Displaying items by tag: Asia

Thousands of Palestinians have gathered along Israel's border for a six-week protest. The situation has escalated, and Israel has doubled its troops. Multiple deaths and hundreds wounded make this the deadliest conflict since 2014. Palestinians have long demanded their right to return to the land they claim. Gaza Strip and West Bank are some of the world's most contested lands. But take a minute to look beyond politics, land, and religion. Stop to see the millions who call this land home - people Jesus loves and died to save. Life in Gaza is dominated by conflict, war and extremist violence. In addition to viewing Israel as their oppressor, their own leadership oppresses them, but, above all, they suffer immense spiritual oppression. Yet Hope was born in the West Bank a little over 2,000 years ago. His name is Jesus. Peace is only possible through Him in some of the most contested and contentious lands on earth.

Brushing aside Russia’s pledge to repel any Syria attack, President Trump used Twitter to put Moscow on notice that a military response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons is on the way, telling Russia to ‘get ready’ as missiles will be coming, telling him he ‘shouldn’t be partners with a ‘“Gas Killing Animal” who kills his people and enjoys it!’ Although Russia, Syria and Iran forcefully deny that chemical weapons were deployed on the rebel-held city of Douma, the US and its allies claim that they have evidence validating the charge. The precise timing and nature of the attack remains unknown. Recently the White House spoke of building support for an international response to Syria that would emphasise ‘the use of chemical weapons is a red-line no nation should feel comfortable crossing’. Currently, France and Britain are in consultation with the US to coordinate a response to the use of chemical weapons. See also ‘UK: Upholding Chemical Weapons Treaty’ above. 

Missionaries in north-eastern China are still engaged in the dangerous work of spreading the Gospel across the border to North Korea, even though at least ten missionaries and pastors have mysteriously died in recent years. They keep at it because they believe their converts will help change religious practice in the cloistered North, which equates Christianity with US-led Western imperialism. The border missionaries provide their North Korean visitors with room and board, and those escaping with places to hide. In return, they ask them to memorise Christian prayers and covertly share what they've learned when they return home.

Three Japanese whaling ships returned to their home port in Shimonoseki on 30 March with 333 minke whales killed in Antarctica. They attracted international protests and condemnation. Supposedly, these sea mammals were harpooned ‘for scientific purposes’. The International Court of Justice ordered a suspension of Japan's ‘scientific whaling’ in 2014, which led the country to cut its whaling programme. Minke whales are categorised as great whales, and commercial hunting of great whales was banned in 1986. Japan wants whaling to be permitted once more, and its steadfast participation in whale hunts continues to provoke protests worldwide. In its defence, Tokyo points out that the International Whaling Commission allows whales to be killed for ‘research’ purposes.

The ‘March of Return’ in the Gaza Strip began on Good Friday. 30,000 Gazans overwhelmed the border security fence, and the resultant clashes with Israeli forces resulted in 18 dead and 1,400 injured. Israel has been accused of using disproportionate force against what became a vast violent march. Hamas has called for mass demonstrations to continue for seven weeks. There are fears that this could turn into war on several fronts. Hamas is indebted to Iran. If major conflicts erupt in Gaza, Iran might order Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria to attack the Jewish State. The march goes beyond resistance. A situation is erupting, and political issues in the region have resurfaced. Violent Israel-Gaza border activity was described locally as ‘peaceful protests being infiltrated by terrorists’ and ‘Israel exercising its right to defend its sovereignty and protect citizens from terrorism’.

Proposals for dialogue between North Korean and American national leaders in the midst of increasing tensions, conflicts, and fear of war have inspired International Prayer Connections (IPC) to call on Christians to pray for a just and peaceful resolution. Pray for wisdom for political, diplomatic and military leaders as they work through differences toward a goal of peace, security and freedom. Ask God to bless the efforts of citizens who seek to bridge the vast differences between these countries. Pray that, however profound the differences between their governments, Americans and North Koreans will not view each other as enemies, but on the contrary desire only the best for each other. May the decades of business, humanitarian and education contact between the two countries now bear fruit by putting a human face on those who are characterised as enemies.

Historically, Saudi Arabia has a hatred for Israel and Jews. No Jew may live in the kingdom, which has never opened diplomatic relations with Israel. For 70 years no Israeli passenger planes have been allowed over Saudi airspace. But there are now signs that this hostile stance may be cautiously changing. The Saudis have a ‘peace plan’ related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and recently there have been rumours of secret communications between the two countries. When President Trump made his maiden trip abroad last May, his first stop was in Saudi Arabia. From there his plane made one of the few flights ever allowed from Arabia to Israel. Netanyahu recently spoke of Israeli relations with the Arab world (including Saudi Arabia) as ‘best ever.’ As of April 2018, flights from India over the Arabian Peninsula will take place three times a week.

Impoverished families trafficked from central Indian states are forced to make thousands of clay bricks daily in appalling conditions. Victims don’t speak out due to intimidation. Officials can’t ascertain the truth. Fortunately, one 13-year-old boy told officials how he worked nine hours a day. His courage emboldened others. Teenage girls described carrying heavy stacks of bricks on their heads. A single mother shared the agony of not getting medical care for her sick child. Soon the local authorities had enough information to complete a rescue operation and bring the victims to safety. On 23 March, IJM reported, ‘nearly 150 children, women and men were rescued from bonded labour slavery in a single Indian brick kiln. Years ago, local leaders would not admit slavery still existed, let alone help families in need. Today the families are receiving medical care, food, ID cards, police protection and release certificates that break any bonds to former owners.’

Evangelical Call to Prayer for Peace on the Korean Peninsula March27, 2018

As American Christians with diverse approaches to force and nonviolence and yet all committed to pursuing peaceful relations among people and nations, we unite in prayer for permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. We do this mindful of the millions of lives, including more than 230,000 Americans, that would be threatened by an escalation of conflict there.

We are heartened by proposals for dialogue between our national leaders at a time when increasing tensions seemed to be marching our countries perilously in the direction of greater conflict, if not war. We call on all Christians everywhere to join us in praying for a just and peaceful resolution.

We pray for wisdom for our political, diplomatic and military leaders as they work across differences toward a goal of peace, security and freedom. We pray that God will bless the efforts of citizens who seek to bridge the vast differences between our countries.

Decades of people-to-people contact between North Korea and the United States- through business, educational and other humanitarian exchanges - have put a human face on those who are sometimes characterized by one another as enemies. So, we pray with empathy and in a spirit of friendship, noting the image of God in every human being. However profound the differences between our governments, we do not view the North Korean people as our enemies. On the contrary, we desire only the best for the people of North Korea.

Most of the nearly two million Korean-Americans are Christians, and many belong to evangelical churches. This community too has contact with North Koreans through humanitarian and family
ties. South Korea is also home to many evangelical churches, including some of the world’slargest. Many of these Korean brothers and sisters have been praying for North Korea for years and we humbly join them. These connections with Koreans in North Korea, South Korea and the United States strengthen our resolve to seek God for mercy and, so far as it depends on us, to pursue peace between our respective countries.

Sincerely,

Leith Anderson – President -National Association of Evangelicals
HyepinIm
President/CEO & Founder
Faith and Community Empowerment
Dr. John P Hartley Chair
Evangelicals for Peace
Rev. Johnnie Moore Founder
The Kairos Company
Nikki Toyama-Szeto Executive Director Evangelicals for Social Action

More info at:http://www.evangelicalsforpeace.org/northkorea


PRAY: Let us continue to pray that the expected upcoming meeting between President Trump with Kim Jong Un will be used of the Lord to end the conflict, denuclearize the Korean peninsula and even to make possible the reunification of the two Koreas.

(Image:Route of AI139 passenger flight from New Delhi to Tel Aviv 22 March 2018)

From the evening of her re-birth 70 years ago, Israel, has been always keenly aware and wary of the vast desert kingdom spreading southeastward from her western neighbor Jordan.

Six months previous, Saudi Arabia had cast their vote against the UN Partition Plan paving the way for the birth of the Jewish State.  Now, hours after Israel’s Declaration of Independence, as five Arab armies began their invasion to stamp out the new state, allied under the Egyptian army was a mass of soldiers sent from the Arabian Peninsula. 

Twenty-five years later, the Saudis would again send troops to support Egypt in the 1973 War. Afterwards, although there have been no further military overtures, Saudi Arabia has continued to be seen as an enemy nation, one with a hatred for Israel and Jews (By law, no Jew is allowed to live in the Kingdom).  They have never opened diplomatic relations with Israel. It was with uneasiness that Israel witnessed in 2010 the US sale of $60 billion worth of F-15 fighters, attack helicopters and advanced munitions to this unfriendly nation, some of whose borders lie only minutes by air from our capital. 

For 70 years no Israeli passenger planes have been allowed over Saudi airspace (When, some years ago, the authors travelled to Thailand, our plane was forced to fly southwards along the Arava through the Gulf of Aqaba, then down the length of the Red Sea—with enemy state Sudan to the west, Saudi Arabia to the East— on southward to just before the Horn of Africa, where we finally made a sharp left turn eastwards out over the Arabian Sea towards India—

In recent years, there have been signs that this official stance of hostility may be, at some levels anyway, beginning cautiously to change. The Saudis came out with a “peace plan” related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More recently, rumors began to surface of secret communications between the two countries.  When the newly-elected President Trump made his maiden trip abroad last May, his first stop was to Saudi Arabia—from there his plane made one of the few flights ever allowed from Arabia to Israel. 

With the remarkable reforms which appear to be attending the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Al Saud, an unprecedented warming of relations with Israel has begun to be spoken of as a legitimate possibility (PM Netanyahu recently spoke of Israeli relations with the Arab world—obviously including Saudi Arabia—as “best ever.”  As of this week, the flights from India over the Arabian peninsula will continue three times a week.

Then this past Thursday night, history was made.  For the first time in Israel’s 70 year history, a passenger plane from another country was allowed to travel the length of the Arabian Peninsula (see map above) en-route to Tel Aviv.  The Air India Boeing 787 from New Delhi touched down at Ben Gurion Airport at 10:15 p.m.  Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz described the occasion as “the first time that there is an official connection between the state of Israel and Saudi Arabia.”  Of its enormous significance, one Israeli analyst observed that even in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty (considered for years a prerequisite for relations between Israel and the Arab world), “this shows you can have small gestures that are of real meaning.”

The most generally held explanation for this thaw in relations is that the Sunni Saudi government is eyeing the expansion of its Shi’ite arch-enemy Iran and its nearness to acquisition of nuclear weapons, and is therefore open to (at least temporarily) making an alliance with the Israelis, whom the Iranian Ayatolla’s have repeatedly vowed to annihilate.  While not discounting this as a factor, we sense it is essential that we seek the Lord as to what He—Lord of the Nations—is doing.  Of course there is war in the heavenlies, with evil powers and principalities over nations at war against the decrees of the Elyon—the Most High—on behalf of His redemptive purposes on the earth.

We believe that through the present year a season of grace is being extended in which nations are being granted opportunity for making choices as related to their alignments with God’s purposes in His covenant land and people Israel.  How they choose will significantly determine their pathway in the season ahead—whether for blessing and awakening or for darkness and great deception and delusion.  During this year, there will be nations whose past histories would have indicated them to be last in embracing Israel, which will turn towards here—others with reputations as friendly will turn away.

During this window of opportunity, the determined efforts of intercessors, though small in number, may have great influence in swaying the stance of their leaders towards that which is good.  It is remarkable that we see the leadership of Egypt, with whom Arabia allied strongly in both the 1948 and 1973 wars against Israel, slowly but steadily engaging in more friendly relations with her.  We believe this is being surely facilitated through the prayers of millions of Christian believers and the many houses of prayer in that land who love and are praying fervently towards the fulfillment of the Isaiah 19 “Highway” which God says will connect “Egypt My people” with “Israel My inheritance.” 

If God has such plans for Egypt, where His people suffered bondage for 400 years, might He not also have redemptive plans for the Arabian Peninsula, where it is appears that these same Children of Israel may have wandered for 40 years in the desert? (In fact, in the opinion of a growing number of Biblical scholars, many factors point towards the very Mountain where the LORD came down and spoke with Moses as lying, not in the “Sinai Peninsula,” but in that area of Midian on the “back side” (i.e. the Arabian side) of the Gulf of Aqaba). 

Might not this area of the world in which the delusion of Islam arose—a delusion which holds vast throngs of people throughout the nations in a bondage not unlike that typified by Egypt before the Exodus—might not this area where His manifest presence once moved among His people Israel be one in which the God of Salvation longs to begin releasing freedom to captivities from evil—even from its very source?  Perhaps this itself sounds delusional.  But God, whose greatness will dwell in Jerusalem, is beginning to shake things—“Let the peoples tremble…let the earth shake, YHWH is great in Zion, He is exalted above ALL peoples…They SHALL praise Your great and awesome name: Holy is He!” (Psalm 99:1-3).  This includes those in captivity to darkness in Saudi Arabia! 

Some of the Body of Messiah in Israel is using the shifts we sense occurring to stir us to pray for His life and blessing to spread over this great enemy from our past.  After all, a part of our call, from the beginning, has been that through the seed of Abraham, every family and nation will find blessing!  (Genesis 12:3; 22:18). 

Will you join with us!

PLEASE PRAY:

* That the Spirit which is drawing a new generation in Saudi Arabia towards regarding Israel with favor, will increase - that the leaders there would respond positively to this Spirit.

* That the “true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every human being” (John 1:9), will illumine hearts of Muslims throughout the Arabian Peninsula to the truth that Issa-Yasuah-Yeshua-Jesus who was born in Bethlehem is the divine Son of God and saviour of the World (We personally have heard testimonies of former Muslims who were illumined by this Light while on the Haj in Mecca itself!).

* For Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Al Saud, that He will be protected in mind and body; that the Power which has already been at work in him towards releasing freedoms towards women, and other areas of his society which have for centuries lain in unjust bondage and oppression, that this Power will reveal itself in a personal way.

* For Israel’s leaders, to regard the initiatives in Saudi Arabia with wisdom, discernment and grace.  That God will work His alliances between the two countries out in His way and timing.

* That the grace and favor which is presently linking India and Israel will be released over the Arabian peninsula over which their flights are now free to take place!

“In world first, Air India crosses Saudi airspace to Israel”: AFP (Reprinted in The Times of Israel: 22 March 2018).

Martin & Norma Sarvis

Jerusalem