DAWN Fridayfax 1996 #15

DAWN News from Israel, Benin, Estonia, Sri Lanka, Germany

Conversions in Israel: openness for the gospel

According to Messianic Jews in Israel, over a dozen previously Islamic villagers have converted to Christianity in the past few years. One of the new converts (name and address withheld) was kidnapped, bound and hidden in the bathroom of a hideout used by the Fatah movement in Nablus.

He managed to escape, and said of his decision to convert to Christ: "I did not find it in the Koran. What I was looking for, I found in the Bible."

Local Christians report that 215 Arabs showed interest in following Christ during door-to-door evangelism.

Source: Name and address withheld

Benin's President Kerekou: from Saul to Paul

Matthieu Kerekou, Benin's previously Marxist-Leninist dictator, made a surprising comeback in the presidential elections on 18 March 1996. Almost 90% of the 2.5 million eligible voters participated in the election, in which Kerekou beat his predecessor, the allegedly nepotistic dictator Soglo.

Kerekou, according to journalists, has become a born-again Christian and is the first African president to replace a dictator at the head of a single-party system through a peaceful and legal democratic election. The re-election and turnabout of the previous and new, now converted, President Kerekou, is seen by Benin's Christians as a sign.

Soglo, the previous president, had recently declared that "voodoo is Benin's national religion" and dedicated a provincial town as an "international voodoo centre". Christians believe that God removed him from his position and that he has other plans with Benin than to let it become a spiritist centre.

Source: International Herald Tribune, 21 March 1996 and others.

Estonian the easy way: speaking in tongues today

Pentecost's miracle still happens today. Since the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Christians have experienced that people can suddenly speak languages which they never learned, and which can be understood by others.

Kertu Gasman and Lia Piir, two Christian women from the Baltic nation of Estonia recently told a member of the Norwegian Youth With A Mission of a missionary journey to neighbouring Latvia.

Both women travelled as part a team from their hometown Tallinn to Latvia in 1989, two years before Estonia's independence, to pray and evangelise. The Estonian and Latvian languages are very different despite their geographical proximity, so Kertu and Lia had to speak Russian in order to be understood.

In a prayer meeting, a Latvian girl suddenly spoke loudly in Estonian: "Lift your eyes, because your hope and Saviour is coming soon." Kertu later went to the girl and told her how surprised she was that she could speak Estonian. The girl replied "Estonian? I can't speak a single word!"

The Christians present, who were still suffering under a Communist regime, understood this as an encouragement from God.

Source: Liv Kuldvere, YWAM Norway, Fax (+47)526-72972 E-mail 100422.3551@compuserve.com

God in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, rocked by civil war, God is quietly performing miracles. Not only was an evangelistic broadcast by Billy Graham shown on national television on 5 April 1996, to which many Christians invited their neighbours and friends, but, according to a member of the committee of Sri Lanka's Evangelical Alliance UK, "in the past few years, up to 1,000 new churches have been founded by independent movements".

Source: Name and address withheld.

"Reconciliation Walk"

At Easter, the three-year "Reconciliation Walk" started in Cologne, Germany, with a celebration. The aim is "to follow the path the Crusaders took 900 years ago, in a spirit of repentance and forgiveness" and reach Jerusalem in 1998, 900 years after they reduced it to ashes in the name of 'Christianity'. The organisers hope among other things, to correct the historically false image of Christianity in the eyes of many Moslems.

Information: Carl Heatley, Fax (+49) 2203-962244

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