Jan has been a free-lance writer since 1975 and has written
more than 300 articles for publication in many periodicals
across the country. Here is just a small sample.
How About the “Israelification” of Our Airports?
It’s time to follow Israel’s El Al Airlines and profile, interrogate, and treat everyone with polite suspicion. I have been through their routine more times than I’d like to remember. It’s an enormous inconvenience but the procedure works. Getting up at 3 AM to prepare for a two-hour cross-examination isn’t a joyride, but there are no El Al plane parts floating in an ocean or embedded on the ground.
According to Global Traveler magazine, El Al is the world’s most secure airline. This is both despite and because her planes are assuredly the highest value terrorist targets in the air.
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The Story of 2009: The Year the World Embraced a Single Leader
By Jan Markell
The Bible is clear that there is coming a one-world leader at the end of days. Most just call him the antichrist; however, there are many other names for the man.
There is much floating over the Internet that Barack Obama is the antichrist. He is not. He simply doesn’t qualify. However, in 2009, he fooled the world into believing that he was a world leader. Many Web sites called him “The President of the world,” “the messiah,” “the world leader,” and much more along those lines. He persuaded the masses that he could unite the world, but to do that, America would have to be reduced from a superpower to the same level as Portugal or Brazil.
More Proof: The East is Seducing the West
On Saturday I had a spirited on-air discussion with a Bethel University professor who acted as spokesman for the college regarding its recent interfaith symposium. As I wrote last week, Buddhism was featured and there was a suggestion that there just might be “common ground” with Buddhism and Christianity when it comes to “meditation.” Hear the program at this link. The potential “common ground” regarding meditation would be an eastern-style mystical meditation. I saw once again how the East has been seducing the West for nearly 50 years.
When I came home from the radio studio I had more e-mails that brought the total to about 15 in two weeks on the issue of “spiritual formation.” It is hitting Christian universities and churches like Hurricane Katrina. Bad metaphor, you say. Not really. It is causing real destruction. And since spiritual formation, too, deals heavily with the mystical, I thought I would take time to give a brief overview of this topic. I know many of you feel nothing unsound as this could walk in the door of your church, but don’t be so sure!
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America’s Foundations Are Being Destroyed: What Can the Righteous Do?
A controversy has broken out between two sides over a serious issue. It concerns The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience, which has been in the works for months and released just prior to Thanksgiving. Allow me to present the case the signers are making for this Declaration and then share concerns that others have who will not sign it. If I may, allow me to report and you decide. I am sorry this takes more paragraphs than normal.
Bill Wilson, a Washington-based journalist and a part of Bill Koenig’s Koenig’s International News recently summed up the unstable tide of our times. He says, “The Senate is poised to debate socialized health care and take a vote on it despite its unconstitutionality and opposition from the American people. This bill shreds the Constitution and the rights of Americans under the false pretense that it will provide health insurance to every American. This bill is the linchpin to legislating unprecedented and unconstitutional socialist humanism as the form of government in America. These usurpers in Congress must be stopped, and the American people must be heard from. From a Constitutional perspective this legislation, in effect, surrenders the power of the people to the power of the government.”
Thrown Under the Bus and Then to the Wolves
Where is the outrage? Why aren’t good Americans by the millions bitterly protesting a Florida judge who has ruled that former Muslim Rifqa Bary, age 17, must return to Ohio? Her parents reside there, and when she lived with them, she became aware that they could kill her for her conversion to Christianity. They would be perpetrating an “honor killing,” something common under Sharia Law.
Rifqa and many converts like her are apostates. To make the story worse, her parents are a part of a radical mosque. Rifqa knows that in spite of her father’s assertions to the contrary, she has committed one of the worst offenses: Renouncing Allah for Jesus. Living as a Christian in a strict Muslim home is just not an option.
Red-Letter Christians: Neo-Marxists in the Church?
They call themselves “red-letter Christians.”
They feel it is convenient to blot out the words of Paul on homosexuality and focus in on the good deeds Jesus talks about. Most are pacifists who reject an “eye for an eye” (Leviticus 24:19-20). They focus on Jesus’ words about helping the poor, ministering to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40), loving our enemies, etc. That justifies abandoning hundreds, even thousands of condemning verses in the Bible they choose to wish away. That makes homosexuality OK and war wrong! And remember, Paul and the others in the Bible represent Jesus’ words. They were His spokesmen.
Some who believe this way practice a form of neo-Marxism and others would call it “Christian Marxism” – an oxymoron if there ever was one. They note that the early church shared everything (socialism). A close cousin to this is “liberation theology.”
Those who are high profile in this movement include Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren and his Emergent bunch, and the National Council of Churches. Jim Wallis says,
“In those red letters, Jesus calls us away from the consumerist values that dominate contemporary American consciousness.”
Translate that to mean he loathes capitalism and opts for socialism and/or communism.
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The Hijacking of 9/11
September 11 is hardly a sacred day. Those days belong to God. But it is one of the most memorable days in American history when 3,000 Americans died a horrible death just for being Americans. So what’s wrong with the plans being made for this solemn day?
Are We on a Slippery Slope to Fascism?
When Evangelicals Dine with the Wicked
Few would disagree that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in America over the last thirty years. The church and pastor have impacted every evangelical church in the country. A year ago Willow Creek’s Pastor Bill Hybels admitted that the “seeker-sensitive” approach he had helped spread across the country had not been very effective at Willow Creek. In one interview here, he states that the church will now target people at all levels of faith. Well, that was an admission many of us were pleased about. The obvious question was, what would the new approach be? One thing was obvious: His leadership summits have not changed one whit.
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