Historians have an enormous advantage over the rest of us: they have the unique luxury of looking back through time and, with the power of hindsight, pinpointing the exact moment a new era began. Yet there are events that are so momentous, so crucial, and so obvious, that sometimes even those living in the moment can recognize their historic significance.

We are living through that moment.

Over the last several days, the turmoil surrounding the question of whether bureaucrats can unilaterally remove Donald Trump's name from a presidential campaign ballot has only intensified. Colorado and Maine have already taken this action and other states are mulling the same.

As observed in a previous essay by this author, these actions attack the very fabric of our representative form of government. The idea that without so much as due process unelected persons in an individual state can remove a potential presidential candidate is the stuff of nightmares for a democracy.

Even leading Democrats have voiced opposition to this latest con by "ballot bandits."

What this means, however, is that the future of our nation is now to the be in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

To their credit, they have recognized this threat and their need to consider the arguments as a matter of urgency for, make no mistake, this is an existential threat to our nation.

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Lots of people believe in UFOs and other unexplained appearances in the sky?
Could aliens be a real thing?
Is it psychological? A projection as Carl Jung thought?
Is it demons?
If aliens are real, how should Christians regard them, enemy or neighbor?

If you are some paranoid person who feels that they need 30-round magazines to protect your family, you are exactly the person who shouldn't be allowed to have multiple 30-round mags lying around your house. It's been proven over and over that parents don't seem to be able to keep their psychopathic children from accessing their assault rifles. Ban them. Make them illegal so people can't legally purchase an assault rifle without the sense to keep their children from accessing them. When the Second Amendment was written we had one-shot muskets. I don't think that opens up the door for people to stock up on AR-15s and AK-47s. Get your hunting rifle. A 30.06 can blast a hole through anything that moves. A 6-shot .357 or .44 magnum can shoot down anyone who invades your home. Not to mention a 12-guage. What do you need 30 rounds for? Are you so afraid of everyday life that you can't sleep unless you can shoot 27 little babies in 4 minutes like at Sandyhook?

I just had to post this because I saw a Sandy Hook parent pleading for us to stop these atrocities. Get your 12 gauges, your hunting rifles, and your 6 shooters. Why do people feel like they need 90 or more high-power bullets to stop an intruder? Are we living in a Mad Max-type world where there is absolutely no law and order? Call 911 and blast a couple of shots if you have to but there is no need to grant the ability for some guy to shoot down a whole neighborhood or carelessly let their psycho child gain access to their assault rifle and take out a whole lunchroom of babies.


Save the children!

Orthodox priest faces expulsion for not asking God for Russian victory. The Russian priest Alexei Uminsky is also known for his liberal position in wartime. He refused to read a prayer invoking a Russian victory in Ukraine. This now has consequences. The 63-year-old had encouraged believers to attend services that do not pray for the war. He is also no longer allowed to hold church services. With his actions, he had broken his priestly oath, the court ruling said. For his refusal to recite the victory prayer, Uminsky should be expelled from the priestly order.

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Lately I'm struggling to see how/why I should reject Brenz's view of Christology. How / why should I accept Chemnitz nuanced view that seems to be more Reformed than Lutheran. If Christ is not everywhere as in Pantheism/ Buddhism, then then Lutheran view makes no sense to me. The infinite must be within the finite or the metaphysics are the same as the Reformed. This got me studying Buddhism again even though I don't believe I can work for salvation, unlike Western logic they have 4 options, true, false, both, neither, so only in this Indian logical system can Lutheranism actually make sense (tetralemma, Catuskoti). This is where Vajrayana intersects with Lutherans in particular because only we have the unique ubiquity doctrine. JC Beall writes something related to this I think about other logical systems. I think Beall has interacted with Graham Priest who is a philosopher of more Buddhist type thought too; basically following Chemnitz is like following reason > faith again which is putting reason as the primary way to salvation, reasoning your way to faith, which is not very Lutheran. If "reasoning" is a work, then we are trying to use works to acquire salvation/nirvana ,the same as Tsongkhapa in Buddhism. Why not accept some contradictions even if it seems pantheistic?

The Hillbilly Thomists is a fine group of Dominican priests that make bluegrass music. Here's their performance at the Grand Ole Opry:

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And they have 3 albums!

I need to have my meds adjusted soon, and I have been experiencing severe anxiety for the past few days. Please keep me in prayer.

God bless

For my friends on the forum, a prayer request:

The pastor at our church, First UCC of Orlando, the reverend Lynn Blevins, has been hurt in a fall and has a broken pelvis. She is in the hospital. She is elderly and it will take months for her to recover.

Hello everyone,
Please pray for me regarding a situation where a group of people has been bullying and harassing me for years. Please pray that their behavior toward me will either stop or that God will allow me to move to a different environment where these people will no longer have access to me. I have tried to be silent in all this but I feel like I have no more patience to deal with the things that are being done to me. Pray that I will continue to be physically and mentally healthy in spite of the things that they are doing. Pray that I will be forgiving and will not hold on to bitterness, anger or resentment.

I struggle with those things since this has been going on for so long and, after everything that has been done to me, the police should have been involved long ago, but I did not involve them early on because I was afraid of retaliation. Now I have little evidence to prove how long these people have been harassing me and the lengths that they have gone to do so. I did finally contact the police a year or so ago but because of the lack of information I had, my submission to them was more for just documentation purposes than anything else. Now the harassment has become more covert so the chances of me gaining real evidence of it have become low. I live every day feeling unsafe in my own skin now and I struggle with being so angry that (in my eyes) these people have "gotten away" with everything that they have done to me and since the police are not actively involved, I don't feel protected.

Unrelated prayer requests:
- Please pray for missionaries around the world, for their safety and also that their work would be fruitful.
- Please pray that my family members would come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and that they would have personal relationships with Him.
- Pray that I would be successful and able to submit classwork on time as a new semester in college starts and that I would be able to obtain my degree and possibly graduate early if an opportunity arises.
- Pray for lost people - people living dangerous or criminal lifestyles and those living compromising lives because of greed or a love of money.
- Pray for countries at war or in conflict around the world and those affected.
- Pray for the Jewish community around the world.

Thank you.

A perfect storm of troubles is brewing and an unprecedented collaboration of Western rivals.

1) IRAN - backs the trade war being waged by the Houthis against trade going through the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
It also backs Hamas whose contribution to the "Resistance" to Western hegemony is to destroy their reputation with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Hezbollah appears absent from any strategic plan at the moment, though watch this space.

2) CHINA - The election of a pro-sovereignty candidate in Taiwan could mean that war with China has now become more rather than less likely.

3) RUSSIA - Russian dreams of restoring imperial or soviet boundaries hinge on victory in Ukraine. The war has become one of attrition and remains crucially dependent on American support.

This is time for wise, strong leaders who persist in doing what is right and crucially require the following:

1) A commitment to support Ukraine.
2) Keeping trade flowing past Yemen and in the straits of Hormuz
3) Security guarantees to Taiwan
4) A moderated support with Israel that allows them to destroy Hamas while minimizing the humanitarian cost of that
5) A continued commitment of the USA to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Once countries like Japan do not believe America would defend them they are more likely to develop their nuclear weapons and a general proliferation of possession and risk is more likely.

The biggest threat to world peace and security right now is Republican isolationism. If Trump wins in 2024 that is most likely to lead to:

1) Ukrainian defeat and the advance of Russia to the Carpathians
2) American indifference to an invasion of Taiwan
3) The end of NATO and a big increase in world instability. More wars and greater economic instability.

Pray for my grandpas recovery whos at the hospital right now Amen

We're getting hit by winter storms tomorrow. Please pray the Lord keeps everyone safe.

Also, I'm probably going to have to call in to work because of it. Please pray that goes well.

Thanks in advance.

CNN​

US did not properly track more than $1 billion worth of weapons sent to Ukraine, watchdog report finds​

Story by By Haley Britzky and Natasha Bertrand, CNN • 2d

The Pentagon did not properly track $1 billion worth of military equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a watchdog report released on Thursday.

The report from the Pentagon Inspector General says that while the Defense Department has improved its ability to track military aid sent to Ukraine, it “did not fully comply” with requirements and much of the equipment sent is “delinquent,” meaning it’s not possible to complete an inventory of everything sent.

Please be aware that there are some swear words in that article because of words quoted by those protestors.

I read something and it had the phrase 'under the control' of the holy spirit.
It seems a Christian has the Holy Spirit living in them, but if they are obedient to the promoting of the Spirit, then they are under its control.
It's like you choose to be under its control, but there seems to be a shift in your experience when you do that... gifts? bliss?

Could anybody comment on how it is to live with the holy spirit, and being obedient to it?

New York Times​

Russia Targets Ukraine With Large-Scale Missile Attack​

Jan 13, 2024

The assault was in line with a wider air campaign that Russia began in late December, seeking to wear down Ukrainian air defenses.

Russia attacked Ukraine with several waves of missiles on Saturday morning, the Ukrainian and Russian militaries said, putting the entire country under an air-raid alert and sending people rushing for shelter as bangs were heard in several cities.

The attack, which started around 5 a.m. local time and lasted about three hours, involved nearly 40 cruise and hypersonic missiles fired from different regions, including the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea and the Caspian Sea, to the southeast of Ukraine. They were directed at cities including Kyiv, the capital, and Lviv, near the border with Poland.

It followed Russia’s recent strategy for large-scale air assaults: waves of different types of aerial weapons launched almost simultaneously from multiple locations and aimed at various targets, with the goal of overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses.

There's a lot of information and also analysis within this article. What are y'alls opinions regarding this topic and that analysis?

Pedophiles are truly disgusting. They all should be locked up in prison for the maximum amount of sentence possible by law if they are found guilty by a trial jury.

I shouldn't be afraid of an old man on a walker but the other day my dad told me that he would do whatever he could to stop me from going to church and talking to other Christians. It may easier for you to say to "just stand up" or "don't let it get to you" but it affects me differently. I don't think the threats are mortal of course, but I still don't know if he's trying to (or can) conjure up ways to stop me from being able to go to church and talking to other Christians.

Vox Day claims to have mathematically shown that "evolution is impossible". His argument appears to be that simple math shows that there isn't enough time to account for the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees.

The argument looks badly flawed to me, but I am not a biologist and am likely missing or misunderstanding some things. My question is if I have correctly identified problems or if I am getting things wrong myself.

The JFG-VD Debate - Vox Popoli

We’re told that they [humans and Chimpanzees] are 98% identical in terms of DNA. So that would imply that there are sixty million different base pairs, which would tell us, because it’s two different paths, we’re talking each – they both have thirty million mutations since the common ancestor. And that’s kind of close to that other number, with the thirty-five million plus the five million.

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First, is he confusing the number of base-pair differences with the number of fixed mutations that must have occurred? As I understand this, a single mutation can change many base pairs. It appears that throughout the rest of his argument, when he says "fixed mutations", he is really talking about fixed base-pair changes.

Maximal mutations - Vox Popoli

He averages several estimates the time since the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor (CHLCA) to get 9 million years. Using twenty years per generation, he calculates that there have been 450,000 chimp and human generations since the CHLCA. He then uses an average rate of 1600 generations per "mutation" (single base-pair change) to conclude that there could only be at most 562 "total fixed mutations" in this time (the 125 figure appears to be from using 4 million instead of 9 million years). His justification for using the 1600 rate doesn't make much sense to me.

He is citing a Nature article that I don't have access to:
Human mutation rate revealed - Nature

Source: Sequencing of 19 whole genomes detected 25 mutations that were fixed in the 40,000 generations of the experiment.
NATURE, 2009

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Biologists REALLY Don't Get Math - Vox Popoli

What JFG is claiming in his clarification is that because sexual reproduction CAN result in faster gene fixation than bacterial cloning when measured in terms of generations, it is possible for the fixation rate to be high enough to account for genetic divergence between chimps and humans since the LCHCA, as well as every other observed genetic divergence over time.

However, this is not true. What JFG and his followers forgot to take into account is that it is not generations that are relevant here, but time. And although bacterial cloning may – or may not – be slower to fixate a gene across a population than sexual reproduction in generational terms, bacteria also have considerably more generations over a given period of time than humans do.

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I used the bacterial model in order to demonstrate that the case for natural selection was impossible even when applying the fastest possible fixation rates ever observed.

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This is 1600 generations per "mutation". How does the number of generations that bacteria have factor into this number that is supposedly being very generous? He is trying to justify using the rate ("generations per fixed mutation") of bacteria for humans and chimpanzees because he claims it is faster due to bacteria having many more generations for a given period of time, but then uses 20 years per generation to calculate the "maximum fixed mutations". Am I missing something or does this just not make any sense?

Also, is 1600 "generations per fixed mutation" way too slow of an estimate of this rate for humans and chimpanzees since they reproduce sexually and have a much larger genome than bacteria?

Christians..
Did you notice any change when the Holy Spirit entered you?
How did you know it had happened?
What did you notice then and since?
Was it primarily intellectual, or attitudinal? Was there a sensation a feeling... what actually happened to you when the Holy Spirit came to you?

I'm beginning this as a discussion so that others outside of the regulars here can post about it also. Let's hope it doesn't turn into a mess.


Last night The Holy Spirit brought a subject up to me that I had not put much thought into before. He brought back to remembrance an experience I had happen just a few days after I was born again. This was back in '92 and I was in the Navy at the time. I was down in one of the machinery spaces at some point during the day and it was like I had this sudden urge to speak something. I thought that I was possibly praying out loud or something, but it was like a fire was rising up inside me and around me as I was speaking. The words seemed flow strongly from my heart and I sort of felt The Holy Spirit moving around me during it. It lasted for about a minute or so.

After this happened, I was reminded about a passage in scripture that I had just read about,...

Rev 19:10 And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow–servant with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

I got to thinking about it again and found that I was prophesying only days after I was born again but had not received the filling of The Holy Spirit. The spirit of Jesus (my regenerated human spirit) was witnessing to the truth in this passage of scripture.

I never really put too much thought into that event as others were happening also to me, but as it was brought back to me last night, The Holy Spirit started teaching about the distinctions between the spirit of Christ (our regenerated human spirit) and The Holy Spirit. I was under the assumption that when we were born again we had a small portion of The Holy Spirit placed into our heart and we were then sealed unto the day of redemption. But I'm being shown differently, that that is not the case, that The Holy Spirit must be sought after so that we are filled with Him after water immersion, and the example I was given was Jesus. He did not have The Holy Spirit until after He was water immersed. The text is clear on this in scripture.

I always wondered why Paul asked the disciples he ran into this,....

Act 19:2 and he said to them, "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit, after having believed?" And they said to him, "Nay, we did not even hear whether there is a Holy Spirit."

I thought it was an odd question since I was under the belief that they had a small portion of The Holy Spirit already in their hearts, but after last night, I'm seeing things in a different manner. They didn't have The Holy Spirit inside, and until they were water immersed and Paul laid his hands upon them, did they actually receive The Holy Spirit.

Thinking about this, this spells out all sort of problems for those born again Christians who refuse The Holy Spirit and His gifts. They are trying to run their race on just their regenerated human spirit and nothing more.

Questions, opinions?

In Memoriam: Archpriest Moses Berry

may his soul dwell with the blessed!

A bit of good news for the new year. The DEI office of Clackamas County, Oregon no less, has been entirely defunded and dismantled. Those employees will hopefully find useful work which doesn't just consist of sitting around doing nothing but fomenting hatred. Let's get this ball rolling, America.

This movie opened in theaters yesterday. I'm not sure what this guy (Jeymes Samuel) is trying to say, but it certainly (to me) has more to do with current racial politics than it does the Christian Faith.

Clarence is an atheist Black dope pusher in Jerusalem, who competes in chariot races against Mary Magdalene (yes, really), and owes a lot of money to his supplier, "Jedediah the Terrible". He can't come up with the cash because he's underprivileged and disenfranchised (sound familiar?), and he's also being oppressed by the Romans, who are all white and are the equivalent of the po-lice in today's society.

Mary Magdalene, by the way, is Black, as are the Virgin Mary (played by Alfre Woodard), John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Barabbas, and Jesus himself. Samuel asks "Who was in the 'hood?" with regards to 1st-century Judea, and apparently decides there was no difference between then and any street corner in Philly or Flatbush five minutes ago.

The review below gives it a positive rating (of course), but also says that Samuel wants to "tread lightly, and respectfully, on our ideas of the messiah myth".

I tend to disagree with that assessment; I don't find anything very respectful about it at all. But I suppose that's because I'm male, white, Catholic, and conservative, which automatically means I am also privileged, patriarchal, oppressive, racist, bigoted, blah, blah, blah, blah, the usual tired bleat.

To those who say this might be an over-reaction, what would they say to a white director making a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr., and depicting him as a Chinese lesbian woman? Think that would go over well?

2024’s Most Unique Movie Is an Anti-Historical Epic With an Identity Crisis​