Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The last Christians in Iraq

Lela Gilbert of Fox News writes in an opinion piece published July 22, 2014 at FoxNews.com that "frightened Iraqi Christians by the thousands" have fled their ancient Iraqi homeland over the weekend after the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group announced Friday afternoon that local Christians must either "convert to Islam, pay an exorbitant Muslim tax or leave the city."

If they did not comply by noon on Saturday, July 19, there would be "nothing for them but the sword" according to Gilbert's quote of the announcement.

Gilbert writes: "Most of the Nineveh Plain's Christians... had already fled to Erbil and other destinations in Kurdistan before ISIS's recent declaration... now the rest of the refugees -- many of the last Christians in Iraq -- have joined them."

"Many Christians interviewed expressed a sense of utter abandonment and desolation," Gilbert writes, in quoting a report from the New York Times. "They remarked that the sound of church bells mingled with the Muslim calls to prayer... 'would likely never be heard again.'"

READ MORE HERE...

How prophetically-fulfilling can one article get? Jeremiah's prophecy of doom on the land of Babylon -- modern-day Iraq -- calls on the people of God to "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... (She) will be desolate forever," (Jer 51:6,26).

Almost exactly seven years ago, on July 27, 2007, it was reported in Time magazine that the "last eight Jews of Baghdad" remained in desperate conditions, after hundreds of thousands of Jews left Iraq beginning in 1948, with the founding of Israel. In November 2011, even those last "seven remaining Jews in Baghdad" were in "immediate danger" according to an article at the UK's Daily Mail, as they had been named by WikiLeaks.

And so Jeremiah foretold this event: "'In those days and at that time... the sons of Israel will come... They will ask for the way to Zion, turning their faces in its direction; they will come that they may join themselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten... Wander away from the midst of Babylon and go forth from the land of the Chaldeans... For behold, I am going to arouse and bring up against Babylon a horde of great nations from the land of the north, and they will draw up their battle lines against her... Chaldea will become plunder; all who plunder her will have enough,' declares the LORD," (Jer 50:4-10).

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