Most Viewed Religion & Spirituality Blogs (1,491)

A friend recently purchased a taped shut box at an auction. Among with cameras and other goodies it contained these objects possibly of brass,

One is the pot pictured below. The lid seems corroded in place and has not been opened. Its use is unknown as are the carvings on it.



This is a bell of some kind. Two views. It looks like it may be Hindu, but I don't know what it is for.





If anyone recognizes these objects and what (if any) special purpose they serve please advise me here. Thanks.

Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret,

In my opinion, everybody prays.
In all religions. Of all beliefs. Whether proclaimed atheists or non believers, all pray.
Spiritually prayer is from the heart and so most times it’s private, but it also is manifested publicly, aloud and as a congregation, invoking or pleading or asking or thanking God, or Allah, or Buddha, or the Sun, the Moon.....
Praying is a powerful emotion which can be both physical and mental, and even if for the briefest of time, can be a reliever of worry, stress, mental and physical pain, and a support in time of need.
I believe in the power of prayer.
You ?

I hate going to funerals on my own. A neighbour of mine has died so I have to face the cold frightening place of death.
I suffer from an anxiety disorder so my son will come with me to help me sympathize with the family.
Do other people find it hard to face funerals or am I the only worry freak!

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7 KJV

By David Brant Berg 6/72

1. FEAR IS A VERY INTERESTING SUBJECT!--It's a lot of amazing things! And you don't realise so much of it is subconscious until you try to put it in words & try to analyse it! I suppose being afraid to talk about your fears is one of the worst fears of all, because to confess your fears is really to expose your innermost self--the part you hide from everybody--even those dearest to you!--In fact, the part you're even trying to hide from yourself, because you're afraid to think about it. You don't even want to confess it to yourself that you're afraid because that would be admitting you're a coward, & you don't want to confess you're a coward for fear of being exposed, I guess!

2. I GUESS IT'S KIND OF LIKE A DISEASE: You can't very well find the CURE unless you confess you HAVE the disease & you reveal the SYMPTOMS. It's one of those secret, dirty diseases that you're ashamed to confess you have, because you know it's the result of sin. Because if you're honest, you know your fears are results of doubts, & usually your doubts are the results of disobedience or feared disobedience or failures--feared failures, past failures or possible future failures!

3. AND I THINK THE FEAR OF FAILURE IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE GREATEST FEARS anybody could possibly have!--The fear of failure in life, love, labor & the Lord! If you're failing God, I think that's one of the worst for a Christian. And it's perhaps second only, I think, to the fear of failing others, because you KNOW that GOD will forgive you, but others find it hard to forgive! The fear of hurting them because of your failure, fear of letting them down, disappointing them, hurting their faith, disillusioning them, discouraging them--the fear that because of your failure others will fail too!--This is hardest to bear! It's the kind of thing you don't even want to admit to yourself!

4. THE FEAR OF FAILING YOURSELF is least of all! Really, in a way, it's a fear of the truth about yourself! But now here's where it pays to FACE your fears, because you have to draw a line of distinction by facing them--between that which is the TRUTH & those fears which are the LIES of the Devil!

5. I'LL NEVER FORGET WHEN I WAS A KID ABOUT 12, DELIVERING HANDBILLS, & I had to go into a certain yard to get to a house in the rear, & out from the back yard came this huge Great Dane, barking & growling furiously & coming at me full speed, leaping & bounding, & I thought, "This is it!" But I knew I didn't dare turn my back on him or he would bite me for sure, yet on the other hand, he was a little too big for me to face & I was invading HIS territory!

6. SO I THANK GOD I REMEMBERED TO CRY OUT TO THE LORD, & I did something that I've even tried since then with people!--I suddenly jutted my hand out toward him & I yelled, "I rebuke you in Jesus' name!"--And did he put on the brakes! He skidded to a stop & looked absolutely startled!--And turned tail & ran!

7. SO IT NOT ONLY PAYS TO FACE YOUR FEARS & TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEM--even confess them--but to take a positive stand against them, especially in the power & Spirit of the Lord with the promises from His Word!

8. IT DOESN'T PAY TO TRY & SAY THERE'S NO DEVIL & NO DEMONS & NO SUCH THING AS EVIL, sin or sickness & just try to ignore the facts! It would be like trying to ignore that you have a disease when you've really got it, because as long as you have it & try to hide it, you can't very well find the remedy!
**
True faith, the kind that can stand any test, the kind that works miracles and the kind that lasts, are built on the solid rock foundation of His Truth!





TFI [Posted Video - "Time Of Love" - music,orchestration]

Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce; So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. - There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, and there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. The generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters will himself be watered. Proverbs 3:9-10; 11:24-25 NASB

"He who does not want to die should not want to live. For life is tendered to us with the provison of death. Life is the way to this destination." -Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"There should be no fear of death, for the death of the body is but a gentle passing to a much freer life." - Helen Greaves

"Only the destructive forces know death as lord. Only spiritual forces know life as the Lord. Know ye the Lord!" - Edgar Cayce

"The last to be overcome is death, and the knowledge of life is the knowledge of death." - Edgar Cayce

"Think of stepping on the shore and finding it heaven, of touching a hand and finding it God's, of breathing new air and finding it celestial, of waking up in glory and finding it home." - Don Wyrtzen

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

"Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it." -Albert Einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live." - Albert Einstein

"Probably a dozen times since their death I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them ... it doesn't seem strange to me" - Carl Sagan

"The modern tradition of equating death with an ensuing nothingness can be abandoned. For there is no reason to believe that human death severs the quality of the oneness in the universe." - Larry Dossey MD

"A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us." - Guirdjieff

"The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain." - Colin Wilson

"I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth." - Ben Johnson

"A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The longest journey is the journey inwards of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being." -Dag Hammarskjold

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark." - Francis Bacon

"I am borne away by the mighty and shining ones." - the Egyptian Book of the Dead

"If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it, let him be anathema ." - Decrees of the Fifth General Council





PowerPointParadise TFI

(Continued from Pt. 1)

Famed scientist, science fiction writer, and big bang/evolutionary proponent Isaac Asimov put it this way:

Another way of stating the second law then is, “The universe is constantly getting more disorderly.” Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself—and that is what the second law is all about.

But the crux of evolutionary theory is that things are gaining in complexity, simple life forms giving rise to more sophisticated ones, disorder giving rise to order. This flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics. On this point alone the theory of evolution would have to be disallowed.

Evolutionists counter this argument by claiming that an energy source can reverse the second law. For example, an outside energy force such as a housekeeper can tidy a disorderly room. They point to the sun as the outside source of energy, and say over billions of years the sun’s energy would be like the busy housekeeper. Simple observation, however, would show that energy from the sun alone is not capable of creating life from something with no life, or complexity from simplicity.

Consider the sun shining on two seedlings: the one alive, the other dead. When equal amounts of water and nutrients are added to both, the live plant flourishes but the dead one decays. Energy from the sun is not enough to give rise to life. And as for the dead plant, it rots and disintegrates in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics.
* *
Just for Fun

God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, “God, we don’t need You anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other words, we can now do what You did in the beginning.”

“Oh, is that so? Tell Me,” God replies.

“Well,” says the scientist, “we can take plain dirt, form it into the likeness of You, and breathe life into it, thus creating man.”

“That’s very interesting. Show Me,” says God.

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man.

“No, no!” interrupts God. “Get your own dirt.”
***
"NOT OF WORKS, LEST ANY MAN SHOULD BOAST!" (EPH.2:9).

"There's none righteous, no not one! … For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Rom.3:10; Eph.2:8). That principle is true of everything--including our service to the Lord!

Our service must not be self-works and self-effort! It has to be the Lord!--Otherwise it's self-righteousness, self-works and self-energy, what the Lord calls "a voluntary humility," sort of a self-made spirituality (Col.2:18). It's the Lord that gets the credit for it all!

It's just like Salvation; you can't work it up no matter how hard you try! There's nothing you can do to get it except just humble yourself and receive it by faith! There's no way you can get it except just by the grace of God, just a pure gift!--And that's what we have to recognize about works too. The Lord wants us to throw ourselves at the complete mercy of the Lord!--Just to give up on ourselves and depend on the Lord to the point where we have nothing left but God.

It's all the Lord!--We have almost nothing to do with it! This is what we need to learn: To let go and let God!--Amen? Lie back in His arms and let Him do it! Rest in the Lord!



Activated TFI

The way a spinning wheel or a fan spinning or the tracks on a tank. When they reach a certain speed of rotation appear to the human eye to stand still or at times rotate backwards or forwards at speeds variable to the actual speed of rotation.

No doubt some optical phenomenon directly related to the planks distance.



Now this my friends is something you may well not have considered. How that with sound also this phenomenon could occur.
Now this part is more difficult to perceive but consider sound that can not be heard because of some aspect of it's frequency. Yet as it comes into resonance or discord with another slightly dissimilar vibration that sound would then become audible to some degree.

For example two speakers set apart with a stereo observer in a location where the sound from one speaker might strike a single surface before reaching the observer where as the opposite speaker strikes perhaps 3 surfaces before reaching the observer. Even if the same sound was played over both speakers simultaneously there would be a detectable distortion and delay as compared from one side to the other.

More to the point an "encoded" message could be transmitted which could only be received when it interacts with another slightly varied wave form.

I tell you this so that you may challenge your perceptions. There are things encoded in many television, radio and internet broadcasts and videos and games of which you are very likely fully unaware.

Or perhaps you are enlightened enough to be aware , perhaps even aware enough to detect something in the broadcasting but unable to fully realize it. Only that it is annoying you, perhaps.

It is absolutely possible that with the right room design and dimensions and perhaps a fan or two running producing a correct harmonic that one can on occasion actually discern these other encoded messages hidden beneath the standard audio track of many forms of audio tracks and entertainment.

I would surmise that these sorts of things would have been much more difficult to detect in analog systems, but with digital systems it becomes much more likely for harmonics to take place as there are considerably less frequencies in use.

One last thing, I would assume that many of these signals are likely to interact with 60Hz frequency and multiples thereof. This opens the possibility to glimpse the potential for direct targeting of populations or individuals. As there exists a potential to implant thoughts or enact emotions through not just subliminal suggestion but through actual bio electrical or electro magnetics coupled with acoustic audio frequency impulses.


Interestingly, I have just recently learned that all of creation is just a boundary layer condition of ordered frequencies interacting with each other causing very slight harmonic disturbances in the fabric of space and time.

But that is a whole other subject.....

God's love is like an evergreen; It is active in all seasons.
The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. (Psalm 103: 17)

Written by Peter Amsterdam April 2015

When Jesus rose from the dead, His resurrection was the first phase of God’s new creation, a new kind of existence—a human body was transformed by the power of God into one that is no longer affected by death, decay, and corruption. Nothing like this had ever happened! “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him.”1

His risen body wasn’t a spirit; it was physical, which His followers could touch. He taught them,2 walked with them,3 cooked for them,4 and ate with them.5 He was once together with 500 of them at one time.6 After 40 days,7 He ascended into heaven,8 where He sits at the right hand of God.9

As Christians, we too are part of God’s new creation. We can look forward to the time when Jesus will return and raise our bodies as well.10 The apostle Paul speaks about our bodies raised from death in terms of a seed that is planted, and from which the more complete plant grows.11 He goes on to explain that these new bodies will be imperishable, raised in glory and power as spiritual bodies.12

Being imperishable means our bodies will not have the weaknesses they have now. They won’t be affected by aging, sickness, or weariness as they are today. As one author wrote, “In these resurrection bodies we will clearly see humanity as God intended it to be.”13

When a person receives Jesus as their Savior, God’s Spirit comes to dwell within them and they are renewed and regenerated. Renewal is a renovation, a change in the believer for the better. Regeneration is the production of a new life consecrated to God, a radical change of mind. “When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.”14

As part of the new creation, God’s Spirit changes us, helping us to put on the mind of Christ, as we develop and reflect some of God’s characteristics by growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.15

And that’s why we have so much to celebrate!—That God dwells in us and helps, guides, and renews us; that we are part of His new creation; that we will live eternally in our new bodies, with perfect health and no aging, sickness, or disease. This is the good news of the Gospel: the love that God has for each individual, the offer of everlasting life, of resurrection from the dead, of being a new creature in Christ Jesus today and a part of the overall new creation for eternity.

1. Romans 6:9 ESV
2. Luke 24:27.
3. Luke 24:13–15.
4. John 21:9–13.
5. Luke 24:41–43.
6. 1 Corinthians 15:6.
7. Acts 1:3.
8. Acts 1:9–11.
9. Mark 16:19.
10. 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17; 1 Corinthians 15:51–52.
11. 1 Corinthians 15:35–38.
12. 1 Corinthians 15:42–44,49.
13. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 832.
14. Titus 3:4–5 NLT
15. See Galatians 5:22–23.
16. The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995)
**
THE PURPOSE OF BIBLE PROPHECY IS TO PREPARE US FOR THE FUTURE!

Our generation is facing the events of the End right NOW, and needs to know exactly what's happening according to God's Word!

Thank You, Lord, for Thy wonderful wonderful Word that tells us so many beautiful mysteries!--Thank You, Lord, for revealing their meaning, so that as we see them come to pass, we'll know Thy Word is true and that everything is happening just as You said it would, which will give us the COURAGE and the FAITH and the ENDURANCE to keep going for Thee until the very End!





Activated TFI

If we are not a little bit uncomfortable every day, we're not growing. All the good stuff is out side our comfort zone." Jack Canfield

It will motivate you, help you to build good habits, and help you slog through the sacrifices as you make the sometimes long trek toward reaching your ultimate goal, so it’s vital that you’re crystal clear on what your why is. Keep your why in the forefront of your mind. It will give you strength and help you to keep going, even when your natural strength and drive wanes.

Number 4. Set goals for incremental progress.

When you have a big goal you’re working toward, you can’t get there in one jump. Sometimes a goal takes months to reach, sometimes years. When you’re working toward a long-term goal, it’s natural to grow weary in well-doing. To help you stay on track and encouraged, it’s effective to set daily, weekly, and monthly steps of progress. You need to have clear immediate goals that are small enough that you can reach them daily, but that build one upon one another, working toward a plan that leads to where you want to be next month, in three months, in six months, and the next year. You need to be able to plan, recognize, and measure your incremental progress.

When you’re chipping away at a big goal, it’s important to be realistic about the small goals. It won’t help to set goals that aren’t attainable; that will only leave you discouraged and feeling like you should quit now. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Instead, set yourself up for success by setting sustainable goals that acknowledge the many small steps that are inching you ever closer to the fulfillment of your big goal.

Focus on consistency, regularity, and faithfulness. You can’t do a little here or there and expect to achieve your goals. Doing a small thing consistently will develop a powerful habit, which will serve you well. Don’t underestimate small steps. Incremental growth is powerful. Over time you can make big changes in your life by taking small steps consistently.

Number 5. Have a system for accountability.

There are so many things that come up in daily life that threaten to knock us off course and derail us from reaching our goals. I bet we’ve all set a goal, started working towards it, and then a few weeks later realized, “Hey, what happened to that goal I set? I haven’t thought about it or done anything towards it for over a week now.” Maybe you got sick, had visitors stay with you, traveled for work, or were taking care of sick children. The list of interruptions could go on and on.

It’s vital to have a system of some type that points you towards your goals again and again.

Tracking your progress brings moment-to-moment awareness of the areas of your life that you want to improve. You can’t manage or improve something until you measure it. Tracking is a key to staying on track or getting back on track.10

Research shows that when you tell someone else what your goal and commitment is, you’re much more likely to stick with it. Accountability makes you more likely to succeed, so if you’re going to put time and hard work into something, why not help to ensure your success by figuring out a simple but effective way to hold yourself accountable?

Accountability systems trump intentions. If you don’t have a system, the natural result will be to stray off course. You can avoid the “if I only had” lament by safeguarding yourself and your God-given goals by holding yourself accountable daily.

10 Darren Hardy, “Tracking Progress,” DarrenDaily, December 5, 2014

11 Zechariah 4:6 CEV.






Director's Corner TFI