No Survivors: London-Bound Boeing 787 Crashes with More Than 240 Aboard

An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed Thursday in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad, and there were no known survivors, officials said.

Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane went down in a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Many charred bodies lay on the ground and one was carried away on a stretcher by first responders.

“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.

Indian television news channels reported that the plane crashed on top of the dining area of a medical college hostel and visuals showed a portion of the aircraft atop the building. It was unclear if any medical students were present inside the building at the time of the crash.

“It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,” Police Commissioner G.S. Malik told The Associated Press.

“As the plane has fallen in a residential area which also had offices, some locals would have also died,” he added. “Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained.”

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

Brave Missionaries See Big Results in Deadly Corner of Africa

In one of the most perilous regions of the world, an American missionary is quietly building an army – not with weapons, but with prayer. Carole Ward has made it her life’s mission to follow God’s call and train fearless believers in Africa’s Sahel region.

The Sahel region of Africa isn’t the kind of place you just wander into. You’re called here.

“It’s very dry. It’s very sandy. It’s dusty. It’s desert. It can be 100, 115 degrees year-round,” Ward tells CBN News.

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This vast stretch of land cuts across 10 African nations, from Senegal to Eritrea. It’s a land of extremes – scorching heat, shifting sand and deadly danger.

More than half of the world’s terror-related deaths happen here. It’s the front line in a spiritual and physical battle.

“And now, here you are in the middle of one of the most dangerous swaths of land in Africa. What is wrong with you?” CBN News asks Ward.

“The call of the wild. I don’t know. It’s in my blood,” she answers back.

Ward runs toward the fire. She has been doing it for decades, starting in northern Uganda during the height of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army. Then came South Sudan – civil war, destroyed villages, broken hearts.

While others fled, Carole stayed, bringing healing, hope, and the relentless love of Jesus.

“You can’t live here until you’ve already died,” insists Ward. “You’ve died to yourself, and the devil can’t kill a dead man because your life isn’t your own.”

This kind of courage runs deep.

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“So, this map was my father’s map on the wall of his, of our missionary house in the Philippines,” Ward describes as she walks to a map of the world that hangs in her modest home on the outskirts of Chad’s capital city. “And he would lay his hands, particularly on Muslim areas, just weeping and weeping.”

Her parents spent 62 years preaching the gospel in regions terrorized by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines.

Her grandparents served as missionaries in China for 30 years.

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Following Jesus wasn’t just a decision. It was their legacy.

“I realize then fear is contagious, but so is faith,” Ward says. “And so, I grew up in a home that, even though Abu Sayyaf was looking for my own father’s head for 45 years, he had no fear. He absolutely loved the people that burned the Bibles and threw them back in his face. And he was willing to lay his life down.”

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

170 Inmates Receive ‘Fresh Start,’ Baptized Behind Bars At County Jail

There is no doubt that an incredible spiritual movement is taking shape in America. From college campuses to beaches on both coasts and evangelistic outreaches in small towns, there is evidence that the Spirit of God is moving as people give their lives to Jesus Christ.

This phenomenon is also going behind bars, including the Sumner County Jail in Gallatin, Tennessee, where 170 inmates were baptized last weekend, according to WTFV-TV.

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Men and women waited patiently for their turn inside the small jail to publicly declare the change that had taken place in their hearts — a newfound relationship with Jesus Christ.

“Here at the Sumner County jail, something very unique is happening involving dozens and dozens of inmates hoping to change their lives,” Jerry Scott, the jail administrator,” told the outlet.

Long Hollow Church and First Baptist Church of Hendersonville work closely with jail staff to baptize inmates periodically throughout the year, and last weekend’s event became the largest they had seen.

Each of the inmates will be leaving the jail soon fulfilling time served for the crimes they’ve committed. Yet the baptisms serve as a fresh start.

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“This is a day they can remember that is something about baptism they don’t forget,” said Chaplain Bruce Raley with First Baptist Hendersonville.

“It’s really them committing to live to follow Jesus and not come back. It’s a bold statement,” Danny Spano with Long Hollow Church added.

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One female inmate shared what the baptisms represent.

“We get a new beginning and new start and live a better life,” she said.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

Thousands Baptized Across U.S. in Largest Simultaneous Event in History

On Pentecost Sunday, thousands of believers across the nation made a public declaration of faith in what organizers say was the largest synchronized baptism event in American history.

More than 26,000 people were baptized as part of Baptize America, an initiative involving over 650 churches from all 50 states.

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“The prayer of Jesus in John was that we would become one,” said Pastor Mark Francey, one of the organizers. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing right now — a unity around what we all agree on, which is water baptism.”

The event grew out of Baptize California, which began two years ago with 4,000 baptisms. That number jumped to more than 6,000 last year.

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This year’s nationwide expansion culminated in a massive gathering at Pirate’s Cove — a beach with deep spiritual roots. It’s the same site where Pastor Chuck Smith conducted mass baptisms during the 1970s Jesus Movement, as portrayed in the 2023 film Jesus Revolution.

For those present, the event was more than a celebration or milestone — it was a deeply personal spiritual experience.

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“It felt like God was there — just amazing,” said Kaili Newby, who was baptized Sunday.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

A Revival Is Stirring in Spartanburg, SC: ‘We Give All Glory to God’

Locals are calling it the beginning of a revival, and it’s bringing churches from all over South Carolina together for a big crusade this weekend.

Evangelist Jacob Ebersole of World Harvest Ministry says something special is happening in upstate South Carolina.

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“What’s happening right now is something that we couldn’t even dream or imagine. We give all glory to God. People all the way from Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Gaffney, honestly all the way to Myrtle Beach and even into other states, North Carolina, are getting word of this crusade that is coming June 6th, 7th and 8th to Spartanburg,” Ebersole said.

For two years, Ebersole’s been holding events to inspire and equip the local church for this 3-day Gospel outreach that he says is stoking the fires of revival.

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“And it’s something that is kind of blowing our minds. People are getting saved in the highways and the byways, in the prisons, but not only getting saved, going on mission, getting plane tickets to some of our crusades overseas. There has been prophetic words that the upstate of South Carolina would be a light unto the nations. And we are starting to step into that now,” he said.

Ebersole, an international evangelist who’s preached all over the world, said it was time to shine the light of Christ in his hometown.

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“We’re going to go throughout the inner city and reach the city with the power of the Gospel. The event starts that night, June 6th at 7 p.m., but every night starting at 5:30pm we’re going to feed the city. We’re trying to feed 3-to-4,000 people per night. It’s something that the churches have come together to pull off. It’s a massive undertaking. So, every night at 5:30 p.m., there’ll be food. The first night, June 6th is when the Jesus March happens. If you want to be a part of the Gospel choir, come early every night before 7 p.m. and take front row and center, and we’re going to worship together,” Ebersole said.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

Dolly Parton Holds to the Hope of Heaven After Husband’s Death

It’s been three months since Dolly Parton lost her husband of 60 years. The country music legend recently reflected that her steadfast faith in God and the promise of seeing her husband again someday has sustained her through one of the biggest changes in her life.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honoree spoke openly about her faith in a recent interview with the Associated Press while promoting her new single-serve Southern-inspired frozen meals. She told the outlet that she often misses her husband, Carl Dean, and reflects on many cherished memories.

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“I am a person of faith, and I truly believe that I’m going to see him again someday. And I see him every day in my memories and in my heart, and in all the things that we used to do and all the things that we’ve built together,” said Parton. “You just kind of have to learn to kind of make new plans — but that’s the hardest part.”

Parton and Dean had been married for six decades before he passed away in March at the age of 82 in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I really feel his presence,” Parton recently shared. “I just try to go on, because I know I have to. And he was ill for quite a while, and part of me was at peace that he was at peace and not suffering anymore. But that still doesn’t make up for the loss and the loneliness of it.”

The couple’s love story began 62 years ago when they met outside a Wishy Washy Laundromat. Parton was 18 years old and had just moved to Nashville.

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“I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” Parton described the meeting. “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”

Two years later and against the advice of her record label, Parton and Dean snuck across state lines to Georgia and got married in a small ceremony in Ringgold on Memorial Day. They hoped to keep the news out of the Tennessee newspapers.

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Parton told CBN News in a 2016 interview that her husband was a “God-send.”

“I think my husband and my relationship was just really a God-send,” the 10-time Grammy winner said at the time. “God knew I was going to need somebody like him if I was going to be doing all this crazy stuff.”

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

‘Illegal to Mention God’: Pastor and Wife Detained, Facing 8 Years in Prison

Cuban authorities are seeking to imprison a pastor and his wife for eight years simply because they invoked their religious beliefs during a military tribunal, according to a religious freedom watchdog group.

Pastor Luis Guillermo Borjas and his wife, Roxana Rojas, were detained last week in a Cuban jail after they were charged with the crimes of disrespect and disobeying the authorities, according to the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

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The couple, who are affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination which has legal approval to operate in Cuba, initially appeared in court after being summoned for a military tribunal for their son.

Kevin Laureido Rojas had run away from a military facility after having been taken by force to perform the military service that is required of all Cuban males at the age of 18, despite having a medical exemption.

The couple had presented court documents from a medical commission that outlined that their son had a psychiatric condition that made him unfit to join the military.

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“When the military prosecutor accused the couple of lying and presenting false evidence, Pastor Borjas protested, stating that the officials in the court would be accountable to ‘God’s justice’. The prosecutor then ordered the couple to be detained and charged, claiming that it is illegal to mention God or God’s justice in a military tribunal,” explained CSW in a press release.

The prosecutor has requested that they be sentenced to eight years in prison.

A trial for the couple is set for June 9th, but CSW is pleading with Cuban authorities for their release.

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The group reports that Rojas has a heart condition and was taken to hospital, unconscious, on the same night he was detained. Additionally, hospital reports reveal that Rojas was harassed by a young man in civilian clothes who falsely claimed to be a nurse.

The communist country is number 26 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2025, which ranks the countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution.

Cuba has ranked higher on the list in the past, and Open Doors cites the only reason it has lowered is because persecution has worsened in other countries.

To read the full story, please visit our content partners at CBN News.

‘He Is Real’: Her Atheist Dad Told Her Jesus Was a Hoax, Then She Died and Met Him Face to Face

Up until the age of 16, Heidi Barr did not believe in Jesus, that is until she met Him face-to-face after a terrible horseback riding accident.

“I knew him immediately. Every cell in my soul knew everything about who He was. I should not have seen Jesus. Why should I see Jesus? My father told me Jesus was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind,” she recalled in a recent interview with Jews for Jesus.

“[Yet] I knew Him. I have known Him my entire life and I love Him. I have loved Him with everything in me,” Barr said.

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Barr, now a mom and grandmother, is sharing more of her childhood near-death experience in her new book, “What I Saw in Heaven: The Incredible True Story of The Day I Died, Met Jesus, and Returned to Life a New Person.” She shares about her life, family struggles and the redemption she found through God’s amazing guidance and grace.

Barr tells readers how it was easy to spurn any belief in a higher power as a child because, although she was raised Jewish in a small Orthodox community in Iowa, her parents made it a point to tell her God did not exist.

“I was raised in a family that was atheist, but we belonged to this Orthodox synagogue and my father was not only an atheist [but] we were only allowed to discuss God in our home if we were denying His existence,” Barr shared during her interview with Jews for Jesus.

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“He hated God,” she says flatly.

Barr said her father used to repeat this mantra almost daily: “There is no God. There is no heaven, there is no hell, you are an accident of science.”

Despite what Barr was told by her father, she said she believed in the “God of Abraham” and prayed to Him daily.

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But all that stopped at the age of 12 when she began to endure sexual abuse from the synagogue’s rabbi.

“It kind of set off this spiral of not talking to God, getting into drugs, getting into dangerous situations until I was 15,” she explained.

Barr says, at the time, she only found comfort and joy from riding her horse, Heather. But a freak accident changed the trajectory of her life and brought her face-to-face with the love, compassion, forgiveness, and inexpressible joy of Christ.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

‘The Spirit of God Is on the Move’: Florida Church Baptizes Nearly 2,000 at Beach

Nearly 2,000 people lined the shores of a small Florida beach earlier this week to publicly proclaim their faith in Jesus Christ.

The Church of Eleven22 baptized 1,958 people on the shores of Hanna Park Beach in Jacksonville, Florida, on May 18.

“1,958 members of our church family went public with their faith today and got baptized! Every year Beach Baptism somehow gets better and better and we could not be more in awe of the goodness of God,” reads a caption from The Church of Eleven22.

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Hundreds more lined the shore in support of loved ones giving their “yes” to Jesus.

Church organizers told CBN News that participants traveled from across the country including from neighboring areas of Florida and southeast Georgia to take part of the annual event.

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“We are a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Today, we celebrated 1,958 people proclaiming Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It doesn’t get much better than that! The church is alive and well, the Spirit of God is on the move, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is still changing lives as it has for thousands of years,” said Pastor Joby Martin, lead pastor of The Church of Eleven22.

For the last decade, the church has been hosting an annual beach baptism and each year the event has grown in size. As CBN News reported, more than 1,600 people were baptized at the same site last year.

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“It’s a great reminder that the church is not dead, and neither is God. He is moving amongst his people all over the world and we’re all just swept up in His work. It’s a gift to be a part of it all,” Jay Owen, a spokesperson with the Church of Eleven22, told us at the time.

Those who attended the event are thanking God for what took place.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.

Revival Fire Ignites in South Carolina With Plans to Go Statewide

An incredible move of God is stirring in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Over the past two years, there has been what locals are calling the beginning of a revival, and they are looking to take it all the way to the capital of the state.

It began with different outreach ministries sharing the gospel throughout the city, student-led clubs in high schools holding Christian rallies during lunchtime, and city-wide prayer meetings that bridged church, racial, and generational barriers. It is now moving toward a citywide multi-day evangelistic crusade taking place June 6-8 at the county fairgrounds. The organizers are looking to then move on to a statewide crusade in Columbia, South Carolina, in the fall.

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There are no “big names” or “big bands involved.” In fact, the main speaker for the crusade is Jacob Ebersole of World Harvest. He is a local evangelist who has done work primarily overseas but felt stirred in 2023 to shift his focus to his hometown. The worship music for the event will be led by a mass gospel choir of 200+ people from the area.

What is happening in Spartanburg is a great model of how the Church in other cities could approach reaching their communities.

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Our nation needs a move of God, but every move of God always begins at the local level. Jesus made this clear right before his ascension when He told His disciples in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Over the past decades, it has been documented that there has been a clear spiritual decline in America. Not only that, but the moral fabric of our culture has been seriously damaged. Historically, whenever there is spiritual and moral decline in our nation’s history, the country has been ripe for an awakening.

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For those who are unaware, there were two revival movements that took place during the history of our nation that affected every part of the nation: the First Great Awakening, which took place in the 1740s, before the Revolutionary War, and the Second Great Awakening, which took place in the early 1800s. There have been numerous regional and societal moves of God since then, but nothing as all-encompassing as the First and Second Great Awakenings. Our country, our cities, and our communities are ripe for a move of God.

What is happening in Spartanburg is truly unique and different from the standard crusade/gathering model that we have seen in more recent years in bigger cities across America. Most of us have heard of mass events taking place in cities; however, what is happening in Spartanburg does not fit the mold.

To read the full story, visit our content partners at CBN News.