Scripture for Today 9-1-20: Martyrs for Jesus

9-1-20, The more Christians have been persecuted the more who come to faith in the Messiah the Lord Jesus. ​In Acts 22:20 we see the first Christian Martyr, Stephen. T​he history of Christian martyrs does not end with Stephen's death. During the first century after Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension; all His disciples suffered martyrdom for His sake except Apostle John who was banished to Isle of Patmos: 

​Revelation 1:9 "I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus."

1. James the son of Zebedee was beheaded in approximately 44 A.D.
2. Philip was crucified in 54 A.D.
3. Matthew was killed with an ax-like weapon, in 60 A.D.
4. Matthias was beheaded
5. Andrew was crucified
6. Peter was crucified upside down
7. Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome where he was beheaded

The history of Christian martyrs does not end with the death of the disciples more here.
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Armenia Battle of Manzikert: The “Subjugation of Christianity by Islam”
​Job wasn't a martyr yet the Lord allowed him to be tested. Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him." He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before Him. ​yet I will exult in the LORD; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!"

Job 13:15-16; Habakkuk 3:18

8-26-20, * -- On August 26, 1071 AD one of the most decisive battles in all world history took place—that of Manzikert, Armenia which initiated the creation of the modern state of Turkey atop formerly Christian Asia Minor.

Recorded by history chronicler: “In 1019 the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia [eastern Anatolia] and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword.”

In the ensuing decades hundreds of thousands of Christians were slaughtered or enslaved by Muslims and thousands of churches torched or desecrated or into mosques. Records tell of monks and priests, fathers, wives, and children, all shabbily armed but zealous to protect their way of life, coming out to face the invaders—only to be butchered or enslaved.
 
One Christian military leader explained why … “This nation of infidels [Muslims] comes against us because of our Christian faith and they are intent on destroying the ordinances of the worshippers of the cross and on exterminating the Christian faithful. Therefore, it is fitting and right for all the faithful to go forth with their swords and to die for the Christian faith.”
 
In 1068 AD when he became Emperor, Romanus Diogenes made it his priority to act against the brutal killers of Christians.  By 1069 he had amassed and marched a massive army deep into Asia Minor, liberating numerous cities from the Turks. The two forces eventually met near the city of Manzikert, Armenia just north of Lake Van.   The Turkic sultan, Muhammad bin Dawud sent a delegation to parley with Romanus on the pretext of peace. Romanus spurned the emissaries and commanded them to tell their sultan that “there will be no treaty . . . and no going home except after I have done in the lands of Islam the like of what has been done in the lands of Rome [Byzantium].”
 
On Friday, August 26, 1071 the battle ensued … When the day was nearly spent, Romanus ordered an about-face back to camp, the only place to feed his men and water their horses.

Once he turned his back, the Turks launched an all-out assault, Romanus’s Varangian Guard were surrounded and killed to a man. Emperor Romanus unsheathed his sword and charged the Muslims killing many and chasing off more; but was surrounded and taken captive. [..] One Muslim chronicle confirms that the Christians “were killed to such an extent that a valley there where the two sides had met was filled [with their corpses].”

​Sultan Muhammad declared victory and hurriedly dispatched “the cross and what had been taken from the Byzantines” to Baghdad, and “the caliph and the Muslims rejoiced. The battle opened the doorway to the permanent conquest of Asia Minor.
 
Before he was assassinated, the Sultan Dawud had commanded the Turks to “be like lion cubs and eagle young, racing through the countryside day and night, slaying the Christians and not sparing any mercy on the Roman nation.” This they did; and the emirs spread like locusts, over the face of the land, invading every corner of Anatolia, sacking some of ancient Christianity’s most important cities, including Ephesus, home of Saint John the Evangelist; Nicaea, where Christendom’s creed was formulated in 325; and Antioch, the original see of Saint Peter.
 
Muhammad bin Dawud has been honored by Muslims in general, Turks in particular, for centuries to come.  For the “victory of at Manzikert was not just a military triumph over the Byzantine emperor,” explains historian Carole Hillenbrand. “it symbolized the subjugation of Christianity by Islam. Manzikert was perceived to be the first step in an epic story in which Turkish-led dynasties would defeat the Christians and proclaim the triumph of Islam.”

Little wonder that, along with another Muhammad—the sultan who conquered Constantinople in 1453—the current 2020 AD Turkish president Erdoğan never fails to honor (if not seek to emulate) this sultan, Muhammad bin Dawud, Turkey’s “Heroic Lion” and scourge of Christianity.

*Excerpted and adapted from Raymond Ibrahim’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West full original article here 

The 1071 AD Islamic slaughter in Armenia not only one ...

Modern Day Turkey: President Erdogan Denies the 1915 Armenian Genocide; He claims casualties of war
4-24-15, EUTimes -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has downplayed the massacre of Armenians during World War I, saying that Turkish ancestors never committed genocide. Ankara rejects the term “genocide” and says 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians that perished between 1915 and 1917 were “casualties” of World War I. The Armenian genocide was the systematic killing and deportation of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during World War I, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians. 

By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country.

​Today, most historians call this event a genocide: a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government still does not acknowledge the scope of these events. The Armenian people have made their home in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for some 3,000 years. For some of that time, the kingdom of Armenia was an independent entity: At the beginning of the 4th century A.D., for instance, it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion. More here History.com