Larniavc said:

A thought is not a behaviour. It might seem complicated but it is really not.

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What's the difference between the atoms in my brain and the atoms in my arm and fist? Aren't they all "behaving"?

Larniavc said:

To continue your previous example: you can be arrested for the behaviour of punching someone but not for thinking about punching them.

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Correct, but you can be charged for what you're thinking, or what you believe, in association with an act of the body.

prodromos said:

Do you dispute that figures of speech are common in every language?

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No, I don't. Why do you ask?

Jipsah said:

If the damnationists are correct, most of them are punished for being born in the wrong place.

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Keeping in mind that Jesus was a "damnationist," in fact, he is the only one in the NT who speaks of hell.

"If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes
and be thrown into hell, where "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched." (Mk 9:47-48)

I'm sure you'll understand if I take Jesus at his word. . .

Say it aint so said:

Easy. No different with Blacks in the south and Hispanics in Texas, you go to the census and find out where those young white women live, and then you gerrymander those districts till those districts look like Jackson Pollock paintings.

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Or deport them back to Womenistan.

d taylor said:

The predestined us to adoption is not to eternal life, but that believers would be adopted to Jesus as sons

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Is adoption not eternal? What's the difference?

Do you have a response to the argument of the OP?

The verdict in the case of a Christian man in Malta who is facing potential fines and prison time for giving his testimony in 2022 about leaving homosexuality was delayed for the second time last week.

Matthew Grech, 36, was scheduled to receive a ruling last Thursday in his case, which has dragged on for three years. His lawyer received an email at the last minute informing him that the verdict had been postponed, according to the London-based nonprofit Christian Concern.

Grech has been engaged in a legal battle since he was criminally charged in 2022 for giving his testimony, which was allegedly an example of discussing and promoting so-called conversion practices in violation of Article 3 of Malta's Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender and Gender Expression Act.

If convicted, Grech faces €5,000 (over $5,700) in fines or up to five months in prison. Passed in 2016, the law makes it "unlawful for any person" to "advertise conversion practices." It was the first of its kind in Europe and has served as a model for similar legislation in other countries.

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A Christian social worker in the United Kingdom has appealed a tribunal ruling that upheld an employer’s decision to withdraw a mental health job offer after discovering his views on homosexuality.

The man claims his religious beliefs were the reason he was denied the position.

The case of Felix Ngole, 47, was heard late last month by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London. He is appealing a 2024 decision by Employment Judge Jonathan Brain, in which the rescinding of a job offer by Touchtone Leeds was deemed lawful, despite the court acknowledging the action potentially amounted to discrimination.

He and his legal team argue that the tribunal's ruling effectively bars Christians with traditional views on sexuality from working in professions that serve LGBT individuals and sets a "dangerous precedent."

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DALLAS — Not unlike 2,000 years ago when the Apostle Paul was divinely inspired to pen his letter to the church in Philippi, Tom “N.T.” Wright wants to remind everyone that the Gospel is still unchained.

The 76-year-old New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop kicked off a three-day conference on Paul’s letter to the Philippians at Park Cities Baptist Church, where 650 attendees from Texas and across the U.S. filled the historic church sanctuary.

Wright quickly zeroed in on the letter’s prison context, noting that while most scholars agree Paul was writing to the first-century assembly in Philippi, a Roman colony located in northern modern-day Greece, there is still some debate on whether the prison from which Paul wrote was located in Ephesus, modern-day Turkey, or Rome.

What’s indisputable, said Wright, is that Paul did not consider himself or the good news of Jesus Christ bound by his imprisonment.

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is anyone willing to be an accountability partner to me and me in return. I have been having a bunch of falls to lust for a while now and just want to break free from it.

FredVB said:

In the new covenant, what we are to obey is to be in our hearts that we act on those things.

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The Scriptures seems clear....

We are told to obey God's laws in the New Covenant Heb8:10 they went from tablets on stone, to tablets of the heart 2Cor3:3 not changing the words as God promised Psa89:34 Mat5:18 but established on better promises Heb8:6

The OC is indeed obsolete, that's why God wrote a new one and told us what is was established on Heb8:6 and what it still contains Heb8:10

A judge has granted in part a temporary restraining order request from a chaplains group seeking to cut ties with the Anglican Church in North America.

The Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy recently filed a complaint against ACNA over the Anglican denomination’s refusal to allow the ministry to disaffiliate.

United States District Judge Bruce Hendricks of the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division issued an order last week partly granting JAFC’s request for a temporary restraining order.

According to Hendricks, while the court “does not intend to entangle itself into an internal canonical dispute over the Anglican Church’s ecclesiastical structure,” some issues raised by JAFC “may be ripe and appropriate for the Court’s consideration, such as Plaintiff’s trademark claims.”

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BPPLEE said:

All of them?

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Each of them.

Job 33:6 said:

We would end up with all sorts of religious people wanting their positions in public schools. Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism etc. and that's part of what the founding fathers wanted to avoid, because it leads to schisms and conflict as well as some religious positions gaining dominance over others, which often results in oppression of religions. Which is what drove the exodus from Europe to begin with.

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These ideas can be presented in public schools; it just can't be done by the school itself, or any agent designated by the school. Students can do it.

I think there is a revolution brewing. Kuhn call it a paradigm shift. We had a paradigm shift from the God centered universe to the Enlightenment which has led to the mechanical and material or naturalistic universe. Then another shift into the Quantum universe and now the Mind and Consciousness.

Which ironically sort of comes full circle from the God centered or spiritual universe to the observer and subject centered universe. Which naturally flows into conscious experiences such as phenomenal beliefs in transcedent spirits and gods.

Galileo realised to do science the subject had to be seperated from that which is being observed and measured. Now science is bring the subject back in because, well we are part of that reality and cannot be seperated.

Thanks! Glad you liked them!

With 234 million people, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa.

Despite the potential that this gives it, it has become known for a far more infamous reason in recent years, becoming the epicentre of anti Christian violence in the world.

The modern state of Nigeria was created by the British in the 20th Century, bringing together a wide variety of tribes who only had the commonality of having been within the confines of British control. The country is roughly half Muslim/half Christian.

The scale of violence in Nigeria is mind boggling. The Open Doors 2025 Watch List reports 3,100 Christians killed during that reporting period, with 69% of all global faith related murders taking place there.


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Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called for overcoming ideological divisions within the Catholic Church in a Spanish-language interview on the “Sacristy of the Vendé” YouTube channel in which he reflects on the “instrumentalization” of abuse cases.

Held last July, the interview was released this week after the coordinator of the priests’ YouTube discussion group, Father Francisco José Delgado, was acquitted of charges of “inciting hatred” against the Holy See, interfering in the Vatican’s investigation into the Sodality of Christian Life, and damaging the “good reputation” of layman José Enrique Escardó, one of the main proponents of the case against that apostolate.

Müller stated that, since its inception, the Catholic Church has experienced divisions “because of these false doctrines, heresies, or pagan ideologies” and thus proposed that “everyone has to be aware that one is following Jesus Christ and not ideologies.”

For the cardinal, within the Catholic Church it is not possible to define oneself as conservative, traditionalist, or progressive: “We must overcome these divisions that stem from the French Revolution, from the Jacobins. In the Parliament of that time, these right-wing and left-wing groups existed, but these are political and ideological concepts, not Christian ones.”

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The judges' statements seem to be a good analysis of the two conflicting principles in the case: the right to feel safe in school, and the right to exercise free speech and religion.

The Pontifical Swiss Guard this week opened an internal investigation to clarify an alleged act of antisemitism committed by one of its guards against two Jewish women in St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican confirmed.

“The Pontifical Swiss Guard received a complaint regarding an incident that occurred at one of the entrances to Vatican City State in which elements interpreted as antisemitic were allegedly detected,” Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni stated on Monday.

The reported incident took place during Pope Leo XIV’s Oct. 29 general audience commemorating the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the 1965 declaration on the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions.

According to a Nov. 7 report published in Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Israeli writer and theater director Michal Govrin said a Swiss Guard “hissed at” her and a female colleague, saying “les juifs, the Jews,” before “making a gesture of spitting in our direction with obvious contempt.”

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More than three decades after his father preached the Gospel in Argentina, the late Billy Graham's son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, shared the Good News of Jesus with more than 70,000 Argentinians last weekend as part of an outreach one church leader is calling “a miracle from Heaven.”

In a statement published Monday, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association provided a recap of a free two-night evangelistic outreach event in Buenos Aires, Argentina, titled Esperanza Buenos Aires. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association CEO Franklin Graham spoke to nearly 75,000 people at Velez Stadium over the course of the two-night event, where he shared the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

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What, is he going to put barracks in the mall to lower the vacancy factor?

(also, Miracle Mile is in Los Angeles, Magnificent Mile is in Chicago.)

Lava fountains at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano reached 1,100 feet: USGS​

The current series of eruptions has featured lava fountains up to 1,500 feet.

The current episodic eruption began on Dec. 23, 2024, and has produced significant lava fountaining not seen since the 1983–86 episodic fountains at the beginning of the Puʻuʻōʻō eruption, according to the USGS.

Thailand suspends Cambodia ceasefire deal, testing Trump-brokered truce​

Thailand said on Tuesday it was halting implementation of a ceasefire pact with Cambodia a day after a landmine blast maimed a Thai soldier, posing the biggest test for a truce brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Thai government has accused Cambodia of planting fresh landmines along a stretch of their disputed border, including a PMN-2 anti-personnel mine that injured four Thai soldiers on Monday, with one losing a foot in the explosion.

At least they got the photo op.