very sad

Otto F. Warmbier has died. He was the US college student who was held in North Korea for 17 months. He came home still in a comma he’d been in for months.

Otte was visiting China in December 2015 when he signed up for a five-day tour of North Korea with a Chinese company that advertised “budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from.”

Otte was detained at the airport when he ought to have been departing the country. His crime was an attempt to steal a propaganda sign from the hotel. According to CNN,  North Korea believed a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, promised Otte a used car worth $10,000 in exchange for retrieving a slogan-bearing sign from the communist state.

We hope CNN is wrong. We hope no member of any church would encourage a young person to steal anything – especially not in a totalitarian state.

 

 

back to Jerusalem?

In May, two Chinese nationals were kidnapped in Pakistan. ISIS has claimed responsibility for their deaths.

The two were in Pakistan on business visas but were doing mission work according to Pakistan’s interior minister. The man, 24, and woman, 26,  were among a group of Chinese citizens who obtained a business visa from the Pakistani Embassy in Beijing.

It is alleged the pair went to the Pakistani city of Quetta and under the guise of learning Urdu from a Korean and “engaged in preaching.”

In a social media post discussing the story, the People’s Daily newspaper, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, said Friday that China was the biggest target market for South Korean missionaries and urged people “to cover their souls.” It is not known whether the two Chinese nationals had been accompanied in Pakistan by Korean Christians.

The Chinese Communist Party once tried to destroy religion. It failed.

Back in 2010 the PEW Forum estimated there were 67 million Christians in China.  Today, according to some estimates, there are more Christians in China than Communist Party members, up to 100 million. There are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of unofficial home churches in China where people gather to study the bible and pray.

The Back to Jerusalem Movement started in Chain. It is an evangelistic campaign to send commissionaires to all the Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim peoples who live between China and Jerusalem.

The movement plans to send 100,000 or more missionaries to 51 countries along the Silk Road.  They intend to complete the great commission and take the gospel into the whole world.

Taking the gospel into Pakistan took extraordinary courage.  Pray for the rest of the missionaries on the silk road that the good news may be proclaimed.

 

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not every one who says to me Lord, Lord

An asylum seeker killed a five year old child in Bavaria and was shot by police.  The boy was attached by the man on Saturday night. The 47 year old mother of the boy was also injured, she was originally from Russia. She and another child were hospitalized.

The 41 year old perpetrator from Afghanistan had already been convicted of arson and served six years in prison. He had attempted to murder his wife and cousin by burning them to death. When he was released he was allowed to live in an asylum home under heavy surveillance. He was not allowed to leave the compound and was made to wear an ankle monitor.

According a Bavarian broadcaster the reason the Afghan was not sent back to Afghanistan after serving his sentence was that he had converted to Christianity.

Nothing about his behavior suggests he converted to Christianity.

 

another attack on Coptic Christians

In Egypt a bus load of Coptic Christians was just attacked by gunmen. At least 26 people are dead.

chemical weapons

Islamic State tested poisonous chemicals on prisoners in a bid to produce easily-obtainable chemical weapons for local use and potential terrorist attacks in the West, records recovered from Mosul by Iraqi soldiers and obtained by The Times show.

This news comes from notes recovered in Mosul by British and US forces.  ISIL was experimenting on people using thallium sulfate which is commercially available a pesticide in the United States. Experiments conducted in Mosul are part of a larger weapons program.  Ways of making such weapons are included in training materials for ISIL recruits in the West.

Given its stated goal to strike at the church, maybe its time to safeguard potlucks and other gatherings.

in case you didn’t catch this one

Twenty-eight year old Hamza bin Laden recently delivered a speech sounding very much like his father, according to the FBI. He has recorded four audio messages in two years according to a 60 Minutes report. Basically, he is saying to America, “we are coming and you are going to feel it. We are going to take revenge for what you did to my father, for what you did in Iraq, and for what you did in Afghanistan.”

 

Ebola in the DRC

Dr Allarangar Yokouide, the WHO representative in Congo, said that teams of specialists will arrive in the affected area of Likati by Saturday.