"State officials say they're baffled, offended by false election claims"❗

Nick wrote:
"What's being said in the mass media, that we have no evidence, is a complete, absolute lie," - Rudy Giuliani

"Ga. secretary of state says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots"

https://tinyurl.com/yyjllz7y

The first mandatory day of Catholic attendance is coming up in a couple of months.

ex-catholic journal wrote:
January 1st: Holy Day of Obligation

Today is a holy day of obligation in the United States. It is the celebration of the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. Holy Days of Obligation require mandatory church attendance – failure to comply with the obligation is considered a grave sin....
....
Seriously, these man-made rules and traditions (which must be observed by Catholics as their minimum spiritual duty to merit heaven) are an abuse of power by the Holy See. They deny the simple gospel of salvation by faith in Christ alone. They are an abomination.

https://tinyurl.com/y2uys4ym

"As of October 27, 2020, I count 615 religious gatherings associated with at least 7,289 cases of COVID-19 and 99 deaths."---Warren Throckmorton

https://tinyurl.com/y6lkt3vq

"...according to a number of missionaries and missiologists, projects like Operation Christmas Child do much more to help Americans believe they are generous than to actually meet real needs of others through generosity...."

"10 alternatives to Operation Christmas Child"

History Channel wrote:
....
There is no central Masonic authority, and Freemasons are governed locally by the order’s many customs and rites. Members trace the origins of Masonry back to the erecting of King Solomon’s Temple in biblical times and are expected to believe in the “Supreme Being,” follow specific religious rites, and maintain a vow of secrecy concerning the order’s ceremonies. The Masons of the 18th century adhered to liberal democratic principles that included religious toleration, loyalty to local government, and the importance of charity. From its inception, Freemasonry encountered considerable opposition from organized religion, especially from the Roman Catholic Church.
....
Freemasonry has continued to be important in U.S. politics, and at least 15 presidents, five Supreme Court chief justices, and numerous members of Congress have been Masons....

https://tinyurl.com/y5kaek7c

Amendment Text | Annotations

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

https://tinyurl.com/bd4tvgn (United States Bill of Rights)

Ian MacDougall wrote:
....
The rare elections in which challenges to ballots make a difference tend to be dramatically smaller, and they tend to involve a conspiracy not in the theoretical sense raised by Trump’s lawsuits but in the criminal sense. In 2018, the North Carolina state elections board ordered a revote in the race for the state’s 9th Congressional District after a local operative working for the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, was found to have perpetrated a ballot fraud scheme. Harris won by only 905 votes out of around 278,000 cast in the 2018 election and decided not to run in the re-vote in 2019. (The seat was then won by a different Republican candidate.)...

the URL for the article that I just mentioned:

Bishop Mark J. Seitz wrote:
....
Back in her home country, the girl’s aunts and uncles had been assassinated. If she had not traveled with her family 2,000 miles to the U.S. border, she might have shared the same fate. But after a long and perilous journey and having survived kidnapping attempts, there she was, waiting to legally petition for asylum at a time when hard-line immigration policies like family separation and forced returns to Mexico have made such an act dangerous.

I tried putting myself in that child’s shoes....I felt the overwhelming weight of bureaucratic indifference and abstract government policy positioned against the vulnerability of a child. For a brief instant I felt what it must be like to be on the outside-looking-in of an exclusionary system of power. I felt fragile.

That experience of fragility deeply shaped my understanding of the social commitment of Christians. I realized that our political commitment as Christians is less about seeking self-interest, accessing privilege and influencing power, and more about standing in solidarity with those forced to the margins of the systems we create....

Kevin Clarke wrote:
....
"I think a lot of people in the bottom 40 percent work jobs that have rotating shifts,” Mr. Perko says.

He has other reasons for an at-times tenuous connection to the church. He is a bit annoyed by those Catholic bishops who denigrate Pope Francis, whom he holds in high esteem as a risk-taker and truth-teller. And as the president of a United Steelworkers local in Pueblo, Colo., he has bristled when church leaders attempt to dictate how he should vote, pushing parishioners toward candidates who may share the church’s position on abortion but otherwise fail to check any political boxes for this union leader.

“When you have someone reading a letter telling you that you’re going to hell because you support the candidate who wants people to eat—that doesn’t jibe with me,” he says.

“I’ve never lost my desire to be in the church,” Mr. Perko adds, “but I had no desire to be part of a growing conservative movement that I saw in the church.”...

https://tinyurl.com/y33abae5

Romans 8:3-8

3. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4. so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7. because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8. and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. --
https://tinyurl.com/has82mk (NASB)

Bill of Rights Institute wrote:
....
Thomas Jefferson wrote to a letter to a Baptist Church from Danbury, Connecticut, in which he explained his beliefs about federalism and the meaning of the Establishment Clause. Jefferson did not address the subject of state-sponsored churches, but assured the congregation that the federal government could not interfere with their church or offer special favors to any particular sect.

He wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” This phrase became so famous that many have come to believe it is in the Constitution, though it is not. Jefferson’s letter has been used by the Supreme Court, including Justice Hugo Black as “almost an authoritative declaration” as to the Founders’ intent for the Establishment Clause....

https://tinyurl.com/y4cgqyvb

"What’s Going On With John MacArthur and Grace Community Church? Must True Believers Vote Republican?"

https://tinyurl.com/y538xkmu

Reuters wrote:
Al Qaeda's second-in-command, accused of helping to mastermind the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa, was killed in Iran in August by Israeli operatives acting at the behest of the United States, the New York Times has reported, citing intelligence officials.
Key points:

• Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah went by the pseudonym Abu Muhammad al-Masri
• He was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in Tehran more than three months ago, the Times reported
• The Times said al-Masri had been in Iran's "custody" since 2003 but had been living freely in an upscale suburb of Tehran since 2015

https://tinyurl.com/yxlnfus3

It appears that Iran believes in the old saying,"the enemy of my enemy is my friend"

John Lee wrote:
It's okay. The Lord Jesus Christ was persecuted, therefore his followers will be persecuted. He said it, and it will happen. It's not happening in a serious way everywhere, but all those who live godly in Christ will suffer persecution of some sort.

One other thing that causes hostility towards Christians is that they are beginning to be looked upon as meddlers in government ❗👎

"A Christian should view the separation of church and state as a good thing. Those who wish to combine church and state usually do so thinking that Christianity can help stamp out evil, if the church is in charge. But history shows that the melding of church and state gives rise to corruption, totalitarianism, and oppression. Christians can and should be involved in the political process, just as anyone else. But Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and Christians understand that enforcing Christianity through a national church is not the answer to the world’s problems"

"How should a Christian view the separation of church and state?"

Greg Krieg wrote:
Joe Biden will win Georgia, CNN projected Friday, striking at the heart of what has been a Republican presidential stronghold for nearly three decades. The former vice president is the first Democratic nominee to triumph in Georgia since Bill Clinton did it in 1992.
Biden's victory adds 16 electoral votes to his tally, bringing him to 306 -- matching President Donald Trump's 2016 total. With CNN's projection that Trump will win North Carolina, the final tally is 306-232, a landslide for the President-elect, who flipped five states and a congressional district in Nebraska from red to blue in 2020....

https://tinyurl.com/y482aw5r

"Judge to allow witnesses in COVID contempt hearing against Grace Community Church in Sun Valley"

https://tinyurl.com/yxu6h8qy