Bits & Bobs

QUAKE CLAIMS WORSHIPPERS AT PRAYER
At least 17 worshippers died and over 200 were trapped as two churches collapsed in a massive earthquake in Peru in August 2007. Falling masonry in the Senor de Luren church in Ica was said to have killed 17 and injured dozens. In nearby Pisco rescuers were yesterday trying to free 200 people from the rubble of their church. About 70 per cent of this port town of 60,000 people, 125 miles south of Lima, was levelled. The tremors caused similar destruction in a third town, Chincha, although Lima itself escaped with only one recorded death. President Alan Garcia declared a state of emergency but thanked God that ‘the 7.9-magnitude quake had not caused still worse damage with an immense number of victims’.
Sources: The Guardian (17/8); Daily Telegraph (17/8)

AFGHANISTAN: SECOND CHRISTIAN HOSTAGE KILLED
Urgent calls for prayer have followed the shooting of a second member of the South Korean Christian aid party kidnapped by a Taleban group in Afghanistan. The body of 29-year-old Shim Sung-min, a former information technology worker, was found outside Ghazni city, central Afghanistan on Monday. A man claiming to speak for the group reiterated threats to kill all the remaining 21 hostages if Kabul and South Korea failed to agree to a release of Taleban prisoners.
Sources: The Guardian (31/7); Church Times (3/8); The Church of England Newspaper (3/8)

BIBLE TRUTH CONFIRMED BY BABYLONIAN CLAY TABLET
A clay tablet inscription deciphered 130 years after it was excavated has been hailed as a breakthrough for biblical archaeology. It took Dr. Michael Jursa a mere couple of minutes to reveal the name of a court official of King Nebuchadnezzar who is also mentioned in the Old Testament. Nebo- Sarsekim, the royal officer mentioned in the 2,600-year-old Babylonian inscription, also appears in Jeremiah’s account of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem. The find is significant because it is a rare example of a non-biblical reference to someone other than a king featured in the Old Testament. Geza Vermes, the eminent emeritus professor of Jewish studies at the University of Oxford, said that ‘it will be interesting for religious people as much as historians’.
Source: The Times