Thursday, February 20, 2020

Presbyterian or Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran and Other Mainline Protestant Pastors are the Main Protestant Support for Same-Sex “Marriage”


Presbyterian or Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran and Other Mainline Protestant Pastors are the Main Protestant Support for Same-Sex “Marriage”

By Julio Severo
Even though a majority of evangelicals still disapprove same-sex relationships, approval has grown among traditional Protestant pastors, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research that asked Protestant pastors their thoughts on this issue.
The increase in support for same-sex “marriage” among Protestant pastors can be attributed to changing attitudes among certain groups, especially pastors from mainline Protestant denominations, said the survey “Mainline Pastors Drive Growth in Pastoral Support for Same-Sex Marriage,” of LifeWay.
Presbyterian or Reformed (49%), Methodist (47%), Lutheran (35%) and other traditional Protestant pastors answered to LifeWay’s survey that they see nothing wrong with same-sex “marriage.” In comparison, only 3% of Baptists and 1% of Pentecostals have the same liberal view.
LifeWay found that pastors with a doctorate (27%) or a master’s degree (32%) are more likely to support same-sex “marriage” than pastors with a bachelor’s degree (9%) or no college degree (6%). So pastors with higher diplomas are more likely to support same-sex “marriage” than pastors with no university diploma.
Such result is no surprise. Universities are filled with left-wing professors who transmit their ideologies, inclusive homosexual ideologies, to their students. So if you fill your mind with a left-wing education, you will end thinking as a left-winger. On the other hand, if you fill your mind with God’s Word, you will think God’s thoughts.
LifeWay’s survey was conducted by phone with 1,000 Protestant pastors Sept. 24-30, 2019. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, from a random sample drawn from a list of all Protestant churches.
From the Gospel viewpoint, the LifeWay survey is bad news for Presbyterian or Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran and other mainline Protestant pastors. But it is good news for Baptists and especially Pentecostals. It shows that university diplomas do not equip pastors to face secular and spiritual challenges, but supernatural gifts and the anointing of the Holy Spirit are an excellent equipment for pastors to face such challenges.
While traditional Protestant pastors treat their theological diplomas and doctorates as their greatest equipment to spread their theological gospel, Pentecostal and charismatic pastors treat supernatural gifts and the anointing of the Holy Spirit as their greatest equipment to spread the living Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is the great difference. The best equipment that mainline pastors have are their diplomas, which prove that they were massively indoctrinated by liberal professors.
The best equipment Pentecostal and charismatic pastors have is the supernatural gifts and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Without such spiritual equipment, even the best efforts of mainline “conservative” pastors fail. The Gospel Coalition, which is Reformed or Calvinist, has supported a strange view that Christians can live with homosexual feelings and desires without rejecting them. In fact, the Gospel Coalition has many members who are Calvinist ministers in this situation.
While university education turns mainline pastors into religious liberal puppets, less attached to God’s Word and more supportive of sodomy and the fake “marriage” between two men, the supernatural gifts and the anointing of the Holy Spirit make Pentecostal and charismatic pastors more attached to God’s Word, more conservative and more supportive of the traditional marriage between only a man and a woman.
With information from LifeWay Research.
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Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Vladimir Putin says “marriage is a union of a man and woman” as he declares support for traditional family values and rejects homosexual “marriage”


Vladimir Putin says “marriage is a union of a man and woman” as he declares support for traditional family values and rejects homosexual “marriage”

By Julio Severo
Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 13, 2020 stressed that marriage should be solely the union of a man and woman.
“A marriage is a union of a man and woman,” he said at a meeting with a Kremlin-appointed committee discussing new amendments to the Russian constitution.
He made clear he would not allow the traditional notion of mother and father to be subverted by homosexualists who seek to turn father and mother just in the neutral “parent number 1” and “parent number 2” even in birth certificates and passports, as it is happening in some Western nations.
“As far as ‘parent number 1’ and ‘parent number 2’ goes, I’ve already spoken publicly about this and I’ll repeat it again: as long as I’m president this will not happen. There will be dad and mum,” Putin said.
During his two decades in power, Putin has closely aligned himself with the Christian Orthodox Church and sought to distance Russia from left-wing Western values, including the homosexual agenda.
His leadership has produced more conservative policies, with groups promoting Orthodox Christian views becoming stronger and left-wing and homosexualist stances attacked.
His actions aim at pleasing the Christian Orthodox Church, which rejects homosexual “marriage” and defends only marriage as a union of a man and woman.
The Advocate, the largest gay magazine in the world, said, “Putin’s Russia is a very homophobic and transphobic place.”
American evangelical Paulie Heath said,
“Being mindful of world politics, and the vast pressure President Trump is putting on other countries, to embrace the evil of sodomy; even threatening to reduce support for these countries if they do not embrace the evil, I can see exactly why Putin wants to make his stand clear - they are not confused about God's intention for sexuality. Big contrast to the morally decadent U.S.”
Presidents of Christian nations should also please their national Christianity. For example, the United States was founded by a population 98 percent Protestant. And their Protestantism was conservative. So it is not wonder that the main voters for President Donald Trump in 2016 were evangelicals.
Yet, Trump has not expressed any rejection of homosexual “marriage.” He has not also expressed any clear support to marriage as a union of a man and woman. On the contrary, he told Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera that he would be willing to vote for a homosexual for president of the United States.
Rivera interviewed Trump on February 13, 2020 and asked, “Would Americans vote for a gay man to be president?”
“I think so,” Trump answered. “I think there would be some that wouldn’t, and you know, I wouldn’t be among that group, to be honest with you.”
Homosexual activists did not put Trump in the White House. Conservative evangelicals did it. Cannot Trump respect and honor his conservative evangelical voters by openly rejecting gay “marriage” and supporting only marriage between a man and woman just as Putin is doing for his Christian Orthodox voters?
With information from Daily Mail, Reuters, The Advocate and LifeSiteNews.
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Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Brazilian President Says He Believes in Jesus in Evangelical Event


Brazilian President Says He Believes in Jesus in Evangelical Event

By Julio Severo
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joined the 140,000 young people who attended The Send 2020 in Brasilia, Brazil in February 8, 2020.
Bolsonaro speaking in The Send
Although not directly invited, Bolsonaro showed up because “he wanted to be there for the historic event,” reports Fox News.
The crowd of thousands applauded as Bolsonaro took the stage and asked for prayer. He also declared that he believes in Jesus.
The coordinators of the event included Youth With a Mission’s Andy Byrd, Todd White with Lifestyle Christianity, Circuit Rider’s Brian Brennt, Michael Koulianos of Jesus Image, intercessor Lou Engle, Daniel Kolenda of Christ for All Nations and the Dunamis Movement's Teo Hayashi.
Yet, this was not the first time Bolsonaro confessed Jesus. In 2016, he was baptized in the River Jordan by Assemblies of God minister Everaldo. The interaction between them in the baptism was:
“So, Bolsonaro, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?”
“I believe.”
“Do you believe that He died on the cross?”
“Yes.”
“That He is risen?”
“Yes.”
“That He is alive forevermore?”
 “Yes.”
“That he is the Savior of mankind?”
“Yes.”
“Through your public confession, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Both Everaldo and Bolsonaro were then representatives in the Brazilian Congress, with Everaldo being the president of the Christian Social Party and Bolsonaro being a member of this party. The baptism, even though symbolically spiritual, was a political strategy. After the baptism, Brazilian evangelicals, who thought that he had become an evangelical, massively voted for him.
Today, Everaldo and Bolsonaro are political enemies and Bolsonaro has left his party.
Bolsonaro has accepted Jesus also in other evangelical services. In December 2019, he received some evangelical ministers in his presidential residence and he declared that he was “publicly accepting Jesus.”
So his declaration in The Send accepting or declaring Jesus was one of his many other similar declarations. Yet, he is not open only to evangelicals. In May 2019, he had one of his ministers to sign a document consecrating Brazil to Saint Mary, and he chose to keep her image in his presidential residence.
Bolsonaro before the idol of Our Lady of Aparecida
Just as he attends massive evangelical events, he also attends massive Catholic events. On October 12, 2019 he took part in the religious feast at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Aparecida, São Paulo, Brazil. The military rule in Brazil created, in 1980, the date of October 12 of each year as a federal holiday of the Day of Our Lady of Aparecida as Patroness of Brazil. This date is repudiated by Brazilian evangelicals, who see Jesus as the only Lord of Brazil.
In January 2020, shortly before The Send, Bolsonaro visited India, where he purified himself in a Hindu temple. You can watch his Hindu purification here.
Bolsonaro with a priest in a Hindu temple
Religious syncretism is widespread among Brazilian Catholics. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than 60% of the urban population of Brazil claims a Catholic affiliation. Yet, there is an overlay of Afro-Brazilian religions (like Candomblé, Quimbanda and Umbanda) with Catholic beliefs and practices, which many Catholic Brazilians do not find inconsistent with their faith.
Astrologers, spiritualistic mediums and psychics are immensely popular in Brazil. Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian esoteric author who is seen as a “mystic Catholic,” has several books published around the world, including in the United States. Even Bill Clinton, when he was the U.S. president, had his books as favorite reading.
Each one of them says that he “believes” in Jesus. It is very common in Brazil for any Catholic, including spiritualistic mediums, to declare that he believes in Jesus.
In Bolsonaro’s case, his Catholicism is not different from the widespread religious syncretism among Brazilian Catholics.
He has found that his spiritual openness to people in their religions makes them open to him politically. So when he was baptized in the River Jordan by a Pentecostal minister, evangelicals massively voted for him. His political strategy was successful.
His openness — each time he accepts or confesses Jesus — is at least an open door for something to happen, including the possibility of a real conversion to Jesus. Yet, it is undeniable that just as evangelical leaders have learned to capitalize religiously on his visits to their events and services, he has also learned to capitalize politically on the evangelical yearning of seeing him accepting Jesus — again and again and again.
Such mutual capitalization is beneficial when both sides are really open to each other. Yet, Bolsonaro’s constituents, me included, should pray fervently for him. Even though we guaranteed his victory with millions of votes, he has received advices from an occult man — as it is tradition in Brazil, where Catholic presidents receive advices from mediums, spiritualists, occultists, etc.
Jesus can heal Bolsonaro from his syncretism and his dependence on occult advices. Each time he accepts or confesses Jesus in an evangelical service or event, there is an opportunity that he may achieve a real salvation experience, in spite of his political strategies.
God is bigger than political strategies. Let us pray that God’s strategies may prevail.
With information from Charisma, Extra and GospelMais.
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Monday, February 10, 2020

Mike Pompeo: Chinese Communism is “the Central Threat of Our Times”


Mike Pompeo: Chinese Communism is “the Central Threat of Our Times”

By Julio Severo
U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo has rightly said that Chinese Communism is “the central threat of our times.” He had such conclusion after he saw that China is using capitalism to infiltrate the federal, state and local governments in the United States.
Pompeo said in a speech to the National Governors Association in Washington on February 8, 2020 that China is pursuing a policy of exploiting U.S. freedoms to “gain advantage over us at the federal level, the state level and the local level.” His language was strong: “The Chinese Communist Party presents the central threat of our times.”
His comments contrast with President Donald Trump’s more conciliatory language on China. On January, Trump called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “very, very good friend of mine” and said he planned to visit China in the not-too-distant future. He also visited China in 2017, in the first year of his administration. Trump also congratulated China’s communist revolution that killed millions of innocent Chinese.
To see a threat before its dangers are materialized is vision. To see a threat only after all its dangers are materialized is a lack of vision. Even though Pompeo’s assessment is correct, it fits the latter.
Not seeing the threat of Chinese communism, for decades administration after administration in the U.S., Democrats and Republicans, left-wingers and right-wingers, in a lesser or greater degree, gave China special commercial privileges, which helped thousands of U.S. companies to move to China, where labor is cheap.
The truth is that the U.S. used and abused Chinese labor for its own profits. In return, the Communist Party in China took advantage by profiting from these U.S. companies and Chinese labor to build the biggest communist army in the world. The U.S. government and its companies never cared about slave labor and persecution against Christians in China.
If the U.S. can use — and it really used — communist China for profit, why could not China use the U.S. capitalism for ideological profits?
Capitalism is not a moral tool. It can be a moral tool only if its handlers are moral people. There was a time in America, which is the largest Protestant and capitalist nation in the world, when capitalism and Protestant values walked hand in hand. Later, they divorced, and now the U.S. capitalism is at the mercy and whims of its materialistic, non-Protestant handlers, who do not care about the past marriage of capitalism and Protestantism in the U.S. history.
So, the U.S. handlers, without the original Protestant values, use and abuse capitalism any way they see fit. And China, with its communist values, also uses and abuses capitalism any way it sees fit. But the U.S. is not pleased with this.
Capitalism is sheer materialism. Conservative Protestantism is spiritual vision. Both the U.S. and China want capitalism, but no Protestantism leading capitalism.
For a lack of vision, in the 1970s the U.S. had the idea to turn China in a capitalist power to defeat the Soviet Union. The plan was successful: China actually became a capitalist power recognized by all. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, when visiting China in the 70th commemoration of its communist revolution, said, “I’m in a Capitalist Nation.”
China is a “Capitalist Nation Made in America” — made in an America that divorced capitalism from Protestantism.
The geopolitical plan of the U.S. was successful by turning China into a capitalist nation to defeat the Soviet Union. The problem is that the Soviet Union died in 1989, Russia has returned to its Christian Orthodox roots, and China has replaced the Soviet Union as “the central threat of our times.” That is, the U.S. plan in the end backfired miserably, because it had a materialist vision, but no Christian, no spiritual, no conservative Protestant vision.
China is not the first example of the U.S. funding communism. The birth of the Soviet Union was funded by American bankers, as discussed by Antony C. Sutton in his 1974 classical book “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists.”
Later, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt greatly helped the Soviet war machine by giving military equipment and even food to the starving Soviet soldiers during the World War 2, according to General William T. Still in his book “New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies.” Roosevelt’s plan generously gave Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany to Stalin.
No one helped, equipped, funded and fed the Soviet Union more than the U.S. government and U.S. capitalists did.
These are not the first U.S. plans to fail for lacking spiritual vision and prioritizing materialistic goals. To defeat the Soviet Union, the CIA trained its Saudi agent Osama bin Laden in the 1970s and gave him billions of dollars to found and fund al-Qaida. In the end, the Soviet Union died, and al-Qaida and bin Laden became the central threat to the U.S. The U.S. plan backfired.
The U.S. invested heavily in al-Qaida and did not perceive that such investment would be counterproductive. In fact, the U.S. has massively, especially in military terms, invested in Saudi Arabia, and what have Americans received? Saudi terrorists becoming the authors of the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil in 9/11.
In 2011, to fulfill the U.S. plan to oust the Syrian president, the U.S. government and Saudi Arabia funded and armed Syrian rebels and ISIS. Thousands and thousands of Christians were martyred. In the end, the U.S. had to fight ISIS because, again, the solution became worse than the alleged problem. The U.S. plan backfired.
Even though the U.S. has many military bases in the Middle East, the Christian communities being martyred by ISIS received no help from the U.S. military forces, which were too busy protecting Saudi Arabia and its interests.
In spite of the hard lessons the U.S. was supposed to have learned — the spiritual, Christian, conservative Protestant vision is more important than materialistic plans —, the U.S. insists on seeing Saudi Arabia today in the same way it saw China in the past.
Does it take a big vision to see that the U.S. is creating another threatening monster? The hard lesson not learned is that the U.S. will only see the threat when it is too late.
By now, the U.S. government should be asking itself: “Why have our political and military plans backfired for decades?” The U.S. Founders, who read and valued the Bible, would have some helpful answers. For example, they would say, “Why spend trillions of dollars to maintain over 800 U.S. military bases around the world if our own borders have decrepit protection?”
So instead of saying that the Chinese Communism is “the central threat of our times,” Mike Pompeo should have said, “The U.S. made the Chinese communism the central threat of our times.”
There is a saying that the wise man learns from others’ wrongs. I have learned a lot from the current U.S. wrongs, even though I have learned many more positive lessons from the Protestant U.S. history.
The spiritual, Christian, conservative Protestant view that guided the U.S. Founders is hugely lacking in today’s U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Pompeo, who is an evangelical just as I am, should know it better than I do. He knows the Bible. In fact, on February 9, 2020 he tweeted a Bible verse on his personal Twitter account:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:5
Is not this lack of vision? How can an evangelical love the Lord with all his heart, soul and strength and at the same time celebrate sodomy, which God calls abomination? God says in his Word:
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22 ESV)
How can an evangelical with such mixed loyalties have a good vision to address political, geopolitical and military issues without the U.S. historical failures with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida, ISIS and Osama bin Laden?
How can God bless a nation where even evangelicals in high government offices bless an abomination?
It is not only China that is exploiting U.S. freedoms to “gain advantage at the federal level, the state level and the local level.” Saudi Arabia has been doing it for decades for the sake of Islamic expansionism. The abortion industry has been doing it for decades profiting billions from the blood of unborn babies. The homosexual movement has been doing it for decades too in its aggressive predatory campaign against families and their children.
As an evangelical, Pompeo was supposed to have a larger vision for large problems.
The Chinese communism is the central threat of our times.
Legal abortion is the central threat of our times.
The homosexual agenda is the central threat of our times.
Islam is the central threat of our times.
To expose one threat and celebrate other two is not a Christian vision, for a normal Christian or a Christian in a high-profile government post.
With information from DailyMail and the Associated Press.
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