On a warm winter morning in early February, a series of grainy video images from a Libyan beach stunned an entire Egyptian village and devastated dozens of impoverished families.

The eerie images showed a line of towering, black-clad men gripping a line of 21 prisoners in the bright orange jumpsuits now the trademark execution garb for Islamic State captives.

American journalist James Foley had appeared in the same orange gear in summer 2014 as Islamic State thugs brutally beheaded him in a Syrian desert. A month later, fellow American reporter Steven Sotloff’s execution video surfaced online as well.

But the Egyptians on the Libyan beach carried two distinctions: Here were the first captives outside Syria and Iraq that Islamic State terrorists would behead publicly. And here were Christians who would die proclaiming the faith in Christ their captors condemned.

On the cloudy beach, each somber man kneeled before a hooded terrorist, as each executioner gripped a prisoner’s shoulder with one hand and clutched a knife in the other. A caption scrolled across the screen: “People of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church.”

One of the terrorists unleashed a rambling diatribe: “Recently you have seen us on the hills of al-Sham and on Dabiq’s plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross delusion for a long time.

Read the article “Christian Martyrs Honored as World‘s 2015 Daniels of the Year” on worldmag.com.