Posted on 12/04/2005 7:44:18 PM PST by Hunden
An Iranian convert to Christianity was kidnapped last week from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death, his bleeding body thrown in front of his home a few hours later. Ghorban Tori, 50, was pastoring an independent house church of convert Christians in Gonbad-e-Kavus, a town just east of the Caspian Sea along the Turkmenistan border.
Within hours of the November 22 murder, local secret police arrived at the martyred pastor’s home, searching for Bibles and other banned Christian books in the Farsi language. By the end of the following day, the secret police had also raided the houses of all other known Christian believers in the city.
According to one informed Iranian source, during the past eight days representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have arrested and severely tortured 10 other Christians in several cities, including Tehran. All the detainees have since been released.
One of the arrested Christians was reportedly interrogated about his involvement in relief work after Iran’s deadly Bam earthquake in December 2003. Another working with a legal organization defending human rights was accused of using it as a “cover” for church activities.
In addition, MOIS officials have visited known Christian leaders since Tori’s murder and have instructed them to warn acquaintances in the unofficial, Protestant house fellowships that
“the government knows what you are doing, and we will come for you soon.”
A former Muslim of Turkmen descent, Tori had converted to Christianity more than 10 years ago, while in Turkmenistan.
After he returned to his native Iran in 1998, Tori began to share his new Christian faith with friends and relatives. Within two years, a small fellowship of 12 believers was meeting in his home.
But not all welcomed his message; at least one relative attacked Tori, scarring his face. In the past year he received several threats from Islamic extremists vowing to kill him if he did not stop sharing his Christian faith.
Tori is survived by his wife and four children, ages 3 to 23.
He is the fifth Protestant pastor assassinated in Iran by unidentified killers in the past 11 years. Three of the five were former Muslims, under Iranian law subject to the death penalty for having committed apostasy.
Tori’s murder came just days after Iran’s new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an open meeting with the nation’s 30 provincial governors. During the session, an Iranian source told Compass, Ahmadinejad declared that the government needed to put a stop to the burgeoning movement of house churches across Iran.
“I will stop Christianity in this country,” Ahmadinejad reportedly vowed.
“This was apparently a green light from the president of Iran to go out and start killing Christians,”
the source said.
Slurring Non-Muslims
Last week a Zoroastrian representative in the Iranian Parliament protested a slur against non-Muslims on November 20 by a top aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
According to the government-run Entekhaab website, in a public speech Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told youthful Basidjis (members of a volunteer militia formed to enforce strict Islamic codes) preparing to join suicide missions that “non-Muslims are sinful animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption.” Jannati, who is secretary general of the powerful Guardian Council, is known to be a mentor and close advisor to Ahmadinejad.
Iranian Member of Parliament Kurosh Niknam declared the comment, “an unprecedented insult to religious minorities.”
Over the past month, Ahmadinejad has conducted a broad shake-up within the government establishment, replacing hundreds of governors, ambassadors and senior ministry officials with young and mostly inexperienced Islamists. Yesterday students at Tehran University protested noisily when a religious cleric without even a high school diploma was appointed rector of the nation’s oldest university.
In November, the new director of prisons also transferred a number of political prisoners of conscience into criminal wards with convicted murderers and drug dealers. At least one of these political prisoners has been killed by fellow inmates, sparking the fears of Iranian Christians for the security of Hamid Pourmand, serving a three-year sentence at Tehran’s Evin Prison for refusing to renounce his conversion to Christianity.
So very true.
Read Ezekiel 38, 39 and Zechariah 14.
The greatest ass-kicking of all time.
...and Amnesty International?
Crickets chirping...
You sure that quote about stopping Christianity isn't from the ACLU?
Seems to like this topic a great deal...
More Iranians have come to Christ since 1978 than in the few centuries before then.
See...on the one hand, I do believe that is the right personal response. On the other hand, I believe we are obligated to speak out and condemn this sort of thing whenever it happens to others. Christians err when they make that mean something broader than the personal level. Ultimately that puts you on the side of evil -- again, unless you are personally the persecuted. That's different.
So I pray that God will punish the Iranians for this evil deed. I pray for His justice. But also for a miracle, that they will have a change of heart, and if so, that God will be rich in mercy towards them. And I pray for the persecuted ones, that He will be very near to them, giving them the strength they need to face this terrible ordeal. May their faith stay firm, and may they give honor to the Lord in all they say and do.
Hey you ragheaded worshiper of a perverted criminal called mohhamed, we will stop islam dead in our country.
And I believe in a reigning Savior who will continue subduing His enemies one by one, until only death remains standing. Psalm 110 is the most frequently cited OT scripture in the NT. Your eschatology breeds fatalistic resignation to the ascendency of evil. Mine empowers me to effectually resist evil.
That's all right, I used to be pre-millenial too. The traffic is going one way, however. Faithful and thoughtful pre-mils eventually become post-mils. It doesn't work the other way.
bump
I'm having a bad night. Time to quit FReeping for the evening. LOL! Oh well.
TROP = The Religion of Peace - a label far too often associated with Islam - and its a lie!
I'll try and remain Faithful and Thoughtful and then let the Lord lead me the rest of the way. Only he knows where that is. (I do like your tag-line, wonderful)
December 4, 2005: Iran uses music to play out nuclear case
Source: IRNA
Iran has taken its nuclear energy campaign to the realm of music this time in an effort to strike a chord with the public about the peaceful nature of this "national" achievement.
The Music and Songs Center of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has produced two musical pieces "in parallel with supporting the peaceful nuclear technology", the center said in a statement Saturday.
The works named "Indebted to Fire" and "The Burning Lantern" are being produced with a symphonic orchestra trait, it added.
Meanwhile, the press reported Saturday that a plan was being broached for a public offering of Iran's nuclear energy stock.
"According to a plan which has just been forwarded to the Supreme National Security Council and will soon be put on the agenda, the nuclear stock will be offered to the public," the daily Kayhan wrote.
The paper said feasibility studies on the plan would probably commence soon.
"The plan is based on the peacefulness of the nuclear energy according to which, the government can even issue bonds in order to provide finance for building nuclear plants," it added.
Kayhan went on to say that "based on what experts believe, the ceding of nuclear shares to the public beside reasserting the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear technology can strengthen its place as a modern source of energy among the people".
The plan would require the government to find out mechanisms according to which revenues from the sale and exports of nuclear products would be distributed among the shareholders, the paper said.
The government is fresh from its approval of a bill on how to participate foreign companies in Iran's nuclear energy program.
The program is a thorn in Washington's side since the US law bans the country's firms from any engagement in Iran's development projects.
Iran's first nuclear plant is being built by Russia under a one-billion-dollar contract which is scheduled to become operational in mid-2006.
Last week, a key parliament speaker announced that Iran would tender by March 2006 the construction of two more nuclear power plants.
"In the 1384 budget, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization has been given license to set up 20 nuclear plants with a capacity to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said.
US authorities claim that the program might be a front to build an atom bomb, a charge Tehran vigorously denies.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) announced last week that the so-called EU3 had accepted Iran's offer to take up nuclear negotiations from where they were left off in August.
In a letter dated November 6, SNSC Secretary Ali Larijani had invited the Europeans to resume the negotiations.
Negotiations broke down in August after Iran rejected an EU proposal of concessions, which the country described as 'a package of lollipops' and resumed uranium conversion work.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi has stressed that the focal point of any future negotiations would have to provide 'concrete guarantees for realizing production of nuclear fuel in Iran'.
The French philosopher Voltaire, a skeptic who destroyed the faith of many people, boasted that within 100 years of his death, the Bible would disappear from the face of the earth. Voltaire died in 1728, but the Bible lives on. The irony of history is that 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society moved into his former house and used his printing presses to print thousands of Bibles.
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