For Fawzy, police interrogations have become such a common part of his ministry work that he hardly notices them. As an evangelist and church planter in North Africa, he spends his time meeting with new Christian converts and others interested in learning more about Jesus. But his activities are viewed as a threat by Islamic leaders and government officials afraid of civil unrest. His first visit with government authorities was in the late 1980s, just three months after he had become a believer. After police arrested Fawzy, then 17, at his home, they took him to the police station and interrogated him for more than six hours, asking him if he had become a Christian. Although frightened, his faith held strong. “l felt like there was a power or a hope in my heart,” Fawzy said. He boldly told the police that he had left Islam for Christianity after studying the Bible through a correspondence course. Three months later, the authorities returned for another lengthy interrogation, telling Fawzy the only reason they didn’t arrest him was that he was still 17. They warned him that if he remained a Christian after turning 18, he would spend the next two years
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Tied to a chair in a small room, struggling to breathe after a severe beating, Pastor Dharala Francis awaited his death. For nearly 30 years, he had faithfully led a ministry that served the disadvantaged in India, but on July 9, 2015, his reputation for sharing the gospel caught up with him. That day, an angry mob beat him severely and conspired to burn him to death. “I didn’t have fear,” he recalled eight months later, sitting with his wife and daughter at a guest house in India. “I was ready to die that day. I said, ‘If this is the last day for me, I want to go to heaven directly.’” Instead of dying, however, Pastor Dharala saw a surprising work of God. A Threatening Love The pastor and his family had spent the first six months of 2015 building relationships with villagers in western India, praying for those who were sick, serving the poor and distributing Christian literature. Gradually, Hindus — and even some Muslims — started following Christ. “Every Sunday we would go to that village and share the Word of God, and day by day the number was increasing because of many miracles taking place there,”
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Richard Wurmbrand had a comfortable life as a pastor in Communist Romania. He had a salary that supported his family and a congregation that loved and trusted him. But as he watched other Christians suffer for their faith while a tyrannical dictatorship destroyed everything around them, Richard was not at peace. Why, he wondered, had God spared him from persecution and trial? Desiring to answer Christ’s call to take up his cross and follow him, Richard and his wife, Sabina, began to pray that God would give them a cross to bear. And on Feb. 29, 1948, their prayers were answered. As Richard walked to church that winter morning in Bucharest, members of the secret police abducted him, taking away not only the comfortable life he had known but also his identity. “From now on,” they told him, “you are Vasile Georgescu,” labeling him with a generic Romanian name to conceal his true identity. He disappeared without a trace, and Sabina had no information beyond the outrageous rumors she had heard: One said he had been taken to Russia, while another claimed he had died under interrogation. Though overwhelmed with worry from not knowing where Richard was or if he
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“We are all mortals until God says, ‘Your time is finished,’” said Mauricio, who works as a pastor in a Colombian “red zone” along with his wife, Dena. “We understand that we live in constant danger.” The stranger sat down in Dena’s living room chair and made himself comfortable. “Your husband has been gone for three days,” he said knowingly. “He is far from home.” The man then began pulling his shirt off, revealing a crudely stitched knife wound on his shoulder. “I need a shower,” he demanded, “and I need some food.” Realizing that he could be a member of the paramilitary group that controlled her area, Dena wasn’t surprised that he knew her husband was gone. Villagers often shared information out of fear of the paramilitary, which emerged as one element of a long-standing conflict involving government forces, drug cartels and guerrilla groups like the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia). Dena could tell that the man was only trying to frighten her into doing what he wanted. “Give me your money,” he ordered, staring at the paper pesos in her hand. Church members had brought her the timely gift earlier that day; the church knew it wasn’t
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Ali was a jihadi. He had a long beard, wore white clothing and trained to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. As a devout Muslim, he exhorted his mother and two sisters to be more religious, forbidding them to watch TV. One of Ali’s brothers, however, had become a Christian. “I thought he had left the true religion, and according to Islamic law he deserves to be dead,” Ali said. “I would show him the Quran verses and tell him, ‘Look, you have to believe. You have to believe back to Islam.’ Every time we would start talking about this, he would tell me that God loves me and would talk about God’s love.” Ali belonged to an Islamist cell group that distributed tracts about fasting, Islamic dress and joining the jihad. But in 1992, following a crackdown on Islamists, he suddenly found himself at the top of the Algerian government’s most-wanted list. His options were to stay inside all the time or venture out and risk arrest. One day, frustrated with his self-imposed house arrest, Ali went for a bus ride and got off at a random stop. A young woman at the bus stop caught his eye, so he
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