Brown's Daily Word & India update 2-20-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for this Friday. Sunday is coming. I would like to ask you to continue to pray for the Christians who are persecuted and who are still being brutally murdered in Orissa. I spoke to some of my family members yesterday. They shared with me another tragic story. One of our relatives was brutally murdered by the Hindu Extremists on Feb 19. I have enclosed the news release on him. His name was Hrudaya Nanda Nayak. I knew him personally. He was married and had two young children. His father's name was Phillip. He was my mom's first cousin. His mother is the daughter of a pastor who was a staunch Convert from Hinduism. He is survived by his wife, two children, his mom, one brother, and two sisters. My brother, Patel Naik, remains in jail. He is in his seventh month of captivity.
Acts 6: 8 - 8:3 tells the story of Stephen. Stephen was not an apostle. He was not a "star," but he would suffer and die for his faith as may anyone who is faithful. Stephen had become one of the first deacons (Acts 6: 1-8), engaging in ministry among needy followers of the Way, the Jesus movement within Judaism. Stephen is a model of balance in Christian service. Today we hear much of "Great Commission Christians," that is, Christians who stress the Great Commission of Matthew 28, who emphasize evangelism, who quote Acts 1: 8 ("ye shall be witnesses), John 4: 35 ("the fields are white unto the harvest") and Matthew 9: 33 ("the harvest is great, but the laborers are few"). While Stephen would agree with these Great Commission Christians, he would also identify who another group, the "Great Commandment Christians." They take seriously Jesus' command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22: 38-39). They believe that Matthew 25, with its teachings about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison is every bit as "God breathed" as Matthew 28: 19-20. For a Great Commission Christian to get a hearing, he or she had better be acting first like Great Commandment Christians. Stephen kept the two in balance as we also should. When Stephen was chosen to become a deacon of the early Church, he was a recent convert. Yet, unlike so many new to the faith, he was not an overly eager zealot. He was "full of wisdom and of good repute," "full of the faith and of the Holy Spirit and wisdom," "full of grace and power." (Acts 6: 3, 5, 8) The word "full" implies that he was well-balanced in the Christian life. His faith was winsome and contagious. One scholar has made an educated guess that Stephen was a young man who helped bridge the generational and ethnic splits in the early church. His name is Greek, meaning "crown." He may have come with older, prosperous Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora to Jerusalem. There they may have felt the need to go out of their way to prove their orthodoxy to their Jerusalem-based, Hebrew-speaking fellow Jews. There were differences in age, ethnic background, economic ability, and religious development have been in the church since day one. Stephen made the longest speech that has been recorded in the book of Acts. In doing so he scrutinized his own failures in order to match personal behavior with the teachings of the scriptures. The climax of his speech is the exaltation of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah who now rules over all, who is to be obeyed even if at great cost or rejected at great peril. When he died he was praying a prayer modeled after a short Jewish bedtime prayer from Psalm 31: 5, with one important change. That is, the prayer is addressed to "Lord Jesus" rather than God. He died with the same attitude as Jesus in Luke 23: 34, forgiving his enemies.

In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scG_RxipiFw

Fri, 20/02/2009 - 5:27am One more murdered in Kandhamal,Orissa
Raikia 19th Feb09
Hrudayananda Nayak, aged 40 was murdered by Hinduvta extemists on Feb 19th in Rudangia village near G Udaigiri, Kandhamal distrct, Orissa
On Feb 18th was abducted by a mob of fundamentalists on his way back from G Udaigiri
On Feb 19th, some villagers who were passing on this forest road, saw some blood stains and a slipper in the bushes. As Krudayanada was reportedly missing there was an alarm when the slippers and blood stains were discovered
The police along with the Christians found dead body was discovered in the deep inside forest, he was badly beaten up and killed, there among the boulders his body was found.
there were marks on around his neck, and it is presumed that a rope was tied around Hrudayanada neck and he was dragged into the forest.
On Oct 30th in this same village 3 Christians were murdered and NO ARRESTS have been made