Church Desecration Video Serves as Jihad Fund-Raiser

[JoeS]

http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/august/0811_church_video1.shtml
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/august/0811_church_video2.shtml

Taken from a GOP website so ignore the political part.

The content is very troubling.

JoeS 
 

[ozgeorge]

May God forgive them.

[SouthSerb99]

Those videos have been available for a long time, unfortunately it is not politically popular to stand up for Orthodox Churches or Serbs.

I get sick everytime I watch.

[monkvasyl]

This is indeed extremely painful to watch, tho, I can't get out of my mind the ruckus that was made about the desecration" of their holy sites by the simple presence of American troops.  To them it only becomes a desecration if its their holy places and not Christian or Jewish.  If they consider us "People of the Book" then no matter what they should respect everyone's holy places.  It was also surprising to see them enter the church...many years ago our parish had a fare and I was maning the displace in our church.  An Islamic gentleman came to see the displace, but when I offered him a tour of the inside of the church, he said he wasn't allowed to enter.

[choirfiend]

I guess it's ok to enter if you're just going in to stomp on the Holy icons...

 I hope that church has recovered. Does anyone know how to find out if the parish is existing? The Church and the icons did not look old, so it might have been a young, thriving church...

[amnesiac99]

I haven't words to express either the anger or pity I feel toward those men. May God have mercy on us and upon them, for they know not what they do.

[Nacho]

This is really disturbing......why did the MSM mysteriously miss the coverage of this? If a bullet flies within a mile of a mosque that's world news around the clock, but if a Christian Church is desecrated by a gang of chanting islamo-fascist that's swept under the rug...

[EkhristosAnesti]

I can’t watch stuff like that anymore…it fills me with so much anger and hate. I tried to stop myself from downloading the video clip at the links, but my curiosity got the better of me; however, as soon as I saw the soldier approaching the altar curtain within literally the first 2 seconds of that clip, I turned it off and deleted it; I couldn't bear to see what would happen next.

I remember being exposed to images and footage of this sort of stuff for the first time like 3 years ago, it’s what got me pumped about Islam in the first place. My cousin from Egypt had an Arabic website containing images of a massacre that happened in Egypt.ÂÂ  Islamics had been waiting on the rooftops of Coptic homes with rifles, and hid out behind their shops with knives, to shoot them down like animals as they arrive home from celebrating either the Christmas or Easter liturgy; to cut open the wombs of pregnant mothers, and to slash the breasts of children’s mothers and husbands wives. I couldn’t eat properly for a week, and I fell seriously ill as a result of witnessing the related footage.

As for Church desecration…never have I heard anything more disturbing that brought me to absolute tears, than when members of the Egyptian police force walked into one of the most ancient Coptic Church’s that the government had planned to destroy - during the liturgy - beating down the deacons and priest, handcuffing them, and taking the Holy Bread from the altar and stomping upon it by foot.

When I debate Islamics with regards to matters of doctrine and theology, and they get all heated up and threaten me even — I find it easier to think “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” and I genuinely pity them for their ignorance. But when I see this sort of footage, and hear the news of Christian slaughters and Church desecrations, and sacrilege, then I only wish the Lord’s wrath and vengeance upon them, and nothing less.

Peace.

[Antiochian]

Hatred is the work of the devil.

Those who committed these atrocities are victims of hatred, and as we have been taught by Christ, we must pray for them.

God have mercy on us all.

[ozgeorge]

I have a "test" for myself. When I go to Confession seeking the forgiveness of my sins, I can best gauge my level of repentance by how much I am able to pray for those who do things like this- my 'enemies' and 'persecutors'. If I am unable to pray for them and their forgiveness, I don't dare expect forgiveness for my own sins.

In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, one Abba (can't recall which right now) says that if you want God to hear your prayer and quickly answer, first raise your arms and pray for your worst enemy- I think this is similar to my own "test".

Our Lord Jesus Christ never minced words- so there can be absolutely no compromise about "Love your enemy, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you." This is what Our Lord expects of us, and if we don't do it, we are not His followers.

So show these men what a Christian is made of by praying for their forgiveness. The spiral of hatred choking the world right now exists because we see it as "normal" to return hatred for hatred. Somewhere it's got to stop- and the only way to stop the spiral of hate is for an extremely courageous human to absorb it without reflecting it so that it goes no further and can do no more damage.

Make no mistake, this is the "Age of the Confessors" which will seperate the wheat from the chaff. Chaff looks like wheat, but it is hallow and empty. With the "Age of Confessors", the chaff who are "Christian" in appearance and name only,will be blown away when they are called upon to" Love your enemy, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you." The wheat, the true followers of Christ who "hear his Words and do them" will be ground and will become a divine Prosforo, or will fall to the ground and die only to yeild "thirty, sixty or a hundredfold".

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