Azra followed Jesus because she saw how Christians cared for her sister

Our acts on God's behalf ought to be so out of the ordinary that people take notice. Such was certainly case with a young Muslim woman in South East Asia who we'll call "Azra". Several years ago Azra's sister underwent surgery and was cared for over a period of six months by Karen, one of our workers in that country. The woman later died of unrelated causes, and Karen and her family eventually moved away to another part of the country, unaware of any spiritual fruit from their time there.

But last year on a visit to the area where Karen had lived, one of her co-workers encountered Azra, the sister of the deceased woman, and discovered that she had come to faith in Jesus. When asked what had led to her conversion, Azra explained that her decision to follow Jesus was largely a result of what she had seen in Karen and her daughters when they had cared for her sister.

Oh the power of an act of God's kindness, displayed through one of His servants. This was certainly what Jesus had in mind when He said: "Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." In a world where people are increasingly lonely, isolated, selfish, and in search of meaning, a simple smile and a word or act of kindness can stand out like an exquisite red rose on a colorless day.

(from a letter by Dale Losch, CrossWorld, March 2011)

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The children of Mount Ararat show that darker skin is not due to evolution

Evolutionists like to trumpet the power of natural selection. Often they speak of it accomplishing a major evolutionary advancement, but natural selection doesn’t think or plan or provide. Does this imaginary mechanism actually “do” anything?

Mount Ararat, rising to 17,000 feet in elevation, is home to hardy Kurdish shepherd families. Inhabitants of mountain clans typically are darker than their city cousins. Living a pastoral life, they usually send their young boys out to herd sheep at an elevation of 11,000 feet or more all summer long.

A darker skin shade  provides a natural barrier to radiation and thus enhances survival chances for the mountain folk. Undoubtedly, many of these boys passed away due to skin cancer before reaching reproductive age. Thus the darker-skinned individuals bore more children. Over the generations, darker skin would become a tribal characteristic in the mountain clans.

But this isn’t evolution. It might appear to be a textbook case of natural “selection,” but is it? Did any selection process even operate at all? All key functions, reproduction, and variability are innate to people. Either the individual possessed a darker skin shade that protected him, or he did not. This was a function of genetic variability, built in from creation and not imposed through selection. The skin shade either resulted in the death or the survival of an individual and the preponderance of a particular trait within the group. Natural selection didn’t “do” anything.

The Kurdish people descended from the Medes of the Bible. They have always been rather brown-skinned, and certainly have always been people.

(excerpted from John D. Morris, Selected by Nature or Designed to Fill? Acts & Facts March 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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Uh-oh, is Satan missing?

Denying Satan
by Carl Bloch.

Whatever happened to Satan? While belief in God is still credible in America today, belief in Satan represents lunacy to some. Is it some great leap of faith to believe in an evil spiritual being? If so, what is the point in believing in a good spiritual being? I wonder if the cumulative effect of the enlightenment, materialism and rampant secularization has so influenced us that Satan seems no longer plausible, even to believers. If indeed Satan is real and represents God’s arch-enemy, if he is the root cause of the “evils” we see in our world, if he is intimately connected to the fall and sin and the need for forgiveness, if he is constantly tempting believers to fall and preventing others from coming to faith, if he is destroying individuals, marriages, families, whole societies and nations – then one would think he would figure a bit more prominently in our statements representing organizations devoted to advancing the Kingdom among all the inhabitants of this earth.

Of course, we all believe in Satan and his works, but we need to do more to address and resist him. Without a theology that includes him in a prominent way, we easily end up blaming God for evil and shifting the identity of our enemy onto human beings.

(excerpted from Dave Datema, General Director, Frontier Mission Fellowship, 2010 Statements and the Whereabouts of Satan, Mission Frontiers, March-April 2011)

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A Church Planting Movement in Cuba?

Cuba, Hopelessness or Hope?

The most dramatic church growth in all of Latin America has occurred among the Protestant churches of Cuba. The human agency for this Protestant revival may have unwittingly been Communist Cuban government leaders at the highest level. When evangelical church leaders approached the Office of Religious Affairs in the early 1990s, the Castro dictatorship authorized the believers to conduct meetings in their homes since they could no longer fit in their authorized buildings and the crisis in gasoline importation curtailed all but essential travel. This government directive resulted in an estimated 10,000 house churches springing up throughout Cuba over the next ten years.

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The Western Baptist Convention described the 1990s as “the one with the most growth in our history” accomplished “without strategy,” “without temples,” and “without equipment.” This massive response to Christ is estimated to have resulted in 10 percent of the Cuban population, over 1,000,000 people, becoming active evangelical believers during the last decade of the twentieth century. There were at least two church-planting movements in Cuba during this decade. One is between the Eastern and Western Baptist Conventions, and the other is among the Assemblies of God churches in Cuba.

These church-planting movements can be attributed to the shift towards house church meetings as a more reproducible method for harvesting the many interested seekers, coinciding with a dramatic increase in church growth, which “freed the church from physical limitations and thrust the gospel witness into the community.” Also, ironically a positive result of persecution in Cuba was that ‘persecution weeded out those who were not serious followers of Christ.’ Operation World summarizes this spectacular growth of the evangelical churches in Cuba during the 1990s: "Evangelicals now outnumber church-going Catholics. The 1,250 evangelical congregations in 1990 has increased to possibly 4,500 congregations and a further 10,000 house groups in 54 denominations. A high proportion of the new Christians are young people."

God on Mission in Twenty-first Century Cuba

In an attempt to curb the movement, the Communist regime has targeted house churches since 2000. In September 2005, the government began enforcing restrictive new regulations aimed at curbing the growth of house churches.

The new regulations, though unevenly applied in practice, restrict the locations, times, and frequency of house church meetings; forbid foreigners from attending these meetings; and require information on attendees to be provided. If complaints are filed against a house church meeting, the church can be disbanded and the members arrested and imprisoned. Other tactics include the destruction of church buildings, baseless accusations, arrests, interrogations, and imprisonment of church leaders and other forms of harassment and intimidation.

Despite continued Communist efforts to repress Christianity in Cuba, the Church continues to proliferate. The total Baptist community (church attendance) has doubled between 2000 and 2006! For example, one church used ‘Operation Andrew’. The church implemented the program for one month, inviting all the friends to church on the fifth Sunday. So many new friends came to the church that morning that the pastor asked ALL of the members to get up and leave their seats to the newcomers. The church members went outside and lined up all around the external wall of the sanctuary, placed their hands on the wall, and prayed for their friends inside while the pastor explained the gospel. Scores came to faith that morning.

The incredible influx of seekers has meant that many new home Bible studies have been started. These are held in every imaginable venue: a public garage, a flimsy tent lean-to, a living room with boards for benches, etc. Churches often fill to capacity with some now experimenting with multiple services.Churches are equipping ‘lay missionaries’ to become the leaders of these cell groups.”

Clearly God is at work in Cuba, revealing what happens when the spiritual hunger of a godless society is met with an obedient church that is willing to pay the price to live and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

(excerpted from Kurt Nelson and Bob Garrett, A Church Planting Movement in Cuba?, Mission Frontiers, March-April 2011)

Is there someone to whom you can show God's kindness?

Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness? (2 Samuel 9:3)

Three thousand years ago King David asked this question, because he wanted to show God's kindness. David then found Mephibosheth, the crippled and forgotten grandson of the previous king, Saul. Saul had regarded David as a mortal enemy. He brought Mephibosheth to live with him, and put at his disposal an army of some 35 servants! What an impact David's action must have made on all who heard of it. Mephibosheth was so astounded that he asked, "what is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?"

Today, we are not called to simply act on our own behalf but to represent God. Is there someone, perhaps an enemy or someone who is estranged from you, to whom you can show God's kindness?

(based on a letter from Dale Losch, CrossWorld, March 2011)

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