Nigeria – The sharp blade of a machete cut the ropes that tied Pastor Ojih’s feet together. Rough hands jerked him to his feet from the ground where he had laid for hours, singing praises to God with his cheek pressed into the dirt.

Pastor Ojih and several other Christians had been captured by radical Islamists, bound, and left alone to contemplate their fate under the scorching heat of Nigeria’s sun. They were told to stand and decide their fate.

“If you want to live for Christ, go to this side,” his captor said, jerking his hand toward a man dressed in white with a sword who stood apart from the captives. “If you want to go for Mohammad, remain where you are.”

Pastor Ojih led the way for those who would stand for Christ with a song of praise coming from his lips. Seven others followed. He watched, with tears in his eyes, as the men who turned to Islam to save their lives began to recite the Arabic vows to convert to Islam.

Pastor Ojih kneeled in front of his executioner and was given one last chance. His executioner raised his sword and asked him if he wanted to live as a Muslim or die as a Christian.

The husband and father of four turned to his companions and spoke his last words. “If you survive, tell my family that I died well and am living with Christ. And if we all die, we know that we died for the Lord.”

After hearing the testimonies of so many martyrs over the years, I’m struck by the fact that in account after account, you will find that the death of the martyr often involves a conscious choice. They are given a choice to turn away from Christ and live or to die in Christ.

If you are like most people, when you read accounts like Pastor Ojih and these early Christians, you are struck by their courage and are probably asking yourself, “Could I do what they did? Could I die as a faithful witness with a sword over my neck?”

In Luke 14:33, Jesus says, “Any of you who does not give everything he has, cannot be my disciple.” Are we willing to give up everything, even our own life, for God? He demands our everything, and yet we hold back. Our love for the world and its comforts often rivals our love for the One who offers us the greatest of treasures, an unconditional, incomprehensible love and the gift of eternal life.

Jesus calls us in Matthew 22 to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, and mind. The martyrs are an inspiring example of what loving the Lord with all that is within us looks like. They’re not just being willing, but purposefully choosing to lay down their very life in order to demonstrate just how invaluable the love of God is. They consider the cost of their life a small price to pay for the great reward of being found faithful in Him.

Ojih and the apostles’ fate was sealed long before they met their executioner. Why? Because they had found the ultimate treasure that was worth everything to them. This is why death (eternal life) is their choice.
Sources:persecution

http://theendtimeradio.com

Panama — After spending three months in Panama, a 27-year-old Iranian woman is still praying and searching for a safe country to accept her. And her time is running out.

Artemis Ghasemzadeh must find a haven by June 7, when her two-month humanitarian visa expires. Otherwise, she will be returned to Iran, where she will face extreme persecution for leaving Islam.

Ghasemzadeh’s journey began months ago when she fled Iran with her older brother, Shahin, first to Dubai and then to Mexico, where they hired a smuggler to take them into the United States.

The siblings were detained together for five days in San Diego and then separated: Ghasemzadeh to Panama with other refugees, and her brother to a Houston detention facility, where he remains. Other families were separated, too.

“At first, I thought we were going to Texas,” Ghasemzadeh told International Christian Concern (ICC) staffers during a WhatsApp video call this week. “And when we heard Panama, I was like, ‘Is that in the United States?’”

A phalanx of photographers and journalists met the Iranian refugees at the Panama hotel in late February. The New York Times broke the story, followed by other media outlets that were critical of the Trump Administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Ghasemzadeh spent a month at an unsanitary camp near the Darién Gap jungle, choosing to sleep outdoors, before moving to a hotel in Panama City with UNICEF support.

She is now staying with two Christian families from Iran and asylum-seekers from China, Vietnam, and Pakistan. They were initially given 30 days to leave the country but received a two-month reprieve.

Ghasemzadeh and her brother knew the challenges and risks of their journey. They were caught in the timing and dragnet of changing U.S. immigration policies and executive orders. Still, they were desperate to flee oppression in Iran, where converts to Christianity must hide their faith and worship as part of an underground house church, a growing and loose collection of believers who use apps to connect and support each other. Christian friends were caught and arrested.

When news about Ghasemzadeh’s situation broke, Iranian police visited her mother — her parents are divorced — seeking anything tied to her daughter and Christianity. Ghasemzadeh fears for her mother’s safety.

“In Iran, being a Christian when you’re born is OK,” Ghasemzadeh said. “There are even beautiful churches. But if you’re a Muslim and you convert to Christianity, it’s a problem. The police want to catch you because it’s not good for [the country].”

Armenian, Assyrian, and Catholic communities exist in Iran. Yet, like other Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and beyond, Iran has strict anti-conversion laws that are punishable by imprisonment or death. Many Christians, criminals, politicians, and enemies of the state are sent to Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, which the U.S. Department of State and other bodies have cited for its human rights violations.

Lawyers from New York, Mexico, and Colombia are helping Ghasemzadeh and the other refugees in Panama find a country that will accept them. So far, potential sponsors have fallen through.

Ghasemzadeh said she would “rather die” than go back to Iran, knowing the fate that awaits her. ICC continues to advocate with government entities on Ghasemzadeh’s behalf and share her plight with the world.

Refoulement, or the forced return of refugees and asylum seekers to countries where they are likely to face persecution, is prohibited in many international treaty bodies, including the Convention against Torture and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). The United States is party to the Convention against Torture but has refused to sign the ICPPED.

Adherence to non-refoulement is, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “an implicit guarantee flowing from the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill human rights.”

While Ghasemzadeh remains surprisingly upbeat, peaceful, and feels the Lord’s presence in big and small ways, the reality of being cast away eats at her soul.

“I have many nightmares now. I don’t have my hometown, I don’t have the USA, and I don’t have a safe country; I don’t know the next step, where should I live … it’s really scary for me,” she said. “It’s a trip where you never come back to your country, and it may be the last time you see all of your family; maybe you can visit your family in the country, maybe not.”

Shahin became a follower of Christ in 2015 while living in Turkey. Ghasemzadeh visited him often and attended his church in part “to not be lonely.” When Shahin gave his sister a Bible, she absorbed the Scriptures. She became a believer in 2022.

In Panama, Ghasemzadeh spends most of her time at the hotel, fellowshiping with other believers and practicing her Spanish, or taking walks. She stays in touch with her brother in Houston and connects with friends and family on social media.
She writes in her journal each night and knows the Lord is near, that he has a plan for her life.

“Whatever happens to you, you should pray to God,” she said, “the good, the bad, you should just pray.”

Recently, Ghasemzadeh was reminded of Psalm 126:5: “Those who sow in tears will reap in shouts of joy.”

“I cry so much,” she said. “I’m waiting for my shouting of miracles.”
Sources:persecution

http://theendtimeradio.com

United States — Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog group, last month released its annual report on global executions. The report documented 1,518 executions in 2024 — a 32% increase compared to 2023 and the highest global numbers in a decade.

These numbers do not include an estimated thousands of executions conducted by China, a leading persecutor of religion, or those executed in North Korea and Vietnam. China has long persecuted independent religion within its borders, subjecting millions of Uyghur Muslims to concentration camps and murdering religious minorities, especially Falun Gong practitioners, to sell their organs on the black market.

The North Korean government is consistently ranked as one of the most repressive of religious freedom and has been designated by the U.S. as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) every year since 2001. There, owning a Bible or praying can lead to life in prison or even death.

Vietnam is designated as a Special Watchlist (SWL) country by the U.S. Department of State, indicating credible evidence that it has engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.

Leading the list of documented executions were Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which have been designated as CPCs for decades, given their consistent track records of particularly severe violations of religious freedom. Iran executed at least 972 people in 2024, while Saudi Arabia doubled its rate from 2023, with 345 executions in 2024.

While the Iranian government allows some degree of freedom for historically non-Muslim communities, converts from Islam to Christianity are viciously persecuted and are treated as a national security threat.

One of the world’s few theocracies, the Iranian system is built on extreme devotion to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. After the overthrow of the secular but authoritarian monarchy in 1979, Iran swung hard toward Islamist extremism and has continued on that path ever since, with a growing security apparatus designed to suppress religious and political dissent in every corner of society.

Iran’s constitution, finalized soon after the 1979 revolution, is a religious manifesto that quotes the Quran extensively and mandates the military to fulfill “the ideological mission of jihad in Allah’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of Allah’s law throughout the world.”

For religious minorities in Iran, there is no escape from the extremist policies of a government fueled by an extremist interpretation of Shia Islam that leaves no room even for Sunni Islam, much less religious minorities like Christianity.
The United States has designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) 13 times since first issuing the designation in 1999, including every year since 2016. The CPC designation is designed to pressure countries that engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.

Blasphemy and apostasy are both crimes under Saudi law, with punishment for these violations of Islamic morality including large fines, long terms in prison, floggings, and even death. According to the activist group Reprieve, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 212 people this year, surpassing the kingdom’s previous annual record of 196 people executed in 2022 and the 172 people executed in 2023.

The country’s blasphemy law, in essence, outlaws the expression of minority religious beliefs, while the ban on apostasy prevents Muslims from leaving Islam for another faith. Combined with the idea, taught in schools, that all infants are born Muslim, this leaves little room to identify with any faith other than Islam.

Public worship of any faith other than Islam is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, with the government enforcing this restriction carefully and only allowing private gatherings under the strictest of conditions.

As do many authoritarian regimes around the world, the Saudi government considers religious freedom to be a threat to its absolute grip on power. While it has managed to twist and manipulate Islam into a tool for the state, it does not allow even Muslims to practice their faith in freedom. It even maintains an enforcement agency to ensure that Muslims practice their faith in a way that does not interfere with the interests of the state.
Sources:persecution

http://theendtimeradio.com