BAGHDAD, IRAQ (ANS) — Iraqi Christians who have become targets of attacks by Muslim extremists and bandits are risking their lives to attend church services, ASSIST News Service (ANS) has established.
An Arab convert to Christianity was killed in a bomb blast last night outside his Tripoli apartment, adjacent to the home of a European missionary family thought to have been targeted in the attack.
Turkmenistan’s most prominent religious prisoner, the Baptist Shageldy Atakov, has been freed before the end of his four-year sentence, Keston News Service has learnt. The US-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries and the German-based Friedensstimme Mission, which maintain close ties with Baptists in the former Soviet republics, have both confirmed that Atakov was released from prison in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) early on 8 January and has now been reunited with his wife Artygul and five children in the town of Kaakhka close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran. “Jesus has given me a Christmas gift,” Atakov was quoted as saying (many Christians in the region celebrate Christmas on 7 January).
The hearing in the case to liquidate the Love Baptist Church in the Azerbaijani capital Baku was postponed yesterday (23 January), the church’s pastor Sary Mirzoyev told Keston News Service from Baku. The Narimanov district court had been due to hear the suit, brought by Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, in the afternoon of 23 January (see KNS 18 January 2002) but the court agreed to the defendant’s request to postpone the hearing because of ill health. Yahya Mamedov, the church’s deacon and administrator, suffers from diabetes. No date has yet been set for a new hearing, but it is likely to be in about ten days’ time.
Two major hurdles face evangelical churches in Turkey: lack of trained leadership and suitable buildings. A Turkish church planter says conditions are now right to do something about both.
Part 1
by Berit Kjos
“I strongly urge the establishment of a Mission to Planet Earth, a worldwide monitoring system staffed by children…design to rescue the global environment.” -Al Gore
“…absolute behavior control is imminent…. The critical point of behavior control, in effect, is sneaking up on mankind without his self-conscious realization that a crisis is at hand. Man will… never self-consciously know that it has happened.” [1] Raymond Houghton, To Nurture Humaneness, ASCD (curriculum arm of the NEA), 1970
“The Protestant Ethic will atrophy as more and more enjoy varied leisure and guaranteed sustenance…. Most people will tend to be hedonistic…” [2] Feasibility Study, Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program (B-STEP), Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Bureau of Research, 1969
ASTANA / BUDAPEST , (ANS) — Leaders and other believers of non registered Baptist and Evangelical churches in the former Soviet republic of Kazakstan are experiencing a new period of persecution by central authorities, reports said Monday July 1.
Attorneys for a Chinese Christian leader who barely escaped execution in January want his retrial to be conducted in public this time, according to sources close to the case.
In what appears to be a growing divide between US and European approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the European Union this week expressed support for the Palestinian position that Israeli concessions made since the Camp David talks should serve as the starting point for future negotiations.
Let me state flatly that I do not believe Al Gore is the Antichrist. But millions of conservatives around the world, religious and non-religious, are concerned with the United Nations earth-centered one-world environmentalism supported by such as he. Al Gore has suggested that his resume makes him better prepared for the White House than Bill Clinton was in 1992. Apocalyptically speaking, he may be right. Gore’s resume, especially as outlined in his book Earth in the Balance, contributes to an ominous, if not prophetic, global vision of the near future.
New legislation awaiting agreement by the Kazakhstan authorities looks set to undermine religious freedom.
The Keston Institute reports that if adopted, the law will require all missionaries to be registered and allow unregistered religious groups to be banned.
BUDAPEST/PRISTINA (ANS) — The NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (K-FOR) has identified a British soldier who died while guarding a Serbian Orthodox Church in the regional Capital Pristina, ASSIST News Service learned Wednesday December 19.
An Assyrian Christian arrested a month ago for taking home videos in an ancient churchyard in Turkey’s heavily militarized Southeast was ordered released today by Diyarbakir’s State Security Court.
Inescapably intertwined with Bible history, Egypt and much of her history has had great impact over the years on Judaism, then Christianity. From Joseph being appointed as second-in-command to Pharaoh, to Moses leading the Jews through the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, to the infant Jesus and His family seeking refuge, the stories are familiar to us. Egypt’s recorded history dates back to 3200 BC. This land that straddles parts of two continents–Africa and Asia–rose to world wide prominence as a series of Pharaohs who ruled the Land of the Nile oversaw incredible feats of engineering that resulted in the … Read more
Two young men who lead a small Baptist church in the town of Kulsary, the centre of Jiloi district of Kazakhstan’s Atyrau region on the Caspian Sea, have protested against an illegal order by the district prosecutor banning the church.
KULSARY, KAZAKHSTAN (ANS for KNS) — Two young men who lead a small Baptist church in the town of Kulsary, the centre of Jiloi district of Kazakhstan’s Atyrau region on the Caspian Sea, have protested against an illegal order by the district prosecutor banning the church.
The widely divergent approaches of American and European leaders to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been on display in recent days, with a visiting US Congressman blaming PLO chief Yasser Arafat for on-going violence, while a Belgian diplomat has come down hard on Israel.
The wife and children of Baptist prisoner Shageldy Atakov in Turkmenistan have been told by the local mullah, administration officials and officers of the country’s political police, the KNB (former KGB), that they may not believe in Jesus Christ and must convert to Islam. According to a statement from local Baptists — passed on to Keston News Service by the German-based Friedensstimme mission — officials in the town of Kaakhka, close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran, also warned Atakov’s wife, Artygyul, that the family home would be confiscated if Christians continue to meet there.
(STOKE-ON-TRENT, UK (ANS) – UCB Europe has called for a day or prayer and fasting on Sunday April 22 from its over three hundred thousand supporters across the UK and Ireland.
A sizeable Christian community is among the Karen people group in Myanmar (formerly Burma) facing abuse at the hands of the country’s military regime, according to Newsroom-Online, an Internet news service based in London.