In The Shadow II

We have seen a focus on the persecution of the Jews (appropriately), particularly in Europe and anywhere where radical Islam exists. We are also seeing Christians murdered, in mass, by ISIS and other radical Islamic groups, but that has become the expected norm and not completely surprising. 

However, during the Tribulation, the persecution of both Christians and Jews will become widespread and state-sponsored, growing far beyond the actions of pockets of radical Islam as we see today. 

As stated before, we are clearly living in the shadow of the Tribulation as it inches closer and closer by the day, with everything we see in the news (I am tempted to summarize, but it would take far too long to even attempt to summarize the various signs that we watch on a daily basis).

The stories below (bolded statements in particular) reveal what could be the beginnings of this process and, in turn, represents a very ominous recent trend:

White House Renews Its 'Tu Quoque' Offensive Against Christians

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, evidently relishing her status as the poster child for Obama Administration nitwittery, interrupted her campaign to defeat ISIS by giving them all jobs to wonder why nobody’s complaining about Joseph Kony any more. 

Kony is indeed a nasty piece of work. His “Lord’s Resistance Army” has been haunting central Africa for the past twenty years or so, committing various atrocities – most famously the conscription of tens of thousands of children into service as slave-soldiers with threats of inhuman punishment – in a deranged quest to “establish a new state ruled by a mix of Christian fundamentalism and local African mysticism,” as the Washington Times put it, in a New Year’s Eve update on the search for Kony and his cronies.

It’s not the African mysticism that made Marie Harf suddenly remember this guy. She thinks she’s making a brilliant argument about how there are Christian terrorist groups, too, and that means we should climb right back off the high horses Obama told us to abandon because of the Crusades. 

Presumably she’ll repeat this dopey talking point until she finds an interviewer who tries to argue that Kony isn’t really Christian, at which point she’ll light up like a pachinko machine that’s been struck by lightning and cry, “That’s exactly what we’re saying about ISIS and Islam!” (A word of advice to Ms. Harf: you’re not likely to score that gotcha moment with anybody who works for MSNBC.)

There’s nothing conspiratorial or hypocritical about the relative lack of attention paid to Kony. African atrocities tend to be ignored, in part because there are a lot of them. He only caught the world’s attention because a documentary about his crimes went viral on the Internet. His gang isn’t a threat on the scale of, say, Boko Haram, which also didn’t attract much attention until their headline-grabbing enslavement of hundreds of young women… an atrocity the Obama Administration and its followers quite literally responded to by pouting. There are only a few hundred adult fighters in the Lord’s Resistance Army, while Boko Haram is doing quite well against a multi-national coalition in pitched battles.

Kony has zero influence in the Christian world, an important difference with ISIS that Obama officials ignore furiously. 

The whole misbegotten project of their Summit Against Generic Extremism is to confuse the issue, turning the already far-too-generic “War On Terror” into an even blander battle against “extremists” – a term Obama and his drones not coincidentally apply to nearly all of their domestic political opponents. Obama looks visibly annoyed with the business of defending America and her allies against ISIS and other Islamist organizations because there’s nothing in it for him – it’s a pure and unpleasant exercise of duty with no payoff, no fresh billions to spend on vote-buying projects, no expansion of government, no opportunity to persecute the segments of the American populace he intensely dislikes. A War On Extremism, on the other hand, has loads of appealing possibilities. He’d be happy to sign up for that, provided he gets to make the list of “extremists,” and cross Islamists off it.

That’s what he’s in the process of doing with his Extremely Extreme Summit Against Extremism, at which the very words “Islam” and “jihad” are verboten. 

The quest for a Christian version of ISIS to balance the scales has taken Team Obama from the dim mists of the 12th Century to the forbidding terrain of central Africa. 

Meanwhile, out in the real world, Christians are being kidnapped and beheaded by ISIS. They’re getting burned out of ancient communities in the Middle East where they’ve lived for thousands of years. Even before ISIS rolled into Iraq, a Christian exodus was under way. 

Benjamin Weinthal of the Jeruslaem Post appeared on Glenn Beck’s TV show earlier this week and said the persecution of Christians has “increased dramatically,” to the point of genocide.

“It’s one horror after the next, but the West simply fails to internalize what’s unfolding in the Middle East, not only in Libya but Iran, Syria, and Iraq,” said Weinthal, who noted the only country in the region with a growing Christian population is Israel. He complained there is “no counter-movement right now to tackle this problem.” And there won’t be, as long as Obama and his ideological posse are more interested in rounding up a Christian version of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, et cetera, ad nauseum, to score cheap points on talk shows.

I’d like to tell Christians it’s nothing personal, strictly a matter of political business, but anyone who understands how the Left views the history of Europe and the United States knows that isn’t true.

State Department Spokeswoman: 'Christian Militant Group' Among 'Extremist Threats We Face'

 People talk a lot about Islamic extremism and ISIS/ISIL (the guys who behead Christians, among others), but what about Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army?

"I don't remember people talking about that as much anymore, but that's a Christian militant group," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday.

"If you look at the Lord's Resistance Army and Kony, Joseph Kony -- I don't remember people talking about that as much anymore, but that's a Christian militant group. So there are a lot of different extremists threats we face, and there are different tools we have to go after each one of them."

According to an Associated Press report last November, "Kony's LRA comprises a few hundred fighters who are being hunted down by African Union troops as well as U.S. advisers." Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in a "reign of terror" that has spanned more than two decades in Central Africa.

Obama noted that Kony's LRA "continues to commit atrocities" across Central Africa "that have a disproportionate impact on regional security."

Muslim Group Cites Biden As Referring To Extremist Violence 'In The Name Of The Bible'

A U.S. Islamic advocacy group says that Vice- President Joe Biden, addressing a White House summit on “countering violent extremism (CVE)” on Tuesday, referred to right-wing extremists and supremacists committing violence “in the name of the Bible.”

“Biden just talked about the right wing militias & supremacist groups that are violent in the name of the Bible,” the Washington-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) tweeted later in the afternoon.

“We wanted them (WH) to include other type of violent extremists. Now they have, let’s keep asking and push,” MPAC said.

President Obama drew flak earlier this month with National Prayer Breakfast remarks that appeared to draw a comparison between terrorists invoking the Qur’an and violence perpetrated “in the name of Christ,” citing the Crusades, Inquisition, Jim Crow laws and slavery.

Watch Ed Henry Grill WH Spokesman On Islamic State: 'Why Did You Not Say 21 Christians Were Killed?

White House press secretary Josh Earnest was pressed on Wednesday as to why he did not identify the 21 victims of an Islamic State beheading as Coptic Christians, as opposed to just Egyptian citizens.

At one point, Earnest said, “I can’t account for that specific line of the statement.” 

“You talked about the murder of 21 citizens. I’m just curious, why didn’t you mention it was 21 Christians killed by Muslims? Is that relevant?” Fox News reporter Ed Henry asked.

Earnest answered, “It sure is.”

An Islamic State-affiliated group beheaded 21 Coptic Christians and released the video of the killings on Sunday in Libya. The group that posted the video called itself the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State group. That day, Earnest put out a statement that said: “ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect or ethnicity.”

On Wednesday during the press briefing, Henry followed, “Why did you not say 21 Christians were killed?”

Earnest responded, “I can’t account for that specific line of the statement.”

Henry went on to question Earnest about why the White House “invoked faith” when three Muslim students were killed in North Carolina, but not when Islamic State terrorists beheaded 21 Coptic Christians. Local authorities in the North Carolina slayings believe that the deadly incident was the result of a long-running parking dispute, not religion, USA Today reports.

In his response, Earnest said the president believes no one should be targeted based on their faith. He didn’t answer Henry’s question directly regarding why faith was included in one statement and not the other.