Eritrea: Time to pray

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Since 2002 the autocratic regime of President Isaias Afewerki has detained well over 2,000 Christians without trial, and has forced dozens of churches and Christian ministries to close. Many believers have been tortured to force them to renounce their faith.

Since 2002 the Eritrean Government has recognised only three churches: the Orthodox Church of Eritrea, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran-affiliated Evangelical Church of Eritrea. All other churches have been closed.

Well over 2,000 thousand Christians have been detained without trial. Some estimate the total could be nearer 3,000 – out of a tiny population of only five million.

Many leading pastors and Christian activists have been arrested. In most cases they have disappeared without trace inside Eritrea’s prison system. Relatives often do not know if they are dead or alive.
Some Christian prisoners have been tortured by being locked in metal shipping containers where they suffer extreme heat during the day, and biting cold at night.

Other forms of torture are common, including what is known as ‘helicopter’ torture, where a prisoner is forced to balance on their stomach for prolonged periods, with their hands and feet tied behind them.

Christians undergoing military service are not allowed to meet together, to worship or to read a Bible. Many have been told to renounce their faith. Those who do not face lengthy terms in jail. The secret police routinely spy on Christians.

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Colombia: Guerrillas threaten pastor

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COLOMBIA: LEFTIST GUERRILLAS THREATEN, KILL CHRISTIANS
Pastors are issued warnings in north; evangelists murdered in southwest.

Having been sentenced to die by leftist rebels for holding Christian worship services in 2006, a pastor in Colombia’s northern department of Arauca took seriously the death threats that guerrillas issued on Friday (March 13), according to Christian support organization Open Doors.

The rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN) phoned a pastor of Ebenezer Church in Saravena at 5:30 a.m., telling him to meet them at a site on the Arauca River at 7 a.m. When the pastor, who requested anonymity, arrived at the landing, the guerrillas took him by canoe to the other side of the river – into Venezuela – then drove him to a guerrilla camp some 40 minutes away.

For the next three hours, the rebels warned him that area pastors had three options: cooperate with the revolutionary cause of the guerrillas, leave or die. Although the ELN has been at odds with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Arauca they co-exist without conflict.

FARC guerrillas control the southwestern department of Huila, where last November four Christians were killed. Farley Cortés was killed on Nov. 5 in Plumeros village, Hermes Coronado Granado was killed on Nov. 8 in Santana Ramos, and 10 days later a married couple, Dora Lilia Saavedra and Ferney Ledezma were also killed there.

Guerrillas seized Saavedra, 40, and the 35-year-old Ledezma from the school where Saavedra taught on Nov. 18, bound them on the floor of an old house and shot them several times.

Their pastor, Hernan Camacho, has moved with his family out of the area after receiving death threats. “[The FARC guerrillas] say that we, the evangelical ones, are their worst enemy because we teach the people not to take up weapons,” Pastor Camacho said.

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Eritrea: Persecution persists

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Persecution persists in Eritrea, as three more believers are martyred. According to a recent International Christian Concern report, three believers on separate occasions were imprisoned and tortured. They were all given the option to deny Christ and receive medicine, or to suffer more torture and be killed. All three believers chose to die. One man had a wife and kids at home.

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Distractions i Prayer

Lord! I cannot pray,
My fancy is not free;
Unmannerly distractions come,
And force my thoughts from Thee.

The world that looks so dull all day
Glows bright on me at prayer,
And plans that ask no thought but then
Wake up and meet me there.

All nature one full fountain seems
Of dreamy sight and sound,
Which, when I kneel, breaks up its deeps,
And makes a deluge round.

Old voices murmur in my ear,
New hopes start to life,
And past and future gaily blend
In one bewitching strife.

My very flesh has restless fits;
My changeful limbs conspire
With all these phantoms of the mind
My inner self to tire.

I cannot pray; yet, Lord! Thou knowst
The pain it is to me
To have my vainly struggling thoughts
Thus torn away from Thee.

Sweet Jesus! teach me how to prize
These tedious hours when I,
Foolish and mute before Thy Face,
In helpless worship lie.

Prayer was not meant for luxury,
Or selfish pastime sweet;
It is the prostrate creature’s place
At his Creator’s Feet.

Had I, dear Lord! no pleasure found
But in the thought of Thee,
Prayer would have come unsought, and been
A truer liberty.

Yet Thou art oft most present, Lord!
In weak distracted prayer:
A sinner out of heart with self
Most often finds Thee there.

For prayer that humbles sets the soul
From all illusions free,
And teaches it how utterly,
Dear Lord! it hangs on Thee.

The heart, that on self-sacrifice
Is covetously bent,
Will bless Thy chastening hand that makes
Its prayer its punishment.

My Saviour! why should I complain
And why fear aught but sin?
Distractions are but outward things;
Thy peace dwells far within.

These surface-troubles come and go,
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but Thee.

Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863

Men – God’s method

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Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

 

The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget.

 

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use – men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men – men of prayer.

 

E. M. Bounds

Power through Prayer