Four masked gunmen charged into Mohammad Yousuf Bhat’s home on the evening of July 1, 2015, pushed his wife aside and demanded to talk to him. After he stepped forward, the gunmen escorted the 43-year-old father of three outside his home in the Kashmir Valley and shot him seven times, killing him. Those who worked with Yousuf describe him as being a fearless, bold and passionate believer who “would not be quiet about Christ.” In the end, his unflinching faith and evangelism of Kashmiri Muslims in North India led to his death. Since leaving Islam himself in 1999, Yousuf had known his life could end this way. SHARING HIS TESTIMONY While India is nearly 81 percent Hindu, the territory of Jammu and Kashmir is predominantly Muslim. In the Kashmir Valley, 97 percent of the nearly 7 million residents are Muslim. Islamic militants in the region have created a war zone in which both government soldiers and civilians are attacked by various radical groups. Villagers, especially Christians, have become anxious since Yousuf ’s murder. They are even afraid to speak of it. Before his death, Yousuf discussed the Islamists’ efforts to stop the spread of Christianity and the fear this caused
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Elmer sat in a cave, listening to the howling wind and the hail pounding the rain-soaked earth. Surrounded by darkness and fearing for his life, the FARC guerrilla commander had much time to think and much to think about. He was being pursued by a FARC commander one rank below him as well as by government soldiers. The commander was jealous that Elmer had been promoted after government soldiers killed the previous top commander. And the government had placed a 200-million-peso (about $98,000 USD) bounty on his head that made him that much more of a target. Elmer saw only one solution. It was the solution that he had been taught in more than 30 years of indoctrination with Marxist teachings: “In situations like this, taking my life is my only way out,” he thought. He grabbed his gun and lifted it to his head. But when he tried to pull the trigger, he heard a voice saying, “Don’t do it.” He tried two more times, but each time he heard the voice, preventing him from pulling the trigger. The fourth time he tried, the hail and rain suddenly stopped. “Don’t do it,” the voice said again. “I love you.
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When Pastor Han answered a phone call one afternoon at his church in Changbai, China, near the North Korean border, his wife saw no particular reason for concern. She knew, however, that for several months both Chinese police and South Korean intelligence officers had been warning her husband that he was at the top of a North Korean “hit list.” Pastor Han, his wife and other Christian leaders had even agreed on security precautions designed to protect him while allowing him to continue his ministry to North Koreans. For example, he stopped driving on the border road, he didn’t leave his house or the church alone, and he kept a very strict schedule. But after receiving the phone call that afternoon at church, the pastor uncharacteristically disregarded those precautions and left the church alone. His body was found that evening in a rural area along the North Korean border. North Koreans on the Doorstep Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol and his wife arrived in the Chinese border town of Changbai in 1993. The 26-year-old recent seminary graduate had been called to Changbai to lead a small church of ethnic Korean Chinese, who make up about a quarter of the population in that
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Prison pastor Imprisoned as a threat to the state, Pastor Kashkumbaev had every reason to feel discouraged. But a pointed question from a Christian brother changed his perspective, leading to a powerful work of God in a Kazakhstani prison. “You will serve 10 years of hard time,” the investigator said solemnly. The elderly pastor would be almost 80 by the time he completed his sentence, and part of it, he learned, would be spent in a psychiatric ward. Pastor Bakhytzhan Kashkumbaev knew that prisoners in the psychiatric ward were routinely drugged, causing them to lose the abilities to even think or move. They would drug him to a point of losing his mind. His heart sank. While he was not afraid to die, he didn’t want his seven grandchildren to see him in that condition. Death didn’t scare him, but losing his mind did. The “Crime” In May 2013, Pastor Kashkumbaev was arrested after being accused of harming the health of a church member at Grace Church, a legally registered church in Kazakhstan. Authorities filed five charges against the pastor, including a charge of inciting religious hatred. Although the church member defended the pastor, saying the charges were unfounded, these
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Infidel, Smuggler, Pastor How an encounter with the Bible transformed a militant Iraqi Kurd into a passionate evangelist. Seventeen-year-old Nemrut devoured books. He was always looking for something new to read, but few books in the Kurdish language were available in his dusty Iraqi town. One day he spotted something new in a local bookstore — a Kurdish translation of the Gospel of Luke. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was intrigued. When he asked about the book, he was disappointed to learn that the bookstore owner wouldn’t part with it because it was his only copy. Determined to read the book, Nemrut made a deal with the owner to pay a lending fee so he could borrow the book and return it when he was done. He read until 4 a.m. the next morning. “This was the beginning of loving Jesus,” he said. Luke’s Gospel had planted a seed, but Nemrut still had much to learn. While he wasn’t particularly committed to Islam, Nemrut had been born into a Muslim family. Like many Kurds, he held that faith lightly, feeling more loyalty to family and tribe than to religion. Zealous for an independent Kurdish homeland, Nemrut joined
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Cubans have borne the weight of communism for more than half a century. In the last years of Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s life, however, the country’s strict communistic and atheistic ideals appeared to be eroding. Then, in 2014, the waning spirit of the communist revolution was suddenly revived, and pressure on Christians rose sharply. Evangelical leaders were regularly interrogated by the Religious Affairs Committee and pressured to stop their Christian work. As the communist spirit continued to grow, Christians experienced a renewed passion to evangelize. Amid this environment, Christian leaders from various denominations jointly launched an evangelistic campaign in Havana called the “Power to Transform.” The campaign’s objective was simple: Church members would go to bars, cafes and parks and share Jesus. When Communist officials heard about the campaign, the church leaders from all denominations were summoned for interrogation. But since the campaign had no central leader and received no foreign support, Cuban authorities had no one to arrest and no way of stopping the campaign. So Christians throughout Havana continued to share their faith with confidence. When a church member was confronted by a man asking who had given him the authority to evangelize in a public park, the
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While growing up in North Korea, “Sang-chul” was taught that the concept of God was a dangerous lie. And the government’s zero-tolerance policy toward any suspicion of Christian behavior reinforced the lesson. As the gospel quietly spread in parts of the country, so did a fear among North Koreans that they might be suspected of Christian faith. “We were really afraid of Christianity because anybody could get executed or killed — even if you were looking at the Bible,” Sang-chul said. But in 2013, Sang-chul witnessed the power of a life devoted sacrificially to Jesus: The commitment of a pastor named Han Chung-Ryeol enabled Sang-chul to let go of his fear. Pastor Han was later martyred, on April 30, 2016, because of his bold Christian work. “I really wanted to know why he helped North Koreans, because it was dangerous for Pastor Han to help North Koreans there,” Sang-chul recalled. “Pastor Han unconditionally loved us and treated us well. I felt his heart. The more I met with Pastor Han, I felt more his heart came from the Lord. Without God, he wouldn’t have helped me. That is why I realized Christianity is a true religion.” Like many North Koreans,
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As Kyung-ja drifted in and out of consciousness, her head bloodied by repeated blows from a club, she heard her guard shouting words she had never heard in her 56 years of life: “Bible,” “God,” “Jesus.” North Korean Guard: an unlikely Evangelist Kyung-ja understood why the female guard had interrogated her about her latest trip to China and about her daughter’s defection to South Korea, but she couldn’t grasp why she kept asking odd questions about something called Christianity. “I first learned about Christianity from my torturer,” Kyung-ja said. The guard’s confusing and persistent questioning piqued Kyung-ja’s curiosity. At the time of her arrest, she had no belief system or concept of God, but now she had to know what made this Christianity so dangerous. Kyung-ja had been detained twice before for illegally crossing into China. This time, however, was worse. Instead of serving only a few months of “re-education” at a labor camp, she endured repeated torture, most likely because of her daughter’s defection. After brutally beating Kyung-ja for two months, the guard realized she did not have any ties to Christians within North Korea. She then sent Kyung-ja, now a fragile 63 pounds, to a labor camp, and
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Hassan’s appearance at a pastor’s conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was his response to what he believed was God’s call for him to focus on persecution. In fact, just months earlier, he had turned down a second term as Secretary-General of the Sudan Church of Christ so he could help prepare churches for persecution at a more grassroots level. During the November 2015 conference in Ethiopia, he told pastors about the increasing persecution his eight congregations were facing in Sudan. Among those in the audience during Hassan’s presentation was Petr Jasek, a Czech national who served as VOM’s Regional Director for Africa at the time. Petr was especially moved by a photograph Hassan showed of a young Christian man who had been injured during a demonstration. Weeks later, Petr traveled to Khartoum to meet the injured man and arrange to help cover his medical expenses. After a four-day visit, Petr prepared to leave the country. That’s when Hassan experienced what he considers one of the greatest blessings of his life. “Petr was arrested at the airport,” Hassan said, “and then, through investigations, they discovered that he had visited me and other people. That is why they arrested me.” The Price
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When Poonam quietly left Hinduism in 2012, the Bible she obtained instantly became her most prized possession. The young Indian wife and mother of three secretly read God’s Word in her home each day, growing in her understanding of God’s love for her. But she feared that her husband would find out about her new faith, and he soon did. After overhearing her praying a Christian prayer one day, he found her Bible and angrily tore it to pieces. “From today on you stop reading the Bible, and as long as you live in this house you better not pray!” he scolded. Poonam’s husband then beat her, eventually kicking her out of the house and refusing to let her see their young sons and daughter. Her Christian faith cost her everything. In India, where a rise in persecution of Christians has paralleled the rise in Hindu nationalism, Bibles are a precious resource that help new believers continue to grow in faith amid persecution. After losing her Bible and her family, Poonam stayed with relatives and prayed for the return of everything she had lost. A pastor and another believer who lived near her relatives visited Poonam regularly to pray with
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