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The earliest church in Japan, built on a site where 26 Christians were martyred by crucifixion in 1597, is a candidate to become a World Heritage Site by 2018.
According to Japan Today, Nagasaki's Oura Church was the main target of extensive Christian persecution from 1603-1868, when the faith was banned in the country.
From 1614-1640, up to 6,000 Christians were put to death for their faith.
Christianity was "presumed extinct" for many years, according to Christian Today. However, thousands of believers survived by living in the remote islands of Nagasaki and Sakitsu village, keeping the traditions of their martyred fathers.
When Japan opened its borders in 1865, villagers visited a newly built Catholic church in the area and told the priest they continued their hidden worship for 250 years.
The U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization will examine this site during the summer of 2018, after the government submits its letter of recommendation on Feb. 1, next year.
Shusaku Endo, in his book Silence, retold the story of the Japanese persecution of Christians. A movie by filmmaker Martin Scorsese is expected later this year.
"Christ did not die for the good and beautiful," Endo says in the book. "It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt."
Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a speech at the celebration of the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. (REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
End-Times Persecution Is Here: Russia Just Banned Evangelism and China Has Torn Down Thousands of Crosses
We always knew this was coming. For years, the horrifying persecution of Christians in the Middle East has made headlines all over the globe, but now we are seeing very disturbing examples of government-sanctioned persecution literally all over the planet.
As you will read about below, Russia just banned virtually all types of evangelism outside of a church or religious site. And China has been tearing down thousands of crosses and has been demolishing dozens of churches in a renewed crackdown on the growth of Christianity in that nation. Overall, there are 53 countries that now have laws that restrict the Christian faith according to one recent report. When are we going to wake up and realize what is happening?
When I heard about the new law that was just passed in Russia, I was absolutely stunned. I was in Moscow just a few years after the Berlin Wall fell, and the people were very eager to hear about the Christian faith which had been brutally repressed under the Soviet regime for decades.
The law, which will come into force on July 20, will prohibit evangelism anywhere outside a church or religious site – including private homes and online – and those in breach of it will be fined. Only named members of religious organisations will be able to share their faith, and even informal witnessing between individuals is forbidden.
According to the New York Times, this ban also includes "preaching and praying" that is done outside the boundaries of "officially recognized" religious institutions.
In recent years, I have defended Russia in many of my articles. But there is no defending this.
This new law is the single worst thing that Russia has done since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
Meanwhile, government officials in China have launched a renewed crackdown on Christians as the underground church continues to grow like wildfire.
According to some reports, the government has torn down more than 2,000 crosses in Zhejiang Province alone in recent months.
More than two thousand crosses have now been forcefully removed from churches as part of a government campaign to regulate "excessive religious sites".
The nation's leadership launched the crusade to eradicate Christianity in the coastal province of Zhejiang almost two years ago.
Several members of the public have since been arrested for attempting to halt the government's crude attempt to suppress the Christian faith.
But sometimes government officials don't stop there and decide to tear down an entire church. In fact, since the beginning of this year, at least 49 churches have been destroyed in Zhejiang Province. Just recently, one group of believers defied the government and returned to their destroyed church to hold a worship service.
Christian worshipers gather to worship among the ruins of their demolished church, defying the Communist Chinese government anti-Christian drive. These congregants in China' Wenzhou, Zhejiang province conducted a prayer service despite their church building demolished by the government officials.
Zhuyang Church, which was a government-sanctioned church, was routed as a part of an unprecedented church demolition drive. On May 20, the church was demolished by about 100 government officers took down the church building authorized despite the fact that it had the government authorization to operate.
The church member said that the only reason the official could provide for church' demolition was that the church was "transforming the villages in the city."
The communist government of China's Zhejiang Province is enforcing a new law that demands numerous churches to turn over all of their tithes and donations to state authorities.
According to a nonprofit Christian organization dedicated to serving the persecuted Church in China, the officials of Pingyang County in Wenzhou are compelling members to give all of their churches' income to state authorities.
"The government officials will interfere with church affairs, managing our donations and some large-scale projects," a source told China Aid.
For so long, most Americans have considered the Chinese government to be our friend, but that is not true at all. The communist Chinese are a corrupt, wicked regime that has always been deeply anti-Christian. Anyone that believes otherwise has simply been deluded.
Meanwhile, the persecution of Christians continues to intensify in many parts of Africa. Just recently, a mother of seven children was "hacked to death" by Islamic radicals in Nigeria for openly preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
A Christian mother of seven was hacked to death by suspected Muslim radicals in Nigeria and her mutilated body was discovered in a pool of blood along with a Bible and megaphone she used to preach every morning.
According to local reports, 41-year-old Eunice Olawale, a pastor at the Redeemed Christian Church of Nigeria and an evangelist, was murdered in the early morning hours on Saturday while she was out evangelizing near Nigeria's capital of Abuja.
Olawale's husband, Olawale Elisha, told local media that his wife had left their home around 5 a.m. Saturday morning to preach in the neighborhood but she never returned home.
Ever since the first century, Christians have been martyred for publicly preaching the gospel, and we were warned that this kind of terrible persecution was coming in the last days.
Of course Christians in the Middle East don't exactly need to hear about "the coming persecution" because they have been living it for many years. Christians are being tortured, beheaded and crucified by radical terror groups such as ISIS, and in other areas of the Middle East, the persecution is being imposed on a national level by the government. For instance, just check out what is happening right now in Pakistan.
"The government of Pakistan has announced plans to force Islam on young people by making Quranic study compulsory for all school and college students, which is contrary to the country's constitution and the Islamic precept that there should be no compulsion in religion. This is the latest escalation of the country's bias against Christians, other minority faiths and non-believers," said Peter Tatchell, Director of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.
"Pakistani Christians, including children, are at risk of kidnapping, forced marriage and forced religious conversion to Islam. Some are also victims of blasphemy charges, which carry the death penalty. There are regular violent assaults on Christian families, homes, shops and churches.
The persecution of the end times is here.
All over the planet, the Christian faith is under assault. In the Western world, we may not have to face much violent persecution just yet, but our faith is relentlessly mocked, ridiculed and demonized on television, in the movies and on the internet. Laws that are anti-Christian in tone and substance are regularly being passed, and many of our top politicians are not even pretending to be fair to us any longer.
Just like in much of the rest of the world, we are starting to discover that there is a great price to be paid for following Jesus Christ.
In Matthew 16, Jesus told us that if anyone would choose to follow Him, that individual should "deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."
Are you ready to take up your cross?
The persecution of Christians is only going to get worse in the years ahead, and in order to make it through what is coming, we need to be ready to give up everything for Him.
Michael Snyderis the founder and publisher of End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled "The Rapture Verdict"is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
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Hundreds gather for a candlelight vigil for the UCC shooting victims. (Reuters)
The Day Christians Were Martyred on American Soil
Life or death was determined by the answer to a single question: are you a Christian?
That was the question asked by an anti-Christian gunman who stormed into a classroom at Oregon's Umpqua Community College.
Eyewitnesses say the shooter targeted Christians.
Kortney Moore was inside the classroom. She told the Roseburg News-Review that the shooter ordered students to get on the ground—and then told them to stand up and state their religion.
"And they would stand up and he said, 'Good, because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second," Stacy Boylan said in a televised report. "And then he shot and killed them."
His 18-year-old daughter was struck in the back by a bullet—that traveled down her spine. She survived. Miss Moore, too, survived.
Davis Jaques, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon News, said he received a text message from a student who said she was inside the classroom.
"The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christians," the message read. "If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no or didn't answer, they were shot in the leg."
Christians were martyred for their faith—on American soil—a fact mostly ignored by most of the mainstream media and the White House.
The New York Times only mentioned that the gunman inquired about people's "religions" and one cable television news channel opined that the shooter's motive was unclear.
President Obama's behavior in the aftermath of the massacre was quite frankly unpresidential. Instead of calling for religious tolerance—he delivered an unhinged tirade on gun control.
"Somebody somewhere will comment and say Obama politicized this issue," the president said. "Well, this is something we should politicize."
But I reckon it's politically incorrect to address the persecution of Christians.
That could explain why the White House has expressed less than passionate outrage over the near-genocide of Christians in the Middle East. And that could also explain why his administration has failed to secure the release of an American pastor being tortured in an Iranian jail.
These days "lambs being led to the slaughter" is not exactly a politically correct narrative.
Franklin Graham eloquently memorialized the fallen on his Facebook page and reminded us that Christians are being persecuted around the world.
"The bold souls at Umpqua Community College who stood up to say they were followers of Jesus Christ were heinously gunned down with no mercy," Graham wrote. "Jesus said, 'If they hate you, remember they hated me before they hated you.'"
I cannot even begin to imagine the courage it took for our fellow believers to take a stand—knowing that to do so—would require the ultimate sacrifice.
But their families can take comfort in knowing that after they took their last breath on earth, they took their first breath in heaven.
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