God's Hostage

Andrew Brunson

Description

In 1993, Andrew Brunson was asked to travel to Turkey, the largest unevangelized country in the world, to serve as a missionary. Though hesitant because of the daunting and dangerous task that lay ahead, Andrew and his wife, Norine, believed this was God's plan for them.What followed was a string of threats and attacks, but also successes in starting new churches in a place where many people had never met a Christian. As their work with refugees from Syria, including Kurds, gained attention and suspicion, Andrew and Norine acknowledged the threat but accepted the risk, determining to stay unless God told them to leave.In 2016, they were arrested. Though the State eventually released Norine, who remained in Turkey, Andrew was imprisoned. Accused of being a spy and being among the plotters of the attempted coup, he became a political pawn whose story soon became known around the world.God's Hostage is the incredible true story of his imprisonment, his brokenness, and his eventual freedom. Anyone with a heart for missions, especially to the Muslim world, will love this tension-laden and faith-laced book.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493421619
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2019 by Andrew Brunson
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2161-9
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Some names and details of the people and situations described in this book have been changed or presented in composite form in order to ensure the privacy of the individuals involved.
Dedication
To our beautiful children—
Jordan, Jacqueline and Kevin, and Blaise
And to our Christian brothers and sisters in Turkey—
The prayer I prayed often for myself and over my family while in prison
I now pray for you as well:
Father God, pour out on your sons and daughters the courage, the strength, the confidence, the perseverance, the endurance, and the steadfastness of Jesus, that we may run the race set before us and finish well, purified in the fires of faithful obedience, tested and found worthy of Jesus, the King of Glory .
Contents
Cover 1
Half Title Page 2
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Dedication 5
Acknowledgments 9
Part One 13
1. Time to Come Home 15
2. The Arrest 23
3. Locked Away 33
4. Ripped Apart 43
Part Two 53
5. Alone 55
6. Holding On 61
7. Just Breathe 71
8. The Wolf 79
Part Three 89
9. The First Night 91
10. Meltdown 97
11. The Cruelest Whisper 107
12. The Mouth of Hell 115
Part Four 123
13. The Shark 125
14. A Furnace of Fears 135
15. The Valley of Dry Bones 143
Part Five 149
16. Maximum Security 151
17. A New Trajectory 159
18. Heartsong 169
Part Six 179
19. Back to the Pit 181
20. On Trial 189
21. False Witnesses 199
22. The Hostage 205
Part Seven 215
23. Broken Deal 217
24. The Brunson Crisis 225
25. Thirty-Nine Hours 233
Epilogue 243
“Worthy of My All” 249
Notes 251
Back Ads 255
Cover Flaps 257
Back Cover 258
Acknowledgments
This is inevitably an incomplete list. Norine and I have not included everyone we want to thank, and beyond this, there are many who did things we are not even aware of. Throughout this process we have come to see that God has many of his people in places of influence and that he has many who know those in places of influence.
SO MANY IN THE WHITE HOUSE and the State Department did so much for us. Our thanks to the consular staff in Turkey for their faithful visits (and magazines!)—Norman Pflanz, Aroosha Rana, and especially Martin Thomen.
Chargé d’Affaires Phil Kosnett and his staff in Ankara went above and beyond for me and, along with his wife, Alison, provided support to Norine. Norine was released shortly after Phil met with the Turkish deputy prime minister. Jeffrey Hovenier was focused and engaged from the minute he took over as chargé d’affaires.
Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell fought hard for us, and Ambassador Sam Brownback came to my trial and advocated for me.
We are grateful for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s interest and commitment to action on our behalf, and to Vice President Mike Pence for being “on to this” from early on and giving such personal attention throughout.
President Donald Trump intervened for me again and again, taking unprecedented steps to secure my release.
WE ARE DEEPLY GRATEFUL to the many senators and members of the House of Representatives who monitored my situation and signed letters to the Turkish government requesting my release. In a time of sharp political division this was truly a bipartisan effort.
Senator Bob Corker was the first to raise my case to the highest levels of the Turkish government, and he organized a letter to President Erdogan from the Senate and then a second one from the Senate and House.
We were told that Senator James Lankford was “our hero on the Hill.” Early on he met with the Turkish minister of justice, brought media attention to my plight, and throughout my imprisonment never stopped looking for ways to bring me home.
Senator Thom Tillis was tenacious. He visited me in prison, attended my first trial session, and made many speeches on the Senate floor that kept my name before his colleagues.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen was also committed to getting me out. Together with Senators Lankford and Tillis she introduced a bill to block the delivery to Turkey of the F-35 fighter planes in relation to my detention. Along with Senator Lindsey Graham she met with President Erdogan and then visited me in prison.
We are grateful to the office staff of these senators.
THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION on International Religious Freedom took up my case. Commissioners Sandy Jolley and Kristina Arriaga visited me in prison, Kristina returned for one of my court sessions, and Tony Perkins was at my last hearing and escorted us back to the US.
Our deep thanks to Erik Bethel at the World Bank.
Help also came from other governments, including Hungary, Israel, Canada, Monaco, Mauritania, and Sudan. In the European Parliament, ninety-ight MEPs from twenty-one countries wrote to President Erdogan urging him to release me.
THE AMERICAN CENTER for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, and our US attorney CeCe Heil in particular, were relentless in fighting for us. CeCe was truly available for us 24/7.
Middle East Concern, especially through Rob D., advocated and raised prayer for us in countries outside the US and provided much personal encouragement. Other advocacy groups and individuals also took on the challenge, including Rights & Resolution Advocates, Mark Siljander, Mark Finlay, Michael Bradle, Isaac Six, and Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. My good friend Dan Slade, coordinator of Partners in Harvest, did many things behind the scenes. Jeff Jeremiah, coordinator for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, worked tirelessly on our behalf. Someone described him as latching on and not letting go. Norine’s younger brother spent an enormous amount of time in the fight for me.
There are some who asked not to be named. You know who you are. Thank you.
HOW CAN WE THANK our worldwide family of believers? Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox on every continent prayed, fasted, wrote letters, and prayed some more—some even facing persecution themselves. It was through their prayers that all the pieces moved for my release. A special thanks to children and teenagers who prayed and fasted, giving up meals, sweets, and electronics! We thank sunny Jayne for walking through this trial with Norine. The support from our brothers and sisters in Turkey who stood with us was especially meaningful. We were not alone.
Part One
1 Time to Come Home
I was shaving when all of this started. Just standing in front of the fogged-up bathroom mirror in our apartment, barely noticing the typical sounds of hustle and bustle and traffic that drifted up from the narrow streets below. The city and I were both getting ready for an ordinary day that lay ahead.
That’s when it hit me.
A thought, from out of the blue.
It’s time to come home.
It startled me, and I jerked to a stop. I warily hit rewind in my mind. What had I just heard? It made no sense. I’m an American, but the day I stood in front of that bathroom mirror I did not think of the US as my home. Turkey was home. When we had bought this condo two years earlier, we knew that our knees could handle climbing to the fourth floor with no elevator, but we wondered if we would still be able to do it twenty years later. We were here for life.
It’s time to come home.
My heart started to beat faster, because suddenly I feared that I knew what these words meant. I did not even want to think about the implications. I was home already. But my faith tells me that there is another home where I’m ultimately going. Could God be telling me it was time for me to die—time to come home to heaven?
It’s time to come home.
I rebuked the thought. This can’t be God. There are so many things left to do. No—it can’t be time for me to die . . .
FOR TWENTY-THREE YEARS Norine and I had been living and working in Turkey.
We had met in the library at Wheaton College. Norine was there to study, while I was there looking for girls who were studying! I was determined to marry only someone who was willing to be a missionary. From the time I was a child I had a strong sense of call to missions that went all the way back to Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China. When he was an old man, a mother took her two young sons to him and asked that he pray and set them aside for missions. They did become missionaries, and when one of them, Stanley Soltau, was an old man, my mother took me and my sister to him. She asked that he do for us what Hudson Taylor had done for him, and so he did. Because I was acting up I got a spanking, which marked the day for me. I was three years old, and I never forgot. I’m sure God put something in me that day that eventually took me to Turkey with Norine.
We arrived to Istanbul in 1993 and eventually settled in Izmir. We had started churches, hosted national conferences, set up a hous