(Please read this letter. It is long but should be read by every believer. I solicit your prayers for the Chirstians in Turkey and around the world who are daily facing severe persecution because of their faith in Christ Jesus.)

 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 missionary and father of three Tilman Geske prepared to go to his office, kissing his wife goodbye taking a moment to hug his son and give him the priceless memory, “Goodbye, son.  I love you.”   

Tilman rented an office space from Zirve Publishing where he was preparing notes for the new Turkish Study Bible.  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, breadknives, 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 Tilman’s hands and feet to chairs and as they videoed their work on their cellphones, they tortured our brothers for almost three hours*   

[Details of the torture– * Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count.  They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes.  They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed.  Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open.  Possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured.  Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated.] 

Neighbors in workplaces near the printhouse 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. 

Tilman and Necati had been slaughtered, practically decapitated with their necks slit from ear to ear. 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.  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 will fall apart if he does not recover.    

The Church in Turkey responded in a way that honored God as hundreds of believers and dozens of 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 Tilman 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, thousands of Turkish Christians and missionaries 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 Tilman 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 Tilman has changed lives.  One columnist wrote of her comment, “She said in one sentence what 1000 missionaries in 1000 years could never do.” 

The missionaries 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 Tilman Geske, who gave his life as a missionary to his beloved Turks, and the testimonies in death of Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, the first martyrs for Christ out of the Turkish Church. 

THOMAS CAMPBELL wrote: “We speak to all our Christian brethren, however diversified by professional epithets, those accidental distinctions which have happily and unscripturally diversified the professing world. By our Christian brethren, then, we mean . . . ‘All that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, throughout the churches.’ ” (Millennial Harbinger, Series 1, May 1844, p. 199.)

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL wrote: “But who is a Christian? I answer, every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. . . . I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [cannot] in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. Should I find a Pedobaptist [one baptized as an infant] more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 411-412.)

Again, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL wrote: “The case is this: When I see a person who would die for Christ: whose brotherly kindness, sympathy, and active benevolence knows no bounds but his circumstances: whose seat in the Christian assembly is never empty; whose inward piety and devotion are attested by punctual obedience to every known duty; whose family is educated in the fear of the Lord; whose constant companion is the Bible; I say, when I see such a one ranked amongst heathen men and publicans, because he never happened to inquire, but always took it for granted that he had been scripturally baptized, and that [ranking] too, by one greatly destitute of all these public and private virtues, whose chief or exclusive recommendation is that he has been immersed, and that he holds a scriptural theory of the gospel, I feel no disposition to flatter such a one, but rather to disabuse him of his error. And while I would not lead the most excellent professor in any sect to disparage the least of all the commandments of Jesus, I would say to my immersed brother as Paul said to his Jewish brother who gloried in a system which he did not adorn: ‘Sir, will not his uncircumcision, or unbaptism, be counted to him for baptism? and will he not condemn you, who, though having the literal and true baptism, yet dost transgress or neglect the statues of your King?'” (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 565.)

BARTON W. STONE wrote: “My opinion is that immersion is the only baptism. But shall I therefore make my opinion a term of Christian fellowship? If in this case I thus act, where shall I cease from making my opinions terms of fellowship? I confess I see no end. . . . Let us still acknowledge all to be brethen, who believe in the Lord Jesus, and humbly and honestly obey him, as far as they know his will, and their duty.” (Christian Messenger, 1831, p. 19, 21.)

WALTER SCOTT wrote: “Christians who have not been baptized for the remission of their sins! Strange! Whoever read of such christians in God’s Word? But the times are peculiar, and as faith does purify the life of a man, and as the man of pure life and pure heart is accepted of God and may receive the Spirit, therefore we must allow, that there are now a days christians in heart and life who have not been baptized for the remission of their sins. What evidences, then, have they for themselves and others, that they are posessed of the Spirit? None but the moral graces which have already been quoted, viz: love, joy etc.; they dont need to depend upon an opinion; they feel within themselves and show to those without them by their fruits, that they have been made partakers of the Spirit of Christ.” (The Evangelist, No. 2, Vol. 2, Feb 4, 1833, p. 49.)

ISAAC ERRETT wrote: “There are myriads of godly people, who are in error on baptism, of whom, nevertheless, we are compelled to say, ‘They are not of the world.’ To urge against these a strict and literal applicaton of passages which are meant to mark the distinction between the church and the world, and thus to attempt to thrust them out from our Christian love, among heathens and reprobates, is, in our view, a grievous wrong. As it is a question growing out of the times — a question not directly known in form in the Scriptures, it must be settled in the light of well-established Christian principles, and not by a severly literal construction of Scripture language, spoken with reference to other classes of persons, and another condition of things.
The saints were carried captive into Babylon and remained there a long time. The church lost her primitive purity and excellency. . . . Yet God had a people in Babylon. . . . Now our good brethren may be able to prove to their own satisfaction that all these people of God in Babylon were immersed believers; and they may point, here and there, to bands of religionists, who kept up a protest against the corruptions of Rome. But it strikes us that a people could not come out of Babylon who were not in Babylon; and immersed believers, walking in the light, would have been hard to find within Babylon’s limits! But there was a people of God in Babylon. We incline to the opinion that most of them were unimmersed. They were in many respects an erring people — in regard to baptism they certainly were in great error; but they ‘feared God and wrought righteousness’ and, — what seems as great a stumbling block to many good men now as it was to Peter, until the trammels of sectarianism were kno cked off — ‘in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.'” (Millennial Harbinger, 1862, p.120.)

(Reprinted by permission from Edward Fudge – gracEmail)

What happened to their view of things? Here 5 of the most well known figures of the Restoration Movement, in their own words, prove that the modern day version of the restored New Testament church of Christ is a far cry from what they invisioned isn’t it?

Grace to you,
Royce Ogle

Our next stop in the Acts finds Peter and John in chapter 3. God again uses  an astonishing event to get the attention of those who need to hear the good news about Christ. A lame man is healed by the Lord and Peter makes it clear that it was by the power, and in the name of Jesus, that this man was made whole. Then Peter begins to preach to the people.

His message was much like the one he preached in Acts 2. He accused them of murder and then powerfully preached the ressurection of Jesus. “But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.” Acts 3:14-16. This is exactly the same way we are now healed from our sin sickness,  By”His name, through faith in His name” we are made pure. Peter contintues in verse 19 commanding ” Repent therefore  and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out…” He made it clear that the responsiblity of man is to “hear” Jesus according to the prophets and those who do not “hear” Him will
be cut off. Acts 3:22-24.

Then in the early verses of Acts 4 Peter and John are arrested for preaching through Christ the ressurection from the dead and were put in jail for the night. Then the 4th verse says,”However, many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.” What a great harvest!

Again, Peter preached Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and many of the hearers responded by putting their faith in Jesus and were saved. (about 5,000 men) It is safe I think to assume that those who were saved were then immediately baptised, that is the New Testament pattern, but so far as the scriptural record, baptism was not a condition of their salvation. Peter said “repent and be converted“, but never mentioned any other condition.

The same message preached in 2007, preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, will get the same sort of results. Neither the method or the message has changed. Through Jesus’ name, and faith in His name, we can be made whole just as these 1st Century men who “believed”.

Grace to you,
Royce Ogle