By Riley Gonzalez –
As she went to pick up the dead body of her husband in a refugee camp in Nigeria in 2021, a woman was praying for the killers to get saved.
“She was asking Jesus to open their hearts for them to know Jesus the same way her husband did,” says Brad Brandon, CEO of missionary group Across Nigeria. “She’s truly the Elisabeth Elliot of northern Nigeria. I have no doubt that God will answer those prayers in the years to come.”
Nigeria is the most dangerous country for Christians currently. The Fulani, Boko Haram and IS West Africa Province are killing them with impunity, bringing about the worst genocide on the planet right now. At least 7,000 have been murdered this year.
On Saturday, President Trump threatened the Nigerian government, whom many see as complicit in the persecution of Christians. “If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
Bill Maher criticized on Sept. 26 all the people supposedly concerned about the “genocide” in Gaza because they don’t care about the actual genocide in Nigeria.
“Nigeria, the fact that this issue has not gotten on people’s radar, it’s pretty amazing,” Maher said. “If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck. You are in a bubble.
“I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria,” he added. “They’ve killed over 100,000 since 2009. They’ve burned 18,000 churches. These are the Islamists, Boko Haram. This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. Where are the kids protesting this? They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”
More than 15 million Christians have been displaced cumulatively since 2009, NGOs estimate.
Brandon agrees: “Nigeria is a killing field, and Christians are the prey.”
With 230M people, Nigeria is the sixth most populous nation in the world and most populated in Africa. About half of the population is Christian, but they live mostly in the southern part of the country. In the North, it’s 95% Muslim and part of the Sahel where radical Islam holds sway.
Across Nigeria helps persecuted converts and reaches out to Muslims through opening schools. It was started by Brandon in 2018 when he felt his relationship with Christ was growing stale as a successful pastor for 20 years in Connecticut. He got saved when he was seven.
Brandon spends half of the year in Nigeria. It’s a dangerous mission.
“We are sometimes 12 hours in to areas controlled by (the terror groups),” Bradon says. “There’s really no help that we’re going to be able to get if something happens.”
But the man is called.
“When you find your why – why you exist, nothing can stop you,” Brandon explains. “You continue to get back in the ring. Even if you’ve been knocked down a thousand times, you’ll crawl back in.”
Brandon’s wife is supportive and his adult son sits on the board of directors for the mission.
The Nigerian who was hacked to pieces by extremists (whose wife prayed for the killers) was a “scout” working for Across Africa.
“My grandkids think I’m Indiana Jones,” Brandon says. “I think that’s kind of cool.”
Related articles: The words you NEVER want to hear around radical Muslims, a silent genocide, guess which religious group is the ‘most persecuted.’ Source: CBN, others
