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Pakistani Christian couple’s death row appeal delayed after 6 years in prison for blasphemy
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A Pakistani Christian couple who’ve been imprisoned for six years and sentenced to death on false blasphemy charges of sending a text message insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad continue to have their conviction appeal delayed.
Shagufta Kausar and her husband, Shafqat Emmanuel, who is partially paralyzed, were accused by a local imam of committing blasphemy by sending him an offensive text message in 2013.
Maulvi Mohammed Hussain, a leader at a mosque in the town of Gojra in Punjab province, claimed that Emmanuel used his wife’s cellphone to send an anti-Islamic text message. He later claimed other messages followed.
Hussain said he was praying when he received the offensive text message from an unknown number.
The Muslim cleric reportedly showed the text message to two other imams before approaching his counsel for legal proceedings. He and his lawyer later claimed they both received subsequent blasphemous messages.
Police registered the blasphemy case following the imam’s complaint, and the couple were arrested on July 21, 2013. They were charged with “insulting the Quran” and “insulting the prophet.”
They were sentenced to separate prisons in 2014.
“Kauser is being held in the same prison cell Asia Bibi was held in before her release,” Will Stark, regional manager for South Asia at International Christian Concern, told The Christian Post on Wednesday.
“In regards to Shafqat, his medical condition has deteriorated significantly during his imprisonment,” Stark added. “This is because the jail does not provide facilities for him, as someone partially paralyzed. Bedsores and lack of nutrition are definitely issues I have seen reported specifically in regards to Shafqat’s case.”
A final hearing before the Lahore High Court was scheduled for Wednesday. However, the hearing was delayed and a new hearing date will be announced.
Kausar’s brother, Joseph, told the BBC that his sister and her husband are not only innocent, but he believes they aren’t even literate enough to have written the text messages.
Joseph also said his brother-in-law had been tortured and forced to make a false confession.
“He told me the policeman hit [him] so hard that his leg was broken,” Joseph was quoted as saying.
The text messages were also alleged to have been written in English. Aside from being illiterate, Shafqat and Shagufta are not familiar with the English language — written or spoken.
The couple’s lawyer, Saif ul Malook, who also assisted in the appeal of Asia Bibi’s blasphemy case, said the charges against Kausar and Emmanuel are “deeply flawed” and “weaker” than those levied against Bibi.
Although the phone was registered in Kausar’s name, Malook told the BBC that “in their trial, they suggested a Christian neighbor they had argued with might have purchased a SIM card in Kausar’s name and sent the messages in order to frame them.”
In 2014, Nadeem Hassan, who’s also representing the couple at the high court, said the offending messages were sent from a phone that had been lost. He further explained that a “bogus SIM card” had been presented as evidence against the couple, The Telegraph reported.
Hassan told ICC last year that the allegation is “based on religious hatred and is being used to settle personal grudges.”
Before her arrest, Kausar worked as a cleaner at a Christian school. Emmanuel has been paralyzed from the waist down since 2004, following an accident that fractured his spine. At the time of the accident, they were living with their four young children in a church compound.
The children continue to remain in hiding as their parents’ case continues, Stark said.
“Like many relatives of Christians accused of blasphemy, they live in fear that their parents’ blasphemy accusation may cause extremists to attack them,” he added.
Malook said the couple needs the same international support that Bibi received during the years she waited for her appeal to be heard. And if they’re acquitted, he said they will also need to be granted asylum.
While no one has yet been executed on blasphemy charges, people who’ve been accused of the crime have been killed by retaliatory mob violence. Allegations of blasphemy are frequently lodged to settle personal disputes and to discriminate against religious minorities.
Christians make up just 1.6% of the country’s population.
Last year, Asia Bible was acquitted by Pakistan’s Supreme Court of blasphemy charges after she languished on death row for more than eight years. Bibi has since written a book about her ordeal.
Pakistan, a 96% Muslim-majority country, ranks as the fifth-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List. In 2018, Pakistan was also named by the U.S. State Department as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations.
The couple’s appeal hearing has been rescheduled for June 22.
Sources: Christian Post
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Nearly 2,000 Students Choose Christ in 1 Night at Ohio State: ‘God Is Moving in This Generation’
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Thousands of college students gathered at Ohio State University on Tuesday night to seek the hope that’s found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and nearly 2,000 of them made decisions to give their hearts to God.
It was the second massive revival event of 2025 organized by the Unite US movement, and this time students braved sub-freezing temperatures down in the teens to get baptized in the backs of U-Haul trucks.
“We’ve been in awe of how God has already been moving on this campus over the past year, and He met us here again tonight,” Unite US said in a social media post. “Over 6,500 students gathered in The Schott to lift the name of Jesus and almost 2,000 responded to the altar call – experiencing the freedom only He can bring.”
“God is moving in this generation, and we know that He’s just getting started!” the post exclaimed.
Tonya Prewett, the founder and visionary behind Unite US, also posted to Instagram saying, “What a night at The Ohio State University! …close to 2,000 students made a decision to go all in with Jesus! I am in awe of how God is moving on college campuses!”
The Ohio State revival follows a Unite US outreach held last week at the University of Kentucky where more than 2,000 students gave their lives to Jesus Christ and many were baptized as well.
The next Unite US outreach will be held at Purdue University in Indiana on March 5. Since September of 2023, the ministry’s events have reached more than 70,000 college students across multiple campuses.
Sources:CBN News
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‘Amazing Salvation Numbers’: Seismic Spiritual Shift in World’s Largest Catholic Country
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RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil is witnessing a seismic shift in its religious landscape that’s rapidly reshaping the country’s spiritual and social fabric. As News discovered, evangelicals are poised to outnumber Catholics as the largest faith group there.
In the heart of Brazil, amidst the rhythmic beats of samba and the vibrant colors of carnival, something spiritually profound is unfolding. “We are on the verge of a religious change in Brazil’, said Brazilian sociologist Dr. José Alves.
If there’s one image that symbolizes Catholicism’s influence here, it’s Rio de Janeiro’s 98-foot-tall Christ the Redeemer. Inaugurated in 1931, the iconic statute celebrated the country’s rich Catholic heritage. There’s also the beautiful blue Cathedral of Brasilia – one of the largest Catholic churches in Brazil’s capital city. But despite these historical landmarks, Alves says the faith’s dominance is rapidly declining.
“In 1950, 93 percent of Brazilians identified as Catholics. The Church was losing about 1 percent of followers every decade,” said Alves. “However, from 1991 onwards, the Catholic Church started to lose 1 percent of followers every year, resulting in a dramatic drop.”
Evangelical Christianity, once a minority faith here, is now growing at unprecedented levels. The surveys show that what was once the world’s largest Catholic nation, will be overwhelming evangelical by 2030.
Signs of this growth are everywhere—mega-churches dotting the landscape, filled with thousands of worshippers each week. That includes Andre Fernandes’ church in São Paulo.
“We are living in the fulfillment of a promise,” said Fernandes, who pastors Lagoinha Church. “For many decades, we have heard that Brazil would experience a wave of revival that would be exported around the world, and I believe that this is what we are experiencing at this moment.”
It also includes Lourival Pereira’s congregation in the Amazon region—boasting more than 10,000 members across roughly 600 cell groups.
“The foundation of our growth is these cells,” said Pereira, pastor of a Foursquare Church in Belem. “The real revival is taking place outside the church walls. Every day, people are meeting in small groups in homes; it’s the biblical model.”
Then there’s J.B. Carvalho’s church in the capital city of Brasília.
“We started the church in 2003 with only 25 people. Today, we have about 12,000 people in Brasília alone,” said Carvalho of Community of the Nations Church. “We also have another 15,000 people in Fortaleza. Our churches are spread throughout Brazil.”
And Silas Malafaia’s church in Rio de Janeiro is one of the largest and most influential Pentecostal churches in Brazil with more than 100,000 members.
“In the next seven years or so, we will be the majority in the country,” declared Malafaia of the Assembly of God Victory in Christ church. “Today, we make up about 35% of the population, and God’s Kingdom has influence in every corner of Brazilian society.”
Marcelo Crivella, a well-known evangelical pastor turned politician, once served as mayor of Rio de Janeiro. He says that, years ago, evangelical Christians hesitated to get involved in politics—but that’s no longer the case.
More than 30% of the country’s legislators are now evangelical. “We are more than 140 deputies and more than 20 senators,” said Crivella, a Brazilian Congressman.
Many of them gather each Wednesday in the halls of Brazil’s Congress for worship and prayer.
Celina Leão, the vice governor of Brasília, tells CBN News that God is also at work in other branches of the government.
“I used to participate in those prayer meetings when I was in Congress,” Leão told CBN News. “Now, every month in the governor’s office, we meet for prayer, and people come to my office. It’s a wonderful time to see friends and be in communion.”
The country’s first evangelical church opened in 1922. By 1990, the number had grown to more than 7,000 congregations. Nearly 30 years later, it grew to almost 110,000.
The growth is so staggering that one study found 17 new evangelical churches opening every day across Brazil.
“Now in Brazil we have 550,000 – 550,000 churches,” declared Crivella.
Ezenete Rodrigues says this dramatic transformation began, as in many great movements, with the most profound of practices: prayer.
“I’ve always believed that prayer is like planting: You plant, plant, plant, and at some point, it will sprout, and then the explosion will come,” Rodrigues told CBN News.
Rodrigues is one of the country’s most well-known intercessors. She has organized countless prayer rallies nationwide, urging her fellow countrymen to turn to God.
“Brazil has been hungry and thirsty for God, and the key has been intercession—bending our knees, seeking God, and letting the Spirit of the Lord guide us in everything we do,” said Rodrigues. “Today, we can look back and see so many beautiful fruits of this commitment.”
Those who have been tracking the explosive growth of the evangelical movement here in Brazil say worship has also played a monumental role in the church’s growth. And one Christian artist, above all, has been at the center of it all.
Her name is Ana Paula Valadao.
“Even growing up, I had glimpses of crowds, of multitudes worshipping the Lord,” Valadao told us.
From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, her group’s music became synonymous with a powerful worship movement that emphasized intimacy with God, passionate worship, and personal revival.
“As I was songwriting, the Lord always made me very intentional,” Valadao said. “The whole idea was about transformation, was about changing the nation.”
Paula’s songs played across Brazil, helping many experience a deeper connection to their faith. “It was about healing the land, and we started seeing amazing salvation numbers,” said Valadao.
She held concerts in strategic locations, drawing millions of people, many of whom were Catholics.
“Like the carnival sight in Rio de Janeiro and in the soccer stadiums, Jesus broke every record, gathering more people than any soccer tournament,” Valadao recalled.
Because of her songs, many Catholic services in Brazil today—like one CBN News attended in São Paulo—have embraced a more evangelistic style of worship, shifting away from traditional liturgies to incorporate contemporary music.
Father Antonio Luiz Catelan Ferreira, who leads the Cathedral of São Sebastião in Rio de Janeiro, says the change is part of an effort to encourage former Catholics to ‘come home.’
“People are attracted to environments where worship celebrations and moments of prayer are done in a more charismatic way,” Ferreira told CBN News. “Today, a growing number of Catholics are returning precisely because prayer meetings are conducted in a more Pentecostal style.”
Still, for Brazil’s Catholic majority, the question is no longer whether they will lose their dominance, but how quickly.
The answer? Probably, faster than anyone ever expected.
Sources:faithwire
us news
‘Only God’: Massive ‘Miracle’ as Thousands of Students Choose Jesus, Confess Sin, Get Baptized
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Author and speaker Jennie Allen is witnessing what she calls a real-life “miracle.”
Allen told CBN News she was absolutely astounded last Wednesday night, when UniteUs, a ministry serving young people, arrived at the Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky and saw thousands of students show up to praise the Lord.
“This is this is just all a miracle,” Allen said. “We are on our 12th University. Next week, we will go to 13th at Ohio State, and, in every single case, it has been miraculous.”
Images and photos show hordes of young people engaging in praise and worship, with many coming forward to accept the faith and get baptized.
“So many kids come forward, confess sin, follow Jesus, and we’re baptizing usually into the morning,” she said. “And it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s unlike anything I’ve even been bold enough to pray for … until recently.”
Allen continued, “You can just see all over the stadium, huddles of kids, wiping tears, nodding, praying, holding each other. I mean, it’s so precious and brave.”
After the event, four people baptized droves of young people for around an hour and a half, showcasing the full impact of these events. Allen mentioned one young man who was lost and not living right whose friend had been praying for him.
“He said, ‘I’m tired of living the way I was living and I want something to change,’” she said. “And he goes, ‘I’ve been going this way and now I need to go this way.’”
It was incredible for the man’s friend, who had been praying for him, to see him change right before his eyes.
“It can only be God,” Allen reiterated.
Despite never dreaming such events could be possible, Allen has been blown away by all God has done. It’s especially remarkable because these campus events are organized by local student teams who do all the fundraising and work to make it unfold.
The young team responsible for the University of Kentucky event had prayed fervently beforehand, doing a massive, 42-mile prayer walk around their campus.
Allen, who is gearing up for her own event, Gather25 — a “25-hour global broadcast event telling the inspiring stories of the global Church, by the global Church” — said it’s remarkable to see these revival-like moments unfolding on campuses across the globe.
Ultimately, she believes these simultaneous spiritual revivals are all God-ordained.
Sources:CBN News
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