Gurinder turns from drugs to Jesus

"Gurinder*, a Punjabi Sikh man who had moved from India to live in a Western country, was troubled by drug addictions for a number of years but he could have never been prepared for the stroke he was to experience in December 2010. He had heard me speak about Jesus on numerous occasions but was never receptive. The stroke kept him in the hospital for six months and then he was transferred to a rehabilitation centre. Gurinder's left side was totally paralyzed as his arm and leg would not move. I continued to visit him, share about Jesus and pray for him.

"About two months ago I went to see him and he had a smile on his face (I don't remember seeing this smile before!). Gurinder told me that he had prayed to receive Jesus and that he wanted to follow him. His left leg began to work again and I saw for the first time a happy man who was once weighed down in addiction.

"Gurinder's arm is still not working but he has found a spiritual healing.

"He went home about four weeks ago but now the family will not let me talk to him or see him. PRAY for an open door to visit Gurinder and for total healing."

(from a Christian newsletter, November 2011)

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See, Here is Water

It can be difficult for those of us raised in an established church in the free world to imagine someone being baptized outside of a church building with no significant examination of faith beforehand.

In areas of severe persecution, some believers still have difficulty finding someone to baptize them. In Egypt and Malaysia, many mainstream church leaders are afraid to baptize a Muslim convert to Christ. They will only baptize those from a non-Muslim background. Likewise, in the four communist countries of Asia, more than 80 percent of baptisms are illegal because of government restrictions. Believers there have to function "outside the box:' so they are sometimes baptized in a barrel!

When Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch on the side of the road (Acts 8), the Lord had already prepared the Ethiopian's heart by leading him to read the prophecies about Jesus. Perhaps the man felt the urgency to be baptized because he didn't know if he would ever meet another Christian who could baptize him. Consequently, he exclaimed to Philip, "See, here is water." They stopped the chariot and he was baptized on the spot. The man would soon be returning to Ethiopia, where the apostle Matthew, according to Church history, was later nailed to the ground and beheaded under orders from King Hytacus.

This kind of situation led two zealous Muslim converts recently to ride their small motorcycles to the ocean and baptize themselves. They believed they needed to go under water three times, so they got a lot of saltwater in their mouth. But they rejoiced as they sought to be obedient to Christ's commandments.

I recently witnessed the baptisms of 20 Muslim converts to Christ in a Muslim nation. They had sewn their own baptismal robes. Their exuberance, delight and overflowing joy washed over me like the water pouring off of them. In their country, there is no church building where they could be safely baptized.

Making use of the primitive means available is not about being different; it's about finding a way to obey God.

(excerpted from Tom White Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, November 2011)

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Long necked Sauropods had All-or-Nothing Design Features

The Bible’s history provides a framework that best explains the most significant facts about Sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. They were immense, four-footed dinosaurs. Sauropods’ long necks allowed them a wide reach through the treetops. They were able to eat the massive amount of foliage required to maintain their size without having to expend extra energy moving from tree to tree. Some of the largest may have needed up to a ton of vegetation every day. This is according to Fredric Heeren's report in Nature.¹

Clearly, sauropods had all-or-nothing design features. Without small heads, hollow vertebrae, long necks, pillar legs, specially shaped pelvis bones, and fast growth rates—all at the same time—sauropods could not have existed. This is why sauropod evolution has been imagined as having happened in “an evolutionary jump.”¹

If sauropods evolved, then why are there no fossil “pre-sauropods” that have at least two, three, or four of the uniquely sauropod features, instead of just one or merely a possible part of one? If sauropods evolved over eons, then most of these fossils should be transitional. For example, why are gradually lengthening dinosaur necks not apparent as one ascends the rock record? Instead, these candidate “prosauropods” were perfectly developed creatures of their own types, showing no hint of evolutionary experimentation.

The Bible’s framework best explains the facts. First, sauropods were intentionally formed at one time, not morphed from other creatures. This is why no single undisputed ancestor exists, why their evolution is imagined to have happened in a “jump,” and why sauropods have all-or-nothing design features.

And the very reason that sauropod fossils exist “on almost every continent” is because, being a worldwide phenomenon, the Genesis Flood was powerful enough to totally overwhelm even the world’s most massive land creatures of that time. Unlike the miserable state of evolutionary guesswork, these observations confirm the biblical record!

(excerpted from Brian Thomas and Frank Sherwin, What the Fossils Really Say about Sauropod Dinosaurs, Acts & Facts, November 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1.Heeren, F. 2011. Dinosaurs: Rise of the titans. Nature. 475: 159-161.

The Red Letters Broke His Heart

Badi, a Muslim living in Libya, was given an English language Bible from a relative who did not read English and did not realize what he was giving Badi. Fortunately, Badi had learned to read English in school.

Badi soon learned that the red-lettered words in the Bible were the words of Jesus. His heart broke when he read the Sermon on the Mount in the fifth chapter of Matthew, and he soon came to revere the Word of God.

Badi studied his Bible, and he gained a deeper understanding of the faith about two years later when he met some foreign workers on a farm. He noticed that some of them were carrying Bibles, and they began to discuss Christ. The foreigners were Christians, and they invited him to attend church services with them.

When government officials discovered that Badi had become a Christian, he was arrested and imprisoned. He was charged with treason (!) rather than apostasy. Badi was beaten and tortured during his imprisonment. The pain was so severe that Badi wanted to die. But his torturers told him, "We won't kill you, because we want you to wish for death and not find it."

Badi survived and was released from prison six months later. He is now a follower of Jesus.

Recent news from post-Gaddafi Libya: one of the scattered Christians in Libya was arrested by rebels a few months ago. According to a friend, "they arrested him and beat him just a few days and released him. That is normal as a Christian in Libya. But the Gadhafi troops would kill him surely. The rebels would work with him quietly."

Pray for Badi for Libya's small indigenous church. Pray that the civil war and its aftermath will lead to new opportunities to advance the gospel.

(excerpted from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, November 2011)

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One Bible you can have, Two Bibles you cannot

Individual Christians have long suffered for their faith in Algeria, but not until 2006, when Algeria enacted a new religion law, did the government have the legal means to restrict the church.

"If they find you with Christian materials, they will arrest you immediately," Gerard* says. "One Bible, you can have. Two Bibles, you cannot have because the second one is clearly not yours. They say you are just trying to give it to someone else."

Gerard* was riding a bus that was stopped by police at a checkpoint. A policeman who searched Gerard's bag found his Bible-study book and began to curse him. "And I just told him, 'Ok, that is enough. This is my faith. This is what I believe.' He didn't beat me, but he spat on me," Gerard says. Gerard's faith has sustained him through multiple beatings for being a Christian, and he now sees this treatment as normal.

As the bus left the checkpoint and drove on, the other passengers began to verbally abuse Gerard. "All of them started to say bad things," he says, "and I hoped that long distance would finish soon. "The persecution is there, but the church is there no matter what happens."

Not a single church has been granted registration since the 2006 law's enactment, and in 2008, the government ordered the closure of 26 churches in Algeria's Kabyle region, where the majority of Christians live. In May 2011, authorities ordered seven more churches in Bejaia province to close for failure to comply with registration regulations.


Charred items pulled from burned
Tafat Church building in Tizi Ouzou.

 Instead of closing, however, the seven churches decided to continue meeting to test the government's resolve. "Many people are praying, and that is why the churches keep the doors open," says one Algerian Christian. In 2010, rather than wait on the government to close down a church, extremists chose to burn down the Tafat Church in Tizi Ouzou, also in the Kabyle region.

In this environment, many churches have begun to meet in the countryside, while others meet in homes where the walls have been removed to make room for worshipers.

(excerpted from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, November 2011)

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