Christians are being persecuted. More Christians died in the past century alone than in the history of Christianity to that point.

Persecution is not something new. It happens as long as the Christian Church exists. The Bible tells us that it will happen. We all know that it is happening. From time to time we hear stories about it.

It wasn’t that long ago that Russia (or the Soviet Union, of which Russia was a part) was actively persecuting Christians. Granted, it is more than 25 years ago, but nevertheless, many of our readers will probably remember that time.

Usually we express thankfulness that we may live in free Western democracies where we may come together in freedom, as churches, to worship God and proclaim His Word. For generations we believed that Christianity was the religion of the West.

However, times are changing. We live in a time that Christianity is more and more being seen as an enemy by many in the Western world. It is an impediment on the road to fully satisfy all their sinful desires.

It is remarkable that an article about persecution of Christians is being published in the Russian media, which would probably be refused in the large Western media. WWW.RT.com published an article with the same title as the article you are reading now. RT.com is a Russian news site in the English language. It usually sides with Putin and Russia over against Western countries. We should realize that Putin is certainly not a nice man. He allegedly has killed several of his opponents. He can be considered a dictator. Nevertheless, the narrative that the West and Christianity are almost synonyms is clearly not (longer) true and that Russia (or the Soviet Union) anti-Christian not either.

Jim Jatras, the author of the article, is a former US Diplomat, who served in the US office of Soviet Union affairs in the Reagan government. It is telling that such a person cannot publish his article in Western media, while a website as RT.com does not see a problem publishing it.

Another article that confirms that confirms this trend that I noticed is published in ‘Crux’, an independent Roman Catholic news site in northern America, operated in partnership with the Knights of Columbus : As U.S. commitment to persecuted Christians wavers, Russia steps in. It quotes the Russian minister of foreign affairs as saying:

The future of Christians in the Middle East is very important.

Thankfully, the Trump administration in the USA has changed course and is focusing now on directly helping Christian communities in the Middle East, as this website reported earlier in “US AID Funding Persecuted Christians“. However, this is not being met with a lot of approval from other Western countries.