It’s advised in proverb’s don’t spare the rod so should we listen to this advice ?

In the debate last week Vivek Ramaswami asserted that J6 was "an inside job".

For those of you who think Speaker Pelosi orchestrated J6 and it was perpetrated by Antifa, BLM and FBI agents who had been extolled to assault the Capitol by Fed Ray Epps (or some variation thereof), I have one question...

Why did Donald do nothing for 187 minutes other than watch the attack unfold on TV?

I got to chatting with this...."Christian" woman, and she couldn't figure out, why at the age of my 50s, that I've never been married, and no matter what the reason I gave, that I keep meeting shallow women that play games, or whatever, that she finds it VERY strange and suspect that I've never married. That I date a lot (which I don't ) and found it odd that I'm Christian that assumed that I go out with a lot of women, but never married anyone of them.


That I wasn't a "risk" taker at marriage. Implied that I was afraid of it even. I said since my 20s I wanted marriage.

She said she is "Christian", she's divorced..;.once, and never wants to marry again. So it sounds like she wants to just date, and hasn't been on a lot of dates. She then contradicts herself that she's not "entirely opposed" to getting married again.

She claims to have gotten to America on her own (not via a green card marriage), and was married 25 years.

Then she goes on to say, "The maybe it's you"

I've gotten into quite a few of these conversations with these bitter, divorced women 40 and older and it's no wonder men my age tend towards the younger ladies...and these are the very reasons I suppose. They tend to grill me hard about my situation, and it's made me a bit self-conscious and it doesn't make me feel any better when they do this.

I said I found it a bit odd, being from South America, and Christian, that she came from a culture that was of a marriage minded capacity, and from that she thought I was saying that she got married for the purpose of citizen ship. So don't generalize!

I never said that, she put words in my mouth.

And I was like "Don't generalize ME/ or Judge mE (same thing in a way), because I'VE never been married!"

The conversation pretty much ended there.

It's a sad...sad world where even CHRISTIANS find a fellow Christian, that's never been married, as a dealbreaker, yes?

The mom who said she felt “frustration and anger” over the quiz also said her son, who is white, is often berated by teachers at the school who have reportedly accused him of being racist and “a product of the patriarchy that teaches young boys not to care about anything,” according to the Rantz show.
Seattle Public Schools said the quiz was meant to promote inclusion and was in line with lessons taught in the Ethnic Studies class.
The liberal approach to education is a disservice to our children.

Jesus doesn’t want just part of us
Not just part of us, but all our time
Doesn’t want just what we’ll give to Him
Wants our whole, not part, and not our mime

Our Lord Savior Jesus Christ and God
Gave His life up for us on a cross
So that we’d be forgiven our sins
So that we’d live not for self, but Him

People have it backwards nowadays
Think that all God wants is that we pray
Take some little time for Him each day
Then go merrily along our way

That is not how God has set things up
He desires we drink from Him His cup
Share with Him in death and righteousness
Live for Him so we’ll be heaven blessed

An Original Work / December 14, 2023

This negligence on the highest order on the part of Hyundai and Kia,
"Judge rules Hyundai, Kia lawsuit can move forward, saying ‘the level of fault is almost entirely on the defendants.'
Hyundai and Kia had hoped for a quick dismissal of the litigation hundreds of insurers brought forth after a spree of vehicle thefts. Instead, U.S. District Judge James Selna in Santa Ana, California, rejected the automakers’ argument for dismissal and ruled Hyundai and Kia must face the insurers' lawsuits.

The lawsuits in question aim to recoup more than $1 billion that insurers say they owe Hyundai and Kia drivers whose vehicles were damaged or stolen during a theft spree inspired by social media. The insurers argue that the lack of anti-theft devices in the 14.3 million vehicles made between 2011 and 2022 dramatically increased the likelihood of vehicle theft.

Hyundai and Kia argued that insurers assumed the risk of vehicle theft by collecting auto insurance policy premiums.

Selna rejected that argument, writing, "Though [the insurers] have received premiums, defendants allegedly failed to include any anti-theft device as required under federal regulations. Thus, the level of fault is almost entirely on the defendants."

A lack of immobilizers​

Much of the criticism Hyundai and Kia face stems from their failure to install immobilizers in many of their vehicles. These anti-theft devices are common in most vehicles and prevent cars from being hotwired.

TikTok videos showing how to steal vehicles without such a device triggered an avalanche of thefts in 2021. Federal statute states all vehicles must have starting systems that prevent normal activation of the engine if the key is removed from the starting system, according to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 114.

A broader case​

Selna's ruling is the latest in a string of legal cases surrounding the automakers and the thefts. Hyundai and Kia also face legal challenges from several municipalities and victims in those areas seeking to recoup costs associated with vehicle theft and vandalism.

On Oct. 31, 2023, Selna provided preliminary approval of a class action settlement involving Hyundai and Kia and concerning more than 9 million vehicles. The settlement is valued at $200 million, of which $145 million will go to the drivers themselves.

Other lawsuits remain ongoing.

What's next?​

While the court battles continue, current owners of the Hyundai and Kia models that appeared in the TikTok challenge face a new obstacle - getting insurance.

"Auto insurers, as a result of all the spikes in thefts in those vehicles, stopped writing new business for those policyholders and probably were not renewing policies,".......ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/judge-rules-hyundai-kia-lawsuit-can-move-forward-saying-the-level-of-fault-is-almost-entirely-on-the-defendants/ar-AA1lrHk7?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=84f667aa10164154906a64641b65093f&ei=131

This is sad. I enjoyed his work. both serious and comedic.

I am a 51 year old man who had a beautiful marriage of 18 years, 2 beautiful children, and in just 40 days I went from happily married to hell. On January 27th 2023 God needed my wife to make heaven a better place. For me the hardest thing about being a widower is the silence. It is coming up on one year and I am grieving more now than on February 11th. I am disabled and extremely lost. How do y'all deal with the greif and silence. Remember that there is nothing bigger than the little things. I miss my wife. God bless you and your family. Merry Christmas .

What are y'alls thoughts about this poll conducted by The Heartland Institute/Rasmussen.

One of the most provocative and encouraging statements I have found in the Bible is this one:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” (John 14:12, NKJV)

For me, this means also that I should not put any limits on what I think I can or cannot do, or rather, what the Love, Power and Wisdom of God can do through me. I believe following Jesus is adventurous, do you also experience it this way?

It being Christmas season, I know there's a lot of pain going on over family estrangement.

I have been estranged from many family members for like 12 years. I know in a way it's justified because I have done things that have been wrong and have hurt others, but there is something specific I'm struggling with about it.

I have had no reciprocation from any of those family members from which I am estranged, despite trying to make peace and respect boundaries over a long period of time. No communication over Thanksgiving or Christmas consistently. No communication, period. My texts or calls are never returned....ever.

I don't really like these people, respect them, or have much of anything in common with them. Actually, the most important family member I have is my mom. She is the only one who has supported me unconditionally. Sometimes I feel guilt because although she is the only family member that matters, I am constantly struggling with why I feel such a hole in my heart over the siblings I have that either are self-interested, unforgiving, or simply don't care.

I know personally, and have read, that there are real and devastating consequences to long-term sibling estrangement. As I type, I can FEEL the cortisol and the adrenaline pumping through my veins and blood. I have tried to lose weight, but it is not possible if you are angry. Your cortisol levels will drive you to eat, and to eat unhealthy foods, to compensate for your stress.

I am trying to justify to myself and to you why I feel this need to reconcile, even though I have nothing in common with my estranged family members. I know that for me, closure and tying up loose ends is really important. I know people who went to their graves estranged from important family relationships, when a simple phone call would have solved the problem, and they let the estrangement go on for 30 years. I don't understand that kind of pride.

I love the idea of coming full circle with things, and I value making peace and being at peace with others. I have been able to make peace and live in peace with every single person I have ever known and ever hurt, and we are on good terms. But for some reason, this "untied knot" of estrangement with certain family members is really eating me up. It's like an itch that I can't scratch, because it really is the only itch in my life I have not been able to scratch, the only loose end I have not been permitted to tie up in my relationships.

Every time I have tried to communicate, the door gets slammed in my face.

In this situation, the worst part for me is being consistently tormented with the idea that I can't move on from the situation, because I am the only clear Christian witness in the family, and if someone important in the family dies, I am expected to be there and to be the "big guy."

It's very, very painful to continue leaving my heart open for years to those who don't want anything to do with me, and feeling like it might never end. Part of me believes though that this is a cross from God. It's almost like he's telling me, "now you get to feel what I feel. I love the world so much, and my heart goes out to everyone every single day, and most people want nothing to do with me. Still, my heart is open to them from birth until death, if they will only call out to me."

Anyone have experience with this? It sounds like I am torn between a lot of conflicting things.

What would you do in this situtation?

I've been praying for A's salvation nonstop since he mentioned it? We work at a rather liberal store (Target) that isn't friendly towards Christians.

Any advice is appreciated.

GOP clash nixes Johnson plan for floor showdown on surveillance reforms​

The House Rules Committee pulled consideration of the two bills after a GOP conference meeting that was staged as a debate over reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on foreigners overseas.

1. The Apocrypha Has Different Doctrine And Practices Than Holy Scripture
2. The Apocrypha Is Never Cited In The New Testament As Scripture
3. The Apocrypha Has Always Been Rejected By The Jews As Scripture
4. The Books Of The Apocrypha Were Written During The Silent Years
5. The Septuagint Translation Proves Nothing
6. There Is No Evidence The Apocrypha Was In Septuagint At The Time Of Christ
7. There Is No Evidence Of A Greater Alexandrian Canon
8. They Are Not On The Early Canonical Lists
9. They Were Rejected By Most Church Leaders
10. There Are Other Books Apart From The Apocrypha That Are Cited As Scripture By Some Church Fathers
11. The Early Greek Manuscripts Are Not Decisive
12. The Apocrypha Is Not A Well-Defined Unit
13. The Councils At Hippo And Carthage Are Not Definitive

There was one great Hebrew scholar among the Christian Church living in the era of Saint Augustine - Jerome the translator of the Latin Vulgate. Jerome rejected the Apocrypha as Holy Scripture in the strongest of terms. He refused to place it in his translation of the Old Testament. It was only after the death of Jerome that the Apocrypha was placed in the Vulgate - the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church. His expert testimony was rejected.

We can start there:

Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) [nearly one light-day] away, while its twin Voyager 2 has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from our planet.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager probes are the two longest-operating spacecraft in history.

The mission team first noticed the issue November 14, when the flight data system’s telecommunications unit began sending back a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, like it was trapped in a loop.

While the spacecraft can still receive and carry out commands transmitted from the mission team, a problem with that telecommunications unit means no science or engineering data from Voyager 1 is being returned to Earth.

The Voyager team sent commands over the weekend for the spacecraft to restart the flight data system, but no usable data has come back yet, according to NASA.

Republicans aren’t saints either but they seem to support more biblical views than Democrats. I was wondering how some Christians can still be democratic IF they vote ?

A whole bunch of charges and conviction would go up in the air because of the way one particular judge felt it appropriate to restrict the definition of what a "obstruction of an official proceeding" can mean.

Supreme Court will hear a case that could undo Capitol riot charge against hundreds, including Trump

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

Click to expand...

I don't know how to look it up, but if I were a betting man (though I'm not) this feels like something a Trump appointed judge would write. Not a competent, impartial and reasonable jugde.

1 Corinthians 15:46 (NASB20)
However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As with all God’s dealings with fallen man, that which is of the outward must come first; it being, one believing that Christ did sacrifice Himself on the cross for the forgiveness of one’s sins…. Then that which is spiritual comes, it being, believing that Christ took the believing one also to death with Him when He died on the cross….

That which is of the outward must come first, being that which the human will chooses to believe, then that which is spiritual comes, that which that same believing believes, by adding one’s death on the cross with Christ to that same faith….

For this is the spiritual faith of a Christian, that which turns one from a carnal believer into a spiritual believer; one believing that when Christ died on the cross He took the sinful one with Him to death, thereby freeing one from the law by fulfilling the law concerning the sinner which reads; ‘the soul that sins, that soul shall die’…. This is the Christian’s spiritual faith, believing this truth, and believing into this truth…..

For struggle as much as one will against sin, one will never find victory but in the way of this faith; believing that when Christ died on the cross He took the believing one to death with Him, so that by faith it might be made true , ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ that lives in me’….. This is that which is spiritual, that which comes after, which when the faith of it comes, becomes one’s very life, and the very heart of it… For the faith that becomes one’s very life is the faith one is to live by…..

Be blessed in the faith of the very heart of life….


A fellow follower, Not me

In one of Africa’s last great wildernesses, a remarkable thing has happened—the scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, is now classified only as endangered.

It’s the first time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest conservation organization, has ever moved a species on its Red List from ‘Extinct in the Wild’ to ‘Endangered.’

The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country, who kept the oryx alive while the governments of Abu Dhabi and Chad worked together on a reintroduction program.

Chad is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth, and ranks second-lowest on the UN Development Index. Nevertheless, it is within this North African country that can be found the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a piece of protected desert and savannah the size of Scotland—around 30,000 square miles, or 10 times the size of Yellowstone.

At a workshop in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, in 2012, Environment Abu Dhabi, the government of Chad, the Sahara Conservation Fund, and the Zoological Society of London, all secured the support of local landowners and nomadic herders for the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the reserve.

Continued below.

Kids complained for years about sexually abusive probation officers. Some of them still work for L.A. County​

The girls said they were molested in bed and raped in an administrative office, leered at in the communal shower and surveilled in the bathroom.

If they told, they said, they were threatened with solitary confinement and revoked phone privileges. If they stayed quiet, they might get out a few weeks early.
...
It wasn’t until this fall that Jackson resigned from the Los Angeles County Probation Department, capping a 33-year career during which 20 women say he sexually abused them when they were girls. His last day was Sept. 28.

Ernest Walker, a longtime probation supervisor, resigned two days later, also after 33 years with the department. His departure would come nearly two decades after he was accused of having sex with a teenage girl he supervised.

Faced with roughly 1,500 plaintiffs accusing the county of tolerating unchecked sexual abuse at its juvenile facilities, the Probation Department has spent the last two years removing alleged sexual abusers from its ranks.

“It makes my stomach sink,” said Thom, a former sex crimes prosecutor. “To hear that number — and I guarantee it’s probably double if not more — it just shows how irresponsible the county is.”

The crackdown can be traced to the 2019 passage of the Child Victims Act, a state law that gave victims of childhood sexual abuse a new window to sue.

In April, the county estimated it will need to spend $1.6 billion to $3 billion to resolve a deluge of lawsuits accusing county staffers of raping and molesting the children they were paid to protect

[In many cases, such as the two men named above, they were never criminally charged, and I presume the statue of limitations prevents them from being charged now.]

Could this be an example of systemic racism in Louisianna?

5-judge panel reaches 3-2 decision on Whitehorn’s appeal in contentious Caddo sheriff race

TlDr
1) Race for sherrif. One black one white.
2) Black man wins by one vote
3) Recount: Still wins by one vote
4) No actual evidence of illegal votes being cast in support. Claims that there were "voting irregularities"
5) After the window to issue a recount passes, white candidate manages to find a conservative judge.
6) He orders election null and void; (to be clear) with no direct causal relation between ANY supposed "irregularties" and the outcome being affected.
7) He appeals. It was heard by a panel of judges; 3 white, 2 black.
8) The lower court ruling stands. 3-2

Guess who voted what?
It seems like the white candidate required a lot of rule bending to just get the election overturned.

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I'm not one to make light of a medical condition however the circumstances of this incident warrants at least a little curiosity. What do you think of the incident?

Me, it's a coincidence.

Do you believe that icons and statues are idols and should be disposed of?