You Will Be Hated by All Nations, by Robert Royal

In just the past few days, hundreds of Christians have been murdered, raped, and tortured in Syria. When news outlets even notice what’s happening – yesterday’s New York Times only carried an “update” of a previous article and the Washington Post’s latest story on the massacres appeared Friday – they usually only mention the attacks on “civilians” or Alawites, the Islamic sect followed by the al-Assad family, the former rulers of Syria. It’s true that Syrian Christians are caught up in the larger political turmoil in their homeland. But like Christians around the world, it’s also true that they are being killed and persecuted specifically because of their faith.

I’m more than a little sensitive to injustices like these because my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century will be published in a few weeks. Anyone who looks systematically at what’s been happening to Christians in the first quarter of our century – and not only in the Middle East, Africa, China, and the Far East, but even in our once Christian “West” – cannot help but be shocked. By quite sober estimates, something like 300 million Christians worldwide are under threat. …

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