page 2 

It is hard to imagine (especially for the American saint), that many have suffered, are suffering and will be suffering according to G-d’s perfect will. It is His perfect will for some.

The following are excerpts from MessiahNet Intercessory Prayer Reports¹⁰; from web pages of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem; Canadian Friends of the ICEJ; and Christian Friends of Israel. 

The FBI has become concerned about terrorism from within the country of the United States, as we approach the new millennium. Their main worry comes from the many militia groups springing up around the country, that proclaim their beliefs are based on the Bible - even anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Pray that the true believers in Yeshua will be prepared for a persecution never before known inside the boundaries of the United States. 

The State Department recently published the first ever report on the state of religious freedom around the world. The details of Christian persecution are gruesome and widespread. Christians have become the most persecuted group on earth with over 250 million believers attacked, threatened and even murdered for wanting to live as Christians. Only recently has the question of religious persecution of Christians become at all a concern of the foreign policy establishment. 

More than 6 millian Copts, descendants of the ancient Egyptians converted to Christianity¹² by one of the twelve apostles (believed to have been Thomas), feel increasingly threatened amid growing Islamic fundamentalism. When Bishop Anba Wissa (local head of the Coptic Church) protested to the regional police chief, he said ‘you haven’t seen anything yet’. The bishop and two priests are now facing the death penalty for bringing the persecution to the attention of the world. 29 American Congressmen have written to President Hosni Mubarak demanding an end to the torture by Islmaic militants and Egytpian police.

Britain’s Sunday Telegraph ("Electronic Telegraph" on the Web) reported on Oct. 25, 1998, that during that month Egyptian police reportedly detained about 1,200 Christians in Al-Kosheh, near Luxor in Upper Egypt, seizing groups of 50 at a time. Many were allegedly nailed to crosses or manacled to doors with their legs tied together, then beaten and tortured with electric shocks to their genitals, while police denounced them as “infidels”. An 11-year-old boy, Romani Boctor, was hung upside down from an electric ceiling fan and tortured as the fan rotated. Young girls were raped and mothers were forced to lay their babies on the floor of police stations and watch police beat them with sticks.

Joseph Assad, a project co-ordinator with Freedom House, the Washington-based centre for religious liberties founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, said: “This is not an isolated incident. I fear Egypt is turning by stealth into an Islamic state” (see my newsletters for predictions in regard to Isaiah 19).

Mustafa Shukravi, human rights activist who converted to Christianity and is now in asylum in England (Sept. ‘98), was jailed for 10 months. He said: “I was beaten with sticks and electric shocks. I was hung, blind-folded, made to stand for five days and five nights.”

This particular situation among our brethren in India has burdened my heart for about 8 years already. They, too, must be ingrafted by baptism into Messiah’s death and resurrection in order to partake of His divine nature and to receive a glorified body. A Christian community in the mountains of India has invited me to come and minister. But funds are lacking.

In certain African and Middle Eastern countries believers suffer constant harassment, confiscation of church buildings and personal homes, and imprisonment. It is a criminal offense to gather for worship; and Church offices are ransacked with all registers, financial statements and personal correspondence gone. Interrogations are frequent, while travelling within the country is restricted and trips abroad are extremely difficult.

One of the Christian leaders said: “So we are always praising G-d and give him thanks for this tremendous privilege. Because it is a privilege. The state of joy you see, people suffer but they are joyful. They suffer with thanksgiving. Suffering can be devastating as well, not always building up, unless you do it as a companion with Jesus. You identify with His cross.”

“The situation in our church is the status Jesus had when he ‘handed himself over’ at the time of his passion... We are in that state of just being with Christ. And we have to be obedient to our call, and to respond to what G-d wants us to be. We cannot do much. It is not doing, it is just being. Being in the hand of G-d and trying to be obedient moment by moment. We cannot have any plans for tomorrow even. We cannot plan for anything because any moment everything changes.”