As churches across the country change their plans for Easter Sunday in response to coronavirus, one congregation in Texas will be taking their Easter Egg hunt to the digital world.

Tate Springs Baptist Church of Arlington, Texas, will hold an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt on a customized Minecraft game on Easter Sunday, which falls on April 12.

Jared Wellman, lead pastor of Tate Springs, told The Christian Post that the digital Easter egg hunt event came as a way to better engage younger children with the church’s online services.

“I noticed that as we’ve moved to online streaming services that the content is not necessarily engaging for younger kids,” explained Wellman. “I thought, ‘We need to engage kids somehow, especially on Easter.’ Of course that’s difficult without the traditional egg hunt, which we were going to offer.”

Wellman said he talked with Tate Springs’ Family Pastor Curtis James about the issue and he with his ministry team responded with the Minecraft egg hunt.

“Our ultimate goal in all we do is to show and share the message of Jesus,” said Wellman. “As a church, holding a virtual egg hunt for the purpose of holding a virtual egg hunt would be no different than just asking kids to play a video game, and that’s not why we exist as a church.”

“So we created a sign-up form for the event to gather email addresses so that we can do our best to follow up with participants electronically to make sure they get access not only to the private server on Easter, but to the explicit message of the resurrection of Jesus.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is calling for a national day of prayer and fasting this Sunday to “free Brazil from this evil” coronavirus pandemic.

Following criticism over his management of the increasing number of coronavirus-related deaths, Bolsonaro met with Pentecostal evangelical pastors, Reuters reports.

“With the pastors and religious leaders we will call for a day of fasting by Brazilians so that Brazil can free itself from this evil as soon as possible,” he said to the radio station, Jovem Pan.

CBN News previously reported that Bolsonaro confirmed his faith in Jesus while attending the Christian worship and missions event called “The Send” back in February.

As of Friday, Brazil’s COVID-19 cases rose to 9,056, while deaths from the virus increased from 299 to 359. 

Last month, Bolsonaro’s communications director tested positive for the virus, just days after traveling with Bolsonaro to a meeting with President Trump in Florida.

Brazilian Congressman Marco Feliciano, who is also an evangelical pastor, said, “Brazil is in a serious crisis. The forces of evil are rising against a God-fearing Christian president and family defender. Sunday will be a day of fasting.”

One pastor tweeted support, saying, “President Bolsonaro called the Brazilians to a national fast and prayer of repentance on April 5th.”

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President Bolsonaro called the Brazilians to a national fast and prayer of repentance on April 5th#COVID19 #Brazil #nationalfasting pic.twitter.com/xcrIvbeFMg

— Daniel Lucena (@DanielL17703012) April 3, 2020

Assemblies of God Pastor Silas Malafaia suggested that the national day of prayer begins at midnight on Saturday and lasts until midday Sunday.

Bolsonaro’s motto is: “Brazil above everything, God above all.” He believes it is a powerful statement about the importance of the higher truth beyond politics.

Eu creio!!
I believe!
God Save Brazil and the world.

— Luciane Valeria#Aco(@lucianevaleria) April 3, 2020

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PARIS (AP) – A man wielding a knife attacked residents of a French town while they ventured out to shop amid a coronavirus lockdown Saturday, killing two people and wounding eight others, authorities said.

Police later arrested the assailant nearby, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said, thanking shopkeepers for their help. Castaner said authorities were studying whether to qualify the attack in the town of Romans-sur-Isere as an act of terrorism.

While more investigating is needed, “it seems that all the risks have been neutralized” because of a quick police intervention, Castaner told reporters at the scene south of the city of Lyon.

Two people were killed and eight injured, he said. French media reported that three were in critical condition.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press the attack took place at 11 a.m. on a commercial street. 

Prosecutors did not identify the suspect. They said he had no identifying documents but claimed to be Sudanese and to have been born in 1987. 

The prosecutor’s office did not confirm reports that the man had shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is great) as he carried out the attack.

The office said it was evaluating whether the attack was motivated by terrorism, but that it has not launched any formal proceedings to treat it as such.

Some 100 police and 45 firefighters were involved in the operation and securing the area, Castaner said.

Like the rest of France, the town’s residents are on coronavirus-linked lockdown. The victims were carrying out their weekend food shopping on the street that has bakeries and grocers, the office said. Two-meter distancing is being encouraged as in the rest of the country.

Media reported that the knifeman first attacked a Romanian resident who had just left his home for his daily walk – slitting his throat in front of his girlfriend and son. 

Following that, they reported, the assailant entered a tobacco shop, stabbed the tobacconist and two customers, and then went into the local butcher’s shop. He grabbed another knife and attacked a client with the blunt end before entering a supermarket. 

Some shoppers took refuge in a nearby bakery.

There have been a number of knife attacks in France in recent months. In January, French police shot and injured a man in Metz who was waving a knife and shouting “Allahu akbar.”

Two days earlier, another man was shot dead by police after he stabbed one person fatally and wounded two others in a Paris suburb.

It is unclear whether the suspect in Saturday’s attack had psychological problems or any links to extremism. Analysts say some extremist groups see the upheaval from the virus pandemic as an opportunity to win over more supporters.

Copyright 2020. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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Theologian John Piper has shared what he believes children should understand about God and the novel coronavirus and identified how parents can address difficult questions pertaining to the outbreak. 

In a recent episode of his “Ask Pastor John” podcast, the 74-year-old pastor and grandfather-of-14 first stressed that “God is stronger than the coronavirus,” citing Matthew 4:24: “They brought [Jesus] all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains . . . and he healed them.”

“Jesus is more powerful than diseases — every one of them,” he said. “In fact, over and over again, the Bible tells us that God commands the wind, rain, snow, lightning, plants, grass, grasshoppers, flies, frogs, gnats, worms, whales, birds, and everything else. He commands them where to go, what to do, and they do what He says. They have to; He’s God.”

Piper then addressed the question, “Why is there a coronavirus, then? Why don’t you, God, Jesus, please take it away, since you could?”

While God could take away the coronavirus “by snapping His finger,” He doesn’t do so because “He has a wise purpose for it,” the pastor explained.

“God is perfectly wise. That means He knows exactly what needs to be done to bring about what’s best for all time,” he said. “That’s called wisdom. When you know what is best to do all the time, you’re a wise person. And God is perfect in wisdom. He knows what needs to be done: He knows how it needs to be done, and He knows when it needs to be done.”’

Tragedies like the coronavirus happen “so that people in the world who don’t believe in Jesus would wake up. So that people would stop trusting in themselves and trust God.  [And] to show us that we might be loving things more than we love God,” Piper said.

“God is in charge of the coronavirus,” he said, adding that because Jesus came to the world and died for our sins, “we never have to be afraid of God’s punishment.”

“This is wonderful. That means we don’t ever have to be afraid to die — not from the coronavirus or anything else — because when Jesus died and rose from the dead, He changed death from punishment into a doorway to everlasting happiness with Him,” he said.

Stressing that “God is stronger than the coronavirus,” Piper encouraged children to “be brave … because you have a great Savior.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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Despite the best effort of critics to challenge the authorship and re-date the Old Testament book of Daniel to something written after the events that were prophesied in the book, the conclusion of one of the most careful and educated theologians I’ve ever known – Dr. Thomas Howe – says in his 700+ page commentary on Daniel: “There has not been an argument that has offered a reasonable alternative to the traditional view that Daniel, of the 6th century BC, is the author of this book.”[1]

It’s no wonder that skeptics want to challenge the book of Daniel. Its astonishingly accurate prophesies about the rise of various empires and political leaders such as Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes are enough to give a heart attack to anyone who attempts to rest comfortably in their anti-supernatural worldview. If there is a book in the Bible that more than stands up to the poorly thought out atheistic challenge of, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’, it’s Daniel.

In my opinion, the most noteworthy section of Daniel is a set of four verses in chapter nine. The prophecy Daniel received at that point summed up the most important headlining events for the world that were yet to come. At the time, the predictions were hundreds of years in the future.

Today, we can look back and see how the first three were precisely fulfilled down to the letter, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that the last verse will be as well. Let’s take a quick jet tour through these four verses that sum up the world’s future from God’s perspective.

“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy” (Daniel 9:24).

The first verse lays out the general landscape of the prophecy and timetable. There are three things to notice in this verse.

First, the timetable is “Seventy sevens” or 490 years. While some translations use “weeks” as the word for “sevens”, the literal Hebrew word is ‘sevens’[2], and nearly all Biblical commentators – whether conservative or liberal – agree that 490 years is the amount of time being discussed.

Second, the prophecy specifically targets the Jewish people and their city, Jerusalem (“for your people and your holy city”). However, don’t misunderstand – these predictions also greatly impact the entire human race.

Third, there are six things that will be accomplished in this 490-year timeframe, three of which are bad in character and the other three good:

Bad
-to finish transgression
-to put an end to sin
-to atone for wickedness

Good
-to bring in everlasting righteousness
-to seal up vision and prophecy
-anoint the most holy

The next three verses offer more detail about what is to come.

“Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble” (Daniel 9:25).

The second verse provides insight into what starts the 490-year clock ticking and breaks that same 490-year period up into distinct segments of time. The initiation of everything begins with “the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem”.

While historians cite four decrees made by various rulers in reference to the Jews / Jerusalem, only one fits with the verse’s description to totally rebuild the city and its accompanying infrastructure – the one made by Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 5, 444 BC, and described by Nehemiah (Neh. 2:1-8).

There are two divisions of timing referenced in the verse: seven ‘sevens’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’ that equate to 49 and 434 years, and total 483 years. The first 49 years may very well reference the total time to restore Jerusalem while the subsequent 434 years run up “until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes”.

Who is the “Anointed One”? In his commentary on Daniel, Dwight Pentecost does the math between the issuing of Artaxerxes’ decree and the ending of the total 483 years and convincingly shows that the end point is March AD 33.[3]

Not coincidentally, at that time a Jewish carpenter named Jesus was entering Jerusalem on a donkey and allowing Himself to be publicly proclaimed for the first time as the Messiah (Zech. 9:9; Mark 11).

SOURCE: Christian Post, Robin Schumacher

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Amid numerous reports pointing to the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party in putting millions of lives and the global economy at huge risk due to its lies about the coronavirus outbreak, Cardinal Charles Bo of Myanmar has called on China to apologize to the world and pay compensation for the damage caused.

“There is one government that has primary responsibility for what it has done and what it has failed to do, and that is the CCP regime in Beijing,” the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yangon wrote in an op-ed published in UCA News.

The cardinal clarified that “it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China, and no one should respond to this crisis with racial hatred toward the Chinese.”

He stressed that when the virus first emerged, “the authorities in China suppressed the news.”

“Instead of protecting the public and supporting doctors, the CCP silenced the whistleblowers. Worse than that, doctors who tried to raise the alarm — such as Dr. Li Wenliang in Wuhan Central Hospital who issued a warning to fellow medics Dec. 30 — were ordered by police to “stop making false comments,” he wrote.

Anonymously speaking to Bloomberg, three officials said the U.S. intelligence community noted in a classified report to the White House last week that China lied about the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak, under-reporting the number of infections and deaths.

“The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN earlier this week. “What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar

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As we face the COVID-19 crisis together, we should trade our fears for trust as we are going through this trial. Now is the time to draw near to God and to draw near to one another, even as we remain physically distant. We hope this message from Tony’s Table will encourage you today.

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