Unrest in Honduras

Reports that the ousting of the Honduran president is a military coup are completely false. Having a deep personal interest in Honduras, I called Dr. Gene Priddy of Bible Basics International, which has an active ministry in Honduras and sponsored the two evangelism efforts in which I participated in 2005 and 2008. These home visitation and evening church meetings saw many come to Christ. Gene is in touch with local pastors in Honduras, and they contradict what most of the liberal secular media is saying.

The Honduran form of government is patterned after that of the U.S. with three counterbalancing branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial. The ousted president was attempting to change the law by personal effort through a referendum, which is illegal. He wanted another term of office, which is not permitted by Honduran law.

To accomplish this, President Zelaya was influencing poor voters by giving them items, such as farm equipment, that actually came from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Chavez had actually shipped illegal ballots into Honduras. Zelaya ordered the military commander to distribute them, and, when he wouldn’t, Zelaya had him fired.

The Honduran legislature and Supreme Court found that was Zelaya was acting illegally and commissioned the military to arrest and remove him, which they did exiling him to Costa Rica. Gene suggested that they took him there out of compassion rather than jailing him in Honduras.

Zelaya had fallen out of favor with most Hondurans, including the Roman Catholic Church and most evangelical leaders, and even many in his own party who do not want a Chavez-type dictatorship in Honduras, but he has garnered sympathy from the UN, the Organization of American States and the U.S. government. He has said that he plans to return to Honduras. The acting president of Honduras says Zelaya will be arrested if he does.

Gene also noted that there is a group of six leftist, socialist and communist nations fomenting revolution in the area. One of these is Nicaragua, which borders Honduras on the south. There have been threats of invasion from Nicaragua.

Bible Basics International is sending another summer team on July 12 to the northern city of Puerto Cortez, which is one of the largest shipping ports in Central America. Twenty-one Americans on the team are slated to do home visitation, child evangelism and also evening family seminars and evangelism. Should there be an invasion by Nicaragua, this would likely be postponed.

Would you breathe a prayer for the team for Honduras, for the legal politicians and for our government to see the situation clearly? And pray for the Hondurans to be sensitive to the Gospel, which alone can give true spiritual freedom and lasting peace.

In a related personal story, I met a young man who is working on a housing development right behind our ministry property. I discovered that he was from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which is the city where I ministered last July and the largest city in Honduras. I gave him a post card showing downtown San Pedro Sula along with a printed copy of my testimony and the plan of salvation in Spanish. Pray that this brief encounter will enable him to find Christ as Savior.

Dave Virkler