I receive a magazine called Mission Frontiers. I scan the articles when it arrives, but most of them deal with topics of interest to mission strategists rather than a northwoods pastor. The most recent issue brought something to my attention that broke my heart and became a matter of prayer.
Did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than there were at the height of the North Atlantic slave trade? According to many sources, there are close to 30 million people in slavery today. Some of these slaves are involved in forced prostitution, while others are forced to work for others for little or no pay under the threat of violence if they refuse.
The US State Department's 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report, the slave trade generates almost 10 billion dollars in revenue a year. Cases of forced labor have been documented in over 112 countries...including the United States. In some instances families sell their children into slavery in order to survive. Rich business owners make loans to people in poverty and require them to work to pay off the loan. This doesn't sound bad, until you understand that there is no way to possibly work enough to repay the loan and that there is severe physical punishment for failure to work long or hard enough each day. In other instances a foreign "savior" offers to take charge of a person and provide them with a good job in a different country. The impoverished person then finds herself in a strange land, unable to understand the language or their rights. They are forced to work for nothing and intimidated by threats against themselves or their family members back home if they fail to cooperate.
Certainly the church of Jesus Christ needs to put the issue of slavery on its radar screen. We need to make the issue one of prayer and ask God to raise up a new abolition movement around the world that would put an end to this diabolical practice.
Here are some web sources of information (some of these are faith-based and others are secular):
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