World Scene from December 11, 1987

EGYPT

Finding Joseph’s Remains?

Researcher Ahmed Osman says he has located the mummified remains of the biblical patriarch Joseph. In his recently published book, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings (Souvenir Press), Osman says the mummy of Yuya, which is kept at the Cairo Museum, is really Joseph.

“I am sure that Yuya, who was chief administrator and therefore virtual ruler of Egypt under the pharaohs … between 1413 and 1367 B.C., was the Joseph of the Book of Genesis,” Osman said in an interview with the Associated Press. “The [mummy’s] hands are placed palms down, under the chin. It is the only mummy we know of whose hands were not across his chest in the conventional position of the god Osiris, suggesting he did not subscribe to the gods of Egypt.”

Yuya’s tomb was discovered in 1905 between the tombs of two Egyptian pharaohs. Archeologists have observed that Yuya does not have strong Egyptian features, suggesting he may have been of foreign origin. However, the Bible says Moses took Joseph’s bones with him when the Israelites left Egypt (Exod. 13:19). And some conservative scholars, taking the Bible’s chronological statements at face value (Exod. 12:40–41; 1 Kings 6:1), would date Joseph several centuries earlier than the period during which Yuya ruled.

CHINA

Christian Medical Assistance

American Leprosy Missions (ALM,) a Christian medical organization based in New Jersey, has been asked to help the Chinese government eliminate leprosy in that country before the end of the century.

China’s Leprosy Association and the country’s Ministry of Public Health issued the invitation for the American organization to supply drugs and microscopes to complete a World Health Organization pilot project in Guizhou Province. Some 30,000 persons in Guizhou and two other provinces have the disease, ALM has also been asked to help rehabilitate persons disabled by leprosy.

HONG KONG

Aiming High

The assocate director of a Christian camp in Hong Kong says his ministry is aiming for 100,000 conversions before 1997, the year Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule.

“We’re going to keep busy and work very hard in the next 10 years …,” John Tsang told Pulse. “The Communists will eat us up like a big shark, but we will be alive and witnessing inside the shark.”

Last year, 45,846 people attended the Suen Douh (To Proclaim the Truth) Camp, and 6,304 became Christians. During the first six months of this year, 3,545 people were converted. About one-third were adults and teenagers, and the remainder were children in grades five through nine.

The three-day gospel camps include games, a family emphasis, and education about religion and ethics. The gospel is taught both in large sessions and in small groups. Public school students, as well as those from Catholic and Buddhist schools, receive permission to attend the camp because of its emphasis on citizenship, family, and religion.

SUDAN

Saying ‘No’ To More Aid

The government of Sudan has ordered three Christian relief-and-development agencies to leave the country, saying the worst effects of the drought in the early 1980s are over. But the three agencies—Lutheran World Service, World Vision, and the Association of Christian Resource Organizations Serving Sudan (ACROSS)—have appealed the order.

The agencies will be allowed to remain in the predominantly Muslim country while their appeals are being processed by the Ministry of Social Welfare. In its appeal letter, ACROSS noted that it began working in Sudan years before the drought, “ACROSS has been in Sudan since 1972 with the objective of working with the people of the Sudan in the development of their country with the emphasis on community development and self-help.”

The government, in a letter asking the agency to leave, stated, “… after two seasons of sufficient rainfall and alert measures taken by the government, the drought has been abated.” But the government-owned Sudan News Agency issued a report stating the organizations were given “three weeks to terminate their work on the grounds that their operations threaten national security.”

In the past, the government has expressed displeasure over relations many aid agencies have with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which controls much of the southern part of the country where the Christian population is concentrated.

AUSTRALIA

Biking For Bibles

Hundreds of Australians joined a bicycle marathon, some of them pedaling as far as 2,800 miles, to raise money to provide easy-to-read Scriptures in Kenya, Burma, and Brazil.

Called Bike for Bibles ’87, the event has been sponsored every year since 1984 by the Bible Society in Australia. This year’s event raised $200,000 for the society’s Overseas Literacy Development Fund.

Bicycle teams embarked from various cities around the country, some riding for five weeks to arrive at Canberra, the nation’s capital. One 47-member team covered a combined total of 45,857 miles. The team that left from Perth, on Australia’s west coast, covered a distance nearly equal to crossing the United States from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

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