Lord said Demolish Pagan Temples- ISIS does it on Church

Jan 21 2016 : The Times of India (Chennai) IS razes Iraq's oldest Christian shrine Irbil (Iraq) AP   Satellite photos confirm what church leaders and West Asia preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's (IS) relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.St. Elijah's monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for US troops.In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel, worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters `chi' and `rho', representing the first two letters of Christ's name, were carved near the entrance. This month, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera to grab photos of the site, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot. Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress -like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely mis sing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later photos show “that the stone walls have been literally pulverised,“ said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the dest ruction between August and September 2014. “Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely ,“ he said from his Colorado offices. St. Elijah's joins a growing list of more than 100 religious and historic sites looted and destroyed by IS, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. Ancient monuments in the cities of Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra are in ruins. Museums and libraries have been pillaged, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked. US troops and advisers had worked to protect and honour the monastery, a hopeful endeavour in a violent place and time.