Monday, March 28th, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Mark Robinette
Millions of the faithful gathered around the world Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. “Christ has risen,” church leaders announced. Multitudes responded joyfully, “He has risen indeed.” The sun never sets on the Kingdom of the Son.
According to Fox News, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has banned all city-funded travel to North Carolina. No joke. Mayor Lee said it was one way of standing with the homosexual community in the southern state, where the governor refused to allow homosexual behavior to be added as an innate, immutable characteristic like race or gender under the state’s non-discrimination laws.
Sophie Kasiki, a French woman born in Cameroon and living in Paris since age nine, is one of a few Western women to have lived as part of the Islamic State in Syria, and she escaped. She has now written a book that she hopes will prevent others from falling into the same trap. Her book, entitled In the Night of Daesh, is the story of how she made her way to an ISIS maternity ward in the city of Raqqa, a place she described as a “baby factory…more like a kennel than a prison.” She then told how she made it back home.
The State of Indiana became the second state, joining Kentucky, to ban abortions for Down syndrome babies. Governor Mike Pence signed the bill Thursday prohibiting abortions based on race, sex or any other disability of the child. Planned Parenthood has promised a fight.
Father Bernard Kinvi, a Catholic priest working in Central African Republic, is humbled by the possibility of winning a $1 million peace prize for saving hundreds and possibly thousands from the violence that grips his nation. Father Kinvi is one of four finalists for the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, an award he had never heard of. He said that he was not sure how anyone knew about his work at the church and hospital he started there. Father Kinvi, whose work is credited with saving the lives of at least 1,500 refugees, Muslim and Christian alike, said the work was his duty.
Matthew 25:34 says, ”Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…I was sick and you visited Me.’”
Bernie Sanders barnstormed his way west on Saturday, winning landslide victories in the Democratic primaries in Alaska, Washington, and Hawaii.
ISIS is claiming responsibility for the 33 dead and 78 wounded from a suicide bomber who hit a filled soccer stadium in Iskandariya, Iraq, on Saturday. In Belgium, authorities arrested a suspect in connection with the horrific attacks. And sadly, Boko Haram, a terrorist group in Africa, is now said to be using kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls as suicide bombers. By God’s grace, one of the girls, kidnapped with 270 others in Nigeria two years ago, was intercepted in Cameroon Friday before her bomb went off. She is safe now. Pray that God delivers the rest of her sisters.
Thousands of Christian celebrants gathered in a beautiful park in Lahore, Pakistan, on Sunday to rejoice over Christ’s victory over death. Cowardly members of the Taliban took this opportunity to set off explosives there in an effort to strike fear in the hearts of believers everywhere. Sixty-five people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 300 injured as the explosions sent flames and bodies high above the trees, witnesses said. Flowers of faith will grow in Pakistan, and an overwhelming outpouring of love will flow to and from this part of the world in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. It always does where things like this happen. One day, the bodies of these believers will rise again to meet their Lord in the air, for the sting of death is no more. Death will be swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15).
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.