It’s Wednesday, January 29th, A.D. 2020. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I’m Adam McManus.
By Adam McManus (adam@theworldview.com)
Massive Caribbean earthquake triggers tsunami warning
After a massive 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck the Caribbean at 2:10pm Eastern on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey, a scientific agency of the United States government, issued a tsunami warning in Jamaica, Cuba and the Cayman Islands.
The quake, which was felt in Miami, struck 75 miles off the northwest tip of Jamaica and 50 miles off of southeastern Cuba. It was about 6 miles deep, reports weather.com.
British venue cancels Franklin Graham crusade event
Fearful that Evangelist Franklin Graham was going to bring a message of “hate” to the homosexuals and transgenders of the United Kingdom because of an open letter that LGBT leaders sent, an entertainment venue canceled the May crusade event in Sheffield, reports the Christian Post.
Graham rejected the claim, saying on Facebook, “This is just not true. I am coming to share the Gospel, which is the Good News that God loves the people of the UK, and that Jesus Christ came to this earth to save us from our sins. The rub, I think, comes in whether God defines homosexuality as sin. The answer is yes. But God goes even further than that, to say that we are all sinners—myself included.”
Trump unveils “Deal of the Century” Mideast peace plan
Yesterday, President Donald Trump unveiled his “Deal of the Century” peace plan in the White House, giving Israel full control of the settlements and Jerusalem as its undivided capital. The plan also established a Palestinian state, reports the Jerusalem Post.
The plan, Trump said, has the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main political rival, Blue and White head Benny Gantz.
Netanyahu said, “If [the Palestinians] are genuinely prepared to make peace with the Jewish state, Israel will be prepared to negotiate peace right away.”
For the first time in this conflict, Trump has reached an understanding with Israel regarding a map setting forth borders for a two-state solution. The president explained that the plan will “more than double Palestinian territory … No Palestinians will be uprooted from their homes.”
Senate Republicans cannot block impeachment witnesses
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not have enough votes to block witnesses like former National Security Advisor John Bolton in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, reports the Wall Street Journal.
CNN’s Don Lemon & two liberal guests belittle Trump supporters
CNN’s Don Lemon and two liberal guests on his show are facing backlash after they mocked President Trump’s supporters and depicted them as uneducated.
Lemon was joined by New York Times columnist Wajahat Ali and GOP strategist Rick Wilson during his show Saturday night to discuss the recent feud between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Public Radio. Following an interview last week, Pompeo allegedly yelled at NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly off air and demanded that she locate Ukraine, the topic of the initial disagreement, on an unlabeled map.
Wilson, who has written anti-Trump books including “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump”, pivoted the conversation to attack Trump supporters, prompting uncontrolled laughter from Don Lemon as the CNN anchor doubled over at the CNN news anchor desk.
WILSON: “[Pompeo] also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter ‘U’ and a picture of an actual, physical crane next to it. He knows that this is an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so, that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience.”
Wilson went on to use a heavy Southern accent to impersonate how he believes a Trump supporter speaks, claiming that they wouldn’t be able to identify Ukraine.
WILSON: “The credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump, that wants to think that Donald Trump’s the smart one and ‘y’all elitists are dumb!”
ALI: “You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling, sipping your latte.”
WILSON: “All those lines on the map.”
ALI: “Only them elitists know where Ukraine is.”
Lemon had to wipe his eyes after laughing so hard that he started to cry.
LEMON: “Sorry. Hold on. Wait. Hold on, hold on. No, it’s good. Sorry. Rick, that was a good one. I needed that.”
The Daily Caller tweeted the CNN video along with this verbiage: “America, this is what CNN thinks of you.”
Hillary Clinton: “I certainly feel the urge” to run against Trump again
In a wide-ranging interview with Variety about her new Hulu docu-series entitled “Hillary”, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked about the 2020 presidential election.
RAMIN SETOODEH: “Have you picked who you’re going to vote for in the 2020 primary?”
CLINTON: “I’m going to vote. Please, please get out and vote. The most important responsibility we all have is to retire Donald Trump.”
SETOODEH: “I know that you’re not running. But do you ever feel the urge that like, ‘I could beat him if I were’?”
CLINTON: “I certainly feel the urge because I feel like the 2016 election was really an odd time and a bad outcome.”
Superbowl ad to feature Drag Queens promoting Sabra hummus
For the first time, drag queens will appear in a Super Bowl advertisement. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumni Kim Chi and Miz Cracker will make history in a commercial for hummus brand Sabra during the football championship game this Sunday, February 2, when the Kansas City Chiefs will face the San Francisco 49ers, reports NBC News.
In the teaser for the ad campaign, which the New York-based company posted on its YouTube channel last week, Miz Cracker, a man dressed as a woman, clumsily attempts to put a football helmet on over his sizable wig while Kim Chi looks on skeptically.
KIM CHI: “Ready Cracker?”
MIZ CRACKER: “Chick peas? I was born ready. I hope this doesn’t give me helmet hair.”
Bob Witeck, a longtime marketing strategist who specializes in reaching homosexual/transgender audiences, said the Sabra ad, which could reach around 100 million viewers during the Super Bowl, is indicative of a sea change in the public perception of drag, which he said has been normalized in the mainstream for many years. Sabra is owned by PepsiCo.
Deuteronomy 22:5 says, “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.”
In addition to the first drag queen-filled ad, Super Bowl LIV will also have the annual game’s first female and openly lesbian coach: Katie Sowers of the 49ers.
Kanye West & Kim Kardashian’s daughter sings about Jesus
And finally, on Monday afternoon, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s two-year-old daughter, Chicago, sang about Jesus, reports People Magazine.
CHICAGO: “Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I love you. Jesus.”
Her mother, who shared the video of her singing atop a nightstand, explained that it was her “favorite song”.
In Matthew 19:14, “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’“
Close
And that’s The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Wednesday, January 29th in the year of our Lord 2020. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I’m Adam McManus (adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
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Indian pastor beaten, forced to sit before idols
On January 5, a mob of 250 radical Hindu nationalists attacked a house church in India’s Haryana state. The attack left the pastor of the house church badly injured and falsely accused of forcefully converting Hindus to Christianity, reports International Christian Concern.
Approximately 30 assailants broke into the church and attacked Pastor Jai Singh in Bichpari village. “They pushed me to the floor and I could not understand who was kicking me, who was slapping or beating on my back,” he told Morning Star News. From the house church, Pastor Singh was taken to a school where he was forced to sit before idols and was further beaten with wooden sticks.
Police took Pastor Singh to the hospital, but when he returned to the station he had been falsely accused of forcefully converting Hindus to Christianity. The next day, January 6, Pastor Singh was presented before a judge and sent to judicial custody.
Thankfully, due to the intervention of the Alliance Defending Freedom-India, Pastor Singh was released on bail on January 7.
Pastors and other Christian leaders are increasingly under threat of being falsely accused of religious crimes such as forced conversion or blasphemy. These false accusations are used by radicals to harass and intimidate Christian communities across India.
Taliban claims “many CIA” officers killed in plane crash
Iranian media claims that “many CIA” officers were killed in a plane crash on Monday. The Taliban initially claimed large numbers of Americans were killed, while Russian media and Iranian media then asserted that a senior CIA officer responsible for killing Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was on board. The claim has been greeted with skepticism,
The U.S. has dropped a record number of bombs on the Taliban in the last year as it also tried to push them toward the peace table.
A U.S. defense official says the United States has recovered the remains of two American service members, whose identities have not been identified, killed in the crash of an Air Force plane in Afghanistan.
One official anonymously explained the American recovery team met no Taliban resistance in reaching the crash site and said there is no indication that the plane was downed by hostile action, reports the Associated Press.
The U.S. and the Taliban are negotiating a reduction in hostilities or a cease-fire to allow the signing of a peace agreement that could bring home an estimated 13,000 American troops and open the way to a broader post-war deal for Afghans.
China races to build hospitals for patients stricken by deadly virus
Hundreds of construction workers wearing masks are toiling around the clock at the site of a field hospital in Wuhan as China is racing to build within days to treat a rapidly growing number of patients stricken by the deadly coronavirus, reports AFP.
It is one of two makeshift hospitals that Chinese authorities are rushing to build within a fortnight in the city of 11 million people to relieve medical facilities swamped with patients with the waiting for hours to see doctors.
They hope to be able to take patients on February 3 at the first hospital with a 1,000-bad capacity, and on February 5th at the second hospital with a 1,300-bed capacity.
The pneumonia-like virus that has killed 81 people — mostly in Wuhan — and infected more than 2,700 across the country.
With over 4,500 confirmed cases of the respiratory virus and a death toll exceeding 100, Americans are on edge. According to a new Morning Consult poll of 2,200 U.S. adults — surveyed from Jan. 24-26, as three more cases of coronavirus were confirmed stateside — the vast majority are worried about an outbreak of the virus in the United States, with roughly 3 in 4 people either as concerned about coronavirus as they were about the 2014 outbreak of Ebola.
The new virus is from the same family of viruses as SARS, the viral respiratory illness that killed 774 people between 2002 and 2003.
China-U.S. air traffic is in free-fall
Thanks to the coronavirus epidemic, China-U.S. air traffic is in free-fall, reports Forbes.com.
The medical epidemic is not only killing people, but it’s threatening to put a stake in the heart of what was until now still thought to be potentially one of the fastest growth sectors in the global air transportation business between the United States and China.
How John Bolton’s book is impacting Senate’s impeachment trial
John Bolton, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor, sent a jolt through the president’s impeachment trial as he released his new book entitled, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir”, reports the Associated Press.
The book contains an account of an August conversation in which Bolton says Trump told him that he wanted to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid from Ukraine until it helped him with investigations into political rival Joe Biden.
It’s a dramatic eyewitness rebuttal to claims by Trump and his legal team that the president didn’t hold up the aid for political reasons. The account immediately gave Democrats new fuel in their pursuit of sworn testimony from Bolton and other witnesses, a question expected to be taken up later this week by the Republican-led Senate.
Until Sunday, the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, wouldn’t even confirm the existence of the book, for which The AP first reported that Bolton received a $2 million advance.
Star-studded endorsements for Bernie Sanders ahead of Iowa vote
As Bernie Sanders attempts to surge to a first-place finish in Iowa, the Vermont senator is tapping famous politicians and celebrities to campaign for him in one final star-studded week before the caucuses, reports Politico.com.
The luminaries cut across the culture, from politics to music to movies and more. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, filmmaker and liberal stalwart Michael Moore, actor Kendrick Sampson, and recording artist Bon Iver are among those who have or will be stumping for him.
The roster of celebrity surrogates is designed to bring out young and unlikely voters to events.
New York Times endorsements of Warren, Klobuchar irrelevant
Following the joint endorsement of The New York Times on January 19th, neither Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts nor Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota saw significant increases in support for their respective presidential candidacies as they head into the Iowa caucuses, reports MorningConsult.com.