Jesus warned his disciples: “They will hand you over to persecution, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name” (Matthew 24:9). Such treatment was a reality for the early followers of Christ, and it continues today, especially in Africa and the Middle East.
Among the better-known recent atrocities are the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya; the killing of an elderly French priest at morning Mass by ISIS terrorists in Normandy; and the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram. The details of these events are horrific, but so are lesser-known stories like those of the Iraqi Christian woman who watched jihadists nail her husband to the front door of their home, or the Christian mother who escaped ISIS enslavement after she had been brutally tortured and taken to a sex slave detention center.
