Barnabas News, 24 July 2018

A Christian was sworn in as Malaysia’s top judge on 11 July 2018.

 Tan Sri (Sir) Richard Malanjum has been appointed Chief Justice of the country’s Federal Court and is thought to be the first Christian to hold the post. Before being promoted to the Federal Court in 2015, the 65-year-old was chief judge of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Sarawak is the only state in Malaysia where Christians are more numerous than Muslims, and Sabah also has traditionally had a strong Christian presence.  

 Tan Sri Malanjum has previously argued strongly in favour of Malaysian Christian converts from Islam being allowed to officially change their religion, i.e. without having to go through Malaysia’s sharia court system which would leave them open to being prosecuted for apostasy from Islam.

World Watch Monitor, July 26, 2018

Churches in China are becoming more careful over who they let in to their buildings, as government pressure increases, and a local source says the authorities are “trying to stir up larger more influential churches” to see how the people will react.

The government is especially wary of “high profile” churches that have access to international networks and is also closing some church venues.  More landlords are refusing to continue rental contracts with churches.

2 weeks ago, a Bible Reformed Church was forced to stop its meeting for a third time in a month following a police raid – some of the Christians were arrested for questioning.  The church was also fined 50,000 yuan (US $7,500).

While China has accumulated wealth and emerged as a major player on the world stage, the underlying dark spirits of atheistic Marxism have not disappeared.

Barnabas Fund, 11 July 2018

There has been a troubling incident where, once again, at the order of St Paul’s officials in London, a man was apparently arrested outside the Cathedral for simply reading aloud the King James Bible. This is almost the very translation of the Bible that Tyndale was martyred for almost 500 years ago. 

The man asked the policeman why he was being told to move on while other people were standing there talking, before adding he was a preacher and had been reading the King James Bible there for weeks.  The police officer told him, “I haven’t got a problem with what you are doing, but staff here have asked you to move off of the property.”  When the preacher continues to politely protest, the officer says, “Then I will arrest you for a breach of the peace.”

 In February 2017, a CPS lawyer told Bristol magistrates court, in relation to the arrest of a street preacher in Bristol, that publicly quoting from the King James Bible “in the context of modern British Society, must be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter”.

 This disturbing trend against public preaching and Bible reading is evidence of the gradual erosion of Religious Freedom taking place in the UK.

Barnabas News, 10 July 2018

Anxious to avoid jeopardising the peace talks before the summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un, South Korea clamped down on a twelve-year-long effort of Christians to send Bibles and Scriptural materials by balloon into North Korea.

GPS tracking had confirmed that thousands of Bible-filled flash drives, donated by US students, were successfully dropped into North Korean territory.

Koreans living in China have been carrying out missionary activity for the last 20 years, ministering to North Koreans visiting family in China or having escaped across the border.

The mission team teaches new Christians the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed as well as Bible verses, and sends them back into North Korea to share the Gospel – at risk of imprisonment.