By Hope Imaka – EMTV Online
In a series of never-ending executions of Christians, Christianity is facing extinction in the Middle East and Syria.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) executed 12 Christians, including a 12-year-old boy, after they refused to abandon their faith and convert to Islam. The murders occurred on August 28 outside of Aleppo.
“In front of the team leader and relatives in the crowd, the Islamic extremists cut off the fingertips of the boy and severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam,” revealed Christian Aid Mission.
The boy’s father was a ministry team leader who planted nine churches.
“When the team leader refused, relatives said, the ISIS militants also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.”
One woman allegedly yelled “Jesus!” right before the terrorists beheaded her. Militants took eight aid workers, two of them females, to another village. They proceeded to rape the two females before they executed them.
Villagers said some were praying in the name of Jesus, praying the Lord’s prayer, and lifted their heads up to commend their spirits to Jesus. According to a source, “One women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said “Jesus!”
ISIS has executed more than 11,000 people in Iraq and Syria since its establishment of a self-proclaimed caliphate in June 2014. For over 2,000 years, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully with each other. But when ISIS invaded, the Christians were told to leave, convert, or pay a subjugation tax. They kidnapped the majority of the females to sell on their sex slave market while they slaughtered the males in front of their families.
Patrick Sookhdeo, founder of Barnabas Fund said “It is like going back 1,000 years seeing the barbarity that Christians are having to live under. I think we are dealing with a group which makes Nazism pale in comparison and I think they have lost all respect for human life,”
“Crucifying these people is sending a message and they are using forms of killing which they believe have been sanctioned by Sharia law. For them what they are doing is perfectly normal and they don’t see a problem with it. It is that religious justification which is so appalling.”
In July 2014, Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican Church in Iraq, told BBC Radio 4 that Christianity is near extinction in the Middle Eastern country.
“Things are so desperate, our people are disappearing,” he said.
“We have had people massacred, their heads chopped off. The Christians are in grave danger. There are literally Christians living in the desert and on the street. They have nowhere to go.”
“Are we seeing the end of Christianity?” he continued. “We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near.”
ISIS destroyed churches, statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and raised the black flag in Mary’s place. Among other horrible treatments endured by the Christians, terrorists have also robbed Christians at checkpoints, taking the earrings women were wearing.
Refugee Bashar Nasih Behnam who left with his two children, said “there is not a single Christian family left in Mosul…the last one was a disabled Christian woman. She stayed because she could not get out. They came to her and said for her to leave or have her head chopped off. That was the last family.”
