Jesus Keep Your "Shirt" On?

Thanks to Chris Coatney for sharing this Voice of the Martyr's article with us.This article certainly reminds all of us why we go to the streets with the graphic truth of what abortion really is. How will anyone know if we don't love enough to tell?

Jesus, Keep Your "Shirt" On?
by Tom White, Voice of the Martyrs

I was born in 1947, just after World War II. When I was a boy, I found a shoebox of black and white photographs in our garage. My father, an Army officer serving in the Phillipines, was an amateur photographer and had taken hundreds of pictures during his tour. Many pictures were of the dead bodies of his comrades.

In the 1950s, we saw the old newsreels of the dead American sailors at Pearl Harbor. Why would our nation release such terrible-looking things? For a worthy reason: These truths were publicized to induce grief, anger and action. No one called the release of these images "sensationalism." Conversely, the sensations they produced resulted in military production factories being filled with workers. We had proof that the war was real. We suffered with our soldiers and identified with them as they saved the lives and liberated the Filipinos, Chinese, Europeans, and many others.

Here at VOM, we understand the spiritual dynamics behind our photographs. We print them without apology. We know that just as we can cry over images of Private Jessica Lynch, who was beaten by Iraquis, we can also weep with Indonesian Christians (soldiers of Christ) who have been brutalized by Muslims, as well as chinese Christians who have been tortured in police stations and go back out to witness for Christ. In the 1970s, Russian Christians took photographs of their family members, killed by the KGB for witnessing, and smuggled them to the West. They wanted the world to know, so we printed them.

Jesus aggressively challenged the comfortable religious community and the doubters not only in words, but also in demonstration. In John 20:27, Jesus invited Thomas to put his hand into a deep scar on His side. He did not tell Thomas, "I have a scar under My tunic, and you simply must believe it." He wanted Thomas to see the scar and even touch the scar, so that this disturbing, yet overcoming fact would not stick in his mind as a visual image, not simply as a conversation or paragraph described in a book.

Thomas was not a coward. He was the only disciple who said in John 11:16, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him" (NKJV). He wanted proof. VOM exists to provide the proof of the reality of our persecuted church, despite state religious propoganda of the former Soviet Union and now communist China. Our photos and articles are not pleasant. Some of us here in the office want to look the other way. That is natural. Yet we must confront these fresh wounds on His Body. They shock us out of our "paradise now" idealism and remind us of the eternal reward inherited by the faithful. They stamp eternity on our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

When the founder of our ministry, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, stood before a U.S. Senate Committee to testify about tortures endured under the communists, he took off his clerical shirt and showed them the cuts and burn holes in his neck, chest, and back. For a good reason, the committee members were moved. They were confronted with visual truth, not simply words. Pastor Wurmbrand was invited to many large churches in America, and the result of his testimony and his boldness began our ministry to the persecuted church in 1967. As a Romanian Christian, Pastor Wurmbrand wanted the outside world to know what was happening to the Body, hidden by tyrants inside his country.

Some people accuse us of being "sensationalists." They are correct. We are reviving a sensation that has been avoided in our "pursuit-of-happiness" society: the sensation of grief. The Scriptures tell us to weep with those who weep, not just rejoice with those who rejoice (1 Corinthians 12:26).

Our culture often turns a blind eye to any possibility for grieving. This produces a tragedy. When we avoid grief in the pursuit of constant happiness, we become the walking dead. Just as lepers lose their fingers in accidents, because they feel no pain, there are dead parts of the Body of Christ in our culture that need to feel pain to ensure their own survival. Someone recently wrote: "If your heart stretches in grief, don't worry. A heart enlarged by grief also has a greater capacity for joy."

In many cases today, those who photograph Christian persecution are members of the martyrs' families or are Christian friends and risk imprisonment. They are not concerned about the appearance of their indignant situation but desire to expose the evil inflicted upon them. They wish the free world to pray for them and for their persecutors. Like the hundreds of thousands of Americans who worked in the factories during World War II, these persecuted believers hope there will also be a great number to appeal for them and help them.

The Voice of the Martyrs is not the Voice of the "Mollified" (meaning, to soften in feeling, to pacify or appease). Many of our articles and photographs shock Christians into prayer, letter writing, tears, phone calls and participation. Just as sketches of the brutal treatment of slaves in America cause an outcry, photographs of our persecuted family do the same. Members of Congress and many news agencies receive our publication. Those who do not want to be shocked or grieved find other mission publications that will mollify them.

Take courage. Look grief in the face. Do not be afraid to view the scars of faith. Do not risk the chance of missing a disturbing, yet intimate picture of overcoming faith that endures all.

www.persecution.com