When you pray for someone else, you are engaging in heaven’s supernatural rescue mission. Here’s how you can become an effective advocate for others in prayer.

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When we intercede in prayer, we plead our case before the eternal judge of the universe. Every case we present to God calls for genuine preparation. Without proper preparation a lawyer would make a fool of himself before the judge, his client, his adversary and the gallery of people.

Personal Preparation

Before we prepare a case, we must first prepare ourselves. We do this by experiencing salvation, coming to know God and recognizing our position in Christ.

Salvation. Personal preparation to plead a case in intercessory prayer before God’s throne begins with the new birth (see John 3:1-5). Without salvation, we are not prepared to face our own trials or anyone else’s. But exactly what is salvation?

Salvation begins with a revelation of the absence of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the overwhelming awareness of our personal sin before a perfect God. It is vital that we each settle this in our own hearts.

But salvation is more than the forgiveness and removal of our sin. We are empowered to live because the Holy Spirit moves in. A Christian is a person in whom the Holy Spirit lives.

Knowing God. Through the new birth we can truly know God. Being born into His family, we become His children. As children of God who spend time in His Word and in His presence, we begin to know Him as He really is, not as we have supposed Him to be.

We asked several lawyers what makes a good attorney. One of them said, “A good attorney is one who knows the judge and knows how he tends to rule.” We might add that a good intercessor is one who knows God and knows how He tends to rule!

An attorney who knows the judge and how he tends to rule has a distinct advantage over an attorney who does not. One can have no stronger position in the heavenly court than to be one of the judge’s own children. Who would dare challenge us? Or, as Paul wrote, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31, NKJV)

Position in Christ. In every state an attorney must meet certain requirements, which include a very difficult bar exam. So it is with we who pray. We need to be properly equipped (see Eph. 4:11-13).

The courtroom is an adversarial place. It is a place of confrontation and conflict. As our friend Mickey Bonner used to say, “All prayer is warfare.”

If we don’t know our position in Christ, we may be easily intimidated by the devil. If we are to be effective in intercessory prayer, we must be secure in Christ. If we are to expect to win a case against Satan we must know that Christ is in us.

It is important to know not only what Scripture says about the case we plead, but also what it says about us. Paul writes to the Christians in Colosse, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority” (Col. 2:9-10, NIV). The New King James Version of verse 10 says, “You are complete in Him!”

Knowing your position in Christ fortifies you before the bar of God. It also fortifies you before your adversary.

Qualities of a Good Advocate

Below is a list of personal and professional qualities that make good attorneys. Let’s see how these qualities also help make good intercessors.

Dedication. An intercessor must be committed to Christ, to others and to the task of intercession. There simply is no substitute for dedication. As Phillips Brooks once said, “If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing; it is an infinitely foolish thing.”

Reliability. It’s not our ability that God looks for, but our availability. Paul Daniel Rader once said: “If you can beat the devil in the matter of regular daily prayer, you can beat him anywhere. If he can beat you there, he can possibly beat you anywhere.” Or as a country preacher once said, “If your day is hemmed with prayer, it’s less likely to come unraveled.”

Integrity. In my book Beyond the Veil, I (Alice) write: “If we accept an assignment from God, we can be sure that He will attempt to build integrity into our lives. I love Psalm 26:11-12: ‘But I lead a blameless life; redeem me and be merciful to me. My feet stand on level ground; in the great assembly I will praise the Lord.’

“My paraphrase would read: ‘In all my public trust I will walk uprightly and pay strict attention to truth, honesty, justice and mercy. I will not plan evil schemes or use myself to promote my own cause. I will be true to the integrity of the Word. I will live a moral life in private and in public. I stand firmly on principles of proper conduct, and I will not turn aside.'”

Objectivity and empathy. Objectivity and empathy are tricky. Both are necessary, but they must be kept in balance.

If we are empathetic intercessors who cannot find objectivity in prayer, we will soon be consumed emotionally and ultimately overwhelmed with the prayer needs we bear. Remember the words of the old song “Leave It There” by Charles Albert Tindley: “Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.”

On the other hand, if we are objective intercessors without empathy, who cannot feel the needs of those for whom we have been commissioned to pray, our prayer life will grow stale and eventually dry up.

Kind. Kindness is a necessary commodity for the intercessor-advocate, as illustrated by the following story.

An old man carried a little can of oil with him everywhere he went. If he passed through a door with squeaky hinges, he put a little oil on the hinges. If the gate was hard to open, he poured a little oil upon the latch.

Every day he found a variety of ways to use his pocket oilcan to others’ advantage. Neighbors thought he was eccentric, but he went on his way, doing all within his power to lubricate the hard places and make life easier and more enjoyable for others.

Do we carry with us the oil of human kindness? When the traffic is backed up, the grocery clerk is rude or your boss decides to come down on you, are you exercising the oil of gladness? Go ahead and do it. It will make your day.

Discipline. The intercessor will not be successful without applying discipline to his or her work of intercession. As the next story illustrate, discipline is vitally important.

A visitor to a famous pottery establishment was puzzled by an operation that seemed aimless. In one room there was a mass of clay beside a workman. Every now and then he took up a large mallet and struck several smart blows on the surface of the lump. Curiosity led to the question: “Why do you do that?”

“Wait a bit, sir, and watch it,” was the reply.

The visitor obeyed, and soon the top of the mass began to heave and swell. Bubbles formed upon its face.

“Now sir, you will see,” said the modeler with a smile. “I could never shape the clay into a vase if these air bubbles were in it, therefore I gradually beat them out.”

It sounded in the ears of the visitor like an allegory of Romans 5:3-5, “Tribulation produces ” (NKJV). Is not the discipline of life, so hard to bear sometimes, just a beating out of the bubbles of pride and self-will, so the Master may form a vessel of earth to hold heavenly treasures?

Leadership ability. In his book Wind and Fire, Bruce Larson points out some interesting facts about sandhill cranes:

“These large birds that fly great distances across continents have three remarkable qualities. First, they rotate leadership. No one bird stays out in front all the time.

Second, they choose leaders who can handle turbulence. And then, all during the time one bird leads, the rest honk their affirmation.

“That’s not a bad model for the church. Certainly we need leaders who can handle turbulence and who are aware that leadership ought to be shared. But most of all, we need a church where we all honk encouragement.

It is safe to say that some of our prayer assignments are also being borne by other Christians. Let’s guard our hearts against feeling that we–and our prayers–are “the only reasons” something happens.

The apostle Paul warned us that we are “not to think of [ourselves] more highly than [we] ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3).

High moral character. A Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, who was acquainted with both Christianity and Buddhism, was once asked what he thought was the great difference between the two. He replied, “There is much that is good in each of them, and probably in all religions.

“But what seems to me to be the greatest difference is that you Christians know what is right and have the power to do it, while we Buddhists know what is right but have not any such power.”

The monk was right. True freedom is not the right to do as we please. It is the power to do what is right!

A lawyer who lived in the chambers of the temple told a story about an old gray-haired man in the room next to his who knelt down every night and said his prayers aloud. The partition between their rooms was thin, and he heard what the old man said quite distinctly. He was greatly surprised to hear him always say this prayer: “Lord, make me a good boy.”

This may seem rather ludicrous. But if you think of it, you will be touched by its beauty. Long years before when, as a little child, that old man had knelt at his mother’s knee, she had taught him this petition, “Lord, make me a good boy.”

And through the years with their trials and temptations, he still felt the need of offering that cry in the old, simple language of childhood, knowing that in the sight of the ageless God he was still a child.

Just as a good advocate should be a person of high moral character, an effective intercessor must also live a holy life of high moral character.

A team player. Corporate intercession is almost an unknown art. In most places it is individual intercession in a corporate setting. Thankfully, the church is beginning to understand how to gather as a group and approach God as one person!

We are also beginning to network as intercessors. We realize that the more testimonies we have in court, the stronger our case will be. We are grateful for the 61 personal intercessors who faithfully serve us and our ministry in prayer. We take seriously the hours they spend in court on our behalf.

We never cease to be amazed at the self-discipline exerted by intercessors. The abilities to work well under pressure and with minimal supervision are grace gifts that God has given most intercessors. People of prayer, we admire your faithfulness to voluntarily spend the time you do in prayer on behalf of others.

We can experience transformation of our families, cities and nations if we will be willing to labor together.

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Eddie Smith is the founder and president of the U.S. Prayer Center, and his wife, Alice, is the executive director. Eddie also coordinates Pray USA!, an annual fasting and prayer initiative. Alice is an intercessor, conference speaker and author. This article is from their new book The Advocates (Charisma House).

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Do you remember The Lone Ranger, the TV Western that was a hit program in the 1950s? Tonto and the Lone Ranger would end the show by riding side-by-side on their horses into the sunset. The ideal image reinforced the theme of the two culturally different heroes acting as “one man” in their mission to preserve justice.

Could it be that this is the best picture we’ve seen of partnership between Native and non-Native peoples? No, though some Christians in the North American church still act as if it is.

The perfect model is the one the apostle Paul writes about in Ephesians 2:14-16. He states that through the completed work of Christ on the cross God has torn down the walls of hostility and animosity that have separated peoples.

The church in North America faces a challenge–a lingering one–to discover the true “one man” described in Ephesians 2. After 500 years of missions, we still have yet to see walls of hostility and distrust come down and issues of injustice and inequality experienced by First Nations and immigrant peoples truly reconciled at the cross of Christ.

Before we can successfully confront this challenge, we must recognize at least three barriers to our becoming “one new man” in the body of Christ.

Paternalism. I see this all the time when talking with Anglo ministry leaders. It is the systemic attitude in Christian leadership structures that regards Native people as lacking sufficient “ministerial competence” to be entrusted with authority and leadership. It is the tendency not to fully trust, empower or release Native leaders to minister in culturally appropriate ways.

Apathy. “Out of sight, out of mind” typifies the church’s awareness of Native peoples. There is a deep ignorance about the realities Native people face and thus noninvolvement by churches in Native ministry. We are asked to “represent” Native concerns at reconciliation events, to pray for land dedications or to speak at conferences, but we are soon forgotten after that.

Arrogance. The church at large dismisses the prophetic significance First Nations people have in fulfilling God’s purposes for revival as spelled out in 2 Chronicles 7:14. Yet resolving issues about the land (literally and figuratively) and corporate sin as they relate to Native peoples is critical to seeing national renewal occur. As the host people, First Nations people have a unique relationship to the land that must be included in the cry for national repentance and revival.

Next, we must embrace the three keys to releasing this “one new man.”

Repentance. This will require acknowledging the three previous challenges for the sins that they are, then turning away from them. In the New Testament, the Greek word for repent is metanoeo and means “to think differently” or “to reconsider.” After 500 years, it is time to think differently about and reconsider First Nations people!

Reconciliation and restoration. We are reconciled to God’s purpose and intention for the “one new man,” not reconciled to a former healthy relationship–because there never was a healthy relationship. Reconciliation among Christians is the beginning of a journey whose destination is one body that reveals a level of mutual love and relationship that overcomes the barriers of skin color, language, economics, class and denominationalism, and thus convinces the world that God is among us.

Brotherhood and partnership. This begins by acknowledging and embracing First Nations believers and leaders as valued, co-equal partners in the life, work and mission of the church worldwide. It means no longer treating First Nations people solely as a mission field. We are your co-equal partners in ministry.

I challenge you as a fellow believer to identify First Nations ministries and leaders that you can build relationships with, support financially and pray for regularly. As we choose to walk in the light together, we’ll eventually ride into the sunset together. It is from relationships that we will discover and live out the realities of the Father’s “one new man.”

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Imagine this: You’re heading for destiny, moving with confidence in the right direction. Suddenly, you’re distracted by something demanding your attention. But when you stop to attend to the matter, your path is altered forever.

Such was the case with Paul and Silas in Acts chapter 16. En route to a prayer meeting, they met a fortuneteller who was rebuked by Paul because of her mockery of him and Silas as men of God. Paul commanded the evil spirit to come out of her, and the girl was set free.

She was a slave, however, and because her masters were no longer able to profit from her psychic powers, they had Paul and Silas thrown in jail. The ministry duo was suddenly thrust from prayer to prison.

Think about that. On your way to what God has for you, there’s a detour in your well-constructed plan. Although painful, such times are common in the life of every believer. But what do you do when you’re passing from one season in life to another, when it’s 11:59 midnight–in your life?

Transition occurs because God is altering His plans for us. There is a three-step process during such times: burden, birthing and breakthrough.

First comes the burden. On their way to jail, Paul and Silas were dragged into the marketplace to face the authorities. Even the crowds participated in their humiliation. They were beaten and stripped, and then thrown into prison. But they were not alone.

Life’s transitions may leave you feeling attacked. You may feel beaten and stripped of your spiritual and personal dreams. It may seem as though layers of divine protection have disappeared. This stripping simply means God is taking off the old and exposing you to new life and new assignments.

Then comes the birthing. To be beaten means God is molding us into His image. Jeremiah 18:6 says: “‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?’ says the Lord. ‘Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so you are in My hand, O house of Israel'” (NKJV).

Think of a muscle. Have you ever had a really good workout, but the next morning felt sore? Your muscles were in a breakdown stage, which is critical. Without it, the muscles can’t rebuild themselves.

It was humiliating enough for Paul and Silas to suffer, but why did the crowd have to participate? Our transitions are often similar. It’s not enough to suffer in silence or privacy; it seems as though God chooses those broken moments to put us on display.

Paul and Silas were confined to prison, but at about midnight–perhaps it was 11:59 confinement birthed their true assignment: prayer and praise. In the midst of confinement, they blessed the Lord.

Lasting change is birthed out of pain and often filled with isolation. But there’s no better time to feel God’s presence than during your “spiritual 11:59 p.m.” During these times, praise God for who He is. Recall past victories, and in spite of how you feel or what you see, praise Him for His promises. Your worship will promote stability and assurance.

Then you’re ready for the breakthrough. Paul and Silas’ prayer and praise caused tremors in the realms of darkness. Suddenly, a violent earthquake shook the building, and the doors were opened.

Explosive breakthroughs will come in your life as you continue to lift up the name of Jesus. Breakthroughs bring the favor of God on your life, which releases His plans for you.

Soon, your doors will swing open, chains will fall off, and those standing by will marvel at your life. When we become a testimony of God’s faithfulness during painful transitions, not only are we blessed, but others will observe our breakthroughs and will be touched by our release. Desperation will prompt them to ask, as the jailer did, “What must I do to be saved?”

The passage in Acts concludes with the jailer restoring Paul and Silas as the magistrate sent word to release them. Likewise, God can cause the same people or situation that imprisoned you to bless you.

When your clock strikes 11:59 p.m., know that it’s time to rejoice. Whether you are in a period of burden or birthing, remember that explosive breakthroughs are born around midnight. So, let the celebration begin.

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Joyce Rodgers is founder of Primary Purpose Ministries in Denton, Texas. She is the international youth department chairwoman for the Church of God in Christ. She also has been a speaker at Charisma’s annual women’s conference.

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I understand firsthand about persecution in China. In 1993 I was arrested by border guards for trying to smuggle 50 Bibles into mainland China in my luggage. I was detained for several hours before being released to continue my journey. I probably was not in too much danger, but I could have spent the night in jail if I had not been traveling with an American passport.

The experience had a positive outcome. It motivated me to follow those first 50 Bibles with 50,000 more. With the help of readers of this magazine, we raised enough money to print and distribute 50,000 Bibles in mainland China.

China has been in the news a lot since an American spy plane was detained for 11 days on Hainan Island in April. But the media has focused on more than the political incident, as evidenced by a recent article about the underground church in U.S. News & World Report and the article in this issue of Charisma on the persecuted Christians in that country.

As you can read in Lee Grady’s excellent report, the greatest need now of the underground church in China is training in basic biblical doctrines. To meet this need, we are teaming up with Christian Life Missions, our nonprofit partner, to appeal to our readers for help. Christian Life Missions passes on 100 percent of what you give, keeping nothing for administrative or fund-raising costs.

In April, the board of Christian Life Missions voted to make China our No. 1 project for 2001. After meeting with three mission groups, we established these priorities:

Publishing and distributing Christian literature. Although Bibles are still needed, we were told that a greater need now is for books that will help train church leaders. We intend to translate some of our best Charisma House books and to appeal to other publishers and ministries to help us translate their books. Our goal is to raise enough to translate and print 100,000 copies before the end of the year.

We will work with a widely respected international ministry that has the network for printing and distributing already in place. They print only as many books at one time as they can distribute in five days because of the danger of being caught and the concern that confiscated books will be destroyed.

Developing Christian leaders. The article on page 48 explains the need for leadership training in China. We hope to raise money to offer 500 leaders an intensive one-month course at a cost of $100 each. We are working with a North Carolina-based ministry that has been teaching this course for several years.

Aiding the persecuted church. Many Chinese Christians are desperately poor. They can become self-supporting through humanitarian aid we send. But if they are imprisoned or leave their homes for a month of training, their meager earnings may dry up, leaving them destitute. We estimate that the equivalent of $100 each will help 500 families get on their feet so they can spread the gospel.

From time to time we raise money to help ministries we write about in Charisma. But this is the first large project we have undertaken in several years.

Whatever you donate will be divided evenly among the three areas I mentioned. We are convinced the money will be used wisely with nothing wasted. And we have found a way to multiply what you give through matching funds for the first $25,000 donated.

Think of the opportunity we have to impact the kingdom: You can address the needs of the persecuted church, knowing your gift will be matched dollar for dollar for at least the first $25,000 donated. Nothing is taken out for administrative costs, and the money will be channeled through respected ministries that already have the contacts and infrastructure to quickly put this money to use.

I’m praying that after reading the article in this issue about China, becoming aware of the need and being given the opportunity to make a difference, you will give generously. Send your tax-deductible gift to Christian Life Missions, P.O. Box 952248, Lake Mary, Florida 32795-2248, and mark it for the “China House Church Project.”

China’s persecuted Christians need your help. Won’t you respond today?

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Stephen Strang is the founding editor of Charisma. Regular updates about our China fund-raising project can be viewed at . Just click on the “China House Church Project” icon.

Imprisonment and torture have not stopped Christianity in China. Thanks to cellphones, missionary zeal and New Testament-style miracles, evangelists are spreading the gospel faster than anyone can calculate.

Just days after the Tienanmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989, Sister Peng* was delivering a small shipment of freshly printed Bibles to unregistered church leaders when police officers arrested her after she got off a train from Guangzhou. She was traveling to Henan Province, which still serves as ground zero for a Christian revival that has been thriving in China since the 1970s. Peng was about to experience persecution for the first time.

Officers of China’s infamous national police cadre, the PSB, threw her in a dirty detention cell. Assuming that she was an anti-government activist, they used an electric prod to make her confess to her “crimes.” She stayed in solitary confinement for eight months and was not allowed to see her family.

She was wearing pants and a T-shirt when she was arrested in the summer, so when winter arrived she shivered on a bare concrete floor. Prison guards offered no coats, blankets or feminine hygiene supplies–only watery soup at mealtimes. “For eight months I had no contact with anyone. I just ate soup in my cell,” Peng told Charisma during a secret meeting of Christian leaders held earlier this year. “It is really God’s mercy that He fed me and kept me warm.”

Peng was later transferred to a women’s prison, where she stayed for two lonely years. The PSB sometimes made her stand for long periods–once for 11 hours–in a cruel attempt to obtain information about the underground church. But Peng never betrayed her Christian colleagues. While her friends outside the prison were busy planting churches and delivering Bibles, she led 32 female inmates to Christ from her cell.

That’s the way it works in China. Here, even hard-line communists apparently cannot imprison the Word of God.

To Peng, followers of Jesus somehow seem to remain in control in spite of the government’s constant crackdown on unauthorized religious groups. “Every time the PSB would ask me something, the Lord would give me what to say,” she added. “I would start asking them questions instead, and it would seem that I was in charge of the conversation.”

Peng’s story has been repeated thousands of times. Hundreds of pastors and evangelists are jailed in China today, but for every one locked up in a cold prison cell there are hundreds more brave, self-supported ministers who elude the watchful eye of the PSB. They worship in homes (although rural groups actually stage outdoor evangelistic meetings), they deliver contraband shipments of Bibles and Sunday school materials smuggled in by foreigners, and they win converts at the rate of 25,000 per day.

Fugitives for God

Peng is 40 now, and she has been running from her captors since she began evangelizing China in 1976 at age 16. She entered full-time ministry in 1981 and has spent more than four years in prison since then. Although she has a husband and a 6-year-old daughter, she must visit them at night to avoid being arrested by the PSB. Government officials are particularly upset because she insists on reaching teen-agers–who are forbidden by Chinese law to learn about Christianity.

When Peng began planting house churches in the 1970s (the typical evangelist in China today is a woman between the ages of 18 and 22), rural areas were experiencing a “season of miracles” that continued into the next decade, she said. “We didn’t have Bibles. We didn’t have training. There were no foreign missionaries,” Peng remembers. “But we started one new house church every day. We just went from village to village praying for the sick–and most accepted the Lord quickly.”

After the miracles spread, a wave of persecution began in 1983–and most of Peng’s colleagues found themselves behind bars. Among them was the leader of her church movement, Mr. Shi*, 50, who has been in prison four times. He has been tortured with electric prods and beaten with metal bars and bayonets. Yet today he leads a network of illegal “house churches” that represents at least 10 million believers, and he directs his ministry by relying on prayer, cell phones and secret strategy sessions. He changes his phone often to elude detection.

“Even while I am talking with you we are starting churches,” Mr. Shi told Charisma. “The work of God’s kingdom is so fast. We have gone through a lot of suffering, but the suffering has turned to great joy.”

Leaders representing approximately 35 million underground Christians met in a secret location in January to be trained in basic pastoral skills by representatives from a North Carolina-based ministry. Leaders came from all over China–even from far western provinces–and shared meals together for six days of worship, prayer and teaching.

Every leader Charisma interviewed said he or she had spent some time in prison. “I was beaten, slapped, kicked and handcuffed. I was like a slave,” said Sister Yi*, 35, one of 10 top leaders of a 4 million-member house church movement. She has been in and out of prison four times.

“I was made to kneel down for long periods, and sometimes I became unconscious,” she says. “We did hard labor 16 hours a day. When I read about how the slaves of ancient Rome were treated, I realized I was treated the same way.”

Brother Wu*, 47, was jailed twice in the 1980s and again in 1991. He says his worst treatment was in Henan Province, where he was beaten with iron bars and belts. “They beat me so bad I was blue,” Wu remembers. “I could not lay down or sit. They hit our shins and ankles with iron rods and also made us carry bricks all day.”

Chinese prisons are infamous for their meager rations. Wu was given only two bowls of soup a day. Brother Xing, who was jailed in 1991, often found worms at the bottom of his bowl. “I got very dizzy because we were not allowed to eat much–only three bowls of rice soup a day,” he said.

Despite horrific conditions, many of these living martyrs say God often performed miracles to protect them–or even free them. Back in the 1970s, during Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution, an elderly pastor named Brother Xiu* had to sleep in a bare cell with a concrete floor and no toilet for eight months. He developed a skin disease as a result of living in filth. Later, when he and 100 other Christians were being held in a detention center in the city of Fangcheng, in Hunan Province, the group began singing praise songs when suddenly, he says, “the door opened by itself, and we escaped.”

Brother Zhao*, 50, a former Buddhist, was released from his most recent prison stay in early January after 16 months. During the time he was incarcerated, his colleagues started more than a dozen Bible training schools and sent hundreds of church planters into China’s major cities where the gospel has not enjoyed as much success as in rural areas. Though Zhao has suffered much, he smiles broadly when he is asked about the future of the Chinese church.

“This is the day we have longed for. I believe we will see our nation Christianized,” he said.

In his most recent clash with the PSB, Brother Zhao was arrested because he and three other prominent house church leaders released a declaration demanding that the Chinese government release all unregistered Christians from prisons and labor camps, stop persecuting and fining believers, stop calling house churches “cults,” and acknowledge “God’s great power.” The document, called A United Appeal and released in August 1998, represents the boldest step yet for the underground church–which now is estimated to include as many as 80 million Christians. Zhao later mailed a copy of the document to China’s president, Jiang Zemin.

“The enemy began to attack us severely in 1996,” Zhao said, noting that four of his top leaders were arrested that year. “The government made it a goal to wipe us out. They say we are too big and too well-organized so they feel threatened. They think the house churches are against the government, but we teach Christians to obey the government. They don’t understand that.”

Repeating the Book of Acts

China’s Christians certainly have tasted New Testament-style persecution, but they have also witnessed New Testament-style miracles. The two, it seems, go hand in hand. In China, adversity is the breeding ground for spiritual revival.

When Charisma asked a group of church leaders to describe their most memorable miracle, most found it difficult to choose an incident to describe.

“There are so many,” one pastor said, laughing. Brother Xiu said he was most astounded in 1985 when an infant was raised from the dead after he preached to a group of 70 villagers in Shangxi. “The baby began to cry, and after that everyone wanted to become a Christian,” he said. A new church was formed immediately as a result of that miracle.

Brother Wu said a girl in Hubei Province was raised from the dead in 1992 after committing suicide by drinking poison. Brother Zing* from Anhui Province said dozens of people were healed of deafness and lameness two years ago in the city of Mongchung. “But we have had to limit these outdoor meetings lately,” Zing said, “because the government’s crackdown has affected all churches.”

Indeed, there is evidence that a new wave of government oppression has been unleashed in China. In December 2000, just prior to the house church leaders’ conference, dozens of unregistered churches in the eastern coastal city of Wenzhou were bulldozed, padlocked or confiscated and turned into museums. Also, a 21-year-old man, Liu Hai Tao from Jiaozuo in Henan Province, died in prison last fall. International human rights organizations say he was denied medical attention.

No one knows how many Chinese Christians are currently in prison. A spokesperson for the Washington, Freedom House said estimates range from a thousand to “tens of thousands,” but figures are impossible to obtain. Chinese believers have refused to align themselves with the government-controlled Three Self Church–which in most cases does not allow its members to evangelize, talk about healing or minister to anyone under age 18.

But the government’s attempts to squelch the church often backfire. Brother Shi, who is considered an apostle in the Chinese house church movement, says God supernaturally paralyzed the chief of police in 1993 in Xinye County, in Henan Province. The story sounds like something from the book of Acts.

“We were having an outdoor crusade in a sports stadium, and there were so many people coming that the streets were blocked,” Brother Shi explained. “When the sheriff arrived, he was very angry. He pointed at us, and he commanded his officers to arrest us. But suddenly his arm was stuck, and his feet could not move. He was like a statue!

“His officers tried to put him in his car, but it was difficult because his arm was sticking out. Before they drove him away, he sent word to us that he wanted us to visit him at his office after the meetings. When we arrived there that afternoon, he was still paralyzed. He asked us to pray for him, and he told us: ‘I want to become a Christian. Please give me a Bible.’ When we prayed for him he was finally able to move his arm and his feet!”

Brother Shi smiled as he explained how the sheriff’s attempt to shut down the meeting in Xinye actually helped spread the gospel. “In one year, 15,000 were added to the church in that area,” Shi said. “It created an incredible disruption because so many were saved.” In nearby Zhouko County, hundreds more were saved after three teen-age boys were paralyzed in a similar way after they began taunting some evangelists.

“The leader of our meetings pointed to the boys and said, ‘Lord, bind them!’ Suddenly the boys could not move,” Shi said. “Their friends began to offer us cigarettes if we would free them. They thought we were using magic, but we explained to them that it was the power of God.”

One thing is certain: Neither teen-age hecklers nor communist storm troopers have quenched the zeal of China’s underground church. The harder the government presses in on the Christians, the more passionate they become about spreading their faith inside and outside the world’s most populous nation.

“Although we have gone through a lot of trials and attacks, greater revival is coming. The future of the Chinese church is glorious,” said Brother Zing, who at age 37 represents a new generation of visionary leaders within the underground movement. Imprisoned twice now, Zing’s passion is to take the gospel to the more than 50 ethnic minority groups in China. He has sent church-planters to Nepal and Tibet–where sword-wielding Buddhists attacked his team in 1997.

Zing believes this latest wave of persecution is due to Beijing’s fear of Falun Gong, a fast-growing Chinese cult that has attracted a worldwide following. But he believes he will see a day when the house churches will send evangelists around the world. “We have had 100 years of suffering, but that has brought wisdom,” Zing said. “There will come a day when the Chinese government will open the door and give us real freedom.”

Sister Peng shares that optimistic view. In fact, she is already preparing Chinese teen-agers to be part of a missionary army. “I used to think that missionaries going from China would not happen until after I die, but God has shown me that it will soon be time,” she said. “I want to raise up 700 missionaries. God is going to raise up apostolic teams throughout China. It’s our time to go to the world.”

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How You Can Help China’s Unregistered Church

House church leaders say their most urgent need is ministry training-to prevent false teaching.

Hundreds of Chinese pastors are arrested every year in China, but persecution is not the most serious problem Christians face in this country. When Charisma asked a group of house church leaders what they consider their toughest challenge, they all agreed it is heresy.

Just like in New Testament times, young churches in China are bombarded by strange doctrines that split congregations. The house church movement–which has grown to an estimated 80 million people–has been fragmented by unbiblical beliefs or practices.

One group often referred to as “the Shouters” follow a Taiwanese teacher who claims that his movement is the only true church. Some of his members have recently repented of promoting false doctrines and are modifying their theology. Another isolationist group known as the Rebirth Church (also called “the Crying Movement” because of a teaching that insists on tears to prove true devotion to Christ), is beginning to cooperate with other house churches after years of separatism.

A pseudo-Christian cult known as Eastern Lightning is spreading false doctrines among churches that are led by naive pastors who have scanty theological training. Members of the cult pretend to be true believers for a while, but they gradually introduce a bizarre teaching about a newly incarnated female Christ who demands to be worshiped–or else.

“Eastern Lightning is very deceptive. They react violently if you refuse to believe them. They have even cut people’s ears off,” said Brother Shi*, leader of a 10 million-member house church movement in Henan Province.

Shi and his colleagues say the only way to fight this onslaught of heresy is to increase the level of training for their pastors, and to provide more Bibles and discipleship materials for lay members. He estimates that only half of China’s house church members own a Bible.

“We need 7 million Bibles a year,” he added. “The need is always greater than the supply.”

That need confuses Christians in the West–who are often told that China’s state-sanctioned Three Self Church prints large quantities of Bibles at the Amity Press in Nanjing. But the Bibles printed in China are distributed primarily to the Three Self churches, leaving unregistered groups dependent on Bibles smuggled in by foreigners.

Many U.S. organizations today are meeting the demand for Scriptures in Chinese languages. One North Carolina ministry, however, has taken the need for training seriously by sponsoring intensive, monthlong pastoral schools in Chinese cities. The events require high-level security to avoid arrests.

“Everything we do is stealth,” said a co-founder of the training schools, who requested anonymity. “The leaders of these movements are aggressively planting new churches every day in ways we cannot imagine. They want to go into the cities. They want to go into Muslim countries. They have the passion and the calling. The best way we can help them is by coming alongside to serve: teaching them how to pastor, how to provide counseling and how to develop youth and children’s ministries.”

Charisma is raising funds for the Chinese church. Every $100 gift will pay for a Chinese pastor’s travel, lodging, meals and training for one month. A gift of $50 will support a full-time evangelist for one month. A $25 gift will provide a pastor with five Bibles. Tax-deductible gifts can be made payable to Christian Life Missions, P.O. Box 952248, Lake Mary, FL, 32795-2248. Please note on the check that the gift is for “China House Church Project.”

Thousands of Christians have died, fled their homes or endured forced circumcision and conversion to Islam as Muslim extremists press their ‘holy war’ in the Moluccas.

Duma is one of thousands of island villages that dot the crescent-shaped archipelago of Indonesia’s Molucca Islands, a paradise rich in natural resources, unspoiled beaches and botanical gardens. Although 88 percent of Indonesia’s 210 million residents are Islamic, Muslims have lived harmoniously in the north Moluccas for years with their Christian, Buddhist and Hindu neighbors.

For Christians, that harmony ended in January 1999 when a series of small domestic quarrels throughout Indonesia’s north Moluccas led to a jihad, or “holy war,” waged by Muslim extremists against non-Muslims. Since then, Duma has become one of hundreds of Christian villages that have been attacked by Muslim militants connected to the Laskar Jihad, or “warriors of the holy war.”

By June of last year Laskars had made 21 attacks on Duma, and the village’s 1,500 Christian residents were living in constant fear of another jihad scourging. On June 19 lookouts warned that Laskar Muslims were approaching. Christians in the village were outnumbered and lacked the sophisticated weaponry needed to defend themselves.

“We did everything we could to defend our village and church,” says a leader from Duma, named Obie. “I told everyone to run to the church, hoping we could defend ourselves [there].”

Crude attempts were made to thwart the attackers. Sixteen-year-old Tina ran to the church and rolled fuel drums into the path of the advancing warriors to form a barricade. Bullets passed through the drums and hit her legs.

“I just didn’t want them to take our church,” she said. “I fell to the ground wounded and was helped by some of the young people. [Jihad warriors] burned my father alive and cut my brother to pieces with their machetes.”

The Christian men held off the attack at the front door of the church while the women and children escaped through the back door into the jungle. When the men finally ran for their lives, the Laskars called after them: “We are going to catch you and cut you up into tiny pieces!”

Obie was unable to run fast because he carried his young son in his arms. One of the warriors slashed at Obie, slicing his neck.

“With God’s help, I managed to grab his machete and slew him,” Obie said. “This caused the other warriors to fear, so they ran away.”

Back in the village, Christians who didn’t make it to the safety of the church scattered everywhere, running for their lives. One woman named Selena cried out, “Lord, help us!” A jihad warrior came up to her and said, “I’ll show you how God helps you,” and put a pistol in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Half her face was blown off, though she survived.

Children who did not escape were either killed or captured and taken to Ternate Island where they reportedly are being converted to Islam by members of the Laskar Jihad. Fifty-six of the Christian men who fled with Obie were slain. In all, 400 Duma villagers died in the massacre. Another 120 drowned while trying to escape by boat.

Obie and his son caught up with the women and children in the jungle, and he led the group to the safety of a refugee camp in Manado on the island of Sulawesi. They live there today in crowded conditions with more than 7,000 other Christian refugees who have survived similar attacks.

In all, the jihad in Indonesia has killed more than 8,000 people on both sides of the fighting and displaced 500,000 into refugee camps where there is little food, overcrowded shelters, poor sanitation and inadequate water. Having little hope of soon rebuilding their lives, Christians gather to worship, often expressing their grief in songs they’ve written about the loss of loved ones, the destruction and looting of their homes, and the dreams that have been crushed.

“We sing about what happened, but we know God is really good and faithful to us,” one refugee singer said. “We wanted to live in peace with the Muslims, and we really didn’t think that our neighbors would attack. We don’t have guns, but the jihad warriors had arms and bombs, as well as support from the military.”

It is often difficult for Indonesian Christians to determine who is for them or against them. The country’s president, Abdurrahman Wahid–a Muslim scholar known for his message of tolerance–said in a Dec. 22 speech in the capital, Jakarta: “There is an effort by Islamic extremists to convert Christians to Islam. This is not right.”

Though his statement is encouraging, the national military seems divided. Some soldiers protect Christian villages from attacks, but others join the Laskars in massacring Christians.

Many believers who have fled to the jungles have been coaxed out of hiding by the military, who promise them safety but leave them to be captured or killed by waiting jihad warriors. The greatest sympathizers the Christians have are local police, Indonesian animists and Muslim moderates.

Convert or Die!

Pastors are the most hunted of all because there is a $5,000 (U.S.) bounty paid for each one killed. One pastor, who asked to be identified only as “Yohannen,” actively works to help rescue Indonesian Christians. He narrowly escaped jihad machetes during a pastors meeting last year.

When Laskar warriors suddenly appeared at the meeting shouting, “Convert to Islam or die!” he and three other pastors quickly escaped through the back door. Those pastors who weren’t able to get away faced two choices–death or denying Christ. Three of them converted to Islam, and four were brutally murdered.

Thousands of other believers have converted to Islam in word only, fearing for their lives and for their children’s lives.

According to an eyewitness report by an Indonesian believer who wished only to be identified as “Andrew,” on Feb. 5 of last year the village of Lata-Lata was attacked by 6,000 Laskars. Andrew was one of more than 1,000 Christians who tried to defend their families, fighting attackers from 6 a.m. until noon. When the Christians could no longer hold off the attack, they fled to the jungle, where jihad leaders found them and commanded all pastors to give themselves up.

After Andrew’s pastor surrendered, he was told that he was being taken by boat to another location where he would be protected. Later, Andrew learned that his pastor was killed on the beach at Chinga Chinga.

The remaining Christians were told they would have to convert to Islam. Although not all of the villagers agreed to do so, the head of the village signed an agreement stating that all would become Muslims.

Over the next month, the entire village of men, women and children were forcibly circumcised without pain medication. Thirty-seven suffered serious infections from the surgeries. They were forced to build a mosque and participate in a festival of circumcision and must say Muslim prayers and chant verses of the Quran daily.

Andrew escaped on Sept. 16, and on Feb. 21 Andrew’s wife told the soldiers she needed to go to Ternate to sell fruit and made her escape with three of their children. A daughter is still in Lata-Lata with Andrew’s parents and in-laws.

There has been at least one confirmed report of what is presumed to be a divine intervention. According to Yohannen, when jihad warriors attempted last fall to land their boats several times to attack an island village of Christians, a figure dressed in white with a white beard and riding a white horse appeared on the shore and repelled the attackers. Several of them were reported killed after confusion ensued among their ranks and they turned on one another.

Yohannen stated that investigative teams from the Indonesian military had come to the island to question Christians about the man and said that they were looking for “a white man” who was fighting for the Christians. Believers on the island–who had heard nothing about the incidents–immediately told officials upon hearing their description of the figure that it was Jesus.

At least one human-rights organization is currently involved in trying to rescue Indonesian Christians trapped in the fighting. Steve Snyder, president of the Washington, International Christian Concern (ICC), visited the refugee camps last February during a fact-finding mission.

Snyder, three Australian missionaries and two Indonesian pastors were arrested and detained by security forces on Ternate, a Laskar stronghold. After being interrogated and released, Snyder returned to the United States to inform government officials of his findings and to hold press conferences in an attempt to raise political support and more than $1.2 million to free Christians and resettle them in safe locations. Christian Aid has since joined the effort, raising $50,000 to assist ICC with the project.

Networking with Yohannen and other pastors and leaders in Indonesia, Snyder’s organization later hired boats and with an Indonesian Navy escort rescued 1,500 Christians. Snyder continues to raise support to rescue the nearly 6,000 Christians who remain trapped in Indonesia’s jihad strongholds.

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C. Hope Flinchbaugh is a freelance writer based in Pennsylvania.

Authorities routinely turn a blind eye to injustices against Christians, yet believers hold fast to their love for their Savior–and their enemies.

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Her crime, the cause of all ther trouble, is being a Christian in the Muslim nation of Pakistan. She bears scars both on hter body and in her psyche, but she willingly endures them to wear the name of Christ.

Last year, 16-year-old Safeena was imprisoned on false charges of theft while working as a housekeeper for a wealthy Muslim family. One of the sons, taken with Safeena’s dark brown eyes and warm smile, determined to make her his wife. But marrying Safeena required that she convert to Islam. Though the family pressured her constantly, Safeena refused to deny her faith.

“I am a Christian,” she told them repeatedly.

Leaving her job would devastate her own impoverished family. In Pakistan, education and employment opportunities are limited for Christians. Believers often are able to find jobs only as street sweepers or brick kiln workers. Cooking and cleaning for the family provided Safeena with a meager but much needed income.

Then one day the young man finally gave up on his pursuit to marry Safeena. He decided instead to take her by force. As Safeena worked in the house, the man dragged her into a room and raped her. In Muslim nations, a woman who is raped or not a virgin is considered unfit for marriage.

Devastated, Safeena planned to press charges, but before she could contact the police, the family accused her of theft. Still reeling from the rape, Safeena was thrown in jail.

As if her situation could grow no worse, Safeena received a visitor. It was her rapist. When the police gave him access to her, he raped her again. Then a police officer assigned to guard her raped her as well, intensifying her shame.

Stories such as Safeena’s are not uncommon in Pakistan. Protestant Christians in the south Asian nation make up only 1 percent of the population. Ninety-seven percent of Pakistan’s 135 million inhabitants are Muslims. Believers have faced mob violence, discrimination and harassment. Their testimonies should challenge
Christians in the West to a deeper commitment to serve Christ no matter the cost.

One Muslim imam, or mosque prayer leader, was drawn to Christianity after analyzing Islam and Christianity side by side, comparing the Bible with the Quran. When he finished, he prayed hesitantly for Jesus to reveal Himself if, indeed, He was real. That night, he says, he had a dream in which Jesus held out to him His nail-scarred hands.

“I died for you,” Jesus told the man.

When he awoke, the man prayed to receive Christ as his savior. But later, his own mother, a devout Muslim, tried to poison him. Miraculously, though he ate the food, he was not harmed.

Another Pakistani Christian was threatened by radical Muslims. They held loaded guns to his head and ordered him to deny his faith in Christ and convert to Islam. “I cannot do that,” the man answered. “As soon as you pull the trigger, I will be with Jesus. And I’m in a hurry to see Him, so hurry up and pull the trigger!”

Pastor Robinson Abid also is no stranger to persecution. He leads a small band of Christians in the town of Shanti Nagar, a village of almost 20,000 people four miles from Khanewal that is made up mostly of believers. The words “Shanti Nagar” mean “village of peace,” but in February 1997 the village was the site of one of the worst attacks on Christians Pakistan has ever seen.

According to Islamic tradition, Feb. 5 is the night the Quran descended from heaven. In Pakistan, radical Muslims spent that night celebrating and chanting slogans. The following day, Feb. 6, 1997, Islamic fervor was at a fever pitch, and an announcement went out from the loudspeakers of the mosques in Khanewal and the surrounding area. Christians, it alleged, had torn a copy of the Quran.

Loyal Muslims were advised to “take up your weapons and take revenge for Allah.” Within hours, a mob of more than 70,000 radical Muslims descended on Shanti Nagar, intent on avenging the alleged misdeed. By the day’s end, the village of peace was almost destroyed.

The first members of the mob looted the homes and businesses of Christians. The second group burned the village to the ground, and the third destroyed anything left standing. The mobs chanted as they came: “Kill the Christians, burn their homes! Kill the Christians, burn their homes!”

The believers fled for their lives. One pregnant woman’s water broke as she ran, and she and her husband were forced to hide in the bushes to deliver the baby. Another woman, whose husband was a church elder, had delivered a baby only hours before the attack. The elder left his wife and child inside their house and locked the door, then began to run. But the mob lit the house on fire, and the man had to run back to carry his wife and newborn to safety.

It was not yet noon when the mob finished its work. The village was in ruins. As the radical Muslims returned to their homes, the Christians were left to assess the damage. More than 100 people were seriously injured. At least 200 Christian women were abducted and/or raped by the mob, many of them violated by entire gangs of radical Muslim men. The Quran says men shouldn’t force themselves sexually on women, but that if they do, Allah is merciful.

Several believers died of heart attacks when they returned to find their homes and businesses in ashes. Children, frightened and traumatized, refused to go to school. The Christians couldn’t call the police, for there had been hundreds of police officers leading in the raid.

During the attacks, pastor Abid, whose last name is Arabic for “the one who serves the true God,” prayed for the strength not to deny Christ. He, like many of his brothers and sisters in Christ, refused to be bitter toward his persecutors. Instead, the believers held a service to forgive their attackers.

Since the raid the church has grown stronger. Today, Christians in and around Shanti Nagar spend more time in prayer, fasting and Bible reading than ever before. They are more dependent on God now than they were before the attack, Abid says. “If you have no test,” he says, “then you have no testimony.” Pastor Abid has since been forced out of Pakistan and now lives in the United States.

Safeena’s tests have been great, but her testimony is great as well. Today she is free on bail but still faces charges of stealing from her Muslim employer. Her life is forever altered. Because of the shame in Pakistani culture of being raped and of not being a virgin, Safeena faces the prospect of never marrying. Her family may have to relocate to another part of Pakistan for their safety.

Yet despite these challenges, Safeena’s faith remains strong. She knows that while her earthly home is dangerous and unstable, her heavenly home is safe and solid. It is on this truth that Safeena and other Pakistani believers stand.

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Todd Nettleton is assistant news services director for Voice of the Martyrs in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

For years Christians in the south have been starved, bombed and sold into slavery in an attempt to impose Islamic rule. But church still lives.

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Kamerino hadn’t eaten in many days, but his hunger pangs had passed. He was only 10 years old, but he was old enough to know that he was starving to death.

The small boy asked his grandmother for permission to join three of his friends in searching for food. He knew the danger, but what choice did he have? He had already been orphaned after the Islamic raiders murdered his parents. A hunger to survive drove the fragile boy.

Reluctantly, his grandmother permitted him to go–with the understanding that the four boys would return home that day. The children left the village the next morning. But instead of finding food, they were found by radical Islamic soldiers.

An officer leading the soldiers spotted the boys and yelled for them to come forward. Kamerino and his friends had heard the grim stories of Muslim soldiers taking boys captive to be indoctrinated in Islam, and capturing and raping young girls. Fearing for their lives, the boys ran. The closest hiding place was a field of tall grass, and they burrowed into it, hoping the soldiers would forget them.

But the soldiers wouldn’t give up. They circled the field that was the boys’ hiding
place and lit it on fire. Surrounded by flames, the children had little choice. They fled the fire and ran right into the arms of the Islamic soldiers. Kamerino, however, stayed put, even as the fire began to consume his flesh.

When the field was completely burned, the soldiers looked for the fourth boy they’d seen. They found his body, lying motionless amid the smoking ash, scorched from head to toe. Assuming Kamerino was dead, the soldiers left, marching their three new captives with them.

In the last 18 years, Sudan’s civil war has claimed the lives of at least 2 million people. Villages in southern Sudan are frequently attacked, and captives are sold into slavery in the Muslim north. The conflict is, at least in part, over land. Southern Sudan is the only part of the country outside of the desertlocked north that the government can use to grow crops.

But more than land, the war is about religion. The Muslim government in the north gives the mostly Christian and animist Sudanese in the south three choices: convert to Islam, face threats and danger, or leave. Many simply don’t have the resources to leave but refuse to bow to Muhammad.

Last year, a team from the Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), a ministry that champions the cause of the persecuted church, set out for the Sudanese village of Pageri, where they were to distribute 2,000 blankets given to VOM for their “Blankets of Love” campaign. The village had not received any previous assistance from the many humanitarian organizations working in southern Sudan. Because of a wide river that often flooded near the village, trucks rarely ventured along the almost impassable road.

After a prayer for divine protection, the VOM team set off for Pageri, carrying the blankets, supplies and a projector to show the Jesus film. Shortly into the trip, a flat tire stopped them. They returned to their camp, opting to continue their journey the next day. That evening, planes from the government of Sudan dropped 24 bombs in and around Pageri.

The following day, VOM’s team loaded up another truck and set off again. This time they arrived safely in Pageri, and distributed some of the aid they had brought, then went further on to a village called Kit, where they screened the Jesus film for hundreds of Sudanese. The next morning they started back for base camp.

Just a few miles down the road, the team came to a small military camp, housing families of rebel soldiers from southern Sudan. They distributed the blankets to the wives and children in the camp, then sat down to talk with some of the camp’s officers.

Quietly, a Sudanese woman approached a team member and tapped him on the shoulder. “Please come quickly,” she said. “Please come to see this little boy. He has skin problems.”

Not sure what to expect, the team followed the woman into a small cement structure. There were no lights and no windows in the room, so the team leader grabbed a flashlight and began to look around.

The light caught the eyes of a small boy looking up at the light-skinned visitors. He lay on a small piece of green plastic, his body covered by a tattered blanket.

When the team lifted the blanket to examine the boy’s wounds, hundreds of flies swarmed off his body. His skin hung in blistered patches. A purple dye stained his skin where villagers had tried in vain to treat the terrible burns. The team had met Kamerino.

When Kamerino had not returned to his grandmother’s home, she asked some villagers to look for him, praying that he was safe. They found him. Somehow, he had pushed himself to his feet and was staggering toward home. His feet were badly burned, barely able to carry the weight of his wounded body.

His chest also was burned. He was brought back to the village and placed in the concrete hut. Villagers tried what they could, but there was little hope. There was no way to transport the boy nearly 50 miles to the nearest hospital. For eight days Kamerino hung tenaciously onto life before the VOM team found him.

The team quickly made room in their truck, then lifted the green plastic on which Kamerino’s tattered body lay into the bed of their truck. The 50 miles to the hospital seemed an eternity. The boy was too frightened to speak, but with each bump on the road he cried out in pain.

After what seemed like hours later, the team delivered him into the care of doctors at the hospital that VOM sponsors in southern Sudan. Today, his body and spirit are mending, but he will always bear the scars of Islamic hatred.

Kamerino is part of an entire generation of Sudanese children who have never known peace in their homeland. The civil war that divides their country is now almost two decades old. Related to that war have been famine and persecution as the Islamic government tries to starve and harass the Christian and animist peoples of southern Sudan into accepting Islam.

The government carefully controls the areas to which the United Nations and humanitarian groups are permitted to deliver food, thus fostering famine and forced starvation. Many southern Sudanese have been abducted and sold into slavery in the north. Women have been gang raped, children tortured and whole villages massacred.

And yet the church in Sudan is experiencing growth. Sudanese believers refuse to deny their faith, and they profess Christ as their only hope. Still, another famine threatens this harvest. There is a desperate need for trained leaders, Bibles are in short supply, and the education system is virtually paralyzed.

As with most wars, the biggest victims are the children, and the greatest catastrophe is the loss of potential–for the country and for Christ’s kingdom.

Addil and many of his friends in the village of Kauda walk an hour each day to attend classes at Holy Cross School. They work their way up and down the pebble-laden pathway with little difficulty. The soles of their shoeless feet are like leather, as walking long distances through the Nuba Mountains is a way of life.

It was a hot, balmy Tuesday morning last year when terror fell from the sky, striking Addil and his classmates as they sat in the shade beneath a tree in the schoolyard. Their teacher had moved the English class outdoors so the children could enjoy the cool February breeze. Most of the students were 10 or 11 years old.

The children were writing their English lesson when the engines of an Antonov cargo plane were heard overhead. On this day, four bombs were intentionally dropped on the students below. All but one exploded, projecting hot shrapnel in every direction, tearing into the flesh of the students and ripping through Addil’s left arm.

Twenty-two people–including a Holy Cross teacher and several students–eventually perished from the government’s attack. Young Addil’s mangled left arm and hand were amputated. Today the Holy Cross headmaster says Addil, not yet a teen, has changed. The boy is more introverted and subdued since his injury.

Kamerino and Addil are two of the millions of believers scarred by the war. Kuwa Bashir was a youth pastor in the Blue Nile region when he was captured by Islamic soldiers. He was beaten for seven days and then released and told to stop his church activities. He refused and was again taken captive by the Muslim soldiers.

When the officer urged him to convert to Islam and threatened his life, Bashir testified about Jesus to the gathered soldiers. “If I die or am shot dead, I will be very happy because I will leave an example for other Christians to follow in my steps,” he told them. “I will die without fear, like Jesus on the cross.”

The officer decided not to kill Bashir, but instead poured acid on his hands, leaving him with a mass of useless burned flesh that daily reminds him of his decision to refuse Allah. Other captured believers saw the torture and wept because they could not help their brother. For 13 years he has borne the scars of abuse. His wife has to feed him because he cannot use his hands.

Kuwa, Addil and Kamerino are just a few of the millions affected by persecution in Sudan. The shocking statistics include men, women, boys and girls living out their faith each day in a hostile land. Let not the Western church, in her comfort and ease, forget these battered and persecuted members of Christ’s body.

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Todd Nettleton is assistant news services director for Voice of the Martyrs. The son of missionary parents, he spent part of his childhood in Papua New Guinea.

No one did more to raise awareness about the persecuted church than Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, who suffered for years in Romania’s communist prisons.

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Years of physical mistreatment and neglect failed to dampen Richard Wurmbrand’s zeal for God and His people. So at an age when most men would be considering retirement, he began a new ministry that would make him, other than Brother Andrew, probably the Christian leader most recognized internationally for championing the plight of the persecuted church.

He began in his typically passionate style. On his first visit to the United States after he and his family were ransomed out of Romania after years of persecution by the communist authorities, Wurmbrand witnessed a large anti-Vietnam War rally in Philadelphia.

Incensed by the pro-communism message of the speaker, the then-57-year-old challenged him to a debate. Wurmbrand said that he was an expert on communism and stripped off his shirt to show his “doctorate”–the scars he had received during 14 years of imprisonment. Wurmbrand’s arrest by police for disrupting the meeting was captured by a photographer and splashed across the next day’s newspapers–sparking the birth of what would become Voice of the Martyrs (VOM).

“My father was incredible when it came to debate,” said Michael Wurmbrand, speaking shortly after his father’s death in February at the age of 91. “He was a trailblazer. He single-handedly opened up the United States to his message. He really considered the world was his parish.”

Richard Wurmbrand’s best-selling Tortured for Christ, a chilling account of his years of persecution in Romanian prisons, revealed to the West for the first time the extent to which Christians were suffering for their faith under communist regimes. He testified before governments to speak out on behalf of those who suffered for Jesus, and he traveled ceaselessly until the ill health of his last five years of life.

Although Wurmbrand and his wife, Sabina, who died last August, did not become known in the West until their freedom in the mid-1960s, they had been famous among Christians in their homeland for years. Both from Jewish families, they became Christians shortly after their marriage in 1936 and became leaders of the underground church during World War II.

Their son Michael suffered for his faith, too. He was left to fend for himself as an 11-year-old boy when his mother was arrested and
followed his father into prison for three years.

“I didn’t have time to start crying for myself,” he recalled. “There were thousands of kids on the streets.”

He was cared for by a family who had been touched by his parents’ ministry, and he later was reunited with his mother. Now 62 and the director of a correspondence school in California, Michael Wurmbrand recalls weeping when he was taken to Disneyland shortly after his arrival in the United States.

“Everybody thought it was because I was so impressed,” he remembers. But there was a different reason for his tears.

“Growing up in a communist country, people always said to me, commiserating, that one day the Americans would come and free us and help us, take us out of all this craziness. And that day in Disneyland, I understood that nobody would. They had no idea, no imagination of what communism means. The Western world is also in an insane asylum.”

A member of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Rancho Palo Verdes, California, Michael Wurmbrand has returned to the land of his birth since the fall of communism. He was saddened when he found “some mixture of communism and capitalism done with no true spiritual conversion of the people.”

“Unless they do that as a nation, nothing will happen,” he says.

But his hope is in what he said is the true legacy of his parents–even beyond the challenge they brought the Western church to respond to the cries of suffering believers in other parts of the world.

“They loved their enemies,” he says, simply.

That love led to his father’s miraculous release from prison, he says, explaining that one secret police officer sent to interrogate Richard Wurmbrand ended up coming to Christ through the imprisoned pastor’s life and witness. The officer later arranged for Wurmbrand’s release papers to be included among hundreds of others.

Says Michael: “Nobody understood how [his release] happened.”

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Andy Butcher is senior writer for Charisma and editor of Charisma News Service.

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Pentecostal church leaders in Sweden are rallying against a proposed law that could make it illegal to publicly express the biblical position against homosexual behavior.

A government legal expert told journalists late last year that passage of the bill might criminalize the “reading of certain Bible verses in public.” When senior pastor Jack-Tommy Ardenfors of the Pentecostal Smyrna Church in Göteborg, Sweden, heard about it, he said he would “keep preaching the scriptural truths” and “sue himself” in protest if the so-called smear bill is passed.

Defamatory statements about homosexuals are prosecutable in Sweden under existing laws. The new bill defines homosexuals as a group in need of special legal protection against discrimination–alongside, for example, Jews, Gypsies and women.

The specific target of the new bill are Swedish-Nazi smear campaigns against homosexuals, but the broader effect of the proposed legislation could open the door to criminalizing the religious views of Christians, Jews and Muslims. Minister of Justice Thomas Bodstrom said in March that he would “never personally endorse a law that forbids quoting the Bible.”

Ardenfors told Charisma that the bill “probably won’t get the vote in parliament,” but he emphasized not taking the proposed law for granted. “Ten years ago the gay lobby was insignificant. Today it is very influential,” he said.

Non-Christian organizations representing publishers, journalists and lawyers say the new law would undermine freedom of speech. Meanwhile, Sweden’s three largest denominations–Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Congregationalist, as well as “Christian gay” pressure groups–favor the bill.

The campaign for gay rights gained momentum in Sweden in 1998, when the Lutheran archbishop of Sweden hosted an exhibition in the National Cathedral in Uppsala that portrayed Jesus as gay. In 1999, statements made against homosexuality at a Youth With a Mission event in Malmö, Sweden, caused the city to ban contributions to government school or social projects from any church that sponsored the YWAM event.

A separate bill proposing the right for homosexual partners to adopt children is also gaining support in Sweden.