A Whitney, Texas church has won a temporary injunction against a school district that had refused to allow the church on their grounds for a Bible study.
Judge F.B. McGregor ruled that Prairie Valley Baptist Church has the same rights to rent the school for after-school clubs and meetings because other community groups are given the opportunity.
The church’s associate pastor and youth minister had contacted the school district last December to hold an after-school Bible study at Whitney High School. The school’s Superintendent, Gene Solis, contacted the church before the application was even formally submitted, saying he was rejecting the request because if the church was allowed to use the facilities then “fringe groups” could also use them.
Pastor Drew Tucker said he asked the Superintendent to reconsider and then presented the request to the school board. Superintendent Solis then urged the board to reject the request because the Bible study would be illegal and violate school board policy.
After the Liberty Institute contacted the school, the pastor applied again only to be denied because the school claimed it would cause a traffic congestion problem.
The court ruled the Bible study could take place while the case moves through the court system. The Liberty Institute praised the court’s decision, saying that it follows well-established federal and state laws on the free exercise of religion.
The 63rd annual National Day of Prayer took place on May 1st.
Over 40,000 events were scheduled to take place nationwide over the court of the day including many at local and national government buildings. While government officials do not officially sponsor the events, many were in attendance at various events.
The theme for this year’s event was “One Voice, United in Prayer.”
“With our nation divided on so many issues, many wonder how Americans can come together with one mind and one voice,” said Shirley Dobson, chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force.
The 25th annual U.S. Capitol Bible reading marathon where every word of the Bible is read aloud from the steps of the capitol building preceded the prayer in Washington, D.C.. The reading completes during the National Day of Prayer.
A Louisiana lawmaker has abandoned his bill to make the Bible the state’s official book.
State Rep. Thomas Carmody had filed HB 503 and it had even passed through a committee hearing before he took the action to pull the bill from consideration. The bill would have made a specific Bible currently in the possession of the state the “official state book.”
Carmody pulled the bill after other lawmakers said it caused a “distraction” that took away from other issues that needed to be addressed by the state legislature.
Several Democratic opponents to the bill kept pointing out that it would likely be challenged in court, drawing away tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on something that did not need to be spent. However, at least one legal scholar believes the law would have been just fine.
“Judges are likely to think that this is de minimis, too minor to care about,” Professor Douglas Laycock of the Virginia School of Law told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “They don’t tell the President he can’t issue Thanksgiving proclamations or host a national prayer breakfast, and judges are likely to view this the same way.”
The Bible was seen all over the hallways at a Missouri school after a teacher told two students they weren’t allowed to even read their Bibles in the hallway.
Kiela English, 15, a freshman at Potosi High School, was reading the Bible with a friend and discussing a passage when a teacher confronted them and said they had to put the Bible away and stop pushing their religion on people. The two girls had not been speaking to anyone else about the Bible or its contents.
Kiela’s mother posted on Facebook about the incident and it developed into a call for students to bring their Bibles to school and carry them around as a form of protest showing their rights to have their Bibles in school.
Students say the protest was effective in that not only did they show their dedication to the Scriptures, they also did it in way that did not disrupt the school day or show disrespect to the administration.
Potosi Superintendent Randy Davis said an investigation is ongoing regarding the incident but that he had no problem with the girls bringing their Bibles.
“We have absolutely no problem with our students bringing their Bible,” Davis said. “We firmly believe in freedom of religion and students practicing their religion.”
A California school district has ruled that teachers violated the rights of Christian students when they prohibited the distribution of a series of Bible coins.
The students were giving classmates coins that were printed with different Bible verses including John 3:16 and John 3:36.
“We’re going to make sure that students are protected,” Apple Valley School District Superintendent Thomas Hoegerman told the San Bernadino Sun. “There was no malicious intent but we clearly had folks who didn’t fully understand the implications.”
The children were giving the coins to their friends during recess periods and not during actual class time when they were stopped by teachers.
One of the teachers, Stormy DeHaro, told her student she hated the coins and they were a distraction to her class. A second teacher removed them from Valentine’s cards a student brought to her class and returned them to the child saying they were a violation “of the Ed Code.”
The superintendent says he regrets the incident and the problems it caused to the student’s family.
The state of Louisiana is moving closer to naming the Holy Bible the official state book.
A committee in the House of Representatives approved the legislation last week and the bill now moves to the entire House for discussion and floor vote. The House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural Affairs passed the bill on an 8 to 5 vote.
The bill’s sponsor says that the purpose of the measure is not an attempt to establish an official state religion.
“It’s not to the exclusion of anyone else’s sacred literature,” Republican Representative Thomas Carmody told the Christian Post. Carmody said the Bible reflects America’s history and founding principles as outlined by the Founding Fathers.
Critics of the bill say its unnecessary and makes the state open to lawsuits by anti-Christian activists. The ACLU of Louisiana has also expressed their concerns about the bill saying the official state book should related to the history of Louisiana.
In the wake of the devastating explosion that destroyed two buildings in Harlem, the discovery of a Bible is being called a miracle by not only members of the Spanish Christian Church that was destroyed in the blast but firefighters and emergency personnel.
On the third day of their recovery efforts, rescue workers found a waterlogged Bible under the debris of the church. The Bible was not singed by fire at all and the water damage was minimal.
Members of the church hailed it as a miracle because the Bible was the one placed on the church’s altar because it was the used for the founding of the church 80 years ago.
The church’s pastor, Rev. Thomas Perez, became so overwhelmed at the sight of the Bible being brought out intact from the rubble that he had to be hospitalized for observation.
Attendees told reporters the Spanish-language Bible belonged to the founding couple of the church.
Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said the discovery of the Bible means a lot because now the church will have a remnant as they rebuild.
Air Force officials have banned Gideon volunteers from giving Bibles to new recruits at Maxwell Air Force Base.
Gideon’s volunteer Michael Fredenburg told Fox News they were told by base officials to “get their Bibles out.”
The public affairs officer for Military Entrance Processing Command told Fox News that the Gideon’s claim was not “entirely” true. Gaylan Johnson said that the Gideons have been banned from standing at a table and speaking with anyone who is a recruit. They will still be able to put materials on a table.
The Gideons had been meeting recruits and handing out Bibles for over a decade. Four days a week the Gideons would stand by a table, shaking the hands of those who had just enlisted and offering them a pocket-sized Bible.
Johnson told Fox that the Gideons are no longer allowed to be within the building to speak to anyone. Johnson is claiming that this is a new command-wide policy against any organization that is not a member of the Federal Government.
A woman who ordered two prints online of Bible verses for her Bible study from her local Walgreens was told she couldn’t print them because Bible verses violated copyright law.
After a clerk told Kelly Taylor that they would not print her order, she received an e-mail that told her to contact a photo team associate. When she called the number, she was told that printing Scripture violated copyright law.
She was given prints of the Bible verses after Fox News obtained copies of the e-mails between Taylor and store officials and provided them to Walgreens’ corporate offices.
A Walgreens spokesman then sent a statement to Fox News that the employee who rejected the printing of the verses was not acting on behalf of the company.
He went on to say the employee may have had concerns that graphic designs behind the verses could fall under copyright protection and that the whole situation could be resolved by Taylor signing a waiver of copyright law.
Taylor said she hopes the incident will be a teachable moment for Walgreens and that in the future Christians won’t be denied the opportunity to print Scripture verses.
Many teachers of Bible prophecy believe that the antichrist himself will suffer a fatal head wound, but if you look at the scripture carefully, you can easily get a different impression: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed” (13:3, niv).
Remember, John saw the Beast rising out of the sea, which probably means rising from many peoples. But John used the term “beast” in several ways in Revelation, sometimes talking about the antichrist and at other times talking about the antichrist system, the one-world government system that is against God. Here, I believe the latter is the more correct understanding, that is, this beast is the antichrist system. This one-world government will have ten horns, seven heads, and ten diadems (13:1).
Revelation 17:12–13 tells us that the ten horns are ten kings who will receive power with the Beast for a relatively short time, and their sole purpose is to give their power to the Beast. The seven heads, according to Revelation 17:9–10, are seven mountains on which the harlot rides and seven kings: “Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while.” Continue reading →
