After releasing pastor Andrew Brunson just days ago, Turkish authorities detained another U.S. missionary.
According to Middle East Concern, missionary David Byle, who has been preaching in Turkey for 18 years, was arrested in Ankara on Saturday by the Anti-Terror Police Department.
Byle was reportedly released Sunday afternoon, soon after he was interrogated. The missionary was then ordered to leave the country within the next 15 days.
“[We] have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support, not only from believers here in Turkey, but from literally all around the world. It means a lot to us and encourages us greatly to know we’re not alone, that we’re a part of such a great family, God’s family,” Byle and his family shared in a message.
The Christian Post reports that Byle has been arrested several times while he has been a missionary in Turkey.
In 2007, Byle was arrested and held for three days by Turkish authorities for carrying Christian literature, but since the literature did not insult Islam, he was let go.
Byle was arrested for a second time in 2016, this time he was detained for eight days and told that he would be deported.
Byle’s deportation order was soon temporarily blocked in February 2017, because officials could not prove that he was a “director, member or supporter of ‘terrorist organizations’” as they suspected.
The Apostle Paul told Timothy, “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution“.
But in his letter to the Romans, he asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” He then answers, “ Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us”.
Paul then concludes in one of the most majestic sweeping declarations in the New Testament, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
