30 Chinese Christian Leaders Abducted

An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.

Christians Secretly Forced to Re-Convert to Hinduism in India

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Organization, VHP) is secretly conducting large-scale conversion drives in India’s Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal. More than 16 tribal Christians were forced to re-convert to Hinduism on April 22 at a purification ceremony in Chopra village in the Malda district about 300 kilometers from Calcutta, NGO sources said. Ten other animist tribals were also converted to Hinduism in the village.

Two More Arrests in Saudi Arabia

Two Filipino Christians were quietly whisked away from their homes near Jeddah early Wednesday morning, April 10, according to the Washington, DC based human rights organization, International Christian Concern (ICC).

Azerbaijan: “Overzealous” Police Try To Ban Baptist Service

Just two days after a court in the capital Baku liquidated a Baptist congregation, a local policeman in the small town of Chukhuryurd near Shemakha in central Azerbaijan tried to ban a small Baptist church from meeting, Baptist sources told Keston News Service. “He had heard the news of the Baku church’s liquidation on ANS television and came to the local elder last Friday [5 April] and told him the church could not meet on Sunday for worship,”

Palestinian Christians: The Other Side of the Story

Some time ago I was invited to present a two-day seminar in a church about the Middle East conflict. During the course of those sessions, we used an abundance of scriptures, carefully presented in their context, to clearly explain why the land is God’s, that He entrusted it to Israel as a permanent possession, and what are the challenges of Islam. At the end of the two days, the senior Pastor told a couple in his church: “Well, I’d like to hear the Palestinian side…”

Azerbaijan: Police Order Protestant’s Deportation

On the day Baku’s Protestant Greater Grace church was celebrating Easter, police in the city’s central Sabail district tried to forcibly deport a church member, alleging that she had been conducting religious “propaganda”. One of the church’s pastors, Musfig Bayram, told Keston News Service from Baku that police took Nina Koptseva, a Russian citizen who has a residence permit to live in Baku, to the city’s railway station on Sunday morning (31 March), bought her a ticket to the Russian border and tried to place her on the train without any court decision.

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