MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

For peaceful purposes, despite paying Islam’s “jizya” extortion money …

By Colin Freeman, The Telegraph – “Bombs have been planted in the confessional box of one of the world’s oldest churches in a Syrian town hailed as the country’s last remaining centre of religious tolerance, Syria’s most senior Christian leader has disclosed.

On a visit to London to highlight the persecution of Christians in the civil war, Patriarch Gregorios III said the two devices were found at the Cathedral of Constantine and Helen in the rebel-held town of Yabroud.

Not only is the church one of the oldest in the world, but it lies in a town where Christians and Sunni Muslims have so far resisted efforts by al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel groups to drive a wedge between them.

As The Telegraph reported on a visit to Yabroud earlier this month, a self-appointed local council has tried to keep both foreign jihadists and local mafia gangs at bay, as well as government forces. Only last week the Syrian army shelled the church.

The Patriarch said that early on Tuesday morning, two remote controlled bombs were discovered planted in the church, one of them in the confessional box. Challenging the town’s image of harmony, he also claimed that local Christian families had been asked to pay a monthly protection tax of $35,000 by local ‘armed groups’.

‘Yabroud is under the control of armed groups, and Christians are asked for protection money, yet in spite of this, there are these bombs being placed in the church,’ he said.

He added that in the event of a rebel victory in the country’s civil war, life for Christians could get even harder because of the hardline Islamist elements in the anti-government ranks.” Read more.

Syria: 450,000 Christians Forced To Flee Homes To Escape Islamic Persecution – “A senior Church leader in Syria has said almost a third of the country’s Christians have fled their homes. Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III Laham told the BBC that more than 450,000 Christians out of a total population of 1.75 million had been displaced or left the country.” Read more.

It’s a fairly long read, but good to see even a Muslim scholar able to somewhat float above the waves of a roaring sea instead of drowning in them …

Revelation 17:11, “As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.”

Al-Jazeera broadcasts pure propaganda and does not adhere to any of the parameters of responsible journalism. Must be why there are fans of this network in the Obama White House (click photo for more).

By Ali Salim, Gatestone Institute – “With every Middle East country at each other’s throat, the Arab-Muslim world is uncertain of its fate. Some of its totalitarian regimes were toppled in the so-called Arab Spring but they have yet to be replaced by stable governments; the battle for the future of the Middle East is still being fought. The real question is whether the young people, representatives of moderate Islam and secular Arabs who initiated the Arab Spring, will be able to keep the region from being taken over by Islamists seeking to promote their own agendas, and to prevent it from being engulfed by a fundamentalist form of Islam.

Radical Islam may have been weakened but it is still a force. The revolution of the young reformists against the Shah of Iran was exploited by the Shi’ite Ayatollahs to take control of Iran. Turkey’s democratic government was overthrown as Erdogan established himself as its Islamist dictator. In the Palestinian Authority-administered territories, Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, rose up against the PA, took over the Gaza Strip, and now eyes the West Bank and awaits the chance to pounce. Islamists almost took over Egypt, but praise to Allah (S.W.A.T.), were defeated at the last moment. Fortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohamed Morsi was terminated by the Egyptian army, commanded by the Minister of Defense, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Past experience has shown that as soon as the Islamists are in control they change the democratic laws and institutions that allowed them to gain power; they are no longer interested in change or willing to accept opposition of any sort. It soon becomes clear that they cannot solve their country’s problems; their only desire is to exercise complete political and religious control, and the desperate, faltering masses continue to suffer as before. Eventually, with no help in sight, some will turn to more extreme forms of Islam, praying to Allah (S.W.A.T.) to save them from their hopeless plight, while others, disappointed by the Islamist regime, will abandon religion altogether.

Exposed by the media to the achievements of the West, the masses of the Middle East thirst for change and desire the quality of life enjoyed by the rest of the world. The Islamist movements, on the other hand, especially those that grabbed political power, desire the total alienation of their citizens from the West. Progress, freedom, human rights, a thriving economy, security and democracy are all trademarks of a competing religion, Christianity, while the Arab and Muslim world, despite its oil, land and water, remains mired in the shifting sand dunes of backwardness and reaction.

The values of the Judeo-Christian world and the attendant success of its economies and societies threaten the foundations of the Islamic faith and its universal mission, which to us feels as if it has failed, lags behind the rest of the world and deals only in bloodshed. From an Islamic point of view, such a failure is completely unacceptable. In addition, the mere existence and economic and military success of the Jewish State of Israel and what can be seen on television as its genuine democracy present a terrible challenge to radical Islam: for Islam, the Jews are not a nation but a collection of bits and pieces that have no right to a state of their own, to be condemned to eternal division and humiliation for rejecting the words of Allah (S.W.A.T.). Islam represents the one and only true, relevant and timely religion; there is no need for any other.

Therefore, as far as radical, fundamentalist Islam is concerned, the success of the West in general and of the Jews and Israel – the West’s ‘imperialist branch’ – in a flourishing state in the heart of the Middle East, all seem to contradict and cast into doubt the mission and rightness of Islam. The success of the West is unbearable, so the Islamists have declared a war to the death against it and against Israel.

The Islamic agenda demands that infidels and other enemies be Read more…

1 Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

By Alissa Tabirian, CNS News – “A Syrian rebel group affiliated with Al Qaeda desecrated two Christian churches in Northern Syria late last month, replacing their crosses with the symbolic black flag of jihad.

Senator Rand Paul noted in a speech today at the Values Voter Summit that “Pew Research did a poll and it indicated that 21% of Egyptians, 15% of Jordanians … 13% of Pakistani Muslims find terrorism acceptable, if not laudable… [I]f you add up the numbers in just three countries it’s over 40 million Muslims [who] sympathize with violence against Christians. This shouldn’t be understated.” And indeed, if between just 10% and 13% of Muslims all across the Muslim world are devoted enough to their “prophet” and to Islam, that’s about 200 million antichrist soldiers ready to raise the banner of jihad for the cause of “Allah” and his “prophet” against a world of non-Muslims. Where have we heard that number before? …

Revelation 6:8, “And I looked, and behold a [chlōros – green] horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the [thērion – savage, brutal, bestial men] of the earth…”

Revelation 9:13-16, “Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them.”

Sen. Paul went on to describe how “[President Obama is] now arming Islamic rebels who are allied with Al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11. Does that make any sense at all? American tax dollars should never be spent to prop up a war on Christianity, but that’s what’s happening now across the globe …” 

Qur’an Sura 8:39, “And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world ]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.”

The Daily Caller – “Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spent Friday morning telling stories to conservatives about the persecution of Christians across the world.

‘Today I want to tell you about a war the mainstream media is ignoring,’ the Republican lawmaker said Friday during the Values Voter Summit in Washington. ‘From Boston to Zanzibar, there is a worldwide war on Christianity.’

‘You won’t hear much about it on the evening news because the answer is not convenient and does not fit the narrative we have been told about radical Islam,’ Paul added.

Paul also said President Obama ‘tries to gloss over who is attacking and killing Christians.’

‘But the truth is, there is a worldwide war on Christians by a fanatical element of Islam,’ Paul said.

‘Ever since 9/11, commentators have tried to avoid pointing fingers at Islam,’ he said. ‘While it is fair to point out that most Muslims are not committed to violence against Christians, this is not the whole truth and we should not let political correctness stand in the way of the truth.’

Examples referenced by Paul:

• Referencing an incident in Syria, Paul spoke of Islamic rebels storming into town and demanding everyone convert to Islam or die. ‘Sarkis el Zakhm stood up and answered them, ‘I am a Christian and if you want to kill me because I am a Christian, do it.’ Those were Sarkis last words.’
• ‘Elsewhere in Syria, Islamic rebels have filmed beheadings of their captives and celebrated by eating the heart of an enemy soldier,’ Paul said. ‘Two Christian bishops have been kidnapped and one priest recently killed.’
• ‘In Zanzibar, a priest was shot in the head on his way to church by two Muslim youths,’ Paul said. :A message by the Muslim Renewal said, ‘We thank our young men, trained in Somalia, for killing an infidel. Many more will die. We will burn homes and churches. We have not finished: at Easter, be prepared for disaster.’’

Read more.

“Even western Christians turn a blind eye to the worst persecution of our times” …

Daniel 12:1b-2, 10, “And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt… Many will be purged, purified and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand.”

Also See:

• The Obama Administration’s War On Persecuted Christians
• White House Overlooks Christian Persecution While Pandering To Islam
• ‘Widespread Death, Destruction’: The World Is Silent As Christians Are Persecuted
• Appalling, Staggering, Devasting: The Greatest Story Never Told – The War On Christians
• All Across Muslim World Christians Are Kidnapped, Terrorized, Tortured, Raped, Murdered
• Christian Persecution Is ‘Coursing Through Muslim-Majority Nations From One End Of The Globe To The Other’

By John L Allen Jr, CH – “Back in 1997, American author Paul Marshall said that anti-Christian persecution had been ‘all but totally ignored by the world at large’. To be sure, the situation has changed in the 16 years since Marshall’s classic work Their Blood Cries Out. A cluster of advocacy groups and relief organisations has emerged, and from time to time anti-Christian persecution has drawn coverage in major news outlets such as the Economist, Newsweek and Commentary. On the whole, however, the war on Christians remains the world’s best-kept secret. As recently as 2011, Italian journalist Francesca Paci – who writes for the Italian media market, which probably pays more attention to Christian topics than almost any other culture on earth, given the massive footprint of the Vatican – said about the fate of persecuted Christians in places such as Iraq, Algeria, and India: ‘We ignore too many things, and even more indefensibly, we pretend not to see too many things.’

In 2011, the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, addressed the crisis facing Arab Christianity in the Middle East during a conference in London. He bluntly asked: ‘Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?’ Those are questions that deserve answers, and understanding the motives for the silence about the global war on Christians is a good place to begin.

In the secular milieu, several factors intersect to explain the relative indifference toward the global persecution of Christians. First is the basic point that some secularists have little personal experience of religion and can be strikingly ignorant on religious subjects. There’s also a reflexive hostility to institutional religion, especially Christianity, in some sectors of secular opinion. People conditioned by such views are inclined to see Christianity as the agent of repression, not its victim. Say ‘religious persecution,’ and the images that come to mind are the Crusades, the Inquisition, the wars of religion, Bruno and Savonarola, the Salem witch trials – all chapters of history in which Christianity is cast as the villain. For many such folks today, ‘Christianity’ means an all-male gerontocracy in Rome cracking down on progressive American nuns, or intemperate Evangelicals seeking to restrict a woman’s ‘right to choose’ or a gay’s right to marry.

Victims of the global war on Christians challenge this narrative head-on, because they show Christianity not as the oppressor but as the oppressed. By 2012, almost two thirds of the 2.2 billion Christians in the world lived outside of the West, and that share should reach three quarters by mid-century.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘Time Is Running Out’: US Congressman Asks Why Churches In The West Are Silent On Worldwide Christian Persecution – “Congressman Frank Wolf, who has been a champion of human rights, is hard pressed to understand why U.S. churches are silent when it comes to advocating for persecuted Christians. The Republican Virginia rep. specifically called out big-name pastors such as Rick Warren and John Piper for their non-activity, especially at a time when Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Egypt are at greater risk for persecution.” Read more.

Acts 14:22, “… continue in the faith … we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”