Friday, June 30, 2023
Southern Baptists uphold expulsion of churches with women pastors – but the debate’s not just about gender
In Southern Baptist history, rules on women and sexuality are often entwined. A scholar writes about the first congregation to be expelled from the SBC over LGBTQ+ issues
June 27, 2023
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States, overwhelmingly voted to uphold its Executive Committee’s expulsion of two congregations with women pastors on June 14, 2023, during their annual convention.
SBC messengers, as convention delegates are called, also put forward an amendment to make churches’ membership within the denomination contingent upon prohibiting women pastors, which will be voted on next year.
Media coverage of this debate has focused on gender. However, as a scholar of Baptists in the U.S., I believe an underlying conversation about sexuality has also shaped the church’s opposition to women preaching.
A denomination’s decisions about one social issue often influence its position on others, as I have written about with sociologist Gerardo Marti. We argue that the SBC’s stance on issues of gender and sexuality have not always been just about fidelity to their interpretation of scripture. Rather, the SBC uses these issues to differentiate itself from other, more progressive denominations.
My recent book, “Binkley: A Congregational History,” examines the history of one of the first congregations to be expelled from the SBC over the issue of sexuality, in 1992.
Gay and called
In 1990, a Duke Divinity School student named John Blevins, who was openly gay, began attending the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After his first year of Divinity School, he approached the church about the possibility of being ordained.
Attendees, or ‘messengers,’ hold up their ballots during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 2022. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
June 27, 2023
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States, overwhelmingly voted to uphold its Executive Committee’s expulsion of two congregations with women pastors on June 14, 2023, during their annual convention.
SBC messengers, as convention delegates are called, also put forward an amendment to make churches’ membership within the denomination contingent upon prohibiting women pastors, which will be voted on next year.
Media coverage of this debate has focused on gender. However, as a scholar of Baptists in the U.S., I believe an underlying conversation about sexuality has also shaped the church’s opposition to women preaching.
A denomination’s decisions about one social issue often influence its position on others, as I have written about with sociologist Gerardo Marti. We argue that the SBC’s stance on issues of gender and sexuality have not always been just about fidelity to their interpretation of scripture. Rather, the SBC uses these issues to differentiate itself from other, more progressive denominations.
My recent book, “Binkley: A Congregational History,” examines the history of one of the first congregations to be expelled from the SBC over the issue of sexuality, in 1992.
Gay and called
In 1990, a Duke Divinity School student named John Blevins, who was openly gay, began attending the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After his first year of Divinity School, he approached the church about the possibility of being ordained.
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Who Are These Aliens? - Can you survive it?
In the last couple of weeks it was widely reported by the corporate MSM that the United States government had recovered an intact alien spacecraft from a crash site.
The supposed revelation comes from one David Grusch, a “former” military intelligence agent, who turned “whistleblower” and told the press that this supposed craft “distorted time and space”, was “bigger on the inside than the outside” and made some rescue workers ill.
It is commonly believed that flying objects come from other worlds/planets, and this assumes that there is intelligent life on other planets.
If you are knowledgeable, you can sense it. Something very cataclysmic is poised to happen. It seems like forces are building toward some stupendous event which has the potential to destroy earth and its inhabitants.
Yes, it’s coming.
The great increase in sightings and abductions in modern times indicates that both the forces of good and evil are PREPARING FOR A FINAL SHOWDOWN. This is being discussed in many areas, including military, ecological and theological.
If you are willing to be knowledgeable, you can sense it. Something very cataclysmic is poised to happen. It seems like forces are building toward some stupendous event which has the potential to destroy earth and its inhabitants.
Rich nations pledge to unlock hundreds of billions of dollars for climate fight
By John Irish and Leigh Thomas
June 23, 20238:15 AM EDT
Updated 19 hours ago
Summary
PARIS, June 23 (Reuters) - Multilateral development banks like the World Bank are expected to find $200 billion in extra firepower for low-income economies by taking on more risk, a move that may require wealthy nations to inject more cash, world leaders said on Friday.
The leaders, gathered at a summit in Paris to thrash out funding for the climate transition and post-COVID debt burdens of poor countries, said their plans would secure billions of dollars of matching investment from the private sector.
An overdue pledge of $100 billion in climate finance for developing nations was also now in sight, they said.
Many in attendance, however, said over the two-day summit that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were increasingly ill-suited for tackling the most pressing challenges and needed a broad revamp.
Summary
- World leaders and global organisations meet in Paris
- Agreement for development banks to boost lending
- Rich nations close in on $100 bln climate finance pledge
- U.S., China adopt conciliatory tone on debt relief
PARIS, June 23 (Reuters) - Multilateral development banks like the World Bank are expected to find $200 billion in extra firepower for low-income economies by taking on more risk, a move that may require wealthy nations to inject more cash, world leaders said on Friday.
The leaders, gathered at a summit in Paris to thrash out funding for the climate transition and post-COVID debt burdens of poor countries, said their plans would secure billions of dollars of matching investment from the private sector.
An overdue pledge of $100 billion in climate finance for developing nations was also now in sight, they said.
Many in attendance, however, said over the two-day summit that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were increasingly ill-suited for tackling the most pressing challenges and needed a broad revamp.
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America Is Well Underway
June 21, 2023
Credit...Eleanor Davis
By Jessica Grose
Opinion Writer
This is the fourth newsletter in a series about Americans moving away from religion. Read part one, part two and part three.
In previous newsletters about Americans falling away from religion, I’ve talked about why so many Americans’ religious identities now fall in the category known as “nones” when, just a half-century ago, nearly all Americans had some kind of affiliation. (It’s complicated and multifaceted, but to summarize, it’s largely a combination of Christianity’s association with far-right politics and the fact that being unreligious has become more socially acceptable over time.)
But it’s not just how Americans identify that has greatly shifted. In their new book “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?” Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan Burge argue that the most dramatic change may be in regular attendance at houses of worship. “We are currently in the middle of the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country,” they postulate, because “about 15 percent of American adults living today (around 40 million people) have effectively stopped going to church, and most of this dechurching has happened in the past 25 years.”
While the authors find that there is some variation in the rates at which different demographic groups are dechurching (Hispanic Americans are dechurching at the lowest rate, for example), every group is trending away from traditional worship. As Davis, Graham and Burge put it: “No theological tradition, age group, ethnicity, political affiliation, education level, geographic location or income bracket escaped the dechurching in America.”
By Jessica Grose
Opinion Writer
This is the fourth newsletter in a series about Americans moving away from religion. Read part one, part two and part three.
In previous newsletters about Americans falling away from religion, I’ve talked about why so many Americans’ religious identities now fall in the category known as “nones” when, just a half-century ago, nearly all Americans had some kind of affiliation. (It’s complicated and multifaceted, but to summarize, it’s largely a combination of Christianity’s association with far-right politics and the fact that being unreligious has become more socially acceptable over time.)
But it’s not just how Americans identify that has greatly shifted. In their new book “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?” Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan Burge argue that the most dramatic change may be in regular attendance at houses of worship. “We are currently in the middle of the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country,” they postulate, because “about 15 percent of American adults living today (around 40 million people) have effectively stopped going to church, and most of this dechurching has happened in the past 25 years.”
While the authors find that there is some variation in the rates at which different demographic groups are dechurching (Hispanic Americans are dechurching at the lowest rate, for example), every group is trending away from traditional worship. As Davis, Graham and Burge put it: “No theological tradition, age group, ethnicity, political affiliation, education level, geographic location or income bracket escaped the dechurching in America.”
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
John Kerry meets Pope Francis privately, says he's in great form and spirits
June 19, 20233:53 PM EDT
Updated 14 hours ago
VATICAN CITY, June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Pope Francis on Monday, the first official to have a private audience with him since his discharge from hospital, and told Reuters that he found the pontiff "in great spirits and in great form".
Francis, 86, left Rome's Gemelli hospital on Friday, nine days after surgery to repair an abdominal hernia.
"He was in great spirits and great form ... I was really amazed. He embraced a lot of our conversation. It was a nice meeting," said Kerry, who was the first person on the pope's public schedule.
"I found the pope to be very much the pope that I have had the privilege of seeing several times over the last years. He was strong. He was clear. He seemed in very good form and good spirits," Kerry, 79, said in an interview in front of St. Peter's Square.
In 2015, Francis wrote Laudato Si (Praised Be), a landmark encyclical on the need to protect the environment, combat climate change and reduce use of fossil fuels. An encyclical is the highest form of papal writing.
"Laudato Si stands up as a major and important turning point for a lot of people," Kerry said.
VATICAN CITY, June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Pope Francis on Monday, the first official to have a private audience with him since his discharge from hospital, and told Reuters that he found the pontiff "in great spirits and in great form".
Francis, 86, left Rome's Gemelli hospital on Friday, nine days after surgery to repair an abdominal hernia.
"He was in great spirits and great form ... I was really amazed. He embraced a lot of our conversation. It was a nice meeting," said Kerry, who was the first person on the pope's public schedule.
"I found the pope to be very much the pope that I have had the privilege of seeing several times over the last years. He was strong. He was clear. He seemed in very good form and good spirits," Kerry, 79, said in an interview in front of St. Peter's Square.
In 2015, Francis wrote Laudato Si (Praised Be), a landmark encyclical on the need to protect the environment, combat climate change and reduce use of fossil fuels. An encyclical is the highest form of papal writing.
"Laudato Si stands up as a major and important turning point for a lot of people," Kerry said.
[1/4] U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry arrives for an interview with Reuters after meeting with Pope Francis, near the Vatican, in Rome, Italy, June 19, 2023. REUTERS/Guglielmo...
The former U.S. secretary of state said the pope had a "profound impact" on the 2015 Paris climate conference that set goals to limit global warming, and he thanked Francis for continuing "to sound the alarm" about the dangers and challenges of climate change.
Kerry is having a series of meetings ahead of COP28, the latest U.N. climate summit that is to be held at the end of this year in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
"Now we have to continue and have the next movement, if you will, and I think COP28 in Dubai presents a good opportunity to do that because we all understand the implications of what's been happening over the last few years," Kerry said.
"This is getting more challenging, more serious, more immediate than it has been at any time, and I think that you are going to see more action as a result of that," he said.
The head of the United Nations climate body has said he was not satisfied with the outcome of a recent 10-day conference in Berlin, and that the process was moving too slowly given the urgency of the crisis.
(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous word 'Friday' from paragraph 1)
Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Military Monitors Social Media for Mean Posts About Generals
19 Jun 20231
The U.S. Army’s Protective Services Battalion (PSB), the Department of Defense’s equivalent of the Secret Service, now monitors social media to see if anyone has posted negative comments about the country’s highest-ranking officers.
Per a report by the Intercept, the PSB’s remit includes protecting officers from “embarrassment,” in addition to more pressing threats like kidnapping and assassination.
An Army procurement document from 2022 obtained by the Intercept reveals that the PSB now monitors social media for “negative sentiment” about the officers under its protection, as well as for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats.
FILE – The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. The FBI wants to question a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in connection with the disclosure of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war, two people familiar with the investigation said Thursday, April 13, 2023.
“This is an ongoing PSIFO/PIB” — Protective Services Field Office/Protective Intelligence Branch — “requirement to provide global protective services for senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, adequate security in order to mitigate online threats (direct, indirect, and veiled), the identification of fraudulent accounts and positive or negative sentiment relating specifically to our senior high-risk personnel.”
Per the report, the Army intends not just to monitor platforms for “negative sentiment,” but also to pinpoint the location of posters.
Via the Intercept
The Army’s new toolkit goes far beyond social media surveillance of the type offered by private contractors like Dataminr, which helps police and military agencies detect perceived threats by scraping social media timelines and chatrooms for various keywords. Instead, Army Protective Services Battalion investigators would seemingly combine social media data with a broad variety of public and nonpublic information, all accessible through a “universal search selector.”
These sources of information include “signal-rich discussions from illicit threat-actor communities and access to around-the-clock conversations within threat-actor channels,” public research, CCTV feeds, radio stations, news outlets, personal records, hacked information, webcams, and — perhaps most invasive — cellular location data.
The document mentions the use of “geo-fenced” data as well, a controversial practice wherein an investigator draws a shape on a digital map to focus their surveillance of a specific area. While app-based smartphone tracking is a potent surveillance technique, it remains unclear how exactly this data might actually be used to unmask threatening social media posts, or what relevance other data categories like radio stations or academic research could possibly have.
According to the Intercept, the PSB wants to search not just mainstream social media platforms, but also anonymous and semi-anonymous discussion boards like 4chan and Reddit, as well as the chat platforms Discord and Telegram.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
© 2023 Breitbart
The U.S. Army’s Protective Services Battalion (PSB), the Department of Defense’s equivalent of the Secret Service, now monitors social media to see if anyone has posted negative comments about the country’s highest-ranking officers.
Per a report by the Intercept, the PSB’s remit includes protecting officers from “embarrassment,” in addition to more pressing threats like kidnapping and assassination.
An Army procurement document from 2022 obtained by the Intercept reveals that the PSB now monitors social media for “negative sentiment” about the officers under its protection, as well as for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats.
FILE – The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. The FBI wants to question a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in connection with the disclosure of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war, two people familiar with the investigation said Thursday, April 13, 2023.
“This is an ongoing PSIFO/PIB” — Protective Services Field Office/Protective Intelligence Branch — “requirement to provide global protective services for senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, adequate security in order to mitigate online threats (direct, indirect, and veiled), the identification of fraudulent accounts and positive or negative sentiment relating specifically to our senior high-risk personnel.”
Per the report, the Army intends not just to monitor platforms for “negative sentiment,” but also to pinpoint the location of posters.
Via the Intercept
The Army’s new toolkit goes far beyond social media surveillance of the type offered by private contractors like Dataminr, which helps police and military agencies detect perceived threats by scraping social media timelines and chatrooms for various keywords. Instead, Army Protective Services Battalion investigators would seemingly combine social media data with a broad variety of public and nonpublic information, all accessible through a “universal search selector.”
These sources of information include “signal-rich discussions from illicit threat-actor communities and access to around-the-clock conversations within threat-actor channels,” public research, CCTV feeds, radio stations, news outlets, personal records, hacked information, webcams, and — perhaps most invasive — cellular location data.
The document mentions the use of “geo-fenced” data as well, a controversial practice wherein an investigator draws a shape on a digital map to focus their surveillance of a specific area. While app-based smartphone tracking is a potent surveillance technique, it remains unclear how exactly this data might actually be used to unmask threatening social media posts, or what relevance other data categories like radio stations or academic research could possibly have.
According to the Intercept, the PSB wants to search not just mainstream social media platforms, but also anonymous and semi-anonymous discussion boards like 4chan and Reddit, as well as the chat platforms Discord and Telegram.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
© 2023 Breitbart
Newly Unsealed Documents Expose Plaskett's Email Soliciting Epstein's Contributions and Extending Fundraiser Invitation
Published On June 17, 2023 06:42 AM
Janeka Simon | June 17, 2023 06:42:18 AM
I
Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett.
The email was reportedly sent in July of 2018, just about a year before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. However, he was being investigated since March 2005 in Florida after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported that she was molested at his mansion. And in 2008, he pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. Additionally, at this point, multiple women had spent approximately a decade claiming that they had been groomed, trafficked and abused by the owner of Little St. James and his network of powerful friends.
Janeka Simon | June 17, 2023 06:42:18 AM
IDelegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett.
By ERNICE GILBERT, V.I. CONSORTIUM
"Epstein was a reprehensible person and I'm truly disgusted by his actions," Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett said earlier this month, speaking out after filings in the ongoing lawsuit between the Government of the Virgin Islands and JPMorgan brought her acceptance of Jeffrey Epstein’s donations to her political campaigns to the fore once again.
Ms. Plaskett said that she was unaware of Epstein’s campaign contributions until after it was reported in the press subsequent to her campaign’s federal filing. However, newly unsealed evidence submitted by JPMorgan’s legal team show that Delegate Plaskett in 2018, had personally requested that an invitation to her Bloomberg fundraiser be sent to Epstein. “I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me," she wrote.
"Epstein was a reprehensible person and I'm truly disgusted by his actions," Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett said earlier this month, speaking out after filings in the ongoing lawsuit between the Government of the Virgin Islands and JPMorgan brought her acceptance of Jeffrey Epstein’s donations to her political campaigns to the fore once again.
Ms. Plaskett said that she was unaware of Epstein’s campaign contributions until after it was reported in the press subsequent to her campaign’s federal filing. However, newly unsealed evidence submitted by JPMorgan’s legal team show that Delegate Plaskett in 2018, had personally requested that an invitation to her Bloomberg fundraiser be sent to Epstein. “I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me," she wrote.
Email from Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett seeking support from Jeffrey Epstein and his circle of wealthy and powerful friends. (JPMorgan court filing)
The email was reportedly sent in July of 2018, just about a year before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. However, he was being investigated since March 2005 in Florida after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported that she was molested at his mansion. And in 2008, he pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. Additionally, at this point, multiple women had spent approximately a decade claiming that they had been groomed, trafficked and abused by the owner of Little St. James and his network of powerful friends.
Monday, June 19, 2023
Sunday, June 18, 2023
WATCH: Democrat Corrects Herself After Saying Trump Should Be Shot
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) had to correct herself on Sunday after she said during a live television interview that former President Donald Trump should be “shot.”
Plaskett made the comment during an appearance on MSNBC, during which she discussed the federal charges against Trump relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents following his departure from the White House in January of 2021.
WATCH:
Freudian slip? Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) slips and says Trump "needs to be shot." She quickly corrects herself and says "stopped." pic.twitter.com/cUJlhshiGD
— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) June 18, 2023
“You know, having Trump not only have had the codes, but now having the classified information for Americans and being able to put that out and share it in his resort — with anyone and everyone who comes through – should be terrifying to all Americans and he needs to be shot … stopped,” she said.
Plaskett went on to say that Trump would certainly have his day in court and would have the same chance that any other American citizen would have to defend himself, but she was careful to point out the fact that the former president had been indicted in a very red state — Florida — by his peers.
“Of course, he’s going to have his day in court,” she continued. “Let’s remember that he was indicted by his peers — individual Americans who live in South Florida, a red state — they saw enough that there was probable cause for him to bring this indictment for him to stand trial.”
During the same interview, Plaskett claimed that Republican “propaganda” was the only possible reason Americans might have doubts about the Justice Department and the FBI under President Joe Biden.
Democrat Del. Stacey Plaskett says some Americans are skeptical of Biden's DOJ and FBI because of Republican "propaganda" and not because Biden just weaponized his DOJ to arrest his political rival. pic.twitter.com/5GZydAhyzq
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2023
“And that’s the thing that I am concerned about with many of my colleagues in the GOP,” she said. “That they believe that there is a two-tiered system , but the two-tiered system is not to punish them more, it’s to – they want it to allow them to get away with more than everyday Americans.”
“Causing Americans to distrust the FBI, the Department of Justice, it’s all a mechanism, and all, you know, part of their propaganda,” she added.
Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) had to correct herself on Sunday after she said during a live television interview that former President Donald Trump should be “shot.”
Plaskett made the comment during an appearance on MSNBC, during which she discussed the federal charges against Trump relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents following his departure from the White House in January of 2021.
WATCH:
Freudian slip? Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) slips and says Trump "needs to be shot." She quickly corrects herself and says "stopped." pic.twitter.com/cUJlhshiGD
— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) June 18, 2023
“You know, having Trump not only have had the codes, but now having the classified information for Americans and being able to put that out and share it in his resort — with anyone and everyone who comes through – should be terrifying to all Americans and he needs to be shot … stopped,” she said.
Plaskett went on to say that Trump would certainly have his day in court and would have the same chance that any other American citizen would have to defend himself, but she was careful to point out the fact that the former president had been indicted in a very red state — Florida — by his peers.
“Of course, he’s going to have his day in court,” she continued. “Let’s remember that he was indicted by his peers — individual Americans who live in South Florida, a red state — they saw enough that there was probable cause for him to bring this indictment for him to stand trial.”
During the same interview, Plaskett claimed that Republican “propaganda” was the only possible reason Americans might have doubts about the Justice Department and the FBI under President Joe Biden.
Democrat Del. Stacey Plaskett says some Americans are skeptical of Biden's DOJ and FBI because of Republican "propaganda" and not because Biden just weaponized his DOJ to arrest his political rival. pic.twitter.com/5GZydAhyzq
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2023
“And that’s the thing that I am concerned about with many of my colleagues in the GOP,” she said. “That they believe that there is a two-tiered system , but the two-tiered system is not to punish them more, it’s to – they want it to allow them to get away with more than everyday Americans.”
“Causing Americans to distrust the FBI, the Department of Justice, it’s all a mechanism, and all, you know, part of their propaganda,” she added.
Saturday, June 17, 2023
Friday, June 16, 2023
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
Sunday, June 11, 2023
Britain’s green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans Capell Aris
Blade inspectors carry out work recently in the North Sea - Antonie Robson
© Antonie Robson
Last year, the Biden administration set an ambitious new goal for the USA: to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by the year 2030, increasing US offshore capacity more than seven hundred times over. The UK already has 15 GW of offshore wind, more than 300 times as much as the USA: and our experience should be a terrible warning to Americans.
The UK’s electricity prices are the highest since records began in 1920 and are now amongst the highest in all Europe. One reason for this is obvious: slightly less than half our electricity comes from gas-burning Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs) and gas now costs £90 per megawatt-hour (MWh), nearly five times higher than normal. CCGTs are cheap to build (around £650m per GW) and operate. In normal times they would generate electricity at a total cost of £40 per MWh. That’s now risen to nearly £150/MWh, thanks to Vladimir Putin and his impact on the gas market.
But that’s not the whole story. The other reason why British electricity is so expensive is because we have so much wind power: particularly, so much offshore wind power. Bad though the current situation is, we would be an even worse state if we had built even more offshore wind, as the British government plans to.
Saturday, June 10, 2023
DECEIVED BY PHARMAKEIA part-1, "God's Preparation For The End-Time Heal...
Part-2 "Caught in its Snare"
Part-3, "For Such A time As This"
Friday, June 09, 2023
Thursday, June 08, 2023
Wednesday, June 07, 2023
Tuesday, June 06, 2023
Apostasy Prepares the Way
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. 2 Thessalonians 2:3.
When the early church became corrupted by departing from the simplicity of the gospel and accepting heathen rites and customs, she lost the Spirit and power of God; and in order to control the consciences of the people, she sought the support of the secular power. The result was the papacy, a church that controlled the power of the state and employed it to further her own ends, especially for the punishment of “heresy.” ...
Whenever the church has obtained secular power, she has employed it to punish dissent from her doctrines. Protestant churches that have followed in the steps of Rome by forming alliance with worldly powers have manifested a similar desire to restrict liberty of conscience. An example of this is given in the long-continued persecution of dissenters by the Church of England. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thousands of nonconformist ministers were forced to flee from their churches, and many, both of pastors and people, were subjected to fine, imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom.
It was apostasy that led the early church to seek the aid of the civil government, and this prepared the way for the development of the papacy—the beast. Said Paul: “There” shall “come a falling away ..., and that man of sin be revealed.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3. So apostasy in the church will prepare the way for the image to the beast.15The Great Controversy, 443, 444.
Satan will work with all power and “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:9, 10. His working is plainly revealed by the rapidly increasing darkness, the multitudinous errors, heresies, and delusions of these last days. Not only is Satan leading the world captive, but his deceptions are leavening the professed churches of our Lord Jesus Christ. The great apostasy will develop into darkness deep as midnight. To God's people it will be a night of trial, a night of weeping, a night of persecution for the truth's sake. But out of that night of darkness God's light will shine.16Prophets and Kings, 717.
Maranatha, E. G. White, p.165.
Monday, June 05, 2023
Sunday, June 04, 2023
Saturday, June 03, 2023
Biden BUMPS HIS HEAD as he gets off Marine One 🤦♂️
Jun 2, 2023
How much longer is this guy going to last as president? Joe Biden bangs his head walking down steps of Marine One after collapsing on-stage during Air Force graduation 🤦♂️
Friday, June 02, 2023
Thursday, June 01, 2023
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