MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Matthew 10:22, “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

By Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute – “Nigeria continues to be the most dangerous nation for Christians—where more Christians have been killed last year than all around the Muslim world combined. In one instance, Boko Haram Muslim militants stormed the home of a Pentecostal pastor and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, and opened fire on him, instantly murdering him.

Separately, other Boko Haram gunmen killed 14 Christians, including the cousin and two nephews of the Rev. Moses Thliza, head of a Christian organization dedicated to preventing AIDS and caring for AIDS patients and orphans: Said Thliza: ‘My cousin, Bulus [Paul] Buba, was dragged out at gunpoint from his house by the Boko Haram members. They collected his car keys, demanded money and asked him three times to renounce his Christian faith, and three times he declined to do so [prompting them to execute him]. The attackers met three guards on duty, killed two of them by cutting their necks with knives, and then proceeded to take the third guard, Amtagu Samiyu, at gunpoint to lead them to where the keys of the deputy governor’s house is.’

As for some Christians observing a wake two kilometers away, Boko Haram Muslims asked to know what was going on there, and when they learned that people were saying prayers for an elderly Christian woman who had died, they charged in and shot into the crowd. ‘The attackers went there and shot indiscriminately at the worshippers, killing eight Christians—two women and six elderly men,’ said Thliza. ‘In all, we buried 14 Christians. Some were injured and taken to the hospital.’

Despite all this, when the Nigerian government tried militarily to confront and neutralize Boko Haram, the Obama administration criticized it, warning it not to violate the ‘human rights’ of the Islamic terrorists.

Categorized by theme, the rest of May’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Bosnia: The Serbian Orthodox church of Saint Sava in Sarajevo, where Muslims make up approximately half of the population, was ‘desecrated‘ and six of its windows panes broken. The unidentified vandals wrote ‘Allah’ in dark paint twice on the church wall. A month earlier, unidentified persons tried to set the church on fire.

Central African Republic: According to the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, since an Islamic rebel leader proclaimed himself president, the situation for Christians, has ‘deeply worsened.’ The organization warns against ‘the evil intentions for the programmed and planned desecration and destruction of religious Christian buildings, and in particular the Catholic and Protestant churches…. All over the country the Catholic Church has paid a high price.’ Several dioceses have been seriously damaged and plundered, and priests and nuns attacked (more information below, under ‘Dhimmitude.’)

Egypt: Two Coptic Christian churches were attacked, one in Alexandria, the other in Upper Egypt. St. Mary in Alexandria was attacked by Molotov cocktails and bricks, causing the gate to burn and the stained glass windows to shatter. One thousand Christians tried to defend the church against 20,000 Muslims screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ [‘Allah is Greater’]. One Copt was killed and several injured. In the village of Menbal in Upper Egypt, after ‘Muslim youths’ harassed Christian girls—including hurling bags of urine at them—and Coptic men came to their rescue, another Muslim mob stormed the village church of Prince Tadros el-Mashreki. They hurled stones and Read more…

Revelation 13:15, “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”

By IBRAHIM GARBA and MICHELLE FAUL, The Associated Press – “Multiple explosions at a bar and entertainment area in a Christian quarter of Nigeria’s northern and mainly Muslim city of Kano killed at least 24 people, a hospital official said Tuesday.

Lt. Ikedichi Iweha, a spokesman for the Military Joint Task Force, said earlier Tuesday that 12 people died at the scene and ‘a couple’ of people were wounded in Monday night’s attack, which he blamed on suspected members of the Islamic extremist Boko Haram network.

But the spokesman for Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital said their mortuary had 24 bodies brought from the scene and from the city’s Murtala Muhammad Specialists Hospital.

The teaching hospital also was treating nine people wounded in the blasts, said spokesman Aminu Inuwa. It was unclear how many others might be in treatment at other hospitals.

More than a hundred people gathered outside the hospital morgue, weeping and screaming in anguish Tuesday afternoon. Military officials would not allow them into the morgue, so many said they have no idea if missing loved ones are dead or alive.

Nigeria is fighting an Islamic uprising by extremists based mainly in the northeast, where the government has declared a state of emergency. Kano city and state are in the northwest and not part of that emergency. Boko Haram, which means ‘Western education is forbidden,’ wants to impose Islamic law in all of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of more than 160 million divided almost equally between Christians who live mainly in the south and Muslims who dominate the north.

Monday night’s attack at just after 9 p.m. (21:00 GMT) rocked an area popular for its outdoor bars, blaring music, snooker tables and table tennis — a place where people have fun, which is anathema to the militants.

Witness Kolade Ade said at least one blast appeared to come from a Mercedes-Benz parked beside the bar.

‘After the first bomb, I threw myself into the canal (drain) to hide. There were at least three blasts,’ he said.” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Islamists Expel 90% of Christians from Homs, Car Bombs in Christian Districts of Aleppo and Damascus Kills Dozens – “Al-Haqiqa has learned from church sources in Homs that the city has been emptied of almost 90% of its Christians. It is expected that a complete ‘cleansing’ of buildings owned by Christians will occur within a matter of days or weeks by armed men from the Wahhabi ‘Faruq Brigade.’ A source in the Orthodox metropolitan’s office told al-Haqiqa that armed men from the Faruq Brigade went to the homes of the Christians, house by house, in the neighborhoods of Hamidiya and Bustan el-Diwan, informing them that they must immediately leave their homes and the city of Homs.” Read more.

Flashback: Pakistan: More Than 250 Christian Families Driven From Homes By Angry Muslim Mobs Threatening To Set Fire To Entire Christian Village – “More than 250 Christian families have been threatened and thrown out from their homes in the village Chak 31 in Khanewal district, in southern Punjab. A report drawn up by two human rights groups said: ‘What happened in South Punjab reflects the increase of violence and abuses against religious minorities in Pakistan’ and ‘recalls the serious episode of the attack on Joseph Colony, a Christian area of Lahore, which happened two months ago’… Christians called the police, but a police officer, instead of protecting them, became the leader of a crowd of 60 Muslims who began to beat anyone they encountered and started destroying homes and shops.” Read more.

Recommended: The Mark of the Beast – What Your Church May Not Be Telling You
Recommended: Unsealed: A Closer Look At Revelation 6 And ‘The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse’

Mark 13:19, 24-26, “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be… But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

By Bruce Thornton, Defining Ideas – “Few people realize that we are today living through the largest persecution of Christians in history, worse even than the famous attacks under ancient Roman emperors like Diocletian and Nero. Estimates of the numbers of Christians under assault range from 100-200 million. According to one estimate, a Christian is martyred every five minutes. And most of this persecution is taking place at the hands of Muslims. Of the top fifty countries persecuting Christians, forty-two have either a Muslim majority or have sizeable Muslim populations.

The extent of this disaster, its origins, and the reasons why it has been met with a shrug by most of the Western media are the topics of Raymond Ibrahim’s Crucified Again. Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow of the Middle East Forum. Fluent in Arabic, he has been tracking what he calls ‘one of the most dramatic stories’ of our time in the reports and witnesses that appear in Arabic newspapers, news shows, and websites, but that rarely get translated into English or picked up by the Western press. What he documents in this meticulously researched and clearly argued book is a human rights disaster of monumental proportions.

In Crucified Again, Ibrahim performs two invaluable functions for educating people about the new ‘Great Persecution,’ to use the label of the Roman war against Christians. First, he documents hundreds of specific examples from across the Muslim world. By doing so, he shows the extent of the persecution, and forestalls any claims that it is a marginal problem. Additionally, Ibrahim commemorates the forgotten victims, refusing to allow their suffering to be lost because of the indifference or inattention of the media and government officials.

Second, he provides a cogent explanation for why these attacks are concentrated in Muslim nations. In doing so, he corrects the delusional wishful thinking and apologetic spin that mars much of the current discussion of Islamic-inspired violence.

Ibrahim’s copious reports of violence against Christians range across the whole Muslim world, including countries such as Indonesia, which is frequently characterized as ‘moderate’ and ‘tolerant.’ Such attacks are so frequent because they result not just from the jihadists that some Westerners dismiss as ‘extremists,’ but from mobs of ordinary people, and from government policy and laws that discriminate against Christians. Rather than ad hocreactions to local grievances, then, these attacks reveal a consistent ideology of hatred and contempt that transcends national, geographical, and ethnic differences.

In Afghanistan, for example, where American blood and treasure liberated Afghans from murderous fanatics, a court order in March 2010 led to Read more…