the morning we're going to have a conversation
about persecution in the church I think if you're like me perhaps the persecution while we've
been aware of it somewhat it hasn't been in our face like it has the last couple of years
because now we see it on cable news day by day right of course persecution for believers began
at the very beginning of the church right after Pentecost believers began to be criticized by
their culture and the political powers and the philosophical cants and we g
et to ax8 we read
the story of the first martyr Stephen as the Jews sought to purge Judaism of what they saw
as a dangerous sex and then we know that a short time after that Nero blamed the fire in Rome
on Christians and persecution really began in earnest of course persecution is actually not
just a man's thing of course in fact did you know that the first female Christian author
was a woman named Perpetua who lived in the third century a woman hit this 22 years old
she's nursing a baby a
nd she's put in prison and sentenced to die because she will not renounce
Christ her father comes to the prison begs her to come home to nurse her child and raise her child
and she will not and she's there in prison with Perpetua is kind of a higher class person she's
in prison with a slave woman named felicitous and they prepared to face death together and we read
this about what happened when that day come it says at the demand of the crowd they were first
scourge before a line of gladiat
ors then a bore than a bear and a leopard worse set on the men
and a wild cow on the women and wounded by the wild animals they gave each other the kiss
of peace and then were then put to the sword so throughout history and on this even to this
day Christians are persecuted throughout the world and so we've been in the book of first
Peter and Peter's admonition to us is rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings that
you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed and those wor
ds of first Peter have
emboldened men and women to face persecution over many centuries now entrusting their souls
to a faithful creator so I'm so grateful to be joined by this panel of people who bring a
variety of perspective and experience and wisdom to this conversation about persecution
you may not know about da Carson that he grew up in french-speaking Canada which was thoroughly
Catholic at the time if you've read his wonderful little book memoirs of an ordinary pastor he
writes abo
ut his dad who was a pioneering church pastor and church planter in Quebec beginning
at a time when Baptist pastors were persecuted and in prison so dr. Carson knows something of
persecution from his own family history but of course dr. Park dr. Carson goes around the world
all the time in fact I kind of like to see your frequent flyer statements dr. Carson because this
guy gets around and so we look forward to how you you're both your love for God's Word and love for
Christ and your experi
ence is going to add to this discussion thank you Karen Ellis is currently a
PhD candidate in church history at Oxford at the Oxford Centre for mission studies effects you're
heading to Oxford after you leave here aren't you to get going on your doctoral dissertation and
Karen writes and speaks on human rights religious freedom and the persecuted Church she's currently
an ambassador for the organization international Christian response and that's a group that
provides spiritual and material
assistance for persons who are persecuted as a result of
their Christian beliefs around the world Karen has a fabulous blog I just started following her
on Twitter a few months ago if you want to begin to be more aware of what's going on in the world
in terms of persecuted people well then follow her tweets go to her blog she wrote recently on
her blog she said for the genuine Christian the most significant number in approaching persecution
is one so we'll find out in a little bit what you
mean by that and we have Mindy bells and Mindy
is the senior editor of world magazine and the author of they say we are infidels have some of
you read this book yes well I started reading this book this summer it's an amazing account Mindy's
personal write their experience especially in the Middle East among Christians let me just read you
a paragraph from this she said I tried to fathom the depths of Christian solidary watching these
believers find water in this desert the Christians took
both earthly and unearthly provisions into
the hardest and saddest and sometimes insanely dangerous places caring for displaced families
when they first arrived was one thing but it was another to help them for six months one year or 18
months later the long years of war and persecution preceding the invasion of Isis had trained some
muscle reflex only instead of it moving their hands away from the fiery flame it moved them
toward it and toward one another so we're so grateful you're here
at Mindy I do have to tell
you that the about reading the book it made my life seem so small boring the way the experiences
that you have had and then we have master on thorough Hani yeah Nasir on grew up in Iran she
lives here in the states now in the Bay Area and rather than me telling you about her I'm gonna let
her tell us about her so and English is not master Ron's first language so she's going to use some
notes but we're okay with that aren't we so nasty Ron you grew up in a Muslim f
amily but something
happened when you are 60 were 16 or 17 that changed everything about your life tell us what
happens one day well I was taking a shower I heard someone was talking to me telling me repent the
voice told me I will wash I will I'm going to wash you off your sin at that time I didn't know what
that voice was and what was the meaning of those words but after a while my sister she came to Iran
from Holland for visiting I realized that she has a Bible for me so one one lady she
came to her and
she told her that God gave her which gave her a vision that she saw a three women sitting on the
bed and all trust in Christ so and she told her you have to go to Iran and visit them and another
a woman came to her and give her a ticket so she came to Iran for visit and when she got home to
our family she opened her bag and brought out the Bible and said I believe in Jesus and all my
families start to cry and I told her I believe in Jesus I know of Jesus I do not know how b
ut I know
him I do not have any question so how did it's not something so how did the rest of your family
respond you said they cried how did they respond to this word of Jesus they just they just cry
within one mount my mom converted and within two months my father had a dream region doing yeah and
he converted to Christ and we we started to go to the church that on that time the building church
was open in Iran but while after a persecution coming to the church we decided to gather at hom
e
and start the house churches but then things did change for the church in Iran after you begin
and it was first open you were in these house churches and he's really changed specifically
for you so that you moved to Dubai for a while but then you returned to Iran and when you were
going back into the country you and your husband were arrested entering the country so why were you
arrested and what happens and when we arrived the officer check our password and then call my name
he took my
he took my bag and started searching and then he paid someone else and told him to
take my husband's passport - they took us to the separate room with no window and they started to
integrate aggression greeted us lots of my close friend had been arrested in the past one was held
in jail for nine months they were constantly tell her telling them telling her dad would be executed
her so it was really scary for me uh-huh yeah so when they were interrogating you what kind of
information were th
ey trying to get out of you they won the name film of people meeting in the
south group they have people that were in you're so good that you were in Iran in exactly exactly
they were looking for members who might have been connected to the people outside of Iran they asked
me what is your plan thinking that we we want to work against the Iranian government's okay and
so were you then in prison were you held in jail no they let me go but they kept my passport so I
could not go anywhere and
they call me in two or three time for an integration how are they kept my
husband for integration for three months and they would question him more often so what was that
experience like for you being interrogated and having your husband held when I was integrated
the word of Jesus in Matthew 10 19 came to me when they deliver you over do not be anxious how
you are to speak or what you are to say for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour
I was so scared and when I'm afraid I
cannot talk but I was given what to say as just as a Jesus
promise I told them anything that never would have come up to me on my own they kept telling
me that I'm lawyer he tested me I wanted if my hands are were shaking yeah yeah he offered me
a tea but I didn't drink because I heard many story about how they gave they would give their
woman's something to drink that make them fall asleep and also I heard too much of a story of
them raping woman in the jail and I so scared of that so dur
ing those three months while you're
waiting to be free to go and your husband was like I think a lot of us fear that if something
happened like that we wonder how we would be able to endure that and what that would do to our faith
and confidence in God what was that like for you I just read the Bible it was encouraging to me
read what the Bible says about persecution and suffering as a Christian reading the experience
of apostles and their terrible suffering and how they had endured the suf
fering by putting their
faith in their Lord Jesus was so it was make me a strong I read he will not test you more than
you are able to be around me I believed it you believed it yeah I read the instruction to trust
in God we with the promise that he will help you and I experienced that exact experience that isn't
that encouraging so finally they gave you your passports and they told you to leave the country
and don't come back as saying that the next time they'll keep you in jail and so you
went back
to Dubai and then in 2011 you came to the States yeah and we're so glad to get to know you have
you as our sister in Christ thank you so much so Mindy you've met and spent a lot of time
with women living under significant persecution especially in Syria and Iraq where Christians
have been fleeing from Isis we we know there's significant persecution but sometimes it doesn't
seem real to us because we don't have a face and a name and a real story we haven't seen with our
own eyes
what their living conditions are like and sat down and talked with them so you have met so
many can you tell us a little bit about perhaps a particular woman who's living been living
under persecution what's her daily life like what are the fears that she faces and how does
the gospel make a difference in that situation well there are so many unsung heroes and heroines
in the situation since Isis invaded Iraq in 2014 and you know if you remember from the headlines
they came in in two waves
they first came into the city of Mosul and Iraq and and chased out all
of the Christians very specifically about 30,000 of them from that city of two million or so then
they fanned out from there across none of a plane this is the ancient heartland of Christianity in
the east dating back to the third century and the Christians had taken refuge in Nineveh plain in
in the ancient villages and in this town called karakash which was the largest Christian city in
that region and no one ever expe
cted that Isis would be able to penetrate carico [ __ ] was
heavily guarded by Kurdish forces but one day in August two years ago the Kurdish forces fell
back and said they couldn't the Isis was lobbing mortars and bomb exploded in the center of town
it killed a boy it killed a girl a young woman who was supposed to be married that day and so the
the people that I think of in that situation among many are the the thirty nuns the Dominican Sisters
who had already fled Mosul already were home
less but they had they had re-established themselves
at a convent and karakash sister Diana moneka was a woman in her 30s and and very energetic very
beautiful very much at the heart of caring for other people even though she herself was displaced
they were these 30 sisters were taking care of 510 families wat that at that moment that Isis
invaded they're taking care of what do you mean they were sheltering them in the convent and in
houses nearby they were providing food for them on a week
ly basis and and helping them because
they didn't have any other resources so at the time that Isis entered I mean it was a mass exodus
and it was done at gunpoint and even the elderly were being chased I interviewed elderly people who
were forced to flee ten miles they were ordered to go to a river and cross the river these were
people in their 70s very frail I interviewed one man whose leg had broken and was not reset for
like months and and what sister Diana mo Mecca did she saw this hap
pening they didn't leave that's a
really important detail everybody else was fleeing and sisters were staying to make sure everyone was
taken care of sister Diana rounded up wheelbarrows and had young men to take them to to round up
the elderly and they literally put the elderly in wheelbarrows and carried them to this river and
all the time there's gunfire there's explosions there's fighting so a number of people were killed
but it's striking that most of the Christians escaped karakash th
ey fled north they entered
what we call Iraqi Kurdistan and that's where they are now and sister Diana and thirty others
I mean they and other people were doing this they were cramming like twenty and thirty people into a
sedan a four passengers and and taking them north Christians and others came down from the north
and met them and helped them to safety and so once again they had to find housing and and shelter and
in the north and while the again these these nuns themselves displaced I m
ean I think they're just
a wonderful picture of believing the gospel enough to hope that God would provide for them and then
and then stepping immediately out into service not even knowing what that provision was going
to look like and so even as day themselves are waking up in the morning not knowing I mean they
were sleeping on church pews not knowing where their next meal was coming from they were trying
to provide for hundreds of families sister Diana was was able to she was very vocal
about what was
happening and she was speaking to news media and she was telling her story to visiting delegation
several American congressmen heard her story they invited her to come and testify to Congress about
what was going on even in the middle of it the State Department denied her a visa to travel
to the United States and that went on I mean they're literally just about had to be an act of
Congress in order to grant her a visa for her to come and travel but she did and her testimony w
as
very powerful because I think she spoke for all the Christians and saying you know what have we
done wrong why should we not be allowed to return to our homeland so yeah Karen would you answer
that same question would you tell us about one or two women you've known and looked into their
eyes and prayed with and cared for who live daily under persecution you know women are especially
vulnerable I think in these situations and and suffer a number of things from psychological
disorders to
PTSD to divided families missing parents missing children unplanned pregnancies
I mean rape is a weapon of war it's it's it's a distortion of what God originally intended sex
to be and it's it's the weaponization of it wreaks havoc on women in these situations thousands
of women and young girls have actually been kidnapped and abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria I
think we probably remember the the Nigerian girls best from the chibok village the 200-plus girls
I think their situation sort of
underscores the vulnerability of young women who suffer at the
hands of their oppressors 57 or so of the chibok girls have bravely escaped how many 57 or so none
have been rescued by the government as yet but they've given us a window into the horror that
they shared under those conditions among this group was a five-year-old girl whose pelvis was
shattered so much that she walks like an animal now and we look at these things at these and
justices and we think this just this shouldn't be I
don't want to leave you with that image though
on the other side there are there's a house church movement that's exploding in Egypt and on the the
amazing side of us how God is using women in the midst of persecution the movers and the Shakers of
this house church movement are the least of those in their culture it's the not only are they women
they're elderly women and they're illiterate and they are this this explosion is happening through
their discipleship there these are of hundreds o
f thousands of Eunice's raising up Timothy's and
impacting this culture so when I look at the span of the joys and the sorrows and all the ranges
in between I see I see women like Priscilla's working alongside ik Willis I see Eunice's I see
Tim I see Lydia's wisely running businesses that impact the kingdom and all this under very very
difficult circumstances for me these women they're so brave and how they carry on the legacy of women
in the New Testament church beautiful thank you so as K
aren said dr. Carson we look at this and we
think this should not be that those who are called by the name of Christ that you know we wonder how
could God allow those whom he loves those who are called by his name to suffer in this way yet we
also know that Jesus told us to expect persecution and said that we would be rewarded for it so
could you help us to understand where ultimately does persecution come from and help us know how to
think about it it would be a huge mistake to think that
persecution is an intrinsic good it is always
a mark of the fall of hatred toward God hatred toward other human beings beings made in the image
of God but there is a danger that Christians then start to think this is where the devil's winning
one and God is taking a walk or maybe snoozing what you have to see in the Bible it's it's one
massive tension that is always there that you have to get hold of and then a lot of other things
fit into place that is nothing absolutely nothing escapes th
e sovereignty of God absolutely nothing
so that when Joseph is sold into slavery and reflects on it later he can say to his brothers
you intended it for evil but God intended it for good and one in the same event not as if God came
in after the fact and sort of cleaned up the mess but but in the one event God is operating with
perfect goodness and and the brothers were operating with malice the evil is traceable back
to the brothers but that doesn't mean that God was asleep at the switch an
d you have to even think
about the cross that way and then it comes back to Christians I mean Herod and Pontius Pilate
the leaders of the Jews entered into a two-bit conspiracy and in a small country and the eastern
end of the Mediterranean to put together to put to death is troublemaker this this man called Jesus
whom they saw as a political risk but at the same time they did what God had ordained beforehand
should be done acts 4:27 and twenty-eight and if you don't see that God's hand was
in the death
of Jesus then ultimately the cross is merely a blip in history one more crucified man that's it
rather than God's plan from before the foundation of the world for seen already in the Lamb who who
was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities in Isaiah 53 or in in the Passover
lamb who whose blood is dogged on our doorpost so that the Angel of Death passes over and so forth
it's just an accident in history you have to see that God is operating with perfect r
ighteousness
and truth and goodness and sovereignty all the way down to the last balancing quark there are no
accidents yet at the same time you have to still say this is a rageous this is evil because God
stands behind good and evil in different ways he stands behind good and evil asymmetrically that
is he stands behind good in such a way that the good is always traceable to him he stands behind
evil in such a way that the evil element in it all is finally traceable to secondary causalitie
s
if the Bible insists on anything it's that God is good he's as good as he is sovereign he's as
sovereign as he is good and so you have to hang on to the goodness of God you let the tension
perk it runs right through Scripture and then even in the midst of suffering you can still say
with job though he slay me yet will I trust him and and that confidence in God's sovereignty so
that it's not a mistake yet in God's purity and righteousness so that you see his goodness is in
no way compromi
sed and in any case we're taking a long view of things we're looking at not only
this world but the world it is to come and we see that if Christ suffered this way then in some
way it can be an excellent thing a good thing for us to join with Christ and be aligned with his
sufferings in some way it becomes a privilege even when it's miserable and hateful and full of
tears and death it rises to the level of privilege again filling up the afflictions of Christ for his
church so when you inter
act with people around the world I imagine you have interacted with people
who are living under persecution when you have a conversation with them how does this matter
of God's sovereignty over this and this sense of privilege if what would you how would you
encourage the persecuted person I mean I don't imagine you say well you know God's sovereign
over it and so no sometimes you just have to have to hold their hands and weed and and it's very
important to listen they have more experience
on these sorts of fronts than I'll ever have so
it is important to be careful what you say that's true on the other hand my experience has been
that if if Christians have had even a modicum of biblical training in this area they gravitate
in the right direction almost intuitively when the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt a few
years ago and there were Christians who were dying because of it we have quite a number of
graduates from the seminary where I teach that our Egyptians and livi
ng and working in Egypt and
so on and I emailed a few of them you know we're praying for you and so on and without exception
they emailed back saying we're having the time of our lives we're seeing more people turning to
Christ than we've ever seen it's almost as if the very violence of some sectors it's not the whole
Muslim world but some sectors of the Muslim world has made some Muslims start asking questions and
saying there's got to be a better way and start thinking of the Prince of Pe
ace so there have been
there's been more boldness in Christian witness in Egypt in the last 5 years 7 years than in the
previous 50 and and and perhaps more conference as well and and so you you don't want to so focus
on on the blood and gore which is awful you you you've got to see that that that God takes the
prognostications of the pundits and turns them all in their heads and brings the blessing out of out
of tears and sorrow thank you so Karen you really do keep your finger on the puls
e of persecution
around the world as well as you've been a student of the history of persecuted people's so would
you talk to us a little bit about the course that increasing persecution takes in a particular
culture or environment yeah so there's a document that if you're not familiar with it everybody
should get familiar with it it's called the International Declaration of Human Rights and you
can google it and it's the international standard by which most countries in the world play by a
nd
it assures you things like freedom of assembly of religion freedom to change your change your
religion freedom to freedom of speech and it's a huge list now and not everybody plays by those
rules there are other declarations by which other ones and that's sort of where a lot of the
tension comes in that not everybody's playing by the same document but this is the document that
the UN has decided these are the standards by which human flourishing can occur and they're
actually very the p
rinciples are very biblical they're based even though it's a secular document
so you shouldn't you need to be familiar with that because that's what we use in the international
community to determine if someone is entering into persecution the question of how persecution
begins to manifest is harder to answer we here in the West you know and especially I mean I'm I'm PC
yeah I'm Presbyterian we like to check our little boxes and you know it's like oh we're in this
category and this is where
we are on the spectrum but persecution doesn't always manifest in a
linear fashion there are things that come into play like it's generally historically culturally
politically determined and so because all of those things and all those dynamics change from region
to region the way persecution manifests looks different from India India looks totally different
from Pakistan Pakistan's persecution looks totally different from North Korea because all of these
different these different componen
ts are coming into play so the rise of anti-christian hostility
from me is like it's like soup it's like making soup you can you can go to your kitchen and say
oh I've got a carrot I've got an onion I've got some celery you can put into the soup a number of
different things that will make soup but they may not always be the same thing so if you've got the
right combination of history culture politics add in a little ideology leaders sometimes gender
and ethnicity any combination of these yo
u can get something that most people will recognize
in the international community as persecution I think one good brother Egyptian friend of
mine summed it up by saying for him he says when you lose the ability in your culture to
call sin sin you're under persecution Charon I mentioned earlier that you wrote on your blog for
the genuine question the most significant number in approaching persecution is one so what do you
mean by that oh yeah okay so the media likes to give us disaster by n
umbers some of the media
others give us narratives and korie's which carry the truth I got you back thank you but generally
the mainstream media likes to give us disaster by numbers you know people always want to know
how many deaths how many injured and you know the the numbers the larger the numbers oftentimes
the the greater the outrage in some ways there's only one number that really matters though to
us as Christians and I see that that number is one because for us one isn't a statisti
c it's not
a number for us as Christians one is a state of being it's something that Jesus determined that we
should be we are one in him and so through union with him he prays for us in John 17 make them one
as we are one and this is a very particular kind of relationship that we have that compares to
no other on earth there are no other temporal relationships either in relation to God the Father
either on earth or in relation to God the Father that are based on our spiritual union with th
e
person of Christ there's a reason why he calls us his body and so our union together it doesn't
cancel out our earthly associations we still have familial relations that are important social
relationships that are important our tribal our family and blood relations but when we look
at our connection through union with Christ there's simply no other comparison to earthly
alliances so Paul who's always writing from a context of persecution he qualifies the primacy
of our unique relationshi
p in union with Christ by saying do good to all but especially those in
the household of faith so this is why I say that one is the only number that's necessary to stir
us into action look at social media you touch one Muslim and the world hears about it you touch one
member of the LGBTQ community and the world hears about it how many of us remember the massacre of
a hundred and forty eight Christian University students in Garissa Kenya terrible massacre how
many of us remember just a few m
onths ago the man who went to a community college in Oregon and
singled out nine Christians for their faith and shot them or have we forgotten about that already
for me advocating for the persevering church is not activism it's family business and our silence
honestly our silence is to our shame we can't rely on the media to tell our stories accurately
except for Mindy but we can't rely on them to tell the mainstream media to tell her stories we
have to do what she's doing and tell our stor
ies to each other and we have to share them I see
people doing it for communities outside of the body of Christ don't tell me we don't know how to
make hashtags trend or organize memorials memorial services to honor those around the world that we
are connected to by one we know how to do this if you can't say Amen say ouch come on y'all we
are one this is our body and we are one in Christ and that's the only number we need to move and to
help each other yeah thanks for those words Karen so
mehndi if you were able to bring some of the
women that you have interacted with in very harsh places and we wish you could but if you were to
bring them with you here in a setting like this what would what do you think they would want
to say to us as Western Christians what could we learn from them well I do think the example
of their lives is what we would want to learn from them you know when people ask me how can I
pray for the persecuted Church I typically think well we pray for the pe
rsecuted Church the way it
prays for itself I mean we learned from them how they how we can advocate for them and and I think
of one of the people that I write a lot about in the book is in saath saath ooo who is a wonderful
Iraqi woman who herself was a refugee and now has a ministry of working with these women that you've
been talking about these traumatized women who've been living under some form of persecution of
her years I mean even before Isis and and you know when you ask and thup
about all these issues
that we've been talking about and what to do she says I only hear Jesus saying feed my sheep and I
think that there's a lot that we in the West can take from that that there is there is physical
and spiritual nourishment that people need and and women especially Karen has spoken so well
to the particular traumas of women undergoing persecution and they need their dignity restored
mm-hmm they they need they need to know that they still are human beings they have in man
y cases
been treated like animals worse treatment that we would not allow in this country of animals and and
so restoring them and finding ways to do that that are both internal and supplying for the external
needs so I think that that would be what they would bring because I don't think in this country
even now as much as we've heard about the subject that we appreciate the depth the daily depth of
the trauma and the challenges there there is an amazing doctor who is working with both Chri
stian
and Yazidi women who have been rescued from Isis and he described for me one day by phone the the
unit that they have at one of the hospitals they had them at a number of them but this was the
first one they set up and it is a suicide watch unit for young girls some of them are as young
as 10 and and these are and I've interviewed a woman who's 18 who's tried to commit suicide twice
she wasn't even captured by Isis but she saw her friends disappear and she saw her life disappear
befo
re her she pulled out her phone and she she held it up and she showed me a picture of her at
age three on her phone and she said it's the only piece of my childhood that's left I downloaded it
from Facebook and so this is a this is the kind of devastation the mental and spiritual and physical
devastation and and I think that they would want women especially to understand all those aspects
of it and to and Christian women then to come alongside them because I think only the gospel is
suffici
ent to provide the to motivate us to care for the physical needs and to share the gospel in
a way that begins to heal on the inside Nestor and I want to ask you something similar sometimes I
wonder how Christians under persecution in other parts of the world feel about brothers and sis
SURS who live in places where it's relatively easy to be a Christian do Christians in a place
like Iran do they feel abandoned by Western believers well we know it's not easy for those
in other parts of world
to understand what life is like in Iran or country like Iran because they
live in freedom and they can worship God without the fear of being arrested too hard however these
days because of the influence of the media social media it's it's easier to know and to be aware
of the condition of the people who live under first equation and for the same reason people
in the West are becoming more ever and they are getting more involved in helping their brothers
and sisters which I know is very enc
ouraging to people in Iran I do not think Iranian think that
they abandoned feel Iran is a bounded or uncaring other Christian in the West because as you might
know there were some Christian prisoner who had been released as a result of Christian support in
the West however they might think that people who live in free countries do not really appreciate
that I appreciate their freedom and take it for granted also I believe the persecution that is
happening in my country Iran and in the part
of other award is generous bring more people to
Christ God is using the persecution to show how people show a people how much they need Jesus as
their sailor so how do you think master on that women like us in this room and those who are
watching the livestream how can we really be supportive beyond a hashtag which is significant
but sometimes can be empty are there some ways we can generally support help Christian believers
under persecution sure you can keep praying for them I know that
there were people who pray for me
while I was going to through that difficult time and it's really encouraging when when you're
on persecution it's very encouraging to know that your brothers and sister standing with you
by their supports pray prayers and also keeping your situation in the news the government like
Iran are a scary losing their face and of the negative publicly against them so spreading the
news of Christian who are under persecution it can be a huge help and hopefully it wi
ll makes
government to release them there are many ways we can help our brothers and sisters such as
writing a letter to them or talking to the government officially helping their family or
helping their family who are outside the prison so we're gonna put up on the screen a list of some
organizations where you can get information about people under persecution these are organizations
that serve some of the needs of the persecuted church because you said there write a letter
to them and no
t my first thought is well how would I know how to do that right and so I would
appreciate it if some of you would talk about some of these organizations maybe we can just would
you start dr. Carson perhaps just if someone can't said to you I want some information about
persecuted people or organ or I have some money that I want to provide to organizations that help
persecute the persecuted what would you recommend what would you tell them about that organization
but the first thing I would
do is ask what part of the world they're particularly interested in okay
because many of these organizations most of our discussion is focused on the Muslim world but in
some ways that's that that's a narrow focus things are tightening up again in China for example or
think what Christians face in North Korea and so on so the first thing I would want to do is
ask what part of the world are you particularly interested in and then within that framework
it's pretty easy to track down organiza
tions and and its some of them some of them where
they work within the country I don't want to mention their names publicly okay because they're
trying to keep low profile and then there are much larger organizations like Samaritan's Purse and
organizations like that where they have contacts and tentacles that you can follow out to get in in
touch with people in certain parts of the world in terms of sort of a broad survey of what's going
on there are a lot of organizations like that some w
ebsites in terms of old-fashioned newsprint
one of the best monthly summaries that I know for what's going on in the world as evangelicals now
a British publication which highlights something like 80 or 90 a month and that's that's both in
print and digital but but there are many many organizations that try to bring you up to date and
websites and and other resources Karen what would you recommend - I would say that's that that's
really good like thinking about region and where you know you
feel that God is directing your heart
geographically but also to understand that among organizations there are people specializing
in different types of support for example some people do he anat Aryan relief some people do
some people limit their funds just to Christians others broadly distribute their funds to people
who are need humanitarian relief of all faiths my organization international Christian response
our focus is on church planters in hostile regions and we're there whether th
ey're in crisis or not
you know we do everything from church planting training to discipleship training to supporting
them with legal aid so you just have to kind of take a look at just understand that it's not just
a blanket umbrella we're helping the persecuted church but each organization actually has a focus
and functions like the body does kind of filling in different holes according to what the needs
are thank you Karen Mindy what would you yeah and I want a third the the admonition t
hat it's
possible to be educated and that we should we should be educated I think before we give and and
all that's been said before I'm really struck that these are headline stories right now the New York
Times did a wonderful story a week or so ago about what's happening in China and the cross is coming
down in the churches being under some renewed persecution there and it's possible by reading
those accounts to see the groups they're quoted that are working there at world on our website
we keep a list because we have focused so much about what's on what's happening in the Middle
East we keep a list it's under a button called aid for Iraqis many of those groups are working
throughout the Middle East not simply in Iraq but that's how we've organized the list and those are
and it's listed in such a way that you can click on the names and go to the websites and you can
see pictures of how these groups are working I want to mention the significance of supporting
some of these
groups that are working in these very very difficult situations we've watched over
the last week and a half the Iraq army moving into this area Fallujah Fallujah is mostly a Muslim
territory and has been kind of a nest for Isis the first aid group to come in and able to penetrate
all of the levels of both security and danger to deliver aid to really starving families was
pre-emptive love coalition a group that is run by a Christian named Jeremy Courtney who lives in
Iraq with his with his f
amily that is just one of many organizations Samaritan's Purse servant group
international a number that I encounter who have people dedicated on the ground making the kinds
of relationships are necessary to do this kind of thing Jeremy described to me I mean he listed
off probably 20 people he had to get permission from in order to take this one truck of Eden
but it's significant that dedicated Christians are doing this kind of work I love servant group
international a number of them are a
t my church and they're taking groups of people over to
Greece yeah that they're there on the shore as refugees come on and they give them dry socks
and I love their boldness they say you've heard that Iraq is dangerous go and let's go and who I
know don't you love it well in the ultimate acts of persecution Christ was nailed on a cross and
as you mentioned dr. Carson while that was the greatest evil of all time it also accomplished the
greatest good of all time so how does that impact our
perspective about persecution are there good
things that you have seen come from persecution just anyone who has something feel free to answer
the slogan that a lot of people cite is the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and
I think that that's only sometimes true it's really important to say that sometimes the blood
of the martyrs is just the blood of the martyrs historically the the blood the blood of the
markers tends to lead towards church growth when there's pressure and t
hen backing off then
pressure and then backing off then pressure and then backing off so that they the pressure
tends to purify the church there's not a lot of nominalism when you've got a persecution
and then when it backs off the intent city and gratitude before god of these people tends to
foster boldness and witness and so on so it's not always the case but that's that's pretty commonly
part of a pattern of multiplied church growth in Ethiopia under Haile Selassie or in in in in China
in the last 70 years and so on but sometimes as in Albania for example the blood of the martyrs just
meant the crushing of the church by the time they were finished there was no church there and you
start all over again and and you remember how strong the church was in western Turkey in the
second century in the third century the fourth century it was eventually utterly crushed so
that there was no Christian witness whatsoever as recently as 1972-73 there were only 35 37 known
evangelicals
in all of Turkey and half of them were converted in in Cambridge England as external
students today there may be five or six thousand Christians evangelical Christians in all of Turkey
so one doesn't want to become dreamy-eyed about about persecution yet you still have to say Christ
declares I will build my church the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it and one way or the
other there there is glory that emerges even in the tears in the anguish and and you don't make
that glory comfor
table any more than you want to make the glory of the Cross comfortable it still
is a barbaric instrument of torture and the glory comes out of it anyway to the to the praise of
God and the good of his people but but while you say that that mustn't be said with a romantic
overtone it's it's it's in the the pain and the agony and the torture that still he who sits in
the heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision and and and meanwhile he comes along
and wipes away every tear an
d and promises you haven't seen anything of the comfort that I'm
going to give yet the day is coming when there will be no more sorrow and no more pain and no
more cheer and no more evil yeah and so we joined the church in every generation and crying yes
even so come Lord Jesus will you think our panel the writer to the Hebrews who were beginning to
face significant persecution he wrote this and it's a good word to us too he said for you have
need of endurance so that when you have done the
will of God you may receive what is promised
and then he quotes from Habakkuk yet a little while the time and the coming one will come and
will not delay but my righteous one shall live by faith and if he shrinks back my soul has no
pleasure in him and he says but we are not of those who shrink back don't you want that to be
said of you we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who have faith
and preserve their souls so what you sing with me I have decided to follo
w Jesus I have decide
to follow Jesus no turning back no Lord make us women who are bold give us the endurance that we
need that as people who in the workplace and on the soccer sidelines and in our neighborhoods
as we may begin to be ostracized criticized misunderstood would you give us
the endurance and the boldness we need that we will not shrink back amen thank you
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