Thursday, November 18, 2010

"Iraqi Christians flee after violence"

This is the headline of an article by Leila Fadel and Ali al-Qeusy published today at The Washington Post online.

The article recounts the attacks on Christians in the last few weeks, and then notes, "many from (the) ancient Syriac Catholic community have fled."

Jeremiah was very clear in his warning -- "Thus says the LORD: 'Behold, I am going to arouse against Babylon... the spirit of a destroyer. And I shall dispatch foreigners to Babylon that they may winnow her and may devastate her land... [I will] devote all her army to destruction... [WHEN THIS HAPPENS,] Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her,'" (Jer. 51:1-2,6).

But the priest of the church in which 58 worshippers were massacred last month contradicts the hebrew prophet. The Rev. Mukhlis Shasha is quoted in the article encouraging his flock to remain: "We will not give up... People tell me the Bible says if the land does not want us we must leave. I tell them you have to stand tall in these lands. If we leave the country, who will remember this massacre, who will witness the resurrection of this church again?"

It is sad the disdain this Catholic priest has for the Bible. Jeremiah was talking about today's events happening in the land of the Chaldeans, modern Iraq. And he was adamant that the people who claim to be the people of God are to do this: "Come forth from her midst, my people, and each of you save yourselves from the fierce anger of the LORD. Now, lest your heart grow faint, and you be afraid at the report that will be heard in the land -- [Here is how you are to know it is time to leave:] For the report will come one year [1st Gulf War], and after that another report in another year [2nd Gulf War], and violence will be in the land with ruler against ruler -- Therefore behold, days are coming when I shall punish the idols of Babylon; and her whole land will be put to shame, and all her slain will fall in her midst. Then heaven and earth and all that is in them will shout for joy over Babylon, for the destroyers will come to her from the north [i.e., the Medes],' declares the LORD," (Jer. 51:45-48).

God says through the prophet the people of God are to flee from Babylon. This priest says to stay. Fortunately, as the article reports: "Since the attack, [...] Christian families have made their way out of the country or fled to the much safer northern Iraq, where Kurdish security forces control the area."

That is a good thing. The article continues: "The new wave of displacement could devastate an already dwindling Christian community. Some worry that if something doesn't change, there will soon be no Christians left in Iraq."

That is also a good thing. But as the article relays, "Political and religious leaders from across ethnic and sectarian lines have called on Christians to stay."

That is a bad thing. But the article continues: "But many Christians said that after years of violence and devastation, they must go."

That is a good thing. Said Waleed Jamil Butrous, a parishioner who survived the shooting, "The nation will lose the Christian community. I'm leaving, others are leaving."

That is a good thing.

"Flee from the midst of Babylon and each of you save your life!"

Do it.

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Jeremiah: Flee from the midst of Babylon; Cardinal Delly: stand firm

From Jomana Karadsheh, CNN November 16, 2010
Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- A bombing in northern Iraq killed a Christian man and his 6-year-old daughter Tuesday, the latest in a series of strikes targeting the country's dwindling Christian population.

The incident occurred in Mosul, a multi-ethnic city in Nineveh province -- long the home of significant Christian enclaves.

A flurry of attacks in the north over the last 24 hours is a sign that the recent sectarian violence targeting Christians is spreading from Baghdad.

The man and his daughter were killed Tuesday afternoon when an explosive attached to a vehicle detonated, local police said.

Monday night, attackers went into two homes occupied by Christian families in the Tahrir neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, killed the two male heads of the households, and then drove off, the interior ministry official said.

In central Mosul, at about the same time, a bomb detonated outside a Christian's home. No one was hurt in that blast, which damaged the home's exterior.

Attacks in October 2008 on Christians in Mosul prompted a mass exodus from that city of 1.8 million people.

Many Christian families in Iraq who spoke to CNN said they feared for their safety and wanted to leave the country, but didn't have the means to do so.

Christians have endured a spurt of attacks in Baghdad since October 31, when militants attacked the Sayidat al-Nejat Cathedral, leaving 70 people dead and 75 wounded, including 51 congregants and two priests. The Islamic State of Iraq, a militant group, claimed responsibility.

On November 9 and 10, at least three people were killed and 28 wounded in attacks targeting Christians in Baghdad.

The violence led the United States, the United Nations Security Council and an American Catholic archbishop to express concerns for Christians and other religious groups in Iraq.

Cardinal Emmanuel Delly III -- the patriarch of Iraq's largest Christian community, the Chaldean Catholic Church -- urged Iraqi Christians in a televised address Thursday to "stand firm" in their country during these "difficult times."

READ MORE HERE...

Cardinal Delly III, instead of urging Iraqi Christians to "stand firm" in their country, should rather be urging Iraqi Christians to heed the words of the prophet Jeremiah to "flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save your life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her," (Jer. 51:6).

It can't get any clearer. Read those words as if they say what they mean and mean what they say. Christians, flee from Babylon and save your own life.

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Monday, November 15, 2010

More bombings, more deaths in Iraq

CNN reports at least 5 Iraqis were killed and dozens wounded in bomb attacks in different parts of the country Monday.

The deadliest attack occurred on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul, targeting a complex that mainly houses prison guards and killing at least two people and wounding 20 others.

The attack comes one day after a suicide car bombing killed at least two Iraqi soldiers in Mosul.

In addition to bombings, the International Zone in Baghdad has come under rocket or mortar attacks alomost daily over the past week.

If the cities burn, the fourth judgment of Jeremiah's prophecy of doom on Babylon will have been fulfilled here in modern day Iraq.

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Friday, November 12, 2010

Iraq's disappearing Christians are Bush and Blair's legacy

William Dalrymple guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 November 2010 21.30 GMT
Before Bush senior took on Saddam for the first time in 1991, there were more than a million Christians in Iraq. They made up just under 10% of the population, and were a prosperous and prominent minority, something exemplified by the high profile of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Christian foreign minister. Educated and middle class, the Christians were concentrated in Mosul, Basra and especially Baghdad, which then had the largest Christian population of any city in the Middle East.

Of the 800,000 Christians still in Iraq when Dubya unleashed the US army on Saddam for the second time, two thirds have fled the country.

READ MORE HERE...

This haemorrhage accelerated after the ill-judged post-9/11 Anglo-American adventures in the Islamic world, and particularly after Bush used the word crusade, which in the eyes of many Muslims implicated the Arab Christians in a wider crusader assault on the Muslim world. So it was that two invasions that were intended to suppress terrorism actually had the reverse effect, radicalising the entire region.

According to the historian Professor Kamal Salibi, of the American University of Beirut, the Christians have simply had enough: "There is a feeling of fin de race among Christians all over the Middle East," he told me. "It's a feeling that 14 centuries of having all the time to be smart, to be ahead of the others, is long enough. The Arab Christians tend to be well qualified, highly educated. Now they just want to go somewhere else."

Certainly, for the first time, that now looks like being a possibility in
Iraq: last week
Michael Youash, of the Iraq
Sustainable Democracy Project,
warned that in the near future "perhaps we'll find no Christians in Iraq". Given the overt Christian faith of the two architects of the invasion, Bush and Tony Blair, there is a tragic irony in the fact that their most lasting contribution to the region may well be to have created the environment that led to the destruction of Christianity in one of its ancient heartlands – something Arab, Mongol and Ottoman conquests all failed to pull off.

While Mr. Dalrymple considers it to be a tragic irony, Jeremiah the hebrew prophet simply considered the abandonment of that ancient heartland to be a getting out of the way of his people so that the judgment pronounced upon it could come to pass.

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

France receives wounded Iraqi christians

From AFP 11 Nov 2010
PARIS — France's immigration minister Thursday defended his decision to bring to France those wounded in an attack at a Baghdad church, after Iraq warned against encouraging Christians to abandon their homeland.

"The French government's concern is not to make all the Christians of the Middle East and of Iraq come here," the minister, Eric Besson, said during a visit to a refugee centre east of Paris where the wounded were being housed.

"France's aim is to strengthen the protection of Christians in the Middle East and in Iraq to preserve communities which have been home to multiple faiths for centuries."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday warned other countries, without naming France, not to encourage Christians to emigrate, after Besson sent a plane to bring victims of the October 31 church attack to France for specialist treatment.

"The countries that have welcomed the victims... of this attack have done a noble thing, but that should not encourage emigration," Maliki said on a visit to the Syriac Catholic cathedral where the massacre occurred.

France flew 54 people over on Monday and plans to bring another 93 "in a few days or weeks", Besson said Thursday.

He had said earlier that his move fitted France's "tradition of asylum", and that asylum would be "handed out generously" to those who sought it.

READ MORE HERE...

God bless France; Christians should abandon Iraq, just as Jeremiah exhorted in his prophecy -- "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment," (Jer 51:6).

Can't get any clearer than that.

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Iraq's Christian community hit by new wave of attacks

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent 10 Nov 2010
From the Telegraph UK

Suspected Islamist militants detonated 11 bombs in Christian suburbs across the Iraqi capital, striking indiscriminately at shops and homes owned by members of the increasingly vulnerable minority. At least five Christians were killed and a further 33 wounded, among them a four-month-old baby.

The attacks came less than a fortnight after extremists linked to al-Qaeda blew themselves up during evening mass at Baghdad's main Syriac Catholic church, killing over 50 worshippers.

In the aftermath of the church massacre, The Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda front, announced its intention to open upon the country's Christians "the doors of destruction and rivers of blood."

READ MORE HERE...

Jeremiah the hebrew prophet wrote that the land of Babylon would become "an object of horror... a wilderness, a parched land, and a desert... She will be completely desolate." And because of the judgment coming upon the land, his people should "come forth from her midst... and each of you save yourselves from the fierce anger of the LORD" (Jer 51:45).

Fortunately, many Christians are now doing what the Jews had already done, almost to a man -- they are fleeing from the coming violence and desolation.

As the Telegraph article reports, "Some Christians in Baghdad said the latest attacks had convinced them that there was no point in staying in Baghdad. 'It's not worth staying in a country where the government is not even able to protect you when you are sitting in your house,' said Juliet Hana, who was eating breakfast with her young daughter when the bombs began to detonate in nearby houses."

"Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her," (Jer 51:6).

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Tuesday, November 09, 2010

US ready to extend stay if Iraq asks

09 November 2010 Voice of America VOANews.com English


U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Photo: AP

As reported by a Voice of America news article today, the U.S. defense secretary says the U.S. is willing to keep troops in Iraq past the current deadline, but only if that is what Iraq's leaders want.

Robert Gates made the comment to reporters in Kuala Lumpur Tuesday after a meeting with Malaysia's defense minister.

The current agreement calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

A rising wave of violence has prompted U.S. and Iraqi officials to express a willingness to revisit the deal. But Gates said any request would have to come from a functioning Iraqi government.
Iraqis went to the polls in March to elect a new government, but no one bloc won an outright majority, and the country's leading political parties remain deadlocked eight months later.

Iraq's quarrelsome politicians are meeting for a second day Tuesday in an attempt to resolve their differences.

Meanwhile, violence claimed at least 21 lives in a series of car bombings Monday, including a blast in the southern Shi'ite city of Basra that killed five people and wounded 30.

Earlier, two separate attacks targeted buses carrying Iranian pilgrims in the southern Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, killing at least 16 people and wounding 50 more.

Read more here...

Jeremiah prophesied that the occupiers of Babylon would abandon her after fires raged through her cities. If the U.S. leaves Iraq before the cities burn, these events in Iraq today are NOT the fulfillment of Jeremiah's 2,600 year old prophecy.

But if the cities go up in flames, and then the U.S. pulls out because of the failure of reconstruction, two more judgments in Jeremiah's prophecy will have come true in sequential order.

Invasion, capture, execution, burning, abandonment. Five of nine judgments will have happened, in order.

After that, civil war, plundering, flood and drought, leading to a complete desolation. And the fulfillment of Jeremiah's 2,600 year old prophecy.

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Friday, November 05, 2010

Al Qaeda terrorists predict more bloody days in Iraq

Reuters Africa Fri Nov 5, 2010
BAGHDAD, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate said on Friday that recent attacks in Baghdad were "the beginning of the downpour" and many more bloody days would come.
The Islamic State of Iraq's statement posted on radical Islamic websites appeared to link the escalation in attacks to signs that incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, might secure a second term.

In vague language, the statement said the Sunni Islamist insurgency was launching a new campaign because it was "disillusioned by the return of the Safawis' project," a term it has used to describe Shi'ite political supremacy in Iraq.

"What they have seen in that night is the beginning of the downpour, and one day out of many bloody days awaiting them."

A series of bombs around Baghdad on Tuesday night killed more than 60 people, mostly in Shi'ite areas.

READ MORE HERE --

The violence in Iraq appears to have no end. Jeremiah's prophecy of calamity on Babylon sees the violence take the form of the burning of the cities. If the cities burn, the first four of the nine judgments will have come true. The end is a complete desolation without inhabitant.

Christians in Iraq, do as Jeremiah implored you to do: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and save your own life!" He wasn't kidding around, he was speaking from God. Those are God's words to you.

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Thursday, November 04, 2010

Roman catholic leaders: christians will not leave Iraq

Al Jazeera English posted a youtube video reporting on the funerals of the christians killed in an al Qaeda in Iraq attack on a Roman Catholic church in Baghdad earlier this week. In the video, the Roman Catholic prelate presiding over the memorial service is reported to have said "Iraqi's Christians are not going anywhere."



This blog is exploring the question, are the present events in Iraq the fulfillment of Jeremiah's ancient prophecy of doom on Babylon as found in chapters 5o and 51 in his book in the hebrew bible? If they are, his warning to the people of God is clear: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life!" (Jer. 51:6).

Seventh Day Adventists, an 18th century protestant uniquely American 'historicist' sect, for decades have interpreted this passage metaphorically as Babylon referring to the Roman Catholic Church and those who are to flee from it the protestants who do not meet for services on Saturday, as they do. That interpretation is a wild flight of imagination having no basis in any extant revelation from the written word.

Literal dispensationalists, like myself, assert we read prophecy from a grammatically and historically literal perspective. From this point of view, Jeremiah's admonition is to real people living in the real land of the Chaldeans who claim to be people of God to flee from that land so as to escape the coming judgments brought on by God himself as punishment on the land.

To say, "we aren't going any where" is to ignore Jeremiah's warning, and to take upon one's self the consequences for that choice.

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Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Al Qaeda declares all Christians "legitimate targets"

by Greg Burke, FoxNews.com, Nov 3, 2010
Just days after a brutal attack in a Catholic Church in Baghdad that killed more than 50 people, an Al Qaeda group in Iraq has declared all Christians “legitimate targets,” calling for them to be killed.
A group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, has labeled all Christians “idolators” in an Internet statement, which it also used to dub the Vatican a “hallucinating tyrant.”

Read more here --

The hebrew prophet Jeremiah was explicitly adamant that the people of God, upon seeing the land of Chaldeans invaded, captured and their king punished, should "flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her... for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies," (Jer. 51:6,9).

Christians in Iraq, whether Syriac, Eastern Orthodox, Chaldean, Roman Catholic, Assyrian, Armenian or Baptist, need to heed the warning of Jeremiah, and flee from Babylon.

Fortunately, many are, as this UPI.com report relates...

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Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Series of blasts in Baghdad kills 76

By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press
BAGHDAD – Rapid-fire bombings and mortar strikes in mostly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad killed 76 people and wounded nearly 200 on Tuesday, calling into question the ability of Iraqi security forces to protect the capital.

The blasts — at least 13 separate attacks — came just two days after gunmen in Baghdad held a Christian congregation hostage in a siege that ended with 58 people dead. Tuesday morning, hundreds of Christians gathered at a downtown church to mourn their lost brethren.

"They murdered us today and on Sunday, they killed our brother, the Christians," said Hussein al-Saiedi, a 26-year-old resident of the Shiite slum of Sadr City where 21 people were killed in the most deadly incident of the day. He said he was talking to friends on a busy street, when the blast occurred.

"We were just standing on the street when we heard a loud noise, and then saw smoke and pieces of cars, falling from the sky," he said. People were fleeing the site in panic, frantically calling the names of their relatives and friends. "They (the government) say the situation is under control. Where is their control?"

read more here...

There seems to be no end to the killing and bombing; will the violence take the form of burning cities, and thereby fulfill the next event of prophecy of judgment on Babylon pronounced by Jeremiah 2,600 years ago?

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Monday, November 01, 2010

Iraqi Christians massacred

by BARBARA SURK and HAMID AHMED Associated Press (c) 2010
Nov. 1, 2010

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's dwindling Christian community was grieving and afraid on Monday after militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The attack left at least 52 people killed and 67 wounded -- nearly everyone inside.

The attack, claimed by an al-Qaida-linked organization, is the latest assault against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries. [...]

"It was a massacre in there and now they are cleaning it up," (Raed Hadi) said Monday morning. "We Christians don't have enough protection... What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?"

read more here...

Jeremiah the prophet was very emphatic as to what Christians in this land should do:

"Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her..." (Jer 51:6).

While all but 7 individuals of the Jewish community have already fled, Christians seem to think Babylon is a safe place for them to remain. But the warning could not be more forceful -- it is long past due for all God's people to leave Iraq before the remaining judgments fall down upon them along with the rest of the inhabitants of Chaldea:

"Come forth from her midst, my people, and each of you save yourselves from the fierce anger of the LORD," (Jer 51:45).

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