BraveMen S3E79: The COPTIC 21: Martyrs / Heroes

On February the 15th, 2015, 21 men knelt on a beach in the southern coast of the Mediterranean sea. Those men, as they knelt, changed the course of human history. They said to each other this phrase, Yadrabai Yasu, O my Lord Jesus, Yadrabai Yasu. There were men who were twenty of them from the Coptic Egyptian Orthodox Church. One of those men had been in prison with the other twenty and had received Jesus Christ as their Savior. As these twenty one men knelt, there were assassins standing behind them. Perhaps you've seen the video, perhaps you've seen the photos. But those men on that day were men who have stirred my heart and men, I believe, who have stirred the hearts of millions and millions of people around the world. I want to memorialize those men today, and yet I want to celebrate their lives also, because those men, those are brave men. It's brave men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. You recall where you were when you saw the photos or heard of the terrible ordeal of those twenty one brave men. Perhaps you saw part of the video. There's a website called March of the Martyrs that shows an entire beautifully done video of those men being marched to their death. You see, they were men who had been brought as workers. They had come to Libya, and they were in the area of search, which is the capital, south of Libya, there in northern Libya, and they had come as workers, this day workers, and they had been captured by a group of militants that were part of ISIS, or wanted to be part of ISIS, and so they were doing things in that area to prove how worthy they were of being part of ISIS. That five-minute video of those men rocked the world, in fact it caused Egypt to go into Libya. Let me set the stage for you, and then talk about these 21 men, who are now saints of the orthodox church based in Egypt, and it's a fascinating background in this thing, is that that Gothic church came out of the work of the Apostle Mark, who was the first Christian Apostle to go to Egypt and share the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ back in around 85 AD. Following that over the next couple hundred years, the church began to grow, and then a series of different churches came up, this one being the most prominent, the Gothic orthodox church of Egypt, which now comprises about 15% of the population of Egypt, they are persecuted, they are under a lot of pressure, and that they stand strong. My question is, in a moment of pressure, Ephesians 6 says, having done all stand in a moment of pressure, how would you and I respond? You see Joseph that we've been studying in the power of potential on the Monday Night men, that's every Monday night at 9 p.m. on YouTube, and then it stays there, so you can go back through it, never quit, strong minute tough times, now power of potential, everything in life has potential, your dreams, the dreams you hold onto have the potential to change the future of the world. Joseph had a dream, 1700 years before Christ, and he never let go of that dream, and one of the things we talked about in last Monday night, in chapter 7 of the book is that Joseph's private philosophy determined his public performance. Joseph's private philosophy determined his public performance. We've talked about it before, it's in the book called, just a bartender, that what you put in your heart is what you'll eventually do with your hands. These 21 men as they knelt, you could see that what happened to them is they had something in their heart of faith in Christ, they were willing to give their lives for you, look at the photos of them, they're young men from Egypt, one of them from Ghana, one young man from Ghana had received Christ in prison, and he was not going to walk away from the other 20, so he was there also, those 21 men had something inside of them that said, we will not bow our knee to the gods of this radical Islam, we will not deny Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. I'm sure you've seen the photos, you need to go back and look at them again, let me set the stage, so 2011 Qaddafi who's ahead of Libya, who's a dictator, and a bad guy, almost gets captured instead, he basically commits suicide, he has one of his team kill him before they, before they capture him, in 2011 then Libya devolves into a series of different civil wars, tribal conflicts, ISIS comes in, militants, you name it, the place just goes chaotic, in the midst of this, in the capital cert, there's one group of ISIS-related militants, desiring to show their strength who began capturing people in about 2014, they capture them for the sake of a ransom, but then they decided let's do something big, so in December 2014 they began to capture just hundreds of workers who had come in to that area to help rebuild Libya, and then in January of 2015 they began to let them go one by one, if they would proclaim their allegiance to the god of the militant Islamic jihadists, and now, February, we're down to 21 men, 20, coptic orthodox Egyptian men, day workers, guys who'd come in in their 20s and 30s just to get a job to send money back to their family, to get some work so that they could provide, one man from Ghana who when he accepted Jesus Christ a profoundly impacted his life, so when they came to him and they said all you have to do is say this phrase is sentence of allegiance to our radical dogman, he wouldn't do it, and in that situation then they said well fine, you'll stay with him, he said I'll stay with him. On the 15th of February 2015, which now is a day of memorial and celebration for coptic orthodox Christians around the world, and is now a significant day for me personally. At that time, when I saw that, it was seared into my mind. February the 15th, they ran these men out onto a beach, they marched them out to do a public spectacle of killing them. They put them on this beach right across from a hotel in cert Libya. Those 21 men, it was amazing because when you watch them march out, they're not struggling, they're not pushing, they're not trying to get away, they're not doing it, they're literally with their hands and feet bound marching to their death knowing it. The captors, the militants, the jihadist militants had put them all in orange jumpsuits, orange prison guard, they did that to look like something that had been done to somebody in ISIS by another group and it was all, you know, it all spoke of something, it all had some sort of picture look for them, it meant something to them. And so they marched them out on those orange prison suits, 20 men dressed in all black, with just their eyes showing black from head top of their head to the bottom of their feet, all black, and anonymous assassins with sabers in their belt. And then one, their leader in camo gear, the man in camo, they lined them all up, the man in camo stood in the middle and they made all of those men kneel. Now they didn't struggle when they knelt. This is what has absolutely just hit me so hard. They didn't struggle knowing that they were kneeling to their death, they whispered to each other, they whispered to each other, yarrabah yassu, oh my Lord Jesus, quietly, and they knelt. On this beach insert under storm clouds and against roughen seas, these 21 men were lined up as trophies to the militants dogma, but they became trophies of grace. They were courageous men, they knelt down on that wet and cold ocean shore right on that beach, behind each man stood one of those men in black, then the man in camo did a big die tribe and yelling and speaking into the video. At the end of that, each of those men bowed their heads, giving their lives for Christ and those men took out their sabers. And as those knives sliced across their throats in unison, at that moment those courageous men went from the shores of Libya to the shores of heaven. Present with the Lord, heroes of faith, men in whom courage was evident in real. I never want to lose the look of that and the sound of that and the feel of that and my reaction, my initial reaction, never want to lose that. They're all lose that image because at that moment something shifted in my heart also. You know, when they show that now in memorial of them and they showed it on the 15th and now these men have been called saints and actually vested as saints in the Coptic Orthodox Church and their heroes of faith to you and me. Those 21 men, 21 saints, 21 heroes, 21 courageous men, 21 warriors of faith, 21 men who would not bow to the gods of this earth but gave their lives so that others would live because now he has stirred millions of people around the world into action. Why? Because faith isn't just something we say we are. Some faith is something we do. Hope isn't just a word. Hope is alive. Hope's name is Jesus. And it's alive in their hearts. Now when they show this video and they take the entire video and they show it on an iPad or on a screen or whatever, you know, all the different churches and the families listen to this. This is what absolutely just wrecked me. The families, the mom, the dad. First time I was shown in a church outside of Alexandria, a man stood up and said, that's my son. He walked up to the screen and pointed to the third man from the left and he said, that's my son and he turned with tears in his eyes and he said, look how brave he is. He didn't say I'm going to go kill those guys. I'm going to get them back. I'm going to kill every, you know, Muslim that I meet. He didn't do any of that. He said, look how courageous my son is. That's who he is. That's what I taught him. That's what was put into him as a young child as he memorized scripture as he learned the word of God. Kind of manner you and I raising up. What kind of manner are you and I? What happens when pressure comes? See, pressure doesn't make a man only reveals a man for who he really is. What happens when testing comes? What happens when when it's not comfortable anymore? His dad, Krinshaw, said he said, we've become a nation that's committed to comfort instead of being committed to conviction. Men, we've got to hold our convictions. My brothers, we have to be men who stand like these men who are willing to kneel that others might live. At the Christian men's network, because of this kind of stirring and because of what happened in Vietnam last September, we're over 24 hundred, 24 hundred pastors and leaders were trained. Because of that, we've launched the Dangerous Nations campaign focused on training 50,000 leaders and pastors over the next five years to disciple five million men in 50 of the toughest nations on earth. To that end, on February the 15th, we've put together a list of the 21 first nations we're going after. You'll get that in an email. If you're not on our email list, go to semen.men. You'll get information teaching like a what's up. The other things are going on like the majoring in men.com, majoring in men.com. It's an incredible site and tool for teaching and learning how to train and disciple men, how to build a men's ministry in your church. So the Dangerous Nations campaign, we've got a task force led by some key men like Dr. Rob Carmen and Dr. Doug Stringer and Walt Landers and others who are part of guiding this, gearing it up. We've already done one broadcast three nights, three mornings into Vietnam with 24 hundred leaders. The next targets are Iran, Nigeria, where Johnny Moore on a previous podcast talked about the things that are happening there. And so we're going after it. We can't get there in person for all of these, but we can put the gospel. We're using a number of different ways to partner with boots on the ground, men who are there, leaders who are already there, people who are already doing some things. We're partnering with those people in order to make it happen. Man, I just, this thing just wipes me out. The jihadist militants call these men their crime. Here was their crime. They are people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church. Brothers, thank you for letting me be just really personal today and share with you my heart on this thing. My, you know, my sensing, I wrote it down three years ago in a sort of a little dream. I write down things of the gods put in my heart and I dream of them and I hold on to them. And now it's become this and I didn't know it. It didn't have a name on it. This dream was, was how do we go to the streets of the young men in the world who are disaffected, who are in poverty? How do we help them? How do we go to their streets before they get militant and come to our streets? How do we go there to protect them? How do we go to other countries? And now God's giving us the strategy and the little notes that I wrote down and shared with Bishop Dale Bronner and some others of our executive board members. I just say this is a dream. I don't know when this is going to happen. Now here it is. The dangerous nations campaign. Go to seaman.men. You'll see more about it. We've got a download brochure that details it shows you how to be involved. And your gifts and your help, your financial support, your prayer support, make this thing happen. The 21. I will never, ever the rest of my life. Back off the passion of saying, you know, for those 21, for my friend Big Tommy, a great evangelist for Steve Solomon, for my other friends who have gone on before. Why would I back off? Why would I just retire or do? Why not refire, refocus, and go with a passion and great vigor after the cause of Christ? If we reach one more man, two more men, what if we, what if we actually train 50,000 pastors over the next five years? I think it's doable. The men involved with this thing, it's doable. I want you to pray believing it's going to happen. Man, let's get choked up. Hey, I love you. Thank God for you. We've got some great guests, great things going on with the podcast, with brave men, also with a majoring in men. Monday night men, power potential is just fantastic. I love you. Thank God for you. Remember hope is alive. Hope has a name. Hope's name is Jesus. I'm Paul Lewis Cole. Bless your work. You've just experienced brave men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian men's network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.