NewsWatch

Pakistan, Home of ‘Rent-A-Mob’

OneNewsNow.com, 3/15/19, “Pakistan, home of ‘rent-a-mob’” [Excerpts]: Christians in Pakistan are facing more violent mob attacks at the hands of enraged Muslims—and in most cases, it all starts with a false accusation of blasphemy.

Four Christian women last month were falsely accused of blasphemy in Pakistan, which erupted into mob violence that resulted in 200 Christian families being displaced. According to the reports, it all started over a property dispute.

Meanwhile, earlier this month in the South Asian country, a mentally disabled Christian was accused of blasphemy, resulting in his family being attacked.

William Stark, with the persecution watchdog International Christian Concern, explains why mob violence is quite common in Pakistan. “Some of my Pakistani co-workers, they like to say in Pakistan you have kind of a rent-a-mob culture,” he says. “So mobs form pretty easily [here], mob violence is pretty easily stoked—and blasphemy accusations are one of the easiest ways to get a mob going.”

Stark tells OneNewsNow the mob violence associated with accusations of blasphemy is really the most powerful threat that the blasphemy laws carry in a place like Pakistan.

“What people are really afraid of is the mob violence that happens in and around that,” he laments. “You have whole neighborhoods that get burned down, you’ve had individuals shot outside of the courthouse, you’ve had individuals beaten.”

(http://bit.ly/2UwZ1wu)

Stunning Chinese Fossils Support Creation

ICR.org, 4/02/19, “Stunning Chinese Fossils Support Creation” [Excerpts]: News reports reverberated with details from a fantastic new fossil site in southern China. The Cambrian remains supposedly represent some of the earliest creatures to have evolved on Earth, but two telling details show why these fossils fit better with biblical creation. 

The study authors wrote, “The Qingjiang biota, however, is marked by high abundance and diversity of exceptionally preserved cnidarian fossils, which fills a major gap in knowledge of the [body shapes] and diversity of Cambrian basal metazoans.” Cnidarians include jellyfish and sea anemones. Metazoan refers to any animal made of a variety of different tissues like jellyfish, hagfish, and people. But what do the authors mean when they speak of a major knowledge gap?

The “major gap in knowledge” points back to the challenge of the Cambrian explosion. In short, all basic life forms suddenly appear in their completed forms in these early rocks.... [Evolution] points to simple creatures with few tissue types that supposedly evolved into completely different creatures.... Unfortunately, the only fossil information available to fill this stunning knowledge gap is the presence of regular old jellyfish.

Stable life forms point to Genesis creation according to kinds. Extinct animal fossils show no evolution either. Extensive rapid burial beneath ancient waters points to Noah’s Flood. That’s why biblical creation best explains the Qingjiang biota’s main features. 

(http://bit.ly/2VBPz7m)

Mother & Father Removed From School Forms

AnswersInGenesis.org, 2/28/19, “France Removes Mother and Father from School Forms [Excerpts]: The attack on the family continues, this time in France. New legislation erases the words “mother” and “father” from school forms, instead replacing them with the terms “parent 1” and “parent 2.” It will be no big shock for you to read that this is considered necessary “to bring France’s schools into line with the European nation’s 2013 same-sex marriage law.” 

The increasing elimination of the terms mother and father is happening in the name of “family diversity,” to appeal to the very small number of same-sex couples with children. But it’s really just an attack on the family, which is the first and most fundamental human institution which God ordained in Scripture (in Genesis). We don’t get to define marriage and family—God does. But the further the West drifts from a biblical worldview or any understanding of reality based in God’s Word, the more we’re going to see “family diversity” championed over God’s very good design of one man and one woman for life (Genesis:2:24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
See All...) who produce godly offspring (Malachi:2:15And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
See All...). 

More and more, sexuality, gender, and family diversity are topics that will come up in moms’ groups, around the water cooler, and at your own kitchen table.

(http://bit.ly/2IntXIh)