Believers in a particular community in Bangladesh are requesting prayer after assailants destroyed their homes and attacked the women in the community. A local contact wrote that the aggressors had struck just the night before.
Read MoreA group of 15 believers was arrested once again in recent weeks despite being released from prison in the last few months. These Christians were not engaged in any illegal activity as they were arrested in their homes. “The police actually went to each of their individual houses; they weren’t caught in a homestead church or gathering,” a front-line worker said.
Read MoreFront-line workers in Cuba recently celebrated the baptism of more than 100 believers as part of how God’s kingdom continues to advance amid adversity and opposition.
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Four masked gunmen charged into Mohammad Yousuf Bhat’s home on the evening of July 1, 2015, pushed his wife aside and demanded to talk to him. After he stepped forward, the gunmen escorted the 43-year-old father of three outside his home in the Kashmir Valley and shot him seven times, killing him. Those who worked with Yousuf describe him as being a fearless, bold and passionate believer who “would not be quiet about Christ.” In the end, his unflinching faith and evangelism of Kashmiri Muslims in North India led to his death. Since leaving Islam himself in 1999, Yousuf had known his life could end this way. SHARING HIS TESTIMONY While India is nearly 81 percent Hindu, the territory of Jammu and Kashmir is predominantly Muslim. In the Kashmir Valley, 97 percent of the nearly 7 million residents are Muslim. Islamic militants in the region have created a war zone in which both government soldiers and civilians are attacked by various radical groups. Villagers, especially Christians, have become anxious since Yousuf ’s murder. They are even afraid to speak of it. Before his death, Yousuf discussed the Islamists’ efforts to stop the spread of Christianity and the fear this caused
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Rashin Soodmand was 13 years old when her father, Pastor Hossein Soodmand, was executed in Iran for the crime of apostasy. Rashin remembers that day as a strange mix of sadness and joy as she, her family and members of their church dealt with the loss of Pastor Soodmand while at the same time celebrating his life and the fact that he had stood boldly in the face of Christian persecution and threats. Rashin will tell how church leaders encouraged Pastor Hossein to leave Iran and go somewhere safer. He refused; he knew that for him to flee would discourage the hearts of his congregation. She’ll describe the man she knew—a man who genuinely loved people, both Christians and Muslims—and tell of the last time she saw her dad. To learn more about the current ministry activities of Rashin and her husband, Amir, visit the Torch Ministries web site. Next month Christians around the world will join in prayer for persecuted Christians on the International Day of Prayer for Persecuted Christians. Download your free IDOP resources now. Never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the podcast.
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No one was more surprised by the court’s sentence, or treated with greater cruelty, than the early Scottish martyr Patrick Hamilton. He was royalty, after all, related to the Stuart King James V. Through that relation he was educated in Paris, and knew Erasmus, one of Europe’s premier scholars. Hamilton had been appointed abbot of Ferne the same year MartinLuther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg.Hamilton had met the German reformer and also knew Philip Melancthon, whose written works powered the Lutheran Reformation. Patrick was a gifted musician, composing and directing in his home cathedral. This promising young man, brilliant and connected, faltered at only onelife skill, so it seemed: a sense for danger. In the summer of 1523, Hamilton returned from Europe to join thefaculty at St. Andrews University. Recently challenged on the continentto reconsider the meaning of Christian faith, he took every opportunityto teach and debate his recovery of biblical truth: God’s mercy in Christapart from indulgences and other contrived interventions. But the archbishop, James Beaton, was scrutinizing the young scholar from afar.Utterly devoted to the papacy, the archbishop would make sure this vileteaching of faith and grace at St. Andrews would not ruin
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Elmer sat in a cave, listening to the howling wind and the hail pounding the rain-soaked earth. Surrounded by darkness and fearing for his life, the FARC guerrilla commander had much time to think and much to think about. He was being pursued by a FARC commander one rank below him as well as by government soldiers. The commander was jealous that Elmer had been promoted after government soldiers killed the previous top commander. And the government had placed a 200-million-peso (about $98,000 USD) bounty on his head that made him that much more of a target. Elmer saw only one solution. It was the solution that he had been taught in more than 30 years of indoctrination with Marxist teachings: “In situations like this, taking my life is my only way out,” he thought. He grabbed his gun and lifted it to his head. But when he tried to pull the trigger, he heard a voice saying, “Don’t do it.” He tried two more times, but each time he heard the voice, preventing him from pulling the trigger. The fourth time he tried, the hail and rain suddenly stopped. “Don’t do it,” the voice said again. “I love you.
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When Pastor Han answered a phone call one afternoon at his church in Changbai, China, near the North Korean border, his wife saw no particular reason for concern. She knew, however, that for several months both Chinese police and South Korean intelligence officers had been warning her husband that he was at the top of a North Korean “hit list.” Pastor Han, his wife and other Christian leaders had even agreed on security precautions designed to protect him while allowing him to continue his ministry to North Koreans. For example, he stopped driving on the border road, he didn’t leave his house or the church alone, and he kept a very strict schedule. But after receiving the phone call that afternoon at church, the pastor uncharacteristically disregarded those precautions and left the church alone. His body was found that evening in a rural area along the North Korean border. North Koreans on the Doorstep Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol and his wife arrived in the Chinese border town of Changbai in 1993. The 26-year-old recent seminary graduate had been called to Changbai to lead a small church of ethnic Korean Chinese, who make up about a quarter of the population in that
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