prodromos said:

What you think you see is actually an optical illusion. Our brains make assumptions based on how things are relative to others and are very easily tricked.
For example, in the picture below, both the center circles are identical in size, but our brains are tricked into thinking the one surrounded by small circles is bigger than the one surrounded by large circles.
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The same thing happens when the sun or moon get close to the horizon. When they are up high, our brains have no other reference so tend to make them appear smaller, but close to the horizon when trees and buildings can be seen tricks our brains into thinking it is larger. The fact is they remain exactly the same size all the way across the sky as has been shown when people take multiple exposure photographs which we have posted before in these threads.
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Thank you for explaining this, but can you tell me, when did God create the earth to rotate ? Or was it already rotating in order to receive night & day ? And why do the scriptures say that the earth is unmovable ?

"Unmovable" means incapable of being moved or not able to be changed or influenced. It describes something that is fixed, stationary, or steadfast.

Christsfreeservant said:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” (John 10:1-5 NASB1995)​

Who are these thieves and robbers and strangers Jesus spoke of here? Some of them are pastors of “churches,” and teachers of the Scriptures, and “Christian” book authors, and evangelists, and many who profess faith in Jesus Christ with their lips but whose hearts are far from God and who are teaching a false gospel of human flesh and not of God. They are within the gatherings of the church, the body of Christ, but they did not enter by way of the cross of Christ, by death to sin, and by walks of obedience to God.

For they are teaching a very diluted and altered gospel message intended to tickle itching ears and to not offend sinful flesh. They are teaching that all we have to do is to “pray a prayer to receive Christ” or to acknowledge that Jesus Christ was our sin offering for us on that cross, and that he rose from the dead, and now we are saved for eternity and heaven is our eternal destiny. And not only do they not mention the necessity of death to sin and obedience to God, but they say that no works are required of us by God.

But that is a lie of Satan who wants all people believing the lie so that they will join him in hell on the false promise of eternity in heaven with Christ/God. Generation upon generation, the people of this world have been fed this “cheap grace” gospel of human flesh, promising so many people that heaven is their eternal destiny based on a profession of faith in Jesus Christ or a mere acknowledgement of what they have been told he did for us on that cross, but with no repentance and obedience required.

So, if we are Jesus’ true sheep (his true followers), we will not listen to these voices which are saying that all we have to do is to pray a prayer to receive Christ and now we are good to go to heaven, no works required by God. But we will listen to the true Shepherd of the Sheep, Jesus Christ, who is also the door into a genuine faith relationship with him and to salvation from sin and to eternal life with God. And we will listen to the teachings of the New Testament apostles who taught the gospel of Christ in truth.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

By God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

And we learn in 1 John 1-3 that if we claim that we have fellowship with God, but yet we walk in the darkness (sin), we are liars. And if we claim that we know God, but we do not obey his commandments, in practice, we are liars. For it is not the one who claims he is “in Christ” who is “in Christ,” but it is the one who has denied self, died with Christ to sin, and who is now walking in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, and no longer in sin, who has the hope and the promise of eternal life with God in heaven.

So, don’t believe the lies. All of us are going to have to stand before God one day and he is going to judge us, not by what we profess with our lips, but by our deeds, by what we do. All those who have given lip service to God only, but who continued in deliberate and habitual sin, and not in walks of obedience to God, they will not inherit eternal life with God. All those who, by faith in Christ, died to sin, and are walking in obedience to the Lord, in practice, will have salvation from sin and eternal life with God.

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You got it.
I hope you are living THE life.

ViaCrucis said:

I agree. But even the most literal word-for-word translation still has this issue. The translator still needs to choose what they believe is the most appropriate word in the target language for a word in the source language.

I'll admit that sometimes this is not going to be a problem at all, the Latin word cattus means "cat". But things get more complicated when we have a word like כַּפֹּ֫רֶת (kapporet) which going back to Luther has been called "mercy seat" (Luther used the word gnadenstuhl or "grace-seat"); the word kapporet comes from the root kaphar meaning "to cover", so would it be more accurate to translate it as "the covering"? This was the place where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled, between the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, when the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, "Day of Covering"?) . But because the act of sprinkling and covering this kapporet wrought forgiveness of sins to the nations, a reconciling of the people to God, we use words like atonement (a Tyndale coinage literally at-one-ment, to bring together as one, the state of being at one, united, reconciled, etc). And that concept then gets applied to the Greek word hilasterion, the same word which the Septuagint uses to translate kapporet, and which often is translated as expiation or propitiation (though, again, Tyndale coined atonement to translate this word).

There are layers of nuance, complexity, and historical factors all that need to be balanced, and no shortage of debates to be had. So even in a word-for-word, literal translation we still have to answer the difficult and not altogether precise question of "what is the literal translation?" Is there a literal translation of kapporet that satisfies the meaning and intent behind the original Hebrew word? If so, what is it? And to what degree are we importing our own philosophical, cultural, and theological biases to the text?

-CryptoLutheran

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Actually, it's explainable in terms of the evolution of consciousness in western European thought. Transferring the meaning of a concrete thing into a symbol then an abstract idea is how language has evolved in western culture. Owen Barfield (the first and last Inkling), influenced by German Idealism, wrote a great deal about that process as the evolution of the structure of western consciousness towards increasing abstraction. The Hebraic imagination (as in many ancient cultures), on the other hand, communicated through concrete symbols, appealing to immediate embodied experience.

eclipsenow said:

A poster on the wall does not great writing make

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Not saying it was great writing.

Teresa enjoyed roasted apples

APER

Nithavela said:

Bring back trial by combat and make it the sole method of adjudicating guilt or innocence.

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Only if they use that Star Trek fight scene music. That would be epic!

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-- A2SG, Gerald Fried doesn't get nearly enough credit.....

RileyG said:

May he rest in peace and rise to glory!

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Amen!

Clare73 said:

The events occurred outside the boundaries of U.S. jurisdiction.

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That doesn't matter. From here: Can the US Prosecute Crimes Committed Abroad?

'While U.S. law is presumed to apply only domestically, Congress has enacted specific statutes that extend their reach. This authority is based on several established principles of international law that create a connection between the U.S. and a crime committed abroad.

• The “nationality principle,” which allows the U.S. to prosecute its own nationals for crimes committed anywhere in the world.
• The “passive personality principle,” which grants jurisdiction when the victim of a crime is a U.S. national, regardless of the offender’s nationality.

The U.S. also prosecutes its citizens for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors in foreign countries.'

Notwithstanding that Epstein's island in in the United States Virgin Islands. It's a US territory.

ozso said:

It's too bad that the Biden administration made such a huge mess of border control, that things like this are happening during the repair process.

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Ooh that’s a good excuse to keep in one’s front pocket. “The last administration made us do this.”

SMOKING: You seem to have missed the point on the smoking analogy. The very same 'doctors' that tried to argue smoking was good for us sowed FUD about the science against smoking. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Some of the very same people (see wiki) employed their skills against climate science, establishing the pattern of denial. You appear to have been taken in by the very same people you just referenced! Irony, much?

SUDDEN BANNING: That's ridiculous - please show where I suggested such a thing? I am with you in that suddenly BANNING fossil fuels would be horrendous! But this is where you have demonstrated how little you know about energy - and are just recycling other people's talking points. It would not kill 20 times as many people as the pollution (say 8 million) which would be 160 million people a year. No no no!

A sudden ban on fossil fuels would cause the collapse of industrial civilisation - and agriculture - and the death of about 6 to 7 billion people! It's the stuff of my nightmares - the stuff of Mad Max.

We "Eat fossil fuels" in that it takes 10 calories of oil to grow 1 calorie of food. We use the Haber-Bosch process to make nitrogen fertilisers and run harvesters and farm equivalent and all kinds of transport to create what James Howard Kunstler calls "The 3000 mile Caesar Salad".

Instead - I propose a ban on all NEW fossil fuel exploration and exploitation, and the removal of TRILLIONS in various kinds of subsidies to Big Oil from governments across the globe. I also propose we gradually increase a carbon tax to help us Refuel our civilisation on Renewables, Rezone our Cities around the best Ecocity Practices, Replenish the soil through various kinds of Regenerative Agriculture, and so much more.
The energy cost in fossil fuels to build the first generation of clean energy has been costed - it's about 6 months of carbon at today's rates. That's JUST the energy to build the world's first generation of an "All Electric" civilisation. It's not the fossil fuels to keep running things AS we deploy the clean tech - but as you can see - the energy cost to build renewables is not that much.

Just like any product release curve - the old will scale down as the new scales up. Faster than most think!

EV's: The ranges are already FANTASTIC for 95% of city driving. Highway driving should not be a problem AS the EV charging spots improve. Time them around a toilet break and drink, and you're done.

JANUS AUSTRALIA have EV trucks for Australian conditions - we have some of the biggest trucks in the world! Tesla's Semi requires a MEGACHARGER which can put stress on the local grid. Janus instead charge their batteries slowly - and then when the truck pulls in - a guy on a forklift swaps the truck battery over! Yep, battery swap. It can be done in 2 minutes.

INTERMITTENCY: You're thinking too locally. Intermittency is solved by OVERBULDING across the continent. This is affordable because wind and solar are now 1/4 cost of nukes per gigawatt. The savings can be put into the super-grid and batteries and OFF-river pumped hydro. As we "electrify everything" - energy becomes fungible. Big iron smelters in the Outback sunshine might have charged up their Rondo Heat Blocks - and have abundant extra energy to pump into the grid when Queensland is in cyclone weather under clouds. Other states can let their hydro dams go and get income from that stored energy when Sydney's in cloud. Or we'll just use Snowy 2.0 for the first 4 days at least. You'll see. It's not a problem. It's been calculated - and it's CHEAPER than coal!

CLIMATE FANATICS:? Please retract that. There's climate science and policy - then there are some extremists within the movement. I would disagree with them, like some of the Extinction Rebellion assaults against public art, etc. I mean - how to tarnish the climate movement!? I disagree that they represent climate science and policy just as I disagree with the proposition that Westborough Baptists represent all Christianity when they do their obnoxious stunts. They do not! Not the bible I read - and not the churches I know! So please try to avoid inflammatory and derisive terms about a subject you seem to know little about.

The reality is the moment the world moves to renewables we are freed from depending on a finite and depleting resource - and can use abundant, recyclable materials to get our energy from!

OZONE layer DOES expand and contract naturally - it's the RANGE of expansion you don't understand. It is ALSO harmed by our chemicals. These 2 facts live comfortably alongside each other. It's the same with climate. Over hundreds of thousands of years things like the Milankovitch Cycles cause natural climate variation. Also - about 600 million years ago the world nearly froze. (Google "Snowball Earth".) Fortunately that was back when there were so many very active volcanoes poking through the ice that they FLOODED the atmosphere with CO2! Excessive CRAZY climate change resulted - with acid rain storms a millennia long - so acidic they melted rock - but all of this SAVED life on earth! My point? In that climate story, CO2 was the 'good guy' in the story of the development of life on earth.

Everything is about context and understanding the bigger picture. I suggest you start watching some real climate science channels that unpack it for lay people like myself. I'm no scientist - but I love the executive summaries - the stories from climate science and all these different fields. I suggest you develop some curiosity and learn more about the subject you are tarnishing without understanding.

Try this as a brief - Undeceptions by Dr John Dickson. He interviews one of the world's most famous evangelical climate scientists.
This is one of my favourite apologetics podcasts and one of my favourite episodes on my favourite podcast.
Cheers! Have a great weekend - and listen to this podcast regularly - it's quite encouraging.
After that - Just Have a Think YouTube is great - and you might like Katharine Hayhoe's channel that sometimes caters to specifically Christian questions about climate change. (She is the climate lady interviewed by John Dickson above.)

Answer to Alaska oil Quiz: ​

I found figures ranging around 3.1 to 3.4 billion barrels left in Alaska.​

Let's make it 4 billion barrels = 4000 million barrels / 100 million barrels day = ooops!​

Only 40 days global consumption of oil.​

We're saved! ​

​

Wow - that's going to require 2 posts to reply to.

"It’s always the everyday person that is milked and who has to foot the bill."

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Except the bill with fossil fuels is MUCH higher because:-
1. Climate change is real - you have not responded to the raw physics which Fourier figured out 200 years ago, and Foote clarified in 1856.

You say "Our veiw points will probably never agree." I'm not discussing viewpoints. I'm discussing facts and evidence - as a Christian I thought you would value basing your opinion on verifiable truth claims.

2. Globally fossil fuel pollution kills more people than live in the entire state of NSW each year, and costs the world $5 TRILLION in EXTRA health care costs. The World Bank estimates the Energy Transition will cost only $4 Trillion. The sooner we do this the sooner it pays for itself.

3. Peak oil IS a thing. It IS finite. "Some say fossil fuel is just a term used to make oil seem limited and precious." Give me a break. Who is "some"? How much is in Alaska? Try doing some actual research before you post! Global conventional oil has already peaked. Only unconventional oil like tar-sands flooded the market and reversed America's oil decline - and turned America into one of the world's largest oil exporters! But at a horrendous environmental and financial cost. It is only affordable at a new average higher global price.

Historical oil discovered in green - oil mined in rusty red.​

Look at this graph closely. See how discoveries last century are now dropping off? The consumption / production graph line can only follow discoveries. See how 1985 was the LAST time we discovered more oil in a year than we burned?

We are now burning oil our grandparents discovered!

So when you get back to us about Alaska's oil reserves - remember to divide by 100 million barrels. Because we burn that every day! Alaska / 100 million barrels = days of oil Alaska has. Got it? Please go do some googling.​

(I'll put my answer at the bottom of the next post).​

Remember - peak oil is not about oil running out, but slowly running down. It's about the easy, cheap stuff being largely used up. The "low-hanging fruit" is gone - and it's going to cost more and more to get the other stuff. But don't worry - EV sales are on track to radically reduce oil use across the next 10 to 15 years. We'll leave oil way before it leaves us.

4. Oil DOES fund petro-tyrants - most of Russia's income is from natural gas and oil. It's literally funding the war in Ukraine.

Why do you want to defend a corrupt regime like them, like the Middle Eastern regimes that are as oppressive as some Medieval Kings - why? Just turning around and ASSERTING there are 'climate tyrants' is not convincing. Governments have a duty of care to their populations to deal with the problems above. What is your solution to pollution killing over 8 million a year, costing $5 TRILLION a year in extra health fees, destabilising the climate according to demonstrable physics, and the other challenges above? You don't have one.

I do. It's happening before our eyes. Not perfectly - nothing is - but it's a start.

Always in His Presence said:

From Grok

President Donald Trump was asked on July 25, 2025, if he would pardon or grant clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell. His response was that he had not considered it but noted he was “allowed to do it.” Specifically, he said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about. I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”

He had not even considered it.

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Still taking him at his word?

wing2000 said:

One thing is clear - Tulsi is back in the club:

“She’s, like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now.”

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That was Elon 6 weeks ago.

iluvatar5150 said:

Always failing to comprehend the text that's right in front of you.



If it is cancelled, it'll be for whatever reasons influenced the executives. One potential reason posited by the OP was the "liability" it posed given the administration's call for it to be cancelled. That is censorship.

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The influence was ratings. They were losing money.

Beth77 said:

Yes, entirely ignore the scriptures above about God getting what he wants and cherry pick the scriptures that prove that Jesus fails and ends up torturing them forever.

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It appears you are the one doing the ignoring to make scripture match your assumptions/presuppositions.

Clare73 said:

Keeping in mind that we are by nature objects of wrath (Eph 2:3),
born with the guilt of the imputed sin of Adam (Ro 5:17, 12-14),
which is removed only by faith in and trust on the person and atoning work of Jesus Christ for the remission of our sin (Ro 3:25).

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And I have not posted anything to the contrary.

caffeinated.hermit said:

If it does provoke a reaction, ignore it. Especially if you have little to nothing to do with this woman in real life and don't really think of her as a friend. Prayer always works.

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You're right--I don't have anything to do with this woman. If she gets an attitude, I'll have to accept that that's her choice. I'll continue to pray for my niece (and my other niece who's into Satanism). Maybe prayer is all I can do.

Beth77 said:

...could a loving parent justify killing their infant child in order to ensure that their child spends forever in Heaven?

Conversely, is it reckless and unloving for a parent to allow their offspring to reach the age of accountability and risk that they will spend forever being tortured by Jesus in Hell?

These ridiculous questions demonstrate the illogical doctrine of forever punishment. Right?

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Incorrect this demonstrates how scriptural doctrines can be twisted and distorted to fit a false teaching. Nothing posted above is scriptural.

Dan Perez said:

And you have said the BAPTISM is part of that witness ?

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No, I did not say that.
You did.

Dan Perez said:

Do you have a verse , please !

dan p

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