AUSTRALIAN PRAYER NETWORK NEWSLETTER

* ONE TOWN TACKLES THE PROBLEM OF DRUGS ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO FOLLOW

* SHARIA LAW SPREADING IN BRITAIN

* RICHEST 2% HOLD HALF THE WORLD’S ASSETS

* MORE DIE IN A WEEK IN ZIMBABWE THAN IN DARFUR SAYS ARCHBISHOP

* BOY MURDERED FOR REFUSING TO CALL HIS MOTHER’S LESBIAN LOVER ‘DADDY’

* CHINA BANS ABORTION DRUGS TO STOP SELECTIVE GENDER ABORTIONS

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ONE TOWN TACKLES THE PROBLEM OF DRUGS ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO FOLLOW

Back In May, 2004, nearly 4,000 people came out to march against drugs in the small town of Manchester, Kentucky. The pastors repented before God and their communities for allowing the darkness to settle in. The drug dealers were put on notice: “get saved or get busted.” They’d had enough. Over the next 12 months, they saw dramatic changes in their town — drug arrests went way up, drug dealers and users started coming to church and getting free from their addictions, and the story of Manchester was shown around the world on the 700 Club.

Pastor Doug Abner of Community Church said, “About two hours after the story of Manchester aired the first time live, we started getting telephone calls. Hundreds of towns made contact with us. Not only did we hear from people in the U.S., but we got e-mails from New Zealand, France, Wales, England, and British Columbia. Just mind-boggling,” said Abner. One of those who called was Pastor Mike England from Georgia. “We were blown away, because we knew we had a serious methamphetamine problem. We have other drugs too, but meth is just overwhelming. We had no idea how to battle it – or deal with it. We saw that video and we got hope that somebody might have an answer about how to attack it!” Pastor England showed the 700 Club story to his church. “I didn’t even preach because the floor of the church was just littered with people weeping and weeping after seeing that video, and I wasn’t going to touch that because that’s a holy thing.” After that – my wife decided we needed to go to Kentucky and see for ourselves,” England explained. And that’s just what they did. After a surprise visit to Manchester, Pastor England and his wife headed back to Georgia, where they helped organize the first-ever march against meth. Some 3,000 residents of Fannin County, Georgia took to the streets. The local news covered the event. England said “Churches are now letting down the walls and seriously starting to work together.The government agencies and the churches are working together for the first time ever — that’s never happened.” Not only that, but England says that since the march, they are receiving 10 times the number of calls to the county’s drug-tip hotline. A good indicator, he says, of things to come. In Longview, Texas – a similar story of desperation. Shannon Smallwood, whose family had been struggling for years with a family member hooked on cocaine said, “I flipped on the TV and the 700 Club was on, and I saw this community marching, concerning drug abuse in their city. I said, ‘God, would You do that in our city?’ Shannon’s prayer was answered. A few weeks back, hundreds of Longview residents donned red-T-shirts in what they called “The Big March.” Their theme: “The Battle is the Lord’s – taken from 2 Chronicles, Chapter 20.

Nobody could have imagined that one town — once hopeless when it came to its own drug problem –could give hope to so many who needed it. Amanda Tornberg, a former drug user, said, “I believed that I would never be anything more than the hopeless junkie that I had been for so long, but God spoke to me and He said, ‘You know what, when you were still in your sins, Christ died for you.'” In Manchester, three years after the march — the area once known as the pain killer capitol of the nation is now seeing a dramatic dip in the number of pain killers prescribed by doctors — and there’s more. Pastor Abner said, “We’ve been told by drug dealers who’ve been set free by Jesus, that if they were still drug dealing they wouldn’t even stop in our town and buy gas because the climate has changed so much.”

Source: CBN News

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SHARIA LAW SPREADING IN BRITAIN

Islamic law is becoming the law of the land in select pockets of Britain. Though sharia law-the Islamic code of justice-has no legal authority in Britain, some Muslims are sidestepping the English criminal justice system in order to have their cases tried by Islamic judges. “Sharia courts now operate in most larger cities,” said Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. “Different sectarian and ethnic groups operate their own courts that cater to their specific needs according to their traditions.” Sookhdeo calls these sharia councils an “alternative parallel unofficial legal system.” Polls indicate significant support among British Muslims for the sharia system. In a report in the Scotsman, one third of British Muslims said they would prefer living under Islamic law-in England-rather than British law. In one specific case a group of Somali youths, arrested over suspicion of stabbing a Somali teenager, were released on bail when the victim’s family said they wanted to settle the case out of court. The matter was decided by an unofficial Somali court in southeast London. Britain has done a notoriously terrible job of assimilating its burgeoning immigrant population. Embarrassed by its own imperial history, it is eager to accommodate the eccentricities of whatever foreign cultures may choose to plant their flags on British soil. It provides them no sense of pride in Britishness, nothing positive to identify with. It is afraid to insist on migrants giving up anything of their own cultural identity, even when that may pose a threat to other Britons. This fact has resulted in Britain playing host to an astonishing amount of anti-British attitudes and activities. Numerous radical groups have planted their headquarters or significant operations there. Says Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan, “UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States.” Consider this list of infamous Islamists: the murderer of journalist Daniel Pearl; al Qaeda members who sought to target U.S. financial centres; the man who rammed an explosive-laden truck into police barracks in Kashmir; shoe-bomber Richard Reid; suicide bombers who blew up Israelis in a Tel Aviv bar; one of the masterminds behind two attacks in Bali. All these terrorists called England their home. The existence within British cities of courts judging British citizens who commit crimes by foreign laws is yet another example of how Britain’sunquestioning devotion to the principles of multiculturalism is eroding its sense of national identity and endangering its people.

Source: BBC Radio 4

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RICHEST 2% HOLD HALF THE WORLD’S ASSETS

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth. Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent, according to the data from the World Institute for Development Economics Research. To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37 million adults have achieved. So much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in few hands that if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use. Almost 90 per cent of the world’s wealth is held in North America, Europe and high-income Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia. While North America has 6 per cent of the world’s adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth. The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 per cent in the U.S. holding 70 per cent of the country’s wealth, compared with 61 per cent in France, 56 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany and 39 per cent in Japan.

Source: Intercessors for America

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MORE DIE IN A WEEK IN ZIMBABWE THAN IN DARFUR SAYS ARCHBISHOP

Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe says that the humanitarian situation in his country is critical. Each week an estimated 3,500 Zimbabweans die from a unique convergence of malnutrition, poverty and AIDS. The figure suggests that far from the media spotlight, more people die in Zimbabwe each week than in Darfur. The World Health Organisation figures released earlier this year place life expectancy in Zimbabwe at 34 for women and 37 for men. This is the lowest in the world. In comparison, life expectancy in Iraq for men is 51 and for women it is 61. Archbishop Ncube says that although Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV infection rates on earth, with over 24% of the population infected, these life expectancy figures cannot just be blamed on AIDS. Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries have the same incidence of Aids but their life expectancy figures are better(some substantially better). For example, life expectancy in South Africa is 47 for men and 49 for women. Archbishop Ncube said, “Zimbabwe is not a nation at war. It used to be able to feed itself and its neighbours. Zimbabwe used to have one of the highest life expectancy rates in Africa. Now hunger, illness and desperation stalk our land. Cemeteries are filling up throughout the country. But no blood is being spilt. People are just fading away, dying quietly and being buried quietly with no fanfare – and so there is little international media attention. These deaths are largely preventable yet without significant intervention, the situation threatens to develop into a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions. The UN has recently warned that 6.1 million Zimbabweans now face starvation.” He says Zimbabwe has never been in such a dire socio-economic or political position as that of the present. Inflation is 1000%, over 10 times more than the next highest rate of Burma, where inflation stands at 70%. The economy has shrunk by over 40% in the last six years. Between 1991 and 2003, urban poverty trebled in Zimbabwe.

Source: Intercessors Network

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BOY MURDERED FOR REFUSING TO CALL HIS MOTHER’S LESBIAN LOVER ‘DADDY’

Four-year-old Jandre Botha disobeyed an order to call his mother’s lesbian lover “Daddy”. So the lover, Engeline de Nysschen (33), viciously assaulted Jandre while demanding that he must call her “Daddy”. Jandre died from his injuries, which trauma expert Professor Mohammed Dada said were similar to those of a person who had fallen from a double-storey building. The magistrate found De Nysschen and the mother, Hanelie Botha (31) – who did nothing to protect her child – guilty of murder. Delivering judgment, the Magistrate acknowledged there was no substantial evidence linking Hanelie Botha to the assaults, but said she was equally guilty of murder for failing in her legal duty to protect her child against abuse and violation. The magistrate criticised Botha for failing to report Jandre’s abuse at the hands of her lover to the social workers monitoring Jandre’s progress saying “Hanelie was not helpless. She was well aware of Engeline’s violent outburst. “She could have called for help but she failed to do so. She did nothing to protect her own child.” The case was postponed until June 26 for a pre-sentencing report.

Source: The Star Newspaper

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CHINA BANS ABORTION DRUGS TO STOP SELECTIVE GENDER ABORTIONS

China has long been known for it’s preference of boys over girls. Coupled with the one child policy, this has led many new parents to abort baby girls in order to get a male heir. Now China faces a new problem: too many boys and too few girls. To counter the problem China has introduced a ban on abortion drugs in the Henan province. Already there are laws in place that prevent a woman from having an abortion following an ultrasound that shows the baby’s sex, except for medical reasons. While selective sex abortion is still widespread there is new hope for China’s future.

Source: BBC News

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