Hoping2 said:

His version of 2 Cor 5:17 must be different from mine.
2 Cor 5:17..."Wherefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (KJV)
If the old is passed away, how can it still indwell any believer ?

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Hoping2 said:

I hate it when men say one is "freed from the penalty of sin", without saying that we are also freed from committing sin It makes it look like one can commit sin without a penalty !
That would be the antithesis of Christ like behavior.

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The Liturgist said:

I might have joined the RCC as I was considering it when two things happened that caused me to become Orthodox when my traditionalist friend Fr. Steven retired from the Episcopal Church, namely, the unexpected retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, memory eternal, and the abduction of the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop and the Antiochian Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo while the two were riding back from Lebanon in a car. I had always been fascinated with Orthodoxy, and had grieved for the Serbian Orthodox and Allbanian Orthodox Christians in Kosovo who were persecuted over a decade previously, and during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in 2002 I was greatly upset, and in my youth the Soviet Union and its repression of Orthodox and other Christians was very much in my mind, and the subsequent suffering of those same Christians in the economic collapse that followed the political collapse of the Soviet regime.

But I think Orthodox Catholic - Roman Catholic reconciliation is extremely important, although first I believe that the reunification of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, which is in progress, but naturally takes a long time and is not helped by the inaccurate information about the OOs posted by schismatic Old Calendarists on sites like orthodoxinfo.com (they are unaware that ancient Monophysitism is extinct, and the beliefs of the Oriental Orthodox as demonstrated through their worship is the same as ours, indeed, the hymn Ho Monogenes was most likely written by St. Severus of Antioch and added to the liturgy by Emperor Justinian, who married a Syriac Orthodox woman, St. Theodora, venerated in both communions (the Eastern Orthodox venerate her for her piety and the Oriental Orthodox venerate her for advising St. Jacob bar Addai that the Imperial authorities were arresting and perhaps executing all of the Miaphysite bishops of Antioch, of whom he alone survived or remained free, and ordained hundreds of bishops acting sola, which is allowed in emergency conditions, which made it impossible for the Syriac church to be decapitated. The belief that St. Athanasius wrote Ho Monogenes is most likely of Armenian origin, as the Armenians rival the Copts and Ethiopians for their veneration of St. Athanasius, and had a schism with the Syriac Orthodox and apparently are the only Oriental Orthodox church where St. Severus is not widely venerated (and was for a time regarded as heterodox).

However, it seems possible that Roman Catholic - Assyrian, or rather I should say Chaldean Catholic - Assyrian relations could begin sooner; an initial advance was rebuffed by the Holy Synod of the Assyrian Church of the East because of concerns that it would mean the end of their autocephalous status, which they have enjoyed de facto since the evangelization of the Ephesus to Kerala, India trade route by Saints Thomas, Addai and Mari in the first century (as an autonomous church under the Patriarch of Antioch, and later as a fully independent and autocephalous church responsible for all territories beyond the Eastern border of the Roman Empire, streching to Socotra off the coast of Yemen in the Southwest, Urmia and Merv in the Northwest, and to Mongolia in the Northeast, and Tibet in the Southeast, with major population centers in the Nineveh Plains, Seleucia-Cstesiphon, near Old Babylon and modern day Baghdad, and Kerala. Indeed the Chaldean Catholics are members of an Assyrian tribe, the Chaldinaya, Arabic speaking Assyrians chiefly in the city of Baghdad.

Thus we have the question of preserving the autocephalous status our churches are assured under Canons 6 and 7 of the Council of Nicaea in the case of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and other canons in the case of Cyprus and constantinople, and by extension, all other autocephalous churches (since if Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople have the same authority as Rome in their jurisidictions, that includes the authority to organize new autonomous and autocephalous churches, although lately the current Greek Orthodox Archbishop of North America became notorious as Metropolitan of Bursa (which under his tenure went from an actual Metropolis with one church to a titular Metropolis with no churches, which is unfortunate since Bursa is approximately where Chalcedon was, and there were 15 or so members at the remaining Orthodox church there), by claiming that only the Ecumenical Patriarchate has the power to grant, and even more controversly, to revoke, autocephaly (indeed the controversial tomos of autocephaly granted to the OCU in 2018 appears to give the EP this ability), but it is the case that Constantinople refuses to recognize the autocephalous status of the Orthodox Church in America, despite the OCA having been granted autocephaly in 1970 by the MP.

There is also the important question of the liturgy - from an Orthodox perspective the Novus Ordo Missae comes across as being a bit too close to the liturgies of the mainline churches, often lacking the elements of the ars celebrandi which some dismiss as “bells and smells” which characterize the Traditional Latin Mass and contibute so much to the liturgical beauty of the Orthodox churches and indeed most of the Eastern Rite Catholics, with the exception of the Maronites and some of the Mar Thoma churches (indeed I have even seen celebration versus populum in a Chaldean Catholic church, which would not be something the Assyrians would want to see). Among Byzantine Rite Catholics, paradoxically, in North America the Ukrainian Greek Catholics have liturgy that is less Latinized and in some cases closer to the Ukrainian Orthodox liturgy of the UOC and the UOC-KP than the worship of the OCU, which has adopted the Byzantine style phelonion (a cope-like chasuble) instead of the high-cut Athonite phelonions traditionally used in Ukraine (one of the three main varieties, along with the Athonite phelonion used on Mount Athos and in Russia, Belarus, the Church of Finland (also under the EP) and the Slavonic parishes of the OCA, and the Byzantine Phelonion which lacks the raised collar and is draped over the shoulders like the Western cope, the Gothic-style chasuble or the Syriac Orthodox phayno (and its Maronite equivalent).

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The Liturgist said:

I agree with this wholeheartedly, and I believe it supports traditional liturgical Christianity, although I don’t think there is enough evidence from historical study alone to say which church (nor is there enough evidence to definitely exclude any of the ancient churches, although we can identify doctrines that are of relatively recent origin, and some churches such as the RCC believe in doctrinal development, and others such as the Orthodox do not, which has been a minor but not insurmountable sticking point in ecumenical discussions, since the Orthodox do concede that the expression of doctrine can and does develop, for example, it was the heresy of Arius that neccessitated the Nicene Creed and the proliferation of heretical apocrypha falsely claiming Apostolic provenance, such as the Acts of Thomas, or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (poor St. Thomas, everyone was impersonating him - indeed Mani, the Persian heresiarch, named his disciple who he sent to Syria to spread his false religion there Thomas to appeal to the locals due to their devotion to that Apostle, while naming those sent to Egypt and India Hermes and Buddha respectively, based on the presumed popularity of the Hermetic religion in Egypt and the Buddhist faith in India in the third century AD. Ironically both of those Pagan religions would in the following centuries disappear from those lands; Buddhism vanished from India until its recent reintroduction, where it has been popularized under the Dalits, who would have been regarded by Siddharta Guatama as untouchables, at least in his youth, and as for Hellenic and Egyptian Paganism, they are, like the Manichaen religion itself, gone from Egypt, with only Christianity and a religion regarded by St. John of Damascus as a heretical offshoot of Christianity, the Islamic faith, remaining. The only trace of Mani’s religion remaining consists of a couple of apparently Buddhist temples in China which were originally secretly Manichaean, with subtle differences from a normal Buddhist temple such as the expression on the face and certain other references to Mani; this dissimulation was widely practiced by minority religions in the East and differs from the martyrdom-seeking behavior of Christians.

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concretecamper said:

More fallout from a poorly catechetized generation. So sad.

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ViaCrucis said:

Folks, if your first response to reading about a white supremacist group wanting to create a whites-only commune is to play a game of whataboutism, then you probably should do some deep, deep soul searching.

-CryptoLUtheran

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fhansen said:

So did I. And yet I still know I can walk away. I can still fail to love God and neighbor to put it another way.

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RileyG said:

Many gay men and women don’t think God loves them. My brothers own words when he attacked my deceased cat (she was hissing at him) and calling her dirty names.

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DaisyDay said:

Are you saying that Benny Johnson did not accept money from RT or are you complaining that last year is so long ago that it doesn't count? The article includes a link to the indictment.

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fhansen said:

Yes, that's what happened to Paul. Was that also what happened to you? Plenty of people were specially graced all throughout the bible, for God's specific purposes according to His wisdom for the advancement of His kingdom, for the salvation of man. He continues to do so even now, but that is far from the norm for us regular folk. And even at that Paul acknowledged that he had to strive, towards his final end in heaven.

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CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN said:

China town and Black cities allow white people in their cities and towns.

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Clare73 said:

I had my own "Damascus Road."

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wing2000 said:

Incoming MAGA "Truth bombs"....take cover!

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fhansen said:

Yes, that's what happened to Paul. Was that also what happened to you? Plenty of people were specially graced all throughout the bible, for God's specific purposes according to His wisdom for the advancement of His kingdom, for the salvation of man. He continues to do so even now, but that is far from the norm for us regular folk.

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FireDragon76 said:

If we’re talking about grace “knocking,” consider St. Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus. It wasn’t a gentle knock—it was a blinding, earth-shattering confrontation that utterly overwhelmed him. Grace didn’t politely wait for his consent; it broke through his resistance and reshaped his entire life.

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fhansen said:

No, The gift of faith precedes our response but are response is optional. It works that way with all grace. God actually covets are willingness and so He approaches us first and prompts and moves us towards Himself but we can refuse- since Eden, He draws the line at making humans into some sort of Christian automatons. We can fail to answer the door when He knocks. We can fail to care when He loves us. Or we can spit back out the heavenly gift after tasting it.

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Bro.T said:

What happen to the people who will not repent?

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Vambram said:

The HPSCI report proves indispensable for understanding what supposed intel Obama withheld from the intelligence community under the guise of executive privilege.
Documents released over the last month have exposed a post-election plot designed to derail President Donald Trump’s first term. The recently declassified material reveals former President Barack Obama sought to continue the Russia-collusion hoax Hillary Clinton had launched during the presidential campaign by directing select members of his intelligence community to craft the deceptive Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. However, a close reading of these documents reveals Obama holds even more culpability than previously discussed.
However, the recently declassified HPSCI report also revealed a more subtle — but equally significant — detail, namely Obama’s role in hiding intel from the analysts responsible for drafting the ICA.


“Investigators as well as the ICA authors were denied access to a trove of information on grounds of executive or congressional privilege,” the HPSCI report explained. According to the report, one FBI analyst argued the intel should be shared with analysts, but “that the Obama Administration denied ICA drafters access to this intelligence on grounds of Executive or Congressional privilege.”

While it is unclear what intel would be protected by congressional privilege, executive privilege rests in the president of the United States, meaning Barack Obama prevented the drafters of the ICA from reviewing relevant information.

What intel Obama directed Brennan and others to keep from those drafting the ICA is also unclear, but the recent release by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of internal emails related to the ICA suggest the material withheld under the guise of executive privilege, or elsewise, was extensive.

A little over a week ago, Director Gabbard released a report revealing that soon after Obama ordered the rushed crafting of the ICA, a top official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) eighty-sixed an already completed President’s Daily Brief that concluded Russia had not hacked the 2016 presidential election. As The Federalist reported at the time, emails declassified by Director Gabbard indicate the ODNI “buried the PDB to provide the intelligence community cover to issue a contrary assessment concerning Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election — and did so, against the recommendations of a wide array of intelligence professionals.”


In addition to that explosive news, another email thread in the hundred-plus pages of declassified emails revealed another shocking detail: The intelligence officer charged with conducting an “analytic scrub” of the “noncompartmented” version of the ICA had no knowledge that the ICA report referenced, much less relied upon, the Steele dossier.

Director Gabbard’s report referred to this analyst as an “ODNI Whistleblower,” noting that he was shocked when asked as part of a FOIA request in September of 2019 to search email systems for material related to the Steele dossier, being told “the dossier was a factor in the 2017 ICA on the election interference in which an assessment of the document was added as an annex.”

“I am choosing my words carefully, for your awareness, because the premise of the message is concerning,” the ODNI whistleblower wrote in response to learning the dossier was relied upon in completing the ICA. Then, after explaining his role in the development of the ICA, the whistleblower stressed, “t included no dossier reference that I recall.” Further, “[a]t no point did [redacted name] suggest that there was any analytically significant reporting that I was NOT seeing, with the exception of compartmented material.” And here, the whistleblower noted that he had “asked repeatedly” whether there was any analytically significant reporting because of “concerns” he held regarding a key judgment of the analysis.

“At no point did I see or consider what I gather is, or was represented to be, ‘dossier’ materials,” the ODNI whistleblower’s email to another member of ODNI continued, adding that he “heard second hand from [redacted name], ostensibly recounting words of then DNI Clapper, on the day of a briefing to current [then, I think, just elect] POTUS, about inclusion of dossier materials in a presentation to POTUS elect. This was characterized as an unexpected and unwanted sudden and unilateral act by then DIR FBI Comey, and as a source of concern to the DNI.”

Of course, that was not true, as both Director Clapper and CIA Director Brennan colluded with Comey to include the dossier in an annex. But the DNI intelligence officer, turned ODNI whistleblower, who worked on the ICA knew nothing about the assessment’s reliance on the dossier. This led him to conclude that “IF the Dossier material WAS used by the NIC, unless it is also compartmented,” he was “deceived and excluded [] from things [he] was cleared for and had need to know, . . . .”

Here, the ODNI whistleblower is both right — and wrong. He properly concludes that he was deceived and excluded from things he was cleared for and had a need to know, but he inaccurately assumes that if the dossier was “compartmented” there was no concern.

“Compartmented” information is tightly held intelligence that is accessible only to specifically identified and approved individuals. The ODNI whistleblower noted in his emails that he had not “participate[d] in the crafting of the compartmented version” of the ICA, assuming that fact might explain away his ignorance about the ICA’s reliance on the Steele dossier.

But that does not explain why the Steele dossier was compartmented in the first place. Or rather, it does: to keep the honest analysts responsible for finalizing the classified and unclassified version of the ICA from discovering the shady and fake intel Brennan buried in the compartmented version.

In discussing the compartmentalizing of the intel for the ICA, the CIA’s report questioned “whether the extreme limitations on access to underlying intelligence within the IC during the ICA’s preparation was justified.” Here, the CIA stressed that the “ICA had been shared with more than 200 US officials.” “This is unusually high for such a highly compartmented product,” the CIA noted in questioning the compartmentalization of the materials.

While the compartmentalized version of the ICA has yet to be declassified, the HPSCI report released last week reveals large swaths of intel that were included only in the compartmentalized version and thus withheld from analysts working on the classified and unclassified versions. The HPSCI report stressed this point, explaining “the highly compartmented nature of the raw reporting made it difficult or impossible for most readers to see the foundational sources.”

The Steele dossier was but one of the documents included in the compartmentalized ICA but excluded from the public and classified versions of the report. This reality becomes clear when you compare what the HPSCI report states about the ICA with the previously classified version of the ICA that Director Gabbard recently released.

Details Buried In Declassified Docs Further Implicate Obama

Details in recently declassified documents further implicate President Barack Obama in launching the Russia collusion hoax.

thefederalist.com

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Michie said:

If the sun still rises, God’s covenant with Israel still stands.

That’s the startling logic of Jeremiah 33where the fixed order of creation is offered as proof that God’s promises to the Jewish people are unbreakable. Yet in an age of rising theological confusion and mounting hostility toward Israel, many in the Church have begun to waver. Replacement Theology is back, often dressed in more “respectable” robes. But let’s be clear: if God can abandon Israel, then no one is safe. If He breaks that promise, why wouldn’t He break yours? Has God truly revoked His covenant? Has the Church replaced Israel in His plan? Or is the continued existence of Israel as certain as the sunrise?

The answer, resoundingly and unmistakably, is found in the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah:


These two verses are both a prophetic rebuke and a theological anchor. God Himself sets the terms: Only if the rhythm of day and night ceases — only if the laws that govern the cosmos unravel — then, and only then, would He cast off Israel.

Continued below.

If God can replace Israel, He can replace the Church, too

If the sun still rises, God s covenant with Israel still stands

www.christianpost.com

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Phil G said:

But the fact you don’t have answers means that you’re ignoring the valid points put to you.

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Phil G said:

For instance, denying the eyewitness testimonies of Christian astronauts is nothing but wilful ignorance.

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Phil G said:

Add to that the very basic fact that when something is far away from you, such as the moon as it rises if the earth is flat, should appear smaller than it is when it is closer to you, such as the moon when it is high in the sky if the earth is flat. The fact you you see it as bigger when it rises than it is when it’s high in the sky means that it’s not as flat earthers claim.

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Phil G said:

If you can’t answer these basic facts, except to claim Christian astronauts are lying and ignore your own eyes, then you have no rational reason to continue to claim the earth is flat.

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FireDragon76 said:

This argument really falls apart under scrutiny. To claim that faith depends on a person’s “capacity for moral accountability” is just a disguised form of Pelagianism. Faith isn’t some ability we muster up or a choice we make based on our readiness; it is a pure gift of grace that precedes and enables any human response.


Lutheran theology nails this because it refuses to confuse grace with human effort. Faith is received, not performed. Anything else risks turning salvation into a meritocracy, where grace is reduced to a mere assist rather than the sovereign work it is.


So no, this isn’t a helpful distinction—it’s a theological muddle that obscures the metaphysical reality of grace and invites the very errors the Church has historically condemned. If you want to defend grace, you must defend it as unmerited, unilateral, and foundational—not as a conditional response to our supposed moral capability.

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mourningdove~ said:

Did you even read the title of this thread?
Did you even read the opening post?

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mourningdove~ said:

Do you not see it as being uncharitable, to not allow others to freely discuss their topics without disruption?

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mourningdove~ said:

No, I didn't decide who was invited to post in this thread. The OP did.

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RandyPNW said:

The name "Israel" identified the people we are talking about. Paul was using the name "Israel" to reflect upon their calling to be a faithful people.
So, when Israel failed to become a Christian nation, they were viewed as "untrue, or unfaithful, Israel." They did not stop being identified as "Israel." They stopped being who they were called to be.
Since they didn't stop being identified as Israel, the hope was that they would eventually live up to their name.

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Let me be perfectly clear here. "Israel" refers to the *Jewish People,* and not to international Christianity. Their failure does not rob them of the name "Israel." Paul simply called them out for not living up to their name, indicating that they could be cut off from that group of people if they did not follow through and become a Christian nation.
In the Wilderness many Israelites were cut off from the assembly of Israel by death for their unfaithfulness. But they did not stop being called "Israelites."
The Jewish People have indeed failed, as a nation, to become a Christian nation for 2000 years. But they are still being identified as "Israel," ie as the Jewish People who are still called to eventually become a Christian nation. The definition of "Israel" did not change from "the Jewish People" to "the International Church."

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