Episode 817: Persecuted Church Conference Recap & End Times Deep Dive

It was powerful.

For any of you guys that were able to join us, you will be able to attest to the time that we had.

Voices of individuals that we work together with that have been persecuted for the faith, that came together to represent the voice of the persecuted church, to share with us in the West the lessons that they learned and what we can learn from them.

It was a powerful time, and I think it was appropriate that we did it at Oxford University, right in the middle of Oxford University, because it was exactly 500 years ago this year.

2026 marks the 500-year anniversary of having the Bible in the English language.

Obviously, that is a big deal for me.

Being my first language, having the Bible in my own mother tongue is a gift that I can never thank anyone enough for having.

And it was a guy by name of William Tyndale who went to Oxford University, who God called to put the Bible into the English language, and he did it at great risk to himself, his family, his friends, and all of his coworkers.

In 1526, he completed the very first printed Bible in the English language, and it was completely against the law to do so.

And it was 500 years ago from Antwerp that he did this translation on the mainland of Europe, and then at night smuggled the Bible in by these trade boats that took pieces of the Bible to the shores of England, and the secret church was able to get these pieces of the Bible, put them back together, and then smuggle them around to basically what was very small house churches in the, in England at that time.

And everybody that was associated with this project was persecuted and many of them killed, including William Tyndale himself.

Because he dared to translate the Bible into the English language, he was strapped to a pole, strangled, and then his body burned.

That sacrifice has been a blessing for me.

What he gave, the blood that he shed, is something that I have been a direct beneficiary of.

I benefited from his sacrifice.

And it's really amazing to me that 500 years later, we were able to bring individuals who represent the persecuted church, all of them having been in prison, all of them having been thrown in jail and persecuted for their faith.

We had six different speakers from five different nations that served in four different prisons.

One of them with a, um, death sentence, was, was put on death row.

One of them was given three life sentences.

And it was, it was a very powerful time to kind of come together and sit at the feet of these individuals and listen to them and what they have learned by the persecution that they've gone through.

And one of the times that we were together, um, we had a very special speaker, Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has just been appointed by the Trump administration to serve a role in the government to be a voice for the persecuted church.

In fact, this week he takes his post, and it was very exciting to have him at our Voice of the Persecuted meeting because of the time that he spent in a Turkish prison because of his faith.

In fact, he was given more than three life sentences.

I think it's something like three life sentences plus 40 years, if I remember correctly, that he was given by the Turkish government because of him preaching the gospel in the nation of Turkey.

And, uh, we had him on a question answer panel, and we hope to have those videos out soon.