Sid Roth, host of It’s Supernatural!, believes the world is “coming into a new move of God’s Spirit on planet Earth” amid fulfillment of the biblical mystery known as the “fullness of the Gentiles.”  

Roth says he came to this conclusion following a recent evangelistic meeting in Odessa, Ukraine, where more than 99 percent of roughly 1,000 unsaved Jews made professions of faith.

Roth told Charisma News he’s never seen so many miracles happen in such a short period of time—with at least half of the attendees reporting they were “instantly healed.”

Explaining the incident captured on video, Roth says he believes “God is in a hurry to get Jews saved!” In a nation experiencing civil war, Roth says he felt “an open heaven.”  

“Something happened in Odessa that has never happened in my life,” says Roth, who has spent nearly four decades investigating the miraculous move of the Spirit throughout the world. “In fact, I’ve never heard of this outside of the days when Jesus walked in the flesh.”

During the service, Roth says about half stood up and “publicly proclaimed they were physically healed.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my meetings or any meetings,” Roth says. “In my meetings, I see a couple of dozen people healed. I’ve never seen half the people get healed and now we’re seeing more than 90 percent getting saved.”

The event follows similar ones Roth held earlier this year in Jerusalem, where nearly all the unsaved Jewish people in attendance accepted Yeshua, or Jesus, as their Messiah.

Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the New York Times bestselling author of The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah, says the end of the age cannot conclude until the “Jewish people return to their Messiah.”

“We know Messiah Himself will not return until that happens,” Cahn says. “So there must again be something on the scale of the book of Acts, and even greater, as the Scriptures prophesy that ‘all Israel shall be saved.’

“The mystery is, Israel can never be completed without the Church, and the Church can never be completed without Israel. The two must become one again, as they were in the beginning of the age. We are beginning to see this happen.”

At these events, Roth speaks on the topic of the supernatural. The American-born Jew takes the stage and begins to speak “words of knowledge” about healings taking place. Afterward, many in the auditorium stand to confirm that they have been healed of pain in their back, neck or other parts of their body. At one event last year, about 525 of 550 people stood up to proclaim Yeshua as their Lord. At another event, Roth says more than 90 percent of the 650 people in attendance stood to proclaim their faith in Yeshua.

The outreach meetings are sponsored by a team of local pastors. One of the first pastors Roth met in Odessa was a Jewish believer with Jews for Jesus. He got saved by reading the Russian version of Roth’s Jewish evangelistic book, They Thought For Themselves.

“Jews are wired to have intimacy with God,” Roth wrote in his newsletter. “Romans 10:2 says we ‘have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.’ The Bible also says we have spiritual blindness. But praise God, that blindness is now lifted! Since few Christians will share the gospel with us and we have a built-in zeal for the supernatural, we are like sheep going to the slaughter.

“That’s why so many Jews are stampeding into the New Age and the occult. The highest percentage of leaders and participants in these cults are Jews. Even though the Torah specifically condemns these practices and calls them an abomination (Deut. 18:9-11), our rabbis do not warn us of the dangers. In fact, Jewish mysticism (called kabbalah) has now merged with Hinduism and is embraced by many Jewish people, especially in Hollywood.”

This fascination with the supernatural is a key to Roth’s outreaches. At the events, Roth prays for nonbelieving Jews to “walk in the same power I operate in, which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” After teaching them about meditating on the promises of the Bible, Roth explains how to be filled with the Spirit and the value of speaking in tongues.

“Right from the start, they got to witness ‘normal’ Christianity—normal as defined by the Bible,” Roth wrote in his newsletter. “They saw 50 percent of the people at the first meeting instantly healed. They saw over 99 percent of 1,000 unsaved Jews make professions of faith. By the way, there was a high percentage of amazing miracles in the second meeting also, including a deaf boy getting healed.”

Roth believes the end of what the Bible calls the “times of the Gentiles” is underway and a new era is beginning in which God is lifting the veil of spiritual blindness off the Jewish people who are becoming increasingly open to the idea of Yeshua as the Messiah. A 2014 Pew Research Center report found 34 percent of American Jews say believing Yeshua is the Messiah is compatable with being Jewish.

“I believe we are absolutely at the (conclusion) of the ‘fullness of the Gentiles’ age,” Roth says. “I believe all these prophets I’ve interviewed that see a lot of things happening are correct, but I see a lot of good about to happen too. I see an explosion of the Holy Spirit among Jews in the land of Israel and throughout the world.

“I see Jews getting radically saved and coming into the body of the Messiah and forming what Paul calls the ‘one new man.’ The two will spark one another. The Gentile believers have the maturity and training and the brand new Jewish believers have the zeal and fire.”

As this awakening begins, Roth says he believes the types of miraculous events that took place in the Bible will once again occur on earth.

“I believe we’re at a whole new point,” Roth says. “If I have a message for anyone, it’s ‘don’t look at what’s happened previously and just be normal’—normal as it’s defined in the Bible. I believe we’re coming into a new move of God’s Spirit on planet Earth. I believe we’re looking at the greatest awakening the world has ever seen.”

November is usually an auspicious month for Israel and the Jewish people, and for me and my family personally.

On November 2, 1917, at the twilight of WWI, the British government issued the “Balfour Declaration” affirming their support to establish a Jewish home in “Palestine.” 

On November 29, 1947, at the twilight of the “British Mandate” for Palestine, the United Nations voted in favor of partition plan to establish a (second) Arab State in “Palestine” and a Jewish state as well, on a tiny sliver of land. 

The interim years were tragic for the Jewish people with the British preventing immigration of Jews while Jews were being slaughtered throughout Europe. One of the harbingers of the horrors and evils to come also shares a November anniversary.

Kristallnacht was a series of coordinated deadly attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938. German authorities looked on without intervening. More than 1,000 synagogues were burned; over 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed or damaged. More than 30,000 Jews were arrested, with dozens murdered and even more beaten. The relative silence of the world then paved the way for the murder of 6 million Jews over the next several years.

In November 1947, my father was a 10-year-old in Haifa, then part of the British Mandate—or what I refer to as the British occupation—of Palestine. He was the same age then as his youngest grandson is today, the first in our family to be born in Israel since my father was, almost eight decades ago.

My father danced and celebrated this milestone in the streets along with Jews throughout Israel and the world, albeit in the shadow of the Holocaust and the mourning of relatives for whom the milestone came several years too late. My grandparents celebrated with my father but mourned their parents, siblings and nieces and nephews.

The imminent rebirth of a Jewish state in the land of Israel was celebrated personally, globally, but never lost that it was fulfillment of divine prophesy. 

Today, our celebration continues and is played out every day in more mundane ways. An example of this is my 10-year-old son playing soccer in the street in freedom, the way my father as a 10-year-old in his generation danced in the street, and paving the way for what we have today.

It’s an important historical note in a world that spares no effort to lie about and slander Israel today that until 1948, the use of the word “Palestinian” was in reference to the Jewish population of the land of Israel, and not as has been taken over in recent decades suggesting that we are intruders, occupiers, or that there’s no Jewish history here.  

Despite these milestones and their significance, let’s not think for a minute that despite its declaration of support for the establishment of a Jewish home in Israel, as the sun began setting on the British Empire, that His Majesty’s government became any more imbued with a sense of biblical obligation to birth a Jewish state. In fact, one might argue that impediments placed in the way of Israel’s restoration to its land might have been part of the downfall of the empire about which they famously boasted the sun never set.

Similarly, let’s not think that, in 1947 or now, the United Nations that voted to end the British Mandate and establish a new Jewish and Arab state sharing some 20 percent of the original territory ever did so because of an outbreak of Zionism, or out of a biblical obligation to bless Israel.

In fact, another infamous November milestone was the 1975 U.N. Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism. In the decades since, as the U.N. has repeatedly cursed Israel through obsessive one sided votes and declarations, its own relevance has dimmed just as the lights have gone out on the British Empire.

And let it be clear that though the British government and United Nations did play a role in Israel being born again, Israel’s existence does not depend on the authority of either. The authority of Israel’s existence, and the source of Israel’s blessing and protection, is the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, the Creator of the Universe.

Speaking of God, recently Jews around the world read the Torah portion in Genesis where God instructs Abraham to leave his home and family and settle the land that He will show him. Genesis 12:1 is where we derive the biblical obligation to be like Abraham and settle the land.

It’s not just a nice idea or a gift that was once made once upon a time, but an imperative in our lives today for which Jews yearned for millennia. This has grown in observance in the past decades with the yearning of the past married with the ability to do so.

For anyone who reads my articles regularly, you’ll know that my family and I moved to Israel in the month of August. So, why is November relevant to us personally? This month it’s safe to say we are not only not new immigrants anymore, but established residents of the land and beneficiaries of God’s promise to Abraham.

With one son born in Israel a decade ago and five “imports,” this month we celebrate the milestone of my oldest child now living most of her life in Israel. It is a blessing to live in the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants, and a privilege to raise my children here, writing the pages of our future in the land that is our home deeded by God.

We may not celebrate by dancing in the streets as my father did in 1947. We may “only” continue to drive car pool, commute to work and school, and be frustrated about the lack of parking on our street. Very mundane things to say the least. But all these, and this personal milestone, symbolize that our future is here, where our past started.

As God promised to make Abraham a great nation, sitting in the Judean Mountains thousands of years hence, we are indeed privileged and we are very blessed. {eoa}

Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has been blessed by the calling to fellowship with Christian supporters of Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He writes a regular column for ‘s Standing With Israel. He can be reached at FirstPersonIsrael@.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks that shocked Paris on Friday night, a team of chaplains from the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team is headed to France to offer emotional and spiritual care.

At the direction of Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), an international consortium of BGEA’s U.S., Canada and U.K. Rapid Response Teams has coordinated to send six French-speaking, crisis-trained chaplains to the French capital to offer care and support.

“Join me in praying for the French people, all those injured and the loved ones of the victims of these barbaric attacks,” Franklin Graham said.

Jack Munday, international director of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, reflected on the situation.

“This has been reported as the worst tragedy in France since World War II,” Munday said. “We want to encourage them, let them know we’re here to support them.”

The chaplains, who will be working directly with a church in Paris as well as up to three other Christian organizations, are scheduled to arrive Monday morning. This will be the first BGEA internationally coordinated relief effort since the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Billy Graham‘s ministry in Paris included four evangelistic crusades, most recently in 1986. BGEA’s Internet evangelism ministry has partnered with Paris-based since 2011.

“We’ll be there for the people on the streets, the storekeepers, the café workers to listen and provide comfort,” Munday said. “They need to know that God loves them and hasn’t forgotten them.” {eoa}

©2015 Thomson Reuters. All Rights Reserved.

Lebanese authorities arrested five Syrians and a Palestinian in connection with the twin suicide bombings in central Beirut on Thursday that killed 43 people, a senior security source said Saturday.

The bombings in a busy residential and commercial area that is a stronghold for Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah were claimed by Islamic State.

“Within 24 hours, the network was arrested in the fastest uncovering of a bombing incident in the country,” the source said.

The explosions were the first attacks in more than a year to target a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon, as the Iran-backed group steps up its involvement in the war in neighboring Syria.

Lebanon‘s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Syrian and Lebanese detainees were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the bombings, which he squarely blamed on Islamic State. However, he did not say if any of those arrested were Palestinian.

Nasrallah warned his followers of a backlash against ordinary Syrians and Palestinians in the aftermath of the bombings, saying the goal of radical Islamist Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shi’ites to be heretics, was to sow discord among Sunnis and Shi’ites.

The blasts occurred almost simultaneously late Thursday and struck a Shi’ite community center and a nearby bakery in the commercial and residential area of Borj al-Barajneh, security sources said. A closely guarded Hezbollah-run hospital is also nearby.

Nasrallah condemned the Paris attacks, saying the region which was reeling under the “earthquake of Daesh barbarity” felt more than any others the pain the French people were now experiencing. Daesh is an Arab acronym for Islamic State.

Islamic State said in a statement posted online by its supporters that its members blew up a bike loaded with explosives in Borj al-Barajneh and that when onlookers gathered, a suicide bomber blew himself up among them. The group said the attacks killed 40 people.

Hezbollah has sent hundreds of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces in the four-year-old conflict over the border.

Government forces backed by Hezbollah and Iranian troops have intensified their fight against mostly Sunni insurgents, including Islamic State, since Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad on Sept. 30.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Jon Boyle and Digby Lidstone)

©2015 Thomson Reuters. All Rights Reserved.

American church planters Robert and Kathryn Baxter have been living near Paris, France since 1988. The Baxters, who are senior leaders of Le Bon Berger church, share their specific requests in the wake of the Friday terrorist attacks in Paris:

As I write this Saturday evening, Nov. 14, a strange and unsettling calm has descended over our troubled city. As of now, there are 128 confirmed dead, 250 are wounded, among them 80 are in a critical state.

Police tell us that there were eight terrorists in all, at least one confirmed as a French citizen. Those killed were all wearing explosive belts. Three of the terrorists blew themselves up just outside of the national football stadium, Stade de France, which is located only 10 minutes walk from our church. No fewer than six separate attacks happened in Paris within minutes of the bomb explosions at the stadium.

In one case, masked gunmen jumped out of a car and opened fire on a sidewalk café killing as many as possible. In another case, two gunmen broke into a concert hall and began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of 1,500. Shooting continued until police broke in and killed the two gunmen.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. In a letter released earlier today, ISIS gave specific details of the attacks, leaving the authorities little doubt as to the legitimacy of their claim. President François Hollande has declared that “France Is at War” and promised to deal with ISIS without pity.

Authorities have asked Parisians to stay at home over the weekend. Movies theaters, many restaurants and Disneyland Paris are all closed. Our discipleship school did hold a special session this morning, and our church service will be held tomorrow at the normal hours.

All members of the Baxter family are safe and sound. Our eldest daughter, Rachelle, who often hangs out in this part of Paris is on a trip to South Korea. Réanna was spending the evening with the family of her fiancé 60 miles away; and Kathryn and I were both at home.

We are praying for three things:

We are praying for God’s great mercy and compassion to be poured out on those who have lost a family member, friend, colleague. We are praying for this evil to be turned into a wave of salvation for the French.

God has told us that there are other terrorist cells active in France; and we are praying that they would be exposed to the authorities and dealt with adequately.

And finally, we believe God has called us to repent for the silence of the church as our society has slid into moral decadence. We believe that the “normalization” of immorality has destroyed God’s protection over our nation. And He is calling us to repent.

Thank you for standing with us. I will try to update you in a few days.

Islamic State claimed responsibility Saturday for a coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people at locations across Paris that French President Francois Hollande said amounted to an act of war against France.

In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered Saturday morning.

Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double-suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.

The assaults came as France, a founder member of the coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks. It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which 191 died.

Hollande said the attacks had been organized from abroad by Islamic State with internal help.

“Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action,” he said after an emergency meeting of security chiefs. He also announced three days of national mourning.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy added in a statement: “The war we must wage should be total.”

During a visit to Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said “we are witnessing a kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same time.”

In its claim of responsibility, Islamic State said the attacks were a response to France’s campaign against its fighters. It also distributed an undated video in which a militant said France would not live peacefully as long it took part in bombing raids against them.

“As long as you keep bombing, you will not live in peace. You will even fear traveling to the market,” said a bearded Arabic-speaking militant, flanked by other fighters.

A French government source told Reuters there were 127 dead, 67 in critical condition and 116 wounded. Six attackers blew themselves up, and one was shot by police. There may have been an eighth attacker, but this is not confirmed. The attacks, in which automatic weapons and explosives belts were used, lasted 40 minutes.

“The terrorists, the murderers, raked several cafe terraces with machine-gun fire before entering (the concert hall). There were many victims in terrible, atrocious conditions in several places,” police prefect Michel Cadot told reporters.

After being whisked from the stadium near the blasts, Hollande declared a national state of emergency, the first since World War II. Border controls were temporarily reimposed to stop perpetrators escaping.

Local sports events were suspended, the rock band U2 canceled a concert, the Paris metro railway was closed, and schools, universities and municipal buildings were ordered to stay shut Saturday. However some rail and air services were expected to run.

Sylvestre, a young man who was at the Stade de France when bombs went off there, said he was saved by his cell phone, which he was holding to his ear when debris hit it.

“This is the cell phone that took the hit; it’s what saved me. Otherwise my head would have been blown to bits,” he said, showing the phone with its screen smashed.

French newspapers spoke of “carnage” and “horror.” Le Figaro‘s headline said: “War in the heart of Paris” on a black background with a picture of people on stretchers.

Emergency services were mobilized, police leave was canceled, 1,500 army reinforcements were drafted into the Paris region, and hospitals recalled staff to cope with the casualties. Radio stations warned Parisians to stay at home and urged residents to give shelter to anyone caught out in the street.

The deadliest attack was on the Bataclan, a popular concert venue where the Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was performing. The hall is near the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, target of a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen in January. Some witnesses in the hall said they heard the gunmen shout Islamic chants and slogans condemning France’s role in Syria. 

France has been on high alert ever since the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January killed 18 people. Those attacks briefly united France in defense of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But that unity has since broken down, with far-right populist Marine Le Pen gaining on both mainstream parties by blaming immigration and Islam for France’s security problems.

It was not clear what political impact the latest attacks would have less than a month before regional elections in which Le Pen’s National Front is set to make further advances. The governing Socialist Party and the National Front suspended their election campaigns.

U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel led a global chorus of solidarity with France. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the “despicable attacks,” while Pope Francis called the killings “inhuman.”

Italy, Russia, Belgium and Hungary all tightened security measures. Poland, meanwhile, said the attacks meant it could not now take its share of migrants under a European Union plan. Many of the migrants flooding into Europe are refugees from Syria.

Julien Pearce, a journalist from Europe 1 radio, was inside the concert hall when the shooting began. In an eyewitness report posted on the station’s website, Pearce said several very young individuals, who were not wearing masks, entered the hall during the concert, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and started “blindly shooting at the crowd.”

“There were bodies everywhere,” he said.

The gunmen shot their victims in the back, finishing some off at point-blank range before reloading their guns and firing again, Pearce said, after escaping into the street by a stage door, carrying a wounded girl on his shoulder.

Toon, a 22-year-old messenger who lives near the Bataclan, was going into the concert hall with two friends at around p.m. (2130 GMT) when he saw three young men dressed in black and armed with machine guns. He stayed outside. One of the gunmen began firing into the crowd.

“People were falling like dominoes,” he told Reuters. He saw people shot in the leg, shoulder and back, with several lying on the floor, apparently dead. 

Two explosions were heard near the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, where the France-Germany soccer match was being played. A witness said one of the detonations blew people into the air outside a McDonald’s restaurant opposite the stadium. In central Paris, shooting erupted in mid-evening outside a Cambodian restaurant in the capital’s 10th district.

Eighteen people were killed when a gunman opened fire on Friday night diners sitting at outdoor terraces in the popular Charonne area nearby in the 11th district.

The prosecutor mentioned five locations in close proximity where shootings took place around the same time.

(Additional reporting by Geert de Clercq, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Emmanuel Jarry, Elizabeth Pineau, Julien Pretot and Bate Felix Tabi-Tabe; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Copyright © Thomson Reuters 2015.

The deadly gun and bomb attacks in Paris on Friday night prompted stern responses from Republican presidential candidates, with Jeb Bush calling them a war on the West and Ben Carson saying Syrian refugees should be barred entry into the United States.

Republicans attending the Florida Republican Party‘s Sunshine Summit stood and bowed their heads for a moment of silence for the Paris victims. Candidates offered their prayers.

“This is a war being created by Islamic terrorists,” Bush told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “This is an organized effort to destroy Western civilization. And we need to lead in this is the war of our time.”

Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush who ordered the U.S. into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in which hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers were killed, said the United States should reinvigorate U.S. alliances in the Middle East and rebuild its counter-intelligence capabilities in response.

Gunmen and bombers attacked busy restaurants, bars and a concert hall in the French capital, in what a shaken President Francois Hollande described as an unprecedented terrorist attack.

Retired neurosurgeon Carson told reporters the Paris attacks, in which 140 people were killed, “reminds us that there are those out there who have a thirst for innocent blood in an attempt to spread their philosophy and their will across this globe.”

“We must redouble our efforts and our resolve to resist them, not only to contain them, but to eliminate that kind of hatred in the world,” he said.

Carson said refugees from the conflict in Syria and Iraq should not be allowed into the United States.

“To bring them here when we have tens of millions of people who are suffering economically doesn’t make any economic sense,” he said.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another candidate seeking his party’s nomination to run for the White House in the November 2016 election, said Americans should stand with the people of France and help the French government find those responsible.

“We cannot let those who seek to disrupt our way of life succeed. We must increase our efforts at home and abroad to improve our defenses, destroy terrorist networks, and deprive them of the space from which to operate,” Rubio said in a statement.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawk on U.S. national security, called the Paris attacks “an attack on human decency and all things that we hold dear.”

(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Grant McCool)

Copyright © Thomson Reuters 2015.

Up to 120 people could be dead after shootouts in central Paris, and explosions were heard near a stadium where a soccer match between France and Germany was underway, BFM TV and other French media reported on Friday. An earlier report said the death toll hovered around 30, but has since risen exponentially.

France 24 television said that president Francois Hollande had been at the Stade de France and was taken out of the area. News media also now report five of the assailants have been killed.

BFM TV also says there are some hostages. People are being held hostage at the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris after several shots were fired, French news channel BFM TV reported on Friday.
Shooting at the Bataclan began one hour into the concert of a California rock group called Eagles of Death Metal, BFM TV said, adding that one or two people came in and began shooting in the air.

Hollande and his interior minister rushed were rushing from the soccer match to the ministry to deal with the unfolding situation, an official said.

One witness said he hear gunshots as he was walking on a street in the 10th district of Paris close to Place de La République. When he arrived outside a restaurant he saw bodies on the ground

“I saw three bodies being put into body bags,” said Fabien Baron, a student. {eoa}

© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

Indianapolis police on Friday said they have surveillance photos of a man they suspect murdered the 28-year-old pregnant wife of a pastor during a burglary this week, saying he may have also broken into a nearby house. 

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department detectives told a news conference they would not release the images until forensic experts had finished analyzing them. 

However, they described a man dressed in light pants and a two-toned hoodie, who they also suspected of breaking into a house two doors down from the north side Indianapolis home of Amanda Blackburn, who had been home with her 1-year-old son at the time of the Tuesday shooting. The son was unharmed. 

Blackburn’s husband Davey, with whom she moved to Indianapolis from South Carolina in 2012 to start the independent Resonate Church, came home from the gym to discover his wife, who was rushed to the hospital and later died, the church said in a Wednesday statement. 

Police said the suspect also has been linked to a dark SUV that was seen in the neighborhood that same morning. Police said there is other evidence, but they did not release details. 

Officials said the burglary of a television and computers from a home two doors west of the Blackburn house occurred at about 5:30 a.m. and Davey left for the gym shortly after 6 a.m., Chief Rick Hite said. Neighbors reported hearing shots fired at about 6:45 a.m., but there were no signs of forced entry and police said they have not ruled out that others were involved. 

Davey Blackburn, who was eliminated as a suspect during the investigation, said in a statement on the church website that he had lost his ministry partner and best friend. 

“There is no way to prepare yourself for circumstances like these,” he said in the statement. “As deeply as I am hurting I am hopeful and confident that good things will come of this. I rest in the truth of Romans 8:28 that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.” {eoa}

© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

The average megachurch in America has the production sensibilities of a Grammy award-winning performer, the thoughtfulness of a famous professor or lecturer, the business-savvy of a multinational Fortune 500 company, the philanthropic effect of a global NGO and the supernatural spirit that pops right off the text of the Bible’s Book of Acts. 

They are almost all conservative theologically and politically (think 95 percent), but they have varying degrees of comfort with making politics an issue in the pulpit. If you pin any of them down, they almost always embrace traditional values. Their dual mission of evangelism and compassion stands in stark contrast to the very unholy games we play in the public arena. It’s the tension between the pastoral and prophetic calls that every church must embrace, and each church must find its own way through. It’s a real struggle, and different churches handle this tension in different ways.

Megachurches are the spiritual phenomenon of the 21st century; there are more churches with 5,000 people attending weekly services than at any other time in history. So much for those who claim ad nauseam that faith is declining in our country.

In compiling this list, Newsmax has elected to organize these churches based upon their overall influence rather than by their size (others do that regularly). While influence is notoriously subjective and therefore difficult to quantify, we based our list on the notoriety of the megachurches’ leaders, the reach of their books, the ratings of their television and radio programs, and the way the public views them. 

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