Glenn Beck warns of 'serious times' as nonprofit aims to help persecuted Nigerian Christians

The charity founded by Glenn Beck is setting a special aim to aid persecuted Christians in Nigeria amid skyrocketing global persecution, and the conservative radio host warned during an interview with The Christian Post that the U.S. is not immune.

Mercury One has been at the forefront in offering disaster relief and humanitarian aid since Beck founded the nonsectarian nonprofit in 2011. It has focused especially on the plight of persecuted Christians around the world, partnering with nonprofit Save the Persecuted Christians and The Nazarene Fund, which was established in 2015 under Mercury One's umbrella as ISIS was sweeping the Levant.

Beck, who personally donated $5 million to Mercury One's maximum-impact fund during its 15-year anniversary gala in Irving, Texas, last month, told CP that the most urgent work they are doing now is in Nigeria, where workers are "trying to figure out a way to help" the Christians there. The West African country of 230 million people is the global epicenter of deadly violence against Christians, where thousands of Nigerian believers have been martyred in recent years.

Amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, The Nazarene Fund made headlines for raising more than $20 million in less than three days, mostly from small donors who wanted to help evacuate thousands of Christians and other at-risk Afghans as the Taliban regained control. Reports emerged from human rights groups of militants going door to door searching phones for Bible apps and asking neighbors to identify Christians, some of whom they tortured and killed.

Beck told CP that similar to their work for those trapped in Afghanistan, the charity has been working with a partner on an alert system that gives people a chance to get out of Nigeria, though he noted that Nigerian Christians shouldn't have to cede their homes to encroaching Islamic militants, Fulani ethnic militias and armed bandits.

"We've moved thousands of Christians out of the Middle East to different countries around the world who were targeted for death," he said. "But we've got to give people ways to stand their ground, or we're going to lose all of that territory. That's what the Muslims want. They want you to move so they can have it, and so we're trying. And most of [the Christians] don't want to leave."

"So we're going over, and we're trying to do what we can to save as many Christians, and that's one of the big things that we really work on," he added. He said two of their people who went to Nigeria are women, and that he "begged them not to go."

"We need eyes to be opened. We need countries to be opened. We need the United States to take a bold stand on this, as well."

'To be the light of Christ'

Beck echoed multiple Christian persecution watchdog groups that have lately been reporting that global Christian persecution has risen to an unprecedented degree and shows no signs of diminishing.

"There's nobody being killed at the clip that Christians are. I mean, you want to talk about a genocide? That's the genocide. It's intentionally targeted, and it's happening all over the world," he said.

In its annual World Watch List published earlier this year, Open Doors U.S. estimated that approximately 388 million Christians — more than one in seven worldwide — faced some form of intense persecution or discrimination for their faith in 2025, an increase of more than 8 million compared to 2024.

Similar data has emerged from groups such as Global Christian Relief and Aid to the Church in Need, whose report released last week found that persecution has not improved over the past two years in any of the 18 countries it had been monitoring. It worsened in more than half.

Jonathan Decker, who serves as executive director of Mercury One, said he is limited in the details he can provide on their team presently traveling "in the deep parts of southern Nigeria," but urged Christians to pray for their safety. He said persecution "is definitely on the rise."

"We're seeing it all across the world, and that's one reason why we're trying to go into some of these other countries and see what we can do," he said. "But I also think there's persecution that's going to happen in the United States. I think we've seen it with some churches that have been under attack, and we'll be ready for it whenever it does happen."

Decker said Mercury One also does work on the home front, helping out in the wake of the 2023 fire in Lahaina, Hawaii, and Hurricane Helene's devastation of western North Carolina in 2024. Much of their work has been picking up the slack of the federal government's disaster response, though Decker said there has been some improvement under the current administration.

"The whole thing has to be revamped because a lot of people go in and they've got their own agendas. Our only agenda is to go help and to be the light of Christ anywhere we go. And I just think there's an agenda with whoever's in charge in disaster areas, and we saw it under Biden, and then also with Afghanistan," he said.

"That whole thing should never have happened," he said of Afghanistan, where Christians now reportedly face the threat of genocide. "I and my co-executive [Suzanne Bock Grishman] should never have been the ones on the phone with people. They [the Biden administration] should have been the ones handling the manifests in and out of Afghanistan. That should have been our government, but they failed."

'Dark forces at play'

Mercury One chartered private planes to evacuate thousands out of Kabul as the country crumbled in 2021, including U.S. citizens, Special Immigrant Visa holders and Afghan Christians at risk of martyrdom. During one of his broadcasts that September, Beck was driven to tears as he described the extreme persecution and the Biden administration's apparent unwillingness to assist even those Afghans who had provided aid to the U.S. government.

"There are dark forces that are at play here. Unfortunately, there are dark forces still at play in our own White House and in our own State Department," he said at the time, suggesting there were figures in the Biden administration who appeared to be actively impeding their rescue efforts.

Speaking to CP, Beck said a Marxist-Islamist political alliance continues to wield cultural influence, which he warned is fundamentally at odds with the Christian duty to resist oppression and the Lord’s commandment in Deut. 30:19 to "choose life." Neither ideology can tolerate Christianity and both ultimately manifest in what Beck described as "a death cult." The effects, he said, are increasingly evident in Western societies amid rampant abortion and state-sanctioned suicide, which is the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada.

"That's insanity, and the only thing that stops that is people of faith saying no. Life is valuable. All life is important, and if you can get rid of that, it's an open highway for anything," he said.

Noting the number of religious voters who plan to vote in the U.S. midterm elections has reportedly cratered compared to 2022, Beck worries many Christians in America have become complacent, failing to realize what he sees as the eschatological scale of violent persecution and spiritual darkness. Echoing Decker, he believes Americans are being naive if they presume their country will remain insulated from the rising global tide.

"Why is it that religious people don't understand what we're facing? I don't understand how people are not seeing the time in which we live. I mean, it could be me: I just think Jesus is coming in my lifetime. Maybe not; people have thought that for thousands of years. But the times we live in are serious, and I think we've been protected by these oceans, and nobody thinks anything could happen here, but it very well could," he said.

"And one way to stay aware of it is to get involved and help save Christians elsewhere. Because who's coming to save us?" he added.