• BIBLES UNBOUND CELEBRATES FIRST BIRTHDAY
• INDONESIANS JAILED FOR BEHEADINGS
• JUDGE STRIKES DOWN INTERNET PORN LAW
• EQUALITY LAW IN GREAT BRITAIN CAUSES GRAVE CONCERNS

 

* BIBLES UNBOUND CELEBRATES FIRST BIRTHDAY - First birthdays are exciting! Some one-year-olds blow out the candle and some try to grab it. Some children are more interested in playing with the cake than eating it!

Last month, our VOM staff celebrated a different kind of birthday—the first birthday of Bibles Unbound. This project has grown dramatically in its first year! More than 10,000 individuals of all ages have now mailed almost 200,000 New Testaments into restricted nations. We are racing toward the goal of mailing 50,000 New Testaments each month; last month Bibles Unbound participants mailed more than 20,000!

It is exciting to see how God has blessed Bibles Unbound, and we are thankful for each person, family, Sunday school class, homeschool group and church that has participated.

If you haven’t logged on to www.biblesunbound.com yet, do so today! You can see right on the home page how many New Testaments have been mailed and the current monthly commitment. You can also sign up to mail from your home, and join this exciting ministry opportunity. Although this is a monthly program, no long-term commitment is required. You may cancel your participation at any time.

If you would like a DVD of the three-minute Bibles Unbound promotional video to show in your church, we would be happy to send you a complimentary copy. You can watch this video online at www.biblesunboundmovie.com, and may also request a copy of the DVD to share with your Christian friends.

Ultimately, this first birthday celebration is not about a date on the calendar or an organization. It is about God's Word going to people and places where it has not been available before. It is about our brothers and sisters who are faithfully witnessing in those dangerous places.

Instead of gathering around a huge cake here on earth, we are looking forward to an even bigger celebration—one that will last for all eternity.

For those in bonds,

Scott Poe and the Bibles Unbound team
(www.biblesunbound.com, Mar 2007) (to index)

* INDONESIANS JAILED FOR BEHEADINGS - An Indonesian court has sentenced three Muslim militants to jail for beheading three Christian schoolgirls in Central Sulawesi in 2005.

Hasanuddin, 34, was given 20 years for planning the attack, while two accomplices were given 14 years.

Hasanuddin had earlier told the court he helped plan the attack but rejected allegations he masterminded it.

The beheading of the girls, attacked as they walked to school in Poso in 2005, drew international condemnation.

It also fanned tensions in Sulawesi, where Muslim-Christian violence has continued despite a 2002 peace deal.

Hasanuddin's denial was rejected by chief judge Binsar Siregar, who said: "The accused was proven to plan and move other people to carry out terror acts."

The court in Jakarta was also told that Hasanuddin had left a message next to the severed heads of the girls, saying: "A life for a life. A head for a head".

A separate court sentenced defendants Irwanto Irano and Lilik Purwanto to 14 years each.

Speaking before his sentencing, Hasanuddin said going to jail did not concern him.

"It's not a problem (if I am being sentenced to prison) because this is a part of our struggle. What will become a problem is if our brothers decide to get revenge," he said.

The three girls were attacked as they walked to the private Christian school near their home in Poso. One of their heads was discovered outside a church.

The trial had been told that the attack was timed to take place during a festival at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hasanuddin said he wanted to avenge the deaths of Muslims killed during previous religious violence in the country, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

More than 1,000 people are believed to have been killed during two years of violence triggered by a brawl between Christian and Muslim gangs in December 1998.

Tensions have risen in recent months following the execution of three Christian militants in September 2006, for attacks against Muslims in 2000.
(BBC News, 21 Mar 2007) (to index)

* JUDGE STRIKES DOWN INTERNET PORN LAW - A 1998 law designed to block children from viewing pornography Web sites violates free speech rights, a U.S. federal court ruled on Thursday, in a blow to government efforts to restrict Internet smut.

The ruling sided with a challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had argued that the provisions of the Child Online Protection Act were too restrictive and violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that protects free speech.

Judge Lowell Reed of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia wrote in his ruling that while he sympathized with the goal of restricting minors from seeing pornography, other means that were less restrictive of free speech, such as software filters, were available to block such content.

"I may not turn a blind eye to the law ... to protect this nation's youth by upholding a flawed statute, especially when a more effective and less restrictive alternative is readily available," the judge wrote in his ruling.

Government lawyers had argued during the four-week trial that Internet filters were ineffective tools since most parents did not actively use them.

Supporters of the law predicted the ruling will be appealed or that new legislation would be passed by Congress.

"It doesn't matter if the Republicans are in the majority or the Democrats. This issue is something both sides of the aisle feel strongly about," said Donna Rice Hughes of Enough Is Enough, an Internet pornography watchdog group.

John Morris, a lawyer for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told reporters in a teleconference, "This law is not really aimed at commercial pornography but really reaches far beyond that to a broad range of valuable content."

The Child Online Protection Act made it a crime for any person to provide minors access to "harmful material" over the Internet. Violators could be fined up to $50,000 and imprisoned for up to 6 months.

The law was never enforced because it was immediately challenged in court after being signed into law by former President Bill Clinton.
(Reuters, 22 Mar 2007) (to index)

* EQUALITY LAW IN GREAT BRITAIN CAUSES GRAVE CONCERNS - Despite opposition from Christian groups, the British House of Commons passed the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) 2007 on March 19 without debate in the house. On the evening of March 21, it was passed by the House of Lords after two and a half hours' debate. Only three of the twenty-six unelected bishops in the House voted on the bill.

The law forbids any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. While exceptions are made for churches and other faith-based organizations, they do not apply to churches or other religious organizations under contract with the government to provide services such as adoption and private education. The Catholic adoption agencies are prepared to close rather than place children with homosexual couples, according to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, who has openly criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government for the tactics used in passing the law. Blair has been firm in rejecting any religious exemptions to gay adoptions and has given church-run agencies twenty months to change their policies.

Pray that U.K. Christians will be faithful to God's Word regardless of what men say (Acts 5:29).
(Voice of the Martyrs, 28 Mar 2007) (to index)