Important Takeaways:
- State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters threatened to hold “rogue” public school districts accountable if they didn’t incorporate the Bible as part of their curriculum.
- At least a dozen of the state’s largest districts – Norman, Moore, Stillwater, Bixby, Deer Creek, Piedmont, Yukon, Jenks, Broken Arrow, Collinsville, Owasso and Tulsa – have publicly said they have no intention of altering their curriculum to incorporate Walters’ directive.
- Without providing examples, he said those same districts “want pornography in front of kids under the name of inclusivity but don’t want the historical context of the Bible.”
- In a five-page guidance document, issued in late July, Walters reiterated his demand: “Immediate and complete implementation of these guidelines for the 2024-2025 school year is required. This memorandum and the included standards must be provided to every teacher as well as providing a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Ten Commandments as resources in every classroom in the school district. These documents are mandatory for the holistic education of students in Oklahoma.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Some state lawmakers opposed to the order said they aren’t necessarily opposed to the Bible being used or referenced. Two Democrats, who are former teachers, agree the Bible can provide important historical context.
- Where the lawmakers take issue is making teachers include the book in every lesson plan.
- “The districts are going to have to ensure that when they’re teaching our kids, when they talk about American history, when they talk about these moments that are historically factual, that the bible played a role, again not according to us, but according to those individuals in history, it will be covered in Oklahoma classrooms,” Walters said.
- “Highlighting the Bible is to fetishize one particular religious document to give it such significance in class that we start to lose sight of its meaning,” State Rep. John Waldron said.
- Despite no districts publicly getting on board with the Bible mandate, Walters wants to see it implemented statewide by the start of the school year.
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Important Takeaways:
- We Live In A Day And Age Where Soundness Of Doctrine Is No Longer A Priority
- Imagine feeling sorry for a word. Doctrine is one of those words I always feel sorry for when I read it in the Bible—because people don’t like it. In Acts 2:42, the Greek word for doctrine means teaching or instruction.
- Yet I’ve heard believers say things like, “You know, it’s not about knowing doctrine. I’m not into doctrine. I’m just into loving Jesus.” It’s almost like their badge of spirituality. It sounds like they’re saying they are a cut above the rest of us, because they’re not into instruction. What a sad thing to say: “I’m not into good Bible teaching or truth. I just want to love Jesus.” But how will you love Him unless you are given good instruction on who He is and how to do it?
- The early church knew this and prioritized wisely: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Acts 2:42
- com defines steadfast as “fixed in direction…firm in purpose…unwavering.” How does that compare to “I’m not into doctrine”? Look at 2 Timothy 2:15: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” How can you rightly divide the Word of Truth unless you know the truth? And how can you know it unless you study it?
- Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29).
- Here’s the reason I’m pressing this: We live in a day and age where Bible teaching—doctrine—is not tolerated, and people go to church and just want a spiritual pep rally. They want somebody to whip them up with a little exhortation and cool, clever phrases.
- There’s nothing wrong with exhortation. There’s nothing wrong with having an emotional experience of loving the Lord—but it cannot replace knowing the Word by the study of doctrine.
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Important Takeaways:
- State Superintendent Ryan Walters said during opening comments of Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting that “every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.”
- According to the memo obtained by StateImpact, “all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specified grade levels, e.g., grades 5 through 12.”
- The memo to schools says the State Department of Education “may supply teaching materials for the Bible, as permissible, to ensure uniformity in delivery,” and “further instructions for monitoring and reporting on this implementation for the 2024/35 school year will be forthcoming.”
- Finally, it says adherence to the mandate is compulsory, and “immediate and strict compliance is expected.”
- Though many Oklahoma schools start fall classes within the next two months, Walters indicated there was still significantly more guidance to come on implementation and compliance monitoring of the mandate.
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Important Takeaways:
- The topic of abortion is very personal to me—not just because I am a pastor, but because I myself was not planned. I was conceived as a result of a one-night stand, and could have become another abortion statistic. Thankfully, that did not happen.
- God Planned Our Lives Before Birth
- Though it took me a while to discover it, my life was planned by God:
- Psalm 139:13–16 KJV – “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
- Jeremiah 1:5 KJV – “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
- Notice that God says, I formed you in your mother’s womb. God doesn’t say, I waited until you were born to have a plan for you, because you were not yet really a human, but only a mass of tissue.
- Each child is created by God and is granted the gift of life at conception
- God has a plan for every single baby conceived, regardless of the circumstances. There is no such thing as an illegitimate child. Illegitimate parents, perhaps, but not children.
- We read Paul’s words in Galatians, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace” (1:15)
- Since the passing of Roe v. Wade in the early 1970s, an estimated 63 million+ babies have been aborted.
- The abortion industry creates revenue in excess of $4 billion in the United States alone.
- Despite the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, many states have continued this practice, under the banner of “woman’s rights.” The truth is that abortion takes the life of an innocent child in the womb. It is, plainly speaking, murder.
- I think one of the reasons abortion has persisted is because we are so desensitized to murder. Our culture today is awash in violence. Everywhere we look, we see it: on our television screens, in theaters, in music, and in video games. But it’s sin. It’s the Sixth Commandment: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
- Our Pro-Life Role as Christians
- With all the emotion and passion about this topic, let’s do everything we can to help any woman who finds herself pregnant to make the right decisions, so she doesn’t have to struggle with the aftermath of a wrong choice.
- Let’s also do everything we can to care for families who need it. Caring for moms and children should be a priority of the Church more than ever before.
- To refrain from voting is irresponsible and bad stewardship. Scripture tells us, “To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17 NKJV). We should vote for the candidates and policies that best reflect the values we find in Scripture, and that includes voting pro-life.
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Important Takeaways:
- Robotic priests, AI cults and a ‘Bible’ by ChatGPT: Why people around the world are worshipping robots and artificial intelligence
- People around the world are turning to machines as a new religion.
- Six-foot robot priests are delivering sermons and conducting funerals, AI is writing Bible verses and ChatGPT is being consulted as if it was an oracle.
- Some religious organizations, like the Turing Church founded in 2011, are based on the notion that AI will put human beings on a par with God-like aliens by giving them super intelligence.
- An expert in human-computer interaction told DailyMail.com that such individuals who are following AI-powered prophets may believe the tech is ‘alive.’
- The personalized, intelligent-seeming responses offered by bots, such as ChatGPT, are also luring people to seek meaning from the technology, Lars Holmquist, a professor of design and innovation at Nottingham Trent University, told DailyMail.com.
- In 2015, French-American self-driving car engineer Anthony Lewadowski founded the Way of the Future – a church dedicated to building a new God with ‘Christian morals’ using artificial intelligence.
- Gabriele Trovato’s Sanctified Theomorphic Operator (SanTO) robot works like a ‘Catholic Alexa,’ allowing worshippers to ask faith-related questions.
- ‘The intended main function of SanTO is to be a prayer companion (especially for elderly people), by containing a vast amount of teachings, including the whole Bible,’ reads Trovato’s website.
- Other quasi-religious movements which ‘worship’ AI include transhumanists, who believe that in the future, AI may resurrect people as God-like creatures.
- Believers in ‘The Singularity’ hope for the day when man merges with machine (which former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil believes could come as early as 2045), turning people into human-machine hybrids – and potentially unlocking God-like powers.
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Important Takeaways:
- Shocking report from Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, indicates that federal law enforcement agencies wanted financial institutions to identify potential extremists by flagging otherwise benign purchases and search terms affiliated with former President Donald Trump in the wake of the incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
- On Wednesday, Jordan sent an alarming letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, better known as FinCEN. According to the letter, Jordan’s committee and select subcommittee have collected documents which suggest that FinCEN was targeting law-abiding Americans “on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”
- One FinCEN document referenced in the letter allegedly urged financial institutions to query “Zelle payment messages” for terms such as “TRUMP” and “MAGA.” Another FinCEN analysis mentioned in the letter apparently suggested that these same institutions could identify possible “Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent” extremists by examining customers’ transactions, looking for the purchase of “religious texts” — including the Bible, Jordan said — or “bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel areas with no apparent purpose.”
- The letter also alleges that Key Bank created presentation slides about merchant category codes and keywords that financial institutions could use that might identify “potential active shooters” or other “dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists / Homegrown Violent Extremists (‘Lone Wolves.’)” The MCCs Key Bank suggested supposedly included “3484: Small Arms” and “5091: Sporting and Recreational Goods and Supplies,” and the keywords supposedly included the names of notable national gun stores, such as “Cabela’s” and “Bass Pro Shops.”
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Revelations 13:14 “…by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth…”
Important Takeaways:
- PETA Uses ChatGPT to Rewrite Bible’s Book of Genesis to Make It Animal Rights ‘Friendly’
- The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has used artificial intelligence, namely ChatGPT, to turn the Bible’s Book of Genesis into an animal rights religious message “filled with vegan teachings.”
- The left-wing organization is targeting its new modern version of the book to members of the GenZ generation. PETA is promoting its book as a “cruelty-free Story of Creation.”
- “The message in Genesis is that God created every sentient being, He saw that they were good, and He gave them greens for sustenance,” the organization said on its website.
- The book’s distortions of Genesis include:
- A revised version of the story is told in Chapter 21. According to the Bible, Abraham and Sarah were 100 and 90 years old when they had their son Isaac. But in the PETA version, they also adopt a dog named Herbie, emphasizing the importance to adopt dogs from a shelter or a rescue organization.
- A rewritten Chapter 22 in which Abraham travels to Moriah and befriends a lamb in order to show his reverence and respect for God’s creation rather than how the original Bible reveals how he was tested and proved faithful, so God spared his son Isaac and provided a substitute sacrifice of a ram as an offering.
- “The Bible has long been used to justify all forms of oppression, so we’ve used ChatGPT to make it clear that a loving God would never endorse exploitation of or cruelty to animals,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk argued in a press release. “It took God only six days to create the entire world, but we realized it would take us years to rewrite the whole Bible, which is why we’ve started with just the first book.”
- CBN News reached out to PETA for comment. The organization responded by admitting they rewrote God’s Word just to make people start talking about their agenda.
- “We asked an AI to create The Book as a modern companion to the Bible, and we’re pleased with the results, because this complementary piece provides readers with moral lessons relevant to the world of the 21st century,” PETA told us. “We expected that The Book would initiate vital conversations about treating all sentient beings with dignity, kindness, and respect—and it has done exactly that!”
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Revelation 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Important Takeaways:
- Franklin Graham: ‘Never Before In America Have We Seen Such Open Contempt For The Word Of God’
- Make no mistake, the cancel culture from woke businesses, schools and corporations is coming hard after Christians who are faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in matters involving mankind’s sin, God’s holiness, and Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). As Jesus advised His disciples on His last night with them: “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
- I warned the thousands at the NRB convention that a storm is coming, and we’d better be ready because it appears as if all the demons in hell have been turned loose. Never before in America have we seen such open contempt for the Word of God.
- And when I say demons, I mean just that.
- We know that Satan and his rebellious, unholy allies were cast down out of Heaven at one point. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Revelation 12:7-9).
- Behind the disdain and hatred for Christ and His followers is the evil one, plus his minions who for a season have been allowed by God to work evil on Earth. Remember that the devil is a deceiver, a murderer, a destroyer by his own sinister, wicked nature.
- One of the big lies in our culture today is that persons are free to change their gender, biological identity or their sexual preferences. That is a demonic lie. The Bible says, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). This is the authoritative, unchanging truth of the Word of God.
- Another demonic lie in our culture today is that a baby in the womb is simply a mass of tissue—without value, soul or meaning—that can be aborted. The Bible says, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14). The Apostle Paul said that he had been set apart for the Gospel “from my mother’s womb” (Galatians 1:15).
- Perhaps the greatest demonic lie in our culture is that we are all basically good, with no responsibility toward anyone except ourselves. The Bible says that “there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God … there is none who does good, no, not one” (Romans 3:10-12). The Bible says, “each of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12).
- The good news is that Satan has already been decisively defeated on the cross by the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:15). He works his woe, but he knows that his time on Earth as the deceiver and destroyer will soon be over (Revelation 12:12), and he and his rebellious demons will be forever cast into the burning lake of fire (Revelation 20:10).
- Until that time, we stand on the all-powerful, never-changing truth of God’s Word, and we refuse to buy into any of the enemy’s wicked tactics. In Christ Jesus, we are always more than conquerors, whatever the culture may futilely say.
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Revelations 9:6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
Important Takeaways:
- The billion-dollar search for immortality
- Altos Labs’s Cambridge Institute of Science What does the company actually do? “Cell rejuvenation,” or “sell rejuvenation.” Depending on how you hear it
- Altos Labs is pursuing a lavishly funded quest to unearth the secrets of ageing.
- Last year, the Silicon Valley venture revealed it had raised $3 billion from investors, making it one of the best-financed start-ups in history.
- Altos’s leaders, however, are in the business of managing expectations. Hans Bishop, the president, has said his focus is on increasing “healthspan” rather than lifespan, and that any extension in longevity would be “an accidental consequence”. The idea is that, by focusing on “reprogramming” cells with various proteins, Altos can find medicines that treat many diseases at once by targeting the underlying problem: ageing.
- [More companies are in this race] Calico was set up a decade ago by Google co-founder Larry Page, though it has yet to unveil a product. Other players include Unity, BioAge, BioViva and AgeX Therapeutics. Billionaires — including Milner himself, Page, and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel — are regularly glimpsed behind the scenes.
- [In a separate story there is] Bryan Johnson, who injected himself with his son’s blood and spends $2 million a year in the hope of achieving the body of an 18-year-old.
- Amazon CEO [When he stepped down] in 2021, Bezos urged shareholders to stay nimble, quoting Richard Dawkins: “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at… If living things don’t actively work to prevent it, they would eventually merge with their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”
- philosopher Ingemar Patrick Linden, who calls the suggestion that everyone should die at a natural age “appalling”
- fellow tech titans articulated a very different philosophy of ageing. In 2005, Steve Jobs reflected on his pancreatic cancer diagnosis and offered a powerful rebuke to Silicon Valley-style transhumanism. “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there,” he said. “And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”
- But that is as it should be, he said, because “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
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