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The Benefit of Watching A Beheading
I mentioned recently that I had witnessed an online beheading of a professing Christian at the hands of muslims. Please note that I did not say ‘radical’ Islamist. That would be silly and redundant, since all muslims, if they truly believe Islam, are radical.
Anyway, and for the record, there was a benefit to watching it, and I thought it profitable to pass on a few words to the brethren.
We read Scripture and we see teachings on the necessity of suffering, of persecution in a plethora of different forms. We sit in our Sunday schools and we discuss persecution of Christians ‘over there’ with the same intensity that, while eating supper and watching the news broadcasting some tragic event, we casually declare “That’s terrible,” immediately followed by “could you pass the mash potatoes?” Unfortunately, too many see and discuss the Gospel with the same lack of reality.
My point is this. We, as Christians, can talk about suffering, persecution and even death all day long without it ever taking on a sense of reality, until experienced, not as the victim, but as a witness.
Yes, people are dying everyday for the faith. It’s true. But until you’ve actually witnessed someone dying – for their faith in Christ – at the hands of those who would see Christianity erased from the earth, well, the reality of persecution is just not driven home to the innermost core of our being.
It was disturbing, it was real, it was not quick – and the reality of it only strengthens my faith and conviction in the truth of the Word of God.
5 Pt. Salt 
I have seen a similiar video, or what may actually be the same video. It likewise strenghtens my faith and conviction, but it also serves to fortify my notion of the intense wickedness of Islam.
Some of you brethren are faint of heart (and a little slow on the uptake) and think Islam an errant religion but essentially a good and decent group with a few bad apples. You would be infinitely wiser and better served to see Islam as an evil thing – is it not evil to live out the bloody injunctions of the Koran?, to war against Truth? God? His Christ? His people?
It is not just a “faith hijacked” by radicals – it is the outworking of a dangerous and manevolent war on all that is Christian and on all of non-Islamic civilization. Yes, there are some in Islam that have not thus far yielded to the real program and agenda of this dangerous and manevolent movement, but standy by, they will be, or they will become targets like the rest of us.
i saw one on video almost 10 years ago now and still to this day haven’t been able to rid my mind of the images… i’m not sure i would call it a benefit, but it does make it far more real, it isn’t just some lofty martyrdom thing talked about in Revelation 6 we can just gloss over… it’s real as real gets.