Christian Heritage News

Asbury Revival - Image Source: Relevant Magazine By David de Bruyn - Posted at Churches Without Chests: Published February 20, 2023 Right now, something is happening on the campus of Asbury University in Kentucky. What began as a chapel service has turned now into a several-day worship service of singing and prayer. People from other universities have been busing in to see and to participate. People are queuing up outside the chapel. There are both people cheering it on, and claiming this is a revival the answer to prayer, and there are people sceptical, doubtful that this is more than emotion, and a kind of prolonged crowd-hysteria. I find that the momentum of the moment is to believe that it is true, and to harshly criticise those who are in any way doubtful, or even just unpersuaded. The tradition I grew up in is known as revivalism. Revivalism doesn’t only seek revival to come when God sovereignly wills it, in some ways, it seeks it every week. A lot of this began in the 19th centu

Source:  Jesus Revolution   By Taigen Joos - Posted at G3 Ministries: Published February 22, 2023 The worldwide release of a new film entitled Jesus Revolution is set for Friday, February 24. The film is based on a book by the same title written by Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, CA. The book and the subsequent movie tell the story of the so-called Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which was centralized in southern California. Being rooted in the hippie culture, these young people were experimenting with all kinds of things like drugs, sex, and religious pursuits. Hippies were a counter-cultural group of adolescents and young adults looking for meaning in life in the face of what they viewed as a meaningless war in Vietnam and a frustrating American political climate. The Jesus Movement is said to have been a major spiritual working of God in these hippie sub-cultures, not only in southern California, but also around the nation. Converted hippies

Ryan Koher with his wife Annabel and children.   (Mission Aviation Fellowship) By Anugrah Kumar - Posted at The Christian Post: Mission Aviation Fellowship, pilot's wife ask Christians worldwide to join them in prayer every Wednesday A court in Mozambique has denied bail for Ryan Koher, a pilot for the U.S.-based ministry Mission Aviation Fellowship and two of the organization's South African volunteers who were arrested more than four months ago, allegedly on suspicion of supporting insurgent activity. The ministry says the pilot has “peace from God and is committed to His will.” Koher , 31, and two South Africans — 77-year-old W.J. du Plessis and 69-year-old Eric Dry — were detained in the coastal city of Inhambane on Nov. 4 while they were loading supplies into the aircraft to be taken to church-run orphanages in the Montepuez district in the troubled Cabo Delgado Province. Their request for bail was denied earlier this month. In an update Friday, MAF said Koher’s wife, An

The editor is pleased to introduce you to a new blog and it's editor Mercy Adams. Please check out Mercy's new blog at:  Mercy Adams Writes  . Thank you! Angela Wittman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hello! Mercy Adams is a pen name used to write about the founding of the United States of America from the perspective of a godly, patriotic woman who loves her country and the men and women who dared to risk it all (their lives, fortunes and sacred honor) for Americans and their posterity to live in a land of liberty and religious freedom. The author has great respect for American founders Samuel and John Adams , hence the surname of Adams, and a great admiration for author Mercy Otis Warren who recorded the events of the founding of our nation in her book History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. May the good Lord bless this humble attempt to honor their legacy and the Christian heritage this nation was founded upon, amen.

 By Diana Chandler - Posted at Baptist Press: NASHVILLE (BP) — In its meeting Tuesday (Feb. 21), the SBC Executive Committee deemed six churches to be not in friendly cooperation—five of whom for having a female functioning in the office of pastor—including one of the largest churches in the Convention, Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Saddleback hired Andy Wood and his wife Stacie as “Pastors Andy and Stacie Wood,” according to the church website, in 2022 as the megachurch’s founding pastor Rick Warren retired. The SBC Executive Committee did not name the Woods in its decision to deem the church to be not in friendly cooperation. The recommendation from the SBC Credentials Committee came “on the basis that the church has a faith and practice that does not closely identify with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith, as demonstrated by the church having a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor.” Four other churches with women senior pastors were deemed

 By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: In recent days, I have had several people contact me about the Asbury Revival which is happening presently at Asbury University in Asbury, Kentucky. Time will tell if this is a true revival or just a work of the human flesh. Either way, there will certainly be some people who come to faith as a result of what is happening and for that we will rejoice. Yet, not all that glitters is gold. One of the things that concerns me is that Rick Warren and Francis Chan and other like-minded ministers have already gone to Asbury or they are on their way there to try to fan those flames into a revival that reaches other college campuses also. It makes me wonder if and when Andy Stanley and his entourage of LGBTQ supporters will make it there also. I have written often about the need for revival in our country and I still do. I have also tried to distinguish between true revival and false revival. As a youth, I was a member of two di

 Posted at Reformation Scotland: The Church of England recently voted in favour of allowing blessings for same-sex couples although with assurances that the church’s doctrine of marriage will not change. To many this seems incoherent, and it exposes a lack of clarity on the boundaries between what is and is not acceptable in the realm of sexuality and marriage. In the New Testament model, the church and the world are on different sides of a clear line of demarcation and the church has no need to feel pressurised into adopting the agenda and mores of the world. In the early days of the church of Corinth the pressure was real and the church in some significant ways capitulated to societal expectations. The boundary markers in these ways collapsed and the apostle Paul needed to write more than once to reinstate them. Particularly in the area of sexual ethics the divergence needed to be crystallised between how the surrounding culture regarded people’s behaviour, and how Jesus’ apostles ex

 By Scott Barkley - Posted at Baptist Press: EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (BP) — Joe Sheely may be a trusting pastor, but even his faith in state and federal officials is being tested. In the wake of a train derailment in his small Ohio town, people are scrambling for clean water. Suitable answers are even harder to find. On Feb. 3, a freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed near East Palestine. Norfolk Southern Railway released a statement Feb. 5 that a “controlled breach” would take place due to damaged pressure relief devices on some cars. That process occurred the next day, releasing a large fire that lasted for hours and produced a large, black plume that developed into a cloud settling over the area. Deadly chemicals released in the air Those chemicals released were deemed carcinogenic to people. Vinyl chloride, one of them, has been linked to central nervous system effects in acute doses. Chronic exposure has been shown to cause liver damage, including a rare form of liver

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits: “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” – 2 Corinthians 5:20 Most us have seen or heard about the “He Gets Us” ad campaign which began with television ads a few weeks ago during the telecasts of NFL football games, and then perhaps you saw the two ads which ran during the Super Bowl on February 12. The first was a thirty second ad costing $7 million with emotionally evoking images of children and their kindness to each other and animals, ending with the words of Jesus, “Be childlike.” The second ad was one minute long, showing disturbing images of anger and hostility between people with Jesus’ words “Love your enemies”, ending with “Jesus loved the people we hate.” The branding firm producing these ads say they will spend $1 billion over the next three years in this ad campaign. What shall we say about this effort to reach peopl

By Rev. Daniel Fleischer - Posted at Christian News: “Post-Christianity is the loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in public affairs, especially in the Western world where Christianity had previously flourished, in favor of alternative worldviews such as secularism, nationalism, environmentalism and militant atheism amongst many other ideologies.” The above online definition of post-Christianity is more succinctly described by Merriam-Webster as the “decline of Christianity as a majority religion.” Decline of Christianity does not mean that the Word of God is no longer among us or effective. It is among us despite the competing and growing anti-Christian forces in the world. The Word they still shall let remain, Luther wrote. Jesus said in His Olivet address, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words will by no means pass away” (Matthew 24:35). It does not mean that Christians will disappear from the earth. Jesus said again, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, an

 By Bill Muehlenberg - Posted at Culture Watch: Published Feb. 13, 2023 Marriage matters, and women and children especially suffer without it: Many decades of social science research have conclusively demonstrated that heterosexual marriage is an invaluable social good, with benefits for adults, children and society at large. As a well-documented 2004 booklet I was involved in producing puts it: "We believe good social science, despite its inherent limitations, is a better guide to social policy than uninformed opinion or prejudice. The public and policy makers deserve to hear what research suggests about the consequences of marriage or its absence for children and adults. This report represents our best judgement of what the current social science evidence reveals about the importance of marriage in our social system. Here is our fundamental conclusion: Marriage is an important social good, associated with an impressively broad array of positive outcomes for children and adults a

 Posted at Reformation Scotland: A failing health service, the social care timebomb, disregard for the safety of women and children, economic stagnation, the aftermath of the pandemic, immigration woes, a crisis in law and order, the deficiencies of our energy policy – yet even the boldest politicians seem to offer little more than sticking plasters, if not proposals that will positively make things worse. Even secular commentators are talking in terms of Britain’s “fall from grace” and expressing frustration at how little yield there is for our efforts. We seem to have inherited problems from the previous decades and generations which we cannot solve, while inheriting opportunities which we fail to exploit to our advantage. At the national level it is as if something is preventing us from achieving what we could. Yet this is not a new experience. In the 1600s commentators such as William Guthrie were keen observers of national trends and their analysis moved beyond the political and e

 Posted at The Christian Institute: Universities with a religious ethos cannot be forced to act against their beliefs by affirming LGBT ideology, a US district court has ruled. In 2021, 40 LGBT activist students sued the United States Department of Education for allowing universities to be exempt from anti-discrimination law on “sexual orientation or gender identity” where it would force them to act against their religious beliefs. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon has now dismissed the case, highlighting a previous Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of institutions to only employ staff who adhere to their religious beliefs. Continue here...

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None Of His Benefits: “For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you, and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, and the kings to the brightness of your rising.” -Isaiah 60:2,3 Tin soldiers and Nixon coming We’re finally on our own This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio. Gotta get down to it Soldiers are cutting us down Should have been done long ago What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know?[1] On Thursday, April 30, 1970 President Richard Nixon announced on national television that he was directing our military to invade the nation of Cambodia, which Nixon said was harboring, aiding, and abetting the North Vietnamese in their war against South Vietnam and the United States. His announcement immediately stirred up the anti-war movement, especially on college campuses around the U.S. Until then it seemed that Nixon was

 By Ian M. Giatti - Posted at The Christian Post: Christians faced harassment in more countries than any other religious group amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a recent Pew Research study finding an increase in 45 countries where followers of Christ face social or government abuse or violence since 2012. The data on restrictions to religion around the globe, released last November , was featured in a Jan. 27 report showing that Christians face harassment in over 155 countries in 2020, an increase from 110 in 2012. The organization's definition of "harassment" can include a wide range of actions, including verbal abuse to physical violence and killings committed by governments, social groups or individuals. The study captured "cases where individuals or groups feel singled out or unable to express their religious belief or nonbelief." Continue here...

 By Dale Chamberlain - Posted at Ministry Watch: Two Southern Baptist churches are the subject of an inquiry by the denomination’s Credentials Committee into whether they should be removed from friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention. The inquiry of the two churches—Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida, and New Season Church in Hiram, Georgia—centers on their affiliation with and promotion of disgraced pastor and former SBC president Johnny Hunt, who has been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The credible accusations against Hunt came to light in the Guidepost Solutions report commissioned by the SBC Executive Committee, which was released in May 2022. Along with revelations of systemic failure by the Executive Committee to properly respond to sexual abuse allegations over the course of two decades, the report also found that Hunt allegedly sexually assaulted the wife of a pastor he was mentoring toward the end of his term as SBC president in 2010. Cont

 By John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander How far would you go to rescue a child from danger? What if it were your child? What if your child was being harmed by an ideology that taught her to hate her body and question who she was? While parents are pressured to believe that they must affirm their child’s gender confusion, threatened with legal action, and even told they will be responsible for their child’s self-harm, Erin Friday refused to give up on her 11-year-old daughter when she began to struggle with her identity as female. Recently, Erin told the remarkable story to Virginia Allen on The Daily Signal Podcast. It really started for my daughter in seventh grade when she went to her comprehensive sex-ed class at her public school. And unbeknownst to me, a third party comes in and teaches these kids four, five hours—so an hour each day. And one hour was dedicated to gender identity, with the “genderbread man” and all of the pictorials of, you could have a female body and a male

 By John Stonestreet and Shane Morris - Posted at Breakpoint: Forty years ago, Monty Python’s Life of Brian mocked a male character who wanted to become a woman and have babies. “You haven’t got a womb, [Stan]!” John Cleese’s character reminds him. “Where’s the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?” For the most part, men who identify as women (and vice-versa) accept that no amount of cross-dressing, hormones, or surgery can allow them to play the opposite sex’s role in reproduction. As Cleese rightly observed, men can’t have babies because they haven’t got wombs. But what if they did? What if medical science enabled “womb transplants,” giving men the ability to carry and bear children within their bodies? Would that make them women? In her book, The Genesis of Gender , Abigail Favale tells the story of the first real-life attempt at a “womb transplant,” which took place in Germany in 1931. Danish artist Einar Wegener, who went by the name “Lili,” was obsessed wi

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits: “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” -Revelation 12:11 On the morning of January 31, 1968, during the Tet offensive, Viet Cong (VC) troops invaded more than 100 towns and villages in South Vietnam. A platoon of VC overran the missionary station at Ban Met Huot, a small town in the highlands, 150 miles northeast of Saigon, which was operated by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) Church. The CMA had a leprosarium, church, and school at the mission station and when the shooting between the VC and US soldiers began CMA missionaries Bob and Marie Ziemer, Ed and Ruth Thompson, Leon and Carolyn Griswold, and Ruth Wilting took cover in a shallow bunker they had dug earlier. After an hour or so of shooting, Bob Ziemer, age 49, decided to exit the bunker and try to persuade the VC to leave their village. He was

 By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog: Church History Is Family History The value of church history is not always immediately obvious to everyone. In particular, Americans seem generally allergic to history. This is true of American Christians who are influenced by the American prejudice against history. Look at the History Channel (but only briefly). How much actual history do they show? Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Ancient Workouts. I watched a lot of Pawn Stars and even visited the shop in Las Vegas (while passing through). It is smaller than it looks on television. American Christians (and Christians of all other nationalities and times) should care about history and even learn a little of it. Why? The Christian religion is a historical religion. In 1931, J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) wrote, The student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian. The centre and core of all the Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into an