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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast on your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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In terms of the numbers of people involved, the gravity of the crimes committed and their
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impact.
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It is clear that the persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history.
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Not only are Christians more persecuted than any other faith group, but ever increasing
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numbers are experiencing the very worst forms of persecution.
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All right, guys, that is a line from the subject matter for today's podcast.
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And that is from the executive summary of this report called persecuted and forgotten,
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a report on Christians oppressed for their faith, 2015 through 2017.
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So this report was put together by an organization called aid to the church in need or ACN for
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short aid to the church in need.
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It's basically a Catholic charity.
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It's a papal charity.
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It supports Catholic people and other Christians that are persecuted and oppressed around the
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world or those that are just basically in need of basic pastoral care.
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And so if you go to their website, they have some objectives here.
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So I just wanted to read these verbatim from their website.
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So if you go to their website says this, these are their objectives to support and promote
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the church.
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That's the Catholic church, especially in countries where Christians are suffering persecution
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or discrimination to further the other charitable work of the church by providing practical assistance
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and pastoral care for persons in need, especially those who are living in or are refugees from
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such countries.
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In addition to that, they can and do in large part provide emergency and pastoral relief
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in 140 countries around the globe.
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And also they're committed to chronicling and assessing the cases and the trends of
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Christian persecution and oppression around the world.
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And so this is an organization that has kept up with this for a very long time.
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They didn't just start this back in 2015.
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They have some older reports, but these are the most recent.
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So most of you may have heard of this report from a Newsweek article.
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So this was a Newsweek article that came out in January of 2018.
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So the beginning of this year.
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And it was something that was pretty egregious and pretty crazy whenever you saw it like
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at face value.
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But the other thing that was pretty egregious about is that we didn't really hear that
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much about it.
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It wasn't really a story that made national and certainly not really international headlines
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like it should have.
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I mean, there's it's national news when Trump tweets something off color about somebody,
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which he shouldn't be doing, but it's that's national news.
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That's something that we need every single late show and every single news show and opinion
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show to give us their take on, right?
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You know, if if a guy wants to go pee in the girl's bathroom, that's national news.
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We need to change federal law so that that could be something that happens.
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But this is something that just kind of goes by the wayside.
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So in terms of the main focus of the report, it's looking at the situation in 13 countries.
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The previous report looked at 20 different countries, but this one is focusing in on
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13 countries.
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And those countries are China, North Korea, Egypt, Pakistan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, India,
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Sudan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Nigeria.
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So one thing that you'll notice about all those countries is they're either Muslim majority
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countries or communist countries, that that's so that'll be something to grow on.
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So we'll talk about that a little bit more later, but some of the things that frequently
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are seen in these countries and obviously show up in this report.
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We see the murder, genocide, assault, rape, kidnapping, unlawful detention, unfair trial,
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division of religious assembly and peaceful religious expression of Christians.
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So in a lot of these countries, they don't really have the same standards or actions towards
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other faiths.
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It's really centered around mainly about Christianity.
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Now there are examples in some of those countries listed where it's of religions of any kind
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that they're cracking down on, especially like China.
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You hear that they've cracked down on Muslims and they sent them to like Muslim, I don't
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know, it's like reintegration camps or rewording or rethinking camps.
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I can't remember exactly what it's called.
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So we do see that quite a bit.
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I did want to read a quick excerpt from the report.
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It's from the beginning just to kind of give you an idea of the scale here because it's
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almost impossible to really know the scale of persecution around the globe.
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This organization's probably one of, if not the best organization at doing that, but I'm
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going to read an excerpt here for you.
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In April of 2017, the Pew Research Center released a report showing that the number of
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countries where Christians fell victim to government restriction and social hostilities
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grew from 108 in 2014 to 128 the following year.
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In its world watch monitor report covering 2016, open doors, an organization supporting
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persecution or persecuted Christians rather found that more than 200 million Christians
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in the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian experience persecution because
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of their faith.
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Other sources claim that the true figure for 2016 may be as high as 600 million.
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Although the precise number of Christians persecuted for their faith remains unclear,
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reports showing a fall in the number of deaths during the period under review to below 100,000,
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nevertheless highlight that the violence against followers of Jesus Christ remains severe.
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So this is something that again, like I said, it's really difficult to really peg to peg
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these things, but you know, it's one of those things that we need to look at as thinking
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Christians and think, how should we respond to these things.
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So one thing I want to do here is I want you guys to be able to read the report on your
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own.
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Obviously you saw that coming, but I do want to highlight some different sections of the
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report.
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So this report is obviously done really well.
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There's the full report, which I'll give you a link to, but there's also a report to
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the executive summary.
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And so I want to read some excerpts from the executive summary.
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And so the first section I'm going to go through is one called the imminent threat of wipeouts.
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I'm going to read this part to you here.
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The most significant factor in this context is undoubtedly the enforced exodus of Christians.
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In Syria, the decimation of the church community was profound.
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While figures for the country as a whole are disputed, it is notable that by March 2016,
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Chaldean Bishop Antoine Udu of Aleppo was claiming that Syria's Christians now numbered 500,000,
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a fall of 1.2 million or two thirds within five years.
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The decline was especially marketed in certain towns and cities for which more specific data
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has been collected.
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Syria's second city of Aleppo until 2011, home to the country's largest Christian community
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of 150,000, saw an exodus of faithful with numbers dropping to barely 35,000 by spring
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of 2017, a fall of more than 75%.
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While the exodus was undoubtedly driven by an ongoing civil war, the part played by
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specific targeting of Christians should not be underestimated.
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This would help explain the disproportionate decline in their number as compared to the
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overall population, which in the case of Aleppo had fallen by perhaps 25% in the same period.
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In Iraq, meanwhile, figures for the Christian population showed a decline from 270,000 to
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175,000 in mid-2015 to below 200,000, two years later, and possibly as few as 150,000.
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If this decline were to continue at the same rate, it would show that the 2015 persecuted
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and forgotten report prediction of a virtual wipeout of Iraq's Christian community by
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2020 remains on track.
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However, fears that Christians in Iraq are "on the verge of extinction," were to some
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extent alleviated at the end of the reporting period by news of thousands of families returning
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to their homes on the Nineveh Plains following the defeat of ISIS.
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So this is something really important at the end of this, where it's basically talking
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about the defeat of ISIS.
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This is why it's important to have strong leadership.
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Need I remind you, I had two opportunities to vote for Donald Trump, and I chose not
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two both times.
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So don't think I'm one of those guys, it's just a slobbering, MAGA, MAGA, you know, always
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trumper.
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I'm also not a never trumper.
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He is my president, I want him to do well, just like I wanted Barack Obama to do well.
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Barack Obama was a paper tiger when it came to international extremism or fundamentalism
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or any of those things.
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Like he basically could have crushed ISIS with a few bombs or a few dozen soldiers whenever
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they were just a little group of guys out in the middle of the desert, but he chose not
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to.
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He very infamously called them the JV team, right?
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So say what you will about Trump, and I've said plenty, but this is a man who basically
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said, oh, General Mattis, these ISIS guys, you know, these little pests, let's go ahead
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and wipe them off the face of the planet.
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And we pretty much did that.
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And we pretty much gave huge swaths of Iraq and Syria back to its people.
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So moving on to the next section, which is called genocide of Christians.
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I'm going to read a section from this part here.
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Taken as a whole, this evidence proves conclusively that Christians in Syria and Iraq have fallen
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victim to genocide as defined by the convention on the prevention of punishment of the crime
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of genocide as adopted by the United Nations.
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The evidence is consistent with an intent to destroy in whole or in part the Christian community
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and meets all the indicators set out by the convention, any one of which is sufficient
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to be proof of genocide, including a killing members of the group, be causing serious bodily
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or mental harm to members of the group and see deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
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of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
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Evidence also shows that ISIS activity to be consistent with the final two sets of genocide,
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final two tests of genocide set down by the convention concerning efforts to prevent burst
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and transferring children away.
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In November 2016, French Catholic priest, father Patrick DeBoy described his experiences helping
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Christian families in Iraq and Syria saying they dislocate the families.
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They take the newborn babies and they put them in Islamist families, families, adding
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that the young children are trained to be terrorists.
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He said that young girls who are virgins are selected by doctors and sold genocide against
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Christians has taken place in Northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram and affiliate of ISIS set about
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a campaign of violence to ensure the faithful will not be able to stay.
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Islamous Fulani herdsmen accused of colluding with sister organization Boko Haram carried
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out a campaign of butchery, desecration of church buildings, rape and mass expulsion
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of Christians.
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When an aid to the church in need delegation visited Northern Nigeria in March of 2017,
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church leaders handed them a dossier showing that in one diocese alone, Kefanshin within
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five years, 988 people had been killed and 71 Christian majority villages had been destroyed,
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as well as 2712 homes and 20 churches and Madaguri formerly a Boko Haram heartland.
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The diocese and officials reported that 1.8 million people had been displaced, 5 million
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women had been become widows and 15,000 children were now orphans, damage had been done to
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200 churches and chapels as well as 35 press surgeries and parish centers.
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So obviously, genocide is a real thing and it's really happening and it's so hard to
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talk about and so hard to even think about because we think in terms of modern standards
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and we think that this is something that that should have happened back in the day like
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this isn't something that could happen now.
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Are we really seeing a genocide of any particular group of people?
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And again, we kind of get whitewashed to this being in America.
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We just don't really think about these things, but but it's incredible that we have brothers
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and sisters that are going through that.
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Now moving on to the next section, I want to read a little excerpt from government week
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on extremism.
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It's the next section here.
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So let me go into a little short paragraph here.
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In countries such as Sudan, the Islamist threat was mainly from the government, which
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human rights observers accused of causing religious freedom to spiral downwards.
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In the 2015 to 2017 period, Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir pursued a hardline Islamist
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agenda, deeply hostile to Christians, resulting in churches being torn down each month, Christians
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being arrested for alleged proselytizing and women being fined for wearing obscene and
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modest dress.
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When the government removed the citizenship rights of people with origins outside the country,
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it sparked a massive exodus of Christians who were forced to go to their ancestral homelands
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in neighboring South Sudan in spite of having lived in Sudan itself for 300 or for 30 years
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or more.
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And so this was something where it's like we have these governments where that are supposed
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to be protecting the people.
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Again, we think in terms of things in the West and we see that, you know, we're supposed
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to protect the people, create laws that will allow people to have the freedom to do things.
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But most countries around the world don't have the foggiest idea about what liberty is.
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They certainly don't have freedom to do different things and move around.
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It's just not something that they're big on.
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So I want to move to the next section here, which is religious nationalism in the targeting
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of Christians.
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So I'm going to read a little bit from here.
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Since the right wing baratia, I'm hoping I'm saying that right, baratia, Janata Party,
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or BJP came to power in April, May of 2014 general election, Christians in India have
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faced increasing intolerance and violence.
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The PJP's espousal of Hindutva philosophy has been a crucial factor in this situation.
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Hindutva, a right wing form of Hindu nationalism, sees India as a Hindu country, which should
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not tolerate other religions or cultures.
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Much of the anti-Christian rhetoric of Hindutva groups and hinges on the suggestion that Christians
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are responsible for forced conversions.
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Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal claimed that such allegations were designed to sow
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division between faith communities, adding, "I want to ask those who accuse us of converting
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global people to Christianity.
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Where are those whom we converted?"
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Hindutva groups have held Gar Wapsi, homecoming ceremonies, and reports suggest ironically
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given their rhetoric against forced conversions that many of these events have involved the
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forcible reconversions of Christians to Hinduism.
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So this is something that's incredibly crazy.
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I had to just take a little pause here because I just want to prepare you for what I'm about
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to read here in just a second.
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A report by Catholic secular forum recorded 365 serious anti-Christian atrocities in India
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in 2016, including 10 people being killed and more than 500 members of the clergy or
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senior faith members being attacked for their faith.
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For example, in July of 2016, a 14-year-old Christian school girl in Chahatskarth State
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was gang raped and killed following her family's refusal to renounce their faith.
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2017 has seen a sharp rise in incidents.
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The data available at the time of writing this report, which was covering January to May
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of 2017, showed that there were 316 incidents almost as many as were recorded for the whole
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of 2016.
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So guys, I know for a lot of you, India doesn't really come to mind as this hotbed of Christian
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persecution.
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But I mean, just think about that.
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There was a school girl that was raped because her parents, her family wouldn't convert back
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to Hinduism.
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Again, we're supposed to look at things like Hinduism as, oh, you know, that's just an
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Easter religion.
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They have all these thousands and thousands of gods.
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They're pretty much harmless.
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There's a lot of groups that aren't harmless guys and we need to wake up.
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The next section I want to read a little bit from is communism's worsening clamp down on
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Christianity.
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So obviously this is going to be talking about China and North Korea.
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So here we go.
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Christians and communist countries, China and North Korea continue to experience persecution
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and discrimination in various forms.
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North Korea's songbuns social stratification system determines access to necessities such
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as food, education and healthcare based on people's position in one of the 51 potential
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categories, which signify greater or lesser loyalty to the regime.
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Those in lower categories are classified as hostile to the state.
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Protestants rank at 37 Catholics at 39.
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This system enshrines discrimination based on religious belief in the very structure of
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communist society, making it all the more worrying that in 2016, China announced plans
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to implement a similar system.
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Citizens would be assigned a category based on their political, commercial, social and
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legal credit.
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While details remain vague, it seems probable that the system would assign a lower rating
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to Christians.
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This would appear likely, especially given that government efforts to increase control
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of the church gained fresh impetus in April of 2016 following the programmatic speech
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by President Xi Jinping at the national conference on the regime's approach to religion.
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Part of the narrative presented by President Xi Jinping is that Christianity is a means
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of foreign infiltration into China.
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Recognizing the influence of religious practice on society, he insisted on the need to synthesize
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religious life, i.e. make it authentically Chinese, for which one can read "communist"
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and "automatize it," i.e. free it from foreign control.
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This has been reflected in the government response to religious groups that operate outside
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of state control, the so-called underground churches.
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So obviously, guys, I know a lot of you have heard a lot about the situation going on in
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North Korea and in China, and I mean, really, guys, it just doesn't get a whole lot worse
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than that, whenever you combine the godlessness of communism with, you know, a regime that's
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willing to basically carry that forward a little bit lower in that section or later in
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that section.
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I want to read a little bit here a little bit more about North Korea.
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Otto Warmbier's return to the U.S. in a state of unresponsive wakefulness and subsequent
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death also draws attention to the extreme conditions endured in North Korea's prison camps.
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Reports describe Christians undergoing unspeakable atrocities in the camps, often being singled
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out for worse treatment because they are religious prisoners, including forced labor, torture,
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persecution, starvation, rape, forced abortion, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killings.
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According to CSW, Christians have also been hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under
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a steamroller, and herded off bridges.
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One estimate suggests that three-quarters of Christians in the camps die from the harsh
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punishments they receive.
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So guys, this is a modern description of a country that exists in 2018, being hung from
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a cross over fire, crushed by a steamroller, and basically thrown off bridges.
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This is happening, this stuff is happening, and this is just crazy.
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I mean, I'm like reading, I'm like, this can't, this can't be real, like, is this some sort
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of like fiction that I'm missing somewhere, but it's absolutely real.
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But towards the conclusion here, I want to just read a little bit from the final area,
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it's called conclusion, it's now or never to save Christians from persecution.
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One quick paragraph here.
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"At a time in the West, when there is increasing media focus on the rights of people regardless
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of gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, to name but a few, it is ironic that in many sections
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of the media, there should be such limited coverage of the massive persecution experienced
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by so many Christians.
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The worsening plight of Christians in a country such as Eritrea, little known to the West
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and hitherto largely ignored by the media, is a case in point.
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Highlighting the scale of Christian oppression against a background of media ambivalence
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towards the subject forms the impetus behind this, the 2017 edition of ACN's persecuted
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and forgotten report.
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It shows that not only is Christianity still the world's most oppressed faith community,
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but also that in many cases, genocide and other crimes against humanity now mean that
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the church in core countries and regions faces the possibility of imminent wipeout."
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So guys, I think that's a tremendous point to bring up here towards the conclusion, which
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is, look at the things we complain about and talk about in the West.
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I mean, right now, the sexual revolution, everything about LGBTQ+APP, TTTYL, AARP, whatever the
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thing is, it just keeps it being added to those are like major things that people worry
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about, right?
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And I'm not trying to diminish the people that struggle with those things, but we can't
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even categorize it as what they are.
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Like a lot of the things discussed in there are our mental disorders.
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So someone that is born a man and thinks he's a woman, that is a mental disorder, right?
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It's gender dysphoria.
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They need treatment for that, but we can't possibly say something like that, right?
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It's just crazy for someone to think that, right?
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I mean, just think about it, think about how we take if someone who's born white thinks
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or says that, no, actually I'm Mexican or actually I'm black or something like that.
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Think about how crazy that would be.
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Like at that point we're going to look at science and be like, yeah, that's absurd.
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It doesn't matter if you identify as somebody from a different ethnicity, you are still
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what you are, but the guys this report is so important for us.
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And I was just thinking through this because I read this a while ago, I knew about it at
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the beginning of the year, but it just came back up in conversation here recently.
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That's why I wanted to share it with you.
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But there's a few things I was thinking about as to why this report is so important.
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Why a report like this would be so important.
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And the first thing is we're in America.
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And this stuff just seems so far away.
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That's the first thing is why a report like this is good for us Westerners to see.
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Because if you're a blue tie person, you're like, you've just been in sheer hell for the
21:35
last two years because Donald Trump's been the president.
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And if you're a red tie person, you were in hell for the last eight years before that
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because Barack Obama was president.
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And you just look at the things that we complain about in the 24 hour news cycle and it's,
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it's just fresh outrage every day.
21:50
There's never like a normal day or like there's no natural disasters.
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You know, nobody in Congress says anything stupid, like nobody gets shot like we don't
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ever have times like that, right?
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It's just constant every single day.
22:04
There's something going on every now and then the news takes a weekend off, right?
22:07
But in America, we just, we don't think about things like this and we don't think about
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what happens in all these other countries because they're an ocean away, right?
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Thousands and thousands of miles away, right?
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It's just kind of out of sight out of mind, right?
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The second thing why I feel like this report is so important is that it reminds us what
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it was like for early Christians.
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I mean, really like the first second and third century Christians.
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I mean, there was no such thing as solo scriptura in those times.
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If you really think about it because the Bible didn't come until like the fourth century.
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And so people that were dying, especially in the first century, they weren't dying because
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of what they believe.
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They were dying because of what they saw.
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It's reported it was reported in the Bible that, oh, 500 people saw resurrected Jesus,
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right?
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500 people and allow those people died martyrs deaths and their family members died martyrs
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deaths.
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And as Christianity spread around the Mediterranean rim, there's so many people that died martyrs
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deaths, but you would be hard pressed to find if you could even find it a resource where
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you see someone saying, no, no, no, no, I'm just kidding.
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I'm not a Jesus follower if as they're being marched into the middle of the Colosseum to
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fight armed gladiators without arms themselves, right?
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Or, you know, basically swords and stuff like that, or, you know, or they're going somewhere
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where they're about to be killed by an animal.
23:24
They just don't know which animal it's going to be that day or they're going to be trampled
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by an elephant or have their throat ripped out by a lion like they just didn't know exactly
23:31
what it was.
23:32
But I think I talked about this last year on my best books of 2017 podcast, I think it
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was episode two or three of this podcast, um, excuse me, talked about this book called
23:43
tried by fire by William Bennett, and it talked about that was a book about the first thousand
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years of, of church history.
23:49
And it's basically just martyrdom.
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That's what the first thousand years of Christianity was.
23:53
It was just people dying because of their faith in Jesus Christ.
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And what's happening right now in these countries that we've talked about, that's what was
24:02
happening back then.
24:03
And it's crazy when you, when you read back about what was happening at those times, it's
24:07
like, man, what, what kind of humanity was happening at that time?
24:10
Like, yeah, we know they didn't have iPhones and electricity and running water in a lot
24:14
of these places, but gosh, dang, like what, how in the world could, could, could humanity
24:18
be worse?
24:19
That stuff is still happening.
24:21
It's just crazy that something like that could still go on.
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And another thing I want to talk about here in terms of why this report is important is
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because it reminds us what Islam actually is.
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Because aside from North Korea and China, most of the countries I talked about are Muslim
24:38
majority countries.
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And I guess you could include India in there as well because that's, I believe, a mainly
24:43
Hindu country.
24:45
But all these other countries are Muslim majority countries.
24:48
And these are countries where they take the Quran seriously, where they take what's lined
24:53
down in Surah nine of the Quran seriously, because there's, there's a concept of abrogation
25:00
that people don't really understand.
25:02
All the peaceful verses that people quote about the Quran, whether you're a Muslim apologist
25:07
or maybe a member of the left wing media, trying to make it seem like, Oh, it's not that big
25:10
a deal.
25:11
When Muslims chop people's heads off and roll it down the street as they're screaming all
25:15
who Akbar, these are individuals that are not Muslim extremist.
25:20
That's actually a misnomer.
25:22
These are Muslim fundamentalists.
25:24
These people are actually sticking to what the Quran says at an extreme level.
25:30
And that's the scary part.
25:32
The scary part is if there are droves of Muslims that are more conservative, if they were to
25:37
wake up and understand what abrogation is, I know I mentioned it earlier and didn't explain
25:40
it.
25:41
Abrogation is basically where there are parts of the Quran that are peaceful, that have peaceful
25:46
notions in there that Muhammad later said, Oh, those things don't apply anymore.
25:51
This is what my revelation from God is now.
25:55
And the latest parts of the of the Quran, the parts that were towards the latter parts
26:01
of Muhammad's life, all of those things are violent and bloody.
26:06
There's no peace.
26:07
There's no, uh, let's just, uh, kind of see if we can coexist with the Christians or the
26:11
Jews or anything like there was none of that, none of that at all.
26:16
And so I think this is just a good reminder.
26:17
And if you think I'm making this stuff up, there, there's plenty of resources.
26:21
Nabil Kureshi wrote two great books seeking Allah finding Jesus and no God, but one or
26:27
law or Jesus.
26:28
And I think those are two great breakdowns.
26:30
This was a guy who went from, um, I think was, he was a Salafi Muslim and then he ended
26:34
up becoming a Christian and kind of goes through his journey, but the, the, that's the scariest
26:39
part about Islam is it's so specific, what they're called to do.
26:43
And the crazy part is this Boko Haram and al Qaeda and, uh, ISIS and those types of organizations,
26:50
the Taliban, the Muslim brotherhood, those are the ones that are actually following it
26:54
to a tee.
26:55
And the last part here, um, that I think is really important about this report is it reminds
27:00
us why things like the prosperity gospel are bogus, like, and just nonsense.
27:05
I mean, this idea that Christianity makes things better for you is ridiculous.
27:09
And, and let me, let me just explain that.
27:11
Uh, Andy Stanley, who I like a lot and I've been following for a long time, read a stuff,
27:15
listen to his sermons, all that he has this, the saying that he says that I've never really
27:21
understood, but he says, you know, following Jesus will make life better and make you better
27:25
at life.
27:26
It's, it's a very bumper sticker, coffee cup quote.
27:29
But the thing about it is is where do you get that idea?
27:34
I mean, following Jesus ultimately means the end is good for you, right?
27:39
The whole heaven thing is really, really important.
27:41
But if you're thinking about the earth that we live on in the life that we have to live
27:45
on that earth, it's pretty, it's pretty insane, like to say something like that, like, where
27:52
do what hint do we get from the New Testament that things work out great for Christians?
27:59
I mean, didn't pretty much all the apostles die of martyrs death except john.
28:03
I mean, john, they tried to give them martyrs death.
28:06
They tried to kill them by like, put them in boiling oil or something like that.
28:09
And then they basically excommunicated into Patmus.
28:12
So we didn't exactly have a relaxing into his life.
28:15
I mean, this idea that Christianity is just supposed to be the soft thing.
28:19
And we just follow Jesus and dollar bills just rain down from the sky.
28:23
It's just, it's ridiculous.
28:24
It's nonsense.
28:26
And the reality is, is we as Christians, you know, I'm here in Oklahoma, there's, there's
28:33
no threat of when I walk into a church that we're going to have some sort of an issue
28:38
that the state or federal government's going to come in and shut us down, or we're going
28:41
to have to go underground, even in highly, highly liberal places in the United States,
28:46
mainly on the cuss, the coasts, you're not having to worry about that.
28:49
I mean, maybe people are sneering at you and turning their nose up you like, Oh, these
28:52
Christians, these D is like what's wrong with these people, so whatever they say, right?
28:56
They're just making crap up.
28:58
That's still not that bad.
28:59
I talk about this all the time.
29:01
People think they're being persecuted if someone says something mean to them online about being
29:04
a Christian, like makes fun of them a little bit or says, Oh, you believe in the spaghetti
29:08
monster in the sky?
29:09
What a moron.
29:10
Like they think that's persecution.
29:11
They think that's their cross to bear.
29:13
It's just hilarious.
29:14
It's just absolutely, absolutely hilarious, but it's things like this that help us realize
29:20
what's going on for our brothers and sisters overseas.
29:23
I mean, there are legitimately people dying for their faith.
29:27
They're having guns put in their face.
29:29
They're having knives at their throats and they're being asked, are you going to renounce
29:32
faith in Jesus Christ?
29:34
Are you going to become a Muslim?
29:35
Are you going to become a Hindu?
29:37
Are you going to be becoming atheists?
29:39
Are you going to denounce it?
29:40
And these people are unequivocally saying, no, I'm not going to denounce my God and my Jesus.
29:46
And then they get their throats cut, then they get ran over by steam roller, then they
29:50
get, you know, buried alive, drowned alive, you know, just all that kind of stuff.
29:55
And so again, it's important for us to think through that, to be thinking Christians to
30:00
support organizations that are giving aid to these individuals, but also just prayer.
30:05
Prayer for these people.
30:06
I know people are like, Oh, yeah, I'm sending thoughts and prayers like they make fun of
30:10
that.
30:11
But no, it's really important because we need to pray for these people.
30:14
Because when they die, it's only it's a horrible thing.
30:16
And there's always a ripple effect of negativity after that.
30:19
And it's just important for us to continue to look at things like this.
30:22
I know a lot of Christians that I see, you know, men and women, they don't want to read
30:27
through reports like this.
30:28
They don't want to see stuff like this.
30:29
It's just too much.
30:30
It's just a little bit too violent.
30:32
It's just a little bit too real.
30:33
We don't need to turn away from these things.
30:35
We need to look right at them.
30:37
We need to look right at them and think to ourselves, you know, what, how would I react
30:41
in this situation?
30:43
Do I have faith?
30:44
Do I have spiritual resilience in the face of things like this?
30:47
And how would I react?
30:48
I think that's good for us.
30:49
All right, guys.
30:50
A lot of here, we're going to do a quick resilience boost.
30:52
As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
30:56
Specifically, we do that by providing content that for just spiritual, mental and physical
31:00
toughness.
31:01
Today, we're focusing on spiritual resilience.
31:04
So the big thing for you guys is I want to make sure you see the resources that I was
31:08
reading from.
31:09
So I'm going to provide you a link to the aid to the church in need page.
31:14
And there's three different things on that page.
31:15
The first thing is a country profile.
31:17
So all the different countries, the 13 countries, they all have their own individual profiles.
31:22
And so there's these highlights of kind of what was happening in these countries and
31:26
the statistics they're in.
31:27
And so that's something that I want to provide to you there.
31:30
The second link is actually the report.
31:32
So this is the executive summary that I was reading the quotes from.
31:36
And so that's a very important report.
31:37
It's about like 26 or 27 pages, something like that, but it's not all type.
31:41
There's a pictures and different things like that.
31:43
So I want you to be able to see that.
31:45
So there's something called the faces of persecution.
31:47
So there's individual stories.
31:49
It kind of brings it more down to a ground level point of view about what's happening
31:53
with some of these people, some of the murders that have happened, some of the desecrations
31:57
of churches, the defiling of bodies.
31:59
And so I want you to be able to read through that.
32:01
And then also I provided an Amazon link to that book that I talked about earlier.
32:05
So that was the tried by fire, the story of Christianity's first thousand years by William
32:09
J Bennett.
32:10
It is a fairly lengthy book, but it's in a very important book for you to read.
32:15
Again, this is the second time I've talked about it on this podcast.
32:18
So I just want to make sure that you guys know that that is out there.
32:21
It's an incredibly interesting read and it'll give you more perspective about what our Christian
32:25
forefathers had to go through.
32:27
Thank you guys as always for listening to the podcast.
32:30
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32:33
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32:51
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32:53
All right.
32:54
I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2018 and the beginning
32:57
of 2019.
32:58
So if you want me to come to speak to your church, to your men's group, to your event,
33:02
just let me know.
33:03
Hit me up at info at undaunted.life info at undaunted.life.
33:07
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33:15
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33:17
Just search undaunted life under plans.
33:19
And as always, we want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their
33:22
music library for our content.
33:24
The intro outro track on this podcast is our song, King of Sorrow, which is off their latest
33:28
record entitled Phantom Anthem.
33:29
The links to all of this are in the description.
33:32
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
33:34
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience.
33:37
Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
33:40
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.