Life After Abortion Preview
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Abortionist Who Did Over 40,000 Abortions Becomes a Pro-Life Activist
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/04/27/abortionist-who-did-over-40000-abortions-becomes-a-pro-life-activist/
(LiveActionNews) — It should have been a routine abortion in the early second trimester. The woman was having her ninth abortion, as former Serbian abortionist Stojan Adasevic describes in the documentary “The First Hour.”
Adasevic, who is now a pro-life leader in Serbia, had performed over 48,000 abortions before doubts about the procedure made him stop —other sources claim that number is closer to 60,000.
Adasevic credits his pro-life conversion to two things: an unusual series of dreams, and this particularly disturbing experience he had while performing what should have been a routine abortion. He describes the procedure:
I opened up the womb, tore the placenta, the birth waters flowed out, and I got to work on the inside with my abortion forceps. I grabbed something, crushed it a little, removed it, and threw it onto a cloth. I look, and I see a hand – quite a large hand. The child was 3, perhaps 4 months old. I had no tape to measure it.
At three months, a preborn baby is fully formed with fingers and toes. All of the organs and body systems are present. The baby has fingerprints, and breathes amniotic fluid in preparation for life outside the womb. Adasevic goes on to say:
Someone had spilled some iodine on a part of the table and the hand fell in such a way that the nerve endings came in contact with the iodine. And what happened? I look and I say, “my God, the hand is moving by itself.” I nevertheless carry on with my forceps, and again catch something, crush it, and pull it out. I think to myself, “let it not be a leg.” I pull, and look. A leg.
I want to put the leg on the table, carefully, so that it isn’t near the moving hand. As my arm falls, I hear a bang behind my back. I jumped, and automatically, my grip on the forceps loosened. At this very moment, the leg completed a somersault and fell next to the hand.
I look – both hand and leg are moving by themselves. I nevertheless, once again, direct my instrument into the womb, and begin to crush everything inside. I think to myself that all I need to complete the picture is the heart. I continue to crush, and crush, and crush, and till I am sure that I have ground everything inside into a pulp, and once again pull out the forceps.
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As I pull out the mess, thinking it will be bone fragments I lay it on the cloth, I look, and I see a human heart, contracting and expanding and beating, beating, beating. I thought I would go mad. I can see that the heartbeat is slowing, ever more slowly, and more slowly still, until it finally stops completely. Nobody could’ve seen what I had seen with my very own eyes, and be more convinced than I was — I had killed a human being.
This strange and terrible experience opened Adasevic’s eyes to the horror of what he was doing. This powerful encounter with the humanity of the preborn was stark in contrast to the training he received. In the documentary, Adasevic describes his daily work as an abortionist:
There were times when I used to carry out 20, 25, 30 or even 35 abortions every day. We used to work five days a week….
He had been trained to regard the preborn baby as subhuman. He had been taught that life did not begin until after the baby was born.
They taught us and they taught us, told us that life began with the first cry. When a baby cries for the first time. That up to that moment, a human being is like any other organ in a woman’s body, like an appendix. The removal of an appendix from a mother’s body is not murder.
Only a child that had been born, and had cried, could be killed. It hasn’t cried, then there can be no talk of murder. That is why, immediately after birth, children were taken and their heads submerged in a bucket of water. A child that would take in water instead of air. And would never cry. That was, therefore, not regarded as murder. Terrible, but that was how things were.
Abortion and infanticide, then, were morally permissible. Both were legal. Adasevic said he first began to question abortion when he began having unusual dreams. The documentary notes:
He dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence.
The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night, he asked the man in black and white who he was. “My name is Thomas Aquinas.”
“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked me in my dream.
“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,” St. Thomas told me.
Thomas Aquinas would be a strange figure to appear in an anti-abortion dream. Aquinas was not pro-life. He did not oppose abortion in his writings, and did not believe life began at conception. He believed that the soul did not enter the preborn baby until 40 days after conception (for a boy) or 80 days (for a girl). Prior to that, abortion was not considered to be wrong.
It is more likely that the abortionist’s dreams were a function of a subconscious mind wrestling with guilt. Ultrasound had recently become available, and it showed moving pictures of preborn babies. The new technology did not sway him – but he started having the series of dreams.
After the disturbing dreams and the horrific abortion experience, Adasevic told the hospital where he worked that he would no longer do abortions. His pro-life conversion came at great cost:
Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut my salary in half, fired my daughter from her job, and did not allow my son to enter the university.
Adasevic has worked to change hearts and minds. He was responsible for the airing of a pro-life documentary on Serbian television. His dramatic conversion story is chilling, but also inspiring. A dedicated abortionist has become a pro-life hero.
Incidentally, Adasevic owes his life to another abortionist’s mistake. His mother was pregnant with him when she sought an abortion, but the abortionist botched it and he was born alive.
LifeNews.com Note: Sarah Terzo is a pro-life liberal who runs ClinicQuotes.com, a web site devoted to exposing the abortion industry. She is a member of the pro-life groups PLAGAL and Secular Pro-Life. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. This originally appeared at Live Action News.
(LiveActionNews) — It should have been a routine abortion in the early second trimester. The woman was having her ninth abortion, as former Serbian abortionist Stojan Adasevic describes in the documentary “The First Hour.”
Adasevic, who is now a pro-life leader in Serbia, had performed over 48,000 abortions before doubts about the procedure made him stop —other sources claim that number is closer to 60,000.
Adasevic credits his pro-life conversion to two things: an unusual series of dreams, and this particularly disturbing experience he had while performing what should have been a routine abortion. He describes the procedure:
I opened up the womb, tore the placenta, the birth waters flowed out, and I got to work on the inside with my abortion forceps. I grabbed something, crushed it a little, removed it, and threw it onto a cloth. I look, and I see a hand – quite a large hand. The child was 3, perhaps 4 months old. I had no tape to measure it.
At three months, a preborn baby is fully formed with fingers and toes. All of the organs and body systems are present. The baby has fingerprints, and breathes amniotic fluid in preparation for life outside the womb. Adasevic goes on to say:
Someone had spilled some iodine on a part of the table and the hand fell in such a way that the nerve endings came in contact with the iodine. And what happened? I look and I say, “my God, the hand is moving by itself.” I nevertheless carry on with my forceps, and again catch something, crush it, and pull it out. I think to myself, “let it not be a leg.” I pull, and look. A leg.
I want to put the leg on the table, carefully, so that it isn’t near the moving hand. As my arm falls, I hear a bang behind my back. I jumped, and automatically, my grip on the forceps loosened. At this very moment, the leg completed a somersault and fell next to the hand.
I look – both hand and leg are moving by themselves. I nevertheless, once again, direct my instrument into the womb, and begin to crush everything inside. I think to myself that all I need to complete the picture is the heart. I continue to crush, and crush, and crush, and till I am sure that I have ground everything inside into a pulp, and once again pull out the forceps.
Like this pro-life news article? Please support LifeNews during our current fundraising campaign with a donation!
As I pull out the mess, thinking it will be bone fragments I lay it on the cloth, I look, and I see a human heart, contracting and expanding and beating, beating, beating. I thought I would go mad. I can see that the heartbeat is slowing, ever more slowly, and more slowly still, until it finally stops completely. Nobody could’ve seen what I had seen with my very own eyes, and be more convinced than I was — I had killed a human being.
This strange and terrible experience opened Adasevic’s eyes to the horror of what he was doing. This powerful encounter with the humanity of the preborn was stark in contrast to the training he received. In the documentary, Adasevic describes his daily work as an abortionist:
There were times when I used to carry out 20, 25, 30 or even 35 abortions every day. We used to work five days a week….
He had been trained to regard the preborn baby as subhuman. He had been taught that life did not begin until after the baby was born.
They taught us and they taught us, told us that life began with the first cry. When a baby cries for the first time. That up to that moment, a human being is like any other organ in a woman’s body, like an appendix. The removal of an appendix from a mother’s body is not murder.
Only a child that had been born, and had cried, could be killed. It hasn’t cried, then there can be no talk of murder. That is why, immediately after birth, children were taken and their heads submerged in a bucket of water. A child that would take in water instead of air. And would never cry. That was, therefore, not regarded as murder. Terrible, but that was how things were.
Abortion and infanticide, then, were morally permissible. Both were legal. Adasevic said he first began to question abortion when he began having unusual dreams. The documentary notes:
He dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence.
The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night, he asked the man in black and white who he was. “My name is Thomas Aquinas.”
“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked me in my dream.
“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,” St. Thomas told me.
Thomas Aquinas would be a strange figure to appear in an anti-abortion dream. Aquinas was not pro-life. He did not oppose abortion in his writings, and did not believe life began at conception. He believed that the soul did not enter the preborn baby until 40 days after conception (for a boy) or 80 days (for a girl). Prior to that, abortion was not considered to be wrong.
It is more likely that the abortionist’s dreams were a function of a subconscious mind wrestling with guilt. Ultrasound had recently become available, and it showed moving pictures of preborn babies. The new technology did not sway him – but he started having the series of dreams.
After the disturbing dreams and the horrific abortion experience, Adasevic told the hospital where he worked that he would no longer do abortions. His pro-life conversion came at great cost:
Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut my salary in half, fired my daughter from her job, and did not allow my son to enter the university.
Adasevic has worked to change hearts and minds. He was responsible for the airing of a pro-life documentary on Serbian television. His dramatic conversion story is chilling, but also inspiring. A dedicated abortionist has become a pro-life hero.
Incidentally, Adasevic owes his life to another abortionist’s mistake. His mother was pregnant with him when she sought an abortion, but the abortionist botched it and he was born alive.
LifeNews.com Note: Sarah Terzo is a pro-life liberal who runs ClinicQuotes.com, a web site devoted to exposing the abortion industry. She is a member of the pro-life groups PLAGAL and Secular Pro-Life. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. This originally appeared at Live Action News.
Monday, April 27, 2015
How Much Does God Care?
By Peter Amsterdam
http://anchor.tfionline.com/post/how-much-does-god-care/
Audio length: 7:02
Download Audio (6.4MB)
I once heard three different people say three different but connected things within the span of a week, which got me thinking about God’s interaction and participation in my life.
One person said that he didn’t know if God actually cares about what we do in our lives, and that He may not be interested in the choices we make beyond accepting salvation. That person felt that perhaps most of our choices don’t matter to Him—especially if they aren’t significant choices.
The second person said that he had listened to a podcast in which the speaker presented a position that God only intervenes in our lives after we have reached the limits of our means of finding His will—that He expects us to exhaust all available means and do everything we are able to do before He will intervene.
The third person brought up the point of view that when God made the world, He was like a clockmaker who assembled and wound up the clock and then walked away, letting it run completely on its own. God did the initial work of creation, and He created the laws of nature, but from that point on, He has let things run themselves without further involvement or intervention.
In the days that followed, I reflected on these comments. These outlooks disturbed me. Something inside me caused me to resist the thought that God didn’t care or want to be involved in my life, or that to get His attention I had to work so hard at it that it barely seemed worth the trouble.
If any of these three concepts are true, then what beyond salvation would I need God for? What good is He to me? In times of tumult, when I need help and direction, I need the confidence that I can get His guidance and not be wondering if He cares or will get involved.—Or how bad things have to become before He will do so.
When I mulled over these three points of view, I was reminded that God has intervened in my life on several occasions in ways which made it clear to me that He isinterested in the decisions I make. There was one time, years ago, when I had a dream which gave me the answer before I even knew the question. The dream preceded my being offered two different jobs within the few days that followed. The dream made it very clear which offer to take, and doing so put me on the direct path that led me to my major work for the Lord.
There have been numerous times when I have sought the Lord’s guidance and have received direction from Him. I’ve sought for solutions in prayer and found them. I’ve asked Him to give me answers, and He has—through speaking to me in prophecy, speaking to my heart, by reading His Word, and through circumstances. He’s given me clear counsel and direction which, when followed, has worked. I know from personal experience that God cares, that He is interested in me and intervenes in my life.
Over and over again in both Old and New Testaments, there are examples of God’s interaction with man—His intervention in events, His giving guidance and counsel, direction or warning.
The Bible explicitly states that we should look to God for guidance in our decision-making, and that if we do, He will give us direction:
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.1
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.2
In the Psalms, David clearly showed that he believed in God’s guidance when he prayed, “Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto Thee.”3
Jesus said that if we are in need, we should:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.4
Jesus believed His Father would guide Him in decisions, as evidenced when He selected the apostles from among His disciples:
It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles.5
It’s evident from Scripture that God wants to and will interact with us if we want Him to.
Jesus also promised that once He physically left the earth, the Father would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers. He said that the Holy Spirit would live in us.
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.6
If God was going to send His Spirit to dwell within me forever, then it stands to reason that He is interested in me as an individual, and in what I do and the decisions I make. I would make the case that He’s actually quite interested. And not just interested butinvolved.
I see plenty of evidence that God wants to be part of my life, to play an active role, even an interactive role. He and I are working together. His Spirit—dwelling within me, guiding my decision-making—helps me in my journey through life.
In a number of Bible translations the word “Counselor,” used to describe the Holy Spirit, is rendered as Helper. I like that image—God’s Spirit being my Helper. I love it that God is an active part of my life, that He is interested in me, in who I am and what I do.
I’m so grateful that He didn’t just wind me up and walk away, but that instead He gave me the means to interact with Him through His Word and His Spirit. I love it that His Spirit dwells within me.
Originally published September 2010. Adapted and republished April 2015.
Read by Jon Marc.
Footnotes:
1 Proverbs 3:6 NKJV.
2 Psalm 32:8 NKJV.
3 Psalm 143:8 KJV.
4 Matthew 7:7–8 ESV.
5 Luke 6:12–13 NASB.
6 John 14:16–17,20 NIV.
http://anchor.tfionline.com/post/how-much-does-god-care/
Audio length: 7:02
Download Audio (6.4MB)
I once heard three different people say three different but connected things within the span of a week, which got me thinking about God’s interaction and participation in my life.
One person said that he didn’t know if God actually cares about what we do in our lives, and that He may not be interested in the choices we make beyond accepting salvation. That person felt that perhaps most of our choices don’t matter to Him—especially if they aren’t significant choices.
The second person said that he had listened to a podcast in which the speaker presented a position that God only intervenes in our lives after we have reached the limits of our means of finding His will—that He expects us to exhaust all available means and do everything we are able to do before He will intervene.
The third person brought up the point of view that when God made the world, He was like a clockmaker who assembled and wound up the clock and then walked away, letting it run completely on its own. God did the initial work of creation, and He created the laws of nature, but from that point on, He has let things run themselves without further involvement or intervention.
In the days that followed, I reflected on these comments. These outlooks disturbed me. Something inside me caused me to resist the thought that God didn’t care or want to be involved in my life, or that to get His attention I had to work so hard at it that it barely seemed worth the trouble.
If any of these three concepts are true, then what beyond salvation would I need God for? What good is He to me? In times of tumult, when I need help and direction, I need the confidence that I can get His guidance and not be wondering if He cares or will get involved.—Or how bad things have to become before He will do so.
When I mulled over these three points of view, I was reminded that God has intervened in my life on several occasions in ways which made it clear to me that He isinterested in the decisions I make. There was one time, years ago, when I had a dream which gave me the answer before I even knew the question. The dream preceded my being offered two different jobs within the few days that followed. The dream made it very clear which offer to take, and doing so put me on the direct path that led me to my major work for the Lord.
There have been numerous times when I have sought the Lord’s guidance and have received direction from Him. I’ve sought for solutions in prayer and found them. I’ve asked Him to give me answers, and He has—through speaking to me in prophecy, speaking to my heart, by reading His Word, and through circumstances. He’s given me clear counsel and direction which, when followed, has worked. I know from personal experience that God cares, that He is interested in me and intervenes in my life.
Over and over again in both Old and New Testaments, there are examples of God’s interaction with man—His intervention in events, His giving guidance and counsel, direction or warning.
The Bible explicitly states that we should look to God for guidance in our decision-making, and that if we do, He will give us direction:
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.1
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.2
In the Psalms, David clearly showed that he believed in God’s guidance when he prayed, “Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto Thee.”3
Jesus said that if we are in need, we should:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.4
Jesus believed His Father would guide Him in decisions, as evidenced when He selected the apostles from among His disciples:
It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles.5
It’s evident from Scripture that God wants to and will interact with us if we want Him to.
Jesus also promised that once He physically left the earth, the Father would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers. He said that the Holy Spirit would live in us.
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.6
If God was going to send His Spirit to dwell within me forever, then it stands to reason that He is interested in me as an individual, and in what I do and the decisions I make. I would make the case that He’s actually quite interested. And not just interested butinvolved.
I see plenty of evidence that God wants to be part of my life, to play an active role, even an interactive role. He and I are working together. His Spirit—dwelling within me, guiding my decision-making—helps me in my journey through life.
In a number of Bible translations the word “Counselor,” used to describe the Holy Spirit, is rendered as Helper. I like that image—God’s Spirit being my Helper. I love it that God is an active part of my life, that He is interested in me, in who I am and what I do.
I’m so grateful that He didn’t just wind me up and walk away, but that instead He gave me the means to interact with Him through His Word and His Spirit. I love it that His Spirit dwells within me.
Originally published September 2010. Adapted and republished April 2015.
Read by Jon Marc.
Footnotes:
1 Proverbs 3:6 NKJV.
2 Psalm 32:8 NKJV.
3 Psalm 143:8 KJV.
4 Matthew 7:7–8 ESV.
5 Luke 6:12–13 NASB.
6 John 14:16–17,20 NIV.
It wasn’t just the Armenians: The other 20th century massacres we ignore
By Adam Taylor, Washington Post, April 24, 2015
This week is being marked as the 100th anniversary of the killings of more than a million Armenians during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Despite considerable opposition from the Turkish government, the anniversary is bringing renewed attention to an often overlooked historical issue, with President Obama in particular facing criticism for not using the word “genocide” to describe the killings. This didn’t happen by accident. The attention placed on the massacre this year is the result of a long and coordinated campaign by Armenia and the Armenian diaspora to ensure that a dark and sometimes disputed part of history wasn’t forgotten. It was this campaign that has slowly dragged the Armenian tragedy out of obscure disputes and into mainstream discussion. It doesn’t always work that way, though. In fact, what happens far more often is that the difficult parts of history often are forgotten or ignored. The 20th century was bloody and violent, and while some horrors are at least relatively well-known–the Holocaust or the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, for example–others have become mere footnotes in history. So, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian killings, here are some of the lesser-known massacres of the 20th century, many of which are considered genocides, too. Unfortunately, because history is so bloody, this list is far from exhaustive. The Herero and Namaqua genocide. When Pope Francis referred to the 1915 killings recently and sparked a backlash from Turkey, he not only called the killings a genocide, but also “the first genocide of the 20th century.” Even if historians would agree with the former, they might have some disagreements with the latter. Between 1904 and 1908, tens of thousands of Herero and Namaqua people were killed in what is now Namibia during German colonial rule. These people were indigenous to an area then known a German South West Africa which was the first colony of Germany, a latecomer to the imperial land grab. After uprisings by both the Herero and the Namaqua, a German general in charge of the region ordered that the indigenous people should be “annihilated” or, if this was not possible, expelled from the land. Unarmed men, women and children were killed by German troops, and huge numbers of Herero and Namaqua people were sent to concentration camps as a form of collective punishment. It’s now thought that as many as 70,000 Herero and 7,000 Namaqua died. In 2004, Germany apologized for the killings, now thought to be the first genocide of the 20th century. Many see the killings as a precursor to the Holocaust. The Ottoman killings of Assyrians and Greeks. The Armenians weren’t the only group targeted during the chaotic collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It’s thought that as many as 250,000 Assyrians, mostly Christians, living in Mesopotamia were killed by Ottoman forces during the period around World War I. Many of those who survived were dispersed throughout the Middle East. A handful of governments, including Armenia, have recognized the killings as a genocide. At the same time, in Anatolia, the Ottoman Empire killed hundreds of thousands of Greek Christians. While the total number of deaths is unclear, some estimates put it at more than 1 million. Since 1994, Greece has held a remembrance for the killings, which it views as a genocide. Holodomor. Between 1932 and 1933, estimates say that as many of 10 million Ukrainians–almost a third of the population at the time–were killed by a devastating famine. The mass starvation was of a truly horrific scale: There were reports of cannibalism, and entire villages were wiped out. It’s not just the scale of the famine that merits its inclusion here. Most agree now that the famine was man-made, designed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to either eradicate private landowners or perhaps the targeting of Ukrainians as an ethnic group. In 2006, Ukraine’s parliament officially recognized the “Holodomor”–or “Death by Hunger”–as a genocide. But Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, has resisted calls for any compensation for the mass deaths. The Nanking Massacre. In 1937, during the Sino-Japanese war, the Imperial Japanese Army marched into Nanking, then the Chinese capital. The city, now known as Nanjing, was left virtually undefended, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed, if not more (Chinese historians tend to put the number at 300,000, a higher estimate than their Western peers). The six-week spree of violence left the city devastated in many ways. The post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East concluded that some 20,000 rapes occurred during the first month of Japanese occupation, lending the tragedy its other grim name: “The Rape of Nanking.” Thanks to some remarkable scholarship over the past few decades, the Nanking Massacre is hardly obscure anymore. But it remains a disputed issue, with Japanese nationalists (and the current Japanese government) accused of downplaying its significance, or even suggesting that it never happened. The German Expulsions. While the horrors committed by Nazi Germany are well known, what’s lesser acknowledged is what happened to the Germans scattered in Eastern Europe after Germany lost the war. These Germans, who had been left living in places that reverted to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, had to make their way back to Germany and Austria. Many were forcibly expelled from their homes, some were sent to internment camps. R.M. Douglas, a historian who studies the expulsions, has described it as “not merely the largest forced migration but probably the largest single movement of population in human history,” with more than 12 million civilians forced out. It was effectively what would now be considered “ethnic cleansing,” Douglas argued, and, inevitably, masses died–at least 473,000 by one count. “The Nazis’ crimes had been far worse,” German newspaper Der Spiegel wrote in 2011, “but the suffering of ethnic Germans was immense.” The aftermath of the 30th September Movement. Following a failed coup d’etat in 1965 by a group referred to as the 30th September Movement, General Suharto led an anti-communist purge in Indonesia that eventually turned into widespread massacres around the country. In the end, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), once one of the largest, was virtually wiped out: Estimates for the number of dead start at 500,000. For decades, there was little discussion of the killings in 1965-1966. Few foreign observers saw the events and many foreign governments–including the United States–viewed the anti-communist movement as a good thing. When Suharto became president in 1967, an official silence was installed across the country. Suharto would end up being president for 32 years: To this day, communist organizations are officially banned. It was only in the past few years that discussions about the terrible events began to take place. In 2010, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court struck down a ban on several books about the coup that mentioned the killings. In 2012, American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer released “The Act of Killing,” a documentary that saw perpetrators act out their killings, which sparked renewed international attention. The Bangladesh Genocide. The Partition of India after 1947 saw one of the world’s largest migrations ever: Some estimates suggest 2 million or more died in the chaos. It also left Pakistan split between the main rump of its body to the west of the new state of India, and a smaller province of East Bengal, later renamed East Pakistan, to the east. This split state didn’t last, with terrible consequences. In 1971, West Pakistan began a military crackdown on Bengali calls for independence, which eventually led to a nine-month war that birthed Bangladesh. That war resulted in an estimated 10 million refugees, and while there is no clear death toll, estimates put the number of deaths in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. The Bangladeshi government has said that as many as 3 million people died, and many observers consider it a genocide. The war’s toll on women was also especially awful: Estimates say that at least 200,000 people were raped. Recent investigations have also focused on the role the United States could have, and perhaps should have, played in ending the conflict. Pakistan was reliant on U.S. military hardware, journalist Gary J. Bass noted in his book “The Blood Telegram,” but President Richard Nixon was fearful of using it, as Pakistan was a secret conduit for communications to communist China. Ethiopia’s Red Terror. Between 1976 and 1978, the Ethiopian government ran a brutal counter-insurgency campaign which they dubbed “Red Terror.” Following the political vacuum created when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by a military junta in 1974, a new Marxist government, led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, sought to eradicate the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party and other opposition groups. Estimates of those left dead vary greatly–Human Rights Watch says that the figure was “certainly well in excess of 10,000” and that the killings were “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.” Other estimates say as many as 500,000 were killed. Mengistu was deposed in 1991, and fled to exile in Zimbabwe. In 2006, an Ethiopian court found him guilty of genocide, though some doubt that the label is appropriate, as the killings did not target one particular group. Mengistu remains free in Zimbabwe. |
God’s Presence in Times of Difficulty: “Thou Art With Me”
By Dennis Edwards--
It almost seems that today we are in a perpetual crisis. Almost every single day seems like the mountains are too high and the valleys are too low. The mental and emotional difficulties we are passing through as a world seem insurmountable. We may wonder where God is in times like these.
I have been thinking back to another time in my life when things were really tough, not only physically, but spiritually, mentally, psychologically and financially. That was the time I was living in a western European country, when the local officials arrested me and took custody of my children.
I was accused of fraud, of forming an illegal association, which means an association whose aims were to overthrow the government, and not giving my children a proper education. I had been home-schooling them at the time. The accusations were fabricated and false as the later court cases proved. But while being questioned and retained for seventy-two hours, my four school aged children were taken by the local welfare authorities.
After a difficult nearly two months without visitation rights or communication rights, I finally was able to visit my children under police and social service observation for thirty minutes. I would go through a harrowing period of emotional, psychological, and financial pressure before my children were returned to me one year later. It would not be until four years afterwards that the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court would finally vindicate me.
Yes, I felt God had abandoned me, but in fact He was drawing me closer to Him. I remember one day pouring out my heart in prayer as both my mind and faith were fainting. I couldn’t see how I could go on any longer. I cried,
“God, I can’t take it any longer. I’m not going to make it. I am not strong enough.”
He answered me,
“You are not suppose to be. But remember, I am. Remember also, that two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falls; for he has not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevails against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.[1] Meditate on these things.”
Right away, I knew exactly what He was getting at.
In the home-church fellowship I had helped organize was a single mom who also had been home-schooling her children. Her two children had been taken from her at the same time as mine. I liked her from the first, but I didn’t want to get involved emotionally as I was still recovering from a failed marriage which had ended in divorce. But now the Lord was telling me,
“If you don’t get involved, you are not going to make it.”
I thought,
“Okay, Lord, I’ll follow.”
Three months later we were married. Ten months on our first child was born and we have had four more since. In November, we will celebrate 25 years of marriage. Out of what seemed like defeat, God got a great victory. He works in wonderful ways His wonders to perform.
My children ended up in custody for one year. However, my new marriage relationship was the way of escape that God gave me, that I might be able to bear it.[2] The criminal case against me for fraud and forming an illegal association was defeated and the local government’s appeal rejected by the Supreme Court.[3]
The home-schooling case went all the way to the Constitutional Court where the judges upheld the Regional Court’s decision in my favor giving a ruling precedent for families to legally home-school their children.
In the end, God did not abandon me. By yielding to his voice and following His leading, I had found a strong help-meet. God did not leave me comfortless. He comforted me and sent me a comforter, one that I could actually hold and caress, my lovely wife. Together we look back at that period of our lives as some of the most rewarding we have ever lived.
Those times of difficulty strengthened our connection with God, deepened our relationship with Him and fortified our personal convictions. As soldiers of war glory in their days of action, we, too, were on the front lines. We were in the papers, on the news, appearing on radio programs, talking with lawyers, psychologists, policemen, judges and government officials. We were standing up for our convictions and we felt God’s presence with us.
At times it was difficult. At times we were at wits ends. But God did not leave us comfortless. He came to us and He helped us. He raised up people in our defense. He lifted us up. He raised up people to help us with our physical needs. He strengthened us and saved us from our enemies who were too strong for us to overcome. He raised up new friends. God is good. He does not fail. All things work together for good to those who love Him and trust Him. Will you?.
Footnotes:
[1] Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
[2] 1Corinthians 10:13
[3] http://www.cesnur.org/testi/TheFamily/spain.htm
U.N. Refugee Official Calls Situation in Syria and Iraq ‘Unsustainable’
By Rick Gladstone, NY Times, April 24, 2015
The war that has engulfed Syria and spread into Iraq has displaced 14 million people, including four million Syrian refugees scattered to neighboring countries, and it has created “host fatigue,” which has further aggravated the crisis, United Nations officials said Friday.
In remarks to the United Nations Security Council, the officials also rebuked its 15 members for what they called a failure to exert authority to intervene in the four-year-old Syria war, which has left 220,000 people dead.
The officials described the Iraqi territorial gains of the Islamic State, the Syria-based extremist group, as an unforeseen shock to an already overstretched emergency aid system. They called the crisis in both countries a contributor to the surge of people risking death at sea to reach Europe.
“One thing is clear: the situation in the region has become utterly unsustainable,” António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said in remarks to the Council. He called the crisis “a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing.”
Mr. Guterres was one of four United Nations officials who briefed the Council–the others were his agency’s celebrity global emissary, Angelina Jolie Pitt; Valerie Amos, the departing emergency relief coordinator; and Staffan de Mistura, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for Syria.
Mr. de Mistura’s briefing was held privately. Officials at the United Nations offices in Geneva said earlier Friday that he had invited representatives of Syria’s government and opposition groups to meet with him there separately next month as part of his effort to revive peace talks.
Mr. de Mistura’s efforts, like those of the two special envoys that preceded him and resigned in frustration, have shown little sign of progress.
The remarks by Ms. Jolie Pitt, who has visited Syrian refugees 11 times since the war began, were in some ways the most eagerly anticipated because of her celebrity aura. They were also among the harshest.
“International humanitarian law prohibits torture, starvation, the targeting of schools and hospitals–but these crimes are happening every day in Syria,” she said. “The Security Council has powers to address these threats to international peace and security–but those powers lie unused.”
Ms. Jolie Pitt, who has been a representative of United Nations causes for 13 years, also said: “We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world’s inability to protect and defend the innocent.”
Many Syrian refugees, she said, had lost all hope. She invited Council members to visit them in the refugee camps of neighboring countries to “see first hand their suffering and the impact it is having on the region.”
Mr. Guterres expressed particular worry about enormous stresses imposed on Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, which have absorbed nearly all of the Syrians who have fled, echoing recent Jordanian warnings that “we are seeing a growing ‘host fatigue.’ “
“There are increasing tensions between communities, as local families struggle harder to cope the longer the conflict drags on,” he said.
The situation in Iraq has been compounded by that country’s own surging population of displaced people. Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, said in a statement Friday that 2.6 million Iraqis were now on the run from conflict. Ms. Amos, in her remarks to the Council, despaired over what she described as widespread disregard for its resolutions requiring humanitarian aid access to civilians. She said “the government, armed and terrorist groups continue to kill, maim, rape, torture and take Syria to new lows that seemed unimaginable a few years ago.”
The war that has engulfed Syria and spread into Iraq has displaced 14 million people, including four million Syrian refugees scattered to neighboring countries, and it has created “host fatigue,” which has further aggravated the crisis, United Nations officials said Friday.
In remarks to the United Nations Security Council, the officials also rebuked its 15 members for what they called a failure to exert authority to intervene in the four-year-old Syria war, which has left 220,000 people dead.
The officials described the Iraqi territorial gains of the Islamic State, the Syria-based extremist group, as an unforeseen shock to an already overstretched emergency aid system. They called the crisis in both countries a contributor to the surge of people risking death at sea to reach Europe.
“One thing is clear: the situation in the region has become utterly unsustainable,” António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said in remarks to the Council. He called the crisis “a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing.”
Mr. Guterres was one of four United Nations officials who briefed the Council–the others were his agency’s celebrity global emissary, Angelina Jolie Pitt; Valerie Amos, the departing emergency relief coordinator; and Staffan de Mistura, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for Syria.
Mr. de Mistura’s briefing was held privately. Officials at the United Nations offices in Geneva said earlier Friday that he had invited representatives of Syria’s government and opposition groups to meet with him there separately next month as part of his effort to revive peace talks.
Mr. de Mistura’s efforts, like those of the two special envoys that preceded him and resigned in frustration, have shown little sign of progress.
The remarks by Ms. Jolie Pitt, who has visited Syrian refugees 11 times since the war began, were in some ways the most eagerly anticipated because of her celebrity aura. They were also among the harshest.
“International humanitarian law prohibits torture, starvation, the targeting of schools and hospitals–but these crimes are happening every day in Syria,” she said. “The Security Council has powers to address these threats to international peace and security–but those powers lie unused.”
Ms. Jolie Pitt, who has been a representative of United Nations causes for 13 years, also said: “We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world’s inability to protect and defend the innocent.”
Many Syrian refugees, she said, had lost all hope. She invited Council members to visit them in the refugee camps of neighboring countries to “see first hand their suffering and the impact it is having on the region.”
Mr. Guterres expressed particular worry about enormous stresses imposed on Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, which have absorbed nearly all of the Syrians who have fled, echoing recent Jordanian warnings that “we are seeing a growing ‘host fatigue.’ “
“There are increasing tensions between communities, as local families struggle harder to cope the longer the conflict drags on,” he said.
The situation in Iraq has been compounded by that country’s own surging population of displaced people. Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, said in a statement Friday that 2.6 million Iraqis were now on the run from conflict. Ms. Amos, in her remarks to the Council, despaired over what she described as widespread disregard for its resolutions requiring humanitarian aid access to civilians. She said “the government, armed and terrorist groups continue to kill, maim, rape, torture and take Syria to new lows that seemed unimaginable a few years ago.”
