A worldwide Christian organization says that the horrific executions of Christians by members of ISIS in Libya in February have sparked a surge in conversations between Christians and Muslims about faith.
Tami Yeager, a volunteer coordinator with the Voice of the Martyrs,reports the “vivid video footage” “did not spark division amongst Egypt’s 10 million Christians and 73 million Muslims.”
Quite the contrary, she said, “the declarations of faith uttered by the men only moments before their death have created fertile soil for conversation between Muslims and Christians.”
Her report appeared on the VOM blog site this week as a followup to a trip to the Middle East. The Christians killed by ISIS in February were mostly Egyptians who had gone to Libya for various jobs.
The ISIS video shows black-clad executioners leading a line of Christians down onto a beach then executing them.
Yeager reported: “Militants released video footage of the martyrdom of Coptic Christian men in Libya. The footage of their martyrdom included a caption that read – ‘The people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church.’ The 21 men who knelt before their persecutors were identified as ‘people of the cross,’ and asked to deny their faith or die. Many of the men are seen uttering their final words on this earth – ‘Lord Jesus Christ.’”
She said the statement of faith exhibited by the men “sparked the Bible Society of Egypt’s biggest campaign ever.”
“A Bible tract was created and sent to print within 36 hours following their public executions. Titled ‘Two Rows by the Sea,’ it carries a message of hope, comfort, and forgiveness for both Christians and Muslims alike. The Bible tract has been widely received in Egypt with 1.6 million copies distributed.”
She said one man who lost two brothers that day went on Egyptian television to thank ISIS for including their statements of faith in the video so that the world could see.
Yeager spotlighted another remarkable story: It wasn’t discovered until later that one of the men wasn’t a Christian when he was led to his execution.
He was identified as Matthew Ayairga of Chad.
“He is believed to not have been a Christian before kneeling in the sand beside the ‘people of the cross,’” Yeager reported. “Witnessing the courage and faith of the Egyptian Christians, he also chose to follow Jesus. Mere moments before Matthew was executed, his executors are seen asking, “Do you reject Christ?’ His reply was, “Their God is my God.’”
Egypt responded to the executions with airstrikes against targets in Libya. Meanwhile, Tea Party Network News noted that President Obama was tweeting a message to sign up for Obamacare at the time of the executions.
Franklin Graham, CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, posted on Facebook that eventually ISIS will bow to Jesus.
He was lamenting the fact that when ISIS released a video of the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya, Muslim leaders were silent.
“Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians? Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?” he wrote.
“We’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States. If this concerns you like it does me, share this,” he said.
He added, “The evil of ISIS really shouldn’t shock us – it is fully in keeping with their ultimate agenda of hastening a final apocalypse.”
That a “final battle” will come is confirmed in the Bible, he said, and it “will result in the defeat of Satan and all those allied with him.”
He continued, “One thing is for sure – one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father.”
Islamic State militants have killed at least 400 people in Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, mostly women and children, Syrian state television said Sunday, citing residents.
According to Reuters, opposition activists on social media claimed that hundreds of bodies were in the streets of the city.
"The terrorists have killed more than 400 people.. and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders," a Palmyra resident told Syria's state news agency.
State employees were among hundreds killed in the massacre. Among them was the head of of nursing department at the hospital and all her family.
Videos posted by Islamic State supporters showed the militants entering governmental buildings in search of Syrian soldiers. They were also seen pulling down pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his father, Hafez Assad, Reuters reported.
At least 300 troops were killed in battles before the city was captured, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are," Rami Abdulrahman, from the monitoring group, told Reuters.
A rare glimpse into Hezbollah's underground tunnels was provided on Friday by Lebanese publication As-Safir, which is associated with the militant organization.
The report praised Hezbollah's activities and painted it as a strong army ready for battle. While it is difficult to verify the claims in the article, it contained a rare discussion of the tunnels by Hezbollah members.
The reporter wrote that in order to meet Hezbollah fighters near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, he travelled from the city of Tyre and was required to stop at a house known to locals as a Hezbollah headquarters, where he changed into a military uniform to blend in to his surroundings and to confound Israeli drones.
The report described Hezbollah's observations unit on the border, claiming it has been upgraded and is waiting for battle.
The tunnels were discussed several times, but not as an offensive tactic to infiltrate Israel, like the ones used by Hamas during Operation Protective Edge – a greatly concerning prospect for residents in the north. Instead, the tunnels were described as a means to launch rockets from Lebanese territory.
The report claimed that Hezbollah has upgraded its tunnels and that they are located at sensitive spots near the border. "It is true that the enemy discovered the ramifications of the tunnel technology in the Second Lebanon War, but the tactic has developed since then," said the newspaper.
"The type of concrete has changed, the ventilation system is different, and the methods for customizing weapons and food have changed. Electricity is provided to tunnels 24 hours a day with the use of generators set up underground."
"The war has not yet arrived, but it could arrive one of these days. Therefore building of new fortifications and tunnels continues around the clock, and instead of tens of thousands of rockets ready for launch there are now hundreds of thousands."
Hezbollah fighters with whom the reporter spoke said that the group's fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen is a continuation of its campaign against Israel. "Its fingerprints are obvious everywhere, and if it's not her (Israel) – then they are her allies' fingerprints," said one.
"Anyone who thinks the organization's presence in Syria comes at the expense of our presence here in the heart of the south is mistaken. Israel is well aware of this, and if it weren't, it would not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity."
The article also reported seeing a structure containing a 120mm artillery gun that appeared to be aimed towards a specific Israeli target.
President Obama and the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis are equally committed to elevating climate change to a top public policy priority, ahead of issues such as the continued surge of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and its massacre of Christians.
But they are ignoring a growing body of scientific evidence challenging the assumptions on which the theory of human-caused “climate change” is based, critics contend.
Marc Morano, editor of the website ClimateDepot.com, called President Obama’s speech on the subject Wednesday at the Coast Guard Academy commencement “politically contrived nonsense,” arguing “scientific studies, data and history refute Obama’s climate/national security claims.”
“The president’s speech was so farcical in its claims that it hardly merits a response,” Morano said in a statement posted on ClimateDepot.com. “Contrary to the president’s claims, it seems ISIS may in fact trump ICE as a bigger concern.”
Morano said that “believing Obama’s climate claims undermines our nation’s ability to distinguish real threats from politically contrived nonsense.”
Morano cited evidence to support the conclusion that the presumed scientific link between anthropogenic climate change and extreme weather events is “weak (or worse) on scientific ground.” He noted it has been nine years since a Category 3 or grater hurricane has struck the United States, with the last being Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. Also, the U.S. tornado count has plummeted to record lows in three consecutive years, 2012 through 2014.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the author of the 2012 WND book, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” observed that Obama’s speech Wednesday shows the White House is getting “more desperate.”
“The president’s speech at the Coast Guard Academy stating his belief that climate change poses the greatest threat to future generations is a severe disconnect from reality,” Inhofe said in a statement posted on his Senate website.
“While the president has spent at least $120 billion on climate change initiatives since first taking office, he has also set into motion more than $1 trillion in budget cuts to our national defense,” Inhofe stressed.
He noted that when he talks to military personnel, whether in Oklahoma or overseas, their greatest concern is not climate change.
“Instead, what I hear is their concern for global instability, the disarming of America and the lack of vision from their commander-in-chief,” he said.
On April 28, at the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, the Vatican held a much publicized meeting “on climate change and sustainable humanity” attended by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace; and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, a leading academic advocate for the United Nation’s “sustainable development” agenda.
The Vatican conference, like President Obama, stressed the need for government action to curb climate change.
“Political leaders of all U.N. member states have a special responsibility to agree at COP21 to a bold climate agreement that confines global warming to a limit safe for humanity, while protecting the poor and the vulnerable from ongoing climate change that gravely endangers their lives,” the statement stressed.
“Climate-change mitigation will require a rapid world transformation to a world powered by renewable and other low-carbon energy and the sustainable management of ecosystems,” the statement continued. “These transformations should be carried out in the context of globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals, consistent with ending extreme poverty; ensuring universal access for healthcare, quality education, safe water, and sustainable energy; and cooperating to end human trafficking and all forms of modern slavery.”
In his opening address to the Vatican conference, U.N. Secretary General Ban declared that climate change is “the defining issue of our time.”
From the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world's stage and which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the world's terrorist bogeyman, we suggested that the "straight to beheading YouTube clip" purpose behind the Saudi Arabia-funded Islamic State was a simple one: use the Jihadists as the vehicle of choice to achieve a political goal: depose of Syria's president Assad, who for years has stood in the way of a critical Qatari natural gas pipeline, one which could dethrone Russia as Europe's dominant - and belligerent - source of energy, reaching an interim climax with the unsuccessful Mediterranean Sea military build up of 2013, which nearly resulted in quasi-world war.
The narrative and the plotline were so transparent, even Russia saw right through them. Recall from September of last year:
If the West bombs Islamic State militants in Syria without consulting Damascus, LiveLeak reports that the anti-ISIS alliance may use the occasion to launch airstrikes against President Bashar Assad’s forces, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Clearly comprehending that Obama's new strategy against ISIS in Syria is all about pushing the Qatar pipeline through (as was the impetus behind the 2013 intervention push), Russia is pushing back noting that the it is using ISIS as a pretext for bombing Syrian government forces and warning that "such a development would lead to a huge escalation of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa."
But it's one thing to speculate; it's something entirely different to have hard proof.
And while speculation was rife that just like the CIA-funded al Qaeda had been used as a facade by the US to achieve its own geopolitical and national interests over the past two decades, so ISIS was nothing more than al Qaeda 2.0, there was no actual evidence of just this.
That may all have changed now when a declassified secret US government document obtained by the public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.
According to investigative reporter Nafeez Ahmed in Medium, the "leaked document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
And not just that: as we reported last week, now that ISIS is running around the middle east, cutting people's heads of in 1080p quality and Hollywood-quality (perhaps literally) video, the US has a credible justification to sell billions worth of modern, sophisticated weapons in the region in order to "modernize" and "replenish" the weapons of such US allies as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iraq.
But that the US military-industrial complex is a winner every time war breaks out anywhere in the world (usually with the assistance of the CIA) is clear to everyone by now. What wasn't clear is just how the US predetermined the current course of events in the middle east.
Now, thanks to the following declassified report, we have a far better understanding of not only how current events in the middle east came to be, but what America's puppermaster role leading up to it all, was.
What if Putin is Telling The Truth?
On April 26 Russia’s main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d’etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago.
Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations.
Putin stated that the terror in Chechnya and in the Russian Caucasus in the early 1990’s was actively backed by the CIA and western Intelligence services to deliberately weaken Russia. He noted that the Russian FSB foreign intelligence had documentation of the US covert role without giving details.
What Putin, an intelligence professional of the highest order, only hinted at in his remarks, I have documented in detail from non-Russian sources. The report has enormous implications to reveal to the world the long-standing hidden agenda of influential circles in Washington to destroy Russia as a functioning sovereign state, an agenda which includes the neo-nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine and severe financial sanction warfare against Moscow. The following is drawn on my book, “The Lost Hegemon” to be published soon…
Also see:
1 comment:
Well, sure seems like the world if falling off the "dark" cliff.
Heard several interesting sermons recently that said the same thing...yes, things are falling apart. But from a Christians perspective, they're just falling into place.
Well, this can only be falling "into place" if we're in the end of the end of days. Maybe we should be celebrating instead of crying. Jesus is soooooo close.
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