“On the date noted above, the IEA released a statement on its website threatening wide-spread retribution if the government carries out the death sentence for Anas Haqqani, who is currently being held at Bagram Airfield.

“If the higher courts also uphold the death sentence to Anas Haqqani, it will have very disastrous and dangerous consequences for the current regime,” according to the statement. “The war and its intensity will increase in all parts of the country. A lot of blood will be spilled and the government will be responsible for all of it.”

Anas Haqqani has been held for nearly 18 months, and at the end of August, the GOA announced he had been sentenced to death (although it is unclear on what charges). The announcement has brought with it a range of threats promised by the IEA, and developments surrounding the case should be followed closely by NGOs thorough the country.

The response by the IEA is not surprising and further statements can almost certainly be expected. Just days before the statement was released, a video was shared by IEA media showing two Western captives (an American woman and a Canadian man) who were abducted by the group in 2012. Both abductees pleaded with their respected governments to pressure the Afghan government to change its execution policy. The Canadian stated that in order to get the policy changed or take revenge the IEA was willing to kill them and their two children (both of which were born in captivity).

The use of Western hostages to prevent executions of AOG members or to secure their release through prisoner exchanges is nothing new. The most prominent example took place in May 2014 when the US government released five IEA commanders held at Guantanamo Bay detention centre in exchange for the release of a US soldier, who had been held by the group since 2009.

Given Anas’ high profile, it is unlikely that the US/Afghan governments would use him in a prisoner exchange. Further, if Anas is in fact executed, this could led to revenge killings against Western citizens currently being held by the group in response. There is reliable information that the Haqqani Network has over the past two years attempted to conduct abductions of high profile Westerners in the county to use for exactly for this purpose… 

The IEA showed it was able to follow through on threats made in response to the May execution. And a similar show of force – if not much greater – on judiciary targets and GOA targets more broadly could almost certainly be expected following the execution of Anas.”

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 INSO SECURITY REPORT - AFG: IEA Threats over Haqqani Execution

Please pray for Afghanistan and its healing and restoration from years of war. Continue to pray that the Taliban terrorists will be thrown into disunity and dissolution, will give up there fruitless, destructive conflict with the government, and will sue for peace. Pray for protection for those serving there as part of the NGO humanitarian community, both Christians and non-Christians, that they will be able to carry out their work and be kept from kidnappings and other dangers to themselves and their families. In addition, pray for the quick release of any being held by the Taliban or IEA.

How often have you heard sexual progressives claim that those of us who hold to traditional sexual morality and marriage are “on the wrong side of history?” But as one new book points out, it’s the proponents of the sexual revolution who are embracing a sexual morality that history left behind millennia ago—in the dusty ruins of the Roman Forum.

Yes, today Western civilization is undergoing a dramatic cultural shift. In just a few short years our society has fundamentally altered the meaning of marriage, embraced the notion that men can become women, and is now promoting the idea that grown men should be welcome to share a bathroom with women and young girls. Not unexpectedly, we’re also seeing movement toward the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia, and incest.

It’s precisely in times like this that we need some historical perspective. Which is why Lutheran pastor Matthew Rueger’s new book, “Sexual Morality in a Christless World,” is a timely godsend. In it, Rueger shows how Christian sexual morality rocked the pagan world of ancient Rome. The notions of self-giving love, sexual chastity, and marital fidelity were foreign, even shocking to the people of that time.

Citing existing scholarship, Rueger details the Roman sexual worldview that prevailed for hundreds of years. Women and children were viewed as sexual objects; slaves—male and female--could expect to be raped; there was widespread prostitution; and predatory homosexuality was common. Christian sexual morality might have been seen as repressive by the licentious, but it was a gift from God for their victims.

Rueger writes that “Claims in our day of being progressive and moving forward by accepting the ‘new prevailing views on sexuality and same-sex marriage' are horribly misinformed … Contemporary views about sexuality are simply a revival of an older and much less loving view of the world.”

But they are also a revival of an older and impoverished view of human beings. Imagine the reaction of a pagan Roman slave girl who learned for the first time that she had value—not monetary value as a piece of goods to be enjoyed or discarded by her owner—but eternal value because she was made in the very image of God.

Or imagine the pang of conscience felt by an unfaithful Roman husband when he learned that God became incarnate, and took on human flesh, and that how he treated his own body and the bodies of others mattered to God. Mattered immensely.

Folks, we can’t look away and ignore this unholy revival of pagan sexuality and its cheapened view of human beings. But we also can’t wring our hands in fear or throw them up in defeat. As Rueger points out, Christ and His Church radically transformed a far more sexually cruel and chaotic world than ours.

Look to those ancient believers who went before us: Rather than succumbing to or accommodating the spirit of the age, new converts in the early Church came to understand, as Rueger writes, that “Christian morality is based on Christ’s all-encompassing purity and self-emptying love…Christians could no longer live as the Greeks or Romans. Their worldview and self-view was distinctly different. They were now one with Christ in heart and soul.”

Now, their distinctiveness, as Rueger writes, “would not spare them from suffering; it would invite suffering.” It’s pretty clear now that the same holds true for us. Will we bend the knee to this revived pagan sexuality, or will we hold out to a needy world the freedom of God’s plan for human sexuality?

From BreakPoint.org.

Let’s pray for a revolution away from such degraded and destructive sexual “progressivism” , especially for the younger generation. As has happened in earlier human history, such pagan immorality threatens to take our nation and many other nations over the brink and into the sure judgment of God.