EDITOR´S NOTE:  This is a reposting of an August 19, 2014 article by the then Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Reformed Fellowship, Dr. Rick Perrin.  Ric has already been called to be with our Lord, but we are posting his article again because of the relevance in light of the currently developing situation in Ukraine.

British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office watching the street lamps being lit below.  He turned to a friend standing next to him and observed, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”  It was August 3, 1914.  World War I was beginning.

Now it is one hundred years later, and once more the lights in the world are going out.  Civil war rages between Muslim sects in the Middle East.  One side is led by Iran.  The other by Saudi Arabia.  At stake is which Muslim faction will control the envisioned world-wide Islamic Caliphate—the Sunnis or the Shiites.  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is backed ultimately by Russia, the patron of Iran.  The faltering Iraqi government and the Kurds are supported by the United States.

The Russians have already fired artillery at targets in Ukraine, and their troops are poised at the border, waiting for an opportune moment to invade.  Europe is in the cross hairs.  China and Russia have become allies in an economic effort to destabilize the American dollar as the world currency. 

America is joined to a decayed Europe already overrun by Islamic immigrants.  And the United States, having once withdrawn from Iraq, has belatedly reentered to attack strategic targets in defense of the out-gunned Kurds.  But it may be too little and too late.   Afghanistan is collapsing before terrorist forces.   Hamas rockets bombard Israel. 

In 1914 the European powers, and ultimately the United States, were sucked into “the Great War” with the inevitable force of a tractor beam pulling a space ship into the Death Star.  It seems to be happening again.  The great powers are drawn up in battle lines.  World War III may have already begun.  And we seem powerless to resist it.

Make no mistake, however, what this war is really about.  It is not about shifting power or the age-old question of who will dominate whom or about Islam flexing its muscles.  You will likely not know this, because the main stream media steadfastly ignores it: This is about the annihilation of Christians.

One of the most ancient Christian communities in the world has been obliterated in Iraq. The Syrian Orthodox bishop of Mosul said it is nothing less than “genocide… not to mention the slaughters and rapes not being reported… Forcing more than a thousand Christian families out of Mosul, and turning Christian churches into Muslim mosques, is equivalent to genocide."  

In 2003 before the United States “liberated” Iraq from the clutch of Saddam Hussein, there were a million Christians in Iraq.  In Mosul there were 60,000.  Today, by all evidence, there are none.

The bigger picture is appalling.  In 2011, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported: "The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it's increasing year by year." Within the scope of our life span, "Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

After the “Arab Spring,” 100,000 Christian Copts fled their homeland.  In 2012 the last Christian in the Syrian city of Homs was murdered.  Before the jihadis arrived, Homs was home to 80,000 Christians. In the African nation of Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as 200,000 Christians fled. In the north, according to reports, house to house searches sought out Christians in hiding.  Church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed.  People have been tortured into revealing any Christian relatives. At least one pastor has been beheaded.

Similar atrocities have occurred in Nigeria, Libya, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.  In the Ivory Coast Christians have been crucified.

As always, the Bible provides some insight into what is going on.  Revelation 20 describes events sliding toward the end of the world.  “When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth…to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore.  And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints (Christians) and the beloved city (Jerusalem), and fire came down and from heaven and devoured them.” (v 7-9)

The “thousand years” is a symbolic number, which in the opinion of this observer, is representative of the period from the time of Christ to the present.  During that period Satan has been restrained by God as the Christian gospel spread across the earth.  At the end of that time, it would seem that Satan—the devil—reappears with renewed power and gathers the world to fight against those who believe in and follow Christ.  In other places the Bible calls this the Battle of Armageddon. (Revelation 16:16)

If that is what is playing out now before our eyes, a terrible war is about to begin.  The first shots may already have been fired.  And if this is it, the entire world will soon be engulfed.

As the lights go out, it is time to get your life together.  It is time to seek God, to gather your children and prepare them for what is about to take place.  It is time to start living by the unchangeable values of truth and doing what is right and standing for what is good.  Everything is about to change.  Light a lamp in your own life before the darkness falls.

Dr. K. Eric Perrin was one of the founding fathers of the WRF.  He pastored churches in Pittsburgh, PA, Baltimore, MD, Columbia, SC, and Cherry Hill, NJ.  He also served on various committees of the Presbyterian Church in America, including the Interchurch Relations Committee which he served as chairman and was used of God to establish the WRF in the early 1990s.

He served with distinction the WRF as chairman of the Executive Committee and Board since its inception and continued in those roles until his death on April 13, 2016.  His quiet demeanor and gentle diplomacy gave WRF the steady leadership through the years of rapid growth.  

Rick was not just the long-serving Board chair of the WRF; he was the consummate board chair.  He had the extraordinary ability to run meetings that were both kind-spirited and efficient.  Differing opinions felt heard and given due consideration.  Rick could summarize a discussion and, with a smile and a touch of humor, bring matters to a vote.  Any discord melted away!  The WRF had his full attention and support.  He, with his wife Barbara, shepherded the Board and International Director with prayer, attentiveness, and love-filled tokens of appreciation.  Rick and Barbara together tenderly nurtured this global ministry to maturity.

The entire membership of the World Reformed Fellowship thanks the Lord for the life and ministry of Dr. K. Erik (Rick) Perrin.