Story number 1 for 2 Feb 2000

Headlining today’s news violence against Christians continues in Indonesia and
it has at least one missionary broadcaster concerned. President of Far East
Broadcasting Company Jim Bowman says it has had a direct impact on their ministry.
“A number of our broadcasts, one in particular the Acahnese broadcast, we’ve had to
suspend that because of the extreme tension. There’s what we consider at least five hot
spots in Indonesia right now. One is Aceh, up in Sumatra. The others are Jakarta,
Timor, Irian Jaya and Ambon because there’s a lot of threats against Christians right
now.” Bowman says despite the threats, they don’t have any plans to stop
communicating the Gospel there. “We’re broadcasting in 14 languages from Manila on
short-wave, then locally things are going ahead quite fine right there in Jakarta even
though a little more than 30 days ago there was a major burning of a Christian
institution there. This is so often the case – where there’s the most upset, people are
very often the most open to the Gospel.”