Studyman said:

What a good point. But according to God's Own Definition of His "New Covenant", where is a change in the 10 Commandments mentioned, suggested or even implied? There is no mention at all, concerning the abolition, change or removal of God's Definition of Holy, Righteous, Clean and Good at all. In this world's religious system there is, but in the Law and Prophets, specifically the promise of a New covenant, the only "change" mentioned is "the manner in which God's Laws are administered to His People", and "the manner in which forgiveness for transgression of God's Law is provided for". Both of these things were exclusive duties of the Old Priesthood "after the order of Aaron", which from the beginning was only to be in place until the Prophesied Priest, "After the Order of Melchizedek" should come.

We have been taught since our youth, not by the Bible, but by this world's religions "who come in Christ's Name", that God Promised to end of God's definition of Holy, Just and Good that Jesus said to Live by. I think this doctrine is "Leaven" and has influenced you and I to believe things that are not true about God's Salvation.

No different than the "leaven" promoted by the mainstream religions of Christ's Time, that it was against God's Sabbath Commandment to take a walk in fellowship with Him on the Sabbath Days, and pick a blackberry to munch on along the way.

And I understand your believe that the promised New Covenant didn't start until Pentecost. I was taught the same thing. But Jesus, before HE was murdered, forgave sins. And not once did HE follow sacrificial "works of the Law" required under the Old Priesthood, at least according to my understanding of what is written. I could be wrong about that, so please do your own study of the Scriptures discerning this belief.

And I can't get my head around the implication of God's New Covenant not starting until after HE ascended, because HE was the High Priest of the Apostles in my view. So while I believe the New covenant still has parts that are even today, yet to be fulfilled, it seems that it started the day Jesus was anointed High Priest of God by a True Levite Priest, "John the Baptist", "for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness".

Give this some thought, and let me know what you think, even in PM if you want.




But if a man who professed to know God, stole from people, and another man who professed to know God didn't steal, is there a problem?

I would say it would be a problem if a man didn't judge one Law of God above another. But if we have judged that One Law of God is more Holy, more righteous, more worthy of our honor and respect than His Other Laws, then it might not be a problem.

Isn't that the reason God rejected the Priests in the first place?

Mal. 2: 7 For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

8 But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.

9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but "have been partial in the law."

So if a girl chooses to stay a virgin her whole life, in service to God, but judged some of His Commandments as unworthy of her honor and respect, would that be a problem?

I love your perspective and questions Jerry. These are good, but perhaps sometimes uncomfortable discussions to have among men "Seeking the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness".



But is Paul talking about God's Law here? "One person is loyal to his wife, while another person cheats with many different women". Would Paul not rebuke this person and tell them as he has others, "he who committed adultery, commit adultery no more".

What difference does it make what day one man esteems, or another man esteems. In the Holy Scriptures, God Esteemed one day a week above the other 6, and sanctified it and gave it to men. Then will a man who "Yield himself" to God, and submits to God's Righteousness, not be fully convinced in his mind concerning God's creation of the day and the week?

I think Him was pointed in the right direction when he said these men, "weak in faith" are dealing with opinions they have adopted "Wherein in time past they walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience". And God will reveal to them what is important, as Paul also teaches.

Phil. 3: 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God (The Perfection that was) in Christ Jesus. 15 Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. (Let each man be convinced in his own mind)



Yes, this is why Paul Labored.

2 Cor. 5: 9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.

10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.

Great topic, great points and ones I have pondered myself for years. I appreciate that I can share what my studies have found.

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rjs330 said:

Your the one who asked why I should care because it doesnt affect me.

If your husband was to beat you that wouldnt affect me either. But I would care anyway.

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rjs330 said:

Just like I care that millions of people have been killed by those drug dealers even though it doeant affect me personally.

Now do you get it? Its patently a faulty argument to say, "why do you care if people are hurt or killed, it doesn't affect you."

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rjs330 said:

No it doesn’t. You are to forgive someone who sins against YOU. It has nothing to do with government paying for helping drug addicts who won't stay clean.

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rjs330 said:

Good

Me too.
I see, its always an all or nothing thing with you?

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rjs330 said:

There can be no compromise on governement interventions? This is why we cant really find agreement. Either government pays all the time everytime for everything always or nothing.

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rjs330 said:

Im.sorry, but with that kind of attitude and thinking we can never find common ground.

Im done with you on this subject.

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rjs330 said:

Ive addressed this numerous times now. Yes it is. They build into their drugs lethal doses. They do it becauae it produces a greater high and it actually makes their drugs more desirable.

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Apple Sky said:

And here's me thinking that the sock fairy stole them.

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Stopped_lurking said:

Never have I meet anyone that feels/thinks that rape is a good thing.

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o_mlly said:

Now, you may continue to waffle on the morality of rape or you can continue to deflect. Let's have your "context" in which you would recommend that one rape another as a good idea.

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Bradskii said:

So you've asked for an example when the act [rape] would be considered good. And I've given you one. If the woman was perhaps in the throws of divorce and found out that her husband had had sex with her while sleeping then she might well report him and he might well be convicted. But if she's in a loving relationship and finds she's pregnant, then she may well be ecstatically happy.

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Jerry N. said:

I agree, but many brothers and sisters use those verses to say they don't need to keep the Sabbath, but they don't follow verses 10 through 12. I have only met a few, but they are very defensive about it.

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Jerry N. said:

Something doesn’t make sense here. Some of the people posting are saying that the New Covenant doesn’t include keeping the Sabbath, and some are saying that Jesus and the apostles broke the Sabbath by picking and eating grain as they walked through a field or healing on the Sabbath. However, the New Covenant didn’t start until the crucifixion or Pentecost. So the apostles and Jesus were under the Old Covenant. So one has to decide if they sinned or that they did what is acceptable during the Sabbath.

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Jerry N. said:

The other thing I don’t understand is why someone would stand against somebody that does more than they think the Bible requires. If a Catholic girl decides to be a virgin all of her life and stay in silence in a cloister, which is more than the Bible requires, I don’t think many people would see it as wrong. So if you don’t keep the Sabbath and somebody else does, what is the problem?

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Jerry N. said:

Romans 14:5, “5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.”

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Jerry N. said:

Romans 14:10-12 “10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister[a]? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’” 12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.”

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Tuur said:

Socks are just paired items that aren't secured together, making it easier to loose one.

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NxNW said:

If you have a cat, that may be the reason.

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Bob8102 said:

Because I vacillate between thinking I am a Christian and thinking I am not a Christian, I sometimes post in “Struggles by Non-Christians” and sometimes post elsewhere, such as under “New Christians.”

One verse that at least used to screen out non-true believers is John 6:53, where Jesus says “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” John 6:66 (wow!) says “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.” I once heard a Christian speaker say that, here, Jesus “put the pedal to the metal” and left superficial believers in the dust. Modern day understanding realizes that Jesus was talking about the Lord’s Supper and so the statement is not as challenging to us as it was to them.

But there are one or more verses that are just as challenging today as ever. A key one is Galations 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Certainly, at least at first glance, this verse screens me out of the kingdom of heaven. I do not want to be crucified; I want to still live and not have someone else take my place. This concept goes against my self-preservation instinct and my self-identity. Therefore, I am left in the dust.

There are other verses that relate, like Jesus’ statements that one must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him. As I contemplate converting to Christ, I see that Jesus did not explicitly issue this same challenge to all people that He talked to. And the concept is not explicitly mentioned when the New Testament talks about some people’s conversions. For instance, Jesus said to the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is that says to you, ‘give Me a drink’, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” More than once, including yesterday at church, I have explicitly asked Jesus for living water. And in other places, the NT simply says things like a person or group of people “believed.” For instance, in Acts, after Paul had preached to people in a particular city, it says, “as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” Thinking of this verse, I have on one or more occasions asked the Lord that I be one of the people “appointed to eternal life.”

So, I am thinking that, possibly, one can have a real conversion while concentrating on such a not-as-challenging verse.

Also, because I have both wavering faith and OCD, I tend to be in the “perfect storm” of doubt. As to my wavering faith, I tend to try to sincerely turn to Christ at moments, saying “Take me!”, but then the next moment I figure my attention to and my faith in Him wavers away. Just today, I have begun wondering if such a wavering-faith conversion can be a real conversion, brief as it is. Because Jesus saves in a moment and He does not waver. But I realize that such a conversion might be a superficial conversion.

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HIM said:

Romans 14 is about opinions outside of what the Bible says. How do we know? Because it says so in verse 1 and verse 2's example about only believing one can eat vegetables. That is not a mandate from God in Scripture. Besides that, if Paul was speaking of the Sabbath then he would have mentioned it considering that it is held at such high regard.

Rom 14:1 Now receive the one who is weak in the faith, and do not have disputes over differing opinions.
Rom 14:2 One person believes in eating everything, but the weak person eats only vegetables.

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BNR32FAN said:

That final outcome of God choosing certain vessels for glory and certain vessels for destruction comes AFTER Him having patience on them which is why the elect are chosen according to His foreknowledge. And here’s the real difference between our two opposing positions, in my position the vessels of wrath are capable of repentance making them responsible for their disobedience. In your version they are incapable of repentance because God has not enabled them to obey which makes God responsible for their disobedience since He is the One who has created them in this fallen state unable to comply with His commandments. The scriptures make it clear that God does not want them to be disobedient since He grieved in His heart that man was so wicked and marvels at their disobedience. It simply isn’t logical that God would grieve and marvel over man’s disobedience if it was something He actually wants them to do. It’s just simple common sense.

The house of Israel is God’s elect? The house of Israel is composed of both believers and unbelievers. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were Jews, they were even Levite priests who were condemned by God in Numbers 16:32. Then you have all of the Jews that witnessed God’s miracles in Egypt who weren’t allowed to enter into the promised land because of their unbelief. Saul is another example, then you have several thousands of Jews who worshipped Idols for centuries, the Pharisees, Judas Iscariot and countless others. To say that the house of Israel is only composed of the elect is a demonstration of complete ignorance of the entire Bible. If all of these people I just mentioned were “God’s elect” then why were they condemned?

Your problem is you don’t include all of the information given in scripture and you have to twist the passages to say the exact opposite of what is actually written. In Romans 9:22 why is God being patient with the vessels of destruction? Can you answer that? I can.

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I'll have to come back ASAP to pick your response apart thoroughly. It's midnight here and I'm vexed out, so I'm not going to attempt to demolish your tower right now. But don't think that I'm backing out, I'll come back with the big guns

Tuur said:

Which should be simple enough (though tedious) to confirm. How tightly the box is packed should be a factor: tightly packed box = less movement of paper clips. Anecdotally, the longer paper clips stay in the container on my desk, the greater the likelihood that when I remove one it will be linked to another. Note that the longer they are on my desk, the number of paper clips in the container drops until I refill it. I'm currently at the point where, when I remove a paper clip, it's more likely to be linked with another than I am to remove a single one.

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Yes — a box of paper clips is an analogy or macroscopic example of statistical mechanics, but not a true thermodynamic system. Let me explain carefully.

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1. Why it’s an analogy​

Statistical mechanics was originally developed for microscopic particles (atoms, molecules) to explain thermodynamic behavior. The key ideas are:

• Microstates: all the possible configurations of the system.
• Macrostates: coarse-grained properties like temperature, pressure, or total number of links in the paper-clip example.
• Entropy: measures the number of microstates corresponding to a macrostate.

In the paper-clip box:

• Each linking configuration (which clips are linked/unlinked, in which arrangement) is a microstate.
• A macrostate could be “2 links formed” or “all free.”
• Entropy can be defined as (S = k \ln \Omega), counting the number of accessible microstates.

This mirrors the logic of statistical mechanics, but the “particles” are macroscopic paper clips, not atoms.

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2. Why it is not real thermodynamics​

To apply genuine thermodynamics/statistical mechanics:

• You usually need a huge number of particles (~10²³).
• Particles move due to thermal motion, not external shaking.
• Concepts like temperature, heat, and energy spectra are meaningful at the molecular scale.

In a paper-clip box:

• There are only dozens or hundreds of clips.
• Motion comes from shaking, not thermal agitation.
• “Entropy” is really configurational combinatorics, not true molecular entropy.

So it’s a macroscopic analogy — it demonstrates the statistical principles (microstates, macrostates, entropy, equilibrium) in a visible, intuitive way.

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3. Why it’s useful​

• Helps visualize entropy changes: free clips → high entropy, linked chains → lower entropy.
• Shows how equilibrium corresponds to the most probable macrostate.
• Illustrates energy input and dissipation (shaking → linking → friction/heat) as in statistical systems.

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✅ Summary:

• The box of paper clips is not a real thermodynamic system, because the clips are macroscopic and the “temperature” is metaphorical.
• It is an analogy or example of statistical mechanics, illustrating the concepts of microstates, macrostates, entropy, and equilibrium in a tangible way.

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If you want, I can make a diagram showing paper-clip microstates and corresponding entropy, which makes this analogy extremely clear.

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Dikaioumenoi said:

We need to be precise about what kind of believing you mean. Superficial assent is not saving faith. Luke 8:13 describes hearers who "received the word with joy" but "have no firm root." That's the language of a "belief" that is superficial and non-saving. That's precisely why Jesus gives the parable; He's distinguishing outward professions from inward, abiding faith.

We also need to be precise about what you mean by "ability." There are two kinds. Everyone has the natural, cognitive ability to assent to a proposition (e.g., "that might be true"), and some can even be emotionally moved to confess belief for a time. That is not the same as the spiritual ability to embrace Christ as Lord and live on that basis. Asserting that natural man has that ability is a contradiction of John 6:44; 1 Cor. 2:14; Rom. 8:7-8.

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Sportsballfan said:

Democrats want to give them healthcare. This is a fact.

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Sportsballfan said:

Furthermore, this post didn’t address the gender mutilation surgeries.

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FreeinChrist said:

Some forget that God allowed bad rulers to lead as a way of punishing a nation. Jeroboam and Manasseh of Judah were bad kings.
Just because a man is the leader does not mean God approves of them.

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FreeinChrist said:

A deeper look at the passage demands that we pump the brake some, starting with the key word in the text, established – “the authorities… have been established by God”. The word sounds like a pretty energetic verb, invoking a sense of strong intent and purpose; people tend to establish things that they feel strongly about – like Foundations, Institutions and Monuments.But that isn’t quite the case here, because the word used here for established isn’t an active verb at all! Instead, it’s a passive participle (“tetagmenai”) being used here. And while the word is derived from a verb (“tasso”) that means “to arrange, or set things in order”, the way that it is used here is altered because of the grammar. Instead of asserting that God is ordaining his personal choices for leadership in every election, Romans 13:1 is suggesting that leaders are in their position because God simply allows them to be there. It’s not so much that God is demonstrating HIS preference when a leader ascends to power; sometimes it’s more about God allowing that which is in place to remain, by divine forbearance.This makes sense when you consider God’s painful lament given through the Prophet Hosea…“They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval.” (Hosea 8:4)This passage shows that that some leaders somehow get elected/appointed without God’s approval. But the fact is that God is sovereign; therefore, any leader in any position can only be there with God’s approval! In short, ALL leaders are established because God allows them to be – regardless as to whether they reflect God’s ideal preference.

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FreeinChrist said:

Trump is not representative of a godly leader in any way. He will say the right words then act differently. His many instances of fraud (Trump U, Trump Foundation, lies on tax forms, etc) do not reflect a godly man. The adultery in his life do not reflect God. The sexual assaut in his life do not reflect God. The tremendous amount of lying does not reflect God.

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FreeinChrist said:

God allowed Trump to the presidency, but Trump will bring the country down. Thousands are losing jobs, including manufacturing ones. Housing is in a recession per Bessent. Tariffs have just groups such as farmers. Trump's recent agreement with China for soy farmers is less than what soy farmers would have gotten had not Trump started the tariffs in the first place. For many reasons, public opinion of Trump is the worst of any president 1st or 2nd term.

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BNR32FAN said:

What works did Jacob Arminius claim that man is saved by?

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