Intercessory Insights from the Isles 2004 Part One

We warned a year or so ago that oppression and persecution were set to return to this beautiful and spiritually strategic country. Is the shadow of Idi Amin threatening to fall again? We received the following report from David Sseruwagi, the Director of Uganda Gospel Rehabilitation Centre, and one of Terry Charlton’s co-workers.

"We are going through a political transition that is very significant spiritually. Many intercessors and ministers gifted prophetically are in agreement about this. One of these people is John Mulinde and he had this word from the Lord:

'The priesthood in the land is in balance. We are at a place when so many politicians are leaning back on witchcraft and sorcery to see their way forward. They make covenants with demon gods and these are making demands if they succeed. Today Uganda is being bargained in the spiritual market. Both publicly and privately leaders are striking deals that are holding Uganda to ransom. In this season the satanic priesthood is more active than at any other elections. If the Godly priesthood does not rise up now, the satanic priesthood will take up the land. And you will live to regret it.'

‘On the ground we are having a lot of excitement about the political transition. We are to have elections in 2006 and a referendum sometime this year. The constitution is being changed to [make it possible for the] President to seek another term of office, which is against the present constitution.

‘Many laws are being debated in Parliament. We need to pray that these are laws that are not against the teachings of the Bible. The Moslems are also pushing for sharia law to come into the constitution. Feminists, homosexuals are also trying to resist laws on pornography. The political direction we take in the near future depends on the prayers of the church, at this time when the country appears poised to go back into the anarchy we had in the Idi Amin and Obote times. Many opposition politicians are quite violent in their speech. It is true that many people are being arrested and tortured in 'safe houses’ – though the government vehemently denies this.

“Unfortunately we leaders in the church are generally not ready and in tune with the reality facing us. So we have felt led to first take a forty day prayer and fasting session involving repentance for our lukewarmness, (sin!) before we involve the whole church in twelve months of prayer right up to 2006.

This second report is by Adrian Blomfield. It was published in March in the Daily Telegraph, and is reproduced with permission:

Regime of Tyranny and Torture back to haunt Uganda
- April 05
Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes; chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin's infamous torture chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass executions.

Welcome to President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda. One of Britain's favourite African states in recent years has, almost unnoticed in the West, become a sinister land where a corrupt regime uses its secret police to rule through fear.

Mr Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986, when his rebels marched triumphantly into the capital Kampala. Many of his countrymen believe he now wants to recast himself as that most African of leaders: a president for life.

Signalling his intent to jettison the vestigial trappings of democracy his government still professes, Mr Museveni has set out to remove a constitutional provision that prevents him from standing in elections next year. Not all Ugandans are keen on the idea, but the government has ways of making them change their mind.[1]

The official existence of political parties was only allowed last year, under considerable western pressure. Until then Mr Museveni operated what he called a “no-party system”, in which every Ugandan belonged to an entity known as ‘The Movement’, which was headed by the president.

In theory, the philosophy was supposed to rid Uganda of the ethnic and political divisions that helped cause the civil wars and dictatorships that characterised much of the country's history since independence from Britain in 1962. In practice it has allowed Mr Museveni to exert total control over most of his people.[2]

Philip and his wife Juliet were picked up in January, accused of renting out their hall south of the capital for an opposition meeting. "Every night I was hung upside down over a pit of snakes while my wife was raped by army officers," said Philip, who was held in Room 21 of Mbale Police Station, another Amin torture chamber. "One time we had to move five dead bodies into a truck. Another time I was made to dig my own grave." Like Yasin, Philip and Juliet were released. Their captors told them to report what had happened to fellow villagers, but threatened them with death if they told anyone else.

Certainly things are not as bad as they were under Amin, who killed half-a-million people in eight years of bloodshed. Mr Museveni remains popular in many quarters for bringing stability to the country.

The president was long seen as an African role model in the West for his willingness to introduce economic reforms demanded by the World Bank. But many donors are now disgusted both by the repression and by the corruption in Mr Museveni's cabinet, many of whom are relatives of the president. "Museveni hoodwinked many donors for a long time and people wanted to see the glass as half full," a diplomat said. "We are now learning our lesson." But that lesson may have come too late. A gang of young thugs, known as the Kalangala Action Plan (KAP), is allegedly preparing to disrupt the elections. Styled on the youth wing of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party in Zimbabwe, the KAP was an effective tool of intimidation during flawed 2001 elections won by Mr Museveni.

With an even greater risk of defeat if elections are free and fair, diplomats fear that the KAP could be responsible for serious violence and compound Uganda's human rights reputation still further.

For an in depth look at the traumas occurring in northern Uganda see www.alertnet.org. This will point you to other informative sites.

[1] Last year, Yasin, a taxi driver who occasionally chauffeured a senior opposition official around the countryside, was woken by a loud rapping at his door a few hours before dawn. The men who had come to arrest him were not policemen, but members of the widely feared Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI). Yasin knew that the CMI, a shadowy spy agency directly answerable to the president, had no powers to arrest anybody. But he also knew better than to question his captors. He was taken to Makindye barracks, where some of the worst atrocities of Amin's infamous State Research Bureau, which used to force inmates to beat each other to death with sledgehammers, took place in the 1970s. "Every day for a week, they would hang me upside down and beat me with clubs," Yasin said. "They wanted to know names of people working for the opposition. I kept saying I didn't know any, but they wouldn't believe me." On his third day, Yasin watched as a fellow inmate, an elderly man accused of recruiting for the main opposition alliance, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), was killed using a method known as "Liverpool". The victim's head was placed in a bag that was repeatedly filled with water. To breathe, he had to drink it all, but the more he drank, the more bloated his belly became until his innards ruptured and he died in a pool of his own urine.

[2] The leader of the FDC, Kizza Besigye, in exile in South Africa, has instructed his campaigners to dole out copies of Animal Farm during party rallies. But most people are too frightened to attend. Secret police infiltrate the rallies, noting down those who attend. It is usually supporters and low ranking FDC members who are taken to Makindye. As a means of spreading fear, it is an extremely effective method.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe led his ruling party to victory against an opposition weakened by intimidation in the past years, in the face of relentless international criticism that he has hijacked democracy to stay in power.

Ø During Mugabe’s long years in office, opponents have been intimidated to the extent that a climate of fear keeps opposition in check even where sterner measures no longer need to be employed directly.

Ø Up to three and a half million people have left the country, most to either the UK or South Africa, but with considerable numbers trying to go to Botswana, but being forcible repatriated.

Ø Mugabe made opposition to Tony Blair (of all people!) a central plank in his intensive propaganda efforts. He claims that Washington and European governments (led of course by former colonial power Britain) want to bring him down because of his seizure of white-owned land for landless Zimbabweans.

Ø Even before the election happened it was branded as rigged by both the United States and the European Union.

Ø Members of Mugabe’s Militia of Choice (his young thugs) were present to ‘help’ voters in the polling booths. President Mbeki of South Africa, continued, however, to support Zimbabwe uncritically.

Ø The South African trade union movement has finally woken up to what is happening however. There have been protests in the streets against their own government’s uncritical support of Mugabe’s excesses.

Robert Mugabe has led the former Rhodesia since independence in 1980. He is planning to retire by 2008 at the latest. Pray for the new vice-president, Joyce Mujuru (49) who Mutable appears to favour as his successor and for all that happens in this troubled nation.

This is a prayer for those of us in the West who do not have a strong burden for the Muslim nations to pick up on the Lord's heart. If the Lord is shining His light into those huge swathes of the world that are known as 'Muslim' how can we remain indifferent?

Gordon Hickson, who runs 'Peacemakers' and 'Heartcry' urges us to 'think harvest' whenever we think about the Islamic world and to do whatever we can to care for the Muslims in our midst. Here are millions of dedicated and devout people just waiting to know the Lord Jesus, whom they revere as a prophet. They are ‘treasures’ being prepared in darkness. (Is. 45:2-3) To such people, prayer, commitment and obedience come naturally. Pray for many who are not yet in the Kingdom to become the future leaders in God's worldwide Church.

From Morocco to Kazakhstan and beyond; from West Africa to the Far East, over one billion people are waiting to become active disciples. Pray for the Lord to find ways to release their massive potential. Particular prayer needs to be focussed on the closed’ or ‘difficult’ countries. Pressure against Christians is continuing to rise in places such as Malaysia, and in Indonesia, where thousands of Christians have been slaughtered. Few believers are under any illusions about the risks that they face if they fall into the hands of militant Islamists. Raw courage has to be the hallmark of their faith.

Despite all manner of subtle discrimination, open persecution and repeated setbacks, the Church is growing in countries such as Egypt faster than it is in the West. People are coming to know the Lord Jesus through dreams and visions, through face to face experiences as well as through personal witness.

May Christian agencies, churches and missions recognise what the Spirit of the Lord is doing and be moved to direct their prayer and resources in that direction.

So many Muslims have never really heard the gospel or seen it incarnated in the lives of those who follow the Lord Jesus closely.

Pray special blessing on those who are involved in training Christian nationals to bring the gospel to the Muslim world.

Pray that the power of the gospel may dispel myths and faulty perspectives and open people’s hearts wherever the truth and the love of Jesus permeates. especially through the Jesus film and its successor, and through broadcasts made through Christian radio and satellite television. A high percentage of people in the Middle East can receive satellite broadcasts – and many have had their lives turned around as a result. May the Lord use the airwaves to defeat the prince of the power of the air and to disciple countless new believers. May the Light of Jesus flood into the hearts of those whose hearts are hungering for truth.

Father, help those who are on the point of making a decision for You to cross the threshold and to experience Your clear leading and Your supernatural guidance and protection. Bless those who look askance at their conversion, that in the fullness of time many of them, too, may see Who it is that their friends and family members have chosen to follow, so that Your Kingdom may beat in new hearts and advance in new places on Earth. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

During the first literary class we held in Shetland, I asked everyone to write a piece about the impending war in the Middle East (which was then six months away). A seventeen year old had a picture of a sort of modern-day ‘Pandora’s Box’ with a reflective aluminium seal over it. He had a clear sense that if the West went in and punctured this seal, it would be impossible to reseal it again afterwards – and that much evil would emerge from it.

If we were to plot the rising tide of problems and outrages on a graph chart, it is so obvious that Pandora’s box has been opened, and the spirit of Babylon let loose, with all the attendant cruelty and confusion that has marked its progress through the millennia. Sections of the armed forces, operating in centres formerly used by Saddam’s tormentors, have clearly come under the baleful influence of this spirit. In the American case, what has been done is being exposed more and more, and is profoundly distasteful. In the British case, the pictures in the Daily Mirror have proved to be nothing but a malicious hoax – but reports of abuse continue to circulate not only from Amnesty International but also from the Danish Defence Ministry, which has reported that Danish medics treated Iraqis who had been severely mistreated at the hands of British interrogators.

This is doubly disappointing in that the British army has made considerable progress since the days of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in 1972, not least as the result of the leadership of Generals Rose and Jackson. Spare more than a passing prayer for the exceedingly difficult task the British army face in Basra. These troops come under live fire may times a night. The task of all concerned is becoming increasingly difficult: Iraq has enormous oil reserves – but neither Iraqis nor Americans will benefit from it if pipe lines are cut and civilian operators are in constant danger of being kidnapped and beheaded by Al Q’aeda.

The knock on effects from the lid coming off Pandora’s box are huge. The resignation of Piers Morgan of the Daily Mirror means he joins a growing rank of media moguls who have been forced out of office over the Iraq war. I can never get away from the word the Lord gave six months before hostilities that America was being lured into a trap by thinking it could win the war against terror by conventional means. But it is important too to consider the matter from the viewpoint of those who have suffered under totalitarian regimes. Those who suffered such extremes of horror in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries longed constantly that the Americans might come to deliver them.

The tragedy is what else has come with the Americans. Newsweek itself now speaks openly of an American ‘Gulag’ (with up to 50,000 Iraqi prisoners). The Daily Mirror episode has, on this side of the Atlantic, taken away from the rather pathetic sight of Senator Hilary Clinton coolly and relentlessly forcing Paul Wolfowicz to concede that American treatment of prisoners has been inhumane by any standards: sleep deprivation, twenty four hour continual questionings, and wearing hoods for up to 72 hours. Not to mention pointing out that every prediction Wolfowicz made concerning the war has proved unfounded, and that he is currently requesting an additional $25 billion dollars for the American effort in Iraq.

Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, Bali, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the present pressure on George Bush . . . all these examples of countries in need of prayer are worrying examples of how Islamic militancy has caused great and widespread fear and instability. In the UK, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is openly discussing in The Times today how government ministers are preparing themselves for life beyond Blair.

In Thailand (where Hannah Prittie recently worked in an orphanage), the military are currently hunting five thousand armed separatists in the deeply troubled the south of south. More than 200 people have died this year. With more than a dozen Arab teachers from across the Middle East and a seemingly endless flow of funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, the multi-million-dollar campus of the Yala Islamic College has become the most obvious manifestation in Thailand of what critics call the "Arab threat" to the traditionally moderate and tolerant local Islamic tradition. Pandora’s box has been thrown wide open: much has yet to unfurl emerge. It is definitely time to pray for hope to emerge!

If you are not familiar with the myth, Pandora was a strikingly beautiful woman whom the gods brought to Prometheus in the expectation that he would marry her. But Prometheus knew full well that the gods were eager to take revenge on him, so he refused to have anything to do with her. Instead, Epimetheus, his brother, who was intrigued by Pandora’s beauty, agreed to marry her, presuming that anyone so beautiful could never hurt or harm anyone.

On a personal note: if the Lord has shown you to do something – or, alternatively, not to do it: heed what He is saying. He means what he says!!!!

A point perhaps worth making is that, Kosovo excepted, most of the suffering that has afflicted Muslim countries since the Second World War has been the fruit of ‘home-grown’ extremism. The murderous campaign the militant jihadists in Algeria have long been waging, along with the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan, led Barbara Amiel to a stark conclusion:

‘The main development in 2003 was that Muslims have just as much to fear from militant Islam as the West does. ‘The greatest enemy Muslim societies face are the extremists in their midst: Ba’athists and the so-called political Islamists.’ (The Daily Telegraph)

Al Qa’eda has now extended the theatre of action by launching attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But they may have miscalculated this time. The Saudi response has been as vigorous as we predicted it would be. (After all, the rulers are massively concerned to protect their own dynasty). Over four hundred suspected terrorists have been arrested. Equally as proactive has been the forced re-education of hundreds of imams.

Given that a substantial number of (innocent) British people have been arrested by the Saudi religious police and tortured into making the most bizarre confessions, Pray for real terrorists to be located and the innocent protected.

Father, we pray for Your power to break through into this climate of fear. Bless the people of Algeria with seeking hearts and the means of finding You, and bring many in both Turkey and Saudi Arabia to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gallantly urged New Yorkers in September 2001 to carry on as usual with their lives to show that they could not be cowed. But it has long since become ‘respectable’ to take elaborate precautions. People have been saying that Bin Laden is on the run, but the net effect we saw around us over Christmas was that America too is on the run. To spread such a climate of uncertainty is an obvious bonus for bin Laden. Pray for the West to get the balance as nearly right as possible between security concerns and basic freedoms.

Al Qa’eda excels at picking soft targets. It was easier to launch attacks in Kenya, Bali and Turkey than in New York. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese citizens have also been killed in Iraq. Pray for supernatural protection.

On the macro front, European opinion is itself one such target – and it is being most effectively focused on. Mind you, just as surely as pro-Israeli supporters feel that the EU has been unevenly supportive of the Palestinian Authority, so the Muslim Council of Britain strongly criticises it for refusing to making the far reaching indictments of Israel that it is pressing for.

Wherever the external war against terror is up to, there is a huge battle going on for souls in the Islamic world. The West’s assumption tends to be that ‘If the problem is militant Islam, then the solution must be moderate Islam.’ Such a solution is good for trade, for tourism and for international relations, but how can we, as followers of the Lord Jesus, settle for it? Pray against excessive polarisation that leads to extremism winning.

CND is, and has always been, another example of uneven-handed support. For years, peace campaigners marched against western causes in such a way that it was clear that the only disarmament they had in mind was Western disarmament. When did CND ever march against Soviet missile programmes or protest against the actions of the Chinese in Tibet? Likewise, to say, as protestors did at the biggest ever anti war march in Britain earlier in 2003 ‘Give peace a chance’ fails to take account of the three hundred thousand people who died under Saddam Hussein. Iraqi firing squads were working flat out until minutes before the Americans took over towns and cities of Iraq.

The Military Task and the Spiritual Challenge

Whilst the Taliban are having considerable success in regrouping in rural parts of Afghanistan, much as the mujahadeen predecessors did against the Russians, pray for a dear man – we’ll call him Charles – who is leading a team to resume a previous ministry of reaching an unreached tribal people.

What spiritual people can only do in the first instance on their knees, military planners are seeking to do by other routes. But the task of rooting out the terrorists in Iraq is made the more difficult by the fact that cells no longer conduct attacks in their own hometowns to make it more difficult for them to be infiltrated. Cell members do not sleep in their own homes, and they never keep their weapons in the houses they are living in. An estimated 5000 operatives are at work in these cells. Considering how well armed and resourced they are, this is a potent opposition, despite the capture of Saddam leaving them with no figurehead to gather around. Pray blessing and success on all God’s chosen workers, but also on His secular agencies in the run up to the elections in Iraq.

Morality in Iraq

Despite the sleaze inside the royal palaces, Saddam and the Minister of Culture kept a strict watch outside on any films or books that were deemed even remotely ‘naughty.’ Prostitutes could be beheaded. Now people are ‘making up’ for lost time. Just as in Eastern Europe, western-style ‘freedom’ is opening the door for porn and vice to flood into the country. A third of the country has access to the porn channels on satellite TV, which horrifies traditionalists. Whilst few in the nation want to see a Saudi-style religious police to curb these trends, Islamic vigilantes are inflicting their own horrific penalties on people found watching or practising such things. Pray again for these satellite channels to be used to help the Iraqi people to find and follow the Lord Jesus.

Saddam’s Fate

For all the suffering he caused, Saddam often miscalculated spectacularly. He launched a pre-emptive war against Iran expecting it to be a quick one; it turned into a long drawn out and sanguinary affair. Then, in the mother of all misjudgements, he invaded Kuwait and hoped that the world would turn a blind eye. Saddam’s capture was a huge blow to many Palestinians, who viewed him as their champion. (He had provided over $35,000,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and to support the Intifada). One would expect him to relish a ‘mother of all genocide trials’ – but rumours are beginning to circulate that he may be suffering from cancer and not have long to live.

The Allies had desperately wanted him to taken Saddam alive so that the world could hear the stories of torture and oppression that he inflicted on his people in order to demonstrate that they were ‘justified’ in going to war. But will the truth about the Ba’athist regime in Iraq be laid bare in the same way that the Nuremberg trials did about Nazi Germany?

Do tyrants repent? Always at the back of my mind I have the wonderful story of the American chaplain appointed to minister to the Nazi war criminals who had been sentenced to death following the Nuremberg trials. Initially, the man fought against the appointment. He had lost both his sons to the Nazis, and his heart raged. But, as he put it, the Lord gave him hell until he agreed to take the gospel to them. Some were not interested. Goering took his own life. But one by one several of the most guilty men in the Third Reich opened their hearts to the Lord Jesus and went to the scaffold pleading the blood of the Lamb.

The good news is that it is never too late to repent – but neither is there the slightest room for complacency. Studies amongst surviving tyrants who have been forced into exile indicate that the over-whelming majority remain stubbornly convinced to the end of their rightness. They have built the structure of their whole being around the decisions that they made, no matter how profoundly wrong more level headed people would regard them to be. To admit they were wrong would mean pulling down the foundations of their lives and leave them effectively admitting that everything they had done or believed had been off beam. Few are prepared to humble themselves so completely.

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What feelings rise up in you when you discuss Israel, let alone meet Jews?

Because this issue raises such strong feelings and opinions, polarisation continues to be the order of the day. A good starting point for praying about this topic would be to pray the prayer that originated in Kenya which we included on our cassette ‘Encounter’:

Phil Townsend wrote, in ‘A Vision for the Church at the Turn of the Millennium’:

Britain’s part in Israel’s history

Britain has been used to support and succour Israel – but we have also been the cause of further suffering. Between 1922 and 1946, a large portion of the land which had been promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration was given away by Britain to the Arabs. In 1947, what was left of the Promised Land was again partitioned, leaving less than half of what had originally been promised.

Moreover, at the time when the Concentration camps in Germany were emptying, and Jews were desperately trying to get back to their new homeland, the British Navy actively prevented many of these refugees from reaching Israel.

Such actions have taken a toll in the life of our nation. We have not prospered spiritually. Two generations have now grown up in Britain, most of whom know little of the Word of God, or of His promises. To the Lord's intense chagrin, consumerist hedonism reigns supreme. The fear of doing anything that would be displeasing to a holy God is most certainly not the dominant influence in most people’s lives. But the Lord is watching over His prophetic word to perform it:

"I will take you (Israel) out of the nations. I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back to your own land . . . You will live in the land I gave to your forefathers; you will be My people and I will be your God." Ezek. 37:24-28

Double Standards in the West (Article posted late March 2004)

Ryan Jones in Jerusalem Newswire (March 23, 2004) is relieved that Israelis will never again be subjected to the shrill ranting of Sheikh Yassin, Hamas' founding father, who declared the fire and brimstone destruction Islam sees as the being the ultimate destiny of the Jewish state. This is a very different picture of the Sheik to that currently being portrayed in the West.

Now that Sheikh Yassin has been replaced by a hard liner, there is widespread expectation that the Israelis will launch more such selected attacks.

Whatever your view of the appropriateness or otherwise of such attacks, it is hard not to agree with Jones when he accuses the West of hypocrisy. One of Israel's biggest critics was British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Barely one year ago, Britain and the US launched a full-scale war against Iraq in which their first action was to attempt a "decapitation attack" aimed at bringing the war to a swift conclusion by killing Saddam Hussein. It stuck in the gullet therefore to hear a clearly irritated foreign Secretary deploring Israel's killing of Yassin as "unlawful, unacceptable [and] unjustified."

Why are Britain and America allowed to assassinate a recognized head of state who poses a minimal threat to their nations' assets, but Israel is not permitted to eliminate a known terrorist leader who advocates the mass slaughter of Jewish men, women and children from Israel's own backyard?

Jones argues that 'When the US finally captures or kills Osama bin Laden, will Washington for even one second entertain liberal criticism that by doing so the Bush Administration had exacerbated the situation? By denying Israel the same justice they seek for their own citizens, the leaders of these two "Christian" nations are playing a dangerous game with God.'
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Double standards in the EU (posted April 2004)

Europe as a whole is struggling to come to terms with the resurgence of Islam. Right at the centre is Germany, where the church is far and away the best funded and politically most influential on the continent. This is why the government has been able to pass a decree forbidding Muslims to wear headscarves The French government has done the same. Although it sounds somewhat like King Canute’s futile gesture to hold back the tide, these actions have intensely angered many Muslims.

Islam is becoming increasingly overt and ‘visible’ in Germany. The number of mosques with minarets doubled in Germany in 2003 alone, and a further 150 are currently under construction. Germany’s ageing population will be increasingly dependent on its army of immigrant labour, a majority of whom are Muslim.

Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, deliberately chose recently not to proceed with a conference on anti-Semitism – but it did publish an opinion poll which shows that most Europeans consider Israel to be the greatest threat to world peace(!) Kevin Myers makes an important point when he wonders out loud if the Commission is not eager to divert attention from the fact that the bulk of anti-Semitism today originates even more from immigrant Muslim communities than from neo Nazi groups.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority continues to receive millions of euros every year from the EU, which it uses to promote explicit anti-Semitism in its schools and on television. By this reckoning, the EU can only be considered as guilty of sponsoring anti-Semitism.

In the National Review Online Bat Yeor points out that ‘Terrorism is not a consequence of poverty. Many societies are poor, yet they do not produce an organised criminality of terror. To subsidise societies which nourish ideologies of hate (which he accuses the EU of doing) will not suppress terrorism, rather such pusillanimity will reinforce it.”

Bat traces how the EC created a structure of Co-operation and Dialogue with the Arab League after the Yom Kippur War in which the EC would broadly support the Arab anti-Israeli policy in exchange for wide commercial agreements. Over time, he argues that this structure evolved into a channel for Arab immigration into Europe, of anti-Americanism, of increasing Judeophobia linked with a general denigration of the West.

If it is right to believe as Bat does that Europe has long since tied its prosperity to a co-operation with Middle Eastern rulers, it becomes additionally understandable why Germany and France above all were so opposed to becoming involved in the war against Iraq. Oil is thicker than water, and monetary rather than moral issues may well have been behind its reluctance.

There is a continuing need to pray for what is happening at the heart of Europe. One of the most disturbing reports I have come across recently (by Ambrose Evans Pritchard) concerns the arrest and interrogation (with no lawyer present) of Hans Martin Tillack, the Brussels' correspondent for Germany's Stern magazine. Tillack, the author of The Brussels Spaceship - How demcocray fails in Europe' was investigating fraud and corruption in the EU, and has a hue amount of material regarding the subject, which has now been seized by the police, who took him to their HQ at the Hague, which, far from amusingly, is itself the building the Gestapo once used.

Tillack's book paints a serious picture of the European Union Remeber, Tillack is a self-declared pro-federalist, ie an insider, being arrested by a police force that is not accountable to any nation. His book explains in detail how the European institutions function – or more precisely pertinently, how they do not function. His conclusion is that the European Union has the seeds of its own collapse within it.

What did the police say to him? That he was lucky not to be in Burma or Central Africa, where journalists get the real treatment!" The European Ombudsman has already come to his defence, issuing a strong criticism against OLAF's campaign to silence him.
(OLAF came into being as a direct replacement for UCLAF, the old fraud office, which had been discredited for its cover ups in the days of Jacques Santer. But just as many former communists remain in power in Eastern Europe under a different name, so many UCLAF staff now work for OLAF. Pray for measures to be in place to ensure that unaccountable federal police in Europe do not overstep the mark.

Overview of the current situation (April 2004)

Many who support Israel sense that it is so weary with its blood-spattered struggle that it is now willing to trade land in order to gain a measure of peace. But many in Israel fear that yielding some ground may only serve as a prelude to seizing more. Pat Robertson, the influential American evangelist, made an impassioned speech for Israel not to ‘commit national suicide’ by ceding control of East Jerusalem because he sees the goal of the PLO, Hamas and Hizbullah as being nothing less than ’the final destruction of the State of Israel.’ His speech was published in The Jerusalem Post. In it, Robertson said that the entire world is being:

In a major policy statement in mid December 2003, Prime Minister Sharon made it clear that if the Palestinian Authority does not move in the next few months to implement its Road Map obligation to crack down on terrorists, Israel will unilaterally establish a security border and "disengage" its people from the Palestinians. This will involve putting as much distance as possible between Israeli and Palestinian centres of population.

Support for Israel should not make us blind to the plight of the Palestinians. A friend passed on a heart cry from the Lutheran Church in Jerusalem concerning the immense damage being done to Palestinians by the building of the 600 kilometre long wall, which often incurses well into Palestinian territory. It encloses not only settlements but also the vital water sources on the West Bank, with heartbreaking effects for individuals and communities. (See the web site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), www.elca.org/middleeast).

The situation is unlikely to improve in the short term, simply because neither Mahmoud Abbas nor his successor, Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister, looks set to act on the terms of the Road Map and to make a serious move to clamp down on terrorists. Praise for ‘jihad – holy war’ and ‘shahada – martyrdom’ is still incorporated into Islamic Culture, a core curriculum book that is being used by the PA in schools in the occupied West Bank. The PA argues tenuously that martyrdom is an Islamic concept rather than an incitement to suicide bombings, but the ideas are nevertheless being firmly planted in young people’s minds.

Jerusalem News Wire report that no fewer than 19,000 terror attacks have been launched by Palestinians during the last three years. As a friend who saw the draft of this article remarked, ‘I think the focus of our praying should be for salvation rather than peace . . . We are in a spiritual battle. We must balance politics with the prophecies. Scripture is clear that all the nations will gather against Jerusalem.’ Only the power of God can overcome the strongholds of hatred anger and fear that the powers of darkness have shed abroad in the land.

As an example of the gates of hell being opened, www.worldtribune.com (an American internet newspaper that sets out to bring news from the rest of the world to the attention of the American people), reported recently that a ten-year-old boy was found at a checkpoint the other day near the northern West Bank city of Nablus carrying a suicide bomb. He was not even aware of the contents of the package, which he had been paid a considerable sum to smuggle through. Fatah
operatives tried to detonate the bomb by cellular phone when Israeli soldiers stopped the 10-year-old at the checkpoint outside the town of Hawara.

Mercifully, the cellular phone failed to detonate the bomb. Over the last two years, Fatah and other insurgency groups have used Palestinian women, many of them teenagers, for suicide missions. Most of the women were said to have been blackmailed into agreeing to blowing themselves up near Israeli military and civilian targets. Israel's military has determined that Palestinian insurgents have recruited children to become suicide bombers.

Meanwhile, Israel itself was rocked in mid February by an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale. Earthquakes are common in Israel, but are rarely felt or reported. The last really big one was in 1033; experts have been predicting that it is due a ‘big’ one in the next fifty years, with the Dome of the Rock, Al Aqsa mosque being thought to be particularly at risk. (Zech. 14:4-5, an event that will split the Mount of Olives in two, creating an enormous valley. The book of Revelation also speaks of an earthquake in the last days such as there has never been before (Rev. 16:18).

This latest quake left a crack in the ceiling of the Knesset building – which many believers saw as a prophetic sign.

Pray for Palestine

Patrick Johnstone (www.operationworld.com) writes: ‘Israel’s strangle-hold on communications, investment in industry, control of water supplies and restrictions on Palestinian labour in Israel have severely reduced living standards and raised unemployment to 40% in 2000. The inefficient Palestinian administration further exacerbates the economic plight of the population.’ He called for specific prayer for a fair apportionment of the water resources. Israel uses a massive percentage of the land’s fast disappearing renewable water. (The crucial mountain aquifers are close to being used up and far too much water is also being taken out of the Jordan. See www.wecup.org – West Bank Clean Up).

Patrick urges us in particular to pray for the squalor and hopelessness of Gaza’s teeming multitudes. There are well over a million people in the city but only one evangelical church; few to minister the gospel, and thousands of Islamists trapped in their bitterness and rage. Pray that the Lord will open people’s eyes and embrace the one true God as their only hope.

Pray for Russian and Ukrainian Jews

Emigrés from the Russia and the Ukraine now account for the largest sector of Israel. Over half the Jewish population of the former USSR now live in Israel – and they are reported to be more open to the gospel than ‘traditional’ Jews. Their presence is changing the feel of the nation. By contrast, the Ethiopian ‘Falasha’ Jews, who were so marvellously brought to Israel over ten years ago, now form an underclass in society and are generally greatly disillusioned. The relative handful of Christians amongst them (about 500) are heavily discriminated against. Patrick Johnstone writes:

War-Weary Palestinian Christians are seeking to escape the Holy Land (posted mid 2004)

Palestinian Christians can trace their roots back to pre-Islamic days, but there is a growing exodus from among their dwindling and increasingly desperate ranks. Squeezed by Israel's crippling military blockade of the West Bank and the rise of a deepening ‘Islamization’ of Palestinian society since the start of the Intifada in 2000, there are now barely 50,000 Palestinian Christians left in the midst of more than three and a half million Muslims. Many are finding the pressures too great to bear.

Pray for the Lord to protect and provide for the Palestinian Christians. Many of them are respected in the community and have good relations with the (still dominant) Muslims who do not want to see the Islamists winning. By all means pray for the Lord to show them clearly if they truly do need to leave, but a better prayer strategy might be to pray that they can be a force for good in the land.

Pray too for Arab Evangelicals, who number about 2,000 in 30 churches, of which 20 are on the West Bank. They feel rejected by Jews, Arabs, traditional Christians and even Western evangelicals. Those from Muslim backgrounds have been specifically targeted by Islamists. The loss of leadership through emigration is serious. Bethlehem Bible College is the most promising centre for Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, and a key ministry with 80 full- or part-time students. See www.musalaha.org (Musalaha means ‘let us be reconciled.)

Reconciliation Journey to the Holy Land (Lynn Green) (posted end of 2003)

A rather different approach to the region’s problems has been adopted by the visit of a recent team organised by ‘The Reconciliation Walk’, a project we have referred to on previous occasions. Our friend Peter Adams sent us this report of a visit to the Holy Land in November 2003, though Lyn Green the director of the Walk actually wrote it. Their focus was to meet people in Israel and the West Bank, to hear their stories and to encourage genuine peace.

Two Arab Saints: Bishara and Rami

Bishara was born in Jerusalem and was just nine years old when the 1948 war broke out. His parents with their 7 children were trapped in their house just outside the Damascus Gate of the old city. After some days without provisions his father ventured out to buy food but was shot just outside the door. His mother managed to drag his father's body back inside but it was several days before they could bury his father in the courtyard of the house. Then they fled and found an open home extended to them by a Muslim family inside the old city of Jerusalem.

As he grew up Bishara, born into a Christian Family, came to a strong faith, gained degrees in America (thanks to the generosity of a visiting American pastor) and returned to teach school in Bethlehem. Eventually he took a huge step of faith and obedience to start the Bethlehem Bible College.

These days Bethlehem is like a vast open prison. Travel restrictions are so severe that the people in Bethlehem (still the strongest concentration of Christians in the region) cannot travel even to Jerusalem only four miles away. Unemployment is over 70% and when trouble flares food and water supplies can be cut off. Thankfully we were there in a relatively peaceful week, so the check-points were not difficult for us. However it was heart breaking to see mothers with sick children arbitrarily turned back as they tried to get them to hospital.

There is so much more injustice in Bethlehem, but in it all Bishara is a living illustration of the grace and forgiveness of Jesus. Against all odds he keeps sharing his meagre provisions with the poor, and training Christian leaders for the better future he faithfully expects.

Rami

We also met Rami, an Israeli whose wisdom and courage impressed us beyond words. (Rami and his wife Nurit are from one of Israel’s more distinguished families. Nurit's father was a famous general, Commander of the Jerusalem Brigade, and renowned war hero.) Six years ago the ultimate nightmare of every parent in Israel happened to him. They heard the radio report of another suicide bomber and realised their 14 year old daughter could have been in the target area.

The hours that followed were filled with fruitless phone calls, visits to the scene of the disaster, and then to hospitals where the injured were being treated. Late in the night they stood by a trolley in the morgue as the sheet was drawn back to reveal the near unrecognisable remains of the light of their life.

Rami, Nurit and their family faced an inescapable choice: they could direct their unspeakable pain towards vengeance, or they could take the higher and more difficult road to forgiveness. Today Rami is an inspirational leader in a peace movement, Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace.

Part of his message is; "There will be a solution – two states for two peoples. One side (Palestinians) gives up 78% of the land and the other (Israelis) gives up 22% of the land. One side gives up a holy grail and the other a holy of holies. It will happen in a year or two, or five, or five hundred. It will happen when the price of no-peace is higher than the price of peace, after a certain amount of anguish and agony, horror and nightmare, after a certain number of casualties, when there is weeping in every home and the cries of both peoples reach the heavens."

Rami explains that he spends much of his time speaking in schools and colleges where he sometimes encounters hard right Israeli youth who believe that the land should be taken using any and all means. Recently a young man expressed a view sometimes held by the most religious settlers (those are the fundamentalist Jews who settle within the boundaries of the Palestinian areas, as decreed by the Oslo agreement, the Road Map to peace and several other Middle East peace initiatives).

The young man said, "We should just kill all the Arabs because the land belongs to us not them." Rami replied, "OK. How shall we do it? Do you want to take a pistol and start shooting? It will take a long time and they will surely fight back when you start. Shall we bring buses and lorries and load them up to be taken away and be shot? Will you kill me too if I resist you? Maybe there is a more efficient way. After all our race has experience with that."

A few days later our team visited Hebron, an Arab town of about 180,000 people, where about 450 settlers are reclaiming the city where Abraham and Sarah are buried according to tradition. The settlers, mostly hard right religious Jews from New York, have created four enclaves in the centre of Hebron and require nearly 2000 Israeli soldiers to protect them. On the wall around one settlement, someone had written in English "All Arabs to the gas chambers!”

My reading from the New Testament that day was from Ephesians 2 "For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us" . . . This magnificent presentation of God's end times plan goes on to reveal that God has purposed to bring together Jews and Gentiles (including Arabs) into one people who, when built together in unity, will become a "holy temple in the Lord . . . a dwelling place for God."

Towards the end of Ephesians, the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul, reminds us that, in all these life and death matters, we are not struggling against enemies of flesh and blood, but "against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places". The truth of this revelation is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the Holy Land. Everybody we met had the same longing for peace – and people do not think ownership of the land by one ethnic group or the other to be worth the destruction of human beings who are created in the image of God. Oh, there are some fanatics who think otherwise, just as the graffiti in Hebron demonstrated, but they are a tiny minority. Yet the war of horror and military retribution continues to grow. These are indeed powerful "spiritual forces of evil".

How ironic therefore that some of our ‘end times’ thinking leads to theories and ideas that stoke the fires of terror and warfare. That brings us to the reason for making this journey and our determination to make many more similar journeys.

What is God’s Solution? (by Lynn Green) (posted late 2003)

There is no doubt at all that God has a special love and calling for Jews and that He has enabled them to have a land of their own. I believe it is God's will that they should remain in the land and that they should live in peace with their Arab cousins, who are so close to them ethnically that no genetic distinction can be identified. I also believe that our brother in Christ, Bishara and many thousands like him, have the right (along with their Muslim relatives and friends) to live at peace in the land of their ancestors. As Rami said so eloquently, it is not only possible it is inevitable.

Neither Jews nor Arabs will ever abandon the land en masse peacefully, and the world will not stand by passively while one side annihilates 4 to 6 million of the other. Surely the world will not ignore holocaust again! As committed followers of the One who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers" and "you shall love your enemies", we must be the first to stand on the dividing wall, breaking it down as we call Jew and Arab to be reconciled to God in Christ and therefore to one another.

Peter Adams notes that it would surely help our prayer if more of us were to go on such journeys. The Reconciliation Walk will be hosting several journeys in 2004: contact them at The Oval, Harpenden, Herts, or at rwalk@oval.com

Israel at an uncomfortable cross roads – April 05

The IDF (Israel Army) is anticipating huge problems ahead following the enforced evacuation of settlers from the Gaza strip. It expects that it will need to retake in the autumn the cities that the Sharon government is yielding now, and that this could easily lead to something approaching full-scale war with the PA.

Despite statements by PA chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) that he is disarming terrorists, attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers have increased more than 300 per cent in the last two weeks. Pray for Israel at this vulnerable and volatile time.

Twenty years ago, the Lord told us that there was going to be an earthquake in an Iranian town that would destroy it altogether. Now that it has happened, may the Lord somehow bring blessing out of the rubble, and bless the Iranian people both in their own land, and in the far-flung places to which they have been dispersed.

While attention is focused on the social disaster caused by the massive earthquake, a political crisis has been rocking Tehran. The Guardian Council – that is the clerical group that controls the country – has declared that hundreds of reformist-minded candidates, including nearly a hundred current MPs, should not be allowed to contest the elections scheduled for February 2004. Included in this group is the brother of the reformist President Mohammad Khatmi (Reza).

Despite sit-ins by dozens of moderate MPs, and even an appeal from the country’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khameniei, the Council has refused to compromise. Pray for Iran to open up in accordance with the wishes of the majority of its citizens – and that this will ease the pressure on believers.

The Power of God at work in Iran - April 05 UPDATE

I will scatter them to the four winds, and there will not be a nation where Elam's exiles do not go. I will set my throne in Elam and destroy her king and officials," declares the Lord. Yet I will restore the fortunes of Elam in days to come," declares the Lord (See Jer. 49:35-38).

An exciting event is going to be held in Holland at the end of July: a conference for one thousand Iranian Christians, who believe that the time is right for the hold that Islam has over the land to be broken. They believe that God has been raising up converts around the world to return to join forces with the underground church in Iran to make the Church significant in the land. The government is getting worried and is clamping down hard. This is an important time to pray for Iran.

Ø One Iranian pastor says: "In the 1980s, we rejoiced over two or three new believers each month. In the 1990s, we were impressed when we heard about a group of new believers. Today, we are somewhat surprised to discover an entire new underground church."

Ø The Islamic Revolution took place in 1979; the Shah was deposed, and Ayatollah Khomeni ruled the nation with an iron grip. Almost all Iranians were at least nominal Muslims. There was a minority of around 250,000 Armenian and Assyrian Christians who were allowed to practise their faith, but not in Farsi, the national language. They were also forbidden to evangelise.

Ø After 25 years of the Islamic Revolution and its religious-political propaganda, people are disappointed in Islam and its broken promises. They feel stifled and repressed.

Ø "There is no freedom of speech or of religion. Violence against women, suicide, drug use and prostitution are endemic, and AIDS is increasing," the Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) reported on the 10th February, one day before the 26th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution.

Ø " Twenty-six years ago, the secular state was replaced with "a quasi-theocracy where the government is subservient to, and hamstrung by, the Council of Guardians, (fundamentalist Shia clerics and judges). Despite its ancient history in the region, Christianity is treated as a foreign religion and a threat to national security.

Ø But the nation is setting set off on the quest for alternative answers and people are coming to faith in Christ as never before.

Ø An Iranian who emigrated to Scandinavia for economic reasons found Christ there. On his first visit to Iran, he was itching to tell his relatives of his new faith. Within one month, 50 of his relatives came to faith. By the time he returned again one year later, the church had grown to over 250 believers. "Sixty per cent of all Iranians have heard the Gospel. We find these people everywhere!" said one member of the Iranian security services.

Ø Children of ministers and mullahs are also coming to faith. Every day, 50 Iranian youths secretly join a Christian church, according to Shiite leader Hassan Mohammadi of the Iranian Ministry of Education, speaking to a group of students in Tehran. By saying that, Mohammadi was inadvertently admitting that the Iranian Republic has failed as a theocratic regime.

Hamid Pourmand held in notorious Evin Prison

Under Iran's constitution, Islam is declared the official religion of the nation, and the doctrine followed is that of Ja'fari (Twelver) Shi'ism.

Ø Hamid Pourmand, a Colonel in the army and a lay pastor in the Iranian Assemblies of God, was arrested on 9 September 2004 and tried for military espionage under the charge of deceiving the Iranian armed forces about his religion. Although the charges were dropped, the military court in Tehran heard that Hamid served in an 'underground church' and that 'many Muslims' have converted to Christianity through his ministry. He now faces a court with charges of 'apostasy' from Islam and 'proselytising' (evangelising) Muslims.

Ø Iranian Christian Hamid Pourmand has been sentenced to three years in prison and incarcerated in a group cell at Tehran's maximum-security Evin Prison, along with several internationally known political dissidents. Hamid reportedly explained to his fellow prisoners the circumstances of his arrest and sentencing, which was based solely on his religious conversion to Christianity 25 years ago.

Ø "The government is very angry about this, because now he is very popular in the jail!" one source commented.

Friends are fearful for Hamid's life. Evin Prison became infamous after the 1979 revolution brought an Islamist government to power. Untold thousands of political prisoners were tortured and executed there after cursory trials.

Pastor Pourmand's conviction on dubious charges of concealing his Christian faith from military superiors has left his wife Arlet and the couple's two teenaged sons penniless and homeless.

Ø Since the government-ordered execution of convert pastor Hussein Soodmand in Mashhad in December 1990, the Islamic Republic of Iran has enacted a harsh crackdown against the country's evangelical churches and various house-church movements accused of evangelising Muslims.

Ø Many Iranians long for openness and liberty, but under Islamic law Christian witness to Muslims is banned. Renouncing Islam is a capital offence," the RLC added.

Ø Because apostasy is a capital crime under Islamic law, Pastor Pourmand's conversion 25 years ago – which he never kept secret – is sufficient grounds for the death penalty. "He will doubtlessly be ordered to return to Islam or suffer the consequences," the RLC reported. Several former Muslims who had converted to Christianity have reportedly been executed by court order on charges of 'espionage'.

Here is an example of Iranian openness to the Gospel: an Iranian Bible courier was on a long bus journey. The bus was modern, with air conditioning and a video player. The Bible courier went to the driver and gave him a video of the Jesus film, and asked him to play it.

The courier was shocked to discover a mullah a few seats behind him. How would the mullah react to the Jesus film?

The mullah could not keep his eyes off the video, and soon jumped up, shouting with a shaking voice, "Please be quiet! This is a film about a holy man, the Prophet Jesus. His life deserves our full attention!"

Immediately, the noisy bus fell silent, and the passengers concentrated on the video. At the end of the film, which ends with an evangelistic call, the mullah sat in his seat, weeping.

These developments are a catastrophe for the Islamic authorities. They are losing control. In September 2004, they arrested 86 Assemblies of God pastors – in many ways, an act of desperation.

	Africa	Uganda at Crossroads -April 05 Mission Africa with Terry Charlton The Congo Mozambique Zimbabwe
	Light into the Muslim World	Pandora's Box War against Terror The Military Task and Spiritual Challenge Morality in Iraq Saddam's Fate
	Israel and Palestine	Israeli Crossroads - April05 Israel: God’s Time Clock Britain’s part in Israel’s history Double Standards in the West Warning Signs in the EU Israel War weary Palestinian Christians Reconciliation Journey (Lyn Green) Two Arab Saints (Bishara and Rami) What is God's Solution?
	Middle East	Insights into Iran - April 05 UPDATE Qatar: a Proto-democracy? Pakistan
	America	ATROCITIES IN IRAQ (1.5.04)

	Australia	Vilification Charges brought against Pastors
	Russia	Kyrygzstan – After the ‘Tulip’ Revolution: what next? April05 President Putin and the Caucases Why is the Ukraine so important to Russia?Ukraine Ukraine 2 Revival in Russia
	Asia	Japan/China Tension - April 05 North Korea
	China "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:35-39	The Heavenly Man: The Back to Jerusalem Vision Economic Bubble about to Burst? (1.05.04)

Uganda at the Cross roads - April 05

For an in depth look at the traumas occurring in northern Uganda see www.alertnet.org. This will point you to other informative sites.

Israel at an uncomfortable cross roads – April 05

The Power of God at work in Iran - April 05 UPDATE

Hamid Pourmand held in notorious Evin Prison