Posted on 07/09/2008 5:09:21 PM PDT by Lee N. Field
On June 6, Martin Burnham, an American missionary, died in a battle between his Islamic kidnappers and Filipino troops sent to rescue him. Burnham, thus, becomes the newest member of what the Te Deum, an ancient hymn, calls "the white-robe army of the martyrs" -- an army that, according to a recent estimate, is a staggering 70 million strong.
But what's even more staggering is that, according to the same estimate, 45 million, or two-thirds of all Christian martyrs, died in the twentieth century. These estimates are contained in a new book, The New Persecuted: Inquiries into Anti-Christian Intolerance in the New Century of Martyrs....
Linked from Green Baggins blog.
Chuck Colson has some interesting and eye-opening figures on the holocaust of Christians in the twentieth century. The article itself is dated 2002. The estimate is that 45,000,000 Christians have been martyred in the twentieth century. According to the same estimate, the total number of Christians martyred since the time of Christ is around 70,000,000.
I want to point out a couple of things. Firstly, such numbers, as Colson points out, do not diminish the horror of the Holocaust in the least. However, Jews should not think that they are the only ones who have been persecuted in the twentieth century. Christians have lost more than 7 times as many lives as the Jews lost in the Holocaust. Not a fact that you will hear much about in the news (nor do I particularly want it to be reported. It is not as if Christians need to brag about being persecuted).
The other thing I wish to point out is that Colson’s conclusion is not how we should pray for the church. Indeed, the Chinese church has told us differently. Why should we pray that persecution should be eliminated against the church, when persecution is something we are told that we should expect? Not only that, but persecution is good for the church, eliminating nominalist “Christians.” I am not saying that persecution is a good thing, in and of itself. I am very thankful that I am not being persecuted for my faith. However, God overturns evil for good constantly, as He has been doing all throughout history. I am raising the point only to encourage us to pray for the persecuted church. And this is how we should pray: that the church remain faithful in its witness, not compromising the truth of the Gospel for comfort’s sake.
"I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years."
Far more Christins have been mass murdered and enslaved by Islam than by any other agency, past or present.
Islam has spread more slaughter, misery and atrocity over its bloody 1400 year history than any other political or religious movement.
Islam cannot be ‘reformed,’ nor can it be persuaded or appeased. It can only be destroyed.
ditto! iss-lame is a perverted cult.
Forget Islam. This is a post about the Body of Christ. We are supposed to pray for them, even as they try to persecute us. But we don’t have to give into them, ever.
Below is the famous dialogue of St. Polycarp before the Proconsul.
And when he came near, the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp.
On his confessing that he was, [the proconsul] sought to persuade him to deny [Christ], saying, Have respect to your old age, and other similar things, according to their custom, [such as], "Swear by the fortune of Cæsar; repent", and say, "Away with the Atheists."
But Polycarp, gazing with a stern countenance on all the multitude of the wicked heathen then in the stadium, and waving his hand towards them, while with groans he looked up to heaven, said, "Away with the Atheists."
Then, the proconsul urging him, and saying, "Swear, and I will set you at liberty, reproach Christ"; Polycarp declared, Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?
And when the proconsul yet again pressed him, and said, "Swear by the fortune of Cæsar", he answered,
Since you are vainly urgent that, as you say,
"I should swear by the fortune of Cæsar, and pretendest not to know who and what I am, hear me declare with boldness, I am a Christian. And if you wish to learn what the doctrines of Christianity are, appoint me a day, and you shall hear them."
I went to College with the (son)- of the Burnham family. God bless them for their Dad’s sacrifice in the Service of Christ!
I believe Jeff B. is studying to be a missionary pilot currently at Liberty University..good man.
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