Source: Orthodox Christian Laity
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15).
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).
Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John 15:20).
21 New Egyptian Martyrs of Libya
Abanub Ayad Atiya
Maged Solaiman Shehata
Yusuf Shukry Yunan
Kirollos Shokry Fawzy
Bishoy Astafanus Kamel
Somaily Astafanus Kamel
Malak Ibrahim Sinweet
Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros
Girgis Milad Sinweet
Mina Fayez Aziz
Bishoy Adel Khalaf
Samuel Alham Wilson
Worker from Awr village (name unknown at this time)
Ezat Bishir Naseef
Loqa Nagaty
Gaber Munir Adly
Esam Badir Samir
Malak Farag Abram
Sameh Salah Faruq
Holy Egyptian Martyrs Pray For Us
Source: Ancient Faith Radio
February 18, 2015 Length: 24:55
This past Sunday, a video titled “A Message Signed With Blood to the Nation of the Cross,” released by the media arm of Islamic State, showed the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians on a beach in Libya. We talk with Egyptian native and Antiochian Orthodox priest Fr. Nabil Hanna who just returned from Egypt. The interview closes with a prayer for the martyrs, their families, and the end to violence.
[audio:http://audio.ancientfaith.com/interviews/afp_2015-02-18.mp3]See also: Metropolitan Tikhon offers condolences, prayers on slaying of Coptic Christians in Libya
Michalopuos:
Eastern Orthodox don’t really CARE about Copts, and they haven’t done so since the various Chalcedonian-subscribing emperors had their men torture, murder, and force Melkite communion down the throats of unwilling Egyptians and Syriacs. HOW DARE YOU GLOM ONTO OTHER PEOPLES’ SUFFERING!
Take a deep breath.
I’m afraid OOM is right. And for that matter, we don’t really seem to care about our own kind either, bailing out whenever a photo-op with the bishop of Rome presents itself.
BUT, I read reports of these savages referring to the Copts as “Crusaders.” They’d better watch their language–no doubt they consider us to be “crusaders” as well, knowing that we suffered more brutally than they did by the sword of the crusading Papists. If they continue to speak like this, they will surely find themselves under siege of a New Crusade, an Orthodox Crusade, a Crusade that restores Orthodoxy to the Middle East, crushes Islam, and brings Western Christendom to repent of her errors. Christian mercy has its limits and there will be retribution!
Let ISIS go to Rome and recite the Shahada from the campanile of St. Peter’s. We’ll take back Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria in the meantime. Maybe even Jerusalem.
I’ll have a pipeful of whatever it is you’re smoking.
I’m sorry OOM, but here is the score.
George 1
OOM 0
And actually George won without trying because you defeated yourself.
There is a mutual frustration with extremist Islam shared between Copts, Christians, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and pretty much everyone on the planet. The intricacies of the relationships of the past don’t matter when 21 innocent people are executed publicly. If this doesn’t resonate with you, there isn’t much to say.
The Muslims have been put back another thousand years because no one in the world wants to trust them. Some creative cartoonist somewhere needs to show a cartoon of a Muslim led world. It would be a big ball of red dripping.
And this is the first place I’ve seen these people named.
Furthermore, if Orthodox people are silent about such a thing while jumping up and down about Obama and the dream act, well, then that says a lot as well.
good post George
Why is it ‘gloming’ on to others sufferings by recognizing these men as martyrs in Christ and praying for them? I am thankful for the list of names that I may lift each up to the Lord in prayer. And why do you say ‘Eastern Orthodox don’t care about Copts’? Do you really know the mind of every Orthodox and what they care about and pray for? May we unite in Christ and stop the divisiveness. Forgive me a sinner.
You’re right, OOM. Nothing ever changes; there is no hope.
That black guy in the middle?
“+What made a non believer Chadian citizen; die for Christ, along with his “20 Coptic Christian friends”? +
Shalom +++
ISIS announced the execution of 21 Copts but only 20 names were confirmed, most of them were from the province of Minya(Upper Egypt). There was an inaccuracy in the number of Egyptian Hostages; there were only 20 Egyptians(Copts). Then who was this remaining one non-Coptic victim?
Ahram-Canadian News was able to gather information about this man. He was a Chadian Citizen (Darker skin shown in picture) who accepted Christianity after seeing the immense faith of his fellow Coptic Christians to die for Christ. When Terrorist forced him to reject Jesus Christ as God, looking at his Christian friends he replied,
“their God is my God“so the terrorist beheaded him also.
Think about the faith, shining through those 20 Christians who made a non believer, a true believer in Christ, even at the point of death.
In Bible, Gospel of Luke describes about two thieves, being on either side of Jesus as they were crucified. At that very point of death by Crucifixion, one of the thief accepted Christ saying, ‘LORD, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’ Here this Chadian citizen showed the same faith in Christ.
Can we put ourselves into his place? The faith he showed was not a mean faith, at such a moment, he could believe in Jesus as Lord and King.
May God help us to strength our faith so that the world may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven. (Mathew 5:16)”
He was too busy trying to decide whether to stand with his fellow prisoners or not to quibble over what happened in the past between EOs and OOs.
I’m a ‘melkite’ or ‘Rum’ Orthodox priest, albeit American so I’m not very bought into any Byzantine imperial polemic past or present, and I DO CARE very much about Copts, Armenians, Assyrians and Nestorians. It may be controversial, but I feel we are essentially one Church, much closer in our lived faith than we all are to Roman Catholics, though I love and respect them as well. Especially close while under the sword of Islam.
The hideous violence of Byzantine/Roman imperial power exercised historically against Egyptian Christians is perhaps one of the worst disasters of Christendom and I deplore the ugly chauvinism of Hellenists that drove it and most failures we still suffer from in ‘Rum’ Orthodoxy.
But to deride feelings of empathy and spiritual unity of any of us ‘Rum’ with the suffering Coptic people as inappropriate, undeserved and hypocritical is an expression of deep alienation and negativity that would seek to deny us who happen not to be born Egyptian of the right to pray for Egyptians. We are all Christians. We are all free to pray for each other. Sorry for my presumption.
Sadly, even today there is a certain persecution by the Greek clergy of the native Arab laymen in the Church of Jerusalem.
The Chalcedonians set the standard for martyring Copts. The ethnic Greeks at the heart of the imperial power structure looked down on the ethnic Egyptians and Syriacs. Justinian and subsequent Chacedonian emperors twisted their religion in the service of imperial control, and mixed it all up with ethnic hatred. They were the original Jihadis against their own imperial subjects in the outlying provinces. Without the imperial reign of terror, it’s likely the Arabs during the Conquest would have been turned to the East, unable to make inroads into the Roman Empire. It is entirely hypocritical, historically short-sighted, and SICKENING for Eastern Orthodox to appropriate the new Coptic martyrdoms as “their own.”
Getta grip!
Snore
“Their own”?
Whether they were Copts, Orthodox, Roman. or of no prior creed, they willingly died rather than renounce Christ. They are therefore Christ’s own. They belong to Him and have been crowned with a glory of which few among us are worthy.
PRAY TO GOD FOR US!
The simple faith of these relatives of one of the twenty-one martyrs is beyond beautiful to behold.
I am out to shame by the greatness of their faith. How impoverished has my faith become! God grant me the riches of such faith.
Amen and amen.
May they be counted among the saints, and may they be remembered forever.
The Assyrian Christian community in IRAN, that is, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is numerous and not subject to the hatred of Sunni ISIL or Saudi Arabia. They are concentrated mainly near Lake Urumiya in NW Iran rather close to Iraq, Of course, the Republican senators and their Benefactor-Through-AIPAC, B. Netanyahu, wouldn’t mind their destruction IF ONLY we’d declare war on (embarrassing?”) Iran!
IRAN:
Jews have 25 synagogues, one representative in parliament, newspapers, Hebrew schools and clubs, etc.
600 Active Christian Churches mostly Armenian and Assyrian Orthodox, 2 representatives in parliament,newspapers, schools and clubs.
About as many Zoroastrians as Jews
The Assyrian Christians in No. Syria DO benefit from Iran’s military strength and influence in the region, although our Republican epistolary Senators COMPLAIN of that ON NETANYAHU’S and SAUDI behalf.
Iran’s “EVIL” military bombs IS. The only force in Syria trying to protect Syria’s Assyrian Christians is Assad, and he too is supported and supplied by the same Iran that the Senators want to butt out.
I thank God that Obama is our President or we’d be treating Iran to “SHOCK AND AWE” and trading the welfare of Iran’s Ancient Jewish community and that of ALL Assyrian and Armenian Christians left in their LAST place of refuge but satisfying the hysterical fear of and anger at our President, They think of foreign policy is a sandbox in which they have as much say as the President, It’s not a sandbox and they have the right only to be responsible They do not have the right to be a bunch of Crazy King Georges!
The only trouble is the Iran question is coming in the 2016 debates.
If Israel attacks Iran, will you, as President, provide military support and how?
Neither Bush nor Clinton will say no.
If you have friends in Iran, tell them to get out. 36 months I give it.
Iran should be our closest ally in the entire region. There’s something alarmingly false and cheap about blaming Iran for human rights violations, and NOT just because Iran’s record is BETTER than Israel;s or Saudi Arabia’s or Pakistan’s or Turkey’s, etc. We fostered and pampered a Shah with his worse-than-Nazi” secret police, Savak, and we CRUSHED the strong democratic forces around Mossadegh, sacrificing him and ALL those intewrested in Human Rights to the worst two elements in modern Iranian history: the Shah and his police on the one hand, and then the forces of Khomeini who were closet Sunni fascists. And they all EXPERIENCED how Reagan cyniv=cally and immorally got them to hold on to the hostages until after Reagan could be thereby elected here. Remember how fearless Ronny sent Khomeini a birthday cake and a /bible? He didn’t even KNOW of their 300 Christian Churches.
I pray you are wrong about the inevitability of war against Iran. Of course if geniuses like Cotton and Boehner and the Cubanadian have anything to say about it, AIPAC dollars will win the day!