Vernon Brewer: Help For Today, Hope For Tomorrow
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This week on Live in the Bream, we are going to go international. We're going to talk about some things happening around the world. Some of these situations, you know, we report on them. You guys see them and hear them from us. They are rather dire. And there are some special people in the world who step up and walk into those situations and try to help those who are most in need in some really tough places. And one of them is somebody I have been privileged to know for decades. I'm not going to date us of how old we are, but...

He's an amazing man. His name is Vernon Brewer. He is founder and CEO of WorldHelp. And we knew each other from years ago when I was a student at Liberty. And Vernon, you were there as well. Welcome.

Thank you. It's good to be on with you today. Tell us a little bit about WorldHelp, how this came together, what the mission is, and then we'll talk about some of the more specific things you're working on these days. Well, we're a Christian humanitarian organization that focuses on not only relief and development and rescuing in times of crisis,

emergencies and refugees, but also we focus on the spiritual aspect as well by providing churches and Bibles. We call it Help for Today and Hope for Tomorrow.

Yeah. And I mean, talk about the spread of this and the many countries and places that you've been to, because you've seen all kinds of situations that I mean, frankly, I've seen them on television and we've reported about them. You have been in these situations on the ground with people who really have struggles that the average American, the average Westerner has no idea what their lives are like.

Yeah, we focus primarily on persecuted countries like North Korea and China and Cuba and the Middle East. And we partner with organizations and individuals on the ground to provide not only relief, but also the spiritual resources that they need to get the gospel to people that have never heard of Jesus. Mm-hmm.

So you're trying to meet them on many levels. And I know that there are a number of places where you all operate where there are flourishing religious communities, but for many of them, they're underground. It's not safe for them to be publicly talking about their faith and what they're doing. And I know that those probably have a special place in your heart where these people really their faith is a life or death situation for them.

Yes, and it's really the love that we show, the love of Jesus Christ by meeting their physical needs that draws them like a magnet to faith.

Now, have you had those over the years who have questioned the combination of the humanitarian relief along with the spiritual and saying, you know, that people should not feel any obligation to listen to anything about religion if you're there helping them with food or water or safety? And how do you answer those folks who have those kinds of concerns?

Well, we don't distinguish when someone has a physical need, whether they're a Christian or a Muslim or another faith. We just provide water, food, survival to everyone. We have a clinic right on the Syrian border where we provide doctors and nurses that see about 200 Syrian refugees a day. And last year they had 1,000 of those patients become Christ-forsaken.

followers and i did what what's your method of evangelism they said we don't we don't evangelize openly they just one by one come to us and say why are you doing this you're different we what is it we want to know what's different about you we want that to so which it's that kind of meeting people's need we call it earning the right to be heard and uh... it's not like we will meet your need if you listen to us share our faith

It's just meeting that need is a form of sharing our faith. Talk about the Syrian border situation, because this is something we've been covering for years. There are times when there are flare ups and hotspots there. And we talk about those numbers, about millions of people displaced, hundreds of thousands, we believe, killed.

And it's easy to forget about just how pressing that need continues to be there in some of the surrounding countries that have taken an influx of refugees. And you talk about the camps there. Tell us what's going on.

Well, you know, right on the Syrian border to Jordan, just that one border alone, there's still two million refugees that are homeless, that are living either in camps or living in just two or three families in one room under the most...

difficult circumstances. And, you know, people say, well, ISIS is not a threat any longer. Well, there's still a threat to those people. I had a woman tell me in private, she closed the door and she said, I want you to know I'm a secret believer.

And she went on to explain. She said, I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ, but if ISIS finds out that I'm a believer, they will kill my family back in Syria just for me being a believer in Jesus Christ. So it's still, it's out of the headlines, it's out of the news, but their needs are still tremendous. And we're there on a regular basis providing food, water, clothing, medicine, medical help.

and just to try to keep them with some sustainability of life. Yeah, I mean, it's things that we take for granted, most of us here in the U.S. I mean, just things that you turn on the faucet, the hot water's there, it's clean. You know, you can go places here for assistance with food or to any grocery store that's overflowing, you know, if you can afford it, to go and buy any food or delicacy that you could think of. And I know for these people, they're just thinking about survival, right?

What is the outlook in those camps and the places where people are displaced? I mean, the civil war continues in Syria. Do they have any hopes of going home or what is their plan? Well, they all hope to go home. Some of them I've met carry their house key on a key ring as a reminder they want to go back, but the house is not even there. It's been, you know, bombed or exploded or entire villages and cities have been destroyed. And

And so there's a great sense of hopelessness. And so when you can meet someone on that level that has lost everything, these aren't people who were in poverty. These were middle class businessmen and women who lost everything. And now they have nothing to go back to. So

we're trying to meet them, meet their needs, get to know them, show interest in them as a human being, and then let them see the love of Jesus Christ shine through all that. Yeah, you make such a good point there in that. A lot of times folks just assume and emerge just wrongfully not thinking through the process that these are people who are just like us, who have kids in school, they have education, they have jobs,

These are people, as you said, I mean, if you think about yourself as a middle class person being displaced and losing everything, your home, you know, your career, everything that you had plugged in as the foundations for your life. I mean, that's what millions of people are now dealing with. We're talking to Vernon Brewer, CEO and founder of WorldHelp, a group that works all over the world in trying to assist people with their most basic needs in really difficult situations.

sharing the Christian faith with them as well. And that's something, Vernon, that we've reported on so much over the last few years is that ISIS really was specifically targeting Christian churches, whether they be Protestant or Catholic or other things within that denomination or that bigger umbrella, and really marking people's homes and

taking inventory of who believes what. And some of these communities, it was the cradle or birthplace for many of them of Christianity. And there's been a real move to try to extinguish it there in that part of the world. And I know that you're specifically concerned about Iran and its war on Christians. So what's new on that front?

Well, you know, Shannon, I would say that most American Christians have no idea that Iran is the home of the fastest growing group of Christians anywhere in the world. According to Open Doors, it's the ninth most persecuted country in the world. In 1979, Iran

There were only 500 Muslim background believers in all of Iran at the time of the revolution, and today there's an estimated 800,000 believers. Some people like myself believe that could be as high as a million. The reason they don't know for sure is that

All of them are meeting in secret. There are only two Iranian Christian church buildings in the entire country, so the vast majority of them worship underground because of persecution. So that means in the last 40 years...

more people have come to Christ in Iran than the last 1300 years combined. That's an amazing statistic. Even the intelligence minister of Iran just recently acknowledged that Christianity is spreading and he said when the officials ask these Iranian believers why they're converting, they say they're looking for a religion that gives them peace.

So there's a real hunger for hope. The church is growing at an astronomical rate. And can you imagine a country with a million believers?

of all first-generation Christians. They're persecuted by arbitrary detention. Many of them are put into prison camps without being charged or without having access to lawyers. They even endure physical torture and sexual abuse. And this is just...

just because they're caught worshiping in a house church or caught with the Bible, and yet the only thing they've asked us for is for more Bibles, because with all these new Christians coming to faith, obviously there's not enough Bibles for all of them, and most Christians in Iran have never even held a Bible, let alone owned one.

And so that's becoming the greatest need now. Most Americans don't realize that Iran's the fastest growing church in the world. Yeah, and we have, you know, most of us, two or three Bibles sitting on our bookshelves. You know, something that, it's a luxury here in the U.S. that you could find one just about anywhere online.

24/7 and such a luxury for people who face enormous persecution just by trying to and choosing to follow that faith. Is that something that you've seen in other countries? As I know for decades you've worked around the world where churches are really under persecution. It seems to be where they tend to have these moments of growth and of flourishing where they're under the most extreme pressure. I guess in some ways it makes you rather, you know, crystallize about how you feel about the commitment that you're choosing to make.

Well, I've heard it said the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, and not unlike Jerusalem at the first century, where that early church grew and prospered because of persecution. It just seems like...

of the more this perfect more persecution the more god blesses and grows his church in we've just seen that worldwide in you know people have asked me what why can't they uh... go online and get by was that we we understand there's no bookstores where they can walk in his bibles but they they they don't realize that the government monitors uh...

the internet and makes it inaccessible for them to download or even have access to these websites for Christianity or for Bibles. So the only way they have is to print them in a

an adjacent country and have couriers take them in through trucks or vehicles or businessmen take them in in their briefcases. We even have a group of couriers in the Iraqi mountains with donkeys that take loads of Bible over the Iraqi mountain passes and distribute them to these networks in Iran who have a very elaborate system. You know, a few years ago,

We partnered with an organization, several organizations, that needed to translate the Bible into a modern Farsi language because the only Bible available was in the old Persian language, which was not unlike our King James Version or Shakespearean English, and the millennials in Iran didn't relate to it or read it.

And so we meticulously worked for several years to get it translated into a modern translation in Farsi and Persian. And now there's just such a demand for that because not only can they read it, they can understand it. In fact, the way most of these Christians are coming to faith is someone will give them a Bible or a New Testament to someone that they meet once

and realize they'll never meet them again. They don't even share their contact information. They just say, you have a need, read this. And we're hearing stories after stories of people coming to faith just because someone gave them a Bible. Well, and I found that it's so interesting when you think to places around the world that you really have to make a choice about your faith and about what you believe and about what you're willing to risk.

And we've been watching lately the protests in Hong Kong. And I know that you've worked through Asia and that area as well. We had a young man on our evening show last week who had been one of the primary protesters. He's been leading demonstrations for years. He's been in and out of jail there. And he says that a lot of the what's happening in Hong Kong with the millions of people taking to the streets,

and protesting against Chinese, what they think is inappropriate oppression to their freedom. He says a large contingent of those protesters are Christians. And we have seen videos and heard from them singing, singing hymns and praise and worship songs in the streets

in the streets of Hong Kong. And even though this is about more than just that issue with China and the extradition treaties and laws and things that are going on there, so many of the people in Hong Kong apparently are saying the reason they're showing up in the streets and the reason that they're

Speaking out is because they are Christians and they want to assure that they'll have freedom if China moves to take more authority over Hong Kong in a more formalized way and that they are very concerned about keeping their religious freedom intact there in Hong Kong. So it's interesting to see them kind of because of that be on the front line.

as sort of freedom demonstrators and protestors. Well, and that makes sense because they pay the ultimate price and risk imprisonment and torture on a daily basis as it is. So they have, from their perspective, they have nothing to lose. They're willing to die for their faith. I had one young Christian college student told me one time, she said, I live for Jesus Christ, and if I die, I die for Jesus Christ.

Yeah. I mean, it is a real world different issue than what so many of us are dealing with. So listen, I want to ask for people who want to help WorldHelp, they're interested in what you're doing. How can they find out more or be able to help people who are desperately in need? Oh, they can go to worldhelp.net, our website.

And right now we're trying our best to print and distribute 20,000 of these new Farsi Bibles in Iran. And for only $10, we can print and distribute one. And each Bible will be read by at least five people. They exchange them. They take them home. They make copies of it. They give them to their friends.

And so they could make an incredible difference in a part of the world where the Spirit of God is moving by just providing a few Bibles to people who've never had one.

Yeah, again, WorldHelp does incredible humanitarian work. There is obviously the religious aspect, the spiritual feeding as well. But you go into dire situations, as we've said, in some of the roughest, most difficult places all around the globe, reaching out to share love and to meet people where they are and provide their most basic needs and to share love.

The love of Christ with them as well. So, Vernon Brewer, you've spent decades doing this work, and we applaud you, and we thank you for your time today and for sharing how other people can get involved too. Well, God bless you, Vernon. You're a patriot and a hero too, so thank you. Well, in our little corner of the world, we try to do that here on Live in the Bream. Thanks for being our guest. Thank you. Thank you.

Jason in the House, the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Dive deeper than the headlines and the party lines as I take on American life, politics and entertainment. Subscribe now on Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you download podcasts.