VOMRadio

Middle East Concern was founded in 1991, in response to needs expressed by Christian leaders in the Middle East and North Africa. Through a network of ministry partners, Middle East Concern seeks to help Christians facing persecution across the Middle East and North Africa. They work to come up with strategies to improve conditions and protect rights of Christians with a goal of seeing Christians able to live out their faith in Christ freely.

Brother Rob, a researcher for MEC, shares with VOM Radio this week about his work and about persecution faced by Christians in the MENA region.

One of Rob’s areas of interest is Iran, and he will tell us about recent large-scale research that shows how many Iranians are questioning and even rejecting Islam since the Islamic Revolution. Many of those have become followers of Jesus Christ—despite the risk of persecution.

Rob also tells how God is bringing good out of Christian persecution in Türkiye (formerly Turkey) as Turkish Christian leaders are stepping up to shepherd the church after the expulsions of numerous foreign Christians. The Turkish government’s strategy since 2019 has been to designate Christians from other countries living in turkey as a “threat to national security” and force them to leave, causing upheaval to many families who’ve lived there for decades. David Byle was one of those pushed out of Türkiye after fighting the expulsion order through the court system.

Israel is another country where Rob monitors religious freedom and you’ll hear about challenges to gospel outreach there. Brother Rob will also share how we can pray for Israel, including Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, as there is so much conflict there.

“The Christian community in this part of the world,” says Rob, “are the light and salt in these lands.”

Prayer is the central part of the ministry at Middle East Concern as they continue to seek God’s wisdom in each sensitive situation. Learn how you can pray specifically for Christians in Israel, Iran and Türkiye as Rob shares the needs of the church in these nations.

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J.D. Bridges, Vice President of Global Outreach for Ligonier Ministries, tells us this week about Ligonier’s efforts to produce content and teaching materials to defend and teach the holiness of God—not only to American Christians but to Christians around the world, including persecuted Christians in hostile areas and restricted nations.

Since 1971, when R.C. Sproul founded the ministry in the Ligonier Valley of western Pennsylvania, Ligonier has continued to produce more and more Biblical content. As people from other nations discovered the work and requested resources in their own languages, Ligonier’s international efforts have grown.

Creating a strategy for translation and dubbing, Bridges and his team are focusing on the top twenty languages around the world—which creates the potential to access 80% of the world’s population with gospel materials and theology training. God has opened doors to provide resources in Chinese, Urdu, Hindi, Indonesian, Farsi and many other languages.

Out of 5,000,000 pastors around the world, only 5-10% have any theological education. Listen as J.D. shares his heart to create more opportunities for more people to freely engage with Biblical content and how Ligonier works to equip pastors and churches.

“For us the first impulse is to equip the pastor…because we know that the church will benefit,” he says.

Bridges tells of the difficulties in translating theological concepts into a new language for the first time and the most important thing he gets to do as he builds relationships with persecuted Christians and how Ligonier uses many different and creative angles to provide these tools to Christians in places like China, Iran, Pakistan and other restricted nations.

Pray for God’s blessings on continued translation work and distribution efforts. Also, check out the Things Unseen Podcast from Ligonier for thoughtful reflections on the Christian life and our relationship with God.

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Sister Sara wrestled with faith questions as she studied Christianity, Islam and other religions in a years-long quest for truth. Last week, Sara shared her struggle to understand and believe how Jesus could be God—a common stumbling block for Muslims hearing the gospel message. Listen this week to hear what happened after she received forgiveness of sin through Christ—and how you can pray for her and other Christians living and ministering in Central Asia.

As soon as Sara read Matthew 28:18-19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” she gathered her words to tell others the gospel. Her first effort was sharing the hope of Christ with her family. Sara tells how her family responded and explains the importance of discipleship resources, written in local heart languages, to train up new Christians in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Sara worked to learn how to share the gospel in her own language—and then began learning to explain Jesus’ love in other languages as well.

“People need God, but they just didn’t know it.” Sara says. It was only a short time into her outreach ministry when Sara first experienced pushback. God reminded her that Jesus faced persecution with humility and that is the model Sara tries to follow when opposition arises. Her own family’s responses to her Christian faith reminded her that she couldn’t save anyone herself but had to trust God to do the work, and to trust his timing.

When Sara reads of historic missionaries who went to the difficult places, she asks, “Why don’t we go there sooner? The harvest is plenty and ready!”

Pray the Lord will raise up gospel workers and evangelists to preach the gospel in Central Asia. Pray that, as these workers face Christian persecution, they would be faithful to Jesus even in difficulty and suffering.

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As a young woman in an Islamic culture in Central Asia, Sara was drawn to stories of Jesus. He was a good man, she thought, one whose life matched his teachings. But how could Jesus be God?

Sara wrestled deeply with this question in her search for truth. Intellectually, she found the Bible to be true, but she couldn’t commit to everything it said. Eternal life was attractive, but the idea that Jesus was God was confusing to her. Sara poured herself into studying different religions, desperate to figure out how she could be confident she’d go to heaven when she died.

She prayed, “God, there should be only one way to you.”

Sara loved the Bible study she joined at a local church. She was attracted by the love Christians had for each other, even being willing to share their weaknesses and struggles. Everything about Jesus and his followers was attractive to Sara.

After so much study and so many questions, Sara heard God’s voice—speaking to her in her own language. “You need to make a decision.” She knew it was God himself speaking with love, authority, gentleness, and power. Sara remembered reading John 14:6 where Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and they life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Listen to hear how Sara came to understand Jesus as the perfect sacrifice for her sin and the peace he gave to overcome her anxieties. Join us next week to hear the price Sara paid for her faith in Christ.

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This month we are commemorating the 10th Anniversary of The Voice of the Martyrs Radio. This week we look back on one of the most powerful conversations ever shared on VOM Radio airwaves.

Sister Amber spent more than a decade in Tibet providing vocational training to local people and sharing the gospel. She felt God’s call especially to work among Tibet’s nomadic tribal people. Amber watched as God brought about a great ministry breakthrough: people who’d been completely closed to her message were now asking to learn more about Jesus!

But just days after the breakthrough Amber experienced persecution. Chinese police came pounding on her door. Listen as she tells how the Holy Spirit strengthened and spoke to her and how God brought Amber from a place of terror to the point of expressing Christ’s love, even to the men violently persecuting her. “I never felt Jesus so close,” she says.

God laid on the hearts of people around the world to pray for Amber, including one who drew a picture of Amber surrounded by five policemen in a room. Months later, when Amber saw the picture, it matched exactly the setting of her interrogation! It also contained a ray of spiritual hope.

Your faith will be challenged as you hear Amber’s thoughts on how the New Testament speaks of the “honor” of being persecuted; she’ll also give first-hand advice on how to pray for Christians in prison right now.

Learn how you can pray every day for persecuted Christians like Amber who are imprisoned in hostile and restricted nations. And never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the podcast.

Over the last decade, God has allowed VOM Radio the opportunity to bring you into fellowship with persecuted Christians and tell the stories of what God is doing around the world even amid suffering and persecution. This week we’ll look back on some of the most moving moments of the first decade of VOM Radio.

It was September of 2014 when The Voice of the Martyrs began releasing new VOM Radio episodes weekly. The first episode introduced listeners to members of our persecuted family in China. Gina, a gospel worker with YWAM Frontier Missions and Julian, serving with Operation Mobilization, told in 2015 how God was drawing Muslims to himself – even ISIS fighters were coming to faith in Christ!

By watching the JESUS Film in his Turkmen heart language, Silas’s life was forever changed.

Several guests over the years have told of being imprisoned for Christ just as the founders of The Voice of the Martyrs, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, were imprisoned for their faith. Helen Berhane, who spent many months locked in a shipping container in Eritrea, reminds us that everything—including following Jesus—will cost us. Listen to how David Byle and Petr Jasek, both imprisoned for Christ, saw God’s purpose for them in prison as they shared the gospel, and how Dan Baumann was reminded that God could still change people’s hearts, even in prison in Iran.

You’ll hear these stories of heroic faith and also stories of faith overcoming fear, like Maria praying God would remove her fear after Cuban authorities issued an arrest warrant for her husband. God has inspired thousands with the testimonies of martyrs’ widows who publicly forgave their husband’s killers, like Anita Smith and Pauline Ayyad. Hannelie Groenewald shares how she learned that her husband and teen-aged children had been killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Also Gary Witherall remembers how God ministered to him after his wife, Bonnie, was killed for her faith in Lebanon.

More than seven years after his abduction, Susanna Koh still doesn’t know what happened to her husband, Pastor Raymond Koh. After a season of great loss, Nik and Ruth Ripken chose to sit at the feet of persecuted Christians to learn from them about following Christ in difficulty and suffering.

THANK YOU for listening to the stories of our persecuted family over the last ten years! We pray that VOM Radio will continue to build a bridge of fellowship between fellow members of the Body of Christ whether they live in free nations, hostile areas or restricted nations. What episodes most moved or inspired you during the first 10 years of VOM Radio? Share your most impactful episode.

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Working together, a Canadian with a vision, a businessman from Tampa, Florida, and tentmaking missionaries in Israel launched a ministry that today is making a gospel impact in more than 140 countries.

Listen this week as Tim Whitehead, Executive director for Galcom International in Canada, tells the story of how Galcom started in 1989 producing solar powered radios that could be locked into specific frequencies where listeners in a given location would hear Christian broadcasts. He’ll also share how Galcom has moved forward as technology advanced in the last 35 years—including helping launch more than 200 radio stations to provide gospel broadcast content in places where none previously had been available.

Galcom continues toward the goal of reaching remote villages across the world to share Jesus Christ with more and more people, especially among unreached people groups (UPGs). “When they receive these radios,” Tim says, “it shows them they are not forgotten.”

Listen for four barriers that can be overcome by gospel radio broadcasts, and how volunteers build thousands of radios each year for distribution all over the world. Tim will also share how Galcom and The Voice of the Martyrs started partnering together to serve Christians in Colombia and how that partnership expanded into West Africa and other parts of the globe.

Join us next week for a special episode sharing highlights of the past decade as September 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of VOM Radio. Please share how you’ve been encouraged and inspired by the testimonies and stories of our persecuted Christian family on VOM Radio over the past 10 years.

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Pastor “AZ” saw his church in Kazakhstan grow the fastest during a season of intense Christian persecution. The church began with AZ, his wife and one other believer. Two years later there were 250 believers! AZ knew that reaching Kazakh people required communicating and demonstrating the gospel in their heart language. The church also needs to be ready to assist new believers when persecution comes.

AZ became a believer in 1992, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Soon after repenting of sin and believing in Christ for salvation, AZ experienced persecution from his family. His own experiences help him prepare church members to face persecution, which he teaches them to expect. AZ will share three things needed to prepare a church to advance the gospel no matter the cost.

The biggest challenge for church planting in Kazakhstan—the 9th largest country in the world by territory—is distance. The greatest encouragement for AZ is discipling new believers. “Disciples are our crowns;” AZ says, “that’s the greatest reward.”

Pray for unity in the Kazakh church and for pastors to be strengthened and encouraged to endure for Christ despite persecution. Pastor AZ encourages us to pray for the next generation of believers as they take on leadership in the Kazakh church.

September 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of VOM Radio. Please share how you’ve been encouraged and inspired by the testimonies and stories of our persecuted Christian family on VOM Radio over the past 10 years.

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How do we start gospel conversations with Hindu or Buddhist friends, neighbors and coworkers? Tim and Dawn have a simple answer: ask questions!

Tim and Dawn serve as gospel workers in South Asia, leading an effort to plant gospel seeds in countries like India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Maldives—countries where Christian persecution is a common occurrence.

Listen as Tim shares about Buddhism and Hinduism—including how followers of those religions may respond to or resist the message of Christ and the gospel. Tim encourages each of us that the best foundation for sharing the gospel is narrowing the gap between the scripture we read and the life we live.

You’ll hear how God is at work in the Maldives and Bhutan as gospel workers begin to see the first fruits from those who’ve gone before and Bible translation efforts. Tim will share just how difficult Bible translation has been in getting the gospel to the Maldivian people, and how sections of scripture are now available in the islands.

Tim and Dawn ask that we pray for thousands of gospel workers to be raised up to heed the call to go to difficult nations to reach the unreached or least reached there.

“Just because a place is difficult,” says Tim, “it does not negate God’s call to go.”

Listen to past conversations with Tim & Dawn on VOM Radio and learn how you can pray for Buddhists and Hindus at Change The Map. Learn more about specific ways you can pray for South Asia and other restricted nations and hostile areas by using The Voice of the Martyr’s Global Prayer Guide.

September 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of VOM Radio. We’d like to know how you’ve been encouraged and inspired by the testimonies and stories of our persecuted Christian family on VOM Radio over the past 10 years.

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Brooks Buser, President of Radius International, says the best missionaries smell like the local people they have gone to serve. They focus not just on learning a language but understanding and living the culture, eating local food and joining in the things that fuel human interaction in that place. Buser says just as Christ came as a human baby into this world, missionaries that last become like those they are trying to reach for the sake of the gospel.

Before leading Radius, Brooks was a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea. As an adult he went back to PNG as a missionary to the YembiYembi people with New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360). Listen as he shares the hardest challenges of missions and his own experience immersing himself in the culture of the Yembi people. With the goal of teaching them the Bible, his team first had to learn their language, culture, and integrate into their new clan families. Watch a video here that tells the story of Brooks and his family’s mission work in Papua New Guinea.

One of the things new YembiYembi Christians faced early in their faith journey was persecution. But Brooks sees that Christian persecution as a blessing rather than a curse.

Today, Brooks leads Radius International as they train mission workers—in multiple languages, to be sent by multiple mission agencies—to go with the gospel to the ends of the earth. Part of that training is a language learning methodology that immerses future missionaries in a local language like Spanish, giving them tools and training to quickly learn the language of the place where God will call them to serve as missionaries. Brooks will also describe the qualities he looks for that point to successful long-term mission service and how he prays for those who commit to gospel work.

Pray for future missionaries and Radius International’s training schools as they prepare students to share the gospel in the heart language of the people God calls them to serve. Brooks will be one of the speakers for The Missionary Conference, to be held October 16-18th in Jacksonville, Florida.

September 2024 will mark the ten-year anniversary of VOM Radio. Let us know how you’ve been encouraged and inspired by the testimonies and stories of our persecuted Christian family over the past 10 years. And never miss an episode of VOM Radio! Subscribe to the podcast.