VOM adds Israel to its Christian Persecution watch

Please pray for protection and freedom of worship in Israel for followers of Jesus! Voice of the Martyrs, an organization helping persecuted Christians around the world, has often covered cases of harassment and even murder in countries like Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Columbia, and Cuba. In their July 2011 newsletter they have recognized that in Israel, too, both Christians and Messianic Jews have frequently come under attack mainly at the hands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups.

VOM mentions that the Jeruslaem Alliance Church was burned in late October 2010, and that the church was near an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.

Here is more information, from Ryan Jones' article Jerusalem church fire blamed on Jews, in Israel Today Magazine, November 1, 2010:

"The Jerusalem Alliance Church, part of the global Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA), was built in 1914 on the edge of what is now the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Ten church staff had to be evacuated as the fire began to spread in the basement area of the building just after midnight last Friday. At least three staff members were treated for smoke inhalation at the adjacent Bikur Cholim Hospital. Considering that there were people sleeping in the building, the question of whether or not the fire was intentional became even more pressing.

"Rev. Jack Sara, the pastor of the Alliance Church’s main Arabic-speaking congregation, told Israel Today that police had confirmed to him that the fire was an act of arson. He noted that had Muslims been behind the fire, they most likely would have claimed credit, thereby shifting suspicion to Orthodox Jewish extremists.

"Orthodox attacks on perceived “missionary” elements in Israel are not uncommon, and in fact have escalated in recent years, though they usually target Messianic Jews. That doesn’t mean ultra-Orthodox attacks on Christian churches are unheard of. In 2007, suspected Orthodox extremists set fire to the Narkiss Street Baptist Church in downtown Jerusalem. The same church was burned to the ground by anti-missionary elements 25 years earlier.

"Rev. Sara insisted there were no candles in the room where the fire started, and that renovations on the basement had been completed just a day before, which he said meant the fire could not be blamed on faulty wiring or other electrical problems.

"Rev. Sara was reluctant to point a finger of blame at any particular group, though he said Jewish elements are the most likely culprits, and was concerned that current speculations were being exploited for political purposes. He noted that the day after the fire, Muslim and other Arab press were the first to visit. Naturally, they painted the story as an Israeli assault on Christian freedom of worship in the Holy Land."

(For the complete report, see Ryan Jones' article Jerusalem church fire blamed on Jews, in Israel Today Magazine, November 1, 2010).

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Natural Selection works only in peoples' minds

“Nature selects the fittest organisms”? Evolution has no life apart from this idea of natural selection. This “selection” is a captivatingly powerful idea—it’s difficult to dislodge things that exist only in someone’s mind. As Daniel Dennett explains, "natural selection" is the evolutionists equivalent to God:

The fundamental scientific idea of evolution by natural selection is not just mind-boggling; natural selection, by executing God’s traditional task of designing and creating all creatures great and small, also seems to deny one of the best reasons we have for believing in God….The idea that natural selection has the power to generate such sophisticated designs is deeply counterintuitive.¹ 

The word “select” is an absolute necessity to Darwinism. But in reality, choice-making abilities have never been observed by anything other than conscious agents or by things they have designed. Life displays features apparently chosen by a designer to solve environmental problems or exploit properties such as gravity and friction. Darwin’s extraordinarily clever account attributes those features to unintelligent natural forces that somehow could “select” in a way very much akin to how animal breeders select. Thus Darwin introduced a natural source of intelligence—a substitute god.

But in recent years, evolutionists have backpedaled furiously from the idea of "selection." Graciela Flores in The Scientist argued that evolutionists feed the beast of theism by incessantly using the word “design” in publications. She made an example of Timothy Bradley’s paper in Nature, which evidently said insect respiration was “designed to function most efficiently.” Afterward Bradley conceded that the word design is subject to misinterpretation, and confessed that “there is no reason for sloppy language.” Flores also gave an example of a professor who has stopped using the word design with his students. “They are going to take the language too literally, and it will cause a misunderstanding.”²

Evolutionists' problem is this: since there is no designer, using the word “design” is fundamentally illegitimate—in spite of qualifiers like “apparent” or “illusion of” preceding it. Even Darwin himself, when pressed on this illegitimate use of the word, conceded that tying “selection” to a real agent is “false,” and his followers also admit it’s “not really accurate.”³

Advocates, therefore, insist that “selection” is not used in a literal sense. Really? Evolutionists claim their word choice is only a figure of speech—a ploy characterized as the “bait-and-switch” logical error.⁴ Darwin’s remarkable feat—which continues nearly unaltered—was to get everyone looking at the organism-environment interface from the environment’s perspective. External forces are illegitimately given credit for the capabilities of the organisms. It is challenging to dissect evolutionary language that clouds the fact that the power to solve ecological challenges resides in organisms and not environments.

The power of “natural selection” to imprison minds must always be taken seriously—as it’s only in the mind that “selection” actually occurs. Minds immersed in “natural selection” view interactions from the perspective of “nature’s” inanimate forces and are further clouded by being uninformed that there is no real “selector”! If the evidence points to the fact that “natural selection” is merely a figure of speech, and thus impotent, should not honest scientists put aside their passionately held beliefs and accept reality?

A distinctive of living things is their goal-directed operation—one of which is filling ecological niches. This is in obedience to God telling “them” to be “fruitful,” “multiply,” and “fill” the earth (Genesis 1:22, 28; 8:17; 9:1, 7.)

As a label applied to the normal outworking of organisms’ innate programming that enables them to fill environments, it steals credit from the organism and ultimately from the Lord. “Selection” is not really real. We should ascribe glory to the Creator, and not to “natural selection”!

(excerpted from Randy J. Guliuzza, Darwin's Sacred Imposter: How Natural Selection Is Given Credit for Design in Nature, Acts & Facts, July 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1. Dennett, D. C. Show Me the Science. New York Times, August 28, 2005

2. Flores, G. 2005. Journals and intelligent design. The Scientist. 19 (4): 12.

3. Guliuzza, R. 2011. Darwin’s Sacred Imposter: Recognizing Missed Warning Signs. Acts & Facts. 40 (5): 12-15.

4. Johnson, J. J. S. 2011. Just Say No to Trojan Horses. Acts & Facts. 40 (2): 17-18.

Pray for Churches under attack by Muslims in Indonesia

God's flock in Indonesia is accustomed to moving hurriedly from one pasture to the next.

A group of 50 believers on the island of Java have had to move their place of worship six times. They have been hit with boards, stabbed, locked out of their church, ordered by 200 policemen to leave their church and had their church building burned to the ground. Yet they remain faithful through every move - the same 50 members moving together.

The most recent attacks, on July 10 and Aug. 8, 2010, occurred while the believers were clearing weeds from a piece of land they had purchased to use as a worship site. A Muslim mob screamed at them, calling them prostitutes and dogs. The believers responded by proclaiming, "Hallelujah!" The video here shows the mob starting their attack.

Pastor Luspida Simanjuntak, who received hospital treatment after she was struck with a wooden plank by suspected Islamic extremists in the Sept. 12 attack, said that the church was ready to stop struggling.

Pastor Luspida hospitalized
after struck with a plank
by Islamic extremists.

“We are tired of being intimidated and terrorized,” Pastor Simanjuntak said. “We will be able to worship quietly and peacefully.”

Church lawyer Saor Siagian said that the church had accepted the temporary move with the understanding that the Bekasi municipal government must fulfill its pledge. The government will build a new church building to replace the structure the church is leaving on a 2,500-square meter lot belonging to PT Timah, the Government Tin Mining Co. in the Mustika Sari area of Bekasi. The lot is zoned for general and social facilities.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with an estimated 205 million Muslims. The Indonesian island of Java, where these attacks occurred, is also the world's most populous island, with about 136 million people. Church closures and attacks against Christians are occurring with increasing frequency on Java and elsewhere in Indonesia.

Jesus say, "My sheep hear my voice." His sheep in Indonesia remain faithful.

(Voice of the Martyrs, July 2011)
(Church under attack agrees to change venue, Islamization watch, October 5, 2010)

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Bible Professors Apologize for Young Earth Believers & Well-Meaning Tract Ladies?



 Do Bible professors need to
apologize for Bible tracts?

Bible colleges, not just seminaries, are slipping into worldly compromise with historical Biblical truth.

Timothy Yoder, professor at Philadelphia Biblical University, talks about the value of Christian Apologetics to defend the existence of God and the truth of the Bible. Then he highly recommends William Lane Craig and Dinesh D'Souza as teachers of the Apologetic method. Dr. Yoder, don't you know that William Lane Craig believes the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and that Dinesh D'Souza believes in the big bang?

In his article titled "Apologetics for the Glory of God" (PBU Today Summer 2011), this is what Yoder teaches his impressionable students:

This competition and debate regarding the existence of God, the Bible as God’s Word, the historicity of Jesus and the gospels, the creation of the world, and a host of other controversies means that one of our most important duties as Christians is to be an apologist for the faith.... Apologetics magnifies God, because it contends for the veracity of the divine revelation and message.... Apologetics is not a discipline in its own right, but rather it employs all the disciplines – theology, of course, but also philosophy, history, science, archaeology, etc. – to the project of safeguarding and championing the Christian faith.
[The apostle] Peter’s apologetic command includes the injunction to do so with gentleness and respect.... The other hand, acceptance of everything in the name of tolerance is not genuine love.

So what does Yoder offer "on the other hand," particularly with regard to the truth of God's creation account?

The well-meaning tract lady is not doing effective apologetics if all she can do is tell the Bible story. Apologetics requires a well-rounded education....  Many think that a belief in creationism means that Christianity is at war with science.

I'm sure that Dr. Yoder has much more to say if you pay for the privilege (or the privilege of your son or daughter) to attend his classes. But if you do not wish to pay $1800 for a course, you can look at his Recommended Reading list. He has 13 books listed under the category of General Apologetics and Apologetic Method. But at least five of them are by professors who definitely oppose the truth that God created the world in six literal days, or that He created Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth.

William Lane Craig is one of the Apologetics professors that Yoder recommends, with 3 books listed. As James J.S. Johnson tells us in his article Culpable Passivity: The Failure of Going with the Flow (Acts & Facts July 2011, Institute of Creation Research):

Christian professor William Lane Craig - who teaches at an "evangelical" college and claims to support the inerrancy of the Bible - was caught in an admission of culpable passivity regarding the Bible and science on Canad'as Michael Coren Show. Mr. Coren's guest was a prominent evangelical Christian professor from a California school of theology who appeared to defend the existence of God and the need for a personal relationship with God. However, when asked "How old is the world" this brilliant Christian scholar confidently stated, "The best estimates today are around 13.7 billion years." Mr. Coren was thrilled, he said "this is a position I can embrace because there are people who will sit here and say that it's six and a half thousand years old." Craig seemed amused, but concluded that such a position is not plausible.

(No doubt they were both thinking of the well-meaning tract ladies whose education was not well-rounded enough to recognize the foolishness of thinking that God could actually create the world in six days).

Craig continued, "the arguments that I give are right in line with mainstream science. I'm not buckling up against mainstream science.... I'm going with the flow with what contemporary cosmology and astrophysics support." Coren then asked, what about dinosaurs and man co-existing? "There are some 'creationists' - they typically style themselves 'young earth creationists' - who believe that," Craig stated, obviously disagreeing. The Bible, he said, gives no evidence for dinosaurs and men living together or for the young-age of the earth.

If Dr. Craig had carefully read Genesis 1-12, with attention to the quantitative data provided by God, he would have *plenty* of data from which to learn that the age of the earth is thousands of years old, not billions.

Dinesh D'Souza is another of the Apologetics professors that Yoder recommends, with 2 books listed. One is What's so Great about Christianity? Apparently the awesome creative power and truthfulness of God is not one of them. As Lita Cosner writes in her review of D'Souza's book, Mostly masterful defence of Christianity; pity it’s slack on creation:

D’Souza then takes a disappointing turn and argues that the big bang is a ‘stunning confirmation of the book of Genesis’ (p. 116), arguing that it proves a beginning around 15 billion years ago. He seems unaware of the huge problems with this theory. And what happens if secularists reject the big bang? He will have to re-interpret his re-interpretation of Genesis!

D’Souza goes on to defend not just the evolutionary timeline, but evolution itself. He even repeats the disproved assertion that man shares 98% of his DNA with apes. He argues that this is perfectly reconcilable with Scripture; since God’s image that man is made in is not physical, but spiritual, there is no problem with the physical body being derived from an ape.

However, he completely ignores the biblical account that asserts that humankind was derived not from other animals, but as a special creation distinct from animals (Genesis 1:26–28, 2:7, 21–24). He also ignores the genealogy of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, which traces Him back to a real Adam, then directly to God, not via a line of apes (Luke 3:38). And the apostle Paul treats Adam as a real first man and ancestor of all other humans (Romans 5:12–19,9 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45); evolution teaches that a population of ape-like creatures evolved into a population of humans.

It is sad that Dr. Yoder does not come out and tell us what his recommended professors are teaching. It would be even better if he took a different approach, and actually defended Scripture to the hilt! It would also be suitable for an apologetics professor to analyze how the term "science" has been hijacked and replaced by speculation and just-so story telling, with the scientific method left to die by the side of the road.

It appears that Bible colleges, not just seminaries, are slipping into worldly compromise with historical Biblical truth. Please pray for a new generation of Apologetics professors who will defend God's honor, and also defend all the well-meaning tract ladies, too!

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ID cards still say Religion Status = Islam

Muslim-led governments prohibit Christian converts from changing the religion status on their ID card from Islam to Christianity, and some converts are using the Muslim ID to their advantage.

One new believer told me, "I go to the annual pilgrimmage to Mecca and walk around the Kaaba with hundreds of thousands. I will ask a man walking next to me, 'Is anyone sick in your family? Can I pray for them?' As we circle the black stone, they will tell me about illnesses or problems. I will say, 'I will pray in the name of Issa, Al Masih (Jesus, the Messiah). I pray as we are walking. They thank me for the prayers."

(from Tom White, Voice of the Martyrs, July 2011)

Mohammed Hegazy Holding Identity Card.

For a recent case of a new Christian who was refused a new identity card that did not say "Islam", see Egyptian Convert from Islam Mohammed Hegazy Lawsuit Delayed by Court, R.E.A.L. Organization, May 17, 2010.


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