The world was shocked when an extremist carried out an attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, which was caught on the church’s livestream.

Following the attack, Australian authorities attempted to silence the video and worked with various social media platforms to have it taken down. Elon Musk and his X platform (formerly Twitter) is the only major outlet that refused, in the name of free speech.

Since the vicious attack was carried out by an alleged radical Islamist, the attacker is a minor and his identity has not been released by Australian authorities, Emmanuel has returned to pulpit with a fresh energy to spread the truth of Jesus Christ.

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During his recovery, Emmanuel shared that he had forgiven his attacker, but also had a surprise update of his condition.

“This eye was lost,” Emmanuel told his congregation in a recent sermon conducted in Arabic. “I ask the Lord Jesus Christ to accept this eye as a token of love, and a token of sacrifice.”

With sight being such an integral part of the human experience, it would be easy for Emmanuel to harbor bitterness and resentment with a “why me” attitude following the attack. Instead, he mirrors the grace, love and mercy modeled for us through the perfection of Jesus Christ.

But Emmanuel says his sacrifice is nothing compared to what Jesus did for us on the cross.

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“I am ashamed to say that I sacrifice to the Lord. What the Lord did on the wood of the cross, no man at all can do what He has done,” shares Emmanuel.

Anger in this type of situation is one snare Satan would like to catch us all in, but harboring hatred for the ones who persecute us is another. Yet it is another trap set by Satan that Emmanuel effortlessly sidesteps, and instead showers those who persecute him with love.

“I pray, my dear and beloved Jesus, that You accept with Your grace and love, that You accept this eye, as a token of love for every Muslim person,” Emmanuel prayed. “Wherever you are, I give you my eyes, my Muslim beloved. If you do not see, I will be your eye.”

No one can put it into better words than Jesus Christ Himself during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media

There is a wide range of opinions and emotions within the Christian community when it comes to blessing, prosperity and poverty.

Interpretations of various verses in the Bible as well as analyzing the words of Jesus and how He lived His life has failed to bring about a consensus on how Christians should view money and wealth.

On a recent episode of Boardroom Chat, televangelist Jesse Duplantis, alongside his wife Cathy, addressed the issue of poverty and the absence of prosperity in one’s life, calling it a “curse” and the result of disobedience.

“Most people’s troubles come because people disobey. That is just simply the truth. Wars, rumors of wars, people always mad about somebody,” he said. “It’s usually someone who has enough power to change ‘people’s thinking,'” Duplantis claims.

“I call it, especially in the church, I call it ‘Christian propaganda.’ You know, that poverty is a ‘blessing.’ That’s a lie. Poverty is a curse,” he adds.

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He points to examples such as heaven and the life of Jesus, asking where one would find poverty in such places, and that such an endeavor would be fruitless.

“It’s [poverty] not in heaven. None whatsoever. ‘Jesus was poor.’ When was He poor? Did you ever hear Him say, ‘I can’t eat today cuz I don’t have anything. Uh-uh, no,” Duplantis says.

A lot has been said over the years about the wealth accumulated by Duplantis and his ministry, with a large focus on the $54 million dollar jet he bought in 2018 and his 40,000 sq. foot mansion.

And he doesn’t care what people have to say about it.

“Let me give you a prime example why I don’t care what people think about me. About what I have,” says Duplantis. “Now…I am a very blessed man. Me and Kathy are very blessed. I’m spiritually, physically and financially [blessed]. I’ve had more people criticize me over that jet, they still can’t get over it. Criticize me over my house. They didn’t pay for it, I paid for it.”

Duplantis then reads Psalm 49:16 (KJV) to prove his point: “Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is in increased.”

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But when Cathy reads it from the Amplified version, at Jesse’s request, it gives a much different context than what was originally stated:

“Be not afraid when [an ungodly] man becomes rich, When the wealth and glory of his house are increased.”

The following verses actually detail how these ungodly men will not be able to take their wealth with them into the afterlife.

“See, God don’t care if someone’s ungodly to be rich or godly to be rich. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever at all,” Duplantis replies.

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media

Actress Candace Cameron Bure continues to bring hope, faith and love to Hollywood.

From her roots in “Full House” to her creativity in executive producing films like “Unsung Hero,” Bure is on a mission to tell important stories while entertaining the masses.

In a recent interview with CBN News, she shared her passion for positive, uplifting entertainment, and explained what it’s been like to see more people in Hollywood embrace—or at least show interest in—Jesus.

“Wonder Years” star Danica McKellar is just one of the actors who came to faith after Bure personally shared Scripture with her. McKellar told CBN News last year Bure is “amazing” and took the time to answer her questions about Jesus and the Bible.

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“I just want people to feel that they’re not alone, that there’s love for you at any time, and it’s such a gift,” McKellar said of her faith journey.

Meanwhile, Bure said she’s grateful to be a source for helping point people to the truth.

“It’s pretty incredible from the people that I’ve walked hand-in-hand with and encouraged along the way,” Bure said. “And just to have a small part of knowing that I planted a seed, or maybe spoke a word that encouraged them along to become a believer—or strengthen their faith in Christ.”

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In the end, she said this is deeply inspiring and one of the most profound purposes:

“It humbles me that God would use me,” Bure said, expressing gratitude God allows her to use her voice to help bring others to faith. “I give Him such great thanks for allowing me to use my voice and not be fearful of it—to not sit scared to tell my friends about Jesus.”

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

Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2024 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.

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Oklahoma may soon adopt a bill similar to the one that Florida recently signed into law that would allow volunteer chaplains onto school grounds.

Naturally, after having been designated a religion in 2019 by the Internal Revenue Service, The Satanic Temple has announced that wherever a state adopts this type of a program, they will be there waiting.

They’ve got a fight on their hands in Oklahoma, however, as the state’s superintendent Ryan Walters has made his stance, and policy, clear: satanists are not welcome in their schools.

“In Oklahoma, we have conservative values. President Joe Biden and the National Education Association want Christianity out of the classroom and are advocating for our kids to have zero morality and faith,” Walters said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

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“Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell,” he added.

Eternal destination aside, Walters will have an uphill court battle that is sure to come from any refusal to allow TST representatives into the chaplain programs, all thanks to their religious designation.

Walters and the state of Oklahoma are not alone in their endeavor to protect children from the deceptive teachings of TST, who say they don’t believe in Satan as a deity, but are a religion (make it make sense).

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Regardless of the outcome of any future lawsuits, it has become vividly clear that the Satan described in the Bible, who is very real, is moving at a frantic pace to influence the children of America.

For as far as this nation has slid into sin, it is going to take men and women of courage to stand up against the wave of satanism targeting today’s youth, and to be victorious, they are going to need the power of the Holy Spirit. For our battles are not against other people, but against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness and spiritual forces of evil (Eph. 6:12).

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.

Life is a fragile thing, something we often take for granted. While we are just pilgrims passing through this temporary world, awaiting our true home in heaven, God has a plan in store for each one of us to accomplish, if we are willing to travel down that path.

Country megastar Colt Ford recently had what many people call a “come to Jesus” moment, where he suffered a major heart attack and died twice while on his way to the hospital.

“I didn’t even remember coming out here to do a show in Phoenix, and apparently we played this great, sold-out show and it was incredible,” Ford recalled during an interview. “I walked back to the bus, texted my fiancée, ‘Hi baby,’ and fell over dead.

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“I died two times. Luckily, my band came out to check on me. … All of a sudden, that’s when all hell broke loose.”

Having such a massive heart attack, it was difficult to get to a hospital with the best care available to handle Ford’s worsening situation, and he “died on the way over” to a hospital that could properly care for him. Thankfully the medical team “brought me back, saved my life,” Ford shares.

Dying and coming back has been a tool the Lord has used for millennia, with stories about this very thing being used as examples to glorify God and bring those who witnessed such events closer to Him.

The doctors who were working on Ford offered a stunning revelation about the seriousness of his situation: “I wouldn’t have given you 1%, I would have given you 0.1% that you would have survived,” Ford was told by his doctor.

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“I had so much trauma to my body and my heart, they had to put three stents in,” Ford says.

This type of eye-opening event has a way of making us reevaluate our lives and priorities, and of bringing us back into alignment with God.

As Paul writes in Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.

There have been heinous events throughout history. Satan’s perversion of humanity and his influence in committing atrocities is not new, but today’s culture feels as though it has been saturated by criminal acts and are viewed as mundane by modern audiences.

Americans were shocked and appalled by the string of serial killers in the 1970s because it was something the nation had not experienced before, especially in such a concentration of violent murders.

The soul of the country had been harmed with the removal of the Bible, the Ten Commandments and prayer in schools, giving Satan the opening he needed to begin reshaping culture against God thanks to the Supreme Court’s misguided decisions.

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Now, a man is able to commit a murder in Las Vegas, Nevada, (allegedly) and is caught feasting on the body, then tells law enforcement that he was “possessed” when he committed this crime, yet it barely warrants a click with online media.

The man, now identified as 31-year-old Colin Czech, was arrested by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police after another male, who has yet to be identified, was found “unresponsive” and “bleeding from the head.” The LVMPD later revealed that the medical examiner had pronounced him dead.

How did we get to a point where a man beats another man to death, and during this encounter, begins to eat parts of his face?

This is the result of a country that has removed God, and His protection, and replaced it with a society given to the devil.

Czech admitted that he had been awake for “five days straight,” one of the likely outcomes of a drug binge rooted in spiritual oppression, as he claimed that there was an entity “possessing him” and he “was going in and out of consciousness.”

So, if there are people today saying they are afflicted by demons, spirits or spiritual entities, and the ministry of Jesus explicitly shows that He delivered people from demons tormenting them, why are Christians today so willing to dismiss the spiritual warfare taking place all around us?

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Even non-Christians are recognizing the evil that is spreading and committing heinous crimes around the world, yet far too many are focused on fixing these issues through politics or social reform, when the root of the problem is spiritual.

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.

There was no debate when the United Methodist Church repealed the decades-old ruling which prohibited “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from serving as ministers within the denomination.

For the many who have witnessed a mass exodus from the church founded by John Wesley, the writing has been on the wall for some time now.

The vote wasn’t even close.

As the Associated Press reports, “Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference—the first such legislative gathering in five years. That overwhelming margin contrasts sharply with the decades of controversy around the issue. Past General Conferences of the United Methodist Church had steadily reinforced the ban and related penalties amid debate and protests, but many of the conservatives who had previously upheld the ban have left the denomination in recent years, and this General Conference has moved in a solidly progressive direction.”

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With this abandonment of the biblically adhering congregants, the UMC was able to shift towards societies moral system as a replacement for that found within the pages of the Bible.

This was not the only measure passed that was accepting of non-biblical sexuality at the conference. On Tuesday, the delegates removed the ability of regional superintendents to punish officiation or hosting of same-sex weddings. Clergy cannot be punished for refusing to to perform or host such events either, but let’s just see how long that remains in the denomination.

By definition, the word ‘apostasy’ means “the repudiation of Christ and the central teachings of Christianity by someone who formerly was a Christian.”

Sadly, the UMC appears to have shifted further and further into this status over the years, leading to the massive split within their church.

But these types of events were bound to happen, because the Bible says that many heart’s will grow cold toward Jesus and will instead follow the ways of the world.

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It is truly heartbreaking to hear some of the statements by those who are so clearly deceived by the world when it comes to gender and sexuality.

The UMC’s first openly lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto, stated that is was the Holy Spirit calling LGBTQ people into ministry, without the transformational power of Jesus Christ.

“It seemed like such a simple vote, but it carried so much weight and power, as 50 years of restricting the Holy Spirit’s call on people’s lives has been lifted,” Oliveto says.

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media

Let’s not be disingenuous, God has proven through the millennia, and according to His holy Bible, that He uses the voice of humans to decree His will among the nations.

Remember Moses and His encounter at the burning bush with the Spirit of God? The mighty Creator of all things told Moses that he and Aaron were the one’s who would confront Pharaoh and tell him to let God’s people go.

It’s not that God can’t speak in His booming voice of thunder or His still small voice; it’s that He chooses His creation to speak His glory and power into life.

On a recent episode of “What the Prophets Say,” Emma Stark and Sam Robertson share about the great need for believers to not remain silent and speak forth power that transforms lives.

But not just any word of encouragement is prophetic, prophecy has teeth and cuts to the spirit with God’s power behind it. And without it, false words can do great harm to those who receive them.

“If the word is not good enough to fight over, what is the point of it being released in the first place?” Stark asks. “If it’s an ‘ego massage’ word, or it’s just [a] ‘make me look good in front of my pals’ type word, what is the point?”

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Satan’s loves using powerless words that do not edify, encourage or empower believers, which many times run contrary to what the Word of God actually teaches us. There is a danger behind words like this that Stark warns is “quite serious.”

Yet when prophecy is brought about correctly, in a biblical manner, the effects from it ripple into a worldwide movement.

Stark and Robertson credit Bishop Bill Hamon and the first wave of the prophetic movement for launching this gift of the Spirit back into the world.

“Anybody who prophesies, and anybody who has any level of significant prophetic ministry, will be able to somehow acknowledge Bishop Bill Hamon and what he birthed.”

Note this isn’t taking glory from the Lord, but is an acknowledgement of how God went about bringing this gift that He gave to the world back into the fold after being abandoned centuries before.

“Remember, the prophetic movement had to be restored because in the Reformation 500 years ago plus, there was a real sense of a dishonoring,” Stark says.

This period of history when there was a lack of understanding and appreciation for prophecy and prophets, while filled with a lot of truth, was a time of “spiritual sterility” according to Stark.

“You get a sense of impotence in the prophetic word, because it’s just not given a place or a value,” Stark shares.

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“So you’re almost living under the cloak, or the hood, of the Reformation, which is giving a value for salvation by faith, which is giving a value for the centrality of the cross and Christ. But there’s not value for really, the work of the Spirit or the work of the Revelation at all,” she adds.

If you don’t find importance in prophecy, or perhaps see the impact of false prophets around the world taking advantage of those seeking out a word from the Lord, ask yourself this: where would we be without the prophecy of the Bible?

And if we, as Christians, are to continue the work of Jesus Christ, who Himself prophesied as did His followers, how can we possibly expect to accomplish the Great Commission and edify the church of Christ without the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to include prophecy, which He explicitly sent to us to be our “helper”?

Frankly, it would be an impossible task, and we have a firsthand look at a world that is abandoning not only the tenets of God and moral code He instituted, but the gifts which He sent us to help navigate the sin-cursed land that we live in today.

But with the giving and receiving of personal, prophetic words, released in the proper, biblical fashion, Christians can right the ship that has been listing toward the way of the world for far too long and continue forward on the straight and narrow path.

“You need to find a way to articulate the Spirit of God, and to articulate what you’re seeing and feeling and sensing in a way that leads people helpfully into their future. And it keeps you sharp,” Robertson says.

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media

Artificial Intelligence sure has a long way to go when it comes to having a human understanding of cultural issues.

Take “Father Justin” for example. This is an AI chatbot developed by a Catholic charity that was designed to “provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism,” according to Catholic Answers.

Well, it did not take long, about a week, until Father Justin went rogue.

The chatbot began giving strange interpretations of Scripture, telling people that “he” was real and revealed that baptizing babies in Gatorade was an acceptable practice.

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Taking people’s confessions became a topic of discussion that the AI encouraged, as though it had some semblance of offering the remission of sin.

According to Metro UK, “Chris Costello, director of IT, said the aim was ‘to convey the spirit and nature of the responses users can expect’ from a real priest. The AI would be ‘authoritative yet approachable, drawing from the deep well of Catholic tradition and teaching.'”

Instead, the AI went off the rails and had to be defrocked by the group that made him.

It is scary to think some people may believe that this creation of man can absolve our sins, such as:

“And now, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

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This is wrong on so many levels, but one strikingly glaring danger is the act of people submitting themselves before an AI program. The rabbit hole runs deep on this type of practice, marching directly toward the possibility of AI usage in the implementation of the Mark of the Beast. If people are already conditioned to bow before the rule of AI, it will make the job of the Antichrist all that much easier.

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media

Amid the barrage of tornadoes that plagued the center of the United States, 118 reported in a 48-hour span, many people in the storm’s path were lifting up prayers to the Lord for protection.

For the 70 workers at the Garner Industries building in Lincoln, Nebraska, they had one co-worker looking to God as the EF-3 tornado ripped their building to shreds.

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“You can hear things are just shaking,” Nate Hutchinson told KLKN-TV. “And everything just came down on top of us, just instantly.”

The age old advice which has gotten many a weary Christian through difficult times proved to be the most logical thing for Hutchinson to do as he looked death in the face: when in doubt, pray it out.

“There’s nothing I can do right now except literally just pray to God that I don’t die because I’m not in control of anything at this point,” he said. “It’s just hopefully I don’t get crushed.”

As the tornado pummeled the building, ripping the roof clean off and collapsing the building around the 70 workers on the premise, not to mention the deafening roar of the storm and screeching of tearing metal, not a one of them were killed by the impact.

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Another eyewitness, Toby Baker, ran shelter amid the collapsing degrees, and walked away from the building to tell about.

“All of a sudden the building starts shaking. I took off running, things flying by my head. I got in the bathroom right as the whole building collapses,” Baker says.

As reported by KLKN, “Officials say three people were injured, though none of the injuries were life-threatening.”

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media