NOW Violence in India is Getting Press Coverage

195 dead. Over 200 wounded. Blood all over the train station. By now we have all seen the coverage of the three horrifying days of attack in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on the news and in the press.

Americans and British citizens in particular were singled out by gunmen who took (and killed) hostages in the luxurious Taj Mahal hotel and attacked Western diners in restaurants. The tragedy has been everywhere in the news this week. An hour ago, a local rabbi was on our nightly news discussing the committed Chabad House couple who were killed yesterday. He lamented how such good-hearted, giving individuals would be attacked for the religious beliefs that they held.

There's just one question that's been bothering me.

Why now? Why, just now, since religious extremists in India have been on the rampage since August, is this finally getting the world and the media's attention? Could it just be that....because a half dozen Americans were killed? Now the massacres qualify for "crisis" status. Before this week, the thousands of Indian Christians who were murdered in cold blood didn't even register on the world news' radar. (They're still finding rotting corpses in the jungles, by the way). As I posted earlier this week, the bounty for a dead pastor is now $250. The terrorists even provide the kerosine and matches to light them on fire.



Just in case you've missed my periodic updates on open season on Christians in Northern and Central India, here are a few of this month's news briefs from GFA and Voice of the Martyrs:

India: More than 70,000 Displaced Christians in Orissa
Extremists Demand End to Christian Activity in Orissa
Orissa Attacks Described
Attacks on Christians in India Spread Beyond Orissa

Here is a telling survey result table from VOM. It indicates that fewer than 11% of those polled have even seen any reports about India's violence against Christians anywhere in the secular media:

Have you seen coverage of the widespread attacks on Christians in Orissa, India…

Only from The Voice of the Martyrs 26.55% 1518 votes From VOM and in the Christian media 24.07% 1376 votes In both Christian and secular media 10.93% 625 votes I’ve not seen any reports of these attacks 38.43% 2197 votes Total: 5716 These results were generated on Nov 29, 2008 20:02:45. powered by www.survey-tech.com This survey is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate.

Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

Here's but one of the attacks that never made international headlines:

7 Month's Pregnant, Kamalini Naik Cut into Pieces for Her Faith

As narrated by an independent writer:

Mrs. Kamalini Naik's husband was asked to become a Hindu for which the fanatics threatened to kill his mother. Seeing his mother under their grip Mr. Naik denounced his faith.

Then they called his wife Kamalini Naik who was 7 months pregnant. She strongly stood for her faith in Christ and immediately the fanatics cut her into pieces and her one and half year son in front of her husband and other Christians.

But now, Westerners are involved so the violence has been deemed "newsworthy". Being mutilated or set on fire just for being a Christian just isn't important enough to make the papers.

Going rate to kill pastor: $250

This from The Berean Call and GFA, originally posted on WorldNetDaily:

Rewards offered for murdering Christians, destroying homes, churches

(GFA) Extremists are offering rewards to continue violence like this.

Hindu extremist groups are offering money, food and alcohol to anyone who murders Christians and destroys their homes.

The violence is nothing new in Orissa, India, where India's Communist Party estimates that more than 500 Christians have been killed by Hindu mobs in Orissa since late August, 12 times more than official government claims of only 40 homicides.

But now the stakes are even higher – and pastors have a bounty on their heads.

Faiz Rahman, chairman of Good News India, said Hindu militants are targeting Christian leaders, the Christian Post reported.

"The going price to kill a pastor is $250," he said.

Rahman, a head of several orphanages in Orissa State, said he's helped 25 pastors to leave refugee camps, but 250 Christian leaders are still in shelters.

"All of the pastors are high value targets," Rahman told the UK-based Release International. "We've got to get them out of the refugee camps."

An All-India Christian Council spokesman said, "People are being offered rewards to kill, and to destroy churches and Christian properties. They are being offered foreign liquor, chicken, mutton and weapons. They are given petrol and kerosene."

One official said he personally authorized "cremation of more than 200 bodies" found in jungles after Christians were blamed for the death of Hindu leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati on Aug. 24. They continue to be persecuted even though Maoists openly admitted to murdering Saraswati.

Thousands of homes and churches have been destroyed, and an estimated 50,000 Christians have been forced to flee the violence. Mission Network News estimates 5,000 Christian homes have been burned and 200 churches ruined. According to the Christian Post, 30,000 people remain in government-operated refugee camps. Tens of thousands are living in forests – many seriously wounded.

Father Manoj, based at the archbishop’s office in Bhubaneshwar, said Christians remain in hiding.

"They are too scared to go home. They know that if they return to their villages they will be forced to convert to Hinduism."

Religious rights group Barnabus Fund told the group Hindu militants "forced" Christians in Orissa to "convert" to Hinduism by threatening them with rape if they refused.

Neighbors reportedly gang-raped a Hindu woman after her Christian uncle refused to renounce his faith, according to reports.

Another Christian woman named Jaspina was told by neighbors, "If you go on being Christian, we will burn your house and your children in front of you." She and her family were forced to eat cow excrement to "purify" themselves of Christianity.

Other Christians were doused with gasoline and told to participate in conversion ceremonies or be lit on fire.

This week, Hindu extremists said they have set a deadline for the capture of Saraswati's murderers. If the killers are not caught by Dec. 15, they promised to begin a massacre on Dec. 25, Christmas day.

According to the latest report, Orissa's Catholic bishops wrote an ominous letter to the state's chief minister. It read, "This conflict is a calculated and pre-planned master plan to wipe out Christianity from Kandhamal in order to realize the hidden agenda … of establishing a Hindu nation."

KGB is "Interested" in the Activities of Church Minister

This is from the updated webpage of Belarus' New Life Church, just outside of Minsk. In October, I posted about a Christian ministry which operates within the country and does much good to improve the lives of impoverished and abandoned children. Unfortuantely, I had to remove it for security reasons (Christian activity has become illegal in Belarus, which has reverted to a police state).

On November 10 one of the helpers of New Life church’s pastor, brother Sergei Vashkevich has come to the Department of KGB of Minsk and Minsk region in accordance to the summons paper received by him earlier. KGB officers talked with Sergei for over 2 hours. During this talk they were asking him questions concerning the act of terror that had taken place in Minsk on July 4 this year and the past activities of Sergei in one of local NGOs. During this talk KGB officer wanted to take Sergei’s finger prints, to which, as well as to having to sign the protocol of his interrogation, Sergei refused. Sergei has argumented his position as follows: “as an evangelical, and as a church minister as well, I definitely could not have participated in such act of terror”. At the end of this “talk” KGB officer has promised not to invite Sergei for such “talks” in the future.

Several years ago, after passing the most repressive law on religious freedom in Europe (the EU has compared it to Stalin's 1929 decree on religious associations) the Lukashenko government tried to reposess New Life Church's building, an unheated, abandoned cow barn which the then-800 member congregation personally restored and was using for worship. Pastor Slava Goncharenko stood up to the police, as he had before, and 180 members of the church held an in-building hunger strike for weeks. The incident made international news and gained support around the world. While they retained their right to meet for worship, the government claimed they could not use the barn for anything other than a barn (although the land it stood on was residential and no longer agricultural). It is not unusual in Belarus for new laws to be invented spur of the moment at the whim of an official. The government was to "buy" the church back, at a tenth of it's real estate value.

I recently learned that the KGB has been operating once again at full force, and the communist youth organizations Young Pioneers and Komsomol have once again become de riguer - notwithstanding that a whole generation has grown up post-communism.

Also recently, deportations of other Christian pastors:

On the night of 15-16 of October border (frontier) services of the Republic of Belarus in the airport Minsk-2 detained, placed into detention unit for deportees and deported a famous Christian minister, Bishop Benjamin Brukh. The detention and the deportation were done without explanation of any reasons.

Benjamin Brukh is a protestant bishop and a pastor, a famous minister in Belarus, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ in Minsk, one of the largest protestant religious communities in Belarus. He served as the pastor of this church during 1991-2002. Borys Chernoglaz, the senior pastor of the Full Gospel Church of Jesus Christ, expressed his concern over this fact: “While the visa ban has been lifted on high-ranking state officials, the person who has contributed quite a lot to the spiritual development of the nation is not permitted entry into the country. I do not understand why without presenting any reason explanations Bishop Benjamin Brukh was not admitted into Belarus. In the last years not once he entered the country, he did not violate any laws, and there were not any claims against him. On this night he was detained and taken into the custody as a criminal”.

Benjamin Brukh is the citizen of Ukraine. During the time of his ministry in Belarus, his church and he personally have done a lot work in the spiritual and social spheres. In the last years he has been in Belarus on numerous occasions, as well as for a longer period of time, in compliance with the procedures established by the legislation of the republic of Belarus.

“We will make our utmost efforts to receive Belarusian state authoritities official explanation on Benjamin Brukh's deportation. In any case, it is obvious that in this situation human rights are violated, the rights of a protestant pastor in particular, and the image of our country is seriously harmed”, the lawyer and human rights consultant Sergei Shavtsov says.

New Life's congregants worshiping outside:

May they be spared any more "visits" from the KGB.

Very Impressive Non-Answer

...And today's Very Impressive Non-Answer award of yadda-yadda articulation goes to.......Muslim feminist analyst Dalia Mogahed, who was interviewed here by Warren Larson. Larson, the director of the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies at Columbia International University (a well-known academic center of liberalism), authored Islamic Ideology and Fundamentalism in Pakistan: Climate for Conversion to Christianity?

So a leading Christian publication is running a feature that not only gives Islam a voice, but that voice casts Islam in a progressive and favorable light. To quote Mark Driscoll, "If I may state the obvious, Christianity...is about Christ. Now, I don't mean to stretch it....."

I stopped being amazed by anti-biblical ideology masquerading as Christianity somewhere around 2003, when my church was doing Richard Foster books that promoted zen-like meditation. When the UCC gave up all pretense of following the God of the Bible, I didn't raise an eyebrow. But the space given to Islam in Christian media outlets is not only disconcerting, it promotes a completely false, unbiblical and dangerous ecumenism. For the discerning, it is easy to see through the facade. This Muslim spokeswoman hangs herself on her own words.

Here's the quote:

Larson: Don't all four schools of Sunni Islamic law suggest that a Muslim who leaves Islam and embraces Christianity, for example, should be executed?

Mogahed: We have to look at modern interpretations, because Islamic law is a vibrant, ever-changing set of interpretations. Fiqh, or human interpretation of Shari'ah, maps changes with time and place. Look, for example, at Sheikh Ali Jumu'a, grand mufti of Egypt, whose interpretation of apostasy laws is not to take drastic measures. In the past, apostasy was seen as treason because citizenship in one group was defined by faith, and when people left one faith, they had to work against their community. One's faith today is no longer seen in the same context, because the nation-state has been completely transformed.

Notice she neither answered the question, nor denied that ex-Muslims are persecuted and killed by other Muslims the world over because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Mogahed actually stated in the interview that data indicates Islamic violence is NOT driven by religious extremism, but rather by "extreme political ideology". Mmm, yeah. Like that Danish cartoon incident. That probably had more to do with the severe persecution of Muslims in Copenhagen and Denmark's oppressive economic conditions than it did with fascism. Those crazy

Vikings Danes can be real demagogues.

The 4-page spread in CT "challenges stereotypes" about Islam. Mogahed claims that "Muslims admire democratic values" and that the Koran does not espouse violence (which is a bald-faced lie). For a more accurate, chapter and verse assessment of what the Koran really says, see the writings of former Muslim Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner, including "20 Things Every Christian Should Know About Islam". Notice when questioned about "apostates" (by definition, those who leave Islam for other religions; also known as "infidels"), she evades the question by affirming how wrong it would be to call other Muslims apostates. So I guess the scholarship of Drs. Ergun and Emir Caner, who are both Baptist pastors with PhDs in theology, wouldn't count since they are just "apostates".

Go read their joint project, "Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs" for some quotes that actually contain substance and truth. Careful, though; it's seditious stuff.

Angel Tree Ministries

"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." -- Jesus (Matt. 10:42)

Even though it still seems a long way off in mid-November, Christmas is fast approaching. The holiday season seems to bring both a whole new level of worries and needs to many, both in our nation and abroad; but we are also faced with unique opportunities to show compassion and the love of Christ.

Of course, the need to do all we can for others and, above all, to spread the Gospel is one we should keep foremost in our minds all year long. From time to time, I profile certain ministries here that fit the criteria for what a true Christian mission should be: both evangelical and humanitarian in nature. After having read the Bible thoroughly several times, I am convinced that God's will for us to serve (what some churches refer to as "social justice") is secondary only to His desire to keep sinners out of hell. Isaiah, James, Amos, 1 Corinthians, the Penteteuch and all of the Gospels drive home this fact. (That's a good chunk of Scripture right there)!

Christmastime presents an ideal opportunity to bring tangible aid to vulnerable people who may otherwise never ask for or receive it. As Angel Tree and many other related ministries have noted, this often softens a hardened heart and opens the door to an opportunity to talk about Jesus. Angel Tree is an offshoot ministry of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship that was started in 1978 by Mary Kay Beard, a former felon and convicted bank robber. Mary Kay had grown up in a Christian home, but had been abused by her alcoholic father and later started down the wrong path in life. She turned to Christ while in an Alabama state prison. After serving her sentence, in 1978 she was released and joined the staff of Prison Fellowship. She became Alabama's first woman state director for Prison Fellowship, and it was out of her Christmas prison experience that Angel Tree, a ministry that provides gifts for inmates' children, was born.

Mary Kay remembered how the women in prison would attend church-related events put on in the prison in order to receive trial-sized bottles of shampoo, soap and toothpaste - which they would then wrap and give to their children when they came to visit them. Recalling the children's joy at the care their incarcerated mothers showed, Mary Kay decided to collect names and addresses of the inmates' children, put them on two public Christmas trees, and allow members of the public to purchase gifts for them in the imprisoned parents' names. “Within six days we were out of names and I had to go back to the prison to get more. At the end of that first Angel Tree in 1982, 556 children had received up to four different gifts each,” she says in her testimony (the whole story is available here).

Just as in the beginning, inmates who register their children's names in the Angel Tree program typically participate in prison Bible studies and discipling afterward. The ministry, whose slogan is "It starts with a gift, it leads to lives transformed by Christ", has expanded to every state and has regional offices to help churches and individuals coordinate their giving programs. Volunteers purchase, wrap and personally deliver Christmas presents to the children whose parents are behind bars and visit with their families. Prison Fellowship even trains the volunteers on presenting a clear Gospel message.

However, Angel Tree does more than just coordinate delivery brightly-wrapped packages to children and sharing the Gospel in one visit. The ministry encourages participating churches to build ongoing relationships with the families they are serving, and offers camping and mentoring programs to reach out to these youngsters long after the holidays are over. Some of the ideas on Angel Tree's website include putting on a church-wide "Family Fun Day" to introduce the children and other family members to the congregation; helping them write letters and make visits to the incarcerated parent; and enrolling the Angel Tree kids in the church's VBS program.















Individuals can also send tax-deductible donations directly to the ministry if their church does not participate in an Angel Tree outreach. With the state the economy is in, donations to charities and missions are bound to be down this year. Still, we all should do what we can, and look at small ways we can help someone who has it worse off than we do. Ensuring that a child receives a gift on Christmas morning....and a lonely prisoner hears the Gospel (perhaps for the first time) is a worthy cause. A gift for one child averages out to only about $11.00. Angel Tree's website also has suggestions for getting your church involved, if there is collective interest in doing so, but missions committees tend to move slowly so it might take until next year.

Please keep these children and their families in your prayers. There is much pain and difficulty not only for the person incarcerated, but for their families as well. Their struggle is often an "invisible" one, and they deserve our compassion.

Is this Orissa....or Michigan???

You people have to read this. (Thanks to Glenn of Watchman's Bagpipes for sending it in). A Lansing blogger named Nick wrote it.

So, the question of the day is.....since it's the Mid-west and not the Mid-east, does it qualify for a "persecuted church" label? You decide.

I'll be back with an original entry later - off to Bible study right now.

Michigan liberals attack Lansing congregation in the middle of Sunday worship

This is what we're up against.

On Sunday morning, amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our President-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful church goers.

They did it with banners, chants, blasphemy, by storming the pulpit, by vandalizing the church facility, by potentially defiling the building with lewd, public, sex acts and by intentionally forcing physical confrontations with worshipers.

This didn't take place in some dystopian, post modern work of fiction and it didn't take place in San Francisco or Berkley. This was the scene at a Bible believing church in Lansing, Michigan.

I returned home myself yesterday, from church and an afternoon watching football with the family, to find an email in my inbox from a friend in the Capitol City. Isn't surprising to see her name in the inbox as she and I often compare notes on our Sunday services.

Truth be told, I've done my best over the last year to start a friendly little rivalry with her. My church is better than hers, I insist, and I have been known to tell her why. Hers is superior to mine, she reminds me, and lists the reasons. (I admit I'm maybe a tad hyper-competitive, but my church really is the best in the world.) Yesterday's email began with an understated proclamation; "So church today was exciting..."

On Sunday, November 9, 2008 Michigan liberals sat peacefully through announcements, worship and prayer for the sick, our nation and our President-elect before staging a coordinated, disgusting and repulsive attack on worshipers and the broader concept of the church itself at Lansing's Mount Hope Church.

The lefties were a part of a liberal organization known as Bash Back Lansing and their collection of radical blogs, including one of the state's most widely read "mainstream" progressive blogs (and none which will receive a link on this website) called on "queers and trannies" from across the state and the region to converge on Lansing for what they refer to as an "action." While many of the members claim to be anarchists (they drove on roads, ate non-garden grown foods, printed materials on products created by government protected free markets, wore clothing, talk incessantly about "organization," etc etc etc) their broader goal is stated plainly on one of their lefty blogs.

"I can tell you that we are targeting a well-known anti-queer, anti-choice radical right wing establishment."

Mount Hope, for the record, is an evangelical, bible believing church whose members provide free 24 hour counseling, prayer lines, catastrophic care for families dealing with medical emergencies, support groups for men, women and children dealing with a wide variety of life's troubles, crisis intervention, marriage ministries, regular, organized volunteer work in and around the city, missions in dozens of countries across the globe, a construction ministry that has built over 100 churches, schools, orphanages and other projects all over the world and an in-depth prison ministry that reaches out, touches and helps the men and women the rest of society fears the most. They also teach respect for all human life and the Biblical sanctity of marriage as an institution between one man and one woman.

This is what Michigan liberals label a "radical right wing establishment," and over 30 of them showed up in force yesterday. Wearing secret-service style ear pieces and microphones they received the "go" from their ringleader and off they went.

Prayer had just finished when men and women stood up in pockets across the congregation, on the main floor and in the balcony. "Jesus was gay," they shouted among other profanities and blasphemies as they rushed the stage. Some forced their way through rows of women and kids to try to hang a profane banner from the balcony while others began tossing fliers into the air. Two women made their way to the pulpit and began to kiss.

Their other props? I'll let them tell you in their own words... from another of their liberal blogs:

"(A) video camera, a megaphone, noise makers, condoms, glitter by the bucket load, confetti, pink fabric...yeh."

The video camera they put to good use as they attempted to provoke a violent reaction. The image of the pink-clad folks above is one of theirs, stating in a picture worth more than a thousand words the goals of the Michigan left.

The "open minded" and "tolerant" liberals ran down the aisles and across the pews, hoping against hope to catch a "right winger" on tape daring to push back (none did). And just in case their camera missed the target, they had a reporter in tow. According to a source inside the church yesterday there was a "journalist" from the Lansing City Pulse along for the ride, tipped off about the action and more interested in getting a story than in preventing the vandalism, the violence and anti-Christian hatred being spewed by the lefties. We'll see what he files and what his editors see fit to print.

Props were readily on display too, though some of the condoms may have been put to even more nefarious use.

An hour after police and security had collected and removed who they thought were the last of the liberals, a volunteer security person discovered two more, hiding, together, in a public restroom. While their compatriots engaged in openly violent protest in front of everyone these two snuck away to potentially stage their own protest of sorts, and only by the grace of God did one of the hundreds of kids at the church not happen upon that particular restroom in those moments. Precisely how long they'd been there and precisely what they'd been up to we don't know.

The church's response? After things settled down, the blasphemy ended, the lewd props removed and the families safe from fear of additional men and women running into and past them the pastor took the stage and led the congregation in one more prayer... not for retribution, or divine justice or a celestial comeuppance (that's what I'd have prayed for) but instead that the troubled individuals who'd just defiled the Lord's house, so full of anger and hate, would know Jesus' love in their lives and God's peace that exceeds human understanding.

Yesterday morning defined the difference between a church of believers and Michigan liberals. It also illustrated in shocking, painful detail precisely what we're up against.

Stuff I Couldn't Figure Out on the Way Back from Work Tonight

1.) Synergism or monergism?

2.) Dispensationalism or Covenant Theology?

3.) Limited Atonement? (Really? Really really?)

4.) Classical cessationism or concentric cessationism?

5.) False teachers with saved followers?

6.) Free Grace or Lordship?

7.) Shorts and flip-flops in church? How? Why?

Thoughts? Anyone? (Yes, it's a long commute).

OK, another thing I've noticed when I check the site meter is that folks from all kinds of exotic locales like the Philippines, Australia and Great Britain have surfed in, if only for a moment. Please, leave a comment; introduce yourself if you've a mind to. I like knowing my readers and who you are!