Tag Archives: Christianity

Pakistani Businessman Building 140 Foot High Cross

A Pakistani businessman is taking a bold, dangerous stance for Christ by building a 140-foot tall cross in Karachi.

Parvez Henry Gill wants to encourage his fellow Christians not to flee the country in the wake of intense persecution at the hands of Muslims.

Gill, a native of Karachi, describes himself as a property developer and owner of farmland.  He said that God came to him in a dream and told him to do “something good” for the people.

“I said, ‘I am going to build a big cross, higher than any in the world, in a Muslim country,’ ” said Gill, 58. “It will be a symbol of God, and everybody who sees this will be worry-free.”

Gill believes the cross carries a message to the Christians of his city.

“God will protect you. Stay in your country. Don’t be afraid,” the businessman said, according to CBS.

While many religious leaders in Pakistan believe the cross will be seen as a way to encourage interfaith cooperation, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.K. Akbar Ahmed said some radicals will see the cross as a provocation.

“They will say this a challenge to Islam and that it can only be met by destruction,” Ahmed told HuffPost. “It’s a smaller group, but it’s the smaller groups that can inflict a lot of damage.”

While the cross is not the biggest in the world as the Great Cross in St. Augustine, Florida is 208 feet tall, it is still the biggest in a Muslim dominated country.

A Christian Wife’s Biblical Submission Can Be Beautiful

A Christian counselor is standing up against the world’s redefining the word submission and says a wife submitting to her husband as commanded by Scripture can be a beautiful thing.

Christina Fox says that submission is not about forced control, as the world wants to define the word.  Fox says that the world tries to equate submission with negative words or phrases like “door mat”, “inferior” or “controlled.”  Fox says that when you follow the Scriptures, the exact opposite is actually seen.

“When a man leads his wife, he is leading her to depend on Christ, not on himself,” says Fox, who has been married for 17 years. “The kind of leadership a husband provides his wife is to encourage her growth in grace and prepare her to be a co-heir in the coming kingdom.  Scripture teaches that we are to ‘encourage one another and build each other up’ (1 Thessalonians 5:11).”

Fox says that in today’s world, the only way for a couple to truly have Biblical submission play out properly in their lives is to stick closely to the Word of God.

“It is only through the power of Jesus and his gospel at work in our lives that the beauty of submission can blossom in our marriages,” Fox says.

Fox adds that a woman following her husband in Biblical submission is a reflection of Christ’s people following their Savior with a heart of faith.

Pope Francis Says Without The Church You Can’t Be Christian

Pope Francis said that one cannot be a Christian without the church in their life.

“Our Christian identity is belong to a people: the Church,” the Pontiff said during Mass.  “Without this, we are not Christians.  We entered the Church through baptism: there we are Christians.”

The Pope said that someone who says they are a Christian but not a part of the church is simply a laboratory experiment.  He pointed out that not even Jesus was alone.

“Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us. No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history. So a Christian without history, without a Christian nation, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible. It is a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life,” Francis said.

The Pope also said that people should seek to renew the covenant of grace with God every day.

“The Days Of Acceptable Christianity in America Are Over”

The chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says the days of it being easy to be a Christian in America is over.

“The days of acceptable Christianity are over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. It’s no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, a faithful witness to the truths of the Gospel,” Dr. Robert P. George said Tuesday.   “They threaten us with consequences if we refuse to call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. They demand us to conform our thinking to their orthodoxy, or else say nothing at all.”

Dr. George, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, made his address at the 10th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.  George said that while he meant his comments to be pointed at Catholics, they are equally as valid for all other Bible believing Christians.

“To be a witness to the Gospel today is to make oneself a marked man or woman. It is to expose oneself to scorn and reproach,” he said.  “To place in jeopardy one’s security, one’s personal aspirations and ambitions, the peace and tranquility one enjoys, one’s standing in polite society.”

“One may in consequence of one’s public witness, be discriminated against, denied education opportunities and the prestigious credentials they offer, one may lose valuable opportunities of employment or professional advancement, one may be excluded from worldly recognition.”

He reminded Christians that we are judged by God, not the world, and that we should reject those demanding Christians change their beliefs to stay on the “right side of history.”

Louisiana Governor Says Accepting Christ “Most Important Moment”

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal believes the most important moment in his life is the moment he accepted Christ as his Savior.

The governor is scheduled to speak at Liberty University this weekend and released an advanced copy of his speech where he openly and boldly speaks of the importance of Christ in his life.

This is from the text of the governor’s address:

The short story is this, I read the words of Jesus Christ and I realized that they were true. I used to think that I had found God, but I believe it is more accurate to say that He found me. And it happened because people were brave enough to plant seeds of the Gospel in my life.

Many years later, when I became a candidate for political office, in one of my first debates, I got the question– “What is the single most important moment in your life?”

I had just endured countless hours of debate prep sessions with my political consultants and staff. That’s where you sit around and get savagely grilled by people you pay – your political consultants and staffers. I knew exactly what they hoped I would say – they would argue that I should try to appeal to female voters by offering a touching story about when I asked my wife Supriya for her hand in marriage, or about the birth of my first child.  And yes, those were great moments.

But instead, I decided to do something new in politics, I told the audience the truth — that the most significant moment of my life was when I turned it over to Jesus Christ and acknowledged Him as my Savior.

My political consultants then began shifting uncomfortably in their seats…and I have to admit I enjoyed that.

Jindal goes on to talk about how despite what many in the liberal academic community claim about followers of Christ, it is not a faith that is followed by those with a lack of intelligence.  Jindal is a Rhodes scholar.

Pope Calls For Charity In Lenten Message

In a Lenten message to the world, Pope Francis called for fair distribution of wealth and equal access to education and health care for the poor in the world.

He called on followers of Christ everywhere to make an effort to lessen “the poverty of our brothers.”

However, the Pope did not just focus on monetary poverty.  The Pope also had harsh words for Christians that he termed as suffering from “moral poverty” such as alcohol abuse, drug use, pornography and gambling.

The Pope said that those who are caught in alcohol or drug abuse, pornography or gambling are in “slavery to vice and sin” and said that “in such cases, moral destitution can be considered impending suicide.”

The Pope said that while Lent was “a fitting time for self-denial” he was tired of what he called superficial acts by Christians to try and show they were sacrificing something of benefit.

“Our consciences…need to be converted to justice, equality, simplicity and sharing,” The Pope said.

Christian Apologist Says Most Christians Unprepared To Defend Beliefs

A Christian apologist and university professor says that the church is in desperate need of churches who will prepare their members to address the tough questions about faith and God.

Dr. William Craig of the Talbot School of Theology says that Christians should be concerned about recent studies like the Pew survey that showed nearly 20 percent of Americans consider themselves “religious” but not affiliated with any religious group.

Dr. Craig alluded to social changes in the world that have removed the stigma of being an atheist and making them bolder in working to remove Christians from society and shouting down any Christian with hate speech when they defend the faith.

“I think that many Christians are intimidated because atheists are often very aggressive,” Dr. Craig told the Christian Post. “They will attack you personally, and they will do so in the name of reason and intellectual arguments. And many Christians feel utterly unprepared to give a defense of what they believe, and feel unprepared to answer the tough questions that their unbelieving friends will put to them.”

Dr. Craig has defended the faith in many venues with atheists and noted atheist author Richard Dawkins continues to be afraid to debate Dr. Craig in a one-on-one setting. Atheist author Sam Harris said in a recent article Dr. Craig has “put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.”

Georgia School District Orders All Christian Items Removed

Update 12/4/13:  A public relations and marketing specialist for the school district has released a statement claiming the information given to Fox News was inaccurate.  The statement claims the Christmas cards involved were personal cards of teachers and that the display was moved because one teacher had expressed “legitimate, personal privacy concerns” about the display.  The statement also said the incident had nothing to do with “current open and ongoing discussions that the school system is having with local citizens about religious liberties and expression.”  The statement did not include any response to accusations teachers were told to remove Christian items like Bibles from their rooms or that they were told to turn their backs on student-led prayers. 

The Bullock Georgia County Board of Education is cleansing an elementary school of any object that could be tied to Christianity.

Teachers say that they were forced to take down Christmas cards made for them by students because of the word “Christ” in Christmas and because some of the cards contained pictures of the nativity. Now students are asking the teachers why they won’t be hanging up their cards as they’ve done in previous years.

The district’s edict, however, goes beyond just Christmas cards.

Teachers have been ordered to remove anything from their classrooms that can be connected to Christianity like Bibles or Christian music even if it is for personal use on break times or lunch. They have also been told that if they come across students leading a prayer, they are required to turn their backs on the students or face disciplinary action.

The Board of Education released a statement to Fox News attempting to justify their attacks on Christianity by saying there are “established legal requirements to which we must adhere.”

British Minister Says Christianity At Brink of Extinction In Middle East

Lady Warsi, a Muslim who is Great Britain’s Faith and Communities Minister, told the BBC that Christianity in large parts of the Middle East and in a majority of Islamic nations is on the brink of extinction.

I’m concerned that the birthplace of Christianity, the parts of the world where Christianity first spread, is now seeing large sections of the Christian community leaving, and those that are remaining feeling persecuted,” Lady Warsi told the BBC Radio 4 Today program. “One in 10 Christians live in a minority situation and large numbers of those who live in a minority situation around the world are persecuted.”

She said that as Islamic extremist groups gain influence, they are able to convince the local population that Christians are “newcomers” to the area that should be driven out when in many cases the Christians were living in the area before the arrival of the Islamists. She also said that Christians are being made the scapegoat for problems in the Middle East created by Islamists.

She also said that violence against Christians in Pakistan is threatening to drive all Christians from that nation.

She said that violence against Christians worldwide should not just reverberate in the Christian community but in all communities.

Detroit Church Leaders Combine To Quell Violence

Christian leaders in the city of Detroit are banding together in hopes of stemming the tide of violence that has broken out the last few weeks including a gun battle at a barbershop that left three people dead.

The leaders are plastering the city with “Thou shalt not kill” posters and billboards along with crafting messages for their congregations about combating violence with love.

“We all have to do what we can do, and right now we don’t have a respect in our communities for life; we don’t have a respect for many things,” Ovella Andreas, a Detroit area minister, told WWJ-TV. “But we still have to create a standard to hopefully have a consciousness about God …. because even our people have become apathetic.”

The group has worked with the city to have the 22nd day of each month declared “Stop the Violence Day” in Detroit.

“This is an emergency; this is a crisis, and we have to come together now to do what we can,” Andreas said. “I truly know if we do what we can, God will do what we cannot; but we’re not doing all that we can.”