“Ah! City of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty—no end to the plunder.” Speaking many years after Jonah’s ministry, so wrote Nahum (3:1) as he proclaimed God’s judgment on wicked Nineveh. The inhabitants of Nineveh were feared for their utter cruelty, delight in bloodshed and appetite for wanton destruction. “The LORD is slow to anger but great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty” (1:3) thundered Nahum. Pointing to the Babylonian destruction of Nineveh, “It is decreed that the city be exiled, its slaved women led away, moaning like doves” (2:7). Nahum summarizes the joy of judgement upon Nineveh: “All, who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?” (3:19).

Ancient Nineveh is modern-day Mosul, Iraq. Jonah’s tomb was in Mosul (until destroyed by ISIS), and Nahum’s tomb is in a small Assyrian village a few hours away. Even in death, the tombs, memories and writings of these prophets have offered a living witness to the Living God for more than 2,000 years. Despite the overthrow of the Assyrians by the Babylonians in the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nineveh/Mosul has remained a center of wanton cruelty; and, as in the times of Jonah and Nahum, cruelty specifically aimed at the worshipers of Yahweh.

In 2014-2018, under ISIS, Mosul was the center for the trafficking and sex slavery of young girls—Yezidis (an offshoot of Islam) and Assyrians (Christians from the Nestorian and other ancient sects). Multitudes of girls, some as young as 10, were paraded naked at the slave auctions to be humiliated, prodded, poked, and traded among the jihadis and the local community. Many were sold into brothels or were forced into marriages to older Muslim men, and the resulting children were raised as Muslims. As ISIS withdrew, some girls have come home, but many remain missing.

In another era, within the memory of my grandparents, Christians were deported into the same region and cities. Under repeated policies of Christian extermination, the men were marched out of cities to be bayoneted or shot in nearby gorges. The remaining women and girls were forced on long death marches to interior deserts near Mosul. Every day they were subject to rape, snatched into forced marriages or sold into brothels for the local soldiery. Untold thousands perished on these death marches from starvation, thirst, bayonet or a merciful bullet. Local tribes were encouraged to pillage, abduct and kill at will as the death marches passed their communities. The Christian girls who survived the death marches were simply left to die of heat exhaustion in an interior desert, or they were sold as slaves in Mosul. The extermination policies lasted a generation, and millions perished. Tens of thousands of young Christian girls were abducted into forced marriages and simply disappeared behind the veil of history. My daughter is 13 years old. To me, this is not mere history. This is very personal.

Yet, despite this profoundly painful history, AFM missionaries serve today in this region among those very peoples and tribes responsible for this systematic rape and extermination—people with Christian blood on their hands. Why? Humanly speaking, perhaps the hardest teaching of the Good News is the command to love our enemies. “But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27, NRSV). Jesus has the authority to give this command, because He also has been bloodied. I am responsible for that blood. So are you. We all are. No one is innocent.

And today, for the first time in centuries, we are seeing a turning to the Savior like never before among those persecuting, pillaging tribes. After evil has run its course, AFM missionaries are seeing that good indeed does triumph, or as Nahum wrote, “Look! On the mountains the feet of one who proclaims good tidings, who proclaims peace!” (1:15). And that is why we serve today.

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