Video Clip Shows IRGC Support For Terror Against America

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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What is spiritual adultery?

4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4 (NASB) 

Worship is that vital part of the relationship between God and His people that we see so often corrupted and wrongly focused in our time to the point that the end result is that even if people believe they are “worshiping” God they are actually guilty of spiritual adultery. The division line between what true worship is, that which glorifies and pleases God, and that which is no more than spiritual adultery is actually very easily drawn. Those on the side that is “friends of the world” and are, therefore, making themselves enemies of God, are part of “systems” whose values, loves, and deeds are wholly at odds with what pleases God (1 John 2:15-17). Carefully read James 4:4 (above). Those whom James was accusing were betraying Christ and following after the world by embracing the worldly way of treating people because they were being motivated by the things of this world in this rather than the mandates of Christ. One way that “churches” do this in our day is to seek to meet people’s felt needs first rather than preaching the truth of the Gospel. In these churches, the focus becomes all about the people in “worship” instead of about God and His glory. How can that be called “worship?” View article →

Tim Keller Stepping Down as Redeemer Senior Pastor

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

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

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

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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For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong

17 For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. 18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him. 1 Peter 3:17-22 (NASB) 

The Lord Jesus Christ suffered unjustly on behalf of those He came to save because it was God’s will. He perfectly accomplished God’s purposes in this. Even though those in “emergent christianity” are attempting to hijack our Lord’s Crucifixion for their own purposes, let us never forget that His violent, physical execution did terminate His earthly life when He was “put to death in the flesh”, nevertheless, He was “made alive in the spirit” on the third day. This is not referring to the Holy Spirit, but to Jesus’ true inner life, His own spirit, which is contrasted with His humanness, His flesh, which was crucified and lay dead for three days in the tomb. His deity, His Spirit, remained alive, literally “in spirit” (Luke 23:46). In light of our Lord’s suffering for righteousness, Christians should have a “Christian” perspective on suffering in the flesh as well. View article →

Discernment and slander

8 But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. 11 But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. Matthew 23:8-12 (NASB) 

This discernment ministry stuff is not for everyone. I often wonder if I am cut out for it at all. I do not like conflict. On the other hand, God gifted me with the makeup that loves the truth and seeks justice because it is His truth and I am compelled, quite often, to speak out when false prophets besmirch His truth and the Gospel is treated as optional by certain “evangelicals.” However, there is a fine line between exposing that which is false and slander. That fine line has to do with intent and evidence. View article →

The Left vs. Reality

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.

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

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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Christ’s sacrifice and the New Covenant

10 For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” 11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “ The righteous man shall live by faith.” Galatians 3:10-11 (NASB) 

As has been clearly shown, the easy-believism “gospel” as well as any version of it that either calls for more works (i.e. piety) on the part of the believer over and above believing the Gospel and receiving Christ as Lord and Saviour or suggests that the saving work of Christ on the Cross was not “sufficient enough” to cover the sins of the those He came to save, therefore they must somehow achieve perfection on their own or enter into some form of purgatory after death to make up for that, are perversions of what is clearly taught in God’s Word. They are based on the presupposition that God has created salvation in a man-centered, law-based, works-righteousness oriented way that is found nowhere in Sacred Scripture. The correct presupposition, being Biblically based, we will explore in this post and will focus primarily on Hebrews 10:1-18.  View article →

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

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’

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

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

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

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

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

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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Does God have a purpose in divisions and factions in the Church?

18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. 1 John 2:18-19 (NASB) 

19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21 (NASB) 

Only those Christians who put their head in the sand, that is, those who are deliberately ignorant would say that the visible church is not under extreme attack from charlatans, out-right heretics, false-teachers, and compromisers.  That last being the most dangerous for they look so good and orthodox, have a great following, and yet they do and say some of the strangest things at times so that even their supporters have a hard time explaining them, which causes great confusion. This ministry has mostly been concerned with three major heresies since its inception. The first being the seeker-sensitive paradigm which has caused huge numbers of local churches to fall apart and be destroyed as deceived pastor after deceived pastor has fallen for the Purpose Driven Church lies and attempted to implement that model and ended up with simply a store front church full of goats. The second heresy I have spent much time on is the Emergent Church or as some call it now, Emergence Christianity. This takes many forms and I often finds elements of it in the third heresy I have spent much time on, which is a strange combination of Reformed doctrine, but includes the false doctrines found in Charismatic teachings and as well as Roman Catholicism and even Gnosticism. I don’t have a concrete name for it so I simple call it NAR/New Calvinism/Acts 29. There are 3 commonalities found in all three of these heresies, though not to the same degree.

1) Their Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus. 2) Absolute Truth is found outside the Bible. 3) Doubt is the marker of true faith not assurance. View article →

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

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

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

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.

Do not lose heart

11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. 13 Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. Ephesians 3:11-13 (NASB) 

Let us look at an important word from v13 which many Bible translations render as ‘faint,’ ‘discouraged, ‘ or ‘lose heart.’ Here is v13 from the NA28 Greek text.

13 διὸ αἰτοῦμαι μὴ ἐγκακεῖν ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσίν μου ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν, ἥτις ἐστὶν δόξα ὑμῶν. Ephesians 3:13 (NA28) View article →

Oregon’s Euthanasia Bill Is Intentionally Ambiguous

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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