Babylonian conquest of Israel confirmed by archaeology

Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem represented a watershed in Jewish history, ushering in the era of the captivity. The carnage in Jerusalem was catastrophic and was lamented by generations of Jews.

But the conquest, narrated assiduously in the Bible, was never discovered in archaeological digs and documented by field researchers.

Until now.

Archaeologists, led by a professor with North Carolina University at Charlotte, have uncovered ruins that correspond to the Babylonian attack. The team unearthed layers of ash, carbonized wood, broken pottery and a mansion.

“What we’re finding is the result of that destruction. It’s the kind of jumble that you would expect to find in a ruined household following a raid or battle,” says Shimon Gibson, professor of history at the university. “Household objects, lamps, broken bits from pottery which had been overturned and shattered and arrowheads and a piece of jewelry which might have been lost and buried in the destruction.”

Every turn of the archaeologist’s spade confirms another page of the Bible.

Jerusalem became a vassal state of Babylon during the Iron Age but rebelled twice — first under King Jehoiakim and then again under King Zedekiah. In 586 BC, Nabuchadnezzar — the “Destroyer of Nations” — set out to make an example of their repeated resistance and, after a two year siege, breached the gate and tore down all “great houses” and burned them with fire.

King Solomon’s temple was stripped of its treasures and razed. The wall around Jerusalem was leveled.

Gibson and his team found that Jerusalem was a sprawling and rich cosmopolitan city, larger than previously thought, at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest.

“The combination of an ashy layer full of artifacts, mixed with arrowheads, and a very special ornament indicates some kind of devastation and destruction,” Gibson says in a Haaretz news article. “Nobody abandons golden jewelry, and nobody has arrowheads in their domestic refuse.”

The arrowheads have been identified as Scythian, used during the 7th and 6th centuries BC by Nebuchadnezzar’s troops.

“They were fairly commonplace in this period and are known to be used by the Babylonian warriors,” Professor Gibson says. “Together, this evidence points to the historical conquest of the city by Babylon because the only major destruction we have in Jerusalem for this period is the conquest of 587/586 BCE.”

The jewelry piece is half gold and half silver. It consists of a cluster of grapes suspended from a cup-like top that might have been an earring or a tassel and seems to be a bauble for a Jerusalem elite, not a temple decoration, Gibson says.

“Frankly, jewelry is a rare find at conflict sites, because this is exactly the sort of thing that attackers will loot and later melt down,” Gibson says. “(It) is a unique find and it is a clear indication of the wealth of the inhabitants of the city at the time of the siege.”

The finely worked fragment may have been torn from a more significant artifact but not enough of it survives to identify its original nature definitively, researchers think. Read the rest of Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem confirmed by archaeology.

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God’s call. To cooking?

When God called Ira Krizo distinctly and undeniably to ministry, “there was no use waiting any longer,” he says.

So he immediately went to New York… to culinary school.

Yes, cooking.

Ira wasn’t called to the pastorate. He wasn’t called to the foreign field as a missionary. He wasn’t called into worship.

He was called to be a chef — a Christian chef. After all, God’s calling and gifting is to myriad areas of life, not just stereotypical “ministry.”

Today, Ira is the president of Christian Chefs International, a network of believers who have almost as much gusto for gourmet cooking as the Gospel.

With 14 chapters active or pending in America and abroad, the Cannon Beach, Oregon-based non profit holds annual conferences and boasts a 1-year, non-denominational culinary school where they don’t throw knives at the students.

“In many secular kitchens I’ve worked in, I’ve seen the chef yelling and screaming all day long at people,” writes Ira in a devotional on CCI’s website. “I’ve seen chefs throw things; once even knives. Is that the best way?”

Ira recommends humbly confronting head chefs who abuse their authority. He suggests chefs use the Biblical model: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” Matthew 18:15-18 (NKJV)

Even reality TV programs depict the outbursts of rage that occur under pressure when chefs are striving to meet the demands of their patrons.

Under the title “Christians in the Kitchen,” the CCI website offers devotions for cooks that include ethics in the kitchen, being content (restaurants typically experience a high turnover of staff) and being “prayed up” for the pressures of the job. One encourages disciples to be “sourdough Christians,” with analogies per ingredient. Read more about God’s calling to cooking.

A spider saved a Marine in WW2

After intense fighting against the Japanese on Okinawa during World War II, a Marine got separated from his unit amid the explosions, smoke, and chaos of battle.

He was alone in the hills in dangerous enemy territory. The sun was setting, and the stranded Marine heard the approach of Japanese soldiers so he took refuge in one of the many caves on the ridge.

It was no use. As the minutes passed, he realized the Japanese were searching methodically cave by cave for any American soldiers. With grim resignation, he realized his own death was imminent and inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the enemy would approach his cave and find him in the recesses.

But the Marine was a Christian, so he prayed to God.

“Lord, if it be your will, please protect me,” he prayed, as narrated on a website by Father Hugh Duffy. “Whatever your will though, I love you and trust you. Amen.”

As he prayed, he observed a spider building a web over the crawl space of an entrance to the cave. He scoffed on the inside.

“Ha! What I need is a brick wall and what the Lord has sent me is a spider web,” the anonymous Marine thought. “Well, I guess the Lord isn’t going to help me out of this one.”

He remained extremely still and quiet as he listened. The enemy was getting closer. He readied himself to make a last stand.

But to his surprise, the Japanese soldiers passed by his cave and didn’t search its interior. Read the rest: prayer saved a Marine by way of a spider’s web.

Kenya terror attack on Christians foiled by Muslims

The latest terror attack perpetrated by radical Muslims against Christians was thwarted by a group of moderate Muslims in Kenya.

On July 21st, a group of Muslims learned of an imminent terror strike in the war-torn northeastern corner of Mandera County. They responded quickly by evacuating their countrymen — all Christians — from a hospital construction site in Kutulo, officials said.

By the time the arms-toting Muslim fanatics arrived, their targeted victims were not to be found.

“They confronted the gunmen, who proceeded to the site and failed to get what they wanted,” Mohamed Birik told reporters. The attackers “opened fire but no one was injured before they escaped.”

The attempted massacre was led by a jihadist al-Shabaab group rampaging through East Africa. Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, which has executed prior attacks with success, including Christmas attacks last year that killed 14 in Kenya.

In 2012 they pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda but subsequently fell out with leadership over disagreements about their priorities. In 2014, the terror group was estimated to be 9,000 strong. At present, they have abandoned urban centers but control swaths of rural territory.

The group was formed in Somalia when the Islamic Courts Union was defeated in 2006 by the Somali Transitional Government. They like to stage attacks in Kenya, which is a strong anti-terrorism ally and a largely Christian nation in a Muslim region. Mandera County, a triangular territory that is pinched between Somalia and Ethiopia, is particularly vulnerable to such attacks because of its exposed geographical position.

Read the rest of Muslims foil terror plot.

Gamer turns the tide to the (real) game

Brandon Farah hadn’t figured prominently in any play this year. Or last year.

But on Friday, the senior — who’s 99 parts gamer and 1 part football player — came up big in the third quarter with an interception that hammered the nail into the coffin of Beacon Hill Classical Academy. His heroics, in the red zone, preceded a 70-yard touchdown run by Marcus Scribner that left no doubt that tide had turned. Lighthouse Christian Academy won 56-28.

“I didn’t know the ball hit me until I got it, until I looked down,” Brandon said, projecting modesty in his moment of glory.

Brandon Farah, the softie, played hard. The cocoon burst, and the kid who always said he loved football was finally playing real football. Not just on a monitor.

“It was a great game. It was a great four quarters,” said Justin Kayne, offensive coordinator filling in for head coach Zach Scribner who was out sick. “We came out and it was a battle. We scored, they scored, we scored, they scored. We made a few adjustments. Our guys answered the call, and look what happened when we played four quarters of sound, hard-hitting football.

“This was a statement game,” Kayne added. “We made a statement. This is what Lighthouse football is all about. This is one win. We are going to build on this win. We’re going to continue to build on this.”

The Saints now have one win and two losses in CIF Southern Section 8-man football.

No one could have predicted a landslide victory by half time. Both teams seemed pretty even, score for score, man for man, plays for plays. One ref called the high-scoring 1st quarter a “track event” because there was so much running for touchdowns. LCA was ahead by a slim 22-20.

When the Saints fumbled in the 2nd quarter, it gave the Gryphons a chance to pull ahead.

However, the team from Camarillo failed to capitalize on that gift. In response, the Santa Monica boys scored. It was 30-20 at half time.

In the second half, both teams wanted to come out strong. LCA got the upper hand.

Marcus Scribner was running rampant with the ball. He was burning opponents with speed, breaking ankles with cuts and punishing with stinging hits when Gryphons were making tackles. He smashed them, strong-armed them and ground down their will to put up a fight. Every WWF body slam was an injection of intimidation for opponents.

While Marcus was playing the unstoppable superhero, his LCA teammates were stepping up and making contributions.

Senior Hosea Ashcraft, alternating with Marcus, ran the ball to keep the Gryphon defense guessing. Originally a soccer player who never really understood the intricacies of football, Hosea was dashing with speed, power and cuts that he had never made before.

Quarterback Pat Canon was making unaccustomed tackles on defense, and secret weapon Steven Lahood was catching passes when the opponents concentrated too much on countering the “thunder and lightning” attack of Marcus and Hosea.

Even the kid brother, freshman Rob Scribner made a 2-point conversion reception. Overwhelmed with excitement that as a slender and small freshman he had succeeded in varsity football, Rob spiked the football, a violation that penalized the Saints kickoff 10 yards.

The offensive and defensive lines are to be credited. The Gryphons couldn’t make a single sack.

But the runaway surprise was Brandon. Read the rest of Making men out of boys through football at Christian school in Santa Monica.

300 (how a small Christian school in Santa Monica puts up a fight in football)

This was not King Leonidas’ battle. It was Gideon’s.

After witnessing Lighthouse’ undermanned but courageous stand against his team, Downey’s coach Mike Nuño compared his Santa Monica opponents to the Old Testament hero who vanquished the Midianites with an army of just 300.

“You’re like Gideon’s warriors,” Nuño told them after Saturday’s game. “You guys are the 300 that stayed and say, ‘Man, we’re going to go out there and do this thing.’ It takes heart. You guys battle and battle and battle. You guys come out with a small group year after year after year and fight until the end.”

If Lighthouse Christian Academy got compared to Gideon’s 300, it lost like Leonidas’ 300, overwhelmed by the endless swarming hordes of the Persian Empire. Despite a late first-half, valiant but quixotic surge, the Saints lost 21-62 against Calvary Chapel Christian School of Downey in CIF’s Southern Section 8-man football league.

“I coached 16 players one year, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Nuño said. “You come out with 10 or 12 players. I applaud you guys for that.”

LCA and the Grizzlies were roughly even at the beginning of the game as players sized each other up, identified strengths and weaknesses and sought to exploit opportunities. Realizing their superior firepower, the Grizzlies began to pull away, making the score 6-24.

But then a short kickoff gave Lighthouse a short field to drive for a touchdown. Senior Marcus Scribner caught a pass in the 2nd quarter for a touchdown to make it — with the subsequent 2 point conversion — 14-24.

Downey discovered they could essentially block Lighthouse as long as they needed to make the long bomb pass and quickly added a TD.

When Lighthouse tried to reply, the Grizzlies stymied their advance. Despite a dazzling one-handed catch and subsequent power scramble from senior Hosea Ashcraft, the Saints were unable to capitalize and had to punt.

The Grizzlies shot their effective long pass down the right side to 1st and goal. It seemed they would pull away definitively in the scoring. But sophomore David Hutchinson tackled a running back for a 2-yard loss, and two passes bounced off the receivers hands brought an unexpected stop to the Downey steamroll. Read the rest of Christian school Santa Monica football fight.

The quiet kid is heard in football

He was the quietest of five brothers. While his older brothers fought and his younger brother was being the mischievous clown, Steven Lahood was the quiet — and obedient — of the siblings, both at home and at school.

But Friday, Steven made himself heard, first with a touchdown on the second play of the game and then by stripping the ball from Teach Tech Charter High player and running almost for a touchdown in what was Lighthouse’s last chance to overtake its opponents.

Despite the sophomore’s eruption on the football field, Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica lost its opening game 25-38 in its sputtered bid to establish league dominance this year.

2019 was supposed to be the year for the Saints. With a crop of talented, speedy and big seniors, LCA hoped to win by big margins.

But key man, Levi Photenhauer, injured his knee in the first quarter and went out for the game. Without the speed of “Cheese” (as coach calls him for his shock of red hair), the Saints’ offense centered pretty much around hulkish Marcus Scribner, who trains constantly and wants to crack the NFL.

“We became one-dimensional,” said Head Coach Zach Scribner, Marcus’ uncle.

Marcus delivered.

After a controversial ref’s call annulled a Lighthouse touchdown because of a smart block by Marcus, the blond-haired kid returned undaunted to the offense and caught a pass to not be denied the TD.

But it was not enough. At the end of the day, the Tech’s Rams from Los Angeles, weaved and wobbled their way through the Saints enough times to secure the win. Read the rest about Small Christian School’s football team.

Clubbing, drinking and hookups didn’t help her rejection

Jordone Branch always felt like an outsider and rejected, so she ended the misery of internalizing her pain by swallowing 31 Ibuprofens in the 9th grade.

“I felt like I wanted to be accepted by people and I wasn’t,” Jordone recounts in a CBN video. “I had this strong craving that wanted to be loved.”

She threw up those pills and survived.

Then in high school, she sought love and acceptance through a boyfriend and sex.

“It felt like love, but it wasn’t love,” she says. “It didn’t help at all. It made it worse actually.”

At college, she continued to seek happiness where she would never find it: clubbing, getting drunk and pre-marital sex.

“I had a very deep level of sadness inside of me,” she confides. “When I got high, I wouldn’t think about my insecurities. When I got drunk, I wouldn’t think about my low self-esteem.”

Raised in church, she never stopped attending, but there was a major disconnect.

“I didn’t know what it meant to seek God,” she explains. “You smoke weed on Friday and sing in the choir on Sunday. I didn’t even know that any of the stuff I was doing was wrong.”

At a networking conference after graduation, she met a man, went out for drinks, and then got date-raped. When she went to police, she was told there was not enough evidence.

“I was depressed, just all the negative emotions you could think of,” Jordone says. “I remember driving down this road and thinking, ‘Maybe I could run into this tree and people won’t think it was intentionally a suicide.’”

Fortunately, she didn’t carry through with it.

Instead, she shared her troubles with a friend a few weeks later and he told her that Christ could heal her heart.

‘When he started talking about God, it was different,” she says. “It was genuine and sincere. It wasn’t surface level. He talked about God is his life and a relationship with Him. I felt like my eyes had been opened. I just started crying. I got it. I’d been wrong.” Read the rest of Rejection.

Miscarriages drove Carrie Underwood to desperation

After her third miscarriage, Carrie Underwood got mad at God.

“I had always been afraid to be angry because we are so blessed,” Carrie told CBS. But “I got mad.”

It was 2018 and one night when her husband wasn’t home, she thought she had miscarried for the fourth time in a row.

“I was just sobbing,” she says. “I was like, ‘Why on earth do I keep getting pregnant if I can’t have a kid? Like, what is this? Like, do something. Either shut the door or let me have a kid.’ For the first time, I feel like I actually told God how I felt.”

It turns out the country music sensation hadn’t lost her child that night. Today, the singer of “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and her husband, NHL player Mike Fisher, have two children.

Carrie grew up in the single-traffic-light town of Checotah, Oklahoma, with a population of about 3,000. The youngest of three girls, she grew up loving animals and singing in the church. Her love for animals was so strong that she helped build an animal shelter named “Happy Paws” and became a vegan.

A local fan of her singing hooked her up with an audition at Capital Records when she was 14, but the deal evaporated in the midst of management change-ups. She majored in journalism at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, worked at a pizzeria, a zoo and a veterinary clinic. She participated in beauty pageants and singing contests. She had decided she didn’t stand a chance to make it in singing, but that all changed in 2004.

She auditioned for American Idol and was quickly included in the contests and advanced to the #1 spot. Her subsequent release in 2005 of “Inside your Heaven,” which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. That same year, her Some Hearts album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Country Music. She has sold 65 million records, earning the moniker “country music’s reigning queen” from Billboard.

At one of her concerts, she met Canadian hockey star Mike Fisher, and the two married in 2010. She launched a line of clothing in the exercise space called Calia, and she had a little boy, Isaiah. It was a precipitous rise to fame and fortune and she enjoyed a picture perfect marriage and family. It was almost as if Satan asked God, as he did with Job, if he could deprive her of her joy to see if she would still serve Him.

In 2017, she and her husband tried for a second child early in the year, and she miscarried. She got pregnant again in the fall and again lost the pregnancy. When she lost a third pregnancy in 2018, she began to question her faith.
“What’s the deal? What is all of this?” she asked God. “What are You doing to me? What have I done wrong?

She got pregnant a fourth time and had a miscarriage scare.

She sobbed uncontrollably as she cried out to God in desperation. Read the rest about Carrie Underwood miscarriages.

Healed of inoperable tumor

Over her whole adult life, Evelyn Cartwright suffered unbearable headaches that she thought were due to high blood pressure.

In 2014, she experienced a headache like no other.

“Kind of like a heartbeat just thumping on the top of my head,” she told the 700 Club. “And the pain was worse than anything I had ever felt in my life before.”

Evelyn went to the emergency room and after having an MRI, she received the news that she had a inoperable, benign tumor on her brain.

Over three months, Evelyn went through five rounds of radiation.

While she went through the treatment, Evelyn’s husband was dying and she needed to take care of him.

“God, where are You through all of this?” she cried. “What’s really going on here?’”

She recruited a prayer group to support her.

Read the rest healed of inoperable tumor.

Neo Nazi wooed out of hate by black Christian lady

An African American drove Michael Kent into a neo Nazi hate group, and another one pulled him out.

“I hurt a lot of people,” he says tearfully in an “I Am Second Conversations” video. “I hurt a lot of kids when I was a kid. Their parents were coming after me.”

Michael’s sojourn into racism began when he was 12 years old and struck up a budding friendship with a black boy in Erie, PA.

“I got me a black friend. No animosity or nothing. We were as thick as thieves. We got along great,” Michael recalls. One day he was invited to his house.

“I don’t want that blue-eyed devil in my house,” his mother declared.

His friend was never allowed to talk to him after that. “My first encounter with racism was that day,” he says.

“It was over,” Michael recalls. “You guys don’t like accepting me no matter what. I was discriminated against, and it was like, ‘Why?’”

By the time he was 15, he started cooking up methamphetamines and getting involved with neo Nazis, even working closely with the higher-ups. He began passing out hate pamphlets and participating in marches on the state capitol.

Later, when he had a child himself, he understood why other parents had tried to protect their kids.

“These people I freaking hurt and I destroyed their lives, they were just trying to protect their kid,” he says. “I cried like a little baby the day my son was born because I know that if anybody hurt my kid, I’d kill them. That’s when I knew I had to walk away.”

What really helped him get out of the neo Nazis was a female African American probation officer, who visited his house in Pinal County, Arizona, unaccompanied. Because of his violent involvement with the skinheads, all of his previous probation officers — white officers — took pains to show up with a wingman.

“Not even people of my own race showed up at my house alone,” Michael says. “I gained a lot of respect for her that day.”

Tiffany Whittier’s job was to check for parole violations after his release in 2006 for drugs and weapons charges.

But Tiffany, a committed Christian, went beyond the call of duty and reached out to Michael with some heart-to-heart life coaching. She urged him to tear down the Hitler paraphernalia decorating his walls. He complied with everything, worked his job and paid his fines. He got swastika tattoos covered up.

Inside, his heart was melted by the kindness of Tiffany.

“Why did you believe in me?” he asked her. (“I Am Second Conversations” adds a twist to the usual testimonial videos of a person seated in a white chair. In these, two people talk face to face in two white chairs.)

“Why did you want to help me to change? You put forth more of an effort than anybody I’ve had in my life. Why? Not even people of my own race wanted to help me.” Read the rest: Neo Nazi renounces hate thanks to black Christian 

FMX daredevil overcame fear with faith

When he made the switch from racing to daredevil trick riding, Ronnie Faisst got sponsors, pay, notoriety… and a drug habit.

“You can’t become a top professional racer if you’re a partier. Tight diets and training everyday — that’s the background I came from. Didn’t do any drugs, didn’t drink, didn’t want to,” Ronnie says on This is Me video.

“But then when you got into freestyle, all you really needed was to be willing to take some risk. So we found you could party and still do this. We all got caught up in girls, drugs, alcohol, late nights.”

For 10 years, Ronnie soared at the top the emerging Freestyle Motocross, or FMX, pioneering tricks and competing on tour. But while his motorbike flew, his soul was sinking into the depths of sin.

Ironically the thrills-seeker who thrived off of the adrenaline rush found Jesus in a very ho-hum way, watching a televangelist explain the gospel. What drove him to the arms of Jesus? His greatest obstacle in freestyle: fear.

“If you’re a free-style riders, there’s gonna be tricks that scare you a little bit. You have to push through that fear to learn the trick. Right at that time, the back flip came out which to land one you might crash five,” Ronnie says.

“This dude speaking on T.V. was talking about faith, and it spoke to me because he was speaking about fear. I experienced fear everyday,” he says. “I thought, ‘This dude has such a cool view on life. I’ve never really looked at it that way.’ I got saved in my bedroom just watching this program. It makes you feel good. God’s on your side. God starts blessing you.”

Ronnie, from Murrieta, California who now lives in Kansas, is an X Games regular since 2000, winning Moto X bronze medal four times. The 42-year-old was featured in the original Crusty Demons daredevil videos.

He was living his dream, getting paid to ride his motorcycle and perform tricks and compete — and God was on his side.

Initially he didn’t realize there was much more to the Christian life.

“I had a friend give me a Bible for Christmas. Things were just jumping off the page at me,” Ronnie remembers. His life didn’t line up with the demand of the Bible. Read the rest: dirt bike daredevil Ronnie Faisst comes to Jesus.

The Rock now looks to the THE ROCK

Before he became Hollywood’s most bankable movie star, Dwayne Johnson got smacked-down by life — arrests, evictions, family suicide attempts, football failure, divorce — and the concurrent depression drove him to God.

“I have my own special relationship with God, you know, and I certainly, I feel very blessed. I count my blessings, every day,” the retired WWF wrestler told the Gospel Herald.

The monikored “Rock” has learned to rely on the Real Rock.

Both his dad and maternal grandfather were wrestlers. Dwayne Johnson grew up in Hawaii, son to a black Canadian father, Rocky Johnson, and a Samoan mother. There was instability in his home, and he was getting arrested over and over — for fighting, theft, and check forgery. Then his mom got evicted, and mom and son were forced to leave Hawaii.

The rude awakening injected in him a measure of sobriety. He decided to turn his life around and turned to football. Working hard, he earned a scholarship as a defensive tackle at the University of Miami. He eventually graduated with a degree in criminology, but his dream was NFL stardom.

After going undrafted, he moved to Canada and tried out for the Calgary Stampeders and slept on a stained mattress he found in the trash outside a sex motel. He subsisted on Ramen noodles for two months into the season.

“The first ‘rock bottom’ that I hit was out of college where I worked for 10 years from the time I started playing football at 14 years old to the time I was 23…and did not get drafted,” he told the Tribune News Service. “I played in the CFL (Canadian Football League) for approximately 200 bucks a week Canadian. I got cut from the team a couple of months later, and I had to close that chapter in my life.

Having to face the death of a dream, with $7 left in his pocket, he returned to his father’s house in Tampa, Florida.

“It’s a tough experience when you have to move back in with your parents. And at that time, my parents — we never lived in a home, they had a little small apartment in Tampa, Fla., and I had to move in with them. And then you go through the challenges of that. You hit depression.”

Against the wishes of his dad, who struggled to provide for the family as a journeyman wrestler, Dwayne launched a career as a professional wrestler. Unlike his dad, he was a blockbuster success as a trash talker with an ebullient personality. The audiences of the late 1990s and early 2000s loved him, and “The Rock” raked in huge ratings, earnings and championships for WWF.

After eight years, he turned to acting with a big splash in The Scorpion King in 2002. He followed up the initial modest success with a string of career-killing family movies. What was happening to the Herculean action movie hero?

My career was a little shaky – really shaky,” he told Rolling Stone.

A return to wrestling was an unthinkable admission of failure.

“What the ____ did I do with my career?” he wondered at the time.

In 2007, the always confident action man lost the confidence of his beloved wife, and the couple divorced. He submerged again into depression.

“Around 2008, 2009, I was going through a lot of personal ____ that was really _______ me up,” he told People magazine. “I was just struggling, man. Struggling to figure out what kind of dad am I gonna be. Realizing I’d done a piss-poor job of cultivating relationships, and a lot of my friends had fallen by the wayside. I was just scared.”

Out of the darkness, he found God’s light. Read the rest: Dwayne Johnson Christian.

Jake was a fake, and how transgenderism didn’t work for Laura

She changed her name to Jake and tried to forget she was born female.

“At first it was the greatest thing ever. I was on Cloud Nine,” says Laura Perry, who transitioned into a man through surgery and hormone treatments, then married a male who transitioned to female.

“I started to grow facial hair. I began to grow sideburns. My voice began to get lower. Even the body shape began to change a little bit. In 2009, I had a double mastectomy and chest reconstruction to look like a man,” she says on a 700 Club Interactive video. “I thought this was the epitome of everything I wanted.”

But years later, she began to realize that the path she had been encouraged to take hadn’t really helped her find the happiness she sought.

“Transgenderism will lead to depression because it’s not real,” Laura told Black Christian News Network 1. “It is a lie from the pit of Hell. You cannot change your gender. It’s just not biologically possible.”

After giving her life to God and turning back into a woman, she wrote a book “Transgendered to Transformed.

Her misguided venture down the path of transgenderism has its roots in her childhood.

Her mom was quiet and really connected with her quiet brother, while little Laura was rambunctious and athletic. She didn’t enjoy a great relationship with her mom. Laura concluded that boys were preferred over girls — and she fantasized about being a boy.

“Very early in life I believed the lie that I wasn’t loved as a girl,” she says. “Everything in life got put through this lens that I should’ve been a boy.”

At 8, she was molested by a friend’s brother, and this aroused precocious passions in her. She discovered porn and became hooked on it in middle school. She slept around trying to earn the affections of boys in high school, but ultimately they despised her.

In college, Laura continued sleeping around until she burned out. “There just wasn’t any satisfaction in it anymore,” she says.

That’s when she started remembering her childhood fantasy of wanting to be a boy.

She heard about a “transgender support group,” and from the first meeting she was encouraged by enthusiastic people that “coming out” as transgender was brave and the key to happiness. After two years of hormone treatments and surgeries to refashion her body into a male shape, she changed her name legally to Jake on her birth certificate and her driver’s license.

“I just wanted to be a man and completely forget that I had ever been born female,” she says. “I wanted to erase the existence of Laura.”

But she came to realize Jake was a fake.

“In all my times of rebellion, I knew that God was real,” she says. “After my surgery I realized that it hadn’t made me a man. I was legally a male, and I could look down at my license and it says I was male. But I was still the same person, just without breasts. It was devastating to me because I had really believed that I would become a man.”

As Jake

A few years later, her mom asked her make a website for her Bible study. Although Laura had no interest in the Bible, she decided to help her mom with the technical Internet details of website creation.

“As I began to read her notes, I was blown away. I had always seen the Bible as God’s rule book,” she says. “I had never seen the character or the heart of God. I began to see a loving and faithful God, not the angry, judgmental God that I’d always seen before.”

She began calling her mom daily. When a crisis struck, her mom encouraged her to trust the Lord. Her mom’s compassion and loving amiability was a stark contrast with the distant mom she knew in her childhood.

“She had been so radically transformed,” Laura remembers. “It was at that moment I knew the Gospel was true. I knew that Christ was alive. I knew there was a transforming power because I could see how my mom had been totally changed. That night I prayed and asked the Lord into my heart.”

At first, she pursued Christ as “a man of God.”

“I could not face being a female. There was so much pain attached because of what those guys had done and because of all the lies I’d believed all my life,” she says. “I felt like it was a shameful thing to be a female.”

After a month of crying out to Jesus night after night, she saw a vision of the Lord on one knee, his hand extended towards her.

The still small voice of the Lord spoke to her heart: Laura, do you trust Me?

Read the rest: Laura transitions back to the woman God made her.

‘You killed Christ’ taunt filled him horror of ‘Christians’

His Jewish mother was smuggled out of Nazi German by nuns, but tragically, she later died in a mental hospital.

“We could get mom out of Nazi Germany, but couldn’t quite get Germany out of mom,” says Dr. Jeffrey Seif.

Living in a Jewish community in Texas as a young person, Jeffrey got smacked with anti-semitism.

“One time around 12 or 13 years old, I’m walking down the street and these two girls yelled ‘Hey you dirty Jew, you killed Christ!” Jeffrey recounts. “I remember that vividly.”

So his first brush with what he thought were Christians provoked unmitigated horror in his heart.

As a young boy, Seif was sent to a Yeshiva– a very strict, religious Jewish school. It changed his mindset about following Judaism because, by nature, he was rebellious.

“I’m 16 now and as I’m laying on my bed my mother comes in and tells me to clean up my room and I gave her a hard time. She says ‘Well if you don’t like it you can leave!’ And so I left!” Jeffrey says.

He ran away from home, hitchhiked to California and ended up in San Francisco.

This is where he got his first positive exposure to Christians.

They were very nice, they were gracious, they’d give me a ride, they would want to give me a meal,” Jeffrey says. “I realized there were Christian people that were kind of cool.”

At school, Seif got high on drugs and received D’s and F’s in his classes.

“I wasn’t on anyone’s ‘most likely to succeed list,’” he recalls. “I was almost like road kill on the highway of life.”

Later in Pennsylvania as Jeffrey walked down the street, a man with hair down to his waist gave him a pamphlet and told him he wanted to talk to him about Jesus.

“Look man, I’m Jewish; I don’t believe in Jesus,” Seif responded curtly.

“Why not?” the man replied. Read the rest of Overcoming anti-semitism to come to Christ.

Framed man forgives corrupt cop, becomes friend after Jesus moves in his life

In prison, Jameel “Zuki” McGee vowed revenge on the cop who framed him unjustly.

“I made a goal for myself in prison to harm the officer whenever I got out,” Jameel says in an “I am second” video. “I was deeply hurt by everything that happened.”

But three things softened his simmering rage: He found out that he had become a father. Second, the corrupt cop got saved. Third, Jameel started reading his Bible in the cell.

Today, Jameel McGee, wrongly convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and former corrupt cop Andrew Collins are friends and brothers in Christ thanks to an unusual outpouring of grace and forgiveness.

Years after the fateful false accusation, years after being released from jail before schedule, Jameel happened to see the formerly crooked cop who stole years out of his life. Jameel was with his son and so was Andrew.

Jameel was quick to forgive. Evil was overturned by grace.

Andrew Collins had a rough home life. Growing up in Benton Harbor City, Michigan, he decided to become a cop because a police officer, summoned to his parent’s home, brought peace during one particularly acute domestic dispute. Little Andrew associated heroism with the cop.

“I remember thinking from that point on, that’s what I want to do with the rest of my life,” Andrew says.

He started police work with high ideals. But eventually, his sense of justice crumbled and the old evil upbringing began to exercise a bizarre control over his professional course.

Jameel McGee also grew up in tough circumstances.

“Mom used to kick the crap out of us,” says Jameel, the youngest of six. Dad left the picture early on. “Violence became a part of my nature.”

Their lives became intertwined in February of 2006 when Officer Andrew, on the narcotics beat for four months, acted on a tip and was looking for a crack dealer. The car matched the description, but the suspect did not.

Then Jameel walked out of the grocery store with milk and groceries. Because he nearly matched the description, Andrew moved in.

“Where’s the dope?” he barked at Jameel.

“What?” Jameel responded. “What dope?”

Andrew, who was plain clothes, pulled his badge. Jameel, who had been confused by the confrontation, suddenly realized that something had gone terribly wrong.

“This is for real,” he thought.

Cops are rewarded for arrests and convictions. Andrew decided that Jameel was his suspect and made the arrest. He wrote in his report that he found dope on him. That was a lie. Jameel was charged with possession with intent to distribute. Andrew fudged facts, knowing this would secure a conviction in court. He didn’t really think much about the possibility that he nabbed the wrong guy.

This is what Andrew had come to. The old ideals of heroism has succumbed to the dirty work of busting guys without regard for the means. Sadly, his conscience didn’t bother him.

Andrew’s life had descended into utter corruption, and there was no way out… until he got caught.

“Two years after I met Jameel, I got caught with crack, heroin and marijuana in my office,” Andrew says. “I got caught on a Tuesday. I thought about killing myself on Wednesday.

“I couldn’t see coming back from this.”

Fortunately, his wife was a Christian, and at her urging, Andrew went to see her pastor. He confessed everything. Read the rest of crooked cop and framed man.

Will Katy Perry turn back to God after court loss to Christian rapper?

In a court decision with implications for Christian Hip Hop at large, Flame won a plagiarism suit against pop star Katy Perry, who stole his beat from “Joyful Noise” and included it in her #1 song “Dark Horse,” according to a Los Angeles jury.

Damages are yet to be established by the court.

It was a victory for Flame, whose real name is Marcus Gray. But it is also a resounding validation for Christian Hip Hop (CHH), which gets criticized for being copycat, unoriginal, even corny. Perry extracted the Flame’s 2008 synth beat almost unaltered for her 2013 song, whose video was the first of a female artist to reach a billion views on YouTube.

The brazen daylight robbery of intellectual property proves once and for all that CHH is a source of creativity, not a knockoff.

Apparently it was Flame’s DJ at the time Cho’zyn Boy who sniffed out the fraud when he heard “Dark House.” He dissected the two songs and found that the only difference in the beat lines was Dark Horse sped up its tempo from 66 BPM to 76 BPM and dropped pitch down one decimal from Db to C, according to Rapzilla.

Perry and her lawyers argued that her song-writing crew never heard “Joyful Noise” and didn’t even know of Flame. They contended that beats can sound similar from one song to the next.

Flame’s lawyer hog-washed such claims, saying the music diva thought she could get away with highway robbery because Flame was a low-level musician – and Christian.

“They’re trying to shove Mr. Gray into some gospel music alleyway that no one ever visits,” argued Michael A Kahn, as reported by the Guardian. Flame’s video reached 2 million viewers and was too widely known for jurors to believe Perry.

But behind the court conflict, there’s an epic battle going on that transcends a significant payout for the Christian rapper, who turned down $1 million from secular producers that offered him a contract on the condition he tone down the Jesus talk.

Behind the settlement and intellectual property infringement, there is also a war for the precious, prodigal soul of Katy Perry. Read the rest Katy Perry’s Dark Horse compared to Flame’s Joyful Noise.

When her husband (a pastor) died of AIDS, Tamara Bennett thought her life was over

Tamara Bennett didn’t believe the doctor when he said her husband had AIDS and was dying.

“Tell him,” Tamara told her husband, “tell him that’s not right, that he’s got the wrong guy.

Her husband was silent in the face of the news.

The doctor said he would give the couple a few minutes to talk in private and discuss things.

Tamara’s husband was a dynamic pastor of a burgeoning church. How could he have AIDS?

After the doctor left the room, her husband spoke quietly but firmly. “I never had an affair on you,” he said. “This was something that happened before I met you.”

Tamara went to the bathroom and stuffed all the toilet paper into her face as she cried.

The last five years of her 13-year marriage would be taking care of her dying husband at a time when you didn’t openly discuss AIDS in the church, she says in a Journey Faith Film video.

As she sought the Lord, He spoke to spoke to her heart and encouraged her that He wasn’t abandoning her in the crisis.

Her husband refused to take any medication because of the amount of drugs he would have to ingest and the horrible side effects.

Tamara knew that her husband could no longer function in ministry when the AIDS progressed and caused dementia. Three times in one morning, he asked, “What day is it today?

“It’s Sunday,” she responded.

“Oh, we have to go to church,” he replied. Then he repeated the same question. Read the rest: Life after AIDS.

Pregnant and homeless in the 8th grade, she decides NOT to abort and graduates valedictorian

By now, Trameka Pope should have earned her bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University, where she enrolled as high school valedictorian, AP student and cheerleader with scholarships galore in 2015.

And she did it all with a baby she had in the eighth grade that left her homeless for some time.

Trameka refused to abort (or kill) her baby, the course urged upon girls her age in similar circumstances. She decided to choose life — and to let her child motivate her to lead a better life.

“I didn’t give up,” she told LifeSite news. “I pushed myself hard. And my baby motivated me every day because I wanted to provide for her, and I also didn’t want to be a statistic.”

Trameka found motivation in God and her baby. “I was told that God didn’t make mistakes and He wouldn’t give anyone a child who wasn’t ready for one.”

As a pregnant 14-year-old in Chicago, Trameka defied the odds. She neither aborted nor dropped out of school. Instead, she stood out at Chicago’s Wendell Phillips Academy High School. She took college prep classes, joined the National Honor Society, became a cheerleader and held a job at a grocery store.

“I always said that I wanted to make change, and I wanted to be in the history books, and I started with myself,” Trameka says. “I didn’t give up. I pushed myself hard. And my baby motivated me every day because I wanted to provide for her, and I also didn’t want to be a statistic.”

She won $600,000 in scholarships for college. Her ultimate goal is a PhD in social work, according to Huffington Post.

Read the rest: homeless pregnant 8th grader graduates valedictorian.

Either way — as a communist or a Christian — he ran from cops

Julio Moraleja at left

Julio Moraleja ran from the cops when he was a communist in post-WW2 fascist Spain, so running an illegal underground church when he converted to Christ was no big deal.

“I just ran really fast,” says Julio, who became a Christian during the repressive, anti-Protestant government of Francisco Franco. “We hid from the police. They never caught us.”

In Spain, Franco infamously stamped out evangelical churches, suppressed freedoms and tried to drive born-again Christians out of the country.

But the crackdowns on house churches, the raids and the secret police did not intimidate Julio, who was accustomed to subversive activities as a communist factory worker trying to overthrow the capitalist dictatorship.

Julio Moraleja Arias (Spaniards use both the last name of Dad and that of Mom), now 67, was raised in a family who believed in atheistic communism.

“For me, the world needed a social change that only could be carried out through the communist philosophy,” Julio says.

His father, who fought in the Spanish Civil War with the Communist Youth, was arrested and the usual death sentence routinely given to communists was commuted to life imprisonment. He served 11 years in jail before his release.

In spite of Franco’s crackdown on communists, Julio became a card-carrying communist. He got work in the Chrysler automobile factory and began to agitate to form a labor union and propagate communist ideals.

A friend, José Aguilar, who was Christian, began to explain to him another way to save the world: Jesus.

“Logically, I didn’t pay any attention to him because I didn’t believe in God, since communism is based on scientific atheism,” Julio says.

But he received a cassette tape from Julio, partly to humor the man.

The following Saturday he had nothing else to do, so he played it out of curiosity.

“As I listened to the tape, something began to move in me and I didn’t know what was happening,” Julio remembers. “The message pierced my soul. When I finished listening, I was broken.” Read the rest of running from the cops.

What pro-lifers need to do

I was embarrassed. After debating abortion for decades, I heard FOR THE FIRST TIME an important pro-choice argument. I pride myself on listening to other sides. Maybe I wasn’t listening up to the level of my pride. Have you heard it? Here it is: Pro-lifers do nothing to help special needs children and at-risk youth. They don’t let a Mom choose, and then they don’t help her when she’s stuck.

It stung. I was caught. Was I all talk and no action?

But after a day of meditating on this legitimate claim, it slowly crept over me: I AM doing something for the less fortunate. I teach for at a small Christian school where at-risk youth attend. I teach with no pay (although in some years, I have received salary). I am silencing the argument that conservatives ban abortion and shun helping needs.

So I am writing this post, not to the pro-choicer (whose opinion we treat respectfully) but to the pro-lifer: YOU NEED TO PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS and help with special needs and at-risk people. If you can’t volunteer for some program, make a donation. If you don’t know where, I suggest my school, the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica. You can make a tax-deductible, one-time or monthly gift to help teachers like me continue doing what you can’t.

Jordan Sheppard just graduated. His mother left the abortion clinic waiting room, hearing the voice of God telling her He would help her with her child. She didn’t even know God at the time.

By his own appraisal, Jordan says he’d been dead, in jail or en route to one of those options. He was falling into all kinds of trouble. His mother walked the streets late at night looking for him when he was in middle school. Then she looked for a place to enroll Jordan where Christians could help her, a single mom, raise her man. Today, Jordan has plans to join the Marines. We are super proud of him. You could be too if you take a stake in this ministry.

The 3 unhealthiest dim sum

There’s a urban legend among the Chinese that the tea washes away all the excesses of Dim Sum. They call it a cleanse or a detergent.

The truth of the matter is that Dim Sum is a comfort food (Dim Sum means “touches your heart”), like seven-layer dip with potato chips or shoe fly pie. Indulging shouldn’t be a daily or even weekly experience.

Here are the three Dim Sum you should avoid — or if it’s absolutely you’re favorite, cut back on the intake per category on other baskets you order!

Three Dim Sum items to avoid:

1. Chinese Pork Ribs: High calories

In terms of caloric intake for a single portion, nothing beats the Chinese pork ribs with sticky rice in black bean sauce. In 2005, the Public Health Branch of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department of Hong Kong analyzed 71 Dim Sum items and found that a portion of this tasty treat has a whopping 820 calories. And that was for a serving size of 100 grams — about half a cup (rice and beef). Who eats only a half a cup of this deliciousness?

The average adult needs between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. One “portion” of this yummy food then is about one-third of your daily need for caloric energy. (If you don’t use up that energy, it gets stored as fat.)

2. Xiao Long Bao Soup: Too much fat

In the area of fat, there are many contenders. But the king is Xiao Long Bao Soup Dumpling with a staggering 80 grams of fat, according to My Fitness Pal’s ranking. These jellied meats inside of a flour dough wrapping are so bad that Men’s Health magazine in Singapore called on readers to “dump the dumpling.” Read the rest of unhealthiest dim sum.

Newest greatest of NBA Kwahi Leonard keen on Jesus, not so much on money

Not Steph Curry, not LeBron, not KD.

The hottest commodity in basketball right now is Toronto Raptors star Kwahi Leonard who honors Jesus and has single-handedly carried his team to unpredicted wins, first in Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers to enter the Eastern Conference, then again last night to upset the Warriors in Game 1 of the finals.

“Last year was a very down year for me (he was injured); I was going through a lot,” says Kwahi, whose buzzer beater to beat the 76ers in Game 7 is now legend. “And you know, God is good! I prayed every day and ended up getting healthy, now I’m able to play basketball. You could just see what He does for you.”

Kwahi is dropping jaws both on offense and on defense. He averaged 35-point games against Philadelphia. He locked down Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks to reverse a 0-2 game deficit to secure the Eastern Conference.

“Leonard is killing dudes in isolation (like Harden), pounding and rocking the basketball (like Harden) before blowing past defenders or hitting step-back threes (like Harden),” Jesse Washington crows on The Undefeated.

Up until last night, the idea that the Golden State Warriors would sweep the finals — again — was thought to be as pre-determined as the Book of Revelations. It was sure to be boring, and only diehard fans and somnambulists who like eye-glazing as they observe the inevitable even bothered to tune in.

But Leonard and the on-fire Raptors suddenly woke up the soporific middle American who only turns on the game if there actually is going to be a game. Now, the final is promising to be interesting.

The talent-rich Warriors knew they had to double-team and even triple-team Kawhi to win. Stymie the star and blitz to victory. It’s been their not-so-secret strategy, and it has worked against James Harden and Damian Lillard.

It didn’t work last night.

The Marvel’s Avengers of the NBA got blindsided by the no-names of the Raptors. Harassed at every turn, Leonard passed the ball to his teammates, who materialized superstar performance. Pascal Siakim, notorious for poor shooting, transformed suddenly into a marksman, hooping 32 points to lead his team to a 118-109 thrashing.

Will the Golden State league hegemony be broken? Read the rest of Kawhi Leonard Christian.

Malawi: God inspired impoverished prodigy to harness technology for his people

William Kamkwamba was born amidst famine and poverty on a farm in Malawi, but with God’s inspiration he fabricated a primitive windmill to bring electricity to his house.

His ingenuity caught the eye of international organizations that opened doors for him and William graduated from Dartmouth College in 2014.

“With a windmill, we’d finally released ourselves from the troubles of darkness and hunger,” the resourceful youth told the Malawi Daily Times. “In Malawi, the wind was one of the few consistent things given to us by God, blowing in the treetops day and night. A windmill meant more than just power, it was freedom.”

William’s improbable journey from farm subsistence in Africa to international mover and shaker in technology education begins with his father, a rough fighting man who settled down after he received Jesus into his heart.

Christianity marked their household as much as poverty. The only boy among six sisters, William shouldered the burden to help his family survive. When rains skipped 2001 and famine clouds gathered, William had to drop out of school in 2002 because the family couldn’t afford the fees.

William dutifully toiled the soil, but he never let go of his hunger for learning and frequently visited an internationally-supported library near his home, where he found a couple of books about energy that piqued his curiosity. One was called Using Energy and How it Works.

As he thumbed through the pages with diagrams, he understood the basic mechanics behind magnetism for generating electricity in a turbine and a windmill. He was a tinkering kid who once disassembled his father’s radio because he thought there were little people inside that he wanted to talk to.

He was not able to reassemble the radio, so when he asked permission of his father to disassemble his bike to build a windmill, his father was resistant. Eventually he prevailed on his father and began to collect scraps of junk to fashion his windmill.

Like Noah building an ark, William became the laughingstock of the townspeople, who watched the formation of his quixotic windmill, resembling a modern art assemblage in the famine-stricken plains of Africa.

But when William brought light to his house in Mastala Village, a section of the country unreached yet by government’s electrification projects, villagers no longer laughed at him.

“When I was making all these, some people were mocking me that I was going mad but I had confidence in what I was doing because I knew if it was written in the books then it was true and possible,” William remembers. “When I succeeded they were impressed.”

He charged car batteries throughout the day, which then were used to light houses or power radios in the neighborhood.

Encouraged by his first success as a 14-year-old inventor, William next devised a plan to build a larger windmill to pump water during the drought. He received donations from outsiders to help his project.

After his second triumph, the town was no longer at the mercy of darkness or drought. Read the rest of William Kamkwamba Christian.

Rebel Jewish rocker went forward to receive Jesus as a joke, got surprised by joy

Growing up in a Jewish household, Dr. Michael L. Brown believed Jesus was the God of Christians and had nothing to do with the Jews.

During his high school years he became a pothead and eventually earned the nicknames “Drug-Bear” and “Iron Man” due to his prodigious intake of drugs. He abused pot, hash, LSD, mescaline, amphetamines, cocaine and heroin.

“I would take massive quantities just to see how far I could go,” Brown says on a One For Israel video. ”I once did enough mescaline (a hallucinogenic drug) for 30 people — the equivalent of one ounce. I couldn’t distinguish between reality and hallucination.”

Between 1996 and 2000, Brown led the Brownsville Revival, a Christian Pentecostal Movement at the Brownsville Assembly of God church in Pensacola, Florida. He is currently a radio talk show host and also president and professor of practical theology at FIRE School of Ministry in Concord, NC.

Born in New York City in a respectable family, his father served as the senior lawyer in the New York Supreme Court.

“My upbringing was typical of many New York, Conservative Jewish children. We moved to Long Island, I did well in school, I played lots of sports, and, like all my friends, I basically stayed out of trouble. But something changed. It all began innocently enough,” he said.

“When I was eight years old I started to play drums. There was no question that I had ability. In fact by the time I was fifteen I had played on a studio album. But my favorite music was rock, and after my Bar Mitzvah in 1968, I got interested in playing in a band. I wanted to be a rock drummer, and all my role models were known for their heavy drug use, rebellion, and flagrant immorality. I wanted to be like them!”

In 1969, at age 14, he was offered pot.

“I was only too happy to oblige,” he says. “Soon I tried smoking hash too. But neither one had any effect on me. So I tried harder drugs until I started using uppers, downers and LSD. I thought I wouldn’t do anything worse than that, but I was deceived.”

By age 15, he tried speed and heroin.

“I loved it,” he says.

His grades crashed. Drugs, rock and “filthy living” were his daily portion. He and his friends broke into homes and a doctor’s office just for fun. Snatching up drugs wherever they entered, they nearly killed themselves.

He was binging drugs, constantly pushing the outer edge of the envelope toward overdose.

At times, it was difficult to distinguish between hallucination and reality. “I would walk with my hand in front of my face at night because I didn’t know if the tree that was growing up in front of me was really there, or if the tree that grew up into fireworks, that they were really taking place,” he noted.

”I’d see a car coming at me, and suddenly it became a person: the lights became eyes and a mouth. I’d see someone walking their dog and they’d morph until they each became a little bit of each other.”

Brown wasn’t the type of person to fight, but he would bring people down with verbal volleys. He ripped into people until they were in tears.

He had been raised a conservative Jew, but wandered far from the faith of his family. He rarely thought of God, but when he did, he rationalized that he was a good person.

“If there really is a God, He knows I have a good heart,” he thought at the time.

Ultimately, it was the Book of Revelation that brought him to account. Some friends began attending church and telling him about the Beast with seven heads and 10 horns that emerged from the Bottomless Pit to rule the world. It sounded like an LSD trip.

“That’s in the Bible?” Brown asked his buddies. “That’s what they talk about in this church? That’s a cool church.” Read the rest: Dr. Michael Brown started as a Jewish rocker on drugs and came to Jesus.

Simple steamed fish Chinese style

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• About 2 lbs white fish fillets
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 3 pinches sugar
• 2 green onions, cut into slivers
• 3 TB cilantro
• 1 clove garlic crushed
• 1 TB fresh ginger crushed
• 2 TB cooking oil
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 3 TB soy sauce

Marinade ingredients:

• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp sugar
• 1 TB sherry
• 1 tsp fresh ginger cut into slivers

Visit our website for directions to Simple steamed fish Chinese style.

Bamboo steamer: be careful what you buy

Bad news for the unsuspecting bamboo steamer-purchaser who’s recently come under the illusion of tasty, healthy food:

Not all bamboo steamers are equal.

Some are rather flimsy, cheaply put together to be priced more competitively. Regrettably but understandably the poorer quality lasts a shorter time.

When you look to buy a steamer, make sure the outer rim is thick and round. Since the rim is the chief support of the steamer, it is the critical structural component for longevity:

When you buy a steamer, study gaps between the slats. The curved cuts provide maximized steaming AND support. This intricately assemblage takes longer than the flat slats with gaps between them. This is fine craftsmanship.

When you look to buy a steamer, look at the thickness of the slats. Obviously it’s cheaper to put thinner wood for the supporting slats. And yes, the thinner wood will work… for a while. But then it will break, and you’ll have to get another steamer. The thicker slats lasts longer. The snugly fitted assembly, not tied with flimsy strands (which some brands do), also contributes to the overall sturdiness and longevity of the steamer. For the rest of the useful tips for buying a bamboo steamer, click on the link. If you’re shopping for a bamboo steamer, check all the quality points.

Here’s a good one:

Basics to start cooking Chinese at home

Everybody loves Chinese food. But can you do it at home? What special cookware and ingredients do you need? Is it too hard to set up for Chinese recipes at home?

Mike Ashcraft — aka The Klutzy Cook — shows you the basics you’ll need to get started. Get some quality recipes, these essentials to start, and you’re on you’re way. Cuisine Natural sells a killer 10″ steamer for $21.95 on Amazon click here.

I forgot to mention cooking sherry. Get cooking sherry also.

 

The ‘success’ of touring with Bob Dylan left her disillusioned

Touring with iconic superstar Bob Dylan may have been a life changing experience for Jennifer Goetz, but that wasn’t the only transformational aspect of the journey.

After going on two 6-week tours with Dylan in 1975 in the U.S., rather than feeling elated, she felt empty, completely lost.

“It was like I had climbed a mountain and looked over and there was nothing on the other side,” Jennifer said. “I was so frustrated with life that I determined I would give myself 35 days to find a new way of approaching life. I was so sick of this brain inhabiting this body and just the way I thought about things.”

During those 35 days, Jennifer contracted Bell’s Palsy, which is partial face paralysis.

“As I was going to bed one night, I was brushing my teeth and water came squirting out of the side of my mouth, and I lived alone in an apartment at that point, and I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to go to bed and I’m going to wake up paralyzed,’ and sure enough when I woke up the next morning, half my face was paralyzed.”

The next day, Dylan’s girlfriend, an African American Baptist Woman, grabbed Jennifer by the hands and started praying for her in the name of Jesus.

With her husband, Marty Goetz

“I remember that when she was finished I walked out of that trailer and I was stunned, and I looked around and I thought, ‘What was that?’’ she remembers. “And the next day I actually started seeing an improvement and feeling an improvement in my face.”

After the first tour, Jennifer got to join Dylan’s six-week European Tour.

Her quest for truth was not over.

With a friend at a hotel in the desert, Jennifer opened a little drawer and found a red Gideon Bible. She “stole” it, brought it home and began to read.

Read the rest of Jennifer Goetz disillusioned with success in music industry finds Yeshua.

Kuwaiti Muslim was taught to hate Jews

“Allahu Akbar”, the crowd chanted, “Allahu Akbar”

The Muslim girl was confused and didn’t know what was going on in the large crowd until they were pushed to the front and saw a woman tied up, sitting on a box, and a man next to her uttering a traditional prayer.

The next thing she knew the man pulled out a golden sword from his side and beheaded the woman. The little girl, her hand in her dad’s, began to tremble.

“If you don’t listen to the teachings we’re instilling in your life, this will happen to you one day,” her father told her sternly, as recounted in a One For Israel video.

In the dramatic video, the woman is dressed in traditional Muslim garb, including a hijab, and her voice is altered to thwart identification.

She was raised in Kuwait, a small oil-rich nation on the Persian Gulf whose population is 98% Muslim. Two of her uncles are imams, and one is president of a mosque. Five times a day, she prayed.

“The word ‘Yehudi,’ which means Jew, was instilled in me as a bad word, as a cuss word,” she says. “Yehudis should not exist. They should be killed. I never thought to question why would I hate them. I never met Jewish people in my life. They never did anything to harm my family.

“I just hated them. Just the word brought hatred in my heart.”

She had to learn the Quran and the Hadith, memorizing vast portions in Arabic.

During her younger days she even entered a competition of reciting a long chapter in front of Islamic leaders and teachers. She was proud to win second place.

But her dad criticized her for not doing better.

“Most of my life, I was alone, by myself, alone,” she says. “I was a broken person in need for love from my family but I never received it from them.

“I tried to experience this love from Creator God, from Allah,” she adds. “In my prayer times, I prayed with my hands lifted up: ‘Please help my father to stop beating my mother. Please help my father to stop beating me.’ But no help came.

“God (Allah) is not a personable god to Muslims,” she says. “Allah does not say, ‘I love you,’ to Muslims.”

Then, Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi army overran Kuwait to take possession of its oil and start the unification process all Muslims idealize in the Quran. His soldiers raided homes, stole possessions, killed men and raped women.

Because of the carnage and suffering, her family applied for and was granted visas to the U.S. There her grandmother suffered a heart attack and two days later died at the hospital.

“I was devastated because I lost my best friend,” she remembers.

Her friend, Paula, seeing her saddened one day, asked her if she was OK. She burst into tears afresh.

“At that moment, only crying helped,” she says. Read the rest of Kuwaiti Muslim taught to hate Jews.

600 precious babies saved!

If you only prayed for one hour in front of an abortion clinic as part of the 40 Days for Life campaign, would it make much difference?

Remarkably, this year’s annual pro-life demonstration saved more than 600 babies, according to a video posted by 40 Days for Life.

“Abortion is ending in the United State of America and around the world,” Shawn Carney declared, president of 40 Days for Life.

“But things are getting worse before they get better on other fronts,” he added. “We’ve begun to see a wave of infanticide sweeping our nations not led by the fringe but by governors and candidates for presidents. It’s absolutely unprecedented.”

Recently, New York approved a bill that would allow late-term, viable fetuses to be aborted on the condition the abortionist believes it would be in the interest of the mother’s health, according to National Review.

Not to be outdone, Virginia state legislator Kathy Tran introduced legislation legalizing full-term pregnancy abortion and partial birth abortion. Illinois and New Mexico are weighing similar laws.

“It’s infanticide in the United States of America in 2019,” Shawn said. “There’s a hardness of heart, a coldness. There’s nothing greater than seeing your beautiful baby girl or beautiful baby boy. They have removed humanity from that beautiful moment of seeing your newborn.” Read the rest: lives saved by 40 Days for Life, powered by Unplanned

Meanwhile, the 40 Days for Life movement — which went nationwide in 2007 and involved 1 million volunteers in street prayer outside clinics — has played a part in shutting down 90 clinics, the video noted.

This year’s drive was energized by the blockbuster movie Unplanned, which documents Abby Johnson’s switch from Planned Parenthood clinic director to pro-life street prayer warrior who pleads with mothers to turn back at the clinic door.

Abby was the 26th out of 186 abortion workers to switch to pro-life, the video says. That switch and the subsequent of shutting down of her old clinic was the beginning of the 40 Days for Life movement.

How to steam fish fillet in bamboo steamer

For piping hot yet tender delicious fillets, a bamboo steamer is ideal! The trick is to line the basket trays with lettuce leaves (Romaine works well). I put lemon slices in with the lettuce so that the juices can saturate the fillet. Try 1 ½ lb of cod, halibut or salmon. Depending on the thickness of the filet, it will take 4 to 12 minutes; the flesh should whiten and lose its translucent appearance.

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and your favorite herbs. Or try the Chinese way with sprinkled fresh ginger and scallions on top. Find out the basics for use of bamboo steamers, including steaming broccoli.

Steaming broccoli with a bamboo steamer

It’s easy to want to eat more broccoli because it’s a superfood packed with nutrients and fiber for digestion. But broccoli is either too tough raw or wilted if boiled. This is where a bamboo steamer comes to the rescue! The steaming takes off the tough edge of the broccoli and keeps in the nutrients you crave. The bamboo basket brings a subtle authentic touch from China and keeps molecules from the metal steamer baskets from contaminating your food.

Here the steps to perfect steamed broccoli:

1. Cut into bite-size florets. I like to use pre-cut florets from Costco because they save me this time-consuming step. Most people prefer not to eat the stems anyway, but if you do eat the stems, that extra roughage is a windfall for your digestion.
   You can use wax paper liners or parchment sheets, which you can use by loosely wrapping around the vegetables.
2. Bring water in wok to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Let the steam filter through the cracks between the bamboo slats for 3 to 4 minutes. If you like the broccoli crisper, steam for less time. If you prefer tender florets, then steam for a bit longer.
   Add some pizzazz by adding bullion into your boiling water. Alternatively, cook the broccoli on the top basket with fish or chicken on the bottom. NOTE: If you cook a protein on the bottom, it will take longer, so you may want to remove the broccoli sooner and place the bamboo lid on the bottom basket.
3. A lot of people put butter or olive oil with herbs on their steamed broccoli. But I like the Chinese oyster sauce for a rich, appetizing flavor that will make you want more of this most healthy of vegetables.

Read about other tips for bamboo cooking.

Nuts and bolts post of bamboo steamers

Bamboo steamers are all the rage for a reason. It turns out that the ancient Chinese knew a thing or two about keeping nutrients and flavor in their ingredients. The double-tier bamboo basket provides the additional benefit of allowing flavors to inter-mingle. But you can amp up your flavor by boiling broth in the bottom water!

Once you have your bamboo steamer from China, here’s the simple steps that are absolutely necessary for best results:

• Line the bottom with lettuce or cabbage leaves. Alternatively, you can buy special wax paper liners that are easy to use. This step is important because the cooking food will otherwise stick to the bamboo slats that comprise the steamer and make a sticky mess. You can put your fish on the bottom tier and vegetables on the top one.
• Place the interlocking tiers into a wok or other pot with approximately two inches of water. Make sure the level of the food doesn’t submerge in the water or you will have boiled food! Simmer on low heat for the allotted time. Make sure the water doesn’t boil off.
• Serve and enjoy piping hot over rice!
• Clean the bamboo steamer with a soft dish soap, never in the dishwasher. Make sure it is thoroughly dry before storing in the cupboard. The same bamboo that makes for healthy and natural food is also delicate and susceptible to mold!
• The wok works best for the bamboo steamers, but an open skillet will work. Make sure the bamboo ring on the bottom is slightly submerged in the water to avoid burning (including slow burn).

These bamboo cooking baskets require a bit of learning curve, but once you get used to them, it’s easy to get addicted. The flavor and texture is superior to boiled vegetables! The fish comes out tender with no blackened burn marks or greasy oil! Read the rest of how-to-use bamboo steamers.

Christian researcher seeks breakthrough in cancer fight with lasers

Hadiyah-Nicole Green lost her adoptive parents to cancer, so she threw herself into the study of physics to cope with her loss.

She became one of only 66 black women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States between 1973 and 2012.

Hadiyah was born St. Louis, Missouri. She was orphaned at a very young age and raised by her aunt Oralee Smith and her uncle General Lee Smith, according to an NBC article.

She was always a strong student, studying at Alabama A&M University. After changing her major three times, she eventually decided on a degree in physics. She was the first in her family to obtain a bachelor’s degree.

It was at this moment of elation and euphoria, when everybody was celebrating her academic success, that her aunt announced that she had cervical/ovarian cancer.

Hadiyah was crushed. Her aunt was essentially her mother. What good was the college degree if she couldn’t harvest the benefits and enjoy them with her close family?

But the prognosis was even more grim: she had already lived with the cancer for eight years but refused treatment. Her aunt rejected treatments because of the painful side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.

“I didn’t understand it at first,” Hadiyah said.

Hadiyah took care of her for three months. Then Auntie died in 2005.

It was a huge blow.

Not too long afterward, her uncle was diagnosed with cancer as well. The difference was that her uncle received the treatment — and to confirm his wife’s concerns — the treatment was a horrible experience.

“He really had it bad. The treatment disfigured him,” Hadiyah said. “The man that raised me wasn’t the same. He just wasn’t the same person.” Read the rest about Hadiyah-Nicole Green Christian researcher fighting cancer.

3 abortions and then pro-life candidate?

From age 6 to 16, Lisa Luby Ryan was raped by her dad.

Her mom flagrantly committed adultery, inviting numerous men into the home. Her dad was drunk most of the time.

“Everything about my childhood was just lonely, it was hard, it was not what a child deserves to have,” she says on an I Am Second video. “I wanted a different life than the one I had. The course I was taking was a crash course.”

Today, Lisa Luby Ryan is an interior decorator from Dallas, Texas, who lost a bid for U.S. Congress on the Republican ticket in November 2018. She submitted to three abortions before coming to Jesus, repenting of her sins and then later running on an anti-abortion platform.

Only Jesus could straighten out the chaos of her life and heal her of the pain stemming from her childhood.

But with so much trauma and confusion derived from her upbringing, Lisa found it almost impossible to escape the sins of her parents. She dreamed of having a stable family but found she attracted the type of men who would take advantage of her.

“I continued to follow in the life of finding men who were abusive — what I knew, abusive alcoholics,” she says. “All I wanted was to be loved. But being loved for me was to have a sexual relationship. I was willing to do anything to have that.”

She met and married a man but left him for another.

“All of the things that I had promised and wanted to never do to my children, I was doing. I was repeating that behavior,” she says. “I felt dirty, I felt shameful, I felt guilty. I didn’t want the life I had, I wanted to be different.”

She felt like she had hit rock bottom, so she called out to the Lord. “Ok Lord, I’m going to just trust you, and I’m going to share the desires of my heart with You, and we’re going to just walk this out because You are all I’ve got.”

Two months later she met a man, Jay, whom she felt was sent straight to her from God.

“He loved me and he loved my children,” she says.

But God interrupted the engagement.

“How can I heal you if your not willing to heal yourself?” He told Lisa.

That day, Lisa gave Jay his ring back.

“God has spoken to me personally and I have to trust Him,” she says. “I have to let Him be the husband I never had, the father I never had, because otherwise our marriage would have never worked.”

She entered Christian counseling with a woman named Joyce. They prayed together and cried together. Lisa began peeling away all the layers of hurt, guardedness and coping mechanisms

After many sessions, Lisa believed she was done. She had forgiven her parents and her ex-husband.

But she hadn’t forgiven herself.

It turns out that she still hadn’t dealt with her deepest darkest secret. During her senior year in high school, Lisa had an abortion.

As she confessed to Joyce, Lisa thought she was done. But Joyce, sensing in the Spirit that Lisa was not done confessing, just sat there praying.

Then Lisa broke down.

“Ok, I’m going to tell you one last thing, and then I’m finished,” she says. Finish reading about Lisa Luby Ryan overcame abortions.

Almost aborted, Aaron Cole is one of the best Christian hip hop artists currently

Aaron Cole’s mom and dad nearly aborted him, but the breakout Christian Hip Hop star was too far along in the womb for the procedure to be legal.

“How does it feel to know you was unwanted… to know you was just one good late night pimping,” Cole raps on “Shouldn’t Be Here.” “It makes me asks is there any point of even living?”

Aaron’s dad was 19, his mom only 17, when he was conceived.

Today, Aaron, at only age 20, is a rap sensation signed to Gotee Records with three albums and other projects banging on the charts. His song “Right on Time” with Toby Mac has 7.4 million views on YouTube.

Aaron Tyrese Cole made it out of the womb in Bristol, Virginia, on February 28, 1999. Mom and dad stayed together and another baby was born. They separated and reunited when dad came with another child. Today, Aaron has three full siblings and one half sibling.

Dad was a hip hop artist who got saved somewhere in there, and Aaron picked up on his musical ways. The tyke was performing in front of friends and family from age 4. His dad produced an album for the little one titled Fourth Period.

His father had his own recording studio in his apartment and has helped Aaron with his music.

Aaron discovered Jesus for himself as a result of getting bullied for being a good kid.

“I remember in junior high just enjoying being a regular kid, but I would get picked on because I wasn’t smoking, drinking or getting in trouble,” he says. “One afternoon I told my dad what was going on and why, and he shared that he thought I was called for a purpose and that this calling would cost me to NOT be like everyone else.

“It was that moment that I encountered God for the first time for myself,” Aaron says. “And I knew I was born to do this and began writing and putting my own songs together.”

In 2016, Aaron’s parents told him the truth about his beginning, that he was going to be aborted. It was a huge blow. There was rejection but also relief. He owed God his life. Read the rest: Aaron Cole abortion.

Theif, saved in jail, returned $200K stolen goods when he got out

After years and years of ripping off Home Depot and other retailers Mark* finally got busted for theft. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 days in jail. So he scheduled his accumulated vacation time for his jail sentence, says Prison Chaplain Dan, who worked with Mark.

Mark went to Bible studies in the Los Angeles County Jail and got radically saved.

When he was released, he had $200,000 worth of stolen power tools that he had extracted by hiding them inside toilets and other places. He paid for the toilet. No one ever looked inside when he went through the checkout.

He knew he had to surrender the stolen goods as part of his repentance. He tried offering them to the local church, which refused them and instructed him to give them back to Home Depot. But giving them back would constitute evidence against him that could lead another conviction.

Mark was sincere about serving Jesus. So he went to Home Depot, and on videotape, gave everything back. Home Depot employees were shocked and grateful.

Mercifully, they didn’t press charges!

When Mike tried to return merchandise to his boss at a retailer, Mike wouldn’t have any part of it. Read the rest: does prison ministry do any good?

Musician found ‘ecstasy’ in Christian EDM music

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and Cole Walowac, a Washington D.C. native, didn’t know which to take: the assured but boring career path or to follow his dreams combining music and ministry.

He was two years out of high school, not holding a job, making music with his church friend, Jon White, under the band name “Capital Kings.” They were doing something completely unique: Christian electronic dance music. Prior to the Capital Kings, all EDM was secular and played at the raves — all night dance parties renowned for ecstasy consumption.

Cole liked the music, not the drug abuse.

He was living at home on mom and dad’s tab seemingly endlessly. Finally, his parents delivered an ultimatum: Cole needed to do something productive with his life. He needed to grow up, move out and be responsible.

It was a frightening prospect because music was his passion and he hadn’t figure out how to make money at it. Some friends encouraged him to move to the Christian music capital of the nation: Nashville.

“We took a leap of faith and did it,” Walowac says on a This is Me video. “I just trusted God was leading me a whole other direction in my life. Doubt is like a disease. Even if you don’t see results immediately, it will lead to something good eventually if you work hard.”

The duo signed a record deal with Gotee Records and released an eponymous album in 2013, which charted in the Top 5 of Christian Albums on Billboard. The Houston Chronicle noted that no other Christian EDM met with so much crossover success. Toby Mac, Mandisa and Group 1 Crew all took note and started collaborations.

Their second album, titled simply II, was released in 2015. They did remixes for Britt Nicole, David Crowder Band, Nathalie Grant and Colton Dixon.

“Musically, EDM is very youthful. I think it’s just… Read the rest of What happened to the Capital Kings?

Rough biker went to church to confront people, was confronted by Holy Spirit

By Lortourme Hang’andu —

As a biker in the 1960s, Joe Campbell always carried a gun with him. He had gotten into many fights and stolen from people. He needed to be ready for anything.

“I carried a gun around,” he said, “because of the amount of people I had wronged.”

His life was a chaotic mix of violence, drugs, alcohol, gambling and other biker gang activity in Illinois, and he knew it “would destroy my marriage,” Campbell says.

When his wife Connie got saved, Joe didn’t immediately join her. In fact, he mocked her and constantly hounded her to return to their former sinful lifestyle.

After six months, Connie invited a church couple over for lunch and when they skipped out on the date, Joe got mad — mad enough to go to the church of 25 members and find out why they were a no-show. (At the time, Joe and Connie didn’t have a landline phone to call and find out.)

But instead of confronting the couple for standing them up, Joe got confronted by the Holy Spirit in the sermon. At the altar call, the lanky, longhaired, rough and tumble character responded to the invitation for salvation.

At 29 years old, he didn’t immediately feel any different. But Jesus had come into his heart at that moment in 1971.

The next day, two of his friends came to visit and asked him if it were true, according to word on the street, that he “got religious.”

Yes, he said.

They invited him to their normal routine of parties, but instead of using and abusing drugs, Joe witnessed to all his old friends. He was a changed man.

This was the 1960s, a time when it wasn’t uncommon for churches to hold revival services every night for a month. Joe’s church was in the midst of one of those extended revivals, and he attended faithfully.

After a month, he poured his Jack Daniel’s down the drain and disposed of his drugs. Nobody knew about his stash, so nobody told him he should do this. It was simply the Holy Spirit who convicted him, and he spontaneously responded.

“I didn’t have a real problem turning away from the drugs and alcohol,” he said. “It was just such a powerful experience that my wife and I just walked away from.” Read the rest of biker to Jesus.

Ada Betsabe almost signed but execs’ Luciferianism scared her off

As a three year old, Ada Betsabe Ruiz would sing in the church and wind up crying under the power of the Holy Spirit.

But when she was 14, she left the church because of controlling and abusive leaders. She became a skeptic and rebelled against everything she had learned. God had been “misrepresented” to her, so she turned her back on Him.

As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic with her parents, she lived from age three in New York’s Bronx where people blasted from cars either salsa, bachata or hip hop. Biggie and Pun enthralled her, and she started mimicking and composing verses herself.

With no moral compass, Ada fell into lesbianism. She began a formal relationship in 2012 with a domestic partner who had no background in Christianity. Their home was adorned with Buddhas and crystals. “We were both really searching,” she says.

Ada launched a secular hip hop career in English, and she was gaining notoriety. She got a handler and was at the point of signing a major record label. She attended a music conference in Los Angeles in April 2014 to interview with executives.

But the bosses and her new friends did more than just worldly music; they were into Luciferianism, and they invited Ada to participate. They drank wine mixed with blood and apparently performed human sacrifices. Somebody in the cult died mysteriously during the conference, Ada tells God Reports.

Frightened by what she saw and by what was happening, Ada declined to join.

“I had the opportunity to be a part of it, but instead decided to run to Jesus,” she says.

She never signed the record deal and, no longer “skeptical” about the reality of supernatural things, went to her Airbnb in Hollywood to reconcile with Jesus.

“I was terrified after the things that took place in LA,” Ada says. “This situation, however, proved to me that evil was real and good was real.”

Ada returned to the East Coast and shared with her domestic partner what she had experienced. Both of them went to church, repented of their sins and broke off their relationship, she says. Read the rest Spanish female Christian rapper scared to Jesus by Luciferianism.

Confessions of an ex-junk food junkie

I have a confession: I love junk food.

I would probably eat it everyday.

But I know that it will kill me. It’s loaded with calories, salt, fat, preservatives. It comes up short on nutrition. So I avoid it.

I’m not so much of a health freak to NEVER eat junk food. But I try to limit it to once a week. The rest of the time, I try to stay health.

Officially, weekends are “cheat days” to not live in dietary misery. I indulge an ice cream on Friday night. I don’t watch my calories.

I’m the tall guy in middle. I’m 51.

But Monday through Friday lunch, I’m pretty good about being intelligent about food selection. My tongue doesn’t feel good; my body does. I enjoy the benefits of feeling healthy depriving my tongue of daily delights (those are saved for weekends).

And the benefits I feel in my body are great. I have energy. I don’t get sick. I go to the gym and have strength. I enjoy walking up stairs without struggling. I don’t go to the doctor or the hospital. I do my work with zest and passion and don’t have to lie down and recover. My body delights in health (though my tongue gets deprived of the rush of emotion over super tasty foods).

Here’s what’s amazing and possible: I actually enjoy the healthy food now. I savor the broccoli, the asparagus, the not-fried chicken, the salads, the food without heavy cream sauces and cooking without grease and fat.

Yes, it’s possible.

My experience is that you can literally retrain your taste buds.

I think it takes years. It has taken me years. Right now, I’m actually grossed out by soda if I drink it. As hard as that may to believe.

My journey towards healthful eating and healthfulness has led me to selling bamboo steamers on Amazon. People are absolutely fanatical about bamboo. They conserve nutrients better and absorb some of the steam so that Chinese buns come out right. I have discovered that steaming fish fillets to take into work with me is NOT slower than warming fish sticks in the toaster oven. If you want to buy one and try it for yourself, here’s the link.

Product of rape wins beauty pageant

When Valerie Gatto’s uncommon beauty allowed her to win the Miss Pennsylvania pageant in 2014, it was impossible to imagine she was a product of rape.

Her mom was only 19 and planning on law school when she was attacked at knifepoint, raped and nearly killed.

The assailant wanted to prevent his victim from going to the cops by silencing her permanently, but an unusual flash of light scared him and he ran from the scene.

How does light emerge from the depths of darkness and despair?

“Mom always told me I was her light,” she told LifeSite News.

Valerie found out about her conception in the third grade when, when she wondered why she didn’t have a father like other kids and asked her mom.

Absorbing this difficult news, she never accepted an attitude of victimhood. Her mother, who had to abandon her plans for law school to take care of her baby, brought her to church and got Valerie involved in social outreach.

She was raised by her mother and grandparents in a stable, loving home.

“I knew God put me here for a purpose, and He’s the reason my mother and I were saved,” she told CBN. Mom “always would tell me I was her light. I am the light to illuminate the darkness for all to see, and I look at it from that moment of conception, there has been that light associated with darkness.”

Valerie got involved in clothing drives, giving gifts to children in hospital care, and Operation Dear Abby, which gives cards to U.S. military members stationed overseas, according to LifeSite.

“I live my life not thinking of it as something negative but looking at how to turn a negative into a positive,” Valerie told CBN Read the rest abortion in case of rape.

Are atheists rational and scientific? Studies debunk publicity

Clay Routledge

It is said that atheists are free-thinkers, rational, logical and scientific; people of faith need a psychological crutch, believe fairy tales and superstitions and are anti-scientific.

Have you ever heard that before?

No doubt some disdainful atheist disrespected your faith with a reworking of that line of rhetoric.

Well, it turns out they’re wrong. Atheists are not as freethinking, rational, and scientific as they may proclaim.

A host of new psychological and sociological studies have come out that undermine their claims.

Renowned atheist Richard Dawkins has called Templeton Foundation studies “atheist bashing.”

University of North Dakota Psychology Professor Clay Routledge has shown that atheists are prone to “magical thinking” and lead “secret religious lives,” according to research funded by the Templeton Foundation.

Routledge found that many atheists believe in cosmic justice and even that UFOs exist.

“We (atheists) don’t have the rational upperhand we often claim,” noted Dominic Johnson in The Guardian. “Though we don’t believe in a higher being in the traditional sense, we cannot claim to act simply in the realm of science and reason.”

Johnson, an atheist, points to widespread superstition in the United Kingdom despite postmodernism’s attempts to dethrone God. Recent surveys in Britain reveal that 74% of people knock on wood for good luck, 65% cross their fingers and 26% avoid the number 13.

Lois Lee

“Atheists pride themselves on being rational. We believe our beliefs and actions are taken from the world of science and reason. We don’t waste our time on wishy washy notions such as higher forces or supernatural beings. Or do we?” Johnson said in a 2017 video. “Don’t be so smug atheists. You are as irrational as everyone else.”

Yet scholars have arrogantly declared their triumph over God. In such books as Jesse Bering’s Belief Instinct and Michael Shermer’s Believing Brain, faith, they say, is the byproduct of a weak mind; teach people to be empirical and use critical thinking, and the illogical notions of primitive man will go the way of cave dwelling and hunter-gathering.

But that narrative is being upended by objective science.

“Recent studies have shown unbelief to be both correlated with and even mediated by a cognitive malfunction: autism spectrum disorder,” the Templeton website says. “If CSR has shown religious belief to be both natural and normal, is unbelief thereby unnatural; are unbelievers abnormal (and irrational)?”

Stuart Vyse, a behavioral scientist with a PhD, demonstrated on the Skeptical Inquirer website that millennials are flocking to astrology. They eschew church attendance and categorize themselves as “nones,” according to Pew Research.

But while traditional faith is declining, superstition is rising.

People who hardly ever go to church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts. They have flocked to “paranormal tourism” (that means, going to haunted houses). An estimated 1,200 haunted houses in America generated around $500 million in yearly revenue, double from 10 years earlier, according to Routledge.

“Many who reject religion are attracted to what I describe as supernatural-lite beliefs,” he says. “Supernatural-lite” means that they believe in outside influence on society, say by aliens, and wrap their beliefs in pseudoscientific and technological language, Routledge says.

“Science increasingly shows that atheists are no more rational than theists,” says Lois Lee, a research fellow at the University of Kent. “Indeed, atheists are just as susceptible as the next person to ‘group-think’ and other non-rational forms of cognition.”

There are an estimated 1.1 billion atheists and non-believers on the planet. While much scientific study has been dedicated to understand religious believers, atheists have not been studied much at all. Read the rest: are atheists rational and scientific?

First he got mugged, then…

In the cage, Mark Munoz is known as the Filipino Wrecking Machine who bested Tim Boetsch after Munoz recovered from a foot injury and depression-induced obesity. Outside, Mark Munoz is the nicest guy in the UFC and a Christian whose life changed when he turned to God.

“You look back on what happened and all the events that happen in your life, and I see God’s hand on it all,” Mark says in a This Is Me video. “And now I can give people hope.”

Mark’s introduction to professional fighting came by way of getting mugged in the 8th grade. Five kids shoe-lace-tackled him from behind, beat and kicked him and stripped him of his Jordans. He walked home barefoot and, ashamed, faked sickness for as long as he could to not go back to school.

“What happened to your J’s,” a friend taunted.

Mark didn’t want to recount his humiliation on the street. But eventually word got out. That’s when a friend, wanting him to learn how to stand up to bullies and young thugs, invited him to train in wrestling, but Mark wanted no part of it.

“Nah man,” he retorted. “You guys wear tight leotards and touch each other in funny places, man. I’m good.”

His buddy wasn’t going to be denied so quickly. “I bet you I can take you down in 10 seconds,” he challenged.

“Yeah right,” Mark responded. “I’m 150 pounds, and you’re barely 100 pounds. There’s no way you’re going to take me down.”

Mark broke into a fighting stance.

With two seconds, his friend darted in, picked him up and slammed him on his back.

“I’m like, if wrestling gives you superpowers, I want it,” Mark surmised.

What started in the eighth grade carried through to his senior year in high school. Mark became state champion twice, placed second at junior nationals and second at junior worlds, he says. He earned a full-ride scholarship to Oklahoma State University. He was on the national team twice and tried out for the Olympic team.

“But God had different plans,” he says.

He returned to California to study at UC Davis and met Urijah Favor, who introduced him to MMA. At first, Mark wanted no part of professional fighting; he was coaching and had a wife with four kids while getting his master’s degree.

“And probably my wife won’t allow me to do it either,” he told Urijah.

Just like the wrestling friend in eighth grade, Urijah wasn’t going to be denied so quickly.

Mark wound up going to a UFC practice. The “Who’s Who of UFC” at the time were all there. Spontaneously, he got in the ring to spar with Randy Couture, a legend in UFC and former Army sergeant with training in Greco-Roman wrestling.

Mark didn’t know what the MMA techniques were and was trying to learn and incorporate them in the ring.

“I end up snapping Randy Couture’s head back a little bit, and Urijah smacked into my chest and said, ‘See bro, I told you homie, you can do this,’” Mark remembers. Read the rest: Mark Munoz Christian UFC fighter.

Shed stress, shed pounds

Maybe your problem is not sugar after all.

It might be cortisol. It’s a useful hormone that helps you kick into “fight or flight” mode.

Your adrenal glands dump into your blood system during stress. Its purpose was to — occasionally — heighten blood pressure and heartbeat when in danger of a predator or war in ancient times.

Nowadays, sabre tooth tigers, Black Plague or invading mongols are not a threat. No, your problems are worse- bills, deadlines, domestic friction, rejection, loneliness, competition, low self esteem, weight gain, sickness. Plus, the world is coming to an end (again)

We have more stress points than any civilization ever, and as a result our cortisol levels are puncturing the stratosphere. Excess cortisol cues hypertension, high blood sugar, inflammation, depression, insomnia, atherosclerosis and a bunch of other cools ways to die or live in misery before dying. This is serious! There’s even a full-blown academic journal dedicated to its study: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress.

We’re stressed about stress.

Of course, people develop coping mechanisms to lighten the overload. There are some that are escapist and some are counteractions: alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, binge-watching, oversleeping, social isolation, scape-goating, gaming.

One more: dunking donuts.

Or candy, or soda.

Sugar gives an instant pleasure from a dopamine release in your bloodstream. Dopamine is the happy hormone. It counteracts the cortisol and offsets it, if temporarily. It’s an tangible relief.

Behold then!

Excessive obesity then is not just a product of the prevalence of added sugar in grocery store items. It’s not just a product an overly sedentary lifestyle. Lack of information about nutrition alone cannot be blamed — nor can the marketing fusillade of the food industry.

Our weight problem can be traced to unhealthy stress levels.

You don’t need to strengthen your willpower to resist that chocolate bar. You need to lower your stress levels. Read the rest of the article for practical tips to lower stress and thus shed pounds.

Who knew Sheila Walsh suffered mental illness

Under the semblance of a successful Christian music career, Scottish-born New Wave singer Sheila Walsh hid a rumbling volcano of mental illness that started when her father suffered a brain aneurysm and lashed out at the 5-year-old girl.

The volcano finally erupted in 1992 when she checked herself into a mental institution to come to grips with the rejection, depression and suicidal inclinations. Her recovery — and the help of Jesus — are the subject of her book Honestly.

“I was very much a daddy’s girl. I thought my father was the most amazing man on earth,” Sheila recounts. The tenderness and warmth ended brusquely with an aneurysm he suffered one night. After he returned from the hospital a few weeks later, he was paralyzed on the left side of his body and could only make grunting, animal-like noises.

“Sometimes during acute brain injury, the person hits out instinctively at the one person they believe will love them,” Sheila says. “But you don’t understand that when you’re five years old.

“The only one my father would take his anger out on was me,” she adds. “He would spit in my face or pull lumps of my hair out. As a child I thought, ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

One night, dad approached Sheila from behind and raised his cane to smash it down on her skull. If not for the growling of her little dog Heidy, he might have achieved his twisted intent.

“I don’t know whether I pulled it or pushed, but he fell and hit the ground hard,” she remembers. “He lay there like an animal just roaring.”

Four men were needed to carry him to the nearest asylum in Ayr, Scotland.

He escaped the asylum, dragged himself to the river, where he entangled himself in the salmon nets to drown. Search and rescue crews found him dead the next morning. He had committed suicide.

Sheila’s mother arrived home dressed in black. She took down every photo of dad from the walls and stowed them in a suitcase under her bed.

“We never talked about him again,” she says.

“All I knew is that I had done something to make my father hate me, or he had seen something in me that he despised,” she adds.

Neighbors would try to encourage her: “Sheila, you’re just like your dad.” They meant mannerisms or singing voice, but Sheila feared they meant she was mentally ill like him.

“What I heard was: ‘There’s a crack in your soul like your father, and one of these days, no matter how fast you run, it’s going to catch up with you,’” she says. “I spent the next many, many years trying to make sure that whatever it was my father saw, no one else would ever see.”

She finished studies in theology at the London Bible College (now called London School of Theology) in 1979. She studied music at the London Academy of Operatic Art. She also worked as an evangelist for Youth for Christ in Britain and sang in a group called Oasis.

In 1981, she released a solo album of New Wave music with Christian lyrics entitled Future Eyes. She toured the United States opening for Phil Keaggy. In 1992, Pat Robertson made her co-host on the 700 Club.

“I found the perfect hiding place: Christian ministry,” she says. “Outwardly it looked like God had really put his hand of favor on my life. But inside I was still the same scared little girl. It felt as if I was on the edge of this volcano and this distant rumble was getting louder and louder every day, and I didn’t know what to do.”

She stayed busy and constantly filled her world with music and noise.

One day while interviewing a guest on the 700 Club on live T.V., the guest asked her how she was doing. “I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t get the chance to pull my guard up,” she says. “And that day I did what I vowed I would never do. I cried on live T.V.”

She went away from work that day feeling naked before the world. The ghosts from the past had finally caught up with her, and she didn’t know how to deal with them. She went to the coast and walked out into the water, with every intention of drowning herself like her father.

What held her back was the thought of her mother receiving the phone call that her daughter had repeated the curse of inheritance.

She checked into a psych hospital. “I felt I had gone to hell,” she says. She was in a simple room with a chair, and personnel checked on her every 15 minutes.

A man came in at 3:00 and gave her a stuffed animal, a lamb.

“As he was leaving, he turned and said, ‘Sheila, the Shepherd knows where to find you,’” she remembers. Sheila was treated for a month and never saw that man again. Read the rest of Sheila Walsh mental health and suicide.

She turned to witchcraft for protection until God called her ‘daughter’

Merari Rodriguez earned the nickname “the Black Widow.”

“The black widow lures her mate and after she’s done, she kills him,” Merari says in a 700 Club video. “And that’s exactly what I was doing.”

Her father left when she was just 6, and her mom was working many jobs. Merari was always with a babysitter, who happened to be married to a police officer. The cop exploited little Merari for a year.

“The words he would speak to me were so controlling. I remember him putting such fear in me,” she remembers. “The message he was telling me pretty much was that I belonged to him. I felt like it was my fault. The hatred for myself began to build.”

Her mother eventually picked up on the activity and intervened to put a stop to it. But when Merari was 11 years old, a family friend took advantage of her. Her mother confronted him with Merari present, and the man opened the Bible in front of them, put his hand on top and swore to his innocence.

When Merari saw his total lack of fear or respect for God, she assumed, “God does not exist.”

“I decided right there that I would never want to hear in my life of God or the name of God — ever,” she recalls with tears.

She started to act out of rebellion by drinking, smoking, skipping school.

Merari also encountered many abusive relationships and had three kids while she was still a teenager.

“I felt like I had become a label,” she says. “I felt like I had written all over myself: ‘I’m fatherless, I’m alone, and I have no protection so come and hurt me, use me, and abuse me.”

When Merari was 18 she thought she found the answer through witchcraft and Goth subculture.

“They seemed so together and always talking about power and how you could now have the power to control someone else,” she says. “All of my life I was controlled. Now I wanted to control those around me.”

She was baptized into witchcraft and given a special name.

Merari began casting spells to control people around her. Now she felt like she could protect herself.

She continued in the occult, but when the other witches wanted to initiate her children, Merari drew the line. She moved out of town and wanted a fresh start. She thought she had moved on, but at home one night she had a hair-raising vision.

“I see this beast just standing in a yard and it was a form of a lion, but he was awful-looking,” Merari says. “And I look and he opens his mouth and I noticed someone is in his mouth, and so I yell out ‘Oh my God, help! He’s got someone in his mouth!’ and when he turned the person right before he’s going to swallow, I looked and I saw it was me.

“And I saw myself and he began to squeeze, and I could hear my bones cracking and I could hear myself gasping for air and blood just gush out of my mouth,” she remembers.

Then she heard a different voice, one that she didn’t recognize but wasn’t one to stir fear. It was soothing.

“Merari, I’ve been calling you for a long time,” the voice beckoned. “If you don’t come to me now, he’s going to kill you.”

Somehow she knew the voice belonged to God. She asked for time, but God spoke a soft word to her that melted her heart.

“Daughter,” He said.

She fell to the floor crying out: “God, Lord, Please don’t let me die. I receive You. I don’t know You and I’m sorry. But thank you for showing me where I was.” Read the rest: Black Widow in witchcraft turns to God after Father calls her ‘daughter.’

Russian Armenian ex-atheist Christian rapper who signs black artists for his label

At age 10, Ruslan became a decided atheist after his father, immigrating from Azerbaijan with the family, dumped his mother and married another woman.

“At the time, my mom was so distraught over this, she stopped going to this Armenian Orthodox church where we found a lot of community,” he says on a video on his YouTube channel. “I was 10, 11 or 12, and I was literally convinced that there was no God. I was saying, ‘I’m an atheist,’ at a very young age.”

But when Ruslan, who today is a top Christian hip hop artist, got to high school, he was torn between girls: one was Christian, the other was Jehovah’s Witness. He decided to settle the dispute of whether Jesus was God by studying. He read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and the encyclopedic New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.

With his wife, Monette, and son, Levi.

The verdict came in.

“I — based on a very intellectual rational experience — came to faith,” he says. “My faith wasn’t hinged upon an experience. It hinged on the evidence that Jesus was God and He resurrected from the death.”

Ruslan Karaoglanov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan to a Russian mother who had been adopted by an Armenian family and an Armenian father. As an infant in the 1980s, he contracted an acute urinary tract infection, and a doctor at a remote clinic on the Caspian Sea performed a circumcision to save his life.

Five years later, Muslim extremists fanned out through the region to massacre Christian men and boys. Toting automatic weapons, rebels fighting the Soviet Army very nearly killed Ruslan, but his mom argued they were Muslims and showed her son’s circumcision as proof (in that region of the world, Christians do not usually circumcise while Muslims do).

“No! No! No!” Marina shouted in Russian, as narrated by Christianity Today. “We’re not Armenians. Look, my son is circumcised!”

The ruse worked.

The reign of terror didn’t abate, and finally the family applied for visas to America on the basis of religious persecution. They settled in San Diego in 1990.

Little Ruslan spoke only Russian and was one of just five a few “white” kids mixed with “black and brown” youngsters at school. His apartment complex and community had roughly the same ratio.

So while he studied English, Ruslan also learned “basketball, break dancing, graffiti and rap,” he wrote to God Reports via Instagram DM. “My experience with the black community is they tend to be very gracious and welcoming of outsiders. Specifically black church folk. I’ve never felt out of place or anything. Always the opposite.”

Ruslan free-styled with his friends from age 10 and performed at open mic night by age 12. He bought as many hip hop CDs as he could and started gravitating towards the gang culture of the hip hop in that era. For attempting to break in to a house, he was arrested and put on probation at age 12.

As part of his probation, he was required to do community service, so he decided to perform it at a church where a lady named Charee, an ex convict who converted radically to Christ, attended. He cleaned the church but also heard the Word. People kept prophesying to him: “You’re going to do things for the Lord.”

Afterwards, his mom still worried and wondered how to help her son escape the bad influences, so she moved to San Marcos, to the immediate north of San Diego. Ruslan got better grades, stayed out of trouble and stayed in the rap game. “Yo, you’re really dope,” friends told him repeatedly.

“I was super into basketball and thought I was going to play for the NBA. In my sophomore year, I got cut from my JV basketball team” at Vista High School, Ruslan says on a video. “Ever since then, I made the mental switch that I was going to take music more seriously. I started entering all the talent shows. I won second place in our high school’s battle of the bands in 2001.” Read the rest: Ruslan Russian Armenian ex atheist Christian immigrant rapper.

Step up your steaming game

For those who are looking to level up their kitchen skills, a bamboo steamer offers a more natural way to steam fish and vegetables — and it’s not just for Chinese cooking. Steaming conserves nutrients better than most other types of cooking. Of course, it reduces fat content because no oil is needed to keep the food from sticking to the pan.

I’m going to be honest: The bamboo steamer sounded pretty exotic to me, and I imagined it would more difficult to use. What I found was that it really isn’t difficult. Here’s the down and dirty truth: Because I’m addicted to “fast cooking,” I used to throw frozen fish sticks into the toaster oven. They took about 6 minutes. Now I place refrigerated fillets on Napa cabbage leaves in my steamer. It takes about 6 minutes.

The kicker: I’m moving away from processed food.

This is a huge bonus because prepared and package convenient food means “processed.” Every time you eat processed food, you’re taking a hit of salt, sugar and fat.

You can use a bowl to keep the food from sticking to the bamboo. I prefer the Napa cabbage.

My favorite brand of fish sticks said on the label “lightly processed,” so I thought I was doing well. Then I checked the sodium content, and guess what: it was high. Salt is used to cover up a lot of mishaps in the processed food industry. It gets added to create craving and hook repeat customers. You don’t even realize it’s there, but it’s pulling you back to another purchase.

When I steam, I control the amount of salt, which is creating a heart disease epidemic in the United States.

The end of the frozen fish stick

One more thing: washing. Is cleaning the bamboo steamer more difficult than the toaster over tray. I used to soak the toaster oven tray in water with dish soap and then scrub it with stainless steel scouring pad. It took a tool on my sensitive skin.

Now I use a soap-saturated sponge on the bamboo steamer, rinse thoroughly and let dry. The drying is the tricky point on the bamboo steamer. It has to dry thoroughly or mold or mildew and grow. I have found that if you leave the top off and store it on an open shelf after drying, it’s good.

The net time for cleaning? The bamboo steamer is quicker and easier.

This is my experience with the bamboo steamer. Why don’t you tell me your yours in the comments?

Would you like to buy a 10-inch bamboo steamer? I’m selling to supplement my ministry.