Persecution of Christians and Jews Growing Worldwide

  “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me.”  (Matthew 24:9)

End-Time Signs: Persecution of Christians and Jews Growing Worldwide

In Matthew 24, when Yeshua (Jesus) was asked by His disciples about the end times and the sign of His coming, He prophesied that there would not only be wars, famine and earthquakes, but that persecution would increase, especially as His return approached.

It seems that today, this prophecy is in the midst of being fulfilled!
There has been an alarming increase in the persecution of Christians and Jews worldwide.

Woman praying at the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem.

The statistics may surprise those who live relatively peaceful lives in North America since the media seldom reports on this issue.
This July, Palestinian Christians conducted a protest against abductions and forced conversions of young Christians.
Ramez al-Amash (24), and Hiba Abu Dawoud (32), along with her daughters, 12, 9, and 7 were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam.
Of course, Hamas insists they converted of their own free will.
“If my son is not kidnapped, why don’t they just let him go home with me?” asked Huda Amash, mother of Ramez.  “My son was brought up as a Christian.  His love of Jesus is strong enough to keep him Christian.  He cannot change his beliefs all of a sudden.”  (Godreports)

Church courtyard in Bethlehem

Such abductions are not uncommon in Islam.  In June 2007, an Egyptian girl named Mary was abducted when she went out for pizza with friends.
The next day, as her father waited for police to find her, she was escorted into the police station by four bearded men in Islamic dress.  She was covered head to toe in a burka and was hit in the face when her father called to her.
The police held the father down as he tried to get to his daughter, and they allowed her to be driven away by her Muslim captors.
Here in the Holy Land, in Hamas and Palestinian-controlled areas, Christian Arabs have been beaten, raped, and murdered by Arab Muslims for their faith in Jesus (Yeshua).
Around the world, roughly 200 million Christians are being persecuted and over 100,000 die every year.
“There is not the slightest question of the scale and barbarity of this persecution, and a little of it is adequately publicized.  But this highlights the second half of the atrocity: the passivity and blasé indifference of most of the West’s media and governments,” Conrad Black reported in the National Review Online.

A church in Cairo

Human Rights Report Excludes Religious Freedom

In the United States, the value placed on religious freedom may be in decline, which diminishes the will to respond to persecution in communities around the globe.
This year in fact, the US State Department removed sections covering religious freedom from the annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices—the Human Rights Report.
According to former US diplomat Thomas Farr, this reflects efforts by the Obama administration to downgrade issues of religious freedom, and to “edge traditional religious ideas out of the public sphere, both domestically and in foreign policy.”  (Weekly Standard)
He noted that this is extremely short-sighted since religious freedom and democracy are correlated.
“Both history and social science make it clear that highly religious nations like Egypt and Pakistan will not achieve stable democracy unless they embrace religious freedom in full.
Nor will they be able to defeat the toxic religious ideas that feed violent Islamist terrorism, including the kind that has reached American shores,” he said.

Pakistani Christians kneel in prayer during a march to Downing Street.  They were protesting the use of blasphemy laws in Pakistan to persecute Christians and other minorities.  Pakistani law mandates punishment for those who “blaspheme” the Qur’an.

Bacon Hate Crime

Let us not forget the thousands of innocent people massacred on 9/11 in the name of Allah.
Polls reveal that many who lost loved ones and friends that day have not fully recovered from the trauma (New York Times).
“This was not a natural disaster.  It was caused by radical Islamists,” said Carlo Notaro during a memorial service on September 11, 2011, in honor of his daughter Daniela Rosalia Notaro who died at the World Trade Center.
Widespread Islamophobia seems to be one backlash of 9/11, and consequently, in America, Muslims have become the new underdog.
So in the name of political correctness, democracy and multiculturalism, a corresponding hysterical Islamophobia witch hunt has been launched against those who criticize Islam in the US.

9/11: The remains of the World Trade Center after collapsing

Just recently at a Ramadan event (Ramadan is holy month in Islam), at the New Dorp high school football field in New York, Muslims reported to the police and media that—bacon—(yes, bacon), had been discovered lying on the ground.
(According to the Quran, Muslims are not allowed to eat pork.)
Unbelievably, the police were called in to investigate this act of littering as a hate crime against Muslims.
“The Ramadan event had been organized by a local chapter of the Muslim American Society.  However, the Muslim American Society is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of its chapters have called for the murder of Jews.
“Calling for the murder of Jews however falls under freedom of speech.  Unlike bacon which is a hate crime,” Daniel Greenfied said (Gatestone Institute).

Coptic Orthodox Christians protest outside the Irish parliament in Dublin the killing of Copts in Egypt.

Egypt: Persecution of Coptic Christians

“All men will hate you because of Me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.”  (Matthew 10:22, see also Mark 13:13 and Luke 21:17)

Another recently released US report, the International Religious Freedom Report, takes note of the momentous changes caused by revolution in the Arab world.
“In Egypt, an epicenter of the Arab Spring, hope turned to dismay, as human rights conditions, particularly religious freedom abuses, worsened dramatically under military rule,” the report said.
Indeed, the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt has been bad news for Coptic Christians.
“In 2011, violent sectarian attacks, targeting primarily Coptic Orthodox Christians, have resulted in nearly 100 deaths, surpassing the death toll of the previous 10 years combined.”
Last October in Cairo, at least 25 Egyptians were killed and 350 were injured during a peaceful protect regarding an an Islamist attack on a church in southern Egypt.  Many of the dead and injured were Coptic Christians.
Since the Arab Spring uprising last year, several Egyptian churches have been attacked, looted, burned and/or bombed, including St. George Coptic Orthodox Church, St. Mina Church, the Church of the Virgin Mary and the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Two Saints.
Churches are not only being attacked in Egypt, however.  Islamic militants are attacking churches in Kenya, Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere.
A recent report by the Gatestone Institute, an international policy think tank, also described Syria as a hotbed of anti-Christian activity where US-backed rebels are “sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory.”

Stop killing Coptic Christians.

Egypt’s Election: What the Muslim Brotherhood Means for Christian Representation

During Egypt’s presidential elections this year, according to Egypt’s national newspaper Al Ahram, “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets; prevented Christian families at gunpoint from voting for the secular candidate.”
Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is firmly in power in Egypt, Christians have less representation than before the election, despite promises of equal representation during election campaigns.
“We had expected an increase of [Christian] representation in the new government, especially after increasing the number of portfolios to 35,” acting leader of the Egyptian Coptic Church Archbishop Pachomius said (Al-Shorouk).
The Archbishop added that they were in fact only given “half a ministry” and voiced his concerns that the rise of the Islamists in Egypt would lead to diminished freedoms for Christians.

Christians and Jews are increasingly under pressure throughout the Arab world.

Boko Haram: Persecution and the Purging Nigeria of Christians

In 2011, the Islamist group Boko Haram murdered over 500 Nigerian Christians, burning over 350 churches in 10 northern states of Nigeria.
“The violence reached a terrible peak over the past year, claiming more than 800 lives, displacing 65,000 people, and destroying churches and mosques in the three days after Nigeria‘s presidential election, and at least 35 more lives in a series of coordinated church bombings on Christmas Day,” the International Religious Freedom Report states.
The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oristejiafor, stated in a recent letter to Hilary Clinton that the Freedom Report misses the mark in conveying the true horror of the persecution.
According to a Gatestone Institute report by Raymond Ibrahim, while hundreds of Nigerian Christians are being murdered, Boko Haram also has plans to purge Nigeria of Christians by killing them with “poisoned food.”
Meanwhile, President Obama’s US State Department was deleting sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights, and insisting that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion.

Nigerian Christians

A Key Trend: Anti-Semitism on the Rise Globally

“Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus [Yeshua].”  (Revelation 12:17)

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2012 Annual Report found abuses against the rights of Jews throughout the world calling this “rising tide of anti-Semitism” a key trend.

Egypt: Virulent Anti-Semitism

Egypt’s once large, thriving Jewish community now numbers no more than 100.  Although the community is small, the virulence of abuse has not weakened.
“In 2011, material vilifying Jews with both historical and new anti-Semitic stereotypes continued to appear regularly in the state-controlled and semi-official media.  This material includes anti-Semitic cartoons… comparisons of Israeli leaders to Hitler and the Nazis, and Holocaust denial literature.”

According to legend, the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, also called the El-Geniza Synagogue and the Synagogue of the Palestinians, is located on the site where Moses was found as a baby.  The land for this ancient synagogue was purchased in AD 882.  In the 19th century, the synagogue’s treasure trove of 210,000 Jewish manuscripts were brought to Cambridge University and the University of Manchester.

 Iran: Official Anti-Semitic Policies Increasing

In the last year, official government policies of anti-Semitism in Iran have “risen sharply.”  These target members of the Jewish community “on the basis of real or perceived ties to Israel.”
President Ahmadinejad and other top political and clerical leaders have publicly denied the Holocaust and called for the total destruction of Israel.
Anti-Semitic sentiments have filled Iran’s airways, and a leading newspaper held a Holocaust denial editorial cartoon contest.
The Iranian government also sponsored a Holocaust denial conference.
Official government discrimination against Jews continues to be pervasive, fostering a threatening atmosphere for the approximately 20,000–25,000 member Jewish community.

An Iranian Jewish man prays in a synagogue in Shiraz, Iran

Venezuela: Hotbed of Anti-Semitism

Venezuela is yet another hotbed of anti-Semitism, where President Hugo Chavez described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as “genocide” and called Zionism “racism.”
Running against Chavez in the upcoming October 2012 presidential election is opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.
Although Capriles was raised Roman Catholic, he is the grandson of Polish Jews who fled Nazi persecution.  His great-grandparents were killed in the Treblinka concentration camp.
“Within a week of Capriles’ selection in February 2012, state-run Radio Nacional de Venezuela posted on its website a column calling him a supporter of ‘international Zionism’ and included a number of traditional anti-Semitic themes and conspiracies; and a mob formed in front of a Caracas synagogue until it was broken up by the police,” the report said.

Henrique Capriles Radonski is running against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela’s upcoming election.

When it comes to what is really happening in the world in terms of the persecution of Jews and Christians, this article has only touched the tip of the iceberg.
Jews and Christians, however, are not the only ones experiencing persecution.  In the past year, according to the International Religious Freedom report, “across the global landscape, the pivotal human right of religious freedom was under attack.”
This does not diminish the global war now being waged on Christians in Muslim countries and the Islamic war against the Jews.
The context of Matthew 24 reveals that there will be a time when tribulation will be widespread.

“For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.”  (Matthew 24:21)