'Don't pray for the persecution to stop,' says Middle East Christian woman
A Middle Eastern Christian woman tells Western Christians not to pray for persecution's end but for God to endow them with the spirit to stand as God's witnesses.
The woman, identified only as "Maryam" for security purposes, visited Sunday the MeadowBrook Baptist Church in Gadsden, Alabama, where she asked the congregation to continue praying for the Christians suffering persecution in Muslim states, but "to pray a different prayer."
"Don't pray for the persecution to be stopped. ... But pray for the Christians there, for their boldness, their encouragement, for their faith and that they can all be witnesses for God's work and for God," said the woman, as reported by The Christian Post.
Maryam came upon the invitation of a group of six American pastors and ministry leaders and would be visiting eight more churches across the U.S. in the next two weeks.
The woman also asserted that the worsening state of persecution only worked to encourage Christians because they've seen how the Church increased in their area as a result. She described how the atrocities carried out by Muslim extremists in the name of Allah only led many Muslim people to question their faith.
"A lot of them are asking, 'Who is this God whose name is Allah, who orders people to slaughter?'" she shared. "They are confused and they are asking and wondering now days about ISIS and about what is going on."
She reported more than a million Christians in her home country alone and that one priest Christianized more than 6,000 Muslims in the past five years.
Apologist and bible scholar Jeremiah Johnston also believes that Jesus appears to Middle Eastern Muslims and underground Christians in China. He recounted a chance meeting with an underground Christian missionary who told him that "everything you read about in the book of Acts is happening in China right now."
The Communist country might just produce the world's largest Christian population by 2030, reported OMF International.
"According to the Bible, the church grows even faster under persecution," an anonymous Christian member of a persecuted house Church in China told China Aid in May.