Thursday, March 17th, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Kevin Swanson
After two Presbyterian pastors from Sudan were finally released by a court in Khartoum, Morning Star News now reports that a Baptist pastor has been arrested in the same city. Pastor Philemon Hassan’s wife is asking for your prayers for her husband.
President Obama has nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Before President Clinton appointed him to the Washington D.C. Circuit Court, Judge Garland clerked for William J. Brennan, one of the most liberal judges in the history of the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are refusing to consider the nomination. We interviewed Christian attorney and historian John Eidsmoe on the Garland appointment. Eidsmoe said that this appointment would add a fifth liberal judge on the bench against three conservatives: “Judge Merrick, if he were confirmed, would fit that same pattern. He himself is a Harvard graduate, so that certainly perpetuates that stereotype. Not only that, but political scientists who have evaluated his career note that he has first of all served a Democrat President Carter and then served a Democrat President Clinton, and his political philosophy would be squarely aligned with Justice Ginsburg and Justice Kagan on the left.”
Personal integrity was the issue in the resignation of two justices from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Christian News reports that the attorney general, Katherine Kane, initiated the investigation after discovering a three-year delay in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case. This uncovered inappropriate and pornographic email exchanges among the highest judicial representatives in Pennsylvania governance. Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Micahel Eakin just announced his voluntary resignation over his participation in the corrupt behavior.
“The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind . . . Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul thus they weave it together” (Micah 7).
ISIS is losing ground in the Middle East. The IHS Conflict Monitor finds a 25% decrease in territory for the terrorist group over the last 18 months. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, “Fighters are becoming disenfranchised . . . and are in increasing numbers choosing to leave the group.”
Human technology is failing in Venezuela. A national drought has affected the hydroelectric power for the country, resulting in a weeklong shutdown for businesses. The socialist party has blamed the drought on El Niño weather patterns. However, President Nicolas Madura told the nation over the weekend, “We’re hoping, God willing, rains will come.” God willing?
“You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:14-15).
Pakistan’s Punjab district passed the Women’s Protection Act last month, providing legal protection for women from domestic violence. Two days ago, an assembly of 35 religious parties gathered to condemn the law as un-Islamic, according to Jihad Watch. They request retraction of the law, which the religious leaders see as contradictory to Quran 4:34, where husbands are commanded to beat their wives.
But God’s original and true Word says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.”
China Christian Daily announced the completion of a 100,000 square-foot church building in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province. The ten-year building project is the largest church in the city, and it has been described as a landmark for Christianity in China.
The GOP is talking about a brokered convention. That’s brokered, not broken, based on multiple floor ballots. The last three brokered candidates did not win the general election. Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are opposing a brokered convention at this point.
A Morning Consult poll of Marco Rubio supporters found that 47% of them would go for Cruz as a second choice, 27% for Governor Kasich, and only 13% for Donald Trump.
In his concession speech, Rubio acknowledged God 13 times and ended with 1 Chronicles 29: “Yours O Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth. Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and you exalt yourself as head overall.”
The World Soccer Federation (FIFA) is going after $200 million from 41 executives recently indicted in the United States on fraud charges.
A 21-year-old college student was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea. Frederick Warmbier was accused of attempting to lift a political banner from a hotel wall. The former U.S. Ambassador to the Union Nations, Bill Richardson, is working on his release.
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.