But ... I cant see Jesus anywhere. The end for Iraqi Christians.

by fulltimestudent 2 Replies latest jw friends

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  fulltimestudent

  Pentecost 33 CE (well, maybe?)

  When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia , Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, [ a ] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome - Acts 2:6-10 NIV

  So these people went home and started to meet in little communities. The little communities grew larger ...

  

  The ruins of Saint Elijah's Monastery founded in 595 AD south of Mosul by the Christian monk Mar Elia (from Wikipedia)

  They were caught up in many conflicts (the Roman-Sassanian wars, the spread of Islam, etc) but they hung on and survived. In the 1980's there may have been about 1,500,000 Christians in Iraq.

  Then President Boy George had his brain-snap and invaded Iraq, and now there are less than 250,000 and droping in the midst of the chaos tht President boy George managed to unleash.

  Two years ago, the Orthodox Pope in Lebanon sent Mar (father) Jalal Yako to attempt to build up the community. He says he has failed and its time for Christians to leave Iraq.

  But in the past six months Father Yako has changed his mind, and he now believes that, after 2,000 years of history, Christians must leave Iraq. Speaking at the entrance of a half-built mall in the Kurdish capital Irbil where 1,650 people from Qaraqosh have taken refuge, he said that “everything has changed since the coming of Daesh (the Arabic acronym for Islamic State). We should flee. There is nothing for us here.” When Islamic State (Isis) fighters captured Qaraqosh on 7 August, all the town’s 50,000 or so Syriac Catholics had to run for their lives and lost all their possessions.

  So the END has arrived for 2000 years of Christian historyin Iraq.

  And Jesus, who promised:

  " Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

  Is nowhere to be seen
• 

  fulltimestudent

  I drew much of my information from this report in COUNTERPUNCH:

  http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/24/has-the-end-finally-come-for-iraqs-christians/
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  kaik

  Christianity was exterminated in much of the Middle East, and this is just continuation of the trend from the past. Tunis used to be a center of the Roman Catholicsm, where St. Augustine, Cyprian, and Vitus wrote their monumental work influencing Latin Christianity, in era, where Christains were still minority in Italy. This civilization parished long time ago. Similar fate happened to Christian communities in Yemen, Sudan, Iran, which had vital Christian civilization in the 500-1000 AD. Egyptian Christians are facing similar extermination as do Iraq' Christians. While most of the damage was done by Islam, it is crucial to say, that Orthodox Christianity was detrimental for expelling Churches of the East after Nestorian split and condemning all non-Greek christianity as heretic and many times supported Persians and Arabs to suppress them. Western world has share of the blame as well, not only having by GW allowing devastation of the Iraq's Christian community, but also with British, French, and Russian colonial powers who cared less about these churches in 19th and 20th century.