UNFORTUNATELY…EVIL IS ALIVE AND WELL

Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…after a fun weekend in Chicago to attend our new niece’s baptism ceremony – and to be away from the news for three days – I am back, charged-up, and ready to go.  Chicago is one of my favorite cities to visit, and we were blessed with an air show on the lake-front while we were there.  The acrobatics of the biplanes and the speed and maneuverability of the military jets is something to behold. If you haven’t seen an air show before, I highly recommend it… especially since we all have probably fantasized about being a “top gun.”

One of my favorite scriptures – and in fact, the story of my life – can be found in John 8:32: “Jesus told his disciples, ‘if you follow my teachings you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  Notice Jesus was very specific about the teachings he was referencing…“my teachings”.  And what did Jesus teach?  He taught about love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, compassion, acceptance, and being of service to our fellow man.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we lived in a world where that teaching was predominate?

But all we have to do is turn on the local news or look at the daily news headlines, and we are brought back to the reality that “evil” is alive and well.  In fact, it appears it is winning out in the eternal morality play of “Good vs. Evil”. But thank God, as Christ-followers we already know how this play turns out.  In John 16:33, Jesus addressed our situation.  He said, “In this world you will have trouble. But fear not! I have overcome the world.”  And again in Philippians 2:10-11 it states, “…that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”  Thank God again that we have The Truth – His Truth, the same Truth Jesus was referencing above, to cling to.

I remember not too long ago, in fact the day after the first massacre in Paris that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent men, women and children, our President addressed an audience and claimed that the greatest threat to the world was not terrorism or ISIS, nor nuclear weapons or the rogue states that are developing them, but the greatest threat to the world is global warming.  I couldn’t help but wonder how his assessment was received by the families of the victims slaughtered by the JV team of ISIS the day before.  Call me crazy, but I think hated and brutal killings = EVIL = THREAT!

While our current government leadership refuses to lead the charge against the evil that is ISIS, the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice) does have the courage to do just that.  They have stood against the evil trappings of the Liberal Progressive Agenda (characterized by this administration – and heaven forbid- perhaps even a next administration) on many issues and have won many cases.  On the way home yesterday, I found this article in one of their recent newsletters.  I thought I would let this article share with you the truth that you will never hear in the mainstream media. Unfortunately evil is alive and well, and is among us.  May God bless you and keep you safe.

ACLJ NEWSLETTER:

It is mind-boggling, heart-rendering and alarming!  Yet genocide—the intentional action to systematically eliminate an ethnic, national, racial or religious group—accelerates despite the rising demands to stop this horror. Although, Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that Christians as well as Yazidis and Shi’a Muslims are suffering genocide at the hands of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, in a recent interview with Genocide Watch, confirms that ISIS continues its genocidal quest to “purify” the Mideast so Islam can reign supreme.

Consider the following: Christians numbered about 1.4 million members in Iraq before 2003, but today Iraqi Christians amount to only 250,000 or less. That’s a staggering 82% drop in the Christian population. In Syria, two-thirds of its Christian population, which numbered 2 million in 2011, is now displaced or slaughtered. Despite the fact that Christian communities of Iraq and Syria are ancient ones with ties to the earliest Church, and while some of these Christians still pray in the Aramaic language of Jesus of Nazareth and trace their religion to Thomas (one of the twelve apostles), they now face a situation that Pope Frances calls an “ecumenism of blood.”

After intense public pressure (led by the ACLJ), the Obama Administration finally recognized the “genocide against . . . Christians.” Nevertheless, the Administration refuses to make the admission of Christian refugees from Syria a top priority.

In 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that affirmed that genocide was a crime under international law. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. More recently the United Nations Security Council determined that genocide is a crime under international law regardless of whether committed in time of peace or time of war. Five months ago, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution by a vote of 393 to 0 declaring ISIS beheadings, enslavement, mass rape, and other atrocities against Christians as genocide.

As we’ve previously reported, the resolution provides:

Whereas Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities have been murdered, subjugated, forced to emigrate and suffered grievous bodily and psychological harm, including sexual enslavement and abuse, inflicted in a deliberate and calculated manner in violation of the laws and treaties forbidding crimes against humanity, . . . the atrocities committed against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities targeted specifically for religious reasons, are, and are hereby declared to be, “crimes against humanity”, and “genocide.”  And yet the slaughter continues because the Obama Administration refuses to take action.

For instance, only a few sick or elderly Christians remain in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, placing Christians and Christianity on the edge of extinction. For centuries, Syria was a melting pot that included Sunni Muslim, Alawites, Christians, Armenians and others. Today, the sand runs red with the blood of Christians and others. Now the vicious ISIS ideology that sustains genocide has spread to parts of Asia and North and Central Africa. Regrettably again, despite this spreading virus, the Obama Administration refuses to clearly identify the party responsible for this terror or take aggressive action to end the slaughter.

The Obama Administration’s refusal becomes all the more poignant by noticing that the Islamic State, in its July 31st issue of Dabiq, titled “Break the Cross,” the Islamic State maintains that its genocidal terror campaign is motivated by the pursuit of radical Islamic superiority. The Islamic State supplies unmistakable evidence that its reign of terror and barbarity—a campaign that has placed the lives of so many Christians and Yazidis at risk—is driven by its connection with radical Islamist ideology and its desire to purify the “caliphate” of infidels.

Current reports indicate that ISIS, along with its predecessors and affiliates, have carried out more than 4,900 attacks since 2002, killing more than 33,000 people, injuring tens of thousands, and displacing millions more. Evidently ISIS carries out more than 100 attacks per month and its thirst for blood remains unabated. It is time to take ISIS’s genocidal campaign seriously and it is time to take them at their word.

The ACLJ has continued to advocate to protect persecuted Christians and other religious minorities being targeted by ISIS’ genocide.  We are preparing our next series of critical legal actions, including a letter to the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and letters to every U.S. presidential candidate, laying out the gruesome facts and the legal obligations to protect the victims.

We must continue acting and speaking out until the genocide is stopped. Please help our effort by sharing this truth with others.

Please feel free to respond to this posting, and please “like” and share with other social media friends.

May God continue to bless all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ…

Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)