Volume 6 Issue 12

Warfare prayer of the soldiers of the Army of Jesus to bind and destroy the works of the devil

Let us bind and destroy the works of the devil in the name of Jesus Christ who has conquered sin, satan, curse and death on the cross

Mark 7:22  The spirit of evil eye

Healing to the body

A land  owner came for counselling. He was explaining all the problems he was facing with the government authorities in the maintenance of the land which resulted in no gain. Even while he started speaking, the Holy Spirit gave a word of knowledge. He put words in my mouth, “Do you have bitterness towards anyone? Anyone to forgive?” He looked at me sympathetically and said, “My brother has done a lot of damage to me…….” He started narrating. Since the time at my disposal was too short, I had to simplify it in this way, “See, your brother is not suffering, and you are suffering. Why should you incur loss and suffer sickness for the evil others have done?”

He was convinced.

“Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.  This will bring healing to your body, and refreshment to your bones. Pro 3:7,8 

Turning away from evil is obeying the commandments of the Lord. Violating the commandments of the Lord is the ‘evil’ mentioned here. When you agree to obey the commandments, it brings healing to your body, soul, spirit and even to the land you live.

 Ps. 51:8 says about the bones of a person rejoicing in his body. When bones are refreshed, they rejoice and dance in a body. Job 33:19 mentions about continual aching in the bones as a sign of rebuke from the Lord.

Let us walk in the ways of the Lord and let our whole body, spirit and soul get refreshed.

Earthquakes & The End Times

When Jesus was asked what would signal His return and the end of the age, He said to look for a number of signs. One of those signs was the appearance of earthquakes (Matthew 24:7). But what does that mean? After all, earthquakes have been a part of human life since Adam and Eve. They aren't rare. 

The Bible says they appeared in the days of Amos (Amos 1:1) and King Saul (1 Samuel 14:15). They appeared in the days of Paul and Silas (Acts 16:26). And non-biblical history tells us earthquakes shook ancient China, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, and other nations. 

In 1906, a devastating earthquake hit San Francisco. It toppled almost every building in the city and killed over 3,000 people. In short, earthquakes have been a part of life since the beginning of human civilization.

So if we've always had earthquakes, how can they possibly be a sign of the Second Coming? That's a great question. Fortunately, Jesus gave us the answer. Earthquakes in general are NOT a sign of His return. But according to Jesus, earthquakes occurring in a certain pattern are...

Signs Like Labor Pains

Jesus cited a number of signs to look for. Among them are the appearance of earthquakes, famines, wars, and false messiahs. Jesus knew these signs had always been present. So He wasn't saying their appearance alone will signal His return. Instead, He said to look for them in a distinct pattern. 

He said they would arrive like "birth pains." But what does this mean? What could these general signs possibly have in common with birth pains? 

Only this - birth pains, or labor contractions, are sharp pains. They increase in both frequency and intensity right before birth. In other words, the signs Jesus mentioned will appear with greater frequency and intensity right before His return.

Looking for the Pattern

This means earthquakes (or even what seems to be a numerical increase in the number of earthquakes) are NOT a sign of the Second Coming. Instead, Jesus said to look for an increase in the frequency of large earthquakes. Such an increase will fit the pattern Jesus described - a pattern of more frequent intense events rising toward a climax. 

So how do we measure an increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes? We don't have accurate data going back to the beginning of time. We don't even have accurate data going back to the time of Jesus. 

After all, advanced instruments for detecting and measuring earthquakes are relatively new. The Richter Scale didn't even exist until 1935, and most seismographs at the time failed to detect any earthquakes under a magnitude of about 3.0. 

But today? Today's devices routinely measure earthquakes with negative magnitudes. Because of this, looking only at the frequency of earthquakes is meaningless. Obviously, with better instruments, we can detect smaller earthquakes. But that doesn't mean more earthquakes are occurring. It just means for the first time we're able to measure them.

But let's take a different point of view. What if we look only at modern data from the last one hundred years? And what if we look only at earthquakes registering a magnitude of 8.0 or greater? This will give us a much more accurate picture. Why? Because most instrumentation from that time period could detect an earthquake of such enormity. 

This eliminates all the small quakes detected in more recent times. And even though the sample size is still small (only about 120 years), it should give us enough data to spot a recent trend. If these are the times Jesus told us to look for, we should expect to see an increase in the frequency (number) and intensity (magnitude) of earthquakes.

Is this what we see today? Yes. It is.

The Increasing Frequency of High Intensity Earthquakes

According to the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) composite catalog, recent years have seen a marked increase in the number of earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 or greater:

1900's - 3 earthquakes

1910's - 0 earthquakes

1920's - 1 earthquake

1930's - 1 earthquake

1940's - 1 earthquake

1950's - 1 earthquake

1960's - 3 earthquakes

1970's - 2 earthquakes

1980's - 3 earthquakes

1990's - 7 earthquakes

2000's - 13 earthquakes

2010's - 8 earthquakes so far

The 20th Century witnessed 22 earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 or greater, but already the 21st Century has seen 21 such earthquakes. If that pace continues, we'll see 116 earthquakes of 8.0 magnitude or greater by the end of this century!

In 2014, I cited this same data in my book Signs of the Second Coming. While writing the book, my original draft showed six earthquakes for this decade. I had to revise the book before publication because of another 8.0 earthquake in April 2014. 

After the book was published, another earthquake struck in September 2015. And during that same time, we've had three other earthquakes later revised to 7.9.

Is it possible this is just a coincidence? Sure. We've only had the tools to measure earthquakes for a small portion of human history. It's possible we're looking at a small sample size and drawing an incorrect conclusion. 

Perhaps these earthquake patterns have appeared before. Some might argue we've only recently had the instrumentation to measure all 8.0 magnitude earthquakes - that such technology didn't exist in the early 20th Century. I find that hard to believe. But even if that's true, we've nevertheless seen a notable increase since that time.

Jesus Is Coming

Absent any other signs, the rise in earthquakes would be nothing more than a footnote of history. But earthquakes aren't the only signs. They aren't the only events increasing in frequency and intensity. 

The other signs Jesus said to look for are also increasing in frequency and intensity - the appearance of famines, wars, and false messiahs. And even those aren't the only signs.

Travel and knowledge have increased significantly (Daniel 12:4)... Israel is a nation again (Jeremiah 23:7-8)... The Jewish people control Jerusalem (Luke 21:24-28)... The Gog of Magog alliance is forming (Ezekiel 38-39)... The Gospel is being preached to the ends of the earth (Matthew 24:14)... Sin is everywhere, and the love of many has grown cold (Matthew 24:12)... 

These are all signs Jesus and the prophets said to look for. And our generation is the first ever to witness these signs. Still think this is mere coincidence? I don't either.

Jesus Himself said, "When all these things begin to happen, look up for your salvation is near!" (Luke 21:28). These things are happening. And Jesus said the generation witnessing them will not pass away before He returns (Matthew 24:34). 

The signs are clear. Jesus is coming! So don't waste any opportunity to share the Good News. 

Britt Gillette is author of the free ebook Coming to Jesus as well as the books Signs of the Second Coming and Racing Toward Armageddon. 

Christian Woman in Hiding after Muslim Fulani Herdsmen Kill Husband in Nigeria

A young Christian mother of three has been in hiding for more than four months since Muslim Fulani herdsmen threatened her after killing her husband, she said. Soon after the herdsmen killed her husband in an attack on Zanwra village, near Jos in central Nigeria’s Plateau state, 25-year-old Lami Bulus was forced to flee, she said.
 
“We had to leave the village after my husband was killed as we received death threats from the herdsmen for reporting the killing of my husband to security agencies,” she told Morning Star News. In tears, she added, “Please, I need your prayers for strength and for means to care for my children.”
 
After killing Bulus John, 30, on Nov. 5 in Zanwra village outside Jebu Miango, the herdsmen found her phone number in his mobile phone and called her several times, warning her that she, her family and other residents of Zanwra would be killed, she said.
 
The herdsmen have since attacked the village several times, and all Christians have now abandoned it.
 
Bulus, who has only a primary level education, said her husband also had provided for his mother and younger brother in addition to her and their three children, a 9-month-old and two others, ages 8 and 5.
 
A member of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Zanwra, Bulus said she had traveled to her hometown the day he was killed. The previous day, she said, local Fulani herdsmen had taken their cattle to his farm to graze, destroying most of their crops. When he asked the herdsmen why they had ruined his crops, they threatened to kill him if he pressed charges, she said.
 
On Nov. 5, Bulus John and his brother decided to go to their farms outside Zanwra village in the evening to make sure the herdsmen did not return and destroy the remaining the crops, she said. Before meeting his brother to go to their farms, Bulus John went to his mother’s house at around 7 p.m., she learned.
 
“And a few minutes after leaving his mother’s house, on his way to join his brother, the sound of gunshots were heard in the village,” Bulus said. “Unknown to my husband, armed herdsmen were hidden and lurking behind some bushes and rock formations just outside the village. They shot and killed my husband and then retreated.”
 
While some villagers scampered to safety, others went to the site and found his body riddled with bullet wounds, she said.
 
“He was shot at point blank on the leg, stomach, and on the head,” Bulus said.
 
Moses Chohu, an elder at the Zanwra ECWA church, said Bulus John was an active member of the local congregation.
 
“We found some bullets from an AK-47 gun at the scene where Bulus John was shot,” Chohu said. “The case was reported to the Bassa police authorities, and the corpse was taken away by the police.”
 
Police investigated, those who had threatened Bulus were arrested, and detectives recovered weapons at the herdsmen’s houses, he said.
 
“Four months after the incident, nothing has been heard again, and the police have not said anything about the incident to Lami, nor contacted her to find out how she’s coping with life,” Chohu said.
 
Police officials in Jos told Morning Star News that cases of herdsmen attacks, including the murder of Bulus, were still under investigation.
 
“We are aware of that incident,” police spokesman Tyopev Terna of the Plateau State Command told Morning Star News. “Arrests have been made, and like all other cases of herdsmen attacks, investigations are ongoing, and those found culpable shall be prosecuted.”
 
In the last two weeks of January, herdsmen attacks in the area killed eight Christians and torched 50 houses belonging to Christians, sources said.
 
Christians make up 51.3 percent of Nigeria’s population, while Muslims living primarily in the north and middle belt account for 45 percent.
 
Nigeria ranked 14^th on Open Doors’ 2018 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution.

Turkey Calls for Life Imprisonment of US Pastor Andrew Brunson

Turkish prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for jailed US pastor Andrew Brunson in an official indictment presented to Izmir’s 2nd Criminal Court yesterday, 13 March.

Arrested without bail since October 2016, Brunson is accused of being “a member and executive” of the Islamic movement led by self-exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, accused of orchestrating the failed July 2016 coup attempt to overthrow the Turkish government.

According to the semi-official Anadolu Ajansi, the formal indictment also charges the pastor with establishing links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and obtaining espionage information for political and military purposes.

If the indictment is accepted by the court, formal trial proceedings are expected to be set in motion against Brunson. To date, neither the pastor nor his lawyer have been allowed any access to the legal file of investigations conducted by Turkish authorities into his case.

Commenting on the indictment, the two Vice Chairs of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Sandra Jolley and Kristina Arriaga, said: “USCIRF urges President Trump and others in the administration to redouble their ongoing efforts to secure Pastor Brunson’s release. No stone should be left unturned in our efforts on behalf of this unjustly imprisoned American. We call again for his immediate release and, if this is not forthcoming, for the administration and Congress to impose targeted sanctions against those involved in this miscarriage of justice.”

“USCIRF is appalled that Turkish officials are seeking a possible life sentence for Pastor Brunson and are accusing him of leadership in a terrorist organisation. The government of Turkey has detained Pastor Brunson largely based on a purported ‘secret witness’ and secret evidence which they refuse to make public. The Turkish government should reverse course immediately and we urge the international community to condemn this indictment,” they added.

World Watch Monitor reported only yesterday that, despite being detained for 17 months, the Turkish judiciary had failed to release any formal indictment against him.

His daughter, Jacqueline, appealed to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last week to help secure her father’s release. Declaring that he had been “falsely imprisoned for far too long”, his married daughter noted that Brunson decried that he had “still not been formally charged with any crime”.

“I know the allegations against my father are absurd,” Jaqueline said, as shown in a video posted by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

“He is not an armed terrorist trying to overthrow any government. My father is a peaceful pastor,” she said. Noting that she had grown up in Turkey, she added: “My family loves and respects the Turkish people, and my father has been dedicated to serving them for over two decades.”

Jacqueline said she was allowed to visit her father at his Izmir prison last August. “It was hard to see him so broken, so thin, so desperate,” she told the UNHRC assembly. She then read a note Brunson had written just a week ago:

“Let it be clear. I am in prison not for anything I have done wrong, but because of who I am – a Christian pastor. I desperately miss my wife and children. Yet I believe this to be true: it is an honour to suffer for Jesus Christ, as many have before me. My deepest thanks for all those around the world who are standing with and praying for me,” Brunson wrote.

Pastor's Family Assaulted in Southern India

On a recent Monday at noon in southern India, a pastor’s family in Telangana state noticed motorcycles parked outside their church gate and a gang of young men loudly reading the church banner.
 
The banner of the church in Ramachandrapuram village, Karimngar District, included 2 Cor. 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you” in Telugu, the language spoken in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, along with a name and phone number, the pastor told Morning Star News.
 
“We thought the youths had come to quench their thirst at the hand-pump,” Pastor Kolhapuri Lachaiah Moses said. “The youths started shouting, ‘Where is the pastor idiot? Who gave you Christians the permission to set up a church here? You Shudras! Idiots! How dare you do Christian activities here?’”
 
Shudras are a low-caste group in India.
 
“I came out running and asked, “What happened, babu? Why are you shouting?” said the 52-year-old father of three. “I could smell the stink of alcohol. They were drunk.”
 
He told them he was the pastor and politely asked them what had happened, he said, but they continued making derogatory caste remarks. His son, Kolhapuri Prabhakar, came out, urged them not to shout and asked what was the matter.
 
“But they became aggressive, and started hitting my elderly father,” Kolhapuri Prabhakar told Morning Star News. “When I tried to stop them, they punched me too. My mother and sister also rushed to help us, only to be pushed away by the drunk men. They yelled, ‘We have been looking for you for the past six months, we got you today. We will not stop now.’”
 
Pastor Moses said his youngest son, 20-year-old Kolhapuri Immanuel, insisted the assailants be handed over to police and dialed the police emergency service line, and then family members tried to confine the six young men until officers could arrive.
 
Before police arrived, one of the young men picked up a large boulder and threw it on Kolhapuri Immanuel’s right foot, and two of the young men escaped, Pastor Moses said.
 
“He howled in pain, but they did not stop there,” he said.
 
Kolhapuri Immanuel, who underwent foot surgery for a fractured fifth metacarpal, said they continued beating them.
 
“Two of them held me by my hands, while the other threw that huge stone on my foot. I could not bear that pain,” the 20-year-old said.
 
Counter Case Filed against Christians 

Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police Abdul Kareem told Morning Star News that officers identified the drunken young men as members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a Hindu nationalist student group affiliated with the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
 
Kolhapuri Prabhakar filed a complaint at the Ramadugu Mandal police station and rushed his younger brother to a hospital. Police registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Kalikota Sai Krishna, 20; Kanaparthi Sai Sunil, 19; and Chaviti Sathya Shiva and Edavelli Karthik, both 20, under sections of the India Penal Code (IPC) prohibiting trespass, voluntarily causing hurt and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, among others.
 
A counter FIR, however, was filed against the Christian family under IPC sections against intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, public nuisance and voluntarily causing hurt, Sub-Inspector of Police Naresh Reddy told Morning Star News.
 
A police official who requested anonymity added, “In the pastor’s family’s attempt to catch the culprits and hand them to the police, two Hindu youths also got injured in the scuffle.”
 
The police source said officers came under strong pressure from higher authorities to register a counter case against the Christians.
 
“The accused ABVP youth have connections with the political leaders at state and central levels,” the source said. “We came under severe pressure and registered a counter case against the Christians, but only as non-cognizable offenses [wherein no arrest can be made without a warrant]. The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] politicians are trying their best to bail out the [Hindu] accused.”
 
Kolhapuri Prabhakar said he had no idea how the sections of the law filed against the Christian family members can be applied to them. The assailants did not register the FIR against them, he said.
 
“It was the police who registered the FIR, and they now are pressuring and threatening us that we made false claims,” he told Morning Star News. “Now the police are threatening us that we filed a false case to seek vengeance for the attack. It is not true. That is not our intention. It was the police who levied the sections; we forgave our attackers and are ready to withdraw the case also.”
 
Police officers insulted him as a lower-caste Dalit, he added.
 
“The police called me and asked if I am human or animal,” he said. “They asked why am I unable to submit the medical reports, but the staff at Karimnagar General Hospital are refusing to issue the reports.”
 
After many requests, the hospital staff finally wrote on a small slip of paper that Kolhapuri Immanuel had a fifth metacarpal fracture and gave it to him, Kolhapuri Prabhakar said. After surgery on March 7, doctors advised complete bed rest for three months.
 
Kolhapuri Prabhakar said he is devoted to Bible reading, prayer and ministry work and has no knowledge of legal cases.
 
“But look at what God is bringing us through,” he said. “My Lord gives me the courage and strength to talk to these police. They are threatening, abusing, calling names, but I have been patient and will continue to be so. It is pure joy that the Lord chose me for this battle.”
 
The family requested prayer for healing of Kolhapuri Immanuel’s foot and their ministry work.
 
The hostile tone of the National Democratic Alliance government, led by the Hindu nationalist BJP, against non-Hindus, has emboldened Hindu extremists in several parts of the country to attack Christians since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in May 2014, religious rights advocates say.
 
India ranked 11^th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2018 World Watch List of countries where Christians experience the most persecution, up from 15^th the previous year, and ahead of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Egypt.