Scientific Study Reveals Something Amazing About Religious People

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By The Daily Caller. Religious affiliation actually prolong one’s life through positive social effects according to a recent study of obituaries in Iowa and across the nation.

Laura E. Wallace of Ohio State University, one of the study’s authors, found that among the social factors that affect one’s physical health and longevity, religion plays a large and observably positive role. Her findings showed that people who had active religious affiliations in life lived an average of 10 years longer than their non-religious counterparts in Des Moines, and an average of five years longer nationally.

“Being healthy doesn’t just mean going to the gym and eating well. Our social worlds have such a large influence on our health as well. Religion is clearly one of these factors that makes a big difference,” Wallace said, according to PsyPost.

“Religion has a strong relationship with longevity. Our research suggests that, in part, this is due to the opportunities that religion provides to make social connections and give back to the community,” she added.

Researchers for the study, which was initially published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, analyzed 505 obituaries from the Des Moines Register and a further 1,096 obituaries from across the country. The parameters of the study, however, presented some drawbacks, according to Wallace. (Read more from “Scientific Study Reveals Something Amazing About Religious People” HERE)

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Do Religious People Really Sleep Better?

By Psychology Today. Years of research have shown that religious involvement is associated with many dimensions of good health. Among patients with cancer, for example, religion is associated with fewer physical symptoms and better functioning. Additional research has found significant correlations between religion and better mental health.

Do people who are involved in religion also sleep longer and better? A recent study addressed this question by reviewing seven relevant studies. Here’s what they found:

1. People who were religiously involved were more likely to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night. Interestingly this association was found only for those from what were described as “liberal-to-moderate” religions (e.g., Presbyterian) and not among those from “conservative” religions (e.g., Baptist).

2. People who regularly attend religious services are more likely to report sound sleep quality. This effect was found for those who attended religious services at least once per week; attending less often was not associated with an advantage.

3. People who believe that God is in control of their life report better sleep quality. A similar effect was found for those who believe that their body is sacred, though only among those who also ascribed control to God. (Read more from “Do Religious People Really Sleep Better?” HERE)

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School Board Wanted to Drop Pledge of Allegiance and Have Students Recite This Instead…

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The Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School decided this week that the pledge of allegiance would no longer be part of their morning meetings. Instead, parents and students would be encouraged to say a new “Wolf Pack” chant. It would be an allusion to their school mascot and an attempt to be more inclusive, helping them promote “school family, community, country, and our global society.”

“Students will continue to lead the meeting by asking our community to stand to participate in our Wolf Pack Chant together. Students will also be given the opportunity to say the pledge at another point during the school day within their classroom,” the school’s elementary campus president, Lara Zelski, said in the original press release.

So, citing “some miscommunication and inconsistency in the rollout,” the ANCS has reversed course and is returning to its “original format.” Governing Board Chair Lia Santos released the following statement:

Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School has and will continue to provide students with an opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each school day. In the past, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited during our all-school morning meeting, but at the start of the school year, the daily practice was moved to classrooms. This change was done in compliance with state law [O.C.G.A. 20-2-310 (c)(1)] and aligned Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School with most other schools in the state who also say the Pledge of Allegiance in individual classrooms. However, it appears there was some miscommunication and inconsistency in the rollout. Starting next week, we will return to our original format and provide our students with the opportunity to recite the Pledge during the all-school morning meeting.

(Read more from “School Board Wanted to Drop Pledge of Allegiance and Have Students Recite This Instead…” HERE)

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VIDEO: Alaska Airlines Plane Stolen, Does Loops, Crashes; “Pilot” Complains About Wages, Being White; May Have Been Shot Down

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By USA Today. An airline employee at Seattle’s Sea-Tac International Airport crashed an airplane after an “unauthorized takeoff” late Friday night, the airport confirmed on social media.

The airplane crashed in south Puget Sound, Sea-Tac International said on Twitter, adding that normal operations have resumed at the airport.

Two military F-15s chased the plane but were not involved in the crash, according to the Pierce County (Washington) Sheriff’s department and the Associated Press. The plane crashed into Ketron Island, about 30 miles south of the airport.

The pilot was a suicidal 29-year-old male and a resident of Pierce County, according to Ed Troyer, the county’s public information officer. There was no connection to terrorism, Troyer added.

In a tweet, Alaska Airlines said there was an “unauthorized take-off” of a Horizon Air Q400. No passengers were on board. (Read more from “Alaska Airlines Plane Stolen, Crashes Near Sea-Tac Airport” HERE)

Editor’s Note: Video has profanity; mechanic’s conversation with control tower is heard at the end:

Here’s another, fuller audio clip with mechanic:

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VOX: Was the Alaska Airplane Shot Down?

An airline employee stole an Alaska Airlines Q400 passenger airplane from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) late Friday night and has since crashed on Ketron Island in the southern Puget Sound. No passengers are believed to have been on board the plane. According to local media, witnesses reported seeing F-15 fighter jets chasing the plane, followed by smoke and loud boom. . .

What we don’t know:

* Whether the plane crashed on its own or was shot down

* The name of the person who stole the plane and why they did it

* If the person who stole the plane survived the crash (Read more from Vox HERE)

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‘Suicidal’ Mechanic Steals Plane From Seattle Airport

By Washington Post. A “suicidal” airline mechanic stole an empty Horizon Airlines plane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport and was chased by military jets before crashing near a small island in the Puget Sound on Friday night, officials said.

Preliminary information suggests that the 29-year-old mechanic stole the Horizon Air Q400 and the crash occurred because he was “doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said.

Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, said on Twitter the man was suicidal and there was no connection to terrorism. (Read more from “‘Suicidal’ Mechanic Steals Plane From Seattle Airport” HERE)

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Researchers Uncover History-Defying Facts About the Bible. Doubters Dumbfounded

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The New Testament as we have it was originally written in Greek. The first printed Greek New Testament coming off a printing press happened in the year 1516, which means that for 1,500 years, the text that John and other biblical authors wrote was passed down by handwritten copies. It was copied by hand and passed on and on and on. That’s significant.

When the New Testament was printed in 1516, it simply turned the world upside down. And I should just pause here and say if you want to read one of the best biographies that I’ve ever read, read David Daniell’s biography of William Tyndale to learn about that era and the heroism, and sacrifice, and reformation that this printing took so that anybody could read it — not just a few monks tucked away making faithful copies, but anybody who took the time could have it in their hands. It simply turned the world upside down in 1516 and beyond.

But for 1,500 years, it came down to us in handwritten form. We do not have the original manuscript of any of the New Testament books; that is, the very piece of parchment or paper that John or Paul or Matthew or Mark or Luke wrote on. We don’t have that piece of paper. Everything we have is copies, and the question is: Did they get it right? Were they faithful with it? And frankly, I think it’s probably just as well that we don’t have those originals because we’d make idols out of them and charge money probably for people to come worship at the shrine of the original manuscript of the apostle Paul. So the books of the New Testament are all preserved by these faithful, hardworking scribes and copyists for all those centuries.

Let me describe those manuscripts to you and give you some amazing facts. There are four ways that those manuscripts appear. One is a group called uncials, which are capital letters in the Greek. These are very old manuscripts. The next group is minuscules, and they’re little Greek letters. So some were written in all caps and some were written in little letters, and then there’s a group called papyri. These are the oldest fragments, written on papyrus, which was a plant common along the Nile in Egypt. The other group is lectionaries, which are collections of text used in public worship, not in the order they were written necessarily, but it lays out what you read on a particular Sunday.

Now, here’s what’s simply amazing: The abundance of those manuscripts in those four different forms is so startling compared to the oldest manuscripts of any other manuscript coming from the first century. It’s simply breathtaking. Caesar’s Gallic Wars was written about 50 BC. It has ten surviving manuscripts in the language in which it was written, and all of them date from AD 900 and after. Livy’s History of Rome has twenty surviving manuscripts, which are all late. Two manuscripts survive of Tacitus’s Histories and Annals, written about AD 100. There are only two manuscripts and they’re all from the AD ninth and eleventh century. Eight manuscripts exist for Thucydides’s history, which was written around 400 BC.

So, typically when you’re a historian working with manuscripts that come from the period that we’re talking about — the very early first century or so — you have up to twenty manuscripts to work with, and they’re all from the ninth and tenth century, not earlier. And virtually all those historians working in universities around the world are confident they’re interpreting Caesar, Thucydides, and Tacitus.

Compare the numbers of the manuscripts that we have of the New Testament. And these numbers all come from the main think tank called the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, who have the data all collated. These manuscripts exist in libraries around the world, but of course they’ve been digitized now. And the numbers of these are plain for everybody to see. There are 322 of the uncial texts, there are 2,907 miniscule texts, there are 2,445 lectionary portions, and there are 127 papyri, adding up to about 5,801 manuscripts or fragments. They’re not all complete New Testaments, but they are either whole or fragments of the New Testament. So these handwritten copies of the New Testament are in existence today and now are visible to the scholars who want to work with them to try to discern what the original words were that the biblical authors wrote.

Now, as you can imagine, the copying of those texts produced variations for all kinds of human reasons. So the multiplicity of the numbers of manuscripts increases the problem of variations, and also increases the powers of control by which we can assess which are the most original. The more you have, the more you can test which were the original ones. If we only had two manuscripts of the Gospel of John and one of them included the story about the woman caught in adultery, and one of them omitted it, and they’re both old, what would we do? It would be very difficult to decide.

That’s not the situation with any text in the Bible. The variations are many, but we have hundreds of texts. So we can say, “Here it is in these, but here — the number of these texts, the antiquity of these texts, the geographical distribution of these texts — it makes it crystal clear: that’s the original right there.” The number of manuscripts, while creating more variations, also creates the very control that scholars are able to use in order to decide which is original.

Here’s the way F.F. Bruce from a generation ago put it. He wrote this in 1943:

If the great number of manuscripts increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is . . . in truth remarkably small. (The New Testament Documents, 19)

What’s most significant for the reliability and the authority of the New Testament is that the variations that remain, that we still wonder about, do not affect any biblical doctrine. Here’s the way Bruce puts it: “The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affects no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice” (The New Testament Documents, 20).

Now, nothing in the last seventy years or so since he wrote that has changed in my judgment, except the fact that some very popular teachers, especially Bart Erhman, have become renowned for calling the New Testament into question precisely on the basis of textual critical issues.

On the other hand, Paul Wegner, writing in 2006, reaffirms Bruce’s judgment: “It is important to keep in perspective the fact that only a very small part of the text is in question… Of these, most variants make little difference to the meaning of any passage.” And then he closes his book with this quote from Fredric Kenyon: “It is reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable word of God” (A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible, 301).

I agree with Don Carson and the others that the story of the woman caught in adultery was not in the Gospel of John when he wrote it. When I say that, I don’t at all mean for you to respond, “Oh, everything then is up for grabs,” or “How can I count on any text?”

On the contrary, you and I should be very thankful that in God’s sovereign providence over the centuries, these thousands and thousands of manuscripts are so abundant today — that in the science of textual criticism, as they are compared one with the other, there is a high degree of certainty that we have the original wording. And where there isn’t a degree of certainty, it affects no doctrine of the Christian faith. (For more from the author of “Researchers Uncover History-Defying Facts About the Bible. Doubters Dumbfounded” please click HERE)

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, and most recently Expository Exultation: Christian Preaching as Worship.

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Muslims Responsible for Running New Mexico ISIS Camp Have Direct Link to Linda Sarsour, ‘Anti-Islamophobia’ Activist

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The son and two daughters of Linda Sarsour’s mentor have been busted by authorities for setting up an Islamic extremist terrorist training camp on American soil.

This week, police raided an Islamic extremist compound in New Mexico, where its leaders were reportedly training children to become school shooters.

The leader of the terrorist training camp, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, was arrested by police during the raid. He and two of his sisters, along with his brother-in-law, were also arrested by authorities. Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe described the arrested parties as “most likely heavily armed and considered extremist of the Muslim belief.”

Wahhaj and his sisters are the children of controversial Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was once listed as a co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Imam Wahhaj is a high-profile individual in the American Islamist community. He often keynotes conferences held by fringe groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two entities that were founded as part of the global Muslim Brotherhood network.

Imam Wahhaj is also the chief mentor to Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour. She regularly showers praise on Wahhaj. At an ISNA conference last year, Linda Sarsour began her speech thanking her “favorite person in this room … Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has been a mentor, motivator, and encourager of mine. Someone who has taught me to speak truth to power & not worry about the consequences.”

Sarsour’s Twitter page is rife with continuous affection for the radical Imam.

Not only does Sarsour praise the Imam wherever she goes, they often share a platform at Islamist conferences and conventions throughout the United States.

Wahhaj’s defenders like Sarsour have crafted a narrative claiming that he is a mere social justice activist who happens to be an imam. This could not be further from the truth. Wahhaj is a radical’s radical.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing co-conspirator has advocated for the establishment of an Islamic state inside the United States. He served as a character witness for the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was given a life sentence for being the mastermind behind terrorist plots in the United States. Wahhaj also claims that homosexuality is a “disease” created by American society and has recommended that LGBT individuals should face execution.

Wahhaj has not said a word publicly since his family was arrested for the Islamic extremist plot. (For more from the author of “People Responsible for Running New Mexico ISIS Camp Have Direct Link to Linda Sarsour” HERE)

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Why Voters Rated This Governor the Worst in America

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Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin was recently decreed the worst governor in the entire nation in a Morning Consult poll. According to their survey, Fallin—who is leaving this November at the end of her two-term limit—came in at number 50 with a whopping 74 percent disapproval rating, beating Democrat Dan Malloy of Connecticut by 3 percentage points.

While this might simply be an interesting data point in the world of the 24/7 news cycle, the collective eye-rolls and heat of embarrassment rising from Oklahomans’ cheeks over our governor could create a tropical depression off the coast of Texas. Obviously one of the 50 governors has to come in last, but why Fallin?

In a word: everything. That includes a thorough lack of leadership by a self-ordained conservative on a raft of important conservative issues, an obvious disdain for transparency while advocating for open records laws, big spending on personal travel during budget shortfalls, and major policy failures. The conservatives who ushered her into office on the 2010 Tea Party train are so over Fallin, and they’re not the only ones, either. . .

Fallin has held major political offices in Oklahoma since 1990: Oklahoma House representative, lieutenant governor, then governor. Certainly, there are a litany of reasons liberals don’t care for Fallin, but these are an artifact of life in an historically red state. So let’s just stick to the big conservative blunders, especially since she was ostensibly elected as a conservative.

Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion: Fallin was for it before she was against it before she was for it before she wanted to hit the “pause button.” In 2012, Oklahomans shut down the state capitol switchboard numerous times to protest her decision to accept federal money and set up state Obamacare exchanges. (Read more from “Why Voters Rated This Governor the Worst in America” HERE)

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Secret Recording Reveals Why Rosenstein Hasn’t Been Impeached – and When He Will Be

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By The Blaze. A recording of a fundraising event with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) reveals why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hasn’t yet been impeached despite so many Republicans calling for the action – and what they’re waiting for. . .

Nunes told the crowd at the fundraiser that he personally had called for Rosenstein’s impeachment, but that it had to be delayed in order to keep the Senate on track with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

“So if we actually vote to impeach, OK, what that does is that triggers the Senate then has to take it up,” Nunes explained to a questioner on the recording.“ . . .

In another portion of the tape Nunes said that the special counsel’s investigation was politically motivated, but admitted that some of the president’s tweets made him “cringe.”

“They know it’s ridiculous to go after the president for obstruction of justice,” Nunes said. “But if they tell a lie often enough and they put it out there and they say, ‘Oh, we’re looking at the tweets,’ cause you know you’ve got a mixed bag on the tweets, right? Like sometimes you love the president’s tweets, sometimes we cringe on the president’s tweets.” (Read more from “Secret Recording Reveals Why Rosenstein Hasn’t Been Impeached – and When He Will Be” HERE)

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Recording Reveals Nunes Saying Rosenstein Impeachment Would Complicate Kavanaugh Confirmation

By The Hill. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told supporters at a recent fundraiser that impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would pose a political dilemma because it would delay the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, according to audio obtained by MSNBC.

Nunes, who has been among the most vocal critics of Rosenstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ), reasoned to supporters that the impeachment process was “a bit complicated” because the Senate would have to deal with much of the fallout.

“Do you want them to drop everything and not confirm the Supreme Court justice, the new Supreme Court justice?” Nunes said in the recording, which was first obtained by and aired Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” . . .

Nunes’ explanation for the delay seems to differ from other conservative lawmakers, who backed off the impeachment proposal after meeting with party leadership and after retiring Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he did not support the effort.

A group of conservative House lawmakers late last month introduced articles of impeachment against Rosenstein amid escalating tensions between the two sides. (Read more from “Recording Reveals Nunes Saying Rosenstein Impeachment Would Complicate Kavanaugh Confirmation” HERE)

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Voter Fraud? Twice as Many Ballots Cast as There Are Voters in Precinct

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Twice as many ballots as the number of registered voters were cast in a northeastern Georgia precinct during the state’s primary elections in May.

According to official numbers from the Georgia Secretary of State, 670 votes were cast in Habersham County’s Mud Creek precinct, where there were only 276 registered voters, says a report from McClatchy DC. Impossibly, this means the precinct saw a 243% voter turnout.

In a bizarre turn of events, the number of registered voters changed from 276 to 3,704 on the secretary of state’s website on Tuesday morning. . .

“The odd turnout figures last Friday were filed as part of a federal lawsuit against the state by election security activists that included a number of sworn statements and exhibits from activists and voters who experienced a series of bizarre and confusing issues at the state’s polling places,” reports McClatchy.

One voter, for example, claimed in a sworn statement that she and her husband were assigned differing polling locations despite registering to vote at the same address. In another instance, someone claimed their voting machine froze while attempting to cast their ballot. Others said they showed up at the correct polling place per the SOS website, only to be directed to a differing location. (Read more from “Voter Fraud? Twice as Many Ballots Cast as There Are Voters in Precinct” HERE)

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Federal Judge Dismisses Transgender Bathroom Lawsuit: Students ‘Do Not Have a Fundamental Privacy Right’

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By Conservative Review. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Oregon schools’ policy that allows boys in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and vice versa, LifeSiteNews reported Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez dismissed the case against the policy, saying it was not a violation of privacy rights for males to be allowed in female restrooms.

“High school students do not have a fundamental privacy right to not share school restrooms, lockers, and showers with transgender students whose biological sex is different than theirs,” Hernandez wrote.

So, teenage girls in high school have a fundamental privacy right to kill their unborn children, but not to their own bathrooms? This is progressivism. (For more from the author of “Federal Judge Dismisses Transgender Bathroom Lawsuit: Students ‘Do Not Have a Fundamental Privacy Right’” please click HERE)

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Judge Upholds Transgender Bathrooms

By Life Site News. Boys will continue to be allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms in Oregon after a judge dismissed a lawsuit against that policy, saying, “high school students do not have a fundamental privacy right to not share school restrooms, lockers, and showers with transgender students whose biological sex is different than theirs.”

Students who are unwillingly subjected to seeing students of the opposite sex are not having their rights violated, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez wrote.

This ruling “reveals everything people need to know to understand the utter corruption of our court system,” Julie Quist, Board Chair of the Child Protection League (CPL), told LifeSiteNews. “Decency and respect for our children…are being cast aside for the political advantage of a militant political force that is systematically violating the innocence, dignity and freedom of our children and all of us.”

The lawsuit against Oregon schools allowing boys in girls’ restrooms and vice versa was filed by parents and students in Dallas, Oregon. This gender-free policy caused “embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, and stress produced by using the restroom with students of the opposite sex,” they said in the lawsuit.

The problems began when the Dallas School District allowed a girl to change in the boys’ locker rooms. She didn’t like changing in the gender-neutral bathroom because it was too far away and other students noticed, according to the Washington Post. (Read more from “Judge Upholds Transgender Bathrooms: Female ‘Students Do Not Have a Fundamental Privacy Right’” HERE)

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Heartless Liberal Critics Mock Terminally Ill Texas Teen for His Make-A-Wish Request

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In March, 16-year-old Jeremiah Thomas was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive bone cancer. Since then, he has battled chemotherapy, radiation, a collapsed lung, paralysis, and, unfortunately, many social media trolls.

But Jeremiah also has forged an unlikely partnership with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and forgiven those who taunt him.

With perhaps only weeks left to live, Jeremiah—a former all-star, state champion football player from Waco, Texas—has been told numerous times on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that he is not dying soon enough … because he took a stand for life.

“Cancer is giving your mom a late term abortion. Lmao [laughing my a– off],” one message said.

“Jeremiah … You aren’t dead yet? God do your job!” taunted another.

“Good Riddance,” another posted to Jeremiah’s prayer group page on Facebook, following with a one-star review.

Jeremiah’s mother, Kendra Thomas, quoted one person as saying Jeremiah has “a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic [sic], hateful” agenda, and another as saying “He’s garbage and is suffering as he deserves.”

All of this because Jeremiah made a “legacy wish” through the 38-year-old Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Jeremiah’s wish was to abolish abortion, and to do so he ended up asking for a meeting with Abbott, a pro-life Republican.

Jeremiah’s father is the Rev. Rusty Thomas, director of the pro-life activist group Operation Save America, based in Dallas and formerly called Operation Rescue. The teen made his reasoning public June 24 by posting “A Letter to My Generation,” describing his Christian faith and writing in part:

We have grown up in a culture of death, sexual confusion, immorality and fatherlessness. This culture of death I speak of consists of abortion, homosexuality and suicide.

One third of our generation has been wiped out due to abortion. Over 25 million people have died as a result of AIDS. Even without AIDS, the life expectancy of a homosexual man or woman is about 33 years shorter than that of a heterosexual.

More young people die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined.

We have been handed a bill of goods that has completely destroyed us. In our nation, we have chosen death and received the curse.

Jeremiah’s mother posted his story and a section of “A Letter to My Generation” to her Facebook page July 19. As of this week, it had been shared about 1,200 times and garnered 1,700 Facebook reactions.

In her post, Thomas shared Jeremiah’s struggle with his terminal illness, known as osteoblastic osteosarcoma, and the backlash he received from the left for his comments on the “culture of death.” She appealed to her audience to keep her son in prayer.

In a Facebook message Friday, Kendra Thomas told The Daily Signal:

When Jeremiah learned Make-a-Wish granted legacy wishes, he knew he wanted to use his wish to protect life. Jeremiah met with Make-a-Wish representatives and requested a sit-down meeting with Gov. Abbott. His wish was shared on Facebook. A number of people worked behind the scenes to make the governor aware of Jeremiah’s dying wish.

Gov. Abbott called Jeremiah in the hospital [June 17]. Jeremiah was able to speak to him about abolishing abortion.

Jeremiah’s family had set up a GoFundMe page three months ago to help raise money for surgery. It had reached $115,000 as of Aug. 1.

As a result of his bone cancer, Jeremiah became paralyzed from the waist down. Abbott has been paralyzed below the waist since a tree fell on him 34 years ago, when the future governor was 26.

“How would you feel if an army of abortion supporters, homosexuals, and social justice warriors flooded your child’s social media account to cyberbully him AS HE DIED?” Thomas asked in her public message July 19 on Facebook.

But while Jeremiah’s attackers were asking who is “the disgusting kid” who “could have gone to Disneyland for free,” his mother said, “Jeremiah was busy serving God.”

He spoke with the governor by phone from his hospital bed in June about passing a bill to abolish abortion in the state and make his “legacy wish” a reality.

“Your wish is on the Republican Party platform position and it’s what we’re going to be pursuing this next legislative session—that’s to outlaw abortion altogether in the state of Texas,” Abbott tells Jeremiah in a now viral video of their June 17 phone conversation, referring to proposed legislation.

“And so, your wish has [been] granted,” the governor said.

A spokeswoman for the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the Central and South Texas region told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that the organization is “not politically affiliated.”

Robbie Aaron, marketing and communications manager at the foundation’s North Texas chapter, said Wednesday that the chapter set up a shopping spree for Jeremiah a couple of weeks ago.

“We don’t discriminate in wishes. It’s not our place to judge what someone wants,” Aaron said.

As Kendra Thomas wrote Friday to The Daily Signal:

Make-a-Wish told us later that they were unable to fulfill the wish because it was political. They suggested a shopping spree, which Jeremiah accepted since the governor had already called. God worked it out.

Instead of letting the hate get to him, his mother said earlier, Jeremiah shut it out, even after he recently returned home for what could be the last time.

To the surprise of some, perhaps, Jeremiah had posted a photo of himself on Instagram that showed him praying, with the caption “Anyone need prayer?”

“He opened up his Instagram for prayer requests,” his mother wrote July 19 on Facebook, adding:

Jeremiah’s response to those who hate him is to bless them. To pray for them.

This is what he told me[:] ‘I pity them. To have that much darkness in your heart that you’d want a kid with cancer to die. Makes me wonder what happened to them in their life.

‘It’s a scary place to be—mentally and spiritually. I pray God would have mercy on them.’

… How can a 16-year-old terminal cancer patient forgive those who wish him dead?

Jesus. Jeremiah can forgive others because he’s been forgiven.

(For more from the author of “Heartless Critics Mock Terminally Ill Texas Teen for His Make-A-Wish Request” please click HERE)

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