MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Let’s be frank. Muslims have been attacking Christians and churches long before knowledge of the anti-Mohammed film came to light. The ‘film’ has been, and will continue to be, a pretext for violence. What truly offends Islamists is not merely the existence of a film deemed insulting to Islam, but rather the existence of Christians themselves …

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.”

Continental News – “Across much of the Muslim world, more than two weeks of backlash to the internet video ‘Innocence of the Muslims’ has occasionally been directed at Christians, from computer hacks to church burnings.

In Zinder, Niger, on Sept. 14, about 1,000 Muslims emerged from the Friday Jumu’ah prayers, divided into groups of several hundred each, and started marching toward the churches in town. They set the Winners Chapel afire. They severely vandalized the Union of Evangelical and Protestant churches’ community center, the Church of the Assemblies of God, and a Catholic church.

Several Christians were injured, though the exact number has not been verified. After police regained control at the churches, smaller groups damaged the homes of the evangelical church pastor and homes of members of the Catholic church. Police made numerous arrests.

Meanwhile, as far away as Pakistan, Christians anticipated the wave of Muslim anger to wash into their country. On Sept. 21, an angry mob torched St. Paul Lutheran Church in Pakistan’s Mardan district. Protestors destroyed not only the church building but a school attended by Christian and Muslim children.

Yet amid the anger and violence in several countries, there have been some moments of peace.

Unable to breach the perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, some Egyptian protesters turned their attention to the nearby Kasr-el-Dobara Evangelical Church. ‘Death to the worshippers of the cross!’ they painted on the wall.” Read more.

Mark 10:14, “… ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.'”

MWC News – “At least two children have been killed and two others wounded when a hand grenade was allegedly thrown into a church in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, police officials say.

Moses Nyakwama, the city’s police chief, confirmed the injuries in the attack on Sunday.

He said that police suspected the cause of the explosion was a grenade.

Charles Owino, a deputy police spokesman, said that the attack at St Polycarp’s church occurred on Juja Road, in the eastern part of the city.

The grenade exploded, spraying the children with shrapnel.

Blood-stained children’s jackets and shoes lay scattered on the floor, surrounded by remnants of metal walls that were broken and twisted by the force of the explosion.

‘The children who attend this service are aged between six and 10… we usually divide them according to their ages,’ said Livingstone Muiruri. ‘They had just started the morning session when the explosion occurred.’

‘We were in the main church so we all ran there to assist the kids,’ he said.

Janet Wanja was just entering the church when the blast shook the building.

‘I heard a loud explosion and then heard kids screaming,’ she said. ‘I am traumatised by what I saw, kids with injuries and blood all over. ‘Why are they attacking the church?’

Al-Shabab suspected

‘We suspect this blast might have been carried out by sympathisers of al-Shabab,’ said Owino. ‘These are the kicks of a dying horse since, of late, Kenyan police have arrested several suspects in connection with grenades.'” Read more.

AFP – “CAIRO — The United States warned on Saturday that US women Christian missionaries in mainly Muslim Egypt face threats of terror attacks and urged vigilance.

‘The embassy has credible information suggesting terrorist interest in targeting US female missionaries in Egypt,’ the American mission in Cairo said in a statement on its website.

‘Accordingly, US citizens should exercise vigilance, taking necessary precautions to maintain their personal security,’ it said, calling on Americans to ensure they can be contacted by diplomatic missions in case of emergency.

On Friday, a Republican congresswoman froze a request by the US administration for $450 million in cash for the Egyptian government, saying it needed new scrutiny amid rocky US ties with Cairo.

Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama said Egypt was neither a friend nor a foe in the wake of last year’s uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak and brought Islamists to power.

Obama’s comments came after a mob raided the US embassy in Cairo in protest at a film mocking Islam made in the United States that sparked deadly unrest across the Muslim world.

Coptic Christians, who make up six to 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 82 million, regularly complain of discrimination and marginalisation. They have also been the target of numerous sectarian attacks.

The Copts have been nervous since the Islamists came to power.” Source – Google News.

Flashback: Egyptian Cleric: Christian Missionaries Teach Children to Hate the Prophet Muhammad

By Raymond Ibrahim, Jihad Watch – “According to Al Masry Al Youm, Kasr El-Dobara, the largest evangelical church in the Middle East, located in Egypt, was recently besieged by ‘unknown people’ hurling ‘stones and gas bombs.’ The first gas bomb thrown at the church Thursday afternoon, September 13, was signaled as an error by police, but it was soon followed by other bomb attacks, which went into midnight and early Friday. Worshippers locked themselves inside the church and put on masks to avoid gas poisoning.

Some of those trapped inside looked for help by trying to contact politicians, journalists, and even the ‘moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood. All the latter did was announce on TV that the attackers were not members of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the besiegers left and the trapped Christians finally came out, not a single police or security agent to counter the attacks or protect the church could be found.” Source – Jihad Watch.

Flashback: Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi Says Christians Must Convert To Islam, Pay ‘Jizya’, Or Leave – ‘Conquest Is Coming’ – “… Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, just declared that he will ‘achieve the Islamic conquest (fath) of Egypt for the second time, and make all Christians convert to Islam, or else pay the jizya,’ the additional Islamic tax, or financial tribute, required of non-Muslims, or financial tribute… ‘They need to know that conquest is coming, and Egypt will be Islamic …’” Read more.

Flashback: Egyptian Cleric and Former General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood: ‘To Hell With Anyone Who Does Not Accept Islamic Rule’ – “Egyptian Cleric and Former General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood: ‘To hell with anyone who does not accept the Islamic rule that the people want. Why? … We are a people who talk about democracy and the rule of the people … They elected Dr. Morsi for the cultural enterprise that he declared, which is based upon Islam. … I don’t want to beat around the bush. I’m a straightforward man. When Morsi presented his cultural enterprise for the revival of Egypt, he did so from an Islamic perspective, not a secular one.’” Watch video.

Associated Press – “CAIRO — Coptic Christian families have fled their homes in a town in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, fearing for their lives after receiving death threats from suspected Islamic militants, a local priest said Thursday.

Father Youssef Sobhi said that Islamic militants dropped leaflets on the doorsteps of shops owned by Copts in the city of Rafah near the border with Gaza and Israel, ordering them to leave town within 48 hours and making an implicit warning of violence if they failed to do so. Two days later, masked militants on a motorcycle opened fire on one of the shops before speeding off, Sobhi said. No one was hurt in the shooting.

When Christians met Tuesday with the province’s top government official, who was recently appointed by Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, the governor promised to facilitate the Copts’ move to the nearby city of el-Arish but did not offer to protect the community to ensure that it stayed in Rafah, according to the priest.

‘I was shocked at the governor’s response,’ Sobhi said. ‘This is simply displacement by the government’s consent.’

An Egyptian intelligence official confirmed that a number of Coptic families had fled Rafah because of a militant threat. Another security official denied the reports and said that no Christians were forced to leave. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media.

It was not exactly clear how many Christians have left the town, but Sobhi said that the number of Copts in Rafah had dwindled from 14 families to two since the uprising that pushed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power in February 2011.

A first wave left Rafah after the only church in the town, The Holy Family Church, was looted, torched and destroyed in several militant attacks over the past year. The church is built on the site where Christians believe the Holy Family first stopped to rest after crossing into Egypt.” Read more.

By Milad Zaki – “Christian residents of Egyptian border towns Rafah and Al-Arish have so far refused to leave the city, as a local church had advised, after they received leaflets containing messages threatening to blow up their property if they do not leave within 48 hours.

Rev. Gabriel Habib, priest at the Church of the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael in Al-Arish, said Christian residents had refused to leave temporarily to avoid fulfilling the extremists’ goal of forcing them out of their city.

Habib added that some Christians told him, ‘Even if we die, we are not better than the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their homeland and religion,’ adding that they will stay with their Muslim neighbors.

Seven Christian families saw leaflets posted on the walls of their shops or homes, commanding them to leave within 48 hours or else have their property destroyed.

Habib said, ‘The church of Rafah was destroyed during the January revolution [of 2011] and has not been renovated yet.’ He added that ‘prayers have stopped there, because of the security situation in the Sinai.’

Rev. Carlos Victor, secretary of the diocese of North Sinai, quoted security sources as saying that investigations have shown that [the warnings to Christians] were random and no organizing group was behind them, and that it is likely that these leaflets were distributed by Muslim residents angry at the film that insults Prophet Muhammad.” Source – Al Monitor.

AFP – “A suicide bomber has attacked a church in northern Nigeria , killing at least two people and injuring 48, according to the Red Cross.

Witnesses at the scene in the city of Bauchi said they heard a blast near St John’s Church, possibly in a car park.

Bauchi has often been targeted by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which wants to impose Sharia law across Nigeria.

Sunday attacks on churches took place regularly earlier this year but had eased in recent months.

Attacks in central and northern Nigeria blamed on Boko Haram have killed some 1,400 people since 2010.

On 16 September, Nigerian security forces said they killed Boko Haram’s spokesman Abu Qaqa in a gun battle in the northern state of Kano.

However, the group has not confirmed his death.

Meanwhile, the military in Yobe state imposed a 24-hour curfew on two cities as soldiers went door-to-door, searching for Boko Haram members.

‘Residents of the two cities are to remain indoors until further notice to enable security personnel to fish out Boko Haram terrorists,’ a military spokesman told the AFP news agency.” Source – BBC.

By Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife – “ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)– Thousands of Muslims burned down a Lutheran church as well as its school and adjacent homes in Pakistan Friday, September 21, injuring several Christians in violent protests against an anti-Islam film that elsewhere killed dozens of Pakistanis, church sources and rights activists told BosNewsLife.

In published remarks, Lutheran Bishop Humphrey Peter said a crowd of some 8,000 people, many of them carrying petrol, attacked the St.Paul Church complex in Mardan city in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.

‘The St.Paul Church, its school and the houses of the principal and pastor along with a vehicle were burned by a mob,’ he said in a statement released by Pakistan-based rights group World Vision In Progress (WVIP).

Several people staying inside the church complex were beaten, added WVIP Executive Director Farrukh H. Saif.

Saif suggested that many more people could have been killed or injured in Friday’s church attack.

‘Nearly 500 students are studying at the primary and secondary school of the Lutheran church. But nobody was there now because it was a holiday in Pakistan,’ he told BosNewsLife…

Saif said that elsewhere in Pakistan at least 22 people died in clashes between Muslim protesters and security forces.

‘According to the reports we received from hospital sources in the city of Karachi alone there were 15 killings, while four others died in Peshawar, two in other parts of Punjab province and at least one in the capital Islamabad.’

Additionally ‘hundreds were injured,’ he said.

More than 100 were wounded in Karachi alone, according to Allah Bachayo Memon, spokesman of the chief minister of Sindh province.

He told reporters about 20 vehicles, three banks and five cinemas were set on fire.” Read more.

Revelation 12:12b, “… Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”

Friday Sermon in Benghazi, Libya: “Oh nation of Islam, I was so overwhelmed with grief that I could not express it. How could I possibly depict the tragedy that had happened? We remained quiet when they butchered the elderly. We remained quiet when they slaughtered the children. We were restrained when they violated the honor of women. All that is left is the mocking of our Prophet. No, a thousand times no… Oh nation of Islam, who will come to the aid of the Messenger of Allah? Who will come to the aid of Muhammad, who sacrificed everything he had, in order to deliver us this religion? Oh, how he suffered for our sake! Oh, how often his honorable face was spat upon for our sake! Oh, how many times he was banished from his land for our sake! After all this, how can we not boycott anyone who attacks our beloved prophet? Indeed, oh Muslims, the time has come for us to adopt a firm stance, and to detonate our wrath upon them, with deeds they will not be able to ignore. Let us stab them in their main artery, the secret behind their power. Let us stab them in their economy. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘Wage Jihad against the polytheists [Christians], using your wealth, your hands, and your tongues.’ Oh Allah, destroy the rancorous Christians. Oh Allah, destroy the rancorous Christians, and the corrupting Jews. Oh Allah, destroy them for they cannot withstand you.”