New post on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog “The First Hostage” is now out in paperback.

New post on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

“The First Hostage” is now out in paperback. by joelcrosenberg I'm pleased to announce that Tyndale has just released the paperback edition of The First Hostage. My latest political thriller lists for $15.99, but it's available through many bookstores for much less -- including here and here for just $9.02. --------------------------- “The president of the United States . . . is missing.” With these words, New York Times journalist J. B. Collins, reporting from the scene of a devastating attack by ISIS terrorists in Amman, Jordan, puts the entire world on high alert. The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority are critically injured, Jordan’s king is fighting for his life, and the U.S. president is missing and presumed captured. As the U.S. government faces a constitutional crisis and Jordan battles for its very existence, Collins must do his best to keep the world informed while working to convince the FBI that his stories are not responsible for the terror attack on the Jordanian capital. And ISIS still has chemical weapons . . . Struggling to clear his name, Collins and the Secret Service try frantically to locate and rescue the leader of the free world before ISIS’s threats become a catastrophic reality. > Order the new paperback edition of The First Hostage today -- click here. —————————– You can now pre-order my next novel — Without Warning — which will release on March 14, 2017. Click here for details. Order The First Hostage today — the new political thriller about genocidal ISIS leaders plotting a terrorist attacks against Israel, Jordan and the United States — available in hardcover, softcover, e-book and audio formats. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks on the U.S. and our Mideast allies. ———————-—- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg Follow on Facebook — Epicenter Team page joelcrosenberg | October 11, 2016 at 12:23 pm | Categories: Epicenter | URL: http://wp.me/piWZ7-5QW

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog My next political thriller, “Without Warning,” releases March 14.

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

My next political thriller, “Without Warning,” releases March 14. Here are the details. (And yes, you can pre-order now.) by joelcrosenberg Last night, a blog dedicated to reporting anything and everything about spy novels and political thrillers published the first story on my next novel -- its title, cover, and release date. It's all true, so I thought I'd post the article here for you. A number of you have already been writing with questions. Here are answers to two of them: Yes, you can now pre-order the novel through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, ChristianBook.com, GoodReads, or wherever you like to buy books. Yes, we are planning a book tour. Currently, we're sifting through various speaking invitations in locations all over the country. I'll post more on that -- and more details about the novel, including exclusive excerpts -- in the months to come. ------------------------------- Joel C. Rosenberg’s Next J.B. Collins Novel, ‘Without Warning,’ Scheduled To Hit Bookstores On March 14, 2017 By TheRealBookSpy Having been called a “modern-day Nostradamus” by U.S. News and World Report,  author Joel C. Rosenberg has made a career out of turning heads with the headline-beating themes and scenarios featured in his novels. While the bestselling author technically writes fiction, his books (or parts of them) have a remarkable history of coming true after publication. Rosenberg, who has already penned two brilliant series (one starts with The Last Jihad, the other with The Twelfth Imam), is currently two books into his latest series following J.B. Collins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times.  Beginning with The Third Target, which came out in January of 2015, the story follows Collins as he makes his way into the heart of ISIS territory after hearing whispers suggesting that the terrorist organization successfully smuggled chemical weapons out of Syria. Initially hoping to confirm or deny those rumors, a second question soon plagues the young reporter, who begins to wonder if ISIS does, indeed, have chemical weapons, which country might they be planning to use them against? Later that same year, the second book in the series, The First Hostage, was released. Picking up just seconds from where The Third Target ended (at a rather nail-biting cliffhanger, I might add), Collins finds himself in another unique, high-pressure situation, as he’s the only reporter with insider access to cover the worldwide response to ISIS’s latest attack. With no new titles being released in 2016, Rosenberg’s fans have anxiously been awaiting any and all updates on the third Collins novel. Good news, though. Not only is the wait for updates finally over, but the countdown to the release of Rosenberg’s next novel officially starts now! Without Warning, the highly-anticipated follow-up to The First Hostage from Joel C. Rosenberg and Tyndale House Publishers, is scheduled to hit bookstores everywhere on March 14, 2017. (Scroll down to check out the awesome cover art, and to read the official plot details.) From the publisher: “As he prepares to deliver the State of the Union address, the president of the United States is convinced the Islamic State is on the run, about to be crushed by American forces once and for all. But New York Times foreign correspondent J. B. Collins tells the president he’s dead wrong. With the Middle East on fire, the Israeli prime minister dead, and Amman in ruins, Collins fears a catastrophic attack inside the American homeland is imminent. He argues that only an all-out manhunt to capture or kill Abu Kahlif―the leader of ISIS―can stop the attack and save American lives. But will the president listen and take decisive action before it’s too late?” Judging by the plot synopsis, it sounds like Without Warning will be well worth the wait as Rosenberg appears to have written another timely thriller that feels all too plausible in today’s world. Without Warning, one of the first must-read books of 2017, is already available for pre-order wherever books are sold. joelcrosenberg | August 25, 2016 at 8:19 am | Categories: Epicenter | URL: http://wp.me/piWZ7-5t9

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: A chilling headline ripped from the pages of #TheThirdTarget & #TheFirstHostage: “How the Islamic State Seized A Chemical Weapons Stockpile.”

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

A chilling headline ripped from the pages of #TheThirdTarget & #TheFirstHostage: “How the Islamic State Seized A Chemical Weapons Stockpile.” by joelcrosenberg When I sit down to write a novel, I don't set out to predict the future. Rather, I set out to write about worst case scenarios that could come to pass if our leaders are blind-sided by evil they ignore or misunderstand. This was the case when I began writing my first novel, The Last Jihad, in January 2001. That was a novel that opened with a group of Radical Islamic terrorists hijacking a jet plane and flying a kamikaze mission into an American city, an attack that sets into motion a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. That was also the case when in the fall of 2013 I began writing The Third Target, the first installment in my latest series of political thrillers. After doing months of research, meeting with two former CIA directors, a former head of Israel's Mossad, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Jordan, and numerous of military and intelligence experts, I set out to write a novel about a New York Times reporter named J.B. Collins who hears a rumor that ISIS has captured a cache of chemical weapons from a military base in northern Syria. As that novel, and the second in the series -- The First Hostage -- unfold, Collins and two colleagues slip into hellish, war-torn Syria to track down and interview an ISIS operative to confirm the story. Along the way, Collins and his team not only discover that the terror group has these horrific weapons but that the leaders of ISIS hold to an End Times theology that is driving them to wage genocide against Christians, Jews and any Muslim that doesn't follow their brand of Apocalyptic Islam to establish and expand their so-called Caliphate or Islamic kingdom. That was fiction when I wrote it -- but no longer. Unfortunately, this worst-case scenario appears to be coming to pass. As time passes, we are learning more and more about the eschatology of the ISIS leadership (as I explained more detail in my last column). We are also learning that ISIS does now have weapons of mass destruction. Consider excerpts this chilling report from the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine: "How The Islamic State Seized A Chemical Weapons Stockpile." Abu Ahmed told us about how the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant (ISIS) came to acquire some of the world’s most fearsome weapons, which were claimed as spoils of war from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces months before its creation. Roughly four months before the split between the Nusra Front and ISIS, in December 2012, dozens of Syrian jihadi fighters climbed a hill toward Regiment 111 — a large army base near the town of Darat Izza, in northern Syria. That town had been taken roughly five months earlier by a coalition of rebel groups. But while they had besieged Regiment 111 since the summer of 2012, they still had not succeeded in capturing the base from the troops loyal to President Assad.  The weather had turned bad in winter, however, making it more difficult for the Syrian Air Force to hold off the rebels with airstrikes. Moreover, the base was huge, sprawling over almost 500 acres, and difficult to protect from all approaches.  Syrian Army soldiers inside Regiment 111 successfully defended their base during the first rebel attack in early November 2012, killing 18 Nusra fighters in the process. But the cold December wind only fortified the rebels’ resolve. The base was a goldmine: home to guns, artillery, ammunition, and vehicles. And deep inside Regiment 111’s bunkers lay something even more valuable — a cache of chemical weapons.... Within a day, the combined jihadi forces had broken through the lines of the Syrian Army. Shortly after, Regiment 111 was fully under jihadi control. They found large stocks of weapons, ammunition and, to their surprise, chemical agents. They were, according to Abu Ahmad, mainly barrels filled with chlorine, sarin, and mustard gas. What followed was the distribution of the war spoils. Everybody took some ammunition and weapons. But only the Nusra Front seized the chemical weapons. Abu Ahmad watched as the al Qaeda affiliate called in 10 large cargo trucks, loaded 15 containers with chlorine and sarin gas, and drove them away to an unknown destination. He did not see what happened to the mustard gas. Three months later, both the Syrian government and rebel groups reported an attack in Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo. The international media said that 26 people had been killed, among them 16 regime soldiers and 10 civilians. Both the Syrian regime and opposition claimed that chemical weapons had been used — and both accused the other of having carried out one of the first chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian war..... To read the full article, please click here. To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it. Let us pray our leaders wake up to the true magnitude of the threat posed by ISIS and stop taking half-measures. It's time to declare war on ISIS, take the gloves off, and do everything in our power -- in close cooperation with our allies, especially those in the region -- to end this scourge of evil once and for all. —————————– Order The First Hostage today — the new political thriller about genocidal ISIS leaders plotting a terrorist attacks against Israel, Jordan and the United States — available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. ———————-—- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks on the U.S. and our Mideast allies. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and prayerfully consider making a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution. Thanks so much! Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | August 18, 2016 at 5:44 am | Categories: Epicenter | URL: http://wp.me/piWZ7-5rn

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: “The First Hostage” hits #1 on best-seller list one day after CIA director warns ISIS using chemical weapons.

“The First Hostage” hits #1 on best-seller list one day after CIA director warns ISIS using chemical weapons. by joelcrosenberg On the day after CIA Director John Brennan told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that the Islamic State is using chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq, a novel about ISIS using chemical weapons against its enemies in the Middle East has hit #1 on a national best-seller list. I'm pleased to report that The First Hostage has just become the nation’s #1 best-selling novel in the North American Christian book market, according to the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association. It is also the #7 of all Christian best-sellers, both fiction and non-fiction, this month. In January, The First Hostage spent four weeks on the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction best-sellers list. It also hit the USA Today list, though it did not hit the New York Times list. This is the second in a series of thrillers about J.B. Collins, a fictional foreign correspondent tracking the threat posed by ISIS to the U.S., Israel, Jordan, and a group of other Mideast countries. The previous novel, The Third Target, was released in January 2015. They are both the first -- and, thus far, the only -- novels in the world about the threat of the Islamic State. On behalf of my wife and me -- and the entire Tyndale House Publishing team -- please let me say thank you so much for your enthusiastic support of this thriller, and The Third Target before it, which hit all the general market lists when it released last year and was also a #1 best-seller in the Christian market. We deeply appreciate how so many of you are blogging and Tweeting and writing on Facebook about both novels, and writing so many positive reviews on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, and other book sites. Since many of you keep asking, please rest assured that I am hard at work right now on the third novel in this J.B. Collins series. We expect this next one to release in January 2017 and I'll certainly keep you posted on my progress along the way. ————————– Order The First Hostage today — a new political thriller (four weeks on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list) about ISIS plotting a chemical weapons attack against Israel, Jordan and the United States — it’s now available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. FACT SHEET: The Iranian leadership’s Apocalyptic Beliefs FACT SHEET: The Islamic State’s Apocalyptic Beliefs What the next US president will need to know about Iran and Islamic State.(my column in The Jerusalem Post) What’s the difference between Apocalyptic Islamic eschatology & Biblical eschatology? And why does it matter? (Video & sermon notes) ——————- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and make a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution before the end of the year. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | February 15, 2016 at 3:11 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4gQ

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog - "To defeat ISIS, we need to retake Iraq & cut the Caliphate in half." (Radio interview with Hugh Hewitt)

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

To defeat ISIS, we need to retake Iraq & cut the Caliphate in half. (My radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Apocalyptic Islam) by joelcrosenberg (Washington, D.C.) -- Over the course of the last month, as I've been traveling across the country on The First Hostage book tour, people have been consistently asking me a series of excellent questions: How do we defeat ISIS? What should the Obama administration be doing that it isn't? If this administration can't or won't get the job done, what should the next President do? Should we send a ground force into Syria? What about the ancient Islamic prophecies that the West will get slaughtered in the Syrian town of Dabiq? On Wednesday afternoon, I was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt on his nationally syndicated talk show host. I have grown to respect Hugh as a serious thinker as well as an excellent interviewer, both on radio and in his role helping to moderate the CNN presidential debates. Hugh, a devout Christian and a skilled lawyer, reads voraciously and has an insatiable hunger to learn. Often when I'm in Israel, I enjoy listening to the podcast of his interviews not only with the presidential candidates but with key experts on foreign policy and national security matters. During our conversation about The First Hostage -- my last interview on this book tour -- we discussed each of these questions, as well as how I write novels and do my research. You can listen to the podcast of the full interview by clicking here. That said, here's a slightly more detailed explanation of my view on how to defeat ISIS: Yes, a coalition of U.S., Iraqi, Kurdish, Jordanian, Egyptian, and other Sunni Arab military forces can and must crush the Islamic State. This is a winnable war, but not with the current strategy of half-measures, pinprick bombings, and political tough talk not backed up by a serious military approach to win. What the Obama administration should be doing is pursuing a "Take Back Iraq First" approach. Since the first Gulf war in 1991, and then with the war to liberate Iraq in 2003, followed by the surge strategy in 2006-2008, the American people have identified Iraq has a strategically important country to us. Getting Iraq right matters. We have invested heavily in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein and from the clutches of al Qaeda and other Radical Islamic terror groups. Withdrawing all our forces in December 2011 was a terrible and foreseeable error. It created a vacuum that ISIS exploited. Now we're seeing genocide against Christians and Yazidis by the Islamic State, the wicked fruit of Apocalyptic Islam. Thus, the goal now must be to re-take Iraq -- and cut the Caliphate in half -- using decisive military force. We likely need 20,000 to 40,000 U.S. boots on the ground, primarily special forces. We need to heavily arm the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. We need to strengthen the Iraqi military. We need to increase arms (and humanitarian aid and other economic assistance) to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, our most faithful Sunni Arab ally in the region. We also need to work closely with Egypt, the Saudis and the Gulf States and get their active participation. The mission: to storm across northern Iraq, crush ISIS wherever they are found, liberate Mosul -- Iraq's second largest city -- set the captives free, crush ISIS once and for all, and drive whatever remains of the terror group back into Syria. This could likely be done by the end of 2016 if the U.S. took the lead and was fully committed to victory. By cutting the Caliphate in half, it would deal a serious blow to ISIS morale and their sense that they are invincible. If President Obama won't pursue such a strategy, then we need to elect an American President who understands the threat of Radical and Apocalyptic Islam and has the courage and wisdom to fight to win, beginning with re-taking Iraq. No, I don't believe we should send U.S. ground forces into Syria. That Arab nation is imploding. It's engaged in a Hellish civil war. Now the Russians and Iranians are fighting there on behalf of Bashar al-Assad and his evil regime. There are no good options. There are no rationale leaders that we can identify at this point who could truly govern the country in a civilized way, even if we could defeat ISIS, remove Assad, and pacify the civil war. Syria is a hornets' nest. My heart breaks for the people of Syria. The U.S. and other world powers need to help Jordan and Lebanon care for the millions of Syrian refugees that have flooded their borders. We should not take Syrian refugees into the U.S. because we cannot vet them and determine who is a terrorist and who is not. We should use air power to consistently degrade ISIS forces, infrastructure, oil reserves, and so forth. But we should not launch a ground force into a country that we have no plan -- or ability -- at this point to truly rescue. While there are many reasons at this point not to launch a ground war into Syria, fear of ancient Islamic prophecies about an end of the world battle in Dabiq is not on the list. Those are false prophecies. ISIS is driven by them. But they are not Biblical prophecies. They are not based on truth. They are based on false teaching. We needn't fear false teaching and false prophecy. Since we can degrade ISIS in Dabiq (and Raqqa, and elsewhere) from the air, that's what we should do for now. Once we have worked with our Sunni Arab allies in the region to re-take Iraq, and degrade ISIS forces in Syria from the air, then we can re-evaluate and develop the next phase of our strategy. But while we need to understand how Apocalyptic, genocidal, Islamic eschatology motivates ISIS leaders, we need not hesitate confronting them because of their apocalypse-addled thinking. ————————– Order The First Hostage today — a new political thriller (#9 on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list) about ISIS launching a chemical weapons attack against Israel, Jordan and the United States — it’s now available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. FACT SHEET: The Iranian leadership’s Apocalyptic Beliefs FACT SHEET: The Islamic State’s Apocalyptic Beliefs What the next US president will need to know about Iran and Islamic State.(my column in The Jerusalem Post) What’s the difference between Apocalyptic Islamic eschatology & Biblical eschatology? And why does it matter? (Video & sermon notes) ——————- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and make a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution before the end of the year. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | February 5, 2016 at 1:04 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4dh

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog - “The First Hostage” now 4th week on Publishers Weekly best-seller list.

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog - “The First Hostage” now 4th week on Publishers Weekly best-seller list. by joelcrosenberg (Ft. Myers, Florida) -- We've just learned that The First Hostage has hit the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction best-seller list for the fourth week in a row. The thriller about the Islamic State plotting to capture and behead the President of the United States is presently #20 on the PW charts. I'm encouraged that it's resonating with so many readers, especially given that it's competing against recently released novels by the biggest names in the fiction world, including John Grisham, James Patterson, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, David Baldacci, Nicholas Sparks, and Danielle Steel, among a host of others. Thank you so much to all of you who are reading and enjoying this new J.B. Collins series in the U.S., Canada and around the world! Thanks, too, to all of you who are reviewing the novel and spreading the word about the book on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. I'm deeply grateful for each of you. ————————– Order The First Hostage today — a new political thriller about ISIS launching a chemical weapons attack against Israel, Jordan and the United States — it’s now available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and make a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution before the end of the year. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. joelcrosenberg | January 29, 2016 at 4:31 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-45r

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: ISIS waging war of genocide against Christians in the Mideast.

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog  BREAKING NEWS: ISIS waging war of genocide against Christians in the Mideast. New UN report provides chilling details.

(Austin, Texas) -- The evidence is in, and it's chilling -- the Islamic State is intentionally waging a war of genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria. The jihadists are systematically trying to exterminate the Christian population in both countries by forcing followers of Jesus Christ to convert to their brand of Apocalyptic Islam or enslaving them, murdering them, starving them, and/or driving them out of the region. This is the case I began to lay out during a presentation at Life Austin Church here in the Texas capital on Thursday night. It was part of a series of messages I'm delivering across the U.S. on radio, TV and in churches as part of The First Hostage book tour. For the moment, ISIS is focusing their genocidal campaign on the populations of Iraq and Syria. But this is only the beginning. According to their Apocalyptic Islamic eschatology, ISIS leaders want expand their genocidal campaign throughout Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and the rest of the region in order to broaden their Islamic kingdom or caliphate and hasten the coming of the Mahdi, who they believe will then establish a worldwide caliphate. Consider the trend lines: The number of Christians in Syria has dropped from 1.25 million to 500,000 in recent years, according to analyses by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ). The number of Christians in Iraq have dropped from 1.4 million to fewer than 275,000 in recent years, which ACLJ notes is "an 80% drop." “When hundreds of thousands of Christians – men, women and children – are killed, this isn’t war -- this is genocide," argues World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder. "And we Jews know what happens when the world is silent to genocide.” Lauder has urged Jews and Christians to join forces against genocide. “Together, we must speak as one and tell the world: no more discrimination, no more terror, no more death, and no more silence!” I absolutely agree. While ISIS is engaged in the slaughter of Christians because they believe it is fulfilling Islamic End Times prophecy, they actually unknowingly fulfilling Biblical prophecy about the last days. The Lord Jesus Christ prophesied in John 16:3 that "an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God." Christ also prophesied that believers will see "wars and rumors of war," the rise of "lawlessness" and vastly increased persecution in the last days before He returns to set up His Kingdom. The Lord Jesus specifically warned that the enemies of the Cross "will deliver you to tribulation" in the End Times "and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many." (see Matthew 24) These are exactly the trends we're seeing emerge in the epicenter. But let's be clear: it's not just Christians who are facing the ISIS genocide. Sunni and Shia Muslims who don't share the ISIS theology and eschatology are also facing this jihadist rampage. So are Yazidis and other minorities. And, of course, ISIS is threatening to exterminate the Jews of Israel soon. “Palestine will not be your land or your home,” ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told the Jews of Israel in an audio message in December. “It will be a graveyard for you. Allah has gathered you in Palestine so that the Muslims may kill you.” In August of 2014, just after I finished writing my first novel about ISIS (The Third Target), I began publicly warning that "we are watching genocidal conditions emerging in the epicenter" as the ISIS jihadist rampage accelerated. The situation has worsened dramatically since then. By February of 2015, the government of Iraq had laid out their case to the U.N. Security Council that the Islamic State was not simply committing atrocities but outright genocide. "These terrorist groups have desecrated all human values. They have committed the most heinous criminal terrorist acts against the Iraqi people whether Shi'ite, Sunni, Christians, Turkmen, Shabak or Yazidis," Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said. "These are in fact crimes of genocide committed against humanity that must be held accountable before international justice." Now, just this week, the U.N. has issued a report documenting the magnitude of the horror. Consider the numbers just in Iraq: 18,802 civilians were killed in Iraq between January 2014 and October 2015 36,245 civilians have been wounded during this same period some 3,500 have been seized as slaves by ISIS 3.2 million civilians have been displaced from their homes and villages, on the run for their very lives "The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,” the report states. “The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.” The U.N. report "details numerous examples of killings by ISIL in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. There are also reports of the murder of child soldiers who fled fighting on the frontlines in Anbar. Information received and verified suggests that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted by ISIL for religious education and military training....ISIL [also] continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery." Now consider the numbers in Syria, as well. According to the United Nations: at least 250,000 people have been killed in Syria 6.6 million people in Syria have been displaced from their homes and villages and are on the run for their lives 13.5 million need humanitarian assistance," reported Reuters on January 15, 2016. What's worse, new intel reports indicate ISIS appears to be testing chemical weapons for even larger and more lethal attacks. They must be stopped. First, the President and Congress must publicly acknowledge that the Islamic State is engaged in genocide. Second, it is time for Congress to formally declare war against ISIS. And third, we need to elect a new Commander-in-Chief ready, willing and able to neutralize the ISIS threat, as well as the Iranian nuclear threat before it's too late. As Jay Sekulow, head of ACLJ, and his team note, "The Holocaust gave rise to the necessity to define what 'genocide' is, and Article 2 of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) did just that," defining it as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Sophia Kuby of ADF is urging Members of the European Union "to call the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq by its name: genocide." “Christians in the Middle East urgently need this recognition to wake up the world to what is going on," Kuby notes. "In contrast to other diplomatic notions such as ‘systematic mass murder,’ ‘genocide’ is an internationally recognized legal term. It is necessary to call for further steps, such as a resolution at the UN Security Council and a referral to the International Criminal Court....All necessary criteria are fulfilled in order to recognize this as genocide. To deny this only adds to the horrendous suffering that people are already experiencing.” ————————– Order The First Hostage today — a new political thriller (#9 on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list) about ISIS launching a chemical weapons attack against Israel, Jordan and the United States — it’s now available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. FACT SHEET: The Iranian leadership’s Apocalyptic Beliefs FACT SHEET: The Islamic State’s Apocalyptic Beliefs What the next US president will need to know about Iran and Islamic State.(my column in The Jerusalem Post) What’s the difference between Apocalyptic Islamic eschatology & Biblical eschatology? And why does it matter? (Video & sermon notes) ——————- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and make a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution before the end of the year. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | January 23, 2016 at 9:07 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-40L