Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4: 8-9

 

Harold Sala:  Today on Guidelines my daughter Bonnie Craddick, who serves as Guidelines International Director, is going to be chatting with me and David Curry, president of Open Doors USA.

Bonnie Craddick: Well, I’d like to pick up our conversation about Bibles.  David, are you telling me there are places in the world where it’s still impossible to get a Bible?

David Curry:  Absolutely!  In North Korea if you own a Bible, you’re going to be arrested.  You might be imprisoned in a prison camp.  It’s extremely dangerous in North Korea to have a Bible.  It’s illegal.  In Saudi Arabia, which many people consider a geo-political partner with the United States, it’s illegal for a Saudi individual to own a Bible.  It’s illegal to print Bibles in the country.  So there are many places around the world where that’s happening.  And, of course, in recent months we’ve had issues in Iraq and areas in Syria, where it’s very difficult and very illegal in some of these regions to own a Bible.  So it’s still a problem today.

HS:  David, in the 70s it was my privilege to take literally hundreds of Bibles into closed countries in cooperation with Open Doors.  Now I doubt that you are able to do this today in North Korea.  But in areas such as that that are really closed, how are you able to minister to people there?

DC:  Well, we divide up our services based on the context of the country, so there may be occasions when we’re training pastors.  It’s what we call people-to-people ministry so we go in to an area, train the pastors so that they can be leading others to the Lord and training others.  In many cases, we still do smuggle Bibles.  They may not be physical bibles.  They may be electronic versions of it—these sorts of things.  So Bible-smuggling is still part of what we do in many areas.

BC:  David, I noticed that Open Doors World Watch List for 2014 was released.  And most of the countries on the list people will not necessarily find surprising to be there.  There were a few countries such as Laos, Myanmar or Colombia that were on the list.  What’s happening in those countries?

DC:  Well, those are some countries that often don’t jump to the top of your mind when you think about persecution. Colombia, for example, is a very interesting scenario.  You have drug lords that are trying to dominate and push out morality in some of these areas to make their drug trade easier, so they are murdering and harassing pastors, creating an orphan situation there.  And Open Doors is trying to support that.  And Myanmar which opened up in 2007 sort of to the world in a greater way still has not passed on the freedom to believers there.  So there are issues of violence, especially in rural areas.  So every country is a little different.  But the expression is that Christians often don’t have the freedom to read a Bible, own a Bible, to decide for themselves if they want to follow Jesus.  And if they do, they face imprisonment and/or death, in some cases.

BC:  You know, speaking of religious conflicts, we’ve seen religious conflicts all over the world just become increasingly more violent.  How do you see persecution, the nature of persecution, changing, say, in the last five years?

DC:  Well, the fact of the matter on World Watch List countries are dominated by Islamic extremism.  And you have countries like Iraq with ISIS so the nature of it is changing in the extreme.  And then of course you have some of the social issues like pressure on Christianity on legal systems and so forth.  So there’s a bunch of factors involved.  In Laos you have a communist regime and communist oppression is the driver of persecution there.  And so in many of these countries, the persecution drivers are different.

Resource reading: 2Corinthians 4:8-12.