UPrising (United Prayer rising): World Youth Prayer Assembly
Here is some of the latest thinking from the International Dream Team of the WYPA. Please feel free to give suggestions to the planning team.
1. We will initiate on 2016 and culminate on 2017.
2. It will be a full-year event.
3. We will pursue this regardless of seeming conflict with other global events; we see it as complementary to all gatherings.
On UPRISING 2016
1. We will mobilize for an "UPRISING DREAM TEAM" - mobilizers, organizers, trainers, to work toward UPRISING 2017
2. We will recruit young, like-minded, global leaders who are ready to pray.
3. Attendance can go from 300 to 5,000 or more. We will not set a limit.
4. We will treat the preparations for this as if there is no event on 2017.
5. We will incubate and synergize, soak and seek, relate and bond.
6. We will receive impartation from the older leaders from all walks of society.
7. We will cast a global vision of UPRISING.
8. We will "resist in prayer" the growing evil in our times, especially the attack on Christians.
9. We will believe for fresh anointing on the youth and children in prayer, starting their own prayer movements.
10. We will ask the UPRISING DREAM TEAM to do an UPRISING prayer gathering monthly for 12 months in order to build momentum for 2017.
11. For mobilization of Koreans: we will maximize the potential of mobilizing "Korean Diaspora Churches" to call for sort of a 'homecoming' for the Koreans.
12. We will dovetail on other global gatherings between July 2016-2017 not to compete, but to complement their respective visions.
13. We will send the delegates home to gather a generation: "See you in UPRISING 2017"
On UPRISING 2017
1. This will be exponentially bigger than 2016.
2. We will pray, seek God, and hunger for Him.
3. We will hear from and pray for every region.
4. We will research on and pray against every attack the enemy has released in this generation.
5. We will challenge all delegates to a global fasting and praying for revival, for a new Jesus Movement in the Digital Age.
6. We will challenge the generation/s represented to commit to a personal vision of transformation in the 7 Mountains of Culture.
7. We will give a "packet" to all attendees with how-to's on mobilizing, organizing, and starting an UPRISING in every nation and region.
Dates
We are looking at JULY 25-30, 2016.
-July 26-28 will be the 3-day kick-off.
-July 29 will be the Prayer Time at the DMZ border.
-July 30 will potentially be a stadium event to rally the Korean churches and prayer movement.
For more information or to give suggestions, please contact Pastor Jerome Ocampo care of the WYPA administrator Sarah Torres at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Please pray for His continued clarity, unity and wisdom for the planning team; for the finding of the appropriate venue in South Korea; effective connection and mobilization with youth prayer and mission movements worldwide; and for His provision of all the resources needed.
Pray for North Korea
It seems that there is a growing divide in North Korea between the donju who have money and the rest of the population. Donju are the newly affluent and growing middle class but in the North it is hard to speak of a middle class since the divide is so great. Anyway, they are able to buy their way out of undesirable work like the army and the "spring battle" that requires everyone to get out into the fields and plant. (The North has set up up another tension by upgrading schools from fines for skipping out.) They are strongly focused on owning the latest South Korean goods, including the best cosmetics, and this despite the increasing crackdowns. The growth of this class that increasingly flaunts authority may also be adding to Kim Jong Un's sense of insecurity. He recently executed his latest defense chief, Hyon Young Chol--by antiaircraft fire. This is only the latest in a long string of purges that reflect this. This insecurity and his inconsistencies (e.g. canceling UN Security-General Ban Ki Moon's visit) are of grave concern.
Kim Jong Un is also quite concerned about the ongoing communication between North Koreans and relatives who have made it to the South. He has been tightening up and call volume is dropping.
There is much in the news these days about North Korea that should fuel our prayers. We have also learned that the long arm of ISIS has also touched North Korea in the kidnapping of a North Korean doctor and his wife in Libya. Keep praying!
Ben Torrey
Director
The Fourth River Project, Inc.
www.thefourthriver.org
Here is the link to a marvelous video about a university that has been established by Christian organizations in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. It is a bold effort to change minds of young people so they can become change agents in this oppressive dictatorship:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur7IwW5NA0s
From the editor:
An additional, very special development for ministry inside North Korea has occurred that could bring great blessing and breakthrough to the nation this year. Please pray with us for all those involved in this process.
Two Sudanese Christian pastors face a possible death sentence
"In just a matter of days, Pastors Yat Michael Ruot and Peter Yein Reith are set to face a trial in Sudan on trumped-up charges. They could hang for their faith.
Both pastors, originally from South Sudan, were arrested by Sudan's Islamist government five months ago.
The two pastors disappeared amidst a government crackdown against Christianity. Pastor Ruot was arrested on December 21, 2014, and his friend, Pastor Reith, was arrested a few weeks later, on January 11, 2015, after inquiring about his friend's disappearance.
Lisa Daftari of Fox News reports:
Two Christian pastors from South Sudan who traveled north to Sudan and were arrested on charges of spying could face the death penalty when their trial begins this week, according to their attorneys.
Yat Michael Ruot and Peter Yein Reith, both Presbyterian pastors from the breakaway Christian nation of South Sudan, are being held by Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Services on charges of undermining the constitution and espionage. Their supporters say their arrest and pending trial is just the latest effort by the militant Islamist government in Khartoum to stamp out Christianity. . . .
The pair also was charged with "inciting organized groups" and "offending Islamic beliefs," which call for imprisonment.
The trial was postponed to May 31.
Even worse, Sudan's "NISS officials have demanded $12,000 from the Church for the release of the pastors . . . ."
This is nothing more than cold-blooded extortion to profit from the threat of execution of these Christians pastors.
In just a few days they will face a jihadist sham trial on trump-up charges by an Islamist government focused on persecuting Christians. Sudan is trying to make a statement.
This is just the latest example of the Sudanese Islamist government's targeted persecution of Christians.
This is not the first time the Sudanese judicial system has been used as a weapon to exterminate Christians.
Last year, Sudan sentenced Christian mom Meriam Ibrahim to hang for her Christian faith. After weeks of tireless advocacy by the ACLJ and other global advocates for persecuted Christians, she was set free.
Sudan will listen to international pressure. Because hundreds of thousands of people from all across the world spoke out, demanding her freedom, Meriam Ibrahim is now safe and free with her family in America.
Yet the persecution continues.
As Lisa Daftari reports, "Marginalization of Christians has dramatically increased since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011." Her report also explains, Sudan's NISS intelligence forces, led by hard-line Islamists, persecute the country's Christians and use Shariah law to extort Christians and churches.
The 2015 Annual Report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommends that Sudan continue to be categorized as a "Country of Particular Concern" by the State Department, as it has been since 1999, for its ongoing and systemic human rights abuses against Christians."
From the American Center for Law and Justice, http://aclj.org
Please pray for the exoneration and release of these two men of God and for the end of persecution of believers in both Sudan and South Sudan. May the Gospel speed on and triumph through His people there!
Boko Haram Hacks to Death Dozens, Including Scores of Christians; Continues Forcing Young Girls to Carry Out Suicide Bombings
Returnees queue during the evacuation of Nigerians displaced by Boko Haram militants, at a camp for displaced people in Geidam,
Yobe state, Nigeria, May 6, 2015. Niger has evacuated Nigerians living around Lake Chad, military and aid officials told Reuters on Tuesday, as the armies of four west African nations battle to quash the Islamist militants.
Boko Haram has killed dozens of people, including many Christians in a slew of separate attacks carried out in raids on villages in Nigeria in the past week. The U.N. has said that the Islamic terror group continues forcing women and young girls to carry out its suicide bombings.
Morning Star News reported that Boko Haram's raids in Adamawa state have killed at least 29 people, most of whom are believed to have been Christians. Last week the jihadists hacked to death 10 Christains with machetes in Pambula-Kwamda, a Christian community in Adamawa's Madagali Local government Area.
"They destroyed the telephone mast first before invading our community - this was to prevent us from telephoning and requesting help," said one pastor from the community who did not wish to be named.
"They killed 10 members of our church [Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, or EYN] using machetes and then slaughtering them."
Although the Nigerian army has successfully pushed out Boko Haram from a number of its hideouts in the past several months, the terror group continues carrying out deadly raids.
Boko Haram is the prime suspect in a separate suicide bombing of the Christian community of Garkida, Gombi LGA in Adamawa state, which killed nine people on May 19, and a shooting attack on May 16 in Wagga which killed another 10 Christians.
Niger has evacuated Nigerians living around Lake Chad, military and aid officials told Reuters on Tuesday, as the armies of four west African nations battle to quash the Islamist militants.
"The attacks killed 19 people in Garkida and Madagali," said the Rev. Samuel Dante Dali, president of the EYN. "The bombing signals a renewal of violence by the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram at a time when Nigerian authorities are claiming victory in many parts of the northeast."
AllAfrica.com reported on Wednesday that another 37 people, including men, women and children, were killed by the terrorists after an attack on Gubio town in Gubio local government of Borno State.
Bukar Mondama, a teenager from Gubio and a member of the town's vigilante group, described the incident:
"We were playing football around 5:30 p.m. when we suddenly started hearing gunshots and there was confusion all over the town; everybody was running. The civilians JTF tried their best but there was no weaponry," Mondama said.
"They killed 37 civilians, including two little boys, while many others suffered injuries. They took their time to select and burn all good homes and all the mosques in the town. They burned our vehicles that were parked in the town so that we would not be able to go after them."
The U.N. has meanwhile said that Boko Haram continues to use women and girls in its suicide bombing attacks.
"Children are not instigating these suicide attacks; they are used intentionally by adults in the most horrific way; they are, first and foremost, victims not perpetrators," UNICEF representative Jean Gough said.
The international agency said that women and children were used in three-quarters of all of Boko Haram's suicide bombings since July, with girls between 7 and 17 years old used in at least nine confirmed bombings.
UNICEF noted that at least 743,000 children have been uprooted by the conflict in Nigeria in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which has stretched on for over five years.
"Many children were separated from their families when they fled the violence, and have no one to look after them," Gough added.
Let us pray for the overthrow of Boko Haram and the wicked ideology of hate and destruction that motivates them. Pray that they may be set free from serving the devil and that the authorities in Nigeria, Niger and Chad can increasingly overcome and destroy this evil movement that has become such an awful menace.
