It’s near freezing when tents begin appearing on Avénue du Président Wilson. Migrants are getting ready for another November night. Their evening ritual creates an impromptu camp in a pedestrianized median on the north side of the city, near the Metro at Porte de la Chapelle.

I greet many of the men as I trail along behind a more expert friend who visits this spot weekly. She is Egyptian and comes like a sister, in the name of Christ, herself a stranger in France.

Some men are waiting to be processed as asylum seekers. Others want to avoid deportation after having asylum claims denied. They are among thousands who have inundated Paris, up to 80 per day. Across Europe, more than 178,000 migrants sought new homes in 2017. Most come from Muslim-majority nations in Africa.

Mahamat is angry. Murderous even. He tells me he plans to kill three people the next day. “They treated me like I’m a slave!” he roars.

Mahamat comes from a town in Chad where I once rented a house, planning to work with a nongovernmental organization there. My move never happened, but my exposure to the place means we have some shared spaces, shared memories, and that strikes a chord. Mahamat talks, and I listen. Telling me his ordeal seems to lower his rage. He smiles at my exhortation to patience, and I’m reassured he will not kill anyone.

We discuss God’s power to change things—to order events so Mahamat…

Christmas will be extra special for 13-year-old Noeh and his family this year. Like thousands of other Iraqi Christians, his family of eight had to flee Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. This Christmas is the first they’ll spend back in their hometown of Karemles, east of Mosul.

Noeh’s Christmas wish is that he and “all the other Christian children in Iraq will get to celebrate Christmas in peace and not be afraid.”

Late one night in 2014, priests knocked on doors warning that ISIS was coming. Noeh’s family spent hours on a dust-choked road, clogged with others in flight, listening to gunfire. They lived in a camp for internally displaced people near Erbil, in the Kurdistan region, for three years.

They returned to Karemles this summer. Noeh said he was very happy to go home again, but when he saw the rubble and destruction everywhere and his own house burned out he was “heartbroken.” In spite all they’ve endured, his family and many other returning Iraqis are hopefully looking forward and asking for help to rebuild in their homeland.

They want to live in peace and dignity and, as Noeh put it, “for life to go back to normal.”

That hope for the future brought Noeh and his father, Haitham to the United States last week to deliver an Open Doors Petition to the United Nations. More than 800,000 people signed the “Hope for the Middle East” petition on behalf of the Middle…

A secular scientist who attempted to explain the origins of life has made a bold admission that bolsters arguments against Darwinian evolution. Jack Szostak of Harvard University published a 2016 paper in Nature Chemistry claiming he and his colleagues had figured out a way to get RNA to replicate itself.

Darwinian evolutionists believe RNA, a nucleic acid present in all living cells, were some of the first molecules to form on the Earth and give rise to living things. But for that to happen, the RNA would have had to somehow reproduce on its own without requisite enzymes that would not have evolved yet. Szostak claimed to have facilitated RNA self-replication in his lab, but earlier this month, he said one of his colleagues, Tivoli Olsen, realized they had misinterpreted the data when she could not reproduce the original experiment’s results.

“In retrospect, we were totally blinded by our belief [in our findings] … we were not as careful or rigorous as we should have been (and as Tivoli was) in interpreting these experiments,” Szostak told Retraction Watch.

In his 2009 book Signature in the Cell, the Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer noted the inadequacy of using RNA to explain how life spontaneously appeared on earth. That inadequacy continues to stymie evolutionists today.

“As I have investigated various models that combined chance and necessity, I have noted an…

The GOP made good Wednesday on a major promise by passing sweeping tax cuts, and now Republicans have to sell the reforms to the American people.

The most significant rewrite of the U.S. tax code passed without a single Democratic vote or a public hearing. Republicans tweaked the bill all the way up until the same day it cleared. The legislative lift marks the largest reform of the tax system since 1986, and Republicans did it in record time. House leaders unveiled the first draft of the legislation Nov. 2, and Congress passed the bill onto President Donald Trump on Dec. 20, just in time for Christmas.

The bill changed so many times over the last six weeks that most Americans aren’t sure of the legislation’s details and how it will affect them. But Republicans aren’t worried about that; right now, it’s time to celebrate.

“Results are going to make this popular,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared this week.

The final bill, nearly 500 pages long, permanently lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. Originally the Trump administration envisioned reducing the seven individual tax brackets down to three. The final bill keeps seven but at different rates: 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35, and 37 percent for top earners.

About 48 percent of households will receive a tax cut of greater than $500 starting in 2019, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Those savings are projected to dwindle…

The United Nations General Assembly voted Thursday to condemn President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy to the new capital.

The assembly voted with 128 members in favor, nine against and 35 countries abstaining.

Israel, itself, voted no to the assembly’s condemnation of the U.S.

U.S. allies Canada, Australia, Argentina and Mexico were among those countries that abstained from voting.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley warned the United Nations that the U.S. would “remember” the countries that voted for the measure.

“The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations,” she said, adding that “our participation in the U.N. produces great good for the world.”

“We do this because it represents who we are… when we make generous contributions to the U.N. we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized,” she said. “If our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways.”

The vote will not change Trump’s decision, but Haley said that the vote would “make a difference on how Americans look on the U.N.”

“At the UN we’re always asked to do more & give more,” she said on her Twitter before the vote. “So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don’t…