Looking out, Looking up
North Korea
Christians are regarded as political subversives because their worship of the Lord as God is contrary to the State cult that venerates the Kims as the divine saviours of Korea. For the 'crime' of Christianity, three generations of a family will be incarcerated in a prison labour camp where immense and inhumane cruelty and starvation guarantee a short, tortured life. North Korea's great leap backwards is a devastating blow for the Church.
In North Korea all religion other than the veneration of the ruling Kims is criminal. Christians are executed or, along with three generations of their family, incarcerated in prison labour camps where they are cruelly worked, tortured and starved to death. After several years of tentative but positive steps towards openness and Korean rapprochement, the Kim regime has made a dramatic U-turn and is returning the northern state to Stalinism, escalating militarism and intensifying the isolation essential for regime survival.
This is a crushing blow for the severely persecuted North Korean Church. But God is sovereign still. He has not abandoned his Church.
Pray for all North Korean secret and incarcerated believers. May God their Father protect and deliver them; may Christ their Saviour hear and answer their prayers; and may the Holy Spirit sustain their faith, comfort them and bless their witness with miraculous results 'abundantly more than all that we could ever ask or think' (Eph 3:20.)
Pray that our sovereign, just and merciful God deliver North Korea from its captivity and restore its spiritual heritage. (In the early 20th Century the North Korean capital Pyongyang - the birthplace of the 1907 Korean revival - was known as "The Jerusalem of the East".
England
Pray for the many Christians in England UK who have converted from Islam, for they suffer much abuse and threat by their families and communities (barnabas aid, March/April 2009).
Some specific cases: 'Hannah', a British imam's daughter, became a Christian after running away from home in 1992 (when she was 16) to escape an arrranged marriage. She is living in fear of her life and was recently placed under police protection after receiving death threats from her family for converting to Christianity.
Nissar Hussein is a hospital nurse in Bradford, UK. Born a Muslim, he converted to Christianity in 1996 and his wife converted soon after. Since their conversion, they and their children have been regularly jostled, abused, attacked, told to move out of the area and given death threats in the street. Nissar's car has been rammed and torched. Recently, he was warned that his house would be burnt down if he did not return to Islam. When he reported the threat to the police, he was told such threat was rarely carried out and was advised to move out. A few days later, the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.
It is hard for to imagine that in a liberal country like England, Christian converts are being persecuted and the intensity is increasing. But this is a fact and we must, from the comfort and security of our home, to uphold our brethren in prayer. Pray they will remain steadfast in their new-found faith and they will experience His divine peace, strength and joy in the midst of their suffering, knowing that there awaits a crown of glory for those who endure to the end.
Gaza
Continue to pray for peace in the Holy Land, remembering especially our Christian brothers and sisters in Gaza caught up in the conflict. They number about 3,000 out of a total population of 1.5 million in the Gaza Strip. A church and a Christian hospital were among the buildings hit by Israeli attacks in January.
They face all the deprivations of the Muslim majority as well as the extra difficulties of being Christians under the strongly Islamic Hamas government.
It is not uncommon for Christians to have their properties seized or bombed and their business boycotted. In 2007, the manager of the Bible Society bookshop was kidnapped and killed. In 2008, the Young Men's Christian Association in Gaza was bombed. In the context of growing Islamisation, this persecution looks set to increase.
There is also a lot of hostility, especially towards Messianic Jews, from extreme Orthodox Jewish groups. In 2008, these groups published announcements in religious newspapers, calling Messianic Jews "dangerous" and for their explusion from Israeli areas.
Pray for the Lord's hand of protection over the small Christian remnant, that He will supply for their needs in supernatural ways. Pray for understandiing and peace between the various religious factions.
Pray for the work of Barnabas Fund, a ministry devoted to helping persecuted Christians, as they assist Christians in Gaza with food and basic needs. Since the December attack, it has been working with the Palestinian Bible Society, the Bible Society in Israel and the Arab Israeli Bible Society to provide food coupons for the afflicted.
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