Tag Archives: Church

Country Founders knew the Government would rule over the Church if the First Amendment wasn’t established

  • The Founders Meant to Keep Government Out of the Church, Not God Out of the Government
  • These days the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” has come to mean keeping God or His believers from having a big effect on government and public life.
  • But that’s far, far from what the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they were separating church and state.
  • They were afraid of what so many of the Old World countries had: a religion established by the state as its one true religion, that would tyrannically rule over the faith and conscience of every citizen.
  • Not only did the First Amendment say, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but it also said, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
  • “What they wanted was the freedom that we have in the Bible: the rights of conscience,” Barton said. “And they didn’t want the state telling us how we could or couldn’t practice our faith.”

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Presumed jihadists stormed church in Nigeria, opened fire on worshipers killing at least 50

Mark 13:13 “You will be hated by all because of My name, but the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Pentecost Massacre in Nigeria claims the lives of more than 50 Christians
  • The attack on St. Francis Catholic Church took place in the morning when the faithful had gathered to celebrate Pentecost.
  • While no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the targeting of Christians strongly suggests Islamic extremists were behind the assault.
  • Our peace and tranquility have been attacked by the enemies of the people.

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Orange County church shooting suspect hogtied by attendees

Matthew 24:12 “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Man killed, 5 wounded in shooting at Laguna Woods church; suspect in custody
  • One man was killed and five others wounded when a gunman opened fire in a church in Laguna Woods
  • The shooting occurred at Geneva Presbyterian Church, located in the 24000 block of El Toro Road
  • By the time Orange County Sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene, the suspect, a man in his 60s, was hogtied by an extension cord by churchgoers. The churchgoers had also confiscated at least two weapons, the sheriff’s department said.
  • Laguna Woods Mayor Carol Moore thanked the “impressive” members of the church who “were wise enough to take action and endanger themselves to save others.”

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See what God showed to Chuck Pierce about the current global crisis and the calling on the Church

Revelations 6:3-4 “ when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Chuck Pierce: What God Showed Me About Russia, Ukraine, China, America and the Church
  • In 2004 and 2008, I wrote articles and met with leaders in the Ukraine to explain to them that they were in a very small window of revival. I told them if they didn’t understand the times, they also wouldn’t understand the progression of events after 2020. After 2020, Russia would re-establish themselves at the right time by regaining Ukraine. They would continue to gain back their old territory and move toward establishing themselves in Syria and ultimately move to gain more control in Israel. When that happens, we’ll see Ezekiel 38 come alive in a way that we’ve never seen before.
  • In the prophetic realm, I’ve always seen America as a wild-card. I believe our nation could be strengthened or unravel based on the response of the church.
  • The church across the world still has a role to play. I’m calling the church in America, in Ukraine and all around the world to pray.
  • We have to become an apostolic, prophetic, warring tribe who rises up in the midst of this.
  • In Scripture, the Lord says that if you don’t bind the strong man, he gets seven times worse. We’re in that scenario.
  • We need to be advocates for the Holy Spirit, because if we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, we will overcome.

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It’s Not Just Political It’s Spiritual Too – Control of State Religion

Matthew 24:6 “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Putin is after more than land — he wants the religious soul of Ukraine
  • The physical landscape of Ukraine isn’t the only battle space Russian invaders hope to dominate. For the past decade, the two countries have fought another battle — not over territory but the religious orientation of Ukraine. And if Russia occupies the country, religious freedom will be one of the many casualties.
  • Putin’s efforts to restore Russian prestige have included elevating the Russian Orthodox Church to the center of Russian identity while also undermining the independence of the Moscow Patriarch. Putin’s Ukraine scheme included leveraging the potential religious soft power of the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate.
  • The Orthodox Church of Ukraine becoming free was a declaration of independence from foreign influence and achieved greater religious freedom
  • The president of the European People’s Party, Donald Tusk, cited sources saying Putin’s “demands are also connected with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its independence from Moscow.
  • Whatever the outcome, the future is uncertain. The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz said, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” War was probably the only outcome Putin wanted. The implications for Ukrainian religious freedom and other human rights, however, hang in the balance.

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Quake wrecks old buildings in Crete, killing one person

By Angeliki Koutantou and George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS (Reuters) -An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 shook Greece’s largest island, Crete, on Monday morning, killing one person and injuring several, authorities said.

The tremor sent people fleeing out of homes, schools and public buildings across the island. Damage was reported to many old buildings close to the epicenter, in the east of the island.

The Greek infrastructure ministry said it had sent a group of civil engineers to assess the structural damage and assist in relief efforts.

A man died when the dome of a small chapel in the town of Arkalochori, some 30 km (20 miles) outside Crete’s main city Heraklion, caved in during renovation works, a police official said. The church was largely reduced to rubble.

Civil protection authorities said nine people were injured in the quake, which damaged mainly old, unοccupied buildings in the wider Arkalochori region.

Nevertheless many people in Heraklion rushed outdoors. Schoolchildren were told to leave their classrooms, gathering in schoolyards and town squares.

Supermarket shelves were toppled or emptied by the tremor. Schools in the Heraklion region were closed for the day.

A civil protection official said hotel rooms would be made available for people needing to stay outside their homes overnight, and 2,500 tents would also be put up.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute put the quake’s magnitude at 5.8 and said it was centered at a depth of 10 km, with an epicenter 23 km (14 miles) northwest of Arvi in southeastern Crete.

Earlier, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) had measured the earthquake at a magnitude of 6.5, while the United States Geological Survey (USGS) put it at 6.0.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou, George Georgiopoulos; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Kevin Liffey)

Jerusalem church suffers damage in arson near Garden of Gethsemane

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police on Friday arrested a man for trying to set fire to an east Jerusalem church by the Garden of Gethsemane, the site revered by Christians as the place where Jesus prayed before he was crucified.

The 49-year-old Israeli suspect poured flammable liquid inside the Church of All Nations, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The man then set it alight, a separate police statement said, before the church guard detained him.

“Preliminary investigation and the suspect’s details strengthen the assessment that the background to the incident was criminal,” police said, suggesting investigators believed it was not a hate crime.

Reuters pictures showed a charred bench and a small blackened portion of the mosaic floor of the Catholic church, which overlooks Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

“This is a crime, a crime that shouldn’t happen in a church in the Holy Land,” said Father Ibrahim Faltas, as he inspected the damage. The Custody of the Holy Land for the Roman Catholic Church in a statement urged police to conduct a thorough investigation.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the suspect as a “terrorist Israeli settler” and said in a statement the Israeli government was responsible for such attacks.

Over the past decade, Jewish extremists have been charged or blamed for arson attacks on a number of churches and mosques in the Holy Land.

(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

As coronavirus ‘storm cloud’ gathers, church in Missouri braces for mourning

By Makini Brice

(Reuters) – When Traci Blackmon, the senior pastor for a predominantly black church in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, is finally able to open the doors for service again, one of her main concerns is the collective sorrow her congregation will experience.

Five members of her 180-strong congregation have gotten sick from the coronavirus and two have died. Two others have died during lockdown due to other causes.

But because the doors of Christ the King United Church of Christ have been closed since the end of March to help stop the spread of the virus, members of the church have not been able to be together and console each other.

“It’s almost like a suspended grief,” said Pastor Blackmon. “It’s like when a storm cloud is hanging over and you know that it is going to rain, but it hasn’t fully rained yet.”

Protestant churches with predominantly African-American congregations has played a crucial role in U.S. history, forging historically black colleges and universities such as Morehouse College in Georgia, fueling the Civil Rights Movement, and serving as campaign stop mainstays for political candidates interested in appealing to black voters.

Many of these churches are now bracing to play a prominent role as the United States grieves for its coronavirus dead.

More than 98,000 people in the United States have lost their lives after battling COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and a disproportionate number of them have been black.

In Missouri, while only 11.8% of the state’s residents are black, they account for 37% of reported deaths from COVID-19, according to figures released by the Missouri Department of Health.

Similar racial disparities have appeared across the United States.

Black Americans are the most religious ethnic group in the country, with nearly half attending religious service at least once a week.

One of those faithful was Christ the King’s Eugene Young.

Young would drive his wife, Annie, who he married nearly 45 years ago, to and from church services in the St. Louis area every Sunday, she recalled recently in a telephone interview. He called her “Precious” and was always able to make her laugh. She called him “Sunshine.”

She described a “storybook romance,” with three sons she calls her “kings,” 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Young became sick from the coronavirus in April, though it remains unclear how he caught it. He died at the age of 61, on Easter Sunday, April 12.

“It’s so fresh for me. It’s still unbelievable to me,” Annie Young said.

Because of social distancing guidelines to stop the spread of the virus, Young’s family had a visitation at a funeral home, not the church, limited to ten people at a time. There was no touching or hugging to comfort family members. Everyone needed to wear a mask.

“My three kings and myself got to see him by ourselves, just the four of us, and we got to spend just a little while with him,” she recalled. “So that was our time to say goodbye.”

Christ the King’s congregation has been keeping in touch through the crisis through Zoom calls, Facebook live streams of sermons given from Blackmon’s dining room and Bible studies conducted over the phone, but it isn’t exactly the same, members say.

Wesley Hurt, 77, and his wife Linda joined the Christ the King congregation more than 40 years ago, and have continued to attend services online during the lockdown.

“The whole camaraderie thing is lost, to a certain extent. We are a church that likes to fix meals for each other and we do a lot of cooking. So we haven’t had that opportunity to meet and come together and have our church dinners like we’d normally have,” Hurt said.

Though Missouri allowed churches to reopen on May 4, Christ the King United Church of Christ remains closed. Blackmon said she remains cautious until she sees progress in a number of factors, including testing.

Blackmon had initially planned to hold an Easter service when people were able to safely sit in the pews again, no matter the date.

But she worries now that the celebratory holiday would ring false for people grappling with all that had been lost from the pandemic.

Instead, she is considering devoting the first service to Good Friday, the Christian holiday commemorating the death of Jesus.

“There are a lot of things you can do over Zoom and there are a lot of things that you can do on different channels of the Internet, but what you cannot do is feel,” she said.

(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Ed Tobin and Rosalba O’Brien)

HE IS RISEN! With Joy and Hope, we worship together in our hearts! Happy Easter!

By Kami Klein~~

HE has RISEN! We Worship with JOY and HOPE today from our homes, our cars or even in our backyards! It does not matter where you are for it is in our hearts that we find Him! Whether we are with family, sheltered together or alone we have New Life through Jesus! No matter what happens here in the world, God gave us His promise through the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. His message is clearer today than ever! YOU are special, YOU are a child of God, you are forgiven and He LOVES YOU!

This Easter, may you truly understand that the Church is not a building or tradition, the Church is not the creeds or statements of belief found in your faith or denomination. The Church is the bride of Jesus. We are a family built from the greatest Love that has ever been known on Earth. No building can hold us, no statement can ever be bigger than the one made on the cross.

Sing with Joy today! Leave your troubles in God’s hands and Celebrate our new lives! Let today bring you strength as we trust HIM and HIS purpose!

Matthew 28 (MEV)

The Resurrection
28 At the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

2 And then there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. 3 His countenance was like lightning, and his garments white as snow. 4 The soldiers shook for fear of him and became like dead men.

5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid. For I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here. For He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead, and indeed, He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see Him. Listen, I have told you.”

8 So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. 9 As they went to tell His disciples, suddenly Jesus met them, saying, “Greetings!” They came and took hold of His feet and worshipped Him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go tell My brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

The Report of the Guard
11 While they were going, indeed, some of the soldiers went into the city and described to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave much money to the soldiers, 13 saying, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were sleeping.’ 14 If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you secure.” 15 So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this saying has been commonly reported among the Jews to this day.

The Commissioning of the Disciples
16 Then the eleven disciples went away to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw Him, they worshipped Him. But some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

HE is ALWAYS with us!

Happy Easter!