He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Revelation 21:4
Ezzat Habib (2005)
Car “Accident”
One evening in October, Pastor Ezzat, his son Ibram and a friend were hit by a taxi that seemed to drive deliberately at them as they crossed a street in Cairo’s Matereya district. Ezzat was rushed to hospital and immediately operated on, but his life could not be saved; he died later that day of internal bleeding and a broken skull. His son and friend survived, but with severe leg injuries.
Many Egyptian Christians have been threatened by the security police that they could be killed in staged car accidents if they do not cooperate with their demands. Pastor Ezzat’s death was apparently one such killing. His house church, Beit-El (House of God), in Giza had been constantly threatened by neighbours and the security police for two years before the incident. Further evidence that this was no innocent accident was the false paper Ibram was forced to sign upon reaching hospital, which reported the incident very differently from how it had actually happened.
Despite their loss and the harassment they continued to face, Pastor Ezzat’s family continued to run the church that he had founded.
Lord,
teach me to accept
that when wickedness nailed goodness to the cross,
it was evil that received the mortal blow;
that in gentleness and love is strength that never fails;
that it is the proud who fall
and the meek who inherit the earth.
Frank Topping (1909-1997)