The Christian Messenger November 2012 edition

INDIA’S EVANGELICAL NEWS MAGAZINE Online Portal: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

Vol. 9, No. 7

Pages 30

NOVEMBER, 2012

The purpose of the news magazine is to report newsworthy religious events and activities within the local community, nationwide and around the world, to increase the awareness and activism of believers regarding the moral issues of today, to provide thought-provoking commentary, and to provide an effective advertising vehicle for Christian ministries and organizations, events and businesses that want to reach the Christian community. - Editor

The Team Managing Editor: Robin Sam Editor & Publisher: Elsy Robin Director (Strategy & Planning): Benjamin Ross Editorial Advisor: P I Samuel Production & Sales: S Saravanan Mission Fields: S A Peter, N Solai, (Tamil Nadu) Ashok Baghel (Chhattisgarh) Mohinder Lal (Jammu & Kashmir) Guest Columnists: Grace Ida Rajan, Joyce Braganza, Mathews George, Don Davis

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SUBSCRIPTION RATES Annual (India): Rs.120/Annual (Overseas): Rs.1,000/Lifetime (India): Rs.1,000/Lifetime (Overseas): Rs.10,000/Owned and published by Elsy Robin from 329/4, Poonga Apartments, HIG Flats, II Avenue, Anna Nagar, Chennai 600 040. Printed by L Cyril Sagayaraj at VS Printograph Pvt Ltd., 1, Narasinghapuram Extn.., 1st Lane, Maduvankarai, Guindy, Chennai 600 032. Editor: Elsy Robin Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Dear brothers and sisters, We praise God Almighty for making it possible to bring out another issue of The Christian Messenger. This is the 115th issue of The Christian Messenger. What that means is this ministry has completed nine and a half years of existence. This is sheer grace, and it’s amazing to see how God led us every day, week, month and year since He called us to do His work.

In Romans 8:38, there’s a poignant verse. The latter part of the verse reads like this in NLT version: Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. That's a great promise, a beautiful one from which we can draw courage.

I hope you will continue to uphold our mission fields in Chhattishargh, Jammu and Tamil Nadu. Our mission workers are working really hard to see a harvest in their regions. We are particularly encouraged by the reports of people turning to the Lord from Jammu and Chhattisgarh. In Jammu, people trudge long distances (over 25 km) to reach our church. Post navratri celebrations, five new converts will be baptised in Jammu. In Chhattisgarh, our workers are entering villages that have not been visited yet by any Gospel outreach. Since most of these villages are in the grip of naxal leaders, our workers’ safety is at stake.

Continue to pray for their wellbeing, safety and guidance. May our God help us see a rich harvest in these mission fields. In Tamil Nadu, we are praying that God will send his men to work in our mission field in Tiruchi.

You may have noticed that we have changed our cover page design in this issue. Our intention behind this effort is not merely to impress the reader but also to avoid clutter on the cover page and make it more aesthetically appealing. This is an age when even established print media houses find it difficult to survive. In such a scenario, Christian media houses like us with a hand-tomouth budget must introspect more and look at offering the best in terms of coverage and services. We hope more people will be encouraged to pick up our copies off the shelves in bookshops where the magazine is available for sale. If you live in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad, you can help us by introducing our magazine to potential subscribers, Christian bookshops and get more people to be involved in our missions.

Please contact me for details at 72990 63345.

In our cover story this month, you will read two instances of near-death experiences. Dr. Eben Alexander, a second generation neurosurgeon, who taught at Harvard Medical School had a neardeath experience that he has shared in a new book, ‘Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.’ We have published excerpts from the book in this issue. We have also recorded the experience of Senthil Kumar rechristened as John Senthil now. He works as a driver with a bank in Chennai. While Dr Alexander saw a vision of a place like heaven, Senthil saw a vision of hell in his near-death experience. We hope you will not simply read this issue but also delve deeper into the Word of God to find more about eternal life after our life on the earth.

May God richly bless you and make you a blessing to others!

In His Service, Robin Sam NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 5

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20 22 24 Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

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E encourage you to use these points in your daily prayer as a family, prayer group or an individual.

We would be glad if you take copies of these prayer points and share them with other believers in your church, prayer group or workplace.

If you have a specific prayer point that you would like us to pray for along with our readers, you can send it to us by email at christianmessengerindia@ gmail.com Blessings, Editor. n What do you want your children or grandchildren to be? There is no greater joy than our progeny knowing the Lord closely and walking with Him. Luke 2:40 says what kind of boy Jesus was. ‘And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom.

And the favor of God was upon him.’ May this be our prayer for our children, too. n Will you pray for our ministry today? The Christian Messenger has opened a mission field in Chhattisgarh and is working among tribal people in two districts. The ministry has opened a mission post in Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu. Pray for our mission post in Jammu & Kashmir. Pray for our workers' health, protection and guidance.

Pray that their efforts in reaching the lost will be met with success. n The Bible warns us that love will be a casualty in the last days. Pray that we don’t become dispassionate or disillusioned but be optimists for Christ forever. n Riches in life can often hinder us from coming to Christ. What should be our mind-set when it comes to wealth? Proverbs 30:7-10 has a wonderful prayer that we can emulate. n Matthew 7:19 says every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Let us ask God to prune us periodically. n Pray for Bangalore city today. Despite its cosmopolitan outlook and pleasant environs, the city’s pub culture is causing havoc among young IT professionals and others. Two years ago, DNA put out a report that said HIV positive people descend on the city looking for young virgins in the hope that sex with them will cure their disease. n 2 Timothy 2:16 asks us to avoid godless chatters.

Those who indulge in it become more and more ungodly. Pray that all believers would pray like David in guarding their mouths. n Pray for good rains in India this year. Although, the Meteorological Department has said the monsoon deficiency is expected to narrow down soon, the current deficiency is 22 percent. Monsoon rains are crucial for the agricultural sector, which contributes about 15 per cent to the country’s GDP.

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n Proverbs 28:19 talks about how hard work fetches good dividends. Let us pray that all the spirit of sloth be removed from our midst. n Pray for peace in Assam today. That state was rocked by ethnic violence in which several lives were lost. Curfew had to be imposed in two districts after Muslims and Bodo tribals clashed with each other. Close to two lakh people are said to be in relief camps while 11 people are still missing. n Growing number of teens and even younger children in the US who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and doctors who give them sex-changing treatments.

According to a report, as many as 97 girls and boys were treated between 1998 and 2010. Pray. n Pray for peace between India and Sri Lanka. In the recent past, the two neighbors have had more than their share of troubles the most niggling being the rights accorded to Sri Lankan Tamils by the government of the island nation. n Pray for peace in Pakistan. The nation continues to be tormented by bomb blasts orchestrated by fundamentalist groups and terrorist outfits. n Let us pray that material blessings of the world will not affect our spiritual growth in Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 30:8 has an excellent prayer for an earnest believer. n Pray for all you know who are involved in the Lord’s ministry, for their efforts to bear fruit, for their spiritual growth and for peace and harmony in their homes. n Pray for Goa. Tourists flock the tiny state for not only its idyllic beaches but also for the roaring liquor trade and sex trafficking. According to the book ‘Rape for Profit,’ girls mostly between the ages of 9 and 16 are sold to brothels. Pray for more churches led by the Holy Spirit to come up in Goa. n 2 Peter 3:11 says what sort of people ought we to be in holiness and godliness since the day of the Lord is nearer than we think. Pray that we are not caught up in laying up treasures for ourselves on earth or caught up in the worries of the world. n Pray for respite from heat this summer. Pray for adequate water to be available throughout our country, containment of common summer diseases and God’s canopy of grace over us and our families. n Philippians 4:6 outlines the line of action expected of us by God. ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’ Let us offer Him thanks, praise and continue to pray. God will meet us at the point of our need.

Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

AN article describing Mormonism as a “cult” was removed from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s (BGEA) website following Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s visit with Graham last month.

The article described The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, commonly referred to as Mormonism, as a group that “teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith.” Other groups identified as cults in the article include Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, the Unification Church, Scientologists and Spiritists.

The article was removed sometime after Romney, a Mormon, visited Graham at his Montreat, N.C., home in October. Ken Barun, chief of staff for BGEA, said in an emailed statement that the organization removed the article in order to avoid a debate, though he did not specify whether or not the candidate's visit had anything to do with the timing of its removal.

“Our primary focus at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has always been promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign,” said Barun.

Following his meeting with Romney, the 93-yearold Graham said he was honored to have met the candidate, with whom he had the opportunity to pray.

“What impresses me even more than Gov. Romney’s successful career are his values and strong moral convictions,” said Graham.

He later added, “I will turn 94 the day after the upcoming election, and I believe America is at a crossroads. I hope millions of Americans will join me in praying for our nation and to vote for candidates who will support the biblical definition of marriage, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

During his meeting with Romney, Graham said he would do “all I can” to help the Republican candidate, The Asheville Citizen-Times reports.

Issues surrounding Mormonism – and whether or not it should be defined as a Christian belief system – have stirred up strong emotions and some debate in Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

Christian circles this election season. Some have even questioned whether or not it is acceptable for Christians to vote for a Mormon at all.

Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and the president and CEO of the BGEA, told The Christian Broadcasting Network in December 2011 that Romney’s Mormon faith “doesn’t bother me at all.”

The most important thing, he said, is for Americans to select the person who is most qualified to be president.

“You can have the nicest guy and he can be a Christian and just wonderful but have absolutely no clue as to how to run a country, you don’t want that … Mitt Romney is a very capable fellow,” he said.

OBITUARY

L JOHN (75) Kaleelazhikathu (Mylom, Kottarakara) Founder, Ave Maria Industries

Slept in the Lord on Oct 20 in Chennai.

Fondly remembered by Mariam Thomas, Varghese John, Mary Monson, Simon John, Thomas George, Shiney Varghese, Monson Abraham, Leeba Simon, grandchildren and extended Kaleelazhikathu family members.

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T

HE existence of life after death is a universal question. Job speaks for all of us by stating, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure....If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:1-2, 14).

Like Job, all of us have been challenged by this question. Exactly what happens to us after we die?

Do we simply cease to exist? Is life a revolving door of departing and returning to earth in order to eventually achieve personal greatness? Does everyone go to the same place, or do we go to different places? Is there really a heaven and hell?

The Bible tells us that there is not only life after death, but eternal life so glorious that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to the earth to give us this gift of eternal life.

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Jesus took on the punishment that all of us deserve and sacrificed His life to pay the penalty for our sin. Three days later, He proved Himself victorious over death by rising from the grave. He remained on the earth for forty days and was witnessed by hundreds before 6 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

ascending to heaven. Romans 4:25 says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

The resurrection of the Christ is a welldocumented event. The apostle Paul challenged people to question eyewitnesses for its validity, and no one was able to contest its truth. The resurrection is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Because Christ was raised from the dead, we can have faith that we, too, will be resurrected. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate proof of life after death.

Christ was only the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again. Physical death came through one man, Adam, to whom we are all related.

But all who have been adopted into God’s family through faith in Jesus Christ will be given new life (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). Just as God raised up Jesus’ body, so will our bodies be resurrected upon Jesus’ return (1 Corinthians 6:14).

Although we will all be eventually resurrected, not everyone will go to heaven. A choice must be made by each person in this life, and this choice will determine one’s eternal destination. The Bible says that it is appointed for us to die only once, and after that will come judgment (Hebrews 9:27). Those who have been made righteous by faith in Christ will go into eternal life in heaven, but those who reject Christ as Savior will be sent to eternal punishment in Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

hell (Matthew 25:46). Hell, like heaven, is not simply a state of existence, but a literal place. It is a place where the unrighteous will experience never-ending, eternal wrath from God. Hell is described as a bottomless pit (Luke 8:31; Revelation 9:1) and a lake of fire, burning with sulfur, where the inhabitants will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Revelation 20:10). In hell, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, indicating intense grief and anger (Matthew 13:42).

God takes no pleasure in the

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but desires them to turn from their wicked ways so that they can live (Ezekiel 33:11). But He will not force us into submission; if we choose to reject Him, He accepts our decision to live eternally apart from Him.

death of the wicked, but desires them to turn from their wicked ways so that they can live (Ezekiel 33:11). But He will not force us into submission; if we choose to reject Him, He accepts our decision to live eternally apart from Him. Life on earth is a test, a preparation for what is to come. For believers, life after death is eternal life in heaven with God. For unbelievers, life after death is eternity in the lake of fire. How can we receive eternal life after death and

avoid an eternity in the lake of fire? There is only one way—through faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die...” (John 11:25-26).

The free gift of eternal life is available to all. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (John 3:36). We will not be given the opportunity to accept God’s gift of salvation

after death. Our eternal destination is determined in our earthly lifetimes by our reception or rejection of Jesus Christ.

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). If we trust the death of Jesus Christ as the full payment for our sin against God, we are guaranteed not only a meaningful life on earth, but also eternal life after death, in the glorious presence of Christ.

Then it happened on the seventh day.

DR. Eben Alexander is a second generation “There is no scientific explanation for the fact that neurosurgeon who has taught at Harvard Medical School. He didn’t believe in the phenomenon of while my body lay in coma, my mind – my near-death experiences until he experienced one conscious, inner self – was alive and well. While the himself. Now he’s proclaiming that heaven is indeed neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my real. brain-free consciousness In a Newsweek cover story, The neurosurgeon now journeyed to another, larger Alexander describes himself as a faithful Christian - but “more in confidently believes that dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed name than in actual belief.” As a another “dimension” scientist, he could not believe exists. He describes it as existed and which the old, precoma me would have been more certain things, he said, such as “a world where we are than happy to explain was a Jesus being anything more than a much more than our simple impossibility,” he states in good man. the Newsweek story.

But after seven days in a coma a brains and bodies, and The neurosurgeon now few years ago, his views changed. where death is not the confidently believes that another It was in 2008 when his entire end of consciousness but “dimension” exists. He describes cortex shut down. It was rather a chapter in a it as “a world where we are much determined that he contracted a vast, and incalculably more than our brains and bodies, very rare bacterial meningitis that and where death is not the end of mostly attacks newborns. In other positive, journey.” consciousness but rather a chapter words, E. coli bacteria were eating his brain. in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.”

With his chances of survival being very slim, he It was a place of “big, puffy, pink-white” clouds went into a coma and for seven days his brain and high above were “flocks of transparent, functions were “totally offline.” shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

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long, streamerlike lines behind them.”

He also heard a booming sound “like a glorious chant” from above which he later concluded came out of uncontainable joy from these creatures.

“It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it –without joining with it in some mysterious way,” he says.

Interestingly, a young woman with deep-blue eyes was with his for most of his journey. Together they rode on the wing of a butterfly and were surrounded by millions of butterflies.

The woman spoke to him but without using any words, he recalls. She said (if translated to earthly language), “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.”

“The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real – was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial,” he states.

Alexander knows how his story will come off to skeptics and other doctors. He’s already seen “looks of polite disbelief, especially among my medical friends.” But he’s firmly convinced that what he experienced is real and has co-founded Eternea to advance research on the physics of consciousness and enhance the understanding of spiritually transformative experiences.

“According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent,” he wrote.

“Had someone – even a doctor – told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons.”

He adds, “Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity – that it is undivided ... Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also – I now know – defined by love.”

After his experience, Alexander went back to church which he hardly attended before.

“I’m still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I’m very different from the person I was before, because I’ve caught a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality.”

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Interestingly, a young woman with deep-blue eyes was with his for most of his journey. Together they rode on the wing of a butterfly and were surrounded by millions of butterflies.

The woman spoke to him but without using any words, he recalls. She said (if translated to earthly language), “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear.

There is nothing you can do wrong.”

Though many today believe that science, not faith, is “the road to truth,” Alexander now understands that “such a view is far too simple.”

“The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.”

Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally.

In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.

I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body.

Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 9

body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off.

This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened during that time. Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.

Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.

Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise—that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself 10 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

implies a separation that did not exist there.

Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet ... or a butterfly’s wing.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deepblue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real—was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial.

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this: “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.

“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me.

“But eventually, you will go back.”

To this, I had only one question.

Back where?

A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, doctor—told me a story like this in the old days, I shifting the world around me into an even higher would have been quite certain that they were under octave, a higher vibration. the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me Although I still had little language function, at was, far from being delusional, as real or more real least as we think of it on earth, I began wordlessly than any event in my life. That includes my wedding putting questions to this wind, and to the divine day and the birth of my two sons. being that I sensed at work behind or within it.

What happened to me demands explanation.

Where is this place?

Modern physics tells us that the universe is a Who am I? unity—that it is undivided. Though we seem to live Why am I here? in a world of separation and difference, physics tells Each time I silently put one of these questions out, us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, the universe is completely woven up with every color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a other object and event. There is no true separation. crashing wave. What was important about these Before my experience these ideas were blasts was that they didn’t simply silence my abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the questions by overwhelming them. They answered universe defined by unity, it is also—I now them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced it in my coma is—I entered me directly. But it wasn’t I’ve spent decades as a have come to see with both shock thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, neurosurgeon at some of and joy—the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking or abstract. These thoughts were the most prestigious of in their (very) different ways. solid and immediate—hotter than medical institutions in I’ve spent decades as a fire and wetter than water—and as our country. I know that neurosurgeon at some of the most I received them I was able to many of my peers hold prestigious medical institutions in i n s t a n t l y a n d e ff o r t l e s s l y our country. I know that many of understand concepts that would to the theory that the my peers hold—as I myself have taken me years to fully grasp brain, and in particular did—to the theory that the brain, in my earthly life. the cortex, generates and in particular the cortex, I continued moving forward consciousness and that generates consciousness and that and found myself entering an we live in a universe devoid of any immense void, completely dark, we live in a universe kind of emotion, much less the infinite in size, yet also infinitely devoid of any kind of love that I now comforting. Pitch-black as it was, emotion. But that belief, unconditional know God and the universe have it was also brimming over with that theory, now lies toward us. But that belief, that light: a light that seemed to come broken at our feet. theory, now lies broken at our feet. from a brilliant orb that I now What happened to me destroyed sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being investigating the true nature of consciousness and born into a larger world, and the universe itself was making the fact that we are more, much more, than like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my sensed was somehow connected with, or even fellow scientists and to people at large. identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was I don’t expect this to be an easy task, for the guiding me through it. reasons I described above. When the castle of an old Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the scientific theory begins to show fault lines, no one 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that wants to pay attention at first. The old castle simply came close to describing this magical place, this took too much work to build in the first place, and if vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine it falls, an entirely new one will have to be itself. constructed in its place.

“There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling I learned this firsthand after I was well enough to darkness ...” get back out into the world and talk to That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also others—people, that is, other than my long-suffering full to brimming with light. wife, Holley, and our two sons—about what had I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly happened to me. The looks of polite disbelief, unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone—even a especially among my medical friends, soon made me Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 11

its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. It won’t be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons’ either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.

I’m still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I’m very different from the person I was before, because I’ve caught a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality. And you can believe me when I tell you that it will be worth every bit of the work it will take us, and those who come after us, to get it right.

realize what a task I would have getting people to understand the enormity of what I had seen and experienced that week while my brain was down.

One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was a place I’d seen fairly little of before my experience: church. The first time I entered a church after my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above.

The deep bass notes of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that world are like waves that move through you. And, most important, a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned of as a child in Sunday school.

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In

Dr. Eben Alexander has been a neurosurgeon for the past 25 years. His book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, is published by Simon & Schuster.

BY SENTHIL KUMAR I hail from a small village in Sivaganga near Madurai. I am the eldest among four children. I dropped out of school in 9th standard. Later, I came to Chennai looking for a job when I was perhaps 15 or so. I came to an IAS officer’s home in Chennai and worked in his household for some time. He was also from our village. After I reached Chennai I did various odd jobs. I was living along with a few bachelors in Adyar in Chennai.

When I was 25 years old, I took ill. Though I came out of it some ailment or the other kept tormenting me. Meanwhile, a cyst developed in my back. It kept growing and there was pain in that area. I went to the Cancer hospital in Adyar fearing the worst, but after diagnosis and tests the doctors ruled out cancer.

Though I was relieved at this, sickness continued.

None of the doctors I consulted could really diagnose my problem. One day, when I was in my room I took ill again. Looking at my condition, my friends rushed me to a hospital nearby. I was running a very high temperature.

Meanwhile, let me tell you I knew nothing about Jesus Christ. To me, he was the God of Christians.

Nobody had ever shared the Gospel with me.

Nobody had ever given me so much as a gospel tract.

I had never stepped into a crusade meeting until that day I took ill and was admitted into the hospital with high fever.

At the hospital, the doctor was examining me.

Seven of my friends were around my hospital bed waiting anxiously for the doctor’s diagnosis.

Suddenly, I saw a great white light shining on the wall of the room. The light was so bright that I wondered where it had suddenly appeared from.

And I heard a voice from nowhere. Someone, in an angry voice, said: 'Leave him. He’s a sinner destined to die.’ At this, I remember I was thoroughly frightened. I knew my time was up and there was no hope for me. I cried like an utterly forlorn person.

The doctor and my friends were puzzled at the change of my visage. They asked me if everything was OK. I imagined the doctor was injecting some poisonous drug into my body to kill me. I told the doctor not to kill me.

The doctor told me he would not and asked me about my background, my profession and my family.

I patiently answered him but kept telling him not to kill me. I knew what was happening around me. I knew it was not a hallucination. At the same time, I realized that I was about to die. The light shone for a brief moment on the wall and disappeared. Before it

12 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

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disappeared, I heard the loud and angry voice.

Strangely, nobody else in the room saw the light or heard the voice. I was petrified and wailed for a while. A little later, I consoled myself. All those who are born into the world have to died once, I told myself. No sooner had I told this to myself then I saw a vision. In that vision, I saw the place where I would go to if I died. I saw a bottomless pit. It was pitch dark inside the pit. Imagine for a second how you would feel if the ground under your feet disappeared and you fall into a dark and bottomless pit. That was my experience. I fell into this abyss that kept going deeper and deeper. Imagine you fell off from a 40storied building. I screamed my lungs out. I kept wailing and screaming even as I kept going deeper and deeper into the dark pit in my vision. The doctor and my friends heard my screams but they had no clue what I was going through. They thought I had gone mad.

If you read the Bible, there are enough verses to describe what would happen to sinners in the last days and at the time of judgment. I know the verses now because I am a Christian but back then I had not even seen or touched a copy of the Bible. The Bible says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in hell. The place was so real and so loathsome that I wanted to get out of it at any cost. I looked around and I heard people crying ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’ I looked up and saw a figure standing above the bottomless pit in a great white light. I wailed again. I pleaded someone will kill me quickly to help me avoid the agony in the place where I was in the vision. When I heard voices around me crying out to Jesus, I knew Jesus must be the God of the whole universe. If all these people cried out to Jesus, then He surely was not the God of Christians alone, I thought. He is the God of the whole world.

All I wanted to do was get out of the dark and bottomless pit but I also realized with not even a foothold it was difficult to get out of there on my own. I also knew nobody around me would be able to help me out of that place because they were also helpless like me. At that instant, all the sins I had committed till that day went before me like on a giant screen. I tried shutting my eyes but there was no escaping the vision of the gross sins I had committed. At the same time, it occurred to me that Jesus is the One who can forgive my sins. With that thought came a great peace. Slowly the vision of hell left me. When I realized I hadn’t really died but was lying on the hospital bed with my friends all around me, I got up from the bed and shouted in joy: ‘Jesus is the real God. He is the only One who can forgive us our sins.’ When I realized I was alive and on the earth and not really slipping down into the unending void, Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

my joy knew no bounds. I jumped up and down in joy. I was carried to the hospital physically by my friends but here I was jumping in joy.

Ever since that day, no sickness has afflicted me.

Later when I was out of the hospital, my friend’s mother suggested that I go with her to the local temple since I was possessed by an evil spirit. “If you are hit with a bunch of neem leaves you will be all right,” she said. I told her I required no such treatment as I was alright – perfectly sound in body and mind. Thereafter, I kept looking for Christians in the area where I lived. Someone took me to a woman in the neighborhood. She was a member of a Pentecostal church. When I narrated what had happened to me in the hospital, she read out a few Bible verses and explained that it was possible that Jesus Christ had shown me the vision of hell to save my soul from eternal damnation. She led me to the Lord and I began frequenting a Pentecostal church in Saidapet.

Only later when I read the book of Job I realized that the place I saw in the vision is real and foretold

by God. Hell is prepared for souls that die in sin without accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Today, I have led my cousin into the Lord.

My wife, who was born a Hindu, has accepted the Lord and worships Him along with me.

(Senthil Kumar now works as a driver in a private bank and can be reached at 9840358684) (As told to Robin Sam) NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 13

NEITHER the book of Job nor any other book of the Bible indicates forthrightly when God’s servant Job lived upon the Earth. Furthermore, no biblical genealogies with chronological information, such as that found in Genesis 5 and 11, help in approximating the century in which Job lived.

Nevertheless, various clues within the book of Job seem to indicate Job lived sometime after the Flood, but long before the time of Moses.

First, Job’s postdiluvian status seems apparent from a question Eliphaz raised in his final speech.

While accusing Job of wickedness, Eliphaz asked: “Will you keep to the old way which wicked men have trod, who were cut down before their time, whose foundations were swept away by a flood?”

(Job 22:16, emp. added). As Wayne Jackson noted: “That this is a reference to the Flood of Noah’s day is almost universally conceded by scholars” (1983, p.

58).

Second, that Job was a patriarch who lived prior to the time of Moses, and probably closer to the time of Abraham, seems evident from the following facts: Like other patriarchs of old (Genesis 8:20; 12:7-8; 31:54), Job, as the head of his family, offered up sacrifices to God (Job 1:5; cf. 42:8). In the book of Job, there is no mention of the Levitical priesthood, the tabernacle, the temple, the Law of Moses, etc.

Unlike Israelite law, where the family inheritance was passed on to daughters only in the absence of

sons (Numbers 27:1-11; 36:1-13), Job gave his daughters “an inheritance among their brothers” (Job 42:15).

Job’s material wealth was measured, not in money, but in the amount of livestock he owned (Job 1:3; 42:12), which is more characteristic of patriarchal times.

Finally, that Job lived long before the time of Moses seems evident by the fact that the longevity of his life is more comparable to the long lives of the patriarchs who lived around 2200 B.C. The book of Job reveals that Job lived long enough to marry, become “the greatest of all the men of the east” (1:3), and then witness his first 10 children reach at least the age of accountability (1:5), and probably much greater ages (cf. 1:13,18). Then, after suffering greatly, losing all of his children and his material wealth, God blessed Job with 10 more children and twice as much wealth (42:10-13). The book of Job then concludes: “After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days” (42:10-17, emp. added). Thus, it would appear that Job lived well into his 200s or beyond. Interestingly, the Septuagint testifies that Job died at the age of 240—an age more comparable to the ancestors of Abraham (e.g., Serug, Abraham’s great-grandfather lived to be 230—Genesis 11:2223).

One in eight of world population going hungry, says UN ONE out of every eight people in the world is chronically undernourished, the United Nations' food agencies said on Tuesday, warning that progress to reduce hunger has slowed since 2007/08 when high food prices sparked riots in several poor countries.

In their latest report on food insecurity, the UN agencies estimated that 868 million people were suffering hunger in 2010-2012, or about 12.5 percent of the world's population, down more sharply than previously estimated from about 1 billion, or 18.6 percent in 1990-92.

The new figures are lower than the last estimates for recent years that pegged the number of hungry people at 925 million in 2010 and 1.02 billion in 2009.

“That is better news than we have had in the past, but it still means that one person in every eight goes hungry. That is unacceptable, especially when we live in a world of plenty,” said Jose Graziano da Silva, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

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“Most of the progress in hunger reduction was made until 2006, as food price levels continued to decline. With the rise in food prices and the economic crisis that followed, there have been many fewer advances,” he warned.

Food prices have been on an upward trend over the past few months, fueled by drought in the United States, Russia and other major exporters, and FAO expects prices to remain close to levels reached during the 2008 food crisis.

But Graziano da Silva said the world can still achieve the Millennium Development Goal to halve the prevalence of undernourishment in the developing world by 2015 if efforts are boosted to reverse the slowdown in progress.

The goal is one of a series of targets adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to slash poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries by 2015 Broad-based economic recovery, especially in the agriculture sector, will be crucial for sustained hunger reduction, according to the report by FAO. Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

AS watered down believers we are led by Satan to believe that the only time we deny Christ is when a gun is pointed at our head and we are asked “Are you a Christian?” But nothing could be further from the truth for we deny Christ many more times that we might ever believe.

100 Ways We Deny Christ 1. We fail to regularly read our Bible 2. We do not accept Him as our Lord & Savior.

3. We do not live like we accepted Him as our Lord & Savior.

4. We have a job and do not start a weekly Bible study at our office.

5. We don’t invite or neighbors to church.

6. We don’t serve at church.

7. We don’t pray for others.

8. Jesus was not a mime. We think the way we live is enough.

9. We are a chameleon Christian bending this way and that.

10. We believe there are shades of gray in our faith walk.

11. We believe some Bible stories to be “just stories.”

12. We look to hang out with the “in crowd.”

13. We don’t study God’s word.

14. We believe science’s story of evolution.

15. We see a sunset and fail to know the truth.

16. We seek our own way.

17. We follow those who are not following Him. 18. We don’t stand strong even when others fall away.

19. We walk by someone in need.

20. We fail to stop to help a stranded driver.

21. We fail to serve the poor.

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22. We fail to bind up the broken hearted.

23. We fail to ask when someone is hurting.

24. We ask how someone is doing, when all we really want is to be on our way.

25. We believe we did something ourselves.

26. We fail to give all the glory to God. 27. We fail to consider others better than ourselves.

28. We fail to tithe.

29. We fail to go the extra mile for others.

30. We fail to see the world through others eyes.

31. We fail to act when God tells us to.

32. We fail to speak when we know our words will make a difference.

33. We fail to try to lead others to Christ.

34. We fail to disciple others.

35. We fail to seek to be Discipled by others.

36. We fail to seek Godly counsel.

37. We fail to listen to Godly counsel.

38. We fail to be obedient.

39. We fail to be a team player with other Christians.

40. We fail to see our place as part of the Body of Christ.

41. We fail to be the part of the Body of Christ God desires.

42. We serve the church while failing our spouses.

43. We serve the church while failing our children.

44. We fail to serve on Mission trips locally, in our neighborhoods, work, school and all aspects of our lives.

45. We fail to keep our commitments.

46. We fail to make commitments we should.

47. We talk more than we listen.

48. We are relentlessly committed to our being right.

49. We accept praise as an acknowledgment of our efforts.

50. We fail to pray.

51. We fail to fast.

52. We fail to be humble.

53. We believe ourselves to be a great leader.

54. We believe all our words are of God’s authority.

55. We are prideful.

56. We believe in our own efforts.

57. We fail to rely solely on God’s power.

58. We stopped reading this list at number 10 believing are lives “are good.”

59. We believe we are mature in our faith.

60. We believe we understand the Bible.

61. We believe in ourselves.

62. We fail to know we have a cross.

NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 15

63. We fail to pick up our cross.

64. We fail to pick up our cross daily.

65. We fail to recognize the power of the cross.

66. We fail to take our sins to the cross.

67. We fail to appreciate the power of grace.

68. We fail to forgive others.

69. We fail to forgive ourselves.

70. We believe in worldly power.

71. We let the sins of the past rule over our future.

72. We fail to live knowing we cannot be snatched out of His hand.

73. We fail to believe in our true value.

74. We fail to reach our true potential with Christ.

75. We fail to believe we are an overcomer.

76. We forget who God made us to be.

77. We react rather than respond.

78. We anger easily.

79. We hold grudges.

80. We let the sun go down on our anger.

81. We become indignant.

82. We are self righteous.

83. We speak first.

84. We listen last.

85. We listen thinking of what to say next.

86. We fail to truly hear.

87. We believe we know how someone feels.

88. We think we know the answer for someone else’s life.

89. We fail to seek out others in misery.

90. We fail to walk alongside others who are suffering.

91. We struggle when we need to be strong.

92. We waiver when we need to push forward.

93. We befriend those that Christ knows you should not.

94. We do not witness to those Christ knows you should not befriend.

95. We seek friendships with those mainly like ourselves.

96. We fail to speak the light of Christ into a lost world.

97. We believe the job of witnessing is for others.

98. We believe the Great Commission was a great suggestion.

99. We fail to interpret the Bible under the grace of the two greatest commandments.

100. We believe there are only a 100 ways we can deny Christ.

Oprah Winfrey: Satan’s Spokesperson

BY STACEY DAMES OPRAH Winfrey is leading millions of viewers towards “oneness,” global unity and togetherness, all the while denying the Gospel message of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Oprah’s new-age slant, Christ is but another avatar, another great teacher, who is helping us all achieve the ‘god’ within.

Every false teacher, from celebrities to politicians, who clearly deny the Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel, has somehow found their way onto Oprah’s couch over the years and are more than willing to validate her unbelief.

Never before in history has an individual been given such a public platform to deny the Lord Jesus Christ, and promote doctrines of devils. From channeling demons with new-age mystic Eckhart Tolle, to agreeing with Madonna’s statement that she (Oprah), is really a “closet cabbalist,” to promoting homosexuality as normal, even created by God, this woman has endorsed, even celebrated, more damning poison in the past twenty-five years, than the best known occultists have over the last onehundred. New agers like to complain that the Bible is narrow-minded. They also like to say we are all on different paths to the same place. The Lord Jesus Christ wasn’t so narrow- minded as to say there is only one destination, he said there are TWO. 16 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

It is also very revealing, as well as frightening, to listen to this false teacher, Eckhart Tolle, when asked about what he believes happens after death, respond glibly with, “ I try not to think about it.”

You must think about it!! This is not a game to be played or something that can wait. Your eternal abode depends on what you believe!!

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Matthew 10:32-33 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in Heaven 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven.

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“THE violence has pushed people out of their homes, fleeing for their lives. Many are displaced internally and many others are external refugees living in the most humiliating circumstances, deprived of even shelter, clean water, power, food and medical care.”

That is the lament to Christians in the West from a Christian pastor in Syria, describing the deteriorating, horrific conditions in the war-torn country.

He adds: “Millions are not sleeping in their own beds, forced out of their homes to find themselves with their children homeless and living in public parks or in the wilderness. Others are not sure if they or their children and loved ones will see the light of a new day. Tens of thousands of families lost loved ones—a child, a father, a mother or a husband.

“Hundreds of the injured died for lack of medical care. Thousands of children go to bed terrified of the sound of shelling. Hundreds of thousands are in camps in neighboring countries.

“My people are hurting. I can cry like Nehemiah because the walls of our cities are burnt and the people in great trouble and disgrace. I can weep like Jeremiah because of the intensity and the spread of evil.

I can mourn like David because of the indiscriminate brutal killing of innocent people; children, women, elderly, youth subject to shelling or under the rubble of their homes.”

Over the past 20 months the civil war between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and the Free Syrian Army has resulted in approximately 30,000 deaths, mostly civilians, according to several reports. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the country into such neighboring countries as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, according to the United Nations. In addition, about 2.5 million Syrians need aid inside the country, with more than 1.2 million displaced domestically.

Places especially dangerous for Christians include the cities of Aleppo and Homs.

“A lot is being destroyed in Aleppo,” one of Open Doors’ contacts in the city says. “Extreme violence is being experienced in the last few weeks. You can see the results of it in the old city and in other neighborhoods and surrounding villages. There is a lot of destruction.”

Many Christians in Aleppo have lost their houses or apartments. “We see that their apartments are easily confiscated by the rebels to be used for snipers,” the spokesman states. “The Christian community is the only group that doesn’t fight back Website: www.christianmessenger.in | Email: christianmessengerindia@gmail.com

or doesn’t protect property with guns. So when the rebels search a place to stay or to use for their battle, they choose the houses and apartments of the softest target--the Christians.”

Based on information from Syria, Open Doors thinks that the number of internally displaced people “might be higher than thought,” an Open Doors spokesman says. “For example, I heard that only from Homs and the surrounding villages about 275,000 people have fled.”

The Christian pastor says outreach continues despite the terrible conditions.

“We are here for a divine reason; we trust and rely on our sovereign loving Lord. We believe that we are in the midst of a spiritual war. In this country there are many who are much more effective than us militarily, politically, economically and socially, but none have the privilege of being effective in this spiritual battle like we are.

“We thank God because the Church is united across the country in prayer 24 hours a day, seven days a week; praying for the glory of God to dwell in the Church, praying for an end to the bloodshed, praying for peace in the country, praying for keeping the church’s faithful witness, to reach out to the suffering, to share the divine cure of the gospel, to speak the word of the Lord in all boldness.”

Open Doors is supporting churches doing relief work in several Syrian cities.

The pastor adds: “We deeply appreciate the prayers of God’s people everywhere; it is a rare time where the Church in Syria is feeling the true oneness of the body of Christ all over the globe. For this, we thank the Lord, for it is a great encouragement to us.”Open Doors News NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 17

T

HE second coming of Christ is a glorious event, and one that we must learn about so that we are prepared when it happens. In knowing how the end will come, on what basis we are going to be judged, we can make changes in our lives today, to ensure that we run this race in the best way that we can.

When our Lord Jesus first came to the earth, it was declared by the angel Gabriel to an individual (Mary the mother of our Lord). The second coming of our Lord was foretold by two angels to the band of disciples that had gathered at the time of His ascension (Acts 1).

They were told by the angels that our Lord would return in the same way that He was taken up.

When our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, He asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit down to the believers on earth. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to cleanse and prepare the Church to be the spotless bride of Christ. Though there were many saints in the Old Testament, like Abel whose offering was more than excellent, our Lord was looking for a bride, someone like Himself, someone with the same spirit as His. Mankind has fallen short of this ideal, but the Holy Spirit was sent to equip the Church to become more like Christ. The Holy Spirit was sent to remind us of all that our Lord Jesus taught us and also to lead us into every righteousness – not some, but every righteousness.

And when the bride is ready, our Lord will come again. Here are some facts about the second coming of our Lord.

He will come as a thief. No one knows when this will happen. Our Lord’s second coming is a secret. Thieves don’t come to steal objects of no value. Instead they come to steal everything that is valuable within the house. Our Lord Jesus will return to take away righteous, precious and the best things in the earth – the Church, His bride.

Our Lord will come down, not to the earth but in midair, with 3 things – a loud command or cry, a trumpet blast and the voice of the archangel. And the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

Great shout – the last time the Lord shouted, was at the tomb of Lazarus, when He commanded the dead man Lazarus to come out of the tomb. And again, He will shout in a loud voice only this time He will shout for all the saints who are dead in Christ, to rise up again.

Only those who are dead in Christ will rise. The Bible records that it is not those who had heard about Christ, but those who had spent their lives living for Christ and finally were in Christ even in their death – those who had lived their lives, without compromise, knowing that it is better to die than to live in compromise. Those are the saints that will rise up.

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There will be a trumpet blast. In Numbers 10:1, God instructed Moses to make 2 trumpets of beaten silver.

One trumpet signaled that everyone should gather at the Tabernacle. There is no salvation without suffering, in our lives we maybe beaten as we are being saved.

The second trumpet blast was for the people to start moving from the camp. When our Saviour blows the trumpet, we will start moving from our abode to our eternal home.

When Moses died, he was not given an earthly burial – he received a heavenly burial. When Moses’ body was being lifted to heaven, there arose a dispute between the archangel and the devil (Jude 1:9) and the archangel, Michael rebuked the devil. The devil roams about in the sky and he is not likely to allow the dead in Christ to rise up without a fight. The voice of the archangel will be raised up to rebuke the devil as the dead in Christ are gathered together.

In Matthew 25, our Lord Jesus talks about a parable of 10 virgins who were preparing to welcome the bridegroom to the wedding feast. Each of the 10 had a lamp and at the beginning of the parable, all 10 lamps were lit. The oil in the lamp that was lit is an indication of our worship, our ministry – all 10 virgins were ministering for God. They had the same purpose, the same kind of lamps and the same light. The bridegroom was delayed and the virgins went to sleep. Sometime later, they all were suddenly awakened with a shout that the bridegroom had arrived. 5 of them were able to light their lamps while the remaining 5 could not as they did not have enough oil in their lamps. Whenever you place oil in an earthen vessel, the oil is absorbed by the earthen vessel. If we have the oil in us, it will keep changing us into God’s image. The oil is a symbol of baptism of the Holy Spirit and the deposit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The 5 virgins who were prepared were taken into the wedding feast, but the 5 that were not were locked outside. All 10 were actively involved in ministry and worship but only 5 were allowed in. The term ‘rapture’ denotes a gardener who selects the best flower from his garden and plucks it by force. Our God does the same when the rapture takes place. Our Lord Jesus will judge us. The judgment seat of Christ is called the Bema court (Greek word) where God will grade us, based on what we have done for Him. We will receive crowns based on the work we have done, in comparison to our talents, capacity, ability, population around us etc.

The majority will not inherit heaven. Only who have lived our lives according to God’s Word will do so.

Rev. M A Varughese is the Senior Pastor of Bethel AG Church in Bangalore.

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BY BEN REED 1. Our pastor isn’t normally this _____.

Insert whatever you want in this blank: loud, obnoxious, offensive, long-winded. If you have to explain part of your pastor’s style because you know that outsiders won’t like it, you’ve got a problem.

Talk with your pastor about that.

2. We’re full. Sorry.

Always have a backup plan. Always. If someone sees that your service is full once, they’ll deal with it.

But they probably won’t come back if they don’t see a plan you have in place.

3. What are YOU doing here?

Never say this. Never. Your shocked, open mouth reveals your judgmental spirit…at least in the eyes of visitors. When you say this, all they can think is, “God couldn’t really love someone like you.”

4. You can’t serve now…you’ve got to be a member first.

Why would someone want to become a member if they’ve never had the chance to serve?

5. We don’t believe in serving coffee on Sunday mornings.

If you say this, I can only assume you are leading a church in the pit of Hell.

6. What’s your address? I didn’t catch it on the first 6 forms I had you fill out.

Try to streamline the “first-time visitors check-in process.” Nobody likes to feel like they’re visiting HR on their first church visit.

7. You want to join a small group? You’ll have to wait until next Fall.

If you ask people to wait more than a month to join community, they’ll often look elsewhere.

8. Here we just care about the Truth. If you don’t like it, you can leave.

I get it. You love the Bible. You love preaching the Truth. But don’t love that more than you love people.

9. Here are the 38 things we do each week as a church.

Simplifying is the key, otherwise you’ll give people decision paralysis.

10. Next time, could you make sure to wear _____.

Fill that in with “something nicer,” “something more relaxed,” or “something that’s clean,” and you’ve offended someone unnecessarily. Creating a “come as you are” culture should be our aim, not creating a “come as I am” culture.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the end of his government and called for early elections. Netanyahu’s announcement means elections could take place by mid-January or February.

Despite a number of challenges, Netanyahu has led one of Israel’s most stable governments in recent years. He announced early elections now because his government could not agree on next year's budget.

Recent polls indicate Netanyahu’s Likud Party would win the most seats in the next parliament.

That would ensure Netanyahu would continue to be prime minister.

One wildcard in the elections is whether or not former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert runs. If he does, he could represent Netanyahu’s strongest political challenge.

According to pollster Mitchell Barak, the outcome of the U.S. elections will have a direct impact on the Israeli elections.

“It has appeared over the past few years that the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu is strained so if we’re talking about elections in January and Obama wins, then I think we’re going to see an issue of less people voting for Netanyahu based on the U.S.-Israeli relationship,” Barak said.

“If Romney wins, Netanyahu might get a bump because of his relationship with Romney,” he said.

The timing of Israeli elections fits into the U.S. election cycle and could indicate Israel might wait to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

When Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations last month, he implied Iran might not cross his “red lines” until next spring or summer. And for Israelis, the timing is good.

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NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 19

D

The One Command

O you know the “One Command” which in their lives. There are people both in our near and applies for both the human Creation & the far geographical and cultural contexts whose Church? It is also the “First” command in spiritual images are still marred. They do not know the Bible. Of sure, it precedes the famous “Ten their Creator and Saviour God. The commission is Commandments.” This “One Command” even runs on His church, consisting of people who bear His through the whole Bible from the beginning to the image to plunge into discipling people and end. This first and one command was to “be fruitful communities in the near and farthest corners of the and to multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Importantly, this world. The commission in the first page of the Bible command succeeds the verse which says that both to fill this earth with humans restored to His image, Adam and Eve were created in the image of God still remains the same. By fulfilling His command (v.27). It is therefore clear that the earth has to be we can contribute our share to the great multitudes in filled not merely with humans but humans in the Heaven (Revelation 7:9). In heaven, we will be “like Him”, all in the image of God. We image of God. Jesus, the incarnate God will be with Him forever.

The aspect of God's image in Himself came and The question: Am I obeying the Adam and Eve is evident in the “One Command” of the Bible? discipled a handful to way they were associated with the What changes have to be made in Creator God in the Garden of whom He gave the me, my church to follow this over Eden in a personal way. But when “Great Commission” arching command of the Bible? sin entered into the lives of Adam commanding them to You may go through many & Eve, they ran away from God make further disciples. setbacks and hardships as you and the image of God in them became marred. God had then After Jesus ascended to wait (though probably nothing as as what Joseph endured). agents like Noah, Abraham and heaven, Holy spirit, the severe God is working it all for your good many more through whom He third person of the - nothing is wasted in his gave and acted upon His promises Trinity came upon the economy. When it is over and of restoring and blessing the fallen your dream has come true you will human beings. He then chose the believers of the you be able to say along with nation “Israel” as His agent and Saviour-God. Joseph; "God meant it for good in through the ups and down of her history was telling her and the other nations about a order to bring about this present result." (Genesis 50:20) THAT my friends, is a dream worth waiting God who can restore nations.

In an appropriate time in history, Jesus, the for! incarnate God Himself came and discipled a handful Grace and her husband Suresh Rajan are part of to whom He gave the “Great Commission” Charis Seva Mandal (CSM) which works for the commanding them to make further disciples socially and geographically isolated communities.

(Matthew 28:18-20). After Jesus ascended to heaven, Holy spirit, the third person of the Trinity Non-delivery of came upon the believers of the Saviour-God. Again the commission of the Holy Spirit was the same. The magazine? primary purpose in the dwelling of Holy Spirit in a Please call us at person is to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The 044-65145334 members of the early church witnessed the God of or leave us an email at the Bible to the then ends of the earth. contact@christianmessenger.in Now, it is “we” all who have been restored to the in case you do not get your image of God, who are commissioned to carry the subscription copy or gospel. There are many people today who never you have changed your address. have heard the “Good News” of the Bible even once 20 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

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Do not worry about what to speak Mark 13: 11 When they arrest you and hand you than 1% attempt to reach the third of the world where over for trial, do not worry about what to speak. But no one speaks a language that knows anything about say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not Christianity! It is a risky world we live in today, but the gospel must go forth to the "regions beyond" you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. where it is known.

OST of the readers of this study will have Jesus knew some of His followers would obey His little fear of this situation occurring to command to take the gospel to every people group in them because they live in the one-third of their generation, so He gave instructions for how to the world that is nominally Christian. Fortunately, respond to inevitable unjust persecutions. With the most of this “Christian” world has withdrawn the present negative imperative they were commanded power of the state from these churches, but when to "stop worrying" (implying that they were doing it) “Christianity” was in power, any disagreement with about how to respond, but to "continuously be their form of religion was cruelly persecuted. In the saying" what the Spirit brings to their mind at the Catholic countries the Inquisition tortured and killed time. hundreds of thousands of non-Catholics to coerce The Spirit is promised to “remind them of them to become Catholic. The Anglican Church and everything” that Jesus had taught His disciples (John Greek Orthodox Church were just as cruel to the 14:26), that is, what we have learned of His Word evangelical believers who were burnt at the stake, will come back to our mind when we need it. This is beheaded, and tortured in the most painful ways not a promise of a new revelation, nor is it a promise merely because they wanted to obey the Scripture. of acquittal. Their focus will be to faithfully and Only in the past few centuries have evangelicals fearlessly proclaim the gospel. “Now when they saw been free to practice the Bible as it reads. As they the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that increase in number and influence, the secular world they were uneducated and untrained men, they is beginning to create laws that will inevitably result marveled. And they realized that they had been with in their persecution.

Jesus” (Acts 4:13). How do others know you have Another third of the world is dominated by non- been with Jesus? Imagine yourself on trial for your Christian religions especially Islam, Hinduism, and faith. Are you taking advantage of present Buddhism. Evangelicals are not always free in these opportunities to share your testimony of knowing parts of the world to practice their religion and they Christ? live under threats of various degrees. In this third of Psalm 119:46, "I will speak of your testimonies the world, creative means of communicating the also before kings, and will not be ashamed” gospel is still possible.

The final third of the world population has no The writer is a professor at Liberty University, the knowledge of Christianity at all. No one speaks a language or knows anyone who speaks a language world’s largest Christian university. where Christianity of any form FOR YOUR ATTENTION has ever been spoken in his 1. If you have not paid your subscription yet, please remember to pay it tongue. Here changes to the status at the earliest. quo can be dangerously resisted, 2. Subscriptions are one of the lifelines of our magazine. By though there are many heroic subscribing, you keep us stay focused on our job and not worry about victories where whole people payments.

3. We prefer that you send subscriptions by cheque/DD in favor of groups have converted to the gospel thanks to the sacrificial ‘Messenger Communications Pvt Ltd’ and send it to our address found on effort of foreign and indigenous Page 1.

4. However, if you are using Money Order to send your subscriptions, missionaries. please follow it up with a post card with your address and date on which It should be noted that 97% of the MO was sent. Remember, EMOs don’t have the sender’s address. all Western missionaries go to the 5. If you want to directly credit your subscription into our bank account, nominal Christian parts of the write to us at christianmessengerindia@gmail.com 6. Please consider getting your friends/relatives to subscribe too. globe; only 2% go to the nonChristian part of the globe and less Thanks!

M

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NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 21

MOST of us can look back over our lives and see dreams we have had which never materialized. In our early years all of life is before us. Anything is possible and we dream big dreams. Time and experience "correct" our hopes and we then often realize that some of the things we wished and believed for will never come to pass.

It's a good thing to dream big even if they don't all pan out. There is a particular kind of dream, however, that must come true no matter what. You may have one like that in your dream bag. Joseph in the Old Testament had such a dream when he was only seventeen.

Joseph was one of twelve sons of his father Jacob but he was hands down the favorite and both he and all his brothers knew it. This is what he dreamed: "for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf." (Genesis 37:7) Basically he dreamed that he would someday have authority over his family and they would bow the knee to him. Of course this was something they did not want to hear; they were already jealous of Joseph and the idea that they would ultimately be subject to him was galling to them. The brothers had a solution. "'Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, "A wild beast devoured him." Then let us see what will become of his dreams!'" (Genesis 37:20) They thought they succeeded. They sold him into slavery to a passing band of traders headed for

22 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

Egypt. Joseph's brothers mistakenly thought that if they got rid of Joseph they would get rid of the dream and that would have worked if it had been Joseph's dream. What they didn't understand is that the dream had really been God's. Actually, maybe they suspected as much. In that case, they found themselves resisting Almighty God. Not a good place to be.

In the story of Joseph it is remarkable the way God wove circumstances together over the next thirteen years to bring his dream to pass. "Let us see what will become of his dreams"? Oh yes, they would see! And by the time it happened they were more than ready to submit to Joseph AND to God. In the end the fulfillment of the dream meant their provision and survival as a people. By then they were grateful for the dream and the dreamer.

Do you have a God-given dream for your life that has yet to reach fruition? First, be sure the dream really came from God. Nothing is ultimately as disheartening as hanging on to foolishness instead of real faith. But if you know God gave it, don't give up if time or circumstances tell you that the dream is now impossible.

A really good dream with really good results is going to have resistance. Behind Joseph's brothers was a demonically inspired plan to kill off Joseph and kill off the dream. Satan always believes he can thwart the plans of God. The devil will try to kill off your dream too.

The writer is an author and speaker.

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DINESH D’Souza resigned as president of The King's College after a magazine story revealed that he was engaged to another woman while still married to his wife of 20 years.

The Board of Trustees of The King’s College, a Christian institution based in New York, recently accepted his resignation.

“God has a mighty future for Dinesh, but there are some things he has to go through first,” said Andy Mills, who will serve as interim president for the third time. “Christianity is about truth, but it’s also about mercy. The love and care and attention of the board for Dinesh is amazing.”

“This has been a very difficult period for the board and the college,” he added, according to The Empire State Tribune, the college’s student publication. “The success or failure of an institution is not based on a man. It’s based on what God does.”

The board spent hours in meetings last month after World Magazine reported that D’Souza and a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, stayed in the same hotel room in September. The two were attending an apologetics conference in South Carolina where D’Souza was invited to speak about his box office hit “2016: Obama’s America.”

D’Souza had introduced Joseph as his fiancée to several attendees, according to World. The Indian American has, however, denied any wrongdoing.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

ROMANS 10:9.

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NOVEMBER 2012 w THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER 23

PLUSH leather couches line the room, chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and the stage is in perfect view from the pool table.

One room over, retro pin ball machines are plugged into the wall, next to the massive air hockey table. Tucked away in the corner is a gaming system, hooked up to a giant TV. Walking into The Underground Café, one would never guess they were stepping into a church basement.

The comfortable vibe was exactly what Bob Deppisch had envisioned for the space. The last thing the senior pastor at Grace Family Church wanted was to come across as “boring.”

“I want my kids to say 'Wow, we have the coolest youth group,'” Deppisch said.

Along with housing the church's regular Sunday morning youth services, the coffeehouse is also open Friday nights for anyone who wants to come out.

What was originally started for youth and young adults has turned into a safe place for people of all ages and backgrounds.

Deppisch said on any given Friday, some 40 people will hang out at the venue. When bands come in to play or artists take the stage, standing room only is all that's left.

24 THE CHRISTIAN MESSENGER w NOVEMBER 2012

The rules are guests have to be at least 16 years old, and no drugs or alcohol are permitted.

“It's a nice alternative to the bar,” Deppisch said.

“You get that feel of a fun place.”

The difference is The Underground Café is completely “safe” for those who have dealt with addictions, or just want to stay away from the bar scene. With a professional background in correctional institutions, Deppisch said everyone can come out knowing they can have clean fun.

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