WUHAN PASTOR: PRAY WITH US - CORONAVIRUS
from: The Stream
(30 Jan.) The following is a letter from the pastor of a church in Wuhan written to brothers and sisters in Christ. It was specially written for distribution.
Brothers and sisters, peace be upon you:
During these past days the Wuhan pneumonia [virus] has been at the center of my thoughts and life. [I am] always watching the latest news, and always thinking about how our family and the church should face this.
We are Trusting in God’s Promises
As for family, I have gathered masks and foodstuffs and have ventured out of doors as little as possible. When venturing out in public I have worn a mask, but as for the rest, I have placed it in the Lord's hands.
As for the church, the safety of the congregation, a faithful witness, the possibility that members could contract the illness, have all become a great area of struggle. It is readily apparent that we are facing a test of our faith.
The situation is so critical, yet [we are] trusting in the Lord’s promises, that his thoughts toward us are of peace, and not evil (Jeremiah. 29:11), and that he allows for a time of testing, not to destroy us, but to establish us. Therefore, Christians are not only to suffer with the people of this city, but we have a responsibility to pray for those in this city who are fearful, and to bring to them the peace of Christ.
Seek the Peace of Christ
First, we are to seek the peace of Christ to reign in their hearts (Hebrews 3:15). Christ has already given us his peace, but his peace is not to remove us from disaster and death, but rather to have peace in the midst of disaster and death, because Christ has already overcome these things (John 14:27, 16:33). Otherwise we have not believed in the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15), and, with the world, would be terrified of pestilence, and lose hope in the face of death. [read more~~]
COMMENTARY: We absolutely must pray with these Christians in China who are undergoing a strict quarantine, with several cities across China being locked down so almost nobody is allowed to come in or get out. Hundreds of Chinese have died and millions are at high risk of infection. This deadly virus was first discovered on 8 December last year but the world was not alerted to its pandemic risk for three weeks, during which it spread all over China and into dozens of other countries as Chinese people travelled to celebrate Chinese New Year. The doctor who discovered it on 8 December but was ignored has now died from the virus. This is the way communism tries to cover up its disasters, such as during the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown. Now the whole Chinese nation and indeed the entire world are at great risk.
RUSSIA: WILL CHURCH'S ALLEGED FIRE SAFETY VIOLATIONS BE RESOLVED?
by Victoria Arnold: Forum 18 News Service
(6 Feb.) Bailiffs have closed the building of Jesus Embassy Church in Nizhny Novgorod due to alleged "fire safety" violations, but the changing number of violations claimed, and the apparent hostility of the FSB security service, raise doubts that the church building will be reopened soon. "Of course the FSB isn't interested in fire safety," Alexander Verkhovsky of SOVA Center commented.
Bailiffs sealed the building of Jesus Embassy Pentecostal Church in Nizhny Novgorod on 31 December 2019 and its congregation now has to rent places of worship elsewhere in the city. The authorities have since summer 2018 claimed that multiple fire safety "violations" exist in the building. The church strongly disputes that these violations – if they exist – should have resulted in the closure of the building.
The alleged fire safety violations followed inspections initiated by the FSB security service. The FSB was also behind seven prosecutions of the church and its members between summer 2017 and summer 2018 for alleged "illegal missionary activity." One of the prosecutions led to the deportation of a Zimbabwean medical student, and is now the subject of a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case in Strasbourg.
"Of course the FSB isn't interested in fire safety," Alexander Verkhovsky of Moscow's SOVA Center for Information and Analysis commented to Forum 18 on 15 January 2020. "Fire supervision is just an 'ideal controller': it will always find something, and something that is difficult or impossible to fix at that. Therefore, it is used. Rather, one should be surprised that it is not used so often."
Alleged fire safety violations and other alleged violations - such as of sanitation regulations - have also been used to target Protestant theological education institutions, churches, and Muslim mosques. The only way to have access to Jesus Embassy's building restored is to apply through the courts, showing that the church has followed all the fire inspectorate's orders. "We are not completely confident that this will happen in the near future, as the authorities are scheduling new inspections," Pastor Pavel Ryndich told Forum 18 on 19 January 2020. [read more~~]
COMMENTARY: This is the same sort of obstacle that local authorities are placing in the way of our building an "Agape Restoration Community" just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. They will continually find some excuse, some miniscule regulation they can misinterpret, in order to exhaust Christians' finances through legal fees and force them to finally give up and just go away. Russia's government no longer calls itself "Socialist" but its secular constitution that supposedly guarantees the free exercise of religion can be thwarted by a myriad of local regulations, licenses, and legal fees.
While serving as missionaries in Moscow, we had built an office in the basement of an Evangelical seminary. Then local authorities came up with a regulation saying the seminary couldn't have a basement, so it had to be filled with dirt. Next, the authorities said that the seminary couldn't have students living in the building and made it impossible to find housing for the students, so the seminary had to shut down its in-house instruction and switch to online distance education.
(5 Feb.) On February 4, 2020, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church of Ukraine) met at the Congregational Hall of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy presided over by His Beatitude Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine. All members of the Synod except Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, who was absent for no good reason, attended the meeting, according to the official website of the OCU.
After considering the present activities of the Honorable Patriarch Filaret and taking into account his special merits in relation to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Holy Synod once again stated that Patriarch Emeritus Filaret remains part of the episcopate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, however, he lost the canonical rights and responsibilities associated with the diocese governance. Patriarch Emeritus Filaret and his entourage were reminded of the call of the Council of Bishops to reconcile and end their isolation.
Given his absence at six consecutive meetings of the Holy Synod, his groundless refusal to attend the Holy Synod despite a written invitation, it was decided to suspend the powers of Patriarch Emeritus Filaret as a member of the Holy Synod. The Synod stated that Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, as bishop of peace, was imposed a canonical ban from performing any consecrations. The clergymen who are nominated as bishops in a non-standard way are not bishops, and all those consecrated by them have no valid holy order (see rule 4 of the Second Ecumenical Council). [read more~~]
COMMENTARY: The Interfax website has an article stating that the UOC has "kicked out" Patriarch Filaret, but the above article shows that isn't true. It is simply sad, very sad, to see a senior clergyman become mentally disoriented and begin doing things that make no sense. The OCU is trying to be gracious and understanding toward the elderly Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, who was given recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarch a year ago, but more recently he has retracted his agreement to merge the old Kyiv Patriarchate with the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Please remember him in your prayers.
PATRIARCH KIRILL PROPOSES MENTIONING GOD IN CONSTITUTION
from: Interfax-Religion
(2 Feb.) Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has proposed including a reference to God in the Constitution.
"Let us pray and work so that our Fundamental law would mention God. For a majority of Russian citizens believe in God. I am not talking about the Orthodox [Christians] only. I am also talking about Muslims, and many, many others. If we can have 'This Native land protected by God' in our anthem, why not in our Constitution?" the patriarch said at an event honoring the eleventh anniversary of his enthronement.
"It is not there yet, but I think that with joint efforts and prayers we will facilitate such an elevated idea that is faith in God, which forms the morality, personal, social and political, becoming present in our Constitution as well," the church leader said.
In his view, this discussion could begin today. [read more~~]
COMMENTARY: After Patriarch Kirill proposed including the word "God" in the Russian Constitution, some related ideas were also suggested, such as mentioning the definition of "family" to be the union of one man and one woman, or "marriage" to be the union of one man and one woman. These suggestions were all placed at the bottom of the Constitution Working Group's agenda. Obviously, a secular state such as Russia or the U.S. cannot enshrine the beliefs of one particular religious establishment as the state religion.
Adding the word "God" may give a nice, vague, warm-fuzzy feeling to some people's attitude toward the state, but "God" is defined quite differently by various religions: the Muslim idea of their god "Allah" is utterly remote, compared to the Christian idea of "God" being a loving heavenly Father with the Son and Holy Spirit, but the Jewish idea of "Yahweh" is not three Persons but only One. Thus, adding "God" to the Constitution satisfies almost nobody, it's like saying - "Let them eat cake!" to the starving masses during the French Revolution.
ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT TO ENSURE NO ONE HAS AN ABORTION BECAUSE OF FINANCES
from: The Daily Signal
(6 Feb.) Interview with Emily Berning, co-founder and president of Let Them Live: "There are definitely a ton of awesome pro-life nonprofits. I think at first glance, it can seem like the pro-life movement is pretty jam-packed already with nonprofits that fill every part of the pro-life movement. What we realized in forming Let Them Live was that there is an untapped market for financial aid and financial support for women who are on the edge, about to have an abortion, to help bring them back and choose life instead.
"Crisis pregnancy centers are amazing. They do so much work and save so many lives, but a lot of them don't have the funding to pay for rent for women that come in or car payments for an extended period of time. Some of them can't do that at all. That's where we come in. Because 73% of women who are getting abortions are doing it because of financial reasons. That's from the [pro-abortion] Guttmacher Institute.
"Typically, what a situation will be is we end up contacting or getting in contact with a mom who has been referred to us possibly by a crisis pregnancy center or a sidewalk counselor. Then if it's an emergency, which it usually is, the abortion is usually scheduled for the next day or the next week. We will run an emergency fundraiser for her on social media and crowdfunding. ... These women don't want to have abortions. They don't want to go in there and do that, but they feel they have no other option. When we step in and help them take control of their bills, they feel they are seeing with clear vision.[read more~~]
COMMENTARY: This is an amazing start-up organization: I've looked up their website for you and added the link above, so be sure to check it out. I wasn't aware that so huge a percentage - SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT! - of expectant mothers who are considering abortion do so because of financial reasons. Most often they are unmarried and are deceived by secularism's indoctrination that sex is simply for pleasure, with pregnancy (procreation) being an unwanted side effect.
Actually, it's just the opposite: sex is for procreation and pleasure is simply a side effect, a God-given inducement to perpetuate the human race - otherwise, people wouldn't put up with all the difficulties of raising a family. But secularism substitutes the state for the family, saying the state will take care of young women if they get pregnant... by killing their babies, because that's cheaper than paying those women child support money for several years. Eventually, however, this policy ceases to work because there weren't enough people being born to pay taxes to support the policy. But, like China's "one child" policy, they didn't think of that.
DOCTOR WHO PROMOTES 'TERMINAL SEDATION' OF SICK PATIENTS KEYNOTES AT LA ARCHDIOCESE END-OF-LIFE CONFERENCE
from: LifeSite News
(6 Feb.) A pro-Planned Parenthood doctor who promotes "terminal sedation" of sick patients will give a keynote address on Feb. 7 at a Catholic conference on end-of-life issues run by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where Jose Gomez is archbishop. Gomez is also the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Ira Byock MD is scheduled to speak on Friday at the "Caring for the Whole Person" conference. In a 2000 paper on "intractable terminal suffering," Byock defended the use of "terminal sedation and voluntary refusal of food and fluids" as a way of dealing with "severe and unacceptable" suffering. Byock has been involved in controversial organizations that advocate suicide and denial of food and water for patients with terminal illness. He claims to be an opponent of what he calls physician-assisted suicide. He calls himself a "registered Democrat and progressive" who supports "women's rights, Planned Parenthood, gay marriage."
Euthanasia opponents, however, warn that "terminal sedation" is essentially euthanasia by another name. Catholic thinker Roberto de Mattei has called "deep sedation" a "masked form" of euthanasia, where a doctor deliberately kills a patient. Such sedation, he said, "causes the death of the patient, either directly, through sedative drugs or through the interruption of life-saving measures." This kind of sedation, said de Mattei, "is not a temporary therapy to alleviate pain, but a permanent condition, of no return, which is similar to that of an irreversible coma."
"Those who choose deep sedation perform an act with which they choose to snuff out irrevocably the light of reason and will, to immerse themselves in a deep and definitive sleep, which is difficult to distinguish from death," he continued. "However, if it is not licit to take one's life, will it be licit to deliberately renounce the exercise of the soul's faculties, which are an immense good received from God?" he added. [read more~~]
COMMENTARY: See our news headline below PALLIATIVE CARE: MEDICAL STUDIES CONCLUDE THAT 100 PERCENT OF PEOPLE EVENTUALLY DIE on what palliative and end-of-life care should be. Dr. Byock, who has been active in hospice care for 40 years, merged "Choice in Dying" (the successor to the "Euthanasia Society of America") into "Partnership for Caring." All of these have been succeeded by the "National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization." Thus, the hospice care industry, which began in the 1960s as a Christian movement to alleviate pain while a person is dying, has stealthily been taken over by the euthanasia movement that disguises its practices by mis-using medical jargon. "A rose by any other name is just as sweet," wrote Shakespeare, and a skunk by any other name still stinks to high heaven.
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Dear friend,
The First Amendment states that the God-given right to the free exercise of religion shall not be infringed. Government does not "grant" us our rights, it must be prevented from infringing upon our natural, God-given rights.
As you may already know or you can see at www.Agape-Restoration-Society.org/ARC/building-the-ARC.htm, for many years we have been planning to build an "Agape Restoration Community" - a Christian independent living community with 30-45 mostly wheelchair-accessible housing units and a community room/chapel. We have located a beautiful 8.8-acre hilltop property in the Borough of Trafford, PA, about 20 miles from downtown Pittsburgh, so our architect and I modified our site plan and preliminary building sketches to meet local zoning requirements and we put money down for an Option to Purchase the property.
The property is zoned "R-3 Multiple-Family": zones "R-1 Single Family" and "R-2 Mixed Use" both allow incidental religious use (a church) so our architect stated in our application that if religious use is permitted in R-1 and R-2 zones, it should also be permitted in the less-restrictive R-3 zone. On May 6, 2019, the then-acting building code inspector agreed with this interpretation of the zoning ordinance, approved our architect's site plan, and wrote that we could now apply for a Building Permit. But we were waiting and waiting for clarification of a minor point until the middle of July, with no response from the town manager.
Then we were informed that a new code inspector would be hired. This person decided to refer our application to the town's attorney, who interpreted the R-3 zoning ordinance to mean that if it doesn't explicitly allow incidental religious use, then it is not allowed. So we had to pay a $300 fee to apply for a zoning variance, hire attorneys, and wait again for the Trafford Zoning Board to meet on September 5.
This meeting lasted three hours: I stated that the R-3 zoning ordinance does not need to explicitly allow incidental religious use, because U.S. law is based on English "natural law" that whatever is not prohibited is permitted, whereas European law is based on Roman law that whatever is not explicitly permitted is prohibited. Our architect stated that our planned community room/chapel is less than 10% of the floor area of all the buildings and would greatly enhance the attractiveness of our planned community: most independent living, condo, and townhouse developments have some kind of common meeting spaces.
There were questions from the board and objections from the townspeople, both which demonstrated a clear anti-religious bias: we could have birthday parties, pizza parties, common meals, etc. in the community room, but not religious use: "Would you build this community here without a chapel?" I replied that our organization is registered with the I.R.S. as a non-denominational Christian organization and we intend to build a specifically Christian community. "Will you allow Muslims to live in your Christian community?" "Why do you need an 'altar' and 'sacristy'?" "Will you have fixed seating [pews]?" Attorneys for the adjacent townhouse association, which has a swimming pool and clubhouse where their community sometimes holds meetings and parties, spoke against our application for a zoning variance to allow religious use along with parties and meals. The Zoning Board decided not to decide that evening, so they announced a new meeting in three weeks. The local newspaper, Penn Trafford News, ran a two-page article on Sep. 11 (next page) about the Zoning Board meeting.
The CDC statistics are 2 in 5 - that's 40% - of adults age 65 years and older have a disability. And as we age, it climbs to 70% of us will be disabled before we die. Will you be proactive and deal with this probability, or think "This doesn't apply to me"?
The Trafford Borough Zoning Board met again on September 25 to give their decision. They did allow me and others to speak: The attorneys for the townhouse association asked if our non-profit organization would pay property taxes on the housing units, and I assured them that we would. I said that our attorneys had requested that the following federal law be inserted in the minutes; I gave them a copy and I read the underlined portions of the "Title 42 U.S. Code §2000cc. Protection of Land Use as Religious Exercise." Then the board met briefly to make their final decision to not grant our requested variance. In this decision, they flatly disregarded this federal law, which clearly states:
"(b) Discrimination and exclusion (1) Equal terms No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that treats a religious assembly or institution on less than equal terms with a nonreligious assembly or institution. (2) Nondiscrimination No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation that discriminates against any assembly or institution on the basis of religion or religious denomination."
The board said they would mail me a printed copy of their decision but failed to do so within the specified time frame. At first, I didn't see much sense in trying to fight for our First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. But if we drop the issue, we will have wasted several months and several thousands of dollars in architect's and attorney's fees due to Trafford's foot-dragging and resisting. How much more time and money would we have to spend before we could make any headway with the stubborn Trafford Borough? Is it time to look elsewhere? No, we must appeal this clearly illegal decision! The Penn Trafford News on Sep. 30 ran a front-page summary of the Zoning Board's denial.
Our architect agrees that this is an unjust decision and that the town is working against its own best interests. Our attorneys have filed an appeal on procedural grounds and we are waiting for the decision of the Appeals Court. Then we can consider filing with the U.S. Attorney's office in Pittsburgh for treating our First Amendment-guaranteed right of religious assembly on less thsn equal terms with a nonreligious assembly: when faced with a lawsuit and likely unfavorable decision from the Federal Government, plus fines and legal fees, local municipalities often concede.
I am revising the sketches of our main building to meet standard building codes for an "accessory use" assembly area: equal to or less than 750 sq. ft. or no more than 10% of the area of the floor it is located in. This should eliminate any objections about zoning and building codes, as well as our already following federal law.
If that fails to gain local approval, we will make use of the DOJ's Place of Worship Initiative and How to File a Complaint: scroll down to the "Discrimination in Religious Land Use under RLUIPA" section.
So please pray for us and Take a Stand With Us as we take these actions. Do not think - "This doesn't apply to me" because the gradual nibbling away at our free exercise of religion affects every one of us Americans. And please sharethis message and share our ARC website with your friends, especially our little "How YOU Can Help!" leaflets and on social media: let's make this Go Viral!
I CAN'T DO THIS BY MYSELF: I NEED YOUR HELP! So please WRITE US and say you will Take a Stand With US for our First Amendment-guaranteed freedom of religious expression. Thanks in advance!
Yours in Christ,
"Dr. Bob"
Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., D.Min.
About a week ago, I received an email from the pro-life group LiveAction saying that their TikTok video account was banned for "violating multiple community guidelines." Live Action had posted a 15 second video, in which a woman is briefly shown looking at the screen with captions that read: "Be pro-abortion" and "Be pro-life and help save babies." TikTok notified them that the video violated Community Guidelines, and removed the video. When LiveAction appealed, asking what guidelines were violated, TikTok sent a message saying that the @liveactionorg account "was banned due to multiple Community Guidelines violations." No further explanation was given for this decision.
TikTok's Community Guidelines prohibit "violent and graphic content," but the platform often permits videos that simulate brutal harm to preborn infants, which can be seen in the video here (warning: may be sensitive for viewers). After LiveAction alerted its subscribers about this ban, the subscribers deluged TikTok with messages asking why LiveAction's video was considered violent or graphic. By the next day, TikTok had reinstated LiveAction's account. But as you can read in our "here" link, other social media accounts have banned LiveAction.
Among them is Pinterest: this week, I tried to post a link on Pinterest to another article from LiveAction's website. only to receive the message "inappropriate content" next to the link. Here's how I got around it: the LiveAction article was one that I had quoted in our last issue of Hosken-News, so I simply changed the link I was trying to post on Pinterest to my own newsletter article. You can do that too: start a simple Wordpress or Blogspot blog, summarize an article from LiveAction or another pro-life website that gets banned, and post the link to your blog on Pinterest, etc.
Please read this article: 'Cowed Into Silence': Dave Rubin Warns of Cancel Culture, Mob Mentality. We must not let ourselves be cowed and bullied into silence by the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ, leftist-dominated social media. Insist on your First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of religious expression! "Freedom of religion" is not merely the freedom to go to church, sing some hymns and listen to sermons: it is the freedom to express your faith in a public forum. Social media are the new "public square" where people can exchange their views, but if a Christian worldview is banned from social media platforms, this is a violation of our God-given rights that are backed up by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Almost everyone under 40 has little if any memory of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, or Mao Tse Tung's "Great Leap Forward." I certainly do: we traveled through the Iron Curtain many times and crossed the Berlin Wall in the 1970s, our team getting millions of Bibles, New Testaments, and othr Christian literature to believers there. My wife Cheryl and I lived in Russia for 17 years during and after the collapse of the USSR. Please read The Berlin Wall: Its Rise, Fall, and Legacy.
The Wall and Iron Curtain may have fallen, but the atheistic, demonic ideology behind it all still exists: it has morphed into a sugar-coated secularist-socialist worldview that is busily indoctrinating us and our children through television, streaming video networks, social media, public schools and universities. Opposing viewpoints are silenced, shadow-banned, or outright persecuted. Basically, it is the same atheism that has gotten people addicted to the free lunch, free love, free birth control, free abortions... until they are addicted, dependent on the state, and no longer free: unable to go back to a godly, holy, Christian way of life.
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The Weapons of Our Warfare
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
St. Paul wrote - "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). St. Paul also wrote: "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).
We are involved in spiritual warfare against the demonic forces that are behind sexual promiscuity, abortion, homosexual and lesbian acts - all the behaviors that spring from the philosophy of relativism and the ideology of secularism. These are not merely systems of ideas that people have constructed rationally, they are acts motivated by evil spiritual forces.
In 2 Chronicles 36:11-16 we read -
Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. He did that which was evil in the Lord his God's sight. He didn't humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the Lord's mouth. He also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God; but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. Moreover all the chiefs of the priests, and the people, trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the Lord's house which he had made holy in Jerusalem. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending, because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place; but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the Lord's wrath arose against his people, until there was no remedy."
Notice the spiritual aspects, not simply morally-neutral human actions:
1. Zedekiah did evil.
2. He rejected God's Word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.
3. He hardened his heart against the Lord.
4. The religious leaders trespassed against God by performing pagan abominations.
5. They polluted God's house - in Christian terms, the religious leaders compromised true, spiritual doctrine of the Church.
6. They mocked God's messengers - they ridiculed people who preached and practiced God's Word.
7. Therefore the Lord sent foreign invaders - it wasn't just a foreign military-political decision, God motivated the foreign powers to carry out His judgment.
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Secularism teaches that you are free to choose to do whatever you like, whatever turns you on, there's no good or evil. But as Christians, we must "bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" by recognizing and rejecting this ideology, we must avoid getting sucked into the vortex of secularism, thinking that there's no right or wrong, that you can make up your own reality, your own gender simply by imagining it.
How do we reject this ideology and avoid getting trapped by the sugar-coated, neo-pagan, over-sexualized worldview? "I have made a covenant with my eyes, how then should I look lustfully at a young woman?" (Job 31:1). Make a rule, a covenant with your eyes: do not gaze at scantily-dressed women! I have a 5-inch wide piece of heavy paper near my computer screen so that, when some pornographic image or sex-oriented "news" article photo comes up in the sidebar of an otherwise decent web-page, I tape that heavy paper over the sidebar so that I can read the article without being indoctrinated into that worldview. If a porn website comes up when you're searching for some worthy website, close that tab or window! If you're at the swimming pool and a young girl in a bikini appears, look the other way!
King Solomon wrote the book "Song of Solomon" and in chapter 3:5 it states - "I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, by the does of the field, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until its time." Grade-school children are being indoctrinated into this over-sexualized culture of ours before their time, before they are able to fully understand and emotionally handle it. This is why leftist-secularists are against charter schools and Christian schools. BTW - the book "Song of Solomon" itself was not taught to children during Old Testament times, its love story was reserved for mature adults!
We desperately need to re-establish Christian communities where we can raise our families in a Christian atmosphere and keep them from being brainwashed by the surrounding secular culture. We need to monitor what they watch on TV and which websites they visit on the Internet. Children need to be taught what is good for them and what is evil, harmful and enslaving. Sadly, they are being taught just the opposite in many of our public schools.
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
(30 Jan.) The following is a letter from the pastor of a church in Wuhan written to brothers and sisters in Christ. It was specially written for distribution.
(6 Feb.) Bailiffs have closed the building of Jesus Embassy Church in Nizhny Novgorod due to alleged "fire safety" violations, but the changing number of violations claimed, and the apparent hostility of the FSB security service, raise doubts that the church building will be reopened soon. "Of course the FSB isn't interested in fire safety," Alexander Verkhovsky of SOVA Center commented.
(5 Feb.) On February 4, 2020, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church of Ukraine) met at the Congregational Hall of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy presided over by His Beatitude Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine. All members of the Synod except Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, who was absent for no good reason, attended the meeting, according to the official website of the OCU.
(2 Feb.) Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has proposed including a reference to God in the Constitution.
(6 Feb.) Interview with Emily Berning, co-founder and president of Let Them Live: "There are definitely a ton of awesome pro-life nonprofits. I think at first glance, it can seem like the pro-life movement is pretty jam-packed already with nonprofits that fill every part of the pro-life movement. What we realized in forming 
(6 Feb.) A pro-Planned Parenthood doctor who promotes "terminal sedation" of sick patients will give a keynote address on Feb. 7 at a Catholic conference on end-of-life issues run by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where Jose Gomez is archbishop. Gomez is also the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
St. Paul wrote - "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). St. Paul also wrote: "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).