MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Daniel 11:43, “He will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Nubians in submission.”

Compass Direct News – “JUBA, South Sudan, April 19 (CDN) — As tensions between Sudan and South Sudan turn into military combat on the border, predominantly Christian citizens of southern origin trapped in Sudan fear the Islamic government and Muslims in general will turn on them, sources told Compass.

Officially foreigners though many of the half million southern Sudanese in Sudan have never lived anywhere else, the ethnic southerners have been granted another 30 days as of April 8 to register or leave the country. But the government has forbidden hundreds of ethnic southerners from boarding planes for Juba, saying they require documents from the southern capital in order to leave.

‘They closed all ways in front of us in order to prevent us from travel to our country,’ said one church leader.

South Sudanese Christians were surprised to learn that all flights and land routes to South Sudan were closed to them on April 9, with no information forthcoming on when they would be allowed to leave, sources said. The Sudanese government last week declared it was in a state of war with South Sudan, adding to the fears of the trapped southern Sudanese.

Church leaders who wish to remain in the north said they have not been provided enough information on how to register for legal status. And many South Sudanese fear that registering will only help officials to monitor their movements.” Read more.

“Jordan (MNN) ― Refugees who have fled to Jordan from Syria are telling mission leaders supported by Christian Aid Mission about deliberate, new persecution from the ‘Arab Spring’ insurgents who are seeking to overthrow the brutal Assad regime in Damascus.

Nearly 100,000 Christians so far have fled from Homs and other cities being targeted by government forces, but it is no longer just to escape the crossfire. Now, more reports are revealing that a new wave of persecution is deliberate and growing. As a result, Virginia-based Christian Aid Mission is sending additional aid to help the growing numbers of refugees which have fled to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

‘It is over; we can’t get back what we lost,’ said one discouraged Christian refugee here in Jordan. ‘It will never be the same anymore for me or my family. We’ve lost hope.’ He said he had to flee with his family at night, because anti-Christian persecution in Syria is becoming a steadily growing reality.

‘I had my own business. I ran a supermarket, and we were financially stable. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. Our dreams vanished when a group of terrorists threatened to kill my family, burn our house, and set fire to the supermarket if I didn’t pay them $7,000.

‘I paid the amount, hoping that they would leave us alone, but they did not. Instead, they kidnapped me for a whole week. They only let me go on one condition: that each month I would pay them the same amount.

‘What do you think I could do? I fled. I packed our stuff, taking only the basics. I took my family and came to Jordan. My son, Omar, has one year left to finish his bachelor’s degree, but now his dreams have vanished as well. I used to be a business owner…but now I am a laborer who can hardly provide the day-to-day basics for my family.’

Meanwhile, indigenous missionaries supported by Christian Aid are standing in the gap to help by visiting Syrian refugees in northern Jordan, sometimes every day. Like the grocer, they also have left everything. Many have lost sons and other family members since the fighting began.

Another older woman told native missionaries how close death is for Syrian Christians, ‘I was talking with friends next to our building when suddenly, from every direction, we heard gun shots. At the same moment, I watched my friends fall dead in front of me. I lost my friends in one second. I was also hit by a bullet. It fragmented my knee, and now I can’t walk normally.’

‘Only three weeks ago, two car bombs detonated in the middle of a Christian neighborhood in Syria, close to the Syrian Air Intelligence building. The explosions caused massive damage, turning walls to rubble.'” Read more.

“The Jammu and Kashmir Police has arrested a Christian couple on charges of ‘promoting enmity’ while they were allegedly distributing pamphlets about Christianity in the border township of Bandipora in north Kashmir.

The police said the couple from Delhi, along with a local girl, was distributing pamphlets in the Bandipora market when people raised a hue and cry and called the police. Sensing trouble, the police seized the pamphlets and immediately whisked them away for sustained questioning.

The police later registered a case under section 153A Ranbir Penal Code (promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, etc) at the Bandipora police station. Under this section, the law prescribes imprisonment of up to three years, or with fine, or with both. In case of an offence relating to religion, the punishment could extend to five years.

‘We have arrested the duo. The woman was seen distributing pamphlets in the market place where she had gone shopping,’ said Bashir Ahmad Khan, superintendent of police, Bandipora district.

The couple and the girl have been detained and questioned in the police station. Police sources said during questioning, they said they were not doing anything unconstitutional or illegal in the town.

The police said they were arrested to avoid any law and order breakdown in the area. ‘There was lot of hue and cry which could have created law and order problem in the area. Therefore we took them into custody as a preventive measure to avoid any crisis in the district,’ said a police official.

The arrest comes six months after the police arrested a Christian priest in Srinagar in November last year.” Read more.

Compass Direct News – “After a memorial service for three Christians who were murdered in Malatya, Turkey five years ago today, an Istanbul pastor who was attacked over Easter weekend said he’s experienced hostility from Muslims nearly all his life.

Semir Serkek, 58, pastor of Grace Church in Istanbul’s Bahcelievler district, said he personally knew Turkish converts to Christianity Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske, who were brutally murdered by five young men in the southeastern city of Malatya on April 18, 2007.

‘I looked at their fate with some envy, because they were young and I am old, but they left – I have gone through many things,’ he said. ‘But they were so young, so young.’

On a day when memorial services were held for the three slain Christians in Malatya, Izmir and Elazig as well as the ones Serkek attended at both the Kozyatag Cultural Center and Gedikpasha Church in Istanbul, the pastor said the physical violence on him the evening (April 7) before Easter Sunday surprised him.

‘I’ve been verbally abused for being a Christian many times, but this was the first time I was hit, so this was surprising and made me sad,’ Serkek said.

Serkek was alone at Grace Church finishing preparations for the next day’s Easter celebration when at around 9 p.m. he heard frantic pounding at the door, he said. Opening it, he found four young men in their late teens who claimed they had questions and demanded to enter.

The men, whom Serkek said appeared to be about 18 years old, were agitated, and when he refused to let them in they used insulting language, he said. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t recite the Islamic testimony of faith.

‘This made me uneasy, and I told them that this was a church and they should come back in the morning,’ Serkek told Compass. ‘‘This is a Muslim neighborhood, what business does a church have here?’ they asked me, and told me again and again that if I didn’t accept the final religion I would die.'” Read more.

“The United States has warned its citizens in Nigeria that the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram may be planning attacks in the capital, Abuja.

The U.S. embassy issued an emergency message saying attacks could target hotels used by Westerners, but that the timing was unknown.

The alert said the Nigerian government was aware of the threat and ‘actively implementing security measures.’

The embassy cautioned citizens to be especially aware of their security near Nigerian government facilities, diplomatic missions, large gathering places, markets and places of worship.” Read more.

Viewer Discretion Advised

By Gary Lane, CBN – “ISTANBUL, Turkey — On April 18, 2007, three Christians were bound to their chairs, tortured, and stabbed repeatedly at a Bible print shop in Malatya — their throats slit.

Five years have now passed since the Malatya murders, an incident that was perhaps the most tragic and brutal murder of Christians in modern-day Turkey.

Today, believers are facing increased persecution and the country is gradually moving away from secularism.

‘You see everyday is April 18. Everyday I have to live without him,’ widow Susanne Geske told CBN News on the one year anniversary of her husband’s murder.

Five suspects went on trial for killing the men, but there is still no conviction…

Church attendance dropped immediately after the Malatya incident. And although attendance is now growing again, so are the number of attacks against Christians.

The Protestant churches of Turkey documented 12 attacks in 2011. This included the beating of Christians for sharing their faith with Muslims.

No one has been prosecuted for any of these crimes, putting Turkey on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s list of ‘countries of particular concern’ (CPC) for the first time.

Nina Shea, one of the commissioners supporting that move, said the Turkish government is suppressing Christian worship, and as a result Christian numbers are dwindling.

‘They comprise 0.15 percent of the entire population of Turkey,’ Shea said. ‘They are very frail, and we’re going to see them vanish in our lifetime if Turkey doesn’t lift its dense web of regulations and give them religious freedom.’

Turkey’s ambassador in Washington called the CPC designation ‘politically motivated.’

Middle East analyst Walid Phares is not surprised by the persecution of Christians in Turkey. He said Prime Minister Erdogan has been shifting away from a pro-NATO, pro-Western position to a ‘pro-Islamists, more anti-Israel and slightly anti-Western attitude.'” Read more.

BBC – “A Swiss woman has been abducted in the rebel-held northern Malian city of Timbuktu, officials and residents say.

The woman, a Christian missionary in her 40s called Beatrice, was taken from her house by armed men, residents said.

Most foreigners fled Timbuktu after Tuareg and Islamist rebels seized the town early this month in the aftermath of a military coup.

The kidnap comes amid concern the area could offer a safe haven to an al-Qaeda branch operating in the country.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), the network’s North African wing, has links to the Islamist rebels. The group is already holding 13 Westerners.

‘Beatrice, a Swiss national, was abducted this Sunday at Timbuktu by armed men,’ local official Mohamed Ould Hassen told AFP.

One resident of the town told the news agency that they saw six armed men take the woman.

‘They shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ [God is great],’ the resident added.” 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.

It was only a matter of time …

Sudan Tribune – “(KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese national assembly on Monday adopted a resolution designating the country’s southern neighbour as an enemy state in the latest sign of escalation between the two sides.

‘We consider the government of South Sudan an enemy and Sudanese state institutions must treat it as such,’ according to the text read by Kamal Obeid who chairs the defense and security committee in parliament.

The legislative body’s speaker Ahmed Ibrahim al-Taher also announced that his country wants the ruling party in South Sudan toppled by any means necessary.

‘We declare that we will confront the [Sudan People Liberation Movement] SPLM until we end its rule of the South, and will work to gather our resources to realize this aim,’ al-Taher said.

‘We are in a battle that does not finish with the recovery of Heglig, but with an end to the danger that comes from South Sudan’ he added.

It remains unclear what implications the decision will carry as the power to declare war lies with the president according to the constitution. Only then can the parliament endorse it according to the 2005 constitution.” Read more.

Flashback: North Sudan: Islamist Government Launches Air Strikes Against Churches and Schools in the Nuba Mountains – “After Khartoum denied that it had bombed civilians earlier this month, Sudanese aerial strikes last week were aimed at church buildings and schools in Kauda, South Kordofan state, a humanitarian aid worker said… Humanitarian agencies consider the Islamic government’s targeting of civilians in the Nuba Mountains, which has a large Christian population, an ‘ethnic cleansing’ against non-Arab peoples …” Read more.

Flashback: North Sudan: Christianity No Longer an Accepted Religion, Muslims Attack Christians Trying to Rebuild Church – “Emboldened by government calls for a Sudan based on Islamic law since the secession of South Sudan, Muslims long opposed to a church near Khartoum have attacked Christians trying to finish constructing their building, sources said… laiming that Christianity was no longer an accepted religion in the country, Muslims in the Hay al Sawra, Block 29 area of Omdurman West on Aug. 5 attacked SCOC members who were constructing the church building, the sources said. ‘We do not want any presence of churches in our area,’ shouted members of the mob as they threw stones at the Christians, the sources said.” Read more.

Flashback: North Sudan: President Al-Bashir Moves Forward with Rewriting the Country’s Constitution to Implement Sharia Law – “Sudanese leader Omer Hassan Al-Bashir is moving forward with rewriting the country’s constitution to implement Shariah law, according to reports from organizations with links inside the Muslim-dominated nation. International Christian Concern’s North Africa specialist Jonathan Racho says that a Shariah-compliant constitution will mean more suffering for Sudan’s remaining Christians. ‘This new law (Shariah compliant constitution) is going to affect a significant number of Christians who live in places like Khartoum (the capital city). There are still a significant number of Christians in Sudan,’ Racho said.” Read more.

By Stoyan Zaimov, The Christian Post – “Reports of Islamic extremists attacking people of others faiths in India and Pakistan have been growing in recent years, resulting in beatings and even beheadings.

On March 30, at a Christian church in the West Bengal state of India, a 65-year-old woman widow was beaten after Islamist extremists forced their way into the church, Compass Direct News reported. The 11 or so members of the church were attacked simply for gathering and worshipping Christ, and the Islamists called them “pagans” as they continuously kicked and beat them.

In the same area of Nutangram earlier in March, a 22-year old woman was driven from her predominantly Muslim village after she thanked Christ for being healed from an illness – apparently, even her Muslim parents joined in the subsequent attack by Islamists who wanted her and her beliefs out of the village.

The religious persecution is reportedly just as bad in neighboring Pakistan, where Christians are targeted even by government authorities. Currently, a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, is on death row for allegedly blaspheming the name of the prophet Muhammad two years ago, an accusation filed by co-workers at a field she was working on.

Bibi insists all she was doing was defending her Christian faith, but has been jailed nonetheless – and even if the Pakistani court finds her not guilty and releases her, many Islamic leaders have placed a bounty on her head …” Read more.

AP – “KANO, Nigeria – Witnesses say three people were injured following a bomb attack in a north Nigeria city that was the scene of a massive assault by a radical Islamist sect in January.

The attack happened Sunday night in a Christian neighborhood of Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s Muslim north.

A military spokesman said the attack caused no injuries, but local witnesses said three people were wounded.

The bomb apparently was hidden inside of a drinking can. A January attack by members of the Boko Haram sect saw gunmen throw similar explosives.

That January attack killed at least 185 people.

Boko Haram is waging an increasingly bloody fight against Nigeria’s weak central government in its effort to enact strict Shariah law across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people and free its imprisoned members.” Source – FOX News.

Revelation 6:9-10, “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

By Ed West, The Telegraph – “This week’s issue of the Spectator is very important and worth buying – ie I’m in it, arguing that Britain should take action to alleviate the suffering of Iraq’s Christians, if necessary by offering sanctuary (no link, I’m afraid: you’ll just have to stump up the cash).

I met with three Iraqis who have been refused asylum in this country, all of whom had been threatened by Islamists back home. One had lost his shop to jihadi violence, another a brother. The Home Office wants to deport them back to Iraq.

Of two million Iraqi refugees currently outside of the country, some 30 per cent are minorities, mostly Christians, according to the UN: the bulk of them in Syria, Jordan and Turkey, unable to work and living in desperate poverty. Many in Syria now fear that it will become another Iraq, with Christians caught in the crossfire between rival Islamic communities.

The Christian population of Iraq has declined from over one million in 2003 to below 400,000 today. Overall some 1,000 Christians have been murdered since the 2003 invasion, and over 60 churches have been firebombed – the worst single incident being the October 21, 2010 massacre of 60 men, women and children at the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, which alerted the world to their suffering. Two weeks later Islamists detonated 11 bombs in Christian suburbs of Baghdad, killing five Christians and wounding 33, including a four-month-old baby.” Read more.

‘Digital Journal’ Op-Ed: In the line of fire — The plight of Middle Eastern Christians – “As followers of the Christian faith in the United States and throughout the Western world celebrate the culmination of Holy Week with Easter, their counterparts in the Middle East find themselves under fire and on the run for their lives – literally. The Christians of the Middle East are in great peril. Christians in that part of the world are being subjected to an unprecedented religious cleansing at the hands of Islamic extremists who have declared jihad against them.” Read more.

By Nina Shea, Hudson Institute – “In recent years, we’ve begun to brace ourselves for news of bombings, burnings, and other attacks on churches full of Christian worshipers on religious holy days — for example, in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. This violence comes out of the growing community of Salafi Muslims, adherents of the radical brand of Islam that is Saudi Arabia’s official doctrine and which Saudi Arabia exports throughout the Sunni world. We’ve also come to expect the willful blindness of the Obama administration about the religious implications of these horrific events. Last weekend’s Easter Sunday was no exception.

On Easter morning, a Protestant church in Kaduna, Nigeria, was targeted by a suicide car bombing that killed 39 and wounded dozens, apparently the handiwork of Boko Haram, the Salafi network whose stated aim is to turn Africa’s largest country into a sharia state. Last Christmas, Boko Haram had bombed St. Theresa’s Catholic Church outside the capital Abuja killing 44 worshipers, as well as attacked various Christian churches in the towns of Jos, Kano, Gadaka, and Damaturu.

Four days have now passed and there has been no official comment from the Obama administration about this most recent monstrous example of anti-Christian persecution. However, on April 8, that is, Easter, Secretary Clinton did manage to issue one press release. It announced that ‘today we celebrate the history, impact and culture of Romani people’ (formerly called ‘gypsies’), and inveighed against Europe, demanding that it become ‘more inclusive.’ But for the northern Nigerian Christians savagely attacked on one of their most important religious days, there has not been a word of condolence.

Even worse, the day after the Nigeria church bombing, at a forum on U.S. policy toward Nigeria held at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson — overlooking Boko Haram’s self-proclaimed identity, pattern of behavior, statements and very name, which means ‘Western education is a sin’ — publicly denied that Boko Haram has religious motives. He went out of his way to stress: ‘Religion is not driving extremist violence in . . . northern Nigeria.’

Carson is articulating official U.S. policy.” Read more.

Flashback: Washington Times: Obama Administration Silent While Saudi Grand Mufti Targets Christianity, ‘Ignores These Types Of Provocations At Its Peril’ – “If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.” Read more.

Flashback: Obama’s Christian Problem – White House Overlooks Christian Persecution While Pandering to Islam – “The Obama administration has been obsessed with Muslim outreach and recently tried to mend fences with the Jewish community. Given the state of the world, however, the White House ought to be focused on helping the world’s oppressed Christians. The United States has been wary to intervene in matters affecting Christians in the Middle East for fear of validating terrorist narratives that the West is engaged in a new crusade against Islam. The result of this passive policy has been to allow Islamic extremists increasingly to dominate the debate, often with tragic consequences.” Read more.