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.”

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More & More Arab Youth Are Openly Blessing Israel

David Lazarus : May 4, 2015 : Israel Today

“As an Arab who lives in Israel, it is a great honor for me to live side by side with my brothers the Jews. I bless them and love them and it is a privilege to tell them about my faith in their book, the Bible. There is a real way that we can live together in love, unity and peace, Arabs and Jews—through our Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.”

Young people from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen and many other Arab countries are turning to social media to tell the world that they love Israel.

The trend began, according to Al-Monitor, a popular pan-Mideast media outlet, when an Israeli Arab Muslim who served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wanted to convince other Israeli Arabs that the (IDF) are not an “army of evil” and that its soldiers are not as bloodthirsty as they tend to be portrayed in Arab propaganda films.

But instead of messages from the Israeli Arab audience he was targeting, he began receiving messages of peace and love from young Arabs all across the region.

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Earthquakes of Faith

By Brian C Stiller , Global Ambassador, World Evangelical Alliance – April 28, 2015

A shaking is taking place in the Muslim world with tectonic rumblings. Signs are early and evidence is anecdotal, yet stories abound and are persuasive. The unsettling of entrenched Islamic faith is making its way into places and with people we assumed were closed to conversations about the Christian faith.

Returning from the Middle East, a journey I’ve made regularly in the past few years, I spoke with those engaged in Christian witness about some possibilities they would not have verbalized twelve months ago. I begin with a story from meeting with Syrian refugees on the Lebanese side of the border.

A worn, gnarled hand gently stroked the bruised face of her two-year-old granddaughter whose front teeth had been broken and face scraped by a serious fall. I sat next to them in their scrabbled together shack in a Syrian refugee camp in the Beqaa Valley, just over the mountains from Syria. The life of “Fadwa” had been shattered first by her husband having been taken prisoner in Syria. Then her daughter died in childbirth because Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint refused to let her go to the hospital in time. Then to stay alive Fadwa was forced to flee from her home in Lebanon and walk three days over the mountains. Today she cares for five adults and six children in a makeshift abode, the main room curtained off from the sleeping room.

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Homosexual activists speak out against same-sex marriage

"I'm gay and I'm voting No. Here's why." Keith Mills and Paddy Manning give powerful and compelling reasons for voting NO to redefining marriage on May 22. Use your vote.…

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Three Things I Oppose: Youtube Link of Ps Daniel

Dear family and friends in Christ, RUAP National President Daniel Nalliah speaks out on three things he opposes; two depopulates a Nation, while one populates a nation and tries to…

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Why can’t Muslims laugh at Mohammed?

David P. Goldman May 5, 2015

In Mel Brooks’ comedy “History of the World Part I,” Moses is shown descending from Mount Sinai with three stone tablets in hand. As he declares, “I give you the Fifteen Commandments,” one falls and breaks, and Moses corrects himself, “er, Ten Commandments.” Jews, including the observant, find this funny rather than offensive. As we learned once again in Garland, Texas, Muslims do not laugh at jokes about Mohammed, the purported author of the Koran (as Moses is the author of the Torah). Two wannabe Jihadists with assault rifles and body armor were no match for an off-duty Texas traffic cop with a sidearm, but the incident might have turned into a massacre worse than the murder of the Charlie Hebdo staff in January.

Why do Jews as well as Christians–but not Muslims–laugh at jokes about the founders of their faiths?

The answer is that radically different deities are in question. Judaism begins with a covenant between God and human beings–Abraham and his descendants–that is a partnership in which God is normally, but not always, the senior partner. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks observes, the Jewish sages of antiquity envisioned Moses acting as a judge for God, permitting God to annul his earlier vow to destroy the Jewish people after the sin of the Golden Calf. This is unimaginable in Islam, just as unimaginable as the Christian God who humbles himself on the cross.

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Doing Church on the Streets of Baltimore

May 05, 2015 – The New York Times – Ron Nixon and Scott Shane

The Rev. Warren Savage, a former gang member, is trying to persuade members of several gangs to direct their energy away from violence. (Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times)

For the past few days, as a rare national media spotlight has shined on this city’s troubles, the Rev. Warren Savage has taken the opportunity to meet with self-described members of the gangs that many residents blame for some of those woes: the Crips, the Bloods and the Black Guerrilla Family.

He has found them on the streets, sat down with them in churches, and talked to them about their anger and their aspirations, urging them to redirect their energy from crime and violent feuding to more productive ends — including tamping down unrest that followed the death of a young black man, Freddie Gray, who suffered fatal injuries in police custody two weeks ago.

In Ferguson, Mo., community leaders seemed unable to come together to stem the violence after the police killing of Michael Brown in August. But in Baltimore, an array of pastors, politicians, community leaders and even gang members have repeatedly taken to the streets to calm crowds, effectively helping the police impose a curfew so far.

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Say NO to legalising ‘Gay Marriage’ in Australia / Live webcast 31st May

Dear family & friends in Christ, 1) It seems like many nations are rapidly slipping away from God’s divine order of marriage between a man & woman, and embracing gay…

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Nigerian bishop: Hillary must think she’s a ‘god’ if she wants us to abandon our pro-life values

May 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com)

An African Catholic bishop has said he thinks Hillary Clinton believes she is a god, someone who doesn’t value others’ morals, and he hopes Americans will wake up to what sort of people are running to be their president.

“I believe there are three groups of people in this world,” said Bishop Emmanuel Badejo. “Those who believe in God, those who do not believe in God, and those who think they are gods.”

“Hillary Clinton I think is one of those who thinks she is a god,” he said. “And I’m not obliged to believe that.”

In an April 29 interview with the Catholic website Aleteia, the Nigerian bishop was asked about Clinton’s recent statements at the Women in the World Summit, where she said, “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” to give women access to “reproductive health care and safe childbirth.”

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UKIP vows to defend Britain’s Christians in new election platform

Hilary White – May 5, 2015

LONDON, May 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In sight of this month’s general election, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has issued a manifesto of its adherence to Christian values, saying that there must be a more “robust” defence of Christianity. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, stated that the political class in Britain has lost sight of the nation’s Christian roots.

“We will uphold robustly the rights of Christians, as well as those of other faiths, to worship as they wish and to espouse their beliefs openly, within the limits of the common law,” the party said in its “Christian manifesto,” thus far, the only such document produced by any British political party.

UKIP says the party is “proud of Britain’s Judaeo-Christian heritage,” which it says “underpins our culture, our legal code and our system of governance.”

“We will stand up for it because we believe it is as integral, relevant and important a part of life in Britain today as it has ever been.”

“Sadly, I think UKIP is the only major political party left in Britain that still cherishes our Judaeo-Christian heritage. I believe other parties have deliberately marginalised our nation’s faith, whereas we take Christian values and traditions into consideration when making policy,” Farage said.

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Christian Betrayal: President Obama Refuses to Acknowledge Genocide

4/22/2015 CBN News

President Barack Obama is once again stopping short of calling the 1915 massacre of 2 million Armenians a genocide.

That’s prompting anger and disappointment from people who have been urging him to fulfill a campaign promise and use that politically significant word on the 100th anniversary of the massacre this week.

“President Obama’s surrender to Turkey represents a national disgrace. It is, very simply, a betrayal of truth, a betrayal of trust,” Ken Hachikian, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, said.

Officials decided against calling the massacre a genocide after some opposition from the State Department and Pentagon.

“We know and respect that there are some who are hoping to hear different language this year,” CNN quoted an administration official.

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With Islamic terrorism in our backyard, can we still love the Muslims?

Dear friends & family in Christ, You may click the following link to watch a seven minute video by Rise Up Australia Party National President Daniel Nalliah titled ‘With Islamic…

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A Century Later, Turkey Still Won’t Come to Terms with the Armenian Genocide

April 27, 2015 – The National Review – By David Pryce-Jones  

The Turks in 1915 destroyed the minority of Armenians in their midst, killing probably as many as a million and a half, and driving hundreds of thousands into exile. Such a nation-wide exhibition of human brutality takes its lasting place in the collective memory. Yet Turkish officials and spokesmen for the past hundred years have refused to accept responsibility for this great crime, much less apologize for it.

They contest the numbers of victims. A world war had opened, and bad things happen in war everywhere. Armenians, they like to say, were making common cause with the Russian enemy, and ethnic cleansing was therefore a security measure. Turks as Muslims were waging jihad, but Armenians as Christian infidels had brought it all on themselves. In “Minorities,” one of his most judicious essays, Elie Kedourie ascribes much of the blame to the handful of Armenians who had let nationalist ideology take possession of them, a malady or infection “eating up the fabric of settled society.” In his summary of their fate, “the Armenians were forced to be free.”

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