NewLifeInChristJesus said:

That's a good start. What if we were to add "life" to what we share in common with the Father and the Son?

• For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself (Jn 5:26)
• For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. (Jn 5:21)
• And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 Jn 5:11–12)

Having been joined to the Lord and being one spirit with Him also means we have the same life that Jesus and His Father share. And we have it because the Father gave it to us when He sent Jesus to live in our hearts. And like you said, we received Him by faith...

• Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. (Jn 5:24)

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And those who persevere in remaining in Him to the end, producing good fruit, overcoming sin, doing good, will fully realize that life that begins in nascent form in the here and now. They will have shown themselves to be good soil; they will have shown that the verses you've quoted along with others actually apply to them. Until then it's all just talk.

essentialsaltes said:

Top prosecutor is rejecting Trump pressure to charge New York AG​

A key federal prosecutor in Virginia, where James Comey was indicted, is resisting bringing charges against Letitia James.

Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud, the two sources told MSNBC. Yusi plans to present her conclusion to the president’s new interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, in the coming weeks, they said.

Prosecutors in the Eastern District are now bracing for Yusi to be fired for her own resistance to try a case that many lawyers have said lacks sufficient evidence, according to the two people.

--
Meanwhile, I understand Halligan has had to bring in outside prosecutors for the Comey case, presumably because no one in her office wants to touch it.

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She'll probably have no problem securing work in the private sector.
So there’s that.

essentialsaltes said:

Trilogy Metals shares soar over 200% after U.S. takes stake in minerals explorer​

• Shares of Canadian minerals explorer Trilogy Metals skyrocketed on Tuesday.
• It comes shortly after the Trump administration announced a $35.6 million investment to support mining exploration in Alaska.
• The investment makes the U.S. government a 10% shareholder in the company.

Make Canadian Companies great again!

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There’s plenty of money to throw around now that the USAID boondoggle is over!
Now, only “deals” that make us a buck are allowed.

dms1972 said:

Don't worry about Barth, I think Bunyan, Spurgeon, Pieper are better.

Barth seems to hold to a theological dialectic, which I am moving away from now, having read these others.

I totally agree about not focusing on demons. CS Lewis struck the right note on that when he wrote:

"There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” ​

Depends what one means by "bound" - Satan can be bound in that he, or it cannot ultimately prevent the Gospel being preached, but still there is an overcoming involved as in Revelation 12:11

Revelation 12:11 - The War in Heaven

They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.

biblehub.com

Do those that have overcome mean those saints that have passed into Heaven, or those still on Earth?

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One word you should learn to use, when focusing on the Revelation, is the "prolepsis." Reading Ladd, he drew my attention to it, making me realize that so much of the Revelation can be understood not as a chronologically-sequenced revelation but more of a series of visions showing our ultimate end in the Kingdom of God.

The "prolepsis" is the opposite of a flashback, portraying the future as if it is already happening. This is much of what I believe John was witnessing, not the literal history to come, but actually, symbols representing that future history as if it was happening right in front of him in a series of chronologically-fragmented visions.

Rev 12.
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death."

This portrays the ultimate coming of the Kingdom in the eschaton, bringing salvation to those who had overcome the temptation to lose their faith and give up their fight for righteousness. But then the vision changes scenes back to previous history in which Satan is fighting against this projected future triumph....

12 "Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”

This indicates that Christians who have already died in their faith are rejoicing in their triumph of faith. At the same time Satan is furious at the prospect of Christians achieving a continuing victory in their faith.

Regardless of how you choose to read it, I find the Revelation very flexible with respect to changes in scenes and their respective chronologies. Always the focus is on the inevitability of the triumph of the Lord and His Church. But it constantly draws us back to the present where we still have yet to fight the good fight. Good luck with it!

essentialsaltes said:

Powell Co. KY man arrested after Halloween decorations allegedly depict bodies of local officials​

Stephan Marcum was arrested on Saturday and is charged with intimidating a witness in the legal process and third degree terroristic threatening.

"The one hanging was labeled "district judge." There was a rope around the neck of the body," the citation wrote. "From left to right the four other bodies were labeled "mayor," "SIS," "C.A." and "zoning mgr."

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I might be with Mister Marcum on this one.
Upon further reading: this guy might be a sovereign-citizen. They tend to be outspoken.
But this is still probably protected political-speech.

Desk trauma said:

…and reduce the surplus population.

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The utopia of no “crowded cities”, everybody will be rural! And probably not feral for another generation or two?

Servus said:

It's probably the usual situation of lots of misappropriation. There's probably a Cocker Spaniel collecting SSDI etc.

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Please let us know when that next occurs!
Thanks!

Valletta said:

It's not evidence.

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Oh!? It’s not?

Valletta said:

Do you think every instance of excessive use of force by a law enforcement officer results in a conviction?

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Third base? Abbott & Costello Wow, deflectors on stun!

Valletta said:

As President Carter pointed out, there are weaknesses in the election vote counting system.

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We’ve launched machines out into the icy-depths of space for decades now.
I think that we have had equally talented politicians and other “public servants” that address these “weaknesses” of our “vote counting system”.
Were the people who came before us too stupid to craft effective legislation that would allow us to rest assured that the elections are (mostly) on the up & up?
I do not believe that they were.

Pommer said:

<benderlaff.gif>>

The “evidence“ is congress (House & Senate) “fully cooperated” with investigation and now someone wants to complain about the committee doing the job that it was tasked to do?

That sounds pretty political and therefore probably not criminal.

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The Senators didn't agree with or cooperate with having their phone records spied upon.

Christworshiper said:

Hi,
I've been waiting for a while to get my Bible, Rosaries, etc and myself blessed by my parish priest. He was great, speaking for 20 minutes about my history and his. So, very kind. Bless you Father McCaulay!View attachment 371210

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What saint is on your medal? It’s beautiful!

7thKeeper said:

I know you're trying to imitate Trump, but it's just funny in a non-funny way to try to implicate that neither of those institutions aren't exactly what you asked for. You just don't like the data

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I'm not trying to imitate President Trump. I am asking for reliable non-partisan data instead of merely estimates and predictions.

partinobodycular said:

I ask this because more and more the world seems to be behaving more like a poorly written video game than a naturally evolving physical reality. For instance, Donald Trump seems to be such a stereotypical narcissistic villain that it's hard to believe that he wasn't purposefully created just for this role, and his popularity, in spite of his obvious character flaws seems to defy reason.

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The universe is a strange place, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's all a simulation. But don't overestimate our ability to reason. Consider that the bulk of the population may be made up of gullible buffoons. Evolution only favors the ability to perpetuate the species, it doesn't guarantee that we'll be rational.

How we perceive, store and process information varies from person to person. Given enough people, there will be charismatic leaders who pop up, and some of them will be nutcases. And many will join the herd to follow a charismatic leader no matter how nutty the leader is. Herding is kind of a natural thing for us to do.

A2SG said:

Feature, not a bug.

-- A2SG, aiding and abetting, the new SOP.....

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This is all acceptable…Trump was hired (in part) for his willingness to take on inefficiencies in Government, and created inventive “stress-tests”, either through action (or as in this instant) inaction. Let’s see what happens if we jiggle this handle?

Perhaps this spurs our stellar Congress to take on Federal Election laws reform?
Wouldn’t that be nice, an arm of the government being slightly less inefficient!?

The Liturgist said:

The overturned tables in the temple had nothing to do with the ancient traditions of Judaism but were a transient deviation that was no more reflective upon the actual tradition of Second Temple Judaism as instituted under divine guidance by St. Nehemiah the Prophet and St. Ezra the Priest, than the sale of indulgences reflects upon the actual tradition of the Roman Catholic Church - both were transient and localized anomalies in the worship of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as we now know Him to be. The corruption seen in the Second Temple at that late date does not ameliorate or compromise the earlier holiness evinced with the visitation of Christ our True God to the Temple in the twelfth year of His incarnation, nor years earlier, the presence of the Theotokos in the same temple.

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Traditions aren't static.

Read Micah 6:6-8. The temple system had limitations, because it bound the notion of atonement for sin in a place and a priesthood, and ultimately didn't have much to do with actual virtue.

Vambram said:

Schumer's shutdown holds as Senate Dems block GOP bid to reopen government

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs eight Democrats to end the shutdown, but Senate Minority Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., insists President Trump must approve the deal first.

www.foxnews.com

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Don’t give in, Chuck.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Servus said:

Okay, now I want there to be a weekly Greta Thunberg reality TV show.

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Or you can just watch Shrek and imagine Lord Farquaad as Greta.

partinobodycular said:

Having been an epistemological solipsist for over fifty years I've often wondered about how to tell whether the world around me is physically real or a simulation. The laws of physics seem to support the possibility of a simulation, but can't definitively answer the question, so I've been left to look for another means of determining whether I'm living in a simulation.

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And never will unless there is a paradigm shift in thinking and metaphysics. Which has sort of happened with QM. But not yet fully realised. There are some interesting findings and the research into quantum consciousness is yeilding some promising results.

But the physical sciences that asssume methological naturalism can never theorectically explain reality. It can explain a certain aspect that is the physical parameters we navigate through our physical senses.

But this is not really the case because our senses are filtered through our minds which are influenced by non physical phenomena like conscious experience. Which can only be measured as a direct exeprience of reality.

In other words is (mind). It is the mind that is creating or percieving that there is some solid bits of matter existing outside the mind. But we cannot get outside our minds to know this is the case.

That's why I think experiential phenomena is tru reality. We keep sensing something beyond what the science says and theres nothing science can do. It persists and phenomenal beliefs that persists despite object reality are real.

Its just that we live in a material paradigm that is expressed all around us and its easy to only believe what we see. But if we stop and look we will find we virtually live by our conscious experiences everyday.

partinobodycular said:

To that end I often wondered whether a character in a video game such as 'Grand Theft Auto' would be able to tell, simply by the behavior of the characters around it, that the world in which it was living wasn't 'real'. Would the fact that the characters seemed to act irrationally be a tip off to the possibility that it was living in a simulation? Or would it simply accept the simulation as real no matter how irrationally the characters in it behaved, or what the background story was.

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Actually if the material paradigm is true and consciousness is just a epi-phenomena of the physical brain. Then technically if the entire brain is mapped out and understood then this should create consciousness. The idea that a certain level of complexity will create consciousness.

Ai is now coming up against this problem. Of making Ai in real time and able to make independent and conscious choices. Pumping in all the possibilities that a conscious brain would make.

Not sure if its possible because once again there is this theorectical gap from quantative to the qualitiative aspect of reality that wires, metal, electrical signals don't have and cannot create because they constitutionally are different.

But I think Ai will get awefully close that it mimicks consciousness to the point it can fool humans. In other words not so much to the actual characters in the games. But to the humans watching the characters in the games. And thats all that will be enough to more or less do the same thing. Which is once again fool people with a copy of reality. Just more complex and harder to tell for most.

Its happening now in that the IPhone is more or less an extention of humans now. They can't function without this. I get pictures of that sci fi movie where they put on the VR glasses or have some implant in the eyes and suddenly they are in another world with what looks like real people, buildings, lights, sound and action lol.

partinobodycular said:

I ask this because more and more the world seems to be behaving more like a poorly written video game than a naturally evolving physical reality. For instance, Donald Trump seems to be such a stereotypical narcissistic villain that it's hard to believe that he wasn't purposefully created just for this role, and his popularity, in spite of his obvious character flaws seems to defy reason.

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Or it may be that seeing others as villians in the first place is itself a programmed response lol. That the world is seen like a video game. In some ways a self fullfilling phenomena that mimick art and gaming. We become what we make ourselves. Feed on virtual reality and reality becomes virtual.

partinobodycular said:

So the question is, does reality pass the Turing test? Does it act like a freely evolving natural world, or does it act more like an purposely designed simulation?

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Both. Obviously we see the information aspect, nature reflects math. We need the physical aspect to navigate this physical plane. Thats how Gods creation is expressed that we exist. But there are deeper layers to reality that we all can know. People look for it in many ways and have always done so.

Modern science is itself now looking at other dimensions to explain reality.

Its not a case of whether we are in some sort of simulation, information or MInd reality. Or a fallen state that is yet to be fullfilled. But a case of which one. Or rather which metaphysical reality you believe.

Valletta said:

Sen. Kennedy slams Dems' shutdown demands: 'We'll give $1.5T when donkeys fly' | Fox News Video

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., discusses shutdown negotiations, the sentencing of Kavanaugh's would-be assassin and his new book 'How to Test Negative for Stupid' on 'America's Newsroom.'

www.foxnews.com

It's just not going to happen. As to the sentencing for trying to kill a Supreme Court justice, I do agree. The number one goal in sentencing should be to protect society.

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Oh, lookie, a book-teaser masquerading as “news”, cute.