Georgetown Covered Name of Jesus to Comply With White House Request

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”–symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the “IHS” monogram that had previously adorned the stage at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was still covered up–when the pediment where it had appeared was photographed by CNSNews.com.

“In coordinating the logistical arrangements for yesterday’s event, Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage,” Julie Green Bataille, associate vice president for communications at Georgetown.

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America A Mission Field

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says a recent article in Newsweek magazine about the decline of Christianity in America poses some challenges to believers. The cover story of the April 13, 2009, issue of Newsweek — titled “The End of Christian America” — points to studies that show the number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. For example, the American Religious Identification Survey found that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped by 10 percentage points since 1990.

Addressing the topic on his daily radio show, Dr. Albert Mohler, who was quoted in the Newsweek article, says Christians must take every opportunity to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It’s easier to have an honest conversation with someone about Christianity who knows that he or she is not a Christian, than [to have a conversation with] someone who thinks they are because of some vague, family tie or cultural kind of alliance or allegiance,” he says. “But we’re now looking at an America that knows itself to be increasingly secular.”

Albert Mohler, Jr.Another challenge, says Mohler, is how many people view Christianity. Many, he believes, see Christianity as merely a moral system.

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Newsweek: The End of Christian America

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, “this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.” As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.

“That really hit me hard,” he told me last week. “The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous.” Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. “A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us,” Mohler wrote. “The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.” When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. “Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society,” he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

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Supporters of ‘Antichrist’ Minister Protest Miami-Dade Judges

Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with ”666”, about a dozen followers of Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the Miami-based minister who proclaimed himself the Antichrist, protested his ”persecution” by the justice system in front of the family courthouse on Tuesday.

Last year, after a bitter divorce that featured dueling claims of lesbianism and physical abuse, Miami-Dade judge Roberto Pineiro awarded more than $2.2 million to the minister’s ex-wife, Josefina de Jesus Torres.

In his ruling, Pineiro determined that de Jesus’ Growing in Grace church was a personal business, rather than a religious nonprofit, so the ex-wife was entitled to half of its assets.

Jo-Ann de Jesus, the minister’s daughter who also handles the church’s finances, said the judge based his decision on a ”prejudice against my dad” and not on evidence.

De Jesus and her father’s followers are hoping to get the multimillion dollar judgement overturned.

Pineiro could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The minister, who claimed his teachings have replaced those of Jesus Christ and therefore he should be known as the Antichrist, has refused to pay up.

He has been ”moving around a lot lately”, his daughter said, to avoid the arrest warrant issued against him for contempt.

”My father is afraid if he is captured, people will sell their houses to help him because they love him so much,” she said.

Many of de Jesus’ followers say his clash with the secular justice system is further proof that he is the Second Coming. The original Messiah also faced significant legal difficulties, they note.

”It just makes me more secure,” said 38-year-old de Jesus follower Angel Toro. “His persecution means he’s really divine.”

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Explicit Sex Ok, But Talk of God Taboo In American Schools

Our young people are growing up in a world in which GOD is the new four-letter word. Look around and you will find that while it is permissible for children in many public school systems and homes to read novels with graphic language and watch sexually explicit commercials on TV, talking about God or religion is taboo.

Few objections are raised over the kind of music kids are listening to on their MP3-players at school during non-instructional time. However, lawsuits are constantly being filed over whether students should observe a moment of silence at the start of the school day. Two incidents that perfectly illustrate my point recently came across my desk.

The first incident involves Wade, a fourth grader from Colorado. Wade’s class was given a “Hero” assignment, which required each student to pick a hero, research the person and write an essay. The student would then dress up and portray the chosen hero as part of a “live wax museum” and give an oral report in front of the class.

However, when the 9-year-old chose Jesus as his hero, school officials immediately insisted that he pick another hero. (You have to wonder whether school officials would have objected had Wade chosen the Dalai Lama–or even the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.–as his hero.) After Wade’s parents objected, the school proposed a compromise: Wade could write the essay on Jesus. He could even dress up like Jesus for the “wax museum.” However, he would have to present his oral report to his teacher in private, with no one else present, rather than in front of the classroom like the other students.

The message to young Wade, of course, was two-fold: first, Jesus is not a worthy hero, and second, Jesus is someone to be ashamed of and kept hidden from public view. Yet do we really want our young people to grow up believing that freedom of speech means that you’re free to talk about anything as long as you don’t mention God or Jesus?

Wade is not the only school-aged child being singled out for censorship because of a particular religious viewpoint. For instance, a third grader at an elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada, was asked to write in her journal about what she liked most about the month of December. When the child wrote that she liked the month of December because it’s Jesus’ birthday and people get to celebrate it, her teacher tapped her on the shoulder and informed her that she was not allowed to write about religion in school.

Much of the credit for this state of affairs can be chalked up to secularist organizations that have worked relentlessly to drive religion from public life. John Leo, a former contributing editor at U.S. News and World Report, painted a grim picture of those who operate under the so-called guise of safeguarding the separation of church and state so that all faiths might flourish. Leo’s article, written seven years ago, was an eerie foreshadowing of our current state of affairs:

History textbooks have been scrubbed clean of religious references and holidays scrubbed of all religious references and symbols. Some intellectuals now contend that arguments by religious people should be out of bounds in public debate, unless, of course, they agree with the elites.
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Billy Graham Ministry To Focus On End Time – Return of Jesus Christ

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will focus on the return of Jesus Christ and help prepare believers for life in the last days in 2009, according to a recent announcement.

Writing in one of the several resources that the ministry is providing on the End Times, Rev. Billy Graham said, “People ask me, ‘Do you really believe that Jesus Christ is going to come back to this earth again?”

“Yes, I do,” he continues. “The Bible teaches that Jesus is coming again. And I don’t see any other hope, because we’re heading toward a catastrophe in our world.

“The most important question, however, is this: Are you ready for Christ’s return?”

Towards this end, the ministry has compiled a number of End Times resources including a message delivered by Graham in 1998, a 2008 message from BGEA president and CEO Franklin Graham, an article adapted from a message delivered by Anne Graham Lotz in 1996, an End Times article on the basics of the Second Coming, and a couple of Q&As with Billy Graham that includes a question on whether the world will end in 2009, according to news reports.

Through its compilation of resources on the Second Coming of Christ, the BGEA hopes that believers will learn how they can fulfill God’s plan for their life, increase their love for the Savior and grow their faith during these times.

The world renowned evangelist also reminds believers that regardless of when Christ returns, the end of the world does come for each and every single person – the moment that they die.

“[A]nd that could be at any time for any of us. We never know,” Graham states.

Billy Graham ministry focuses on end times – The Christian Messenger

Is Obama the Most Famous Living Person Ever?

No. That honor goes to  Jesus Christ.

Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.

I’m not trying to induce an acid flashback to John Lennon’s infamous 1966 comment, “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus.” But whether you measure fame in terms of saturation or sheer numbers, it seems indisputable to me that more people know at least something about the new American president than anyone alive, at this point—or any—in the planet’s existence.

Who else could it be? One friend suggest Muhammad Ali, another Princess Diana, and a third said Bill Clinton. Surely all are global brands with enormous reach and broad appeal. But all fall short of the man-meets-the-moment frenzy unleashed by Obama.

To be sure, the digital revolution has made this feat of fame possible. Not only has it helped the son of an erstwhile Kenyan goatherd to become president, it has allowed a current Kenyan goatherd to follow the former’s journey. And he is not alone. Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.’s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe. At the same time, population continues to grow; there are now some 6.7 billion men, women, and children on earth, an historic high.

Read Full Article – Vanity Fair.

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1 in 3 American Christians Say Jesus Sinned

Half of Americans who call themselves “Christian” don’t believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent “dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches,” the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications.

“Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible,” he said.

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Top Scholars Confirm Truth of Christianity

A new survey recently showed that 70 percent of people in Great Britain doubted the biblical account of the birth of Jesus Christ, but they are “gravely mistaken,” says Ted Baehr, a professional scholar and theologian.

Christianity is true as well as historical, factual and “intellectually sound,” said Baehr, who founded The Christian Film & Television Commission ministry in 1985.

“Top scholars, historians and experts have confirmed that the Bible is the most historically and intellectually reliable ancient text in the whole world, including the Bible’s account of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles and disciples who wrote the New Testament documents,” Baehr said.

He cited the work of numerous top scholars, historians and experts, such as C.S. Lewis, Gary Habermas, F.F. Bruce, William Lane Craig, John A.T. Robinson, John Warwick Montgomery, Bruce Metzger, Simon Greenleaf, Stuart C. Hackett, J. Gresham Machen, Ronald Nash, Edwin Yamauchi, Craig Blomberg, John Wenham, Lee Strobel, Paul Maier, and N.T. Wright.

“These people are wonderfully astute thinkers, investigators and writers,” Baehr said. “They have refuted all of the important lies, half-truths and silly comments against Jesus, His apostles, the Bible, and Christianity made by non-Christians and even by some allegedly former Christians.”

“Not only can you have complete faith in the New Testament documents and what they say about the virgin birth, divinity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and teachings of Jesus Christ,” Baehr said, “but you can also rely on what they say about non-Christian places, people, and events, such as the names and titles of Roman government officials.

“Jesus is both God and man,” he said. “He was born of a virgin, never sinned in his life, died for our sins, and rose on the third day. Turn away from your sins and faults, believe in Jesus and his teachings, and be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

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Gay Anarchist Group Disrupts Church Service

A gay anarchist group infiltrated the Mt. Hope Church in Eaton County Sunday morning, disrupting a service by pulling a fire alarm, dropping leaflets and yelling at parishioners, a pastor said.

The group, Bash Back, was simultaneously picketing outside the church, beating on buckets and using a megaphone to shout “Jesus was a homo” and other slogans as confused churchgoers continued to enter the building.

Members of Bash Back wrote in a blog that it picked Mt. Hope, a church that claims a flock of around 5,000, because of its anti-gay stance.

According to the Myspace.com page of the Lansing chapter, the network initially sprung up with the intent of increasing homosexual visibility within the anarchist community.

The “action” began early Sunday morning at the Northstar Center on Lathrop Street in Lansing where a group of around 20 protesters gathered. Pink bandanas, signs, a rainbow-colored “Bash Back!” flag and a pink, wooden cross were distributed among about half the group — the “outside team.” The rest — “inside team” — were dressed in conservative clothes and carried Bibles and stacks of fliers, intending to blend in to the church‘s 11:30 a.m. “contemporary-laid back service.”

City Pulse was alerted to the Bash Back event through a press release and had no prior knowledge of where the “action” would take place or what it would entail.

“We’re having an action today,” one of the organizers told this reporter at the Northstar Center. “You’re in for a treat.”

Bash Back began picketing outside the church doors soon after the 11:30 service began. The group also handed out fliers, which were much calmer in tone and targeted more at the curious than the angry.

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Boy Sent Home From School For Dressing In Jesus Costume

Apparently dressing up as a witch, harlot, devil, demon, etc is okay… But dressing up as Jesus is offensive.

A Paramus middle school student was sent home Friday after he came to school dressed up as Jesus for Halloween.

For a few hours, Alex Woinski was the messiah of West Brook Middle School, but like the real Jesus, Woinski was condemned, so to speak.

“Sort of like a new remake of what supposedly happened,” Woinski told CBS 2.

Decked out in sandals, a robe, fake beard and thorns, the 13-year-old joined 500 other students at his school’s Halloween celebration, and on this day, he was the chosen one – to go home.

“It was offensive to some students,” Woinski said, when asked what school officials told him the reason for being sent home was.

Woinski says he wore the costume because friends say his long hair makes him a Jesus lookalike, and were not offended by his costume.

The school says thes costume was a disruption and denies its religious nature had anything to do with it.

“I don’t think I overreacted,” Principal Joan Broe told CBS 2.

Broe said too many students were drawn to the costume, and that was reason enough.

“Children were [asking], where is the boy who is Jesus Christ?” she said. “It was disrupting the education process.”

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