This chapter has a surprising end! A summary (from God’s Point of View, the “only one” that really counts) of Israel’s spiritual condition at the time of Isaiah’s ministry. Or at least during the “low times” of Isaiah’s ministry. “10 His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot […]

Our chapter begins, its very first verse: “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” Isaiah 57:1 Several little “nuggets” of truth are buried therein, I’m sure. (In fact, Jesus believed and stated to […]

Our Text today, with God being the Speaker … “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” Isaiah 57:20-21 We have here a “word picture.” The noun (substantive) “wicked” means “hostile to God,” rebelliously […]

Classic Isaiah! “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” Isaiah 57: 15 […]

Notice Isaiah 58:1 with me today. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” What a verse! Two strong, imperative verbs front this divinely inspired Sentence. “Cry” translates “qara,” meaning “to loudly proclaim.” (It is used in one form […]

Let me first mention the fact that our chapter discusses the spiritual discipline of “fasting.” But the material is somewhat lengthy and culminates in today’s verse anyway. The Jews had been fasting “for show,” it seems. Without any spiritual reality to buttress their actions. That’s called “hypocrisy.” So the Lord calls them back to holy […]

It is often the “missing” element in today’s ecumenical scene, at least in the West (including the United States). The two-word Title to today’s Lesson: “BOLD PREACHING!” Notice I did not necessarily say “mean Preaching!” But I am talking about preaching (what Paul the Apostle called) “all the Counsel of God!” (Acts 20:27) Yes, the […]

When it comes to gun violence in schools, people get outraged about children in danger of losing their lives. It's a worthy concern. According to Education Week,� in 2018� 28 students were killed in school shootings, while so far in� 2019, 2 children have been killed. That is tragic. But it's not about the math; it's about the […]

Former NFL star Ben Watson slammed actress Alyssa Milano as a racist Sunday after she defended abortions for unborn black babies. Milano has been a vocal abortion activist over the past several months, lobbying against pro-life laws in Alabama and Georgia that protect unborn babies from abortion. She led calls for Hollywood to boycott Georgia […]

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said he will not veto radical pro-abortion legislation allowing unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth in his state. WCAX News reports a spokeswoman from the Republican governor said Scott will either sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature. “It will become […]

It’s been almost five full months since January 22, when Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) made infanticide the new abortion. In most states, the time has flown by, thanks to a blur of pro-life legislation. Turns out, New York didn’t just light up the city in deadly celebration — it fired up a movement. Looking back, […]

A public records request has revealed that the Greater Boston Planned Parenthood abortion facility, located at 1055 Commonwealth Avenue, called 911 for emergency medical assistance that resulted in ambulance transports for ten patients to hospital emergency rooms from April 2018 through April 2019. The incidents took place on the following dates: 05/19/18; 05/30/18; 07/05/18; 09/07/18; […]

Instagram said Tuesday that it inadvertently and incorrectly blocked a pro-life group from accessing a feature on the platform that users often use to make content go viral. “We investigated this issue and found that this account was incorrectly filtered from Explore and hashtags,” a source inside Instagram told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We […]

As the generation most likely to report experiencing misconduct and least likely to tolerate it, Christians under 35 stand to shape how congregations respond. Surrounded by revelations of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, younger Christians are more keen to recognize sexual abuse—and less likely to put up with it.According to a new study sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources, 10 percent of Protestant churchgoers under 35 have previously left a church because they felt sexual misconduct was not taken seriously. That’s twice as many as the 5 percent of all churchgoers who have done the same.Among the younger demographic, 9 percent said they have stopped attending a former congregation because they personally did not feel safe from misconduct.Churchgoers ages 18 to 34 are more likely than older generations to report experiencing sexual harassment—ranging from sexual comments and prolonged glances—at church and to know others at their church who are victims (23%).“It is not surprising that young adults who have only known this frank ‘call it what it is’ sexual culture to be more likely to identify instances of misconduct than older adults,” Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research which conducted the survey, told CT.Another factor: Younger churchgoers are also closest to the ages when most sexual assault takes place. The highest risk spans ages 12 to 34, peaking between 16 and 19, according to Justin Holcomb, an expert on sexual abuse in the church and a board member of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).While 14 percent of those ages 18 to 34 say that sexual advances from people at church have led them to attend less frequently, just 1 percent of those over 65 said the same. The youngest generation is two to three times more likely than the oldest generation to say they have experienced sexual harassment ...Continue reading...

I want to explore recent trends in the evangelical movement and how they are influencing the movement's direction and identity. Start an article with the statement “What is an evangelical?” and you are likely to get a healthy mix of eye rolls and frustrated sighs. There are simply better things to do with your time than read the one thousand and forty-eighth article on evangelical identity of 2019.I get this definition fatigue.Both a domestic and global movement, evangelicalism can be near impossible to define and therefore challenging to track. If linguists tried to craft a term as ill-defined and ripe for misuse, they would be hard pressed to develop one as perfect as evangelicalism.As a result, I want to take a step back from the nitty-gritty of definitions to look at broader trends. Taking a 30,000-foot level perspective, I want to explore recent trends in the evangelical movement and how they are influencing the movement’s direction and identity today.I want to start by exploring the legacy of the emerging church and specifically how we seem to living in a period of a post-emerging clarification within evangelicalism.The Emergence of the Emerging Church While the emerging church seems like a distant memory to most, for a period of 10-15 years, it was the most talked about movement in American evangelicalism. Pastors and scholars alike were obsessed with the emerging church—its leaders, ideas, methods, and deficiencies.My intent here is not to rehash the history. Others have done that better and with more details. My intent it to address the impact.At the beginning, for many the emerging church was a collection of reformers asking questions after the rise of the big boomer churches—the Saddleback’s and Willow Creeks – and their intended and unintended impact on church theology and praxis. In the 1990s, ...Continue reading...

I want to explore recent trends in the evangelical movement and how they are influencing the movement's direction and identity. Start an article with the statement “What is an evangelical?” and you are likely to get a healthy mix of eye rolls and frustrated sighs. There are simply better things to do with your time than read the one thousand and forty-eighth article on evangelical identity of 2019.I get this definition fatigue.Both a domestic and global movement, evangelicalism can be near impossible to define and therefore challenging to track. If linguists tried to craft a term as ill-defined and ripe for misuse, they would be hard pressed to develop one as perfect as evangelicalism.As a result, I want to take a step back from the nitty-gritty of definitions to look at broader trends. Taking a 30,000-foot level perspective, I want to explore recent trends in the evangelical movement and how they are influencing the movement’s direction and identity today.I want to start by exploring the legacy of the emerging church and specifically how we seem to living in a period of a post-emerging clarification within evangelicalism.The Emergence of the Emerging Church While the emerging church seems like a distant memory to most, for a period of 10-15 years, it was the most talked about movement in American evangelicalism. Pastors and scholars alike were obsessed with the emerging church—its leaders, ideas, methods, and deficiencies.My intent here is not to rehash the history. Others have done that better and with more details. My intent it to address the impact.At the beginning, for many the emerging church was a collection of reformers asking questions after the rise of the big boomer churches—the Saddleback’s and Willow Creeks – and their intended and unintended impact on church theology and praxis. In the 1990s, ...Continue reading...

Character formation isn't just an individual process, says Anne Snyder. It requires institutions. In a media landscape awash in flame wars and polarizing punditry, it’s a bit surprising that the topic of character formation is making a comeback. “Building character” is the stuff of childhood chores and onerous school projects, completed out of duty and little delight. Yet according to new research presented in the book The Fabric of Character, published by the DC-based Philanthropy Roundtable, character formation is a top concern among today’s leaders and charitable givers across the ideological spectrum. According to researcher Anne Snyder, anyone paying attention to social trends in the West recognizes that “the conditions under which good character is forged are in trouble—weakened as much by the decline of traditional institutions as by a culture that promotes ‘I’ before ‘we,’ pleasure before purpose, self-expression before submission to a source of moral wisdom beyond oneself.”In the book, Snyder highlights several institutions—including schools, neighborhood renewal projects, and the Boy Scouts—as case studies of how organizations strengthen the moral fiber of their members. Snyder, the newly named editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, recently spoke with CT about why faith-based institutions are particularly good at teaching character.When I hear the word “character,” I think of the dad in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip who is always making Calvin shovel snow because it builds character. It’s not a sexy topic. Yet as you note, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in it. Why?I started this particular project for the Philanthropy Roundtable in early 2016. I used to joke that Donald Trump is a huge gift to my work ...Continue reading...

As the generation most likely to report experiencing misconduct and least likely to tolerate it, Christians under 35 stand to shape how congregations respond. Surrounded by revelations of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, younger Christians are more keen to recognize sexual abuse—and less likely to put up with it.According to a new study sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources, 10 percent of Protestant churchgoers under 35 have previously left a church because they felt sexual misconduct was not taken seriously. That’s twice as many as the 5 percent of all churchgoers who have done the same.Among the younger demographic, 9 percent said they have stopped attending a former congregation because they personally did not feel safe from misconduct.Churchgoers ages 18 to 34 are more likely than older generations to report experiencing sexual harassment—ranging from sexual comments and prolonged glances—at church and to know others at their church who are victims (23%).“It is not surprising that young adults who have only known this frank ‘call it what it is’ sexual culture to be more likely to identify instances of misconduct than older adults,” Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research which conducted the survey, told CT.Another factor: Younger churchgoers are also closest to the ages when most sexual assault takes place. The highest risk spans ages 12 to 34, peaking between 16 and 19, according to Justin Holcomb, an expert on sexual abuse in the church and a board member of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).While 14 percent of those ages 18 to 34 say that sexual advances from people at church have led them to attend less frequently, just 1 percent of those over 65 said the same. The youngest generation is two to three times more likely than the oldest generation to say they have experienced sexual harassment ...Continue reading...

3 Harmful Aspects of Public Schools The education of our children is a grave responsibility for every parent. For years, Anna and I have counseled Christian parents to either homeschool their children or to have them in a quality Christian school. I tell people that one of the primary reasons our children are serving the Lord today is because we kept them out of public school and gave them a Christian education.Our primary focus has been on protecting children from the many negative influences found in the public school system. Though there are many dedicated public school teachers who truly care about their students, the public school can be very damaging to the Christian student. Let me repeat, I do believe there are dedicated Christian schoolteachers in public schools; and I believe that the public school is a great mission field for these dedicated servants.However, the public school can be very hurtful to Christian young people for the following reasons:1. The Secular World ViewIn 1962, by Supreme Court decision, prayer was outlawed in our public schools. In 1963, the Supreme Court followed up by saying that Bible reading would be outlawed in our public schools. From that time, the quality of our education has decreased.� The Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. With the exclusion of God, our educational system could not do anything but decline. The humanistic philosophy of our present society has great influence in our public schools and will have a harmful negative effect on our Christian students.2. Teachers Who Are Anti-GodAs I said, many good, solid, Bible-believing Christian teachers are in our public schools. However, the vast majority of teachers in public schools are not Christians.� Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”God tells us that, as adults, we should not sit in the counsel of the ungodly. If God doesn't want us to sit there, then why would we send our children to be taught by men and women who deny the Lord Jesus Christ? It certainly isn't the wisest thing we could do.3. Negative Peer PressureBy far, the most negative thing about the public school system is the negative peer pressure that Christian children receive. There is a constant pressure to conform to the new fads of this world.I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind….—Romans 12:1–2Young people are continually pressured to be conformed to this world in their dress, in their music, in their lifestyle, and in their morality. When a child spends thirty to forty hours a week in school with friends who see nothing wrong with vulgar, inappropriate music, movies, language, and lifestyle, they will be pressured to conform to that immoral behavior.However, having said all that, I want to share with you an article that I recently read put out by the Council for American Private Education. In this article, a study is quoted that was published in issue three of volume eighty-seven of The Peabody Journal of Education. The study was done, not by a Christian organization, but by a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institution in Princeton, New Jersey, and a professor at California State University, Long Beach. I think you will appreciate a portion of this article.Students in religious schools enjoy a significant academic advantage over their counterparts in traditional public schools and charter schools, according to the findings from a meta-analysis of 90 studies on the effects of schools conducted by William Jeynes, senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Priceton, New Jersey, and a professor at California State University, Long Beach. The study was published in issue 3 of volume 87 of the Peabody Journal of Education.� “The results indicate that attending private religious schools is associated with the highest level of academic achievement among the three school types, even when sophisticated controls are used to adjust for socioeconomic status,” according to the report.“I was quite surprised that students from charter schools did no better than their counterparts in traditional public schools,” wrote Jeynes in an email message to CAPE. At the start of the study, he was expecting to see higher levels of performance from charters.� “To the extent that neither traditional public schools nor charter schools are succeeding on a broad scale, it appears that the best hope for American education is religious private schools,” said Jeynes. “Not only are they considerably more economically efficient, but their students obtain better results.” He said the nation should “rethink its strategy of espousing charter schools and overlooking the benefits of faith-based education.”1� Christian education is the choice of even secular educators today. I would encourage you to consider that as you prepare to enroll your child for the next school year.1Council for American Private Education (2013). Study Finds Advantages for Students in Faith-Based Schools. CAPE Outlook, 1.

In a recent story that made headlines, “Sam” (name changed in the media for privacy), a biological woman who identified as a transgender man, was brought to the hospital by her boyfriend because she had suffered through hours of severe abdominal pain. Her online medical records classified her as “male,” so the triage nurse who was running the tests on Sam naturally thought she was a biological man. Being obese and admitting to have not taken her blood pressure medication in a while due to losing her insurance, the triage nurse “triaged him to nonurgent assessment. Laboratory samples were drawn, including one for human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) testing, and Sam awaited further evaluation.”It wasn’t until hours later when the emergency physician came in to examine Sam that they discovered she was pregnant. Her hCG test came back positive, indicating that she was indeed with child. It wasn’t long before it was clear that Sam was in labor and needed an emergency C-section to try to save the unborn baby’s life. Sadly, Sam delivered a stillborn baby.According to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sam indicated to the hospital staff that she was transgender. The article states:In Sam’s evaluation, the triage nurse did not fully absorb the fact that he did not fit clearly into a binary classification system with mutually exclusive male and female categories. Though she [triage nurse] had respectful intentions and nominally acknowledged the possibility of pregnancy by ordering a serum hCG test, she did not incorporate that possibility into the differential diagnosis in a way that would affect ensuing classifications and triage decision making. Despite communicating that he was transgender, Sam was not evaluated using pregnancy algorithms. Having no clear classificatory framework for making sense of a patient like Sam, the nurse deployed implicit assumptions about who can be pregnant,� attributed his high blood pressure to untreated chronic hypertension, and classified his case as nonurgent.The problem with this statement is that the authors of the article don’t say when in this entire process Sam communicated she was transgender. Instead, the authors blame the triage nurse for not taking every possible scenario into consideration. Whether or not the triage nurse should be blamed is another issue altogether. What needs to be addressed is the fact that Sam was born a female, transitioned to a male and classified herself as a man on her medical records and forms, and then was rightfully treated as a man by medical professionals because they had no reasonable way of immediately knowing that she was in fact a biological woman.Biological men cannot get pregnant. It doesn’t make logical sense for a triage nurse to look at a medical form, see the patient classified as “male,” and think that there is a chance this patient is having abdominal pain because of a pregnancy. It seems clear from this tragic situation that when it comes to medical care for individuals who identify as transgender, we should pursue policies that eliminate confusion on what to do in medical emergencies, resulting in more innocent unborn lives being saved.In this vein, while we continue to fight for science and biology to be the basis of medical care, maybe there should be a box to indicate biological sex, not just gender identity, to hopefully help mitigate these kinds of tragedies in the future.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Facebook is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There's only one way to fight back — and that's by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.� Central Park School for Children in North Carolina held a week-long celebration […]The post Charter School Wants 5-year-old’s to be Liberated at Gay Pride Event appeared first on Todd Starnes.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Facebook is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There's only one way to fight back — and that's by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.� If Democrats get their way religious hospitals would be forced to perform […]The post Democrats: Religious Freedom Cannot Be Used to Discriminate against LGBT Americans appeared first on Todd Starnes.

Pre-order a copy of Todd’s explosive new book – “Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation.” President Trump says the evidence is conclusive that the Deep State spied on his campaign — and he wants the guilty parties charged with treason. “My campaign for president was conclusively spied on,” the president […]The post Trump Wants Deep State Spies Charged with Treason appeared first on Todd Starnes.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Facebook is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There's only one way to fight back — and that's by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.� Congressional Democrats continue to make headlines as they push the so-called Equality […]The post RED ALERT: Rep. Hice Says Democrats Want to Force Christians to Violate Beliefs appeared first on Todd Starnes.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Facebook is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There's only one way to fight back — and that's by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.� A handful of Taylor University graduates and faculty members walked out just […]The post HATEFUL HEATHENS! Dozens of Taylor Grads Walk Out on Pence appeared first on Todd Starnes.