Updates on the persecuted Church (excerpts)
Barnabas Fund, 26 April 2023
- Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was observed in Christian-majority Armenia and in other parts of the world on 24 April. Between 1893 and 1923 around 3.75 million Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac and Greek Christians perished in the Ottoman Empire in a policy of extermination of Christian minorities. Pray that this will prevent further such atrocities.
- An illiterate Christian woman and Muslim man were arrested and charged with “blasphemy” in the Punjab, Pakistan on 19 April. Asked to clear a store room at their school, they gathered waste paper and burnt it, not realising that some of the pages contained Arabic verses from the Quran. School pupils and residents in the district raised the alarm and informed the police. Ask that justice will be done for both.
- Seven people from a group of eight were abducted on Sunday 16 April when returning from a church service in Benue State in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. One of the group was spared abduction due to having a leg injury which would have slowed the kidnappers down. Pray that the Lord will draw close to those abducted, strengthening them spiritually through their ordeal, and that they will all be released without harm.