FredVB said:

The symbol of the lake of fire in the book of Revelation full of symbolism does not mean people are placed where they will be burning up. God's justice is real and it will be fair, God does though provide the way for deliverance, which is desirable for any to come to, with Jesus Christ having come to beat the consequential judgment from the fair justice in place of those sinners who came the way for deliverance through him, including us. The rest are indeed lost yet it is not God's fault, having made the way of deliverance, that creation groans for with hope in that. Growth must certainly get happen even with those who are saved with the deliverance, growth is meant to happen that they are saved for. Sin against God must diminish, and there is always more of God's will to learn and grow to, with God's Spirit working with us. It includes loving more that will not exclude others. And God was not wrong about the design for us. We should learn more of it while God's will for us is not kept hidden from us.

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As an alternative to an eternity of suffering in the lake of fire, what do you see in scripture?

HantsUK said:

Many flat earth videos not not understand basic flat earth concepts.

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So please let us know.

The symbol of the lake of fire in the book of Revelation full of symbolism does not mean people are placed where they will be burning up. God's justice is real and it will be fair, God does though provide the way for deliverance, which is desirable for any to come to, with Jesus Christ having come to beat the consequential judgment from the fair justice in place of those sinners who came the way for deliverance through him, including us. The rest are indeed lost yet it is not God's fault, having made the way of deliverance, that creation groans for with hope in that. Growth must certainly get happen even with those who are saved with the deliverance, growth is meant to happen that they are saved for. Sin against God must diminish, and there is always more of God's will to learn and grow to, with God's Spirit working with us. It includes loving more that will not exclude others. And God was not wrong about the design for us. We should learn more of it while God's will for us is not kept hidden from us.

I've had my one hot drink with caffeine, which I actually take before each day, while I am up and it is cold still at night before that is over. Again, not like others. In many ways I am not. Though I am choosing much healthier ways than the others, in general.

I think there are safe places for communication, other than this special forum place in CF. I remember there was once Jesus Radicals with their forum, they were not conservative. They changed it not thinking their forum would still have value, which it did when I found it. And they have a site by another name since. How to find each other where communication is possible without a link, as I think links are not allowed? I don't know, but is sharing email accounts allowed?

It is not like I would agree with others, here or anywhere. I think things out too independently and have many different conclusions from those of any others. I still have Bible verses I take into account for those things. Others saying they believe the Bible will say, those things can be disregarded because of these other verses they can use. But my disagreement is that their passages, whether in context but very often not taken in context, do not negate the other passages I make note of, with the different conclusions. This is general, in almost anything. So I can trip over others' obstacles in many things here.

Apple Sky said:

Not sure maybe we should ask @HantsUK .

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I don't think we need to because in his post he wrote: "The problem with a flat earth understanding is that it contradict reality. What we observe does not agree with what would be seen if the earth was flat." So he obviously doesn't believe in a flat earth.

David Lamb said:

I took it that HantsUK meant (in context) that the correct position of the north pole as far as the flat earth believers are concerned is in the centre. I don't think Hants UK meant that he believes the North pole is in the centre.

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Not sure maybe we should ask @HantsUK .

Michie said:

Knechtle claimed

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Honestly, how could this pastor sensationaliz a private conversation with the son of the President that was supposedly planned in the early mornings, 12:30 am, then turn around and expose this private conversation with the world?

Apple Sky said:

Your absolutely right

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I took it that HantsUK meant (in context) that the correct position of the north pole as far as the flat earth believers are concerned is in the centre. I don't think Hants UK meant that he believes the North pole is in the centre.

I think its not so much about the specific of how creation happened but that this knowledge is within humans that they should care and create such a story in the first place to explain the world.

Humans don't have to read a book of ancient stories about creation. Its in their DNA and they will create such stories to explain how existence came about.

Thats because its true. As created beings we know this is the case. We see Gods invisible creative powers in the things that have been made.

So naturally all cultures are going to make these stories of creation and the great flood that God sent.

Its more the case of which story is truth. Which one accounts for reality. God declares He is the one true God and creator. It is the Genesis creation story that God has used to reveal to all. Thats all that matters.

RamiC said:

There are not 45,000 denominations. This is a link.

• These “denominations” are defined in terms of being separate organisations, not necessarily separate beliefs. This is a critical difference, not commonly noted by critics.
• The largest component (something like two thirds to three quarters) of these totals are “independent” churches, mostly in Africa. These are not necessarily different in doctrine, but are simply independent organisations.
• These estimates include national branches of the same denomination (e.g. the Lutheran Church of Germany and the Lutheran Church of Australia) as separate organisations in the count.
• There are many churches among the independent churches which would have effectively the same teachings, just different locations, different leaders, etc.

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Indeed, many people incorrectly suppose the Romanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Cypriot Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, et cetera, have different beliefs. They don’t.

joechristianwarrior said:

​

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the tension many Christians feel around the phrase “social justice.” It’s a topic that seems to trigger strong reactions from different sides of the church — both progressive and conservative — even though Scripture speaks frequently about justice, mercy, the poor, and the oppressed.


In studying this subject, I’ve noticed that there seems to be one main reason many believers push back against the idea of “social justice” today. What’s interesting is that I’ve heard this same objection from both sides of the political spectrum, even though they frame it differently.


Rather than turning this into a political debate, I’m curious from a theological standpoint:

What do you think is the primary reason Christians object to talk of “social justice”?​

Is it:

• a misunderstanding of the biblical meaning of justice?
• a reaction to how the term is used culturally or politically?
• fear of drifting into works-based righteousness?
• concerns about ideology?
• something else entirely?

I recently explored this topic in the final part of a video series I’ve been working on, and it led to some interesting insights. For anyone who wants to see how I approached the question, I've linked the video below. But the main purpose of this post is to hear your theological perspective and learn from the broader Christian community here.


Video link: Login to view embedded media

Looking forward to a respectful, Christ-centered discussion.


Grace and peace.

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Some, ignorantly, consider social justice to be a secular pursuit, perhaps thinking Christians should just isolate themselves from this unholy world rather than attempt to help make it holier. Social justice is really about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the poor, standing up for victims, upholding righteousness, opposing injustice where it’s found.

Delvianna said:

If you preach that salvation is works based, both you and everyone else who agrees with that, is not apart of his flock, that is part of knowing their heart. So no, not within "all" denominations are his flock. There are denominations as a whole based on their teaching, that none will be saved due to it contradicting what scripture says about salvation.

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The Nicene Creed doesn’t say anything about the issue of Sola Fide or “works based salvation”, since the issue was unknown in the early church and did not become controversial until the 16th century.

Valletta said:

Matthew 16:18-19 And I tell you, you are Peter,[a] and on this rock[b] I will build my church, and the powers of death[c] shall not prevail against it.[d] 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,[e] and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” RSVCE

Jesus and the Apostles spoke Aramaic. The name given to Simon Peter by Jesus is the Aramaic "Kepha," transliterated into "Cephas." "Kepha" means "Rock" in Aramaic. This Aramaic name is preserved within the Koine Greek Biblical text. Thus Jesus said "You are Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church." That is, Jesus used Rock twice in the same sentence. Had Jesus wished to show what you contend he simply could have said "I am Jesus and on this Rock I will build my Church." God renaming someone, such as Abram to Abraham, often comes at an important moment in Biblical history.

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Indeed, this clearly points to the Orthodox (Eastern and Oriental) being the legitimate congregation, since after the Latin church separated from us in 1054, that left the other two Petrine sees, Alexandria and Antioch, and Constantinople - New Rome, the see of St. Andrew the First Called, and Jerusalem, in the territory of the EO and OO churches. The Orthodox in the Middle East are known as Romans, for they were citizens of the Roman Empire until its conquest by the Turks, and after that, of the Roman Millet, the autonomous courts that continued to apply Roman law to Christians in private matters in the Ottoman Empire (offenses against Muslims or against the Osman Bashi would be tried in an Ottoman court under the principles of Islamic jurisprudence).

timothyu said:

My question remains the same. With Jesus, it is more than Judah and the rest of the brethren of the house of Israel. It is the entire world that has been broken free of the rule of the elohim over the nations, returning to God's Will, the Kingdom. No longer is God's piece of real estate in a world of nations, formed after Babel, relevant other than as capital of the new world. The Kingdom, which covers all, is the new promised land.

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If we are Christians and therefore live in the Renewed Covenant with Jesus, then we are ‘grafted’ into the people of Israel (Romans 11:17-24). Through Jesus' actions, we are grafted into the noble olive tree and may now belong to His people (Israel: the house of Judah and the ten tribes, as well as the strangers and those who are grafted in) #191.

Isaiah 56:6 says:

Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, Isa 56:6-7a

This refers to the Messianic age. Condition: Keep his covenant and do not profane His Sabbath!

Are we not also strangers who have been grafted in?

Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, Eph 2:11-12a

The following is said about the olive tree Israel:

Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of G-d, and the promises; Rom 9:4

And we, the believers from the nations, are grafted in.

In any case, we were destitute and strangers in the Egyptian system. And in any case, the only way to true freedom is found exclusively in Jesus. This also means that we must become part of Israel in order to be truly free.

For G-d will keep His promises, His covenant with Israel, and gather His people in the Promised Land! It is already happening!

G-d promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation and receive the land of Canaan as their eternal possession, a covenant that was confirmed with an oath.

Prophets such as Amos and Isaiah speak of future abundance, restoration and eternal peace in this land, where the people will flourish under messianic rule.

The promise of land is a fundamental aspect of Jewish tradition, which refers to G-d's faithfulness to His covenant, even after judgment and captivity (Diaspora). The renewed covenant, sealed by Jesus, confirms and expands these promises, whereby the gift of land is seen as part of G-d's faithfulness to His people, even if it is placed in a spiritual and future, eternal context.

The founding of the State of Israel (1948) marks the beginning of the fulfilment of these prophecies, even if the complete messianic fulfilment is still pending.

The promise is for a final, complete restoration of Israel and the world, in which G-d's people will live in peace and abundance in the land, made possible by the new covenant with the Messiah.

The prophetic writings of the Bible not only foresee an end-time restoration of the state of Israel, but also announce a restoration of Israel's neighbouring countries. A remarkable passage in this context can be found in the prophet Jeremiah.

In it, G-d speaks of the restoration of Israel's neighbouring peoples in the same way that He speaks of Israel's restoration. It is safe to say that the ancient peoples of the Bible have been absorbed into the various Arab tribes and are thus still among us. The prophet Jeremiah foresees a time of salvation for these ancient peoples. John Wesley comments that this means nothing other than that these peoples will one day be ‘called into the kingdom of the Messiah.’

Without a doubt, G-d's goal for Egypt is that He can say, ‘Egypt, my people’ For the nations that today comprise the territory of the ancient Assyrian Empire (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Iran, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), His declared goal is to proclaim over them, ‘Assyria the work of my hands.’ And they will all, together with Israel, be a blessing in the midst of the earth (Isaiah 19:24-25).

This gives us an incredible vision of hope for the future and, hopefully, a better understanding and greater revelation of G-d's purposes for Egypt and Assyria in our time.

What does Scripture prophesy about Iran, Israel's arch enemy?

G-d proclaims that He will set up His ‘throne’ in Elam, see Jeremiah 49:38-39. This means that G-d will take control of Elam, a sign of His absolute sovereignty. The kings and princes will be deposed, and G-d alone will reign. Elam will be judged for its hostility towards Israel and its sin.

Despite the harsh judgement, G-d promises to turn Elam's fate around. This means that there is hope for restoration and grace; G-d does not stop at his wrath. This turn of events is an indication of G-d's comprehensive salvation, which is completed in the Messiah, i.e. in Jesus Christ.

BobRyan said:

Interesting detail...

ASK AI this in any browser:

"what are the top 3 Christian denominations holding to sola scriptura testing of all doctrine and having a single set of administrators with one single set of official doctrines and having no autonomous subgroups included in the total membership"

<<I am excluding autonomous subgroups because by definition , autonomy does not preserve unity in doctrine so does not represent a single set of church teaching as being held by all the group>>

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Which AI?

Also, as I must remind you, AI is not an inherently reliable source - remember when Grok declared, and I proved with screenshots, that Pope Gregory XVII, had canonized Ellen G. White?

I would note the Google AI that appears in web searches is particularly unreliable - frankly I wish they’d remove it, as its wrong about half the time. The problem is LLMs require immense compute resources; the better an answer, the longer they take (for this reason GPT 5.1 Thinking takes much longer than GPT 5 Instant, for example). Google’s search engines are too high volume to allow for the kind of processing power to equal even the now retired chatGPT 3.5, let alone Google’s actual professional grade Gemini, Grok 4, GPT 4o, o4 Reasoning, et cetera.

I would also note your question is ambiguous - it does not define a denomination, which can have multiple meanings. For example, there are two main groups of Seventh Day Adventists, the SDA General Conference and the SDA Reform Movement. Are these groups, in a state of schism, separate denominations? It would be absurd to call the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East separate denominations, and they don’t even have any doctrinal differences, merely different hierarchies.

Also, what is Sola Scriptura? Does a denomination that accepts as inspired prophecy extra-Biblical texts, such as the writings of Ellen G. White, Sola Scriptura in the same way that for example, the Calvinists are Sola Scriptura? And of course we have the fact that Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer and John Wesley all placed some value on church tradition - in the case of Luther, Cranmer and Wesley, quite a lot of value, which is why Lutheran and Anglican churches frequently look the way Roman Catholic churches looked before the Novus Ordo Missae was introduced and the “wreckovations” of parishes as some call them happened in the 1970s (removal of altar rails and the installation of free-standing altars; some Lutheran and Anglican churches have these but many do not, instead retaining the traditional Western style altar rail and non-freestanding altar, which was traditionally used in most Western churches outside of some high altars in Rome, and also in all Armenian, East Syriac and West Syriac churches; the free-standing Holy Table being the norm in the Altars of Coptic Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches.

And a single set of Administrators? What is an Administrator? In many denominations, Administrators are defined as the secretaries who manage parishes, but lack ecclesiastical authority. In some cases, like the LCMS, you have a parish pastor, parish elders, and bishops, my friend @MarkRohfrietsch could explain it. In the Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic and Assyrian churches, and the Methodists churches, you have Bishops (Episkopos, meaning Overseer), Elders, referred to by the term Presbyters (also called Priests, an older Anglifization of the word Presbyter, confusingly used in the KJV to refer also to the Kohanim and Hierus referred to using distinct terms in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek text), and Deacons, from the Greek word Diakonos, meaning service - the seven Deacons ordained in Acts, including St. Stephen the Illustrious Protomartyr, the first person to die preaching the Gospel of Christ, even before St. James the Great, who was the first Apostle to receive the Crown of Martyrdom (not to be confused with St. James the Just, who wrote the Epistle).

HantsUK said:

The correct position for the 'northern hemisphere' should be in the middle.

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Your absolutely right

I am wonder if there is a need or there should be street preaching today. As there has been so much chaos in the world today do you think this is a time where perhaps the traditional street preaching should come back.

Some sort of calling out in the wilderness again. A call to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. Declaring Christ is saviour and the answer people are looking for. Re declaring and proving the gospel.

Not engaging in debates or arguements or politics. Just a simple redeclaration to ensure everyone hears the gossspel. As I think this is a fundemental way of comunicating the gospel instead of on social media on the internet.

Going back to the basics like in the early church and walking around preaching the gospel and Good news in the public squate like Paul did.

Bradskii said:

Well, I'd say that the survivors were 'actively trying' not to drown. Just make a mental note that the orders were not 'prevent these drugs from getting to the US'. It was literally 'kill them all'. That's the position you have to square with your conscience.

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No doubt Daytime TV news announcer, multiple divorcee, alcohol enthusiast and inveterate adulterer felt threatened by the up and down bobbing motion of the floundering ex sailors.

samaus123456789 said:

It only had one fulfillment and ended 70-73 AD. The masoretic is probably the least closest to the original compared to the LXX too.

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The holy of holies was not anointed, and the kingdom was not established, so your view is missing alot of context, the anointing of the holy of holies and the age of righteousness are the climax of the second 70 weeks and the necessity for the prophecy to be fulfilled.