The office of Youth With A Mission in England and Wales could lose 350 missionary families in April because British immigration officials have suspended the ministry’s visa sponsor status.
The UK Visas & Immigration office claims that YWAM committed mistakes in two of seven areas that were being audited. The UK is working to lower the number of immigrants in the nation. YWAM immediate submitted corrected paperwork to the UKVI.
“Whilst we recognize and support the [UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI) office’s] legitimate right to concern over compliance to the rules, we do not feel that the issues raised in the letter from the UKVI justify such a draconian outcome as losing our license would produce,” wrote YWAM Harpenden in an “urgent request” sent Friday and highlighted by the Evangelical Alliance UK (EAUK).
YWAM has been working to resolve concerns, but if they cannot by January 20th the UKVI may revoke their license and require all missionaries to leave the country within 60 days.
“The British government has said they want to reduce immigration by one third. So they are going to have to find organizations that currently have licenses and potentially take them away in order to meet that target,” said Mark Vening of YWAM to Christianity Today. “We wonder whether or not faith-based organizations are providing perhaps a soft target for that.”
A Muslim man attempted to murder a French police officer Friday while yelling “Allahu Akbar.”
The London Daily Telegraph said the man has been arrested for theft after he snatched a woman’s purse. He asked his jailers for a glass of water and when the officer opened the prisoner’s cell, the man lunged at the officer and tried to strangle him.
“The doctor who treated him (the officer) said that just a few seconds more and it would have been too late,” Michael Philippart of the SGP FO police union told the publication L’Est Républicain.
The attack is not the only attack on French police by Muslims in the last few weeks.
In Joue-les-Tours, Bertrand Nzohabonayo walked into a police station with a knife and shouted “Allahu Akbar” while he slashed at police.
“He was banging on the fittings [of the door], so the officers opened [the door] to see what he was doing, and he immediately threw himself at my colleagues, stabbing one in the hand, and attacking the second on the neck and face,” Christophe Crepin told France 2 TV.
The attacker said he was doing it for the “children of Palestine.”
A man who has been called the “new Doctor Death” for following in the footsteps of Dr. Jack Kevorikian has been stripped of his medical license in Maryland.
Dr. Lawrence Egbert has been connected to the suicide deaths of six elderly Marylanders.
“It is undisputed that Dr. Egbert participated in six suicides in the state of Maryland as either a Senior Exit Guide or as a members only exit guide,” the Maryland Board of Physicians wrote in their revocation of Egbert’s license.
“Dr. Egbert reviewed their applications and medical records and recommended accepting them as members,” the board wrote. “Dr. Egbert attended their suicide rehearsals. He held each member’s hand and talked to him or her.”
Egbert, who law enforcement officials say is connected to over 300 deaths across the nation, is currently awaiting trial in Minnesota for helping residents there end their lives. He had previously been arrested in Georgia but charges were not filed.
Egbert says he will appeal the decision and claims that assisted suicide is “in the Bible as legitimate.”
Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico.
Police in Pilibhit, India say a 10-year-old was tortured and killed as part of a witchcraft ceremony.
Police say that an Indian worker whose goal was to get spirits to allow his wife to get pregnant killed the boy, called Pranshu, in a sugarcane field.
The boy had been missing for two days before his body was found by his father in the field. The family believed at first the child had been attacked and killed by animals until further investigation found the witchcraft connection.
After police had proof from the autopsy of the murder, they questioned the family’s neighbor who was taken into custody for the killing. The man’s wife has also been taken into custody by authorities and is being questioned regarding her role in the murder.
A man who led a Seventh Day Adventist church until last March when he resigned and said he was going to “try atheism for a year” has announced he no longer believes in God.
“For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God,” he explained. “I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.”
Ryan Bell was the leader of Hollywood Adventist Church until he was asked to resign by church leaders because of his opposition to Scripture on issues such as creation.
“Not being a pastor for nine months has given me the freedom to not have to believe in something for other people’s sake,” he explained to Religion News Service.
Bell now not only denies the existence of God, he is actively trying to undermine the Scriptures and truth of Christ by claiming it was just made up to fit the view of the leaders at the time.
“It’s probably been a decade since I was convinced about the virgin birth or the historicity of the birth narratives more generally,” Bell wrote. “In fact, Mark doesn’t even have a birth narrative, suggesting that it was invented later to tie the story together.”
A Massachusetts church was in shock Christmas Day to find that someone had stolen the baby Jesus from their nativity scene and replaced it with the severed head of a pig.
Police say that the vandals struck the nativity scene outside Scared Hearts Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts during the early morning hours of Christmas.
Police are investigating the incident on what they called a “busy, well lit street.”
Brenda Burns, a resident of Haverhill, took the baby Jesus from her family’s nativity scene and went to the church to replace the stolen one.
In addition to the stolen Jesus in Haverhill, a second Jesus was stolen in nearby Greenfield. That baby Jesus was imported from Italy and worth over $3,000. The thieves also caused significant damage to the manger in the display.
An 18-year-old black teenager who pulled a gun on police officers was shot and killed in the St. Louis area. Protesters descended on the scene immediately after the shooting and proceeded to clash with police.
St. Louis County PD said that a police officer conducting a routine check on a Mobil gas station at 11:15 p.m. saw two men outside the store and approached them. Antonio Martin pulled a gun on the officer and was shot by the officer.
The protesters that stormed the scene attacked police officers, threw some kind of explosive device at the police and also tried to burn down a QuikTrip store. Four people were arrested in the assault on the officers.
Police say Martin had a criminal record that included three assaults, armed robbery, armed criminal action and multiple weapons violations.
The family of Antonio Martin is claiming that he wasn’t with another man but with his girlfriend and that he didn’t have a gun despite the evidence that shows otherwise. A 9 mm handgun with the serial number filed off was found next to the body of Martin. A video of the incident showed Martin pointing the gun at the officer.
“When he was around me, he knew to do right,” Margret Chandler, Martin’s grandmother, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why would he pull out a gun against the police? That’s the thing I don’t get. It just doesn’t add up.”
The man who ambushed and killed two New York Police officers has been arrested several times for petty crimes and has been described as “violent and suicidal.”
28-year old Ismaaiyl Brainsley also spent two years in prison for firing a stolen gun near a public street in Georgia.
New York Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told NBC that they had discovered the gunman had tried to commit suicide last year. The mother of the gunman’s ex-girlfriend, who he shot after an argument Saturday morning, told the NYPD that she had been afraid of him.
Friends of the gunman have been telling media that he was a peaceful, “God-fearing” man and they were shocked to hear he had committed the crime.
“This would’ve never crossed my mind for him to do something like this,” friend Jay Romero told the New York Daily News. “It brought tears to my eyes. No human has the right to take any human’s life, that’s wrong. What he did is a cowardly move. I don’t know what he went through, what was on his mind.”
A group of atheists aimed to mock the Christian Ten Commandments with a list of their own “for the modern age.”
Anti-Christianists Lex Bayer and John Figdor launched the contest last month to “open up for discussion what gives life meaning when secular culture is on the rise.” The contest received over 2800 submissions from 18 countries.
Some of the “winning” submissions for their mock list included “God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life” and “There is no one right way to live.”
Judges for the action included Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters.” Each one of the ten “winners” was given $1,000 for their “commandment.”
The two atheists that headed up the mockery said that they want to demonstrate you don’t have to be Christian to be moral.
Two teenage girls who attempted to kill a third teen girl as a tribute to the fictional character “Slenderman” have been found competent to stand trial.
A spokeswoman for the Waukesha County Circuit Court told CNN that Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier will face trial on charges of attempted murder. The two girls stabbed a classmate 19 times in May and left her body in the woods as a “sacrifice” to the “Slenderman.”
All three were 12 years old at the time of the attack. The victim was able to crawl out of the woods where a cyclist noticed her laying along the road. She spent weeks in the hospital in critical condition.
One of the accused girls told police that Slenderman is the leader of the “Creepypasta” website and the only way for someone to “reach his realm” is to kill someone.
The two girls are being tried as adults and their first preliminary hearing is set for February 18.
