Friday, March 26, 2021

They're Coming for Oral Roberts University, and that Means They Are Coming for You, Too


Will Christian colleges survive? Will colleges and universities that hold to historical biblical definitions of gender and sexuality and marriage be forced into the academic wilderness? What about American collegiate sports? Will conservative Christian schools be ruled out of bounds?

These are real and urgent questions. Christians in the United States now face the reality that open hostility to our convictions is now leading to public calls for Christian colleges and schools to be marginalized and excluded from organizations such as the NCAA. . . .

Make no mistake, this may be about Oral Roberts University today, but the same will be said about you and your school, your church, and your organization tomorrow. You can count on it. All the scare words in this article, about bigotry and phobia and regressive sexist policies and fundamentalist morality and “wildly out of line with modern society and the basic values of human decency,” will soon be directed at any Christian institution that dares to defy the new moral order.

Read the entire article by Albert Mohler here.


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Thursday, March 25, 2021

Do Not Surrender, and Do Not Pivot!

 

This legislation would massively change our moral landscape and silence people of faith who do not agree with the secular values of the Left. But more than muzzling us, they want to force us to pivot—to change direction—instead of trusting God and standing on His Word. If we begin compromising on basic Biblical truths, it will lead to the end of Christianity in this country. We cannot surrender on our watch. We must not remain silent.

The Apostle Paul faced significant opposition and criticism while he ministered in the city of Corinth. The resistance could not stop him, however, and he continued sharing the Word of God. The Bible says many Corinthians heard the Gospel, believed, and were baptized. During that time, the Lord spoke to him, saying, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you” (Acts 18:9–10, ESV).

In difficult days, we must remember God promised He would always be with His people—those who believe in Him, according to the Scriptures, repent of their sins, receive Him into their lives, and follow Him in obedience. As our country continues to turn further away from God and the Bible, followers of Jesus must work to preserve His truth for future generations.

Read the entire article by Franklin Graham here.


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Sweeping Madness


The following is my newspaper column for the week of March 21, 2021 . . .

“Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22 HCSB).

Perhaps no statement better describes our elite culture.


Rev. Franklin Graham warns, “Madness is sweeping our country. I am referring to the ever-widening spread of what has been dubbed cancel culture, the suppression and intolerance of people whose viewpoints differ from what our godless society has deemed fitting and appropriate. Not surprisingly, the overwhelmingly left-wing cancel culture has aimed its most vicious verbal darts squarely at Christians who hold a Biblical worldview founded on the authority of God’s uncompromising Word.”

Here's one recent example. A private, Episcopal, New York K-12 school released a 12-page “inclusive language” guide, recommending students stop using such potentially-insensitive terms like “mom,” “dad,” “parents,” and “traditional family.” Teachers likewise are not to address students as “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen,” but instead “friends,” “readers,” or “mathematicians.”

Yet another case in the downward spiral of abandoning reason, logic, and truth for feelings, irrationality, and the intolerant “woke” Left.

General Michael Flynn writes in his recent article, 5 Lessons I Learned when the Deep State Came after Me and My Family, “There is a reason why the forces of darkness are trying so hard to eradicate the family as we know it. They see how powerful the bond of family can be, so they want to redefine it, water it down and replace it with a dependency on the state. . . . Do not think of the fight to protect our families as distinct from our fight to save America. The fight to protect the family is the cornerstone of our fight to save America.”

As I write, the House of Representatives recently passed, by a narrow margin, a dangerous piece of legislation called The Equality Act. The name deceives. For decades, the outer-fringe proponents of the sexual revolution said, “Please just accept non-traditional forms of sexual choices and we can all get along.” What we see today is the “get along” means submit to an alternative way of thinking. Don’t even dare admit you agree with the view of sexuality held by most of history and every major world religion prior to the last few decades.

Scott Powell shares, “The Equality Act would override our Constitution and tear down a number of norms that are essential for the majority of our society and its institutions to function reasonably well. Fundamental First Amendment rights, such as the rights of free speech and individual conscience that have been the cornerstone and bedrock of our country and its people, would be overridden and forced underground with the passage of the Equality Act”(The Equality Act: The Next Step for the Cancel Culture?).

Just a few of the implications of this act: the government could force their positions of sexual orientation and gender identity on schools, churches, and healthcare organizations, threatening freedom of speech in everyday communication. Schools could be forced to teach that sex is not established by biology but a person’s choice. People would be forced to pretend some biological males are actually females.

Religious organizations could be stripped of their right to hire people who share their faith and values. Colleges and universities could lose their accreditation – and students not allowed to receive federal grants and loans – to schools that do not submit to the new “collective identity.” Medical professionals and hospitals could be forced to deliver treatments with which they fundamentally disagree – and hold back wisdom and advice they actually do believe. And, anyone or group who does not submit could be punished by the new Leftist government. (Remember Star Trek’s the Borg? “Resistance is futile.”)

Our Founders built “the structures and functioning of government on natural law. Law used to be thought of as a civilizing force to protect society. Now with society becoming increasingly unmoored from its moral heritage, new laws have focused more on new-found minority rights and less on protective obligations to the majority. And it seems with this unmooring, the legislative and legal agenda has been more driven by emotional appeal and experimentation than in circumspection more common in prior times. . . . As a result, if laws like the Equality Act come into being, they create uncertainty and unrest by undercutting long-held fundamental norms. What should also be clear is that when law requires the transformation of the peoples’ moral norms, it brings on mass confusion and social psychological dysphoria, which weakens society and even erodes the underpinnings of civilized behavior. Cancel culture has already done enough harm.”


We live in dangerous days with alarming ideas and hazardous leaders.

We need Gideons and Deborahs to arise, people of truth, conviction, compassion, and courage. We need people like Winston Churchill, George Washington, William Wilberforce, Corrie ten Boom, Rosa Parks, and King David.

Again, Flynn writes, “America needs fighters today. We need those who will say as President Andrew Jackson did, ‘I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me.’

We need those who will stand against failed Marxist ideologies that have invaded the mainstream of our consciousness like a network of choking vines seeking to strangle the mighty American oak tree.”

 

Pictures used by permission from Pixabay.

 

Why Biden’s Blaming Trump for Border Crisis Has Zero Credibility

 "After just one month, Customs and Border Protection encounters ballooned to more than 100,000, the number of unaccompanied children has risen to 16,500 and continues to climb.

Three convention centers are opening to house those children because the Department of Health and Human Services cannot find enough sponsors for them. The secretary of homeland security has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist at the border and activated his own agency’s Volunteer Force to go to the border.

In perhaps the most desperate sign of the crisis, the Border Patrol in Texas is no longer issuing court dates to illegal aliens because it takes too long to complete the paperwork, and it simply needs to process individuals quicker. That’s a truly astonishing development.

This week, the president appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee this crisis. Her appointment and the attempt to blame former President Donald Trump are tacit admissions that they have a crisis on their hands, but Americans know the blame lies squarely at Biden’s feet."

Read the entire article by Chad Wolf here at The Daily Signal.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.

Get the Facts

 

"Get the facts at any price, and hold on tightly to all the good sense you can get" (Proverbs 23:23 TLB).

We live in a day characterized by much disinformation. In recent years, many Americans realized we cannot take much of the mainstream media at face value. Wise citizens are learning to do their own research, network with other citizens, and find facts that traditional sources of information may not reveal.

Want to hear some facts about the COVID-19 virus and related machinations of powerful people that the mainstream media won't report?

Listen to Thrive Time media's Clay Clark here. Watch out - he shares lots of startling pieces of information and then starts sharing from the book of Ephesians and Revelation as they relate to current events.

Watch the interview with Clay here.

Don't be deceived. Liberty is at stake.

It's not time for skinny jeans and fog machines Christianity. It's time for some Daniels, Esthers, Gideons, and Rahabs to arise.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.


Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Coaching Cinderella: Meet Oral Roberts’s Paul Mills

 

This year’s favorite March Madness underdog is a Christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma, named for Pentecostal evangelist Oral Roberts. But while Roberts preached prosperity theology, the coach leading his school’s winning basketball team does not.

Head coach Paul Mills tweets Spurgeon quotes, has a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and says that hearing the Bible misused—especially in sports, where winning is often connected to God’s blessings—makes him “go bonkers.”

TGC asked him about Big God theology, growing up poor, why he took a job at Baylor months after one player murdered another, and more.

Read the entire article by Sarah Zylstra at The Gospel Coalition here.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.


Monday, March 22, 2021

The American People vs. The Democratic Machine

 

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Congressional Democrats in Arizona (and other politically mixed states) are going to have to make a choice about whether they will serve the people they represent – or the Democratic Machine that’s running Washington.


Specifically, I was pointing out provisions in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s H.R. 1 which are deeply opposed by most Arizonans. The bill is largely geared toward keeping Democratic politicians in power (and their allies well paid) in perpetuity – despite the will of the American people.

This got me thinking more deeply about how the American people as a whole feel about the broader agenda of the Democratic Machine – which is largely being hidden behind slickly named legislation and a complicit national news media that benefits more from helping the machine than informing the American people.

Read the entire article here by Newt Gingrich.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.


Gen. Flynn: 5 Lessons I Learned When the Deep State Came After Me and My Family


You do not have to watch the news for long to see that America is rapidly changing. The downward slide can be found not only in our leadership but also in the shifting definitions of right and wrong blindly accepted by many Americans today.

Our leaders would have us believe that these changing values are inevitable and that they are good. That is why they are called “progressive.”

Yet to those of us who still believe in the immortal truths upon which America was founded, their so-called “progress” is alarming, to say the least.

Read the entire article by Gen. Flynn here at The Western Journal.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.


Saturday, March 20, 2021

A SIMPLE WAY TO PRAY FOR PASTORS BEFORE WORSHIP THIS WEEKEND

 

Chuck Lawless offers 5 ways to pray for your pastors this weekend:


One of the most important things we can do for our pastors is pray for them, especially as they prepare to proclaim the Word. Use these Bible texts to pray today for pastors—particularly, for your shepherd—in preparation for worship this weekend:

1. Pray they will stand before God’s people with a pure heart.

  • 2 Corinthians 1:12  For this is our confidence: The testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with God-given sincerity and purity, not by fleshly wisdom but by God’s grace.

2. Pray they will speak the gospel boldly.

  • Ephesians 6:20b  Pray that I might be bold enough in Him to speak as I should.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.


Friday, March 19, 2021

The Equality Act: The Next Step for the Cancel Culture?

 

"The Equality Act would override our Constitution and tear down a number of norms that are essential for the majority of our society and its institutions to function reasonably well. Fundamental First Amendment rights, such as the rights of free speech and individual conscience that have been the cornerstone and bedrock of our country and its people, would be overridden and forced underground with the passage of the Equality Act.

As it is currently written, the Equality Act could designate any place that the public gathers, such as schools, healthcare organizations, private establishments and perhaps even churches as “public accommodations.”

Any such institution that is a public accommodation could be forced to accept the government’s positions and mandates about sexual orientation and gender identity. This would be highly invasive and wide-ranging, nullifying people’s First Amendment rights and threatening every day speech and parental rights, and even resulting in people being fined or losing their jobs for using the wrong name or pronoun."

Read the entire article by Scott Powell here at The Epoch Times.


Picture used by permission from Pixabay.