Persecution Blog

Are You N?

VOM staff members have been encouraged by the amazing response to the “I-am-N” t-shirt VOM offered last month. Thousands of American Christians have chosen to stand with our Christian brothers and sisters facing Islamic extremism in Iraq and Syria by publicly wearing the Arabic “N” shirts.

The Arabic letter “N” (nun), from the Arabic word nasara (meaning “Nazarene” to indicate Christians), has been painted on homes of Christians Raqqa, Syria, Mosul, Iraq, and other cities taken over by by an organized terrorist group called IS (Islamic State). The symbol on the homes allows IS to target the Christians for expulsion from their homes so that IS members can take them over. Christians who don’t submit or flee face death.

Last month VOM introduced a t-shirt with that same symbol on it, and Christians around the nation have jumped at the chance to publicly mark themselves in solidarity with Christians marked by IS. Wearing the shirt also provides direct help to Christians in the region, as $10 from the purchase price of each shirt goes directly to support Christians facing persecution from radical Islamic groups.

The shirt also provides an opportunity to be a witness and to share your heart for persecuted Middle East Christians with your Christian friends…or to share the plight of Middle East Christians and the gospel with unbelievers.

But it isn’t just individuals. Churches also are taking up the challenge.

Pastor Matt Richardt of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church has implemented an I-am-N challenge. The challenge consists of 80 members of his congregation who purchased an I-am-N shirt. They will make a video wearing their shirts and challenge another congregation to do the same. Gloria Dei is excited to help Iraqi Christians in this capacity and have high hopes that this video and the challenge to support Christians in the Middle East will become a viral phenomenon.

Owasso First Assembly of God in Owasso, OK took up the challenge as well. They invited each member of the congregation to wear an N shirt or hold up an N sign, then took a picture which they posted on their web site and on their Facebook page.

One of our international staffers shared today that Iraqi Christians are aware of this effort and are so encouraged as they know American Christians are standing with them in their trials.

You can order your I-Am-N shirt and give online to support Christians in the Middle East at www.I-Am-N.com. 

Will You Commit to Pray?

Many American churches have abandoned the practice of "Prayer Meetings," weekly gatherings of believers to seek the Lord and lift up the needs of their congregation and the world. But prayer meetings to lift up persecuted Christians are still happening every week among believers from all over the world—online.

It has been almost a year since VOM launched www.iCommitToPray.com, an online prayer meeting on behalf of persecuted believers around the world. Each week a new request is posted for a Christian in a hostile or restricted nation, and readers are invited to post their prayer for that need.

New visitors are called to pray, and encouraged by the prayers they see on the site that have already been offered up for this need. The site is also accessible INSIDE these hostile and restricted nations, so Christians there can log on and see the prayers being offered up on their behalf. This allows them to be encouraged as they see others praying for them, and it allows them to connect with and pray for believers facing persecution in other nations.

This week visitors are praying for "Kollol" and his family, Christians in India:

"Kollol" and his wife were attacked by 15 radical Hindus during a June 4 prayer meeting in their home. The couple were beaten and then dragged to a Hindu temple, where they were forced to undergo a ritual cleansing. The Hindus poured water on them to symbolize outward cleansing and put red powder on their foreheads to mark them as devout Hindus. When the Hindus force-fed the couple with food sacrificed to idols, Kollol's two teenage daughters protested. They were then beaten, too, and they were all later treated at a hospital. Community members evicted the family from the village, threatening to kill them if they return.

Will you join with more than 350 Christians in 30 nations in prayer for this family? Add your voice to the international online prayer meeting on their behalf at www.iCommitToPray.com. 

Repost: Making Muslim Converts or Pointing Toward Jesus?

Today we re-post a blog from last year's "MOVING TOWARD MUSLIMS" series of posts by "Anna," a Christian living and working among Muslims in the Middle East.

Last month, I shared how I felt like a project when my Muslims friends try to convert me. But what if I turn the tables and ask myself: Should I, as a Christian, convert Muslims?

The short answer? No.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day did a lot of converting. In fact, they traveled “over land and sea to make one convert.” Impressive, right? Not to Jesus. He said those efforts to impose religion were making the spiritual condition of their converts worse than before! (See Matthew 23:15.)

Instead of starting a new religion, Jesus of Nazareth ushered in a kingdom where he reigns as King. In this kingdom, people are healed physically and spiritually. The poor finally have some Good News. Dead people are raised to new life in Jesus.  

For any of us to move toward Jesus, the supernatural must occur. The Holy Spirit wind of God must blow through my life, regenerating my enemy soul. In Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.”

Ephesians 2:4-5 describes the miracle: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” (NKJV, emphasis mine).

As I interact with Muslim friends, I attempt to introduce them to Jesus Christ and the reality of his kingdom reign. With a growing admiration for Jesus, we can learn together what it looks like to obey him gladly. I look for the day when Muslims unburden themselves at Jesus’ feet, without taking on my religious baggage in the process. This is clearly supernatural!

In my years of building relationships with Muslims, I have shifted my focus away from winning converts to my religion. Muslims are not prizes to be won. We are all flawed human beings who desperately need Jesus. I am identifying more with John the Baptist, who saw his role as a “mere stagehand” in the drama Christ is unfolding in the nations (Luke 3:16 MSG).

With this shift in focus, I can begin to recognize God’s everyday miracles of stirring the spiritually dead:

• A friend in turmoil is comforted by a psalm of David.
• A family matron asks a question about Jesus and her attentive daughters and nieces listen to the answer.
• A light bulb goes on for a university student and she remarks, “God is showing me how much he cares about me!”  

I will never “convert” Muslims. Instead, by God’s grace, I will live wisely and take every opportunity to point to Jesus. I may be a player in the drama God is unfolding in my friends’ lives, but I want Jesus to be the star of the show.

He must increase, and I must decrease. Because, let’s be honest. If I tried to run the show, I would operate much like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and make my convert twice as much a child of hell as I am.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Do you agree with the author’s premise that Christians should not convert Muslims? Is it possible to make a convert worse off spiritually than before?

"Anna" blogged each month last year for VOM, writing about friendship, culture, and Kingdom-living from her home in the Middle East. She loves Jesus and wants to see Him cherished by her neighbors and people everywhere. Anna is a pseudonym, and all names in her posts are changed for security reasons.

Suffering - the Mark of the Church

I recently read a deeply thought provoking blog written by Pastor Eric Foley, the CEO and Co-Founder of Seoul USA. As I read what he wrote, I was reminded of a chapter in Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place. It is in this part of her story that she tells of a night when she and her family stayed up late into the evening to listen to a live radio address from the Prime Minister of Holland. Her family listened intently as the Dutch people were told they need not worry about war. He announced to the nation that both sides had agreed to accept the neutral stance of Holland. Upon hearing this, Casper Ten Boom rose to his feet, and abruptly turned off the radio. He knew that war was imminent, and he was deeply disturbed by the false hope being given to the people.

It was a mere five hours after that announcement that the Ten Boom family awoke to the sounds of explosions followed by flashes of light. Bombs were being dropped on their homeland. They had been invaded, and war had rudely erupted in the Dutch nation. Further reading of Corrie’s story reveals the deep concern Casper Ten Boom had for those who would not be ready for the hard times ahead.

I too, sense this deep disturbance as all my senses are bombarded by knowledge of the suffering Christians are enduring all over the world today. I am troubled as I see and hear evil men taunt the world, both verbally and visually, with their hellish threats. Something in me shudders when I hear a narrative that portrays us as a people removed from harm, and safely secured. It is not a fearful self-preservation I feel, but rather a concern for those who are not ready. At the same time, I believe this begs a deeper look from within from all of us. 

If we have edited our faith to such a degree that suffering has no place, how will we be prepared when it arrives on our doorstep?

I remember reading The Hiding Place many years ago and thinking to myself: surely God knew I could not suffer as those whose stories line the pages in this book. I told myself – that is why I was born in this time, blessed, and in America. I am ashamed to admit that my world view was distorted and self-absorbed at best. My understanding was one in which Americans somehow were not privy to suffering for their faith; certainly not in today’s civil society. Keeping with the comfort level I sought to surround myself with I also believed that all persecuted Christians must have been supernaturally spared the physical and mental pain of torture. If I dared to allow my mind to contemplate their suffering, I did so only to a point. Generally those thoughts ended with my rationalizing how God must have intervened before the physical pain touched them. I also entertained the thought that perhaps there was something those who suffered for their faith could have done to avoid the punishment they were dealt. Maybe if they had prayed a specific prayer, avoided hostile people groups, or perhaps simply stayed home.

It would be years later at The Voice of The Martyrs conference that I would come face to face with my distorted understanding. I heard stories from all over the world of suffering happening to Christians. The first evening I listened as a man from Pakistan explained the hardships the Pakistani church endures, and then described the torture and eventual murder of a young Christian boy. This young man died at the hands of his torturers simply because he was a Christian. For the first time in my life I contemplated the possibility that God does not intervene in every situation and take the suffering away from His people.

That evening I went back to my hotel room and had a heart-to-heart talk with the Lord. Up until that time I had been crying out to the Lord to “Send me!” Now I was asking Him to not fulfill those prayers. The burden in my heart for those who suffer was greater than I felt I could bear. I spoke to the Lord again from the neatly-crafted package of comfort, safety, and control I wanted to create for my life. He graciously listened to me try to tell Him what to do.

Day two of the conference began with me feeling assured—certainly my talk with the Lord was successful and I had effectively canceled out all those “send me” prayers. It was then that a young man from the Middle East began to share about his work, which includes traveling great distances into hostile territories controlled by militant Islam. These are places where Christians die for their faith. He shared his family’s pleas not to do the work God had called him to.

Pictures were displayed on a screen behind him of people receiving the Bibles he delivered. Their expressions of curiosity and delight captivated me. As he spoke, he seemed puzzled by those who ask why he goes to such dangerous places. His response was simply, “Since when has the gospel been safe?”

I felt as if I were alone with the Lord in the room. This statement seared my heart, and I knew the Lord was speaking directly to me. I recalled the list of demands I called “prayer” the night before, and heard Him say to me, “I did not create you that way.”  At that moment, I said “Yes.” to His way in all my life. 

Today I still hear this young man’s words – “since when has the gospel been safe?” Perhaps it is the omission of this gospel message that disturbs me most. If we have edited our faith to such a degree that suffering has no place, how will we be prepared when it arrives on our doorstep? After all it is in the Bible that, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” (2 Timothy 3:12).

Corrie Ten Boom goes on in her book to describe how as bombs were falling from the sky over Holland, she and her sister knelt on their knees and prayed. They prayed for those who would mourn the loss of loved ones, they prayed for those who were injured, they prayed for the ill prepared, and they prayed for the German soldiers. Today Christians in hostile and restricted nations continue to pray. They are praying in the West Bank, as the minority Christian communities open their churches as places of refuge to Christians and Muslims alike. Some of the places where they are praying include Syria, Iraq, North Korea, Nigeria, and South Sudan. They are praying in underground meetings, in fields, deserts, and homes. Some will pray alone, silently, without the utterance of a single word. While others are praying in chains confined to their prison cells. Yes, suffering has always been the mark of the Christian church. We have much to learn from our Christian family who suffer for the sake of the cross.

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”   Revelation 12:11

Tami Yeager was first introduced to the ministry of VOM through a newsletter she was handed in 2003. As she began to read the stories shared within those pages she was confronted with a reality that did not fit into the package she had unknowingly wrapped her knowledge of God in. As she began to learn of the suffering of Christians around the world a desire grew to serve them. Today she serves as volunteer Community Coordinator in the Be A Voice ministry of VOM.

To Love, You Must Seek To Understand

Last week in our VOM staff chapel service Cole Richards, the leader of our international work, talked about how we, as followers of Christ, should think about and respond to radical terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS), which is dominating the news cycle yet again this week with the videotaped beheading of another American journalist, Steven Sotloff.

Cole’s thoughts and comments went hand-in-hand with Cheryl Odden’s post last month here on the Persecution Blog sharing things Christians must remember and ways we can pray as we watch IS advance. (Her timely post has been one of our most-read blog posts of this year as so many Christians wrestle with how to think about and how to pray for the Middle East and especially for Christians caught in the crossfire there.)

One of Cole’s challenges to our staff and volunteers was to truly love radical Muslims. This is a formidable challenge, especially as we see our Christian family forced from their homes and the barbarism of crucifixions and beheadings at the hands of IS. But it is the call that Christ himself made to His followers, in Matthew 5:43-45:

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighborand hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

“Loving your enemies is something you have to wake up every morning and decide to do,” he told us.

“Lack of love often comes from a lack of understanding,” Cole shared. “You don’t have to agree with someone to love them, but you do have to seek to understand them.”

The day after his chapel challenge, I came across the journalism site Vice News, which has done some in-depth reporting of IS from inside Raqqa, Syria. Their reporter had amazing access to the city and saw how it is functioning under IS control, including the courts system and the religious enforcement police. Some of the images are disturbing, such as a crucified man or a young boy shouting hatred.

I share this portion of the report because in several places it deals with Christians and how they are treated. The cameras go inside a church building that has been “converted” to an Islamic education center. I found it interesting that the man inside says Christians there “used to worship the cross,” but that Muslims had helped them understand the need to worship God. There is also a segment where they visit the court department that oversees “the Christians who are still here”—those that weren’t forced to flee or killed.

I offer this video today not as an endorsement of Vice News but as an answer to Cole’s challenge that in order to answer Christ’s call to love our enemies we must first seek to understand them.

 

YOUR TURN: What new understanding of IS did you gain from watching the video? How will this affect the way you pray for them, and for Christians in Iraq and Syria endangered by IS’ expansion? Answer in the comments to this post.

Todd Nettleton has served with The Voice of the Martyrs for 16 years. He’s travelled to more than 20 restricted and hostile nations and interviewed hundreds of believers who’ve faced persecution for their Christian witness. As VOM’s principle media spokesperson, Todd has done more than 2,000 interviews with media outlets ranging from Moody Radio to the BBC and Los Angeles Times. He is the principle author of Restricted Nations: North Korea and was part of the writing team for four other VOM books.

Reading Hebrews 13:3 with Mosul in Mind

Today we share an excerpt from a post by Pastor Eric Foley, VOM’s project partner for North Korea, the CEO of Seoul-USA, and a regular speaker at VOM Regional Conferences. In his post Pastor Foley provides a careful and thoughtful exegesis of Hebrews 13:3 in light of the current situation that Christians are facing in Mosul under the domination or Islamic State (IS).

After sharing a careful look at the language of the verse and the challenge it presents (what does it really mean to “remember those in prison”?),and through his unique perspective as one intimately connected to our brothers and sisters facing equally-intense persecution inside North Korea, Pastor Foley ends with a very clear challenge to American believers:

What if, as we mourned the Christians of Mosul and followed their plight on the news, Jesus turned to us and said,

“Christians in the ‘free’ world, do not weep for the Christians of Mosul; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the Christians who were warned before they were evicted, given the chance to escape before they were put to death!’

This does not in any way absolve us of prayers, tears, and advocacy on their behalf. After all, Jesus wasn’t shooing the women away. He was calling them to think even more deeply. And when we think even more deeply and scripturally we begin to recognize that prisoners of faith are not an aberration to be remedied by our advocacy and relieved by our gifts, as much as those actions are important. No, prisoners of faith are a regular and permanent feature of Christianity–a reminder until he comes again of the difficulties Christ promised would be attendant to all who follow him. We really are Nazarenes, in a way deeper than we can imagine. 

And interestingly, Nazarenes and other persecuted Christians are in their harrowing situations for the same reason he was in that situation: Because it turns out that Christianity really is a threat to Islam, a threat to the existing world order, and a threat to many aspects of the “American way of life” as well. Even if we generally mind our own business and carry out the commands of Christ in small and faithful ways that would seem to hurt no one, we should not be surprised when our countrymen turn on us as well one day, just as the countrymen of the Christians of Mosul are turning on them now. Trouble, says Jesus, is what you have in store when you follow me.

If this is true, then how are we to respond today to the situation facing the Christians in Mosul? Pray, yes. Give, yes. Advocate, yes. Cry, yes. But something more, deeper, and costlier is called for here than only our tears, our advocacy, and our material aid, and–yes–our Facebook posts.

What is called for is a decision to voluntarily take up the cross in our own nation and neighborhood, while the wood is still green. 

If you wonder what that would look like in your own life, you are not alone. I am renewing my own quest for an answer. Fortunately the author of Hebrews actually goes on to explain in detail to us some of the consequences of identifying with the Nazarene (and the Nazarenes) that we are likely to encounter. He says this identification will impact every dimension of our existence, from our marriages (13:4) to our Christmas wish lists (13:5) to our diets (13:9) to the people with whom we voluntarily associate (and “friend” on Facebook) and the places we frequent (13:13). But I’ll let you read those verses for yourself.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

CLICK HERE to read Pastor Foley's entire post, "A Careful Exegesis of Hebrews 13:3, With Mosul In Mind." Thank you, Rev. Foley, for granting permission for us to excerpt it here.

From the Well to Worship: Four Ways to Discern God's Will

She first caught my eye because she seemed so filled with joy while she worked.

In my world, I just turn on the faucet and water appears.

In her world, she drops a bucket attached to a very long rope into a deep well. Then, with amazing deftness, she quickly pulls it up and accesses the fresh water that we all desperately need to survive.

She was surrounded by friends. They were filled with expectation and smiles.

The village was abuzz because they were gathering to receive a Bible—some of them for the first time ever.

I snapped a photo of the girl working at the well, and then headed inside the ramshackle concrete room the local church meets in. There wasn’t enough space for everyone, so the crowd spilled outside, with dozens sitting on the ground under a tarp attached to the building.

Then, I was stunned. There was the girl again. This time, instead of a bucket, she was wielding a guitar!

She stepped up, gathered everyone’s attention and began to lead us all in worship. She played and sang and exquisitely ushered each of us into the throne room of God.

As a spiritual leader, one of the most frequent questions I am asked is, “How can I discern what God is calling me to with my life?” There is something extraordinary about finding that “sweet spot” where The Spirit is moving powerfully in and through us.

First Peter chapter four highlights both aspects of this young lady’s ministry: “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

She used her gifts of service at the well and her gifts of worship and leadership on the platform.

Here are four ways to discern how God may be calling you to serve:

1. What am I learning from God’s Word and the Holy Spirit? Discernment begins here: Reading. Meditating. Fasting. Waiting. Listening.

2. Where does my joy intersect with real needs? Frederick Buechner once said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

3. Is there both a “push” and a “pull?” Sometimes, God makes options clearer by simultaneously closing the door to a current opportunity while attracting us to new ministry opportunities.

4. What are others telling me? It is difficult for us to wade through our own preferences when we are considering opportunities. Scripture spurs us to seek input from wise counselors—it is one of God’s safety nets that we would be unwise to overlook!

YOUR TURN: How did you know where God was calling you to minister? What is God teaching you now about the ways that He has shaped you for service? Answer in the comments to this post.

Dr. Jason Peters serves in VOM’s International Ministries department, traveling frequently to meet with our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. He has ministered in 35 countries, as diverse as Cuba, India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Nigeria. Before joining VOM’s team, Jason was a faculty member of the US Air Force Chaplain Corps College, where he directed Crisis and Trauma training. Jason, his wife, Kimberly, and their five children are actively engaged in standing with their persecuted sisters and brothers.

The Persistence of Persecution

Listening to the news about Iraq brought a different response from me than before. I had just finished reading The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins and my response was—“They’re still at it.” In a phrase attributed to Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again!” The book is about how the great churches of the Middle East in the first few centuries of Christianity essentially collapsed, and many totally disappeared after decades of invasions, persecution, coercion to convert to Islam, and massacres. Churches, clergy, institutions, libraries, whole villages destroyed. Those that still exist (and have survived under the most severe difficulties) periodically face severe pressures unknown to us in the West.

Much of the world thinks of Christianity as Western. The Western church became predominant by default—it was the last one standing after the collapse of the great churches of the Middle East. The attempt to decimate the church and to push it into extinction is not a new tactic—Satan has been raging a long time and periodically we get a glimpse of the ugliness of his evil. He doesn’t appear to be losing interest in destroying God’s people.

Jenkins writes that the ancient church in Iraq had reached a high level of development by AD 800, one that the Latin Church in the West would not reach until the 1300s. Cities like Basra, Mosul, and Kirkuk, as well as Tikrit—the hometown of Saddam Hussain—were important Christian centers even into the Middle Ages. Eventually they were, in essence, beaten down, some to death, by invaders and Islam. Present-day radical Muslims want to finish the job but wish to carry on their program of eradication around the world, including and especially in the West.

We have misunderstood the passage in Matthew 16:18 where it says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The church will ultimately prevail but in certain locales, it is being beaten out of existence. We need to embrace this fact and deal with it realistically and with maturity. We need to be careful of false “triumphalism,” which is what we easily fall prey to when we don’t have the whole picture. While Christianity is seeing great success in some places, it is being systematically decimated in others. VOM and others like us are not always appreciated for bringing up this fact. Many Christians wish to ignore it with the hope that it will go away. Bad news—it will not go away until Jesus comes again. Most likely it will get worse.

In the meantime, what we don’t want to see can hurt us. It is already hurting us. Presently it is hurting others far more than us in the West, and to ignore this robs us of the opportunity to pray for and encourage those who are going through persecution at this very moment. To shun those who are suffering for Christ is to shun Christ himself. That is certainly not the wise way to deal with the problem. 

Roy Stults, PhD, is the Online Workshop Coordinator and Educational Services Coordinator for The Voice of the Martyrs. He graduated from Olivet Nazarene University (BA and MA), Nazarene Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Doctor of Missiology), and The University of Manchester (England) with a PhD (theology). A Vietnam veteran, Dr. Stults served as a missionary for 19 years and pastored U.S. churches for eight years. Prior to joining VOM, he was a Professor of Religion at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

Disclosure: VOM is part of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on the link in this post and purchase the book from Amazon, VOM will receive a very small percentage of your purchase as a referral fee.