Heliocentric Global Warming

Henrik Svensmark probably understands a little of how Galileo Galilei felt as he was attached by the Roman Catholic Church for his proposition of a heliocentric model of the universe in opposition to the geocentric model of Ptolemy.

Galileo challenged the conventional wisdom of his day which, supposedly on Biblical grounds, placed the Earth at the center of the Universe. Similarly the results of Svensmark's research challenges the conventional wisdom of our day that Earth bound CO2 (especially that produced by us nasty humans) is responsible for the Global Warming phenomenon. In contrast to this "geocentric source" of global warming Svensmark proposes a "heliocentric source" (that the Sun is the primary source of global warming).

History has this knack for being repeated. I predict that Svensmark will be labeled a heretic by Al Gore's Church of Global Inconvenience. The only question remaining is how many carbon credits he will be required to pay to avoid House Arrest.

Sun's Shifts May Cause Global Warming

DISCOVER Magazine
Environment / Global Warming
06.25.2007

His studies show that natural variations in the sun plays a major role in global warming. So are humans off the hook? And if so, why does he use compact fluorescent lightbulbs?

by Marion Long

Most leading climate experts don’t agree with Henrik Svensmark, the 49-year-old director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen. In fact, he has taken a lot of blows for proposing that solar activity and cosmic rays are instrumental in determining the warming (and cooling) of Earth. His studies show that cosmic rays trigger cloud formation, suggesting that a high level of solar activity—which suppresses the flow of cosmic rays striking the atmosphere—could result in fewer clouds and a warmer planet. This, Svensmark contends, could account for most of the warming during the last century. Does this mean that carbon dioxide is less important than we’ve been led to believe? Yes, he says, but how much less is impossible to know because climate models are so limited.

There is probably no greater scientific heresy today than questioning the warming role of CO2, especially in the wake of the report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report warned that nations must cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, and insisted that “unless drastic action is taken . . . millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods, and disease.” As astrophysicist ?Eugene Parker, the discoverer of solar wind, writes in the foreword to Svensmark’s new book, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, “Global warming has become a political issue both in government and in the scientific community. The scientific lines have been drawn by ‘eminent’ scientists, and an important new idea is an unwelcome intruder. It upsets the established orthodoxy.”

We talked with the unexpectedly modest and soft-spoken Henrik Svensmark about his work, the criticism it has received, and truth versus hype in climate science.


Was there something in the Danish weather when you were growing up that inspired you to study clouds and climate?

I remember being fascinated by clouds when I was young, but I never suspected that I would one day be working on these problems, trying to solve the puzzle of how clouds are actually formed. My background is in physics, not in atmospheric science. At the time when I left school and began working, it was almost impossible to get any permanent work whatsoever in science. That was why, after doing a lot of physics on short-term things at various places, I took a job at the Meteorological Society. And once I was there I thought, “Well, I had better start doing something.” So I started thinking about problems that were relevant in that field, and that was how I started thinking about the sun and how it might affect Earth.

It was a purely scientific impulse. With my background in theoretical physics, I had no—well, certainly not very much—knowledge about global warming. I simply thought that if there is a connection to the sun, that would be very interesting, and I certainly had no idea it would be viewed as so controversial.


In 1996, when you reported that changes in the sun’s activity could explain most or all of the recent rise in Earth’s temperature, the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel called your announcement “extremely naive and irresponsible.” How did you react?

I was just stunned. I remember being shocked by how many thought what I was doing was terrible. I couldn’t understand it because when you are a physicist, you are trained that when you find something that cannot be explained, something that doesn’t fit, that is what you are excited about. If there is a possibility that you might have an explanation, that is something that everybody thinks is what you should pursue. Here was exactly the opposite reaction. It was as though people were saying to me, “This is something that you should not have done.” That was very strange for me, and it has been more or less like that ever since.


So it’s difficult to do climate research without being suspected of having a hidden agenda?

Yes, it is frustrating. People can use this however they want, and I can’t stop them. Some are accusing me of doing it for political reasons; some are saying I’m doing it for the oil companies. This is just ridiculous. I think there’s a huge interest in discrediting what I’m doing, but I’ve sort of gotten used to this. I’ve convinced myself the only thing I can do is just to continue doing good science. And I think time will show that we are on the right track.
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Do you ever worry that people will take your findings and use them to support unwarranted or even harmful conclusions?

I would be happy to kill the project if I could find out that there was something that didn’t fit or that I no longer believed in it. When we started, it was just a simple hypothesis based on a correlation, and correlations are, of course, something that could be quite dubious, and they could go away if you get better data. But this work has only strengthened itself over the years.


What first made you suspect that changes in the sun are having a significant impact on global warming?

I began my investigations by studying work done in 1991 by Eigil Fiin-Christensen and Knud Lassen Fiin-Christensen. They had looked at solar activity over the last 100 years and found a remarkable correlation to temperatures. I knew that many people dismissed that result, but I thought the correlation was so good that I could not help but start speculating—what could be the relation? Then I heard a suggestion that it might be cosmic rays, changing the chemistry high up in the atmosphere. I immediately thought, “Well, if that is going to work, it has to be through the clouds.”

That was the initial idea. Then I remembered seeing a science experiment at my high school in Elsinore, in which our teacher showed us what is called a cloud chamber, and seeing tracks of radioactive particles, which look like small droplets. So I thought to myself, “That would be the way to do it.” I started to obtain data from satellites, which actually was quite a detective work at that time, but I did start to find data, and to my surprise there seems to be a correlation between changes in cosmic rays and changes in clouds. And I think in early January 1996, I finally got a curve, which was very impressive with respect to the correlation. It was only over a short period of time, because the data were covering just seven years or something like that. So it was almost nothing, but it was a nice correlation.


How exactly does the mechanism work, linking changes in the sun with climate change on Earth?

The basic idea is that solar activity can turn the cloudiness up and down, which has an effect on the warming or cooling of Earth’s surface temperature. The key agents in this are cosmic rays, which are energetic particles coming from the interstellar media—they come from remnants of supernova explosions mainly. These energetic particles have to enter into what we call the heliosphere, which is the large volume of space that is dominated by our sun, through the solar wind, which is a plasma of electrons, atomic nuclei, and associated magnetic fields that are streaming nonstop from the sun. Cosmic-ray particles have to penetrate the sun’s magnetic field. And if the sun and the solar wind are very active—as they are right now—they will not allow so many cosmic rays to reach Earth. Fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds will be formed, and so there will be a warmer Earth. If the sun and the solar wind are not so active, then more cosmic rays can come in. That means more clouds [reflecting away more sunlight] and a cooler Earth.

Now it’s well known that solar activity can turn up and down the amount of cosmic rays that come to Earth. But the next question was a complete unknown: Why should cosmic rays affect clouds? Because at that time, when we began this work, there was no mechanism that could explain this. Meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation.


You and a half-dozen colleagues carried out a landmark study of cosmic rays and clouds while working in the basement of the Danish National Space Center. How did you do it?

We spent five or six years building an experiment here in Copenhagen, to see if we could find a connection. We named the experiment SKY, which means “cloud” in Danish. Natural cosmic rays came through the ceiling, and ultraviolet lamps played the part of the sun. We had a huge chamber, with about eight cubic meters of air, and the whole idea was to have air that is as clean as you have over the Pacific, and then of course, to be able to control what’s in the chamber. So we had minute trace gases as you have in the real atmosphere, of sulfur dioxide and ozone and water vapor, and then by keeping these things constant and just changing the ionization [the abundance of electrically charged atoms] in the chamber a little bit, we could see that we could produce these small aerosols, which are the basic building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei.

So the idea is that in the atmosphere, the ionization is helping produce cloud condensation nuclei, and that changes the amount and type of clouds. If you change the clouds, of course, you change the amount of energy that reaches Earth’s surface. So it’s a very effective way, with almost no energy input, to change the energy balance of Earth and therefore the temperature.
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There were so many strange surprises, and many times we were busy just trying to understand what was going on. The mechanism we seemed to be finding was very different from any theoretical ideas about how it should work. It seemed to be much more effective than we had ever imagined. It seems as if an electron is able to help form a small particle—a molecular cluster, as we call it—and then the electron can jump off and help another one. So it’s like a catalytic process. It was a big surprise that it is so effective.

These types of experiments had not really been done before, and we had to find new techniques in order to do them. Once we had the results, it was necessary to understand completely what was going on. So it was a very intense period of work, almost hypnotic.


Now there are other experiments, like the CLOUD project, also designed to investigate the effects of cosmic rays. How will this build on your work?

CLOUD is an international collaboration [sponsored by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN] that is taking place in Geneva, but it’s going to take a while before any results come out of that. It was approved last year, and building the machine will take at least three years. That’s a problem with science: You have to have a lot of patience because results are very slow to come.


If the scientists at CLOUD are able to prove that cosmic rays can change Earth’s cloud cover, would that force climate scientists to reevaluate their ideas about global warming?

Definitely, because in the standard view of climate change, you think of clouds as a result of the climate that you have. Our idea reverses that, turns things completely upside down, saying that the climate is a result of how the clouds are.


How do you see your work fitting into the grand debates about the causes of global warming and the considerations of what ought to be done about it?

I think—no, I believe—that the sun has had an influence in the past and is changing climate at the present, and it most certainly will do so in the future. We live in a unique time in history, because this period has the highest solar activity we have had in 1,000 years, and maybe even in 8,000 years. And we know that changes in solar activity have made significant changes in climate. For instance, we had the little ice age about 300 years ago. You had very few sunspots [markings on the face of the sun that indicate heightened solar activity] between 1650 and 1715, and for example, in Sweden in 1696, it caused the harvest to go wrong. People were starving—100,000 people died—and it was very desperate times, all coinciding with this very low solar activity. The last time we had high solar activity was during the medieval warming, which was when all of the cathedrals were built in Europe. And if you go 1,000 years back, you also had high solar activity, and that was when Rome was at its height. So I think there’s good evidence that these are significant changes that are happening naturally. If we are talking about the next century, there might be a human effect on climate change on top of that, but the natural effect from solar effect will be important. This should be recognized in the models and calculations that are being used to make predictions.


Why is there such resistance to doing that? Is the science that conflicted or confusing? Or is politics intervening?

I think it’s the latter, and I think it’s both. And I think there’s a fear that it will turn out, or that it would be suggested, that the man-made contribution is smaller than what you would expect if you look at CO2 alone.


Have you had a hard time getting funding?

For an eternity, I would say. But there are no oil companies funding my work, not at all. It sounds funny, but the Danish Carlsberg Foundation—you know, the one who makes beer—they have been of real support to me. They have a big foundation; in Denmark it’s one of the biggest resources for science. It’s because the founder of Carlsberg wanted to use scientific methods to make the best beer. It’s probably the best beer in the world, because of science.


If cosmic radiation is in fact the principal cause of global warming, is that good or bad news for human beings?

That’s a good question because you would have to say that we cannot predict the sun. And, of course, that would mean that we couldn’t do anything about it.
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But if humans, through carbon dioxide emissions, are affecting climate less than we think, would that mean we may have more time to reduce the harmful effects?

Yes, that could of course be a consequence. But I don’t know how to get to such a conclusion because right now everything is set up that CO2 is a major disaster in society.


Do you agree that carbon dioxide is having at least some impact on Earth’s current warming?

Yes, but you have to give the sun a role. If you include the sun in the right way, the effect of CO2 must be smaller. The question is, how much smaller? All we know about the effect of CO2 is really based on climate models that predict how climate should be in 50 to 100 years, and these climate models cannot actually model clouds at all, so they are really poor. When you look at them, the models are off by many hundreds percent. It’s a well-known fact that clouds are the major uncertainty in any climate model. So the tools that we are using to make these predictions are not actually very good.


What do you hope to do next in pursuit of your theory?

I’m extremely excited about our next experiment, which will happen in the next couple months. We are planning to go one kilometer below Earth’s surface because when we do an experiment in the basement we cannot get rid of the radiation. Cosmic rays are so penetrating that there’s always ionization in our chamber and we cannot get to zero ionization. I think it will be the first time that people are attempting an experiment where there is no ionization present. I think it will be quite fascinating because it will tell us something about the details in the mechanism.


Do you think then that individuals and societies as a whole need to try to conserve energy? Do you use compact fluorescent lightbulbs, for instance?

Yes, yes, we use those. And I ride a bicycle. There are good reasons to conserve our resources and find a more economical way of using energy, but the argumentation is not linked necessarily to climate.


At this stage in your work, how confident are you that your basic theories are correct?

I think it is almost certain that cosmic rays are responsible for changes in climate. I think now I have very good evidence, and I think I’ve come up with some very good evidence that it is clouds. Of course, we cannot discuss the exact mechanism, but I think we have some very important fragments of these ideas. One extrapolation we could make, for instance: Would this mechanism work in an ancient atmosphere? Would these processes still happen? That is something I don’t know.


You discuss your work as part of an emerging field that you call “cosmoclimatology.” What is that?

It is the idea that processes in space and what is happening here on Earth are connected. It is this idea that when Earth is in a certain spiral arm of the Milky Way, you can associate that with a certain geological period. Previously, the idea was of Earth as a sort of isolated system on which processes evolved. Now all of a sudden it seems as if our position in the galaxy is important for what has happened and is happening here on Earth. It is this connection between Earth and space that’s exciting and why I have given it this name. Most of this research has taken place just within the last 10 years, and it is truly multidisciplinary, ranging from solar physics and atmospheric chemistry to geology and meteorology—even high-particle physicists are involved. The people who are doing space-related observations are very happy that there could be a connection from space to Earth because it makes a good argumentation for understanding processes out there.

These connections, which combine such a variety of disciplines and create opportunities for many lines of work, are surprising and wonderful. It has been a real challenge for me, though, because I have to look at so many different fields in order to work.


You’ve faced more than a few hard knocks in pursuing your scientific career. What keeps you going?

From the beginning, I have found this to be a really interesting problem, and now, I think, it is the potential of it that draws me on. It is something which started as a simple idea and seems to be continually extending, or expanding. That has really been the most important thing. I mean, for instance, I would never have thought that we would find these correlations between the cosmic rays and the evolution of the Milky Way and life on Earth. I never expected that all of these things are connected in a beautiful way.

A Call to Prayer for the Church in Smyrna

The Letter to the Church at Smyrna

And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write;
These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;

I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;
He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

Revelations 2:8-11, The Bible, King James Version

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com

Thursday, April 26, 2007

A letter to the Global Church from The Protestant Church of Smyrna (revised -- please use this version)

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

SMYRNA, TURKEY (ANS) -- Smyrna is an ancient city (today known as Izmir in Turkey) that was founded at a very early period at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia.

It was the second city to receive a letter from the apostle John in the book of Revelation. Acts 19:10 suggests that the church there was founded during Paul’s third missionary journey. Due to the fact that the port city of Izmir houses the second largest population in Turkey today, the site of ancient Smyrna has been little excavated. Excepting the agora, theater, and sections of the Roman aqueduct, little remains of the ancient city.

But there is a protestant church in there that calls itself The Protestant Church of Smyrna and it has issued the following letter to the Global Church which was sent to ANS.

Here it is in its entirety:

A letter to the Global Church from The Protestant Church of Smyrna

Dear friends,

This past week has been filled with much sorrow. Many of you have heard by now of our devastating loss here in an event that took place in Malatya, a Turkish province 300 miles northeast of Antioch, the city where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26).

On Wednesday morning, April 18, 2007, 46 year old German Christian and father of three Tilmann Geske prepared to go to his office, kissing his wife goodbye and taking a moment to hug his son and give him the priceless memory, “Goodbye, son. I love you.”

Tilmann rented an office space from Zirve Publishing. Zirve was also the location of the Malatya Evangelist Church office. A ministry of the church, Zirve prints and distributes Christian literature to Malatya and nearby cities in Eastern Turkey. In another area of town, 35 year old Pastor Necati Aydin, father of two, said goodbye to his wife, leaving for the office as well. They had a morning Bible Study and prayer meeting that some other believers in town would also be attending. Ugur Yuksel likewise made his way to the Bible study.

None of these three men knew that what awaited them at the Bible study was the ultimate testing and application of their faith, which would conclude with their entrance into glory to receive their crown of righteousness from Christ and honor from all the saints awaiting them in the Lord’s presence.

On the other side of town, ten young men all under 20 years old put into place final arrangements for their ultimate act of faith, living out their love for Allah and hatred of infidels who they felt undermined Islam.

On Resurrection Sunday, five of these men had been to a by-invitation-only evangelistic service that Pastor Necati and his men had arranged at a hotel conference room in the city. The men were known to the believers as “seekers.” No one knows what happened in the hearts of those men as they listened to the gospel. Were they touched by the Holy Spirit? Were they convicted of sin? Did they hear the gospel in their heart of hearts? Today we only have the beginning of their story.

These young men, one of whom is the son of a mayor in the Province of Malatya, are part of a tarikat, or a group of “faithful believers” in Islam. Tarikat membership is highly respected here; it’s like a fraternity membership. In fact, it is said that no one can get into public office without membership in a tarikat. These young men all lived in the same dorm, all preparing for university entrance exams.

The young men got guns, bread knives, ropes and towels ready for their final act of service to Allah. They knew there would be a lot of blood. They arrived in time for the Bible Study, around 10 o’clock.

They arrived, and apparently the Bible Study began. Reportedly, after Necati read a chapter from the Bible the assault began. The boys tied Ugur, Necati, and Tilmann’s hands and feet to chairs and as they videoed their work on their cellphones, they brutally tortured our brothers for almost three hours.

Neighbors in workplaces near the print house said later they had heard yelling, but assumed the owners were having a domestic argument so they did not respond.

Meanwhile, another believer Gokhan and his wife had a leisurely morning. He slept in till 10, ate a long breakfast and finally around 12:30 he and his wife arrived at the office. The door was locked from the inside, and his key would not work. He phoned and though it had connection on his end he did not hear the phone ringing inside. He called cell phones of his brothers and finally Ugur answered his phone. “We are not at the office. Go to the hotel meeting. We are there. We will come there,” he said cryptically. As Ugur spoke Gokhan heard in the telephone’s background weeping and a strange snarling sound.

He phoned the police, and the nearest officer arrived in about five minutes. He pounded on the door, “Police, open up!” Initially the officer thought it was a domestic disturbance. At that point they heard another snarl and a gurgling moan. The police understood that sound as human suffering, prepared the clip in his gun and tried over and over again to burst through the door. One of the frightened assailants unlocked the door for the policeman, who entered to find a grisly scene.

Tilmann and Necati had been slaughtered. Ugur’s throat was likewise slit and he was barely alive.

Three assailants in front of the policeman dropped their weapons.

Meanwhile Gokhan heard a sound of yelling in the street. Someone had fallen from their third story office. Running down, he found a man on the ground, whom he later recognized, named Emre Gunaydin. He had massive head trauma and, strangely, was snarling. He had tried to climb down the drainpipe to escape, and losing his balance had plummeted to the ground. It seems that he was the main leader of the attackers. Another assailant was found hiding on a lower balcony.

To untangle the web we need to back up six years. In April 2001, the National Security Council of Turkey (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu) began to consider evangelical Christians as a threat to national security, on equal footing as Al Quaida and PKK terrorism. Statements made in the press by political leaders, columnists and commentators have fueled a hatred against ‘missionaries’ who they claim bribe young people to change their religion.

After that decision in 2001, attacks and threats on churches, pastors and Christians began. Bombings, physical attacks, verbal and written abuse are only some of the ways Christians are being targetted. Most significant is the use of media propaganda.

From December 2005, after having a long meeting regarding the Christian threat, the wife of Former Prime Minister Ecevit, historian Ilber Ortayli, Professor Hasan Unsal, Politician Ahmet Tan and writer/propogandist Aytunc Altindal, each in their own profession began a campaign to bring the public’s attention to the looming threat of Christians who sought to “buy their children’s souls”. Hidden cameras in churches have taken church service footage and used it sensationally to promote fear and antagonism toward Christianity.

In an official televised response from Ankara, the Interior Minister of Turkey smirked as he spoke of the attacks on our brothers in Malatya. Amid public outrage and protests against the event and in favor of freedom of religion and freedom of thought, media and official comments ring with the same message, “We hope you have learned your lesson. We do not want Christians here.”

It appears that this was an organized attack initiated by an unknown adult tarikat leader. As in the Hrant Dink murder in January 2007, and a Catholic priest Andrea Santoro in February 2006, minors are being used to commit religious murders because public sympathy for youth is strong and they face lower penalties than an adult convicted of the same crime. Even the parents of these children are in favor of the acts. The mother of the 16 year old boy who killed the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro looked at the cameras as her son was going to prison and said, “he will serve time for Allah.”

The young men involved in the killing are currently in custody. Today news reported that they would be tried as terrorists, so their age would not affect the strict penalty. Assailant Emre Gunaydin is still in intensive care. The investigation centers around him and his contacts and they say the case will fall apart if he does not recover.

The Church in Turkey responded in a way that honored God as dozens of believers and pastors flew in as fast as they could to stand by the small church of Malatya and encourage the believers, take care of legal issues, and represent Christians to the media.

When Susanne expressed her wish to bury her husband in Malatya, the Governor tried to stop it, and when he realized he could not stop it, a rumor was spread that “it is a sin to dig a grave for a Christian.” In the end, in an undertaking that should be remembered in Christian history forever, the men from the church in Adana (near Tarsus), grabbed shovels and dug a grave for their slain brother in an un-tended hundred year old Armenian graveyard.

Ugur was buried by his family in an Alevi Muslim ceremony in his hometown of Elazig, his believing fiance watching from the shadows as his family and friends refused to accept in death the faith Ugur had so long professed and died for.

Necati’s funeral took place in his hometown of Izmir, the city where he came to faith. The darkness does not understand the light. Though the churches expressed their forgiveness for the event, Christians were not to be trusted. Before they would load the coffin onto the plane from Malatya, it went through two separate xray exams to make sure it was not loaded with explosives. This is not a usual procedure for Muslim coffins.

Necati’s funeral was a beautiful event. Like a glimpse of heaven, hundreds of Turkish Christians and workers came to show their love for Christ, and their honor for this man chosen to die for Christ. Necati’s wife Shemsa told the world, “His death was full of meaning, because he died for Christ and he lived for Christ… Necati was a gift from God. I feel honored that he was in my life, I feel crowned with honor. I want to be worthy of that honor.”

Boldly the believers took their stand at Necati’s funeral, facing the risks of being seen publicly and likewise becoming targets. As expected, the anti-terror police attended and videotaped everyone attending the funeral for their future use. The service took place outside at Buca Baptist church, and he was buried in a small Christian graveyard in the outskirts of Izmir.

Two assistant Governors of Izmir were there solemnly watching the event from the front row. Dozens of news agencies were there documenting the events with live news and photographs. Who knows the impact the funeral had on those watching? This is the beginning of their story as well. Pray for them.

In an act that hit front pages in the largest newspapers in Turkey, Susanne Geske in a television interview expressed her forgiveness. She did not want revenge, she told reporters. “Oh God, forgive them for they know not what they do,” she said, wholeheartedly agreeing with the words of Christ on Calvary (Luke 23:34).

In a country where blood-for-blood revenge is as normal as breathing, many many reports have come to the attention of the church of how this comment of Susanne Geske has changed lives. One columnist wrote of her comment, “She said in one sentence what 1000 missionaries in 1000 years could never do.”

Many foreigners in Malatya will most likely move out, as their families and children have become publicly identified as targets to the hostile city. The remaining 10 believers are in hiding. What will happen to this church, this light in the darkness? Most likely it will go underground. Pray for wisdom, that Turkish brothers from other cities will go to lead the leaderless church. Should we not be concerned for that great city of Malatya, a city that does not know what it is doing? (Jonah 4:11)

When our Pastor Fikret Bocek went with a brother to give a statement to the Security Directorate on Monday they were ushered into the Anti-Terror Department. On the wall was a huge chart covering the whole wall listing all the terrorist cells in Izmir, categorized. In one prominent column were listed all the evangelical churches in Izmir. The darkness does not understand the light. “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” (Acts 17:6)

Please pray for the Church in Turkey. “Don’t pray against persecution, pray for perseverence,” urges Pastor Fikret Bocek.

The Church is better having lost our brothers; the fruit in our lives, the renewed faith, the burning desire to spread the gospel to quench more darkness in Malatya …all these are not to be regretted. Pray that we stand strong against external opposition and especially pray that we stand strong against internal struggles with sin, our true debilitating weakness.

This we know. Christ Jesus was there when our brothers were giving their lives for Him. He was there, like He was when Stephen was being stoned in the sight of Saul of Tarsus.

Someday the video of the deaths of our brothers may reveal more to us about the strength that we know Christ gave them to endure their last cross, about the peace the Spirit of God endowed them with to suffer for their beloved Savior. But we know He did not leave their side. We know their minds were full of Scripture strengthening them to endure, as darkness tried to subdue the unsubduable Light of the Gospel. We know, in whatever way they were able, with a look or a word, they encouraged one another to stand strong. We know they knew they would soon be with Christ.

We don’t know the details. We don’t know the kind of justice that will or will not be served on this earth.

But we pray-- and urge you to pray-- that someday at least one of those five boys will come to faith because of the testimony in death of Tilmann Geske, who gave his life as a foreign Christian in Turkey, and the testimonies in death of Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, the first martyrs for Christ out of the Turkish Church.

Details in this letter were obtained through various news and media sources based on preliminary press releases and interviews. The court cases are pending and specific evidence and autopsy reports from the crime are not yet available to the public.

Reported by Darlene N. Bocek (24 April 2007)

Links to other postings of the same story:

http://persecution.com/news/index.cfm?action=fullstory&newsID=511

http://www.symphonyofscripture.com/?p=142

http://thepersecutiontimes.com/2007/04/25/from-the-protestant-church-of-smyrna/

http://www.breakingchristiannews.com/articles/display_art.html?ID=3907