Christian Persecution
My ancestral heritage can be traced to the Middle Eastern country of Armenia where my paternal grandparents were born. Armenia was one of the first nations to wholly accept Christianity. History reveals that between1915 to 1923 in what is now eastern Turkey over 1.5 million Armenian Christian men were massacred. Women and children were forced on death marches into the dessert where they were raped then shot and left in mass graves at the hands of Islamic Ottoman. Turkish authorities continue to deny that the atrocities ever took place, but the story of the bloodbath in Armenia is one of the well-documented tragedies of our time as the first modern day genocide. My mother shared with me that when she was a school girl there were collections being taken on behalf of the “Starving Armenians”.
A few years ago when Debbie and I visited the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. we were astonished to see a display featuring a quote from Adolf Hitler made in 1939 which served as the justification of his “Final Solution” plan to eliminate the Jewish race. "After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?"
Last week while in Chicago on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Debbie and I visited the graves of my Christian Armenian grandparents and we remembered those who died and those who escaped the persecution in Armenia before the massacres began.
Christians have been persecuted since Peter and Apostles preached in the streets of Jerusalem just days after Jesus’ resurrection and it continues to this very day. Continue to pray for our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world.
Your pastor and partner in ministry,
Kyle
VCA OPN HOUSE TONIGHT @ 6:30pm
NATIONAL DAY of PRAYER THURSDAY @ noon on the Ellis County Courthouse Steps
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