Sunday, March 15, 2015

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

That song was the first thing that came to mind when learning of these forces on Friday. 600 Assyrian Christians! Here's who America should be supporting in the Middle East!
DailyMail: Iraq's first Christian-only brigade of regular forces graduated Thursday to help retake the community's towns and villages from the Islamic State group.

The new brigade will answer to the government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, whose peshmerga fighters are playing a leading role in the war against the jihadists.

Fighters paraded and jumped through fiery rings in front of Kurdish and Assyrian officials in the northwestern town of Fishkhabur, near the borders with Syria and Turkey.

Most of Iraq's Christians lived in the Nineveh plain, an area between the main IS hub of Mosul and the Kurdish capital of Arbil, before IS fighters swept in seven months ago.


"Around 600 peshmerga from our Christian brothers in the Nineveh plain joined this course, which focused on physical training, military lectures and shooting exercises," said Abu Bakr Ismail, the commander of the training academy.

"All the participants are volunteers... and want to liberate their land from IS and then protect it," the Kurdish special forces major general said.

The new brigade is called the "Tiger Guards" and was formed out of the remnants of an Assyrian force first created in 2004 to protect churches in the region.

Up to 100,000 Christians fled their homes overnight in early August when IS fighters who had already conquered large parts of Iraq thrust into areas controlled by the peshmerga.

The exodus has been described as the worst disaster to befall the minority, which is one of the world's oldest Christian communities.
Walid Shoebat puts this phenomena in a broader, scriptural context:
So many speculate about the Mark of the Beast in Revelation 13:16-17. They usually speculate about computer chips and such, yet they rarely if ever think of the Mark of Christ:
“… they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads” (Revelation 9:4)

“Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” (Revelation 7:3 NAB)

“And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.” (Revelation 14:1)

“And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.” (Revelation 22:4)
And those modern speculators, along with so many of our political leaders these days, may be off about the other as well...
So many who never mention the Mark of God, yet they give themselves the liberty to expound on computer chips and bar codes while so many others say that the Mark of the Beast is also an invisible mark. Yet we can see the beginning of marking on foreheads and the Muslims have the mark of blasphemy:



Perhaps Revelation is more literal than expected. And if so, that need only reinforce the apparent side America should land on in these times.

Related links: What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Mark Of The Beast And The Mark Of God
600 Christians with MARK OF GOD on foreheads join Peshmerga fight against Muslims with Mark of Beast