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Originally written by Semodius:

R&J are clearly emo; they both end up cutting in the end. :P

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Originally written by Prometheus:

My bet is, it'll be unoriginal.

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Originally written by Prometheus:

Quoted for outright stupidity

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Originally written by Micawber:

Culturally/technologically: Avernum 9 will be ported to Windows AI, and Geneforge 9 will be released for Mac OS Kappa

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Originally written by Ash Lael:

I consider myself to be fairly centrist.

Edit: Yup. Economic Left/Right: 1.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.41

Of course, that makes me a rabid right winger here.

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You’re right about that. I worry frequently how my words “sound”, moreso than simply the content I choose.

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Feel free to run around as much fluff as you like,

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Originally written by Jumpin' Salmon:

A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

*this message sponsored by the number 19*

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:

Also, because this subject came up in our study today.. please people.. don't mention hell to me. Right now that subject just makes me angry. I don't know if you believe in it, but I hope you see through Satan's horrible lies.
There is an excellent example in the book 'What Does The Bible Really Teach?' about that. Let me retell it to you and you decide how it makes you feel.

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What would you think about a man, who'd punish an unobedient child by holding their hands in a fire? Would you respect him? Would you even want to know him? You wouldn't, no doubt about it. You'd probably think of him as extremely cruel. Yet Satan wants you to believe that Jehovah tortures people in a fire forever - billions of years!

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Just.. 1 John 4:8 "-- God is love."

I wanted you all to know that. I nearly burst into tears when we got to that part because I just got so angry, and sad. It's a horrible thing to believe.

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Originally written by Synergy:

I’ll state again that I am not a great original thinker or researcher. These are not my own ideas. Others have done great research, study, and spiritual seeking to begin restoring a lot of this vision to the scriptures. These aren’t new ideas either. They’ve just always been outside the organized church doctrinal slants.

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It doesn’t have to be our own interpretation or research. Some do that kind of work with their gifts and energies. Most of us do not. When we hear a thing the Spirit gives witness to and peace with His truth the more we learn to discern with that mind and not the natural mind.

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Originally written by Thuryl the Magnificant:

If you're not amused, you can always stop watching.

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Originally written by Synergy:

I can’t answer it quite the way you asked it...sorry. So let me prelude it a bit first. Jesus died for all, paid the debt for all sin, is given authority over all, and promises do what He wills, which is that all be saved. I don’t say they need to be “Christian” because it’s such a word loaded with history and religion and convolution, that it has no spiritual meaning to me. Salvation is not adopting a religious faith and rituals, but simply being redeemed from one’s disconnection from God, from a state of spiritual death back into union and life. So, through Christ, a human soul is reunited with our Father and brought ultimately into incorruptible life. Will this eventually, in some time or place, by some means of our able and fervent Christ happen to everyone who ever breathed, walked, talked, lived, or died?

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Originally written by Synergy:


Yes.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


But, generally, they are the processes Christ, the Conqueror armed with the two-edged sword of the Word and riding us down upon powerful horses, uses to break open our full redemption from our carnality (earthy!) in thinking and doing so we may become overcomers fit to be given spiritual authority as kings and priests in Christ. We are all a microcosm. We have an inner earth, sea, and heaven within us to be conquered and subdued and made bride to the bridegroom so a Manchild can be born out of us with maturity to be “caught up to the throne (rulership) of God”. This is what we must endure if we are to win the race and attain as Paul exhorted us.

Or, to put it really simply, Christ has to do a serious remodel job inside us to make us fit to rightly administer His life to the world with the authority to do it. Kind of like the brutal training soldiers and weight-lifters have to endure in which autonomy or muscles are broken down in order to build a new discipline.

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Signified, signified, sign-ified. Put into signs. The earth is a symbol. The whole book is symbols. There are literal seas, earth, and heavens, and there are prophetic/spiritual seas, earth, and heaven. The horses being ridden aren’t literal. The earth being brutalized in various ways isn’t terra firma, and Jesus isn’t really a lamb or a lion. The stars are not going to fall out of the “heavens”, but the lights which have guided us which are not the Sun are going to fall from their position of being “lights” to us. The heavens in us are the spiritual place of rulership over us, the earth is our soulish realm (mind/will/emotions) which is to fuse a new creation life married to the Spirit in us, and the seas are the low, murky, seething basest carnality within us, animal passion and fleshly appetites. All three must be brought into subjection to Christ for us to overcome and be made kings and priests. There will be great shakings and earthquakes. The city we have built is going to fall and Christ will build the mansion and make us fit to partake of the “holy city” that is New Jerusalem.

Five is the number of grace. The fifth seal involves a work of grace involved in our complete redemption.

Re 6:9 And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony that they held

When you really are able to start seeing with the eyes of high spiritual language, you may see that souls are indeed slain by the horseman during the fourth seal. Your soul has to die in order to be born again into a new life in Christ. It happens below the altar (found in the temple which is within us) because of the Word which is a two-edged sword proceeding from the mouth of Christ. When we bear witness to the Word of God coming to us with life and power, it also has power to kill, so we might live anew. It kills the old soul life.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


The point here is, though, that this was a prophecy given to the body of believers through John around 90 A.D. saying the time is at hand. It’s not about what time is to God. It’s what is time to those receiving the message. When prophecies were made concerning the Christ to come, God did not say, “This is going to come to pass shortly.” That’s the simplest obvious difference.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


Prophetic symbology is consistent. God is helpful like that, just as His nature never changes. A “woman” in prophecy is a church, and also speaks of the soul which is represented by the female. “Church” in Greek is “ekklesia” and means “the called out”.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


I can’t say it’s a rule. What Israel and the law were in the OT prefigures, shadows, and types much of what the full body of believers are in the dispensation of grace (and beyond) given to all the earth. It’s there to demonstrate a principle of how God works either way. Prophecies like Joel are awesome in that they have had both an earthly fulfillment (like the feasts) and a more spiritual fulfillment which we can experience internally when God’s judgements are going to work in us. The names of all those nations have meanings, and when you look at what the nations represent by the meaning of their names, you can begin to see what God has promised to do in our own inner earth on a spiritual level too.

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:


Also, just think of science. It's proved that the earth is millions of years old. If the seven days were literal, earth would only be 6000 years old. But it's not. The seven days are figurative. They were long periods of time, thousands of years.

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:


Then Plah:

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First, I'm going to have to ask you to re-translate "No, because exactly."

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No, as in not out of context. Because exactly, as in you sort of got it correct, but not entirely.

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Second, The Gospel of John, 10:30 "I and the/my Father are One." (NIV/KJV)

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Let's have some verses that are linked to this as explanation.
John 10:38 "But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, in order that you may come to know and may continue knowing that the Father is in union with me and I am in union with the Father."

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:


John 17:11 "Also, I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, watch over them on account of your own name which you have given me, in order that they may be one just as we are."

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:


John 17:21 "in order that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in union with me and I am in union with you, that they also may be in union with us, in order that the world may believe that you sent me forth."

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John 14:10 "Do you not believe that I am in union with the Father and the Father is in union with me? The things I say to you men I do not speak of my own originality; but the Father who remains in union with me is doing his works."

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:


Remember John 1:1-3? Jesus is Word and he was with God in the beginning, that beginning being the first verses of Genesis. He was there as the masterworker.

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Originally written by Pien' Kiusanhenki:

What, by the church you mean? Catholics and all of them? Or in his own times?

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Originally written by Synergy67:

For anyone who is not automatically threatened by the possible roles of the stars in the heavens, which God created and said He gave as signs, it is known that we are in or near a period of change from the age of Pisces (the two fishes, fish being a symbol of the church and also two being the number of witness), to the age of Aquarius, the one who pours the jar of water out upon the earth. This represents a transition of ages to the fullness of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, symbolized often by water, upon the earth. The signs of the Zodiac are highly spiritual, and predate the Babylonian religion of astrology. Some traditions trace the Zodiac back to Noah’s sons. I believe the signs (12 in number, 12 being the Biblical number of divine government) tell a very Biblical, spiritual story of the progressive works of God in the world and within us.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


It is also good to note that God makes things specially complete in threes, thus the importance of recognizing the three feasts, even if we are yet in the second.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


YLT: Rev 1:1 A revelation of Jesus Christ, that God gave to him, to shew to his servants what things it behoveth to come to pass quickly; and he did signify it, having sent through his messenger to his servant John,

KJV: Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:

Second, a critical detail to note is the word “signified.” This word in Greek literally means “put into signs.” The vision is put into signs. It is symbolic. Jesus spoke in parables. Prophecies are given in symbols. This is the language of the Spirit. So why people look at the imagery in the vision and fear literal hailstones falling, seas turning into literal blood, literal locust-like creatures hurting people, a literal “man of sin” walking into a literal temple in Jerusalem and ruling the earth, literal fires or beasts or lambs—or anything else in the vision—is simply baffling.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


A third thing to note is the vision talks about things “to come to pass shortly/quickly”. It was imminent. It speaks of things pertinent to the time the vision was given, not some distant sci-fi tale of dread for a far off age 2000 years or more into the future. It continues to be pertinent.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


So, whatever is in The Revelation we know was already beginning or soon to begin unfolding, and that it involves the revealing of Jesus Christ. Everything else is incidental to and supportive of that theme. In this light, many have come to see the vision talking about the plans and means at the disposal of Jesus Christ to reveal Himself within all of us and to all creation. He purchased all with His blood. He has been given the keys of death and hell and triumped over death for all the world. The revelation is a glorious and sometimes sobering picture of how He is going to come forth and conquer all hearts and usher in the fullness of the Kingdom in earth, seen in the New Jerusalem (a new heavenly government) appearing in the earth.

The scroll of seven seals is the Kinsman-Redeemer scroll of Hebrew culture and written about in the Old Testament. It involves the case in which a person sold into slavery for a debt he could not pay could be redeemed by a blood relative who paid the debt. The scroll was sealed until that debt was paid, and only a kinsman-redeemer could take the scroll and break the seal, releasing the debtor into from his bondage. So, this is what the opening of the scroll in Revelation is all about...our ultimate and complete redemption from slavery to sin and death. It’s a familiar cultural symbol to a Jew in the first century A.D. It means little to modern Europeans and Americans. This is a very good example of how we need to learn something of cultural context if we hope to make anything meaningful out of much of scripture.

Jesus is of course our Kinsman-Redeemer Who is worthy to open the scroll and who purchased us with His blood. Seven is the Hebrew number of divine perfection/completion (on the seventh day God rested) It is a perfect work completed by breaking seven seals. Jesus is also the rider of the four horses coming forth to make war on our earth. He lays waste to our inner soil of carnal thoughts and works, for we are earth and we are the garden in which He plants the good seed. We may have to have our false crops beaten down with hailstones, our fields ridden over and plowed up for new life to be birthed from the soil of our soul, our waters turned bitter so we might turn to drink only of the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit. We have to be killed even with “death” (to former thoughts and ways) and starved of what has formerly and falsely sustained us. He is the Hound of Heaven, the Conqueror on the white horse (always a symbol of purity) riding into our earth to conquer sin and death in US.

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Originally written by Synergy67:


There is a false prophet to the truth and life of the working of Christ. There is a harlot church/bride who fornicates with the kings of the earth, working against our ultimate redemption and union with the true Bridegroom, yet even God calls her a golden cup in His hand, achieving His ends despite her whoring ways. There is a bestial system in the world which rises out of the seas, (which are the symbol of the deep churning waters of the carnal soul) which opposes and attempts to subdue and rule us instead of Christ within us. There is a “man of sin” (spuriously and erroneously assumed to be “the antichrist”) within us which seeks to make itself god within the temple that we are.

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Originally written by Pien' K:


No, because exactly. Through him all things were created. Jehovah HIMSELF created ONLY JESUS, and then used Jesus as his masterworker for creating everything else. And there's a dozen and dozen more verses for that and more, but darn it!

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