Why Aren't Christian Ministries Involved in Nigeria?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Harris. As many of you know, one of the ministries that we support on this podcast is

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Equipping the Persecuted. And my friend Judd Saul is the one who runs that ministry, he's been on the podcast a few times.

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First, you probably saw him appear talking about his movie Enemies Within the Church. Now he comes on to talk about his ministry in Nigeria to Christians who are under severe persecution for their faith.

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And in this episode, he's going to give us a little bit of an update about what's going on, not just with the ministry, but also geopolitically, what's going on in Africa with the waning influence of the

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United States and the increasing influence of places like Russia and China.

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So welcome back on the podcast, Judd. It's good to have you. Hey, thanks for having me on, John. Yeah.

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So if people want to go to see the website and check out what you're doing, equippingthepersecuted .org, or they can go to truthnigeria .com,

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or equippingthepersecuted .org. Truthnigeria .com is a website that we created about a year ago.

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So we have about 10 journalists in Nigeria, many of them who have been persecuted by the police, by the government for their reporting.

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And we are giving them an outlet to actually tell the truth about what's going on there. And this has been able to really give us more information as a ministry on where and how to act and where to put resources to help people out.

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So I mentioned in the intro that things are changing in Nigeria and in Africa.

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Let's start with Truth Nigeria then, which is more the exposing what's happening there.

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And then let's get to the ministry stuff. So Nigeria has been in what amounts to a civil war.

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I don't officially think of it that way. Maybe the people on the ground do, but I don't think the government wants to acknowledge that that's happening.

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But this has been for what, decades? I mean, how long has this been going on? The severity and the attacks against Christians have started about 30 years ago is when we started just seeing a little bit here and there, and it started really far up north.

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Well, over the course of the last 30 years, they've conquered their way further south.

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And little by little by little, but when they've gained more population, I'm talking about the radical

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Islam terrorists, Boko Haram, the Fulani radicals have taken more population.

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When they take more population, they get more political control. And then when they get more political control is when they start going violent.

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Because they have now the political will and power to back up their violence and essentially provide themselves a shell of protection.

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And so right now we're in the middle belt of Nigeria, that's Kaduna, Plateau State, Benue State, where the line is drawn of the

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Christian South and the Muslim North. And what we're seeing in real time is a jihad taking place.

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The classic jihad that conquer all of the Middle East, that conquered all of northern

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Africa. We are seeing it real time right now take place in Nigeria. And it's kind of an unspoken civil war of what's going on, except the problem is, is the terrorists have political cover.

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They have the AK -47s, they have the sophisticated weapons, and the Christians are pretty much defenseless.

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We talked about this a little bit last time, but who's backing them? Just to review,

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I suppose. Like, where are they getting this equipment to persecute our brothers and sisters? Well, that's an interesting thing.

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And this is something that I believe has changed since we last talked. But the money and the funding is coming from terrorist organizations up north, from the

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Middle East, from northern Africa. The money's flowing. They want to establish a caliphate in Africa.

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So they're getting funding from up north, but also the criminal activities and the extortion against Christians that's taking place and the slave trade that's taking place with Christians is also helping fund it.

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So their criminal activity is also funding their effort. So they go into a village, they kill a bunch of people, they blow up the church, and they take captive women and children and then sell them on the slave market that's in Africa.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Women, men and children that do get captured end up becoming slaves.

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They do end up becoming slaves, and if not slaves in the chattel traditional sense, they essentially become serfs, if you will.

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If they still live there, they say, OK, we've killed your people. We now own this territory.

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If you want to live here, you have to pay us a fine, a fee to survive and live here.

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Everything you sell, we get a piece of. Your land, we get a piece of. The land that you lived on for 200 years, you'd have to pay us to live on.

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So we hear this is one of the frustrating things for me. We hear a lot from the social justice crowd and even in Christianity about American slavery from the 19th century and the

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British involvement in slave trading and so forth in the West. And we don't hear about the

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Muslim side of it. And the side of it that's actually still going on. You might hear a little bit about sex slavery, but we have a situation where actual

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Christians are being persecuted in severe ways and then being forced into a completely ungodly slave system that degrades them and is all about showing their dominance to persecute them and make them the slaves of Islam.

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I mean, it doesn't really get much worse when you're thinking about slave systems and rape and stuff is all part of this.

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And they're silent. There's not really I think it's a frustration for me that you don't see organizations over there like World Vision or because the

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World Vision to me is like one of the quintessentially kind of woke, right, international.

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So I don't even know it like aid organizations, but they're not doing anything about this.

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You don't even see what's the other big one equipping the you're equipping the persecuted. Sorry.

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Oh, gosh. With the Voice of the Martyrs, I think that's the other one. They're not really over there doing much as far as I understand it.

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So you're kind of it. And I don't know, that's my rant. But you've tried in the

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United States to get some support to back your efforts since you're the only game in town among these

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Christians who are will gladly, you know, compromise themselves for George Floyd riots.

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What will they say to you when you walk in? Um, they they don't it's falling on deaf ears.

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A lot of them won't even won't even acknowledge it. And to break into the mainstream

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Christian market, I'll just call it the industry, the mainstream Christian industry.

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They want to charge a lot of money to even talk about the issue and not just talk about the issue, but the

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Christian industry is treating. Christians with kid gloves, so the

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Christian industry's message is positive, uplifting love. Positive message, uplifting message, love message, there is no negativity you are allowed to say to that Christian audience.

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There's some I stand with Israel and I stand with Ukraine, right? That's part of it. Well, there's some yeah, there's some

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I stand with Israel. I stand with Ukraine. There's there's some of that stuff. But overall, the majority of the

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Christian industry in the United States, you cannot say anything negative. Unless it's virtue signaling for something that's on the left.

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Can you give me a story or stories about your experiences with trying to talk to major Christian ministries or figures that, yeah,

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I don't know what you can and can't say, but. So, yeah, so I have been repeatedly told by major, major players in the

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Christian industry, I don't call them ministries, I call it industry, that say that the message of equipping the persecuted is not positive and uplifting enough and it does not meet their demographic, which is who they refer to as Becky.

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Becky, I've never heard of this. Yeah, Becky is a 40 year old woman with 2 .5

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kids that drives her kids to Christian school in a minivan. And Becky does not want to hear negativity.

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Becky wants to hear a positive, uplifting message and does not want to hear anything negative because she's having a hard day.

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And when she tunes into Christian music radio stations and turns into Christian stations, she wants to feel positive, uplifted and happy.

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And equipping the persecuted's plight and message is not positive and uplifting enough.

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Interesting. So I never heard about Becky. So yeah, that no, that is this is this has been said to me by told to me by major Christian music industry professionals and top radio networks that they call their demographic

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Becky. Well, that's why I think it's important for you to make the connections directly with people who are supportive of missions and aid efforts, because you're not going to find out about this stuff.

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You may I think what's that other organization that not not ones

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I've mentioned before, but they you can like adopt a child. Oh, Compassion.

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Yeah. Compassion International, because, you know, at all the Christian concerts that I've been to, which aren't many, but the ones

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I have been to in the last 10 years, they all seem to be promoting compassion. And it's funny, you know,

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I was I'm just going to say this. I was at a Getty concert in the

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Gettys. They do it Christ alone. Right. Was there a big one? But yeah, I've been to a few of their stuff.

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And then I was at and this was years ago before I knew Ren Collective was essentially heretical.

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But Ren Collective, you know, I saw them. They gave the exact same speech with the exact same examples at both concerts.

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And I thought it was the weirdest thing, you know, is they gave a pitch about a girl who was saving every penny in her piggy bank to adopt a child.

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And she decided she wasn't going to. I don't remember. It was just to make some big sacrifices.

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But then the pitch, of course, is like, if you just give up this many cups of coffee, you can also help a child and stuff.

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And of course, my wife and I, we we are helping a child through compassion.

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We I mean, we bought the pitch. Right. And I think there are some of that money is going legitimately to children in these places.

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But I guess the question I have is how come they can make inroads, but not for our for what you're doing in Nigeria?

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So I'll just be flat out honest and kind of give you the inside of what's happening.

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Compassion International dominates the Christian music industry. They have spent over six million dollars on the

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Christian music industry this year. So they buy up the sponsorships of all the major concerts, all the major artists.

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And they do deals with these Christian music artists to the point where they give them

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X amount of dollars up front for a sponsorship. But then they negotiate that in certain cases, an artist will get 50 percent of the donation.

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For the first year that comes through their website, through their concert, through their ministry. Makes me kind of mad to be honest, because so so so if you if you if you agree to give thirty five dollars a month to save and sponsor a child at a concert, there's a high chance that that artist is getting 50 percent of that donation.

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So when he comes out on the stage, if 15 is going to the artist, 50 five zero,

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I meant like, OK, so you're giving one hundred dollars a month, 50 dollars, 50 bucks goes the artist, right?

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Yeah. OK, so that makes sense as far as what

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I've heard and maybe other people listening now, the bells are ringing and they're thinking, oh, my goodness, I've heard the same thing and the same pitch.

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And it always is framed to make you think the artist is sacrificing just as much as you are to help these kids.

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Maybe in some cases, I don't know, maybe maybe they are doing something. But but yeah, that's an insane amount of money, six million dollars.

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So you don't have that kind of money. And I guess maybe you're principled and don't want to spend that kind of money to help artists when you're trying to help kids in Nigeria.

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Well, this is this is this is a conundrum. I mean, if you have, you know, there's always you have to get the word out about your mission, right?

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You have you do have to spend money to get word out about your mission, to get more support, more donors, to have an impact.

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But. It's to the point now the Christian industry. Is. Manipulating and raking real ministries over the coals.

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To get word out about their ministry. That's why that's why I call it it's completely separate.

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There's a Christian industry and then there's Christian ministries. But along the way, somehow it's all been fused together as far as some of the major players.

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And so a little guy like me cannot afford to even get in front of those kinds of audiences because you have a dominating ministry like Compassion International who drops six or seven figures.

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Into the Christian music industry, and so when I go to an artist, when I go to a festival, when

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I go to these people say, hey, I want to get word about our ministry, it is unaffordable for a little guy to to even play the game.

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It's a scaling issue. Yeah, well, let me ask you this, but and I want to get back to Nigeria and then, of course, to what you're physically doing on the ground there.

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But I think it's important for people to understand about and I've come to these same conclusions on seminaries and all these ministries that you think are solid.

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And then you start to peel back the layers or, you know, people who are in them and you start hearing these stories and you start thinking, man, you know, that's not what

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I thought at all. But I think it's important for people to understand. So my last question on this vein with a model like Compassion International.

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Right. And, you know, I, you know, the orphan that we've been supporting in the

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Dominican Republic, like I'm grateful that we can help in some way. And and there is, you know, exchange back and forth, which

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I think makes it personal in these things. And of course, you know, and my wife, I think I think for women especially that's that's kind of big.

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Right. Especially if women don't have children, like that's a big thing. Right. Right. Here's the thing, though. I've wondered and this is my guy.

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This is my nuts and bolts mind at work. Right. Which is, you know, maybe this sounds like super bigoted or something, but it's not.

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It really is because I value efficiency. I've wondered whether the overhead of all of that, you know what

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I mean, like you're adopting a kid, there's this understanding that you're going to someone's facilitating correspondence back and forth reports about that individual kid to you.

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And, you know, they're usually somewhat subjective, but there's still there's still like effort going into that.

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If you have 600 kids that you're serving at or 60 kids at an orphanage, however, the number is, it's just that's a lot of extra red tape in my mind.

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Right. And I've wondered whether someone on the ground who just says we got to we have a bunch of kids here and they're trying to survive and we need help.

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Just we'll give you an overall report. This is how it's going. Like if that's more efficient now, maybe maybe that's bad of me to say that.

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But I want to get your perspective on that since you have a different model. I mean, did you choose to go the direction you're going because it's more efficient and actually helps more people because you could have gone the compassion way,

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I suppose, and had all the cards and. Right, it's well, it is way more efficient to give a report, you know, into what's going on and going through all the red tape of having, you know, this kid, you know, go through this, have this person oversee this.

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I mean, you're talking a huge cost. Just on the logistics of getting that delivered.

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That's what I thought. Yeah. Huge cost in logistics of getting that delivered. I mean, it's it's

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I've looked at it and I'm going, wow, and that diverts so much so much resources and work from actually accomplishing, doing better and doing more good.

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With the funds that are given, like it would go a lot further. You know, like how much more money can you help a kid by, you know, saving up for them, providing more for them on the table and having to pay a bunch of people to monitor and manage all this correspondence back and forth between, you know, however, thousands of kids that Compassion International is working with.

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Now, are they doing good? Yes. Is is a portion of the money going to helping kids? Yes. With compassion. Yes, this is true.

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But it has gotten to the point where. How much money is wasted?

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In all the in all the overhead and then paying, you know, an artist like Michael W. Smith, 50 percent of your first year donation collected at your concert, and they're not even in Nigeria anyway, right?

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No, no, no, I haven't I haven't seen compassion in Nigeria. I haven't seen and I haven't seen

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Samaritan's Purse in Nigeria. People, please quit asking me about Samaritan's Purse. I've contacted them several times.

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They have no interest in being in Nigeria. Just want to get that off of my chest. So you're pretty much the only game in town.

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There's other small missions that are doing certain things and and other missions that align with ours, we've come alongside to help them, like if they're in an area that we don't have staff at or can't get to, we actually work with other missionaries on the ground there.

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OK, to do certain things. But as far as one with a vision of ending persecution and actually helping persecuted

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Christians, I haven't seen anybody doing anything like we're doing. So let's talk about the political situation and then what you're doing concretely.

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Is there a solution politically to this problem? What is the solution, if so? The solution, political solution to this problem is the international world and the international community needs to start calling it out for what it is and start speaking up for the innocent people that are being murdered, enslaved, raped by Islamic terrorists.

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And we can't even get our own State Department. Secretary Blinken said, oh,

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I talked to a couple of guys. There's nothing going on in Nigeria. There's there's some bad stuff going on, but it's not religious.

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It's it's really not that big of a deal. That's Blinken. That's our own Secretary of State. They know darn well what's happening.

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But for some reason, the United States has taken a blind eye to what is happening, and I believe they're actually complicit because of their willful ignorance.

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They are actually complicit in the murder of Christians in Nigeria, and I can we can take that all the way back to Obama helping get the

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Muslim president, Buhari, elected. The Democratic Party in the United States has helped put

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Islamists in power in Nigeria, which has resulted in the killing of Christians. Well, this is on the veins.

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I want to ask if we had resources flowing to Nigeria or the Nigerian government or the terrorist organizations that are there from the

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United States, if there's evidence of this. I don't see any evidence of money going to terrorist organizations, although.

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Aid that is going up north. We do find that a lot of that aid ends up in terrorist hands.

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Yeah, whether it's food, many such cases, many such case food, some financial support, we do know that some of our aid is actually getting into the hands of terrorists up north.

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Know that for a fact. One of the interesting things, though, is in a recent terror attack, a couple of terrorists were killed, which

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I'm happy about. But what was found on the terrorists were brand new. Russian Special Forces, AK -47s.

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Really, and we have gotten evidence that the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary organization, is now in Nigeria, and we think that they are possibly dealing arms to the terrorists.

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What interests would they have in Nigeria? Resources. The natural resources in Nigeria, Russia and China have their eye on Nigeria.

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They have their eye on Africa because of all the natural resources that are in the ground. You got oil, uranium, copper, tin, gold, diamonds.

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It is all up for the taking. And the U .S.

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is saying, we don't want to be involved in Nigeria. We'll give it to Russia and China, essentially, is the message they're sending.

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Yeah, not surprised exactly, but concerned,

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I would say. So you're a small outlet, really, and you can't compete with China and Russia.

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Obviously, you're not going to be directly involved in the political stuff. What can you do?

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What are you doing? What are some of the new developments at equipping the persecuted? We are helping one life at a time.

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We are helping one life at a time, and we are working on educating pastors. We are working on educating the people,

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Christians, to stand up for themselves. And with Truth Nigeria, we're able to create more awareness about what's really happening.

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And we know that there are key people in our government reading Truth Nigeria. We know the international community is starting to read

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Truth Nigeria for what's going on. And we have to make it a movement. We have to make it a movement so everybody knows what's happening.

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But what are we doing on the ground? We are working with widows. We are working with orphans.

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We are responding to terrorist attacks within 48 hours by providing food, medicine and aid to our

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Christian brothers and sisters. And we are training and working with village security teams. We are trying to save as many lives as possible.

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What are some of the newest things or developments that you've been able to accomplish? So one of the newest things that that we're launching and that we've seen a big need for is the, we're building a, it's called the

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Fountain of Hope Women's Care Center. Because of all the rapes that have been occurring in these villages, we're finding so many traumatized women that one, after they're raped, there's like a stigma put on them, even by the local villagers.

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And they're kind of outcast and they really don't have a place to go. So we want to bring them in, give them the counseling they need, give them vocational skills and be able to help them get them out there.

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And then also start training. We're also working on training villages on how to handle this and how to stop this stuff from happening.

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And that's one, by standing up for yourselves and also telling Christians it's OK to defend yourselves and protect your women and children.

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I want to share a story with everybody. And this is a pastor who's a dear friend. We've worked with him quite a bit in Nigeria.

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We continue to work with him. But his name is Pastor Ezekiel Dakomo. For the last year, he has been going around telling

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Christians to stand up for themselves, to not be bullied, to rise up. And he is now joined and is working with village security teams known as the

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Hunters. And this is Pastor Ezekiel praying over a bunch of dead

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Nigerians after a terrorist attack. And he's on his knees crying and praying to God.

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And so he decided to join up with the

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Hunters. And this is Pastor Ezekiel to the left in a bulletproof vest, ones that actually our organization has helped them get, his locally sourced bulletproof vest carrying a shotgun.

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He's got a gun in one hand and a Bible in another. And he is rallying up people to defend villages and rallying up pastors and Christians.

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And we are very happy to work with this pastor. But this is an example of a pastor that really believes in protecting his flock.

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And so we're coming alongside him and many others to help protect and defend their villages.

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Well, this is one of the things I know when you first were on, we talked about because there was this mentality still is,

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I'm sure, of, you know, we can't ever pacifism. We can't fight back. And and I think

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I had asked you about, you know, why not? Why isn't there someone trying to defend the people that they love?

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And it's good to see that there are people doing that. And to have a pastor do it means that there's going to be other people that will follow the lead there.

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So that's a great, great development. I know many have prayed for that. And I've been praying for a long time.

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I was like, OK, we need strong pastors to stand up and say enough is enough. And the Christian church needs to be vocal on this.

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And that's the thing, the Christian church in America needs to be vocal on this issue. And, you know, and to reach the

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Christians and reach some of these people, it's, you know, the plight of persecuted Christians isn't positive and uplifting enough.

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Yeah. And we have to break that mold and we as a church in America need to get back on track to what real

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Christianity is. Well, the website is EquippingThePersecuted .org,

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where you can go to TruthNigeria .com if you want updates about the geopolitical situation going on there.

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Judd, any last words? No, I just like to ask everybody, we need all the support we can get.

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Go to EquippingThePersecuted .org and, you know, we need help.

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We need help. I'm a little guy trying to do a big mission. We need all the help we can get.

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And I also would like you to continue to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters. Talk to your pastors, talk to your

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Bible studies, tell them about what's going on in Nigeria. And I just want to leave one more fact to reiterate this again.

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Ninety percent of all Christian persecution deaths worldwide occur in Nigeria.

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Wow. Ninety percent of all Christian persecution deaths are occurring in Nigeria.

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That's incredible. Well, Judd, thanks again for stopping by and sharing that with us.

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And, you know, you're in our prayers and in our thoughts. And I hope for many also a part of the monthly giving to help our persecuted brothers and sisters.