President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and large scale killing of farmers,” prompting Pretoria to accuse Trump of stoking racial divisions.

The tweet appeared to be a response to a Fox News report that focused on South Africa’s land issue and murders of white farmers.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokeswoman said Trump was “misinformed” and the foreign ministry would seek clarification from the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria. A tweet from South Africa’s official government account said, “South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”

Ramaphosa announced on Aug. 1 that the ruling African National Congress plans to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation, as whites still own most of South Africa’s territory. No land has been “seized” since the reform plans were announced, the ANC says.

Ben Carson News

Two million South Africans will be coming together in several days for a massive prayer gathering. Angus Buchan, a white farmer, is the leader of this amazing new movement.

Please pray for this beautiful nation for the overthrow of government corruption and the awful violence and crime that has plagued South Africa in recent years in spite of the Truth and Reconciliation effort of the past.

Pray for this mega-prayer gathering to be anointed and guided by the Holy Spirit and for the breakthrough the Christians, both black and white, want to see in their country.

“300,000 Troops and 900 Tanks: Russia’s Biggest Military Drills Since Cold War

Aug. 28, 2018

Pic: A Russian soldier patrolling near military vehicles in Moscow in April.Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

According to the New York Times, “Russia is mobilizing for its biggest military exercise since the height of the Cold War, the Kremlin says, citing a tense international climate that is “frequently aggressive and unfriendly toward us.”

The exercises, which are set to involve nearly 300,000 Russian troops, 1,000 aircraft and 900 tanks, will also include units from China for the first time. They will start on Sept. 11.

In a separate display of military power, Russia was reported on Tuesday to have assembled a large flotilla of warships off the coast of Syria. Russian news media outlets, citing unnamed defense ministry officials, described it is as Russia’s largest naval deployment in the area since Moscow first intervened in Syria’s civil war in September 2015.

The move follows a flurry of claims by Russia, unsupported by evidence, that the West is preparing to stage a fake chemical weapons attack inside Syria as a pretext for an assault on the forces of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Known as Vostok-2018 or East-2018, the September military exercises, involving land and air units, will begin near Russia’s eastern border with China and Mongolia. Both have agreed to join a series of regular exercises that used to be restricted to Russia and countries that were either once part of the Soviet Union or Soviet allies.

The participation of China, which will send helicopters and about 3,200 troops from the People’s Liberation Army, signals a significant reshaping of military exercises that began in the Soviet era. For decades they were aimed primarily at preparing the Red Army for a possible attack by or on China.

The Soviet Union and China clashed repeatedly along their long border in the late 1960s, nearly tumbling into all-out war. They remained bitter foes until the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev normalized relations with a visit to Beijing in 1989.

President Vladimir V. Putin, his ties with the West severely strained by Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and military incursions into eastern Ukraine, has put a premium on developing ever closer ties with China as a counterweight and insurance policy against the United States.

Asked on Tuesday at a regular briefing with reporters why Vostok-2018 would be so big, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said, “The country’s ability to defend itself in the current international situation, which is frequently quite aggressive and unfriendly toward us, is absolutely justified and has no alternative.”

Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the exercises in Russia’s far east would be the “biggest drill to take place in Russia since 1981.” That was the year large exercises known as Zapad, or West, were held by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.

The last iteration of the Zapad drills was held in September 2017 in conjunction with Belarus, the former Soviet republic and close Russian ally. That action unnerved the Baltic States and Poland, which feared that the fictional nations invented by Russian military planners as targets for a simulated attack were thinly disguised proxies for their own countries.

In the West, Russia faces off against NATO, but on its eastern flank, it has no obvious enemy or rival. The area has instead become a zone where Russia is keen to demonstrate its close ties to China, despite the risk that Russia’s weak economy and vast expanses of sparsely populated territory make it a vulnerable junior partner.

Alexander Gabuev, a China expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research group, said that while the scale of the exercises was significant, “what is most significant is that China is taking part in drills that Russia only used to do with its allies.”(italics ours)

“China was seen as the potential threat or target in exercises like Vostok,” Mr. Gabuev said, “but it is now being invited to join as a friend and even a quasi-ally. This is really unprecedented.”

All the same, he said, Chinese troops taking part in Vostok-2018 may well be restricted to a military training ground in Tsugol, near where the borders of China, Russia and Mongolia meet. That could allow a far bigger Russian contingent elsewhere to prepare for clashes with China.

Russia’s military, Mr. Gabuev said, “is not so naïve that it is not preparing a contingency plan” in case relations with China take a sudden turn for the worse, as has happened many times in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/world/europe/russia-military-drills.html

Pray that Russia and China will not form a military alliance to threaten the West or other regions and nations.

Pray for 5:5:5

• 5 lost family, neighbors or friends
• 5 minutes of scripture-based prayer/day using the scriptures I prayed for you, listed below
• 5 days/week

Unite with 3 or 4 others once a week, ignite your home/office as a house of prayer, asking God how He wants you to reach/love on and serve the lost  ones for whom you are praying.

www.zumeproject.com is an excellent on line in life discipleship training tool that God can use to turn your HOP into a church planting movement of disciples worth multiplying.

Colin Millar, a “prayer igniter” living in Houston, Texas- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Iran’s mullah-led Islamic regime has sentenced four Christians to harsh prison terms for practicing their faith.

Pastor Victor Bet-Tamraz and his wife ShamiramIssavi, who are ethnic Assyrian Christians, and Amin Afshar Naderi and HadiAsgari, who are Christian converts from Islam, were sentenced to a combined total of 45 years in prison, reported CBN News.

The charges were conducting “illegal church activities” and spreading propaganda that “threaten national security.”

“These Christians were solely arrested for practicing their Christian faith, including attending Christmas gatherings and organizing house churches,” Mike Ansari of the group Heart4Iran told CBN News.

Bet-Tamraz was arrested in 2014 when plain-clothed security forces raided his home during a Christmas party.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2017 by an Iranian Revolutionary Court along with Asgari for “forming a group,” meaning their church activity, “composed of more than two people with the purpose of disrupting national security.”

The court also sentenced Naderi to five years in prison for allegedly insulting Islam.

Issavi was sentenced this year to five years in prison for “membership of a group with the purpose of disrupting national security” and another five years for “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security.”

Amnesty International, CBN noted, says Christians in Iran “have been a target of harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials, and imprisonment on national security-related charges solely because of their faith.”The human-rights group said that in the past year alone, “dozens of Christians, mostly Christian converts, have been targeted.”

The four Christians, currently free on bail, are awaiting the verdict of their appeal.“If they are imprisoned, they will be prisoners of conscience,” Ansari told CBN News. “We ask you to continue to pray for the Iranian Christians that are highly persecuted.”

Amnesty International has launched an “urgent action” appeal urging supporters to write to Iranian authorities, asking them to “stop harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and imprisonment of Christians, including converts, in Iran.”

Human Rights Watch also blasted the Iranian regime for the crackdown on Christians, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“Since May 2018, revolutionary courts have sentenced at least 208 members of the religious minority to prison terms and other punishments in trials that violate their basic rights,” the group said in a statement.

“The authorities detained more than 300 community members in the notorious Fashafuyeh and Qarchack prisons after late February protests that included violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Tehran.”

The Post said the European Union, according to Iran experts, appears to be prioritizing the preservation of the Iran nuclear deal over human rights abuses.

The EU is seeking to retain the deal after the U.S. withdrew from it in May.

Tzvi Kahn, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote a policy article titled “The EU’s Passivity on Iran’s Human Rights Abuses,” the Post reported.

“Whereas the Trump administration has issued fresh sanctions against 17 [Iranian] human rights abusers to date, the EU has imposed no new human rights sanctions since the 2015 nuclear deal,” Kahn wrote.

wnd.com

Let's pray for these brave followers of the Lord in Iran and for the fast-growing movement to Christ that they represent. Pray for a new government that will uphold religious freedom and that the Christian movement will explode even more throughout the nation.

An Australian Christian Lobby blogger states ‘The cultural climate of our day often makes the politically engaged Christian in Australia feel isolated. So many issues are beyond us. Safe schools, the rights of parents, conversion therapy, abortion, euthanasia, religious freedom, moral decay, children’s innocence, political apathy, weakened churches. The voices seeking to redefine truth, justice and morality are very loud and increasingly effective.’ He went on to say, ‘Elijah faced an infinitely more desperate set of political and cultural circumstances. He was overwhelmed and desperately cried out to God, ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, demolished your altars, I alone am left, and they seek my life.’ God’s astonishing answer was, ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ God has preserved a great many in Australia who have not bowed the knee.’ We can pray for our Australian brothers and sisters to engage more vigorously, and confidently to make an enormous impact on Australian society.

Farmers are struggling to afford to feed their animals in Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, which is now officially declared 100% in drought. The area produces a quarter of Australia's agricultural output and farmers tell harrowing tales of failing crops, severe water shortages and inability to feed livestock; having to spend the equivalent of £5,768 per truckload of hay to feed animals, and the threat of large cullings.  Cattle farmer David Graham said he was resigned to waiting for rain, adding ‘In our community you support each other through the tough times.’ Mental health group Sane Australia has said that suicide rates in rural regions are 40% higher than urban areas.

The National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF) commented on a press release by the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). Their opening comments were, ‘On 5 July, 2018, the NSCIA published an article titled LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD. In our candid estimation, rather than tell the truth, the article is the exact opposite of the truth. It might have been more proper to have titled it ‘Let the Taqiyya  be told.’ Taqiyya is religious deception and the article they refer to said that Muslims were the targeted victims of herdsmen. NCEF stated categorically that this statement is untrue and Muslims were not victimised, Christians are the victims while the government consents to ongoing genocide and ethno-religious cleansing of communities. NCEF said that the government deliberately obscures the truth as the targets of the Fulani herdsmen are natives of Middle Belt who are mainly Christians. See also next article - Five Christian youths to be hanged.

Muslim Fulani herders do not make the headlines as often as Boko Haram. Christians in the northeast state of Adamawa have fled because of Boko Haram, only to return and find their property occupied by Muslim Fulani herders. Five Christian youths have been sentenced to hang for killing one Fulani herdsman who in turn had allegedly killed 48 people. Who is stopping the violence? Where is the government's protection for citizens? Where is justice? The lack of response by Nigeria's security services is seen as complicit in crimes against Christians. The Numan Federation in Adamawa is the only predominantly Christian area remaining in northern Nigeria. In recent years migration of Muslim Fulani herdsmen into that area has increased. The judicial, military, and security agencies are all controlled by non-Christians and many fear that the Muslim President may use the violence as an excuse to cancel the 2019 elections and remain in power.

Sunni Islam was declared the state religion of Comoros in a referendum vote on constitutional reforms in the southeast African island. The amended constitution reads, ‘The state draws from this religion the principles and rules of Sunnite observance.’ Many believe this will have an impact on the country’s small Christian minority. Things are already very hard for indigenous Christians and this kind of specification is expected to make things even harder for them. The referendum was initiated by President Azali Assoumani and gives him the right to run for another presidential term. Previously power rotated between Comoros’ three islands every five years. In April, Assoumani suspended the constitutional court over ‘incompetence’ which observers saw as an attempt to diminish the rule of law in the country. Open Doors says, ‘In mosques and madrassas Muslim religious leaders teach anti-Christian sentiments and government officials obligate parents to send their children to madrassas.’

A new LifeWay Research study on Christians and prosperity theology concludes that ‘more than a few people in the pews have embraced it’ and ‘evangelicals appear to be to the most eager to embrace a link between God’s financial blessings and their actions.’ Researchers asked 1,010 adults who attend Protestant and non-denominational churches once a month to agree or disagree with three statements: -To receive material blessings from God, I have to do something for God. - if I give more money to my church and charities, God will bless me in return. -God wants me to prosper financially. 1/3rd of Protestants said their church teaches - God will bless them if they donate money. One in four said they have to do something for God to receive material blessings. Two-thirds believe God wants them to prosper.