MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Chana Ya’ar, INN – “At least ten people were killed and 41 others were wounded Monday in a car bombing on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus. The blast blew apart pieces of surrounding buildings in the Christian and Druze suburb of Jaramana.

Syrian state television said a ‘terrorist car bomb’ was responsible for the deaths, which included women and children, near a bakery in the southeastern district controlled by loyalists fighting for President Bashar al-Assad.

The attack came in between fierce air strikes against the area by Syrian government warplanes determined to erase rebel targets in the capital. Chunks of concrete and other building materials dropped from surrounding balconies on to cars parked in the residential area of the attack.

A similar car bombing killed 15 people in Damascus on Friday, state media reported.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least six air raids were carried out on Damascus suburbs on Monday alone. It was to be the fourth and final day of a ‘ceasefire’ between government troops and opposition fighters in observance of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday. But the so-called ‘truce’ was violated nearly from the moment it was declared, a cynical prediction that had been made to media by officers from both sides at the start.” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Car Bomb Timed To Detonate In Christian Quarter Of Damascus As People Were Travelling To Church, 10 Killed – “A car bomb exploded outside a police station in the Old City of Damascus on Sunday, drawing the city’s historical Christian quarter into the civil war… ‘The bomb exploded as people were moving to go to Churches for Sunday mass. It exploded just outside the police station. There was a bus stop right beside it … Terrorists are doing this,’ said George, a Christian who, like many residents in Bab Touma lives in fear of the rebel fighters trying to gain control of the capital.” Read more.

News.va – “Bamako (Agenzia Fides) – ‘In the north of Mali, all Christians were forced to flee’ the complaint in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Fr. Laurent Balas, a missionary of the White Fathers, who spent six years in Gao in northern Mali before being appointed pastor of the Church of the Holy Martyrs of Uganda in Bamako. ‘My Gao successors were forced to flee,’ said Fr. Balas describing the conquest of the north of the Country in the spring of this year on behalf of the Islamic militias. Christians fleeing from the north are welcomed by the families in the south in very precarious conditions, after having left all their belongings. ‘There are no refugee camps in the Country, but in neighboring Countries. The displaced have been ‘absorbed’ by the people. It is very difficult to say how many there are,’ says the missionary. In the north Islamist groups have imposed their radical interpretation of the Sharia even reaching the point of breaking into homes in search of unveiled women. In this case the unfortunate’s ear is cut. ‘Faced with this situation, the Muslims themselves are fleeing en masse, except that now, in the south, these families who flee put extra weight on other families who are already devasted. Therefore they go to the north, saying that they prefer to die in their own land,’ said the missionary. But there is not only religious extremism at work in the north of Mali. Fr. Balas notes in fact that Islamist groups that have ties with drug traffickers, as demonstrated by a plane load of cocaine that recently crashed at an airport controlled by the Islamists. ‘Islamism is a screen that hides the trafficking of drugs and of possible searches of gold and oil,’ concludes the missionary.” Source – News.Va.

Flashback: Mali: 200,000 Christians Flee Country To Escape Islamic Persecution As Islamists Impose Sharia Law – “In the Northern part of the African nation of Mali, a refugee crisis is quickly escalating. The front page of the Vatican newspaper expressed concern over the gravity of the situation. It noted that many of the refugees were Christians that were trying to escape persecution from a version of Sharia law that has been imposed in parts of the country by a group known as the ‘Ansar Dine’ movement. The Algerian newspaper El Khabar has reported that some 200,000 people have fled to refugee camps in Mauritania and Algeria.” Read more.

Flashback: Mali: Christian Leader Beheaded as Islamists Terrorize Country, Create List of All Christians They Intend to Execute by Beheading – “A Christian leader has been beheaded and others are being threatened with similar treatment as Islamic militants run amok in Mali, West Africa. Christians have fled the town of Timbuktu in the north of the country where harsh Sharia Law has already been imposed amid reports that churches in Gao, 200 miles to the east, have been completely destroyed… ‘We have escaped in the wake of horrible death threats as the Islamists have a list of all the Christians in Timbuktu whom they intend to execute by beheading.’” Read more.

By Jamie Dean – “When Iranian authorities released condemned pastor Youcef Nadarkhani from prison on Sept. 8, Mervyn Thomas of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) compared the moment to an account in Acts 12: As church members prayed for Peter’s release from jail, the apostle (delivered by an angel) suddenly knocked on the door. The Christians were so surprised they nearly didn’t answer.

‘I believe it’s no coincidence that Pastor Nadarkhani was released as people around the world were praying for him,’ Thomas told supporters. ‘What a result … and such an unexpected one at that!’ …

For every Nadarkhani released, many more remain imprisoned or persecuted for their Christian faith. That reality offers particular potency to the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church—slated this year for Nov. 4.

On the eve of the annual event, it’s challenging to grasp the persecution hounding many Christians worldwide. Indeed, Open Doors USA—a California-based advocacy group—publishes an annual list of 50 countries with the worst records on persecution.

But in a brief look at a handful of countries, a common theme emerges: In a year of answered prayers, the suffering remains steep, the need for prayer remains sharp, and the faith of many persecuted Christians remains strong.

In Iran, advocacy groups aren’t the only ones reporting Christians’ suffering. In late September, two human-rights experts from the United Nations reported that Iranian authorities were intensifying their clampdown on evangelical churches.

Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, estimated that Iranian authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained more than 300 Christians since June 2010. Shaheed said ‘scores of Christians’ remained in jail ‘for freely practicing their religion.’

Advocacy groups believe that number is far higher. CSW reported a ‘steep rise’ in persecution against religious minorities in Iran during 2011 and 2012. The list of developments include: ‘waves of arrests and detentions; regular raids on church gatherings; harsh interrogations; physical and psychological torture (including demands for recantations of faith and for information on the identities of fellow Christians); extended detentions without charge; violations of due process; convictions for ill-defined crimes or on falsified political charges; and economic targeting through exorbitant bail demands.’

The group also noted ‘a proliferation of anti-Christian rhetoric from senior official figures’ and ‘a systematic infiltration of church networks’ by Iranian authorities.” Read more.

UPI – “KADUNA, Nigeria, Oct. 28 (UPI) — A suicide bomber in a car attacked a Catholic church in Kaduna, Nigeria, Sunday, killing at least seven — and perhaps as many as 15 — people, officials said.

The attack took place at St. Rita Catholic Church around 10:45 a.m. local time during mass, Nigerian newspaper Leadership reported.

In addition to seven people confirmed dead, dozens were injured in the bombing, which damaged a corner of the church and blew off parts of the roof, the BBC reported. The newspaper reported as many as 15 members of the congregation were killed.

Witnesses said the bomber drove up to the gates of the church, but was refused entry by security. The driver then backed up and drove through a wall and detonated the bomb just outside the church, the BBC reported.

No group has taken responsibility for the bombing, though similar attacks have been perpetrated by Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The group has fought to overthrow the government and implement Sharia law, the BBC reported.

A spokesman for the local governor asked people in Kaduna to remain calm and avoid retaliation for the attack. The Nigerian Emergency Management Agency told the BBC some Christian youths had attacked a vehicle that had arrived at the church to help survivors.” Source – Breitbart.

Flashback: Boko Haram: Our Goal is to Eliminate Followers of Christ – “Terrorist organisation Boko Haram has issued a statement making clear that its goal is to eliminate followers of Christ from Nigeria and establish an Islamic state. ‘The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state … We are responsible for the suicide attack on a church in Jos and also another attack on another church in Biu,’ a spokesman for the group, Abul Qaqa, is said to have told reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri over the phone.” Read more.

And this is the mindset itself of the Sunni rebels who are being “secretly” supported by the Obama Administration …

By Mary Wakefield, The Spectator – “There is one main road stretching north-south along the Bekaa valley between Lebanon and Syria. It runs in a beeline from the prosperous little city of Zhaleh, on through a series of villages each with its own religious bent — some Sunni, some Christian — to the border town of al-Qaa, then on into Homs and the bloody mess of the Syrian war.

We’re just short of the border when what has been an uninspiring landscape, a wafting sea of plastic bags caught on desert shrubs, springs suddenly to life. Out of nowhere: orchards, vineyards, fig trees; aubergines fat and fallen on the grass. The air is sweet with the smell of apples.

Dr Bassam El-Hachem, professor of sociology at the Lebanese university in Beirut and a big hitter in Lebanon’s FPM party, is our tour guide today on this jaunt to visit Christian refugees. He leans over his shoulder, to address the minibus (one priest, two hacks and the Doc’s flamboyant blonde wife). ‘The source of the Orontes river!’ He points, we nod. The Orontes, we learn, runs from here into Syria spreading rich, fertile soil through the Wadi al-Nasara — the valley of the Christians — up ahead. It traces the course of the fighting, past Hama and Idlib province into Turkey. On our return trip, I look at the Orontes in a different light, because though the conflict in Syria is fuelled by religion and repression, I suspect this river plays a part too.

As we pull into al-Qaa, the minibus team grows quieter. We drive past the checkpoint and peer into no man’s land. This is the portal through which the refugees escape from Syria into Lebanon: not just Christians, also Shia, Sunni and Alawite (Syrian President Bashir al-Assad’s family are Alawites). It’s still reasonably safe on this side of the border. Syria’s war hasn’t spilled over into Lebanon yet — but it’s a very precarious peace. Hezbollah has formed a little pro-Assad gang with the Christians and have a grip of this area here. In Aarsal just a few miles away, the Sunni population supports the rebels of the Free Syrian Army. Under the cover of night, both sides steal across the border to fight.

But in the mayor of al-Qaa’s house, all is calm. The windows are bulletproof, the shelves heavy with bottles of expensive drink, and we sit in the usual way on seats around the walls, like patients in an old-fashioned waiting-room. After tea, the Christian refugees who’ve been corralled in here tell their stories.

First up is Boutros (not his real name), a 26-year-old from the nearby Syrian town of Qusayr where once Christians and Sunnis lived side by side. So how did the fighting start? ‘At first the Sunni rebels offered us a choice: join us or leave. When we refused, they turned on us. Our neighbours!’ says Boutros in outrage. ‘Then the Sunnis began to threaten us. They would shout Read more…