Words'nTone

Last week at Sunday morning worship, we prayed for and reviewed the persecuted church throughout the world. We reviewed the countries which cause the most persecution of Christians and then we concentrated on two countries on the top ten list: North Korea topped the list (“There is no other country in the world where Christians are being persecuted in such a horrible and relentless way”). When I lived in South Korea back in ’79-’80, I had heard the stories first hand how the church in the Korean peninsula had suffered. Now South Korea is home to five of the largest church congregations in the world. We learned of Eritrea, where persecution of Christians is daily. Have you even heard of Eritrea? I certainly haven’t. It is a small a country in the Horn of Africa. These are the two countries we paused to pray for. Also on the list was the Maldives, an island country in the Indian Ocean, sometimes known as the paradise islands, and is a pure Islamic State.

As we were praying for the Christians and Pastors in North Korea and Eritrea, my heart became heavy, saddened, and wandered to a current movie that just hit the theaters: The Box. This movie is about a small wooden box that shows up on the doorstep of a married couple where they have been instructed that if they open the box, they’d receive $1,000,000. The catch: they have to kill someone they don’t know. Open the box for the million bucks and someone has to die.

Now why in the world did that weird movie come to mind? The connection most likely started when I saw the Maldives on the list of the top ten countries where the church is most persecuted. Back in the mid-1990s my daughter’s mother, Peggy and I were at Teen Mission Boot Camp on Merritt Island, FL as guests, speaking about Prairie Bible Institute to potential future students. One session we were asked to do was on a people-group. We chose the Maldives since Peggy had done some research and even wrote a play about the Islamic State. There is no known church in the Maldives. Christians are in the handful, if that. Mission sending agencies cannot send “missionaries” per se. So they are creative (e.g., wind surfing instructors for the resorts, IT people for the hotels, etc.). But at one point I said to the small band of listening teens sitting on logs and rocks and on the ground, “To really see the church start and grow in the Maldives, where its illegal to be a Christian and Christians are killed out right, what do you think has to happen?” One of the teens said without hesitation, “Someone has to die.”

Wow, right on the mark. I thought I was going to be cleaver; but they got it right away. A Maldivian convert to Christianity most likely would have to die, have to suffer and be killed in order for others to come to Christ. I referred to the early church father saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The teens understood. Do we?

This is where my mind went. We were asked to pray and I felt it was like that Box had shown up on my doorstep. Open it (that is pray) and someone has to die. We were asked to pray for the Christians and pastors facing persecution in North Korea and in Eritrea, and I couldn’t help but think my prayer—with all things being equal and typical in God’s economy and way in the world—would actually mean someone would have to die. Then I thought, how safe we are here in this nice church building, in our nice clothes, singing beautiful worship songs to the various instruments in the worship band, and praying for those whose lives are at stake every second. And, I thought, my prayer might actually be answered and that could very well mean some North Korean or Eritrean Christian could die.

No wonder my heart was heavy. I am at ease. They are suffering. And here I was, in essence, actually praying for their death for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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