Hope in the Shadow of Persecution

It could be the worst humanitarian crisis on our planet right now.

It's definitely the worst humanitarian crisis right now that people don't know about, that people aren't aware of, but you're going to be made aware of it right now. I'm Stu Epperson, sitting next to Brad Phillips, one of my good friends, The Persecution Project. I'm on the board of his ministry. Brad, it's good to see you, my friend. We just want to kind of catch up and get an update. For folks who haven't heard of Persecution Project before, tell them who you guys are, kind of how you guys got started real quick, and then we'll get into what's going on right now in this crisis.

Well, Stu, let me first just say it's always good to see you, brother, and you've been a part of this ministry and your family's been a part of this ministry from the very beginning. We started back in 1997, and Persecution Project is a ministry to the victims of genocide and persecution in Africa, especially the persecuted church. And yeah, we've been focusing on the two Sudans for more than 25 years now. And Sudan, the Republic of Sudan, which is an officially Islamic state, has plunged into yet another war two years ago on April 15, 2023. And it was, in fact, the US government that labeled that war as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

So we are up to our eyeballs right now in dealing with the consequences of that war and of that failed system in Sudan. Just a few months ago, Brad, I was in a room in Washington DC with you and Matt Chancey, Ed Lyons, some other of our board members, standing room only, watching a documentary, a film, a movie, whatever you call it. And man, there were tears in that room. A lot of your family were there. Your mom was there, some others. Watching just this awful, not just this awful modern day Holocaust, but watching these heroes go get any kind of bus or van or anything with wheels to get people out of Khartoum who are being targeted based on ethnicity, just lined up and killed. To talk about that movie, how that came about, because it was a very tender moment for me. I'll never forget being in that room with you.

Thank you, Stu. That movie is called Exodus, and we have a website, nubexodus.com, where people can go and find the one minute trailer and they can get information about some of the work we're doing, but also about that film. And the version that you saw was actually a rough cut at the end of last year, but now we've completed the film and we're getting ready to launch it. And so people can go to that website, nubexodus.com, and find out more about setting up a viewing at their church or in their community. But that story, we call it Exodus because it's the story of the exodus of Christians from Khartoum that began and is still going on now, but it began in April of 2023, when Sudan really began to implode. And it's been our privilege over the years to stand alongside the persecuted church in Sudan. And in the Republic of Sudan or North Sudan, the largest community of Christians is in a place called the Nuba Mountains.

And the Nuba Mountains is an area about the size of the state of Georgia. And that community of Christians live in an officially Islamic state, the Republic of Sudan, which has been under the thumb of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood for decades, really for more than 35 years. And as a result, Sudanese Christians, Nuba Christians have become the number one target of persecution in Sudan and arguably in Africa. And hundreds of 1000s of them have paid dearly for their faith with their lives.

And again, it's really just been a privilege for us to stand alongside them. But when this war erupted two years ago, a little bit over two years ago, we were wringing our hands and praying, you know, about what we could do to help believers in Sudan respond to some overwhelming challenges. And God opened the way for us to become involved in some rescue and evacuation work. And it was through the leadership of the Nuba Church in the Nuba Mountains, who had relationship with Nuba Christians in the center in Khartoum, that we began to become involved.

And there is actually a pastor whose name was Musa, which is which is Moses, and no coincidence that God so raised up a Moses in Sudan to lead the exodus of Nuba Christians. So we got involved with that that film nubexodus.com tells the story of some tremendous courage and heroism, which resulted in 1000s of believers finding their way out of the fire in Khartoum. I'm Stu Everson, and I'm just getting over a cold. So I'm enjoying having a deeper voice than I normally have.

So for those of you who are listening, pray this voice stays this way and the cold goes away. But I'm so privileged to talk to Brad Phillips, who has been a hero of mine for a long time. I was in the Sudan just over a decade with you. I saw a people that love Jesus, a people that prayed for us, a people that celebrated us that served that were so gracious and kind they don't want to hand out they want to they want to hand up these are entrepreneurial, industrious people, so many believers who are reaching Muslims for Christ, there's all kinds of Muslim evangelism going on. And so not only were you in this movie focuses on your, you know, the evacuation process of saving these lives and getting them to safe harbor. But there's also a big relief ministry, the persecution project does this desperately needed, and it's going on right now.

And it involves Bibles mosquito nets, give us an update on that and how, you know, the church needs to get involved here in America, helping this thing in a big way. Yeah, well, I would just say again, I mean, it's one of the great privileges of my life has been to get to know the Nuba people in the church, the Nuba church. These are humble people, but they are resilient in their courageous people. They're people of faith. They're people who have had to count the cost. More than 6000 bombs have been dropped on churches, homes, marketplaces and hospitals in the Nuba Mountains.

Those people being targeted primarily because of their identification as Christians because of their faith in Jesus Christ. And so these are some really wonderful so we've gotten involved in different types of ministry to stand alongside them. We're in the medical consortium in the Nuba Mountains, and we supply essential medicines to 200 clinics and four hospitals. We are involved in safe water projects, trying to improve access to safe water for it's there's now a population of 4 million people living in the Nuba Mountains.

We're involved in as well relief and shelter projects as well as a lot of church discipleship projects and evangelism projects. But because of this current war, we've we've put a lot of focus right now in responding to the consequences of this very most destructive war which has put Sudan on the map as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. 4 million people have moved from other parts of Sudan of Nuba of ethnic Nuba origin and moved to the southern Kordofan region. They've voted with their feet because they know in the Nuba Mountains, they have religious freedom, and they may not have access to infrastructure and other resources, but they know at least they're not going to be killed on the ground because of their faith.

They might be bombed from the air. So a million of those people were forced to run in the last two years, and a majority of those are children. And one of the biggest problems facing children in all of Sudan, but especially in the Nuba Mountains is something called severe wasting.

Some of these people it took them six or seven weeks to flee through various other states in Sudan to finally reach southern Kordofan state Nuba Mountains which is their ancestral home. And in the process, they were plagued by sickness and malnutrition and by the time they reached many of them were on the verge of death. Three hundred children were dying a day during the first seven months of last year and that provoked us to increase our efforts and go beyond our budgets and our commitments to start a response at two hospitals that we manage.

One is called Tujour Hospital and the other is called Jigeba Hospital. And so working with the medical teams there, we developed a therapeutic feeding and medical care program and we figured out that for only about a hundred dollars we can support treatment for one child for about four weeks and that's really the amount of time that it takes to take a child suffering from severe wasting from death to life. When you're not eating food over time, severe wasting is when you get to the point where your body just can't take regular food because you've been eating grass or nothing. And so you need to put kids on a special therapeutic program that's supervised to get them to the point where they can eat food again and where they can get back to health. So we launched that program in November of last year was our first month and we didn't know if we would have the funding even for one month because it was above our original budget and our resources. But God provided and now we are in the month of May and I can thank God that he's given the resources to take us through not only the month of May but the month of June. But we're looking still to continue this program because the needs far surpass even the fifteen hundred kids a month which is about the number of kids that we're able to help right now and the needs to surpass that. So we're trying our best to continue this program.

I'm praying that we can, God will provide the resources to get us not only through June and July but all the way through the end of the year until the situation improves a bit. So that's one of the programs which is really near and dear to my heart and it's been, it has really been a miracle. It was a miracle to be a part of evacuation work and to see some people who otherwise would have perished get out and it's been a miracle to watch our team, our medical teams there in Two-Jordan-Jigeba treating with a flood of young patients and saving many many lives. So we want to keep them on track so they can continue doing this medical ministry and we want to stand with them.

So yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to share that with your listeners. Friends, you may not be able to stop the radical Muslim government from bombing hospitals, bombing orphanages, bombing churches, which is what they're doing, starving their own population. We're praying and we're asking God for favor diplomatically to end that. In the meantime, you can support persecution project. You can send money to help these kids. One of these kids who's starving dealing with this, they can't just pick up a sandwich and eat it.

They have to have a certain kind of medicine to get their body back to where it needs to be to survive. Brad's doing it. Pursuition project, taking Bibles, mosquito nets, rebuilding these churches, rebuilding these hospitals, building hospitals, supporting medical missions, all that stuff. Brad, how can our people get involved and how can they see this movie you just talked about? Give that website again, will you?

Let me give two websites. One is persecutionproject.org to get information about the work that we're doing and we have another landing page which is called nubexodus.com. And it is really been the privilege of my life to be able to get to know this community of believers. They really are my heroes. And it's a wonderful opportunity for us to identify with them, to stand in solidarity and prayer and fellowship with them.

When one part of the body suffers, all suffer with it. This is a very strategic and important community in the region and in all of Africa because they are bringing the gospel to their neighbors. They're bringing their gospel to their enemies. And so even though the biggest church is in the Nuba Mountains, we're finding now believers among the Darfur community, we're finding believers among some of the northern tribes that were predominantly Muslim.

And that's because of the witness of Nuba Christians. So this is the time really that they need us to stand with them. And there are so many needs, but the biggest thing that we need is for people to pray for the church, for God's people there, that God would give them more strength, more resilience, more endurance, more perseverance so that they can continue to be a light, an assault in a difficult situation and in a redemptive way. There are some amazing things happening right now in the middle of a terrible, terrible tragedy. You have a regime which is basically an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.

And they are literally going and slitting the throats of children, of women, committing all kinds of crimes and atrocities simply because of people's race and their religious faith. And so we have an opportunity, like I said, to pray for the persecutors and also to stand with their victims. And I really thank you, Stu, for your friendship to this ministry, your part not only on the board but for so many years from the very beginning. You've been an encouragement and a support in so many ways. So thank you for that. And thank you for the listeners of this show. Well, thank you, Brad. And you hit me hard with something a second ago that just made me think you thought about the body.

We're the body of Christ. And when part of the body is hurting, I think about athletes. I think about my own self when I've got a semi-broken thumb right now. Every part of my body is thinking about getting that thumb right so I can shoot the ball better. And everything stops. It's a paltry illustration to illustrate though.

Everything in my physical body is on hold until I can get this limp, this gimp or this thumb or something fixed. And I think, friends, your brothers and sisters in Christ are being tortured, persecuted, imprisoned, bombed. These bombs, you showed me craters, Brad pictures. You showed me pictures of people before. They were cut right in half by these bombs dropped on their church, dropped on their hospital, dropped on their school. And so, friends, step up and help this ministry.

Help your brothers and sisters in Christ. You can't go. Maybe you don't even have a passport. Maybe you don't even know how to get over there.

Maybe it's too dangerous at certain times. But you can give. And you can get behind wonderful ministries like the Persecution Project who's doing this. And thank you, Stu.

And we don't even realize the injury to the body. And you gave us a great illustration. I do encourage people to check out the trailer for NubaExodus.com. Find out about the story of these people. Find out about this ministry and figure out what your part is. But for sure, no matter what, pray for us. Pray for God's people there. And God bless you. Thank you, Stu.