Being attracted to Jesus because he was one who didn't mince words is a bit daft really imo. It's daft because we believe in someone who sounds genuine, but that doesn't make them genuine. Trump & Biden have lots of followers for the same reasons. The OT & NT are thousands of years old, been minced and regurgitated from foreign languages in foreign times. What we today think it means today probably is not what it meant eons ago. Besides the fact in my opinion it's like Hershey (god rest his soul) full of man made rhetoric and bs. The bible is not of 'God's Spirit', that is utter nonsense. Every man and his dog going to church claim they are led by the Spirit. I was studying this pic the other day....... See that guy on the left holding a piece of paper..... The flyer I googled the contents, then went looking for the video. The video. I've not only spent years in church, I have been to numerous churches. The contents in that video brought back lots of memories. Memories of what you ask? Memories of church speak, nonsense, canned words, parrot words, group think, conformity. The same old, same old year on year regurgitated nonsense made out as spiritual. You know what I also thought? The meek, mild, humble, lowly, working class slaves, they are just as stupid, dumb, conformist, unoriginal, misguided as anyone else including the rich and famous. There is no special place in heaven for the lowly and down trodden, they are just as guilty of stupidity as anyone else. It's a total con! There are sheeple and there are sheeple, religion is the breeding ground for stupid conformist non thinkers who talk shit. Any religion. Governments want it this way. But I digress.
I started watching part of that video again, oh lawd, it made me cringe, the claptrap made out as Holy.
Yeah that stuff is the obvious version of me taking the water tub up the hill to get the cows to follow it to the new field, instead of sitting in their own mud & manure, over and over again. Someone invented that universal religion to get the human livestock to act a little more civilized and keep a huge empire together for a little while longer, and it was such a neat trick, it's still going, under many new brand names. I'm not ruling out that Jesus Christ was a hybrid human / alien and the Father in heaven being some kind of infinite energy / wisdom that we can't begin to comprehend. But there is power in the name Jesus Christ, which is why the devil programmed the slaves to use it as a curse word! The purpose of the old testament rules was to free the children of a man who obeyed the Father, from slavery in this world. And the Lord Jesus Christ freed everyone after that from demons, wrath, hopelessness, depression, even some physical ailments. I've tested both these claims, but you're so old it might be too late to try it for yourself.
LMAO Shakepeare wrote lovely fiction. If you have a couple of thousand spare years up your sleeve, you too could write amazing fiction. No there's not, total fiction, total wishful thinking. Invoking the name of jesus is nothing more than a coin toss. You could invoke the name of abracadabra and get the same results. You can have a ornamental cross or a rabbits foot, hanging around your neck or rear view mirror and get the same results.
That video I mentioned a couple of posts back. Frequent mentions: "Praise Jesus", "Praise his name", "thank you Lord", "blessed be his name"...... on and on..... All total nonsense! Sorry mate for being brutal, but it's reality. Religion is a stitch up. God if there is a God, is nothing like this crap inside our imaginations.
Read up about this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Geering When I was a kid in church, most of NZ thought this guy was demonic. He's over 100 years old, still alive. B'jezus never struck him down for heresy.
Funny you post about Geering, I just stumbled on the same supposed proof that the New Testament was forged by the early officials of the Catholic church. I haven't dug in deeper to verify any of this, but there appears to be no record of Jesus Christ even living at all. Nothing written at all until about 380 AD when Rome got involved. And you can't trust anything they did: https://avalonlibrary.net/Nexus_Mag...007_Nexus_magazine_Issue_June%96July_2007.pdf
The reference to Constantine amalgamating religions into the Christian Bible, that's mentioned briefly in Wiki, but your article brings out the more detail. Thanks for posting the link, I'll read it more fully later as it's quite long.
Wife of Bob Menendez was ‘partner in crime,’ prosecutors say at her trial Nadine Menendez’s trial was delayed because of a breast cancer diagnosis. Nadine Menendez walked alone through the rain to enter the courthouse on Monday for the first full day of the trial. | Seth Wenig/AP By Ry Rivard 03/24/2025 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/nadine-menendez-trial-day-one-00245463 NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors began their case against the wife of former Sen. Bob Menendez by arguing she “did the dirty work” to collect bribes for the couple. “They were partners in crime, partners in corruption and partners in greed,” said Lara Pomerantz, an assistant U.S. attorney, in the federal government’s opening statement on Monday. Pomerantz repeatedly referred to “the defendant and the senator,” a refrain meant to conjoin the two, though the senator was nowhere to be seen as the trial began inside a federal courthouse in Manhattan. The former senator, a New Jersey Democrat, was tried and found guilty in the same courtroom last year beside two businesspeople accused of bribing him and his wife, Nadine, with wads of cash and gold bars. He resigned from the senate and is now about two months away from reporting to prison for 11 years, though he and his co-defendants are appealing their convictions. Since the trial, he’s given a speech and made social media posts villainizing federal prosecutors and appealing to President Donald Trump for some kind of relief, like the pardons and commutations the president has offered his allies. Nadine Menendez’s trial was separated and delayed because of a breast cancer diagnosis. So far, she is declining to throw her husband under the bus, as his legal team did her. During his trial, the senator’s attorneys described her as a well-educated, “beautiful” and tall “international woman” who the senator met some 15 years after his divorce and who “sidelined” the senator when it came to her own finances. By contrast, her attorney, Barry Coburn, did not mention the senator at all in his opening statement. Instead, Coburn used a short opening statement to argue prosecutors would be unable to prove his client’s “knowledge and intent” in the charges against her, which include bribery and obstruction of justice. That was not the only difference between this trial and the last one. Prosecutors are planning to call the senator’s two co-defendants, Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, and Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessperson, according to filings by their defense attorneys. Both Daibes and Hana were found guilty of paying Bob and Nadine Menendez in exchange for access to the senator’s power. The senator was found guilty of being an agent of the Egyptian government, throwing his weight behind Hana in a fight with the USDA and attempting to disrupt a federal criminal case against Daibes. A third New Jersey businessperson, Jose Uribe, had already pleaded guilty to bribing the Menendezes and was one of the government’s star witnesses in the last trial. Prosecutors also may not have to tiptoe around talking about actions Bob Menendez took in the Senate to aid the Egyptian government because Nadine Menendez is not protected by the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution that he is using as the basis for his appeal. In this trial, prosecutors plan to portray Nadine Menendez as the “bribe collector,” the go-between and the one who got her hands dirty in ways a senator, who had previously been accused of corruption and been admonished by the Senate, could not. “She was willing to put her hands on bribes a United States senator could not be seen touching,” Pomerantz said. The case is shaping up to be a sideshow and perhaps a somewhat tragic one. Nadine Menendez walked alone through the rain to enter the courthouse on Monday for the first full day of the trial. During three days of jury selection last week, she would sometimes cry, apparently in pain from a recent medical procedure, according to a pool reporter. No one was seated in the bench typically reserved for family, so it’s unclear if any friends or family were there for her. Her attorney previously said in one legal filing that he didn’t have the money to order transcripts from the case. She wore a mask, presumably because of an elevated health risk. The trial is expected to last nine weeks.
Nadine Menendez Is Found Guilty of Taking Bribes and Obstructing Justice Ms. Menendez had been charged with her husband, Robert Menendez, a former New Jersey senator convicted in July of trading his political influence for gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz. Nadine Menendez, the wife of Robert Menendez, a former New Jersey senator, arrives at federal court on Friday.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times By Tracey Tully April 21, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/nyregion/nadine-bob-menendez-wife-guilty-bribery-trial.html Nadine Menendez was convicted on Monday of participating in a complex bribery conspiracy with her husband, Robert Menendez, a former senator from New Jersey who last year was also found guilty of trading his political influence for gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. A Manhattan jury deliberated for roughly seven hours over two days before finding Ms. Menendez, 58, guilty of playing a central role in the yearslong bribery scheme and then trying to hide it after learning that she was a focus of a federal investigation. She now faces a potentially lengthy sentence in federal prison. Ms. Menendez was indicted in September 2023 on bribery charges with her husband, but her trial was delayed for months so that she could be treated for breast cancer. During the senator’s trial, his lawyers had argued that the evidence was circumstantial and did not show that he had directly accepted bribes in exchange for taking official action. Jurors in Ms. Menendez’s monthlong trial, however, heard testimony that she was handed cash and accepted car and mortgage payments from several New Jersey businessmen who were seeking political favors from her powerful husband. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York told jurors that Ms. Menendez had served as a crucial go-between who willingly shuttled messages and bribes to Mr. Menendez. “She was keeping him in the loop every step of the way,” Paul M. Monteleoni, a prosecutor, said in a closing argument. “She’s telling him what she’s doing,” he added, “because they’re partners in crime.” Barry Coburn, Ms. Menendez’s lawyer, had argued that the government failed to link the gold, cash or car found in the couple’s home to any “official act” taken by Mr. Menendez. “These things that we’re talking about right here are unproven,” Mr. Coburn said in a closing argument. “We’re still in, you know, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ land,” he added about whether Ms. Menendez would have known that it was improper to be relaying sensitive government information. He also cited the hundreds of text messages that were introduced as evidence to suggest it was implausible that there could have existed a secret bribery conspiracy. “I mean, these people are talking about what they’re doing in, like, thousands of text messages,” Mr. Coburn said. Prosecutors had cited the same flurry of messages throughout the four-week trial as they pointed to what they repeatedly described as an overwhelming volume of evidence showing that bribes had been given in exchange for specific actions, or what is known as a quid pro quo. “You don’t need a quid pro quo in writing,” a prosecutor, Daniel C. Richenthal, said Friday in the government’s final summation. “But you have many.” Ms. Menendez and Mr. Menendez, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was once one of the most influential Democrats in Washington, married in October 2020 after a whirlwind courtship. Two years later, when F.B.I. agents searched the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., they seized $486,461 in cash, two one-kilo gold bars, 11 one-ounce gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. After a nine-week trial in Manhattan last year, a jury found Mr. Menendez guilty of accepting bribes in exchange for his efforts to quash criminal investigations on behalf of his allies, steer weapons and aid to Egypt and lock in a lucrative monopoly for a company run by a close friend of Ms. Menendez, Wael Hana. Mr. Menendez, 71, was sentenced in January to 11 years in prison. Mr. Hana and Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, were also convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Mr. Menendez, who is appealing the verdict, is expected to start serving his sentence in early June. The indictment laid out an audacious scheme and a cinematic timeline. Ms. Menendez and the senator began dating in early 2018, just weeks after he was cleared of taking bribes in an unrelated federal case in New Jersey. By February of that year, Ms. Menendez, an unemployed mother of two, and Mr. Hana, a U.S. citizen born in Egypt who was having so much trouble making ends meet that he lost his home to foreclosure, had devised a moneymaking plan, trial evidence showed. The two longtime friends began arranging meetings between Ms. Menendez’s new boyfriend and Egyptian intelligence officials hoping for additional foreign aid, among other things. “When I feel comfortable and plan the trip to Egypt,” Ms. Menendez wrote in a text message shown to jurors, Mr. Hana would be “more powerful than the president of Egypt.” The meetings, in fact, paid off. In spring 2019, Egypt granted Mr. Hana’s startup company, IS EG Halal, a monopoly to certify that meat imported for sale to the country’s 90 million Muslims had been prepared according to Islamic law. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture expressed concern about the arrangement, Mr. Menendez intervened, calling a top official and ordering him to “stop interfering with my constituent,” trial testimony showed. IS EG Halal’s monopoly remained in place, and the company expanded rapidly, making Mr. Hana a rich man. The company was then used to funnel bribes to the senator and Ms. Menendez. That was only part of the plot. Jurors also found that Mr. Menendez had tried to disrupt criminal investigations that threatened allies, including Mr. Daibes and Jose Uribe, an unlicensed insurance broker whose business associates were under investigation for fraud. Richard Koop, 49, in December 2018. Ms. Menendez was not tested for drugs or alcohol after the fatal crash in Bogota, N.J., and she was not charged with wrongdoing. But she frequently complained about not having a car in the weeks after the accident. Mr. Uribe, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, testified at both trials that he had stepped in to fill that need. He told jurors that he had given the car to Ms. Menendez to win the senator’s help in scuttling the insurance fraud investigation. Before the purchase, Mr. Uribe gave Ms. Menendez $15,000 in cash to use as a down payment for the car. Ms. Menendez then deposited money at several banks, according to trial evidence. “She’s driving around New Jersey with a bunch of cash,” Mr. Monteleoni told jurors last week, “going from branch to branch, stopping to deposit cash.” The next day, she bought the car and sent her future husband a photograph and a message. “Congratulations mon amour de la vie,” she wrote, “we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.❤️” Mr. Richenthal, in his final statement, reminded jurors that despite the complex, overlapping schemes, the case was at its heart a simple matter of greed. “Robert Menendez abused his power,” he said, and Ms. Menendez “helped him do it.”