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Public Correction: Mistakes Made on Mormon Machinations 05.26.24

Earlier today we were corrected by James White for a post we made critical of Mormon / Latter Day Saint theology. In our post, we made the following assertion:

(Mormons believe that) Jesus was once a regular sinful man who became exalted and turned into a God after doing many good deeds. ‘God the Father’ himself was also once a man on another planet, but because he likewise was such a good Mormon, he was granted the right to become a God over this earth.

They believe that they too can become capital ‘G’ Gods of their own planet one day, and in fact, hold that there are millions of Gods. For them, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all and individual separate Gods, with the Father and Son having human bodies of flesh.

Mormons categorically deny the idea of salvation by grace alone and believe Jesus and Lucifer are siblings- with Jesus and Satan both being the product of divine procreation; the firstborn of many spirit children made by God the Father and his heavenly wife. They believe Jesus became the Redeemer because he had a better strategy than his brother Lucifer, which caused war to break out in heaven and Satan cast out.

They believe the scriptures we have are all corrupted and that’s why they have the new revelation of Joseph Smith.

There are some errors here, mostly through some use of sloppy and casual language, but also as a result of some confusion on my part about what life was before all these Mormon Gods were exalted, and so I’m going to let James White, who publicly posted this in response to us, explain how we got it wrong.

Well, the most obvious one is that you said they teach Jesus was a sinner. That’s not true. They would never say Jesus was “once a regular sinful man who became exalted and turned into a God after doing many good deeds.” Jesus is, in LDS theology, a savior figure, which most Mormons differentiate from, for example, themselves, if, as a man, they are worthy of exaltation to godhood.

They wouldn’t say God the Father was “such a good Mormon,” they would say he obeyed the laws established to bring about exaltation. Further, he was not “granted the right to become God over this earth;” instead, he lives upon a planet that circles a start named Kolob, and, like all other gods before him, he organizes pre-existing matter (there is no creatio ex nihilo), and did so so as to organize this earth.

Yes, a worthy priesthood holder who is sealed in the temple to his wife (wives) is able to become exalted, just as Elohim was (just how Jesus was exalted is a matter of dispute, especially amongst the earliest LDS leaders). God the Father (Elohim) and the Son (Jesus) have bodies of flesh and bone (no blood) but the Spirit does not have a physical body (some speculated in the past that the Spirit would have to obtain one at some point in the future).

Mormons do not deny salvation by grace alone since salvation is a multi-faceted concept. What they deny is exaltation by grace alone. Salvation can be as basic as resurrection, and everyone will be resurrected. And while it is quite true that Jesus and Lucifer are spirit-brothers, many modern LDS are unaware of this idea, nor why it is necessary in their scheme of things.

The general knowledge of LDS theology of Mormons has collapsed disastrously over the past decades.

Yes, they believe the revelations given through Joseph Smith are perfect (there are more and more modern Mormons willing to think otherwise) and they continue to believe the Bible has had many “plain and precious truths” removed from it. Mormonism is changing rapidly today, and I do not see how even its billions and billions of dollars can keep it from eventually fracturing and splintering.

Dumb mistake on our part, and we’re sorry, and we’ll be more careful in the future.

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Featured Heresies Roman Catholic Stuff

Pope Calls for ‘Ecological Spirituality’ to care for ‘Mother Earth’

The capitalism-hating, socialism-loving Vicar of the Roman Catholic Church has come up with a seven-year plan to greenify the world and heal “Mother Earth” on account of the “wounds that we cause by our predatory attitude, which makes us feel that we are masters of the planet and its resources,” in order to “inaugurate a lifestyle and a society that is finally eco-sustainable.”

This new venture from Pope Francis is unsurprising, as the pontiff has been effusive with his flattery and worshipful praise of mother Gaia, joining with pagans to worship a topless earth goddess, saying that fossil fuels are immoral and should be banned, suggesting that God will flood the world again if we don’t stop global warming, and arguing that we need to ditch capitalism so that we don’t kill the planet and each other.

In a video released by the Vatican, Francis explains that because humanity has been so abusive towards the earth, “we need a new ecological approach, that can transform our way of dwelling in the world, our styles of life, our relationship with the resources of the Earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life.”

Doubling down on the theme of predation, he reiterates that we need to “care for our Mother Earth” and “overcome the temptation of selfishness that makes us predators of resources.”

For this reason, he’s launching a project called “Laudato si’ Action Platform.” It is a seven-year undertaking designed to see communities “totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology.”

It is based on his own Laudato Si’s writing, which even has its own chaplet for faithful Catholics to pray over

And not just praise, but repentance too, where you can apologize to “Sister Water” or “Brother Air” for abusing them.

Like some grotesque morphing of Roman Catholicism, the New Apostolic Reformation’s Seven-Mountain Mandate, and the Democrats’ Green New Deal, Francis reveals that there are seven sectors of the church that need to be pulling together. These are “parishes and dioceses – schools and universities – hospitals – businesses and farms – organizations, groups and movements – religious institutes.”

In tandem with this announcement, Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development revealed the sustainability goals of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, which include, according to the National Catholic Reporter:

  • Adopting renewable energy;
  • Achieving carbon neutrality;
  • Defending all life;
  • Solidarity with Indigenous peoples and vulnerable groups;
  • Adopting simpler lifestyles;
  • Fostering ecological education and spirituality;
  • Advocating for sustainable development;
  • Following ethical investment guidelines, including divestment from fossil fuels and other industries that harm the planet.

All this, so “mother Earth may be restored to her original beauty.’

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Church Critical Race Theory Featured Heresies News Social Justice Wars

The Wokefication of World Vision: Whites View Black People as Either ‘Pets’ or ‘Threats’

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Professor, North Park Theological Seminary, is leading the way in demonstrating the extent that Critical Race Theory is spreading throughout World Vision. Parks is the moderator and one of the leaders of the May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice course, whose stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church.”

From remarks he made at a Black & Asian Christians United Against Racism conference on April 5th 2021 at the Apostolic Faith Church, and also reiterated in Session 9 of the course, Soong-Chan Rah explains that by default and intrinsically, white people view black people and Asians as either “pets” or “threats” and view Asian women as invisible or sexual jezebels.

For African-American communities, I’ve often described how the spiritual demonic power of white supremacy, the gaze of the dominant culture defines the black community, so that the rest of us have to play along.

So that when the white male looks at the black male, the black male is either a pet or a threat. The black male is a pet because the white community wants you to entertain them, wants you to be their comedians that make them laugh, the musicians that make them dance, and the sports athletes that make them jump up and clap.

But they also see you, if you’re not the pet, you become the threat. You are the unidentified black male that commits every crime in our city. You are the individual that is seen as the unsafe person in our society. And even worse, if you are the pet that becomes the threat.

Hypothetically, it could be an athlete who takes a knee. That pet has become a threat. Hypothetically, it could be pastors who decide we’re not going to play the game anymore – we’re going to stand against injustice. You’ve gone from a pet to a threat.

And it is the same scenario that Asian-Americans often find ourselves in. The gaze of the white dominant culture looks at the Asian male and says: you are a pet or a threat.

…They are the Chinese virus. They are the Kung flu. And how easily and quickly it became for that pet to become a threat. And we’ve seen this on the gendered side, as well. Bell Hooks says that when the white male gazes upon the black female, he categorizes the black female in two ways: the Jezebel or the Mammy.

The Jezebel, that is, the sexualized fantasy of the dominant culture, and the mammy that takes care of you and gives you what you need. You see that same paradigm now play itself out in the Asian community, as well.

…because you are seeing the Asian women as disposable and invisible. The ones that pick up the towels after you. The ones that feed you. The ones that take care of you. That’s what you’ve seen, the Asian women. You have sexualized or you have made invisible the Asian-American woman. This is the reality of white supremacy.

This is what world vision is teaching thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of people each week. It is not an unknown program.

To give one example, Willow Creek, the multi-campus 20,000 member church founded by Bill Hybels, announced months ago that they were participating in World Vision’s May We Be One year-long conference “in an effort to help equip all our staff to better engage justice and racism from a biblical perspective.”

Sadly, we have only scratched the surface of how deep this all goes.

h/t to @wokepreachertv for the find.

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Breaking Featured News SBC

Breaking: SBC Presidential Candidate’s Wife Preaches at his Church

Ed Litton, Pastor of Redemption Church (Saraland, AL), and considered one of the more progressive candidates running for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, claims to have complementarian creds and that women do not preach at his church, despite it being revealed in a series of recently unearthed videos that his wife has on occasion preached tag-team sermons with him.

This, of course, is a sneaky and unbecoming practice, where the pastor will let a woman preach but stands on stage with them in order to give her his “authoritative covering.” It is nothing but semantic word games and is no different than Adam standing by and watching Eve take of the forbidden fruit.

This is what Ed Litton has done.

During his questionnaire for the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s Candidate forum, though he said that “The only ministry the Bible limits to God-called and qualified men is the office of pastor, which is rightly designated by the title of pastor and elder,” he also specifically said that women do not preach from his pulpit: a revelation that is patently untrue.

4. Recently, there have been some publicized instances of women serving as the Sunday morning preacher in Southern Baptist churches. Do you think the Bible allows for women to serve in this role? Explain.

I think that our pulpits should be places that reflect our view of pastors. At Redemption church, we do not have women preach. However, we intentionally promote the significant ways that women can and do serve.

Let me say that I understand that some pastors have a different approach to who can speak when the church gathers for corporate worship, even if that’s not my approach, I respect their right and responsibility to lead their church as God has called them to do so.

Redemption Church absolutely allows women to preach. His wife has preached alongside him, and him being there doesn’t make it ok.

Watching one’s wife publicly go before the body and sin by preaching is a critical failure of headship and leadership, shows why Litton cannot be trusted, and is absolutely disqualifying from leading the convention.

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured In-person Church Unrighteous Compliance

TGC Author: Believing in ‘Big-Government Overreach’ Is a Denial of ‘Objective Reality’

A Gospel Coalition is at it again. Mere months ago a Gospel Coalition writer condemned the consumption of all news that isn’t intensely local, suggesting that doing otherwise is Gnosticism, gives a God-complex, has no value, and makes one hate their neighbor. They said “anti-masking is not a “conscience issue,” but instead is sinful “civil disobedience” and suggested boomers are sinfully being “radicalized into conspiracies” by Ben Shapiro and Fox News.

This time, in an article by Brett McCracken, he posits that the “biggest emerging fissure in Western culture is not necessarily between political left and right” but rather between those who are “fiercely committed to reality” and those who “elevate the narrative above reality.”

He goes on to lists some examples of some beliefs that do not have a “good faith commitment to reality” but rather are committed to an untrue narrative, noting that “no level of scientific consensus or statistics will cause them to rethink or at least complicate their narrative.”

  1. “Nanny state” big-government overreach
  2. Corrupt Big Pharma
  3. Encroachments on personal liberty
  4. Vaccines as government control

None of these things are happening, he argues. None of those things occurred in the last 15 months.

That’s all just a narrative and conspiracy theories, and by believing they have happened or will happen, these men and women are not living in the real world, but rather are merely “allowing their entrenched narratives and biases” to “take precedence over objective reality.”

Where are the people who live in light of the facts about reality more than their feelings about it? Where are those whose understanding of the world is shaped more by evidence and logic than by narratives and anger? Where these people exist, they’re the true radicals…”

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News

RCC Readies to Fire ‘Alt-Right Priest’ for Ignoring Covid-19 Limits, Calling Democrats ‘Godless’

A Wisconsin Bishop has asked a Roman Catholic Priest to resign from his post on account of criticizing COVID-19 restrictions and calling the Democrats “godless,” according to the La Crosse Tribune.

James Altman, dubbed the “alt-right priest” by critics, serves at St. James the Less parish. He has amassed a large following on social media and earned the ire of local leftists along with his Bishop, William Callahan, for partaking in the aforementioned sins:

(Saying) ‘anti-Black and LGBTQ+ rhetoric, stating that all Democrats are “Godless” hypocrites going to hell, spreading misinformation on vaccines and COVID-19, frequently appearing on far-right media platforms and more.’

Altman made the surprise announcement of his termination on his YouTube channel, telling the congregation:

Unfortunately in our cancel culture, if the Left whines like they do, like a spoiled brat, often enough they succeed in canceling so many voices of truth. And now they are whining like, if I may say it, the pansy babies that they are, to cancel me…allegedly because I’m divisive, as they like to say, or as a bishop has stated to me, ‘I am ineffective.’

For the record, dear family, Bishop Callahan has asked me to resign as pastor as of this past Friday, two days ago, because I am divisive and ineffective. In response, my canon lawyer asked for clarification as to the justification, and a chance to review what was in my file that suggested I was so divisive and ineffective.

And I say all this only because I’m no expert on canon law, but understand only that while we are contesting the Bishop’s request, he could in theory appoint a parish administrator whilst I remain a pastor without duties until the appeal goes through Rome, which could take upwards of a year or more.

Altman disputes that he is ineffective, pointing to the fact that despite earning growls of rage from progressives and nods of appreciation from conservatives, the church has flourished in every way possible, with attendance being up nearly 102 people and already doubling last year’s total in donations and tithes given.

What really is at play here, dear family, is that other shepherds are offended because I simply state the fact that they abandoned their sheep in a time of need as you’ve heard me say so many times.

If this alleged virus was allegedly a fraction as dangerous as they said it was, all the more reason to keep our churches open and get you the sacraments so that you stayed in a state of grace. They put your eternal souls at risk – they despise me for speaking that simple truth.

Of course, if you do praise Democrat Joe Biden, give him communion, and come out as Pro-LGBT, your job is secure. It is amazing what it takes to get one fired in the RCC nowadays, and what gets one shuffled from parish to parish in the dark of night.

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured SBC

SBC Loses 435,000 Members in 2020 in Historic Drop

The Southern Baptist Convention membership continues to plummet according to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) report, with the denomination suffering a record loss of nearly half a million members in 2020.

Though the loss of these congregants dips their total amount of members to 14 million, down from a peak of 16.3 million in 2006, it is in fact nowhere near an accurate number of real Southern Baptist members.

SBC membership rolls are notoriously inaccurate and inflated, with purging the rolls viewed as thoroughly distasteful and far too humbling a task for most. Realistically the SBC would be lucky to have even 5 million members that could be found on any given Sunday.

The report further notes that “Southern Baptist churches also experienced a decline in worship attendance in 2020. Average weekly worship attendance declined by 15.44% percent to 4.4 million in-person worshippers.”

This is a far more accurate baseline of how many members they actually have.

Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, declares that COVID-19 and the mass church closures definitely had something to with the losses, noting that as Pastors reconnected with people after being shut down or online for so long, they “discovered some on their membership lists who moved away, joined another church, or no longer wanted to be a member.”

With bad news across the board, the only thing that did grow appears to have been “multisite congregations” who added 529 campuses.

Baptisms were also cut in half, from 235,748 in 2019 to 123,160 in 2020, with McConnel explaining that “socially distant behavior is helpful for containing a pandemic, but it hindered meeting new people, inviting people to church, and helping them take a step of obedience to be baptized,” 

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Church Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Featured

The Wokefication of World Vision: Jesus and Paul were ‘Code-Switching’ to fit into 1st Century ‘White Spaces’

Continuing our series in the ways that World Vision has gone woke, we bring you Session Nine of their May We Be One curriculum. Moderated by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal on May 20, 2021, it featured Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes speaking on the Asian American Pacific Islander Experience and why Jesus was “code-switching.”

In this session, Van Opstal introduces her guest by explaining that she can teach us all the ways “in which we have participated and or not known how our country has participated in the pain of the Asian American community and in being complicit…with the things that have happened to them.”

This is after Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained that white folk use their “white gaze” to view Asian people as either “threats” or “pets” and gave us the helpful diagram below:

She then introduces us to guest Dr. Michelle Reyes. She’s a speaker, author, activist, and the Vice President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative who has written for TGC and the ERLC. She’s all in on Critical Race Theory, writing in a blog post on her website:

White privilege relies on racialization, a system of values that says one group of people is superior to all others because of the color of their skin. This system has been weaponized to justify the cruel treatment of and discrimination toward non-white people throughout American history

….White privilege is both a cause and legacy of racism. It is a conscious act rooted in historic inequities, and it continues to reinforce systemic racism today. When it comes to racial trauma, displacement, the cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, or the country’s history of slavery, we have to acknowledge the role of white privilege.

….But if we aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.

Each of us needs to do the hard work of examining our own biases and actions. We cannot separate the past from our present. They are interconnected. Repenting for the sins of historic slavery and its current iterations in our society is a necessary step in beginning to work toward a more equitable and just future, both inside and outside the church. 

It is on this note that she tells thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of laymen listening in all about “code-switching,” explaining that Jesus and Paul did their own version of this in the first century.

All of us code-switch in different ways at different times. Sometimes it’s just about putting our best foot forward, like that the first time we go on a date with somebody, or we have a job interview or something like that. We’re trying to present ourselves in the best possible light. So the other person will like us, want to hang out with us, hire us, fill in the blank.

When it comes to minorities, when we talk about code-switching, this is that thought that pops into our brain, like ‘you’ve got this, just act white.’ It’s this way of saying, ‘I’m going to hide my own ethnicity, or my ethnic heritage, my cultural expressions. I’m gonna hide the way that I perhaps act at home so I can fit in within this majority of whitespace.’

And usually it’s not just about fitting in, it’s about trying to survive. It’s trying to not be made fun of, to not be shamed, to not be bullied verbally or physically. So there’s a lot of fear, and trauma that goes into code-switching, as well.

And so, as a caveat, and what I argue in that chapter of my book is that it’s important for historically disempowered minorities to understand that the Bible is not calling us to hide who we are, to be ashamed of who we are, to code-switch merely as a means for survival, and to sort of give in to the status quo.

She concludes by explaining that Jesus would code-switch in order to ensure that he doesn’t come across as “offensive” or so that people will be able to fully hear and receive his message.

But rather, I think we see in the life of Jesus, we see in the life of Paul, that they are able to code-switch. And by that, as I mentioned, they know that they are studiers of people.

They understand how people think, how people tick, theological difference, world differences, a worldview, even just sort of social norms, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate. When they step into a room or they step into a new town, they have those ideas at their forefront and say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to connect with this person, I need to shift in this way, or I need to adapt myself in this way so I don’t come across as offensive or that my message will be heard.‘

The original video can be seen here.

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Church Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Featured Heresies

The SBC 2021 SEND Conference is an Embarrassment and a Mockery of Conservatives


If you thought the initial 2020 SBC Pastor’s Conference lineup was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. Jacob Johnson had the best succint take on it, and he put it this way:

This is worse than the initial 2020 SBC Pastor’s Conference Lineup; this is intentional deception and absurdly obvious in that this isn’t an intended solution, this is a backhand display of mocking conservative BF&M affirming Southern Baptist’s and a spiteful response from SBC Liberals/Elites to the EC’s action and position taken last year. This is a directly intended message.

Instead of a “pastor’s” conference, they change it a “SEND” conference; hosting (non-SBC) heretics, feminists, social justice warriors, and destructive forces against the biblical family / Godly ordered homes. A send conference presented by North American Mission Board (NAMB) / IMB — Kevin Ezell / Paul Chitwood.

Tony Evans is not SBC and a dangerous social justice warrior; this man is a rank heretic. Evans’ heresies include (but are not limited to) Pelagianism (the denial of original sin), Inclusivism (you don’t have to be a Christian to be saved), and Limited Theism (the denial of God’s omnipotence). Kevin Smith (falsely self-proclaimed ‘Dr.’ recipient of SBTS) a woke social justice/crt advocate, Shelia Walsh, etc.

SBC Executive Committee previously stated, regarding the 2020 Pastors Conference, that they rejected the conference and argued its participants and alignments to be: “sufficiently beyond the parameters of the faith and practice of Southern Baptists in accordance with The Baptist Faith and Message.”

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cancellation of the 2020 SBC Annual Meeting, the 2020 Pastors’ Conference had drawn criticism and concern because not all speakers were Southern Baptists and scheduled performer Hosanna Wong, a spoken word artist, is also a teaching pastor at her non-Southern Baptist church. The SBC Executive Committee voted Feb. 18 to give the SBC pastors’ conference officers until Feb. 24 to make “amendments to its proposed program”

Following “prayerfully considered options” and “counsel” among SBC elites … it was decided for 2021, there would instead be a “Send” Conference— “NAMB president Kevin Ezell said NAMB would be “honored to produce a SEND event for the 2021 Pastors’ Conference in Nashville and to work with our friends at IMB to present it.”

This is worse than the 2020 Pastors Conf. Conflict and it’s more rebellious against the Gospel and a willful rejection of the BF&M 2000 than previously in 2020. This is a message SBC Elites/Progressives/Liberals are making [“SEND”(ing)] loud and clear.

If that isn’t messed up enough, the SBC’s International Mission Board (IMB)’s official Facebook page joined nine other people in ‘liking’ that status update, though given that this was a direct shot across the bow at them, their ‘like’ was nothing more than a grim, sardonic mockery.

Their purposeful ‘like is an affirmation that they saw the post, and they don’t care. Johnson believes it’s backhanded, and that “they will claim it was a slip-up and believed it to be promotion for the event— as someone familiar with how they operate, the social media (publishing) power they have… it was intentional. They are all PR Masters. (The “KY Boy Club” at work). They’re mocking us, conservative/confessional Baptists.”

We could not agree more. The fox that is Russell Moore may be out of the hen house, but there are more than enough predators left behind to frolic, feast, and cause some bedlam within the body.

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Church Onward to Glory

China Blocks Keywords like ‘Christ,’ ‘Bible,’ and ‘Gospel’ from Social Media Giant

China has gifted its citizens with a new round of crushing censorship, placing further restrictions on Christian content on the social media megacorp WeChat. As directed by the Communist Party of China, WeChat has blocked Christian search terms and has purged thousands of overtly Christian accounts, according to an organization that provides hope and aid for the persecuted Church.

WeChat is the world’s largest social media site – a one-stop-shop that handles sharing video, text messages, photo sharing, and video games, along with being linked to one’s bank account and used to pay for food, groceries, bills, and even rent and mortgage.

It differs from a similar site like Facebook, not just on account of the monetary integration, but because users are openly and actively tracked, surveilled, and their posts analyzed by the government as part of mass surveillance network in China.

The Barnabas Fund reports that “key words such as ‘Christ,’ ‘Bible,’ and ‘Gospel’ appear to have been blocked, with searches for these terms bringing up no results on WeChat,” and that “attempts to access these pages prompt a notification that the accounts have been ‘removed from use’ due to ‘complaints’ that they violate China’s Internet User Public Account Information Services Management Provisions.”

This follows the country instituting the Measures for the Administration of Religious Personnel, which came into effect May 1, 2021, and contains a database of all Christian leaders authorized to preach in the country. Anyone not registered will be denied the ability to engage in ministry. The Barnabas Fund reports that:

In order to be registered church leaders must, according to Article 3, be those who ‘love the motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support the socialist system, abide by the constitution, laws, regulations and rules, [and] practice the core values ​​of socialism.’

Pray for the persecuted church in China.