The Lesson Taught by Mosul
On June 10th of 2014, a band of 300 Islamic State fighters walked into Mosul, Iraq. They took control with hardly any resistance. Kurdish intelligence had warned that the city would be attacked. But infighting among top officers, Iraqi political leaders, and panic by the Iraqi military—caused a city of over one million people to be handed over to the enemy.
Many residents initially welcomed the ISIS invasion. They were fed up with the sectarianism of the Shia dominated Iraqi government. Because most residents of Mosul are of the same Sunni sect as ISIS, they falsely believed they would receive better treatment from them.
Not since the time that the Russians welcomed the Nazi army as liberators from Stalin’s reign, has there been a greater misjudgment of an invading force. In the nearly three years of occupation by ISIS, the living conditions in Mosul have gone from bad to worse.
The Iraqi soldiers that laid down their arms and surrendered were the first to realize their mistake. They were marched out into the desert by the hundreds and mowed down with automatic gunfire. The civilian population has had plenty of time to reconsider their error—as their lives became subject to an endless list of horrors. One ISIS member claims to have raped over 200 women.
There is almost nothing left of the 70,000 Assyrian Christians that lived in Mosul. The fortunate ones fled from the cities. The few that remain are forced to pay a tax for remaining Christian. They live under the constant threat of violence. Dozens of Christian churches and monasteries have been vandalized or burned down.
Other great losses are the artifacts from 5,000 years of ancient Mesopotamian ancestry. These ISIS criminals have the mindset that anything that is not directly related to their religion must be destroyed. Soon after their takeover of the city, ISIS released a five-minute video of its members smashing their way through the Mosul Museum, toppling statues and taking sledgehammers to centuries-old artifacts.
It has taken a great deal of time for the Iraqi government to turn the tide against ISIS forces. With help from Russia, America, and Iran, these evil thugs are slowly being driven back. The Battle of Mosul—a military offensive to retake the city begun in October 2016, is the largest deployment of Iraqi forces since the last Gulf War.
It is going to take a long siege to retake Mosul. The ISIS insurgents have a fanatical devotion to their cause. They have dug in with underground bunkers, booby traps, anti-tank missiles and car bombs. They are also using the civil population as human shields.
The city of Mosul has already suffered heavy damage. By the time the city is liberated, it will be unrecognizable to those who return home.
If the citizens of Mosul had been able to see into the future, I doubt the city would have fallen into the hands of ISIS. Knowing what horrors would come, they would have fought tooth and nail to the death. Those 300 ISIS fighters would have been wiped out in short order.
The devil wins many battles because people fail to count the cost of complacency. Adolf Hitler admitted that he would have had to retreat with his tail between his legs if the allies had reacted to his move to militarize the Rhineland. When he made his move in 1936, the Germany military only had 500,000 men. By the time Hitler invaded Poland, the German military had 4.5 million. The cost of stopping him went from a show of force to a bloodbath that left 60 million people dead.
I think where complacency has hurt us the most in America is how people on the right have allowed the forces of darkness to take over our schools, the news media, Hollywood, and much of the business world. We win some battles, but we are losing the war.
Elizabeth Johnston, aka the “Activist Mommy,” has regained access to her account after Facebook apologized for banning her for posting Bible quotes about homosexuality. If you work at Facebook, you still need to keep your Christian views to yourself.
There is an overwhelming spirit of complacency that has made this current generation ripe for the Tribulation. Many organizations that claim to represent Christian values are unwilling to resist evil and stand up for what they believe in—so there is nothing to prevent this world from coming under God’s wrath.
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
–Todd
Catalyst for Cataclysm
There continues to be anxiety over the political chasm now dividing this nation. And the schism involves much more than politics. There has developed a separation of worldview unlike any yet known in this nation.
We have all heard, particularly as of late, Lincoln’s words reflecting off Jesus’ declaration that “a house divided cannot stand.” Yet these United States, clearly a house not so united, as this presidential election showed, continues to not only stand, but seemingly is on the brink of entering boom-times, economically speaking at least.
For a number of years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, America appeared to be a nation more and more moving toward unification. From our perspective on the Christian right, however, that coming together looked to be leading to disaster for religious freedom. Not only was religious liberty being cast aside, we thought, but all vestiges of morality and constitutional principles were being trashed at every turn. The libertines were having their way and hope to ever regain our national sanity seemed all but lost.
Those who prefer America detached from moorings the founding fathers provided, like most of those of us who love this nation as founded, thought the political left had won the presidency–that is, they thought they had won right up until late that night when poll results proved the opposite. The rage–the insanity–hasn’t stopped since that moment of epiphany.
The progressives were certain they had won the day and that now Bob Dylan’s lyrics, taken from the poetry of his self-chosen namesake, Dylan Thomas, were proving prophetic.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
The oft-quoted mantra during the Woodstock era was about to find its declaration chiseled upon the marbled, governmental walls of earth’s only superpower. “Do not go gentle into that sweet goodnight. Rage, rage, for the times they are a-changin’.”
The “rage,” as I said, is still raging. The losers of the election–the principals, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama–are reportedly leading the charge from the shadows with their opposition community organization efforts, in collusion with the so-called deep state. The manufactured, paid-for, rage is manifest in Republican town hall meetings across the nation.
I continue to maintain that it is the satanically engendered, globalist agenda that is driving the rage. George Soros funding is unabashedly admitted by the liberal side to be adding inspirational fire to the vitriol and anger. America must be brought under control of the one-world minions. The Trump victory jolted the new world architects’ incessant drive to knock America off its constitutional foundation.
The new president, with each mention of rolling back regulations, of reformulating tax structures to make things more friendly to the business world and to middle class taxpayers, inspires the financial markets to record heights. Rather than America and the world collapsing into the deepest depression in history like many experts were predicting, the economic indicators are soaring in the opposite direction.
We are now heading into fiscal territory that is like that prophesied by Jesus. The Lord said the buying, selling, building, etc., would be going along quite nicely at the time he next catastrophically intervenes into the wicked affairs of mankind. I’m convinced that those times of buying, selling, building, etc., were referring not to just “business as usual,” but to a coming boom that is unprecedented.
So, we have all of the major elements in view that Jesus predicted when foretelling what the times of His next intervention into human affairs would involve.
He said the nations would be “in distress with perplexity.” The “seas and waves” (people of the nations)would be “roaring.” He said that people will, at the same time, be buying, selling, building, planting, and marrying. It will be a “think not” generation at the time of Christ’s sudden intervention, according to Matthew 24:44.
World conditions will be just like in the days of Noah and the days of Lot. It will be in the midst of this time of both anxiety and apparent affluence that He will suddenly and catastrophically break in on an unsuspecting world.
We are, I firmly believe, swiftly entering into just such a time. The Rapture of the Church will be, I’m convinced, the catalyst for cataclysm for those left behind.
–Terry