Ozzone 11-11 > Self sacrifice may be a disease. Never choose the scene of your martyrdom but go through the crucible with God and know Him better.

 

Over 900,000 Christians Have Been Killed in 10 Years, at Least 30% Martyred for Their Faith

This is actually a couple years old, but still valid, unfortunately

By Samuel Smith, CP Reporter

Christians attend Sunday service in the Virgin Mary Church at Samalout Diocese in Al-Our village, in Minya governorate, south of Cairo, May 3, 2015. Copts have long complained of discrimination under successive Egyptian leaders and Sisi's actions suggested he would deliver on promises of being an inclusive president who could unite the country after years of political turmoil. However, striking out at extremists abroad might prove easier than reining in radicals at home. Orthodox Copts, the Middle East's biggest Christian community, are a test of Sisi's commitment to tolerance, a theme he often stresses in calling for an ideological assault on Islamist militants threatening Egypt's security.

| (Photo: Reuters/Stringer)

Over 900,000 Christians have been martyred in the last 10 years, a Christian research firm affiliated with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts estimates.

Gordon-Conwell's Center for the Study of Global Christianity recently released its annual report on the persecution of Christians, which found that as many as 90,000 Christians died for their faith in the last year.

Although the study was released this month, the finding that 90,000 Christians — or one Christian every six minutes — were killed in 2016 was leaked by a prominent Italian sociologist named Massimo Introvigne during an interview with Vatican Radio in December and the report received much media attention before it was even released.

Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State kneel in front of armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, in this still image from an undated video made available on social media on February 15, 2015. In the video, militants in black marched the captives to a beach that the group said was near Tripoli. They were forced down onto their knees, then beheaded. Egypt's state news agency MENA quoted the spokesman for the Coptic Church as confirming that 21 Egyptian Christians believed to be held by Islamic State were dead. 

| (Photo: Reuters/Social Media via Reuters TV)

Even though 90,000 Christian martyrs might seem like a lot in one year, the think tank maintains that 90,000 Christians have died each year on average from 2005 to 2015.

"In the last week, several news organizations reported on the persecution of Christians around the world and cited our figure of 90,000 Christian martyrs in 2016," the organization said in an email to supporters. "The Center for the Study of Global Christianity has done extensive research on Christian martyrdom, both historical and contemporary. We estimate that between 2005 and 2015 there were 900,000 Christian martyrs worldwide — an average of 90,000 per year."

Only 30 percent of the 90,000 Christians

were killed because of terrorism

It should be noted that 90,000 Christian martyrs per year is a very liberal estimate. In fact, the organization notes that only 30 percent of the 90,000 Christians were killed because of terrorism. Seventy-percent of the 90,000 Christians were actually killed in tribal conflicts in Africa, which raises the question of whether or not 70 percent of 90,000 Christians were actually killed over their faith or just victims of violent conflicts.

In the email, the center explained the definition of "martyr" it used for its study. Two of the qualifying factors for "martyr" is that the slain Christians must have been in a "situation of witness" and have been killed "as a result of hostility."

"'Witness' in this definition is not restricted to public testimony concerning belief in Jesus," the email explains. "It refers to the individual's entire lifestyle, regardless of whether or not he or she was actively proclaiming at the time of death."

The email adds that the definition "as a result of hostility" takes "a variety of forms including war, conflict, random killing, and genocide, and includes acts by both individuals or groups (such as governments). This excludes deaths through accidents, crashes, illness, or acts of nature."

Last week, the Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA released its 2017 World Watch List of top 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution.

Open Doors estimates that a little over 1,200 Christians were killed for their faith around the globe from Nov. 1, 2015 to Oct. 31, 2016. However, that is a conservative estimate since it only includes documented cases and doesn't include statistics from North Korea and areas of Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has killed thousands of people over the last two years.

According to Open Doors, Christian persecution across the world has steadily increased over the last three years and 2016 was "the worst year of persecution on record."

Center for the Study of Global Christianity also found that Christians are the most persecuted religious group throughout the world.

The blood of the Coptic Christians flows into the Mediterranean Sea after they are beheaded by ISIS.

| (Photo: Screen Grab via TKList)

Tortured Evangelist Supernaturally Escapes High-Security Chinese Prison by Simply Walking Out

Author: Paul Steven Ghiringhelli

Charisma

 Brother Yun (Vimeo/Back to Jerusalem)

Liu Zhenying fell to the floor convulsing, his frail body coursing with electricity. Prison guards, electric-shock batons in hand, stepped back unashamedly as he lost consciousness.

Inside Nanyang Prison, located in China's Henan Province, 25-year-old Liu was beginning the 75th day of his fast from both food and water. Although he was 5 feet 5 inches, he weighed less than 70 pounds and had to be carried to a room where officials had arranged for his family to see him. The Public Security Bureau (PSB), China's secret police, was hoping Liu's wife and mother would convince him to renounce his "superstitious" beliefs and reveal the identities and locations of his unregistered house-church contacts.

When Liu regained consciousness, his head was in his mother's lap. She was sobbing. His young wife and sister peered at him in horror. He was an unsightly pile of skin and bones, covered in crusty blood and filth. His ears were shriveled like raisins, and portions of his scalp were exposed because the prison guards had ripped his hair out.

Only a birthmark convinced Liu's mother that the man she was holding was her son. Soon they were all crying. Liu broke his fast by sharing communion with his family. Then he cried, "I will see you all in heaven!"

That was April 7, 1984. Liu believed he would soon die for the Lord in that prison, but God had other plans. He was released four years later but imprisoned and tortured twice more before escaping China in 1997.

Today, Liu Zhenying, 49, is known to Christians around the world as Brother Yun (pronounced "Yoon"), a name Chinese believers gave him to protect his identity. Thousands have been inspired by his account of supernatural intervention and miraculous survival, which he detailed in his autobiography, The Heavenly Man (Piquant Editions and Monarch Books).

Co-authored by Paul Hattaway, the book has been translated into 33 languages and has sold more than 800,000 copies. In 2003, it won the United Kingdom's Christian Booksellers' Book of the Year Award.

But more than being a testimony of one man's spiritual journey, The Heavenly Man offers a glimpse inside the Chinese underground house-church movement, a Christian community that is poised to reach the world with the gospel.

China's Christian Awakening

Although the numbers vary, observers estimate between 100 million and 130 million Christians live in China, an indication that nearly 10 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people may be believers.

Protestant missionary work to South Asia began exactly 200 years ago when Robert Morrison landed in Macao in 1807. The Scottish missionary eventually translated the Bible into Chinese from his base in the coastal city of Guangzhou. Later, missionaries such as Hudson Taylor, who founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, carried the gospel into interior provinces such as Henan.

There were roughly 1 million Christians living in China when Mao Zedong's community army took over in 1949. But Mao's regime looked to turn back the tide. "The first thing Mao did was expel all missionaries, throw pastors in prison or labor camps where most of them died, destroy church buildings and burn Bibles," Yun says. "By the 1970s, it was said the only Bibles left in China were in history museums in Beijing."

Yet when Mao's bloody Cultural Revolution ended with his death in 1976, an underground Christian movement erupted. It was around this time that a proselytizing 17-year-old Yun first became a wanted criminal in China, having led 2,000 people to Christ in his native Henan Province during his first year as a Christian.

He says his zeal came from his mother, a poor and backslidden woman who, while caring for her cancer-stricken husband and near suicide herself, tearfully turned back to God one night in 1974. The prodigal gathered her five children (Yun was the fourth of five) and told them Jesus would save them. They prayed all night for their father, and he was healed. Yun says God then told him to be His witness "to the south and the west."

The young evangelist continued to preach despite the constant threat of arrest. Even after Mao's brutal reign ended, Chinese authorities continued to persecute Christians. In 1983 after a secret house-church meeting in a village, PSB officers arrested Yun.

As he was being kicked and dragged through the snow, Yun feigned insanity to warn other believers to run, shouting, "I am a heavenly man! I live in Gospel Village! My father's name is Abundant Blessing! My mother's name is Faith, Hope and Love!"

One of several Christians to be arrested that night, Yun spent four years in Nanyang Prison. There he rejected numerous enticements to join the government-sanctioned Three-Self Church, as do most Christians in China. Members of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement or the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association face legal restrictions on core Christian practices, including evangelism, youth outreach and home groups.

Because Yun refused to conform, prison officials resorted to beatings and electric shocks in an attempt to penetrate his house-church connections. "They wanted me to reveal names of co-workers and meeting places," Yun told Charisma. "With thick needles they squeezed acids under my nails, and I fainted from the pain. I woke up and told them nothing."

Unlike many Western teachers who equate Christianity with comfort and abundance, Yun preaches a gospel that emphasizes suffering and ruin. He sees affliction as a way to commune with God.

"I did not really suffer for Jesus while in prison—I was with Jesus," he writes in his book. "The ones who really suffer are those who never experience God's presence."

Revivalist Rolland Baker—who with his wife, Heidi, ministers among the poorest of Africa—says Yun's life is one "so totally captured by [Jesus] that no imaginable hardship or persecution can stop him from being more than a conqueror."

Yun says there was a time when he allowed ministry "to become an idol." After being released from Nanyang Prison in 1988, Yun says he temporarily lost sight of God and became overzealous and obstinate. He ministered around China at a breakneck pace, ignoring his wife's pleas to slow down.

Yun later admitted that he had forgotten his "first love." Of his second imprisonment in 1991, he says, "The Lord graciously allowed me to rest in Him behind bars."

Released in 1993, Yun says he soon developed a burden to see unity among China's house churches, a passion he shared with his mentor, Peter Xu Yongze, who at that time led China's large house church, the Born Again Movement.

The unity movement, later named Sinim Fellowship, spread so quickly that by early 1997 word of it reached the office of high-level communist officials in Beijing. Subsequently, the PSB raided a clandestine Sinim meeting in Henan's provincial capital of Zhengzhou.

Trying to avoid arrest, Yun leaped from the second-floor window but fractured his leg. He was met on the ground by the PSB, who beat him and issued electric shocked. Sharing a wall between their cells, Yun and Xu, who also was arrested during the raid, were tortured for several days at Zhengzhou's Number One Maximum Security Prison. Yun's legs were beaten with clubs to rule out an escape attempt.

Yun says torture taught him an important lesson: "Even though God did not speak a word to me, no matter how much I cried; even though God didn't immediately set me free from the pain and terror; I have come to understand that He was there."

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After six weeks on the prison's third floor, Brother Yun believed God wanted him to escape. So on the morning of May 5, 1997, after his wife in a vision that morning told him to "open the iron door" and after Zu whispered to him that the time had come, Yun asked the guard for permission to use the bathroom.

Although he barely could stand on his battered legs, when the iron door opened, Yun says he suddenly was able to walk on his own, which he did, right past the first guard. On the stairwell he says he grabbed a broom to pretend he was tidying up the place, then proceeded past the second guard, who looked straight through him. Praying with every step, Yun says he reached ground level and found the third iron door open as well. Stepping onto the courtyard and into broad daylight, Yun thought he would be shot in the back at any moment.

But amazingly, when he reached the prison's main gate, it was open too. He walked onto the busy Zhengzhou streets and a taxi pulled up. The driver asked, "Where to?"

Yun later learned that no one had ever escaped from Zhengzhou Prison.

There is much more on this story at Charisma

The War on Christianity Heats Up Again in India

'The Graham Staines Story' a grim reminder of horrors of religious persecution

Reuben Joe Joseph, The Week

Two days before the March 29 release of The Least of These: The Graham Staines Story, a Twitter post was being widely circulated, accusing the movie of “attempting to polarise voters by inciting communally & politically sensitive content during elections season”. The tweeter was appealing to the Election Commission to “act on it”. The replies below the tweet had a few “chowkidars” vehemently demanding that the movie be banned.

TLoT is a dramatised account of the last days of Australian missionary Graham Staines, who was killed along with his two young sons in the early hours of January 23, 1999, in Manoharpur village, Odisha. The three of them were attending a four-day “jungle camp”, which is a Christian gathering of tribals. They were burned to death while they slept in a vehicle. Hindu fundamentalists were behind the killing led by Dara Singh of the Bajrang Dal, who was later convicted. 

The former president of India K.R. Narayanan had described the murder as “a monumental aberration of time-tested tolerance and harmony. The killings belong to the world’s inventory of black deeds.” Twenty years on, hate crimes against religious minorities are peaking again.

It was hardly surprising that hardline Indian nationalists on social media were against the release of a movie that documented one of the darkest days in independent India's history. Directed by Aneesh Daniel and starring Bollywood's Sharman Joshi and Hollywood's Stephen Baldwin, TLoT is partly fictionalised and cinematically nothing like, say, a Schindler's List. But this deeply moving film bears a theme that needs to be talked about—the persecution of Christians missionaries in India on the pretext of “forced” conversions.

Staines' “crime” was that he was converting Hindus to Christianity illegally —by force, inducement or other fraudulent means. The movie revolves around a fictional journalist Manav Banerjee (Joshi), who is desperate to prove that Staines (Baldwin) and his wife Gladys (Shari Rigby) have ulterior motives for their service to the ostracised community of lepers. Through his journey, he realises that there is no proof of such motives. But that does not stop a group of enraged Hindu fundamentalists from killing the Australian, blaming him for making numerous tribals turn Christian.

Sharman Joshi - Stephen Baldwin

In the current hypernationalistic environment that is gripping the country, how did a movie like this get the clearance to be released, especially ahead of the general elections? Simple. The movie does not discuss the politics behind the gruesome death of Staines and his sons. It tells the story of his selfless service through the eyes of a sceptical, bumbling journalist. Neither the real perpetrator nor the party he was affiliated to are mentioned. It is the issue of religious intolerance that the makers seek to address, and particularly effective in their endeavour are the dialogues in the film.

Conversion is a difficult topic to discuss in India. Under the British rule, many Indians were forced to convert to avail the benefits given to Christians. The makers of TLoT admit that not every missionary is a Graham Staines. “They have this (conversion) law for a reason,” Baldwin tells his wife in the movie. “There are people out there doing the wrong thing.” Can missionaries really be generalised based on the few rotten apples that bring disrepute to the faith?

For 34 years, Graham Staines worked among lepers in Orissa. By his own admission, he was a missionary. Yet, neither did he directly convert or baptise anybody. Staines bridged the gap between lepers and the rest of society that considered leprosy a curse. He helped people without discrimination, and never on the condition that they would become Christians. As shown in the movie, it is said that there were people cured of leprosy who worked with him closely but had never converted. There were many who became Christians, no doubt, but those were inspired by the values the man held and his actions. “No inducement brings real conversion anyway,” a doctor explains to Banerjee.

After his death, a judicial inquiry headed by Supreme Court judge D.P. Wadhwa had cleared Staines of allegations that he had forcibly converted locals. There was no evidence of it, but there was plenty of evidence that he had indeed touched the lives of thousands in Odisha through his service. Thousands of Christians across the country protested the murder.

Open Doors USA ranked India as the 10th most dangerous country for Christians to live in its 2019 World Watch List. This is the highest that India has featured in these rankings. Last year, it was 11th and in 2017 it was 18. This steady rise has been seen since the arrival of the BJP government in 2014. The report said that in 2018, there were about 12,000 reported cases of Christians being harmed on religious basis, while the number of churches attacked annually increased from 34 to 98.

Persecution of Christian evangelists, preachers and social workers is rampant not so much in cities as it is in smaller towns and villages. A majority of Christian converts are dalits in rural areas, and many communities disown them after this. The organisation Persecution Relief has a Twitter handle that regularly posts reports and videos of violence against and harassment of Christians and arson attacks on local churches. In a 2014 interview, Narendra Modi denied having any knowledge of church attacks though the spike in such incidents was pretty clear.

Not only are Christians facing the brunt but also Christian-based organisations and charities that do community service. A New York Times article in March 2017 said that more than 11,000 NGOs had lost their license to accept foreign funds since 2014. The prime example of this is that of Compassion International, India’s largest source of foreign funds for charity, being forced to close its offices in India in 2017. For 48 years, the organisation partnered with 500 local charities to provide meals, medical care and education to the downtrodden. And tens of thousands had to be denied of their service because of a suspicion of engaging in religious conversion.

The silver lining of the Graham Staines story is that his work did not end with his death. Gladys Staines, a simple woman herself, took the extraordinary step of declaring that she had forgiven Staines' murderers and held nothing against them. She continued to work among the poor in India for another 15 years and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2005. She is now in Australia and had given the go-ahead for the movie when the makers approached her.

Christianity - Martyrdom, Forgiveness, Courage - The story of Graham Staines and his family.

TLoT is not a “Christian” movie or one with any propaganda. Nor does it seek to glorify Staines. It is fairly clear in its message of peace and harmony. But the political environment into which it has been released means that we cannot ignore the grim realities of religious minorities in India. In fact, the movie was released just a week before the clearly propaganda-filled biopic of the prime minister, the trailer of which shows the former Gujarat chief minister supposedly heartbroken by the ghastly 2002 Gujarat riots. In an era of distorted truths and fake news, TLoT is a reminder of true incidents that are happening every day. With the BJP eyeing a second term at the Centre, there is growing fear among religious minority bodies as they brace themselves for the worst.

As the closing lines of TLoT said: “Of course, Graham Staines converted. For 35 years, he converted lepers to human beings.”

BJP won its 2nd term in a veritable landslide. 

Unlike Compassion Int'l, STEP is run by Indians which is more acceptable to the nationalistic tendencies of the Modi government. I am a supporter of the great work STEP does in Odisha, and I invite you to check out their work and consider helping some of the poorest people in India have a bright hope for the future.

UK Funding 33,000 Teachers Promoting Jihad & Martyrdom in Palestine Schools, Minister Admits

AntiSemitism rears its ugly head again - in UK

FILE PHOTO: Palestinian schoolchildren attend a lesson inside a tent in the West Bank village of Jubbet Al Dhib, near Bethlehem August 24, 2017. © Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Millions in UK taxpayer money being spent on helping Palestinians is also funding schools teaching a curriculum that promotes martyrdom and jihad against Israel, a government minister has confirmed.

In his answers given to the UK Parliament, Minister of State for International Development Alistair Burt confirmed that British taxpayers’ money is funding the wages of some 33,000 teachers who use the new curriculum.    

Earlier last week, Burt said that “all of their [the Palestinian Authority’s] schools in the West Bank are using the revised 2017 PA curriculum. UK-funded public servants and teachers … are therefore involved,” the Sunday Times cited him as saying, adding that £20 million (US$24.6 million) was spent on supporting Palestinians last year alone.

Study material from the schools in Palestine pushes children toward violence, a review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) discovered back in October 2017. It said the school program not only demonized Israel but also “provided a rationale for war.”

"The curriculum exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence in a more extensive and sophisticated manner," IMPACT-se wrote. "The discourse is couched in terms of nationalist and religious martyrdom, across science, literature, history and religious education textbooks." The report provides numerous illustrations supporting the claim. It describes how violence has even penetrated physics textbooks.

"A science textbook teaches Newtonian gravity through the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting soldiers, to explain power, mass, and tensile strength," the watchdog wrote in the report. "An eleventh-grade physics textbook teaches circular motion through the use of a slingshot in another clash with IDF soldiers."

Another textbook encourages nine-year-olds to be martyrs with a picture of students looking at their friend's empty desk with the sign "The Martyr." A poem in a history book meanwhile calls for violent resistance against Israel: "I vow I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land of the generous and will remove [uzilu] the usurper from my country will exterminate [ubidu] the remnants of the foreigners."

Sacrifice of life is also widely encouraged, as dying is "better" than living: "Drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation." Martyrdom and jihad are "the most important meanings of life," claims one fifth grade Arabic-language textbook.

"Giving one's life [fida'], sacrifice, fight, jihad and struggle are the most important meanings of life, especially for a people suffering from the scourge of occupation, of siege, repression, harassment, demolition and arrest," another page says.

The Palestinian Authority introduced the new school curriculum for grades 5-11 in August. It is the first full reform of the Palestinian curriculum since 2000.

MP Joan Ryan, chairwoman of Labor Friends of Israel, has slammed the funding of Palestinian schools that use the curriculum.

"It is absolutely appalling that UK taxpayers' money is helping to support the teaching of a curriculum which incites violence and terrorism and spreads anti-Semitism," she told the Sunday Times. "The government must immediately suspend all aid to the Palestinian Authority until it commits to wholesale and urgent revisions of the curriculum."

The Department for International Development said in a statement to the newspaper: "Our support is helping around 25,000 young Palestinians go to school each year. The UK government strongly condemns all forms of violence and incitement to violence."

If that is so, then do something, don't just talk about it.

The Palestinians should also be held accountable for this evil. This is child-abuse and goes against everything modern societies stand for. Yet, such societies tolerate this evil, even support it as the UK does, because modern societies are becoming more and more AntiSemitic as they actually believe the propaganda that comes out of Palestinians. Palestinian propaganda is the flag ship for the fleet of fake news that propagates social media today. Israel should sue!

Muslim Migrants Arrested for Allegedly Throwing 12 Christians into Sea

Italian police said Thursday that 15 African Muslim migrants have been arrested after witnesses said the refugees threw 12 Christians into the Mediterranean following a brawl. 

Being murdered for your faith is called martyrdom. Those 12 souls will join millions more in Heaven. God rest their souls.

Palermo police told the Associated Press that they had learned of the assault while interviewing tearful survivors from Nigeria and Ghana who had arrived in the city Wednesday morning after being rescued at sea by the ship Ellensborg.

The 15 were accused of multiple homicide aggravated by religious hatred, police said in a statement.

The survivors said they had boarded a rubber boat April 14 on the Libyan coast with 105 passengers aboard, part of the wave of migrants taking advantage of calm seas and warm weather to make the risky crossing from Libya, where most smuggling operations originate.

During the crossing, the migrants from Nigeria and Ghana — believed to be Christians — were threatened with being abandoned at sea by some 15 other passengers from the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau.

Eventually the threat was carried out and 12 were pushed overboard. The statement said the motive was that the victims "professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim."

The surviving Christians, the statement said, only managed to stay on board by forming a "human chain" to resist the assault.

Lucky Europe gets to take in 'moderate' Muslims like these. Were these extremists? They came from 4 different countries and probably did not know each other until they got on the boat. Yet they were of one mind about murdering all the Christians on the boat. It was an opportunity they could not resist.

How many more of these Muslim murderers will make it to Italy's shores? How many have already made it to Europe? How many opportunities to murder Christians or rape young white girls will present themselves to men whose religion gives them permission to do both? Norway's shocking drop in violent crimes since they began deporting Muslim criminals and those associating with jihadists tell you that there are many opportunities and rarely to they appear to be missed.

The shocking accusation comes amid an unprecedented surge of migrants from Africa to Europe in recent days. Sky News reports that the Italian Coast Guard has said that 10,000 people have been pulled from rickety boats in the Mediterranean. Another 400 are believed to have drowned off the coast of Libya.

Earlier Thursday, the International Organization of Migration (IOM) said four migrants who were picked up in recent days by the Italian Navy reported a shipwreck to aid workers after arriving in the Italian port of Trapani Thursday. Their boat had originally been carrying 45 people; the others are presumed dead.

The IOM said the migrants — two Nigerians, a Ghanaian and one Nigerien — were found floating in the sea by a helicopter and were rescued by the Italian Naval ship Foscari. They had left Tripoli in Libya on Saturday and stayed adrift for four days. The location of the rescue was not immediately known.