Report Reveals How Ruthlessly The Biden Administration Persecuted Christian Education

While Americans were focused on the weaponization of federal law enforcement and the justice system, the Biden administration was also quietly but ruthlessly weaponizing the U.S. Department of Education against Christian institutions as well. Those are the findings of a shocking new report by the pro-family group American Principles Project.

The numbers are shocking but hard to deny. According to new data obtained by APP, almost 70 percent of the Biden education bureaucracy’s “enforcement actions” targeted faith-based and career schools. For perspective, those categories represent less than 10 percent of students across the country.

Two of the nation’s largest and most important Christian institutions of higher education, Liberty University and Grand Canyon University, both found themselves in the crosshairs. The universities were hit with record-breaking fines totaling more than all other fines combined: Almost $38 million for Grand Canyon and $14 million for Liberty.

Both of those institutions, along with many other smaller ones, were targeted by a relatively unknown office within the Department of Education called the “Office of Enforcement.” The three primary tactics for “dismantling its targets” described in the APP report are huge penalties, “scrutinize and fine” investigations, and cutting off federal funds.

Grand Canyon University spokesman Bob Romantic expressed hope that change was coming. Officials there “look forward to an administration that, rather than using federal agencies to harass universities to which they are ideologically opposed, will reduce bureaucracy while applying regulations fairly and equitably,” he told The Center Square.

According to the report, at least 12 Christian colleges or universities were targeted by the Biden administration with “excessive penalties.” In some cases, students at those colleges have even been prohibited from receiving student aid. Not a single Ivy League school received similar treatment, researchers at APP reported.

The disparity in fines between Christian schools and non-Christian schools was also astounding. APP researchers, citing government data, found that the average fine for a “Clery Act” violation by a Christian school was $815,000. The average fine for similar violations by non-Christian institutions was less than $229,000.

“Using its scrutinize-and-sue tactics, the Department of Education can penalize and withhold federal aid to non-traditional schools,” the report warns. “When they go under, the administration can cancel students’ loan debt, making good on its campaign promise. And, of course, students then have fewer higher education options, cornering the market for conventional universities.”

Critics are now calling for drastic action by the incoming administration. “For the last four years, Democrats have been busy weaponizing every part of the federal government to target their opponents,” argued APP Policy Director Jon Schweppe, noting that the corrupt efforts of federal agencies went far beyond the U.S. Department of Justice.

“As our report details, the Biden-Harris Department of Education has been engaged in a long-running scheme to punish Christian colleges that are ideologically opposed to the left’s agenda,” he continued. “The unfair targeting of these institutions has been egregious, and it needs to stop immediately.

“During his first term, President Donald Trump deprioritized the Enforcement Office, and his next administration should eliminate it,” argued APP Policy Director Jon Schweppe, expressing hope that newly elected leaders would “end the Democrats’ years-long campaign to control and eliminate faith-based universities once and for all.”

Last year, the Biden administration increased funding for the “Office of Enforcement” by more than 600 percent, according to researchers. It was originally created during the Obama administration before being “deprioritized” during Trump’s first term and then super-charged by the Biden administration.

Unsurprisingly, the department did not respond to multiple requests for comment from media outlets about its targeting of Christian institutions. However, as the scandal grew, the department finally released a statement claiming a “school’s religious affiliation or non-profit status has absolutely no bearing on our oversight and enforcement actions.”

The Department of Education spokesman also accused the APP report of dishonesty. “Our top priority is protecting safety and academic opportunity for all students at institutions of higher education,” the spokesman said. “The data in the APP report itself pushes a false narrative by distorting information released publicly by the Department.”

The persecution of Christian institutions by the federal government shows the danger of allowing them to become dependent on public money. While Trump and Republican lawmakers may be able to rein in some of the lawlessness over the next few years, Democrats will resume their attacks as soon as they are able. Christians must prepare.

Alex Newman is an award-winning international journalist and the Founder of Liberty Sentinel.

Source: Report Reveals How Ruthlessly The Biden Administration Persecuted Christian Education – Harbinger’s Daily

Across the non-left media world, it’s now an article of faith that Donald Trump’s emphatic victory is a woke watershed.

After asking petulantly for year upon year, “Now have we hit peak woke?” — like children in the back seat nagging Daddy, “Are we there yet?” — we learn repeatedly from conservative outlets that the progressive lunacy that has tormented us since about 2014 (if not since 1965) has been roundly defeated.

A decisive death knell for identity politics dangles the blessed possibility of no longer squandering our brief duration on this Earth on stupid conversations and debates over whether women can have penises; racial discrimination cures racism; advancement in employment and education should be determined by skin color; the Western civilization that gave us penicillin, Rembrandt, Bach and the Hubble Space Telescope is a disgrace; being grotesquely fat is healthy; and wearing a sombrero that you bought yourself on Amazon is theft.

Friends, the folks who’ve really been stealing — and high-value items: our precious time, energy and attention — are the doctrinal morons who’ve roped us into addressing these painfully self-evident questions. I have devoted whole afternoons to seriously considering whether a mass movement to sterilize children and cut off their healthy body parts is a good idea.

‘Cancel’ canceled

Agreed, then: We yearn to put this rank idiocy behind us.

In fact, I’m intensely curious how this period of communal madness will be regarded once it’s foreshortening in the rear-view mirror. Will this era’s edges blur until, in retrospect, “cancel culture” is remembered as rather cute?

Will historians recall only that for a funny little period, people cared innocuously more than usual about “social justice”?

Or will the reign of woke instead take its place alongside Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s show trials and Pol Pot’s killing fields as a lower-fatality example of a whole society losing its collective mind?

As for that rear-view mirror, there are promising signs. Preferred pronouns are quietly dropping from email signatures. The sanctimonious University of Michigan is firing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff. Walmart has dropped the term DEI altogether. Investors are suing the retailer Target for putting commitments to DEI, environmental, social and governance and Pride Month above the interests of shareholders. Formerly left-wing Silicon Valley billionaires are publicly excited about, or even bidding to participate in, the Trump administration.

The atmosphere on podcasts is suddenly more permissive; why, it might finally be safe to make a joke.

Democratic media figures are drowning in self-pity, while the viewership of the hectoring MSNBC channel has plummeted. Red states are banning gender-defying care for minors, and these laws have a good chance of holding up in the Supreme Court. The word “retarded” is enjoying a comeback.

Still, I worry that we’re jumping the gun. This dogma has infected all our institutions like a fungus. It won’t be easy to eradicate. Ever notice how quickly, after a full complement of treatments, athlete’s foot comes right back?

One American election won’t do the trick. There are too many people with a vested interest in wokery because “decolonizing the curriculum,” say, is their job. Many a museum director has been hired expressly to ensure an art collection doesn’t acquire work by white people.

Won’t all go quietly

Numerous black female hires who tick two boxes in a diversity “buy one, get one free” but are sometimes conspicuously under-qualified, such as ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay, owe their appointments to that fungal way of thinking, and they won’t all go quietly.

America’s entire Democratic Party is steeped in this brain rot, and Kamala Harris still came within 1.5 percentage points of winning the popular vote.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the universities, the judicial system, NGOs, the legal and medical professions, the news media, cultural institutions, theater, publishing, film: They’ve all been putrefied by the zombie fungus. Picture the special effects for “The Last of Us,” all those hairy tendrils and fibrous clumps crawling up the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan.

So this is a long fight that’s not yet won. That’s not to detract from the cheerful impression that we sane people do seem to have gained the upper hand right now.

Indeed, I’ve never doubted that our level-headed and unindoctrinated contingent — however beleaguered, persecuted and shockingly few in number — has always been destined to win, because lunacy eventually collapses from its own contradictions. It has only ever been a question of how much longer we have to put up with this staggering bull.

As for the present juncture, I have a theory. Let’s remember the nature of the opposition. Wokesters are conformists. They didn’t invent their wretched ideas; they’re reading from a common hymn sheet.

That’s why they all use the same words and subscribe to the exact same roster of convictions, no matter how preposterous: these people aren’t original thinkers. But they imagine they’re at the cutting edge.

Being “progressive” means they’re in the vanguard. They think woke makes them modern, makes them hip.

That, whatever our private reservations about the guy, Trump’s election marks a hard Before and After. That as Kamala would say, we’ve “turned the page” and “we’re not going back.”

Is that an echo?

Because when you say something enough times (this is a gambit the wokesters themselves have mastered) you can make it true. Wokesters are highly suggestible. Furthermore, most of these folks don’t really care about social justice. They care about appearing to care about social justice. They care about other people’s esteem. They care about fitting in.

They echo what everyone else around them says, because being a mindless copycat means other mindless copycats will like them and they’ll keep their friends and their jobs. And they care about social fashion.

So they won’t spout lingo like “cisgender” if that might risk an eye-roll at parties. They won’t want to seem behind the times. If we convince them that woke is over, that their BLM lawn signs are passé, that maundering about “white privilege” is boring and old hat, they’ll drop the whole patriarchy/neurodiversity/heteronormativity et al package in a New York minute.

New York Post – Filed under

• cancel culture
• DEI
• political correctness
• woke culture
• 12/30/24

By Lionel Shriver

Who would have ever thought we would be living in a time when murderers are considered heroes?

I suppose, in one sense, it’s not surprising. Millions of children are murdered in their mother’s wombs, and those who murder them, the abortionists, are considered heroes or heroines. We now have this particularly alarming example of Luigi Mangione, who shot the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, being applauded.

Consider an interview conducted on the streets showing startling opinions from the public:

Question: What do you think about Luigi Mangione?

Person #1: I’m up in the air about it because he killed someone, but I can understand part of his reasoning.

Question: Luigi Mangione, do you think he is a hero?

Person #2: Yeah. I do think he is a hero.

Question: Should Luigi Mangione be free?

Person #3: Yes. He is fighting for the people!

Person #4: He is a man of the people.

Person #5: Taking someone’s life is objectively something that is wrong to do, but he is a hero, in my opinion.

ABC News had this headline: ‘Supporters of suspected CEO killer Luigi Mangione established defense fund.’

The article began, “As New York City prosecutors work to bring murder charges against Luigi Mangione in the brazen killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, supporters of the suspect are donating tens of thousands of dollars for a defense fund established for him, leaving law enforcement officials worried Mangione is being turned into a martyr.”

Then, adding to the absurdity, politician Elizabeth Warren stated in an interview about Mangione, “You can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands.”

Oh, really? How about in reference to politicians? What if somebody said, ‘Well, you politicians can only push us so far, and then we’re going to eliminate you!’ It’s an egregiously irresponsible statement, to say the least.

Interestingly, Hannity on Fox News said, “Cheering for the murder of an unarmed man is beyond sick.”

I agree; it’s morally sick. However, what needs to be recognized is that a person must believe in absolute authority to be able to make that statement. If there’s no absolute authority—God, who sets the rules, who decides right and wrong—how then can we say that an action is ‘morally sick’?

Why shouldn’t everyone act according to their personal judgment and whims? In Judges 21:25, we’re told, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” That is the point. When there’s no absolute authority, everyone does what he believes is right. Right or wrong is subjective. What’s good or evil is subjective.

Our culture has increasingly abandoned God, deserted God’s Word, thrown Christianity out of the public education system, taught generations of people that there’s no God, and bought into the lie that we are merely animals. It is no wonder people think: ‘I can do whatever I want. I’ll define right and wrong. If I want to murder, it’s okay for me if I determine it to be the right thing to do. Why not?’

It reminds me of Jeremiah 17:9, which states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

It’s a heart problem. That’s what we need to understand. The gun that was used to murder the CEO wasn’t the problem. Knives used to kill people are not the problem. What is the problem? The problem lies within people’s hearts. We’re sick; we have a sin problem. When people let their sinful nature rule over them, they do whatever is right in their own eyes.

There is a verse from Scripture that I have read many times over the years that I once thought, ‘I can’t imagine a culture being like that!’ We are now at a time when the verse in Isaiah 5:20 is precisely what we are witnessing in our society: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

We see Isaiah 5:20 happening in all sorts of ways, and now we see it happening in regard to murder. People are calling murder good, and those who want to condemn murder evil. Who would have ever thought that we would be in that situation?

It’s a reminder that the culture is sick—and you can’t just treat the symptoms; you have to treat the sickness. The sickness is man’s heart. Until people recognize that this is a spiritual issue, we will be unable to deal with the many ramifications happening as a byproduct.

We have to understand the true sickness and deal with the origin. Doctors don’t just want to deal with the symptoms; they must get to the root cause and deal with the disease. The root cause is a spiritual issue. We have to be pointing people to the truth of God’s Word, the saving Gospel, and see a heart change—from a sick heart because of sin to one regenerated by the work of the Lord, Jesus Christ, through what He did on the cross of Calvary and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

That’s the solution.

Ken Ham is an author, speaker, and Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis and its two popular interests: the acclaimed Creation Museum and the internationally known Ark Encounter.

Source: Living In A Time When Murderers Are Called Heroes, And God Is Called Hateful – Harbinger’s Daily

The New York Times reported December 4 that math and science test scores for U.S. fourth and eighth graders have been essentially stagnant since 1995. Nor have they have been stagnant near the top — lots of countries outrank us — but rather in the middling middle. American elementary/middle school students perform behind Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, England, Ireland, and Poland.

“’This is alarming,’” opined a Department of Education commissioner.

Yes, it is, but perhaps not just for the reasons the article identifies.

The spin of the article is that scores are down and American kids have lost significant ground as a result of the pandemic. Author Dana Goldstein says the results corroborate “a large body of research showing significant academic declines since the Covid-19 pandemic began.” “Experts are debating potential causes,” reports Goldstein, including maybe the fact that American public schools were shuttered comparatively longer than in other countries.

Let me argue that spin is far too limited and selective.

While the “experts” debate, American kids continue to move through the public-school industry, advanced perhaps more for social promotion than mastery of skills. Eventually, they’ll hit college where freshman year will be spent in math remediation before they can undertake a required general education math or science course. I know. I worked as an associate dean at a private, tuition-driven Catholic university. One year, a fifth of the freshman class was in math remediation prior to regular college-level math classes.

You can argue the young people shouldn’t be admitted and it’s not a college’s role to make up deficiencies in elementary and secondary schooling. But somebody’s got to do it. These kids relied on what their schools told them, credentialing them with diplomas after going through multiple “proficiency tests” (that more often were “teaching to the test” than teaching). At some point, somebody’s actually got to teach them.

Goldstein’s article blunts the fact that the public-school industry stayed out after COVID long after private schools resumed… and resumed safely. (We won’t ask how many DoE employees may still be out).

Anecdotal information: Back in 2021-22, I would often attend noon Mass at my local parish, which had a Catholic school attached. The kids were in school long before the neighboring school districts were. I did not see ambulances regularly coming to the school to retrieve victims of the “irresponsible exposure.” There was no uptick in youth funerals at the church.

Yes, the pandemic did contribute to suppressing scores, just as it contributed to parents discovering all the ideological nonsense crammed into the curriculum that displaces time for substantive education. Kids might not know what it is to diagram a sentence (and where the “pronoun” fits in that diagram) but they waste plenty of time picking their “pronouns.”

No, while the pandemic affected scores, Goldstein’s article notes that America’s mediocre scores have been stagnant since 1995. That’s thirty years ago. That’s over three, almost four complete cycles of elementary school students.

Which means the problem is not just the pandemic. It’s the Department of Education.

While “experts” debate “causes” and DoE bureaucrats wring hands about “alarming” results, the truth is that the almost half-century old DoE has almost nothing to show for its existence in terms of improving American students’ educational performance. Its advocates will identify tons of legislation that have poured millions of dollars into “standards,” but we all see the subminimal results of federally imposed ‘standards.”

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” That classic definition makes the case for renaming DoE the “Department of Insanity,” because, despite half a century’s investments, little has changed but we are nevertheless told the dire consequences that would befall little Johnny and Mary should President Trump succeed in putting those failing bureaucrats out of taxpayers’ misery.

Instead of insisting on keeping DoE alive, it’s time — after half a century — to try something different. School choice. Since education money is for education and it’s kids — not schools — that get educated, why are educational dollars going to schools rather than kids? And not even all schools: public education is an Animal Farm monopoly in which some schools are more equal than others, even monopolies.

Putting educational dollars in parents’ hands to decide where a child will thrive empowers parents, who are the primary educators of a child (not “co-participants” with schools). It affords all children opportunities to choose the environment in which they can perform best. It incentivizes schools to maintain and enforce academic rigor in order to be competitive for students. And it cuts out the subsidy net that keeps underperforming schools — primarily public schools — humming along while they do damage to concrete kids and our international academic standing.

Insanity is not changing the model and empowering parents through school choice. Insanity is continuing to do what we are doing to our children’s and our national detriment.

Source: A Half Century of Miseducation – American Thinker

It’s official. Paraguay has become the sixth country to move its Embassy to Jerusalem. The relocations began with President Trump’s move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018. The United States was followed by Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea. Now, Paraguay, as the newly elected President Santiago Peña promised in 2023, will move its Embassy back to Jerusalem.

“Today, we close an important chapter here at the Embassy in Herzliya, from where we worked tirelessly for the Paraguay-Israel relationship,” the Paraguay Embassy in Israel announced in a video statement. “But, like every story, it is time to move forward toward a stronger future. This is a historic moment that brings our nations even closer together.”

With President Trump returning to the White House next January, we can safely assume that more countries will follow in relocating their Embassies in recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s rightful capital.

But what does God think about Jerusalem, and does He care what the nations think?

Indeed, He does! In 2 Chronicles 6:5-6, God says, “Since the day that I brought forth my people out of the land of Egypt I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build an house in, that my name might be there; neither chose I any man to be a ruler over my people Israel: But I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there; and have chosen David to be over my people Israel.”

In 2 Chronicles 7:15-6, God says about the temple mount in Jerusalem, “Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place. For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually.” There is no other place on planet Earth where God makes this declaration. His eyes and His heart are perpetually in Jerusalem.

In Ezekiel 5:5, God further says, “This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.”

There you have it! God considers Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel, and He has placed it at the center of all the nations.

Yet, there are world leaders who refuse to see it that way. Donald Trump took a lot of flack over his decision to move the US Embassy. When you move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, you are acknowledging the fact that Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital. That recognition is unacceptable to the world—despite what the God of the universe and history declares.

Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital for 3,000 years, dating back to the time of King David. It’s mentioned over 850 times in the Bible. Not once is Jerusalem mentioned in the Quran, and yet most of the nations and their leaders are more sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians than that of the Jewish people, in whom the history of the city is well documented and speaks for itself.

The nations ought to tremble as they refuse to acknowledge God’s sovereign choice over that special city. Jerusalem is the city where He has placed His name forever, and it is the city that He has given to His chosen people—the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Period.

For that very reason, there is a warning to the nations in Zechariah 12:2-3. In these verses, God says, “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”

There is a showdown on the horizon with the countries that come against God’s chosen people, and it’s not going to fare well for the nations.

It’s a spiritual battle. Satan hates Israel, Jerusalem, and the Jewish people. Why? Because God loves and has made promises to them. If Satan can destroy the Lord’s chosen people and nation, he believes he can render the promises void and make the God of Israel a liar.

This endeavor by Satan to thwart God is an effort to avoid judgment. We know from the Messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15 that one day, the seed of the woman (Jesus Christ) would crush the head of the serpent. As we read in Ephesians 2:2, Satan is working overtime in the “sons of disobedience” to carry out his dirty work. That is why the majority of the nations refuse to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital.

There is coming a time, as we read in Zechariah 12 that God is going to “make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces…” One day, this hatred of the nation’s going to come to a head.

In the New Testament, we read that when Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ, returns at His Second Coming, He comes back to rescue the remnant of His people—to save Israel physically and spiritually. Christ will then rule on the throne of His father, David, for one thousand years, and the millennial Temple in Jerusalem will be constructed.

In Matthew 25:31-33, we read, “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”

This chapter goes on to detail that the “sheep” and “goat” nations are judged based on what they did or didn’t do to the Jewish people. The goats are cast away into eternal darkness, awaiting judgment at the Great White Throne, which occurs following the thousand-year reign of Christ. The sheep, on the other hand, are those that will go into the Millennial Kingdom.

Well done, President Santiago Peña! I believe that you’ve shown the world a picture of what being a Matthew 25 “sheep” looks like.

Robert Gottselig 

Robert Gottselig is the Director of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry Canada and the host of ‘In News Surrounding Israel’ and Cruizin’ For Zion.

Source: Why The Majority Of The Nations Refuse To Acknowledge Jerusalem As Israel’s Eternal Capital – Harbinger’s Daily

Do they still force schoolchildren to memorize the 275-word Gettysburg Address? If they don’t, they should. There is no greater statement of American values, and no more eloquent explanation of the meaning of America than that short, graceful utterance by Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 19, 1863.

Could Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech have been as effective if given in the 1950s or 1970s? Would it have been remembered if it had been delivered from a pulpit rather than in front of the Lincoln Memorial? The answer is probably yes, but its impact, would have been blunted and the majestic words would not have resonated with us down through the years to today.

Abraham Lincoln was not a good public speaker. He had a high, breathy voice that cracked when he strained to be heard in larger gatherings. He was invited to the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetary as an afterthought and was asked to deliver a few “appropriate remarks.”

The main speaker was Edward Everett, former secretary of state under Millard Filmore, Massachusetts Senator, and a professional orator, whose two-hour, histrionic speech, with its classical allusions, biblical quotes, and flowery language, held the crowd spellbound.

Then it was Lincoln’s turn. How could he top that masterpiece by Everett? He didn’t try. He knew that the men who fought at Gettysburg “have consecrated” the ground “far above our poor power to add or detract.” So his aim was to promote a deeper resolve among his listeners to honor the dead and keep fighting for the ideals they died for.

Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” was revolutionary. In Gary Wills’ book, “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” the author writes that “the address completes the work of the guns,” and talks of “how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.” Bruce Catton in “Glory Road” speaks of the address in terms of meaning for both North and South. Catton’s point is that no battle, no war was worth the kind of carnage witnessed at Gettysburg. Lincoln’s words, however, expanded the very definition of freedom and made a start toward binding the nation’s wounds.

By 1863, with casualties that the United States couldn’t have imagined in 1861, the public was already desperate to find something that would make these extraordinary sacrifices meaningful. It wasn’t enough to “save the union”— not if the proximate cause of the war would remain. Slavery was still a stain on the American experiment, and eliminating it was only part of the “new birth of freedom” Lincoln wanted.

He wanted freedom for the German and Irish immigrants who fought so courageously at Gettysburg. Beyond that, Lincoln’s expansion of freedom’s definition eventually meant equality under the law for blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and anyone else who hungered for it.

Did Lincoln’s words register immediately as historic?

In his eulogy for Lincoln two years later, Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator and leading abolitionist, lauded the Gettysburg Address as “a monumental act” made even more poignant by Lincoln’s assassination just after the Civil War’s conclusion in April 1865.

In response to Lincoln’s modest claim in the address that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,” Sumner thought the late president was deeply mistaken. “The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it,” Sumner eulogized. He was right—though just 15,000 people are thought to have heard Lincoln speak that day, the address has since become a touchstone of American rhetoric.

Lincoln’s “back of the envelope” speech has become the most important public utterance by any American. Bigger than Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech to the House of Burgess in 1775 or FDR’s “All we have to fear is fear itself” first inaugural address in 1933.

The man, the moment, the backdrop, and the words all came together that November day to deliver what I consider the greatest speech in American history.

Rick Moran | 10:07 AM on November 19, 2024

Source: Why We Still Celebrate and Remember the 161-Year-Old Gettysburg Address – PJ Media

Gettysburg Address

Delivered at Gettysburg, Pa.

Nov. 19th 1863.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. “But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Greetings y’all. One thing I love about the Bible is Jesus’ use of parables to tell a story about faith and the Kingdom of God. It is critical to convey a message in terms, metaphors, and relevant references that enable the audience to grasp the meaning clearly. As I reflect on the 2024 election cycle, which resulted in Republicans winning the Presidency and Senate and holding the House of Representatives majority, I pondered how I could simply convey a message of what happened. Perhaps our dear delusional and misguided fellow Americans who are still reeling from such a massive electoral defeat will read this missive and gain an understanding as to why they were rejected.

How many of you have been in a grocery store and heard those infamous words over the intercom? We all know that something has happened, and there is a call for a grocery store employee to see what has gone awry on the aisle and clean up the issue. Just like with accidents on the roadways, people always want to see what has happened—it is just part of our human nature. One thing is for sure. As with accidents, no one interferes with the person called to clean up the issue on the aisle.

Now, consider that this grocery store is in America, and a certain group was managing it. The problem with this grocery store is not just that there was a cleanup needed on aisle 7; there was a mess on every aisle. The aisles represent different aspects of our Nation…the economy, taxes, inflation, energy, national security, foreign policy, border security, domestic security, education, government intrusion, and overreach. All those aisles were messy, and the grocery store patrons saw these accidents. Yet, the management tried to focus on something else. The messes on those aisles precluded the customers from having access to purchase the products that they wanted. Furthermore, when the customers reported messes on all these aisles, they were told there was no mess.

To complicate things even more, the customers who attempted to clean up the mess were obstructed and called names by the grocery store management and employees. The grocery store management called government officials to restrain the customers from cleaning up. Therefore, the customers had no other recourse than to ensure the management and employees of the grocery store were fired and replaced. The new management recognized the messes on all the aisles, promised to clean them up, and hired employees who would respond to calls for “cleanup on aisle 7.”

On top of that, due to the management’s policies, many of the commodities in that grocery store had become unaffordable for the customers. So, not only did the consumers have to deal with a messy store that was horribly kept, but they also had to contend with exorbitant prices. The management operated under a mindset that they had a monopoly, and the customers had no other recourse but to continue to shop with them.

America fired the Democratic grocery store management because they were tired of the mess that had been created. They knew that the store could be run better, so they decided to return to the previous management.

For a good understanding of who the leftists and Marxists are, think of the Chicago Mayor’s response to grocery stores closing down. He failed to understand that inner-city neighborhoods were becoming food deserts due to increased crime. His resolution was just to take over and have government-run grocery stores. Kamala Harris had a disturbing response to rising grocery prices, which elitist MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was unaware of (he thought butter was $3). Mika Brzezinski had to correct him that it was $7. Harris wanted to implement government price controls, which would only lead to scarcity on the grocery store shelves.

Democrats made a mess of America in every way. It is quite disturbing that they are angry and attacking those who reported that we needed a cleanup on aisle 7, all the aisles. Worse, they’ve gone into vicious attack mode on the people being called in to clean up. Instead, the former grocery store management should ask themselves why we were all fired.

None of us want to shop at a grocery store in disarray, where we cannot afford the commodities, and some are allowed to come right in and take whatever they want out of our shopping cart. I liken that to illegal immigrants. Oops, I am sorry, “newcomers.” This is why the Biden-Harris management team was sent packing, especially since we were told they had “no regrets” and could not think of anything to do differently in managing the grocery store. And who wants to be greeted at the store by an angry curmudgeon who calls you disparaging names?

Sure, there were some who liked the way the grocery store was run, but they didn’t have a strong enough voice to prevent the firing. Truthfully, they will reap the benefits of a well-run grocery store—and they don’t even have to patronize the meat section.

Steadfast and Loyal.

Source: Cleanup on Aisle 7

https://townhall.com/columnists/allenwest/2024/11/18/cleanup-on-aisle-7-n2647897

Shalom from what is now a different world! Oh my goodness! You cannot imagine the relief that most here in Israel feel after Tuesday’s election. At the top of your ballots, you had a contrast in ideologies. True, there were some who liked one or the other more, and others who disliked them both to the same degree. But personality isn’t what was important on Tuesday. The foundational belief systems of each camp were of such a distinct contrast that voters were forced to choose one side or the other. When the platforms of the two parties were studied, it became crystal clear – Tuesday’s vote was a choice between good and evil.

And America chose the good! Thank you, Lord! We prayed for Your will to be done and we firmly believe that You have answered that prayer. Across all economic classes, races, backgrounds, and the only two genders that exist, American citizens voted for the unborn. They voted for safe borders. They voted for family values. And they voted to support Israel. Those of us on the east coast of the Mediterranean were watching. We saw what you Americans did. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

This vote was not just an affirmation of Donald Trump’s policies. It was a clear rejection of the disastrous programs of the Biden administration; ones which Harris tried to publicly reject. Unfortunately, when you are number two in the White House, it is difficult to separate yourself from the person who is number one. The people recognized that a four-year extension of Biden’s White House would be calamitous for the nation. He was essentially fired in Tuesday’s vote, and she was kicked to the curb along with him.

But it was more than just a firing of Biden. There was an urgency to what took place. This is what Republicanized so much of the Jewish vote, with an unheard of 45% of New York Jews voting for Trump. But it wasn’t just New York – Trump took 43% of the Jewish vote in Florida, 42% in Nevada, and 37% in Arizona. The Amish community, usually content to let the “English” hash out the political stuff while they quietly maintained their farms, also came out in force for Trump. They recognized that the energy and environmental policies of the liberals threatened their very livelihood. Trump even took very surprising areas, including the very Muslim-heavy region of Dearborn, Michigan, as well as vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s home county.

In addition to specific groups, there was a sense by many that they had to do something just for lifestyle-preservation. That led to a record number of first-time voters coming out from all walks of life with a majority going to Trump. Again, people knew the score. Regardless of religion or background, people know for a fact that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and many acknowledge that the precious little ball of cells in the womb is a full-fledged human being from the moment of conception.

Congratulations to President Trump are already pouring in from around the world. Benjamin Netanyahu spent 20 minutes on the phone with him yesterday. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhamad bin Salman called, as did many other world leaders. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei neglected to drop a line, though. Instead, he made threats, and he hung a giant banner in Tehran threatening Trump. It’s not surprising. He knows this will likely mean a violent end to his nuclear aspirations. It will also mean new sanctions the moment his nation steps out of line. This morning, the value of the Iranian Rial dropped to an all-time low in anticipation of the tamping down of the nation’s current free rein. In contrast, the Dow soared 1,400 points on news of Trump’s return.

Once again, it’s a brand-new world after Tuesday’s election. It will be very interesting to see the make-up of Trump’s cabinet. He is coming in much wiser this time and will be on the lookout for quislings and those who are Republican in name only (RINOs). Just know, Mr. President, that you have the support of many around the world, especially those of us in Israel. We don’t back any party nor are we interested in personalities. We celebrate this election because it was a vote for life – the life of the unborn and our lives here in Israel.

Seven Front War

As I mentioned above, Israel is fighting a war on seven fronts. Directly on our borders are Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Close enough to fire rockets and suicide UAVs at us are Iran, Yemen, and Iraq. This multi-front confrontation has given us Israeli civilians a new reality in which we need to be ready at any moment to rush to the bomb shelter at the siren’s call. It is emotionally wearing never knowing if today is the day you’ll receive the bad luck of the draw and have a missile or drone explode on your house. Meanwhile, nearly every family has someone close to them who is in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) in harm’s way. Please pray with us that God allows us to end this war soon in a manner that will keep us safe from those who want to do us harm.

Netanyahu Fires His Defense Minister

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday night. He’d likely been planning it for quite some time but was held back by pressure from the United States. But once the PM saw the elections going the right way, he cut ties with Gallant who was a shill of the Biden administration and acted essentially as an agent of the Israeli and American deep state. Into Gallant’s place will step current Foreign Minister Israel Katz, whose resulting vacancy will be filled with chairman of the United Right party, Gideon Sa’ar. The appointments of both men need to be approved by the Knesset.

Hostages Remain in Gaza

There are 101 hostages who remain in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, massacre. Of these, we have confirmation that at least 50 are dead, and we are demanding the return of their remains. However, that leaves up to 50 more who are still alive and are being held in deplorable conditions in the terrorist hideouts. A deal for a brief ceasefire and hostage swap was floated by international parties. Despite the numbers being lopsided – 11-14 hostages in return for around 100 Palestinian prisoners – Israel was open to the possibility. Hamas, however, rejected it out of hand. They demand everything or nothing at all.

Israel Seeks to Corral Gazans in Humanitarian Zone

There are currently four primary zones of IDF activity against the terrorists in Gaza. One is down south along the Philadelphi Corridor, one is central around Khan Yunis, and the other two are up north in Gaza City and nearer the border. Israel is seeking to move all civilians to the large Al-Mawasi Humanitarian Zone along the Mediterranean in Rafah, where they will be safe from the fighting. An additional benefit of that unified location is that it would allow the IDF to be effective in its humanitarian efforts. Currently, any aid given to Gaza is immediately stolen by Hamas. The terrorists will take what they want, then sell what is left over to the civilian population. Uniting everyone at Al-Mawasi will allow the IDF to give the aid directly to those who need it most. Unfortunately, Hamas understands this strategy and is embedding itself amongst the refugees in the humanitarian zone.

Saving Lebanon from Hezbollah

On October 8, 2023, rockets began to soar south into Israel from Lebanon. But it wasn’t the Lebanese government that was behind their launching. It was Hezbollah, which meant it was Iran. The Israeli government never had a desire to go to war with Lebanon. It wanted to destroy the terrorists. So it is the terrorists who are the primary targets of the IDF. And while it is easier in Lebanon to separate the terrorists from the civilians than it is in Gaza, Hezbollah has still found many Lebanese who are more than happy to shelter them. This is what has led the IDF to bolster its almost daily air strikes with a ground attack. As the military moves through the south of the country, it is finding safehouses, weapons caches, and a labyrinth of tunnels, all designed with a strike on Israel in mind. Despite these finds, the IDF continues to be strategic in their targets, while encouraging the civilian population to move to safety up beyond the Litani River. Meanwhile, we are hoping that international pressure and support can motivate the Lebanese people to save Lebanon from the cancer of Hezbollah. It is time to cut them out once and for all. True, the terrorists are so embedded that it is easier said than done. But it can and must be accomplished.

Smuggling Attacked at Syria/Lebanon Border Crossing

On Friday, an Israeli strike shut down a border crossing in the northeast of Syria. The area hit was being regularly used by Iranian proxies to smuggle weapons into Lebanon. The finds in the Lebanese ground action is evidence that Iran has been able to keep Hezbollah well-supplied despite it being illegal to do so.

Iran Still Mulls Attack on Israel

The threats from Iran continue. Many thought that the Islamic Regime might use the U.S. elections as a cover for an attack, but that proved untrue. But Israel remains on heightened alert. The talk is that Iran may employ 800 large warhead missiles this time, which could be devastating without the divine intervention we’ve been blessed with in the previous two attacks. It’s also possible that movement to fuel these massive missiles could be picked up by Israel, prompting a preemptive strike. As usual, all eyes will be on the Middle East.

Amir Tsarfati is a fmr Deputy Governor of Jericho, Israeli tour guide, author, and the Founder and President of Behold Israel.

Source: It’s A Brand-New World After Tuesday’s Election… Especially For Israel – Harbinger’s Daily

Here in the US, God has spoken—that’s his sovereignty. And the people have voted—that’s our responsibility. Yes, sovereignty and responsibility go hand in hand. So, yes, the American people have elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States, but he has also been appointed by God (as every ruler is).

Romans 13:1 KJV – “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”

Daniel 2:21 KJV – “And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings…”

I am thankful that the candidate I believe will best maximize righteousness and minimize evil in this nation has been placed in that position of power. I know many Christians have been praying for the election through election day, but we must continue to pray.

1. Pray for a peaceful transition from the Biden administration to the Trump administration.
2. Pray that the Lord will give the new administration wisdom and efficiency in fixing many of the problems impacting Americans.
3. Pray that President Trump will surround himself with and appoint into positions of influence people who love the Lord and have a biblical worldview.
4. Pray for salvation for President Trump and that he would lead in a humble and godly way.
5. Pray that President Trump and his administration will take a stand for life, protecting the lives of unborn children.

We also rejoice that three states—Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska—rejected amendments that would’ve enshrined abortion into their state constitutions and overturned all pro-life laws in their states. Praise the Lord for those who voted to preserve innocent life!

But sadly, other states, including Montana and Missouri, did vote to add abortion “rights” to their constitutions. In Missouri, this overturns a near abortion ban that only allowed for abortion when the mother’s life was at risk. Now mothers can murder their unborn babies up until the point of viability (when a baby can survive outside the mother’s womb, usually around 21 weeks) in that state. We need to continue praying for these states and against the wickedness that prevailed last night.

We are very grateful to the Lord for so many of the decisions that were made in this election. Let’s continue to pray for this great nation and for those who are leading it.

And here is an admonition for the incoming administration: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord…” (Psalm 33:12)

Ken Ham is an author, speaker, and the founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis and its two popular interests: the acclaimed Creation Museum and the internationally known Ark Encounter.

Source: Let Us Continue To Pray For This Great Nation And Those Who Will Be Leading It – Harbinger’s Daily

In just a few days, our nation will hold one of the most consequential elections in decades. Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5, to cast their ballots for the next president of the United States, as well as for many crucial congressional, state and local offices.

The future of our nation is at stake. America has drifted far from the Biblical values that once stood as our rock-solid foundation. In so many ways, we have turned our back on God, and the results have been devastating.

Progressive, liberal thought and activism have so contaminated the mainstream of American life and culture that once-unthinkable abominations such as same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and transgender advocacy have become dogma in one major party’s platform.

Our dangerous plight reminds me of Isaiah’s warning to apostate Israel, which had abandoned allegiance to Almighty God and instead adopted the godless culture of surrounding nations. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).

Be warned, if we continue down this rebellious path, our nation will reap the bitter fruit of blatant immorality that shakes its fist in the face of God. Remember, we reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow. “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction” (Galatians 6:8, NIV).

In just a few days, our nation will hold one of the most consequential elections in decades. Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5, to cast their ballots for the next president of the United States, as well as for many crucial congressional, state and local offices.

Source: As Christians Go To The Polls, We Must Remember: The Future Of Our Nation Is At Stake – Harbinger’s Daily

As many young Americans abandon a Biblical worldview in pursuit of paganism and the occult, self-proclaimed witches, as during previous election cycles, are participating in “mass rituals” against former President and current republican nominee Donald Trump.

Thousands of witches have participated online and in person to cast spells on Trump in the hopes of thwarting his bid for the White House. However, in contrast to previous years, many “Wiccans” are publically complaining that their spells have been rendered ineffective. The stated reason? According to the witches, the former President has a “shield” protecting him as a result of the “prayers” of Christians.

“I hate to say this, but don’t do magic against him,” one spell-caster wrote. “He has a form of protection surrounding him… You will have better results if you focus your magic on helping his opponent or protecting yourself and others..”

“Some other witches have mentioned that doing spells directly against Trump are not as effective as we might hope as he seems to have some kind of protection around him,” said another writing on the “WitchesVsPatriarchy” thread on Reddit.

Because so many are praying for Trump, “he has a shield, a flimsy one of course, but a shield nonetheless (I am trying to figure out a way to create spells that can bypass that, but it’s difficult),” one individual insisted, suggesting alternatively that the witch community focus on casting spells against the Christians themselves. “Most of them are just civilians and wouldn’t have the same shielding. Like in Chess, wipe out each piece to get the King.”

It is easy, and not entirely unfounded, to classify this under the banner of absurdity. However, it is worth noting that the Bible does not state that witchcraft is all make-believe. Witchcraft employs the demonic and is an abomination before the Lord. Rather than simply falling within the category of idolatry, the Word of God explicitly calls out sorcery, fortune-telling, and interpreting omens as “evil in the sight of the Lord” (Leviticus 19:31, 20:27, Exodus 22:18, Galatians 5:19-21, Revelation 21:8).

One eye-opening example surrounds Israel’s first king, Saul. Following the death of Samuel, Saul, in the heat of a fierce battle with the Philistines, came to a witch to contact Samuel from the grave. Saul successfully contacted Samuel through sorcery, but in doing so, his line was stripped of their kingship (1 Samuel 28).

1 Samuel 15:23 states, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”

It could be argued that, in this example, witchcraft did indeed alter the course of a nation’s leadership—just not in the manner today’s “Wiccans” might hope. Witchcraft is a curse, not to the target of the “magic,” but to the practicer of it.

Whether the “shield” around former president Trump, brought about by the prayers of Christians, is legitimate is another topic and an interesting one to consider.

It is hard to argue that the hand of the Lord has not been involved in the protection of Donald Trump as he has miraculously survived multiple assassination attempts—a fact Trump himself has accredited to God. The day following the first attempt on his life, when the former President literally “dodged a bullet,” Trump thanked his supporters for their prayers, writing: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

Furthermore, considering the demonic nature of witchcraft, there are numerous Biblical examples of God using prayers to restrain satan’s actions (see Daniel 9:20-23, 10:10-14, Revelation 8:3-5).

As for the “witches” themselves, while this craft places you in enmity with God, the Lord has not cast off His love for you, His desire for your repentance, or His yearning for you to know Him and begin a relationship with Him through the forgiveness offered by Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:9, Ephesians 2:1-5).

By God’s hand of mercy, we have a specific account recorded in the Book of Acts describing many people who took part in witchcraft, being brought out of its bondage and washed clean by the power and love of Christ: “And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts 19:18-20).

Breanna Claussen is the Editor In Chief for Harbingers Daily News Media.

Source: Witches Complain ‘Spells’ Against Trump Aren’t Working, Insist The Prayers Of Christians ‘Shield’ Him – Harbinger’s Daily

Twenty years ago, when I lived in southern California, a guest speaker gave a sermon at the church we were attending at the time. He was describing the condition of America, the apathy of too many professing believers, and the moral decline that had been gradually increasing since the 1960s.

I thought of the reputation we used to have around the world as a great Christian nation and beacon of religious freedom. And even though our country has been tremendously blessed as God shed His grace on us for over 200 years, it did not last. It rarely does. More on this in a moment.

While churches in the West are becoming lukewarm, fading, or spiritually insignificant, there are thriving churches in countries where persecution is quite common. The speaker was discussing missions and said something I will never forget:

“There are Christians from Asia and nations where the gospel is restricted who are sending missionaries to America. They are flying into LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) with the goal of evangelizing the decadent West.”

We need to be evangelized! A recent guest on my show, Worldview Matters, also said that if you want to be a missionary, go to church, meaning – get them saved. What happened to the morality and influence of born-again believers? Where is the light of Christ and the preserving influence of Christians on American culture?

Sadly, the United States is a top exporter of abortion, demonic entertainment, pornography, the prosperity gospel, drugs, and more. We are full of pride and perversion. Abraham Lincoln, in the late 1860s, said we have become too proud to pray to the God who created us and blessed this land. We’ve become apathetic, comfortable, distracted, and divided. Tragically, the Church is no longer leading the way.

Let’s look at how Jesus rebuked the lukewarm church in Asia Minor.

Revelation 3:15-22 reads, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.Therefore be [c]zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” 

Notice that this is a message from Jesus (through the Holy Spirit) to Christians in one of the early churches in Asia Minor. He is standing outside the door of His church!

How about today? Is Jesus knocking on the door of churches claiming to worship Him?

Is the state of today’s church any indication of the morality, stability, and strength of America? There’s an expression many believe to be accurate: as the church goes so goes America.

You may have heard about the concept of a ‘Life Cycle of Nations,’ put forth by Scottish historian, Alexander Tyler at the time of the American Revolution. Nations generally follow this pattern:

From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance.

From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy;

From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

As we consider Bible prophecy and current events, let’s also be reminded that though the biblical worldview is on life support, God is not shocked and His sovereignty still rules over all.

Contrary to the left, the media, secular government, the K-12 education system, and Marxist universities, America’s greatness was undergirded from the beginning by our Judeo-Christian moral foundation.

In November 1620, Pilgrims and Puritans created the first social contract in the New World. The Mayflower Compact set a precedent for religious freedom and became a guide for later charters of self-government in North America. It’s vital to understand the Compact declares profound religious commitment while organizing a civil government.

The second sentence states their purpose:

“…Having undertaken for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony…”

At the time of the American Revolution, historian from France, Alexis de Tocqueville attributed America’s greatness to what he described as American pulpits “aflame with righteousness.” We would have had no American Revolution without the black robed regiment; pastors speaking the whole counsel of God’s Truth and standing up to tyranny.

In order to have a strong, stable nation, we needed a healthy, vibrant, influential church committed to preaching the gospel of repentance and being counter-culture – refusing to conform to this world.

Sadly, there are millions of people who go to church every Sunday and are not even saved. They profess to believe Jesus is the only way and claim to trust the Bible, but they are better classified as unconverted or ‘so-called Christians.’

In light of a huge national election coming up in a few weeks, how could someone claim to be a Christian and support the Democrat Party? How do they justify supporting things like abortion, homosexuality, drag queens, transgender surgeries, open borders, socialism, and do not support Israel?

They don’t know or haven’t read the Bible.

You’ve heard it said politics are downstream from culture meaning culture influences government. Ideally, as in the early church and the earliest days in America, biblical Christianity influenced the land. A vibrant faith and religion should be shaping culture and politics today but I’m afraid it’s the other way around.

George Barna was my guest on Worldview Matters a few weeks ago and shared some tragic news about the alarming decline in biblical worldview among pastors and church leaders. A majority (62%) do not even believe the Bible they preach from on Sunday mornings. How’s this possible?

It just takes one generation. Worldly pulpits have led to Syncretism; a merging of – or a combination of conflicting and differing religions, beliefs, or practices. Barna estimates that a staggering 92 percent of Americans fall into the category of syncretism!

People can’t decide on just one, so they mix a patchwork of beliefs such as Buddhism, Christianity, the New Age, works righteousness, and worldviews such as: Islam (everything must submit) Postmodernism (everything is about power) and Marxism (everything advances revolution, oppressed vs oppressor).

A weak American church combined with secularism have now produced some awful consequences. Only one percent (1%) of 18–29-year-olds have a biblical worldview today. We desperately need repentance and revival!

Barna concluded:

“It certainly seems that if America is going to experience a spiritual revival, that awakening is needed just as desperately in our pulpits as in the pews; …This [research] is another strong piece of evidence that the culture is influencing the American church more than Christian churches are influencing the culture”

Too many pastors are unwilling to teach the whole counsel of God, equip the saints, address Bible prophecy, politics, and expose darkness. They will answer to God one day.

Moreover, a Gallup Poll last year had this headline revealing a big part of the problem: “Belief in the Inerrancy of Scripture Rapidly Declining”

Just 20% – a record low of Americans think the Bible is actually and literally God’s Word. This is the first time in history more Americans do NOT view the Bible as divinely inspired. In addition, almost 30% of Americans now think the Bible is merely a collection of “fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man.”

Abandoning inerrancy is the first downward step to apostasy, accommodating sin, and post-modernism.

In his 1998 book, The God Who Is There, Dr. Francis Schaeffer warned about the danger of compromise and what happens when we stop believing in the inspiration of Scripture:

“Here is the great evangelical disaster – the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth. There is only one word for this, namely accommodation: the evangelical church has accommodated the spirit of this age. First, there has been accommodation of Scripture, so that many who call themselves evangelicals hold a weakened view of the Bible and no longer affirm the truth of all that it teaches – truth not only in religious matters but in matters of science, history, and morality.”

He was spot on!

We need to acknowledge how we got here, understand the signs of the times, and also know how to respond. Doing nothing, not warning people, keeping our faith to ourselves must not be options. The Bible warns about falling away, heresy, and rebellion against God. Let’s see if any of these predictions sound familiar.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 states: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”

Things will get worse. The question is this: What will we do about it? How are we responding today to blatant evil and perpetrators of demonic agendas? If you are a believer in Christ and you are silent in the face of evil, whose approval are you more concerned about, God’s or man’s?

2 Timothy 3:12-13 further states, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”

Those who truly believe and live out their faith will be persecuted. In other words, when people know you by your fruit and bold witness, they will hate you.

Some speculate America is ripe for judgment. Others say we’re in the early stages. Too many don’t seem to care, and many Christians seem unconvinced the time is short.

Why does all this matter?

Sadly, too many professing Christians are ineffective or unproductive as salt and light; many are clueless about how late the hour is and it seems we’d rather be busy, be entertained, and of course, comfortable. This is cruise ship Christianity.

The truth is we’re on a battleship and Satan is pulling out all the stops. We know our struggle is not against flesh and blood – but we also know the enemy uses people, flesh and blood, to do his work on the earth. We must discern and respond.

Writer of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton, once said, “If I might read only one book beside the Bible, I would choose The Christian in Complete Armour,” by William Gurnall, an English scholar, preacher, and puritan. Born in the 1600s, he wrote much about spiritual warfare and the duty of believers. He stated:

“It is the image of God reflected in you that so enrages hell; it is this at which the demons hurl their mightiest weapons; …God himself underwrites your battle and has appointed His own Son ‘the captain of [your] salvation’ (Hebrews 2:10)… The soldier is summoned to a life of active duty, and so is the Christian. The very nature of the calling precludes a life of ease.”

You don’t see much about pursuing comfort and leisure in the pages of the Bible.

Daily news and headlines clearly prove the dark and dramatic moral decline. Some topics include abortion, antisemitism, transgender ideology, environmental extremism, population control, AI, hyper-sexuality, LGBTQ, globalism, Marxism, medical tyranny, communist policy in America, delusion, persecution, evil called good, increasing crime, and violence.

These are just a handful of indicators that the return of the Lord must be getting close.

Judgment is coming, and it’s not going to be pretty. Do you think there’s chaos and disorder and turmoil on the earth now? We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Imagine the darkness when the church is removed.

How many pastors today are warning people of the judgment to come and teaching about the holiness of a God who is described as a consuming fire?

Like Noah’s day, many people will not understand until it’s too late; they are busy, preoccupied, and carrying on with life. Nonetheless, we are called to share the good news because we’re messengers of a righteous, worthy, Mighty God.

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

We represent King Jesus! Furthermore, we have the Holy Spirit in us and are not left without armor or help. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 states: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

We are overcomers, and if God is for us, who can be against us?

It’s good to be informed, encouraged, and to enjoy fellowship. For those of us who attend solid Bible-teaching churches, we’re well fed and equipped. But what about Monday through Saturday? Are we using the knowledge, gifts, and talents God gave us to bless and minister to others?

We need discernment, we need to be obedient, and we need to be ready. Preach the truth that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

Romans 10:8-10 states: “But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Speak up, stand in faith, pray for wisdom, love your neighbors, and watch for our Blessed Hope. Even when things feel like they’re spinning out of control, the Lord of History has not lost His power, remains on the throne, and is faithful forever.

David Fiorazo is an author, ordained pastor, host of Worldview Matters, and media contributor for Harbinger’s Daily and Freedom Project.

Source: Have Lukewarm Churches And Secularism Created The Perfect Storm For America’s Decline? – Harbinger’s Daily

What do you do when one of the warning indicators lights up on your dashboard or your car’s computer screen? Ignoring it can be costly. In fact, I saw a survey that revealed 30% of people either overlooked or ignored the indicator altogether. Only about 50% of drivers acknowledged the warning and knew what it meant. Just like failing to heed those signs can lead to a breakdown, we, as a country, are facing cultural warning indicators that we can’t afford to ignore.

In just the past two months, there were two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump. That alone is alarming, but even more disturbing is a recent poll conducted by Scott Rasmussen for Napolitan News. This survey of 1,000 registered voters should drive us to our knees in prayer.

Here’s what they asked: “While it is always difficult to wish ill of another human being, would America be better off if Donald Trump had been killed last weekend?” Shockingly, the results showed that only 47% of Democrats said “no,” while 28% said America would be better off, and 25% were unsure. In other words, 53% of Democrats were either comfortable with Trump being murdered or unsure how to respond to such a serious question.

But there’s more. Forty-nine percent of Democrats think it’s at least somewhat likely that Trump himself or his campaign was involved in these assassination attempts, while 52% of Republicans believe the Democratic Party or the Harris campaign had a role. This kind of political rage is a flashing warning light that many are choosing to ignore.

As Proverbs 28:2 says, “Because of the transgression of a land, many are its princes; but by a man of understanding and knowledge, right will be prolonged.” This truth is unfolding before our very eyes. Instability, violence, and policy swings with each administration have created a fragile nation and an unstable world. Proverbs also tells us that “moral rot” is the root cause of a nation’s downfall. The sin of the people is the real problem, not just politics.

So, how do we stop this moral decay? Proverbs 1:7 reminds us that the beginning of knowledge, or the pathway out, is found in the fear, or reverence, of the Lord. Only a return to God will heal our nation. This fall election is crucial, but it won’t solve our nation’s sin problem. It may even worsen it. The solution is deeper — it’s spiritual. We must restore a healthy reverence for God in our society, which will lead to respect for the lives of others and bring back the security and stability our country once knew.

We need to pray. We need to vote. We need to stand. But beyond that, we must live out our faith, engage with our communities, and be ambassadors of God’s truth. Only then can we start turning the tide and address the deeper issues plaguing our nation.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Source: The Warning Lights In America That We Can’t Afford To Ignore – Harbinger’s Daily

For decades, most of the media has put forth tremendous effort to destroy people they don’t like, and to protect people they support. Evidence has been irrelevant.

During the debate, the ABC moderators spent their time seeking to undermine President Trump (even though he told the truth) and protect Kamala Harris, no matter how much she lied.

On Thursday night, they repeated an unverified story from CNN about what the black Republican candidate for governor of NC supposedly said online, back around 2008.

Of course this unverified story will be repeated far and wide by all the media outlets campaigning for Harris; this is standard procedure. If the NYT, WaPo, ABC, CBS, CNN, or any one of the other Democrat networks run a story, the others will act as mockingbirds, no matter how often previous stories have been untrue.

For over thirty years, the media and other Democrats have set out to destroy Clarence Thomas for the crime of being a black conservative.

In 2004, Dan Rather set out to destroy George W. Bush with unverifiable documents about his time in the National Guard as the media supported Kerry for president. Now, the media likes Bush, as long as he doesn’t support Trump.

In 2008, the NYT endorsed McCain over Romney in the Republican primary, and after they disposed of Romney, they ran a hit piece on McCain about a supposed affair with a lobbyist years earlier with no evidence. Later in life, the media loved McCain as long as he was trashing Trump.

Meanwhile, the media was spending a lot of time protecting Obama from the scrutiny of the public eye, hiding his relationships with terrorist Bill Ayers, radical Reverend Wright, political fixer Tony Rezko, and antisemite Louis Farrakhan.

In 2012, the media set out to destroy Romney, including spreading the story, without evidence, that he didn’t pay taxes for ten years. Now they love Romney as long as he is trashing Trump.

In 2012, the media didn’t care about how much Obama had lied about Obamacare, his IRS targeting political opponents, the people left to die in Benghazi after another lie about a video, his ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-running operation, and the time he told Russia he would be flexible after he was reelected. To this day, most of the media pretends that the massively corrupt and incompetent Obama-Biden years were corruption-free and great.

And starting in 2016, the media, FBI, CIA, and other Democrats have colluded to destroy Trump with continuous lies and investigations; the most obvious ones being Russian collusion and the “insurrection” on January 6.

The media also ran pictures of kids in cages during the Obama-Biden years, but said they were Trump’s doing. To this day, they spread the lie about Trump and Charlottesville to gin up racial hate and division—ABC had Tim Walz on last night, who repeated the lie with zero media correction.

Of course the media never cared about the corruption or lawbreaking of Hillary. All the evidence suggests that her family got rich selling access, she mishandled classified documents, and obstructed justice. They also never care about all the women that Hillary and Bill mentally and physically abused and sought to destroy. The media still treats Hillary like she is an honest person.

The media, FBI, CIA, and other Democrats have also known about the Biden family corruption for years, yet continually buried (and still do) the story. When the NY Post came out with a well-sourced story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, they blacklisted it as they campaigned for Biden.

It is not only politicians the media sets out to destroy, they will go after anyone who threatens their agenda.

In 2014, a white cop shot a black, teenage criminal who went after his gun, and the media, along with others, started the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” narrative. The lie was meant to gin up racial hate against white cops, and it destroyed that cop and his family. How many cops have been killed or injured because of that intentional lie?

In 2014, white Duke lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black woman, and the media set out to destroy them because it fit a progressive narrative.

In 2014, without evidence, Rolling Stone ran a false story about fraternity boys and rape. The story was repeated far and wide. No evidence was necessary.

When Judge Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court, the WaPo and other media outlets, along with other Democrats, set out to destroy him. They came out with a story, without evidence, of something he supposedly did to a girl decades earlier. No one cared about evidence or the truth.

CNN, Wapo, and others sought to destroy white Christian boys for the crime of being Trump supporters. They were falsely accused of being racists. The media didn’t care who they harmed with their stories—the target was Trump!

CNN also ran a story to destroy a man seeking to save people in Afghanistan. Again, it was a false story. CNN couldn’t care less about how disastrous the Biden-Harris withdrawal was but they set out to destroy someone who cared:

CNN Could Be Forced to Pay Upwards of $1 Billion from Defamation Suit from Tapper Show

The case hinged on CNN’s use of the phrases ‘black market’ and ‘exploited’ to describe [Zachary] Young’s legitimate business helping corporately sponsored Afghans escape the country as it collapsed around them and the Taliban retook control. Young’s clients included Audible and Bloomberg News – one of CNN’s industry peers, and he saved 24 people.

Freedman said CNN essentially ‘branded [Young] a human trafficker’ and a ‘war profiteer’ and broadcasted it to millions of households.

Jake Tapper, the host whose show the allegedly defamatory story ran on (The Lead), also made a point to note that people seeking escape were given ‘no guarantee of safety or success.’ Yet, at no point could CNN prove that what Young was doing was a scam. In fact, their editors admitted in messages that couldn’t find evidence of it.

The media, FBI, Biden, Harris, and others also sought to destroy border guards with the false story that they were whipping Haitians. Evidence didn’t matter.

Then they pretend to care about Iran, China, and Russia interfering in our elections with misinformation.

Most of the media are just puppets for Democrats. They are the ones who are intentionally trying to destroy America, not Trump.

Source: Bias through the years: a long list of media infractions – American Thinker

Why is the church quiet? The revolutionary pastors fought and urged congregants to be involved. Why has the church lost its zeal today?

Speaking of revolutionary pastors, back in 1776, a pastor in Woodstock, Virginia, John Peter Muhlenberg, stood up in front of his congregation and preached from Ecclesiastes chapter 3. When he got to verse 8, he talked about how there was a “time for war and a time for peace,” and he unzipped his black clerical robe to reveal an officer’s uniform in the Continental Army. He marched to the back of his church, and he called the men of his congregation to fight. They formed the 8th Virginia Brigade, which is still in active duty today.

James Madison, one of the great founding fathers in Virginia, was running for the first Congress in 1789. While he was running for the fifth district to sit in Congress, he met with the Virginia Baptists in Richmond. They told him that he wouldn’t get their support unless he wrote a Bill of Rights for the First Amendment protecting religious Liberties. Madison did just that, and he won that seat in Congress.

My point is that the church has always been involved in the past, so why be silent today? I think there are a few reasons.

Some have misinterpreted the First Amendment—the idea of a separation of church and state. The First Amendment was intended to keep government out of the church, not the church out of government.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote his letter in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists in Connecticut, he was interpreting the constitutional rights that churches had to be involved in politics. The separation of church and state was intended to help churches and Christians realize that the government can’t intrude, not the other way around.

Then, in 1959, the Johnson Amendment came into law. It muzzled Pastors in the Pulpit from endorsing candidates.

Today, you have pastors who just don’t want to be controversial. Let me tell you something: anytime you step into the arena of truth, it will sound controversial to some people. As pastors, we must continue to urge our congregations. And as Christians, you must be active, not silent, in the pews. Get out and make your voices heard and your values known.

Be involved in the political process today. We’re called to be salt and light. Get out there, please, and be salt and light to this world.

Gary Hamrick is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, VA. Pastor Gary is also on the Advisory Board for The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and serves as the Chief Chaplain for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

Source: Don’t Be Silent: The 1st Amendment Was To Keep Government Out Of The Church, Not The Church Out Of Government – Harbinger’s Daily

Tectonic shifts are taking place in the Middle East. We see tectonic shifts politically, certainly militarily, but now we’re seeing tectonic shifts literally. An earthquake in Syria this last week has profoundly affected Hezbollah and could be one of the reasons why Iran and the terror organization have delayed their invasion of Israel.

The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was the leader of Hamas, took place in Tehran over two weeks ago on July 31. Iran is insisting that they are going to retaliate against Israel. However, Tehran added that one thing could prevent their attack: a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

The problem is it appears everybody wants the ceasefire except Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Israel intends to prosecute this war to the end, which I believe they should. If they don’t, they’ll just be delaying the inevitable. I don’t think the Hamas leaders in Gaza and surrounding arab nations want this war to end either; they would much prefer to continue using it as leverage and a tool to stoke even more global hatred for Israel.

The United States is currently accelerating its deployment of a carrier strike group to the Middle East, even sending a nuclear submarine to this area. Interestingly, the United States doesn’t normally announce the whereabouts of our nuclear sub’s location—that’s a top secret.

I think all of this is happening not because the US wants to escalate but because the US wants to de-escalate. We want the world to see that we have Israel’s back, and hopefully, this will cause Iran to stand down.

A Wall Street Journal headline reads, “In Israel, Support Grows for Offensive Against Hezbollah.” There is increased support in Israel to get this thing started and neutralize Hezbollah. There’s also growing fear that Iran and Israel could attack each other’s nuclear facilities—that would, of course, be an apocalyptic scenario if that were to happen. Time will tell how extreme and extensive the war and the destruction will be.

The main story I would like to highlight surrounds the earthquake that took place recently in Syria. There’s an article in the Jerusalem Post about this fascinating development. The headline of the article says, “Heaven sent: Is Lebanon’s earthquake a testament to divine protection?“

Here is some intriguing information the article included:

Hezbollah’s underground ambitions may now lie buried, turned to ashes before they had any chance to harm us.

In our collective memory, Tisha B’Av has always been a solemn day, marked by the destruction of the First and Second Temples.

To provide further context, Tisha B’Av is a day of sorrow and reflection, which usually falls on our calendar in early August. It marks the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 586 BC and the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. Those events happened on the same day. That’s not an accident—that’s divine providence. It was the hand of God showing the Jewish people that He was behind these destructions that took place because of their disobedience to Him.

The article continues:

This year, however, the day bore witness to what many of us view as a modern-day miracle—a testament to divine intervention that could not have come at a more crucial time.

Reports confirmed a 5.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Syria and Lebanon, profoundly impacting the region. This was not just any seismic event; it may have served as an unanticipated yet divine act that thwarted a grave threat against the Jewish nation. Hezbollah, an established proxy of Iran, had been preparing to launch an attack on Israel—a direct affront planned deliberately for Tisha B’Av. Many of the group’s underground tunnels, teeming with armaments, may have been reduced to rubble by an act of God to protect His children, which could effectively halt Hezbollah’s nefarious plan before it could materialize.

It is hard to perceive it as mere coincidence that the earth shook on the very day Hezbollah had intended to send Israel into mourning once more. With tunnels collapsing and their arsenals buried, what could have been a devastating assault turned into a day of bewildering relief and gratitude.

Throughout history, Jews have faced adversaries who sought to dismantle our spirit and our faith. This recent event is yet another example that, irrespective of the gathered forces against us, divine protection remains steadfast. Tisha B’Av, usually a day of sorrow and reflection, was transformed into a moment where we could see the hand of God in action, turning our potential despair into potential reassurance.

It is possible that say that Iran and Hezbollah must now be reeling from this unforeseen disruption. 

We have previously discussed a number of reasons why Iran may be delaying this invasion. They may be trying to get more concessions out of the West. They may be waiting for air defense systems to come in from Russia. They may just be afraid. They don’t really want to escalate as the US is moving more assets into the area.

There is a multitude of reasons why they might be delaying, but one thing that has yet to be accounted for is that Iran may have had a plan for Tisha B’Av. This earthquake collapsed many Hezbollah tunnels, which may account for this further delay.

One thing is sure in all of this: God is in control of the timetable and the scope of any attack by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel. God controls the time, and God controls the extent of that attack.

Daniel 1:1-2, at the beginning of the book of Daniel in 605 BC, describes the Babylonians coming against Judah and Jerusalem. It reads: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god.”

It’s interesting to note all these verbs in these verses have to do with Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar came, besieged, carried away, and put these articles in the temple in Babylonia. But in the middle of all the actions of King Nebuchadnezzar, it says, “the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.” Nebuchadnezzar thought he was in total control of what was happening, but God was behind the scenes working, and it was God who delivered a Jehoiakim into his hand.

God delivers into the enemy’s hand, and God delivers out of the enemy’s hand. We need to remember that with all that is happening in the world today. Pastor Greg Laurie of Harvest Riverside shared a story from history that aptly displays God’s ultimate hand of control over the affairs and wars of nations:

History tells us that on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon stood gazing on the field of battle and described to his commanding officer the strategy for that day’s campaign. Then he declared that at the end of the day, England would be at the feet of France, and the Duke of Wellington, who was leading the British forces, would be the prisoner of Napoleon.

After a pause, Napoleon’s commanding officer boldly said, “We must not forget that man proposes, but God disposes.”

With arrogant pride, Napoleon shot back, “I want you to understand, sir, that Napoleon proposes and Napoleon disposes.”

Commenting on that statement, Victor Hugo said, “After that moment, Waterloo was lost, for God sent rain and hail so that the troops could not be maneuvered as he had planned, and on the night of the battle it was Napoleon who was prisoner of Wellington, and France was at the feet of England.”

It’s a great and true statement: “man proposes, but God disposes.” And I think we saw that statement play out with the earthquake in the Middle East on Monday. That may have been the day (Tisha B’Av) that Hezbollah intended to attack, rubbing salt on their wound during their day of sorrow and reflection—But God had other plans. God’s hand sent this 5.4 magnitude earthquake, literally shifting the tectonic plates to cause this plan to be thwarted.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Hezbollah will not attack sometime in the future, but I think it was a message to the Jewish people. It was also a subtle message, I’m sure, that wasn’t lost on Hezbollah. They saw these tunnels cave in, wondering, “Here we are making all these plans, and look what’s happening!” It had to give them pause.

We need to remember that whatever happens in the Middle East, in fact, whatever happens in our lives, God always has the last word. People are proposing, they do what they want to do, but God is disposing. God’s will will be done in His time and His way. God is working behind the scenes in His providence, ordering, orchestrating, and overseeing the events of history.

Sometimes, God steps in a more open way, like this earthquake, and shows His Hand. This is just one little kind of glimmer of light, if you will, in this dark situation, to show us that God is present and God is at work. I hope you’ll see that and look for that in your own life as well.

Mark Hitchcock is an author, associate professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, Senior Pastor of Faith Bible Church in Oklahoma, and hosts the weekly program “Marking The End Times.”

Source: Tectonic Shifts: Did God Use An Earthquake In The Middle East To Thwart An Attack On Israel? – Harbinger’s Daily

A worldview is the lens through which we interpret the world and live our daily lives. If our worldview is based on the Bible, we hold a biblical view of marriage, family, society, law, justice, morality, and basic right and wrong. God said … the end. His word is eternal, unchangeable, and absolute because God is eternal, unchanging, and rules over all things.

If we hold a biblical Christian worldview, we know God ordained marriage for life as a covenant between one man and one woman. We know this because God said so in Genesis 1:27, and Jesus confirmed and repeated it in Mark 10:6-8, “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” God left no room for compromise, caveats, nuances, or “social norms.”

Christians understand most unsaved people hold a secular, humanist, self-centered, relativist, or evolutionary worldview. Their beliefs may be sincerely held and ardently supported, but it doesn’t matter how many people are for or against something when they’re wrong. Truth is not decided by a show of hands or headcount. God does not rule by consensus. The only opinion that matters in all endeavors of human existence is “What does God think?”

How can I say dogmatically that only God’s opinion matters? Because my Christian worldview is rooted in the Scripture that says, “Declare among the nations: ‘The Lord reigns!’ The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity” (Psalm 96:10). If that’s not clear enough, we have Paul’s testimony repeating Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (1 Corinthians 10:26). God has the divine right to rule over all humanity because He is Lord.

Why Does A Worldview Matter?

A Christian biblical worldview is essential in a world that is constantly morphing into whatever is popular, gratifying, or legal. That is one of many reasons our Founding Fathers did not establish a Democracy (That’s a common lie we are being fed on purpose. Just because we hear it often doesn’t make it true).

America is a Constitutional Representative Republic. In a pure democracy, the majority rules. Whatever many want, everyone gets. What happens when the majority is wrong, biased, selfish, immoral, or addicted? We get a mess, like when the majority votes that drug addiction should be legalized or mothers should be legally allowed to kill their babies even after they are fully born, breathing, and out of the womb, as in California, Michigan, and New York.

If we hold a biblical Christian worldview, we know this is wrong because murder is written into the Decalogue (Ex. 20:13). It’s murder to kill a living human being, preborn, newborn, or octogenarian. Our 14th Amendment protections apply to us all. Just because abortion is legal or euthanasia becomes socially acceptable doesn’t make them right, only harder to prosecute.

Why do some Christians accept cultural shifts and try to fit in? Fear, faithlessness, and ignorance. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. People with no biblical Christian worldview often follow the crowd, some out of a desire to fit in, others out of ignorance that there’s another option. Both have nothing on which to depend when questions arise that they don’t understand or have never faced. What should I do if…?

As Christians with a biblical worldview, our automatic response should be, “What does the Bible say? What is God’s perspective?” We know what is right because the Bible addresses right and wrong in every possible context: religious, societal, interpersonal, and governmental.

Why A Biblical Worldview?

How could one 2000-year-old book possibly address every matter of human behavior and thought? The answer to that also arises from a biblical worldview: Only an eternal God could have known what would happen in advance. Only a Master Creator would have anticipated everything humanity would face over our existence and made preparations for our salvation and everyday lives. Only a loving Father would have written it down and preserved it for us to reference thousands of years later.

If humanity and the universe are products of luck, chance, chaos, and evolution, then we have the right to be and conduct ourselves according to our whims and desires. Instead of what is right, we default to what feels good, what we want, what benefits us most, or what advances our agenda. That’s the natural outcome of a me-based evolutionary belief system. I’m the final authority. It puts “me” in God’s place.

Our modern society believes it can do whatever it wants because they’re more evolved, more advanced, and more open-minded. I love the phrase that defines that attitude: “Don’t be so open-minded, your brains fall out.” Too many people have tried to be open-minded, tolerant, and inclusive because they’ve been force-fed that nonsense and told it’s what we must do in this highly evolved social paradigm.

Well, guess what? Our society isn’t new. “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Abortion was legal and common in ancient Rome. Pagan temple prostitutes gave birth all the time. When they became pregnant, they would give birth, then put the babies out in the street and leave them to die or worse—offer them as sacrifices to pagan deities. Like modern abortions, where 97% of all abortions are elective – the baby was ‘sacrificed’ because it was inconvenient – these babies were disposable outcomes of illicit sexual activity.

The early Christians understood this was wrong because God values life, so they began rescuing those infants. The First Century Church became known for rescuing these uncared-for and unseen babies. The idea of an orphanage as we know it was born in the early Church. Historians Josephus and Tacitus noted the practice of Christians saving babies because it was so unusual. They had only the Old Testament then, but by comparing the teachings of Christ to the Mosaic Law, the young Church understood allowing babies to die was inhumane and abhorrent.

Practical Applications of A Biblical Worldview

What of the other social issues of our time, like homosexual marriage and legalized drug use? How could the Bible possibly address modern society and the problems and questions we face? That’s the easiest question to answer if you hold a biblical worldview. Because God created everything and everyone, God would know everything we would ever face because He knows what is in the hearts of men and women.

How do we know sexual perversion is wrong? Because the Bible says so in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Why is 1 Corinthians chapter 6 in your Bible? Simple, because that letter was written to the Church of Corinth, where it was already happening. Paul based his answer on Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 22 because sexual perversion was common in Canaan before Israel inhabited the Promised Land. All the gender nonsense we face is not new, evolved, or a newfound freedom of expression; it was happening in 2000 BC!

Because God is the Author of the Bible, He addressed all the concerns, behaviors, ideas, and situations we would ever face. Even when no verse says, “Thou shalt not…” we have God’s eternal promises and timeless principles that apply to any generation or question. Only an all-knowing God could do that, and He did! Now, more than ever, the world is looking for answers. They don’t need compliant, complacent, tolerant, make-no-waves Christians; they need the truth from the Bible.

Unsaved people can see that the world is a mess, and they are desperately seeking answers. We have them. They don’t fit the politically or socially accepted narrative because the current culture is godless, anti-Christian, immoral, and wicked. Our biblical Christian worldview will stand in stark contrast to the world’s viewpoint, but we were never meant to fit in; we were meant to stand out, to “shine as lights in the darkness”(Philippians 2:15).

Never be afraid to stand for the truth and against the lies. Stand on the truths of the Bible. Speak for God unapologetically, “The Bible says…” God was right the first time. His word still applies. His answers are still true. His way works because humans will always repeat the processes and practices of those before them. When societies have been out of step with God’s word, they have always failed and fallen. Pray that does not happen to America. Speak up in the places God has given you influence.

Let Ephesians 6:13 be your guide. Reject what the liberal, godless, mainstream media is selling. Never be ashamed to be salt and light to a world that is spiritually dead in sin, morally decaying in filth, and blinded by the thick darkness of Satanic deception.

Watchmen, fill your mind with things of Christ—think Christianly. Be a fountain of His words—speak biblically. Be a beacon in the town square, at home, online, and in public. Pray, Vote, Stand, and Finish well.

Source: Holding To A Biblical Worldview Has Never Been More Critical – Harbinger’s Daily

BUTLER, Pennsylvania — The drive between Butler, Pennsylvania, and the Ohio village of East Palestine is less than 42 miles long. In between are the villages and boroughs of Lyndora, Connoquenessing and Evans City on the Pennsylvania side before you cross the state line directly into the village of East Palestine.

It is what is often referenced to by coastal elites who have never driven through this very Americana scenery as “flyover country” or “the middle of nowhere.”

It is filled with people who work hard and stay because there is value to them to be intertwined with the lives that made them. Living not far from family was good for their future children. They could not justify moving away from that sense of community and belonging, so they stayed to make their hometowns better.

The region also is filled with people who have given up hope. This is where opportunity left when automation and trade deals left them behind with skills and work ethic that had no place to go. Once upon a time, they were the votes Democrats coveted, union men and women who were used as backdrops for the labor movement until climate change and international deals became more important and Democratic leaders stopped showing up.

Their despair is often chronicled as bitter or angry. It is not. It is the despair of the unseen. The unheard. The disrespected. They don’t want power. They want to be seen.

For decades, presidential candidates from either party have rarely shown up in places like East Palestine and Butler. The political calculation was simple: There seemed to be no political power here, the population is small, their industries are gone, and the pols really don’t know how to connect with their lives.

What they missed is what the people here represent, explained Youngstown State University’s Paul Sracic, who said there are many thousands of 42-mile stretches just like this one all across this country — forgotten blue lines on U.S. maps that look just like this one and have people just like the people here.

“This is not a place where presidential candidates go, but it is where presidents can be elected or defeated,” said Sracic, who lives right in the thick of it.

“Politicians on both sides of the aisle for the longest time did not understand that this 42-mile stretch and all of the other ones in this country that it represents was becoming ground zero in American politics,” Sracic said.

On the eve of the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump showed up here in Butler for a rally that was one for the ages. People wondered why.

Seventeen months ago, he showed up in East Palestine after the devastating train derailment spewed deadly toxic chemicals throughout the village and the region. It was a visit President Joe Biden failed to make.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), then newly sworn into office and a son of Appalachia who grew up in a town very similar to East Palestine, was with Trump that day.

It shows, said Sracic, an expert on the shifts in American politics, how much we’ve really gone through a political realignment.

“The old Republican Party was an uncritical partner with big business such as Norfolk Southern,” he said. “But this new party is not reflexively pro-business. It understands business. It wants to do deregulation to help business, but when business does the wrong thing or isn’t accountable, it is much more willing to hold them accountable.”

“We talked about first responders, but they were political first responders representing the larger country, the larger political world that was going to pay attention to these people who feel ignored,” he said.

“These 42 miles represents a broad swath of the country, one could argue most of the country that basically feels ignored and by the media centers on the coasts and the power elite on the coasts, and now with Trump and Vance, they’re finally kind of being spoken to,” he explained.

In our interview on July 14, Trump told me repeatedly that the people at the Butler rally and the people in East Palestine were “his people, the greatest people in the country.”

Sracic said corporate media still fail to understand that despite the fact that Trump won in 2016 and narrowly lost in 2020, he had been mounting a campaign that was expanding, not subtracting, his universe long before Biden’s debate performance or the attempted assassination of Trump.

“They see it as tribal, and a lot of us, including me, kind of misunderstood at the beginning with the rallies. My own students who supported Trump in 2016 telling me the importance of the rallies, feeling once again that they’re part of the whole,” he said.

“You have to remember that the people in these stretches of the country are not, as the book says, ‘bowling alone.’ They are joiners. They come from parents who join the Rotary Clubs and Elks, who coach Little League and are ushers at their church and, yes, bowling leagues,” he said. “They are the very essence of the Alexis de Tocqueville observation that Americans thrive in associations that bring them into shared concerns with their neighbors to give them voice to influence public opinion.”

Vance, he said, is one of them. Born in Appalachian Ohio to a mother addicted to prescription drugs and a father absent from his life, and raised by his grandparents, he enlisted in the Marines and attended, as they say around here, “THE” Ohio State University, then Yale Law School.

Vance’s life story shows the value of meritocracy, Sracic said.

“He rises up not because of the privilege that he was born in but because this is a country that gave him the opportunity to prove his worth, to prove his merit,” he said.

In short, none of us would’ve ever heard of Vance if he hadn’t tested well enough to get into law school through these largely neutral testing regimes.

Vance, like Trump, understands the importance of showing up.

This past February, on the one-year anniversary of the train derailment in East Palestine, Vance pulled up to a local church in his pickup truck and stepped out of the driver’s side, juggling two boxes of Oram’s donuts that he had picked across the state line in Pennsylvania. This was just one of many meetings he has held with locals since the train derailment that set off a massive fire and a billowing cloud of toxic smoke rolling over this community — followed days later by a toxic “controlled burn” meant to prevent an even larger explosion.

He greeted everyone there by their first name, grabbed a glazed bear claw from one of the donut boxes, sat down with his constituents and asked them for an update, spending 90 minutes taking questions, pressing them for details, telling them what he believes the Environmental Protection Agency has gotten right and what it’s gotten wrong, and talking candidly about how sick he felt after his first visits here.

At the end of the meeting, he held a grief-stricken Lonnie Miller, who has lost her home and her small business and has barely held on to her marriage since the derailment.

Sracic said he is stunned the media still do not get this.

“They still will as they continue to parachute in here and try to see America from their worldview, not the 42-mile people who decide elections,” he said.

Sracic said here is the genius about understanding the importance of showing up where there is seemingly no capital: “Right? There are no centers of power or influence here, no Wall Street, no big corporate headquarters, yet coming to places like here or Ashtabula, Ohio, or Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, or the Jersey Shore or the South Bronx is symbolic. People ‘see’ themselves there.”

East Palestine or Youngstown, Ohio, or Butler, Pennsylvania, are symbols, he said. “They are not just a place. After all, we know it’s like declining in population, not that important politically anymore, but the type of people that are there — what happened there is the story of what happened in most of deindustrialized America.”

This is the center of the political earthquake where we have seen what on paper shouldn’t have happened. These voters changed American politics. Trump intuitively understood that, and Vance is part of that evolution.

“For any political scientist to say that we don’t have a realignment, they’re not seeing what’s right before them,” Sracic said. “All they have to do is drive these 42 miles.”

Source: The Most Important 42 Miles in American Politics

In all the brouhaha the Friday after the disastrous debate between Trump and POTATUS, a pretty important Supreme Court decision came down. SCOTUS overturned the long-time deference to what was called “The Chevron Doctrine.” The ruling cheered the hearts of so many freedom lovers who had watched in horror as bureaucratic tyrants took over the administration of law, regulatory power, and punishment that are constitutionally the purview of Congress alone.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling on the Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (Loper), will profoundly impact multiple industries regulated by federal agencies that have grown accustomed to being the ultimate arbiter of ambiguous language in their applicable laws, rules and regulations. Those days are over—courts no longer have to defer to federal agencies when resolving such ambiguities.

Originally decided in 1984, Chevron became a watershed decision in which courts used its two-part test as the standard for interpreting when a statute is ambiguous or silent, deferring to the administrative agency’s reasonable interpretation of the statutory language. Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 US 837 (1984)…

No longer do politically appointed federal bureaucrats have the power to make rules as they go along.

…The theory underlying the deference afforded agencies in Chevron is that experts who work within federal agencies are often better attuned to the impact of new laws and how they should be implemented within the context of specific industry practices, policies and trends. For example, Judge Friendly once noted that Medicaid law is “almost unintelligible to the uninitiated.” For heavily regulated industries like healthcare and securities, in the wake of Loper, judges across the US, many of whom are unfamiliar with the complexity of the relevant regulatory schemes, may offer potentially conflicting interpretations of the same statute, rule or regulation, thereby creating challenges for industry participants who need to conduct business throughout the country. Of course, the theory underpinning Chevron has its limitations as regulators’ views can change over time. Afterall, the heads of federal agencies promulgating and enforcing their rules and regulations are political appointees who are not necessarily constrained by prior agency practice.

As Ilya Shapiro said (well, sort of), “Whoda thunk it?”

Whoever thought that an obscure case about fishing regulations would bring down a core part of modern administrative law, the rules that govern the executive-branch agencies that write the rules by which we live our lives? In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court has overturned the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which told judges to defer to “reasonable” agency interpretations of their operative statutes. Originally meant to streamline the Reagan administration’s deregulatory agenda in the face of judicial obstruction, the doctrine wound up enabling a ratcheting up of bureaucratic bloat.

Good for the Court to recognize that its 40-year-old experiment in rebalancing the relationship between administration and judicial review has failed. And indeed, the Court itself hasn’t used the doctrine in nearly a decade. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion (joined by five colleagues): “At this point all that remains of Chevron is a decaying husk with false pretensions.”

It’s been a couple of weeks now, and there is an idea of what size tsunami of change, thanks to this decision, might actually wash through the office buildings in D.C.

For example, the Food and Drug Administration has wide latitude to set its own rules, as does the Security and Exchange Commission. Both have been under increasing scrutiny and incurring broader legal action against certain of their dictates. But now, with Chevron gone, do the lawsuits about their rules become a deluge? What about the climate-related disclosure requirements that the SEC has set up? Both agencies are ripe for a litigation explosion.

I hadn’t thought about the impact on American agriculture, either, until I got one of my little newsletters this morning. Farmers are hoping this decision will get a number of government monkeys off their backs and are thanking the menhaden fishermen for going the SCOTUS distance.

…This ruling by the Supreme Court throws a wet blanket on how government agencies have operated for the past 40 years.

Predictably, bureaucrats are now playing the Chicken Little card saying the sky will fall, rivers will turn red, and the skies will turn black. Meanwhile, businesses and many average joes are celebrating the ruling saying maybe – just maybe –a little common sense has been restored in how our lives and businesses are regulated on a daily basis.

The Ripple Effect
Could this be the nudge needed so we can start to have some truly honest two-sided discussions about things like gas stoves, gasoline cars, and burping cows before we hastily put everything we know out to pasture? Maybe the world, in which every day is a new day with another new regulation, will finally stop spinning or at least slow down.

There is no doubt the overturning of the Chevron Doctrine will certainly clip the powers of federal agencies to issue regulations. This will most heavily impact agriculture when it comes to federal regulations surrounding food and drug safety, environmental and welfare standards. The real world impact at the agency level is that these regulations will be harder to create and enforce, affecting progressive efforts in specific areas like agriculture runoff, wetland protection, climate, and animal treatment guidelines.

…For example, this could thwart the Biden Administration’s EPA’s unwavering push to regulate the waters of the U.S — down to the sometimes dry creek running through your back 40. This ruling essentially puts the EPA up a creek without a paddle.

…Here’s a tip of the cap, to some scrappy East Coast fishermen. Well done!

Republicans are also determined to look into any actions implemented because of the Chevron deference and “rollback” the executive overreach when they find it.

…The conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) said House committees “have an opportunity to review any regulatory action that was justified by Chevron deference toward agency interpretation.” The RSC views the overturning of Chevron as a way to “reclaim congressional authority” and roll back what they see as executive overreach. The committee’s memo encouraged its members to “scour Biden-era regulatory actions and highlight any that should be considered for judicial review post-Chevron.” This indicates a specific focus on reviewing and potentially challenging regulations implemented during the Biden administration.

That’s the way to do it.

And not a minute too soon.

This is a whale of a good fish story with what could be a really happy ending.

BEEGE WELBORN 7:00 PM | July 12, 2024

Source: American Farmers Are Pretty Happy With That SCOTUS Fish Decision – HotAir

Only 6% of adults in the United Kingdom identify as practicing Christians, while 42% say they are non-practicing Christians, and one in three non-Christians say they want to know more about Jesus Christ, according to the findings of a recent survey, Talking Jesus.

As many as 70% of those who identify as Christians are white Brits, who represent 83% of the U.K.’s adult population, says the survey, adding that 25% of those who identify as Christians are ethnic minorities, although they represent only 12% of the U.K.’s adult population.

The survey of more than 3,000 U.K. adults, commissioned by five Christian organizations, also found that 4% identify as agnostics, and 12% as atheists.

“It’s a significant drop that shows that our reach has diminished, and we’ve got less contact,” Rachel Jordan-Wolf, executive director of Hope Together, a group involved in the research, was quoted as saying.

She added, “There are more non-Christians who don’t know an active or practicing Christian. So that’s something really to watch. It could be because of the pandemic, as we’ve all not been out and about as much. But these are often significant relationships, so someone they call a friend or family member.

The study also showed that a quarter of Brits describe Jesus as a “normal human being,” and 33% as a prophet or spiritual leader, and not God.

However, while only 6% of Brits identify as Christian, the survey revealed that 45% of people believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, and 20% believe He is the Son of God.

Asked where would people go to find out about the Christian faith, 26% said they would search on Google, 22% said they would go to a local church, 22% said they would read the Bible, and 15% said they would talk to a friend or a family member who is Christian.

The survey, which was also featured by the Church of England on its website, further showed that 62% of non-Christians describe the Christians they know as friendly, 50% as caring, 33% as good-humored, 32% as generous, 19% as authentic.

The groups that commissioned the survey included Alpha, Evangelical Alliance, Luis Palau Association and Kingsgate Community Church.

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Monday, May 02, 2022

Source: Only 6% of UK adults identify as practicing Christians: survey | World