Paul Ernst was a natural tinkerer who based his outlook on life on the material world that could be seen, quantified and studied.
“I liked knowing how things worked,” Paul says in a CBN video. “I wanted to drill down to the basis of something where it was, you know, like taking apart an alarm clock or later a motorcycle or a car engine.”
Attracted to sciences, he graduated from college with a degree in chemistry. He didn’t bother much with the notion of God because if he existed, he couldn’t be documented by scientific means.
“Even though I might think about where the universe came from, ‘Where there’s a God,’ ‘Is there life after death?’ I pushed those into unknowables.
“The picture I had of Christians is that since they weren’t in science, they were in another realm that was unknowable, and some of it actually looked kind of silly to me and I just wasn’t interested in that.”
He stayed the course of scientific atheism through his 40s, but when he turned 50, a nagging sense of his mortality began to irritate him.
“I had a fear of dying,” Paul says. “I didn’t want to go into oblivion or even, or worse yet, into some kind of judgment.”
A friend, Tom Anderson, composed a paper called “A Lawyer Gives a Defense of the Divinity of Christ.” After reading it, Paul realized it made a lot of sense.
“I knew if this is true, this changes everything. This is huge. So I could immediately tell that this was something big that needed to be pursued,” he says. “But the bigger part of the picture is this individual had a roadmap for connecting the dots to where I, for the first time, saw the possibility of knowing whether it was true or not. And I thought ‘I’m not going to live forever; maybe I’d better look into these things and settle them.’” Read the rest: skeptical intellectual, at 50, decided to study more thoroughly the God he had dismissed as ‘unknowable’ when he was younger.
For 20 years, Rob McCoy preached in his pulpit and never faced persecution, but when he ventured into politics, he got death threats, received hate mail and was stalked by menacing figures.
“You don’t have the right to shut down churches and let Marxists run amok in our cities,” McCoy said in the Citizens Journal.
The U.S. Supreme Court just handed down July 24th a discouraging 5-4 ruling for Nevada churches that have been facing suffocating restrictions while casinos are relatively free to return to business.
He was engaged to someone else when he met his wife. Because his girlfriend got pregnant, his college group pastor suggested they expedite marriage. This brought a crisis with his parents because the girl was Hispanic.
In an unusual coincidence, Michelle’s grandmother — also married to a Navy man, Admiral Richard Fowler — had hosted the baby shower and donated the crib towards little Rob McCoy years earlier. His parents were pleased with Michelle.
“You have two weeks to live.”
Creating and selling in-vogue art pieces brought her fame and finances. She married, had three kids and moved to Hawaii where she and her husband, John, ran two art galleries. Vera had all the pieces of success.
“Acute Leukemia, in the absence of urgent treatment, is rapidly fatal,” he says. “It is typically within weeks without treatment you will die.”
Born in a strict Shia Muslim Pakistani family in South London, Rayeesa was becoming too westernized, too worldly, according to her family, because she wanted to… play tennis.
One night Rayeesa and her sister tried to escape. In their flight, they tried to enlist the assistance of some guards. But when the guards tried to get “overly friendly” with them, they resisted their advances. Giving up, the guards instead forced them to return home.
She never did.
While Covid-19 has killed myriads, shut down economies and closed churches around the world, the deadly virus has liberated thousands of exploited sex workers in India, according to a report from Project Rescue.
Because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s particularly drastic quarantine, there are no businesses open, no transit, and no industry. With the streets virtually deserted, brothels have no customers and human traffickers are simply releasing their prey rather than have to feed them without them generating any income, Grant says.
Her mother was scolding Demetrius Fears because the 4th grader was STARTING homework at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday.
Dee’s grandma, Yvonne, wasn’t too strong in the Lord at that time. But the Holy Spirit kicked in and she began praying and prophesying that Uncle Robert would live. “She spoke life over him in the name of Jesus,” Dee says.
First there was blood on the pillowcase. Second, her husband slept all day, had circles under his eyes, and a persistent bad attitude. Eventually, he lost his job, his car and his dignity.
When Norma accepted Jesus into her heart in 1997, the marriage was on a fast train to Splitsville. Her friend, Sandra, who had evangelized her tirelessly for three years, encouraged Norma to contend for restoration of their relationship.
By Nazarii Baytler —
The only times when she considered the moral ramifications of her job was when she worked in the intensive care unit for newborns.
From a very young age, Bob Siegel identified with being a Jew.
Those self-centered characteristics came to head one day when Jews for Jesus visited the campus and set up a sign.
Because he didn’t much believe in prayer, Roy Davidson declined when some men on a missions trip offered to pray for his sharp ulcer pain.
Additionally, his stomach was lined with scar tissue.
Reclaiming the heritage left by Martin Luther King Jr. and William Wilberforce, a group of Christians is preaching and baptizing on the street corner of Minneapolis where George Floyd’s life was snuffed out by a rogue cop. They’re seeking to effect real social change from the ground up.
Pastor Curtis has labored for 38 years in a neighborhood that used to be overrun with gangs, on the same corner of E. 38th St and Chicago Avenue where Floyd was murdered. His patient service has helped multitudes escape sinful lifestyles and come to Christ.
“I came here and I was broken,” said WYAM’s Christophe Ulysse in Fox News. “It affects team members differently, but those of us of color, as we’re here, we’re watching the change happen through the gospel. My heart is so filled with hope. Those in the neighborhood are saying this is unprecedented unity. They’re feeling an outpouring of love and hope from this nation.”
Erik and Mary Lanka worked hard and partied hard until alcohol became a nightmare. Then Mary delivered an ultimatum: Either me or the booze.
Their firstborn son, Zach, arrived soon. “I didn’t have time for him,” Mary says. “I was too busy.”
Swarmed with doubts about his family’s Hinduism, Rahil Patel, a respected Swami priest in London, thumbed through a children’s Bible in a bookstore.
“Hinduism is a canvas of hundreds of religions with different doctrines and ideas and philosophies,” Rahil says. “I was so desperate to search for God.”
But he didn’t immediately renounce Hinduism. He kept an open mind and continued his studies. After all, his parents had brought him up that way and millions of people worldwide adhere to Hinduism. He ought to give it a fair shake, he thought.
Matthew McPheron just wanted a cheap high, but heroin drove him to the streets. He slept on a playground, using a smelly trashbag as a blanket.
When it comes to finding the reason he fell into drugs, Matthew can’t blame his dad, who was first a fireman and then a minister. Mom left him alone during his early years — and then left him for good in Youngstown, Ohio.
“I took a really selfish perspective, where it was like, ‘I’m being abandoned again,’ Matt recalls. “So it made those walls go right back up.”
Unattended by his career-ambitious parents, Jim Rouches discovered his older brother’s stash of pot and LSD when he was only seven.
By middle school, he was a committed pothead. His parents divorced. After misbehaving with his mom, he was moved to his dad’s, where he shaped up for a time.
“It was supposed to be a private moment of closure for me and my dog, but I recorded it for Mission K9,” the Texas service that places retired service dogs in loving homes, Thomas Locke told God Reports. “They put it on Tiktok and it just blew up.
“These dogs have unconditional love,” Thomas says. “They don’t care if you’re white black, Christian, not a Christian, Muslim, they don’t care. All they want is love. They don’t judge. How beautiful is that?”
But when Thomas saw the 90-pound animal, his heart was moved and he took the dog to his home to Pearland, south of Houston.
Left with the baby sitter, 4-year-old Angel Frias, one of nine siblings, was approached by a blonde woman who led him in a sinner’s prayer. She looked bright, almost angelic.
“That’s when I got into more of mess. I became a problem to society and not a solution.”
As Col. Carlyle “Smitty” Harris flew over the targeted bridge on a bombing run in Northern Vietnam in 1965, anti-aircraft fire blew out the single engine to his F-105 Thunderchief. He ejected deep inside enemy territory.
“Mrs. Harris, Smitty has been shot down and his plane was seen in a ball of fire and there was no chute sighted,” they informed her, according to CBN.
His fellow pilots didn’t see his parachute, so they assumed he died when the plane hit the ground and exploded.
To counteract the devastating torture campaign, Smitty recalled and taught to his fellow prisoners a secret code system to communicate. It was called tap code and had been developed by American POWs in German camps. Smitty had learned it from an instructor.
The MAGAhulk who erupted on social media after appearing at #OpenCalifornia rallies all over the state is a Christian who walked away from God after his mom died of cancer when he was 17.
But at age 25, a series of “eye-opening miracles” eventually brought him back to Jesus — things like financial miracles. He found himself in a church service thinking, “I was too far gone to come back. God didn’t want me anymore.”
At 6’4” and 335 pounds of lean muscle mass, he carries a commanding presence, dressed in a dark blue 45 T-shirt and MAGA cap with a Trump flag and American flag slung over his shoulder.
When Cornelia Jude came home drunk from clubbing at 5:00 a.m., she would see her husband sitting on the bed, praying, and she hated him for it.
At 18, she escaped home by marrying, but her young husband was also a drug addict who beat her so badly that she had to have her teeth fixed by a dentist.
Cornelia began to suffer panic attacks, nightmares and breakdowns. A therapist diagnosed her with PTSD.
Erez Soref discovered spiritual reality on a trip to India as he conversed with Buddhists and Hindus.
In Amsterdam, Erez fell in with some young vibrant Christians.
Karina Lahood never wanted welfare, but because she was afraid she would lose custody of her five boys when she suddenly became a single mom, she felt compelled to go on government support.
Many Christians believe that Christ’s mandate to care for certain vulnerable segments of the population should be carried out by government. Others, including Karina, see government usurping God and the church in the role of charity. When it comes to social care, the government is notoriously inefficient, they say.
Her family only went to church occasionally and Karina wished it was more often, but when a half-sister came to live with them, Karina learned to smoke pot from her while in middle school. She excelled at swimming but without parental support, she dropped that and fell into rebellion.
When Melissa Ohden’s mom left the abortion clinic more than 30 years ago, she thought her fetus was disposed of properly.
“God had a plan,” she says.
How did she break the cycle of self-destruction?
Why would Christians number hugely among the anti-lockdown marchers when the Bible warns us to obey governing authorities?
Videos of officers handcuffing a pastor in Louisiana and handing out tickets in the parking lot have enraged Christians. It is reminiscent of the Soviet Union — or maybe even something worse: the Apocalyptic scenes of the End Times. Some point to the suggestion of Bill Gates that people worldwide will need a “digital certificate” to not lose their vaccination record, strikingly close to the 666 of the Beast.
A network of 3000 California churches representing 2.5 million congregants defied their governor and announced they would re-open May 31, according to Fox News.
For almost half his life, Matt Whitman lived off of the faith he found in Christ at age 15. But at age 29, after a falling out in his church, he decided that none of it made sense anymore and he became an atheist.
Matt Whitman was raised in a household where they discussed theology, history, philosophy and art. His dad was a pastor, and home life in Fort Collins, Colorado, was nothing but enjoyable.
But his young mind had fixed mostly on behaving well to earn people’s admiration, which is a “pretty ugly build of faith to take out of childhood,” he says.
On the surface, microchips implanted into your hand could be — excuse the pun — really handy.
“The biggest benefit I think is convenience,” Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter told AP. “It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.”
Revelations 13:16-18 says the Anti Christ “forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.”
MySpace, Heather found just the sort of compassionate older friend to whom she, at age 12, could confide her troubles, things she couldn’t share with her own parents.
When the man was arrested, Heather feared she would be raped. She had no idea if he was in jail or released. All she knew was that he lived in her town.
First he became Madea, the gun-touting granny ready to even any score. Then he became the “Atlanta Angel,” paying for the groceries of seniors at 70 supermarkets during the Covid crisis.
The elderly got receipts signed by the “Atlanta Angel.”
“We would like to join our customers in thanking Mr. Perry for his kindness and generosity during this unprecedented pandemic,” says Felix Turner, Kroger’s Atlanta manager of corporate affairs. “Our customers were filled with joy and gratitude.”
Just two weeks after he arrived from Colombia as a child and was taken to a luxurious home in Glendora, CA, little Edwin Arroyave watched his home raided because his father was under suspicion for drug trafficking.
On the fourth raid, federal agents arrested and convicted Edwin’s dad. The family moved into poverty-stricken Huntington Park.
Through the chaos of their lives, mom prayed over him and built up his self-esteem. Edwin came to accept Jesus into his heart.
There’s an army of unseen, anonymous prayer warriors backing up President Trump during the COVID crisis, which possibly accounts for his popularity and success in spite of the apparent hostile mass media and entrenched intelligentsia.
CJ joined a hailstorm of enthusiastic comments in response to photos showing pastors praying for Trump. The post read simply, “I’m praying for my president. You too?”
It is hard to estimate how many people across America are actively and earnestly praying for the president – especially during the current crisis.
At 10, Veronyka dressed like a boy and wanted to be a gangster. Then her father got radically saved and she started attending church.
“I was going to church but I was also walling out, drinking and going to parties,” she said. I was living a double life. I never had a real one on one relationship with God. When I was 17 and I got my first real taste of the world, I decided, ‘This is awesome. I love it,’ and, ‘Freedom!’ and I got pregnant. I just kind of went downhill from there.”
Andrew Klavan, international best-selling author, grew up in a Jewish household devoid of God.
“The more I read, the more I found that Christianity was at the center of almost every great story that I loved,” Klavan said. “I started to read the Gospel according to Luke as a piece of literature just to find out what everybody was talking about, and I found that the figure of Jesus Christ was at the center of Western Culture.”
Some of them walked 10 days to cross the border into Colombia in search of food or medical supplies they could take back to socialism-starved Venezuela.
The pleas for prayers grew to a fevered pitch after some miraculous healings and exorcisms, Johnny says.
Forget the bombs, commando squads, closed borders and anti-Sharia laws. The way to defeat Islamic threat here in America is to evangelize Muslims with love, says one expert.
“If we address spiritual problems with physical means like politically, economically, it’s not going to work,” he tells God Reports. “We appreciate everybody’s job — like our troops — but they’re not going to solve the problem because the problem is spiritual in origin.”
After several years, he took a break/vacation to the U.S. and ultimately decided to stay. He started reaching out to Muslims in their communities, outside their mosques and over the internet, a ministry he has led for 10 years.
Incarcerated for a schoolyard murder, a psychologist told 12-year-old Ronnie Legg there was no forgiveness available to Him from God.
His mother, brokenhearted at the loss of one son, steeled her heart against what she thought was the inevitable demise of Ronnie.
By age 15, he was in the penitentiary because he was so dangerous. While there, he joined the Houstone Blast gang and fought every day to make a name for himself.
As a Muslim, Khaleed Matmati was skeptical that Jesus would take away the pain from his mouth infection. But after prayer he was so astonished that the pain was gone the next morning.
“It was right after 9/11 had happened, and Eddie was not trying to take no Muslim into his ministry,” Khaleed says now laughing.
She prayed, and then — to Khaleed’s astonishment — the swelling went down.
Bryann Trejo was a cold-blooded killer* who’d already spent half his adult life in jail. So when gangsters gunned down his twin brother, Bryann T was tempted to exact a brutal and immediate revenge.
Bryann was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, but his family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was 13. There, he fell into armed robberies and selling narcotics. The juvenile delinquent system and then later adult jail, had a “revolving door” for Bryann, he admits on his website.
The SECOND ATTEMPT on Ryan’s life was a case of mistaken identity on May 28, 2013 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Ryan was trying to disciple a young hoodlum, whom the gangsters were looking for in reprisal for a murder days earlier. The killers showered him with bullets.
Danny Gokey’s wife died unexpectedly during a routine heart surgery in 2009.
During this time, he married Sophia Martinez, who was also a fellow church-going music fan.
All the praying to Allah did little good for Jazal Khatri, whose parents fought contiually and finally divorced.
“I believed that staying true to Islam was something my parents and I would bond over,” she says. “As I did as they requested me to do — like going to the mosque with them, participating in Ramadan fasting — it would bring us closer.”
Samuel’s mother prayed but couldn’t get pregnant. So when Samuel was conceived, he was her miracle child.
Samuel didn’t tell his mom about the first traumatic abuse. It happened again, followed by more violations.
He never could patch things up with his mother. She died of cancer after two years of broken communication with her son.
First they toned down Barbie’s hyper femininity. Now Mattel has launched dolls that are “gender neutral.” That means, you can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.
Maybe Creatable World should be rebranded “Confusable World.” This is the latest salvo from “woke” culture, liberal progressives who are “aware” of current trends and sensitive to everyone’s feelings except God’s.
Excuse Derek Minor for bragging in his Christian hip hop, but it’s hard to not be excited about how God brought him out of poverty: While Dad and Grandma were on dope, mom was Wonder Woman raising up the middle Tennessee youngster with strict Christian principles.
Derek Minor is also CHH’s professor of sociology, explaining the harsh realities of the hood to the kids in the suburbs. He goes so far as to say kids from the hood realistically have no other option other than to sell drugs, but before you fire your judgment gun, consider the ease with which suburbanites justify funny accounting and tax evasion, or other white collar offenses. Minor is only promoting understanding, compassion and mercy toward those facing daunting challenges.
First he staged a prom for special needs people at his church. Now, he’s opened a coffee shop staffed by special needs employees.
“If Down syndrome or special needs make you nervous,” McLeod says, “you probably need to come in here and relax and just treat them like anyone else.”
Before his influence, hip hop was a backwater movement off most people’s radar. Then Joseph Simmons and his group Run DMC brought rap to the mainstream in the mid 1980s and suddenly it became an international sensation.
“There are always your darkest moments before the birth of a beautiful thing. Rev Run at his low point was not quite Rev Run,” he says, speaking in third person about himself, to the Guardian. “He was trying to understand this great thing that was happening to him. There was a time to reap, a time to sow. A time for it to be sunny outside and a time when it’s so dark you have no option but to just be or you’ll go nuts.”
As the rap genre turned dark and promoted drugs and gang violence, Simmons turned to church. It was a former Run DMC bodyguard, Bobby Walker, who finding Run wallowing in depression persuaded him to attend New York’s Zoe Ministries Church in 1990. Within five years Run had gone from usher to ordained minister, donning the moniker Reverend Run.
Gruesome crimes that cannot be “unseen” sometimes weigh down on and break the heart of police officers who got into law enforcement with enthusiasm and idealism.
“If you have the scriptures behind you and you have a firm foundation, then you know that lost people are acting like lost people,” Lee says. “Today we have lost people and lost cops out on the streets clashing and acting like lost people while Satan claps his hands together with glee.”
Lee accepted Jesus into his heart in 1995 — after 17 years of handling the stress of police work in his own strength. He immediately joined the Chattanooga chapter of FCPO and was hooked to their Bible studies and discipleship support group.
The climax of your story is (usually) where all your character conflict and your unfolding plot is resolved or your protagonists goal is achieved. Usually this would be at the end of the story but in television or in films like Pulp Fiction, this structure may not be so clear cut.
Zabbai says he “pimped out” God.
At 17, Bradsley Rumble came to terms with the Jesus he avoided in his youth while he was smoking marijuana and “flexing” to get girls.
When Seth Jacon Fenton searched for a stage name, he had only to think what afflicted him in grade school and what led to innumerable suspensions.
Eleven-year-old Linda was rescued off the streets by her cousin from another village.
Linda’s demise began because of extreme poverty in a remote village in Honduras. Her parents left her to fend for herself and she found shelter in an old abandoned house, where she slept.
QB Patrick Mahomes, whose confident leadership and hot arm provided the edge for the Kansas City Chiefs first Super Bowl win in 50 years, is very open about his convictions.
Mahomes made his decision to accept and follow Jesus in the seventh grade when his parents got divorced. He wanted to be a man of the church, attended youth group, raised his hands to worship God, declined invitations to hang out so he could do more chores and watch over his siblings at home, according to Belief Net.
