Current Events – Christians Targeted

“Never, never was there a time when the truth will suffer more from being misrepresented, belittled, demerited through the perverse disputings of men than in these last days.” Letter 136a, 1898.

According to South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, which cites sources in China, singer Hyon Song-wol was among other singers, musicians, and dancers arrested and publicly put to death by firing squad [August 20, 2013]. Mum Kyon-jin, head of the Unhasu Orchestra, was also executed, along with members of both that orchestra and the Wangjaesan Light Music Band. Family members and bandmates watched as authorities killed the dozen performers with machine guns, one source said. A source told South Korea’s largest daily newspaper that some of the victims also faced accusations of possessing Bibles. All were regarded as political dissidents, and their families have been shipped off to prison camps, according to the source. www.spin.com, August 29, 2013.

Kafr Hakim, Egypt (CNN) – For 67 years, the Virgin Mary Church has been a peaceful refuge for Shenouda El Sayeh, much like the Giza province village of Kafr Hakim where it rests and where he has lived all those years. But, as he swept its floors on Thursday, it was painfully obvious things had changed. The night before, a mob—chanting against Coptic Christians had torched and looted the Virgin Mary Church.

Christians all around Egypt are cleaning up in the aftermath of a spate of attacks, which came on the country’s deadliest day since the 2011 revolution. Bishop Angaelos, the Cairo-born head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said he was told by colleagues in Egypt that 52 churches were attacked in a 24-hour span, as well as numerous Christians’ homes and businesses. www.cnn.com, August 16, 2013.

Christians and Muslims used to peacefully coexist in Syria. Unfortunately, the last two years of civil war have erased this peaceful coexistence, leading Christianity to face an “existential threat” in Syria. According to reports, over 300 Christians have been killed during the civil war, even though they did not participate in hostilities. Christian leaders, including priest and monks have been targeted by extremists and hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled the country seeking safety as a refugee outside Syria’s borders. Please pray for these persecuted people. www.persecution.com, August 21, 2013.

Peru has been urged to investigate the mass killing of Christians and other civilians. Over the course of two decades of guerrilla warfare in the 1980s and ’90s between left wing rebel groups and the Peruvian government an estimated 100,000 dead, most of whom were civilians. Massacres also targeted Christians and church leaders opposed to the group. Ten years after a groundbreaking 2003 report was published on the atrocities committed, the Peruvian government has yet to prosecute many of those responsible for the deaths, including the abduction, torture and murder of a Protestant pastor in 1989. www.persecution.com, August 2013.

Current Events – The Great Crisis

In the great crisis soon to pass, the faithful servants who “would fearlessly serve God according to the dictates of conscience, will need courage, firmness, and a knowledge of God and His Word, for those who are true to God will be persecuted, their motives will be impugned, their best efforts misinterpreted, and their names cast out as evil.” Acts of the Apostles, 431.

In more than 40 nations around the world today Christians are being persecuted for their faith. In some of these nations it is illegal to own a Bible, to share your faith in Christ, change your faith or teach your children about Jesus. Those who boldly follow Christ—in spite of government edict or radical opposition—can face harassment, arrest, torture and even death. Yet Christians continue to meet for worship and to witness for Christ, and the church in restricted nations is growing. www.prisoneralert.com, October 31, 2013.

In various parts of the Muslim world, religious minorities are facing a reign of terror. In the Middle East, persecution has become so terrible and widespread some experts are predicting that non-Muslims may be entirely driven from the region known for millennia as the cultural crossroads. The situation facing the religious minorities has become ever more perilous with a shocking series of attacks that have garnered international media attention. Christian minorities of all faith communities are being targeted. So are Baha’is, Mandeans, Yizidis, Zoroastrians, Ahmadiyas, Druze, Jews, and other minorities in such countries. In recent weeks: in Pakistan, the Taliban for the first time bombed a church packed with Sunday worshipers, killing 85; Somalia’s al-Shabaab terrorists crossed into Kenya where they hunted down and shot dead dozens of non-Muslims in a shopping mall; and, in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, scapegoating Coptic Christians, went on a rampage against churches and monasteries, destroying 40 of them. In Iran, the entire Baha’i leadership languishes in prison, as does American Christian pastor, Saeed Abidini. And in Iraq, over the past decade, some two-thirds of the ancient Christian community, fifty percent of the Yizidis (an off-shoot of Zoroastrians) and ninety percent of the Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist) have fled after being targeted by terrorists and abandoned by their government. www.christianpost.com/news, September 13, 2013.

“For it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone (Luke 4:10, 11). …

“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed (II Corinthians 4:6–9). “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal (II Corinthians 4:17, 18).” Early Writings, 28.