Colo Millz said:

It's better to be a heretic than a pagan.

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No, not that I can tell. But it would be better to never be born than to be a heretic or a pagan destined for destruction or already condemned.

boughtwithaprice said:

Now you are saying that God is that author of sin. You are way off in your thinking, so much so that you do not even realize it. There is no point to continue in your logic. You are not using godly reasoning, rather vain speculation
Only a demon would say that there is no sin unless there is God

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To the pure all things are pure; you see an adversary, what I see is the purpose God purposed in himself ... as the path he chose ...

Aaron112 said:

Trying in any way to pass off universalism is as much a false gospel as witchcraft is.

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It's better to be a heretic than a pagan.

To all the saints whom God has blessed with sonship, union with Jesus, born again bairds in His care by His Doing,
beware always of the lion prowling about seeking whom he may devour (when God permits and as God Himself warns).....
beware , all you saints (who are saints in this evil world) , of the wolves in sheeps clothing, the false teachers, the false profits and false prophets , and the false teachings, the false gospels, that overwhelm the world and the people thereof.

Who are the saints ? They are by God's determination, and happen to be mingled or surrounded by multitudes who will be resurrected to destruction instead of to eternal life.

Hentenza said:

Jesus tells us who they are and scripture nowhere tells us to be concerned with our status of elect vs. non-elect.

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He gives many warnings ....
and also, the only time He says "be terrified" is concerning : be terrified that anyone of you (who think they are saved) does not make it...

fhansen said:

The same rhetoric is used in church services at times now, the pastor addressing g the congregation. That’s the ideal, the hope for us all that we should be oriented towards, But that doesn’t mean the whole congregation is necessarily heaven-bound or that I can definitively single out any person as such. But even if I could, or even if Paul is speakning generally to whomever the title actually fits, that doesn’t mean that we can apply that rubric to ourselves just because we‘ve decided to. God knows, and wants all to be saved; humans are the wildcard.

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You have zero evidence for your interpretation. Lack of evidence is not going to help your argument. I have scripture that you just trivialized and devalued for whatever motivation you have.

In my years as a Christian going to services and as a deacon for my church I don’t recall ever hearing “hagios” used in this context for other than actual saints. So until you provide evidence my argument still stands.

Hentenza said:

Why would Paul call them saints?

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Why does God point out in the book of Revelation in the letters to the assemblies how many have sinned, erred, either fallen away from the truth or falling or in danger of falling ;
and still shows that some/ not many?/ few/ still hold fast to the truth, to Jesus, and warning them not to give up , not to lose their souls or whatever the way others did ?

Jamdoc said:

Billions of people suffering for ANY slapping on the back and praise...

like I can get and love the idea of salvation for the sake of others, a selfless sacrifice,
what I can't love is doing it for praise.

for many believers what they want is Jesus telling them "well done my good and faithful servant", they want praise.
I don't get that at all.
I desire something more intimate than corporate praise and worship.

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So what is that "intimate something" that you're really looking for? Looks to me that you don't even see your own sin for what it is.

Clare73 said:

I'm talking what you call duplicitous, and God's "duplicitousness" in commanding Pharaoh to obey what God had hardened his heart against so that he could not obey. . .which you call duplicitous.
So according to you, God is duplicitous.

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But as you already know I never said that God was duplicitous with Pharoah. Adam knew God and His will-and the story says nothing about God hardening Adam’s heart. Pharoah didn’t even know God, let alone believe in Him or any hearsay regarding His will. And God knew that-and knew that Pharoah would pursue his own agenda- and even if God gave Pharoah an extra push towards that same agenda everything God does since the Fall is part of His overall plan to save fallen man, to bring man back to Himself and obedience of His will, for our highest good. God’s most basic desire is this, as made known to Adam: that creation obey His will. Only then can peace, harmony, wholeness, happiness, justice, life, etc reign in His universe. And only rational beings with the gift of free will can possibly deny and reject His will. So now, patiently working in and through a fallen creation, God had Moses tell Pharaoh, a fallen being, His will, knowing full-well that he wouldn’t acknowledge it, let alone do it, until finally, after the loss of his own son, Pharaoh finally acquiesced. And even then he did not believe in God. But ultimately God’s will was done anyway: the people were freed. But not so with Adam, as far as we know at this point.

The point is that coming back to God involves struggle and time. And God uses various means to accomplish this, working in and through man. Adam was innocent, free from covetousness, greed, concupiscence while Pharaoh was fallen and therefore full of all of those things. God does not oppose Himself or put obstacles in the way of His own plans. Rather He works with what he has, to ultimately bring a greater good out of the evil that resulted in humankind due to Adam’s original choice.

AV1611VET said:

We can also be instrumental in bringing others here.

Such as this example from a former poster:

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Having looked for posts by them, since they are 'gone', I won't say much other than there is no evidence I could find that they were helped and not harmed by visiting however long.
I've 'met' several who visited and never posted, or posted a little and stayed a day or a week or a month, and they said in private that they saw no benefit and would not stay around because of all the confusion and arguments and misleading information posted without regards to truth at all.

dogs4thewin said:

There is nothing wrong with not using or owning guns, but let me asks you this do you have issues with people using guns to protect you?

In other words, you may not own or use guns, but the reality is that in this fallen world there will also be violence and violence is all some people understand. Knowing this would you be upset if someone used a gun to protect you directly?

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No. I have no problems with responsible gun owners. Period.

o_mlly said:

Thanks for the heads-up. His posts demonstrates a certain kind of pedant;

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You missed it. sfs was calling himself a pedant (albeit humorously). You see, chimps are actually two species, forest chimpanzees and bonobos. He was pointing out that the phylogeny of great apes looks like this:

But is often shown as this:


Notice that humans, chimpanzees and bonobos still are more closely related to each other, than any are related to other apes. A hyper-pedant could also insert H. neanderthalis into the human side of the clade and then the four species would be more closely related to each other than any of them are related to other apes.

Perhaps if sfs would use the "WFTH-I" warning I sometimes use for such things, you'd have noticed that he was gently poking fun at himself.

essentialsaltes said:

Looks like the Storm Division may be in the running.

View attachment 369429

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@Jerry N.

John 6 does not use the word “gift,” but it does say we should believe in Christ and we should eat the Bread of Life.

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Eating presupposes life, and spiritual life at that, so that scripture is speaking of the regenerated, not the spiritual dead. Can you eat bread if you dead ?

essentialsaltes said:

Sane people left Twitter ages ago. Now it's mostly Musk fanboys, white supremacists and foreign influence networks.

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Twitter is certainly more slanted towards the right than it was before, but we're not talking about something like Rumble or Bit Chute here (or, in the opposite direction, Bluesky).

You’re not alone in this, brother. Many of us have wrestled with the same fight, and God hasn’t given up on you. One small thing that’s helped me is using an app that blocks sites and nudges me to pray when temptation hits. It’s not a cure, but it’s been a real support. Praying for your strength and freedom in Christ.

I will be praying specifically for your marriage, for reconciliation with your wife, and for God to bring deep healing to those wounds inside of you. I’ll also pray for strength as you walk through this battle with addiction and depression. God’s grace is bigger than our failures, and His love can restore what feels lost. Stay close to Him, even in the nights when prayer feels impossible.

ozso said:

Okay, okay, it's fake. He's gonna keel over any minute.

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Did I say it's fake?

I just dont buy that its so preposterous that theyd manipulate the message.

o_mlly said:

The ever-evolving hypotheses of the evolution theory beg for a a good dose of Occam's Razor.

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Then go do better! If you really think you have a better way to do biology, then either go do it yourself and show everyone how great it is or at least go to a creationist organization and present your way to them so they can implement it.

eclipsenow said:

Again - America has been a thing since 1776.
Australia since 1901.
How has this not been sorted yet?
Are any Americans on this list able to devote an hour a week to setting up an online campaign to get this thing rolling? To generate a conversation around Constitutional reform?

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Constitutional amendment is an incredibly difficult process (I think it's the hardest constitution to amend in the world? I could be wrong) to the point that people, perhaps not wrongly, generally just have to sigh and shrug at the idea and try to seek results elsewhere. The US constitution being so astoundingly difficult to amend certainly made some sense back in the late 18th century when states had a fear of signing up for the Constitution only for the other states to pass a bunch of amendments stripping away their sovereignty, so a very difficult to amend Constitution was a strong guard against that (it was actually easier to amend the Constitution than the original Articles of Confederation, which required unanimous agreement for any amendments). Nowadays, unfortunately, it means that problems with the Constitution must go unfixed because of the difficulty in fixing them.

That said, strictly speaking, no constitutional reform is needed, at least for the federal House of Representatives. The Constitution says:

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

So things like districting are normally left up to the states, but the federal government can override those and set up its own fairer districts if it wants, or even abolish districts and set up proportional representation (they would probably need to expand the House's size to do this effectively, but the House needs an expansion in size regardless). So the federal government could end gerrymandering for the House of Representatives (it has no power over gerrymandering for state legislature races, though).

Then again, it could also do the opposite and make gerrymandering far worse, and all in one direction rather than a mixture of Democratic-gerrymandered and Republican-gerrymandered states. If one party captures the trifecta of president/house/senate and is daring enough to abolish the filibuster, it seems to me they could absolutely gerrymander every state in their favor to likely give themselves perpetual control of the House of Representatives.

Wow, 32 years... that’s an incredible testimony of God’s faithfulness! Your story is such an encouragement to those of us still learning to lean on Him daily. Thank you for sharing and reminding us that with Christ, true freedom and lasting change are possible. Praying that God continues to strengthen and bless you in your walk.