Does your Religion have its members go into persecution?

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I’ve been meditating on the Acts and how everywhere each Apostle went they were killed for Christ. For the first 325 years Christians were persecuted for their faith. The same continued in the East for hundreds of years and now that the world has changed. I feel less people of Christianity go into places where they may face death for their beliefs.

I’ve been reading of a couple Evangelical missionaries who have been imprisoned in Pakistan and Iran for going there and preaching. One man is serving an eight year sentence, away from his family for preaching Christ in the middle East. I also read many articles on Coptic Egyptian Church’s being burned down and horrible atrocities being committed against the Orthodox.

Our Church sends missionaries to Pakistan to preach Jesus and a couple returned to discuss with us what it was like. Basically, there is plenty of fear as their lives are on the line each day, but they still keep going back. According to one man, they won’t even mention Muhammad because they know the consequence. They also won’t debate at all when things get heated, there’s just too much danger.

How is your Church suffering persecution? Have any miracles or amazing stories gone on in your Church going to places where you can be killed for preaching Christianity (lately.) So many have come to Christ from Evangelicals going and risking martyrdom, but I’m interested in stories from other Church’s as well.
 
catholicdoors.com/news/martyrs.htm

There are a lot of cases, and I’m pretty sure these are only the tip of the iceberg.

As to miracles, the Church has a really strict criteria for what it considers a “miracle”. It often takes years for us to determine that, officially.
 
Thanks for the list.

Are there any that are killed specifically because they were there to preach Jesus? Do you find the CC has its members being imprisoned and persecuted because of them going into unwelcoming regions and teaching the truths of Christ?
 
The USSR wasn’t very fond of us in its day. We’ve got plenty of New Martyrs from that time period.

Our Church is also suffering persecution in Syria right now at the hands of the Western sponsored terrorist groups there.

In Turkey there is an ongoing soft persecution. We aren’t killed, they just make it difficult to operate. If the Church ever tried to flee it would probably have to leave behind untold numbers of holy relics and the like.
 
dronald said:
I’ve been meditating on the Acts and how everywhere each Apostle went they were killed for Christ. For the first 325 years Christians were persecuted for their faith. The same continued in the East for hundreds of years and now that the world has changed. I feel less people of Christianity go into places where they may face death for their beliefs.

I’ve been reading of a couple Evangelical missionaries who have been imprisoned in Pakistan and Iran for going there and preaching. One man is serving an eight year sentence, away from his family for preaching Christ in the middle East. I also read many articles on Coptic Egyptian Church’s being burned down and horrible atrocities being committed against the Orthodox.

Our Church sends missionaries to Pakistan to preach Jesus and a couple returned to discuss with us what it was like. Basically, there is plenty of fear as their lives are on the line each day, but they still keep going back. According to one man, they won’t even mention Muhammad because they know the consequence. They also won’t debate at all when things get heated, there’s just too much danger.

How is your Church suffering persecution? Have any miracles or amazing stories gone on in your Church going to places where you can be killed for preaching Christianity (lately.) So many have come to Christ from Evangelicals going and risking martyrdom, but I’m interested in stories from other Church’s as well.
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God saw that the Church in America was not suffering enough, so He sent us liturgists.
 
I’m not sure about premise, and I don’t think anyone actively seeks persecution. But there were many persecututed and even martyred during the days of communism in what was the Soviet Union, perhaps millions.
 
I believe there is a lot of persecution in China, parts of India and Africa.
 
I know that the church I commune with sponsors at least 2 families in china. There are also opportunities for short term missions there. Did you recently read Radical by david platt or something?

I do not mean this to be offensive but when I was in South Africa, which definitely is not a persecuted area, I did not see one catholic missionary or native support. I spent most of my time in Capetown about 2 months or so. I am not saying that there was no one that was there just I did not see any outreach from the catholic church in the poor community. Again I want to say I am sure there are programs there. I just thought it was weird.
 
Nine_Two said:
The USSR wasn’t very fond of us in its day. We’ve got plenty of New Martyrs from that time period.

Our Church is also suffering persecution in Syria right now at the hands of the Western sponsored terrorist groups there.

In Turkey there is an ongoing soft persecution. We aren’t killed, they just make it difficult to operate. If the Church ever tried to flee it would probably have to leave behind untold numbers of holy relics and the like.
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I know and this is what kind of sparked my question. I know the Orthodox have always from day one been persecuted and continue. It must be so hard to be in the EO in this day.
Protestor said:
I know that the church I commune with sponsors at least 2 families in china. There are also opportunities for short term missions there. Did you recently read Radical by david platt or something?

I do not mean this to be offensive but when I was in South Africa, which definitely is not a persecuted area, I did not see one catholic missionary or native support. I spent most of my time in Capetown about 2 months or so. I am not saying that there was no one that was there just I did not see any outreach from the catholic church in the poor community. Again I want to say I am sure there are programs there. I just thought it was weird.
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I haven’t read it, but I do agree with its premise. He’s certainly not wrong.

Some friends of mine went to Africa recently on missions trips. It’s amazing how denominations cease to exist when the poorest of the poor are being fed and Christ is being proclaimed.
 
One priest in the US asked us all to please not buy the small Christmas lights from China. He said priests who forced to make those, and it’s excruciating putting those together.

I thought it was so outlandish that I thought he was kidding, but seems possible. If that’s any indication, they do seem to punish priests with forced labor, fines, etc.
 
It is not an issue. This is one of those first world problems (whose version of christianity is better)
 
The Catholic Church started with the persecution of Jesus and will continue to be persecuted until the second coming. We have always had Religious who give up everything to follow Jesus and Priests who go out and proclaim the Gospel throughout the world by the example of their lives and sometimes, even by using words. As I type more and more of these souls are being tortured, abused, imprisoned and martyred a recent example is Father Francois Murad (Source: huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/01/francois-murad-catholic-priest-beheaded-jihadist-fighters-syria-_n_3527372.html). My Aunt (a nun) and my uncle (a priest - RIP) suffered persecution in the Congo, she preached through living a Christ filled life, seeking Christ in others and helping people. Not all of her Religious Sisters survived.

Our lay people are persecuted throughout the world e.g. youtube.com/watch?v=ckpQFIro2C and youtube.com/watch?v=_Jg8EeL7zD8.
The Catholic Church is also persecuted by Governments e.g. youtube.com/watch?v=vAJIFFAjMzA and youtube.com/watch?v=0RPWmzdBNkg (no disrespect intended, they were the first to hand and I know they are mild compared to persecution in other countries).

The persecution continues through lying about the history of the Church to deliberately undermine faith e.g.- The Inquisition (which saved people from slaughter by the government and Galileo’s trial (the Church was never against science). Plus the anti Catholic programs and films e.g. Philomena. Google and Youtube will always put unrelated items attacking the Church when searching to find something positive about the Catholic Church.

Sorry, but even many people claiming to be Christians actively persecute Catholics by going out, not to preach or convert non-believers but to move Catholics away from God. I will not put examples (plenty can be found on google) so I will just mention the name of one person actively persecuting Catholics through lies and half truths - Dr Joseph Mizzi. To be fair, I also have to conceded that we do have members of our faithful who are not loving or kindly to others and forget that honey is more attractive that vinegar.

God bless you.
 
All spiritual

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

(2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
 
Go into? It’s never left. Egypt is structured in such a way that we can only hope for less openly hostile treatment, and sometimes we get the exact opposite…right now it is not good, perhaps going to get better than it was under the MB (which honestly wouldn’t be too hard, but also wouldn’t mean that things are “good”), but overall you get the sense talking to recently arrived immigrant Copts or those who have been back home recently that things are very unsure and unstable…that’s life in the Middle East/North Africa for all Christians…instability. Any moment, things could go very, very bad. Lord have mercy.

It has been said by some early church figures (though I don’t remember exactly who) that if all the martyrs of the Church of Egypt were counted and compared against all the martyrs of the Church elsewhere, the balance would tip in favor of the Egyptian Church. From the days of Diocletian through to today, we have seen so many martyrs. It has become inculcated into the life and mindset of the Church to such a degree that our calendar is marked not by BC/AD, but by AM – Anno Martyrum “Year of the Martyrs” (starting in AD 284, the first year of the reign of Dioceltian, the greatest single persecutor of the Church of Egypt). Just as an example of how this mindset works out in today’s Church, when the martyrs of the Church of el-Qiddiseen were killed in the bombing of their church in Alexandria in 2011, their blood covered the icons of the church (the bomb was exploded in the middle of midnight service, so the church had many people in it), and the surviving members of the congregation refused to allow the blood to be cleaned from those icons, preferring instead to keep it there and venerate the martyrs by those icons. Gruesome perhaps, but you have to understand what these people go through. Unlike elsewhere in the world today, the Middle East is still a place where it can be very dangerous to be a Christian, so the people know that they put their lives at risk just by living, essentially. Just by being Christian on so-called “Muslim” land. So the mindset that develops is very defiant, and very, very serious. But, of course, also hopeful in the promises of our Lord to His Church and His people (as is recorded in the Holy Bible, He has blessed Egypt specifically, and that is something that Egyptian Christians never forget).

HG Bp. Moussa and Fr. Tadros Yaqub speak at the funeral for the Alexandrian martyrs, 1/4/2011 (with English subtitles)
 
Eastern Catholics, of both the Syriac and Chaldean churches, are under extreme duress in Iraq in recent years with clergy killed and churches bombed. Unfortunately, this means these Catholics have often had to flee the country in order to protect their lives.

The Egyptian Catholic Copts, like their Orthodox brethren, are also under public scrutiny and government discrimination as a Christian minority.

Historically the Catholic Church has been heavily persecuted even into the 19th and 20th centuries. The French Revolution decimated the Church in France, with priests and nuns being arrested or killed. Likewise during the Spanish Civil War, with churches burned and more clergy murdered. Even in heavily Catholic Mexico, Catholics were persecuted by the socialist government during the 1920-30s and churches were closed and religion was suppressed.

As far as I know, the Catholic Church mostly preaches the Gospel in places like India, Africa and Asia, and I don’t know enough of these governments to say whether Catholicism is oppressed there. However, I do know that although the Catholic Church is somewhat of a fake church in China, there are real Catholics in that church who believe in the Magesterium’s teachings and are waiting for the Chinese government’s persecution to end so they can officially rejoin the Church
 
I am not Christian, but being Shia, we have always suffered persecution and continue to do so…
 
Shia_Muslim said:
I am not Christian, but being Shia, we have always suffered persecution and continue to do so…
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Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut. I am actually interested in more about this if you would like to explain further?

🙂
 
dronald said:
I’ve been meditating on the Acts and how everywhere each Apostle went they were killed for Christ. For the first 325 years Christians were persecuted for their faith. The same continued in the East for hundreds of years and now that the world has changed. I feel less people of Christianity go into places where they may face death for their beliefs.

I’ve been reading of a couple Evangelical missionaries who have been imprisoned in Pakistan and Iran for going there and preaching. One man is serving an eight year sentence, away from his family for preaching Christ in the middle East. I also read many articles on Coptic Egyptian Church’s being burned down and horrible atrocities being committed against the Orthodox.

Our Church sends missionaries to Pakistan to preach Jesus and a couple returned to discuss with us what it was like. Basically, there is plenty of fear as their lives are on the line each day, but they still keep going back. According to one man, they won’t even mention Muhammad because they know the consequence. They also won’t debate at all when things get heated, there’s just too much danger.

How is your Church suffering persecution? Have any miracles or amazing stories gone on in your Church going to places where you can be killed for preaching Christianity (lately.) So many have come to Christ from Evangelicals going and risking martyrdom, but I’m interested in stories from other Church’s as well.
Click to expand...
The Mormon church sends missionaries out all over the world. Although rare, there have been cases of kidnapping, rape, and murder. Very tragic that ‘missionaries’ of any religion face the risk of experiencing such horrific acts.
 
Shia_Muslim said:
I am not Christian, but being Shia, we have always suffered persecution and continue to do so…
Click to expand...
Unfortunately in Iran, you are the persecutor of Baha’is.

One can only weep for the persecuted when one is not him/herself a persecutor…

God bless you 🙂
 
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