Friday, April 22nd, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Kevin Swanson
Five Mexican evangelical Christians in Chiapas lost access to the city water supply after refusing to provide monies to support a Roman Catholic festivity that celebrates patron saints. Another 27 Protestant families from Chiapas recently regained access to water and electricity after surviving two years without it. Local authorities in the village of Union Juarez finally agreed to restore religious liberty.
Matthew 10:22 reminds Christians—“Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.”
Christian groups are hopeful that the Supreme Court will grant freedom to religious charities through the Little Sisters of the Poor contraceptive case. Americans are siding with the Christian ministries, who want to opt out of paying for abortifacients as part of the Obamacare insurance requirements. In a recent poll of the Catholic group Knights of Columbus, 53% of the respondents believe that such requirements are unfair, and 32% said that they were fair.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump called it “pure political correctness.” The Treasury Department has announced its plans to put Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20 bill. Tubman is known for assisting John Brown’s raids on a little town in Virginia in 1859 and helping with the Underground Railroad.
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is accusing Donald Trump of more political correctness for his criticism of the North Carolina bathroom bill. Cruz said, “He has succumbed to the left’s agenda, which is to force Americans to leave God out of public life while paying lip service to false tolerance.”
Tennessee is backing away from a North Carolina-like bathroom bill that would prevent transgenders from using the wrong bathroom. Representative Susan Lynn announced that she would kill her own bill after Tennessee’s attorney general said that it would jeopardize at least $1.1 billion in federal funds for K-12 schools and higher education. WorldNetDaily.com reports that the federal Title IX funding regulations impose heavy compulsion on the states.
The state of Georgia continues its attacks on Christian freedoms as the Georgia Department of Public Health fired a Christian medical doctor, Eric Walsh. He was a former member of the president’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. The department reportedly fired the doctor after conducting a thorough analysis on a series of Sunday sermons he preached on homosexuality, health, and marriage. Dr. Walsh has filed a lawsuit against the department, and Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty, spoke to The World View about the case: “Dr. Walsh was not fired for anything that he said or anything he did at work, but for something he said in a sermon. And so bi-vocational pastors ought to understand first and foremost: the law protects them. But that’s why we’ve taken this case up—because if the government can fire Dr. Walsh over the content of one of his sermons or any of his sermons, they can come after any of us for any of our beliefs on anything.”
Labor demand is high, and jobless claims scraped the lowest in 42 years. Also, unemployment levels are the lowest since 2000.
In economic good times, we may ask, “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:4-5).
On Wednesday, the Border Patrol Agency discovered an 800-yard-long drug tunnel running between California and Mexico. An agent dropped into the tunnel with a GoPro, uncovering lights, stairwells, and even a rail system. The tunnel is thought to be the longest ever discovered in California.
Volkswagen is now offering to buy back people’s diesel cars after its cheating on emissions tests was discovered last year. This is after a judge made the decision yesterday that it could either buy people’s cars or fix the cars as compensation.
The iconoclastic pop singer known as Prince is dead at 57. Prince Rogers Nelson was known for interspersing the filthiest sexual innuendo in his music with a religious language inspired by his affiliation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He ended his pop music career with seven Grammy Awards, 100 million albums sold, and a net worth of $300 million.
“But what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:37)
Queen Elizabeth II celebrated 90 years on this earth yesterday. The Queen attributes her long life to two things: “her Christian faith” and the “steadfast love of God.”
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.