The head of a prominent Christian financial ministry says the pandemic could be a blessing for many Americans who were stuck in the wrong job before they were laid off.

Chuck Bentley, the CEO of Crown Financial Ministries, said his organization has received phone calls from many individuals who had not saved enough and were not prepared for living without an income for multiple months.

“Of course, who could have been prepared for something of this magnitude and this duration? It’s affected all of us,” Bentley told Christian Headlines.

But the disruption to daily life could be a blessing for many families, he said.

“Sixty percent of Americans said before the pandemic that they were unhappy with their job,” Bentley told Christian Headlines. “And that’s usually because it’s not a good fit for their skills. Pray and ask the Lord to use this to lead you to a better fit with your skills and talents. Pray for God to use this as the most exciting time in your life, where you may find something that you never would have had you not lost the other job.”

Roughly 40 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck prior to the pandemic, Bentley said.

“There’s been a lot of pain and there continues to be a lot of pain,” he said.

For the unemployed, Bentley recommends signing up for unemployment benefits, which he says are “the best they’ve ever been in history.” From…

A U.S. senator who was in ministry before he was elected to office says he’s still serving God in Congress – only in a different way.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) served as program director from 1996 to 2009 at the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s Falls Creek summer camp and was in youth ministry for 22 years. The Oklahoma convention is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

He was elected to the U.S. House in 2010 and 2012 before winning a special election in 2014 to succeed Sen. Tom Coburn, who was retiring.

“My wife still calls this ‘life’s greatest interruption’ for us. We didn’t see ourselves serving in Congress,” Lankford said Thursday during the virtual Values Voter Summit. “I saw myself serving in ministry for the rest of my life. But God completely interrupted our life in 2009-10 and called us to be able to run for Congress.

“This is my calling,” Lankford said, referencing his service in Congress. “This is my task to be able to have ways to be able to serve my fellow man, and to still be able to serve God in the process. … People will catch me and say, ‘Well you were in ministry and now you’ve left the ministry.’ And I laugh and I say, ‘No, this is still my ministry,’ … and I feel like He has led me to it.”

To those who say Washington, D.C. is similar to Sodom and Gomorrah, Lankford says, “God was pulling people out of…

Yom Kippur, additionally recognized as the Day of Atonement, is the most revered day of the year in Judaism. Its fundamental themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally commemorate this holiday with all-day fasting and extended prayer, and typically most of the day spent in ceremonies at their synagogue.

Following briskly on the heels of the Jewish New Year comes the most important holiday of the Jewish calendar. Unlike the New Year’s feast, however, the Day of Atonement is a holy day of a much more somber nature.

For 2020, Yom Kippur will be Sunday, September 27th through Monday, September 28th.

There are five things Christians should know about the Day of Atonement.

1. What is Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)?

Yom Kippur is Hebrew for Day of Atonement; it is a holy day ordained by God in Leviticus 16 and 23.

Originally on the tenth day of the seventh month, Yom Kippur is now observed in the first month. It concludes the Ten Days of Awe, which began with Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year).

This year, Yom Kippur spans September 29^th through 30^th, from sundown to sundown.

2.  What are the biblical origins of Atonement?

The Day of Atonement was the only day on which the high priest could enter the tabernacle’s inner sanctuary and come before the ark of the covenant, according to Leviticus 16.

First, the high priest had to observe purifying rituals and dress in special white clothing. He then…

More than 200 leaders from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are asking President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to commit to resettling more refugees in Fiscal Year 2021.

“As people of faith, we believe that we must honor the dignity of every human, regardless of national origin,” reads the letter to Trump and Pompeo. “We have a commitment to follow the teachings of Jesus and to uphold our nation’s tradition of protecting the persecuted.”

The letter was signed by 243 leaders working with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a faith-based group that helps immigrants.

The letter asks that refugee admissions increase to at least 95,000 in Fiscal Year 2021, which starts Oct. 1.

In 2020, Trump cut the admissions goal to 18,000, but as of Sept. 24, only 10,845 refugees have been resettled, according to LIRS.

“Our nation’s once pristine reputation as a place of refuge for the oppressed and persecuted of all faiths has been gravely damaged,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president & CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and a former refugee from Sri Lanka. “I question if my own family would be welcomed and embraced in America today were we fleeing the ethnic and religious persecution that drove us from our home.”

In many refugee resettlement cases, the federal government works…

A study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that just six percent of Americans adhere to a biblical worldview. The findings, released in the American Worldview Inventory 2020, show a disconcerting realm for those who may consider themselves evangelists. The survey also found Millennials held the lowest number of biblical worldview holders, at just two percent.

According to the study, Americans’ biblical worldview has been rapidly eroding but eroding the fastest for millennials. “Previous findings from the American Worldview Inventory 2020 show the rapid erosion of the biblical worldview in American culture—with only 6 percent of adults today possessing a biblical worldview, down from twice that (12 percent) in the mid-1990s. But nowhere is this cultural shift more dramatic than among the youngest American adults, ages 18 to 36. The findings show a generation radically different in its worldview and beliefs from previous generations.”

Additionally, the survey found millennials are the most likely to exact revenge when wronged and are least enthusiastic about America. However, most millennials claim to be Christians, even though they have the least biblical worldview, according to the survey. Additionally, millennials report they have the least respect for other people out of all age groups surveyed, and they are twice as likely to say they…

New information has been publicly released regarding the late apologist Ravi Zacharias and an alleged online sexual relationship that was first reported in 2017.

In a three-part installment last week from The Roys Report, the website of independent investigative journalist Julie Roys, new testimonies and emails were released suggesting an alternative version of events than those that were represented nearly three years ago when allegations emerged that Zacharias had been involved in an illicit online sexual relationship with a Canadian woman. Around this same time, the famed apologist’s academic credentials and resume were also scrutinized amid questions he had inflated and misrepresented them.

Zacharias, who died in May after a battle with cancer, said in a Christianity Today article published in December 2017 that the woman had sent him unwanted, racy photos of herself and that it was part of a plot to extract millions of dollars from him and his ministry. 

Some have maintained that his words to the magazine were in violation of the settlement agreement he reached with the Canadian woman, Lori Anne, and her husband, Brad Thompson,…

The Church at Planned Parenthood, a church that meets right outside of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, was ordered by a judge to relocate its services.

According to The Christian Post, after the church was sued by Planned Parenthood for harassment, a judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the church to move its services across the street from the abortion facility. The church was also asked not to hold services during the clinics operating hours.

TCAPP’s attorney Tracy Tribbett argued that the decision is an attempt to silence the pro-life church.

She said, “Plaintiffs (Planned Parenthood) do not like the speech that is occurring outside of their walls, they want it completely eradicated. People do not picket away from the place where they have an issue.”

According to The Christian Post, Planned Parenthood sued the church for “recklessly disrupting the normal functioning of a health care facility by ‘making noise that unreasonably disrupts the piece within the facility.’”

In the past, the regional Planned Parenthood chief executive even called TCAPP worshippers “bullies who are trying to take away care from young women, men, the LGBTQ community and black, indigenous people of color in Spokane.”

According to the injunction, TCAPP has been known to have large rallies and protests.

The injunction states, “TCAPP has been holding…

A California judge has sided with California Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church in yet another hearing over the church’s decision to hold indoor public worship services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff ruled that MacArthur and his Sun Valley-based church are entitled to a full trial on the merits of their challenge against state and local orders prohibiting indoor church gatherings before they can be held in contempt for violating the orders. 

For nearly three months, the county has sought to shut down the church and hold MacArthur in contempt for repeatedly violating the order.  However, attorneys at the Thomas More Society have argued that the governor’s orders violate several provisions of the state constitution.

This week, Beckloff ruled that the courts must first decide on the constitutionality of the shutdown orders before the county can pursue contempt charges.

Due to the state’s shut-down orders, the contempt trial is not expected to take place until early 2021. 

The court…

On Thursday, Jaime Smith, a 40-year old mother and attorney, wrote an op-ed in The Huffington Post explaining how the death of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg led her to join The Satanic Temple because of their pro-abortion stance.

She expressed her first reaction to Ginsburg’s passing was “not grief but fear. I fear that American citizens are inching closer to living in a theocracy or dictatorship and that the checks meant to prevent this from happening are close to eroding beyond repair.”

Furthermore, she explained how Ginsburg was a strong advocate for a woman’s reproductive rights and how her death places Roe v. Wade in “imminent danger of being overturned” because of what she called “religious objections to what is a safe and necessary procedure for the women who seek it out after discussion with their physician.”

Smith was surprised at how The Satanic Temple’s Seven Fundamental Tenets aligned with her  personal beliefs for years, including how “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

“I realized, happily, that these were my people and that I had been a Satanist for several years without even knowing it,” she added.

Tenets aside, Smith “sought strength” from the Temple’s efforts “to turn religious arguments on their head by pushing for religious liberty for their members on an equal basis with believers…