Tornados Tear Apart Missouri, and are Iraqi Christians close to extinction? We'll get to it all on this episode of the Hot Zone.
[memorial Ronald Reagan]
Hi Folks, it's memorial day, and before we get to the stories I'm covering today, I just wanted to take a minute and honor the men and women who have sacrificed to make America what it is today. So few people in America today even know a person serving in the military - and the number who actually are serving at any given time is an infinitesimal percentage - six tenths of one percent of our population. Since the founding of our country, over a million American warriors have paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Today we honor that.
[memorial day package]
One of the greatest things about America is the willingness of our people to sacrifice for the benefit of others. If you do a little research you'll find that Americans are the most charitable people on the planet, by a long shot. That's likely due to our Judeo-Christian heritage, among other things, but it's one thing that makes America great - the fact that America is good.
It's easy to see this whenever tragedy strikes somewhere in the US. On Wednesday tornadoes hit Missouri and killed three people and made a mess out of the northern part of Joplin and Jefferson city. You might remember that Joplin was all but wiped off the map by a huge tornado eight years ago. I was there for the aftermath and found some perfect examples of how good Americans are at helping our fellow man. Watch.
[Joplin package]
I've seen the same things in so many disasters I've covered. And frankly it's one of the reasons I love doing this job. Because when the chips are down and people are losing everything and just trying to survive, we all come together and help each other. Politics don't matter, economic station is irrelevant. It's just people helping people. One of my heroes in this is my friend Kenny Vaughan. during the floods that hit Houston in the aftermath of hurricane harvey in 2017 he spent weeks of his time and thousands of dollars just helping people who needed it. Listen to him explain why:
[NRATV package]
If that doesn't make your heart swell and your eyes leak a little, you need to get your heart checked. That's all I need to say about that.
Okay, let's talk about Christians in Iraq. The Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Christian leaders in the west of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq.
Giving a speech in London, the Right Reverend Bashar Warda said Iraq's Christians now face extinction after 1,400 years of persecution.
Well is that true? It IS true that Iraqi Christians have had a really rough time over the past five years, and it wasn't easy even before that. There had been areas in that country where Christianity actually flourished at one time, but now the vast majority of Christians in that region have been driven out or killed during the plague that was ISIS.
But I believe there is reason to hope. When I visited Kurdistan in February, I attended a church led by American missionaries in Erbil. And it was thriving. There were many visitors at the service I attended who were current or former Muslims, who told me the brutality of ISIS caused them to re-think their own faith, and some said it led them to embrace Christ.
The church had a great service and powerful preaching. I got permission from the Pastor of the church to film the service and interview some of it's members. From that I made a great news feature for CBN news. But after they aired it the pastor's wife got very worried that the church would be targeted because of my report. She was so distraught thinking about it that we ended up pulling the package down off the website. Which was really unfortunate.
One of the great things about Kurdistan is it's tolerance. Lots of different ethnic, tribal and religious minorities live there in peace. In fact, I got to visit an aramaic church there one time - they are one of the only churches left in the world to hold services in the language Christ spoke. It was incredible.
So I'm hopeful. On this last trip I interviewed several groups who are pushing for a Christian enclave in Ninevah province, trying to make it a semi-autonomous region like Kurdistan, but specifically for Christians. There's a lot of hostility toward that idea by other groups, but who knows? With God, all things are possible.
So pray for the Christians left in Iraq. Pray for their safety, but more than that pray they'll have the courage to spread the gospel without getting too worried about their own safety. After all, Christians throughout history haven't really been known for being risk averse.
That's all for today folks. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with more next week. Right here on the Hot Zone.
End Notes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48333923
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/682112/memorial-day-2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
https://www.nratv.com/videos/stinchfield-kenny-vaughan-heroism-shinning-bright-throughout-south-texas