“Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left – and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11 NIV)

‘’For the first time in 1600 years there was no Mass in Nineveh on Sunday,” according to a quote from an anonymous Iraqi Christian, shared on Facebook last month by Andrew White the courageous “Vicar of Baghdad” who has kept the St George’s Church in the Iraqi capital open, at great cost.

Mosul, one of the cities in Iraq overrun by the ISIS insurgency, is the capital city of the province of Nineveh, and the ruins of the ancient city lie across the Tigris River from it. Mosul is the modern replacement of Nineveh, that repented after Jonah preached there.

According to White, ISIS have ordered the destruction of all the churches in Mosul, “and the Christians are all fleeing.”

“Mosul soon will be emptied of Christians,” the Open Doors representative for Iraq reported. “This could be the last migration of Christians from Mosul.”

“We didn’t even stop for our shoes, we fled in our sandals!”

As social media has been cut-off in Iraq it is impossible to know how many people have been killed but White puts it at hundreds daily – and some days thousands. The BBC reports half a million people have left the city of Mosul.

Three hundred Christians and Shia Muslims in Mosul’s jail were killed, says “Mahmoud” who lives in Bartilla a short distance from Mosul, according to a Daily Beast report.

The Nineveh district has been a haven for Christians who speak Assyrian as their first language, since the aftermath of the American invasion drove them out of Basra and Baghdad. They have been sandwiched between the opposing forces in Iraq: “Between the Sunni and Shia Arabs of Iraq lies a patchwork quilt of other ethnic groups and faiths, many of whom have been reconsidering their future in the most obvious possible way since the allied invasion a decade ago unleashed the sectarian militias and their death squads,” according to a Telegraph report.

Reports filtering out from cities the ISIS group control paint a grim picture.

“When the jihadists arrived in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which they now completely control, residents also thought life was better for a while. Then they took over the two churches, tore down the crosses, and turned them into jihadi battalion recruiting stations”, according to the Telegraph.

Please pray for the Christians of the Nineveh region and all those driven from their homes in Iraq and Syria.

Seek out opportunities to help them, perhaps by donating to Christian groups such as White’s “Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in The Middle East” (frrme.org), Open Doors (opendoors.org.au). Barnabas Fund (barnabasfund.org) or Bible Society whose Iraq and Syrian affiliates continue to operate under great pressure (biblesociety.org.au)