It’s happening as you read these words. Somewhere a Christian is dying for his faith. Christian women are being raped. Christians’ children are being sold into slavery. It is happening to our own brothers and sisters–torture, imprisonment, harassment, starvation, to say nothing of banishment, family destruction, literature bans, and prohibition to meet as believers. I confess I am ashamed, sheepish, to write about this rising tide of suffering saints because I know nothing about such things personally. But I would be more ashamed not to say something.
The problem is not an isolated one–a Christian imprisoned here, another dying there–though if we depended on the Western media, even most Christian publications, we could easily come to that conclusion.
It’s difficult when reading the statistics to distinguish nominal Christians from true believers. (While this is a crucial difference, it is not always noticed by the persecutors.) In their shocking, up-to-date, well-documented book, Their Blood Cries Out, Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert cite the following:
* In more than 60 countries, Christians are harassed, arrested, tortured or executed, specifically because of their faith.
* More than 600 million who take the name Christian live under political restrictions on religious liberty (they had more than Western hand-slapping in mind).
* Perhaps 225 million of those suffer “severe state interference in religion, obstruction, or harassment.”
* Quoting David B. Barrett’s International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Jan. 1996), it suggests the average rate of martyrdom at something close to 150,000 professing Christians per year!
Our response can only be, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge [their] blood…?” (Rev. 6:10). Heaven’s answer to those martyrs is given: “…They should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (v. 11).
We can hardly be surprised that much of the Christian world suffers such antagonism. The Lord warned: “If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also” (Jn. 15:20). What should be surprising is how easily we get off in the West. The answer may be obvious (2 Tim. 3:12).
Some suggest we pray for persecution here, to bring purification of the church. It may come, whether we pray for it or not. But Paul instructs us to pray that we might live “quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.” I suspect that times of persecution bring with them another set of problems beside the obvious–a temptation to bitterness, not only against oppressors, but against fellow believers who collapse under the weight; disruption of family life with children removed from believing households to be raised by the state; doubting God’s care when fellow believers starve to death (as in Angola recently or in North Korea today)–David may not have seen it (Ps. 37:25) but others have. We could hardly wish such things on anyone.
Does God care? Calvary tells us He does. Then why does He allow such suffering? The Cross gives us one answer: “Unless a corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone: but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit” (Jn. 12:24). In the book, By Their Blood, James and Marti Hefley trace Christian martyrdom through the 20th Century (until 1979). In it they recount some of the results of the martyrdom of the Ecuador Five. Not only were many of the people saved, but one of the killers, Tona, was himself martyred in taking the gospel to a downriver tribal group. In his dying breath, he whispered, “I forgive you. I’m dying for your benefit.” By such sacrifices the Church still overcomes.
But do we care? Do we pray for the sufferers–and persecutors? Can we be better informed? Are there other ways to help? Read on; if you’re asking such questions, this Uplook is for you. And “Remember those…in bonds, as bound with them; and those who suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body” (Heb. 13:3).