Tag Archives: Media

Christian Radio Station To Bring Hope To Communist Nation

For years in the country of Albania, the communist government once exerted such control over the publications and broadcasting that you could not buy a dictionary with God in it.

Now, the country is undergoing a revolution of hope as a Christian radio station is airing programming in the Albanian’s native language aimed at bringing the good news to the lost.

Radio 7 has been broadcasting Christian material to the country since 2002 but had been hampered by the fact their programs were translations of North American programs that were aimed at believers in the United States and Canada.

The head of Radio 7 contacted an American ministry called The Tide which works to create locally produced Gospel shows around the world.  The group helped launch radio ministries in countries such as Nigeria, Nepal and India.  They knew they could bring the kind of help to Radio 7 that would impact Albania.

“Like all of our programming, The Tide Albanian-language program, which also reaches into neighboring Kosovo, is produced on-site, using indigenous speakers who tell people about Jesus in the language they were born to speak,” said The Tide Director Don Shenk. “But our ministry in Albania also goes beyond airtime, and our ministry leaders invest into the lives of those to whom they minister, visiting with them, giving them radios so they can listen to the program, praying with them and encouraging them in their faith.”

The ministry of Radio 7 and The Tide has produced noticeable results in just a few short months with letters from those who said they were atheists or Muslims who have now accepted Christ as Lord.

Albania’s population today is less than one percent Christian.

Fox To Air “Lucifer” TV Series

Fox is planning to air a TV series that focuses on Satan coming to Earth as a nightclub owner.

“Bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell, Lucifer Morningstar has abandoned his throne and retired to L.A., where he owns Lux, an upscale nightclub,” a description of the series reads on the Fox website.

“Charming, charismatic and devilishly handsome, Lucifer is enjoying his retirement, indulging in a few of his favorite things—wine, women and song—when a beautiful pop star is brutally murdered outside of Lux,” it continues. “For the first time in roughly 10 billion years, he feels something awaken deep within him as a result of this murder. Compassion? Sympathy? ”

The series is based on comic books by author Neil Gaiman which focus on occult culture.

The Fox description then goes to say that Satan will begin to wonder if “there’s hope for his soul” because of the “inherent goodness” of the police detective he works with to solve a murder.

Criticism of the show has been swift.

“It was only a matter of time before Hollywood gave the devil a prime time television show on a big network,” wrote Joe Schimmel of Good Fight Ministries and host of the documentary “Hollywood’s War on God” in an online post this week. “After all, for the last several years, Hollywood has portrayed everyone from meth dealers to sexual deviants as ‘cool,’ while depicting Jesus as a cuss word!”

Pastors are saying the show is a danger to youth, showing Satan to be “cool” instead of his truly evil nature.

ISIS Magazine Calls Islam “Religion Of The Sword”

The newest edition of an ISIS online propaganda magazine says that despite the claims of Muslim leaders around the world that Islam is a “religion of peace” that Islam is really a “religion of the sword.”

“There is a slogan repeated continuously by apologetic ‘du’at’ [callers for Islam] when flirting with the West and that is their statement: ‘Islam is the religion of peace,’ and they mean pacifism by the word peace,” reads the ISIS article, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“How far is their claim from the truth, for Allah has revealed Islam to be the religion of the sword, and the evidence for this is so profuse that only a zindiq (heretic) would argue otherwise.”

The propaganda article from the group quotes passages in the Quran that ISIS claims tells Muslims to cut the heads of anyone who is not a follower of their faith.

“His Messenger … also described the sword as the salvation from evil and fitnah [strife]. [He] also described the sword as being the key to Jannah [paradise],” the article asserts. “He also declared that his worldly provision was placed for him in the shade of his spear and that the best livelihood for the Muslim in the future is what he takes with his sword from the kafir [unbelieving] enemy.”

A leading expert on ISIS theology quoted in the Christian Post says that many western Muslims have a “cotton-candy view” of Islam and they overlook what their holy book says is required of them to be a true follower.

“People want to absolve Islam,” Bernard Haykel of Princeton University says in an interview with The Atlantic. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.”

Haykel says it’s wrong to say ISIS is un-Islamic because their tactics are barbaric.

“The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” he continues. “What’s striking about them is not just the literalism, but also the seriousness with which they read these texts. … There is an assiduous, obsessive seriousness that Muslims don’t normally have.”

Judge Refuses To Delay Boston Bomber Trial

A judge on Wednesday denied attempts by lawyers for the Boston Marathon terrorism suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to delay the start of his trial.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole, Jr. means that jury selection will begin Monday in Boston federal court.

Lawyers for Tsarnaev tried to make the case that it would impossible to find an impartial jury in Massachusetts because of the amount of publicity given to the case.  They also said they needed more time to examine the large amounts of discovery turned over my prosecutors.

The lawyers tried to use the example of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh whose trial was moved to Denver because of media attention.

Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.

Jury selection in the case is expected to take weeks because of the intense media coverage and the number of local residents impacted in some way because of the bombings.  Also, jurors who object to the death penalty could also be excluded from the case.

Al-Qaeda Threatens To Execute Captive

The al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen has threatened to kill an American hostage.

The captive has been identified at 33-year-old Luke Somers, a British-born man who became an American citizen.  Somers was working for the Yemen Times as a photojournalist.

Journalists throughout Yemen have been calling on the government to work for the journalist’s release, saying the kidnapping was an attempt to intimidate the country’s media.

The terrorists reportedly have made demands that have to be met in three days or they will kill Somers.

The terrorist group has already killed a hostage this week, former Yemeni Intelligence official Rashid al-Hebshi, whose body was found on Thursday.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby admitted there was a failed rescue attempt last month.

Dr. Kent Brantly Says Ebola In Africa Worse Than On TV

Dr. Kent Brantly, the Christian doctor who was one of the first Americans to be infected with Ebola during the current outbreak, says that conditions in Africa are worse than you see on television.

You’ve seen the news reports, and I can assure you, the reality on the ground in West Africa is worse than the worst report you’ve seen. And our attention and our efforts need to be on loving the people there,” he said.

“Let’s stop talking about that highly improbable thing [of an outbreak in America] and focus on saving people’s lives and stopping the outbreak where it is. God saved my life… He used some incredible people and unbelievable circumstances to do that … I want to live in that reality forever.”

Dr. Brantly called the attention being paid to Ebola possibly breaking out in the United States “panic.”

“I just want to tell everyone that yes, Ebola is a serious devastating disease and for those number of people who have been identified as contacts of an Ebola patient, they need to be monitoring themselves, they need to be cooperating with the authorities, with the CDC, and it’s very serious for them, but for the rest of us we don’t need to be worried,” Dr. Brantly said.

“I am particularly thrilled to be alive,” Brantly added.

Values Voter Panel: Media Clueless About Sex

A panel at the Values Voter Summit says that the national media is missing the boat when it comes to young people and sex.

“When young adults are asked what they are looking for, they’re not looking for hook-ups. They’re preferring romance over sex, relationships over sex. But most people don’t recognize that,” Valerie Huber, president and CEO of the National Abstinence Education Association said.

She cited a survey from the Centers for Disease Control that showed a 15 percent increase in the number of young people waiting to have sex until marriage.

Huber added that many young people are looking to the media to portray reality rather than pushing a hyper-sexualized agenda on the community.

“Here is what this generation wants: they want the media to show more youth not having sex. They want to hear more reasons to wait for sex — and this is according to a very broad national study — and they want to hear that waiting for sex is realistic; and they want to know waiting for sex is, in fact, quite normal,” said Huber.

David Knopp of Summit Ministries said parents, mentors and peers need to step up and take back control of sex education from those who want to make sex appear as something just for fun or something insignificant to the larger parts of life.

Chelsen Vicari of the Institute on Religion and Democracy said that young Christians need to better defend the Biblical view on sexuality to those inside and outside the church and strive for the purity that God calls for everyone before marriage.

Hamas Admits Intimidating Foreign Press

A Hamas official made a major blunder Thursday in admitting they were taking steps to control the media and the images that were released from Gaza during their attacks on Israel.

The head of foreign relations for Hamas’ Information Ministry, Isra Al-Mudallal, was responding to an Arabic reporter and said that some foreign press were trying to “collaborate with the occupation” by showing Hamas terrorists.

“These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip,” al-Mudallal said. “The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another.”

“We suffered from this problem very much,” she added. “Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.”

The Foreign Press Association says they have evidence that Hamas would screen any reporter attempting to enter Gaza and would use troops to block those who they felt were too pro-Israeli in their reporting.

“Some reporters received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen,” the FPA reported.

United States Makes Significant Decline In Press Freedom

The United States fell 13 spots in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index from 32nd to 46th, one of the biggest declines in the survey for a country that didn’t feature murders of reporters.

The U.S. was the featured country in the report’s section on information sacrificed to national security and surveillance.  The conviction of Bradley Manning and the situation with fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden were described as “warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest.”

The report also cited the Department of Justice targeting the Associated Press and taking their phone records without warning because they wanted to know who leaked CIA information to a reporter.  Also the cases of James Risen of the New York Times and Barrett Brown, a freelance journalist, who are facing jail time for publishing classified information without revealing sources or testifying against them.

Finland topped the list for the fourth straight year followed by Netherlands and Norway who held their same positions from last year.  The bottom three are Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.