B.A.S.I.C. NEWSLETTER #46

B.A.S.I.C. NEWSLETTER #46
March 7, 2005

I Cor. 16:9   For a wide door for effective work has opened to me,and there are many adversaries.

NEWS – ETAGO CLC, KENYA
With more children left from Aids parents’ deaths, this for Christians is becoming a great mission field to bring up those children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.   Our brethren at Etago, Kenya have been operating a school for children orphaned by Aids.   They have had up to 80 children in school.   Each year they plan to add another grade.   Four women now teach in the school.   The school evidently has been appreciated, as some parents have asked if they could send their children to the school for tuition.   Complete religious instruction is in the charge of our members. So far the school has been conducted in the church building.   Now the men are working on the first classroom on donated land next to the church.   Their plan is to build one new classroom each year until eight classrooms exist.   Work on the building has progressed and completion is anticipated in March.   Pray for this Christian venture. We thank the Lord that our brothers and sisters have undertaken this work for the Lord.

TO THE EAST BOTH NORTH AND SOUTH – part 4
In the West – In 597 Augustine with 40 missionaries arrived in England. The Gospel entered England previously after 43AD through Roman legionnaires who were Christians.
500 IN THE EAST – Cosmas, ‘the India-Sailor’ reported about 525 that in Taprobane (Ceylon)…there was a church of Christians with clergy.   Also in Malabar as well as in Bombay, India there were churches.   The bishop of Bombay was appointed from Persia.   He reported further, “And so likewise among the Bactrians, and Huns and Persians, and the rest of the Indians, Persarmenians, Medes and Elamites, and throughout the whole land of Persia there is no limit to the number of Churches with bishops and very large communities of Christian people,   as well as martyrs…” p. 29-30 from Young’s “Handbook of Source Materials for Students of Church History”. Regarding Japan, the Seventeen Articles of Injunction of the Regen tPrince, Shotoku (574-622) apparently include a grant to Nestorian Christians of full liberty and personal rights. In the 500’s Afghanistan had a metropolitan bishop at Herat.
IN THE WEST – In 692 Willibrord was working among the Frisians inthe Netherlands.
600-700 IN THE EAST – By the seventh century a flow of teachers, students, novices and monks from Japan to China and back, often following long periods of study, brought back books and knowledge from China’s diverse religious and political traditions…The trade routes of the ‘Silk Road’ are also known to have reached Korea, Japan, and what is today eastern Russian by this time, contributing to these exchanges. Against this background it is from China, in particular from Chang-an and during the Tang Dynasty, that Christianity also first came to Korea and Japan.In the case of Korea, where Christianity seems to have been present, as Buddhism was, prior to its introduction to Japan, evidence has been found in the Korean Chronicles Samguk Yusa and Samguksa, for the presence of Nestorian Christianity during the united Silla Dynasty (661-935).The total number of Christians in Persia by the contemporary estimate in the late seventh century, well over a million, the majority being Syriac-speaking but a significant number being of Iranian stock. From the mid 600’s to the mid 700’s the Nestorian churches went from Syria in the west to Japan in the northeast and to Sumatra in the southeast.   Their hierarchy included nine metropolitans and ninety-six bishops.

Pastor David Koenig