Persecution Blog

VOM Radio: Zero Percent Chance of Hearing Gospel

The people of Central Asia are caught between their Islamic culture and the authoritarian remnants of 70 years of communist domination. Statistically, many of the region’s people have a zero-percent probability of meeting a follower of Christ or hearing the gospel message of Jesus' love.

"Brother Harold" has served more than a decade building relationships and planting gospel seeds among Muslim people in Central Asia. This week on VOM Radio he shares about the persecution Central Asian Christians face, some of his challenges and God’s victories during 15 years of ministry, and thoughts on how Christians in the United States can minister to Muslims right where we live. He also offers advice to those who sense a calling from God to serve in missions.

 

You can also access every episode of VOM Radio as a podcast.

Why Christians Are Fleeing Syria

Recently VOM's primary media spokesperson, Todd Nettleton, recorded a radio interview with Martha Manikas-Foster of Family Life Radio about what Christians in the Middle East are facing, and why so many are willing to risk death in order to flee to western Europe or someplace else considered "safe" for them.

The resulting report aired earlier this week, and was also posted on the Family Life web site. Here is a portion of it. Click on the link at the bottom to listen to the full radio report.

Millions of people. On foot, in boats, crossing borders, crossing the sea. Every day it seems a different country opens its doors—or closes its gates—to refugees. These are Syrians and Iraqis fleeing the self-proclaimed Islamic State as it carves out for itself a caliphate. This is where it hopes Sharia Law will rule. Where it plans for everyone to live under its preferred form of Islam.

How desperate must those fleeing be to risk boarding tiny boats to cross the Mediterranean Sea? What choices do Christians have under the Islamic State? What happens to former Muslims who have bent the knee to Jesus?

My conversation with Todd Nettleton is a help toward understanding. Nettleton is the director of media and public relations for the advocacy group The Voice of the Martyrs. We talk about the conditions that push people out of their homes, and he shares how we can pray for the Christians being persecuted—as well as the people persecuting them.

“One of the amazing, challenging things to me is that they don’t say, ‘Pray that the persecution will stop.’ Or, ‘Pray that the suffering will stop.’” Nettleton says. “What they say is, ‘Will you pray that we’ll be faithful in spite of the persecution?’”

You can listen to our 15-minute interview here.

William Tyndale and The English Bible

If you read the Bible in English, you owe a debt of gratitude to William Tyndale. Today marks the anniversary of Tyndale’s execution at the stake for the “crime” of translating the Bible into English:

The “father of the English Bible” was apparently born in a hamlet near the Welsh border about 1490. He arrived at Oxford with a gift for languages and began studying the writings of the greatest linguist in the world, Erasmus. He poured over Erasmus’ Greek New Testament and other writings, and he soon began lecturing from them. The Bible was still virtually unavailable in English, and an idea formed in William Tyndale’s mind.

He began proclaiming the value of pure Scripture and of the need to translate it. He was threatened and opposed. “We are better to be without God’s laws than the pope’s,” one man said, voice rising. Tyndale’s reply is among the most famous in church history: “If God spares me, ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scriptures than you do.”

He approached the Bishop of London for help in rendering the Bible into English, but was rebuffed. Tyndale nevertheless began working on his project. Finding his life in danger, he fled to the Continent. There he continued translating, smuggling copies of Matthew and Mark back into London. Spies combed Europe for him, and Tyndale played a cloak and dagger game, hiding and running, translating and smuggling. By 1525 complete copies of the New Testament were being secretly read in England.

On May 21, 1535 Tyndale was betrayed and seized. He languished in a miserable prison cell. His witness there converted the jailer and his family. On October 6, 1536 he was tied to the stake outside of Brussels, strangled, and burned. He was 42.

Tyndale’s final words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” That prayer had already been answered, for King Henry VIII had approved of a new English Bible by Miles Coverdale, Tyndale’s friend. Henry never realized that Coverdale’s Bible was nearly 70 percent Tyndale’s work. In 1604 James I approved a new translation of the Bible into English, and Tyndale’s work became the basis of 90 percent of the King James Version.

VOM Radio: Reaching Muslim Women for Christ

Muslim women face oppression in society and even in their own families, sometimes forced to hide even their very faces from the world. JoAnn Doyle leads an outreach to share the truth with Muslim women that they are Not Forgotten, that Jesus Christ loved them so much He even gave His life for them. Listen in as JoAnn shares how we can reach out to Muslim women, even through simple acts of kindness and conversation, and even right here in the United States.

We’ll also answer a question from a reader about how Christians inside the world’s most closed nation—North Korea—pray and worship Jesus Christ.

 

You can also access all episodes of VOM Radio as a podcast.

Front Line Ministry in Colombia

What is it like to minister on the front lines in Colombia, areas where FARC guerrillas attack churches and threaten pastors? Here's a look inside Colombia, which also gives insights into how VOM stands with these brave gospel workers. 

 

Learn more about VOM's work in Colombia.