1Tonne said:

I’d also add, wearing a cross or attending church, while good things, do not in themselves mean someone is saved

Click to expand...

That’s true, since one might be attending a heterodox church that makes use of the cross and someone might be a hypocrite. However challenging people who appear to be Christian as to the status of their faith by demanding to know “Are you saved?” is deeply offensive and is not compatible with the Golden Rule. It is also not a question that an individual believer who is faithful can necessarily answer. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware nonetheless did charitably indulge the strange woman who was accosting him on a train about his soteriological status with this lovely answer “Using the present tense, but using the continuous form of the present tense, I trust that I am being saved.”

Servus said:

Login to view embedded media

Click to expand...

It seems this thread is moving slowly enough to tempt me into conversation.

Whatever solidarity his supporters may feel with the lamented Charlie Kirk, they will never be Charlie Kirk. None of them nor TPUSA are trained public speakers ready to take up his singular promotional style. Nor are his ad hoc positions, taken up and abandoned at his personal whim, a moveable feast set for successors to carry on.

Arguably, not even Charlie Kirk could be Charlie Kirk.

From the million students who famously never showed up for Trump 2020 to the 80 buses that were never needed to deliver the 350 students he recruited to support the "Civil War" he promoted for J6 when Trump lost. Kirk was a critic of college education who dropped out before attending a single class.

Silencing MLK didn't stop the Civil Rights Movement because it gained appeal with a majority of Americans.

Kirk's TPUSA has not gained appeal with even a majority of the college students who Kirk would know, if Kirk had actually attended college, actually set the tone and politics on campus for their professors, and not the other way around.

The Chicago Statement on Free Expression was created to preserve academic freedom under assault from a more liberal — some would say more coddled — student body, because that has always been the dominant force on campus.

Servus said:

I was specifically talking about an audience listening to a debate. Anything outside of that is taking what I said off on a non-sequitur tangent.

Click to expand...

Does anyone remember Trump’s behavior or performance in the debates he participated in! It seemed to be more insults and condescending pejorative name calling than truth. And yet look who we awarded as victor.

o_mlly said:

The issue is, "how did that diversity come to be?".

Click to expand...

While we can never prove that anything isn't the result of some kind of miracle, we can ask whether what we observe is the sort of thing we expect to occur naturally, given the processes we know about. When it comes to genetic differences between species, what we observe is very much what we would expect if the differences were the result of random mutations. There are multiple lines of evidence leading to this conclusion; I've described one of them here: Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations - Article - BioLogos

o_mlly said:

The evolutionist's claim is that only mutation is un-directed; selection is directed (toward survival and reproduction), no? So in any hostile environment, for sentient animals the complex sense of sight provides an advantage for survival. But since "there are too many directions that selection can take", a gradual change evolution theory cannot explain the necessary complexity of an evolved functioning eye?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you're asking. What I meant was, some other change might be more important than a slight improvement in eyesight for a particular species, and might take precedence, or some other change to the eye might be more important, or there might be some developmental constraint that makes a particular change to retinas be difficult to achieve. Organisms are too complex and their interaction with their environment far too complex for us to intelligently model the way a specific trait is going to evolve.

o_mlly said:

So, how many mutational routes are available? If the number of random mutational routes is not significantly smaller than the number of possible random mutations before selection weans them then I don't see much progress in the discussion on gradual evolution explaining the functioning eye.

Click to expand...

Mutational routes to what? Again, I'm not sure what you're asking. To achieve a small change in some particular trait, there might be anywhere from zero to thousands of random mutations possible, while the total number of possible mutations is in the billions.

o_mlly said:

However, the evolution of a functioning eye via accumulated micro-evolutionary events needs evidence. The rate of change is not that evidence.

Click to expand...

In the absence of any reason at all to think there's a limit to how much change can accumulate, yes, the rate is indeed evidence. If the question is whether I could have gotten here from a hundred miles away today by natural means, the fact that I'm in a car that routinely drives at 70 miles an hour is relevant information.

o_mlly said:

So, what is the bais for the claim that "all the evidence (observed effects) ... to date indicates that abstract thinking evolved"?

Click to expand...

The evidence that abstract thinking, very much including language, is a product of brain activity, coupled with the evidence that our brains evolved.

o_mlly said:

What are life's characteristic manifestations? What are its chief forms? What is the inner nature of the source of vital activity?

Vegetation manifests the universal and basic phenomena of life: nutrition, growth, and decay. The second kind of life, the animal kingdom, adds sentience and locomotion The highest kind of life is mind or reason, exerting itself in thought or rational activity. This last properly belongs to man. The source of vitality in all creatures resides in its soul, its animating and harmonizing principle.

Click to expand...

Restating an Aristotelean understanding of life doesn't answer my questions. How old are the Hawaiian Islands? Was life specially created there, or did it arrive from elsewhere?

o_mlly said:

Micro-evolution.

Click to expand...

That's a heck of a lot of change for microevolution, including the kind of change that creationists insist is impossible.

This is exactly what authoritarian regimes do, heavy-handed policing of the law against ones political opponents.

childeye 2 said:

I'm sure that we're all called to be charitable, to care for the needs of others.

I'm using it in this context:

Luke 18:21-23​

​

King James Version​

​

21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.​

22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

childeye 2 said:
To me he's describing what one must do to be the perfect servant, or in other words, perfectly selfless.

Click to expand...

I never said we are not to be charitable. I am asking if every Christian is supposed to give up all as were those called to be his witnesses? There may come a time that we will be persecuted and this is upon us to do. Many people are being persecuted and being killed today in some places.
But again, in every instance are all supposed to not have any earthly goods?

A New Dawn said:

It means nothing that you keep repeating that. Partisan courts making partisan decisions on command of a corrupt DoJ is not a surprise.

Click to expand...

Sorry that you don't like facts. A partisan court has nothing to do with a guilty plea negotiated by the defendant and the court. It also has nothing to do with the jury's decision. The J6er' lawyers agreed to the jury selection.

A New Dawn said:

There were, MAYBE, five people who actually committed a crime in all that went into the Capitol that day who were rightly tried and convicted, the rest were invited in as the video evidence shows and should have received nothing more than a warning instead of the years in jail that they spent on misdemeanor charges.

Click to expand...

Almost all those arrested were not invited in. They forced their way in and videos confirm that. One door on the left side of the Capital building was opened by guards but only those that damaged offices were charged with crimes, from those.

There was video evidence of all those charged with crimes unless officers witnessed and arrested them on site.

1Tonne said:

Scripture never presents evangelism as only an ‘inside the church’ matter

Click to expand...

And neither do I. That said, the kind of outdoor preaching engaged in then is at present difficult to undertake except at organized events. St. Paul benefitted in Athens from the Aereopagus, a hill where people could present what they wanted, and there likewise exists a place in Hyde Park where people can stand on a soapbox and articulate whatever they wish (Muslims have been preaching there of late, among others, and evangelicals have tried counter-preaching, but the net effect is that the majority of people going to Hyde Park to recreate simply avoid that area like the plague).

1Tonne said:

They did not rely on architecture, icons, music, or ambience to bring people to Christ.

Click to expand...

Actually, the oldest surviving church dates from 57 AD and is in Kerala, India, near the spot where St. Thomas the Apostle was martyred in that year. and we still have the Cenacle as well - admittedly it has been redecorated (it is now a monastery under the control of the Syriac Orthodox Church, dedicated to St. Mark the Evangelist, whose house contained the famed Upper Room). Until 2016 an ancient house church was among the archaeological discoveries at Dura Europos in Syria along with a synagogue; the house church had a sanctuary that was particularly splendid, and which featured iconography. Likewise the houses of that era were not commonly made of clay (you seem to be conflating the sophisticated Mediterranean civilization with the more primitive civilizations elsewhere, which some of the Apostles did reach, such as St. Andrew) rather constructed using bricks and stones on the lower level, with wood on the upper levels, while in Rome concrete was available and was used, and indeed the Roman concrete used in the Pantheon, now a Christian church, is among the finest concrete ever used, superior to most concrete used at present in quality. And regarding music, here again you are inaccurate, for the Jewish custom was always to sing the Psalms and prayers, and early Christian worship was taken from Jewish worship, and 100% of ancient liturgical rites sing or chant scripture rather than reading them in an ordinary voice. So basically your entire post is a string of unverified assumptions.

But what really matters is what is working, and what is working is the Orthodox approach. If your church was obtaining an 18% growth rate, per annum, we might want to adopt the methodology you propose. The problem is that you seem to regard ineffective methods of evangelism as a religious duty, which they are not - on the contrary, I would argue we have an obligation to not tarnish the image people have of the Christian faith by spending time annoying them, when we could be spending time loving our neighbors as ourselves, which is an activity that consistently wins people over to Christ and causes conversion, as the Salvation Army and the Anglo Catholics in London, who both made a commitment to care for the poor of the city, discovered (of course in their case it wasn’t so much conversion, but the rechurching of people who were baptized but who had become unchurched or secularized, and to a large extent in the Western World that remains our goal - to take those people who would be Christians had it not been for the devastation inflicted on Christianity by the conflict between liberal theology on the one hand and various non–traditional forms of more conservative theology on the other, such as premillenial dispensationalism and pentecostal worship, which were unknown (in their present form) prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, and the use by both groups of Christian Rock music and Praise and Worship music during worship services, something which has not occurred in the Orthodox churches because thankfully our church specifies the hymns for each service, which the Roman Catholic Church used to do at one time, but had already stopped by the time Pope Pius X wrote Tra le Solecetudini, a plea for his church to return to its traditional musical forms which unfortunately went unheeded by subsequent generations; they canonized him a saint and they allowed the use of electric guitars in the Mass, which are not consistent actions.

1Tonne said:

This daily surrender is a form of living martyrdom; faithful obedience in both deed and proclamation. Martyrdom may be rare in the ultimate sense, but daily obedience and boldly speaking the Gospel are expected of all believers. Fear is not an excuse to remain silent.

Click to expand...

This is all true. Indeed, boldly speaking the Gospel is why I am posting in this thread, because I feel that a nominal presentation of the Gospel by laity not actively engaged in the continuous love of God through love of their neighbor as themselves is counterproductive. I am calling for more Christians to share the Gospel by serving others in their community - boldly displaying their Christianity while doing so and boldly declaring the Gospel imperative as the reason why they are helping others. A good example to follow would be the Roman Catholic charities connected with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, or many others (indeed the Catholics have such good charitable operations as to be the envy of all Christendom).

The liberal mainline churches made the catastrophic mistake of allowing their charitable operations to become disconnected from their ecclesiastical identity, so that the association between the charity and the sponsoring church was only loosely defined; lately the trend has been for hospitals established by the Roman Catholic Church to de-emphasize their Roman Catholic identity, such as Catholic Healthcare West calling itself Dignity Healthcare, which is quite depressing. Indeed the hospital as we know it was invented by an Eastern Orthodox bishop, St. Basil of Caesarea, in the fourth century, who along with St. Nicholas of Myra is one of two figures who in the popular imagination has contributed to the identity of “Santa Claus” but the real bishops are much more interesting than the fictional character they collectively inspired.

However you seem to be projecting your fear of rejection onto me; I have no fear of speaking the Gospel to anyone, but God will hold me accountable if I alienate someone from the Church (especially given my current clerical status).

Two common forms of living martyrdom that go widely ignored are Holy Matrimony, where each spouse will sacrifice their own desires for the benefit of the other and their children, and the monastic life, which is a particularly bold way to proclaim the Gospel - indeed the contributions Orthodox monks have made to the growth of our church, which started to heat up during the previous decade, and which has become exponential since Covid.

Generally monks don't eat meat, but otherwise celebrate. Feasting doesn't necessarily mean eating a ton or even all that richly, so if you're not feeling like stuffing yourself, that's fine. You should generally enjoy yourself and have a respite from labor (as possible). The most important part, of course, is the liturgical celebration, particularly participating in the sacrament of communion.

However, if you're talking about this specific commemoration, the Exaltation of the Precious and Life Giving Cross is a fast day because it's a commemoration of the cross, though it does collide with the Sunday.

ralliann said:

Context.....
Is it about all believers and all life situations how they are to walk?
Are we all called to this?
They were going to lose all. Including their very lives. Were they willing? Yes.
Ps 116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD [is] the death of his saints.
Ac 20:24 But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
Ro 11:3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
Ro 16:4 Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.

Click to expand...

I'm sure that we're all called to be charitable, to care for the needs of others.

I'm using it in this context:

Luke 18:21-23​

​

King James Version​

​

21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.​

22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

childeye 2 said:
To me he's describing what one must do to be the perfect servant, or in other words, perfectly selfless.

Michie said:

Texas A&M University (TAMU) has fired a senior lecturer and two administrators after a Republican lawmaker shared a video of a classroom discussion on gender identity in violation of state law.

The controversy erupted after state Rep. Brian Harrison shared a hidden-camera video online on Sept. 8 showing English lecturer Melissa McCoul dismissing a student who objected to the lesson, which was discussed as part of a children’s literature course.

In one of the undated videos, an unidentified female student is engaged in a discussion with McCoul over content related to gender identity. “This also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people’s religious beliefs. And so, I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws as well as against my religious beliefs,” the student says in the video.

“If you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal,” McCoul responds.

Continued below.

Texas A&M fires lecturer, administrators over classroom gender discussion caught on video

Texas A M University TAMU has fired a senior lecturer and two administrators after a Republican lawmaker shared a video of a classroom discussion on gender identity in violation of state law

www.christianpost.com

Click to expand...

The course description:

Is gender identity not a genre or movement in literature for children?

Chesterton said:

He sets up a tent, provides a microphone, and anyone who wants can step up and discuss whatever they want. You don't get more actual dialogue than that. If the people he spoke with often made fools of themselves that's on them.

Click to expand...

That's an intellectually dishonest framing of how most people encountered Charlie Kirk, which was as an algorithmically mediated presence on a screen, and Kirk and his billionaire backers counted on that algorithmic outrage loop.

Defenders of Kirk really need to do a better job looking at Kirk in his wider context, and not merely focusing on the idealized image they have of him as some kind of chivalrous knight defending "truth".

That's an interesting choice of options in the poll. I think at different points of my life I've been in one way or another guilty of all of them. One that I think that is missing is that you might not be sure exactly what you believe or who has the correct beliefs.

Regarding the "cowardly" question, I think that it refers to people who go along with evil, even though they know it is wrong. They are willing to kill innocent people, because they are scared for their own life. Serving in an unjust war. Being part of a violent gang. Being bullied into doing something illegal or immoral.

On the other hand, there are many things that one could call cowardly (in the strict definition of the word) that definitely wouldn't be included. Running away from a fight, lying to protect someone (including yourself), having a panic attack or PTSD from extreme stress you were never taught to handle. Refusing to do some activity that seems risky like sky-diving, bunny jumping or just scared of the new roller-coaster at the fair, etc.

Gregory Thompson said:

Government is an institution. It consists of people, but the people in it act according to something similar to mob rule, not as individuals.

Click to expand...

It consists of seats of power. These people are just as prone to human nature as the rich people whose wealth they have taken. Thats is it. It is power put in the hands of another group of people.

Gregory Thompson said:

Ideas are just ideas, people act according to what they're really thinking. The ideas are molded into an ideal image and not representative of how humans operate.

Click to expand...

People are people, and have human nature alike, and think like humans can think..

Gregory Thompson said:

The set up applied to the world that existed at the time of the founding. Since it is outdated, amendments will not change that.

Click to expand...

Human nature is what it is. The founding fathers knew this. When men think of their own nature higher than it really is comes to no good end. We will never reach perfection in this world and this life. But many fathers being deists acknowledge Human rights given by God. And created a government to limit power in our branches of government.

Michie said:

Texas A&M University (TAMU) has fired a senior lecturer and two administrators after a Republican lawmaker shared a video of a classroom discussion on gender identity in violation of state law.

The controversy erupted after state Rep. Brian Harrison shared a hidden-camera video online on Sept. 8 showing English lecturer Melissa McCoul dismissing a student who objected to the lesson, which was discussed as part of a children’s literature course.

In one of the undated videos, an unidentified female student is engaged in a discussion with McCoul over content related to gender identity. “This also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people’s religious beliefs. And so, I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws as well as against my religious beliefs,” the student says in the video.

“If you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal,” McCoul responds.

Continued below.

Texas A&M fires lecturer, administrators over classroom gender discussion caught on video

Texas A M University TAMU has fired a senior lecturer and two administrators after a Republican lawmaker shared a video of a classroom discussion on gender identity in violation of state law

www.christianpost.com

Click to expand...

Gig ‘em Aggies. Hoped for better from them, but it’s hard to stand up against legislation that silences teachers.

Only 3 more years.

Swift was skilled at ridiculing the foolish and the rich, the corrupt and whose morality and fairness was in question. Most people remember only two of the groups that were in his book Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnag. They forget that the
4th group, the brutish, materialistic Yahoos, was how he saw most people of that day.


But that does not apply to this thread.

caffeinated.hermit said:

So you used AI to break down AI's conclusions? And AI agreed with what AI had originally proposed? Or did you run this idea by another human engineer?

Click to expand...

I have tried to run this down with human engineer/scientist back in 2009 (without AI obviously) with a completely different design back then. The talk never progressed beyond, the possibility of harnessing molecular energy from ambient temperatures..

He never bothered to look. I gave up on it not long after.

So I'm not going to make the mistake again of showing it to another person at least not until I build the working prototype.

The theory is simple enough that scrutiny of every aspect of it didn't take long and it was easy.

If things got complicated, that couldn't be simply resolved with formulas, chatgpt would recommend me to use a 3rd party app like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. IN this case, it never did.

Have you actually used AI before like really use it heavily like analysis tasks at work? Or just repeating what other people said about AI?

Some of these "rumors" are true but had to be treated under certain context. If you don't supply AI with every possible detail that can affect its analysis, it can make a wrong analysis of the situation and give the wrong advice. You need to have good knowledge and experience of the topics you're discussing with AI so you can still scrutinize its output than blindly believing everything it's saying.

Servus said:

I said truth often wins out over malarky. Many came up to the microphone and spewed malarky, which Charlie Kirk demolished with the truth.

Click to expand...

Ok but rdkirk was explaining how that is not the case and it was an intriguing thought.

How do you respond to that?

iluvatar5150 said:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/13/business/charlie-kirk-death-fired-comments

The Charlie’s Murderers site, whose domain was registered anonymously and which says it is not a doxxing site, claims it has “received nearly 30,000 submissions,” according to a message on the site’s front page on midday Saturday. Currently, there are a few dozen submissions published on the site. “This website will soon be converted into a searchable database of all 30,000 submissions, filterable by general location and job industry. This is a permanent and continuously-updating archive of Radical activists calling for violence.”​

charliesmurderers.com - charliesmurderers Resources and Information.

charliesmurderers.com is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, charliesmurderers.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

www.charliesmurderers.com

Looking over the first handful of entries, it seems their idea of what constitutes “supporting political violence” is… extremely broad.

Click to expand...

Ah, so we’re on that phase of the regime now. Cool.

Richard T said:

Working in the USA on a tourist visa is illegal. Trump gave them special permission to stay but after being detained one week most of them did go on the plane back.

Click to expand...

According to them, many were not here on tourist visas, but limited work visas.

Richard T said:

Not with handcuffs as normally would occur, and they also are NOT going to be considered blacklisted three years for their immigration offenses.

Click to expand...

They had already been chained and shackled. Since South Korea flew them home, there would be absolutely no reason for them to fly handcuffed, in humiliation.

Richard T said:

My only question is that since many even Trump now pity the plight of the S. Koreans, why not pity the plight of the poor Hispanic that works in the meat packing plant?

Click to expand...

I think the general feeling about the plight of the S. Koreans is outrage, not pity. Many do pity the plight of the poor Hispanic that works in the meat packing plant.

Richard T said:

Hiring all these agents is not about rounding up the worst of the ones working or staying here illegally, it is about a show of force to I suppose be a deterrence. So now it worked. The S. Korean President said they will have to rethink new USA investment.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't think that it will be only the S. Korean government reconsidering investing here.

Amo2 said:

It was more an identification of the entity described in Revelation 17 by interpreters, than historical accounts by historians. Peoples being persecuted by the Catholic Church in league with Catholic political leaders, noticed the colors and golden cup employed by the church, its direct connection to the Roman Empire, and simply put 2 and 2 together. They were Christians (saints), they were being persecuted and killed by Roman Catholic religious and political leaders in league with each other, and the Catholic church employed the colors and cup described as an identifying mark in Revelation 17. It is hard to dialogue, with people who outlaw what you say and believe with penalties up to torture and death. Many of course today, look back at said history, and see these same identifying marks played out in actual history.

Click to expand...

Obviously whoever complained about the use of purple vestments, which the Roman Catholic Church does not actually use (rather they use violet and in the Ambrosian Rite, morello), was writing relatively recently, within the past few centuries. In England the Roman Catholic Church historically never used violet vestments before the Council of Trent, instead using Sarum Blue in the South during the penitential seasons and elsewhere, for example in those areas using the liturgy of York, used only gold, red, white and black vestments.

If we go back a bit further, to the medieval period, and to the Classical period when the pre-schism Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches became the official religion in Edessa, Armenia, Ethiopia, Georgia, and after a long flirtation with Arianism, of the Roman Empire around 390 AD, only two types of vestment were in use, dark vestments and light vestments, with the rules on whether to use one or the other varying between church - for example, the Copts use dark vestments during services such as Evening Prayer and their Readers have reversible stoles which are normally red but if reversed are dark blue or black, which are reversed during Holy Week to commemorate the Crucifixion on Good Friday, before being reversed again on Holy Saturday to commemorate His Resurrection (a similiar change of vesture colors happens in the Byzantine Rite on Great and Holy Saturday).

Later, in the early Renaissance, or perhaps a few years before hand, violet vestments were introduced in the Roman Rite on most penitential occasions, but other alternatives were also used, for example, in Lyons, a tan vestment color was used, which is still used in the traditional Lyonaise liturgy on Ash Wednesday, and in the UK the aforementioned colors were used, and also something called “Lenten Array” which was used in the aforementioned Sarum Rite and consisted of natural linen rather than linen bleached white: Lenten Array in the Sarum Use

Several liturgical rites continue to use only light and dark vestments, including the Coptic Orthodox, the Mozarabic Rite, the Ethiopian Rite, and officially at least, the Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and several Eastern Orthodox churches (the Eastern Orthodox typikon, the book which regulates the services, specifies only whether light or dark vestments are to be used, so while in Russia, Ukraine, and certain jurisdictions in the US and certain Eastern Catholic churches that also use the Byzantine Rite, a more complex color scheme is in use, it is entirely optional, with other churches even in the US such as most of the Greek Orthodox really not caring; likewise the Syriac Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic and the Assyrian Church of the East (East Syriac) just pick colors and use them whenever light vestments are as well, while wearing more minimal vestments, which are usually black, red and gold in color at other times.

Regarding the use of a golden chalice, this is an absurd accusation against the Roman Church, and ignores the historic existence of silver and brass chalices. At any rate, since the Orthodox churches and all other traditional liturgical churches also use these, and the Syriac Orthodox informally use, and the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox formally use, purple vestments, we can dismiss this whole conspiracy theory as moot, since it relies on a connection with the Church of Rome and is just obvious anti-Catholic agitation, probably of 18th century origin at the earliest, probably written by someone who was a non-Trinitarian opposed to the Council of Nicaea given the dating (since historically most Trinitarian Christians were aware of the importance of Nicaea in opposing Arianism and it was only in the 19th century in the US that poorly educated people began to make the Council of Nicaea the center of various conspiracy theories, while, due to peer pressure from other Christians, not rejecting the doctrine of the Incarnation which was defended at Nicaea against the heresy of Arius.

childeye 2 said:

Is this statement meant to be speaking about the intent of Jesus? To me he's describing what one must do to be the perfect servant, or in other words, perfectly selfless.

Click to expand...

Context.....
Is it about all believers and all life situations how they are to walk?
Are we all called to this?
They were going to lose all. Including their very lives. Were they willing? Yes.
Ps 116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD [is] the death of his saints.
Ac 20:24 But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
Ro 11:3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
Ro 16:4 Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.