Belk said:

I do not find your strawmen and red herrings of interest.

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Well then just take the money and quit complaining and pearl clutching.

essentialsaltes said:

So far the government has alleged only two gang members were among those arrested. This is what required helicopters and zip-tying citizens.

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Reporting Highlights​

• Chicago Raid: Agents rappelled from a helicopter to raid an apartment complex “filled” with Tren de Aragua gangsters. ProPublica found little to support the government’s claims.
• Immigrants Speak Out: Federal officials declined to release the names of 37 immigrants detained in raid. ProPublica has identified 21 of them and spoken with a dozen.
• A Bust? Immigration officials said they arrested just two members of Tren de Aragua. ProPublica talked with one and found no criminal records in his past.

Shortly after midnight on Sept. 30, some 300 agents from Border Patrol, the FBI and other agencies stormed the 130-unit apartment complex. SWAT teams rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and hurled flash-bang grenades. They arrested 37 immigrants, most of them Venezuelans, who authorities say were in the country illegally. Agents also zip-tied and, for several hours, detained many U.S. citizens.

Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names.

That “raises a legitimate question as to whether any of the people in that building were really considered susceptible to prosecution,” said Mark Rotert, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney in Chicago.

[Propublica identified one of the 'gang members'.] Our review of criminal records indicates that Chicago police arrested Parra for drug possession and driving without a license after a traffic stop last year, but the charges were dropped. We found no other arrest records.

Because of the lack of information provided by DHS, it is difficult to assess the accusations that Parra and another Venezuelan, who has not been named, belong to Tren de Aragua. A DHS spokesperson said one of the two men “was a positive match” on a watch list for terrorists. We checked several lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol; Parra’s name was not on those lists.

Nathan Howard, a U.S. citizen, was asleep in a fifth-floor apartment when the raid began. He saw the helicopter and the agents storming into the building from a stairwell on the roof. He was temporarily blinded by bright white lights as agents threw a flash-bang inside the apartment.

“It’s 20,000 of them running through my house like we got Saddam Hussein in the closet,” he said.

Cohen, a 40-year law enforcement veteran and former SWAT team member, questioned the decision to have agents descend from helicopters on ropes. Helicopters are routinely used for observation and support during raids. But in cities, the tactics known as rappelling, in which agents are attached to the ropes, and fast-roping, in which they are not attached, are typically reserved for extreme scenarios such as hostage rescues because of the risks of injury to agents and of a helicopter mishap to the public, experts said.

Cohen said he has done hundreds of searches, including in gang-controlled buildings, but “I have never rappelled out of helicopters in those operations.”

A Canadian nonprofit organization has succeeded in persuading the city staff of Toronto to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall next week in recognition of the “State of Palestine’s Independence Day” on Saturday.

The head of Tehran’s Regional Water Company said that water levels had fallen 43% from last year, leaving the Amir Kabir Dam at just 8% of capacity.​

Iran is grappling with its worst water crisis in decades, with officials warning that Tehran, a city of more than 10 million, may soon be uninhabitable if the drought gripping the country continues.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that if rainfall does not arrive by December, the government must start rationing water in Tehran.

"Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They (citizens) have to evacuate Tehran," Pezeshkian said on November 6.


If I was a Christian in Iran, I'd leave. That sounds like judgement does it not?

Catholic hospitals in the United States are explicitly forbidden from carrying out transgender-related surgeries on individuals who believe themselves to be the opposite sex, the U.S. bishops said this week.

The prelates, gathered at the plenary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore, voted on Nov. 12 to direct hospitals to “preserve the integrity of the human body” when treating individuals with gender dysphoria.

Such individuals often seek surgery to make their bodies conform to that of the opposite sex. But in updated guidance, the bishops said that while Catholic health care providers must employ “all appropriate resources” to mitigate the suffering of such patients, they can use “only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body.”

The new rule makes into explicit USCCB policy what the bishops expressed in a doctrinal note in 2023 when they said Catholic providers must not take part in procedures that “aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex.”

Continued below.

rjs330 said:

There aren't any anti-immigrant MAGA folks.

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Nothing says authentic MAGA better than a pardoned Jan 6 Capitol tourist.

He stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now he's running for Nancy Mace’s seat in Congress.​

As evidenced on his campaign website, Dykes’ platform is built around an anti-immigration stance, blaming immigration for disrupting the housing and job markets and driving down wages.

“We’ve lost control of who enters our community, our state, and our nation. This is a deliberate policy to displace us,” Dykes writes on his website.

Following an investigation by the FBI’s Columbia and Washington field offices, Dykes was arrested in Virginia on July 17, 2023. He pleaded guilty in April 2024 to two felony counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers and agreed that his use of a police riot shield constituted a dangerous weapon.

BNR32FAN said:

Why didn’t you quote any of the passages that do actually support eternal punishment?

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Some of the scriptures say the Wicked will vanish, disappear, not get life, be destroyed. Wouldn't any of these be considered as eternal punishment?

eleos1954 said:

The kingdom is not a physical place, building, or a mere organization, but a condition of being where God's authority is acknowledged and obeyed. It is characterized by righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

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The Kingdom is not really the subject of this thread though, but the unbiblical “kin-dom”, an idea potentially heretical since God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three uncreated coequal and coeternal persons sharing the uncreated essence of the Father, ever one God, has no equals; there is no one like God, and His ways are inscrutable.

That said God does have a human mother and human relatives thanks to the the Incarnation, for God the person of the Only begotten Son and Word did take on our human nature by being born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, and thus became consubstantial with us, as reflected in His name Emanuel.

Thus in rejecting the idea of the kin-dom we are rejecting the rejection of the Kingdom and of equality with God and not the idea of biological and consubstantial kinship with God, and also of tampering with the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father.

Hentenza said:

So the body of Christ is the subset of humans that believe in Christ. So now that I have made my utilitarian observations some of the Christians here will argue doctrinal purity according to their denomination to exclude some believers in Christ from the body of Christ. So be it.

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See, this one of the issues I talked about. I didn't necessarily spell it out as such, but can be under the umbrella of number 3 with "quarreling". If the only reason someone wants to debate scripture is because of a denominational practice/belief (which is already divided) then that resides under quarreling. We should be debating theology purely to help each other figure out what "truth" is or correcting someone because there is only one truth and that is God's which isn't subjective. Some doctrine DOES exclude people from the body of Christ because it is false. Believing in false doctrine doesn't somehow make you in the body. The Mormons believe you can be EQUAL to God and that is how Jesus gained his status, does that pure blasphemy make them in the body of Christ? Do you consider them brothers and sisters because CF doesn't. What about Jehovah's Witnesses who believe that Jesus is "a" god as a created Michael the Archangel which isn't who Jesus is at all, so if you claim to follow that created person, are you still in the body of Christ because again, CF says no. There has to come to a point where people ARE excluded because "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven," (Matthew 7:21) but the better attitude should be to debate scripture to correct, or even find out what the truth is. If it's the truth, it would hold up to scrutiny and shouldn't be based on the confines of denominations.

CoreyD said:

I can help you speed up your journey.

1. 
   Genealogy is the study of your family, from the distant past right up to the present day. Genealogy records are the historical sources that make this study possible, providing key details about your ancestry which allow you to piece together stories of past generations.
   
   Genealogy records explained
   There are many different types of genealogy records – each type contains different information
2. 
   Genesis Chapter one is the events that takes place, in the beginning - six days of creation. Genesis 1:1
   Genesis 2:1-3 the narration concludes the events...
   1 And so the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their heavenly [a]lights. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His work which God had created [b]and made.
   
   Genesis 2:4 The narrator informs his reader that he is now going to give the history of those events in Genesis Chapter one.
   This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
   
   He does not give the history in chronological order. Nor does he give every detail.
   He is selective.
   He starts by saying... (Genesis 2:5, 6
   5 Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to [d]cultivate the ground. 6 But a [e]mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole [f]surface of the ground.
   
   That first statement even verifies it is a historical account.

Can you see why, or do you need help?
That's your homework to relocate your thinking cap.
I'll know if you find it by your response. No. I'm not giving you any more hints... yet..

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And what are your thoughts on how the teledoths noted above do not give history, but continue the story? Such as with Noah's children being born, followed by the story of Noah's ark?

Yup! They need to defend Church teaching and stop allowing this sinful nonsense! Ugh!

St. Peter Damian, pray for us!

Douggg said:

Revelation 10:1 And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:

No way is that mighty angel - Satan.

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2 Cor 11:14

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.


Rev 12:9

9And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Jipsah said:

I have yet to figure out the obsession that so many Christians have with Spacemen and Flying Saucers. And the apparent compulsion so many seem to have to include those Spacemen and Flying Saucers in the Christian Faith

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And he will open his mouth in blaspheme against God, to blaspheme God's name, and His tabernacle (God's tabernacle is outside of the sky) and them that dwell in heaven (outside of the sky)
Revelation 13:6. Is telling us that the beast will speak blaspheme about what is outside of the sky.

He cast down some of the host of the stars and trampled on them....
He cast down the truth to the ground.
Daniel 8:10,12

Prophetically we therefore see truth related to the stars being cast down.

Pope Leo XIV during an address at the Vatican on Thursday called for the “prudent” evaluation of supernatural phenomena to avoid falling into superstition.

“To avoid falling into superstitious illusion, it is necessary to evaluate such events prudently, through humble discernment and in accordance with the teachings of the Church,” the Holy Father said to participants in a Nov. 13 meeting organized by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints that reflected on the relationship between mystical phenomena and holiness of life.

The conference focused on the theme “Mysticism, Mystical Phenomena, and Holiness.” Upon receiving the participants at the Vatican, the pope noted that, through constant commitment, the magisterium, theology, and spiritual writers have provided “criteria for distinguishing authentic spiritual phenomena, which can occur in an atmosphere of prayer and a sincere search for God, from manifestations that may be deceptive.”

For the pope, mysticism and spiritual phenomena are “one of the most beautiful dimensions of the experience of faith,” and he expressed his gratitude for the participants’ collaboration in shedding light on certain aspects that require discernment.

Continued below.

Say it aint so said:

This is a case of being hung by one's own petard.

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Hoist. It’s hoist.

Beautiful video! Successful first stage recovery on a barge! Touchdown confirmed! The first time for Blue Origin. The most complicated part of the launch successfully achieved! Well done! On their way to best SpaceX! Go Blue Origin! Go New Glenn!

Dan1988 said:

Where did you get the idea that God is obliged to save every devil

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He is not obliged to take them to heaven, but to give them opportunity to repent and be worthy of heaven, because He said His way is fair Ezekiel 18, and that He will be judging in righteousness, that is not my opinion, that is what He through Paul said, Acts 17:30-31

"But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earth, and some to honor and others dishonor. If a man purge himself from dishonor, he shall be a vessel of honor, sanctified and meet for the masters use and prepared until every good work." 2 Timothy 2:20-21

"How can a man cleanse his way? By taking heed unto the word of God." Psalm 119:9-10

Commanding someone to do what they can not possibly do is called evil in the Bible; Exodus 5:23 KJV one must also read the whole chapter for context.

God is not evil . Therefore, according to solid scripture, not my opinion, it is possible for anyone to find repentance via faith in Christ.

"Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.'" Romans 10:17

You are saying that faith comes some other way, and the scripture does not say such.
And as someone else pointed out to you
John 6:45
"...He therefore that has heard and has learned from the Father comes to me."

The way anyone hears from the Father is through His word. We are to be in the business of sharing His word and the good news about Him with each and every creature, as He commanded.

"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature...". Mark 16:15-16

A federal appeals court says Texas can move forward with enforcing a ban on drag shows and other lewd performances in public or in the presence of children.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court injunction on Nov. 6 that had blocked enforcement of Texas Senate Bill 12, which regulates "sexually oriented performances" on public property or in the presence of minors. The decision allows the state to begin enforcing the measure while sending the case back to the district court for further review of its constitutionality.

Dubbed a “drag show ban” by critics, SB 12 defines a "sexually oriented performance" as "a visual performance" that features a performer who "is nude" or "engages in sexual conduct," and "appeals to the prurient interest in sex.” Under the law, anyone who controls the premises of a commercial enterprise” is prohibited from allowing any lewd performance in the presence of anyone younger than 18 years of age.

Continued below.

mark46 said:

google it and you will find articles as well as youtube videos
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In the end, it is less expensive to hire robots for lots and lots of jobs, and to use computers to do lots of others.
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There is very low unemployment now, especially since so many youth choose staying home over jobs they don't like.

In future, we will need to come to terms with high unemployment and need to find solutions.

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ah - I misread / misunderstood your post.

I took at as Amazon was looking to hire all those human workers, when in reality they are looking to buy / build that robots for the job.

JohnB445 said:

For example, a young man just starting college is murdered. He didn't get to live a long life, while someone else becomes a believer in their 40's.

The person in their 40's had more time to accept Jesus, yet the young man didn't. It seems unfair, but what does the Bible say?

Was the young man probably never would have been a believer anyway? Are we sometimes saved not only because we accepted Jesus, but by chance we survived long enough to accept Jesus as our God? Or does this not make any sense?

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I believe this falls into what Paul tells us in Romans 2:1-29 especially verses 6 through 16 on the individual level. We cannot say who in particular God will save or condemn by their works. Obviously God will save people based on the light given them and any good a person does is from God ( James 1:17).

In Romans 1 & 3, Paul explains the dangers fallen humanity as a whole faces in condemnation and the only certainty of salvation is in the Lord ( Romans 3:21-25).

Isaiah 64 is often referenced as to the hopelessness of human works but Ezekiel prophesied later. In Ezekiel 18:1-32 the prophet tells us that we can do what is right but we can also undo it by doing what is wrong.

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has ordered a massive mobilization of nearly 200,000 troops, according to the country's defense minister, following the arrival of the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford in the region, US media reports.
The mobilization is a response to the "imperialist threat" from the United States, says Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, according to CNN.

Apple Sky said:

It is round but it is like a dish shaped disc, it is not spherical.

View attachment 373118

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When the only people you accept information from are mentally retarded, it tends to impact on your own mental state.
D.Marble definitely comes across as someone who is mentally deficient.

I wouldn't have a problem