‘ETERNITY’ was first written by the gloriously saved Sydney personality, Arthur Stace, almost 90 years ago when Sydney was facing an uncertain future in the aftermath of the Great Depression and leading into World War Two. In its heyday, ‘ETERNITY’ was a good news story. It caught Sydney and Australia by surprise and captured the imagination of newspaper edi-tors, writers, artists and musicians. Today, as we are dealing with COVID-19, ‘ETERNITY’ contin-ues to evoke positive emotions and is part of our national story – featuring in artworks, buildings, landmarks and businesses across Australia and around the world. The skywriting was organised by the Australian Television and Media Group, who are producing a documentary looking at the way ‘ETERNITY’ is still being used and embraced today. ‘I would like to encourage people to take photos and use the #eternity hashtag when posting on social media,’

said Richard Attieh, the Executive Producer and Director of the new documentary. ‘ETERNITY’ is one of those words that means different things to different people, and we want to record as many ‘ETERNITY’ Stories as possi-ble.’ The website for the ‘ETERNITY’ Film is www.eternityfilm.com.au and it has a page ded-icated to capturing peoples’ ‘ETERNITY’ Stories. Arthur Stace came to faith in Christ at St Barn-abas Church Broadway and grew in his faith under the preaching of J.G. Ridley. He took to writ-ing the single word ‘ETERNITY’ on the footpaths of Sydney over and over again in yellow chalk after he was captivated by Ridley’s rallying cry: ‘ETERNITY! ETERNITY! ETERNITY! – Oh that I could blaze that word all over the skies!’

Where will YOU spend

Vol 82 No 21 15 June 2020

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TELLING THE GREAT WORKS OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD TODAY

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Reactions from Sydneysiders after the word ‘ETERNITY’ unexpectedly appeared in the sky above the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Friday 5 June ranged from complete sur‐

prise to disbelief, with people calling talk‐back radio asking about the word, and bringing back memories of ETERNITY

appearing in lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as part of the

2000 Millennium Celebrations.

?

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page TwoNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Two

VOLUME 82 NUMBER 21

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A Study In ContrastsIt’s a good start when someone not of the Faith can at least see some of the smaller blessings that God in His com-mon grace has con-ferred upon this world through Chris-tianity. However it’s not enough to get them ‘over the line’. When this occurs, we are drawn to pray for and witness to the person con-cerned in the hope that the Lord will bring them through to the fulness of sav-ing faith. How much more wonderful it is, though, when we see someone who has come through ‘many dangers, toils and snares’, including sufferring at the hands of the Nazis, with triumphant faith. As Spurgeon said of David, ‘He is strong in his faith, and his faith makes him strong.’

TELLING THE GREAT WORKS OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD TODAY

Pastor Tim Keller Diagnosed With Pancreatic Cancer Internationally known pastor and author Tim Keller re‐vealed on 7 June that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and will begin receiving chemotherapy. ‘Though we have had times of shock and fear, God has been remarkably present with me through all the many tests, biopsies, and surgery of the past few weeks,’ he said. ‘I have the Great Physician Himself caring for me. Less than three weeks ago I didn't know I had cancer,’ Keller wrote in a Facebook post. ‘Today I'm headed to the Na-tional Cancer Institute at the NIH for additional testing before beginning chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer next week back in New York City.’ Despite having no symptoms, Keller says he isn't worried because God is with him and will continue to be there throughout this journey. ‘I feel great and have no symptoms. It was what doctors call an “incidental pickup,” otherwise known as providential intervention,’ he wrote. Please keep the Keller family in your thoughts and prayers during the difficult days ahead. Tim Keller, who had thyroid cancer in 2002, also listed four ways people can pray for him and his family through this process: • ‘For God to use medical means or His direct intervention to make the cancer regress to the point of vanishing.’ • ‘That my wife, Kathy, and I will use this opportunity to be weaned from the joys of this world and to desire God’s presence above all.’ • ‘For my family to be comforted and encouraged.’ • ‘For the side effects of treatment to allow me to continue writing and speaking.’

– Andrea Morris, CBN News

PLEASE PRAY PLEASE PRAY

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page ThreeNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Three

Tim Keller ‐ Christian Headlines

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City Bible Forum Celebrates Ten Years In Melbourne! On 10 June 2010, City Bible Forum was delighted to officially launch in Melbourne, with the motto ‘To reach the world through the workplace with the Good News of Jesus Christ’ – and ten years on, this remains their mission. As it was then, it is still their joy (and challenge!) to bring the Gospel to those who need it, to support the work of local churches, and to encourage fellow Christians to see their col-leagues as Christ does. Throughout the decade CBF has engaged with culture, asked the bigger questions, and grappled with the intersection of faith and work. But the heart of this ministry has been, and will continue to be, serving those people on the frontlines, praying for, ministering and listening to Melbourne's workers. A Celebration Dinner had been planned for 10 June, but had to be cancelled because of COVID 19 restrictions, so CBF asks that for the moment, supporters put aside some time to pray. Pray for those workers whom CBF serves, that they might increasingly live out and share their faith at work; and pray that CBF might continue, in God's strength, to equip them for that work. Pray also for staff members: Robert Martin, Strategic Head of Engaging, National Product Manager of Bigger Questions and Bible Shots; Andrew Laird, National Product Manager, Life@Work; Stephanie Gear, Administrator; Sharon Cheung, Program Manager, Networks; David Chan, City Leader; Daniel Ch’ng, Program Co-ordinator, Networks; Amy Isham, National Resource Manager. The team are praying, thinking and trialling differ-ent ways to continue to serve workers as new hybrid workplace structures emerge.

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NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page FourNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Four

POSITION VACANT: ASSOCIATE EDITOR

With the impending retirement of the Rev Bob Thomas

as Editor of New Life, the New Life Board seeks expressions of interest

from persons wishing to take up the position of Associate Editor for a probationary period of six months

to gain experience in the production of New Life, an understanding of the ethos of New Life,

and with a view to succeeding the present Editor.

An important part of the Associate Editor’s work, at first, would be upgrading and updating the New Life website,

and investigating other means of promoting the magazine, while also assisting in covering events, expanding our network of contributors

and becoming conversant with the production of New Life.

The Associate Editor must be firmly committed to the Conservative Evangelical Christian Faith,

computer literate, with a knowledge of desk-top publishing, and have the ability to superintend

the whole operation of New Life Australia Ltd.

This is a part-time position which would be particularly helpful for a person with other commitments but who still has time to devote

approximately 10 hours per week to New Life.

Please contact the Rev Bob Thomas, Prior to 30 June 2020. Phone: 0417 592 646,

Email: editor@nlife.com.au for further details

and terms of employment.

The Silver Lining On The Cloud Of Persecution South Korean police have stopped the latest balloon launch of Bibles into North Korea following political maneuvering between the two countries. A part of the mission of Voice of the Martyrs is to send Scripture to North Korea in balloons or sea bottles. Eric Foley, with VOM, says police interference with their work isn’t new, but when it happens it turns into another Gospel opportunity. He says they have learned that God always has a reason for every ministry event – and there’s always a silver lining. Police surround VOM’s building night and day and talk with the missionaries, who supply them with snacks and a presentation of the Gospel. Mr Foley says they have probably witnessed to the South Korean police as much as they have to the North Korean people. Many South Korean police officers have been challenged to put their trust in Christ.

– Mission Network News. (This story was reported in The Australian on 10‐6‐20, but without reference to the cargo being Bibles or the interaction of missionaries with police. – Ed)

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page FiveNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Five

FAITH NEWS with Stan Hunt FAITH NEWS with Stan Hunt

Preaching, Prayer And Practice To Clean Up Protests The world has witnessed violent protests and peaceful demonstrations for nearly two weeks following the death of George Floyd, but there have also been testimonies of faith and love among Christians, revealing that there is no racial division in Christ. CBN News reports a team of preachers with Circuit Riders went to the inter-section where George Floyd died. They were able to preach to thousands of people and saw hun-dreds responding to the Gospel. They even con-ducted a baptism on the street while bystanders cheered. Meanwhile, in another city Christians washed the feet of protestors. Alongside the foot-washing, protestors peacefully marched and sang We Shall Overcome and Amazing Grace. The foot-washing organisers say prayer is needed, but they also want to show love in action. Two Christian

police chiefs joined in foot-washing on the steps of the police station. – CBN Christian World News Less Wasting Food = Avoiding Mass Starvation Gospel For Asia Christian Mission predicts that up to nine million people worldwide will die this year from starvation. But GFA says this coron-avirus-worsened ‘scandal of starvation’ is entirely avoidable. One News Now reports approximately $1 trillion worth of food is lost or wasted every year – accounting for roughly one-third of the world's food. According to the UN, reversing this trend would preserve enough food to feed 2 bil-lion people – more than twice the number of un-dernourished people across the globe. GFA says the trillion-dollar waste comes from families, restaurants and hospitals. GFA founder K.P. Yohannan says the coronavirus itself is a deadly, terrible event, but more people will die from star-vation than from the virus.

VOM workers turning their attention to South Korean Border Police.

Christians Take Over As Secular Media Vacates The Field In UK; An Idea For Australian Christians To Take Up With The Folding Of Local Newspapers Here? An Anglican church in the UK is taking the 'revolutionary' step of employing a full-time journalist. The church in Kent is advertising for a 'multi-skilled qualified journalist' to report community and church-based news. Christian Today reports the move comes as the outlook for local newspapers looks increasingly bleak. Even before the lockdown, print news was facing major challenges with much advertising revenue going to digital platforms. Rev Nathan Ward says they are responding to a community survey which reveals that people want local news. He says for years stories have kept communities together. The church intends half of the stories will focus on the local community, its people and groups, schools and new housing. The other half will focus on telling the story of the church, its people, pur-pose and history. The journalist will also take a lead on all digital content including overseeing the live streaming of services. – Christian Today

On 28 May West Sumatra governor Irwan Prayitno, backed by the West Sumatra office of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI, Indonesia's top body of Islamic clerics), sent a letter to Communication and Informa-tion Minister Johnny G. Plate, formally requesting that the ministry remove a local language Bible app, 'Kitab Suci Injil Minangkabau' [The Bible in Minangkabau lan‐guage], from the Google Play Store. Irwan also advocated vigilance to prevent similar apps from emerging in the future. According to Irwan, 'the Minang [short for Minangkabau] people object to and are troubled by the app ... [which] contradicts Mi-nangkabau culture with its philosophy of Adat Basandi Syarak, Syarak Basandi Kitabullah [culture is based on sharia, sharia is based on the Quran]'. According to West Sumatra Provincial Government spokesman, Zardi Syahrir, the decision to remove the local language Bible app has nothing to do with reli-gion. Rather, the decision was made to protect the cul-ture of Western Sumatra which, he said, is 'Islam-leaning'. As of Wednesday 3 June, the applica-tion has been removed from the Google Play Store. The Minangkabau are the dominant ethnic group in West Sumatra Province and Bahasa Minangkabau is of-ficially recognised as the local language in the province. The Joshua Project puts the Minangkabau population at 6.815 million [99.72% Muslim and 0.26% Christian]. About half of Indonesia's Minangkabau live in the high-lands of West Sumatra; the rest are scattered through-out the nation. According to Indonesia's National Statistics Agency, the small minority of Minangkabau Christians live mostly in the Mentawai Islands. Traders and artists, particularly famous for their cuisine, the Minangkabau are the fourth largest ethnic group in In-

donesia. The move to deprive the Minang of the Gospel in their mother-tongue has triggered a fierce debate both in-side West Sumatra and across Indonesia. A senior jour-nalist in West Sumatra, Syofiardi Bachyul, wrote on his Facebook account that Islam does not own the Minang language, noting that Buddhism was in Sumatra well before Islam. On the other hand, MUI secretary-gen-eral, Anwar Abbas, echoed the statement of the West Sumatra governor, Irwan Prayitno, telling the Jakarta Post that the Minangkabau people were guided by Islam, not by the Bible. 'Hopefully,' he said, 'there will not be a Bible [published] in Minangkabau language.' Anwar clearly believes the lie, 'to be Minangkabau is to be Muslim', without regard for reality or liberty. Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Agency for Pan-casila Ideology Education, Hariyono, pointed out that the governor's move contradicts 'Pancasila', Indone-sia's foundational philosophy which does leave space for religious freedom, a right also guaranteed in the constitution. As far as Hariyono is concerned, holy books can be translated into any language and 'every individual is given the freedom to observe their beliefs as long as they do not cause disruption in the public.' Halili Hasan, a researcher from the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, believes that, far from posing a threat, the local language Bible app is helpful for ad-vancing tolerance. He is particularly concerned that the governor's request could set a 'bad precedent'. 'What is dangerous,' he says, 'is the perspective of local political elites and intolerant groups [in West Sumatra] which, for me, are not representative enough for the Minangk-abau people and its inclusive culture.' As fundamentalist Islam has taken root and spread throughout West Sumatra, Christian persecution has escalated. In recent years Minang Christians have expe-rienced difficulties establishing churches or even cele-brating Christmas at home. This is no doubt why Thomas Pentury, Religious Affairs Ministry director-general for Christian Community Guidance, is primarily concerned the issue of the Bible app not be 'blown up'. The Communications and Information Ministry should have rejected the West Sumatra governor's re-quest outright on the grounds that it goes against the spirit of Pancasila and violates the constitutional guar-antee of religious freedom. If this is permitted to stand and the governor is permitted to withhold the Mi-nangkabau language Bible app from the people - it will set a very dangerous precedent indeed. Let the reli-gious freedom debate begin!

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page SixNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Six

MATTERS FOR PRAYER MATTERS FOR PRAYER withwith Elizabeth KendalElizabeth Kendal

INDONESIA: 'No' To Minang Bible In West Sumatra

Elizabeth Kendal is the author of Turn Back The Battle: Isaiah Speaks To Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding The Christian Crisis In The Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). See www.ElizabethKendal.com

Please Pray That The LORD Will: • redeem the situation in West Sumatra to arouse curiosity and draw many more Muslims to the life-transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ; • stir up the religious liberty debate in West Sumatra and across Indonesia while raising up, energising and empowering voices of liberty for the sake of all Indonesians; • intervene decisively so the decision to remove the Minang lan-guage Bible app will be overturned and the app restored to the Google Play Store so that anyone wishing to avail themselves of it will be free to do so.

'Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.'

(Proverbs 19:21 ESV)

COVID‐19: Attention Turns To Developing World After ripping through the developed world, the coronavirus is now spreading rapidly in develop-ing countries. Sidney Muisyo, with Compassion International, says currently the spread of the virus in Brazil is shooting through the roof. Peru and Ecuador in South America are also in difficul-ties, he says. Other countries Compassion is con-cerned about include Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Tanzania. Mr Muisyo says the poorest families are hardest hit. The healthcare system in these coun-tries can’t keep up with other diseases like malaria or even routine vaccinations. When there is a pandemic like COVID-19 the situation is exac-erbated, he says. With the help of Compassion, churches in these countries have responded pro-viding food, soap, sanitizers and masks. – MNN Prostitutes ‘Freed Indeed’ At Free Dinner A free dinner for sex workers in Zimbabwe fea-

tured a presentation of the Gospel and a result beyond the organizers’ hopes. The Shining Stars Dinner was held in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s sec-ond-largest city, during an evangelistic outreach. According to God Reports magazine 66 women turned up for the dinner and 50 of them re-sponded to an invitation to follow Christ. The African Enterprise mission will help the women rebuild their lives, teaching skills like tailoring, baking, and hairdressing. The mission also reached out to 200 schools and six prisons. 17,000 school children made commitments to Christ and 3,000 prisoners indicated they wanted to receive Christ as Saviour. – God Reports

FAITH NEWS with STAN HUNT FAITH NEWS with STAN HUNT

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page SevenNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Seven

What To Do When Starting Up Again

WHO CAN WHO CAN YOU YOU INVITE TO SIGN UP FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INVITE TO SIGN UP FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO NEW LIFENEW LIFE??

TURN BACK THE BATTLE: TURN BACK THE BATTLE: Isaiah Speaks To Christians Today.Isaiah Speaks To Christians Today.

With persecution escalating globally, Elizabeth Kendal calls us to revisit the prophecy of Isaiah, maintaining that Isaiah 1-39 provides an unambiguous treatise on how God's people are to respond to persecution, suffering and existential threat.

For purchasing options, visit: www.ElizabethKendal.com

For Further Reading / Listening: Every fortnight New Life receives more material than we are able to include in the current issue due to the exi-gencies of space. Mostly these are articles which exceed the space available in their particular category. Others are longer than the usual run of articles we publish. Still others, though worthy, are judged to be of interest to only a small proportion of readers, generally because they are more technical than the articles we choose for publication. An Attitude Of Gratitude: Thanking God For All His Good Gifts, enquiries@celebratemessiah.com.au Creation Infobites, Answers In Genesis, infobytes.au@creation.com A Time For Grief, The Langham Partnership, australia@langham.org LIGONIER MINISTRIES advise that you can now stream all of the messages from their recent Southern Ontario Con-ference for free on Ligonier.org , the Ligonier app and YouTube

A group of clergy, scientists and other experts has released a guide to help congregations consider best practices for reopening for worship. The guide says it is much more than unlocking the church doors and inviting all to come, sit, sing, and greet one another. Rather, the 36-page document notes a care-filled response to gathering post Covid-19. The document first recommends each congregation create a COVID‐19 Task Force to oversee preparations that may be adopted by church leadership. Among the suggestions are: Have no physical contact. Nod instead of shaking hands. Refrain from singing. Preach shorter sermons. Mouth congregational prayers instead of speaking, and maintain social distancing.

– Religion News Service

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Our God is full of mercy and forgiveness. He also uses us to bring others to Himself, despite our frailty and even our disobedience. For God’s mercy and good-ness flow from His character and adorn His purpose, such that when we respond with faithful obedience to His Word, the glory belongs to Him and not to us. God is not prevented by either human beings or heavenly beings from fulfilling His purposes, for His Word never returns to Him void (Isaiah 55:11). The highlight of the book is, in many ways, Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2. It is a prayer offered after he was delivered onto dry land, so that verse 2 is best rendered: ‘And he said’, not ‘saying’, as in the ESV, suggesting the prayer beginning in verse 2 is the prayer of verse 1. This understanding of the flow of the narra-tive is consistent with the opening words of the prayer in verse 2, looking back upon God’s deliverance of him from the belly of the fish: ‘I called to the Lord, out of my distress and He an-swered me’. It is also consistent with the author’s de-layed explanation of the prayer in verse 10: ‘And the LORD had spoken to the fish and it had vomited out Jonah on dry land’. Thus the prayer of chapter 2 is a prayer on dry land, recalling the prayer Jonah offered inside the fish. It is a prayer of thankfulness after his deliverance as he re-flects upon his darkest hour (or 72 hours!), when the outcome of his prayers were unknown. One could not think of a more devastating, let alone distasteful, venue for isolation than the stomach of a fish, even a big one! We may have reason for complain-ing about our home isolation of late, but nothing quite compares with Jonah’s experience. Yet this solitude enabled Jonah to reflect upon his folly in refusing to follow God’s commands, recognising God’s judgment

on him in the storm at sea. While Jonah may have urged the sailors to throw him overboard – humanly speaking – to certain death, it was God who cast him into the sea (2:3). He felt he had been cast out of God’s presence, the presence of God’s blessing. Yet he remembered the Lord and cried out to Him, and God’s mercy prevailed as He rescued Jonah, chastened and repentant, for His sovereign pur-

poses. Upon his deliverance, he then jour‐neys to Nineveh and preaches God’s Word – and to the surprise of the reader (though not to Jonah), the Ninevites repent and turn to the living God, and God in His mercy relents from the judgment Jonah had foretold. In this respect, Jonah’s preaching fore-shadows the spreading of the Gospel to Gentiles, in accordance with God’s promise to Abraham that he would be a blessing to all nations. Jesus uses the sign of Jonah to de-

scribe His own ministry for the salvation of the world. Unlike Jonah, though, Jesus was obedient to His Fa-ther’s will, suffered the extremity of death – not just metaphorically, but truly – for three days and three nights. Yet from the grave He rose victorious. As God had a concern for the salvation of the city of Nineveh, He has a concern for the salvation of the world and the people of greater Sydney. We should pray for those in our communities that, in the wake of COVID-19, we might have opportunities to share the Good News of God’s grace, that many people might put their faith in Jesus and that God’s mercy might be showered upon them. For it is only through Jesus that God forgives our sins: Salvation is from the Lord!

– Dr Glenn Davies, Archbishop Of Sydney, via Sydney Anglicans

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page EightNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Eight

DISCERNING GOD’S WILL DISCERNING GOD’S WILL

God’s Concern For Greater Sydney – And For All The World If you were to look for one sentence that summarises the teaching of the Bible, it would be hard to find a more succinct candidate than the final words of the prophet Jonah’s prayer: ‘Salvation belongs to the Lord!’ (Jonah 2:9). Jonah is a remarkable book for many reasons. One example is that it contains, in the Hebrew text, only five words of prophecy (3:4), whereas both the minor and major prophets of the Old Testament contain hundreds and thou-sands of words of prophecy addressed to Israel or the nations. The Book of Jonah is more intent on describing the prophet himself, rather than conveying the words of his prophecy. The book details Jonah’s inadequate response to God’s command to go to Nineveh, his experience of God’s chastisement, his rescue from the belly of the fish, his obedience to God’s reissuing of His command, the repentant response of the Ninevites to Jonah’s preaching and, surprisingly, Jonah’s anger towards God’s good-ness and mercy in the final chapter. The book is deftly composed with delayed explanations of events described. We see examples of this in 1:9,10 and 4:3-8, and in the classic revelation of Jonah’s reason for disobeying God (1:3) in 4:2. Yet, despite Jonah’s rebellion and reluctance to preach to the city of Nineveh, God’s sovereign pur-poses overrule Jonah’s disobedience, to bring salvation to unsuspecting pagan sailors, as well as wicked Ninevites.

‘As God had a concern for the salvation of the city of Nineveh, He has a concern for the salvation of the world and the people of greater Sydney.’

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page NineNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Nine

FAITH NEWS FAITH NEWS with with STAN HUNT STAN HUNT

COVID-19 Brings Opportunity Knocking

COVID‐19 Has Increased The Persecution Of Christians In China As China banned gatherings, churches decided to hold services online. This introduced a new form of virtual persecution for Chinese Christians. Chi-naAid’s Bob Fu says more than one million offi-cers were designated to monitor digital activities. Christians were taken into custody for holding online gatherings, and virtual prayer meetings were banned. Mr Fu says officials have also re-stricted the charitable work of churches, even forcing Christian-run orphanages to close. The Church in the past has been allowed to engage in community work if it contributed to the well-being of society. That is now being considered an illegal religious activity. When the virus first ap-peared in Wuhan, more than $5 million worth of medical equipment was confiscated by the gov-ernment. The churches had purchased the equip-

ment to help stop the spread of the virus. – China Aid

The Word In The Window Janice shares simple messages that she prays will bring hope and life to others. ‘I’m just doing what I can from where I am,’ she says about the art-work on her windows. One day the cross. The next day, an empty tomb. The next a psalm. Janice learnt to write backwards words of hope to ac-company her pictures. Visible from the street, people walking by stop and read. She told Opera-tion Mobilisation these windows tell the story of a Man who was God, who came to bring hope, not just then but now. Janice’s journey with Jesus took her to OM for years as missionary teacher, leader and art director onboard the mission ship Logos II.

– Operation Mobilisation

A Sydney church is planning to come out of lockdown next month with an opportunity too good to miss. St Paul’s Anglican Church in the suburb of Canterbury will launch a third service with an easy-English focus. Church rector Rev Steve Gardner says the COVID-19 situation has created the opportunity to make a move. Reading and teaching the Bible will be at the heart of the new service, as well as approaching prayer in a more flexible and multicultural way. Mr Gardner says that God is in the business of turning around bleak situations such as the coro-navirus lockdown. More than 50% of the Canter-bury population was born overseas.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statis‐tics, residents in almost two thirds of homes in the area speak a language other than English. The church has many contacts with different cultural groups in the area. – Sydneyanglicans.net

New Bible Aims To ‘Set The Prisoner Free’ Supported by Bible Society Australia, the Corrective Services NSW Bible has been al-most five years in the making. Due for release soon, the custom Bible involved many contributors and several prison chaplains. Correctional Services NSW Assistant Super-intendent Bradley Lawless says he is a believer in the better story told by God’s Word. With 15 years in the job, he told Eternity News that everywhere it penetrates, the Chris-tian faith brings light in the darkness. Similar to other custom versions of God’s Word backed by Bible Society Australia, the Corrective Services Bible includes pertinent content such as prayers for Correctional Officers. Part of the drive behind this project was to enhance the ministry of chaplaincy. Prison chaplains don’t just minister to inmates, their ministry extends to all who work in correctional centres. – Eternity News at biblesociety.org.au

FRANCIS I. ANDERSEN, an Australian scholar, who spent more than 35 years analysing the syntax of the Hebrew Bible and created a powerful computer dictio-nary of the Scriptures’ clauses, phrases, and text seg-ments, died 0n 20 May aged 94. He started transcribing the oldest complete Hebrew text of the Bible into machine-readable form in 1971. It took him eight years to finish. Working with A. Dean Forbes, a seminary graduate who was researching a computer’s ability to recognize speech, Andersen de-veloped a database of all the orthographic units of He-brew Scripture, with seven different layers of syntactical information. Today, the Andersen-Forbes database is used by Logos Bible Software, with a syn-tax search engine and phrase-marker graphs that open up the grammatical structures of ancient He-brew. The database demonstrated the vast potential for digital Bible study just as the personal computer was being developed and made widely available. It was also a feat of Hebrew linguistics and Christian de-votion. Dr Stuart Barton Babbage, an evangelical Anglican leader in Australia and one of Andersen’s spiritual mentors, said that Andersen ‘brought the machines of science into the service of the Church and the procla-mation of the Word of her Lord.’ Andersen was also the author of the Anchor Bible commentary on Habakkuk, and co-author, with David Noel Freedman, of the series’ commentaries on Hosea, Amos, and Micah. Andersen loved the academic prob-lems of understanding ancient Hebrew, but those who knew him said his deepest motivations were evangeli-cal. ‘Right to the end Frank loved to talk about the Scriptures, the different forms of Hebrew that could

be seen in the books of the Bible, and what was going on in the world of scholarship,’ wrote An-drew Prideaux, a campus minis-ter at the University of Melbourne. ‘But most of all, Frank wanted to talk about the goodness and love of God.’ Andersen was born in War‐wick, Qld, in July 1925. His cul-tural Christianity became personal at the University of Melbourne, where he earned a master’s degree in chemistry, enrolled in a doctoral program, and then felt God prompting him in a different direction. Bab-bage encouraged Andersen to switch from the sci-ences to the humanities. Then, with more encouragement from Babbage, agreed to take a posi-tion teaching at Ridley College, Melbourne and be-come an expert in Hebrew linguistics. He went to Johns Hopkins University on a Fulbright scholarship in 1957 to study with William Foxwell Al-bright, the Methodist expert in Biblical archaeology who had authenticated the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940s. Andersen also worked closely with William Lambert Moran, a Jesuit scholar who showed how the study of obscure cuneiform texts from ancient Egypt could illuminate grammatical problems in Biblical He-brew. He returned to Ridley in 1960 for three years before accepting a position at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, California. He taught classes on the Old Testament and continued researching arcane grammatical problems. His first major academic work was The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch. He held several other senior ap-pointments before retiring to Melbourne at 72. As Andersen worked on obscure grammatical prob-lems of Hebrew Scripture, he also reflected on the spiritual importance of his work. He wrote religious poetry in conversation with his translations and his own devotional experiences, so that his piety and scholarship were fused. His wife, Lois, died in 2010, and he is survived by his sons David and John, daughters Nedra and Kathryn, and his second wife, Margaret. – Daniel Silliman,

Christianity Today Weekly

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page TenNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Ten

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A Christian convert teenager in Odisha State, India, was killed on 4 June by a group of religious fanatics in the Hindu-majority country, who re-portedly cut his body into pieces, according to the interdenominational ministry Persecution Relief. Pastor Bijay from the Malkangiri district told the nonprofit serving persecuted churches in India about how a group of suspected Hindu radicals (some of whom did not live in the village) ganged up last Thursday to kidnap Christians in the re-mote Kenduguda village. As a result, seventh-grader Samaru Madkami was killed by the perpetrators, who were said to have cut his neck and crushed his head with a rock. The suspects are also alleged to have cut the teenager’s body into pieces and buried him in a pit. Madkami’s father, Unga Madkami, is a member of Bijay’s Bethel house church who also serves as an elder in the congregation, according to Perse-cution Relief. He is a widower who lost his wife a few years back and was raising his children on his own.

Bijay reported to local police last Friday that the teen went missing after he was taken from the home the night prior. Mad-kami’s kidnapping came after a series of attacks on Christians in the area. The father claimed in his police report that a group of villagers picked up Madkami at around 11 pm and told him that they needed him for a meeting in the jungle, according to Persecu-tion Relief. The suspects allegedly came back to the house about an hour later to try to kidnap Madkami’s father. However, they were unsuccess-ful as Unga Madkami was able to escape to the po-lice station, where he filed an earlier complaint. According to a police report filed by the victim’s father, he and his son became Christians about three years ago and faced harassment. ‘Samaru was a passionate Christian,’ Bijay told Persecution Relief. ‘He always shared from the Bible with youth and children from the village.’

– Samuel Smith, Persecution Relief

PERSECUTION WATCH PERSECUTION WATCH

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page ElevenNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Eleven

Nigerian Pastor And Calvin Seminary Graduate Gunned Down With His Wife On Their Farm A Nigerian Christian pastor who graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan, USA, was gunned down along with his wife Mon-day while working on their farm in the Taraba State of Nigeria. The couple leaves behind eight children ages 1 to 19. The Rev Emmanuel Saba Bileya and his wife, Ju-liana, who is said to be pregnant, were killed by gunmen who have yet to be identified, according to a statement released by the Hausa Christians Foundation. ‘It was an attack on the pastor and his wife on their farm. While they were working on the farm, suddenly armed men came and opened fire on them, leading to the death of the pastor and his wife,’ a spokesperson for the state police said in a statement shared by the foundation. Bileya served as a pastor at a Christian Re-formed Church in the Donga local government area. Bileya received a Master of Theology degree from Calvin in 2014 and served for the last five years at Veenstra Theological Seminary in Donga, according to his LinkedIn profile.

‘In what is being noted as systematic direct war against Christianity in Nigeria, pastors, Christian leaders and seminarians are either being kidnapped or killed every week,’ the Hausa Christians Foundation statement reads. ‘Chris-tians in Nigeria have been the target of many at-tacks by the vicious Boko Haram jihadist Islamist terrorists, herdsmen attacks and many other kid-nappings in recent times.’ In a statement released through a spokesper-son, Taraba Governor Darius Ishaku condemned the murder of the pastor and his wife. Ishaku said he sympathizes with the surviving members of Bileya's family and members of the Christian Re-formed Church in Nigeria.

– Samuel Smith, Christian Post Reporter

Emmanuel and Juliana Bileya

Christian Teen Cut Into Pieces By Radicals In India Three Years After Conversion

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page TwelveNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Twelve

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Glorious Things – A Protestant’s Guide To London

• Revised! • Updated! • Illustrated! • Now Available As An e-Book! Glorious Things will help visitors to London arrive well prepared to make the most of their time there.

The guided tours will take you to places like Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral, but Glorious Things will take you to important sites linked to our Protestant heritage.

COST: $10 for the PDF version, with the right to print two hard copies. PAYMENT OPTIONS:

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The Australian Blessing video released on YouTube is al-ready in the top ten trending videos. Blessing videos have be-come a global internet sensation during the COVID lockdown as worship leaders in different countries have united across denominational lines to sing a blessing over their nation. In Aus-tralia, organisers put out a call for contributions a few weeks ago and were inundated with more than 300 submissions from across the country and every church tradition. Communications director Jordan Bromhead told Eternity News there would be well over 1,000 people directly involved in making this project.

Indigenous gospel recording artist Robyn Green was among those involved in the project. When asked about her hopes for the project, she quoted Psalm 133: ‘It is good for brethren to dwell together in unity, and there God commands a blessing’. An army of praying people are asking God to bless Australia with His love through the video.

– Eternity News at biblesociety.org.au

Jesus has taught the apostles well. He has passed on the words God gave Him (vv.8,14). The apostles therefore know that Jesus has come from the Father (v.8) and they are hated by the world because they are no longer part of the mass of hu-manity in rebellion against God (v.14). Here is the central conviction of all true follow-ers of Jesus: that He is God, the only Son who is at the Father’s side (John 1:18); He is ‘God of God, Light of Light, and very God of very God’ (Nicene Creed). Jesus prays for protection for the apostles (v.11), first from the world (v.14), and then from the evil one (v.15).

As with any flock, unity is vital (v.11). That is why Jesus prayed. We need a prayer like this, so that we can have joy and unity in the face of the

opposition coming from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Jesus also prays that the apostles would remain holy and not become compromised (vv.17–19).

It is through His being set apart that we are set apart to be God’s special people (v.19). This prayer shows us what Jesus yearns for in His peo-ple. He prays that we will be joyous and united; that we will be protected against Satan and his lies (John 8:44), and that we would live transformed lives, un-compromised by the world. ‘Sanctify’ means to separate or make holy. Be-lievers in the New Testament are called holy ones, or saints (Acts 9:32; Romans 1:7; Ephesians 1:1; Jude 1:3). The noun ‘saint’ is never used in the singular. We are all saints together in Christ; this is not a title reserved for a privileged few, but for all followers of Jesus. French reformer John Calvin writes, ‘No man ... is a believer who is not also a saint; ... no man is a saint who is not a believer.’ Holiness of life, over-flowing joy, and the enjoyment of the unity of be-lievers are all fortifications against the enemy. (John Calvin, New Testament Commentaries.)

NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page ThirteenNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Thirteen

JOURNEY THROUGH JOHN JOURNEY THROUGH JOHN withwith David CookDavid Cook

Joy, Unity, Faith And Holiness Read John 17.6-19

THINKING THROUGH: Jesus prayed this prayer for the apostles. Personalise the prayer and pray this prayer for yourself. How will God’s answering of this prayer be evident in your life?

Reprinted from Our Daily Bread Journey Through Series® – Journey Through John by David Cook

(Copyright © 2017) published by Discovery House. Used with permission of Discovery House.

All rights reserved. For further enquiries please visit: journeythrough.org or email: australia@odb.org

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Elizabeth Kendal’s New Book ... War! Destruction! Violent Persecution! Martyrdom! Forced Displacement!

For hundreds of thousands of now destitute Christian families, this is the new reality. Yet contrary to all appearances, God is at work in the Middle East.

‘Kendal’s book is a godsend to anyone who is at a loss to understand what lies behind the suffering in the Middle East. Drawing on authoritative voices from the region, her clear-eyed analysis untangles the conflicts with the heart and insight of a prophet.

– Jeff M. Sellers, Editor, Persecution News Service, Morning Star News.

For more information go to: www.ElizabethKendal.com

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The Ministry Of New Life. Will You Help Us? Please Send Donations To: New Life Australia Ltd, PO Box 457, Mitcham 3132

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NEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page FifteenNEW LIFE – 15 June 2020 – Page Fifteen

WITNESS PAGE WITNESS PAGE

‘Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace.’

The Murray River – Photo by Al Watson