Two black Christian women are standing up against the Black Lives Matter organization by covering up its murals that have been painted in several New York City locations.

The Christian Post reports that on Saturday, activists Bevelyn Beatty and Edmee Chavannes attempted to paint over the Black Lives Matter mural outside Trump Tower. Both women arrived in a sports utility vehicle with numerous cans of black paint, alongside several other women.

A Facebook live video on Beatty’s page showed them pouring the paint over the mural’s yellow letters. As of Wednesday, the now-viral video has amassed over 1.6 million views, with 20,000 likes and 40,000 shares.

According to the video’s description, Beatty wrote that the Black Lives Matter Movement is “a domestic terrorist organization” who does not “care about black lives.”

Instead of using the hashtag ‘Black Lives Matters’, the activists are using the hashtag ‘Jesus Matters’ in making a statement.

“They support the killing of more than 600K Black Babies every year!” she added.

“We’re not standing with Black Lives Matter. We want our police. Refund our police,” Beatty said in the video.

“Jesus Matters! Jesus Matters!” she exclaimed as she smeared the paint over the mural.

“Black Lives Matters is a demon. It’s a devil!” Chavannes added. “It’s destroying this nation!”

As the NYPD came to…

A man from China recently offered a personal account of how he and other believers are being forced to renounce their faith or, if they refuse, be imprisoned.

A man under the pseudonym Li Geng told persecution watchdog Bitter Winter that he was arrested five years ago and was imprisoned for three years and six months for “organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the law enforcement.”

Li is a member of The Church of the Almighty God (CAG), which Bitter Winter describes as “the single most persecuted religious group in China” due to its “phenomenal growth” in membership.

During his incarceration, Li was kept under 24/7 supervision by a team of prisoners that were led by guard assigned inmates.

Bitter Winter explains that the “supervised” prisoner had to obey the team leader and must always stay in close proximity. This also includes asking for permission in everything that they do, including eating, drinking water, using the toilet, changing clothes, sleeping or even scratching an itch. However, if the leader denies the request, the prisoner must comply.

In order to make CAG members renounce their faith, they are subjected to mandatory indoctrination.

Reportedly, Li was required to memorize prison regulations and “The Standards for Being a Good Pupil and Child,” a manual centered on the teachings of Chinese philosopher Confucius….

Police from Kansas City, Missouri are raising funds for a single mother after she donated her $100 lottery winnings to a police officer who was shot in the line of duty.

According to NBC12 in Kansas City, Shetara Sims is a single mother who lost her job because of the coronavirus pandemic. She said she had $7 and bills due but she found a $1 bill in a grocery store parking lot and bought a scratch-off ticket. She won $100.

Her daughter, Rakiya Edmonson, 12, suggested they donate the winnings to a police officer who was shot on July 2 while chasing a suspect. He is currently in the intensive care unit in stable condition, KCPD shared.

“She won $100, and I said we should donate it to the police officer that got shot for his family to go eat and see him,” Rakiya said.

On July 10, Sims made the $100 donation anonymously.

NBC12 says police “spent days tracking her down” and set up a GoFundMe page for the single mother. As of Wednesday morning, the site had raised more than $51,000.

“Even still, when we tracked her down, she said, ‘Doesn’t the officer’s family need it more than me?’ She’s got a heart of gold, and here’s how you can help her out: gf.me/u/ygr4ya,” the Kansas City police department said in a tweet.

Sims said she appreciates the work of police officers. After her other daughter was murdered in 2012, Kansas City police stayed in contact…

Earlier this week, an appeals court ruled that a New York-based Christian adoption agency can now sue the state of New York for attempting to shut them down because the charity does not place children with same-sex or unmarried couples.

According to The Christian Post, after New York’s Office of Children and Family Services sent a notice to New Hope Family Services threatening to disband the charity for violating a 2013 state law against discriminating against applicants, New Hope filed a lawsuit in 2018. This latest ruling pushes the case back to the district court and handed the charity a victory.

The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that New Hope was within its First Amendment rights. Circuit Judge Reena Raggi, who wrote the panel’s opinion, stated that “the allegations cannot be dismissed for failing to state a plausible Free Exercise claim.”

“It is plainly a serious step to order an authorized adoption agency such as New Hope—operating without complaint for 50 years, taking no government funding, successfully placing approximately 1,000 children, and with adoptions pending for being supervised—to close all its adoption operations,” Raggi wrote.

“All the more serious when, as just discussed, the agency has, for five years and without objection by OCFS, used recusal and referral to avoid rejecting…

(RNS) — When asked what she would write about if she could write about anything, Ashlee Eiland’s answer was immediate.

Kindness.

It was 2018, and the pastor said the divisiveness and contention in public conversations was weighing heavily on her. Eiland, the formation and preaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church near Grand Rapids, Michigan, said she felt a “holy discontent” to offer an alternative.

She wanted to help people talk across their differences and, at the same time, still be able to recognize each other’s worth as human beings created in God’s image and likeness.

“I wanted to recapture that because I feel like, especially two years ago, some of that was being lost. I was sensing that would take us down a really hard trajectory if things continued in that direction,” she said.

But kindness isn’t all holding doors and letting people merge in front of you in traffic. The goal of kindness is restoration and transformation, Eiland said.

“I think sometimes what kindness means, if we’re doing it well, is that we are righteously angry,” she said.

“We are lamenting, we are grieving and sometimes holding that grief and anger and lament with someone,” she explained. “I’m specifically thinking of people of color in this country and Black people, who, for generations, have endured an injustice. That should not be met with a pithy call to just be nice to…

Pointing to the U.S. Constitution and state law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week issued a letter prohibiting local governments from closing private religious schools during the pandemic.

The letter, issued July 17 and addressed to “religious private schools in Texas,” said Paxton “acknowledges the robust constitutional and statutory protections unique to religious individuals and communities at all times.”

Local governments, he said, are prohibited under the governor’s orders from closing Christian and other religious schools during the pandemic.

“Local public health officials have begun to issue orders restricting or limiting in-person instruction in private and public schools,” Paxton wrote. “… Local public health orders issued by cities and counties must be consistent with the Governor’s orders and the Attorney General’s guidance. If local public health orders are inconsistent with these authorities, the local orders must yield.

“Under the Governor’s orders, local governments are prohibited from closing religious institutions or dictating mitigation strategies to those institutions,” he added. “Local governments are similarly prohibited from issuing blanket orders closing religious private schools. Because a local order closing a religious private school or institution is inconsistent with the Governor’s order, any local order is…

While continuing to receive treatment for his stage four pancreatic cancer, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek shared that he has also been writing a new memoir.

In March, Trebek, who is continuing to work through his cancer treatment, stopped recording for new episodes of the quiz-based show when the coronavirus broke out across the United States. Since then, hit reruns of Jeopardy! have been airing in its weekly broadcast, with Trebek recording the introductions from home.

Trebek told the New York Times that he is narrating 20 introductions to old episodes of Jeopardy!, including its pilot episode which originally aired in 1984.

According to the long-time host, the night before recording the new introductions, Trebek was not feeling well and in some pain, but after the cameras came on, his strength began to reappear.

“Oddly enough, when we started taping, I suddenly started to regain my strength,” Trebek told the Times. “It’s the strangest thing. It is some kind of an elixir.”

While Trebek hopes to continue with the show that he has been hosting for 36 seasons, he noted that he would step down if his health hinders his performance.

“It’s a quality program, and I think I do a good job hosting it, and when I start slipping, I’ll stop hosting,” he said.

On Monday, Good Morning America released an interview that was recorded with Trebek at his home. In the…