“With the flames of love’s fire that Jesus kindled in my heart, I caused the ice of Siberia to melt. Hallelujah!”

If you read through very many of VOM’s newsletters, there are sometimes heartbreaking stories — ones that can be difficult to read because of the pain these dear Christians had to endure. Oftentimes though, there will also be pictures of these Christians smiling or they make statements that almost make them seem happy.

When VOM offered a free DVD about the church in Iran during the month of April, there was an overwhelming response! Thousands of believers across the United States requested the DVD, inspired by the hope of God’s amazing work in a culture dominated by Islam.

The following is excerpted from a letter written by German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and circulated to a hundred or so of his former students during World War II:

It doesn’t seem fair.

The Soviet newspaper, Molodoij Gruzii, reported the imprisonment of three Christians. Their crime was starting an organized chain letter to help people all across the Soviet Union understand the teachings of Jesus Christ.

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.”

The support of VOM readers provided 16 patients with prosthetic legs in January 2013. "I feel so happy!" said Esther, a woman who received one of the prosthetic legs.Attacks against Christians in Nigeria have increased over the past three years. As the number of victims has grown, VOM has responded with a one-of-a-kind medical clinic. This special prosthetics lab will greatly improve the lives of amputees. "Providing them with mobility will impact not only their own quality of life, but also that of their families," said a VOM medical worker.

One of the things The Voice of the Martyrs has consistently encouraged readers to do is to write letters to Christians in prison. In the museum space in our headquarters building is a list of prisoners in Soviet prisons in the early 1970s, as well as a poster of prisoners from that era that was sent out to US readers and churches to encourage them to write letters. Today VOM offers a letter writing kit for people who prefer writing with pen and paper and an online tool for those who prefer electronic tools in their communication.

An Arab Muslim woman studying in the United States confided in me that her family was worried about her living in America. “They tried to stop me,” Najma said. “My aunt visited me and warned me, ‘Don’t you know America is full of violence? They will kill you on the street!’”