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It was the second day of the  2020 Women of God Through Promise Conference at True Cornerstone Church in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, when the “devil…showed up in a deadly way,” according to Pastor Derek Scott Gandy.

“Pray for True Cornerstone Church. Tragic incident tonight after a Holy Ghost blow out service that I cannot discuss at all but your prayers are greatly appreciated. Cannot answer or respond. Have to wait around to secure our building. Thanks in advance for your prayers,” Gandy wrote in a series of Facebook posts early Saturday morning. “Arrived home about 30 minutes ago trying to wind down and get some sleep. Women Of God Through Promise was much more anointed than the devil desires and he showed up in a deadly way. Cannot go into specifics or names but please pray for those who witnessed what no one should, especially children.”

The Mobile Police Department said in a statement that at approximately 11:23 p.m. on Friday, they responded to the church on Halls Mill Road after receiving a report about a person being shot. When they got there, they saw a woman on the ground who had been apparently shot.

The suspect involved reportedly fled the scene as police arrived. He was pursued by authorities and subsequently returned to the church. As officers approached his vehicle, however, the suspect shot himself. His car then crashed into the church. He was pronounced dead on the scene while his wife was taken to a local hospital where she is recovering.

Friends of the woman told WKRG that the man came to the church looking for his wife and just shot her outside.

Pastor Gandy, who said both the shooter and his wife were friends of his family, was not available to discuss the incident with The Christian Post on Monday. His wife, Kula, told WKRG that as soon as the victim was shot, she started praying right away.

“She was calling on Jesus, even with the bullet in her she was calling on Jesus,” Kula Gandy said.

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).

The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) of 2018 went into effect January 1, 2020, but enforcement begins July 1, 2020.  This Act expands the personally identifiable information (PII) categories to include name(s), addresses, account names, biometrics, geolocation data, employment information, social security, and drivers’ license and passport numbers; radically changing how organizations collect and manage PII.

Does CCPA impact Churches?

The Answer is Yes. The CCPA covers For-profit legal entities.  Not-for-profit organizations, e.g. churches, appear to be exempt.  In reality, most churches are probably not selling goods or services, yet their third party service providers do. For example, they collect and use PII for financial and membership management, fundraising and social media engagement.

How to Prepare?

You may have noticed, churches and their service providers updating website “Cookie” and “Privacy” policies and anonymize IP addresses to prevent data aggregation among other things.  The reason being the 2018 European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation does not exempt Not-for-profit organizations. From collecting and managing PII on donors, employees or even visitors to websites or mobile apps, the prospect for running afoul of GDPR’s regulators motivated churches and their service providers to voluntarily comply.

Now in 2020, many churches and their service providers that are now GDPR compliant are hoping they are legally exempt or that being located outside of California protects them from CCPA compliance.   This position is temporary.

SOURCE: Christian Post, T. Jeff Vining

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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).

The contrast between the two videos is stark. The first is terribly disturbing. The second is tremendously inspiring. The first shows security camera footage of some young thugs vandalizing a building and assaulting a female worker. The second, which is an interview I conducted, shows the female worker and her father expressing their love and concern for the thugs. That is the power of Messiah’s grace in Jerusalem. And that is the opposition faced by Messianic Jews living there.

The community that was attacked is called Adullam. It focuses on compassionate, humanitarian outreach to hurting Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews and those who have left that community. It also serves at-risk Israelis from other backgrounds.

But because of its effective outreach to religious Jews, it has come under intense fire, with a well-known radical inciting some young people to go on the attack.

As reported in Kehila News, “Members of Lehava, a violent anti-assimilation organization led by Ben-Zion Gopstein – a former disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahana – have been attacking a safe house for at-risk youth which is operated by a Messianic family.”

Michael, who manages the safe house, tells the story.

“When they came, during opening hours, we asked them to leave and said that we have three little children here. They didn’t care. They left and came back throwing bricks and stones at us. One flew right by one of our heads.”

But that was not the end. The thugs returned again, ultimately knocking out the windows with bricks and rocks as well as carrying out at least one physical assault.

Thankfully, with security cameras just installed, the last attack was captured on video. As for how the police will respond, that remains to be seen.

Does all this confirm the worst suspicions of the antisemites? Does it prove how evil “the rabbis” are? Does this point to the fundamentally corrupt nature of “the Jews”?

Certainly not.

There are bad apples in every religion, including Judaism.

There are corrupt leaders in every religion, including Judaism.

And there are thugs in every nation, including Israel.

The vast majority of rabbis would not support a violent attack on a Messianic Jewish center, let alone one with women and children inside.

And the vast majority of Israelis, most of whom are not religious, would be appalled at such an attack.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Brown

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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).

I admire the believers who’ve never questioned why God allows suffering because I have to admit, I’ve directed my attention to the heavens and cried out, asking God the reasons we endure pain. There have been times that life felt like it was too much to bear, and I wondered why an all-powerful, merciful God would allow us to experience such hurt and devastation.

From losing my mother to cancer to my husband’s painful knee injury to the countless children around the world suffering from incurable illnesses, my heart has cried out so many times I’ve lost count.

Non-believers, too, have questioned God’s power because they wonder why Christians would praise Him when our world is plagued with disease, war, heartbreak, poverty, famine and many other tragic issues.

Well, the truth is — the fingers pointing at God and questioning His power are pointing in the wrong direction.

The Bible reminds us that God “saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31), but when Eve bit the forbidden fruit and shared the apple with her husband, they began to reap the consequences of disobedience. It was mankind that defied God’s rules and bit the fruit of evil which paved the way for suffering to enter the world.

You see, God allows us to have free choice, and with choice comes consequence.

As a child, my mom warned me not to touch a hot stove because if I touch a hot stove, I will get burned. Well, I touched the stove anyway, and what do you know — I got burned. Badly. Similarly, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, and their consequences were deadly.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Laci Swann

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A multisite megachurch primarily based in Ohio partnered with a nonprofit to eliminate $46.5 million in medical debt, the largest medical debt relief amount to date.

Crossroads Church, a nondenominational church with multiple campuses in Cincinnati, as well as elsewhere in Ohio and central Kentucky, worked alongside RIP Medical Debt to raise the funds.

Senior Pastor Brian Tome announced the total amount of medical debt cleared near the beginning of his sermon on Sunday, receiving an applause from the congregation.

“The partner we work with said in a one-time shot, a one-time act, that’s the largest amount of medical debt that has ever been retired in one shot. Come on, who’s excited about that?” declared Tome, receiving more applause. “That is amazing.”

The money raised by the church in partnership with RIP Medical Debt has been given to many families in the Cincinnati area and some families outside of Ohio, according to Tome.

In a post to their Facebook page on Sunday, Crossroads Church celebrated the news, thanking all those who donated to the charitable endeavor.

“We asked our Crossroads community to come together and bless some of our neighbors in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee. And you did just that. Thank you!” the church said.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

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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).

In 1968, Stanford entomologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, warning that the earth was overpopulated and that millions of people would starve to death. His doomsday warning did not come true. Starvation has occurred on much smaller scales, due largely to government mismanagement and corruption, not overpopulation.

Yet the myth of overpopulation persists. Ecologist Emma Olliff of the UK based group Population Matters recently said, “More of us is only going to make (the environment) worse.”[1] This kind of reasoning was famously cited by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who are choosing to have only two children because of global overpopulation.

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall said that human population growth is responsible for most environmental problems.[2] Goodall stated, “All these (environmental) things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.” Apparently, Goodall pines for the good ol’ days when the average life expectancy was around 40 years of age and infant mortality was around 20%.

Human life is not the problem, and human death is not the solution. Since the publication of The Population Bomb, several books have debunked the myth of overpopulation, including The Myth of Over-Population (1969) R.J. Rushdoony, Fewer (2004) by Ben Wattenberg, and Population Control (2008) by Steven Mosher. Governments in Japan, Finland, Italy, and Australia (to name a few) are now paying people to have babies.[3]

Currently, no European country has a population replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman.[4] Globally, many countries are below the replacement rate, including  China (1.7), Brazil (1.7), Canada (1.5), Puerto Rico (1.1), Thailand (1.5), and Chile (1.7).[5]

In 1968, the fear was global starvation. In 2020, humans waste 1.6 billion tons of food at a cost of $1.2 trillion dollars annually.[6] In 1968 the fear was overpopulation. In 2020, under-populated towns and cities are paying people to move there.[7]

SOURCE: Christian Post, Adam Groza

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Mirroring other Western countries, the nation of Sweden has documented an astronomical rise in gender dysphoria diagnoses among teenagers in the past decade.

Between 2008 and 2018, the rate of teen girls ages 13 to 17 being diagnosed with gender dysphoria grew by approximately 1,500 percent, a report from Sweden’s Board of Health and Welfare said, according to The Guardian.

The report follows backlash, which began in March, in the Scandinavian country after the government, heavily swayed by the Swedish LGBT group RFSL, proposed a new law in the fall of 2018 that would have lowered the age for medicalized gender treatments, scrapped parental consent, and permitted kids as young as 12 to change their gender on legal documents.

In October, an investigative news program highlighted Stockholm’s Karolinska University hospital, which received criticism for performing double mastectomies on trans-identifying females as young as 14.

As has been the case in other gender identity medical outfits around the world, the Karolinska Institute was accused of hurriedly steering young people through the experimental practices without giving due consideration to other contributing factors to gender dysphoria and relevant psychiatric comorbidities. The Swedish center pushed back, asserting it was carefully reviewing every case.

Amid the allegations of the rushing of patients through the gender change process, including one from the father of a trans-identified person — who died by suicide four years after surgery — authorities ordered the Board of Health and Welfare to reassess the issue just before legislation that would lower the age for such treatments was about to be debated in parliament.

In December, the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment reported that “there was very little research either into the reason for the increase or the risks or benefits of hormone treatment and surgery,” The Guardian reported.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter

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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).

I’ve always been a student of revival.

Since I was a teenager I have studied revivals and spiritual awakenings with a voracious appetite. I have scoured books about them and have listened to sermons on them, looking for the keys to revival, longing to be a part of the next great move of God on earth.

Books like George Whitfield…Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the 18th Century Revival (Volumes 1 & 2), Lectures to my Students by Charles Spurgeon, Movements that Change the World by Steve Addison, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret by J. Hudson Taylor, The Life of Dwight L. Moody by William R. Moody and so many more…have been on my reading and re-reading list for decades.

But, as much as I’ve loved reading these books and others like them, I’m tired of just reading about revival and awakening.

I want to be a part of one.

Just a few weeks ago I was invited to speak at an event called Go2020 USA. My good friend Dave Gibson is the North American Executive Director of Go2020 and he asked me to do the closing challenge to 110 key national ministry leaders attending this catalytic meeting.

Go2020 is a global Gospel advancing movement that is mobilizing 100 million believers worldwide to share the Gospel with one billion people in the year 2020. Of course, this is a movement that everyone at Dare 2 Share, the ministry I lead, is excited about! After all our vision at Dare 2 Share is “every teen everywhere hearing the Gospel from a friend!”

Speaking to these leaders was a great privilege that I did not take lightly. By the time I boarded the plane from Denver to Orlando my sermon was complete. I was going to preach on the 5 characteristics of a movement based on Steve Addison’s book, Movements that Change the World.

But once on the plane, the Spirit of God convicted me that this was not the sermon He wanted me to preach. After praying, He guided me to my new sermon. It was entitled, 3 ways to kickstart a movement based on Acts 4:31-33.

I was ready to preach it…or so I thought.

After a day full of strategic meetings at the Go2020 meeting and just moments before I walked to the stage to preach, I suddenly realized that the 3 points to my sermon were already in full play, not just nationally, but globally.

There was no kickstarting a movement, the movement had already begun, long before I boarded any plane. As I scanned my sermon and looked at the 3 keys to kickstarting a movement, and thought back to all that had been shared that day, it struck me, these 3 keys were starting to happen nationally and were in full swing globally.

Right there I changed my sermon title to “3 Signs a Spiritual Awakening has begun” based on Acts 4:31-33. If there ever was an example of spiritual awakening its the book of Acts and this passage contains all the elements that reflect a true and sweeping spiritual move of God.

Here is the passage and the 3 points I preached that day to these ministry leaders.

“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all.”  Acts 4:31-33

The first sign a spiritual movement has begun is that…

SOURCE: Christian Post, Greg Stier

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