re: Help me determine some Objective Truth

Thank you, too, brother.

Regarding SM... Yeah, I found it very interesting that his OP showed significant knowledge of the Bible (more than me, to be honest), but that he was skewing things (Elijah, Jesus, the Israelites) to force a point in an inaccurate way. Something seemed off, though I'm not familiar enough with him to know his game as you do. Still, it was one of those posts which grabbed me and I felt compelled to defend the Truth to my understanding-- even if only one person might see it, or even if it only helped me see refine my own thoughts on the matter.

I appreciate the 1 Peter 3:15 reference as well, which I was not aware of. As I admitted above, my knowledge of scripture is not as strong as SM, or yours / others here. Ironically, this place-- which now anchors and sometimes deletes religious threads-- is responsible for my deepest dive into the Bible. It was before your time (per your signup date of May'23... unless you're an alter *wink*).

Was about 2008/2009 when TulaneLSU, who was then a bit more fiery than his current idiom of starting every post addressing everyone as "friend", started a daily Bible thread with the intent of getting through all of it, in order, in a year. I was active in it everyday for the first several books, but work became insane and a couple weeks of near all nighters broke me down and I fell behind. I checked in from time to time, but never quite regained my footing as far as participating again. On a related topic, TulaneLSU's "Late Night Bible Study" daily thread on the OT was almost completely unobtrusive alongside the typical WYHI, music threads, car threads, etc. and averaged a modest 1-4 pages of replies most nights with only a couple of trolls. But some admin here who hated TulaneLSU eventually seemed to convince Chicken that the LNBS thread and all religious threads should be banned. They let him get right up to and maybe barely into the 4 gospels if I remember correctly. Then, they cut the rug out from under him and became intolerant of any religious threads. At first they deleted anything remotely religous. Now threads like this get the anchor and go mostly unseen.

Apologies for the history lesson. It's just always bothered me-- both my own failure to keep up at the time, and the admins unjustly shutting it all down. But in the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15 (though I did not know the passage itself), I've always felt inspired to reply in threads like these because the truth/Truth is important, and standing up to represent truth may be a duty, but I don't consider it a burden in the least. I appreciate it when the spirit moves me to reply since posters like you-- and even SM in his own way-- help me learn.