THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Planned Parenthood has unveiled an 18,000 square foot mega-clinic in Illinois they built in secret.
On Wednesday, the abortion giant revealed the massive facility built in Fairview Heights, situated 13 miles from St. Louis, Missouri, where the state’s last remaining abortion clinic hangs by a thread after lawmakers passed a pro-life bill banning abortions after eight weeks.
According to CBS News, Planned Parenthood built the facility under a shell company over the past year:
Since August 2018, Planned Parenthood has used a shell company to construct the facility, leaving no public trace that the former medical office would become one of the largest abortion clinics in the country.
Map shows distance between new clinic and Missouri border. Image courtesy of DailyMail.co.uk
In the wake of pro-life bills taking hold across the country, liberals have reportedly been flocking to Illinois for out-of-state abortions, leading pro-life advocates to label the state “the abortion capital of the Midwest.”
Illinois Right to Life Executive Director Mary Kate Knorr slammed Planned Parenthood’s new clinic claiming they constructed it for lucrative reasons, not to care for women.
“Make no mistake – this new mega-facility is not a response to an increased demand, nor is it a gesture of care for women. This facility was created to fill the gaping hole they’re seeing in their bottom line,” Knorr said in a statement.
“The increase in pro-life laws across the country coupled with President Trump’s Protect Life Rule has undoubtedly had a devastating impact on Planned Parenthood’s abortion revenue. This is a money-making venture, and Illinois is the most abortion-friendly state in the country. The construction of this new facility was a strategic business move – certainly not a defense of women.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
The hate-Trump Democrats on Capitol Hill want Americans to believe that President Trump broke the law when he askedUkraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, during a phone call on July 26, to look into the Biden-Burisma scandal.
Yet corollary to the charge that Trump committed a crime on the call to Zelensky is the exoneration of the Bidens, who, we are told, did “nothing wrong.” Hunter Biden did nothing wrong in working for Burisma, we are told, and neither did Vice President Joe Biden (shown), who was Ukraine policy boss for President Obama when he forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Hunter’s company.
Hunter Biden might be innocent of wrongdoing, but Joe Biden can’t be, as the record well shows. And anyway, the younger Biden isn’t the problem. The older one is. He could be elected president.
As The Atlantic'sSarah Chayes explained, Hunter Biden’s employment at Burisma was “perfectly legal, socially acceptable corruption.” He traded on his surname to land a highly lucrative position for which he was completely unqualified.
Young Biden joined Burisma in 2014, yet “had no prior experience in the gas industry, nor with Ukrainian regulatory affairs, his ostensible purview at Burisma. He did have one priceless qualification: his unique position as the son of the vice president of the United States, newborn Ukraine’s most crucial ally.”
But Biden’s lack of experience wasn’t his only disqualification to join a corporate board.
The Navy discharged him in 2014 because he flunked a drug test a month after he was commissioned. He tested positive for cocaine. He is a confessed alcoholic and crack and cocaine addict.
Also, his former spouse alleged in her divorce papers that he spent “extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations).”
Cops in Arizona found a crack pipe in a car he rented in 2016, which was after he secured the Burisma job, but shows that he still had a drug problem.
None of that recommends a person for any responsible position, much less the board director of an energy company. But Hunter somehow wangled a gig with Burisma that paid his consultancy more than $3 million. Biden, as the New York Times reported, earned as much as $50,000 a month.
As Secret Empires author Peter Schweizer observed on Fox talker Mark Levin, “What was he being paid for? He wasn’t being paid for his expertise. What was he being paid for? And what were the Ukrainians expecting to get in return?”
When you overlay the financial payments with the fact that Joe Biden as point person on Obama administration policy to Ukraine was steering billions of dollars of Western money to Ukraine it becomes crystal clear exactly why they were paying him money. They wanted access and they wanted to influence Joe Biden. And Joe Biden has been around a long time here, and he had to know exactly why his son was being paid.
Thus, the hysteria about Trump’s call with Zelensky. The Ukraine president just might answer those questions.
Shokin Out
Biden forced out the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in March 2016. Get rid of him, Biden warned then President Petro Poroshenko, or Ukraine loses $1 billion in loan guarantees.
The Atlantic’s scribe would have readers believe “there are no indications that Hunter’s activities swayed any decision his father made as vice president,” and that Biden senior pushed the prosecutor out because he was corrupt. The Washington Postfalsely claimed the probe was dormant; thus, Biden could not have been protecting his son.
But that narrative is false, as The New American reported on Friday, citing The Hill’s John Solomon.
Burisma’s legal team met with the new prosecutor and confessed that the corruption charges were false and apologized. Shokin claimed in a court affidavit “that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors.”
As well, the probe was alive and well.
Biden senior knee-capped Shokin, Solomon wrote, to “stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
The upshot? The unqualified drug addict Hunter Biden might have done nothing wrong in trading on his name to pull in millions for his consultancy, but his father certainly did something wrong when he targeted a foreign official for ruin to protect Hunter’s income and the Democrats’ prospects in 2016.
Biden Lied
Hunter Biden claims he spoke to his father only once about his business affairs in Ukraine. Joe Biden says he never discussed them.
Neither claim is believable, particularly given the photo that Tucker Carlson’s team at Fox News unearthed. It features Joe and Hunter with Devon Archer, who joined Burisma’s board with Hunter in 2014.
China showed off its newest missiles, including a nuclear-capable one, in its biggest ever military parade in Tiananmen Square to mark 70 years since its founding. President Xi Jinping said in an address that "no force" can shake the foundation of the nation. https://cna.asia/2n1GSY9
CHINA'S CELEBRATION OF 70 YEARS OF COMMUNIST OPPRESSION AN ATTEMPT TO MASK
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Just as Adolf Hitler turned the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games into a propaganda spectacle, highlighting his “new Germany,” it appears that China’s extravagant display of military hardware starting tomorrow is meant to have a similar impact. And just in time, too, as more numbers showing China’s faltering economy are being released.
Those Olympic Games “provided Hitler with a showcase,” wrote University of Pittsburgh history professor Barbara Burstin on the 80th anniversary of those games. “It was a propaganda bonanza for him.” She added:
[They] … dulled the opposition to [Hitler] that clearly had been quite evident up to 1936. A lot of people felt he was clearly heading in the wrong direction, and by going to the Olympics [the West] gave [him] the opportunity to appear sane, rational and tolerant.
Starting Tuesday, October 1, the celebration of 70 years of communist oppression of the Chinese people will begin in earnest. The sheer enormity of the celebration is likely to mask any concerns about the country’s faltering economy. According to the BBC, 15,000 military personnel will be taking part, along with a rolling display of 580 pieces of military hardware and 160 aircraft flying over Tiananmen Square.
Two weeks ago The New American reported on China’s faltering economy, noting that the nation’s industrial production hit its lowest level in more than 17 years, while retail sales, auto sales, and capital expenditures worsened as well.
On Monday additional confirmation of China’s faltering economy was released, showing that both manufacturing activity and sentiment contracted in September for the fifth straight month. After reviewing the numbers released by the government’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), along with more reliable sources outside communist control, Martin Lynge Rasmussen, an economist from Capital Economics, wrote, “We remain downbeat on the outlook [for China]. Not only is global demand set to weaken further, but the long-overdue pull-back in property construction is getting underway.”
Economic commentators from the South China Morning Post agree:
While there was a slight uptick on August’s official reading, the fact that manufacturing PMI remains in negative territory is indicative of the weak sentiment among producers, in a month when the trade war with the US escalated significantly. On September 1, new tariffs of 15 per cent on more than US$125 billion of Chinese goods went into effect.
With a tariff increase on US$250 billion of Chinese goods set to happen on October 15, prospects for the month ahead remain gloomy.
Reality will emerge in Washington when a Chinese delegation, headed by Vice Premier Liu He, will meet again with Trump negotiators in another attempt to hammer out an enforceable agreement to rein in China’s theft of intellectual property from U.S. technology companies. The initial meeting is scheduled for October 10, long after the spectacle of the Chinese government’s celebration of 70 years of its communist oppression of the Chinese people has been forgotten.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
China has doubled the number of its troops stationed in Hong Kong as one expert warns that the soldiers could be preparing for a “total breakdown in order.”
According to Reuters, Chinese military personnel in Hong Kong doubled last month to 12,000, with many of the reinforcements arriving in late August.
The troop movements were initially claimed to be a routine “rotation,” but were in fact the arrival of thousands of extra soldiers and anti-riot forces (as we reported at the time).
China has now “assembled its largest-ever active force of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong,” according to the report.
According to Alexander Neill, a Singapore-based security analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the build-up is an ominous sign that a crackdown could be around the corner.
“They do seem to have an active contingency plan to deal with something like a total breakdown in order by the Hong Kong police,” said Neill. “I would think it would take something like that or some other worst-case scenario for them to deploy. But they are clearly more ready than before, and are leaving nothing to chance.”
There are expected to be more violent riots in Hong Kong to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China.
The protesters’ main demand, the withdrawal of an extradition bill, was met, but they have vowed to battle on until all five demands are satisfied.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
There's a lot of talk of civil war. But there are a lot of things that happen before a civil war.
One of things is the different groups making it clear that they can't co-exist and the cycle of repression and resistance. Consider that in light of these IGS numbers.
40% of Republicans say that they're giving serious consideration to leaving California. Another 31% say they're giving the idea some consideration.
Only 26%, a quarter, say they aren't considering it.
Those are huge and disturbing numbers. If 71% of any other group were thinking about leaving a state, that would be news.
Here it's buried underneath the usual 'cost of housing' stuff. (Sure, let's raise some more taxes, pass more regulations and wait for housing to become affordable.)
Among those who call themselves very conservative, the numbers climb as high as 74%.
But it's not just Republicans or conservatives who are sick of living this way. 55% of independents are considering an exit.
60% of independents cited high taxes and 43% the political culture.
59% of whites, 56% of Latinos and African-Americans were unhappy with the high taxes. 51% of whites, 40% of Latinos, 39% of Asian-Americans and 27% of African-Americans also hate the political culture. If the California GOP were even marginally competent, it could do something with that.
Who's happiest in California?
The rulers of the one-party state, Democrats.
Only 14% are seriously considering leaving. Another 24% are giving it some consideration. 48% say they won't move.
"For example, since 2013 the proportion of Democrats describing the state as one of the best places to live has increased fourteen points from 53% to 67%. Similar increases are seen among voters describing themselves as liberal in politics. By contrast,the proportion of Republicans who feel California is one of the best places to live has declined six points over the past six years from 29% in 2013 to just 23%, while among very conservative voters there has been a twelve-point decline from 31% in 2013 to 19% at present."
In other news, ISIS doesn't intend to move out of the areas it conquered, ravaged and pillaged either. Why would they?
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Jeremy Hunt, the British Foreign secretary, has recently commissioned a report on the persecution of Christians, most acutely occurring in the Muslim World, and especially in the Arab/Muslim Middle East.
Addressing an audience at the Foreign Office in London on July 8, 2019, along with Bishop Philip (Rt. Rev.) Mounstephen, (Bishop of Truro) who helped prepare the report, Hunt pointed out that, “The number of countries where Christians suffer because of their faith rose from 128 in 2015 to 144 a year later. In the Middle East, the very survival of Christianity as a living religion is in doubt. A century ago, 20% of the region’s people were Christians: today the figure is below 5%.” Jeremy Hunt added, “Perhaps because of a misguided political correctness – or an instinctive reluctance to talk about religion – British governments have not always grappled with this problem.”
Bishop Mounstephen’s concluded that “Religious persecution and discrimination, political failures, the rise of Muslim extremists, and the lack of legally protected freedom of religion or belief have all contributed in shaping the status of Christians in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Based on Pew Research findings, Christians remain the most vulnerable of religious groups in the Middle East. Though the decline of Christians from the Middle East started in the early 20th century, during the past decade, on the evidence cited above, millions of Christians have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against.”
Specific cases include Palestinian and Saudi hate education against Christians and Jews. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued a study of Saudi school textbooks in March, 2018. The findings confirmed that they have been teaching pupils religious hatred and intolerance toward non-Muslims “including references to anti-Christians and anti-Jewish bigotry. Similarly, Palestinian textbooks are notoriously anti-Semitic, and triumphalist. The population of Palestinian Christians has dropped from 11% (under the British Mandate) to 2%. The 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ and the fall of old dictatorships gave ground to religious extremism that greatly increased the pressures and persecutions upon Christians in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya. Interestingly enough, Israel is the only state in the Middle East where the Christian population is free and has grown. An Asia News headline on 1/8/2019 read “Christians in Israel grow through immigration, educated and active.”
Contrasting the positive treatment of Christians in Israel with that in Muslim states in the Middle East, such as Iran and Turkey, reveal a sad reality. Arrest, detention and imprisonment are common in Iran. For example, in the course of six days before Christmas, 2018, 114 Christians were arrested in Iran with court cases still left pending, apparently as a form of intimidation. Though most cases in Iran involve converts, indigenous Christians such as Pastor Victor, an Assyrian Christian, with his wife Shamiran Issavi and their son, have also been targeted and imprisoned.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist agenda has asserted Sunni Islam to the disadvantage of minority groups, a process which “gathered momentum” as the government responded to the July, 2016 coup. Christians reported being under increased pressure, maintaining that the state media portrayed them as “the enemy.” Whilst the Turkish constitutional system is based on equality before the law, with religious discrimination outlawed, the governing AK Party (Justice and Development Party) has depicted Christians as a “threat to the stability of the nation.” Turkish Christian citizens have often been stereotyped as “not real Turks,” but as Western collaborators.
Yet, despite the above record compiled by Anglican Bishop Philip Mounstephen, it is Jewish Israel and not Muslim nations such as Iran, Turkey, or the Arab states (including Palestinians Arabs) that is being set up for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions, as well as other anti-Israel measures, by the mainline Protestant denominations, and especially the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA).
The PCUSA is a shadow of its former glory. The church membership has declined from 2.5 million members in 2000 to 1.4 million in 2018, and the number is still falling. The Pew Research Study found that of the current membership, 38% of the church is 65-years old and older, 30% are 50-64, 24% are 30-49, and only 8% are 18-29 years old. In short, the PCUSA is an aging organization, and the young are going elsewhere.
At its 2018 General Assembly (GA), the PCUSA resolutions echo those of Israel’s enemies in statements such as calling for “the right of return of Palestinian refugees,” which is plainly a formula for the destruction of the Jewish state through demographics. The notion is totally unacceptable to Israel since it invites demographic suicide. PCUSA doesn’t apply this formula to millions of German refugees from Poland, who were forced out after WWII. For that matter, has the PCUSA given a thought to the ancient Jewish communities in the Arab World that were forced out of their homes? Jewish refugees from the Arab Middle East were more numerous than the Palestinian refugees.
Another resolution called for the deployment of an “International Peacekeeping Force,” a measure that would deny Israel its right of self-defense against Palestinian terrorists. Still another resolution “urges the U.S. to end the occupation of Palestinian territories now.” This is a false premise to begin with. UN resolution 242 did not apply to, nor recognized an entity called Palestine. Hence, the phrase “Palestinian territories” is a total canard. Had the Palestinian leadership accepted the many offers for the partition of Palestine in 1937 (Peel Commission) or the 1947 UN Partition Plan, or even the Clinton (U.S. President) parameters of July, 2000, there would have been a Palestinian state. Olmert’s (Israeli Prime Minister) in 2008, offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a most generous solution, but it was likewise rejected. The Palestinians have habitually refused a compromised solution. Thus, a Two-State solution never materialized, and therefore, no “Palestinian territories.” Instead of choosing statehood, the Palestinians preferred terror, and a zero-sum deal, namely, “all for them and nothing for the Jews.”
One PCUSA resolution “urged Israel to accept the Arab League peace plan,” which would amount to Israel’s demographic destruction in that it called on Israel to accept the inflated Palestinian refugees and surrender half of Jerusalem. Finally, the PCUSA resolved that the U.S. should “reallocate its annual aid” and while not explicitly saying so, it meant to cut its aid to Israel and allocate it to the Palestinian Arabs.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) Assembly passed eight resolutions against Israel and called it an “apartheid state.” Rabbi Noam Marans (American Jewish Committee Interreligious Director) asserted that “For many years and in myriad ways, the PCUSA has gone beyond legitimate criticism of Israel and embraced demonization of the Jewish state.”
Fortunately, for the most part, the relations between the Presbyterian churches and the Jewish communities throughout the U.S. are good. It is a small and vocal minority that is occupying the PCUSA bureaucracy that has kept up the demonization of Israel over the last 14 years. This powerful minority has gone far beyond the pretense of “social justice,” and has degenerated into antisemitism.
The finding of Jeremy Hunt’s commissioned report should be of major concern to the PCUSA, and its resources ought to be mobilized to combat those who oppress fellow Christians. Instead, the PCUSA GA energies are spent on demonizing the only state in the Middle East where Christians are free and growing as a community in Israel.
Nancy Pelosi is leading the charge to make pharmaceuticals even more expensive, in order to make Americans believe that they will only find relief in the form of socialized healthcare. It's another smoke-and-mirrors routine from the Democrats, in another dishonest attempt to grab more money and power.
A newly-unearthed photo shows former Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter sharing a round of golf with Devon Archer, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings alongside Hunter.
The photo, first obtained by the Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, is believed to have been taken at the Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, New York in 2014. Both Hunter Biden and Archer joined Burisma Holdings as board members in April 2014.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
The Southern Baptist Convention’s ERLC, which serves as the denomination’s left-of-center political lobbying arm, has released a propaganda guide “How to talk to your kids about immigration” to help brainwash your kids on this complicated national security issue. The ERLC is a “head member organization” of the George Soros’ Evangelical Immigration Table (as the screenshot below demonstrates) and now wants to teach your kids Soros-approved material to help them think about immigration.
The kids and immigration propaganda guide was offered by the same perspective that led Russell Moore to accuse Christians who want a border wall of idolatry and calling it a “golden calf.” It is from the same perspective that led Moore to say one day we would be “ashamed” of Trump’s immigration policy.
Moore and the ERLC have made it very clear that they do not believe a nation should have sovereign borders, should enforce immigration law, or should prosecute those who invade other nations. Moore, who serves on Soros’ EIT with other liberals like Jim Wallis, is now providing tips for Southern Baptists on how to brainwash kids on this topic.
Written by a contributing columnist for The Federalist, Jessica Burke, the post, How to talk to your kids about immigration, was written in perfect propagandic fashion.
As you would expect, the kids’ guide did not attempt to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. It presupposed that all immigrants were law-abiding and moral people who were victims of privilege and suffering. The guide equated all immigrants with refugees, who had fled for their lives.
The guide begins…
Several of them had left their home country because of extreme poverty and violence. A few escaped persecution. Some of them had to move when their parents’ jobs transferred them to a U.S. office. Their parents all wanted the same thing: a good life for their children. It’s the story of millions of our neighbors, and yet few of us understand it.
The guide did not inform parents or children that nearly 80% of people who cross our borders illegally are men. Neither does it mention that nearly 20% of immigrants are trafficked like slaves. Neither does it mention that nearly a fifth of children who come into the United States are actually kidnapped hostages not related to those posing as their parents because kids make it more likely for immigration officials to let criminals pass checkpoints. Neither does it mention that nearly a quarter of illegal aliens are known to have committed felonies inside the United States.
Instead, the reasons given by brainwashing guide only included those quoted above, including “persecution” (only roughly 26 thousand immigrants a year come to the United States for legitimate asylum reasons), job transfer, and ‘extreme poverty and violence.’
The ERLC’s child brainwashing guide did not include the fact that American cities, like Chicago for example, have a higher violent crime rate than the per capita violent crime rates of the nations in Central America from which immigrants are “fleeing.”
The guide says…“While having a foreigner as a classmate can create language and cultural barriers for everyone, it also provides a great opportunity to teach your child about the plight of the immigrant. What should we, as Christian parents, teach our children about immigration?
The guide makes children presume that all immigrants have a “plight.” Roughly ten million Americans – or about 3% – of U.S. population lives overseas. Must we assume that they also live overseas because of “plight”?That is is the assumption demanded us of Soros-influence immigration propaganda.
The brainwashing guide includes the tired old (and Biblically inaccurate) canard that Jesus was an immigrant.
Ruth immigrated to Israel with Naomi and is part of the lineage of King David and Jesus. And Jesus and his family had to flee their home for his physical safety. God used immigration in biblical times, just as he does now. It is hard today, just like it always has been.
Of course, Jesus was not an illegal alien. In fact, Jesus was not even an immigrant at all. Both Judea and Egypt were parts of the Roman Empire, and it would have been like moving from Ohio to Tennessee. No “national” borders were crossed. And certainly, no laws were broken.
Then, the brainwashing guide tells us that we don’t actually own our nation, cities, or communities, but it all belongs to God. As with all good lies, it has an element of truth. But put through the filter of George Soros’ Evangelical Immigration Table, what it means is, “There is really no such thing as a nation-state.”
If your children have only lived in one context, it may be easy for them to think they have ownership over their home, neighborhood, and community. Ultimately, though, this world is not ours. Earth, and everything in it, belongs to God.
This sounds religious and doctrinally astute, but God has given mankind the right to private property ownership in the 8th Commandment. Furthermore, God created the national borders of Israel in places like Genesis 15 and Genesis 18.
Why doesn’t the immigration guide remind children that God instructed Nehemiah to build a militarized border wall?
Regardless ofhowor why an immigrant came to our country, we are called to love. Regardless of our position on immigration, we are called to love.
Again, this true. However, the Soros-approved guide doesn’t specify that loving immigrants doesn’t imply letting them come illegally. Loving criminals doesn’t imply not punishing them.
No, this the same old tired liberal talking point that Soros’ rented evangelicals have been using for some time, and that is the notion that love requires not enforcing the law.
How long will Southern Baptists let George Soros’ money influence the material they’re telling us to teach our children?
Map shows distance between new clinic and Missouri border. Image courtesy of DailyMail.co.uk
In the wake of pro-life bills taking hold across the country, liberals have reportedly been flocking to Illinois for out-of-state abortions, leading pro-life advocates to label the state “the abortion capital of the Midwest.”Illinois Right to Life Executive Director Mary Kate Knorr slammed Planned Parenthood’s new clinic claiming they constructed it for lucrative reasons, not to care for women.“Make no mistake – this new mega-facility is not a response to an increased demand, nor is it a gesture of care for women. This facility was created to fill the gaping hole they’re seeing in their bottom line,” Knorr said in a statement.“The increase in pro-life laws across the country coupled with President Trump’s Protect Life Rule has undoubtedly had a devastating impact on Planned Parenthood’s abortion revenue. This is a money-making venture, and Illinois is the most abortion-friendly state in the country. The construction of this new facility was a strategic business move – certainly not a defense of women.”The clinic will reportedly begin accepting patients by the end of the month.
