Dear friends and family in Christ, 1) We at CTFM praise God for the completion of our new building settlement as we have now received the key to our new…
Teresa Neumann (Nov 5, 2013) "God is showing me that He has chosen Asia as the epicenter for the next might move of God—[He] has heard the cries of the…
Last week’s gospel festival in Makassar, Indonesia, was planned as an outreach to the 2.6 million-strong Makassar people with less than 500 believers. No one could have predicted the outcome—capacity crowds, amazing healings, death threats and on the last day Peter Youngren being called to the police headquarters to be interrogated for ‘blasphemy against Islam,’ a crime that carries a five-year prison sentence.
After pressure from Muslim extremists and with only one day to go until the festival, the city mayor canceled the permit for the event to be held on the huge open grounds in the center of the city. It seemed that all was lost, but God had other plans.
“In spite of everything that happened, this has been one of the most amazing weeks in 30 years of gospel ministry because of how God turned this around,” Youngren says.
The Youngren ministry has conducted 26 gospel festivals in Indonesia since the year 2000, and only twice has a stadium or outdoor venue been canceled due to security reasons.
“The other two times we felt a sense of loss that we had missed an opportunity to present the gospel, but this time was different,” explains Youngren.
John L. Allen Jr. 5 October 2013- The Spectator
Imagine if correspondents in late 1944 had reported the Battle of the Bulge, but without explaining that it was a turning point in the second world war. Or what if finance reporters had told the story of the AIG meltdown in 2008 without adding that it raised questions about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that could augur a vast financial implosion?
Most people would say that journalists had failed to provide the proper context to understand the news. Yet that’s routinely what media outlets do when it comes to outbreaks of anti-Christian persecution around the world, which is why the global war on Christians remains the greatest story never told of the early 21st century.
In recent days, people around the world have been appalled by images of attacks on churches in Pakistan, where 85 people died when two suicide bombers rushed the Anglican All Saints Church in Peshawar, and in Kenya, where an assault on a Catholic church in Wajir left one dead and two injured.
Those atrocities are indeed appalling, but they cannot truly be understood without being seen as small pieces of a much larger narrative. Consider three points about the landscape of anti-Christian persecution today, as shocking as they are generally unknown. According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular observatory based in Frankfurt, Germany, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet.
According to the Pew Forum, between 2006 and 2010 Christians faced some form of discrimination, either de jure or de facto, in a staggering total of 139 nations, which is almost three-quarters of all the countries on earth. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, an average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade. That works out to 11 Christians killed somewhere in the world every hour, seven days a week and 365 days a year, for reasons related to their faith.
Charisma News – 9/5/2013 Gina Meeks
Evangelist Nick Vujicic shared an inspirational story of “divine appointment” on his Facebook page Tuesday.
Vujicic, who was born with no arms or legs, is in the midst of a two-week Christian outreach tour of several Asian countries.
With a photo of the family in the capital city of Malaysia, Vujicic begins, “Friends, I have an incredible story to share about a family I met in Kuala Lumpur.”
He goes on to say the family drove seven hours to meet him but found the event was filled when they arrived.
“After patiently waiting for more than 4 hours for us to leave the venue, they managed to track down which van I was in,” he continues. “That in itself was no easy task, as there was quite a bit of commotion exiting the event, and our convoy was made up of three different vans which carry the team and our gear.
“They followed behind us, planning on saying hello whenever we reached our destination. When we stopped for fuel, they came running out of their car. Our host, Joshua, saw them coming up to the van and said to me, ‘Wow, you’ll never believe what I’m seeing. There’s a family with a girl who has no arms and no legs, and they’re coming to see you.’
The Sundaily – Posted on 27 August 2013
JAKARTA – The Miss World beauty pageant will go ahead in Indonesia next month despite objections from the country’s leading Islamic federation, an organizer said Tuesday.
“We have obtained support from the government so there are no obstacles,” said Syafril Nasution, corporate affairs director for RCTI, the organizer and official broadcaster of the event.
“Since the beginning, we have made it clear that the event will not feature bikinis, or make use of anything that is against religious and cultural values,” he said.
“So we don’t really understand why there are still objections.”
Amidhan Sabrah, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema, said it was opposed to the event because it objectified women.
“This kind of events turn women into a commodity and that is against Islam,” he said.