Monday, June 20th, in the year of our Lord 2016
By Mark Robinette
Fallujah has fallen. Iraqi special forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, retook the Iraqi city from ISIS who held it since January 2014.
Last week refugees within the city began receiving aid, now many are rejoicing for their freedom. Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said they promised to take the city back and they did, adding, “Mosul is next.”
20-year-old Sarmad Ozan, an Iraqi Christian forced to flee Mosul as ISIS took it over, said, “Faith is all we have left, (they took everything. Our faith), that, ISIS couldn’t take from us.”
A mountain lion attacked a five-year-old boy in his yard just outside Denver, Colorado, but thanks be to God his brave mother was nearby.
Pitkin County Sheriff’s authorities said the boy was playing outside on Friday evening when he was attacked. His mother heard him screaming, ran outside and pulled her son’s head from the grasp of the lion. Both the mother and son received serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities found and killed the lion.
The heartbroken parents of 2-year-old Lane Graves, who tried desperately to pry their son from the jaws of an alligator last week at a Disney Resort in Florida, learned the boy drowned near where he was attacked. A GoFundme page, opened for Matt and Melissa Graves of Nebraska for just one day, accumulated more than $50,000 to help the mourning mom and dad.
Three missionaries for Bibles for the Mideast are believed to be kidnapped after being released from the hospital from being beaten with pipes last week. According to the organization which delivers Bibles to underground house churches in 17 Middle Eastern countries, the men – Samuel, James and Stephan – Christian converts from Islam, were hospitalized last week after being beaten with metal pipes by Muslim extremists last week. Fearing for their lives even in the hospital, they called a taxi when is now believed to have been run by jihadists. They have not been heard from since. Praying and fasting and hoping for the best, the ministry also understands as it reads on their website, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
Pray for these Christian heroes of the faith.
Also pray for the members of a Vietnamese church near the border with China which was raided last week. Several were beaten, including a 14-year-old boy, and others were arrested.
It’s been one year since 21-year-old Dylann Roof shot and killed nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. While Roof had hoped to start a race war, more than 2000 gathered to talk about forgiveness and God’s grace instead. They did exactly as it says in Romans 12:21, “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
When little Lia Mills of Toronto, Canada stood before the camera practicing for her school’s speech competition at the age of 12, she had no idea how it would shape her future. Seven years later, nearly three million people have watched her video and many minds have been changed. Lia remembers the heartaches of being disqualified from a speech competition by the judges, and then the triumph she felt after they changed their minds and called her the winner. “Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation. Someone is choosing, without even knowing them, whether they are going to live or die. That someone is their mother. And that choice is abortion. Every day 115,000 children are dying through abortion. 115,000.”
Don’t discourage your children from doing big things. You can see what Lia is up to on Facebook now, all grown up and working as a pro-life activist, at www/facebook.com/LiaMills4Life.
When David heard the taunts of Goliath and offered to fight him, his older brother chided him and accused him of being full of pride. David responded, “Is there not a cause?” Indeed Lia, this is a cause worth giving your life to. Keep up the good fight.
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes