The Situation in Nigeria for Christians
5 views
Judd Saul talks about his organization, Equipping the Persecuted, and their work among Nigerian Christians.
- 00:09
- Well, welcome once again to the conversations that matter podcast everyone, it's good to be with you. It's good to have you with me on this
- 00:16
- Giving Tuesday. This is kind of a new tradition. I don't think I grew up with this. I don't remember.
- 00:21
- I mean, we have a special guest Judd, Judd, do you remember Giving Tuesday? When it started? It was it wasn't that long ago.
- 00:27
- It might have been, I don't know, within the last 10 years, but I definitely didn't grow up with it.
- 00:33
- It's a good thing, though. I appreciate it with all the commercialism and Cyber Monday and everything else going on.
- 00:39
- It's good to have a reminder that there are people in need out there and there's Christians actually in need across the whole globe.
- 00:46
- And we don't often we don't think about it if it's not right in front of us. We have a political situation here in the
- 00:51
- United States. I know I get wrapped up in that sometimes, but there are things going on around the world. And one of them,
- 00:58
- Judd, you're going to share with us. So let me just introduce you. You probably don't need an introduction, but Judd Saul is the director of Enemies Within the
- 01:05
- Church and producer as well. He is a filmmaker, has a number of other films, but he the
- 01:12
- Lord put it on his heart. Should I use that language? Is that OK? You had a conviction from the
- 01:18
- Holy Spirit, I think, as you would describe it, to go and help these orphans and just Christians who are in Nigeria, who are being persecuted by Muslim terrorists.
- 01:30
- And it's a very sad situation. So you started Equipping the Persecuted and you're going to share with us about your trip to Nigeria, a little bit about the ministry and how people can give to helping these orphans.
- 01:42
- So, Judd, I appreciate it. Thank you for joining me and being willing to discuss this. Oh, it's always a pleasure to see you,
- 01:48
- John. I appreciate you having me on. It has been it has been a very interesting trip that we just got back from in Nigeria.
- 01:55
- We had to cut it short a little bit early due to terror threats that were going on in the area.
- 02:01
- And this happened to be the first trip that brought my wife to Nigeria with me. And believe it or not, she still wants to go back after after going through all that.
- 02:12
- But the the big reason I had her come along was we have just opened our orphanage.
- 02:20
- And it was it was a dream one year ago, and I didn't have the resources to do it, but it was kind of like, you know, you feel a calling, we should build an orphanage.
- 02:32
- And I was like, God, this is in your hands. This is in your hands. I don't have the resources to do this.
- 02:37
- It's up, you know, it's up to you to do it. And then slowly but surely, people who I don't even know, never met before, came to the table with funds to build the orphanage.
- 02:48
- And in one year we completed it. Wow. Yeah, I remember I think it was last year we were talking about this.
- 02:54
- If I'm not mistaken, it was about a year ago and the dream of doing this. And now it's a completed process, which is awesome.
- 03:01
- And I know you're going to show us some pictures of that. But you have a good wife, Judd, that she's willing to go with you to areas that have terrorist threats and she's willing to go back.
- 03:09
- I mean, that's kind of a rare woman that would do that. So you married the right person for the light of work you're in now.
- 03:16
- It's a it's a it's a given grace from God. And it's a it's a blessing to have have a wife willing to do this.
- 03:24
- And but she finally got to see things firsthand and meet the people that we've been working with.
- 03:32
- And one of the biggest impacts that came from the trip from her and what's going to keep her going back was she got to meet with several of the widows that we support on a monthly basis and got to hear their stories and really, really touched her heart, impacted her and heard the stories about these.
- 03:53
- I mean, these widows are widows of whose husbands were pastors that were murdered.
- 03:59
- Yeah, they were murdered because they were pastors. Oh, man. And it's nothing like what we experience here.
- 04:05
- I mean, we think it's incredible. It's a different paradigm, different world, completely different paradigm.
- 04:10
- But the the interesting thing is, is that they are they are women, they're mothers. They have the same prayer requests we have.
- 04:19
- Just on a different scale, obviously, because they're suffering extreme poverty on top of what they're doing.
- 04:25
- But they want their kids to stay in the faith. They they you know, they want to see their kids prosper.
- 04:32
- You know, they have normal concerns that regular mothers would have. But it but to know on the kind of scale that of the poverty and the other issues that they're dealing with is just very humbling.
- 04:44
- But they're just like us. They're just like us. You know, we we might have more more conveniences and more things, but they're humans just like us.
- 04:54
- They have the same needs and the same wants for their families. Yeah, I'm glad to hear you say that. Oftentimes, I think growing up, especially when we would have missionaries speak or people will go on short term missions, come back.
- 05:07
- There tends to be and that's not in every case, but there tends to be conjured up in Christians, this sort of I don't know if you've seen this,
- 05:15
- Judd, but a kind of an anti -Americanism or just the Christians in the United States were so spoiled.
- 05:21
- We don't really understand what's going on over there. And and that's probably there's probably some truth to this where we're just not being threatened every day with our livelihoods.
- 05:31
- Of course, that is changing perhaps, but not to the extent of people in Nigeria. And, you know,
- 05:37
- I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit with just I mean, it's the same Holy Spirit.
- 05:43
- It's the same Bible. It's the same Jesus Christ, whether you're in the United States or in Nigeria.
- 05:48
- Yet the challenges, it's a different set of challenges. Can you just talk to me about that? What are the set of challenges you see for Christians in the
- 05:54
- United States versus when you got off that plane for the first time in Nigeria and then saw the challenges they experienced?
- 06:01
- How are they the same? How are they different? And how does God's grace then manifest or what kind of gifts of grace does he give to the people in Nigeria?
- 06:09
- Maybe we're not we don't need as much here or we don't experience as much. Well, I think with with the
- 06:16
- U .S., I mean, it and with Nigeria, so we take the United States, for example, this is how we grew up.
- 06:22
- We grew up around our culture. We grew up around the way things are, if you will. You know what I mean?
- 06:28
- We have running water. We have air conditioning. We grew up in a house with a two car garage, you know, typically, you know,
- 06:36
- I'm just saying in general and we grew up with the American culture. Well, in Nigeria, they grew up in Nigerian culture.
- 06:43
- And, you know, suffering extreme poverty, trying to make ends meet every day, but it is their regular way of life out there, just like we have a regular way of life here.
- 06:52
- But what do we have? The same problems we have sin. We all have a sin problem.
- 06:57
- We have a sin problem in the U .S. They have a sin problem in Nigeria. It just manifests itself in different ways.
- 07:04
- And the thing is, is when when you go to when you go to church in Nigeria and you're with fellow
- 07:11
- Christians, you don't feel like an outsider. I mean, you're just you're you're one with the body of Christ and you're talking to a fellow another
- 07:21
- Christian brother like you would here in the United States. It's just they you know, they are suffering things on a massive scale that we aren't suffering here.
- 07:31
- And when you get together with a fellow Christian brother, it's it's it's
- 07:37
- God's grace. We're all on the same page and we're all just working together for the Lord. And they have the same and they have the same heart of reaching the lost.
- 07:47
- They have the same heart of reaching the still reaching the lost. They have the same heart of reaching even the people that are that are killing them.
- 07:55
- Is that a difference in our country? I know there's perhaps a resentment that I would say.
- 08:03
- I mean, I fight to some extent, seeing that the battle is not against flesh and blood ultimately, it's against angels, principalities, powers.
- 08:10
- And you see these these politicians who are just as crooked as it can be.
- 08:17
- And they hate Christianity. They hate the God of the Bible. They want to do sin. Right. And it's there's a righteous indignation we should have.
- 08:25
- But there's I mean, it can go, I think, very easily into the territory of resentment.
- 08:30
- And how dare they take away the country that I grew up in? You know, I hate them.
- 08:36
- Right. And there's and there's a line here. There's obviously a righteous indignation versus be angry and do not sin versus a seething anger that we should not have.
- 08:46
- But in Nigeria, they quite literally are being blown up by Muslims bullets while they have a worship service going on.
- 08:54
- Orphans, widows. Yeah, it's it's a I mean, talk about persecution and opposition to the church.
- 09:02
- And yet what's their attitude? Is it what do you see there? Is it that that resentment that can often build up,
- 09:09
- I think, easily in Christians, the United States, or is it different? There's there in the true believer.
- 09:18
- OK, there's not that. Well, they're they're fighting for their land and they're protecting their families.
- 09:25
- OK, so you do have to stand up against evil. And they're they're well aware they have to stand up against evil.
- 09:33
- But. If they had the opportunity as Christians to share the gospel and and forgive, you know, you know, and if somebody is repentant and, you know, and to forgive and all that, they're willing to do that.
- 09:46
- And I've seen it happen many times. And we've seen Muslims, even former bandits and terrorists, come to Christ.
- 09:54
- Wow. You know, through the process, but at the same time, they the the terrorists and these guys are lawless and there needs to be protection for the innocent.
- 10:07
- You know, against them, so I mean, it's a it's it's hard to understand, but there's a difference between the two.
- 10:16
- And but to have a hatred, blind hatred just for a group of people. You some of them have fallen into that, but but the true
- 10:24
- Christians are trying to tell and they're trying to like the pastors are trying to get to people say, don't have blind hatred for a group of people.
- 10:34
- You know, be cautious, protect your families, protect your land, you know, do what you need to do. But if you come across.
- 10:41
- A stranger, you come across that person, we still have to do our Christian duty and share the gospel and show the love of Christ to them.
- 10:50
- Yeah. And there's two needs you're talking about here, you're talking about the physical needs you're talking about, then spiritual or the need to share the gospel.
- 10:59
- And you're working on both fronts, right? Yes. Yes. So, I mean, you know, part of our ministry is we do help village security teams with bulletproof vests, village alarm systems, security training.
- 11:12
- On our last trip, we had a gentleman come down that taught. We had several village security leaders from different areas.
- 11:20
- I mean, the hard hit areas that are seeing a lot of conflict. And we taught them how to address bullet wounds, machete wounds, how to respond to these attacks and how to save lives when these happen.
- 11:31
- And we gave them all military grade medical kits and taught them how to use everything inside.
- 11:38
- Awesome. As a as a you know, as a practical thing is this is something they deal with all the time. And we're saying,
- 11:44
- OK, well, now we're giving you equipment, the tools to help save lives and more and what the village alarm systems warn people in case of an attack so we can help save lives.
- 11:53
- And and just by showing them and doing those things, we had guys in tears. We had people in tears that we were able to provide this type of training and this type of equipment to them, and they just can't believe somebody from the
- 12:07
- U .S. would care enough for them, especially these village security teams are not funded by the government.
- 12:13
- These are these are volunteer village security teams that volunteer their time and they're the first line of defense for their villages.
- 12:21
- They don't get paid, they don't get any stipends, whatever they do have, they have to scrounge together themselves. So someone comes in a foreign, you know, foreign mission from the
- 12:30
- U .S. and says, hey, you know, here's here's some stuff to help you guys out. It goes a long way, but not only goes a long way with practical needs, but from a spiritual standpoint, when we give when we train them and we give away these things, we say this is because of Jesus Christ.
- 12:47
- It's not me. It's not Judd. It's not equipment persecuted. This is because of Jesus Christ is why we're here. God loves you.
- 12:52
- God cares about you. And by the way, how's your spiritual walk? Are you going to church? And we have the gospel conversations with them, but we're helping out a very practical need, and they think the world has forgotten about them because when it news of attacks and what happens hits the mainstream media or even alternative media, the facts aren't always there and everything's underreported.
- 13:15
- And they boil it down to village conflicts versus it's. Muslims killing
- 13:20
- Christians, it only goes in one direction is that it only goes in one direction. So, you know, one of the things
- 13:26
- I hear a lot in the United States is that if we had persecution, it's not a bad thing.
- 13:33
- It's a good thing for the church because it purifies the church. And then we get all those hypocrites out of the church.
- 13:38
- And finally, the church can be functional again. And it struck me, it strikes me when
- 13:45
- I hear this, one of the things is that in the New Testament, there was persecution, and yet they also had heresies coming in and lukewarmness.
- 13:53
- And the same challenges we have today, maybe they manifest themselves differently in different forms, but they're there.
- 13:59
- And so I'm kind of curious in the United States right now, as we are starting to see some opposition publicly to Christian ethics, we have at the very same time
- 14:10
- LGBT soft peddling. We have critical race theory.
- 14:15
- We have, you know, all kinds of of soft peddling of various sins that are popular coming into the church and and people shrugging and saying it's not really that big of a deal that we're alliancing with the totalitarians in government.
- 14:32
- And and you've done a whole documentary, you've done enemies within the church. I'm curious in Nigeria, what are their challenges?
- 14:38
- Is it animism? Is it do they have heresies coming in? What's going on there? Well, there's there's crazy heresies.
- 14:44
- And one of the biggest heresies that has taken a stronghold in Nigeria is the prosperity, hyper word of faith, insanity among impoverished people, among impoverished people.
- 14:56
- Wow. And it's it is it is really nuts how that's taken on.
- 15:05
- And that is something that we're trying to correct their doctrine. And we're actually reaching out to these guys in correcting their doctrine.
- 15:15
- And we've been able to we've been able to change a few of them and kind of get them on the wake up call and showing them that this stuff is heresy.
- 15:22
- This is bad. And they're and they listen to us. So if we see some of the pastors within our network go off track, we're like, hey, this is wrong and this is why, you know, you want to you want to stay away from this stuff.
- 15:35
- I mean, Creflo Dollar isn't over there giving them bulletproof vests. Right. I mean, where are they getting all this stuff?
- 15:42
- They they came in. You know, one of the first times I went to Nigeria, I saw these posters everywhere.
- 15:48
- Benny Hinn. In Nigeria, giant posters of Benny Hinn were everywhere.
- 15:54
- And I asked one of our Nigeria guys, I said, was Benny Hinn here? And he's like, yeah,
- 16:01
- Benny Hinn was here. And over like a million people came to see Benny Hinn and Benny Hinn.
- 16:07
- And then they so when Benny Hinn was there, they had giant trash bags on sticks and people were putting money in these trash bags on giant sticks.
- 16:15
- And Benny Hinn walked away with over a million dollars in Nigeria. That's just disgusting. From the from the impoverished.
- 16:22
- Yeah, no, he doesn't come there and build anything for the
- 16:28
- Nigerians. He's not he's not helping persecuted Christians. And prosperity guys do come to Nigeria.
- 16:34
- Prosperity US guys come to Nigeria to get in a lot. And some of them have giant churches in Nigeria, giant churches.
- 16:43
- But they are not doing anything. To help the persecuted or really anything to help the impoverished, it is it is awful and it is sick.
- 16:52
- But this is something that we're trying to correct. Well, here's another question you probably get, Judd. Are there other organizations and I'll name them?
- 17:00
- I don't care. You know, Voice of the Martyrs or, you know, like World Vision or any of these orgs, are they over there helping?
- 17:06
- And like, you know, what are you doing starting a new organization? We already have organizations doing this. Are you reinventing the wheel?
- 17:14
- I'll be very careful in saying it this way, but I'll I'll say this. Very little, very, very little is being done by these organizations.
- 17:24
- What I have seen is and witnesses and I've looked into this is they will come in, they'll take a bunch of pictures, shoot a video, give the person that they say they're helping two hundred dollars and leave.
- 17:37
- And that's it. But then they come in, they fundraise and do a huge, you know, promotion campaign saying that they help this one person, but they only gave them two hundred dollars, but they might be raising one hundred, two hundred thousand dollars off that campaign.
- 17:53
- Oh, my goodness, really? Yes. Yes. So they say they're helping, but they're only helping by, you know, here's two hundred dollars.
- 18:01
- So what makes you guys different? I mean, you talked about some of the needs you're meeting. You talked about this orphanage.
- 18:06
- You're going over there, what, twice a year, three times a year now, three times a year. OK. And so you got eyeballs on the ground.
- 18:13
- You got guys who are they're not Americans living over there. They're actual Nigerians that will call you.
- 18:19
- I mean, I've been in the car when I've heard them call you. Yeah. So we we have we have a staff of Nigerians of over 40 people.
- 18:28
- On our staff now running the orphanage, we have a staff that coordinates and is our medical response team, so when there's an attack, we get funds and we get food, medicine, whatever.
- 18:42
- We assess the situation and we send a team out to go help. These are people who've just been attacked. Right. And then on a regular basis, we go to the intern is called
- 18:52
- IDP camp, internally displaced persons, which are essentially refugees in their own country. That means they can't go back to the land.
- 18:59
- The Muslims have taken it over. They've squatted on it. If they try to go back, they get killed. So you have massive camps of, you know, 500 people here, a thousand people here, some or even 10 ,000 people.
- 19:10
- But we regularly not just one off once a year, we go in every couple of months to do medical interventions.
- 19:18
- We give a medicine, we do checkups, we find them, we assess the most needy out of the bunch, and we try to help them how we can.
- 19:25
- And then in certain cases, we pay for emergency surgeries of these people. And I want to get some tell something to your audience is that so people send me news articles.
- 19:37
- Hey, such and such happened in Nigeria. You know, these massive group of girls were kidnapped 200 years ago or not 200.
- 19:45
- I mean, 100 girls were kidnapped two years ago. Where are they now? You know what's happening.
- 19:50
- And these are organizations that are fundraising off of tragedy. But this is one tragedy you're looking at now every day, there's kidnappings, there's killings every day.
- 20:04
- You might hear one out of 30 incidents that happen. We're responding not only to that one incident that might get popular, but we're trying to respond to the other 30 that's not in the news.
- 20:18
- Right. You know what I'm saying? So we get word on the ground as it happens of what's going on and we're trying to respond and it might not get the headlines here in the
- 20:27
- U .S., but we're working every day and we're working in a location that we're able to.
- 20:35
- That's. We're effectively able to operate in, we can't get to the whole part of the country, there's some parts we just can't our team cannot go, otherwise we'll get killed.
- 20:44
- Gotcha. But we do send people into very dangerous areas to deliver aid and help people out where we can.
- 20:51
- Why don't you show us some of the pictures? I know you were just there and you have some pictures and videos of the orphanage.
- 20:57
- So people get an idea of what we're talking about here. They can see. You see that?
- 21:03
- Yes. OK, so this is a camp outside of McCurdy, Nigeria, this is in the state of Benway.
- 21:11
- We've been working with another there's another local group of local missionaries from America that actually live there.
- 21:19
- It's about five hours from where our orphanage is. But what you're seeing here is an
- 21:24
- IDP camp. They are living in makeshift tents made of garbage bags and used food bags.
- 21:33
- Wow. Yeah, that is quite sobering. This village, this whole area, this is just a small shot, but this area has 12000 people in it.
- 21:46
- Wow. Their. Land, their livelihoods, their farms, everything they had was taken over and several several of their villagers were murdered and killed.
- 22:00
- And we go here four times a year to do medical interventions, and we're also working on trying to get them new, better and newer tents.
- 22:10
- It's it's one of the things we've been fundraising for trying to get these guys in tents that actually work and they're not made out of this.
- 22:17
- Yeah. The and then our orphanage opened. We have seven kids right now and I'll show you pictures of that in a minute.
- 22:24
- But there are 50 kids on the waiting list to get into our orphanage from this camp.
- 22:33
- And so we're assessing them, we're getting all the paperwork in order and slowly but surely over the next several months, we're going to be integrating those 50 kids into our orphanage.
- 22:43
- Gotcha. You know, go to the is the government, Nigerian government.
- 22:48
- Do they inspect your orphanage? Do they have to have a record of who's there? Yeah. Yeah. We have we have to go through inspection.
- 22:55
- We had to register with the Nigerian government. And I'll show you pictures of our orphanage.
- 23:01
- They are. In fact, they had the inspection a couple of weeks ago. They were very impressed and very proud to have something in their community like our orphanage.
- 23:11
- Let me go to another picture here, if I can. Can you see that? Yes. So this is some of the people that we've helped at that camp.
- 23:20
- And then I'll show you here's here's our team getting out medicine and drugs to help out the people at that intervention.
- 23:29
- Yeah. So our Nigerian NGO officially is called Equipping the Needy Initiative. They did not like the name
- 23:36
- Equipping the Persecuted in Nigeria because it's controversial. So they gave us the name essentially
- 23:42
- Equipping the Needy Initiative instead of Equipping the Persecuted. So they don't is it that they have a split government and don't want to acknowledge the fact that there's persecution going on?
- 23:53
- Correct. So you so right now the the the president of Nigeria is a Muslim. The but you have different states within Nigeria that are
- 24:03
- Christian and then you have some that are Muslim dominant. So it is it is a split country at the moment.
- 24:10
- It's about 50 50. Would it? OK, now this is my ignorant American self marching into a conversation that I'm not probably ready for.
- 24:19
- But I mean, have there been efforts to maybe split the country up or I mean, I don't know if the Christians are mostly in one area and self -government.
- 24:27
- If if if things aren't dealt with and taken care of it, my my guess is it'll probably end up being that way.
- 24:34
- OK, but probably with a war, I would assume. And with the other there, if things aren't dealt with within the next five years, there probably will be a civil war.
- 24:44
- Wow. OK, that's that's just my take on it. So over here, I want to show you this picture.
- 24:51
- So. Is that showing right now, do you see a picture of an orphanage yet? I don't see a picture of orphanage,
- 24:57
- I see some people giving out supplies. There you go.
- 25:04
- Yeah, there we go. Yeah. OK, so this is our compound. This is built in just over a year.
- 25:11
- And what you are looking at, John, is just shy of three hundred thousand dollars.
- 25:19
- Wow. So you've raised all this. Yeah. And you've built this. Wow. Yeah, we we raised three hundred thousand dollars towards the construction of these efforts over the last built out of what is that?
- 25:29
- Is that like it look like mud huts? No, no, no. This is all concrete. It's all concrete. It's all concrete.
- 25:36
- Yeah. Well, I suppose it's I don't know what the climate is there, but I suppose you don't have to do like this if you were going to do this in a rainy part of the
- 25:46
- US or a humid area. Is it a cold area? It's not the same in Nigeria.
- 25:51
- No, it's not the same in Nigeria. So you can get away with putting a concrete structure together because the roofing, the roofs, even on that,
- 26:00
- I can't see the picture on the top, but I'm going to I'm going to show you a so I'm going to show you a speed up tour of of the orphanage and I'll cycle through it.
- 26:14
- Hold on here and get me get it shared here. Oh, that's inside the orphanage. This is inside the orphanage.
- 26:19
- Oh, that's beautiful. OK, so. It's kind of a sped up video, so this is our main entryway into the orphanage now over here is where the kids stay.
- 26:32
- These are the rooms. Oh, those are really does it. That's nice. That's actually a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be. You know, we get that from a lot of people.
- 26:42
- Do you feel insulted? I mean, you have like nice curtains and, you know, fans in the rooms and nice bunk beds that look like you could have gotten them from a, you know, like a furniture company in the
- 26:55
- U .S. or something. Yeah. So this so you have to understand the kids that are coming into the orphanage are coming from the they're coming from the camps.
- 27:07
- That were intent, you know, the living intent city sleeping on dirt. Yeah. And this is
- 27:12
- Disneyland. Now they have beds running water and they're being fed every day. And they're also getting a quality biblical education.
- 27:20
- So they go to chapel every day and. Yep. They go to chapel every day. They go to school every day.
- 27:26
- And we're teaching them, you know, many different skills. On a second.
- 27:31
- Those are nice doors. The paneling on the or the etching on those doors is really. So, yeah, that's a great.
- 27:39
- I mean, for three hundred thousand dollars in the United States to build something like this,
- 27:44
- I would think cost you a lot more, like a lot, a lot, a lot more than what you guys paid.
- 27:51
- So, I mean, is it pretty the exchange rate's pretty in favor of you guys as Americans, I would guess.
- 27:58
- And I mean, did you have you didn't have to bring American builders or anything over there. They have all the knowledge and equipment there.
- 28:05
- Is that correct? Yeah. Well, yeah, they have the knowledge, they have the equipment and we're able to pay and hire
- 28:13
- Nigerians to work on the effort. And it made a world of a difference to them. We're giving them jobs to here's
- 28:20
- I guess this is structures. Why I sound like probably an ignorant American over here, because you just show me this picture of tents like a tent city.
- 28:30
- And it's it may be someone could say this about the United States. You could just show a picture of Watts or something or, you know, downtown
- 28:37
- Los Angeles and you could see all these tents. And then, you know, for three hundred thousand dollars, you're able to build this magnificent facility.
- 28:47
- And you just I guess the curiosity in me is, OK, why don't they just do it? Why don't they why? There's no effort from the people there who live in the city to get their money together and do something like this.
- 28:59
- Or like what's the why does it take you as an American going over there to do it? Just out of curiosity.
- 29:04
- And I know this is a completely ignorant question, but you have to look at the poverty of the area itself.
- 29:11
- OK, so the poverty of Nigeria, it's 90 percent poverty rate. And when I mean poverty rate, that's not
- 29:18
- U .S. poverty rate or U .S. poverty rate is less than twenty thousand dollars a year. They call that poverty here in the
- 29:24
- U .S. in Nigeria. It's a thousand dollars a year. Wow. For the average
- 29:30
- Nigerian, it's one hundred right around one hundred dollars a month is what the average Nigerian makes as an income.
- 29:38
- So so put put that into comparison. You know, it's it's a thousand, yeah, that would be three hundred people's yearly wage to put together what we put together in Nigeria for three hundred thousand.
- 29:56
- It's just, you know, so they give to Benny Hinn, though. I don't know. I just I got to go there. I got to see what's going on.
- 30:02
- It's yeah, it's well, you know, and we need to bring you out. We'd love to have you come out and and show you the dynamic.
- 30:08
- But it's a lot of it is is because they have nothing. They have poverty and they're they have a dream of, you know, if they put
- 30:16
- X money in, they're going to get rich back. Yeah. And and that's, you know, and that's all they that's all they have.
- 30:23
- I mean, it's a message of hope. If you seed money, you're going to get all this money back. And they fall for it.
- 30:29
- And the charlatans are robbing the power, robbing the poor. Yeah. So so the contractors exist.
- 30:37
- They can come out. They can do this work. You guys can build more orphanages if you want it out there. Same quality.
- 30:43
- You just need resources. We just need resources. Where are the. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, go. So the thing is, we have we have plans.
- 30:53
- Our next phase now, the orphanage is built is to build a there's land adjacent to where the orphanage is.
- 31:00
- We want to buy that land and have a sustainable food growing operation. Farm.
- 31:06
- Oh, we want to do chicken farming. We want to grow crops and be able to self -sustain the orphanage for the food costs and all that, because that's one of our heaviest costs is, you know, feeding lots of kids every day.
- 31:20
- But we want to be able to have a sustaining operation to do that. But then also take that product, put it on the market and then generate income for Nigerians, employ a bunch of them, but also have that helps us help self -sustain our efforts in Nigeria.
- 31:34
- And we want to be able to duplicate that in different areas. If, you know, God so provides the resources to do so.
- 31:41
- It's but. Well, you have a fifteen thousand dollar matching grant for so if anyone gives to equipping the persecuted, equipping the persecuted dot com that he can if they give two dollars, you know, two dollars will be matched.
- 31:59
- So that's four and two dollars will be four thousand. So so I would encourage people go to equipping the persecuted dot com and this money that people are giving.
- 32:08
- I mean, I've had people ask me about not just your ministry, but other ministries, if I support them. John, are you sure that this money is actually getting to where that needs to go?
- 32:18
- And I think you just provided evidence that here's the orphanage. But I mean, what other things can you say to assure people that this money is actually going to the people there and the workers who are participating in it?
- 32:29
- We try very hard to stick to the ninety ten model, where 90 percent of all our funds go, I mean, actually go to Nigerians.
- 32:38
- It's not going into pockets. It's it's going towards, you know, supporting widows or orphanage medical interventions.
- 32:47
- Any if the need comes up, we try to meet it. If we have the resources, we try to meet those needs. And we document everything we do.
- 32:56
- We document everything we do when we do it. That's one of the differences between our organization. A lot of others is within a week.
- 33:03
- We're showing you updates of what we've just done. Yeah. And I get the email list. People can sign up. They go to the website. Right.
- 33:08
- And they can see. Yeah, we're showing we're showing the pictures. We you know, we have testimony. And if you want to see for yourself what we're doing in Nigeria and you have a calling and a grace to endure
- 33:18
- Nigeria, let me know. We're an open book. We'd love to. I'd love to have you come see it for yourself.
- 33:24
- What could you use? So if you could, I'm sure people who have nursing experience, I mean, what kinds of skills, security?
- 33:31
- So in that orphanage picture you saw. So we have the orphanage there. But then we are part of that is a medical clinic where we are working on treating.
- 33:39
- We're going to be bringing in people, treating them for free. So if nurses or doctors want to come in, do surgeries, help train other staff on medical things, we're working on a medical clinic where we treat for free.
- 33:53
- I've run into other missions organizations that have hospitals, but they charge for their services. Hmm. For these folks, we don't charge for anything.
- 34:02
- This is these are funds donated to us. We're not charging people in Nigeria to get medical treatment. So and so that's the thing we're doing.
- 34:11
- So nurses, medical staff, people want to come down, help train village security teams.
- 34:18
- We're open to those as well. And, uh, you know, people have a heart for the gospel.
- 34:25
- Want to go out and train people on, you know, teaching the gospel. This is another thing we're doing is training people how to share the gospel properly and give them tools necessary to do so.
- 34:36
- But yeah, if there's a need, we try to meet it. And if it's a calling that somebody has, we welcome them to come out and check out what we're doing.
- 34:43
- But we're an open book. You can, uh, every week we're showing you what we're doing and we document it and show it out there because we don't want to be one of those organizations that fundraisers off the same thing that they've been doing for, you know, four years, the same water well they drilled four years ago.
- 34:58
- Yeah. You know, we're drilling water wells all the time and trying to help people out where we can.
- 35:05
- Well, you can pray, you can give you can sign up for the email list. Enemies within the church dot com.
- 35:10
- Sorry, not and not enemies within the church equipped. Well, that's it. Dot org. I only
- 35:15
- I had it on my mind because I was going to transition here and so equipping the persecuted dot org. But enemies within the church.
- 35:23
- So I think I probably said that earlier to my mistake. How's that going?
- 35:29
- Because I know you put the DVD out there, what, over a year ago. And of course, this is about the problems in the
- 35:34
- United States church with social justice. But is it still selling? Are people receptive? You have testimonials?
- 35:41
- Yes, every day, every day people are buying the DVD and ordering the DVD every day. We've sold over 60 ,000 units, 60 ,000
- 35:50
- DVDs we sold. We have people still paying to watch it online every day.
- 35:57
- So it was out a year ago, but the but the movie is still gaining steam and we still get messages every day, every week of people saying, thank you, thank you, thank you for telling us what's going on.
- 36:09
- We got letters from churches that have stopped woke pastors from taking over. We have churches that have put bylaws and the right things in place that stopped woke pastors from getting into their churches.
- 36:20
- And it has it has been a tool that's helped so many people. That's great.
- 36:26
- So it's still working. It's still doing what you intended it to do. How many people you think have seen this documentary?
- 36:34
- On a small estimation, over 500 ,000. Really? OK, easy. Yeah. Without really major media.
- 36:41
- You know, I thought there were probably going to be hit jobs on it. But there really hasn't been a lot of you haven't been able to capitalize on that.
- 36:50
- But maybe that's a good thing. It's spread organically, word of mouth. People are sharing it with their friends. And it's it's it's it's like, well, even what you're talking about in Nigeria, it's the unseen.
- 37:02
- It's the it's not covered, but it's happening. It's not covered. It's happening. But I'll tell you what, I think they quit trying to do hit jobs on us when
- 37:08
- Greenway from Southwestern tried telling Mid -America
- 37:14
- Baptist Theological Seminary not to show our film. And then that controversy made Newsweek when that happened.
- 37:21
- I think they quit fighting it because they didn't. They finally realized that we're people who fight back. Yeah, yeah.
- 37:27
- And we when we know how to play that game and we're not going to be pushed around. And so I think that's why they're not fighting.
- 37:34
- That's why they're not trying to attack us is because they can't cancel us. We're not going to come out and and apologize.
- 37:43
- And again, from the very onset, the thing that makes us unique with our movie is we don't care about the conferences.
- 37:49
- We don't care about getting invited to the next party, the next, you know, muckety muck summit.
- 37:54
- You don't have time. You're going to Nigeria three times a year. Leaders and pastors. There's no we're out there doing the real work.
- 38:00
- We're out there, you know, doing the real work, witnessing the people and helping persecuted Christians and and trying to take care of those in need.
- 38:08
- So, yeah, well, good. So I wanted to plug that as well. Let people know. But so if they want more information, enemies within the church dot com and, of course, equipping the persecuted dot org.
- 38:17
- If you want to give to Judd's efforts in Nigeria and the whole team, 40 people on the ground there.
- 38:24
- So I encourage you giving Tuesday. I mean, a lot of you are have been assessing what organizations should
- 38:30
- I give to? And there's a lot of Christian organizations out there, but I'll tell you what, a lot of them have gone woke.
- 38:38
- They've in fact, enemies within the church has done some work on this and go to their woke. What is it? Their Wikipedia or do you have a
- 38:45
- I know a go to go to enemies within the church dot com slash Wikipedia. Yeah. OK. And by the way, news on the on that front is the website's being completely redone.
- 38:55
- It'll be ready to go next week. Oh, yeah. So all the articles, everything we have is going to be completely integrated in with our regular site.
- 39:02
- And we've actually been on the radio, done about 19 radio shows so far.
- 39:11
- And we're on like 20 radio stations with the Wikipedia. It's called Wikipedia Radio.
- 39:17
- And so it's reaching more people and they're paying attention to what we're doing. Yeah, that's great.
- 39:23
- So, you know, a lot of these organizations, World Vision being one, I mean, they've gone down a road that you probably don't want to give your money to.
- 39:30
- And so if you want to help people in need, Christians in need across the world, I just encourage you. This is one of the organizations that I would say you should consider maybe getting behind.
- 39:38
- So, Judd, with that, thank you so much for sharing your time and for doing what you're doing.
- 39:44
- And, you know, we'll continue to pray for you. And, you know, Lord willing, you'll get a boost this year to help build more orphanages.