The State Department reports that Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world. And it is also one of the hottest recruiting and funding countries for Islamic terror. But even though it may be a hotbed for terror, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone who lives there supports it.

According to Open Doors USA, it is both illegal to convert to Christianity and preach in Iran. Oftentimes Christian pastors will be arrested and given long prison sentences for “crimes against the national security.”

If you open up your doors to a house church in Iran, then your home could be frequently raided and monitored. And if you do happen to go to prison, the prison situation there is appalling.

Despite these issues, Christianity Today reports the Iranian church has grown to around 1 million members. This is according to a survey by GAMAAN, a research group based out of the Netherlands. The survey asked 50,000 Iranians what their belief was. 90% of those surveyed live in Iran.

According to the survey, 1.5% of Iranians are Christians. Extrapolating that out yields a minimum of 750,000 Iranian Christians, but there are also 117,500 Armenian and Assyrian Christians living in the country, putting the actual baseline closer to 867,500 Christians at minimum.

However, Christianity Today reports the survey itself states there are “without doubt in the…

Faithful America, a left-leaning Christian activist group, is urging Samaritan’s Purse to remove Evangelist Franklin Graham as its President and CEO after he prayed at the 2020 Republican National Convention last week.

Last Friday, the group made a petition entitled: “Tell Samaritan’s Purse: Franklin Graham’s Hateful, Pro-Trump Politics Are Ruining Your Credibility.”

In the petition, the group asserted that if the directors of Samaritan’s Purse “truly believe in their ‘purpose of sharing God’s love,’” then they would oust Graham.

“The final night of the 2020 Republican convention began with a partisan appearance from notoriously homophobic preacher Franklin Graham, who prayed, ‘I thank you tonight for our president, Donald J. Trump … in the mighty name of your Son,’” the petition stated.

“Standing behind a Trump-Pence campaign sign, Graham also used Jesus’s name to give thanks for ‘the many blessings we have received these past four years.’ We would hardly consider family separation, the deadly federal COVID-19 response, rampant corruption and authoritarianism, or ongoing systemic racism to be ‘blessings,’” the group asserted.

“While Faithful America commends Samaritan’s Purse for their ‘important work for the sick and poor,’ Graham’s ‘hateful politics’ and support of President Trump is damaging the credibility of the…

JUBA, South Sudan, September 3, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Fears that Christianity would again be omitted as a course subject in schools in Sudan were confirmed in a recent government directive, sources said.

While Islam has long been taught in schools, the head of the body responsible for curricula in Sudan sent a letter to director generals of education throughout the country on Aug. 23 omitting Christian education as a subject for primary schools, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Morning Star News.

“All the subjects not mentioned [in this letter] are to be considered omitted and will not be taught in schools,” Omer Ahmed al-Garay, director general of the National Centre for Curriculum and Educational Research (NCCER), wrote in the letter.

The Rev. Yahia Abdelrahim Nalu of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) confirmed that Christian education was again omitted from the curriculum of the new transitional government that took office following the deposing of President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

“Christian education has indeed been removed from the curriculum, and it has not been there since the independence,” Pastor Nalu told Morning Star News.

Since Sudan’s independence from the British in 1956, there have been no Christian teachers appointed by the government to teach Christianity in public schools. While the Aug. 23 directive mentions only…

Modern secular culture is on a march to evangelize Christians and Sunday School, church services and youth groups are no longer enough to inoculate Christian children from its new gospel without God, warns founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Tim Keller.

In a Q Session discussion with moderator and Q Ideas founder Gabe Lyons Wednesday, Keller warned that secular culture in America is now at a point where “the only sin is to tell people that they sin,” and traditional Protestant catechism needs to better prepare Christian children to thrive in a world where they are constantly bombarded with the new secular gospel on social media.

“Roughly speaking, every other culture always taught that the truth is something outside me, it could be family, God, dying for my country; and to be a person of honor and worth, authenticity, you had to find that truth and align your feelings with the truth. Now the understanding is, truth is inside you. You go inside to find the great depths and then you come out and you tell everybody else that you have to now accommodate me,” said Keller.

“What that means…

In a candid interview on Nick Cannon’s Cannon’s Class podcast, Kanye West continued to attack the abortion giant for its mass killings of black infants each year.

“In 50 years, there’s been 22 million — over 22,500,000 — black people aborted strategically and on purpose. Planned Parenthood was set up and placed in minority communities to kill black people,” West said, according to the Daily Wire.

West then mentioned several thoughts on Planned Parenthood’s, seemingly targeted, negative impact on the Black community.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abortion kills more black people than HIV, homicide, diabetes, accidents, cancer, and heart disease — watch this one — combined,” West argued. “Three thousand shootings in Chicago a year, 700 murders, you’ve got to put that with heart disease, you’ve got to put that with HIV, you’ve got to put that with diabetes, you’ve got to put that with just accidents, and put that with cancer, and it doesn’t add up to specifically abortions.

“If you think about that number, 1,000 black babies are aborted each day,” he continued.

In a Forbes interview in July, West said that Planned Parenthood clinics were placed in cities by “white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”

“I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the Bible,” he asserted.

During a rally…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Standing beside a waving Lebanese flag, Pope Francis paid homage to the troubled population of Beirut on Wednesday (Sept. 2) and implored its residents to “take courage” as they begin the reconstruction of their city.

“I encourage all Lebanese to continue hoping and finding the strength and energy that are necessary to restart,” Francis said in the courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, during his first public audience since the beginning of the pandemic in Italy.

“I ask politicians and religious leaders to commit with sincerity and transparency to the reconstruction work, setting aside partial interests and looking at the common good and future of the nation,” he added.

On Aug. 4 a powerful explosion in Beirut destroyed the city’s port and killed more than 100 people, leaving many more injured. The blast wreaked havoc on the tenuous fabric of the Lebanese society, allowing sectarian interests to resurface in a country marred by civil unrest and a financial crisis.

This is the pope’s second appeal for the struggling Middle Eastern nation since the explosion. During his Angelus prayer Aug. 9, Francis asked that Lebanese people and the entire international community work together “for the common good of this beloved country.”

A priest from the Lebanese congregation of Maronite missionaries, the Rev. Georges Breidi, who studies at the Pontifical…

Christian author and conservative radio personality Eric Metaxas took to social media this week to say that he was “menaced” by a protestor after the Republican National Convention, according to The Christian Post.

A video went viral over the weekend showing a rioter riding his bicycle close to Metaxas and screaming at him and other supporters of the president. Metaxas is then seen lunging toward the man on the bike and taking a swing at the back of his head.

The man jumped off of his bike and shouted, “You just attacked me, bro! That’s a felony!” The rioter ran after him and Metaxas jogged backwards while the rioter continued his rant, “F—- you, you Republican piece of s—-“, he said, then faced an elderly man and yelled, “What are you going to do? You ain’t s—-, you old a— man.”

Secret Service officers dragged the man away before the conflict could continue to escalate.

The man posted the video to his Instagram account and told Religion News Service, “He attacked me. I wasn’t threatening or intimidating. I was on a rented bicycle! He clearly punched me from behind…I don’t want the dude to get charged. I just want awareness that Republicans are attacking people.”

However, Metaxas contends that the man antagonized him several times and was driving perilously close to him, his wife, and pastor Harry Jackson.

“For context, just so you…

California lawmakers recently passed a new law that will lighten sentences for transgender people and other members of the LGBT community who have “consensual” sexual relations with minors within ten years of their age.

The bill passed by sweeping margins in both the California House and Senate and is now off to California’s Governor Gavin Newsom for a signature, Faithwire reports.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, The bill makes being registered as a sex offender for engaging in voluntary sex with minors between the ages of 14 and 17, optional, depending instead on the discretion of the judge, whereas before it was mandatory.

Existing California laws regarding pedophilia also assert that anal or oral sex with a voluntary minor is not necessarily grounds for being registered as a sex offender.

The rationale came from a California Supreme Court decision which said it would be “stigmatizing” for a father to do his job or support his child if he was labeled a sex offender for having anal or oral sex with minors.

California Senator Scott Wiener also argued that the legislation “eliminates discrimination against LGBTQ youth in our criminal justice system.”

According to current law, since anal or oral sex cannot lead to pregnancy, it is different from vaginal sex and therefore, offenses of either of those natures are considered “optional” information…