While living in the west, it is easy to be ignorant of what our Christian brothers and sisters are going through in the Middle East. In the western media there is little news about Christians from the middle east, let alone Christians who are in Iraq. Most westerners are familiar with the fact that there is no separation of religion and state in most Islamic countries, unlike here in the west. The thought that God has always had a Christian remnant in Iraq, despite the laws of the land, probably hasn’t entered most westerner minds. In fact, not only has God had a remnant there, but their history traces back to two of the twelve Apostles from scripture. Wikipedia says:
“Christianity was brought to Iraq in the 1st century AD by the Apostles Thomas and Addai (Thaddaeus) and his pupils Aggagi and Mari. Thomas and Thaddeus belonged to the twelve Apostles.[6] Iraq’s Eastern Aramaic speaking Assyrian Christian communities are believed to be among the oldest in the world.
The Assyrian people adopted Christianity in the 1st century AD[5] and Assyria became the centre of Eastern Rite Christianity and Syriac literature from the 1st century AD until the Middle Ages.”
Let’s not stop with the New Testament, let’s also look at the Old Testament. Most Christians are familiar with the story of Jonah, but how many westerners have associated Jonah with Iraq? God guided that large fish with Jonah inside all the way back towards Nineveh, which is located across the river from Mosul, the second biggest city in Iraq. The following are quotes from “The End Time” blog:
“It was ‘an exceedingly great city’ some three days’ travel in breadth. Some historians calculate that as many as 250,000 lived in Nineveh. For several decades it was the largest city in the world. When Jonah preached, all the Ninevites repented, from the king on down to the lowliest peasant. All of them. It surely was a great move of God and a great shower of grace upon the many people of Nineveh.
God’s move was so powerful and so amazing that even till this day Eastern Orthodox churches of the Middle East commemorate the three days Jonah spent inside the fish during the “Fast of Nineveh”. There are streets named after Jonah in the Middle East and monuments to him. There are even several places claiming to be his tomb. He is known to Muslims as Nabi Yunus, and Prophet Jonah is mentioned in the Q’uran. Therefore we see that God’s move was SO GREAT that the vestigial memory of it rests in the hearts and minds of even the most blinded and spiritually distant from God.”
We can see that Iraq has an amazing, rich, past touching all followers of Christ. Americans, in such a young country, cannot relate to that kind of ancient history. God has done some wonderful things there that will be forever recorded in scripture. He loves believers in the West, but He loves Middle East people as well, and has kept a remnant in Iraq for thousands of years.
There has always been times of suffering by the Iraqi remnant, such as wars and great religious persecution, and yet, Iraqi Christians, and people of other faiths are now experiencing an attack that’s unprecedented. They are literally facing genocide, women are being raped and sold into slavery, heads are being chopped off, hundreds of thousands of Christians are being confronted with three choices from their brutal persecutors(Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-ISIS); the choice of converting to Islam, paying a “dhimmi” tax as subservient, submissive residents of the Islamic state, or being executed. In the words of ISIS itself, “We offer (Christians) three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword.”
Fleeing these ISIS vessels of death and destruction, Christians are evacuating their homes and headed to the mountains and surrounding regions with barely the clothes on their back, reminiscent of the future fleeing of Jews that Jesus talks about here:
Matt 24:15-21
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
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19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.(KJV)
Iraqi Christians fleeing from persecution is yet another foreshadow of the last of the “last days” that will soon overtake us all.
Iraq is litarally being purged of Christians as Charismanews reports:
“Human-rights lawyer Nina Shea described the horror in Mosul to me: “(The Islamic State) took the Christians’ houses, took the cars they were driving to leave. They took all their money. One old woman had her life savings of $40,000, and she said, ‘Can I please have $100?’, and they said no. They took wedding rings off fingers, chopping off fingers if they couldn’t get the ring off.”
“We now have 5,000 destitute, homeless people with no future,” Shea said. “This is a crime against humanity.”
For the first time in 2,000 years, Mosul is devoid of Christians.
“This is ancient Nineveh we are talking about,” Shea explained. “They took down all the crosses. They blew up the tomb of the prophet Jonah. An orthodox cathedral has been turned into a mosque. … They are uprooting every vestige of Christianity.” University of Mosul professor Mahmoud Al ‘Asali, a Muslim, bravely spoke out against the Islamic State’s purging of Christians and was executed.”
Shockingly, areas of Iraq are being purged of Christians after being the home for hundreds of thousand Christians for over 1900 years. We must take note of these matters and pray! Pray for our suffering brothers and sisters as they are going through unspeakable trauma that only those who have gone through wars, natural disasters, or homelessness can only begin to understand. Pray that the murderers will have a road to Damascus experience as Paul did when he was on his twisted mission to go kill Christians. Pray–without ceasing.
Luke 21:36
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” (NIV)