6 minutes ago, thormas said:

More conspiracy theories and....

the trumpeter caves to Putin, alienates the Allies, blows it with North Korea and tries to muscle the Ukraine - really tells you something. Hey, accomplishments?

 

Caves to Putin on what?  The Obamagate Russia scam?  Justice has the evidence.  We just need Obama’s treason hearing.

Biden proudly admitted on camera to muscling the Ukraine to fire the guy prosecuting his son for corruption.  

North Korea is doing just fine now that Trump removed his CIA handlers.  

Soros funds wars; Trump stops them.

Tells you something.

33 minutes ago, Elen1107 said:

You don't think that any of the people(s) that I underlined from the first six chapters of Mark "got it"?

Is that what you are saying?

Correct.  Before the incarnation event concluded in Jesus’ resurrection, heavenly session as our high priest and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the students and disciples of Jesus had no way to consciously connect with God directly.
They thought they had heard a prophet and miracle worker, but the classic Jewish separation between creator and creation remained. 

1 hour ago, JosephM said:

Thomas ,

Why don't you tweet your thoughts to President Trump himself instead of thinking you are some kind of all knowing  judge, jury and executioner here! You seem pretty good at ranting yourself. We acknowledge your hate and despise for him so why don't you think about just letting  it go and allow yourself to heal? 

Because Thormas has no knowledge of what President Trump has accomplished.  He is only concerned about his President’s words and appearance as conveyed by partisan media propaganda.

4 hours ago, PaulS said:

Okay, so now that you acknowledge outliers (your actual understanding of statistics yet to be revealed) I guess you're no longer saying that covid only endangers octogenarians in long term care.  

CV kills less than flu and pneumonia?  What, are you talking over the history of man?  Tell me - how many people have died from flu and pneumonia in the US in the last 6 months?  I don't think you are keeping a very good track of statistics, just quietly.

Covid has nearly disappeared in the US?  If that is the case, you are very lucky Burl (to live in the world you live in) unlike the cursed state of Victoria and that camp in Zealand!   Camps!  Really, where do you get this stuff?

This is caused by unnecessary Covid controls.

 https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/stunning-photos-desperate-provisions-thousands-cars-line-texas-food-bank?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)

3 hours ago, PaulS said:

 

Not sure where you get your data from Burl but it is clearly an erroneous source if you think that covid only endangers octogenarians in long term care.  Yes, they are the highest at-risk group by far, but people in all age brackets, from babies to aged care (and without underlying health issues) have died from the virus.

Your society is not getting destroyed.  Suck it up for a few months and you will largely be okay.

I keep track of the stats every day.  There are a few outliers, but overall cv kills less than flu or pneumonia and the mean age of deaths here is 80.

Now it has almost disappeared.  I do read about the lockdowns in Victoria and the camps in New Zealand so ymmv.

2 hours ago, PaulS said:

We can see there are gentile influences to some of Matthew and I'm sure there was editing done throughout the ages also.  That largely Matthew says nothing about Jesus encouraging non-gentiles into the Kingdom says more than these couple of verses, in my opinion.  It just would not be hard, if it were true, for Jesus to utter one sentence such as "the Kingdom is for Jew and Gentile alike", if that is what he actually believed.

Fallacious argument from lack of evidence.

5 hours ago, Elen1107 said:

What do you mean by "justified in Christ"?

It’s the realization that Christ always points to God like a compass needle always points North.  It’s the point where one ‘gets it’.

Absolutely, but what you do not read about is the people who mistook infatuation for faith, or the ones whose were enlightened but backslid into their old selves, or those who simply got it wrong.

They did have the Scriptures, and Jesus always taught in accordance with the Scriptures but of course none of these people were justified in Christ.

38 minutes ago, Elen1107 said:

Do you have any quotes or parts that you can remember about how any of these people put their conscious experience of God into words?

It sounds interesting. It seems that I've read some of this, at least by Augustine, but right now I can't remember what I've read.

If you have any recollections let me know. Thanks

Conversion of St. Augustine

April 24

Augustine's life as a young man was characterized by loose living and a search for answers to life's basic questions.

He would follow various philosophers, only to become disillusioned with their teachings. For nine years he was associated with the Manichean sect. But he gradually became aware that Manicheism was unable to provide sastisfactory answers to his probing questions.

At this time, Augustine was teaching rhetoric in Milan. He went to hear the preaching of Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. At first he went only to hear Ambrose's eloquent style of speaking. But the Bishop's preaching led Augustine to a new understanding of the Bible and the Christian Faith.

Some time in the year 386, Augustine and his friend Alypius were spending time in Milan. While outdoors, Augustine heard the voice of a child singing a song, the words of which were, "Pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it." He thought at first that the song was related to some kind of children's game, but could not remember ever having heard such a song before.

Then, realizing that this song might be a command from God to open and read the Scriptures, he located a Bible, picked it up, opened it and read the first passage he saw. It was from the Letter of Paul to the Romans. Augustine read:

Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. --Romans 13: 13-14

Reading this scripture, Augustine felt as if his heart were flooded with light. He turned totally from his life of sin. He was Baptized by Ambrose during the Easter Vigil April 24, 387. His friend Alypius and his son Adeodatus were Baptized at the same time.

Later, reflecting on this experience, Augustine wrote his famous prayer: You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. He went on to become a powerful influence on the spirituality and theology of the Christian Church.
 

https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine

18 minutes ago, thormas said:

Of course the entire economic crisis is horrible but the lost would be substantially less if we had a president who knew what he was doing, listened to the experts and actually cared. But we don't, he (and some governors) blew it and here we are. There was a better way........but our fate is tied to a failure of a man and president.

I'll go with the experts on the dangers of Covid-19.  Not sure where you are getting your numbers but the yearly flu deaths in the US are far less that the present number of Covid deaths over 6 months in the US - unless I have the wrong information. And we typically have a vaccine for the flu which mitigates its impact.

Last time I checked even octogenarians are people and US citizens ............and some 165K Americans actually did get sick and they died, and many probably didn't have to. But hey that's me: for the trumpster it is more important to have college football and nascar, open schools without leading the way on any effective testing, sign 'executive orders' to make himself look better and not pressure a Republican congress that wants to cut benefits that will only increase the suffering of the people. 

It is not AIDS or Ebola - I had a friend who died of AIDS decades ago and it was a horrible death, today that person would have been able to take 1 pill (I believe) to remain healthy. And he was able to have visitors till the end. My friend's Mother died of COVID and had to die alone in the hospital and they still have not been able to have a funeral for her. Covid is not AIDS but I was never in fear of catching AIDS. And how many US citizens died of Ebola?

And how about the kids? Ninety kids dead and counting but the trumpster uses stats to tell us kids are ok -  fill the schools. Ninety kids is a statistic unless it's your kid or a friend's kid but hey open the schools. I'm glad more and more people across the country are ignoring this clown.

Nobody does like getting sick but suffering in our society (destruction is a bit much) is due in large part to a failed, uncaring trumpeter.

 

 

You are dead wrong.  Emphasis on DEAD.  Trump has been supporting the cure since the beginning and fought by our phony ‘experts, Fauci and Gates, who are heavily invested in Moderna and who managed Obama’s gift to the Wuhan lab that created the virus.

Trump has been absolutely on point every single time.  It is the China virus and it could have been eliminated by the HCQ protocol used as a preventive.

8 hours ago, Elen1107 said:

It's nice to have some agreement on this and on some of this/these things.

I don't ness. see it as "the mystery of the cross", however I really like what you said about "the intersection of the horizontal physical and the vertical metaphysical". I'm kind of more understanding it as the intersection of the eternal (vertical) and time {lines} (horizontal).

Do you think you could put your conscious experience of God into words? Or that anyone can?

Thanks

I can’t but Merton, Augustine, Thomas á Kempis, Rumi, and others have.

1 hour ago, thormas said:

We all value our freedoms but as people pulled together and sacrificed in other times, so too everybody should do the same now (masks, hand washing, distancing, no crowds). It is more than absurd that people are not willing to do this, to sacrifice for a few months to help bring numbers down everywhere. 

All well and good if one considers the full cost/benefit analysis of these social controls.  

28 million additional homeless is a big cost for a disease that is less dangerous than the flu and only endangers octogenarians in long term care.  This is not AIDS or Ebola.  The vast majority of the infected do not even get sick.

Nobody likes getting sick, but cv is not worth destroying our society.

3 hours ago, Elen1107 said:

Even during Jesus's ministry, a lot of people just seemed to get the faith, just the simple message of "good news" , and then Jesus and his group went off to somewhere else, leaving those people to figure somethings out and do something on their own. I think people experienced him as eternal, whether it was during or after his ministry or thousand(s) of years later.

Not wrong, but an inaccurate picture.  Matthew lays it out best.

Jesus performed miracles and taught only in parables so that people would NOT understand. He left them with questions, and taught the meaning of the parables to the apostles privately.

The apostles taught the people, and each developed their own 12 disciples (the 70/72).  The development of the church was a deliberate strategy used by Jesus.  He was not an apocalyptic prophet like JtB. 

Conscious experience of God happens.  This is the mystery of the cross; the intersection of the horizontal physical and the vertical metaphysical.

10 minutes ago, thormas said:

Not sure it 'needs' to be preached to all just that it had begun to be preached to Gentiles in the 1st C CE.

We all know that continued and created some horrific situations for native people. So. I'd leave the Amazons alone and I hope no missionaries have visited them.

Maybe we can compromise and just preach to the Amazon Primes.

Matthew 10:17-20 continues to say the disciples will eventually bear witness to the Romans and the Gentiles.

Matthew 10:5-6 indicates the disciples are to go to only the most accepting of Jewish households first in order to avoid being persecuted out of business before accumulating critical mass.

These verses would seem to be a matter of ensuring the first seeds of Jesus’ church were planted in fertile ground rather than a restriction of the message.

9 minutes ago, PaulS said:

What I mean is are you talking about ancient peoples or are you talking about the modern religious movement of Messianic Judaism?

I’d ask a rabbi.  There is plenty of literature but I would not know where to start.

22 minutes ago, PaulS said:

Which ones?

I don’t know enough about them.  Just seems like a likely place to look.

So what do the Messianic Jews have to say about Paul?

There were many early forms of Christianity.  The Ebionites were probably the most ‘Jewish’. 

Ehrman is the best introduction to early Christianities imo.

5 hours ago, Pipiripi said:

Okay, when you are so far let me know. 

I read your link Pipi and it says the Bible is not to be read as it is written but instead interpreted as metaphor and symbolism.  

It is also anonymous and provides no rationale for the interpretation.   It is sheer guesswork written by someone in hiding.

I’m puzzled as to why you posted this link.

18 minutes ago, Pipiripi said:

My friend go in here. Only a few can understand it. end-times-prophecy.org 

One of the principles of this site is that the bible is NOT to be interpreted literally or as history.

It really does not promote the literalist interpretation you express, so I’m a bit puzzled by that.