Believers in China face an insecure future as local governments enforce legislation restricting religious freedom even more.

On February 1, new laws were enacted in China givingthe government additional control over everyday religious activities. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, provisions state:

For many in China, this law has serious ramifications.

Kurt Rovenstine, President of Bibles for China says, “I can’t speak specifically to the restrictions as they’re printed. But I do know two things: that there’s a bit of fear as to what and how it will be implemented.”

Often, provincial government officials decide how and to what extent they will implement national laws. This enforcement may vary by area. Some parts of the new law are also vague, leaving uncertainty about what it actually means for religious bodies.

However, tensions are high as people wait to find out what changes are in store for their churches. Rovenstine continues, “I know that there [are] a lot of our folks that just are afraid that there’s this…slow creep of the government into the business of the Church [which] will be accelerated.”

SOURCE: Mission News Network, Anna Deckert

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Transformation Church, a popular congregation which recently relocated to facilities in the city of Bixby in Tulsa, Oklahoma, could soon be shut down if they can’t keep the joyful noise they have been making to the Lord from bothering their neighbors.

The church has been given 32 noise violation citations since it moved to its new location in Bixby in recent months, according to ABC News affiliate KTUL, but city officials think they might have to take more drastic measures to get the church to quiet down.

Phil Frazier, the city’s attorney, said they are looking at three different ways to fix the problem, including the drastic step of shutting down the church, led by pastor Michael Todd, or make a deal that would appease the community.

“You read the books of Matthew and Romans, it talks about loving your neighbor and your neighbor right and that’s what we’re asking them to do,” Frazier said in an earlier report.

The Christian Post reached out to Transformation Church for comment Thursday and a representative said the church would not be issuing any public comment at this time.

Last August, pastor Todd announced that Transformation Church had purchased the building in Bixby which formerly housed Spirit Bank. Todd said the move was driven by a vision he got from God a few years ago and that with favor and faith, the promise finally came to pass.

According to KTUL, even when the building was named the Spirit Bank Event Center in the late 2000s, there were many complaints about noise from it as well.

“When that noise comes on and you have a cup of coffee sitting on a counter in a neighbor’s house, the water starts doing like this, it’s that much vibration,” said Frazier.

He told KTUL that the building is a big part of the problem, and noted that it was “unfortunate that the church had bought such a terrible building.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s).

Question:  I’ve heard congregants complain that while they agree with their pastor on political issues, he talks too much about it and it’s tiring.  While other pastors are criticized by never talking about any political issues from the pulpit, with some saying that’s not their gift.  Should pastors of local churches talk about political issues from the pulpit?  If so, when should they do so and on what issues?

Editor’s Note:  Part 1 of this “Ask Dr. Land” series can be read here. 

As I explained last week, vast segments of the American people have looked historically to their pastors for moral, as well as spiritual, guidance. And, in today’s culture, the public policy issues that often cause the most intense discussions in our society — the sanctity of human life, racism, human rights, immigration, sexism, and sexuality — are of an entirely different level of moral significance than the politics of what are the most beneficial tax policies or the most prudent trade agenda.

As people of faith and their pastoral leaders wrestle with these issues, we should draw comfort, and perhaps guidance, from how previous generations of Americans have dealt with morally contentious issues.

This tension between the pastoral and public morality role is not new. It goes all the way back to early colonial times in America and has been a consistent theme throughout American history.

Ironically, one of the earliest examples of this tension is the Rev. Roger Williams, historic champion of separation of church and state. Williams argued that there ought to be a wall of separation between the “garden” of the church and the “wilderness” of the state in order to keep the state from corrupting the church.

Williams was extremely critical of the state church in Massachusetts Bay. But among the official charges levied against him when the colonial authorities sought to arrest him and send him back to England in chains was that he claimed that the colonists did not really own their land because they had received it by patent from the King and had not compensated the Native Americans for it. In other words, Roger Williams, champion of separation of church and state, was up to his colonial eyeballs in the most controversial moral issue of that time and place, the colonists’ shameful treatment of the Native American population.

Perhaps, that is why, when Williams escaped into the New England wilderness, the Native Americans whom he had befriended took him in, thus allowing him to survive and to found Providence Plantations (later Rhode Island), the first colony in the New World where you were free to worship where you pleased on Sunday morning or to sit home and shuck peas on your front porch without any civil penalty of any kind.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Richard Land

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Pope Francis cancelled events for the second day in a row today after falling ill.

The Vatican said the 83-year-old pontiff had decided not to go ahead with official audiences after he skipped a church service yesterday.

It comes as Italy is reeling from a worsening coronavirus outbreak which has so infected more than 500 people and caused 17 deaths.

The Vatican declined to say whether the Pope will be tested for the virus.

A spokesman said he celebrated Mass as usual this morning and will go ahead with some private meetings.

Yesterday he was too unwell to travel to a mass on the other side of Rome and stayed in the Santa Marta guesthouse where he lives in the Vatican.

His spokesman said he had a “light indisposition”.

Concerns for his health had been raised the day before after he was seen coughing and blowing his nose during an Ash Wednesday service in St Peter’s Basilica.

Earlier on Wednesday – the first day of Lent – Francis appeared in good spirits as he greeted a large crowd at a general audience in St Peter’s Square.

Many of the faithful wore face masks, but others did not as they kissed the the Holy Father and shook his hand.

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American faith leaders met with representatives of Nigerian communities devastated by Boko Haram and Fulani tribesmen as well as key figures within the Buhari administration as part of a fact-finding mission to investigate reports of escalating insecurity in the West African country.

Johnnie Moore, an evangelical communications executive and president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group, traveled to Abuja on Feb. 17 and met with dozens of victims of terrorism from five different Nigerian provinces for three days.

“After our journey there, we want the world to know that you haven’t heard half of it,” the faith leaders said in a joint statement. “The terrorists’ aim is to ethnically cleanse northern Nigeria of its Christians and to kill every Muslim who stands in their way.”

In addition to victims, the two met with the chiefs of staff for both President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as part of their quest to determine the severity of the situation. They also met with four Muslim leaders.

Their trip came as thousands have been killed by Boko Haram (an Islamic militant group in Nigeria’s northeast with a splinter faction that has claimed allegiance to the Islamic State) and radical Fulani herdsmen who have in recent years increasingly raided predominantly Christian farming villages in the country’s Middle Belt.

Reports of barbaric overnight raids, attacks, abductions, executions and displacement of civilian communities have become more and more common. In Nigeria, over 2 million people have been displaced.

Moore and Cooper stressed that if things “do not change immediately” portions of Nigeria and the broader Lake Chad region “may soon become the most dangerous place on the planet.”

“This portion of Africa will be ground zero for the next generation’s war on terrorism, and the humanitarian cost of letting these problems fester and multiply in the near term could result in disaster for much of Western Africa,” they said.

Moore, who also serves as a commissioner on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, made the trip in his private capacity. He has long traveled the world to advocate for persecuted believers. Cooper, a longtime Jewish human rights activist, is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and also the director of its global social action agenda.

Although Moore had been to Nigeria several years ago, he was shocked by how much worse things have gotten there.

“People are dying every single day and they don’t have to be. More can be done,” Moore told The Christian Post. “This is not a poor country. [It’s] the wealthiest country on the continent.”

Considering Nigeria was placed on the U.S. State Department’s “special watch list” for religious freedom over the government’s inability to thwart attacks and hold perpetrators accountable, Moore and Cooper came to the conclusion after their meetings that the “status quo is unacceptable.”

“The scale is just incomprehensible. It seems very, very clear to us that for various reasons, the government is failing at its fundamental responsibility to protect its citizens,” Moore said. “That’s not to say that there aren’t people in the government who are good people who are trying to do something about it. They were obviously willing to meet with us. They were willing to answer our direct questions that we asked them.”

“But I can tell you, across every facet of Nigerian society, whether the religious leader was Muslim or Christian or whether the victim was describing something that happened to them in the center of the country or at the hands of ISIS or Boko Haram in the northeast, it was really clear that everyone felt like the government wasn’t doing enough or wasn’t able to do enough.”

Among the many people they met with was a girl who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram and was recently released. They also met with villagers whose entire villages had been razed, and a pastor whose church was destroyed twice. That pastor recently brokered a deal for the release of two of his parishioners kidnapped by Boko Haram.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith

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On May 7- 8, 2020, a group of renowned Christian leaders will join together for a big national worship gathering in Dallas, Texas, called “Sing Over America.” The list of participants is impressive and contains names such as Terry MacAlmon, Don Moen, Paul Wilbur, Gateway Worship, Nathaniel Bassey, Vocal Majority and—last but not least—Joni Lamb & The Daystar Singers.

MacAlmon, who is the initiator of the event, appeared on Daystar’s Marcus & Joni last Wednesday and explained that God instructed him to gather the worshipers from coast to coast, because He wanted to give an open heaven over the nation, just as He once did over Colorado Springs. Sing Over America will not be a conference or seminar, it will be worship only. MacAlmon says, “It’s not just worship, it’s all His presence. Where there is His presence, there is His power. Where there is His power, there is healing, deliverance and salvation. My great call and task are to take people into the manifest presence of God, and He’ll do the rest from there.”

Tickets are available for $29.00 at TicketMaster.com.

More info about the event can be found at SingOverAmerica.us.

Watch MacAlmon’s interview with DayStar here:

SOURCE: Charisma News

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Welcome to A Christian Manifesto Today episode #40. My name is Daniel Whyte III, president of Torch Leadership Foundation.

Pastor and Christian philosopher, Francis A. Schaeffer, warned us and created the war plan that we as Christians need today to deal with a society that is increasingly moving away from God, the Bible, and moral principles. He wrote “A Christian Manifesto” over 33 years ago and its words are just as relevant today as they were back then.

Our Christian Manifesto Today Passage from the Word of God today is Acts 5:29 which reads: “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”

Our Christian Manifesto Today quote today is from Melvin Tinker. He said: “Secularism is the process whereby God and religion are pushed to the margins of life and so make no significant contribution at all to the policies and values adopted by society. By and large, politics and education carry on as if God were not there.”

In this podcast, we are using as our text: “A Christian Manifesto” by Francis A. Schaeffer.

Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer writes in “An Open Window” (Part 8):

We might differ as to what the ruling should be in some of these cases, but that does not change the weight of the whole. It should be said that it is not only Protestants who are facing the implications of the above list, but Roman Catholics and Jews as well.

And for Christians who are in the habit of drifting complacently, a case presently before the courts should be a loud-sounding alarm bell. As I write, Samuel E. Ericsson, an attorney-at-law, is defending Grace Community Church, the largest Protestant church in Los Angeles County, in a clergyman malpractice suit. This suit was brought by parents because the pastors of that church cared for their son (who had later committed suicide) instead of turning him over to professional psychiatric and psychological care. Obviously if the church lost this case, all religions would be greatly affected. In fact, anyone who tried to help someone with questions or fears could be sued if he or she did not fall under the category of professional psychiatric and psychological competence. And to make matters more complicated, no one has thought how to set standards acceptably for professional psychiatric and psychological competence!

Samuel Ericsson has put the case in the proper perspective when in a letter to me dated May 1, 1981, he wrote: “I believe that clergyman malpractice, or more accurately spiritual counseling malpractice, is going to present the secular courts with a head-on clash between the two competing world views, secularism and Christianity.”

Should not all of us be thinking what to do about it if the window does shut? The Christian theologians, the educators, the lawyers, the evangelical leadership, have not had a very good record in the past of seeing things as a whole. That is, they have not seen the contrast between the consensus which is based on there being a Law Giver and what that naturally brings forth, and the totally different material-energy, chance world view of reality and what that naturally brings forth. Now if we have not run very well in the past with the footmen when it has been so very easy, I wonder what is going to happen to us if we have to run with the horsemen? What will protect us from what is happening in most of the world today? Have we run with the footmen? Very, very poorly. What happens if we must run with the horsemen?

Lord willing, we will begin looking at the topic of The Limits of Civil Obedience in our next episode.

Let’s Pray.

* * * * * * * *

Dear friend, if you are listening today, and you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, allow me to show you how:

First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”

Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Also, the Bible states in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Now this is bad news, but here’s the good news. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Just believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead by the power of God for you so that you can live eternally with Him. Pray and ask Him to come into your heart today, and He will.

Romans 10:9-13 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Until next time, my friend, continue to stand for the Lord and his Word. God bless you!

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Lauren Daigle’s “You Say” was at the top of the most-streamed Christian songs on Spotify in the last year, Fox News reports.

“You Say” was also No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart for 73 weeks in a row, beating Hillsong UNITED’s record of 61 weeks with “Oceans.”

Singer “Just Sam” recently sang “You Say” for her audition on American Idol. The young singer not only wowed the judges with her emotional performance, but also had the opportunity to pray with them afterward.

But this isn’t Daigle’s only big win. She won multiple awards at the 50th Annual Gospel Music Association Dove Awards in Nashville in October 2019, including Artist of the Year, Song of the Year for “You Say” and Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year for Look Up Child.

In January 2020, she delighted a stadium full of football fans with her rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the 2020 National Championship game between Clemson and Louisiana State University.

SOURCE: Charisma News

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