GLEANINGS (October 13, 2106):

• PENNSYLVANIA – The cross… dangerous to so many
• MORDIALLOC, Victoria – More Trinity Products
• UGANDA – Holocaust miracle
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PENNSYLVANIA
Is the cross dangerous?

Author Hope Flinchbaugh asks a challenging question…

Well… is the cross of Christ dangerous?

Vladimir Lenin thought so
In November 1917, when he seized power in Russia, Lenin’s soldiers climbed steeples and pinnacles of churches and tore down the cross and replaced it with the red star of the new soviet state. Clergy were denounced as enemies of Russia and summarily executed.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Vladimir Putin just made a law to restrict the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hmmmm….

Joseph Stalin thought so
After Lenin died in 1924 Stalin ruthlessly tore down crosses from churches in the previously free Christian nations of Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany.

Stalin was not satisfied until all the crosses were gone.

Adolph Hitler thought so
One author believes that the Christian Cross was used as a symbol of the Nazi agenda.

One thing is for sure. Under Mein Kampf crosses were removed from all churches and replaced with the swastika.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) thinks so
The ACLU opposed the eight-foot iron cross in California’s Mojave Desert, an illuminated cross in a California State park, and let’s not forget their opposition over 9/11 steel beam cross being placed in the World Trade Center Memorial.

So… is the cross dangerous?

• China thinks so.
• ISIS thinks so.
• The devil thinks so.
• What makes all these people think that the cross is dangerous?

Or…  is it victorious?
Look what the cross did for us!

Jesus cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross (Colossians 2:14-15).

Now then… what do you think?

Hope Flinchbaugh has a heart for the kingdom and China. She is an author, freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Link: seehope@comcast.net / http://liftjesuscross.com / www.HopeEditors.com  / Hope4nk@gmail.com

Daughter of China
Like young women everywhere, Mei Lin longs for an education, a career– even love. But the system she lives in doesn’t tolerate religious belief, and Mei Lin’s faith is as profound as it is simple.  Must she abandon her beliefs to have the life she’s dreamed of? This Catherine Marshall Christy Award of Excellence 2003 novel lingers in the mind long after the last page has been read.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Daughter-China-C-Hope-Flinchbaugh/dp/0991462408

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MORDIALLIC
More Trinity Leadership Products

 

Dr Tony and Robyn Keys, Trinity Leadership – highlighted last month in respect of their new Facebook forum What’s on the Minds of Christian Leaders Today? – offer many other products such as First Love Ephesians ‘The Believers’ Riches in Christ!’ Here’s an extract (pp 145-146)…

The King is Watching and Listening – Christian Employee and Employers
Ephesians 6 verses 5-8
Christians betray to the world their desire to imitate Christ by the way they work. Paul tells us in verse 5 that we are to do our work ‘with fear and trembling.’ These are the same words Paul used to describe his own efforts at Corinth in 1Cor 2:3: ‘I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.’

The verse carries with it the idea of trembling in anxiety when performing a duty well. He continues, ‘in sincerity of heart,’ using the word ‘sincerity’ as in ‘singleness of heart’ not in formality, pretence or hypocrisy. Why? Because our employment is done ‘as to Christ.’

In her book Today’s Good Word, Ethel B Sutton told the story of a young British soldier who was blinded in battle. He was a trained musician, so after he recovered from his injury he spent much of his time playing the piano for the wounded that had been sent to a London hospital. He sometimes wondered if anyone was paying attention to his music, for he often heard the tramping of feet through the corridors as visitors came and went, but he never let this distract him. He always put his best effort into his playing, hoping his music would encourage and comfort those who were depressed by their painful injuries.

One day when he paused to rest, he heard somebody nearby heartily clapping his hands. Turning his sightless eyes in that direction, he asked with a smile, ‘Who are you?’

‘I am your King!’ was the reply. The British monarch was visiting the wounded to cheer them and strengthen their morale. Without realising it, the young man had been using his talent to entertain royalty.

Paul tells us that employment is ultimately done ‘to the Lord’ (v8) though at times it may seem that no-one is watching or that no-one cares how well we perform our duties. The King of Kings is watching and listening, and it is to his applause that we serve and work.

Ephesians 6 verse 9
So too are Christian employers to betray to the world their desire to imitate Christ by the way they treat their employees.

Paul places the same expectations on Christian employers, as he says ‘you masters, do the same things to them.’ They are to act in such a way that benefits their Christian calling, by not threatening those who work for them. Paul again deals with the danger of self-assertion. It would be very easy for the employer to see themselves a little higher on the social scale than their employee, but Paul reminds us that in God ‘there is no partiality with him.’

The word ‘partiality’ in the Greek literally means ‘to accept people at face value,’ the value accorded to them by other people. God looks on the heart. Peter, when he saw the conversion and outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Cornelius and his family, said in Acts 10:34-35, ‘In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality.’

This is the first time in the New Testament this phrase is used.  It means to lift up someone’s face, which is a sign of favour.  Peter was saying to Cornelius and his family, ‘You need not to fear that God will not receive you.  In fact he will lift your face to him and bless you,’ much as a parent would lift a child’s face in order to give them something special.  God has no favourites, nor should we.

Everything we do really is about imitating Christ!

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UGANDA
Doctor escaped Idi Amin’s killing machine and found new life in Christ

Dan Wooding,  ASSIST News Service founder, shares good news…

A Ugandan pastor was one of the fortunate of Uganda who, during Idi Amin’s brutal eight years of misrule, was able to escape Amin’s terrible killing machine which left an estimated 300,000 Christians dead.

In an interview, Bishop Dr Lamech S Lumala, a former dental surgeon, and now pastor of Showers of Blessing Church in Kampala, Uganda, shared with me his miraculous escape from death from the man who called himself His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.

Having co-authored the book, Uganda Holocaust (below) with Ray Barnett, I was fascinated to learn more about Dr Lumala’s time during that dark period of the vicious dictator, which began in 1971 and ended in 1979, when he fled the country after being driven out by Tanzanian forces.

Miraculous escape from death

‘Yes, it is true that during that Idi Amin era, which was a terrible time my life, I just escaped from being killed,’ he said. ‘Amin had sent soldiers to the clinic at Masaka Government Hospital where I was working, but fortunately my secretary acted quickly when she saw them and told them that I was “not in.” She then told me that Amin’s soldiers were after me and so I escaped through the back door and I went into hiding for two weeks. By God’s grace, some negotiations with my friends took place, and the local governor said he would give me protection and that I would not be killed.’

I asked him why the soldiers were after him and he explained, ‘Idi Amin was after all those people who were educated and well-off, so being a doctor, I was one of those who were to be persecuted and killed.’

Providentially for the Uganda people, Idi Amin overreached his power when he attempted to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978, and this led to the Uganda-Tanzania War, and the eventual demise of his regime. Amin fled to Libya, before moving to Saudi Arabia in 1981, where he died in 2003.

Dr Lumala said that at that time of his near death experience, he wasn’t a believer, but then his eldest daughter Juliet, and other children in his family, along his wife, Peninnah, ‘got saved’ and they all prayed for him.

He recalled, ‘It was back in 1986 when I was invited to an evangelical meeting and, during that gathering, the power of God came on me just as it came on the apostle Paul on his way to Damascus.‘ At that moment, the Lord said to me, “Lamech, your ways are not my ways.” It was then that I raised up my hands and cried out to God and I gave my life to the Lord. From that day my lifestyle completely changed. I had worked for the government for 10 years and then I had set up my own private practice back in Kampala City on Martin Road near the Kampala Moslem Mosque for nine more years. After my conversion to Christ, I was very thirsty for the word of God and day and night I studied the Bible, went to conferences and Bible schools. God’s word just sunk in me and I got into the presence of God.’

Visitation from the Lord
‘Then one day I had a visitation from the Lord. He came to me with so many angels singing wonderful Handel’s Messiah type of music. I had never heard that type of music in this world anywhere, and they were singing that “the king is coming, the king is coming!” So God then lifted me up and took out my spirit like a little kitten in his hands and spoke things to me and called me into ministry and then pushed my soul back into my body. And, from that time, I’ve been trying to see what God has for my life.’

Dr Lumala added, ‘Then one day, God told me: “I want to show you my supernatural divine healing power. You have been healing people using your head knowledge, but now I want to show you my super human divine healing power.”’

 

Dr Lumala on his travels

He said that not long after this, he was invited onto the BBC to give a talk about spiritual divine healing power. ‘On the program, I talked about it with another pastor, now called Proposer Simeon Kayiwa of Namirembe Christian Fellowship, and I knew that many of the listeners remained sceptical and then the Lord said to me that these people needed to see “documented proof” of these healings to know it was for real.’

So Dr Lumala, who I had met at medical conferences in Brisbane, Australia, and Sofia, Bulgaria, organised by the World Christian Doctors Network (WCDN), which is comprised of medical doctors who not only believe that God still heals today, but also that miracles should be ‘provable with medical evidence,’ said that he is now a great believer in divine healing, but he also says it is important to chronicle those miracles with medical evidence.

Healings and miracles today!
‘Today, the Lord is working many miracles,’ he told me. ‘I’ve seen so many people being healed supernaturally. I’ve seen the lame walk and have got the documentation of that. On one occasion, there was a student in City Hill College at Mutundwe, who had paralysed legs. I prayed for him and immediately he got up and walked.’

But, he says, one day, healing became really personal for him, explaining, ‘My wife Peninnah contracted breast cancer, and while we were in America, they analysed it and did a mammogram and we discovered that the cancer was for real. During the night, we had a visitation from the Lord who woke me up at 3am to tell me to start praying for her while she was sleeping. As I did, I immediately saw a vision. It was something like a yellow light jelly moving from her body. She later testified that she was feeling something enjoyable moving in her breast. And then she woke up and asked, “What is happening Lord?” She felt that still voice of the Lord telling her, “I’m operating on you. You are now being healed, and so from now on go and pray for other people so they too will be healed.” She did just that and so many people have since also gotten healed completely.’

Dr Lumala told me that after Peninnah had been completely healed of breast cancer, she went on to enjoy another ten years of ‘very good health,’ but sadly ‘went to her glory’ on June 19, 2014, after an attack of Malaria.

So now, this former medical professional is continuing to see God’s healing power at work in Uganda and other nations that he goes to, including in America.

New Hospital
At this time, Dr Lumala is in the United States and is working on an important fund-raising project to get $200,000 to buy a new hospital facility ‘built by my prosperous cousin, Gerald,’ and which is located at Gombe Kyadondo in the Luweero Triangle, an area north of the capital Kampala.

 

 

Entrance to the new hospital

‘This is a place where Idi Amin killed so many innocent civilians and, even today, people there are in desperate need of medical care,’ he explained. ‘Any donations or grants from well-wishers are welcome.’ and people can contact him at his e-mails: lamechlumala@gmail.com , or showeersofbles55@gmail.com (Donations and gifts for the hospital, please go to A/C 4744 8801 0111 5226 — Bank of America. Lamech Sejobyo Lumala).

Several people have testified about how God has healed them through Dr Lumala’s ministry. They include: Oyado David Calmax (davidcalmax@gmail.com ), and you can read his story at https://www.facebook.com/lumala.lamech/posts/1316506791702818.

Another is Ikenna Aranotu, who recently attended a service in Long Beach, California, where Dr Lumala spoke and ministered. (https://www.facebook.com/lumala.lamech/posts/1315312768488887.).

Dr Lumala says that he is grateful that his life was spared during the horror years of Idi Amin so he could ‘get salvation’ and then help bring new life and healing to others, adding: ‘Glory be to the Lord Almighty.’

 

ASSIST News Service founder Dan Wooding is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist. Link: www.assistnews.net.  Recommended: Dan Wooding’s many publications, particularly as Christmas is coming – Mary: My Story

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Disclaimer: Articles, as well as the sources linked to, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of ConnectingwithYou! Our thanks mainly to Dan Wooding, ASSIST (www.assistnews.net) and other news sources for timely gleanings

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