Despite being held prisoner in Turkey for more than two years, North Carolina Pastor Andrew Brunson shared on Wednesday that he would like to go back.

According to the Christian Post, Brunson shared with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that he knows God loves the Turkish people and he feels as if he is still being called to serve there.

Brunson met the USCIRF on Wednesday at the Senate Welcome Center to thank the commission for the tireless work they put forth while advocating for his release. 

He said of the United States to the commission, “I don’t know how many countries have this kind of emphasis on religious freedom, not just in their own country but trying to advocate for it around the world. I think this is something very unusual, very admirable.”

His wife Noreen also thanked the commission for providing support to her husband while he was being jailed in Turkey. She said, “We’re aware that not all stories end the way ours did, so just keep up your work. And we have to give glory to God.”

Brunson added that since his arrest and eventual release he fears that restrictions on Christians will become more aggressive in Turkey. He told the USCIRF, “I think there is going to be more difficulty for the church in Turkey.”

“There are more restrictions coming right now. There have been a number of missionaries…

A bill in the Vermont House that has more than 80 co-sponsors declares that fetuses have no rights and that women who perform their own abortions cannot be prosecuted.

Some observers are calling this bill even more radical than the controversial abortion bills in New York and Virginia. The abortion bill in New York was signed into law last month.  

“Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, give birth to a child, or to have an abortion,” the bill, H. 57, says. 

The bill then declares: “A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights under Vermont law.” The New York law did not include such language.  

It even gives Vermont citizens the right to perform their own abortions. 

“No State or local law enforcement shall prosecute any individual for inducing, performing, or attempting to induce or perform the individual’s own abortion,” it reads. 

The bill is known as the Freedom of Choice Act.

“This bill proposes to recognize as a fundamental right the freedom of reproductive choice and to prohibit public entities from interfering with or restricting the right of an individual to terminate the individual’s pregnancy,” it reads.

The state’s pro-life leaders say they will fight to defeat it.  

“I think it’s completely dangerous,…

President and Founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, z”l passed away Wednesday in his Jerusalem home. Eckstein was 67 years old. The ministry released a statement following his death expressing their sadness for his loss but their gratitude for his life. 

The Fellowship wrote, “We are in shock and mourning the loss of our visionary leader, rabbi, friend and colleague. Rabbi Eckstein was a giant in the Jewish and Christian communities, a man who devoted his every moment to helping Israel and the Jewish people. Yechiel forged unbreakable bonds of Christian-Jewish friendship and unity around a shared love for Israel that will stand as his timeless legacy.”

According to the press release, Eckstein founded The Fellowship in 1983 and spent his life working to help low-income Israeli families, Holocaust survivors and toward “strengthening the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”

In the past four years leading up to his death, Eckstein was working to help relocate and resettle more than 17,000 immigrants to Israel struggling with “economic hardship, persecution, and terror in 31 countries.” Eckstein was also working on building a global center for Christians in Jerusalem.

Eckstein’s loss was felt around the globe. Many prominent figures of faith and dignitaries have voiced their sadness for his…

President Trump on Thursday committed to helping protect faith-based adoption agencies and then quoted the book of Jeremiah in reaffirming his position on the unborn. 

Trump’s comments came at the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event that brings together different religious groups and members from both parties. Every president since President Eisenhower has attended. 

Trump discussed several issues, including anti-Semitism, human and sex trafficking, and religious liberty, but his remarks about abortion received the loudest applause.   

“As part of our commitment to building a just and loving society, we must build a culture that cherishes the dignity and sanctity of innocent human life,” Trump said. “All children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God. Every life is sacred, and every soul is a precious gift from heaven. 

“As the Lord says in Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born. I set you apart,’” he added, quoting from Jeremiah 1:5. 

To underscore his point, Trump recounted the story of a baby named Grayson that was born in the backseat of a car during a snowstorm four months premature, weighing only one pound, 11 ounces. Doctors were unsure if he would survive. The parents, Nikki and Tyler Watkinson, were in attendance at the prayer breakfast. 

“Nikki and…

HYDERABAD, India, February 7, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Emergency medicine doctor Christo Thomas Philip was returning with his family to his native India from a medical conference in Greece when immigration officials at Delhi’s Indira Ghandi International Airport took him into custody.

His deportation from India on that day, April 26, 2016, came after working for three years treating destitute people on the verge of death from snakebites, HIV, diphtheria, tuberculosis and heart failure, among other conditions, in Raxaul, a remote area of eastern India’s Bihar state. He was planning to return to his work there at the emergency care unit of Duncan Hospital.

“My wife and children were allowed entry back into the country,” Philip, 36, told Morning Star News. “But as soon as my passport was scanned, I was surrounded by multiple Indian immigration officials, taken into custody and was informed that I had an hour to leave the country.”

At age 10 Philip had migrated with his family to the United States, where he was educated. He had a life-time visa to India and an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, but the immigration officials confiscated the card and his passport, telling him only that he was no longer welcome on orders of the Consulate General of India in Houston, Texas.

“It broke my heart to see my family from behind the cordoned-off section of…