{"id":26333,"date":"2025-02-05T13:52:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T18:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=26333"},"modified":"2025-02-05T13:52:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T18:52:01","slug":"something-demonic-in-that-the-real-life-evil-driving-slaughter-horror-of-global-persecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/02\/something-demonic-in-that-the-real-life-evil-driving-slaughter-horror-of-global-persecution","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Something Demonic in That\u2019: The Real-Life Evil Driving Slaughter, Horror of Global Persecution"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_26339\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26339\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2025\/02\/Christian-Persecution_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26339\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2025\/02\/Christian-Persecution_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-26339\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>By all accounts, Christian persecution is worsening across the globe. Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at Christian Solidarity International, is among those who know the full extent of the issue, often observing its evils firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>And these diabolical infractions \u2014 from killings to land seizure to discrimination \u2014 have a rooting, Veldkamp believes, in the overarching spiritual battle between good and evil.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the way the Bible speaks about how the powers and the principalities operate is very important, because, what drives the powers and the principalities of the air \u2014 you might say, the evil spiritual powers of the world \u2014 is a desire to unseat God and to be the most powerful, the most important thing in the universe,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we see a lot of the temporal powers, so states, governments, terrorist groups, are driven by a similar desire \u2014 a desire for supremacy, a desire to remake the world the way they want to see it be remade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These individuals and groups will essentially \u201cgive themselves over to evil\u201d to achieve their stated goals and aspirations. The result of these tragic quests can often be seen in the deadly persecution observed in various nations across the globe.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to Veldkamp explain the role of evil in persecution:<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/2H3l7x09PFkOGfQ1tTMXlJ?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Among other examples, Veldkamp cited Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, landlocked region between Armenia and Azerbaijan that had long been steeped in Christian history and was populated by mostly Armenian Christians.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a place where there\u2019s 1,700 years of uninterrupted Christian history,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a place where some of the first translations of the Bible were made into languages outside of Greek. This is a place where just generations and generations of people have carried on the faith, and last year it was destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Veldkamp decried \u201can ethnic cleansing campaign by the dictatorship of Azerbaijan,\u201d which included a siege and military attack that eventually drove out the entire population.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAgain, I think there\u2019s something demonic in that we had a nine-month lead time on this,\u201d Veldkamp said. \u201cEveryone could see it happening. We could see it coming down the pike. We knew how this was going to end. And no one in the world seemed to be able to muster the political will to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The end result is the exile of these Armenian Christians and a loss of Christian history, with many lives upended in the process. Veldkamp said coping with so much suffering can be difficult.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes [I] get messages from people who have family members who are being held hostage in Azerbaijan right now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I feel really helpless, and at a loss of what to say \u2014 to comfort them. It can be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet Veldkamp finds solace in the Bible, where he sees people hundreds \u2014 and even thousands \u2014 of years ago facing the same pressures believers face today.<\/p>\n<p>Veldkamp described Scripture as often telling the \u201cstory of the people of God under pressure.\u201d And those pressures are still unfolding today in countries like North Korea, China, and Nigeria, among many others. And, tragically he said the problem is worsening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s getting worse for a few specific reasons,\u201d he said. \u201cBut mostly having to do with the increased competition and even wars that we\u2019re seeing between the superpowers now \u2014 between the U.S., Russia, and China, that are always competing for influence in different parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Veldkamp said the \u201cillusion of an international order\u201d that once persisted in the 1990s and beyond is \u201cstarting to come apart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDictators and terrorists feel fewer compunctions about carrying out their programs,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, in places like South Asia and Southeast Asia, we\u2019re seeing a lot of governments take steps to really restrict free practice of religion in ways they wouldn\u2019t have before. In Africa, we see that jihad is spreading from country to country, really piggybacking off of the conflict between Russia, and the U.S., and China for influence in Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the safeguards that once \u201crestrained human evil\u201d are no longer holding back the chaos, leading to a situation that gives little more than a \u201cgrim outlook,\u201d according to Veldkamp.<\/p>\n<p>Whether it\u2019s addressing Azerbaijan\u2019s horrors or deadly persecution in Nigeria, Veldkamp encouraged Christians and Americans more broadly to stand up and speak out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOften, U.S. policy towards these countries will just get set, and it\u2019s very difficult to change the policy once it\u2019s set,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re in a moment now where we can have some influence because we have a new president \u2026 there will be new policies, new policies are being formulated, and now is the time to raise our voice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Veldkamp continued, \u201cI would really encourage Christians, especially Christians who voted for President Trump to make their voices heard \u2026 tell [his team], \u2018I care about Nigeria. I care about Armenia. I care about Christians in Syria. I care about this issue.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.faithwire.com\/2025\/01\/22\/something-demonic-in-that-the-real-life-evil-driving-slaughter-horror-of-global-persecution\/\"><em>This article originally appeared on CBN\u2019s Faithwire.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By all accounts, Christian persecution is worsening across the globe. Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at Christian Solidarity International, is among those who know the full extent of the issue, often observing its evils firsthand. And these diabolical infractions \u2014 from killings to land seizure to discrimination \u2014 have a rooting, Veldkamp believes, in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":26339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u2018Something Demonic in That\u2019: The Real-Life Evil Driving Slaughter, Horror of Global Persecution<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/02\/something-demonic-in-that-the-real-life-evil-driving-slaughter-horror-of-global-persecution\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Something Demonic in That\u2019: The Real-Life Evil Driving Slaughter, Horror of Global Persecution\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By all accounts, Christian persecution is worsening across the globe. Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at Christian Solidarity International, is among those who know the full extent of the issue, often observing its evils firsthand. 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Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at Christian Solidarity International, is among those who know the full extent of the issue, often observing its evils firsthand. And these diabolical infractions \u2014 from killings to land seizure to discrimination \u2014 have a rooting, Veldkamp believes, in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/02\/something-demonic-in-that-the-real-life-evil-driving-slaughter-horror-of-global-persecution","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2025-02-05T18:52:01+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2025\/02\/Christian-Persecution_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Billy 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