Daily Devotional for Friday July 12, 2019

The effort to censor, eliminate the Gospel from the marketplace!!!

(Luke 19:40)

***DAILY PERSONAL PRAYER FOR YOU: Dear Lord, thank you for another day. Please let me never take a moment of this precious gift of life for granted. Grant me your peace, your joy, and enjoy the abundance this life can offer. Let me live this day for your glory. In the name of Jesus I pray...AMEN!!!

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19:40

Twitter has just announced a new protected class on their platform...religious groups!!! Twitter is announcing updates to its policies today to address hateful language directed at religious groups. The new policy lays out specific examples of content targeting members of religious groups that should be removed if reported. Tweets that dehumanize people on behalf of their religious alignment — for instance, referring to them as “rats,” “viruses,” and “filthy animals” — are now explicitly forbidden by the platform’s rules.

What great news! Now, finally, Christians will have protection from those who bombard us with hatred, blasphemy, call us the most vile name, and attack us simply because of our belief in God, faith in Jesus, and living by the Bible. But wait, I’m sorry. While Twitter has announced religious groups to be a new protected class, I can assure you that Christians will not be the beneficiary of this new policy. Trust me, nothing will change on Twitter when it comes to targeting Christian speech for being banned as a form of “hate speech,” and shutting down the accounts of Christians using this platform to share the Truth of God’s Word and the Gospel.

It was almost 18 years ago in a Daily Devotional that I shared Liveprayer would be censored and blocked from this new technology called the Internet while pornography and every kind of evil known to man would still exist. Despite not even owning a computer until Liveprayer signed on August 31, 1999, it was very shortly into writing the Daily Devotional each morning on the issues of the day from a Biblical worldview that I immediately realized “they” won’t let Liveprayer do what we were doing forever.

Again, even though the internet was in its infancy and I had zero background in technology, I was seeing each day the impact Liveprayer was having despite the fact we only had a few thousand people who were initially getting the Daily Devotional. Lives were being impacted. People were finding hope in their most desperate times of life. Many people getting the Daily Devotional forwarded to them to people they knew and we were reaching the ever growing number of people who were NOT Christians. Most important, emails came in daily from people who made the decision to come to faith in Jesus!!!

I remember one evening getting ready to leave for the day, sitting at my desk, and spending the next hour writing notes as the Lord was showing me that it might not be tomorrow, or next year, or ten years, but there would come a day when having the ability to boldly and without compromise share the Truth of God’s word on the issues of the day while helping people face the challenges of life and leading lost souls to faith in Jesus, would be censored and possibly even shut down.

Because of that, I sat with my head tech Mike (who is still serving the Lord here at Liveprayer since nearly day one), and we made the decision to house Liveprayer on our own servers and have our own tech crew. This was an INCREDIBLE expense at that time and to be honest still is. Liveprayer could have been run for 40% less by using other companies servers and infrastructure. However, I knew that we would never last very long due to what the world viewed as our “controversial content” each day and whatever company was hosting us would be pressured to shut us down.

Liveprayer would HAVE NEVER BEEN HERE for 20 years had we not made this move. The bandwidth we have to buy which is how the internet operates, our tech crew, has always been and still is the bulk of our monthly operations. Having control of our website, most important our email infrastructure that we send out 2.5m Daily Devotionals worldwide each day as well as handle 40,000 incoming emails for prayer daily, has been the only way Liveprayer has been able to exist all of these years without being shut down for any number of reasons to silence us!

Only God’s hand of protection has kept Liveprayer up and running these past 20 years!!! He has preserved Liveprayer in order to do the work He has called us to do. I remember doing Daily Devotionals over the years warning people about social media sites, primarily Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. I can’t even begin to tell you the daily emails we get from Facebook users whose lives have been greatly damaged. Since Facebook caters to an older demographic, we get many older people who have kids who are on their own, stuck in their job, life is sadly in a rut, and all of a sudden they find their high school boyfriend or girlfriend and Facebook who is in the same situation. You can figure out how that ends up.

Listen, like everything, you can use websites for good or you can get caught up in a trap using them for bad. My other concern though was the fact these social media platforms were all private companies and at any time they can boot you for whatever reason they decide. These giant tech companies are mostly all in Silicon Valley (San Francisco), all very liberal in their political beliefs, and a huge percentage have bought into all of the lies of the world that has rejected Christ and the Truth of the Bible.

These social networking companies have now used the bogus “Russian interference” scam to do what they have LONGED wanted to do. (For the record, I say that since if anyone thinks a bunch of Facebook ads totaling $100,000 or so had anything to do with the 2016 Presidential election you are wrong.) CENSOR THOSE VOICES THEY DISAGREE WITH!!! That has now started, and while the majority has been focused on conservative political speech, don’t think for a second it is not also happening to Christian speech!!!

The fact is those who oppose God DO want to silence us. Now please understand me. As long as we stay inside our churches, as long as we stay in our own little Christian media world that NOBODY outside of a small minority of Christians pays attention to, we are fine. However, once we venture into the marketplace, into the mainstream media, we have problems. New hate crime legislation here and in other countries is designed for one purpose, and that is to silence anyone from sharing the Truth of the Bible.

Over a decade ago, a private liberal advocacy group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, place myself and Liveprayer on their nationwide “hate map” that identifies “hate groups.” How did I manage to get on a list filled with true organizations that spew real hatred and incite violence, groups like the neo-Nazis, skinheads, black panthers, and many others? I had the audacity to share the Biblical Truth that homosexuality is a sin, marriage is between a man and a woman, and Islam is a false religion from hell leading souls to hell with their lies!!!

Liveprayer had our PayPal account closed after 19 years with no warning even though we have never had one issue. We were told by an anonymous person it was due to our “business.” From 2002-2010, I appeared dozens of times on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Cavuto, several MSNBC and CNN programs, national secular radio programs, along with hundreds of newspapers in the US and internationally, dealing with the issues of the day from a Biblical worldview. I still comment on issues for various newspapers, do some radio programs, but for the most part have been blackballed from the major secular media outlets because I never went on one of those programs without working the Gospel into whatever the issue was. EVEN FOX NEWS REALLY DOESN’T WANT TO HEAR IT!!!

Many of the bookers and producers I dealt with told me straight out that I was too “black and white” that I needed to be more accepting of the views of others. For the most part, the major secular TV and radio media operations have shut out a Christian worldview 99% of the time. You have the better percentage of the last two generations who have never even been to church. Sadly, the culture is ringing 24/7 with every lie from satan on every issue, and that lie is virtually unopposed because the Christian view has been silenced!!! That is already happening, and now the internet is the next outlet looking to silence Christians!!!

Liveprayer will never slow down. We will continue to battle each day to reach the lost and hurting masses with the only hope there is for this lifetime and all eternity...JESUS. This world is lost and in a spiritual abyss because it has chosen to reject the only truth there is found in God’s Word for the lies of this world. Worse of all, souls are needlessly dying daily and ending up in hell for all eternity simply because people are not being reached.

I have told people for virtually 20 yrs now that the ONLY way Liveprayer can be silenced is if we don’t have the funds to operate. After a very difficult last 4 months of 2017 that literally could have taken Liveprayer out, God intervened and after re-working our monthly budget from $65,000 to $50,000 while sacrificing virtually none of our main daily ministry operations, we have worked our way through June with only a $5,000 shortfall. Please pray about what God would have you do to insure we have the funds we need to be able to continue the Lord’s work here at Liveprayer each month thru the balance of 2019!

In perspective, our monthly budget to reach 2.5 million worldwide daily, respond to 40,000 emails for prayer daily, lead hundreds of lost souls to Christ each week, is apx. the same budget of a local church with 800-900 members meeting once a week. For just under $1,700 a day, God can multiply those funds like the fishes and loaves to feed the masses! IF JUST 30 OF OUR FRIENDS WOULD COMMIT TO MAKE A $1,700 GIFT EACH MONTH TO LIVEPRAYER, WE WOULD NEVER HAVE ANY ISSUES WITH OUR OPEARTIONS!!!

Please be praying as we navigate our way through this current culture that is very focused and smelling blood to silence the message of the Bible in the culture. Trust me, only God and a few on this planet have any idea the battles we have fought, literally daily over these past 20 yrs. The culture could care less what happens on Christian TV, radio, in local churches, since they are simply preaching to the choir and staying out of the way. Please understand, Christians need to be fed to grow, however, since it is easier to stay behind their four walls virtually all churches and ministries have forgotten the lost masses who will die and go to hell without Christ.

We always had to fight just to reach the masses in the marketplace, and now we have to fight that much harder. However, with your prayers, love, and support, Liveprayer will continue to battle for our Lord and His Truth on the front lines as we have faithfully done these past 20 yrs. AMEN!!!

I love and care about you so much. The fact is those who oppose God DO want to silence us. Now please understand me. Again, as long as we stay inside our churches, as long as we stay in our own little Christian media world that NOBODY outside of a small minority of Christians pays attention to, we are fine. However, once we venture into the marketplace, into the mainstream media, we have problems.

This is a wake-up call today to all of those who love the Lord. You no longer have the luxury of being silent. The reality is, it will soon cost you to speak out for Christ. However, regardless of the personal consequences you have no choice. Sadly we are at a stage in this nation's history where people of faith will pay a price for speaking out for their faith. It is a reality many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world face daily. Regardless of the price, we can't be silent and must speak out or the very rocks will cry out!!!

I pay a price daily to do what God has called me to do. I could have taken the same road most do, stay in the Christian trough, preach to the choir, build buildings and fly around in private jets. But that is the gutless mindset that has put us in a position where in the very near future we won't even be able to preach from the Bible without severe repercussions.

Our ability to freely share the Gospel will be gone one day very soon. We MUST make the most of what little time we have left. The window to turn this nation back to God and to His Truth, to freely bring the lost to Christ, is almost closed. Now is the time, this is the moment, while we still have it, we must exercise our right to free speech!!

In His love and service,

Your friend, brother, and co-laborer in Christ,

Bill Keller