Wednesday, August 22nd, in the year of our Lord 2018.
By Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldView.com)
Chinese pastor bravely refuses to stop preaching
The Bible Reformed Church, a house church in China’s southern Guangdong province, was holding a service this past Sunday morning when more than 10 police officers broke into it without permission and ordered the pastor, Huang Xiaoning, to stop preaching, reports China Aid.
With Holy Spirit-inspired boldness, the pastor said, “You don’t know the severe transgression you have committed by interrupting the sacred worship. I will cooperate with you after my sermon.”
Because of his gutsiness, the Communist authorities listened to the sermon for 30 minutes. After they left, the service continued, and Pastor Huang said to the congregation, “Thank the Lord that our service could be held. Brothers and sisters [in Christ] who are in the congregation, we should all the more treasure every Sunday gathering. I also thank the Lord for leading those law enforcement officers to our church and giving them half an hour to listen to the sermon. May the Lord have mercy on them and open their hearts. May the Lord grant us courage so that we can courageously witness to them about the Lord.”
After the service, a person visiting the church came up to Pastor Huang and shook his hand, saying, “When I saw your behavior, I felt that there really is a God!”
Since the beginning of June, many of the church’s belongings have been confiscated, and it received a fine of $7,000.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, guilty on 8 charges
A federal jury in Virginia convicted Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, on eight felony counts yesterday, but the judge declared a mistrial on the 10 other charges he faced, reports NBC News.
Manafort was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, one count of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts and two counts of bank fraud. A mistrial was declared in three counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, and seven counts of bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.
Manafort faces an estimated seven to nine years in prison.
He was paid some $60 million over 10 years by a Russian-backed political party in Ukraine, the prosecution showed, and evaded taxes on about half that income by parking it in overseas accounts and disguising it as loans.
Last night, on the airport tarmac in West Virginia before a campaign rally, President Trump made these remarks over the sound of the engines of Air Force One.
“Paul Manafort is a good man. He was with Ronald Reagan. It’s a very sad thing that happened. This has nothing to do with Russian collusion. They started out looking for Russians involved in our campaign; there were none. I feel very badly for Paul Manafort. Had nothing to do with Russian collusion. We continue the witch hunt.”
Trump’s former lawyer confesses to paying hush money at Trump’s direction
And there was more bad news for the President.
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, stated yesterday that Trump directed him to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal to stay silent about damaging stories during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying, “I participated in the conduct for the purposes of influencing the election,” reports Politico.com.
Cohen is pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, false statement to financial institution, willful cause of unlawful corporate contribution, and excessive campaign contribution. He will serve prison time from 46 to 63 months.
U.S. to Myanmar government: Sanctions for your human rights abuses
The US government announced on Friday that it had imposed sanctions on Myanmar for “widespread human rights abuses” against Christians, Rohingya Muslims and other ethnic minorities, reports The New York Times.
According to the Treasury Department, the abuses against Rohingya Muslims, forcing more than 700,000 to seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh, amount to “ethnic cleansing”.
Myanmar’s military has been accused of numerous atrocities against civilians in the northern states, including murder and rape, destroying villages and bombing churches.
Pastor Mark Robinette, the founder of Mission to Myanmar, spoke to The World View.
“I do pray and hope that God will use the relationship with the United States and good men like Mike Pompeo who are helping to spread religious freedom around the world. It will help them negotiate a freer Myanmar for Christians and for people of all different faiths because I really believe that freedom to worship is fundamental when it comes to freedom.”
40% of evangelical Christians: Prosperity Gospel has infected our church
Four in 10 evangelical Christians say they attend a church where they’re taught that “if I give more money to my church and charities, God will bless me in return”, according to a LifeWay Research survey.
26 percent of Protestant churchgoers believe that “to receive material blessings from God, I have to do something for God.”
Fornication is down among millennials
Contrary to conventional wisdom, millennials are not fornicating like rabbits; in fact, many are committed to abstinence, according to a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
When controlled for a time period and age, the only generation with a higher rate of abstinence than today’s 20 to 24-year-olds was the generation born in the 1920s.
Ruth Institute founder Jennifer Roback Morse said, “I think a lot of them are watching the adults around them and concluding that sex without limits is not making people happy. Parents with multiple marriages and divorces, etc.”
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God.”
Father’s murder motivates gutsy Egyptian Christian 11-year-old boy
And finally, a young Christian boy Mina was only ten years old when he and his brother Marco, aged 14, saw their father murdered, as a group of armed men ambushed their car on a desert road in rural southern Egypt in May last year, reports World Watch Monitor.
They were following a bus full of Christian pilgrims that was attacked first. All the Coptic men who would not accept Islam were shot. Then the gunmen heard Ayad’s pick-up truck approach.
Marco recalls how the attackers shot the men in the head, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” which means “Allah, the moon god, is greater.”
“After killing my father and all the workers, one of the terrorists wanted to kill us but another one of them said to him: ‘Leave them alive to tell people what we did’,” he told World Watch Monitor last year. Their father died in Marco’s arms.
Mina says he hopes to become a police officer so “I can protect the Christians, and prevent attacks like what happened to my father”.
And that’s The World View in 5 Minutes.
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Venezuelan earthquake
Caracas, Venezuela was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, reports the Associated Press.
Families Separated during Korean War reunited 65 years later.
It’s been 68 years since the Korean War broke out separating thousands of families at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
On Monday, however, after decades of longing to reconnect with each other, several families were finally able to reunite, reports Christian Headlines.
The South Korean families who were selected for the Red Cross reunions were chosen at random through a lottery process, and according to BBC News, the oldest family member in attendance was 101 years old.
New York Times to Trump: You’re too cozy with evangelical Christians
Evangelical leaders have responded to the New York Times’ claim that the Trump administration is undermining its own priority of protecting religious freedom by emphasizing the policy priorities of evangelical Christians, reports The Christian Post.
On Saturday, The New York Times editorial board published an opinion piece titled “A Too-Narrow Vision of Religious Freedom.”
The piece essentially argues that although “the Trump administration embraces a laudable desire to expand religious tolerance” across the globe, it is the administration’s “own intolerance toward some” that “undermines the message.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said, “It is a poor piece of journalism. They go on to provide nothing that supports [their argument] in this piece. I am wondering how the American strain of evangelical Christianity potentially undermines these good intentions.
“In fact, it is evangelical Christianity that understands every person has a choice that is driving religious freedom, especially given the previous eight years where evangelicals understood what it was like to have the government against you,” he added in reference to the Barack Obama administration.
Trump Plans 40 Days on Campaign Trail for Midterms
President Donald Trump is disregarding concerns he may be a liability to Republican candidates this fall and will travel the country to campaign on their behalf — a decision likely to ensure the 2018 elections are a referendum on his presidency, reports Bloomberg.
How God has used a deaf pastor
Michigan pastor Scott Blanchard is not an ordinary church leader because he was born with 80 percent hearing loss and speaks with a noticeable speech impediment, reports The Christian Post.
Despite the discouragement from friends along the way, Blanchard became a successful Detroit-area church plant leader, planting Lakepointe Church in the Detroit area where he has baptized 150 people since its launch in 2010.
The mostly deaf pastor said, “For me, there is a constant reminder that I am fulfilling God’s word and I am reminding myself that in Christ, all things are possible.”
Christians to Governor Jerry Brown: Veto anti-Christian bill
Pro-family activists in California are asking citizens to urge Democratic Governor Jerry Brown to veto a bill some critics say would effectively ban the sale of the Bible in the state, reports WorldNetDaily.com.
AB 2943 classifies as “consumer fraud” any financial transaction – such as selling a book or charging for a seminar – related to counseling people with unwanted homosexual desire to overcome their attractions.
The legislation comes amid the release of a Liberty Counsel study showing that such therapies overwhelmingly are effective.
UNC-Chapel Hill students topple Confederate statue
Despite $390,000 of surveillance cameras and security, student protesters toppled the Silent Sam Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at 9:15 pm on Monday night, reports The Raleigh News & Observer.
Earlier in the evening, protesters covered the statue with tall, gray banners, that said, “For a world without white supremacy.”
The monument had been erected in 1913 with donations from the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Andrew Skinner, 23, who graduated from UNC earlier this year, said, “We are not going to get there putting racism on a pedestal.”