600 or so mission leaders and others will gather to focus on the remaining 1347 unengaged unreached peoples that need to be adopted for prayer and mission.

Pray: for the organizers, especially Paul Eshleman who is battling some illness and is one of the main speakers.

Pray: that a new close convergence between the prayer and mission movements will happen and that all these UPGs will be adopted and reached even by 2025.

For more details, see http://www.finishingthetask.com

'"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind," and "your neighbour as yourself."' — Luke 10:27.

Context

The story of the Good Samaritan starts with Jesus’ commandments in this verse, as Jesus answers the questions of: 'What must we do to inherit eternal life?', and 'Who is my neighbour?' Loving God and loving our neighbour are commands to his followers, his people, his church.

After a horrendous series of beatings, being burnt and left naked to public humiliation a woman accused of witchcraft in Papua New Guinea said this: “Like a bent old cooking pot I laid there alone and nobody came to see me, because I was declared eating humans…” (from an interview led by Fr. Philip Gibbs, 2016). Her story recounts that neither the police, nor her family, nor even a doctor would come to help her.

Who is our neighbour and where are the ‘Good Samaritans’ addressing child witchcraft accusations?

Thank God

Even when situations look and are horrendous, there is light. Give thanks to God for the "countless acts of heroism, generosity and courage …often by strangers", reported by Dr Miranda Forsyth (who is working with Fr. Philip Gibbs to address witchcraft accusations in Papua New Guinea) as these ‘Good Samaritans’ intervene where others will not help.

Let us continue to give thanks for the groups of people SCWA and others are impacting across DRC, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, who are seeking to address witchcraft accusations, not by condemnation, but by bringing God’s love and justice into play.

Please Pray

Pray: that children will increasingly have a voice in their communities, nationally and internationally.

Pray: that God will allow his church to move from a position of sometimes colluding and encouraging fear in communities and harm to children, to a position where Christ’s church is seen to take the lead in ending accusations of witchcraft to children.

Pray: that God would heal communities, so that it would not take a stranger to stand up for the abused and rejected in any society, that hate and fear would be replaced by love and acts of kindness.

Pray: Giving thanks that our greatest role model, Jesus, became a stranger, so he could do exactly that.

Thank you for standing with us in our Standing in the Gap prayer campaign. Please continue to press on in prayer with us for the sake of the children and the glory of the name of Jesus. It would be great if you could share this latest bulletin with others in your prayer networks.

With much appreciation,

Susie Howe – Director
The Bethany Children's Trust

http://www.bethanychildrenstrust.org.uk/

More:http://stop-cwa.org/posts/prayer-bulletin-no6-2017

This week marked a century since one of the darkest chapters in human history began, and a truly evil worldview was put into practice.

One hundred years ago, Bolshevik revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, the seat of the Provisional Government of Russia. They also seized post offices, train stations, and telegraphs in the dead of night. When the people of Russia’s capital city awoke, they were in what Rhodes Scholar David Satter described as “a different universe.”

That universe was a communist one. Vladimir Lenin’s so-called “October Revolution,” which took place in November on the Gregorian calendar, sought to establish the first-ever Marxist state. After a lengthy civil war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged, marking one of the greatest setbacks Western Civilization has suffered since the fall of Rome. Communism would eventually rule one-third of the planet, condemning one-and-a-half billion people to lives under brutal, totalitarian governments, and leaving behind a trail of over 100 million corpses.

So many people died because, as Satter explains in The Wall Street Journal, the communist worldview sees the state as supreme, replacing God, Himself. It’s infallible, it transcends morality, and it demands absolute loyalty from its citizens.

Karl Marx taught that only such a state, acting for its people, could break the chains of economic oppression and private property, creating a “new man.” This type of person, depicted in Soviet propaganda posters with bulging muscles and steely eyes, would work willingly for the common good, seek only to advance the interests of his comrades, and usher in a worker’s paradise.

The communist ideal was nothing short of a godless eschatology—a Heaven on earth.

What we got instead was hell on earth. Through political purges, forced population transfers, manmade famines, gulags, and a so-called “Great Leap Forward,” dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot presided over some of the worst mass murders in human history, all directly motivated by the desire to bring about that communist paradise.

It wasn’t until Christmas 1991 that the darkness which had fallen on Russia in 1917 began to lift. The Soviet sickle and hammer descended over the Kremlin for the last time, quietly announcing the end of what President Reagan had dubbed the “evil empire.”

But for millions of people the world over, this godless worldview remained and remains a political reality. China’s forced abortions, Cuba’s political repression, and North Korea’s persecution of Christians are just some of the atrocities that have continued in communist countries since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And here in the United States, communist ideology enjoys a kind of immortality in our universities, where many professors openly identify as Marxists, and students sport those ever-popular Che Guevara t-shirts.

One recent survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that half of millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist democracy. More than 20 percent have a favorable view of Marx, and thirteen percent think of Joseph Stalin as a “hero.”

The only good news is that 71 percent of those surveyed couldn’t identify the correct definition of communism. They don’t understand what they’re praising.

As we look back on the aftermath of that October revolution, we should commit ourselves to teaching our kids, our friends, and whoever else will listen where communism belongs: squarely in the dustbin of history.

Perhaps the best way to commemorate communism’s 100th birthday is to pray that we can fully and finally bury this evil worldview in our lifetimes.

Pray: for effective education on the failed utopian promises of communism, as well as the results of its worldview on humankind.

Pray: that the scourge of communism will end on the earth.
Pray: for communist countries in the world including China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam.
Pray: for countries with strong communist influence including Nepal, Guyana and Moldova.

For video overviews of the above countries, visit http://prayercast.com/index.html

Find a BreakPoint radio station in your area – Click here: http://ambassadoradvertising.com/station-map/?program=126

ERIC METAXAS WITH SHANE MORRIS

Is a Door Opening for Christianity in Saudi Arabia?

(Worthy News) - Stunning political developments in Saudi Arabia have some wondering if the strict Muslim-ruled Kingdom could become more tolerant of Christianity.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has said he intends to return Saudi Arabia to "moderate Islam" and open the country to all faiths.

As part of his reform drive, dozens of officials – including 11 princes – have been arrested on corruption charges. The kingdom also says it has dismissed several thousand imams from mosques for spreading extremism.

The percentage of Saudi Arabian citizens who are Christians today is officially zero, because conversion from Islam to Christianity has long been punishable by death.

But it's estimated that between four and five percent of the population is Christian – mostly guest workers who are not allowed to worship openly.

Some are hopeful that change is coming.

"The days of a religious monopoly in Saudi Arabia are over," says Christian Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab to Christianity Today, "No more pushing Islam down every citizen's throat."

Andrea Zaki, president of the Protestant Churches of Egypt, said of the reform promises, "I hope it will lead Saudi Arabia and the region to a more open society."

But time will tell whether Prince Mohammed can bring real reform and religious pluralism to a nation that has known little to none of it since its founding.

More: http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2017/november/is-a-door-opening-for-christianity-in-saudi-arabia