EUPHRATES RIVER DRYING UP: New York Times notes connection to Book of Revelation and the End Times
In Uncategorized on July 16, 2009 at 1:49 am
NYT caption: "A boy rested on the mud in a dried-up section of the Euphrates River near Jubaish, Iraq, in June."
The front page of Tuesday morning’s New York Times had a stunning headline: “Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles.”
The drying up of this historic river in the land of ancient Babylon is so stunning, that even the Times had to note that Bible prophecy says this will happen in the “last days” of history, in the lead up to the apocalyptic battle of Armageddon described in the Book of Revelation.
Excerpts from the Times story: “Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat. ‘Maaku mai!’ they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. ‘There is no water!’ The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now. The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.” [More photos of the drying-up Euphrates from the NYT.]
Please note that I did not add in the link above to the “Bible Gateway” website for Revelation 16:12. The Times’ online edition includes that link themselves. Apparently the newspaper of record now believes that the future of Iraq in light of Bible prophecy is part of “all the news that’s fit to print.”
To be clear, we will not see the complete fulfillment of Revelation 16 until during the seven-year period of judgment and bloodshed that the Bible calls the “Tribulation.” Indeed, it is possible that we will see the drought end and the Lord bless Iraq with abundant water in the coming years that will make the prophecy cited seem all that more dramatic in its proper time. Only time will tell. But it’s certainly another curious development.
I’d recommend skeptics stay tuned. This is just the beginning of the dramatic headlines to come.
* To learn more about the upcoming 9/11 event — the “National Town Hall Meeting on the Threat of Radical Islam and the Church’s Response” — and/or to sign up your church or ministry for the special, high resolution webcast, please click here.
Nun: Slain Christians' blood drained and sold
Vials from beheading victims 'going for $100,000'
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Sister Hatune Dogan told WND in a Skype interview that members of the Syrian opposition are draining the blood of Christians they behead and selling vials to Islamic radicals for $100,000 a piece.
The Syrian Orthodox nun explained that the blood is used in a ritual washing of hands in the belief the act atones for sins and provides privileged access to heaven.
The Christians, she said, are beheaded in ceremonies in which they are forced to kneel, with their hands and feet bound, as the Muslim radicals read a death sentence imposed because the victim refuses to renounce Christianity and embrace Islam.
She detailed how the head of the victim is brutally severed with knives. The blood spurting from their necks is captured in basins and then bottled.
“The Muslims sever the necks and collect the blood in vessels to sell the blood. The Muslims believe that if they kill a Christian and wash their hands in the blood of the Christian, they will go to heaven,” she explained.
She said the sale of the Christian blood “is a big business.”
“With this money, the Muslim terrorists can buy more weapons,” she explained.
Walid Shoebat, a native Arabic-speaking Christian who was a member of the PLO, has called Hatune a Mother Teresa figure in an article that featured her presenting the results of an independent investigation of Christians in Syria under the rule of Muslim fundamentalists.
A video posted on YouTube shows Hatune presenting the results of the investigation in which she discusses how women held captive by Muslims for ransom have been raped and mutilated. She also presents evidence for her claim Muslims are beheading Christians and selling their blood.
See Sister Hatune’s presentation of her findings:
“Her righteous deeds, of course, receive the vociferous wrath of the jihadists,” Shoebat said.
The nun says she gets “18 death threats in seven languages.”
“But Sister Hatune is no pacifist,” Shoebat writes. “As she ardently believes in denying one’s self, helping the oppressed and turning the other cheek, like a true warrior, she as well zealously believes in taking up a whip and driving out the wicked.”
Independently, Shoebat has published a video of Sunni Muslims playing soccer with the heads of the people they murdered.
WND Middle East correspondent Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense, said the “vociferous wrath” from jihadists that Hatune is receiving because of her vigorous effort to protect Christians has made her a prime target of al-Qaida and its affiliate, the Jabhat al-Nusra.
“Al-Nusra, which wants to establish caliphates in Syria and throughout the Middle East, has amply demonstrated that it will kill any ‘infidel,’ even Muslims, who do not subscribe to a strict form of Shariah,” Maloof said. “This places all Christians and other minorities in peril which, in turn, puts Sister Hatune and her companions in al-Nusra’s crosshairs.”
Hatune explained to WND that she was born into a Christian family in Zaz, a village in Turabdeen, Northern Mesopotamia in Turkey, at a time when Christians were being persecuted by both by Turkish and Kurdish Muslims.
According to a biography, her family migrated from Turkey to Germany in 1985 to escape persecution.
She completed her education in Germany. In 1988, she joined the Morephrem Monastery in Losser, Holland, where she entered the sisterhood under the leadership of the Mother Superior Seyde Atto.
In Germany, she completed her degree in practical theology at the Theological Seminar in Mienz, Germany, in 1996. Later, she worked as a psychotherapist in Kathekese Psychotherapy Institute in Augustburg, Germany.
She has visited 38 countries and worked in the Ministry of Charitable and Social Service in Turkey, Africa, India and the Middle East.
She is a member of the Universal Syrian Orthodox Church under the Holy See of Antioch.
Hatune is the founder of the Sister Hatune Foundation, registered in the United States in New York. The foundation has a Facebook page. Her various country-specific Internet websites are frequently hacked and often inoperable.
Shoebat has begun accepting contributions through a foundation he created for Hatune, RescueChristians.org.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/nun-slain-christians-blood-drained-and-sold/#BTeES4xucIZTbaR1.99
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