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Always in His Presence · Oct 24, 2025

Bradskii said:
It's kinda the raison d'etre of the forum. You express an opinion and other people comment on it. So if Trump says he's not going to touch the existing building and then he tears part of it down and you say hey, it's only a wall and someone shows you a picture of what's left of the East wing after it's completely demolished and then you say it's no big deal...then it's worthy of comment.

Except I have never said “it’s no big deal”..

You added that to prove a non existent point.

So we’re done with this once again.

Christsfreeservant · Oct 24, 2025

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NASB1995)

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are not promised that life is going to be easy and that we will not face many trials and tribulations to test our faith. In fact, we are taught the opposite of that. We are taught that being followers of Christ will mean a life of suffering and pain and rejection and persecution. And the closer our walk of faith in the Lord Jesus, the greater our suffering may become, because the more Satan will oppose us and be after us to try to destroy us and our faith and our testimonies for Christ and for his gospel.

And this doesn’t mean that we will always be suffering, or that we will always be in pain, and that there is no joy in being Christ’s followers. There is! We rejoice in the grace of our Lord in delivering us out of our bondage to sin, and in him forgiving us our sins, and in him giving us new lives in Christ Jesus to be lived for his glory, in his power and wisdom. We rejoice in our daily fellowship with our Lord where we listen to him speak truth to our hearts, and where we experience the joy of serving him with our lives, too.

We rejoice, too, when we see other people turn their hearts to the Lord Jesus in submission to him and in surrender to his will in obedience to his commands in holy living, by faith in Jesus Christ and in what he did for us in putting our sins to death with him on that cross so that we can now die to sin and live for God and for his righteousness, in his power. And we rejoice in the fellowship among those who are of genuine faith in the Lord who are serving him with their lives in encouraging one another in Christ’s church.

There is much to give praise and thanks for to our God for all he has done for us, and for all he has provided for us, and for all that he has done through us for his glory and for the salvation of human souls. There is a peace that is beyond understanding that we can have, as his followers, no matter how bad things get, and no matter how much we may have to suffer. And we can be at peace in knowing that God is fully sovereign over our lives and everything that comes into our lives, so we can be at peace in suffering.

And knowing that God is in control gives us the assurance and the confidence to not lose heart in times of difficulty and pain and suffering. For we can be hurting on the outside (or inside our bodies), yet our inner person can be being renewed day by day. What we are going through physically does not have to destroy us within, if we have the right biblical perspective of suffering. And that is that suffering is for our good, to humble us, to draw us closer to God, and to conform us to the likeness of character of Jesus.

So, in all that we are going through in this life on this earth, although we must certainly deal with the things we are going through in this life, we are to have an eternal perspective. We should see God’s hand in all that we go through in this life, that he is still in command, and that he has a plan and a purpose for our suffering, to grow us to maturity in Christ, to make us more compassionate towards others who are suffering, and to get us ready for his return. And we need to keep eternity’s values in view in all that we suffer.

[Matthew 5:10-12; Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 10:16-39; Matthew 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 21:12-17; John 15:18-21; John 17:14; Romans 5:3-5; Philippians 3:7-11; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:12-17; 2 Timothy 3:12; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5; James 1:2-4; 2 Corinthians 1:3-11; Hebrews 12:3-12; 1 John 3:13; Revelation 6:9-11; Revelation 7:9-17; Revelation 11:1-3; Revelation 12:17; Revelation 13:1-18; Revelation 14:1-13]

With Eternity’s Values in View

Alfred B. Smith 1916-2001

With eternity’s values in view, Lord,
With eternity’s values in view,
May I do each day’s work for Jesus
With eternity’s values in view.

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Do Not Lose Heart
An Original Work / October 24, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Bradskii · Oct 24, 2025

Landon Caeli said:
It's not being permanently knocked down.

What a perfectly odd thing to say.

If you demolish something then it's...umm...not there anymore. It's gone. The East Wing has been permanently removed from the grounds and will no longer exist. Permanently.

Amo2 · Oct 24, 2025

Job 33:6 said:
So what is your counter?

Here is what I said:
And this is simply misinformation. For example, the first article states:

“Dinosaurs are supposed to have evolved into birds. But Confuciusornis was a true beaked bird that pre-dates the ‘feathered’ dinosaurs that it allegedly came from. It also has been found in the stomach of a dinosaur.”

But in fact, Confuciusornis dates to roughly 125–120 million years ago, while feathered dinosaurs date back earlier, such as Sinosauropteryx from about 130–125 million years ago, Caudipteryx from 125–124 million years ago, and Anchiornis from about 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic.

Is your counter to simply say, the earth is 6,000 years old, therefore all conventional science is wrong?

It's not actually true that confuciosornis predated feathered dinosaurs. Not by any measure known to any field or science. I'm pointing this out as misinformation and you're suggesting that it's not, on what grounds?

Well yes, if the earth is thousands of years old and not hundreds of millions or billions of years old, then the theory of evolution which depends upon deep time scenarios is wrong. I do not believe evolutionists deep time scenarios at all. Apart from this though, it is still a problem for the theory of evolution when bird fossils are found with or before dinosaurs. As the processes of evolution are supposed to occur over deep time intervals.

Perhaps you have abandoned this idea for far more rapid evolution scenarios, than evolutionists once allowed for. Nevertheless -

Chinese scientists discover oldest bird fossils, rewrite history of avian evolution - Global Times

www.globaltimes.cn

Quoted article below from link above. Emphasis is mine.

Chinese scientists discover oldest bird fossils, rewrite history of avian evolution

Chinese scientists have discovered one of the world's oldest bird fossils of Baminornis zhenghensis in East China's Fujian Province, which is also the only confirmed Jurassic avian to date, and found that the body structure of modern birds had already emerged in the Late Jurassic, approximately 150 million years ago, according to a research report published on Thursday.

The research was jointly conducted by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and Fujian Institute of Geological Survey, with their findings published in the academic journal Nature on Thursday.

The study pushes back the appearance of an important avian feature, represented by the pygostyle, by nearly 20 million years.

The fossil, discovered in November 2023, was identified as a bird after one year of restoration and analyses by the research team. Although incomplete, the fossil retains key features, including separate scapulae and coracoids, and most notably, a fully fused pygostyle, a key structural feature in modern birds, according to the China Central Television (CCTV)..............................

The oldest bird currently widely recognized is Archaeopteryx, discovered in Germany and dating back to the Jurassic period, approximately 150 million years ago. However, recent studies have challenged its classification, suggesting it may be more closely related to deinonychosaurian dinosaurs than to the birds, as reported by CCTV.

The discovery of the Baminornis zhenghensis reveals for the first time that the body structure of modern birds appeared in the Jurassic, pushing the origin of birds back to around 172 to 164 million years ago. It is currently the most definitive and only known Jurassic bird, reshaping people's understanding of avian evolution.

Global Times

Bradskii · Oct 24, 2025

ThatRobGuy said:
No, I didn't miss the point...

I'm afraid that you did. You've now swivelled from someone supporting a loss by the opposition to avoiding the point completely by saying hey, teams only support their wins in their home towns.

Bradskii · Oct 24, 2025

Always in His Presence said:
You worry way, way too much about what I think or feel on every matter.

It's kinda the raison d'etre of the forum. You express an opinion and other people comment on it. So if Trump says he's not going to touch the existing building and then he tears part of it down and you say hey, it's only a wall and someone shows you a picture of what's left of the East wing after it's completely demolished and then you say it's no big deal...then it's worthy of comment.

Chesterton · Oct 24, 2025

dump truck

Chesterton · Oct 24, 2025

Useless things are not useful.

DragonFox91 · Oct 24, 2025

.Mikha'el. said:
I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think most people already know what Christians believe, and they make a conscious choice not to buy in on their own. If they're not ready to listen or accept the message, I wouldn't try to force it on them.

That's a really big reason it makes it hard. It's like most people probably already know it.

bbbbbbb · Oct 24, 2025

Useful is better than useless.

Hazelelponi · Oct 24, 2025

ThatRobGuy said:
That was an interesting watch, thanks for sharing, I haven't heard of that guy before.

I think he touched on an interesting aspect (and it's one I've thought of before).

He touched on the aspect of apologies, and commented on "the willingness of the people making hay about a situation to accept the apologies"

He's right about that...I've noticed that -- especially in the realm of comedy/entertainment, the people who give graveling apologies end up worse off than the people who simply make no apologies for what they've said in the past and go on about their business.

Often times the demands for an apology are just a way for the "hay-makers" to get their own position publicly validated in front of an audience to bolster their premise, just for them to keep on hating the person anyway.

For example, if Joe Rogan came out on his podcast tomorrow and said "I apologize, but I realize I was wrong, the covid vaccines are awesome, and I shouldn't have promoted all of those other alternative things, that was my bad", the "haters" would still hate him, and they'd be using his statement as a means to bolster their own arguments to use against him...there's literally no upside in apologizing if the people demanding it had zero intention of forgiving you either way.

Even though it's a comedy show (surprisingly I was able to find a clip from IASIP that doesn't contain any naughty language), they hit the nail on the head for why you don't try to apologize or contextually justify yourself to the angry mob, it's just throwing chum in the water for the sharks that wanted eat you regardless

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That's Pastor Doug Wilson, he's a reasonably popular reformed pastor. I enjoy his blog from time to time when the topic grabs my attention. He always gets me thinking.

I agree about apologies, many are just ridiculous with it. Thanks for sharing that clip - it was good.

bbbbbbb · Oct 24, 2025

hand truck

Jipsah · Oct 24, 2025

Hentenza said:
Sinning against an eternal God requires an eternal punishment whether the serpent or a human sinner.

Citation, please? I 'spect you're quoting your doctrine again

Hentenza said:
Scriptures are specific that the punishment is eternal

A death sentence. The wages of sin is not eternal life in torment, it's death, and the punished will be dead forever. YOur belief that no one ever really dies is simply baseless.

Hentenza said:
so the new body at the resurrection of the damn are able to handle the spiritual and physical eternal punishment.

Made up from whole cloth.

Jipsah · Oct 24, 2025

Hentenza said:
I guess I’ll need to sent you a new pair of glasses.

Oh, I reckon the ones I have will work fine to read this: "Apollymi (απωλλυμιalpha pi omega lambda lambda upsilon mu iota) is a Greek word meaning "to destroy utterly," "to kill," or "to perish". It can refer to the permanent destruction of an inanimate object or the violent death of a living being.

So it looks like you disagree with both whoever provided this translation of the word, and with the various Greek scholars who did the translations for the various English versions of the Bible. I reckon you need to square those folks away, <ROFL>

Hentenza said:
Did you not see the variation of translations for the word apollymi or did you just decided to ignore it?

I decided to ignore it. The opinions as to the "correct translation" of the word offered by people whose knowledge of the Greek language comes from having eaten at a gyros restaurant once, and who have an ax to grind that would make them opt to choose a less appropriate "translation" if they thought it would their hand-wrought doctrinal position, renders that opinion, shall we say, dubious. Short form - I reckon your knowledge of Greek is roughly equal to your knowledge of quantum computing, and of roughly equal value. <Laugh>

SavedByGrace3 · Oct 24, 2025

Aaron112 said:
fwiw, it is not difficult, probably, to find the online resources/ exposes/ references and information that
billions, many billions, are received by false christs, false churches, the world church (thousand times as much),
and corporations , regular profits, illicit profits, and corporate welfare....
Many many times more money etc, than is needed to feed everyone in the country for years.

I agree that feeding the poor deserves attention. And you can never go wrong feeding children and those incapable.
The only issue I can think of is that humans will be humans. I fear that these programs will create a permanent underclass of the needy. As I said, it is only human nature to depend on "entitlements." Today, generations of families have existed on government benefits. I checked, and as of 2025, 72 million Americans are receiving one sort of government assistance or another. That is about 1 in 5. They receive just enough benefits to exist in poverty for decades. One might say we are enabling this behavior. Bigger minds than mine are dealing with this issue. We also contribute to private charities to provide for the needs here and abroad. I suspect this will be an ongoing battle for years to come....

DragonFox91 · Oct 24, 2025

I agree. I agree especially you're not really being a witness 'spreading God's love.' I see that a lot, but the pagans believe that too. A Christian is called to spread God's love AND the truth

But is it possible a lot of us just don't really have the evangelism gift to the extent of others? Sadly, one thing I noticed even in 'evangelical churches', most of the actual body isn't very evangelical. I wish I was more an evangelist.

SavedByGrace3 · Oct 24, 2025

bèlla said:
...This is an unfortunate reminder about the necessity of preparedness but the window has passed. That’s not to say you can’t add extra items every month. But the season for doing so is behind us and it’s more difficult now than before.

~bella

I tend to agree with you. Prepping is much harder now with higher prices. In 2012, we could buy 50 pounds of rice for 17 bucks. Today, it is almost double that. After 13 years of adding bulk and freeze dried items, I feel that we can stop now. However, we still collect canned goods and need to develop a water catchment/storage system. In some ways, this has become a hobby. We have enjoyed finding good deals, learning to dehydrate, freeze-dry, and prepare items for long-term storage. We have been fortunate enough to have started early and never really spent a lot at one time. Just a few bucks a week following the sales. Our largest expense was the freeze dryer, which was about 2500 bucks. It has already paid for itself. We bought items when super sales occurred and freeze-dried the goods. Some are now closing in at 14 years old. I am now in the process of taking some of the old vacuum-packed rice and beans, cooking them, and then freeze-drying them. Like I said, it is kind of a hobby now. :oldthumbsup:

d taylor · Oct 24, 2025

-

Well this person is not a christian philosopher, but there is no one who expounds/teaches the Bible better than Zane Hodges.

Chesterton · Oct 24, 2025

live goldfish

Chesterton · Oct 24, 2025

ThatRobGuy said:
He's right about that...I've noticed that -- especially in the realm of comedy/entertainment, the people who give graveling apologies end up worse off than the people who simply make no apologies for what they've said in the past and go on about their business.

Often times the demands for an apology are just a way for the "hay-makers" to get their own position publicly validated in front of an audience to bolster their premise, just for them to keep on hating the person anyway.

Yep, I've said this for years - Never apologize to the Left. Apologizing to them is like baring your neck to a wolf. It'll only be used against you. They don't understand the concept of forgiveness, until they desire it for themselves.

DragonFox91 · Oct 24, 2025

I could give you a long list of research & arguments that helped me. Those research & arguments are very good & very right, but I didn't start there in the beginning. I started w/ the Bible & reading it for myself. You need to read the Bible for yourself. Have you read it for yourself? What did you think?

camille70 · Oct 24, 2025

At Bay Area protest, a second pastor is shot by federal agents with a pepper round

OAKLAND, Calif. (RNS) — For the second time in six weeks, a pastor was struck in the head with a pepper round fired by a US immigration agent as faith leaders protested the arrival of more than 100 US Customs and Border Patrol agents.

religionnews.com

MSN

Video:

https://x.com/Kaos_Vs_Control/status/1981821670206660907

DragonFox91 · Oct 24, 2025

I've never encountered anyone who's tought that outside the Internet. I think most people who pay attention to this stuff recognize that different translations have their strengths & weaknesses, & I think that is right. I do think the KJV is a very good translation, tho.

If anything, what I see is the push to more & more 'liberal' translations

Freth · Oct 24, 2025

Welcome to the forums!

eclipsenow · Oct 24, 2025

Tuur said:
Now let's see it all work when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Intermittency is DECADES OLD news - and usually says more about the person raising it than being a valid concern with renewables. The engineers KNOW how to solve this through 3 rules - Overbuild Capacity, Overbuild across a wide area, and PHES storage.

OVERBUILD CAPACITY
This RADICALLY reduces storage on the grid by Overbuilding the amount of wind and solar in the first place. Don’t think of 100% supply - think 200%. They’re now cheap enough to do this. This is old news. Scientific American covered it way back in 2015 - 10 years ago. They showed that the “law of large numbers” means 15 GW of Texas wind - equivalent to 15 nuclear power plants - would only require 18 MW of storage! Renewable Energy Intermittency Explained: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities
Models for Australia's horribly rainy La Nina year of 2022 show that a 170% capacity would RADICALLY reduce storage. A near 100 per cent renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage
Basically, if you are not getting MOST of your electricity LIVE from renewables - you have not built enough.

OVERBUILD ACROSS A WIDE AREA
Professor Andrew Blakers won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering. (Like a Nobel Prize for engineers.) He says that if each Australian state tried to do their own renewable grids it would increase the storage required by 5 TIMES! We need a national continent-wide super-grid. This is when the 'law of large numbers' kicks in. (See Scientific American article above.) Decades of weather data shows we can easily sail through the worst weather 1/5th the storage of each state going alone.

PHES STORAGE
We would only require 2 hours of batteries and 2 days worth of pumped hydro storage for each city - and if Sydney is having a bad week - Brisbane or Adelaide or even Perth can sell their hydro storage to us that week.
The Blakers world satellite map of ecologically safe OFF-river pumped hydro sites is 100 TIMES the more than we need. Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Atlases

THE COST OF ALL THIS?
Way back in 2017 his team calculated that an all renewable grid would be cheaper than today’s coal - and that’s not even factoring the staggering HEALTH costs of coal - just the electricity cost. If it was cheaper in 2017 wind and solar prices - imagine today?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217309568
Fortunately, solar is doubling globally every 3 years. By 2030 it will produce more power than ALL other sources combined - including wind (and wind is doubling every 4.5 years!)

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