Persecution – the big picture and genocide

 

 

Just in case – like me – you’re a little slow in seeing it.

Yes, we have known that the last 100 years has brought more persecution of Christians than all previous centuries combined. Open Doors with its “worldwatch” lists the countries where persecution is most prolific.

North Korea highlights in our day sinister persecution by the state where walls have ears and people just disappear. It still happens in China and Vietnam. We must not forget our suffering church brothers and sisters.

ISIS has brought a new level of military persecution by Islamic forces. Yes, it is about taking over of territories and establishing a Caliphate, but it has graduated from Al-Qaeda before it to specifically targeting Christians and Christian villages in a more specifically genocidal fashion.

We have seen – and we wore (and still wear) our T-shirts with the Arabic letter ن or “N” that Islamic forces put on the houses of Christians prior to killing, raping, or just driving them out to an uncertain future.

We read in the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletins how ISIS has specifically targeted Christian Assyrian villages in northern Syria and likewise driving them out (where?) but keeping more than 200 hostage and shooting them in small groups. Before being killed – in their orange jumpsuits and kneeling before their captors – the Christians declare “we are Assyrian Christians. My name is…”

We have seen the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians – along with many others – on the shore of the Mediterranean, once again with declarations of belonging to Jesus Christ, along with the chilling “message to the nations of the Cross”. All videotaped for the world to see.

Even in the attacks on shopping centres and schools we have seen – and here at home in the West – the specific targeting of Christians for execution.

There is an amazing insight by Islamic military forces that Islam and Christianity are implacably opposed and that supernatural forces are at work.  Here in the West we seem to be slower to acknowledge this – at least openly. We pretend that we can find a common ground. But the Boko Haram in northern  Nigeria have recognised that spiritual powers have sometimes sabotaged their military efforts and have targeted and killed Christians in order to prevent them from praying. If only we realised more – and engaged in – the power of such praying…

And here in the “free” West we are losing our freedom to speak. Even in our submissions to parliament our arguments against euthanasia and our support for children having mothers and fathers – argued without any “Christian” content – are sought to be dismissed simply because they have been put together by Christians.

If we dare publicly to support marriage as between male and female then we are charged with “hate speech”.

And in our Islamic communities the push for Sharia Law continues. The severe persecution of those who become Christian continues. Islam is not only intrinsically and implacably opposed to Christian belief but also against “Christian” civilisation and democracy with its foundations on Judeo-Christian principles. There is no freedom in Islam unless we submit.

And when Islamic youth sees the decadence of the West, and hears the call of their teachers for purification of themselves and then others by sacrificial Jihad so the Caliphate will be established, they commit to the cause of what they see as the call of the prophet and true Islam and become terrorists.

Can we change this?  Not while Wahhabi Islam – as in Saudi Arabia – and ISIS has the upper hand in the Islamic world.

Realising – as the Boko Haram do – that this warfare is so much more than “against flesh and blood” (Eph 6:10-18), that the battle is spiritual and not with “the weapons of this world” (2 Cor 10:3-5), we desperately need to pray. To pray, for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, for God’s protection, that God’s Name will be honoured in our nation and we must immerse ourselves in – and commit to memory – God’s Word, the “sword of the Spirit”, so we will be prepared for the future.

We may find ourselves in the position of Habbakkuk (are we there yet?) where we face purification by a God-defying external force by our continued God-defying attitude internally.

18 October 18, 2015 | by Lachlan Dunjey | Source: chooselifeaustralia.org.au