The Martyr’s Oath, an Interview with Johnnie Moore on the Persecuted Church

The persecuted church calls the free church to live for the Jesus they are willing to die for

Ed: What is The Martyr’s Oath, and why did you write it?

Johnnie Moore: I’ll never forget meeting a nun on a visit to Iraq just after Mosul fell to ISIS. She said to me, “I love America. Such beautiful people. Such a wonderful place. I have a PhD from an American university. You care for your pets so well. So, when will you care for us? Why are you so silent in the face of our genocide? We feel forgotten.”

Since that moment, I have felt a call to be a voice for the persecuted church, and to call the church to care more, pray more, and do more. I’ve come to realize this is actually my primary call. I’m committed to telling the stories of the suffering church to the free church. This is my latest and most comprehensive effort to do so.

The Martyr’s Oath is the result of months of travel documenting the actual experiences of persecuted Christians. It’s a book of firsthand accounts from more than a dozen different countries. Some of the stories we found are very powerful.

We met one newly-converted Syrian family who welcomed a threat of martyrdom from a family member but refused a threat of crucifixion because they said, “We felt so unworthy to die the same death as our Jesus.”

We found supernatural stories like one of a judge awakening in the middle of the night from a dream where he was told not to touch the Christian pastor he was planning on ruling against the next morning. We found another pastor whose ministry led him to a spy for Osama Bin Laden who became a believer and is now a Christian pastor himself.

We met one woman who told us that after her family got out of prison in China they became so courageous that they stopped meeting in a basement but instead chose …

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