Day: June 21, 2017

Reading God’s Word in China. Image: Voice of the Martyrs (story below).

In This Issue:

1. EUROPE: Is God Reviving Europe Through Refugees?
2. ALGERIA: Believer Faces Blasphemy Charges
3. ARMENIA: First Scriptures in Armenian Sign Language
4. MUSLIM WORLD: A Message That Must Be Heard
5. CHINA: Bible Smugglers Arrested, Deported, and Banned

QUOTABLE

“Looking back, I believe the need for Bibles in China was so acute in the 1980s that if the Body of Christ had failed to unite to provide God’s Word, the state of Christianity would be markedly different from what it is today. Each Bible was like placing a log on the revival fires blazing throughout the country. When the final page of Church history is written, the forty-year revival in China may go down numerically as the greatest revival in history.”

— Paul Hattaway, An Asian Harvest (autobiography). Asia Harvest has provided some 10 million Bibles to persecuted believers and supported hundreds of Asian evangelists among the unreached.

Source: Sam George, Lausanne Global Analysis, May 2017

In December 2016, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand what God is doing among and through the refugees in Europe. I travelled through ten cities in five countries over three weeks visiting many refugee camps, as well as churches and missions agencies working with them. A month before, I visited three cities in three other countries. Over this period, I interviewed many refugee ministry leaders in Europe in order to assess and study the desperate situation and the response of God’s people to it.

It was amazing for me to be present at meetings where hundreds of refugees turned to Christ. I visited several fellowships and churches that have baptized hundreds of refugees. One church in Germany had baptized over a thousand Syrian and Kurdish people over the previous six months. At our own meetings each night in different cities in Greece and Germany, we saw almost all of the refugees present responding to the gospel. There are over 100 Arabic-speaking churches across Europe, some predating the crisis and others started in response to it. They are not only very engaged with the issue, but also highly effective on account of their linguistic and cultural proximity to the refugees.

Only God could have turned such a desperate situation into such a mission opportunity, and what is happening lies beyond the strategic planning of any church or mission agency.

» Read full story.

» The UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report, released this week, reports that the world’s forcibly displaced population remained at a record high. Use and share their “Trends at a Glance” summary as well as further analysis.

Source: Missions Network News, June 5, 2017

Some of the most dangerous regulations [believers in Algeria face] are the strict blasphemy laws. “The blasphemy laws are used often against people who are expressing their views and religious beliefs on social media,” says [Miles Windsor of Middle East Concern].

That’s how Slimane Bouhafs ended up with a five-year prison sentence.

Bouhafs, a 50-year-old Christian who was formerly Muslim, was convicted of blasphemy on September 6, 2016. According to Windsor, “He was accused of insulting the prophet Mohammed” when he proclaimed his faith on Facebook. Since September, his sentence has been slightly reduced, but Windsor says the government has stubbornly resisted or ignored many of Bouhafs’s appeals.

“We can lobby human authorities, but the most powerful authority that we can turn to is the Lord,” says Windsor.

» Read full story, as well as more about Slimane Bouhafs and his experiences (Open Doors).

» Morning Star News just published a new report about developments regarding blasphemy laws in Pakistan. Evidently the government-run Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) began sending text messages to all mobile phone users warning that “uploading & sharing of blasphemous content on Internet is a punishable offence under the law” and providing a government email address for reporting such content.

Source: United Bible Societies, April 2017

In Armenia, the day before an election is called “the day of silence” because political parties are no longer allowed to campaign. This year’s day of silence took place on April 1—the same day that Armenia’s Deaf community celebrated the launch of the first Scriptures in their mother tongue, Armenian Sign Language.

“The silence is broken!” said the Bible Society in Armenia’s Project Director Arshavir Kapoudjian of the joyful and colorful event, attended by many Deaf people, their families, and church representatives.

Bible Society General Secretary Yeznik Petroysan encouraged the Deaf community to spread the Word of God.

“As we began to understand, things flowed easily and we became more and more aware that we can’t just keep the divine Word to ourselves—we must share it with everyone… God entrusted his Word to be shared through chosen people, such as prophets, apostles, Church fathers. Today, you have the translation of the first part of the Holy Bible in your language. God has chosen you to spread his Word to the people.”

» See full story with lots of pictures. Looks like quite the celebration!

Source: Mike Jones, Frontiers UK, June 2, 2017

When my Muslim friend Jemal came to our home, he wanted to talk to me about the spirits that had been bothering him in his bedroom. We’d only been living in Jemal’s country for less than a year, so, aware of my limited language ability, I decided to point him to some Bible stories showing Jesus’ authority over spirits. As we started reading, he shut the Bible and said, “I don’t want to talk about spirits. Tell me, who was Jesus and why did he come?”

As I reflect on that hot summer evening and my weak attempt to answer Jemal’s wonderful question, I’m reminded of the Apostle Paul’s request to the early church: “Pray for us… that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ… Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should” (Colossians 4:4).

If Paul could imagine himself speaking the gospel in a way that was not clear, bold, and powerful, how much more can we imagine that for ourselves? Think of it: The greatest gospel ambassador who ever lived (besides the Lord Jesus) said the effectiveness of his speaking about Christ depended on the prayers of the Church. If that was true for Paul, it is true many times over for us.

As we ask God to open up doors in the great unreached areas of the Muslim world, we encourage you to join us in praying that our workers have a clear and powerful message to take through those doors.

» Read full story.

» As we pray for Muslims and Muslim communities we should remember that they are quite diverse. See Challenging the Concept of the Muslim World (Circumpolar blog).

Source: Voice of the Martyrs, June 13, 2017

In May, several men split into three small groups to cross into mainland China. With bags stuffed with Bibles, they timed their entries 20 minutes apart to increase their odds of getting copies of God’s Word into the communist country.

The final group and a member of the second group, however, were stopped by customs officials in Shenzhen, one of China’s largest cities, while on their way to Guangzhou. The men were detained for 10 hours and, after being questioned by 50 officials, were banned from the country for three years.

The men, plus another Bible smuggler not tied to their organization who happened to be crossing into China at the same time, were interrogated for six hours. Officials confiscated everyone’s Bibles and other Christian materials.

“These books are forbidden in China,” one official said, pointing to the Bibles. “They are foreign-published.”

Since opening in 1987, China’s only government-approved Bible printer, Amity Printing Company, has printed more than 115 million Bibles. However, the majority of these Bibles are for export. The relative few that remain in country are sold by China’s official Three-Self Patriotic Movement churches. Even so, Amity alone cannot meet the Chinese citizens’ demand for the Bible, as Bibles wear out and as new people become believers.

» Read full story.