Trump plans to give persecuted Christians priority refugee status

It’s about time that we had an American leader who was sympathetic to the plight of persecuted Christians at home and abroad instead of showing favoritism to religious terrorists wanting to enter and destroy America! May YHVH bless, strengthen and encourage our leaders to do the right thing. Please pray for our leaders and President Trump in particular that YHVH will guide, embolden and direct them to do his will that the kingdom of Elohim may be advanced! — Natan

Courtesy of the Washington Examiner at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/exactly-right-jindal-backs-trump-over-travel-ban/article/2613297

Persecuted Christians seeking asylum in the United States will be given priority when they apply for refugee status, President Trump said Thursday.

“We are going to help them. They’ve been horribly treated,” Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview set to air Sunday.

“Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, and the reason that was so unfair — everybody was persecuted in all fairness — but they were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians,” he told CBN’s David Brody.

Upon being asked if he sees persecuted Christians “as kind of a priority” when it comes to granting non-citizens refugee status, Trump told Brady: “Yes.”

Trump was expected to sign an executive order Friday afternoon that would temporarily shut the door to most U.S.-bound immigrants from Muslim countries and suspend the Syrian refugee program.

“The secretaries of state and homeland security, as appropriate, shall cease refugee processing of and the admittance of nationals of Syria as refugees until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the [U.S. Refugee Admittance Program] to ensure its alignment with the national interest,” read a draft of the order obtained by the Washington Examiner earlier this week.

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What Are We to Make of President Donald Trump?

Like everyone else, I’ve been watching the Donald Trump phenomenon ever since he miraculously won the US presidential election in November 2016. Since then, I’ve been asking myself, what’s next for America and the rest of the world, and how does this all fit into end times biblical prophecy?

As I’ve been pondering these questions, I have positioned myself as a watchman on the proverbial wall while following the news, listening to Bible teacher-pundits’ assessment of the situation, and, most importantly, asking YHVH for wisdom and guidance to discern correctly from heaven’s perspective the times and seasons in which we are living.

Frankly, what right-minded individual can’t be excited about the actions that Donald Trump has taken since becoming the president? Things like cutting funding for abortion, appointing many Christians to key positions in his cabinet, taking a strong stand to protect America’s borders, limiting or cutting off immigration from terrorist nations, reducing strangling governmental regulations against business, encouraging an America-first policy regarding energy production and manufacturing, and the list goes on.

In light of the anti-American, new world order, globalist agendas that have hurt America and Americans from failed trade and economic policies to expensive foreign military entanglements and adventuristic policies, and the rise of the anti-Christian and  Elohim-hating, anti-biblical left that has all but taken over large segments of our country, I never believed that anything could slow down this tidal wave of evil.

For these reasons, Trump has given me reasons to be greatly encouraged and to be optimistic. But, and there’s always a but, I refuse to park my brain in a vacant spot and throw caution to the wind in favor of unbridled optimism based more on emotion than on reality unlike some of my colleagues in the ministry are doing.

My gut tells me that we’re simply in a reprieve from YHVH Elohim’s judgment against America and the rest of the world. Unless my understanding of end times Bible prophecy is totally off, the Book of Revelation tells me that there will be a Babylon the Great New World Order, antichrist, Luciferian system in place, which will control all or most of the world, and which Yeshua will destroy at his second coming. Period.

If we’re in a reprieve, then what must we do during this respite from YHVH’s final end times judgments? Yeshua told us what to do: Occupy until he comes! What does this mean? It should go without saying: Draw closer to Yeshua. Repent of sin. Put on holiness and righteousness. Do the great commission by preaching the gospel in every way you can. Be a river of life to those around you by praying for them, sharing the gospel and meeting others at their point of need as Yeshua did. Finally, support through prayer, help and finances those who are doing these things. There are many ways to participate and many levels of participation depending on one’s resources, means and abilities. Inactivity is inexcusable in Yeshua’s eyes. Everyone can do something, or else  our King and Master calls us an unprofitable servant.

How long will this reprieve last? This has not been revealed to me.

Satan and his followers will not easily let go of the gains they have made over the past few decades when it comes to world domination. They are ruthless in their goal to accomplish their evil agendas and will stop at nothing—even assassination. I am praying for President Trump’s physical protection (and hopefully you are too), and then asking YHVH what I can do to be a better servant to get the gospel out during this respite. Hopefully you’re doing the same thing.

Another thing that is against President Trump is the instability (to put it mildly!) of the current economic system—nationally and globally. The fundamentals are still very weak. Those of you who are astute observers understand what I’m talking about. These factors can’t be overcome much less changed overnight. They are well entrenched and endemic. We didn’t get here overnight, and we won’t get out of this mess easily, quickly or painlessly. So buckle your seat belts. Think austerity!

Although I like what I see so far with Trump, it’s still very early in the game and only time will tell.

No, Trump is not the Messiah; he’s just a man. But YHVH Elohim is in charge and uses men for his purposes and glory. May this be the case with Donald Trump, those around him and the rest of us as well.

Below, I have a link to a video that best explains my views on the current situation. I personally know Norm Franz and have followed his ministry since the late 90s when he was just coming into an understanding of the Torah. You will find it instructive and balanced.

Occupy until Yeshua comes and (sorry for the cliche) let’s make hay while the sun shines!

Norm Franz—Can Trump Really Save The US Economy?

 

Thank you letter…

Ministry update and thank you letter from Natan and Sandi to those who supported Hoshana Rabbah in 2016…

Shalom aleichem partners with us in Yeshua’s kingdom work!

Once again, please accept our heartfelt gratitude for all of your financial contributions large or small to Hoshana Rabbah Biblical Discipleship Resources. We thank Yehovah Elohim for each of you and pray a blessing over each giver each time. 

Although we run a frugal operation out of our small home and try to keep our expenses low, as you know, everything costs money. The internet and YouTube may be free, but computers, online servers, domain names, video equipment, phone and internet lines, paper, printers, hard drives, electricity, etc., etc., still cost money. It all adds up.Natan still takes no remuneration for his ministry work, but Sandi for her expert services managing the website, the finances, answering phones and all the myriad tasks associated with running a ministry takes a small monthly stipend. For her high level skill set, she could make a lot more money working elsewhere, but then the ministry would suffer. All this is to say that your loving support is necessary and a great encouragement to us as well.

After Sukkot 2016, Sandi and Natan retired from pastoring the local congregation we started in our home 18 years ago. We reluctantly did so, but several factors necessitated it. Frankly, we were tired and burned out and we lacked the necessary local support to be able continue. Moreover, and very importantly, the pressure was beginning to affect Sandi’s health deleteriously. We’re getting older and the strain was just too much. Additionally, I’m still working full-time in my tree care business, and I just was lacking the energy to do it all.

When one door shuts, another opens. Since closing the local congregation, we have rededicated ourselves to improving services on our internet, global outreach ministry. Presently, the Hoshana Rabbah YouTube channel continues to grow steadily with new subscribers and viewers. Currently, there are more than 320 videos on our channel. Natan does all the filming, editing and uploading, and is the researcher and teacher on nearly all of the videos as well. A lot of work, but lives are being touched globally as we endeavor to connect the message of the gospel to its pro-Torah, Hebraic roots. Currently, we have nearly 5,000 subscribers with 665,000 view. This seems pretty good for a tiny ministry in a niche market.

Natan’s Bible study blog continues to be very active. Hundreds read it each day, and the numbers are still growing. Currently, He has posted nearly 2,000 self-written articles on his blog on a huge variety of biblical subjects. In his great commission command, Yeshua told us to make disciples (not just converts). This blog along with the YouTube channel and the many resources on the Hoshana Rabbah website are our way of helping to fulfill Yeshua’s command to take the gospel to and to help gather in the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Agains, thank you for your prayers and financial support in helping us to make these resources available free of charge to the world.

After Sukkot, Natan began to record a video teaching for each Torah-portion or parashah for the entire year—there are about 54. So far, he has recorded all of Genesis and is well into Exodus. Some of the videos are a couple of hours long, while others are more than five hours long. These videos are ideal for individual and group study sessions. As always, they’re gospel-oriented. We always try to keep Yeshua the Messiah at the center of everything as the early apostles did as recorded in the Testimony of Yeshua (New Testament).

Even though Natan is no longer pastoring a local congregation, he is making himself more available to be of assistance in an advisory role to new congregations or home fellowships starting up. He wants to be a big brothers to anyone who needs it. He’s available to help via email, phone and Skype. Through Skype, he is available to speak to congregations, to answer biblical questions and to pray with, encourage and to speak prophetically over groups upon request.

Sandi also plans on redoing the Hoshana Rabbah website—a huge and daunting task—and bringing it up to current web standards. This will hopefully reposition ourselves more favorably in the web marketplace of ideas, so that we can reach even more of the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Together, Natan and Sandi are hoping to begin updating the adult Torah study guides. Natan has much fresh material to add to the existing ones. This project may take a couple of years.

That there is a quick update on the Hoshana Rabbah ministry. We’re probably forgetting something, but that’s the main gist of it.

Again, Sandi and Natan want to express our heartfelt and sincere thanks for all of your love and love offerings. We pray that we may be able to continue to earn your love and support, and to be fruitful ground into which you are pleased to sow your finances, and, most importantly, we want to be pleasing to Yehovah Elohim and Yeshua our Master as we together show them our love and devotion by doing our reasonable service for the advancement of Elohim’s kingdom!

Yeshua’s Bondservants in His Love,

Natan and Sandi Lawrence

 

10 Rules of Radicals for the Right

 In 1971 Marxist strategist Saul D. Alinsky published his infamous handbook for “community organizers,” titled “Rules for Radicals,” which ever since has been the essential resource for left-wing agitators, including the Clintons and Obama.

Alinsky dedicated his “Rules for Radicals” to “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer” [the entity also known as Satan, the Father of Lies and Enslaver of Mankind].

As we conservative populists begin to reclaim our nation from Alinsky’s anti-American Bolsheviks, we need a resource for pro-American constitutionalists. These Rules for Radicals of the Right are dedicated to the One who conquered Lucifer:

1. Tell the truth without hesitation or apology.

Truth is our most powerful weapon and strategy. Truth is objective, verifiable and self-evident to a clear-thinking mind grounded in rationality and knowledge of the facts. Rationality proceeds from recognition and respect for the created order and the Creator Himself. His immutable laws provide the fixed standards by which any material or spiritual thing can be measured, proved and trusted. Without fixed standards there can be no steadfast rule of law making all men equal and free, only arbitrary rule by those with power to enforce their will.

2. Keep it simple but not stupid.

The enemy relies on confusion to create chaos and then exploits it to take control. He weaves a complex fabric of falsehoods, half-truths, misrepresentations, misdirection, hidden false assumptions and sophistry designed to mislead the gullible into drawing false conclusions. Complexity favors the deceivers. Honest and intelligent simplification frees captive minds.

3. Trust or not trust, but always verify.

People who spin narratives or otherwise interpret facts or events instead of providing the straight facts to interpret for yourself often have their own agenda. This includes not just leftist media but can be any information source, including those you think are trustworthy. Whenever you’re expected to form a conclusion on any issue based on the authority of the source rather than the full and free presentation of the facts, including opposing opinions and interpretations, don’t trust it. This is especially true when an inherently controversial narrative is repeated consistently over time from only one perspective, such as “climate change,” the “born gay” assumption, or the theory of evolution.

4. Think for yourself.

Human beings are susceptible to jumping on bandwagons or joining teams to meet social needs, but this makes us vulnerable to manipulation by people who form or control teams to serve their own agenda (i.e, the R’s and D’s). Beware of any group, system or institution that requires or expects you to substitute their conclusions for your own, or to adopt a “team” position on a whole slate of issues, and shuns or denigrates you for disagreeing on one or more items. (E.g., many liberals recognize an essential natural order in the eco-systems of living things but are forbidden from acknowledging the natural family as humanity’s ecosystem because “gay rights” is a “must-embrace” leftist goal.)

5. See the good and bad on both sides.

Remember that the devil works both sides of the street, and it serves his goals if we evaluate people by the team they’re on, not their character or the rationality of their arguments. If truth is our standard and filter, we’ll judge things and people fairly and thereby lessen the “us vs. them” stupidity that makes us so easy to manipulate in elections and other cultural conflicts.

6. Restore critical thinking.

The goal of the elites has always been to “dumb down” Americans to make us easier to deceive and control. Thus liberal terminology always avoids simple definitions and distinct boundaries, especially when used in social policy or laws (e.g., “homophobia”: a nonsense word that implies all disapproval is an anxiety disorder). We can defeat the elites by mastering critical thinking skills and restoring true literacy that employs only clearly defined words in unambiguous sentences conveying true and trustworthy knowledge.

7. Reclaim objectivity.

The elites always obscure the distinction between objective truth and subjective opinion, and between hard science (which is never contradictory to biblical truth, properly understood) and “soft science” (which can easily be manipulated to serve a hidden agenda). We must always promote and defend objective truth and contrast it with the subjective opinions and belief systems of the often-fraudulent “soft sciences” that have been driving our social policies for decades.

8. Challenge the know-it-alls.

The elites on both sides invariably assume an attitude of moral and intellectual superiority. It’s easy to expose their errors by practicing the Socratic Method of interrogation. Just ask 1) “What do you mean by that?” (i.e., define your terms), and 2) “How do you know that’s true?” (i.e., what is your source of authority). You don’t have to be an expert on any given topic to take command of the discussion and expose liberal illogic and it’s lack of sound presuppositions.

9. Avoid the tar-babies.

Remember that you can’t persuade a true-believer leftist with fact and logic. Intellectually, most of them embrace a closed-loop Cultural Marxist narrative similar to paranoid schizophrenia. If someone proves himself incapable of recognizing self-evident truths (such as denying the humanity of an unborn baby while looking at an advanced stage ultrasound image), disengage immediately. Conservative populists should largely ignore the left and their delusions and just focus on taking the seats of power away from them.

10. Be an army of one.

Paradoxically, populism is a movement of individualists whose common denominator is the U.S. Constitution. Unlike our cultural opponents who hold the hive-mind mentality of big-government statists, our true strength isn’t in our numbers, but the rightness of our cause. We don’t need to wait for marching orders from Donald Trump or any other perceived leaders; we can act on our own or in small groups on the inherent authority granted to us by God and affirmed by the founders. The quicker we all decide just to do that, the quicker we can restore this republic. (I figure we’ve got about a two-year window.)

 

How Christianity in America Changed During Obama’s Presidency

From http://www.christianpost.com/news/how-christianity-in-america-changed-during-obamas-presidency-pew-report-172970/

How Christianity in America Changed During Obama’s Presidency: Pew Report

 

BY BRANDON SHOWALTER , CP REPORTER

A new report released this week outlines the changes in American society during President Obama’s eight years in office; the number of Christians in the United States has dropped significantly, the statistics show, but others argue there’s more to the story.

image: http://d.christianpost.com/full/102405/590-436/u-s-president-barack-obama.jpg

(Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)U.S. President Barack Obama arrives to deliver his farewell address in Chicago, Illinois, January 10, 2017.

“When it comes to the nation’s religious identity, the biggest trend during Obama’s presidency is the rise of those who claim no religion at all,” according to a report released on Wednesday titled “How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency” from the Pew Research Center. When Obama took office in 2008, approximately 16 percent of Americans identified as either atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.” As Obama leaves office, that number has increased to a quarter of the population.

“To me, the Pew data is very important but it’s not the only data,” said John S. Dickerson, author of the 2013 book The Great Evangelical Recession, in an interview with The Christian Post on Friday. “Because there is some conflation between ‘born again’ and ‘evangelical’ and the Pew data does not extricate between the two.”

“But when it comes to the long-term trajectories [for evangelicals], I don’t see anything that has changed,” he added.

Dickerson’s book contends that if you extricate born again and evangelical and actually count the number of devoted evangelicals, they amount to approximately 8 to 10 percent of the population.

“In 2013, when I first released the national data about evangelical Christianity declining, and at that time some prominent leaders said the trends could not be true. But the data never lies, and the last five years have sadly demonstrated what the data suggested back in 2013 — that Millennials are embracing agnosticism and increasingly rejecting Biblical Christianity,” Dickerson noted.

The Pew report states: “Christians, meanwhile, have fallen from 78 percent to 71 percent of the U.S. adult population, owing mainly to modest declines in the share of adults who identify with Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism. The share of Americans identifying with evangelical Protestantism, historically black Protestant denominations and other smaller Christian groups, by contrast, have remained fairly stable.”

Simultaneously, however, Americans who identify with a particular faith are as devout as they have ever been and by some accounts even more so.

Though the full “How America Changed” report was released this week, the findings on religious identification were harvested from Pew’s 2015 America’s Changing Religious Landscape Survey. Media outlets skewed the numbers and created a false narrative at the time, according to notable scholars from Baylor University. The Jan. 11 Pew report also addressed a range of cultural phenomena and political divisions, such as the widespread use of social media, distrust in government, and America’s place in the world.

CP asked Dickerson to explain how Obama’s administration has affected American evangelical Christianity.

“I think evangelicals largely felt alienated and ignored during the eight years of this administration. If you rewind through the decades, evangelical Christians were at the head of the table, then they moved to the foot of the table, and then they got moved to the kids table, and then they got kicked out of the dinner party altogether,” Dickerson said.

Those negative feelings likely precipitated a vote for a man in a presidential election many evangelicals found unsavory, he explained.

First Things editor R.R. Reno previously told CP in an interview about his book Resurrecting the Idea Of A Christian Society that “the main problem facing Christians today is a kind of lament, a spirit of lament of having lost the country” and that lament “tends to make contemporary Christians resentful of the present age. So it creates a defensive posture toward the contemporary moment as we feel the current going against us.”

“Instead, what has happened is very powerful elements of our society are shaking off this presumptive authority of Christianity to define their lives and for the wider public culture of America,” Reno said.