Spiritual Matters
…In selecting speakers for Oklahoma Wesleyan, party affiliation and political positions do not matter. Personal conduct, public statements, theological integrity and moral consistency do. …we choose speakers who generally promote our university’s mission and who do not stand in opposition, either in word or deed, to what we claim to hold dear as a Christian community. …Anyone who is pro-abortion is not on my side. Anyone who calls women “pigs,” “ugly,” “fat” and “pieces of a—” is not on my side. Anyone who mocks the handicapped is not on my side. Anyone who has argued the merits of a government takeover of banks, student loans, the auto industry and healthcare is not on my side. Anyone who has been on the cover of Playboy and proud of it, who brags of his sexual history with multiple women and who owns strip clubs in his casinos is not on my side. Anyone who believes the government can wrest control of the definition of marriage from the church is not on my side. Anyone who ignores the separation of powers and boasts of making the executive branch even more imperial is not on my side.… No, Donald Trump will not be speaking at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.…
…Retired Reverend Richard Chartres said the two vicars have grown full beards "of an opulence that would not have disgraced a Victorian sage" and is applauding their efforts to share in the culture of the East End's majority Muslim population.…
Planned Parenthood Says Speaker Ryan Was Showing “Disrespect” By Inviting Catholic Nuns To SOTU……
“Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate.
It would be even worse to think those who get what they pray for as sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare no leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: ‘I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.’ …"
I am still here, although I did have a pretty close call recently, thanks to complications from my Addison’s Disease, that I am very slowly recovering from.…
A Biblical scholar claims that due to a mistranslation the original scripture actually says that Eve was made from Adam's penis not his rib. The professor states that man is the only mammal without a penis bone. Guess that's where it went.
…An amazing image some say resembles Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared at Transfiguration Catholic Church in Marietta, Georgia.
The image first appeared on a church window on Deceber, 12, 2015 on the Feast of Our Lady of Quadalupe.…
Joseph and Michele Assad, former U.S. counter-terrorism officers, helped arrange for 25 families, 149 refugees in all including 62 children, to board a privately-chartered plane in the Kurdistan region of Iraq on Dec. 10, and land in Kosice, Slovakia, where they will be granted asylum within a month.…
Israeli archaeologists discovered a 1,500-year-old slab of marble with Hebrew inscriptions by Kursi near the Sea of Galilee in Israel’s north, reaffirming a Jewish presence at what Christians believe to be the location of Jesus’ “Miracle of the Swine.” …first piece of evidence confirming the existence of a Jewish or early Christian community in Kursi…
…But the White House chose Susan Talve to light the Menorah. Talve is a member of the anti-Israel group T'ruah which is currently promoting assorted "soft BDS" programs. She's also a Ferguson activist. Her behavior was deeply insulting to the religious Jewish community and made it clear that the White House was determined to hijack even a Chanukah party to promote an anti-Jewish agenda.…
The U.S. Constitution allows a large Latin cross to stay as the centerpiece of the Bladensburg World War I Veterans Memorial, a federal court in Maryland ruled Monday.
In 1925, the American Legion erected the Bladensburg cross as a memorial honoring 49 men in Prince George’s County, Maryland, who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in World War I.…
Yale theology professor Miroslav Volf argues that all religions are basically the same—equally prone to fanatical violence and to peaceful love of neighbor—and thus should be treated in exactly the same way. …
…recent Anglican Church of England… polling results showed that the majority of people surveyed believed Jesus was “not a real person.” …4,000 respondents where 57% identified themselves as Christians. Less than 10% of Christians read the Bible, prayed on a regular basis or went to church at least once a month.…
…At Sidney Sussex College, where there are several papers of Dr. Samuel Ward, he found a 70-page notebook belonging to the scholar that had Biblical verse-by-verse comments and also notes on Greek and Hebrew. He took photographs of the pages, and only a month later did he realize that what he had been looking at was Ward's draft of the King James Version, with 1 Esdras in full and the Wisdom of Solomon partially complete. There are no full drafts of the King James Version because it was the effort of several translators, whose works came together to form the KJV.…
The group of religious sisters founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta is shutting down its thirty orphanages in India as a protest, rather than comply with new state regulations requiring that they place children with single parents. …
…The Republican Party of Oklahoma has offered a home to a Ten Commandments monument soon to be removed from Capitol grounds by court order, saying the teachings etched in stone are espoused by the party, officials said on Thursday. ... "It really defines us as a nation," said [interim GOP-OK chairwoman] Estela Hernandez "We really are a moral nation and, when we look at those laws that are enshrined in that monument, that's what we follow today."…
…Here’s the deal. In order for a pope to be validly elected, there can be NO vote canvassing… It is an automatic excommunicable offense.… Cardinal Danneels of Belgium… openly admits to being a member of a “mafiaclub” – HIS WORD – formed to act against Pope Benedict XVI, that specifically canvassed and organized Bergoglio’s election.…
Sep 16 - A pastor in East Texas… Corinth Missionary Baptist Church pastor, Rev. John D. Johnson III calmed down an armed Islamic man who had entered his church… Rasheed Abdul Aziz… allegedly with the intent to kill Christians. Police later arrested the armed man without incident.…
A new study suggests that joining a religious group could do more for someone’s “sustained happiness” than other forms of social participation, such as volunteering, playing sports or taking a class.…
It was an unscripted moment like few others on the presidential campaign trail Monday in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Ted Cruz paused for a moment and looked into the audience at a community center for a man who changed his family’s life.
“I was told Pastor Gaylon Wiley was here…”
John Chisolm will be talking on his study of breathwork and the alchemy of the Holy Breath. He attained a Master's degree in psychology and has maintained a counseling/healing practice for 45 years. …raised Catholic …converted to Methodism after marrying and presently studying the Gnostic Gospels starting with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. …student of “A Course In Miracles” and The Urantia Book. …seeks to recognize the Divine Feminine as full partner to the Holy Masculine. He has come to believe that we are all endowed with the Christ seed and have the opportunity allow our individual expressions of Christhood to unfold.…
The Atlantic writer Jeffrey Tayler is annoyed at the “educated elite” in our country. Why have they not risen to the occasion and labeled passionate religious belief a mental illness?
The writer’s disappointment followed the release of an article on The News Nerd entitled “American Psychological Association to Classify Belief in God as a Mental Illness.” In the story, Psychologist Dr. Lillian Andrews had stated: “The time for evolving into a modern society and classifying these archaic beliefs as a mental disorder has been long overdue.”
Yet the article, it turned out, was a hoax.
Alas for Mr. Tayler.…
The mourners didn't know her name, her native country or the place where she met her demise, but they knew her as one of their own and as such, she deserved the dignity of a traditional Jewish burial Sunday in Oklahoma City's Fairlawn Cemetery.… The service, Jacobson said, was the result of "once-in-a-lifetime" circumstances. Jacobson, spiritual leader of Emanuel Synagogue, said she was contacted in 2014 by a local Christian minister who said the family of one of his church members had the remains of a Holocaust victim in their possession. …
The quarter-century controversy over the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial has finally ended, after the US Department of Defense sold the government land on which the 29-foot cross stood.
Judges have disagreed over how emblematic the San Diego memorial really was of Christianity.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals referred to the cross as a “distinctively Christian symbol” in its 2011 ruling that the memorial was unconstitutional. It sided with opponents who argued the cross signified “that Jesus is the Son of God and died to redeem mankind.”
In contrast, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggested “the cross was a war memorial,” maintaining that it was “outrageous” to conclude that the only dead veterans it honored were Christians. The high court has twice refused to review the case.…
Lord Weidenfeld, an influential British publisher whom Christians helped escape Nazi-occupied Austria during his youth, has set up a fund to help save Syrian and Iraqi Christian refugees from the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group. … “We have been deeply moved by the plight of Christians in conflict-torn Middle East countries, and we are supporting the transfer of Christian families to safe havens where they can lead normal lives.” …
The story of the Waldensians is a story of devotion to the Scriptures, and of perseverance—a story that should inspire us all. Because of their origins in the distant 12th century, they have been called “the oldest evangelical Church”; because they became an embattled pocket of stubborn “heretics” in the valleys of the Piedmont Alps, unwilling to surrender their beliefs, they have been called the “Israel of the Alps.” The Waldensian story is fascinating, and legendary. …
This Fourth of July, God and America have a complicated relationship.A third of Americans say the United States is a Christian nation. But more than half say the country has a special relationship with the Almighty. …
Despite having family members to sponsor them, a group of 20 Chaldean Christians who fled ISIS have been detained for over four months at the Otay Detention Facility in San Diego. The large Chaldean community in Southern California are unhappy with the unexplained delays and are demanding their release.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claim they are undermanned and face a backlog of cases but have offered little to the media about the prolonged detention of the Chaldean 20.
Mark Arabo, an activist and spokesmen for the local Chaldean community says, "What we do know is that they are being held without a real reason." …
…Frankly, we don't think that it was God's plan to take advantage of these horrendous murders. We think that's more Mr. Obama's style.
Nor do we think that the president, who has religiously avoided church attendance ever since the good old "God DAMN America" days spent with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was in any way speaking for the Almighty.
Rather, Obama was mixing his lies with truth - a skill which comes from another source entirely….
This morning in church, I was thinking about my column “The Rage of the Left” that I posted this morning. And I began to think of how I used to be. If you’ve read the About Dianny page here at Patriot Retort, you know that I was once a raging, screaming Leftist. I was lost in that blinding darkness of anger and hatred.
And now I’m not.
As I sat in church this morning, I considered how my life has gone from darkness to light. This is the Light from God. …