This might just be the strongest and most convincing advertisement for accepting Jesus as your Savior there is.

Bill Wiese, the author of “23 Minutes in Hell,” says there is one period of time during the Tribulation that will be hell on earth for those alive to experience it. He asks, “Why would any rational person reject Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and be forced to endure what is coming?”

“Some may say I exaggerated the torment I experienced in my ’23 Minutes in Hell,'” Wiese says. “However, hell can never be exaggerated by anyone. The Tribulation period will certainly be like a hell on earth. But there is one aspect that occurs during the seven-year period that is actually a supernatural evil.

“Revelation 9:5-6 speaks of the demons that are released on the earth during that time,” he says. “And it says, ‘To them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months, and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he strikes a man. In those days, man shall seek death and shall not find it. They shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.'”

Wiese says demons will ascend from hell to torment the people who have taken the mark of the beast, a mark people will take to buy or sell anything. The Bible says that anyone who takes this mark is doomed to hell, and the mark will also reflect an allegiance to the Antichrist.

“During this five-month period, these people cannot die, no matter how terrible the suffering they experience,” Wiese says. “The tormented will find no relief. Even their unimaginable attempts to end their misery in suicide will be unsuccessful. This is similar to hell. In hell, you are like the living dead.”

Take a clue from this very real look at the future. Accept Christ as your Savior and eliminate all uncertainty. {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

For years, Louie Giglio has been teaching people how to see God as a perfect Father, to see themselves as someone pursued by a God that loves them unconditionally.

Along the way, however, Giglio has encountered people who have point-blank told him: “If God is anything like my dad, I don’t want to have anything to do with Him.” Sadly, that sentiment, Giglio says, is shared by a lot more people than you might think—including born-again, Jesus-believing Christians.

“That’s real,” says Giglio, the pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta and the founder of the Passion movement, which exists to call a generation to leverage their lives for the fame of Jesus. “And my heart goes out to every person who has been left behind by their earthly dad.

“It would be easier for anyone who has experienced this to just opt out. A lot of us have tried. I buried that wound 100 years ago and I’m never going back. But the reality is that none of us are living free unless Jesus has set us free.

“He wants to go into those places. He wants to open those doors. He wants to walk in them with us. He wants to restore what’s been broken. He wants to heal us and heal our hearts. And, He wants to let us see this huge waterfall that is over each one of us whom He calls son, and He calls daughter.”

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where not only fathers, but manhood and masculinity itself, are under an intense attack from the culture, the secular media and the unrelenting feminism movement that basically espouses the ideology that men and fathers are useless.

But tell that to the 18.3 million children across America—according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau—who live without a father in the home. That’s 1 in 4 children—25%—who grow up without any kind of father figure in their home.

Americans are united in the belief that strong families are a positive in today’s society, with 84% of those polled believing that a strong family is foundational to a strong America and that parents have the primary responsibility for raising children.

However, the Pew Research Center reports that the U.S. has the highest rate globally of children living in single-parent households.

Giglio says this is certainly a spiritual battle the enemy wages against the family unit, and that the church must stand up against it and let people be embraced by the Father heart of God.

“It does start with God,” Giglio says. “I think we typically want to start the identity journey with ourselves. Everyone is looking through the filter, the lens, of me—what do I think, what do I feel, and that’s how I’m going to self-identify.

“But, that’s really a trap at the end of the day because if I’m the one who is determining who I am and what my story is, then I’ve got to hold that story and that identity up for the rest of my life. Freedom comes when I realize I’m not the Creator; I’m created. I didn’t originate me; God originated me.

“So, I need to go back to the source. I need to go back to the one who thought me up in the first place and ask Him, what were You thinking about me? For me, the thinking was, I’m making you a man and here’s what my purpose and plans for your life are. I love you, and I want to be in relationship with you. I want to restore you into a relationship with me. I want to use you to do great things for eternal significance for the world. I go back to my Creator to get my identity, not telling my Creator who I think I am.”

That’s a solid and heartwarming message for not only the gay community but also for the transgender movement that has enveloped this country and poisoned the minds of young people who believe that they need to be something—or someone—whom God did not create them to be.

Giglio says that the enemy indeed is crafty—and he has cranked that up a few notches over the past few months and years. Giglio says he knows God wants to be a perfect Father for His children, so the enemy has a launched an all-out attack against fathers and fatherhood.

“The devil knows if he can crack up our concept of dad, then he puts a barrier between us in a relationship with God,” Giglio says. “And that’s what God has come to restore. That’s what can be redeemed in every single one of us.”

And that goes back to the story of the prodigal son, which Giglio says he’ll be preaching on this Sunday, Father’s Day. But instead of focusing specifically on the prodigal son, Giglio says he’ll be focusing on the other son, who felt slighted and betrayed by his father, according to the famous story in Luke 15:11-32.

“What was great about this story was that this dad never gives up on his son,” Giglio says. “When you dig a little deeper, you understand that there was a cultural practice called community shame, and that kid was going to get it. So, that father had to get to that son before the community shame got to him. Once the father had him in his arms, that community shame couldn’t come on him anymore.

“Now, the radical grace of God doesn’t mean there weren’t consequences. … But the radical grace of God is that there is a God who is pursuing us. Some people out there, whether it was their dad or not who did it, got this idea that God wants be the community shamer. But it’s not that way. He’s waiting to run to you. And through Jesus, what He did for us on the cross, He’s already run to you. He’s run ahead of all of the shame. … and He has taken on that shame for you so that you can have a party tonight.

“This is not about a guy that Jesus was talking about to prove a point in the Bible. This is our story. This is my story. It’s everyone’s story who comes to know the grace of God and comes to know this perfect Father.”

And that’s the message that Giglio wants the confused, mixed-up youth of today to understand. There is no shame in Jesus, and they don’t have to live in a lifestyle God never intended for them. {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

Indeed, it is a sad—and pathetic—world we live in, especially when three “Jeopardy!” contestants cannot answer the most basic Bible question.

Host Mayim Bialik read a clue that began “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, [THIS] be thy name.” The passage, the Lord’s Prayer, is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Each of the three contestants looked stumped and could not come up with the question. And it didn’t go without notice.

Fans of the show expressed their displeasure on social media over the contestants’ lack of biblical knowledge.

Fox News Digital reported that fans began “tweeting their disdain for the religious blunder.”

Niles Francis tweeted, “Jeopardy is getting borderline unwatchable. Bialik is a terrible host and the contestants don’t know the answers to most of the clues on the board. Like tonight no one buzzed for a $200 clue about the opening sentence of the Lord’s prayer.”

And Kathy Henderson wrote, “Jeez, these #Jeopardy contestants can’t solve clues about The Lord’s Prayer, Big Daddy and Elizabeth Taylor. I give up.”

Jolene tweeted, “There was just a bible question on Jeopardy that I knew the answer to, and none of the contestants did, and I feel the need to warn everyone that this may be a sign of the impending apocalypse.”

Other responses included:

“Today, 3 Jeopardy contestants did not know the first line of the ‘Lord’s Prayer!’ Sad. Our Father, who art in heaven, ________ be thy name; They didn’t know the answer: ‘Hallowed.’ Pathetic,” they wrote.

“@Jeopardy has 3 geniuses on the show today. The question was-In the Bible it says-Our Father, who art in heaven (blank) be thy name. The answer is Hallowed (of course) … none of the 3 knew the answer. Sad world we’re in,” they noted.

Another person joked, “That’s ‘hallowed,’ you heathens!”

“OOF. Watching @Jeopardy tonight, and none of the contestants knew the words ‘hallowed be thy name’ in the Lord’s Prayer,” one user lamented.

Mimi Joeckel tweeted: “Not one contestant on Jeopardy last night new the answer to this … Are you waking up yet?”

Not one contestant on Jeopardy last night knew the answer to this…..

Are you waking up yet?

— Mimi Joeckel (@cantcancelmimi) June 14, 2023

The Lord’s Prayer can be found in the Bible from Matthew 6:9-13.

Fox News Digital reported that the Final Jeopardy clue involved a question about actors. Two of the three contestants answered correctly. {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

A former United States intelligence officer says UFO sightings in Italy during the time of dictator Benito Mussolini were “widely known,” and claims that the Vatican was involved in the first-ever UFO crash in Italy.

NewsNation reported that David Grusch, a U.S. Air Force veteran, has often made claims about the U.S. government’s involvement in covering up the truth about aliens and UFOs.

Grusch says The Vatican and the Catholic Church were “certainly” aware of “non-human” existence on earth.

“The Pope back-channeled that, and told Americans what the Italians had and we ended up scooping it,” Grusch told NewsNation.

Grusch says that “1933 was the first recovery in Magenta, Italy,” Grusch said. “They recovered a partially intact vehicle, and the Italian government moved it to a secure airbase in Italy until around 1944-1945.”

The Daily Star reported that Grusch says there are documents claiming to be first-hand accounts of sightings made by Mussolini’s men nearly 100 years ago, which also have “crude” drawings of what looks like an alien spacecraft.

In his interview with NewsNation, Grusch spoke of government cover-ups and New Mexico, where, in 1947, an object crashed near the town of Roswell. The U.S. Air Force recovered material that was described as “metallic and rubbery,” though the government changed its story as to what it was, calling it a “flying disc” at first and then a weather or spy balloon.

But Grusch says that there were multiple witnesses who said there were bodies recovered from the alleged Roswell aircraft.

“You might want to trust some of these witnesses,” Grusch implores.

Grusch, who served 14 years in the United States Air Force, became a career intelligence officer and spent time on the ground in Afghanistan and other places overseas before rotating back to Washington, D.C. He says his claims are believable because “I have the credentials.

“My last position, which I left in April of 2023, I co-led the UAP portfolio for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and some of the highest officials within the Department of Defense and intelligence community used to call on me to advise them on some of the hardest target sets that the country had,” Grusch said.

Grusch claims that he was entrusted with some of the country’s most intimate secrets. He was invited to join the UAP task force in 2019.

“I have, based on my full security clearance and multiple polygraphs, had the ability to be read into any program that I needed,” he recalls. “At one point in time, I was extremely highly cleared.”

Grusch told NewsNation that the U.S. is in possession of “quite a number” of “non-human’ vehicles, which was difficult for him to believe—at first.

“I thought it was totally nuts and I thought at first I was being deceived,” Grusch said. “People started to confide in me … approaching me. I had plenty of senior, former intelligence officers that came to me, many of which I knew almost my whole career, that confided in me that they were part of a program.

“They named the program … I’d never heard of it. They told me, based on their oral testimony, and they provided me documents and other proof, that there was in fact a program that the UAP Task Force was not read into.”

Grusch says he believes humans are not alone in the universe, and there is “potentially extra-terrestrial life” out there.

“We are definitely not alone,” Grusch says. “The data points quite empirically that we’re not alone.”

UFO sightings have become a national phenomenon again in recent months. Charisma News reported this week that a Las Vegas family believed they saw “a tall, skinny alien creature with greenish color” after an unknown craft crashed near the family’s home.

Prophet Joseph Z explained three theories on these recent UFO sightings, one of which he says could be “demonic deception.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma News.

This Father’s Day, Sunday, Roland C. Warren has a message to all dads, whether they are dealing with a transgender issue within their own family or that they suspect their child could be headed in that direction.

“You must know that it all comes down to the Great Commandment Jesus talked about in the Bible,” said Warren, the former President of the National Fatherhood Initiative and now the President and CEO of Care Net, the nation’s largest network of pregnancy resource centers. “And that Great Commandment, found in Mark 12:30-31 is that you shall ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

But, Warren says, children today can’t possibly love God and love their neighbor if they don’t love themselves. One of the biggest reasons that many youth today are turning to transgenderism is that they do not love themselves. There are many reasons for that, and it all begins in the home and specifically with fathers, whether they are present or absent in the home.

“Basically, transgenderism stems from a rejection of yourself. You don’t love yourself or who you are,” says Warren, who will host a Father’s Day special on the Trinity Broadcast Network this Friday titled “What Good Dads Do” where guests Dr. Tony Evans, former Tennessee Titans wide receiver Chris Sanders, former NFL offensive lineman Ed McGlasson and others will appears as guest and will unpack the things that good dads do to lovingly guide their children in a culture that can be challenging to Christian values.

“Dads must remember that your children are your disciples, and you, as well as them, are called to live out the Great Commandment and to obey it. It’s one of the greatest challenges we have today and it leads to the fulfillment of The Great Commission. Fathers need to teach their children how to love God and love their neighbors, but also to love themselves.

“Often, kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. They are a wounded soul. And eventually that’s what leads to all of these social ills like transgenderism, teen pregnancy, poverty, etc. This is the why behind the what. It leads to the breakdown of the family.

“Our biggest challenge today is love. We’re challenged with it so much in the public square. Any break down in the parenting process is a violation of the greatest commandment, and that’s to love.”

But that love and compassion, Warren says, must be intertwined. Otherwise, it simply won’t work and you could lose your children quickly in a world they believe will embrace them and accept them if they go in a direction contradictory to the Word of God.

“There has to be a balance between compassion and truth,” Warren says. “When you love your kids, you must share the truth, but do it with compassion. Many parents compromise one of those. They will do one and not the other.

“Some say, ‘I’m going to love my kid if they are having a problem with gender identity,’ but they don’t share the truth with their child because they are so afraid that they will offend them and drive them away. The problem there is that you are leaning into compassion but you are not anchoring your teachings with the truth. Compassion is not compassion until you take action, and that’s built upon the truth of God’s Word.

“On the other hand, you can be a truth-teller without compassion, and that’s harsh. Rules without relationship leads to rebellion, and that can lead to all sorts of things, like transgenderism. So, truth without compassion is not loving them. It’s like Jesus when He spoke with the rich young ruler. He loved him, but He also shared the truth with compassion. He did that with the woman at the well. And all of that is reflected in the Great Commandment. Our children are also our neighbors, and the Great Commandment applies to the family first.”

Roland warns fathers that if they are not honorable with the their children, then they cannot expect their children to respect or honor them.

“One of the bad mistakes Saul made was that he was not honorable, and his behavior made it difficult for his children to honor him,” Warren says. “It’s hard to honor a father is not honorable. That’s why it’s up to you to be honorable, and if you are, that will most likely help you steer your children in the right direction—God’s direction.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

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[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]On Monday, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Associated Press that the Communist nation of China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since 2019 as part of a global effort by Beijing to upgrade its intelligence capabilities.

This is nothing new for prophet Charlie Shamp, who says the Lord showed him more than two years ago about the devious deeds of the Chinese government and how the relationship between China and the U.S. would deteriorate quickly.

From spy balloons over the country to the arrest of Chinese spies in New York City in April and now the discovery of the spy base in Cuba, the Chinese have thrust the U.S. into a “cold war” similar to that of when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were at odds and on the brink of a nuclear war at any moment.

“The Lord has shown me a lot of things concerning China,” Shamp told Charisma News in April. “The Lord spoke to me almost two years ago concerning China and how we would be at what God called a cold war.

“This would have to do with some things that happened back in 2020, partly concerning the virus. But this was an attack upon the nation of America. Now we’re starting to see even in the news that we are in an underlying war with the nation of China whether we recognize it or not—from spy balloons to recently seeing in the news that there were Chinese spies that were in New York that were arrested.

“We are at war with China whether we recognize it or not. This is a cold war, but I believe through prayer we’re going to see the nation of America come back again.”

The AP reported that the Biden administration official was not authorized to comment publicly, saying the “U.S. intelligence community has been aware of China’s spying from Cuba for ‘some time,’ in an effort to establish intelligence-gathering operations from around the globe.”

In February, a Chinese spy balloon floated across the U.S. until a fighter jet shot it down over the coast of South Carolina. An already strained relationship between the two countries intensified, especially when the balloon, the height of which was comparable to the Statue of Liberty and that the Chinese maintained was a weather balloon that veered off course, was taken out by the fighter plane.

The existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed after The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island nation.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that China planned to pay Cuba, which has been strapped for cash for quite some time, billions of dollars as part of the negotiations.

The White House called the report inaccurate, and White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said in an interview last week with MSNBC that “What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China’s influence [and] activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we’re watching this very, very closely.”

Kirby said the Chinese spying efforts from Cuba were an “ongoing” matter and “not a new development,” the AP reported.

In the meantime, Shamp says, he’s concerned about the efforts of some for America to join China as a communist government. In a 2022 article by the New York Post, four immigrants who fled communist regimes say they now see the ominous signs of authoritarianism in the United States.

“There are things that are happening in this country, issues that are clearly attempting to bring us into a communistic state,” Shamp says. {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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A Christian doctor who was fired for refusing to use a hypothetical patient’s preferred pronouns in a training exercise says the persecution of medical professionals of faith is more widespread than people think.

After practicing medicine for 26 years, Dr. David Mackereth lost his job in the United Kingdom four years ago for not compromising his Christian beliefs in his job. He is urging other medical professionals to and other people of faith to “stand up” and affirm truth in battles over gender ideology.

“I told them as a Christian in good conscience, I couldn’t do that,” Mackereth told Fox News Digital recently.

In failing to use a patient’s preferred pronouns, his employer invoked the U.K. Equality Act of 2010 and dismissed Mackereth. His employer labeled his refusal as “harassment” under the law established 13 years ago.

Not using transgender people’s personal pronouns had not been an issue in the U.S. until the last couple of years, but it has been a point of contention in the U.K. more much more than a decade.

Mackereth told Fox News Digital that he would “never treat a transgender patient different than any other patient,” but to him “it was a matter of honesty.”

“If we are introducing a fundamental principle of dishonesty into medical practice … that has a very big impact on the quality of our health care,” Mackereth said.

After his dismissal, Mackereth filed a lawsuit against his former employer for religious discrimination but lost the case before the Employment Tribunal just three months later. The Tribunal ruled that his biblical beliefs on gender were “incompatible with human dignity.”

Mackereth claimed that the law and the ruling was contradictory to what it is supposed to espouse. The anti-discrimination law claims to protect citizens from being harassed or discriminated against for their religious beliefs, gender identity and other characteristics. But apparently the former doesn’t apply, especially in Mackereth’s case.

“If Christianity isn’t protected by the Equality Act here in the United Kingdom, then surely the Equality Act is useless,” Mackereth told Fox News Digital.

This ruling gives American doctors a lot to think about as well, as Democratic lawmakers have been attempting, since 2020, to pass a bill titled The Equality Act (), that “seeks to protect individuals from such discrimination, applying existing state anti-LGBT laws nationwide.”

The Equality Act seeks to incorporate protections against LGBT discrimination into the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

With the recent uproar in the United States about the use of personal pronouns for transgender people, it is not a stretch to believe that if H.R. 5 were to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate that the U.S. would see the same conundrum Mackereth has experienced in the U.K.

Mackereth’s verdict was partially overturned in May 2022 by the Employment Appeal Tribunal, says the Christian Legal Centre that supports Mackereth. The Tribunal, however, still held that his firing had been justified and was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

“For a court to declare that Christianity was not illegal but wasn’t protected was more or less saying that Christianity was irrelevant to the modern world,” Mackereth told Fox News Digital. “There are still a lot of Christians around, and we’ve got an awful lot of history behind us.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

As a preacher of God’s Word, Pastor Greg Laurie says it is a real challenge to reach today’s culture. And, he says, one of the biggest hurdles he and his co-pastors must overcome when trying to win young adults to Jesus is the transgenderism issue that has enveloped not only this nation, but the entire globe.

Laurie says it is heart wrenching to see the enemy lure today’s youth down that path so easily and to turn them away from the truth.

“My heart goes out to impressionable young people, because many times adults are pushing this on little children,” Laurie says. “The whole transgender thing is affecting the way so many people think today, especially Gen Z.

“This is America. We have freedoms in this nation. There are privileges, but as believers, there are responsibilities. And we need to speak up before we completely lose our kids. … This is a war. The question is not are we going to be in this spiritual war, but are we going to win or lose this spiritual war.”

But more than a spiritual war, Laurie says, it’s something that most of today’s youth simply don’t comprehend—yet.

“I find this outrageous. It’s so outrageous that some would even say it’s wicked with these minds that have not fully formed yet and this issue that’s confusing them. But again, my heart goes out to these kids.

“You know what I think it really comes down to? I think it’s all a search for God. It’s a search for meaning. This generation is searching for God and being given wrong answers. They think something will fix this. If I have this surgery, it will be fixed. If I use this drug, it will be fixed. If I have this experience, it will be fixed. It’s not a search for something but a search for someone, and that someone is God.”

One of Laurie’s favorite scenes from the “Jesus Revolution” movie, which is partly about his life and his journey to Christ, is when Lonnie Frisbee, played by Jonathan Roumie, meets Chuck Smith, played by Kelsey Grammer, for the first time in Chuck’s kitchen.

“Chuck’s trying to figure out the whole hippie culture and kids using drugs and the whole free love thing and all,” Laurie says. “Lonnie says, ‘Chuck, it’s a search. A search for God.'”

But, Laurie says, today’s youth aren’t given the right tool—the Bible—to diligently search for God. And that makes his job so much more difficult.

“There was once a time when you could assume most people had a general idea of the Bible and you referenced Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, Noah and his ark or even Jesus Christ, they would have a sense of what or who you were referring to. Not anymore,” Laurie says.

“People are largely oblivious to the Bible, not only as God’s Word, but even as great literature. The obsession of some to implement the ‘separation of church and state’ has contributed to the illiteracy concerning God’s Word.

“When I present the gospel today—especially to young people—I can no longer assume that they understand what I mean when I say something along the lines of ‘You need to repent of your sin and put your faith in Jesus and become His disciple.’ They might wonder what it means to repent, or even what sin is.”

Today’s youth, even from their elementary school years, have been taught by their respective institutions that not only isn’t there anything wrong with transgenderism, but it’s normal and that you can be anything you want, a man or a woman, despite your biological sex.

Transgenderism has become an accepted ideology in America, and those who support it not only flaunt it but tell conservatives that they must confirm it or be condemned.

“But what is transgender? How do they define that?” Laurie asks. “It’s someone whose gender they identify with differs from what they were assigned at birth. So, when you are questioning your identity, they call this gender dysphoria. Maybe I’m a man, but yet I was born as a woman. No, no, you’re a man, you’re a woman, there are no little boys that were meant to be girls and no little girls that were meant to be little boys. God created you as you are.

“You might say, well, ‘Greg, that’s just your opinion.’ No, actually it isn’t. Because my opinion isn’t any more important than your opinion. It’s God’s opinion, and that’s all that matters. Genesis 5:2 says He created them male and female and blessed them, and named them mankind when they were created. So, this is God’s plan no matter how you choose to identify it really doesn’t change anything.”

So, what are we as Christians to do about this infectious lie the enemy has presented to our children?

“Our challenge as believers in reaching this generation is to make sense without compromising our message,” Laurie says. “The gospel that the apostles delivered in the first century is still the one being shared today.

“But still, we need to adapt and become, as Paul said, ‘all things to all men.’ Let’s reach people, but stand our ground and hold to our principles as followers of Jesus. When Jesus was with sinners separated from God, they did not stay that way for long. He confronted the woman at the well about her sin. Sure, He loved her, but He pointed out she was living in sin with a man at present. She also came to faith after that.

“Yes, Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, but it was only after she called Him ‘Lord,’ and then He said to her, ‘Go and sin no more.’ Jesus was around sinners not to conform—or ‘hang out’—but to transform. So, let’s work on building a bridge to our lost world, not burning one. As the same time, let’s not lower our standards in order to extend our reach.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

Artificial intelligence appears to be conquering the secular world. But now the church?

It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?

The Associated Press reported that a ChatGPT chatbot, in the form of an avatar of a bearded black man on a huge screen above the altar, led an experimental Lutheran church service last week as part of the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag convention in Fuerth, Germany. Almost entirely generated by AI, the service was attended by 300 people and drew such immense curiosity that a long line formed outside the 19th-century, neo-Goth church an hour before it began.

The convention takes place every two years in the summer at a different place in Germany and draws tens of thousands of believers to pray, sing and discuss their faith.

The service began when the chatbot asked attendees in the fully packed St. Paul’s Lutheran Church to rise from the pews and praise the Lord.

“Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,” the AP reported the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.

The service lasted 40 minutes—including prayers and music. The entire event was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.

“I conceived this service—but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” Simmerlein,told The Associated Press.

“I told the artificial intelligence ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like?'” Simmerlein said. He also asked for psalms to be included, as well as prayers and a blessing at the end. You end up with a pretty solid church service,” Simmerlein said.

The AP reported that attendees of the church service listened attentively to the AI preacher, who spoke about “leaving the past behind, focusing on the challenges of the present, overcoming the fear of death and never losing trust in Jesus Christ.

At least the chatbot got the last part correct, which almost any human preacher with a solid relationship with the Lord would tell you.

The entire service was “led” by four different avatars on the screen, two young women, and two young men. At times, the AI-generated avatar inadvertently drew laughter as when it used platitudes and told the churchgoers with a deadpan expression that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly.” The AP reported.

The service itself, and the AI leadership during the service, drew mixed reactions from the crowd in attendance. Some people enthusiastically videotaped the event with their cell phones, while others looked on more critically and refused to speak along loudly during The Lord’s Prayer.

One attendee, who works as an IT person, said she was excited and curious when the service started but found it increasingly off-putting as it went along.

“There was no heart and no soul,” she said. “The avatars showed no emotions at all, had no body language and were talking so fast and monotonously that it was very hard for me to concentrate on what they said. But maybe it is different for the younger generation who grew up with all of this,” she said.

A young Lutheran pastor who brought a group of teenagers from his congregation in the western German city of Cologne, were a bit more intrigued by the service.

Marc Jansen, a 31-year-old Lutheran pastor from Troisdorf near the western German city of Cologne, brought a group of teenagers from his congregation to St. Paul. He was more impressed by the experiment.

“I had actually imagined it to be worse. But I was positively surprised how well it worked,” says Jansen. “Also, the language of the AI worked well, even though it was still a bit bumpy at times.”

Jansen, however, said he missed any kind of emotion or spirituality, which he says is essential when he writes his own sermons.

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.

Is this possibly more worldly deception as described in the Bible, as Joseph Z of Joseph Z Ministries explained in this recent interview with Charisma News, or is this really happening?

One thing is for sure: A Las Vegas family is taking what they saw and believed to be “a tall, skinny alien creature with greenish color” very seriously, a sight that they described as “no joke” and terrifying.”

Fox News Digital reported that “authorities still don’t know exactly what crashed in Las Vegas that night, but there is evidence that something happened.”

Las Vegas police officers who responded to the 911 call interviewed three witnesses and found them to be “sober and credible,” renowned journalist George Knapp, who has broken some of the biggest UFO-related stories, told Fox News Digital. Knapp interviewed the family involved and “didn’t detect a hint of a hoax.”

“Metro police took it seriously,” Knapp said. “They searched the backyard, looked for physical evidence, canvassed the neighborhood for more witnesses, then returned day later for a follow-up. What really happened? We don’t know.”

One witness said the greenish creature was “about eight to 10 feet tall … with a weird-looking face, big feet and big shiny eyes and a big mouth. I can hear its loud, deep breathing and its stomach kept moving.”

Joseph Z explained three theories on recent UFO sightings in this video and story on Charisma News recently.

In one of the theories he says, “I believe [what] could be happening is a fake alien scenario—augmented reality stuff, projections in the sky or things that many have heard of like Project Blue Beam, where they blast things up in the sky like the Spider Man movie. … It’s drones projecting an image that had a lot of reality behind that image. I believe that is a precursor to a Project Blue Beam type of thing.

“You see drones that go into the sky and they can write things in the air and do all kinds of amazing things, that’s what the public sees,” Joseph Z says. “And why would they do that? Because whoever controls the narrative can unite the world under what they want. I think there’s a truth in that, that there will be more revealed or concealed to deceive the masses upon either the rapture or something else.”

But that doesn’t explain the “creatures” the Las Vegas family saw a few weeks ago.

One member of the family called 911 at 12:25 a.m. on May 1 and told the dispatcher that “large creatures were in his backyard. They’re not human; 100% they’re not human. I swear to God it is not a joke. It is actually real,” he told the dispatcher.

Another officer’s bodycam, dated April 30 at 11:50 p.m., captured a glowing, green light streak across the sky from the top right corner until it appeared to crash and disappear in the distance,” Fox News Digital reports.

At least 21 people across eastern California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah reported seeing the glowing, green light, according to the American Meteor Society.

A witness, who was seen in the responding officer’s bodycam, told his story in a YouTube video and shared pieces of the bodycam footage, a neighbor’s doorbell camera that captured the loud bang and aftershock and a picture of a “perfect circle in his backyard purportedly left behind the aircraft,” Fox News digital reports.

“I turned around and saw a big light falling from the sky and moments after, I felt a big impact and a bang … when the impact happened, it was like a shockwave,” he says. “It was all blurry. Not my vision, only the backyard, and I heard thousands of footsteps around me. A couple seconds later, the footsteps were gone.

“I know some people are not going to believe this,” the witness said in the YouTube video. “But this is what happened to me.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.