Articles by Guest Author

Believe it or not, there are people in Texas who have never heard the true Gospel. These people are your next-door neighbors. Who will tell them?

“This is very hard because we’ve never thought about God before.”

It's easy to trust God when you know what's going on and what He has planned. But trusting God in the waiting? Trusting Him in the silence?

By Jaclyn Bonner

My late grandmother, Edna Wood Bonner, grew up during the Great Depression. She sought to emulate the strength and selflessness she saw modeled by her own mother, Maggie Wood, who became a single parent of seven shortly after my grandmother and her twin brother were born.

It does not require statistics from the 1930s to understand the difficulties Maggie faced. She labored under the hot sun daily as a cotton picker, but this did not provide an income adequate to raise two sets of twins and three other daughters alone.

Like many mothers who desire the best for their children, Maggie made the difficult decision to place her children in institutionalized care. In 1932, at the age of eight, Edna and her twin brother were sent to the local orphanage, joining their siblings and other children whose parents were deceased or unable to care for their primary needs.

While the current economic situation of our nation does not rival that of the Great Depression, hunger is still hurting families today.

Feeding Texas reports that a study released by the United States Department of Agriculture found that 1.4 million Texas households were food insecure from 2014-2016. One in seven families in our state, 14.3 percent of households, are unable to put food on the table every night.

Hunger in Texas is higher than the national average*, but it is only a microcosm of the pervasiveness and severity of global hunger. The World Food Programme announced that 815 million people, one in nine, go to bed hungry every night. One in three people in the world are malnourished.

Go Now Orientation weekend has just ended and I think it’s safe to say everyone involved gained something from attending. Before attending orientation, I was overwhelmed with worry about many different things. What would we learn? What if I don’t fit in? What if I am not capable or equipped to do the tasks presented to us?

En una resolución histórica el lunes bajo el rubro Murphy vs NCAA, la Corte Suprema de los EE.UU. abolió la ley de Apuestas en Deportes Profesionales y Amateur (PASPA, por sus siglas en inglés), una ley que de manera efectiva prohibía las apuestas deportivas en la mayoría de los estados alrededor del país desde hace 25 años.

The Scott & White College of Nursing at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor has announced the launch of an Adult - Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (AG-ACNP) program, which will equip graduates with the skills to practice in high pressure areas within acute care settings.

By Caleb Seibert

In a landmark decision Monday entitled Murphy v. NCAA, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Betting Act (PASPA), a law that effectively eliminated legal sports betting in most states around the country for 25 years.

The case pitted the State of New Jersey (Gov. Philip Murphy) against the National Collegiate Athletic Association and three professional sports leagues.

The court found that the law violated the “anti-commandeering” principle drawn from the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. This principle holds that Congress may pass laws that must be upheld by states, but it may not issue direct orders to state governments requiring them to take certain state legislative action.

This decision does not immediately legalize sports betting across the country, but it does allow states to legalize such activity in their state if they wish to do so.

As for the effect in Texas, Rob Kohler, a Christian Life Commission consultant, says, "The recent decision by the Supreme Court regarding gambling on sporting events really has no effect on the current gambling regulations in the State of Texas.” The current leadership of Texas has repeatedly rejected efforts to expand gambling in our state. Kohler concludes: “it will however, energize proponents of this, and other forms of gambling expansion in Texas in the upcoming legislative session in January 2019."

I was surprised when I got a call out of the blue from movie producers at Pure Flix asking if they could make a feature film based on my book, “The Case for Christ.”After all, my book had been published nearly two decades earlier.

Dr. Phil Christopher, Abilene’s First Baptist Church pastor, was honored with an Honorary Doctorate Degree for his amazing influence on thousands of lives during his more than 40 years of ministry.