Persecution Index: A Reminder to Pray for the Persecuted Church

Christianity Today has an article reporting on the annual persecution statistics put out by Open Door. We ought to remember to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world.

Here are some of the excerpts  from Christianity Today's report:

More than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith last year, up drastically from 4,344 in 2014 and 2,123 in 2013. Those numbers don’t include North Korea or parts of Iraq and Syria, where accurate numbers are hard to obtain... 

Violent Islamic extremism was the main culprit, "with its rise being the lead generator of persecution for 35 out of the 50 nations on the list," stated Open Doors. "Its two hubs are in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, regions where persecution has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing." ... 

In addition to death and destruction, Islamic extremists caused the displacement of thousands of Christians. Syria’s largest Christian city, Aleppo, saw its Christian population shrink from 400,000 to 60,000, while more than 1 million refugees fled from the Horn of Africa and the Middle East to Europe, Open Doors said. ... 

North Korea remained the No. 1 perpetrator of persecution in 2015, as it has since the WWL [World Watch List] began 14 years ago. Up to 70,000 Christians are in labor camps there, Open Doors said. ... 

The authoritarian Eritrean regime "has consistently supported the rise and spread of radical Islam in the Horn of Africa," Open Doors said. Of the 15,000 Eritrean refugees resettled in the US in the past 12 years, 85 percent were Christians.
"Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants routinely are tortured and pressed to recant their faith," wrote Robert George and Thomas Reese, members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), for the Christian Science Monitor.

You can (and should) read the article or at least take a look at the chart Open Door put out to see where most of the persecution is happening so you can pray more intelligently for our brothers and sisters as well as their persecutors.