Publisher’s Point: The “People Of The Cross”

Most of us have had moments in our lives we will never forget, things like where we were on 9/11, or if we are old enough, when JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I had one this week, the sight of 21 Egyptian Christians kneeling in orange prison jumpsuits in front of their black clad executioners, with strangely gentle waves of the waters near Tripoli lapping around them both. All of the 21 were beheaded, a part I chose not to watch, and all the while on the crawler at the bottom of the screen, the same caption played continuously until the grisly deed was finished: “The people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church.”

Of course, this is on the heels of the 45 being burned alive in Iraq, the Jordanian soldier being put in a cage and burned alive, the Charlie attacks in Paris, the woman beheaded in Oklahoma, the crucifixions, the beheading of a 5 year old, the beheading of Western journalists and no doubt other murders I have inadvertently omitted. There is only one good thing that is coming out of this: the politically correct belief that “jihad means an internal struggle” is circling the drain, at least for now.

At first our president would not describe those who were martyred because they were Christians as Christians, even though their murderers described them as such. He called them “Egyptian citizens.” Thankfully he called their murders “despicable and cowardly,” and then later wrote a subsequent op-ed, (after there had been a significant outcry from Christians regarding the use of the uber-neutral term “citizens”) in which he then referred to them as Christians.

Meanwhile, Marie Harf, one of the younger members of the Obama State Department, has come under well-deserved fire for what has become known as the “jobs for jihadis” gaffe. She said, that ‘we cannot win this war by killing them, we cannot kill our way out of this war.’ Instead, she said, the administration should ‘go after the root causes that leads [sic] people to join these groups’ – including ‘lack of opportunity for jobs. We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance,’ she said. ‘We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.’

The great irony here is that it is the free market principles she espouses as the powerful solution to jihad are found in the teachings of the “people of the cross,” and their predecessors, “the people of the Book.” By this I mean Christians and Jews, the very ones jihadists are sworn to destroy.

As I have been prayerfully pondering this package of madness, I have been thinking back more than 40 years ago when I was in theological school and studying the Book of Revelation. Back then, the concept of people being beheaded in our “day of supposed reason” for the cause of Christ seemed surreal.

But it is here, and while we have a duty to do everything we can to stop it, it is going to take the splitting of the Mount of Olives, the return of Messiah, and His ruling and reigning with a rod of iron to end forever the insanity of Ishmael.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner