• Blog – 2020 4th Quarter

     

    Weekly Commentary – November 29 – December 5, 2020

    On our report this week (please click here to read in full) we have more murder in Nigeria.

    We have persecution in Cuba and Vietnam.

    We have an attack on a church in India, which demonstrated police complicity. First, the police claimed they could not leave their posts at night to stop the attack without approval from higher authority. At daybreak they showed up and refused to take the injured to private hospitals. At the government hospitals the staff refused to perform x-rays, and the police later cited the lack of x-rays as evidence that the attack was not serious (the police also denied that a sexual assault had occurred). Arrests were made but no one was held due to Covid restrictions.

    Just typical events around the globe. Just more reasons to pray for everyone.

     

    Weekly Commentary – November 22-28, 2020

    Captives have been freed in Cameroon, Haiti, Niger, Pakistan, and Uganda. Church leaders who have stood up for the persecuted have retired in India and Myanmar. That is much good news in this week’s report (click here to read in full).

    A Colombian nun continues to be held in captivity in Mali. Christians were beaten – again – in Kenya. The father of a church radio station employee was beheaded in Mozambique, and the employees fled into the jungle with their families as jihadists destroyed the station. Christian charity workers were killed by Mexican paramilitaries, and a nun was wounded alongside them.

    Named Christians were murdered in Indonesia and in Uganda. One story is particularly horrific: in Uganda a ‘Muslim shaman’ has been murdering the children of Muslim converts to Christianity to ‘empower’ his spells and amulets. The Indonesian security forces in Papua have done much the same, but without the occult dimension.

    Please continue your prayers for this suffering world.

     

    Weekly Commentary – November 15-21, 2020

    With this resumption of our reporting we have a small report (please click here to read): a shooting and beheadings in France, a beheading in Italy, churches burnt in Chile, and an anti-Christian proposal for the government in the United States.

    Church of the Assumption, Santiago, Chile – courtesy Martin Bernetti, Getty Images

    This week marks the ninth anniversary of the beginning of publication of Today’s Martyrs. Most readers will know that this is our first weekly publication in five months. Why this ‘sabbatical’?

    There have been a host of reasons, but the one of interest to the reader is that the principal author has suffered from a kind of fatigue. Has nine years of stories of discrimination and persecution taken a toll? Not really, although it cannot be completely excluded. Another factor is that some original reporters of these stories – people who this writing is dependent upon – have quit the field, and so our news sources have become constrained: a disheartening fact.

    However, the greatest factor in our ‘sabbatical’ of fatigue has been the ongoing social climate seen on the internet throughout the Anglophone world. We have always written about the ‘unreality’ of the thinking of those who hate Christianity, it has been a persistent theme here. What is new is the broad sense of unreality across the spectrum of politics, public health, public order, and even in our interpersonal relationships. We have watched as dozens of fellow Christians who we have greatly admired have fallen to these intellectual seductions and by their words have advanced untruths, often with declining charity. How far from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 have we fallen in 2020:

    We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, cheer the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient with all. See that no one returns evil for evil; rather, always seek what is good for each other and for all. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.

    While it is our opinion that events could be worse, and probably will get worse, the rate at which new untruths have been introduced to discourse seems to be slowing (even though we likely have not fully comprehended those now before us). Perhaps all of us are fatigued now. Perhaps we might really begin to pray without ceasing. Christian hope, after all, is a wonderful gift; let us ask for it!