November 4 kicked off the 2018 International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) event which implores Christians around the world to pray for their persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ.
The event, which takes place on the first and second Sundays in November each year – this year being the 4th and 11th – was started in 1996 by the World Evangelical Alliance’s Religious Liberty Commission.
According to Open Doors USA, the purpose of the IDOP is for “Christians throughout the free world [to] band together in solidarity with believers who live out their faith in the face of harassment, attacks, false imprisonment and even death.”
This year’s theme is “Listen to Their Cry,” and it aims at giving persecuted Christians a platform to share their stories from countries such as North Korea, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan where hundreds, if not thousands of Christians are persecuted annually.
A Christian from Afghanistan is quoted in the video as saying, “I am so afraid; I believe in Jesus now, and my wife also but I still go to the mosque to pray five times a day.”
A Christian woman from North Korea shared her experience in a labor camp with the outlet saying, “Every day was as if God was pouring out all ten plagues on us simultaneously. That’s how hard it was. But God also comforted me. Every Sunday we would gather in the toilets and pray.”
More than 6,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria this year alone. In Pakistan, 700 Christian women or girls are being kidnapped and pressured to convert each year.