A Message From Our President
It was a dark year in the places we serve.
War pressed in on Iran.
Lebanon kept buckling under crisis.
Nigeria buried its own, whole families in some cases.
In Sudan, believers we now serve were disowned, beaten, and threatened with death by their own families for following Christ. Yet even there, they continued translating Scripture and sharing the hope of Christ with those around them.
From that darkness, our brothers and sisters did not run. Instead, they chose to shine.
Jesus said in John 1:5, “The light shines in darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.” We didn’t just read those words this year. We saw them lived out every day.
In a Yemeni jail cell, a believer scratched the name of Jesus into the wall with a nail. The guard watched him finish before saying a word. Later, four imprisoned believers discovered they were not alone; they had each thought they were the only Christian there.
This year, together,
- we reached 121,000 people across countries.
- 2,185 came to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
- 224 were baptized.
Behind every number is a person — a brother or sister in Christ — who chose to stand firm rather than walk away from their faith.
This is what your partnership made possible. Not an easier road, but faithful endurance. Your generosity didn’t make persecution disappear. It strengthened believers to stand firm in the middle of it.
None of this happened apart from you.
Because you chose to stand with persecuted believers, I can write to you today with hope instead of despair. Across 18 countries, God’s light shines in some of the darkest places on earth, and your generosity is part of that story.
The pages that follow in our Annual Report share stories of just a few of the lives you changed; showing Light in the Darkness!
Joshua Youssef
President and CEO
Help The Persecuted is an accredited member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an Excellence in Giving Certified Transparent Charity, and is Certified Platinum Transparent by Candid.
Help The Persecuted is a proud member of the Religious Liberty Partnership (RLP). RLP is a collaborative effort of Christian organizations from every continent focused on religious liberty for all.
THE HELP THE PERSECUTED LOGO
The Tau-Rho symbol is the earliest artistic depiction of the crucifixion. It combines the Greek letter Rho with a cross bar, presenting the image of a man on a cross. In early Christian writings (including some of the earliest manuscripts) the translators used this symbol to represent “the cross” and “the crucifixion”.
This Tau-Rho symbol pre-dates the Chi Rho symbol which was adopted some 150 years later by Constantine. Later came the Iota and Eta Christogram. Clement of Alexandria was one of the first to reference this. It is the Greek letters Iota (I) and ETA (H) which are the first two letters of Jesus’s name.
Around the 4th Century, a symbol known as Chi Rho was used by Constantine. It took the first two Greek letters of Christ - Chi (X) and Rho (P) - and placed them atop one another. This was a much different time in the life of the church, persecution virtually comes to a halt due to Constantine’s embrace of Christianity. The first 300 years of the church were marked by periods of intense persecution and the symbols above were more subversive than we now view them. They stood against Caesar worship and pagan practice. We find them now scribbled on cave walls where believers worshiped in secret.
Our logo is a reminder that our salvation was purchased by the ultimate persecution on the cross, and that we stand historically and presently with our brothers and sisters who, even now, cry out - “How Long O Lord?” - Revelation 6:10.jpg?width=306&height=172&name=image%20(1).jpg)