Anonymous Missionary: What it's like to be detained by the Egyptian police

Loved this (old) account of one missionary who was detained by the Egyptian police. One section:

Ala ‘The Terminal’, some people had been kept in that room for days if not weeks. The Bangledeshi men had no money and had been there for four days without eating. I was treated like a long lost Uncle after I bought them all bean sandwiches for breakfast (as much as they could eat!). In the midst of all this  – it was hard (although still possible) to dwell on my own misfortune for too long – and to tell the truth – feeding of inmates aside – I was very happy to see the comparatively kind manner with which the Egyptian police dealt with these people.

Read it all at SFM.

Bret Stephens @ WSJ: 'What comes after Europe?'

Great short article here:

And there was, finally, the whopping fiction that Europe had its own "model," distinct and superior to the American one, that immunized it from broader international currents: globalization, Islamism, demography. Europeans love their holidays and thought they were entitled to a long holiday from history as well.


All this did wonders, for a while, to mask European failures and puff up European pride. But there is always a danger in substituting grandiosity for achievement, mistaking pronouncements for facts, or, more generally, believing in your own nonsense.


Read it all at the WSJ.

Palestine to request recognition as a nation state by the UN.

Palestine to request recognition as a nation state by the UN.

Read it all at the IHT.

Abu Daoud says: this is a big deal. A really big deal. Palestine will not get full recognition because the USA will veto that at the Security Council level. But the General Assembly will certainly give Palestine non-member status, like the Vatican has. This means that technically Palestine will have international recognition to have its own currency, secure its own borders, issue passports, and so on--none of which it presently does.

The times they are a changin'...

Woodberry: 9/11 led to an increase in the number of missionaries to Muslims

One of the positive effects of 9/11 was that it forced Christians to seriously consider Islam and how they should respond to its growing global presence and authority:

The most significant missions development since 9/11 has been the increased number of students who want to be missionaries to Muslims. The first class I taught on Islam after 9/11 had 100 more students than usual. This interest built on the emphasis of the "AD2000 and Beyond" and Lausanne movements on the "10/40 window," the section of the world that includes major non-Christian religions. Increases in student numbers were also the result of interest in Muslims raised by the 1979 Khomeini Revolution in Iran. Todd Johnson, an editor of the Atlas of Global Christianity, has calculated a 26 percent increase between 2005 and 2010 in the number of missionaries working in Muslim-majority countries.

From Dudley Woodberry's article at Christianity Today, read the whole thing HERE.

'The Old Math' by Carol Catt, a poem about 9/11

The Old Math

Out of the East on stolen wings they came,
like raptors,
innocent of pity.
Self-righteous, single-minded,
they slit the air with hate keener than box cutters,
fell on unsuspecting prey,
on one,
then on its twin some minutes later.

They'd got it wrong,
of course -- the direct access into Paradise.
By another reckoning,
souls in their hundreds leapt up to God as one,
leaving a hole in the morning sky,
in a thousand thousand hearts.

By Carol M Catt
from Selected Poems


HT to VirtueOnline

Turkey to restore properties to Christian groups

Wow, and the good news for the Christians of Turkey does not cease. I recently posted on some good news HERE, and now we read this:

The Turkish government made a historic U-turn in state policy this past weekend, issuing an official decree inviting Turkey’s Christian and Jewish communities to reclaim their long-confiscated religious properties. [...] 

Within hours of the surprise announcement, the boards of Turkey’s minority religious foundations in Istanbul were scrambling to review the status of their confiscated immovable properties. They must apply within the next 12 months to the General Foundations Board to recover each individual property. 

Their former holdings include schools, churches, cemeteries, stores, hospitals, orphanages, houses, apartment buildings and factories that were seized by the Turkish state and re-registered as public or foundation properties. A number were later sold to third parties.

Read it all at CompassDirect, and good for Turkey. If you want to know more about the growth of the Protestant Church in Turkey, the best article I know of is James Bultema's article in IJFM, which you can read here.

Zakaria Boutros: 'Islam is not just a religion, it's a state.'

Islam is not just a religion; this is a misunderstanding in the West. You think that Islam is like Judaism or Buddhism, so we give Islam lots of opportunities to grow in the West. No, Islam is a State, and religion is a factor to establish this state. It is a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Islam. Non-Muslims in their country are invaders. The invaders brought missionaries with them.

From Bob Blincoe's interview with Father (Abouna) Zakaria Boutros (or Botros), my favorite Coptic priest out there :-) This is from the third post on Blincoe's blog containing his interview.

I have written about Fr Boutros HERE and HERE, if you care to learn more about this impressive man. The second link there is one of the most commented-on posts I've ever have, if I'm not mistaken. Also, I develop a similar concept to what Fr Boutros said HERE: Islam, Religion Plus.

Pray for facility in travel for me and my family, please. --AD