Persecution Blog

Martyr's Widow: "God Prepared Me"

When Hannelie Groenewald and her family left their comfortable home in South Africa to serve on the front lines in Afghanistan, they knew the danger. But God's call was clear, and they went in spite of the risk. Hannelie became not only wife and mom, but also teacher and doctor and cook in a country that isn't known for welcoming foreigners--especially women.

As time passed, God strengthened her faith, even if He didn't answer all her questions or prayers. She didn't know the extent of the sacrifice her family would be called to make, and in fact says she wasn't strong enough to make such a sacrifice. But God prepared her, even in the days and weeks immediately before the murder of her husband and children, to stand strong in the face of suffering and persecution.

Hannelie's inspiring testimony will challenge you to consider what you're willing to risk to share God's love in an increasingly hostile world.

Request a DVD or download the video telling the story of Hannelie and her family, which was produced by VOM for this year's International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Please share this video with your church family or other Christian friends.

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"What They did Was Unconscionable"

By now you know of VOM’s 2017 IDOP video called Hannelie and have read the October newsletter with her story.

A couple of weeks ago, Andrea H. wrote to us after she read the story in the newsletter:

Hello. I am stunned by this month's cover story of Hannelie and am particularly interested if there are others who are utterly in shock that these two people would endanger their children. I believe what they did is unconscionable; if they were in the United States, they would have had their children removed from their custody. How dare these people put those vulnerable kids in harm’s way. I'm absolutely blown away by this irresponsible act, as well as your tacit approval of all of it.

What did you think? Did you feel the same way Andrea did? Did Hannelie and her husband make an irresponsible choice regarding their children?

On the other hand, Bob S. wrote us this note:

When my wife and I watched the DVD Hannelie, I got depressed. I realized that in my quiet time or during a good sermon or rousing Christian song, I was like Peter and ready to “risk my life for Jesus,” but when faced with a situation like distributing Bibles as a Gideon in Chicago–the murder capital of America for over two years–I was chicken at the thought of what might happen.

Well, yesterday, I went into Chicago with other Gideons in a pretty safe neighborhood and all I suffered was indifference at the offer of a free Bible–plus many were open to accepting the Lord. Pray that Friday I will be a credit to His name and be willing to endure whatever may come when we venture into a place a lot less threatening than the people you support.

Sincerely in His service,

Bob S.

P.S. Keep sending out testimonies like Hannelie.

Bob had a completely opposite response to Hannelie’s story. Her story inspired him to take more risks in sharing the gospel, even in a dangerous part of America. Is it foolish of Bob to take that risk? Please join us in praying for Bob as he shares Christ through the Chicago area, and that his work will result in much fruit.

I’ve written before about trying to bring my young children up by praying for our persecuted family and with the knowledge that persecution could come to us. And if the Lord calls us to Afghanistan, to Saudi Arabia, to North Korea, I would take them with me. Jesus promised us persecution. He said that his message would divide families, and he said that no sacrifice was too great for him.

What about you? Are there some sacrifices that are too great?

Dory P. grew up the daughter of missionaries in Ecuador, met her husband while working with another mission organization, and now lives in Oklahoma. Their family of four shares seven passports. Dory helps tell the stories of the persecuted through VOM's newsletter, and her husband serves with VOM's international department.

Tyndale: Father of 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 in 1536 for the “crime” of translating the Bible into English. Here is Tyndale’s story, as told in VOM’s book, FOXE: Voices of the Martyrs.

William Tyndale was a well-educated scholar who was frustrated at the distance between English education and the Bible, the source of truth. Studying at Oxford and then at Cambridge, he bristled at the barriers and longed for the nourishment his mind and heart treasured. “In the universities,” he said, “they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be nozzled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.” Tyndale’s life would be devoted to overcoming just this obstacle. For him, the Bible “for the people” would become the answer to corruption in the church. The Bible “for the people” meant that all could drink from the truth itself, without pressure or pretext; and most clearly, without a priest to read or interpret.

Tyndale was born sometime around 1494 in Gloucester, England, near the Welsh border. Ninety years earlier the Church had banned the only English Bible in the world, the hand-copied work of John Wycliffe. It was a flawed translation, based on the Latin Vulgate, but it was all English speakers had. And to have it was a crime. Tyndale’s passions eventually settled on a mission as dangerous as any in his century: to work from the Greek and Hebrew texts to create a Bible in vernacular English, so readable and accurate that an Englishman could depend on it, learn from it, and find God’s voice in it. All this was clear to the multilingual Tyndale by the age of thirty.

To do that work, Tyndale had to leave England. No bishop in the realm would protect him, much less encourage the project. Tyndale traveled to Germany where he completed the New Testament in 1525. Then he went on to Antwerp, one step ahead of English agents, where the first five Old Testament books were translated and printed. In Belgium he met a community of English merchants, and though agents were searching the continent to find him, Tyndale felt secure enough to relax his guard. His lack of caution would prove fatal.

Tyndale took up a friendship with Henry Phillips, who won Tyndale’s confidence but secretly sough the bounty offered for his capture. In May, 1535, the trap was set. Tyndale was taken under guard to the castle at Vilvoorde, near Brussels, where he suffered in dank and cold for eighteen months before standing trial for “maintaining that faith alone justifies…that to believe in the forgiveness of sins, and to embrace the mercy offered in the gospel, was enough for salvation.” The complete list of charges included direct attacks on church teaching, among them that “neither the Virgin nor the Saints should be invoked by us.”

Tyndale knew how these trials ran. He would have no chance at defense, and death was the remedy. With his body shaking from cold and the winter’s light dim for writing, he worked to complete the English Bible, helped by a sympathetic prison governor.

In August, 1536, Tyndale was condemned as a heretic and defrocked. For two more months he was kept at Vilvoorde. Then in early October, just past dawn, he was led from prison to the stake. Formalities included placing the Mass once more in his hands, then quickly snatching it back, the offer of last-minute reprieve if he would only recant, and always the shouts of a crowd gathered to witness a “heathen” die.

Secured to the stake, surrounded by brush and logs, Tyndale was heard to pray, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Then the executioner snapped hard on the rope, strangling Tyndale before the blaze consumed his body.

That final prayer was for the bully King Henry VIII, whose pursuit of a male heir had already cost Anne Boleyn her life and Catherine her marriage. So full of his own power and pomp, would the king’s eyes ever fall favorably on Tyndale’s English Bible?

Indeed they did. Two years after Tyndale’s death, King Henry authorized the distribution of the Matthew Bible, much of it Tyndale’s work. And then, on November 14, 1539, all printers and sellers of books were ordered by the king to provide “for the free and liberal use of the Bible in our own maternal English tongue.” Tyndale’s dream and his last earthly appeal had come true.

Excerpted from FOXE: Voices of the Martyrs by The Voice of the Martyrs. Order your copy here.

Extreme Power

ROME: VINCENT

Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience. Colossians 1:11

The ropes at his wrists and ankles stretched further until Roman Christian Vincent felt his arms pull out of his shoulder sockets and his hips come out of joint.

Decius, the Roman emperor, stood by the rack where Vincent was tied. “You will die in terrible pain,” he told the young Christian.

“No death is more honorable than that of a martyr,” Vincent said to the king with conviction. “I see heaven, and I abhor your idols.”

Furious, the king called for the now-crippled Christian to be tortured even more. Yet they could not rid Vincent of his smile. He told the emperor through his pain, “You destroy only my body, which has to perish anyway. Inside of me lives another Vincent, and over him you have no power. That Vincent cannot be put on a rack and cannot be killed.” Vincent welcomed death with a smile.

Finally, the Roman soldiers pulled him from the rack, but his torments were not over. They stripped him of his clothes and threw him into a cell, the floor of which was covered with shattered glass. Unable to stand, Vincent was forced to lie on the ragged glass. Even there, God’s peace was with him. Guards later reported to the emperor that he rested on the shattered glass “as on a bed of flowers.”

In modern culture, the idea of power is tied to authority and office. Power is reserved for the outwardly important, the cultured, and the refined. History, however, shows that people with the mere position of power are ineffective without the inner strength to carry out their duties. In contrast, God targets our inner strength through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Suffering is his classroom, where he teaches us what it is like to be strong. We are able to endure more than we imagined. We are bold beyond our means. You may feel as though your sufferings have made you weak. Ask God to show you how they can, in fact, make you stronger. Flex your muscles. You will see you are stronger than you think.

This is one of the readings from the book, Extreme Devotion, available from VOM’s online bookstore. You can also receive devotional thoughts daily via email or in VOM’s Pray Today App for your smart phone or tablet.

The Cause for Conflict

There is no question that the New Testament writers believed Jesus to be the Lord. He alone is supreme and to Him alone we owe ultimate allegiance. What Jesus Christ teaches and commands has priority over all other teaching and authority, both in heaven and on earth. Contemporary followers of Jesus believe this as well.

Therefore, Christ’s command to preach and teach salvation in and through Him should be our highest priority. By obeying this mandate, Christ’s disciples can expect to face opposition. Teaching salvation through Christ alone is the most serious threat to the powers of darkness, directly confronting anything or anyone that would try to usurp Christ’s ultimate authority. Authorities and powers that submit to Christ’s authority (or at the very least don’t claim superiority over it) generally accommodate Christ’s mandate without interference. However, certain ideologies that control some human governments see freedom as a threat to their power. God’s people will seek to fulfill their calling whether governments concur with them or resist them. In reality, the resistance is against God rather than his people or the message. He is the One being rejected.

A common theme in the stories of faithful martyrs is that they die due to their allegiance to Jesus Christ. Those who are loyal to Him are seen as a threat to earthly kings and kingdoms. The early church father Tertullian testifies to this fact in The Apology: “It becomes evident that the crime laid to our charge consists not of any sinful conduct, but lies wholly in our name. If, indeed, any real crimes were clearly adducible against us, their very names would condemn us, if found applicable, so that distinct sentences would be pronounced against us in this wise: Let that murderer, or that … criminal, or whatever it be that we are charged with, be led to execution, be crucified, or be thrown to the beasts. Your sentences, however, import only that one has confessed himself a Christian. … Surely, surely, names are not things which deserve punishment by the sword, or the cross, or the beasts.”

While acknowledging the authority of governments, Christians look to a higher authority that ultimately requires us to obey God rather than man when the two are in conflict (Acts 5:29). The Christian continues to witness even if it is illegal to witness and will continue taking Bibles to believers even if Bibles are banned. It is a matter of priorities. God’s priorities.

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.

Image credit: "The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer" by Jean-Leon Gerome. Public domain.

 

15 Years Since Burnham Kidnapping

Today marks 15 years since Martin and Gracia Burnham were kidnapped in the Philippines. The missionary couple was on a getaway to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary when they were kidnapped by radical Muslim Abu Sayyaf fighters. For more than a year, and under the total control of their captors, they were constantly on the move, living in primitive conditions in the jungle, evading capture from the Philippine military, enduring gun battles and witnessing unspeakable atrocities committed by the men of Abu Sayyaf Group.

On the afternoon of June 7, 2002, over a year since their abduction, the Philippine military attempted a rescue. Tragically, Martin was killed during the gunfight. Wounded, but alive, Gracia was rescued and returned home under a national spotlight.

This week the Burnham's hometown paper, The Wichita Eagle, did an in-depth story about the family now, and especially how Martin and Gracia's three children have been affected by their parents' kidnapping and their dad's death. Here's how Zach, who was 10 when his parents were kidnapped, described his response:

“I shut off,” he said. “I didn’t want to deal with the fact that I might not see them again.”

His grandparents had told him how important it was to talk to the media, so the world would want to save his parents. But it felt like a chore, and he responded listlessly, barely looking up from a rocket ship drawing in one interview.

Mindy knew talking to reporters was about the only thing she could do to help her parents, she said, and yet she remembers refusing to cry for a Christmas news special and rolling her eyes during a photo shoot on a Friday when she wanted to be at a school dance.

When the kids finally heard from their mother after more than a year apart, Jeff, the oldest, bragged to his mother that he had called the police on a TV crew that had set up on the lawn of their house.

Jeff said he hated how some reporters would try to manipulate their emotions, and to this day, his siblings say, Jeff will not talk to the media.

Television reporters wanted to film Zach’s 11th birthday party.

“It was my birthday. I didn’t want to think about my parents’ hostage situation,” he said.

“That one, that was the worst for me. I was just bitter the whole day.”

The story also included a video interview. Gracia also talked about God's faithfulness to her children in an interview with The Voice of the Martyrs Radio.

Gracia regularly shares her story, and the lessons that God has taught her, at VOM ADVANCE Conferences around the United States. The next conference Gracia will be a part of will be June 11 in Auburn, Maine.

We encourage you today to thank the Lord for the Godly legacy of Martin Burnham, and to pray for Gracia and her family as they continue to be a family that God can use.

Honoring a Martyr

This post first appeared on the blog of our sister mission in Korea, VOM-Korea. It is written by Dr. Eric Foley, the CEO of that ministry.

I want to tell you about one of the great men of North Korea ministry upon the occasion of his martyrdom in Changbai, China this past Saturday, April 30, 2016.

His name was Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol (한충렬).

He was 49 years old.

He was married, with one son and one daughter.

He was ethnically Korean but Chinese by birth and citizenship.

He was a pastor in the Three Self-Church.

He graduated from the East-North Theological Seminary in Shenyang, China.

When he was finishing seminary, elderly people called him to come visit Changbai to preach because they had no church. So he went there to preach a little bit. But he never stopped preaching there. He planted Changbai Church in 1993.

Changbai borders North Korea. And in 1993, North Korea was gripped by famine. North Koreans flooded across the border, looking for food, clothing, money, anything. It was rumored along the border in North Korea that if you went to a building with a cross on top, they would help you there.

In Changbai, there was one building with a cross on top. That was Pastor Han’s church.

Pastor Han never sought to start a North Korea ministry any more than he sought to start a church in Changbai. He simply responded faithfully to whatever God gave him to do. So as North Koreans knocked on the door of his church, he gave them food, and clothing, and Christ. When North Koreans began to knock on the doors of the homes of people all over Changbai, Pastor Han trained ordinary people how to help North Koreans also.

There was a time when it was possible for Korean Chinese people to visit North Korea to see their relatives. Pastor Han’s wife did. She even went to jail in North Korea for evangelizing North Koreans. But providentially in the same jail cell with her was a fellow prisoner, a kotjebi, or North Korean orphan, whom she and Pastor Han had once helped in China. The kotjebi was wearing layers and layers and layers of clothing, because every time the kotjebi needed to buy something, off would come a layer of clothing as payment. So the kotjebi provided Pastor Han’s wife with enough clothing to stay warm in the cold prison cell, as a way of saying thanks.

What North Koreans always said about Pastor Han was that they could see his heart. That is far rarer in ministry than you might imagine, and it is especially rare in North Korea ministry. You can share food with North Korean people. You can share clothing. You can share the Gospel. You can give them lots of money and rice cookers. And you can throw big parties for them. But unless North Koreans can see your heart, unless the gospel is embodied in your life and not only your words or your business cards, they will never cross over the scary, shaky rope bridge over which we each of us must cross in order to move from the ideologies that enslave us, to enter the Kingdom of God.

Pastor Han was devoted to helping North Koreans enter the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of South Korea. He insisted that the North Koreans that he helped should return to their homes and their family and their country, not abandon them. He told us, “Whether this person dies or not, they have to go back. If they die, God will honor them. But if they go to South Korea, they will turn their backs on God.” I believe this is why the Chinese authorities continued to permit Pastor Han to help North Koreans, no matter how frequently the North Korean government complained about him. Pastor Han was not a broker, not a human rights activist, not a guest on radio programs, not a speaker in pulpits. He was a pastor, and all he was doing was pastoring anyone who came to him. And then he would send them home.

In this and many other ways he was a wise man. Frankly, most workers in North Korean ministry end up losing their souls in this work. Bitterness inevitably corrodes their insides after they are betrayed by North Koreans and other North Korean workers enough times. They come to hate the North Korean government and start praying for its collapse and for North Korean officials to die. After a while they stop praying at all. They have to spend all their time on the phone, talking to North Koreans who need help, raising money, doing radio interviews, and, eventually, trying to cover up the sinful behavior they fall into because the work eats them up. They stop talking about the Messiah to North Koreans and instead become a messiah to the North Koreans they agree to help. Paradoxically, these North Koreans then become their god, because they serve them every waking moment as faithfully as a person can serve any idol, hoping to gain some sense of peace from placating the idol’s wrath.

But Pastor Han did not fall into this trap because he started each day in morning prayer. He said that if he didn’t pray, he couldn’t do the work. God gave him a piercing sense of discernment, and people often commented about his sharp eyes. Those eyes kept him focused on Christ, and this kept him alive for a lot longer than anyone else could have survived in his situation.

Pastor Han was our partner in Changbai, and over the years he helped many other North Korean ministries as well. But I also appreciated that there were people whom he would not help. He would not help North Koreans defect. He would not help governments with their spying. And he would not accept money from ministries or individuals whose motivation was to “buy” testimonies and stories from him that they could use for fundraising purposes. This happens a lot in North Korea work, and I note sadly that one of the people whose money Pastor Han consistently refused is already making the rounds this week, seeking to raise money ostensibly to help Pastor Han’s family.

There was only one disagreement I ever had with Pastor Han, and I always wonder if I should have pushed it further with him. One of Pastor Han’s deacons was kidnapped from inside China by North Korean agents in November 2014, taken back across the border to North Korea, imprisoned, and interrogated. I told Pastor Han that my experience with North Korean work has been that the best thing we can do in such a situation is to bring things to the light as quickly and loudly and broadly and publicly as possible. We go to the Lord, to the media, to the governments, and we say, “Remember our brother who is in chains!” It’s part of our Voice of the Martyrs heritage that we try to keep prisoners alive by advocating for them publicly. We never pay bribes or cut deals to get our workers out of prison.

But Pastor Han thought it best to try to deal with the situation quietly, through private channels. He knew that if we went public with the news about the deacon, his North Korean work in Changbai would have to close down or be transferred to someone else. I know he prayed about it. And I know he told us he would handle things himself. But he did agree to a whole new set of security precautions on which we insisted. He agreed not to drive along the border, not to go meet North Koreans alone who crossed the border and called, asking for his help.

When back inside North Korea the authorities started rounding up the North Korean people Pastor Han had helped in Changbai, we knew that information about the work had leaked. The last time we met in Korea, over the Chinese New Year holiday, we knew that North Korea had issued an order for Pastor Han to be kidnapped, brought to North Korea, and interrogated. But Pastor Han was his usual self. He talked soberly but without fear about returning to Changbai at the end of the holiday, and he was quite cheerful as he hung around our office and caught up on his phone calls. I can still recall him standing there, staring out the window in my office at nothing in particular as he talked very casually on the phone.  

On Saturday, April 30, 2016, at 2PM, Pastor Han left his church building in Changbai.

At 8PM, his body was found on the China side of the Changbai mountain, mangled nearly beyond recognition. There were multiple knife wounds on his stomach from repeated stabbings, and his head was chopped by an axe.

All of his belongings were confiscated, including his phone.

The North Koreans who killed Pastor Han returned to North Korea, as everyone who encountered Pastor Han always did. They reported their story about their encounter with him. I am sure their superiors were eager to receive this report, in every detail.

But all over North Korea tonight, there are others, countless others…

They are the North Koreans who every day since 1993 encountered Pastor Han. Kotjebi. Sex-trafficked women. Soldiers. Professors. Housewives. The famine-starved. They heard a story from Pastor Han and saw his heart. And this enabled them to accept his invitation to cross the rickety rope bridge in their mind that led them to the Kingdom of God. And this enabled them to return to North Korea with the story about their encounter with him. They shared it with their friends and family members, who I am sure were eager to receive their report, in every detail.

It is the story that is continued.

As Pastor Han would describe it, it is a story about how though you may die, God will honor you.

A story about how God never turns his back on you.

A story about how even when at last you are compassed on every side by your enemies, bloodied, and left to die in this world

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.

Widow Shares How God Gave Grace to Forgive

Semse Aydin's husband, Necati, was one of three Christian men martyred for their faith and ministry in Turkey. The next day, on national TV in Turkey, Semse offered forgiveness to her husband's killers, along with the widow of one of the other martyrs.

Listen to VOM Radio this week as she shares how the Holy Spirit enabled her to forgive, and how God has sustained her and her two children since she gave Necati to Jesus. You’ll also hear how Necati dealt with family members who were still Muslims, and how he went to meet with his killers, even though he thought their motives might not be pure.

You'll be inspired by God's faithfulness and equipped to pray more for the nation of Turkey and for the families of martyrs this week on VOM Radio.

 

This interview with Semse was recorded live at a VOM Advance Conference; to find a conference in your area, visit VOMEvents.com.

Never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the VOM Radio podcast on iTunes or Google Play.

 

Remembering Bonhoeffer: "Only at the Hour that God Has Chosen"

On this date in 1945, German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung by order of Adolf Hitler in a Nazi concentration camp. The following is excerpted from a letter Bonhoeffer had written which was circulated to a hundred or so of his former students during World War II:

...To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God’s hand alone, we shall all be protected even in greatest danger, and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call.

 

Bonhoeffer is honored on The Martyrs Wall at VOM headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Who can comprehend how those whom God takes so early are chosen? Does not the early death of young Christians always appear to us as if God were plundering his own best instruments in a time in which they are most needed? Yet the Lord makes no mistakes. Might God need our brothers for some hidden service on our behalf in the heavenly world? We should put an end to our human thoughts, which always wish to know more than they can, and cling to that which is certain. Whomever God calls home is someone God has loved. “For their souls were pleasing to the Lord, therefore he took them quickly from the midst of wickedness” (Wisdom of Solomon 4.)

...Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death.

...Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God’s power, and it must now serve God’s own aims. It is not some fatalistic surrender but rather a living faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us, that is able to cope profoundly with death.

In life with Jesus Christ, death as a general fate approaching us from without is confronted by death from within, one’s own death, the free death of daily dying with Jesus Christ. Those who live with Christ die daily to their own will. Christ in us gives us over to death so that he can live within us. Thus our inner ding grows to meet that death from without.  Christians receive their own death in this way and in this way our physical death very truly becomes not the end but rather the fulfillment of our life with Jesus Christ. Here we enter into community with the One who at his own death was able to say, “It is finished.”

 

You can learn more about Bonhoeffer's life, ministry and death, read BONHOEFFER: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.

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

VIDEO: VOM Worker Visits Martyred Relatives' Grave

In 1934, John and Betty Stam were kidnapped and killed by communist soldiers in China. Today their distant niece, Dory, works at The Voice of the Martyrs.

Recently she was part of a VOM team visiting China, and while there she attempted to visit the place where the Stams were buried. Watch the video below to see the story:

 

Dory also spoke with VOM Radio about her visit to China and the Christians she met. Listen here.