Lake Zurich Illinois (IL)

Commonly known as the "Alpha Center".

We here at Baymeadows Baptist Church want to share the love of Jesus Christ with those in our community and throughout the city of Jacksonville.

Since 1988, Beacon Rescue Mission has been sharing the Gospel to those in need while providing food, shelter, and clothing. Luke 10:36-37

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What The Bible Says - Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says - Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says - Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says - Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

Prayerfully seeking its next pastor.

Verses: Pastor Henry Funkhouser Welcome to those joining via YouTube, we are glad to have you join us. If you are ever in the ...

Verses: Josh 11:15-23 Pastor Henry Funkhouser Welcome to those joining via YouTube, we are glad to have you join us.

Verses: Pastor Henry Funkhouser Welcome to those joining via YouTube, we are glad to have you join us. If you are ever in the ...

Verses: Pastor Henry Funkhouser Welcome to those joining via YouTube, we are glad to have you join us. If you are ever in the ...

Verses: Neh 6:1-3 Missionary David Wilts Welcome to those joining via YouTube, we are glad to have you join us. If you are ever ...

Do activists often invest their work with religious significance? All the more reason for Christians to be discerning co-laborers.I love nature documentaries, especially those narrated by David Attenborough. Whether watching with my children or on my own, I love seeing the majesty of the snowy Alps or kelp forests.But I’ve noticed that in recent years, nearly every somber vignette of a species struggling on the edge of survival ends with a call to action. Viewers are beckoned to take responsibility for causing a poor animal’s plight and to consider how they can fix things before the species is gone forever.I understand the impulse to believe that animals’ struggles should move humans to action. However, it is the ethics informing the narrator’s pleas that seem a bit muddled.By many documentarians’ admission, the species we marvel at on screen have emerged out of eons of struggles to survive and adapt to their surroundings. Sometimes, the narrators even remind us that this process has resulted in countless prior species disappearing into extinction.Whether you believe in a young or an old earth, in God’s hand or in meaningless physical forces guiding history, we can all agree that change, death, and selection favoring adaptability are features of life on earth. Witnessing it in real time makes for compelling television drama, but the moral indictment that you and I contribute to grave evil when one of these species goes extinct does not seem to square with the documentarians’ worldview.What compels us to see polar bears possibly going extinct in terms of moral right and wrong? If we take human action out of the equation, isn’t history littered with the bones of countless species that have gone extinct? Are not humans and their actions part of nature?A robust theology of creation careIf we listen closely, ...Continue reading...

A Palestinian civil defense team on Thursday called on the United Nations to investigate what it said were war crimes at a Gaza hospital, saying nearly 400 bodies were recovered from mass graves after Israeli soldiers departed the complex."There are cases of field execution of some patients while undergoing surgeries and wearing surgical gowns at the Nasser Medical Complex," the civil defense forces said at a press conference, without presenting any evidence.Palestinian authorities have this week reported finding hundreds of bodies in mass graves at Nasser hospital, the main medical facility in central Gaza, after Israeli troops pulled out of the city of Khan Younis.Bodies were also reported to have been found at the Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, which was targeted in an Israeli special forces operation.UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday he was "horrified" by the destruction of the Nasser and Al Shifa medical facilities and by the reports of the mass graves, according to a spokesperson.The Israeli military said claims by Palestinian authorities that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had buried the bodies were "baseless and unfounded."It said forces searching for Israeli hostages had examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser hospital and had returned them after they had been examined."The examination was conducted in a careful manner and exclusively in places where intelligence indicated the possible presence of hostages. The examination was carried out respectfully while maintaining the dignity of the deceased," it said in a statement.Israel has denied killing those found in the graves and has released footage they say shows Palestinians digging these graves before the IDF operation.The Palestinian Civil Defense Team accused Israel of burying a number of bodies in the Nasser complex in plastic bags at a depth of 3 meters (10 ft), where they quickly decomposed concealing evidence of its "crimes," including torture, it said.The office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is investigating both sides in the Israeli-Gaza war, including the events of October 7 and their aftermath.Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has said his team is "actively investigating any crimes allegedly committed" in Gaza and that "those who are in breach of the law will be held accountable."

Iraq had hanged 11 militants sentenced to death on terrorism charges, local security officials said on Thursday.The executions were carried out on Monday at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, and all those executed were Iraqi nationals, said a prison police officer and a local security official. They declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.They said the 11 men were convicted of joining the Islamic State militant group and taking part in "terrorist actions."In a report issued on Wednesday, Amnesty International raised concern that many more people may have been executed in secret, given a "disturbing lack of transparency" regarding executions in Iraq in recent months.Iraq has put hundreds of suspected jihadists on trial and carried out several mass executions since defeating Islamic State fighters in a US-backed military campaign in 2014-2017.

The Israeli government has requested a delay in the debate on the draft law and the response to the appeals on the issue, according to Israeli media on Thursday.? Member of Knesset Avigdor Liberman commented on the decision in a post on X. "Instead of internalizing the situation in which the State of Israel is, and the importance of service in the IDF, the government submitted another request to postpone the discussion on the conscription law.""I expect that the additional lagging out of a political consideration will be outrightly rejected by the Supreme Court," he added.? במקום להפ? ים את המצב בו מדי? ת ישראל ? מצאת, ואת חשיבות השירות בצה״ל, הממשלה הגישה בקשה ? וספת לדחות את הדיון על חוק הגיוס.א? י מצפה ש? סיון המריחה ה? וסף מתוך שיקול פוליטי-קואליציו? י, ידחה על ידי בית המשפט העליון על הסף.— אביגדור ליברמן (@AvigdorLiberman) April 25, 2024The Movement for Quality in Israel and Israel's Defensive Shield stated on response, "The government's request for a postponement is another blatant attempt to evade responsibility, and to ignore the Supreme Court ruling and the government's duty to enforce equal conscription ? Instead of acting without delay for equal recruitment, the government is once again trying to buy time to protect its political interests at the expense of those who do serve."Narrow political considerations must not be allowed to prevail over the good of the country and the rule of law. Every day of postponement damages national resilience and places a burden on those who serve. The time has come for yeshiva students to bear part of the burden, like every other young person in Israel. The petitioners ask the Supreme Court to reject this request, which has no grounds, and to rule in favor of justice and equality," the statement concluded.This is a developing story.

The world is realizing anew that our faith has tangible benefits. This is an opportunity for the gospel.As Christianity continues to decline in the West, the broader world has begun to notice something’s missing. There seems to be a growing awareness that—for all the scandals and failings of the church—the loss of a Christian culture leaves us all worse off, and that there are benefits to being a Christian and to living in a Christian society.For example, Derek Thompson recently wrote in The Atlantic about the loss of community that comes with declining church attendance. “Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall,” he concluded, “hold[ing] back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.”Likewise, Harvard scholar Tyler J. VanderWeele has extensively researched the benefits of participation in religious services, finding that it leads to improved mental and physical health, happiness, and sense of meaning. Statistically, going to church regularly will help you flourish as a human being. As Brad Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia, has shown, regular church attendance even correlates with a more satisfying sex life!And then you have those like former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali who explain their conversion to Christianity at least partly as a response to the decay of the contemporary world, a world threatened by “woke ideology,” “global Islam,” and authoritarianism. “The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” Hirsi Ali said in an essay announcing her new faith. Famous atheist Richard Dawkins objected to Hirsi Ali’s conversion yet seems to ...Continue reading...