(Hebrew Year 5769)
J.
Jacob Prasch (Rev) - Director
As we come to the end of
2008 and approach 2009, it is a time of reflection and seeking The Lord for the
future, and for thanking The Lord for His goodness and provision. It is also a
time for thanking our brethren for their much needed prayers and generous
support, especially for missions and evangelism as Moriel enters into its
fifteenth year by The Lord's grace.
2008 has indeed been a year
of steady growth with increases in mission activities and attendance at
meetings and opening of new venues, especially in North America. While the USA
and Canada saw the largest growth, there have also been noticeable increases in
Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, but at a much
smaller pace.
Despite battles with frail
health, Marg Godwin in Australia and Nigel Nicholson in New Zealand both labor
on in The Lord doing an excellent job for which we are all grateful. These
countries are scantly populated in contrast to America, Britain and Asia and
are geographically remote from the rest of Moriel yet growth has been
consistent. We owe a particular note of thanks to our Australia council members
Peter Danzey, Kevin Bickle, John Phillips, Michael Shafton, Sam Mule, and John
Kidd.
In Asia, although there has
been growth, it remains more difficult to quantify as Moriel affiliates there
without a branch of our own. However, Moriel Asia/Japan will be opening based
in Osaka in 2009. There are other countries however, that will continue without
Moriel branches for the time being.
Overall, our largest growth
has been in our missions and the continued growth of our website in terms of
unique visitors, hits and with the BE ALERT electronic news bulletin. Over the
last few years, the Internet growth has been exponential.
As more people visit the
website and subscribe to BE ALERT, printed newsletter subscriptions have
neither grown (except very slowly) nor have they declined (except by
intentional culling), but are largely static with more people preferring
updated online material. The exception would be in the USA where the periodical
subscriptions are increasing conspicuously. Online ordering of materials has
long overtaken catalogue orders through the Moriel Quarterly in the USA.
Neither I (Jacob Prasch) nor
anyone else profits from the sale of recorded materials. All proceeds and
royalties are donated to the ministry to cover operating costs. Correspondingly,
neither do I nor most of our team receive a salary (apart from those in full
time foreign missions service and a very few full time support staff that keep
the website running). There are no pensions and few benefits even for full time
staff. All of the administrative work remains in the hands of volunteers, and
all donations designated for missions go directly to missions with none going
to administrative costs.
This has been both Moriel's
blessing and Moriel's continual financial struggle. Year by year our financial
intake have increased, but most of the contributions are designated for the
mission field and are placed directly into missions and evangelism, always
leaving us a short fall and deficits for operational costs such as telecommunications,
petrol, etc. Still, The Lord honors our priorities and provides. For this we
are indebted to Him, and to you our partners. Money however, while always
needed by ministry, as with any honest ministry it has never been our single
biggest need. Our biggest need is prayer, and the need to see souls saved and
taught The Word of God. Our other huge need of course is for the health of our
orphan children, most of whom are HIV + (Positive) and our need for dedicated
mission staff and the resources to sponsor them.
MORIEL MISSIONS
Most people know Moriel as a
teaching ministry, others as an evangelistic ministry to the Jews, and others
know it as a discernment ministry. Many people know it as an Internet ministry
and a number of people attend congregations planted by and/or affiliated with
Moriel.
While all of these things
are indeed true, internally within Moriel, the brethren on our teams in various
countries rather know and view Moriel more as missions organization. This is
the area where we invest our hardest work, our most man-hours, and most of our
money.
Moriel missions are two
fold. One are ministries with both a humanitarian and evangelistic mission we
support (in Israel and India), and others which we operate ourselves (Africa).
Moriel has outreaches,
humanitarian aid and evangelism run by Sal and Dianne, and newly married Zak.
Lyn, Dave and Chris Royle run Ebyown and Alan and Sue Wells have an affiliated
work called Bezaleel. In Tanzania, Norbert and his crew handle our work and
Moses and his team plant churches and have an orphan program in Kenya. Dave
Royle oversees all work in Africa.
Moriel operates
somewhat differently from other Christian orphanages in Africa. Bezaleel is an
associate facility run as a home and Ebyown is a children's village registered
with child welfare but run not as an orphanage but as near to a home setting as
possible and concentrating on special needs children (we have acquired land for a second Ebyown in
Tanzania). Most of our activities in Zimbabwe have had to be terminated due to
the Mugabe regime and finding financially honest local co-laborers in Kenya is
a huge problem.
We differ from most in at
least two areas. First, we operate as a family environment not as an
institutional one, emphasizing Jesus, missionaries as parent figures, as well
as the usual emphasis on hygiene, nutrition and antiretroviral pediatric
medical care. Secondly, our children are either AIDS babies or extremely ill or
handicapped demanding an intensive level of supervised medical care. We
therefore do not have hundreds of babies and children but dozens due to the
kind of care and medical treatment they require. We only take the clinically
worst cases of babies and small children who would otherwise in effect be more
or less abandoned to die, or who have been abandoned to die. These are our
children whom The Lord has entrusted to love with His love.
2008 has been a difficult
year first because we lost a baby girl named Angel who is the granddaughter of
Patience. Although not an Ebyown child, Angel was loved by all of us. The death
of a little one is terrible and it never gets any easier and particularly takes
a heavy toll emotionally and spiritually. Because of the tight health regime,
we can thank God that in its 9th year of operating Ebyown has not lost one
child under our care.
This year has not been good,
but The Lord has been. We know these children go to be with Jesus away from the
ugly world into which they were born. We have recently taken on another
cerebral palsy child and HIV baby. Our pressing requirement now is for more
volunteer medical staff.
The death of children is
however painful, something we have learned to anticipate the possibility of
this sad fact. But, what transpired in
Tanzania is something for which we were unprepared.
Moriel houses sick and
handicapped babies and small children. However, there are countless thousands
of orphan children at older ages in Tanzania whose parents died usually from
AIDS related disease. We operate a school for such orphan girls. But we learned
that pagan tribesmen from other villages had raped a number of our girls on
their way to or from our school leaving them socially ostracized in their
tribal culture, 3 pregnant, 3 HIV+, and 5 with STD's. Local police wanted
bribes to find the perpetrators (which we would not pay). This left us with
quite a dilemma.
Due to the prayers and
generosity of our friends, we are now building rondevals to house the girls
(ages 13-17) on the school grounds and the victims are getting medical and
antenatal treatment as required. We will also be helping them to care for their
babies. I cannot describe how difficult this ordeal has been and we continue to
covet your prayers. We cannot do enough to thank all of those individuals and
those churches that contributed so generously without us even asking anyone
except The Lord.
In 2008, we expanded our
support in Israel to include another congregation in Galilee. In 2009, we are
planning to take on sponsorship of another new congregation near Jerusalem and
to increase our support budget for another congregation we already support in
Galilee in addition to our ongoing support of the National Evangelism
Committee. Due to security reasons, we cannot place specific details in the
public domain but we can inform our supporters privately as to locations and
identities etc.
Our sponsorship of the
orphanage work in India is proceeding as usual. Problematically, adjacent areas
of India are experiencing increased persecution by fundamentalist Hindus.
Pastor Chancy does a fantastic work. Most of this support originates with
Moriel Australia.
DISCERNMENT MINISTRY
While Moriel is not a
political organization, we do see a prophetic significance in the contemporary
events in The Middle East and we stand with Israel and the persecuted believers
in the Moslem world. The vicious spiral of factually distorted and unbelievably
biased attacks on Israel by figures such as Stephen Sizer and David Rushworth
Smith has left us to respond to this challenge. Predictably, after agreeing on
TV to debate me, Mr. Sizer backed down. The unbelievable maelstrom of twisted
revisionism published by 'Evangelicals Now' in the UK by Rushworth Smith was
horrific. Moriel and Jacob Prasch are the continual targets of anti-Israel
'Christians' who, as in the case of Sizer, even teamed up with terrorist Iran
to denounce Israel even as Iranian Christians were being martyred by the same
regime who televised Sizer.
Moriel also was among the
first to warn of the fiasco at Lakeland, Florida (imitating the failed Toronto
and Pensacola revivals). With the moral collapse of Todd Bentley, the tattooed
wonder boy of C. Peter Wagner, Bill Johnson, Wendy Alec, Mark Stibbe, John
Arnott, and Rick Joyner, who kicked elderly ladies in the face, the bubble
fortunately burst quickly leaving the promulgators of that sham publicly
embarrassed and looking like the religious frauds many would say they are. With
little doubt, Satan will have other lies in store for 2009, which he will
perpetrate against the biblically ignorant and undiscerning. Lord willing,
Moriel and our sister ministries will be ready to respond.
Moriel will continue to
partner with others in Discernment ministries aware of the issues challenging
biblical orthodoxy and threatening The Body of Christ at these perilous times
such as Sandy Simpson, Mike Oppenheimer. Jewell Van der Merwe, Bill Randles,
Dave Hunt, Roger Oakland, Philip Powell, Jan Markell, Stuart Dool, Tony Pearce,
Deb Dembrowski, Jackie Alnor, and multiple others upholding scriptural truth in
an age of apostasy, emergence, money preaching, ecumenism, and purpose driven
lies.
FRIENDS & PARTNERS
Our partner ministry in
Singapore, 2 Timothy 2 led by Jeff Loh, Esther Goh, and Cecilia Perh all
continue to serve The Lord faithfully and fruitfully. The Christian Ministerial
Fellowship International (CMFI), with whom most Moriel preachers hold
credentials, continues to grow. Our particular thanks to Paul Sherbird, Tom
Chacko, John Angliss, Bruce Shimwell and Jim Cottington. CMFI was established by
moderate Pentecostals & Charismatics who were compelled by The Lord to
leave movements such as The Assemblies of God and Elim due to various doctrinal
and ethical considerations.
2008 has also been a
difficult years from some of the ministries with which we align ourselves. Dave
Hunt and Roger Oakland have both struggled with major health issues. We also
ask those who pray to be mindful of the health of the wives of Arnold
Fruchtenbaum and of David Hocking, two brothers from the more sane axis of the Messianic
movement.
Please also remember to pray
for the protection of brother Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist, as the Moslems
have a fatwah on him for his death for accepting Christ and preaching the truth
about Islam.
WOMEN'S MINISTRY
2008 also saw Moriel's first
women's conference in California and another is being planned for 2009. This
year also additionally saw the birth of Moriel's first woman's ministry in the
UK, Zarephath Ministries ably led by Julie Edensor.
EVANGELISM & HOME MISSION
We have by God's grace seen
a number saved in 2008, Jew and Gentile. We have also witnessed many believers
leaving unscriptural churches after being exposed to the teaching material The
Lord gives us. A highlight of 2008 was the Utah outreach to the Mormon cult by
our American branch led by David Lister. A host of ministries joined with us,
including many ex Mormons and we saw 12 people saved out of Mormonism at an
outreach in Manti, Utah at what is called the Mormon Miracle Pageant. The year
was not without its blessings.
2008 has also witnessed the
spiritual and numerical growth of our newest congregation in Pittsburgh, PA
near our main American base. Moriel is cautious about planting churches
however. If there is a solid biblical congregation in an area our policy has
always been that we would much rather stand by, help, and encourage what
already exists than begin something new. As The Lord leads however, we will
explore new church plants.
TEACHING MINISTRY
A variety of new teaching
titles have been released in 2008 including: Amos 7&8, Reductio Ad
Absurdum, 'Thou Shalt Not Ask', The Children of The Harlot, Jehoida The Priest, and What The Spirit Explicitly Says. We also
released the first series of 'on site' DVD teachings filmed in Israel and Greece.
Please pray The Lord will give us more grain for 2009 in this time of famine
for the hearing of His Word. We are hoping to get the on site Seven Churches in
Revelation DVD's edited for release in 2009 and more on site teaching filmed in
Israel.
INTERNET MINISTRY & MEDIA
Scott Brisk has as usual
performed brilliantly and with blessing in editing BE ALERT.
By early 2009 Danny Isom,
Carol Champion our web mistress, John Dunn, and Greg Kaloutsis will have
completely redesigned the Moriel website. From Internet radio & TV to the
on line the new website should Lord willing prove much more efficient and
varied.
We are meeting with
Revelation TV in the UK concerning televising Jacob Prasch as Tom Chacko
already has a program on that award-winning channel with Howard Condor.
Stewart & Deb Menelaws
are also continuing to expand GVTV 24/7.
We also are praying that
Radio Free TV & Godly Conferences with whom we are linked will become fully
operational in 2009.
On the American side, we
want to thank the Wayne and Sharon Achey as they continue to fulfill the
American media orders along with many of the international orders, also the
Nelson's for their work on the Moriel Quarterly. The layout improvements have
been appreciated. We also wish to thank Al Dager for his sacrificial work in
editing and printing.
A big thanks you to Darren
and Allison for their hard work in editing the new on site messages and on the
tours. Also, their ongoing work with Moriel UK.
________________________________________________________________
Once again, we thank our
missionary staff, our volunteers whom The Lord has blessed us with, and above
all The Lord Himself. Not least of all we once again thank you for your
prayers, help, and support. 2009 promises to be a busy year for all of our
preachers, Dave Royle, David Lister, Tom Chacko, Skip Gillespie, and Jacob
Prasch etc.
May The Lord bless you, your
families, and your churches in the forthcoming year and beyond. In the
meanwhile, we covet your prayers. Please pray for our countries and their
leaders, for our children in India and Africa, please pray for Israel and for
the salvation of Abraham's descendents - the Jews and Arabs, and please
remember Moriel.
With Much Love &
Gratitude in Jesus,
J. Jacob Prasch
(Director)
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