The Daily Signal reports:
On Wednesday night, 43 Republican members of Congress joined the Democrats to vote for President Barack Obama’s transgender agenda.
Whereas last week Congress voted to reject this proposal—known as the Maloney amendment—last night they voted to ratify Obama’s 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from what it describes as “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their private employment policies.
Christian News Network reports:
Hipster Hillsong NYC leader Carl Lentz has drawn concerns over the past week after he posted a photograph on social media announcing his upcoming appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s “Super Soul Sunday” television broadcast.
“I really enjoyed my time with @oprah filming for her Super Soul Sunday show,” he wrote on May 18. “She is truly a special woman and a culture changer. To come from absolute poverty in Mississippi and reach the point where she became the first African American multi-billionaire takes a passion and drive that is exceptional and tireless.”
He continued to praise the talk show host, and said that others should emulate Oprah’s practice of thanking Jesus with each new day.
News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Acts 11:22-24
The gospel had broken through the Jewish barriers that had held it in and was now reaching out to the Gentiles. The result of this first preaching was that many Gentile converts came to Christ. This news was a bit disconcerting to the disciples at Jerusalem. They did not know what to do about this movement of the Holy Spirit. Since they were themselves Jews, raised in the tradition that they were God’s chosen people, you can imagine what happened. They never thought that God would move to reach the Gentile world and so they hardly knew what to make of it. When word came to them that Gentiles were becoming converts of Jesus Christ, they were utterly astounded. Were these real Christians?
According to Charisma News, Jan Crouch, co-founder of the haven of heretics known as Trinity Broadcasting Network, has had a stroke. Jennifer Leclaire reports:
TBN co-founder Jan Crouch has been hospitalized after a massive stroke. The TBN family is asking for miracle healing prayers for the 78-year-old Christian media pioneer.
Crouch and her husband, the late Paul Crouch, founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network in 1973. She produced multiple television programs including Praise The Lord, The Glory of America and Say Yes. Paul Crouch passed away in 2013.
Crouch appeared to be in good health. Earlier this month, she was seen on the back of a motorcycle with pastor Phil Aguilar at a Kenneth Copeland motorcycle rally.
Berean Research wrote a follow-up to a piece over at Churchwatch Central entitled Family Friendly Hillsong Includes the Dancing Naked Cowboy? If you missed it, Hillsong Church has gone off the rails, as you will see in this blog post which includes a video of Hillsong’s partially clad youth pastor, a.k.a the “naked cowboy,” parading around on stage singing Frank Sinatra’s hit song New York, New York…..while throwing kisses to the audience. This is not satire, brethren. Here’s the story:
I usually don’t expect to see a near-naked cowboy gyrating from the stage of a Christian women’s conference. Nor would I see and hear thousands of Christian females applauding and squealing in delight, and spurring on the performance. Indeed if I were of the world, I’d expect these sights and sounds to come from a giant bachelorette party at a strip club.
I am not of the world. I like my women’s conferences to be edifying to me and glorifying to God. What I’m about to share from Hillsong New York’s women’s conference is neither of those things:
Asleep No More has a piece on supposed visitations to heaven that includes a short must watch video. A ton of money has been made off heavenly tourism by those who’ve returned to tell the tall tale; likewise by “Christian” publishers, book sellers and of course Hollywood. Needless to say, spiritual discernment among Christians is sorely lacking.
Once upon a time Mike Bickle, the founder of IHOP and self appointed Apostle in the NAR, went to Heaven and spoke with God, and Jesus, and Paul. I’m just wondering if he bumped into Rick Joyner who also claims to have conferred face to face with my Lord and Savior. Todd Bentley goes one better – he visited heaven with Bob Jones, but he also tells us that God visits him. Maybe it’s getting too crowded up there for God, what with all those visitors, so He has to come down here to meet a few self appointed apostles
Should Christians stand and fight for religious liberty? Bud Ahlheim of Pulpit & Pen says yes, but “We should be cautious about how we align with this god of religious liberty because it is nothing less than the current ‘spirit of the world,’ the one beckoning for tolerance and co-existence.” He writes:
Southern Baptists, through their Ethics And Religious Liberty Commission and their International Mission Board, have joined hands with Muslims and others to help build a mosque.
But they have to. It’s inevitable when you hold closely to the tenets of American Christianity.
The SBC’s ERLC and IMB have joined in with the likes of the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom, the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, the Sikh Coalition, and other unlikely allies to support building a mosque. According to The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty (An organization in which Russell Moore is on the Board of Directors) over 20 “interfaith” groups have united to push forward the agenda of the god of religious liberty in support of the mosque.
Holly Pivec of Spirit of Error addresses Arch Heretic Bill Johnson’s denial that he’s a part of the New Apostolic Reformation, which he clearly is as Holly reveals in her blog post:
Following Christianity Today’s recent cover story on Bethel Church in Redding, California, I’ve been contacted by people wondering about Bill Johnson’s statements made in that article distancing himself from the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The two specific statements he made are that his church does not have any official ties to theNAR and that he’s “not completely clear on what it is.”
Despite Johnson’s distancing himself from the NAR, he very clearly is part of it. Let’s look at his two claims.
All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Acts 10:43
Peter says, You may not appreciate this fully, but everything that Jesus did was predicted by the prophets. Long before he ever came, what he would be like and what he would do was written down. Every prophet bore witness to this one fact: The only way you could ever find forgiveness of sins is by believing in him. That is the great, final, glorious thrust of the gospel. The good news is that men have been given a way to be forgiven of their sins.
That is the basic need of every human heart. Each of us suffers from the terrible consciousness of guilt. We are guilty people; and we know it. That is what makes us so restless. That is why often we cannot stand to be alone with ourselves, because we are afraid of that sense of guilt which oppresses us. So the prime need of our lives is to be forgiven, to have nothing in the past to worry about, to have nothing that makes us uncertain of the future and, especially, nothing which makes us unwilling to appear before God. Through Jesus Christ sins are forgiven.
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, a Democrat, supports same-sex “marriage,” says he believes that abortion should be legal until birth, and self-identifies as a socialist. So it is disappointing to learn that RPC’s ministry director at the West Side campus donated a total of $666 to this man’s campaign. Heather Clark of Christian News Network has the story:
In the midst of a famine in the visible American church for biblical instruction on selecting leaders in civil government, public records show that a ministry leader at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, led by popular megachurch pastor and author Tim Keller, has been a consistent donor to the Bernie Sanders campaign.
The Federal Elections Commission website, which records the political donations of Americans under the names of their employers, shows that Tiffany Koch, the ministry director at the West Side campus of Redeemer Presbyterian Church made 76 donations to Sanders since October.
The professor wrote in a press statement, “Humanity is owed a serious investigation of how we have gone so far with the decarbonization project without a serious challenge in terms of engineering reality.” Andrew Follett of Daily Caller has the story:
Cambridge University electrical engineering professor Dr. M.J. Kelly concluded in a peer-reviewed journal article that attempts to fight global warming with green energy will impoverish the world.
The Monday article found reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions enough to actually slow global warming in a measurable way simply isn’t possible without significantly reducing standards of living by plunging most of the world into poverty, destitution and starvation.
Saving the elephant has become the latest fad in Hollywood. According to a piece in the New York Times:
The Actress Elizabeth Hurley traveled to Nairobi from London a few weeks ago to witness the Kenyan government burn 105 tons of poached ivory, saying “she felt sick to watch the great preys.”
Moreover,
Susan Sarandon raised thousands for an elephant benefit in London last year. “The crisis facing elephants is particularly tragic,” she said recently.
That elephants are being killed by poachers is indeed a tragedy. But an even greater tragedy is that the lives of over 57 million womb babies have been legally snuffed out at the hands of an abortionist since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Yet Hollywood’s elite has shown no interest in saving innocent human beings.
Berean Research reveals the hard truth about what can happen during an abortion procedure: some babies do live:
Abortion does one thing: End the life of a human being. A baby that was alive for weeks and months, suddenly and violently murdered. For abortionists, it’s a clump of tissue that to them was already dead. But sometimes their own eyes are yanked open by the brutal reality of what they are doing.
Newly released 911 calls
highlight the devastating reality of abortion: Babies are being slaughtered, and the killers are neutralizing the language to make this evil practice more palatable.
An abortion clinic worker in February had just sucked a little 21-week-old baby out of his mother, and was shocked to find the baby gasping for breath. That’s not how she reported it. She used different words. Clinical, neutral words. The television station reporting it did likewise:
Churchwatch Central reports the latest Hillsong debauchery. And “If you have a problem with this, according to Hillsong, you’re going to Hell.”
Did you know that Hillsong is not only planning to release their own Hillsong movie, they are also planning to produce a new Hillsong Channel?
Honestly, is this the best face Christianity has to offer to the world? Is their message what we want to promote?
After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Acts 9:23-25
What humiliation! Here Paul was, equipped to win the day for Jesus Christ. He was going to show the world how much he could do for this new Master that he had found. But instead he finds himself humiliated, cast off, rejected, repudiated. His own friends finally have to take him at night and let him down over a wall. He walks away into the darkness in utter, abject failure and defeat.
The amazing thing is that many years later, as he is writing to the Corinthians and looking back over his life, he recounts this episode. He says, You ask me to boast about the most important event in my life? The greatest event in my life was when they took me at night and let me down over the wall of Damascus in a basket. That was the most meaningful experience I have ever had since that day when I met Christ…
(2 Corinthians 11:32-33).
According to ABC News:
Federal health officials today said they believe thousands of people may have contracted the Zika virus before returning to the U.S. and they remain concerned that the virus might commence ongoing transmission in the U.S.
Speaking at a panel at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the Zika virus remains “pretty concerning” for experts as they learn how it affects pregnant women.
“The reality is one bite, and if you’re pregnant, your baby might be harmed,” Schuchat said at the panel today. “That’s a phenomenal problem.”
Jeff Maples of Pulpit & Pen has the story:
Hillsong, the worldwide leader in Jesus-themed music, has recently taken their approach to human sexuality to a new level. Adding to their general theme of godlessness in entertainment, including a recent risque Christmas performance that called into question their respect for women, and human beings in general, now they’re promoting the well-known sex pervert, Austin Powers, at–get this–a women’s conference.
Fox News reports:
Police in riot gear and mounted patrol units faced off against a violent crowd of protesters outside a Donald Trump campaign event in Albuquerque Tuesday night.
Hours after Trump and some 4,000 of his supporters left the Albuquerque Convention Center, approximately 100 demonstrators remained in downtown. Smoke grenades were used in an effort to disperse the crowd, while protesters threw rocks, plastic bottles, burning T-shirts and other items at officers.
The Daily Signal reports:
The censorship of free speech on a college campus has caused a legal fight to brew in California
A lawsuit filed Thursday against numerous staff at California State University-Los Angeles claims that the university discriminated against free speech by trying to silence Ben Shapiro, 32, a prominent conservative voice who has spoken on college campuses around the country.
“Free speech on college campuses, particularly publicly-sponsored campuses, it’s not merely a necessity, it’s a right,” Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, said at a press conference Thursday in Los Angeles. “That right is being quashed all across the country by administrators who are significantly more intent on indoctrinating students and eliminating dissent than giving students the opportunity to hear different ideas and reach their own conclusions about those ideas. It’s time for that to stop.”
CNSNews reports:
The Obama administration has admitted 499 Syrian refugees so far this month, with no Christians among them.
Of the 499 admitted in May, 495 are Sunni Muslims and the remaining four are described simply as “Moslem” in State Department Refugee Processing Center data.
Since FY2016 began on October 1, a total of 2,235 Syrian refugees have been resettled in the United States. Of them, 10 (0.44 percent) are Christians: three Catholics, two Orthodox, one Greek Orthodox and four refugees identified simply as “Christian.”
According to Emily McFarlan Miller of Religion News Service, neither side got what they wanted out of the General Conference:
Amid protest, song and fears of a denominational breakup, United Methodists at their quadrennial General Conference decided yet again not to decide anything regarding LGBT rights.
But in a groundbreaking move, the delegates from the U.S. and abroad voted 428-405 on Wednesday (May 18) to allow the church’s Council of Bishops to appoint a commission to discuss whether to accept same-sex marriage or ordain LGBT clergy.
The bishops said they want the commission to “develop a complete examination and possible revision of every paragraph in our Book of Discipline regarding human sexuality.”
Here we have yet another example of a professing Christian who claims that God speaks directly to her in her mind instead of through the Bible. According to Gabriel Hughes, the voice and creator of the video series When We Understand the Text, Anna McCarthy “seldom references his words in the Scriptures, but she will quote what she feels like he’s saying in her mind.” Moreover, McCarthy “Does not attempt to teach you anything about what Jesus said, and therefore can’t teach you anything about what it means to follow him.”
Pastor Hughes offers plenty of reasons to flee from this wolf.
From Berean Research:
Church Watch Central has an exposé on Jesus Camp. In it, CWC demonstrates the unconscionable way children are indoctrinated into the New Apostolic Reformation cult by leaders such as “Apostle” Becky Fischer. CWC posted a video showing children being brainwashed by this woman that has been blocked. So Berean Research replaced it with two short Youtube videos that demonstrate the excesses.
