Southern Baptist Convention Passes Anti-BDS Resolution by JNS BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

Southern Baptist Convention Passes Anti-BDS Resolution

By JNS   BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS June 21, 2016 

“For Tzion’s sake will I not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her triumph go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a torch that burneth. Isaiah 62:1 (The Israel Bible™)

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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) adopted a resolution reaffirming the church’s support and prayers for Israel as well as condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The resolution declared that the BDS movement “seeks to isolate the nation of Israel economically and socially,” while also expressing concern about the “ongoing anti-Israel activities in this country within certain university campuses, academic and professional associations, and popular culture.”

“We support the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state and reject any activities that attack that right by promoting economic, cultural, and academic boycotts against Israel,” the SBC resolution said, adding that “at this critical time when dangerous forces are mounting up against the nation of Israel, we recommit ourselves to pray for God’s peace to rule in Jerusalem and for the salvation of Israel.”

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit that promotes religious freedom and family issues, stressed the importance of the resolution’s timing.

“There has never been a more important time for Christians to support Israel and its right to exist as a sovereign nation,” he said.

Staver, a member of the SBC Resolutions Committee, added that he is “pleased that this year’s Southern Baptist Convention took a stand in support of Israel and in opposition to the BDS movement. Frankly, with Israel as a world leader in technological and medical inventions, it is foolish to boycott Israel.”

SBC’s move comes amid a debate among its Christian counterparts in mainline Protestant churches over whether to adopt resolutions supporting the BDS movement.

During the past several years, a number of leading mainline Protestant churches—including the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church, and most recently the United Methodist Church—have considered or voted on pro-BDS resolutions.

SBC, which is the country’s largest Protestant denomination with an estimated 15.3 million members, recently held its an annual meeting of church delegates in St. Louis.

The Spiritual State of Our Union in 2016: America Must Come Back to God - Ronnie Floyd - Senior Pastor of Cross Church and President of the Southern Baptist Convention CBN News

The Spiritual State of Our Union in 2016: America Must Come Back to God

01-12-2016

Ronnie Floyd - Senior Pastor of Cross Church and President of the Southern Baptist Convention 

CBN News

This is the time of year when millions of Americans tune in to hear our President give his State of the Union address. He will give his assessment of our national security, our priorities, and our vision for the future.

This is a tricky word— "our."

For these days it seems as if America can hardly find "our vision" for any thing, much less the future.  Our nation is deeply polarized around our political parties, and totally unrelenting in our commitment to fighting against one another. Despite growing national security threats, violence erupting, escalating racial tensions, the devaluing of human life, and economic insecurity we find ourselves unable to agree on almost anything.

What's especially alarming to me, serving as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, is that we fail to realize how the spiritual health of our nation affects the state of our union. As our spiritual lives go, so goes the nation.

It wasn't meant to be this way in America, for one of the reasons our founders so cemented Judeo-Christian principles in our nation is because they were skeptical of mans' ability to govern themselves.  So, America would be a nation first subject to God - and subject to His higher law - so that our respect for our creator would provide a baseline for our "more perfect union."

We would at least be united around important things when we couldn't find unity among many things. Where are the leaders in America today that can bring people together, rather than separate us?

For our founders knew that the moment we no longer saw ourselves subject to God - and to His higher law - that we would begin to fight over everything in an attempt to gather God's authority for ourselves.

When our political leaders and the people of America lack fear of God we become subject to that awful temptation we find in Judges 17:6, "to do what is right in their own eyes."

For since the beginning of time, we have been tempted to "be like God" and when a nation's leaders and her people lose their fear of God and replace it with their own authority then we begin to live in a kind of chaotic unity – not with one another – but in an unholy union with that very sin that brought sin to earth in the Garden of Eden. Aside from all of the others, we fail to follow the very first commandment given to us through Moses, "thou shalt have no other gods before me."

In America, we have replaced God with government, and granted politicians the ability to circumvent God's higher law at will.  It's our fault as citizens because we are a country that elects our leaders. 

While we profess to remain "one nation under God" - and while we have inscribed such belief on our currency and in marble all over our capital - we seem to be more interested in "God bless America" than in actually being "one nation under God."

The first phrase infers what we want from God, and the second phrase infers what God requires. We want His blessing, but His blessing comes with our being subject to His authority.

Rarely is God ever mentioned in the State of the Union address except with that customary salutation, "God bless America."   It's all about what we can get from God, and less about what we need from Him.

So, what is the actual spiritual State of Our Union?

It is very simple.

We need to repent, come back to God and put our trust in God alone. America needs a Great Spiritual Awakening.

Now is the time to elect leaders who fear God and we need to learn to fear God again ourselves.

We need not say phrases like "God Bless America" because they are our tradition. We need to speak them with a holy reverence for God's authority, for without God there never would have been an America at all, and without God at its center America will not exist as it has.

I'm trusting that 2016 is a year where we apply a simple verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

 Dr. Ronnie Floyd is Senior Pastor of Cross Church and President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Follow him on Twitter @ronniefloyd.

Ministries File Class Action Suit over HHS Mandate

CBNNews.com

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

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The Southern Baptist Convention's GuideStone health plan and two other non-profit religious groups are suing the Obama administration over its contraception coverage mandate.

That Obamacare mandate forces all employers to provide birth control coverage to employees, including drugs that may cause abortions.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is suing the Obama administration on behalf of GuideStone, the Oklahoma-based Reaching Souls International, and Truett-McConnell College in Georgia.

Their class-action lawsuit actually includes more than 100 ministries that participate in GuideStone's health benefits plan.

"The very purpose of the GuideStone plan is to provide ministry organizations with employee health benefits according to biblical principles," said O.S. Hawkins, GuideStone's President and CEO. "The government shouldn't prohibit us from continuing in that ministry."

The three organizations argue the contraception mandate is "an assault on biblical convictions and an attack on religious liberty."

The Obama administration has said churches and a narrowly defined category of religious organizations are exempt. But the administration is still threatening devastating penalties to many other ministry organizations, like Christian colleges, missions organizations, and family ministries.
 
"The government's refusal to treat these ministries as 'religious employers' is senseless," Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a written statement.

"These people spend their lives teaching and preaching their religious faith - if they do not qualify as 'religious employers,' the government needs to get a new definition," Rienzi said.

For more: CBN News