From Christian Aid Mission (www.christianaid.org) -- For Immediate Release
Contact: Amie Cotton APR, +1 (434) 327-1240, Amie@christianaid.org
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (ANS -- October 5, 2015)
--At several steps on their path to death by beheading and crucifixion
last month, eleven indigenous Christian workers near Aleppo, Syria had
the option to leave the area and live. The 12-year-old son of a ministry
team leader also could have spared his life by denying Christ.
The indigenous missionaries
were not required to stay at their ministry base in a village near
Aleppo, Syria; rather, the ministry director who trained them had
entreated them to leave. As the Islamic State (ISIS), other rebel groups
and Syrian government forces turned Aleppo into a war zone of carnage
and destruction, ISIS took over several outlying villages. The Syrian
ministry workers in those villages chose to stay in order to provide aid
in the name of Christ to survivors.
“I asked them to leave, but I
gave them the freedom to choose,” said the ministry director, his voice
tremulous as he recalled their horrific deaths. “As their leader, I
should have insisted that they leave.”
They stayed because they believed they were called to share Christ with those caught in the crossfire, he said.
“Every time we talked to them,”
the director said, “they were always saying, 'We want to stay here –
this is what God has told us to do. This is what we want to do.' They
just wanted to stay and share the gospel.”
Those who chose to stay could
have scattered and hid in other areas, as their surviving family members
did. On a visit to the surviving relatives in hiding, the ministry
director learned of the cruel executions.
The relatives said ISIS
militants on Aug. 7 captured the Christian workers in a village whose
name is withheld for security reasons. On Aug. 28, the militants asked
if they had renounced Islam for Christianity. When the Christians said
that they had, the rebels asked if they wanted to return to Islam. The
Christians said they would never renounce Christ.
The 41-year-old team leader,
his young son and two ministry members in their 20s were questioned at
one village site where ISIS militants had summoned a crowd. The team
leader presided over nine house churches he had helped to establish. His
son was two months away from his 13th birthday.
“All were badly brutalized and
then crucified,” the ministry leader said. “They were left on their
crosses for two days. No one was allowed to remove them.”
The martyrs died beside signs the ISIS militants had put up identifying them as “infidels.”
Eight other ministry team
members, including two women, were taken to another site in the village
that day (Aug. 28) and were asked the same questions before a crowd. The
women, ages 29 and 33, tried to tell the ISIS militants they were only
sharing the peace and love of Christ and asked what they had done wrong
to deserve the abuse. The Islamic extremists then publicly raped the
women, who continued to pray during the ordeal, leading the ISIS
militants to beat them all the more furiously.
As the two women and the six men knelt before they were beheaded, they were all praying.
“Villagers said some were
praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were praying the Lord's
prayer, and others said some of them lifted their heads to commend their
spirits to Jesus,” the ministry director said. “One of the women looked
up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said, ‘Jesus!’”
After they were beheaded, their
bodies were hung on crosses, the ministry director said, his voice
breaking. He had trained all of the workers for their evangelistic
ministry, and he had baptized the team leader and some of the others.
Hundreds of former Muslims in
Syrian villages are in danger of being captured and killed by ISIS,
which is fighting to establish a caliphate in which apostasy is
punishable by death. The underground church in the region has mushroomed
since June 2014, when ISIS began terrorizing those who do not swear
allegiance to its caliphate, both non-Muslims and Muslims. Consequently,
the potential for large-scale executions has grown along with the gains
in ISIS-controlled territory.
The ministry assisted by
Christian Aid Mission is providing resources and trying to find ways to
evacuate these families by other routes.
Many of the ministry's teams
also remain in Syria. Christian Aid Mission assists those who do not or
cannot leave with the means to survive and operate their outreaches.
Even those who leave, however,
may encounter ISIS militants and other criminals in refugee camps, said
the leader of another ministry that Christian Aid Mission assists. He
spoke of a Muslim from northern Syria who, like all men in areas that
ISIS takes over, was coerced into joining the caliphate or being killed.
Recruited into ISIS, he fled
the country after his brother was killed in the fighting. Disillusioned
with ISIS but still adhering to Islam and its teaching that Christians
and Jews are unclean “pigs,” he went to Amman, Jordan, as he had learned
that relatives there were receiving aid from Christians.
The Muslim, whose name is
withheld for security reasons, went to a Christian meeting with the
intention of killing the aid workers gathered there. Something kept him
from following through on his plan, though, and that night he saw Jesus
in a dream, the ministry director said.
“The next day he came back and
said, 'I came to kill you, but last night I saw Jesus, and I want to
know what are you teaching – who is this One who held me up from killing
you?'“ the director said. “He received Christ with tears, and today
he's actually helping in the church, helping out other people. We're
praying for lots of such Sauls to change to Pauls.”
The sorrow of the ministry team
leader who lost eleven workers and one of their children last month has
been deep, but he takes heart that their faithfulness could help change
the hearts of persecutors.
“They kept on praying loudly
and sharing Jesus until their last breath,” he said. “They did this in
front of the villagers as a testimony for others.”
He asked for prayer for surviving family members and for himself.
“These things have been very
hard on me,” he said. “What wrong did those people do to deserve to die?
What is happening is more and more people are being saved. The ministry
is growing and growing – in the past we used to pray to have one person
from a Muslim background come to the Lord. Now there are so many we can
barely handle all the work among them.”
For more information, please click here -- http://www.christianaid.org/News/2015/mir20151001.aspx where you can out more on how you can help the situation.
Photo caption: 1) Aleppo was
prized by rebel and government forces since fighting began in 2011.
(Wikipedia). 2) Prelates survey the damage following an attack on
Christians in Aleppo. (Credit: Melkite Archdiocese of Aleppo).
Note:
Christian Aid Mission is an evangelical missionary organization based
in Charlottesville, Virginia, that assists indigenous missionary
ministries overseas through prayer, advocacy and financial support.
Since 1953, Christian Aid Mission has identified, evaluated and assisted
more than 1,500 ministries in more than 130 countries that are reaching
the unreached for Christ in areas of the world where there is no
witness for Christ, where Christians suffer from poverty or persecution,
or where foreign missionaries are not allowed. Today, we assist more
than 500 ministries overseas with tens of thousands of indigenous or
native missionaries in the field. These ministries are currently working
among more than 1,000 people groups in 100+ countries around the world.
For more information, please visit www.christianaid.org
** You may republish this or any of our ANS stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net).
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