A pas­tor who denounced white suprema­cy in a mov­ing speech at MTV’s Video Music Awards last month has been forced out of his church because of his comments.

Reverend Robert Lee IV deliv­ered a poignant address that took aim at the ide­ol­o­gy of his ances­tor, Civil War gen­er­al and Confederate icon Robert E Lee, dur­ing the awards show.

“We have made my ances­tor an idol of white suprema­cy, racism, and hate,” he said.

Houston megachurch pastor was reluctant to help Harvey victims — after all, that’s not where the money is.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD

On Monday, mil­lion­aire pas­tor Joel Osteen taught more Americans via his actions than he’ll ever do in a ser­mon. At least ini­tial­ly, Osteen refused to open the doors of his Houston megachurch to peo­ple dis­placed by Tropical Storm Harvey. Even though he even­tu­al­ly reversed him­self and defend­ed his con­duct in eva­sive media inter­views, Osteen’s mes­sage was clear: Don’t count on reli­gious lead­ers to do what’s right.

That mes­sage is one that many have been hear­ing for quite some time, as American Protestantism has moved from focus­ing on hum­ble pub­lic ser­vice to greed and naked polit­i­cal ambi­tion. Some, like Dallas pas­tor Robert Jeffress, man­age to pur­sue both simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. In 2013, he fin­ished con­struc­tion on a $130 mil­lion church cam­pus in Dallas, a project which he claimed was about glo­ri­fy­ing God, instead of mammon.

“In these tough eco­nom­ic times, we want­ed to use our gifts to build a church that pro­vides spir­i­tu­al growth and heal­ing while seek­ing to reflect the splen­dor and majesty of God,” he said at the time. A year ear­li­er, he had claimed that then-pres­i­dent Barack Obama was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

Jeffress made those com­ments dur­ing the 2012 elec­tion cam­paign, in the con­text of his sup­port of that year’s Republican nom­i­nee, Mitt Romney. Just four years pri­or, the Baptist min­is­ter had claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith was a “cult” whose mem­bers were going to hell. In a 2016 move that sur­prised no one, Jeffress was one of Donald Trump’s ear­li­est endorsers.

Osteen is dif­fer­ent from some of his evan­gel­i­cal col­leagues in that he has gen­er­al­ly shied away from polit­i­cal involve­ment. Despite hav­ing called Trump “a friend of our min­istry” and “a good man,” he has not endorsed polit­i­cal can­di­dates. What Osteen has endorsed, how­ev­er, is what many crit­ics have called the “pros­per­i­ty gospel,” the idea that God not only wants to bless believ­ers spir­i­tu­al­ly but wants to bless them finan­cial­ly as well.

“We just feel like this is God’s bless­ings,” he said dur­ing a 2012 inter­view with Oprah Winfrey. “You know, we’re big givers, we live what we preach, we’ve giv­en mil­lions of dol­lars. And I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong with hav­ing a nice place to live and being blessed.”

To his cred­it, Osteen does not draw a salary from his Lakewood Church nor does he direct­ly ask his fans for mon­ey, unlike many oth­er osten­si­bly reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions. Last year, a Canadian reli­gious group called Gospel for Asia was accused of abscond­ing with more than $90 mil­lion in dona­tions. Nonetheless, Osteen’s fol­low­ers have cer­tain­ly ponied up bigly. His orga­ni­za­tion report­ed­ly has an annu­al bud­get of more than $70 mil­lion, and the church facil­i­ty he orig­i­nal­ly declined to open up to flood refugees was pre­vi­ous­ly the home are­na of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

Osteen’s views on wealth and his osten­ta­tious style (he lives in a $10.5 mil­lion man­sion and is esti­mat­ed to be worth about $40 mil­lion) are a pro­nounced depar­ture from tra­di­tion­al Christian teach­ings about “the love of mon­ey” being the root of all evil, how dif­fi­cult it is for a rich per­son to live a life wor­thy of God and how the mate­ri­al­ly dis­ad­van­taged are regard­ed more favor­ably by the divine.

Osteen’s the­o­log­i­cal indif­fer­ence seems to be reflect­ed not just in his ini­tial refusal to fol­low Jesus Christ’s direc­tive to care for “the least of these my brethren” but also in his appar­ent lack of preach­ing inter­est in Christ himself.

In the Google Play ver­sion of Osteen’s lat­est self-help offer­ing, “Think Better, Live Better,” a search turns up 599 match­es for “God” but only 45 match­es for “Jesus” or “Christ.”

A search through Osteen’s Twitter feed reveals that he almost  nev­er men­tions Jesus to his dig­i­tal flock. Generally speak­ing, he only men­tions the name of his alleged sav­ior around Easter, nev­er around Christmas. In fact, with­in the past three years, he has men­tioned “Jesus” or “Christ” only 14 times amid hun­dreds of tweets. (By con­trast, Rev. Billy Graham has men­tioned “Jesus” and “Christ” dozens of times this year alone.) http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​r​e​l​i​g​i​o​u​s​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​l​i​k​e​-​j​o​e​l​-​o​s​t​e​e​n​-​a​r​e​-​a​-​b​i​g​-​r​e​a​s​o​n​-​w​h​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​a​r​e​-​d​u​m​p​i​n​g​-​r​e​l​i​g​i​on/

At this time of Easter , lets take time to give God praise for the sac­ri­fice of his son . While we were yet sin­ners he made the deci­sion to save us from the throes of death and redeem us unto himself .
For that we are grate­ful Thank you God.

Thank you for the shed blood of your son Jesus Christ.
Yeshua .

V(16 )And the sec­ond beast required all peo­ple small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their fore­head, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name. 18Here is a call for wis­dom: Let the one who has insight cal­cu­late the num­ber of the beast, for it is the num­ber of a man, and that num­ber is six hun­dred sixty-six.…(Berean Study Bible)>

In the din of every­day life it is easy to miss God’s voice. Those who trust in him and believe his words are sacro­sanct must do their very best to go to their pri­vate places, or quite spaces, even when total­ly strapped to the ham­ster-wheel of life’s dai­ly grind.

God speaks to us as long long as we are will­ing to lis­ten. He is able to do that in tiny moments of his choos­ing because he is God Almighty.
I can lay no claim to being an obe­di­ent lis­ten­er who waits for him to speak through his Holy Spirit to my heart , yet in his grace and mer­cy, in his infi­nite wis­dom and awe­some kind­ness he some­times choos­es the least qual­i­fied , the least like­ly , the least wor­thy through whom to com­mu­ni­cate his word.

Telling of his grace and good­ness can­not always come from an esteemed pul­pit, but from wher­ev­er we are , reach­ing the peo­ple we can reach, in what­ev­er way we can. So that his Kingdom may be glo­ri­fied. I am one of those unqual­i­fied, unwor­thy, unlike­ly servants.
That must have been the way Jonah felt when he decid­ed to ignore the Lords call to trav­el to Nineveh to warn the peo­ple of God’s immi­nent wrath which was to come.
Jonah in his lim­it­ed wis­dom and human flesh had no use for the Ninevites, he believed they were utter­ly deserv­ing of what­ev­er God was about to vis­it on them. In his eyes they were wicked peo­ple who deserved every bit of what was to come.

It’s such a beau­ti­ful , won­der­ful thing to be com­fort­ed in the knowl­edge that God does not har­bor the thoughts we har­bor, does not hate the way we hate. In fact the only thing he hates is the sin in us . Even though we sin he for­gives us while still hold­ing us in his lov­ing arms.
Though unde­serv­ing we still ben­e­fit from his uncon­di­tion­al love, his unend­ing forgiveness.

REVELATION.….

So this morn­ing before going to work I was tak­ing a show­er as I always do each day, and out of nowhere his voice spoke to my heart “you like to write, how about writ­ing some­thing for me”?
“How about telling those with whom you inter­act that my words are true today as they were yes­ter­day, as they will be for ever­more”?

“Wow” !
The Book of Revelation Chapter 13 Verses 16 – 18 was revealed to me.
I found it stun­ning that God would want me to write about that to the maybe four peo­ple who would poten­tial­ly be inter­est­ed in any­thing I have to say. Usually my wife and maybe two of my friends.

According to for​tune​.com, for the first time ever, shop­pers are going to the web for most of their purchases.

An annu­al sur­vey by ana­lyt­ics firm comScore (SCOR, ‑0.97%) and UPS(UPS, +0.20%) found that con­sumers are now buy­ing more things online than in stores. The sur­vey, now in its fifth year, polled more than 5,000 con­sumers who make at least two online pur­chas­es in a three-month peri­od. According to results, shop­pers now make 51% of their pur­chas­es online, com­pared to 48% in 2015 and 47% in 2014.

According to the web­site Forbes​.com, Amazon ruined the Holidays for retailers.
As the own­er of a small elec­tron­ic busi­ness I know all too well what that feels like. Before this mad rush to shop online, I under­stood the mad rush toward the large box-stores dur­ing the hol­i­day season.
As Black Friday images emerged show­ing throngs of peo­ple lin­ing up for deals in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures, com­pa­nies like Amazon has made it much eas­i­er to pur­chase online insu­lat­ing shop­pers from the madness.

Amazon is now ask­ing the Government to approve drone licenc­ing which would essen­tial­ly allow the mega retail­er to deliv­er same day to it’s customers.
If approved this will cer­tain­ly deal a death knell to many mega stores, not to men­tion small mom and pop estab­lish­ments which are just bare­ly hang­ing on for survival.

According to CNNmoney​.com ‚In a sign of how dra­mat­i­cal­ly the retail shop­ping land­scape is chang­ing, Macy’s is clos­ing 100 of its stores nation­wide. Macy’s (M) announced the clo­sures Thursday. They rep­re­sent about 15% of all Macy’s depart­ment stores. The icon­ic retail­er did not dis­close the loca­tions of stores, but said most of them will be shut down in ear­ly 2017.

For instance, Walmart (WMT)announced plans in January to shut down 269 stores this year and just this week, inked a $3.3 bil­lion deal to acquire Amazon rival Jet​.com. Sports Authority, once the nation’s largest sport­ing goods retail­er, is shut­ting all 450 of its stores after fil­ing for bank­rupt­cy. Other tra­di­tion­al retail­ers such as Target(TGT), JC Penney (JCP), Kmart, Sears (SHLD) and Kohl’s(KSS) have also pulled the plug on hun­dreds of stores in recent months. It’s a grim pic­ture for retail store work­ers — there have been around 44,000 retail lay­offs announced so far this year alone, accord­ing to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data. Walmart’s clo­sures alone impact­ed 16,000 work­ers. Macy’s clo­sures come amid a sixth-straight quar­ter­ly decline in sales. However, sales fell less than feared and the com­pa­ny said it’s “encour­aged” by recent sales trends. Wall Street applaud­ed the dra­mat­ic store clo­sures, send­ing the stock surg­ing 17%, its best day since 2008.

Last night I need­ed to pur­chase a lap­top bag for my wife, so after work I drove to K‑Mart, they usu­al­ly have stuff like that right?
Wrong, the store seemed like they were on the verge of clos­ing down.
I drove across the street to Radio Shack, they are small­er , with stores gen­er­al­ly the size of my small busi­ness . They did not look much bet­ter than K‑Mart , just small­er more orga­nized but of course they did not have any either.
So I went a few miles up the road in anoth­er direc­tion to Staples , only to see total dark­ness where Staples once stood, it had closed.

I Inquired from staff at a large store next door which is kin­da like a dol­lar store filled with chachkies, “what hap­pened to Staples” ? They told me they moved to where Office Depot once was before they closed down.
So I got back into my car and drove the few miles down Route 9 south. The store was there like she said, but stocked sur­pris­ing­ly sparsely.
I was the only cus­tomer except a lady get­ting some copies made.
I found a few lap­top cas­es and grabbed one for Cheryl, I was through driving.

A friend who owns a petrol sta­tion laments to me that he is pay­ing humon­gous sums of mon­ey to the Banks through their mer­chant ser­vices divi­sions which han­dles cred­it card processing.
This I under­stood well, more and more peo­ple are opt­ing for the fast con­ve­nience of credit/​debit card use over cash, my cus­tomers being no exception.
He tells me the bulk of his cus­tomers who stop for gas uses a deb­it or cred­it card. His estab­lish­ment also hous­es a con­ve­nient store as well, thats where his prof­its come from as there are real­ly not much mar­gins on gaso­line sales.
However he went on to say that even if the cus­tomers are not fill­ing up their tanks but are get­ting a cup of cof­fee, they still plunk down a debit/​credit card.
Turning them away is not an option .

To the young Generation X’ers this is cool, clut­ter-free way of doing busi­ness, a cash­less society.
But a cash­less soci­ety has it’s downsides.
For instance the Banks are get­ting expo­nen­tial­ly rich­er as they cut into the mea­ger prof­its of retail­ers who have no choice but to accept cred­it card and deb­it cards.
This forces more and more small busi­ness to close as they are unable to turn a profit.(And the rich shall be rich­er and the poor poorer)
Credit/​debit cards get lost they are prone to being com­pro­mised. Hackers are able to hack into large hold­ing servers steal­ing mil­lions of credit/​debit card infor­ma­tion which ren­ders own­ers pen­ni­less and at fur­ther risk.

So with peo­ple lit­er­al­ly look­ing to shop online which dras­ti­cal­ly reduces com­pe­ti­tion for large cor­po­ra­tions, and the legal ten­der already proven vul­ner­a­ble and eas­i­ly com­pro­mised whats next?
V(16 )And the sec­ond beast required all peo­ple small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their fore­head, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name.

The human specie will do pre­cious lit­tle to halt it’s own march toward it’s ulti­mate con­clu­sion. In fact human­i­ty is glee­ful­ly rush­ing to it’s des­tiny, unwit­ting­ly ‚ful­fill­ing Biblical Prophecy in the process.
Even so, Isaiah 55:11New King James Version (NKJV)¹¹ So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accom­plish what I please, And it shall pros­per in the thing for which I sent it.

Please read , leave a com­ment and def­i­nite­ly share.

Greenvile Fire Chief Ruben Brown said fire­fight­ers found flames and smoke com­ing from the sanc­tu­ary just after 9 p.m. Tuesday.

Bishop Clarence Green is the pas­tor at the 200-mem­ber Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi. See more @ http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​m​i​s​s​i​s​s​i​p​p​i​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​-​b​u​r​n​e​d​-​v​a​n​d​a​l​i​z​e​d​-​t​r​u​m​p​_​u​s​_​5​8​1​9​e​f​9​5​e​4​b​0​1​f​6​1​0​e​3​9​3​372

Marriage should be considered not an institution but rather a state of being. Relationships, hopefully intimate, tend to have the most challenges as they are managed from the outcomes and events of the world rather than the collaborated efforts of the pairing. This pairing, by today’s standards, means that there is balanced and open communication to deal with issues from family, economics, and well-being. But what happens when those challenges overwhelm and collaboration and communication becomes static?

General solu­tions tell us that cou­ples ther­a­py is the start to help to reignite trust in a rela­tion­ship. Trusting a part­ner is the work in rela­tion­ships. The opin­ions that part­ners have comes from those expe­ri­ences that have shaped and mature each indi­vid­ual. As issues arise and a solu­tion must be arrived at; trust in each oth­er’s thoughts and actions have to be respect­ed in order to come to a res­o­lu­tion. Here is where the work comes in. Resolutions need a goal set for it to be com­plet­ed. Knowing what mile­stones need to be com­plet­ed and focus­ing on them is what most peo­ple do not have or lose sight of while in the process of the plan. Recently, a plan which may have been in the works seems to be slow­ing or is becom­ing increas­ing­ly hard­er to start. Instead of com­mit­ting to the plan and work­ing toward that 1^st goal, we failed to focus and fell back into a place of pan­ic. Panic leads to fear, then a dis­con­nec­tion, and final­ly no com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is not so much the one that hurts but the many. Does it mean one gives in to the easy and remains sep­a­rate in think­ing and action? Would the right path be that of the fear­ful just allow­ing issues to destroy or the tired to give in to sep­a­ra­tion in growth but what of the hope­ful? Hopeful?

Psalm 121, 5 – 6.

The Lord watch­es over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your com­ing and going
both now and forevermore.

Marriage is a bond on the sur­face by a record, but what of those fun­da­men­tals that we hold dear in reli­gion. We look at each oth­er as indi­vid­u­als sort­ing this per­ilous adven­ture of life day by day and then see­ing how to nav­i­gate to the next. There is the ques­tion. Is it to be left to God’s will as to a posi­tion or cir­cum­stance or is a belief the aid for the day and then the choice is our own? Knowing that we have steps is under­stood, do we know what those steps are or go with the prover­bial flow? The for­mer means we should write down goals, set our mile­stones and adjust. The lat­ter has goals but God has our steps already defined so allow the instances to lead one. There is a 3^rd sce­nario a com­bi­na­tion of the two. The bal­ance and dis­ci­pline to com­mit is the chal­lenge and fol­low thru the process. We woke to face the day, God’s bless­ing has anoint­ed our steps.

Write it down. What are our goals? When are the mile­stones? Who are the stake­hold­ers? What are our the con­tin­gen­cies? It is a belief that visu­al­iza­tion is the best way to record a plan. Graphically or a wordy plan can help with that focus that is need­ed to com­plete tasks. Many busi­ness­es, insti­tu­tions, and plans rely on the writ­ten word to imple­ment plans to make the par­tic­i­pant reach what­ev­er the goal is. Then part­ner­ship in a mar­riage can do the same, as both part­ners, need to com­mit to the focus.

Looking at the sci­ence and the reli­gious aspects, it is evi­dent that with every moment, deci­sions are more com­plex and need a thought­ful­ness to make it worth­while and sus­tain­able. Simple and quick is based on a feel­ing and not in ratio­nal dis­cov­ery to a resolve. Openness to change is a cul­mi­na­tion of patience and under­stand­ing of part­ners in a rela­tion­ship. A will­ing­ness to try and fail togeth­er, rather than fall into one’s fear and close off the connection.

Chery’s mus­ings.….

For any­one who does­n’t get the BLM move­ment, the crit­i­cal need for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, or the dan­ger of calls for more ‘law and order’-watch 13^th and if you still don’t get it, then I’ll just have to assume that you have no soul.

After Hurricane Matthew, the Crossworld team is work­ing with our Haitian min­istry part­ners to help meet needs on the ground. https://​cross​world​.org/​g​i​v​e​/​d​e​t​a​i​l​s​/​h​a​i​t​i​-​h​u​r​r​i​c​a​n​e​-​r​e​l​ief

It was one of Donald Trump’s first pow­er­ful endorse­ments: Jerry Falwell Jr., who tes­ti­fied for many evan­gel­i­cal Christians that despite lead­ing a life of excess, the thrice-mar­ried, trash-talk­ing mogul was indeed a God-fear­ing president-in-waiting.

But Falwell’s plunge into pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics did not sit so well with inti­mates of his late father, Jerry Falwell Sr., nor with some at Liberty University, the Christian col­lege in Virginia found­ed by the elder Falwell and now led by his son.

Mark DeMoss, who for many years served as chief of staff to Falwell Sr. and con­sid­ered the tel­e­van­ge­list a sec­ond father, said in an inter­view that it was a mis­take for Falwell Jr. to endorse Trump. He said the Republican front-runner’s insult-laden cam­paign has been a fla­grant rejec­tion of the val­ues Falwell Sr. espoused and Liberty pro­motes on its campus.

“Donald Trump is the only can­di­date who has dealt almost exclu­sive­ly in the pol­i­tics of per­son­al insult,” DeMoss said. “The bul­ly­ing tac­tics of per­son­al insult have no defense — and cer­tain­ly not for any­one who claims to be a fol­low­er of Christ. That’s what’s dis­turb­ing to so many peo­ple. It’s not Christ-like behav­ior that Liberty has spent 40 years pro­mot­ing with its students.”

[Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. endors­es Donald Trump]

DeMoss, a pub­lic affairs exec­u­tive with deep ties through­out the nation­al evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, sits on the board of Liberty University and chairs its exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. He said he has dis­cussed his views about Trump per­son­al­ly with Falwell Jr. — “This appears to be some­thing we’re just going to dis­agree on,” DeMoss said — but oth­er­wise has kept his opin­ions private.

On Monday, how­ev­er, with Trump poised for sweep­ing Super Tuesday vic­to­ries, includ­ing in Virginia and in DeMoss’s home state of Georgia, DeMoss decid­ed to break his silence in an inter­view with The Washington Post.

“I’ve been con­cerned for Liberty University for a cou­ple of months now, and I’ve held my tongue,” DeMoss said. “I think a lot of what we’ve seen from Donald Trump will prove to be dif­fi­cult to explain by evan­gel­i­cals who have backed him. Watching last weekend’s escapades about the KKK, I don’t see how an evan­gel­i­cal backer can feel good about that.”
Read more here: https://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​s​t​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​w​p​/​2​0​1​6​/​0​3​/​0​1​/​j​e​r​r​y​-​f​a​l​w​e​l​l​-​j​r​-​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​e​n​d​o​r​s​e​m​e​n​t​-​d​r​a​w​s​-​o​b​j​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​-​f​r​o​m​-​h​i​s​-​l​a​t​e​-​f​a​t​h​e​r​s​-​c​o​n​f​i​d​a​nt/

As this election cycle intensifies and draws to a close one thing is certain, is that left in it’s wake will be a wasteland of casualties.
Like a flatland after a Tornado, or a caribbean Island after a category four hurricane there will be hell to pay regardless of who wins or who loses come November 8^th.

Chief among the list of vic­tims will be the American Electoral process . This process flawed though it was, had not seen a can­di­date of the coarse­ness and crass­ness of Republican can­di­date Donald J Trump, cer­tain­ly not in our lifetime.
Certainly some would argue also that nei­ther have the process seen a flawed and con­tro­ver­sial can­di­date as Hillary Clinton ‚the Nation’s first female can­di­date ever to be nom­i­nat­ed as the stan­dard bear­er for a major polit­i­cal party.
Also among the casu­al­ties will be the Evangelical move­ment. This move­ment has tra­di­tion­al­ly ral­lied around the Republican Party which they argue is more in line with their values.
There has always been much to debate on that pre­sump­tion , of course the issue of Abortion has been front and cen­ter in the Evangelical move­men­t’s aver­sion to the Democratic Party.

That is under­stand­able but the move­ment nev­er quite got around to the bread and but­ter issues of feed­ing the poor , shel­ter­ing the poor, speak­ing to the killing of defense­less minori­ties which the Democratic Party speaks to some­what . On those issues the Evangelical move­ment has been silent.
On the occa­sion Barack Obama announced his can­di­da­cy for the Presidency many in the Evangelical move­ment began a scorched earth cam­paign against Obama, they labeled him a Muslim , some said he was a Manchurian can­di­date here to destroy the United States. He was called a Kenyan inter­lop­er who was­n’t born in the country.

Today less than a month until elec­tion day Evangelical lead­ers and sup­port­ers have a deci­sion to make and many of them are mak­ing it . Will they sup­port Donald Trump a man who has open­ly derid­ed lit­er­al­ly every group to whom he is opposed .
Will the Christian Right throw it’s sup­port behind a can­di­date for President who open­ly talks about grab­bing wom­en’s pussy because he is a star?
Will the Evangelical move­ment stand with a man whom even sec­u­lar mem­bers of his own par­ty are falling over them­selves to get away from?
The Republican nom­i­nee bragged that he could grab women “by the pussy” with­out their per­mis­sion because he is a star.
If the 700 Club’s Pat Robertson is any­thing to go by, there is no prob­lem with any­thing Trump said.

“A guy does some­thing 11 years ago, it was a con­ver­sa­tion in Hollywood where he’s try­ing to look like he’s macho,” Robertson said. “And 11 years after that they sur­face it from The Washington Post or what­ev­er, bring it out with­in 30 days or so of the elec­tion and this is sup­posed to be the death blow and every­body writes him off, ‘Okay, he’s dead, now you’ve got to get out of the way and let Mike Pence run the campaign.’”

Lets imag­ine Barack Obama being found out hav­ing said those things. But before we get to that , as a per­son who played sev­er­al sports I have nev­er heard any­one talk­ing about grab­bing wom­an’s gen­i­talia, not even close.
Sure guys talk about hav­ing scored with women , most­ly the women they talked about were main­ly name­less, face­less ‚fig­ments of their imag­i­na­tion. And yes, that is usu­al­ly geared at appear­ing man­ly, to belong.
Never in my life how­ev­er, have I heard any guy brag­ging about grab­bing a wom­an’s most inti­mate parts as part of any group , lock­er room or otherwise.

Now imag­ine the terms which these very same peo­ple would be using to describe Obama were these same com­ments attrib­uted to him.
Thug. Criminal. Animal. Predator. Are just a few of the choice words which would have been thrown around.
His can­di­da­cy would have been a joke, it would have end­ed the moment those tapes surfaced.
Barack Obama was exco­ri­at­ed for hav­ing attend­ed a Church where the Reverend Jeremiah Wright spoke out against what he saw as America’s sins against Black Americans.
Obama was forced to deliv­er a his­toric speech on race to get his bud­ding cam­paign back on track as a result.
So Obama was held account­able for being a mem­ber of a church where the preach­er spoke elo­quent­ly against the inequities being vis­it­ed on peo­ple whom America and the Republican Right nev­er cared about to begin with, but Trump has no respon­si­bil­i­ty for talk­ing about com­mit­ting crimes against women.

Is there any won­der that young peo­ple are walk­ing away from the church? Should any­one be sur­prised that col­lege edu­cat­ed peo­ple are look­ing at the hypocrisy of those who pur­port to speak on God’s behalf with incred­u­lous disdain?
2 Thessalonians 2:1 – 3New King James Version (NKJV) The Great Apostasy

2 Now, brethren, con­cern­ing the com­ing of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gath­er­ing togeth­er to Him, we ask you, ² not to be soon shak­en in mind or trou­bled, either by spir­it or by word or by let­ter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ^[a] had come. ³ Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin^[b] is revealed, the son of perdition.

In the end vot­ers will chose whom they want . Like it or not, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elect­ed the 45^th President of the United States . That choice will have defin­ing con­se­quences for the Nation for decades to come.

As the conversation continues about what the verdict will be for convicted Cleric Al Miller, there are no shortage of opinions within the public space as to what his punishment should be, or even whether he should have been convicted in the first place.

It is impor­tant to remind our­selves that Al Miller was pulled over by the police hav­ing in his vehi­cle fugi­tive from Justice Christopher (dud­dus) coke , who was want­ed to be extra­dit­ed to the United States to answer to charges for which he is now serv­ing time in a Federal facility.

At the time Miller argued that he was doing a favor to Coke who feared for his life as his father had suf­fered death in a Jamaican jail at a time he too was await­ing extra­di­tion to the United States to answer to crim­i­nal charges.
Christopher Coke who was Jamaica’s most estab­lished and feared crime lord could have used what hap­pened to his father as a reminder to go in anoth­er direction.
Instead he not only took over his father’s crim­i­nal empire in Tivoli Gardens he expo­nen­tial­ly expand­ed it.

For his actions in try­ing to aid and abet the escape of Coke, Al Miller was found guilty in a Kingston crim­i­nal court.
The guilty ver­dict was sur­pris­ing to many court watch­ers includ­ing this writer who have lit­tle to no con­fi­dence in the will­ing­ness of the Jamaican courts to act in accor­dance with its mandate.

Many Jamaicans who under­stand the court’s reluc­tance and inabil­i­ty to find and hold crim­i­nals respon­si­ble for their actions, also found the guilty ver­dict surprising .
Some who cel­e­brate this find­ing do so for polit­i­cal rea­sons, how­ev­er this writer sees this guilty ver­dict as a use­less exercise,unless there are sig­nif­i­cant puni­tive con­se­quences for Miller as allowed by law.

Guilty ver­dicts are some­thing reserved for the poor­est of the poor who are uncon­nect­ed polit­i­cal­ly, or by class .
Al Miller’s ver­dict must have cre­at­ed severe shock to anoth­er esteemed mem­ber of the cloth .
In an edi­to­r­i­al piece appear­ing in the Jamaica Observer Dr Gerry O Gallimore for­mer president/​CEO of YFC International, and retired senior pas­tor of Metropolitan Baptist Church wrote.

Under the head­line Al Miller put him­self at great risk as did Bogle and Sharpe.
In the noble tra­di­tion of the Christian prophets and of our nation­al heroes whose life-chang­ing lega­cies we cel­e­brate at this time, God some­times moves His ser­vants to dis­re­gard their per­son­al safe­ty so as to secure a greater good for the nation. Are we, in 2016, going to indict ser­vants of God like Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle all over again? http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​A​l​-​M​i​l​l​e​r​-​p​u​t​-​h​i​m​s​e​l​f​-​a​t​-​r​isk – as-did-Bogle-and-Sharpe_70097

I did not both­er read­ing the entire text of Gallimore’s Article, suf­fic­ing to say I would like to point the good­ly writer to a sin­gle pas­sage of scrip­ture.  

And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at Him.
Jesus was respond­ed to Pharisees wish­ing to trap him into say­ing they should not pay tax­es to cae­sar the Roman Emperor whose armies occu­pied Jerusalem at the time.
As fol­low­ers of Jesus Christ we do his Ministry and ulti­mate his death a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice when we wrap our­selves in Christianity after run­ning afoul of human laws.
It is rep­re­hen­si­ble when we do that, because as chris­tians we are sell­ing a can of beans to would be con­verts if we believe there are no rules in heaven.
If we believe in God, If we believe in heav­en and hell, we have to also believe in con­se­quences for actions.
There is no scrip­tur­al basis or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not respect­ing earth­ly laws. In fact that is exact­ly what the scrip­ture quot­ed above spoke to .

There is absolute­ly no scrip­tur­al prece­dent or evi­dence which indi­cate or sug­gest that Jesus sup­port­ed the break­ing of earth­ly laws.
Biblical scrip­tures are replete with exam­ples where adher­ence to earth­ly laws are urged as a pre­cur­sor to adher­ence to God’s laws.
While Jesus walked the earth he broke no law , even though he spoke about the injus­tice of said laws.

Al Miller, despite his moti­va­tions, took it upon him­self not only to meet with a felon from the law, he took active steps to remove that sus­pect from the juris­dic­tion with­out the author­i­ty do so.
That is crim­i­nal con­duct, it is not Christian conduct.
If we can­not adhere to earth­ly laws how can we present our­selves as ambas­sadors of christ and his kingdom?

I had the distinct honor of being this month’s Beulah Baptist Church (LAMP) Meditation speaker ‚Leaders And Members in Prayer.
It was encouraging to see our political leaders take the time to attend and acknowledge God as their source.
We may sometimes disagree on policy but what all of us agree on is that Jesus Christ is Lord and we need him in whatever we do.
Thanks to County Executive Marc Malinaro, Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison, County and city Legislators , Police Chief Ron Knapp , Judges and other leaders who attended. Our Pastor was a little under the weather this morning but we continue to pray God’s cover over him.

MEDITATION

They told me I have 5 min­utes to do this med­i­ta­tion this morn­ing and in obe­di­ence I intend to stick with the direc­tives I was giv­en. Nevertheless I am guid­ed by my pas­tor who always said.…If you help me with this lit­tle ser­mon I will be done soon , if not, I will have to go over it again.

There are sev­er­al vari­a­tions to the def­i­n­i­tion for the word ” STEWARD”. However every vari­a­tions of the def­i­n­i­tions of stew­ard has a com­mon thread. A stew­ard is one whose job it is to look after or take care of an event, to orga­nize, or to be care-tak­er of a prop­er­ty , on behalf of another .

THE OWNER:

I want to talk to you briefly this morn­ing about “ACCOUNTABLE STEWARDSHIP” The Beulah Church Theme for this year is COMMITTED and ACCOUNTABLE STEWARDS. Let me first thank my Pastor whose lead­er­ship made it pos­si­ble for opin­ion­at­ed mem­bers of his flock ‚like myself to speak to you this morn­ing. I thank him for the oppor­tu­ni­ty. I thank you all for com­ing here this morn­ing so we may fel­low­ship and wor­ship togeth­er as well. I want to make my brief address about how we treat this Earth we are giv­en stew­ard­ship of . As well as how we treat each oth­er in line with this year’s theme.

It’s impor­tant that before we talk about “STEWARDSHIP” we estab­lish that before stew­ard­ship there was “OWNERSHIP”.

This plan­et on which we live was cre­at­ed by God, for God.
I know some of you are now look­ing at me fun­ny right?
What is he talk­ing about ?
I know God made this earth for me, he made it for all of us !!!

Really ?

Let’s see what the word of God have to say about that. Colossians 1:16 ?.…..For by Him all things were cre­at­ed, both in the heav­ens and on earth, vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble, whether thrones or domin­ions or rulers or author­i­ties– all things have been cre­at­ed through Him and for Him.

HOW DID HE DO IT ?

Psalm 24−−1−2 ( KJV) The earth is the Lord’s, and the full­ness there­of; the world, and they that dwell there­in. Yes he own us too.…

2 For he hath found­ed it upon the seas, and estab­lished it upon the floods.

Genesis 1:3 ? Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 “God saw that the light was good; and God sep­a­rat­ed the light from the darkness.

Psalm 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heav­ens were made, their star­ry host by the breath of his mouth.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we under­stand that the uni­verse was formed at God’s com­mand, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Let me ask you this, and I mean it in the most respect­ful way , if you don’t believe in my God, and you real­ly don’t have to because he gave us free will. Can your God do any of those thinks I just spoke about. Can your God cre­ate galax­ies out of noth­ing? Can your God tell the storms to “be still” and the roar­ing winds bow in obedience?
That’s the great­ness of the God I wor­ship. That’s what excites me when I talk about him. My God…
A very famous Pastor teach­es that John is referred to as the dis­ci­ple that Jesus loved, but those claims are only to be found.….……
You guessed it, only in the book of John.

The way mankind has behaved since the begin­ning of time you would think we owned the earth right?

The whole pur­pose of my lit­tle talk here this morn­ing is to expound on the good­ness and gra­cious­ness of God. I say this despite my per­son­al pain and hurt, as most of you are aware I car­ry a deep hurt after our son Kodi went home to be with the lord. Nevertheless when we con­sid­er God’s gra­cious­ness and love for us, every­thing pales under the light of his grace.

◄ John 3:16 ►For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begot­ten Son, that whomev­er believes in Him shall not per­ish, but have eter­nal life.

You know I was taught this scrip­ture since I was in Kindergarten and cor­rect­ly so . But no one both­ered to teach me that the world we live in was not made for me to abuse.

No one told me that it was­n’t pru­dent to drill in every place for oil because it does irrepara­ble dam­age to the del­i­cate eco-system.

No one told me it was­n’t real­ly mine so I should take care not to pol­lute our drink­ing water for profit.

No one both­ered to teach me only to kill what I need­ed to eat . That I had no right to sac­ri­fice the earth­’s crea­tures on the altar of sports , ren­der­ing many species extinct with reck­less aban­don and cyn­i­cal disregard.

No one both­ered to teach me it real­ly is not yours , take good care of it you are only a steward.

How many of you would build a great big man­sion fill it with beau­ti­ful fur­nish­ings, expen­sive and price­less Artwork. Make arrange­ment for the finest foods and the best wines to be deliv­ered in abun­dance, then give the house to your friends rent free? You don’t return to both­er your friends , no nit-pick­ing all you ask is that they take care of it. Well my ques­tion is rhetor­i­cal because I don’t believe any of you would do it and nei­ther would I .

But God did !!!

But since God loves us so much he did what we would­n’t do and that was just the begin­ning because even after giv­ing us all of the good­ness and abun­dance of the earth free of charge we turned our back on him in rebel­lion. And so you say, that was­n’t me that was Adam and Eve, I’m just being held account­able for their sins.

Well…

When was the last time you fed the hungy?

When was the last time you vis­it­ed the sick?

When was the last time you cared for the widowed?

If you fail at these sim­ple require­ments Jesus asked of us , how can you in good con­science say you are a Christian? If we fail to com­ply with these sim­ple requests how can we say these sins were Adam and Eve’s when you open­ly defy God, and rebel against his commands.

So God cre­at­ed this won­der­ful plan­et for him­self yet he loves us so much that he made us stew­ard over it. On that basis we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to treat it well and prob­a­bly more impor­tant­ly treat each oth­er well . .….….….…..

I get goose bumps when I think about this , it is absolute­ly one of my favorite things to talk about with my saved broth­ers and sisters.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly delight in talk­ing to the unsaved about the big­ness and great­ness of God , yet he takes time to be con­cerned about me.

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you, before you were born I set you apart . I appoint­ed you as a prophet to the nations.”

HOW AWESOME IS THAT ?

Good took the time to set me apart, to set you apart.

There nev­er was any­one like you since the begin­ning of time and there nev­er will be anoth­er you. He took the time to form me in my moth­er’s womb to raise me up to bring me through all my tribu­la­tion and tri­als to stand tall to pro­nounce his name for his Glory so that all shall know that he is God.

Luke 12:7 “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all num­bered. Do not fear; you are more valu­able than many spar­rows. One of the trend­ing nar­ra­tive these days is that God Almighty must be a nar­cis­sis­tic God because he wants us to give him all the praise, all the glo­ry .Of course any untrue nar­ra­tive that goes unchecked becomes false truths if left long enough.….

God wants us to give him all the glo­ry , but there is a very valid rea­son for it. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slow­ness, but is patient toward you, not wish­ing for any to per­ish but for all to come to repentance.

When God bless­es our lives he wants us to give him the glo­ry not because he is an inse­cure God. No, it’s not because he is a nar­cis­sis­tic God who sits and wait for adulation.

Psalm 100:3 Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we our­selves; We are His peo­ple and the sheep of His pasture.

God wants us to tell oth­ers of the good works he has wrought in us so that they too may come to see him as their source. So that they too may be saved . God wants all of us , his chil­dren to be saved.….…… safe with him.

You are in the desert, your throat is parched and dry from the thirst you stum­ble and gasp for air . Are your eyes deceiv­ing you, is that an Oasis on the hori­zon, or is it a mirage? Are your eyes play­ing tricks on you again? After all you have seen what you thought was an Oasis in the dis­tance before, as you peered out of your glazed eyes. Only to find out your un-dilat­ed eyes were play­ing tricks on you. , . Nevertheless you stum­ble on, you fall, you get up and you drag your­self along until final­ly. Trees.… …wait could that be .….

Water? …

Oh yes it’s water , you fall face down in it , you drink to your heart’s con­tent. You roll around in it, you fill your water bot­tle , you are refreshed ..
You con­tin­ue on your way with renewed strength.
You come upon a stranger he is thirsty and exhaust­ed like you were.
You pull out your water bot­tle you give him swigs of the life giv­ing water.
You keep some water for your­self and you point him to the source .
You give them a swig but there is a source.

It’s not you .

He is .

Your bot­tle will run emp­ty so you give what you can, but you direct him to the un-end­ing source. The source nev­er los­es its life-giv­ing fresh­ness, it nev­er gets brackish.

The source nev­er runs out . The source is Jesus Christ the Oasis in the desert .… Our God does not need our adu­la­tion nor our recog­ni­tion, he is God all by himself .

We give him the Glory so oth­ers may come to know him as their lord and savior.

So they too may expe­ri­ence his goodness.

So they too can under­stand the sanc­ti­ty of being good stewards.

After all if we are all good stew­ards God’s house is in good shape.

Thank you …

There seem to be more ser­mons jus­ti­fy­ing greed ‚las­civ­i­ous­ness, get­ting rich, soci­etal accep­tance, sex­u­al per­ver­sion and a gen­er­al sense of “do you it’s all good” com­ing from many pul­pits these days.
There seem to be a zero sum approach by some preach­ers who bel­low their brand of Christianity with a sense of cer­ti­tude which indi­cate that those opposed to their inter­pre­ta­tion of Christianity are out of touch, out of date Neanderthals wor­thy of deri­sion and scorn.
I am loathe to lis­ten to many of them because their ser­mons amount to noth­ing but noise designed to reach only those with­in earshot, whether in the room or those who watch on Television or watch their per­for­mance on YouTube.
Yes most of what pass­es for the preach­ing of the word of God these days is sim­ply a per­for­mance for their own sense of per­son­al aggrandizement.
Matthew 6:7 ►And when­ev­er you are pray­ing, you shall not be ver­bose like the hea­then, for they think that they are heard by speak­ing much.

They speak and they wait for applause as if they are per­form­ers, or are they? The Bible is the word of God, it is the undi­lut­ed truth of God . Jesus came he said he did not come to change what was writ­ten but to ful­fill what was writ­ten. Yet there are no short­age of preach­ers today who are preach­ing a brand of get-along gospel designed to fill the pews and the offer­ing bas­kets and not much more.
Absent is the unvar­nished word of God chal­leng­ing sin where it persists .
No Pastor has the author­i­ty to inval­i­date parts of God’s holy word because it does not jive with his world-view. No Preacher may dis­sect the scrip­ture to suit the nar­ra­tive he/​she wants to advance.

Either you believe God’s word and try to live by them or you don’t ! God’s word is unchang­ing , it stands on it’s own, it does not need any­thing or any­one to clar­i­fy it or to make it palat­able. We don’t get to change God’s word to make it applic­a­ble to the times. God’s word was from the begin­ning of time, it has with­stood all attempts to change and destroy it, man has no pow­er to change one iota of what God impart­ed to us through divine inspiration .
How dare any preach­er take out what he/​she believes and dis­card parts which do not jive with the feel good new-age gib­ber­ish they want to sell to those who want their own ver­sion of Salvation.

No you have no author­i­ty to jus­ti­fy any sin. Not mur­der , not adul­tery, not for­ni­ca­tion, not steal­ing , not envy , not Homosexuality , not any sin.
Christians have a right and indeed a duty to speak out against sin. We have a duty to live a life free from sin as much as we can.

Of course we do sin ‚when we sin unin­ten­tion­al­ly we pray and ask God for for­give­ness God’s grace cleans­es us of our sins.
We do not get to con­tin­ue pre­sump­tu­ous sin­ning while claim­ing to be born again .
We come as we are .….….….…..We do not get to con­tin­ue as we were while claim­ing rebirth.
I rebuke the so-called preach­ers of the gospel who con­tin­ue to teach that it’s okay to remain in sin .
Where is it writ­ten? God’s words are sacrosanct.

How does the Church dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from the world if the Church con­forms to the dic­tates of the world?
On whose author­i­ty are these preach­ers teach­ing that we may con­tin­ue to do the things we were doing because if any­one dare ques­tion it they are guilty of judging?
I have news for these idol­aters and work­ers of inequity God’s judge­ment will be swift , his wrath will be kin­dled against your lying tongue . For you seek not to lead his peo­ple to his light , you seek to lead them to your ver­sion of Salvation and for that he will hold you accountable.
John the Baptist preached against sin he was Martyred. Jesus Christ preached against sin he was martyred.
You Apostates have no Authority to accom­mo­date, authen­ti­cate, negate, or val­i­date sin.

Only God can wash away sin .
No it’s not judg­ing to speak out against stealing!
No it’s not judg­ing to speak out against murderers!
It is not judg­ing to speak out against Homosexuality!
It is not judg­ing to speak out against liars!
It is not judg­ing to speak out against fornicators!
That’s what we are sup­posed to do yet we are sup­posed to love them . For we should love the sin­ner but hate the sin.
All sin is sin but you can’t shut us up for speak­ing out against the ones you don’t want us to speak out against because you are prac­tic­ing that sin.
So for the Black Homosexual pas­tors who want us to shut up about their lifestyle we will not shut up ‚no we will con­tin­ue to speak out and con­demn Homosexuality as we speak out and con­demn all oth­er forms of sin.
Many of you char­la­tans who pur­port to preach the word of God are worse than the unsaved who have made no pro­fes­sion of faith. Many of you are for­ni­ca­tors, adul­ter­ers, thieves, liars and yes homo­sex­u­als so you can­not preach out against the sin many of your con­gre­gants know you are wal­low­ing in.
You are impos­tors , not Pastors !!! Many of you do not preach the com­ing Kingdom of Jesus Christ you preach about get­ting that new car, that new house , how to attract that new beau. You are hea­thens you deceiv­er of the brethren.
How can we endeav­or to extri­cate our­selves from sin if we are unable to iden­ti­fy it ?
How can pas­tors cre­ate the nar­ra­tive that sin­ners com­ing to Christ can con­tin­ue in their sin ?
I Have a word for you preach­ers who pre­sume to water down Gods word to make it more accept­able to the cheer­ing crowds you want to adore you .
I have a word for you who look around for ador­ing con­gre­gants who are enthused by the words of perdi­tion drip­ping from your lying lips with new-age any­thing goes doctrine.
I am call­ing you out because thus sayeth the lord.

1“Woe to the shep­herds who are destroy­ing and scat­ter­ing the sheep of My pas­ture!” declares the LORD. 2Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel con­cern­ing the shep­herds who are tend­ing My peo­ple: “You have scat­tered My flock and dri­ven them away, and have not attend­ed to them; behold, I am about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds,” declares the LORD.…

Jeremiah 50:6

“My peo­ple have been lost sheep; their shep­herds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the moun­tains. They wan­dered over moun­tain and hill and for­got their own rest­ing place.

God call us to come out from the world so that we may be seen as a light on a hill which can­not be hid.
It’s not what we say which will draw peo­ple to Christ it is the way we live our lives.
That is why it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that our lives are able to stand God’s scrutiny.
For all have sinned and come short of the glo­ry of God but the gift of God is eter­nal life.
There are far too many who are preach­ing what the world want to hear and not what the scrip­tures says.
Jesus could have been crowned King but that was­n’t his purpose .
He came to preach and teach the unvar­nished word of his father who sent him.
He shunned the crown the world want­ed to bestow on him so that we may be saved and have life eternal.
You pas­tors who con­tin­ue to preach that apos­tate gospel will receive the world­ly crowns you crave but it will be coals of fire on your heads.
Beware !!!!!

In the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Christianity in Africa explod­ed from an esti­mat­ed pop­u­la­tion of eight or nine mil­lion in 1900 (8 to 9%) to some 335 mil­lion in 2000 (45%), mark­ing a shift in the “cen­ter of grav­i­ty of Christianity” from the West to Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa. We thank the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) for the infor­ma­tion and mate­r­i­al used in this issue. Statistical infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by David Barrett.

At the turn of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, Christianity was vir­tu­al­ly nonex­is­tent in many parts of Africa but is now the faith of the major­i­ty, as the fol­low­ing fig­ures demonstrate:

Other African coun­tries with a sig­nif­i­cant Christian pop­u­la­tion are:

Seychelles 96.9%
Saint Helena 96.2%
Sao Tomé & Principe 95.8%
Cape Verde Islands 95.1%
Namibia 92.3%
Burundi 91.7%
Congo-Brazzaville 91.2%
Lesotho 91%
Gabon 90.6%
Uganda 88.7%
South Africa 83.1%
Rwanda 82.7%
Spanish North Africa 80.3%
Equatorial Guinea 76.6%
Central African Republic 67.8%
Zimbabwe 67.5%
Botswana 59.9%
Cameroon 54.2%
Ethiopia 57.7%
Ghana 55.4%
Eritrea 50.5%
Tanzania 50.4%
Madagascar 49.5%
Nigeria 45.9%
Togo 42.6%

The African Story: Amazing Growth, Unthinkable Persecution
In the 20^th cen­tu­ry alone, there have been some 1.8 mil­lion Christian mar­tyrs in Africa. This fig­ure does not take into account the esti­mat­ed 600,000 Christians who have died in the geno­ci­dal con­flicts in Rwanda and Burundi, nor does it ful­ly account for the more than two mil­lion deaths in the 17 years of Sudanese civ­il war waged by the mil­i­tant Islamist gov­ern­ment on the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Christian pop­u­la­tion of the south.

The Dictionary of African Christian Biography
The spread of the faith in Africa rep­re­sents per­haps the most dra­mat­ic advance in all Christian his­to­ry, and yet the names and sto­ries of per­sons chiefly respon­si­ble are large­ly unknown. The Dictionary of African Christian Biography (DACB), spon­sored by the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, is an effort to rec­ti­fy this by gath­er­ing sto­ries of the founders and builders of the African church and offer­ing them free over the inter­net. We con­sid­er this a most sig­nif­i­cant project, and Christian History Institute was eager to help. So last year we assist­ed in the advance of The Dictionary of African Christian Biography. We urge you to vis­it their web­site and make use of the mate­ri­als: www​.dacb​.org.

An Historical Overview by Michèle Sigg of DACB

The Christian Church has been con­tin­u­ous­ly present on the African con­ti­nent since the days of Christ. While the his­to­ry of African Christianity is mul­ti­fac­eted in its region­al devel­op­ment, it is, nev­er­the­less, pos­si­ble to dis­cern four gen­er­al phas­es in the plant­i­ng and matur­ing of the African Church.

Part 1: The Genesis of the Church The Ancient Church in Egypt and Ethiopia
During the first three cen­turies after Christ, Africa was a major cen­ter of Christian thought and activ­i­ty. Origen was from Alexandria in Egypt, while Tertullian and Augustine were from North Africa. By the end of the third cen­tu­ry, Christians in the east­ern Magrib were in the major­i­ty. Sadly, Christianity in much of North Africa vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared as Islam advanced in the fol­low­ing cen­turies. In Egypt and in Ethiopia, how­ev­er, it had tak­en deep root, and was thus able to sur­vive the Islamic jug­ger­naut and con­tin­ues to this day.

Part 2: The Continuation of the Sub-Saharan Church The European Contribution
While the Portuguese intro­duced a Catholic form of Christianity to the Kongo Kingdom (cen­tral Africa) between the six­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies, there were few, if any, last­ing results. Only at the end of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry did the Evangelical Revival begin to bring to Africa an influx of mis­sion­ar­ies whose labors would pro­duce the first fruits of an endur­ing Christian pres­ence in Sub-Sahara Africa.
With Western civ­i­liza­tion came not only the good inten­tions of Christianity, how­ev­er, but also the appalling­ly dev­as­tat­ing transat­lantic slave trade and the inevitable excess­es of com­mer­cial greed man­i­fest in the white for­eign­ers’ insa­tiable appetite for Africa’s nat­ur­al resources. Before authen­tic Christianity could sink its roots deep into African soil, these evils had to be fought.

Two great British cham­pi­ons from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry were Thomas Fowell Buxton and Henry Venn, nei­ther of whom ever set foot on African soil. While Buxton sought to ful­ly erad­i­cate the slave trade by encour­ag­ing local com­mer­cial and agri­cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives in its place, Venn is respon­si­ble for lay­ing down the prin­ci­ples of the “indige­nous church” where­by the nascent African church began to come of age.

Part 3: Passing the Mantle The First African Leadership
For the next two hun­dred years, African Christians had to strug­gle against racism and Western spir­i­tu­al impe­ri­al­ism. But, as Venn had writ­ten, if the African church were to mature and estab­lish itself, mis­sion­ar­ies had to move on once the seed was sown, leav­ing indige­nous lead­ers to build the church. Samuel Ajayi Crowther was the first African to be appoint­ed bish­op by the Anglican Church. He is the sub­ject of our next issue.

Part 4: “Pentecost” The African Church Seeks Its Own Language
The seeds of the Sub-Saharan church had been plant­ed by Western mis­sion­ar­ies. Now, as the Gospel spread through­out the nooks and cran­nies of the con­ti­nent, African Christianity began to define itself on its own cul­tur­al terms. Reformers with­in the mis­sion­ary church­es as well as inde­pen­dent church lead­ers called for change in the insti­tu­tion­al­ized church. This led to both reform, on the one hand, and to the birth of thou­sands of “African Initiated Churches” (AICs) on the other.
See more here :The Explosion of Christianity in Africa

ADAM MAARSCHALK

Growing up under Christian Zionist and dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist teach­ings, I took for grant­ed that the fol­low­ing nar­ra­tive that was pre­sent­ed to me was the cor­rect one:

The Jewish peo­ple in Israel are direct descen­dants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God restored them to their land as a nation in 1948 in ful­fill­ment of Bible prophe­cy. The Palestinians, on the oth­er hand, are new­ly-arrived Arabs, main­ly from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, who flood­ed the land when they saw the Jews begin­ning to come back from Russia, Europe, and elsewhere.

Although it’s been a num­ber of years since I learned that this nar­ra­tive is far from cor­rect, more recent­ly I’ve learned some details that, if true, take this dis­tor­tion to the next lev­el. They show the claims of Christian Zionism and dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism to be even fur­ther off-base, not only Biblically but also in terms of history.

I recent­ly read an arti­cle writ­ten by Schlomo Sand, an Israeli his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Tel Aviv University, whose par­ents were Polish Jewish sur­vivors of the Holocaust. I don’t agree with Sand’s stance on the Old Testament, but he makes some inter­est­ing state­ments regard­ing the inhab­i­tants of Palestine in the cen­turies pri­or to Israel becom­ing a nation in 1948:

“[After Jerusalem’s destruc­tion in 70 AD], apart from enslaved pris­on­ers, the pop­u­la­tion of Judea con­tin­ued to live on their lands, even after the destruc­tion of the sec­ond tem­ple. Some con­vert­ed to Christianity in the 4^th cen­tu­ry, while the major­i­ty embraced Islam dur­ing the 7^th cen­tu­ry Arab conquest.

Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, lat­er pres­i­dent of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime min­is­ter, accept­ed it as late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that the peas­ants of Palestine were the descen­dants of the inhab­i­tants of ancient Judea.“

[See David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Eretz Israel in the past and present, 1918 (in Yiddish), and Jerusalem, 1980 (in Hebrew); Yitzhak Ben Zvi,Our pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try, Executive Committee of the Union for Youth and the Jewish National Fund, Warsaw, 1929 (in Hebrew).]

Sand goes on to talk about the large impact of Jewish pros­e­ly­tiz­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Middle Ages, when non-Jews, eth­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, con­vert­ed to the Jewish reli­gion. He adds,

“The most sig­nif­i­cant mass con­ver­sion occurred in the 8^th cen­tu­ry, in the mas­sive Khazar king­dom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expan­sion of Judaism from the Caucasus into mod­ern Ukraine cre­at­ed a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties, many of which retreat­ed from the 13^th cen­tu­ry Mongol inva­sions into east­ern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and from what is now mod­ern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish culture.”

[Yiddish, spo­ken by the Jews of east­ern Europe, was a Germano-Slavic lan­guage incor­po­rat­ing Hebrew words.]

Sand was an Israeli sol­dier for three years and fought in the Six-Day War of 1967, so it’s inter­est­ing what he says next:

“The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed them­selves to be the direct descen­dents of the myth­ic king­dom of David* rather than – God for­bid – of Berber war­riors or Khazar horse­men. The Jews claimed to con­sti­tute a spe­cif­ic eth­nic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its cap­i­tal, from 2,000 years of exile and wandering.

…Since the 1970s sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic research, car­ried out in Israel, has des­per­ate­ly striv­en to demon­strate that Jews through­out the world are close­ly genet­i­cal­ly relat­ed… By val­i­dat­ing an essen­tial­ist, eth­no­cen­tric def­i­n­i­tion of Judaism it encour­ages a seg­re­ga­tion that sep­a­rates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immi­grants or for­eign work­ers… But Jews world­wide have always tend­ed to form reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties, usu­al­ly by con­ver­sion; they can­not be said to share an eth­nic­i­ty derived from a unique ori­gin and dis­placed over 20 cen­turies of wandering.“

*Please note that I dis­agree with Sand when he says that David’s king­dom was mythic.

Arthur Koestler (1905 – 1983) was a Jewish author and jour­nal­ist from Hungary (lat­er a British cit­i­zen) who wrote a book in 1976 titled, “The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage” (avail­able in PDF form here). Koestler’s the­sis was that a major­i­ty of Jews today have ances­tral roots in the ancient Khazar region (cor­re­spond­ing to mod­ern SW Russia, Eastern Ukraine, and Western Kazakhstan), where many mem­bers of the Khazar roy­al­ty and also of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion con­vert­ed to Talmudic Judaism in the 8^th cen­tu­ry AD and adopt­ed the Yiddish lan­guage, which is based on the Hebrew alpha­bet. Toward the end of Koestler’s book, he sum­ma­rized its con­tents with these words:

“In Part One of this book I have attempt­ed to trace the his­to­ry of the Khazar Empire based on the scant exist­ing sources. In Part Two, Chapters V‑VII, I have com­piled the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence which indi­cates that the bulk of Eastern Jewry — and hence of world Jewry — is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic, ori­gin. In the last chap­ter I have tried to show that the evi­dence from anthro­pol­o­gy con­curs with his­to­ry in refut­ing the pop­u­lar belief in a Jewish race descend­ed from the bib­li­cal tribe.”

Koestler stat­ed that his research under­mined many accu­sa­tions of anti-Semitism, since many Jews are not even Semitic. His work was under­stand­ably con­sid­ered to be con­tro­ver­sial. Some DNA experts were crit­i­cal or skep­ti­cal of it, while oth­ers agreed. Dr. Eran Elhalk and Dr. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin are two geneti­cists who agree with Koestler’s hypoth­e­sis. They con­duct­ed a 2012 study at John Hopkins University, find­ing that the European Jewish pop­u­la­tion fea­tured a mix of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ances­tries. Their work is summed up in this abstract pub­lished by Oxford University Press:

The ques­tion of Jewish ances­try has been the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy for over two cen­turies and has yet to be resolved. The “Rhineland hypoth­e­sis” depicts Eastern European Jews as a “pop­u­la­tion iso­late” that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrat­ed east­ward and expand­ed rapid­ly. Alternatively, the “Khazarian hypoth­e­sis” sug­gests that Eastern European Jews descend­ed from the Khazars, an amal­gam of Turkic clans that set­tled the Caucasus in the ear­ly cen­turies CE and con­vert­ed to Judaism in the 8^th cen­tu­ry. Mesopotamian and Greco – Roman Jews con­tin­u­ous­ly rein­forced the Judaized empire until the 13^th cen­tu­ry. Following the col­lapse of their empire, the Judeo – Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is there­fore explained by the con­tri­bu­tion of the Judeo – Khazars. Thus far, how­ev­er, the Khazars’ con­tri­bu­tion has been esti­mat­ed only empir­i­cal­ly, as the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus pop­u­la­tions pre­clud­ed test­ing the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis. Recent sequenc­ing of mod­ern Caucasus pop­u­la­tions prompt­ed us to revis­it the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis and com­pare it with the Rhineland hypoth­e­sis. We applied a wide range of pop­u­la­tion genet­ic analy­ses to com­pare these two hypothe­ses. Our find­ings sup­port the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis and por­tray the European Jewish genome as a mosa­ic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ances­tries, there­by con­sol­i­dat­ing pre­vi­ous con­tra­dic­to­ry reports of Jewish ances­try. We fur­ther describe a major dif­fer­ence among Caucasus pop­u­la­tions explained by the ear­ly pres­ence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. Our results have impor­tant impli­ca­tions for the demo­graph­ic forces that shaped the genet­ic diver­si­ty in the Caucasus and for med­ical studies.
Read more here : Who Are the Jews in Israel Today?

In just the lat­est sign of his descent into the com­pro­mised apos­tate church, mega-star Prosperity Gospel preach­er T.D. Jakes very art­ful­ly evad­ed call­ing a homo­sex­u­al­i­ty a sin when pressed on the issue in an inter­view with the Huffington Post. Taking a page from the play­book of Joel Osteen, Jakes made sure not to say any­thing Biblical in the main­stream media inter­view and then took a stronger stance once the ques­tions from the Christian com­mu­ni­ty fol­lowed. Jakes’ com­ments reflect the Apostasy – the proph­e­sied falling away in the church from Biblical Christianity.

“It’s A Complex Issue”

Here is the video of Jakes with Huffington Post con­trib­u­tor Marcus Lamont Hill as it turned to the sub­ject of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the church:

Hill rephrased the first lis­ten­er ques­tion by ask­ing Jakes “how should the church get along [with homo­sex­u­als who want to attend and join]?” This was a ques­tion that a pas­tor who believes in sound, Biblical doc­trine could eas­i­ly answer. The church should get along with mem­bers of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty like it does with all oth­er peo­ple – shar­ing the Biblical Gospel mes­sage that we are all sin­ners who deserve hell but can receive grace thanks to the sac­ri­fice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the for­give­ness of sin. But instead of stat­ing Biblical truth, Jakes opt­ed for a non-answer:

“Absolutely… I think it is going to be diverse from church to church. Every church has a dif­fer­ent opin­ion on the issue and every gay per­son is dif­fer­ent,” he replied. “And I think that to speak that the church — the black church, the white church or any kind of church you wan­na call it — are all the same, is total­ly not true.”

Of course this response did not answer the ques­tion at all. When fur­ther pressed on the issue Jakes gave a ring­ing endorse­ment to “gay friend­ly” or gay-affirm­ing church­es: “LGBT’s of dif­fer­ent types and sorts have to find a place of wor­ship that reflects what your views are and what you believe like any­one else,” he outlined.
“The church should have the right to have its own con­vic­tions and val­ues; if you don’t like those con­vic­tions and val­ues [and] you total­ly dis­agree with it, don’t try to change my house, move into your own … and find some­body who gets what you get about faith.”

Jakes’ advised gay peo­ple who believe homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is not a sin to seek out church­es that “reflect their views.” This is basi­cal­ly encour­ag­ing peo­ple to believe a false Gospel. In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul gave a farewell exhor­ta­tion to a group of his dis­ci­ples know­ing he would like­ly nev­er see them again. In it he said:

“Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the coun­sel of God. Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood.” (Acts 20:26 – 28).

Paul said his hands were clean from being respon­si­ble for anyone’s life because he preached “all the coun­sel of God.” In oth­er words, the Apostle did not pick and choose to preach only the por­tions of the Bible that were pleas­ant to all peo­ple and tick­led the ears. He preached God’s entire Word, regard­less of how dire or stern it may have seemed to his audi­ence. This is because it is essen­tial for all peo­ple to real­ize their sin before God. All peo­ple (this author includ­ed) are sin­ners – the Bible makes this clear: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glo­ry of God..” (Romans 3:23). Conviction of that sin is what can lead a per­son to under­stand that they need a Savior. And that Savior is The Lord Jesus Christ.

If a per­son lives their lives vio­lat­ing God’s Word and hav­ing no remorse or repen­tance for that sin, then they could nev­er feel a need for for­give­ness. And thus their hearts reject God’s mes­sage. And this is pre­cise­ly what Jakes was pro­mot­ing by encour­ag­ing those in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty to attend church­es that affirm their world­view. This is the clear sign of a heretic and false teacher. In the same pas­sage of Acts 20 where Paul admon­ish­es his dis­ci­ples to preach “all the coun­sel of God” he fol­lowed that up with a grave warn­ing:“For I know this, that after my depart­ing shall griev­ous wolves enter in among you, not spar­ing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speak­ing per­verse things, to draw away dis­ci­ples after them. Therefore watch, and remem­ber, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:29 – 31). The “wolves” in ques­tion were false teach­ers pre­sent­ing them­selves as “strong Christian preach­ers” but who in fact were teach­ing hereti­cal, unbib­li­cal doc­trines, like Jakes.
Beginning and End has already exam­ined the wild­ly unbib­li­cal Prosperity Gospel doc­trine of Jakes as well as his New Age teach­ing series he led with Oprah Winfrey. So it is of lit­tle sur­prise that when pressed on the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (some­thing you will nev­er hear Jakes or any mega-church tele­vi­sion pas­tor preach on), he offered up such a sin­ful response.

The Bible and Homosexuality

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the begin­ning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and moth­er, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What there­fore God hath joined togeth­er, let not man put asun­der. – The Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 19:3 – 6.

The Word of God is clear that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin. God’s order for inti­mate rela­tion­ships is for a man to be mar­ried to one woman for life. And what this means for a gay per­son enter­ing the church is that like every­one else who is attend­ing, they have to be ready to put God’s Word and desires before their own. The Christian life is one of sur­ren­der. It is a sub­mis­sion to God’s Holy and per­fect will, even if we do not ful­ly com­pre­hend it.

Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked for­sake his way, and the unright­eous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mer­cy upon him; and to our God, for he will abun­dant­ly par­don. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nei­ther are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heav­ens are high­er than the earth, so are my ways high­er than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:6 – 9.

The Lord’s think­ing and plans are well beyond those of cor­rupt human­i­ty. So while it may seem hard to under­stand the rea­son­ing behind some of the Bible, it does not negate its truth. What helps a per­son under­stand the Bible and God bet­ter is receiv­ing the Spirit of God. This is what occurs when a per­son believes in Jesus Christ’s sac­ri­fice for the for­give­ness of their sins. Their old spir­it, cor­rupt­ed with the sin nature all peo­ple pos­sess, dies. And it is replaced by a new spir­it, giv­en from God, that seeks to please The Lord. At the same time, that new­ly regen­er­at­ed Christian is still liv­ing in the flesh body we are all born with. And that body still con­tains the sin nature. And thus a Christians spir­it is con­stant­ly at war with the flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ said: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temp­ta­tion: the spir­it indeed is will­ing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41).

So the chal­lenge for a per­son in any kind of sex­u­al sin is sim­ple: are you will­ing to give up your own desires and seek to obey The Lord? This is what a true, Christian pas­tor should be advis­ing with respect to how any group can “get along” with the church. The book of Galatians describes this chal­lenge in the Christian life:

I am cru­ci­fied with Christ: nev­er­the­less I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him­self for me… This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not ful­fil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lus­teth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are con­trary the one to the oth­er: so that ye can­not do the things that ye would. – Galatians 2:20; 5:16 – 17.

Note that T.D. Jakes says noth­ing about this. He does not even quote the Scriptures at all in answer­ing this ques­tion. Instead he offered answers that dis­tract­ed from the very direct ques­tions being asked to him. Jakes then fur­ther showed his apos­ta­sy by say­ing the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty should be addressed “behind closed doors” and that the issue of “sex­u­al­i­ty ver­sus spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” was com­plex “in the Bible days.” Jakes accused the Apostle Paul of strug­gling with issues of sex­u­al­i­ty and bases this on a ref­er­ence to 1 Corinthians 11 and the admo­ni­tion for women to have a “cov­er­ing” on their heads – a ref­er­ence to both the lit­er­al veils women wore at that time in pub­lic and the metaphor­i­cal “cov­er” that a man has as an author­i­ty fig­ure over a woman. This pas­sage has noth­ing to do what­so­ev­er with sex­u­al­i­ty. And nowhere is there any indi­ca­tion that the Apostle Paul “strug­gled” to write this pas­sage. 2 Timothy 3:16 says:

All scrip­ture is giv­en by inspi­ra­tion of God, and is prof­itable for doc­trine, for reproof, for cor­rec­tion, for instruc­tion in right­eous­ness: That the man of God may be per­fect, thor­ough­ly fur­nished unto all good works. – 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17.

To say Paul “strug­gled” with his writ­ing is to imply that the Scriptures were not divine­ly inspired. Jakes con­tin­ued his incor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible by say­ing Paul “grap­pled” with these issues and we are “grap­pling with them now.” This is what the Apostle Paul, by inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Spirit, wrote about homosexuality:

Wherefore God also gave them up to unclean­ness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dis­hon­our their own bod­ies between them­selves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor­shipped and served the crea­ture more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affec­tions: for even their women did change the nat­ur­al use into that which is against nature: And like­wise also the men, leav­ing the nat­ur­al use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward anoth­er; men with men work­ing that which is unseem­ly, and receiv­ing in them­selves that rec­om­pence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowl­edge, God gave them over to a repro­bate mind, to do those things which are not con­ve­nient; – Romans 1:24 – 28.

There is no grap­pling or strug­gle with the issues. Paul calls gay inti­ma­cy “against nature” and the prod­uct of rebel­lion against God. For Jakes to incor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­ize Paul’s words demon­strates that he either does not under­stand the Bible or is will­ing to spout all man­ner of heresy just to avoid hav­ing to say that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin.
The inter­view­er was clear­ly not sat­is­fied with Jakes’ attempts at deflec­tion and invit­ed him to come back again for anoth­er sit down to dis­cuss the issue fur­ther. It was quite appar­ent that Jakes was not going to answer the real ques­tion being posed: Was he ready to declare that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is no longer a sin?

The “Joel Osteen Backtrack”

Soon after the inter­view Jakes received crit­i­cism from Christian blogs for his state­ments. And Jakes issued a post on Facebook to “clar­i­fy” his remarks.

Read more here :http://begin​ningan​dend​.com/​a​p​o​s​t​a​s​y​-​a​l​e​r​t​-​t​-​d​-​j​a​k​e​s​-​g​r​a​p​p​l​e​s​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​h​o​m​o​s​e​x​u​a​l​i​t​y​-​a​-​s​in/

Pope Francis came to America and the Nation stopped, People fell over them­selves to kiss his ring oth­ers stood in line for hours to catch a glimpse of the Pontiff.
Francis’ first vis­it to America came after the American President Barack Obama paid him a vis­it at the seat of Catholicism at theVatican city.

No sin­gle event in my life­time has gen­er­at­ed such excite­ment nei­ther has any event, oth­er than the September 11^th 2001 Terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC received such wall to wall tele­vi­sion cov­er­age. This, even as more and more evi­dence sur­faces of count­less cas­es of Priests sex­u­al­ly abus­ing lit­tle boys for decades, maybe more.

The United States Census Bureau Records give some star­tling sta­tis­tics, backed up by denom­i­na­tion­al reports and the Assemblies of God U.S. Missions: Every year more than 4000 church­es close their doors com­pared to just over 1000 new church starts!
That’s a 75% annu­al decline in the num­ber of church­es in the United States.
Every year, 2.7 mil­lion church mem­bers fall into inac­tiv­i­ty. This trans­lates into the real­iza­tion that peo­ple are leav­ing the church. Research found that they are leav­ing as hurt­ing and wound­ed vic­tims-of some kind of abuse, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, or just plain neglect!

Nevertheless Americans and many more around the world are excit­ed about Pope Francis.
What is behind this phenomenon ?
Many refer to him as a Liberal, oth­ers say he is trans­form­ing the Church into a more era sen­si­tive Institution.
As such many are clam­or­ing to be seen sup­port­ing his views.
Of course many of Francis’ views though sound­ing rea­son­ably like Biblical teach­ings, tend to have a per­mis­sive slant all of his own.
The lev­el of excite­ment gen­er­at­ed and the media lan­guage is almost cloy­ing in its effer­ves­cence over the Pontiff.
Religious and non­re­li­gious alike claim him as their Pope. Round-table pan­elists gush flow­ery praise for Jorge Mario Bergoglio who seem to say and do all the right things.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer anchor­ing one leg of the wall to wall cov­er­age stopped the con­ver­sa­tion to point out to the Nation “he just stopped , and blessed that lit­tle girl right there, he just blessed that lit­tle girl”.
But does Jorge Mario Bergoglio have the pow­er to bless anyone ?
When asked about Homosexuality pri­or to his American vis­it Jorge Mario Bergoglio asked Journalists “who am I to judge”?
Exactly what the world wants to hear !!!

Romans 1:26 – 28

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shame­ful lusts. Even their women exchanged nat­ur­al rela­tions for unnat­ur­al ones. 27 In the same way the men also aban­doned nat­ur­al rela­tions with women and were inflamed with lust for one anoth­er. Men com­mit­ted inde­cent acts with oth­er men, and received in them­selves the due penal­ty for their per­ver­sion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worth­while to retain the knowl­edge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Leviticus 18:22 — Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with wom­ankind: it [is] abomination.
Jude 1:7 — Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like man­ner, giv­ing them­selves over to for­ni­ca­tion, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an exam­ple, suf­fer­ing the vengeance of eter­nal fire.
It’s per­fect­ly Christ-like not to judge , but if one is a fol­low­er of Christ it is imper­a­tive that Christians do not com­pro­mise on sin but tell the world “thus sayeth the Lord”. For we are com­mand­ed to love the sin­ner but hate the sin.Claiming “who am I to judge is false teach­ing in that context.
Of course it is up to God to judge , but iden­ti­fy­ing sin is not judg­ing. It is imper­a­tive that we are able to dis­cern all sin and seek to avoid wil­ful sin. We must eschew and shun sin, for even though we sin we can­not be com­fort­able in sin. God is right­eous, if we are com­fort­able in sin how can we hope to have a rela­tion­ship with him?
God’s right­eous­ness and sin can­not co-exist togeth­er, sin sep­a­rates us from our creator.
Those who refuse to call sin what it is by telling us they can­not judge are chang­ing the word of God to fool the world into believ­ing we can come as we are and remain as we are.

Jesus’ Disciples did preach the unmit­i­gat­ed , unvar­nished truth of his Gospel. According to the Bible they were all Martyred save for one. John the Baptist preached the truth of his com­ing he was exe­cut­ed before Jesus died. I am in no way sug­gest­ing that Christians should go out seek­ing Martyrdom but what kind of chil­dren of God are we if we fail to use our voic­es to lift up the lord?
What kind of Christians are we if we are afraid to speak the true word of God because we are con­cerned with what man may do to us.
I am more con­cerned about what will hap­pen if I fail to tell those peo­ple with­in my sphere of influ­ence of the Tribulation to come.

The Pontiff nev­er both­ered to men­tion what the Bible teach­es on the sub­ject. Merely say­ing “who am I to judge’. Coming from him that state­ment auto­mat­i­cal­ly gets con­strued and spun to mean the Pope agrees it’s okay.
Was he cog­nisant of that fact when he failed to ref­er­ence the word of God choos­ing to mere­ly inject his own views with­out Biblical authority?
He chal­lenges Nations to be kind and com­pas­sion­ate to the poor , exact­ly the kind of lan­guage which will bring peo­ple to his side.

• According to the World Bank’s most recent esti­mates, in 2011, 17 per­cent of peo­ple in the devel­op­ing world lived at or below $1.25 a day. That’s down from 43 per­cent in 1990 and 52 per­cent in 1981.
• This means that, in 2011, just over one bil­lion peo­ple lived on less than $1.25 a day, com­pared with 1.91 bil­lion in 1990, and 1.93 bil­lion in 1981.
• Progress has been slow­er at high­er pover­ty lines. In all, 2.2 bil­lion peo­ple lived on less than US $2 a day in 2011, the aver­age pover­ty line in devel­op­ing coun­tries and anoth­er com­mon mea­sure­ment of deep depri­va­tion. That is only a slight decline from 2.59 bil­lion in 1981.
  Of course peo­ple are going to be drawn to a mes­sage of help­ing the poor.….…

Two beasts are described in chap­ter 13, one from the sea (vs. 1) and one from the land (vs. 11). With the beast out of the sea, we come to that one who, regard­less of his claims as the white horse rid­er or peace mak­er, comes as a great source of dark­ness into the world. He comes not to save the world, but to damn the world. In essence, what we have in this chap­ter in the rise of the beast and the false prophet is noth­ing short of the ‘trin­i­ty from hell’ in that both are the prod­uct of the machi­na­tions of that old ser­pent, the dev­il or Satan.19. The Beast and the False Prophet (Rev 13:1 – 18)19. The Beast and the False Prophet (Rev 13:1 – 18)

THE FALSE PROPHET AND IMAGE OF THE BEAST OF REVELATION Bible​.net has this to say . The beast, as I have shown pre­vi­ous­ly, is the Papacy or Roman Catholic Church. Revelation 19:20 is the key to iden­ti­fy­ing who the false prophet is. Here it asso­ciates the false prophet with mir­a­cles per­formed for the beast. This is a link to Rev 13:11 – 14 where the same mir­a­cles are per­formed by a sec­ond beast with two horns like a lamb, that speaks like a drag­on. So this sec­ond lamb-like beast is also the false prophet.

Verse 12 is say­ing that the United States will com­bine Church and State and strict­ly enforce apos­tate Catholic reli­gious doc­trine, just like the Roman Catholic church did in the mid­dle ages! Yes! The cur­rent effort on the part of evan­gel­i­cal Christians to “take back America” will succeed!

In Verse 13 it shows us that this revival of Church and State in the U.S. will be accom­pa­nied by great won­ders (mir­a­cles). The fire com­ing down from heav­en is a deceiv­ing mir­a­cle, a false won­der, that may well refer to a coun­ter­feit out­pour­ing of the Holy Spirit! Already today a false man­i­fes­ta­tion of tongues, holy laugh­ter etc. is sweep­ing church­es in North America!

In verse 14 the lamb-like beast (the United States) pro­motes an image to the first beast (the Roman Catholic Church). When it says “an image to the (first) beast”, it means that the apos­tate Protestant move­ment in the United States will encour­age the estab­lish­ment of Church/​State pow­er, and leg­is­late it’s reli­gious agen­da on every­one. It will be the mir­ror “image” of the satan­ic prac­tices, poli­cies and per­se­cu­tions of the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages.

So using false mir­a­cles as proof of it’s author­i­ty, the apos­tate Protestant church in the United States will take con­trol of the gov­ern­ment and pass reli­gious leg­is­la­tion to enforce it’s agen­da, and it will pro­mote false Catholic doc­trines. What false doc­trines, you might ask?

1. When you are dead, you are not dead. Your con­scious self or spir­it waits at some bus stop (pur­ga­to­ry) between here and heav­en. Here you are free to lis­ten to the prayers of the liv­ing and for­ward these peti­tions for grace to Mary or Jesus.
- They can­not accept that the wages of sin is death. Death includes the loss of any con­scious­ness of the mind. Those who are dead hear noth­ing and can do noth­ing, for them­selves or any­one else.

2. Salvation is obtained through min­is­ters or priests of the church. They have a bank account with Jesus and can dis­pense grace or for­give­ness to those they favor. Conversely, they can cut off your source of for­give­ness if you do not accept their unscrip­tur­al traditions.
- No church can dis­pense or with­hold for­give­ness, for­give­ness is yours from God through faith.

3. They wor­ship on a day cho­sen by a pagan emper­or of Rome, Sunday, although there is absolute­ly NO scrip­tur­al evi­dence that Jesus com­mand­ed such a change in the Ten Commandments.
- The Sabbath is Saturday with­out ques­tion. It is a memo­r­i­al to Jesus the Creator, who worked six days and rest­ed on the sev­enth. To wor­ship on any oth­er day is to reject the Creator, reject God, reject Jesus. Whom do you wor­ship if you reject the 10 com­mand­ments of God?

4. We are saved by good works. God is keep­ing track of every­thing we do and the sum total of our good works bet­ter add up to a big­ger num­ber than our sins. Even “good” peo­ple who have reject­ed Jesus, will by this log­ic, have a chance so long as their good works total is high enough.
- Your works amount to noth­ing with­out faith. By the same token, faith with­out works is a dead faith.

So the False Prophet is in fact, apos­tate Protestantism based in the United States. How do you rec­og­nize apos­tate reli­gion? Try the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors, note that they are accom­pa­nied by a seri­ous lack of mean­ing­ful scrip­tur­al study.

A. Theology that preach­es that God is a lov­ing God and most peo­ple will be saved if only they will just be good peo­ple. You will see a lot of coun­try and west­ern style gospel singers, a lot of prais­ing Jesus and bind­ing Satan, col­lect­ing the tithe, but pre­cious lit­tle scrip­ture study, and what lit­tle there is, is very shallow.

B. The hap­py Christian, it is O.K. to be rich, send us your seed mon­ey today and you will get it back 1000 fold, kind of reli­gion. A pri­ma­ry focus on God reward­ing his fol­low­ers with earth­ly rich­es. If only you will send in your love gift, God will reward you finan­cial­ly. And by the way, we have some neat things to send you if you con­tribute today- (most­ly tapes, books, plaques, glass­es, sculp­tures, life­time mem­ber­ships, get your name engraved on the church­es top givers plaque, etc.) You could almost call it the Christian Shopping Network. Did Jesus sell *any­thing* dur­ing His min­istry? No- what He offered was not for sale, it was FREE!

C. A focus on mir­a­cle heal­ing of the sick, prayer requests and again end­less pleas for dona­tions, just to stay on the air.

D. A mis­sion of build­ing a TV or Radio sta­tion empire, from which there is lit­tle or no bible study, just more pleas for cash dur­ing long telethons, and prais­ing Jesus. Usually broad­cast from mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar lav­ish stu­dios with lots of expen­sive decorations.

Am I say­ing Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the Beast of Revelation ? I will allow Bible Prophesy and your spir­it of dis­cern­ment to decide. Some who seek the Lord have gone fur­ther than I am pre­pared to go. What I do know is what the Scriptures says.

Never before have we seen the Catholic Church seek to uni­fy all reli­gions . In an appar­ent effort to uni­fy all faiths under one world reli­gion Pope Francis took unprece­dent­ed steps by host­ing a series of inter­faith gath­er­ings at the Vatican which saw Muslim prayers giv­en from the pul­pit for the first time in its history.

The web­site Beginningandend​.com The Coming One World Religion – Pope Francis Hosts Muslim Prayers At Vatican makes the case that the Pontiff’s actions is all proph­e­sied in Scriptures as the com­ing one World Religionof the Anti Christ.

Quote :“The Pope’s efforts while seem­ing­ly noble, are in com­plete con­tra­dic­tion to Bible Scripture. But as Biblical Christianity is being aban­doned in the con­tem­po­rary church, pub­lic dis­plays of “spir­i­tu­al uni­ty” will become more com­mon. It is all proph­e­sied in Scripture as the world moves clos­er to the com­ing one world reli­gion of the Antichrist”.

Pope Francis wad­ed into Middle East peace-mak­ing this evening by wel­com­ing both the Israeli and Palestinian pres­i­dents to the Vatican for an evening of prayers.
Israeli President Shimon Peres was the first to arrive at the Vatican hotel where Pope Francis lives, fol­lowed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Francis warm­ly greet­ed both and met pri­vate­ly with each one before head­ing out to the Vatican gar­den for the service.

It took place in the Vatican gar­dens in the shad­ow of St. Peter’s Basilica, the most reli­gious­ly neu­tral place in the tiny city-state. It incor­po­rat­ed Jewish, Christian and Muslim prayers – deliv­ered in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Italian.
The prayers focused on three themes com­mon to each of the reli­gions: thank­ing God for cre­ation, seek­ing for­give­ness for past wrong­do­ing and pray­ing to God to bring peace to the region.
Francis, Peres and Abbas were expect­ed to deliv­er brief remarks, shake hands and plant an olive tree togeth­er in a sign of peace. The spir­i­tu­al leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians was also present to give a unit­ed Christian front.

Beginningandend​.com went on to say.
While the desire for peace in the Middle East is a noble cause, no Bible believ­ing Christian should ever con­fuse polit­i­cal goals with the spir­i­tu­al com­mands of God. While Christians can social­ize, work with and con­duct polit­i­cal nego­ti­a­tions with peo­ple of all faiths, reli­gious activ­i­ty is to be exclu­sive­ly done in a Biblical man­ner. From the first com­mand­ment God gave to Moses, The Lord’s stance on join­ing in the wor­ship of any of oth­er god is clear:

And God spake all these words, say­ing, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no oth­er gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any like­ness of any thing that is in heav­en above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thy­self to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jeal­ous God, vis­it­ing the iniq­ui­ty of the fathers upon the chil­dren unto the third and fourth gen­er­a­tion of them that hate me; – Exodus 20:1 – 5.

Francis com­ing to America rep­re­sents the com­ing togeth­er of Church and State in a one World Religion. It is an apos­tate which will remove God Almighty as the head of the Church replac­ing him with the Devil and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives here on earth.
The Evangelical chris­t­ian Church is blind to this phe­nom­e­non many Preachers and Teachers of the Gospel are too busy teach­ing pros­per­i­ty and hap­pi­ness theology.
The Church miss­es a ter­rif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to use Biblical prophe­cy to bring souls to Christ Jesus.
The Christian faith is the only faith which has prophet­ic words which tells us with immac­u­late accu­ra­cy how events will unfold.
Yet many Preachers of the Gospel are doing noth­ing to warn the flock.
Jeremiah 51:6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliv­er every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniq­ui­ty; for this is the time of the LORD’S vengeance; he will ren­der unto her a recompense.
Babylon is not a city as some of us Christians are led to believe . The Babylon spo­ken of here is the fall­en Church . Christians will have to come out of the fall­en Church. The Church which is pre­oc­cu­pied with telling Parishioners how to attain wealth and hap­pi­ness is lost . It is a Satanic doc­trine which is not borne out in the teach­ings of Christ . Therefor as Jeremiah 51: 6 says, we must, all of us , “deliv­er every man his soul”.