(End of the American Dream)—There are about 8 billion people living in our world today, and well over half of them live in a country where Christians are being persecuted. Of course that would come as quite a shock to the vast majority of the Christians that are living in the western world, because they never hear much about the nightmarish things that are being done to Christians in nations such as China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and North Korea.
Globally, the persecution of Christians is getting worse with each passing year, but since the mainstream media mostly ignores what is going on most of us just assume that it really isn’t a big deal. But the truth is that what is being done to our brothers and sisters all over the world is absolutely horrifying.
There are 1.4 billion people living in China today. Children under 18 are constitutionally prohibited from attending church, and adults are only allowed to attend state-controlled churches that are very tightly restricted.
Underground churches are very popular, but those that lead those underground churches can be grabbed by the government at any time. In fact, dozens of Chinese pastors were just rounded up…
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018.
The detentions, which come amid renewed China-U.S. tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called on Sunday for the pastors’ immediate release.
Pastor Jin Mingri, the founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said his daughter, Grace Jin, and a church spokesperson, Sean Long.
Sharing the gospel on the Internet is a crime in China, and that is apparently what these pastors are being charged with…
Under the Chinese Communist Party’s absolutist Code of Conduct for Religious Clergy on the Internet, Jin & Co. stand accused of “suspicion of the illegal use of information networks” for the “illegal dissemination of religion information.”
That is, preaching the Gospel online is a crime in Xi’s China; these pastors are now at risk of years-long detention, often without charge or trial, and likely abuse if not torture while locked up.
India also has a population of 1.4 billion, and Christianity has become very popular there in recent decades.
Unfortunately, those that do choose to go to church in India do so with the realization that they could be attacked by Hindu extremists at any moment…
Hindu extremists in central India ransacked a church’s worship building, burned Bibles and assaulted every member, causing one to lose consciousness, sources said.
In Chhattisgarh state’s Dhamtari District, the Hindu nationalists attacked during the independent Penial Prayer Fellowship’s worship service in Borsi village, said Pastor Wakish Sahu, who leads the church along with his 57-year-old father, Mannohan Sahu.
“They forcibly entered the church, disrupted the worship service and were carrying wooden rods and shouting slogans like ‘Jai Shri Ram’ [Hail lord Rama],” Pastor Wakish Sahu told Morning Star News.
Threatening the Christians, the attackers told them to stop gathering for worship, he said. They broke all the chairs, fans and musical instruments, then collected all of the Christian literature along with the Bibles and burned them.
Sadly, this was not an isolated incident.
In the state of Manipur alone, literally hundreds of churches have been burned to the ground during the past couple of years…
Tomas (not his real name) is a church minister in Manipur, Northeast India. He had teary eyes when he recalled what happened on May 3, 2023.
“I have never seen such violence in my lifetime,” he said. “They systematically ransacked our places. That first night, they burnt down a church nearby. The sky turned red by flames.”
A few months later, it was reported that 250 churches of different denominations had been burnt. For several weeks, the manhunt continued.
Over 100 people died. The trauma is unimaginable, especially among women and children.
Indonesia has a total population of 283 million people, and 220 million of them are Muslims.
Christians are very much in the minority, and Islamic extremist groups “have encouraged and engaged in violence against Christians”…
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with a total of more than 220 million Muslims, or about 13 percent of the world’s Muslim population. While most Indonesian Muslims practice an animistic and superstitious version of Islam known as “folk” Islam, proponents of Islamic extremism have encouraged and engaged in violence against Christians. The wickedness of these attacks has led many Muslims to question Islam and to be more open to the gospel.
There are 232 million precious people that live in Nigeria, and I recently wrote an entire article about the genocide of Christians that is currently taking place in that nation.
Radical Islamists regularly attack Christian communities, and the death toll has been catastrophic…
According to a report issued in August by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), an African nongovernmental group that documents human rights violations, in the first seven months of this year alone, more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria.
Christians of various denominations and moderate Muslims regularly die at the hands of Boko Haram, Fulani militants and other violent actors.
Numbers vary and are difficult to verify, but between 2009 and 2023 in Nigeria, Intersociety reports at least 52,000 Christians killed, 18,500 abducted and unlikely to have survived, and more than 20,000 churches and Christian schools attacked.
Throughout the Middle East, if a Muslim converts to Christianity it can be considered blasphemy.
One of the countries where blasphemy can result in a death sentence is Pakistan. 251 million people live in that nation, and those that are already Christians are often given the most degrading jobs…
In predominantly Muslim Pakistan, blasphemy laws are egregiously used to target and punish Christians for following Jesus. Christ followers are often discriminated against and not given equal opportunities in employment. Jobs like sewer maintenance and street sweepers are typically reserved for Christians, and believers are jailed for their faith if they are found to have violated the nation’s strict blasphemy laws.
Afghanistan has a population of 42 million, and it is right next door to Pakistan.
Ever since the Taliban took control again, things have gotten much worse for Afghan believers…
For Christians who converted from Islam, publicly affirming their faith in Afghanistan has always been in danger. Since the return of the Taliban on August 15, 2021, it is even more dangerous. The Taliban regime believes that formally converting from Islam to Christianity deserves the death penalty.
Their threats are fierce. Christians in Afghanistan are forced to keep their faith underground. They fear detention, torture or even a death sentence.
Iran borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It has a population of 91 million, and converting to Christianity is strictly forbidden…
In Iran, the Christian faith is tolerated only to a certain extent, primarily among historical Armenian and Assyrian communities. However, converting to Christianity from Islam is considered apostasy and can lead to severe punishment, including death. Christians often face arbitrary arrests and are prohibited from sharing their faith with Muslims.
I couldn’t conclude this article without including North Korea. It has a population of 26 million, and the Christian faith is not tolerated at all.
In fact, if you are discovered to be a Christian, you and your entire family could be shipped off to a concentration camp where you will be worked until you drop dead…
If your Christian faith is discovered in North Korea, you could be killed on the spot. If you aren’t killed, you will be deported to a labour camp and treated as a political criminal. You will be punished with years of hard labour that few survive. And it’s not only you who will be punished: North Korean authorities are likely to round up your extended family and punish them too, even if your family members aren’t Christians.
There is no church life in North Korea. It’s impossible to gather for worship or prayer, and even secret worship and prayer is at great risk. Official spies could inform on you, if they have any indication that you are a Christian, and so could your neighbours or teachers.
So far in this article I have discussed 8 countries that have a total population of 3.7 billion, and I haven’t even mentioned dozens of other countries where Christianity is either illegal or very highly restricted.
Here in the United States, we are still free to worship as we please, but our moral standards are eroding at a very rapid pace…
Only 43% of these churchgoers now call themselves “pro-life,” down sharply from 63% in 2023. When it came to the traditional (biblical) view of family, 46% believe it is a marriage between one man and one woman with children. However, that number is even lower (34%) among Gen Z.
The three groups with the strongest support for the biblical idea of family were Asian believers (55%), Pentecostal members (56%), and born-again Christians (59%).
The study also found that about 51% believe the Bible’s message on abortion is straightforward, a drop from 65% in 2023.
If we are willing to compromise this much now, how will we fare when we are faced with real persecution during the years ahead?
As I have repeatedly warned my readers, we need to be preparing believers in the western world for what is coming.
The persecution that Christians in other countries must endure has made them strong.
Meanwhile, western believers have gotten very soft.
We better toughen up fast, because perilous times are rapidly approaching.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
