Free Republic

I’ve actually been there (Tel Shiloh)! You can still see the ruins of the ancient structure.

It appears that Gates believes Artificial Intelligence can create a better god

A "gxd" that has to be created?

Anything that was created isn't G-d. G-d is The Creator.

I sincerely hope he will, but I can't forget that the GOP was slated to win BIG in the last two election cycles, only to have a very unpleasant surprise when they were over. Have conservatives forgotten?

Regardless of who wins, I expect trouble. No way will conservatives and Republicans accept a third consecutive "November surprise."

(LifeSiteNews) — In a just-released video interview, Tucker Carlson recounts how he suffered a bloody attack by a demon while asleep in bed — an event that he says led him to purchase and read and reread the Bible.

He seems to have missed all the parts about Jews and Israel.

OOPS! I saw this old thread, read the title, and assumed it was current. Turns out I already said my peace back when it was new.

My apologies for bumping an old thread.

"Roman Catholic have a very dim view of the Bible."

That is NOT true. IF you're NOT Roman Catholic, PLEASE don't speak for us. The whole Mass, which we celebrate, is based on the Bible. And, also, you wouldn't have a Bible without the Catholics and the Holy Spirit.

It IS true. The fact that the bible is read at masses doesn't change the fact that the Catholic has promoted historical criticism and evolution for over a hundred years. What good does it do to read a book of "fairy tales" at a religious service???

Get ANY current Catholic bible version and read the notes. It's all blasphemy.

The thing is, the Catholic Church did at one time teach total inerrancy. But its clergy and theologians changed their mind and now deny that it ever taught total inerrancy. But this is exactly why Galileo was condemned. They now teach Galileo's position that only "faith and morals" in the bible are inerrant.

All the ancient historical churches are done for.

What a loon. I guess he forgot to mention that this also means no more rainbows.

Well, except for the "gay" one.

I agree with you that, as a Catholic, Bergoglio has had zero effect on my faith in Christianity, the basics of the Nicene creed, the sacraments, traditional Catholic teachings, etc.

I will say, though, that Bergoglio has changed my view of the papacy... and not for the better. When I saw mainline protestantism (Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists et al.) degenerate to the point of denying traditional Christian views of marriage, homosexuality, abortion, etc., I wrongly assumed that the Catholic Church was holding the line because the papacy was the difference... an institutional bulwark against disintegration into apostasy. It’s not, and Bergoglio and his minions are proving that. Personally, I will never accept a Catholic Church that approves abortion or sodomy or pseudo-marriage between sodomy buddies. And yet there are priests, bishops and cardinals who are, right now, heading down those roads. And in his insouciance, Bergoglio ignores them as he pontificates on climate change and migrants and whatever other leftist causes du jour that tickle his fancy.

And it all started with higher criticism and evolution which most conservatives agree with and defend.

But yes, the ancient sacramental/liturgical/ethnic churches have all hopped aboard the modernism train. But that doesn't prevent them from lying through their teeth about it.

I admit that Fundamentalist Protestantism is an a-historical and anachronistic idea and admit that the ancient churches are the closest we can now get to whatever chrstianity was in the beginning. But when all is said and done, the only churches that will hold the line until the end will be those isolated hillbilly churches in Appalachia that everyone so likes to look down on. Wait and see. The historical churches are all finished. Stick a fork in 'em; they're done.

Think how decent priests and nuns must feel

Most "decent priests and nuns" don't believe in the Flood either. The Catholic Church adopted 19th century liberal Protestant criticism over a century ago. Do you know why??? To prove they aren't Protestants!

However Catholics and Eastern Orthodox don't object to influence by liberal Protestantism. But let someone interpret something in a way that even smacks of "Protestant Fundamentalism" and everyone is wringing their hands over "Protestant influence!"

Yeah. Francis is a commie jerk. But the RC Church which I’m a member of, has for quite a while relegated such Old Testament bible stories to the realm of the homily and no longer canon.

So is J*sus still the "second Adam" even though the first one "never existed?"

Nonsense. I believe in precisely what I believed before +Francis came on the scene, his scandalous nonsense du jour notwithstanding. My faith is in Christ, his teaching, his promises, and his Church -- not in the custodian of that Church with whose presence we are currently afflicted, in God's justice and mercy. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The only person +Francis is certainly putting at risk of going "to hell at breakneck speed" is the one he sees in the mirror.

Does that list of things you believed in before Francis include Noah's flood (which is the synagogue reading for next week)?

Now what about the “virgin birth?”

Now do we know why Jesus called the Jewish religious leaders sons of satan?

That is so stupid.

In the theology of American Fundamentalist Protestantism, every "unsaved" human being is a child of "satan." All are born "children of 'satan'" and remain so until they "pass from nature to grace."

The idea that the text teaches that the Jewish nation is literally descended from "satan" (a weird pick for the "chosen people") was something I thought liberal Jews made up. I had never heard such a thing in a lifetime of Protestant Fundamentalism.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Apparently the ancient, intellectual, "respectable" churches did indeed interpret the verse that way.

To undertand the Liberalism of many American Jews, one has to understand the social influence of Jewish ideas beginning with Moses - possibly the original “civil rights” advocate. When Jews look at Moses they see an adovate for the oppressed, the marginalized, the downtrodden. American Jews were from the start in agreement with the American civil rights movement - seeing their own history in it. That made them Democrats and it is a bond that has been hard to break, even though the times, the conditions and the circumstances have greatly changed.

All this is nothing but (pardon the expression) Barbra Streisand. Moses was a Theocrat, not a "civil rights leader." The laws of the Torah come from G-d and are there because G-d put them there, not because some zygotic form of liberalism was gradually working its way out of the Jewish consciousness. How in the world anyone can invoke "tzedeq, tzedeq tirdof" ("righteousness, righteousness you will pursue") as proof of inherent Jewish liberalism while ignoring all the sexual taboos is beyond me.

And there is a further irony--religious liberals don't believe the ancient Israelites were ever slaves in Egypt. They insist the whole thing is a fairy tale. Let's see the "we were both slaves" liberals work around that.

There was absolutely no hint of an inherent Jewish liberalism for most of Jewish history. Spinoza was probably the first Jewish liberal, and the "enlightenment" was really the hole through which the waters entered and began swamping the boat. And even then, the sexual nihilism that categorizes contemporary liberalism is of very recent origin. The most liberal "Reform" Jews were adamantly opposed to homosexuality during the "repressive" Fifties.

Surprise, surprise.[/sarcasm]

In my experience, the anti-rapture crowd is motivated by one and only one thing: opposition to Israel. Back when I was in the Birch Society (spit!) they were promoting (only not "officially," of course) a nasty little book called The Rapture Cult that had a whole chapter devoted to attacking Israel.

I am acutely aware of the shortcomings of the current State of Israel: its secularism, it's "enlightenment" liberalism, its "democracy," and its fanatical support of sexual perversion (not a good idea in the midst of a war of survival). But the mere fact that an ethnically Jewish sovereign state exists in the Holy Land with its capital in Jerusalem simply drives some people nuts.

And again, the slander and misinformation regarding an allegedly low "political messiah" vs. the non-literal (and non-authentic) "spiritual messiah" of historical chrstianity constantly ignores certain issues. First, this "political messiah" isn't quite so low. We're not talking about Irish Republicanism here. This "political messiah" will bring the eschatological vindication of the True Religion, the eschatological restoration of human nature to its original state and ultimately, the resurrection of the dead. That doesn't sound like a lowly "political messiah" to me. Plus King David makes a ridiculous "type" for a "spiritual messiah."

Then there's the hypocrisy of right wing Catholicism with its own millennium without its "messiah." Instead the Restored House of Bourbon or the Great Catholic Monarch or the Reign of Mary will usher in a utopian restoration of the High Middle Ages. But "the messiah" won't do it; "he's not that kind of king." Not to mention all the Constantines and Justinians and Theodosiuses and Isabellas of history.

I’m sure the “paleos” will insist that Sheinbaum is one of those ee-vil “Zionists” who rule the world.

Not as stupid as the Jews who will go on supporting her because to them there is, always has been, and always will be only one enemy.

Regarding this whole affair, I received an email from GAB today.

It’s a supposedly right wing social media site.

I get emails but I don’t belong and haven’t been on it in forever.

Today’s email was decidedly anti Israel.

I was shocked.

And dissapointed.

Not sure how that fits in with the rest of their beliefs, which are largely in line with mine...but they lost me today. For good.

OK, I’m done :)

During the Jimmy Carter years I was a member of the John Birch Society. I was a typical Bible Belt Fundamentalist and fanatically pro-Israel, as was every Fundamentalist preacher I had ever heard. Imagine when I learned that the Birch Society and its cohorts in the "paleoconservative" or "old right" movement had always been fanatically anti-Israel! Even Jesse Helms, Senator Southern Baptist Convention himself, was originally anti-Israel and actually called for breaking off relations with Israel when they went after the PLO in Lebanon in '82! Fortunately he changed, but I have no idea why he was ever anti-Israel to begin with.

It turned out so many of my anti-Communist heroes were anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. It turned my stomach and still does. And now with the end of the Cold War the Israel-haters have really come out of the woodwork, even here on FR!

If you haven't encountered these posts, just keep your eyes open and you will. They blame abortion, pornography, illegal immigration, etc., on "Zionism." If you wonder what all that has to do with a Jewish nationalist movement, it doesn't. To these people "Zionism" isn't a Jewish nationalist movement but the name of the conspiracy detailed in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

It was years after this that I learned that many of the domestic leftists I absolutely loathed were "pro-Israel." They supported Castro, the ANC, the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, and every other group of Communist terrorists you could think of but magically opposed the PLO! During the '82 Lebanon war (the one Jesse Helms wanted to break relations with Israel over) Jane Fonda and her then husband Tom Hayden actually made a speaking tour supporting Israel! Can you imagine that??? This despite that every group they supported were militantly anti-Israel!

These lunatics belong together. They inhabit some strange pocket dimension where everything is backwards. If there were only a way to lock them up in it!

It also lays to rest any claim that Catholicism is *holy* or *apostolic*.

When demon worship is part of it, it’s neither. It’s then nothing more than the biggest pagan religion on the planet having abandoned Christ and holiness.

You make a good point, but I was actually targeting hypocritical liberals in general and not just Catholics.

Add the fact that no way in the world the original "first century church" was a "bible only church" and that every single ancient church in history, no matter where in the world (Ethiopia, India, Chinese Turkestan), is/was sacramental and liturgical and you get the idea.