ISIS Caliphate Now Aggressively Pursuing Christians In Towns Across The Nineveh Plain.
Nahum 1:11-12a, “From you, Nineveh, has one come forth who plots evil against the LORD and devises wicked plans. This is what the LORD says: ‘Although they have allies and are numerous, they will be destroyed and pass away.’”
Islamic State militants have now launched a mortar attack against the village of Tilkif in an attempt to break into one of the towns in the Nineveh Plain, where families driven from Mosul have found refuge.
ISIS Caliphate Now Aggressively Pursuing Christians In Towns Across The Nineveh Plain | MidnightWatcher's Blogspot
Unfortunately, we've already seen it where Iraq jihadists blew up 'Jonah's tomb' in Mosul..
They actually had imagery of others carrying off rubble from the tomb after it was destroyed, as if others are seeking to have remnants of what once was so that the memory of it is not forgotten.
Another noted how the destruction is part of a bigger policy. Simone Muehl (who works with as an archaeologist ) notes that "ISIS destroys not only from the perspective of religion, but also to steal the identity of the people that they rule."
There has been a long history of Muslims and Christians living together - with the tomb of Jonah being a site that was used by both groups just as other places elsewhere have seen the same. However, the eradication of it (despite how its revered by Muslims) indicates that the radical Muslim extremists are going for total eradication not just of their enemies but even of the possibility of people living together under their rule - and thus, they are at war even with their enemies.
They have already seen it where Christians were offered the opportunity to either convert to Islam or die. Moreover,
Emil Shimoun Nona, the archbishop of the Chaldean Catholics of Mosul, has told news agencies that the few Christians remaining in the city prior to the ISIS invasion have abandoned the city. The savageness of the ISIS is no joke - for no sooner had ISIS entered Mosul than some of their fighters set fire
to an Armenian church.
St. Etchmiadzin Armenian church following attacks by ISIS
It's bad enough, s
eeing how many church bombings have occurred in Iraq since 2004 - but with the ISIS, it is unhuman what they have done in Iraq. This all seems consistent with the group's grim record during the civil war in Syria, where, among other things, it revived medieval Islamic restrictions on Christian populations.
There have been so many atrocities occurring in the Middle East of late - and What is happening there is nothing more than an ethnic cleansing entering its end game (
since it has been consistently occurring since the Iraq Invasion) - and for a report on the persecution of Assyrians in Iraq, see
Incipient Genocide: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Assyrians of Iraq.
It's sad to see how others such as the ISIS have done this, damaging ancient sites because of their extremism (as well as harming Sunnis who are not as extreme as they are) - and yet, it's even sadder to see others in the West not even think it's an issue worth dealing with since the U.S has many who think we did the right thing getting involved with Iraq....and don't really know of the Biblical history within Iraq that is actually being erased steadily. If all of the Western Christians supporting the Iraq Occupation knew how it was in Iraq that the Prophet Jonah came to (Assyria) rather than just seeing it as another Middle-Eastern nation, how different would things be. However, not seeing
the history of Assyria and its
many accomplishments has been a stumbling block to others who may have been concerned with what's going on right now.
Despite all of the chaos happening, I am glad that all of the various Iraqi Christian communities — the Chaldeans (who are part of the Roman Catholic Church), the Armenians, the Syriac Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox — have benefited from large émigré contingents around the world who have welcomed refugees from Iraq. At least in that sense (Diaspora) Assyrian Christianity will survive and the memory of what used to be present will NEVER be forgotten.
And what Jonah sought to do when reaching out to the people of Nineveh will never be in vain. As another wisely noted,
"The Assyrians accepted Jonah and his message from God, and for this God made them "the work of my hands" [Isaiah 19:23-25] and the "rod of my anger" [Isaiah 10:5]... He also assigned to them a task to be completed upon the Second Advent: The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. [Matthew 12:41]"