Rural Bryant, South Dakota

For this "crime against Mohammed" Sisters of Mother Teresa's charity organization were gunned down in Yemen, unarmed and defenceless women of mercy that they were, in retaliation for what was done to Mohammed's dignity by the irreverent Danish cartoons. The cartoonist was proscribed, marked for death, by Muslims in a "fatwa" or official declaration to all Muslims by an imam. The cartoonist is still at this date a marked man and has to live in guarded seclusion.

The Sisters of Mother Teresa's charitable order were attending to the orphans in Yemen, for many years in fact. What did they have to do with the cartoons? Nothing. But the Muslim gunmen hated the nuns because they were Westerners, they were Christians, they were helping orphaned Muslim children--that was more than sufficient to use them for vengeance in retaliation for the Danish cartoons that made Mohammed look ridiculous. The cartoons were the pretext that justified the killings, in the eyes of the Muslim murderers.

In India, the same Sisterhood and Mother Teresa herself often had to face brutal persecution and threats to their lives from fundamentalist Hindus who claimed the Sisters were trying to convert Hindu people to Christianity, when actually they were simply giving humanitarian aid to dying poor, sick, often elderly people abandoned by their families that they gathered up from the streets of Calcutta and gave shelter to so that they could die with a modicum of human dignity. The Sisters did not "convert," but ministered to all people regardless of their religion, but they were still charged with "converting" and persecuted.

The point is: conversionary or not, even if you do not share Christ the Savior with anyone, you are a legitimate target to Muslim fundamentalists even if you are only dispensing critical humanitarian aid to people. If you are Western, Christian, or helping needy people--those are major strokes against you that fundamentalists of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism consider capital crimes calling for your execution.

Buddhism too? Oh, yes! Ever since Sir Edmund Hillary became first to climb Mt. Everest in Nepal, he and others who followed his example met everywhere with Buddhist people and commended their religion to Westerners, and since then Buddhism has been popularly equated with religious toleration of other faiths in the minds of the American and British publics; yet in the mountain kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan and elsewhere in Southeast Asia where Buddhism is dominant, Christians are vigorously persecuted, imprisoned, and even killed, even to this very day. The world press is virtually silent on this persecution. Western Churchmen, particularly representatives of the National Council of Churches in America and the World Council of Churches regularly visit Buddhist-dominated countries and go on well-publicized tours, but overlook the bitter persecution of native Christians in those countries in the effort to bring conciliation and ecumenism with these outreaches to societies dominated by non-Christian faiths. VOICE OF THE MARTYRS is an organization with a magazine that document and calls attention to the persecutions, and has names and contacts to help the persecuted and incarcerated Christians in those countries, including countries that are primarily Hindu or Muslim. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations affiliated with the United Nations ignore the persecutions, as they are only waged against Christians, and somehow are counted as human rights violations by them. The relentless campaign of genocide "religious and ethnic cleansing of Sudan" waged against millions of southern Sudanese, mainly black Christians, by the fundamentalist Muslim regime of northern Sudan was ignored for many years. The killings by Muslim militia groups in Dafur has changed this somewhat. Dafur is located more in the center of Sudan, and it has been brought to the attention of the world by these agencies, and even by President Carter on his famous visit to the beseiged area--but this has happened only after ten or fifteen years of persecutions of Christians in the south, about which these organizations said nothing.

None of what I have described ought to be a surprise to a Christian. Jesus forewarned his disciples they would encounter bitter persecution, even death, for being His witnesses to the world. Families would turn against them in some cases. Children testify against their own parents, etc., getting them in trouble with the authorities. He said that his disciples would be delivered up to courts and face death sentences and all manner of hurt for His name sake. All this has been come true since his disciples obeyed him and went out preaching the Gospel. It has been true since then, and continues to be true today. But the Great Commission remains:

"And Jesus came [after the Resurrection] and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore aznd make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father aznd of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age".--Matthew 28: 18-20.

Again, from Mark's Gospel, Chapter 16, verse 15 onward: And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe in My name: they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; theyw ill take up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

So then, after the Lord has spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.

And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen The Gospel of Luke, Luke 24: 44-48, also speaks of the Great Commission:

Then He said to them, "Thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day.

"And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name [speaking of Himself] to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses [the disciples present] of these things."

Therefore, when they [the disciples] had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

And He said to them, "It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has put in His authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem,a nd in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

Disciples of Christ should share the Gospel regardless of persecution, or the threat of it, it is obvious--that is, if we are to obey Christ, not man. Going unarmed, keeping one's faith in Christ private, etc., does not protect a person from the fundamentalists in every major religion. Even Judaism has the orthodox believers who persecute evangelical missionaries and even Messianic Jews. One boy in Jerusalem, son of a Messianic Jewish believer, was horribly injured by a pipe bomb wrapped up like a Jewish festival gift. Evangelical Christian bookstores are often firebombed. Churches are unable to function freely in many parts of Jerusalem without interference or harrassment by religious Jews. So even Judaism is anti-Christian, anti-conversionary, so to speak. Jewish rabbis claim that Judaism is not conversionary, but it was in the first century, when the New Testament was written, as there are mentioned "proselytes" mentioned, foreigners or Gentiles who became Jewish believers.

What does our Stadem heritage say about conversion and sharing the Gospel without restraint? It says a great deal! Alfred and Bergit Stadem did not have any reservations or restraints in this regard. Lutheran Fellowship League meetings (in which Alfred and Bergit were prime promoters and Alfred was an officer), evangelistic tent meetings held on the farm that invited the whole community, participating in numerous Church conventions, evangelistic meetings of Billy Sunday, and Lutheran camps, all speak of the Stadems' obedience to the Great Commission. They went a giant step further and shared the Gospel freely with Catholics in Mexico, on numerous mission trips. Alfred spoke to uncountable groups at churches and Christian camps in the Midwest about the forty million unsaved Mexicans going into a Christless eternity, calling for help to bring the Gospel to the Mexican people. They raised monies and all sorts of humanitarian aid for the Mexican churches and missions of the Latin American Lutheran Mission. Their family also followed their example. Cora Stadem Taylor and her husband Carl became missionaries to first Alaska's Indians and then to the Indians and people of of Brazil. Their children became missionaries too, and they shared the Gospel to Indians in Brazil, the people of Columbia, and also Latinos in America, and have even been reaching out to Muslims of Iran and Jewish people too. Myrtle Stadem Svanoe and her husband William handed out Gospel tracts wherever they went, and vigorously supported a missionary-sending, church planting church that started in their own home in Minneapolis. Bernice Stadem Schaefer and her husband Russell shared the Gospel with all sorts of people including Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormoms and led them to salvation in the Lord Jesus. Pearl Stadem Ginther and her husband Bob worked many hours for the Union Gospel Mission in Sioux Falls, SD, bringing in speakers for the presentation of the Gospel to the homeless and needy men who came for help, food, and lodging. Bob Ginther preached on street corners for the Mission, and also was a volunteer preacher at his home congregation in Washington State. Pearl Stadem Ginther continued this effort, vigorously supporting with attendance and money and personal participation Billy Graham's ministry and scores of other evangelists' ministries as well, and has continued to share the soul-saving Gospel with uncountable people by word of mouth, letters, cards and acts of kindness. Her many descendants can tell of her endeavors in this respect, how they have continued up right into her 100th year of life!

To characterize evangelism as an attempt to "judge and convert," while just ministering to physical needs, is to cut the Gospel in half, and you have no real Gospel. John Wesley the famed evangelical revivalist of Britain in the 18th-19th century along with his brother, the great song-writer Charles Wesley, ministered the Gospel holistically, did he not? Read his Journals, and you will find out that he was a holistic Gospel preacher. Our grandparents Bergit and Alfred Stadem, along with most of our parents, did so too. They did not divide the Gospel into Social Gospel and Conversionary Gospel, it was one Gospel of Jesus Christ. They also knew that to witness of Christ holistically, giving out the saving salvation message of Jesus on the Cross, paying the full payment for our sin, as well as ministering to urgent physical needs, would bring persecution and opposition from even religious bodies. But they thought it worth it, to obey Christ first, even above considerations for their own safety.

You are not being "judgmental" if you share the Gospel with the unsaved person who already "has a religion." Christ didn't think it was being judgmental to share the saving Gospel about Himself, did he? Of course not! He said there was no hope for any person on earth other than in Himself. He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father but by Me." He gave his disciples the Great Commission, to go and tell the Good News about salvation in Him to all the world. Will we obey him or will we cave in to political correctness and become "non-conversionary" and dispense solely humanitarian aid (perhaps with the hope we will not be attacked for being Christians).

But as we have tried to show, there is no real safety in this world for Christians, even those who chose to render humanitarian aid only, without any attempt to share a salvation message. Events have proved that Jesus is right: his disciples, his faithful witnesses, will encounter bitter persecution, in this world, even from families and religious authorities--they will deliver you up to the authorities of the synagogues, he told his disicples. They should even expect in some cases to be put to death for preaching the Gospel.

Heaven is full already of martyrs, saints who preached the Gospel and were slain because of it. The 20th century added more martyrs, in fact, to heaven's rolls then all the 19 centuries that preceeded. The 21st century is heating up to rival the record of the 20th, it appears. So we should not be surprised or dismayed but expect this to happen to us as it happened to them.