the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape.
Wowsers!!!
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BurnTheShips
JoinedPosts by BurnTheShips
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Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History
by purplesofa infrom newsweekhttp://www.newsweek.com/id/233844/page/1.
history in the remakinga temple complex in turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.. berthold steinhilber / laif-reduxa pillar at the gobekli tepe temple near sanliurfa, turkey, the oldest known temple in the worldby patrick symmes | newsweekpublished feb 19, 2010from the magazine issue dated mar 1, 2010. .
they call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern turkey.
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BurnTheShips
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The Doctrine of Hell
by Yizuman inis the doctrine of hell a hindrance or a help in witnessing?
many evangelicals are ashamed of this biblical doctrine, viewing it as a blemish to be covered up by the cosmetic of divine love.
but this dishonors gods word.
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BurnTheShips
Like the Trinity, some X-JWs still attack a Watchtower caricature of Hell. A strawman.
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Banks face foreclosure fraud crisis that could give you a free home
by moshe inbreaking story on the internet:.
foreclosuregate: time to break up the too-big-to-fail banks.
by: ellen brown october 15, 2010 .
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BurnTheShips
Banks face foreclosure fraud crisis that could give you a free home
So where does that leave people like me, who have done everything possible to honor our debts, and have not defaulted upon them?
I have a number of acquaintances (I no longer consider them "friends") who had cash savings in the bank and mortgages on their homes.
They simply bought another house at an incredibly depressed price for cash after the real estate market collapsed, moved in, and then defaulted on their current house.
That's it! No more mortgage! The shitty credit will resolve itself in a few years!
Honesty and transparency are being turned into a suckers game in this country. Am I a fool for still believing in honoring my word and contractual promise?
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The Doctrine of Hell
by Yizuman inis the doctrine of hell a hindrance or a help in witnessing?
many evangelicals are ashamed of this biblical doctrine, viewing it as a blemish to be covered up by the cosmetic of divine love.
but this dishonors gods word.
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BurnTheShips
I don't think a real discussion about hell can take place with people who talk about it as if it is a hotdog roast.
Exactly.
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The Doctrine of Hell
by Yizuman inis the doctrine of hell a hindrance or a help in witnessing?
many evangelicals are ashamed of this biblical doctrine, viewing it as a blemish to be covered up by the cosmetic of divine love.
but this dishonors gods word.
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BurnTheShips
DD, Chalam, PSac, and I may quibble about the details, but we all believe the Christian doctrine of Hell.
There is a Hell, and it is horrible beyond words.
There is no sugar coating that. The metaphors of a burning fire in Scripture are just metaphors, but just as written descriptions of heaven cannot even begin to approach the blissfulness of Heaven, so too for the written descriptions of Hell.
Our spirits do not end when our body dies. They can find their final destination in the source of light, which is their own source as well, or they can spend eternity stumbling in the darkness, where they can feed on their own miserable love of evil forever, and bring evil upon each other, no different than Satan and the fallen angels who have also chosen this for themselves.
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226
The Doctrine of Hell
by Yizuman inis the doctrine of hell a hindrance or a help in witnessing?
many evangelicals are ashamed of this biblical doctrine, viewing it as a blemish to be covered up by the cosmetic of divine love.
but this dishonors gods word.
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BurnTheShips
I believe there is a Hell. God did not make it. We make it for ourselves.
Hell is more a state than a place.
Heaven is perfect union with God.
Here, we have partial union with God through grace.
In Hell, there is a complete divorce between the soul and God.
The human soul was made for the highest and best: God.
Those that choose a lesser place/state than that to spend eternity, choose Hell for themselves.
Oh my! Sounds too suspiciously like, "We don't disfellowship anyone, they disfellowship themselves by their actions."
Christians will go to great lengths to cover over the original belief in a literal hell with apologetic arguments like that.
Randy, have you spoken with your Catholic friends on the matter?
Here is something Tom Cabeen posted a while back:
Catholics and the Orthodox, following the teachings of the earliest Christians, believe that it is impossible for God not to love us, his earthly children. Love is his very essence and he made us expressly so that he could love us. God loves us so much that he sent his only-begotten son to save us and demonstrate the length he would go to to show us he loves us.
Out of love for us, he made us in such a way that our deepest longings, our most profound needs, are satisfied in Him. He made us to find our fulfillment in the best he had, Himself. He made us to be his lovers; thus we will never be satisfied until we are in perfect relationship with him. When that happens, we will also be in the correct relationship with all other creatures who are in relationship with him, a huge loving family of giving and shared experiences. That is why he made us, so that he could love us and share his life with us.
Love, by its very nature, must be spontaneous. It cannot be forced or coerced and still be love. In order to meet that condition, God had to give us free will, along with the qualities of character we would need to exercise that free will, including intelligence, curiosity, and the capacity for faith and love. As a consequence, we must make a free choice to obey God; we must come to him in pure loving response to what he has done for us. God would never try to force us into obeying him, even though He knows we will never be completely happy until we conform our thoughts and actions to His.
But free will also has a downside. Since we have the God-given capacity for choice, He must also give us the right to reject Him. If that were not true, we would not truly have free will. If we choose to go down that path away from our Creator, God will use every means at his disposal, short of violating our free will, to call us to repentance. He offers free forgiveness and He demonstrates his love for us over and over again, in hope that we might come to realize that only in full, complete relationship with him will we ever realize our potential as his children, made in his own image. But ultimately, we have the right to reject him, even to hate him, to substitute love we ought to have for Him and give it to other, lesser things.
In the words of C.S. Lewis on this subject, it boils down to this: "In the end, we either say to God: 'Thy will be done' or God will say to us 'Thy will be done.'" God knows (because he made us) that once we get to that point, despite all his efforts to demonstrate his love for us, that our hatred will grow until we hate Him with all our heart (just as Satan does). Those who ultimately will end up hating God will seek to be away from his presence, even if they would be welcome there.
God will abandon such creatures to their own devices, and thus, they will be in what Jesus called "outer darkness". Just "where" that will be is not the point at all. Even if God were to allow such people full access to his presence, they would hate to be there. Like a Rock & Roll fan at an opera, or an opera fan at a Heavy Metal concert, the same "place", God’s presence, would be heaven for one and hell for the other. Imagery like fire is used in Scripture to represent the pain of separation from God (which is the Catholic definition of hell, by the way).
One more point about eternity. Eternity does not mean an endless succession of days; millions, billions or trillions of them. Eternity means being outside of time, timeless (that is the literal meaning of the word). All of our linear, sequential time is included in timelessness. One way to envision that is to think about the relationship of our linear time to the "time" in storybooks on a shelf. We can open a book and enter a particular "time", the succession of events found in that story. Then we can close the book and be completely outside of that "time", then later reopen it and be right back in it. That is how some orthodox thinkers have compared the linear time we live in to the eternity in which God dwells.
Those who reject God will end up living in timelessness also, but without the one thing they need to be happy: God. But it will be their own choice about the matter. They will not just be sent somewhere because they inadvertently broke some little rule or other. It will be because they have made a fully informed choice, of their own free will, knowing full well the consequences of their choice, to live without God, and, when offered the chance to change their mind and repent, will refuse. Those who do that will be, completely as a result of their own choice, in hell. -
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According to fundi Christians, where did people go when they died pre-ransom?
by sabastious inbefore jesus offered the ransom, where did people go when they died?.
-sab.
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BurnTheShips
Chalam, I've read the passage, it does not say they got to heaven pre-sacrifice. In fact, you could take it the other way.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Jesus is the first fruits of the dead to go to heaven. The texts I cited earlier show this.
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How to prepare for a JC defense
by brotherdan inmany of you have heard this recording, but i wanted to post it again for some of you (bottleofwater) that will possibily be in jc's soon.
rick townsend does an excellent job (imo) of attempting to defend his position to the elders.
in nearly every category his arguments are stronger.. it is a bit frustrating to listen to because of the elders lack of reasoning ability, but rick is amazing.
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BurnTheShips
It was`t the closure Brotherdan was looking for..
Getting undressed by horny injuns on the high plains that haven't seen a squaw in weeks?
Maybe it is the "closure" he was looking for!
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BurnTheShips
Ricin comes from the same plant source, I believe...
You are thinking of castor beans. Castor oil comes from them. Canola comes from a different plant.
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How to prepare for a JC defense
by brotherdan inmany of you have heard this recording, but i wanted to post it again for some of you (bottleofwater) that will possibily be in jc's soon.
rick townsend does an excellent job (imo) of attempting to defend his position to the elders.
in nearly every category his arguments are stronger.. it is a bit frustrating to listen to because of the elders lack of reasoning ability, but rick is amazing.
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BurnTheShips
It's a courageous last stand.
That is all it can be.
There is no defending against the bOrg.
All you can do is make your case, and accept the consequences.
Whether or not your defense is excellent, you will be dismembered.
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