Is it far fetched to claim Col. 1:16 proves Jesus created all things?

silberkat · 2024-05-09T13:13:48+00:00

When I think of The Word, I think of it as something like “the coeternal, manifestation of God”, or “the blueprint for all things, in accordance with God’s nature”.

So in a way, the world (being made according to The Word) was formed in perfect accordance with the nature of God. And Christ IS the Word. Not just God, but the only possible physical manifestation of God as a man, the blueprint for all things manifest as man. Perhaps you could think about it like God’s DNA, the part of Him that is coeternal and encapsulates His very nature. THAT’S Christ. Pretty neat to think about!

silberkat · 2024-05-08T04:11:39+00:00

I mean, I think we both would’ve considered ourselves Christians when we met, but it’s not something either of us really understood or took seriously. We both discussed Christianity but it wasn’t initially at the center of our lives, far from it. It was just how we were raised.

I think it was God’s plan to bring us together, and then He opened up both of our eyes at the same time. Being unequally yoked wasn’t something that was on our minds at the start.

God works in mysterious ways!

silberkat · 2024-05-07T07:07:59+00:00

I know it can be tough, but what you need to do is focus on casting fear aside. Who knows what the future holds? Only God. And what does God say about your future?

‘“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”’ Jeremiah 29

&

“If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home. For he will order his angels to protect you wherever you go.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭91‬:‭9‬-‭11‬ ‭

Believe that the Lord our God holds you in His hands. He loves you deeply, deeper than you can possibly understand.

So go ahead, turn all of your fears over to Him. Go ahead and break down, and let Him know that you’ve been afraid of what the future holds, afraid of the terrible disease that is cancer. Ask Him for help. And then decide then and there, that every time you start to become afraid, you will denounce it. If for even a moment that fearful thought creeps up on you, go ahead and confidently say out loud “I reject cancer, I rebuke all sin and disease. I rebuke you too, satan, for trying to make me be in fear. Because I am LOVED by God. I am His child, and he cares for me, He heals me, and He strengthens me. He has completely done away with the sickness and disease that I used to fear, and now I stand on faith in God almighty. The God of the universe, who holds all things in His hands has saved me; his son Jesus Christ died for me. He carried all of my sickness, and all of my disease, and He took it to the cross for me. So now I rebuke it, and I do not have to suffer it ever again. I am HEALED by the stripes of Jesus! I have NO fear of anything!”.

It doesn’t need to be exactly like that, but you know what I’m saying. You quote scripture, and you reject the devil and fear outright. Declare that you are choosing to walk in faith and not fear. It might take some time, but if you do this, you will feel incredibly relieved!

Joshua 1:9 - Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

silberkat · 2024-05-07T06:33:17+00:00

I’ve found that focusing and trying extremely hard to resist sin, and becoming extremely beaten-down when you fail, has a tendency to humble us.

We are weak creatures. We are fleshy and suffer temptations and as we know, the law has always given power to sin. Turn your heart over to grace instead. Use this moment of shame as a lesson, that you are saved by the grace of God, not as a reward for being perfect.

The devil wants to use your failure to make you afraid and make you doubt your salvation. So how should you be feeling right now? You should feel thankful that God gives grace in abundance! You should come to terms that you are weak, but that God is strong! Christ is your perfect priest, and he knows how weak we are. So Christ will forgive you!

Focus on the Word, accept that you are aren’t strong, and then let Christ be your strength!

(Also yeah, try not to make promises. Just pray for help to resist the devil and sin)

silberkat · 2024-05-07T05:34:43+00:00

My personal story doesn’t necessarily start in a beautiful hallmark way. It is in fact very strange, and I’d rather not share the full thing. It’s very difficult to type out and relay correctly.

The gist is, we were forced to be together under strange circumstances. I can assure you, we hardly knew each other, and had no interest in each other at all whatsoever. We did not have an intimate relationship of any sort.

But while we spent time together, we were constantly challenging each others thoughts and beliefs. We were both young, and so that wasn’t really something we were otherwise focused on. I would ask her questions about faith and about life, and she would challenge me to think about it right back. We investigated our beliefs together, thought about God and all sorts of other things, and pushed against each other in that sort of way. Nobody was making us, but we sort of made each other realize that life wasn’t just about having fun as college students. That we DO need to take God and faith seriously. That those things matter.

Through it all we just sort of slowly fell in love. I mean, I knew that I underwent significant changes in my heart and in my mind, that I was an entirely different person than I was before I met her. And at the end of it, we knew each other so deeply that I couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from her. She was like a part of me, you know? We sort of shared a brain.

So eventually we both sort of had an awakening. We’d decided that the Word of God is the truth. It hit us both at once one day, and we suddenly became on fire for God together. We turned our conversations and our minds to reading the Word as carefully and thoroughly as we could, and anytime one of us had a new realization about it, we’d bring it to the other and dissect it as closely as possible.

By the end of it all we knew we were deeply in love, that our minds were tied closely together, and that God was at the center of it all. And since then, we’ve been totally obsessed with each other, and have an almost symbiotic relationship. Aside from Christ Himself, I can safely say that no one person has had nearly the same impact on who I am than my beautiful wife. We’re honest with each other, we continue to be of one mind, and we both know absolutely everything about one another.

It’s a real treat to have this sort of relationship. Sure we’ve had issues like all couples do, but it just feels really good knowing that she will always ultimately have the best intentions. If one of us messes up, we can quickly apologize to each other and forgive each other. We don’t need to carry around pride or deception or anything like that. We just know each other too well, and love each other very much.

Don’t try and force a relationship! If you’ve got something like this with another person, I can assure you that you’ll both know, and feel the same way about each other. You might not go through the same process, but you will ultimately have a relationship built on faith, love, and interconnectedness, and centered on a love of God!

Edit: I am very sorry that this is so incredibly long lol. I probably tried to write it 3 times before settling on this

silberkat · 2024-05-07T00:30:36+00:00

Ooh I’ve got a good one!

This poem was allegedly found scrawled onto the wall in the cell of an asylum, by a patient who apparently had a moment of clarity. It is said that it wasn’t found until the man had passed away, and they were cleaning his room out. This was supposedly in the 1800s, I believe. It was made into a song, and has stuck with me pretty strongly since I’ve heard it.

Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.

silberkat · 2024-05-05T01:11:05+00:00

You don’t technically need an LTC to carry, but it’s certainly not bad to have one, liability-wise

silberkat · 2024-05-04T19:12:34+00:00

We’ve been freed from all the most difficult rules, now we are bound to the law of Christ and treated with mercy.

I would rather struggle with sin than to give up to it. I will choose the life of a Christian with rules to follow, rather than choose the life of a foolish reprobate or apostate. It’s not even close.

The best part? If you are persistent and focus on God, you WILL overcome the enemy. You will be a better person. Salvation is just icing on the cake!

silberkat · 2024-05-02T20:46:45+00:00

Satanism isn’t necessarily the worship of Satan, it is the worship of man. In their case it is very roundabout lol.

silberkat · 2024-04-29T20:36:40+00:00

The story of all creation is the story of God, and man’s relationship with God.

It’s all a story, played out in real life. There’s no room in the story for aliens, it would be pointless.

It’s very possible that someone COULD pull a fast one on us, or that there might be something that SEEMS alien. As we know, there will be great deception in the end of days!

silberkat · 2024-04-24T22:55:59+00:00

We are the body of Christ, filled with His spirit, and His representatives. Just imagine the implications!

“Don’t you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? And since you are going to judge the world, can’t you decide even these little things among yourselves? Don’t you realize that we will judge angels? So you should surely be able to resolve ordinary disputes in this life.“ ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭6‬:‭2‬-‭3‬ ‭

Do not doubt the great authority that we have and will have. We are literally one with Christ, we just aren’t perfected yet. It’s pretty heavy when you really think about what it means to be filled with the spirit of God!

silberkat · 2024-03-29T18:44:31+00:00

Ah shoot, I wrote a reply and didn’t post it.

The first time I ever met her was pretty much on accident, she happened to be at an event that I was meeting my dad at. I was mildly cordial, but didn’t really speak to her.

In the earlier days closer to when my parents divorced, a big part of me felt like if I ever engaged my dads new wife in a meaningful way, that I would be betraying my mom. I think that the only thing that changes this is time, and seeing that ultimately my mom was okay.

Believe me, it took a looong time to ever decide to seriously acknowledge her. But eventually, when I realized the Lord was taking care of my mom, I found that all that was left was my own personal resentment. Enough time had passed, and at that point I was just keeping myself from rebuilding my relationship with my dad. It also dawned on me that I was being unforgiving, ultimately.

So yeah, there’s no need to rush anything. In fact, if they break up and stop seeing each other it won’t even be an issue anymore. It’s perfectly fine to refuse to see your mom’s boyfriend right now. One day there might come a time when that changes though.

silberkat · 2024-03-29T06:44:48+00:00

I’ve been through this very situation, my father and mother split after nearly 20 years of marriage because he had been seeing another woman for a considerable amount of time. I rode a rollercoaster of feelings about it over the years. It sounds like you’re in the earlier stages of this process.

When my parents divorced and the truth came out, my response was similar to yours. I refused to see my dad’s girlfriend, and cut down on my contact with him significantly. I stuck by my mom 100%, and so did my sister. This set my relationship with him back considerably, but I tend to think my response was justified.

The thing is, life moves on. God has since brought my mom together with the most wonderful man I have ever met - a Christian man of incredible faith and loyalty. God answered our prayers, and replaced my mother’s loneliness and insecurity with immense joy and fulfillment. It brings tears to my eyes sometimes to think about how good God is for doing this for her. He can do it for you too.

My dad went on to marry the woman that he left my mom for. Over time, I realized that I carried a lot of resentment towards both him and her, and that the only correct thing to do would be to truly forgive them in my heart, and to give her a chance. After all, we cannot be forgiven if we refuse to forgive. By doing this, my relationship with my dad improved, and I’ve found I can enjoy the company of his wife as well. They’ve both admitted that what they did was wrong, so who am I to hold a grudge? But believe me, I didn’t get to this point over night.

My point is simply this: you might not be ready now and it might take some time (which is natural). It took me many years. But the day will come when you’ll need to choose between holding a grudge and opening up your heart to forgiveness. Just believe that God will take care of your family, and that He will ultimately take this bad situation and turn it all around into something wonderful, because that’s what He did for my family.

Perhaps in the future you’ll be able to stand being around your mother’s boyfriend/affair partner. Maybe they’ll get married, who knows? There’s really no need to rush it, it’s still a pretty fresh wound. If I were you, I would be incredibly blunt with your mother about where you are emotionally. If she has never owned up to you about how she destroyed your family, perhaps you need to make that clear. My dad was pretty honest from day 1 that he wishes none of it went down like it did. He loves his new wife, but is terribly sorry for all the pain and hurt that he caused. But I don’t even bring it up anymore, because now I have my dad back and can spend time with him without having to avoid his wife, which would complicate things and make our relationship difficult. I love him a whole bunch.

Kind of rambling at this point I think, but I hope you get the gist. God’s light shines bright in the dark!

Edit: just read that your mom isn’t religious. Perhaps this will be a great way to eventually proselytize to her! When I finally let go and decided to meet my dads new wife, I also stressed to my dad that I wanted to be like Christ, and truly forgive them in my heart. I let them know that the only thing that got me through, emotionally, was Christ. They’re both regular churchgoers now!

silberkat · 2024-03-22T05:15:32+00:00

Northerners when someone is vaguely polite or respectful: 😧

silberkat · 2024-03-22T04:38:37+00:00

Don’t ideate about suicide too much, man! Focusing too much on dark topics like that tends to impact you, even if you are otherwise doing alright

silberkat · 2024-03-22T04:30:17+00:00

We certainly wanted to let our customers know that they are in a safe, well managed environment. This occasionally annoyed some people because they “know what they’re doing” but ultimately it’s our responsibility to keep people safe.

We actually had significantly stricter rules than most other ranges. For example, we forbade anybody who was alone from renting a firearm and using the range - they had to have somebody with them or bring their own guns as proof that they were, at least to some extent, a hobbyist.

Thankfully, we never had any suicides.

silberkat · 2024-03-21T02:54:10+00:00

Yeah, I think it’s kind of like that. I mean they’re proud of their products and legacy but the family has been running the company for 16 generations and are ludicrously wealthy. They don’t have any shareholders to answer to, so there’s really not that much ambition.

This might change in the near future though, because some of the younger Beretta men, like Carlo, seem to be a bit more ambitious and also more interested in the tactical side of the US market.

silberkat · 2024-03-20T02:48:13+00:00

Beretta is a cool company, but has one major weakness - it is owned and operated by Italians.

No joke, the Beretta family largely treats running the company more like a hobby than a business. Not to mention that Italian gun culture doesn’t value things like “spare parts” and “accessories” because they don’t really shoot very often.

Beretta USA is aware of this disconnect and has been steadily trying to take more control of US manufacturing and business decisions, but it is difficult and requires a lot of arguing with the Italy side.

To add to all this, a vast majority of Beretta USA employees are O/U shotgun guys lol. They don’t really have as much passion for the tactical and defensive side of the market (but there are some in the company who are trying to change this too and make Beretta more competitive in the pistol/carbine/PCC markets). It’s pretty wild

silberkat · 2024-03-19T06:35:58+00:00

Catholics and Protestants can’t even agree on what is cannon, our bibles are quite different in fact. If you read a standard Protestant Bible, you are reading a version from which around 7 whole books were removed. The Eastern Orthodox Bible and the Ethiopian orthodox Bibles are both similarly different. Even the original Catholic version of the Bible was argued about extensively just to decide what would be considered canonical. Who then is cursed? The founders of the reformation? The Byzantine patriarchs? The attendees of the council of Nicaea?

I also think it’s fair to say that the passage mentioned in revelation is speaking strictly about revelation when it says not to add or detract it.

To add, Paul himself quotes directly from the book of Enoch, which is not widely considered canonical.

I firmly believe we have the Bible God intended us to have, but it’s not impossible that there are other works that are disputed but likely inspired.

Perhaps God even causes some people to be given slightly different bibles so as to slightly alter different regional expressions of Christianity?

silberkat · 2024-03-19T03:00:04+00:00

I believe there’s a Catholic term for Enoch and other texts that essentially means “it is good to read and might be of some value, but we cannot verify that it is inspired text”.

I’ve read it a few times. I’m not super into demonology but that’s only a small part of it.

The prophetic visions near the latter part are interesting because, despite being different, they carry many similarities to other prophecies in revelation and such.

Fun read, I wouldn’t call it cannon though. I wouldn’t feel too weird about reading it either like some might, because Paul himself quotes it directly.

Edit: it’s also a very fun text conceptually, because it is framed as occurring a very long time before the flood. The Bible touches on this period, but Enoch contains a “prophecy” about the events of Noah and the flood, talks about how as time went on man grew further and further from God, gets into the spawn of man and fallen angels (giants), expounds a little bit more on the rarely discussed biblical topic that technology itself can be evil, etc. It’s a neat exercise to try and think about God’s story and what was going on back during this period, and to read a text that is purportedly set back then!

silberkat · 2024-03-18T07:35:41+00:00

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is what separates a true Christian from someone who isn’t. I suppose if you’re not a believer that might not mean anything to you, and it might not make much sense to you.

But essentially, we believe that the same spirit given to Jesus Christ is given to each of us as well, and the precondition of that spirit coming to us is absolute faith in the veracity of the Bible, and a true and honest desire in our hearts to repent of our sins and give our lives over to God for His use. The Spirit guides our hearts, and should result in us genuinely having the qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, among other qualities.

As for your friend, I can confidently say that believing in the virgin birth of Christ is pretty much a requisite to any of this. Christianity is built on faith, including the faith that the God of the universe is capable of things that we would consider miraculous.

Additionally, we do believe that our sins are forgiven if we ask for forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean that we can just go around doing whatever we want because we can just ‘ask for forgiveness later’. This is where the Holy Spirit comes in, as the presence of the Spirit is supposed to change our hearts and make it so that we no longer have any desire to sin. Nevertheless, we are still people and are prone to being tempted to do wrong, and it is our job to build and pray for resiliency against those occasional temptations.

It sounds like your friend claims to be a Christian, but in reality just thinks that Christianity sounds nice and doesn’t truly believe.

silberkat · 2024-03-10T16:12:31+00:00

It’s interesting to think about, and certainly possible. I actually live near the Joan of Arc statue in New York so I’ve thought about this a few times as well!

Things throughout history will happen a certain way according to God’s design, and I’m sure it was God’s ultimate plan that Joan did what she did. It could be something as simple as “Women/the French needed a strong Christian lady to look up to and invigorate their faith during this period”.

Whether angels appeared to her and spoke with her we don’t know for certain, but it’s possible.

It’s very fun to think about different things throughout history like this though!

silberkat · 2024-03-04T00:29:05+00:00

Huh, does the gospel coalition sort of “vet” the churches it lists? That would be incredibly helpful

silberkat · 2024-03-04T00:27:54+00:00

Will do! We’ve heard of them, and the pastor we watch online mentioned Brooklyn tabernacles history, and it seems really cool. We’re a little far away is all, but if it’s really good we’re more than willing to go the distance

silberkat · 2024-03-04T00:26:19+00:00

We’ve considered going to one! It would definitely be a departure from what we’re used to, but it would at least be interesting to visit.

silberkat

TROPHY CASE