Author Archives: Marsha West

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

The Terrible Message Teens Are Getting About Weed

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LifeZette reports:

Teenagers don’t think pot is a big deal. Because of that, moms and dads need a major heads-up.

The pediatrician, at the teen’s next appointment, may be having a conversation with him or her about why that’s a problem.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday released the report, “Counseling Parents and Teens about Marijuana Use in the Era of Legalization of Marijuana.” It comes as voters in a growing number of states have either approved recreational or medicinal use of the drug, or are seriously looking to make that leap.

It also comes as a result of more kids smoking pot. Almost 40 percent of U.S. high school students report having tried marijuana; about 20 percent say they are current users; and almost 10 percent of teens admit to trying the drug before age 13.

Use among 12th grade students, specifically, is up 36 percent over a year ago. And parents are asking pediatricians to help answer some very tough questions.

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Humans 2.0: these geneticists want to create an artificial genome by synthesising our DNA

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According to the Technocracy News editor: The transhuman dream is to scientifically create life via genetic engineering and then apply it to themselves in hopes of achieving immortality. If it were not for their 100% funding from public sources, these scientists would be rubbing two sticks together in the woods trying to kindle a fire.

Now to the story over at Wired:

Scientists intend to have fully synthesised the genome in a living cell – which would make the material functional – within ten years, at a projected cost of $1 billion

In July 2015, 100 geneticists met at the New York Genome Center to discuss yeast. At 12 million base pairs long, it’s the largest genome scientists have tried to produce synthetically.

Andrew Hessel, a researcher with the Bio/Nano research group at software company Autodesk, was invited to speak at the event. The audience asked him which organism should be synthesised next. “I said, ‘Look around the room. You’ve got hardly anyone here and you’re doing the most sophisticated genetic engineering in the world,” Hessel recalls. “Why don’t you take a page out of history and set the bar high? Do the human genome.”

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Ideologues and Transgenderism – Frightening Stuff

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Bill Muehlenberg of Culture Watch analyzes a “lulu of a debate” between Fox News host Tucker Carlson and DNC Senior Adviser and head of the Democrats’ Trump War Room, Zac Petkanas. The discussion was on President Trump’s decision to reverse Obama’s guidelines on transgendered students.  As liberal ideologues always do, Petkanas kept changing the subject instead of answering Carlson’s questions. Muehlenberg describes how Carlson tried to move the conversation from politics to actual science. He kept asking his guest: “Name one scientist or one biologist anywhere in the world who says that your gender is simply whatever you want it to be.” But of course Petkanas could not and the reason is that there is no science behind the left’s claim that a person can change their sex just because they want to.

So with this background in mind, here’s Bill Muehlenberg’s piece:

Anyone involved in the culture wars, in political debates, or in discussing the various social and moral hot potato issues of the day, will be well aware of what it is like to have to deal with ideologues. They can be a very scary bunch indeed.

So just what is an ideologue? A quick search for a few online definitions gives us this: -an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic. -an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.

Victor Reppert, author of C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (IVP, 2003), once put it this way:

“An ideologue is someone who looks at everything through the ‘glasses’ of their favored viewpoint, and refuses to allow any merit in the perspective of someone who sees things from an opposing perspective. In debate or discussion an ideologue will invariably make no concessions whatsoever to the other side. Nothing that someone on the other side says has any legitimacy whatsoever.”

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Video Clip Shows IRGC Support For Terror Against America

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CNSNews reports:

As Iran’s government claimed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is widely known to be fighting terrorism in neighboring countries, a newly-emerged video clip purportedly shows an IRGC strategist threatening to unleash terror cells in the U.S., targeting nuclear missile launch facilities, among other things.

At a time when the Trump administration is considering listing the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said at the weekend U.S. efforts to sanction the organization have never benefited the U.S.

Zarif said the world at large agrees that the IRGC has extended the utmost support for neighboring countries in their fight against terrorism.

Iran is supporting Shi’a militias fighting alongside the Iraqi military against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists. The IRGC is also heavily involved, in conjunction with Tehran’s Hezbollah allies and other Shi’a fighters, in supporting the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, where combatants include Sunni nationalists, Kurds, Salafists, and ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists.

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Tim Keller Stepping Down as Redeemer Senior Pastor

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According to Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today “The influential Reformed leader is moving away from his NYC pulpit as his church becomes three.” She writes:

Later this year, Redeemer Presbyterian will no longer be a multisite megachurch in Manhattan, and Tim Keller will no longer be its senior pastor.

Keller, 66, announced at all eight Sunday services today that he will be stepping down from the pulpit. The move corresponds with a decades-long plan to transition the single Presbyterian Church in America congregation—which has grown to 5,000 members since it began 28 years ago—into three particular churches.

His last day as senior pastor will be July 1.

This move does not mean retirement for Manhattan’s most popular evangelical pastor and apologist; instead, Keller will work full-time teaching in a partner program with Reformed Theological Seminary and working with Redeemer’s City to City church planting network.

“There’s a certain level of him that’s going to mourn the connection with a congregation and being their pastor,” said Kathy Keller, Tim’s wife and a staff member at Redeemer, in an interview with CT. “It’s a loss. But there’s also something very exciting that he’s going to.”

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Basic Training: The Bible Is Our Authority

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Bible study author, speaker and blogger Michelle Lesley challenges those who claim they’re followers of Jesus Christ to read and study the book He inspired, the inerrant Word of God.  Knowing who God is and His ways prevents believers from getting pulled into a web of deception by the sort of teachers Jesus referred to as “ravenous wolves.” Most of us have played Monopoly so we’re familiar with how the game is played as well as the rules of the game.  Well, Michelle uses that board game to illustrate her point, and we think you’ll agree that she does it brilliantly!

So – with this in mind, listen as Michelle Lesley offers some basic training principles that will help Christians grow in their faith. She writes:

The Bible. Scripture. The Good Book. It used to be so blatantly self-evident that God’s written Word was the foundation and standard for the Christian faith that it was assumed. A given. You learned, “I stand alone on the word of God- the B-I-B-L-E,” when you were three or four years old, you believed it, and you moved on.

But take a look at the Westernized version of Christianity these days. The fruit of abandoning the authority of Scripture is chilling. From the demonic tremoring and barking antics of New Apostolic Reformation “churches” to the rebellion of female “pastors” to the “gay Christian” movement to “Christian” abortion doctors, it’s clear that an astounding number of self-professed Christians and churches don’t submit to Scripture’s mandates for their beliefs and practices.

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Why I Don’t See ‘Christian’ Movies

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Pulpit & Pen has a piece by Matt Sherro that tackles what Hollywood would like us to believe are Christian films. Sherro lists just a few of the heresies taught in so-called Christian movies and books:

“Yea, hath God said…” It’s the oldest trick in the book; bring just enough of the truth to someone to obscure the lie and it is, itself, the reason “Christian movies” are so successful. permit me to digress for a moment.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend, whom we will call Eric in order to protect his privacy, and during that conversation, Eric asked if it was true that, as a rule, I will never go to see a “Christian movie” and I answered in the affirmative. The last allegedly Christian movie that I went to see in a theater was The Passion of the Christ and I probably should have saved my money but that is a different story for a different day. I want to take a few moments to explain why I do not go to see these allegedly Christian movies and why I actively discourage others from doing so as well.

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Relationship problems, not family rejection, leading cause of higher gay suicides

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LifeSite News reports:

While many assume that family rejection is the leading cause of depression among LBGTI individuals, a new study has found that in fact the problem appears to stem predominantly from the higher incidence of relationship problems among homosexuals.

Dr. Delaney Skerrett led a team of researchers from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention (AISRAP) in studying suicides in Queensland. He found that a leading cause of suicide among “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex” (LGBTI) people is stress from their romantic partners.

“We tend to assume that the psychological distress LGBTI people are often going through is due to family rejection. But it seems that’s not so much the case. The conflict seems to be largely related to relationship problems, with partners,” Dr. Skerrett said.

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The Left vs. Reality

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Lee Duigon’s depiction of liberals can also be said about Progressive (liberal) Christians a.k.a Social Justice Christians. For these folks, truth matters not.  They choose not to find God’s truth in the pages of Scripture and instead hang their hat on their own personal experience — so don’t confuse them with facts. Progressives, you see, are all about “feelings.” (This also applies to those who’ve bought into the New Apostolic Reformation and Word of Faith cults.) Just like the Roman Catholic pope (as Duigon points out) Progressive Christians push a political agenda.  And like Francis, they’ll marginalize anyone who disagrees with them and even resort to violence, as you will see in Duigon’s piece over at News With Views. He writes:

Everyone’s entitled to his own opinion, Sen. Daniel Moynihan once said, long ago, but no one’s entitled to his own facts. Obviously Moynihan was talking about some planet other than ours.

It started in the universities, where all this poison hatches out, the idea that a text, any text, can only mean what the reader thinks it means. Academics liked this so much, they quickly applied it to everything. And we wound up having to say a man is a woman because he “identifies as a woman.”

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Namaste, Satan: Metal yoga class set inside Satanic Temple in Salem, Mass.

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Black Widow Yoga done with heavy metal music in the background held in a satanic temple?  Really?  Well, according to Mass Live those who wish to participate in this sort of thing will have their chance:

Metal music and yoga do not seem like two things that go together all that often. But they’re getting paired up under one roof: The Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts.

The classic is scheduled for Sunday, March 5, at 9:30 a.m.

Black Widow Yoga has pulled together the class. On its Facebook page, Black Widow Yoga describes itself as an independent yoga concept that uses metal music instead of “traditional yoga music.”

“Inspired by other non-traditional yoga classes such as Metal Yoga Bones in Brooklyn NY, Tina of Black Widow Yoga aims to challenge your understanding of what yoga means to each individual, and encourages every outsider to harness the energy within that truly connects to doomy and dark music,” its Facebook page says.

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Trial Underway in UK for Preachers Arrested for ‘Anti-Social’ Opposition to Islam, Homosexuality

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Christian News reports:

A trial is currently underway in the United Kingdom for three preachers who were arrested last July on accusations of “causing a disturbance” and engaging in “anti-social behavior” after some listeners became offended by their speech about issues such as Islam, Buddhism, homosexuality and divorce.

Michael Overd, Adrian Clark and Michael Stockwell appeared in Bristol Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and Friday as part of a four-day trial over accusations that they violated a section of the Crime and Disorder Act, which prohibits speech or behavior causing “intentional harassment, alarm or distress” that is “racially or religiously aggravated.”

Prosecutor Ian Jackson “told the court some of the statements made by the preachers may have been in the King James Bible, translated in 1611, but that did not mean they were acceptable in 2016,” according to the Daily Mail.

Video of the incident was played in court on Friday.

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What accounts for the ‘unprecedented venom’ aimed at Trump?

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In a piece entitled “Seven Days In February” columnist, noted historian and social critic Victor Davis Hanson queries: What has the often boisterous Trump done in his first month to earn calls for his death, forced removal, or resignation?

In his opinion, “Trump’s edicts are mostly common-sense and non-controversial: green-lighting the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, freezing federal hiring, resuming work on a previously approved wall along the Mexican border, prohibiting retiring federal officials from lobbying activity for five years, and pruning away regulations.”

Hanson goes on to say: Clearly in empirical terms, nothing that Trump in his first month in office has done seems to have justified calls for violence against his person or his removal from office.”

In a piece over at National Review, Victor Davis Hanson masterfully lays out what accounts for the “unprecedented venom” aimed at President Trump and his administration. He writes:

A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Something far less dramatic but perhaps as disturbing as Hollywood fiction played out this February.

The Teeth-Gnashing of Deep Government Currently, the political and media opponents of Donald Trump are seeking to subvert his presidency in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of American politics. The so-called resistance among EPA federal employees is trying to disrupt Trump administration reform; immigration activists promise to flood the judiciary to render executive orders inoperative.

Intelligence agencies had earlier leaked fake news briefings about the purported escapades of President-elect Trump in Moscow — stories that were quickly exposed as politically driven concoctions. Nearly one-third of House Democrats boycotted the Inauguration. Celebrities such as Ashley Judd and Madonna shouted obscenities to crowds of protesters; Madonna voiced her dreams of Trump’s death by saying she’d been thinking a lot about blowing up the White House.

But all that pushback was merely the clownish preliminary to the full-fledged assault in mid February.

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Pope suggests ‘better to be atheist than hypocritical Catholic’

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Reuters reports:

Pope Francis delivered another criticism of some members of his own Church on Thursday, suggesting it is better to be an atheist than one of “many” Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life.

The same could be said of evangelicals. The report continues…

In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning Mass in his residence, he said: “It is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life.”

Evangelicals, listen up!  More…

“There are those who say ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association’,” the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.

He said that some of these people should also say “‘my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, (I lead) a double life’.”

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See our Research Paper on Roman Catholicism

Witches to cast a spell on Trump

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According to ELLE, liberal witches are going to put what they call a “binding spell” on the Trump administration.  Evidently they’re only going to bind Republicans because they don’t wish to cause them harm. “We’re just trying to stop the harm they’re doing,” say liberal witches.  One can’t help but wonder if conservative witches will stand for this or will they cast their own spell in an attempt to cancel out the spell that binds.  Jaya Saxena has the story:

Those who don’t like Donald Trump and the current Republican administration are mobilizing in all sorts of ways. They’re speaking up in town halls and calling their representatives. They’re organizing protests and demonstrations. And, for the magically-inclined, they’re casting spells.

Starting at midnight on Friday, witches around the country are calling for a mass spell to be cast on Donald Trump every night of a waning crescent moon until he’s driven from office.

The spell was publicized by Michael M. Hughes, who told ELLE.com that it was tweaked from multiple spells he saw going around private witchcraft groups. He published it on Extra News Feed because he felt “it would be very welcome to a lot of people.” It quickly spread, with events being formed around the country and support on social media.

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Americans feeling ‘warmer’ toward Mormons and Muslims — but not evangelicals

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According to Baptist News Global:

Maybe Mitt Romney should have waited one election cycle to run for president.

Romney was dogged by negative perceptions about his Mormon faith during his unsuccessful 2012 bid for the presidency. But new research shows attitudes about Mormons are warming, just as they are for most other faith groups in the United States.

Using a “thermometer” to gauge opinions about various religions, the Pew Research Center said American feelings about Mormons improved from 48 to 54 degrees since 2014.

“The increase in mean ratings is broad based,” Pew said in the February report titled “Americans Express Increasingly Warm Feelings Toward Religious Groups.”

“Warmer feelings are expressed by people in all the major religious groups analyzed, as well as by both Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and younger and older adults.”

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Trump Admin Withdraws Obama-Era Directive Requiring Allowance of Male Students in Girls’ Restrooms

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Christian News reports:

The Trump administration withdrew on Wednesday an Obama-era directive that required public schools to allow students to use the restroom that they feel matches their “internal sense of gender” under threat of losing federal funding.

A letter issued by both the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice outlines that the guidance issued under the Obama administration did not “contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX, nor did they undergo any formal public process.”

“This interpretation has given rise to significant litigation regarding school restrooms and locker rooms,” the departments noted.

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Rick Warren’s Wife, Kay, Joins Band of Vision-Seeing Prophetesses in the SBC

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Jeff Maples of Pulpit & Pen reports on Mrs. Warren’s vision and then selling tickets to carry out that vision:

First, it was Beth Moore with her ridiculous “God-given” vision of the professing Church, including Roman Catholics, being joined together by God in unholy unity. Now Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback megachurch pastor, Rick Warren claims she had a vision from God after the suicide of her mentally ill son in 2013. In a Facebook post, she writes:

Not long after our son, Matthew, died, I had a vision in prayer. I don’t regularly see visions, so this was unusual. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the Worship Center at Saddleback full of people who are living with a mental illness – depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, an eating disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia – or any other mental illness that was making life challenging.

Now, there is one thing to note here. Saddleback may be full of undiscerning professing Christians with a very lukewarm, if any, knowledge of Scriptural truth, at least as of now, it does not seem to be full of mentally ill people–at least to the extent that she makes it sound in her prognostication.

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The Shack’s Author William Paul Young on Substitutionary Atonement

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From Lighthouse Trails:

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! – John 1:29

In 2009, Lighthouse Trails posted an article titled “The Shack Author Rejects Biblical Substitutionary Atonement.” The article was largely based on an interview that The Shack author William Paul Young did. Below is a partial transcript of the interview between Young and a pastor named Kendall Adams. When your Christian friends, family members, pastors, and church members tell you they are going to go and see the upcoming movie, The Shack, ask them if they really understand what The Shack author believes. You may listen to the entire interview by clicking here. You can also pass out Warren B. Smith’s article/booklet The Shack and Its New Age Leaven and Substitution: He Took Our Place by Harry Ironside.

On the Penal Substitutionary Atonement (that Jesus Christ took the penalty for our sins on the cross):

Adams: “On page 120 [of The Shack] where God says, you know, I don’t punish sin, sin is it’s own punishment, you know, this is when Mack , um, is having a hard time with his view of God pouring out wrath, etc. But then when it says, “Mackenzie, I don’t need to punish people for sin. I guess when people read the scripture my question is, doesn’t God…hasn’t God, and doesn’t He…punish sin?”

William Young: “Some of it is semantics, we’re dealing with the concept of the wrath of God and, and here’s an underlying question. “Do you believe that God does anything that is not motivated by love?”

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Celebrating Charismatic Catholicism … As If They Don’t Have Enough To Worry About

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Most people are unaware that charismania exists within the Roman Catholic Church. But it does.  The movement is growing and for good reason. Bud Ahlheim informs us that because the RCC was losing millions of adherents to what they deem apostate Protestantism the church’s hierarchy took the advice of Brazilian Catholic priest Marcelo Rossi who urged them to incorporate some of the features of evangelical churches into a more “modernized, spiritualized, and experientially emphatic Roman Catholic church. The primary feature Rossi mimicked was the charismatic element.”

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) will be celebrating fifty years of the movement this month, which is “not cause for celebration, but for lamenting,” says Ahlheim.  In the following blog post over at Pulpit & Pen, he takes a look at the CCR:

According to a recent story in Religion News Service, “This month marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the most important Catholic lay movement of the past century.”

That lay movement is called the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. And, just like its Pentecostalism forebear, the movement was birthed in the U.S.A.   Though adherents and proponents of it also claim a lineage to the days of the first-century church, charismania of any flavor is a recent phenomenon. Its lineage doesn’t nearly go back two millennia. Barely a century old, charismania was birthed in America in 1900 in Topeka, Kansas. (For more on it, you could read THIS.)

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Straight WNBA star: Lesbian culture broke my spirit

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Mark W. Sanchez of New York Post has the story:

Candice Wiggins was a college star at Stanford, the third pick of the 2008 WNBA draft and a 2011 champion. And at the mountaintop of her basketball career, her sexuality marred the moment.

There is a “very, very harmful” culture running throughout the WNBA, she says, which saw her get bullied during her eight-year career because she is heterosexual.

Wiggins, who last played in the league in 2015, said she retired prematurely to leave a league that she estimated — wildly — is 98 percent lesbian, and which is played in such isolation that it weighs on the people on the court.

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Tim Tebow Raises Concerns After Praising ‘Shack’ Movie Based on Universalist Novel Portraying God as Woman

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Christian News reports:

New York Mets outfielder and former NFL great Tim Tebow recently praised the upcoming film “The Shack,” a movie that is based on William P. Young’s bestselling novel of the same name, which some say contains universalistic doctrine and other unbiblical material.

“Got a sneak-peek of @TheShackMovie last night. Great reminder that God is with us in our highs & lows & LOVES us no matter what!” he posted on Twitter on Friday, generating 1,700 likes.

Reaction to his post was mixed, with some conveying agreement and others expressing concern out of their belief that the book and film are heretical.

“I was able to get a sneak peek, too! I loved the way it portrayed the Trinity’s relationship with each other and us!” one follower wrote.

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Oregon’s Euthanasia Bill Is Intentionally Ambiguous

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According to Ian Tuttle of National Review, Oregon’s Senate Bill 494 will make it easier for the state to end the lives of its most vulnerable citizens. “But it is worse,” Tuttle warns after describing what some elected officials have in store those who live in the blue state. “Having destroyed the professional oath to which doctors are bound, Oregon would destroy the basic ethic of care that is the mark of a humane society — the expectation that says to tend the sick, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless.”  He writes:

Savagery can be subtle.

Oregon, which in 1997 became the first state in the U.S. to legalize assisted suicide, is considering tweaking the laws surrounding advance directives, the legal documents by means of which a person can dictate ahead of time his desires for end-of-life care. The innocuous-seeming changes that Senate Bill 494 proposes would permit the state to starve certain patients to death.

Under current state law, “artificially administered nutrition and hydration” — intravenous feeding by tubes — does not include food administered normally: “by cup, hand, bottle, drinking straw or eating utensil.” The latter category, unlike the former, is considered part of the basic provision of care required for the sick, and required by law as long as the patient is mentally incompetent to say otherwise.

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Are the Dangers of Secondhand Smoke Now Unsettled Science?

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At one time doctors recommended low-fat diets to their patients until researchers discovered that diets high in carbohydrates dramatically increased the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Over at LifeZette, Dr. Brian C. Joondeph reports that even though it was considered settled science, it now appears that secondhand smoke does not cause heart attacks. He writes:

Smoking is hazardous to our health. It’s also the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, according to the CDC. And from a public health perspective, there is no doubt that cigarette smoking increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

What about secondhand smoke, however — is it similarly dangerous or just an annoyance? A recent article in Slate examined the association with some surprising results.

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New Apostolic Leader, Bill Johnson, Teams Up With Catholic Priests to ‘Proclaim the Gospel’

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Jeff Maples of Pulpit & Pen reminds us that “It’s easy for the undiscerning to get caught up in the ecumenism of today’s false church. Everyone wants to be united because disunity is uncomfortable. But the Scriptures clearly teach that it’s the absence of clear doctrine and truth that causes division in the body (Rom. 16:17).”

With this in mind, NAR pastor and self-proclaimed “apostle” Bill Johnson is urging those who pay attention to his egregious teaching to team up with the apostate Roman Catholic Church to share a gospel that saves no one. Maples has the story:

According to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website, the New Evangelization of Catholics:

calls each of us to deepen our faith, believe in the Gospel message and go forth to proclaim the Gospel. The focus of the New Evangelization calls all Catholics to be evangelized and then go forth to evangelize. In a special way, the New Evangelization is focused on ‘re-proposing’ the Gospel to those who have experienced a crisis of faith. Pope Benedict XVI called for the re-proposing of the Gospel “to those regions awaiting the first evangelization and to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization.”1 The New Evangelization invites each Catholic to renew their relationship with Jesus Christ and his Church.

This is an effort initiated by the Roman Pontiff to draw people back into the Roman Catholic system of works righteousness. The crux is that those Catholics who have left the church should be “re-evangelized” and brought back in.

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See our Research Paper on Roman Catholicism

 

The Boy Scouts Are Playing with Fire

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In a piece over at LifeZette, Dr. Meg Meeker shares her concern that girls who identify as boys and insist on becoming Boy Scouts may experience abuse, pregnancy and bullying.  She writes:

The Boy Scouts of America recently announced that they now welcome transgender kids into their ranks. Many people have heard about this decision — but there’s much more to know.

As well-intentioned as the organization may be, there are some serious problems for all of the scouts when it comes to this policy. Here’s why.

First, having a boy who feels he’s a girl or a girl who feels she’s a boy camping alongside other scouts creates tension for all of the children. Where should the transgender child sleep and change clothes? If he is a transgender boy — feeling like a boy but living in a body with breast and a vagina — and he asked to sleep alone, he will feel unaccepted and alone. But if he sleeps with the other boy scouts — as the transgender lobby demands — the risk for abuse, pregnancy, bullying or chiding is unacceptably high.

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