Stone the Preacher

Richard Wurmbrand spent a total of 14 years in prison, three of those in solitary confinement. After being freed and coming to the West, he started The Voice of the Martyrs in 1967.

I had the opportunity to meet this great man in his home a few years before he died. I’ll tell you about it after you watch the video below. Please watch it; then remember the persecuted church tomorrow. And be thankful you live in a country where we can still worship and proclaim Christ freely—at least for a few more years. (more…)

Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, were arrested and sent to Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. The two women did not rob a bank, kill a man or beat up someone.

Their crime? Loving Jesus. And it is for this reason alone they are still imprisoned.

In August during a court hearing, the two were questioned repeatedly about their faith. They were told to return to Islam.

“We love Jesus,” was their reply. Prosecutors asked the women, who had already spent five months in prison, if they regretted being Christians.

“We have no regrets,” they said. “We will not deny our faith.”

The judge sent them back to Evin Prison – notorious for its brutality – to “think about” their decision.

“We have already done our thinking,” they told him.

—From The Voice of the Martyrs

When I read about horrible incidents like this, I have to wonder what we are so afraid of here in the States. Is it fear? Or could it possibly be that we are ashamed?

Islamic extremists have beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader, and the killers are searching Kenya’s refugee camps to do the same to the boys’ father. Click here to read the rest of the story.

Given the cowardice of American Christians when sharing their faith, I must post weekly articles of Christians in other countries who actually suffer for their faith. Also, this may cause you to pray for the persecuted believers around the world who don’t enjoy the freedom of religion that we squander here in the West.

In the wonderful book “The Case for Faith,” Lee Strobel quotes John D. Woodbridge: “The typical Christian lives in a developing country, speaks a non-European language, and exists under the constant threat of persecution—of murder, imprisonment, torture, or rape.”

Here are two examples:

North Korea

Activists in South Korea reported recently that communist officials in North Korea publicly executed a 33-year-old mother of three. Ri Hyon Ok, according to The Associated Press, was also accused of spying for South Korea and the U.S. and organizing dissidents. Following her execution, Ri’s parents, husband, and children were sent to a political prison camp in the northeastern section of the communist country.
Click here to read the rest from OneNewsNow.

Bangladesh

It began with the family’s attempts to make him leave the Christian faith and reconvert to Hinduism. If he did not reconvert, they argued, his parents’ honor – in fact, the entire family’s honor – would be destroyed. If he left Christianity now before anyone else learned about it, he could continue to lead a normal life. But Dipesh was fixed on his decision. “Jesus Christ is the God-man who sacrificed His life for the salvation of mankind,” he told his father. “I won’t be reconverted into our false Hindu religion. I won’t leave my Savior, Lord Jesus. If you kill me, you can kill me, I don’t care because I have found the true God for my salvation.”

It was all that Dipesh’s family needed to hear. When they realized that he would not reconvert to Hinduism, they began hurling insults and savagely beating him. The abuse was so severe that Dipesh finally began losing his senses and fell to the floor. As he lay struggling for his life, he heard his father tell his brother that he was going to call the police and send Dipesh to jail. In the meantime, his enraged father promised, they would continue beating him until “the blood comes from his body. He is not my son.” Click here to read the rest from Christian Freedom International.

When I watch this video from The Voice of the Martyrs blog I can’t help thinking of the lyrics of the Casting Crowns song, “Here I Go Again,” as I reflect on the timidity of American Christians.

‘Cause here I go again
Talkin’ ’bout the rain
And mulling over things that won’t live past today
And as I dance around the truth
Time is not his friend
This might be the last chance to tell him that
You love him
But here I go again, here I go again
What am I so afraid of?

Fellow believers in other countries actually have something to lose when they share their faith.

What goes through a Chinese Christian prisoner’s mind on his day of sentencing? In a letter written from his prison cell, Shi Weihan allows us a rare opportunity to re-live with him the events of June 10, 2009. Shi, 40, a Christian bookstore owner in Beijing, was originally arrested by the Public Security Bureau (PSB) Nov. 28, 2007 along with one of his employees Tian Hongxia. He and his family have gone the through the ups and downs of the Chinese legal system since then. Click here to read his letter, as posted on the Open Doors blog.

Are you afraid to share your faith? Fortunately, what’s happening in Eritrea isn’t happening on a regular basis here—yet. (Still, read the article below, and then this frightening 1984ish article.)

Two more Christians have died for their faith while imprisoned in Eritrea.

Last month, two Christians died while being held in government-run prisons. Reports say one of the believers died as a result of ongoing physical torture and complications from an illness.
 
Jerry Dykstra with Open Doors USA says there are approximately 3,000 Christians being held in Eritrea simply because of their faith in Christ.
 
“It just seems unfathomable that this little country of about five million people located between Sudan and Ethiopia on the Red Sea, really targets Christians,” he contends. “And they’ve been on our World Watch List with Open Doors, and they’re also on the ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ list issued by the U.S. government.”
 
In 2002, Eritrea’s government began a systematic crackdown on Christian activities, churches, and ministries.

—From Open Doors USA

Amidst the hoopla, American gold medals, and Beijing window dressing, it’s easy to forget that the Chinese government is still a brutal, iron-fisted, Communist-atheist dictatorship…

Pastor Zhang “Bike” Mingxuan, known for traveling across China on a bicycle to evangelize, was arrested by Chinese police just two days before the Olympics began.

Pastor Bike was the inspiration for the recent partnership between The Voice of the Martyrs and China Aid Association to create the Olympic Prayer Band.

Pastor Bike, president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, rode his bike more than 10,000 miles, visiting 24 Chinese provinces to introduce nonbelievers to Jesus Christ. Armed with a Bible and his business card, which declared “Believe in Jesus, Earn Eternal Life,” Pastor Bike brought the gospel to thousands of people. He and other Chinese evangelists have been repeatedly harassed by Chinese officials during this Olympic year. Please pray for the release of Pastor Bike and his wife.
(more…)

An Iranian Christian who was beaten and had equipment from her sewing shop destroyed has been told by a judge in that Middle Eastern nation that she has no recourse because she is guilty of evangelism.

The woman ran a tailoring business and volunteered to teach three girls how to sew. During their conversations, she talked about her Christian faith and began teaching them about Christianity. But one of the young women was reportedly from a Muslim family who became upset over the incident. Eventually, the sewing instructor’s shop was broken into, much of her equipment destroyed, and she was beaten and threatened with death. The woman was then taken to court, and a judge said her persecutors were within their rights to attack her. Read the rest here.

Any chance of this happening to you when you evangelize in America? I think not… at least not until the next presidential elections… Here are a few of the lesser known Christian martyrs from previous centuries:

Vitalus, A.D. 99— He was buried alive in Ravena, Italy for his faith.

Wolfgang Binder of Scharding, 1571— He was beheaded in Bavaria, Germany.

Hendrik Pruijt, 1574— Outside Workum, he was tarred and tied to a small boat. Then he was set on fire and the boat pushed out into the water.

John Bret, 1576—In Antwerp, Belgium, he had his tongue bored through with a red-hot poker, and was afterward burned at the stake. Although the available information did not say, it was normally those who preached Reformation doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus christ who had their tongues mutilated.
(My note: In general, Reformers don’t preach that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” to sinners.)

— From The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe, rewritten and edited by Harold J.Chadwick, Pg. 258.
Images from the Mennonite Library and Archives

WORLD magazine reporter Priya Abraham wrote about these atrocities from North Korea.

In one prison, a warden hung a Christian man upside down and ordered him to deny his beliefs. Eventually the warden stabbed at him and pushed him to the ground, ordering 6,000 prisoners to trample him to death.

Some reports say Christian prisoners are deliberately crippled so they cannot walk; others are left naked and so starved they eat the rats scampering in their prison cells raw.

Will this happen to you as you share your faith? I think not.

–From WORLD, “Cruel and unusual punishment, 4/28/07

Has this happened to you yet while preaching the Gospel in our free country?
The second time Romanus preached the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ His well-beloved Son, and eternal life through faith in His blood, Asclepiades commanded the tormentors to strike Romanus on the mouth, that his teeth be knocked out, so that his speaking would be impaired. The order was obeyed, his face was beaten with fists, his eyelids torn with nails, his cheeks cut with knives; the skin of his beard was plucked little by little from the flesh; finally, his handsome face was wholly defaced. The meek martyr said, “I thank you, O Prefect, that you have opened many mouths, where now I may preach my Lord and Savior Christ. Look! How many wounds I have, so many mouths I have lauding and praising God!” –From “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” by John Foxe

A Christian was sentenced to death. Before being executed, he was allowed to see his wife. His last words to his wife were, “You must know that I die loving those who kill me. They don’t know what they do and my last request of you is to love them, too. Don’t have bitterness in your heart because they kill your beloved one; we will meet in Heaven.” These words impressed the officer of the secret police who attended the discussion between the two. Afterward he told me the story in prison, where he had been put for becoming a Christian.
-From “Tortured for Christ” by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

Vietnam, 1991- Le Thi Loi’s husband, a Christian pastor, was executed in a rice field after being accused of subversion against the government, tried and found guilty.

After his death, the government sent her a bill for her husband’s execution, the court “trial,” the coffin, the burial, and the bullet that killed him. The total was $4,000, which would take her years to repay. If she did not, she would be imprisoned. –From The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe, rewritten and updated by Harold J. Chadwick, pg.351

Would you be able to stand if this happened to you? Are you even able to stand now and face a dirty look for sharing your faith?

This happened in Northern Nigeria, 1992:

Muslims in Kaduna, Nigeria, went on a rampage against Christians. Two pastors and their families were killed, along with 300 laymen. The fanatics severed Pastor Selchun’s right hand. When it fell to the ground, he raised the other one and sang:

“He is Lord, He is Lord!

That Jesus Christ is Lord.”

His wife and sister stood by praying.

–From “Jesus Freaks” by Voice of the Martyrs and D.C.Talk

Still afraid to share your faith? These people weren’t.

The tyrants and organs of Satan were not contented with death only, to bereave the life from the body. The kinds of death were diverse, and no less horrible than diverse. Whatsoever the cruelness of man’s invention could devise for the punishment of man’s body, was practiced against the Christians – stripes and scourgings, drawings, tearings, stonings, plates of iron laid unto them burning hot, deep dungeons, racks, strangling in prisons, the teeth of wild beasts, gridirons, gibbets and gallows, tossing upon the horns of bulls. Moreover, when they were thus killed, their bodies were laid in heaps, and dogs there left to keep them, that no man might come to bury them, neither would any prayer obtain them to be interred.

And yet, notwithstanding all these continual persecutions and horrible punishments, the Church daily increased deeply rooted in the doctrine of the apostles and of men apostolical, and watered plenteously with the blood of saints.

–From the original “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs”, By John Foxe

Too afraid to share your faith with the ungodly?

Anne Askew was imprisoned and greatly tortured for her faith. Placed on a cruel rack, her joints and bones were pulled out of place. She fainted from the pain, but when she regained consciousness, she preached for two hours to her tormentors. On the day of her execution, she was carried to the stake in a chair because her bones were dislocated and she couldn’t walk. At the last moment, she was offered the king’s pardon if she would recant. She said: “I did not come here to deny my Lord and Master.”

She died praying for her murderers in the midst of the flames.

–From Jesus Freaks by The Voice of the Martyrs

Lebannon, 1991— Mary Khoury was 17 when Damour, her village in Lebanon, was raided by Muslim fanatics who were bent on converting everyone to Islam by force. She and her parents were given one choice: “If you do not become a Muslim you will be shot.”
Mary knew Jesus had been given a similar choice: Give up His profession of being the Son of God and the Savior of the world, or be crucified. He chose the Cross. So she replied, “I was baptized as a Christian and His word came to me: ‘Don’t deny your faith.’ I will obey Him. Go ahead and shoot.” A Muslim who had just killed her father and mother shot her and left her for dead.

Two days later the Red Cross came into her village. They found Mary and her family where they had been shot – she was the only one alive. But she was now paralyzed; the bullet had severed her spinal cord. Her paralyzed arms were extended and bent at the elbows, reminiscent of Christ at His crucifixion.

At first Mary was depressed, not knowing what she could now do. Then the Lord spoke to her and she knew what she must do with her paralyzed life. “Everyone has a vocation,” she said. “I can never marry or do any physical work. So I will offer my life to the Muslims, like the one who cut my father’s throat, stabbed my mother while cursing her, and tried to kill me. My life will be a prayer for them.”

—From “The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” by John Foxe, rewritten and updated by Harold J. Chadwick

I suspect that this hasn’t happened to you yet while standing for your faith…

In the town of Potiskum, a Christian believer, Azibuike, was stoned and macheted almost to death by Muslims. Another Christian was beheaded. His head was then placed on a stick and carried around the town by a Muslim who repeatedly shouted, “Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!” (God is great!) This happened when about 5000 Muslims, mostly young Koranic students, invaded Potiskum with the same shouts.
The Muslims burned nine churches to the ground, and killed several Christians, among them Pastor Yahaya Tsalibi and Brother Ezra Turaki. Another 165 Christians were injured and Bibles, books, cars, trucks,and equipment belonging to Christians and the churches were set on fire.

Malo Garba was accosted by Muslims and told to recite the Koran, when she refused they struck her in the face several times and broke all her teeth and damaged the bones in her face so severely that it required two operations to repair the damage.

–From The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe, rewritten and updated by Harold J. Chambers