The beheadings by the Islamic State in Libya have resulted in unprecedented sympathy for Egypt’s Christians, who are increasingly finding common identity across denominational lines. The martyrdoms have also allowed Copts a platform to witness to the realities of their faith, as they publicly forgave the terrorists.
While it may be difficult for us in the West to know how to respond to ISIS, the families of the slain are faithfully practicing Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies. The brother of two of the slain men tells in this interview how his family is rejoicing in this opportunity to see the kingdom of God amid the grief. He does not grieve as one who has no hope.
When the day is done and last of the lights are turned out and my head hits the pillow, all I can think of is the faces of The 21 and their surrendered heads, their heads carrying the full reality of the Cross. How the People of the Cross have let themselves be chained to petty and purposeless things instead of praying for the Persecuted Church in chains. How the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
How once when I was a little girl, I tried to behead a dandelion in full orb and if you behead a dandelion in full head — you send a thousand more bravely out on the wind.
My heart breaks over the evil being done in Iraq right now. Christians in America know little about persecution. Click the button below in order to see what persecution looks like. Let us pray fervently for the persecuted.
“Christianity in Mosul is dead, and a Christian holocaust is in our midst,” said Mark Arabo. In an interview with CNN, he called what’s happening in Iraq a “Christian genocide.”
Persecution has an allure for many evangelicals. In the Bible, Christians are promised by Saint Paul that they will suffer for Christ, if they love Him. But especially in contemporary America, it is not clear what shape that suffering will take. Narratives of political, cultural, and theological oppression are popular in evangelical communities, but these are sometimes fiction or deeply exaggerated non-fiction—and only rarely accurate.
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” – Mark 10:29-30
If there was ever a story in which the truth of this passage was made painfully visible it is the story of Richard Wurmbrand. He was born in 1909 in Romania. The events of his life after that are a chronicle of hardship, persecution, and also the unending grace and love of God. Richard and his wife Sabina have left an incredible legacy, which carried on through the ministry of Voice of the Martyrs.
