#621 (8/26) "DEAD SOULS OF A CULTURAL REVOLUTION"

REMINDER: Check out this week's broadcast of ''Truth That Transforms'' at .http://www.truthinaction.org/index.php/truth-that-transforms/ This week’s sermon is about how each of us is called to be SALT in a corrupted world and the feature looks at how Christians can have a transformative influence on their communities.

PRAYER REQUESTS: ["To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." - Karl Barth]

URGENT PRAYER REQUEST- Update on Kenneth Bae: "US Ready to Bargain with N. Korea for Bae's Release,"-  CBNNews.com,  Aug 14, 2013  http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/August/S-Ready-to-Bargain-with-N-Korea-for-Baes-Release/  - The United States is willing to engage North Korea to secure the release of imprisoned American Christian Kenneth Bae. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the United States is "willing to consider a number of different options" to bring him home.In a video recently released by a North Korean newspaper, Bae requested the United States send a high-ranking official to North Korea to seek his pardon. It is unclear if he spoke of his own volition in the video. Bae, 45, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for sharing his faith. He suffers health problems such as diabetes and is currently hospitalized.[PRAY for 1) God's healing of and presence with Pastor Bae, 2) His earliest release by the North Korean government, and 3) God's comfort for his family and friends.] 

“Abandoned” For Christ" - Graham Calls On White House To Support Abedini - By Dr. Tom Askew, Aug.8,  http://www.presidentialprayerteam.com/opinion

Franklin Graham is the latest to join the chorus of voices calling for U.S. State Department and White House officials to take a more vocal role in protesting the Iranian imprisonment of American pastor Saeed Abedini. September 26 will mark the one year anniversary of Abedini’s imprisonment for allegedly “endangering the national security” of Iran.

Graham pointed out that, in contrast to Iranian accusations, “Pastor Saeed was in Iran trying to help children. With the permission of Iran’s government, he was working to build an orphanage. But his humanitarian mission led to an arrest on bogus charges and nearly a year of inhumane treatment, simply because he loves Jesus Christ.”...

Behind the scenes, more than 600,000 people around the world have signed a petition sponsored by ACLJ in support of pastor Abedini. A concerted movement this past May brought together Christians from many nations to set aside Pentecost to pray for Abedini. On June 13, demonstrations were held at Iranian embassies in at least six countries to protest Abedini’s treatment. And, on July 29, Arizona Republican Representative Trent Franks spoke on the floor of the House to urge other Congressmen to join him in “adopting” Pastor Abedini through the bipartisan Defending Freedoms Project.

Saeed’s response…and yours - Through his family living in Iran, Pastor Abedini has been made aware of these efforts on his behalf, and is grateful. “I heard that the persecution, my arrest and imprisonment has united churches from different denominations, from different cities and countries. That the churches have united together in prayer to put one request (my freedom) on one day (Pentecost) before God,” he wrote in a letter.

The story of Saeed Abedini, the jihad against Syrian Christians, the attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the ongoing desecration of churches in Nigeria and India should cause every American to reflect on the blessings of freedom still enjoyed in this nation.
PRAY: - For comfort and peace for Saeed’s wife and children here in the U.S.
- For a strong witness and testimony from Pastor Abedini in the prison where God has placed him
- For Christians around the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Christ
- BOLDly (Beside Our Leaders Daily) for leadership from the White House and State Department in defending the freedoms of Abedini and other Americans
Go to SaveSaeed.org to sign a petition over 600,000 others asking for his immediate release.
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"DEAD SOULS OF A CULTURAL REVOLUTION,"- By: Patrick J. Buchanan  8/23/2013  http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/23/dead-souls-of-a-cultural-revolution/

A

Last Friday, Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian here on a baseball scholarship, was shot and killed while jogging in Duncan, Okla., population 23,000. He died where he fell. Police have three suspects, two black and one white. The latter said they were bored and decided to shoot Lane for “the fun of it.” As Lane was white and the shooter black, racism has surfaced as a motive. Thursday came reports that killing a white man may have been an initiation rite for the black teens in joining some offshoot of the Crips or Bloods.

What happened in Oklahoma and the reaction, or lack of reaction to it, tells us much about America in 2013, not much of it good. Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are moral barbarians, dead souls.

But who created these monsters? Where did they come from? Surely one explanation lies in the fact that the old conscience-forming and character-forming institutions — home, church, school, and a moral and healthy culture fortifying basic truths — have collapsed. And the community hardest hit is Black America.

If we go back to the end of World War II, 90 percent of black families consisted of a mother and father and children raised and disciplined by their parents. The churches to which these families went on Sundays were stronger. Black schools may have been largely segregated, but they were also the transmission belts of patriotism and traditional values rooted in biblical truths and a Christian faith. Though such schools graduated hardworking, law-abiding and productive citizens, today they would be closed as unconstitutional.

Indeed, all of those character- and conscience-forming institutions of yesterday are in an advanced state of decline today. Seventy-three percent of black kids are born to single moms. Black kids who make it to 12th grade may often be found reading at seventh-, eighth- or ninth-grade levels. In some cities the black dropout rate can hit as high as 50 percent. Drugs are readily available. And among black males ages 18 to 29, in urban areas, often a third are in prison or jail, or on probation or parole, or walking around with a criminal record.

Where do the kids get their ideas of right and wrong, good and evil? In homes where the father is absent and the TV is always on. From radios tuned in to rap and hip-hop. From films where Hollywood values prevail and the shooting never stops. From street gangs that sometimes form the only families these kids have ever known. 

Still, crime has fallen since 1990, we are told. And so it has. But that is only because the baby boomers, the largest population cohort in our history, passed out of the high-crime age group a quarter of a century ago, and because the jail and prison population in America has tripled.

What kind of leadership do we see today in Black America? What can be said for an NAACP that was lately demanding a Justice Department investigation of a rodeo clown running around a bull ring in rural Missouri in an Obama mask, but cannot find its voice to address a black-on-white atrocity in Middle America? When Trayvon Martin was shot to death in a murky incident in Sanford, Fla., Jesse Jackson rushed there to declare: “Blacks are under attack. … Killing us is big business.” Trayvon was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante … murdered and martyred.” After Chris Lane’s cold-blooded murder, Jesse tweeted: This sort of thing is to be “frowned upon.” If I had a son, said President Obama, he would have looked like Trayvon; 35 years ago, I could have been Trayvon. Can the president not find his voice to speak to the parents of Chris Lane?

Since Lyndon Johnson took office, 50 years ago, we have spent trillions on his programs for health care, housing, education, food stamps, welfare and civil rights. Are we living in that Great Society we were promised? In that same decade, we were told that the social, cultural and moral revolution bursting forth on the campuses would rid us of the repressive old-time morality and Old Time Religion, and lead to a more equal, just, humane and better America, a beacon to mankind. Yet, are not the killers of Chris Lane who shot him for the fun of it the “do-your-own-thing!” children of that cultural revolution?

The death of Trayvon was said to be reflective of the real America, a country where black folks live in constant fear of white vigilantes and white racist cops. What nonsense.

In the real America, interracial violence is overwhelming black-on-white. Even if the media will not report it, everybody knows it.

And journalists will not dig into the numbers that prove it, for the truth would undermine their ideology and contradict the narrative that governs and gives meaning to their lives. For liberals, America is always “Mississippi Burning.” It just has to be that way.

[bold and italics emphasis mine]

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”