DAWN Fridayfax 1998 #22

News from Vietnam, USA, Canada

In this issue:
Vietnam: Growth under persecution
USA: AD2000 target still reachable!
Canada: Victory in Victoria

Vietnam: growth under persecution

Based on reports from well-informed sources in Vietnam, the Worldwide Evangelical Fellowship's (WEF) Religious Liberty Conference shows the reasons for the continued growth of the house church movement:

Children excited about Jesus

According to a report issued on 1 June 1998, "In Quang Ngai province in Central Vietnam, some 12-year-old children were very excited about a teacher who had come to their village and was telling stories about Jesus as they had never heard them before. Some children had already decided to become Christians, and told others about their discovery with such enthusiasm that they were soon noticed. One of the teachers told the local police security police about these 'dangerous activities'. The police arrived in the village and ordered the children to stop talking about this 'foreign superstition'. After a few days of suppressed silence, Jesus was again the order of the day in conversations. Soon afterwards, the police showed up again and arrested three of the 'ringleaders', who were detained for a week, despite their parent's requests for their release. They were interrogated for hours about the teacher who had spoken to them about Jesus, and were subjected to lectures about 'the stupidity of the superstition which had befallen them'. They were also denied food and drink for a long time, and the strongest of the boys had his head forced down a toilet until he almost drowned. The children were finally released from custody, but were not allowed to return to the public school.

Number of Christians quadrupled: growth of house churches

Observers say that the situation is better than in the first decade after the Communists seized power in 1976; the number of Protestant Christians is estimated at 700,000, four times as many as in 1975. Hundreds of churches in the country, which officially has freedom of religion, are still confiscated. The Christians meet in house churches, of which there are significantly more than 1,000. Leader training takes place away from the prying eyes of the government. "Christians around the world," says the report, "can learn much from the bold faith of the Vietnamese Christians."

Source: Mark Albrecht, WEF-Religious Liberty Conference, e-mail: Religious-Liberty@xc.org

AD2000: target still reachable!

"It can still be done!" say 35 AD2000 track leaders who met from 12-14 May 1998 in Colorado Springs, USA, to discuss the movement's remaining 2½ years. C. Peter Wagner, leader of the movement's prayer track, asked "There are 31 months left - do we still have the faith that we can reach our aim 'a church for every people and the gospel for each person by the year 2000'?" "Yes!" came the answer, according to a press release. "If God gives the vision, he also confirms it by the appropriate fruit." In some areas, they are ahead of the 1998 aims. Their current focus is on research projects and setting strategic priorities, including finances for planting new churches amid unreached peoples. Michael Little (Christian Broadcasting Network) and Vonette Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ) will lead the 'Prayer through the Window IV' project in 1999 focusing particularly on the 62 countries in the 10/40 Window. The previous prayer campaigns in 1993, 1995 and 1997 united some 20 or 30 million people in intercession. Surprisingly, according to the report, the decisive hindrances to world mission are not in the number of missionaries, material, finances or methods, but in "disinterest, self-centredness and lukewarm Christianity. We will see a breakthrough when the whole Body of Christ has a heart for the nations and learns to pray in unity."

Source: Director of Publications, AD2000

Canada: victory in Victoria

We have received two very similar reports of a conference in Victoria, Canada, in May 1998. To quote the report from David Wilkinson, Fellowship at Road's End, Washington: "My wife Marjory and I are on the way back from Trinity Christian Centre (Pastor Ivor Lewis) to Methow Valley, near Winthrop, Washington. In Victoria, during events with Charles Ndifon from Nigeria, '100 were saved and around 1,000 healed'. We saw - and we mean literally SAW - blind people throw their white sticks away; we experienced how people could suddenly hear again, that a woman's tumor vanished, a cross-eyed boy could see straight, how people stood up out of their wheelchairs and walked around, and some believed to be healed of cancer and could hardly wait to go to the doctor to be examined. Most of the healings occurred during the worship time and Charles' preaching. The sermons were so simple, that you almost had to be there to believe it: 'If you came for a miracle, go to him who works miracles. If you came to be healed, go to him who heals. If you came so that Charles would pray for you, you've come to the wrong address. I am just like you. Seek Jesus, not me.' I was standing next to a man who limped because his legs had been different lengths since birth. He was over 40 years old. I saw him healed right next to me. His father, who was also there, was beside himself for joy that his son no longer limped."

Source: D. Wilkinson, USA. e-mail: farel@juno.com

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