Germany: anti-migrant protests and violence
23 Oct 2015
Every Monday evening thousands gather in front of Dresden’s Opera House carrying German flags and singing nationalist songs. One protester said he fears German traditions are being eroded by Muslims. Elsewhere violent attacks and hate speeches are exploding against asylum seekers. Der Spiegel reported a threefold increase in attacks compared to the same period last year. Last Friday night about a thousand people demonstrated in Heidenau against an expected arrival of refugees. The police intervened with tear gas grenades. The refugees are creating a kind of German martial law, where it has been necessary to use schools, gymnasiums and campsites as temporary accommodation centres. The attacks against refugee centres in Germany are so strong that Google deleted a map showing their locations, fearing hate crimes. On Wednesday a converted Christian migrant in a refugee centre was severely beaten up by an Afghan man, who declared that his conversion to Christianity was ‘a sin’.
Viktor Orban urged European leaders to change their immigration policies and involve voters in a debate about the continent's future; otherwise they face a political crisis. Hungary built a steel fence along its borders with Serbia and Croatia that was meant to turn migrants back from Europe, not divert them along a different path to Germany. Orban articulated his party's hard line against the tide of immigrants on state television. He said that European leaders had no mandate to let hundreds of thousands of migrants enter the EU with little or no control and destabilise Europe, saying, ‘We need to start the debate about the future of our continent honestly, without the muzzle of political correctness, without pretence, talking straight. The further migrants travel from their troubled countries, the more difficult it will be for them to return. They must remain in their region and humane conditions must be created for them there.’
Record number of Bibles given out in 2014
23 Oct 2015
Last year saw the highest number of Bibles ever distributed globally by bible societies. Nearly 34 million Bibles were handed out, a 6% rise on 2013; that’s 428.2 million Scriptures distributed. The figure includes full Bibles, Testaments, Gospels and other smaller scripture items. The Americas have reported the highest rates of distribution, with 341.5 million Scriptures, including 14.4 million full Bibles. Brazil gave out more than any other country - 7.6 million full Bibles; it is thought that this was boosted by the many thousands distributed during the FIFA World Cup. Cuba gave away 1.5 million - more than double the total distributed in 2010. The Bible Society reported that more than five times the number of Testaments were distributed in Syria in 2014 as before the conflict began, in 2010.
Rapid church growth in Iran
23 Oct 2015
The Iranian church is growing with increased momentum, as daily reports indicate. Despite persecution, Iranian Christians are courageously preaching Christ. More than one million Scriptures have been distributed to Iranians since 2003. Believers are involved in regular evangelism, and report that most receive the Scriptures with joy. Christian TV, beamed into Iran by satellite, is reaching private living rooms of families that otherwise may never hear the Gospel. The response is significant, with thousands responding to programmes every month. Although satellite dishes are banned, an estimated 28 million people have access to satellite TV (dishes are hidden in the lofts of houses). The official Churches in Iran are closely monitored by the government, so believers meet in house churches, mostly with eight to twelve members. For security reasons, they are forced to multiply once they reach about twelve people. This helps spread the Gospel even more.
Thank you so much for your prayer to Nepal! Praise the Lord! A new constitution in Nepal for a secular nation after about 9 years practice!
I copied this Today 20th September 2015 national news:
“President Ram Baran Yadav announced the promulgation of Constitution of Nepal, 2072 at a special meeting of the Constituent Assembly (CA) on Sunday. The President announced the commencement of the new constitution endorsed by the Constitutional Assembly and authenticated by CA Chairman Subas Chandra Nembang from today. The CA Chair also presented the copies of the new constitution which saw passage from the CA as per sub-section (3) of the CA Regulation 110. The CA meeting was attended by the Vice President Paramananda Jha, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala and Chief Justice Kalyan Shrestha.
The special ceremony was also attended by CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, former prime ministers and CA members Sher Bahadur Deuba, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhalanath Khanal, Baburam Bhattarai among others.
Similarly, Deputy Prime Ministers duo Prakashman Singh Bam Dev Gautam, ministers, former CA members, high ranking officers of Nepal government, civil society representatives, industrialists, chief of the diplomatic missions, media and others.”
All the glory to God!
In Prayer
Govinda
For prayer-
Govinda also has reported that there is still instability in the nation so let’s pray God’s peace and order for Nepal. He and his colleagues also want to build a house of prayer and need financial provision to do this.
Update from September 26:
Remember in your prayer for Nepal that India has blocked every essential supply to Nepal from yesterday. Right now gasoline and other supplies crisis has been increasing. Please pray for China that God would open the border from China so that China may supply all essential needs for Nepal.
Pray that the Lord would calm the country's political crisis and make very mutual relationship between Nepal and India. Some political parties are still against the new constitution. Pray for the Lord's hand to be upon Nepal.
From Govinda who leads a house of prayer in Kathmandu, Nepal
Thank you for your prayers for Marriage in Australia. I sent a prayer request for your prayer for marriage in Australia almost one month ago. At the time Katy Faust, from the USA, was visiting Australia to help us defend Marriage between a man and a woman.
Katy filed an Amicus brief in the battle for marriage in the USA and has an amazing story to tell. She was a child of divorce and her mother subsequently re-partnered with a another Lesbian. Katy was brought up by her biological mother and her mother’s lesbian partner. She is strongly against homosexual marriage because of her experiences.
WE ASKED YOU FOR PRAYERS FOR KATY FAUST AS SHE APPEARED ON Q&A AN AUSTRALIAN TV PROGRAM. – PRAISE THE LORD GOD ANSWERED YOUR PRAYERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Traditionally the Q & A TV show has been in the past heavily biased against anyone who believes in life, love, marriage and religious freedom. I asked that you pray that God will give Katy the words to say, supernatural insight and wisdom to speak up for the rights of children to a mother and a father. God did a miracle in that Katy Faust probably gave the best defense for marriage and the rights of children yet heard on Australian TV. Secondly God raised up an atheist to defend her on Australian TV. Together Brendan and Katy hit the ball out of the Ball Park. Thank you for your prayers.
1. Katy Faust articulates a strong case for the rights of Children on Q&A and then gets attacked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8mBl94HwCI&safe=active
2. God raises up an atheist Brendan O’Neil to speak up for her and defend her on Q&A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnzpMKb-Wk4
Since this time we have seen a significant shift in a positive sense in the homosexual marriage debate in Australia. Yours prayers have made a difference. It would be amiss of me not to thank you for your prayers. We as a nation have prayed for America over the last few years. Most recently the seven days of prayer and fasting for the USA in early May 2015 centered around the USA National Day of Prayer. We will continue to do so. Thank you for your prayers for Australia. See full prayer report below detailing 9 Miracles. The last two were directly related to your response to our prayer request. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS!!!! As Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”
Yours for the USA and Australia
Warwick Marsh
PS Sadly we recently lost our pro-marriage, pro-life and pro-faith Prime Minister Tony Abbott because of an internal coup behind the scenes. Malcom Turnbull the man who replaced him is the opposite so we greatly appreciate your continuing prayers.
PO BOX 378
Unanderra
NSW 2526
Australia
About 350,000 Syrian Christians have been forced to flee their homes. Many have been killed, sold into sex slavery, or forced into hiding. They are not going to U.N. refugee camps, where they often face further persecution, sources tell WND.
As U.S. and European leaders reach out with open arms to tens of thousands of Muslim refugees flooding into Europe, the groans of persecuted Christians in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan are increasingly drowned out.
President Obama announced Thursday that the U.S. will accept an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, on top of the 1,600 that have already arrived. The Syrian arrivals coming from United Nations refugee camps to date have been 95 percent Muslim.
When it comes to the plight of Christians, most of the voices of concern for “refugees” – whether they come from the EU, the White House, the Congress or in the media – fall silent, says a spokesman for the International Christian Concern.
The ICC posted an alert on its website Thursday that an estimated 30,000 Pakistani Christians have been forced to flee their homeland due to persecution from the Muslim majority in Pakistan. They are living in crude conditions in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Malaysia with little help from the United Nations or various international aid agencies. Christians in Pakistan are often jailed for their beliefs, their churches are bombed and their pastors killed. The president of Pakistan Christian Congress has urged the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries to open doors to the persecuted Pakistani Christians. Nazir Bhatti, who launched the Pakistan Christian Congress in 1985 and was forced to flee Pakistan in 1998 after he challenged the nation’s Islamic blasphemy laws, has written leaders of the E.U., U.K., U.S. and other European countries asking that they receive Pakistani Christian asylum seekers, reported the website Christians in Pakistan.
Bhatti’s plea comes after the announcement from Prime Minister David Cameron that the U.K. will accept 20,000 Syrian refugees, while Germany is welcoming 800,000, Spain is taking 20,000 and France 24,000. President Obama has previously committed to taking 5,000 to 8,000 Syrians over the next year, but his administration announced today it is considering increasing that number by 10,000.
Refugees or migrants? Despite all of the attention being given to Syrians as “war refugees,” data from the United Nations refugee agency indicates that the majority may actually be economic migrants rather than true war refugees. The UNCHR data shows, for instance, that 75 percent of the so-called refugees flooding into Europe this year are men, and that only 51 percent are Syrian.
Bhatti has petitioned the leaders of U.K., Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania, Hungry, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and other E.U. member states to give refuge to Pakistani Christian asylum seekers by allowing them easy entry into their countries.
Lord George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent op-ed in the Telegraph, urged Britain to focus on taking Syrian Christians, saying they are the most vulnerable and repeatedly targeted victims of the Syrian civil war. While Carey said he welcomes Cameron’s announcement to take in more Syrian refugees, the most targeted refugees are being left behind to face their Islamic killers. “But the frustration for those of us who have been calling for compassion for Syrian victims for many months is that the Christian community is yet again left at the bottom of the heap,” Carey wrote.
Syrian Christians flee U.N. camps
According to the Barnabas Fund, which recently resettled some 50 Syrian Christian families in Poland, “Cameron’s policy inadvertently discriminates against the very Christian communities most victimized by the inhuman butchers of the so-called Islamic State,” Carey writes. Christians are not to be found in the U.N. camps, because they have been attacked and targeted by Islamists and driven from them. They are seeking refuge in private homes, church buildings and with neighbors and family.” This confirms reports that WND has previously published about the dangers Christians face in U.N. refugee camps.
‘Openly glorifying slaughter of Christians’
Carey argues that even though 100 years have past since the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, in which 1.5 million Christians were wiped out by Ottoman Muslims, the same genocide is being carried out today in the form of an ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region. “Christians have been crucified, beheaded, raped, and subjected to forced conversion. The so-called Islamic State and other radical groups are openly glorifying the slaughter of Christians,” he said.
Lord Carey further urged that Britain should make Syrian Christians a preference, “because they are a particularly vulnerable group. Furthermore, we are a Christian nation with an established Church so Syrian Christians will find no challenge to integration. The churches are already well-prepared and eager to offer support and accommodation to those escaping the conflict.”
Bhatti said Pakistani Christians suffering in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeastern Asian countries have been waiting for years as their cases languish with the United Nations. They go “without any shelter provided by UNHCR, International Rescue Committee and other international NGOs, or any education for their children,” Bhatti said.
“Pakistani Christians are facing genocide in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” he said.
He said the notorious blasphemy law in Pakistan is used against Christians and any non-Muslim. To speak any truth from the Bible about Jesus Christ being the “Son of God,” or having “died on a cross” for mankind’s sins, is considered blasphemy by the Shariah courts. Wearing a cross around one’s neck in public can get you arrested and thrown in jail.
Congressman rebukes Obama plan to take more Syrians
Yet, among the 70,000 refugees taken by the U.S. this year, almost no Christians from Pakistan or Syria are included. Of the 1,600 brought from Syria since the start of that country’s civil war, 95 percent have been Muslim and less than 4 percent Christian. The administration, while heavily lobbied to accept more refugees, has also been warned by some in Congress that bringing in thousands of people from ISIS-controlled territory would pose a grave security risk.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee issued the following statement Thursday rebuking the Obama plan to allow a “surge” of Syrian Refugees into the U.S. “The president wants to surge thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States, in spite of consistent intelligence community and federal law enforcement warnings that we do not have the intelligence needed to vet individuals from the conflict zone. We also know that ISIS wants to use refugee routes as cover to sneak operatives into the West. I implore the president to consult with Congress before taking any drastic action and to level with the American people about the very real security challenges we face. It is heart-wrenching to watch innocent Syrians fleeing the violence in their country, and we can do more to help. But the best way to solve this crisis is at the source. The president needs to develop a real strategy for victory to defeat ISIS and remove Assad from power, which is the root cause of the problem. This is the culmination of a failed foreign policy to deal with the threats and now we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands.”
From World Net Daily http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/refugee-crisis-hits-prime-time-but-christians-left-out-in-cold/
Please pray that refugees who are Christians and are languishing in camps will no longer be left out in the cold but will be welcomed into other lands. Pray for European and American authorities to have compassion mixed with real wisdom to know how to go about dealing with the refugee crisis and to keep out any ISIS terroristic elements that are trying to infiltrate this massive flow of refugees into the West.
“A little before midnight on Saturday, a crowd of around 700 gathered in an old industrial warehouse a few blocks from the Detroit River for what they’d been told was the “largest public satanic ceremony in history.” Most of them professed to be adherents of Satanism, that loosely organized squad of the occult that defines itself as a religious group. Others came simply because they were curious. After all, Satanists exist in the popular psyche as those who casually sacrifice goats and impregnate Mia Farrow with Lucifer’s child; if this ceremony was indeed unprecedentedly big, who knew what could be in store?
Read more: The Evolution of Modern Satanism in the United States
The reality of the event — and of the contemporary Satanic movement at large — was tamer, and, if the Facebook pictures speak the truth, harmlessly festive: a cross between an underground rave and a meticulously planned Halloween party. They were there to publicly unveil a colossal bronze statue of Baphomet, the goat-headed wraith who, after centuries of various appropriations, is now the totem of contemporary Satanism. The pentagram, that familiar logo of both orthodox Satanists and disaffected teens, originated as a rough outline of Baphomet’s head.
The statue itself is impressive: almost nine feet tall, and weighing in at around a ton. The horned idol sits on a throne adorned with a pentagram, but it is the idol’s wings, and not his chair, that curiously evoke the Iron Throne from a certain celebrated HBO fantasy series. He has the jarring horns of a virile ram but the biceps of a guy who lifts four or five times a week. His legs, which are crossed, end not in feet but in hooves. It might seem more menacing if not for the two bronze-statue children standing on either side of him — a girl on his left; a boy on his right; both are looking up at him earnestly.
“Baphomet contains binary elements symbolizing a reconciliation of opposites, emblematic of the willingness to embrace, and even celebrate differences,” Jex Blackmore, who organized the unveiling, told TIME late Sunday night. In a sense, the statue is a stress test of American plurality: at what point does religious freedom make the people uncomfortable?”
http://time.com/3972713/detroit-satanic-statue-baphomet/
Pray for the overthrow and discrediting of Satanism in the USA and the breaking of its influence wherever it is operating. Pray that those involved in it will wake up to the horrific delusion and danger of this negative, destructive movement, repent and be set free by the love and power of Christ.