On January 3, 2015 at 2:30 a.m. in the city of Sirte, Libya, masked gunmen raced from house to house beating viciously on front doors before rushing in. They pulled frightened men from their beds, grabbed their arms, and searched for the traditional tattoos that marked them as Coptic Christians-Christians from the Egyptian Orthodox Church. Fourteen men were pulled from their homes, taken to an undisclosed location in Libya, and imprisoned along with seven other Christian hostages who had been kidnapped a week earlier. On February 15, 2015, after five weeks of imprisonment, the twenty-one were beheaded for their faith on a beach near Sirte.
Christians Targeted
The Coptic Christians kidnapped in Sirte had been working there for months on end, sending their incomes home to feed extended families. In the rural areas of Egypt, the economy is poor and work is hard to find, so scores of Egyptian husbands and fathers leave their impoverished towns to work in the more prosperous, oil-based economy of Libya. These twenty-one workers were not singled out for being Egyptians in Libya’s hostile countryside. They were targeted by radical Islamists for being ‘followers of Jesus Christ.
The caption on the video labels the captives as “the people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian Church.” Egypt has been the home of a Christian minority since the days of the early apostles.
St. Mark, who wrote the Gospel of Mark, likely brought Christianity to Egypt in the first century, during the reign of Nero. The Coptic Church traces its roots all the way back to Mark! Coptic Christians, who make up 15 percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million, have survived Roman persecution, Turkish conquerors, and modern Arabian conflicts, but now they face a new enemy-the rise of Islamic terrorism.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Date: 25th November 2023
Martyr: Coptic Christians
Location: Sirte, Libya
Source: God’s Generals: The Martyrs
Author: Roberts Liardon
Suffering Saturday 066
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