Is the prescription working?

Are you beginning to see a little better long-distance?

Are you getting over being nearsighted?

Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.         2 Thessalonians 1:4 

The persecution continues...

Philippines

Jolo, a city about the size of Dallas, Texas is located near the border with Malaysia. A lay preacher by the name of Mario Acidre was shot in his home in August 2011. He died several days later. He is survived by this wife and four children.

Iraq      

Since 2003, about two-thirds of the Christians in Iraq have fled the war-torn country. Today, fewer than 450,000 Christians remain-down from an estimated 1.4 million. Christians who continue to live there are in peril. Many have been killed. Churches have been bombed. Christian business owners (especially in Mosul and Kirkuk) have been singled out "to make an example of them" in an effort to wipe out the Christian community's financial ability to support one another. On March 3, 2010 the General Secretariat of the Islam Supporters issued a warning to Christians stating in part:

• "leave the country of Muslims for good"
• "There's no more room for you infidels among the Iraqi Muslims. Our swords shall be placed upon your necks and the necks of your followers and other Christians residing in Mosul."

Gaza City

Meet Rami Ayyad, 26.

Rami was the director of the Protestant Holy Bible Society and manager of Gaza's only Christian bookstore. He was kidnapped on October 6, 2007, and was found killed the next day. Open Doors USA (a Christian organization that serves persecuted populations) President, Carl Moeller, said of Rami, "Rami had dedicated himself to bringing the hope of Jesus Christ to the hopeless part of the world known as Gaza."

Lebanon        

Jamil Ahmed al-Rifai, 28, an Arab convert to Christianity, was killed in a bomb blast just outside his apartment in Lebanon city of Tripoli. He lived next to a European missionary family. Although wounded the missionary family survived. In a separate attack, Bonnie Penner Witherall, 31, who cared for pregnant Palestinian women in a Christian maternity clinkc was shot and killed as she opened the clinic one morning at 7 am. At his wife's memorial service her husband testified:

"God led us to Lebanon, and Bonnie and I knew we might die. So many people think my wife's death was a waste, ... but we believe that coming here with the message of Jesus would never be a waste. It is a message worth laying our lives down for."

It is clear to me that martyrs of the Christian faith have a special place in the heart of God. In John's vision of heaven, in Revelation 6, John tells us at one point he say the following: "I saw under the altar the souls of all who had been martyred for the word of God and for being faithful in their testimony."

The implication is that God keeps the martyrs near at hand, near to his heart.

What about you? How is your vision?