As details emerge of the shocking tactics used in the two bomb attacks in Indonesia over the last 48 hours, a regional analyst has said he was not surprised by the apparent Islamist motive.

“Just a few weeks before the attacks, the government published a study, according to which close to 25 per cent of university students agree with the idea of a caliphate. Another study showed that eight per cent are ready for violent jihad, if given the opportunity. So in a way did not come as a surprise,” Thomas Muller, analyst at Christian charity Open Doors International’s World Watch Research unit, said in a radio interview for a Catholic broadcaster yesterday , answering a question about how a country once known for its inter-religious tolerance could give way to extremism.

A 2016 report looking at terrorism in Indonesia found that recruitment to the Islamic State group from the country was “one of the lowest” in the region as a proportion of its 200 million population, which it put down to “a strong culture of moderate Islam, a non-repressive government and relative political stability”. The report, by a group of regional analysts, said the threat from IS-inspired militants “should not be under-estimated”, however, given Indonesia’s long history of Islamic terrorism and lack of legal measures to prosecute individuals under suspicion of terrorism.

Yesterday‘s (13 May) suicide…

When American and Israeli officials inaugurated the first-ever U.S. embassy in Jerusalem Monday (May 14) in a festive red, white and blue ceremony, more than 100 evangelical Christians, including former U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann, were on hand.

So were scores of American Jews, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, many of them Orthodox.

President Trump’s December 2017 decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has spurred criticism from those who believe the decision will impede a broader peace settlement in the Middle East by denying Palestinian claims to the city. It has also brought fears of increased violence. (As of this writing, at least 58 Palestinian deaths have been reported along Israel’s border with Gaza in protests against the embassy’s relocation.)

But for some evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews, the embassy’s relocation is not only a smart political move but a fulfillment of divine prophecy. 

“We see the embassy as crucial to God’s timing to bring about the revelation of the messiah,” the Rev. David Swaggerty, the leader of .Life Ministries in Columbus, Ohio, said following a joint Christian-Jewish Bible study session hosted at the Israeli parliament the day before the embassy ceremony.

A campus of an eight-location multiracial megachurch in Ohio celebrated its 10th anniversary by buying gas for over 100 cars on Saturday.

The Liberty Campus of Victory Christian Center, an Assemblies of God congregation that has eight campuses across Ohio and Pennsylvania, spent over $3,200 to buy 10 gallons of gas for the first 100 cars that stopped by a local BP station on Saturday morning as a way of giving thanks to a community it has served for the last decade.

Led by VCC Liberty pastor Lock P. Beachum Jr. and aided by local police, about 30 volunteers from the church manned the pumps at the gas station and blessed Youngstown-area residents by pumping fuel paid for by the church’s community outreach initiative Operation Impact.

Beachum told The Christian Post that for over an hour, he and the volunteers provided at least 112 cars with about $30.00 worth of gas each.

“I actually heard about a couple of people who cried. They were just so blown away of this act of kindness,” Beachum told CP. “Our church is in a distressed area, so [for] a number of folk just being in the situation of life that they are…