DAWN Fridayfax 1999 #02

News from Germany, Togo, Finland, China

In this issue:
Germany: Support for the Year of Jubilee
Togo: Healed of Yellow Fever after reading a tract
Finland: Girl saved from a 'guillotine' in the church
China: Growth in "The martyrs' century"

Germany: Support for the Year of Jubilee

Germany will support "Jubilee 2000", the debt-cancellation initiative for nations with debts which they cannot repay, at the next G7 conference in Cologne in 1999, says Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. She described the measures called for by the initiative - that nations and banks should cancel the debts of the world's most heavily indebted nations in the year 2000 - as justified. The initiative's name comes from the Old Testament (Leviticus 3:25), which specified that all debts were to be cancelled and land returned to the original owner in the Year of Jubilee, which occurred every 50 years. Poor nations currently owe the industrial nations, the World Bank and IMF a total of 2 trillion dollars.

Source: Frankfurter Rundschau

Togo: Healed of Yellow Fever after reading a tract

According to a report in "Fax of the Apostles", Every Home for Christ's fax information service, 399 people decided to become Christians and 41 house fellowships, so called "Christ Groups", founded during 90 days of evangelism in the West African nation Togo. Vogan's pastor Martin Amevor reported that not only did many people want to become Christians after receiving tracts, but that one man was healed of Yellow Fever, and a woman healed of irregular bleeding which had been plaguing her for 11 years. In total, EHC's staff distributed over 800,000 evangelistic tracts, and 349 'Christ Groups' were started.

Source: Every Home for Christ, Colorado Springs, USA

Finland: Girl saved from a 'guillotine' in the church

Heikki Lassila, a statistician from Helsinki, sent the following report: "A while ago, we visited the Lutheran Kaivoksela church in the Helsinki area. Our little daughter Laura is normally shy, and not given to running around in church, but this time it was different. She accidentally ran into a door made of two plates of glass, one above the other, each about 1cm thick. Even though she is only a little girl, the lower glass plate broke, and her head was stuck in the iron frame which had held the glass. The other plate started to drop from a height of one meter, and would have decapitated her like a guillotine. Miraculously, a hole appeared in the glass exactly where her neck was. The plate fell to the ground, but Laura was unharmed. Some 20 people witnessed the event."

Source: Heikki Lassila, e-mail HEIKKI.LASSILA@tapiola.fi

China: Growth in "The martyrs' century"

"This century is known as 'The martyrs' century', because more people have lost their lives for their Christianity since 1900 as in all the previous centuries together," writes the mission agency 'Open Doors', founded in 1955 by Dutchman Anne van der Bijl, better known as Brother Andrew, whose 1967 book "God's Smuggler" has sold 14 million copies around the globe. China's Christians have suffered particularly. The Boxer rebellion at the start of the century caused a bloodbath for foreign missionaries and national Christians, and the Cultural Revolution increased the oppression. During that time, the house church movement started. At the end of the 1950's, the well-known Chinese house church leader Yuan Allen was sentenced to 22 years of hard labour, and is still under house arrest today. The hunger for the Bible in China remains incredible. Open Doors staff entering the country in the 1970's discovered churches with up to 10,000 members sharing only a handful of Bibles. One church leader said to a Bible courier, "If you don't have enough money to bring us Bibles, we will sell our houses, but please, bring Biblesù" In one daring attempt, the mission agency smuggled 1 million Bibles into the country by ship. Shortly before its arrival, a Chinese patrol boat passed less than 100 meters from the ship, but did not see it. According to conservative estimates, there are some 20 million 'officially registered Christians' among the nation's population of 1.2 billion, with some 60 to 80 million Christians in the underground house church movement, which is also has by far the fastest growth. Every house church is expected to send out and support 1, or preferrably 2, evangelists. Every Christian is also expected to win 1 or 2 people for Christ each year.

Source: Open Doors, fax (+49) 5384-90978

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