Well, I am delighted to speak directly to friends who have supported the Ministry of the Christian Research Institute, who stand shoulder to shoulder with me in the battle for life and truth.

This Christmas season, as we celebrate the coming of Christ in flesh,

my mind inevitably flashes back to Palestine. Palestine, of course, the birthplace of Jesus Christ,

or for that matter, to Antioch in Syria, where the disciples of Jesus Christ

were first called Christians, or, for that matter, to Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted

the seeds of the first Christian communities. Now, why? Why does my mind flash back to those places? Well, in part because these are the very

places where Christians are now facing mass genocide. I think, for example, of Mosul. This is Iraq's second largest city, where more than 100,000

Christians have been displaced from their homes, where I so often focus on the Gaza Strip,

where a mere 1,000 Christians have survived the ominous

persecutions of our century.

I mean, Gaza is one of the most populated areas in the world.

And imagine that there are only 1,000, maybe less than 1,000

believers, Christians, people who take the sacred name of Christ upon their left, left in that place.

And this is not the only place where modern day persecution rages.

Over the last 10 years or so, I have spent a good amount of time in China.

And I can tell you that the China of the last decade is no longer the China of today.

Doors that were once wide open have been slammed shut.

Steeples have been toppled from churches, all under the guise that the skies belong to communism

and not to Christ. And even in America, Christianity is now experiencing what it is to be crushed

by the iron boot of the LGBTQ community. Think of being a Christian staffer, for example,

in a daycare center, and not addressing a six-year-old boy as a girl and then being

fired on account of it. Or the near passing this year in California of AB 2943, which threatened

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