As someone who has never been involved in Christian communities where "means of grace" has been used, I'm trying to understand what people mean by this "expression". It seems to be usually (maybe always) tied to the purpose of the sacraments, but I'm clear what it actually means.

Perhaps it's because different communities use it differently?

So, please, explain like I'm 5, what you mean when use the expression "it's a means of grace"?

And please, let's not let this become a debate - there's a enough of that around. We all know different Christians view the sacraments differently. No need to debate their meaning or anything else in this tread. Feel free to ask clarifying questions, but let's leave disagreeing for somewhere else.

An Arizona pastor has taken to social media to question the wisdom of interracial marriage, characterizing his own marriage to a Latina woman as less than “ideal.”

Partridge is an author and pastor of King’s Way Reformed Church in Prescott, Arizona. He is known for posting provocative content regarding a variety of issues. In October, Partridge was at the center of online controversy after criticizing the “crack-sucking leggings” worn by a waitress where his family ate a meal.

Dale Partridge: Interracial Marriage Is Not the ‘Ideal’​

“As a Christian man happily married to a Mexican/Spanish/American woman, I actually agree with @JoelWebbon,” Partridge said in a social media post on Saturday (Jan. 10). “Interracial marriage is not the ‘ideal.’”

Continued below.

Jeri Rees said her 21-year-old nephew underwent six hours of surgery and that doctors found shards of plastic, glass and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, including a metal piece lodged 7 mm from a carotid artery.

She said doctors did not want to remove the shrapnel near the artery out of fear that it could kill him.

Several videos of Friday’s incident were shared on social media. One video shows demonstrators, who were protesting the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good, throwing orange safety cones at the agents, who were standing guard outside of the Santa Ana federal building.

In the video, at least one agent appears to fire nonlethal rounds at the crowd, hitting one woman in the leg before aiming and striking the victim in the face.

The video shows the victim dropping to the ground after being shot, holding their face as the crowd retreats. The same agent then drags the victim by the hood of their jacket; they appear to be choking, grasping at the jacket binding their neck as blood pours from their left eye.

“The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” she said, recalling what her nephew told her.

“This constitutes as deadly force as far as the law is concerned,” said Ed Obayashi of the video. The Modoc County sheriff’s deputy and legal advisor to police agencies, who has testified in similar cases, said that “all the training manuals and [legal] cases say you don’t aim at the face because these projectiles can cause serious injury [or] death.”

Obayashi said, based on law enforcement use-of-force standards, an officer can deploy deadly force if they feel their life is in imminent danger, or that they are in danger of great bodily harm. “I just don’t see that here,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department said the only violence they were aware of that night were demonstrators tossing orange cones at the agents.

In an email response to The Times, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, said a “mob of 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside of the federal building.”

ETA:

Read in ABC News: Trump says 'HELP IS ON ITS WAY' for Iran as protest death toll tops 2,000 — ABC News


I wish Trump would stop inserting himself into everybody’s business

I remember growing up when I was a kid there was this one church me and my family attended in Longview, WA, where among the youth there, there were 4 teenagers who seemed to have formed a little clique amongst themselves. They acted snobby and didn't talk to anyone else but themselves. They excluded other people from their little circle all the time. I was a 9-year-old girl at the time and I was struggling with my autism and making new friends. They didn't treat me nicely. I guess they thought I was strange? I did actually try to get to know them and hang around them, but I guess I wasn't cool enough for them because they excluded me too!

Of course this angered my mom. She told me she thought they weren't nice kids and that I should stay away from them. She told me she thought one of the girls had a mean streak. So I did stay away from them.

What do you think about young people in churches forming cliques among themselves and excluding others from their little circle? Do you think that is not very Christian-like behavior?

Nothing would exist without the quantum fields. Not life, not math, not even reality! Absolutely nothing.

A scientist would argue, mathematics forbid the absence of quantum fields or Zero point energy......

But without the quantum fields, even math and physics would not exist!!

We argue about life but nothing would exist in the first place without the quantum field / zero point energy

And nobody knows how the quantum field came to be. Even religion have no answer. Nothing says that God created the quantum field. It is already there when God started working!!

The importance of the quantum field is such it makes everything else a distraction.

We are closer to Jesus’s time than to the Pyramid’s earliest acknowledged construction dates, yet this monument and man, millennia apart, connect. No way our most important monument and most influential man should connect, but they do. In August 2025, building on a 2003 spiritual awakening, a 2011 prayer answered and 2013 geometric explorations, I proved this stunning link. Taking the Pyramid’s entrance passage slope at 26.445°, and projecting that angle eastward, towards the rising Sun, bisects Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity with 99.98% accuracy (26.445°/26.45°, within Petrie’s ±0.0055° margin). This ‘True Christ Angle,’ is revealed here for the first time.


People may say coincidence, hard to justify given the precision, but they may. They will have a harder time justifying their position, however, once they learn this precision extends beyond the angle to the distance. The Great Pyramid does not merely point to Jesus, it pinpoints Him. In 2024, I discovered that the 434.02-kilometer distance from the Great Pyramid apex to Bethlehem’s Silver star fits into the Moon’s diameter 8 times (3474.8 / 434.02 is 8.006, a 99.92% match to a perfect 8, and matches precisely when accounting for His life), a discovery I call ‘Moon Proof 8’ (these coincidences alone imply odds ~1 in 2 million, 1/2000 for the Angle and 1/1000 for the distance Appendix 2).

No other single digit number (0 to 9) so clearly represents Jesus. 8 brings to mind His resurrection on the 8th day, the Good News He preached: Eternal life (mathematical ∞, representing infinity across cultures), 888, Christian architecture, including baptismal fonts and so on. 8 as opposed to any other single digit, can be said to encapsulate Jesus. Those wary of what they may judge to be tenuous numerical associations, may look to the 8-sided Great Pyramid’s construction, unique to Giza, compared to the hundreds of other ancient Pyramids. Or to what another researcher found in 2012: that the Entrance passage positioning on the Great Pyramid’s face, encodes the lunar month, from Full Moon to Full Moon. So not only does the Entrance passage give us the ‘True Christ Angle’, which led us to find the importance of the Moon in the distance calculation, it encodes the Lunar month further tightening the relationship between, what should be, ‘random’ places. Additionally, the Giza plateau is widely acknowledged to flag the Spring Equinox. We celebrate Easter based on the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox. Hence, Giza signalled the Spring Equinox triggering a countdown to His big moment: His death and Resurrection under the first Full Moon following this. These alignments and coincidences defy chance. They support a divine design hypothesis for the Great Pyramid, outshining speculative theories like alien or power plant origins. They point to a design originating with God, to pinpoint His Son.

Geometry, the study of shapes and measurements, is a branch emanating directly from Math's arithmetic trunk, and a universal language that offers, some argue, the most robust proofs in Maths after simple arithmetic. Accessible to all, it is my contention, God used it here, making this proof easily communicable to the whole human race, so that all of humanity can be in little doubt of Jesus’s divinity.

Geometry ties Jesus’s birth and resurrection to the Pyramid’s design through the entrance passage’s ‘True Christ Angle’, Moon Proof 8, the lunar calendar’s encoding, 8-sided structure, the spring equinox and more. Only a being with mastery over time, distance, space, life, and death could forge these reinforcing connections: that’s God. Supported by biblical prophecies and cosmic constants like Pi, the Golden ratio, the speed of light, Euler and numerical patterns like YHWH’s Gematria, this book unveils geometric proof to awaken humanity, with additional chapters—several detailing other evidence, biblical exegesis, prophecies fulfilled, global renewal, and my spiritual journey—inviting readers to explore the extent of God’s plan, crafted by our Creator for us to decipher.

Home | The Great Jesus Pyramid

The Rev. Franklin Graham is calling on Americans to join him in a “time of prayer and repentance” this week, warning that “our nation is in trouble” amid a volatile political climate.

In a social media post on Monday, Graham, the CEO of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, announced what he called "a time of prayer and repentance" scheduled for Wednesday at noon ET.


“If you think our nation is in trouble now, just wait," Graham, the 73-year-old son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, asked. “As our streets boil over with hate, anger, crime, drugs, and just sheer hopelessness, is there something we can do?”

“You bet there is,” he responded. “As a nation, our sins are so great. We have increasingly turned our backs on God and His commands, embracing godless secularism. We need to ask His forgiveness and seek His face.”

Amid protests in the aftermath of the shooting of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last week, Graham urged Americans to “pray for our leaders, and pray that God would bring calm to our streets."

Continued below.

I am not comfortable with it. I have never judged anyone a day in my life. Call it a personal preference, I don't know. But I am not accustomed to pointing my finger at people and judging them. Seems mean and cruel to me.

My mom is a born-again Bible believing Christian (she is an Independent Baptist and I was raised in her denomination because she always took me to church when I was a baby), and she tells me it is OK to sometimes judge people because its in the Bible!

I don't know what to make of it honestly. I had always heard that God is love, He loves people unconditionally and as His followers we should too.

She and I got into a huge argument about the Bible. We were quoting Scriptures at each other! I have some knowledge of Bible Scripture (that I learned in church all those years I attended it), but its nowhere near on the level that Billy Graham's was. People called him The Walking Bible.

I guess I don't know a lot about this subject, what the Bible really says about judging people versus loving them. Is she right, or am I right?

I guess someone who is experienced in Bible Scripture should tell me...

In the verses prior to these, Paul spoke against being people who look to other humans for our answers to life’s mysteries and who seek the favor of other humans in order to please them, rather than looking for our answers in God and in his word, and to please God. He did not get his gospel message from other humans, but he got it by divine revelation, which for us is written down for us in the Scriptures. And we need to get our gospel message directly from the Scriptures, too, taught in their correct biblical context.

Now, this is not to say that we cannot do research or that we should never seek the counsel of another human being in any matter whatsoever, for Paul was speaking with regard to spiritual matters. He was not living to please other humans, and he did not get his gospel truth from other humans, but from God. Now he was a tent maker, I believe, so we don’t know if he sought the counsel of other humans in his tent making. He may have. But in spiritual matters we need to get the counsel of God directly from his word.

But what about our health issues? I don’t believe we should look to other humans to be our primary and foundational source to guide us in what to do or in what not to do with regard to our health, for there are many people in the medical profession who are beholding to big pharma and/or to corporate, and so they don’t really have our best interest at heart. So many are just prescribing drugs as the solution for everything, and many of these drugs end up doing bodily harm to their patients. So we must pray for guidance.

I do believe the medical profession can be helpful to us in diagnosing some things which can be seen in imaging tests, for example, but we should never look to doctors to be our gods in determining what course of action we should take. We should pray through every examination result to make certain that we are following the will of God and not the will of humans who may or may not be working for our good, for not all of them do work for our good, but many of them may work for the good of their own selves.

And, yes, this is speaking to me personally with regard to my health issues that I should not rely on the counsel of doctors to make my decisions for me. But in all things I must seek the counsel of the Lord in knowing what direction he would have me go. The doctors have definitely been helpful in getting me tests to diagnose what is going on inside my body, and I am certainly grateful for that technology. But where to proceed from there with the information has to come from the Lord and from his counsel.

And the same truth applies with any area of our lives where we are getting counsel from other humans. We, as followers of Christ are never to make other humans our gods to where we rely on them for truth and guidance, no matter who those humans may be. We should test the counsel that we receive from other humans against other information on the same subject, from other sources, for not all of them agree, but to always do so in prayer, seeking the will of God for our lives. For we now belong to Christ.

And so this includes testing the words of preachers who proclaim that what they are teaching is the “gospel” according to Jesus Christ. No matter who they are, or if they have a good reputation and are well respected, they are all still human. And many of them, sadly so, have compromised the message of the gospel to be acceptable to human flesh, because they want to draw in large crowds of people from the world into their gatherings. So they say what tickles itching ears rather than speak the plain truth of the gospel.

But 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).

So, believe God, trust in his counsel, and follow in his ways always.

[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; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10,19-20; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; 2 Corinthians 5:10,15,21; 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]

As the Deer

By Martin J. Nystrom
Based off Psalm 42:1

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longeth after You
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship You

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Getting Our Counsel From God
An Original Work / January 13, 2026
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

# 1. SHALL //. YALAO. is a verb in. the NIPHAL in. the IMPERECT TENSE.

# 2. A NATION // GOY in. the SINGULAR ABSOLOTE

# 3. BE BORN AT ONCE. ///. in. the SINGULAR ABSOLUTE

# 4 AT ONCE ///. PA AM is and SINGULAR ABSOLTE


#A. FOR one it is not PAUL SPEAKING

# B. IT has to be a NATION in. the OLD TESAMENT ?

# C It has n to be ISRAEL !!

# D AND Matt 10:5. and 6. do not go to the GENTILES or to. the SAMARITANS

# E. BUT go to the bUT GO RATHER. to the LOST SHEEP of ISRAEL who will be BORN AGAIN

# F And EZE. 36 and EZE 37 explains it all to us !!

dan p

Please pray for S. She says: "Can’t stop crying. Can’t sleep. Can’t think. Lord help me to overcome this fear that I have. This paranoia the inner feelings......... Been up over 24 hours."

A New York City Council employee was detained during a "routine" immigration appointment on Long Island on Monday, according to city officials, who called the incident an "egregious government overreach."

"DHS confirmed that this employee had gone in for a routine court appointment and was nevertheless detained. They provided no other basis for his detainment," [NYC Council Speaker] Menin said during a press briefing on Monday. "On the contrary, he was a city council employee who is doing everything right. He went to the court when he was asked."

The speaker said the employee has legal authorization to remain in the country [and work] until October.

I will try to go to Confession this week, but if, in my heart, I don't feel the intention to stop the sins, then I kind of don't want to go to Confession

What do we know?

Cause we do know it's certainly not red demons with horns and a tail, poking at people with a pitchfork in a fire, with Satan being the ruler of hell sitting on a throne somewhere in the place.

I see this is what media tries to imagine what hell is like, but I saw nothing like that in the Bible.

Hello. I am needing recommendations on a Jesus action figure for my 10-year-old son. He likes to role-play the Biblical stories. He would prefer a realistic looking Jesus. I did a search but I wasn't sure about the ones I seen.

God hardens hearts that He claims would otherwise believe. Is this total depravity?

Why does Satan, or the god of this age need to blind people who, according to reformed theology, already lack the capacity or desire to understand? Everybody starts out blind, right? So Satan blinds the blind in the hopes that he might what? BTW, I think God allowing Satan to do this is God judicially hardening them, it's just that sometimes that step is assumed in Scripture.

What truth are these unbelievers suppressing?

Romans 1:18-22 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,

These are unbelievers who rejected the truth, right?

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God Romans 3:23 would seem to be a justification statement. Romans 3:11-13 included (more later). What do you think about the statement that 'they all turned aside'? What did they turn aside from that made them that way, implying that they were not always like that?

Does one need to pass perfect righteous standards for a faith to be accepted by God as genuine? I offer the new believer as evidence. He needs to have the fear of God like a child in his formattable years to motivate him to obey God. It is only later in his faith, if his faith has been perfected, or matured, that he casts away all fear. In other words, he casts away all fear when he's all grown up spiritually and sees the love behind the commandments. He doesn't need to be motivated by fear of chastisement like a child. That doesn't sound like a mature, sinless motivated faith to me. Why does one need to have a five star faith for it to be acceptable, when the beginning of that same faith in sanctification is anything but. "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It doesn't sound like the I love you with all my heart kind of faith, does it? The faith of a mustard seed. God drawing people, or to drag, pull, or persuade, doesn't sound like it's necessarily motivated by Holy Ghost goose bumps, does it?

Paul says something interesting in Romans 7:18

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

Is the desire enough for the start of faith? It's the sick who need a doctor, right? I believe that the faith that Jesus Authors and Finishes is the one that starts when we are indwelt as a result of believing, from the Spirit. In other words, our pre-salvation faith is tainted with sin by holy standards, but also selfishly genuine and seeking the Doctor to be cured. Bottoming out in sin, if you will. Any "being perfected", or practically sanctified would be a result of the indwelling, which is the result of faith.

Isaiah 6:8-10 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." And He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' "Make the heart of this people dull, And their ears heavy, And shut their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And return and be healed."

What would have happened if God didn't judicially harden them so that they could still hear and see? Would they be able to believe? That seems to be what Isaiah is saying in 6:8-10. Rendered so that they could not see and hear, lest they believe, right? Are dead made more dead, etc., or is their being able to believe if not hardened a hypothetical?

Here's some more...

Romans 3:10-12 As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one."

Paul is quoting Psalms, which sheds a little more light on the context. "They have all turned aside" begs the question, from what? Were they able to see before "they all turned aside"? The fact that God looks down upon the children of that time (He taught them all) to see if there were any who understand and who seek God would appear at a glance to answer that question. Psalm 53: says the same thing, but adds "They have together become corrupt". Interesting, that they "became corrupt". One could argue that sin needs to take it's course, and their comes a point in time, while being in a bad state, God, as judgment, puts the final nail in the coffin, lest they see, hear, and believe.

Psalm 14:2-4 The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call on the Lord?

Psalm 53:2-4 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon God?

Because... as John 6:65 is often quoted as a proof text. From that same context...

John 6:35, 45, 65 Everyone has been taught by God. All the children of Israel (Isaiah (54:13). Almost sounds universally, especially when we consider John 12:32, And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."

Even the Hardening on Israel was only partial. They can be grafted back in by God (Romans 11:20-25), if the do not continue in unbelief. Belief seems to dictate the grafting in, as unbelief seems to dictate the branches broken off. Total depravity isn't total according to this context as I see it. Am I wrong?

The Gentiles...

Romans 2:14-15 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)

Wait, what? The Law written on their hearts, accusing, excusing them? Hmm. Time to revisit total depravity, me thinks.

My conclusion is that Romans 3 is speaking of being able to do things that are considered good by the Law, by righteous standards. Without the Spirit of God, we cannot produce anything good by righteous standards. From the flesh, we cannot do anything good. And judicial hardening has it's place, but total unwillingness, or not having the ability to trust in Jesus is going beyond the text, in my opinion, which seems to be part of the definition of total depravity. All the Scripture used to support that idea of total depravity also, if we look at the context, allows for those same people to repent believe.

Randall Gamboa Esquivel had left Costa Rica in good health and crossed the United States-Mexico border in December 2024, according to his family. However, Gamboa was detained by the US authorities for re-entering American soil unlawfully, as he had previously lived there undocumented between 2002 and 2013.

Gamboa was initially held at the Webb county detention center in Laredo and then transferred to the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, both in south Texas. Nearly 10 months later, in September 2025, the Trump administration flew the 52-year-old to the Costa Rican capital of San José on an air ambulance.

He never came round and five weeks later Gamboa was pronounced dead at a hospital in Pérez Zeledón, his home town, around three hours south of the capital.

Medical records related to Gamboa’s time in US custody and shared with the Guardian show that there was a transfer request for him from the Port Isabel detention facility to Valley Baptist medical center in Harlingen, 28 miles (45km) east, on 23 June. [so after months of detention]

By 7 July, Gamboa had been diagnosed with at least 10 conditions, medical documents from the hospital show. Sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to an infection, is listed as his primary diagnosis, followed by rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which damaged muscle tissue breaks down rapidly.

Other conditions outlined in the records included protein malnutrition and toxic encephalopathy, caused by an infection or prolonged exposure to drugs, radiation or metals that ultimately alters brain function.

It is good if you can read the entire book of Galatians in order to get the full picture of what was going on here. But basically there was a group of Judaizers who were trying to convince the Gentile believers in Christ that they had to be circumcised as part of their salvation. And they were trying to get them, and perhaps some of the Jews, too, to participate in some of the Old Covenant liturgical, ceremonial, dietary, and Sabbath laws, as though this would make them better Christians, or something like that.

And so Paul spent probably most of the letter to the Galatians addressing this issue, and showing the new believers in Christ that under the New Covenant they were no longer under the Old Covenant liturgical and ceremonial laws. However, under grace, they were not free to live in disobedience to our Lord’s New Covenant commands, most of which were part of the original 10 commandments, which mostly were God’s moral laws, such as don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie, and don’t commit adultery, et al.

Now the Lord wants me to address a situation we are in, at least here in the USA we are, where our political (Republicans, mostly, I believe) leaders are pushing to make Christianity our national religion. So, in a sense, they are like the Judaizers who are trying to force their religion on everyone else. But is that biblical? No! It isn’t! Nowhere in the Scriptures are we taught to force Christianity upon anyone. Are we to share the message of the gospel with the people of the world? Absolutely! But it is their choice to believe or not.

But I don’t believe this is really about trying to force everyone to be Christians, for not only is that not biblical, but it definitely feels like there is an ulterior motive behind it, especially since some (or many) who profess faith in Jesus Christ don’t actually live the Christian life from a biblical perspective. I sense that this is more about getting the people of the world to hate Christians, to bring on Christian persecution, and to get people angry and riled up and fighting others who, perhaps, are not their true enemies.

Should we have laws? Yes! There should be a definite right and wrong, which should be instilled in every human being. We should all know that stealing, cheating, murdering, lying, slandering, and committing adultery, etc., are not the right thing to do, and that traffic laws are for our safety. But forcing any particular religion on any particular group of people is just wrong. I would not want to be forced to bow to a foreign god and to have to obey their statutes and to follow after their religious and cultish practices.

And the United States of America, from the start, supposedly was based on freedom of religion, from what I recall. So, this is not about trying to make everyone a Christian, but this is about “upsetting the applecart,” i.e. to disrupt, to cause trouble, to upset people, to ruin people’s lives, to control, and I believe to get non-Christians to hate Christians and their “religion.” It is to get people to rebel, to fight for their rights, and to cause chaos, which is what they must do in order to bring us all under the “New World Order.”

So, as Christians, please know that this push in this direction is not for the good of anyone, especially not for us who believe in Jesus. And please know that Jesus never forced himself on anyone, and he did not try to get the Romans to make Christianity their national religion. And he did not teach the combining of world government with our faith. But he taught the opposite. He taught us that we are to come out from among the world, and not be partners with them, and he would receive us, and we would not be punished.

[Matthew 21:12-13; John 2:13-17; Acts 5:27-32; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Philippians 3:18-19; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22; Revelation 13:5-8; Revelation 18:1-5]

And 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).

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:5-10; 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 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]

So, follow what Jesus taught, and not what politicians say that they want.

For Our Nation

An Original Work / September 11, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Recording Via Gerry Peters, music producer and arranger

Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Trust Him with your life today.
Make Him your Lord and your Savior.
Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.
He will forgive you of your sin;
Cleanse your heart, made new within.

Men betraying: Our trust fraying.
On our knees to God we’re praying,
Seeking God to give us answers
That are only found in Him.
God is sovereign over all things.
Nothing from His mind escaping.
He has all things under His command,
And will work all for good.

Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.

Men deceiving: We’re believing
In our Lord, and interceding
For our nation and its people
To obey their God today.
He is our hope for our future.
For our wounds He offers suture.
He is all we need for this life.
Trust Him with your life today.

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Christianity as America’s National Religion?
An Original Work / January 12, 2026
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Today, Texas A&M resumes classes for the spring semester—but a number of canonized texts will not be welcomed back to school. The public research university has lately been caught in the crossfire between state and stupid.

As The Texas Tribune has reported, faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences were informed just last week that “a new system policy restricting classroom discussions of race and gender” is set to take effect today.

The policy, engineered and approved by the Texas A&M University Regents last November, requires that the school’s president sign off on every syllabus with an eye to scrubbing “problematic” content. But the foes were loosely framed.

Under the new restrictions, gender ideology is defined as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.” Race ideology entails “attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity” or anything that “promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction.”

As a European history professor pointed out at the time, this wording could effectively prohibit a professor from teaching about the Holocaust.

The regents used AI analysis software to audit syllabi for unapproved content. Thanks to this rude mech, 200 courses have been cancelled, stripped of core curricular credit value, or forced into revision.

The hammer came down over the weekend for assorted religion, film, ethnic studies, sociology, communications, and literature classes. And in a truly-beyond-parody move, a philosophy professor, Martin Peterson, was told to “either remove ‘modules on race and gender ideology'” from his course, or be reassigned to teach a different class entirely.

Most philosophy nerds will recognize the “gender ideology” readings in question, which are lifted from the Symposium. The university apparently quibbled with Plato’s reference the the “Myth of Androgyne,” in which Aristophanes describes three genders.

Most musical theatre nerds will also catch the reference—the same myth was called up in John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s epic ballad, “The Origin of Love,” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Even as we note the rise of smoothbrain rhetoric sea to sea, the fact that Plato has been deemed inappropriate for an Introduction to Philosophy course is a surreal escalation of terms.

Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention God's name; so what is the reason for this peculiar anomaly?

God allowed rebellious Israel to be taken captive into Babylon for 70 years because they were whoring after false gods, which caused the Lord to hide his face from his people (Deu 31:16-18). Then after the Jews were set free from their captivity by King Cyrus so they could return to Jerusalem to worship the Lord, the majority of Israel chose to stay in Babylon and Persia.

And Mordecai, who commanded Esther to keep her Jewish identity hidden (Est 2:10, 19-20), reveals that the Jews in Persia were being persecuted, and scorned if they mentioned the name of the Lord, which is implied in this story by the absence of God's name (Amos 6:8-10).


Israel was divinely called to worship the LORD and was given the responsibility to reveal God's perfect law to sinful mankind, but instead they turned away from the LORD and served false gods made of wood and stone. Therefore, God cast his rebellious people out of their land and into the nations where they would be ridiculed and persecuted so they would return to the LORD with all their heart and soul (Deu 4:23-31).

This Word of God's discipline for Israel is being fulfilled in this present day by the scattered Jews throughout the world who are experiencing an alarming increase of persecution, which is a witness and a warning for the ungodly nations to repent and seek the Lord's forgiveness of their sins through faith in Jesus, before God's tribulation wrath begins for unbelieving mankind (Jer 30:11).



I find it interesting that the number one enemy and persecutor of Israel today is Persia, which changed its name to Iran in 1935 that was an ally of Hitler and participated in the murdering of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe during World War 2, predicated on the support for a Pan-Arab state and Arab rule over Palestine, which is now called Israel.

And in the near future, Gog, Persia (known as Iran), and several other nations will again attempt to eliminate the nation of Israel in the tribulation (Ezekiel 38:1-5, 16, 21-22).



Although God's name appears to be non-existent in the story of Esther, it is hidden within 4 acrostics, which reveals the Lord was working behind the scenes through Esther and the heart of the king to save Israel from Haman's evil plan to kill all the Jews.

For example:


In Proverbs 21:1, the scriptures declare that God is able to cause the decisions that a king makes in his heart. And this is what the Lord did to the heart of King Ahasuerus through Queen Esther and her request to save her people.


I believe the absence of God's name in this account of Haman's plot to kill all the Jews is divinely intended to be a prophetic picture for the Antichrist's plan to kill all Israel in the tribulation, when he will exalt himself against every so-called god or object of worship and demand to be worshiped as God, or else you will be put to death for worshiping the Lord or mentioning God's name.


Because of Israel's great fear of persecution and death by the Antichrist when he proclaims to be God, the Jews will be afraid to mention God's name. While the tribulation saints who dare to confess Jesus is Lord will be put to death for their faith in Christ (Dan 7:23-25, Rev 20:4).

In the following testimony by Ken Peters, he speaks about a prophetic dream of the tribulation that he had in 1980. Ken said that he was standing in a long line of people when persecutors began to grill the people by telling them to renounce their faith. They would never use the name Jesus, they would never use the name Jesus Christ, they would never use the name God, but they would say you should renounce your faith in him while you can still live and your faith is empty. It was a blasphemous kind of challenging against the people standing in line, and every so often somebody would crack.


Ken's prophetic dream is revealing that the absence of God's name in the book of Esther is prophetic for the Antichrist's censoring of the name of Jesus, the God of Israel, or any other false god during the tribulation (2 Th 2:4).

However, when Israel is surrounded by the nations and at the point of death, a faithful remnant will humble themselves and say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” when Jesus who is the face of God will return to save his persecuted people from their enemies (Zec 12:9-10, John 14:9).


Jesus was quoting from Psalm 118, which is describing Israel's salvation and victory over all their surrounding enemies at the end of the tribulation, because they called on the name of the Lord by faith (Zec 13:8-9).




Queen Vashti who was lovely to look at but refused to obey the king's command, is a type for Satan, who was proud of his beauty and rebelled that was cast out of God's Kingdom (Eze 28:14-18, Isa 14:12-15). And just as Queen Vashti was replaced by another who is better (Est 1:19), that is Esther and the virgins, Satan and the demons will be replaced by a faithful remnant of Israel and the church.

Mordecai, who was second in rank to King Ahasuerus and spoke peace to all his people, is symbolic for Jesus, who will rule under the authority of his heavenly Father, bringing peace to all Israel. While King Ahasuerus represents the Father in Heaven.

• Esther 8:15 Then Mordecai (a type for Jesus) went out from the presence of the king (the Father)
  in royal robes of blue (which represents Jesus came from heaven above, Ex 24:10, 28:31-35, John 6:51)
• and white (which represents righteousness, Isa 1:18),
• with a great golden crown (Jesus was crowned with thorns--our sins—when he became our Savior and King)
• and a robe of fine linen and purple (purple, which is the combination of blue and red, represents Jesus who came from the blue heavens above to shed his red blood on the cross for our sins that are like scarlet, so he could be clothed in purple, which is the garment of Kings, see Mark 15:17-18) and the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.
• The high priest's colorful garment of blue, purple and scarlet yarn is symbolic for Jesus sacrifice on the cross when he became our Savior, King, and High Priest (Exodus 39:1-31).

G'day,
My first post and introduction here on this forum. I do not frequent too many boards outside of "Jeep enthusiasm" anymore but decided what better way to remain mentally active during the cold short days of Winter? My profile pretty much sums up my theological position and church attendance, but I am a member at a Conservative Lutheran Synod to save the click to my profile. I enjoy writing, have my own website and publish my thoughts on topics and subjects from time to time as a type of mental exercises. In these last years I'm learning more about the pious life, and whether synergism or monergism recognize that the pious life in application continues throughout a life long process of sanctification. That is, despite monergism, I must apply myself by the works of G-d in the process and life of holiness. I prefer the quiet peaceful life rather than activism today (whatever that means), preferring peace and quiet.

In case anybody is curious why I hyphen the L-rd or G-d etc., it is a reminder for me to not use the name of G-d in vain and to fear and adore "the name" (Hashem). I am educated in both "ancient" Hebraic and modern Hebrew (Sephardic) but far from a scholar. I am only second year learning and broke away from language studies despite being able to translate from that ancient language found on animal skins, cave walls, and clay pottery to modern Hebrew. Where I struggle is comprehension at this time though able to read and write in both forms, translation into the language of my native tongue requires extensive comprehension and inference in order to interpret in its final form (no direct translation often exists).

I live in Idaho but traveled throughout the states in my life during my time in military service and after relocating from Coast to Coast and everyplace in between. I tend to disengage quickly anymore from both political and religious "arguments" made by purple hair sleeve tats pig nosed pierced ringed advocates for their special interests but don't mind listening reasonable debate when based on solid premises, that is, when the premise G-d is the standard of morality and ethics is not overturned by what only sounds good (reason).
Hope everybody is having a blessed day,
Boom

Jan 12 (Reuters) - A proposed one-year cap on credit card interest rates backed by U.S. President Donald Trump could reduce borrowing costs for some consumers but also limit credit availability, pressure bank profits and reshape the economics of consumer lending.

Trump called for the cap on Friday, without detailing how the plan would be implemented, while Wall Street analysts said such a move would require legislation and has slim odds of getting clearance