A team from The Voice of the Martyrs recently spent some time in Romania, the home country of our founder, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand. This team was in Romania at a unique time; Romania’s television station was in the middle of hosting a contest to determine Romania’s top personalities through an opinion vote. Early in the voting, people were surprised to find the name “Richard Wurmbrand” in the top ten positions. On our team’s second day in the country, Pastor Wurmbrand occupied the number four slot.

I saw this next story at two different websites and I have to tell you that it really breaks my heart to read this news again today. My friend Pastor Grant Swank picked up on this story and is reporting the following details concerning this teenager who was mercilessly beheaded. (His main source is here)

This morning during my devotional time I read 1Peter 5:5 which says, "Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." This is an amazing scripture especially when thinking about our persecuted brethren. The last few years, as I have been writing this blog, one thing that constantly amazes me is the humility of those who have been persecuted. In fact, I'd say that the persecuted church all over the world is a stellar example to us Western Christians of what true humility is like.

It's Monday and I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend. Mine was very nice attending the GodBlogCon at Biola University this past weekend where we had the opportunity to share the ministry of The Voice of the Martyrs. Today's devotion is from the book Extreme Devotion and it was encouraging to me because it reminds me that our walk of faith is not always comfortable and can often be challenging. If you are being challenged today, remember God is still very near to you.

Thanks to persecution blogger Jan who pointed me to this news article today called Religious Persecution in Eritrea from the BBC website.

Normally we do our weekend wrap up on Friday's, however, tomorrow I will be attending the Second Annual God Bloggers Conference right here in Southern California at Biola University, so we've moved our event to today. Thank you again to all of you who are participating!

If you're like me then you probably have a nickname because someone deems you a pretty special person, or you're into spy movies and like to go by code names so that no one will ever know who you are. Some of us actually do that for fun...and speaking of fun, if you ever want to get a reaction out of people when your cell phone rings, why not answer it "Agent _____" and whatever your name is. I digress...

Yesterday I received a very cool email from Todd Nettleton telling me about a recent story they heard from one of the Voice of the Martyrs constituents. I think this is a pretty cool idea, and we wanted to share it with you so that you can take part should the Lord lead you to do so.

A Muslim sheikh jailed in Egypt for 18 months has declared from his prison cell that he is under arrest for "insulting Islam" by becoming a Christian. Egypt's secret police transferred Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad, 57, to the Wadi el-Natroun Prison last month. He was told he would remain there indefinitely unless he agreed to work as a government informer against other converts to Christianity. According to the prisoner's Cairo attorney, Athanasius William, his client remains incarcerated in this desert prison "only because he has chosen a different belief, to be a Christian." When courts ordered El-Akkad's release from provisional detention 10 weeks ago, State Security Investigation authorities deliberately ignored the ruling. Pray God will strengthen this faithful believer with the assurance that Jesus is with him and He will be the final victor. Psalm 102:19-22

Today I have two prayer requests for China that I want to share with you. These are in this weeks VOM Prayer alert which you can sign up for at www.persecution.com .