Dr Paul Allen

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in Tehran, Iran, Yesterday marked one month since the protests in Iran erupted against the Islamic Shiite regime. Multitudes of angry Iranians—drawn from various social levels—took to the streets to demand the toppling of a regime that has been claiming to apply Islamic rules for over four decades. The triggering event for the protests was the brutal death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, who was arrested by Iran’s morality police in Tehran for improperly wearing the Islamic hijab headscarf. The repeated chant of the protesters is, “Woman, life, freedom.” While these protests are clearly triggered by the unjust death of Amini, they are a testimony of the absolute failure of Islamic law, in Iran’s case strictly applied, to enrich and flourish the lives of the Iranian people. Iranians are not merely protesting the killing of an innocent woman—they are demanding the toppling of a brutal Islamic regime that has controlled the lives of citizens for decades.

Image via Wikipedia Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled, saying that in reality the country's supreme court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution. "There has still been no written confirmation of the court's decision on Pastor Nadarkhani's appeal against a death sentence for apostasy, despite efforts to source this," according to a July 5 statement from Christian Solidarity Worldwide , a human rights organization. Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 while attempting to register his church. His arrest is believed to have been due to his questioning of the Muslim monopoly on the religious instruction of children in Iran , the CSW statement said. He initially was charged with protesting; however, the charges against him were later changed to apostasy and evangelizing Muslims .   "Our thoughts and prayers are with Pas

Image via Wikipedia “ Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God , to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods” (v. 21). -  Ezra 8:21–23 Scripture often links the spiritual discipline of prayer to fasting ( Dan. 9:3 ;  Luke 2:37 ). Since we just finished a brief look at old covenant prayer and its new covenant fulfillment, it is now proper to look at the spiritual discipline of fasting. Our passage today records a fast Ezra the scribe once mandated. The setting is the Persian Empire , which in Ezra’s day had recently overthrown Babylon , the kingdom that destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC  and took captive the people of God ( 2 Kings 25).  As it did with other people groups, Persia allowed the Israelites to go back to their homeland, and Ezra went back to enact various religious reforms ( Ezra 7:1–8:20 ).  Traveling on the roads was not very safe back then. Thieves and bandits often waited to am