Kobe Bryant, From His Own Mouth, Trusted Jesus Christ as His Saviour and Is Now in Heaven, Not in Hell. The Question Now Is, If You Were to Tragically Die Today Where Would You Go Heaven Or Hell? (GLMX #424)

This is the “chief of sinners,” Daniel Whyte III, president of Gospel Light Society International, reminding you of what the Bible says, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” like you and me.

James 4:14 reads, “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

Hebrews 9:27 reads, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:”

Kobe Bryant, the retired five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, died tragically and unexpectedly on January 26, 2020 at age 41 when his helicopter crashed into a mountainside near Calabasas, California, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, head baseball coach at Orange Coast College John Altobelli, his wife Keri and their 14-year-old daughter Alyssa, wife and mom Sarah Chester and her 13-year old daughter Payton, basketball assistant coach Christina Mauser; and pilot Ara Zobayan. The group of nine were en route to a basketball game at Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Newbury Park. These young people with their lives ahead of them were not expecting to die and no one was prepared for the news of their tragic passing as they left behind grieving spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends and coworkers. We have prayed for all of the families impacted since this tragedy happened.

As millions around the world mourn the sudden and untimely death of Kobe Bryant, who by all indications was just beginning his new life outside of basketball having already won an Academy Award, the Bible reminds us that all of us will die one day. You may not know how or when but one day you will pass into eternity.

Most of us expect to live long, fulfilled lives where we will be able to “prepare” for death at a ripe old age, such as by making our own funeral arrangements and writing a will. Some say they will think about death “later” and sadly many do not think about death at all or about what comes after.

Following his untimely death, Randy Shepherd and Jamie Johnson of Crossfire Ministry shared a picture they took with Kobe Bryant in London at the 2012 Summer Olympics. This picture comes with a story. Shepherd recalls: “[W]e were telling different guys about Crossfire basketball ministry, and Kobe was there.”

The photo opportunity happened quickly at the Team USA hotel. That encounter gave Shepherd and Johnson a chance to ask Kobe about something bigger than basketball.

Shepherd told News 13, “He was gracious, his bodyguard stepped out of the way. And I said ‘Kobe, have you ever invited the Lord Jesus Christ to come into your life as your Lord and Savior?’ A question I’ve asked a lot of people from kids to the president and he said, ‘yes, I’ve done that’.”

After posing for the picture, they gave him a Crossfire testimony Gospel card.

Now, like everyone else, Shepherd and Johnson are shocked at his death.

Johnson said, “I hope each of us takes a moment to stop and think about what lies ahead. We are not promised tomorrow and it is not a bad idea to ponder what comes next after we die. The Bible says, we are not promised tomorrow. And tomorrow in the Bible means, at some point we will die and we don’t always know when. Therefore it is important for each of us to tackle the question, ‘Where am I going when I die?’ Yes, Kobe will be greatly missed for different reasons, family, sports influence and more, but assuming he placed his faith in Christ [as he told us], along with the others, they’ll all spend eternity with Jesus Christ.”

Kobe Bryant’s death and the deaths of the eight others who perished with him on that fatal helicopter ride, remind us that we all have an appointment with death. Hebrews 9:27 reads, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” You might guess that your death is a long way off, when it might be as soon as…today. So dear friend, you need to think about death and you need to prepare for your death and what comes after. If you do not know how to do that here is 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 18:8: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” 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 that 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 whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead, and you want to trust Him for your Salvation today, please pray with me this simple prayer: Holy Father God, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. I am sorry for my sins, and today I choose to turn from my sins. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. I trust Jesus Christ as my Savior and I choose to follow Him as Lord from this day forward. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen.

If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door”. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

If you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior today, please email me at [email protected] and let us know. There is some free material that we want to send you. If you have a prayer request, please e-mail that to us as well, and we will pray for you until you tell us to stop.

Remember, friend, Believe by faith. Share the faith. and Keep the faith!

God Bless You!

Let me leave you with this prayer. If you pray this daily it will help prepare you for the eventualities of life:

God, prepare us for good days and bad days,
prepare us for celebrations and tragedies,
prepare us for weddings and funerals,
prepare us for life and death.In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow said that he would rather be known for saving babies than winning Super Bowls during an anti-abortion event.

“It really does mean a lot more than winning the Super Bowl,” he said to a crowd at a football-themed banquet hosted by Kansans for Life earlier this month. “One day, when you look back and people are talking about you and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, what are you going to be known for?’ Are you going to say Super Bowl, or we saved a lot of babies?”

At one point in the speech, Tebow turned to people affiliated with the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs football team who were in the audience and addressed their recent feat.

“It’s amazing,” Tebow said. “What an accomplishment! But you know the best part of that accomplishment is that it gets you an even bigger platform.”

Tim Tebow has been a longtime supporter of the anti-abortion movement, partly because he was almost aborted by his mother.

Love this:

In a recent speech, @TimTebow declared that the fight to rescue the lives of children from abortion “really does mean a lot more than winning the Super Bowl.”https://t.co/E8ZXGRCFDA

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) February 21, 2020

SOURCE: The Washington Examiner, Andrew Mark Miller

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Believers around the world are longing for Scripture in their mother languages. Could you be one of the people who makes that possible?

Bible translation powerhouse Wycliffe USA is searching for believers called to bring Scripture to their brothers and sisters in Christ.

The organization is pushing to start translation initiatives for every language in need by 2025. By 2033, the goal is access for all of the world’s population. Currently, 3,384 languages have some Scripture translated and 698 of them have complete Bibles. Learn more here.

Ambitious goals require an ambitious team of dedicated believers from all walks of life.

“God is looking for people who are flexible and adaptable… Those are people that would be a good fit for these roles,” says Daysi Russell of Wycliffe USA.

The roles are well suited for the cross-culturally savvy and lifelong learner.

Global Bible translations require more than translators. In fact, the local church communities complete much of the translation work. Instead, Wyliffe USA requires translation consultants and advisors, technology, management, literacy, and communications to support the native-speaking translators. Believers from any background can be part of the translation process and make an impact.

Technology has reinvented Bible translation and accelerated the process. The first 500 translations took 67 years to complete. It took 17 years to repeat that feat and translate another 500. Today, the vital Information Technology team members support translation team field equipment and create apps to expand scripture access.

Bible translation is a process and sometimes a dangerous one. Office management and administrators keep translation work moving forward one day at a time. These roles include human resources and project management and mobilize the translation teams.

SOURCE: Mission Network News, Kali Katerberg

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Sudan earned a reputation as an oppressive, bloodthirsty nation under former president Omar al-Bashir. Even after his 2019 removal, Bashir remains a key part of the “new” Sudan’s future.

“We’re talking about probably the most brutal dictator in the lifetime of many of your listeners… over 300,000 people dying…over 2 million people being displaced, and all of that blood is on that guy’s hands,” World Mission’s Greg Kelley explains.

“For the process of healing to begin, Omar al-Bashir needs to be held accountable.”

As summarized here, Bashir squelched a 2003 rebel uprising in Darfur with excessive force. Arab militia known as the Janjaweed went on a villainous spree, killing between 300,000 and a half-million people and displacing more than two million more.

“God’s heart is…an expression of unity, of oneness [among nations], worshiping our Creator. The absolute opposite of that is genocide, ethnic cleansing; targeting people groups or nations,” Kelley explains.

“That’s what Omar al Bashir did, and the non-Arab population was his target. His agenda was complete annihilation and removal.”

Obliteration does not sufficiently describe Bashir’s intent.

“[He] was trying to systematically impose psychological warfare on the people that would stay with them for generations,” Kelley says. “He did it [in] some of the most atrocious ways imaginable… burning villages to the ground, killing men, raping women.”

More about the Darfur genocide here.

SOURCE: Mission Network News, Katey Hearth

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Today Wycliffe Associates dedicates the New Testament in a new language: Symbolic Universal Notation, or SUN.

SUN is a concept-based language Wycliffe Associates developed specifically for Deaf and Deaf and Blind communities. It has the potential to bring God’s Word to about 56 million Deaf people who cannot communicate in a local sign language.

Bruce Smith with Wycliffe Associates says, “We recently crossed the milestone of having the entire New Testament translated into this symbolic universal notation. Our team is now turning toward translating the Old Testament as well, but this is a great milestone. So, we’re going to celebrate that this coming week and help move it forward to Deaf and Deaf Blind communities around the world.”

SUN was developed after Emely Wang, a volunteer with Wycliffe Associates, learned that almost 600,000 people in the world are both deaf and blind. She began to question how those people or other Deaf people who don’t know sign language learn about Christ.

The answer? Many simply do not. There are about 70 million Deaf people worldwide and around 80% of those people don’t know sign language. They are isolated and separated from educational systems, their communities, and the truth of the Gospel.

“They don’t even communicate using the community language,” Smith says. “And so, the challenge we faced a few years ago was how do you reach people who don’t even communicate in the local sign language?”

Smith continues, “And our team of hearing impaired and Deaf people actually came up with this approach, which we call symbolic universal notation. And it’s a way to convert the gestures of sign language into symbols on a page. Or, in the case of Deaf Blind, we print them using 3D printers so that they can be touched and felt in terms of the symbols and then understood.”

About a year and a half later, after much testing and a hard work, Wycliffe Associates completed the SUN New Testament.

SOURCE: Mission Network News, Anna Deckert

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Sammy Tippit Ministries’ new WhatsApp program creates a space for Christians around the world to connect with each other.

Christians can be isolated from one another. Some countries have a scarcity of believers, and some Christians live in hard-to-reach areas. That is why Sammy Tippit Ministries has now launched its WhatsApp program to connect believers from all over the world.

So far, 650 distinct small groups have formed across 46 countries. Sammy Tippit estimates there are 30 to 60 people in each group. “We’re off to a great start. And we’re very excited about [being] able to reach many, many thousands of people, tens of thousands of people around the world with the Gospel, and also not only reach them but disciple them after they come to Christ.”

The project is allowing Sammy Tippit Ministries to disciple people that wouldn’t otherwise have been reached. One new Christian in Afghanistan has received training in Christ after the leader of his church was martyred. Another group in China meets digitally together every morning, sharing prayer requests and Scripture.

Ground zero for this ministry? Brazil. Already, over 2000 pastors in that country have signed up to be a part of this program. At a recent evangelistic event in Brazil they had a breakout meeting for the event, expecting about 250 Brazilian pastors. Instead, 650 showed up.

SOURCE: Mission Network News, Kevin Zeller

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As a result of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that hit Puerto Rico on Jan. 7 (usgs.gov), 61% of the island’s 856 public schools remain shuttered even a month later. This situation has led to an increase in home-schooling in the area (thealpenanews.com). Puerto Rican families who never would have otherwise considered home-schooling now have no place to send their children and are thrust into alternative education options.

Chinese families are also forced to reconsider their schooling methods as authorities are calling on people to stay at home to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Fatalities are on the rise, with over 2,000 deaths nationwide and over 80,000 confirmed cases reported. China’s Ministry of Education has recently asked schools to use internet platforms as an option for teaching students (techinasia.com). Some schools are providing education for their students at home, but what about the infected students who are unable to leave their homes in areas where this option is unavailable?

Throughout the U.S., families who envisioned their children thriving in public school, from the day they first sent them on the bus until their senior prom, are also beginning to rethink their options. The School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey reports that in 2013, about 22% of students surveyed, ages 12-18, reported being bullied at school (NCES.org). Parents who have sent their children to public school for years are now pulling their bullied children out, in their high school years, to home educate.

SOURCE: Charisma News, Paul and Gena Suarez

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For three years the team at Flowing Oil Ministries in Dalton, Georgia, said oil was supernaturally flowing from a Bible owned by a man named Jerry Pearce. People traveled to the north Georgia city from all over the country to see the Bible, receive prayer and take home a small vial of the clear oil. More than 350,000 vials of the oil have been given away since the miracle reportedly began in early 2017.

But today, 400 gallons of oil later, leaders of the ministry say the miracle stopped on Jan. 10. On Feb. 11 they canceled regular worship services, which were being held in the Wink Theater in Dalton. And the ministry’s website says revival meetings scheduled in Arizona, North Carolina, California and other states have all been canceled. What happened?

The abrupt announcement came around the time that the Chattanooga Times Free Press published an investigative article claiming that Pearce had been seen regularly buying mineral oil at a local Tractor Supply store in Dalton. Two store managers told the Times they saw Pearce making the purchases. And when the newspaper ran chemical tests on the oil, they reportedly found the substance exactly matched the oil sold at the store.

Leaders of the ministry reject the idea that they were fabricating the miracle. They have maintained from the beginning that the oil first appeared as a small smudge in Psalm 39 and that it eventually soaked the entire book. Leaders then put the Bible in a plastic bag, and later in a glass container, and claimed that the oil kept flowing.

As reports spread, people began flocking to Dalton to be anointed by the oil. Sometimes ministry leaders would lay the dripping Bible on people’s heads at the altar. Some visitors claimed to be healed, while others said they sensed God’s presence in a special way.

Now, the ministry has shut down, at least temporarily. In a statement posted on Flowing Oil’s website, leaders said that Pearce’s purchase of oil at the local store “was made without the knowledge or approval of anyone else in the ministry and we are seeking the full truth of these accusations.” The statement also says Pearce has expressed remorse “for having caused the integrity of the work of God to be questioned because of his action.”

Pearce later admitted in a Feb. 18 interview with the Times that he did in fact buy eight gallons of mineral oil from Tractor Supply on one occasion to pour on the Bible. “I was going to pour that oil on the Bible when the Bible quit producing oil,” he told the newspaper. “But the Lord checked my spirit on it.”

SOURCE: Charisma News

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It is ironic that former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is presenting himself as the balanced alternative to extreme socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders. In reality, when it comes to areas of great concern to Christian conservatives, Bloomberg has been anything but moderate.

As noted by Catholic activist Bill Donohue with references to his tenure as mayor, “on two key social issues—abortion and religious liberty—the presidential candidate was a total bomb.”

Donohue actually claims that “Bloomberg is one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians in American history.”

Among the former mayor’s accomplishments was this: “Bloomberg’s passion for abortion allowed him to appropriate $15 million from a civic facility revenue bond transaction that benefited Planned Parenthood.”

Would you want someone like this in the White House?

Lest you think these policies were a thing of the past, on Feb. 12 Bloomberg announced, “As president, I will fiercely protect a woman’s right to choose, and I will appoint judges who will defend that right.”

He also declared, “On my first day in office, I will reverse the damage President Trump has done to women’s rights and ensure that every woman has access to reproductive health care.”

Never Trumpers who are pro-life might want to reconsider their stance should Bloomberg become the Democratic nominee. (For that matter, given the current crop of candidates, they should reconsider their stance regardless of which candidate emerges as the Democratic nominee.)

Donohue also states that, “On religious liberty issues, Bloomberg’s record was similarly awful.”

SOURCE: Charisma News

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