Free Republic

CBN.com – Mary Forsythe grew up in rural Kentucky where family was celebrated and life was simple. But despite her “good life,” Mary felt she was some how “different.” “I always felt like I was odd in a bad sense. I felt like something was wrong with me,” she says. “Something was defective. Even though I went through the motions, inside I was in really pain and torment even from a young child.” Mary says she always felt rejected even though she never understood why. So to compensate she became an overacheiver -- a performer. For most of her adolescence...

CBN.com – “I was searching for truth, the meaning of life. There’s something missing in my life. I didn’t know what it was.” Cyril Gordon embarked on a spiritual journey to fill that void. “It vacillated at that time in my life, in my late teens," Cyril tells The 700 Club. "Dabbling in existentialism, which says there’s no God. Also got drawn into eastern religion and philosophy, Zen, Daoism, Buddhism, even shaved my head back then, got into the Timothy Leary thing of taking hallucinogenics to find the truth.” Cyril was Jewish, but had strayed far away from the path...

CBN.com – As children, Charles Dudrey and his siblings endured every form of abuse at the hands of their own father. One violent episode sent Charles to the Mayo Clinic. His father slammed Charles’s head against a wall, sending him into a seizure. “The diagnosis for me was grim, and the doctors wanted to do a frontal lobotomy on me to scrape the scar tissue off my brain from the physical abuse," Charles tells The 700 Club. "But my mother said no.” At the age of 11, Charles witnessed the unthinkable, his mother’s murder. He later discovered that his father...

CBN.com – Two different religions, with two very different points of view. Fatima Devanbeigi learned the truth about each of these religions in her search for a genuine relationship with God. “On the inside, I felt like there was a huge rock hanging in my heart,” says Fatima. “It was real, and it was painful. It was like something that would draw me down and wouldn’t let me live. There was no hope in it. And there was no hope for the future.” Fatima was raised in Iran as a Muslim. “Being a Muslim is not by choice, it’s by...

If you're praying for a miracle in 2025, chances are you're not alone. Belief in miracles has seen a significant increase over the past few decades, specifically among Evangelicals and those with graduate degrees in the United States, according to a recent survey. The findings, which were summarized in a report last September from statistician and pastor Ryan Burge and drawn from the U.S. government's General Social Survey, suggest significant shifts in how Americans view the supernatural, with notable increases in belief among Evangelical Protestants, black Protestants and individuals with higher education. In 1991, Evangelical Protestants and black Protestants were...

CBN.com – “My whole family was racist, especially my step-grandfather on my mother’s side. He was a very hateful man and he hated Black people with a passion.” Johnny Lee Clary was taught to hate and fear. His family was racist and their household was full of aggression. “There was a lot of alcoholism in our home and fighting all the time,” Johnny Lee tells The 700 Club. “My mother was constantly cheating on my father. My mother drove my father into bankruptcy, and then my father was faced with losing everything he had worked hard for. I watched my...

CBN.com - Home movies show the few happy times in Kelly Carroll’s childhood. But no one dared turn on a camera when their father started beating one of them. “I was very fearful of his unpredictable temper.” says Kelly Kelly’s father could be kind, but the slightest transgression sent him into a violent rage. There was no mother to comfort or protect the children. She left when Kelly was two years old. “She was gone. I don’t even remember having a mother I was just lonely so I tried to create my own little world in order to survive.” The...

CBN.com – “I’m inside of a building in the cell block looking up 60 to70 feet. I smell the burning toilet paper. I see the dirt and the garbage, ‘Oh my goodness, what did I just get myself into?’” says Michael. Michael Bryant spent a third of his life at San Quentin, one of America’s most notorious prisons. “I’ve been to prison 9 times for drugs, vehicle theft, and insurance fraud.” Michael’s says his life growing up was challenging. When he was 10 his mother robbed an armored car. Before the police came looking for her she left town for...

CBN.com -“How do I stop using? How does a person that has a couple hundred people around him that buy drugs from him every day, just stop?” It was a question that tortured Jared Bellan for years. He made $5000 a day selling drugs. He wanted to quit using them, but he was hopelessly addicted to heroin. In the beginning, drug use wasn’t a prison for Jared, it was an escape. Living in a rural town was boring, and for Jared, marijuana was the perfect distraction. He started smoking when he was 13 years old. He eventually tried alcohol and...

CBN.com -As a relative newcomer to Christian music, Brandy Allison is already making waves. Her second single, Walking on Faith reached number 9 on the Christian charts. As a Christian artist, she loves sharing her faith through music. But there was a time she sang for a different reason. “When I got on stage, every bad thing, everything that was on my mind, disappeared. I went into the song and I became somebody else,” said Brandy. That’s because for much of her life Brandy felt liked she didn’t belong. “Nobody liked me. And there were times that I thought, ‘if...

“Having my cousin commit suicide opened up like a new reality to me, that you could end it, that things do end, and that is an option.”It was an option Jeremy Benson had never considered. His cousin was his hero. But one Christmas Eve his hero ended his own life, leaving Jeremy with questions and no answers. “Although I was born into a Christian family and I had a concept of God in my mind, when you hit some of those bumps along the way, it’s hard to see how God’s relevant. And if He even understands some of the...

CBN.com -Paula Abbott was only a child, but she was suicidal. “I was laying on my bed and I wrote a note that says ‘Why doesn’t my daddy love me?” And I looked at the fingernail polish remover and drank the whole bottle because I didn’t want to live anymore where my daddy didn’t love me. And my mom looked at my dad. She handed him the note and my dad said, ‘You can take her to the hospital if you want to, but I’m not going.’ And my dad sat down and he turned the TV on and he...

CBN.com – Don Teague and RafRaf Barrak. Ten years ago their lives were as different as could be. Don was a respected journalist, with a family and the American dream. RafRaf Barrak was a young Muslim woman living in Baghdad--struggling to find herself in a war-torn existence. Then it happened… September 11th, 2001. Don says, “When September 11th happened, I had an overwhelming feeling that my life was going to change. It was shortly after that, that I ended up being hired by NBC News, and I was going to find myself in a war.” RafRaf was a world away,...

“When I was a kid, sometimes you go out playing and then you forget it’s time for the prayers.” Hephzibah Agai was the daughter of a strict Muslim imam. “He will go and then pray and then when he’s coming back he will have a cane. Then he will come and use it on you. Very hard. So make sure you do your five prayers every day.” When Hephzibah was five years old, her mother died. Her father and grandmother raised Hephzibah and her eight siblings in Ghana, West Africa. Her father sent her to an Arab school where she...

CBN.com – Spud Alford’s life always revolved around athletics. In high school, he excelled in track, football and baseball and went on to play at the University of Southern Mississippi. Then, one day in 1976, he saw something on TV that would change his life. .... “I had never watched the Olympic Games before. I had never heard the word ‘decathlon’, but I fell in love with what I saw as he carried the American flag around the track that particular day.” He began training immediately for the 1980 Olympics and spent the next four years preparing for Moscow. While...

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived back at her California home on Wednesday after suffering a fall in “very high” heels and undergoing hip replacement surgery during her trip to Europe. The California congresswoman, 84, was spotted apparently talking into a pink cellphone in a black vehicle outside her San Francisco home in the first pictures of her in the US exclusively obtained by The Post. “Speaker Pelosi is well on the mend and continues to work,” her spokesperson Ian Krager told The Post. Pelosi was visiting a World War II battlefield site in Luxembourg on Friday when she fell...

[Catholic Caucus] Healing at Lourdes of British World War I Soldier Declared ‘Miraculous’Archbishop McMahon concluded during a canonical commission that based on the evidence assembled by Moriarty, Traynor’s healing was indeed miraculous.The next day, Traynor went again to the baths — while he was bathing, he recalled his legs becoming “violently agitated” and feeling as though he had regained use of them. Since he was due to return for a Eucharistic procession, Traynor’s caretakers — who believed he was having another fit — rushed him to Rosary Church.When the archbishop of Rheims passed him by with the Blessed Sacrament, Traynor’s...

[Catholic Caucus] Did Padre Pio Offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Diocese of Pittsburgh?Editor’s Note: This article begins our new article series A Week with Padre Pio to begin AdventIn Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.During World War II, an American GI from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Joseph (Joe) Peluso, first visited Padre Pio on October 6, 1944 at his monastery in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Joe attended the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered by Padre Pio on many occasions, and after 45 visits to see Padre Pio, Joe’s unit was transferred to France...

Our long national nightmare is over. Donald Trump has been elected president again and life in the United States — and, indeed, the world — will never be the same again. Need further proof? Consider this selection of undeniable miracles that have taken place in just the short time since Trump won the election. 1. Feminists are shaving their heads so everyone can easily identify them: No more worrying about which women are shrill harpies. 2. McDonald's announced that the McRib would now be available permanently: No more shall anyone go without press-formed ambiguous meat patties. 3. Airline stewardesses are...

Itay Shabi: ''For five hours I hid under a tree, when the terrorists passed by my side. I felt that God protected me from the terrorists. That morning of Simchat Torah, Shabi started it with me like most of the residents of the Gaza Envelope with a series of loud alarms and explosions. "Immediately we understood that we were at war. The intensity of the barrages left no doubt that we were in an event on an unusual scale. Something we had never experienced before. However, in the first few minutes we did not understand what was happening, but we...