Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 12:10am

Beecher Bibles

 

Andrew Klavan does a first rate job demonstrating how much reliance persecuted Christians around the globe can place on the Obama administration.  The answer is quite a bit if the reliance consists of the conclusion that Obama and his gang of merry incompetents would sooner eat ground glass than help them.  However, some Christians in the Middle East are beginning to realize the truth of the admonition of Benjamin Franklin:  God helps them who help themselves.

 

Kino Gabriel, one of the leaders of the Syriac Military Council, an Assyrian Christian militia, said the fight was existential. “[We are] like a tree that you uproot from its land,” he said. “We are a people with a historic lineage. We have been contributing to human civilisation for five or six thousand years, and we can still give.”

The fighters, along with modest Kurdish reinforcements, are trying to defend Tal Tamr, a town that straddles a tributary of the Euphrates river. The Assyrians in the area had taken refuge there three generations ago, fleeing the Simele massacre of their people by the Iraqi kingdom.

The Isis attack on the villages appeared tailored to draw forces away from Tal Hamis, where it is battling a Kurdish push aimed at forcing the group further to the east. The fate of the hostages remains unclear, with some members of the community believing Isis intends to trade them for its own captured fighters, or use them as human shields. Others though, mindful of public executions of Egyptian Copts by Isis militants in Libya, fear a similar grisly spectacle.

“We will defend ourselves,” said Gabriel. “We will not allow another Seyfo to happen to us [in reference to a pogrom perpetrated by the Ottoman’s early last century]. We will sacrifice everything.”

“We want help and support from all the democratic forces in the world that are fighting the extremism in the Middle East, to stop these enemies of humanity,” he said. “Their targeting of our people, the Syriacs, has been ongoing. What they did in Iraq … and [elsewhere in] Syria shows that this is what they want.

“After a couple of generations, the culture will disappear. Nobody will remember us.”

The Assyrians say they deserve support like the Kurds in Kobani, the peshmerga in Iraq and the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar. “We stood with Kobani and supported the resistance there and we are now facing the same thing,” said Gabriel.

 

I hope they will receive support, if not from the feckless governments of the West, then from private Christians.  I recall the “Beecher Bibles” shipped to free soil settlers in Kansas during the 1850’s.

“He (Henry W. Beecher) believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp’s rifle.”

The de facto pacifism embraced by too many comfortable Christians in the West, is of cold comfort indeed to the Christians of the Middle East currently being massacred for their faith.  Their cause may be hopeless, but if they are willing to stand up like men and fight against their murderers and the murderers of their wives and kids, they should be given the weapons to do so.  I hate to quote that bold bad man Oliver Cromwell, the bane of my ancestors, but his command to his troops, “Trust in God boys, and keep your powder dry.” is a completely true summation of our position in this Vale of Tears.

Update:  Some Christians in the West are not sitting idly by.  Hattip to Instapundit:

In a smoky living room in a makeshift military headquarters in this northern Iraqi city, Brett, a former U.S serviceman with tattoos of Jesus etched on his forearms, explains how he hopes to help to keep the church bells of Iraq ringing.

“Jesus tells us what you do unto the least of them, you do unto me,” said the 28-year-old from Detroit, who served an extended tour in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 and asked for his surname not to be published to protect his family at home. “I couldn’t sit back and watch what was happening, women being raped and sold wholesale.”

So in December he travelled to northern Iraq, where he joined a growing band of foreigners leaving their lives in the West behind to fight with newly formed Christian militias. The leaders of those militias say they’ve been swamped with hundreds of requests from veterans and volunteers from around the world who want to join them. . . .

Brett and others say they receive dozens of emails a day from potential recruits.

“This place will be flooded,” he said. “From Australia, Asia, literally everywhere. It’s overwhelming, it’s awesome.”

 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
11 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Philip
Philip
Tuesday, March 3, AD 2015 9:06am

Brett and other militiamen (veterans) are the very people the liberal media portray as villain’s and radical’s.
This lame duck imposter of a Christian and imposter of an American President should be tar and feathered.

Prayers are needed along with support only Marine’s and Navy Seals can provide. Don’t hold your breath until the duck is cooked.

Philip
Philip
Tuesday, March 3, AD 2015 9:10am

JV team my ass…..just look at the next hundreds of Christians to be slaughtered and tell their families how JV Isis is.
Oby bomb lama is the JV team.

Paul W Primavera
Tuesday, March 3, AD 2015 9:52am

1st Maccabees chapter 2:
.
40 And each said to his neighbor: “If we all do as our brethren have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” 41 So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against every man who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our brethren died in their hiding places.”

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, March 3, AD 2015 1:01pm

The best ally the Middle East Christians could have would be an American Catholic President with a keen knowledge of history. I don’t think it will happen.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Wednesday, March 4, AD 2015 6:44am

“The best ally the Middle East Christians could have would be an American Catholic President with a keen knowledge of history. I don’t think it will happen.”

I don’t see that in the foreseeable future either, but an Evangelical Protestant or observant Jewish president with a keen knowledge of history would be the next best thing. I know some Evangelicals in the past have tended to focus almost entirely on Israel and overlook Arab Christians, but recent events have probably cured them of that tendency.

Jeanne Rohl
Jeanne Rohl
Wednesday, March 4, AD 2015 1:59pm

well I think we should sign up for “Go Fund Me” and get an honest board together and get these people all the help they need. money, weapons, food whatever! bleepity bleep bleep bleep to this government. Could it even be done? There has to be a way to help our fellow humans without all the encumbrance.

trackback
Monday, March 9, AD 2015 3:13am

[…]   Crusader Movement Growing in the […]

Daniel
Daniel
Monday, March 9, AD 2015 12:18pm

How does one join in the fight against ISIS? I have been pondering this for awhile and am at the point where I can’t hear anymore how our Christian brothers and sisters are being treated. I am ready to leave everything behind and go help.

Donald Link
Thursday, March 19, AD 2015 3:36pm

From Charles Martel at Tours to Andrea Doria and Don Juan at Lepanto to Allenby at Jerusalem (with apologies to T E Lawrence who played a minor role), the west seems not to have learned the necessity of decisive victory, not just the most points on the board. Now,the scourge of God has risen once again to remind the world that serious threats can not be addressed just half way. This is not a new concept. Sun Tzu had some things to say on the subject also 2500 years ago.

AMGD
AMGD
Thursday, March 19, AD 2015 8:03pm

Where do I send a check?

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top