Franklin Graham Warns ‘Arrogantly Disregarding God’s Authority Has Serious Consequences’ in Response to SCOTUS Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage

By Leah Marieann Klett – Jul 01, 2015

Leading Evangelist Franklin Graham has warned the United States that “arrogantly disregarding God’s authority always has serious consequences” following last Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

Graham, the president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, shared his prayerful thoughts several days after the high court ruled 5-4 in favor of legalizing the practice across all 50 states.

“‘Pride goeth before a fall.’ Supreme Court Justice Scalia used Proverbs 16:18 in his comments regarding the court’s disappointing and dangerous ruling about same-sex marriage. He rightly called the decision ‘a threat to the American democracy.’ This is so true. Arrogantly disregarding God’s authority always has serious consequences. Our nation will not like what’s at the end of this rainbow,” Graham wrote in a Facebook post.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls Divorce his ‘Biggest Failure’

June 27, 2015 – CNN – Wyatt Massey

Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t hold back in an interview with Howard Stern on Wednesday, detailing the emotional toll of the collapse of his marriage.

The actor was promoting his new film “Terminator Genisys,” although the five-time Mr. Universe spoke about much more than his famous robotic role.

When Stern asked whether the breakup was Schwarzenegger’s first real personal setback, the actor said it was entirely his fault.

“That was, without any doubt, the biggest setback and the biggest failure,” he said. “You can’t point the finger at anyone else.”

The actor and former governor of California was married to Maria Shriver for more than 25 years before the two split in 2011 after it was revealed that he had fathered a child with Mildred Baena, a former housekeeper.

Though he and Shriver got marriage therapy, it was “nonsense talk,” he said: “It was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

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Comments by Dissenting Supreme Court Justices: The Chilling Consequences of Gay Marriage Ruling

Ben Johnson : Jun 29, 2015 : LifeSiteNews

(Washington, DC)—The Supreme Court’s conservative justices lambasted last week’s majority opinion that the U.S. Constitution grants an inalienable right to same-sex “marriage,” emphasizing the threat the opinion poses to religious liberty, the democratic process, and the institution of marriage even as it is redefined.

In a series of scathing dissents, each of the High Court’s four conservative justices took apart Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision piece-by-piece.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, wrote that “the majority fails to provide even a single sentence explaining” how the 14th Amendment applies to redefining marriage.

“The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent,” he wrote. “There is, after all, no ‘Companionship and Understanding’ or ‘Nobility and Dignity’ Clause in the Constitution.”

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American College of Pediatricians on Same-sex Marriage Ruling: ‘A Tragic Day for America’s Children’

http://www.breitbart.com ^ | June 26, 2015 | Susan Berry

GAINESVILLE, Fla., June 29, 2015 (Dr. Susan Berry) – In a statement released Friday, the president of the American College of Pediatricians said the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage will have a significantly negative impact on children in the United States.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the College, said:

[T]his is a tragic day for America’s children. The SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States] has just undermined the single greatest pro-child institution in the history of mankind: the natural family. Just as it did in the joint Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton decisions, the SCOTUS has elevated and enshrined the wants of adults over the needs of children.

The College, which has members in 44 states and in several countries outside the U.S., joined in an [amicus] brief in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that has led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states of the nation.

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Anthony Bradley: The South is Being Transformed by Christian Forgiveness

by Anthony B. Bradley – June 27, 2015

During Dylann Roof’s first court appearance after the June 17 murder of nine worshippers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, several families of the victims offered forgiveness to man who did not deserve it.

Why were they so quick to forgive? The families were simply exercising a fundamental Christian virtue. In so doing, they possibly changed the South forever in the process as Confederate flags and symbols are removed from state buildings across the South.

When we suffer injustice, the human heart craves revenge, vindication and retaliation. These are also desires Christ came to save us from. Christians are commanded to respond to injustice with forgiveness. This principle is central to Jesus’ teaching in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matt 6:12). Immediately after this prayer, Jesus tells his disciples, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14–15)

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Franklin Graham: God Will Judge President Obama

6/25/2015 Jennifer LeClaire – Charisma

Franklin Graham doesn’t shy away from bold political statements—and he often disagrees with the Obama administration’s moves.

Graham, though, does agree with at least one thing Obama said recently. Unfortunately, Obama being right is all wrong for Bible-believing Americans.

“President Barack Obama was right about one thing in the speech he gave at a Gay Pride event he hosted in the White House yesterday. He said, ‘There has been an incredible shift in attitudes across the country.'”

Graham agrees, but he’s quick to note that it’s definitely not a shift for the good of America. The shift in attitudes to which Obama referred, he noted, is the moral decline we are seeing manifest daily around us.

“Accepting wrong as right—accepting sin as something to be proud of,” Graham said. “Yes, that’s definitely a shift. Should we be surprised that he thanked the LGBT community for all that they had helped him accomplish during his time as president?”

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If Pastors Don’t Stand and Preach the Truth, America Will Fall

If Pastors Don’t Stand and Preach the Truth, America Will FallShane Idleman – Christian Post – July 15, 2015

A paraphrase that is often attributed to Alexis De Tocqueville—a Frenchman who authored Democracy in America in the early 1800s, helps to open this letter: “I looked throughout America to find where her greatness originated. I looked for it in her harbors and on her shorelines, in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and in her gold mines and vast world commerce, but it was not there.”

“It was not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her success. America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Over the last few decades, Americans have seen the destruction of the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, the removal of God’s Word in several areas, and the blatant murdering of millions of babies. This is an indictment against America and the pulpit is partially responsible – our silence speaks volumes.

The pulpit regulates the spiritual condition of God’s people which affects the nation. A lukewarm, sex-saturated culture (and church) simply reflects the lack of conviction in the pulpit as well as the pew.

Sadly, many pastors are exchanging truth for passivity, boldness for cowardliness, and conviction for comfort…they are not aflame with righteousness. We aim to be motivational speakers rather than preachers of righteousness.

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Rifqa Bary details transformation from Islam to Christianity

By JoAnne Viviano – The Columbus Dispatch – May 19, 2015

A woman who said she feared for her life after she converted from Islam to Christianity as an Ohio teenager has written a book through which she hopes to inspire girls and women who are desperate for freedom.

Rifqa Bary, 22, gained national attention in 2009 when she ran away from her northeast Columbus home to Florida, saying her father had threatened to kill her.

The book Hiding in the Light: Why I Risked Everything to Leave Islam and Follow Jesus tells her story. It was released on Tuesday by the WaterBrook Press division of Penguin Random House.

“Writing this book was so painful. I wept so much reliving everything again, and my hope is to save others who read it, to shed hope and light, and that it would cause other people to see that you can leave, that there is hope,” Bary, an evangelical Christian, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview.

“Even though I’ve had so much loss in my life, I’ve experienced more joy and love than I ever dreamed of, and I found that to be in my faith in Jesus Christ.”

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Power of Love: MSNBC Reporter Overcome by Charleston Crowd Singing Gospel Songs during Shooting Suspect’s Arraignment

Aimee Herd : Jun 22, 2015 : YouTube.com, MSNBC

…They’re singing a Gospel song?… and you heard from the family members …of those who were lost… You can see the outpouring of support for this community; it goes all the way down the street…”

EDITOR’S NOTE: What an incredibly powerful testimony of God’s love and forgiveness the people of Charleston are showing the world! It’s obviously having a great impact on secular media who expected the worst, and instead, found themselves covering the message of the Gospel being lived out in front of them. Thank you Charleston. -Aimee Herd, BCN.

(Charleston, SC)—While covering the arraignment for Charleston shooting suspect, Dylann Roof, MSNBC reporter Thomas Roberts suddenly choked up as he described the inspirational scene before him at a vigil which took place at the same time.

Roberts seemed astounded as he reported how the shooting victims’ family members had spoken one-by-one to the 21-year-old suspect, telling him they’d forgiven him for killing their loved ones.

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The Only Comment on Dylann Roof’s FB Photo Will Bring You To Tears

By Benny Johnson | - 2oth June 2015 Dylann Roof committed a heinous act on Wednesday night, killing nine at a church in Charleston. His ominous Facebook profile photo is…

Continue ReadingThe Only Comment on Dylann Roof’s FB Photo Will Bring You To Tears

As West Moves Toward Secularism and Irrelevance, Africa and Asia Embrace Christianity

By Isaiah Narciso  Jun 06, 2015

Christianity’s stronghold was historically based in the United States and Europe. However, while many in the West embrace secular values at their own peril, countries in Africa and Asia have become to embrace Christianity.

According to Dr. Susan Berry of Breitbart, the church is thriving in Africa and Asia while its decline continues in the U.S. and many parts of Europe. John L. Allen Jr. of Crux reported back in October 2014 on that shift.

“[African bishops] no longer regard themselves as junior partners in Catholicism Inc.,” Allen wrote. “This time, they’re ready for the board room.”

Allen observed that when liberal German bishops tried to push their agenda, including a “more compassionate tone overall on sexual morality” and a more permissive position on “giving Communion to Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church,” the African bishops pushed back hard on those concepts.

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Like father, like son: Boys today are twice as likely to be close to their dads as in times past

Jonathan Owen

This will bring a future generation of emotionally intelligent fathers who are ‘willing and able to bring home so much more than just the bacon,’ says expert.

A new generation of fathers and sons are closer than ever before, according to new research released today, and the improved relationships bode well for future generations, according to experts. Fathers are twice as likely to be “close” to their sons today, with more than one in three (35 per cent) describing their relationship in this way. But only 18 per cent felt the same about how they got on with their own father, according to a national UK survey, by OnePoll, of 1,000 men with sons aged between 12 and 16.

Relationships with their own fathers were rated as “terrible” by 7 per cent of today’s dads, with only 2 per cent saying the same thing about their son. And while more than one in five had a “strained” relationship with their dads, only one in 10 said it about their son.

Clinical psychologist Dr Fiona Starr, of Middlesex University, said: “These research findings confirm what psychologists and therapists are seeing in their clinics, namely the nature of fatherhood, boyhood and the relationships between fathers and their sons are more involved, more communicative and more attentive than ever.

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Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to be introduced in U.S. Senate

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 10, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)

A bill to prevent unborn babies from feeling searing pain during an abortion will be introduced in the U.S. Senate tomorrow.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, will introduce the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act before the world’s most deliberative body tomorrow, following a press conference with pro-life organizations at the Capitol Visitors Center.

“Right now in our country, a child can be killed in his or her mother’s womb for any reason, at any point, up until the moment of birth. We are one of only seven nations in the world, including China and North Korea, to allow such brutality,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, who will join Graham at tomorrow’s press conference. “We are a better nation than this.”

The move comes just one month after the House passed the bill, which would ban most abortions after 20 weeks, with a bipartisan 242-184 vote. The House passed the law on the second anniversary of Kermit Gosnell’s murder conviction.

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University of California-Berkeley student’s article about why she left Islam pulled from school paper over fears for her safety

June 12, 2015 – By Robert Spencer

I saw the piece when it first went up in the Berkeley student newspaper, marveled that it was published at all in such a place, and had planned to post an excerpt at Jihad Watch, but it was gone before I got a chance. Now we know why: there are concerns for the safety of the student who wrote it, and such concerns are entirely reasonable, given the fact (however often denied by dishonest Islamic apologists in the U.S.) of Islam’s death penalty for apostasy. The article was also noteworthy for the author’s frank admission that “yes, Islam does allow men to have four wives and sex slaves” — truths also often denied by Western Islamic apologists. In any case, “free speech” Berkeley ought to be in an uproar over the fact that this student is under threat, and the student paper ought to be filled with avowals of her human rights and declarations of how she must and will be protected. However, Berkeley ain’t what it used to be, if it ever was.

Terrorism Works, part 924,103: “Student’s Anti-Islam Article Retracted Due To ‘Safety’ Risk,” by Austin Petersen, Libertarian Republic, June 8, 2015:

An opinion piece written by a student at the University of California-Berkeley explaining her decision to leave Islam has been pulled from the school newspaper’s website over fears for the author’s safety.

The opinion piece, titled “On Leaving Islam,” recounted the personal story of the narrator (whose name we will withold) growing up a devout (though moderate) Muslim in Pakistan, but later abandoning the faith as she learned more about the world.

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Huge March in New York City in Support of Israel

Sara Abramowicz : Jun 2, 2015 : United With IsraelIsra

“Anyone who thinks that the United States is abandoning its support of Israel—obviously they weren’t in Central Park today, because they would have found out that there is strong, passionate sentiment to stand with Israel.” –Mike Huckabee

(New York, NY)—New York City hosted the 51st annual Celebrate Israel Parade Sunday. Over 40,000 people marched along Fifth Avenue with hundreds of thousands appearing on the sidelines to express support for the Jewish state.

Attendees included New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who danced together with a contingent from Chabad Lubavitch, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Eight members of the Israeli Parliament from diverse political parties were also present. De Blasio and Minister without Portfolio Ofir Akunis led the parade.

“Israel and the US share values,” Akunis stated. “The past and the future of the two countries are intertwined. Israel owes a great debt to the US and its citizens who stood and stand with us even when we disagree.”

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