DAVID: Every time I
encourage a believer to go to be bold in the
face of persecution, I can’t sleep for days. I lose a lot of sleep and
I cry tears. You know, tt's not an easy calling to ask people to do that,
but it’s what Jesus would do. [Music] ANNOUNCER: Jesus never promised
his followers an easy path. In fact, he told his disciples
that the world would hate them. He sent them out as
sheep among wolves. Jesus’ words came true in
the life of the apostles and they're still
coming true today in the lives of his
followers around the world. Join host Todd Nettleton as we
hear their inspiring stories and learn how we can help right now on
The Voice of the Martyrs Radio network. TODD: Welcome again to The
Voice of the Martyrs Radio. My name is Todd Nettleton. We are in the studio today
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, with David Paul. David has been working
among Urdu-speaking Muslims in South Asia and we will
talk a little bit about it. I think instantly we
think of Pakistan, but there are Urdu-speaking
Muslims in other countries around there as well. David, welcome to The Voice
of the Martyrs Radio. DAVID: It's wonderful to
be here. Thank you, Todd. TODD: As we start out let’s
go back to the very beginning. How did God call you? People will know now from
your accent that you're not an Urdu-speaking Muslim
background believer. DAVID: That’s right. TODD: How did God call
you out of the US to go into international
cross-cultural ministry? DAVID: Well, as a new believer about
a year and a half into my faith I had the chance to go to
Central Turkey sharing the gospel for about two months and just
fell in love with Muslim peoples and I thought man, this is
where I want to invest my life, and coming back from
that I did everything that I could to spend
time with Muslims. I would go to mosques and
Muslim student groups and Muslim grocery stores and build friends
with Muslims wherever I could and just really felt a
calling in my heart that God wanted me to
go to Muslim people. So when my wife and I
got married, we thought that was the trajectory
we were going on and we thought we would
go to the Middle East because that's where
Muslims are, right? And during that time God just kept bringing things onto our
path about the Muslims of South Asia and just how many Muslims
there are in South Asia, places like Bangladesh and Pakistan, as you
mentioned, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives,
these places that have such large
Muslim populations. I was just hearing that very few people
were going to those places and so my wife and I were just praying, and we were honestly on a
vision trip in the Middle East, and we joked that we were called
to the Muslims of South Asia during that vision trip
to the Middle East. Then we moved to South Asia without
ever having visited South Asia. TODD: Wow! DAVID: So that was
a great joy for us, and it's worked out for us. People thought we were
crazy, but it's been fun. [Laughing] TODD: If you look back on
those first two or three years, what were some of the hard times or
what were some of the challenges? Because obviously you are moving
to a completely different culture; as you mentioned, you never
even had been there before. It's not like you had visited and
kind of knew the lay of the land. What were some of the
challenges and how did God minister to you or help you to
work through those sort of walls? DAVID: We honestly joined a team
that was facing challenges as a team, and so our team fell apart
our first year on the field. TODD: Oh wow! DAVID: And so, we were left with
not quite without any supervision, but pretty close to no
supervision as new field workers and we had to work through
just being self-starters. And we were self-starters,
we were ready to do that but then also language learning. Language learning is hard, and trying to press forward to
get to the point that we could communicate the gospel and
begin to disciple new believers and I think it took me eighteen months or
something before I could really share the
gospel well and lead, like teach the Bible
decently in the language. Just a lot of
diligence, a lot of work and even now when we have new
people join our work, I tell them, they get to a certain
language proficiency, and I say, well, it’s
not really enough. We want to get
people to the point that they can teach
the Book of Hebrews in Urdu over the phone with a
new Muslim-background believer. That's what I tell them. That’s
the level we want you to get to. But getting to that
point in the language is hard and we're always still pushing
forward; in fact, I still am today. TODD: Thinking of our
listeners now who you know they, maybe they support missionaries, maybe they have friends who are
missionaries that are in that stage. DAVID: Yeah. TODD: How do we pray
for them and how do we even from this side of the ocean encourage them and help keep
them motivated to go forward? DAVID: So, I think one
important thing that supporters need to remember is that it usually takes a
period of time on the field before people hit their
highest level of fruitfulness. I think the same thing
happens in local churches. Once a pastor has been in a local
church for about seven or eight years it's like they begin to jive with that
church and begin moving it forward. It's the same thing
with missionaries. If they can press forward in the
language and the culture in a place for 7-8 years, if
they can get to that point, they usually see,
they get into the best groove that they
have ever gotten into. The reality is that most
missionaries don’t make it that long and so we need to continue to help
encourage missionaries from afar. There's a place that we
are trying to get you to and helping them. I heard a statement; I think it was from a football
coach who said something like that his job was to get people
to do the things that they hated to accomplish the things that
they have always wanted to do. And I think that is what
churches need to encourage missionaries to do. You have to press
forward in language, you have to just push into the
Lord, you have to push forward and helping people realize that there's
a fog that they need to get through and they will get through to the
other side if they push forward, but it's not easy. TODD: Wow! So, I hope that encourages you as you
are listening as you think about it. Man, maybe you have missionary friends; you want to send
them a text message. Just right even at this
moment and say, hey, we're praying for you. We're praying for
you to press forward; we're praying for you
in language acquisition. We're talking this week on Voice of
the Martyrs Radio with David Paul. He is working among Urdu-speaking
Muslims in South Asia. David, I want to talk a little
bit about Urdu speakers. You mentioned India, and what is it like for an
Urdu speaker in India because obviously it's a majority
Hindu country and yet they are Muslim. It's majority Hindu-speaking
country and yet they speak Urdu. Do they have like a
recognized place in society or are they kind of picked on even
whether they're a believer or not? DAVID: So Urdu is one of the
national languages of India. So, it is a well-known language
in different places in India. It's actually a well-known
language in Nepal as well. If you go to the
southern part of Nepal, an area that they call the Terai
that's right along the Indian border, you can get by
another Nepali or Urdu in many of those
villages in that place. And honestly if you go to a place
like the United Arab Emirates or even to Saudi Arabia or places like
that and you begin passing through, you realize that most of the
workers aren’t speaking Arabic; they're speaking Urdu. So, I have had a number of times
that I have passed through a place like Dubai, for example, and I'll be in a taxi and the two men will be speaking to
each other in the language and I'll just jump in
and they're surprised. They're thinking what is the white
guy doing speaking our language? TODD: You also know if
they're talking about you. DAVID: Yes. I have surprised
several people that way, yeah. TODD: That’s a
fun trick to play. DAVID: It is. TODD: In an Urdu culture,
in an Urdu context, whether it be India or Pakistan
or some of these other countries... DAVID: Yeah. TODD: ...what role
does religion play and what happens to me as
an Urdu-speaking Muslim if I say hey, I had a dream last
night and I'm a follower of Jesus now? What is likely to happen to me? DAVID: Man, there's a lot of
different things that could happen. We think that
there's always like a standard response that
everyone's going to make. Sometimes I have actually seen
some Muslim families. I think of I'll just say this
one, Mohammed S. Everybody is Mohammed something. Mohammed S. was a young, young man I got to lead to
the Lord several years ago and when his family heard
that he was following Jesus when he went and told them, they said, “We don’t care
what you do with religion. Just live your own life.” And that's a strange response. We've had other people who've
gone and told their families, and their response
has been stronger, something like one of my closest
friends we'll call Mohammed A, his father stood
up and told him, “You're no longer my son. You're no longer part of our family,”
and cast him out of the family. And then we've had other
people who have been beaten for making those
sorts of statements. TODD: Is there a
clue ahead of time of how their family is going to respond
or is it kind of sort of random? DAVID: So, when we talk about
South Asian Islam, one of the rubrics that I like to use is what
we call “The Muslim Triangle.” And I think of South
Asian Islam as being formed around three
types of Islam that are impacting
the average Muslim. And one pole of that
is the Orthodox Muslim who believes that the
Quran is true and is just seeking to follow
the Quran and the Hadith. Another side is
the secular Muslim who is like yeah, yeah we are Muslim
but the most important thing is to get a good education so we can get
a good job so we can have a nice life. And a third pole is folk Islam that's more focused
on esoteric rituals and how to go through
saints to have our prayers heard and
how to get blessings, kind of like a prosperity
Islam, so to speak. So Orthodox Islam,
secular Islam, folk Islam, so in my experience if somebody's from an Orthodox Muslim
family that's stronger in that pole, they're going to get
the most persecution. If somebody's from a
folk Muslim background, they're going to get some
persecution but not as much, and if they're from
a secular background they're going to be like
as long as you're happy. It's not quite that distinct. But that helps us understand it a lot. TODD: And it's interesting to
me because I think you could make a comparison to
Christianity the same way. DAVID: Exactly, yeah, I think so. TODD: Different points of
the triangle as far as how self-professed Christians would
believe or act in a given situation. How is the gospel spreading
among Urdu-speaking Muslims in that part of the world? Is it they have a friend
who comes to faith? Is it a dream or a vision? Is it somebody like you, an
outsider talking to them? Is it all of the above? Is there one way that is
producing more than others? Give us a look at kind of how
the gospel is spreading there. DAVID: Well, the places where
the gospel is spreading most effectively among
Muslims have been places where Muslim-background
believers have become strong in the faith. So, like this
brother Mohammed A. that I mentioned earlier; he
was kicked out of his family and after that, he became
strong in the faith, and he began reaching
back out to his family. Now much of his family
has come to Christ, even after they kicked him out
and he is being used to reach out to other Muslims around him. That's probably the
most effective way, but the reality is that in most
places and a place like South Asia, we don’t have Muslim-background
believers who are ready to do that. So, we often have to take a
step back and we end up training large numbers of local believers in how
to reach out to their Muslim neighbors. And one of the things that we
have seen a lot of fruitfulness with in South Asia is
going and training in local fellowships of local, like
usually people who have come from a Hindu background to Christ and training them to go
reach out to their Muslim neighbors. But one of the blocks
we hit with that is that the Muslims begin reading the
Bible, they begin asking questions, but they're not ready to repent
and believe because they say there's kind of a feeling that
you don’t understand our culture; you don’t understand
where we're coming from. And so they often just get to that
place of being a seeker and stop. And they might have one foot in
Islam and one foot in Christ and trying to decide where they fit. TODD: Is that a matter
of counting the cost, like I don’t want to make
this commitment because of what it's going to cost me, or is it a matter of, you know, I like to keep all my
options open or some of all of that? DAVID: So, part of it is this; they
don’t know what they are jumping into. They know that to follow Jesus means to leave
the Uma of Islam, leave the community of Islam and often that means that they will
lose their job or their household. They might lose their
wife or their parents. They know there's going
to be a great cost, but they're not sure if there is
a community ready to receive them. I have had Muslim men who have
told me this, for example. “If you'll arrange a Christian
wife, I'll take baptism.” [Laughing] And part of what they
are saying is this. If you're ready to make a
place for me to come, I'll jump. So, one of the tricks that we
have found for overcoming this has been bringing more mature Muslim
background believers like guys like Mohammed A. or Mohammed S. along and introducing them
to these Muslim seekers who have learned through
Hindu-background believers having them share their testimony
in that context because then the Muslim seekers say, “Oh, these
people are from our community.” TODD: Right. DAVID: “These people understand.
These people will be family to me.” And when they hear
those testimonies, and they have those interactions, then they're ready
to count the cost because they're not
the first to do it. TODD: We're talking today on Voice
of the Martyrs Radio with David Paul. He is working among Urdu-speaking
Muslims in South Asia. David, many of our listeners
have a Muslim friend, a fellow student, a
co-worker, a neighbor; they would love to have a spiritual
conversation with that person, but they're intimidated. You know, "I don’t know
enough about Islam; I don’t know all the answers to the
questions they might possibly ask." Give us some advice. As we interact with Muslims
right here in the US, in Australia, in
wherever we're listening, as we want to have those
spiritual conversations, just kind of coach us a little bit. DAVID: So to begin, let’s
talk about a resource that somebody could
read to learn more. I think that the best
resource, and I love it because it is an Urdu-speaking
Muslim who came to Christ, is Nabeel Qureshi’s book
“Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.” Just a great story that
weaves the story of a Muslim coming to Christ along with a lot of apologetics
material and understanding Islam. It's also a great book
that you could give to a Muslim friend who
showed some interest. That book will help inform you, but it probably won’t tell you how
to talk to a Muslim about Christ. The advice that I would usually give
to somebody in the West is this, is two things: one is take
advantage of holidays, Christmas, Easter,
those sorts of things. And for a lot of Muslims, it's
not unusual for them to think, oh, a Christian is going to be really happy
about their religion around Christmas. I have often given Bibles away or
given copies of the JESUS film away as Christmas gifts along with a treat
or something like that or even said, “Hey, I just want to celebrate my
holiday by gifting this to you,” and it opens a door and that might
open a door of conversation. A second way, and this is
even simpler than that, is to ask a lot of questions, is to say, “Hey, I
understand you are a Muslim. Could I buy you lunch
sometime, or could we have coffee and I would just like to hear
more about you and your background.” And spend a bunch of time just asking
questions and being a genuine learner about what their experience is
religiously and what they believe, and then it's pretty natural
if you are inquisitive and open and kind about that that you will then have an opportunity
to share your perspectives and faith. And once that happens, you're
in a place of more openness and friendship with
that person. As long as you don’t say anything
offensive about Islam, you can share pretty openly: "Well, this is what I believe. Thank you for sharing
what you believe." And then you can get into
dialogue with that person. TODD: And typically, that's not going to be a
hostile dialogue at all. It's going to be very friendly. DAVID: I tend not to enter
hostile dialogues with Muslims if I can avoid it because I haven’t found
that hostile dialogues have been convincing for anyone. I follow more of a tact that I just like to make a lot of Jesus.
I like to share my testimony: this is what Jesus
did in my life, this is how great Jesus is. And I just lift him up and if that's interesting to them,
they'll ask more questions. TODD: We talked about, David,
the early days of your gospel work overseas and
some of the challenges then. DAVID: Yeah. TODD: What are your
challenges today? DAVID: Okay, so the biggest challenges
that we are facing right now is needing to develop more and
better Muslim-background leaders. So, for example, like we have some
places where we are seeing dozens or maybe a few hundred Muslims
come to Christ and take baptism and starting to form
into fledging churches. But one of the challenges is this might be a church of
five or ten or fifteen people but there's nobody in it who
knows the Word very well. There's nobody in it
who's a skilled teacher, and we're not
threatened by that. We don’t see that as a
bad thing; it's just a a stage in progress, and one of the biggest
problems we have right now is how are we going to
train enough and decent Muslim Urdu-speaking
Bible teachers who can, who can sufficiently
lead those churches and take things
to the next level? How are we going to develop Muslim
background leaders who are going to keep taking things
to the next level? And it's been challenging, and the biggest challenge
with it is this, is that many Urdu-speaking Muslims
don’t trust each other because they're wondering if
the other guy might be a Judas. And so, it's not as if we can
just bring a lot of them together and train them together; we have to do a lot
of smaller meetings. It might be three guys
getting trained together instead of training
twenty guys together. And that lowers our efficiency. TODD: It’s very labor intensive. DAVID: Yes. TODD: It's interesting
as you say that, and I’ve had guests from many other
hostile and restricted nations, and that is almost
always one of their great prayer needs and challenges is how
are we going to raise up more leaders? How are we going to raise up more
leaders; how are we going to do that? So, I would encourage our listeners
as you are praying this week, please pray for
Urdu-speaking believers and for God to raise up
church leaders among them. David, are there other
ways that we can pray for the work in South Asia, and you know, I think of
new believers who are in that stage of saying okay, who
am I going to tell about this? What are some other
ways that we can pray? DAVID: I would say the
biggest need is just that the the Muslim-background believers
just be strengthened in the Word and Christ and that leaders
would emerge from them, is that God would
just supernaturally call some people into
ministry and that they would go through the grind of what's
necessary to be formed by Christ to be able to teach his
Word well and to lead others. That’s probably
the biggest need. Along with that, persecution, like we have so many
stories of persecution. I don’t think that
almost no believer, almost no Urdu-speaking
Muslim comes to Christ without a persecution story. And there's always danger that
the persecution will just knock the wind out of enough
of the believers that things will regress
and go backwards; just praying that God
will give the grace that's necessary to believers
to continue to walk through that. TODD: Amen. Are there some stories
that you can share of what what that persecution
has looked like and what it has cost our brothers
and sisters there? DAVID: I mean, there is a
ton of stories going on. So, I remember one good friend. I don’t want to use any names, but one friend, he was
leading a meeting of twenty or twenty-five of his disciples and the Muslim-background
leader with a group of his disciples and a group of
Hindus in the area were threatened by these
Muslims gathering together. They did not know
what they were doing, so a group of about a hundred
or a hundred and fifty Hindus stormed that facility, took it over and got the police there
and the police didn’t arrest the mob. They arrested the Muslim
background believers who were the target of the mob and one of those guys
was, I don’t know, he was probably in police custody for a
week or ten days or something like that until an extortion was provided. The police didn’t press charges
or do anything proper like that, but the only way that he was going
to be fined was giving an extortion. Another friend... TODD: Let me dig into that. Because it is interesting
to me those were Hindus attacking; they thought they were
attacking Muslims. DAVID: Yes. TODD: But they were actually
attacking Christians. DAVID: Right. TODD: So that’s not even your family
or your community turning against you, that’s a completely outside force
coming and causing persecution. DAVID: Something that Westerners don’t
realize right now is the strength that a lot of Hindus are
gathering in South Asia, but there is a strong impulse
among Hindu nationalists that they want to get rid of anyone
who's a Muslim or a Christian. That's created a lot of
persecution of Muslims by Hindus. And in fact, there are
three countries in the world where that I think that
Muslims are most persecuted. That is China, India, and Burma. And it's interesting that they
are all right next to each other. TODD: Yeah. Wow! Okay, sorry to
interrupt that story. Tell another story about
what persecution looks like. DAVID: A Muslim-background guy
who has been making disciples for years has a couple
of house churches. The local Muslim religious
leaders became threatened by that, so they went to the police, and
he lives in Muslim-majority area. So, there’s not Hindus in that area
that would persecute him, but they asked the police
to begin harassing him. So the police would
begin calling him into the police station,
and they would beat him, and he had days that he was
beaten so badly by the police that he would have to go home and lay
in bed for two or three days to recover before he was able
to begin his ministry, and then he knew that he
would have to go back to the police the following
week on the same day. So, he knew that
he would be beaten, have a few days of recovery, a few
days of ministry, another beating. And I remember talking to him, and he
is a dear friend, and he was saying, “I don’t know how many, I don’t know
how long my body can sustain this. They say they'll stop if
I stop doing the ministry. What do I do?” And... and he was struggling
because at that time, he had a bunch of Muslim seekers
who were ready to take baptism, but he was afraid to baptize them
because he knew that that would cause the persecution to intensify. And he walked through that; thankfully, that persecution
ended after some time, but that was a very
difficult time. He and I were only able to
meet on the phone for a while because he couldn’t be
seen with a Westerner and we would meet in
Bible study every week and I was trying to counsel him
from the Word every week as the the Westerner with an easy life, trying to counsel a
local believer to stand firm in Christ in the
face of persecution. Those were very difficult
Bible studies to lead. TODD: How do you
process that as a, as putting someone else in harm’s way
and encouraging them to stay there? DAVID: So, I process it
through the lens of Jesus. So early in my time on the field, I had an experience in the Word where I
was reading through Matthew chapter 10 where Jesus tells his disciples, “I send you as lambs in
the midst of wolves.” And I realized as I read that that Jesus sent the people he
cared about most in the world as lambs in the midst of
wolves, and as I was just thinking about what that meant
about the character of Jesus and his belief in the
mission and what he what he was willing to do for it, not
just willing to give up his own life, but willing to give up the
lives of his best friends, I felt the Holy Spirit was just
whispering into my heart that he was calling me to
do the same thing and that I would be called to encourage my best friends to
go as lambs in the midst of wolves and that as Jesus encouraged
some of his closest friends to go to death, that I would
probably be in the same place. And so, when I stand
in the places like that, I remember that Bible
study, but then honestly, every time I encourage
a believer to go to be bold in the
face of persecution, I can’t sleep for days. I lose a lot of sleep
and I cry tears; you know, it's not
an easy calling to ask people to do that, but
it's what Jesus would do. TODD: Amen. We've been talking this week on Voice
of the Martyrs Radio with David Paul. He is working among Urdu-speaking
Muslims in South Asia. As always, if you are
just now joining us, you can hear this whole
conversation at vomradio.net. You can also find Voice of the Martyrs
Radio wherever you listen to podcasts. David, thank you for
sharing with us this week. Thank you for opening our
eyes and helping us pray for our family
members in South Asia. DAVID: Amen. Thank you, Todd;
it’s a pleasure to be here today. TODD: Well, it has
been great to have you. I hope that you will be
back with us next week. We're going to have a
very powerful conversation with a gospel worker who suffered greatly for
his work, for his ministry and was actually taken hostage
and held hostage for years. We're going to hear
that conversation. I'll warn you ahead of time, it’s
going to be a hard conversation, but I think you're going to be
blessed and encouraged as well and equipped to pray, equipped to pray for God’s
work in Western Africa and for brothers and sisters
who right now are in that place of suffering and in that
place of terrible hardship. Be back with us
next week right here on The Voice of the
Martyrs Radio network.
