What Franklin Graham Wants Muslims to Know About the End Times

4/7/2015 Franklin Graham

At the core of the Islamic State doctrine is the belief that their adherents are waging warfare against unbelievers—infidels—in order to usher in an apocalyptic end-time battle in which Islam will finally and ultimately triumph.

Many Muslims believe that the Syrian town of Dabiq—near Aleppo—is the location predicted by the prophet Muhammad for this confrontation. In the ISIS journal Dabiq, the dark, evil mind of the terrorists is clearly stated: “As the world progresses toward al-Malhammah al-Kubra (the Great Battle), the option to stand on the sideline as a mere observer is being lost.”

Of course, the Bible speaks of a great conflict at the end of the age that will be waged at a place called Armageddon. The location is often interpreted as the mountain of Megiddo, located on the north side of the plain of Jezreel and frequently identified in the Old Testament as a military stronghold.

Described by the Apostle John as the “battle on the great day of God the Almighty” (Rev. 16:14), it will be the Lord Jesus Christ who returns in glory to vanquish every foe: Satan, his demonic legions, and all who are allied with the prince of darkness and have refused to bow their knee to the Savior.

(more…)

Continue ReadingWhat Franklin Graham Wants Muslims to Know About the End Times

Is Christianity Dying?

Russell Moore – 2015 12 May

Christianity is dying. At least, that’s what major newspapers are telling us today, culling research from a new Pew Center study on what almost all sociologists are observing these days—the number of Americans who identify as Christians has reached an all-time low, and is falling. I think this is perhaps bad news for America, but it is good news for the church.

The lead editor of the report tells The New York Times that secularization—mainly in terms of those who identify as “nones” or with no specific religious affiliation—isn’t isolated to the progressive Northeast and Pacific Northwest. He notes, “The change is taking place all over, including the Bible Belt.”

This is precisely what several of us have been saying for years. Bible Belt near-Christianity is teetering. I say let it fall. For much of the twentieth century, especially in the South and parts of the Midwest, one had to at least claim to be a Christian to be “normal.” During the Cold War, that meant distinguishing oneself from atheistic Communism. At other times, it has meant seeing churchgoing as a way to be seen as a good parent, a good neighbor, and a regular person. It took courage to be an atheist, because explicit unbelief meant social marginalization. Rising rates of secularization, along with individualism, means that those days are over—and good riddance to them.

(more…)

Continue ReadingIs Christianity Dying?

Iraqi Nun Testify Before Congress, Calling on U.S. to Help Rebuild the Lives of Christian Refugees Displaced by ISIS

By Suzette Gutierrez  May 16, 2015

After getting caught in a controversy when she was denied a U.S. visa in April, Sister Diana Momeka was finally able to enter the country when the U.S. State Department reversed its earlier decision and granted her a visa to travel to Washington, D.C. She appeared before the House Committee of Foreign Affairs and testified about the cruelties of ISIS on fellow Iraqi Christians.

Her testimony rang with a simple message: that the U.S. government help displaced Christian Iraqis who have been victims of ISIS go back to their homeland.

Addressing the House Committee of Foreign Affairs, she said, “I call on all Americans to raise your voices on our behalf so that diplomacy and not genocide, social well-being and not weapons, and the desire for justice, not selfish interests determine the future for Iraq and all of her children.” Her testimony appears on the website of Christian News Wire.

Sister Diana said the faith of the homless Iraqi Christians are ‘increasing more and more’ despite living in devastating conditions – families taking shelter in containers, parents without jobs and children without an education.

“It’s making us stronger,” she said. “We were displaced, yet we feel that the hand of God is still with us. … In the midst of this darkness, this suffering, we see that God is holding us,” she explained, adding that it is a “gift of the Holy Spirit” to be able to stay and have faith through hardship.

(more…)

Continue ReadingIraqi Nun Testify Before Congress, Calling on U.S. to Help Rebuild the Lives of Christian Refugees Displaced by ISIS

“Put God First!” Actor Denzel Washington’s Speech to College Grads

Aimee Herd : May 11, 2015 : FOX News Insider

“I’ve been protected, I’ve been directed and I’ve been corrected. I’ve kept God in my life and it’s kept me humble. I didn’t always stick with Him, but He always stuck with me…”

(New Orleans)—Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington delivered an inspiring speech to the graduating class of Dillard University in New Orleans, over the weekend. (Photo: Instagram/via Fox News Insider)

Promising to “keep it short,” Denzel began his 3-point message with the words, “Put God first. Put God first in everything you do… Everything that I have is by the grace of God.”

The actor told the grads of a conversation with his mother shortly after his career began to take off. He came to her touting all the things “he” had accomplished… She told him, “Boy, stop it right there.”

(more…)

Continue Reading“Put God First!” Actor Denzel Washington’s Speech to College Grads

At Closing of Empowered21 Global Congress, Samuel Rodriguez Urges Christians to Stand Up for Their Faith; Warns ‘There’s No Such Thing as Comfortable Christianity’

May 25, 2015 –The Christian Post – Leonardo Blair

Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, tells Spirit-filled Christians at the Empowered21 Global Congress to stand up for their faith at the Jerusalem Pais Arena in Israel on Sunday May 24, 2015.

In a high-energy parting shot to a gathering of several thousand Spirit-filled believers at the closing session of the Empowered21 Global Congress in Jerusalem, Israel on Sunday, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Samuel Rodriguez warned that “there is no such thing as comfortable Christianity” and urged the group to use the power God gave them to declare Him to the world.

“When you are filled with God’s Spirit everything changes. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you are able to do what you were not able to do before. The Spirit came down and Peter did what? He raised his voice…Listen carefully, religion makes us complacent while revival makes us courageous. Today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity,” he warned.

Preaching from Acts 2:14 highlighting the reaction of the Apostle Peter after the initial descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, Rodriguez urged the believers to “be filled, stand up, and raise your voice.”

(more…)

Continue ReadingAt Closing of Empowered21 Global Congress, Samuel Rodriguez Urges Christians to Stand Up for Their Faith; Warns ‘There’s No Such Thing as Comfortable Christianity’

Ed Stetzer Refutes Pew Report on Decline of Christianity; Says Christianity Isn’t Declining, ‘Fake Christians’ are Finally Showing Their True Colors

by Ed Stetzer – May 14, 2015

Fakers who don’t go to church are just giving up the pretense.

A new Pew Research Center survey found the Christian share of the American population declined almost 8 percentage points from 2007 to 2014. Drawing from this point, many continued their breathless claims that the Christian sky is falling.

Rather than predict the impending doom of the church in America, this latest study affirms what many researchers have said before. Christianity isn’t collapsing; it’s being clarified. Churches aren’t emptying; rather, those who were Christian in name only are now categorically identifying their lack of Christian conviction and engagement.

Gallup recently found that weekly religious attendance as a percentage of the U.S. population is about where it was in the 1940s — hardly a statistical collapse.

(more…)

Continue ReadingEd Stetzer Refutes Pew Report on Decline of Christianity; Says Christianity Isn’t Declining, ‘Fake Christians’ are Finally Showing Their True Colors

US State Department Says No to Iraqi Christians

By Faith J. H. McDonnell – 2015-05-17

Writing in April in USA Today about the murder of 12 Christian migrants thrown into the sea by Muslims for praying to Jesus instead of Allah, columnist Kirsten Powers stated that President Barack Obama “just can’t seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or the eradication of Christianity from its birthplace.”

The president’s response appears to be United States policy. Evidence suggests that within the administration not only is there no passion for persecuted Christians under threat of genocide from the Islamic State, there is no room for them, period. In fact, despite ISIS’ targeting of Iraqi Christians specifically because they are Christians, and, as such, stand in the way of a pure, Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East (and beyond), the U.S. State Department has made it clear that “there is no way that Christians will be supported because of their religious affiliation.”

An Anglican bishop revealed that this policy position presented to him in his most recent interaction with State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). The Rt. Rev. Julian M. Dobbs, bishop of the Diocese of CANA East (Convocation of Anglicans in North America) is an advocate for persecuted people worldwide. On this occasion, Dobbs was appealing on behalf of a group of Assyrian Christians desperately in need of rescue from northern Iraq.

(more…)

Continue ReadingUS State Department Says No to Iraqi Christians

Obama, the Jews, the Muslims, and Us

by Michael Ledeen – May 24, 2015

I don’t believe that any other American president has spent so much time talking to and about Jews as Obama.  It all began in the very first months of his presidency—in August, 2009–when he called 1000 rabbis, lobbying for support for Obamacare.  It was a full month before the High Holy Days, when Jews pray for a year of life and good health, and the president remarked that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death.”

That was a considerable misstatement, for in these matters, Jews are supplicants, not partners.  Two months earlier, Obama had similarly distorted the nature of Zionism. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, he maintained that Israel’s right to exist derived from the oppression of Jews for many centuries. But Zionist leaders always insisted that modern Israel’s legitimacy rests on millennia of history: it is the restoration of a Jewish state that was promised by the Almighty to Abraham, entrusted to Moses, conquered by Joshua, and ruled by David, Solomon, and their successors.

So the president isn’t very well informed about Judaism or Zionism, yet he is forever lecturing Jews and Israelis about what is really best for them, as if he had some special insight.  It is no accident that Obama is the only American president to write an introduction to the official military Jewish prayer book, prepared by US chaplains.  All previous presidents had left such matters up to the rabbinate.

(more…)

Continue ReadingObama, the Jews, the Muslims, and Us

American Jews: The Last Leftist Jews in the World

The Jewish Press ^ | May 20th, 2015 | Daniel

Clip on a nametag, pick up a paper cup of lukewarm water and you can sit down in the audience at a thousand liberal Jewish establishment panels where the likes of Peter Beinart or Jeffrey Goldberg will sanctimoniously lecture their bored audience on the growing gap between American Jews and Israel.

Yawn through the usual references to “settlements”, “democratic character” and “one state solution.” Wake up just in time for the sales pitch for J Street and tough love BDS for the Jewish State.

And then go out and get some fresh air.

The gap isn’t between Israeli and American Jews; it’s between American Jews and the rest of the world.

(more…)

Continue ReadingAmerican Jews: The Last Leftist Jews in the World

Jeb Bush Says Homosexual Marriage is Not a Constitutional Right

May 17, 2015 – Bloomberg, David Knowles

Jeb Bush knows the way he would rule on same-sex marriage if he were a Supreme Court justice.

Interviewed Sunday by the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Bush was asked whether he believed that gay marriage was a right protected by the U.S. constitution.

“I don’t, but I’m not a lawyer, and clearly this has been accelerated at a warp pace,” he said.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule sometime next month on whether gay marriage should be made legal in all 50 U.S. states, and Bush tied the future of the country itself to the issue of the family structure.

(more…)

Continue ReadingJeb Bush Says Homosexual Marriage is Not a Constitutional Right

Teen With Down Syndrome Becomes a Supermodel, Challenges Us to See Disability Differently

Life News –  Sarah Zagorski  – May 19, 2015

18-year-old Madeline Stuart has Down syndrome but refuses to let that stop her from her dream of becoming a model. On her Facebook page she said she is pursuing modeling to “help change societies view of people with Down Syndrome.”

According to Buzzfeed, the woman’s mother, Roseanne Stuart, said her daughter has struggled with her weight throughout her life but recently picked up dance, swimming and cheerleading. Roseanne said, “I think it is time people realized that people with Down syndrome can be sexy and beautiful and should be celebrated.”

Roseanne said that culture is much more accepting of people with disabilities now than when her daughter was first born. She said, “Things were a lot different 18 years ago. I remember having her in a [stroller] when she was a baby and small-minded people telling me she should not be out in public. Even her doctors said Madeline would never achieve anything. But things are changing every day and people are more accepting of what they don’t understand yet.”

Additionally, Roseanne explained that her daughter has become very confident despite her disability and she constantly reminds her that she’s perfect just the way she is. She said, “I have made a point of never letting anyone be critical of her. [I tell Maddy] every day how amazing, funny, smart, beautiful, [and] wonderful she is. It’s that confidence — and beauty, both inside and out — that Rosanne wants others to see. People need to see how she shines, how her personality just bursts out.”

(more…)

Continue ReadingTeen With Down Syndrome Becomes a Supermodel, Challenges Us to See Disability Differently

Losing their religion: the hidden crisis of faith among Britain’s young Muslims

Sunday 17 May 2015- Andrew Anthony

As debate rages over the radicalisation of young British Muslims, are we overlooking a different crisis of faith? Ex-Muslims who dare to speak out are often cut off by their families and fear for their lives. A brave few tell us their stories.

Sulaiman Vali is a softly spoken 32-year-old computer engineer. A natural introvert not drawn to controversy or given to making bold statements, he’s the kind of person who is happiest in the background. He lives alone in a modest house on a quiet street in a small town in East Northamptonshire. He doesn’t want to be any more specific than that about the location. “If someone found out where I lived,” he explains, “they could burn my house down.”

Why should such an understated figure, someone who describes himself as a “nobody”, speak as if he’s in a witness protection programme? The answer is that six years ago he decided to declare that he no longer accepted the fundamental tenets of Islam. He stopped being a believing Muslim and became instead an apostate. It sounds quaintly anachronistic, but it’s not a term to be lightly adopted.

(more…)

Continue ReadingLosing their religion: the hidden crisis of faith among Britain’s young Muslims

Boys Without Dads: A Cruel and Volatile Calculus

By Ken Blackwell , CP Op-Ed Contributor – May 11, 2015

This column was co-authored by Rob Schwarzwalder.

The rioting in Baltimore is disturbing to all Americans, as the unresolved cause of Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody should be, as well.

It is right that political and religious leaders, community groups, business organizations, and law enforcement officials are commenting about all the causes and effects of the riots. But one thing seems missing from the discussion, a factor whose omission is unacceptable. It’s called fatherhood.

The rioting is inexcusable but should not be wholly surprising. It is likely that the great majority of it was been done by young black men – young black men without fathers.

Fatherhood is in crisis all across the country. In 2011, Pew Research evaluated data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “National Survey of Family Growth” and found that “more than one-in-four fathers with children 18 or younger now live apart from their children —with 11 percent living apart from some of their children and 16 percent living apart from all of their children.”

(more…)

Continue ReadingBoys Without Dads: A Cruel and Volatile Calculus

Baylor University Scholars Say Reports About Imminent Death of Religion Have Been Greatly Exaggerated; Faith Is Growing, Not Dying, In America and Around the World

May 11, 2015 – Baptist News Global – Ken Camp

Conference speakers highlight statistics and trends showing that in the U.S. and around the world, faith is on the rise.

Reports about the imminent death of religion, the rise of secularization and the growth of atheism largely ignore facts or rely on faulty research, scholars from Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion said during a recent conference.

Reports emphasizing the rise of “nones” and the massive flight of Millennials from organized religion greatly exaggerate — and sometimes misinterpret — hard data, said Byron Johnson, distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor and founding director of the Institute for Studies of Religion.

“There’s a story some people want to report — that religion is on life support — but it’s just not true,” he asserted.

Surveys that report Millennials have left the faith of their parents often really mean they have stopped attending church for a few years or identify with a nondenominational church rather than a Mainline denomination — not that they have abandoned Christianity, he said, pointing to findings from the Baylor Religion Survey.

(more…)

Continue ReadingBaylor University Scholars Say Reports About Imminent Death of Religion Have Been Greatly Exaggerated; Faith Is Growing, Not Dying, In America and Around the World

From Monnica to Susanna Wesley: Remembering Great Mothers In Church History

May 09, 2015 – Baptist Press – David Roach

Augustine of Hippo is known by Christians the world over for standing against heresy in the fifth century and laying a foundation for the Protestant Reformation a thousand years later.

Lesser known is the fact that Augustine might never have become a Christian if not for his mother Monnica, who prayed for his salvation for years before eventually sailing from North Africa to Italy to beg her son to attend church. He honored her wishes and was saved when he heard the Gospel under the preaching of Ambrose of Milan.

Monnica — as her name is spelled on her tomb despite commonly being rendered as “Monica” — is one of many noteworthy mothers in church history.

“Some of Christian history’s greatest preachers, theologians and missionaries owe the first fruits of their ministries not to their exegetical insights, homiletic abilities or spiritual zeal, but instead to the faithful prayers of their godly mothers,” Christian George, assistant professor of historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press in written comments. “In the lives of countless Christians throughout the ages, God has often granted second births as a result of those who gave them their first.”

(more…)

Continue ReadingFrom Monnica to Susanna Wesley: Remembering Great Mothers In Church History