Breaking NEWS for the persecuted

[LionsforJESUS]

See these to witness True Christians in action, losing their lives for JESUS to gain life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piPgfKjC8hE
http://www.youtube.com/wa...;mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/re...ecution&search=Search (full list)

I find these links rather disturbing and convicting, because they are going on now, this moment. Imagine if this to occur here in the US as well as other Spoiled countries, we had to go underground or whatever God would have us do if this were right now in this country. I realize how blessed and spoiled I am that my trials and tribulation are nil this moment and I feel like a product of the Laodician church in Rev 3 except I need God so desperately every moment. I may be somewhat you can say rich and am provided for but I need God more than these earthly temporary satified for a minute things. And when I come across these realities of what is going on in Indonesia and other AntiChristian places persecuting our Brothers and Sister over something that doesn't exist like their Muslim religion which is a disturb childs imagination that has gone haywire, Like little kids picking on the stinky one and their lying games to prosecute these Christian infidels they call them, it breaks my heart and I ache all over realizing that their testimonies are for us over here  (US) who have no such persecution really but division in the church about Scripture, denomination or Escatology endtime arguments which really go nowhere but keep us divided. And these persecuted Saints are risking their lives telling the Lost about the Real Way and the Truth and the Life, Jesus and they are being executed without a trial in the process. These Saints may have heartvroken families but they also cheer them on. They are not in division at all nor want to be. They just take the Simple Gospel at face value never divided at what this Scripture means or that but they just say YES JESUS, WE WILL OBEY WITH OUR LIVES TO THE END AND WILL NOT COMPROMISE. They are the real theologians in God theology in Jesus' name. Also they are our proof once again that what the Godman Jesus said is 100% Truth and the Bible is 100% Absolute Truth just by their simple word to each other and their lost nieghbors that Jesus Christ is Lord and His WORD IS TRUTH. Let us be in exhaustive prayer for them daily because they are in constant prayer for US spoiled Christians while they are suffering in their prison cells and or against the law meetings of worship.
What encouragement they bring to us.

Some say we are going to have our turn eventually that really is going to shake up the foundations of the BODY. See here: http://www.theforbiddenkn...m/hardtruth/con_camps.htm
 Maybe this is going to be a real seperation from the Sheep and the goats, to see who is really for JESUS and who is really just Acting. Are we next???

Lord,
 open our eyes, keep us from deception, and prepare our hearts to stand firm in whatever is to come our way as we strive and press on in the faith growing stronger everyday. Lord let us ultimately and desperately fall so in Love with you that every waking moment you are first in our thoughts, and let us always to remember to Pray for those who are being persecuted this moment and let us support them and thank them for their testimonies. Keep us all in your will Lord and to deny our wills so you can guide us and lead us to your perfect will for our lives no matter what you choose to do with our lives. Let us learn how to lose our lives for your namesake so we can be perfect and compete lacking nothing and in utter dependence on you every waking moment. You are so worth it and worthy JESUS.

In Jesus precious name
AMEN.

In love with you with Christ Brothers and Sisters,


RW 
 

[WaitWatchPray]

I'm not sure this guy is necessarily a Christian, but I still found it troubling, especially the comments made by two of the parents:

"'He took passages that had all kinds of Biblical references," Rahm said. "It prevented her from learning what she needed to learn.'

***

'How many minds did he pollute?' Dan Harrison, the father of a student in Helphinstine's class, said at the meeting. 'It's a thinly veiled attempt to hide his own agenda.'"

The story is at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/03/20/teacherfired.ap.ap/index.html

[WaitWatchPray]

I found this on a blog (yes, sorry, the guy is Catholic, but he makes some very good points) about the above story.  (Be patient -- it's a bit long).

----------

If you read the actual story, what you discover is that the teacher nowhere made any references to creationism. And what "bible references" he made is not clarified. If I take an English class and read Hamlet saying "Would the Almighty had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter" that's a "bible reference". Should the teacher be fired?

No. So what's the big deal? The big deal is that what the teacher actually *did* was blaspheme the Great God Darwin by pointing out the perfectly true fact that both Nazi ideology and Planned Parenthood look to evolutionism and "survival of the fittest" ideas as the basis for what they do. To say this is not allowable is like saying it is not allowable to point out that general relativity and atomic theory did, in fact, lead to the Bomb among other things. But the Darwinian Mythos occupies a quasi-religious place in the Western psyche. So steps resembling an excommunication must be undertake to protect the god.

Here's a little section of my Mary book surveying the impact of various 19th century All Explaining Theories of Everything

It will be noted that Schopenhauer's philosophy sounds a great deal like Charles Darwin's in that both insist man is, to quote one classic definition, "the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind." According to Darwin and his many proponents, man was nothing other than the result of a mindless interaction of matter and energy whereby those traits best adapted to survival were passed on while those species which lacked advantageous traits were killed off by natural selection. No loving Creator was involved, just the random accident of matter and energy.

However, it will also be noted that Schopenhauer died in 1860, the year after Darwin published his Origin of Species. So Schopenhauer is not deriving his atheism from some new scientific discovery disproving the existence of a Creator God. Rather, he demonstrates he was living in an age whose elites were already ripe to hear that nature, not God, was the basic principle of our existence. Darwin simply lent (or seemed to lend) scientific credibility to that fundamentally metaphysical judgment. Darwin, more than any other thinker in the 19th century, gave force to the idea that human beings were not creatures made in the image and likeness of God, but were instead simply unusually clever pieces of meat whose brains, heart, and body and soul were as much the result of a series of accidents as the shape of a pig's nose. In the words of his disciple, Ernst Haeckel, the "modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling." Accordingly, "the myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition as a hundred other myths of other religions." For, according to Haeckel, when Darwin "shattered the dogma of anthropocentrism" by allegedly showing human beings to be as much a product of chance every other species on earth, he smashed the "boundless presumption of conceited man [that] has misled him into making himself 'the image of God,' claiming an 'eternal life' for his ephemeral personality".

Schopenhauer had a huge influence on a number of philosophers, but perhaps his greatest disciple was Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche too proclaimed the death of God. However, Nietzsche was not content with Schopenhauer's gloomy pessimism. If life was a power struggle, Nietzsche was not content to lose or call it a draw. He wanted to win! Watching a cavalry battalion march past during the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzsche had yet another of the many epiphanies that seemed to characterize 19th century thinkers:

I felt for the first time that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower.

Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, never doubted for a moment that our origins were the result of chance. However, he did not want to take chances with destiny. Since God was dead, we were on our own. Therefore, may the best man win. So Nietzsche proclaimed the doctrine of the Superman who imposed his will on the world and defined good and evil, not by appeals to some mythical god, but by his own Will to Power. Naturally, he hated Christianity as a "secret instinct of destruction, a principle of calumny, a reductive agent—the beginning of the end—and, for that very reason, the Supreme Danger."

Others shared Nietzsche's dream of a race of Supermen. But they sought to achieve it, not by the Will to Power, but by treating humans like livestock and improving the breed. This school of thought was not an aberration from Darwin's thought but merely an elaboration of it. Darwin himself had made clear that

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones who look the most like savages in structure]... will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope... the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.

And so, at the conclusion of his Descent of Man, he points the way for the European race to become the Master Race or simply (once inferior races have been exterminated) the human race:

Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes such care. [Therefore] both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if in any marked degree inferior in body or mind.

Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton could not have agreed more. Concurring with so many leading thinkers that we are creatures who owe our being, not to God, but to a fortuitous collision of matter and energy, Galton built on Darwin's work by founding a new science of human breeding which he called "eugenics". Galton had no truck with the mysticism of the Judeo-Christian tradition (enshrined in documents like the Declaration of Independence) that "all men are created equal":

I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality.

Galton fancied himself a hard-headed scientific thinker. So he naturally constructed what seemed to him a scientific hierarchy of "grades" by which he rated the various races of homo sapiens. It turned out that Galton rated "Negroes" very low, commenting that "mistakes the Negroes made in their matters were so childish, stupid and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species" Happily for Galton, he himself belonged to the superior race of Anglo-Saxons, with its wonderful genetic traits capable of "producing judges, statesmen, commanders, men of literature and science, poets, artists, and divines." And, Galton believed, we must make it our goal to better the race still more by selective breeding and the weeding out of the "unfit". Inferiors, he thought, should be treated "with all kindness" so long as they complied with the demand of their betters for celibacy. But if they dared to breed "such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness."

Others had a slightly different view of the State, though not of the human person. Herbert Spencer, for instance, had a more libertarian approach. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". He founded the school of thought called "Social Darwinism" which advocated letting nature take its course (without the interference of government or religion) in eliminating the lower types of humanity in favor of the "fit". Many advocates of laissez-faire capitalism agreed with him, seeing the winners in the capitalist system as "fit" and the toiling masses in sweatshops, miserable and hazardous working conditions, and wretched poverty as the losers in nature's colorful pageant of survival. Against backward religious obscurantists who advocated sentimental ideas like "blessed are the poor", Spencer basically championed the notion articulated by an earlier Social Darwinist named Ebenezer Scrooge: "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

In the next chapter, we look at how all these All-Explaining Theories of Everything got played out when armed with the might of the state. Turns out the teacher in Oregon has a perfectly legitimate point:

Highly Advanced Scientific Thought and New Religious Ideas produced a new and radical politics of race. Haeckel's gung-ho Darwinism saw the "Teutonic race" as the most highly evolved and insisted "lower races (such as the Veddahs or Australian Negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes and dogs) than to civilized Europeans". For that reason, said Haeckel, "we must... assign a totally different value to their lives". Because of the crucial importance of preserving the purity of the breed (an importance agreed upon by Galton, Spencer, and Darwin), Haeckel believed that "the nation-state represented the unifying organic power by which the race was naturally organized" and that "the good of the individual was subsumed under the good of the race as directed by the racially defined state." Such a state had both the right and the responsibility to eliminate the possibility of inferior blood polluting the gene pool of the Master Race. Another enthusiastic student of this school of thought concurred, declaring in his book Mein Kampf that:

The folkish philosophy finds the importance of mankind in its basic racial elements. In the state it sees on principle only a means to an end and construes its end as the preservation of the racial existence of man. Thus, it by no means believes in an equality of the races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated, through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe.

If that language about the "eternal will that dominates the universe" sounds Nietzschean, that's because it is. Hitler felt himself to embody that "eternal will" to power and to sum up in himself the German Race and therefore, by right, the German state. And since, as he believed, the German race was the highest expression of this mysterious "will" pervading nature, it was not very difficult to take the final blasphemous step once his power over the German State was consolidated:

When a Nazi journal asked readers what "the Fuhrer means to them", typical responses included:


"The Fuhrer is the visible personal expression of what in our youth was represented as God."

"I have never felt the Divine Power as near as in the greatness of our Fuhrer."

"What the Fuhrer has given me is not only a political ideology, but also a religion."

"How shall I put in words what I feel for my Fuhrer... I look up to him now as I prayed to God in my childhood..."

"[The Fuhrer] is the bread of which the soul stands in need. I would like to say openly that the high teaching of the Fuhrer is to me a religion, the German religion!"

"Adolf Hitler means the same as the word God means to a fanatical and orthodox Christian."

Nietzsche, who once said "Better to be God!", would be proud. Prouder still was the fallen angel who once said, "You will be like god, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). For few men have ever served him better than Hitler, who not only launched a race war costing 50,000,000 lives, but deliberately murdered 11,000,000 people—six million of them Jews, two million of them Poles, as well as various others—for the crime of belonging to "inferior stock".

Hitler was not alone in his mania of murdering for the sake of the race, nationality, or ethnicity. Lots of different people are capable of exalting their own particular bloodline over God as the object of worship and examples can be multiplied forever: Iraqi over Kurd, Turk over Armenian, Hutu over Tutsi. And let no one think that mere membership in some religious group—even the Catholic Church—automatically immunizes people from the corrupting effects of "blood worship". During World War II, for instance, Croatian Catholics slaughtered Serbs in death camps like Jasenovac. One of the inmates was a Croatian named Vladko Macek, who witnessed the massacres:

In his memoirs, Macek writes that there was a Catholic chapel in the death camp where priests heard confession. On seeing one Ustasha torturer emerge from confessing his sins, Macek asked him if he was not afraid of the judgment of God. "Don't talk to me about that," he was told. "I am perfectly aware of what is in store for me. For my past, present and future sins I will burn in hell. But at least I will burn for Croatia."

The Philosophies of Pride, whether exalting race or class above Christ, have proved inviting enough to man's fallen nature that they could distort the history of nations and even supplant the Gospel in the minds of many.

The United States was not immune, either. Similar notions found a home right here, not merely among organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, but among the educated elites. The Eugenics movement, for instance, found a warm welcome in the United States and programs to forcibly sterilize roughly 60,000 of the Unfit were enacted. In one famous case (Buck v. Bell, 1927), the forcible sterilization of a mentally disabled black woman was upheld by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.—himself a student of eugenics—with the brutally clear words:

It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. government conducted a medical experiment on a group of poor and uneducated Americans. They were black men suffering from syphilis, a deadly sexually transmitted disease, who had sought medical assistance. The nature of their illness was kept secret; they were told they had "bad blood." The government and its doctors pretended to help the men, but in reality they just studied the fatal progress of the disease. By 1972, 29 of the men had died horribly of syphilis, 100 had died of related complications, 40 of the men's wives had contracted the disease, and 19 of the men's children had been born with congenital syphilis. "Thus," as Hitler would have said, the United States government ably demonstrated that it by no means believed in "an equality of the races, but along with their difference" recognized "their higher or lesser value" and felt "obligated, through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe."

Like-minded eugenicists in Germany took even more terrible steps to deal with what they deemed to be "lives unworthy of life." This resulted, as we know, in millions of outright deaths. And as the Master Race needed medical research, it also became thinkable, not simply to kill unworthy lives, but to subject them to medical experimentation for the sake of the Worthy. At Dachau, for instance, Reich physicians, eager to find a prevention for hypothermia and reduce the number of pilots who died when they were forced to bail out over the English Channel, immersed prisoners in vats of freezing water till they died—and then dissected them. Other Unfit humans suffered mass sterilization. And, of course, millions were simply gassed and cremated.

All this was, of course, made widely known after the war and so the word "eugenics" (which had previously had a wonderful ring of Hard-Headed Scientific Realism Against Religious Yokelism) suddenly fell on hard times.

Here in the United States, one unfortunate woman suffered terrible setbacks as a result of this public relations catastrophe. Her name was Margaret Sanger, and she had spent years warning against the growth of "human weeds", speaking to Ku Klux Klan rallies, opining that the "aboriginal Australian" was "the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development", and warning the New York legislature that

The Jewish people and Italian families who are filling the insane asylums, who are filling our feeble-minded institutions, these are the ones the tax payers have to pay for the upkeep of, and they are increasing the budget of the State, the enormous expense of the State is increasing because of the multiplication of the unfit in this country and in the State.

Sanger even dreamed of establishing a vast American concentration camp for "morons, mental defectives, epileptics... illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, [and] dope-fiends". In all, she wanted to forcibly imprison about one-seventh of the entire American population. Needless to say, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the pioneering eugenics done by doctors of the Third Reich. For years, her slogan summed up a philosophy warmly received by her colleagues in Hitler's scientific elite: "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds!"

The problem for Margaret Sanger was that all this became a tough sell in the post-war years, what with pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz circulating in classrooms and history books. So the organization she had founded changed its marketing strategy. Instead of encouraging Americans to worship racial purity, Planned Parenthood instead seized on the much more salable notion (pioneered by Freud) that we should throw off the shackles of guilt and responsibility and worship sex. This was sold as "Birth Control" but the practical outcome was, as Chesterton famously remarked, "No birth and no control."

The outcome of this story is a catalogue of human misery: Massive STD rates, a contraceptive culture in which love and fruitfulness are damned as hindrances to sexual pleasure, the ever-increasing sexualization of childhood, and 1.5 million abortions in the United States alone each year. And so, as Pope John Paul II said, "The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."

But don't say that in Oregon schools or they will fire you and lie about you.

[SoftTouch]

http://www.worldnetdaily....icle.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55207

Christian bookstore bombed by terrorists
Sword of Islam group takes credit at shop funded by U.S. Protestants

TEL AVIV  A Palestinian group today bombed a Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip in the latest targeting of Christians in territories evacuated by Israel and now controlled by the Palestinians.

A group calling itself the Sword of Islam claimed responsibility for the blast, which targeted a store funded by American Protestants that exclusively sold Christian books. Two nearby Internet cafes also were bombed.

The Sword of Islam previously has stated it is allied with al-Qaida and is seeking to impose an Islamist theocracy in the Gaza Strip. It has taken credit in recent months for the bombings and attempted bombings of Internet cafes, music stores, pool halls and other establishments considered secular. Palestinian security officials say the Sword of Islam is an offshoot of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees terror organization.

Sheik Abu Saqer, a prominent Gaza-based preacher and leader of the Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, claimed to WND the Christian bookstore was "proselytizing and attempting to convert our people."

"As a principle we believe that Jews and Christians will always do everything in order to keep Muslims far from their religion," Abu Saqer said.

Targeting Christians

The bookstore bombing was the latest targeting of Christians in Palestinian cities evacuated by Israel. In November, a church in the Gaza Strip was badly damaged in a fire security officials attributed to local Islamist groups.

In September, [Palestinian gunmen attacked and set fire to the Young Men's Christian Association headquarters in Qalqiliya, a large West Bank city controlled by Hamas. Qalqiliya was previously administered by Israel, but was handed to the Palestinian Authority as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

One political source in the city told WND at the time of the attack, "the identity of the attackers is well known to Hamas. We don't expect the Hamas-controlled police, the Hamas city council or the Hamas Interior Ministry to do anything about this attack."

The source called the arson a "warning to YMCAs and Christian groups in the Palestinian areas that they are not safe."

One Christian leader, an aide to Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch Michel Sabah who asked his name be withheld out of fear of Muslim retaliation, called the threats against Qalqiliya's YMCA part of a general trend of Christian persecution in Palestinian areas.

"It's been happening all over the West Bank and Gaza," said the aide.

There have been rampant reports of abuses and persecution in several West Bank towns taken over by the PA.

Anti-Christian riots have been reported in Ramallah, Nazareth and surrounding villages, as well as in towns in Gaza. In Bethlehem, local Christians long have complained of anti-Christian violence. The city's Christian population, once 90 percent, declined drastically since the PA took control in December 1995. Christians now make up less than 25 percent of Bethlehem, according to Israeli surveys.

Some analysts called the recent bombings of secular and Christian institutions in Gaza recent indications Hamas may be seeking to impose Islamic rule on the Palestinian population.

Israeli officials say Hamas in the Gaza Strip has established hard-line Islamic courts and created the Hamas Anti-Corruption Group, described as a kind of "morality police" operating within Hamas' organization. Hamas has denied the existence of the group, but it recently carried out a high-profile "honor killing" widely covered by the Palestinian media.

A Hamas-run council in the West Bank came under international criticism last year when it barred an open-air music and dance festival, declaring it was against Islam.

'West can learn from Islamic values'

In response to the uproar, Hamas chief in Gaza and former foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar told WND: "I hardly understand the point of view of the West concerning these issues. The West brought all this freedom to its people but it is that freedom that has brought about the death of morality in the West. It's what led to phenomena like homosexuality, homelessness and AIDS."

Asked if Hamas is seeking to impose hard-line Islamic law on the Palestinians, al-Zahar responded, "The Palestinian people are Muslim people, and we do not need to impose anything on our people because they are already committed to their faith and religion. People are free to choose their way of life, their way of dress and behavior."

Al-Zahar said his terror group, which demands strict dress codes for females, respects women's rights.

"It is wrong to think that in our Islamic society there is a lack of rights for women. Women enjoy their rights. What we have, unlike the West, is that young women cannot be with men and have relations outside marriage. Sometimes with tens of men. This causes the destruction of the family institution and the fact that many kids come to the world without knowing who are their fathers or who are their mothers. This is not a modern and progressed society," al-Zahar explained.

The terror chieftain told WND the West can learn from his group's Islamic values.

"Here I refer to what was said in the early '90s by Britain's Prince Charles at Oxford University. He spoke about Islam and its important role in morality and culture. He said the West must learn from Islam how to bring up children properly and to teach them the right values."

~ End Article ~

Well now I find that last sentence to be very interesting in light of recent conversations we've been having here regarding PC.

[WaitQuickly]

2 Timothy 3:12  Yea, and all that will  live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

In Indonesia 3 teenage girls were beheaded on their way to their Christian school and their heads left on the steps of a Church.  The note left behind reads:  "We will murder 100 more Christian teenagers and their heads will be presented as presents."

"Once again, women are the targets. In mid-March, rebels assaulted three women gathering firewood and cut off their ears, lips, and breasts."
"Starting in 2003, Janjaweed Arabs, a Sudan-backed militia, have driven 2 million villagers from their homes in ethnic-cleansing attacks designed to suppress local rebels."

"Eyewitness accounts detailing the militia attacks are horrifying. "They killed my 3-year-old son right in front of my eyes," one father from West Darfur said. Since last fall, women have reported more than 500 rapes. Three women said five militiamen beat and raped them last August. The women said, "After they abused us, they told us that now we would have Arab babies. And, if they would find any [more] women, they would rape them again to change the color of their children.""

Revelation 6:6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and [see] thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
If you clicked on the links in the above verse you would get an idea that great trubulation is not necessarily reserved for some future time.

In the Olivet Discourse we found that Luke provided the date pins for the beginning and end of the period of great tribulation "such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be".  We found that this period closed, as we then entered Daniel's "time of the end".  This obviously does not mean that tribulation is over, as evidenced by the 2 million martyred saints, at the hands of Islam, in the Sudan alone.  What it does mean is that we have moved from one era into the next - the last.

Do we have to wonder if the poor Sudanese souls have any doubts about when the tribulation is?  First photo from Journey With Jesus.net 
Second photo from here.



Here is a photo of a Sudanese child trying to make his way to food, while a vulture haunts him from behind, taken by the late Kevin Carter.

Our dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus are being martyred around the world, including through crucifixion and beheading.  To get a better understanding of the major portion of the period of "great tribulation" that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24, read Fox's Book of the Martyrs or Martyr's Mirror for free, online. 

Today in "civilized" Saudi Arabia if a national lets it be known that they converted to Christianity they are beheaded.  Death is the punishment for apostasy required by the Quran, or for turning away, from Islam.  In world news we all saw the same resolve displayed by the Afghanis.  The Afghani government had to pretend the Christian was mentally retarded to avoid the required beheading, and subsequent exposure of their evil before the global community.  A Christian evangelist disappeared into the Palestinian territory for a couple of weeks and was butchered and cut into 4 parts and sent back home to his family in a box.

In Indonesia 3 teenage girls were beheaded on their way to their Christian school and their heads left on the steps of a Church[/b].  The note left behind reads:  "We will murder 100 more Christian teenagers and their heads will be presented as presents."  Next Sudan/Angola border where:

The crime committed by the above martyrs could have been as simple as admitting to a being Christian when asked.  You can study this subject with a Yahoo search.  Don't expect to see Christian persecution reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN.  Visit Voice of the Martyrs to learn more and to find out how you can help.

The above are examples of those who have truly been left behind.  Christians are slaughtered at a rate of perhaps 160 thousand per year (conservative estimate).  Christian martyrdom today and throughout the entirety of the Christian Era is global in scope.  Instead of opening our Bible and praising Christ with our families on Sunday afternoon are we sometimes more preoccupied with helping our kids pick out which football star is most worthy of praise?  Can it be reasonably argued that we are not in the "falling away".

[SoftTouch]

Bro WaitQuickly, this is an Excellent Eye Opening Thread and I hope that this will become a thread that will continually remind all of us that there is Indeed Great Tribulation going on for Many of our Brethern World Wide.  Those of us who live in the so-called "Free World" have NO IDEA.  How many of us could Stand in the face of the things happening to our Brethren?  How many of us even stop to think about it?  I know our Sister Temeraire does!  (I'll be looking up some of her old posts to add to this thread as I have time).

Here's a link to a YouTube video that I found in another thread by Lions4JESUS.  I Hope Everyone Will Take The Time to let this reality sink into your hearts!  We need to Help our Brethren - even if all we can do is Pray for them:

Faces of Persecution

http://www.youtube.com/wa...;mode=related&search=

By The Voice of the Martyrs

[SoftTouch]

Even though this report is older, it's still relevant and shows that it's not just the Muslims:

INDIA: HINDU NATIONALISTS ADVANCE IN DANGS DISTRICT

(A full RLP will be devoted to this issue in early February, but it is so serious that urgent prayer is needed now, before the event - EK.) 'The Lord... frustrates the ways of the wicked'.  Psalm 146:9

Hindu nationalists are preparing to stage a massive Hindu festival in Dangs district, southern Gujarat (northwest India). This Shabri Kumbh Mela festival from 11-13 February is aimed at Hinduising the tribal population of Dangs. The main outcomes of the Shabri Kumbh Mela will be: the creation of new mythology that Hinduises Dangs; the creation of a site in Dangs for Hindu pilgrimage and tourism; massive 're-conversions' (coerced conversions) to Hinduism and Hindutva (Hindu nationalism); the destruction and Hinduisation of tribal culture; stirring up intense hatred against Christians with the real prospect of violence against them; shattering tribal solidarity; and devastation of the delicate, 'protected' forest environment. Hindu militants are distributing vicious anti-Christian propaganda and (according to one report) fixing flags to Christian homes so they can be identified. A central slogan for the event is 'Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao' (Hindus arise, throw out the Christians). One investigative team recently reported, 'We could see the fear written on the face of most of the Christians we met.'

Here's Another:

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin - No. 343 - Wed 07 Sep 2005

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MEXICO: PROTESTANTS FORCED TO FLEE                                 
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Protestant Christians amongst ethnic Huichol in Agua Fria, Jalisco
state, western Mexico, are suffering severe persecution. (The
Huichol are indigenous Indians descended from the Aztecs.) This
village has three Protestant groups  Baptist, Seventh-day
Adventist and Apostolic  all of whom have been affected by the
persecution. Compass Direct (CD) reports that villagers armed with
machetes and clubs drove the believers from their homes,
threatening to burn them alive. This threat was taken seriously as
in February traditionalists torched the home of Hermelinda Vazquez
de la Cruz, an evangelical, who suffered severe burns and is now
disabled. She and her children barely escaped.   

The believers of Agua Fria have fled for their lives across the
state border into Tepic, Nayarit, and are being housed in the
Seventh Apostolic Church of Tepic. According to CD, the first wave
of 70 included 12 infants, with an estimate of some 300 refugees in
total. The Christians were told they can return to their homes only
if they renounce their faith and embrace indigenous Indian
traditions and rites. Defending the expulsions, community leaders 
say communal statutes stipulate the believers can only stay within
the community and on their land if they practise Huichol culture.
Most locals practise a syncretistic religion, mixing the
Catholicism of the Spanish colonialists with traditional Huichol
rituals which involve sharmanism and the use of the hallucinatory
drug peyote. 

Traditionalist Catholics have perpetrated similar persecution
against Protestants in the southern state of Chiapas for many
years. In the central state of Hidalgo, locals at a town meeting in
Cuateceometl agreed the authorities should 'eradicate' non-
Catholics from the area. On 15 May, police accompanied by a
Catholic catechist arrived at the Fountain of Heaven Church in
Cuateceometl and arrested Pastor Francisco Sanchez Gonzalez along
with a church member, Raul Bautista. The men were later released
but fined heavily. The church members also were all fined and
ordered to renounce their faith. 

Though religious liberty is guaranteed in Mexico's constitution,
its abuse stems from a fierce emergent nationalism often expressed
as anti-Americanism and anti-Protestantism, with an insistence on
all things 'traditional'. Many Mexicans are culturally Catholic,
but nominal and syncretistic. However, in recent decades many
Catholics have been discovering the Bible and turning to
evangelical Christianity. This has generated hostility from the
Catholic leadership who sense their traditional authority being
threatened. Also since around 1995, significant numbers of Tzotzil
Mayan Indians from Chiapas have been embracing the message of
Islamic missionaries, who are predominantly Spanish with Arab
funding. Most Muslim converts have been Protestant converts from
Catholicism, who were persecuted by Catholics and then picked up by
the Muslims.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:

* the Christian refugees from Agua Fria to have their needs
  provided and be comforted; may they grow in prayerful,
  confident, joyous God-dependence, bringing glory to God.

* God's provision for the Seventh Apostolic Church of Tepic caring
  for the Agua Fria refugees, and especially for wisdom and
  strength for the church's pastor, Jesus Estrella Candelario.

* Mexico's every level of government to uphold the lawful rights
  of religious minorities, by denouncing persecution and
  unconstitutional local 'statutes' that arise from disinformation
  and prejudice.

* unity, solidarity and selfless energy amongst Mexican
  evangelicals to support each other in mission and when
  persecuted.

* courageous, discerning pastoral leadership and unflinching,
  cross-centred Bible teaching to anchor Mexico's Protestants
  securely to Christ. 'Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and
  perfecter of our faith...' Hebrews 12:2a

[SoftTouch]

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin - No. 341 - Wed 24 Aug 2005

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CHINA: DEFIANTLY INTENSIFYING PERSECUTION                         
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Two recent news releases from China Aid Association* (CAA) document a shocking escalation of persecution in China. There seems (to RLP) to be a direct correlation between increasing Russian-Chinese-Central Asian solidarity and growing persecution of unsanctioned Protestant Christians in those states. The dictators are uniting to protect their totalitarian regimes through alliances that reduce the influence and leverage of Western human rights and religious
liberty advocates. Furthermore, China is systematically strengthening its assault on 'cults' (which includes house churches) through ideological training of cadres. These are very concerning developments. But God is in control of his-story for his
glory! So we will confidently and dependently approach his 'throne of grace' (Hebrews 4:14-16).   

CAA reports that in Henan Province on 1 July, 70 Christians in a house church fellowship were holding a baptismal service for 60 new believers when they were raided by police. Pastor Wang Baode and nine others were sentenced to 15 days' administrative detention, whilst all others present were fined, probably unofficially as no receipts were issued. On 7 July Pastor Cai Zhuohua faced court in Beijing charged with 'illegal business operations' for printing more than 200,000 Bibles and other Christian books. (As they were given away and not sold, there was no 'business'.) He is in prison awaiting sentence. On 22 July, 100 High School students were arrested at a Vocational Bible School in Hebei Province. The Public Security Bureau (PSB) interrogated them for hours before releasing them with the order not to gather again. On 26 July, a 400-member
house church fellowship in Shanghai was ordered to close. 

On 2 August, two touring American theology students were arrested along with 43 South China Church pastors and believers in Zaoyang City, Hebei Province. The two Americans were interrogated for seven hours and their personal Bibles, books and notebooks were confiscated. The SCC believers were imprisoned. All but two have since been released, having suffered torture, humiliation and
beatings. A 17-year-old evangelist, Mr He Baobao, had to be hospitalised. The two still in prison are Ms Gu Junqing (38) and Ms Ren Daoyun (60) who had hosted the SCC meeting in her home. Eye witnesses told CAA Ms Ren was severely punished by the Domestic Security Squad of the Zaoyang PSB, being savagely and repeatedly beaten into unconsciousness. 

On Sunday 7 August, a house church in Hejing County, Xinjiang Province, was raided during worship. Some 30 believers were arrested by the Domestic Security Protection Squad. Ten of the women were then stripped and paraded naked. Those who refused to remove their clothes were savagely beaten. One woman tried to kill herself by beating her head into a brick wall, such was her humiliation. Three church leaders, Mr Song Jun, Mr He Jiangwei and Ms Liang Fanglan are still held incommunicado. 

On 11 August, 35 High School and University students, along with several church leaders, were arrested at a Sunday School teacher training class in Jiangxi Province. Police confiscated money and church property, without receipts. All those arrested have been released but six will be prosecuted for criminal offences. On 15 August, five American church leaders were arrested along with 27 house church pastors. The group had simply been enjoying Christian fellowship together. Where they are being detained is not known.

(* China Aid Association <http://www.ChinaAid.org>)

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:

* 'mercy and grace' in this time of great need, especially for those in prison (Hebrews 4:14-16; 13:3), asking God in his mercy to protect them from brutality and grant them justice.

* all those who have suffered, that God will give them healing,  strength and grace to love and pray for their persecutors  without bitterness, the ultimate spiritual victory.

'Be alert and always keep on praying for the saints' (Ephesians 6:18 NIV) in this spiritual battle. 

* God to so use the integrity, gospel witness, and supernatural grace of China's persecuted believers that their persecutors will be convicted of sin and ultimately be drawn to Christ.

* revival to sweep through the Chinese Communist Party at every level, and for God to intervene in the life of CCP chief, President Hu Jintao, that he might humble himself before the Lord, renounce his sins, do what is right, and acknowledge that  'Heaven rules'. (2 Chronicles 33; Daniel 4).

[SoftTouch]

ERITREA: 68 Christians Arrested in New Clampdown

Police and military authorities in the East African nation of Eritrea imprisoned 68 more Christians in three official round-up operations conducted the first week of January.

More here:  http://www.persecution.co...8AD3-DC11FCC09D1B&c=9



Burma Ordrers “Christians to be Wiped Out”

By Peter Pattisson in Kayin State, southern Burma, Sunday Telegraph

The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.

The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle  identify and utilise its weakness."

More Here: http://www.raidersnewsnet...rk.com/full.php?news=2152



http://breakingnews.iol.i...216655868&p=zy6656574

Three killed in attack on Bible publishers
18/04/2007 - 13:11:19

Attackers killed three people today at a publishing house that had been the subject of protests for distributing Bibles in Turkey, the government-run Anatolia news agency reported.

One person who had his throat cut inside the publishing house and another died after jumping from the second floor to escape.

Other staff were taken to local hospitals for treatment, the private Dogan news agency said.

Anatolia said one of those taken to the hospital later died.

Nationalists had previously protested outside the Zirve publishing house in the city of Malatya, accusing it of proselytising, Dogan reported.

Video footage showed one man being tackled by police outside of the building, and another in a neck brace being loaded into a stretcher.

Malatya is known as a hotbed of nationalists and is the hometown of ultranationalist Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981.

[WaitQuickly]

Prayer Meeting Raided; Believers Beaten
China Aid Association
08-Feb-2007
CAA learned Chinese police raided a House Church Christian prayer meeting in Jiangsu province. At 10:40am February 7, 2007, the local police from Shanghuang Township, Suyang City, Jiangsu Province, along with officials from Suyang Religious Bureau and National Security Protection Squad under Suyang Police Bureau, raided a Christian prayer meeting of over twenty believers held in the home of Tan Jianwei, No.15, Gangxi Village, Shanghuang Town. While the Christians were engaged in prayer, the police interrupted the meeting without showing ID. The police took individual pictures of these Christians and asked them to write their names for identification purposes. The Christians who refused to write their names were subsequently beaten. Without a search warrant, the police searched the house of Tan Jianwei, singling out and confiscating his Christian books without leaving a record of the books confiscated. Tan Jianwei (male, 36 years old), his wife Qin Qing and another lady named Yin Yanling (42 years old) were taken to Shanghuang Town Police Station for interrogation without a summons. The police forced Tan Jianwei, his wife and Yin Yanling to write a promise to cease holding religious activities in Tan Jianwei's house on threat of criminal detention and severe beatings. Five people directed this raid: Peng Luzhong, head of the National Security Protection Squad under Suyang police bureau，policeman Zhang Weifeng, policemen from Shanghuang police station, Zhong Linjun (ID 059442), Bi Qingxi (ID 058869), and Lu from Suyang religion Bureau.



Persecution Follows Anti-Conversion Bill
International Christian Concern
05-Feb-2007
Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org has learned that only two weeks after the Himachal Pradesh state government passed an anti-conversion bill, two Christian institutions have already faced harassment by Hindu fundamentalists.

This shows that there is a direct connection between anti-conversion legislation and Christian persecution. Rather than assisting in keeping the peace between religious groups, anti-conversion laws actually embolden Hindu extremists to attack religious minorities. These two attacks from last month are further proof of this disturbing trend.

In the first attack, about 250 people belonging to the VHP and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, gathered in front of the house of Pastor Behal, a retired officer from the Indian Army, who runs an orphanage in Kangra. They demanded that he close the institution and move out of the area on January 21, the Rev. Madhu Chandra of the All India Christian Council (AICC) told ICC.

When the AICC contacted Sudha Devi, the sub-divisional magistrate of Kangra district, she said police had been deployed at the site and the situation was under control. But she also said that the Hindu protestors had submitted a memorandum against Pastor Behal alleging that he was mistreating orphan children and converting them to Christianity.

The second attack occurred just a few days earlier in Kullu district, when police arrested four workers of a drug addiction rehabilitation center, the Last Resort, in Khokhan village. Two inmates had run away from the center and lodged a complaint alleging that they had been forcibly kept in the center and had Christianity preached to them. The names of the four workers are Rajesh Toppo, Nizam Minthang, Gopal Singh Bhatia and Lalboi, and their accusers are Vinod Saini and Amos.

The plaintiffs stated in an affidavit that they were pressured by a mob, allegedly comprising of Hindu fundamentalists from the VHP, to levy charges against the four Christians. The four said that the plaintiffs had recently been brought to the center by their parents, who had consented that they be given treatment at the center. The Christians also denied the allegation that they were trying to convert them.

Jeremy Sewall, ICC's Policy Analyst for South Asia, said, “It is incredibly important to grasp the deception surrounding these anti-conversion bills. Although proponents claim that they will encourage religious freedom by prohibiting forcible conversion, they are really designed to stamp out India's rapidly growing church. When a state government passes anti-conversion laws, radical Hindus see that as a license to attack Christian ministries. This is exactly what has happened to Pastor Behal and the four drug rehab center employees.”

The less than 0.1 percent Christian population of Himachal Pradesh was stunned when the Congress government passed the anti-conversion bill on December 30. The bill is awaiting the consent of the state governor.



Christmas Celebration Raided
China Aid Association
02-Jan-2007
CAA learns that a Christmas celebration activity held by a house church in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia, was attacked by the local police, 3 church leaders are being detained.

On December 29, 2006 about 30 policemen and the staff of the local Religious Affair Bureau in 5 vehicles attacked a Christmas celebration gathering in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia. They declared the celebration as “illegal gathering,” and three church leaders were detained and sentenced to 15 days administrative detention.

This is the second celebration activity held by the church during Christmas. The 3 detained Christians are: Sister Liu Guanghua, 42 years old; Sister Zhi Huiping, 41 years old; and Sister Zhi Ruiping, 35 years old. All of them are being held at Duolun County Detention Centre.

CAA also learns that brother Lou Yuanqi, a house church leader in Xinjiang, who was rearrested December 23, 2006 was allowed to be bailed pending trial December 29, 2006. It is believed that the arrest is to deter the Christians from holding any Christmas celebration.

“To attack and arrest peaceful Christians during Christmas season is contrary to both the spirit of Christmas and the Chinese law. “said Bob Fu, the president of CAA, “we urge the Chinese government to release the 3 innocent church leaders immediately.”


Church Service Raided; Christians Detatined
China Aid Association
15-Jan-2007
CAA learned that on January 6, 2007 the local police from Yongfeng township police station in Xiuwu county, Henan province, raided a Christian gathering held in Chencun village. 11 Christians were taken to the police station; only 2 of them were released the next day. According to the eyewitness, the event happened at 4 PM January 6, 2007, when 14 Christians gathered in a house in Chencun village. The police broke into and proclaimed the gathering a cultic activity and illegal gathering.

11 Christians were brought to Huifeng township police station for interrogation. The police released 2 Christians the next day, the rest are still in detention.

The names of some of the Christians in detention are:

Ju Xiang, female, 48 years old;
Liu Xiaoduo, female, 42 years old;
Wang Sheqin, female, 40 years old;
Fu Juyi, female, 36 years old;
Hong Xia, female, 37 years old;
Xue Xianghuo, Male, 49 years old;
Xue Xiaona, Male, 34 years old

CAA has been providing legal and financial help to the Christians in detention, and appeal to the local police to release the Christians immediately.
CAA received the 1st trial verdict of the 8 Christian leaders in Zhejiang 7.29 church demolition event. Please click the links below to read the summary of the verdict on the website of CAA.
http://chinaaid.org/pdf/Xiaoshanverdict1.doc



Bible Study Raided by PSB
China Aid Association
08-Jan-2007
China Aid Association learns that on January 1st, 2007 the local police in Baoding city, Hebei province, attacked a Christian Bible Study held in a Communist Party School. There are 130 million Christians in China (including both Protestants and Catholics) according to Mr. Yie Xiaowen, the director of the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA).

On January 1st, 2007 a group of Christians gathered in an office in the Party School (where the cadres of the Communist Party in this area are trained) of Baoding City, Hebei province to celebrate New Year by studying the Bible. But they were besieged and raided by the local PSB officers at 10am. Over 40 Christians were taken away for interrogation. Most of the Christians were not released until 6pm the same day, including Dr. Li Baiguang who is one of the most famous Christian legal activists from Beijing.

The host of the Bible study, Professor Geng Sude, who is the vice president of the Party School, was reportedly released after several days of investigation. Professor Su (about 50 years old) is a secret Christian intellectual among the Chinese House Church. She is under tight surveillances now.

Moreover, CAA also learns that on January 4, 2007 the local police attacked a Christian gathering in Xizhuang group, Anlou village, Erlangmiao Township, Fangcheng County, Henan province. Three Christians were brought to the police station. The police released two of them the same day, while the other one, brother An Wenqing, a house church seminary lecturer, was released on January 5 after being interrogated for 14 hours by the police.

CAA learns from a reliable source, that recently Mr. Yie Xiaowen, the director of the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs, said in two internal meetings held in Beijing University and Chinese Academy of Social Science respectively, that the number of Christians in China has reached 130 million now, including 20 million Catholics. The Chinese government often underestimates the number of religious believers in its officially released figure.

“The unprecedented growth of the Chinese church has happened under ceaseless persecution,” said Bob Fu, the President of CAA, “we pray that China will realize true religious freedom soon.”



Missionary's Children Brutally Murdered
At Anycost Jesus Mission
07-Oct-2006
15 year old son and 14 year old daughter of an underground missionary couple of the At Anycost Jesus Mission were brutaly murdered and dead bodies were burnt by the terrorists in one of the northern districts of Pakistan on 1st of September, 2006. Shalom was the boy and Sharon was the girl, who were secondary school students. Habel, another underground missionary of the At Anycost Jesus Mission said this news from a hidden place.

Police and military forces are supportive to the militants. Habel and family was also attacked and their house was burnt. But Lord has enabled them to escape to a hidden place.

They demolished a church and some houses were set on fire too.

Shalom and Sharon were kidnapped alongwith their missionary parents and two other younger sisters 10 days before the murder. Militants asked them to convert towards Islam and joined with the terrorist group for working against christians and christinaity. They refused. So militants killed Shalom first. Then they raped the girl and cut one of her breasts In front of the parents. She too died. Habel said.

The militants left the dead bodies in a ditch alongwith a motorbyke, poured the petrol and burnt. The police declared a false statement that it was an accident and the petrol tank of the byke was opened while they were fallen into the ditch and burnt by a spark.

Believers are under the great trouble and fear. They are forcely over controlled by the militants. Not alloweded to pray or not even to speak a single word about Christ or Christianity or Christians. Habel said.

Related with the same subject, tribal people and their leaders also being murdered by the terrorists in the Neelum Valley.

At Anycost Jesus Mission is an underground evangelism ministry for the evangelisation of Muslim nations.



Christian Bookshop Bombed in Israel
Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin
18-Apr-2007
A bomb ripped through the only Christian bookshop in Gaza, Israel (Palestinian Authority administrated territory), at 2.30am on Sunday 15 April. This Palestinian Bible Society bookshop has been targeted before but this is the most serious attack yet. According to Christianity Today (CT) the attackers had earlier kidnapped and beaten the security guard to obtain a key to the premises. Because the guard did not have a key the militants were forced to set the bomb outside the front doors. It was a huge explosion and the shop front was destroyed. As the terrorists had wanted to plant the bombs inside they clearly intended to inflict even more extensive damage.

Deann Alford writes for CT, 'The Palestinian Bible Society's Gaza ministry includes relief work in Gaza's refugee camps and community health, microenterprise and development projects. Suhad Salsa Massad, wife of Gaza Baptist Church pastor Hanna Massad, directs the ministry.' When local television reported the incident the executive director of the Palestinian Bible Society, Labib Madanat, used the opportunity to assure the people of Gaza that the ministry would continue, as well as to send a message of forgiveness to the attackers.

Two Internet cafes also were bombed on the night of 15 April.
Around 40 Internet cafes and video stores have been targeted in the past few months. A self-appointed anti-vice squad calling itself 'The Swords of Islam' (or 'The Swords of Truth', 'The Righteous Swords of Islam', 'The Swords of Islamic Right') has claimed responsibility for most of these attacks. This is the same group believed to have kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston and in September 2006 threatened to bomb all churches and Christian institutions in Gaza in response to Pope Benedict's comments linking Islam with violence (see RLP 396). Several possibly al Qaeda-linked, Taliban-type vigilante militias are now operating in Gaza, demanding and enforcing Islamisation along strict, purist Wahhabi lines. Ali Waked of Ynet news (Israel) comments that the signs of widespread radicalisation in Gaza are clear to see in strict dress codes and in virulent opposition to anything 'un- Islamic'.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR GOD TO:

* mercifully bless and protect all gospel, peacemaking and
reconciliation ministries in Israel, particularly those in the
Palestinian Territories. 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they
will be called sons of God.' (Matthew 5:9 NIV)

* specifically bless and protect Hanna Massad (pastor of Gaza
Baptist Church), his wife Suhad Salsa Massad (who directs the
Palestinian Bible Society's Gaza ministries), Labib Madanat
(PBS executive director) and all those who will now be
involved in restoring this ministry in defiance of terrorist
threats and intimidation.

'Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. . .'
(Psalm 113:5-7 NIV)

[WaitQuickly]

See these to witness True Christians in action, losing their lives for JESUS to gain life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piPgfKjC8hE - WARNING!!! GRAPHIC!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/wa...;mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/re...ecution&search=Search (full list)

I find these links rather disturbing and convicting, because they are going on now, this moment. Imagine if this to occur here in the US as well as other Spoiled countries, we had to go underground or whatever God would have us do if this were right now in this country. I realize how blessed and spoiled I am that my trials and tribulation are nil this moment and I feel like a product of the Laodician church in Rev 3 except I need God so desperately every moment. I may be somewhat you can say rich and am provided for but I need God more than these earthly temporary satified for a minute things. And when I come across these realities of what is going on in Indonesia and other AntiChristian places persecuting our Brothers and Sister over something that doesn't exist like their Muslim religion which is a disturb childs imagination that has gone haywire, Like little kids picking on the stinky one and their lying games to prosecute these Christian infidels they call them, it breaks my heart and I ache all over realizing that their testimonies are for us over here  (US) who have no such persecution really but division in the church about Scripture, denomination or Escatology endtime arguments which really go nowhere but keep us divided. And these persecuted Saints are risking their lives telling the Lost about the Real Way and the Truth and the Life, Jesus and they are being executed without a trial in the process. These Saints may have heartvroken families but they also cheer them on. They are not in division at all nor want to be. They just take the Simple Gospel at face value never divided at what this Scripture means or that but they just say YES JESUS, WE WILL OBEY WITH OUR LIVES TO THE END AND WILL NOT COMPROMISE. They are the real theologians in God theology in Jesus' name. Also they are our proof once again that what the Godman Jesus said is 100% Truth and the Bible is 100% Absolute Truth just by their simple word to each other and their lost nieghbors that Jesus Christ is Lord and His WORD IS TRUTH. Let us be in exhaustive prayer for them daily because they are in constant prayer for US spoiled Christians while they are suffering in their prison cells and or against the law meetings of worship.
What encouragement they bring to us.

Some say we are going to have our turn eventually that really is going to shake up the foundations of the BODY. See here: http://www.theforbiddenkn...m/hardtruth/con_camps.htm
 Maybe this is going to be a real seperation from the Sheep and the goats, to see who is really for JESUS and who is really just Acting. Are we next???

Lord,
 open our eyes, keep us from deception, and prepare our hearts to stand firm in whatever is to come our way as we strive and press on in the faith growing stronger everyday. Lord let us ultimately and desperately fall so in Love with you that every waking moment you are first in our thoughts, and let us always to remember to Pray for those who are being persecuted this moment and let us support them and thank them for their testimonies. Keep us all in your will Lord and to deny our wills so you can guide us and lead us to your perfect will for our lives no matter what you choose to do with our lives. Let us learn how to lose our lives for your namesake so we can be perfect and compete lacking nothing and in utter dependence on you every waking moment. You are so worth it and worthy JESUS.

In Jesus precious name
AMEN.

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ERITREA: PERSECUTION INTENSIFIES AND WIDENS                       
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In May 2002 some 20,000 Protestant Christians found themselves in churches that had become illegal when the Eritrean government banned all Christian churches other than the Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Mekane Yesus (Evangelical Lutheran) denominations. Initially the Orthodox Church supported the repression. However, during 2004, youths and then priests from the Orthodox Church's Medhane Alem renewal movement started to get arrested. The Patriarch protested, so the government intensified its attacks on the Orthodox Church.

In August 2005, to counter the Orthodox Church's growing opposition, the Eritrean government deposed Patriarch Abune Antonios and put him under house arrest. To get more control over the church the government appointed Yeftehe Dimetros as church administrator. On 5 December 2006 it then ruled that all tithes collected through the Orthodox Church be deposited in a government account from which it would control church finances and pay priests. The government will also set a quota for priests and any 'extra' priests are to present for military service.

Aid organisations are also targeted. On 4 December 2006, nine Samaritan's Purse aid workers were arrested a month after the organisation had been ordered to leave the country.

On 4 January 2007 military commanders at the national Sawa Military Centre conducted what they termed a 'random check-up on the activities of Christian extremists' among teenage student conscripts. Some 250 Bibles, the personal property of Christian students, were confiscated and burnt. Thirty-five Christian teenage conscripts were then singled out for deterrent 'severe punishment' which included torture as routine. Today more than 2,000 Eritrean Christians are incarcerated in appalling conditions for their faith.

On 15 February 2007 Magos Solomon Semere (30) died in the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility just outside Assab. Compass Direct reports that his death was 'due to physical torture and persistent pneumonia, for which he was forbidden proper medical treatment'. Semere (when 23) had been arrested in August 2000 and served 18 months for his evangelism. Three months after his release in July 2002 Semere, just engaged to be married, was re-arrested for worshipping in a banned Protestant fellowship. During his four-and-a-half-year imprisonment Semere was refused permission to see his fiancee. When he became seriously ill he was told he would get medical treatment only if he renounced his faith. Having already endured extreme hardship and extensive torture Semere elected to persevere and go to his Lord rather than renounce him. Semere is the third Christian to die in custody due to torture since October 2006.

In 2001 the government imprisoned all its opposition and closed all private media. Eritreans risk their lives and liberty to leak this information so we can pray and advocate for them.

On 23 February Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki met with a European Union delegation. The president indicated that Eritrea needs support in its efforts to ensure security of food supplies and to develop infrastructure. He said his government would welcome any party that wishes to assist Eritrea 'without strings attached'.  According to Eritrea's Ministry of Information the European Commission delegation expressed readiness to co-operate.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR -

* the courageous Eritrean Christians, human rights and democracy
  advocates who risk their lives to give us this information about
  the persecution of the Church in Eritrea.

* the courageous Eritrean Christians continuing to meet for
  prayer, Bible study, teaching, worship and fellowship; may God
  protect and preserve them. 'Keep me as the apple of your eye;
  hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail
  me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.' (Psalm 17:8,9)

* revival to keep spreading through the Orthodox Church, and that
  Christian unity will be a real and lasting fruit of this
  persecution.

* God to intervene in the political situation in Eritrea by:
  working through European influences; delivering judgment and
  removing evil forces (Psalm 17:10-14); delivering grace and
  revealing his salvation to those in authority (Galatians 1:23).

----------------------------------------------------
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The WEA Religious Liberty Commission sponsors this
RL Prayer List to help individuals and groups pray
specifically and regularly for religious liberty
issues, and in particular to uphold the Church
where it is suffering persecution.

RL Prayer is moderated by Ron Clough, a commissioner
of the WEA RLC and convenor of the Australian EA RLC.
Elizabeth Kendal researched and authored this message.

[UB4WAR]

i got my winchester
remington
and my sks
and my s&w 357

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Bomb against Christian orphanage
04/26/2007 NEPAL

An orphanage run by the Pentecostal Church in Birganj is attacked and one child is wounded. A Hindu extremist group claims responsibility. It says it wants to restore the country to its Hindu theocracy, accusing Christians of converting Buddhist and Hindu children to Christianity with funds from pro-Maoist groups. The establishment's administrators reject the accusations.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews)  A Hindu fundamentalist group in Nepal bombed a Christian orphanage accusing its administrators of converting its non Christian children and receiving funds from pro-Maoist organisations. The explosion occurred in Birganj, Nepal's industrial capital, at the “Grace Children Home” and wounded one child who is now in hospital.

The orphanage is run by the Pentecostal Church and is home to some 80 children from around the country who lost their parents during the Maoist insurgency.

The attack was claimed by the Nepal Defence Army (NDA), a recently-created group that wants to restore the Hindu theocracy that once ruled the country.

According to a local NDA organiser, Praban, the reasons behind the attack are two-fold: “Firstly, the Christian owners of the home are obviously converting the Hindu and Buddhist children from the hills and mountains to Christianity. [. . .] The bomb was a warning against their nefarious project. Secondly, [. . .] we have evidence that they are actually children of Maoist guerrillas who were killed in army operations during the insurgency. The Maoists don't mind if their children become Christians.”

Speaking to AsiaNews, the orphanage administrators reject all the accusations saying that their work “is to help and educate poor children who have lost their families.”

[WaitQuickly]

Thought Police Alert: Christians In Bull's-eye In Dems' New 'Hate Crimes' plan
April 26, 2007

While most of the attention garnered by Congress lately is the pork-stuffed bill passed last night to immediately surrender to al-Qaeda and the Iraq insurgents, embolden our enemy in Iraq and Iran, and increase the risk to our troops, the Congress has also been busy with other matters of great importance to radical Soros leftists such as creating penalties for being a Christian; this even to the extent of punishing people for even thinking or feeling what is other than politically correct.

The Democrats' latest insane move is a fast-tracked plan to add special protections for homosexuals to federal law that according to opponents, would turn "thoughts, feelings, and beliefs" into criminal offenses that could put Christians in the bull's-eye:

    "H.R. 1592 is a discriminatory measure that criminalizes thoughts, feelings, and beliefs [and] has the potential of interfering with religious liberty and freedom of speech," according to a white paper submitted by Glen Lavy, of the Alliance Defense Fund.

    "As James Jacobs and Kimberly Potter observed in Hate Crimes, Criminal Law, and Identity Politics, 'It would appear that the only additional purpose [for enhancing punishment of bias crimes] is to provide extra punishment based on the offender's politically incorrect opinions and viewpoints,'" said Lavy.

    The proposal has been endorsed by majority Democrats on the committee, and already has 137 sponsors in the full House, making it possible it could be voted on in a matter of days or weeks.

    Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, said the plan, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2007, is no more than "a surreptitious attempt by some in Congress to strip the nation of religious freedom and the ability to preach the gospel from our church pulpits."

    "It will stamp all over our doctrine and practice of our faith," he said. "We believe what the Bible says. If you start there we've got a major problem."

    Secondly, it unfairly restricts the expression of fair opinion by Christians, he told WND. "If anything, gays are getting undue deference awarded to them by the courts. That's why we have the same-sex marriage fight and that kind of thing."

    Rev. Louis Sheldon, director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which represents 43,000 churches across the nation, told WND that the Democrats sponsoring and supporting the issue "have sold out to the homosexual agenda."

    He said churches need to awaken to the dangers of having pastors, lay leaders, or even those sitting in the pews sent to jail for their biblical views. "When they [realize they] could go to jail for preaching the Word of God, they'll be concerned," he told WND. (Continue reading here ...)

Just how one enforces criminalized thoughts and emotions, or even speech for that matter since we supposedly live in a free and democratic (emphasis on the little "d"), is beyond me, however, I have little doubt that if any group is capable of trying to do so, it's the Soros Democrats.

[WaitQuickly]

Turkish Believers "Satanically Tortured" Before Being Killed
26 April 2007

ISTANBUL, TURKEY (BosNewsLife)-- There was increased concern Thursday, April 26, about the plight of active Christians in Turkey after investigators revealed that three evangelical believers were "satanically tortured" last week before being killed.

The influential American human rights group International Christian Concern (ICC) with website www.persecution.org told BosNewsLife that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of German Tilman Ekkehart Geske, 45, and Turkish Christians Necati Aydin, 35, and Ugur Yuksel ,32, at the Christian Zirve publishing house were even worse than thought.

ICC, based in Washington DC, said the troubles began on Easter Sunday when five of the alleged killers had been to a service that Pastor Necati arranged in the eastern town of Malatya, the capital of Malatya province.

The men were reportedly known to local believers as searching for the faith in Christ. The suspects, one of whom is the son of a mayor in the Province of Malatya, are part of a tarikat, or a group of “faithful believers” in Islam, ICC added.

Tarikat membership is "like a fraternity membership" and means that "no one can get into public office without membership" of such a group, ICC said. "On the day of the killing, the young Muslim men had arranged to meet the Christians at 10:00 am [local time] to ostensibly learn more about the Bible. They had gathered guns, bread knives, ropes and towels [as] they knew there would be a lot of blood, ready for their act of service to Allah," ICC stressed.

READING BIBLE

After Necati read a chapter from the Bible the assault reportedly began. "The young men tied Ugur, Necati, and Tilman's hands and feet to chairs as they videoed their work on their cell phones," ICC said, adding that what "followed in the next three hours is beyond belief."

ICC said the men were "disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed." The group added that "fingers were chopped off" and "their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open" as part of what it called "satanic torture."

It added that "possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured. Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur's stabs were too numerous to count."
Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, and their "heads practically decapitated,"
ICC said.

Several hours later at 12:30 local time a fellow Christian reportedly arrived at the publishing house but discovered that the door was locked from the inside. After he called cell phones of the men, Ugur apparently answered his phone saying: “We are not at the office. Go to the hotel meeting. We are there. We will come there.” Yet as Ugur spoke he heard in the background weeping and a strange snarling sound, ICC said, citing its investigation.

POLICE INTERVENTION

After he phoned police the nearest officer arrived in about five minutes and pounded on the door shouting: "Police, open up,!" reports said.

Initially the officer apparently believed it was a domestic disturbance, but when he heard another snarl and a gurgling moan he understood that sound as human suffering, ICC explained. The officer "prepared the clip in his gun and tried over and over again to burst through the door. One of the frightened assailants unlocked the door for the policeman, who
entered to find a grisly scene."

Reports said the attack happened following Muslim protests against the distribution of Bibles and other Christian literature by the publishing house for which they worked.

One of the victims, Necati Aydin, a husband and father of two young children, was also an actor who reportedly played the role of Jesus Christ in a theater production that TURK-7 network aired over the Easter holidays.

DETENTION DEMANDED

Prosecutors have asked a court to allow jailing 11 suspects,  10 young men and a woman, pending trial over the gruesome murder of the three Christians. A 12th suspect, allegedly the leader, remains in hospital with a serious head injury after jumping from the third-floor office of the Christian publishing house in Malatya where the victims were killed, to escape arrest.

At least four of the suspects have reportedly been charged with "founding a terrorist organization and murder within the framework of the organization." In a first reaction, Tillman's wife publicly forgave the those who killed her husband saying “they know not what they do.”

ICC President Jeff King said he was impressed by the "contrast between the acts of the killers and the forgiveness of Tillman's wife." He said it was "glaring and in the end seems to be at the center of this story for us. For in the end, these events serve as a stark reminder of the difference between Islam and Christianity."

He added that, for "the 'faithful' Muslims, following their god meant brutally killing three men [with the excuse] "we did this to protect Islam". For the faithful Christians, following God meant forgiving the men who had tortured and murdered their loved ones."

The attacks have added to concern among Turkish Christians who comprise about 0.2 percent of the mainly Muslim nation of over 71 million people. The murders followed the January murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and the shooting of Italian Roman Catholic priest Andrea Santoro in the town of Trabzon in February 2006. (With reporting from Turkey).

[SoftTouch]

Pakistani Christians Seek Government Protection After Threats to Convert by Pro-Taliban Forces

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan    Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence.

About 500 Pakistani Christians in Charsadda, a town in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, received letters earlier this month telling them to close their churches and convert by Thursday or be the target of "bomb explosions."

Several Christians, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country, have fled town and others are living in fear, community leaders said.

(More at above link)

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OUCHHHHHHH  THIS  HURTS... :'(    And  they  will be persacuted  in  Jesus  name.....

[WaitWatchPray]

From the Barnabas Fund:

Pakistani Christians receive written threat

jma

[SoftTouch]

Christian Persecution in Iraq Ratcheting Up

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http://www.freedomszone.c...upremism_reigns_in_ir.php

Islamic Supremism Reigns In Iraq And Christians Are Being Exterminated - Meanwhile The UN And The West, Along With The Iraqi Government, Ignores Their Ruthless Persecution

Read rest at above link.



http://www.bosnewslife.co...s-christians-crucified-in

URGENT BREAKING NEWS: Christians Crucified In Iraq, Dutch MP Says (BosNewsLife Exclusive)WRAPUP

Read story at above link.