Please pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Iran who are imprisoned for their faith. A few years ago a man named Farshid, featured along with many others in the two-and-a-half minute video below, visited our EPM office. It was a privilege to meet him and the director of Elam Ministries and hear stories of what God is doing in Iran. It’s now heartbreaking to think of Farshid presently in prison, enduring much hardship, and separated from his dear family.
Those imprisoned normally experience the following conditions: solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, many hours of interrogation by different teams, loud speakers outside their cells constantly broadcasting religious teaching, threats of execution, harm to family members, pressure to recant their Christian faith, verbal insults, other forms of psychological torture, sometimes prolonged beatings, and denial of medical attention.
“Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.” Hebrews 13:3
In November 1960, six-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges got out of the U.S. Marshall’s car and walked the short distance to the school entrance, apparently oblivious to the adults who screamed obscenities at her along the walkway. As usual, her teacher watched from the window as the little African-American girl approached the school, but today, something was different—Ruby was talking as she walked. In the classroom Mrs. Henry said, “I saw your lips moving, but I couldn’t make out what you were saying to those people.” “I wasn’t talking to them,” Ruby explained, “I was praying for them.”1
Ruby was born in 1954, the year that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision ( Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka )2 overturning its 1896 ruling, which sanctioned segregation ( Plessy v. Ferguson ).3 Ruling that all segregation was “inherently unequal,” the court ordered desegregation to be enforced with “all deliberate speed.”4
At the time of the decision, Ruby Bridges’ Louisiana was one of seventeen southern states that required segregation. Although the Orleans Parish School Board fought desegregation through the courts, it gave way when federal Judge Skelly Wright ordered that schools had to desegregate on November 14, 1960.5 In the spring of 1960, Ruby was among the black children tested in New Orleans to determine who would attend an integrated school. When she passed, her parents learned she would start first grade at William Frantz Public School. On November 14, federal marshals drove Ruby and her mother to school. They explained that two marshals would walk in front of them and two behind, so they would be protected on both sides.6 It reminded Ruby of what her mother had told her about God—that He is always there to protect His people: “Remember, if you get afraid, say your prayers. You can pray to God anytime, anywhere. He will always hear you.”7
Every day, people yelled hate-filled abuse at Ruby. Once someone even displayed a black doll in a coffin. Civil unrest in the city grew. Her father lost his job. Her grandparents were told to leave the land they had sharecropped for 25 years. Yet, Ruby continued to attend school. She was encouraged by the help her family received, from both black and white members of society, not least from her white teacher, Mrs. Barbara Henry, who dedicated herself to her only pupil.8 Yet above all, Ruby was strengthened to endure by praying on her way to school: “Prayer was my protection.” When asked what she had been praying, Ruby explained, “Usually I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I'd forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don't know what they’re doing.”9
Following the world’s example, Christians can fall into the trap of bitterness and depression over the real or perceived wrongs done them; a resentful, victim mindset can grip them. But the example of a child, Ruby Bridges, can help lead them to liberty, where prayer blocks murmuring, and forgiveness displaces resentment. Christians must never cease to fight social evil, but in the fray, they must never let the devil rob them of their joy in the Lord or poison their witness to His grace.
This article is indebted to Ruby Bridges’ account of these events. See Ruby Bridges, Ruby Bridges Foundation Website, www.rubybridges.org/story.htm (accessed March 11, 2004).
For further information, see Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992, rev. edn. (NY: Hill & Wang, 1993 [1981]); William H Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II, 5th edn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” — Hebrews 12:14
Objection: Some may object, and say, We see that no persons on earth are exposed to such troubles, dangers, afflictions, and persecutions, as those are exposed to who mind holiness, who follow after holiness. These are days wherein men labor to frown holiness out of the world, and to scorn and kick holiness out of the world; and do you think that we are mad now to pursue after holiness? Now to this great and sore objection, I shall give these following answers
1. First, It must be granted that afflictions and persecutions has been the common lot and portion of the people of God in this world.
Abel was persecuted by Cain, (1Jo 3:12), and Isaac by Ishmael, (Gal 4:29). That seems to be a standing law,
“All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution,” (2Ti 3:12).
A man may have many faint wishes and cold desires after godliness, and yet escape persecution; yea, he may make some essays[2] and attempts as if he would be godly, and yet escape persecution; but when a man is thoroughly resolved to be godly, and sets himself in good earnest upon pursuing after holiness and living a life of godliness, then he must expect to meet with afflictions and persecutions.
It is neither a Christian's gifts nor his graces, it is neither his duties nor his services that can secure him. Whoever escapes, the godly man shall not escape persecution in one kind or another, in one degree or another. He that will live up to holy rules, and live out holy principles, must prepare for sufferings. All the roses of holiness are surrounded with pricking briers.
The history of the ten persecutions, and that little book of martyrs, the 11th of the Hebrews, and Mr. Foxe his Acts and Monuments,[3] with many other treatises that are extant, do abundantly evidence that from age to age, and from one generation to another, they that have been born after the flesh have persecuted them that have been born after the Spirit, (Gal 4:20), and that the seed of the serpent have been still a-multiplying of troubles upon the seed of the woman.
Would any man take the church's picture, saith Luther, then let him paint a poor silly maid sitting in a wilderness, compassed about with hungry lions, wolves, boars, and bears, and with all manner of other cruel, hurtful beasts, and in the midst of a great many furious men assaulting her every moment and minute, for this is her condition in the world. As certain as the night follows the day, so certain will that black angel, persecution, follow holiness wherever it goes.
In the last of the ten persecutions, seventeen thousand holy martyrs were slain in the space of one month. And in Queen Mary's days, or, if you will, in the Marian days, not of blessed, but of most abhorred memory, the Popish prelates[4] in less than four years sacrificed the lives of eight hundred innocents to their idols! And oh that that precious innocent blood did not still cry to heaven for vengeance against this nation!
[1] From Crown and Glory of Christianity, Thomas Brooks, The Works of Thomas Brooks, Vol IV, pp. 261-300, reprinted by Banner of Truth. Thomas Brook s (1608-1680) Nonconformist preacher and advocate of the Congregational way. Born into a Puritan family, he was sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Author of Precious Remedies against Satan's Devices, The Mute Christian under the Smarting Rod, and others. He was buried in Bunhill Fields.
[3] Acts and Monuments – a reference to the great work by John Foxe (1516-1587) originally entitled Actes and Monuments of These Latter Perilous Days, known to us as Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
[4] prelate – a minister or priest of the higher order, as an archbishop, bishop, or patriarch.
