Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East?

[LivingWordUnity]

"When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes." - Jesus (Matt 10:23)

The New York Times

ISIS and other extremist movements across the region are
enslaving, killing and uprooting Christians, with no aid in sight.

By ELIZA GRISWOLD
JULY 22, 2015

There was something about Diyaa that his wife’s brothers didn’t like. He was a tyrant, they said, who, after 14 years of marriage, wouldn’t let their sister, Rana, 31, have her own mobile phone. He isolated her from friends and family, guarding her jealously. Although Diyaa and Rana were both from Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq, they didn’t know each other before their families arranged their marriage. It hadn’t gone especially well. Rana was childless, and according to the brothers, Diyaa was cheap. The house he rented was dilapidated, not fit for their sister to live in.

Qaraqosh is on the Nineveh Plain, a 1,500-square-mile plot of contested land that lies between Iraq’s Kurdish north and its Arab south. Until last summer, this was a flourishing city of 50,000, in Iraq’s breadbasket. Wheat fields and chicken and cattle farms surrounded a town filled with coffee shops, bars, barbers, gyms and other trappings of modern life.

Then, last June, ISIS took Mosul, less than 20 miles west. The militants painted a red Arabic ‘‘n,’’ for Nasrane, a slur, on Christian homes. They took over the municipal water supply, which feeds much of the Nineveh Plain. Many residents who managed to escape fled to Qaraqosh, bringing with them tales of summary executions and mass beheadings. The people of Qaraqosh feared that ISIS would continue to extend the group’s self-styled caliphate, which now stretches from Turkey’s border with Syria to south of Fallujah in Iraq, an area roughly the size of Indiana. (More)

Also:
Pope Francis: I pray that Christians will not be forced to abandon Iraq and the Middle East
BBC News: Could Christianity be driven from Middle East?

 

[LivingWordUnity]

“For this cause, I say, when He [Jesus] had told all things, both the times and the seasons, and had brought it to the very doors..., He was silent as to the day. For if you seek after the day and hour, you shall not hear them of me, says He; but if of times and preludes, without hiding anything, I will tell you all exactly.” - St. John Chrysostom, Homily 77 on Matthew

“How then, one may ask, did He say, 'This generation?' Speaking not of the generation then living, but of that of the believers. For He is wont to distinguish a generation not by times only, but also by the mode of religious service, and practice; as when He says, 'This is the generation of them that seek the Lord.'” - St. John Chrysostom, Homily 77 on Matthew

“And Jesus said to them, 'Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.'” - Mark 2:19-20

“On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' And Jesus said to her, 'O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.'” - John 2:1-4

"When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes." - Matthew 10:23

“And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” - Matthew 24:22

“The Eucharist is indelibly marked by the event of the Lord's passion and death, of which it is not only a reminder but the sacramental re-presentation. It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages.” - St. John Paul II

“That then is the evening sacrifice, the Passion of the Lord, the Cross of the Lord, the offering of a salutary Victim, the whole burnt offering acceptable to God.” - St. Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 141

“And from the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he who waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” - Daniel 12:11-12

“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” - Daniel 12:4