boughtwithaprice said:

Christ died for the whole world. There is no double predestination. This thread makes two errors. One that there is no free-will, and two that God created hell to torture people
Both are false.

I think we all know John 3:16, but do we consider John 3:17-20?

17 For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him 18 He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. 20 For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved.


God is not going to torture anyone. Jesus died for all men. Entrance into God’s kingdom requires humility. When we believe, by the grace of God we humble ourselves and see all others as better than ourselves
Jesus says, if anyone come after him, let him deny his very self, and up his cross, and follow in His footsteps.
Pride will keep souls out of heaven. It was found in Satan, and there was no longer any space found for him in heaven. Those that retain pride reject God.
It is not possible to have those that retain pride and reject God find space in heaven. They would not be happy as they world reject service and demand honor. There would be nothing for them to do and no where for them to go.

God’s mercy is infinite, but is only available for those that accept His grace. Anytime during our life, if we humble ourselves and repent, God forgives and shows mercy. If souls reject Him, He has no choice but to put them in outer darkness where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. It is not the finite act of sin that earns us eternal hell, rather the rejection of the eternal God that warrants eternal separation.

Jesus was in agony, sweated great drops of blood, and asked the Father to take the cup from Him, not because he was afraid of crucifixion. He was in agony not because He was dying for His friends but He also had to bear the sins of those that ultimately reject Him. Is not unrequited love the most painful ?

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What is the justification God provides himself to measure the end result of his actions …

RocksInMyHead said:

I can think of one style of speed loader that would make this claim plausible, and even then, only under ideal conditions with some things pre-staged. The only person who could go from an empty mag in a gun and a box of ammo in their pocket to a fully loaded mag ready to fire in under 3 seconds is The Flash.

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lol talking about changing mags not filling the mag.

Hentenza said:

Btw- I can reload an empty magazine in my handgun in less than 3 seconds so if I am a shooter the smaller magazine is not going to hinder me much.

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I can think of one style of speed loader that would make this claim plausible, and even then, only under ideal conditions with some things pre-staged. The only person who could go from an empty mag in a gun and a box of ammo in their pocket to a fully loaded mag ready to fire in under 3 seconds is The Flash.

essentialsaltes said:

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell talks about the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs on consumer prices and inflation. Powell says inflation has been above their target level for more than four years and remains a "prominent concern for households and businesses." He speaks at the Fed's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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Hmmm.... more than four years - Trump has been in office seven months - - hmmm....

Before Trump - before tariffs - inflation has been ABOVE their target level. Yet this is Trump's and tariffs fault?

Go figure.

jacks said:

Whatever you and your wife are comfortable with, is what you should do. Doesn't really matter what others think.

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you are correct. but, the question is about the extent of foreplay. how many women like what?

caffeinated.hermit said:

I've actually heard something very similar to Word of Faith preaching at very, very conservative Holiness churches. "If you have faith, and you say it, the Lord is faithful to His promises and to His Word, hallelujah..." This is especially true of physical health, but not really wealth. This kind of makes me wonder if the predecessor to this theology is somewhere in old-school Methodism.

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I can't speak to any personal experience of the Holiness Churches; but the Holiness Movement did emerge from out of a primarily Wesleyan theological foundation. The language here which is reminiscent of "name it and claim it" makes me wonder if this is less about the Holiness Tradition itself, and perhaps some WoF influence entering in. Though Google searching just now also introduced me to the Keswick Movement.

I wonder if there might not be some overlapping or two-way influencing.

But that is interesting nonetheless.

Belief that God performs miracles, including healing, is certainly not a strange concept to the majority of churches regardless of tradition. Historic Churches, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Paleo-Protestant have always recognized that miraculous works of God can happen; though the sort of anticipatory idea that I should expect miraculous healing is a modern phenomenon. From the historical perspective, the cessationist/continuationist debates which are common in many modern Protestant circles are, in a way, foreign. As if one looks at Catholic and Orthodox history, there's never been any doubt that God can (and sometimes does) operate in profoundly special ways in the world; the same is also true in the Lutheran tradition--though the Lutheran tradition emphasizes the central importance of Scripture in ruling our spiritual life against personal experience and therefore rejects "Enthusiasm"--this is not a rejection of the miraculous, but rather a confession that the miraculous, if it is real and not counterfeit, affirms the word in everything. There is nothing in Lutheranism that says God can't or doesn't cure cancer--but our life in Christ, and the Spirit's power in our lives, is always directing us to Jesus, not to "signs and wonders". Indeed, we would even argue that the miraculous is mundane when it comes to the Means of Grace: For an unbeliever to believe is nothing less than a supernatural work--a miracle--of God. That we receive, indeed and truly, the very and true flesh and blood of our Lord is absolutely a miracle. Man cannot give bread and it be God's flesh, but God meets us right down here in ordinary bread and wine, and gives nothing less than His own body and blood; the body and blood which was nailed and was shed on Mt. Calvary; the very body which He has, reigning in glory at the right hand of the Father.

Which is to say: belief that God works the miraculous has never been limited to fringe movements in Christianity. It has always been normative; but it is always within the context of confessed historic norms. Real miracles confirm the faith once and for all delivered; and do not lead us away from it.

-CryptoLutheran

Btw, how does "cashless bail" contributed to crime?

wing2000 said:

And if Powell doesn't reduce the interest rate at all *or* as much as Trump would like, will you support his firing? (for sake of argument, let's pretend the POTUS has the power to do so).

Yes or No?

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I'd have to have a whole lot more information before making an informed decision. I don't blindly follow for or against. For that reason, I could not possibly answer yes or no.

FAITH-IN-HIM said:

You should correct your misleading post; Powell never said what you posted.

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It is a quotation from the linked article - feel free to contact the author.

Sorry you didn't like the authors opinion.

Postvieww said:

The “lasting change” here in context was referring to crime. Would you like to compare liberal run cities crime stats to conservative run cities?

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I would if I thought you would present a fair comparison using objective data with documented policies.

ThatRobGuy said:

It's also quite possible that it's mere "prove a point/make a statement" retaliation for the Karmelo Anthony fundraiser.

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What you say about Anthony is correct, but there's a second motive people were expressing, and that is that it's an attack on cancel culture. People were basically saying "if you're going to try to ruin some private citizen's life because you don't agree with something they said or did, it could have the opposite effect - we'll make them rich".

2PhiloVoid said:

What is this sudden onslaught of Catholic righteous indignation and posturing??? You weren't doing this a while back. No, you seemed to be more ecumenically inclined. Was all of that just a put on? A facade?

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Sadly, I have seen several posts from Catholics which start off, "tell me what you think ...." and a short time later become, "well you're wrong; only the Catholic church is correct."

I have noticed this with a few others topics as well.
It feels like they don't really want to know what we think, only to say that we're wrong/don't have the truth.

ThatRobGuy said:

There are measures that could be taken that would potentially prevent some of the two highlighted categories ...however, I have doubts that people would have the patience to let them actually simmer long enough to let the effects come to fruition before trying to immediately throw additional restriction measures at the problem.

People need to make sure they have their heads wrapped around the reality that the proliferation is already extremely high, and that any measures imposed will be on a "moving forward basis", and likely won't significantly move the needle immediately. (it could be 30 years before any noticeable shift in the stats)

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ThatRobGuy said:

As where, I feel like modern activists and advocates seem to have a diminishing patience level for "how soon until things are the way I want them to be?" It took 100 years for the gun affinity/culture to develop to where it's at today, that's not going to be un-done in a decade.

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I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don't think it would take as long to see positive results. I went to the Everytown Research site and found the article below. Based on past performance and future projections, noticeable reductions in gun deaths would start to be noticed within a few years if tighter gun control was initiated at the federal level and matched the gun laws found in states that currently have the strictest gun policies in the country.

New Data, Same Conclusion: Smart Gun Laws Save Lives

Today, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund released its 2024 state Gun Law Rankings, which once again show a clear correlation between states with strong gun laws and lower rates of gun violence. Here are three key takeaways:

Our eight “National Leaders” [California, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland] have a rate of gun violence nearly three times lower than the 14 “National Failures.” [Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Dakota, Georgia, Montana, Idaho, Mississippi, and Arkansas]

If every state had the same gun death rate as our National Leaders, we could have saved more than 137,000 lives over the past decade. That’s more people than can fit in the largest football stadium in America.

Looking ahead, if every state in the country had the gun violence rates of our National Leaders, we could save 298,000 lives in the next decade—three giant football stadiums of lives saved.

While the National Leaders weren’t immune to national gun violence trends, the data shows that states that thoughtfully strengthened their laws over the years consistently saw lower death rates, with a 36 percent reduction in gun deaths since 1990.



In 1990, the gun death rate among children and teenagers was nearly the same in both states with strong and weak laws. In the following years, that trajectory took a sharp turn, and the states that implemented the strongest gun laws reduced the rate of gun deaths among children and teenagers by 58 percent. But, following a broad national decline, states with the weakest laws have gone in a different direction, experiencing an 18 percent increase. As a result, children and teenagers are half as likely to die by guns in the states with the strongest laws compared to the states with the weakest ones.

DaisyDay said:

Rude, much? The AI sums it up succinctly. Not everyone knows who/what Peter Navarro is, but for those of us who do:

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Green Bay Sweep convicted felon Navarro. That sums up this thread in itself.

wing2000 said:

...and here I thought strong families were the solution to "lasting change." It's far more covenient to blame liberals eh?

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The “lasting change” here in context was referring to crime. Would you like to compare liberal run cities crime stats to conservative run cities?

Oompa Loompa said:

Regardless, other posters on this forum have verified my statement about the US having better freedoms of speech than the UK is correct.

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I don't believe anyone has argued against that. Well, "better" is a subjective term, so some people might argue that the level of free speech allowed in the US is not necessarily a good thing, but it's inarguable that the US has more freedom of speech than the UK

Oompa Loompa said:

This whole back and forth about bacon was only to prove my point, which has been proven true.

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I think you may have lost track of your own arguments lol. The bacon sidequest started with your claim in the second post of the thread about "Christian persecution" in the US, which then turned into a rant about how Muslims are so sensitive and intolerant that people can get arrested for liking bacon (follow the chain of references back from this post):

Oompa Loompa said:

Well, apparently liking bacon is now a hate crime in the UK. So I will leave that there to show how sensitive and intolerant Muslims are.

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fhansen said:

And I answered it. It's all of Scripture that must be looked at, to shed full light on the whole.

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You still need to address the individual verse also because I’ve seen way to many people that dont let scripture interpret scripture because if their own color lenses, their particularly those that use extra biblical sources or consider other sources authoritative.

fhansen said:

The real point for the purpose of this thread is in whether or not we can know with 100% perfect certainty that we, individually, will end up being that good soil. Now, if we're producing good fruit, and increasingly so generally speaking, perhaps best understood as the fruit born of the love poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5), then we have good evidence and can have a strong level of confidence that we're one of His. Anything else is just talk- possibly self-deception

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Those with saving faith are assured because they do works naturally and follow Jesus. The problem comes when others attempt to judge their faith or anyone’s faith for that matter. I know my heart and I know that God knows my heart. We are,though, imperfect by nature but have the God given capacity to work alongside God for our sanctification.

Valletta said:

"Research from the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that each illegal immigrant generates an average lifetime net fiscal cost of $68,000, calculated as the difference between public services received and taxes paid. Multiply that by 1.6 million, and the long-term cost of supporting these migrants would be roughly $109 billion.
Put simply, spending $1,000 per person upfront is a tiny fraction—about 1.5%—of what it might cost to support them over a lifetime." SEE VIDEO

Fact Check Team: Millions of migrants voluntarily leave US

President Donald Trump has been in office for just over seven months, and according to the Department of Homeland Security, 1.6 million illegal immigrants.

komonews.com

This is a great start.

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I stopped right here: "Research from the Center for Immigration Studies"

I mean just a remedial reading of the OP's blurb leads one to ask. Ok, what about the effect on the American economy in generated revenue if those workers, and the multiplier effect those workers have an whole lot of industries in America?

Undocumented immigrants will boost economy, lower deficit, CBO says ​

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