Tuhan Akbar!

In other words, God is great, and since the 'A' word is claimed to be copyrighted by certain people who have some misguided belief that certain words can only be used by certain people of which I am not one of, I conveniently replaced the 'A' word with Tuhan. God is really really great. And awesome. And almighty. Coz' He not only protected his people, who by biblical definition are the real churches, He has also done a good job of protecting the buildings that His people go to worship.Why do I think so? To date, the number of reported attacks on churches, plus one convent school (they even dare to attack SCHOOLS where children may be at. These twerps truly have no conscience!) has risen to EIGHT, today some of which were churches outside of the Klang Valley, in Perak, Sarawak and Malacca. And this is what the papers have reported:

Reported in the News Straits Times on 8 Jan 2010:

The Metro Tabernacle church in suburban Kuala Lumpur was fire-bombed in a midnight attack that gutted its ground floor. Firebombs were later tossed into the compound of at least two more churches - the Assumption Catholic Church and the Life Chapel Protestant church - in Petaling Jaya, but both failed to explode. Another church also received a threat.

Reported today (10 Jan 2010) in the Sun:
In the first case outside the Klang Valley, a pastor at All Saints Church on Jalan Taming Sari in Taiping alerted the police after finding broken bottles and soot in the compound of the church at about 7.30am.

The 120-year-old Anglican church is listed as a heritage site.

Perak police chief DCP Datuk Zulkifli Abdullah, who confirmed the incident, said there was no damage to the timber building.

He said police received another report from SM Convent on Jalan Regat Convent after a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the security guardhouse at about 3.30am. The bottle broke a glass window but failed to explode.

Zulkifli said police were also informed of a broken empty bottle found in the compound of St Louis Catholic Church not far from the school.

In all reports of churches attacked with Molotov cocktails, so far not ONE has exploded. Like what? Either these guys are just so incredibly incompetent that they can't even make a proper Molotov cocktail, or these bombs just didn't go off because of divine protection. Actually I like both possibilities just as much, and the former is simply more hilarious, but still I'd rather put it down to divine protection. Of course, the thought occurred to me earlier, but I thought it would have been unfair to say God protected all the other churches when the ground floor of one of the churches attacked, the Metro Tabernacle, was destroyed by arson. Does that mean God protected the other churches but not this one??

Not so, as I read a report in the Star today that shows otherwise. The worshippers at Metro Tabernacle were already planning to relocate their church to a new area, which was all set up and ready to be moved in by Christmas last year, but they couldn't because they couldn't get the necessary approvals. Now not only will they certainly get their approvals, but our Prime Minister is giving a grant of RM500,000 to them to help them to relocate! So they not only already have a brand spanking new church to go to, but they have a hoopla of money to buy new resources and equipment for their church! It's amazing! Is God awesome or what? Fellow Christians, let's give our Lord all the glory and praise He deserves and trust that He will continue to protect us and His churches.

Our places of worship are not meant for this:


Our places of worship are meant for THIS:

This was my church service today. We had a combined service with all other CBC centres, and amid the hype of churches being firebombed, we CBC-ians came out in FULL FORCE to celebrate and praise God. And news reports also show that Christians in other churches were all out today, regardless of the security risks. There was no talk of fear or condemnation of any one of my church leaders. Instead, my church leaders asked us to bless our nation, to bless our country's leaders and government and pray for them to have wisdom and uphold justice in our country. Honestly, I found it SO difficult to pray that, considering everything we've seen so far shows our leaders haven't got much in terms of wisdom or ability to be just. But as difficult as it is, that's what Christians are called to do... not just to love our friends, but also to love our enemies. And I'm glad and proud that my church leaders encouraged us to do what is difficult, but what we know is right.

We don't need to turn our places of worship and joy into places of protest and anger.

We don't need to fight anyone else to protect the name of our God. Our God is fully well and able to protect us from harm, and He has already done so.

We only need to praise His name and enjoy every minute of it.

God is GREAT! :D

Tuhan Akbar!