Earlier today VOM Media released the following information. As you read this, please and I say this emphatically, please pray for these believers in Ethiopia. I think here in the West we have no clue how serious the persecution is for our family in Christ. As I read through this I was reminded that when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. And while we can rejoice that many of our martyred brothers are with Christ now, we need to remember this guy did not die of crucifixion, as Glenn Penner of VOM Canada reminded me earlier. Please pray for everyone there who has to deal with the wickedness all around them. Please write Ethiopia on your prayer list today, and pray for them often.
The following are talking points from VOM Media regarding recent persecution in Ethiopia.
• Not far from Sudan’s border, Christians in the isolated outstretches of Western Ethiopia’s Muslim-dominated Tongo and Bambesi regions have recently been heavily targeted for their faith.
• The intensity of Christian persecution in these areas is rarely exposed, but sources for The Voice of the Martyrs inside Ethiopia recently gathered first-hand reports verifying the serious nature of Islamic aggression against believers.
• Militant Muslims have entirely wiped out the harvest of at least three dozen Ethiopian Christians since May. The crops provided the main source of sustenance for the families. By ravaging the crops, the militants destroyed the families’ means of providing for themselves. The Voice of the Martyrs-Canada financially assisted these Christians in their time of need.
• Following through with a campaign to erect a mosque every 1.25 miles, hundreds of Muslims laid siege of a Christian woman’s compound on July 20th and built their mosque on her land while threatening to put down any resistance.
• On June 28th in the village of Begge, Muslims torched to ashes a structure serving as a place of worship for 70 new Christian converts and demolished the house of an evangelist by the name of Tareku.
• For converting from Islam to Christianity, Shek Hamed Adem was hanged on a cross and brutally tortured on July 5th as an angry Muslim mob exclaimed, “Jesus was hanged on a cross and beaten, and as His follower, you also deserve the same punishment.”
