John 15:19 tells us, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” But what does this really mean? For Americans we can sometimes have a hard time getting a handle on what faith persecution is. With the New Atheist today becoming more and more fashionable, we exist for a large portion in the mind set where it is fun to participate in an academic debate where one person believes in God, and one does not. But what would it look like to live in a country where you could be rounded up and literally thrown into prison for a belief in Jesus Christ?
Majed El Shafie was an Egyptian Muslim who was introduced to the Gospels, and finally became a Christian. After his conversion, he formed a small group that helped distribute the life changing news of the Gospel. Soon the “small group” became 24,000 members! As you could have guessed, once the group was big enough, the authorities came looking for Majed. The link below contains his interview with Sid Roth, it is maybe 30 minutes or so long. He was tortured and beaten for his belief system, and all he had to do to avoid this was give up the names of some of his key associates. He didn’t budge. Could you have withstood this? Could I? When asked about how much one person can endure, he responds, “one person?…or one person with God?” Point taken.
There is one point I think we can take away from this (and other similar stories). What allows normal, everyday people to be able to stand up under this type of extreme persecution? Is it religion or is it Jesus? Remember the two are not interchangeable. It seems to me that this alone would give credit to the fact that something big is going on here. Something that only an intellectual devotion would not account for. No, I’m afraid it must go deeper than that. The question then, is “what is all the fuss about relating to God and Jesus?” Dig around on this website for a while, and see if you can find the answer.
Majed El Shafie was an Egyptian Muslim who was introduced to the Gospels, and finally became a Christian. After his conversion, he formed a small group that helped distribute the life changing news of the Gospel. Soon the “small group” became 24,000 members! As you could have guessed, once the group was big enough, the authorities came looking for Majed. The link below contains his interview with Sid Roth, it is maybe 30 minutes or so long. He was tortured and beaten for his belief system, and all he had to do to avoid this was give up the names of some of his key associates. He didn’t budge. Could you have withstood this? Could I? When asked about how much one person can endure, he responds, “one person?…or one person with God?” Point taken.
There is one point I think we can take away from this (and other similar stories). What allows normal, everyday people to be able to stand up under this type of extreme persecution? Is it religion or is it Jesus? Remember the two are not interchangeable. It seems to me that this alone would give credit to the fact that something big is going on here. Something that only an intellectual devotion would not account for. No, I’m afraid it must go deeper than that. The question then, is “what is all the fuss about relating to God and Jesus?” Dig around on this website for a while, and see if you can find the answer.
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