Natural situations can sometimes unlock spiritual revelations. As I walked into my office, I saw my driver’s license facedown on the scanner, waiting to be duplicated.

At that moment, the Lord spoke to my heart. He showed me He was giving out new names and unlocking new identities in this season. The enemy tried to “dupe” many of you. He accused you and maligned your character. But God is giving you a new name for this season. A blessed name.

Check out this teaching and let it encourage your heart.

Many in the body of Christ have walked through a difficult season of justice, slander, persecution, cursing and other demon-inspired attacks through people.

The strategy is clear: The enemy is trying to put out the fire of the burning ones through a constant assault on character, finances and relationships.

If that’s you, it’s time to celebrate. I heard the Lord say, “Justice served.” Hear the word of the Lord:

“I am releasing judgments in this season—righteous judgments against the enemies of your soul who have instigated and initiated injustices against you. For I am a God of justice and I release vindication and vengeance in My timing.

“My timing is now for those who have stood in faith and willfully chosen to return good for evil done to them. I am serving up justice for the merciful who have prayed for their persecutors and blessed those who cursed them.

“This is a season of justice. Walk in it.”

If you are growing weary in well-doing when the wrong thing is happening to you, this is reason for rejoicing. You can expect a hearty serving of God’s justice if you have kept your heart right. If you have grown bitter in the battle, now is the time to repent, forgive and otherwise get your heart right so you can see the recompense God wants to pour out.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us to bless our enemies—to bless those who curse us (Matt. 5:43-48). He wasn’t talking about blessing the devil, who is the real enemy, but people who the enemy is using to harm us. When you understand the Greek word for bless, you may cringe, but there’s power in obeying this command.

The Greek word for bless is eulogeo. According to The KJV New Testament Greek Lexicon, it means, “to praise, celebrate with praises; to invoke blessings; to consecrate a thing with solemn prayers; to ask God’s blessing on a thing; pray God to bless in one’s use; pronounce a consecratory blessing on; to cause to prosper, to make happy, to bestow blessings on.”

This radical concept of blessing can be difficult to swallow, but the blessings that boomerang back on you will be difficult to contain.

Armed with this revelation, pray blessings on your enemies until you sincerely mean what you pray. This will deliver you from any unforgiveness, increase your authority in the spirit, and position you for radical justice in this season.

A pastor was following his instincts when he failed to make contact with parishioner Benny Hallmark.

“It wasn’t like Benny not to show up, and then when I called there was no answer,” Woodhaven Baptist Church Pastor Scott Patz says. “It’s very shocking and very difficult to deal with.”

So Patz went to Hallmark’s home, only to discover the unthinkable: Hallmark was found shot to death in his recliner. Police later found another dead body across the street from Hallmark’s home.

Police arrested Jimmy Merritt and charged him with first-degree homicide.

Hallmark’s Orlando-area church, though, feels the loss.

“He was such a sweet, caring, kind, considerate, loving man of God. No one like him. He is in the arms of the Lord. Going to miss his sweet smile & the warm hugs,” one person wrote on the church’s funeral announcement.

“Please keep Benny’s family in your prayers. Benny’s smile and uplifting personality will be sorely missed. We love you, Benny,” according to the church Facebook post.

“So loving and joyous. I’m missing him terribly,” Patz says.

Prager University (PragerU)  has filed a federal lawsuit in California against Google and YouTube for censoring its educational videos. The suit charges that YouTube (which is owned by Google) “use their restricted mode filtering … as a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU.”

PragerU, founded by radio talk show host Dennis Prager, is a conservative nonprofit digital media organization that is associated with and presents the views of leading conservative experts on current and historical events. The organization produces short, concise, graphics-based videos that are viewed by millions of people, including a large viewership of young people. These are broadly based on Judeo-Christian values and conservative thought. Many of the videos regarding Israel have been censored, as well as those regarding discussions of the history of the Korean War, legal decisions by courts including landmark rulings of the United States Supreme Court, and trending current events such as foreign affairs, male-female differences, environmental issues and other topics discussed on university campuses.

YouTube has admitted that the PragerU videos have been censored by individual human review and not accidentally censored by an algorithm. While PragerU videos have been censored, the same subject matters posted by liberal groups have not been censored.

The intent of the lawsuit is “to stop Google/YouTube from unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech solely because of PragerU’s political identity and viewpoint as a non-profit that espouses conservative views on current and historical events. Google/YouTube have been discriminating and censoring, and continue to discriminate and censor educational videos uploaded or posted to the YouTube platform through the arbitrary and capricious use of ‘restricted mode’ and ‘demonetization’ viewer restriction filters that purportedly are intended to prohibit or limit access of ‘inappropriate’ content to prospective public viewers based on certain viewer characteristics, including the age of the viewer.”

However, the suit also states that “in response to complaints from the LGBTQ community and other critics, Google/YouTube removed all restricted filtering on videos posted or produced by LGBTQ members and groups, and changed their policy, filtering algorithm, and manual review policies to ensure that videos posted by LGBTQ vloggers were not being censored solely because of the identity of the speaker.”

The lawsuit alleges violation of the federal law known as the Lanham Act. The suit also includes a free speech claim, even though Google and YouTube are private companies which are generally not constrained by state and federal constitutional provisions regarding speech. California, however, is one of the few states where the California courts have ruled even private shopping malls must abide by state constitutional free speech provisions. The legal theory is that modern shopping malls have become the modern public like the traditional streets, parks and sidewalks. The suit argues that the modern super information highway channels like YouTube and Google should be considered public fora and the free speech provisions should apply.

“There are many instances of political bias by Google and YouTube, which have repeatedly censored conservative or Judeo-Christian viewpoints,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “Even Alan Dershowitz was censored in a PragerU video because his subject matter contained a pro-Israel message. The fact that YouTube eventually removed the block after public outcry does not undo the pervasive problem of censorship. The PragerU suit will not be the last suit on this issue. Unless the monopolistic social media super highways act more responsibly to allow competing viewpoints, there will be a flood of litigation and perhaps even federal regulation to address these abuses.”

For the original article, visit .

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and Origin, among other hit novels, told BBC Hardtalk that he has abandoned a Christian belief-system, but isn’t quite ready to call himself an atheist.

“I no longer believe in the God of my childhood that some deity sent his son down to be crucified for my sins,” he said. “But I will tell you that if I lay [sic] out under a starlit sky, I feel like there’s something a lot bigger than us.”

He said he’s not quite sure what, exactly, that something is and added that he’s not quite ready to embrace complete atheism. {eoa}

Click here to read the rest of this story from our content partners at Faithwire.

Two explosions and a fire at a fireworks factory in the western outskirts of Indonesia’s capital killed 47 people and injured dozens on Thursday, police said, and the death toll was expected to rise.

Thick plumes of dark smoke billowed from a factory warehouse in the Tangerang district of Jakarta, an industrial and manufacturing hub on the island of Java, TV broadcasts showed.

Hours later the burnout factory was still smoldering and there was a strong smell of burning plastic and chemicals.

Witnesses said there were two explosions, one at around 10 a.m. (0300 GMT) and another about three hours later, both of which could be heard miles away, media reports said.

A grisly video of the scene inside the warehouse, which was widely shared on social media, showed onlookers counting badly charred bodies.

“From the manifest we obtained, there were 103 workers. Of those 103 workers … there were 46 who were injured,” Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono told Metro Television. “We also found some who had died. There are 47 bodies.”

An official had earlier put the death toll at 30.

Yuwono said 10 people on the manifest who were not accounted for may have left with light injuries or not been working at the time of the blasts.

The online video and media images of the PT Panca Buana Cahaya Sukses warehouse showed smoldering ash and debris, with the roof missing in some parts.

A search and rescue official, Deden Nurjaman, said bodies were still inside and he expected the death toll to climb. “People were burned so badly you couldn’t see their faces … It was really bad,” said Nurjaman.

Industrial safety standards in Indonesia are often low and rules poorly enforced. There have been a series of major fires this year, including one that engulfed one of Jakarta’s main markets.

At the scene of Thursday’s disaster, the grass was scorched in an area around 10 meters from the site.

Forensic police worked in the fading light to examine the debris and were trying to set up floodlights as night fell.

A nearby mosque was holding prayers for the victims.

Fiza, a doctor in the emergency unit at Tangerang General Hospital, told Metro TV he was treating seven people, some of them with burns to more than 80 percent of their bodies. Three were in critical condition.

Syamsudin, a relative of two women who were being treated at the hospital, said the pair had only worked four days in the factory’s packing division.

The factory had been operating for only two months, media said.

“We are still looking into the cause of the fire,” police spokesman Yuwono said, adding that for now police were prioritizing evacuating victims.

Police were also investigating the factory’s permit, he said. {eoa}

© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

Israeli researchers have discovered that the amount of a specific protein is severely reduced in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease caused by brain cell death. Currently there is no cure, but according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), we now know what may trigger it. Dr. Debbie Toiber, of the BGU Department of Life Sciences, and her team discovered that a specific protein—Sirtuin-6—is severely reduced in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

SIRT6 is critical to the repair of DNA, the deterioration of which “is the beginning of the chain that ends in neurodegenerative diseases in seniors,” she explains. She discovered that as a person ages, the amount of the SIRT6 protein in the brain declines. In fact, according to Dr. Toiber, “In Alzheimer’s patients, it is almost completely gone.”

Dr. Toiber is currently working on finding a way to increase the expression of the protein into the brain.

Dr. Toiber acknowledges that healthy habits like good diet and exercise might make a difference in our DNA health. She points out that engaging in sports and even working past retirement can challenge the body in positive ways, preparing your cells to react more readily and thus be more likely able to repair themselves.

She concludes, “We should be focusing our research on how to maintain production of SIRT6 and improve the repair capacity of the DNA damage that leads to neurodegenerative diseases,” according to Arutz-7.

“Israel shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the earth with fruit.” Isa 27:6 {eoa}

This article originally appeared at .

Samuel Rodriguez believes there’s a biblical model for leaving spiritual drought behind. He says first there is drought, then fire and finally rain. Yet many Christians try to skip the middle step. Why is spiritual fire the only way to receive abundant rain? Rodriguez explains.

When asked about new prophetic revelations, Mike Bickle says, “Anything that’s not in the written Word of God, I’d reject.” But he’s quick to clarify that many authentic encounters with God are not actually anti-biblical. Watch his nuanced take on the subject in this video. Do you agree with him?

Racial and social justice issues are polarizing topics today. Christian spoken-word artist Propaganda says they shouldn’t be. When both sides try to make the issue an “us” vs. “them” struggle, Christians should resist such easy labels. Instead, they should model our Savior. Watch the video to learn how.