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Regarding faith, I've written quite a bit about this Wingnut, but I don't know if you were present. If you look at Luke 7, you will see a story about a woman who spent a year's wage on a perfume that she anointed Jesus with. She broke down and wept, and dried the feet of Jesus with her tears. Jesus said, "Go in peace, your faith has saved you." She was a living demonstration of what faith is. Faith involves appreciation/gratitude/thankfulness. It would be like you're crossing a street, and a car is about to hit you, and someone jumps in front of you and takes your place so that the car hits him instead of you. Say he survives and is taken to the hospital. Wouldn't you at least want to visit him to thank him for what he did. But let's say instead you merely tell someone what he did, but you never even went to the hospital to visit the guy who saved your life. Faith without works is dead. If we really are thankful/appreciative/grateful we will act; it cannot be otherwise. In both the Greek and the Hebrew the word for "obey" involved hearing. In Greek it means something like "to hear under" if you try to translated the pieces literally. In Hebrew it's the same word, so translators needs to decide which English word to use. The idea is if you hear, if you really hear, you will do. And this is the hearing of faith.

But it doesn't mean anything to you. You repeat phrases like a mantra, but they have no meaning. What useful purpose does this serve? Plus when you say you prefer not to translate, *you're reading from a translation*! It's already been translated! So you're doing the very thing you say you prefer not to do. Anyway, what do you think God wants from us? That we repeat back phrases we don't understand, or that we have an understanding of what He wants to communicate to us?

Yet Samie says that my desperately wicked heart should be my guide?

Would like to see how the question about hell was asked. Any non-SDA might assume that SDA's believed in the more traditional type of hell, ie RCC version.

""I came out very powerfully against Mr. Obama when he stood for same-sex marriage." A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Friday that gays and lesbians had a legal right to marry in all 50 states. Only 36 states and the District of Columbia had allowed gay marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the court's previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996. Chief Justice John Roberts and the courts three other conservatives — Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas — each filed their own separate dissenting opinions. Scalia slammed the majority's opinion as a "threat to American democracy." The decision "says that my ruler and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court," Scalia said. Founded in 1993, CAAP is based in Memphis and has more than 7,000 members. In 2012, the group spoke out against both President Obama and the NAACP for their gay marriage support. In April, the group called on liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from the case because of their "stated bias" on the issue. "Their positions were already known," Owens told Newsmax. "That takes away from the credibility of the court's decision. "They got it wrong in the Dred Scott case," he added, referring to the 1857 court ruling that blacks were property and not American citizens. "The Supreme Court doesn't always get it right. This is one time they really got it wrong." Despite the court's ruling, "I absolutely would not do a gay marriage," Owens declared. "Absolutely. "I think of our children," Owens continued. He is the father of two young adopted children. "What it's going to do to our children. What kind of world are they going to grow up in? "I've said for two years that we're going to have to have civil disobedience. They were very cunning in the way they did it," he said, referencing gay-rights advocates. "Since I was in the civil rights movement, I know that if the people come together in force, things will happen. How they will happen, I don't know. "The homosexual community has not shown all of what it's going to do," Owens said. He mentioned a 2013 California law that allows boys and girls to use the same bathrooms and showers in public schools. "They have a game plan that, now that the Supreme Court has ruled, will take this country down a very immoral path," Owens said. He told Newsmax that he believed that President Obama had always supported gay marriage. "I knew that he was going to do it the second term," Owens told Newsmax. "His deal was, 'Get me elected the first time, and I'll come out for same-sex marriage in my second term.' "He deceived the American people, because the black community would not have backed him had he come out the first time for same-sex marriage. Some people just didn't want to speak against Obama." Owens reiterated his call for civil disobedience, acknowledging that "our work is cut out for us. "It's going to be much harder, because we're going to have to go from state to state. It's going to be hard to do, but it can be done. "Remember, blacks worked for 300 years for civil rights in the courts. Three-hundred long years. It's not something that we're going to win overnight. "There is no quick fix, but I think now the church will rise up," Owens added. "All the Christian churches in the United States that believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, they need to rise up."

I cannot accept any congratulations. God is the One providing and protecting and doing great things. But please join me in praising Him.

Just as a matter of fact, there is very little known about the ancient Druids. Much of what is now associated with Druids and the religions of ancient Celts is simply guesswork. There is no evidence that "Muck Olla" was a Druid god. In fact, Muck originated in folks stories from Yorkshire, England. To avoid bonfires, apple bobbing, pumpkin carving, or wearing costumes simply because "evil" Celts supposedly used them in religious ceremonies is giving too much significance to *speculated* occurrences from hundreds of years ago. I don't like Halloween / Samhain -- because it has more meaning to me than it does to most here. But it doesn't have the capacity to infiltrate a Christian's armor of God. Folks should be more concerned with the popular medieval festivals that are so common nowadays.

To one person, making a joyful noise unto the Lord and shouting to the Lord seems but a bedlam of noise to those whose hearts are out of tune with what is really happening. Recall the out of tune perception of some at Pentecost... it is a bit hard to know exactly what cacophony of sounds were actually present to result in it being described as a bedlam of noise. Just like we cannot know exactly what the music to which the Psalms were set sounded like. We tend to ascribe our own tastes on such things and make some broad assumptions for our own frame of reference. The description sounded to me like a situation where all kinds things were happening at once and poorly performed without much apparent musical ability. Musical instruments essentially used as noise makers. And, Reddog, it it has hardly become like a Led Zep (sic) or Grateful Dead concert in any sense. Hope you can find a quiet little church to suit your tastes... In the meantime, consider that many do find a very meaningful blessing from contemporary music.