The Decatur County Sheriff in Greensburg, IN, seems to be doing the Lord’s work, publicly rejoicing that dozens of inmates have given a profession of faith andwere baptized, writing on their Facebook wall on December 29, 2022.
Nearly 40 men and women after a personal, public profession of Jesus Christ in their lives. Over the past four years, nearly 300 men and women have given their life to Jesus Christ while incarcerated at the Decatur County Detention Center. All glory to GOD!
This echoes previous statements made in July, where they likewise wrote:
The Decatur County Sheriff’s Office conducted baptisms for 36 inmates inside of the Detention Center. These inmates professed a personal relationship with Jesus Christ followed by a water baptism. What a glorious day for Heaven and each of these men and women.
While it is easy to get jaded and skeptical about this sort of thing, and the possible motives they may have for getting baptized or to what degree their profession of faith is legitimate rather than a ploy, we ought to instead be hopeful and pray that the seed would fall in good soil.
Editor’s Note. And ya’ll say all we ever do is publish doom and gloom. Here is your yearly good news story of the day. You only get one, though!
What you are about to read is a harrowing account.
(Montana 1st News) An account (full testimony) containing intricate details concerning five missionaries who were walking across America whose walking route then brought them to Montana (after 5500 miles) to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ peacefully, gently, and with respect as they walked many miles. On November 12, 2022, these same missionaries Jesse Boyd, his 18-year-old daughter Bethany Boyd, 12-year-old son Josiah Boyd, and mission partners Eric Trent and Carter Phillips were assaulted, arrested, thrown in jail, and taken by CPS.
“We have been privileged to serve Christ in more than 40 countries and in some of the most remote and farthest corners of the earth. We aren’t novices. We aren’t naive little missionaries. We aren’t inexperienced and without discernment. And we certainly aren’t homeless vagabonds like the prosecutor suggested to the judge in the zoom court.”-Jesse Boyd
In true ‘Apostle Paul’ and ‘John Bunyan’ (Author of “Pilgrims Progress”) type fashion Jesse Boyd penned his testimony as truthfully and accurately as possible and to the best of his ability while he sat in solitary confinement.
As a prelude to “The Assault” and “The Attack” you can read excerpts (below) from Boyd’s testimony which are eye opening and astounding.
EXCERPTS FROM THE “ASSAULT PART” 1 AND “THE ARREST” PART 2
“He then put his vehicle into park and said, “I’ll show you.” He seemed to be reaching for something and then got out of the driver’s side and very aggressively came toward me from around the front of his vehicle, a distance of about 20 feet. In that moment, I took his threat seriously and concluded that he was an imminent danger to me and my son standing nearby. I didn’t know or see what he reached for in his vehicle but feared in that instant that it could be a gun or some sort of weapon.”-Jesse Boyd, “The Assault”, Part 1
“The assailant got out his phone and dialed 911, openly bragging that he knew the sheriff and that we were in trouble. I heard him tell the dispatcher that he had been assaulted by a group of people. At this point, I feared leaving the scene with law enforcement now involved. The 911 dispatcher asked him if the “attackers” were still there. He said, “Yes.” I replied loudly, “Yes, I am here Ma’am, but I am the victim, and we will wait for law enforcement to arrive.”-Jesse Boyd, “The Assault”, Part 1
“None of his claimed “injuries” came from any use of the Cross or the flag. The flagpole could be broken over someone’s knee, and we have to be careful about letting the Cross fall to the ground because we have chipped and cracked it several times. We have had to repair it on many occasions.”-Jesse Boyd “The Arrest”Part 2
“The assailant made very clear threats of bodily harm that I was forced to take seriously on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. He showed aggression in his car. He got out of his car after I told him we were leaving. He aggressively ran toward me after I told him we were leaving. He made physical contact after we told him we wanted to leave. He threw the first punch after the firearm had been put away and after we again told him we desired to leave. He threw the first punch. He tackled me to the ground. He later tried to attack Eric. And, he continued to threaten us with bodily harm and even death after we had dealt with him and up to the point he called 911.”-Jesse Boyd “The Arrest” Part 2
Sam Heath is manager of the Evangelical Network at Equal Justice USA, a woke organization bent on reforming the criminal justice system in light of their interpretation of biblical social justice. Founding members of the EJUSA include Jonathan Merritt, Lisa Sharon Harper, Eugene Cho, Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren, and Tony Campolo.
Heath appeared on Jemar Tisby’s “Footnotes” podcast and argued that there if someone commits a violent crime, whether it be murder, terrorism, rape or apparently even cannibalism, that the offender should not be executed or even put in prison, but rather restored to society after a temporary “season of separation” and after paying reparations.
Our current criminal legal system believes that when harm happens, the scales of justice are imbalanced. I believe that too. Absolutely. But what I believe brings back that balance isn’t conviction, isn’t execution, isn’t life without parole.
Now there may need to be a season…of separation without harm for an individual. Someone may need to be removed from a situation, a person or from society. But the goal of that is ultimately to have that person reintegrated back into community.
And we already believe this as Christians, right? If we did church discipline in the right way, that’s exactly what it is. Right? We approach someone, if that’s rebuff, we approach with a group, we bring it before the church and then that person is removed. Excommunication is never meant to be this permanent, lasting punishment. It is meant to be this thing that is done for the safety of the community, because harm is always communal, in its effect, and it is done with an invitation to return. It is done always with a handout of welcome, of return, to this healing is offered to you. But if you can’t pursue that, in order to protect this community, we might need to remove someone for a season. But that removal itself isn’t actually the punishment.
Heath continues:
We all have trauma, or most of us have trauma within our backgrounds. And yet, we also, as we engage that- engage other people and can move towards healing- it doesn’t disqualify us from that. And when we do that work of engaging that trauma, either ours or somebody else’s, it’s hard. It’s actually being really tough on crime, to force someone- or not force, but to bring someone into a situation where they are allowed to confront them.
You talk with people who’ve done especially violent crime against individuals who are willing to go through like a restorative justice process and sit down with that person and talk. And they will say it is the hardest thing that they have ever done.
Tisby: “yeah.”
So if we actually want to call people who have done harm to others, and to be tough on crime, it’s having those individuals confront what they’ve done. It’s having those individuals be held accountable. You talked about that word earlier. But accountability is a word that we often use as being synonymous with punishment. But when I say that, that’s not what I mean.
…To really hold someone accountable for harm that they’ve done requires that person to acknowledge what they’ve done, to acknowledge the effect it had on someone, to do some physical act of repair that’s most often dictated by that person who did the harm, and then the change is something needs to change in that person’s life or their surrounding institution at the systemic level so that thing can’t happen again.
Tisby chimes in and asks:
This is an allusion to a conversation I had on Pastor Mike with one of the staffers at the Witness BBC, Bria Perry. And we were talking about ‘what does justice look like when harm and violence has has been done?’ So in the case of, let’s say, convicting the police officers who kill an unarmed black person, is that justice? Is that accountability? Is it something else? How do you sort of parse through that?
Health concludes:
It’s so weighty. Just yesterday, we heard about an individual who had been convicted, my wife and I did, and she goes, ‘Oh, good’. And I said, ‘good?’ She says’ that’s right, wait, we don’t believe in prisons and what they’re doing.” I’m like ‘right’
…Ultimately, we’re talking about justice not being punishment, but justice being safety, healing, and accountability….what I want is when harm happens, for someone’s knee jerk reaction not to be ‘what was the crime and who should be punished’, but ‘who was harmed, and who is it that needs healing? And who do I need to bring into my community to help that healing be pursued?’
If we did that, and we pursue the answers to those questions, we would be building that system. What exactly is it going to look like? Nobody knows. And the most honest people in the movement will say ‘we’re not fully sure because some of that depends on what does my community need?’
(Sportskeeda) On Wednesday, August 31, 2022, former Federal Bureau of Prisons chaplain James Theodore Highhouse, who was previously charged with multiple counts of sexual assault was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years of probation following his release from prison.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. reached this decision after a trial regarding the duration of Highhouse’s sentence.
Earlier, on February 23, James Theodore Highhouse, 50, pleaded guilty to five felonies. According to court documents, the victim, an incarcerated woman, reported Highhouse to federal authorities in February 2019, almost a year after he started abusing her in May 2018.
Federal Prison Chaplain Sentenced for Sexual Assault and Lying to Federal Agents: James Theodore Highhouse, a former prison chaplain, received 84 months in prison for repeatedly sexually abusing an incarcerated female and then lying to federal agents.
Alberta Health Service and Provincial law enforcement have announced that they are physically shutting down “arrested and now released” Pastor Tim Stephens’ Church*, barring their doors to get them to cease gathering. Despite these strongarm tactics, the defiant minister explained on social media that “the church must gather,” and that they had every intention of doing so, building be damned.
Fairview Baptist Church will be joining James Coates’ GraceLife Church, Jacob Reaume’s Trinity Bible Chapel, and two others in having their church shuttered and doors locked by power-tripping government officials, all for refusing to adhere to the provincial lockdown laws that limit church attendance to 15 people inside, or 5 people outside.
Taking to Twitter, Stephens says that he is grateful for everyone who prayed for his release from jail and that though the church building has been ordered closed, they are actively seeking a new place to gather together, implying out of sight and underground if need be. They would join several other churches currently hiding out from the government, some traveling over 80 miles to get to their hidden church location.
This is done with the hopes that if they meet in secret, they will be left alone and not subject to crushing monetary fines or even further arrests.
I’m thankful for all the prayers for my release following my arrest for gathering the church to worship our King.
On Sunday our church building was also ordered closed. Please pray for the Lord’s provision of other places to gather together.
With pastor Stephens being released from prison after two days, it is still unclear exactly what restrictions and conditions were placed on him that enabled him to be released. AHS has been actively petitioning to keep him incarcerated or to lock him back up if he re-offends and continues to lead services, and it Is uncertain whether they will arrest him on sight if he attempts to lead church publicly.
As far as whether the province plans to relent from their harsh lockdowns, Premier Jason Kenny’s government is unlikely to relent soon, announcing that in his great benevolence, they have made an allowance for 12 whole frontline workers to attend a hockey playoff game, in a stadium that fits 18,500 people.
That’s the kind of fear and illogic ruling political decision-making. If he will not allow more than 12 to gather in a literal stadium, (who incidentally, are all sitting next to each other, so much for social distancing) he will not allow a couple of hundred saints in the house of God.
Some exciting news: @AHS_media has approved an exemption for 12 Alberta front-line health care workers to attend Game 1 of the Oilers-Jets playoff series and stand with @EdmontonOilers anthem singer Rob Clarke for the national anthem tonight. pic.twitter.com/paf4KUJWiL
In a jailhouse interview with Rebel News reporter Adam Soos, a Canadian Pastor arrested for the crime of having church services over the 15-person capacity says that he has been subjected to poor conditions while in jail, alleging that he is being thrown around, deprived of sleep and has been refused a lawyer during his stay there [Update: he has since been able to get a hold of legal counsel.]
Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who was taken down and arrested in a dramatic raid after leaving his church, explains:
Here’s what happened after the video. I was thrown like a piece of meat behind the police vehicles, and I had to go for about an hour, hour and a half (in the) back of police car laying down on my handcuffs (unintelligible) and I almost broke my shoulder.
So that was until we got to (unintelligible) then of course, the processing unit. I was with my brother, we were taken to two different separate (house?)…
They’re not allowing us to sleep, so for 24 hours I can’t sleep. The lights are so bright it’s absolutely crazy, even though other inmates for example across from my cell they turned the lights off and he could go to sleep. I don’t have that same courtesy.
We do not have blankets, we do not have pillows, nothing. We had to spend the whole day yesterday and the whole night and half a day right now on concrete, on cold concrete.
So that’s the situation here. I was never contacted by a lawyer. It’s shocking at the treatment. I’m being viewed here as a monkey in the circus. From time to time police will come and just look through the window oh, you know, like a trophy.
But I’m in a good spirit. I’m not going to quit. It will not silence me. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing because if I don’t have freedom, then I have nothing else. If we don’t have the freedom to worship our God, then what else do we have?
Pawlowski and Soos talk a bit more about his predicament, talking about the state of his cell and the fact that he’s going to file a lawsuit against those who locked him down. He calls Alberta Premier Jason Kenny “evil” and laments that he’s become a political prisoner on account of his stand. He speaks of the need for Canadians to rise up and oust these traitorous politicians, noting that on account of everything they have 11 candidates in their own church and they hope they get elected so they can clean up the corruption that would put him in prison in the first place.
If you don’t have the freedom of religion, all the other rights are disappearing as well. We have to stand up and Christians-rise up stand up right now.
I mean, if not now, then when?
As for his final words?
I want to tell you Jesus wins in the end, and when we stand with him, that’s where I draw my hope. My hope is in Christ. He redeemed me. He saved me. He changed the corrupted man into the man I am today and I give him all the glory. And if you are depressed or suicidal or in a tough situation remember that God has your back and we know how the story ends. Truth wins in the end.
A Canadian Pastor has been arrested in the streets and thrown in jail for the crime of having a church service that exceeds the 15-person limit.
Artur Pawlowski and brother David were arrested immediately after Sunday’s service, with half a dozen police cars and over a dozen officers surrounding them and taking them down in the middle of a busy highway. Artur is the pastor of Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta, and went viral weeks ago after yelling at police officers and Alberta Health Service personnel who entered his church without permission in order to shut down the service.
He practiced passive resistance, going limp on purpose, all the while calling them “Nazi Gestapo psychopaths,” forcing them to carry him and his brother away.
Both were taken into police custody and charged with “organizing an illegal in-person gathering, in addition to “requesting, inciting, or inviting others.”
That is, having church and inviting others to come to his church.
In a public statement, Calgary Police say the arrest was completely justified as he was violating lockdown orders that prohibit church gatherings.
It is important to understand that law enforcement recognizes people’s desire to participate in faith-based gatherings as well as the right to protest. However, as we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, we all must comply with public health orders in order to ensure everyone’s safety and wellbeing.
This is the second Canadian pastor arrested and put in jail on account on insisting on having church service at full capacity, following the arrest of GraceLife Pastor James Coates, who spent 35 days in jail and is now having an underground service to avoid further arrests and fines.
In Canada, which is quickly becoming a police state, this new roundup of pastors is likely just the beginning.
“…you joyfully accepted the plundering or your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” (Hebrews 10:34)
A judge has ordered a Canadian church to cease worshipping together in their church building, granting the province of Ontario the authority to bar the doors and prevent any congregants from entering. This is the end result after months of fines and threats of fines have proved unsuccessful in coercing the church to cease gathering together as one, an act that is in contravention to provincial lockdown orders that limit church gatherings to 10 peoplefor both indoor and outdoor servicesregardless of size or capacity limits.
In many ways, Trinity Bible Chapel (TBC) in Waterloo, Ontario has faced the most opposition and steepest price out of any church in North America for being open. GraceLife Church in Alberta had their pastor arrested and spend over a month in jail, and their church is likewise now taken away, but TBC has endured absolutely brutal, punishing, unending fines for being open.
They’re facing 40 million dollars in potential fines right now. 40 million. And while the large multi-million dollar fines might possibly be appealed if granted – some of their large fines like the $83,000 given for a single service cannot be waived, removed, or appealed. These crushing tickets are not just to the Church entity, but parishioner after parishioner is being handed crushing fines for daring to attend. These are crippling numbers, but they have not bent the will of the church.
So now they are having the church building taken away from them.
The judge in the case, Justice John Krawchenko, noted in his decision that the church must be locked up because if it remained open, “the risk of irreparable harm would be too great to ignore.”
In a public statement that everyone should read in full titled We lost the building but kept the church, Pastor Jacob Reaume recounts how they prayed for their own building for years and finally moved into it in the middle of the pandemic, sharing how “It was a time of great joy, and we looked forward to serving our community and worshipping our Saviour in this facility.” But now:
We have around 600,000 people who live in this region. There are 588 active cases of COVID in the region, with 32 people in the ICU with COVID. That’s enough to deem the public worship of Jesus Christ dangerous and enough for the Province of Ontario to kick us off our land and bar our doors shut…Our experience (with COVID) doesn’t line up with the hysteria whipped up by government and media, nor do the numbers warrant turning control of the Bride of Christ over to the Premier of Ontario.
Pastor Reaume explains that while the motivations of the government are clear, they underestimate the body’s commitment to the public gathering and worship of Jesus, even as the judge in the case told them that they can do “virtual services” as an alternative.
The purpose of this seizure is to prevent us from meeting as a church. They believe that we will continue meeting in our facility, no matter the fines or the public shame heaped on us. We are willing to pay any price necessary to worship our Saviour because He is worth it. He died for us, and we want Him to receive a reward for His suffering. Churches used to sing songs like Charles Wesley’s “O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing” and mean it. We still do.
He continues, offering a master class in how believers ought to think about these things:
But it’s now cost us our facility. That’s after policemen sat outside our lot in cruisers on Sunday to chase our people down and ticket them after the service for gathering to worship. That’s after each elder received a ticket this past week for opening the church. That’s after the church itself received a ticket this week. That’s after we were convicted of our second count of contempt of court today. That’s after we’ve now received so many dozens of charges I’ve actually lost track. Combined we are facing over $40 million in fines with jail time. That’s not enough, so they’ve taken our building.
They took our building because they think that will stop us from worshipping. For twenty years our church has worshipped together each Lord’s Day, and we’ve only met in our own building for eleven months. So the best part of our history we have not owned a building. We managed just fine to gather together without our own building, and now we don’t have our own building again. The early church met in the catacombs under Rome. The Covenanters met in fields. John Bunyan led his services in forests. Churches find ways to worship together, as surely as water flows downhill.
He concludes:
During that season we could have complied with all the nonsense protocols. But if we had done that, we would have already conceded the facility to the Province. The Province would have essentially owned not only our building, but also our fellowship and also our worship. We did not let them own our building. We did not let them own our worship. We did not let them own our fellowship. So they stole our building, at least temporarily. We’ll keep our worship. And we’ll keep our fellowship.
Many churches around these parts think they still own their buildings, but they already voluntarily handed their buildings and their people and their worship over to Caesar months ago. We just forced Caesar to come and take the building, but we’ve kept the church.
Caesar can have the brick and mortar. We’ve kept the church for Jesus. He who seeks to preserve his church will lose it, but he who loses the church for Christ’s sake will keep it.
Televangelist Pat Robertson, 91, the living embodiment of the expression “creeping decrepitude has finally crept up on me,” took to the airwaves to criticize Kim Porter in the accidental shooting death of Duante Wright. Using some props, he demonstrated on air the difference between a plastic gun and a taser, while at the same time offering critical comments for the Law Enforcement and asserting that the officer involved in the George Floyd death ought to be “buried under the prison.”
Pulling out a plastic gun and a taser during his program, Robertson had co-host Terry Meeuwsen feel the difference between the two as he explained that there’s no comparison and he can’t believe the officer would make such a mistake.
There’s just no comparison between a taser and a gun. Now how she (Officer Kim Porter) made the difference when she shot that poor guy to death, (was saying) ‘this is what I thought…was my taser.’
And if you can’t tell the difference in the feel of those things, it’s crazy. You know, I am pro-police folks. I think we need the police. We need their service, and they do a good job, but if they don’t stop this onslaught, they cannot do this.
Robertson then turns to Chauvin and the unrest in Minneapolis, using a colloquialism that refers to a person either killed in prison, or more charitably, to spending so much time incarcerated that he perishes in prison, his body being interred on prison property.
Derek Chauvin, I mean, they oughta put him under the jail. He has caused so much trouble by kneeling on the [neck] of George Floyd…it’s just terrible what’s happening. And the police, why don’t they open their eyes to what the public relations are? We’ve got to stop this stuff.
Later on Robertson would opine, “We don’t have the finest in the police department…you cannot have a bunch of clowns running around who are underpaid and who really are not the best and brightest.”
Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church had a hearing today to determine whether or not he’s spending the next two months in prison for the crime of being a faithful shepherd, with the judge hearing both submissions and then ruling Friday morning in the case that has garnered international attention and has highlighted Alberta’s tyrannical and schizophrenic coronavirus shutdown restrictions.
The hearing was to determine whether or not the conditions of James’ release might be modified or removed, as presently he will only be allowed to leave prison unless he promises to not step back on Church property again. The hearing was live-streamed on WebEx and was attended by nearly 450 people, many that failed to mute their microphone upon entry into the channel, causing frequent interruptions and chatter throughout, at one point causing both lawyers some difficulty hearing and needing to pause until the disruptions were muted.
Along with the online viewers, there were dozens of supporters gathered outside the Edmonton courthouse, protesting and praying for a favorable result.
The judge in the case, Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Peter Michalyshyn, noted that Coates did not want a publication ban on the affair, an unusual move as they are normally imposed on bail hearings.
In contrast, the prosecutor requested that she not be mentioned by name and rather simply by her title, on account of her personal safety and “some security [issues] that have arisen on this matter,” an unusual request, which was granted.
Though each lawyer was given 10 minutes to speak and argue their case, the entire hearing lasted not much more than minutes. With all their arguments already submitted, Coates’s lawyer, James Kitchen with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, spoke the bulk of the time and the prosecutor chimed in for less than a minute.
Responding to the Crown’s contention that there is a substantial likelihood of danger to the public if Coates were released, Kitchen retorted that since the church has been opened at near capacity since July and there have been no outbreaks or superspreader events linked to his congregation, that this is substantial proof that Coates is no danger to Albertans. “He’s not going to hurt anybody, the only thing that will happen is he holds church again.”
Kitchen said it should be determined whether Coates’s charter rights are being violated before he is jailed, remarking: “We are putting the cart before the horse, doing things backwards.” Further, even if he was convicted of what he’s accused of, it wouldn’t even be a jailable offense, so why would it be a jailable offense now?
While the Crown was saying that it would undermine the justice system if they were to release Coates without what amounts to a restraining order from his church, prohibiting him from pastoring his flock, Kitchen described that as completely inverted.
He said that for normal people, it is the incarceration of a Christian minister that undermines the justice system, not the other way around, explaining, “Imposing upon a pastor the condition of his release that he not pastor…that is an embarrassment to the courts,” as well as “a stain on the administration of justice.”
Kitchen told the judge that the undertaking Coates was asked to sign was a violation of his religious beliefs. He said his client didn’t sign the undertaking because of a basic “inability to agree to the condition of release that was imposed upon him,” and that Coates ought to be released without condition.
This is a matter of deep-seeded personal conscience and religious beliefs for Pastor Coates. He is unable to disobey the God he believes in. He is compelled to obey…as [are] his congregants.
As for the Crown, since most of what Kitchen was speaking against were previous submissions, she was generally inactive throughout the affair. She made a short submission saying the original justice of the peace made no errors, and again that releasing him would be a danger to the public, saying, “The one condition that was imposed is directly related to the behaviors that come under the prohibition of the Public Health Act orders.”
