The Voice of the Martyrs

Todd Nettleton: Ronnie and Anita Smith were serving as gospel workers in Libya when Ronnie was martyred for his faith. Here is Anita on whether it was worth it.

Anita Smith: We wanted our lives really to glorify Jesus. I do remember Ronnie saying before that if he could only have one person turn to Jesus with his life, that it would have been worth it.

I wanted the people that did the shooting to know that Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and that is what causes people to come to know Jesus and to come to know what the gospel is.

Todd Nettleton: Jesus never promised his followers an easy path. In fact, he told his disciples that the world would hate them. He sent them out as sheep among wolves. Jesus's words came true in the life of the apostles, and they are still coming true today in the lives of his followers around the world.

Join host Todd Nettleton as we hear their inspired stories and learn how we can help right now on the Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network.

I am Todd Nettleton. Thank you for spending time this week with us on the Voice of the Martyrs Radio. Do you ever struggle to forgive the people who have wronged you? Our guest today is going to challenge you about the power of forgiveness to put the gospel of Jesus on display.

Anita Smith is going to tell the story about how she and her family were called to Libya and how that calling required a high price. I talked with Anita during the Voice of the Martyrs' Hearts of Fire virtual event. You can still watch that event online. You will find a link in the show notes this week at vomradio.net.

Ronnie and Anita and their infant child moved to Benghazi, Libya, right after an attack on the American consulate. Four Americans were killed in that attack. I asked Anita what it was like to move to a place that must have seemed so dangerous.

Anita Smith: The time really did seem like it was the perfect time despite what was going on, the hardship that was going on in Libya, the civil war, the unrest. We wanted to take God's love and the gospel to Libya, to Benghazi, because we knew that they just did not know who Jesus is.

Guest (Male): How much fear was there? It is obviously a dangerous place. These Americans have just been killed there. How did you wrestle through that? How did God again confirm that this is where I want you to go?

Anita Smith: At the time, I did have natural fears and I was worried, but I know for sure that we did have God's peace with us. As we were settling in there, there were definitely ups and downs of feeling that fear. The people that we met there, the Libyans, they were extremely welcoming and loving and very protective of us.

Yes, there were times when they were telling us to stay indoors, and they would do your grocery shopping for you. I was scared and I did have the fear of kidnapping and of death. It was myself more than Ronnie. It was not something that was paralyzing, though. We were still able to do our daily things that were the norm and still be able to visit our neighbors and enjoy our times with them. It was not paralyzing; it was just something that was there that we would pray through.

Guest (Male): I love Ronnie's Twitter bio, which is "Libya's best friend." How did you live that out? What did that look like in your life there to go and try to be Libya's best friend?

Anita Smith: He was the high school chemistry teacher at the International School of Benghazi. The students there are speaking English, so he is teaching in English, but then obviously we were learning Arabic as well. We are learning conversational Arabic from our neighbors who were getting to know us. He would learn some Arabic from his students.

Since they spoke English very well, they really loved him as a teacher. He was extremely smart and gifted and well-educated in that role. Apart from that, just his personality and how he was able to connect with the students was a special thing. They were really devastated when they heard of the news that he had passed away.

They gave him that name. I think it was both of them forming that name on his Twitter. They just enjoyed joking with him. They enjoyed his humor. He was able to have not just school conversations with them, but just life conversations.

Guest (Male): And the multi-generational families there, it seems like they just brought you in. You are part of the family now.

Anita Smith: I remember a specific time where my immediate neighbor, her mother-in-law, she is an elderly woman, she wanted to walk me home in the dark. I said, "You don't have to do that." She said, "No, no one's going to harm an elderly woman. I'm the one that's going to walk with you and walk you back to your home."

That is how much they really looked out for us and really cared for us. She was probably in her 80s, and she was locking arms with me. Then she walked home alone in the dark because she knew no one would harm her.

Fortunately, our neighbors were parents with five kids. Some of the husbands did know English, so they made really good friendships with Ronnie. The wives did not know too much English, but they just loved that I tried to speak Arabic to them.

On Thursdays or Fridays, the women get together or the men get together for tea and a gathering. We were just laughing, even though I did not know all the conversations and all of the meanings. It was fun. You really felt their love. You felt being included. They invited me to their weddings.

Some of the younger generation that did speak English, they were able to translate. It really did work out that I was able to even talk about Jesus and talk about who he is to me. Yes, they also talk about Islam and Muhammad, and so it was in a respectful manner that we were able to engage in conversations. We could have conversations about our kids and just normal day-to-day conversations that normal people have. It was not some kind of extravagant lifestyle at all.

Guest (Male): Obviously you cannot go to Libya and say, "We're here to be missionaries. We're going to plant a church." But you are there to advance the gospel. You want to tell people about Jesus. How did you do that? How did you try to steer some of those conversations into spiritual things?

Anita Smith: It was easy to speak to the Libyans and just tell them we believe that God wanted us to move here. We wanted to show you what love that we know is from Jesus, his peace. We are children of God, and so we are just going to live our life out. We wanted to do that in a place that did not know Jesus and did not know his extravagant love and his gospel.

Guest (Male): Let us talk about the day in December of 2013. You and your son had come back early for Christmas. Ronnie was finishing out the semester and then he was going to come for Christmas, too. Talk me through that day and how you found out about what had happened.

Anita Smith: I received a call from the Libyan family that we are very close with. They facetimed or skyped with me. It was very out of the ordinary to receive a Skype call from them at my 9:00 in the morning. The grandmother, who does not speak any English, she was just crying because she loves us. Through tears, they were telling me, "We're so very sorry. Ronnie has died." They were crying and I was in complete shock.

Guest (Male): What did you hear had happened in Libya with Ronnie?

Anita Smith: He was jogging in our neighborhood. It was daylight. It was about 11:00 or 11:15 a.m. Benghazi time. He was followed by a black Jeep. Supposedly there was a witness who heard some conversations that went on between the men in the Jeep, about four of them, with Ronnie.

He saw the Jeep suspiciously slow and going towards Ronnie, stopped, had a conversation, then they went around. Then he saw that Ronnie was jogging and turned a corner and that the Jeep came back. Then he heard immediately the gunshots.

Guest (Male): Obviously you are in shock and in incredible grief. How did Jesus show up? How did God show up in that situation?

Anita Smith: Ronnie's family out of state and in state just rushed to my house that day. Our church in Texas, same day, a group of them came and loved on me and wanted to care for me and wanted to pray with me. So all of that was very present. It was like the body of Christ really being the body of Christ, literally putting Christ's arms around you.

Guest (Male): One of the things in your story that really amazes people, and amazes me quite frankly, is just a few days later, you are on national television forgiving the people who killed Ronnie. You were talking about how much you still love Libya and love the people of Libya.

I was with not very long ago a person whose husband was martyred in the Middle East and she talked about it taking five years to come to the point of being able to say, "I forgive those evil men who killed my husband." You got there in five days. How did that happen? Talk me through how you came to that point of saying, "I'm not going to hate those people. I forgive them."

Anita Smith: We wanted our lives really to glorify Jesus. We only have one life here. We make a lot of mistakes, and we have the opportunity and the grace to ask for forgiveness. But we wanted our lives to be known that we love Jesus.

I do remember Ronnie saying before that if he could only have one person turn to Jesus with his life, that it would have been worth it. I wanted the people that did the shooting to know that Jesus is different. Jesus is a God that loves people who make mistakes and who do crime.

It is not okay what they did at all. That does not mean that they are freed from the consequences of it. But Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and that is what causes people to come to know Jesus and to come to know what the gospel is. I have never been in a situation where someone has sinned against me to that degree where it has been hard to forgive somebody. I just really wanted them to know this is a horrific thing that you have done, but look at the extravagant thing that Jesus has done. You cannot beat us down. You cannot beat me down.

Guest (Male): Is it something that you said, "Lord, I'm going to need your help. I need to forgive these people," or did God just give that to you and it just welled up within you?

Anita Smith: Honestly, I do believe that this was something that God gave me because I did want to show them that this is what Jesus lives for. We are all his enemies and he wants us to know that he loves us. There is no other message or faith that shows that you love your enemies and you forgive your enemies except for Jesus.

Guest (Male): You can watch those videos on YouTube of those interviews that you did. We are talking major national media figures. They did not know what to do with you when you said, "I still love the Libyan people. I forgive them." They had no idea how to respond to you.

Anita Smith: I was very open about it. I was very open telling them that because I do love the Libyan people that I knew. It was not a hatred towards them at all. They hated this. They were angry about it. They were crying about it. They did not want any of this to happen. They did not want it to happen on Libyan soil.

Whenever the newscaster was saying, "Well, how can you still love them?" I was in their living rooms and that is not what they wanted for anybody and not for us. As far as the attackers, it is not an excuse to say that they are lost and that is why they did it, because it is completely wrong for them to have done this. But that is the gospel message, to love people and to show them the grace that I know is from Jesus.

All of the hurt and anger that I have had over the years, my struggle has been with God. He showers me with love and grace, but it is not towards the attackers.

Guest (Male): How do those wrestling matches go? Is it you coming to God and saying, "How could you let this happen? My husband was killed. My son doesn't have a father now"?

Anita Smith: Just as the days pass and the months pass, my son was two at the time and he is now 11. He does not remember a lot of that. Now it is like a different stage of grief because now he is 10 or 11. He has a memory of just videos or pictures, but not like a real representation, unfortunately.

My son, he plays hockey and tennis, for example, and he knows his father really loved those sports, so he wishes that he could enjoy those things with him. He does ask, "What would my dad have enjoyed?" or "Did he ever enjoy this sport or do this sort of thing?" In some ways, he does not know what to ask, either. He just kind of wants to know what his dad was like.

It is like this short time that we were there that completely turned our world upside down for the rest of our lives. I just ask God, and then he does comfort me. Whenever I read the Bible, our sufferings here are for a short time compared to the eternal weight that we will receive of glory of being with Jesus. I knew all this going in. Ronnie and I talked a lot about suffering. We spoke with other people that had gone through some suffering. The whole gospel is you pick up your cross and if you are a disciple, it is not a matter of if you will suffer, it is when.

Guest (Male): How does God respond in those times to remind you of his grace and to remind you, "I'm the husband of the widow"?

Anita Smith: It is definitely through friends and family. They have showered me with love, have always pointed me towards God and his comfort. It is just them coming alongside me, being able to walk through the pain with me, understanding that I am not in your shoes, but this is not easy and we are not going to say that it is okay. Jesus knows that.

A really powerful message that I remember was when Jesus was on the cross, he had seven sayings. One was to John, saying to take care of his mom, who is a widow. There is just so much love that Jesus has to say, the Bible has to say, about widows and orphans. It is evident and he is such a personal God that understands the pain that I went through and am going through.

Guest (Male): We heard a story just in the last couple weeks, actually, of a Libyan brother who was inspired to accept Christ reading your testimony on Facebook after Ronnie was killed. What does that do for you that God used that to see a Libyan won to the kingdom?

Anita Smith: It is really powerful for me to hear those stories because I do feel at times that we lived in Libya for that short period of time and what dent have we made to show who Jesus is? Yes, I was able to speak on the news, but it is almost like it is the next news story, so that is forgotten and years pass.

It is very special to me to hear when a Libyan has come in contact with what I said and pointing them to Jesus. I know for sure that when Jesus comes back, he says people of all tongues, of all nations will be at the throne. They will be there from Libya. They will.

Someone had encouraged me telling me, "Anita, there has not been big opportunities for people to be able to tell the Libyan people about Jesus. You were on the news. You were speaking in their language and their native tongue, telling them that you forgive them because Jesus says to forgive your enemies."

People are going to know that. I do not want the glory for myself; I really don't. He was just trying to encourage me that even when I am not here, there is going to be that story. Maybe I won not have the name—that is okay that it is not Anita—but that this was told in the Libyan language.

Guest (Male): And we should say, we mentioned the media interviews here in the States in English, but you also did that in Arabic on Al Jazeera, broadcast all over the Middle East. I think about Ronnie saying if we could reach one Libyan. You reached thousands, at least, tens of thousands. It is interesting how God has taken your sacrifice and Ronnie's sacrifice and totally used it in the kingdom.

Anita Smith: Yes, and it was a way that I would have never probably even had guessed.

Guest (Male): One other thing that God used in your and Ronnie's life was a sermon by John Piper about giving all for missions. After Ronnie was killed, John Piper wrote an article about how that weighed on him, like something he had said had led this young family to go and this man had laid down his life.

Richard Wurmbrand famously said, "If you don't want any more martyrs, please don't give us any more money, because we're going to send more Bibles and there's going to be more people come to Christ and some of those people are going to be killed. So if that makes you uncomfortable, please don't give." We are asking people, we are telling people: do give, do send more Bibles, do send more people to share the gospel. We understand there is going to be more Anitas. There is going to be more Ronnies. Talk to us about why we should still, even knowing that people are going to suffer because of God, because of his word.

Anita Smith: Being a Christian, it is a joy and at the same time that joy is with pain. The Bible gives us different examples of a woman going through labor. It is painful, but she gets the joy of her infant in her arms.

Walking with Christ is a joy. You get to see people who did not know Jesus and then they turn to Jesus. Or you get to pray alongside people that are in pain or who are suffering. Paul tells us in Philippians that the gospel is a gift and so is suffering for his sake.

It is a gift none of us want. It is not, and I remember having a conversation with Ronnie saying that we need to pray that we will endure suffering and it is not an optional thing. It could be different for anybody. It does not mean everybody is going to die a martyr's death.

It is so important to still provide the resources, to send people to areas that people do not know Jesus, to get those Bibles out there. Yes, there will be deaths involved. There are so many right now as we are speaking that I do not know who is imprisoned. We have to come alongside those people and those small groups of new churches to encourage them and to pray for them and to hear their stories so that we could know who they are.

Guest (Male): And when there are deaths, when there are sacrifices, we need to be ready to be the body of Christ and come alongside those who are left behind.

Anita Smith: It is a gift to be able to come alongside someone, just as I knew that they showered me with love and with prayers and with resources and gifts. My son and I, we would not have been able to do what we did in terms of just surviving the day-to-day without their support.

Guest (Male): One of the things that we are doing this evening is we are challenging people to pray for widows, especially widows of Christian martyrs. Are there some specific things that you would remind us of, maybe things that most of us would not think of, that we can encourage people to pray for the widows of Christian martyrs around the world?

Anita Smith: To remind them that their life and their sacrifice is for Jesus. Another thing would be to be mindful that even if it happened two months ago, two years ago, or ten years ago, the hurt is still there. Every day they miss that person. They miss their husband. To remember that their pain is still there and their sorrow. It is just in a different way of being able to manage it.

Guest (Male): Anita, thank you so much for sharing with us. Thank you for being very real and very raw. We honor you, we honor Ronnie, and we honor your sacrifice. So thank you so much.

Anita Smith: During my early stages of becoming a Christian, so in my early to mid-20s, I do not know how it happened, but I was receiving the Voice of the Martyrs subscription. I was just shocked that there were places where people were being persecuted. I did not understand persecution and suffering for the gospel.

I read Richard's early book and I was amazed by it and it has always stuck with me. I would have never guessed 20 years later that I would be a part of anything with Voice of the Martyrs. That I am able to give my testimony to encourage others—if you asked me in my early 20s would I ever want to, I don't know, that's scary.

This is how it has come about and I hope that God can use my life and Ronnie's life and now our son's life to continue to point people to Jesus.

Todd Nettleton: Anita Smith has been reminding us how much we have been forgiven by Jesus. She has told us a riveting story about the ability that each of us have to forgive others, not through our own power, but through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Anita and I talked during the Voice of the Martyrs Hearts of Fire virtual event. If you missed any of this conversation, you can hear this episode again by visiting vomradio.net. You can also find Voice of the Martyrs Radio wherever you listen to podcasts.

In the show notes this week, we will give you a link to watch the entire Hearts of Fire virtual event. I want to encourage you: do not watch it by yourself. Gather your family, maybe gather your Bible study group, maybe even your whole church, and be inspired together by the testimonies of Anita and other women who suffered for the name of Christ. We will give you a link to watch the entire event at our website, vomradio.net. Again, just come to this week's episode at vomradio.net.

If you have listened to Voice of the Martyrs Radio for any length of time at all, you know that we love to equip listeners to pray. Almost every single week, I ask our guest, "How can we pray? How can we pray for the nation where they've come from? How can we pray for their ministry?" We always want to equip people to pray.

I want to share another opportunity for you to be equipped to pray. You can sign up to receive prayer requests each week via email. I am going to read you an example. This is a recent request that came in from Myanmar.

A pastor has faithfully shared the gospel while imprisoned on false charges. Pastor Sang Tee was arrested by Myanmar military authorities on September 16, 2021, accused of having connections with resistance groups. Christian leaders insisted that Sang Tee was not involved in armed activities but was simply serving Christ and helping people in need during a time of national suffering.

Sang Tee received a 23-year prison sentence and has now been imprisoned for years. During this time, God has worked powerfully through his life. He has shared the gospel freely among the male inmates and 60 prisoners have come to faith in Christ. Praise the Lord.

Please pray for Sang Tee's continued spiritual strength, endurance, and joy in the Lord during his imprisonment. Pray for comfort and provision for his family and his church community. Pray that the gospel will continue to spread among prisoners through Sang Tee's witness, and for truth, justice, and mercy in Sang Tee's legal case.

I do hope that you will lift up this request to the Lord. Praise the Lord for his work and we pray that our brother will be strengthened and soon released from prison. I hope you will visit icommittopray.com, sign up, get prayer requests just like this one every week in your email box. We will also give you a link in the show notes at our website, vomradio.net.

Make sure you are back with us next week. Every week, we talk about what God is doing in places like Myanmar and Libya and other places around the world. Make sure you are back with us next week right here on the Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network.