NEW "PASSION OF THE CHRIST" WILL BE THE BIGGEST FILM IN HISTORY. JIM CAVIEZEL PROMISES

by Bryan Alexander

James Faulkner is Paul and Jim Caviezel is Luke in the exclusive full trailer reveal for 'Paul, Apostle of Christ.

Jim Caviezel is very much on board with director Mel Gibson's plan to shoot a sequel to The Passion of the Christ.

Caviezel, 49, confirmed he will reprise his role as Jesus in the planned film about the resurrection of Christ. "There are things that I cannot say that will shock the audience," he says. "It's great. Stay tuned."

Gibson and his star have been tight-lipped on details of how the new film will move forward. But the actor says he's been inspired in his talks with Gibson by the direction the project is taking.

Jim Caviezel, right, portraying Jesus Christ, carries a cross in 'The Passion of the Christ.' (Photo: Philippe Antonello/Marquis Films Ltd.)

"I won’t tell you how he’s going to go about it," Caviezel says. "But I’ll tell you this much, the film he’s going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. It’s that good."

It's a prediction that could prove true. 2004's The Passion of the Christ, which Gibson directed, co-wrote and produced, was a major milestone in faith-based filmmaking, earning more than $611 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. 

It's the highest-grossing R-rated film ever in North America with $370.8 million.


The original followed the last 12 hours of Christ's life as portrayed by Caviezel. The actor hasn't returned to biblical films until this year. He'll play Luke in Paul, Apostle of Christ (in theaters March 28) alongside James Faulkner's Paul.

Jim Caviezel (as Luke, left) and James Faulkner (as Paul) in 'Paul, Apostle of Christ.' (Photo: CTMG)

“The Resurrection. Big subject. Oh, my God," he said. "We’re trying to craft this in a way that’s cinematically compelling and enlightening so that it shines new light, if possible, without creating some weird thing.”

Caviezel says the Oscar-winning director has "cracked" that story and they have tentatively scheduled a shooting window (which he declined to disclose).


"Braveheart, that’s a film that took a long time to be able to crack," Caviezel says. "The same thing for Passion. And the same thing for this. He’s finally got it. So that is coming."

MIKE PENCE BREAKS THE TIE TO CONFIRM SAM BROWNBACK AS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AMBASSADOR

by ABIGAIL ROBERTSON/CBN

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is now the ambassador for religious freedom. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback was confirmed to be ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom after a dramatic Senate vote Wednesday.

Vice President Mike Pence raced to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking 49 – 49 vote to end debate and proceed to a final vote. The vote was in peril because Sen. John McCain, R -- Ariz., is out on medical leave and Senator Bob Corker, R – Tenn., is in Davos, Switzerland, requiring the GOP to get at least one Democrat to support the nomination.

A top senate aide tells CBN News they thought they had at least 15 Democrats in support of Brownback's nomination, but learned that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D – New York, was encouraging his fellow Democrats to vote against the Brownback nomination.

President Trump nominated Brownback in 2017, but Democrats blocked a vote because as the governor of Kansas he repealed an executive order prohibiting discrimination against LGBT government workers.

Since the Senate failed to vote to confirm him before the end of the year, the president was forced to re-nominate him in January.

Brownback's confirmation is a big win for those fighting for religious freedom around the world.

"After a long wait, those who have been suffering brutal oppression now have a strong advocate in this vital post. It is essential to promote religious freedom as a cornerstone of our foreign policy, given the global instability caused by the severe religious persecution that 77 percent of the world's population live under. Gov. Brownback has been a passionate defender of the rights of all people to worship freely, and has courageously confronted offenses against human rights in trouble spots around the world throughout his career," said Maureen Ferguson, senior policy adviser with The Catholic Association.

David Curry, CEO of Open Doors USA, says Brownback is a "terrific" solution to a big problem.

"The fact that now we've been without a leader in that role I think is a problem," Curry told CBN News. "Because you have these situations around the world where we need a spokesman who understands these issues in-depth." 

 Brownback will be in charge of investigating religious freedom violations around the world and submit an annual report of violations to the White House.

"We need a point person," continued Curry. "This is not a partisan issue. Democrat or Republican or independent, you need to care about the religious liberty of others."

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE'S HISTORIC KNESSET SPEECH

by CUFI

Vice President Mike Pence made a historic speech at the Knesset.  Speaking to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s lawmakers, the Vice President honored Israel’s upcoming 70th anniversary and 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

This was the first time in 10 years that a senior US Administration official addressed the Knesset since President George W. Bush spoke there to mark Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008. The Vice President boldly spoke of the spiritual and political ties between Israel and the United States, and the common bond between our two countries created by people who treasured freedom and the faith of Abraham. He left no daylight between Israel and the United States, a marked change from the speeches we have heard from US officials during the last administration.

We were excited to hear President Donald Trump’s speech in December when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital, and announced that the administration would begin making plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Today, the Vice President reaffirmed the decision of the United States to recognize Jerusalem, and he announced that the Embassy would complete its move by the end of 2019.

The Vice President spoke of his hope that we have entered a new era of the peace process, and said the President believes it is possible to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel with the help of Arab leaders. Instead of chastising Israel for the lack of peace, as the previous President and his administration did many times, Vice President Pence affirmed Israel’s efforts to achieve peace and provide freedom for people of all faiths. 

In addition, the Vice President strongly condemned the disastrous Iran Deal and stated that President Trump has decided that he will no longer certify this bad deal. Vice President Pence stated that, unless the deal is fixed, the US will withdraw and resume sanctions against the regime in Tehran. He promised that the US will not allow Iran to attain a nuclear weapon, under any circumstances. And he offered the hand of friendship to Iran’s people, telling them the US is not their enemy, and that when the day comes that the people of Iran throw off the oppression of their regime the United States will stand with them. 

This historic speech by Vice President Pence marks a dramatic new day in American foreign policy. It also shows that CUFI has a perfect opportunity to seize the moment and work with Congress and the Trump Administration to achieve political victories that will protect Israel for decades to come.

BREAKING: U.S. HOUSE VOTES TO PROTECT BABIES WHO SURVIVE BOTCHED ABORTIONS

by Mark Hodges

In a major pro-life victory, the U.S. House passed a bill Friday protecting babies born alive during botched abortions.

The vote took place on the same day that hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers witnessed to life in the nation’s Capitol during the annual March for Life.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 4712) aims to protect babies who have managed to survive an abortion and are born alive in an abortion center. The bill states that if a baby survives an abortion, that baby is entitled to the same level of care as any other baby of a similar age, no matter how delivered, would receive.

The bill requires that living babies be transported to a hospital for care, instead of being left to the devices of the abortionist.  The bill also establishes penalties if health professionals do not provide this level of care. It also allows the mother to sue if her living baby is killed by intent or neglect.

There are U.S. cases of babies who have been born alive after a botched abortion and then brutally killed by the abortionist.

In 2013, testimony was provided about how abortionist Kermit Gosnell killed at least ten babies who were born alive by slitting their spinal cords. Gosnell was eventually convicted of murdering three infants who were born alive during attempted abortion procedures.

The bill expands Bush-era protections for babies born alive during an attempted abortion.

In 2002, the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act — passed by a voice vote in the House and unanimous consent in the Senate — was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The legislation officially called every born baby — even those intended to be aborted — a “person,” a “human being,” a “child,” and an “individual” in federal law.

However, since the original Born-Alive Bill became law, undercover investigations have revealed how abortionists violate it by letting babies “expire” or by not giving them legally-mandated life-saving care when they survive a late-term abortion.

Pro-life advocates say the legislation is necessary to protect the lives of born humans.

“Children born alive are denied medical care and left to die – cold, alone, abandoned and discarded like medical waste,” Jill Stanek, who personally witnessed viable babies unintentionally born alive simply left to die, said.

Stanek said that instances of abortionists leaving born babies to die are more numerous than people might think: “From Kermit Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors,’ to a D.C. abortionist admitting he would not intervene to save the baby, to a former Planned Parenthood medical director stating…whether to provide lifesaving care is (a matter of) who’s watching.”

“Horrific crimes are taking place in abortion facilities around the country,” said Stanek, who is the Susan B. Anthony List National Campaign Chair. “This is infanticide, plain and simple. Everyone should be able to agree on equal protection under the law for these children.”

One reason why abortionists continued leaving born alive babies to die is that the Bush-era law had no teeth. The new law has changed this.

Abortion centers will likely have to change the way they do business.

One witness from Planned Parenthood told a congressional panel that “none of our health centers provide obstetrics care ... We don’t deliver babies at Planned Parenthood ... They don’t know how to manage a term infant or a premature infant.”

The Center for Disease Control reports that 588 of the infant deaths reported between 2004 and 2013 were because of “termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn.” And those are just the reported cases. Actual numbers of live, birthed babies actively or passively murdered after a botched abortion is estimated to be as much as four times higher.

Babies born alive from botched abortions are called, “Complications,” or, as one abortionist put it, procedures to ensure fetal death are “risk management.”

Undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress reveal that “the fetal-tissue trafficking industry explicitly incentivizes altering abortion procedures in a way that can lead to infants being born alive (because) intact cadavers are most valuable to researchers.” Even heart-still-beating whole babies make “fresh” specimens, worthy of lucrative remuneration.

“The House Select Panel found evidence that whole-baby cadavers of a viable age have been transferred from some abortion clinics to researchers,” the National Review notes. “Planned Parenthood medical directors admitted to not injecting fetuses with the fatal drug dioxin … because tissue untainted by feticidal agents is much more helpful to researchers and therefore worth more money.”

GOOGLE'S NEW FACT CHECK FEATURE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY TARGETS CONSERVATIVE SITES

By ERIC LIEBERMAN

Google, the most powerful search engine in the world, is now displaying fact checks for conservative publications in its results.

No prominent liberal site receives the same treatment.

And not only is Google’s fact-checking highly partisan — perhaps reflecting the sentiments of its leaders — it is also blatantly wrong, asserting sites made “claims” they demonstrably never made.

When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a sidebar titled “Reviewed Claims.”

Vox, and other left-wing outlets and blogs like Gizmodo, are not given the same fact-check treatment. When searching their names, a “Topics they write about” section appears, but there are no “Reviewed Claims.”

In fact, a review of mainstream outlets, as well as other outlets associated with liberal and conservative audiences, shows that only the conservative sites feature the highly misleading, subjective analysis. Several conservative-leaning outlets like TheDC are “vetted,” while equally partisan sites like Vox, ThinkProgress, Slate, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Salon, Vice and Mother Jones are spared.

Occupy Democrats is apparently the only popular content provider from that end of the political spectrum with a fact-checking section.

The Robert Mueller fact check (pictured above) is a case in point for Google’s new feature.

Ostensibly trying to sum up the crux of the post, the third-party “fact-checking” organization says the “claim” in a DC article that special Counsel Robert Mueller is hiring people that “are all Hillary Clinton supporters” is misleading, if not false.

The problem is that TheDC’s article makes no such claim. Their cited language doesn’t even appear in the article. Worse yet, there was no language trying to make it seem that the investigation into the Trump administration and Russia is entirely comprised of Clinton donors. The story simply contained the news: Mueller hired a Hillary Clinton donor to aid the investigation into President Donald Trump.

Still, the Washington Post gave the claim, which came from Trump himself, its official “Three Pinocchios” rating. The method applies to several other checks. Claims concocted or adulterated by someone outside the TheDC are attributed to TheDC, in what appears to be a feature that only applies to conservative sites.

Examples of such misattribution and misrepresentation are aplenty.

For instance, using Snopes.com, an organization with highly dubious fact-checking capabilities, Google’s platform shows an article by TheDC to have a so-called “mixture” of truth.

The “claim” made, according to Snopes.com, and in-turn Google, is “a transgender women raped a young girl in a women’s bathroom because bills were passed…”

A quick read of the news piece shows that there was no mention of a bill or any form of legislation. The story was merely a straightforward reporting of a disturbing incident originally reported on by a local outlet.

And like Snopes, another one of Google’s fact-checking partners, Climate Feedback, is not usually regarded as objective.

Snopes and Google also decided to “fact-check” an obviously tongue-in-cheek article in which a writer for TheDC pokes fun at a professor saying the solar eclipse in 2017 was naturally racist.

Even Vox pointed out the absurdity of the educator’s literary tirade on Mother Nature’s purported racial prejudice, and the damage it might have done to real arguments of apparent racism. While Snopes got some flak for its choice, no one seems to have noticed the absurdity of the world’s go-to search engine providing fact-checks to purposefully irreverent content, rather than hard news stories.

Overall, such inclusion embodies Google’s fact-checking services, which, as many presciently feared, are biased, if not also downright libelous.

Google acknowledged it received an inquiry from TheDCNF, but did not fully respond in time of publication.

WOMAN EXPLAINS WHY SHE LEFT "SUPER WILD" LESBIAN LIFESTYLE TO FOLLOW CHRIST

by Life Site News

Emily Thomes 

Immersed in the gay lifestyle from age fifteen, Emily Thomes’ life was transformed when she encountered the real God.

Rebellious from an early age, Emily’s actions led her into immoral choices.  “I met my need for attention by constantly ‘going against the grain,’” she explains online and in a viral video released last week.

“I partied, slept around, and by fifteen I came out as a lesbian to some friends,” Emily continued in the Anchored North-produced video.  “I cut my hair short, wore boy clothes, and used men’s bathrooms and dressing rooms.”

She figured God was okay with her doings, because “God being love meant God was nice.”  Her view of God was one of benevolent all-acceptance.  “God was chill with what you were cool with,” she thought.

As she became more and more openly gay, she delved deeper and deeper into perversion.  “I enjoyed the thrill of doing and being what was outside the norm—trying harder drugs, exploring even more taboo sexual acts, and getting a couple of regrettable tattoos.”

But despite an outward facade of happiness, Emily describes herself at the time as having “hollow eyes and hopeless heart.”

At age 22, a co-worker invited her to a Bible Study.  Because her aunt was involved Emily went, but she planned to quit as soon as the topic of homosexuality came up.

The Christian women in the study shared positive experiences about God.  “I had nothing like that, and it bugged me,” Emily admitted.

“I couldn’t stop questioning,” she said, “because I (didn’t) feel okay anymore.”

Emily was quite surprised --and not a little frightened-- that the real God was not the all-approving one she had imagined.

“I knew what the Bible said about homosexuality,” she now says, “but I hadn’t cared before (because) I had little understanding of the God I was sinning against.”

Emily began reading the Bible on her own.  She felt “struck by lightning” when she grappled with First Corinthians chapter six.

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God...

“That day it was like my eyes were really opened,” Emily shared.  “Suddenly I could no longer argue.  It was clear.  I was in the ‘Will Not Enter the Kingdom of God’ lineup … It scared me really, really bad.”

And then Emily made the discovery that has transformed millions of lives the world over: she read the next verse.

...and such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

The light of new hope went on in Emily’s heart.  She understood that God heals and transforms people from sins just like hers.

“My whole life changed that day,” Emily proclaims.  “I grasped His hand by faith ... I was amazed at the grace He showed me.”

Emily’s video has so far been seen by over 1.5 million people.

Emily & her husband Benjamin Thomes

Now married for two years and expecting her first child, Emily shares her story to give hope to others like her.

She tells fellow strugglers that the path from homosexuality to wholeness in Christ is not always simple or easy, but it is healing.

“It’s not gay to straight. It’s lost to saved,” she says. “God calls us not to heterosexuality, but to holiness.”

PRESIDENT TRUMP NAMED "PRO-LIFE PERSON OF THE YEAR" FOR 2017

by LifeSite News

The pro-life group Operation Rescue has named President Donald Trump as their 2017 “pro-life person of the year.”

The Malachi Award is given by Operation Rescue every year to recognize individuals who sacrificially work to advance the cause of protecting the pre-born.

“Operation Rescue is grateful to Pres. Trump for having the courage to keep promises made during the campaign that provide greater protections for the pre-born and deny Federal funds from those who commit abortions,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “He has proven to be the most pro-life president we have had in modern history and has backed up his pro-life rhetoric with action like no other before him.”

According to Operation Rescue, after one year Trump has already accomplished more for the pro-life agenda than any other president.

They offer the following examples of Trump’s pro-life actions:

Trump appointed conservative, pro-life Justice Neil Gorsuch to the U.S, Supreme Court.
He has effectively denied public money to those who commit and promote abortions around the world.

The Trump Administration Department of Justice has launched a formal investigation into Planned Parenthood’s illegal baby parts trafficking scheme.

He has actively supported pro-life legislation, such as the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which is currently held up in the U.S. Senate.

He supports legislation to defund Planned Parenthood in the U.S., and removed an Obama-era mandate that forced states to continue funding Planned Parenthood.

He has worked to fill his administration with pro-life people and put them in places where they can do the most good.

Trump’s administration has taken active steps within the Health and Human Services and other agencies to establish pro-life policies that protect the pre-born.

He has provided protections for those of religious and moral convictions from paying for abortifacient drugs through Obamacare, and continues to work to repeal and replace it.

“We are proud of President Trump and his bold willingness to advance the cause of life. There are more battles ahead, but under the Trump administration, we can now finally see progress within our government toward restoring the sanctity of life and the protections of personhood to the pre-born,” said Newman. “This makes Pres. Trump a deserving recipient of the 2017 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award.”