“A Letter from the People of the Cross to ISIS” responds to ISIS’ filmed brutality and barbarism with cinematic beauty and grace, providing a poignant, tear-jerking message that highlights the dramatic differences in the two religions’ response to violence.
ISIS’ filmed beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians included a warning "signed with blood to the nation of the cross” that this beautifully-shot video by Mighty responds to in verses by Michael Chang and Jeanelle Fu:
With no tanks or soldiers
But an army of martyrs faithful unto death
Carrying a message of life
The people of the cross
Comes to die at your gates.
If you wont hear our message with words
Then we will show you with our lives
Laid down.Full transcript here
Twenty-six year old Chang says he was crying as he wrote those words, and the whole video is incredibly emotionally moving for the viewer.
Gorgeous landscape shots combine with powerful English and Arabic verses that convey Jesus’ message of forgiveness and healing for everyone – even for brutal ISIS killers.
In an exclusive interview with MRCTV, Chang said the original script he’d co-written with Fu focused on vengeance and justice, but a discussion with a few missionaries from the Middle East convinced him he’d have to rewrite it.
“You’re going to get a lot of backlash because your letter isn’t written out of a place of love,” the missionary told him.
After all, the Christians of the Middle East’s response to ISIS has been legendary in its near-universal message of forgiveness: the brother of one of the slain Egyptians thanked ISIS “because ISIS strengthened our faith;” while the mother of two of ISIS’ victims said she would invite her sons’ ISIS killers to “enter her house and ask God to open his eyes because he was the reason [her sons] entered the kingdom of heaven." A displaced Iraqi girl who lost her home to ISIS said in a moving viral video: “I won’t do anything to them, I only ask God to forgive them.”
Still, the prospect of rewriting the whole script made a forlorn Chang feel like quitting.
The very next day, Chang got a random Facebook message from a friend that said: “Hey Mike, you know God loves you right?”
“That’s when I wrote the majority of the letter, within a couple of minutes,” said Chang. “The verses suddenly came easily.”
Chang founded his company Mighty so that Christians “have a strong and consistent voice in online media,” he says.
“I think ISIS is leveraging media very well and I think they’re doing a better job than Christians are because they’re videos are going viral and are very high production,” said Chang.
With this high-quality video, Chang aims to turn the tide.