MIDDLE EAST - Muslims finding Christ
26/09/05
26/09/05 - Satellite TV and radio are helping many find Christ, despite subsequent opposition and persecution.
Many Muslims are finding Christ through satellite television, radio, the witness of Christians and even through direct words and revelations from God, despite a hardening against evangelical Christians in most Muslim-dominated countries.
Below are some stories told by Brother Timothy*, who has been living in Lebanon and travelling extensively throughout the Middle East for the past 35 years: (Names have all been changed for security reasons).
Zakiyaa*, a 15-year old girl found a Christian programme on her shortwave radio. This was the first time she had ever been in touch with anything Christian, but she immediately recognised in the programme the answers for which she had been searching.
Although Zakiyaa could not follow everything being taught in the programme, she kept listening and wrote down all the Bible verses, trying to compile her own Bible.
One day, she heard a voice telling her, "Go out, take a bus and go to the centre of the city." At first she didn’t obey; but the voice kept coming back, so she finally went.
When Zakiyaa stepped off the bus, a man in Muslim religious attire came up to her and said, "I must talk to you."
She walked away from him as fast as she could, afraid of being attacked.
Upon getting the next bus home, however, the same man, Jamal, appeared again. She told Jamal she was a Christian and didn’t want to get into an argument. It turned out that Jamal’s brother had recently become a Christian, much to the distress of their whole family, but Jamal had also heard a voice that day, telling him to go to the centre of the city to meet up with somebody he didn’t know. Once they got talking Zakiyaa soon made known her desire to get hold of a complete Bible which Jamal was able to obtain from his brother. They kept meeting, and eventually Jamal became a Christian too. Today they are happily married and living for Jesus.
Mahdi* had been quietly working as a shoeshine man when he heard the message of salvation on Christian radio and TV. Brother Timothy relates:
“For years, Mahdi had been the person to shine one of our friend’s shoes in the city. Our friend is a nominal Christian and very proud of being one. One day Mahdi started telling him what he’d read in the Bible. Our friend, Michel, was amazed and a bit taken aback that an 'outsider' would know the Bible better than he. When he realised there wasn’t much this young shoeshine man didn’t know about the Bible and Jesus, our friend announced, ‘In order to be a Christian you need to be baptised; but you aren’t’.”
He was surprised by Mahdi’s matter-of-fact reply: “I want to be, but who will be willing to baptise me?”
“But Michel," Nahdi replied, "do you know that, at Easter when the church was filled with people, I was able to sneak into a church service and commemorate the broken body and shed blood of Jesus by taking Communion, just like all of you?"
Michel asked Mahdi: “Are there any more people like you – people from your background who follow Jesus?”
Mahdi immediately replied: “Yes! There is a whole family with seven children very close to here, in our city, who have the same faith as mine. They all believe in Jesus!”
Like Mahdi, however, they are not able to go to church for fear of reprisals from their Muslim community and family.
Timothy continued with another story from Hanif* who had also found Jesus through watching a Christian television programme. When the preacher, speaking in Arabic, encouraged his listeners to give their lives to Jesus, Hanif did so. He went on to become a monk and is now training for the priesthood. Hanif’s brother has also recently been baptised.
Timothy explained that others were finding Christ, in many other ways. He told the story of Munib*, shortly due to be executed in an Iraqi prison for being a deserter from Saddam Hussein’s army, when he saw a cross on top of a church outside his prison cell. Throughout his life he had been in touch with Christians, so he knew what it really meant.
Seeing the cross, he started praying, "Jesus, if you really died on that cross and rose again from the dead as the Christians claim, then I really want to follow you. And, if you get me out of this prison so I won't be executed, I will live the rest of my life for you."
The next day, as the prisoners were lining up to be executed, Munib’s name was missing from the list of those due for execution. He stood there as all the others went up to be killed.
The guards made a search for Munib’s name but were unable to find any record of it, so he was allowed to go free. Munib walked straight across the road and into a church, knelt in front of the altar and received Jesus into his life.
Sadly, having found Christ, many Muslim background believers are hounded and even killed for their new-found faith. However, in some cases, families are won over to the Lord through their witness.
Kazim*, a Christian in Iraq had his clinic burnt down by his Muslim family, following his conversion to Christianity. Now, however, through the radical witness of his life, his whole family have received Christ.
For 13 years, Delshad’s wife set his whole tribe and family against him when he gave his life to Christ. During this time, there were many times when Delshad felt he had had enough. But Bible reading, prayer and fellowship with Christians in the Kurdish church carried him through. Just as Delshad gave up all hope of his wife, Farideh, finding Christ, she started secretly reading his Bible and soon came to the conviction that she also was in need of ‘his’ Saviour.
She later told the pastor’s wife, “You told me many wonderful things about Jesus and your faith, and you did everything you could to convince me to follow Jesus, but do you know what really made an impact on me? When I visited your home and saw how you treated your children – no screaming, no threats, no foul words! When I saw this I remembered how I treated my own children and how you had something that I needed in my own life.”
The distribution of Christian literature, Bibles and other materials is absolutely essential to help strengthen the faith of believers throughout the Middle East and to build up the many who are finding Christ, often in quite miraculous ways.
However, despite the number of people finding Christ, the church in the Middle East is in decline overall, as thousands of Christians leave their countries every year. However, many of the Christians who have stayed are becoming increasingly bold in proclaiming their faith.
An exciting development in countries with strong traditional churches like Iraq and Egypt, is the renewal going on in them, with members starting to read and understand their Bibles and young people eager to attend Bible seminars and meetings. The literature distribution that has been carried out by Open Doors in these countries over the past thirty years has been crucial to that renewal.
Brother Timothy is an Open Doors co-worker whose primary task is distributing Scriptures and new Christian books throughout the Middle East. He explained one of the reasons for the continually increasing demand:
“We produce something that is really well done and something that is close to the heart of people and in response to what they are asking for."
Open Door’s literature distribution throughout the Middle East during 2005 includes:
• 100,000 complete children’s Bibles, and a further 100,000 pictorial New Testaments dispersed throughout Egypt
• 20,000 sets of children’s books including a Bible and other Christian materials and 18,000 devotionals for Iraq
• Bibles and materials to help support children’s work in the disputed territories in Israel and surrounding areas.
For more details, please call Open Doors UK & Ireland on 01993 885400, email info@opendoorsuk.org or go to www.opendoorsuk.org
*names changed for security reasons.
End. 1,371 words.
Open Doors strengthens persecuted Christians in over 45 countries across the world by
1. Training Church leaders and Christian workers
2. Supplying Bibles, hymnals, Sunday School materials and other Christian literature
3. Providing livelihood training and self-help opportunities
4. Visiting, comforting and encouraging those who are suffering
5. Raising awareness of the difficulties persecuted Christians face and mobilising prayer for them throughout the western world.
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