Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani faced tense hours early Saturday, October 1, after a government official said he should be executed for being a traitorous “Zionist” and committing “security crimes.”
A young pastor of Iran’s largest house church movement has told an Iranian court he will not “recant” his faith in Christ despite facing execution as early as Thursday, September 29, for abandoning Islam, church sources said.
An Iranian court has asked the pastor of one of Iran’s largest house church movements to abandon his faith in Christ and return to Islam if he wants to avoid execution, a church official told Worthy News Sunday, September 25.
Christians who were recently relocated to Nandagiri have been ordered to suspend construction of their small church to satisfy the region’s radical Hindus.
Bogor’s mayor has a new reason not to allow the Yasmin church to open: the name of the street on which it is built bears an Islamic name.
A mayor in West Java who disregarded a Supreme Court ruling to reinstate the building permit of a church in Bogor has also dismissed a recommendation by the National Ombudsman Institute to comply with the ruling.
An evangelical pastor who faces execution in Iran for refusing to abandon his Christian faith has urged fellow believers to remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the “Word of God” despite persecution, according to a letter obtained by Worthy News.
An unofficial translation of the Iranian Supreme Court’s decision to execute Pastor Youcef Nadakhani was obtained by Worthy News on Monday, July 18.
The Iranian Supreme Court’s ruling on the appeal against the death sentence of Youcef Nadarkhani by a lower court was finally delivered to his attorney.
The United States has condemned reported plans by Iran to execute an Iranian pastor if he does not abandon his faith in Christ, Worthy News established Tuesday, July 12.
Pastor Yerzhan Ushanov of New Life Protestant Church in Taraz is looking at two years’ imprisonment if criminal charges for injuring an individual’s health ever come to court, Christian rights investigators said.
Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled pointing out that in reality the Supreme Court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution, according to an international Christian rights group.
Iran’s secretive supreme court has reportedly overturned a death sentence handed down to an evangelical pastor for leaving Islam, surprising trial observers who were earlier informed about an execution ruling.
An Iranian pastor, convicted of apostasy and sentenced to death, may have only hours or days to live, according to a US-based Christian ministry acquainted with the facts of his case.
Being a Christian in Uzbekistan can be costly. Just ask Galina Shemetova who was ordered to pay a fine of 2,486,750 som, 50 times the minimum monthly pay for giving a colleague a children’s Bible. This amounts to $60,320US, four times the yearly pre-tax salary of a 40 hour-a-week minimum wage earner. Miss Shemetova not only had to pay the fine, but she was also beaten physically by police, a fact known by the Tashkent Court of Appeals.
Uzbekistan continues to persecute Christians exercising their religious rights. Recently a Christian in eastern Uzbekistan was beaten by police, another was threatened with death by an axe while a Baptist congregation was promised prison for failure to co-operate in a pre-trial investigation of their pastor.
A professor at the government-funded University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has prohibited a graduating student from saying “I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” in her own graduation speech, amid a heated debate over using that name in public across the United States, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, June 3.
A Christian missionary, who was “falsely accused of murder” has been released from a prison in Nepal after serving nine of a 20-year sentence, his mission group said Monday, June 1.
Christians in Orissa state are anticipating Christmas with fear as Hindu extremists have called for a state-wide bandh, or forced shut-down on all sectors of society, on Dec. 25 – a move that could provide Hindu extremists the pretext for attacking anyone publicly celebrating the birth of Christ.
Terrified Christians already ravaged by more than two months of violence in Orissa state’s Kandhamal district braced for more carnage as suspected Maoists today gunned down a local worker of the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).