Franklin Graham: About 7 Christian Families Remain in Iraq’s Largest Christian Town

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By Samuel Smith , CP Reporter
Evangelist Franklin Graham spent his Easter weekend touring churches and towns left desecrated and destroyed by the Islamic State terrorist organization in Northern Iraq and claimed that only about seven families remain in what used to be the largest Christian town in Iraq.

(Photo: Facebook / Franklin Graham)Evangelist Franklin Graham visits a church in Qaraqosh, Iraq that had been destroyed by the Islamic State terrorist organization in this photo that was posted to Facebook on April 16, 2017.

“Yesterday we went to the city of Qaraqosh, in Iraq, which used to be home to some 50,000 Christians who were forced to flee for their lives in 2014. Now just a handful, about 7 families, remain,” Graham wrote in an Facebook post on Easter Sunday. “I visited a church that had been burned and destroyed by ISIS and met with the pastor. Incredibly, in the ashes and debris, we discovered one of our Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes that had been given to a child there at some point. I couldn’t help but wonder where the child who received this box is today.”

What Graham, along with NBC News anchor Greta Van Susteren, discovered in the burned church was that IS (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) militants used machine guns to shoot the crosses off the wall and that the pulpit had been used for target practice. Additionally, Graham said that militants blew up the church’s steeple with explosives.

Graham also found charred pages from the Bible.

I picked up a section that contained John 20:27 – ‘Then he (Jesus) said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe,'” Graham wrote. “He’s still saying that to the world today — this Easter Sunday — Believe!”

As it has been previously reported that IS converted a number of churches in Northern Iraq into training centers for religious police and even “torture chambers,” Samaritan’s Purse produced a short video highlighting the destruction that IS caused in the Nineveh Plains.

Graham said in the video that IS militants had written slogans on the wall of the church he visited in Qaraqosh.

“‘You love life. We love death,” Graham quoted one slogan as reading. “Another slogan they wrote was, ‘We have come to drink your blood.'”

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/franklin-graham-about-7-christian-families-remain-in-iraqs-largest-christian-town-180892/#MoF1u0fPCrpKKdl8.99