The Jim Bakker Show

Pakistan Heat Wave Death Toll Skyrockets

The death toll from the heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan has skyrocketed in the last 24 hours.

Reported yesterday at close to 225 victims of the heat, the official toll now stands at over 650 people. Morgue officials say they are overwhelmed by the number of bodies and that hospitals throughout the region have declared a state of emergency.

Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, the area’s largest hospital, reported treating over 3,000 patients in the last few days. The city’s main morgue is over capacity.

Authorities have closed schools and even some government offices in an attempt to keep residents from going out in the lethal heat.

Saeed Mangnejo, senior provincial health official, told the Irish Independent newspaper that he expects the death toll to climb further in the next few days.

The wealthy in the city have been receiving tankers of water but the poor are having to go without fresh, cool water.

“This is how it is. No one cares for common poor man here,” Khadim Ali complained as he fanned his cousin, Shahad Ali, a 40-year-old vegetable vendor who collapsed in the heat.

The situation is further complicated for many Muslim residents as they cannot eat or drink during the daylight hours because of Ramadan.

Meterologists say a sea breeze will likely move into the region through the night bringing cooler temperatures. A monsoon rain could also reach the city and bring relief.

The city’s electrical grid continues to fail as residents overwhelm the system with air conditioners and fans.

High School Athlete Dies from Plague

A rare strain of the plague has killed a 16-year-old Colorado athlete.

Taylor Gaes was a star athlete for Poudre High School. Taylor, who was 6 foot, 4 inches, was already being considered an excellent college baseball prospect and was being scouted by schools when he fell ill.

He died June 8th, a day after his 16th birthday from a sudden illness. Friends thought it was just a bad case of the flu. He woke up that morning and told his parents he coughed up blood. The family tried to rush him to the hospital but he died five minutes before arriving.

That’s when doctors discovered the real cause of death was septicemic plague. It is the rarest of three forms of the plague and happens when bacteria directly enters the bloodstream. It is highly fatal.

Health officials are speculating that Taylor contracted the disease from fleas on a dead rodent or other animal on his family’s farm.

Now the Larimer County Health Department is warning all those who attended Taylor’s memorial on the ranch to be vigilant for any changes in their health.

“There is a small chance that others might have been bitten by infected fleas, so anyone who was on the family’s land in the last 7 days should seek medical attention immediately if a fever occurs,” the agency said.

Gaes was the first resident of the area to contract the disease since 1999 although a visitor to the region in 2004 caught it while camping.

Heat Wave Kills 224 in Karachi

A record-shattering heat wave in Pakistan has left at least 224 people dead.

Officials in Karachi, the country’s largest city with 20 million residents, say that 224 people have been confirmed dead from heat related causes. Hundreds more are being treated for heat stroke or other heat related illnesses.

“Hospitals across the city are overcrowded due to record numbers of patients suffering from heat stroke,” Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar, the health minister for Sindh province, said. “The numbers are unprecedented but the situation is under control.”

Temperatures in the city on Saturday reached close to 113 degrees fahrenheit, the highest recorded temperature in the country in 15 years. Sunday’s high was around 108.5 fahrenheit. The city’s all time record is 117 degrees fahrenheit set in 1979.

Local media reported that 150 bodies were taken to the Edhi morgue in Sohrab Goth. The morgue usually receives 20 bodies a day.

Many of the country’s residents are Muslim, meaning they are observing Ramadan and not partaking of food and water during the daylight hours. The city is also dealing with frequent power outages that cut off air conditioning and fans.

The heat wave comes after a wave last month in India left over 2,000 people dead.

Famed Christian Missionary Elisabeth Elliot Joins Jesus

Elisabeth Elliot, who continued her ministry to the Auca tribe in Ecuador years after her first husband and four other missionaries were speared to death by the tribe in the 1950s, has passed away after battling dementia for the last decade.

Elliot was 88.

Elliot wrote about the loss of her husband when their daughter was only 10 months old.

“A year after I went to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, whom I had met at Wheaton, also entered tribal areas with the Quichua Indians. In 1953 we were married in the city of Quito and continued our work together. Jim had always hoped to have the opportunity to enter the territory of an unreached tribe. The Aucas were in that category — a fierce group whom no one had succeeded in meeting without being killed,” she wrote.

“After the discovery of their whereabouts, Jim and four other missionaries entered Auca territory. After a friendly contact with three of the tribe, they were speared to death. Our daughter, Valerie, was 10 months old when Jim was killed. I continued working with the Quichua Indians when, through a remarkable providence, I met two Auca women who lived with me for one year. They were the key to my going in to live with the tribe that had killed the five missionaries. I remained there for two years.”

Tributes came in from around the evangelical world for Elliot, who authored the best selling book Through Gates of Splendor.

“Just like Jesus, and Jim Elliot, she called young people to come and die. Sacrifice and suffering were woven through her writing and speaking like a scarlet thread. She was not a romantic about missions. She disliked very much the sentimentalizing of discipleship,” said Pastor John Piper. “The thread of suffering was not just woven through her words, but through her relationships. Not only did she lose her first husband to a violent death three years after they were married; she also lost her second husband, Addison Leitch, four years after her remarriage.”

“Other than my parents & Rick, no one has had a greater impact on my life than Elisabeth Elliott. Forever grateful,” Kay Warren noted in a tweet.

“On Earth, she married three times — her first two husbands preceded her in death — but from earliest childhood her deepest affections were for her Savior, and it was for Him that her soul yearned,” wrote Warren later in a tribute on her blog in which she talked about how she was first introduced to Elliot’s work as a teenager.

Nine Dead In Charleston Church Shooting

A white gunman walked into a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night. He sat in the prayer service for about an hour before he pulled a gun, opened fire and killed 9 people including the pastor who was also a state senator.

The gunman has been identified by the FBI as 21-year-old Dylann Roof of Lexington, South Carolina. He was apprehended Thursday morning in Shelby, North Carolina, about three hours away from the shooting site.

“This is a situation that is unacceptable in any society and especially in our society and our city,” Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said.

Officials confirmed that three men and six women were killed in the shooting. The gunman reportedly reloaded five times during the assault.

Witnesses said that the pastor, Clementa Pinckney, tried to talk the gunman out of the attack. Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of the pastor who survived the assault.

“He just said, ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country,” Johnson said.

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

“The only reason that someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate,” Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley said. “It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine, and we will bring that person to justice. … This is one hateful person.”

Al-Qaeda Second In Command Killed

The number two man in the al-Qaeda power structure has reportedly been killed in a drone strike in Yemen.

Nasir al-Wuhayshi was called the “leading light” of the terrorist organization and one terrorism analyst told CNN the death is “the biggest blow against al-Qaeda since the death of bin Laden.”

“[Al-Wuhayshi] was responsible for the deaths of innocent Yemenis and Westerners, including Americans,” U.S. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said.

“While AQAP, al Qaeda and their affiliates will remain persistent in their efforts to threaten the United States, our partners and our interests, (al-Wuhayshi’s) death removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating those groups.”

Al-Wuhayshi was notorious for saying that Al-Qaeda needed to “eliminate the cross and the bearer of the cross is America!”

“Nasser al-Wuhayshi was a major global figure among jihadists, even supporters of al-Qaeda’s rival Islamic State viewed Wuhayshi with respect,” Islamic groups analyst Murad Batal al-Shishani said to the Christian Post.

“As well as creating AQAP itself, Wuhayshi also played a major role in forming the AQAP off-shoot, Ansar al-Sharia, in 2011, to appeal to disaffected youth in Yemen at the time of the Arab Spring. AQAP’s leader cultivated good relations with local tribes, which helped his group advance in various places in the south of the country.”

Unfortunately, the man who is replacing al-Wuhayshi is considering a formidable opponent.

“Qasm al-Rimi was considered the brains of the operation,” CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said. “For more than a decade, he’s really been at the helm of the military side of things for AQAP but also planning their large international operations.”

16 Dead in Malaysian Earthquake

The death toll has climbed to 16 from a Friday earthquake in Malaysia.

The 5.9-magnitude quake struck around Mount Kinabalu in Sabah state. The quake rained boulders and rocks down around the mountain and blocked hiking trails, trapping climbers on the country’s highest peak.

One survivor told the Associated Press that rescue efforts were scarce and that they “waited for a helicopter that never came.”

One group of 21 climbers on the mountain trekked down the mountain after promised helicopter rescue didn’t arrive for them either.

“There were risks of us dying up there of cold overnight,” said 23-year-old Sabah native Amanda Peter. “The guide said we either die of waiting or we die trying. So we all chose to try walking down ourselves.”

Peter noted her group saw two dead hikers laying on rocks as they made their descent.

“It really affected me as it could have been me. I was lucky to be given a chance to live,” she said.

Among the dead were six children from Singapore on a school trip. Their teacher and guide also perished.

Local officials admitted it was “easy to pick on weaknesses” of the rescue operation and that they would be examining shortcomings after the current incident has passed.

Pastor Who Lost Both Sons In Car Wreck Forgives Driver Who Caused Wreck

A North Carolina pastor who lost both of his baby sons in a car accident said that he and his wife have forgiven the man who caused the accident.

Pastor Gentry Eddings of Forest Hill Church in Charlotte was driving home in a car separate from his pregnant wife Hadley and his two year old son Dobbs. The car driven by Hadley was struck from behind by a box truck driven by 28-year-old Matthew Deans.

Dobbs died in the accident. Their other son, Reed, was delivered via emergency C-section but died two days later.

Deans has been charged with two counts of misdemeanor death by vehicle and a count of failure to reduce speed.

“We have, in our hearts, forgiven the man who did this,” Eddings proclaimed at the funeral for his sons. “It was not the easiest thing to do, but in some ways it was because we know — Hadley and I — that Jesus Christ has forgiven us our debt. … So in some ways, it was very easy to forgive a man who made an accident.”

Members of the congregation set up a fund to pay for the funeral expenses and raised almost $200,000 in nine days to help the family.

The pastor and his wife’s choosing to forgive and show Christ to the driver has also made waves in the secular world, with magazines such as People featuring the couple and their hard choice.

India Heat Wave Death Toll Climbing

The death toll in the killer heat wave sweeping India has jumped past the 2,000 mark.

Local officials say that over 2,300 are confirmed dead from the heat with 1,700 in just Andhra Pradesh state along India’s coast.

Scattered rain has been striking the country and helping to cool temperatures that ran as high as almost 118 degrees last week. The rain has helped the capital city of New Delhi fall into the upper 90s with their daily high temperatures.

The monsoon season will begin later this week with the arrival of the first main monsoon. The temperatures are expected to fall to less lethal levels within days of the main monsoon’s arrival.

The majority of the dead were the nation’s poor and sick. Many were unable to find shelter from the heat.

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