How valuable is God’s word to a Christian in prison? More valuable than gold!

We have been repeatedly asked about a recently published book called The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by Candida Moss, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame University. In the book, she asserts that early Christian martyr stories (first three centuries of the church) either were forgeries (“pious fraud”) or that the original stories were edited, rewritten, and altered to fit personal, theological, ecclesiastical, and/or political agendas. She writes that stories of an afterlife for martyrs were invented to protect God’s reputation since God did not come through and save them before death. The stories, she believes, are unreliable at best, obscured by being worked over, or were made-up. “The purpose of this book is to show that the foundations for this idea [that there were legitimate martyrs in the early church] are imaginary,” she writes. They are “inspirational fiction.”

“There is something about experience . . . When somebody becomes a Christian after he has persecuted the church, he knows what persecution is about and it is important to support him to be able to go back and live the Christian life and be an evangelist because he has something to say to persecutors. He can say, ‘I have been there; I know what it means.’ He has a message that is not only theoretical but personal—a message that is out of both the Bible and personal experience that will reach out to the people because of his personal experience.”

In 2007, Babasola’s oldest son was attending classes at his university [in Nigeria] when three Muslim men armed with machetes approached him. They called out his name.

"Our Lord commanded us to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy," Florea calmly told the prison guards. "I cannot work on this day."

VOM’s Kids of Courage resources help parents and educators teach children ages 5 to 13 about persecuted Christians around the world. The resources also provide opportunities for the children to serve and pray for suffering believers.

One evening, when most prisoners were outside, the door crashed open and the guards flung in a pickpocket, known to everyone as "Fingers." He rolled on the floor, gasping and groaning, as I helped him to his bunk. Soaking a rag in water, I began to wash the blood from his swollen mouth. It seemed he had been pilfering from the kitchen.

This month VOM released a new book, Saul to Paul: From Persecutor to Christ Follower, which shares the story of seven men who once tried to destroy the Bride of Christ, but ultimately succumbed to the power of the Holy Spirit. One of those men is Pastor Gowda, a former radical Hindu in India who today passionately serves Christ and His church. Here is a portion of his story, when he decided to read his mother's Bible.

Over the weekend as I was remembering the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, I was reading this brand new book by the Reverend Eric Foley called These Are the Generations.