MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL – “There has been a wave of violence targeting Iranian and Syrian Christians over the past month, say Christian news reports.

In addition, Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been on death row since 2010 for seeking to register his home-based church, refused to renounce his Christian beliefs in exchange for his release from prison. He was also jailed for questioning the role of Islam as the dominant form of religious instruction in his children’s school.

According to a report on the website of the International Christian news agency BosNewsLife, ‘Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has rejected an offer to be released from prison if he publicly acknowledges Islam’s prophet Mohammed as ‘a messenger sent by God,’ well-informed Christians and rights activists said’ earlier this month.

While Iran’s opaque judicial system coupled with the lack of access for most Western media makes it difficult to verify the new coercion against Nadarkhani, the reports are considered reasonable in light of the Iranian regime’s intense crackdown on its Christian population over the years.

In an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and author of the book A New Shoah, wrote ‘After the ethnic cleansing of Jews in 1948 from the Arab countries, Islamic fundamentalism is now trying to push away the Christians from the region. They want to establish a pure Islamic environment and the mass exodus already began under our noses.’

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Christian Post wrote last week on its website, ‘The Christian community in Syria has been hit by a series of kidnappings and brutal murders; 100 Christians have now been killed since the anti-government unrest began. A reliable source in the country, who cannot be identified for their own safety, told Barnabas Aid that children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.'” Read more.

Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) Calls on UN to Protect Christians of Syria – “A prominent international human rights organization is calling upon the United Nations and the international human rights community to act quickly and decisively to save the Christians of Syria, who are being increasingly threatened and victimized by Islamic supremacists. Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) notes with sorrow the one hundred dead in Syria in the recent and ongoing series of kidnappings and murders of Christians. SION President Pamela Geller said in a statement: ‘We deplore the manifest lack of respect for human life and the dignity of the human person. We call upon the United Nations Security Council and UN Commission on Human Rights to schedule an immediate meeting to discuss how to protect the Christians of Syria.'” Read more.