Opposition

The group Open Doors USA figures that in 2023, 360 million Christians lived in countries where persecution was “significant.” Roughly 5,600 Christians were murdered, more than 6,000 were detained or imprisoned, and another 4,000-plus were kidnapped. In addition, more than 5,000 churches and other religious facilities were destroyed.

American Christians talk of persecution, but that is what real persecution looks like. Every year Open Doors USA releases its World Watch report of the 50 states most likely to punish Christians for their faith. Last year 11 nations were guilty of “extreme persecution.”

Afghanistan took over the top spot from North Korea in 2024. Open Doors explains that it long was “impossible to live openly as a Christian in Afghanistan. Leaving Islam is considered shameful, and Christian converts face dire consequences if their new faith is discovered. Either they have to flee the country or they will be killed.”

Unfortunately, the August 14, 2023 collapse of the U.S.-backed Kabul government made the situation immeasurably worse. According to Open Doors: “Christian persecution is extreme in all spheres of public and private life. The risk of discovery has only increased, since the Taliban controls every aspect of government—including paperwork from international troops that may help identify Christians.”

No. 2 on the list of the worst persecutors was North Korea, usually in the news for its nuclear weapons program and missile launches. Christianity was strong in Korea before the Soviet occupation after World War II of what became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Kim dynasty—Kim Jong-un represents the third generation—then created a personality cult that treats its members as semi-divine. Consequently, the North views Christianity, which claims a higher loyalty, as particularly threatening.

According to Open Doors, another 48 countries are guilty of “very high persecution.” Christianity is the most persecuted faith, but most religions face persecution somewhere, and some religious adherents, such as Jews, Baha’is, and Ahmadis, are targeted with special virulence.

For some governments, persecuting Christians is the default mode. Matthew Luxmoore reports that Evangelical churches are being targeted by Moscow in Russian-held cities in Ukraine. In occupied Ukraine, some evangelical churches continue to operate after pledging fealty to the Russian authorities.

Others, such as Melitopol’s Church of God’s Grace and parishes in the villages surrounding Melitopol, continue to meet in secret at followers’ houses, scrambling to hide their Bibles and their instruments as soon as they hear a dog bark or a gate creak open. One evangelical minister who now leads clandestine prayer services at his home said: “We have gone underground.”

Underground services have become a necessity because of incidents like this in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Moments after the band struck up a song of praise at a Christian church in a Russian-held city, Russian soldiers stormed in wearing full tactical gear. One of them mounted the stage and told the congregation to prepare their documents for inspection.

In Iran, Anooshavan Avedian, an Iranian Armenian pastor, started the 10-year prison sentence he received last year for “propaganda contrary to and disturbing to the holy religion of Islam.”

Avedian was arrested while leading a worship service in a Tehran home in 2020. The Assemblies of God meeting place was shut down 10 years ago for holding services in Farsi. Iranian security forces have arrested thousands of Christians in the past few years.

Editor’s Note: Worldwide persecution of Christians is rising. In a 2024 listing of the top countries which persecute Christians, Iran is #9. The complete 2024 top 10 list is: North Korea (No. 1), Somalia (No. 2), Libya (No. 3), Eritrea (No. 4), Yemen (No. 5), Nigeria (No. 6), Pakistan (No. 7), Sudan (No. 8), Iran (No. 9), and Afghanistan (No. 10).

You can view the full report here.

Almost 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2023. Almost 4,000 were abducted. Nearly 15,000 churches were attacked or closed. And more than 295,000 Christians were forcibly displaced from their homes because of their faith.

The latest annual accounting from Open Doors ranks the top 50 countries where it is most dangerous and difficult to be a Christian. Nigeria joined China, India, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia as the countries driving the significant increase in attacks on churches.

Overall, 365 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination. That’s 1 in 7 Christians worldwide, including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 16 in Latin America.

And for only the fourth time in three decades of tracking, all 50 nations scored high enough to register “very high” persecution levels. Syria and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, entered the tier of “extreme” persecution.

When the list was first issued in 1993, only 40 countries scored sufficiently high to warrant tracking. This year, 78 countries qualified.

North Korea ranked No. 1, as it has every year except for 2022 when Afghanistan briefly displaced it. The rest of the top 10: Somalia (No. 2), Libya (No. 3), Eritrea (No. 4), Yemen (No. 5), Nigeria (No. 6), Pakistan (No. 7), Sudan (No. 8), Iran (No. 9), and Afghanistan (No. 10).

The deadliest country for Christians was Nigeria, with more than 4,100 Christians killed for their faith—82 percent of the global tally.

Editor’s Note: You can view the full report here.

As part of a push to "sinicize" religion (to make it Chinese in character), the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a 10-year project to rewrite the Bible and other religious texts. In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously confronts the accusers of a woman caught committing adultery, saying "let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her." The chastened accusers slink away and Jesus says to the woman, "‘Has no one condemned you?' 'No one, sir,' she replied. 'Neither do I condemn you,' said Jesus. 'Go away, and from this moment sin no more.'"

A beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy. Unless you’re a CCP official. Then it's a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends, not with mercy, but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.

The 10-year project to rewrite the Bible, Quran, and other sacred texts is all part of Xi Jinping’s quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God. At the 19th Party Congress, Chairman Xi declared "We will … insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist." In other words, Xi Jinping has no problem with the first commandment, just so long as he and the CCP are playing the role of God.

Yet, even under intense persecution, faith persists throughout China and the number of faithful grows. There are accounts of underground churches, brave clergy, and steadfast believers every bit as courageous as saints of the early-church.

The CCP wishes for there to be nothing higher than their authority, and views love for anything besides their Marxist-Leninist regime with vicious jealousy. In an interview the pastor of one Chinese church stated, "In this war … the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man." The pastor ended with an assessment "[The PRC rulers] are doomed to lose."

In his gripping memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri recounts the gripping story about why his mother became a Christian.

She grew up in a devout and prestigious Muslim family. She was a doctor and had wealth and esteem. But eventually she would forsake all of that to follow Jesus. She was forced to flee for her life from Iran, eventually settling in the U.S. as a refugee. When people ask her why, she looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her, and she says, “Because it’s true.”

Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than $7 million in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and 10 years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home. And maybe even your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God, and he wants you to believe in him, and he sent his Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or my mother is insane. There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks, because she went all the way with it. If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake. But she doesn’t think so.

She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a devout Muslim. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places where people hate refugees. And she’ll tell you––it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true … Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. The whole story hinges on it.

Religious minorities, including Pentecostals, Anabaptists, and Armenian Orthodox Christians, were accused of spreading COVID-19 or secretly profiting from lockdowns in at least 45 countries in 2020.

Pew Research Center found that the accusations, often made with little or no evidence, led to physical violence on every continent except Antarctica. The most significant increase in harassment was against Jews, who faced intimidation and threats in more countries in 2020 than they had before the pandemic.

Change In the Number of Nations with Religious Harassment:

+6% Jews

+4% Folk (Traditional religions)

+1% Christian

-1% Muslims

In June of 1992, Gloria Davey and a few friends were walking in the English countryside. When they stopped for a rest, they discovered a ruined church (from the bombings of World War I). The church had been desecrated by satanic symbols. When she told her husband Bob, a church leader at another nearby church, he was horrified at what he saw. That moment, the recently retired Bob made a decision that would dominate his life for the next 22 years. He would restore St Mary’s Church.

He said, “You couldn’t see the tower, and there was no roof, windows or floor — nothing, really. But I felt it was my duty to save it. This annoyed me intensely. I've been a Christian all my life and wasn't putting up with this on my watch.” He walked inside—the door was long gone—and that afternoon started clearing out 60 years’ worth of rubbish. For 22 years he was at the site early every day “except on days of family christenings and weddings,” says Bob, who has four children, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

He added, “I haven’t had a holiday in 22 years, but I haven’t wanted one. Who wants to retire? My advice to others: don’t play golf or buy a Spanish villa when you retire. Find yourself a ruined church to save!” Bob hasn’t just saved the church. He also uncovered a unique set of wall paintings, the earliest in Britain and some of the finest in Europe.

Bob faced stiff resistance. The satanists sent him a message: “If you continue to come here, I’ll kill you.” Bob said he wasn’t frightened. “I’ll come in an electric trolley if I have to.” And until his death in 2021 at the age of 91, that’s exactly what Bob Davey did.

Wall Street Journal writer Joseph Epstein notes that the opinion poll has been around for more than a century. They gained authority in the 1940s with the polling methods of George Gallup. Now we put way too much stock in opinion polls. Epstein writes, “So endemic is polling that it feels as if what a politician does is less important than whether the public approves or disapproves.”

President Abraham Lincoln is an example of how to seek wise counsel and input from others without letting it run your life. Epstein writes:

Early in his presidency he set aside morning office hours to receive visitors, many seeking favors or attempting to exert influence, or merely wishing to shake the hand of the nation’s leader. … These visits … offered the president the opportunity, in these days before scientific public opinion polling, to get some idea of how ordinary people felt about him and his administration. Yet Lincoln, aware as he was of public sentiment, never allowed it ultimately to alter his policies or principles, which is one of the reasons he was a great man.

For instance, some critics blasted his 272-word Gettysburg Address for being too short. But Lincoln stood by the speech, and as we all know now, it became one of the greatest political speeches of all time.

Mary, was a local drama student at a large university. The professor of her introductory acting class had asked all the students to present “something extreme” to the class. Mary decided that, as a Christian, she would write a hymn of love to Jesus and sing it.

Alice was the student presenting before her. Alice took a Bible, led the class out by a trash can on campus, and proceeded to slowly read portions of the Old Testament about commands to make war, God punishing the nations, and sending Israel into exile. She read imprecatory psalms. With each violent passage, Alice would say something like, “Who would ever believe in a God like that?” Then she would tear out the page from the Bible, burn it, and drop the page in the trashcan. It was extreme drama.

This was the warm-up for Mary. She pulled out her guitar, said a brief prayer under her breath, and sang a love song to Jesus. The class was silent and then went home. All, that is, except for Alice, who came forward with tears in her eyes. “That was beautiful. That is the God I want to know. Can you help me get to know Jesus?” And so, after a few days of Bible study and prayer, Alice gave her life to Christ.

In spite of our polarized politics, it seems that there has long been bipartisan respect for Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt (R) kept a portrait of Lincoln behind his desk and would turn to it in contemplation during difficult times. Franklin Roosevelt (D) made regular trips to the Lincoln Memorial and once wrote to a friend, “I think it is time for us Democrats to claim Lincoln as one of our own.” Both Ronald Reagan (R) and John McCain (R), accepted their party’s nomination for the presidency highlighting their allegiance to “The Party of Lincoln.” And Barack Obama (D) cited Lincoln in his 2008 victory speech, taking his oath of office on the same Bible Lincoln used.

But to claim Lincoln, one must follow his example. In a recent issue of The National Review, Cameron Hilditch offers this advice to those who wish to practice the politics of Lincoln:

To recover it, all we need to do is think seriously, deeply, and regularly about the fact that none of us are, in any intrinsic or objective way, better than the people whose politics we loathe. If you’re interested in practicing the politics of Lincoln, try to bring to mind the person in public life whose views you find the most appalling, and meditate long and hard on the fact that they are your … equal. Our sixteenth president was quite adept at this. On the night that Robert E. Lee surrendered, Lincoln, after four years of being cursed, warred against, and burned in effigy by the soldiers of the South, turned to the White House band and asked them to play “Dixie.”

An article in Men’s Health spotlighted the unlikely friendship of Colin Allred and Van Taylor. Colin Allred and Van Taylor have a lot in common. In 2020 they were both freshman lawmakers in the US House of Representatives. They’re both from Texas. They’re both used to being part of a team: Allred spent four seasons in the NFL with the Tennessee Titans; Taylor was in the Marines for nine years.

But there’s one major difference: Allred is a Democrat and Taylor a Republican. At a time when our government is intensely polarized, you’d have every reason to believe these two aren’t friends and don’t get along. But they are, and they do.

Men’s Health asked how they managed to remain friends. Here is some of their advice:

Allred: You could spend all your time focused on where you disagree with someone. You could have a good argument every day if you wanted to, but you wouldn’t get much done. And anytime you don’t have a relationship with somebody, it’s gonna be easier to demonize them.

Taylor: You want to focus on what you can work on together. You have to accept the arguments on the other side as valid when they are. At least understand what they are so that you are able to converse. Because if you don’t know anything about what the other side is talking about, you’re not going to be able to understand their perspective.

Taylor: No two people agree with each other all the time. If you don’t believe me, ask your significant other.

Allred: And there are important differences! And that’s what our elections are about. That’s democracy. That’s healthy. What isn’t healthy is when you assume that the person who disagrees with you is also a bad person. Because if you can’t disagree without thinking someone else is bad or evil, then you start pulling apart the seams of our country, and we have to be very careful about that.

Conventional story says that journalists should avoid becoming a part of the story they are trying to cover. But when budding reporter Hilde Lysak left her hometown to chase a story, her steadfast fortitude enabled her to face off against an unexpected foe, earning her kudos from around the nation.

Lysak, 12, publishes the Orange Street News out of her parents’ home in Selingrove, Pennsylvania but in February, she traveled to Arizona to file a story near the Mexican border. While riding a bike in pursuit of details, she was accosted by a local law enforcement officer.

The officer asked her for identification, falsely claimed that her video recording of him was illegal, then threatened to have her arrested and placed in a juvenile detention center. He literally told her, “I don’t wanna hear about any of that freedom of the press stuff.”

Not only did Lysak refuse to stop recording, but she transcribed the interaction and posted the video to her news site. The resulting story went viral, and the city of Patagonia later issued an apology.

From a statement by mayor Andrea Wood:

We are sorry Hilde, we encourage and respect your continued aspirations as a successful reporter. We believe and fully support the constitutional right to freedom of speech in the public sector. We will not tolerate bias of any kind including infringement of freedom of speech.

Potential Preaching Angles:

When we armed with the truth, we don’t need to be afraid of opposition. Even young ones can operate without fear if they submit to God’s truth as the ultimate authority.

"Crises of every kind will find us … [But] these crises enter our lives not just as challenges to us to retain our balance and stability, but as invitations to stretch our hearts and minds … [Every crisis] includes within [itself] an invitation for us to move from being good people to becoming great people."

— Ronald Rohlheiser

Two devoted friends and brilliant minds—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—fell out with each other over politics, personal slights, and both feeling betrayed by the other. The feud not only embittered both, causing them to abandon all correspondence and relationship of any kind for many years, but it troubled their closest companions who could not imagine these giants of the Revolution becoming estranged for the rest of their lives.

In 1809 a mutual signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, had a dream about the two former Presidents, wrote it down, and sent it to both men. In the dream he saw the alienated statesmen renew their friendship and begin corresponding with each other. John Adams, again in the dream, addressed a short letter to Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson responded. These two brief letters were "followed by a correspondence of several years in which they mutually reviewed the scenes of business in which they had been engaged, and candidly acknowledged to each other all the errors of opinion and conduct into which they had fallen during the time they filled the same station in the service of their country." Both Jefferson and Adams politely but separately acknowledged their friend's account of the dream and thought no more about it.

Three years later, at Rush's urging, Thomas Jefferson sent a very tentative letter to John Adams who responded with a guarded reply. One letter followed another until John Adams wrote to Jefferson on July 15, 1813: "Never mind it, my dear Sir, if I write four letters to your one; your one is worth more than my four … You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other."

Bitter enemies prodded by a friend's dream were brought back together for the last several years of their lives until they died—both on the same day and only three hours apart: July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1927, the famous English poet and essayist T.S. Eliot became a Christian and was baptized and confirmed. Prior to his conversion, Eliot belonged to London's Bloomsbury Group, a small, informal association of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of central London. But when news of Eliot's conversion hit the news, the Bloomsbury Group responded with shock and even disgust. The writer Virginia Woolf, the de facto leader of the group, penned the following letter to one of her peers:

I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become a [believer] in God and immortality, and he goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem more credible than he is. I mean, there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.

Researcher Carol Dweck did a series of studies on how people handle adversity, particularly when they face limitations, obstacles, failure, and change. In one study, she took a group of ten-year-olds and gave them increasingly difficult math problems to see how they would handle failure. Most students got discouraged and depressed, but a few had a totally different response. One kid—in the face of failure—rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and said, "I love a challenge!" Another kid, failing one math problem after another, said, "You know, I was hoping this would be informative."

"What's wrong with them?" she wondered. "I always thought you coped with failure or you didn't cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure. Were these alien children or were they on to something?"

She realized that not only were these kids not discouraged by failure, they didn't think they were failing. They thought they were learning. She came to the conclusion that human beings have two different, almost opposite mind-sets about life. One of them I'm going to call a "closed mind-set." Those with a closed mind-set believe that life is full of a fixed amount of gifts and talents, and their worth depends on how talented they are. Therefore, their job is to convince others that they've got "it," whatever "it" is.

Dweck said there's another way to go through life—the open mind-set. These people believe that growth is always possible. A commitment to growth means that they embrace challenge. … Therefore, failure is indispensable and something to learn from.