PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS ESCALATES AS JESUS RETURN DRAWS NEAR

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Hamas terror attacks on Israel have inflamed Islamic extremist sentiment against Christ followers, said an official with a Swiss-based aid agency.

“Since Oct. 7, 2023, the whole Middle East is on intense fire and might explode any time,” said the official, whose identity is withheld for security purposes. “It seems that all political, social, and human rights achievements in the direction of a possible reconciliation between major foes — Saudi-Iran, or the Israel-Arab world — are now very far away. This of course has direct implications for our persecuted brothers and sisters as they are the most vulnerable and often blamed as being enemies of [the] state.”

The historical suffering of Christians who have converted from Islam in the region has reached a new level, he said. “All accomplished liberal thinking and religious tolerance in the Middle East are now departing, leaving the battleground for fanatism and Islamic radicalization to take over,” the official said.

His agency recently provided aid to a leader of a group of converts from Islam in the Palestinian West Bank. The leader is from a prominent Muslim family, and his sister’s husband, a member of the extremist Salafi branch of Islam, recently discovered he had become a follower of Christ and reported him as an “unbeliever” to his relatives. The leader’s prominent Muslim father threw him and his family out of their house. “He then had to flee and hide with his wife and son in a secret place for his security as the whole situation around Oct. 7th got heated up, and people became more radical,” the official said. “With the funds we received, we helped him to rent a hide-out apartment, and provided some living expenses for his family.”

Tensions have long hit Egypt’s borders. Israel’s military campaign against Hamas has divided opinion among church members in Egypt who are also pining under the devaluation of their currency and rising prices. Atop these difficulties, persecution remains the main challenge for Muslim-background believers like Sara (name changed) — an educated person who loves reading and research. When she; began seeking answers about Islam from her husband and some Islamic experts, they couldn’t give her satisfying answers.

“It is considered blasphemy to ask certain questions, and so her husband and other people around her reacted alertly,” the aid agency official said. “However, Sara felt a strong urge to find the truth and continued asking questions.” She began reading Christian books until she concluded that she wanted to follow Christ, he said. “Her husband discovered a change in her and argued with her until he found out that she became a Christian,” he said. “Sara was pregnant at that time. Her husband beat her so badly that she had to be hospitalized and lost her baby.” When she was able to return home, her husband reported her to police. Sara was imprisoned on false charges.

“After some years she was released but was still punished with having to go to the police station every week, where she had to clean the toilets and sit there for hours,” the worker said. “Our local partner heard of her situation and helped her legally. He also helped Sara to find a safe place to stay and a new place to work.”

Persecuted Christians are receiving both aid and spiritual care to strengthen their faith in the face of suffering. In Africa, the Islamic extremist terrorism in Nigeria that has displaced both Muslims and Christians for more than a decade drove one woman’s family to a camp for the internally displaced, where she came to faith in Christ under the teaching of the Swiss agency’s aid partner. The suffering she endured in four years of living in and out of the camp had left her cynical and prone to lying and cheating, the official said. “There was no visible change in her behavior — it required a lot of patience, love and wisdom from our partner and her team, and it was a lot of work for her, but over time she grew out of her bad habits,” the worker said. “Through the teachings, the Bible study, the coaching and prayer, she experienced the love of God and discovered what it means to follow Jesus.” She opened her heart so the Lord could transform and heal her, Sara said. “God has given me the biggest gift of my life,” she told aid workers. “He removed me from darkness to light, from nobody to becoming somebody.”

In Laos, village authorities opposed to ten families leaving their ancestral religion for Christ recently drove them out of the community into the wilderness. They were left about 8 miles away, without homes, farmland, food, and schooling for their children. “We worked closely with the local church to help them to find land for these 10 families to build a simple house to live in, and our team helped them to build the well for them to have water to drink, and a tile roof for their house,” the aid official said. “We continue to work with the local church to have worship every Sunday in their house church, and we provide continuous support for their livelihood development.”

The increase in the level of antisemitism around the world since Hamas attacked Israel makes no earthly sense and proves Scripture’s revelation that it is spiritual warfare and that we are living in the last days before Jesus returns to restore righteousness and usher in His Millennial Kingdom.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:9-14

Much of this post was originally published at Christian Daily International 

TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL AND RECENT EVENTS

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CONTENT OF VIDEO – Vlad Savchuk interviews Joel Richardson on recent events: Hamas invading Israel and how this fits with end times prophecies – Antichrist & Israel War.

1. Intro 1:04 – Why do Christians stand in opposition to supporting Israel?

2, 5:35 – It is never justifiable to inflict genocide

3. 16:22 – Jewish identity is not just all about the bloodline

4. 21:00 – What is the synagogue of satan?

5. 27:09 – What would you say to people who claim all of Jesus’ prophecies have already come to pass?

6. 37:12 – Has the futurist end-time view been embraced by the early church fathers?

7. 39:46 – Different views between preterists and futurists

8. 46:44 – Could you give examples of how some prophecies have matched history

9. 51:38 – Does the temple have to be built in order for Christ to come?

10. 59:10 – Biblical understanding and Jewish text concerning the battle that will bring the day of the Lord

11. 1:05:14 – Why is the antichrist most likely not a European leader?

Many great questions. You will need to watch the video to get the answers.

END TIMES PROPHESIED WARS & RUMOURS OF WARS

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World on alert as call for vengeance ignites fear of Armageddon

This headline appeared in THE AUSTRALIAN (newspaper) on Friday, October 20th, 2023.

How the tables of world opinion can turn. It has taken an enormity of an appalling nature in Gaza – the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital. Hamas claims Israel is responsible for the bombing. Israel and US President Joe Biden claim it was a misfired rocket from Gaza Strip’s Islamic Jihad. The Israeli Defence Forces has produced footage it claims dispels a “global media campaign” from Hamas terrorists to inflame the ­region over the hospital tragedy. Muslims can lie to infidels. it is in the Koran so I know who I believe. Hamas is using its incompetence (a misfired rocket) to fuel rage among supporters of Palestine.

Quran 3:54, og Quran 8:30; “Allah is the most accomplished liar and deceiver.”

The hospital carnage and suffering have resulted in a tinder box of horror and rage, particularly in Muslim nations and among supporters of Palestinians. There are calls for a worldwide uprising, for vengeance, for retribution. Who could possibly benefit from letting loose a bloody and global maelstrom of death and destruction? One abhorrent truth is that there are those who do see it as in their interests to fan and release such an Armageddon.

HAMAS ATTACK ON ISRAEL

They weren’t hunting for Israelis, much less for soldiers; they were hunting for Jews. Their instructions were simple: kill as many as you can. Nor were the civilian casualties collateral damage: they were the objective. And maiming babies, butchering children, raping women, and defiling corpses wasn’t the work of a handful of sadists; they were a pervasive feature of the operation.

At least the Einsatzgruppen – the Nazi brigades who murdered nearly half a million Jews in a matter of months, forcing their victims to stand naked at the edge of mass graves before shooting them through the head – tried to hide their crimes, showing they had some inkling of breaching morality’s fundamental principles. Hamas’s killers did the opposite: they videoed their atrocities and posted them – to howls of joy that echoed from Gaza to Lakemba – on the internet.

Only one word can describe these people: evil. To use the term may seem as anachronistic as speaking of abomination, uncleanness or iniquity. Even the Oxford English Dictionary tells us “evil” has been “commonly superseded, in familiar speech, by “bad”. But exactly as we know good from bad, so we can differentiate evil from ordinary wickedness – and this was it.

“Radical evil”, thought Immanuel Kant, is ultimately incomprehensible: to explain human action, he argued, is to appeal to good reasons; and there can never be good reasons for murdering babies, mutilating toddlers, and disfiguring the dead. However, even if we can’t make that evil intelligible, we can capture its essence: the denial of the victim’s humanity.

Thus, just as the Nazis believed Jews were less than human, so the Islamists, gripped in their death cult, refuse to acknowledge that Jews have the moral standing that would protect them from humiliation, degradation, or extermination. And just as it was absolutely impossible for the Allies to make peace with Hitler, so it is absolutely impossible to make peace with Hamas.

Hamas knew that Israel, as it grieved its dead, would be faced with a choiceless choice. And Hamas also knew it could maximize the scale of the tragedy by placing rocket launchers in schools, hiding its command centres in hospitals, and preventing Palestinians from fleeing to safety. Its goal, since it was founded in 1987, has never been to protect civilians; it has always used them as shields, compounding its crimes against humanity. Now, as Gaza yet again groans in seas of blood, the Palestinians losing their lives are Hamas’s victims every bit as surely as their Israeli counterparts.

Much of the Bible (God’s Word) is prophecy. It even reveals how God will end His story of His Cosmos. The principal battle that has been raging from the beginning is a spiritual battle and it is centered around the nation that God established for His purposes, ISRAEL. The most significant end-times prophecy was the re-establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948 and since that time Satan has been doing his utmost to destroy it. We are fast approaching the prophesied last seven years prior to Jesus’ return to rescue His nation at the battle of Armageddon.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

“For they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty… And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” Revelation 16:14,16