Ezekiel 3:27, NASBBut when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you will say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says:’ The one who hears, let him hear; and the one who refuses, let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house.
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Ezekiel 3:27, NASBBut when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you will say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says:’ The one who hears, let him hear; and the one who refuses, let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house.
You ask an interesting opinion question.Originally Posted by Hannibal
It seems to me that individual countries vary as much as individual people; all seem to have some widely varying mix of "good" and "bad" qualities, as does our own choices of what is better.
I ask, what do you believe makes a country "good", "better" and "bad" than ours and where can we find it?
World wide, I see millions of migrants seeking entrance into other countries at great cost and risk to themselves. It seems most of the world's wondering seekers prefer the USA above all other countries but admit I have no idea why and I have no data to confirm my perception.
If you believe I'm wrong about us I have to wonder which country/countries you consider to be better than ours, and ask for a few specific points about why you feel that way.
I think it's pretty obvious. Handouts. Fly the flag of your own country and preach their rhetoric and we'll tolerate it. Sneak in and that's OK. Here. Have an ID. Have a baby here and not only will the hospital bill be paid for you're now anchored. Can't speak English? That's OK. Press '2' if you want English. Burn the US flag? That's OK. We'll put you on the news and say that's your right. I could go on at length but you get the idea.
Most other countries in the world if you try that **** they'll unceremoniously execute you and not think twice about it.
THAT'S why.
Last edited by Hannibal; 10-16-2023 at 10:05 PM.
I think you kind of proved his point without even mentioning
1. The Largest Christian nation in the world
2. The Most advanced medical care in the world
3. The Greatest economy in the world
4. The Greatest military in the world
5. The most industrious nation in the world
6. The 2nd Amendment and a pretty decent list of God given rights guaranteed to every citizen from cradle to grave
7. Natural Resources that will out last anyone reading this thread
8. The Greatest opportunity for a young person to be anything he or she desires with hard work and discipline.
9. The Winchester Rifle
The negative things that you mentioned above are true and revolting... and are a product of Liberal/Progressive/Democrat reprobate. But they do not define us as a nation and I believe will eventually sort themselves out.
If anyone doesn't want to assimilate, obey the country's laws, get a job and live in peace I personally would like to see them living elsewhere. No matter where they were born or how long they've been here.
If you are talking about illegal non-citizens I 100% agree... I give no quarter to them or their kind!
If you are talking about natural born or legal immigrant American citizens I 100% disagree, they have every right that you or I have... even if they are moral degenerates. (We probably make it to easy on the slackers but that is the current Law of the Land.)
I am not talking about someone sneaking across the border and dropping a litter of pups and calling them citizens under the guise of the 14th Amendment. Wrong interpretation IMO
Largest Christian nation? Maybe at one time.
America has, by Google, rounded
8 million Jewish (only 10 million live in all Israel)
4 million Moslem (worldwide there are a lot of Moslems)
There may be more Christians in China than America, because of our missionaries.
I would guess, America has 200 million Taylor Swifties.
John Lennon said he was bigger than Jesus, according to the polls, he was correct.
I have to endure another 90% Disney Christmas. Happy Halloween. The TV is off.
Can America muster 50% Christian? I fear not.
And from where I am sitting, health care for old folks is going away.
We won't know about our Army until it is tested, as the Russians found out.
Manned aircraft are as obsolete as the chariot. Marines don't drive tanks, they destroy them.
We have abundant natural resources that cannot be used because of the greenies who hate us.
We don't make Winchesters like we used to.
Re-elect nobody.
From Google so take it for what its worth
Attachment 319040
But I completely understand your protest comments.
They can protest all they want so long as it's peaceful. Which means no bodily injury, death or destruction of property.
If they want to call a man a woman or vis-a-vis because they wear clothes and take pills that's a soild NO from me.
If they want to coach children on gender in public grade school then that's a solid NO from me.
If they want reparations and excuses for being lazy and stupid that's a solid NO from me.
If they want excessive compensation for unskilled labor that's a solid NO from me.
If they want to force someone else to pay for their secondary education choices that's a solid NO from me.
If they want men to be allowed to compete in women's sports that's a solid NO from me.
If they want admission or hiring standards to factor in gender or race that's a solid NO from me.
If they see the US flag as a symbol of racism or oppression then why are they here? GET OUT.
Last edited by Hannibal; 10-17-2023 at 05:50 PM.
Your Preaching to the choir brother... I whole hardly agree with everything you said.
I would add that any of these freaks trying to flip a child's gender in grade school or at any age deserve a more direct and immediate approach of recompense.
IMHO, the Founders were prayerful people. I'm pretty sure they thought long and hard, and prayed on their knees long and hard, as well. The British government was levying taxes on the colonists that they were not levying on the folks who stayed home. They were also not admitting that the colonists had the same rights as other Englishmen. As for were they evil or not? I'm pretty sure my Irish and Scots ancestors felt they were, at least on and off. That "scalping" thing they taught the Native Americans? They practiced that on the wild Irish tribesmen and their families. And to perhaps a lesser extent on the Scots Highlanders. That's why they made note of a long train of abuses: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
Unless they were lying, it's pretty clear to me that they had just cause. And if He didn't want them to succeed, they would not have. As I read the histories, it was pretty close for a while there. And it is my belief that the folks who wrote that, and our Constitution were inspired by God to do so.
Bill
It seemed to me you were asking for clarification so I provided it. If I misunderstood your post I apologize. Honest mistake on my part.
I'll add I completely agree that those attempting to take advantage of the innocence of children deserve a very special type of punishment. But that's something reserved for experience after they're deceased IMO.
Well, thank you for the kind words.
Forgive me for being discouraged, the only salvation I see for America is a return to God, a Repentance a Salvation.
Our 3 million new voters who just walked into America uninvited are from a very Roman Catholic Central America.
Maybe they will remember why they came here, and want better for their children.
"With God, nothing is impossible"
I'd like to think they're predominantly Roman Catholic and just looking for a better life. Trouble is if even 5% of them aren't, we have a big problem. 150,000 new problems if that's right.
Amen!
You're right on me not believing in God. . .or as Matthew Quigley said of handguns, "I never had much use for one" who insists on "moving in mysterious ways", but that really isn't the issue here, other than to give me a different viewpoint from which to express my thoughts.
The common Christian view is that God is perfect and his creation, mankind, is deeply flawed. To this Man Of Extreme Doubt, this is like continuing to insist that Ford is infallible after they created the Pinto, but I'll accept that notion as truth for the moment while we continue to ponder the sinfulness of the American Revolution - as filtered through scripture.
The basic notion of your Romans passage is that King George III was placed on his throne by God and that his word should have been considered one and the same as the Almighty's. This may be an easy thing for a dirty peasant in a mud hut to accept when looking at impressive stone mansions, jeweled crowns, fur robes, and the history of his lineage (which was, of course, written by the victors), etc..., but what about George's Parliament? How about his governors? His troops that order you out of your hard-won frontier home in order to move you back to the "correct" side of a treaty line, maybe taking liberties with your wife and daughters in the process? At each and every point in that chain of command was a fallible human with the capacity to abuse his authority, take bribes, or come down on either side of the moral conflicts presented by governance for a multitude of reasons.
So on the one hand, you have a book providing guidance on how to live and try to make a better life, and on the other the same book tells you that it's OK for your government (which is Earthly and composed of flawed humans) to crush your efforts. While I think it's ludicrous for us to assume that every single member of the Rebellion consulted his Bible before joining the cause (a lot of them were probably just fed up and ticked off), those that did undoubtedly saw that contradiction.
At the end of the day - scripturally speaking - you would have had Loyalists quoting Romans as justification to continue to bend over and take it in the keister, and Rebels presenting their own quotes as equally valid reason to "spit on their hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats". If the American Revolution was indeed sinful, the Rebels still managed to prevail. . .which sparked a similar successful rejection of the divine right of kings in France in 1789, and another in Russia in 1917. Then you can also consider the American Revolution as a blueprint for the general widespread collapse of monarchies in the wake of WWI after millions died for reasons little more sophisticated than the nobility of Europe had "family trouble" and sent the serfs to sort it out by proxy. If God truly thought those "authorities" were his mouthpiece, then why did so many of them crash and burn within such a relatively short historical span of about 140 years? The "sheep", may or may not need to be led, but they tend to take exception to being led poorly.
Anybody picking up the banner of revolution is risking exile, imprisonment, execution, death in combat, and probably more than a few nights sleeping in accommodations far short of five-star. It certainly isn't a "feel good" kind of sin that one undertakes on a whim. Any sane person will only go down that road when they feel all other paths are blocked. I suppose those rebels of history could have wrangled with using the nearly 2,000 year old writings of a prophet's follower (I will note here not of the prophet or God himself) as their barometer for judging whether or not something was evil, but instead they chose to use the sense that God supposedly gave them to recognize the evil that they felt was staring them straight in the face.
That all is of course just my admittedly secular take on it, but you launched this thread seeking additional scripture to counter Romans and justify the Declaration of Independence. I would therefore submit that those earthly governmental authorities have an ingrained flawed-human tendency to present themselves as false prophets, and a web quick search will give you plenty of biblical statements on those:
Matthew 7:15 - “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."
Matthew 24-11 - "And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray."
Matthew 24-24 - "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect."
2 Corinthians 11:13-15 - "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds."
All of which can be summed up more contemporarily by:
Reagan 8/12/86: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help'".
From your viewpoint, might not those revolutions of 1776 to @1920 have been the righteous simply clearing out the false gods? If nothing else, it at least tore down a hereditary system of false prophecy and forced any new would-be false prophets to peddle their lies on their own merits. Apologies if that rambled a tad, but when you consider the acts governments often commit under the premise of "greater good", I think there's easily as much biblical justification that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, etc... were far more saints than sinners.
WWJMBD?
In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.
When you decide to argue over whether or not our creator decides who to put in charge then sooner or later you're going to run into who offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, who put him in charge and why. If you don't get, get cracking on your studies.
I am led to believe that the bible holds all the answers to how to live my life. Yet, I do not find all the answers in the bible. I am neither uneducated, nor below normal in intelligence, so I end up frustrated.
I have also been told the bible is "the perfect inspired word of God".
Lastly, that man cannot comprehend how God works.
I have concluded:
The bible does not have all the answers.
The bible is not 100% the inspired word of God.
Man cannot comprehend how God works.
I believe in God. He sent His son to die for our sins to provide a pathway to eternal life. In general, the bible gives us moral foundations to live by.
Man has used God to justify what man wants to do. The British prayed to the same God as the Revolutionaries. The Germans who built concentration camps prayed to the same God as the Allies who liberated them. And on, and on, and on...
Our founding fathers were men. Highly intelligent men, but still men. They certainly were not saints. They did the best they could to guide us to "one nation under God". Did they use God to justify their actions? I believe that is the case. Were they divinely inspired? I doubt it.
Don Verna
Some people make note of the bible not being the encyclopedia galactica.
Actually it's an abbreviated and revised version of a survival manual for operations in enemy territory.
Basic
Istructions
Before
Leaving
Earth.
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