SPRINGFIELD – The International Mission Board’s Nik Ripken opened a window on the realities facing persecuted believers worldwide and on the way those believers view American Christianity during the Missouri Baptist Convention annual meeting, Oct. 28.
“There is no free church and persecuted church,” Ripken said. “There is just the church. And it is always persecuted and it is always free. And when any part of your body is hurting and you’re not aware of it, and you’re not concerned about it, then it is not the hurting part that is disconnected from the church, it is probably the part that is not hurting.”
Ripken, author of The Insanity of God, preached from Matthew 11 at the MBC annual meeting, before speaking to nearly 60 Missouri Baptists at a “Servants in the Crucible” workshop at South Haven Baptist Church here during the following three days.
There is no free church and persecuted church. There is just the church. And it is always persecuted and it is always free. – Nik Ripken
“If there was anybody in the New Testament that knew that Jesus was the Messiah, that prepared the way for Him, that recognized Him, it was John the Baptist,” Ripken said as he introduced Matthew 11. He baptized Jesus, saw the Spirit dwell on Him and heard the Father’s voice. He also declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, who takes away the world’s sins.
“Here is a tough guy,” Ripken added, describing how John the Baptist had openly criticized the religious leaders of his day and how he was imprisoned for rebuking King Herod for his sins. And, in Matthew 11, John the Baptist was still in prison and would soon be beheaded by Herod. But when Ripken read Matthew 11 as an 18-year-old, brand new believer, he was at first disenchanted with John, whom he expected never to falter in the face of persecution.
“John the Baptist did not man up,” Ripken said. “He did not do what I expected him to do. He did not look evil and death in the eye. His back is against the wall. Now, I picture him trembling and nervous and afraid and wanting to know if Jesus is the One who was to come, or if he was supposed to wait for someone else. … I had lost faith in John the Baptist.”
But years later, Ripken found a new perspective on John the Baptist’s experience in Matthew 11. At that time he and his wife, Ruth, were considering mission work in Somalia, and he went to a refugee camp there to consider possibilities for service.
“That camp had a chain link fence all around it with razor wire at the top. There is one big gate that you can get in and you can get out, and there are 10,000 people stuffed in that,” Ripken recounted. In this camp, he connected with a university student and after three days decided to ask him, “Do you know my friend, Jesus?”
The young man “exploded,” Ripken said. “He began to wave his arms and he began to shout. Somali men began to run, and within no more than 10 minutes there is about 50 guys surrounding me, and my back is against the chain link fence. And all I can hear is, ‘Jesus this and Jesus that,’ and, ‘Nik this and Ripken that.’ I didn’t know at that time that this is just normal Somali behavior. They are just yelling, and I was thinking, ‘Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut? Lord, take care of Ruth and the boys.’ …
“And after about 15-20 minutes, they broke in a semi-circle around me, and (my friend) walks up to me with every muscle just in anger, and said, ‘Dr. Nik we don’t know your friend Jesus, but (this man) says he has heard about him and thinks he lives in the refugee camp up the road.’”
Immediately, Ripken thanked them, left the refugee camp and flew home.
“I remember that the moment I walked out of that camp, … all I could think of was how glad I was that my father wasn’t there because he would have been so ashamed of me because I ran away.
“And I understood John the Baptist in this story for the first time in my life. I want you to hear something clearly: Every believer in persecution denies their faith. For every believer in persecution, there will come a time when they are walking up Calvary’s hill and they can’t carry their cross by themselves any longer.”
In his shame, Ripken begged God to give him another chance, and God answered His prayer by sending him and his family to Somalia for the next 8 years. He entered Somalia, and saw only “crucifixion” with “not much resurrection going on.” When he entered the country in 1991, 150 believers lived in Somalia. By the time he left, only four believers were left behind. Then, after Ripken was forced to leave Somalia, his son died of an asthma attack on his 16th birthday.
Then the IMB asked Ripken to create a curriculum to train people how to enter situations like he had faced in Somalia, where they would be “sheep among the wolves when the wolves were in the majority.”
But this “was not what was in my heart,” Ripken said. “What was in my heart was that I could not pray and I could not say, ‘Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world,’ because I didn’t see any evidence of that. And I didn’t just want to hold it theoretically. I wanted to see if it was literally true.
“And we went to believers in persecution. Why? Where else could we go to answer the question, ‘Is Jesus who He says He is, or is Jesus just for the dressed up, Western Christian church? … Is Jesus trustworthy?’”
In fact, he and his wife went to 45 countries, interviewing 450 believers who live in persecution as a normal way of life.
In China, Ripken met with 170 house church leaders and spent time watching their churches witness, worship and endure hardship. Out of the 170 house church leaders, 40 percent had already “been in prison for their faith for three years.” They told Ripken, “Prison is our theological seminary. It is where we go for training.”
As Ripken watched the persecuted churches of China, he saw how God was working miraculously among them to bring people to faith in Christ.
“And then the Chinese asked me about you,” Ripken said, “and I began to tell them about you. And they began to weep and to sob. They were breaking down. … They asked, ‘Why is it that God loves the church in America so much more than He loves the church in China?’
“And I was dumbfounded. The blind see, lame walk, lepers are cleansed, dead are raised. The church is in persecution, and it is leading thousands to Christ. What are you telling me?
Do you recognize the miracle that God is doing in your midst today, or do you call it common, normal, what you deserve? – Nik Ripken
“They said, ‘You really don’t understand … Which is the greatest miracle? You’ve watched and maybe a 100,000 Chinese get healed by God, and only one, maybe two, maybe three, maybe four, can figure out that the healing came from God and that His name is Jesus and get eternal life.
“Which is the greatest miracle? You tell us that when you hurt a shoulder … you can call a Baptist deacon in Jacksonville, Fla., and you can fly (there), and before surgery at a Baptist hospital, he will lay hands on you, the nurse will lay hands on you, the anesthesiologist will lay hands on you, and they’ll pray for you. And if you want, you can have access to Christian healthcare 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
“Which is the greatest miracle? You’ve watched us tear our Bibles into shreds, and you tell us that where you live in Ethiopia, you have 7 copies of different translations of the Bible just for yourself.
“Which is the greatest miracle, son? You’ve watched us as pastors and deacons and elders and church planters and evangelists stay one step ahead of the persecutors. And you tell us that your pastors, if they want to, can stand in the house of God, in the presence of God’s people, and they can preach the gospel of Jesus Christ 24-7, and nobody goes to jail, nobody is beaten, nobody loses their jobs, they are not killed.
“Which is the greatest miracle, son? You’ve listened to us sing our songs so quietly that our voices won’t carry through the walls to the neighbors or the policemen walking by. And you tell us that your praise bands can sing in the marketplace if they want to everyday, all day, and they won’t be beaten, they won’t be killed, they won’t lose their jobs, and they won’t lose their kids.”
“And they went on and on and on,” Ripken said. “And I began to sob because I had called this – I had called the church – normal. And the body of Christ globally looks at what God has given us, and they see it as a miracle of God from his very throne. And what do we do with it? We can sit here, and we can worship without excitement, we can worship without our hearts being thrilled. … Do you recognize the miracle that God is doing in your midst today, or do you call it common, normal, what you deserve?”