Two Sundays ago, members of Saint Elias, a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, were gathered for evening mass when a gunman walked in and started shooting. Todd Nettleton of The Voice of The Martyrs (VOM) says men, women, and children were indiscriminately targeted.
"He went in, started shooting. As he was sort of approached by people in the congregation trying to put a stop to the attack, he then detonated his explosive vest," Nettleton details.
At least 22 Christians were killed, and more than 50 were wounded.
Now, Syrian Christians and human rights advocates around the world are waiting to see what the government that recently replaced the deposed tyrant Bashar al-Assad will do next.
"The new Syrian government promised a Syria for everyone," the VOM spokesman relays. "They have said all the right words, but they're waiting to see action."
The new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was once a terrorist himself but now wants his government to be respected as legitimate.
"It's just gonna be really interesting to see how this government develops and how they relate with the rest of the world," says Nettleton. "And it will be interesting to see how the rest of the world holds them accountable if they start to break these promises that they've made."
Nettleton says Syria's Christian heritage goes all the way back to the Apostle Paul himself, who was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus.
"The Church has such a long history in Syria," he notes. "Before Islam was there, the Church was there."
Christians in hostile countries around the world are dying for their faith, but to the southeast in Myanmar, formerly Burma, the fact that a faithful missionary did not die is what brought his persecutors to the Lord.
"A missionary came to their village and began sharing the gospel," Nettleton reports. "This was very offensive to this family of Hindu priests, and so they put a curse on the missionary."
The next morning, the missionary was still alive, so they put stronger curse on him. That did not work, either, so they laid the strongest curse they could conjure as the missionary was leaving on a trip.
The Hindu priests were shocked when the thrice-cursed missionary returned to town unharmed. They decided they needed to know more about this man and his faith, and the father instructed his son to steal a Bible so they could figure out a way to take him down. What they found was far more powerful than any occultic curse.
"He and his father began to read it, and they both got saved, became followers of Christ," says Nettleton. "He is today an evangelist in that country."
The names of all of these individuals are withheld for safety reasons.
