Tim LaHaye, Christian Persecution, and Actors against Porn

Tim LaHaye

Tim LaHaye Dies.
Pastor, author, and activist Tim LaHaye died on the 25th Julu, 2016 at the age of 90. I had the privilege of knowing Dr. LaHaye a bit. One day about 15 years ago I was at a conference with him, and I had my then 10-year-old son Cole with me. Cole was reading "Left Behind" in those days, and on the first day of the conference I introduced him to Dr. LaHaye, who greeted Cole warmly and signed his book.

There were a lot of big-name Christian celebrities at this conference, but every time we saw Dr. LaHaye the rest of the weekend, he would pause his conversation with whomever he was talking to and greet Cole by name. I will always have a warm spot in my heart for Tim LaHaye because of that weekend and the way he treated a 10-year-old boy.

Christian Persecution Increases. 
According to a study by the Pew Research Center, “harassment of Christians” in 2014 occurred in 108 countries last year, an increase from the year before. (The project studied the status of religion in 198 countries.) Pew defines “harassment” as “both verbal and physical assaults as well as arrests, detentions and desecration of holy sites.

Discrimination on religious grounds was also found in employment, education and housing decisions.” About 8,000 Christians were martyred last year. That is the equivalent of nearly one person dying for his or her faith every hour of every day of the year. Christians are not alone, however. The study also found that Muslims had the second-highest rate of religious persecution after Christians, experiencing harassment in 100 countries.

On The Other Hand.
To give at least one actor some credit: Terry Crews, a former NFL player whose work includes “Friday After Next” and the “Expendables” series, has hit Facebook and other sites to tell men to stay away from pornography: “I’m calling on men to be more accountable. This is one of those ‘man up’ kind of things.”

Crews has recently gone public about his struggle with porn, saying it nearly ended his marriage. According to a company called Covenant Eyes, which provides Internet filtering, “By 2017, a quarter of a billion people are expected to be accessing mobile adult content from their phones or tablets, an increase of more than 30% from 2013.”

By Warren Cole Smith