PERILOUS TIMES SHALL COME!
INCREASING DANGER FOR JEWS & CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE
NEW DANGERS ON AFRICAN CONTINENT AS CHAOS SPREADS
PLEASE REMEMBER ALL MISSIONARIES IN PRAYER
ESPECIALLY THOSE IN KENYA
February 1, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
II Timothy 3:1a – This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
We have missionaries in Kenya who are doing what Paul did facing the possibility of death, which he described in II Corinthians 4:5-11. Please remember them especially in your prayers. But we have many others in many parts of this earth, such as Mongolia, who face daily problems, and who are also going to experience the same sort of chaos as the end of this age draws near. Please remember them all, and thank God for them.
II Corinthians 4:5-11 – For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. [6] For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. [7] But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. [8] We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; [9] Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; [10] Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. [11] For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
Revelation 6:8,9 – And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. [9] And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
The three articles which follow describe just a small part of what has been, is, and will continue to increase across Africa, as well as the rest of the world.
These are simply the latest episodes in specific areas. Areas such as the Sudan and Ethiopia have, and are, undergoing even greater slaughter of the innocent. This will not end until the Second Advent of Jesus Christ.
During the four weeks I lectured in Kenya, Joel Cobbs and Ernie Hopper told me about the “gangs,” which are now being revived by the current political chaos. This is becoming an even worse potential maze of terror by this latest development. Please remember all of the God-sent missionaries in Kenya.
Begin Article from The Australian – Central Africa
Kenyans turn to gangs for security
A Correspondent in Nairobi
February 2, 2008
AS Kenya splits along ethnic lines and the body count spirals, desperate residents say they are turning to once-hated gangs for protection.
And some say politicians are using gang members as militias.
One gang recruiter in Nairobi said she received about 30 calls daily from people seeking membership, and politicians – including a government minister – are offering money for weapons to fuel the furore over the presidential election.
At a camp for displaced families in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, she led the crowd in a Kikuyu song before asking those whose homes were burned or looted whether they would consider joining the Mungiki gang. Much of the post-election violence has pitted President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu against other ethnic groups.
“If we are many, we can go and chase those people,” she explained, the ragged crowd staring at her designer sunglasses and gold high heels delicately poised above the mud. “This is the time to join us.”
Hands shot up around the circle.
Elsewhere in the slums, recruitment is under way by gangs associated with other tribes.
The Taliban, for example, is made up of members of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Luo people. The origins of its name are unclear, but appear more inspired by the Afghan group’s fearsome reputation than its extremist Islamic ideology.
The Mungiki began as a quasi-religious group dedicated to promoting Kikuyu culture in the 1980s and flourished during Kikuyu leader Uhuru Kenyatta’s failed presidential bid in 2002.
The Taliban and other ethnic militias, like the Sungu-Sungu and the Chinkororo, emerged in response, members say.
The state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says strong “circumstantial evidence” links the police to more than 450 execution-style murders of young men last year during a crackdown on the Mungiki.
The police deny it.
The crackdown ended two months before the December 27 election. The violence that followed has claimed over 850 lives.
“Why are we seeing Mungiki still harassing people here?” Mr Odinga said this week in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. “Mungiki is the unofficial arm of the Government. They are the ones who are being brought here because the Government wants it to appear as if it was a civilian thing. So the police provide the cover.”
But police chief Ali Hussein says he is not aware of any gang mobilisation within Nairobi.
Slum residents accuse police of firing at random, killing innocent civilians, or simply refusing to come into the slums when the gangs prowl the alleyways at night. “The head officer said, ‘Let them fight each other. We will come in the morning to pick up the bodies’,” said a member of the Taliban gang. He said he called police to report the murder of a Luo friend in the Mathare slum by a group of Kikuyus. “When they didn’t come, we had to go out to protect ourselves,” he said.
The gang took to the streets armed with machetes, he said.
Several members of different gangs said rich businessmen were offering gangs about 1000 shillings ($15.50) a day to protect their property.
Politicians on both sides – mostly at the local or regional level – also offered cash to buy guns, the gang members said.
The Taliban member said he knew of 10 fellow gang members who had bought guns recently.
“They (the politicians) are coming to search for us so we can fight,” said a male Mungiki member. Fake Mungiki gangs were being set up, he complained, to get the politicians’ money.
That echoed allegations from human rights and other groups that politicians were organising the post-election violence, citing the long history of orchestrated political violence in Kenya.
Michael Peel, author of a report on gang-plagued Nigeria for British think-tank Chatham House, said any alliance between gangs and politicians could spiral out of control.
In Nigeria’ s oil-rich Delta region, gang
s have evolved in a few years from stoned young men with thongs and old rifles to masked militants with body armour and new rocket-propelled grenades. The money they got from politicians has bought them weapons and influence, say human rights groups that follow Nigeria.
In Kenya, many previously law-abiding citizens say they have turned to the gangs because of the breakdown of law and order.
Muthoni Mwaura, a Kikuyu woman in her 50s with arthritis so bad she can barely get out of bed, says the violence means Luo tenants in her six slum shacks refuse to pay rent. She cannot buy medicine or food for three orphans she cares for, she said.
“They are not paying and I am hungry,” she said. “Police demand money to protect you, but Mungiki just want you to join.”
Gang membership comes with a price. As part of the initiation, the Mungiki demand that female members undergo ritual genital cutting.
A Mungiki woman in charge of the ritual in part of Mathare slum said she was cutting around five girls a week since the violence started; the whole of last year she cut fewer than 50.
Sometimes girls had second thoughts, so she locked them in her house to prevent them from escaping, she said.
Once initiated, it is difficult for men or women to leave the gang alive. Mungiki recruiters say they will kill anyone who tries to leave for fear they will betray gang secrets. There are no reliable estimates on the number of gang members.
Many Mungiki say they are not yet willing to fight for the Government, because the gang is still nursing a grudge over last year’s police crackdown.
But they say they are loath to turn away new members and money for guns.
Some say they have received word the gang will really begin its “work” this month. The Mungiki recruiter said the gang is stockpiling supplies, including food and weapons, for the coming battle.
AP
Begin Jerusalem Post Article 1 – Extreme Northeast Africa
Egypt: 12 armed Palestinians arrested
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST
February 1, 2006
Egypt claimed Friday morning that it arrested twelve armed Palestinians on suspicion that they were planning to attack Israeli tourists vacationing in the Sinai, Israel Radio reported.
An Egyptian security official said the group was arrested near the Rafah crossing and the Ahmad Hamdi tunnel, leading to Sinai coastal resorts.
According to the report, two of the men were Hamas members and two were Islamic Jihad operatives, and all but two of the detainees arrived at Sinai through the Rafah border crossing.
The remaining two came to Egypt via Persian Gulf states.
A senior Egyptian diplomat told Saudi paper Al Wattan that Egypt offered Hamas to reach a ceasefire with Israel which would include the group eschewing firing rockets from Gaza to Israel. This was not the first such proposal, the diplomat told the paper.
Reportedly, Hamas was also ready to call for new elections, on condition that they would include presidential elections and not only parliamentary elections.
Begin Jerusalem Post Article 2 – Northwest Africa
Gunmen fire near Mauritania embassy
JPost.com Staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST
February 1, 2008
Six gunmen opened fire near the Israeli Embassy in Nouakchott, in the northwest African country of Mauritania early Friday morning, trading fire with guards before fleeing and screaming “Allah Akbar,” witnesses said.
The six men arrived by car and regrouped in front of a discotheque that is just beside the embassy, said Hamza Ould Bilal, a taxi driver who was parked outside the club called ‘The VIP.’ He saw them pull out their automatic weapons and scream “God is Great!” in Arabic, before assailing the embassy, he said.
Guards at the embassy traded fire with the gunmen, repelling them. The men fled on foot, before jumping into a car, said Bilal.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that since the attack occurred in the early hours of the morning at a time when few embassy workers had arrived, none of the embassy workers was hurt.
An eyewitness said he saw at least a woman wounded; later Friday it was revealed three French nationals were hurt, one of them a restaurant owner, another a passerby, and a third French citizen hurt himself while falling when he fled the scene.
The Mauritanian government claimed that the target of the terrorists was not the embassy but the nearby ‘VIP’ discotheque.
Israeli Ambassador to Mauritania Boaz Bismut told media outlets that despite foreign reports, only one gunman had carried out the attack.
“Israel and Mauritania have had full diplomatic relations since 1999 … both countries understand the severity of the incident,” Bismut told Army Radio.
The neighborhood has been roped off by the Mauritanian military, which is preventing journalists and visitors from entering.
Last week Mauritanian protesters mounted pressure on their government to cut ties with Israel as a punishment for alleged Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Among the demonstrators were members of the government’s main opposition.
On Christmas Eve, four French tourists were killed by gunmen while picnicking on the side of a road in Mauritania, an act the government blamed on a terror sleeper cell affiliated with al-Qaida.
Their killing led the French organizers of the famous Dakar Rally to cancel the long-standing trans-Saharan race, which would have traversed this desert nation last month.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.