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If you are from the Denver area, you are probably aware of the hiker missing in Eldorado Canyon - David Robles. He is my 1st cousin. Eldorado Canyon is a stunningly beautiful place; but it is also treacherous. Please pray that the searchers find him and/or that the family hears from him soon. He is the youngest child of six; and this loss would devastate a large number of people.

I really want to learn Welsh! https://youtu.be/1BXKsQ2nbno

There were times when Jesus kept silent regarding evil. Those were times when I believe He was working for the repentance of the ones He knew did evil. For example- He knew that Judas was a thief but in His dealings with Judas right up until the end He didn't expose Him. I think it is John that gives us that info. Or, when handling Simon at the party where Mary is shamed; Jesus knows Simon's past but doesn't bring that up. In reply to Simon's thought about the sinfulness of Mary (Luke 7:39) He rather tells him to leave Mary alone. He does not expose either Simon or Mary's pasts before the guests.

I quoted the entire 1st amendment to the Constitution above. It is very clear that there shall be no prohibition against freely expressing a person's religious beliefs. There are no conditionals in the language of the amendment. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. It is a positive declaration that leaves no option for this state of liberty to not exist for the individual. However, in the US today individuals in the US are being deprived of this most basic and most important liberty. Where is the conditional that deprives private businessmen of their right to freely express their religion? Where is the conditional that deprives someone who is a part of government of their Consititutional rights? Yet that is the popular opinion and the stance taken by the Supreme Court. I'd say the Supreme Court's stance is in direct violation of the Consititution. I completely reject the idea that a baker not baking a cake for a wedding party is depriving the couple of their rights. How can it when that couple can go to many other bakeries and get exactly what they asked for? They are being deprived of nothing. The baker is simply exercising his rights under the constitution. And that right is one that is covered by Natural Law, or in other words, a God-given right. That is the very foundation of our country. Also, where is the conditional that says if you work for the government you are denied your rights under the Constitution. Really? If you work for a government that professes to follow the Constitution as its highest form of law it must deprive you of your rights? Doesn't that really say that liberty does not exist and that the government itself is hostile towards liberty?

God helmet There is research going on and fits well into the field of neurotheology ["Neurotheology" is a neologism that describes the scientific study of the neural correlates of religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. Other researchers have rejected the term, preferring to use terms like "spiritual neuroscience" or "neuroscience of religion".] One device has been invented which when it beams magnetic waves into the brain causes in the recipient a mystical experience or a feeling of the presence of the divine. It has it skeptics but it also has it's supporter and has caused quite a stir at times in recent history. There was even an editorial in the Review regarding the God helmet. The conclusion one might draw from this research is that there is a physiological basis for appreciation of God and the divine. It has also been known that people who have right temporal lobe seizures also have an intense religious focus to their lives and will write prodigiously on topics of religion. Unfortunately, religious skeptics have used this knowledge in the past to attempt the discrediting important people in religion. The Apostle Paul's experience on the road to Damascus is said by the skeptics to have been the result of an epileptic seizure. More modern skeptics like claim that EGWs visions were the result of a seizure disorder related to being hit in the face by a rock, and we all know she had visions and was a writer of religious books all of her adult life. Muhammad is said by some to have had a seizure disorder. So you see, people who want to not believe have plenty of possible reasons to fuel their lack of faith in more than one religion. The God Helmet is an experimental apparatus originally called the Koren helmet after its inventor Stanley Koren. It was developed by Koren and neuroscientist Michael Persinger to study creativity, religious experience and the effects of subtle stimulation of the temporal lobes. Reports by participants of a "sensed presence" while wearing the God helmet brought public attention and resulted in several TV documentaries.The device has been used in Persinger's research in the field of neurotheology, the study of the neural correlations of religion and spirituality. The apparatus, placed on the head of an experimental subject, generates very weak fluctuating magnetic fields, that Persinger refers to as "complex." These fields are approximately as strong as those generated by a land line telephone handset or an ordinary hair dryer, but far weaker than that of an ordinary refrigerator magnet and approximately a million times weaker than transcranial magnetic stimulation. Persinger reports that many subjects have reported "mystical experiences and altered states" while wearing the God Helmet. The foundations of his theory have been criticised in the scientific press, anecdotal reports by journalists, academics and documentarists have been mixed and several effects reported by Persinger have not yet been independently replicated. One attempt at replication published in the scientific literature reported a failure to reproduce Persinger's effects and the authors proposed that the suggestibility of participants, improper blinding of participants or idiosyncratic methodology could explain Persinger's results. Persinger argues that the replication was technically flawed, but the researchers have stood by their replication. More recently, other researchers have published a replication of one God Helmet experiment. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A similar form of brain stimulation research is known as "transcranial magnetic stimulation (tms)." While the God helmet has undetermined results, it uses very weak magnetic fields. TMS has been well research has have very well established results from brain stimulation with much stronger magnetic waves. On of the most interesting test I have hear of involved TMS where during the period of magnetic waves being focused on the subjects brain, the subject developed "savant" capabilities which ceased when TMS was stopped.

I agree with you. Jesus told us we need the faith of a child. He wasn't just flapping His gums or talking just to be talking when He said it. "Higher criticism" is the human being thinking his mind is the equal of God's. It's the idea that the fallen human mind can successfully distinguish between truth and error without help from God. The French had a name for it in the French Revolution. They called it the Goddess of Reason. And we know exactly what that produced. The failure to take God at His word is destroying faith today, and the Bible actually asks if faith will be found on the earth during the last days.

Raquel Welch?

A sad ending but as you said the family has closure. My prayers for peace and love go out to the entire family

so very, very sorry... (((JoeMo)))

I respectfully disagree, Deaconess. I don't know if you are familiar with Todd White. He is a charismatic "itinerant" (for lack of a better word) minister who openly prays for (and lays hands on) people at these types of venues, including wiccan fairs, rock festivals, strip clubs, bordellos, street protests, and witch doctor strongholds. I have seen him and the front man for the hard rock band Korn (Brian "Head" Welch) roaming around in line before a Korn concert laying hands on and praying for people before the concert. No one they asked to pray for had a problem with it; they seemed earnestly embrace it.

Infallible only when speaking ex cathedra, which is not very often..

Flamboyant but accurate. The Pope is believed to be infallible.

The study note to the ESV Study Bible is interesting: "5:13 keep silent. The reference is probably to the legal proceedings taking place in the gatehouse (see note on v.10). If someone were to speak out against the manifest injustice taking place, his own life might be in danger (v.10), while his objections would do no good because they could not stop the ongoing, entrenched evil." This might be why those who keep their silence are called prudent, or wise, during times like this.

i was too young to vote in 76 election oh gosh math then in Sept of 1979 i was almost of Age..but not quite We really down on Carter cause of everything.. Then I would have voted for Reagan? He was a Saviour! O wow! Pssst.. I am a Registered Republican but not for reasons peeps might think.

I voted for him, but changed my political thought around then also. I guess I was sort of living the saying: “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Churchhill

Consider the text. It says: "who were once alienated and enemies in your mind" When was this? This was before the person being addressed repented. This is what happened: a.The person was at odds with God, alienated and an enemy in his mind. b.The person repented (meaning he changed his mind; that's what "repent" means). c.Then the person was no longer an enemy of God, but a friend, meaning he was reconciled. What brought about his reconciliation? The death of Christ! How did it do that? By leading him to change his mind, to repent; to decide, in his mind, to longer be alienated from God, but to be at peace with God instead. When does a person have peace with God? Being at peace with God, meaning no long at enmity, or being reconciled, happens when one believes (as this verse states). Reconciliation, by virtue of the meaning of the word, cannot happen without repentance.

Who is perfect, hold up your hand. What, no hands? So why all the attempts to trash President Carter? Was a nice, insightful article...can't we just leave it at that?

You can't have reconciliation without man putting in his piece, because man is the one who is at odds with God. A person cannot stop being at odds with God without changing his mind (this is repentance) and deciding that rather than being angry at God, he will be friends with God (this is reconciliation). We are reconciled by the death of Christ when we allow His death to bring us to repentance (see Col. 1:21).

I.'m not the least bit surprised at the support Trump is getting from minorities. Blacks are not a group of idiots. As a group they are intelligent thinking people, and inside any intelligent thinking group of people you will find differences of opinion, differences in political views. The mainstream media would have you believe that all blacks must think the way the race hustlers portray them, but more and more blacks are speaking out and condemning what movements like BLM are doing and saying. Two thirds of blacks disavow BLM. They see the dead end road movements like that would take them down.. I'm not a bit surprised at the support he is getting among Mexicans. I've worked with, been friends with, gone to school with, hundreds of them. I don't remember ever having a problem with one of them. They are a far more conservative group of individuals than the mainstream media would have you believe. The ones I've known have little, if any, sympathy for illegal immigrants. They, in fact, call illegal immigrants wetbacks. Their term, not mine.

A logical explanation of the evidence I find convincing. When we read Scripture, we should try not to read our preexisting ideas into the text, as opposed to letting the text speak. The word "reconcile" means, as its definition, that two parties which were at odds with one another become friends. So to say that we were reconciled by the death of Christ, by the very meaning of the word "reconciled", has to mean that something happens to us, which causes us to become friends with God, which involves the death of Christ. Consider the following text: See how much sense this makes when we take into account what "reconcile" means! The point that we were once alienated and enemies in our minds is tied into being reconciled! This is because to be reconcile *means* to make friends out of enemies. Again, this is what "reconcile" means, and the text here is in perfect harmony with what the word means. Your idea is that we were reconciled without our being involved, but that's impossible, given the meaning of the word, and clearly not in harmony with what the text is communicating in bringing out that we were once "alienated and enemies" where? In our mind. The problem is in the mind, so that's where the problem is fixed. By the death of Christ, we who were once far from God are brought near to God. How? By changing our minds (this is what "repentance" means), which is brought about by the death of Christ ("the goodness of God leads you to repentance" Romans 2:4).

Will also be praying

I don't think the "keep silence" is an accurate translation. Here's why. In the following verses in that chapter God goes on to say that justice must be established and right courses of action need to be taken. To stop talking about the evil that is being done and stop opposing it is to ensure that justice will never be established for silence will ensure the status quo. The Hebrew word translated as "keep silence" can be translated other ways according to Strong's. By implication it can mean to be astonished. To me that makes more sense for the prudent will be astonished at the depths of evil to which their fellow human beings can fall. It also makes more sense when we take into account what God says about the same kinds of behaviors which He addressed through Isaiah. He said, through Isaiah, to do the opposite of keep silent about evil. He said to oppose injustice, evil, etc... and lead Isreal back to following God. Jesus, also, never kept silent about evil. He spoke out quite plainly. He did not mince words when He told the Pharisees they were the children of their father the devil.. It is said that for evil to prevail all that needs to happen is for good men to do nothing, and that includes remaining silent. That's like a law of human behavior for to descend into evil is the easy way out. To remain silent about evil is to tacitly endorse it.

I wonder if it means avoid bringing attention to yourself when a prudent person would comprehend that their actions won't have any effect. Trying to give Bible studies at an Ozzy Ozborne concert probably won't work and you would likely be wasting your time in that venue. Maybe if means to use your speech and wealth to help others quietly without bringing attention to yourself. There is a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking.

perhaps the verse needs to be read with the one immediately preceding it: "There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil." Perhaps it may be referring to the wealthy, advising them not to use their wealth to impose discrimination, e.g., bribery, against the poor and innocent who have no way to defend themselves... don't know...just making a guess...

To add to your comment, we can only make a decision according to the information we have. One more piece of information can make a difference in one's opinion.

Considering how a lottery, or any other gambling venture, is funded, one has to be aware that every dollar the winner takes home is a dollar lost (wasted) by the millions of lottery losers. The only way gambling can work is for there to be a lot of losers spending money. Gambling simply exploits greed for quick easy money. And for it to work that greed has to work its mysterious work of shutting down logic and reason. The same way a con man can effectively scam people. After years of reviewing scams and victims stories of being scammed I have reached the conclusion that greed just makes a person stupid. And I think that the sad stories of lottery winners losing it all tends to confirm that.

Yes, JoeMo I just prayed and will continue to pray until the situation is resolved. Please keep us informed.

This would mean the more people who die before the age of accountability, the better, as far as their eternal salvation is concerned. So fighting starvation and disease among young children, under your hypothesis, would tremendously decrease their chance of eternal bliss, and, conversely, whatever could be done to increase their chance of death would increase their change of eternal bliss. When one winds up with such an odd logical conclusion, one must question the premise that led there.