If asked “Which religious group is the most persecuted in the world today?” most people would likely answer, “Jews.” Some might even say “Muslims.” But they would all be wrong. The most persecuted group of religious believers in the world in 2021 is Christians! Christians in the United States have understood for decades that believers in non-Christian countries are often in danger of losing their lives.  In Russia, during Communist days, believers met in small groups at each other’s homes, each family treasuring the single page of Scripture that had been given to them, torn from a Bible smuggled into the country.  Such pages were sewn into the bottom lining of chairs or slid behind the backing of pictures of Stalin that hung on their walls, and when a group got together, they read and studied the one page of the family in whose home they met that night.  Neighbors reported on such meetings, and when the KGV broke into the homes, woe to the families if the page of scripture was found!  Children were indoctrinated in atheism from a young age in the schools and were encouraged to report their parents for being Christians.

In Muslim countries, if a strong and benevolent leader does not protect them, Christians are persecuted, turned out of their homes, and often murdered.  In the Middle East especially, the murder of Christians, according to a study conducted by Great Britain, often amounts to genocide.  In the Middle East and North Africa, 20% of the population used to be Christians.  Now less than 4% of Christians remain in the area, 177,000 of them living safely in Israel. Churches and crosses are destroyed.  Pastors are imprisoned or killed.  All Christian beliefs are strictly forbidden to be publicly expressed. And of those who have not fled the region, many are murdered by extremists who are often supported by the government. “The inconvenient truth,” the report concludes, is “that the overwhelming majority (80%) of persecuted religious believers [world-wide] are Christians” (TheGuardian.com).

Open Doors USA, which keeps a close watch on Christian persecution reports that each month 

  • 345 Christians are killed for faith-related reasons
  • 105 Churches and Christian buildings are burned or attacked
  • 219 Christians are detained without trial, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned

In 2019, in the 50 worst countries for persecution, 4,136 Christians were killed because of their faith (11 Christians a day), 2,165 were arrested and imprisoned without trial, and 1,266 churches or other Christian buildings were attacked. The number of Christians in those countries who are persecuted but not imprisoned or killed stands at 245 million for 2019, up from 215 million in 2018.  In some parts of Africa, Christian women and girls are kidnapped and turned into slaves by Muslim groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province.

Yet, there are countries in the world where we expect Christians to be allowed to freely practice their beliefs, since these western countries generally have religious freedom of expression enshrined in their laws and constitutions.  But if that is what you expect, think again.

On April 23, 2021, 71-year-old pastor John Sherwood was roughed up and arrested in Uxbridge, England for preaching in a public square that according to the Bible, marriage should only be between a man and a woman.  Some complained that he was offending them with his “homophobic” remarks and that it was hate speech.  According to Newsweek, “His arrest was warranted under Section 5 of Britain’s Public Order Act because it caused alarm and distress, according to the police. The 1986 act seeks to ‘abolish the common law offenses of riot, rout, unlawful assembly and affray and certain statutory offenses related to public order; to control public processions and assemblies; to control the stirring up of racial hatred.’”

Peter Simpson of Penn Free Methodist Church had also been preaching in that square since knife attacks there suggested to the two pastors that the Word of God was needed there.  Pastor Simpson was told by a policeman after Sherwood’s arrest that some things simply cannot be spoken of in public because there is no freedom to say something that offends someone.  What? When interrogated by the police, Pastor Sherwood reminded them that they were under a constitutional oath which they were breaking. “I reminded them that every monarch swears to maintain the royal law of God, under the crown,” Sherwood said.  Thus, in Great Britain, man’s law cannot supersede God’s law.   Shamefully, most Brits no longer see it that way!

But Great Britain is not the only country to jail pastors for breaking man’s law.  In Canada, churches were closed because of the pandemic as they were briefly in the U.S. Pastor Artur Pawlowsky and his brother Dawid were arrested by a Swat team, dragged from their car onto a busy highway, and forced to kneel in the rain as they were handcuffed.  Their crime?  “Inciting” people to go to church. Rebel News, who started a legal defense fund for the pastor, the second to be arrested in Canada this year, makes this apt comment: “Arresting Christians for holding church services is what police states do, not liberal democracies. This has to stop.” 

And then we move on to Finland.  According to the Family Research Council, “Finland’s former Interior Minister and leader of the Christian Democrats, has been criminally charged for posting a picture of the Bible, opened to Romans 1:24-27” which reads:

 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their [a]women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the [b]men, leaving the natural use of the [c]woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

Unless she recants, the former member of Finland’s parliament could face up to six years in prison since her quoting the words of Paul in the Bible verbatim “violated the equality and dignity of homosexuals” according to the prosecutors (Cauldronpool.com).   Former M.P. Päivi Räsänen, who is basically being charged with hate speech for quoting scripture, points out the danger of passing oppressive pro-LGBTQ laws such as a 2003 Swedish law which states that “Those who disseminate statements alleging homosexuality to be a sin can be sentenced up to two years in prison for incitement against a group of people” (Cauldronpool.com). Finnish Bishop-Elect, Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, who published a book written by Räsänen in 2004 before same sex marriage was made legal in 2017, has also been charged.  The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF) has broken away from the state sponsored Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, because it moved away from the Bible and Lutheran teachings.

An investigation in Helsinki, Finland’s capital in 2019 had determined that no law had been broken, but in 2021 the radicals around the world are emboldened to attack. The International Lutheran Council warned:

“The implications of the decision to charge Juhana Pohjola and Päivi Räsänen are clear: if the authorities are willing to do this to a respected pastor, reverend doctor, and Bishop-Elect, as well as a Member of Parliament and former Minister of the Interior, then that sends a message of fear and intimidation to everyone in Finland who follows the Scripture’s teaching on human sexuality.”

(International Lutheran Council)

Rod Lampard, theologian and author of “Christian Leaders Face Six Years in Prison For Quoting the Bible on Homosexuality,” from which this information comes, claims that all of this is “eerily similar to 1930s Germany” at the rise of the Third Reich.  “The ELMDF,” he explains, “appears to be the equivalent of the Confessing Church . . . an ecclesiastical protest against nominalist German Christians surrendering Christian theology into the hands and service of National Socialist ideology.”  That, in turn, sounds frighteningly like what is currently taking place in the United States.

In the U.S., the pandemic became the excuse for the closing of church doors and then for the ridiculous maximum occupancy of 10 people when they were finally allowed to reopen.  A Florida minister was jailed for opening his mega-church, deeming it an essential business, which to Christians, it is.  In New York, another pastor was threatened with a $1000 fine for holding a drive-in church where he stood on the porch of the church and the congregants listened in their cars over an FM radio channel, just as we did at our church.  North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara County, California, was fined thousands of dollars for holding in-person services as were two mega-churches in Albuquerque, Texas.  The pastor of the Life Tabernacle Church in Central, Louisiana was arrested for holding services as well.  The list goes on and on:  Worchester, Massachusetts; Ventura, California; Los Angeles, California; Moscow, Idaho – – – all over the country pastors and Christians went back to church while enraged (mostly) Democrat officials levied fines and made arrests.  And so goes the freedom to worship in the United States.

Now, President Asterisk and Democrats in Congress are attempting to pass the Equality Act which would amend existing civil rights law to explicitly cover sexual orientation and gender identity, with protections extending to employment, housing, education, and public accommodations such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, libraries, gas stations and retail stores. It could also force doctors and nurses to perform abortions even if abortions are contrary to their religious beliefs. “It will be very difficult for Christian schools, Christian colleges, even in some cases for the ministries of Christian churches to proceed,” the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a recent radio broadcast. “This will change not just a few things, it will fundamentally change almost everything on the nation’s landscape” (AP). 

So far, thanks to the outrage by both protestant and Catholic church leaders, the bill has not made it to a vote in the Senate.  If it does, we will follow Sweden and Finland in not being able to share Biblical truth outside of our church doors.  We would be one step closer to a Godless society.

But yet another scenario is even more disturbing.  Because of the Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza and Israel’s response in defending herself, Jews in the United States as well as elsewhere in the world are being physically attacked.  Not a single Democrat leader has denounced these attacks.  

Today the Jews. Tomorrow the Christians?