There may be efforts to take Christ out of Christmas in this world, but we have within each one of us, individually, everything we need to keep Christ in Christmas. He is in our every moment after all! When we see others, we can choose to beam the love of Jesus into them as we say those words… “Merry Christmas! “ We can shine with His Spirit! It is up to our hearts to show that Christ is still in Christmas!
Nobody can take that from us. And nobody ever will. Continue reading
A Virginia woman is under arrest after she lied to authorities about her connections to ISIS.
Heather Elizabeth Coffman, 29, has been a big supporter of the terrorist group on social media and worked to help those in the United States connect with the group.
The FBI says that Coffman told an undercover agent that she could help them join the terrorist group. She claimed that she had a husband who traveled to Turkey to meet with ISIS agents that could get him to the front lines in Syria. She then claimed the “husband” left her and never made the move.
Coffman had come to the FBI’s attention because of her emphatic postings supporting ISIS on Facebook.
The FBI says Coffman “is suspected of conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) a foreign terrorist organization.”
“As far as I know, she hasn’t traveled anywhere,” Mark Henry Schmidt, Coffman’s attorney, told The Washington Post. “Her connections with the outside world would be on the Internet. I imagine you can get into trouble on the Internet, but I imagine you can also think a lot more’s going on than really is. If nothing else, this is certainly a cautionary tale about the Internet.”
The Supreme Leader of Iran has published a document that outlines a 9-step plan to eliminate Israel.
The 9 steps were also posted to the Twitter account of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime,” Khamenei wrote. “And of course the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in the region. The Islamic Republic has proposed a practical and logical mechanism for this to international communities.”
The statements come as Iran is negotiating with western countries regarding their nuclear program.
“Up until the day when this homicidal and infanticidal [sic] regime is eliminated through a referendum, powerful confrontation and resolute and armed resistance is the cure of this ruinous regime,” the supreme leader writes. “The only means of confronting a regime which commits crimes beyond one’s thought and imagination is a resolute and armed confrontation.”
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called on the western countries negotiating with Iran to step back and realize this is the goal of Iran and that under no circumstances can that nation be allowed to continue on any path that would allow them to create an atomic bomb.
Islamic terrorist groups are taking to the web in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the younger generations.
A report shows that Islamic terrorist groups are sending out at least 90 messages on Twitter every minute.
The study by the Saudi Arabian based Sakina shows that terror groups like Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, Al-Nusra Front and ISIS are not only sending out messages to promote their view of Islam but also recruiting potential terrorist fighters.
The head of the group says that governments need to watch social media to control the messages being sent to youth. But he also said that the public has a responsibility as well.
“The responsibility of protecting the general public from terrorist activities does not only lie with the official directorates. It is also the responsibility of the media, mosques and educational institutes,” Abdulmunim Al-Mushawah said. “Public awareness and guidance are the campaign’s top priorities because it is important to teach people how to face one problem without creating another.”
The Rev. Canon Andrew White is speaking out for the Christians still inside Iraq and saying that most of them are hoping to escape to other countries.
“To be honest, every single Christian wants to leave,” White, the vicar of St. George’s Church in Baghdad, told the London Daily Telegraph. “I used to say to my people: ‘Don’t you leave. I’m not going to leave you, don’t leave me.’ But now every one of them wants to leave and the ones who are left tend to be the poorer ones who couldn’t get away earlier.”
White told the newspaper that for the first time in 2,000 years Christans could not take community last week in the Nineveh province.
White posted to his Facebook page Monday about the horrible conditions in the country.
“Greetings from Baghdad. People are very fearful the nation looks as if it has collapsed. The usual hectic and crazy streets were this morning almost empty,” White wrote.”The news from our friends in areas surrounding Baghdad is equally worry [sic] the Islamic State. ISIS or DAASH, as they are known locally, are very close to Baghdad.”
White told the newspaper that ground troops will be the only way to stop ISIS.
Sunday marked the sixth straight year that churches participated in the “Get Back To Church” Sunday event where those who had walked away from the church were invited to “come home.”
Churches across the country reported significant upturns in attendance as a result of the event.
“We had a wonderful service in Yuba City, CA,” wrote Greg Mansur on the event’s Facebook page. “Very high attendance, several visitors, many returned we had not seen in a while, and there was a tremendous spirit of fellowship and unity … Just a tremendous day. Appreciate all the tools and support from the BTCS team!”
“Second Baptist Church in Barnwell, South Carolina had an amazing worship service today!! We had an overflow of attendance with several visiting friends and family … a jam packed weekend! Beautiful…awe inspiring,” another poster wrote.
Scott Evans, CEO of Outreach, Inc. which started the “Get Back To Church” initiative, says the event started with 600 churches in 2009 and now is the largest such event in the country.
“We believe in this day because we know it helps people invite others to church. Back to Church Sunday really got its start from research that showed 82% of people said they would attend church if someone they knew invited them, but only 2% of church members were inviting others to come with them,” said Evans in a statement.
The Islamic terrorist group ISIS announced plans to attack Israel and eventually the U.S. in a magazine they produced called “Dabiq”.
The terrorists say the conflict with Hamas has made Israel a target for their campaign of violence.
“As for the massacres taking place in Gaza against the Muslim men, women and children, the Islamic State will do everything within its means to continue striking down every apostate who stands as an obstacle on its path toward Palestine,” one article states. “Our actions speak louder than its words and it is only a matter of time and patience before it reaches Palestine to fight the barbaric Jews and kill those of them hiding behind the gharqad trees — the trees of the Jews.”
The magazine was named for a town where the terrorists believe Muslims and Westerners will fight before the apocalypse.
The magazine ends with the group telling their followers that they wlll eventually conquer the entire Arabian Peninsula, Rome and then will defeat the anti-Christ.
“ISIS’s tactics span all media, with devoted Twitter accounts and YouTube channels, including ones that showed the horrifying — and slickly shot — execution of photojournalist James Foley,” Josh Kovensky of the New Republic writes. “… much of Dabiq’s content focuses on a coming apocalypse, while pulling out the same glossy stops that one would expect from an American magazine.”
As some expected in light of the death of strong Christian businessman and founder of Chick-Fil-A S. Truett Cathy, anti-Christian bigots jumped onto the internet to spew hate speech.
Most of the hate was directed toward Cathy and his strong Bible-based stances for life and running a business.
Some of the hate included statements like there was one less Bible-following Christian in the world and that it made “the world a better place.” Another said “oh good, the Chick-Fil-A [profanity deleted] is finally dead!” Several said that the “Chick-Fil-A founder is roasting in hell!”
S. Truett Cathy started in 1946 with one small restaurant selling his signature chicken sandwich. Over the next 68 years the company grew to nearly 2,000 restaurants and annual sales over $5 billion.
And it was all based on his belief in the Bible, its teachings for life and how to operate a business.
“It’s a silent witness to the Lord when people go into shopping malls and everyone is bustling, and you see Chick-Fil-A is closed,” he one told a reporter.
Tributes to Cathy included radio host Dave Ramsey, who said Cathy was “a godly man who loved his family well and showed us faith in the marketplace.”
The video of Islamic terrorist group ISIS beheading a second American is much harder to find on the internet thanks to a secret coalition of the biggest social media and streaming video outlets.
An anonymous source revealed to the Times of Israel that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others agreed to work together to keep the video from being uploaded and spread throughout the world on their systems. Copies of the video uploaded to YouTube were deleted within seconds of their upload so other sites could not link them.
“It’s been very interesting, with this second beheading, how very little of those images have been passed around,” said Family Online Safety Institute CEO Stephen Balkam, who serves on Facebook’s safety advisory board. “It’s very difficult to find them unless you know of some darker places on the web.”
The Times of Israel also reported that after the first beheading video the social outlets decided to take a stand against the terrorists spreading their hate online.
The networks involved refused to give media interviews although YouTube released a statement saying they have clear policies to remove videos aimed at inciting violence.
Online privacy advocates said the censoring of the video could be a very dangerous precedent although most would endorse a way to keep the video from the internet if the discussion of the incident could continue to freely flow.
A twitter campaign is beginning to make a large in dent in the social media landscape for the persecuted Christians of Iraq.
The hashtag #WeAreN is trending worldwide and many people on twitter have changed their avatars to a picture of the Arabic letter N. The letter N has been used by the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to mark the homes and businesses of Christians in the towns they invade.
The N stands for Nazarene, the term used by the Islamic extremists for those who follow Christ.
Many world leaders have stepped up be a part of the campaign like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who wrote “#WeAreN and we stand in solidarity with the persecuted Iraqi Christians.”
The Church of England even changed the photo on their official twitter account to support the cause.
“We are changing our picture to stand with those showing solidarity for those Christians being persecuted in Mosul #WeAreN,” the church stated.
The hashtag has also allowed persecuted Christians inside Iraq to tweet news and disturbing photos to the world that are not getting attention on major western news outlets. One of the major revelations through the hashtag that was not mentioned in the media was the beheading of children by ISIS.