One Iranian Christian convert imprisoned for his faith has been released early from prison and it is expected that two more converts will also be granted an early release.

According to Middle East Concern, Asghar Salehi was freed from his six-month prison sentence this week after being charged with propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

The nonprofit advocacy group that operates in 24 countries across the Middle East and North Africa previously reported that Salehi was arrested along with Mohammadreza Rezaei and four other associates in the Fars Province after their homes were raided by intelligence officers in September 2018.

Asghar was allegedly interrogated for three days in which he was kept blindfolded for most of the time. He was eventually transferred to Eghlid prison for eight days before being released on bail.

Asghar, Mohammadreza and one other convert whose name was not reported were summoned to a court hearing in Eghlid last April and charged for their Christian activities.

According to the advocacy group, the judge refused to allow Asghar to speak. Additionally, he was warned that he was being monitored and told he would have to commit to stopping his Christian activities before another court session.

Last September, the three men were reportedly sentenced to six months in prison under Article 500 of the Iranian legal code banning “propaganda against the System through promoting Zionist Christianity.”

Asghar was again arrested last December and sent to Eghlid prison. He and the other two applied for a pardon and early release. According to MEC, Asghar’s request for early release was granted after serving only two months of the six.

While he was freed on Feb. 2, MEC reports that the two other converts are scheduled to be released on Feb. 8.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith

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Anti-Semitism is on the rise throughout the world and to combat increasing prejudice and persecution Christians United for Israel, the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., will be releasing an upcoming documentary titled, “Never Again?”

“Violent anti-Semitism is rising across the country, and people of conscience cannot sit idly by,” CUFI founder and Chairman, pastor John Hagee, said in a statement shared with The Christian Post.

“Anti-Semites have used the fertile ground of ignorance to grow their malicious ideology. If we are to stem the tide, we must inoculate the next generation against the world’s oldest hatred by empowering them with knowledge and reaching them with a message of unity,” he added. “If we are to fulfill the promise of ‘Never Again,’ we cannot allow the memory of the Holocaust to fade.”

CUFI released a trailer for the feature-length film just days after Holocaust Remembrance Day when 200 survivors gathered at the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp to honor and remember their loved ones who perished there from illness and starvation or execution. That same week, the Pew Research Center released a survey that found 45 percent of Americans surveyed were unaware that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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A Holocaust survivor shared her story of pain and loss to encourage the international community to “stand up, call out religious and ethnic intolerance and persecution, and work toward the idea of never again.”

Theodora Klayman shared her story Wednesday during a National Prayer Breakfast sideline event on religious persecution worldwide co-hosted by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and 21Wilberforce.

Born in 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, Klayman was 7 years old at the end of World War II.

“I still do remember, so I will speak about that,” she said.

She described Yugoslavia as a country “cobbled together after World War I” and made up of “differing historical alliances, many religions, several languages,” and “serious ideological and political disagreements.”

These disagreements resulted in the formation of an ultranationalist group known as the Ustaša, who broke off from the Yugoslav establishment and collaborated with the Nazis. With the support of Nazi Germany, the Ustaša ruled the Independent State of Croatia, “eager to persecute anyone who was not politically conservative, Croatian, and Catholic,” Klayman said.

Klayman’s grandfather was a Jewish Rabbi who had served as the community rabbi for more than 40 years and taught religion courses in the local school alongside the Catholic priest. She described her family’s relationship with their predominantly Catholic neighbors as “very cordial.”

“For the forty years my family lived there, practically no anti-Semitic incidents occurred in that area,” she recalled.

But just a few months after the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, Klayman’s parents and infant brother, Zdravko, were arrested. Her father was deported to the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp and their mother to Stara Gradiska, a subcamp of Jasenovac.

Fortunately, their housekeeper was able to get Zdravko released from jail. Both children were taken to Ludbreg, where they were cared for by their grandparents.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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Actress and Christian filmmaker Madeline Carroll attended the 28th annual Movieguide Awards where she celebrated God’s faithfulness in her life.

Carroll became a breakout star for her role in the hit movie “I Can Only Imagine,” based on the life of Christian singer Bart Millard. The film brought in $17.1 million domestically during its opening weekend and over $83 million overall, surpassing expectations. Before her big break, the California native almost gave up on acting altogether after years of struggling in the industry.

“The biggest thing I can say is, God is so faithful. He is so faithful over our dreams,” Carroll told The Christian Post last month on the red carpet at the popular award show that honors faith and family content.

After “I Can Only Imagine,” doors opened for Carroll to also get involved behind the camera.

“That was something I had desired for a little while but I never knew how it was going to happen or how I was going to get there,” she added. “Each step I took, the Lord literally just made the path clear before me.”

“He is a faithful person if you are faithful to Him. He is faithful to you and He has been so faithful to me,” Carroll maintained while encouraging others. “He has your dreams; He is a faithful God. He is an all-covering God and He will make a way where there is no way, and that’s what He’s done for me.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has denounced Wells Fargo for withdrawing donations from a state voucher program because some of the schools students are choosing to attend oppose homosexuality and transgender ideology.

Last month, Wells Fargo, along with Fifth Third Bank, withdrew donations to the Step Up for Students program after The Orlando Sentinel reported that some of the schools involved in the program have conservative policies on LGBT issues.

“We have reviewed this matter carefully and have decided to no longer support Step Up for Students,” said Wells Fargo in a statement, The Hill reported.

“All of us at Wells Fargo highly value diversity and inclusion, and we oppose discrimination of any kind.”

In an interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins earlier this week, Rubio said Wells Fargo and others withdrawing support from the scholarship fund were only hurting the less fortunate with their decisions.

Rubio explained that the scholarship program allows parents to choose which school to send their children to and many of the options are schools without official biblical stances on LGBT issues.

“Doing what they did is not going to hurt those schools. Those schools are not going to abandon the Bible over a government program. They existed before this program,” said Rubio.

“Who they are hurting are low-income kids, because they are not going to be able to go to school and probably not go to a school that doesn’t have those policies, by the way.”

Rubio said he believed that this was an example of “corporate America” trying to “buy themselves into the good graces of broader society” or to cover for major internal problems, such as Well Fargo’s recent series of scandals.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

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UPDATE: 12 AM, FEB. 9: By Sunday morning, deaths from the coronavirus reached 811, surpassing SARS, and the number of confirmed infections rose to 37,198, most of them in Hubei province, according to Chinese officials.

As the death toll from the coronavirus reaches 724 and the number of confirmed cases rises to 34,546, Christians in China — where the illness originated — are distributing masks and sharing the love of Christ on the streets in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.

While fear and insecurity have gripped the 11 million residents of Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei province, Christians there have been out on the streets giving out masks and sharing the love of Jesus and the hope the Gospel brings, according to Christian Broadcasting Network’s Asia correspondent Lucille Talusan.

“They’re very courageous,” she was quoted as saying. “They give out masks and they say that they are Christians and they share the love of Christ and point to Jesus to bring hope to them and their families and the whole of China. … This is really a break-through.”

The coronavirus originated in Wuhan about two months ago and can lead to respiratory illnesses which are fatal in some cases. While at least 724 people have died from the disease and 34,546 people have been confirmed to have the illness, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher, according to Bloomberg.

Earlier during the week, a Chinese pastor living Wuhan, identified only as “A Wuhan Pastor,” wrote to the international faith community, urging them to pray and revealing that fellow pastors from around the world had been reaching out.

“It is readily apparent that we are facing a test of our faith,” the pastor wrote. “The situation is so critical, yet [we are] trusting in the Lord’s promises, that his thoughts toward us are of peace, and not evil (Jeremiah. 29:11), and that he allows for a time of testing, not to destroy us, but to establish us.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar

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A Florida woman, who filed a federal complaint after her homeowners association barred her from continuing to host a Bible study in the social room of her own condominium complex, has reached a settlement allowing her to carry on with the religious activity, a legal group that represented the Christian woman said.

The agreement states that Donna Dunbar, a Seventh-day Adventist lay minister who runs a nationally recognized soup kitchen with her husband, “may continue to use the social room on a weekly basis to hold a Bible study without being subject to special rules or restrictions,” said First Liberty Institute in a statement, calling the settlement “excellent news.”

“Her victory is more proof that we are taking part in a historic turning point when people of faith are reclaiming religious freedom at an unprecedented rate,” the group said.

Dunbar, a retired senior citizen, started a small women’s Bible study last year in the common room of the Cambridge House complex in Port Charlotte, Florida, for two hours on Monday mornings. Less than 10 friends, some of whom are not Cambridge residents, attended the study.

Around three months later, Dunbar was told by the then-treasurer for the Cambridge House Board of Directors that the group would have to acquire insurance for the meetings. No other groups were required to purchase insurance to use the common areas for their meetings. After disputing the need for insurance, Dunbar went ahead and complied with the demands so that the weekly Bible study could continue.

However, the Cambridge House board of directors then passed a resolution stating, “Prayers and other religious services, observations, or meetings of any nature shall not occur … in or upon any of the common elements.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar

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Native missionaries in a country in West Africa did not know what to expect when they went to preach to inmates at a prison they had never visited, in a town unknown to them.

After a more than six-hour trip on rough roads that put them in town in the hottest part of the afternoon, they had to rely on people in the street to help them find the prison, the native ministry leader said.

They had a plan for how to proclaim Christ in a way that would most resonate with the inmates, but some things you couldn’t plan for in the 92-percent Muslim country. They were stunned to be greeted by a social service officer who had witnessed their preaching in the prison closer to their ministry base.

The social service officer began shouting to the prison personnel eating lunch in an adjoining room, according to the ministry leader.

The message seemed to be the last chance for the inmates and the only hope God offered them.

“These people that you see here among us have transformed the lives of detainees and prison officers during their stay in our prison, and I myself was present that day,” the officer told those eating. “Please rise to welcome those partners who came from far away. I know them, they always come with good news – they are Christians, men with a big heart, to come to see us.”

In a country that is less than 1 percent Protestant Christian, the ministry leader said the officer’s testimony opened hearts in their favor before they had even begun.

“Without further ado, the other leaders stood up to walk towards us,” he said. “Each one came in turn, to present himself to us according to his name and rank. Thank you, Lord – suddenly the atmosphere had changed, and joy and peace invaded everyone’s hearts.”

The prison warden led them to his office to welcome them, and the missionaries presented the soap, toothbrushes and other hygiene products they had purchased for prisoners in the sanitation-depleted facility.

The prison officials felt a great relief to see all the donated items, the warden told him.

“The warden testified that we were the first partners to come to them to offer them such gifts,” the leader said. “He said, ‘Our prison is totally lacking in sanitation products and materials,’ as he pointed to the reserves, which was almost exhausted. ‘The detainees have really been in need for a very long time,’ he continued. Seeing the amount of donations, the entire penitentiary team continued to thank us.”

SOURCE: Christian Aid Mission

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