iluvatar5150 said:

I was talking about national creeds

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iluvatar5150 said:

Want me to point out all the fraud committed by conservative native-born Americans?

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Landon Caeli said:

The third world countries are the real threat! Wake up! They are the ones with the cartels, who use their own people to smuggle the drugs into this country, which poisons our population with mind altering substances, causing them to fail in education, lose the jobs they can get, become unemployable going forward, and then eventually, off to prison.

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FenderTL5 said:

Why don't we just allow the Heritage Foundation to hand-pick the wealthy and/or well-connected, race appropriate, individuals they want to allow into the country? That'd be much easier and great for the entire nation.. doncha' think?

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Oompa Loompa said:

Staying on the OP topic, I recommend you just do a Google search on the Samalia fraud ring in Minnesota and it's connection to the Al Shabab terrorist group. I will wait.

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Oompa Loompa said:

It was entirely relevant to your comments. You rolled a 3 on deflection and failed miserably.

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Delvianna said:

So true, every older generation complains about the younger but also true that the younger generations today have been screwed up by tech that we're only now realizing the effects of what we did (social media, etc).

What generation are you from?

My music style has changed drastically. As a teen, I liked rock, Pop, and ska but now, I prefer modern classical, Christian rock, and even some Christian rap as long as it isn't mumble rap.

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History of floods

Learn about the history of significant flood events in Queensland since the 1860s.

www.qld.gov.au

Far North Queensland Low Pressure System, 15 - 26 April 2021
Southern Queensland Severe Weather, 20 – 31 March 2021
Tropical Cyclone Niran and Associated Low Pressure System, 25 February – 3 March 2021
Far North Queensland Tropical Low, 24 – 30 January 2021
Tropical Cyclone Imogen and Associated Low Pressure System, 2 – 12 January 2021
Western Queensland Thunderstorms 21-30 December 2020
South East Queensland Coastal Trough, 12-15 December 2020
Gumlow Bushfire, 21- 26 November 2020
K’gari (formerly Fraser Island) Bushfires, 9 November 2020 – 23 December 2020
South East Queensland Hailstorm, 31 October 2020
Kooralbyn Bushfire, 12 - 19 October 2020

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Hailstorm - South-east Queensland, 2020 | Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub

Widespread thunderstorms affected central and south-east Queensland between 24‑29 October. Thunderstorms affected Brisbane on 24 and 25 October, and again on 27 and 28 October, bringing heavy rainfall to some sites, flash flooding and strong wind gusts.

knowledge.aidr.org.au

Within 24 hours of 31 October, the Insurance Council of Australia declared the natural disaster a catastrophe with the damage bill currently at $980 million. Insurers have received more than 42,000 claims as at 23 June 2021.

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iluvatar5150 said:

That’s all wonderful and also totally irrelevant to the comment of mine to which you responded.

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Guojing said:

So to understand you correctly, because of what you regard as your "proper hermeneutical exegesis", you are saying the Acts 21:18-25 words cannot be therefore understood in their literal meaning?

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iluvatar5150 said:

Yeah? How much damage have immigrants done to your area?

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romansroad said:

Hello brothers and sisters. I have followed Christ for many years I have struggled with OCD since I was a young teen. At first it was having to say things a certain amount of times for it to feel right. That abated and it did not rear its ugly head it I was 35. Sitt at home with my wife, all of a sudden, I started having blasph thoughts about the Holy Spirit. It scared me to death. We didny know what was going on and didn’t go to the hospital For an evaluation. After about a yea, I agreed to go into an inpatient psychiatric hospital. at that point, they didn’t really know what was going on and treated me for simple anxiety. The medication helped and was able come off a lot of it after a while. At the beginning of this year it returned exce on steroids this time. I have never had these kinds of thoughts in my entire life. Along with it was an urge or an anger or hate towards God. I don’t understand any of this even though I have known about scrupulosity for a while now. I don’t want these thoughts and feelings but at times it feels as if I am an apostate or have committed the unpardonable sin. I feel lost, God doesn’t talk to me anymore. I can’t read the Bible without having the worst thought. I am on prozac an one other medication. It slows the thoughts do but it makes you not care about anything. I feel like someone has switched my brain with an unbeliever . I feel hopeless. It’s been 11 months and my faith is waning. The thoughts may have slowed but these urges are just not going away. I know John Bunyan had issues like this. I know that scrupulosity can flip your beliefs and make you question everything I am in counseling but they are having me try to do things that are scary. Only God knows about my soul but I want God to heal me and restore my soul. I believe in miracles as I have witnessed them before. I grew up in a very strict denomination which really was more about works than faith. Couple that with a an austere father I really hated as a teenager. I refuse to give up though. I covet your prayers.

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Valletta said:

Clever writing, this is one slick author. Daniel Fried could easily get a job with the establishment media. J.D. Vance y said: I’d also say that citizenship in the 21st century necessarily means building. Because America is not just an idea, we’re a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life. Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from new land meant creating new tangible things. New homes, new towns, new infrastructure to tame a wild continent. That is our heritage as Americans."

So J.D says that America is not just an idea but a particular place. The absolute truth, it's fact that applies to every country. And J.D. goes on to say that particular place comes WITH "a particular people" etc. Quite true, again something that applies to every country. Fried, in his "hit job" on J.D., give his own imaginative explanation to the reader:

He defined America as a blood-and-soil nation, a nation not based on universal ideas but composed of a what he called “particular people” with “our shared qualities,” starting with heritage. That seemed the point of his speech. Vice President Vance seemed to be redefining America, defining it down and backwards. He would undo Abraham Lincoln’s profound achievement: not just winning the Civil War but reconstituting the nation, no longer as a White Man’s republic, but a “new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Vice President Vance’s argument would overthrow the meaning of the Gettysburg Address, the speech that restored America to its original principles from the Declaration of Independence after its bloodiest war.

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Delvianna said:

I'm not struggling with aging, more just shocked by my different views. Like, looking at younger generations and their new made up word choices just makes me wonder if our generation looked that dumb to older generations.

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Nithavela said:

I don't know. I don't think anyone (incuding Biden) knows.

Besides that, who cares? Trump can just terminate any Biden executive order he likes and keep any he wants to keep, just like any president after Trump can do the same with Trump's EOs. That he just stresses the autopen part is nothing but a publicity stunt.

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Dreyma said:

Hello, my name is Dreyma! (Or at least, that is the alias I typically use online.)

I graduated from college last year with an education degree, and now I'm teaching English to high-school students at a small public school in a rural area. This is my first time working in a profession and my first time living away from parents, so it's been quite the adjustment.

I'm here because I spend too much time chatting in online communities that draw me away from Christ instead of towards him. I thought this might be a good substitute, a place that could strengthen my faith instead of making me feel ashamed or uncertain of it.

(I just need to make sure that I don't use conversations here as another excuse to procrastinate chores and lesson planning and grading...)

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Ophiolite said:

The only thing that annoys me more than criticism of my opinions is failure to criticise my opinions. The former makes me temporarily annoyed, the latter leaves me permanently ignorant.

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FATHER’S DEATH APPARITION

It had began, precisely, on the 11th January 1979. No, that wasn’t quite true – the background to the scene was set long before that.

But on that night, he had the experience of his father appearing to him in his room. Which was a bit strange – he hadn’t seen his father for six months, and that had been when he had been driving one-way along Ann Street in the city, going from the Valley towards George Street. He had been one of the hundreds of drivers in pre-peak hour traffic, warily watching the lights and other drivers, when suddenly he saw his father walking in the opposite direction on the foot path, on his right hand side. He had resisted the impulse to wave – he couldn’t stand the man. Not what one should think about one’s father, at least not in polite society. But how do you explain vindictive, relentless, stupid cruelty to polite society?

His father didn’t see him, or he was pretty sure he didn’t. And he had looked like death warmed up – his face drawn and pale, with a sort of shadow about it, and an almost demonic cast to the sullen, angry features.

Then he’d driven past and that had been the end of it. Apart from despising him.

The last time he’d seen his father before that was another six months, and that was when the old man had kicked him out of the family home, which was shortly to go under the hammer due to his parents’ divorce.

And that had been the symbolic end of his father’s role as dedicated family man.

True, there’d been a sort of impulse to go and visit him for a few days before his father’s death. He’d resisted it, but if he had to describe it the impulse, the only thing he could have said was that it was sort of “spiritual”, a feeling that just would not go away, quite insistent at times. But hatred and bitterness had won, and he had refused. But the feeling, the persistent impulse to visit – where had it come from?

So on the night of the 11th January 1979, his father visited him instead.

He remembered the setting well. It was January, hot in Brisbane, and with the feeling of persecution he occasionally experienced, he had shut and locked all the windows and doors, except for the bathroom window. He didn’t have much choice in one sense – there were no security screens or bars, and all of them opened onto the balcony or back landing. So if they had been open, anybody could have gotten in. And with his hearing loss, he was unlikely to hear somebody unless they made a lot of noise.

The old double bed had a sag in the middle of it. He had spoken to the landlord about it, but the landlord has simply pointed out the lease said “partly furnished”. By which he meant that if Bob wanted a better bed, he could buy it himself. So far he hadn’t, and as a result he always rolled into the middle.

And it really had been hot and humid. He had to get up at 4.30am, since he started work at 6am, and he had a long way to travel. He had tossed and turned, and finally drifted into a fitful sleep, lying face down, which was how he normally started dozing.

Then at some ungodly hour, he’d felt something shaking his back. He shrugged, and tried to go back to sleep. It happened again, almost as though somebody was trying to wake him up.

So he woke up and turned over. Odd – he must have imagined it, as there was nobody there.

Then something misty began to appear in the corner of the room, near the bedroom door. It seemed to sharpen, and his father appeared.

He watched in amazement as his father approached the foot of the bed.

“Hello, Robert” he said. Yet Bob had the sense his father was not really looking at him, but was mainly focused on something behind him, and above his head. His father did glance at him, but then looked up again, almost enthralled.

Bob was startled. “How the hell did you get in here!” he demanded.

The question remained unanswered. “I’ve come to apologize for the way I’ve treated you” his father said. “We had no idea of what you were going through”. He looked at Bob again, then over his head.

Bob was angry. “You mean you had no idea what you were doing to me!”, he replied bitterly.

At this his father appeared distraught, shook his head in fear, and held both hands over his face, as though he could not stand what he was seeing.

Then he seemed to recover, and he resumed looking above Bob’s head, as though gazing at something beautiful. Then at times he would again cover his face with his hands, and a tortured, frightened expression would come over his face.

His father looked devastated. “I’ve completely wrecked your life” he burst out. “I’ve destroyed your confidence!”

Then he added “I did it deliberately!”

Bob broke the silence. He had been thinking about the years of intense verbal cruelty his father had lavished upon him, and the intense frustration that had resulted.

“Why!!” he demanded.

The answer was almost immediate.

“I was jealous” was the reply. “I didn’t have the same opportunities that you did. It wasn’t easy for me either, you know. And I didn’t have the chance to see anything like this!”

“I know it wasn’t easy! Why do you think I was so patient! I knew that by the time I was twelve!”

His father looked deeply ashamed, and shocked, as though realizing for the first time just how much his son had understood, and from what an early age.

But his next reply came as a bit of a shock. “You weren’t very patient”.

Bob was taken aback. He’d thought he’d been very patient, considering just how vicious his father’s diatribes had been. He remembered the constant humiliation, the dripping sarcasm, the cruel comments that followed his every little mistake, or child’s effort to do something. Yet here was his father saying he hadn’t been patient.

Not patient? Compared to what? He’d like to know. He wondered how many other people would have put up with so much deliberate contempt for so long without cracking.

There was another moment of silence, as father and son reflected on their situations, the son facing his father and his father facing something that could not be seen.

Bob turned around to see what his father was gazing at with such an enraptured expression. But all he could see was the plasterboard, behind which he knew was the brick wall at the end of the building.

He turned back to his father. “What is all this, a dream or something?”

His father looked slightly bemused. “No, it’s not a dream. I died tonight.”

Bob shook his head. “What?”

His father replied again. “I died tonight.”

There was mutual silence.

Then his father raised his hands in front of his face again as though appalled. Whatever he was looking at seemed to relent, and the enthrallment was back again.

“I served the devil. You do too, but you’ll become a Christian.”

Bob stared at him. “I’m an atheist”.

His father looked bemused again. “You’ll become a Christian.”

Bob’s curiousity got the better of him. “So how’s all this supposed to start?”

His father glanced at him, briefly. “You’ll meet a pastor. You’ll think he’s great, but all he’ll do is discourage you even more!”

Now Bob was beginning to get annoyed.

“You know what really gets to me! Because of the way you’ve treated me, I’ve now treated Jennifer badly”. But he knew he wasn’t being fully honest – there were two particular instances of behaviour on his part that bothered him.

His father then somehow seemed to be hovering right over him, with the usual bad tempered look on his face, that had been so much a part of him for so long that he did not have a bad temper – he had become a bad temper.

“Don’t blame me for that!!” he almost seemed to shout. “That was your decision”.

His eyes were like black pits. Bob shrank back, a bit difficult since he was lying on his back in bed.

But Bob knew his father was right. But it also struck him how quickly his father was on the offensive as soon as he had a particle of ground to justify his stance, as though the twenty years of cruelty he had inflicted were of no consequence. The other bit was, how did his father know what the two instances were? He had never told him. Oh, he’d insinuated it was an option at one stage, but that was as far as it went.

Then his father disappeared, or seemed to. But as Bob recovered and sat up again, he could see him against the bookcase.

This time his father looked forlorn. “Son, you’ve got to forgive me!”

Bob rebelled. “You treated me like dirt for twenty years, and now you want forgiveness!”

“Son, it’s not for my sake. It’s for your sake. It’s too late for me. All I was expected to do was look after my family, and I didn’t even do that! If you don’t forgive me, you’ll destroy yourself!”

Then it seemed he was running out of time. “Son, you’ve got to keep away from Jennifer and her mother”.

Bob misheard him. He thought his father said “your mother”. He replied back, “How can I? They’re my responsibility!”

His father answered, in seeming anguish. “Oh, I meant …she’ll use you!”

It was a long time before Bob understood his father was talking about his girlfriend’s mother, and not his own mother.

Then his father seemed to become even more desperate. “Son, you’ve got to believe me!” And a look of complete dejection came over his father’s face.

Then he added “I’ve been an absolute mongrel to you!”

Bob was angry. “Why should I (forgive you)? You’ve spent the whole of my life …”

But he never finished. As he was talking, his father was turning to his right, Bob’s left, as though he could see something in the distance. He seemed to be taking fright, and said “No!”

Then louder “No! No!”

Then finally, he screamed in sheer terror, shook from head to foot and raised his arms in what appeared to be an attempt to ward something off, something hideously frightening. It was so terrifying, Bob started to scream hiimself.

Then his father disappeared into eternity.

Bob was left staring at the bookcase, in the darkness, alone.

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RDKirk said:

I use terms like "I gather" and "the suspicion is" for a reason.

Someone with real expertise would have made those checks in ways that would not have been apparent to people with real expertise.


And then you tell us about someone without real expertise.

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BPPLEE said:

Umm, no that's not what that says

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jonojim1337 said:

Says here it is. I wonder what they think about Christ.

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