Free Republic

Something is coming. I don’t know what. But we must be ready. Here’s the key question: Is America heading towards a terrible implosion or a great awakening? I feel a tremendous sense of urgency about this column. The United States is hurtling towards severe trouble, and the events of the past few months — and what may be coming over the next few months — grieves me a great deal. Something is coming. I don’t know what. But we all must be ready in every possible way. Consider where we are in the summer of 2015: •Violence is exploding in...

A prominent Muslim leader in France has suggested that thousands of the country's abandoned Catholic churches should be turned into mosques to accommodate the growing French Muslim population, which is the largest Muslim population in Europe. In a Monday interview with France's Europe 1 radio, Dalil Boubakeur, the president of the French Council of Muslim Faith and rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, explained that there are only 2,500 mosques in France, with another 300 under construction, which falls short of being able to serve the nation's estimated 5 million Muslims. Boubakeur asserted that at least 5,000 mosques are...

Pop singer Miley Cyrus recently slammed Christian conservatives for believing in "fairy tales" like the story of Noah's ark and argued that those who hold to a traditional definition of marriage should not be permitted to make laws within the United States. In a recent interview with Paper magazine, Cyrus, who appears nude within the publication, refers to herself as the "least judgemental person ever." However, the magazine notes that while she was raised in a Christian home and was baptized in a Southern Baptist church, the "Wrecking Ball" singer "maintains a particular contempt for fundamentalist lawmakers who rally against...

Last May in Italy, a Muslim boy of African origin beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck. The African schoolboy, who had only started to attend the school approximately three weeks earlier, began to bully the Christian girl — “insulting her and picking on her in other ways all because she was wearing the crucifix” — before he finally “punched the girl violently in the back [1].”What is it about the Christian cross that makes some Muslims react this way?The fact is, Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of...

...churches should not be afraid to tackle controversial issues such as homosexuality, sexual impurity, and divorce. Where else but in church will young Christians hear Biblical truth and be prepared to handle the most pressing social and cultural issues of our age? Public school? Television? College? To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, the church must push back as hard as the age that pushes against it.

If you doubt that Christians are fair game for ridicule by the cultural left, take a look at the hit piece on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by Jeffrey Tayler for Salon. I can't decide which is worse, the title or the subtitle. The title: "Antonin Scalia is unfit to serve: A justice who rejects science and the law for religion is of unsound mind." The subtitle: "The justice claims to be an originalist, but his real loyalty is to religion and a phony man in the sky." The writer is trying to be cute, but don't conclude that any...

I love this quote by illustrious NASA scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow (1925-2008): “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” I would just add to Dr. Jastrow’s keen insight, that it’s not merely theologians at large who have long lounged atop Mount Understanding. It is, more precisely, Judeo-Christian theologians....

The historic Christian Syrian town of Maalula celebrated Saturday as a new statue of Mary, worshiped in Christianity as the mother of Jesus, was erected in its center, replacing the figure destroyed in rebel attacks in 2013. Dozens of families gathered alongside government officials and religious dignitaries in the main square, which was adorned with government flags and a giant portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Located north of Damascus, Maalula is one of the world's oldest Christian settlements, and its inhabitants still speak Aramaic, a language spoken by Jews in Israel at the time Jesus was said to have...

Dear Governor McCrory, With all due respect to your office and your many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I must say that I read your response to the congressional override of your veto to Senate Bill 2 with real disappointment. Are you the same man who stood so strongly against gay activism when you were the mayor of Charlotte? I remember, sir, sitting next to you at a luncheon at First Baptist Church in Charlotte in 2006 when Pastor Mark Harris commended to you my statement to the local gay and lesbian community, one in which...

Where is Christianity growing the fastest? The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, based at Gordon Conwell Seminary, published In June 2013 an excellent report regarding Christianity in its Global Context. The full report can be found online at www.globalchristianity.org/globalcontext. From this report I identified the top 20 countries that have the highest percentage Christianity Average Annual Growth Rate (AAGR). They are listed in Table 1. I have also calculated the number of years for the number of Christians to double, based on the Average Annual Growth Rate. Table 1. The Top 20 Countries Where Christianity Has the Highest...

If Jesus returned to Earth to ease the suffering of the poor, afflicted, and the persecuted, who do you think the liberal media would choose to honor: the Son of God or Caitlyn Jenner? This is how utterly delusional and myopic progressives have become in their quest to worship the LGBT community to the fall of Christianity, if not all humanity. How else can you explain ESPN giving the Arthur Ash Courage Award to a 65 year-old, cross dressing father of six – an accolade typically bestowed upon those bravely facing imminent death or grave injury – rather than a...

The Fount of Knowledge is divided into three categories: 1. “Philosophical Chapters” (Kephalaia philosophika) – “With the exception of the fifteen chapters that deal exclusively with logic, it has mostly to do with the ontology of Aristotle. It is largely a summary of the Categories of Aristotle with Porphyry’s “Isagoge” (Eisagoge eis tas kategorias). It seems to have been John Damascene’s purpose to give his readers only such philosophical knowledge as was necessary for understanding the subsequent parts of the “Fountain of Wisdom”. 2. “Concerning Heresy” (Peri aipeseon) – “Little more than a copy of a similar work by Epiphanius,...

[caption id="attachment_1500" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image source: WENN[/caption] I was reading on Quora, which I like to do in the mornings to increase my knowledge of random subjects like WWII’s greatest atrocities or how astronauts aboard the ISS keep the toilet clean. I came across this piece titled “If Jesus forgives all sins what is the point in not sinning?”  Johnnie Lockett makes a really strong argument for living a righteous life. It’s actually the best, most concise answer I have seen, backed up with personal experience. And when people do such things well, those who watch are greatly impressed. We...

In this episode, we pick up where we last left off on the concept joy, and what it has done (promising you what it can do) for people who truly find it in the Lord. Then, we discuss how God provides restoration to the soul, showing us, through personal experience, how he accommodates, aides, and provides purpose, and companionship, satisfying (and completing) our soul’s overall longings and yearnings, as we have discussed throughout this series. (The program can be accessed by clicking on the "Source" link, or by clicking HERE.)

The doctrine of soteriology is a major concept and a major theme in the Bible.  The terms related to salvation are prevalent in the OT and NT.  In the OT, the Hebrew verb yasa and its derivatives appear about 353 times in the OT.  In the Niphal it bears the meaning “to be saved” or “be delivered” and in the Hiphil it means to “deliver,” “give victory,” or “save.”  The noun form of yasa is yesuah (64 times), yesa (31 times), and tesuah (19 times), which means, “help,” “deliverance,” and “salvation.”  When looking at the OT, the above verb yasa...

Standing against same-sex marriage is not at all like supporting slavery and Jim Crow laws. In part I yesterday, I addressed two of the three most common efforts to undermine the legitimacy of Christian doctrine on marriage and homosexuality. Part II deals with the third. The third major avenue of attack on Christian teachings on same-sex marriage and homosexual sex, and a particular favorite of anti-religious progressives, is to compare Catholics and other Christians who defend the New Testament’s teachings on marriage and sex to the defenders of Jim Crow and American slavery. This argumentum ad Wallace, mainly advanced by...

The contemporary sexual revolution is thoroughly Gnostic, attacking the institution of marriage, thwarting the conception of children, and denying the differences between men and women “Temptation of Jesus Christ” (1901-03) by Ilya Repin [WikiArt.org] There is a tale, whose threads are too long to unravel here, of the meanderings of an idea through history—the idea that, as Nicolas Gómez-Davila parsed it, man is “a god imprisoned in the dull inertia of his flesh, or a god who elevates matter as his cry of victory.” This is the “knowledge” of both the old and the new Gnostics: We are not who...

The comfortable, suburban Christians who are sitting in their armchairs and tut-tutting at us for being so uncharitable as to hold a Muhammad cartoon contest should take careful note of this. Islamic law asserts authority over non-Muslims. To send the signal that we will submit to Sharia blasphemy laws regarding drawing Muhammad, even if we are doing so out of a misguided sense of “respect,” will only embolden Islamic supremacists to make more demands. The endpoint of these demands is shown in this incident in Egypt. These comfortable, suburban Christians in the West are ensuring a future of harassment, persecution,...

Erbil, Iraq, Jun 9, 2015 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite the potential threat from the nearby Islamic State, several monks and students in northern Iraq have found refuge in an ancient monastery, certain they are in God's hands no matter what happens. Erbil’s Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda said that those who have chosen to remain in the fourth century Monastery of Saint Matthew have “expressed their faith that this is a secure place.” He told CNA June 8 that although these Christians are now being protected by the Kurdish military, their sense of safety is not only due to...

In Korea, the only "god" he knew was the country's leader, Kim Il-Sung, and any perceived blasphemy against him could land a person in a prison camp. So when Joseph Kim finally crossed the Tumen river into China, he did what he was told—follow the cross—even though he didn't know what a cross or a Christian was. Kim tells his story in a new book, Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and at a time when North Korea occasionally surfaces in the headlines for its continuing beligerence towards the...