We seek to have a biblical balance on the issues concerning apostolic and prophetic gifts today. One of the keys to find such a balance is the phrase, “we prophesy in part.”

First Corinthians 13:8 says, “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.”

Love is the greatest commandment. As we continue to love, our love grows more mature. In that experience of maturity, we have more patience and humility. The more we know, the more we realize how much we don’t know. We give place to the fact that others will know and see things that we do not. This attitude preserves unity and prevents divisiveness.

The phrase, “we prophesy in part” can be looked at in two ways. For those who do not believe in the continuing gift of prophecy at all, or who say that prophecy must be perfect or else it is totally false, we can see that New Covenant prophecy involves a level of interpretation and understanding that is only partial in nature. We “see as through a glass, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12).

Yet we do indeed prophesy. Anyone who is born again and filled with the Holy Spirit can potentially share prophetic revelation (1 Cor. 14:5, 6, 24, 31, 32, 39). Just because prophecy is only partial does not mean that it is not true prophecy. This is why we are instructed to “examine” prophecies and “hold onto what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). If everything prophetic was perfect and complete, there would be no need to “hold on” to what is good and reject what is not.

In the New Covenant, after a person repents and believes in Yeshua, his spirit can be born again. The Spirit of God can bear witness with the human spirit (Rom. 8:16) through the human conscience (Rom. 9:1). Through the human spirit and conscience, thoughts come to the human mind whose origins are from God (Rom. 8:6, Is. 55:8-9).

That is the experience of normative New Covenant prophecy: God’s thoughts through God’s Spirit to our spirit through our conscience, bringing God’s thoughts into our thoughts. When we convey those “God thoughts” to others, it is considered prophecy or divine wisdom.

On the other hand, those of us who believe in prophecy often need to “tone down” our language. We should not speak in absolute terms, because, after all, we only prophesy in part and we only know in part. New Covenant prophecy is not so much a direct and external command from God, but an internal understanding of the will of God through words and pictures, inspired by God in our hearts.

Therefore we should speak with more humble language, posture, tone of voice, volume and “body language.” Is the way we prophesy indicating the fact that we know that the very prophecy we are giving is by definition only partial?

Here is the balance: “Non-charismatics” need to recognize that New Covenant believers can indeed prophesy, and that the Scriptures nowhere teach that this gift would cease before Yeshua’s return. We “charismatics” need to recognize that what we are prophesying is only partial. And finally, to all of us in any kind of theological argument: whatever it is that we do know, we only know it partially. Let’s give some room for humbling ourselves and learning from others. {eoa}

Asher Intrater is the founder and apostolic leader of Revive Israel Ministries and oversees Ahavat Yeshua congregation in Jerusalem and Tiferet Yeshua congregation in Tel Aviv. Asher was one of the founders of Tikkun International with Dan Juster and Eitan Shishkoff and serves on the board of the Messianic Alliance of Israel and Aglow International. He and his wife and full-time partner in ministry, Betty, have a passion for personal prayer and devotion, local evangelism and discipleship in Hebrew and unity of the body of believers worldwide.

This article originally appeared at .

Government investigators found four bodies, appearing to be second-trimester infants, preserved in a Detroit cadaver warehouse owned by Arthur Rathburn. The raid was triggered by information showing that he had provided human organs with hepatitis and HIV instead of healthy tissue to paying clients in December 2013, according to Reuters.

Rathburn has pled “not guilty” and is facing trial next month for defrauding both clients and donors.

However, the indictment he is currently facing does not even mention the four prenatal bodies. Nor is it clear where they came from or who he was providing them to. The infants were lifted out of a brownish liquid, which documents indicated “included human brain tissue,” according to Reuters, which included intentionally pixilated pictures because of their graphic nature in the report.

Liberty Counsel is calling for an investigation into how these babies were obtained by Rathburn.

“Rathburn wasn’t running a charity,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “It’s possible these were aborted children. It is also very possible that the illegal profiting and trafficking of aborted human organs is much more widespread than the public knows. These four children deserve an investigation, and if they were among other aborted children who were sold for profit, those children deserve justice as well. We must end aborted organ trafficking and the first step is a detailed investigation.” 

Some of Rathburn’s bodies were provided by the Biological Resource Center(BRC), which received about 5,000 human bodies, usually those who wished to donate their bodies to science or those too poor to afford burial. Many donors were under the impression that the company would only take skin samples, but in reality, BRC butchered and sold about 20,000 human parts.

Sometimes this included calling widows and pressuring them to amend the consent form to allow military or destructive tests on their loved ones, according to Reuters. Investigators discovered and seized more than 10-tons of human body parts still frozen in the BRC warehouse, which the company fought claiming their value was more than 1 million dollars. However, in total, Reuters’ investigation uncovered more than 1,600 bodies have been “misused, abused or desecrated.”

Two other companies, DV Biologics and DaVinci Biosciences, agreed to settle a lawsuit earlier this month for illegally selling baby body parts supplied by Planned Parenthood to pharmaceutical companies and schools across America as well as 10 countries, making millions of dollars in profit. The companies avoided further investigation and discovery by settling out of court.

The companies were forced to pay $ million, turn over more than $10,000 in laboratory equipment and storage containers, and pay $195,000 in civil penalties. Both companies must cease doing business in California. These companies created catalogs of baby body parts and even ran “specials” to sell to pharmaceutical companies and universities.

For the original article, . {eoa}

In this video, Dr. Michael Brown has an interesting conversation with one of his callers. The caller identifies as a conservative evangelical Christian but also as a transgender female, explaining, “I’m trying to see a common ground between the two communities.” Watch to find out how Dr. Brown responds.

One week after the United Nations singled out the United States for President Donald Trump’s historic decision to relocate the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Pastor Robert Jeffress accused the United Nations of being the “leading sponsor of anti-Semitic rhetoric and action in the entire world,” and praised President Trump as being “on the right side of history” for holding the organization accountable.

Citing a litany of absurd actions taken by the United Nations such as naming Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe a goodwill ambassador for the World Health Organization as well as Turkey’s newly appointed role on the executive board of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization even while President Erdogan shutters churches, censures universities and is the world’s leading jailer of journalists. Then there’s the United Nations Human Rights Commission whose member nations include Venezuela, Cuba and the Philippines.

Jeffress says “there is no end to the well-documented absurdities of the United Nations” but it’s no more pronounced than as it relates to “blatant anti-Semitism” of which it is now the leading “international facilitator.”

The evangelical adviser to President Trump continues, “The State of Israel has been subject to 46 condemnations from UNESCO as opposed to Syria’s single condemnation and no condemnations for North Korea, Iran or Sudan. The U.N. human rights council from 2006 to 2017 condemned Israel on 68 occasions, but only issued another 67 condemnations over the entire 10 years for all the other nations of the world, combined. The U.N. General Assembly criticized individual nations 97 times from 2012 to 2015, of which 83 were against Israel. In 2017 alone, the U.N. voted against Israel 21 times, and only voted to condemn Iran, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar and Syria, once.”             

Therefore, Jeffress says, “The only logical conclusion is the United Nations has become the leading sponsor of anti-Semitic rhetoric and action in the entire world.”

Pastor Jeffress concludes by noting that he is grateful to God for President Trump who “unlike any other U.S. president” is willing “to financially drain this expanding cesspool of racism” which “may be his most consequential global decision.”

Investigators in New York City searched early on Friday for the cause of an apartment fire that killed 12 people including four children in the city’s deadliest blaze in at least a quarter of a century.

The fire broke out a little before 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT) on Thursday on the first floor of a brick building and quickly spread upstairs, killing people on multiple floors, the New York City Fire Department said.

“We’ve lost 12 people and we could lose more,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, who visited the scene of the fire, told CNN in a Friday morning interview. “Some are still fighting for their lives. It’s a horrible tragedy.”

Children ages 1, 2 and 7 died along with four men and four women, local media reported. An unidentified boy also died.

Authorities said firefighters rescued 12 people from the building and four people were in the hospital in critical condition. More than 160 firefighters responded to the four-alarm blaze.

The building, with 26 apartments, has at least six open building code violations, according to city records. One violation was for a broken smoke detector in an apartment on the first floor, reported in August. It was not clear if the detector had been fixed or replaced or whether it had played any role in the fire.

“The building owner, the building manager is supposed to make sure that all those basic safety precautions are in place,” de Blasio said, when asked about the violations. He cautioned against speculation while the fire department investigated the cause.

New York City is undergoing a bitter cold snap with temperatures in the low-teens Fahrenheit (minus teens Celsius) and high winds, which according to one media report, stoked flames inside the building as residents flung open doors and windows.

Wherever fire hoses were sprayed, the ground was covered with sheets of ice, according to a NY1 reporter.

Two of the dead were found in a bathtub, according to cable news channel NY1.

“People were screaming, and that’s how we knew there was trouble,” eyewitness Kimberly Wilkins told WCBS television. “People were screaming, ‘Fire! Help! Fire! Help!”

The building is in a poor section of the Bronx, where roughly one-half of residents earn less than the U.S. poverty threshold, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

One witness, Rafael Gonzalez, who lives across the street from the engulfed building, told WCBS he saw some youths on a fire escape of the burning building.

“What woke me up was the smoke, because I thought it was my building,” he said.

The building is in the Belmont section of the Bronx, a primarily residential, close-knit neighborhood known as the “Little Italy” of the borough, near Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo.

It was the deadliest fire in the city since an arsonist torched a Bronx nightclub in 1990, killing 87 people inside the venue that did not have fire exits, alarms or sprinklers, the New York Times reported.

In 2007 10 immigrants from Mali, including nine children, died after a space heater caught fire in a Bronx building.

The number of civilian fire fatalities in New York City in 2016 dropped to 48, the fewest in the 100 years since record-keeping began, the fire department said on its website. Data on 2017 fire fatalities was not immediately available. {eoa}

© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

It is fitting that 2017, a year of the unexpected, ends with more unexpected news. In an attempt to crack down on sexual harassment on the job, NBC has reportedly issued strict new guidelines that call for employees to rat out the miscreants in their midst. Not only so, but NBC has allegedly banned shared taxi rides for employees and even issued instructions on how to hug. Yes, NBC is going the way of sexual prudery—or perhaps the way of wisdom?

As reported on Page Six, “NBC employees have been ordered to report any inappropriate relationships in the workplace—and if they fail to do so, they could be fired for covering up for colleagues.

“Detailed rules also have been issued about conduct in the office, including how to socialize and even how to hug colleagues.”

What about romantic relationships in the workplace? Not anymore. There is zero tolerance for this.

“Staffers have been told that if they find out about any affairs, romances, inappropriate relationships or behavior in the office, they have to report it to human resources, their superior or the company anti-harassment phone line. Staffers are shocked that they are now expected to snitch on their friends.”

Is NBC overreacting? Perhaps. But the reaction is understandable. The allegations against NBC’s Matt Lauer do not stand alone. Others either enabled Lauer to commit his alleged offenses over a period of years or simply looked the other way. So it is not just Lauer with lots of egg on his face. Many others at NBC are not looking too good.

Not only that, but Jeff Zucker, a former NBC executive who claimed to be unaware of Lauer’s actions, participated in a 2008 roast of Lauer that contained lots of sexually explicit humor—at Lauer’s expense, with him as the subject. In other words, his behavior was apparently well-known, even to Zucker, who told his own bawdy jokes about Lauer.

Of course, only NBC knows what it does and doesn’t know, but many people have been badly hurt—the great majority of them women—and it would only seem logical that the company would be facing its share of major lawsuits in the coming days. They certainly don’t want more of these.

So it’s good that NBC wants to clean house and reverse the culture of abuse that was able to thrive in its midst (at least, in some places and with some people). But has NBC gone overboard? To quote from Page Six again, “There’s been a series of ridiculous rules issued on other office conduct. One rule relates to hugging. If you wish to hug a colleague, you have to do a quick hug, then an immediate release, and step away to avoid body contact.”

Strictly enforced hugging guidelines for adults in the workplace?

Had a major church or ministry issued such guidelines earlier this year, the general public would have mocked such prudery, calling it legalistic bondage. But this is NBC. Who saw this coming one year ago?

And this is where conservative Christians can only shake their heads and smile. What NBC needs is not simply guidelines and rules. NBC needs to promote a culture of honor rather than a culture of domination, a culture that respects members of the opposite sex rather than objectifies and abuses them. With that culture in place, you don’t need to mandate the reporting of workplace abuse because it is so rare as to stand out on its own. And when it does raise its ugly head, people won’t need to be told to report it. They will do so as a matter of conscience.

That’s why it was Harvey Weinstein, not Mike Pence, who was exposed for years of alleged abusive acts against women. Pence already had guidelines in place as a committed evangelical Christian, because of which there was not a ready environment for him to transgress. And he didn’t build relationships with the opposite sex in a way that would open the door to such transgressions.

That’s also why, in the circles in which I have traveled for years, we don’t need to issue hugging guidelines. They come naturally to us out of respect for the differences between the sexes and the danger of certain kinds of physical contact.

While the watching world might mock us for our “side hugs” and our purity guidelines, it turns out we weren’t so crazy after all. And inevitably, when we hear of someone falling in our midst—we certainly have more than our share of failures to deal with—it’s because our common-sense guidelines were violated, probably repeatedly.

And followers of Jesus also know this. We may be mocked today, but we’ll be admired tomorrow. That’s not because we’re special, but because God’s ways are ways of life and God’s ways are best. And while it’s good that NBC is addressing a very real problem in its midst, the solution goes beyond rules. A change in culture and mentality is even better.

In fact, I know someone who could teach them a lot. He’s just quite busy these days serving as vice president.

Last year, the #MeToo campaign and horrific stories made it all too clear that sexual abuse runs rampant in our world. Unfortunately, it’s a sin that leaves traumatic consequences for the victims. Joyce Meyer was one such victim, after being sexually abused by her father. But she explains how the Holy Spirit restored her and healed her from that abuse in this video.

North Point InsideOut teamed up with Heath Balltzglier to perform the song “Written” live in concert. This song captures the incredible power of God’s forgiveness, extended to all believers. Don’t miss it.

Nehemiah 8:10 says, “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Bible teacher Jackie Hill-Perry takes that message seriously. In this video, she explains five reasons why Christians should laugh more.

When spiritual giants fall, it’s easy for young or new Christians to lose faith in the church. That’s why Mike Bickle says it’s important not to view these leaders as giants in the first place. Instead, Bickle urges Christians to place their hope in the only One who will never disappoint. Watch his advice here.