If we fail to hear the cry of the poor, we shall cry and not be heard.
That’s the Proverbs 21:13 battle cry of Tony Nassif, president of Cedars Cultural Education Foundation, an organization committed to protecting women and children from trafficking and abduction.
With millions crying out for deliverance, Nassif poses two pointed questions: “Will we hear? Will we act?” Perhaps an understanding that terrorists who are aiming to destroy the United States and Israel are actively profiting from the trade.
“Christianity is not reflexive or docile,” says Nassif. “It is a proactive faith that is sharing the gospel to all of society and certainly setting the captives free.”
As Nasiff sees it, anyone who is silent in the face of the problem trafficking women and children supports it.
According to the FBI, the problem is real—and growing worse. Child pornography is the fastest growing type of smut in America’s booming $13 billion industry, generating more revenue than the NFL. Child pornography circulation exists, not only on American soil, but also globally. And news media shined a bright light on this truth after raids on Osama bin Laden’s compound revealed profuse amounts of pornography.
Terrorists and extremists not only use pornography, they profit on it. According to Nassif, Muslim extremists use child pornography to encrypt their messages and use pornographic websites to fund terrorist activity. Many of these extremists are highly educated Ph.D.s, communicating via websites with intelligence agency-level security.
Indefinite numbers of women and children involved in the pornography industry are victims of human trafficking. Indeed, Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, says: “The proliferation of hardcore adult pornography on the Internet and elsewhere is contributing to the demand for prostitution and thus, [the demand] for women and children trafficked into prostitution.”
As exploitation funds terrorism, many, including the U.S. government, consider human trafficking a form of terrorism in and of itself. Nassif reflects on the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons during the Bush administration, which rated nations on how they were combating human trafficking.
“For a nation to be on the report was a disaster,” Nassif recalls. “No one wants to be on the report. The key is public pressure. When you link them to something that sounds so horrific … you’ll get the public opinion against them.”
Although sunlight may be a great disinfectant, Nassif believes the body of Christ plays an even bigger role. In fact, he says God has given the church a mandate to launch the largest anti-porn, anti-trafficking movement the world has ever known. That’s because Nassif has identified a demonic element as the root of pornography. Nassif isolates the stem of human trafficking and child abduction as code practices that incur the protection of the demonic spirits against law enforcement.
Despite the demonic guards, Nassif is confident that the church has a higher and more powerful spiritual element. The problem: the church is ill-equipped for the battle.
“This is a spiritual warfare. You don’t just get down and say “˜now I lay me down to sleep.’ You’ve got to have the gifts of the Spirit operating: most notably the gift of discernment, the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge to attack,” Nassif says. “When you start breaking down demonic kingdoms, then they get exposed. Unless the evil realm is engaged through the power of Jesus Christ, these insidious spirits of hate will continue to debilitate mankind.”
At the upcoming 8th Preventing Abuse Conference in Orlando, Fla., in August, Nassif and his team will deal with pornography’s link to human trafficking and how it can be dealt with.
“A theme of the conference is to educate, motivate, activate,” he says. “We educate the attendees about the problem. We motivate them that we all need to act and take a proactive role to protect our families but also to protect our nation. And then we activate them, by pointing them to organizations [that] we approve of to be involved with.”
From senators to state department officials and victims, supporters and speakers will identify the corrections and improvements legislation can make to effectively address the issues at hand.
“We will be dealing with the connection between pornography and human trafficking—the degenerative nature,” Nassif says in preview. He identifies the elements fueling the already spreading fire as “the sexualization of the culture, where the paradigms of right and wrong have disintegrated in the sand,” and the lack of consequences for sex outside of marriage. Nassif states, “The country is disintegrating into a hole of moral depravity where anything goes.”
And so, the founder of the conference returns to the drive of the church—hard passion. “[The church] won’t be closed at 9 o’clock at night when there’s a victim that law enforcement needs to have helped. The church was right there in the days of abolition. They are the ones that started the abolitionist movement and we still have the slaves today.”
The activist continues: “Church isn’t just four walls on a Sunday. Church is taking the gospel outside the four walls and being obedient to Christ as He said, ‘going into all the world and making disciples of all nations.’ Jesus never built four walls. The church has got to stop playing patty cake and the holy water and they’ve got to stop running away from the gifts of the power of the Holy Spirit. When you start committing [to] spiritual warfare and start holding the nation to moral accountability … you’re going to see a turnaround.”
The Preventing Abuse Conference website states: “Problems regarding child kidnapping and human trafficking of women and children are relative abstracts to the general public because there doesn’t seem to be a relevant connection.”
Until now, that is. In the recent findings of Osama bin Laden’s compound, replete in its pornography, a connection has been made, shining a bright light on how immorality is funding murderers.
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