Free Republic

TRYING TO PLEASE EVERYONE Trying to please everyone is by far the worst disease the West contracted. Today, critiquing any other religion besides Christianity is considered a sin while mocking Christianity is applauded. I argue that anyone who tries to combat anything without using biblical concepts is an idiot no mater how ‘brilliant’ society thinks they are. A Christian will always be attacked no matter what they say. I as a Christian could type any sentence and instant objections will arise. I could even publish a single line article that says: “Mankind does good and evil” and someone will object....

When healthcare is expensive, the Amish culture of autonomy and thrift may be a way to balance communal support and individual responsibility. Sara Talpos finds out more. The Allegheny Plateau, sprawling across northern Pennsylvania and beyond, is an ecosystem of forested hills, with land that supports black bears, bald eagles and wandering turkeys, as well as a patchwork of wild herbs: burdock, jewelweed, chamomile and sheep sorrel. Cellphone reception is spotty and gas stations are few and far between. Tucked away among the streams branching from the Cowanesque river is a cluster of small white and tan buildings, including the...

Germany’s Bayerischer Rundfunk reports on the experience of an estate agent with experience selling homes in Hungary’s picturesque Lake Balaton who said the number of “disaffected” Germans seeking property there to escape their own country was on the rise. Estate agent Ottmar Heide said now eight in ten of his customers were leaving Germany and moving to Hungary because of the migrant crisis, and the potentially millions of non-Europeans who will move to Germany every year. The fact that there is already a large German speaking community around the lake, the country is Christian, property and cost of living is...

“Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.”– John 15:20The answer had to be yes. The Holy Spirit made it crystal clear. When Tristan Emmanuel, managing publisher and CFO of BarbWire Books, called me and said it was time for me to put pen to paper and write a book on the anti-Christian left’s demonic war on religious liberty (and all things godly and good), I immediately agreed.And so with the tireless help of my project partner...

Moderate Malay­sians are making a stand against the unilateral conversion of children, urging that they be allowed to hold on to their original faith until they can decide for themselves at age 18. Businessman and moderation activist Anas Zubedy said a child’s religion must be agreed on by both parents. “Unilateral conversions should not be allowed for whatever religion, be it Islam, Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism. “Should a parent convert to a religion different from that at the time of marriage, especially during dissolution of the marriage, the children should remain in the original faith until they turn 18,” he...

Some thoughts I've been stringing together over the Labor Day weekend involve Heaven, the New Jerusalem, the Tabernacle, and the Temples. In the Old and New Testaments, the Hebrew and Greek etymology of the words that translate to atmosphere, space, and what we commonly, in our language, refer to as "Heaven", are the same.  In the Bible, Heaven is the sky, the stars, and the place where God dwells "behind the veil". "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know,...

When Australia's most successful Olympian, Ian Thorpe, came out as gay in an interview with Sir Michael Parkinson in July 2014, he was inundated with messages of support. At the time, some posed the question: does this even count as news? Is homosexuality today not a simple biographical detail rather than a sensational scandal? And yet, it is significant that on the same night that Thorpe came out, Australian Rules Football commentator Brian Taylor used a homophobic slur on air, referring to Geelong player Harry Taylor as a "big poofter." The two events accentuated perfectly why it remains the case,...

.....Despite the 1st amendment and his oath, Sen. Schumer (D-New York) says that religious Americans have a choice: hold their religious faith or go into business but, according to Sen. Schumer, religious people cannot both practice their faith and conduct business in America.... The first part of the answer is that...it became a given in the modern period that religion is an essentially private, theoretical matter. ....The second part of the answer is really a question. How did it come to be that, in America, a nation founded on the principle of the right of relatively unencumbered religious practice, in...

Like most people, the list of books I have read over the years is in the hundreds. The ones still to be read also in the hundreds. That said, of all the books I’ve read or planned to read, a book about “The End Times” had never made either list. Until now. While never a “Bible thumper,” I have always been a person of deep faith, and as outlined in the past, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ started when I was five years old, when a little plastic Baby Jesus became my sole comforter during a fairly violent eviction...

This is an excerpt from Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live? Published in 1976, Schaeffer draws parallels between ancient Rome's hatred of Christianity and what we're seeing in modern times. No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts. Amazing the number of similarities between...

Christianity: An Antidote to TyrannyClifford Staples Like all modern tyrants, Karl Marx hated religion, Christianity in particular, because he understood that it was going to be very difficult if not impossible to get men to follow him so long as they continued to follow Jesus Christ, and so the first thing an aspiring tyrant in the middle of Christian Europe needed to do was to uproot and destroy Christianity. With Christ dwelling in the hearts of men there was no room for the atheist humanism that Marx and others were proposing as an alternative. But without God men could be...

We have lost the great art of Bible meditation today, and we are the poorer for it. In 1987, newsman Ted Koppel gave a classic commencement speech at Duke, in which he famously said that Moses didn’t come down from Mt. Sinai carrying the “Ten Suggestions.” Note what Koppel then said about television and our ability to concentrate: “Look at MTV or Good Morning America and watch the images and ideas flash past in a blur of impressionistic appetizers. No, there is not much room on TV for complexity.” We have been losing concentration power through the constant stimulation of...

A new study shows that potentially thousands of Christians have been attacked and harassed in German migrant homes by Muslim guards and fellow migrants. Multiple human rights organizations are warning the German government of the conditions that Christians in asylum homes are being subjected to. One organization in particular has chronicled 231 specific cases of the harassment of Christians by Muslim migrants and Muslim security guards in asylum homes. Open Doors is a humanitarian relief organization that specializes in helping Christians who are persecuted worldwide. Markus Rode, a member of the group, said that the study is only “the tip...

Since the beginning of the most recent uprisings by the cowardly Islamic world, we have repeatedly been told by their apologists that Muslim attacks on the civilized world are merely a continuation of their response to the Crusades. They insist the Crusades are the moral equivalent and justification for jihad. The accompanying video, featuring Bill Warner PhD, demolishes this lie in a well-constructed 5 minutes presentation. Dr. Warner uses simple and effective graphics showing us the HUGE disparity in the number of battles initiated by the Christian Crusaders and those made by the loathsome Islamists since the 7th century. The...

An interfaith group is laying the groundwork for what will likely be the world’s first ever joint house of prayer. The center of worship, which will be called the "House of One," will combine simultaneous Jewish, Muslim, and Christian prayer services. The House of One is planned to be built on the site of Berlin’s first church, the Petrikirche. One of the organizers of the interfaith group behind the planned church/mosque/synagogue, Rabbi Tovia Ben Chorin, said that the House of One is a reminder that despite the dark history of Berlin in the 20th century it is now a center...

He was the most recognized person in the world. He met with Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Born in a small town in Poland, MAY 18, 1920, was Karol Wojtyla. A chemical worker during World War II, he risked punishment by Communists for being ordained a priest. In 1967, he became Archbishop of Krakow and, in 1978, he became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope since 1522. Leader of one billion Catholics, Pope John Paul spoke eight languages and traveled a million miles in 170 countries - more than any other pope. In 1981, he survived...

When amateur archaeologist Dennis Fabricius Holm got off work early last Friday and decided to spend a couple of hours searching a little field in Funen with his metal detector, little did he know he was about to make history. Holm stumbled across one of the most extraordinary finds in recent times near the little town of Aunslev when he discovered a crucifix that dates back about 1,100 years – Denmark’s oldest crucifix ever found. It could rewrite Danish history. “It’s a completely sensational find that dates back to the first half of the 900s,” Malene Refshauge Beck, a curator...

It is a fact that Islam is growing rapidly in the West. In the U.S. alone the number of Muslims has risen dramatically, from about 10,000 in 1900 to 3 million or more in 1991 (some authorities say 4.5 million). Most of this growth is due to recent immigration and the high birth rate of Muslims (5 children per family on average), rather than to conversion. Still, the number of those who convert to Islam is significant. In the U.S., the majority are African-American (a third of all Muslims according to most authorities), but there have also been significant numbers...

This is the last in a series of essays on the duty of Christians in civic affairs, adapted from Kevin Kookogey’s weekly radio address and podcasts at www.advancingchurch.com 8. Which responsibilities of providing help to our citizens are the government's and which belong to the Church? The duty of government is plainly described in our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence establishes the philosophical and moral basis for our system of government, famously asserting that governments are instituted among men to secure their rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Constitution then enumerates those powers,...

I commend author and blogger Jonathan Merritt for reminding us that whenever we hear the words “homosexual” or “transgender,” we are not just talking about issues, we are talking about people – people created in God’s image, yet fallen (like the rest of us), people for whom Jesus died, people whom the church is to called to reach. We can never be reminded of this too much. Unfortunately, Merritt is quite wrong in arguing that “conservative Christians will lose the transgender debate.” Writing on ReligionNews.com, Merritt offers three main reasons to support his contention: 1) conservative Christians “focus on ideology...