C. Aaron Russell's Blog, page 11

Demise of The Church greatly exaggerated in 2013

Is the Church Winning or Losing?

BY JERRY NEWCOMBE (Christian Post)

Imagine two men engaged in a conversation on an international flight. These two men, presumably businessmen, are strangers to each other. As they talked with each other, it was revealed that one was a businessman. The second man was a representative of a worldwide organization with franchises in every country.

“Really?” asked the first. “You must work for Coca Cola.”

“No,” replied the second, “We have far more field representatives than they’ll ever have! We have more employees and more customers, if you can call them that.”

Now, the first man was definitely intrigued. “Microsoft?”

“No—infinitely bigger.”

“The U.N.?”

“Again, much bigger.”

“Well, then I can’t imagine who you work for. Tell me.”

The second man looked him straight in the eye and replied that he was a minister in the Church of Jesus Christ.

Think about it. The largest institution on the planet, the kingdom that contains more citizens than any country on earth, the association that has the most members, the world’s biggest most diverse family, is the Church of Jesus Christ…(continue reading at Christian Post)

Christmas in a Cold Prison

by Tony Reinke (Desiring God)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer awoke December 25, 1943 on a hard wooden bed. It was the first of two Christmases he would spend sequestered in a Nazi prison.

This first Christmas would be celebrated in a lonely prison cell in a place called Tegel. He had been there for nine months, and he would be there for nine more until he was transferred to his final home, a Nazi concentration camp.

Bonhoeffer had hoped to be released for the holiday, but that was contingent on his personal lawyer who proved unreliable. His hope of spending Christmas with his family quickly evaporated into the cold silence, and his only connection with his parents would come through letters.

Inside Tegel

In the Tegel prison, Bonhoeffer and his 700 fellow inmates were treated as criminals irrespective of trials and verdicts. The men were underfed and verbally harassed, and frequently the warden refused to turn the lights on, adding to the dark and depressive spirit of the place. Bonhoeffer was assigned to a cell surrounded by prisoners awaiting execution. He writes about often being kept awake at night by the clanking chains of the cots as the unsettled, condemned men tossed and turned.1

But it was within this suffocating suffering that Christmas seemed to take a deeper meaning for the 37-year-old pastor-scholar. “A prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent,” he wrote to a friend. “One waits, hopes, does this or that — ultimately negligible things — the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.”2

Two Sides to Christmas

For Bonhoeffer, there are two sides to Christmas. There is a hopeless precursor side to Advent. Until God arrives, we have no hope for release from this imprisonment of our own sin. We are stuck and condemned, and the door is locked from the outside. We depend completely on Someone from the outside to free us.

And yet on the other side of Christmas, on the other side of the birth of Christ the King, we find suffering remains. We find freedom and hope, but the suffering is not washed away. As Martin Luther says, “God can be found only in suffering and the cross.”3 It is in the suffering of the Son of God that we find God.

From his birth in a despised manger, to his death on the cross, the Son of God suffered. Christ was acquainted with pain (Isaiah 53:3). And because Christ was familiar with it, we too are made familiar with suffering (2 Corinthians 1:5, 1 Peter 4:13).

The wisdom of God in the suffering of his Son baffles us. Christ became weak and vulnerable in order to suffer for us in his full payment of our sin (Philippians 3:9). What this means is that the child of God suffers, but not because God has withdrawn from him, but because God has drawn close. We are united to Christ and we share in his sufferings (Philippians 3:10).

A Christmas More Meaningful and Authentic

Which brings me to Bonheoffer’s Christmas letter from the Tegel prison to his parents Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer on December 17, 1943. In it he asks that they not worry or fret about their separation. He will find joy in their enjoyment of the holiday. They will feast together, and he will feast on the memories of precious Christmases past.

At one point, Bonhoeffer writes this:

Viewed from a Christian perspective, Christmas in a prison cell can, of course, hardly be considered particularly problematic. Most likely many of those here in this building will celebrate a more meaningful and authentic Christmas than in places where it is celebrated in name only.

That misery, sorrow, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God than according to human judgment; that God turns toward the very places from which humans turn away; that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn — a prisoner grasps this better than others, and for him this is truly good news.

And to the extent he believes it, he knows that he has been placed within the Christian community that goes beyond the scope of all spatial and temporal limits, and the prison walls lose their significance. . . .

With great gratitude and love,

Your Dietrich4

Suffering Brings Meaning to Christmas

Ironically, we can miss this meaning of Christmas if our celebration is only wrapped up in comfortable warm fires and the fellowship of friends and family. We can miss the memory of our desperation that required the Son of God to suffer for us. We can miss the personal desperation met in the manger. And we can miss out on the fellowship of his sufferings.

As we have recently explored, Christmas and suffering are deeply interwoven themes in Scripture. Personal suffering brings deeper meaning to Christmas. And in a season of suffering, the child of God discovers that he suffers not because God has drawn away, but because God has drawn close to us convicts, drawn close through a manger, drawn closer to us than the hard prison cell walls of a cold Nazi prison.

1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison (Fortress, 2010), 343–347.

2 Ibid., 188.

3 Luther’s Works (Fortress, 1957), 31:53.

4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison (Fortress, 2010), 224–226.

Tony Reinke (@tonyreinke) is a content strategist at Desiring God, blogger, the author of  Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books  (2011) and  John Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ  (2015), and hosts the  Ask Pastor John  and  Authors on the Line  podcasts. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Karalee, and their three children.

Should Duck Dynasty family walk away from A&E

by C. Aaron Russell

So, Phil Robertson announced he believes homosexuality is a sin, and that’s a big shocker to A&E and the rest of the world? In an entertainment culture where just about anything goes regarding sex, drunkenness and debauchery, simply quoting the Bible is deemed too offensive, and “not what true Christians believe,” and displaying a “public disdain for LGBT people and families,” according to a GLAAD representative.

Apparently GLAAD now believes they are proper representatives for Christianity. Why is it unthinkable for the media to allow anyone to be a public voice for true Christian families, the one’s who do actually read and believe their Bibles? What did Phil actually say anyway that was so intolerable? He started by simply stating the obvious, what every heterosexual male (Christian or not) has thought and probably said themselves at some point. Phil admitted,

“It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” he said. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying?”

Yes Phil, every heterosexual understands what you’re saying. It’s just that the politically correct, vocal minority has more rights to censor what their family is subjected to than the rest of us.

Phil, then went on to simply state that homosexuality was a sin, along with a host of many other things, paraphrasing from Corinthians, “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

He didn’t do anything so offensive other than to say to the LGBT community that they are sinners. Phil then went on to label himself as a sinner as well, saying, “I myself am a product of the 60s; I centered my life around sex, drugs and rock and roll until I hit rock bottom and accepted Jesus as my Savior. My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.”

That is absolutely the right way to be a Christian witness. Phil didn’t do it in some self-righteous fashion and wasn’t being condemning. He just indicated that we are all sinners, and should repent in order to follow Jesus and find Salvation. That’s what we all must do, all believers, because we are all sinners. The specific sin itself really is not the issue, just that we humble ourselves enough to say that only God is holy, and we choose Him over the desires of our flesh. To not tell sinners the truth is not to love them at all. The truth requires people to make a choice, light or dark, sin or repentance, Christ or the World, and that is always controversial.

So, the question remains, is the Robertson family going to continue working with A&E, or stand on the side of the head of their family? They have an opportunity here to demonstrate together how a Christian family should not compromise with the world and its supposed morals that run contrary to God’s. The argument could be made, that even if they can’t say everything they wish, at least they can continue to use the series to demonstrate other Christian values and be an example to the world. The problem with that is it would appear as if they are selling out. It would seem as if they choose to continue to accept money and fame from the world, while their family leader has been censored and banned for taking a moral stand.

As stated, we all have to make a choice when we follow Christ, but the choices don’t stop there. Christians face trials, temptations and compromises every day that would take us off our path and stumble us on our walk of faith. Every day around the world in anonymity, Christians have to make difficult choices over their faith. Sometimes it’s giving up material things or maybe even their job—sometimes it’s their life. This is an opportunity for the Robertson’s to make a public demonstration to the world, that Christian families have a right to believe, live and share the Gospel, without becoming compromised, watered down or lukewarm in order to have acceptance from an amoral world.

C. Aaron Russell—writer, speaker and missionary at Men of Mind, and author of Lessons In Faith—learned the hard way.

Easier said than done when it comes to The Great Commission

Missionaries and Mission-Trippers
by Tim Challies

Keith Green told us, “Jesus commands us to go. It should be the exception if we stay. It’s no wonder we’re moving so slow, When His church refuse to obey.” I used to think that if Green had been allotted a few more years, he probably would have walked away from his career as a musician to be a missionary. He had such passion for missions that it seemed inevitable. But that was when I was young and idealistic, before I realized this is not the way these things work. Not usually, anyway.

One of the unexpectedly difficult things about preaching, at least in my experience, is when I encounter one of those commands or applications in which I am far from exemplary. I need to preach that passage and I need to preach it as it is, yet all the while I carry this deep awareness of my own failings. But I still have to preach it. If I could only preach those areas in which I am excelling, well, an awful lot of the Bible would remain out-of-bounds.

I both love and hate to preach passages that speak to evangelism, and especially mission, to taking the gospel to the nations. When I preach those passages I come up against one of my observations and one of my frustrations in the Christian world. It used to be a frustration with others. Now it’s a frustration with myself.

You’ve probably heard it said that when it comes to missions, there are the goers and the senders. There are the few who go, and there are the many who send them. We can’t all go, or we would have no one to resource the work that needs to be done. Well and good. I am fully aware that even while the New Testament tells us to take the gospel to the farthest reaches of the world, it also commends a quiet life right where we are. God does not require all of us to be foreign missionaries.

What jumps out at me as I look at the Evangelical world, is that the voices screaming “Go!” the loudest are not people who have gone, but people who have stayed…(continue reading at Challies.com)

Is there a time for Christians to stand up and take over, even fight?

C. Aaron Russell (selection from new book, Lessons In Faith—learned the hard way)

Kingdom Now (doctrine) teaches God is waiting on the Church to attain a state of physical earthly rule known as Dominionism, in which they believe not only are Christians to spread the Gospel to all nations, but they are to take over the world. In fact, they believe we are already living in the Millennial Kingdom right now. They believe God gave Man (Adam in Gen. 1:28) dominion over all the earth. Adam lost it to Satan in The Garden, but Jesus won back the rights to it for us on the cross. (Right so far, but then it takes a big wrong turn). Now (they believe) it is up to all Christians to begin creation of God’s Kingdom ourselves by seizing back dominion of the Earth and physically taking over.

They even have a plan, referred to as The Seven Mountains, in which they believe Christians are commanded to infiltrate government (including military), business, family, education, media, religion and the arts and entertainment. They take this very seriously, and believe it is our Christian duty to fight a global war (both spiritually and physically) against Satan to reclaim these Seven Mountains of influence in culture, in order for Man to once again hold dominion over the Earth. Kingdom Now takes a post-Millennial view on Jesus’ Second Coming, believing once we’ve accomplished creating a new God-centered virtual utopia, the world will be fit for Jesus to return at the end of the 1000 years to establish and rule The New Jerusalem (Heaven) for all eternity…

Imagine believing it is up to Mankind to take over the Church and Government, with a fight if necessary. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” Men tried to do that in the Middle Ages with the Crusades and the Inquisitions. Millions were killed in vain, falsely in God’s name. Man neither has the wisdom nor the compassion to judge, conquer or rule in righteousness. That is a plan that is closer to describing what the Anti-Christ and False Prophet will one day come to do. So many false doctrines would be extinguished immediately if more of us would just read our Bibles, believe the Word and just be patient and trust God.

A more modern example of religious zealots attempting to take over by force occurred in 1984, when a group of Jewish extremists attempted to blow up the Islamic Dome of the Rock, the Muslim’s most holy site, their shrine located on the Temple Mount (Mount Moriah), the exact location of where the Jewish Holy Temple once stood. It is the place where Abraham was sent by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Muslims believe it was Ishmael). The Jewish religious extremists believed (some still do) that God would not return while such an abomination as the Dome of the Rock is standing. Hence, by destroying it, their works would pave the way for God to establish His Kingdom. In other words, the plot was hatched by men trying to help God (treacherously). The attempt, along with another plot to plant bombs on six crowded Palestinian buses, was thwarted by the Israeli government and the Shin Bet (Israeli version of the CIA and MI6).

Jesus, in his final hours before the cross, addressed how His disciples are to fight in a well-known story that comes in two parts. After the Last Supper, as they were preparing to go to the Garden at Gethsemane, Jesus made an unusual request to the disciples. He told them to bring swords. There have been many bad teachings on this, and some believe that Jesus was instructing that there would be perilous times ahead, and there will come times to fight. It could seem like that at this point in the story, but let’s find out how it ends.

The story picks back up a bit later when the Romans and Jews accompanied by Judas came to arrest Jesus. The disciples asked if they should fight back with swords, but before Jesus answered, Peter struck and cut off the right ear of the servant of the Jewish High Priest. Jesus then asked permission of the officers to touch the man, who he then healed. Jesus demonstrated that though our instinct is to fight with the sword, we are to give love and mercy to our enemies. As discussed in Chapter Two, Paul described what a Christian is to carry into battle and it’s almost all defensive. We are to wear spiritual armor for protection. There is one offensive weapon to fight back with, a sword, but it is the sword of the Spirit—God’s Word (the Scriptures).

C. Aaron Russell—Christian writer, speaker and missionary at Men of Mind. Author of newly released book, Lessons In Faith—learned the hard way.

5 Reasons we show little concern over Christian persecution

Five myths about global Christian persecution

By Timothy Samuel Shah (Fox News)

As the world’s more than 2 billion Christians — one-third of the global population — prepare to celebrate Christmas, a major conference in Rome will explore the myths and realities of global Christian persecution.

Not far from the catacombs where the martyrs of the early church are buried, dozens of experts will discuss why today’s Christian martyrs — and other victims of persecution — deserve far more attention than they’re receiving.

Most of these victims will continue to be ignored, however, as long as five myths continue to cloud popular thinking about global Christian persecution. Based on an abundance of new evidence, the experts in Rome will show that the myths don’t stand up to the facts.

Myth 1. Just a phenomenon in the Middle East…

Myth 2. Christians aren’t greatly impacted…

Myth 3. Ramifications are just cultural…

Myth 4. Christianity has been a net nuisance, bringing persecution onto itself…

Myth 5. It couldn’t happen here… (read full story at Fox News)

Fleeing Mormonism: A families journey for truth

 

How I Escaped the Mormon Temple

After being in the LDS Church for 30 years, I began reading the New Testament. What was there shocked me.

Lynn Wilder (Christianity Today)

On a Friday in January 2006, at home in Alpine, Utah, I received a phone call from my third son, Micah, that changed my life.

My family and I loved living in “Zion,” the result of a decision that my husband, Michael, and I had made as young adults to join the Mormon Church. For eight years, I had been a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU), the flagship school of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Michael was a high priest, a bishopric member and high counselor, temple worker, seminary teacher, and Sunday school president. Our first son, Josh, and second son, Matt, had served the church’s obligatory two-year evangelizing missions. Our daughter Katie pleased church leaders as well with her faith in Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith.

I looked down on Christians who followed the Bible. They had part of the gospel, but I had the fullness of it. I kept the laws and ordinances of Mormonism. When I took the sacrament of leavened bread and water each week at our Sunday meeting house, I was letting the sin janitor sweep away all iniquity. I believed the Mormon Church secured my eternal life.

Life in Zion

My husband and I had joined the LDS Church at age 25 after Mormon missionaries knocked on our front door. We had both attended Protestant churches growing up, but we rarely if ever read the Bible. We assumed that joining was a Christian option (85 percent of LDS converts come from biblical Christianity). We were unprepared to counter the missionaries.

Immediately and always active in the church, we raised our four children in the faith in Indiana. Serving untold hours in church callings, reading Mormon scripture, tithing, attending meetings, keeping a health code, and doing genealogy so we could redeem the dead in the temple—these were a few of our offerings to the Mormon God.

In all the years of serving the church, I thought I knew Jesus. We believed he was born first as a spirit child to Heavenly Father and Mother, and came to Earth to receive a body. He atoned for our sins in the Garden. Like the Pharisee in Luke 18, I thought I knew him better than others through the exclusive instruction I received in the temple.

In 1999, I completed my doctorate in education and was hired at BYU. We moved to Zion.

And life was good there. On Sundays we sang:

Great is his glory and endless his priesthood.

Ever and ever the keys he will hold.

Faithful and true, he will enter his kingdom,

Crowned in the midst of the prophets of old.

Sound like Jesus? Nope, this hymn is about Joseph Smith. Here’s the first verse:

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!

Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer.

Blessed to open the last dispensation,

Kings will extol him and nations revere.

Like Heavenly Father and Jesus before him—like Smith himself—Michael was working to become a god. This is one reason we attended the temple regularly.

Expulsion

Then, something unexpected interrupted our perfect Mormon life.

Three weeks before the end of his two-year mission, Micah called to tell us he was being sent home early—a horrific disgrace in Mormon culture. He had been reading the New Testament. There he encountered a different Jesus than the one I was taught about in Mormonism—a God of grace, not of works, so that no one can boast. Micah was riveted…(continue reading at Christianity Today)

Lynn Wilder is the author of Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way Out of the Mormon Church(Zondervan).

Vigilantes or protectors? Bishop and Doctor battle tyranny from Mexican Cartels

 

Bishops support Mexican vigilantes in fight against vicious Knights Templar gang

Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles leading fight to free homeland from oppression by ruthless Cartel, AFP photo

By Agence France-Presse

Bells tolled from the red cathedral tower in the western Mexico town of Apatzingan, calling the faithful to hear a bishop who backs a growing vigilante movement against a cult-like drug cartel.

As people headed to church, soldiers patrolled the main square, banks and a supermarket in this bastion of the fearsome Knights Templar gang, which has brought mayhem to the southwestern state of Michoacan.

“We cannot deny that we are living through difficult times. Our towns are experiencing an atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion,” Bishop Miguel Patino Velazquez told his flock, reading a message signed by Michoacan’s bishops.

East of Apatzingan, troops check cars and scan luggage in X-ray machines to look for illegal weapons.

On the western outskirts, the farmers who formed self-defense militia to combat the Templars earlier this year man their own checkpoints behind walls of sandbags.

The vigilantes say they have “liberated” more towns near Apatzingan in recent weeks and vow to spread, ignoring federal government warnings that their expansion will not be tolerated.

“Where there are kidnappings and executions, we will take all of them,” said Jose Manuel Mireles, a tall 55-year-old doctor with a thick mustache who led one of the first revolts in Tepalcatepec on February 24.

“If (authorities) say they won’t allow us to advance but they do nothing, then they can’t stop us. Our people are ready to die, including against the state government if necessary, because they are infested with criminals,” Mireles said as he hunted doves in a remote ranch.

The vigilantes appeared in a handful of towns on February 24, fed up with the municipal police’s inability or unwillingness to stop the Templars, who have killed, kidnapped, fixed lime prices and extorted everyone from butchers to tortilla makers.

Underscoring the complexity of Michoacan, officials and the Templars have accused the self-defense forces of being proxies of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, a charge they deny.

President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose promise to curb violence in Mexico is challenged by Michoacan’s troubles, deployed thousands of soldiers to the state in May to tame the situation.

Troops and federal police patrol sunbaked roads and towns in Tierra Caliente, or Hot Country, an agricultural region that exports limes and avocados to the United States as well as methamphetamine produced in makeshift labs.

Last week, unidentified gunmen hiding in the woods fired on four busloads of federal police on a road near Apatzingan, killing two and wounding nine officers.

‘Failed state’

The chaos prompted Bishop Patino to send a missive in October accusing local officials of colluding with criminals, warning that Michoacan had “all the characteristics of a failed state.”

Last month, authorities hid the 75-year-old prelate in another town over an unspecified threat against him.

But Patino, who is retiring, returned to preach in Apatzingan, using his pulpit to give support to the vigilantes.

“If I want to attack you, you have the obligation to defend yourself, no? It’s the same with society,” the diminutive clergyman with dark circles under his eyes told AFP after Sunday service, smiling to men, women and children who lined up to shake his hand…(continue reading at Yahoo News)

Agence France-Presse

AFP journalists cover wars, conflicts, politics, science, health, the environment, technology, fashion, entertainment, the offbeat, sports and a whole lot more in text, photographs, video, graphics and online.

Despite the Doom and Gloom, Jesus Is Still Lord

 

by JENNIFER LECLAIRE (Charisma News)

As news editor for Charisma magazine, I read hundreds of stories every week about the good, bad and ugly. Unfortunately, most of it is bad and ugly.

Through this lens, it’s clear that anti-Christ agendas and false gospels are rising. In the world, we see the homosexual agenda, the socialist agenda, the atheist agenda and so on. In the church, we see the hypergrace movement, sexual scandals in the church and cessationist wars that grieve the Holy Spirit.

Still, Jesus is Lord.

Over the Thanksgiving break, I was encouraged by some seemingly trivial observations. For example, the Gideon Bible was still in my drawer at the Embassy Suites in downtown Tampa. When I went down for breakfast, a couple sitting next to me held hands and prayed over their meal in the name of Jesus. In nearby St. Petersburg, a nativity scene was displayed in all its glory.

Yes, the culture wars are real. The atheists really are trying to drive Christianity out of the public square, and radical gay activists really are trying to redefine traditional marriage. Yes, there is trouble in the church. High-profile pastors really are falling into sexual immorality or committing suicide. Yes, it’s likely to get darker in the days ahead.

Still, Jesus is Lord.

Peter warns us, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). And to that I say a hearty amen. But nowhere in that verse does it call us to be paranoid or to be afraid of what will happen next. In fact, the Bible tells us repeatedly to “fear not.”

Paul warned us not to be ignorant of the devil’s devices (2 Cor. 2:11). Again, I say amen. But the apostle didn’t intend for us to exalt the enemy over Jesus. We need to put on our spiritual armor because we are wrestling against principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). But God always leads us into triumph in Christ (2 Cor. 2:14).

Each and every week, I sound the alarm through this column because we need to be sober and vigilant; we need to be educated about the devil’s devices; we need to be equipped to wrestle against that which is wrestling against us. But this week I am blowing the trumpet in Zion and sounding an alarm in God’s holy mountain (Joel 2:1).

I would encourage you to read Joel 2 in its entirety. We need to heed God’s Word in this hour. We need to continue issuing the call to repentance in the church. Then the Lord will be zealous for His land. Then God will pour His Spirit out upon us so we won’t grow weary in this wrestling match—and we won’t grow paranoid or fearful either.

Spiritual warfare is a reality, but Jesus is still Lord.

Jennifer LeClaire is news editor at Charisma. She is also the author of several books, including The Spiritual Warrior’s Guide to Defeating Jezebel. You can email Jennifer at jennifer.leclaire@charismamedia.com or visit her website here. You can also join Jennifer on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

Posted with permission from Charisma News.

Moment of prayer for 12 nuns abducted by Syrian rebels

 

Pope prays for 12 nuns abducted in Syria by rebels

By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP)

Syrian Nun, monastery Santa Takla, Maaloula, Syria, Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis called Wednesday for prayers for 12 Orthodox nuns who were taken by force from their convent in Syria by opposition fighters. Religious officials in the region have said the women were being held against their will, but a Syrian opposition activist said they were merely taken away for their own safety.

Francis didn’t call for their release but appealed for prayers from the crowd at the end of his general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“I invite everyone to pray for the sisters of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Santa Takla in Maaloula, Syria, who were taken by force by armed men two days ago,” he said. “Let us continue to pray and to work together for peace.”

The abduction has added to fears that hardline Muslim rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad were increasingly targeting Christians.

Rebels previously kidnapped two bishops and a priest. Syria’s minorities, including Christians, have mostly sided with Assad or remained neutral in Syria’s civil war, fearing for their fate if the rebels, increasingly dominated by Islamic extremists, come to power…(continue reading at Yahoo News)