Thank you so much for the prayers. Her mom says she's doing okay. I tried to call but her mailbox is full.

Northwest Savant said:

Well, the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) was delayed for several years past what was planned six years ago when I posted this response in 2017. The JWST was finally launched on Christmas Day 2021. Fast forward to February 2023, and just as I predicted in my post, the JWST has just viewed six objects from the dawn of the beginning of the big bang which appear to be galaxies larger and older than our 13.5 Gyr Milky Way. Here's an NBC interview covering the discovery:

James Webb Space Telescope images shatter understanding of age of the universe

The James Webb Space Telescope found six massive galaxies that some scientists never thought could exist. The telescope is so powerful it might have just shattered scientific understanding of the universe. Theoretical Physicist and best selling author Dr. Michio Kaku talked to Gadi Schwartz...

www.nbcnews.com

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For decades now, the generally accepted best estimate of the age of the Universe has been 13.8bn years, not 13.5...

It's a huge discovery though to find relatively luminous (thus we'd think not small) galaxies only a mere 300 - 500 million years or so after the estimated time of the start of this Universe, because it had been thought such luminous galaxies would take longer to form (to gather in smaller galaxies through mergers into a larger brighter galaxy). That such bright galaxies seem present so early in the age of the Universe is unexpected and spectacular -- dramatic -- and it's not yet settled just what we are seeing, in that for instance, one interesting question is whether there could be enough super luminous stars to make an early galaxy relatively bright for the number of stars it has (so as to seem as if it were a larger galaxy with more stars). There are a number of open questions being considered. Stay tuned. But not to just a random NBC segment. Try something more about astronomy all the time, like Space.com or such, because it will be readable stuff but also stay pretty current. Here's their page

But for the moment, I'm going to offer you a best article around on this question, from a somewhat more involved website that gets into more detail.
Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.

Chesterton said:

That seems to me almost the opposite of what the OP article is describing. With the Iron Law, people will "go along to get along" to maintain the bureaucracy. Members will tend towards sycophancy, not rebellion.

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Marxism takes hold in the minds of it's useful idiots by demanding all things be described in dialectical terms. Us and them. The righteous and the evil. The proletariat and burgeouis. Oppressor and oppressed. White and people of color.

It's the same old suicidal dogmatic religious death cult. Be happy they were only robbed by Cullors and her ilk. Sjws were always too cowardly for violent revolution. When the opportunity arose....they turned on their neighbors and the people who serve them.

I have been feeling the same "Sort" of thing from Thomas Kempis. Living simple, needing little. And going with Jesus and not worrying about "Dog pile faith". I have been practicing this and I gotta tell you, I have a whole lot more peace in my life. And my spirit is more clear to understand my Bible studies. So yup, it seems to me that the poorer I am to the world the wealthier I am towards heaven. And it's easier to hear Lord's voice, it's not as noisy.

Michie said:

The rescript, which was posted in the Vatican following a Feb. 13 meeting with Pope Francis, says housing perks for high-level Vatican officials are being cut to meet the growing needs of the Church in an economic context ‘of particular gravity.’

Continued below.

Pope Francis Cuts Free and Discounted Rent for Cardinals, Vatican Managers

The rescript, which was posted in the Vatican following a Feb. 13 meeting with Pope Francis, says housing perks for high-level Vatican officials are being cut to meet the growing needs of the Church in an economic context ‘of particular gravity.’

www.ncregister.com

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Also includes where Pope Francis lives.

Was the message of eternal life taught at the Asbury.

AMEN

Morning:​

"Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out." — Song of Solomon 4:16
Anything is better than the dead calm of indifference. Our souls may wisely desire the north wind of trouble if that alone can be sanctified to the drawing forth of the perfume of our graces. So long as it cannot be said, "The Lord was not in the wind," we will not shrink from the most wintry blast that ever blew upon plants of grace. Did not the spouse in this verse humbly submit herself to the reproofs of her Beloved; only entreating him to send forth his grace in some form, and making no stipulation as to the peculiar manner in which it should come? Did she not, like ourselves, become so utterly weary of deadness and unholy calm that she sighed for any visitation which would brace her to action? Yet she desires the warm south wind of comfort, too, the smiles of divine love, the joy of the Redeemer's presence; these are often mightily effectual to arouse our sluggish life. She desires either one or the other, or both; so that she may but be able to delight her Beloved with the spices of her garden. She cannot endure to be unprofitable, nor can we. How cheering a thought that Jesus can find comfort in our poor feeble graces. Can it be? It seems far too good to be true. Well may we court trial or even death itself if we shall thereby be aided to make glad Immanuel's heart. O that our heart were crushed to atoms if only by such bruising our sweet Lord Jesus could be glorified. Graces unexercised are as sweet perfumes slumbering in the cups of the flowers: the wisdom of the great Husbandman overrules diverse and opposite causes to produce the one desired result, and makes both affliction and consolation draw forth the grateful odours of faith, love, patience, hope, resignation, joy, and the other fair flowers of the garden. May we know by sweet experience, what this means.

Evening:​

"He is precious." — 1 Peter 2:7
As all the rivers run into the sea, so all delights centre in our Beloved. The glances of his eyes outshine the sun: the beauties of his face are fairer than the choicest flowers: no fragrance is like the breath of his mouth. Gems of the mine, and pearls from the sea, are worthless things when measured by his preciousness. Peter tells us that Jesus is precious, but he did not and could not tell us how precious, nor could any of us compute the value of God's unspeakable gift. Words cannot set forth the preciousness of the Lord Jesus to his people, nor fully tell how essential he is to their satisfaction and happiness. Believer, have you not found in the midst of plenty a sore famine if your Lord has been absent? The sun was shining, but Christ had hidden himself, and all the world was black to you; or it was night, and since the bright and morning star was gone, no other star could yield you so much as a ray of light. What a howling wilderness is this world without our Lord! If once he hideth himself from us, withered are the flowers of our garden; our pleasant fruits decay; the birds suspend their songs, and a tempest overturns our hopes. All earth's candles cannot make daylight if the Sun of Righteousness be eclipsed. He is the soul of our soul, the light of our light, the life of our life. Dear reader, what wouldst thou do in the world without him, when thou wakest up and lookest forward to the day's battle? What wouldst thou do at night, when thou comest home jaded and weary, if there were no door of fellowship between thee and Christ? Blessed be his name, he will not suffer us to try our lot without him, for Jesus never forsakes his own. Yet, let the thought of what life would be without him enhance his preciousness.

I figured they'd be sterile.
And that can have life long consequences of depression... etc.

NBB said:

Just an observation, if transubstantiation were true, you would be able to detect its material in the stomach and with analysis etc.

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In fact, a Consecrated Host and Blood [once wine] were kept in the Church since 800s when a doubting clergy member consecrated it and it turned to the Flesh and Blood before his eyes.
When science was up to date it was indeed studied and shown to be a bruised left ventricle heart tissue. The Blood type AB.

It's fascinating to note - type AB Blood receives from all. Jesus received all sins unto Himself.

See Miracle of Lanciano if you are interested.

tampasteve said:

In Heaven or in The World To Come? In the renewed Earth I believe so, as @ViaCrucis says so eloquently. In Heaven itself as your question asks, no I don't think so. I have not seen a lot of evidence in scripture that Heaven functions like Earth in an Earthly economy as it were. But I am certainly open to be wrong on that point.

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Yeah I meant more in the eternal state

Amid at least two official investigations into a children’s transgender clinic run by Washington University in St. Louis, the clinic says it will not impose a moratorium on the prescription of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to any new patients.

This comes despite a whistleblower’s sworn statement that she witnessed doctors at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital prescribing puberty-blocking drugs to minors without parental consent.

“The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital is the only place in the entire state of Missouri where transgender youth can access the care they need to ensure their mental and physical well-being,” the Feb. 14 statement reads.

“Therefore, we cannot institute a moratorium that would deny critical, standards-based care to current and new patients. Out of an abundance of caution, however, we are establishing additional oversight at the Transgender Center, and we will continue our internal review of practices at the center to ensure that our patients and families are receiving the appropriate guidance and care for their individual medical needs.”

Continued below.

An association of pro-life obstetricians has literally been canceled by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

For the past 15 years, the group has had an exhibit booth at the annual conference of the Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology (CREOG) and the Association of Professors of Gynecologists and Obstetricians (APGO), which is hosted by ACOG.

This year, without warning, leaders of the pro-life doctors’ group arrived at the conference at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Maryland, only to be told that their exhibit booth had been canceled.

Dr. Christina Francis, incoming CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians (AAPLOG), says she suspects they were denied an exhibit booth because of their opposition to abortion — a position that puts them at odds with the conference’s organizers.

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Pommer said:

Oh lookie, here’s some of that “systemic racism” that doesn’t exist nowadays:

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Uh huh.

Pommer said:

Didn’t matter if they were legal or not, if they were Latino, they got the boot.

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Oh ok....some legit workers got mistaken for being illegal?

This week a federal Texas judge could stop over half of the abortions happening in the country in what may be the most consequential abortion ruling since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk for the Northern District of Texas is set to issue a decision in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s (AHM) suit against the Federal Drug Administration that alleges the agency ignored its own research and testing standards when approving the abortion drug mifepristone.

AHM and several other medical organizations and doctors are represented in this suit by the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist told CNA that unborn babies are not the only ones harmed by chemical abortion. Baptist said that at least 1 in 6 women experience severe medical complications because of using chemical abortion drugs.

Continued below.

“For years I’ve been watching leftist Democrats cancel people, places, and things for things that have happened in the past 250 years,”’ said Ingoglia. “I thought it was hypocritical that you have these Democrats wanting to remove statues or rename buildings because of things that tie back to slavery. Well, under that same metric, then, the Florida Democrat, the Democrat Party itself, should be canceled.”

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fhansen said:

SOLA FIDE-WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

I recently had some "discussions", to put it nicely, on the forums with a member who insisted that he was perfected in love, apparently perfect in all things, because certain biblical passages seem to indicate that a born again person is promised perfection instantly upon his rebirth. I repeatedly asked if his acquaintances would agree, or if, in any case, he/she was perfectly sinless, no white lies or stray thoughts, etc, ever, every single moment. I never got a direct, straight answer on that but was pointed to certain passages that could be interpreted as to assert perfection now rather than perfection as a goal.

What I came away with, however, reading between the lines, was probably a slightly different position, in truth. It appears that he thought it would be sinful, a denial of faith, to believe otherwise, a denial of Christ to believe that we're not perfected as we come to believe, such that if one doesn't claim and continuously appropriate this perfection by faith, they would be outside of God's will. This is a foreign and ugly position to me, to claim to be righteous when, in fact, one is not. But the doctrine of Sola Fide, with its associated doctrine of imputed righteousness, can be understood to support his view, I suppose.

Anyway, I'm left with the following concepts involving the doctrine of SF:

1. Personal, actual righteousness is no longer required in order to be considered just or righteous in the eyes of God-He sees only the righteousness of Christ in us when we come to believe. That faith is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through faith in His Son and in the forgiveness of sin that He accomplished for us. We simply need to believe-possibly only as a one-time event -or as a continuously maintained act depending on theology.
2. Since justice/righteousness are strictly imputed and not given, there's a question as to whether or not a believer can lose salvation, since his justification is not based on-or results in- his personally possessed righteousness to begin with.
3. Even though man stands righteous before God as a forensic declaration, he may or may not be given the ability to become actually sanctified/holy-but that holiness would only be a sort of "side-benefit" anyway, not required to be saved. Man may or may not be obligated to, for example, obey the law/commandments, even if/when done by the Spirit, now under grace. Some theologies insist that the saved man will necessarily be righteous anyway, sort of covering that base, while others at an opposite extreme seem to almost treat the law as evil, and view any requirement for right living as a denial of grace, some even maintaining that no degree of sin could ever separate a believer from God.

Any thoughts here? I'm not particularly favorable towards the doctrine, as may be obvious. But I'm not sure how to best understand it, either.

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Found this thread after you wrote such good posts in reply to mine in another thread about the meaning of death (not the OP subject, exactly). And I think the subjects cross over.

I think there are two objectives God has towards us, 1. To have fellowship with us forever, and 2. To allow for that fellowship without hampering our freewill, I.e., that we should want that fellowshio as much as He does, or at least as much as we can in our less-than-godlike selves.

The first thing God had to do was to fix the problem of evil, which is inherent when freewill is involved. You can't really love (part of fellowship) without being able to do otherwise. Part of the problem of evil is that God can't allow evil to continue forever. Thus He both had to deal with evil justly and deal with mankind lovingly (mercifully), which He did by Jesus becoming a man and dying on the cross.

But that only works sufficiently if each person agrees that God's will is loving and wants to follow it. Adam's sin made it impossible to have fellowship with God forever, because death came from even one sin, which death is inherited--there can only be one ultimate authority.

God took away the permanence of death for all men, but allows each person to decide to give God His due honor...or not. Now the penalty rests on each person individually, but it's a much greater penalty due to the nature of the sacrifice.

This fits with the discussion here because the goal is perfect obedience, from love, as a fellowship relationship between God and His creations should be. This perfection has not happened yet, until we are changed, either by death and resurrection or in the twinkling of the eye at Cgrusts coming, when we put on immortality, but with perfect submission. Those who put on immortality without perfect submission face the new kind of death (2nd death).

DaisyDay said:

Is that illegal or merely unethical?

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At a minimum, it's got to be a violation of whatever contractual obligations Fox had with the Biden campaign. I'm covered under NDA's that prevent me from talking publicly about anything I'm working on before it's announced, even if anybody with half a brain could guess what it is (e.g. sequels, expansions). I can't imagine a political campaign doesn't have something at least as strong preventing broadcasters from spreading their content before the embargo is lifted.

FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Former Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars last year to a defunct car wash owned by a donor.

Between March 18 and Dec. 5, amid a heated race to unseat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., Walker's campaign arm Team Herschel wired 11 payments worth $595,606 to Jetts, according to Federal Election Commission records. Other Walker-linked committees added nearly $270,000 in payments to the company during the midterm elections. Walker's unsuccessful campaign spent more on private jet travel than any other campaign during the 2022 elections, a Fox News Digital review found.

[Carwash owner] Huff had maxed out his donations to Walker's campaign months before the private jet payments to his car wash company began.

[Huff also has another business...]

Aviation Development Group operates a single Gulfstream IV aircraft, according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents. The Gulfstream jet was formerly registered under a firm named JEGE, LLC, which had been owned by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before Huff purchased the firm and jet from Epstein in 2019.

[All in all, Walker spent roughly 10 times as much as Warnock on air travel.]

look4hope said:

I just realized the document you need translation for. I’ll try to read all but it is a lot.
I was reading what is already translated and there are minor tweaks but overall is good.

L4H

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Thank you

Refugees, finding warm welcome, reflect on Christian charity upon the first anniversary of war.

As Russia continues to wage war on Ukraine, the solidarity of Catholics both abroad and in the U.S. offers a tangible model for loving one’s neighbor.

Parishioners in dioceses across the United States have heeded the call of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) to support refugees. MRS particularly recommends the forming of “Welcome Circles,” which are small communities of individuals that come together — often in the context of a parish — to support Ukrainian families, who, through the Uniting for Ukraine sponsorship, are able to come to the United States for two years on humanitarian parole.

Continued below.

praying