Bible Signed by Trump Days after St. John’s Church Photo-Op Is Being Sold for $37,500

Bible Signed by Trump Days after St. John’s Church Photo-Op Is Being Sold for $37,500


On Monday, a Bible featuring a signature from President Trump went up for sale with an asking price of $37,500.

Gary Zimet, who is the CEO and founder of Moments In Time, an online store that features rare autographs and historical documents, explained to Business Insider that the Bible was signed by Trump days after he stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC as he held up a Bible in his hand.

In June, the President was highly criticized for the incident as nearby protestors were dispersed with tear gas by law enforcement reportedly so that he could pose for a photo-op with the Bible in front of the church in Lafayette Square.

The Bible that Zimet is selling, however, is not the same one from the photo-op. The 67-year-old curator claimed that he had one of his contacts bring the Bible to the White House for Trump to sign the same week of the St. John’s Church controversy.

“Someone like him, having the gall to sign a Bible, after what he did in the photo op is revolting,” Zimet said.

While the online dealer is not a fan of the President, he recognizes that Trump signed memorabilia holds tremendous financial value.

“The only thing I’m interested in, vis-à-vis Trump, is making a profit off of him,” he asserted.

Zimet also has a baseball on sale that features the signatures of Trump as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“A high-ranking…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

California Judge Bans John MacArthur, Church from Worshiping Indoors

California Judge Bans John MacArthur, Church from Worshiping Indoors


A California judge on Thursday issued an injunction prohibiting John MacArthur and Grace Community Church from meeting indoors for worship services during the pandemic, thus handing Los Angeles County the ruling it has sought for several weeks.

Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff, in an 18-page decision, ruled that the county’s health order banning large indoor gatherings “has a real and substantial relationship to public health and safety.”

MacArthur and the church have defied the county and state restrictions on indoor worship.

“The court finds the balance of harms tips in favor of the County,” Beckloff wrote. “The potential consequences of community spread of COVID-19 and concomitant risk of death to members of the community – associated and unassociated with the Church – outweighs the harm that flows from the restriction on indoor worship caused by the County Health Order.”

The church can legally worship outdoors, Beckloff noted.

“While the court is mindful that there is no substitute for indoor worship in the ‘spiritual refuge’ of a sanctuary, the court cannot ignore the County Health Order does not dictate a ban on worship. Instead, it provides any worship must take place other than indoors,” Beckloff wrote. “The County Health Order allows worship to occur outdoors, virtually through the internet and in any manner that is not indoors with a large gathering of…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Hundreds of Ethiopian Christians Killed in Coordinated Attacks by Extremists since June

Hundreds of Ethiopian Christians Killed in Coordinated Attacks by Extremists since June


In Ethiopia, throughout the summer, Muslim extremists have carried out an onslaught of anti-Christian attacks that have left hundreds dead and thousands displaced.

According to the Barnabas Fund, an international persecution watchdog, the attacks on Ethiopian believers appear to be coordinated and carefully planned.

“These targeted genocides of Christians by Muslim extremists are going on unabated in the south, south-east and east of Addis Ababa,” an Ethiopian Christian told Barnabas Fund in August.

The attackers are believed to be a youth movement of Oromo men known as Qeerroo or “bachelors.” The Oromo are considered to be an ethnic group who are mainly comprised of Muslims.

In June, Oromo singer Hachalu Hundessa was fatally shot in the capital of Addis Ababa. Following the assassination, Qeeroo members began killing local Christians in door-to-door attacks.

CBN News reports that the attacks were carried out across multiple Ethiopian towns, including Arsi Negele, Ziway, Shashemane, Gedeb Asasa, Kofele, Dodola, Adaba, Robe, Goba, Bale Agarfa, Chiro, Harar, Dire Dawa, Adama, Dera, Asela, and Kembolcha.

Mrs. Eniye Cheru shared her experience with the Barnabas Fund, detailing how the group attacked her family back in June.

“They came to my home and began to knock on our door violently. We tried to escape with our children via the window”, she recounted. “They…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Mainline Protestants twice as likely as evangelicals to have religiously unaffiliated teenage kids: Pew

Unsplash/Kate Kalvach

Mainline Protestant parents are twice as likely to have religiously unaffiliated teenaged children as evangelical parents, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.

In a report released Thursday, Pew found that 80% of evangelicals surveyed had a teenage child who shared their religious identification; 81% of Catholic respondents reported the same.  

However, mainline Protestant respondents who had a teenage child that identified as mainline Protestant was 55%, far lower than the evangelical and Catholic samples.

Further, among the three Christian groups, mainline Protestants had the highest percentage of teenage children who identified as unaffiliated, at 24%.

Evangelical respondents had the lowest percentage of unaffiliated teenaged children at 12%, while 15% of Catholic respondents had a teenage child that was religiously unaffiliated.

Among religious unaffiliated parents surveyed, 86% percent of them had a teenage child who was also unaffiliated, while 10% had teens who identified with one of the Christian categories.

When it comes to religious practices with the family, evangelical teens were more likely to engage in such practices compared to…

… Read More

—-

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

قالب وردپرس

9/11 and the six-month anniversary of the pandemic: How to find the help and hope we need today

Smoke billows from the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Jim Collins)

This day will always be marked by the same image: the Twin Towers are burning, smoke spiraling into the clear blue sky over Manhattan, and the world as we know it is about to change forever.

Two months after that horrific morning in 2001, President George W. Bush stated: “Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.” 

His words are just as relevant today as they were nineteen years ago. 

“You sit still and trust the engineer” 

Today is painfully significant for another reason as well: it was six months ago today that the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. On March 11, there were over 118,000 cases of coronavirus around the world. As of this morning, that number stands at more than 28 million, with global deaths exceeding 900,000. 

On days like today, it is good to remember that “the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). The God who “determines the number of the stars” and “gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4) is the same God who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (v. 3). 

His word assures us that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). This is because “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). In the meantime, we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). 

I have long admired…

… Read More

—

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.

قالب وردپرس

4 Keys to Individual Biblical Literacy

I haven’t found anyone in church leadership who saw this coming. There aren’t stories of prescient church planners and innovators who had prepared for the day when nearly every church had to stop all programming, including Sunday worship services, and find ways to communicate with their members while they were largely confined to their homes. 

As a Christian publisher, we’ve faced different problems, including international supply chain issues, printing and delivery delays, and a halt in plans to provide resources to churches that aren’t meeting.  

One thing that has remained strong here at Tyndale is the demand by individuals for Bibles. People are indeed seeking out God’s Word as much around them has collapsed. I’m sure we’d all agree there has never been a better time to dive deeply into God’s Word. 

It may be that God will use this time to turn our generation to unprecedented repentance and faithfulness. I think that you’ll agree that a deep and lasting revival will depend on a groundswell of biblical literacy.

Perhaps you have faced in your church what research has shown to be the case nationally: regular church attenders love and respect the Bible, but less than 40 percent of them are reading the Bible regularly.  

So, how can pastors and church leaders promote biblical literacy and reading the Bible regularly?

We believe there are four keys: 

  1. Readability – The individual’s ability to easily read the passage.
  2. Portability – An individual’s ability…

… Read More

—

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Thom Rainer.

قالب وردپرس

St. John’s Church Puts Up Murals Promoting Racial Unity, Togetherness

St. John’s Church Puts Up Murals Promoting Racial Unity, Togetherness


A church in Washington, D.C. that was vandalized by rioters has made a powerful statement on racial unity.

St. John’s church, which, according to The Christian Post, was almost burned down and was graffitied by rioters, has painted a series of murals in the spirit of racial justice.

One of the murals has Amos 5:24 written on it, which states, “Let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Another mural prominently features South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who teaches that “our lives are inexplicably bound together.”

Reverend Bob Fisher, the rector of the church, told The Christian Post that the murals were meant to bring light the beauty to the surrounding neighborhood.

He said, “One thing I hope for with the murals is that while the nature of stained-glass windows is to bring light and beauty into a room or worship space, we’re able to flip that script by sending light and beauty outward to our surrounding neighborhood.”

He continued, “The visuals are like the bell we ring in our steeple — they remind us that God is present, that God loves us all, and that it is important, especially in difficult times, to look up! To remember that we are all part of something greater.”

The murals were painted by the P.A.I.N.T.S. Institute in partnership with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District. The Smithsonian Institute attended the…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Pence Says He and Trump ‘Stand without Apology’ for ‘the Right to Life’

Pence Says He and Trump ‘Stand without Apology’ for ‘the Right to Life’


Vice President Mike Pence, on Wednesday, referenced a recent narrow pro-life loss at the Supreme Court in arguing that the high court needs “more conservatives” and that President Trump needs to be reelected.

Pence made the comments in Murrysville, Pa., as part of the Susan B. Anthony List’s “Life Wins!” tour.

The Supreme Court, in June, struck down a Louisiana law that required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The vote was 5-4, with both of Trump’s nominees (Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh) voting with the minority to uphold the law.

The Louisiana law, Pence said, should seem “perfectly reasonable for anybody that cares about women’s health.”

“But this Supreme Court … voted 5-4 to strike that law down, which leads me to only one conclusion: We need more conservatives on the Supreme Court of the United States, and we need four more years of President Donald Trump in the White House,” Pence said.

Trump has “kept his word to the American people in the last election” to appoint “principled conservatives” to the judiciary, Pence said.

On other issues, Pence noted that he became the first vice president to address the March for Life in person and Trump became the first president to do the same.

“We stand without apology, like all of you, for the right to life,” he said.

Speaking “boldly” in support of the…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Wildfires Continue to Ravage California

Wildfires Continue to Ravage California


California has been hit with a series of wildfires that have ravaged the state’s beautiful forests. The most recent one, which hit the iconic Sierra National Forest, trapped hundreds of Labor Day campers and required helicopters dropping gallons upon gallons of water to put out.

Officials said they had never seen a fire move so quickly in a forest, covering 15 miles a day.

But this wasn’t the only major fire to hit California in recent days.

The Associated Press reports that another fire broke out on Wednesday, September 9, 2020, in the Plumas National Forest, which is northeast of San Francisco, and spread 25 miles a day, dwarfing the speed of the Sierra National Forest. It went on to burn up a total of 400 square miles of forestry.

And in Montgomery County, another fire grew so quickly that it doubled in size overnight. This blaze trapped over a dozen firefighters, who needed to don their protective fire shelters to keep from dying in the blaze. One firefighter has been seriously injured from the blaze.

These are just three in a series of 85 fires that have hit California. CBN News reports many of these fires are the result of a toxic mix of dry heat, record high temperatures, and strong winds. In fact, the so-called diablo and Santa Ana winds are the main reasons behind the difficulty in putting out the California fires.

However, a good portion of California’s wildfires are not from natural causes. Law…

… Read More

Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

قالب وردپرس

Abortion survivor’s birth mom opens up: ‘We weren’t allowed to shame the family’

Melissa Ohden (L) speaks with her birth mother, Ruth Lindahl (R). | The Abortion Survivors Network

Melissa Ohden survived a failed saline infusion abortion but her birth mom didn’t know it.

While Ohden’s testimony has been shared widely — she founded The Abortion Survivors Network and testified before Congress — little has been known about her birth mom, Ruth Lindahl.

Lindahl is now opening up to the public about the circumstances that led to the abortion attempt in 1977, how she was unaware of Ohden’s survival, and what she’d tell others who are considering an abortion.

She said she couldn’t share her testimony until recently because she felt “very ashamed of what I didn’t do — I didn’t stand up to my parents.”

“I truly believe, Melissa, is that everything in life happens for a reason and we may never, ever know exactly the reason this happened to either one of us but if the reason was so that you didn’t have to live … with my parents as your grandparents and suffer the same abuse that I had to, then I’m so glad that you got to where you were with your adoptive parents and that they loved you and took you home,” Lindahl said.

She was 19 when she got pregnant with Ohden and was forced by her mother to undergo an abortion.

“We were not allowed to shame the family,” Lindahl recalled, later noting that her family went to church regularly.

It wasn’t until 30 years later that Lindahl found out about Ohden’s survival.

… Read More

Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

قالب وردپرس