Pastor Trump Freed from Turkey Sends Dire Warning About Coming Persecution
When it comes to persecution, Andrew Brunson can speak from personal experience.
So when the North Carolina native who spent two years in Turkish prison makes predictions about the future, his words are worth listening to — even if the picture he draws isn’t pleasant at all.
In an address Monday to the Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham, Alabama, the pastor who was freed by Turkey in October 2018, after heavy pressure from President Donald Trump, had a message for his colleagues.
Hard times are ahead, and now is the time to prepare.
“I don’t think that we’re prepared for what is coming,” Brunson said, according to Fox News.
“Especially the next generation, I fear that many of us are complacent and we’re unaware, and this means that the people in our churches are going to be blindsided by what comes.
“You are the ones as pastors and leaders of churches who have the task of preparing the next generation.”
Brunson’s two decades of ministry in Turkey, a country that’s grown increasingly Islamic over that same time period, sets him apart from most American clergy.
But he told his audience — including many past and future missionaries — that they shouldn’t think they’re immune to persecution.
“Many of you are going to have the opportunity to stand in that line of suffering and you have to prepare yourself for that,” Brunson said.
Andrew Brunson: Being imprisoned for faith ‘stretched me beyond what I could handle’ https://t.co/APwyT8iyza
— Peter Palumbo (@PeterPalumbo1) June 12, 2019
Brunson was arrested by Turkish authorities after a 2016 failed coup and faced terrorism and terrorism-related charges related to the attempted coup. He always adamantly denied the charges against him.
Brunson told the convention his two years of imprisonment were physically and mentally draining. His first six months behind bars he said he lost 50 pounds, according to The Christian Post.
He also said he felt suicidal, Fox reported.
“This is the reality of suffering and persecution,” Brunson said, according to The Christian Post.
“It’s very, very difficult … it stretched me beyond what I could handle, but there was grace and there were a lot of prayers sustaining me.”
Americans of every faith should be grateful for a Constitution that protects the freedom to worship as an individual chooses.
It’s a freedom that’s utterly absent in many countries of the world, and one that’s under constant attack even at home, whether from infuriating, self-righteous cranks like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its incessant war on Christmas, or the highest circles in the Democratic Party, where assailing a Christian judicial nominee for opposing abortion is a considered a smart move for a woman who wants to be president.
Missionaries like Brunson have seen what the world can offer to individuals who aren’t protected by a government committed to the proposition that freedom of religion is paramount in human society.
That’s a commitment that’s constantly being undermined even in the West, by the media, by leftists and — to its shame — by the modern Democratic Party.
With that kind of reality, being prepared for the worst isn’t the worst idea in the world.
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