Muslims 'sick of Islam'

A 21-year-old Iraqi woman who escaped after being tortured and kept as a sex slave by ISIS, speaking in London, appealed for the world to "come on board" in fighting the terrorist group. ISIS were  criminals, she said, and needed to be tackled by the world community.

Nadia Murad said her mother saw ISIS fighters kill six of Nadia's brothers, then they took her mother and killed her. "I was already orphaned because I didn't have a father. All I had was my mother."

Nadia was taken as a sex slave along with 5,000 other Yazidi girls and women. "When they took me to Mosul and raped me, I forgot my mother and brothers, because what they were doing to the women was more difficult than death.

"Until now girls as young as nine are being rented and sold out. A year and a half has passed and the genocide against the Yazidis is continuous. We die every day because we see the world silent in face of our plight."

A hundred women who escaped ISIS when their mountain stronghold was attacked in 2014 are now fighting alongside Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Another 500 are waiting to be trained. "We will do whatever is asked of us," they said.

Christian Aid Mission reports that more and more Muslims in Iraq are hungry to know about Christ after witnessing the brutality of groups like ISIS. "They're just sick of Islam," said one ministry leader.
        

Lessons learned in prison

Daniel Waheli, with his wife and children, was serving as a missionary in a predominantly Muslim country in Africa. One night, six men came. Four of them had guns. They took him and put him in a small cell with a thin mattress.

He had been questioned by authorities before. He would tell them that he loved their country and he had started a successful business there. Then he noticed the writing on the wall of the cell: "Oh God, it has been more than five months. Please, help me to get out of here." He realised this might take longer than he had thought.

Work had kept him busy. Here, he had time to listen to God's voice. He prayed for hours at a time. God began to speak to his heart. He could barely keep up with all the things God told him. After they gave him his Bible back, he pulled strings from the mattress to serve as bookmarks. He looked at the places he had marked each day to remember the things God had told him. Eventually, he had more than 120 bookmarks.

He was released after almost three months. The presence and the voice of Jesus were clearer to him than ever they had been before. 

Waheli says God taught him five principles about suffering that every follower of Jesus should remember:

1.  Be ready for persecution. Suffering is promised for every person who seeks to live a holy life before God, regardless of calling (2 Tim 3:12).

2.  Rejoice in your sufferings. Suffering can help us develop character which can lead to a hope that does not disappoint (Rom 5;3 - 5).

3.  You are blessed by God in your suffering (1 Pet 4:14; Matt 5:11).

4.  Seek to "bless those who persecute you" (Rom 12:14). The power of love and forgiveness in action helps suffering Christians to bless their persecutors. Pray that God gives you eyes to see your persecutors as people who know not what they are doing and who deeply need Jesus.

5.  Suffering will help you comfort others. God often allows something to happen to you so that you can learn and "be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Cor 1:4).

God intends to build our character to help us better serve Him in love and perseverance. Waheli says his suffering induced indescribable peace, joy and hope in God and in His promises that with and through Him, we will lack nothing.

May we endure hardship with joy and perseverance.
               

Christian persecution on the increase

The persecution of Christians across the world is getting worse - and getting worse fast.

Each January Open Doors publishes a World Watch List of the 50 countries in the world where it is most dangerous to be a Christian - in other words, the 50 countries where persecution is at its most severe. Its World Watch List 2016 is published today.

It shows that well over 7,000 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons in the reporting period - a rise of almost 3,000 on the previous year. This does not include North Korea, Syria and Iraq, where accurate records do not exist.

Around 2,300 churches were attacked or damaged, more than double the number for last year.

Systematic  religious cleansing is widespread across Africa and the Middle East. Every year well over 100 million Christians are persecuted because of their beliefs. Extreme Islamic fundamentalism is rising most sharply in sub-Saharan Africa, where more people are killed for their Christian faith than anywhere else in the world.

North Korea tops the list of offending countries for the 14th successive year. In North Korea there are estimated to be about 70,000 Christians imprisoned in labour camps. Christians who worship in secret face death if they are discovered.

Iraq, where a 2,000-year-old church is on the verge of extinction, is second. Eritrea is third, followed by Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iran and Libya.

More than 120 MPs were expected to attend a meeting at the House of Commons this afternoon to discuss Christian persecution.

You can read more details here. 
       

Where Christian lives are cheap

The militant Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly declared that it wants Somalia free of Christians. According to the nation's constitution, Islam is the state religion. Open Doors says those who attack Christians do so with impunity. Suspected Christians are frequently killed on the spot.

Said one Christian: "It appears that I live in a hell on earth. I wish I could just stand inside a  church and cry out in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Still they manage to maintain a witness. One has regular contact with camel herders. He gave them a radio tuned to a Christian radio station. The camel herders are illiterate, but they listen to the radio every night.

In Nigeria, thousands of Christians have been killed or abducted by Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group. Hundreds of churches have been destroyed.

In Sudan, blasphemy laws are frequently used tor prosecuting Christians. A significant number have been imprisoned. President Bashir's government has demolished churches, killed Christians in bombings and allowed others to kill Christians with impunity.

In Eritrea, Christians are considered a threat to the state. They have been tortured, beaten and imprisoned in horrific conditions.

Syrian Patriarch Ignace Joseph lll Younan said Eastern patriarchs had warned the West from the beginning that the situation in Syria was much more complex than in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya, and conflict would create only chaos and civil war.

"They responded: No, the Assad regime will fall in a few months..As I predicted, that hasn't happened, and five years later, innocent people, especially Christians, have no support. The West has betrayed us."

Says Generals International: "Many of us live mostly isolated from the atrocities. We're so used to hearing about unrest and turmoil in places like the Middle East and Africa that we hardly flinch at news of bombings or shootings 'over there.' The scope of this horror is hard to wrap our heads around; meanwhile, it is a daily reality faced by thousands. 

"We are calling on you, our brothers and sisters in Christ. Take a step back from politically charged rhetoric. . . Jesus Himself told us to pray 'Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven'. . . 

"We are here on earth. And terrorism is not the will of heaven. So we will pray, and we will love because the kingdom of darkness is no match for those two things when they come together. . .

"Pray for those who are choosing to destroy others and sometimes themselves. If they only knew the great love which the Father has for them, they might change their minds and choose God's plan of salvation, instead of destruction. 'For this is the way God loves the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.'

"Ask the Lord to uncover every planned attack. . . Ask God to stop those who persist right in their tracks. Proclaim that their hiding places will be uncovered."
            

'This is genocide - and it must end'

A report presented to the House of Lords on Tuesday says Christianity is on course to disappear from Iraq, where Christians have lived for centuries, possibly within five years - unless emergency help is provided on a massively increased level.

The report, Persecuted and forgotten?, by the Roman Catholic group Aid to the Church in Need, says the church's survival in parts of Africa and the Middle East is threatened by religiously motivated ethnic cleansing by extremist Islamic groups.

Jean-Clement Jeanbart, Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, Syria, writes: "My own cathedral has been bombed six times and is now unusable. My home has been hit more than 10 times.

"We are facing the rage of an extremist jihad; we may disappear soon. Truly we are 'reckoned as sheep for the slaughter.'"

The report says Christians are the world's worst persecuted faith group. Of 10 nations where persecution is extreme, persecution in nine of them has worsened in the past two years.

You can see details of the report here, and a report by Sheila Liaugminas here.

 The Pope has said that Christians in the Middle East are facing genocide - "and I stress the word genocide" - and it must end. 
            

Daniel's 70 sevens (2)

Some Christians will have nothing to do with Bible prophecy, because, they say, they don't know how it will turn out. More about that in a minute.

In Daniel's prophecy of 70 weeks (Dan 9:20 - 27) we said the "weeks" were weeks of years - periods of seven years. Sixty-nine weeks refers to the period from the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (Neh 2:5 - 8) to the coming of the Messiah. That leaves one "week" - a period of seven years - still to account for.

There is obviously a gap between Messiah's death and verse 27. This is the church age, not mentioned for two reasons: first, the church was a mystery in the Old Testament; second, this prophecy refers to God's dealings with Israel (Dan 9:24). God dealt with Israel until Israel rejected their Messiah; He will begin to deal specifically with Israel again in verse 27 (Rom 11:25, 26).

Israel is not like other nations: Israel was chosen by God and God's promises to Israel not yet fulfilled are still to be fulfilled (Gen 17:7, 8; Jer 30:18 - 20; 31:10, 31-34; 33:20, 21, 25, 26; Ezek 36:34 - 38).

The Bible says that one of the first events to be fulfilled in the prophetic calendar is the rapture, when the church will be taken from the earth. Some Christians don't believe in a rapture: not believing in a rapture would be difficult in light of such Scriptures as 1 Thess 4:13 - 18 and 1 Cor 15:51 - 53. Some believe the rapture will occur at the end of time: this ignores the doctrine of imminence (Matt 24:42, 44; 25:13; Rom 13:11, 12; Heb 10: 37; Rev 22:20).

After this, a wicked world ruler will arise, generally known as the antichrist (1 John 2: 22). He will make a seven-year covenant with the Jews, but break the covenant half-way through. The remaining three-and-a-half years is the great tribulation, known as the time of Jacob's trouble, when the Jews will suffer as they have not suffered since the world began (J er 30:4 - 7; Dan 7:25; 12:7; Matt 24:21).

Hitler destroyed a third of world Jewry in the Holocaust. If we are to believe Zech 13:8, 9, during this period two thirds of the Jews will die. The remainder will come to faith in the Jewish Messiah (Rom 11:26, 27), heralding a millennium of peaceful reign on the earth. The Lord Jesus Christ cannot return to earth until the Jews are ready to receive Him (Hos 5:15; Matt 23:37 - 39).

So should Christians be concerned with Bible prophecy? The prophecies in the Bible that have been fulfilled so far have been fulfilled in exact detail. Can we not expect the same of the remainder?

The Bible gives us our knowledge of God and His dealings with men. It provides a wonderful history of Israel and the early church. But a quarter of the Bible refers to the future. We need it to make sense of the days in which we live and to understand how we should live in these days.

Of course we are expected to study Bible prophecy. That's what it's there for.
        

Last, but not least

When ISIS published a video in February of men being beheaded for their faith in Christ, it was assumed that all were Coptic Christians from Egypt.

In Egypt they had no work. They had gone to Libya to find work to earn money for their families. There they were kidnapped.

Most were quickly identified from the video. But one, a black man, was not identified until later. His name was Mathew Avairga, and he was from Chad.

According to Voice of the Martyrs, Mathew was not a Christian. In common with each of the others, he was asked on camera by one of his persecutors: "Do you reject Christ?"

Having seen the quiet faith of the others, Mathew decided that he too would be a follower of Jesus. "Their God is my God," he said. Moments later, he was dead.

We are not called to witness, but to be witnesses. May each one of us be as faithful as those young men.
        

UK treatment of Christians 'unbelievable'

The British Government is being slated for its callousness towards Christians in the Middle East.

The charity Barnabas Fund has compared the way Britain has treated refugees from Syria and Iraq with the way Jewish refugees were turned back to Europe before the Second World War.

"Britain has exercised a level of callousness in terms of refugees from Syria and Iraq that is unbelievable," it says. "Given the historical connection between the UK and Northern Iraq, whose Assyrian Christians fought for Britain in two world wars and in the interim period, and given that the Iraqi Christians have suffered intensely because of Britain's illegal intervention in Iraq, the British Government has shown them scant regard, compassion or mercy."

The charity says the situation is reminiscent of the US refusal to allow entry to 907 Jewish refugees who sailed from Germany in May, 1939. Forced to return to Europe, many died in the Holocaust.

Church leaders have appealed to David Cameron for Britain to carry out its "moral responsibility" to shelter more refugees from Syria.

Andrew Carey wrote in last week's Church of England Newspaper: "last weekend 50 Syrian Christian families flew into Warsaw, having been chased out of their homes in areas of the country controlled by so-called Islamic State. The Polish and Belgium governments have been among the first in Europe to accept such significant communities en masse. The Christian relief agency, the Barnabas Fund, has indicated that a further 200 families will be settled in Poland. The agency is openly seeking further governments to offer welcome to these vulnerable, persecuted people, but Western European governments, including our own, are resisting doing what is right.

"There are many thousands of displaced Christians in the Middle East. ISIL now has a policy of destroying Christian homes, in addition to its policy of torture, slavery, rape, killing and crucifixion.

"It is a disgrace that the British government will not even consider the case for treating Christians as a particularly vulnerable group of people and offering them asylum. One day we will look back and wonder how we could have observed the attempted extermination of a whole community in the Middle East and done nothing."

Doing the right thing needs to come before political expediency. 

Refugee status is not certain for Christians facing death at the hands of Muslims in the Middle East. The criterion is contained in Statute 6B of the UN High Commission for Refugees, which requires refugees to have "a well-founded fear of persecution by reason of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion." Unfortunately the UN believes Islam is a religion of peace, and takes no account of the penalties for apostasy.

American activists claim Christians are not being allowed into the US, while Muslims, who do not suffer the same degree of religious persecution, are allowed to immigrate unimpeded.
          

Muslim thousands turn to Christ

More Muslims have come to faith in Christ in the 13 years since 9/11 than in the entire previous 14 centuries of Islamic history, according to missionaries in the Islamic world. They say many Muslims are questioning their faith.

In his book A Wind in the House of Islam,* David Garrison says we are living in the midst of the greatest turning of Muslims to Christ in history. Because converts to Christianity can face the death penalty, it is impossible to know how many new believers in Christ there are in the Islamic world, but he estimates there are currently between two and seven million.

The book, the result of two-and-a-half years of research, involved travelling more than 250,000 miles to conduct interviews with more than 1,000 people.

Whereas Muslims once came to faith in Christ one at a time, he claims to have found 69 movements - a movement is defined as a group of more than 1,000 baptised believers or 100 new churches within a Muslim community - started in the first 12 years of this century. This compares with virtually no movements of converts to Christianity in the first 12 centuries of Islam.

The converts he met included many senior religious leaders. In 2011 he met with 20 leaders from a fundamentalist Muslim people group. Nineteen of them had been baptised. Seventeen of them were imams. Three were women.

He asked why they had not left their community to form a church. One of the women said: "When God wanted to reach men, He became a man. If God had wanted to reach hyenas, He would have become a hyena. If we want to reach our own people, we've got to stay in our community to reach them." They were willing to pay the price, even if it meant death, to bring others to Christ.

The following day he met a sheikh who had led 400 other sheikhs to Christ; 300 of them had been baptised.

Lucinda Borkett-Jones, writing in Christian Today, quotes Garrison as saying that violence in Islam is not new. What is new is that when believers experience this violence they can turn to the internet or turn on the television and see the alternative: Christian evangelism in their own language. Bible translation, multimedia evengelism and the growth of international travel have facilitated the change.

One man found Christ after reading a translation of the Koran in his own language. He went on to see 33,000 people come to faith in Christ by encouraging them to read the Koran in their own language.

A group of converts in Central Asia tell each other: "If you're persecuted, just thank God you haven't been beaten; if you've been beaten, thank God you haven't been thrown into prison; if you're in prison, thank God you haven't been killed; if you've been killed, thank God that you're with Jesus in heaven."

Christians need to stop fearing Muslims, says Garrison. "This is not the day to fear, fight, hate or kill Muslims. This is the day of their salvation. If you want to be on God's side this day, be a part of what God is doing."

*A Wind in the House of Islam, by David Garrison. Monument, Colorado: WIGTake Resources, 2014.
         

ISIS barbarism: 'Why is the church silent?'

Islamic State militants cut off women's hands and publicly flogged men in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, for using mobile phones, allegedly a violation of sharia law. Thirteen teenage youths caught watching a football match on television were publicly machine-gunned to death.

Fifteen Iraqi women in Mosul had their faces severely disfigured by having acid poured on them after the women were caught not wearing a nijab, covering the full face apart from slits for the eyes. Five Iraqi men were executed in Mosul because their wives did not wear the nijab.

In Syria, ISIS fighters took nine villages, capturing 90 Christians. Some 3,000 fled. Judging by past actions, the men will be beheaded and the women used as sex slaves.

It was reported that the women were sobbing, and asking "Why is the West silent? Why is the church not talking about our persecution?"
     

Seven million children in danger

Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant leaders met in Bkarka, Lebanon, and called for international support for Christian refugees in Iraq and Syria. They urged Middle Eastern nations to stop funding terrorists, who have displaced over 90 per cent of the region's believers.

They appealed for material aid and medicines. Christian Aid said refugees, left homeless and penniless, are struggling in snow and bitter winter weather.

According to UNICEF, who are appealing for help to provide winter clothing, medicines and food, seven million children are in grave danger.

Film actress Angelina Jolie said she had never seen anything like the suffering in the refugee camps she visited in Erbil. She demanded additional funding for UN humanitarian efforts and urged countries outside the Middle East to offer sanctuary to the most vulnerable refugees, who had been raped and tortured.

Prayer is good, but material aid is needed too. If you want to give material aid, you can do so through Barnabas Fund, 9 - 10 Priory Row, Coventry CV1 5EX, or Open Doors, PO Box 6, Witney OX29 6BR.
    

Frieda's miracle

Frieda Roos van Hessen was born into a Jewish family in Amsterdam. They were not practising Jews: Frieda had been to synagogue only once, for her brother's wedding. But they knew they were Jews.

Frieda had a beautiful singing voice, and decided to become a singer. She trained at Amsterdam Conservatoire, and was soon performing to packed houses. She was chosen to sing the lead in the Dutch version of Disney's Snow White. She was a soloist in a performance of Verdi's Requiem for the Dutch royal family.

Then the Germans invaded Holland. As a Jew, Frieda was forbidden to perform for non-Jewish audiences.

One day a car pulled up at the house where they were staying. Her parents were arrested and taken away. They died in Auschwitz.

Frieda hid in the house and was not discovered. That night, she fled for her life. For the next four years, she hid in eight different locations. She escaped Nazi soldiers eight times. Once she was arrested, then set free again in miraculous circumstances. At one time she lived for months in one room.

Then came the news: the war was over. There was dancing in the streets.

After the war, she met a pastor, who sent a German woman to see her. The woman told her stories of Jesus. "I thought you were an intelligent person," said Frieda. "How can you believe all this nonsense?"

The woman asked her to read Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. Alone, she read Isaiah 53 and understood not a word. She began to read Psalm 22 and came to the verse which says "they pierced my hands and my feet." She let out a yell. "That's Jesus!" she said. She went back to Isaiah 53. She understood every word. "How could I have lived all these years without this?" she said. "It was like coming out of a dark hole into the light."

She was converted instantly through reading the Old Testament.

Frieda, who lives today in the United States, is now 99 years old, and still active. Her aim: to show the power of the love of Jesus.

Next Tuesday is not only the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but also Holocaust Remembrance Day. You can read about it here and here.

You can see Frieda's testimony, complete with photographs and recordings, here.
          

Suffering for their faith

The past 12 months have seen the highest level of persecution of Christians worldwide in living memory. One hundred million Christians are facing persecution.

Islamic extremists are the main persecutor. In some countries, Christians face imprisonment, torture, rape and death.

More than 70 per cent of Christians have fled Iraq since 2003. More than 700,000 Christians have left Syria since civil war began in 2011.

The organisation Open Doors has published its 2015 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian. North Korea tops the list for the 13th successive year. Meeting with other Christians there is virtually impossible. Anyone discovered in unauthorised religious activity is subject to arrest, arbitrary detention, disappearance, torture and/or execution.

Next countries on the list, in order, are Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Eritrea and Nigeria. You can see further details here.

Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors in the UK and Ireland, says "I am convinced that what happens in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in the next three years will define the future of Christianity as we know it. We can't afford to sleepwalk through these difficult days. Open Doors isn't saying there should be special treatment for Christians - of course there shouldn't. But there must be equal treatment - the fundamental right to follow any faith, or none."

Tomorrow will be the launch of the World Watch List and a report in Parliament on global persecution. It's not too late to e-mail your MP to invite him or her to attend the meeting.
        

2,484 killed in Nigeria. Who cares?

When 17 people were killed by Islamic terrorists in France, the leaders of something like 40 nations - with the notable exception of President Obama of the USA - gathered in Paris to protest Islamic terrorism.

Last year 2,484 were killed in Nigeria as a result of Islamic extremism, the highest total of any nation in the world. This year hundreds more have been killed already. Men, women and children, hunted down, shot, drowned or burned alive. Who cares about them?

Among politicians, a few individuals have expressed concern. Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary - his father was a Church of Scotland minister - has expressed concern. He promised that a Labour Government would appoint a global ambassador for religious freedom to tackle the persecution of Christians worldwide.

But it seems that for the majority of politicians, Islamic extremists in Africa can do what they like. Words, perhaps. But actions?

Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors in the UK and Ireland, says: "Responding to a question from MPs about whether in light of increasing persecution now was the time to appoint an ambassador for religious freedom to campaign for religious freedom internationally, the UK Deputy Prime Minister has just responded confirming that, 'while it is necessary to keep an open mind' about whether more should be done to protect Christians, the UK Government would not be making the appointment.

"Of course that appointment wouldn't have changed the world on its own, but it would have been a step.

"Meanwhile the church is experiencing persecution on an unprecedented scale. Time is running out. Surely we need to move beyond 'keeping an open mind' and do something?"

There are things that can be done. For instance, the UK pays £249 million in foreign aid to Nigeria each year.
        

Good questions. Do we have some good answers?

Christianity is the most widely persecuted faith in the world, and four-fifths of this persecution is at the hands of Muslim jihadists, Chris Sugden, executive secretary of Anglican Mainstream and director of academic affairs at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, says in the latest issue of Evangelicals Now.

He asks some pertinent questions:

Should persecuted Christians move from the Middle East? Should they suffer in silence, resist or retaliate? What is the difference between being prepared for martyrdom or for genocide? How chould the church respond to the violence that intends to uproot whole Christian communities from their homelands?

He adds some interesting facts:

The plight of persecuted Christians is often misrepresented by western media. Archbishop Kwashi of Jos, Nigeria, writes: "It is wrong to claim that insurgency in the north of Nigeria is fuelled more by poverty than by Islamic extremism. Poverty does not explain the killing of 40 schoolchildren - Muslim children - in Potiksum. Boko Haram and its kind delight in massacres, slaughters, rape and murders. This is not the face of poverty, but of radical Islamist jihad."

The Minister of State for International Development. Desmond Swayne, said in the House of Commons that Christians who argue that the jihadist's violence stems directly from Islam were talking manifest nonsense. He refused to recognise any claim of vulnerable religious minorities for help beyond generalised humanitarian help. This notion collapses under its own contradictions.

Bishop Nick Baines of West Yorkshire and the Dales said we must continue to pray, continue to give, to lobby politicians and to engage with the media. Were we content to live in a country that refuses to address the question of asylum for people who have lost everything and have nowhere to go back to?

We must make clear to churches, says Canon Sugden, which organisations are definitely supporting persecuted Christians. Government-supported agencies refuse to discriminate, and Christians get left out. Christian organisations that attempt to fill the gap left by political intrigue include Barnabas Fund, Open Doors, Aid to the Church in Need, World Vision and Andrew White's FRRME. Organisations such as Christian Aid and Tear Fund are constrained bv the Department for International Development's strings, often resulting in non-Christians getting help from all over and Christians getting little or nothing.

Finally, says Canon Sugden, an important expression of our compassion would be to welcome those who needed asylum into our homes and churches - and press the Government to give them entrance visas. One family per church would meet a major need. When he suggested it in a sermon in his church, he had three offers at the end of the service.

So - what are we going to do to help?
     

Nazi SS officer's son who loves the Jews

Werner Oder was brought up in Austria. His father was an SS officer, whose job was to train einsatzgruppen, army units whose job it was to murder Jews.

"The Bible," Werner says, "says very clearly that those who curse the Jews will be cursed by God. That curse manifested itself in our life in the most terrible way. We encountered chaos in our home; anger, violence, hatred. Antisemitic language was normal.

"My life was going down the same road. I became angry, violent, very aggressive. People who just slightly offended me I calculated coolly at home how to kill them.

"A person said to me one day 'Werner, the way you're going, you have got two choices. You're either going to prison for life or you're going to hell for ever, so what are you going to do about it?'

"One night I had this terrific demonic manifestation in my life. I thought I was going to die. I cried out to God - the God who didn't exist, the God I didn't know about. I said 'God, I don't want to die. I want to live.'

"God answered. He sent me an evangelist. He told me Jesus is the Son of God, who loved me and died for me on the cross, and if I put my trust in Him He would forgive my sin and set me free from all evil. From that day on I put my trust in Jesus. I was changed."

Werner started to attend a Roman Catholic church. One Sunday morning as he sat in church, he had a revelation: Jesus is Jewish.

"I thought who is God? Do we know His name? I suddenly realised it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. God is the God of Israel.

"I realised that Jesus Christ was never His name. That's a Greek translation.

"His mother Mary was never called Mary because she was never a Catholic. She was a Jewish woman from Nazareth, who had a revelation from the angel Gabriel. who told her she had a son named Yeshua, who was to be the Saviour of the world. This was the beginning of my love for the Jewish people.

"I couldn't do anything about the people who were murdered, but I had this horror when I discovered what took place. I felt someone ought to come from the Nazi world to at least apologise. This is a very benign term - how  can you apologise? - but at least I wanted to be a friend to the Jewish people. . . "

You can see the whole of a remarkable interview here. 
      

The world's most persecuted people

Christians are the most persecuted group of people in the world. They are being murdered, tortured, imprisoned and assaulted solely because of their faith.

Christians in many parts of the Middle East face wipe-out. Churches and Christian homes are being vandalised and destroyed.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the right to change his religion or belief. Yet in many places those who choose to change their religion are beaten, imprisoned or killed.

The above facts are taken from a report on global persecution, containing almost a hundred pages of evidence, published by Maranatha, the Manchester-based Christian community. The report may be read or downloaded here.

Next Sunday, November 16, is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. A coalition of Christian organisations, impelled by the knowledge that more people had died for their faith in the 20th century than in all the previous centuries combined, decided in 1996 that the church worldwide would no longer be silent.

People from 110 countries pledged to pray in that first year. It has since become an annual event.

Will you pray? You can download a free resource pack here.
   

The man in the borrowed clothes

This month is the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of Hungary: which is an opportunity to tell the story of Pinchas Rosenbaum.

It was late 1944. The Germans were already losing the war, but they still took every opportunity to kill Jews. In a few months, they destroyed something like 600,000 of the 800,000 Jews in Hungary.

Pinchas came from a long line of eminent rabbis: his father was rabbi of Kleinwardein, in north-east Hungary. Pinchas himself was ordained for the rabbinate at 18 years old. It was expected that in due time he would succeed his father.

After the invasion, Pinchas was sent to a Nazi work camp. With several friends, he escaped and returned to Kleinwardein. He obtained false papers for his family, and pleaded with them to flee. His father refused to leave. The entire family except Pinchas was sent to Auschwitz and perished.

From somewhere he obtained a uniform of an officer in the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian fascist organisation that rounded up Jews for the Germans. Mingling with Arrow Cross officers, he would learn who were the next Jews to be arrested, rush to their addresses, "arrest" them himself and take them to the Glass House, a former glass factory, where they hoped to survive the war.

"You're going to have to lend me your suit," he told a friend one day. "I'm going to a party at the Hungarian police tonight. I can't go in uniform. If I'm arrested, well, you'll lose your suit. But if I'm not, I'll give it you back in the morning." The man got his suit back.

One day Pinchas heard that a friend was going to be arrested that same day. He decided to attempt a rescue. He went in uniform to his friend's address and began to curse the Jew. A non-Jewish man was present. "Pinchas, what are you doing?" said his friend. He continued to curse the Jew until his friend caught on and began to play the game. He got away with it.

Before the war ended, Pinchas saved hundreds of Jews, including entire families. When the war ended, he took off his uniform and left it behind in the Glass House. He was still only 21 years old.

After the war, he married and had three children, all of whom moved to live in Israel. He died in 1980, aged 57.
   

Rape, death and destruction - as the world looks on

Christians in Iraq are in desperate need. Christians have been crucified. Christian children have been beheaded and their bodies cut in half. ISIS, now calling themselves the Islamic State, have seized vast swathes of land in northern Iraq and forced their brutal rule on all and sundry.

Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled. Most have been robbed of all their possessions and left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They are homeless, helpless and starving - and facing a cold winter. They are threatened with genocide and extinction.

Hundreds of Christian, Yazidi and Turkmen women are held in Badush Prison in Mosul. The women are raped daily unless they agree to convert to Islam. The UN estimates that there have been roughly 1,500 Iraqi women and children abducted from the Christian and Yazidi communities and forced into sexual slavery.

Said one Iraqi Christian woman: "I wouldn't wish my experiences in Mosul on any human being on earth. They threatened us with death. They forced us to pay jizya - knowing that we can't. For years we have lived close to poverty. In our emergency we Christians looked for help everywhere, but they didn't help us. I plead to the international community, to churches, to human rights organisations, to the UN - to all who promote peaceful living together, to help us."

Politicians have expressed their sympathy, but done nothing effective. They want to bomb ISIS from the air. But what about the Christians?

Says Patrick Sookhdeo: "The real problem is that the Christians have no power, and because of this they are deemed irrelevant. They have no weapons, therefore they are deemed to be no threat. They have no oil, so they have no economic weight. For some politicians it seems better that Christians should leave the Middle East, for then at least they would not be a complication to the situation."

The response from the churches has been negligible.

Are you a Christian? These are our brothers and sisters in Christ. This week, October 26 to November 2,  is Barnabas Fund's Suffering Church Action Week. Will you pray?

You can contact your MP, urging him or her to put pressure on the Government to act. You can sign a petition here.
      

One Christian killed 'every five minutes'

The latest issue of Dabiq, the propaganda magazine of ISIS - or ISIL, or the Islamic State, call them what you will - contains a declaration of war against Christians. The front cover shows a picture of St Peter's in Rome flying the black ISIS flag.

"We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women," they say. "If we do not reach that time, our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market."

Meanwhile. a letter has been sent to the heads of state of 95 countries calling for urgent, determined action to halt the brutal persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The letter was signed by International Christian Embassy Jerusalem executive director Dr Jurgen Buhler, World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder, and Dr William M. Wilson, chairman of the Empowered21 Global Council.

Dr Buhler said the participation of the head of the main umbrella organisation representing world Jewry, together with leading evangelical ministries, made the event "historic." "Western churches have to do more to bring the suffering of our fellow believers to the forefront worldwide. To have a prominent global Jewish leader lend his voice to this moral call for protecting the region's persecuted Christians is unprecedented in modern times."

Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Greek Orthodox priest in Israel, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September that some 120,000 Christians have been killed each year in the Middle East for the last 10 years. That meant that every five minutes a Christian was killed because of his faith.

"Those who can escape persecution at the hands of Muslim extremists have fled. Those who remain exist as second if not third class citizens to their Muslim rulers."

Israel was the only place where Christians in the Middle East were safe. He appealed to the council's 47 member nations to "end your witch hunt of the only free country in the region." 

Some 4,500 Christians from 80 countries have been in Jerusalem this week to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. A  prayer vigil, organised by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, was held at the southern wall of the Temple Mount, adjacent to the Hulda Gate, on Wednesday. The Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem issued a ban on Jewish participation.

The embassy said the prayer event was "for pilgrims only" and was "not in any way an interfaith event."