Homosexuality, Christianity and Heaven

Question: Can you be a homosexual and still be a Christian and go to heaven? - anonymous

It should be clear after you’ve read it that homosexuality is not part of God’s plan for humanity. It is in fact one way a person can express their rebellion against our Creator. But that doesn’t answer your question in its entirety does it?

It is quite possible for a person to have very strong same-sex attractions - to have homosexual desires - and still be a Christian. Sometimes our personalities are the products of factors beyond our control. People can be raised in social circumstances that predispose them towards certain behaviour; we often pick up the attitudes of the people we are raised with on a whole lot of topics. Some people are born with obsessive / compulsive personalities, and that makes things like alcoholism or any other form of addictive behaviour much more likely, and therefore dangerous. Consequently a person can find themselves with homosexual desires and have no clear memory of ever making a ‘choice’ to be that way. That doesn’t make the behaviour right, but it does make it a lot harder for that person to resist.

It’s important to realise that it’s not a sin simply because you are tempted by something. It becomes a sin when we give in to those temptations. Jesus was tempted, just like us, but he didn’t sin - he didn’t elevate his desires over God’s (Hebrews 4:15). It’s also important to realise that just because we do sin, a person doesn’t cease to be a Christian. Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins represented a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for every sin that we have ever committed or will commit (Hebrews 9:24-28; 1 Peter 3:18).

The Bible also assures us that once we have trusted ourselves to Jesus, nothing - not even our own sins - can part us from him and our eventual home in Heaven because our salvation depends not on what we do, but on God’s promise to honour Jesus’ sacrifice (Romans 8:31-39). But a Christian is a person who has turned their back on sin and is no longer satisfied with the sinful life that was taking them further and further away from God. The Bible describes people who put their trust in Jesus as those who ‘put off the old self’ and put on the new life they now have because of him.

So you can see that it is possible to have a homosexual nature and yet be a Christian. But it is not possible to willingly practise homosexuality, thinking no more of it, and yet be a Christian. A Christian, when everything else is said and done, is a person who has chosen to follow Christ first.

Israelis March Demanding Access to Temple Mount

Israelis March Demanding Access to Temple Mount and Building of Third Temple

Monday evening marked the beginning of the Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples.

Thousands of Israelis participated in an annual march around the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, with a special focus on the Temple Mount.

Though it is Judaism's holiest site, Jews are still not allowed to pray there due to threats of Muslim violence.

Government officials participating in the march noted that the people of Israel are seeking much more than just the right to pray atop a Muslim-occupied Temple Mount.

They want the Third Temple.

"Everyone who came here tonight proved with his feet that we want the Temple back - and quickly," Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben Dahan told Arutz 7.




cred: Israel Today

Vietnam pastor freed early from prison in return for exile to US

Vietnam has released a Lutheran pastor and deported him to the United States, reports UCA News.

Nguyen Cong Chinh, was serving an 11-year prison sentence for “undermining national solidarity” through religious activities with ethnic groups in the country’s Central Highlands. He was also a director of the Vietnam-U.S. Lutheran Alliance Church.

A statement released last week (29 July) by the US-based Boat People SOS (BPSOS), said that Chinh arrived in Los Angeles on 28 July with his wife and five children following a deal that saw him released in return for leaving the country.

“We welcome the early release of Pastor Chinh but deplore the fact that he and his loved ones must go into exile,” said BPSOS President Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang.

Chinh, who had been imprisoned since 2011, was recently further punished for speaking to a visiting US diplomatic delegation about the abuses he had suffered. Last year Chinh’s wife, Tran Thi Hong, described her interrogation and beatings for publicising Chinh’s case with international human rights organisations, and the arrest of one of their children, as an ‘intolerable’ level of harassment towards her family.





Cred: World Watch Monitor

Church in Zanzibar, Tanzania Shaken as Court Supports Muslims’ Opposition to Building

Christian leaders see Islamist bias in ruling

NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) - A court on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, ruled on Thursday (July 20) that a church cannot continue constructing a worship building it has tried to finish for eight years, sources said.

Hard-line Muslims outside Zanzibar City have been fighting the construction of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God building since 2009, having demolished the partially built structure twice before then. They claim the party that sold the property to the church was not the rightful owner.
Christians believe the court on the overwhelmingly Muslim island acted out of religious bias. A previous court ruling allowed construction to go forward.

Pastor Amos Lukanula of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God church said last week’s ruling has serious implications for the survival of congregation on the island, and that the church plans to appeal to the High Court of Zanzibar.

“Our church members have persistently worked alongside with me and are frustrated and weary, but we are always hopeful that God will still intervene,” Pastor Lukanula said. “We cannot allow the Muslims to put up a mosque in place of the church.”

The case has dragged on for more than eight years as the area Muslims have forced the church in Chukwani to incur legal costs of $100 per month in an effort to take over its property, sources said. Pastor Lukanula said the court had been waiting for the church to fail to attend the monthly court hearing in order to rule against it on a technicality.

The church purchased the property in 2004 and began putting up a temporary structure, but the area Muslims pulled it down. The church then spent three years putting up a semi-permanent structure, which the hard-line Muslims also destroyed, sources said.

After the third structure of stone blocks was half-way finished in 2009, the Muslims stopped construction with a court order until the legal dispute could be resolved. This forced the church to raise 5.7 million Tanzanian shillings, more than US$2,500, to fight the case in court, with an attorney from mainland Tanzania traveling to Zanzibar each month at a cost of $100 per visit.

“We bought the land from Harun Gikaro Wanzo, who passed on in 2009, and now his widow is the one remaining who has a small piece of land,” Pastor Lukanula said, saying the church has allowed Wanzo’s widow, Annah Philippo Barihuta, to remain living on the premises. “Now she might too lose that land, and she has several children to take care of. We appeal for support and prayers as we appeal for justice to be done.”

On Feb. 21, 2011, a lower court ruled in favor of the church, which then continued with construction. But after the death of Amina Binti Saleh, the seller of the property to Wanzo, area Muslims and Saleh’s daughter, Jilubai Binti Saleh, filed another appeal to stop construction in 2011. The Muslims claimed that Saleh’s son, Sadik, was not the blood son of her late husband, Abdul Shakar, and hence did not have the right of ownership of the land that was sold to Christians. They held that Saleh’s daughter, Jilubai Binti Saleh, had been the rightful heir.

In the church’s bid to show that Barihuta’s late husband, Wanzo, had the right to sell the land to the church, the impoverished widow and her family have borne much of the costs of the court case. Barihuta is a member of the church.

The Muslims claimed in court that Barihuta invaded Saleh’s land in 2004 and uprooted 20 coconut trees, then put up a house illegally, and that in 2007, Pastor Lukanula illegally put up the church building within a residential area and destroyed trees worth 2 million Tanzanian shillings (US$885).





cred: The Morning Star News

Sudan Orders Christian Schools to Operate on Sundays

Educational institutions are not to take the day off

JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) - In an ongoing campaign to rid the country of Christianity, officials in Sudan this week ordered all Christian schools in the capital to regard Sunday as a work day, sources said.

The Ministry of General Education of Khartoum State sent a letter dated July 26 (Wednesday) ordering all Christian schools in the Khartoum area to stop regarding Sunday as a public day off, effective immediately. “In order not to affect the educational process and the ongoing plan, we ask you not to observe Sunday holiday,” the ministry’s Awadia El-Sheikh Saleh Omer wrote in the letter.
Sunday is considered a working day in Sudan, but traditionally Christian schools have not operated on their day of worship and rest. Fridays and Saturdays are public days off in Sudan, which has a sizeable Muslim majority.

The move prompted widespread outrage and led many Christians in Sudan and around the world to view it as another means of harassment and discrimination against Sudanese Christians.
“The government’s decision to abolish Sundays for Christian schools is discrimination against Christians in Sudan,” said a Sudanese church leader whose name is withheld for security reasons.
Sudanese Christians are calling on rights groups and the Vatican to intervene. Other voices are calling for national prayer and fasting.

The move comes at a time of increased government pressure on ethnic and religious minorities in Sudan. On May 7, the last remaining church building in the Soba al Arabi area outside Khartoum was demolished.

A church elder died on April 3 from injuries sustained in a raid on an embattled Christian school by supporters of a Muslim business interest in Omdurman, Sudan, sources said. Younan Abdullah, an elder with Bahri Evangelical Church, died in a hospital after being stabbed while he and others were defending women at the Evangelical School of Sudan, Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC).

Christians had staged a protest against the attempted seizure of the school by a Muslim businessman, they said. Police from the Omdurman Central Division along with a group supported by Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment arrived at the school first and arrested all the men in an attempt to hand it over to the businessman, they said.

Advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC) confirmed that after the arrests, about 20 men, including members of a committee the government has illegally imposed on the SPEC, arrived at the school with knives and other weapons and began to beat the women.
“Several men from the nearby Bahri Evangelical Church rushed to the church to try and protect the women,” MEC leaders said in a statement. “The armed men attacked them, and two church members were stabbed.”

Elder Abdullah later died of his injuries, and a second church member, Ayoub Kumama, was treated at a nearby hospital and has been released, according to MEC.
Abdullah is survived by his wife and two young children.

Harassment, arrests and persecution of Christians have intensified since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011. The Sudanese Minister of Guidance and Endowments announced in April 2013 that no new licenses would be granted for building new churches in Sudan, citing a decrease in the South Sudanese population.

Sudan since 2012 has expelled foreign Christians and bulldozed church buildings on the pretext that they belonged to South Sudanese. Besides raiding Christian bookstores and arresting Christians, authorities threatened to kill South Sudanese Christians who do not leave or cooperate with them in their effort to find other Christians.

Sudan fought a civil war with the south Sudanese from 1983 to 2005, and in June 2011, shortly before the secession of South Sudan the following month, the government began fighting a rebel group in the Nuba Mountains that has its roots in South Sudan.

Due to its treatment of Christians and other human rights violations, Sudan has been designated a Country of Particular Concern by the U.S. State Department since 1999, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended the country remain on the list in its 2017 report.
Sudan ranked fifth on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2017 World Watch List of countries where Christians face most persecution.





cred: The Morning Star News

Prayer Requests

Today's Prayer Requests

Anthony Uguru  | Brethren,I am landlords having a chain of stores rented to traders. Suddenly five out of 14 stores now have been vacated. Some complained of poor marketing conditions. Pls pray for all the stores to be occupied again by credible people that will pay rent properly. Let marketers conditions get improved.

marge | please pray for my son Merle he has cancer and is in a of of pain

Melissa Gonzalez | For my son who has bipolar. He is 23. Pray the Lord heals him of it!

ramashankar premi  | Please pray for me I think  I have a bad evil in my body.i am scared of darkness.I can see evils when I closed my eyes.I think. Someone is looking at me.or watching me.coditions become. Opposite to me,when I  say or determined to do my future plan to any one...

Vera Bankston-Jones | FATHER GOD, I made it because of your grace, and guidance. Continue in your love for me for I am not worthy!.......SELAH

Shalonda Jones | For me An my Family to grow closer to God on our new Journey.That we stay focused on God An not Man..Amen Amen Amen

Natasha C | Please pray for my sister Nicole and me for removal of any inference of our bond and friendship. Pray for unity and peace between her and her children ( Tone & Riah). God bless!

david smith | got fired from my job for hearsay. need another job. a pray to get right with God. to strengthen my relationship with my girlfriend because we argue a lot. and forgiveness for the sins that i am weak in. thank you God bless

Arlene | Please pray that God healing power will penetrate thru the bones of my wrist,having great pain.after a fall,also pray for my daughter,that healing will take place in her body,pray that God will continue to keep a hedge of protection round about our families,church family ,and keep our Bishop covered in Jesus name.thank you and I say a prayer for you that God keep you and your family well and safe in Jesus name.Amen

Charles Fischbein | I have suffered a failed spinal fusion surgery. Lost feeling in my feet which caused an infection and toe amputation. I am 72 and was very active till the surgery. I feel my life is over as best doctors cannot relieve my pain. I need prayers for God too help me and return me to health so I can go on with teaching which I had to stop. Please pray for my recovery. God Bless

Acts of Kindness

Bible Verse of the Day: Ruth 2:12 (KJV)

12 The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.