Compiled by Les Tepper (lestepper@hotmail.com, www.weebly.HisWorldMissions.com)

August 2016 Persecution News

Special Interest Articles:

Uganda – Despised By her Family

Kazakhstan: Dramatic Sentence Change

Muslim Fulani Herds-men Kill Pastor in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Copt Stabbed to Death in Egypt Less Than Week after Islamic State Kills Priest

Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed 2 Cor 4:9

Every shilling Grace had went to pay for her son’s hospitalization. Since most hospitals in Uganda demand payment up front, she sold her very last cow. Then, her son died.

Immediately, her husband’s relatives came to her home and an argument began. “The uncles wanted to take my son’s body and bury him where his father was buried,” she said. Her son, Michael, was a Christian convert, and the 50-year-old woman had wanted her pastor to perform her son’s funeral. Instead, her Muslim relatives insisted that since her husband had left them to care for his family, they would perform Islamic rites. This issue had been a constant struggle ever since her husband had passed away several years ago.

Grace had married a prominent Muslim man in 1986 when she was about 20. The mountainous region in the eastern part of the country where

Uganda - Despised By Her Family

Kazakhstan: Dramatic Sentence Change

Six weeks after a judge sentenced Christian convert Yklas Kabduakasov to seven years of house arrest for his Christian activities, the sent-ence was changed, and Yklas was rearrested and sent to a labor camp.

A former Muslim, Yklas was first arrested in August 2015 and spent 12 weeks in prison before the court sentenced him to a spend seven years under house arrest. The 54-year-old father of eight sought full acquittal, stating that he had not insulted Islam nor had he “incited religious hatred.” On Dec. 28, 2015, however, a court changed the punishment to two years’ imprisonment in a labor camp.

Although state prosecutors had asked for a seven-year prison sentence, the court sent-enced Yklas to two years minus the 12 weeks he had already served in pre-trial detention.

The prosecution relied on evidence that was collected by Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB) secret police, who monitored his activities for over a year. They gathered secret recordings of conversations Yklas has

she lives does have a church presence, but the majority of families in her village are Muslim. Grace agreed to practice Islam too. Two months into her marriage, however, she began attending church services. She couldn’t abide by Islamic practices. Her husband’s relatives, who live in the same village, may have noticed Grace going to church services, but they tolerated it since the couple was raising their four children as Muslims.

As soon as her husband was buried, his family came to Grace. In keeping with tradition, they tried to arrange a marriage for her. “They wanted me to get married to [my husband’s] brother in order for me to produce more children for them. But I had to first go back to Islamic faith.” Not willing to convert, she refused.

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with four university students, with whom he met to study the Bible. Additionally, KNB secret police raided his home and seized religious books.

At trial, prosecution experts testified that the Christian convert was insulting Islam as well as inciting violence against Muslims. Prosecutors also claimed that Yklas had attempted to force his subordinates at work to become Christians.

After the revised punishment was handed down and Yklas was rearrested, he was transferred to a labor camp in Pavlodar, 280 miles northeast of his home in Astana. His wife is now solely responsible for the care of the couple’s six minor children, including their son born in September 2015.

Since his transfer to the labor camp, Yklas is reportedly thinner. His lawyer told Forum 18 that Yklas remains in good spirits and has no complaints about his treatment.

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Guides

Operation World 2

Prisoner Profile 5

Unreached People Groups

5

Additional Stories 6

Prisoner List 6

Extreme Devotion 7

Links 7

Videos 7

Martyr’s Profile 8

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Zonkwa, Kaduna State, Nigeria (ANS -- July 5, 2016) – A pastor in Nasarawa state killed last week in Obi was buried today (Tuesday, July 5, 2015) in his hometown of Zonkwa, Kaduna state.

According to Morning Star News, Muslim Fulani herdsmen with machetes killed the Rev. Zakariya Joseph Kurah of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) on Thursday (June 30, 2016) while he was working at his farm.

A staff member of the ECWA District Church Council in Lafia, Nasarawa told Morning Star News that he met with the council chairman and relatives of Kurah at the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital in Lafia, where police and others brought the body from

Muslim Fulani Herdsmen Kill Pastor in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

ISTANBUL, Turkey, July 6, 2016 (Morning Star News) – A Coptic pharmacist was stabbed to death and then beheaded by a group of Salafi Muslims in Egypt’s Delta region Monday (July 4), the latest in a string of attacks against Copts during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

Family members found the body of Magdy Attia, 33, in an apartment building where a group of Salafi Muslims reside in Tanta, Gharbia Governorate, according to local media. The attackers had stabbed Attia

some nine times and decapitated him,

Copt Stabbed To Death In Egypt Less Than Week After Islamic State Kills Priest

Indonesia Republic of Indonesia Asia

Geography Area: 1,919,317 sq km

The Republic’s 17,500 islands (6,000 inhabited) stretch over 9.5 million sq km of the Indian/Pacific Oceans, with 33 provinces, 5 of which have special status. Includes the world’s second-largest rain forest and vast coral reefs.

Population: 232,516,771 Annual Growth: 1.19% Capital: Jakarta Urbanites: 53.7% HDI Rank: 111 of 182 (UN Human Development Reports 2009)

Peoples: 784 (26% unreached)

Official language: Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) Languages: 722

Religion Largest Religion: Non-religious

Religion Pop % Ann Gr

Christians 36,853,908 15.85 1.6

Operation World

Obi.

“One of them whom I don’t know but was together with the late pastor told us that they were in the bush around 7-7:30 p.m.,” said the staff member, identified only as Moses. “Two people came out and attacked them. Rev. Kurah ran and hid, but they chased him and brutally murdered him with their machetes.”

The assailants took only his phone handset before leaving, Moses said.

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leaving his remains in the room of the apartment where he was slain.

Family members reportedly said Attia went to the apartment building to deliver medicine and stood outside talking to a couple of men for about 30 minutes before going inside. Soon Attia began screaming repeatedly for help, but no one came, according to local reports.

An hour later, family members heard something had happened at the apartment building, went there and found the body. Eyewitnesses reportedly confirmed that

they saw two men in clothes covered with blood running away from the building. Security cameras installed on nearby streets obtained a clear image of the men. No one has been arrested in the crime.

Attia’s cousin, David Naser, told Arabic-language Christian website The Voice of Free Christians that police need to “do their job and punish the killers and not let the case end with his death and have all his rights die with him.

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Evangelicals 13,010,751 5.60 2.8

Muslims 186,734,219 80.31

Challenges for Prayer

Pray for the development of a missionary vision. The history and background of Indonesian Christianity are unique. Indonesians are able to make a significant contribution to world evangelization. Pray for:

a) Churches to be gripped by the challenge of hundreds of unreached peoples in their own country and in other lands of Asia and Africa. The financial and human resources are there. Denominations will need to work together on an unprecedented level.

b) The sending out of Christians – individuals, teams and communities – as migrants to unevangelized areas with a vision for church planting. Christians need to be set free from tribalism, denominationalism and local loyalties, and learn to be sensitive to the subtleties of ministering cross-culturally.

PrayerCast: http://prayercast.com/indonesia.html

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Persecution News

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Democratic Republic Of Congo (ANS, July 11, 2016) -- An attack by unknown armed men early on Tuesday morning (July 5) has claimed the lives of at least nine Christians in the volatile eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to World Watch Monitor.

Local sources contacted by World Watch Monitor said the assailants stormed the Tenambo, Nzanza and Mamiki communities, near an army base on the outskirts of the town of Oicha, between 4am and 6am.

World Watch Monitor reports that, armed with guns and machetes, the attackers looted homes, taking food and cattle as plunder. The incident was confirmed by security forces and the Administrator of Beni territory, Bernard Amisi Kalonda, who said the death toll may climb higher as searches for victims continue.

World Watch Monitor explained that Eastern DRC has been beset by

Nine Christians Killed In Another Attack In Eastern DRC

SUDAN (ANS – July 12, 2016) -- Five years ago yesterday (July, 11, 2011), South Sudan became the world’s newest country after seceding from the North.

Following a lengthy dispute over where a border should be drawn, it was decided that Sudan’s predominantly Christian South Kordofan and Blue Nile states would remain in the mainly Sunni Muslim North. In the five years since, the Sudanese government has waged a bombing campaign against this restive, resource-rich region.

According to World Watch Monitor Sudan’s Christians are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced by the violence, and whose homes, crops, churches, schools and hospitals have been destroyed.

In one of the latest incidents, in June, the sole secondary school in South Kordofan’s Umdorain Country was destroyed.

In April, the US State Department designated Sudan a “Country of Particular Concern” for the tenth consecutive year under the International Religious Freedom Act, for “having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

“A new report by Open Doors, a charity that supports Christians under pressure for their faith, says Sudanese Christians – especially those in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states – have been facing and continue to face ‘ethnic cleansing,’” stated World Watch Monitor.

“The Sudan government's modus operandi was to conquer them, convert them and/or finish them off.”

According to the report, successive Islamist regimes have attempted

Sudan's Christians Face Ethnic Cleansing

deadly violence, with 1,116 killed between October 2014 and May 2016, according to local NGOs. Another 1,470 people have been abducted, they say, while more than 34,000 families have been forcibly displaced. There have also been numerous cases of sexual violence against women and children.

In analysis of the violence, World Watch Monitor says the area is nearly 96 per cent Christian, and the impact of the violence has been immense. A pastor in the area affected by the July 5 attack told World Watch Monitor that all the victims, including an elder from his church and five women, were Christians.

The World Watch Monitor news report says the attack provoked panic; many fled the area and sought refuge in safer areas of Oicha.

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to turn Sudan into a Sharia state that does not recognize other religious groups, with strict punishments for apostasy, blasphemy and defamation of Islam.

World Watch Monitor went on to say that these laws have been particularly harsh on ethnically African (as opposed to Arab) Christians, notes the report, which references the high-profile case of Meriam Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death in 2014 for converting from Islam to Christianity. (She was eventually released and allowed to resettle in the United States.)

Following South Sudan’s independence, many Christians in Sudan, especially those whose family roots were in what is now South Sudan, were forced to leave the country, as the Sudanese government embarked on what the report refers to as its mission to create a “homogenous nation,” in which Islam is the sole religion.

The report, which also reviews the Sudanese government’s record over the past 30 years and considers current trends, concludes that attacks against Christians in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states are “systematic” and “widespread” in their nature and therefore qualify as “ethnic cleansing.”

According to the report, the modus operandi in the 1980s and 1990s was to “conquer them, convert them and/or finish them off”. This continued after war broke out between Sudan and the SPLM/N, the political movement linked to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which fought for South Sudan’s independence.

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"God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician." David Livingstone

"Why should anyone hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?" Oswald Smith

"Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions." Leonard Ravenhill

"How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound Him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves." C.T. Studd

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ABUJA, Nigeria, July 15, 2016 (Morning Star News) – The last words of an evangelist who was killed while she was street-preaching here on Saturday (July 9) were, “Blood of Jesus,” her husband told Morning Star News.

Eunice Mojisola Olawale, a deaconess in the Redeemed Christian Church of God that her husband pastors in a suburb of Abuja, was stabbed and cut to death by a band of Islamists in the streets of Kubwa in the early morning. Born July 23, 1974, the mother of seven children was killed two weeks before her 42nd birthday.

“My wife loved Jesus so very much,” pastor Olawale Elisha of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), in the Gbazango area of Kubwa, told Morning Star News. “Some of the people living close to the spot where she was killed told us that they heard her last words

as she was being murdered. They said she was shouting, ‘Blood of Jesus! Blood of Jesus! Blood of Jesus!’ And that was the end.”

A Muslim leader and five other Muslims from a mosque in the Gbazango area of Kubwa have been arrested in connection with the murder, the pastor said. He said he desires the killers to repent and join her in heaven.

“My desire is that our persecutors get to know God – our desire is to see God arresting them one by one to confess Jesus Christ,” Pastor Elisha said. “You know when Jesus Christ saves their souls, Satan and hell will lose. If we desire that those who persecute us should die, then we are increasing the population of hell. The Bible says there is rejoicing in heaven when a sinner repents.”

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Converts From Islam In Malaysia Detained In Faith Purification Centers

July 14, 2016 (Morning Star News) – Converts to non-Islamic faiths in Malaysia can be detained for more than three months in “Faith Purification Centers.”

While some converts are arbitrarily arrested and sent to the centers, detention in one of the three camps is “slowly gaining preference among sharia judges in Malaysia” as an alternative to prison sentencing, Mohd Al Adib Samuri of the National University of Malaysia wrote in 2013.

It is difficult to find descriptions of life in the centers, but one former detainee’s account, smuggled out of Malaysia and published in India, describes how she was taken from her workplace, interrogated, and then placed in one of the religious rehabilitation centers – all on the same day, and without legal representation or court proceedings.

The young woman reported that when she asked for a lawyer, authorities told her she didn’t need one.

Supposedly there to be “re-educated,” she was surprised to find nothing was actually taught, according to her account in “Pearls of Great Price” by R. Hunt (OM Press India 2010, reprinted 2014). The warden and staff quickly discovered that she knew more about Islam than they did, and instead of teaching anything, they tried to entice her back to Islam with the “charm approach,” the author notes.

“Folk Islam, with its attendant black magic, was in play here,” Hunt writes.

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Deep Love, Indescribable Pain For Family Of Slain Evangelist In Nigeria

Former Imam In Eastern Uganda Loses Home, Family, Work After Turning To Christ

NAIROBI, Kenya, July 21, 2016 (Morning Star News) – A 53-year-old man in eastern Uganda sits alone in a small shanty after losing his family, house and business because he left Islam for Christianity.

Muslim relatives drove Kuluseni Iguru Tenywa, a former imam, from his ancestral home the night of June 27 in Budhagali village, Jinja District. Led by his brother-in-law, 45-year-old Isa Nsaja, the relatives gathered outside Tenywa’s house.

“I heard people talking outside my house around 8 p.m., saying that they wanted to take away my life and, ‘We cannot watch the whole family turning to Christianity,’” Tenywa told Morning Star News.

He escaped through a back door.

“I had to flee that night, leaving my entire family behind,” said the father of four children, ages 10, 12, 14 and 17.

Tenywa said an evil spirit had been tormenting him for many years before he visited Elim Church in his village on May 28.

“I was prayed for in the power of Isa [Jesus] and invited him into my heart, which broke the strength of the evil spirit that was troubling me,” he said. “I remember my vision got blurred and I felt faint. The pastor authoritatively, using some commanding words in Isa’s name, finally delivered me.”

When the story of Tenywa’s conversion reached his family and other relatives, they became incensed and told him to go back to Islam because it was the religion of his clan, he said. Tenywa told them he could not deny what Jesus had done for him.

“Since then they started harassing me, taking me for a nobody at home, including my wife, Fatiyah, and children,” he said. “Fatiyah started provoking me. My wife even refused to give me food and began calling me an infidel.”

Tenywa continued sharing fellowship at Elim Church Budhagali, further enraging his relatives, who on June 6 damaged his red pepper plantation and store and stopped him from cultivating his portion of land. He registered a complaint with the Local Council 1 chairperson, who intervened without effect.

Now without land and the food it provided, Tenywa has no work, no meals and no wife and children. Family members so opposed his new-found faith they had tried to cast spells on him.

“The family even tried to bewitch me,” he said. “But God protected me.”

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Persecution News

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PRISONER NAME LOCATION ARRESTED REVISED

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Pastors Rata and Taour Sudan December 2015 December 2015

Pastor Telahoon Nogosi Kassa Rata, a leader in the Khartoum North Evangelical Church, and two leaders of the Sudan Church of Christ, Hassan Abduraheem Kodi Taour and Kuwa Shamal were arrested in December 2015. While Pastor Rata and Pastor Taour remain imprisoned, Kuwa Shamal has since been released but has been required to report to the Sudanese Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) every day. No charges against Pastor Rata and Pastor Taour have been brought, despite their being in prison for nearly five months.

Pastor Rata is the leader of the Christian student movement FOUCS and also head of the mission office of the Khartoum North Evangelical Church. Last December the NISS visited his home and confiscated mobile phones and laptops. Rata was away but the officials told his parents that he was required to report to the NISS office the following day. Pastor Rata reported to the office as requested, after which he never returned home.

A few days later Rata’s parents were able to visit him in prison where he informed them that he was being treated well. Requests to see their son again were all denied until permission was granted in March. The pastor is being held in the Kober prison in Khartoum; he is in good physical condition considering the circumstances.

A lawyer has requested access to Rata and Taour. However, the public prosecutor has announced that the two men are still being detained by the NISS and can have no contact until the case is transferred to Pastor Rata Pastor Taour the public prosecutor.

Prisoner Profile

Mushunguli in Somalia The Mushunguli are said to have descended from fugitive slaves who escaped from their Somali masters in northeast Tanzania around 1840. Many migrated to Somalia in search of security from the slave-trade. Mainstream Somalis look down upon them because of their slave origins. Traditionally, the Mushunguli were farmers and they formed a "caste" group of Somali minorities known as the jareer or jirir.

What Are Their Beliefs?

Primarily Muslim (approximately 99%) and 1% Christian.

Ministry Obstacles

Somalia is not a hospitable place for Christian outsiders to live and work.

What Are Their Needs

Pray for the few Christians among the Mushunguli tribe, that they will find each other, and fellowship together. Pray they will understand well how to know and follow Christ, and will faithfully follow him.

Pray these people will be able to care for their families, and live in safety and peace.

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Mongour in China

Although the Mongour have been officially included as part of the Tu nationality, they speak a very different language and possess a

Unreached People Groups separate identity from the Tu in other locations. As one researcher

explains, "The Tu call themselves Mongol, except those living in Minhe, who form a minority, where the word is pronounced Mongour. This term has mistakenly been used by some Western scholars as the general name for all Tu."

What Are Their Beliefs?

Two types of shamans are active among the Mongour. "White shamans" are used to heal sickness, while "black shamans" bring vengeance on enemies. Another highly regarded religious figure is the kurtain. This is a person who allows himself to be possessed by an evil Daoist spirit.

Buddhism: 70%; Ethnic Religions: 29.97%; Christianity: .03%

What Are Their Needs:

By the 1920s Catholic missionaries were active in the Mongour region, but no church remains today. Most Mongour can read. Missionary Frank Laubach issued a warning to the Church in the 1930s: "Millions in China will soon be reading. Are we going to give them reading matter? Will they be flooded with the message of Christ or with atheism? Will they read love or hate? This is the most stupendous, most arresting, most ominous fact, perhaps on this planet."

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Persecution News Page 6 of 8

Country Prisoner Link

China Alimujiang Yimiti http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_185_profile.html

China Lacheng Ren http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_228_profile.html

China Yang Rongli http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_199_profile.html

China Huang Quirui http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_244_profile.html

China Li Jiatao http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_243_profile.html

Egypt Mohammed Hegazy http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_241_profile.html

Eritrea Dr. Kiflu Gebremeskel http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_159_profile.html

Eritrea Haile Nayzgi http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_142_profile.html

Eritrea Kidane Weldou http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_146_profile.html

Iran Behnam Irani http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_218_profile.html

Iran Farshid Fathi http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_221_profile.html

Iran Ebrahim Firouzi http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_246_profile.html

Kazakhstan Yklas Kabduakasov http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_245_profile.html

Pakistan Asia Bibi http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_197_profile.html

Pakistan Imran Ghafur http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_204_profile.html

Uzbekistan Tohar Haydarov http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_205_profile.html

Vietnam Nguyen Van Ly http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_219_profile.html

Story Link

Blasphemy Law In Pakistan Claims Another Victim http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-14

5 Pakistani Christians Released, 2 Jailed For Blasphemy For Calling Pastor A Prophet

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-15

California Church Frees 4500 Christian Slaves In Pakistan, Sees Two Muslim Leaders Come To Jesus

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-16

Imprisoned Christian In Iran Hopes For Appeal; Inmate Returns After Medical Leave

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-17

What Would Happen To You If You Didn’t Observe Ramadan http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-18

Do What You Like To Us: We Won’t Leave Christ http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-19

17-Year-Old Christian Woman In Pakistan Raped During Muslim Celebration Of Eid Al-Fitr

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-20

Prisoner List

Additional Stories

Persecution News

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Ref Link

1 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-01

2 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-02

3 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-03

4 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-04

5 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-05

6 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-06

7 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-07

8 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-08

9 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-09

10 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-10

11 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-11

12 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-12

13 http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-13

Story Link

Dramatic Evidence - Christian Martrdom

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-21

N.Korea: Martyred For Christ http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-22

Tribute To Those Who Served The Lord, And Those Who Lost Their Lives For The Sake Of Christ

http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-23

Bounchan http://tiny.cc/PN-Aug2016-24

Soundcloud – Voice Of The Martyrs

http://tinycc/PN-SC-VOM

Links Extreme Devotion South East Asia: Hmong Christians

“They stabbed one believer through the mouth with a long knife and poured boiling water down the throat of another who was caught with a Bible. An entire family had been drowned.”

Believers in the Hmong tribe of Southeast Asia agreed to give their testimony on videotape. They wanted to encourage Christians in the West. One Hmong Christian shared: “The Communist authorities feel threatened because so many Hmong people have become Christians. They beat the Christians to try to force them to return to their worship of evil spirits.” “The local police forbade us to become Christians. They threatened to put us in jail and even kill us,” a woman added. “But if we have to die for Christ’s sake, we are willing.” These believers are willing to put themselves in even greater danger to let the world know they are standing strong in the face of persecution. The Hmong tribe is the largest of Southeast Asia and is experiencing the greatest growth of Christianity. It is also one of the most persecuted people groups. Another woman said, “I thank God that we have remained strong. I do believe that the persecution is just a test of our faith in Christ. It brings out the true riches. It brings out the silver and the gold. Just pray that we will be faithful to the end.”

China: Kati Li

The visitors secretly and quietly arrived at the home of the elderly Chinese woman. They were escorted behind a curtain and then crawled over one hundred yards through a long, dark tunnel that opened up into two small cave-like rooms.

In one of the rooms, a nineteen-year-old Christian girl named Kati Li operated a small, primitive press. For months at a time, Kati would work in this cave, printing illegal books and other Christian material. If discovered, she would no longer be able to show her true identity in public. But as the secret press produced more books and tracts, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) became suspicious and began to question the villagers. Those who knew of the press were unwilling to cooperate. Finally, angered by the lack of cooperation, the PSB began to use dynamite and blow up each house in the village until they finally arrived at the old woman’s home. The cave was discovered and the printing press confiscated. The workers had escaped beforehand, however, unharmed. To this day, Kati Li and the other workers remain in hiding. If found, they would be immediately imprisoned and possibly executed. They will never be able to see their friends and family members again. But Kati’s work and testimony live on through the books and tracts she produced. To this day they are read by thousands of Chinese Christians.

Mark Galli

I’ve come to believe that God, in his wisdom, allows martyrdom in every generation in part because, without them, the reality of Christ’s death for us becomes increasingly blurry. . . . As we look at [the martyrs], the mist that sometimes enshrouds first-century Golgotha is burned away, and we see . . . the Lord nailed to the cross.

A Sudanese Christian

We pray for the government of Sudan but thank God for it, too. Thanks to its policies and its war against Christians - the terror, the threats, the imprisonment -look at how the church has grown. Look at what God has allowed us to do here in the middle of this! Look at how many are turning to Christ.

“Thou shalt not be a victim.

Thou shalt not be a perpetrator.

But, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

Yehuda Bauer, Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust

Videos

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Martyr’s Profile

Rev. John Rough

This pious martyr was a Scotchman: at the age of 17, he entered himself as one of the order of Black Friars, at Stirling, in Scotland. He had been kept out of an inheritance by his friends, and he took this step in revenge for their conduct to him. After being there sixteen years, Lord Hamilton, Earl of Arran, taking a liking to him, the archbishop of St. Andrew's induced the provincial of the house to dispense with his habit and order; and he thus became the Earl's chaplain. He remained in this spiritual employment a year, and in that time God wrought in him a saving knowledge of the truth; for which reason the Earl sent him to preach in the freedom of Ayr, where he remained four years; but finding danger there from the religious complexion of the times, and learning that there was much gospel freedom in England, he travelled up to the duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector of England, who gave him a yearly salary of twenty pounds, and authorized him, to preach at Carlisle, Berwick, and Newcastle, where he married. He was afterward removed to a benefice at Hull, in which he remained till the death of Edward VI.

In consequence of the tide of persecution then setting in, he fled with his wife to Friesland, and at Nordon they followed the occu-pation of knitting hose, caps, &c. for subsistence. Impeded in his business by the want of yarn, he came over to England to procure a quantity, and on Nov. 10th, arrived in London, where he soon heard of a secret society of the faithful, to whom he joined himself, and was in a short time elected their minister, in which occupation he strengthened them in every good resolution. Dec. 12th, through the information of one Taylor, a member of the society, Mr. Rough, with Cuthbert Symson and others, was taken up in the Saracen's Head, Islington, where, under the pretext of coming to see a play, their religious exercises were holden. The queen's vice-chamberlain conducted Rough and Symson before the council, in whose presence they were charged with meeting to celebrate the communion. The council wrote to Bonner and he lost no time in this affair of blood. In three days he had him up, and on the next (the 20th) resolved to condemn him. The charges laid against him were, that he, being a priest, was married, and that he had rejected the service in the Latin tongue. Rough wanted not arguments to reply to these flimsy tenets. In short, he was degraded and condemned.

Mr. Rough, it should be noticed, when in the north, in Edward the VIth's reign, had saved Dr. Watson's life, who afterward sat with bishop Bonner on the bench. This ungrateful prelate, in return for the kind act he had received, boldly accused Mr. Rough of being the most pernicious heretic in the country. The godly minister reproved him for his malicious spirit; he affirmed that, during the thirty years he had lived, he had never bowed the knee to Baal; and that twice at Rome he had seen the pope borne about on men's shoulders with the false-named sacrament carried before him, presenting a true picture of the very antichrist; yet was more reverence shown to him than to the wafer, which they accounted to be their God. "Ah?" said Bonner, rising up, and making towards him, as if he would have torn his garment, "hast thou been at Rome, and seen our holy father the pope, and dost thou blaspheme him after this sort?" This said, he fell upon him, tore off a piece of his beard, and, that the day might begin to his own satisfaction, he ordered the object of his rage to be burnt by half past five the following morning.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs