Volume 6 Issue 40

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

Pr 27:4 The spirit of jealousy which is heavier than cruel wrath and torrent of anger

Clothe herself with fine linen

How privileged and blessed we would  feel if we are  invited for the wedding of a King’s son. When I was studying, in my class there was, one Sethu Parvathi Bai, the daughter of  the concubine of Sree Chitira Tirunal Maharaja of Trivandrum. Most of the days she will be absent for the class. When she reappears, she will come to me in order to copy the notes of missed days. Why should she come to me, leaving all the other girls? When I think of it, I feel proud. That is why I am quoting it even here.

Mat 22:2-5  “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son,  and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.”

Dear soldiers, we are not only invited for the wedding, but you and me makes the bride for the wedding of the King’s son. The wedding dress is being prepared now. “Linen, bright and pure”.

Rev 19:6 -10 “…..  Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready;   it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. 

 Is it difficult to believe? Now you might be living in a ‘cursed place’- the land of Ham.

“ Then Israel came to Egypt; indeed, Jacob lived in the land of Ham. He caused his people to multiply greatly; and be more numerous than their enemies.  Ps 105:23-24 

You might be in a period of servitude right now, serving gentile bosses, who do not know God. They might hate you.

Understand dear, it is “He who caused them to hate his people and deceive his servants” (Ps 105:25).

They all will see you one day, as the chosen and decorated bride, of the king’s son.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”……… 

The fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. Let us be careful to prepare the best wedding dress. It is our righteous deeds. (Obedience to His voice and surrender)

2  Co 11:2-3  I am jealous of you with God's own jealousy, because I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to the Messiah.    However, I am afraid that just as the serpent deceived Eve by its tricks, so your minds may somehow be lured away from sincere and pure devotion to the Messiah. 

Matthew: 24: 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.

As per the above verse Love in the society has grown cold and wickedness has increased. With growing wickedness and without love among the people, the society will destroy itself. To transform this state the Lord has revealed to his children through Sr Angelica to start a social movement to proclaim love of Jesus, hence Transformation India Project was started in the year 2017.

The first meeting was held in Trust conference hall Nungambakkam on 06-04-2017 and the project was launched in a National meet held at Padapai on 16-06-2017. Transform India Project is a social reformation project which is based on the greatest commandment of God that is Love.

John : 13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Only by loving others we will prove ourselves to be disciples of Jesus, hence it was made mandatory for Troop Church members to spend two hours per week in social work. This news of love was taken across India and TIP program was held across many states.

Medical camps, training institutes, tuition centres, skill development training, natural farming, gardening, water conservation, old age home, waste management, counselling centres, tailoring and similar social activities were conducted. Believers were encouraged to take these social activities among the less fortunate and needy. New entrepreneurs were encouraged with plans based on these social activities and Love.

On 11, 12 August 2018 TIP skill development program on Natural Farming was held in Dr Charles Elders Community, Chennai. Fifty people attended the program and gained knowledge and developed interest in Natural Farming. Mr Sunil John from Nagpur came down to Chennai to teach the principles and biblical basis of natural farming. Theory and practical training was given to the participants on natural farming.

These are the ten steps of natural farming

1)         Dedicating the land to the Lord

2)         Land preparation

3)         Planning

4)         Seed and seedling preparation

5)         Care and maintenance of the garden

6)         Using and preparing organic fertilizer

7)         Pest control using natural method

8)         Proper harvesting

9)         Seed procurement and preservation

10)       Thanks giving to the Lord

Acts 20: 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have ministered to my own needs and those of my companions. 35In everything, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”…

Mr Sunil John is a disciple from the state of Kerala who went towards the northern part of India to do the Lord Ministry. During the persecution period in Madhya Pradesh he decided to work with his own hands to support the ministry hence he worked on natural farming and formed Faith garden. With this initiative he supported his own family and ministry without depending on others. From Faith garden Mr Sunil John produced traditional plants with high yield without using chemicals and insecticide. This principle of natural farming was taken across India and many benefitted.

He also encourages people doing full time ministry to support their lively hood by self-employment rather to depend on others for support. He helps believers live in the society with dignity by helping them with entrepreneurship .His team gives lessons for establishing cycle repairing shop, plant nurseries, Flower shops, Flour Mills, Rice Mill, Oven and electricity less Baking,water conservation (rain water harvesting, sand water filters), fisheries, Aquaponics, Cockerel Farming, Odourless Poultry, poultry farms, tailoring shops, etc.

Transformation India Project was also launched with the same motto. The project aims to bring the love of Jesus among the society and help believers live in the society with dignity and self-respect. The project aims to enable a person too unconditionally help the any person in need. The parable of the Samaritan, who unconditionally helped the half dead man, is our example. Let us all take this message across India and transform people life into Christ. Amen                  

Rebels in Burma Detain More than 90 Christian Leaders, Shut Down More Churches

YANGON, Burma, October 1, 2018 (Morning Star News) – After shutting down at least 10 churches in early September, ethnic Wa rebels in eastern Burma (Myanmar) have closed dozens of other churches and detained 92 Christian leaders and 42 students in a bid to curtail Christian activities, sources said. The United Wa State Army (UWSA) in late September detained the Christian leaders and students in territory it controls in Shan state, leaders of the Lahu Baptist Convention said in a statement released on Tuesday (Sept. 25). Some students were also forced to serve as UWSA soldiers, according to the statement. 
 
The 52 churches in Mong Pauk Township have been shut down, and the UWSA destroyed three church buildings and removed all Christian symbols such as crosses, according to the ethnic Lahu Christian leaders. A few religious schools also have been shut down.  Earlier in September, the UWSA troops shut down at least 10 churches, including six belonging to the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC).
 
“The Wa officials instructed Christians in Mong Pauk not even to worship at home these days,” a local Christian leader based in Keng Tung told Morning Star News on condition of anonymity. “So, some Christian members dare not to live in Mong Pauk any longer. They came to stay in Keng Tung town as they are fearful.”
 
Wa soldiers are holding arrested Christian leaders and students in Mong Maw town, a stronghold base of the Wa rebels, said Tat Jack, a local resident whose relatives are detained. “My uncle is a preacher,” Tat Jack told Morning Star News. “He lives at a village nearby the Wa rebel base, Panghsang city. He and his son were detained in early September. But we are not allowed to visit them. We also heard that many members of the Christian community there are detained.” Christian leaders have said the militants, who predominantly follow tribal religions, seek to reduce the spread of Christianity. Wa rebel spokesperson Nyi Rang told The Irrawaddy, a Yangon-based new outlet, that the UWSA had detained the Christian leaders because there were “extremists” among them. 
 
A UWSA statement released on Sept. 13 stated that all church buildings constructed after 1992 would be destroyed or shut down, as they were built without permission from the UWSA’s leaders. On a UWSA-run television program, it was stated that the UWSA has arrested and interrogated the religious leaders for violating organization regulations and laws prohibiting foreigners to serve as religious leaders in Wa-controlled areas. It also accused some detainees of forcing ethnic people to convert to Christianity. 

Dr. M. Hkawng, chairman of an ethnic Kachin political party, the Kachin National Congress, has said that missionaries improve the lives of ethnic minorities in the Wa region, educating them and enabling them to travel to overseas to Japan, the United States and other countries to pursue their education. Although most of the population in Wa territory worships spirits or Nats, there are also Buddhists as well as Christian communities such as Baptists and Roman Catholics. Many area members of ethnic minority groups, such as the Ahkar, Lahu and Kachin, as well as the Wa, are Christians, sources said. Some Christians suspect Chinese authorities are behind the recent aggression against Christians.
 
The UWSA is the military wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP), the de facto ruling party of the area. It was formed after the collapse of the armed wing of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989. The UWSA announced its territory as the Wa State Government Special Administrative Region on Jan. 1, 2009, and although the government of Burma does not officially recognize its sovereignty, the Burmese military has fought alongside the UWSA against Shan nationalist militias.
 
Though de facto independent from Burma, the Wa state officially recognizes Burma’s sovereignty over all of its territory, and in 2013 the two parties signed a peace deal. Burma is about 80 percent Buddhist and 9 percent Christian. The country is ranked 24^th on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2018 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

China’s Pastors Take Their Stand: Jesus Is Lord

I want you to meet some brave Christian leaders pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. When thinking of the golden age of the Church, many of us hearken back to the book of Acts, when Peter and John stood up to the religious authorities, who told them to be silent about Jesus the risen Messiah. “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God,” they answered, “you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Then they prayed for boldness, and the Church exploded across much of the ancient world. But there’s a golden age for the church going on right now—with the same kind of courage, persecution, and Spirit-empowered growth. Where is it? In communist China.

World missions’ historians tell us that when all the foreign missionaries were kicked out of Mao’s China a few years after the Second World War, there were probably no more than 3 million believers in Jesus Christ in the whole, vast nation. But today, seven decades later, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life counts 67 million Christians of all kinds—35 million independent Protestants, 23 million Protestants in government-sanctioned churches, and 9 million Catholics. Other estimates go even higher.

Whatever the true number is, it’s almost as many as there are members of the Communist Party! Maybe that’s why the government is cracking down on Christians. According to Christianity Today and other news outlets, Under President Xi Jinping, China’s government has been tightening its grip on religious affairs. In February, regulations aimed at religious groups have brought increased pressure on churches to be “Chinese” culturally and to submit to the authority of the Communist Party. Churches are being told to burn their crosses and replace them with Chinese flags and to display slogans praising the Communist Party. Some are being forced to join the government-sanctioned churches and permit video surveillance of their services. Meanwhile, in Jiangxi province, authorities have forced at least 40 churches to display banners forbidding foreigners from preaching and anyone under 18 from attending. In August, they even published new rules stating, “Party members who have religious belief should have strengthened through education.”

In the spirit of Peter and John, a group of at least 250 Chinese pastors has publicly signed a joint statement opposing the new regulations. In the statement they declare that Jesus is Lord of all, offering eternal life to anyone who will repent and believe in Him. But they also say, in a challenge to the Chinese communists, “God hates all attempts to suppress human souls and all acts of persecution against the Christian church, and he will condemn and judge them with righteous judgment.”

Then, like Peter and John, they pledge obedience not to the earthly authorities but to King Jesus, no matter what. “We declare that in matters of external conduct, churches are willing to accept lawful oversight by civil administration or other government departments as other social organizations do. But under no circumstances will we lead our churches to join a religious organization controlled by the government, to register with the religious administration department, or to accept any kind of affiliation.” They close their incredible joint statement with the bracing yet sobering words, “For the sake of the gospel, we are prepared to bear all losses—even the loss of our freedom and our lives.”

Friends, is it any wonder that the church in China has grown, and continues to grow? What we’re seeing before our eyes is the golden age of the church in China. How can we not pray for these wonderful brothers and sisters? And more than that, how can we not emulate their costly faithfulness in our own little corner of God’s world?

One of Canada's Largest Banks Reminds Us of The Dangers Of A Cashless Society

Yesterday, CIBC reported a "systems issue" that prevented customers from logging in to their accounts online for the entire business day. CIBC, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, is one of the five biggest banks in Canada. Yesterday just happened to be the day that people receiving welfare, unemployment benefits, social insurance payments (like American social security), Canada Pension payments, and disability payments landed in the accounts of recipients.

Customers could still use ATMs and Point of Sale features but were unable to log into their accounts to check balances, transfer money, or make online payments. The sentiments of normally patient Canadians online were ... tense. The system was restored around 8 pm last night but that wasn't soon enough for people who wanted to pay their bills by the due date or make business transactions.

Meanwhile, CIBC wants to move everything online

Ironically, this online banking catastrophe occurred a day after Victor Dodig, the CEO of CIBC, predicted that nearly all transactions would soon be taking place online.

...almost all transactions will soon be conducted remotely, rather than in person, as customers continue to take more of their business and daily lives online.

"We see continued migration of clients to do transactions remotely," CIBC CEO Victor Dodig said Wednesday during his bank's institutional investor conference in Montreal. "You're seeing 87 per cent of transactions now being done remotely. And we think it's going to get to 96 per cent over the next four to five years." 

But perhaps this migration has more to do with CIBC closing branches. Physical locations where you can walk in and see a teller are going the way of the Canadian penny. (It's no longer being made because production costs were 1.6 cents per coin.)

Since before 2000, CIBC has been closing dozens of branches every year. And it isn't just CIBC that is closing branches in Canada. It's a trend across all the Big 5 banks and thousands of jobs have been lost. So the question is, do Canadians actually "prefer" online banking, or do they have no other choice due to physical location closures? This makes me think of the whole push toward a cashless society. For a long time now, Big Finance has been "nudging" people along toward an end that would benefit them greatly - a cashless society.

If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative. We can illustrate this with the example of self-checkout tills at supermarkets. The underlying agenda is to replace checkout staff with self-service machines to cut costs. But supermarkets have to convince their customers. They thus initially present self-checkout as a convenient alternative. When some people then use that alternative, the supermarket can cite that as evidence of a change in customer behaviour, which they then use to justify a reduction in checkout employees. This in turn makes it more inconvenient to use the checkout staff, which in turn makes customers more likely to use the machines. They slowly wean you off staff, and "nudge" you towards self-service.

Financial institutions, likewise, are trying to nudge us towards a cashless society and digital banking. The true motive is corporate profit. Payments companies such as Visa and Mastercard want to increase the volume of digital payments services they sell, while banks want to cut costs. The nudge requires two parts. First, they must increase the inconvenience of cash, ATMs and branches. Second, they must vigorously promote the alternative. They seek to make people "learn" that they want digital, and then "choose" it. It won't surprise many people to learn that this has links to Marxist philosophy.

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony out of Karl Marx's theory that the dominant ideology of society reflects the beliefs and interests of the ruling class. Gramsci argued that consent to the rule of the dominant group is achieved by the spread of ideologies--beliefs, assumptions, and values--through social institutions such as schools, churches, courts, and the media, among others.  These institutions do the work of socializing people into the norms, values, and beliefs of the dominant social group. As such, the group that controls these institutions controls the rest of society. Cultural hegemony is most strongly manifested when those ruled by the dominant group come to believe that the economic and social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by people with a vested interest in particular social, economic, and political orders. 

Oh yay. Who doesn't love being "nudged" along the road to Marxism and a cashless utopia? (This is sarcasm. Hold the angry comments and emails.) Here's why a cashless society is dangerous. A cashless society is a danger to freedom. And this is why we should embrace cold hard cash.

Most of the folks who will read this article will already be on board with this philosophy, but here is one of the best explanations I've read about the dangers. From The UK Guardian... 

Digital systems may be "convenient", but they often come with central points of failure. Cash, on the other hand, does not crash. It does not rely on external data centres, and is not subject to remote control or remote monitoring. The cash system allows for an unmonitored "off the grid" space. 

This is also the reason why financial institutions and financial technology companies want to get rid of it. Cash transactions are outside the net that such institutions cast to harvest fees and data. A cashless society brings dangers. People without bank accounts will find themselves further marginalised, disenfranchised from the cash infrastructure that previously supported them. There are also poorly understood psychological implications about cash encouraging self-control while paying by card or a mobile phone can encourage spending. And a cashless society has major surveillance implications.

Despite this, we see an alignment between government and financial institutions. The Treasury recently held a public consultation on cash and digital payments in the new economy. It presented itself as attempting to strike a balance, noting that cash was still important. But years of subtle lobbying by the financial industry have clearly paid off. The call for evidence repeatedly notes the negative elements of cash - associating it with crime and tax evasion - but barely mentions the negative implications of digital payments. 

The UK government has chosen to champion the digital financial services industry. This is irresponsible and disingenuous. We need to stop accepting stories about the cashless society and hyper-digital banking being "natural progress". We must recognise every cash machine that is shut down as another step in financial institutions' campaign to nudge you into their digital enclosures. 

It only took one day of the CIBC debacle to remind people of why digital transactions are at the mercy of the computers and those who control them. The people who are pleading for the "progress" of a cashless society, the ones who can't wait to get their debit card embedded into their arms as an RFID chip - they aren't seeing the bigger picture. That's the picture of them, losing everything they have at the whim of a bank, a prosecutor, or a computer error. 

It's the picture of every single thing you buy and every transaction you make being tracked, filed away, and one day used against you. It's all about control. It's always about control. And without cash, you just handed all of your control to someone else.