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Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. All right, we've got If Not For God with Mike Zwick. Today we have a very, very special guest. We have our friend, uh, Todd Nettleton. Um, he is the voice of Voice of the Martyrs.
He has a, uh, podcast and a radio show that is absolutely awesome and exciting. Um, there was a new movie that actually just came out, Todd. Is that right? That is true. Sabina, Tortured for Christ, the Nazi years, uh, told the story, part of the story of our founders here at the Voice of the Martyrs, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, uh, living and serving the Lord under the Nazis in Romania.
But, you know, it's cool. I, I heard that story and everybody was talking about it, but then I got a book, um, in the mail from Voice of the Martyrs, cause I was going to interview you, Todd, but it's, the book is when faith is forbidden and it's 40 days on the front line, front lines with Persecuted Christians, uh, by Todd Nettleton. And, uh, Todd, before we get into this, what is the easiest way for people to get this book if they want to get it? Persecution.com is the main Voice of the Martyrs website. And then if you add onto that, persecution.com slash forbidden, like when faith is forbidden, uh, there is a page there where you can make a donation of any amount to the Voice of the Martyrs. We will send you a copy of the book for free. So persecution.com slash forbidden.
Slash forbidden. And I tell you what, you guys need to pick up this book. It was awesome. But, but Todd, you've been involved in a ministry that speaks on behalf of Persecuted Christians for many years. Um, how did you get started doing this work? Well, you know, I, I really traced back my, my service at the Voice of the Martyrs to, uh, 1982. I was 12 years old and, uh, my family packed up from our home in Southern California and moved halfway around the world. My parents served for four years as missionaries in Papua New Guinea. And, uh, so I got a taste for international travel. I got a taste for ministry work. I got an understanding that not every Christian looks like I do or speaks the same language as I do.
They are still my brothers, my sisters, and just a, an appreciation for the wider body of Christ. And like I say, that, that started when I was 12 years old and that, that really planted the seed. Uh, when I came to work at Voice of the Martyrs, uh, it has now been almost 24 years ago. Uh, the person that hired me and, and actually still works here at BOM is married to my college roommate. So, uh, I knew her, I knew him and, uh, they were looking, she had been tasked with building a communications department here at BOM. And, uh, so she was looking for a storyteller and I was a communications major in college. I had worked as a sports writer. I had worked in PR and a boy, I thought I would love to tell the stories of our persecuted brothers and sisters.
And that's what I've been doing for the last 24 years. That's what I do for, for 40 different stories in this book when faith is forbidden. And I tell you what, Todd, I couldn't put the book down, but you know, especially right now, I think with everything that's going on and things are just nuts, I think a lot of people are hearing more about persecution. Uh, what does the word persecution mean to you? You know, it's something that at the very basic level, what persecution is, is, is when someone forces you to pay a price for, for what you believe. Uh, in the case of a Christian is to pay a price for following Jesus Christ.
And you know, maybe that, that price is different in different places. Maybe it is, Hey, you can't find a job if you're going to be a Christian. Maybe it is, Hey, we don't want you to live here. You get kicked out of your home if you're a Christian. But it is also in some places, literally being willing to lay down your life, uh, because you choose to follow Christ more than you choose comfort or safety or protection here in this world. Uh, all of those are persecution. All of those involve someone saying, Jesus is worth more to me than my comfort or my safety or my house or my education or whatever, whatever that cost is. This person has decided Jesus is worthy of that sacrifice.
Yup. And, and matter of fact, you've traveled the world for, and gathered stories about persecuted Christians for more than 20 years now. Um, you know, there may be some, uh, Christians in America who say, well, that doesn't really affect me right now. Why is it important for believers to understand the reality of persecution? You know, I think the first reason is because the Bible tells us to, uh, you know, Hebrews 13, three says, remember those in prison, as if you were in prison with them. Well, how can we possibly follow that scripture if we don't know about the people who are in prison, if we don't know about the people who are suffering for the sake of Christ? So part of the answer to that question is because the Bible says that's what we're supposed to do. Uh, but the second part of the answer, I think has to do with, with when we're going to face challenges, because all of us will face challenges. Maybe it's persecution, maybe it's a health challenge, maybe it's a vocational challenge, an economic challenge, but all of us are going to face challenges. So what better way to prepare ourselves than to look at people who have already been there and they've already faced that challenge and they've overcome it.
Uh, you know, I, I'm a sports fan. I used to be a sports writer and the comparison I like to make is, Hey, if I'm going to be playing the Patriots on Sunday, I want to watch video of the team that beat the Patriots two weeks ago. I want to see what they did so that I can, I can do the same thing.
I can run the same play. If I think that I might face persecution in my life, I want to watch video. I want to know the stories of those who've already faced persecution and come out victorious. That's the power of these stories to prepare us for the challenges that we will endure in our own lives.
Yeah. Uh, what did you learn when you sat down with someone who had just been released from jail or recently shot? Uh, why were they willing to talk to you and to trust you, Todd? Well, the great thing about my role here at Voice of the Martyrs is usually by the time I go and meet with somebody, uh, they already know some of our other staff, our international ministry staff that are active in the more than 70 countries where Christians are persecuted. They've probably already been there. They've already met this person and so they can be a bridge and introduce me so that when I sit down, they'll be able to they know a little bit about VOM.
They know I have some credibility just because they already know some of my coworkers. But the other thing that plays into this is oftentimes they see the opportunity to suffer for Christ as a gift that has been given to them. And they want to share that gift, not to puff themselves up or to say, hey, look at me, I'm such a hero, but to glorify God. Look, I was in prison all these years and God sustains me. God was with me. Look, these people killed my spouse because of their faith in Christ, but God has enabled me to forgive them. He's enabled me to love even my enemies, even the people who persecuted me.
They want to tell those stories because they want to offer glory to God in the midst of that suffering. Yeah, I mean, matter of fact, I'm reading through the book and I've noticed that you may have had a few close encounters yourself where maybe your blood pressure went up a few times or your heart started beating. Does anything kind of stick out?
One sticks out immediately. We got stopped at a checkpoint in Northern Iraq. I was in a van.
There was two of us from POM. There was some of our Iraqi brothers and sisters that were driving us around and we got stopped at a checkpoint. And, you know, you get stopped at the checkpoint. The guys with guns say, hey, we need to see everybody's ID.
Well, as soon as this young man saw two American passports, his eyes got big and he said, okay, two Americans, you need to come with me. And so we had to get out of the van and follow this guy. And we went kind of up over a hill and embank where we couldn't see the van anymore. And I just thought we are either going to be killed or kidnapped. This is not going to go well. My ministry service may have come to an end this very day. But what happened?
We went into a little shed that was sitting there, kind of a little hut. And his commander was in the hut. And this was Kurdish Peshmerga troops. Kurdish people typically love the United States. The United States has been helpful to the Kurds. And so this commander just wanted to greet us. He wanted to tell us how happy he was that we had come from America to visit Kurdistan and and welcome to our country. We're so glad that you're here.
And I just took a big sigh and said, Oh, I wish you would have come out to the van to tell us that because I was very, very frightened. Well, you've shared 40 amazing stories of persecuted Christians in your new book, when faith is forbidden 40 days on the front lines with persecuted Christians. Did you notice some common things that helped them persevere? And I did myself when I started reading through the book, I said, a lot of the a lot of these stories, although they're different, many of them kind of sound the same, did you?
You know, I think there's a couple of things. And one of them is a real love for God's Word. These are people who are passionate about their Bibles, they're, they're not sitting on a shelf, they are reading, they're studying, they're memorizing, they are passionate about God's Word. And I think that that fuels them to be willing to withstand persecution to be able to withstand persecution. The other thing is, though, the change that they experienced when they came to Christ, they understand that that Jesus is worth everything. And so if, if everything includes a little bit of suffering, if everything includes maybe even losing a loved one, I'm brought to mind the brother of ours in Sudan, who ended up spending more than seven years in prison, and was horribly, horribly tortured. In fact, his body still bears the scars of that torture. And, and they would tell him, just just become a Muslim again, and we'll let you go.
No, I'm not, I'm not going to become a Muslim again, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. And when he met some of my co workers, he was just amazed. He said, you know, Jesus died for me, Jesus gave his life gave his life for me. And all he asked me to do was go to prison and be tortured for seven years.
He was so gracious to me that that he gave his life and he didn't ask that of me. That's the attitude of our persecuted brothers and sisters. And it's an attitude that allows them to endure even under the worst persecution. Yeah, I mean, Sister Tong is a beautiful Christian woman who endured extreme hardship in a Chinese prison. What are the details of her story? Sister Tong changed me one of the day we met her.
I was different after that. And she, we met her in China just a few weeks after she had been released from prison. So she had served six months in prison, because she hosted a house church meeting in her home. So at that time, they were raiding house churches, they were taking down all the ID documents of everyone taking pictures of their IDs and whatever. But the owner of the home, the person who was hosting the meeting, they went to jail. And so Sister Tong had just been in prison for six months. And we're sitting down. This was pretty early on in my time at POM.
So it's been about 20 years ago now. And I know I'm going to come back to America. I'm going to do radio interviews.
I'm going to write for Voice of the Martyrs Free magazine. I'm going to need to tell Sister Tong's story. And so if you're going to tell a story, you need, first you need the setting, right?
So let's get the setting right. And so I say, Sister Tong, tell me about the prison. And what I'm thinking in my mind is, you know, tell me how hard the bed was, tell me how cold it was, tell me how big the rats were, how terrible the food was.
Let's paint a picture of how miserable your last six months in prison have been. And so my translator translated the question and Sister Tong got what I can only describe as a heavenly smile on her face. And she said something in Chinese, and my translator said, Oh, yes, that was a wonderful time. And I kind of tell you, I looked at the translator because I thought there's no way that he understood my question.
There's, we've obviously had a disconnect here, because, because whoever would describe prison as a wonderful time, that doesn't even make sense. And so I said, Now, are you sure you understood? I was asking her to tell me about the prison.
Yes, yes, I understood that. Are you sure she understood that I was asking her to tell me about the prison? Yes, yes, she understood the question.
She knows what you're asking. But what Sister Tong went on to say, she said, You know, during those six months that I was in prison, Jesus was so close to me, and so real to me, every single day, he was with me in such a personal way. And she said, You know what else?
There were ladies in my cell with me. And when I got to the prison, they did not know Jesus. And I got to be the one to introduce them, I got to be the one who led them to Christ. And so her attitude was, Jesus was with me.
And Jesus gave me a ministry to do. Why? Why wouldn't that be a wonderful time?
Well, you know, why? Why wouldn't that be wonderful? And the question I asked in the book, and the question I asked readers is, Okay, if six months in a Chinese prison can be a wonderful time, if Jesus presence is with us, and if he gives us the ministry to do, what is there in my life?
What is there in your life? That could also be a wonderful time if, if we sort of borrowed Sister Tong's glasses and looked at it through her way of seeing things. Is it possible that sickness could be a wonderful time? Is it possible that economic hardship or the loss of a job could be a wonderful time if Jesus is with us, and if he gives us a ministry to do?
That's it. And what do you hope a personal experience after going on this 40 day journey with you and hearing the stories of other persecuted Christians? You know, I think my promise to the reader, and I really believe it's kind of God's promise to the reader is, your faith is going to look a little bit different on day 41. I don't think you can go and sit down with persecuted Christians and hear their stories for 40 consecutive days, and then on day 41 just close the book and walk away like nothing happened. I think your faith is going to be a little more passionate, a little more bold. You're going to be challenged to live the same way that you've seen these people live during our 40 day journey together.
So I, I just think your faith is going to look different after you've been confronted with the faith of these amazing, bold brothers and sisters. And why do you think it's important for us to know the stories of Christian martyrs and persecuted Christians in general? You know, again, I think part of it is because the Bible tells us to. The Bible calls us to be in the fellowship of Christ's suffering, so we need to be connected to the parts of the body of Christ that are suffering. The Bible says when one part of the body suffers, we're all supposed to feel that pain. Well, how can we possibly do that if we don't even know about them, if we don't have any connection to them? So that is a part of it, but the second part is to encourage and increase our own faith.
As we see these brothers and sisters living boldly, as we see them serving the Lord, even when it costs them everything, we are challenged to serve the Lord the same way. And I think every story leads to a question of, okay, what would I do in that situation? What would I do if the gun was pointed at me?
What would I do if I was about to get kicked out of my house? How would I respond to that? And I think that's a great question for us to ask, because two things happen when we ask that. We have to kind of honestly say, boy, you know, I hope I know what I would do, but wow, I'm not sure that that would happen.
And so we are forced to dive into the scriptures and see what the scriptures say about persecution and about enduring, and we're forced to go to the Lord and say, Lord, I know what the right answer is. I know what I want to say I would do. Help me to be bold. Help me to be strong so that I truly can say, hey, I don't care if you point a gun at me. I don't care if you kick me out of my house. Jesus is worth more to me than my house. He's worth more to me than my safety. I am a follower of Christ no matter what anybody says or does to me.
That's it. Is persecution on the rise, and where are the world's most dangerous places for Christians? Persecution is certainly on the rise, and I think there's two sides to that coin. One of them is many governments, many leaders are against the Church.
They want to control the people, and they see Christianity as a threat to that. But the other side of that coin, sort of the good news side of that coin, is part of the reason persecution is increasing is because the Church is growing. There are more Christians to potentially be persecuted because the Church is growing in Iran, the Church is growing in India, the Church is growing in China, and so there are more potential targets for persecution. When you talk about the worst places or the hardest places to be a Christian, I certainly would think of North Korea as probably the most closed country on earth, but certainly there is intense persecution in China. We've seen a dramatic increase in persecution in China over the last five years. I think of India, I think of the radical Hindu nationalist movement in India that says if you're Indian, you should be a Hindu, and if you're not, you should go find someplace else to live. And so Christians are targeted there. I think of many places in the Middle East, I think of Iran, I think of next door in Afghanistan, now that the Taliban is in control there.
Lots of places. And then the other places I would mention are in Africa, Nigeria, northern Nigeria in particular, but also Ethiopia, also Eritrea, places that maybe we don't think of as top persecutors, but places where so many of our brothers and sisters are suffering for the name of Christ. Yet how should we as believers in Jesus Christ respond to hateful acts of persecution? You know, Jesus tells us to pray for those who persecute us, to love our enemies, and it is something that is, you read it and it almost seems like foolishness. In fact, it's one of the scenes in the Sabina movie, the Nazi guard is like, that's foolishness. To love your enemies? That's ridiculous.
Who would do that? And what the reality is, it only happens through the reality of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling us, enabling Christians to forgive their persecutors, to love the people who are coming after them. And one of the results of that is the witness that it is. When the persecutors see that, they know there's something different about this person. Wait a minute, I am beating this person, and they are blessing me, they're speaking blessings to me as I am literally physically beating them. How can that be possible?
How can they do that? That becomes an opportunity to be a witness for Christ, and is a real proof of the reality of the Gospel. Yeah, I think you mentioned there was a Christian named Muhammad.
There are, yes. I love, and I say this in the book, I love pastors named Muhammad, because no Christian in the Middle East, no Christian in a Muslim context names their child Muhammad. And so you know that person was born into a Muslim family, you know they've had a change of heart, and they are following Jesus Christ. And I met Muhammad in Ethiopia, and he told me that he actually, there was a burn mark on the outside of his house where, just the week before, radical Muslims had come and tried to burn down his house.
And thankfully it didn't burn to the ground, and we were able to see Muhammad, to go and read his family and see his house there. But as we were leaving, the evangelist that took us out, kind of was our host, and took us out to meet Muhammad, was standing there, and Muhammad kind of motioned to the evangelist, and he said, you know, I used to beat him. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute, there's a story there.
And he said, yes, there is a story there. He said, you know, when I was a Muslim, I was a very devout, very radical Muslim. In fact, I was sent to Saudi Arabia for special Islamic training, and when I came home, part of my work, part of my Islamic service, was to persecute Christians. And this evangelist, he used to regularly beat the evangelist. And the evangelist didn't return evil for evil, he didn't hate Muhammad. In fact, he blessed him, and he loved him, and he prayed for him, and eventually Muhammad came to be a follower of Christ himself, and he came to be a follower of Jesus. And now he's on the other end, he's now the one being beat, he's now the one being persecuted, because he has left Islam to follow Jesus Christ. But that evangelist, who was willing to take a beating, and still have a smile on his face, and still have a prayer of blessing for the man who was beating him, literally changed Muhammad's eternity by that witness. That is awesome, people are wondering how they can come alongside and serve our persecuted brothers and sisters. You know, a couple of things I would tell them is, first of all, pick up the book, When Faith is Forbidden, 40 Days on the Front Lines of Persecuted Christians.
It's available at Christian bookstores and online book selling sites. And also, you can just Google Voice of the Martyrs, or go to persecution.com. Is that right, Todd? Yep.
That's correct. Persecution.com. Todd Nettleton, the voice of Voice of the Martyrs. Thank you so much for coming on, if not for God, that Mike's with today. And, Brother Todd, we hope to see you again soon, okay? I look forward to that. Thank you for having me.
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