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Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus our Lord and Savior. I’m about to tackle the issue of the testing of the angels by God mentioned by Fr. Fortea a few posts ago, and to search for Scriptural clues about it, and reflect on the consequences of the failure by some of the angels to rise to the test. Why does God test his creatures? Speaking about this test is difficult because the Scriptural data is sparse and can only be surmised by what’s explicitly stated in Scripture by secondary reasoning. We know from Scripture that God...

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and...

A dog had a miraculous escape after leaping off a roof and falling 50 feet on to a ledge at an apartment block. Kai, a two-year-old Shiba Inu, bounded over the side of the roof garden after his owner Tracy Aron took him up for his morning exercise. The pup had been jumping over the connected rooftops when he took a wrong turn and fell four floors on to a ledge below at the townhouse on the Upper West Side of New York. The protective fencing that usually surrounds the edge of the building had been removed due to renovation...

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was being treated at a hospital in South Dakota after falling and hitting his head on the pavement outside a library bearing his name.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:7-8)Immediately after they transgressed, we are told that Adam and Eve became painfully aware of it. Their eyes were indeed opened, but not in the way that they had expected. Upon acting out their rejection...

NEWTON (CBS) – A worker fell 1,000 feet to his death from a tower in Newton on Wednesday. A veteran crew of three men, working for Ultimate Tower Service, was doing routine maintenance work on the tower when one of the men fell. “The wind, you know, can be a factor, but today’s a pretty calm day, so the whole thing seems very bizarre and tragic,” said Brenda Loew, a neighbor. Sources told WBZ-TV that the surviving workers were almost too upset to talk to investigators. WBZ-TV’s Christina Hager reports. Workers routinely wear safety harnesses to attach themselves to the...

The Fall TV Season: Pro, Cons and Pans My opinion and yours...

The main US share index, the Dow Jones, has closed down 5.6%, despite US President Barack Obama moving to try to reassure investors. In his first public reaction to Standard & Poor's downgrading the US, President Obama said markets continued to regard US government debt as being the highest possible grade. Yet despite his comments, the Nasdaq index fell even further, losing 6.9%. Prior to President Obama's speech, the Dow had only been 2.5% lower. He called on both Republicans and Democrats on Capital Hill to avoid party-political positioning over the issue. "It is not a lack of plans or...

On July 18, the Russian air force launched a surprise massive military exercise in Kabardino-Balkaria. Fifteen military aircraft are taking part in the exercises, including Su-24, Su-25, Su-27, Su-34, MIG-29 and Tu-22M3 planes, and Mi-24 and Mi-28 helicopters. These are the largest maneuvers in Kabardino-Balkaria in the past 15 years. The only mountainous firing range for the Russian air force was in a dormant state, but the worsening security situation in Kabardino-Balkaria, Georgia’s perceived threat to its breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the impending Olympic games in Sochi reportedly prompted the Russian military to flex its muscles....

Why China Wants South China Sea East Asia | Security | China July 18, 2011By Tetsuo Kotani Beijing is interested in more than just energy and fishery resources. The area is also integral to its nuclear submarine strategy. In an effort to underscore its importance to Asia, geostrategist Nicholas Spykman once described it as the ‘Asiatic Mediterranean.’ More recently, it has been dubbed the ‘Chinese Caribbean.’ And, just as Rome and the United States have sought control over the Mediterranean and Caribbean, China now seeks dominance over the South China Sea. It’s clear that China’s claims and recent assertiveness have...

It is not understood definitively anywhere when the decline came. What is understood and easily seen is that we are a culture and society in deep trouble. There are proofs and evidence everywhere for those who care to look for such things. We were warned by one of the greatest men of the 20th century that our civilization would fall if we lost our core beliefs and our identity. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet prisoner of conscience, author of Gulag Archipelago, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, a titan of moral clarity warned us about the coming

St. Louis - Rising demand for corn from ethanol producers is pushing U.S. reserves to the lowest point in 15 years, a trend that could lead to higher grain and food prices this year. The Agriculture Department on Friday left its estimate for corn reserves unchanged from the previous month. The reserves are projected to fall to 675 million bushels in late August, when the harvest begins, or roughly 5 percent of all corn consumed in the United States. That would be the lowest surplus level since 1996.The limited supply is chiefly because of increasing demand from ethanol makers, which

According to independent journalists in the Iraqi Kurdish city Sulaymani, a sympathy protest in favor of Egypt and Tunisia turned bloody just a few moments ago. After the gathering, some youths threw stones at the local headquarters of Masud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). From within the building, KDP officials shot into the crowd, killing five and injuring at least 15.

Cathy Cruz Marrero ponders lawsuit after video of her fountain fall goes viral.

Clinton Takes a Spill Whoops! Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's in Yemen for diplomatic talks, fell while getting into a plane today. She's fine, so don't worry! She was probably just drunk. img src"http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp5/pix1pix/h5-1.png:>

LABARRE — Hundreds of dead and dying birds littered a quarter-mile stretch of highway in Pointe Coupee Parish on Monday as motorists drove over and around them. State biologists are trying to determine what led to the deaths of the estimated 500 red-winged blackbirds and starlings on La. 1 just down the road from Pointe Coupee Central High School. The discovery of the dead birds — some of which were lying face down, clumped in groups, while others were face up with their wings outstretched and rigid legs pointing upward — comes just three days after more than 3,000 blackbirds...

Chapter VI Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and the Punishment thereof I. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit.[1] This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.[2] II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God,[3] and so became dead in sin,[4] and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.[5] III. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of...

These versions are not clickable to be bigger; if you go to Mangelsen's Web site, you can click on them and see larger versions. I found these in the Online Gallery, either New Releases, or Landscapes/Flowers/Trees.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday a 17 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests this year shows heightened enforcement is slowing illegal immigration. The Border Patrol made about 463,000 arrests during the federal government's fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, down from 556,032 the previous 12 months. It marks the fifth straight year of declines. Border Patrol arrests are down 72 percent from nearly 1.7 million in 2000. The agency typically makes about 97 percent of its arrests along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico, with nearly all the rest coming along the Canadian border.

Paraprosdokian sentences A "paraprosdokian" is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience. I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But...

September is the time to start preparing your lawn for the winter, especially if you want great spring results. “Waiting until early spring, or even winter, is too late for optimal results – the lush verdant carpet you want to see,” states Travis Wascher, owner of Excel Lawns, a lawn and landscaping business servicing the four county area of Tampa/Clearwater. Fall fertilization can be confusing for many. “Applying the appropriate amount of the correct fertilizer will stimulate a vigorous, healthy lawn that can overcome weeds and serve as a filter to protect Florida's ground and surface waters,” notes Wascher. “On...

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life….Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:10,12)We have been looking at Paul’s teaching about assurance,in Romans 5 . Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we have been justified by faith, and brought into a new status of grace, which empowers us to rejoice even in trials, knowing that we have been completely...

Last year at this time when I was putting together the fall and preliminary winter outlooks I was seeing an El Nino amidst a cold PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) facing me. That helped to lead to a very chilly winter for much of the eastern U.S. and especially the Southeast. This year the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction and that means a La Nina amidst a cold PDO. So can we expect opposite conditions for this fall/winter?

Global economic woes gripped investors on Tuesday, roiling financial markets from Tokyo to Dublin to New York. Worries that started in Asia continued in the U.S. after housing numbers painted a grim picture of the economy. In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped to its lowest close in seven weeks. The Dow finished down 133.96 points, or 1.3%, at 10040.45, its fourth consecutive decline and its ninth losing session in the past 11. The measure fell below 10000 during the day. Day after day, investors have been hit with more evidence that the economy is stalling.

The Indictment…Romans 3 Posted on August 7, 2010 by billrandles As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood:Destruction and misery are in their ways:And the way of peace have they...

To Help Fellow Democrats in the Fall, Obama May Stay AwayBy JEFF ZELENY Published: July 31, 2010 WASHINGTON — As lunch was served in the Roosevelt Room of the White House one day last week, President Obama assured the nine Democratic members of Congress sitting around the table that he would do anything he could to help them survive their fall elections. Even, he said, if it meant staying away. “You may not even want me to come to your district,” Mr. Obama said, according to guests, nearly all of whom hold seats that Republicans are aggressively seeking. Three months...

A high school student from California is dead after falling 30 metres from a viewing platform into a rocky canyon at the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver. The teenage boy reportedly fell from a viewing platform on the west side of the canyon at around 7 p.m. Sunday. Rescue crews were able to reach the boy quickly, but he was not alive by the time they arrived, according to RCMP Inspector Davis Wendell. "Emergency responders attended the scene and undertook a very difficult high-angle rescue attempt. Unfortunately the male in question had fallen to his death," said Wendell. It...

"A series of decisions taken over the last few years in Europe have alarmed me. The first imposed the rule of unanimity within the European Union for any decision regarding foreign policy or the use of armed force for other than humanitarian purposes. Because everyone must agree, nothing is agreed. As a result, Europe cannot develop a common foreign policy. The second alarming decision limited the Union's budget to a mere 1% of EU GDP, thus preventing any new common policy initiative for much of the past decade. The third decision concerns the British vetoes of the candidacies of Jean...

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg was taken by ambulance tonight from his Cliffside Park home after suffering a fall, his spokesman said. The 86-year-old Democrat was conscious when he was taken to the hospital "as a precautionary measure," said the spokesman, Caley Grey. Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerU.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg was hospitalized as a "precautionary measure" tonight after suffering a fall, officials said. Grey said he did not know if Lautenberg had fallen inside the Bergen County condominium or whether he had suffered any injuries. Lautenberg was elected to his fifth term in the Senate in 2008, defeating former U.S. Rep....

Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts' special Senate election was for Democratic leaders a moment that can be described in two words, of which I will only print the first here, which is "oh." Left-wing bloggers, liberal columnists and the stray Nobel Prize winner-turned polemicist are all urging Democrats in Congress to pass, somehow, some way, a health care bill, and many of them are calling for a second and even larger stimulus bill.

What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year. A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning...

It has become fashionable on both the left and the right to compare the United States to ancient Rome. Decline and fall: We are a militaristic power trying to make everyone else in the known world submit to our way, or we are an irreligious, hedonistic bunch going the way of all flesh. Or maybe both. Not true, according to two interesting recent books. Thomas F. Madden, a professor of ancient history at St. Louis University, begins his book, "Empires of Trust," by denouncing "political screeds that yank bloody bits of Roman history out of context in order to make...

The beauty of the NC Mountains - Fall of 2009.

Full Title: "Nothing but a Loathsome Stench": Calvin’s Doctrine of the Spiritual Condition of Fallen ManIntroduction With the reality of the spiritual condition of fallen man, John Calvin begins Book II of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The heading of Book II is “The Knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ, First Disclosed to the Fathers Under the Law, and Then to Us in the Gospel.” Recalling the opening lines of the Institutes, concerning knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves, Calvin declares that we cannot know God as redeemer, if we do not know ourselves as fallen and...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks fell for the third straight session on Friday, ending lower for the week, after weaker-than-expected reports on durable goods orders and new home sales sparked concerns about the strength of any recovery.

Do we all remember when they left was saying that if Obama won the election, that things would get better with the Islamic world? Since he has taken office he has done nothing but cater to the Islamic world, yet the threat is as great as ever. Would anyone on the left care to answer why? Al-Qaida predicts Obama's fall by Muslim nation By PAUL SCHEMM and HADEEL AL-SHALCHI CAIRO – Al-Qaida on Tuesday released a new 106-minute long video predicting President Barack Obama's downfall at the hands of the Muslim world.

CAIRO – Al-Qaida on Tuesday released a new 106-minute long video predicting President Barack Obama's downfall at the hands of the Muslim world. The Arabic-language video, entitled "The West and the Dark Tunnel," is part of series of messages by the organization marking the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Bin Laden released a short message of his own on Sept. 14. Like similar long messages on previous anniversaries, it featured testimony from several leading al-Qaida figures intercut with news footage from the past year. As in the past, al-Qaida attempted to conflate Obama with his predecessor, George W....

The weather pattern over the eastern U.S. the past week has been dominated by a cut-off low pressure system that has brought torrential rains to some in the South and Southeast. That system has now been lifted northward and has weekend and a second system is becoming the new player on the field

First, sorry for the delay in this post. What a couple of weeks I have had and that has kept me away from the computer and being able to complete things I promised. The last post showed graphically my Fall and Winter Outlook. Today, I provide you with some specifics for a few key cities in the eastern half of the U.S.

Last weekend a nice cool shot sank southward out of Canada and encompassed much of the eastern half of the nation. Looks like another and likely stronger surge of early autumn air will sink through the Eastern U.S. through much of the next 7-days.

STURGIS, S.D. — Aerosmith's Steven Tyler suffered head, neck and shoulder injuries in a tumble from the stage at a South Dakota show, a concert spokesman said Thursday, and the audience thought it was part of his hipshaking act until he didn't get up. Tyler, 61, fell while entertaining the crowd by dancing around as the sound crew replaced a fuse that blew during the song "Love in an Elevator," said Mike Sanborn, spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the Wednesday night concert. An amateur video showed him spinning around before falling off the stage.

Making forecasts about Iran is a foolish occupation. Few predicted the surge of support for Mir Hossein Mousavi before the June election, or the regime’s egregious rigging of the result, or the vast protests that followed. Even fewer would have predicted that six weeks later it would be the opposition rebounding and the regime in disarray. A Government that claims to be the champion of Islamic values has been hit by its own version of America’s Abu Ghraib scandal. It has been caught perpetrating some of the very horrors for which the Shah was overthrown.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fractured her right elbow during a fall Wednesday, her chief of staff said. Clinton was on her way to the White House when she fell and injured her elbow, chief of staff Cheryl Mills said in a statement released late Wednesday.

The mutant strain of H1N1 flu continues to make its mark around the world. As of Monday, May 11 the World Health Organization (WHO) was reporting 4,694 laboratory confirmed cases in 30 countries, including the first in mainland China. However, as Dr. Gordon Dickinson, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Miami VA noted, for every confirmed case there are probably hundreds of unconfirmed cases. Based on a new analysis of confirmed H1N1 cases in Mexico and its international spread, WHO researchers estimate that by late April possibly up to 32,000 people...

China exports fall 22.6% in April China's exports fell 22.6 per cent in April from a year earlier, while imports fell 23 per cent, the official Xinhua news agency said today, quoting the General Administration of Customs. The resulting trade surplus for the month was $12.9 billion, compared with $18.56 billion in March and $4.84 billion in February, according to calculations based on the cumulative January-April surplus of $75.43 billion cited by Xinhua.

Housing values in nearly two-thirds of more than 2,000 Houston-area neighborhoods declined or stood still last year, according to an annual home price analysis commissioned by the Houston Chronicle. .... Overall, the median price per square foot of a single-family home fell 2 percent in 2008 to $72.71, marking the first time it has dropped into negative territory in 14 years. ....

In reality, evolution has done nothing to help real science, and has actually hindered it in many ways...

MOSCOW — For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media, who are interviewing him twice a day. A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Professor Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire. "There's a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur," says Panarin. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario — for Russia." Prof. Panarin, 50...

Experts on invertebrates have expressed "profound shock" over a government report showing a decline in zooplankton of more than 70% since the 1960s.The tiny animals are an important food for fish, mammals and crustaceans. Figures contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) document, Marine Programme Plan, suggested a fall in abundance. Charity Buglife said it could be a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions". They said it could have implications for creatures all the way up the food chain, from sand eels to the seabirds, such as puffin, which feed on the fish. Defra described the Marine...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man survived a 500-foot fall into a strip mine Friday, astounding rescuers who spent hours on a risky descent into the abyss to bring him back out. Police said Nathan Bowman was trespassing on coal company property around 1 a.m. Friday when he slipped and fell into the Springdale Pit, an inactive mine about 700 feet deep, 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet wide. Bowman tumbled down a jagged slope and then free-fell several hundred feet, his descent broken by a rock ledge not far from the bottom of the pit, said Coaldale Police Chief...