“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you— unless you believed in vain.”
1 Corinthians 15:1-2
1 Corinthians 15:1-2
Dear Friend,
In the afterglow of Easter I’m reminded of how the Apostle Paul opens his well-known chapter on the resurrection. He grounds the life-changing message of the Gospel in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And by holding fast to Christ’s redeeming work, you and I are saved—what amazing Good News!Yet many in Africa are corrupting this glorious truth, leading multitudes of unsuspecting people to destruction:
• The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus wasn’t God, that he rose from the grave as a spirit-being, and that God the Father simply discarded his physical body.
• The Branhamites, by contrast, teach that Jesus was literally God the Father who died on the cross.
• The Bahá’ís deny Christ’s bodily resurrection, calling it “a spiritual and divine fact, not a material reality.”
• The abaikiriza of Ugandan “god-man” Owobusobozi Bisaka, like other indigenous cults, have no use for Christ or Easter at all. Bisaka even claims that Jesus “was not a saviour, and never existed.”
• Missionary Islam is on the march across the region, denying the resurrection of Jesus outright, teaching instead that He was merely a prophet of God who was taken up into heaven, while someone else—possibly Judas Iscariot—perished on the cross in His place.
• Peddlers of the prosperity gospel exploit the cross of Christ as a path to personal enrichment, as if our Lord and Savior were a genie in a bottle. In East Africa there are thousands of churches with pastors who preach this distorted message.
Where can African pastors turn for help? Who will help Christians refute these false claims and faithfully proclaim the good news of Christ’s resurrection to a world starving for redemption?
For the past two years, we’ve been prayerfully working toward launching a center in East Africa to meet this very need. And today our ministry faces some critical challenges. While we’ve gained a handful of faithful new supporters since the first of the year, ACFAR’s support has essentially stalled.To reach our goal of launching the ministry “on the ground” in Kampala by the end of May, we still need 275 prayer partners, $5,000 in new monthly commitments, and $30,000 in startup support.
Unless God does something drastic and wonderful in the next 60 days, our ministry goal will remain out of reach, and we’ll have to rethink the future of the Africa Center.
So we must pray! Please join with me in prayer and fasting this month, asking God to advance His kingdom through the defense of His truth in East Africa.
Our ministry’s future is in the Lord’s capable and all-powerful hands.
And I can’t imagine being in a better place.
Because of His grace,
John Divito, Director
Africa Center for Apologetics Research
P.S. If God is leading you to support CFAR, please join us today! Your partnership can help us change the spiritual equation in East Africa for generations to come.
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