Michie said:

Now in order to understand what is taking place in the reading, we have to tell the backstory. King David, like a coward, stayed home at his palace while his army went off to wage war. Soon he spied a married woman, Bathsheba, bathing outdoors, and the text offers a stark portrayal of his response: “so David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her” (2 Sam 11:4 RSV). Through this power-rape, she becomes pregnant, so David tries to cover his tracks by bringing Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from the battle, hoping that he will sleep with his wife and hide the evidence of David’s dalliance. Yet Uriah is a brave, battle-hardened man and refuses to go to his house while his comrades are out in the field of battle. David realizes that his cover-up plans have failed, so he turns his heart to murder. He sends sealed orders by Uriah’s hand (!) to his general to put Uriah in a vulnerable spot on the field and then withdraw the other troops. Uriah is thus murdered “with the sword of the Ammonites” (2 Sam 12:9). After Uriah’s death, David steals his wife as his own.

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So now, David is a rapist and a coward ?

Michie said:

David was a fallible man with a heart for the Lord.
Remember: this is the Catholic forum.

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I was not aware of that.

The bubbles look like grapes

com7fy8 said:

You want me to care about others, in prayer, and not only about my own self doing what You desire.

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com7fy8 said:

in this peace with almighty power we share with God in His own almighty immunity

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If we pray in all-loving love, we are in God's almighty peace to keep us safe from anti-love things >

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6-7)

So, while we obey how God wants us to pray . . . we are guaranteed how His peace will guard us . . . in our hearts and in our minds.

And this is commanded in God's word; so this is a miracle that God guarantees us while we obey how He has us doing this.

So, we trust You, O God our Father, to succeed in doing all You mean by this, in us all who have trusted in Your Son Jesus. The glory is to You.

newton3005 said:

What part do we play in Jesus’ crucifixion?

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Jesus died for our sins; so our sins are guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus. Our sins helped to put Jesus on the cross. So, any person who has ever sinned is guilty of the murder of Jesus who is God's own Son.

God's part is He wants to forgive us and change us into the likeness of Jesus so we are pleasing to God the way Jesus in us is so pleasing and He in us shares with us how He is so we can be so pleasing to our Father.

It is written >

"And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." (Ephesians 5:2)

So, if we have trusted in Jesus and are following His example of how He was loving, on the cross, now our part is that we are honoring Jesus by loving any and all people the way Jesus loved while crucified. And Jesus in us affects how we are so we can sweetly please our Heavenly Father the way Jesus on the cross was "a sweet-smelling aroma".

And this includes how we obey God's rule not to argue or complain >

"Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation," (in Philippians 2:13-16)

By not arguing or complaining we can become blameless and harmless and without fault . . . so we are sweetly pleasing to our Father. And so we can be honoring the crucifixion of Jesus, by following His example of how He was pleasing our Father and loving us while on the cross.

Yes, and amen ✝

tonychanyt said:

Jesus focused on his own gospel teachings, not Moses' OT.

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Jesus adds to what we receive from Moses. He does not take anything away. Paul quotes David, but people have trouble understanding. Under the Law we can be good and reap the benefits of being good. With God it is through faith and the grace of God working in us that we become right with God so we abide in His righteousness. That is why Paul says: "It is written". He is quoting Psalm 14:1-3 and Psalm 53:1-3. David loved the law of God, David delighted in the law. But he understood that: Psalm 51:16-17 (NIV): > "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; > you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. > My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; > a broken and contrite heart > you, God, will not despise."

If someone does what is wrong, this can exercise the person to get weaker so he or she can be more and more able to suffer emotionally and miss out on how God's love can make us creative for solving problems and relating with other people.

There is "the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience," we have in Ephesians 2:2.

So, no matter how cleverly we argue for any sin, even only agreeing with it can have us functioning in Satan's spirit of disobedience. So, agreeing with wrong things is also wrong. And it can be spreading the effects of Satan's evil spirit. And then children can be affected by this, so they likewise are weak enough to suffer deeply and be desperate to seek pleasure in order to feel something nicer . . . instead of finding out how to love.

And in less than God's love, people can give in to fearing and arguing and self-righteously criticizing others, instead of praying with hope for any and all people.

So, this is included in what is wrong with anything that is wrong . . . no matter how cleverly anyone argues otherwise > we can see how people are turning out because of what they hold to and how ones hold to their things.

Wrong people can attract problems, plus self-righteous people can be correct about what is wrong but they are not the right way about what they know.

Three-Hundred Sayings of the Ascetics of the Orthodox Church

This is powerful.

tonychanyt said:

Jesus said in Matthew 19: 5b ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’

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God divided them into male and female so He could unite them back together again in Him. We are all born into this world because of the union of a male and a female that united becomes one.

bling said:

Most of the time we are not in a true "fellowship" relationship

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The opposite of being in Christ

Dave Darling said:

Hi everyone, a teaching just came to me- I was doing a study on Adam and Eve. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had access to the tree of life and thus could live forever, it was God's original intent for man to live forever! Death only entered the world because of sin. I was also doing a study on judgement day. I believe one of the purposes of judgement day is to restore man to God's original intent, time will end at judgement day and there will only be eternity, in heaven or hell. Once we get to heaven we will then live forever, like God's intention for Adam and Eve.

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Briefly:
Man's objective while here on earth is not to never ever sin. The Garden was a lousy place for humans to fulfill their earthly objective and the fact that our very best all human representatives failed shows it was an impossible place, so we do not want to return to that situation.

Astrophile said:

Ever since the 1950s, U-Pb dating of terrestrial rocks and meteorites has consistently yielded ages in the range 4550±50 million years for the solar system (including the Earth). Would you like to explain how it has managed to do this if it is as flawed as you say.

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If you provide the data, I'd be happy to show you.

Edit @Astrophile
I found an article that's in line with your comment.
How Old Is Earth and How Did Scientists Figure It Out?
Radiometric dating is a powerful scientific method used to determine the age of the Earth and various geological materials with remarkable precision. The fundamental principle behind radiometric dating lies in the decay of radioactive elements found in rocks and minerals. Certain naturally occurring radioactive elements, known as parent isotopes, undergo spontaneous decay over time into stable isotopes, referred to as daughter isotopes. By measuring the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes in a sample, scientists can calculate the time elapsed since the material's initial formation.

Of course, you are not dealing with Carbon 14 dating here, but there are some basic principles involved in all Radiometric dating. One of them is the problem with assumptions.
Assuming that the number of daughter isotopes is known, and that no radioactive elements have been added to, or been taken away from the daughter isotopes.
There is also the assumption that the decay rate has never changed, but always remained constant... when in fact radioactive decay rates may not be constant.


Concerning Uranium–lead dating... Aside from the assumptions involved, being incorrect...

In a paper published this week in Science, geochemist Roland Mundil of the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) and his colleagues at BGC and UC Berkeley report that uranium/lead (U/Pb) dating can be extremely accurate - to within 250,000 years - but only if the zircons from volcanic ash used in the analysis are specially treated. To date, zircons - known to many as a semiprecious stone and December's birthstone - have often produced confusing and inaccurate results.
Uranium/lead dating provides most accurate date yet for Earth's largest extinction
Zircons have produced complicated data that are hard to interpret, though people have pulled dates out," said Mundil, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow now at the BGC, a non-profit scientific research institute dedicated to perfecting dating techniques for establishing the history of Earth and life on Earth. "Many of these studies will now have to be redone."

The U/Pb isotopic dating technique has been critical in dating geologic events more than 100 million years old, including volcanic eruptions, continental movements and mass extinctions.


I often ask persons who are so cocksure, what they would say to someone whom they argued strongly against, for the "science being right", if years later, the science said they were wrong... by far.
The response is usually, :That's how science works.", but no one ever says, "Well yes. We could be wrong. It's not a case of what we think, or believe, being right. It's a case of proving, or testing if what we believe is wrong, and sometimes it takes years before that may happen."

Akita Suggagaki said:

Perhaps we will see a turning point with disaffiliated Republican especially. Pro-life democrats have about had their fill of being ignored also.

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The way the Democratic Party excludes pro-life Democrats is horrible. It’s all I need to know about that Party at this point.

Nagomirov, where did you go?

MarkusB said:

Documentary Hypothesis states that the book of Genesis is a compilation of the sources

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Science has a lot to tell us about Genesis chapter one. There are 200,000 science books in the Harvard library that discuss what we read in The First Chapter of Genesis. Even we are told all the books in the world would not be enough to tell us what God has done.

John 21:25​

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books ...

Kari Lake settles election defamation case brought by Arizona official​

Terms were undisclosed

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who brought the lawsuitagainst Lake, her husband and others, said in a text message Sunday that “both sides are satisfied with the result.”

--

She has not conceded [the Senate race] to [Ruben] Gallego, nor has she contested the outcome.

Richer lost his reelection campaign in the primary this summer to a Republican attorney and state lawmaker who voted for legislation that grew out of false election theories and who was endorsed by Lake.

Chrystal-J said:

“The medical problem is that she’s pregnant!” declared Hern.

Evil ^

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It’s the devils sacrament! Lord have mercy!

Chrystal-J said:

Not only are they not ashamed, they're filled with pride.

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Worst sin there is. Truly demonic.

tdidymas said:

The whole world has been duped into believing this "crisis" myth. I highly recommend this book that is science oriented in explaining why the "crisis" is a hoax:

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

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I would order it but the Amazon truck would go over my alotted carbon emissions for the month.

Hazelelponi said:

Scripture is prescriptive and proscriptive.

If Scripture says that government is a terror to the evildoer, and a government becomes a terror to those who do good, that government is committing sin, and is unjust.

Scripture is not telling us that whatever a government does is godly or moral, but rather is telling us what a government should be.

When the government fulfills it's role properly, the citizens flourish.

Out of the last 16 years, 12 were spent under Democratic leadership, and the citizens are crying because of it.

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So, Romans 13 only applies when we feel like it? When Peter also exhorted Christians to honor the civil authorities, he said at the same time that they were ungodly and immoral. And Nero certainly wasn't godly and moral when Paul wrote to the Romans.

tonychanyt said:

Sin has consequences, not only for individuals but also for communities and nations. The Egyptians collectively participated in the oppression of the Israelites and benefited from their forced labor.

The plagues were a collective judgment against the nation of Egypt for their sins. The death of the firstborn was the final collective punishment.

God sent a flood to kill everyone except Noah's family. Ultimately, God is sovereign to do whatever pleases him.

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You are totally right in the OT context. I used to think it was the same in the NT but I saw this article from a minister to those in government. Basically the premise is that in the NT God is more or less seeing people as either believers, or unbelievers. So God may judge the church but not the nations. It goes through all the types of judgment and is a good primer on the subject if anyone is interested. Is God Judging America Today?

Romans 1:
11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established.
12 That is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith of both of you and me.

A New Christian Requires the pure milk of the Word
1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Until their Election Is established, they must grow in Christ
1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The leadership are tasked with directing new converts with sound doctrine, and the imparting of spiritual gifts by the laying on of hands.
Acts 6:3 Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; 4 but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch, 6 whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Mutual Faith is receiving gifts and blessings to impart unto the Fellowship, even as it is written:
Genesis 12:2
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.

It is in this election that we must be found faithful
Philemon 1:6 that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

The “good things” in us must be found (acknowledged), and then imparted to others.
2 Corinthians 9:12 For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God, 13 while, through the proof of this ministry, they glorify God for the obedience of your confession to the gospel of Christ, and for liberal sharing with them and all.

I’m sure they did. Biden nor Obama have no respect for us.

Lord, have mercy on your suffering Church!

chevyontheriver said:

He’s not a serious contender. I think he would be seriously shocked if he was appointed.

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Apparently he doesn’t except papal supremacy or the Immaculate Conception, even if he said he wanted to join Rome.