Martyred Pastor in the Sudan

This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. They are martyred for the crime of following and proclaiming Jesus Christ. With me is someone who knows a lot about Sudan. He's the president and founder of the Persecution Project Foundation.

He is Brad Phillips. It's a little loud because we're in a big meeting here with a lot of cool people. Brad, a lot of hearts are heavy in your ministry at Persecution Project because of this dear pastor who was on his way to the war-torn Nuba Mountains. Tell us a little bit about what happened. Well, Stu, I was actually there in Sudan until a couple of days ago.

I was there when this happened. Pastor Ibrahim Kondur was from Umdarain County. Umdarain is also known as Moro Land, and that's the place where Persecution Project is sponsoring Jigeba Referral Hospital. Right now, there's a lot of questions in people's minds about the state of religious freedom in Sudan. For the last few years, people have been speculating that maybe there's change, but this is an example of the regime, the Islamic State in Khartoum, sending a message to the church that they still can't tolerate the gospel. Ibrahim Kondur happened to be an American citizen from the Nuba Mountains, living in Minnesota, and during the last three or four years, there's been what they're calling no peace, no war.

So there's some sort of a limbo between peace and war. And many things have been opened that were closed, but one of the things that happens when things open is that people come out and expose themselves to the regime. And the state security tracked this man. He flew to Khartoum, and then from Khartoum, he went to the Islamic-controlled area of Kadugli, which is one of the only areas in Kordofan controlled by Khartoum. He traveled to Kadugli on his way into Nuba-controlled territory of Umdurain. He was there with his wife and four children, as well as three of his nephews. And at three o'clock in the morning, while the bus had stopped and people were sleeping, waiting for it to be refueled to carry on their journey outside of Kadugli, he was shot along with three of his nephews, and four other people were also shot. One of the other victims was sent to our hospital in Umdurain.

We had a chance to interview him. But this is just a message from the regime of terror against the church that their intentions really haven't changed. In America, we hear headlines. Brad Phillips of some horrible crimes. We have people blowing people up. We have bank robbers.

We have all kinds of things. But in the Sudan, there's a regular battle. They're bombing Christian schools. They're bombing orphanages. They're bombing hospitals. But the Persecution Project is doing it.

You're not cursing the darkness. You're shining a light. And a lot of our listeners have supported you and have opened up their pocketbooks and said, hey, we want to give. We want to go. We want to support you and pray. Well, we really do appreciate the listeners to the Truth Network and your personal support to this ministry. We have the privilege to stand in fellowship with the largest community of Christians in the officially Islamic state of Sudan in a Christian enclave, which is a contested area that continues to be under attack and assault as the regime attempts to wipe out the Christian population there. But we have a great opportunity there to serve that community, especially the persecuted church.

And right now, they need our prayers, and they need us to stand with them more than ever. You're trying to spread the gospel. You're trying to spread help with medicine, medical supplies. So many folks have been generous over here. We want to encourage folks, obviously, to continue to donate to you guys.

But talk about the ongoing work. How important is just to have the birthing center? I mean, women were giving birth under trees. Women and children are the number one victims of Sharia law in Sudan. The Nuba Mountains are people that have decided that they don't want to be under Sharia law, and that's why they're under attack.

And that's why the gospel is a threat to that Islamofascist system. So we've been standing with the church there and with the Nuba community trying to support basic health services. So right now we supply medicines and medical supplies to 203 locations, 203 facilities, as well as seven rural hospitals. And the newest hospital is Jigeba Referral Hospital, which we launched in 2015, which provides services to about 3,000 patients a month in a place where medical services are not available, not because of choice, but because the regime in Khartoum is trying to basically destroy these people. So they find out that this is a highly concentrated Christian area, the Nuba Mountains, probably the most Christian area in all of Sudan, and they drop the bombs, the shrapnel flies.

It doesn't matter if you're a woman, a child, the most weakest, the most helpless. The bombs haven't been dropping since 2016, but they've carried on their terror and persecution campaign through a series of ground attacks, targeted assassinations like the one of this pastor. In October they sent in 1,000 vehicles and they uprooted 60,000 people. About 11,000 families lost their homes. Many other thousands of people were killed in a place called Ligawa. And so there's a lot of people. The Nuba population is about 5 million in Sudan.

They're one of the largest indigenous groups, and half of those Nuba identify as Christian, and that's why they're the target of some of the worst persecution. It's easy for me to hold a mic, which I've done for over two decades, but it's not as easy for what Brad Phillips and the Persecution Project does. You guys hear the fire, you hear the bombs, you hear the attacks, and you guys go to that. You run to the battle.

You've been doing it for all this time. How can our listeners pray for and support the Persecution Project Foundation right now? It's a critical time, and these people need relief. They don't just need your cup of water in Jesus' name, they need the gospel.

They need very practical medical things we take for granted, like a mosquito net, which could save them from malaria. Well, what's really exciting is that the church is growing in the Nuba Mountains under immense persecution. It's growing in a number of different ways. You do have a number of pagans in the community who they call traditional African religion. You also have a number of Muslims in the community, and these people are coming to Christ because the love of Christ is being demonstrated to them by a local body of believers. So it's a great privilege for us to stand in fellowship with the local church there. They're the courageous ones that we get to stand with. There's many opportunities to serve, not only through medical and humanitarian help, but also standing with the church to resource them with scriptures. Last year we distributed about 20,000 scriptures in indigenous languages. Every year we sponsor different activities to try to strengthen and encourage the local church as they carry out the ministry God has given them.

I love it. People have left the persecution project in their will and estate when they pass for you to benefit from that. People have been so gracious to give. Young people have collected little pennies. Remember we used to do dimes for Darfur?

I can't remember the nomenclature of that. But you remember that. People have done so much. You're inviting any help, right?

No help is too small. You know, American people, especially God's people in America, are among the most generous in the world. And I feel really privileged to be in a position to help provide a bridge between them and the body of Christ in Sudan. And there's a lot of opportunities for ministry right now. There's a lot of reasons for encouragement. But at the same time, there's tremendous pressure and acts of terror that are continuing against believers because of their identification with Jesus Christ.

I just came out a couple of days ago from the Nuba Mountains. One of the most... I heard so many testimonies from pastors. One pastor's testimony I'll never forget is a pastor from Habon County.

And Habon is the place where the first convert was recorded 100 years ago in 1922. And this pastor in Daria has been in and out of prison 16, 17 times by the Muslim Brotherhood. He was tortured. And he told his story joyfully about how they threw him into a pit. The prison there is just a hole in the ground. It's full of waste.

It's full of the bodies of people who just died because they starved to death or they were tortured. And when he went in there, within the first few hours of being in there, there were cobras in the pit with him who killed two of the other prisoners who were other pastors who were thrown in there with him. And somehow God kept him alive. He said the snake, after the snake had killed someone, he was eye to eye with this cobra. And he said, we looked at each other and I said to the snake, what do we do now? And then I started to pray.

And then God sent a mongoose and distracted the snake and it didn't bite me. And he just went on and told about how he survived this experience. Every day the jailer came to check and see if he was alive. And he was saying, Daria, are you there? And he said, yes, I'm still alive.

And eventually God delivered him from that pit. And he's one of the strongest leaders there in the Haibon community, Christian community. And there's just a lot of testimonies like that of tremendous courage.

And there's also a lot of people who are raised Muslim who are coming to Christ because they see the love of Christ demonstrated in the local church. Well, we love what you're doing at the Persecution Project Foundation. So many of our affiliates at Carry Truth Talk, so many of our listeners have supported you. I want to encourage you, be generous.

I want to encourage you to give ahead, give an attorney. Maybe you'll bump into one of these dear Sudanese converts to Christ from your gift to the Persecution Project Foundation. The website, Brad, for folks that want to share, learn more, watch the videos, and then of course donate.

It's just persecutionproject.org. Find out about what we're doing. Get involved. Find out what your part is. Thank you.