Message Updated -  December 18th, 2017

We are now in our 21st year in this ministry.  In December, 1997, I had an idea and a desire to communicate online.  I started a web site called The Lamp & the Light, named after Psalm

119:105.  Beginning on a free server, our goal was sharing sermons and outlines and helping readers easily find news headlines of interest to Christians.  After a few years, we changed the name of the site to News For Christians, stressing the news section, but not forgetting the study content.  Our readership has slowly built from 5-10 visitors a day to now more than 500 per day.  Those are not huge numbers compared to other

We have never accepted advertising and do not plan to start.  Making money was never our 
goal.  God has blessed us through a good Christian businessman who allows us free hosting.  We pay for the domain name, but the only other cost involved is time.  Some have asked why we would spend 2 hours a day updating the site.  The answer is that we enjoy reading news and feel a sense of accomplishment in sharing with others. 

This site is the work of one person.  My name is Robert L. Cobb and I live in the small southern town of Gaffney, South Carolina.  I have been married since 1978 and have four grown children.  I am a born-again Christian and a member of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Blacksburg, South Carolina.  I taught the Adult Sunday School class there for many years and designed my own courses of study.  I have supplied as a speaker at my church and other churches in the area, although it has been a few years ago.  I have a great interest in public speaking and homiletics.  Over the years, I have collected a large library of Christian and history books.  I would like to write about what I have l have learned from those books down through the years, time permitting.

Politically and religiously, I am a conservative.  My church is Independent Baptist and I attended a satellite campus of Tabernacle Bible College in Greenville, S.C. back in the 1980's.  I have been employed since 1987 at Parker-Hannifin, a hydraulic pump manufacturing plant located in Kings Mountain, N.C.

In February 2013, we finally connected to high-speed internet making our daily updates much faster and easier.  Rather than saving the time, we found ourselves adding more headlines to the site every day to the point of almost doubling our daily content.  We now average over 500 unique hits per day and almost 30,000 visitors last year.

From time to time, we get requests for submissions.  These requests are sometimes editorials and sometimes sermons and Bible articles.  Our primary ministry is to link to material on other sites and feature our own material.  We are self-limited in the space we take on our server, because it is provided free-of-charge. If you have a web site or blog where you feature your material, I would be glad to link to it from this site.

If you have an online ministry and use this site regularly, please consider adding a link to News For Christians to your site.  Most of the traffic increase we have seen over the years is from sites linking to us.  No doubt we have increased traffic to other sites with our news, op-ed and Bible Study links; we have received letters of appreciation from some.  If you have not done so, please consider it.

I close this message the same as last year.  Who knows what a new year may bring forth?  Is 2017 the year of Christ's return?  It behooves us all to make our calling and election sure.  If you are not a Christian, do not let another day pass without giving your heart to God.

We appreciate your visits to our site.  If God leads, tell others about our ministry and point them to our site.  If you are the owner of a web ministry, please consider adding a link to News For Christians on your site.  We will gladly reciprocate in most cases.  May God bless you in your reading adventures!

In Christ,

Robert L. Cobb
Editor, www.NewsForChristians.com