Sri Lanka Attackers Must Be Held Accountable, Says Save the Persecuted Christians Leaders
WASHINGTON—Leaders from Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), which advocates for hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide who are experiencing terrible persecution, is reacting to the devastating Easter Sunday massacre in Sri Lanka that took over 300 lives and wounded at least 500 in attacks on churches during Easter Sunday services. Three hotels popular with tourists were also targeted.
“The coordinated explosions at Sri Lankan churches and hotels on Easter Sunday reveal yet another new front on the global assault against Christians and the West by radical Islamic groups,” said Dede Laugesen, executive director of the Save the Persecuted Christians. “Violence against Christians by Sharia supremacists and religious nationalists is growing in more and more countries. Houses of worship are generally easy and convenient targets. Last year, Open Doors reports 1,266 churches attacked. That’s an average of three hate crimes every day, and those are the ones that get reported. The actual numbers are much higher. They are happening all over the world—Asia, Africa, Europe and even in America. Increasingly these crimes are violent and deadly.”
Save the Persecuted Christians President and CEO Frank J. Gaffney said a local and heretofore-unknown jihadist group is being blamed, but such a cell would likely have needed help from other Sharia-supremacists to pull off such a complex operation.
“The carnage among Christians worshiping on that holy day was particularly horrific—and therefore, impossible for the international press to ignore,” Gaffney said. “Yet, followers of Jesus worldwide are being killed and otherwise terribly persecuted every day. All too often, their losses go unremarked. Worse yet, those responsible for such oppression are generally able to engage in it with impunity. We started Save the Persecuted Christians as a grassroots movement to raise awareness about these crimes against humanity and hold the persecutors accountable.”
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The mission of Save the Persecuted Christians is to save lives and save souls by holding the persecutors accountable and creating costs for their crimes against humanity. To that end, it will disseminate actionable information about the magnitude of such crimes and bring to bear a movement of concerned Americans determined to hold persecutors accountable for such crimes and create real costs for perpetrating them against those who follow Jesus.
According to Aid to the Church in Need, which released its biannual report on Religious Freedom in the World in November, over 300 million Christians experience persecution. According to Open Doors USA World Watch List, 245 million Christians are victims of high to extreme levels of persecution (i.e., torture, rape, sex-slavery, expulsion, murder and genocide), an increase of 14 percent over 2018. Open Doors also estimates 1 in 9 of the world’s Christians experience persecution and that every month: 345 Christians are killed, often in public and without regard to gender or age; 219 Christians are abducted and imprisoned indefinitely without trial; and 106 churches are demolished.
Because most of these crimes are not covered in the media, Save the Persecuted Christians developed a dedicated news aggregator—www.ChristianPersecutionNews.com—to capture current instances of persecution and to provide readers an easy way to share these heartbreaking stories with others.
With the recent spate of attacks in France and so much of the world’s Christian population being attacked, imprisoned and/or exiled for their beliefs, the need has never been greater for the sort of grassroots campaign STPC’s SaveUs Movement is working to foster. Its efforts are modeled after a miraculously successful one that helped free another population suffering from heavy persecution—Soviet Jews—by penalizing those in the Kremlin responsible for such repression. Through this movement, Save the Persecuted Christians endeavors to provide American policymakers with the popular support they need to effect real change worldwide and alleviate systemically the suffering being experienced by so many of those following Christ.
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The tragedies of this past Easter Sunday are still heavy on the hearts of all who truly believe the Resurrected Christ is the Way to a peace-filled eternity. This is a scary world in which we are living today. True enough, Christians are a major target, however, to certain ideologies, anyone who is not of them is a target for elimination.
America is at great risk, and though it is a smoke-screen, politics is not the greater risk. Our political unrest is a path, but the door for radical Islamists is the extreme liberal left who are spouting, “Ya’ll come” while pushing for a socialistic form of government. What they do not realize, because they are deceived/blinded by the evil one, is that one day they, too, shall be slated for elimination.
What can we do?
The only hope for families . . . the only hope for communities (schools, local governments and businesses), . . . the only hope for this nation . . . the only hope for this world . . . is for God’s people, His Church (and the individual Christian), to go back to being on their faces before God, in selfless, repenting, God honoring, Kingdom building, extended periods of prayer (2 Chronicles 7:14).
Pastors/Church and Denominational Leaders, you can no longer assume your people are praying just because they are part of your churches. Teach them; encourage them; lead them; give opportunities and guidance; get into the battle (Ephesians 6:10-18). It could only take 24 hours for this nation to awaken to the fact that God’s Church is no longer tolerated, at all. Are your people ready for this possibility? What would they do? What would you do?
Beloved, “Awaken, thou that sleepeth,” “Watch and Pray!” Pray On!
