The Harvest

How Every Holy War Funds the Same Unholy Empire

For 2,000 years, believers have been killing believers while the same empire gets rich on every drop of blood.

A Christian farmer in Nigeria watches his village burn. Fulani raiders killed his wife and three children yesterday. Today they’re back for the harvest. Not the grain, but the land itself.

Over 52,000 Christians dead since 2009. At least 7,000 this year alone. That’s 35 Christians killed every day. Nigeria accounts for more Christian martyrdoms than the rest of the world combined.

A Palestinian child dies under rubble in the compound of the Church of Saint Porphyrius. A sanctuary that stood sixteen centuries. Eighteen dead. Christians and Muslims sheltering together.

An estimated 71,000 Palestinians killed. The oldest Christian community in the world reduced to 800 souls still praying in the ruins.

A Ukrainian priest arrested for praying in the wrong language. Church Slavonic, the liturgical tongue used for a thousand years, is now evidence of treason. Armed men drag him away on Christmas morning. One of over 100 Orthodox clergy detained for alleged Moscow ties.

An Armenian grandmother flees land her family held for 2,000 years. Over 100,000 Christians ethnically cleansed from Nagorno-Karabakh using Israeli drones sold through Azerbaijan. She carries a handful of soil. The only piece of home she’ll ever touch again.

They all think they’re in different stories.

They’re in the same one.

And the people profiting from each death are the same people profiting from all the others.

The Ancient Blueprint

The template was documented in 33 AD.

Christ crucified. Not by pagans, but by religious authorities collaborating with empire. The Pharisees needed Rome’s muscle. Rome needed religious cover. Both got what they wanted.

The Truth got crucified.

The method was filed. Ready for replication.

By 1096, Crusaders were writing home from Jerusalem.

“We rode through blood up to our horses’ knees.”

Muslims, Jews, Eastern Christians who looked too foreign. All slaughtered. The bankers of Venice lent to both sides. Religious war, they discovered, is more profitable than any other kind.

1209: The Albigensian Crusade. Christians killing Christians for reading the Bible wrong. When asked how to tell heretics from the faithful, papal legate Arnaud Amalric gave the formula.

“Kill them all. God will know his own.”

Twenty thousand dead in Béziers. One day.

1994: Rwanda. Churches became slaughterhouses. Priests led machete squads. Christians hacked apart Christians in sanctuaries where they’d shared communion weeks before.

French banks who armed both sides increased their portfolios 30% that year.

The rebellion against divine unity always follows the same pattern. Divide the children, make them forget their common Father, profit from the chaos.

The Machine Today

Last week, President Trump stood at the podium, genuinely angry. He designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. Ordered Congressional investigation. Declared the killing stops now.

These aren’t statistics. They’re farmers hacked apart with machetes for refusing to convert. Teenage girls abducted from schools, forced into marriages with their families’ killers. Entire villages where every church is ash.

But here’s what the headlines miss.

“I will never deny that Muslims are also killed,” says Lawrence Zhongo, a Christian farmer who lost eight relatives this year. “There are Muslims who have been affected.”

The crisis isn’t purely religious. It’s drought pushing herders south onto farmland. Resources shrinking. 220 million people competing for survival. Yet when Rep. Riley Moore threatens “kinetic military action,” complexity vanishes into holy war narrative.

Same week Trump identifies Nigerian persecution, we keep funding persecution elsewhere. $17 billion in supplemental military aid to Israel since the October 7 attack. Over $175 billion to Ukraine’s religious war.

Israeli “battle-tested” Gaza tech gets exported to African kill-zones. Tel Aviv profiting from both persecutions. Eric Prince, who profited from Iraq’s sectarian violence, now seeks contracts to “protect Nigerian Christians.” Sudan’s gold mines, 75% of output smuggled, funding the killing. That same gold ends up in the vaults profiting from weapons sales to Gaza.

Banks collect interest on arms sales to all sides. Every persecution becomes a business opportunity.

The circle closes. The harvest continues.

The Truth That Gets You Killed

“Love your enemies.”

The religious authorities heard treason.

Rome heard sedition.

The bankers heard threat.

Because if Muslims and Christians recognize they’re fighting the same enemy, if they see that enemy isn’t each other, the whole con collapses.

Jesus demonstrated it everywhere.

The Good Samaritan. The hated heretic was the true neighbor.

The Roman centurion. The occupier’s faith worked the same as anyone’s.

The Syrophoenician woman. “Unclean” foreigner’s faith healed her daughter.

Every time Jesus validated faith outside the approved system, he was building evidence against the machine.

They killed him for it.

Paul knew.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for you are all one.”

Muhammad knew.

“To you your religion, and to me mine.”

Difference without hatred.

Even the mystics of all traditions have always known.

We’re rays from the same sun.

Waves in the same ocean

Children of the same source.

Every religion has been corrupted by power.

Every tradition has blood on its hands. Christians launched Crusades. Muslims forced conversions. Jews have their own sins. This isn’t about defending institutions or excusing atrocities.

This is about recognizing that the Nigerian Christian farmer and the Palestinian Muslim mother, both praying to the Father, both trying to raise their children in faith, are not each other’s enemy.

The enemy is the system that arms them both, profits from their deaths, and then sells you the narrative that one side’s religion makes them deserve it.

You can believe Jesus is the only way to the Father (I do). You can believe Islam is a false religion. You can hold whatever theology you want.

But if you can’t see that sincere seekers of God, whatever door they entered through, are being harvested by the same empire that killed Christ, then you’re still playing the game that Rome invented.

This is what power fears most. Not your doctrine. Not your theology. But the recognition that believers can stop killing each other long enough to see who’s been selling arms to both sides since the beginning of time.

When The Harvest Ends

The blood is real.

Lawrence Zhongo lost eight relatives. Every Palestinian child played games before the bombs. Every Ukrainian priest chose conscience, knew arrest was coming, prayed anyway. Every Armenian grandmother watched centuries erased in an afternoon.

The suffering is real. The evil is real.

But so is the system profiting from ALL of it.

Trump identified Nigeria. Established precedent. A shot across the bow. The same framework that designates Nigeria can designate anywhere. Gaza. Ukraine. Armenia. Everywhere Christians are being slaughtered while we fund the slaughter.

The designation sends a message.

We see the pattern. We see who profits. And the United States will no longer tolerate Christian martyrdom while signing checks to the killers.

This is what changes the game. Not more weapons to feed the machine. But accountability. Consequences. A POTUS willing to name what others profit from hiding.

The Nigerian Christian farmer and his Muslim killer, both used by forces neither understands. The Palestinian child and the Israeli soldier, both trapped in cycles they didn’t create. The Ukrainian priests destroying each other, both deceived by power wearing holy masks. The Armenian grandmother and the Azeri soldier, both convinced God is on their side.

All of us harvested.

All of us commodified.

All of us turned into weapons against our own family.

The only difference between the Christian farmer watching his Nigerian village burn and the Palestinian Muslim watching Gaza turn to rubble is which persecution we’re trained to see, which blood we’re told matters.

The harvest ends when we stop letting empire convince us to kill family for profit.

When we see that sincere believers, whatever door they entered, are children of the same Father, weaponized against each other.

When we remember who we are.

Not Christians versus Muslims versus Jews.

Brothers and sisters. Being harvested. For profit.

See it. Say it. Stop participating.

That’s when the harvest ends.

<3 EKO

This one’s hard. I know. Seeing enemies as brothers challenges everything. But this is how we defeat the machine. Four more articles this week. Next up? Chapter 7 in my Unsealed Parable series.

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