Despite airstrikes, ISIS just 8 miles away from Baghdad (SCWU #518)

1. Militants of the Islamic State have infiltrated one of Baghdad's outer suburbs which is only eight miles from the runway perimeter of Baghdad's international airport. The extremist group is now either present or in control of a huge swath of countryside, forming a 180-degree arc around the Iraqi capital.

2. The World Health Organization has once again raised the death toll attributed to the Ebola outbreak. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said that 4,033 confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola deaths have now been recorded.

3. The U.N. envoy to Syria has warned that at least 500 civilians who remain trapped in the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani are likely to be "massacred" if it falls to the Islamic State group. He called on the world to help avert a catastrophe as the extremists pushed deeper into the embattled town.

4. The U.S. Navy has taken control of a new missile defense base in southern Romania, one of two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield that Russia strongly opposes. The base is scheduled to be operational in 2015 as part of NATO’s ballistic missile defense system.

5. The U.S. State Department on Friday renewed its global terrorism alert for Americans traveling abroad, saying it sees a heightened risk of reprisal attacks from the Islamic State group and its supporters.

The passage of Scripture we are looking at today is Genesis 2:16-17 which reads: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Our second coming quote for today is from Oswald Chambers. He said, "I do not know how I am going to stay up ‘in the air’ with the Lord; but that is no business of mine."

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