China: House Churches In Multiple Provinces Attacked By Local Government

04/27/2012 China (ChinaAid) - ChinaAid has recently learned that house churches in several province have recently encountered intense persecution by local authorities, a handful of which are reported below.

1) At the end of March, a house church in Daqing, Heilongjiang province held a Bible training session that was raided by Domestic Security Protection agents and officials from the Bureau of Religious. More than 150 church leaders were apprehended, including 10 foreigners (nationalities unknown). The local government has imposed a strict news blackout and threatened family members to keep quiet, so efforts to find out how many people remained in custody have yielded no updates.

2) On April 1, brother Jia Deji, the head of the evangelism group at a government-approved Three-Self church in Jiazhuang village, Shenqiao township, Zhecheng county in Henan province, was expelled from the evangelism group by the local chairman of the China Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Association, Pastor Zhang Yongqiang, and also ordered to stop preaching. Brother Jia holds an evangelism certificate jointly issued by the provincial, municipal and county governments. However, in February, he invited Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, head of the Chinese House Church Alliance, to his home to hold two days of thanksgiving services, and he had attended house church services at the home of Xu Tietou, an elder of the Zhukou town house church in Taikang county. Xu is a paralytic who has not been able to move for 40 years.

3) On April 14, 53 local house church leaders were arrested in Ye county, Henan province, while holding a Bible study. To date, more than 20 people remain in custody.

4) On the afternoon of April 22, local government officials led more than a dozen mafia types masquerading as Christians to the Hongqiao Church in Xianan District, Xianning city, in Hubei province, where they smashed open the donation box and stole the money, then changed the locks on the church doors. They also forced all the Christians to leave the church, and beat Elder Xu Shizhen. Leading the attack were the directors of the religious affairs bureau, one surnamed Yang and the other named Wu Suqiong.

The other government officials involved were the chairmen of the local China Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Association: Mao Yao, Fan Baosheng and Ceng Pingsheng. In the past two years, one of the church’s lay leaders who frequently takes the pulpit and preaches, ShiShanghai, has been beaten three times by these government officials. The construction of Hongqiao Church’s church building was funded entirely by donations from church members, and construction was personally overseen by church leader Xu Shizhen(Source).

Music video from Trip Lee

Here is a music video by a Christian rapper Trip Lee, from a song off of his new album the Good Life, which was released on April 12, 2012. The song is called I'm Good which is featuring a fellow Christian rapper named Lecrae:

The purpose of this video seems to be to bring awareness to the suffering that our brethren in Christ are facing in countries like Asia, China, and Pakistan as signified by the man being beat to death by a guy holding a machine gun. It's also signified by the lyrics of our brother in Christ rapping.

1st Anniversary of this blog

A year ago today, I started this blog in hopes that the Lord Jesus Christ would be glorified as I tried to bring awareness to the persecution that our brethren in Christ were facing in other lands and even the less violent type of persecution me and my brethren face here in the west even though it is not as violent as it is over in places like China, Pakistan and Egypt. I also intended to write on verses in the Bible and how they are relevant to persecution and our proper response to them. Unfortunately I've been slacking off on posts and the like so I'll get back on to doing that from now on. Happy First Anniversary!!!!!!!!

Sudanese President Accused of Inciting Violence against Christians

It's so unsurprising to see that this ruler is (allegedly) showing hatred for God by persecuting his adopted children. My Sudanese brethren in the risen Lord Jesus Christ are in my prayers.

04/23/2012 Sudan (Sudan Tribune)-The secretary-general of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), Yasir Arman, has blamed “racist” statements of Sudan’s President Omer Al-Bashir for encouraging a mob of fundamentalist Islamists to attack a church in the capital Khartoum.
An Evangelical Church in the Sawafi area of Khartoum was attacked and set on fire Friday by a group of fundamentalist Islamists mobilized by hard-line cleric Mohamed Abdel-Karim despite a police cordon in the area.

A pastor named Yusuf Matar Kodi told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday that the group had “burned Bibles and torched the school for training clergy on the farm, as well as the residence of the students."

In a press statement on Monday, Arman said that the assailing group had been motivated to burn the Church as police forces “stood and watched” by the “racist” statements of Al-Bashir.
Arman was referring to a number of derogatory remarks Al-Bashir has made against leaders of South Sudan following the latter’s military takeover two weeks ago of oil-rich Heglig region on the disputed borders between the two neighbors.

In separate occasions, Al-Bashir described the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in South Sudan as “an insect” whose members must be disciplined by “the stick,” in what some have linked to a well-known Arab phrase that says “don’t buy a slave without the stick.”

The predominantly-Christian South Sudan seceded from Sudan to form an independent state in July last year but an estimated 500,000 southerners whose Sudanese citizenship has been revoked are still living in the Muslim-dominated north.

According to Arman, the fighting over Heglig has revealed the “racist face” of Al-Bashir’s regime, accusing its leaders of making insults that dwarfed those of former Apartheid leaders in South Africa.
“Al-Bashir did not only offend South Sudan’s people but also offended the northerners he rules in their names,” Arman said.

The rebel official also said that Al-Bashir’s remarks represent an insult to all of Africa and every black person including all northerners and mediators of the African Union. Arman went on to condemn the attack on the church and warned that the move will harm the integrity of Sudan’s social fabric(Source).

Islamic Group Kills Seven in North Nigeria

The Lord Jesus Christ said that a day would come that when people kill His followers they will think they are doing God a favor (John 16:2). This article shows that Islam is the fulfillment of that prediction.

04/20/2012 Nigeria (Reuters) - Gunmen from radical Islamist sect Boko Haram have killed at least seven civilians in the past 24 hours in a spate of attacks in northern Nigeria, police said on Thursday.
Boko Haram, which wants to carve an Islamic state out of Africa's most populous nation split evenly between Muslims and Christians, has killed hundreds in almost daily gun and bomb attacks this year.

"A water vendor and a customs officer were killed in Abbaganaram and Kasuwan custom areas on Wednesday in the evening, while 5 bakers were killed at the Kasmi Bakery on Thursday," Samuel Tizhe, spokesman for police in the sect's northeastern heartland of Maiduguri, said.

A bomb near a church in northern city Kaduna on Easter Sunday killed more than 30 people. This week, the U.S. embassy in Nigeria warned its citizens that the group might be planning attacks on the capital Abuja, which Nigerian authorities quickly dismissed as alarmist. The group has struck the capital a few times, but its attacks are mostly concentrated in the largely Muslim north(Source).

NASCAR Driver Loses Sponsor Over Christian Faith

04/19/2012 United States (Charisma) - Although many applaud the prayer meetings in NASCAR circles, not everyone is willing to tolerate Christian values on the race track. Indeed, NASCAR driver Blake Koch is being persecuted for his faith. Following California’s Royal Purple 300, Koch sat just 28 points out of the top 10 driver standings—but he was forced to race with a blank car after losing his primary sponsor because of a controversy over his Christianity.

Koch had partnered with The Rise Up and Register Campaign, which works to educate people on the importance of voting in the 2012 elections. But ESPN would not allow the ad to air because of its so-called political and religious overtones.

“I didn’t think that my faith in Christ would have an impact on whether or not a sponsor could air a commercial or not,” Koch told Fox & Friends on March 29. “The one thing I will not do is deny my faith just because a particular sponsor might not like the way I express my faith, which I do on my own time.”

ESPN could not immediately be reached for comment(Source).

Christians In Peril As Sudan And South Sudan Head Towards War

When Southern Sudan (populated with mainly our brethren in Christ and animists) seceded from the North on July 9, 2011, it was thought this would herald an era of peace for the south that was never seen. However as we see in this article such has not been the case.

04/16/2012 South Sudan (ANS)-The threat of an all-out war between Sudan and South Sudan is mounting amid intensifying fighting in the disputed border region, putting Christians in both nations in great danger.
Barnabas Fund, based in the UK says that Fierce clashes in the oil-rich territory over the last three weeks have been described as the worst fighting since South Sudan gained independence in July 2011.

The UN Security Council last week expressed its “deep and growing alarm” over the “escalating conflict”, and said that the situation threatened to return the countries to full-scale war. Sudan, which has been indiscriminately dropping bombs in the border regions and the South for almost a year, said that if Southern troops do not comply with a UN order to withdraw from the Heglig oilfields, Khartoum “will chase them out” and “hit deep inside South Sudan”.

“The tensions threaten a return to the deadly civil war that devastated the South and left more than two million people, mainly Southern Christians, dead,” said a Barnabas Fund spokesperson.

“The independence of South Sudan was meant to herald a new dawn of peace, but a number of serious issues between the two countries remain unresolved, including disputed border territory, oil revenue and citizenship rights.”

The spokesperson went on to say that the hostility between the two nations has left people of Southern origin, who are mainly Christian and mainly African, in the overwhelmingly Muslim and Arab Republic of Sudan in a state of limbo and increasing danger. They were stripped of their citizenship of Sudan after the South voted to secede in January 2011 and given until 8 April to sort out their papers. That deadline has now passed, and, treated as foreigners in Sudan, they have been denied work permits, while South Sudan has not yet started issuing identity documents. Thus they have been left without an official nationality.

A deal that would have given citizens of both countries key rights – to live, work and own property – in the other state has stalled, and there is little hope of further progress; a planned summit between the two presidents at the beginning of April was called off because of the violence in the border region.

A mother and child trying to shelter from the possible upcoming all-out war
“Thousands of people are consequently living rough, hundreds of them on wasteland around Khartoum, having had to give up their homes; many do not have the money and resources to transport their families and possessions to South Sudan. Around three-quarters of them are Christians,” said the Barnabas Fund spokesperson.

One community leader said: “We’ve been out of our homes for three months. We’re going to South Sudan, but we need the help of the two governments to return to our country. The people here are very tired. The men have no work, no food; that is our situation(Source).”