A Season of Hope, the new Christmas record from Don Moen. With over 5 million records sold world-wide, Moen brings holiday classics and new Christmas tunes together to create a message of unending hope available for every listener.
“My Christmas prayer is that I would remain close to God, and He close to me. With all the suffering in the world today, there is the temptation to fall to fear… we need to be near the Lord.. we need the Hope of Christmas.” – Don Moen
A magistrate in North Carolina could lose his job after he refused to marry a gay couple in Elizabeth City earlier this week.
Pasquotank County Magistrate Gary Littleton told the couple he wouldn’t perform the marriage because of his religious beliefs, according to Christian Science Monitor.
Chief District Court Judge Christopher Bean said he sent a preliminary memo out to the magistrates late Monday that “magistrates should begin immediately conducting marriages of all couples presenting a marriage license.”
Littleton reportedly refused to marry William Locklear and Randall Jackson on Tuesday.
“My understanding is that a couple came and asked to be married and he refused to marry them based upon his, I guess, religious or moral principles,” Judge Bean said. “I suppose that it can be construed that he broke the law because that is a duty that the magistrate has to perform marriages.”
Judge Bean says if Littleton keeps refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, he must resign or face removal.
Source and Original Content by CBN News
Faith Driven Consumer, the group that launched the #IStandWithPhil campaign that advocated for Phil Robertson’s return to Duck Dynasty, is pushing out another major petition campaign #HoustonWeHaveAProblem demanding that the city of Houston immediately “cease and desist all bullying and other offensive actions” against a group of pastors who are victims of an aggressive harassment effort at the hands of the city government.
The city is demanding that a group of pastors turn over any sermons—including personal correspondence such as emails—”dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or Annise Parker, the city’s first openly lesbian mayor.”
“Pastors are a critical part of the very fabric of American society. They have been iconic champions of major moral issues such as American Independence, abolishing slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and civil rights. Now, a group of pastors who have continued this tradition are being bullied by the strong-arm tactics of the government of America’s fourth-largest city—simply for preaching out of the same book that Houston’s officials took their oath of office on,” said Chris Stone, Founder of Faith Driven Consumer.
“Today, we are launching the#HoustonWeHaveAProblem petition drive at HoustonProblem.com because we know that untold millions of Americans are or will be outraged by this. We are asking people of conscience to sign up, stand with pastors everywhere and show the city of Houston that we will not tolerate intolerance… Read More
Source and Original Content by Charisma News
Students across the United States will bring their Bibles to school today (Oct. 16) as part of a national initiative to encourage young people to share their faith with peers. According to The Blaze, Bring Your Bible to School Day is sponsored by Focus on the Family in an effort to promote religious freedom.
Focus on the Family is using the event as a way to teach students their constitutional rights.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Jeremy Tedesco said, “Christian students don’t abandon their constitutionally protected freedoms at the schoolhouse gate. Their freedom to express their beliefs includes the right to bring their Bible to school, to read it during their free time, and to engage in other activities as part of ‘Bring Your Bible to School Day.’”
The ADF also released a public memo, informing schools that students are permitted by law to carry a Bible and read it during non-instructional time.
“Students have a constitutional right to participate in and promote ‘Bring Your Bible to School Day.’ Unfortunately, schools all too often censor religious expression for fear of violating the often misunderstood ‘separation of church and state,’ for dislike of religious viewpoints, or for a desire to avoid controversy,” the memo read.
Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines
Erik Lysén, head of the international policy unit at the Church of Sweden, has called the recognition of Palestine an important step towards the peace process.
“In the long term it may lead to a lasting two-state solution, in which Israelis and Palestinians live side by side within safe and recognized borders,” he said.
Lysén’s comments come after the Swedish government’s formal recognition of the state of Palestine.
“The Swedish Government’s decision comes in a key course of events as the situation on the ground is deteriorating daily through the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements,” Lysén said.
In August 2014, Israel announced its confiscation of nearly 380 hectares in the vicinity of Bethlehem. At the end of September, further announcements were made that Israeli authorities had approved the plans for new settlements in Eastern Jerusalem, a decision that was strongly criticised by the European Union (EU) and the USA.
“Hopefully, Swedish recognition will pave the way for recognition of Palestine by other countries in the EU. Today about 130 states, including some EU member states, have recognized Palestine,” Lysén added.
Speaking on the war during the summer, underlining the importance of obtaining a lasting solution to the conflict, Lysén said that “such a solution can only be achieved through peaceful means. All breaches of international law in the form of violence and attacks on civilians, irrespective of who carries them out, must cease, and the perpetrators must be the subject of legal proceedings.”
In 2012 the General Synod, the highest decision-making body in the Church of Sweden, decided to urge the Swedish government to work towards Palestine being accepted as a full member of the United Nations.
Through its several initiatives for advocacy, the WCC mobilises its member churches and partners to work for peace in Palestine and Israel, with the aim of ending the illegal occupation in accordance with UN resolutions, encouraging actions for peace and justice for all the peoples in the region.
Source and Original Content by Ekklesia.co.uk
A team of Israeli Messianic Jews and Arab Christians have been assisting Syrian war refugees. The group recently visited a church where 219 refugees families (over 700 people) were taking shelter after fleeing from ISIS and other Islamist groups.
“These people lost everything,” says one member of the Israeli group, whose names need to be protected. “They even saw family members murdered or kidnapped.”
The Arab and Jewish team are working together with local Christians who are doing what they can to care for the needs of the multitudes of children who have been devastated by the war. The team brought a large financial gift from the Body of Christ in Israel, Jews and Arabs who wanted to reach out to the Syrians in a practical way.
“We brought milk for children, diapers, jackets, warm clothes, toys and candy; we purchased heaters and blankets, small cooking stoves and cooking pans. What a joy to see the faces of the young ones that walked around barefoot, having lost everything, receiving new sandals,” the team member recalls.
In addition to the practical humanitarian needs, they are also supporting educational opportunities for the multitudes of displaced children, including Bible teachings. “We do not want to pass the pain to our children,” said a local Arab Christian working with the refugees… Read More
Source and Original Content by Israel Today
President Barack Obama is now ordering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deploy medical “SWAT teams” within 24 hours to any hospital reporting a new case of Ebola.
The move comes after revelations the CDC may have been too lax in its procedures, allowing a nurse who’d treated an infected patient to travel on an airplane.
“We are monitoring, supervising, overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what’s taking place in Dallas initially and making sure that the lessons learned are then transmitted to hospitals and clinics all across the country,” the president said.
Amber Joy Vinson, the second Dallas nurse to catch Ebola, treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died at a Dallas hospital last week. She then flew to Cleveland to visit family and back to Dallas before she knew she had the disease.
Vinson contacted the CDC about her travel plans beforehand. The agency admits it was a mistake to give her permission to fly with a heightened temperature of more than 99 degrees.
Vinson is now in isolation at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“It’s making you wonder, you know, is it safe to even, you know, to get on any of these planes going anywhere?” air traveler Joyce Walton said.
The CDC says the risk to the 132 passengers is extremely low. Nevertheless, air travelers are still uneasy and the country is nervous… Read More
Source and Original Content by CBN News
The 107th Holy Convocation of the Church of God in Christ will be held from November 3-11, 2014 in St. Louis, Missouri and as a concerned progressive Christian of the millennial generation, I implore you that during this week of meetings, worship services and workshops that you lead this aggregation of people outside of the Edward Jones Dome toward the seats of governmental power in the city of Ferguson, the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri and demand justice on behalf of the family of Michael Brown.
Growing up in the institutional Black Church, I understand that as an institution that it was instrumental in the liberation of Africans enslaved on these shores both in the visible and invisible church as well as the liberation of the descendants of these same African slaves who never experienced the emancipation of their own bodies from the bondage of white racism and chattel slavery. I also understand that the Black Church, as an institution, has held the nexus of pneumatological power from the inception of this country as well as possession of a prophetic voice that produced both a Martin Luther King and a Bishop Charles Mason, a Malcolm X and a Bishop Gilbert Patterson, a Jarena Lee and a Jacqueline McCollough, a Prathia Hall and a Gertrude Stacks, a Thomas Dorsey and a Dr. Mattie Moss Clark.
To plan a national convention that provides an economic boost to the city of St. Louis as much as $35 million in years past, but potentially miss the power of your presence to be in the city of St. Louis at such a time as this is the equivalent of Peter missing the Holy Spirit multiple times leading toward the conversion of Cornelius; to potentially ignore the plight of your own brothers and sisters a mere 12 miles away in Ferguson is tantamount to standing at the foot of cross and watching Jesus suffer not just a spiritual crucifixion, but a political lynching and say nothing–and do nothing! We sit in churches week after week and hear about our own sisters and brothers succumbing to oppressive systems of politics and education, race and religion and we do nothing–we say nothing. Bishop Blake, et. al., now is your time and your opportunity to do something about it.
The time is now to utilize the power of the Holy Ghost and the possession of the prophetic voice to turn the world upside down… Read More
Source and Original Content by BCNN 1
U.S. churches are weak because they’re worldly, according to Christian author Os Guinness.
Speaking at the Family Research Council in Washington, Guinness added that churches have lost influence in America because Christians are fearful and compromised.
He said this is a time when the world needs “a positive and persuasive alternative vision of human flourishing.”
Guinness said he thinks too many American Christians lack the “courage to be different and to clearly make a stand” in a culture that’s increasingly disdainful and even hostile to Christianity.
Source and Original Content by CBN News
Police and fire officials in Shawnee, Oklahoma, are working to figure out who is setting fire to Salvation Army busses. Firefighters responded to two bus fires on Saturday.
Officials with the charity said the busses were used to take children to and from after-school programs.
“They were just in total disbelief. They don’t understand why would somebody take their vehicle,” Salvation Army Captain Phillip Canning said.
The first fire was set early Saturday morning. The second was set in the evening. Canning said it appears that the arsonist tried to use the first aid kit as fuel for the second fire.
The Salvation Army hopes anyone with information comes forward.
Source and Original Content by CBN News