Oh my: Swedenborgism, AKA Church of the New Jerusalem. That's something I haven't heard of in a long time The Handbook of Denominations in the United States skims over it. The Kingdom of the Cults briefly (by the book's standards), discusses it. Emmanuel Swedenborg, mystic who claimed to speak with the dead and to have argued with the spirits of Paul and Martin Luther. Swedenborg, who denied books of the bible that disagreed with him. Swedenborg, who denied not only the Trinity, but that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was substitutionary and also rejected a physical resurrection of both Christ and of those who believe on Him. Swedenborg seems to have been considered a medium by some, though skimming over the article in The Kingdom of the Cults this morning can't determine if he was considered such by contemporaries. Considering he had "revelations" of events purportedly given to him by spirits of the dead, that his contemporaries thought he was a medium is highly likely.

An Amnesty International report published on Thursday concluded that the Iranian regime’s deliberate use of cluster bomb warheads against Israel last month violated humanitarian law.

“Cluster munitions are inherently indiscriminate weapons that must never be used,” stated Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns. “Iranian forces’ deliberate use of such inherently indiscriminate weapons is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law,” she emphasized. Some 100 countries worldwide have already banned the use of cluster bombs due to the danger they pose to the civilian population.

The Amnesty International report criticizing Iran is noteworthy because the human rights organization has a history of hostility towards the Jewish state.

Continued below.

A recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) report highlighted critical national security failures in its Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program that allowed approximately 800 known or suspected gang members to enter the United States.

The report, titled “Criminality, Gangs, and Program Integrity Issues in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions,” examined more than 300,000 SIJ petitions submitted from fiscal year 2013 through February 2025, according to a USCIS press release on Thursday.

The report found that 198,414 SIJ petitions were approved between fiscal year 2020 and 2024, and that half of SIJ petitioners in 2024 were over the age of 18 when they entered the U.S. without inspection.

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WASHINGTON — Barr Franc Utoo, a native of Nigeria's Benue state and a graduate student at the University of Central Oklahoma, awoke to several missed calls one morning last month.

Fulani terrorists murdered 34 members of his immediate family during the June 13-14 Yelewata Massacre, including his pregnant aunt, by slicing open her belly and removing her twin unborn children.

The extremists attacked the Christian community of Yelewata in the Guma Local Government Area of Benue, slaughtering more than 200 believers in what has been described as one of the deadliest assaults in the region's ongoing violence that has claimed the lives of countless Christians.

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Pentacostalism, The power of faith:
Global Christianity for the 3rd millennium
- Samuel James
---
Kindle ebook
- 99¢

The Liturgist said:

That said, you can get even the best of these systems to provide inaccurate information if you cause the system to believe that’s what you want.

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I could convince chatGPT to believe every character in the Bible is a villain by flooding it with "what-if" scenarios that explore the potentially negative consequences of their teachings and actions as recorded in the Bible.

All but one. I can't convince AI to portray Jesus as the villain despite the many logical scenarios telling that Jesus is serving a conspiracy. Cannot find any logical grounds to support it.

AI also won't deny Christ's existence. His wisdom opposed the thinking of that time it could no have been made up even as a fiction. And it's not just mere or random contradiction of cultural beliefs and ideas because the wisdom of Jesus rang true even in our times. With solid grounding in logic not even the wisest philosophers of the period could have made up.

There are exceptions and limits unless the AI deduces that you're just "chilling" not engaged in a serious discussion and just want AI to be your "beer buddy".

I suppose everything is possible. If you can't convince AI in deep and serious arguments, try shallow and insensitive discussions.

Heavenly Father, everyday your grace is new, thank you for it and thank you for Jesus Christ you gave for us!
Please bless everbody who prayed for in Jesus name Amen. Thank you!

If you use Google search, Amazon.com and many other places we go to via internet, you're using Ai. It can process something on the order of 28,000 times faster than the human brain at this point. However, I entered a question about an additive for paint, got instant reply. Reworded it asking the same question and got the opposite answer !

A guy named Billy Krohn ( spelling) has stated, the guy who spear headed the start of Ai has regretted ever starting it. It's now scaring scientist, as it learns to self develop. It's leaning it's way around safe guards. It's playing a large part ( from a Christian perspective) in setting up the beast system. Think about it.

FAITH-IN-HIM said:

All that means is that while 26% female students in collage are getting sexually assaulted, todays republican party worry more about 10 biological male winning swimming competition. Wrong priority !

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Interesting that the Democrat Party hasnt solved the problem already since they are so worried about it?

We CAN stop men competing against women today. Right now, with a stroke of a pen. Now if we could only do the same with sex assault.

Since we cant stop sex assault with a stroke of a pen, we shouldn't do anything that we can stop?

When you figure out an easy way to stop sex assault by a stroke of the president's pen I et us know and I bet we can get it signed.

Stephen3141 said:

Spell checkers, or word suggesters, are not really AI.

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On this we agree, and this is yet another area where the new LLM systems like Grok and even Google’s DeepMind system really demonstrate their worth.

Microsoft’s CoPilot promises to do away with useless spell checkers by hooking a competent AI application directly into Office 365, which will be a huge leap forward, enough to justify the annual subsciption fees, since you can no longer simply license Office (which I find terribly annoying, however, in a few years time, consumer hardware will be fast enough to run an equally competent open source AI as part of LibreOffice or OpenOffice or other open source office suites, and the problem will solve itself; Apple will probably help as they presently lack a viable LLM-type AI system, and could really use one to enhance the user experience for Pages, KeyNote, Numbers, etc, which are a major selling point of the Mac vs. PC systems (and which for a lot of use cases are nicer and more pleasant than Office)

eclipsenow said:

A poster on the wall does not great writing make

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Not saying it was great writing.

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.

essentialsaltes said:

Now for Q2​

Tesla stock dips as second-quarter earnings reduce investor confidence​

Tesla shares tumbled Thursday after its latest earning results knocked the wind out of investors’ confidence in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker.

The company has been facing intense competition, cooling consumer interest and a reduction of the government incentives that made buying EVs more affordable.

Tesla announced Wednesday that its automotive sales totaled $16.6 billion in the second quarter, a 16% drop from last year. Total revenues declined 12% from last year to $22.5 billion.

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Any Tesla owners who want to ditch their otherwise working car, I can do that for a dollar. You pay me or I pay you, I don’t care. I am not offering to pick up your monthly payments though.

If you have Tesla stock, same offer, a dollar a share, you pay me or I pay you. But I have a limit of a few hundred shares so act fast.

I look at unrestricted immigration the same way I look at shipwreck survivors. You have a 15-man life raft, with provisions for 15 persons for 60 days, if allotted correctly. So your ship sinks, and you end up with 15 people in the life raft. So far, so good. But! There are 40 more people in the water, swimming around the life raft. What do you do?

If you try to put 40 extra people in a life raft meant for 15, it will sink, and then you'll *ALL* be in the water, and you will all die. If you try to parcel out food for 15 people to 40 people, everybody will get a mouthful a day, and eventually, you will all starve. There are sharks in the water. If you leave 40 people in the drink, they will die. Is it inhumane to refuse them space on the life raft? But if you take them aboard, the raft goes down, and you will all die. So what do you do?

We have a lot of room in the United States. We could probably find space for possibly millions of aliens here, in places that nobody else is occupying. However, like it or not, most of those places are empty for a reason: there's nothing there to support large numbers of people. You can't set up a town of 150,000 immigrants in the center of Nevada and say, "There you: be well, and prosper." There's no water, no food, and no way to produce any. It would have to be supplied for them from other places inside the country, and again, like it or not, we only have so much surplus that we can dole out before it just isn't there any more. If you go so far as to empty the stores and warehouses and water aquifers in the country supplying millions of freeloaders, eventually the system collapses. Then what have you got?

What you have is a situation where *EVERYBODY* goes down the tubes: aliens, citizens, legals and illegals alike. You cannot sustain 55 people on supplies in a life raft meant for 15. The infrastructure gets overwhelmed, and the country collapses. It ceases to exist. That's what happened when uncounted thousands of Germanic barbarians poured into the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Rome, which had stood for 500 years, ceased to exist. In its place, you had approximately 1,000 years of chaos, anarchy, famine, bloodshed, incessant war, and economic and social stagnation.

I'm not heartless. I know these people are suffering bad times in their own countries. I know the bishops want to follow the injunctions of be good to your neighbor. I know the United States is a rich country with a lot of surplus goods and services and money. I know all this. But the simple fact is, the well, even for a country as rich as the United States, is not bottomless. There is absolutely no possible way we can continue to take in unlimited immigrants month after month, year after year. We don't have supplies for them all. And, just like Rome, we have our own problems: our infrastructure is shaky. Our political system is a corrupt mess. Our economy is exquisitely fragile. If we drive those systems to the point of collapse, they will go down in flames, and then nobody has anything: the aliens will be living in circumstances just like the extreme poverty and hardship that they fled their own countries to avoid, and so will our own citizens. How many is too many? When is it time to say enough? Do the bishops and the leftists want to collapse America until it evaporates and ceases to exist, to be replaced with God knows what, perhaps for millennia? Because that's what's going to happen if we don't send these people back where they came from to solve their own problems in their own countries.

RDKirk said:

Like one does not lead to the other.

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Right. But asking people to take a huge financial hit for society, is not a very effective way of getting them to change behavior. Fix the problem, and the problem is gone. Bottom line? If corner offices grab too much of the income for themselves, the people actually producing that wealth are going to tighten belts. That means fewer or no kids to keep the system going.

Just economic reality.

Evangelization doesn’t always mean avoiding the noise. Sometimes it means listening for what’s beneath it.

Ozzy Osbourne has died. The voice of Black Sabbath — a band that leaned into scary-movie aesthetics by naming itself after a 1963 Boris Karloff film — has gone silent at 76, just weeks after the band’s final show. While most headlines focus on the mayhem, debauchery and decades of chaos, I find myself thinking back to something quieter … relatively speaking.

The Opening Riff​

I was a teenager when I first heard Sabbath’s thunder. I played bass in a garage band in high school — exactly as glorious and awkward as it sounds. We’d cover their songs (usually not very well), but there was something in those riffs that felt bigger than the music. I couldn’t have named it at the time, but I know now what it was: longing.

They didn’t just sound heavy; they sounded like they were searching for something. That became especially clear the first time I went to Ozzfest in Camden, New Jersey, in 2000 — with my dad. He was far from being a “metalhead,” but he was a good sport and came with me. That day was a lot to take in. The volume, the imagery, the intensity. I didn’t quite know what to make of it all — but it stayed with me.

Continued below.

essentialsaltes said:

Our long national nightmare is over!​

AOC's on the hook for $2,983.28 after the House Ethics panel closed its probe into her Met Gala appearance​

In a 31-page report, the panel said that Ocasio-Cortez had "impermissibly accepted gifts" and said that in order for the matter to be closed, she would need to pay nearly $3,000 in personal funds.

That includes $250 to cover the attendance of her fiancé, Riley Roberts, and an additional [emphasis added] $2,733.28 payment to Brother Vellies, the business that designed her dress.

Her chief of staff, Mike Casca, told BI in a statement that she would make those payments.

The committee said that Ocasio-Cortez had taken proactive steps to comply with House Ethics rules

The report said that the congresswoman's attempts to comply with the gift rules included arranging to rent the dress and accessories that she was provided with and to pay for other services out of pocket, which are usually provided to Met Gala guests for free.

However, the committee said that her fiancé's attendance was an impermissible gift because he is not yet her spouse, and that she initially failed to pay the full fair market value for some of the items she wore.

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They should’ve gifted her a 747 instead.

Kiev has ordered the pro-Russian UOC to sever all ties with the Moscow Patriarchate by 18 August. It currently has around 10,000 parishes, a number now equivalent to that of the autocephalous Orthodox Church. Defending Metropolitan Onufryj – who has always maintained a balance between rejecting war and maintaining ties with the Russian Church – is Larisa Brodetskaja, a veteran of the Ukrainian armed forces in the resistance against Moscow’s troops.

Rozanskij (ZENIT News – Asia News / Kiev, 07.24.2025).- Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnic Policy has ordered the pro-Russian Orthodox Church (UPZ) to sever all ties with the Moscow Patriarchate within a month. It is giving it until 18 August before being dissolved by the authorities for ‘violating the law on freedom of conscience and religious associations’ due to its affiliation with the Russian Church, whose activities are prohibited on Ukrainian territory as they are linked to the aggression of the Muscovite enemy.Pope Francis merchandise According to the latest checks, the state services have again found ‘clear signs’ of this link between the Kiev Metropolis of the UPZ Church and the ‘banned’ Patriarchate, and the month’s notice is the last chance allowed by Ukrainian law, with a maximum extension of one month.

Continued below.
Ukraine’s ultimatum to Russian Orthodox Christians | ZENIT - English

https://zenit.org/

Venezuelan team denied entry into U.S. for Little League's senior tournament​

The Cacique Mara team from Maracaibo, Venezuela, was denied visas into the United States and will be forced to miss the Senior League World Series for players between 13 and 16 years old,

The Senior League World Series is held each year in Easley, with six teams from the United States and six international teams. A different team from Maracaibo won the tournament last year.

Hm... they are sending us their best.

Texas GOP Rep. Giovanni Capriglione admits affair, denies abortion allegations​

A conservative news site published an interview with a woman who alleges a 17-year affair with the Southlake representative, who said this week he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Three days after state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione announced he was dropping his reelection bid, the conservative news site Current Revolt published an interview with a former exotic dancer who alleges she had a 17-year affair with the Southlake Republican.

The woman, Alex Grace, alleges that Capriglione paid her for “meetups” and “funded several abortions for his own personal gain.” She declined to provide additional details on the alleged abortions in the interview, saying, “you’re just going to have to go with my word.”

Capriglione said he was “not above scrutiny,” but threatened legal action, seemingly against Current Revolt as well as Grace, for what he characterized as “lying and defaming me.”

Wolseley said:

I forgot to mention that I also have a complete collection of Currier and Ives engravings, as well!

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Not surprising now that I know!

A Long Island man who authorities say made at least seven homemade bombs and threw at least one of them onto the subway tracks of the Williamsburg Bridge after expressing antisemitic comments and frustration about immigration in New York City was indicted on Tuesday.

Michael Gann, 55, of Inwood in Nassau County, was charged with one count of attempted destruction of property by means of explosives, one count of transportation of explosive materials and one count of unlawful possession of destructive devices.

Collectively, the charges could result in a maximum prison sentence of 40 years if convicted, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Court documents reviewed by The Christian Post say Gann, who was arrested by authorities on June 5, was previously arrested 30 times, including 12 felony arrests. He was also convicted a total of 27 times, including three times for felonies.

He is accused of storing precursor chemicals, at least five of his homemade bombs, and shotgun shells on the rooftops of residential apartment buildings in SoHo, Manhattan.

Two witnesses, including a U.S. Military veteran who reported Gann to police, allegedly witnessed him testing his bomb materials and making antisemitic references.

Continued below.

wing2000 said:

More evidence the trump administration could care less about our judicial system.

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No, they care but they are trying to make it subservient to the presidency. They want it to work fist in glove for the goals of the Donald.

wing2000 said:

....the good people of New Jersey better hope they don't need the services of a professional U.S. Attorney.

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For sure.