#69 | The Insanity of God, Pt. 1 | Nik Ripken

You're as free, praise God, you're as free today to share Jesus in Saudi Arabia as you are in South Carolina. You are as free to share Jesus in North Korea as you are in North Carolina. Because it's not about political freedom. It's about obedience.

And I'm on the roll.

It's watering time, everybody.

It is time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might satur your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host.

And today on our show, we are having another one of our deep conversations, a deep conversation with my friend Nick Ripken. I want to ask you a question. Wherever you are, I want you to think about this question and answer it. What price would you pay to follow Jesus?

I mean, think about it. I think for many of us, if we're genuine Christ lovers, we're going to be a lot like Peter. Even if I would die for you, I won't betray you. Right?

That's where we're at. But when we're faced with the reality of our everyday lives, we're not facing hard persecution. For many of us, we're too comfortable.

We don't want to stick out. We don't want to be canceled. We don't want to get a bad reputation.

We don't want people to think of us as some weird zealot or a part of some cult or like some other weird group that we see out there. We don't want to think that way. So we remain quiet or still. And the fact of the matter is, is we really don't suffer a whole lot.

We're not facing the loss of our homes or the loss of our jobs. I mean, some of us are, if we speak up, if we're bold. But for many of us, we got to pay the bills. We got to take care of our families.

We've got kids that have soccer practice and basketball and track and all that stuff that we gotta pay for. We got 401ks that we've gotta, gotta fund. We've got all these things that we gotta think through. And it. And it's tr.

True, we do in our modern society, but in many ways, it's caused this massive constriction to our faith. And it's not overt hard persecution. It's a soft, killing me softly kind of persecution. And that's where Nick and Ruth Ripken come in.

Now, today's conversation is with Nick, and we've got two More episodes where he's going to be featured. And I would highly encourage you to listen in because their story is phenomenal.

And I'm excited to say that we're going to be having Ruth on in the very near future, so pay attention to that. But here's a little bit of their bio to show you where they are coming from. Because they are experts in the persecuted church.

Because Nick and Ruth and their three kids served for over 32 years obeying Christ's command to go and make disciples of all nations. And after seven years in Malawi and South Africa, they moved to Nairobi, Kenya, to begin work among the Somali people. And that.

But after working with the Somali people and watching how the Muslim extremists came in and exterminated two of their church plants, and then facing the frustration of people unwilling to come to church after that, that led them on a journey because they thought to themselves, if the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, why isn't this church growing as it is in other places? What happened? What's different?

And that led them on a journey, and that led them to travel to like 70 some odd countries, interviewing over 600 leaders and believers in the persecuted church around the world and compiling many of their stories and highlighting them in their book that is called the Insanity of God. And it's a fantastic book. But I want to tell you this, if you read it, be ready, because it's like a kick in the teeth.

I mean, honestly, you're gonna read parts of it and you're just gonna hang your head and shake it in shame for those in the west because of how comfortable we really are when you see what other brothers and sisters have gone through in order to proclaim and adhere to the testimony of Jesus. So this is gonna be convicting. Let me say that straight up. If you're not a fan of conviction, then you should probably turn this off now.

I was convicted. I'll tell you that right now. I'm not. I'm not bringing this to you just to. To.

To punch you in the face, but I am to do it to shake us up, myself included. And that's exactly what I found in this conversation with Nick and the Ripkens. Going back to their bio for a moment.

And their teams served throughout the Horn of Africa, within famine and war zones. They were doing Stuff like resettling refugees, providing famine relief, and operating mobile medical clinics.

Now, formerly, many of these Muslims, these Somali believers now suffered for their faith. Most of them were martyred, killed. And near the end of the Ripkens tenure among the Somalis, they had to face the unbelievable.

But their 16 year old son died of an asthma attack on Easter Sunday morning. He's actually buried at the school from which the other Ripken children graduated.

Now, one year after he died, the Holy Spirit led the Ripkens to begin a global pilgrimage that I just told you about around the world to learn from believers in persecution and how to recapture biblical missiology of witness. Now, let me say that again. They wanted to recapture a biblical missiology of witness. I love that.

Now, for those that don't know what that means, it means that they're going back to what the Bible says of how the mission of God is accomplished for us to witness to the greatness of who Christ is. And they learned about house church planting in the midst of persecution and martyrdom.

And most of all, believers in persecution modeled for the Ripkens how to trust Jesus completely. I don't think many of us can do that.

And this is a challenge, and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you because it was a tremendous challenge to me, and I believe, and I know they do too, that most of the lessons that we're talking about here, this biblical missiology of witness, has been forgotten or lost by us as a church in the West. And currently, as I said before, the Ripkens have interviewed over 600 believers in persecution, exceeding, here's the right stat here, 72 countries.

And sitting at the feet of these men and women who are in such difficult circumstances, the Ripkens learned not only to survive as a church, but thrive. And now they're sharing that with us.

They're creating resources as gifts from the church to the church, the church on the other part of the world to the church and other sides of the world.

And today they've created articles, books, a music cd, a documentary, workshops, and other tools that allow the church in persecution to teach the church in the west about its biblical heritage of both crucifixion and resurrection. And there's actually a tool, a future teaching dvd, included in their future plans.

And all these tools, by the way, are designed to challenge believers to boldly follow Jesus where you are. That's why we say over and over again, water your faith and water your world, no matter what your world is.

So I invite you to listen in to Nick's story. We had a lot of fun. He's a good old Kentucky boy, born and bred, but traveled around the world. And he's a guy just like you and me.

We do talk a great deal about his book, the Insanity of God, a book, again, that I highly recommend. But be warned, it's going to change you.

And I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at the New Living Translation, because we both believe deeply that understanding the Bible changes everything. You need to be able to read the Bible in a language that you understand and also let the Bible read you. Now, on to Nick. Happy listening.

Nick Ripken, welcome to Apollo's Water.

Wow. What a joy to be here with you, brother.

Are you ready for the Fast5?

As ready as anybody can be.

Okay, here we go. Here's your Fast 5 questions that we have for you today. Number one, Kentucky Wildcats or Louisville Cardinals?

Yes. I grew up Wildcat. My wife's family grew up Louisville Cardinal on my truck license plate, half Kentucky, half Cardinals.

My family hates me, but I did not survive Somalia to get killed in Kentucky.

So you're in an unequally yoked marriage, is that it?

No. She's crazier about Kentucky than I am. Oh, yeah. But I learned, like I said, if I'm going to get shot, I want it to be by pagans.

You know, get into basketball in Kentucky and it's a whole nother world. A little bit crazy. A little bit crazy. But here we go. Second question.

I had to look this up, but since you're from Kentucky and maybe you don't know this or not, but there are two Kentucky dishes and I need to know which one you prefer, the hot brown sandwich or a Kentucky butter cake?

I don't know that I know Kentucky butter cake. So it'd have to be the hot brown and my wife just adores that. But it's something you eat. Then go see the cardiologist.

So what is the Kentucky? I had to look this up. What is the hot brown sandwich?

It is just a lot of bread, a lot of meat, usually ham or roast beef and a lot of gravy.

Sounds wonderful.

Probably 2,000 or 3,000 calories.

Well, it is a quick way to meet Jesus.

Yeah, right.

All right, here is the next question then for you. What is your favorite hobby?

Probably reading. And until all these surgeries, horseback riding. And I love to fish. I'm not a good fisherman, but I love to be on water.

I don't care to stand on the Land and fish. But I just got back from Florida where some friends took me fishing. Three days out of 10 and I was in heaven.

Oh.

Oh, I love to fish.

Where'd you guys go fishing?

We went to Intercoastal because I've had some serious back surgery and I can't take the deep water right now. But intercoastal fishing for reds and grouper and things like that. So I had a really good time fishing.

Awesome. That's great. Ok, how about this one? What is one habit that you have that drives your wife crazy?

Just one of them.

You can pick a couple. Feel free.

One that drives her crazy. I can hear her knocking at the door saying tell him this, tell him this one. Tell him this.

But I think that I can read and World War 3 can break out and I wouldn't even be aware of it. I can get so immersed in reading.

Okay, all right, that's bad.

It's also same thing like this. I can get talking with someone like you and probably talk the clock around and. Oh, I know the one. I call it recreational arguing.

I think it should be an Olympic sport. She sees it as sin. I see it as an Olympic sport.

What is recreational arguing?

It's just getting an idea on the table. And no hose bar.

I mean, you're not going to be using nasty language or anything like that, but you're just going at each other and you can argue both sides of the equation and you can hold opposing viewpoints at the same time. Because in Africa it doesn't have to make sense. That's a western field. But recreational arguing is one of my favorite things.

Recreational arguing. I'm going to. I've never heard that term before, but I'm going to use it in the future. All right, here we go.

This is the last question of the fast five. You've had a great many cross cultural experiences, but what is the strangest food you have ever eaten in all your travels?

The strangest food I've ever eaten. Well, it'd have to be one of the worms, you know, like a fat worm.

Or when, before the rains come in Malawi, they'll burn the fields, get ready for planting and you can go alongside the road and there'll be a split. Kids holding a split bamboo piece of bamboo. And in that will be the tails of about six or eight mice that they've caught and killed.

And you take that and you mash that up and you make a dish out of that. Then you eat it with a stiff pop with your hands. And so some of the big worms and the mice.

I don't think they'll ever make it into the finer restaurants.

What's the name of that dish? So I make sure that I never eat it.

Well, it wouldn't make any sense to you, but it's just, I think in English, Mopani. M O P A N I. Worms. And, and even they'll put out lights on the side of the road when the. Oh, shoot, the bugs are coming with the little wings.

I can't think what they're called.

Grasshoppers.

No, tiny bugs attracted to the light. And we call them African popcorn. And they'll even pick them off the grill of your truck or your car.

But they have a lot of protein in them in a protein starved culture they'll just stand and eat that and they'll put a light on the side of the road and just harvest them and eat them. And the little wings get caught in your teeth but you know, they'll work their way out.

But the mice and the worms are not my favorite, but rancid camel for breakfast, that's not something that I would recommend. But you know, like they say, where he leads me, I will follow. What he feeds me, I will swallow.

And sometimes you get to swallow it twice if it's really nasty.

I've never heard that terminology before. What was it again? Where he leads me, I will follow.

I will follow. What he feeds me, I will swallow.

Oh, that's really good. I really like that one. Okay, I'm not going to forget that one. All right, let's get to your story. Nick, you've got a pretty phenomenal story.

I know you've written pretty much an entire book about it. You're from Kentucky. But tell us just a brief. Give us a brief bio of who you are and what God has really led you to do.

It may paint a good photograph for your listeners to know that Ruth and I are both PKs. She's a pastor's kid and I'm a pagan's kid. And she cannot remember not knowing Jesus around her breakfast table, dinner table.

You know, having missionaries in their house, spending nights, it's just normal for her. And knowing Christ at a very early age, writing papers about being a missionary by 9, 10 years of age.

And I'm raised in a construction farming family. Six boys. A little girl came along about the time I went to college. My dad came and got me off of a baseball field. Pretty good.

Too small to play football though. I played it and said, I've got good news and bad news. My Dad's a tough guy. I mean rough tough guy. He said, I've got good news and bad news.

I said, what's the good news? He said, kraft Foods cheese factory has hired you so you're going to get to go to college. It was supposed to be a good summer job.

I said, well then what's the bad news? He said, you start tonight. I said, well, I've got 11 weeks of high school left. He said, you want to go to school or not? I said, yes.

He said, and you start tonight.

So from 7 in the evening to 3:30 in the morning, last 11 weeks of high school, I worked in a cheese factory, walked off the baseball field, walked away from girlfriends, walked away from everything that teenagers do. And, and Jesus cornered me in that cheese factory and audibly spoke to my heart three times in a 45 minute period. And that's where I knelt.

Gave my life to Christ, left there. Went to see two local pastors the next day. Never met them, told them what had happened to me. They said to me, travis, you're not a Christian.

God doesn't speak to people directly. He speaks to them through the preaching of the Word and the church. And I didn't know what that was. And I found a young man, young pastor.

And he said, well, sounds like Jesus has captured your heart. And I said, yes. He said, well, give up your scholarship to University of Kentucky to be a veterinarian and you need to go to the Baptist college.

I said, why would I want to be that? He said, well, you need to be a pastor. I said, why? He said, well, it sounds like you want to be full time in the Gospel. And I just was puzzled.

I said I didn't know I could be part time. And so my background is just very much pagan. First believer in my family, first one in the ministry, my father.

I came home, we came home after five years in Africa and he said, well, boy, now you can get you a big church. I said, dad, I'm going back. He said, I didn't raise you to be that stupid. And the only way he could see that was in terms of building a resume.

But he came to really appreciate and love what we're doing, though. You just, I don't know how you can comprehend the racism that I grew up with.

And that's why God allowed us to serve eight years under apartheid in South Africa. Because if I didn't finally deal with that racism that was in the depths of my soul that I'd papered over, we would have never made it to Somalia.

You and I would never be talking now. And I just had to deal with that. I remember dad and my brothers coming to me and just saying, explain to us why are you doing this?

There was no spiritual connection. I said, well dad, if we don't reach African people for Christ in their country, they're going to come here looking for him.

And my dad said, son, I'm going to pray for your ministry every day.

Oh wow.

And that's probably the hardest thing in coming home. My kids were raised by African people and our homes are filled with Asians and Africans, Somalis, Cushitic people, Bantu peoples.

One of the most transformative things that ever happened, brother.

Under apartheid we're in a rural village and our two younger boys are out playing with village kids or in this bush church and men on one side, women on the other. And my wife never gets upset at nothing. And she's made for the mission field and she's made for loving people. She's made for loving all people.

She doesn't take sides. And I look back and she had this look of horror on her face. Travis. And that was so out of the ordinary. I'm going, what's going on?

I could hear the boys voices and all of a sudden I thought, where's the baby? Our youngest was three months old and he's gone. And I looked across this little hut of a church.

There was an 80 some year old grandmother, maybe three or four teeth in her head, wrinkled, dried up, Just has been through everything life can throw at her. Probably never had a nickel to, you know, 5 cents to her name. And she's nursing our baby.

She's got, you know, I can't describe what this old woman looked like physically, but she's got this black stretched breast in the mouth of our little white blond haired baby. And this is under apartheid. Races don't sit together, they don't touch. White missionaries didn't let black missionaries in their house.

I mean pastors, they met them on the porch, they had separate dishes for the black pastors to eat on. All of this stuff that went to make up racism that certainly apartheid in South Africa doesn't have a monopoly on.

And I look at that baby nursing as a pacifier, that old granny lady, and she's got a smile on her face and that baby's just content. And I looked at my wife and said, basically he's happy, she's happy, let's just go with it. And you know what?

That swept through that culture and among the closest speaking people that here where you didn't touch. You didn't let people in your house. You didn't share dishes, you didn't kiss them on the cheek.

And here, the greatest act of missiology, of mission, applied love, applied letting that little newborn white kid from America nurse that old granny lady was the biggest open door to ministry we've ever had. I'll never forget it. Her act of love to him, wanting to help my wife out of a fussy baby.

And I didn't know how closely they were watching for my reaction.

They fully expected for me to come down off of that little platform, run and get that baby, jerk that baby away from that woman and give him back to his white mother. And just to see us smile and be content with it. I'll never preach a sermon better than that. Never. Can't do it.

That's pretty incredible. Just what you've seen in South Africa. But you didn't stay there. Where did you guys go after that?

Well, my wife and I did a foolish thing. We read the Book of Acts together again.

And no matter what, I know it's not a biblical term, this word missionary, but we've never had anybody interpret it. Not the mission board, not seminary. So we're struggling in a country that's had almost 300 years of missionary activity. And I'm not made for that.

I'm not made for a pastorate. I'm made as an evangelist, church planter. I'm not a pastor teacher. And that's part of my problem. I've got a bachelor's, master's and a doctorate.

But all of that poured into me. Even though Jesus said, I'm sending you a sheep among wolves. They trained me to be a sheep among sheep. That's why Somalia ate my lunch.

I had no tools, no way of thinking my way through the wolves of this world. And so we studied the Book of Acts together. And I wrote on a piece of paper the word missionary.

And at the end of those weeks, as we studied it, I wrote down for us, as we talked about it, that for us a sent out one was to go where people had little or no chance to hear. And that week we wrote our mission support organization and said, we've got to get out of places where they have access to the gospel.

It looks like the nearest places that need us is northern Sudan or Somalia. I had almost. We had almost died of malaria. We have been. That's why we ended up from Malawi and South Africa.

They said, you will never be allowed back in malaria country. But because of the desperate need There they said, we'll let you go there. If you get really sick again, we're going to pull you out immediately.

But from reading the Book of Acts, writing that word missionary on a piece of paper, we are to go where people have little or no chance to hear. And two months later, were in Kenya studying Swahili, studying Somalia. And they said, take your time.

It's going to take you three or five years to get in there. Four months after we started trying to get in there, we were in there.

I mean, my first trip in six months, eight of us are feeding 50,000 people a day. We're burying 20 children and old people every morning. Before we can feed that's left alive. We're in there six, eight months before.

And I think it didn't change. I just stopped counting. Six, eight months before we ever met a lady over 13 years of age that hadn't been raped 8, 10, 12 times.

It was part of their daily dialogue. They didn't talk about when they went to get water, whether or not they'd be raped. What they would talk about is who they hoped that would be.

Because the guys that staked out those water spots, some were kinder than others.

And for that to watch sin spiral a culture down that low to where you're parsing your death, defying sinful acts, what do you do when everything's crucifixion and nothing's resurrection? And I never understood. Here's our problem, brother. Satan has sold us a lie. And one of the lies goes like this. The Bible is inerrant and infallible.

Hold on, don't get mad at me. I got a point here. The Bible is an authoritative word of God. It's the very words of God. It records exactly the very acts of God.

And the Bible is a clear, authoritative record of what God used to do, with the implication being he's not doing this stuff anymore.

Right? Right.

And so what? To skip way ahead, what we found in Somalia was the Old Testament in present active tense. But that was somewhat encouraging.

That if the Old Testament was still in present active tense for me, by inference, perhaps the New Testament was still in present active tense. And that's what the believers in persecution gave me. Somalia gave me a deep understanding of crucifixion.

Believers in persecution gave me a clear understanding of resurrection coming out of crucifixion. And our culture in America, they want the resurrection without the crucifixion. They can't have it. They can't have it. I am crucified with Christ.

But it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. So going back here for a second, I want you to clarify something.

You said you saw the Old Testament being lived out in Somalia, something along that line. Could you elaborate on that for a moment?

Let's look at the good side. God never leaves himself without a witness.

There's not a place we've been on earth and we've been in the darkest places among this 3 billion people that don't have a single verse of scripture, not a scriptural song, not a missionary, not a church. But God always is calling men and women to Himself. There's always an Abraham and a Sarah that's stepping out.

Ezekiel, Daniel, David, all of this is coming up. But in the midst of the Old Testament Christianity, or faith in Jesus and obedience to God is almost not measurable.

It's just so miraculous that God can call people out of that extreme darkness where no one has ever gone before them. And yet Abraham's going to go to the promised land.

And that's what we see among unreached peoples is that they're in this Abrahamic type of Old Testament of feuds that last lifetimes.

Racial divides are in concrete every, you know, if you want, you know, the Ten Commandments are written in such a place that today, even with Islam, if you want somebody's donkey, you go get it. You want somebody's daughter, go take it. You want somebody's wife, go take it.

The Ten Commandments are more a litany of what to do rather than what not to do.

And in that kind of darkness, parametered by the Roman Empire, Jesus comes in and he pushes a reset button and he says, guess what, Israel, it's not working. Your armies, your temples, your wealth, your Judaic code of law, your Old Testament scrolls, it's not working.

And so Jesus sort of slaps down an old reset button in Matthew 10 and says, now we're going to try it differently. I'm going to send you out as sheep among wolves. Try to sell that to your church, try to sell that to a government, to a military.

All of this anger about Afghanistan now, yeah, there's going to need to be a political response and there's going to always be a military response. But what's my response as a follower of Jesus to the Taliban that's killing my friends right now?

I got three texts this morning of a 14 year old girl taking from her father's arm, raped in front of him and given as a sex slave because she's of a Believing family to a Taliban soldier. I got three or four texts like that from Afghanistan this morning. And yet Jesus has the audacity to say, love your enemies.

And when they ask Jesus, how do you pray? Well, pray this way, father, forgive me in the same way that I forgive those that sin against me. How in the world do you do that?

And so we divide up Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, and we allow Christianity to be masked, not masked. And vaccine. And not vaccine. When Jesus is trying to say to us, hey, guys, ladies, guess what?

You're as free, praise God, you are as free today to share Jesus in Saudi Arabia as you are in South Carolina. You are as free to share Jesus in North Korea as you are in North Carolina. Because it's not about political freedom. It's about obedience.

They cannot stop you from getting off the plane and sharing Christ. They can punish you for it. And then the love that you have for those persecutors will deepen and extend the kingdom of God.

But there's going to be a big price to be paid.

I'm not blowing smoke, but the believers in house churches in China, they taught me so much about turning that crucifixion into the resurrection, looking for those opportunities.

And so I went all over the world after we went to Somalia trying to find help and couldn't find it until we spent years going among believers in persecution, whom I was taught to feel pity for, whom I was taught to rescue. And yet they taught me, you know, sometimes God needs Joseph in jail.

And if we get Joseph out of jail and Pharaoh has a dream, two months later, the Egyptians are up at the creek without a paddle, and so are the Jews in Egypt. They're all going to die. So how can the church pray God, if it's your will for our Joseph to be in this Iranian prison today, can you sell that?

Can you sell that?

I think it's hard selling. Yeah, it is. It's hard sell in our culture today especially.

I want to go back just for a moment because you skipped over something that I know you've probably talked about ad nauseam, but I know that some of our listeners aren't familiar with. You said you went from.

Right from Somalia to visit a lot of these people that had been in persecution, but you didn't elaborate on why and what happened in Somalia. And I want to hear just from you hear a bit of this story because it is quite phenomenal in hearing it. And I wouldn't even say it's phenomenal.

After reading your book, it's expected in talking about some of the Russians that said, this isn't just as the sun comes up, it's persecution comes for those who are followers of Jesus. But elaborate if you would on how you were trying to plant a church in Somalia and all that happened there.

Well, I think someone else probably said it better, but desperation is one of the most creative places to be. And I knew that Jesus had sent us a sheep among wolves and just didn't know what to do with them.

So we came back to the States after about six months. I went to my seminaries, I went to lots of seminaries. I went to secular, I went to Washington D.C.

to those committees on human and religious freedoms and I went to Freedom House. I went to anybody I could talk to about how do you, how do you serve as a sheep among wolf? I couldn't find any help. Could not.

All I could find was, you know, in our culture we do really good A plus for raising up pastor teachers, D minus for raising up evangelists and church planners across the theological spectrum, schools. I think that's true. And I couldn't find any help. And finally a dear mentor of ours said, you know, Ripken, you're on your own.

We haven't done this before, so you've got to figure it out.

But we're feeding 50,000 people a day, we're burying all these kids, we're resetting refugees, doing mobile medical clinics, watching believers being hunt down and killed. They killed four of my best friends on one day. In a condensed period of time, we got kicked out of Somalia.

Our 16 year old son died of an asthma attack on Easter Sunday morning, eight days after his birthday. Ruth's mother died two months to the day that our son died of a long bout with cancer. Somali believers have been reduced from 150 to four.

And it was a hard place. And yet God reminding us that he had told us the place to go to learn how to be sheep among wolves was to go to the sheep among wolves.

Soviet Union was falling apart, so we went there, we went throughout China, all throughout India, wherever we could find believers. And it's hard. You can't just find them in a phone book.

And it's dangerous for them to be passed from house group to house group or you know, secret place to secret place, just begging them to teach us what we did not know. And so probably for tens of thousands of hours we sit at their feet just begging them, how do you make Christ known?

How do we make Christ known when if you're just my friend in Somalia, you could be Killed. You see, I had people this weekend talk to me about how Bible distribution went in Somalia.

I said it was terrible because your listeners probably cannot comprehend that in Somalia. If you gave a believer a Bible and you did not model for him how to securely handle that, you got him killed because he had a Bible.

I watched a Muslim guy about three blocks away. The Somali Bible is a big green thing.

And before I could get to him, Ali Tahad walked up behind him and put a bullet in his head and killed him. And because some well meaning short term person gave that guy a Bible, he went into eternity without Jesus. And he got killed because of the Bible.

He didn't get killed because of who Jesus was.

How do you make, how do you explain to your listeners, hey, this is what Jesus did, that he handled the scrolls in the temple and the synagogues and then out in the marketplace. He didn't distribute those things. He told those stories of the kingdom of God by memory.

And when they asked him a question about those stories, he told them another story. And what believers in persecution just drummed into me is that God always keeps his word, the Bible in oral forms to rapidly transmit truth.

And God always keeps his word, the Bible in literate forms to preserve the truth. Wow. Wow. You just doubled the way you can use that from a literate open culture.

We can't imagine distributing Bibles leading to the wiping out of, of a whole house church. And so this is what I'm experiencing. I'm watching 150 Somalis believers be reduced to four.

And every one Travis that were killed had a relationship with an outsider Western Christian that directly contributed to the timing of their death. They were killed for who they worked for. And a lot of Christian agencies love to go these places and hire Christians.

You do that in Afghanistan, give them a T shirt and the front of it says Jesus loves me and the back has concentric circles and says shoot me. They were killed for who they worshiped with. They were outsiders. They were killed for having a Bible often that they could not read a word of it.

Every one of them that were paid to evangelize the same way we would evangelize in Dallas, Texas or in Jacksonville, Florida. None of those guys are alive today. And so there has to be what believers in persecution did for Me saying that Jim Slack, one of my mentors, did.

He said, ripken, whenever you have an evangelist evangelism issue you can't solve, or church planting issue you can't solve, you're not telling yourself the right Bible story. The persecuted church gives us the right Bible stories. And included in that is persecution is normal.

Included that is that the number one cause of persecution on the planet is people coming to Jesus. Where there's a great harvest, there's always a great persecution.

Where there's a little harvest, well, Satan's not threatened, so he persecutes nobody. And there's a huge difference between taking stands in a culture for social issues and proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Believers in persecution are not whining over social issues. They're proclaiming the crucifixion and the resurrection.

And so out of those ashes of losing our Son and in a lot of ways losing our health and losing our ministry, going among believers in persecution, they gave us our Bible back in present active tense. But more than that, they gave us the Holy Spirit back in present active tense to our Ruth.

And I can say with great joy and confidence today that everything that God has ever done in the Bible, God is still doing. He hasn't rested, he hasn't taken a vacation. He hasn't ceased to use some modern terminology, God's God.

And perhaps, perhaps we go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, so we can see, see what God is doing. Maybe that's why he says go to all these places is so that he can invest in us and come and say, see who I am and who I and what I'm about.

And it's often been said he or she who speaks only one language understands none. And I think there's some truth in that, that experiencing Jesus in a prolific number of cultures allows you to see.

You can go to India and see all the demon possession. You can go and go to Africa, go among low caste Hindus, one medical personnel for every 2 million people, you know what they'll do.

You pray for 100 people to be healed and one person is healed, they'll focus on that one. In my culture, you pray for 100 people to be healed and one person is healed, they're going to focus on the 99 that weren't.

And yet we don't see that the medical care that we have is a miracle from the throne of God in the eyes of believers around the world.

And so I really don't want to be heard to be preaching Sermons I want to be heard to say, I'm so excited to find the living God of the Bible among the nations today and being able to walk with him. And whether it's in those deepest valleys or the mountaintop, God is God.

And if my brother and sister is in that prison in Iran so that he or she can lead their persecutor to Jesus, can I say, blessed be the name of the Lord? My problem or challenge as churches is we get, how do we, how do we know about Afghanistan? Probably through cnn, Fox News.

But is there not a biblical God loving, fearing response to that kind of hatred and that kind of evil? And, and your listeners might, this might give them pause. But after almost four decades out and about. Travis, I have a heart.

It's in concrete in my heart that every place in my lifetime that we've sent our sons and daughters through our military to bleed and die by the tens of thousands all over the world. I'm a post World War II kid.

But all of these places, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, all of these places where our sons and daughters have been sent to bleed, suffer and die are the exact places the church never went. That's on us.

And the cost in blood for not going and fulfilling the Great Commission is a thousand times greater than the cost in blood if we were to die for who Jesus is. Because Jesus knows how to use that suffering and how not to waste that blood. And the insanity of God, the book, the movie, our lives.

And trying to relate to godly people like yourself and friends like you is not to waste their suffering in those cells. In the Soviet Union, they say you're going to die in this cell. Your story is going to die in this cell.

No one's going to ever know that you ever were faithful to Christ here. And I write about Dimitri in that Russian prison in the insanity of God. And I heard that he had died two and a half years ago.

So there's a way I can get in touch with folks like him through a website. So I called him and I got his son. He said, dad's not dead, Dad's still alive. But he's hurting.

He's got arthritis and the bones they broke and he can't hardly get out of bed.

But he said he gets out of bed each day and he wants to dance and he wants to sing because his persecutors and communism has died and his story is alive and has gone all over the world. And I had about a 15 minute conversation through his son with him, and I was about to Hang up. And his son said, oh, no, no, Nick, you can't go.

You've got to know this. He said, I'm now the chaplain of the prison that helped my daddy for 17 years. You got to stay in the story.

We don't leave Afghanistan at this place in the story. We don't leave. We don't leave Somalia at Black Hawk Down. We've got to stay in God's story until he finishes the story.

And he doesn't finish it until Jesus comes.

And so that's, I guess if there's one thing that I would take from being overseas with my sweet wife and children and all co partners in this endeavor, is that being able to write yourself in God's story is a hoot. It's just something very, very special and to know that you're in God's story and you're not going to take yourself out of it.

And people say, aren't you glad to be back in America? I am so sorry that my body's worn out. I'm up to 33 surgeries and just had major, major back surgery and got all these rods and screws and everything.

And my biggest regret is, my gosh, brother, I can't go. I can't start over. I can't go again like we went before.

And yet we have generations now of young ladies and young men that we mentored in schools and colleges and seminaries. Now they're in these hard places with their children.

And I think one things that I've learned, I never expected to learn, that sending the sheep among wolves is a lot harder than being the sheep among wolves. If the church ever, ever truly understands the responsibility and the joy of the sender, it will either transform them or they'll stop sending.

That's why most of them have stopped sending. Because which is harder, dying on a cross or sending your only son to die on the cross? Of course, both of those are in the nature of God.

But I would rather go to a Somalia, a Kabul a thousand times than to have to send or get to send my kids there one time. Sending is the hardest thing. That's why what you do is so important. You're equipping people to go across the street and across the oceans.

And if you do what you, if you do well, what you're doing, you're going to be part of sending these sheep. You know, inner city Chicago, New York, just the hardest places on earth.

And sending our sons and daughters and our moms and dads, second career people to these hard places. Hardest thing I've ever done. I'm telling you, going is a joy. Sending is heartbreaking and hard.

I told you it was going to be convicting and we didn't even get to the half of it.

I really want you to come back and hear next week as we continue this story and we go, we probe even deeper in hearing how God used them, the experiences that they've gone through, and hearing about how people have suffered so greatly in places like Russia and China and in the Middle East. It's, it's really incredible and it's challenging and I guarantee it's going to help you grow.

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Kathy Brothers of Keller Williams Innovate and the Derek Eastman Insurance Agency.

If this episode has helped you so that you can water your world, then do me a favor, go online, hit that subscribe button, share this episode with other people and if you are able, go to our website, ApolloSwater.org hit that support support us button because we are a brand new ministry just on the Runway. We're starting to fly and that's where we need your help.

We need that Apollos Water family, wherever you are in the world to partner with us so that we can provide you with great water for your faith so that you might grow. I want to thank our Apollos water team, Kevin, Rebecca, Eliana, Anna Donovan and Melissa. Water your faith, water your world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered everybody.