Answer: can you repost this with it a bit zoomed in?
Explanation:
Text me the picture bc the words are too blurry.
It was a phrase used to justify European Imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The phrase implies that imperialism was motivated by a high-minded desire of whites to uplift people of color.
Faith<span> is </span>necessary for salvation<span>. The Lord himself affirms: 'He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he </span>who does<span> not </span>believe<span> will be condemned."
Excerpt from the Bible.</span>
Answer:
Explanation:
Each of the 2 sets has 1 church in the middle that stands out from the other 2 on each side. In both sets, we find 2 churches that are fully overcoming evil and are sandwiched between 2 other churches that are missing the mark. In the Revelation 2 – Set 1, the fully overcoming Smyrna church sits between the Ephesus and Pergamum churches. In the Revelation 3 – Set 2, the fully overcoming Philadelphia church sits between Sardis and Laodicea. And finally, sandwiched between the two sets of 3 churches is yet another church that is drastically missing the mark; the 7th church of Thyatira. This 7th church, sandwiched between sets 1 and 2, hosts an abundance of interesting revelations however, this article focuses mainly on the 2nd set of 3 churches found in Revelation 3—especially the Church of Sardis. [Note: this might be a good time to scroll to the end and read Revelation 3 included in this article.]
In an effort to avoid the crucified-with-Christ, death-to-self path of God-assigned deeds that mark and define the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the Sardis church creates their own list of do-good deeds. Still using scripture-based principles, the focus is changed from developing an intimate relationship with the Person of Jesus to joining feel-good programs that elevate and stimulate the human soul but deny the wonderful work of the cross upon the human’s born-again spirit. The attraction to this soul-stimulating “life-like” looking church means that a person can be entertained by the program, agree to a portion of do-gooding from the substitute Sardis church list of deeds, and still be considered a successful Christian by the church without ever really getting to intimately know the Person of Jesus, who all the programs are supposedly drawing from! This program-based Sardis church becomes renown and draws quite a crowd.
It seems that the Sardis church did not like the price that their God-given deeds would cost them and developed their own “work-around” way of doing self-made “good deeds” for God through their church programs. Rather than joining the Person of Jesus Christ, who daily calls us to pick up our cross and follow Him, the Sardis church targets the pleasure-center of the soul with entertaining programs that make a person feel alive in their souls but do little to transform and mature them. It is not the stimulation of a self-centered soul that changes us to be more like Christ, it is the death of that soul-life and the resurrection of the Christ-life within that changes us into Christ’s new-man image. The death to soul-life means we deny stimulations and the elevation of our old-man nature, not indulge them. Programs that stimulate the soul but do not lead the person into a deeper walk with Jesus Christ will not grow that person up.
Minus a few folks in the Sardis church, who keep God’s original instructions, Revelation 3:2 tells us that the bulk of the Sardis church is completely missing the mark and with little left to draw from, the Sardis church is close to being declared uselessly dead. Even under their own Sardis church roof, sits a sign of their departure from their God-given deeds. Those few folks who did not soil their garments and are holding fast to their original instructions from Christ serve as a direct confrontation to rest of the Sardis church that it is quite possible to fully follow God’s list of deeds without substitution.
Substituting programs for the Person, doesn’t work because God knows and remembers the deeds He has assigned us to complete while we are here on earth. He also knows when we are making up our own substitute list of deeds, thinking that He will still approve of our substitutes. God is not obligated to take responsibility for anything He does not Author. Not only are the Sardis church programs declared “dead,” the people in this system are in grave danger of completely missing Jesus when He comes and even worse, not even realize that they missed Him! Why? Because they did not do the work of God’s deeds that are specifically designed to lead them into an intimate knowing of Jesus.
NO OTHER country puts as much emphasis on “freedom” as the United States. Patrick Henry demanded “liberty or death”. The national anthem calls America “the land of the free”. Great reformers from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King have urged America to live up to its ideal of “freedom”. When a group of French Americanophiles wanted to flatter the United States, they sent the Statue of Liberty.
And no other country boasts as much about its mission to give freedom to the rest of the world. Woodrow Wilson thought that he had a God-given duty to bring liberty to mankind. George Bush regards his foreign policy as a crusade for freedom—“the right and hope of all humanity”.
But how good is America at living up to its own ideals? A new study by Freedom House tries to answer this question. The fact that Freedom House has devoted so much attention to the United States is significant in its own right. Founded in 1941 by a group of Americans who were worried about the advance of fascism, Freedom House is now the world's leading watchdog of liberty. The fact that “Today's American: How Free?” is such a thorough piece of work makes it doubly significant.
The judicious tone of “How Free?” will undoubtedly disappoint leftists. Freedom House bends over backwards to give the authorities the benefit of the doubt. Other countries have recalibrated the balance between freedom and security in the face of terrorists who want to inflict mass casualties on civilians. America's recent sins, however, are minor compared with those of its past. Newspapers have published highly sensitive information without reprisals. Congress and the courts have repeatedly stepped in to restore a more desirable constitutional balance.
But the verdict on the Bush years is nevertheless sharp. “How Free?” not only details and condemns the administration's familiar sins, from Guantánamo to extraordinary rendition to warrantless wiretapping. It reminds readers of its aversion to open government. The number of documents classified as secret has jumped from 8.7m in 2001 to 14.2m in 2005—a 60% increase over three years. Decade-old information has been reclassified. Researchers report that it is much more difficult and time-consuming to obtain information under the Freedom of Information Act.
Government whistleblowers have repeatedly been punished or fired—even when they have been trying to expose threats to national security that their bosses preferred to overlook. Richard Levernier had his security clearance revoked for revealing that some of the country's nuclear facilities were not properly secured. Border security agents have been punished for pointing out that the border is inadequately monitored, and airport baggage-handlers and security people for pointing to weaknesses in the security system. The Office of Special Counsel, which was established to enforce laws designed to protect the rights of such people, is widely regarded as “inept and even hostile to whistleblowers”.
“How Free?” also has some hard things to say about America's criminal-justice system. The incarceration rate exploded from 1.39 per 1,000 in 1980 to 7.5 in 2006, driven, among other things, by the war on drugs. America now has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world: 5.6m Americans, or one in every 37 adults, has spent time behind bars. Even though prison-building is one of the country's great growth industries, overcrowding is endemic, with federal prisons operating at 131% of capacity. America is also one of the few countries to ban felons and, in some states, ex-felons from voting. At any one time 4m Americans—one in every 50 adults—is disenfranchised because of past criminal convictions. This includes 1.4m blacks, or 14% of the black male population.
Freedom House's strictures are, if anything, too soft. America insists on criminalising victimless crimes such as prostitution. Last week Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, committed suicide; the government had thrown the book at her, including racketeering and mail fraud, because it really wished to penalise the arranging of assignations between consenting adults. In her suicide note to her mother she wrote that she could not “live the next six-to-eight years behind bars for what you and I have both come to regard as this 'modern-day lynching'.”
