Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this lesson on Persecution of Christians and Christian responses to persecution.

I'm Miss Kendrick.

And in this lesson, we are going to be looking at some information about how Christians experience persecution worldwide.

I'm going to talk a little bit about how Christians have experienced prosecution historically as well.

So, I just see you are aware, I am going to be referring to people being treated badly and loss of life in all the same.

I'm not going to going into any graphic details or anything like that, but it might be that you want to complete this lesson where they trusted adults near by.

So in this lesson, we're going to look at what is persecution, examples of Christian persecution and Christian responses to persecution as well.

You are going to need a pen or a pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil, and some paper as well.

So if you don't have those things yet, this is your opportunity to quickly pause the video and run and get them.

So firstly, we are just going to make sure we understand what we mean by the word persecution.

So you can see I've got my definition here on the screen.

So persecution is hostility and ill treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs.

And what I'm going to get you to do is pause the video, write down the definition.

And I also want you to think about what do you think is the most persecuted religion in the world? So all religions really have experienced persecution at some point or other or in some place or other, but which one do you think is currently the most persecuted? So pause the video now and do those tasks.

So you might be surprised to learn that Christianity is currently the most persecuted religion in the world.

The international society of human rights claims that 80% of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.

And the peer research centre reported that in 2012, Christians were discriminated against in 139 countries.

That's almost 75% of the world's nations.

More recently on boxing day in 2018, an independent group view of the global persecution of Christians was commissioned, which found that Christians were the most persecuted group and that persecution against Christians is increasing in severity.

And this might be surprising to you if you've lived your whole life in the UK.

And maybe you've not been to some of the places where Christians are persecuted, because in the UK we have religious freedom and Christians are not usually the victims of persecution.

If anything, we often see other religions being treated more badly in the UK than Christians.

But if you go to countries like North Korea, Iraq, Nigeria, and many others as well, then, we can see reports that Christians have been heavily persecuted.

Now what persecution consists of really ranges and from Christians being forced to pay an extra tax, not allowing them to have good jobs or build churches, to attacks on their homes, churches, and families, and even being murdered for their faith.

For example, on Easter day in 2019, several church services in Sri Lanka were bombed killing around 253 people.

And it's believed that many thousands of Christians are killed each year because of their faith.

In 2015, it was reported that the 10 countries where the most serious persecution was taking place, North Korea, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Australia, and Nigeria.

So we can see lots and lots of different places where it's very dangerous to be a Christian.

So now you've got that information.

We're going to pause for a minute so you can answer some questions and then we're going to start looking at how Christians respond to persecution.

Now Christians have actually faced persecution throughout their history and actually the early church.

So Jesus's disciples and the churches they planted, experienced severe persecution.

And actually the Bible teaches Christians to expect persecution.

There's never an assumption that they will always be safe.

The apostle Paul warned that, "everyone who wants to live "a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted," that's in two Timothy.

And Jesus told Christians to expect persecution from the world because if they persecuted him, so obviously Jesus was crucified, then they were persecute his followers too.

And so there is a history of churches responding to persecution and surprisingly the church often grows under persecution as well.

So for example, in China, the church has been heavily persecuted and the Anti God Crown Church has grown phenomenally.

Whereas in countries where it's safe to be a Christian, the numbers have often been reported to dwindle.

So what we could see is that being persecuted for faith often strengthens faith rather than stamping it out.

What you're going to do is you're going to pause for a moment.

And then you guys are going to answer some questions based on the history of persecution and the church and what Christians believe about persecution because of the Bible.

We're going to look at Christian responses to persecution and lets be more detailed now.

And I've already talked about Christians responding to persecution historically.

And this has been a huge challenge because in the early church, when the church is being persecuted by the Romans, there were these real challenges where the Romans would often force Christians to deny their faith.

And this is something that we do see today in the persecuted church as well.

And many Christians would say that they should not deny Jesus.

They should not give up their faith for the sake of saving their lives.

In the Bible, Jesus says, "but those who reject me publicly, "I will reject before my father in heaven." So there was this challenge when persecution finished in the early church about whether or not to invite those people back into Christianity who had denied their faith to survive.

When so many Christians had been killed or martyred.

So martyred means to die for your faith because of what they believed.

And that seemed very unfair to church leaders in the early church.

And there was a really big challenge in deciding how to manage that.

Today, Christians all over the world facing persecution may be forced to deny their faith, or they may be thrown in prison for going to church or for preaching or for giving people Bibles and things like that.

But the Bible is very clear about how Christians should respond to those who are persecuting them.

I've got four verses here, which summarise the Christian view on persecution from the Bible.

So the first one says, "But now I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those "who persecute you." So this is quotation from Jesus.

And he is saying that if someone is treating you badly, if someone is your enemy, you should pray for them and you should love them.

And that's a real challenge because if somebody was really, really mistreating you, then you might feel very justified in being angry towards them or hating them.

And it would be very difficult to love them.

If somebody had taken away your home and thrown you in prison, like has happened to many Christians around the world, it would be a real challenge to love them.

The second quotation we've got here is, "If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." So again, there's this idea that Christians shouldn't respond to violence with violence and throughout church history and in the Bible, there is this idea that to respond to violence with love is going to shame the attacker and hopefully, end conflict.

"Happy are those who are persecuted because "they do what God requires.

"The kingdom of heaven belongs to them." And some translations say, "Blessed are those who are persecuted." And this is from some of St.

Paul's teaching could then Beattitudes.

So a list of blessings that he talked about.

And what this verse means is that those who are persecuted or they are in a horrible situation, they are blessed by God.

And the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

So there's this idea that they will go to heaven, that they will receive a turn on salvation because of what they suffer.

And lastly, "who then can separate us from the love "of Christ can trouble do it or hardship or persecution "or hunger or poverty or danger or death." So there's this idea that even if somebody is thrown in prison, even if they experienced hardship, if their loved ones are killed or their lives are threatened, there is this idea that they are still in the love of Christ and nothing that a human can do could separate them from God.

And for many Christians, this would be a great comfort to them in what they experience.

So having looked at some of these Bible verses, we're going to pause a moment so that you can answer some questions based on Christian responses to persecution.

So how do Christians respond to persecution? When they're in a country that's safe, that they are aware that other Christians are being persecuted around the world because Christians believe that their church is united.

That even if somebody is in another country, someone they've never met before, they're still brothers or sisters in Christ.

One Bible verse says, "If one part of the body suffers, then the whole body suffers." Now you might think about this, if you've ever had toothache, for example, technically, the problem is in your tooth, isn't it? And that's quite painful, but you probably feel like the whole of you suffers.

You might feel a bit sick from the pain.

You might not be able to eat anything.

you might feel really tired and exhausted because of your pain that you're experiencing from toothache.

And there's this idea in Christianity that if some members of the church are suffering due to persecution, then the rest of the church should suffer with them as well.

And that will motivate Christians to help one another, especially as they would want to be supported if they were being persecuted themselves.

So this can be done in several ways.

So one of these ways is through prayer, remember many Christians believe in a God that answers prayer.

So they will pray for the persecuted brothers and sisters.

And they will hope to see answers to prayer.

And they may be in contact with persecuted Christians.

They might not be, but they will still pray either by themselves or in their churches, or there might be some days in the church calendar that are dedicated to remembering the persecuted church.

Education is also a really important part of this.

So there are charities such as Open Doors, which is a charity, which aims to educate people about persecution of the church, and we'll work with Christians and church members.

But we'll also work with non-religious people and with governments to try and bring about change.

So this is one way in which many Christians might support persecuted Christians financially is through official charities, such as Open Doors.

And what the charities might do is they might provide a safe place for people to go.

They might provide training for pastors and church leaders and things like that.

And they're also going to lobby governments.

So you might have seen petitions going around about various matters.

So petitions might be per hour so that people can lobby governments to do more about responding to Christians being persecuted around the world.

So the example that I want you to have in mind is the Charity Open Doors.

They will tell the stories of persecuted Christians to raise awareness and funds and help them to escape persecution.

Open Doors works in 60 countries, and it also provides Bibles, trains church leaders, and provides emergency relief.

So what we're going to do now is we're going to pause and you're going to answer some questions on how Christians respond to persecution.

So to learn a bit more about how Christians respond to persecution and help the wider church who are being persecuted, which is going to look at a case study, and we're going to learn that about Brother Andrew.

Now, Brother Andrew was born in Holland and he was living in the height of the Cold War.

And the Cold War was when there was a lot of unease in Europe and America and a lot conflict with communism and in Eastern Europe, communism had really, really spread.

And one of the sort of ideologies that's part of communism is that religion isn't true.

So Marx who was a famous communist Karl Marx, he believed that religion had been used by rich people to control the poor.

So he was very anti Christianity.

So in these countries that were communist, religion had been really rejected and lots of Christians had been sort of pushed underground.

And even though in some of these places, Christians were still officially allowed to worship.

They were often losing their churches and they weren't able to have Bibles because lots of the communist nations heavily controlled the kind of books and things that people could read.

So Bibles were really hard to come by.

And although there were some sort of official translations of the Bible that some of the communist parties had approved, it was incredibly difficult to get hold of these copies.

So lots and lots of the Christians in these countries were bibleless.

And that might not feel like a big deal to you, but for a Christian, the Bible is the source of all of their knowledge about Jesus.

And it's a way of meeting with God through prayer, learning about their religion.

So Bibles were so, so precious to these Christians.

Now, Brother Andrew, he went to Warsaw in 1955 and he started to meet with the persecuted church there.

And he started to travel to these places more and more.

He felt a real calling from God to go and meet with the persecuted church who were behind the iron curtain.

And when he went to these churches, he had to be so careful because they were very worried that there might be spies.

And he was really aware that if he started to speak to some of the Christians there and make contact with them and a spie was there watching, then those Christians in that country risked going to prison just by talking to him.

But when he went there, he did meet with some people.

And a lot of the Christians, there were greatly encouraged by his presence simply because of the knowledge that they weren't forgotten.

And that's something that they found incredibly Painful.

And that Brother Andrew was really touched by.

So he devoted his life to smuggling bibles into what was then communist Eastern Europe and into China later on as well.

And if you were to read his stories, so you can read his book "God's Smuggler" then he was incredibly daring.

He would pack this little car, filled with Bibles, hide them under the seats.

And he had to go through these military checkpoints where guards and things would often check the cars.

And if he was caught trying to smuggle Bibles into the country, then he could be thrown into prison.

But time after time, he manages to get through.

And he's also got lots of his stories about being provided for by God.

So he talks about circumstances where he needed some money and the next day he'd the exact money he needed would arrive in the post with a letter from a friend just saying, "I was praying for you, "and God told me to send you this money." So these stories of miracles are ones which many Christians believe in and many Christians who feel could deserve the persecuted church would really be putting their trust in God to go into these dangerous situations and help other people.

So his example is a really, really useful one and that he smuggled bibles into these countries, that he encouraged the church there simply by them knowing that there was somebody who cared about them and that Christians in the West and the Christians who weren't being persecuted were aware of them and that they loved them and they cared for them.

So what you're going to do is you're going to pause your video and you're just going to answer a few questions on the story of Brother Andrew, Thank you for taking part on this lesson about Christians who are persecuted around the world.

It is a really important thing that we are educated in these sorts of matters.

And this is one reason why we are important so that we can learn about the experiences of people all over the world.

And in our human rights unit, we're also going to be looking at other religions that are persecuted and other reasons why people might be discriminated against.

So I'd really encourage you to have a look at some of those lessons as well, just to broaden your understanding.

But for the sake of this lesson, the important things for you to keep in mind for an examination is those Bible quotations, for responses to persecution, you want the examples like the Charity Open Doors, and you want to be able to explain how Christians respond to persecuted church and why they care about people far away in another country where Christians have been persecuted.

Now you can complete your exit quiz to show what you have learned in this lesson.