Faith Under Fire

good evening everybody and welcome to this solas webinar tonight's topic didn't really mean a huge amount to me until one evening in 2001 the spring of 2001 i wandered along to a church just along from my house in perth where a member of the house of lords baroness caroline cox was giving a report on a fact-finding mission she'd done to nagorno-karabakh where the christians there were suffering terribly and it was on that evening as she spoke about the suffering she'd seen that this usu this issue kind of came alive to me and things she said that night i can still remember to this day along with um the lovely stuart windsor the late stuart windsor from csw passionately pleading for us to pray for and stand up for the persecuted church things changed again for me about three years ago when i went to an event run by open doors called standing strong in glasgow where persecuted christians from some of the world's most dangerous countries in the world told us their stories face to face and here's the thing that surprised me that night i thought the event would tell me about how i should seek to be a blessing to the persecuted church in fact i came away from that evening blessed encouraged emboldened and strengthened by them i thought the blessing was supposed to flow that way in fact it came to us in spades and that's why tonight's webinar is entitled faith under fire responding to and learning from the persecuted church and joining me to discuss this hugely significant subject i've got not one but two great guests the first of my guests this evening is eddie lyle if you're old like me you remember eddie from being in youth for christ but eddie has for a long time now been president of open doors uk ireland he's a respected bible teacher and passionate advocate for the persecuted church where he works to make us here in the uk prayerful and active in our support for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world welcome eddie are you there on screen with us good to see you thank you for joining us how are you this evening well thank you for reminding me of my ancient past with youth for christ but i'm exceptionally well thank you and lovely to be with you um such an inspiring introduction as well and you're joining us from somewhere in oxfordshire is that right uh yes yeah the uh little town of uh whitney one of the gateway towns to the english cotswolds so it's a very beautiful part of the world open doors uk and ireland's headquarters is here in whitney so this has become christine and my home for the last 15 years or so lovely stay with us as i introduce our second guest our second guest this evening is dr ron boyd mcmillan he is the director of strategic research for open doors international and visiting professor of practical theology with persecution studies at lahore college of theology in pakistan and he's got over three decades of experience ministering amongst persecuted christians across five continents as a teacher author and strategist with apparently a formal career as a bible smuggler i saw on his cv good evening ron are you there with us as well yes i am thank you gavin yes i guess if you really were involved in this in the 70s and the 80s you were a bible smuggler because that's really how we all how we all came in at the at the bottom marvelous thank you for joining us and somebody noted that we have an englishman an irishman and a scotsman on screen which sounds like a joke in search of a punchline with all us through here we are not going to do all the speaking tonight we'd love you at home to be involved as well and the the way that we do that is through a little thing called pigeonhole uh ron and eddie going to speak for a few minutes and then there's your opportunity to ask them any questions about this whole area of the persecution of the church around the world and and how we should respond and engage with that if you go across to pigeonhole at on your web browser and type in the code there solas 21 april that will open up the little q a panel just for tonight i see there's quite a few questions in already i will remind you of that code a couple of times as we go on through the evening but the the second half of our hour together will be your opportunity to steer where the conversation goes if when you get to there the question you were going to ask is already there vote for it it kind of moves it up the rankings and you're much more likely to get your question asked but let's let's dive in i wonder if i can start with you now you as head of strategic research you've done extensive research and a lot of research into the persecution of christians around the world i wonder if you could then give us something of an overview an update about the current situation where we are in 2021 and maybe throw in something about your world watch list that you've helped develop which which gives readers a kind of a handle on what's going on in the world today ron the world watch list is really a ranking of the 50 hardest countries in which to practice the christian faith we have done this uh really for the last 20 odd years it's primarily a tool for planning for us so that we can profile the needs in each country and and assist as best we can what's really been a big surprise to me though is that up until about 2012 2013 things were always getting better i.e easier to be a christian in some part of the world after 2012 2013 it got harder on every continent and we've never seen such an accumulation of of points as as we have now and i mean there are various reasons for this i mean obviously everybody knows that you know in the middle east you've got wars sunny shia tensions you've got caliphates that are not quite away and so um you have a lot of uh you know countries like yemen and libya and iran and that's the middle eastern church is really on the defensive in fact it's exited some countries in significant ways like iraq for example so that's one and that's hit the headlines everybody knows about that what people might not be so they may not be so aware of though is that islamic extremism has a new hub and that's sub-saharan africa and it's really in this tenth parallel the sahel belt that islam has come down from the north christianity has come up from the south and this area this is a deadly proximity between these two evangelistic faiths and it's here that it's most physically dangerous to be a christian and in fact um really in every year we compile the world watch list there are more christians killed for their faith in northern nigeria than in the rest of the world combined so this is a kind of killing zone and and that's not getting better um but a third factor i would say is that china's leaders are more fearful of christian growth the chinese church is up at about 100 million it may actually be a lot higher it's very hard to count underground communities and the chinese government does not fancy sharing power with the church especially as under the present president xi jinping who really took power significantly in 2013 and he's taken china backwards to a kind of 1950s style ideology and there is tremendous supervision and control as well as surveillance we always say that in china today big data meets big brother and and so the church is is being controlled and asked to play its part in the ideology of the government and uh this is really new and china is actually in the top 20 for the first time in in in many years and then you have another factor just going through the globe here so you get a sense of it hindu extremists are back in power in india and they of course they were elected fair and square this is the world's largest democracy and this happened in 2014 and then they had another landslide victory in 2019 and hindu extremists essentially believe that in the northern gangetic plain only hindus should be their sacred land and christians and muslims should get out and so very often how it happens in india is the mob gets released and they beat up the pastors they burn the churches and so on especially as of course the christian church is significantly dominated by the lower caste groups and and this annoys the hindu extremists enormously so we've seen a huge spike in in violence and pressure in india again when it was getting remarkably better um in in the last few years and uh and actually india's number 10 on the world watch list now which is staggering and then finally just to keep you going through the globe real quickly um we also say that in latin america there are countries where narco the narco traffickers and the cartels are out of control in a place like columbia for example 50 of the territory is run by guerrilla movements that are basically feeding cartels and if you are a christian in that area and you say well i'm a farmer but i will not grow the coca leaf because i don't want to support the cocaine trade you're in trouble some of you may be pastors if you're in mexico or something like that even when you're in a big city your church will be cased as it were by the cartel and they'll look and they'll see how much bling your congregation is wearing they'll look at the clothes they'll look at you know whether the women have spent money on you know augmentation and this kind of thing and then they'll say to the pastor silver or lead and you pay us 10 000 or you get a bullet every month and most of them pay up what can you do and so even the latin american countries because this is nominally a christian continent are in the top 50 of the world watch list so uh you've got colombia you know number 30 you've got mexico in 38 i think so this is why it's getting worse everywhere and of course we're not talking yet about secular intolerance in a western setting because that doesn't elevate a country yet to the top 50 or even the top 70 though there will come a day when that will happen too so it seems like we're in an unusual time i've never witnessed this before in 30 40 years of studying the global trends of persecution where it's really been getting harder to practice christianity literally everywhere and where can somebody get hold of the world watch list if they would like to read that and you know because that covers the top 50 countries or the worst 50 countries it covers the top 50 hands on it yes you can just go to the open doors link and you'll see it there in fact i think we have a slide prepared so that you can get right to it wonderful how about that and uh and so everybody can access this uh it also covers countries that are on what we call the persecution watch list which really is from number 50 to about 70 countries that might be in the top 50 uh you know next year or whatever so this is very accessible and uh everybody you know this is in the uh open to me we want everybody to know just how much it costs all over the world to follow christ well thank you for that ron that kind of really paints paints a picture eddie what if i can bring you into the conversation now um ron has painted a picture of a world in decline really and talking about you know the situation worse that he's seen in in decades that can seem i guess overwhelming what should our response be to something just the magnitude of just the things that ron has shared in the last three or four minutes can we contribute anything meaningful or significant to such a massive problem and if so where on earth can we start well let's start with the bible 1 corinthians 12 when one part of the body hurts the whole body hurts um we are ministering under the umbrella of a dutch organization founded by brother andrew and i have a whole um family of dutch friends now and one of the endearing features of uh having colleagues that comes from the netherlands is their kind of direct speak and brother andrew our founder is um a classic straight talker and he said that for generations the church in what could be described the free world has behaved like a prosthetic limb in other words it has functioned but it has no sensory engagement with it it cannot feel and when you are confronted with the eloquence of what ron has been talking about but even more than that the reality of the statistics and even more than that the actual impact on a human being's life who is being persecuted for no other reason than the fact that they are identified as a follower of jesus christ if that doesn't touch us then my contention is that there's something wrong you know in the world of philosophy if the foot is kicked to the voice cries out but i think one of the issues and i'm privileged to have been in this work now for well over 20 years there is the beginning of a stirring within the church it's not a significant momentum but the big hurdle that i think ron and i would want to use this evening's presentation for is to profile the reality of our brothers and sisters who share our faith but not our freedoms this because it is family business if i could term it that way our authority comes from the lord in hebrews he talks about remember those who are in prison as if you were in prison and those who suffer as if you suffer so this evening is not about human rights as such it's not about philanthropy i would want to use this platform to advocate the biblical imperative that when one part of the body hurts the whole body hurts and that has not been you went through your epiphany with caroline cox and stuart windsor and and others the reality is that for most of the church they are patently unaware about this issue so how can we make a difference well become aware become knowledgeable start to get engaged in it this isn't just a small issue now this is a global phenomena a pandemic if you like if i can use the term profoundly respectfully of the persecution of the church we're talking about three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty million people we're talking about one in every eight christian being persecuted that means that we need to become mission aware uh country aware people aware family aware in all of this and just as we've passed transition through easter i'm reminded of the sri lanka bomb just two years ago and one of my colleagues passed a little report to me this morning about a woman called prabha who sadly lost her eight-year-old son in this bombing and i want to somehow take the the theater piece of this global epidemic pandemic and bring it down into one human being and she said for the first six months after the bombing which killed my son peter i couldn't pray all that i could say was the word jesus people who i have never even known or seen were praying for me when i couldn't it was because of their prayers that we have been strengthened and encouraged and they prayed for me when i couldn't pray gavin i think that's a helpful testimony we know that god answers prayer he answers it in a whole myriad of different ways but i can think of nothing more profound than being able to be on my knees alongside my sister prabha now that i know of her plight to pray for her that he will guide her through the horror of this experience the injustice of this experience for her to come to the place where she can release those who took her son's life and know the healing that only jesus can bring into that situation so we're dealing with a global issue but it is not so big that it can't be brought down into the reality of one human being that we can pray for specifically and so if somebody's watching this and they are feeling something of that stirring of the spirit they've heard that story they just told and they're feeling something that kind of that ache when you know one part of the body hurts the rest of the body hurts and they're sensing that and they don't know where to start and they want to do something to respond to that stirring what's the first thing they should do to respond to that sense that this is something they need to address that's a beautiful question and that stirring i think should be called the work of the holy spirit um i have prayed all of my 50 years as a christian a prayer lord what breaks your heart please let it break mine and sometimes the christian church has not been seen as a compassionate community in the way that the reality of the truth is that it is um but i believe that god speaks i i believe that he guides us he is the shepherd and when one of his children starts to align with the things that breaks his heart i think he is the one who will give the guidance and the steer you could not start in a better place than to pray for prabha with me tonight um it comes down to that one person and these um these dear ones that as i've said share our faith but not our freedoms they relish our prayers and so sri lanka one of the nations that is very much involved in this world watch list front-facing radar is in a complex situation it is recovering from this trauma it has endured years of internal war so start to pray for that but um the world watch list i hope that every person that's viewing tonight will be able to get their hands on it i mean will it surprise you to know that north korea is the most dangerous place on planet earth for one to be identified as a follower of jesus christ gavin you will be surprised to know that we think that there could be more than 400 000 christians underground christians operating living witnessing for jesus christ in that hermit kingdom when i say it i can't even believe it myself but that is true it is it is also true to say that in some of these places the church of jesus christ isn't retreating it's advancing i'm not saying that the persecution of christians always equates to church growth it is a perilous balance but undoubtedly when we look into the face of the persecuted church it is an acts of the apostle church it is alive and as it in it is kicking in both micro and macro form so my gentle fatherly advice tonight is become aware get the world watch list start to read it through uh start to invite god's spirit to help you pray um you can take one of these countries every week and pray for it you don't have to have one specific nation although for me i personally find it helpful to pray regularly for north korea that is a burden i believe the lord has pressed on my heart i hope that helps yeah that's great so we we've opened up this evening by talking really about how we should respond to the persecuted church i want to bring ron back in now and ask something we can start to learn from the persecuted church so rod what i'm thinking about here is many christians here in the west um are apprehensive about the marginalization of the church here you know go back a hundred years we controlled culture politics media the whole shebang people would queue round the block to hear billy graham preach in the 50s but we're not in that situation anymore now we're in a situation where we're told the gospel is not just untrue but harmful toxic dangerous and that evangelism is impossible in secular scotland or the secular uk so how the persecuted churches manage to be a witness from the margins in their society how can they teach us what it means to be faithful from the margins because we know that there are christians who are being faithful witnesses for christ in places like iran and places like china where they don't control the media or politics or anything they're very excluded but what can we learn from them as we are moved towards the edge of our cultures and you've just mentioned two countries of course iran and china where the church is really growing very significantly under these pressures and they would say and they're not being facetious they say well remember you'll get a lot of help from the persecutor the persecutor does spread the gospel for you for example in iran there was a case a few years ago the ayatollah khamenei was really annoyed about the children of ayatollahs who had become christians and so he cleared the decks one night on the television and fulminated for a whole hour against the house churches and he said the house churches are evil they're agents of the cia you mustn't go to them they'll serve you soup that's poison and on and on he went and most of the people looked at each other and they said what's a house church what's a house church because if he doesn't like them we will because in in iran the clerics who run the country are hated and despised and so there was a great spike in in the in the numbers of the house churches so i think two words come to mind for me it's cost and community when it costs to share the gospel that really does seem to spread it and you go right back to the early church of course remember when somebody would share the gospel it would they would be putting their lives in the person's hands that they were witnessing to because if they were reported to the roman authorities they would have to go to court and if they didn't deny christ they'd be put to death and their property would be given to their accuser but yet that spread the gospel because people realized that phil is taking a huge risk to tell me this story and so that seems to be one of the secrets to this when it costs to spread the gospel it impresses all the more and then the other key word maybe is community because persecuted christians do gather in communities they're not split up they get together and the whole community rallies around um in china for example i used to be amazed at how the gospel would spread so fast until somebody said well they come to christ village by village you know that's how it was and of course back in the early church that was the oicos the household they came to christ household by household and sometimes that could be as as much as 70 people when you include the slaves and all the business uh contacts as well and so there was this amazing lady she came to britain after having to flee somalia because she was a muslim background believer and she went to this lovely church in central london and they welcomed her and she said then they said something to me in the foyer that made me drop down in shock and disappointment and she said you know what it was they said to me see you next sunday see you next sunday and she thought see you next sunday i'm a muslim background believer i'm not going to get through another six days without being held by the community of god how do these people get by and so they there is an intensity of community uh especially with muslim background believing churches and and so on and a lot of the persecuted church they know that in the hard times they need the church to carry them and so they prioritize uh community and getting together and not just once a week that's not going to be enough so i think it's just a start but i think there is a combination of cost and community that really does give a clue as to how persecuted christians don't just survive but thrive in in their extremity that that's really very helpful so eddie can i bring you in again and say could you give us some more examples then of what faithful evangelism looks like from the margins tell us something about what empowers and motivates these precious people and maybe how we could be a bit more like them um yeah i love it when ron tells stories just it's a it's a great storyteller maybe i can uh put my foot on a territory that he loves so much uh pakistan where um a couple of years ago there was an incident uh whereby the joseph colony in lahore was burnt to the ground and i arrived a couple of weeks afterwards and i was taken to meet the community and i would describe what it looked like as something somewhere between belson and hiroshima it was just utter catastrophe people living in in just total destructions the stink of the smell of burnt wood and people in despair and you know you of course would pray and sit with people and listen to the stories but i had a private meeting with the elders of the community afterwards and i i said i want you to know that the world is praying for you could you help me understand how we should be praying with you what what is the next stage for you um and there was some very helpful exchange but the one thing that stuck in my head was they said brother eddie we're going to rebuild the churches in our community first before we build our homes now that resonates powerfully with what ron has just said a few moments ago about the power of community in in the face of society in the weeks and months that followed the story of the joseph colony was networked around the world and and it was rebuilt and it was rebuilt with a new school and a health center and this glorious resurrection from the dead empowered by the body all around the world standing with one another was a glorious testimony of the power of god and it stands today but imagine that the truth that we built rebuilt our churches before we rebuilt our own homes shows the value system of what jesus expressed for us what the scripture further back when one part of the body hurts the whole body hurts and not only does the physicality of rebuilding this um uh community the strength that came to the community because they knew that they didn't stand alone was power to the fact that they knew that it was jesus that had breathed upon as it were the dry bones that had been left and made something beautiful so underlining ron's a powerful story about cost and community story that i do want to tell is that the very first mission that i was sent on open doors was it to visit three indonesian uh sunday school teachers that were put in prison for five and a half years for the christianization of children it's still a trumped up piece of legalese it doesn't exist within the indonesian constitution but the local gp and the the people in the church ran a happy uh wednesday club for the children of vagrants and the street poor and they gave them a proper meal every day they played games with them they had certificates from the school and from the health authorities and from law enforcement they had all of the right pieces of paper but somehow militants saw what the church was doing were appalled by it that they had the audacity to present the person of jesus to these little children i saw the video footage of the trial the show trial it was an abomination it was terrible the judges being intimidated by chanting crowds outside the courtroom to crucify these three women and when they got into prison they put them in a place called prison block juanita which was exclusively for just women and the people that were in there were al-qaeda terrorists there was a lady that i met who if you give her ten dollars would murder anyone so these lovely people that the pastor the general practitioner who was now a criminal and therefore wasn't permitted to be a doctor thrown into juanita the walls were covered with excrement in the floors with urine and what these three women did first of all was that they asked for a hot water and disinfectant and they washed out the cells of the women first before their own then they gave them their own clothes this unit the prison officers went in in fours in full body armor because it was so violent and the authorities put three sunday school teachers i still can't quite get over it i i play just the experience in my mind so often for the reason i want to talk to right now but uh three or four weeks into their incarceration a prison officer came to um one of uh the prisoners dr rebecca and he said i've got chronic stomach i i can't afford to go to a doctor you're a doctor would you please tell me what to do and she said i'm not a doctor i'm disbarred but you're presenting these symptoms if you go to the chemist and get this medication um you will be healed and i i don't know how you would feel about people who were putting you in prison and oppressing you whether you would want to do an expression of love but she did and before she knew where we were where she was over the next couple of months or so she was treating a significant number of the prison guards i find this astonishing at the end of the third month the prison superintendent asked to see the three women and he said to them i was told that you were subversives and my role was to break you and to break you in such a way that you would never speak about jesus christ again you have been a blessing to this prison and i am profoundly grateful and what i would like to do for you is to give you protection on a sunday and for your church to come to the prison and we will protect you whilst you worship the lord your god and i give you permission to exercise your ministry in this prison gavin don't you think that's a remarkable story that's absolutely astonishing it is it's really quite remarkable i've preached in that church and even more amazing is that in the little corner where 40 or 50 people came for a number of years of their incarceration there was hundreds of arms hanging out of the prison cells and they were listening to the worship of god's people and they were listening to the preaching of god's people and the celebration and they were looking upon jesus walking amongst them now fast forward thousands upon thousands of letters were sent to the indonesian authorities pleading for these innocents to be set free and a couple of years into their incarceration they were freed and i danced around my desk that day i think everybody knows that i'm a quiet subdued irishman but on the day of their release i danced around my desk but gavin on the friday when they were released they came back to prison on the monday to disciple the 49 prisoners that that led to jesus christ during their couple of years of incarceration now the the principle that i'm trying to impart i hope reasonably coherently tonight is that the gospel can be preached by words absolutely but the gospel can also be preached by acts of love and mercy and kindness and forgiveness and i see this again and again around the world how people brothers and sisters persecuted brothers and sisters have forgiven those who have persecuted them and poured generosity and the love of god upon those who have persecuted them and as ron said earlier uh the power of that community the power of that love uh the beauty of those acts of evangelism uh brought people into a transformative encounter with our lord jesus christ that's tremendous stuff eddie thank you for sharing that we're going to go over to some of the questions that have come in and been voted for i see that the q a board is lively moving around with people voting before we go over there i just want to remind you that at the end of this webinar please could you go over to open doors uk.org and have a look at some of the things that they're doing a tremendous ministry doing just remarkable work around the world when you go over to open doors uk.org there's the the picture there there their website you will find people to pray for people who are suffering for christ tonight invite you to go over to that website find someone a story or a country where there is real suffering tonight and to pray there are practical things you can do to support and to help you can find out there and you can give financially to support their wonderful work and also find out how to get a speaker to come to your church and share some of what you've heard tonight with your whole church community my family we are open door supporters it's one of the best things we do as a as a family and i'm very proud to wear this uh cross which has been carved by an escapee from the concentration camps in north korea it says pray for north korea and every time i feel that it reminds me to pray for north korea please would you consider coming over and have a look at open doors and this webinar has been brought to you this evening by solas in combination with open doors and so us we're working here in the uk doing evangelism and equipping the church to be informed confident and committed to sharing christ even from where we are at the cultural margins increasingly and we do evangelism in coffee shops restaurants campuses even churches sometimes and online and doing extensive training work with all kinds of churches and missions and we too need your prayer and support to do what we're doing faithfully holding out the word of life up and down the uk if you want to find out about more about what we're doing including these webinars come across to solas hyphen cpc.org and there's a couple of things we'd love you to do there one is to sign up for our prayer letter it's down at the bottom of the screen there's so called in yellow if you sign up there we'll send you places and times when we're sharing the gospel sometimes our evangelists are working with real hostile audiences and we need your prayer you can sign up there and of course we can only operate because of faithful supporters who give financially to our ministry as well if you can support us for as little as three pounds a month we would love to send you a free copy of our director andy mannister's brilliant new book called do christians and muslims worship the same god so please at the end of the webinar come across and have a look at the solas website and the open doors website where you can plug directly into praying for and helping our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world right it's time for the q a eddie and ron are you ready to deal with some of these questions that come in there's been a whole host of some really quite excellent questions eddie i wonder if i could start with you with the first question that's been voted up to the top of our board this evening and it's a practical one i think you may have touched on this already it says is it better to pray for one troubled country really intensely or to pray a little bit for all of them i think the answer is yes um i i i think i alluded to it a little bit earlier i think our father in heaven knows how we are made life circumstances association and i think it's good that as we expose ourselves to the reality of the wonderful information that's in the world watch list that we simply behave in a child-like way and say father is there a nation here that you particularly would want to guide me as your child uh and how to pray about this give me an appetite for this um i as a child grew up with with an indian friend um sunil and that childhood uh connection has empowered me greatly and being regular in my prayers for india and all that is going on in that situation right now but as i also alluded i pray very very very regularly for north korea i think you know when we fall in love with the father this world of his is so beautiful and magnificent and diverse and there are issues in their times where we will move our prayers in one way and another depending upon a crisis or a an issue um i think it's a lovely question but your kingdom come your will be done on earth is a global prayer that the lord jesus taught us so pray for the world ask for specificity about which nation the lord would have you pray for but the great thing is to develop a heart that is tender towards the things that breaks the heart of god so unassumingly the answer is yes i hope that was nice yes absolutely that's great ron there's a question for you that's been voted to the top of the list while while we've been speaking here doug writes this is your research reliable how do you know that you aren't being played by people trying to make their governments unpopular in the west seems a fair question ron it's the we try to build in a a system of reliability so for example what we do is we have three sources for every country we have um a centralized group of experts that are always tracking what is going on in the country then we every year we take a questionnaire to key church leaders and key on people who are are able to understand what is going on inside the country then we also take that questionnaire as well to a group of what we call external experts people that that will know maybe about government policy maybe things that say the average pastor would not and we put those three sources together and uh and then we actually submit that process and and the points that we we give for each country to an independent auditor it's the international institute of religious freedom it's a group of academics that study this and they pick but at random certain countries to make sure that they are convinced that our calculations are well based so that's our system um i think that what is happening too is that the way as the world watch list gets more prominent more and more governments are protesting it um but as i say that's not a bad thing because then they're reading it they're aware of it and if they're reacting to it it's maybe um embarrassing them and it that's part of the advocacy process you know you've got to bring the facts to light and then you have to be you know that's your basis because in open doors we're very concerned that we must never exaggerate these stories we must get it right because you don't need to exaggerate and and so um we'll get the facts right and that's the basis of of our appeal so i think our system is is robust enough um but you've always got to be smart and shrewd because people are always trying to any system somebody's trying to game it you know that that's the way the way it works yep absolutely okay um eddie back to you on this one uh you and hector has just sent in a question thank you euan for sending that and it's been voted right up the list while we've been speaking beyond prayer and financial giving what can we do to effect change for our brothers and sisters eddie well i i guess in part um ron has already begun to press into that i was just reflecting on the publication of this piece of work it's called the purple book and what is powerful about it is that it's developed exclusively for academics thinkers journalists those that are trying to reflect on the persecution of christians around the world and i i think it's a very powerful piece of intervention by open doors recognizing that opinion formers and thinkers need help it helped to think about religion in the first place but they also need the facts at their fingertips to be able to um advocate on behalf of the persecuted church so let me just talk for a moment about advocacy and the power of advocacy um i dreamed a dream years ago whereby the stories of the persecuted church would be debated on the floors of our parliament and that our policy makers would be impacted uh to be able to call to book those who flagrantly abuse the human rights of individuals people of faith um the un declaration on human rights gives an indication of the fact that no one should be intimidated for their religious faith and they can choose their faith as they so wish um and so what i'm thrilled about now is that when the world watch list was uh presented over the last couple of years well over uh a hundred mps were involved in that now why were they involved in that it's not because they as individuals thought that this was a worthy cause to become interested in but their local constituents had written to their mps and said we want you to be there we want you to be advised we want you to be informed we want you to speak up about the things that i'm concerned about so alongside praying and giving using the blessing of a democratic society to be able to point direction to signpost our members of parliament issues where the church is persecuted is a is a very very significant tool um i think also that in times past one of the powerful things that open doors was able to facilitate was to go and to meet christians who are persecuted and hear the story for themselves so that you could become an advocate for them i guess a little unspoken prayer out of tonight's webinars that i hope that those that are listening may have a sense that to be able to go to their church leaders and say when was the last time we prayed for the persecuted church can this become a regular part of our discipline this is advocacy with perhaps with a small a i don't want to and estimate the power of prayer and giving please don't discount that that is critical to the transformation that can be brought uh to the lives of persecuted christians but to raise your voice to those in politics to raise your voice in your church communities with the full confidence i'm praying for a day when every christian in the united kingdom and ireland will be on their knees in prayer and on their feet in action for their brothers and sisters because they are so profoundly moved by the issues that they're contending with so um apologies for the passion i thought i hope that is being um shared down this webinar but um let's uh let's apologize for passion yeah no need to apologize for passion i think you are irish what if there's anything else you'd like to add to this because someone asked a question which has been voted to the very top which kind of asks a similar question it says it's an anonymous one is there any lobbying work that we can do from where we are that has an impact on government policies or laws in these countries or the persecuted church i mean it is touched on some of that but is there anything we need to say further about advocacy and lobbying that we could get involved with well yes i mean you if you have good ideas and you know who to go to and this is where you often need to to link in with people who may be more expert maybe more connected organizations that may have more clout it's important not to try this on one's own because the essence of effective advocacy is coalition building but i think that you know i would really push into this if you look at say northern nigeria i think it's amazing that there are so many people in the regime in nigeria who look the other way when there are massacres of christians and no one even seems to say they should experience sanctions these are the very people that come to london and buy apartments in kensington and leave them empty why aren't we doing something about that that's great thank you for adding and building on from that i want to just scroll down through the list two to one that's not quite so popular but covers the other side about our our response here this is a question from ruby uh and eddie i want one if you'd like to comment on this ruby says why is the western church so insipid how can i be bolder for jesus and less of a coward it's a brilliant question so i've elevated it but what would you like to respond then thanks for elevating it ruby i think this is yeah one of the really burning questions about this issue um i've spent my whole christian life in in ministry and enabling and empowering people to share their faith has got to be one of the hardest tasks but um what i have found personally if i can just attest to myself is that approximating myself to the persecuted church reading their stories of sacrifice reading remarkable stories of the visitation of the holy spirit into people in dreams and jesus appearing to people in dreams hearing of the power of god working in the persecuted church has has actually inspired me as it has set my faith on fire if the lord can do it for my brothers and sisters then please bring it to me too i find it impossible now to not miss an opportunity to speak for jesus um walking my dog the other night get up go and buy a dog ruby it's the greatest way to get conversations with people that i've never met in my entire life and jesus enters into my dog walking because i'm saying to people i want to pray for you or how's life it's there is something beautiful that there's a fragrance that is upon the persecuted church that i find so exquisitely powerful sir ruby um get involved with open doors read the magazine be inspired by these stories and be willing to be willing even though the church is on the margins of our society in this culture there is a place for us to be courageous not even i don't know that it is a courage i think it just takes the first step to say lord today give me an opportunity to speak for you i think there are lots of armchair generals that rub their hands and bemoan the the fact that it's happening in the persecuted church and it's not happening here ruby it just takes somebody like you um tomorrow to speak for jesus uh and i pray that for everyone that's listening into this call tonight um it is a part of our job description if i may put it that way uh to go into all of the world to preach the gospel and to make disciples for jesus ruby i'll be praying for you thank you for that eddie okay the next question this one is anonymous uh ron someone said i want to help but i don't have much time what's what's the one thing i can do if you don't have much time remember just remember the persecuted and everything will flow from that and then you stay open and watch what god does as you remember remembering will usually drive you to prayer prayer will usually bring an interaction a burden and then you follow up on that burden and the ultimate relationship i think we can have with the persecuted is to ultimately listen to their insights and receive them for our sake persecuted christian will always say are you threatening evil are you a threat to evil in your neighborhood in your nation because persecution is an honor that you have to deserve and so you know i always make a distinction sometimes between helping the victim and shaking the system a wonderful ministry that i support in a certain city and they help prostitutes and they give them a warm meal and and this kind of thing they help them but they but everything and everybody was fine with that they said well that's great you know wonderful even the council you know gave them money for it but then they said but let's try to stop the system that is pushing these women out onto the street that's when the trouble began because then you had to go to the pimps and then you got into trouble and a persecuted christian will always say this is good trouble this is beautiful dropping because you're a threat to evil and if evil bites back then you know your witness is alive and well thank you for that time is against us eddie we've got another question here that's racing up the up the panel here lots of votes mark has asked what is the most powerful lesson that you have learned from the persecuted church and you've got two minutes eddie oh my back into the back into the indramayo state penitentiary rebecca walking me through the corridors said do you see the bars and the chains and the locks and the gun emplacements i said yes i did i do dear rebecca i do this is an intimidating place she said do you know proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6. i said yes rebecca yes i do trust in the lord with all your heart don't lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths she said to me brother eddie this is my university of trust every beat of my heart i've got to put my trust in the lord when i go to bed at night with empty arms for my husband and my children should be i've got to put my trust in him she said that eddie this is a university of trust it is the hardest thing that has ever happened to me um but i am beginning to learn what it means to trust jesus with all of my heart i remind myself of that story i will never forget it but it is that sense that those that are listening tonight you know i want to invite you into this university of trust as well to embrace proverbs 3 you know we might not have all of the answers and we might have no strength at all but i want to assure you in the authority of scripture that rebecca's a piece of extraordinary insight and lessons for life um trust in the lord with all of your heart i'm still trying to do that anything else you'd like to add on that ron you're we're kind of nearly out of time but one what's the most important thing you've learned from the president i would say pay any price to build yourself a cell what persecuted christians often happen is they've been pushed into a cell and they found that to be marvelous because all distraction is pushed away and all they have to do is concentrate on receiving the love of christ they were pushed into the cell i think we in the west have to build ourselves one and where the focus is just receiving the love of christ maybe it's looking at the bible and feeling the smile of god that's not easy to do but that's the power of it all it's getting making space so that we can receive the love of christ because too often we're running through the garden you know the world is a pleasure garden as well as a as a battleground we're too busy running through the garden serving god and we're not walking in the garden enjoying god that really is a lovely note on what to draw this q a to an end thank you so much to everybody that's sent in their questions as ever we didn't get through half of them and we could have carried on for a long time we do try and keep these strictly to the hour can i remind you when we're done please really consider visiting solas hyphen cpc.org and finding out the evangelism work that we're doing here in the uk and then going across to opendoorsuk.org and finding more about how you can serve and be a blessing to people in the persecuted church and support either of those organizations if you can now the the two resources that were mentioned during the course of this evening are top 50 and dangerous faith there are two resources for open doors that are well worth getting hold of these webinars are recorded so if you need to capture that qr code that's on the screen if you're on youtube you can rewind and pause it and capture that qr code which will take you straight through to where you can get hold of those really important resources and that just really means that i need to close by saying thank you thank you so much to eddie and to ron from open doors for joining us this evening bringing all your passion and your knowledge and your wisdom to bear on this most important and pressing of subjects this evening it has been a blessing to us all pray that what you've shared will sort of sit on our hearts for a long time to come i want to thank you to david hartnett our brilliant producer who works behind the scenes to make all the it happen thank you again david and thank you too for watching there'd be no point doing these things if you weren't tuning in and watching and joining in adding your questions and voting on the q a so thank you for joining us and may god's blessing be upon you all this evening good night and god bless

Channel: SolasCPC

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Id: 0eEPDbl2JDs

Length: 64min 35sec (3875 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021