International Churches

Many people are turning to traditional faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The current search to find God has never before been this wide or deep. Some people say the reasons for the interest are moral decay, financial disaster, and the emptiness of materialism. Islam has 1.1 billion followers worldwide and is growing rapidly: in 1950, one of every seven people on earth was Muslim; today, one in five. Christianity has 1.9 million adherents and has become a major religion outside the West.

Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing family of world Christianity. It has 410 million members and is, after Roman Catholicism, the second largest Christian tradition. It is also growing by 20 million a year, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Gaston Espinosa reports: Little Pentecostal templos and iglesias, often averaging only 60-100 members, are attracting 30,000-40,000 Latinos annually from Roman Catholicism. Their minister usually works in a factory. Many Pentecostals attend church every night for a two-hour service. Loud Bible readings and spontanesous testimonies are part of every service. The hymns usually fill with rhythmic clapping, accompanied by guitar, drums, tambourines, bass fiddle, piano. Their call to born again, Spirit-filled life has led to great conflict and persecution in families and neighborhoods, where other people mock them, calling them “Aleluyas.”

Today, Latin America has approximately 1 million Pentecostals in 10,000 congregations in 40 denominations or fellowship circles.

Because Pentecostals argue over almost any subject from prohibitions on pork to the correct doctrine on the Trinity, today there are 11,000 Pentecostal or charismatic denominations worldwide.

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India/Nepal

December 5th, 2006

Scism Christian Institute graduate B. Ramliana has started a hospice ministry in Churachandpur, Manipur state, India--praying for HIV positive patients, sometimes feeding them.

Manipur is one of the first ports of entry into India for drugs from Burma.

Earlier, Brother Ramliana evangelized drug dealers in the state prison and baptized sixteen of them in Jesus name.

Brother Ramliana is district secretary for Churachandpur District.  He and this district a few months back hosted Ronnie Melancon of Thibodeaux, Louisiana, for a powerful Spiritual ministry during their district conference.

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NE INDIA:
Scism Christian Institute graduate B. Rama, now district secretary in Churachandpur, Manipur, NE India, brought kids off the street for a camp.  Sixteen were baptized in Jesus name and more than twenty received the Holy Spirit.

N INDIA:
Scism Christian Institute graduate Tsathvu Thuvuri's work in Uttar Pradesh, N India, has now grown to 26 churches, which includes 98 Hindu priests having come to Jesus Christ in two locations, and 11 Sikh priests.

NEPAL:
Ministers taught at Head and Heart Ministers' Meetings hosted Pastor Muthu of Malaysia in Western Nepal Rallies.  Ninety people received the Holy Spirit and eight were healed.

Praise Report:
In Delhi Brother Paul reports:  recently, in one of the house churches, a Hindu man sick from childhood and always shaking, came to be baptized.  He wept in the baptistry.  We prayed for him in the house church.  God healed him.  Now his mother wants us to have a church in her house.  He still needs the Holy Spirit.  We want to reach many more Hindus through him.

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Praise Report:

B. Rama, graduate of Scism Christian Institute and now secretary of Churachandpur District, NE India, reports:

Twenty-eight people were baptized in Jesus name.  ONe of them owns a school having more than 950 students, more than half of those students Hindu.  My vision is to reach all these Hindu children for Christ--500 children telling their parents the story of Jesus!  Brother Stan, I am very excited about this.  Jesus is so wonderful!  I just love to work for him.  He is so faithful.
 

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Tsathvu Thuvuri comes from Nagaland, NE India.  He studied in Scism Christian Institute--New Delhi, and in his third year was student body president.  After graduation, instead of returning to Nagaland where he would have had a financially secure career in district administration, he went to Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state.  Uttar Pradesh has 160 million people--if it were a separate nation, it would be one of the ten largest on earth.  We had NO churches there.

Tsathvu started a church in his house and also went around to all the pastors who would listen, trying to tell them about Jesus name baptism.  He convinced three, baptized them, and they baptized their congregations.  Now we had four churches.

These four pastors started the crusade at which the first 43 Hindu priests came to Jesus Christ.  That happened thus:  the pastors wanted to have a crusade, but had no money,  so they couldn't hire a hall or PA equipment.  They just started services beside the road and the first day concentrated on healing.  By word of mouth, they announced to everyone, 'Bring out your sick.  We're going to pray for the sick.'  Since India has much disease, they had people to pray for.  One boy who had died earlier that day was raised from the dead.  Two men who'd been born deaf and so had never heard anyone speak and never learned how to speak, were healed and when they went home could hear AND speak.

The word of these healings spread like wildfire and the next night hundreds of people were present, including over 200 priests from a nearby Shiva temple (Shivaites are the right-wing fanatics of Hinduism--ash on their bodies, matted dreadlocks, carrying tridents, three-pronged paintings on their foreheads).  Some of the priests were sick and others curious.  When the Holy Spirit descended on the meeting, 43 of these priests, including the high priest of the temple, who owned the temple, were thrown to the ground.  The ministers prayed for the demons to come out and after the demons left, and now ex-priests stood and addressed the crowd, saying, 'It's clear that Jesus is the one true God, because we saw our gods leave us when you told them to leave in Jesus' name.'  The ex-high priest became the pastor of the local assembly, his priests became his congregation, and his building became their place to worship Jesus Christ.

These priests got into a debate with other priests, resulting in the other priests' coming to Jesus Christ--now there are 64 in that district (county).  Also, in another district, 34 more Hindu priests have come to Jesus.

Another new constituent:  Tsathvu and his wife Kasa, who have two daughters, have a new baby boy!

We just need partners in missions for the India (North) account so we can spread revival further.

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Israel

A red cow named Melody chews a lot of grass in complete ignorance of the controversy she stirs up. She mainly worries about the flies. Melody, a red heifer, was born on an ordinary farm in northern Israel. Two millennia ago, the ashes of a red heifer, butchered in her third year, were mixed with water and used to purify Jews before they approach the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Now, many devout Jews greet red heifers as a wonderful sign that the Messiah is coming at the new millennium, and would like to burn Melody to cinders in a new, third, temple. Muslims and some less observant Jews fear that extremists might take Melody as a signal to destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques to clear the ground for to construct a new temple--and start a war. Journalist David Landau in the newspaper Ha'aretz recommends that someone quickly and casually kill Melody (as if this were all her fault). In the 1980s, a few Jewish militants were arrested and convicted of plotting to blow up the two mosques. Gershom Solomon founded the Temple Mount Faithful Movement thirty years ago to promote the hill's liberation from "Muslim imperialist forces." His followers periodically challenge the Israeli government's longstanding rule against Jewish prayer anywhere on the Temple Mount, apart from the Western, "Wailing" Wall. Solomon says Melody is "another sign that we are very close the rebuilding of the temple." Landau says, "The potential harm from this heifer is far greater than the destructive properties of a regular terrorist bomb," as if killing one would prevent others from being born.

And maybe that's the answer. Melody's not really red, just auburn. And she's going prematurely gray--white whiskers in the snout and white hairs in the tail and eyelashes--perhaps a trauma among women bovine as much as it is for the human variety. Her local rabbi, Shmaria Shore, doesn't think she'll pass inspection: "I'm very doubtful whether she is kosher. If I really thought she was, I'd send her away to an undisclosed location." Melody, if informed about this, probably wouldn't at first know whether to feel relieved or insulted. Then she'd probably decide on relieved. As long as everybody else knows it, too. Then she'll have a lot more days to worry about nothing except flies.

In the midst of all this tension, Israeli tourist officials want to attract hordes of Christian tourists two years from now to Megiddo (Greek name = Armageddon), where the Tribulation ends. The Israeli National Parks Authority approved a multimedia reconstruction of Armageddon on the site of its ruins so that visitors can "contemplate the final showdown with the aid of virtual reality," as Kendall Hamilton, Joseph Contreras and Mark Dennis said in their article, "The Strange Case...," in Newsweek. Unwise, soon-to-be virtual visitors, perhaps, attending a Last Battle Bash.

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Pakistan

The Pakistani government announced that Islam must be taught in all government-funded schools. The prime minister said, ""Pakistan was achieved to create a true Islamic society."" Muslims have made use of a mandatory death sentence for ""disrespect to the Prophet"" to bring false charges against Christians.

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Peru

One thousand buses in this South American nation carry ""Read the Bible"" signs by the Peruvian Bible Society. They have also printed these on the backs of one million bus tickets, and have distributed more than 200,000 Bibles, 200,000 Children's Bible storybooks, and six million Scripture leaflets. Many of these were printed in other indigenous languages as well as in Spanish.

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Sudan

Sudan will spend $100 million to spread Islam. Says Islamic ruler Lt. Gen. Omer Hassan el-Bashir, ""We will export Sudanese culture and values to the rest of the world."" Fifty-five nations also in the Islamic Conference Organization are also backing this effort. Sudanese officials already impose Islamic law within Sudan by requiring all women, including nonMuslims, to wear a head scarf and a long robe or dress to cover their legs and arms. Also, all women entering Sudah, including tourists, who are not dressed accordingly, are provided with dresses and gowns. Most women in southern Sudan are Christian or animist and oppose this law.

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Turkey

This is one of the most unreached nations in the world, with only about 1,000 evangelicals for sixty million people. Evangelical missionaries starting working in Istanbul in the 1960s, and today 400 foreign Christian workers live there. Turkey is 99.8% Islamic--many people feel that to be Turkish is to be Islamic. While Turkey officially grants freedom of religion, most Turkish Christians are harassed in their daily lives. Please pray for freedom in Turkey.

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United Kingdom

200,000 people have enrolled in the ten-week Alpha courses, which introduce people to Christianity. The course begins with a meal and is follsed by talk about Christianity and small-grouyp discussions. Alpha graduates are taking their lively faith to declining congregations in England and so far have saved some churches from closing.

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Venezuela

Evangelical churches have counded more than 3,500 congregations in the last five years, and evangelical growth has increased from 800,000 to 1.4 million. Evangelicals at a conference recently pledged to reach 15% of the population by 2015, and to start 15,000 churches. About 5.5% of the country’s 22 million people are evangelical.

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