About Marsha West

Marsha West is the owner and managing editor of Christian Research Network, Apprising Ministries (the late Ken Silva’s blog) and On Solid Rock Resources. She is also co-founder of Berean Research. For two decades Marsha was the owner and managing editor of Email Brigade website as well as the EMB News Report, a bi-weekly email report for conservative people of faith. For many years Marsha was a regular contributor to several blogs including CRN, RenewAmerica, News With Views and Web Commantary as well as popular websites she no longer endorses: American Family Association, Worldview Weekend, Stand Up For The Truth, The Christian Post and Christian Headlines. Although Marsha still blogs, her primary focus is CRN. Marsha also writes Research Papers (White Papers) on various topics that are published on CRN, Berean Research and On Solid Rock Resources. Visit Marsha’s other sites: On Solid Rock Resources https://www.onsolidrockresources.com/ Apprising Ministries http://apprising.org Marsha’s RenewAmerica Column http://renewamerica.com/columns/mwest Marsha’s Facebook Page http://facebook.com/marsha.west.77

Andy Stanley’s Church Doubles Down on Transgender Ideology

“A gender-dysphoric child who finds “comfort” at North Point is likely to be encouraged to socially, hormonally, and surgically transition.” 

(Alan Shlemon – Stand to Reason) After attending Andy Stanley’s Unconditional Conference in October 2023, I realized his church (North Point) promoted pro-gay and pro-trans theology. I, among many others, called out their unbiblical teaching. Many prayed they would repent. Continue reading

The Logical Conclusion to Preston Sprinkle’s Views on Same Sex Attracted is Pure Blasphemy

“Scripture isn’t vague. Jesus was tempted in every way except sin (Hebrews 4:15). He bore the consequences of the fall—hunger, pain, grief—but not its corruption. He didn’t inherit our disordered affections. He didn’t entertain inward rebellion. And He certainly didn’t carry around sexual inclinations that violate God’s design.”

(The Dissenter) In a recent webinar podcast geared toward making the argument that same sex attraction is not sinful, Preston Sprinkle and Gregory Coles suggest that Jesus Himself may have experienced sexual attraction. Coles states, “It does seem like it sort of cheapens the passage to be like, Jesus totally knows what you’re going through, but not that part… Jesus didn’t deal with that part.” Continue reading

On Guilt By Association

(Richard Henry – TruthScript) For the past few years, scandals have plagued the American church. From well-known pastors plagiarizing, committing adultery, or using anonymous accounts to slander friends, there has been no shortage of improprieties. Then there’s the blame game. If one pastor is guilty of a particular sin, does that mean his friends are as well? Guilt by association is a real thing, but some distinctions should be made.

The charge of “guilt by association” falls into two categories: one legitimate, one not. Continue reading

CNN’s Sick Reaction to the Boulder Terror Attack

“A man firebombs Jews and allies while shouting pro-Hamas rhetoric? That’s a textbook act of terrorism. But not to CNN, which dragged out none other than disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—yes, that Andrew McCabe, the one fired for lying under oath—to cast doubt on the FBI’s assessment.” 

(Matt Margolis – PJ Media) You’d think an elderly woman getting burned alive at a pro-Israel event by a man hurling Molotov cocktails while screaming “This will end when Palestine is free” would be universally condemned as terrorism. But this is 2025, with the media’s moral compass still spinning wildly and antisemitism extremely fashionable on the political left. So, instead of acknowledging the obvious, CNN went into full denial mode the moment the FBI under Director Kash Patel called the Boulder firebombing exactly what it was: a targeted terror attack. Continue reading

Sean Feucht’s Former Ministry Leaders Set Up Whistleblower Website, Accuse Him Of ‘Abuse, Fraud, Embezzlement’

“We have consistently witnessed Sean publicly point his finger at the sin of the world yet repeatedly fail to take responsibility for acknowledging, repenting of and turning away from his own serious and habitual sin”

(Protestia) A group of former volunteers and employees of prominent worship leader Sean Feucht have launched a whistleblower website against him, accusing him of a longstanding pattern of moral and ethical misconduct, including fraud and embezzlement, while calling for him to be removed from a leadership position. Continue reading

The Heresy of Pietism

(Bob DeWaay) There are no extraordinary Christians; but being an ordinary Christian is an extraordinary thing. How I wish I would have understood that when I was a new Christian. But I didn’t. Soon after my conversion I began a quest to become the best possible Christian. In so doing I fell prey to teachings that promised me a Christian life superior to that of ordinary Christians. What I did not know was that I had embraced pietism. I didn’t become an extraordinary Christian and I did walk straight into error.

My journey into the “deeper life” oftentimes involved embracing contradictory teachings. For example, two of my favorite teachers in the early 1970’s were Watchman Nee and Kenneth Hagin. One taught a deeper Christian life through suffering [1]) and the other taught a higher order Christianity that could cause one to be free from bodily ailments and poverty.[2] The hook was that both claimed to have the secret to becoming an extraordinary Christian. I found out that they didn’t. Continue reading

Christian Meditation: what is biblical and what is not

This article by CRN managing editor Marsha West was first published in September 2014.

In Joshua 1:8 God said: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.”

So, what exactly did God have in mind when He told Joshua to meditate on His word? Well, we can be certain of one thing. The Lord was not suggesting that Joshua sit in the lotus position repeating a mantra until he attained an altered state of consciousness.  “These help bring one into states other than normal waking consciousness, in which a person becomes open to mystical experience, the spirit realm, or cosmic consciousness,” warns Bill Muehlenberg.

The sort of meditation God had in mind was not Eastern meditation. He has made it clear that His people are not to adopt pagan practices and those who do are out of His will. The purpose of eastern-style meditation is to “seek the God within.”

That’s pantheism, brethren. People who hold this view believe that God is all and all is God. “A tree is God, a rock is God, an animal is God, the sky is God, the sun is God, you are God, etc.” The biblical view is that God is separate from His creation.  Genesis 1:1-30

More on biblical meditation in a moment, but first… Continue reading

Underpromise, Overdeliver

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

(Ron Halle) “This has never happened to me before,” I told my air conditioning company owner after he completed some work on my A/C system. He is also a Christian brother and friend, so that might have something to do with the fact he “overdelivered” on making changes to my A/C system. Continue reading

The Gospel According to Jordan Peterson

“The damage that Peterson has done has been to allegorize and relativize Christ and the Bible into oblivion in the minds of many of his listeners. If you watch Peterson’s lectures and read his books without a pre-existing grounding in Scripture, you would walk away thinking that the Bible is a remarkable collection of stories that provide spiritual and psychological insights into how to live a virtuous, happy life. What you will not hear is the gospel.”

(Jonah Heuer – TruthScript) Canadian psychologist, professor, author, and speaker Jordan Peterson has nudged many people to the right over the past decade. While the forces of the progressive left have been preaching a message of despair, obsolescence, and surrender to personal vice and self-loathing, especially young men, Peterson has encouraged the men on the receiving end of that spiritual onslaught to shake off the shackles of despair and stagnancy in favor of accepting greater responsibility for their own happiness and success…. Continue reading

The Right Is Rising

“The Right finally seems to be positioned to mount a much-needed counter-revolution and confront these imminent issues. Yes, there are grifters and content generators galore. But there are also patriots who are serving in key posts in the second Trump administration and founding startups that will revolutionize America.”

(Mike Sabo – American Reformer) Is losing seared into the DNA of conservatives? That question was asked countless times over the past couple of decades as the Left systematically defeated them on every front, from Hollywood to the halls of Congress. Continue reading

Pride Fatigue: It’s Time to Push Back!

“People are feeling it—pride fatigue. That bone-deep, soul-level weariness that hits when you realize the world has traded morality for sexual chaos and now demands applause for the trade. They’re tired of having to pretend that they believe men can have babies. Tired of pretending that gender is a hat you try on at Target. Tired of smiling politely while someone’s mentally unstable grandpa in fishnets lectures the world on authenticity.”

(The Dissenter) It’s not even June yet, and you can already feel it—the collective eye-roll of a weary nation bracing for another thirty-day parade of moral confusion, sexual exhibitionism, and corporate hostage videos. The rainbow flags are being ironed, the slogans reheated, the drag queens dusted off for another run at story hour.

And normal people—yes, normal, a word the left hates—are exhausted. Continue reading

Jill Was Running the Country with a Shadowy COS?

Jill’s advisors were allegedly running the show, along with Jill? Not Barack? “They particularly focus on Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernal, and longtime aide Ashley Williams, who joined the deputy chief of staff’s office when Tomasini ascended to the role earlier this year.”

(Mary Dowling) David Hogg, the almost-fired Vice Chair of the DNC, was caught in a Project Veritas sting. And it’s a doozy. Hogg said that Jill Biden’s Chief of Staff had an enormous amount of power. Continue reading

Francis Chan Says He Could Draw a Bigger Crowd, and His Church Would Be Bigger Than Jesus’s

“This is the man who left the pulpit not to pursue deeper biblical truth, but to cozy up to a charismatic caravan of error, dragging confused followers behind him like spiritual roadkill.”

(The Dissenter) In a recent conversation with Lecrae, Francis Chan reached deep into the recesses of his self-awareness and pulled out something so bizarre, so stupefying, that even seasoned watchers of his descent into doctrinal oblivion had to pause and rewind. Continue reading

Bongino Discovered Comey’s Secret FBI Files: ‘You’re Gonna Be Stunned.’

While Bongino stopped short of calling it a “hidden room,” he made clear the material had been deliberately withheld from oversight. “I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us, at least, and not mentioned to us.”

(Matt Margolis – PJ Media) In a stunning interview on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, former Secret Service agent and current Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino dropped a bombshell that could reignite scrutiny of the FBI under former Director James Comey. Bongino revealed that his team recently uncovered previously hidden FBI documents from Comey’s tenure — and the details could be explosive. Continue reading

Who Was Running Biden’s White House? A Shocking Report Is Raising Questions

“Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans. The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

(Jeff Charles – Townhall) A watchdog group focused on energy policy published a report on Wednesday, stating that there is no evidence to suggest that former President Joe Biden was aware of several executive orders related to energy and climate change that he allegedly issued. Continue reading

The Collapse of the Old Guard: How Obama, Pelosi, and the Press Finally Lost Control

“If the Democratic Party has suffered a fall, the media has orchestrated its own slow suicide. Once the proud champions of the First Amendment, legacy outlets like NPR, CNN, and The New York Times now act as apologists, archivists, and airbrush artists.,,,They didn’t just miss the Biden story. They buried it.”

(David Manney – PJ Media) For more than a decade, the Democratic Party operated like a palace, ruled not by consensus but by decree. Its monarchs were familiar: President Barack Obama with his golden tongue and cool detachment, Nancy Pelosi with her iron gavel, and a press corps that never met a Democrat it couldn’t If the Democratic Party has suffered a fall, the media has orchestrated its own slow suicide…. Continue reading

The MAHA Commission’s Commonsense Chronic Disease Report

“Roughly 75% of America’s youth aged 17–24 do not qualify to serve in the military due to obesity, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases or behavioral disorders.”

(Emmy Griffin – The Patriot Post) MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) moms are rejoicing. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team have done a deep dive into why our children’s health is so poor and released the report last Thursday. Parents have been noticing an uptick in chronic health issues and feel helpless to improve their children’s condition.

What Are the Numbers? Continue reading

N.T. Wright Dances Around Transgenderism, Refuses to Call Trans Listener to Repent

“The tragic irony is that N.T. Wright has spent years fighting off caricatures of his theology from more conservative critics, insisting that he holds to the core doctrines of the faith. But when the moment comes to draw a line—to stand on truth, to call a man a man and sin a sin—he turns into a theological fog machine, obscuring everything with sentimental platitudes and academic evasion.”

(The Dissenter) In a recent episode of his podcast, Ask N.T. Wright Anything, Wright was asked by a self-described trans-identified woman—who now lives as a man and has undergone surgeries including a hysterectomy—whether her current lifestyle is sinful, and how the Bible might speak to her situation. According to The Christian Post, Wright responded not with clarity, but with the kind of theological oatmeal that tries to nourish everyone and ends up feeding no one. Continue reading

A near Wiccan speaking spells

“It is dangerous to put a new age occultist in a position like that of surgeon general. A growing number of Christian and conservative influencers, particularly among moms, cannot see what is staring them in the face—behind all the jargon and medical language is a foundational system premised in pagan occult practices that Scripture warns against.”

(Erick Erickson) When my father and his brother, Lief, were children, their mother took them to see Oral Roberts. My father, who spoke Swedish at home and English at school, had a terrible speech impediment. My Uncle Lief had stabbed himself in his eye, losing his vision, as a child. My Swedish grandmother, like so many mothers today searching for cures for themselves and their children, believed by faith that Oral Roberts would heal them. Continue reading

Just when you thought Team Biden and CNN couldn’t sink any lower… this happens…

“Welcome to the United States of America, where the media isn’t free. It’s bought and paid for by the Democrat Party….Team Biden spent millions of dollars producing a fake town hall. That’s right, a completely staged event, rigged with all the bells and whistles – just to try and make Biden look like a competent leader. But here’s the kicker… they failed miserably because the footage was so unusable, they couldn’t even release it. That’s how mentally gone Joe Biden was….The fact that they couldn’t [release the fake townhall] because the president was so mentally out of it… is the real moment of shame here.”

(Revolver) They told us Joe Biden had a “childhood stutter.” They told us he was sharp as a tack, lucid, and a fully in-command grandfatherly type. They told us that questioning his mental fitness was “dangerous disinformation” and bullying. Continue reading

Welcome to the Intifada, America

“How many of the “protesters” who “occupy” college libraries know that Gaza, which was given autonomy all the way back in 2006, is provided food, clean water and electricity by Israel? How many know that the Israeli government forcibly removed thousands of Jews from Gaza because Palestinians can only live Judenfrei?”

(David Harsanyi – The Patriot Post) Now we know what “globalize the intifada” means.

After a pro-Palestinian Marxist was arrested after shooting and killing Yaron Lischinsky, a German-born evangelical Christian, and his American girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim, in front of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., he chanted, “Free, free Palestine.” Continue reading

Remember Those Who Gave Their All

Watch the video.

(Chris Queen – PJ Media) It’s Memorial Day. I started to avoid saying “Happy Memorial Day” because I know people get bent out of shape when people say that. Kruiser and I had a conversation last week about that very fact, but the truth is that even though it’s an important and necessary day of remembrance, it’s also a happy day for most people.

Many people will attend parades or visit cemeteries, and families will also enjoy cookouts and swim parties with loved ones…. Continue reading

Miller Corrects the Record: The Big Bill Is a Massive Tax & Spending Cuts Bill

(Mary Dowling) President Trump’s senior White House aide, Stephen Miller, corrected the record on a number of issues relating to the Big, Beautiful Bill. Some of the potentially erroneous claims come from the House, others from the Senate.

The bottom line is the bill slashes $1.6 trillion, strengthens the border, cuts welfare abuse, and protects tax relief for working Americans.

There is a lot of criticism over not codifying the DOGE cuts in this bill…. Continue reading

We Were All ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’ According to the Biden Administration

“By defending individual liberty and questioning government overreach during the pandemic, PJ Media and our readers apparently earned ourselves a spot on Biden’s domestic terrorist watchlist. The irony? We were right about the mandates all along—their ineffectiveness, their unconstitutionality, and their use as tools of control rather than as public health measures.”

(Matt Margolis – PJ Media) The COVID pandemic feels like a distant, bizarre dream now—but the remnants are still around if you look closely. A lone mask-wearing Karen at the grocery store… faded social distancing stickers no one bothered to peel off… reminders of just how absurd—and sometimes terrifying—that era really was…. Continue reading

Tim Challies: You, Me, and G3

“Along the way, something in the organization’s emphasis shifted so that the early sense of collegiality dissipated and the ranks of speakers became steadily narrower. G3 spearheaded the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel and, though I was present for the meetings in which it was discussed and began to be drafted, I opted not to sign it. As that statement became increasingly central to G3’s identity, it began to seem inevitable that my time there would come to an end.”

(Tim Challies) I have fond memories of the early years of the G3 Conference. When G3 held its debut event in 2013, I was one of the invited speakers and it quickly became a tradition. For eight years I fell into the comfortable pattern of making an annual trip to Atlanta. I would almost always speak in the second spot, then remain for the rest of the event to enjoy growing relationships with speakers and attendees alike. Though the list of speakers varied at each event, it is my recollection that Josh Buice (who founded G3), Steve Lawson, and I were the three who brought a keynote address for each of those first eight years. Continue reading