Hi...

Yes, Jesus had a conversation or two with the Pharisees about this.

Unfortunately, there are those who say they are Christians but their lives do not reflect or bear the appropriate fruit of what that is supposed to mean. That's not the Christian life nor does God condone hypocrisy. Please see here.

A walk with Jesus is about following and obeying Him as God continues to change and transform us into His nature, to experience who He is and to receive (in increasing degrees) His abundant life and freedom. It doesn't mean we don't sin from time to time or make mistakes but that we are continuing to walk with Him to overcome them.

This has been my experience and the Jesus I know. Our God is real and personal. I have a real relationship with Him. I don't come on here and face the criticism and snide comments for something or someone I suspect may not even be real! I say the things I do because the Bible is true and the life I have in Him is because of that truth, as He is truth!

Regards...

There is great wisdom in our ForeFathers' laws regarding the separation of Church and State because they recognized what a huge threat the combination creates and how such a bond stagnates, narrows down, and finally turns on itself. Religion is responsible for crisis within the Republican Party and cause for some of the most hateful legislation that has ever polluted and plagued the USA, not to mention any other government that combines the two.

If we look at ardvark71's post #16 just above and follow the logic we can easily see why this is so.

He is Truth.
I know Him.
therefore - I know Truth as God has ordained it.

There is little more dangerous than a man who believes he has some inside track on the Truth and a divine mandate to see it govern all, especially when that Truth is beyond argument or criticism and has no need of evidence and facts and has little or no tolerance for any but The True Way.

As long as the voting populace cannot learn or tolerate anything not "in the book" (subject to interpretation of vague passages at least as spacious and specious as Astrology - see his link to the Matthew passage) we will have a populace of sheep, unable to think critically, incapable of tolerance, and prey to any self-deluded, sanctimonious "leader" who believes he was "chosen" to "set things right".... that, and of course those pretenders who would give lip service to gain support.

Religion should have no place in politics. The combination is a ticking time bomb.

You are preaching to choir, my friend.

We have an election for state offices tomorrow. The election of state offices is held on off-off-years because the Byrd Machine moved them to odd-numbered years to further reduce turnout.

There will be no lines at the polling places. A 20 turnout will be a good one.

not just the US of A

the whole World

if it is not one thing it is another

At this point a "Carrington event" might be A GOOD THING to have happen

the possibility of 5 to 25 YEARS without electricity WORLD WIDE

is a good RESET button

It is so common among human societies that " government and corruption " go hand in hand in everything!!

That's why you put locks on the doors of closets which contain valuable things: if someone has "the means, the motive, and the ability to cover it up," a crime will occur. This is human nature.

And this is why the Founders included "bribery" alongside "treason." Both are breaches of public trust which result in awful damage to the public.

But the Founders made one critical mistake: they did not sufficiently define the Judiciary. They identified it as a weak-spot in their design, but I don't think any of them were lawyers themselves. The concept of "unconstitutional" does not exist at all in the document. The fear that the Court would become a de facto imperial council, with the supreme ability to create law by declaration and to override the actions of any other Branch of Government at its sovereign pleasure, and to rule as kings and queens until Death removes them from the stage.

But this is what has since happened in America. The Citizens United imperial decree, which set-aside part of the Constitution itself(!), was eagerly received by the corporations that paid for it. You may not like the edicts that the Council of the Five Princes will devise by their sovereign prerogatives, but you will never hear a multi-billion dollar media corporation make the slightest suggestion that it could possibly be any other way. (Nor would you expect them to.)

The design of a government like this one is deceptively powerful:

• As long as the citizens wring their hands and accept that "there's nothing we can do!" their statement is doomed to be true.
• If they try to take the law into their own hands, of course they meet the fate of John Brown.
• But at the moment when the citizens do recognize the power that they hold, and move as one to exert that power, nothing can stop the changes that will occur.
• ... "be careful what you wish for."

The Council on Constitutional Convention ("conconcon"), held several years at a law school, was the first and just about the only "serious" discussion that I have seen publicly being held. There are all kinds of media-sponsored efforts to divert serious effort at change onto ineffective paths, such as the "Tea Party," which is just a third brand of the same Two-Party System, Inc. which has brokered power in this country for about a hundred years. It embodies frustration while preventing necessary discourse. (It also sells tri-corner hats.)

I sure am thankful that school was not like this when I was a child:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.2424585

I have been in the US twice: once in 1964 (I was 15) during one month in a family in Philadelphia, then 9 months in the Detroit area in 1987 for work, and I have good memories of both stays and of the nice people I have met.

But I would think twice before going there a third time.

They called it " Enduring Freedom "!!

http://fff.org/2015/11/06/is-freedom...n-afghanistan/

After the fiascos in Vietnam and Korea, the military industrialists finally recognized that what "those pesky war protesters" were protesting was not "war" at all! They were protesting the military draft.

So, Nixon got rid of the draft, and with it, both public objection to and even awareness of what the American military has subsequently been doing: "one new debacle after another." These wars are never declared, never won, and never stopped. They do not exist on "the evening news."

Americans are dimly becoming aware that there is something desperately wrong with their country ... financially, in its top leadership, and otherwise ... but they have not yet associated these things with "War, Incorporated."

It has never occurred to them that the WTC buildings ... all three(!) of them ... were demolitioned, and that the deed could only have been accomplished by experts of the highest order, who achieved a lasting and total penetration of building security. Which happened, and which would not be difficult to sleuth-out because there aren't many professionals in the world who could have done that. Every attempt to do this, formally or informally, has been squashed and ridiculed. Even though it would have taken weeks to install the amount of explosives required, and to hide them in plain sight. The type of explosives required are not easily obtainable in any quantity at all. And, "this was the work of a true demolitions master."

The military apparatchik wanted "another Pearl Harbor," so that's what they built. The PATRIOT Act ... hundreds(!) of pages of detailed legislation that would take many months to write ... "mysteriously appeared, fully formed" in a matter of days, and was promptly passed by a frightened(?) Congress. The military industrialists had their Pearl Harbor blank check.

But they do not have cunning, nor do they seriously regard any other country. The rest of the world is a playground for the American military machine to play in, full of resources to steal. In the case of Afghanistan, that is: opium, and lithium. An entire generation of kids has been prescribed "zombie drugs" for three-letter "illnesses" which we used to call, "being a normal, squirming, sometimes-hyperactive kid." Lithium goes into a lot of batteries.

I don't think that Americans necessarily want to be "an Imperial power," and don't think of their (my) own country that way merely because they don't know ... and apparently don't want to. "Or so we are told."

A very good proposal has been raised to create a Constitutional Amendment which mandates both a military draft and compulsory military service for all American citizens, both male and female, between the ages of 18 and 21. No matter how rich you are, or how well-connected you are, you cannot avoid your child being very-promptly put into a "hot" battle-zone where they might fairly-immediately get killed ... or worse. No, the only way to avoid that possibility is: "not to be at war." This Amendment would also state that American military forces could not be committed to anything unless a Declaration of War had been passed, and renewed every two years.

Now, "War is in your face, and you and your loved ones are in harm's way." War no longer can be swept under the rug or made "painless." The only alternative is ... not to be at war.

The pages of History tell us that all preceding nations who engaged in such things were destroyed by them ... although it took many years. We have no reason to believe that this time History will be proved false.

It's good stuff. Combine that with this:
http://www.vocativ.com/culture/socie...Speed=noscript

Moral: Being a bully is awesome, keep it up. Being kind, compassionate, and human is against the rules, so cut it out.

Yay society ! Heading straight towards hell for a long time now.

Voting is as ancient a thought as we should use "logic!"

Yet another New York woman has thrown her baby out of a window to its death. Is there something in the water bringing on insanity??