Today’s Headlines:

RADICAL HINDUS CONTINUE TO PRESSURE CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

CHRISTIAN GROUPS UNITE TO VOCALIZE PLIGHT OF ORPHANS

KOREAN PASTOR EXPELLED FOR MISSIONARY ACTIVITY IN KAZAKHSTAN

MINISTRY URGES CHRISTIANS TO ‘BARE THEIR BOOKSHELVES’ FOR GOD

ANGLICAN PRIEST BRUTALLY STABBED TO DEATH IN JAMAICA

An actor handpicked by Chairman Mao’s wife to star in several Chinese movies in the 1970s is the featured guest on the weekly program, “World Radio,” produced by HCJB World Radio-Australia. The actor later became a Christian, and now he and his wife lead a thriving church in Beijing. Podcast or listen online by checking the following link: http://www.hcjb.org/worldwide/australia/world_radio_programme.html

Today’s Top Stories:

RADICAL HINDUS CONTINUE TO PRESSURE CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

Christians in India continue to suffer persecution at the hands of radical Hindus. On Sunday, Nov. 12, Hindu extremists in the southern state of Karnataka slapped a convert suffering from blood cancer, and the following day they threatened to keep area converts from joining churches. An alleged supporter of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the threat at the house of Pastor C. Samuel John in Lakkavalli village, Chickmagalur district. He accused John, the owner of a Christian orphanage, of forcibly converting Dalits to Christianity.

On Thursday, Nov. 9, during a panchayat (village council meeting) convened to address threats against Christians in the village of Bamhni in east-central India’s Chattisgarh state, a local politician and others attacked six Christians, including a pregnant woman. The village council remained mute as they watched the attack in which the pregnant Sukbati Mandavi was kicked in the stomach. After politician Puran Patel and others beat the believers, the Christians fled to the nearby Kondagaon police station where officers refused to help them.

In another recent incident in northern India’s Rajasthan state, a Gospel for Asia (GFA) missionary named Jakson was attacked by four men from a radical Hindu group after he stepped off a bus. They took him by force to a nearby paddy field and interrogated him about two local Christian young men who planned to attend a GFA Bible college as a result of his witness. Jakson’s attackers began to slap him, beat him and throw him to the ground. The four men left after a neighbor pleaded with the men to stop beating him. Then they made death threats to the parents of the two men who planned attend Bible college. (Compass Direct News/Assist News Service/Gospel for Asia)

* Radio programs in 17 languages air to India from HCJB World Radio-Australia’s shortwave station in Kununurra. The programs are produced at the ministry’s studios in New Delhi, India.

CHRISTIAN GROUPS UNITE TO VOCALIZE PLIGHT OF ORPHANS

Christian groups are uniting to bring a voice to the plight of 143 million orphans worldwide. Because the crisis is too big for any one group to handle alone, Family Life, Focus on the Family and Shaohannah’s Hope have joined forces to make a stronger case for action. The alliance launched the “Voice of the Orphan” campaign this week, aimed at raising awareness of the need for North American churches to spur fellow Christians to action in helping orphans, including considering adoption. Coalition member Bill Blacquiere, president of Bethany Christian Services, said the alliance has issued a call that requires a “do” response from the church. “While it’s very important to feed and clothe and care for children — and we support that work — it’s also very important to do it in the name of Jesus Christ and present the message of salvation,” he said. (Mission Network News)

KOREAN PASTOR EXPELLED FOR MISSIONARY ACTIVITY IN KAZAKHSTAN

Shortly after speaking as an official guest at an event marking Kazakhstan’s “Day of Spiritual Unity and Conciliation” last month, a South Korean pastor was expelled from the country Tuesday, Nov. 14, for “missionary work without registration.” Pastor Kim U Sob led the Love Presbyterian Church in the southern town of Kyzyl-Orda, Kazakhstan, for the past eight years and was visiting a church member when he was arrested. “The police suddenly burst into the house where he was staying and filmed everyone present,” said a church member who asked to remain anonymous. Aleksandr Klyushev of the Association of Religious Communities of Kazakhstan said the local migration police refused to allow the pastor to extend his visa and stay in the country after he was found guilty in June of carrying out “missionary work without registration.” (Forum 18 News Service)

MINISTRY URGES CHRISTIANS TO ‘BARE THEIR BOOKSHELVES’ FOR GOD

Research by the Christian Booksellers Association and Zondervan Publishers indicates that the average U.S. Christian owns nine Bibles and is actively in the market for more. That statistic troubled Christian Resources International (CRI) Executive Director Fred Palmerton whose organization receives more than 250 letters a month from pastors and Christian workers in developing countries without any Bibles or Christian books. “Every day more than 122,000 people become Christians, and most of those people are in Africa, Asia, and South America,” he said. “They’re attending churches where even the pastors have no Bibles.” This prompted Palmerton and CRI to launch “Operation Bare Your Bookshelf,” a project that makes it easy for American Christians to send their Bibles and other Christian books overseas. One of CRI’s volunteers, Doug Burnie, regularly takes used ambulances and school buses to Guaymas, Mexico, to donate to charities, churches, clinics and schools. Recently he delivered an 11-pound bundle of theological and spiritual works to a needy pastor. The pastor then shared the library with six other pastors in his community. (Evangelical News/Christian Newswire)

ANGLICAN PRIEST BRUTALLY STABBED TO DEATH IN JAMAICA

Rev. Richard Johnson, one of Jamaica’s most well-loved Anglican priests, was brutally murdered on Sunday, Nov. 12, at his home in a church compound in Jamaica’s capital. He was 45. Johnson, rector of the 119-year-old St. Jude’s Anglican Church in Stony Hill, was found stabbed to death at his residence near the church at about 10 p.m. Sunday. A caretaker heard him screaming and discovered his body, slumped on a staircase, riddled with 25 stab wounds,. The main suspect in the killing, a man known only as “Bomber,” turned himself in to police late Monday and was being questioned by senior detectives. “It has been a huge loss,” said Dave Dennie, senior server and member of the church committee. “He was like a Mother Teresa to us. I don’t understand why someone would take a life like this, and they can’t give life.” A graduate of the United Theological College of the West Indies, Johnson was ordained a priest in 1992. His wife, Heather, principal of a prominent high school in St. Ann, was not at the home when the murder took place. (Assist News Service)

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