Remembering the Martyrs

Two years ago on Feb. 15, a video was released showing members of the Islamic State, or ISIS, marching 21 captives, most of them Coptic Christians, along a beach on the southern Mediterranean coast.

The terrorists lined the men up, and then the ISIS leader gave a brutal message in English for the camera:

“Oh, crusaders, safety for you will be only wishes, especially when you're fighting us all together; therefore we will fight you all together until the war lays down its burdens and Jesus . . . will descend, breaking the cross, killing the swine. The sea you've hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.”

Following the speech, the terrorists beheaded the men, all but one of them migrants from Egypt living in Libya.

In the aftermath of that incident, Charles Kim flew to Egypt from the U.S., where he works as Korean ministry leader for Christian Reformed Home Missions.

Kim, one of the coordinators of the CRC's Prayer Summit 2017, was appalled by what he had seen on the video and yet deeply moved by the death of these men, who could be heard professing the word “Jesus” in the moments before they died.

Taking his own video camera with him, Kim wanted to get the reaction of Egyptian church leaders to the death of these modern-day Christian martyrs, he said.

Once Kim captured their thoughts, he created a video titled Blessed Be Egypt My People. This week, on the two-year anniversary of those killings, Kim suggests that people may want to look at that video to gain insight into the power of faith — a power exemplified by those who died that day.

 It could also provide a chance to reflect on the significance of prayer in the face of the many challenging situations in our world.

“We have so much going on in the world,” he said. “Especially in the regions with much hostility toward Christians, people live with a severe level of fear.”

In fact, the focus of Prayer Summit 2017, the fourth national CRC summit, will be to respond through prayer and petition to all of the political and social turmoil going on in North America and abroad, said Kim.

Anne Zaki, a seminary teacher and one of the Egyptian church leaders featured in Kim’s video, asks for prayer from North American Christians.

“But she doesn’t ask in the video that we pray that God will take away their fears or just make things better,” said Kim.

“They are asking believers around the world to pray right now that people living with hostility will have the courage to see God in the midst of persecution and that they will live out their calling as followers of Christ.”

An important request in the video, he said, is “asking churches in North America to awaken to what’s happening around the world and to see how God is active even in the midst of tragic things that happen.”

“As the apostle Paul requested, we need to pray that those missionaries and believers in hostile places will ‘proclaim the mystery of Christ’ and that ‘the message of the Lord may spread’ rapidly and be honored,” said Kim.

Featured in the video are Ramez Atallah, general director of the Bible Society of Egypt; Fouad Youssef, a leader of Vision for Future in Egypt; and Zaki, a graduate of Calvin Theological Seminary who now teaches at Evangelical Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo.

In Blessed Be Egypt My People, Atallah says that “when ISIS killed these people so brutally and thought that putting out their video would horrify and terrify the world, actually it did the exact opposite.”

That is because the men, kneeling down in front of their sword-carrying killers, showed great courage. These men had been captured because of their Christian faith and were now paying the price.

“They knew they were going to be killed, and yet they were not screaming or yelling,” said Atallah. “They knew they were being killed because of Christ. ISIS gave them the chance to ‘repent’ [and convert to Islam], but they didn’t. They were willing to die for their faith. ISIS didn’t edit out of the video that they were praying all of the time and, eventually before they were killed, they cried out to Jesus.”