Day: 18

Darkness Descends

Abraham and his wife, Birtukan Abera, lived in Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country with a strong, expanding Muslim minority.

Abraham and Birtukan were both heavily involved in outreach to Muslims in Worabe, about three hours South of Addis Ababa. In 2010, they were stopped by three Muslim men while on the way home from praying for a sick man. The men dragged Abraham a short distance away from his wife, pulled out metal rods, and began beating him to death. Birtukan ran towards them, causing the assailants to turn on her.

They didn’t care that she was seven months pregnant.

Abraham was gravely injured. Both of his arms and legs were broken. He lay on the ground, groaning,

unable to help the love of his life, the woman he had vowed to love, honor, and protect. In tears, he could only watch as his wife and coming child were broken under the rods of the three men.

Consumed with hate, they beat her until she lay unconscious. When she blacked out, they turned back to beating Abraham until they broke both his hands and legs. Finally, they raised their machetes and brought them down on his head, killing him on the spot. A Muslim hospital worker who saw the evangelist’s body after Abraham and his wife were rushed to a hospital said, “I have never seen anyone killed in such a brutal way.”

A Widow’s Suffering

When Birtukan woke up in the hospital, she was surrounded by supportive friends and family. When she realized that Abraham wasn’t by her bedside, she understood the full meaning of his absence. The terror that gripped her heart at that moment was confirmed. Her friends and family told her that Abraham had been killed.

She was devastated by the news but thankful for the miraculous survival of her unborn child. After her release from the hospital, Birtukan moved to her mother’s communal home in a remote village. She lived there in the small thatched-grass house with ten other family members.

Comforting the Brokenhearted

In her mother’s village, Birtukan struggled with grief over her husband’s death. She questioned the goodness of God. She didn’t understand why he had taken Abraham from her, a man so intent on ministering to the region.

Eager to help ease her suffering, ICC visited Birtukan and met her immediate needs. When she learned that ICC had heard about her plight, that Christians from the West wanted to help her, she was overcome with relief and gratitude. She cried out in joy:

“Have the Christians in America really heard about me? Yesterday, I had cried out to God and said ‘Lord have I been forgotten? Is there anyone helping me?’ Then a man of God from our village prayed for me and said, ‘God will never forsake you.’  I believed that word. I was crying (out to God) yesterday and here you are today with the help I needed.”

ICC’s regional manager was in tears. He sat, comforting her, and explained how the Gospel had been advanced from one generation to the next through the sacrifices of the martyrs (like Abraham) over the centuries. He also emphasized that the Lord would never leave her.

Just days after our visit, Birtukan gave birth to a baby girl.

Sustaining the Widow

The Bible clearly reveals our Father’s heart for the widow and the fatherless. We knew Birtukan and her baby were precious in the sight of our God, who “defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:18). He tells us that true religion is “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

Given Birtukan’s status as a martyr’s widow, ICC purchased three cows and built a home for her. The cows provided her and her daughter with income through breeding and milk sales, and the home sheltered them in Abraham’s absence.

She was deeply, deeply touched by the care of her brothers and sisters throughout the world who answered her cries to the Father. Birtukan expressed a great desire that “God would remember those who had helped her in their time of need!”

She told us that she had named her baby Berhane. When we asked her why she chose that name, she said,

“I named her Berhane — it means light – because the shedding of her father’s blood has shed the light of the Gospel on the Muslims in the city where he gave his life.”

The Light Spreads

There was a very prophetic aspect to her choosing the name Berhane, and that became clear a year after her birth when we learned more about the effect that Abraham’s murder had on his community.

Abraham was killed because of his zeal to bring the light into the darkness of Worabe. He was too successful in reaching Muslims with the message of Jesus. I’m sure those who murdered him felt they had extinguished his light and that his work would stop with him.

They were wrong.

Following his death, numerous Christian leaders in the city were challenged by his example and sacrifice and vowed to continue his work. Church leaders began exporting the gospel to Muslim regions on a far larger scale. Rather than retreating from Jesus’s Great Commission in fear, they were emboldened and determined to preach the gospel, even if cost them their lives. One church leader told us that many Christians in the area, who are often pressured to convert to Islam, have said they would rather die than abandon their faith.

Seeds

Tertullian famously said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” and Abraham’s life is a clear example of these words.

Many Christians cower after the murder of their brother, gripped by fear. But the death of a martyr lights a fuse in a special few. The Lord always sets a few hearts ablaze following the death of a martyr. After all, He owns their hearts. They pick up the baton of their fallen brother and race to the frontlines. When the masses see someone living for eternity, they become encouraged to live for eternity and join the fight.

This is the way it happens, again and again. However, the “Herods” of this world, Satan’s agents, can never grasp it.

Jesus told us long ago that He is the light. Darkness cannot extinguish Him (the light), even though He would allow the darkness to destroy His body.

That dynamic is being played out today in the lives of the martyrs. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since we (“the body”) have replaced the physical body that was destroyed.

So, when the martyr is killed, his death is nothing more than the blowing of the wind on the dandelion. The seeds lift off the dead and dried flower and scatter far and wide into the fertile soil of broken hearts. And where there was one, now there are many!