China Uses Coronavirus Crisis to Bulldoze Churches and Temples

Churches that do not get knocked flat are encrusted with surveillance cameras to terrorize the congregations, and perhaps build up “evidence” of incorrect speech that can be used as an excuse to wipe out the church

By John Hayward
Breitbart

Religious freedom watchdog groups are accusing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of using the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic as an opportunity to intensify their crackdown on religion, bulldozing some churches and placing others under heavy surveillance.

“China is now holding itself up as a model for fighting the coronavirus. But fighting the pandemic hasn’t stopped communist officials from persecuting Christians,” Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the nonprofit group Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), told Fox News on Tuesday.

Another prominent activist, Bob Fu of China Aid, shared a video of Chinese officials demolishing a church in the city of Yixing:

Bob Fu傅希秋@BobFu4China

Religious persecution continues even in the midst of #WuhanVirus March 11 Xiangbaishu Church in Yixing city, Jiangsu province was destroyed by #CCP govt. Cross is our Glory大疫当前，江苏宜兴香柏树教会,于3.11日遭到强拆.举国上下深感人民的苦难，但谁知道在十字架上那位上帝之子的苦难？

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Other churches have reportedly been vandalized by Chinese officials and orders have been given that effectively ban “unregistered” religious services on the grounds of public health. On the bright side, VOM saw the prevalence of medical masks due to the coronavirus as an opportunity to evade China’s pervasive facial-recognition systems and proselytize with less fear of being identified and persecuted.

Buddhists and Taoists also reported the suppression and demolition of their temples, a process that appeared to be intensifying just as the coronavirus exploded out of Wuhan. Worshipers bitterly noted that local officials have a habit of abruptly deciding that temples built with their approval failed to meet some obscure building code and must be demolished immediately. Not even hoisting Communist flags and papering temples with posters of China’s authoritarian ruler Xi Jinping was enough to save the targeted temples.

“Unconditional cooperation with the government means that no photos of the demolition can be taken, no negotiations initiated, and no compensation demanded. This is typical behavior of the CCP government,” one Buddhist complained to the Bitter Winter human rights website.

“The Communist Party is as evil as a mafia. Under the tyranny of those modern bandits, even sacred Buddhist temples cannot enjoy peace,” said another.

Churches that do not get knocked flat are encrusted with surveillance cameras to terrorize the congregations, and perhaps build up “evidence” of incorrect speech that can be used as an excuse to wipe out the church, as detailed in another Bitter Winter post:

According to a Three-Self preacher from Lankao county in Henan’s Kaifeng city, powerful cameras, over 10,000 RMB (about $ 1,400) each, have been installed in at least eight Three-Self churches, images from which are displayed on a large screen in the hall of the county’s Two Chinese Christian Councils. Who leads Sunday services, what sermons are about, and how many congregation members are present—everything is under the government’s close surveillance.

“The surveillance equipment is powerful; it can catch every single word in the church,” a Three-Self church director in Lankao county explained. “We can get into trouble for making an incautious remark. Believers don’t dare to even chitchat with each other under such surveillance.” He once received a phone call from a local official less than one hour after he complained about the government.

Breitbart report continues here

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Atheist Doctor In Italy Found God While On Duty Fighting Against COVID-19

Always Look for How God is Moving!

By Christel Berns
GodTV.com

Atheist doctor, Dr. Julian Urban, from Italy realized he needed to start asking God for help in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic hitting their country while on duty.

In a Facebook post by Jim McCarthy, he shared a powerful testimony from a doctor forwarded by his friend from Italy.

Testimony By An Italian Atheist Doctor

The 38-year-old medical doctor is serving in a hospital in Lombardy, Italy. Dr. Julian recounted what they have experienced inside the hospital while fighting against COVID-19.

He stated, “Never in my darkest nightmares did I imagine that I would see and experience what has been going on in Italy in our hospital the past three weeks. The nightmare flows, and the river gets bigger and bigger.”

Then the doctor described how a few patients suddenly became hundreds.

And he said, “Now, we are no longer doctors, but sorters who decide who should live and who should be sent home to die, though all these patients paid Italian health taxes throughout their lives.”

However, in the midst of this unlikely situation inside the hospital, some doctors have come to know God.

Meeting An Elderly Pastor

Dr. Julian narrated, “Until two weeks ago, my colleagues and I were atheists. It was normal because we are doctors. We learned that science excludes the presence of God.”

He testified how he mocked his parents going to church in the past. And how that all changed after meeting a pastor who was admitted to the hospital.

“Nine days ago, a 75-year-old pastor was admitted into the hospital. He was a kind man. He had serious breathing problems,” recounted Dr. Julian.

“He had a Bible with him and impressed us by how he read it to the dying as he held their hand. We, doctors, were all tired, discouraged, psychologically, and physically finished. When we had time, we listened to him. We have reached our limits. We can do no more. People are dying every day. We are exhausted. We have two colleagues who have died and others that have been infected.”

Then he and his colleagues realized, “We needed to start asking God for help.”

Atheist Doctors Turned To God

He testified, “When we talk to each other, we cannot believe that, though we were once fierce atheists, we are now daily in search of peace, asking the Lord to help us continue so that we can take care of the sick.”

Dr. Julian, later on, disclosed that the 75-year-old pastor died.

He said, “Despite having had over 120 deaths here in 3 weeks, we were not destroyed. He [the pastor] had managed, despite his condition and our difficulties, to bring us a PEACE that we no longer had hoped to find. The pastor went to the Lord, and soon we will follow him if matters continue like this.”

Grateful In Finding God

But despite the threat to their health, Dr. Julian expressed his gratitude because he found God again.

“I haven’t been home for 6 days. I don’t know when I ate last,” he said. And realized his “worthlessness on this earth” and wants to use his last breath helping others.

Moreover, the former atheist claimed, “I am happy to have RETURNED with God while I am surrounded by the suffering and death of my fellow men.”

This testimony quite reminds us that there is a deep spiritual impact occurring in this crisis. God is working behind the scene!

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

Website: God TV

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Christian Martyrs of Islamic Jihad: A Recurring Them

In the video of the 21 martyrs made by ISIS, some could be seen mouthing, “Oh Lord Jesus Christ” immediately prior to having their heads carved off. 

By Raymond Ibrahim
PJ Media

Last February 15 marked the five year anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 Christians—20 from Egypt and one from Ghana. One human rights group summarized the incident in a statement:

This week in 2015, 21 men were brutally beheaded on a Mediterranean beach in Libya, by members of ISIS. They had been captured by ISIS a few months earlier and pressured to renounce their faith in Christ and convert to Islam. These 21 modern martyrs chose their faith and love for Jesus Christ over the opportunity to extend their mortal lives…. All were given the opportunity to convert to Islam to save their lives, yet each chose the love they had for Jesus above the love they had for their families and own lives. Reportedly, the Ghanaian captive on seeing the faith of his fellow Coptic Orthodox captives chose their faith and death over saving himself.

A Coptic Icon of the 21 Martyrs of Libya.

Inasmuch as the 21 martyrs should be remembered and commemorated, the fact is, they are ultimately modern day reflections of an ancient (and ongoing) phenomenon that permeates nearly fourteen centuries of history: Muslims slaughtering Christians who refuse to renounce Christ and embrace Muhammad.

Indeed, earlier this month, on March 6, the martyrdom of 42 other Christians was commemorated. They too were beheaded—1,171 years before half their number (the 21 Egyptians/Ghanaian) were executed under very similar circumstances. Known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium, their dramatic story follows:

In 838, Caliph al-Mu‘tasim—at the head of eighty thousand slave-soldiers—burst into Amorium, one of the Eastern Roman Empire’s largest and most important cities. They burned and razed it to the ground and slaughtered countless; everywhere there were “bodies heaped up in piles,” recalled a chronicler. The invaders locked those who sought sanctuary inside their churches and set the buildings aflame; trapped Christians could be heard crying kyrie eleison—“Lord have mercy!” in Greek—while being roasted alive. Hysterical “women covered their children, like chickens, so as not to be separated from them, either by sword or slavery.”

About half of the city’s seventy thousand citizens were slaughtered, the rest hauled off in chains. There was such a surplus of human booty that when the caliph came across four thousand male prisoners he ordered them executed on the spot. Because there “were so many women’s convents and monasteries” in this populous Christian city, “over a thousand virgins were led into captivity, not counting those that had been slaughtered. They were given to the Moorish and Turkish slaves, so as to assuage their lust,” laments the chronicler.

When the young emperor, Theophilus (r. 829–842), heard about the sack of Amorium—his hometown, chosen by the caliph for that very reason, to make the sting hurt all the more—he fell ill and died three years later, aged 28, reportedly from sorrow. Meanwhile, the Muslim poet Abu Tammam (805‐845) celebrated the caliph’s triumph, since “You have left the fortunes of the sons of Islam in the ascendant, and the polytheists [Christians] and the abode of polytheism in decline.”

Among the many captives carted off to Iraq were forty-two notables, mostly from the military and clerical classes. Due to their prestigious status and in order to make them trophies of Islam, they were repeatedly pressured to convert:

During the seven years of their imprisonment, their captors tried in vain to persuade them to renounce Christianity and accept Islam. The captives stubbornly resisted all their seductive offers and bravely held out against terrible threats. After many torments that failed to break the spirit of the Christian soldiers, they condemned them to death, hoping to shake the determination of the saints before executing them. The martyrs remained steadfast…

An Icon of the 42 Martyrs of Amorium

Interestingly, some of the arguments used by Muslims indicate that they acknowledged Christ as the Prince of Peace and Muhammad as the Lord of War—and played it to great effect. One Theodore, a Christian cleric who fought in defense of Amorium, was goaded as follows: 

 “We know that you forsook the priestly office, became a soldier and shed blood [of Muslims] in battle. You can have no hope in Christ, whom you abandoned voluntarily, so accept Mohammed.” Theodore replied: “You do not speak truthfully when you say that I abandoned Christ. Moreover, I left the priesthood because of my own unworthiness. Therefore, I must shed my blood for the sake of Christ, so that He might forgive the sins that I have committed against Him.”

In the end, none would recant; and so, on March 6, 845, after seven years of torture and temptation failed to make them submit to Muhammad, all 42 Christians were—like their 21 spiritual descendants, the Egyptian/Ghanaian martyrs—also marched to a body of water, the Euphrates River, ritually beheaded, and their bodies dumped into the river.

In the video of the 21 martyrs made by ISIS, some could be seen mouthing, “Oh Lord Jesus Christ” immediately prior to having their heads carved off. Commenting on this, Coptic Orthodox Bishop Anba Antonios Aziz Mina, said: “The name of Jesus was their last word. Like the passion of the early martyrs, they entrusted themselves to He, who moments later, would welcome them into his embrace (emphasis added).”

Sadly, past and present, some things do not change.

Note: For more examples throughout the centuries of Christian martyrs of the Islamic jihad, see the author’s recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.

Website: Raymond Ibrahim

Persecution Unveiled has been called to prick the consciences of our nation and all free people to pray for, speak up and act on behalf of those who are persecuted for their faith. Follow us on Pinterest.

EU Court Refuses to Hear Case of Christian Midwives Who Refused to Perform Abortions

“A positive judgment from the Court would have been an important step in the protection of the right to freedom of conscience.”

By Anugrah Kumar
Christian Post

European Court of Human Rights has refused to take up the case of two Swedish nurses who were denied midwife jobs because they were not willing to perform abortions. A Christian law firm called it a “dangerous departure from the Court’s purpose in protecting fundamental freedoms.”

The court said the case of the nurses, Ellinor Grimmark and Linda Steen, who were retrained as midwives but were not given jobs due to their religious beliefs against carrying out abortions, was inadmissible to be heard by the EHRC, according to Reuters.

The Christian midwives had claimed that authorities violated the European Convention on Human Rights by refusing jobs to them.

The court’s decision cannot be appealed.

“We are very disappointed by the Court’s decision not to take up the cases of Ms. Grimmark and Ms Steen,” Robert Clarke, deputy director of Alliance Defending Freedom International, said in a statement, according to Premier. “A positive judgment from the Court would have been an important step in the protection of the right to freedom of conscience.”

Clarke added, “Medical professionals should be able to work without being forced to choose between their deeply held convictions and their careers. Although freedom of conscience is protected as a fundamental right in almost every other European country, the decision today marks a missed opportunity to uphold this important protection in Sweden. In its short written decision, the Court agreed that Sweden had interfered with the rights of these midwives.”

A Swedish pro-choice group, RFSU, celebrated the rejection of the case. “It is not a human right for nursing staff to refuse to provide care,” said RFSU’s Hans Linde. “This is an important decision that in the long term will help to protect women’s health, right to good quality care and to be treated with respect when seeking an abortion.”

However, Grimmark said she chose to become a midwife “because I wanted to help bring life into this world.”

“I cannot understand why the Swedish government refuses to accommodate my conscientious convictions,” she said. “I am now working in Norway, where my conscience is respected, but no one can explain why Sweden cannot do the same.”

In 2017, a labor court said that "there had not been any violation" of her freedom of expression and opinion, despite the practice of abortion going directly against her religious beliefs.

The court also found that Jönköping County was within its rights to refuse Grimmark employment, as it has a requirement that all midwives working at women's clinics carry out assigned duties, including abortion.

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief recently spoke against restrictions on abortion access.

“The Special Rapporteur notes that in a number of countries around the world, governments continue to maintain partial or total bans on access to abortion, and religious figures have both encouraged these measures and advocated against efforts to reform the laws,” the rapporteur said in a report. “One area of particular concern regarding accommodations to national law for religious beliefs is the use of conscientious objection by healthcare providers and institutions unwilling to perform abortions or provide access to contraception on religious grounds.”

In response to the report, the World Evangelical Alliance last week urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to recognize the right to conscientious objection for medical practitioners.

The WEA agreed in a statement that “violence, coercion and discrimination in the name of religion are never justified nor should they be condoned,” but expressed concern “at the report’s suggestion that religious individuals are engaging in harmful conduct by supporting policies and legislation that limit abortion. The report also appears to question the right to conscientious objection by health-care providers and institutions unwilling to perform abortions.”

It added, “Indeed, we believe that the full recognition of religious freedom, as well as several other fundamental human rights, must include recognition of the right to protect life in the womb, and to advocate against its termination both in words and deeds.”

Website: Christian Post

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350 Nigerian Christians Killed in First 2 Months of 2020: NGO Report

Group estimates at least 11,500 Nigerian Christians killed since June 2015 NGO Reports

By Samuel Smith

Christian Post

A Nigerian civil society organization claims that no fewer than 350 Christians have been killed across the West African country since the start of 2020 and estimates that about 11,500 Christians have been killed since 2015.

“Nigeria has fully become a killing field of defenseless Christians,” the Anambra-based nongovernmental organization International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) said this week in a new special report, titled “Nigeria: A Killing Field Of Defenseless Christians.”

“Available statistics have shown that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christian deaths were recorded in the past 57 months or since June 2015 when the present central government of Nigeria came on board. Out of this figure, Jihadist Fulani herdsmen accounted for 7,400 Christian deaths, Boko Haram 4,000 and the ‘Highway Bandits’ 150-200.”

The organization, which is headed by Christian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi, has monitored violence against Christians in Nigeria since 2010 through a team of criminologists, lawyers, journalists, security, and peace and conflict studies graduates.

Nigeria has been marred by violence in the last decade-plus due to the rise of extremist organizations in the northeast like Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province.

In recent years, massacres carried out by radicalized Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming villages in Nigeria’s Middle Belt have also driven communities from their homes.

Additionally, bandit gangs have been responsible for carrying out kidnappings along some major highways.

The United Nations estimates that about 2 million people have been internally displaced across Nigeria and 11 million people in need of assistance. An additional 550,000 are said to be displaced in neighboring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

“While 100 percent of the victims of Jihadist Herdsmen attacks across Nigeria are Christians, the estimated 4,000 Christians killed by Boko Haram were part of the estimated 6,000 [people in total] massacred by the sect since June 2015,” the report explains.

“Generally, many, if not most of the victims of Boko Haram/ISWAP attacks in Nigeria’s Northeast are Christians. On the part of ‘Bandits/Highway Kidnappers’ in Northern Nigeria, most of their rural victims are Muslims while many, if not most, of their roadside victims are Christians traveling to northern or southern parts of the country using the Birnin-Gwari Federal Road, near Kaduna, etc.”

For its monitoring and documentation, Intersociety relies on what it deems to be credible local and foreign media reports, government accounts, international rights groups, eyewitness accounts and reports from various Christian bodies in the country.

Intersociety reports that Fulani herdsmen accounted for 250 of the 350 deaths recorded in January and February 2020 while Boko Haram and highway bandit gangs are responsible for 100 deaths.

In the past two months, Intersociety reports that radical Fulani militants have carried out attacks in Nasarawa, Adamawa and Edo in addition to some other locations throughout the country.

Last year, Intersociety reported that no fewer than 2,400 Christians were killed by Fulani radicals in 2018. In 2019, according to the group, between 1,000 to 1,200 Christians were killed by Fulani attackers.

Nigeria has been marred by violence in the last decade-plus due to the rise of extremist organizations in the northeast like Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province. recent years, massacres carried out by radicalized Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming villages in Nigeria’s Middle Belt have also driven communities from their homes.

Emeka Umeagbalasi,board chairman
of the International Society for Civil

Liberties & the Rule of Law in Nigeria

In recent years, massacres carried out by radicalized Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming villages in Nigeria’s Middle Belt have also driven communities from their homes.

Additionally, bandit gangs have been responsible for carrying out kiChristian Post article continues herednappings along some major highways.

The United Nations estimates that about 2 million people have been internally displaced across Nigeria and 11 million people in need of assistance. An additional 550,000 are said to be displaced in neighboring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

“While 100 percent of the victims of Jihadist Herdsmen attacks across Nigeria are Christians, the estimated 4,000 Christians killed by Boko Haram were part of the estimated 6,000 [people in total] massacred by the sect since June 2015,” the report explains.

Christian Post report continues here

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Kentucky High School Scrubs Locker Room Bible Verse after Atheist Group Complains

Also scrubbed was a bulletin board message displayed in Fleming Neon Middle School that said, “Jesus is my savior You can’t scare me!” 

By Caleb Parke
Fox News

Bloggers Note:

This report is just one of hundreds of incidences of Christian persecution in our nation. These are attacks on our first amendment right to the free exercise of religion. In other countries, Christians are arrested, imprisoned, tortured and martyred for their faith. Comfortable Christianity and the silence of the church will continue to embolden these enemies of Christ. Pray for those who want to take our freedom away. Please keep in your prayers our brothers and sisters who face persecution and death every day because of their faith in Jesus.

"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God..." 
2 Corinthians 10:4-5

A public high school in Kentucky removed an inspirational Bible verse from the locker room after a “concerned area resident” complained.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter to Letcher County Public Schools in Whitesburg, Ky., in November claiming the message above the lockers, along with two other religious messages at other schools in the district, “violates the Constitution” by displaying “religious symbols or messages.”

Bold letters on the wall of the Letcher County Central High School athletic locker room said: “But the Lord is with me like a Mighty Warrior,” with attribution to Jeremiah 20:11. But in February, school officials removed it.

Letcher Central High School in Whitesburg, Kentucky, painted over a locker room Bible verse after there was a complaint. (Freedom From Religion Foundation)

Also scrubbed was a bulletin board message displayed in Fleming Neon Middle School that said, “Jesus is my savior You can’t scare me!” and a prayer for children on the Martha Jane Potter Elementary School’s Facebook page at the beginning of the school year.

“Dear God, Thank you for the gift of education in every form. As our children prepare to start a new year may confidence be their foundation, may grace be their guide and may hope be their compass toward a bright future. I pray they would have eyes to see the needs of those around them and a heart to love well. May they face each day with positivity knowing that no matter what comes their way, they do not have to face it alone. Amen.”

“The bulletin board has been replaced, the Facebook post has been removed, and the locker room has been repainted,” Superintendent Denise Yonts wrote in a February letter to the FFRF.

Yonts’ actions were praised by the Wisconsin-based atheist group.

“We applaud the district for taking action to remedy this violation,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, said in a statement. “Students in our public schools are free to practice any religion they choose — or none at all.”

First Liberty Insitute, a religious freedom law firm that successfully defended the Bladensburg Peace Cross at the Supreme Court, said the district may have taken action too soon.

“It is unfortunate that the school took such a drastic step before fully vetting the complaint and doing a proper investigation of the background facts,” Hiram Sasser, general counsel for First Liberty, told Fox News. “It may be the case that the school committed a First Amendment violation by erasing the messages, but until a full investigation is done, it’s impossible to know the correct legal course.”

Website: Fox News

Persecution Unveiled has been called to prick the consciences of our nation and all free people to pray for, speak up and act on behalf of those who are persecuted for their faith. Follow us on Pinterest.

Syrian Muslims find Jesus after ISIS brutality: 'Christianity was the religion I was searching for'

“It didn’t take me long to discover that Christianity was the religion I was searching for.”

Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army fighters are seen at a training camp
in Azaz, Syria, January 28, 2018. | (Photo: Reuters/Osman Orsal)

By Leah MarieAnn Klett
Christian Post

Syrian Christians have shared how they converted from Islam to Christianity after witnessing the brutality of Islamic extremist groups like ISIS, who carried out barbaric acts in the name of Allah.

Members of the recently-established Church of the Brethren in Kobani — the first local Christian place of worship for decades — shared with NBC News how Christianity appealed to them after living under Sharia law.

Farhad Jasim, 23, who works as a mechanic, converted to Christianity late last year. He told NBC he was jailed by ISIS for six months in early 2016 after the militants discovered he didn't know the basics of Islam. During his time in captivity, he was tortured and forced to read the Quran.

“After I witnessed their brutality with my own eyes, I started to be skeptical about my belief,” Jasim said.

After hearing about the Church of the Brethren, which opened in September and is part of a denomination that dates back to 18th-century Germany, Jasim decided to visit: “It didn’t take me long to discover that Christianity was the religion I was searching for,” he said.

Jasim told the outlet his family has rejected him because of his newfound faith and expressed hope that one day, his loved ones will not only forgive him but embrace Christianity, too.

“If ISIS represents Islam, I don’t want to be a Muslim anymore,” he said. “Their God is not my God.”

Firas, a 47-year-old farmer, told NBC he converted to Christianity after living under ISIS for two years. He recalled how militants would terrorize anyone who didn’t adhere to their particular brand of Islam.

Syrian Christians have shared how they converted from Islam to Christianity after witnessing the brutality of Islamic extremist groups like ISIS, who carried out barbaric acts in the name of Allah.

Members of the recently-established Church of the Brethren in Kobani — the first local Christian place of worship for decades — shared with NBC News how Christianity appealed to them after living under Sharia law.

Farhad Jasim, 23, who works as a mechanic, converted to Christianity late last year. He told NBC he was jailed by ISIS for six months in early 2016 after the militants discovered he didn't know the basics of Islam. During his time in captivity, he was tortured and forced to read the Quran.

“After I witnessed their brutality with my own eyes, I started to be skeptical about my belief,” Jasim said.

After hearing about the Church of the Brethren, which opened in September and is part of a denomination that dates back to 18th-century Germany, Jasim decided to visit: “It didn’t take me long to discover that Christianity was the religion I was searching for,” he said.

Jasim told the outlet his family has rejected him because of his newfound faith and expressed hope that one day, his loved ones will not only forgive him but embrace Christianity, too.

“If ISIS represents Islam, I don’t want to be a Muslim anymore,” he said. “Their God is not my God.”

Firas, a 47-year-old farmer, told NBC he converted to Christianity after living under ISIS for two years. He recalled how militants would terrorize anyone who didn’t adhere to their particular brand of Islam.

“I saw men and young teenagers being whipped on the streets because they were caught smoking. I saw dead bodies of young men being thrown from high buildings for being gay,” Firas said. “This was their Islam.”

"If heaven is made for ISIS and their belief, I would choose hell for myself instead of being again with them in the same place, even if it’s paradise," he added.

While ISIS was driven out of the city, located along the Syrian-Turkish border, over four years ago, converting to Christianity remains taboo — and even dangerous — in the Muslim-majority region. Persecution watchdog Open Doors notes that even in more secure parts of Syria, Christians who have converted from Islam face pressure and discrimination from their communities. Kobani is home to about 300 Christians, according to estimates.

Omar, 38, who serves as church administrator, said that even before ISIS overtook the region, it was strictly forbidden to change religion from Islam to Christianity. But under ISIS, converting to Christianity “wasn’t even imaginable,” he said, adding: “ISIS would kill you immediately.”

“Most of the brothers here converted or come to church as a result of what ISIS did to them and to their families,” he said. “No one is forced to convert. Our weapon is the prayer, the spreading of spirit of love, brotherhood and tolerance.”

Christian Post report continues here

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AG William Barr Denounces Progressives' Push Toward Tyranny, Driving Religion out of Public Square

“We live at a time when religion – long an essential pillar of our society – is being driven from the public square.”

Attorney General William Barr speaks to National Religious 

Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, TN  Feb. 26, 2020| NRB

By Leah MarieAnn Klett 
Christian Post

Attorney General William Barr said Christian media is essential to the preservation of Christianity in the public square as the United States continues to experience a “steady erosion of religion and its benevolent influence.”

“We live at a time when religion – long an essential pillar of our society – is being driven from the public square,” Barr told those gathered at the National Religious Broadcasters Christian Media Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, last week. “Thank God we have the National Religious Broadcasters to counter that effort.”

“Your members courageously affirm that entertainment and moral education are not mutually exclusive,” he continued. “You have boldly shown that media can serve higher ends: the safeguarding of faith as well as the cultivation of the classical virtues of the mind and heart that maintain our republican experiment in self-governance. As such, NRB’s members offer an alternative and essential platform for believers and nonbelievers alike.”

The reason politics is "omnipresent" today, Barr said, is partly because progressives are moving away from the liberal democracy envisioned by the founding fathers.

"That has played a major role in our politics becoming less like a disagreement within a family, and more like a blood feud between two different clans," he explained. "They want able-bodied citizens to become more dependent."

"The tacit goal of this project is to convert all of us into 25-year-olds living in the government's basement, focusing our energies on obtaining the larger allowance, rather than getting a job and moving out and taking responsibility for ourselves."

The attorney general stressed that historically, the U.S. has relied on religion, a decentralization of power and the freedom of the press to help prevent a slide toward tyranny.

Barr quoted founding father John Adams, who wrote, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

“How does religion protect against majoritarian tyranny? In the first place, it allows us to limit the role of government by cultivating internal moral values in the people that are powerful enough to restrain individual rapacity without resort to the state’s coercive power,” Barr contended.“Experience teaches that to be strong enough to control willful human beings, moral values must be based on authority independent of man’s will. In other words, they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being. Men are far likelier to obey rules that come from God than to abide by the abstract outcome of an ad hoc utilitarian calculus.”

Barr lamented that religion — “this vital moderating force in our society” — has “declined over the past several decades.”

“In recent years, we have seen the steady erosion of religion and its benevolent influence,” he said. “While most everyone agrees that we must have separation of Church and State, this does not require that we drive religion from the public square and affirmatively use government power to promote a culture of disbelief.”

Christian Post article continues here 

Persecution Unveiled has been called to prick the consciences of our nation and all free people to pray for, speak up and act on behalf of those who are persecuted for their faith. Follow us on Pinterest