Equipping the Persecuted in Nigeria

Equipping the Persecuted and the Situation in Nigeria

Welcome, everyone, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. We have Judd Saul, who's been on the program before. He's the director of Enemies Within the Church, Enemies Within, a bunch of other documentaries about politics.

And also, though, today, we're going to speak to him in this capacity. He is involved in missions work in Africa, specifically Nigeria. And his ministry is called Equipping the Persecuted. And he's going to tell us a little bit more about that, where you can find out more information if you want to support with your end of the year giving.

But he just came back from Nigeria. So Judd, welcome back to the United States. Oh, I got to say it. I'm glad to be back. How are you feeling? I mean, sometimes people, missionaries, you know, they'll come back from being in the bush in Africa, they'll eat some interesting things, maybe drink some water that wasn't the best, and they don't feel so good.

So you're feeling all right?

Or? Oh, I'm feeling really good. After after traveling to Nigeria for the last 10 years, I kind of know the protocol to try to avoid getting sick. After learning some hard lessons in my early days of traveling there, you kind of know what to do, what not to do and take necessary precautions.

So thank God this time I'm feeling good. I'm not sick. And we had a very productive trip. Well, tell us a little bit about that.

For those who don't know, what's the situation like in Nigeria? And then what were you able to do?

Persecution, Displacement, and Direct Aid to Christians

Well, I've been going to Nigeria for the past 10 years, but about a year and a half, two and a year and a half, two years ago, we started a ministry called Equipping the Persecuted, which specifically works with persecuted Christians.

There are a lot of other organizations we saw that really weren't doing much to help persecuted Christians out there. So we saw several needs and said, and Lord said, you know, I can't, you know, Lord kind of told me and guided me and said, put you in a position to be here to help these people.

And so starting about two years ago, we saw or I saw that needs were not being met of persecuted Christians, meaning the attacks and the security situation are worsening. Essentially what it is, is Islam is conquering Nigeria from the north and moving their way south.

The Muslim terrorist organization that does things, they go after the small villages. And when I say attack, I mean, they go through and they destroy everything. They burn houses and they kill the slowest that are in their way, which are usually children and the elderly.

And if one or two people try to fight back, they get killed as well. And after they take over these villages and take over their land, the people are not allowed to come back. If they insist on coming back, they have to pay a fine or a fee, which is what Muslims call jizya, to come back to your own property and you have to pay them to come back to your property and they keep upping the prices.

And if you don't pay, they kill you. This is the situation that we're seeing in Nigeria. It was it was in northern Nigeria. And now it's moving more to central Nigeria. And these villages, once the survivors, the government says, OK, your village is attacked.

I'm sorry we didn't protect you. We're going to take a clump of you and just put you over here in this part of the country and fend for yourselves. And so they put them in an area that doesn't have wells, that doesn't they don't have clean water.

They barely have any type of infrastructure to shelter to sleep in. And these are Christian brothers and sisters that are suffering. And so it's it's just been laid on my heart and kind of my calling to do whatever I can do to help and assist them.

One of the things that made me interested in this to some extent is the fact that there weren't other ministries doing what you're doing, which I'll let you expand on that in a second. Voice of the Martyrs is a prominent ministry and you don't need to comment on them.

But I'll say that I was surprised to some extent that there's some reporting, limited reporting that even is used for fundraising specifically for Voice of the Martyrs when they didn't really have people on the ground that were actually doing what needed to be done, in my opinion.

And and so you saw this opportunity and this unmet need and decided to try to meet it. So tell me a little bit about that. What's your name? You're not a big ministry, but you're trying to do something that's actually very tangible and real and not abstract, theoretical pie in the sky stuff.

You're actually on the ground meeting a physical need and a spiritual need at the same time. What does that entail?

Emergency Relief, Medical Care, and Boots on the Ground

So if we get when we get word of an attack that happens, we try to respond within 48 hours immediately trying to deliver food and medical aid. And then we work with existing camps, people that have been displaced for over a year that are in certain areas where in certain cases, I mean, they're just they're rotting away because of no medical attention and no clean water and no medical support.

And but within 48 hours of an attack, we try to go in, we try to help people. We've we've after attacks have happened, even after 48 hours, people kind of scatter. I mean, so they scatter and they go out into the bush, they go out into the jungle and kind of the wilderness area.

And then there are some of them are wounded. Some of them have gunshot wounds and they're still out there with no with no medical treatment. And we've run into some of those situations where we found them and said, wow, OK, you need medical attention immediately.

And we get them, we send them to a hospital, we pay for their medical care. We we've paid to heal machete wounds on survivors. We've paid to remove bullets removed from bones of people. And it's just if the need is there and we have the resources to do it, we try to fill it.

And since I've been I've been going to Nigeria for over 10 years, so I have people on the ground. I have people that really know what the situation is. They know what's going on. They they you know, we have boots on the ground.

And so when we find a need, we make sure it gets right to the people that need it. There's no transfer to this government entity or this other NGO, non-government organization where resources will shift, you know, change hands three or four different times.

No, what happens is, is if there's a need, it goes right from us to those that need it directly on the ground. And frankly, you kind of brought it up earlier. There's other missions organizations that will go in, take pictures and then leave and never come back.

They don't have any boots on the ground. They come in, they look at it, they raise awareness, talk about Christian persecution here. Oh, my gosh, send us a whole bunch of money. There's Christian persecution going on.

But rarely do I see any actual organization that has boots on the ground that actually does something, you know, or some say, give us a million dollars. We're going to put political pressure on a Muslim government who is allowing Muslims to kill Christians.

It's stupid. It doesn't work. Yeah. And I know you're also trying to provide for security needs as well to give them training. And that's a big thing to me because go ahead. Yeah. So so we have.

Village Security, Preventive Measures, and Protecting Churches

To look at preventative measures on top of that. You know, after attacks happen, we can help those that need but also we have to look at preventative measures. So some of the things that that we've seen become very effective is is we've been training village security teams on security awareness.

How to look for an oncoming attack or how to spot attacks or attacks going to happen. We've installed village alarm systems. So if there's an attack coming, they hit a button, a siren goes off and people are able to flee in time or give enough warning to get enough people in to try to thwart off an attack.

And I was just there and I met with some village security heads that we had come in and speak with us. And I was greeted with hugs and I was told by all of them that our efforts have actually stopped attacks.

We've thwarted off attacks and saved lives by by providing them basic security training alarm systems. And we've been providing radios, long range to a radio so they can communicate with one another.

See, this is the thing that I think hooked me more than anything. Right. And more than anything else. So I think this I've had that thought for a long time. I don't think I'm alone in other Americans feeling this way or thinking this that there's Christians being persecuted.

Is there anything we can do to actually try to stop that or prevent that? I understand I want the gospel to go forward. There's organizations that do that. I want them to get food and water. But like, it's kind of like a ship that's sinking.

Like, can we can we plug the leak somewhere? Can we try to do that? And so you're actually trying to do that, which to me is huge. And I think to most men, right, men who protect their own families, they feel this way.

They they have these questions and want to see those kinds of things happening. As I'm going to go through some of these pictures that you sent me, can you just talk a little bit about the other kinds of work?

I know you've been in churches and I don't know. Are you trying to get gospel literature out there? Do they already have gospel literature? Give me a little.

Bit of a lay of the land as far as the spiritual condition. So one of the things happens is like so when villages are attacked, the first people that are attacked are pastors. There's there's if you're a pastor in in in Nigeria, northern Nigeria, middle Nigeria, you have a target on your back.

And they like to they like to destroy churches. They like to kill pastors. And so when these churches are destroyed, all the Bibles are destroyed, biblical educational materials destroyed. So we go in, we give them Bibles, we give them biblical education material, and we also provide supplies to help them rebuild churches.

Because, you know, this this is a shining light in darkness, a church is a shining light in darkness. And one of the things that I said is that we are not going to let thugs come in your village and destroy the church and destroy the shining light in your area, we're going to help you rebuild.

And so along with that, so we give them biblical resources. And, and in many instances, people have seen what we've done, like locals have seen what we've done for these churches. And it's actually emboldened their faith.

And we've seen many come to know Christ, because we've actually shown that Christians from America actually care about these people being afflicted. In another country, we have we've seen many come to know Christ because of showing this example.

And we don't do any good deed without presenting clearly the gospel. So that's one thing. It's not just humanitarian enough, everything we do is accompanied by the clear presentation of the gospel. And everywhere we go, we see people come to know Christ.

And it's the ministry is really bearing fruit, but it also gives a lot of Christians hope and helps encourage them in their faith. For those watching, I'm playing some of the.

Videos you sent me, Judd. One of them right now is a young man who is talking, I have it on mute. But in a village, we just played a video of I think your team handing out some lollipops to children. And, you know, there's two false gospels that I get concerned about that are being exported from the United States around the world that are wreaking havoc, major destruction.

Rejecting Prosperity Gospel and Social Justice Gospel

The prosperity gospel is the first one. The social justice gospel is the second one. And I know you're not in favor of either one of those. Can you tell me though, have those ideologies made it over there, those.

Corruptions of the faith? I don't see so much of the social justice gospel in Africa, because the social justice concept just doesn't make sense there. I mean, you know what I mean? It just doesn't make sense in Africa, because they're facing real oppression, real poverty, and it's done by other people of the same skin tone as they're facing.

So the social justice, white privilege narrative, all that stuff, it just doesn't make sense in a place like Nigeria. But what has been insane is the prosperity gospel. We're seeing this bad theology spread like wildfire, and we've gotten a chance to preach and speak to pastors and speak to leaders, and we're trying to correct this theology.

We're trying to get them away from this and get them into more of a, you will. And one of the other things with doctrine, and this is what's crazy, I met with 30 pastors two weeks ago in Nigeria, and I was talking to them about biblical worldview.

I was sharing with them about why they, you know, why Christians need to be involved in their culture, why they need to be involved in politics, why they should start paying attention to these things.

And we were essentially anti-pietism. Pietism has been rampant throughout Nigeria, and that's why Christians have sat on their hands and let themselves be taken over like this. And we had pastors come up to us after talking to them about this and sharing with them biblical reasons why they need to be involved.

They were taught as pastors that even talking about politics was a sin. Wow. Wow. They were told it was a sin, and they were scared of even bringing it up because they had been taught somewhere, somewhere down the line from some missionary that talking about politics was sinful.

Yeah, that's a big problem. But then you couple that with prosperity. I mean, I've never seen such walkie theology in my life, but the fact is they were open to hearing the truth. They were grateful, they were in tears, and they loved what we had to say, and they want more.

So what I'm saying is that there's a people that are ready for a true gospel, you know, ready for good doctrine. Because frankly, I'll say this, Nigerians are beginning to realize and see how they've been abused by.

The prosperity gospel. Who are these guys with the guns? You're throwing the picture now of you.

Security Escorts, Destroyed Churches, and Rebuilding

Yeah. Okay. Those are our security guards. Okay. You hired them to accompany you as your... Yep. We cannot go anywhere outside of a major city without security. It's just too dangerous. And there are people that put on fake uniforms, poses police, they'll pull you over, rob you, kidnap you, kill you.

But if you have a hired military guard with you, and some type of an escort, it avoids a lot of those situations. So we have to travel 24 seven with security for safety. And it's just the nature of doing.

Missions in Nigeria. There was a picture I had shown. Let me see if I can find it again. It looks like it's not here. There's a church that had been, it looked like bombed out or something.

I don't know if I... There it is. Yeah, that is a picture of a destroyed church.

From a Muslim terrorist attack?

Muslim terrorist attack on a church. They went and destroyed everything. Collapsed the roof. They burned the instruments, burned the Bibles, destroyed the chairs, everything. Everything that you would have in a church completely destroyed.

Wow. And so we provided that particular church, we provided them resources in tin to rebuild. Tin to rebuild their roof. We gave them some.

Money for chairs and we gave them money for Bibles. Wow. And what you're doing, so unique. Other people, other ministries, I should say, aren't in that area doing the same kinds of things. Is there anything else that is unique to equipping the persecuted that you want.

To mention? Well, we're in the process of building an orphanage. There is a massive need because of the increase in attacks, parents are getting killed. And some of these villages that are moving to IDP camps don't have the resources to help take care of these children.

So we started construction on an orphanage and we hope to have that complete by the middle of this year. We'll be able to house up to 50 kids and then hopefully expand it to a hundred. And the other thing with orphans is that if the Muslims get a hold of these orphans, they take them and they essentially enslave them.

They become slaves and they get beaten on. They don't get taken care of. They get no education. And so that's a very kind of crucial part. If we see a Christian kid that's an orphan, we want to get them into a safe place.

We want to get them educated and we want to make sure that they can grow up and be productive and not be slaves to some imam. Let me ask you this,.

Because I'm watching this video, you're panning out the lollipops and these kids, you know, in the United States, there's kids, especially in certain areas, would probably be running all over each other.

And I don't know, I'm just impressed. They're so orderly. They're waiting their turn. I mean, are they different? Are they more disciplined? What's.

The difference here? The kids in Nigeria are more disciplined. They still have a, within the culture, they have a respect for authority. They have an ingrained respect for authority within their culture.

They respect leaders. They respect the elders of their villages. And a lot of, you know, don't get me wrong. There are times where you get swarmed, but when somebody says, Hey, get an order, they line up.

Wow. They line up because they have.

Respect for their elders. That's impressive to me. You don't, I don't know. I just don't.

See that as much today. And then, well, and then the video you're seeing right here, this, so this was a camp that we had not been to before. Go back to this right here. Yeah. This, this right here. And then the picture of the lollipops, this was a camp that we had not been to before that we went to this time.

And we went in and the government put these people way out in the middle of nowhere, away from main roads. And they just flopped them in the middle of this land. There's no water wells. And the video really doesn't do it justice, but these, everybody had diseases on them.

I mean, you could see the, just the, the, the smell, the the, the ailments that these people had, and they thought the world forgot about them. Wow. They completely thought the world forgot about them.

And Muslim locals had been harassing that village. They had one vehicle that the Muslims shot up three days before we got there. And I mean, so they had, I mean, we're talking traveling pretty far just to go get water to bring back to the village.

So by the end of this week, we provided the costs and organized for that to that camp to have a well, they're getting a well being drilled this week. And so we're they're going to, by the end of this.

Week, they're going to have fresh water for Christmas. Well, praise God for that. That's.

Great. But it's, but this is, it's just another situation where they need all the help they can and we're doing all we can. And, but this is, this is one of many camps across Nigeria that we came across, but this is, if it, if it comes across to us and we find out about it, we're not one and done, we're going to continue to help support them however we can.

How to Support Equipping the Persecuted

What can people do to go and support your ministry?

They can support us at www .equippingthepersecuted .org. That's www .equippingthepersecuted .org. You can donate online. Also we're, as the ministry expands, we're looking for people that want to go, that want to go minister, maybe help out with our orphanage, with construction and get that built.

But first things first is keep the ministry in your prayers. Keep our local team in your prayers. Every time they go out to do an, to do an intervention, to go support a camp, they go and drive through dangerous territory.

They put their lives at risk to go help people. So pray for our safety, pray for their safety. And anything you feel led to give would be much appreciated and it goes right into the hands of those that need it.

A few things I wanted to say,.

I had someone reach out the other day and wanted to know what they could do to support missionaries who they could be assured weren't on the woke social justice train. And this is one option for you. If you're in a Southern Baptist church, Lottie Moon offering that's going to the International Mission Board.

And you don't really know exactly where, where that's going to wind up in the long run. And if you want to be confident, then I would say, give to a missionary, you know, give to a ministry that you're familiar with.

Judd's someone though, that I know that is certainly obviously not on that train. He just produced and directed enemies within the church. And the other thing I wanted to say is you can see from this kind of work, I just wanted to make the point that oftentimes we are accused, those on our side of the social justice debate of not caring about the poor, of being racist, of just heartless, essentially.

And I think you can see that that's not accurate. You have a man here who's just directed a film against social justice, who is helping people who don't look like him as far as their tone of their skin.

And they are Christian brothers and sisters. We love them. We want to help them. We support them. And we're the ones actually out there, right on the ground doing something about it. And so this really does poke a hole in that whole narrative.

And I, the reason I mentioned it is because many people listen to my podcast for content on social justice and what's happening in evangelicalism, and oftentimes rewarding off these horrible accusations against people like us.

And, and it's just, it's slander really at the end of the day that people would say those kinds of things. So this is something that you can get involved with. It's not something that requires belief in social justice.

And in fact, social justice really hampers this kind of thing and gets you stuck in the weeds. This is the kind of charitable work and, and also ministry work that we need to be engaged in as believers in our own communities, but also as we have opportunity across the world.

So this is one of those opportunities and it is 501c3, I believe, right, Judd? Yes, sir. So you can get your tax write-off too, if you donate to this organization. Judd hasn't paid me anything to say any of this.

I'm, I care about this ministry. I care about the people of Nigeria and I hope to go one day as well. So Judd, keep up the fantastic.

Work. Thank you for sharing with us. Thanks for having me on brother. Appreciate it. All right.

God bless. Have a Merry Christmas. Thanks. You too.