ISIS 'blows up famed 4th-century Mar Behnam Catholic monastery' in Iraq

Follows less than two weeks after destruction of 10th century Assyrian monastery near Mosul.

by Gianluca Mezzofiore, International Business Times
March 19, 2015

Islamic State (Isis) militants have allegedly blown up parts of the ancient monastery of Mar Behnam near the predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, according to pictures from IS media shared on twitter and a Kurdish media report.

The photos, released by IS members, show the 4th-century monastery's tomb complex of Mar (Saint) Behnam and Mart (Saint) Sarah reduced to rubble. 

Dr Nicholas al-Jeloo, an expert on Assyrian monasteries in Iraq from the University of Melbourne, visited the monastery, previously run by the Syriac Catholic Church, in January 2010 and confirmed the authenticity of the pictures to IBTimes UK. 

"I didn't want to see the pictures. This is terrible. I'm in shock," he said. 

The Madness of Our Age

When Truth is the new ‘Hate Speech’, and True Islam is not Islam

by Ralph H. Sidway

Coptic Icon of St Anthony the Great

In the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers’, that collection of the wisdom of the early Christian hermits, there is recounted a saying of St. Anthony the Great, founder of monasticism:

Abba Anthony said that the time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will rise up against him and say, “You are mad, you are not like us.”

It seems to me that this saying is inextricably linked to a prophetic warning Jesus gave to his disciples during the Last Supper:

“The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.” (JN 16:2)

Christians — especially those in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan… well, really throughout the entire Islamic world, according to the Open Doors 2015 World Watch List, which reports that 80% of the fifty worst countries for persecution of Christians have a Muslim majority — as I started to say, Christians may be forgiven for taking Jesus’ words to apply to our own day and age. After all, in case after case, Christians are targeted, persecuted, kidnapped, raped, killed, their churches burned or bombed, crosses broken off, all because they confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. 

And in the vast majority of attacks on Christians, there is heard the infamous “Allahu Akbar,” the Muslim jihad battle cry meaning “Allah is greater.” As Raymond Ibrahim persistently points out in his reporting on Muslim Persecution of Christians, these attacks are often in direct response to Friday prayers at the local mosque, where firebrand imams whoop it up with their own “Allahu Akbar”-ing.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, is not merely an educated man, he is a fiqh scholar, which means he knows Islam, and is able to issue fatwas, religious rulings. He must be presenting a compelling case, as he is convincing tens of thousands of Muslims to leave their comfy homes and jobs in the West (and in Muslim nations) and join up with ISIS to expand the nascent caliphate.

Much of their jihad involves persecution of Christians, but the Islamic State is not the only Muslim group targeting the followers of Jesus. Look at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose followers have been known to rampage through buses and trams checking passengers’ wrists for tattoos of the cross, the telltale sign of Coptic Christians, and kill them on the spot. Then there is the Taliban, and of course the chief group to give ISIS a run for their money in terms of sheer ferocity, Boko Haram in Nigeria (who have just recently pledged their loyalty to caliph al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State).

In Memoriam: Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, 1939-2015

Beloved pastor, galvanizing speaker, trusted educator, author and mentor, and faithful Christian struggler, Fr. Thomas Hopko, quietly reposed in the Lord yesterday, March 18, on the commemoration of the repose of St. Nikolai of Zhicha.

I have wanted for some time to prepare an "annotated" text of his excellent talk, 'The Word of the Cross', expanding on certain points which apply especially to the intersection of Orthodox Christianity and Islam. God willing, I may be able to do so soon.

Just last weekend, for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, I did key on a powerful dogmatic truth which Fr. Thomas expressed in 'The Word of the Cross' as follows (emphasis added):

Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can do. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can say. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more to be revealed.

Today I am compelled to simply give thanks to God for the instruction and inspiration I have received from Fr. Thomas over my nearly thirty years as an Orthodox Christian. Although I only met him briefly at a couple of talks and retreats, his recorded presentations, available through SVS Press, Ancient Faith Radio, and YouTube, have made a deep impact on my life and my modest efforts at serving the Church. 

Last September, Fr. Thomas accompanied me on a grand pilgrimage out west, figuratively speaking, of course. I had the expansive blessing of driving from central Alabama to Dallas, then north-west to Santa Fe and Canones NM, where I stayed a couple of days at Archangel Michael Monastery (OCA), then up to Denver to visit a beloved monastic mentor of mine, and then back east-south-east. For my journey of over 3000 miles across the vast American landscape I decided it was the perfect opportunity to revisit Fr Hopko's multi-CD talk on The Lord's Prayer. I thank God for having such a 'companion' for my pilgrimage!

With this as with all his talks and writings, it has always seemed to me that Fr. Thomas was never merely theoretical or even theological, but was always pastoral. He always made the teachings real to his listeners. And this is because he clearly was applying it to his own life, his own circumstances (as could be readily discerned from his asides and self-deprecatory wit). The living and practice of our Christian life has to be real, otherwise it is worse than fake, it is unto condemnation.

Thank God for Fr. Thomas!

May his memory be eternal!

The distilled fruit of Fr. Thomas Hopko's lifetime of Christian life and service may be seen in the below text, '55 Maxims'. 

Additional key links are as follows:

Islamic State destroys churches, smashing crosses and icons

The smashing of crosses and destruction of churches is a harbinger of Islamic apocalyptic dreams, and stems from Islam's deep hatred of Christianity, as seen in this hadith:

Muhammad said: "There is no prophet between me and him, that is, Jesus. He will descend (to the earth)... He will fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish jizya. Allah will perish all religions except Islam." (Sunan Abu Dawud 37.4310)

ISIS Destroys Assyrian Churches, Hostages Still Being Held

AINA, March 16, 2015

ISIS has posted pictures, on its twitter accounts, of its members destroying the St. George Monastery in Mosul. The pictures show ISIS members using sledgehammers to smash crosses and icons, and removing the cross from the dome and replacing it with the black ISIS flag.

ISIS captured Mosul on June 10, 2014 and immediately destroyed or occupied all 45 Assyrian churches and other religious institutions in the city.

Ohio Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Cleveland area events April 24-25 lead into national gatherings at Washington D.C.

Full schedule below...
(Thanks to John for sharing this.)

For background on the Armenian Genocide, see this essential article by Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes, who calculated that in Asia Minor over 3.6 million Eastern Christians were killed by Muslims from 1894 to 1923. The Armenian Genocide is one of the most horrific examples of the 14-century-old pattern of Islamic jihad against Christians. Its relevance for us today is obvious, as we are seeing a new genocide against Christians being committed by Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa.


Cleveland Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

The decision to annihilate the entire Armenian population came directly from the ruling triumvirate of ultra-nationalist Young Turks. The actual extermination orders were transmitted in coded telegrams to all provincial governors throughout Turkey. Armed roundups began on the evening of April 24, 1915, as 300 Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, clergy and dignitaries in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were taken from their homes, briefly jailed and tortured, then hanged or shot (United Human Rights Council).

By the end of WWI in 1918, 1.5 million Armenians were dead. So this year the Armenian community in Ohio will unite to commemorate the Centennial and honor the memory of the Armenians who perished at the hands of the Turkish Moslems.

 

'We must be Crucified...'

A message for the Week of the Cross, from the Journal of Fr. Seraphim Rose, cited in 'Fr. Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works', by Hieromonk Damascene:

"Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be a Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example—and warning—to us all. 

"We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him—even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world.

"And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even in a single representation of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at anytime.

Beyond the Cross

For this Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, I'd like to share a selection from my book, Facing Islam. This is taken from the conclusion of the chapter on Muhammad, 'Prophet Motives - Was Muhammad a Man of God?'.

_______

Beyond the Cross

By far the most compelling, overarching point to emphasize as we close this chapter is the Person and Mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the absolute, incontestable finality and divine pre-eminence of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, through Whom God the Father has wrought salvation for mankind. 

Fr. Thomas Hopko expresses the essence of the Christian message through the centrality of Christ and the Cross as follows: 

Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can do. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more God can say. Beyond the Cross there is nothing more to be revealed. (Fr. Thomas Hopko, The Word of the Cross, SVS Press, emphasis added.)

Anglican Vicar defiles his church, commits apostasy, by holding Muslim prayer service, praising "the god that we love, Allah."

How deeply tragic is the stampede to Christian apostasy in the West.

The church in which this act happened is now defiled. If such a blasphemous act were to be performed in an Orthodox church, the priest would be immediately suspended and defrocked, and the defiled church would be closed until an exorcism could be performed and the church could be re-consecrated by the bishops.

Why so stern a reaction?

First of all, Muslims do not worship the True God; they reject Jesus Christ and the Blessed Trinity. We do not pray to the same God, how then could we pray together?

This does not mean that we hate or reject Muslims. Far from it! We invite them to "come and see," to learn about the real Jesus Christ (who is very different from the vague character of "Isa" in the Koran), and to come to know the True God through Christ. They are invited to attend Orthodox Christian services, but as inquirers or, if they are sincere in leaving their false religion and being united to the Lord Jesus Christ, they may become catechumens. Before their baptism, they will be solemnly asked three times to renounce satan. When you are embracing the Light, you must leave all darkness behind.

Secondly, the Christian church is a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem. Therefore only Christian worship may be performed in it. The altar in a Christian temple is a type of the heavenly altar. Upon it, the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist is performed, mystically uniting the worshipping congregation into the presence of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. In light of this, how could an anti-Christian service be allowed to be conducted in a Christian temple?

Thirdly, the priest is not merely a celebrant, and is certainly not free to add, adapt or improvise services according to his fancy, but is a servant of Christ, and represents Christ to the congregation. He is the one who performs the eucharistic service, distributing the Body and Blood of Christ to the faithful. If he tries to mingle falsehood with truth, he is proving he is not a good shepherd but a hireling (perhaps even a wolf!), and self-condemned, he excommunicates himself from the life of the Church, he betrays Christ all over again.

Then there are the words of St Paul:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? [2 Corinthians 6:14-16]

That Rev. Giles Goddard has so flagrantly violated Christian dogma, scripture, and liturgical praxis and theology that he has committed nearly the grossest apostasy imaginable. He has willingly, of his own design and choice, brought into the church the "abomination which causes desolation." He has turned a church into a mosque. His very salvation is in grave danger if he does not repent of this blasphemy. He has done willingly that to which his forefathers would have preferred death.

No doubt Rev. Goddard is sincere, but he is sincerely deluded.  He believes in and worships his own wisdom in going beyond Christ. He also proves his abject ignorance regarding Islam, which is the quintessential anti-Christian heresy, as seen in the Quranic texts below.

The root word for heresy means "to choose." Giles Goddard is a heretic, as is everyone who chooses to believe and act upon the "Same God" heresy. May he be brought to repentance and united to Christ's Church.

We can't tell from the news story below if the traditionalist Anglicans are scandalized by this for the correct reasons. It is mentioned that the act was "against canon law" and "completely illegal," but is there any sense in the Anglican church as to WHY?  Or is this another symptom, along with women priestesses and bishops and same-sex marriage, of the growing apostasy of the Anglican communion?

Thankfully, there are some positive examples coming out of the Church of England as well.

Related: Having Completed the Forty Days - Apothegmata or Apostasy?

UK: Anglican vicar holds Muslim prayer service in his church, asks congregation to praise “the god that we love, Allah”

by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, March 13, 2015

When Giles Goddard painted that cross on his church building, and had one placed on his forehead, was he aware of this hadith? 

“Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary (Jesus) will shortly descend amongst you people (Muslims) as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya (a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government). Then there will be abundance of money and no-body will accept charitable gifts.'” (Bukhari 3.34.425)

Did the Muslim prayer service include any of these Qur’an readings?

Christians have forgotten part of the divine revelations they received: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.” — Qur’an 5:14 

Jesus is not the Son of God: “O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not “Three” – Cease! (it is) better for you! – Allah is only One Allah. Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.” — Qur’an 4:171 

“It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35

Raymond Ibrahim: 'The Koran and Eternal War'

This was originally published back in November of last year, but is such an important and well reasoned article that it deserves to be more widely read.

by Raymond Ibrahim
November 26, 2014

Originally published by VIE

News recently emerged that Russia was banning key Islamic scriptures—including Sahih Bukhari—on the charge that they promote “exclusivity [supremacism] of one of the world’s religions,” namely Islam; or, in the words of a senior assistant to the prosecutor of Tatarstan Ruslan Galliev, “a militant Islam” which “arouses ethnic, religious enmity.”

If Sahih Bukhari, a nine-volume hadith collection compiled in the 9th century and seen by Sunni Muslims as second in importance only to the Koran itself is being banned for inciting hostility, where does that leave the Koran?

After all, if Sahih Bukhari contains pro-terrorism statements attributed to the prophet of Islam and calls to kill Muslims who leave Islam, the Koran, Islam’s number one holy book itself is full of intolerance and calls for violence against non-believers. A tiny sampling of proclamations from Allah follows:

'Islam can be a violent faith', says Queen’s chaplain

Rev. Canon Ashenden expresses concerns about 100 passages in the Koran that "invite people to violence," and says, "If you’re going to invite people to be dedicated followers of their scriptures, Christians will go around forgiving people and Islamists will do something else."

AXIOS!  This is all that we wish to see, Christian clergy, educators and leaders simply speaking the truth about Islam without varnish, without acrimony, and especially without offering the false platitude that ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamic jihadist groups "have nothing to do with Islam."

by Jack Doyle, Daily Mail, March 12, 2015:

h/t Jihad Watch

The honest and forthright Rev. Gavin Ashenden, Chaplain to H.R.H. Elizabeth II

There are passages in the Koran which ‘invite people to violence’, one of the Queen’s chaplains said last night.

Reverend Canon Gavin Ashenden, the former chaplain of Sussex University and one of 35 who serve Her Majesty, expressed concern about more than 100 passages in the Muslim holy book.

But the Church of England priest declined to say whether parts of the Koran are ‘evil’, instead advising people to make up their own minds.