Christians Called to Respond to Persecution Like 9/11 Rescue Heroes

ICC Note

“As the events of 9/11 showed us, we are all connected…And the fact that Christians are suffering globally is an important aspect of life that we ignore at our peril … we can’t ignore the suffering of our brothers and sisters because to do so is to truly ignore the suffering within our own body.”

By Jeff Schapiro

08/31/2011 United States (The Christian Post)-Drawing a connection between America’s suffering following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the suffering that persecuted Christians experience throughout the world every day, Dr. Carl Moeller says that Christians need to “stand in the gap” for their spiritual brothers and sisters – much like the firefighters, police officers, and other emergency responders did on Sept. 11, 2001.

“As the events of 9/11 showed us, we are all connected,” he told The Christian Post on Wednesday. “And the fact that Christians are suffering globally is an important aspect of life that we ignore at our peril … we can’t ignore the suffering of our brothers and sisters because to do so is to truly ignore the suffering within our own body.”

Moeller, the president and CEO of Open Doors USA, is also the co-author of a new book called ,The Privilege of Persecution. The title, he says, came from a conversation he had with a Latin-American pastor who said that Christians where he lives are “privileged to suffer for the name of Christ.”

“God has a different definition of ‘blessing’ than we do in the West,” Moeller said. “The message of the book … is to refocus and awaken the church on things that we’ve forgotten because we’ve become comfortable.”

He says that the terrorist attacks, which resulted in the death of almost 3,000 Americans, woke our nation up and brought an “enlightened, informed understanding of just how brutal suffering can be.”

Today, there are over 100 million Christians worldwide who live in countries where they are in danger of being persecuted for their faith.

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“We need to respond much like the first responders to 9/11 did,” Moeller urged, “to go boldly into the middle of the worst places on earth to bring the love of Jesus Christ to those that would bring hatred and death and destruction to us.

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