Lightening Storm Leaves 2 dead, 7 Injured In California

If this is your first time visiting Bible Prophecy In The News, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed. Never miss an update.. Thanks for visiting!

A woman walking under a tree was struck and killed by lightning, one of thousands of strikes that touched off spot fires and injured seven others as a gusty storm pounded California. Another woman was killed by a falling tree.

Authorities said Tina Bond, 40, was killed by a bolt Wednesday afternoon as she walked along a sidewalk in Fontana, in San Bernardino County east of Los Angeles.

Police Sgt. Jeff Decker said the bolt blew out the bottoms of the victim’s shoes and hurled some of her clothing 30 feet away.

National Weather Service meteorologist James Oh said there was at least one lightning strike every minute for a couple of hours Wednesday in San Bernardino County, where both deaths and most of the injuries occurred.

Northern California received more than 1,000 lightning strikes from Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the weather service said.

Read Full Article

Seattle Earthquake Risk

Seattle’s tallest buildings are at risk of collapse during a rupture of the Cascadia fault zone in the Pacific Northwest, say U.S. seismic experts. The Cascadia subduction zone is likely to produce the strongest shaking experienced from earthquakes in the lower 48 states, said seismic experts from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

While the Pacific Northwest has experienced little seismic activity in 200 years, there is growing consensus the Cascadia subduction zone ruptures in giant earthquakes exceeding 9 on the Richter scale, Caltech scientists Thomas Heaton and Jin Yang said Thursday at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting in Monterey, Calif. The Cascadia subduction zone last ruptured in 1700, Heaton and Yang said.

Simulations at Caltech show such earthquakes, which last for more than 4 minutes and are dominated by low-frequency motions, would be exacerbated by the geography of the Seattle basin and cause severe damage among modern high-rises, said Heaton and Yang.

via Source

LA Beach Signs Warn of Tsunami Threat

Like many Californians who put down roots in earthquake country, Robin Rudisill knows the “Big One” could strike without warning. Yet from her Venice beachfront duplex, Rudisill worries about a different massive blow from Mother Nature — a tsunami.

Her 1950s-era home — with its cool ocean breeze and golden sunsets — sits smack in the heart of a potentially deadly tsunami zone. If that big one ever came ashore, scientists say, it could raze the landscape from the sun-kissed beach to about a mile inland.

To alert homeowners and beachgoers that they are in tsunami territory, the city of Los Angeles has begun posting blue and white “TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE” signs with an image of ominous-looking waves. The signs, which have surfaced in beach parking lots and at major intersections in Venice and other low-lying communities, also point out evacuation routes.

“It makes it clear that we are in an inundation zone, which most people did not previously, and many still do not, know,” said Rudisill, who pushed for the signs.

While a tsunami threat to the Golden State is real, the potential for killer waves is far less likely than the earthquakes, wildfires, landslides and floods that plague the nation’s most populous state.

Read Full Article

Warren’s Apology Damaging

A Washington, DC, pastor and outspoken opponent of same-sex “marriage” says California mega-church pastor Rick Warren has done “tremendous damage” by apologizing for his support last fall of California’s marriage protection amendment.

Rick Warren said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live that he has “never been and never will be” an “anti-gay marriage activist,” and made a point to inform the program’s host that he apologized to his homosexual friends for comments he made in October to his church in support of Proposition 8 in California.

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., with the High Impact Leadership Coalition says he was very disappointed with Warren’s statements on CNN.

“This man who’s been called the next Billy Graham, who I really respect with all my heart and love what he’s doing in Africa, is falling into a trap that is emblematic of the problem that the entire church is facing in this generation,” Jackson states. “And that is that we love the applause of men more than we love the work of God and the gospel. Jesus…told us that we are to honor God first, and that we are not to fear men but we’re to fear God.”

Bishop JacksonJackson argues that Warren was “aiding and abetting a deception around what kind of stance the Bible calls Christians to take” by telling Larry King that opposing the recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage was “not his agenda.”

“He is the author of The Purpose Driven Life book,” Jackson notes, “and therefore people are going to think, ‘Well, this is not on my mission — it’s not on my purpose. I don’t have to stand for truth.’

“Therefore, his defection — in terms of his stance on this issue — [and] his backsliding on this issue, becomes of tremendous damage to the strength of the church in this position.”

Source

Tent City For Homeless Moving To California Fairgrounds

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a make-shift tent city for the homeless that sprang up in the capital city of Sacramento will be shut down and its residents allowed to stay at the state fairgrounds.

Schwarzenegger said he ordered the state facility known as Cal-Expo to be used for three months to serve the 125 tent city residents, some of them displaced by the economic recession. The encampment may be shut down within a month, said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The move comes after the Sacramento City Council last night agreed to spend $880,000 to expand homeless programs.

“Together with the local government and volunteers, we are taking a first step to ensure the people living in tent city have a safe place to stay, with fresh water, healthy conditions and access to the services they need,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “And I am committed to working with Mayor Johnson to find a permanent solution for those living in tent city.”

California, home to one of every eight Americans, has been particularly hard hit by the housing market collapse after many residents turned to exotic mortgages to afford homes. The tent city, which has long existed along the banks of the America River, gained national attention last month when some of its recently homeless residents were featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Source

More Americans Say They Have No Religion

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.

In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

Source

69 Year Old Woman Carrying Cross Assaulted During Gay Marriage Protest

Video Link

The woman at the center of a disturbance that erupted at a protest against the gay marriage ban on Friday will be pressing charges, The Desert Sun has learned.

Phyllis Burgess alleges that she was assaulted as she carried a Styrofoam cross through the crowd at a No on Proposition 8 rally. The 69-year-old Palm Springs resident originally declined to press charges when asked by police and joked she felt lucky, at least she didn’t lose her wig in the tussle like Cloris Leachman did on Dancing with the Stars.

“I guess I didn’t see the gravity of the whole thing and how it was being portrayed to the public,” Burgess said. “People are incensed. They seem to want some kind of justice.”

What was planned as a peaceful candlelight service in front of City Hall took a hostile turn when the crowd began pushing and a cross was torn from Burgess’ arms. The cross ended up in pieces on the ground.

The crowd chanted, “Go home!” “Nazi!” and “shame on you!” as organizers pleaded with the crowd to ignore the woman. About 500 protesters attended the event, the largest in the county since 52 percent of voters approved Proposition 8, an amendment that banned same-sex marriage.

Palm Springs Police made no arrests, but say they spent about 40 minutes on Saturday trying to convince Burgess to press charges.

Full Article

Gay Radicals Call for Violence Against Christian Supporters of Prop 8

In a stunning reaction to the passage of state constitutional marriage protection amendments in California, Arizona and Florida, several self identified homosexuals on a number of homosexual blogs are advocating violence against Christians and other supporters of traditional marriage. Additionally, some homosexuals are calling for church burnings in response to yesterday’s three state referenda in defense of natural marriage.

In a blog entry titled “You’ll Want to Punch them” on Queerty.com, poster “BillyBob Thornton” wrote, “… I have never considered being a violent radical extremist for our Equal Rights, But now I think maybe I should consider becoming one.” “Stenar” asked, “Can someone in CA please go burn down the Mormon temples there, PLEASE. I mean seriously. DO IT.” “Angelo Ventura,” said, “… hope they all rot in hell, those servants of a lying, corrupt devil!

BAN RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM!” And, “Jonathan,” warned, “I’m going to give them something to be ‘blank’ scared of. … I’m a radical who is now on a mission to make them all pay for what they’ve done.”

Meanwhile, over at JoeMyGod.blogspot.com, “World O Jeff,” said, “Burn their ‘blank’ churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” While, “Tread,” wrote, “I hope the No on 8 people have a long list and long knives.” “Joe,” stated, “I swear, I’d murder people with my bare hands this morning.”

And on the Americablog.com Web site, “scottinsf” posted, “Trust me. I’ve got a big list of names of mormons and catholics that were big supporters of Prop 8. … As far as mormons and catholics … I warn them to watch their backs.”

Read More

More

Gay Pledge Cards Given to Kindergartners

A California school system refuses to say what action, if any, it will take after it received complaints about a kindergarten teacher who encouraged her students to sign “pledge cards” in support of gays.

During a celebration of National Ally Week, Tara Miller, a teacher at the Faith Ringgold School of Arts and Science in Hayward, Calif., passed out cards produced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to her class of kindergartners.

The cards asked signers to be “an ally” and to pledge to “not use anti-LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender language or slurs; intervene, when I feel I can, in situations where others are using anti-LGBT language or harassing other students and actively support safer schools efforts.”

The school has acknowledged that the exercise was not appropriate for kindergartners.

Parent Adela Voelker, who declined to be interviewed in depth for this report, said she was furious when she found her child’s signature on one of the cards. She said she contacted a non-profit legal defense organization specializing in parents’ rights.

Meanwhile, a school board member, Jeff Cook, says some type of action should be taken.

“We have a general rule that all instruction should be age appropriate, and this clearly was not,” said Cook, who has served on the school board for five years.

Full Article