Some hugely encouraging news in a season of the year which often bring death and terror.

http://blog.godreports.com/2016/06/as-muslims-pray-and-fast-during-ramadan-man-in-white-appears-in-dreams-and-visions/

Read this story today.   From the uninitiated, Mormonism appears close to Christianity but actually its very different.

This story this family escapes from the LDS movement

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/december/how-i-escaped-mormon-lds-temple.html

I was surprised that the article says 85% of Mormons come from a evangelical background.  One of the most difficult articles I wrote recently was on what I call “Hyper Hebrew Roots” which is a legalistic cult to gradually gets people to deny grace, their church and the New Testament in favour of law keeping.   This is why I love Israel and ministry to the Jewish people, but the number of religious weirdos popping up on the web who say they are “Hebrew Roots” or “Torah experts” horrifies me.  These don’t bring Yeshua to Jewish people, but look at bringing Judaic practices to gentile Christians in a mixed up confused way.

These cult groups I wrote a few months ago couldn’t be any further away from real Messianic Jews and traditional Jews in Israel which I love and respect.

The fact that some Christians get off track into weird teaching isn’t a surprise as the bible warns this would happen here. 1 Timothy 4 : 1

Back in May, I saw this:

Apparently the French think they can fix the Middle East crisis themselves without consulting Israel.

Then this happened….

Joel 3:2 I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.

Zechariah 12:3 On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.

Any nation that intends to interfere with God’s holy nation Israel will not be tolerated.

It genuinely frightens me in my beloved UK with leaders like Jeremy Corbyn that also want to tamper with Israel’s security and harm trade with businesses there.

Turkey is meant to be the most secular Islamic country in the middle east, but there are signs of it becoming less stable and more observant.

This military vehicle which looks almost like a tank was outside a police station, on my way from my hotel to the city centre.

There were two new mosques on this 2km or so street.   Both look almost finished, I’m guess there is some kind of rendering over the concrete face not yet completed.    This looks like your average novelty box of crayola type mosque, not like some of the more outlandish buildings I saw in Morocco.

This hastily painted over graffiti was close to my hotel and the waterfall.  You can see there is mention of the PKK, the extreme Kurdish groups that did some bomb attacks recently.

I’m not sure how stable Tarsus and much of Turkey is currently, I checked all the news before I cam here, and I didn’t want to go to Istanbul or Ankara which have had fatal bombing in recent times.   So far as as far as I have Google searched there is never been a terrorist attack in Tarsus.

Part of the reason for doing this trip now (April 2016) is things could turn out very different if the always unstable middle east charges tides this direction.   I wanted to see these place while I can.

I feel that peace between the Kurds and Turks can only happen through Christ.

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Its really easy to get stressed and burnt out from doing Christian ministry.

I’ve done background administration for two different Christian organisations and can really related to some of this;

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/57413-10-occupational-hazards-of-ministry