I had made a comment on a video at Youtube to say that in Syria, people are asked whether they are Christian and if the answer is, "yes", it's "Off with your head!"
Hey! I didn't make this stuff up! It's happening and everyone knows it. But, this guy called me an idiot saying that, "If that was true, there would be no Christians left in Syria, you idiot."
My reply was, "Isn't that the goal? It's a Jihad, right?" (I didn't say, "You idiot" because I was trying to be a good example as a Christian.)
Speaking of good examples, those dearly beloved Christians standing up for their faith are SHINING EXAMPLES.
(From "Voice of the Persecuted)
Written by a Christian brother who has been directly affected by persecution in Syria. He has suffered the greatest loss anyone can experience, his family. The persecution of his family was a turning point in his life. He realized the need to tell the truth of what’s happening in Syria. He realized he needed to warn and wake the West.
While the extremism and persecution is being directed against Christians in the Middle East, which is a crime against civilization as well as humanity, the effect of this campaign of violence and intimidation has been devastating for Christianity in Syria. Syria boasted a flourishing Christian population of at least 3 million. Today, the small number of Christians left is a astounding. Most of these Syrian Christians have fled the country, but a staggering number have been killed.
All should see and realize what happened not only to the Christians in Syria but to the civilization.
Radical Islamism and the terrorism that has come to be associated with it, has peaked in the Middle East and especially in Syria. Violent radical Islamism is no longer, if it ever was, limited to the likes of al Qaeda (or ISIS), but rather like-minded networks of autonomous Islamist radical terror cells who aid one another in pursuit of common goals now crisscross the globe and the next journey is to the West.
The blood lust of Islamism is thus rooted in a perverted religious impulse to kill and mutilate in the name of Allah. This is what makes it so insidious and wicked. The killing of innocent men, women, and children in the name of Islam becomes a thing of praise and a badge of honor. The more you kill, the more Allah is honored.
Report: Syrian Christians Cry ‘Jesus!’ Before ISIS Mass Beheading
AP
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) executed 12 Christians, including a
12-year-old boy, after they refused to abandon their faith and convert
to Islam. The murders occurred on August 28 outside of Aleppo.
“In front of the team leader and relatives in the crowd, the Islamic extremists cut off the fingertips of the boy and severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam,”. “When the team leader refused, relatives said, the ISIS militants also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.”
The boy’s father was a “ministry team leader who planted nine churches.” One woman allegedly yelled “Jesus!” right before the terrorists beheaded her. Militants took eight aid workers, two of them females, to another village. They proceeded to rape the two females before they executed them.
“Villagers said some were praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were praying the Lord’s Prayer, and others said some of them lifted their heads to commend their spirits to Jesus,” described one source. “One of the women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said, ‘Jesus!'”
The barbaric radical Islamic group has executed more than 11,000 people in “Iraq and Syria since its establishment of a self-proclaimed caliphate in June 2014.” ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in that month. For over 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully with each other. But when ISIS invaded, the Christians were told to either leave, convert, or pay a subjugation tax. They kidnapped the majority of the females to sell on their sex slave market while they slaughtered the males in front of their families.
“It is like going back 1,000 years seeing the barbarity that Christians are having to live under. I think we are dealing with a group which makes Nazism pale in comparison and I think they have lost all respect for human life,” explained Patrick Sookhdeo, founder of Barnabas Fund. “Crucifying these people is sending a message and they are using forms of killing which they believe have been sanctioned by Sharia law. For them what they are doing is perfectly normal and they don’t see a problem with it. It is that religious justification which is so appalling.”
In July 2014, Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq, told BBC Radio 4 that Christianity is coming to an end in the Middle Eastern country.
“Things are so desperate, our people are disappearing,” he said. “We have had people massacred, their heads chopped off. The Christians are in grave danger. There are literally Christians living in the desert and on the street. They have nowhere to go.”
“Are we seeing the end of Christianity?” he continued. “We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near.”
Christians have spoken out about the treatment they endured from ISIS. They said ISIS destroyed churches and statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and raised the black flag in Mary’s place. Terrorists robbed the Christians at checkpoints, taking the earrings women were wearing.
“There is not a single Christian family left in Mosul,” said Bashar Nasih Behnam, who left with his two children. “The last one was a disabled Christian woman. She stayed because she could not get out. They came to her and said you have to get out and if you don’t we will cut off your head with a sword. That was the last family.”
“In front of the team leader and relatives in the crowd, the Islamic extremists cut off the fingertips of the boy and severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam,”. “When the team leader refused, relatives said, the ISIS militants also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.”
The boy’s father was a “ministry team leader who planted nine churches.” One woman allegedly yelled “Jesus!” right before the terrorists beheaded her. Militants took eight aid workers, two of them females, to another village. They proceeded to rape the two females before they executed them.
“Villagers said some were praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were praying the Lord’s Prayer, and others said some of them lifted their heads to commend their spirits to Jesus,” described one source. “One of the women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said, ‘Jesus!'”
The barbaric radical Islamic group has executed more than 11,000 people in “Iraq and Syria since its establishment of a self-proclaimed caliphate in June 2014.” ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in that month. For over 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully with each other. But when ISIS invaded, the Christians were told to either leave, convert, or pay a subjugation tax. They kidnapped the majority of the females to sell on their sex slave market while they slaughtered the males in front of their families.
“It is like going back 1,000 years seeing the barbarity that Christians are having to live under. I think we are dealing with a group which makes Nazism pale in comparison and I think they have lost all respect for human life,” explained Patrick Sookhdeo, founder of Barnabas Fund. “Crucifying these people is sending a message and they are using forms of killing which they believe have been sanctioned by Sharia law. For them what they are doing is perfectly normal and they don’t see a problem with it. It is that religious justification which is so appalling.”
In July 2014, Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq, told BBC Radio 4 that Christianity is coming to an end in the Middle Eastern country.
“Things are so desperate, our people are disappearing,” he said. “We have had people massacred, their heads chopped off. The Christians are in grave danger. There are literally Christians living in the desert and on the street. They have nowhere to go.”
“Are we seeing the end of Christianity?” he continued. “We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near.”
Christians have spoken out about the treatment they endured from ISIS. They said ISIS destroyed churches and statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and raised the black flag in Mary’s place. Terrorists robbed the Christians at checkpoints, taking the earrings women were wearing.
“There is not a single Christian family left in Mosul,” said Bashar Nasih Behnam, who left with his two children. “The last one was a disabled Christian woman. She stayed because she could not get out. They came to her and said you have to get out and if you don’t we will cut off your head with a sword. That was the last family.”
At several steps on their path to death by beheading and
crucifixion last month, 11 indigenous Christian workers near Aleppo,
Syria, had the option to leave the area and live. The 12-year-old son of
a ministry team leader also could have spared his life by denying
Christ.
The indigenous missionaries were not required to
stay at their ministry base in a village near Aleppo, Syria; rather,
the ministry director who trained them had entreated them to leave. As
the Islamic State (ISIS), other rebel groups and Syrian government
forces turned Aleppo into a war zone of carnage and destruction, ISIS
took over several outlying villages. The Syrian ministry workers in
those villages chose to stay in order to provide aid in the name of
Christ to survivors.
"I asked them to leave, but I gave
them the freedom to choose," said the ministry director, his voice
tremulous as he recalled their horrific deaths. "As their leader, I
should have insisted that they leave."
They stayed because they believed they were called to share Christ with those caught in the crossfire, he said.
"Every
time we talked to them," the director said, "they were always saying,
'We want to stay here—this is what God has told us to do. This is what
we want to do.' They just wanted to stay and share the gospel."
Those
who chose to stay could have scattered and hid in other areas, as their
surviving family members did. On a visit to the surviving relatives in
hiding, the ministry director learned of the cruel executions.
The
relatives said ISIS militants on Aug. 7 captured the Christian workers
in a village whose name is withheld for security reasons. On Aug. 28,
the militants asked if they had renounced Islam for Christianity. When
the Christians said that they had, the rebels asked if they wanted to
return to Islam. The Christians said they would never renounce Christ.
The
41-year-old team leader, his young son and two ministry members in
their 20s were questioned at one village site where ISIS militants had
summoned a crowd. The team leader presided over nine house churches he
had helped to establish. His son was two months away from his 13th
birthday.
"All were badly brutalized and then
crucified," the ministry leader said. "They were left on their crosses
for two days. No one was allowed to remove them."
The martyrs died beside signs the ISIS militants had put up identifying them as "infidels."
Eight
other ministry team members, including two women, were taken to another
site in the village that day (Aug. 28) and were asked the same
questions before a crowd. The women, ages 29 and 33, tried to tell the
ISIS militants they were only sharing the peace and love of Christ and
asked what they had done wrong to deserve the abuse. The Islamic
extremists then publicly raped the women, who continued to pray during
the ordeal, leading the ISIS militants to beat them all the more
furiously.
As the two women and the six men knelt before they were beheaded, they were all praying.
"Villagers
said some were praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were
praying the Lord's prayer, and others said some of them lifted their
heads to commend their spirits to Jesus," the ministry director said.
"One of the women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said,
'Jesus!'"
After they were beheaded, their bodies were hung on
crosses, the ministry director said, his voice breaking. He had trained
all of the workers for their evangelistic ministry, and he had baptized
the team leader and some of the others.
Hundreds of
former Muslims in Syrian villages are in danger of being captured and
killed by ISIS, which is fighting to establish a caliphate in which
apostasy is punishable by death. The underground church in the region
has mushroomed since June 2014, when ISIS began terrorizing those who do
not swear allegiance to its caliphate, both non-Muslims and Muslims.
Consequently, the potential for large-scale executions has grown along
with the gains in ISIS-controlled territory.
The
ministry assisted by Christian Aid Mission is providing resources and
trying to find ways to evacuate these families by other routes.
Many
of the ministry's teams also remain in Syria. Christian Aid Mission
assists those who do not or cannot leave with the means to survive.
Even
those who leave, however, may encounter ISIS militants and other
criminals in refugee camps, said the leader of another ministry that
Christian Aid Mission assists. He spoke of a Muslim from northern Syria
who, like all men in areas that ISIS takes over, was coerced into
joining the caliphate or being killed.
Recruited into
ISIS, he fled the country after his brother was killed in the fighting.
Disillusioned with ISIS but still adhering to Islam and its teaching
that Christians and Jews are unclean "pigs," he went to Amman, Jordan,
as he had learned that relatives there were receiving aid from
Christians.
The Muslim, whose name is withheld for
security reasons, went to a Christian meeting with the intention of
killing the aid workers gathered there. Something kept him from
following through on his plan, though, and that night he saw Jesus in a
dream, the ministry director said.
"The next day he came
back and said, 'I came to kill you, but last night I saw Jesus, and I
want to know what are you teaching—who is this One who held me up from
killing you?'" the director said. "He received Christ with tears, and
today he's actually helping in the church, helping out other people.
We're praying for lots of such Sauls to change to Pauls."
The
sorrow of the ministry team leader who lost 11 workers and one of their
children last month has been deep, but he takes heart that their
faithfulness could help change the hearts of persecutors.
"They
kept on praying loudly and sharing Jesus until their last breath," he
said. "They did this in front of the villagers as a testimony for
others."
He asked for prayer for surviving family members and for himself.
"These
things have been very hard on me," he said. "What wrong did those
people do to deserve to die? What is happening is more and more people
are being saved. The ministry is growing and growing—in the past we used
to pray to have one person from a Muslim background come to the Lord.
Now there are so many we can barely handle all the work among them."
"THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS IS THE SEED OF THE CHURCH."
One great prayer we can pray is for God to give Muslims visions of Jesus. It's amazing how many Muslims these days are coming to the Lord through Jesus Himself appearing to them in dreams or visions!
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