Rape or Recant

Egyptian police torture and beat believer in attempt to force her reconversion:

Egypt (MNN) ― A report by ASSIST News Service states that while attempting to escape ongoing persecution in Egypt, a Muslim convert was raped and tortured.

Martha Samuel, an Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity five years ago, was arrested at the Cairo airport as she was leaving for Russia with her family. Police have promised to release her if she returns to Islam.

In a story covered by the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), the Egypt for Christ ministry reports that police officers sexually assaulted Samuel both at the National Security office in Heliopolis and at the El-Nozha police station. In a continued attempt to force her return to Islam, police also beat and tortured Samuel. According to AINA, Samuel's children, aged four and two years old, are being denied food to increase pressure on Samuel. Her husband has been taken to the National Security office in Alexandria.

AINA said that the family was trying to travel to Russia using a passport belonging to Samuel, whose former name is Zainab Said Abdel-Aziz. The passport was under Samuel's Christian name, which is on a list of people prohibited from leaving the country. Since converting five years ago, Samuel has undergone continued persecution by Egyptian police, and her own family has tried to murder her.

Let this be a great reminded of what others are doing for Christ in the different parts of the world. Oh Lord, strengthen our faith.

Persecution or Seduction?

Charles Spurgeon, writing 150 years ago, speaks poignantly to the problem in the church today: "I believe," he asserted, "that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church."

Do Christians face persecution here in America? Most people would say no, but I disagree. C.J. Mahaney believes that Christians aren't persecuted merely in a physical manner:

Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world. Unlike so many of our Christian brothers and sisters who live in countries with oppressive regimes—where the church is flourishing, by the way—we in America don’t face imminent threat to our families, livelihoods, and well-being for professing faith in Christ. Our peril is far more obscure and far more insidious. We aren’t under attack from without; we’re decaying from within. Our success as ambassadors for Christ, as witnesses of the life-changing power of the gospel, hangs in the balance.

Our persecution is in the form of seduction from worldly lifestyles. As soldiers of Christ, let us stand up against the worldliness we face daily here in America. Let us neither be conformed to the world nor contaminated by it.

Inspired by the book Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World, Edited by C.J. Mahaney.