Eritrea (MNN) — Three pastors in Eritrea are rounding out 2024 in prison, marking 20 years since their arrest and incarceration. They are among hundreds of other Christians imprisoned in that country, where the government can make arrests without warrant and deny trials to those imprisoned.

Todd Nettleton with Voice of the Martyrs USA says there are between 300 and 350 Christians currently jailed in Eritrea, a small country on the Horn of Africa. 

“None of them – not a single one of them – has had a trial. Not a single one of them has had a lawyer. In fact, not a single one of them has actually even been charged with a crime,” he says.

All three pastors were part of the Eritrean Orthodox Church. 

“And that is very significant,” Nettleton says, “because when the Eritrean government closed the Evangelical churches in 2002, one of the churches that they left open that was still legal was the Orthodox church.”

Flag of Eritrea, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Issues arose when the pastors abandoned their denomination’s standard use of an ancient language that only priests understood. They wanted to preach and teach the Word in the language of the general population. 

“That seems to be what got them sideways with the government,” Nettleton says. 

Nettleton recently interviewed the daughter of one of the pastors. Her name is Hana, and she was six years old when her father was arrested. That same year, she was detained by the police for attending a Sunday School gathering. 

“Not only does she have the understanding of persecution from her father going to prison. She has her own story,” Nettleton says. 

When asked how she manages to love her enemies, Nettleton says she responded: 

“Nobody ever asked me about my enemies until I came to America. In Eritrea, we don’t think of the government as our enemy. We just think that when you follow Jesus, you will have persecution.” 

It’s notable that these believers don’t focus on who is persecuting them, Nettleton says. Instead, they cling to the call of Christ. Hana has journal entries from her father that express his willingness to pay any price for the sake of following Jesus. Hear more of her story here. 

Please pray for the pastors to be released, along with the other believers imprisoned in Eritrea. Pray for their families to be strengthened in the meantime and for the church to grow in the face of persecution. Pray also that members of the Eritrean government would come to Christ.

Featured photo courtesy of pKral via Pixabay