Tuesday, March 12th, in the year of our Lord 2019

By Kevin Swanson

Persecution of Christians in Kyrgyzstan

A report from Forum 18 indicates that persecution is heating up in Kyrgyzstan. Police raided two Baptist worship services last month, issuing fines on charges of “practicing faith without government permission.”

After Ethiopian Airlines Crash, China Pulls Jets, Not U.S.

As we reported yesterday, an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed over the weekend, just outside of Addis Ababa, killing all 157 passengers from 33 countries. It was Africa’s first deadly air disaster in two years. However, it is the second Boeing 737 Max 8 jet to crash in six months.

China has announced it will ground its fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8 Jets for now, but American Airlines and Southwest Airlines will continue using them.

The Outrageous Sex Ed in England

The United Kingdom’s new Relationships and Sex Education Statutory Guidance has just been released, requiring all school teachers to positively affirm sexually perverted LGBT relationships.

Beginning in September of 2020, the plan is to provide Relationship Education as compulsory for all primary school students, beginning at four years of age. This will include the state doctrine of homosexual marriage.

Teachers who refuse to participate are subject to a professional misconduct investigation, and could be banned from the teaching profession altogether.

UK parents may only request to withdraw their children from this sex education for children under 15 years of age. Parental authority is removed after the child turns 15, according to the new regulations.

Pope & Mormon Cult Leader at Vatican

The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the president of the Mormon cult, Russell Nelson, met for 33 minutes at the Vatican over the weekend. It was the first such meeting — the agenda appeared to be concerns over secularism and family values, according to the Mormon-affiliated Deseret News.

In related news, the Utah State legislature legitimized sex outside of marriage by a 41-32 vote last week. The bill, sponsored by Republican Representative Paul Ray, is off to Governor Gary Herbert’s desk for signature.

Leading Porn-Addicted Countries, and American States

The #1 pornography-addicted country in the world, by traffic per capita is the UK, followed by Canada at #2, Australia at #3, the United States at #4, followed by France, Japan, Italy, and Spain.

South Korea, Kazakhstan, Syria, and Cuba have seen the largest increases in pornography use in recent years.

States that hit the porn sites for the longest remain the politically conservative southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

Remember what Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.” (Luke 12:1-2)

Colorado’s Push of Abortion, Transgenderism, Sodomy on 6-Year-Olds

Colorado legislation that requires instruction in abortion-inducing drugs, transgenderism, and sodomy for public school children as young as six years of age has advanced through the state Senate.

HB 1032 passed the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services by a 3-2 party line vote and heads towards the full senate for a floor vote. The bill does NOT exempt homeschooling programs using online charter schools, however the non-government supported homeschools are exempted.

Leviticus 18 reminds us, “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.”

Church vs. Washington State over Abortion Inclusion in Insurance

Last year, the Washington State legislature passed a bill that required insurance plans to cover abortion without religious exemptions.

And now, Alliance Defending Freedom has announced they are filing suit on behalf of Cedar Park Assembly of God arguing that the new law violates the constitutional provision for freedom of religion.

Sneak Peek: How to Talk to Children About Sex Slavery

In 1833, slavery was abolished in England thanks to the work of William Wilberforce and others. Years later, there is another egregious form of slavery going on around the world.

How does a parent talk to their children about these sensitive issues of human trafficking?

The World View spoke to Jeff Brodsky, President of JOY International, about his new children’s book, Why Are You Barefoot?,  that addresses this question.

BRODSKY: “The children’s book is to do two things, one, to open the eyes of children to things that are happening in their world today, and how blessed they are that it’s not happening to them. And two, to motivate them to action. Awareness is good, but awareness without action is apathy. If I make you aware of something, but you choose to do nothing about it, what have I accomplished? Nothing. Nothing!”

Stay tuned for a World View Special Report following today’s newscast about how to teach children about modern-day slavery, and how Christians can help set the captives free through Jesus Christ!

Barna Identifies the Spiritually Vibrant Households

And finally, surveys have indicated that about 33% of Americans are practicing Christians, very serious about their faith. Of these, Barna Research has recently identified that 25% could be classified as “vibrant.”

That makes for about 26 million Americans who read the Bible as families and witness to others about their faith. All that to say, of all the western countries, the United States still retains the strongest remnants of faith. Praise God!

Close

And that’s The World View in 5 Minutes on this Tuesday, March 12th in the year of our Lord 2019. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldView.com. I’m Adam McManus. Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Special Report: Why One American Man Has Gone Barefoot for 8 Years

Time now for a World View Special Report by Emily Swanson. I’m Adam McManus.

Special Note for Parents: The topic discussed in today’s report is a sensitive one, and may not be suitable for children up to the age of 15. Please review the transcript first at www.TheWorldview.com before deciding whether or not you want them to hear this report.

40.3 million people are subjected to the horrors of human trafficking around the world, according to the Polaris Project. 75% are females, and 25% are people under the age of 18.

But how do you talk to your children of young ages about these things and make them aware of why Christians should be involved in bringing the light of Jesus Christ to the captives, with sensitivity and wisdom?

Dr. Jeff Brodsky of Joy International, a Christian ministry that actively fights human trafficking by rescuing girls around the world and taking them to Christian safe houses, recently wrote a children’s book called, Why Are You Barefoot?. The book follows the story of a little girl, Emma, learning from Mr. Brodsky about child slavery in a way children can understand, but sensitively delivered without too much detail.

Proverbs 31:8-9 says about the plight of each one of those imprisoned in human and sex slavery, “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Brodsky spoke to The World View about where the idea for the book first began.

BRODSKY: “When I was invited to speak at a school here in Colorado, I was invited to speak to both the school and the elementary school, first through sixth grade. I knew what I could talk about with the high-school, that was easy. But to talk about the work I do, rescuing children from the sex trade, rescuing child sex slaves from around the world, I thought, ‘How can I talk about with children that are six to twelve years old?’ And I thought, ‘I cannot do that. I will not compromise when it comes to that.’ I thought, ‘Okay Lord, what should I do here? What can I do?’ And it wasn’t until I got to the school. I think it was the Holy Spirit that impressed on me this elaborate object lesson. I thought, ‘I think this could work!’”

He said that the children really got the lesson, and the teachers, who were skeptical, were so thankful for the way he presented it to the class.

BRODSKY: “When I got there and I put it into action, at the end of the book, when the principal came up to me, he was in tears, and he was barefoot. He came up to me and he said, ‘Dr Jeff, what you just did is fascinating. I was so nervous having you come here to speak, because I didn’t know what you were going to talk about. But I was assured by one of the teachers that you would be very discreet, be very cautious about what you spoke about.’ He said, ‘She was right.’ And that’s when he said to me, ‘I really believe what you said would make a really great children’s book.’”

Brodsky said that the principal’s comment planted an idea in his head that hadn’t been there before about getting young children involved in fighting slavery.

BRODSKY: “The more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great way to share with children the plight of trafficked children. They don’t have to know all the details. They just have to know that there are children in the world, the same age as them, that are being trafficked and that are being forced into slavery. I didn’t have to mention that it was the child sex trade, but that they were forced into slavery and forced to do very bad things. So I was very cautious with the way I shared and what I shared, and that was the birth of the book really.”

He said the reception of the book has been really positive, and he shared how the book lays out the issue with care for young ears.

BRODSKY: “I think it’s laid out in the book pretty well. When I went to the school and I asked the boys and girls, ‘Do you think it would be a good thing or a bad thing if your mommy sold you?’ Of course that’s going to get everybody’s attention, which it did. ‘Well, BAD, really bad!’

‘Do you ever think it would be good, ever, ever be good for your mommy to sell you?’ Well of course not. But then I showed the scenario of how that happens literally every day. Does that make the mom bad? Well not necessarily, depending on the situation. I think when you put into terms that is understandable by that seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, or twelve-year-old, it opens their eyes to, ‘This is happening today?! This happens in my world?’ And I think it’s great for children to not only understand that it is happening, but that they can even do something about it.”

Brodsky shared that he uses the story of one little girl in Alaska helping fund rescue efforts by starting her own business — a great example to college students who don’t know how to help.

BRODSKY: “When they learn that this is happening and that they can be used. It’s like when I go to college students, and the college students come up, ‘Boy I wish there was something I could do, but I don’t have any money,’ they’ll say. I’ll say, ‘Really, well let me tell you the story of an eight-year-old girl in Anchorage, Alaska. She didn’t say, ‘I wish there was something I could do.’ She said, ‘There’s something that I need to do, and I’m going to do it.’ She didn’t say, ‘I can’t.’ She took off the ‘t’ and said, ‘I can do something, and I’m going to do something.’ She researched it on her own at eight years old. She got a recipe for how to bake peanut butter flavored dog biscuits. She baked ‘em, she bagged ‘em, she labeled them, and she sold them and raised $1,200. The second year, when she was nine years old, she raised $1,500. This year will be her third year, and her goal is $2,000, and she’s already recruited a whole group of other young people to do the same thing.”

He shared that a young boy, Andrew Pepperd, who was killed in a tragic helicopter accident last year, was going to be part of her team. This year’s Anchorage Barefoot mile is dedicated to him and his father, Joshua Pepperd, who was dedicated to the mission of rescuing children around the world with JOY.

Ezekiel 34:16 says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.”

BRODSKY: “This barefoot mile that we’re going to be doing this year is going to be in memory of Josh and Andrew Pepperd. And there’s going to be a booth there for children. It’s wonderful when you see children having an understanding of something so horrific that’s happening in their world, and they don’t need to know the details. But they see that there’s bad happening to children the same age as them, and they realize that God has blessed them with the ability to be living in a free country where they have the opportunities that we have here, and they can do something to help set captive children free.”

Brodsky spoke from his heart about why he went barefoot eight and a half years ago.

BRODSKY: “I hate being barefoot, and that’s the title of my children’s book, Why Are You Barefoot? When people say, ‘Why are you barefoot?’, I don’t just answer with the story of why I’m barefoot. I answer with why I believe I’m barefoot. I believe that I’m barefoot because of one word, ‘Obedience.’ I believe that God asked me to go barefoot in solidarity with impoverished and trafficked children around the world. When God asks you to do something there are only two choices, ‘yes or no.’ There’s no ‘maybe,’ cause maybe just means ‘no’ until it turns to a ‘yes.’ When God asked me to do this on July 19th, 2010, I had a choice to make. And it was either no or yes, and I said, ‘Yes!’

He said that it all started on that day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

BRODSKY: “It’s been a little over eight and half years now, and I was at this garbage dump there. We were actually feeding a group of children who live in the dump because that’s where the fresh food is. We were doing a feeding program there with another ministry, and as I was standing there watching all these children, eating this bowl of chicken and rice, I looked down and I noticed they were all barefoot. A couple of them had old worn out flip-flops. But that doesn’t paint the picture of what I experienced. You have to imagine this garbage dump in the city of over a million people; there’s just one big garbage dump so the smell was horrendous. They’re walking through the sludge and the grime; it was just so disgusting. When I went to my hotel room that night, I took off my shoes and socks, and I felt that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me in the way that only He can. If you were in the room, you wouldn’t have heard.”

Brodsky testified that that night the Lord prompted him to go barefoot for one year in solidarity with these little ones.

BRODSKY: “I believe that God was impressing on me to go barefoot in solidarity with those children and with impoverished and trafficked children all over the world. I thought, ‘What? God. Am I hearing You correctly? I live at 9,000 feet elevation in the mountains of Colorado. What would I do in the winter? And all the travel that I do; what if I’m in a city where it’s 110 degrees out? The ground would burn my feet bad.’ And He gave me this peace that as long as I wasn’t foolish, as long as I took precautions, He would take care of me.”

He said after he had been barefoot for a year, he was eager to put his socks and shoes back on, but the Lord had different plans for him.

BRODSKY: “On the one-year anniversary, I was up at about 3:30 in the morning. I haven’t even had a sock on my feet in 8.5 years, so it’s been 3,154 days today, I believe. I sat on my couch, I put my left foot on the ottoman. I had a sock in my hand; I just wanted to feel a sock on my foot. I put it on my toes and went to pull it on my foot, and it was just — I don’t know what happened, but it was as though it was like a tug of war. I could not get that sock on my foot. I cried out to God and said, ‘Lord what do you want from me? I just went for a whole year.’ And that still small voice spoke to me in a way only God can. And these are the words that I heard verbatim, ‘Keep going, those children are still out there.’

Brodsky said that he committed to this, in the hope that it would motivate at least one person a year to get involved in fighting this heinous crime.

BRODSKY: “I made the decision that as long as my going barefoot would motivate at least one person a year to action, in a way that would help me to rescue even one more child a year, I would go barefoot the rest of my life, and 8.5 years later, I’m still barefoot.”

Matthew 25:41 gives the reason for fighting for these children where Jesus says, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me.’”

He reminded people that the fight against human trafficking is not just on Human Trafficking “Awareness” Day. It has to go on every day, 365 days a year.

BRODSKY: “Would you want me to stop if it was your child, your daughter, your sister that was trafficked? No. You would want me to keep going everyday until she was found, set free. And that’s what Jesus did. Jesus came to set the captives free. Someone once interviewed my wife Gayle with me standing there because I kept saying that it was God that led me to do this, and the reporter turned to Gayle, that’s my wife’s name, and said, ‘Why do you think God would ask your husband to do this?’ And Gayle said, ‘God knew that Jeff would say, Yes.’”

Brodsky said that the core of the fight is remembering that each one of these children are made in God’s image.

BRODSKY: “Every one of these children is God’s creation. If it was your child or a listener’s child or a daughter or a niece, you would be relentless. You’d sell everything you owned to try and get that child back. We would do that for our own child. Well, God would say, ‘If you would do it for your own child, would you do it for one of Mine?’ We’ve lost the ability to love one another.”

He emphasized tenderly that God has uniquely created each precious human being.

BRODSKY: “Why did God instruct us to call Him, ‘Our Heavenly Father?’ Because He is our Creator. Your mom and dad did not create you. They’re just the tools God used to bring life into the world. Jeremiah 1:5 is clear, ‘Before you were in the womb, I knew you. Before you were in the womb, I created you.’

“God is the Creator of all life on earth, and if we could only understand that principle, people would really take it in and begin to really love one another, there would be a mass of people coming to the Christian faith. They would be saying, ‘I don’t know what that faith has, but whatever it is, I want it, because they really know how to love one another.”

John 13:34-35 presents these convicting words from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Brodsky said that it’s sad to see the Christian church so fragmented today. May we re-discover the theological truth that God first loved us so that we can love these children enough to fight for them.

He said the ministry of JOY began when the Lord impressed him with wanting to find the least of these.

BRODSKY: “I did a lifelong search for who is the least of these. I wanted to find who the lowest of the low was so I could devote my life to leading them into a relationship with the Lord. Who’s going to tell a young child, a young teen, a young woman in a brothel about the love of God? Nobody. She will be there until she’s dead unless someone sets her free. That’s my goal. That’s my heart. That’s my desire. To see them rescued is wonderful, but when you see them come into a relationship with the Lord, I’m an emotional basket case.”  

Brodsky went on to share the story of a young girl, Tohah, he knew personally, who was set free.

But you’re going to have stay tuned for part 2 of the Special Report tomorrow!

If you want to get a copy of Brodsky’s new children’s book, Why Are You Barefoot? you can find the link in our transcript today at www.TheWorldView.com. The book will also give you and your children ideas of how to help fight human trafficking and be aware of the dangers.

If you want to help rescue girls around the world in Asia, North America, and South America, go to www.joy.org/donate.

Meanwhile, keep the words of our Lord Jesus in mind as you pray and get involved from Luke 4:17, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

This has been a World View Special Report. I’m Adam McManus.