Wurmbrand Center and Museum dedicated to the Persecuted Church

Voice of the Martyrs has opened the new Wurmbrand Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. One highlight of the center is a museum in the main lobby dedicated to the persecuted church. The museum will house original Tyndale and King James Bible pages, burned Bibles of our brothers and sisters in hostile nations, a history of VOM-USA work, and a "living" wall featuring video clips that relate to current work with our persecuted family. Most of the museum should be completed by December 2011.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, April 2011)

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The Orwellian Nature of the End Times

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (George Orwell, from an unpublished preface written for Animal Farm)

This has profound meaning today in societies that are trying to limit the spread of the gospel, through persecution of Christians, or the political correctness of collectivist and atheist elites which seeks to make the gospel irrelevant. George Orwell understood the evil that lurks in the collective will of people who attempt to stamp out truth. This is most famously expressed in his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Peter Lewis, in The Road to 1984, a biography of George Orwell, writes (pp. 16-17):

"Orwell is read today because he asked questions to which he did not pretend there were answers. He saw why revolutions always go wrong, why plans for equality end in proving that some are more equal than others, and how, in the name of a new order, the collective will abuses its power over the individual.

"One of the things Orwell bequeathed us was the adjective 'Orwellian' - commonly employed, hard to define. It is a frightening word, generally applied to a society organized to crush and dehumanize the individual, sometimes signifying the alienation of that individual if he dares to rebel, like Winston Smith of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Virtually all Orwell's novels have the same plot: the rebel or outsider seeking to escape from a hostile, monolithic society, attempting to make a more natural life for himself, and then being forced back into the slot assigned to him in the system. It reaches its highest development, or deepest despair, in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is impossible to read it now without comparing it with the Gulag Archipelago, its camps and its psychiatric hospitals. Today there are now prisons in many countries like the old Soviet Lubianka, everywhere they resemble almost uncannily Orwell's Ministry of Love.

"It was with the lonely outsider, the rebel, that Orwell naturally identified himself. Had he lived in a totalitarian society, he knew he would have been eliminated with all possible speed. He was a Solzhenitsyn without a Gulag. No one, he said, would write books unless driven by 'some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand'. The knowledge that he spoke for such victims and the danger that there would be many more, in many more lands, even perhaps in his beloved England, was surely Orwell's demon."

The Christian can compare Orwell's prophecies with what the Bible tells us about the end times. We live in days where persecution of the gospel is closing in around us, our avenues of liberty are being cut off. We need to teach our children to cling to Christ through all the trials that are coming to this world!

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Mother's Day around the World

Thank God that Mother's Day is celebrated in all these countries today!

Anguilla, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, British Honduras, Bermuda, Bonaire, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Gold Coast, Greece, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Burma, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanganyika, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe.


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Yes, Jesus loves me - even in Arabia!

Praise the Lord that workers in the Arabian Peninsula overheard a waitress singing "Yes, Jesus loves me" as she worked. This woman is one of many new believers, many from the Philippines, to find employment. Pray that she, and many like her, would be able to connect with a local fellowship.

(from a Christian prayer letter, April 2011)

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The Crisis of Belief in Islamic Countries - Where Next?

"In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come." (Haggai 2:6-7)

I never imaged that I would live to see the Arab world fight so hard for freedom from their oppressive dictators. Fear had gripped people for decades, yet now they are being bold and courageous even though thousands have been killed in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and other countries. As revolution continues to rage throughout the Islamic Middle East, my prayer is that Muslims may see that the corrupt leaders, poverty, and a lack of freedom they are revolting against are all effects of an Islamic worldview.

I pray they experience a crisis of belief that would open them to hearing the Gospel. I believe this may already be happening!

With all this uncertainty, Christian chat lines in some Muslim countries are being flooded with seekers, and large numbers are watching the few Gospel-oriented television programs that are available. God is giving the church an open door to take the gospel to the tens of millions who have not heard it before. Are we ready to step up? When these countries open up, are there workers ready to go there?

Please pray for God to help Christian churches and agencies to mobilize and train missionaries. Pray that Arab Christians may be found and others believers who know Arabic who would be willing to go to these countries to share Christ.

(combined from two Christian prayer bulletins, April 2011)

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