in Christ, and i hope posting among you will help me find myself in Christ's glory once more. Thank you for reading. Bye for now!

...

Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government “indoctrination camps” devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families.

Their decision to send Aimee to the neighborhood elementary school — a test run to see how it might work for their other kids — had contributed to a bitter rift with their own parents, who couldn’t understand their embrace of an education system they had been raised to abhor.

[After first catching on with the countercultural left, homeschooling caught on with conservative Christians.] Rightly educated, those children would grow into what HSLDA founder Michael Farris called a “Joshua Generation” that would seek the political power and cultural influence to reshape America according to biblical principles.

Over decades, they have eroded state regulations, ensuring that parents who home-school face little oversight in much of the country. More recently, they have inflamed the nation’s culture wars, fueling attacks on public-school lessons about race and gender with the politically potent language of “parental rights.”

[But there has been a backlash of sorts from within.]

Former home-schoolers have been at the forefront of those arguing for greater oversight of home schooling, forming the nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Home Education to make their case.

“As an adult I can say, ‘No. What happened to me as a child was wrong,’” said Samantha Field, the coalition’s government relations director.

Earlier this year, Jinger Duggar Vuolo — familiar to millions of TV viewers from the reality show “19 Kids and Counting” — published a memoir in which she harshly criticized Bill Gothard, a pivotal but nowdisgraced figure in conservative Christian home schooling whose teachings her parents followed.

“It’s specifically a system that is set up to hide the abuse, to make them invisible, to strip them of any capability of getting help. And not just in a physical way,” Christina said. “At some point, you become so mentally imprisoned you don’t even realize you need help.”

[But definitely in a physical way.] “The use of the rod is for the purpose of breaking the child’s will,” stated the handout that they bent over together in the church [in a marriage prep class].

“When it came time for me to hit my kids, that was the first independent thought I remember having: ‘This can’t be right. I think I’ll just skip this part,’” he says.

But if that seemingly inviolable dogma was false, what else might be? Aaron gradually began to feel adrift and depressed.

Now it was Christina’s turn to question her belief — not in Christianity, but in the conservative Christian approach to home schooling. She began to research spiritual abuse and the history of Christian nationalism. Ideas she had never questioned — such as the statement, in a book given to her by her dad, that it “would be a waste of her time and her life” for a woman to work outside the house — no longer made sense.

Her loss of faith in the biblical literalism and patriarchal values of her childhood was coming in the way the movement’s adherents had always warned it would: through exposure to people with different experiences and points of view.

Those people just happened to be her daughter and her husband.

[The couple has since put their 2 other school age children into the public schools. One more is stil too young.]

“People who think the public schools are indoctrinating don’t know what indoctrination is. We were indoctrinated,” Aaron says. “It’s not even comparable.”

See Also:

Naughty Princess and Ikkyu San （Part）

一休和玉蘭小公主

一休さんと玉蘭姫

I have heard it said by some Christians that salvation is simply belief on Jesus and I would agree with that, but can I claim true belief on Jesus and of zero tangible changes to my life?

Jesus did not say to the woman caught in adultery, "Go and sin as much as you desire." Now, we cannot stop sinning as a practice without the indwelling of Christ through the Spirit but can we go on sinning as a practice with the indwelling of Christ through the spirit.

If our faith does not produce tangible changes for the better in our lives, is it even real. Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." So can one simply "believe" with no change in their lives and be saved?

A toddler was sentenced to life imprisonment in North Korea after the child’s family was found in possession of a Bible, according to a new report by the US State Department.

Continued below.

I will be covering the book with the above title, because it probably is the best case for the Deity of Jesus Christ that you can get.


Here is brief description I got from a blog.


The authors are pedagogically and apologetically minded for they have structured the content in five categories of evidence for the deity of Christ with the acronym HANDS:

Honors: Jesus shares the honors due to God.
Attributes: Jesus shares the attributes of God.
Names: Jesus shares the names of God.
Deeds: Jesus shares in the deeds that God does.
Seat: Jesus shares the seat of God’s throne.

Click to expand...

Book Review: Putting Jesus In His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ

Putting Jesus In His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski is a book about the greatest human

www.aomin.org

I will be posting some category chapter summaries of the scripture bullet points probably later on in the week. I once had a link to a free online pdf of the book, but I think that disappeared with the Ukranian / Russian war (was a Russian person or web site). So I suppose I will be buying it on Kindle. The good news is I can probably copy and paste directly from book to the thread.

Video Talk

Romans 12:3-8 ESV


Now I am well aware that this is a very controversial subject and that many people have very strong beliefs and opinions with regard to the gifts. For some people are dismissing some of the gifts as foundational gifts, which they claim are no longer active today. But I see no solid biblical support for that stance. I believe what the Scriptures teach regarding the gifts, and that they are all alive and active today, and that they are all necessary to the proper working of the body of Christ.

Now, I also see these gifts on a pendulum or like on a see-saw (teeter-totter), and that on one end we have those who are denying the gifts of prophecy, tongues, miracles, and healings, while they support the gifts of mercy, generosity, teaching, and serving, etc., which are considered the more “safe” gifts of the Spirit. And on the other end we have those who are misusing and abusing the gifts of the Spirit, and they are doing all kinds of wild and crazy things claiming that they are of the Spirit of God.

So, we must be very discerning people. But we need to read what this says in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22:


So, what is this saying? It is saying that we should not deny the gifts of the Spirit as though some of them no longer exist, for in doing so we may be quenching the Holy Spirit. Yet, we are not to just blindly accept any gift of the Spirit that someone says he has, but we are to test everything against the Scriptures, in context. And we should compare Scripture with Scripture because if we just pull out what one Scripture says on a subject without considering what the Scriptures teach on that subject, as a whole, we may misinterpret and misapply what the Scriptures are actually teaching.

Now with regard to the misuse of the gifts, we should be people who use the gifts biblically. So, if someone says he has a word from the Lord, that word should agree with the Scriptures, and that word must not be against (contrary to) what the Scriptures teach. So if your “word” is telling people that they are all going to be successful and wealthy and that nothing bad will happen to them, then you are teaching against the Scriptures which tell us that we are going to be afflicted, and that we will be hated and persecuted, and that we are going to suffer for the sake of the gospel of Christ.

Also, if your gift leads you to do what is out of control to where you lose control over your own body, then that is against the Scriptures, for they teach that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and SELF-CONTROL. So if the spirit you are listening to is leading you to do what is lacking in self-control, that spirit is not of God, and it is not the Holy Spirit. And so it is likely a demonic spirit. And if your speaking in tongues is created by you babbling, which is self-produced, then that is not of the Spirit of God who gives gifts as He wills.

And then I want to touch lightly on the subject of women and the gift of prophecy, for it is clear in the Scriptures that the gift of prophecy is given both to men and to women. And I am not speaking here of future telling nor am I speaking of adding to the Scriptures additional words supposedly coming from the Lord. Biblically speaking, at least under the New Covenant, I see prophecy more in the category of preaching, and both men and women are to prophesy. So this is more about sharing the truth of the Scriptures in ways which are practical and applicable to our lives and our world today.

Now with regard to the silencing of women, as some Scriptures do teach, I believe that we have to look at those Scriptures in their context, and also we should compare them with other Scriptures to see how Jesus regarded women, and how women are gifted of the Spirit, and how all of us are to be used within the body of Christ, too, as “each part does its work.”

Now those passages that mention that women should be silent in the gatherings of the church also say that if they have questions that they should ask their husbands at home. So the idea there seems to be that these women were causing a disturbance and that is why they were being silenced. Anyway, the Lord has given me other writings dealing with the subject of women in ministry, so I will put the links to those writings at the end of this in case you are interested in reading them.

So, what’s the bottom line here? We should not quench the Spirit by denying the gifts of the Spirit, but we should test the spirits biblically to see if they are of God. And we should not tell other members in the body of Christ that we have no need of them and that they are to go “someplace else where they will be a better fit.” Now if they are out of line, biblically, then we don’t have to accept the abuse of the gifts, but we need to make certain that we know what the Scriptures teach on that subject so that we are not out of line by rejecting another Christian’s gifts and end up quenching the Spirit.

[Matt 5:13-16; Matt 28:18-20; Jn 4:31-38; Jn 13:13-17; Jn 14:12; Acts 1:8; Acts 2:14-18; Acts 26:18; Rom 10:14-15; Rom 12:1-8; Rom 15:14; 1 Co 12:1-31; 1 Co 14:1-5; Eph 4:1-16; Eph 5:17-27; Php 2:1-8; Col 3:16; Heb 3:13; Heb 10:23-25; 1 Pet 2:9,21; 1 Jn 2:6]

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Constantly Abiding

By Anne S. Murphy, 1908

There’s a peace in my heart that the world never gave,
A peace it cannot take away;
Though the trials of life may surround like a cloud,
I’ve a peace that has come here to stay!

All the world seemed to sing of a Savior and King,
When peace sweetly came to my heart;
Troubles all fled away and my night turned to day,
Blessèd Jesus, how glorious Thou art!

This treasure I have in a temple of clay,
While here on His footstool I roam;
But He’s coming to take me some glorious day,
Over there to my heavenly home!

Constantly abiding, Jesus is mine;
Constantly abiding, rapture divine;
He never leaves me lonely, whispers, O so kind:
“I will never leave thee,” Jesus is mine.

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Women in Ministry
Role of Women in the Church
The Silencing of Women

The three beasts that John saw in Revelation 17, 12, 13.

Mark 1:15 “The time is fulfilled,” He said, “and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel!”

Repent "metanoiete”

How do we do that? 5 steps: Recognize, acknowledge, apologize, ask forgiveness, restitution

Recognize
And there are two errors we can make. 1) ignore our wrong doings. Quite often when we do wrong we rationalize, “What else could I do?” or minimize, “It really wasn’t that bad.” It is sometimes so easy for us to not recognize or fully acknowledge wrongs we have done. And the more we blow them off, the easier it becomes to ignore them and forget them. The first challenge is to recognize them for what they are. And yet there is also the danger of making too much of them, get scrupulous and fall into misplaced guilt.

Acknowledge publicly or at least to the person offended the wrong done. Without this we just carry guilt and it can be a heavy burden.

Apologize, saying , “I am sorry.” takes humility. But it is critical to an honest metanoia. It is not just about knowing and acknowledging but actually expressing sorrow for it.

Ask forgiveness. We put ourselves at the mercy of the other person. Often it is implied in the apology. "I am sorry." "Please forgive me."

Restitution or reparation, I might recognize that I offended you by denting your car, acknowledged to you that I have done so, apologized and asked forgiveness. But the dent is still there. I need to make it right.

Given these 5 steps of metanoia, where does the expiation of Jesus help us? When we offend each other we also offend God. Jesus makes us right with God but he doesn't fix the dent in the car. That is up to us, a form of penance maybe.

Question, does anyone know what % of Christians are Calvinists? Also, what percentage of Christians are Hard Determinists?

My main curiosity is around Hard Determinism: when did this belief really work its way into the church, and again, what percentage of Christians believe in this?

I have questions around omniscient and omnipotent. I do believe God is both of these, but I do not believe in hard determinism. I read a lot of articles from folks who know a lot about this stuff, and have beliefs on both sides. I also see folks writing formula looking explanations. I guess my issue is, it seems folks are really trying to figure this out and by doing so they tend to put God in a box. For instance I read that if God knows what you are going to do before you do it, then that negates free will. Can someone explain how this exactly negates free will? Couldn’t God just know exactly the decisions you freely were going to make before you made them? I just don’t understand how God knowing 100% all things you will ever do means that it is a requirement that He predetermined you would do those things…
A hypothetical example I have is if someone got into a Time Machine and went into the past. They would know exactly what their or someone else’s decisions would be at every moment. That in my eyes does not take away from their old self’s free will, just that they know what their old self would be freely choosing. They could also introduce themselves to their old self and then their old self would freely make different decisions altering their future. This is just an earthly example btw.

God can do anything, and everything, but we seem to try to define what is or isn’t possible by our own logic. For instance if we say something isn’t logical so that cannot have happened that way, what that person is technically saying is God couldn’t have done it that way.
So when someone says God is omniscient and omnipotent (which I believe as well) and then they say so that means we can’t have free will because He knows everything in advance. First I still don’t understand entirely the logic on that, but second if that person is saying God can’t be omnipotent, omniscient, and humans free will at the same time…then that person is technically saying God isn’t omnipotent and omniscient.

What are y’all’s thoughts here? I have OCD btw, so this stuff really messes with my head most likely more than others and I am actually kind of struggling. I am not looking for a debate but answers. How does our God being omniscient and omnipotent allow for us to have free will?

Hello my name is David
I am 30yrs old
and I'm happy to have finally found this forum away from all the other ones

Proverbs 5:2. My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding. 5:3. For the lips of a strange woman drop as honey comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil; Zur in Hebrew means =stranger, apostate. NAKAR is similar to Zur. Get the picture. This is religious idolatry. These apostates are those who once knew the truth and turned their backs on God. These apostates formed denominations. Its broken down into fragmentation. They allow or insert heathen traditions and customs into true worship of God. 5:4. But her end is as Wormwood, sharp as two edged sword. Her feet go down to death; Her steps take hold on hell. Bitterness and Wormwood is of satan. Traditions of men and false doctrine is indoctrination from satan. Its contrary to sound doctrine, the truth. A church or denominations ask, are you saved??. Big problem. These denominations don't get around to meat of God's word, it's always milk, milk. God will not bless and protect those engage in false doctrine. 5:13. And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. Ego trips, fleecing flocks, or they sellout for pension plan and salary. Apostates are also hirelings. If you go to well for water, its empty, Dry !!. 5:14. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. The heart of the wicked is worth little. The lips of the just is choice silver. Denominations won't nourish their flocks. After 20 or 40 years, the congregation is still in diapers. The apostates are feeding milk bottles to their flocks. Don't expect any spirtual growth. Bottom line, their spirtualty bankrupt. Psalm chapter 73:2. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. 73:3. For u was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. The apostates are after donations. Its body count. The pastor or reverend must teach from quarterly packet each month. Thier compromised. Get the picture. Were in time of famine, its hearing God's truth, amos chapter 8. Those who listen or teach tradition of men, are outside Gods sanctuary. They don't have His blessings or protection. Bethel is were sound doctrine is taught by man of God or woman of God. Denominations are not of God. But of the devil. Any where God has church, the devil builds chapel next to it. Do you understand what king Solomon taught in proverbs chapter 5. Get wisdom and understanding !!.

Each time someone brings up the topic of relationship, I start freaking out internally even when it's not directed towards me. Scripture says that God didn't give me a spirit of fear. How do I work in the authority that He has given me?