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New York Pastor Honoured For Helping Persecuted Christians

by | Sun, Dec 11 2022

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A decorated Vietnam war veteran has received the US President’s Volunteer Service Award for his ministry to persecuted Christians and others trapped in some of the world’s worst war and terror zones.

New York Pastor Bill Devlin joined the US Navy a week after his overnight conversion in the early 1970s from a God-hating atheist to a believer “thanks to a ‘Jesus Freak’ sharing the Gospel.”

He served in Vietnam until he was wounded when his ship was bombed and he was awarded a Purple Heart.

After working for 25-years as a pastor in his homeland, Bill Devlin started travelling to troubled countries like Pakistan and Sudan to witness first-hand the plight of persecuted Christians.

“God was burning a hole in my heart about the persecuted Church, about widows, orphans, the broken, the neglected, the forgotten, the disenfranchised, the persecuted believer and the persecuted Church,” he told The Christian Post.

“What finally pushed me over the edge was during the Obama presidency,” he explained.

“God spoke to me one day and said: ‘Where are your boots, Pastor Devlin? You’re in the safety and security and comfort of the United States of America. You’ve seen the persecuted Church, you’ve seen persecuted believers, you’ve been in their living rooms, you’ve been in the prison cells, you’ve seen the scars on their bodies. Where are your boots?'”

He saw it as a command to take his mission to war zones to minister to the persecuted on a full-time basis.

Pastor Devlin insists on only going to war zones that are “hard and dangerous and located where nobody else is going.”

He launched two ministries REDEEM and Widows and Orphans to help out in hotspots like Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Nigeria.

They worked on healing the invisible scars of hundreds of Yazidi girls and women captured by cruel Islamic State fighters.

They also supported the displaced families of foreign IS recruits forced to live in the squalor of Syrian camps.

Pastor Devlin volunteered at a Syrian hospital to help those wounded in the nation’s civil war.

His charity work is funded by churches but none of his volunteers is paid.

“We are all volunteers, which is probably unique in the nonprofit and ministry world,” he noted.

In Nigeria, they’ve provided trauma healing sessions for Christians who have lost spouses, children and family members to relentless attacks by Islamic terror groups.

They’ve also bought an orphanage and funded the education of children orphaned by the terrorism.

Pastor Devlin’s ministries have also been rebuilding churches destroyed by terrorists in Nigeria, Iraq and Sr Lanka.

The Christian Post writes that while he’s grateful for his award, the pastor gives all the glory to God.