Persecution Project

We're partnering with the Persecution Project Foundation right now to help embattled Christians that are being attacked for their faith in the Sudan. Go to Christmasairlift.com right now and give whatever you can to help these dear families in the Sudan. Christmasairlift.com Your podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it. Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network.

What are they? And we'd get in there and helicopter in, call the National Guard, call everybody to help our family. Well, this is the true reality, friends. If you are in Christ, your family in Christ, the body of Christ, your brothers and sisters in the Lord are being brutally attacked right now. Some of you are preparing for a nice family feast, a Thanksgiving and a Christmas holiday. Some of you have got family joining you for that sacred, wonderful time of celebration, wonderful food, fellowship and the like. But while that's going on in the Sudan, on the other side of the world, thousands of Christians are being attacked. They're being bombed by radical Muslims who want them dead and displaced. And Matt Chancey with the Persecution Project Foundation is with us right now. Now, Matt, I'm prone to get excited about things and kind of blow things up. Did I exaggerate about anything I just said?

Not at all. In fact, it's really shocking how long this particular persecution has been going on. You know, Sudan has been at war for most of its history since independence in 1956 from the Anglo-Egyptian era. And it's been ruled by a small minority of Islamic extremists who have tried to homogenize the country with what they call a twin policy of Arabization and Islamization to force the Arab language and culture and also a particular brand of Islam, the Wahhabist strain, which is responsible for so much of the terror attacks around the world, and try to force this on the population.

And that has caused tremendous backlash. And we saw in 2011 the split of the country into two with South Sudan seceding, becoming its own independent country. However, there were not just Christians in South Sudan. There were many Christians in North Sudan, including in this community of the Nuba Mountains in southern Kordofan state, which is in the southernmost part of northern Sudan, or it's called the Republic of Sudan now. And this community has been under siege since 2011 under a humanitarian blockade, and they have been fighting for their right to freely exercise their faith and to resist the imposition of Sharia in their culture.

So some of you are familiar with that or are listening. Sharia law is a very popular notion. That is the established law among Islam and Muslims and the Quran and all that. So the north is Muslim, effectively, in Sudan. The south is Christian.

And this area kind of in between that's connected technically to the north, called the Nuba Mountains, this is where the persecution project has been active for the persecuted. You have built hospitals, our listeners, listening to my voice right now. And by the way, I'm Stu Empers and this is Truth Talk. My friend Matt Chancey is with us. You've heard from Matt before.

You've also heard from Brad Phillips and Ed Lyons. We've had you guys on for decades on Truth Talk. When I was doing a live show you were on, I went to Sudan with you. It broke my heart.

It changed my life to see a holocaust, to see genocide victims. And now it's happening in the Nuba Mountains where the radical Muslims from Khartoum who are in charge, here's where they're trying to bomb, Matt. They're trying to bomb hospitals. They're trying to bomb Christian schools. Any place there's women and children, they're attacking. And churches on top of that. And so this is very real. And what's Persecution Project doing in that area?

Tell everyone real quick so they'll know what's cooking. Sure. We have been very active in working with the church on the ground. So when we talk about the stuff that we're doing as an organization, what we're really saying is we're just walking side by side with the indigenous church in the Nuba Mountains, which provides so much of the aid and support for their community. The community is divided probably about 60, 40 with a Muslim majority, but the people are all related to each other.

So there's a peaceful coexistence among the Nuba people. But the church is incredibly active. And there's a network that we work with of over 100 churches that have been involved in the distribution of emergency relief supplies to displaced families by the war. We have a clean water project.

It's been repairing broken borehole pumps because, as we know, about 80 percent of the disease in areas like the Nuba Mountains come from people drinking dirty water. We have a very important medical project where we're delivering probably about 80 percent and 90 percent of all the pharmaceuticals going into the territory, which is about the size of the state of Georgia. Every year we're doing this, working with the local medical consortium. And we're also helping them build a new referral hospital that can take some pressure off of one of the existing referral hospitals in that territory as well. So we have a lot of projects that we're supporting. But again, it's the people themselves, particularly the church, on the ground in the Nuba that's reaching out to their community in active compassion. And our job as believers, as brothers and sisters, is to come alongside them and provide whatever support that they need in this outreach. How can our listeners help? This is kind of a give-back we're doing at the Truth Network. We're really trying to help.

All of our affiliates are so gracious to carry this show. And sometimes we go back to the listeners and say, look, here's how you can directly impact the life of one of your Christian family members on the other side of the pond, in this case over in Africa. Matt Chancey, what are you asking people to do? I mean, it's easy for anyone to get involved, isn't it?

Yes. Well, there's a long game and there's the short-term need. The long game, of course, this has been going on in Sudan for decades. But we have also short-term needs that are based on immediate crisis at hand. And so what we've seen in the last this year has been a combination of insecurity around the country, unprecedented flooding. And then in October, we saw new government attacks on the western part of the Nuba Mountains called Western Jebel.

It's an isolated cluster of mountains that were attacked by government troops recently, creating thousands of new refugees, displaced families. And so we're trying to respond to those displaced folks as quickly as possible. So we have organized something called an Emergency Christmas Airlift, which is trying to help 2,000 displaced families with emergency shelter and relief items, things like blankets and mosquito nets and cooking pots and stuff like this.

It costs roughly about $75 to help one family. And you can – and your listeners can participate in this project by visiting christmasairlift.com, christmasairlift.com. They can also go to our website at persecutionproject.org. But if you want to contribute to this specific need right now during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, it's christmasairlift.com. And you can also share this with your friends and your church so that they can get involved, too. This is something we can do quickly. I love it. There's videos there. There's all the information. This is a legitimate certified 501c3 ministry, and we've been partnering with you guys for years.

I love what you're doing. I mean, this is a ministry, Matt. You know, back in the good old days, I'd give you guys a pair of size 13 shoes, and they'd end up on the feet of a Dinka warrior. You know, the tall Dinkas over in Sudan. I mean, you guys take what we give you, Bibles and medicine, and you take it. I've seen you load up your big suitcase with medicine and Bibles and much needed supplies for these dear folks in Sudan.

I've seen you load them up and get on British Airways. I've been on the plane with you, and we landed in Nairobi and then, you know, on into the Sudan, which took us about, what, 15 flights to back and forth from everywhere. Yeah, the planes kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And the terrain was rougher, and we're thinking, what are we going to do? And I just have fond memories of doing my show from there. I'd never done a show from a persecuted country before, and I interviewed our pilot about, you know, flying people into these missions. I interviewed you and Ed Lyons and Frank Seekins and Jason Jones and, of course, Brad Phillips.

And my brother-in-law, Todd, went with us. But this is a desperately needed, just a desperate situation. There are just immense, these people, these dear saints, they love the Lord. And it's interesting, the Christians are intentionally and aggressively evangelizing the Muslims. But, Matt, it's such a sweet spirit when Muslims show up in these Nuba towns expecting Christians to lock them up for how they were treated by Muslims, and the Christians open their arms up and say, hey, listen, God forgave me, I forgive you.

Talk about that dynamic real quick before we get out of here. We're seeing a tremendous evangelistic explosion in the Nuba mountains just because of the work of the church there. I mean, as I mentioned before, it's probably a 60% Muslim majority. However, if you break it down by age group, the young people are coming to Christ in record numbers. And a lot of that has to do with just the experience that they've had growing up in wartime where they've seen the testimony of the church reaching out to them regardless of their faith, their own faith or tribal tradition, and reaching out with them with the love of Christ and showing the gospel in word and in deed. And so it's causing a lot of them to come to faith and to embrace that compassion that's been given to them and then extend it to others.

And so we're seeing a rapid growth of the church in an area that's north of that 1040 window that you read about a lot of times where the Islamic influence is so heavily. And you see it not just being spread not by bombs and bullets and terror, but by the love of Christ being shown to the people on the ground. And so if there's any way that we could contribute to that, and there isn't many ways, it goes a long way. That's the one thing I love about this ministry, I loved about living over there for several years, is that it doesn't take much to have a tremendous impact on somebody's life.

Here in the States, we see what inflation has done, and so it takes a lot more to accomplish a lot less than it did before. But over in places like the Sudan, $75 can change somebody's life. It can really provide shelter and emergency supplies to keep somebody going. And really what it does more than anything, Stu, it provides encouragement, encouragement to keep people going and keep people fighting and to make it another day. And that's what we need most of all, I think, is just encouragement, somebody to say, hey, don't give up, you're going to make it through, and we're going to stand with you all the way.

Yeah, so family, Truth Network family, let's show in all of our affiliates, wonderful affiliates here in this program, let's show our family in this circumstance some love. This is Christmas. Go to Christmasairlift.com.

I think I said that right, Matt, Christmasairlift.com. Okay, and then a donation of any amount, $7, $75, $7,500, whatever God puts it on your heart to do, it's not yours anyway, it's his. We just sometimes got to take our grubby little hands off God's money and let him use it.

But it'll go toward, $75 is the actual amount that'll buy a kit for a whole family, a survival kit. Now, the other thing I want to, as we wrap up, Matt Chancey, with the Persecution Project Foundation, I want you to talk to our listeners. You guys aren't just about supplies and water and medicine, mosquito nets and all those things that are critical for survival, but you guys are also sharing the gospel. There's some bibles going on over there. There's some local pastors preaching the gospel. Your aim is to reach these folks in their souls as well, is that right?

Absolutely. We're a holistic ministry, and we distribute tens of thousands of bibles every year, including, as the large portion are digital, these megavoice bibles. Some of your listeners may have seen some of these. They're solar-powered. They're about the size of a small smartphone, and they communicate the gospel in several local languages, mostly Arabic, which is sort of the dominant language for a lot of the older generation particularly, but also English and also their local tribal languages. That way, it's not just one person getting the benefit of it, but because it's broadcast over a speaker and solar-powered, a whole family can listen to the Word of God and also an entire village, in fact. Those are the most popular things that we distribute. Again, those are distributed through the local church, and they're churches of different denominations that are working together, getting the Word of God out there. Again, we need to feed both the body and the soul, and we need to provide the encouragement for people to keep going. The soul being fed really accomplishes that.

Amen. Watch the website one more time. Matt Chancey, Persecution Project Foundation for our special Thanksgiving Christmas push to save souls, to bless souls who are beleaguered and attacked over in the Sudan. What's the website? It's Christmasairlift.com.

Christmasairlift.com. As you said, $75 does help one family, but a donation of any amount goes towards this campaign, which involves everything from the transportation and logistics to the purchase of the items and the delivery and distribution. So help of any amount is going to go towards our brothers and sisters.

So thanks very much, Stu, for this opportunity to talk to you. And we're creating an opportunity for Thanksgiving among thousands of displaced and struggled and battled Sudanese Christians by supplying them with this great need. They're going to be thankful for us. We're thankful for them. We've been thankful for the Persecution Project Foundation, that you guys have made me very uncomfortable over the years.

Matt Chancey, Brad Phillips, Ed Lyons, you guys have made me quite uncomfortable. But it's been the best thing of my life because I've seen that the Lord is near the brokenhearted and that God has drawn near to me and worked in my life, as I have been able to support and give. And I'm going to financially pledge to give money to this too, Matt.

I want you to know that. A mouthpiece, a parrot, you know, telling everyone else about this wonderful thing. I'm going to give and figure out how to go to the website Christmasairlift.com and get my chubby little fingers going and type in my credit card and give money to what you're doing because you are serving those who are being attacked. You are serving the least of these, my brethren.

And it's on us, gang. The body of Christ is time to rise up and love and serve and give whatever you can to help these believers in the Sudan and to continue to advance the gospel. When they see these blankets and they see these packages coming in, Matt, they say, wow, somebody loves me and all we're doing is what Jesus said. As God the Father sent me, I'm sending you.

As I have loved you, go love other people. And so I can't wash a person from Sudan's feet right now. I can't quite reach that far across the world. But I can send 75 bucks or 1,000 bucks or 20 bucks to deliver a survival kit for a family.

And that really is. That's how we're the arms and legs of Christ. Get your church involved. Get your YouTube involved.

Maybe do a little collection for this. And maybe, Matt, at some point we could take some listeners over there to see what God's doing when things maybe cool down and the bombing and all the shellacking in the Nuba Mountains takes a little hiatus. But it is dark. It's evil that they're bombing hospitals.

They're bombing churches and schools and families. It's tragic. But we can do something about it. Instead of cursing the darkness, we're lighting a candle.

Right, Matt Chansey? Absolutely. That's our job.

With the politics being politics, it's always going to be in flux. But our job is very simple. We pick up our cross and we follow our Savior. And that means that we stand side by side with those who are being persecuted. We use the strength that God gives us to lift burdens off of those who are being beaten down. And that's our job. And honestly, we get more out of it than they do. And you've been there. You understand what I'm talking about. You've been there to receive the encouragement by going to visit people who you think you're doing a favor for, but they actually give you a whole lot more than you give them.

No question. Matt Chansey with the Persecution Project Foundation. That website one more time is christmasairlift.com. Please fight for the persecuted. What is the slogan of the Persecution Project Foundation? I love this slogan.

Go ahead, Matt. Tell us what it is. It's active compassion for the persecuted.

That's it. Active compassion. Right out of James Chapter 2. Thank you, brother. It's a blessing. We love you.

We'll talk soon. And we'll keep sounding the alarm and getting all of our listeners on board. And thank you to the generous people. Some folks, even while we're talking, have probably gouged you guys up and gone to christmasairlift.com and supported it.

We're just so grateful for that. I've had people call me and say, Hey, how can I help this wonderful ministry? And how can I help my brothers and sisters in Christ in this Sudan? And let me tell you something about these Sudanese Christians.

Let me tell you something, Matt. If we got hit here, which the attacks aren't getting any less from Christians here. It's more social, right? And political and whatnot. We haven't gotten locked up just quite yet for our faith in America. But when those attacks do come here, I'm going to tell you who's first in line to send resources, money, to send medicine. The Sudanese Christians. If the shoe was on the other foot and the American church was being attacked, I can bet you anything the first people in line to send us money and relief would be those Sudanese Christians. Wouldn't you agree with that, Matt?

Absolutely. In fact, they're asking for us how they can pray for us. That's a very humbling thing to do. When you go and you visit them and you think you're helping them and then they say, Well, how can we help you? How can we pray for you? We have many people who support us who ask us to forward their prayer requests to some of the pastors that we work with because they want to be prayed for by those pastors.

And it's very touching. Praise the Lord. Well, thank you for what you're doing, Matt. God bless you. Christmasairlift.com. And we will have you on again soon.

Possibly Eddie and possibly Brad Bill soon too for the Persecution Project Foundation. Thank you so much, my friend. And Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. Okay, brother? Thank you, brother. Y'all take care.