Category: News Briefs

Source: Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, July 20, 2021

France’s Operation Barkhane, tasked with fighting terrorism in the Sahel, will come to an end in early 2022, just ahead of France’s presidential election. Troops are already being withdrawn. It comes as jihadists in the Sahel are: (1) escalating their activity; (2) enacting Sharia laws and penalties in territories they control; and (3) actively working to expand south into Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

On the night of June 4-5, Islamic jihadists—many of whom were mere children—massacred at least 160 civilians in Solhan Village, Yagha Region, northeastern Burkina Faso. Separately, jihadists in eastern Burkina Faso have targeted a Bible school, burning its library and threatening its staff.

Christians in the Sahel—especially those in the tri-border region of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—are imminently imperiled. Please pray.

The full story includes more detail, prayer points, and many links.

In other news from the Sahel, a Malian woman broke a world record. No, she is not an Olympic athlete. You should read her story.

Source: The Christian Post, August 2, 2021

A small Christian church in southeastern Bangladesh was attacked and destroyed twice amid weeks of threats from radical Buddhists against Christians who refused to re-convert to Buddhism. Many believers in the community are reportedly displaced from their homes.

“The radicals told us to destroy the church, but we will not,” Tubel Chakma Poran Adetion, the church’s assistant pastor, told Asia News. “If we have to sacrifice our lives, we will. They threatened us to return to our old religion, but we will not return. Jesus Christ is our savior. We will die for him.”

The pastor told the news outlet that believers at the church were previously Buddhists who “met Jesus Christ” in 2005. The Christian residents of Suandrapara built the small brick-and-tin church in January through funding provided by the Bangladesh Bawm Tribal Baptist Church.

The pastor said they gathered and prayed daily despite threats and opposition from the Buddhist majority. The Christians were given a seven-day deadline to stop all church activities and re-convert to Buddhism.

The believers refused to comply.

Read the full story or a similar article from International Christian Concern. But both draw on the same article from Asia News, which reports that the church in question has about 50 members. Christians represent only 0.4 percent of Bangladesh’s 166 million people, most of whom are Muslim.

Source: International Mission Board, July 28, 2021

“Mark” found faith in Christ about five years ago, reports IMB missionary Owen Stoddard. Mark comes from a South Asian Muslim background and works as a painter in his local community to provide for his wife and young daughter.

After Mark became a Christian, he obediently participated in baptism and began to boldly share the saving power of Christ with his fellow villagers. Mark’s obedience cost him his good reputation within the community and has affected his ability to find people who will hire him.

“Deciding to trust Christ and be baptized has blessed Mark with joy in Christ and fellowship with God’s people,” said Stoddard. “However, his faithfulness to share how Christ can also save other villagers causes locals who disapprove of his bold witness to speak out against him. As a result, it has become difficult for Mark to find work. Nevertheless, he has remained faithful to Christ.”

When Mark’s South Asian country was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdowns left many families without jobs and a way to find food. Many residents are day laborers, working the rice and vegetable fields to feed their families.

Yet Mark sought out the man who was the most responsible for publicizing his conversion and encouraging his persecution and gave his own family’s food to this man—his enemy.

Read the full story.

Read more from IMB: New Strategies Emerge as Japanese Churches Face Future Without Pastors and Japanese Hunger for Hope on the Horizon (featuring a good infographic).

Source: Various

The Olympics: A Pattern for the Church?

The Olympic Games provide a wonderful foretaste of the Church in Revelation 7. Or do they have more in common with the gathering of nations in Genesis 11?

Read what UK theologian and missiologist Eddie Arthur has to say on this topic (Kouya.net).

Iranian Defector Dedicates Olympic Medal to Israel

Competing for Mongolia, Iranian defector Saeid Mollaei won a silver medal and dedicated it to Israel. Mollaei told the Israeli Sports Channel he is grateful for the support he’s received from Israel after defecting from Iran (due to pressure from his team to deliberately lose a match to avoid competing against an Israeli).

Read more (CBN News).

Madeline Manning Mims, Chaplain at the Olympics

What is it like to be a chaplain to elite athletes at the Summer Games? A sports ministry asked Olympic 800-meter champion and trailblazer Madeline Manning Mims.

Watch a short video on YouTube or below (Athletes in Action).

Source: International Christian Concern, July 7, 2021

On June 19, Zhejiang Province’s state security officers arrested Chen Wensheng, a Christian from Hengyang City, Hunan province. After transporting him back to Hengyang, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities held Mr. Chen for ten days under residential surveillance at the West Lake Resort.

During his detainment, the Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs leaders and the State Security department interrogated Mr. Chen. They tried to get him to stop preaching the gospel on the streets.

Mr. Chen was released on July 8. Throughout his time detained, CCP security officers communicated with him almost continuously. They told MR. Chen that they knew exactly where he had preached the gospel over the last two decades.

According to China Aid, CCP authorities knew all of the trips Mr. Chen had made in that timeline to different places throughout China, as well as the individuals who had traveled with him. The officers even had documented when Mr. Chen had traveled with four other Christians through numerous countries on their way to Tibet, where they preached the gospel.

In response to this unsettling information, Mr. Chen recently said, “Thank God for the CCP’s thorough knowledge of the fact that I go to different places to preach the gospel. They recounted my record as if they were enumerating the heirlooms of their own family. Authorities also told me that by 2021, I had been to other regions to proclaim the gospel more than 1,000 times.”

Read the full story.

Regarding China, see More Nations Formally Recognizing the Genocide Against Uyghurs in China (Jubilee Campaign), On The Uyghur Genocide (Southern Baptist Convention), Is This China’s Final Solution for the Uyghurs? (Mission Frontiers) and Where Are the Voices of Central Asian and Russian Uyghurs? (Global Voices).

Source: God Reports, June 10, 2021

Every day a “JESUS” film team here begins their ministry with the same prayer. “Holy Spirit, where should we go today?” One day as they walked and prayed, they heard the voices of children. Following the sound, the team entered a compound filled with children and began talking to them about Jesus.

The police heard what they were doing, moved in, and arrested them. Before being hauled away a team member had the presence of mind to quickly turn on a NewLifeBox in his backpack… leaving the backpack behind.

[Later] the team made their way back to the compound to retrieve the backpack. To their amazement hundreds of children were quiet, sitting in groups, eyes fixed on their smartphones, watching something…but what?

As they got closer, their best hope was confirmed: the children were watching the film “JESUS” on their phones. You see, the battery-powered NewLifeBox they left behind creates a Wi-Fi hotspot, inviting anyone looking for a hotspot, and within 150 feet, to watch a film about Jesus.

Later, the team learned that the compound was a training center for the children of wealthy militants.

Read the full story or see the original report from Jesus Film Project.

Showing the JESUS Film to children without their parents knowing may make us squirm, but consider reports that a recent massacre in Burkina Faso was carried out mostly by children, according to the UN and the country’s government. More than 130 people were killed (The Guardian).

Source: Frontiers USA, July 7, 2021

“Do you know anything about Jesus Christ?” asked Ismail, a Muslim stranger standing at Driss’s door.

Ismail explained that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to come to this exact house to learn about Him.

Driss invited him in and told Ismail that he had recently become a follower of Jesus. He wasn’t sure he could answer all of Ismail’s questions. But he would certainly try. Driss felt excited at the chance to try answering Ismail’s questions about Christ.

Then Ismail explained that he was an Islamic scholar, and Driss panicked.

Driss was an uneducated man, and he worried that his answers would sound foolish to the high-status religious leader. The new believer had been studying God’s Word with Joseph, a Frontiers worker. But Driss knew he still had much to learn from the Bible.

“I have a friend who knows more about Jesus than I do,” Driss backpedaled. “He can answer your questions better than I can.” He called Joseph and asked him to come over.

When Joseph arrived, Ismail asked him question after question. Their discussion lasted hours. Ismail kept asking to hear more about Jesus.

Finally, Joseph suggested they finish for the day. Then he said, “But I think you two should meet together and study God’s Word to learn more.”

Again, Driss felt panic rising inside him. “Joseph is sending me to the wolves,” he thought. “I’m a simple man. I’ll certainly fail!”

Read the full story to find out what happened next.

Source: Jeff Frazee, via World Venture, June 26, 2021

The Syenara people of Mali are subsistence farmers and animists. Numbering about 200,000 people, they are one of about 30 dialects of the Senoufo people of West Africa are a subgroup of the Senoufo people of West Africa. The Syenara speak to their idols in their own language, but they speak to Allah only in Arabic, which they don’t understand.

Let us ask God to make himself known as the loving father he is, that he might be worshiped rightly in their language, too.

Read about a visit to the Syenara and watch the short (4.5-minute) video, Syenara Prayer, below.