Patriot Games
Patriot Games
Defiant Faith: Nicaragua Christian Persecutions
When the skies opened with relentless rain over Nicaragua, it wasn't just water that poured down—it was also a deluge of prayers from a million voices united in faith. In our latest episode, we recount the stirring saga of Mountain Gateway and Shake the Nations, whose prayer crusades became a beacon of hope amidst political turbulence. Yet, even as their spiritual fervor withstood the storms, the hearts of local pastors were tested by the claws of persecution, leading to a trial that shook us to the core. With a dear friend among the imprisoned, we lay bare the personal connections and the devastating impact of a regime intent on silencing the devout.
As these courageous pastors face an uncertain future, echoes of support resound from the halls of the U.S. Congress, with leaders like Congressman Barry Moore and Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio standing in solidarity. We unveil the international efforts to champion their cause, sharing plans for an imminent journey to Central America to strengthen the cries for justice. Our voices merge in a solemn prayer for the convicted and their kin, holding onto hope for a swift resolution. Join us as we navigate the tumultuous waters of legal battles and political strife, standing unwaveringly with those who have risked it all for their faith.
No matter where you are, you are being watched. In today's world, no one is off the grid. Existing in the modern world has been forever changed. What's out there? Most people don't want to know, but you are about to get clued in. This is Patriot Games. We'll explore different intelligence techniques, spycraft and the latest cutting-edge technology that will blow your mind. We'll introduce you to pros who've spent careers in the Intel community With incredible stories. We'll expose it all. Welcome to Patriot Games. And now your host, greg Phillips.
Speaker 2:Hey folks, it's Greg Phillips. Welcome back to Patriot Games. I'm going to give you an update today on the situation in Nicaragua. Hearts are heavy. We have learned that that the court has basically completed a sham trial. They brought them in. They were given very little time, if no time, to react to the charges themselves. They spread the trial out over a few days. The total number of hours in the trial, though, was less than seven across the three days, and they have convicted them all.
Speaker 2:And just to kind of remind everyone, if I could, what exactly happened, so we got involved with a group called Shake the Nations and another one called Mountain Gateway. Mountain Gateway is an amazing group of missionaries that is really all throughout Central America. They're based in the United States, a place called Dripping Springs, texas, not too far from Austin, and the Mountain Gateway team, along with the Shake the Nations team, got together, with some support from Americans, and built a mechanism through which they could build on to the missionary work and the mission field work that was being done and do a prayer crusade. This was spread out over 2023. It was two nights each, eight events, so a total of 16 nights, and they brought in over a million people. Even the last night, the last two nights in Minagua, over 300,000 people came to the event.
Speaker 2:So Catherine and I got involved in this, went down to Nicaragua a couple of different times, flew up into the mountains, was able to join just an incredible group of people who had come together. Literally hundreds of pastors across Nicaragua came together to support this effort and while they were from maybe slightly different denominations and certainly different church setups, they were able to really bring all of these people together. And the just the first day we were there, we had an opportunity to go to a lunch. And what the lunch was? It was on a Thursday afternoon and we flew up into the mountains. As I said, when we got there, the government of course, had their eyes on us, their Sandinista signs all over the place. They were flying drones over us over our helicopter, kind of watching where we were going. We went to a lunch with a group of pastors the food was great, by the way, and they prayed and they all just came together in worship and it was the most amazing thing and they treated us like we'd been their best friends the whole time and took such good care of us and there was so much love and care in the room. They took the time out to pray for me and my health and it was just, really just an incredible adventure.
Speaker 2:The next night went to a little place called Messiah, nicaragua, on a Friday night, and, man, it poured like you've never seen before. Thunderstorms just rain, rain, rain. The field, as I tell everybody now, you could literally feel the blood of Christ in that muddy field. And as that rain came down and the storm went on and the lightning and everything kind of boomed in, the people just came closer to the stage and when I first saw the drone pictures that emerged from that event, I was so blown away because from the stage you could see it, but it also also bent up around a corner, kind of dog lagged around and you couldn't see. So to us it looked like 40 or 50,000 people, but there were another 40,000 people kind of around the corner, if you will, and it was amazing. The next night was equally amazing. The folks that were involved. Again, they prayed for me and we saw healings and we saw Just people being saved by the hundreds and it was just an incredible adventure.
Speaker 2:We had the great fortune then to go back again when they were in Managua. Managua was the last night. It was on November 10th and 11th. On November 10th, I think I heard there was 210,000 people the first night and the second night was over 300,000 is the estimate. The second night I went walking out into the crowd, much to the chagrin of the security teams, and just walked as far as you could walk and I ended up walking down a boulevard that was just full of people. I think I walked a half a mile or a mile or so and people on this boulevard that fed the National Square couldn't get there because there were so many people. And it was just fantastic. I mean, I had no fear, I had no concern really, certainly not over my own safety but of anyone else who was just such a loving, incredible experience. And the second night, in retrospect, there were some red flags. As you look out into even some of our pictures and some of our video, you could tell that there was an intelligence operation ongoing in the crowd and really trying to keep it high on us. There was also some evidence of satanic activity, but we just kept praying and they kept praying and the folks kept moving closer and there was just joyful music and it was just an incredible adventure.
Speaker 2:A month later, almost exactly a month later, all of the pastors that had been involved in the organization of all of this throughout the period in 2023 were arrested and thrown into a dungeon beneath the police station in Minagua. It was heartbreaking, to say the least. Not long after that, the main guy, someone who befriended me, and he and I just became his friends and we shared gifts with each other before I left, and it was just. He was just a super incredible person who had lived a life very much like mine, but imagine living that in a communist country. Jesus saved him and he turned into just an incredible minister, an incredible missionary and a guy willing to risk his life to have others be saved by our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:And they tried to break him while he was in the dungeon. He wouldn't. So they went out and picked up his wife, who had the high crime of taking care of some of the books around all of this, because it was just a huge set of events and if you've ever done events, you can imagine just how much bookkeeping goes on around that kind of thing. And that was her. That was her crime. Well, they picked her up and brought her into court to charge her with some stupid charges that no one still to this day exactly knows what charges were. And they did a wellness video based wellness check on her the first time. It looked to the observers as though she had been tortured, raped, beaten to the point where she couldn't even stand. And the hard part for those of us that knew the family is she had at the time a three month old, so she was the mama of a three month old still nursing the baby, and they picked her up and did that tour. It's heartbreaking to really know that this has gone on and remember all of this has happened since December. They charged them but they never would read what the charges were, just as the trial was starting. A week or so ago they finally read the charges to them. Completely absurd, absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2:We have been in DC off and on almost gosh, I guess for about a month and just an incredible outpouring of bipartisan support. There've been Republicans, democrats, black White. Nothing has really mattered here. The administration has been great Homeland Security and the State Department and others. There are major law firms that are basically lobbyists in DC that are getting involved in this and there's been a pretty sharply worded letter to the Nick Rogwin embassy from a bunch of Congress people and I don't know whether they actually answered that or not.
Speaker 2:Typically, these communist organizations don't answer anything. They don't answer to God. They don't answer, or at least in their view they don't answer to God. They're gonna answer to God. I can assure you that Judgment day is gonna be really hard on these folks. The other thing that's happened recently is a resolution has made its way it looks like it's making its way through the house and a companion in the Senate and it's very exciting to know that that's happening. My friend, barry Moore, congressman in South Alabama, has led the house side of that and I understand that Rick Scott is leading the Senate side of that, along with another Florida senator, mark Rubio, and they're pushing this resolution through and normally things take year or years and I'm hopeful that they're gonna get that done here in the next couple of weeks. So we have all that going on while the trial is happening. So all of that's going on.
Speaker 2:They go in there the first day. The trial's absolutely bogus. They don't get to speak. They don't even get to hear the charges. Until they go in there, the government puts on their witnesses a couple days later. It's a couple of people that just they had nothing to do with anything. They were just people that had shown up to have the people arrested, and what we thought was the final day of the trial was last Friday, and then they broke it off. Finally, let the people that were detained let the lawyer speak for a little bit, and while the lawyer did their best, she was really unable to move a court that was dead set on what inevitably happened. So they reconvened this past Monday and then just abruptly adjourned. They brought it back in yesterday and found them all guilty and we understand that they're going to be announcing their sentences. So what we have right now is we have, I think, 12 pastors, one pastor's wife, also a bookkeeper. All have now been convicted.
Speaker 2:The babies, we understand, are safe now with their grandmother and Nicaragua, but we are working with really everybody everybody on the planet, it feels like to try to find a way to get the babies out. Tomorrow's sentencing, I think, is going to be difficult. It's going to be hard to hear and I just the reason. I wanted to just hop on and share this podcast and we may not even post it till tomorrow. I don't quite know how we're going to do this, but this is a time where, where I think that Jesus is really hoping and and and leading us to cry out to him and the father and we, we still fight this thing out here on this dirt earth and we're not given up by any stretch. There's a lot, of, a lot of dominoes still to fall here. We've got some great attorneys that are supporting us, not only in DC, but another friend of ours is helping us with the possibility, if maybe they're exiled or something, maybe we can help with that. We're looking hard at the safety of the kids and what we can do to ensure that these two young American citizens are brought back to the United States and in safety.
Speaker 2:And again, I think just praying for Walner and Marcella by the parents of the babies and paying for the rest of the pastors is desperately needed at this time. And I'm leaving for Central America here pretty quick and I'll try to give an update while I'm on the road. We're trying to rally the support of others in in Central America. They might be able to help. And we've got it. Just as I said, we have a tremendous number of people willing and able to step up right now and really step into this terrible situation in which these amazing pastors and these people who had the absolute audacity to spread the word of the gospel and the word of the Lord to the people in Nicaragua, saving millions, healing thousands, and this is what they get, and I know the Bible is pretty pointed on this fact that you know we will all be persecuted for his name.
Speaker 2:When it happens in this way, it's hard to see and it's hard to hard to unsee. It's hard to imagine that our friends Walner and Marcel and their two babies are put in this peril, and so I'm struggling a lot with it. But, as I said, we're doing all that we can. Everybody is. There's been just huge outpouring. But the one thing I would just ask you now if you could just just close your eyes and bow your heads and pray with me for these amazing people, and I'll get you an update as soon as the actual sentencing happens, and then, once we get a little tighter grip on what the final outcome is, I'll let you know. With that, please pray with me.
Speaker 2:Dear God, we're coming to you today with heavy hearts, thinking about our friends, their families, the pastors who are growing through this terrible and difficult time because they had the audacity to believe in you. They're in jail and we'll soon find out what their punishment will be. It's so hurtful and so hard and and people everywhere are watching and in in praying to you for just your grace and and and saving that not just the babies but but all of the pastors and all of those that are involved. We pray that you give them strength and courage. Help them feel your love and comfort, especially now when things are so hard, so difficult, so scary. Help them remember that you're always with them, no matter what. We also ask that you help guide these judges and the people in charge to be fair, to be kind, to open their hearts so that they can see that that punishment Someone for loving you just isn't right. Please watch over their families of those who are in trouble. Give them hope, peace and let them feel the support and prayers of the people all around the world and all around your kingdom.
Speaker 2:We believe that you do amazing things, god. We trust that you take care of our friends and their families. Thank you for always listening to our prayers. In Jesus' name, pray, amen. Again, thank you so much for listening in. In this special update about Nekaragua, I will I will try to get a live update for you as it unfolds. God bless you all. Thank you so much for sticking with us during this tough time and God bless you and God bless America.
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