Franklin Graham Takes Hard Stand Against This Muslim Prayer

11/18/2014 Mark Andrews – Charisma News

Franklin Graham, who is widely respected as the heir-apparent to his father, iconic evangelist Billy Graham, isn’t shy about speaking out for God’s truth. So when he saw Christians compromise their principles to reach out to false religions in the name of ecumenicalism, it was no surprise that it drew a harsh response.

Graham this week slammed the National Cathedral in Washington for allowing Muslims to hold their first prayer service there last Friday.

“It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins,” said Graham, head of the Samaritan’s Purse humanitarian aid ministry.

The younger Graham took to Facebook and spoke to the news media to register his extreme displeasure that a Christian cathedral—long a Washington landmark—would willingly be handed over to Muslims by the Cathedral’s Episcopalian leadership.

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A Diverse and Powerful Egyptian Church

By Dr David Curry , Christian Post Guest Contributor – November 13, 2014

In June and July of 2013, Tahrir Square became a place where history was made. This Cairo, Egypt landmark housed the largest outpouring of protest against the radical Jihadist agenda in the Middle East, with estimates of over 20 million people protesting the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. The loss of power for the Muslim Brotherhood brought repercussions to Egyptian Christians, both Coptic and evangelical, as the Brotherhood sought to both appeal for support among Islamic radicals, and punish Christians for speaking out against the brutality of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds of churches were burned to the ground, homes and businesses were attacked and many Christians lost their lives.

As CEO of Open Doors USA, I have the privilege of regularly interacting with heroes of the faith, people who have suffered great persecution. I often meet people who have lost their entire families, businesses and homes, simply because they choose to be followers of Jesus. I was in Tahrir Square last January when Egyptians voted to adopt the new constitution and chart a path away from the rule of Islamic Jihadists. I watched as the Brotherhood demonstrated with violence, desperately trying to hold on to their death-grip of power over Egyptians. And I watched as Christians were targeted for brutality.

But just days ago, I returned again from Egypt. What I saw this time was a Church that has grown strong in spite of the horrendous difficulties that it faces. I saw Christians, both Coptic and evangelical, who have come to understand they must seek a common path together in faith. These are important first steps. What I saw was the first steps in the rebuilding of an Egyptian Christian Church focused on the saving grace of Jesus.

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New Year’s Eve & New Year 2015 program at CTFM at 30 Star Crescent in Hallam

Dear friends & family in Christ, 31st December—New Year’s Eve Worship Service at 9.30pm with Communion followed by supper (bring a plate of finger food) – no hot food please…

Continue ReadingNew Year’s Eve & New Year 2015 program at CTFM at 30 Star Crescent in Hallam

National Cathedral Hosts Islamic Prayers; Lone Protester Interrupts Service

By Stephanie Samuel , Christian Post Reporter – November 14, 2014

UPDATE: 3:31 p.m. The Muslim prayer service held at the Washington National Cathedral was briefly disrupted by a protester, according to a local NBC report.

“Jesus Christ died on that cross over there!” a woman said loudly, immediately after announcements at the beginning of the service were made. “He is the reason why we are to worship only him. Jesus Christ is our lord and savior!”

According to the NBC report, she continued, “We have built, and allowed you here in mosques across this country. Why can’t you worship in your mosque, and leave our churches alone?”

The protester was then escorted out of the cathedral, News4’s Kristin Wright reported. She was removed without incident, but she continued her protest once she was taken to an adjoining space. 

The Episcopal church set in Washington, D.C. altered its visitor tour schedule in order to host traditional Islamic Friday prayers called Jumu’ah. The service was led by South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, and held in the Cathedral’s north transept, an area considered “almost mosque-like” because of its arches and limited iconography.

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The Church’s Responsibility to Address Male Violence Against Women

September 09, 2014

Male violence against women is a real problem in our culture, one the church must address. Our responsibility here is not simply at the level of social justice but at the level of ecclesical justice as well.

We must teach from our pulpits, our Sunday school classes, and our Vacation Bible Schools that women are to be cherished, honored, and protected by men. This means we teach men to reject American playboy consumerism in light of a Judgment Seat at which they will give account for their care for their families. It means we explicitly tell the women in our congregations, “A man who hits you has surrendered his headship, and that is the business both of the civil state in enacting public justice and of this church in enacting church discipline.”

Church discipline against wife-beaters must be clear and consistent. We must stand with women against predatory men in all areas of abandonment, divorce, and neglect. We must train up men, through godly mentoring as well as through biblical instruction, who will know that the model of a husband is a man who crucifies his selfish materialism, his libidinal fantasies, and his wrathful temper tantrums in order to care lovingly for a wife. We must also remind these young men that every idle word, and every hateful act, will be laid out in judgment before the eyes of the One to whom we must give an answer.

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Iran: forget the negotiations, Khamenei just wants to annihilate Israel

November 15, 2014, – The Times of Israel

If you invite someone you want to befriend over for dinner and, as soon as he enters your house, he kicks your cat, spits on the floor and punches your son in the face, you suddenly realize that you have made a mistake.

On the contrary, when Ayatollah Khamenei, following a letter that the US President Obama sent him as a sign of understanding and alliance, tweeted urbi et orbi his genocidal project to annihilate Israel, no reactions have been heard from the hesitant ambassadors of the P5+1 countries, which stayed in Oman in the last few days for a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Even Obama did not say a word about it. But how is it possible to talk with someone who cares to explain in a 9-point list why the “Zionist regime” must be destroyed? Khamenei explains it thoroughly: “Why should the Zionist regime be eliminated? During its 66 years of life so far, the fake Zionist regime has tried to realize its goals by means of infanticide, homicide, violence and iron fist… the only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime”.

Then Khamenei, who affects to prefer the Jews walking away with not too much bloodshed, suggests to organize a referendum for all the Arabs and Christians (who, for the occasion, became his friends… but no Jews, please) and make them vote for the total elimination of Israel. He says he is certain that the international public opinion will gladly accept his plan, but reassures the terrorists: until that day, they are invited to keep on in their armed struggle. Khamenei tells his ferocious and obscene truth, while instructing his delegates to buy time on the nuclear issue. After all, Iran has always acted this way.

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8 Reasons to Expect Massive Muslim Awakening

 9/18/2014 Peter Youngren

Muslim militants are committing unspeakable and barbaric atrocities. If America and its allies ever needed “boots on the ground,” that time may be now. This evil must be stopped for a host of reasons, including for the sake of Christians whose lives are threatened in Syria, Iraq and across much of the Islamic world.

Unfortunately, in this climate of fear, some are ready to write off the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims as beyond the hope of salvation, unfit for redemption and predestined to be eternal enemies of God and His gospel. To do so would be a grave error.

Scripture gives many reasons to expect a gospel awakening across the Islamic world.

1. God promised Abraham that the Arab world would know “the way of the Lord.” Abraham had at least eight sons, first Ishmael with Hagar, then Isaac with Sarah and finally six more sons with Ketura (Gen. 25:1). While Christ would come through Isaac, God promised that all of Abraham’s “children” would know the “way of the Lord,” for “I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him” (Gen.18:19). Ishmael and the sons of Ketura are forefathers to the Arab world, and God’s promise is clear that they will know the way of the Lord. That divine promise can only be fulfilled if they know Him, who said “I am the way.”

2. God promised blessing to Ishmael. “As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly….I will make him a great nation (Gen. 17:20). God promised His blessing on Ishmael. Is there any blessing apart from the knowledge of Jesus Christ? Later when Hagar and Ishmael were dying of thirst, God opened Hagar’s eyes, and “she saw a well of water.” If God cared enough to show them a spring of water to quench their physical thirst, is it not reasonable to expect God will also show Ishmael and his descendants the “living water”?

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The danger of saying ISIS is not Islam

September 16, 2014 – Liz Lightstone

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and posted this morning on twitter about David Cameron’s comment (“they are monsters, not Muslims”). I’m very concerned by growing reprise that “Islamic State” (IS) is not Islam, that they are not Muslims. I can understand where it’s coming from but its a very dangerous form of political correctness. Clearly not all Muslims support IS, nor are all terrorists Muslim. But there is no doubt that IS say they are acting on behalf of Islam, they are Muslims and they want to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

If you detach their monstrous ideology from what we like to think of as Islam, then do you detach from the Muslim community responsibility for denouncing it? I have no problem if moderate Muslims — as some have done (albeit late in the day) — stand up and say that IS does not represent what they believe to be Islam. I similarly say that Naturei Karta, the “ultra-Orthodox” anti Zionist Jews — who by the way simply throw words, not stones, not swords and are nonviolent — do not represent Judaism in any form that I know.  But I want the moderates to stand up and say it.

More importantly, do you, by saying IS is not Islam, they’re not Muslims, detach from the Muslim community at large the responsibility for helping prevent radicalisation which we know full well goes on in certain mosques and on campuses? (It is astonishing how many campuses world wide have HUGE investment from Saudi and Qatar and huge investment in BDS, anti Israel, and radicalisation programmes.)

I am not blaming any particular Muslim community but just as I hung my head in shame when extremist Jews murdered that poor young man in Jerusalem after the death of the three Jewish teenagers, so the Muslim community worldwide must say, not that IS is an Israeli / CIA conspiracy (as Iran currently claiming) but that something is rotten within the Muslim world and it must be stopped.

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Friends of Israel Warn about ISIS

Christian Friends of Israel – Sept 22 2014Territorial control of the ISIS as of 13 September 2014

Some people know that Brigitte Gabriel is a Lebanese Christian who immigrated to the United States a few years ago, following the invasion of Lebanon by the Muslim Jihad. In 1975 when she was ten years old, militant Muslims throughout the Middle East poured into Lebanon and declared war against Lebanese Christians.

Brigitte and her mother were injured in the shelling from Muslim artillery. They were allowed to cross into Israel and receive medical treatment at a hospital in Safed (she tells about it in her book, Because They Hate). The love and kindness that she and her mother received from the Israeli doctors and nurses turned her into a lifelong friend of Israel. She now runs what is known as Act for America, an organization aimed at helping Americans understand the threat they face from Islam and learning how to combat it.

In addition to her books, Ms. Gabrielle has recently written an article entitled “ISIS is a threat beyond Iraq, with Shariah as its worldwide aim.” In the article she says, “ISIS isn’t acting out of anger over borders or ‘politics’ as the West understands the term. ISIS has a specific goal in mind and that is the formation of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah.” She points out this is the common goal of all the major jihadist organizations across the world. It is shared by al Qaeda, Hamas, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyef, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and others. This shared goal transcends any disagreements over borders and pure politics.

For instance, she says, Israel [which she loves] could disappear tomorrow and the overriding goal of the formation of Islamic states ruled by Sharia would not change a bit. It is based on their thousand-year-old doctrine which is far more fundamental and overarching than mere political ideology. That in turn is based on the Islamic trilogy—the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sira.

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A Christian Federation in the Middle East

September 15, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield

The Middle East as it exists now has no future. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers for their own purposes. The political agendas behind those borders are long dead. The kings and coalitions they were meant to protect have vanished.

ISIS is determined to tear apart the borders of the region and it’s not alone. Iraq and Syria are caught in cycles of violence because their national borders are prisons trapping incompatible religious and ethnic populations in multicultural tyrannies. The world has spent a lot of time trying to redraw Israel’s borders when it should have been redrawing the borders of the entire region.

There are only two solutions for ending the violence in Iraq and Syria; tyranny or denationalization.

As long as Sunni and Shiite Arabs and the Kurds are trapped together in a single country they will never be at peace.

All of this is really bad news for Arab Christians because they are a fragile religious minority in a region swiftly redefining itself by religion. The Arab Nationalism that shielded them is dead. That leaves them with few options except to form temporary coalitions with the representatives of older systems, the Baath Party and the Egyptian military, or the minority Shiite Islamists.

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Council Puts Christ Back Into Christmas – City of Greater Dandenong

Dear friends, Further to the email we sent around six weeks ago, you may click the following link (then click the Springvale Dandenong region) to read an excellent front page…

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Which of these two parties is too white and too racist? – by Andrew Bolt

To The Age it is obvious

The Greens love diversity in theory:

Australia’s strength lies in the cultural diversity of people from all corners of the globe, the Australian Greens said today… Our country has been greatly enriched by successive generations of immigrants whose influences are reflected in every facet of society.

Not every facet, actually. Greens leader Christine Milne with Greens politicians and candidates in the Victorian election:

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In contrast, Rise Up Australia leader Danny Nalliah with candidates in the Victorian election

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Age writer Ruby Hamad isn’t so sure about this diversity thing, after all:

Yes, it appears that Australia’s far right, ultra-nationalist, evangelical Christian, anti-abortion, and anti-immigration party has an extraordinary amount of gender and racial diversity. More so, as I noted someone comment dryly under the photo, than The Greens.

How is this possible?

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Please keep praying for 5th & final Upper House seat in Victoria / Stan Goodenough speaking at CTFM this Sunday 7th Dec / RUA Prayer in Melbourne this Friday 5th Dec

Dear friends & family in Christ, 1) Unceasing prayer is still very much needed in the battle between Rise Up Australia Party, the Greens and Sex Party for the 5th…

Continue ReadingPlease keep praying for 5th & final Upper House seat in Victoria / Stan Goodenough speaking at CTFM this Sunday 7th Dec / RUA Prayer in Melbourne this Friday 5th Dec

The Power of Unity – Vic Election and the Christian values based parties / Church leaders refuse to speak out – Will we pay the price?

Dear family and friends in Christ,

First let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who voted, supported and prayed for us. This was the first State Election that Rise Up Australia Party contested (although we contested the Federal Election last year) and I must say that we learned a lot.

Something very significant happened in this election in Victoria. The Christian values based parties worked together as a block in sharing first preferences with each other and the results were very good.

In most regions with the strategic preferences, we came very close to winning Upper House seats, and it seems that at least one Upper House seat will now be secured, with three more seats currently in question. (Some 90% of the upper house votes are yet  to be re-checked).

This clearly shows the power of unity as Jesus said, where He prays for all believers in John 17:20-23.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”.

On another note, although some church leaders I know of spoke out regarding the election, once again many church leaders refused to speak out and tell the people how to vote.

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RUAP (Ps Daniel) in battle with Greens for the final Upper House Seat in South Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne / Urgent Prayer Needed

Dear friends & family in Christ, As we all know by now the state of Victoria has a new Labor Government in place for the next 4 years. However, in…

Continue ReadingRUAP (Ps Daniel) in battle with Greens for the final Upper House Seat in South Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne / Urgent Prayer Needed