What next for Venezuela?
01 Feb 2019
With their country in turmoil, both Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó claim to be president, and neither has any incentive to back down. Guaidó has huge popular support, and is backed by many western powers (including the EU), but has little control over the levers of power. Although Maduro is still backed by allies such as Russia, Turkey, and Cuba, he is under unprecedented international pressure. Military top brass still support him, but there have been defections by junior officers. If he is to survive, he will need to keep the army loyal, which means finding a way to keep the ordinary soldiers paid. Another solution - but not one that would benefit ordinary people - is a military coup, but that might well mean a return to kleptocracy, mismanagement and authoritarianism. In any case, a change at the top would not placate the opposition, now emboldened and set on restoring democracy. Maduro has nothing to gain and everything to lose from stepping down, as he would probably be called to account for his authoritarian rule. Guaidó has promised an amnesty for any members of the armed forces who ‘contribute to the reestablishment of democratic order’. Another possibility, even if very unlikely, would appear to be outright conflict with the USA. Donald Trump, who publicly supports Guaidó, has just imposed sanctions on the country’s state-owned oil company.
Gender-based violence against Christians
01 Feb 2019
Afghanistan, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, and Somalia are the five worst places for women to live, according to the 2019 World Watch List of ‘50 most difficult places to be a Christian’. The list reports that, in contexts which restrict women’s legal rights to equal representation, minority Christian communities are especially vulnerable to having their women and girls sexually attacked, forcibly married, subjected to domestic abuse, stripped of their inheritance, or even killed - all with impunity. Sexual violence is used as a means of power and control against Christian women. Discrimination based on stereotypical roles of men and women is one of the most widespread human rights violations worldwide. It can assume cruel forms and deprives many women and girls of their rights to life, freedom, and respect for human dignity. In Afghanistan, ‘women found to be married to new converts from Islam and sharing their husbands’ Christian faith, are punished by being raped. The same happens with children of converts who are at risk of child abuse.’
Brazil: dam collapse
01 Feb 2019
On 25 January Brumadinho dam, at an iron ore mine in south-eastern Brazil, collapsed. This caused a sea of sludge to bury a workers’ cafeteria, homes, hotels, cars, buses, and a train. At the time of writing, the death toll is 99, with at least another 250 unaccounted for. 192 people were rescued alive. The chance of finding anyone alive now is minimal. Israeli engineers, doctors, and members of an underwater missions unit joined the search team. The Brazilian police arrested three employees of the giant mining company Vale, and two engineers working for a German company which inspected the dam last year. Many residents were evacuated as a safety measure. The first funerals were held on 27 January. Having a body to bury may be a twisted privilege, with hundreds of people buried and colossal challenges to find them. Greenpeace said it was ‘a sad consequence’ of lessons not learned by the government and mining companies.
North Korea: secret money
01 Feb 2019
Lim II went to a construction site in Kuwait, where he worked day and night for five months, but was not paid. His salary was sent straight to Pyongyang. Over the years, an estimated 150,000 North Korean men and women have been recruited and sent abroad to work for the ruling Kim family. Toiling in factories and on construction sites around the world, they have generated billions of dollars for the pariah state. Reporters in a documentary met defectors who confirmed that the cash earned overseas was going directly to fund the development of the country’s nuclear missile programme. A former high-ranking official spoke of Office 39, which manages thousands of companies and factories overseas and provides half of the country's gross domestic product. ‘Our main goal was to make foreign cash, and this foreign cash business is a complete secret.’
Pakistan: Christians sentenced to death
01 Feb 2019
Two Christian brothers have been sentenced to death for blasphemy. Qaisar and Amoon Ayub have been held in jail since their arrest in 2014, allegedly for posting ‘disrespectful material’ on their website. A legal aid centre, CLAAS-UK, which represents the brothers, has said it plans to appeal the sentence, taking it to the Lahore High Court. CLAAS-UK stated on its website, ‘In this case the trial judge did not apply his judicious mind and convicted the accused in a very casual manner’. The story dates back to 2011 when Qaisar, following a quarrel at his office, started to receive death threats, and the brothers had to flee the country. They were arrested on charges of blasphemy on their return four years later. For their full story, click the ‘More’ button; also see
90% of CAR’s population are Christian; Islam is practised by 9%. All the people are suffering. As a new round of peace talks between armed groups and the government began on 22 January, the UN’s top humanitarian official in CAR warned that continued violence could push the country closer to famine. Around 2.9 million people (63% of the population) need humanitarian assistance and protection. Of those, 1.9 million require acute and immediate aid. Food security and protection are the main concerns. Increasing levels of violence drive the ongoing crisis, with near-constant conflict since 2012. Although a peace agreement was reached in 2013, rebels seized the capital two months later, forcing President Bozizé to flee. Rival militias have fought each other ever since. Much of the country is overrun with armed groups, despite the 2016 election of President Touadéra.
USA: dangerous deep freeze forecast
01 Feb 2019
All across the Midwest, preparations have been under way for a bone-deep, relentless chill called a polar vortex. Extreme cold, which is expected to break all records, has already been blamed for one death in Minnesota. Officer Kraig Kalka is spending his time driving between homeless shelters, arranging transportation for those stuck on the streets, and collecting blankets and hand warmers to dole out downtown for some of Madison's most vulnerable residents. ‘What we're going to see, I don't remember ever seeing something like that before.’ The cold has caused statewide declarations of emergency, school closures, postal service interruptions, and 1,000 airline flight cancellations. Diesel fuel can turn to gel, clogging vehicles' fuel filters and leading to breakdowns. If a bus falters on a rural route, the wait for help can be lengthy.
The Amazon is the mightiest river in world. It covers 40% of South America, 2.7 million square miles, discharging 209,000 cubic meters per second. It is composed of over 1100 tributaries. It is a powerful metaphor of what God wants the prayer and mission movement to be like-- flowing together in the same way to become an unstoppable force for breakthrough after breakthrough, for the evangelization and transformation of the nations. If Go 2020 is to succeed in mobilizing 100 million believers to pray and reach out to one billion unreached, hundreds if not thousands of prayer and mission networks and ministries must flow together, giving up some of our independence and identity for the greater good in order to become the Lord’s unstoppable force for the fulfillment of His Great Commission in our time.
Another helpful image about flowing together comes from the Gladiator movie when Maximus, the Roman general still incognito orders his rag tag group of individualistic fighters to “Stand together”. As they coordinated and fought together, they overcame a much stronger barbarian horde with all its superior weaponry, including chariots. In the same way, we are battling principalities and powers, facing massive spiritual and human opposition to the cause of Christ. There is no excuse for going our own way and doing our own thing when our General, the Lord Jesus Christ is telling us to “stand together”!
In assessing the tragic failure of his generation to evangelize the world by 1900, A.T. Pierson attributed this most of all to the lack of prevailing prayer.
"Every time the church has set herself to praying there have been stupendous movements in the mission world. If we should but transfer the stress of our dependence and emphasis from appeals to men to appeals to God-from trust in organization to trust in supplication-from confidence in methods to importunate prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit, we should see results more astounding than have yet been wrought."
The biggest shortcoming and danger of global campaigns like Go 2020 is that we will underestimate our need for united ongoing prayer. We can so easily begin to rely on human-conceived programs, plans and organization rather than following the early church’s example of starting with the Lord before mission activity. Acts 1:14 describes their culture of prayer that carried through the whole book of Acts and resulted in breakthrough after breakthrough in evangelism and cross-cultural mission. God wants and deserves to be the Senior Partner. We need to prayerfully submit to His guidance from start to finish and let Him open the way before us as Head of the Body, the General of a worldwide army of brothers and sisters, men, women and children that He wants to call and use to reach the unreached. Prayer and surrender is always prior to mission strategy and deployment.
The New Testament urges us to always start with intimacy with the Lord (John 15 “abide in me and I in you” so that we can go and “bear fruit that remains”.) Spiritual fruit along with divine strategy and guidance comes out of that dependent, intimate relationship. We are not wasting time seeking God in prayer. Jesus clearly commanded the early disciples in Acts 2 that they were first to “stay in Jerusalem and receive power from on high” before putting any plans or programs into operation. More than 30 times in the subsequent pages of Acts, as the early missionaries and evangelists sought God through united prayer, they experienced the intervention of His almighty Spirit, often in spectacular ways.
Missions and evangelism are supernatural endeavors and need supernatural partnership with the Holy Spirit. He will go before us to open doors, provide what we lack and above all arrange divine encounters with people whom He has prepared to come to Christ. They in turn will become His specially ordained instruments in their own cultural and language spheres.
Let’s therefore recover this dynamic of the early church. Start with God and those around us in prayer, then sharing the Gospel as He leads us. Cultivate the “ministry of availability”, both for people closest to us and those at ends of earth, the 4700 least reached people groups that are still largely cut off from hearing the Good News. As well as evangelizing our own neighborhoods and cities, let’s join many others in adopting each of these people groups for prayer, and help make sure they do not remain lost but get at least one opportunity to hear about the Lord of life! May the result be like the awesome Amazon, an unstoppable force for seeking and hearing from God, then carrying out evangelism, discipling, church planting, and other vital ministries for reaching all the remaining unreached peoples.
For more information and resources on prayer and mission to the unreached, please see www.joshuaproject.net.
Do watch, and share the links to these excellent new videos entitled ‘Reaching the Unreached – Prayer that Empowers Missions’ - that focus us on the need to pray for the 4,700 unreached peoples' groups. They were produced by the acclaimed Videographer / Director, Michael Lienau, a friend of IPC:
3 minute version: https://vimeo.com/311331983
9 minute version: https://vimeo.com/311342648
Prayer Triplets are a wonderful way of doing corporate prayer in an ongoing way focusing on those around us who need to come to Christ as well as for an unreached people group across the world. It is difficult by ourselves to maintain such a prayer focus but “a three-fold cord is not easily broken” as the Bible tells us.
Find two others who want to connect with the Lord for the harvest and begin to pray and then make yourselves available to share His Good News with others!
Pray in Triplets
- That we can all abide in the Vine (Christ), going deeper in intimacy, surrendering all that we are and want to do to Him and His purposes (John 15:4, 16)
- That we may have the “ministry of availability” to those around us now, not only those at the ends of the earth that are in our plans and strategies. (Jesus with individuals like Bartimaeus, Nicodemus, the woman with the flow of blood, the thief on the cross, etc.; Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Paul and Lydia.)
- That together we and others in the missions community can recover the early church’s dynamic culture of united prayer that led them into supernatural breakthroughs of God’s mighty working with great numbers coming to the Lord and Christianity, spreading eventually throughout the whole then known world. (Acts 1:4-5, 8; 4:31,33; 5:12, 16; 6:7)
- That all the 4700 least reached people groups (less than one believer per thousand among them) will be adopted by praying churches, organizations and individuals and rapidly reached with the Gospel.
- That the Lord will use Go 2020 as an effective rallying cry to the global Church that call 100 million believers into a lifestyle of focused prayer and outreach for the unreached around them and at the ends of the earth.
John Robb
IPC Chairman