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“A Day of Judgment and Salvation” (1 Corinthians 1:3-9) In thinking about a theme for our three midweek Advent services this year, I decided to go with the Epistle readings for the first three Sundays in Advent. For there is a common theme that you can see in all three. There is a phrase, a connecting thread, that runs through these readings. See if you can notice what it is. First, from the Epistle for the First Sunday in Advent, 1 Corinthians 1, the part where it says: “as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who...

GOP lawmakers say they have heard new stories about political bias or interference within the FBI on the eve of new testimony Thursday by FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) said Wednesday he interviewed a recently retired FBI supervisor who told him he was instructed by Deputy Director Andrew McCabe not to call the 2012 Benghazi attack an act of terrorism when distributing a report on the FBI findings to the larger intelligence community. The agent found the instruction concerning because his unit had gathered incontrovertible evidence showing a major al Qaeda figure had directed the attack and...

He knows exactly how many burgers will fit on this grill surface. "34",he states with confidence. Marty Hall can tell you everything about what it takes to run Sid's Diner, all 860 square feet and 32 seats of it. "Its old school. It's an old school diner," he says. But other numbers have long since escaped Hall's comprehension. The big one he does know is '50', 50 years of slingin' hash and diner cooking. Hall explains, "It's really fulfilling to me to be able to fix something and give it to somebody to eat, and they enjoy it." Marty got...

Support is coming in from around the world for a student who was paralyzed in a car accident on his way to Godwin High School in Virginia. Ryan Estrada, 16, says he lost control of his vehicle while trying to avoid a bicyclist on Gayton Road in Henrico County on Nov. 8, according to WTVR. “I remember swerving past the biker and there was another car coming in the lane so I had to swerve back into my lane,” recalls Estrada. “I remember losing control of the wheel, hitting the mailbox and then hitting the tree.” Estrada said two motorists,...

Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) possible resignation on Thursday could set off a scramble among potential candidates to fill his seat while putting both Senate seats in the state up for reelection in 2018. Franken’s Democratic colleagues rapidly pulled support from him on Wednesday, as more than half of the Senate Democratic Conference — led by a stream of successive statements seemingly coordinated by half a dozen female senators — called on Franken to resign in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Thomas Perez joined that chorus, upping speculation that Franken will step aside on Thursday,...

Saxony court officials have decided this week that a Niedersdorf man can now legally sell his miniature gallow souvenirs, despite the fact they have reservations for Angela Merkel and her colleague Sigmar Gabriel on them. In a surprising decision by the Chemnitz judiciary, a citizen has been allowed to sell his miniature versions of the gallows used at the Dresden PEGIDA demonstration on October 12th 2015, reported the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday. The miniatures are based on the life-sized gallows carried in the protest in 2015, which had signs hanging from the hangman’s nooses with the words, “Reserved for Angela...

Unpadded metal surfaces, blunt knobs and rods, steering columns that impale—and seatbelts weren’t even on the options list. We may think highly of the 1955 Chevrolet, but like all cars of the era, it didn’t think much of its passengers; here we use it as a lens through which to view the state of automobile safety of the time. Yes, 62 years later, things have become much safer.

An increasing number of jihadists active in Syria are fearing for their lives. The result: they want to go back to the Western countries where most of them were born and raised. It must be a major disappointment for many extremist European Muslims who have traveled to Syria in recent years, hoping that they could live in their own version of heaven. Meaning: a horrific, brutal empire in which Islamist extremists can do whatever they please, like raping non-Muslim women, throwing gays from rooftops, and taking non-Muslims as slaves. For a few years, these extremists got what they had dreamed...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Large military drills being carried out by the United States and South Korea and U.S. threats of a preemptive war against Pyongyang have made the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula “an established fact”, North Korea’s foreign ministry said. See full article at link.

Every Century, there are some Nations or Empires with the most influence and power around the world. The Romans, the British Empire, to America today. Obama once said that the future does not belong to those that slander the prophet of Islam. I sure hope he's wrong, but with the spread of Islam, he could be right. 100 years from now, who do you believe will be the world's power structures? A Christian China? An Islamic Europe? Your thoughts?

The Czech Republic on Wednesday followed US President Donald Trump’s lead. In so doing, it took an unusual step of breaking with EU member states who hold Jerusalem should not recognized as Israel’s capital until a final status agreement is reached. But unlike the US, the Czech Foreign Ministry also said that it would only consider relocating its embassy based on results of negotiations.

NASA has confirmed dozens of eyewitness accounts in the Tampa Bay area of a fireball streaking across the sky on Tuesday evening. Amateur video filmed by local residents shows the fireball dramatically appearing to drop out of the sky and then exploding behind cloud cover. The national space agency said that it had received over 60 reports of the fireball from bay area residents, according to WFTS-TV.

The Justice Department is sifting through 10,000 text messages involving the FBI agent who was kicked off of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation for making anti-Trump comments.Fox News reports that the bureau is reviewing “several months” worth of messages that the agent, Peter Strzok, exchanged with Lisa Page, an FBI attorney with whom he was having an affair.The Justice Department is searching the texts before turning them over to the House Intelligence Committee, a process which could take “weeks.”The Justice Department’s inspector general discovered over the summer that Strzok and Page exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages last year....

“When you were researching your book Defending the Rock,” the BBC man asked, “did you come across any interesting document with an untold story?” I remembered then a beige file in the National Archives at Kew in London, with a 24-page closely-typed diary. The authorities called it ‘an alarming breach of security’ because it revealed some activities of S.O.E in Spain and Gibraltar. S.O.E, the Special Operations Executive, founded in June 1940, was one of the nine secret services that Britain maintained in the Second World War. Its role was sabotage, subversion and resistance to Nazi rule. ‘Set Europe ablaze!’...

For Vietnam veteran John Nugent, who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, coming home to Newburgh, N.Y., meant some isolation, according to his son Chris, but his love of ham radio allowed him to reach out to other people throughout the world. "It was tough for him. The radio made him feel comfortable, and helped with his transition," Chris Nugent said. The veteran's call signal, WA2EQJ, came alive again Tuesday at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, where the 75-year-old Nugent got his dying wish to broadcast on ham radio one more time....

Two of the best known hosts on WNYC, Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz, have been placed on what the station called an "indefinite leave." "Effective immediately, Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz are no longer on the air," news anchor Shumita Basu said on the station's noon newscast. The station's parent organization, New York Public Radio, said the two men have been sidelined "pending an investigation into accusations of inappropriate conduct." The station would not comment on the nature of the accusations.

If you're between 55 and 75 years old, you may want to try playing 3D platform games like Super Mario 64 to stave off mild cognitive impairment and perhaps even prevent Alzheimer's disease. According to the MRI test results, only the participants in the video-game cohort saw increases in gray matter volume in the hippocampus and cerebellum. Their short-term memory also improved. The tests also revealed gray matter increases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and cerebellum of the participants who took piano lessons, whereas some degree of atrophy was noted in all three areas of the brain among those in...

<p>Despite incendiary words from President Donald Trump, Congress seemed on track Wednesday to approving legislation that would avert a partial government shutdown over the weekend as all sides seemed ready to avert a confrontation — for now.</p> <p>Increasingly confident House leaders planned a Thursday vote on a bill that would keep federal agencies functioning through Dec. 22, and Senate approval was expected to follow. Even the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members have been threatening to oppose the measure, predicted passage.</p>

In his Friday interview with Carl Gallups, Obama birth certificate investigator Mike Zullo indicated for the first time that he believes the “short-form” birth certificate bearing the name “Barack Hussein Obama II” was “officially” produced by the Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH), although likely from a “surreptitious record” planted in the database by remote intrusion. On June 8, 2008, an image of a short-form birth certificate, or “Certification of Live Birth,” apparently demonstrating Obama’s birth on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, HI appeared at The Daily KOS, the Obama campaign’s “Fight the Smears” website, Politifact and other websites, reportedly to...

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will stay attached to the International Space Station through at least 2020, NASA announced yesterday (Dec. 4). BEAM, which is owned by the Las Vegas-based company Bigelow Aerospace, launched toward the orbiting lab in compact form aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule in April 2016. It was attached and expanded shortly thereafter, to test the performance of such inflatable habitats — which can provide more internal volume per unit launch mass than traditional metallic modules — in the space environment. That work was originally supposed to last for two years, after which BEAM would...