How a pastor in Baghdad responds to persecution
This story is....wow. Lord, give me a heart to pray for boldness. Open my eyes to your Sovereign nature. Teach me to trust your Word.
Amen.
excerpt from Ron Brackin's story "A Pastor in Baghdad"
Special Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
DALLAS, TX(ANS) -- We met seven years ago in Baghdad. I was there researching a book on the post-Saddam Iraqi Church. Actually, it wasn't all that "post," since he had crawled out of his "rat hole" only a few weeks earlier.
After introductions were made, I sat down in front of his desk and, as I took out my digital recorder, he said, "Before we begin, I would like to read something to you." He opened a black-covered Bible and read from Isaiah 19, which my NIV calls a prophecy about Egypt:
"In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria [modern-day Iraq]. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying 'Blessed be Egypt my people, Assryia my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.' "
You don't have to be a theologian to know that "that day" has not come yet.
"This is our vision," he said, "the vision of the Church in Iraq." And he went on to tell me his story and the account of his people between the Gulf Wars.
This morning, I received a telephone call from a friend in Amman, Jordan.
"Guess who is with me," he said, uncharacteristically playful.
It was my friend from Baghdad. We spent a few minutes catching up, and then I asked him two hard questions.
I knew that more than a million Christians had already fled Iraq, along with millions of other refugees, the Christians heading north to Irbil, Dahuk or Sulaymaniyah, where they are protected by the Kurds, or to the godawful refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. I wasn't surprised that they left. I was amazed that more than a million others have stayed.
He explained that he had lost half of his congregation since November 1, when al-Qaeda-connected gunmen took 120 hostages at Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad and slaughtered 41 Christians, including two priests, as well as 12 police officers and 5 bystanders and wounded 78 others. The media called it the "deadliest attack ever recorded against Iraq's Christians." In 2006 and 2007, my friend's church had a thousand members. Half left between then and last November. Half again since the attack. It turned out that the ter rorists had targeted my friend's church, but the killers went to the wrong address, one street away. The police broke up his service that Sunday morning, informed my friend about the "mistake," and told him to shut down and send everybody home, which he did. But the doors were open again two weeks later.
"How do you teach your congregation that God provides for them when they have no food, that he protects them when they are being raped and tortured and murdered, that he loves them when he sends no one to their rescue?" I asked my friend.
"When the terrorists came and killed many Christians," he said, "that week, I received many calls from my congregation asking me many why's. Why did Jesus let them kill Christians? Why didn't Jesus stop them? Why did God let the terrorists enter the church? Why? Why? Why?
"I cried out to God. I said, 'My Lord, give me the answers.'
"After that, in my reading that day in the Book of Acts 4:29, I saw that when the disciples were threatened, they prayed, I thought maybe for pr otection. I was shocked that they prayed for boldness.
"The next week, I went before the church.
" 'You ask me why, why why. You should go to God and ask him why he left his Son torn on the cross. Why Peter died on a cross upside down. After that, ask me why. It's in the plan. Because you are a Christian, it costs blood. And maybe it will cost our blood. God didn't promise us that we would live in a comfortable life. Why are we surprised? This is our life. This is what is promised for us. Open the Book of Acts and see how the Christians suffered.'
"They were very encouraged and were clapping and they prayed and cried and said, 'Oh, we are sorry, our Lord.' "
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