Ugh, not another report that makes no distinction between abstinence pledges and abstinence programs. There is a huge different between just asking teens to promise to hold off on sex, and actually helping them resist the peer pressure to do so. Of course teens aren't going to do something that they promise to do if they aren't given any help in showing how to do it. Can you imagine someone making a new year's resolution to loose weight, and expecting to achieve that goal without making any changes? No, that would be absurd, most people are going to have change their diet or activity to loose weight. For teens to successfully hold to a pledge of abstinence, they'll have to similarly make changes to how they approach relationships.

*beg

Thanks to everyone for such a warm welcome. I've been watching videos on the sift for at least a year, but I've only recently decided to even vote. I had no idea that people were so incredibly nice here.

Thanks, Fusionaut, I didn't know I could do that, or how.

*beg

>> ^spoco2:
so... after a quick read around, it would seem that Pentecostals are a subset of other Christian faiths in that they are pretty heavy on the whole being born again thing through babtism. (hence the bathing in Jesus's blood line I guess)
Again it's a whole spinoff thing based on reading of a COUPLE OF LINES of text written by some guy a long time ago... I will never fathom why people follow these things so blindly, so with utter conviction that what it says is true.
Baffling... still, upvote because it made me go and look up Pentecostals


Actually, baptism isn't the most identifying part of any Pentecostal doctrine. Many Christian groups are very focused on baptism (like Baptists!). Pentecostals are mainly distinguished by their focus on the day of Pentecost, when God gave the Holy Spirit to believers.

It should be noted that the group performing this song is even a subset of Pentecostals, and hardly representative of Pentecostalism as a whole, let alone Christianity. Most Pentecostal churches follow Christian belief on the revealed persons of God, and His triune nature, however this group is "oneness", a modern revival of modalism. Since they reject the Nicene Creed (among other statements of faith) and trinitarian doctrine most Christian denominations do not recognize so called "Apostolic" Pentecostal churches as being part of the Christian faith.

They're also pretty obsessed with J-E-S-U-S being the name of God, that must be spoken (with the modern English mangled pronunciation) during baptism to be saved. The don't believe the traditional Christian model of "In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit" can save because it doesn't have the right magic word in it.

>> ^MINK:
i wonder what's the logic here, every other train i have been on has seats facing both ways and nobody complains.


I'm going to guess that this is a "bullet train" and accelerates faster than the trains you've been on, thus it would be uncomfortable to be facing the wrong way on this one, maybe even dangerous.