http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news.aspxNews, events and announcements from Brakpan Assembly of God Fellowship.Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.MEXICO CITY, February 3 (Compass Direct News) – A married couple who had served for 28 years as Baptist missionaries in Mexico were murdered on Tuesday (Jan. 31) at their home near Monterrey in El Cercado, Santiago, Nuevo Leon. John Casias, 76, and Wanda Casias, 67, were strangled with electrical cords when intruders broke into their house and stole a safe, televisions and ministry vehicles, along with other items. The area has suffered heavily from attacks by drug cartels in recent weeks, including the murder of the mayor of El Cercado, leading to the tentative conclusion that the crime was committed by people serving narcotics traffickers. Drug traffickers in Mexico oppose the message of Christ because it turns people away from their business, and thus Christians have been among the targets of the criminals. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17532/6/2012 9:07:00 AM This year is the 100-year anniversary celebration of Azusa Street revival. Billy Wilson visits The 700 Club to explain what happened on that Los Angeles road a century ago. Discover more amazing and inspirational stories, Christian testimonies, and healing miracles. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17522/4/2012 7:03:48 AMPentecost power flowed from Azusa in the form of miracles, healings, and signs -- and it still continues 100 years later. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17512/4/2012 6:54:04 AMWhen the Holy Spirit poured out on a small church group in Los Angeles, history was unfolding right before William J. Seymour's eyes. Take a look at the ordinary man who witnessed the extraordinary power of God. Discover more amazing and inspirational stories, Christian testimonies, and healing miracles.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17502/4/2012 6:53:50 AMPentecostalism is a fiery revival sweeping much of the planet from Africa to Asia to Latin America. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17492/4/2012 6:52:46 AMPentecostalism is a fiery revival sweeping much of the planet from Africa to Asia to Latin America. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17482/4/2012 6:49:36 AMWhen the Holy Spirit poured out on a small church group in Los Angeles, history was unfolding right before William J. Seymour's eyes. Take a look at the ordinary man who witnessed the extraordinary power of God. Discover more amazing and inspirational stories, Christian testimonies, and healing miracles.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17472/4/2012 6:48:58 AMPentecost power flowed from Azusa in the form of miracles, healings, and signs -- and it still continues 100 years later. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17462/4/2012 6:48:12 AMThis year is the 100-year anniversary celebration of Azusa Street revival. Billy Wilson visits The 700 Club to explain what happened on that Los Angeles road a century ago. Discover more amazing and inspirational stories, Christian testimonies, and healing miracles. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17452/4/2012 6:35:32 AMNAIROBI, Kenya, February 1 (Compass Direct News) – A Christian convert from Islam who fled hostilities in his native Ethiopia has faced attempted murder and ongoing death threats in Kenya. Somali Muslim extremists in Kenya kidnapped and tried to kill Barack Hussein Kedir in July 2010, and most recently Kenyan-born Islamic extremists in contact with their co-religionists in Ethiopia sent a death threat to his cell phone on Dec. 3, the Christian told Compass. Born to Muslim community leaders in Arsi Negelle district in southern Ethiopia, Hussein had been a zealous Islamic youth coordinator who once harassed Christians before his conversion – a long process that led his father to shoot him in the leg for his commitment to Christ, he said. Hussein had fled to Kenya in 2003 but secretly returned to his rural home in Ethiopia in June 2009 to help establish three new churches.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17442/2/2012 9:59:32 AMLAHORE, Pakistan, January 30 (Compass Direct News) – A judge has denied bail to a young Christian man charged with desecrating the Quran under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws despite the lack of evidence against him, sources said. Police in Shahdara, near Lahore, had arrested 23-year-old Khuram Masih on Dec. 5 and charged him with desecrating the Quran after his landlord, Zulfiqar Ali, alleged that he had burned pages of the book in order to prepare tea. Masih has said that he was falsely accused in the case because he had had an argument with Ali, his landlord. Section 295-B makes willful desecration of the Quran or use of an extract in a derogatory manner punishable with life imprisonment. Masih’s previous lawyers, Muhammad Farhad Tirmizi and Liaqat John, on Jan. 3 petitioned for his bail. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17431/31/2012 9:06:05 AMNAIROBI, Kenya, January 27 (Compass Direct News) – A former member of a Muslim extremist group in Uganda who converted to Christianity is in hiding in Kenya, his movements severely restricted following threats to kill him. Hassan Sharif Lubenga, 54, was a sheikh and member of the Buk Haram, a violent group of Islamists whose name suggests that the Bible is corrupt and therefore forbidden. Originally from Chengera, seven kilometers from Kampala, the husband to four wives began his conversion process four years ago; in June 2011, he said, after dreams and visions in which Jesus appeared to him, he made a full commitment to follow Christ. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17421/28/2012 8:10:27 AMBAUCHI CITY, Nigeria, January 24 (Compass Direct News) – Early morning attacks in Tafawa Balewa, Bauchi state on Sunday (Jan. 22) left at least seven Christians dead and a church building destroyed. The attack on the Evangelical Church Winning All Church 2, residents of Tafawa Balewa said, was carried out by area Islamic extremists alongside members of the Boko Haram sect, with the church building and surrounding houses bombed. Yunnana Yusufu, pastor with the Church of Christ in Nigeria in Tafawa Balewa, told Compass that the assailants arrived in the early morning hours and began shooting at Christians in the town, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Bauchi City. “I saw seven dead bodies of some of the Christians killed,” Yusufu told Compass by phone. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17411/27/2012 3:57:29 PMNAIROBI, Kenya, January 23 (Compass Direct News) – Hassan Muwanguzi, a convert from Islam in Uganda who lost his family and job because of his Christian faith, is thankful after fighting off the latest attack – an attempt by Muslims to imprison him and shut down the school he started. Following his conversion in his early 20s in 2003, Muwanguzi’s family immediately kicked him out of their home, and enraged Muslims beat him, he said. His wife left him that same year, and he lost his job as a teacher at Nankodo Islamic School, near Pallisa. Undaunted, a year ago he opened a Christian school, Grace International Nursery and Primary School, at Kajoko, Kibuku district, 27 kilometers (17 miles) from Mbale town; the area’s population of 5,000 people is predominantly Muslim.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17401/27/2012 3:54:43 PMKHARTOUM, Sudan, January 20 (Compass Direct News) – Police this week beat and arrested a church leader in Khartoum, sources told Compass. Evangelist James Kat of the Evangelical Church of Sudan was arrested on Tuesday morning (Jan. 17), with officers beating him as they took him to a North Division police station, the sources said. He was released on bail the same day. Kat, who lives at the church site, was apparently arrested for using the place as his home. Another church leader was arrested on Monday (Jan. 16) in a Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) church property dispute in which police and courts have been unjustly biased in favor of Muslims, Christian leaders said. Officers arrested SPEC worker Gabro Haile Selassie, as he lives on the church property that has been transferred to a Muslim businessman in a disputed agreement; he has refused to be evicted without police providing him an official document indicating the basis for the action.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17391/27/2012 3:52:39 PMNEW DELHI, January 20 (Compass Direct News) – Christian workers are fleeing India’s Kashmir Valley after a sharia (Islamic law) court issued a “guilty” verdict against three Christian leaders, issued a fatwa against Christian schools and allegedly launched a door-to-door campaign to bring converts “back” to Islam. The court, which has no legal authority, found the Rev. Chander Mani Khanna, pastor of All Saints Church in Srinagar, Dutch Catholic missionary Jim Borst and Christian worker Gayoor Messah guilty of “luring the valley Muslims to Christianity,” The Times of India daily reported on Dec. 19. The three had already left the region apparently due to rising tensions. Headed by Kashmir Grand Mufti Bashir-ud-din Ahmad, the sharia court also “directed” the state government to take over the management of all Christian schools in the region, the daily added.http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17381/27/2012 3:50:13 PMKHARTOUM, Sudan, January 18 (Compass Direct News) – Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments has threatened to arrest church leaders if they carry out evangelistic activities and do not comply with an order for churches to provide their names and contact information, Christian sources said. The warning in a Jan. 3 letter to church leaders of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) arrived a few days after Sudan President Omar al-Bashir told cheering crowds on Jan. 3 that, following the secession of largely non-Islamic south Sudan last July, the country’s constitution will be more deeply entrenched in sharia (Islamic law). http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17371/19/2012 9:12:54 AMBWERA, Uganda, January 16 (Compass Direct News) – A 15-year-old Christian girl in western Uganda who lost the use of her legs after her father locked her in a room for six months for leaving Islam has begun to take tentative steps. Susan Ithungu of Isango village, Kasese district, had been hospitalized since September 2010 after neighbors along with police rescued her from her father, Beya Baluku, who had given her hardly any food or water. In March 2010, Susan had trusted Christ for her salvation – prompting her father to threaten to slaughter her publicly with a knife. Neighbors who discovered that the girl was locked in a room with almost no food or water notified authorities. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17361/17/2012 8:31:13 AMNEW DELHI, January 13 (Compass Direct News) – Attacks on Christians accelerated over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in the south Indian state of Karnataka, which was identified as the most unsafe place for the religious minority for the third consecutive year in 2011. With 49 cases of violence and hostility against Christians in 2011, Karnataka remained the state with the highest incidence of persecution, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s annual report, “Battered and Bruised…” The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), which is based in Karnataka, documented at least six anti-Christian attacks between Christmas Eve 2011 and New Year’s Day. http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17351/14/2012 11:33:06 AMNAIROBI, Kenya, January 13 (Compass Direct News) – Far from the world media’s gaze in remote islands off the eastern coast of Africa, church buildings are razed and Christians are ostracized and imprisoned for their faith – leaving one with a skin disease. On Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar, in one week-long stretch last month Muslim extremists destroyed two church buildings, Christian leaders said. The extremists torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Zanzibar town, at around 7 p.m. on Dec. 3, said Pastor Julius Makoho. The previous week in Kianga, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Zanzibar town, a throng of Islamic extremists demolished Siloam Church’s building. Pastor Boniface Kaliabukama said that more than 100 Muslim extremists arrived at the church compound on Nov. 26 chanting “Allahu Akbar [God is greater].” http://www.agfbrakpan.co.za/news-details.aspx?evId=17341/14/2012 11:29:26 AM