IRAQ: PASTOR: ‘ALL MY STAFF HAS BEEN KILLED’

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

“’All my staff at the church have been killed,’ he said. ‘They disappeared about a year ago and we never saw them again. Of the rest of my congregation, most say they have been targeted in some way or have had letters delivered with bullets in them. People forget, or the Islamic groups don’t realize, that Christianity was in the Middle East before them and therefore they see Christians as being part of the Western coalition military presence. Things have got considerably worse since the Iraq war.’”

Canon Andrew White, president of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, was speaking to The Times about increased tension against Christians during the Iraq war. Many Christians have fled Iraq. Few remain to keep the Christ candle lit but they live daily in fear for their existences, per Stephen Farrell and Rana Gargour of Times On Line.

Christians throughout the Middle East have paid with their lives. If their bodies were not slain, they now breathe by looking over their shoulders.

“Egyptian Copts, Iraqi Chaldeans and the Palestinian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant communities have faced violence and even death at the hands of their Muslim neighbors.”

The Koran stipulates that all Muslims must eliminate the Earth of non-Muslims, that includes Christians of course. Therefore, militant Muslims take these killing and maiming verses literally. Every day more Christian believers are taken from the planet due to their allegiance to the biblical Savior.


“Tensions have also increased elsewhere. In Syria one Christian Assyrian said that he was planning to emigrate to Canada because of growing Islamic fundamentalism in a society having to absorb huge numbers of Iraqi refugees. ‘I do not feel at ease any longer and I do not want my two sons to live in this polarized society and atmosphere,’ he said.

“In Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Christian Arabs are a vulnerable minority caught between sympathy for their fellow Palestinians under Israeli occupation and their own tensions with the much larger Muslim Palestinian community.”

No doubt this is the least covered atrocity story covered by the secular press. In other words, some reporters consider Christian happenings as “just another Christian story.” Christians are to endure, though persecuted. Their being slaughtered does not mean anything new. However, with every believer slain another eternal soul is entranced into heaven, welcomed by Redeemer Christ, the latter reality not noted by a secular media.

“In Gaza, Christians saw neighbors’ anger mount at the US-led occupation of Iraq. Matters were made worse by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad and by a speech from Benedict XVI that described Islam as a religion of violence.
“Hanna Massad, the pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, said that the conflicts highlighted a difficult issue of identity for Christian Arabs. ‘The issue is who we are. Are we first Christians or are we Palestinians?’ he said.

“’For me my priority is my faith. I am a Christian first but I am also a Palestinian, I am Arab. Of course as a Christian Palestinian Arab we suffer with the [Israeli] occupation but at the same time I cannot, because of my personal faith, use violence.’”

It is interesting that while many within the mainline Protestant denominations have gone apostate with teachings that are against biblical morality, in other parts of the world Christians are dying for that very biblical ethic. While portions of the Protestant segments abandon their allegiance to Christ as God, others elsewhere are laying down their bodies for execution in the name of “Christian.”

Shame on those in free nations who proclaim the Christian pulpit while desecrating it with apostate teachings that offend the heart of God.

Shame on those clergy and laity who foster devilment in the name of the Christian church while actually genuine Christians are giving up their mortal existences in order to further the gospel tidings of salvation through Christ Jesus alone.

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