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Today’s News Headlines:

INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS BRACE FOR RENEWED ATTACKS MALAYSIAN STATE RULES CONVERTS FACE DEATH SENTENCE ‘FRIGHTENING’ HINDU CIRCULAR TARGETS OTHER RELIGIONS LATIN AMERICA MISSION PROJECT TRANSPLANTED TO INDIA ‘THE SITUATION IN SUDAN IS URGENT,’ SENATE PANEL TOLD PRAYER PREPARES FOR PRAYER IN PHOENIX EXPERIMENT

Today’s News Stories:

INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS BRACE FOR RENEWED ATTACKS Christian Aid Mission learned Thursday that Indonesian police searches in the village of Garua near Tobelo, a predominantly Christian city in North Maluku Province, reveal that Muslims are caching arms and munitions and a renewed attack against Christians in the region is feared. According to Christian Aid’s contact in the region, police searches on July 9 disclosed weapons, bombs, grenades or rifles in nearly every home in the Muslim sector of the community. None were found in the Christian community. Police arrested three Muslims from Ternate Island, who are still being held. The same day the East Java military unit Brawijaya 512 moved into Garua to secure the area. Three days later the town of Garua had become the launching site for a renewed jihad attack against the Christian community. At 6 a.m. on July 11 attackers came simultaneously from the east and west, destroying five homes and severely damaging three others in Garua. One refugee barrack was destroyed, two kiosks were damaged, and a number of other places were looted before the police and military from Tobelo were able to squash the attack. After the attack was quelled, police and military from Tobelo conducted a new search and discovered that in just three days the Muslim residents had been able to rearm themselves. Late afternoon reports stated that 20 fishing vessels carrying jihad fighters had been sighted traveling north along the coast of Halmahera Island towards Tobelo, prompting a state of high alert. (Christian Aid)

MALAYSIAN STATE RULES CONVERTS FACE DEATH SENTENCE Under legislation passed in a Malaysian state July 8, any Muslim who converts to Christianity or any other faith faces death, CNSNews.com reported Tuesday. The “offender” is given three days to repent for renouncing Islam. Failure to do so will result in execution, with all property to be forfeited and held in public trust. This is just one of the controversial provisions of a bill approved by lawmakers in Terengganu state, which is governed by a radical Islamic party. Others provisions provide for the amputation of a right hand for theft, stoning to death for adultery, execution followed by crucifixion for robbery in which the victim in killed, and lashes for drinking alcohol. The party governing Terengganu, Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), wants to turn one of the world’s more moderate Muslim countries into a state under Islamic sharia law, which already exists in Malaysia but it is limited to non-criminal matters such as divorce. Although it holds power only in two of Malaysia’s 13 states, PAS also is the official opposition in the federal parliament, where its representation tripled in a 1999 election. It remains far behind Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s UMNO-led coalition. (Baptist Press)

‘FRIGHTENING’ HINDU CIRCULAR TARGETS OTHER RELIGIONS Raping Christian women during riots, selling Christian girls into the flesh trade, recruiting doctors to dispense poisoned drugs and assassinating anti-caste activists — these are only four of 34 anti-Christian tactics recommended in a chilling and confidential circular from India’s elite Hindu extremist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). With instructions that “this paper is to be burned and destroyed after passing these instructions along,” the undated RSS circular, numbered 411/RO 303 11/RSS C03, is believed to have been in circulation for two years and originates from the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, Maharashtra state. Sent to local RSS operatives, it recommends a series of mostly illegal tactics to spread “Hindutva,” the extremist ideology that demands India become a Hindu state. “It frightens me that the leaders of our country, while telling the world they respect freedom of religion, are really working for an organization that has no problem killing, raping and poisoning those of other religions to advance their agenda of Hindu extremism,” said a pastor in New Delhi. “This is a wake-up call to the church. We cannot argue that persecution is just a spontaneous over-reaction of a few Hindus to over-aggressive evangelism, but it is a carefully planned chaos originating from the Hindu extremists themselves, with the long-term implications all worked out.” Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani are both leading members of the 750,000-member RSS, which directs the many other organizations that serve the Hindu extremist agenda, including the governing political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The four-page circular, in the form of a memo, calls for a terror campaign to be waged against tribals, Backward castes, Muslims and Christians. Detailed instructions are given that include violence. Yet the violence is not confined to riots, rape, or assassination. Almost incredibly, Article 4 calls for doctors to be recruited and induced to inject newborn Christian babies with diseases that will handicap them. (Compass)

LATIN AMERICA MISSION PROJECT TRANSPLANTED TO INDIA An evangelism project that has seen great success for the past 50 years in Latin America has recently been introduced to India. Latin America Mission’s Ken MacHarg reports that “Evangelism-in-Depth” was begun by LAM using door-to-door evangelism, medical caravans and other methods that involve the entire community over a long period of time. Now, these biblical principles are being used in India. Following its introduction last year, one pastor reported a 50 percent increase in attendance as church members have begun sharing their faith with family and friends. Many in India report success with “Evangelism-In-Depth” through women evangelists. Male evangelists are often persecuted in Indian villages, but the society respects women and will not openly hassle them. Also, women have more openings to Indian homes as men usually go out to work while women stay home during the day. (Mission Network News)

‘THE SITUATION IN SUDAN IS URGENT,’ SENATE PANEL TOLD An estimated 1.7 million Sudanese are at risk of famine and disease as humanitarian access is denied to aid agencies in large portions of southern Sudan, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) reported Thursday to a U.S. Senate panel. The government in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum — at civil war with southern Sudanese seeking the right to cultural, religious and political freedom — bears the greatest responsibility for the lack of access, the relief agency reported. “If the current humanitarian crisis continues to deteriorate we could see a situation as devastating as the famine of 1998 in which an estimated 70,000 people died,” said Paul Townsend, CRS Country Representative for Sudan, who presented testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. “The situation in Sudan is urgent.” Townsend called on members of Congress to encourage that U.S. policy in Sudan make humanitarian issues a clear priority in the ongoing negotiations with the Khartoum government. “The United States and the United Nations must ensure unimpeded humanitarian access to all at-risk populations,” Townsend said. CRS noted that the Khartoum government has ignored the humanitarian protections afforded in the emergency relief effort dubbed Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), established by the warring parties and the U.N. in the late 1980s. Khartoum consistently restricts access to innocent southern Sudanese civilians in need by denying approval of relief flights and by obstructing the delivery of essential aid and services through other bureaucratic barriers, CRS reported. (Assist News Service)

PRAYER PREPARES FOR PRAYER IN PHOENIX EXPERIMENT Mission America reports the pastor of a Christian church in Phoenix, Ariz., asked the members of his church to randomly choose 80 people from the telephone book. He then asked them to pray for each of the 80 names every day for 90 days. At the same time, he asked them to choose another 80 names from the telephone book — but this second list was simply laid aside, and nobody prayed for the people on the list. After 90 days, church members called all 160 people on the lists, asking them whether they would allow Christians to visit them to pray for them. “The amazing result,” says Alvin VanderGriend, speaker of the American Lighthouse movement, “was this: only one person on the list of people who did not receive prayer was prepared to allow Christians to visit, whereas 69 of the 80 people for whom the church members prayed were prepared to allow Christians to visit, and 45 even invited them into their house, offered coffee and named special prayer requests. Prayer was clearly the decisive factor causing these people to open their houses for personal prayer,” he says. (FridayFax)

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* * * * * * * * * * * * * James A. Ferrier HCJB World Radio U.S. Ministries Communications Director E-mail: Phone: 1-719-590-9800 Fax: 1-719-590-9801 Web: http://www.hcjb.org http://www.beyondthecall.org * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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