Arranged roughly by topic, here are 20 new books which are worth adding to your library. Many of the Christian titles can be picked up in Australia at Koorong, while other titles can be purchased at online bookstores such as amazon. Happy reading.

The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G. K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist. Ignatius, 2012. Ahlquist has already penned a number of great books on Chesterton, and his newest does not disappoint. It covers various aspects of his thought, such as the problem of evil, politics and patriotism, the nature of truth, sickness and health, war and peace, and much more. If you are not yet a fan of GKC, this volume should help bring you around.

John Wesley’s Teachings by Thomas Oden. Zondervan, 2012. If you are a Wesley fan, or simply want to study further his thought, this quite substantial set offers you everything you may want to know about his theology. It is a four-volume set, with the first three now available. The four cover, in order: God and providence; Christ and salvation; pastoral care; and ethics and society. An invaluable resource.

The Scriptures Testify About Me edited by D.A. Carson. Crossway, 2013. In this collection of essays eight Christian leaders discuss how we can preach Christ and the gospel from the Old Testament. The expositors include Tim Keller, Al Mohler, Matt Chandler and Carson.

Gospel Truth by Paul Barnett. IVP, 2012. Here the Sydney-based New Testament scholar looks at how the new atheists seek to undermine our confidence in the reliability and authenticity of the Gospels. In 200 pages he offers a wide-ranging defence of the Gospels, and dismantles the various atheist objections to them.

Turning Points by Mark Noll. Baker, 2012. Every believer should know something about church history, and this volume highlights a dozen decisive moments in the history of Christianity. These include the Council of Chalcedon, the rise of monasticism, the Reformation, the conversion of the Wesleys, and the French Revolution. This book first appeared in 1997, and is now in its third expanded edition.

Getting the Marriage Conversation Right by William May. Emmaus Road, 2012. This brief booklet (just 70 pages) lays out some helpful pointers in how to engage in the homosexual marriage debate. He shows us what the real nature of marriage is, why it is so important for children, and how it can never be compatible with non-heterosexual relationships.

Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church by Gregg Allison. Crossway Books, 2012. This is the fifth volume in the very important series on systematic theology begun in 1997, Foundations of Evangelical Theology, edited by John Feinberg. Its 500 pages offer a very thorough and comprehensive treatment of ecclesiology.

Puritan Portraits by J. I. Packer. Packer has been a lifelong student of the Puritans, and this brief volume offers us a nice introduction by focusing on nine major Puritans. Their thought, work and pastoral contributions are nicely examined. A quite helpful little volume.

A Puritan Theology by Joel Beeke and Mark Jones. Reformation Heritage Books, 2012. If the volume by Packer has whetted your appetite, this volume will certainly deliver the goods. It is a monumental volume of over 1000 pages, and is the first and most complete one-volume compendium on the theology of the Puritans. All things theological are to be found here: the Puritans’ views on the attributes of God, the Trinity, Christology, law and grace, sin and salvation, demonology, eschatology, ecclesiology, practical theology, and so on.

What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an by James White. Bethany House, 2013. This 300-page volume offers a lot of vital information not only about Islam and the Koran, but how they differ so considerably from Christianity and the Bible. A very helpful guide to understanding what Islam is really all about.

Sharia Versus Freedom by Andrew Bostom. Prometheus Books, 2012. In this important collection of essays the famous expert on Islam continues to put the spotlight on the war we are in, and how our freedoms are being snatched away from us. Over 40 substantial essays in over 700 pages offer more than enough information and insight into the leading battle of our time.

Buy this from Amazon: Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam by Robert Spencer Click Here

Not Peace but a Sword by Robert Spencer. Catholic Answers, 2013. Islam expert Spencer here shows the glaring differences between Christianity and Islam. He discusses many topics, including Jesus, jihad, sharia and interfaith dialogue. Also included is a very important debate he had with Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft on the issue of the real nature of Islam, and how much common ground can be found between the two faiths.

The Case for Islamophobia by Walid Shoebat. Top Executive Media, 2013. Shoebat is a former Islamic terrorist, but is now a Christian who knows firsthand the dangers of stealth jihad and creeping sharia. In this wide-ranging collection of essays he covers all sorts of territory, including the situation in the Middle East and the Arab Spring, the infiltration of the churches, the Nazi connection, Western geopolitical concerns, and the Muslim Brotherhood. An incisive and eye-opening volume.

Recall Abortion by Janet Morana. Saint Benedict Press, 2013. Abortion is a totally defective and dangerous product which demands an immediate recall. Here we learn how abortion hurts everyone, not just babies, and women especially are the major victims of all this. The book includes the testimonies of many women who have suffered because of their abortions.

Bullies by Ben Shapiro. Threshold Editions, 2013. Shapiro is a young rising star in the conservative movement and here he offers an in-depth look at how the left operates: by bullying, intimidation, thuggery and persecution. What the left lacks in sound argument, moral clarity, and intellectual strength, it makes up for in pure nastiness and strong-arm tactics. The 300 pages worth of examples here should convince anyone with an open mind.

Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns by Glenn Beck. Threshold Editions, 2013. Gun control is not really about controlling guns – it is about controlling us. Beck lays out the case for the importance of the Second Amendment, and shows with plenty of research and evidence why we must resist the controllers. An important volume offering rational light on a topic usually run on emotion and feelings.

America the Beautiful by Ben Carson. Zondervan, 2012. Many think that Carson would make an excellent choice for the Republican Presidential candidate in 2016. In this book he shows us why. He deals with a number of important social, cultural, moral, political, spiritual and public policy issues impacting America. He reminds us of her past greatness, her present degradation, and a way ahead for the future. His amazing story is told in the book and the film, Gifted Hands.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster by Jonathan Last. Encounter Books, 2013. While dealing primarily with the American situation, this important new book certainly takes into account the global situation. His thesis is this: “The ‘population bomb’ never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years.”

Turn Back the Battle by Elizabeth Kendal. Deror Books, 2013. In this careful biblical, theological, exegetical and pastoral study Elizabeth Kendal uses the book of Isaiah to offer hope and comfort to believers the world over, especially the persecuted church. Kendal has mined Isaiah deeply to bring us its treasures, and we all owe her our heartfelt thanks for doing so.

What Jesus Started by Steve Addison. IVP, 2012. Melbourne couple Steve and Michelle Addison have spent decades involved in church planting work and discipleship. In this his second book he continues looking at Christian movements, and how the church grows and multiplies. It examines in detail the examples of Jesus and Paul as missionaries and disciple makers.

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Of course almost every element of that statement is violently opposed by Muslims, but it is truth which they desperately need to hear nonetheless. They regard Jesus only as another prophet; do not believe God has a son; vigorously deny that Jesus died on the cross and rose again; and do not look upon Allah as a loving father.

So the gulf between Islam and Christianity is great, but it is our job to preach the gospel to Muslims anyway. And as I often have said, we must hold simultaneously onto two responses to Islam here. In terms of creeping sharia and stealth jihad, we have every right and reason as Christians to resist this, and defend the blessings of freedom, democracy and genuine tolerance.

These goods are primarily the result of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and are well worth fighting for. But when it comes to our Muslim neighbours, we are called to love them, befriend them, pray for them, and preach the good news to them.

Thus the mass immigration of Muslims into Western lands is a mixed blessing. In terms of them not fitting in, and seeking to subvert our culture, our values, and our way of life, it is bad news indeed. But in terms of God bringing them to us so that we might share the gospel with them, it is a very good thing indeed.

After all, we are not free to share the gospel openly with them in Muslim-majority countries, so God is allowing them to come here so that they might be exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But tragically most Christians in the West are not taking advantage of these opportunities.

And worse yet, many have fallen for the deception of the interfaith dialogue movement, where everyone is told we all basically believe the same thing, and we just need to get along. Sorry, that is not what we are called to do – we are called to tell them that ‘Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man comes to the father but by him’ (John 14:6). But I discuss this elsewhere: www.billmuehlenberg.com/category/interfaith-dialogue/

Here I want to finish with more good news. As many of you would know, more Muslims are coming to Christ today than at any other time in their 1400-year history. And many of these conversions are due to dreams and visions. God is working in the Muslim world, and many are finding new life in Christ.

One recent article details this, and is worth sharing portions thereof: “Testimonies of dreams and other encounters with Jesus can’t always be verified because by definition spiritual experiences are personal. Further, in countries where owning a Bible is illegal, Muslim converts are subject to persecution and even death, so their stories are not always documented. But believers who work among Muslims tell of life-changing conversions resulting from dreams. Like martyrs from antiquity until today, believers who have had profound, unexplainable encounters often develop profound, unshakeable faith.”

Here are some of the stories: “Karima, a Muslim, dreamed she was in a car when it crashed. She was knocked out, but when she opened her eyes (in her dream), she saw that Jesus was the driver. ‘Come to me,’ He told her, ‘I am with you. I love you.’ That experience led her to seek out a Christian church, where she responded to the gospel.

“Omar had been locked up and tortured for years in a jail cell in a nation ruled by a dictator. One night a messenger visited him in a dream, telling him he would be set free. Within days he was released from prison and traveled to America where newfound friends reached out to him. When he was given a book with a picture of Jesus on the cover, his eyes lit up. ‘I know him,’ he said. ‘He came to me in a dream.’

“Yasmin was fearful and anxious. She cried out to Allah, asking him to help her, but she remained unchanged. One night while visiting friends in the U.S., she was awakened from her darkness with an epiphany. ‘Walking around the house of my friend,’ she now explains in broken English, ‘suddenly I felt that I was blind, [but] now I can see.’ That terminology, though cliché to most believers, was foreign to Yasmin, who was born in an Islamic nation and was never exposed to ‘Christianese.’

“‘It was very obvious,’ she recalls, describing it as a feeling as if something literally changed inside her head. ‘I felt that it was Jesus who did something to me.’ She later learned her sister—a Christian still living in her home country—was praying for her. Yasmin received a Bible, was baptized and began to grow with her new church family. (Her sister, now in ministry, has also had supernatural encounters, saying that she’s heard the voice of God seven times, ‘like a man beside me, talking to me. Whatever He says to me, it happens to me,’ she describes.”

And another story: “One man in a nation hostile to Christianity says he heard a voice telling him, ‘Find Jesus, find the gospel.’ He didn’t know what Jesus was—a chair, a tree, an animal? But the voice told him exactly what city and house to go to, so he traveled for two weeks, arriving directly at the door of one of only three believers in the city.”

The article finishes with these amazing stats:

“Iran: At the time of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 there were only about 500 known Muslim converts in the country, according to missions almanac Operation World. By 2000, there were a reported 220,000 believers, including Muslim converts. Even children of government ministers and mullahs have been converting to Christ, missions agency Open Doors reports.
Iraq: It’s estimated that before 2003 there were only about 600 known born-again followers of Jesus Christ in the country. By the end of 2008, Iraqi Christian leaders believed the number had risen to more than 70,000. Meanwhile, millions of Arabic New Testaments and Christian books have been shipped into Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Egypt: Revival is reportedly widespread among nominal Christians within the nation’s historic Coptic Church, whose members number about 10 million. Yet Coptics are under severe attack, according to Voice of the Martyrs. Also, the USCIRF’s list of ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ now includes Egypt, where since January 400 Christians have been murdered, hundreds more injured and multiple churches burned.”

Please keep praying for our Muslim friends. And please keep sharing with them. The interfaith hacks will try to tell you it is “offensive” and “un-Christlike” for us to do so. But just forget them – they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. As I said, there is nothing more loving than sharing the truth about Jesus with our Muslim neighbours. Many will be eternally grateful if we do.

www.charismamag.com/spirit/evangelism-missions/14442-when-musiims-see-jesus

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As just one indication of how big the interfaith movement is, along with its attempts to neuter biblical Christianity, simply google the term. When I last did, some twelve and a half million hits came back! And not surprisingly, the UN is up to its ears in all this.

It has even put together “The World Interfaith Harmony Week”. It “was first proposed at the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2010 by H.M. King Abdullah II of Jordan. Just under a month later, on October 20, 2010, it was unanimously adopted by the UN and henceforth the first week of February will be observed as a World Interfaith Harmony Week.”

Moreover, “The World Interfaith Harmony Week is based on the pioneering work of The Common Word initiative”. Ah yes, ‘A Common Word’. I have written about this before, and biblical Christians are advised to steer well clear of it:

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2007/11/19/how-to-think-about-%E2%80%9Ca-common-word%E2%80%9D/

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/02/06/how-much-common-ground-is-there/

Now there is nothing wrong with peace and harmony. We all should strive to get along better and learn how to put jaw jaw ahead of war war. But these interfaith movements almost invariably are about one thing: minimising any genuine differences which exist between religions, and especially stripping Christianity of its uniqueness and its exclusive truth claims.

Christians can support learning how to live together more harmoniously, but never at the expense of truth – certainly not at the expense of biblical truth. When Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” he most certainly meant it.

And when Peter, who was “filled with the Holy Spirit” declared in Acts 4:12 that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” he meant every word of it. Yet today far too many Christian leaders are jumping on board the interfaith bandwagon.

They have caved in to the tolerance brigade’s demands that truth be downplayed and ‘just getting along’ be upheld as the highest good. Indeed, I just recently wrote about a church in Scotland which has opened its doors to Muslims to pray and worship in their building: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2013/04/04/the-death-of-the-uk/

So as with all such issues, what does the Bible have to say about this? In my daily reading this morning I found a very clear and relevant passage about this. Consider what we find in 2 Kings 10-11. In chapter 10 we read about how Jehu had the 70 sons of Ahab put to death, had the prophets of Baal put to death, and had the temple of Baal totally destroyed.

This was pretty radical stuff: “As soon as Jehu had finished making the burnt offering, he ordered the guards and officers: ‘Go in and kill them; let no one escape.’ So they cut them down with the sword. The guards and officers threw the bodies out and then entered the inner shrine of the temple of Baal. They brought the sacred stone out of the temple of Baal and burned it. They demolished the sacred stone of Baal and tore down the temple of Baal, and people have used it for a latrine to this day” (vv. 25-27).

Oh, in case you missed it, Jehu turned the great temple of Baal into a toilet. Not a very inclusive, tolerant, loving, or accepting thing to do. It certainly does not smack of interfaith dialogue and learning to live together with those of a different belief system.

There is more in 2 Kings 11, eg., vv. 17-18: “Jehoiada then made a covenant between the LORD and the king and people that they would be the LORD’s people. He also made a covenant between the king and the people. All the people of the land went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and idols to pieces and killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altars.”

There is not much excitement for interfaith dialogue to be found here. There is not much advocacy of tolerance, and the importance of learning from other faiths. There is not much openness to the ‘truths’ found in other religions. Quite the opposite. These pagan temples and their false priests and prophets were decisively dealt with.

The result, as Iain Provan writes, is this: “Baal-worship in Israel is officially at an end. It has neither royal patronage nor royal tolerance.” Quite so – there is no tolerance here, no interest in “diversity”, no preference for “live and let live”.

We also find similar sentiments in the New Testament. Of course there are no NT commands for killing false prophets, and we need not go around pulling down pagan altars, but we all should at least have the same mindset which Paul had.

In idol-filled Athens we find Paul having this response: “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). “Paul is very disturbed by what he sees,” says Darrell Bock.

“As a city full of idols, it arouses Paul to react with inner anger. . . . The verb paroxyno means ‘provoke’ or ‘despise’ or ‘revile’ something. It is used of God’s anger at idolatry (Isa. 65:3; Hos. 8:5).” He was grieved. He did not think it would be neat to engage in some interfaith dialogue, and see how they could all just get along and sing kumbaya all day.

As Jaroslav Pelikan comments, “The disgust and anger of any faithful Jew at the artifacts and practices of pagan idolatry was not in any way lessened by being converted to the Christian ‘Way’ (11:26). If anything, Paul was eager to show that his newly acquire faith in Jesus as Lord and Christ was completely consistent with the strict monotheism of his Jewish upbringing (19:28).”

Indeed, this is not some interesting cultural and religious diversity on display here – it is pagan idolatry which must be fiercely resisted. As James Montgomery Boice writes, “Idolatry is the basic problem of our society. . . . When Paul got to Athens he was not excessively awed with it, as we might expect him to have been. Rather, he analysed it rightly and responded to it as a Christian.”

We sure need more of that today. Instead of becoming enamoured and duped by pagan idolatry, we should be rebuking it and proclaiming the truth about the one true God, and his only appointed means of getting right with him: his son Jesus Christ and his death at the cross.

Again, we are not called today to go around smashing down pagan temples. But our heart must have the same repulsion toward idolatry as did the heart of Jehu or Paul. As Charles Spurgeon said in his sermon, “A Jealous God”:

“False gods patiently endure the existence of other false gods. Dagon can stand with Bel, and Bel with Ashtaroth; how should stone, and wood, and silver, be moved to indignation; but because God is the only living and true God, Dagon must fall before His ark; Bel must be broken, and Ashtaroth must be consumed with fire.”

We need that mindset, that heartbeat. We need to be in sync with A W Tozer when he said, “Idolatry is of all sins the most hateful to God because it is in essence a defamation of the divine character.”

And the work of hating and breaking idols must begin with ourselves. As C. S. Lewis rightly wrote in A Grief Observed: “Images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast.”

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/

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But like most of the West, the UK has for quite some time now been becoming less and less Christian and more and more secular. But faith and spirituality and religion are still very important to most people, so instead of folks embracing the vacuous worldview of atheism and secularism, many are turning to what has now become the second largest religion in the UK: Islam.

As of 2011, the total Muslim population there had reached some 2.7 million, or 4.8 per cent of the total population. And it continues to rise. This is largely due to three factors: immigration; demographics (with Muslims having larger families than non-Muslims); and some folks in the UK converting to Islam.

Other figures can be mentioned. Back in 1960 there was one mosque in London. Today there are around 400 in the greater London area. Even more astounding, many of these mosques are former churches. Indeed, the church where William Carey the “father of modern missions” was sent to be a missionary in India some 220 years ago is now a mosque.

The facts and figures are also buttressed by anecdotal evidence. Consider two recent developments which speak to not only the rise of Islam in the UK, but the slow death of Christianity. The first concerns a church in Scotland which is sharing its worship services with Muslims.

This is not the first time such things have happened in the UK, but it is a disturbing development nonetheless. This is how one news item covers the story: “A church in Scotland opened its doors and welcomed hundreds of Muslims for Friday prayers, reported the BBC. Worshippers from the neighboring Syed Shah Mustafa Jame Masjid mosque share St. John’s Episcopal Church in Aberdeen with Christians up to five times a day.

“The church’s rector opened his doors to Muslims because many were forced to pray outside on the streets due to lack of space in the mosque. ‘It was a very cold day, like today, and when I walked past the mosque I saw dozens of male worshippers praying outside, on the streets, right near the church,’ Reverend Isaac Poobalan, who grew up in India surrounded by Islam, told the BBC. ‘Their hands and feet were bare and you could see their breath in the freezing cold. Jesus taught his disciples to love your neighbor as yourself and this is something I cannot just preach to my congregation, I had to put it into practice’.”

Now it is of course one thing if any individual Christian wants to look after anyone else, whether feeding them, giving them shelter, and so on. And to an extent churches can do this as well. But to turn a Christian church into some interfaith vehicle in which all religions are basically treated as equals is quite another.

Would the same church allow Satanists to come into their premises and do their thing when the building is not being used? Will it allow atheists to hold their conferences there? Will it open wide its doors to orgiastic sexual religious cults to frolic in the pews on the church’s off days?

The sad thing is, one suspects that they probably would. Forget the distinctiveness of the Christian faith. Forget the exclusive truth claims of Jesus Christ. Let’s all just be one big happy family by playing down any differences we might have, and by playing up the “let’s just all get along” mantra.

Sorry, but I am just not buying this. In Isaiah Yahweh spoke to the prophet saying, “I will not share my glory with another” (Is. 42:8 and 48:11). And when Paul walked through the multi-faith city of Athens, he did not applaud the “religious diversity” on display there, or seek to engage in interfaith dialogue.

Instead we read this: “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). He certainly did not think to have a big ecumenical party in the interests of merely getting along. Nor did he endorse the sharing of competing religious worldviews as a way of “loving your neighbour”.

The second alarming indication of the rise of Islam comes from Ireland where plans are underway to construct one of the biggest mosques in all of Europe. Here is how the story has been reported: “The Emir of Qatar, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist, has vowed to ‘spare no effort’ to spread Wahhabi Islam throughout Europe. Wahhabism — which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims — threatens to radicalize Muslim immigrants in Ireland.

“City planners in the Irish capital, Dublin, have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s burgeoning Muslim population. The massive €40 million ($50 million) ‘Islamic Cultural Center’ will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin.”

Fears about this project are not misplaced: “But critics worry that Clongriffin is in danger of becoming an exclusively Islamic suburb on the outskirts of Dublin where Muslims will establish a parallel society rather than integrate. An Islamist website called ‘Islamic Vanguards: Spearheading Ireland’s Transition’ recently warned that Gannon’s greed would be Ireland’s undoing: ‘If there’s one thing the west yearns, it is money. For it has worshiped this false god without fail for as long as they have departed from the worship of the true God. And it is this weakness, nay addiction that will see what they hold precious being wrenched from their spindly hands. Already as we speak vast swathes of the London metropolis are in Muslim hands, Dublin is set to follow as the wealth that Allah has blessed His servants with is used to reclaim the land for His glory.’

“In any event, the Clongriffin Mosque will not be the only mega-mosque in town: the new mosque on the northern edge of Dublin will compete with another mega-mosque, located in Clonskeagh on the southern edge of Dublin. The mosque complex at Clonskeagh, which also goes by the name ‘Islamic Cultural Center,’ has been in operation since 1996. Its sprawling four-acre campus was financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.”

So while Christian churches are disappearing and existing ones are declining in number, we see massive mosques being built in the same vicinities. This is not just a war over real estate, but a war of worldviews. Islam is of course an expansionist religion which aims to see every person fully submit to Allah. It brooks no rivals, and views Christianity as an apostate and false religion which cannot coexist with Islam.

At best, because Christians are “people of the book,” they can exist in the condition of dhimmitude, or second class citizens – if they are lucky. As we speak, where this policy is already in place, Christian churches and homes are being destroyed all around the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Egypt.

Europeans like Geert Wilders have sought to warn us of these matters, but most of the secular left elites in the West choose to ignore such warnings, while foolishly and gullibly teaming up with the Islamists. This is a recipe for disaster, and it is only a matter of time before we witness the complete disintegration of the Christian West – unless we wake up real quick and start doing something about it.

english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2013/04/01/Church-in-Scotland-opens-its-doors-to-Muslim-worshippers-.html

www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3654/ireland-mega-mosque

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The short story is this: thanks to all your prayer and intercession, the whole thing seems to have been a real fizzer. The numbers were nowhere near what they anticipated, and they must have lost a bundle of money as a result. None of their big name overseas speakers showed up, and the whole thing must be leaving the organisers with a big headache.

I had to leave for an overseas engagement, so I could not join a small band of concerned Christians who offered a peaceful and prayerful spiritual presence at the conference. Their presence, along with the prayers of so many others, certainly paid off big time.

One person very active in all this has written up a nice summary report of the weekend event, so I offer here in full what activist Bernie has written about this:

Six surprises from the Islamic ‘Peace Conference’

Surprise no 1: Free tickets were not honoured: We arrived at the Conference on the first morning (Friday) to be told that our free tickets would not be accepted. Thousands of free tickets were printed to be given to non-Muslims to attract them to the conference so they would hear the message of Islam and become Muslims – the conference was really all about da’wah or propagation of Islam. Conference reception staff told us that the Victoria Police had advised that everyone must pay the $50 entry fee. We refused, saying that we had not come prepared to pay $50, since we had free tickets. We said that it was false advertising to issue free tickets and then not to honour them. Eventually a young Muslim reception girl had pity on us and spoke to her supervisors on our behalf and we were let in free.

Surprise no 2: Muslim numbers were low: The organisers had hoped for 20,000 attendees, including 4,000 non-Muslims. However they did not achieve anything like this. The biggest day was Friday, when it was planned that 5,000 Muslims would pray behind the Imam of Mecca who was coming from Saudi Arabia. However news of his coming brought condemnation in the Age, Herald Sun, Australian newspapers and Jewish organisations because he had called for the extermination of the Jews, referring to them as ‘monkeys’, ‘rats’ and ‘the scum of the earth’. Although he never applied for an Australian visa (probably due to this negative publicity), it was not until the night before that the conference organiser announced on their website that he was not coming. Consequently, only 1800 people turned up for the prayers. The other main speaker, a sheik from Kuwait, arrived but fell sick and was not able to attend the conference. Muslims were disgruntled at the high price of the conference, expensive food and carnival rides, and the cancellation of some meetings. Eventually cold driving rain sent people home and kept them away the next day. Meetings set up to hold thousands were attended by a couple of hundred people.  If the conference was relying on gate takings for income, it will be in significant financial trouble.

Surprise no 3: Opportunities for Christian witness were high. Over the weekend, a team of 60 Christians turned up to witness to Muslims. The vast majority, by the grace of God, managed to get in free. We had applied for and been given permission to hire stalls and sell or give away Christian literature including Bibles. However this permission was withdrawn by the conference organisers saying they could not guarantee the safety of Christians from radical Muslims inside the Showgrounds. This ban on Christian stalls turned out to our advantage, as it enabled us to spread out, rather than being concentrated in one place. Christians could be seen all over around the conference, making friends with Muslims, asking questions and sharing their faith in Jesus. It soon became obvious, and non-Muslims arriving at the gates were asked by the reception staff: “Are you part of Bernie’s team?” Sometimes conference staff would order Muslims to stop talking to the Christians and send them away. Despite this, we had hundreds of wonderful conversations about Christ throughout the weekend and arranged to meet up with some more open Muslims afterwards.

Surprise no 4: Some Christians got kicked out of the conference. Because of their impact, the Christians came to the attention of the conference organisers. Some high-profile Christians were assigned Muslim ‘taggers’ to follow them around and intervene in their conversations. On the Saturday, one of our Christian team, a former Muslim, rang me (Bernie) in distress. He had been giving out a DVD about Muslims who had come to Christ. Some-one complained and he was surrounded by security guards and the conference organiser who were threatening him. They claimed that this was illegal, as he had no permit to do it. I pointed out that many other people were also giving away brochures and materials. The conference organiser (Abdul Samii) was rude and aggressive. We were marched to the Showgrounds exit by the eight guards, and told we must leave all Christian materials in our car before re-entering. We did so, deciding that a continuing verbal witness was better than no witness at all. Later that day, another of our team had a long conversation with a British man who had converted to Islam, and asked him if he would like a Christian booklet. The man agreed and accepted it, but the man’s Somali wife complained: “My husband became a Muslim and they want to turn him back into a Christian.” Security was called. The Christians asked: “If Islam is so strong, why are you so scared of a piece of paper?” The conference organiser was hostile and insulting, saying “Get out! Shut your mouth,” to the four Christians. He told the security guards to escort them from the Showgrounds, and they were ejected.

Surprise no 5: The Conference publicly advocated Sharia law including the cutting-off hands for theft, the death penalty, the cruel slaughter of animals, and it did not condemn all terrorism. A woman’s clothing was suggested as contributing to her rape:  In an Exhibition hall, a series of pull-up posters outlined aspects of Islamic teaching. One entitled: “Sharia Law” stated that “Like every thriving country follows a constitution, likewise an Islamic state is bound to follow Sharia law.”

An illustration of this was given on another poster called “Why follow only Islam?” It stated: “All major religions teach that theft is an evil act. Islam teaches the same. The difference lies in the fact that Islam, besides teaching that robbing is evil, shows a practical way of creating a structure in which people will not rob. … Islam prescribes chopping-off the hand of the convicted robber … [the Qur’an chapter 5 verse 38 is quoted] … America is supposed to be one of the most advanced countries in the world. Unfortunately it also has one of the highest rates of crime, theft and robbery … Suppose [that] every convicted robber has his or her hand chopped-off as a punishment. Will the rate of theft and robbery in America increase, remain the same or decrease? Naturally it will decrease. Moreover the existence of such a stringent law would discourage many a potential robber. Islamic Shariah is therefore practical and achieves results.”

The “Islam & Capital Punishment” poster proclaims the virtues of the death penalty for certain crimes, following the teaching of the Qur’an. It states that “any country following this rule will see their murder rate go down.”  In fact, US states which do not practice capital punishment have significantly lower rates of murder than those which do execute criminals. A poster entitled “Slaughtering animals” promoted the Islamic method of Halal killing which is opposed by the RSPCA as cruel to animals.

Another poster about “Fundamentalists and Terrorists” stated: “Every Muslim is a fundamentalist because he follows the fundamentals of Islam which are the best of the fundamentals any person can follow or practice. No Muslim should be a terrorist if he terrorises other innocent human beings. On the other hand, Muslims are ordered to stand against and fight those who terrorise other innocent human beings as well as animals.” The key phrase is “innocent human beings”. Who decides which people are innocent and which are guilty? British Muslim leader Anjem Chowdary has declared all non-Muslims “guilty”, thus making them legitimate targets for Islamic terrorist attacks. But this IREA poster does not give a definition of who is innocent or guilty.

A poster labelled “Hijab – a solution to rape?” implies that it is the way a woman dresses that contributes to her rape.  It promotes Islamic law as the solution to all social problems. “Naturally as soon as Islamic Shariah is implemented positive results will be inevitable. If Islamic Shariah is implemented in any part of the world, whether it is America or Europe, the world will breathe easier.”

Surprise no 6: Protests happened on the last day: On the Sunday morning, a group of about 20 ‘Australian Protection Party’ protestors stood outside one of the Showground gates holding posters saying: “No Sharia Law”, “No Mosques”, and “End Discrimination against Women.” They abused Muslims who were driving into the conference. Eventually they packed up and went home.

We went to the Police and asked if we could display a Christian banner with a positive message “Jesus loves Muslims. So do we” outside the Showgrounds as an alternative. They gave permission for us to do so. We said that we would also give the New Testament (‘Injeel’), which is a holy book in Islam, to anyone who wanted a copy. But the Police advised against it, saying that there might be a violent reaction. So we agreed not to distribute any New Testaments. About eight of us went to the Muslim reception staff at the gate and told them what we were about to do. Some were so happy and excited that they took photos of us with our banner and then agreed to be in the picture with us.
Thank you so much to the many who prayed, gave or came so that this Conference would be a significant witness to Christ. We will continue to pray for Muslims and plan for other Islamic events that will be happening around Melbourne.

Well done Bernie, all those who came to let Muslims know of a better way, and all those who prayed so fervently. All this demonstrates that when God’s people get serious and engage in concentrated and sustained prayer offensives, they will see great victories indeed.

Islam – and any other ideology or religion – is no match for God’s people when they take their spiritual responsibilities seriously and bring some substantial spiritual firepower to rain down upon the various contenders to biblical Christianity.

[1835 words]

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2013/03/02/islamic-peace-conference-in-melbourne/

Back then I warned about all the jihadist and extremist hate speakers who had been invited to this event. I asked why the government and our MSM elites made such a stink about Geert Wilders who simply came to warn us about these matters, but seem to be doing nothing about allowing extremists into the country preaching jihad, anti-Semitism, and misogynist rants.

As an editorial in today’s Australian says, “Organisers of the so-called peace conference displayed a bizarre sense of irony, however, in promoting the event as ‘the LARGEST, the BIGGEST and the BEST EVER Islamic Event in the History of Australia’ with an advertised speakers’ list headed by the Imam of Mecca, Abdul Rahman al-Sudais. A bigoted proponent of jihad, the imam has called for the annihilation of Jews as ‘infidels, falsifiers of words, calf worshippers, prophet murderers, deniers of prophecies … the scum of the human race, accursed by Allah, who turned them into apes and pigs’.

“Unlike Geert Wilders’s recent visit to Australia, which attracted extensive, critical coverage from the ABC and other media, with widespread condemnation of the controversial Dutch politician for ‘extremism’ and ‘hate’ speech, the Islamic Peace Conference has received little scrutiny outside this newspaper and the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt. The imbalance highlights peculiar news values across some sections of the media. While many disagree with Mr Wilders’s opposition to large-scale Islamic immigration in Europe, he is more moderate and speaks in milder terms than the aggressive rhetoric brandished by some of those mooted as possible speakers at the Melbourne conference.”

And now, just days before the conference is supposed to open, things are a bit up in the air, to say the least. It seems that the organisers are having all sorts of problems – which is fine by me. Their 1,000 organisers did not materialise, most of the featured overseas speakers seem not to be coming, registrations are way down, and barely a quarter of their booths have been rented out.

It seems to be a bit of a flop in other words – hopefully a huge money-losing flop at that. A number of us have been monitoring all this and active in various strategies, but several individuals deserve special recognition here. However given the touchy nature of the religion of peace, I can’t share their names. But much of what follows comes from these few individuals who have been deeply involved in all this from day one.

A notice placed on the web last week confirms the non-attendance of Sheikh Al-Sudais from Saudi Arabia. In fact, it brands organiser Waseem Razvi “a liar” and “money looter” who is interested in “cheap personal publicity” and “playing with the innocent hearts of Islamic population”. He has taken “hundreds and thousands of dollars” from Australian Muslims in al-Sudais’ name through false advertising and may be under investigation by ASIC (Australian Securities and Investment Commission).

A second blog calls on the ICV (Islamic Council of Victoria) to make a statement about the “shame” that Razvi has brought on the whole Muslim community by exposing Al-Sudais to negative public scrutiny. The Muslim community is rapidly deserting Razvi, the Islamic Research and Educational Academy (IREA) and the Peace Conference. So apparently are its sponsors.

IREA advertising no longer lists any corporate sponsors for this event. Those that were listed earlier on are no longer found on IREA advertising. One can only assume that they have pulled their sponsorship. And some of the overseas speakers may not have been granted visas. A similar Peace Conference in December 2012 organised by IREA’s mother organisation in India was cancelled just a week before its scheduled start when all the overseas speakers were denied visas by the Indian government.

Not only are the sponsors pulling out, but to make matters worse, of the 1,000 volunteer missionaries asked to come and help out, only 300 attended the last training meeting on Saturday. After Mr Ravzi allegedly descended into cursing and screaming at them, a number of the remaining volunteers are said to have left the training event in bewilderment and disgust.

As to the ICV, one has to wonder how it can claim to be moderate, when it is promoting this event. A news report yesterday said this: “Victoria’s peak Islamic body has defended a controversial Muslim conference to be held in Melbourne this weekend. The Islamic Council of Victoria is disappointed with the reaction of politicians and other commentators to the Australian Islamic Peace Conference to be staged at Melbourne Showgrounds. Last week, state Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras warned organisers they could face prosecution if racial and religious vilification laws were broken.”

Moreover, this is billed as a “peace” conference which is open to those of other faiths. Indeed, it bills itself as an interfaith event. So why is it not allowing Christian groups to rent a stall? Some of us have actually rented several booths, but were later told we could not have them.

Some Christians who had approval to hire a stall giving away Bibles at the conference have had this approval withdrawn. The Christians, from various churches around Melbourne, had been offered a 6 x 3 metre stall for $600.  IREA contacted them recently and said that the Bible stall could not go ahead because it would be “unsafe”.

Unsafe? But this is the religion of peace! How can it be unsafe for Christians when they are surrounded by all these peaceful Muslims? The Christians were told that, due to expected anti-Islamic protests outside the Showgrounds, IREA ‘could not guarantee their safety.’ An IREA spokesman said he was concerned about radical elements among the Muslim attendees “taking it out” on the Christians.

He also said that IREA security personnel “could not protect the Christians”. IREA claimed they had consulted Victoria Police about security and had come to this decision. Another Christian group was told last night that all the stalls had been allocated and there was no room left. But according to the IREA website, there are over 200 stalls available, but their stall map shows that only 44 stalls have been hired so far.

The Conference is being advertised as an interfaith event which “welcomes people of all faiths.” Although “Interfaith dialog” is listed as a Conference activity, no names of non-Muslims have been given or program details released. At an earlier taped planning meeting, IREA President Waseem Razvi designated interfaith as a means of dawah or Islamic propagation. He said: “We need to have interfaith, multifaith and debates with the non-Muslim community to engage them, and to bring them over to Islam.”

Imam Riad Galil, the president of the Jewish Muslim Christian Association, an interfaith advocacy group, has expressed deep concern about this event. And the Jewish Christian Muslim Association of Australia has also raised its worries about the weekend conference.

All in all, this thing seems to be going from bad to worse – which is terrific news indeed. We have been urging people far and wide to pray like mad about this conference, and the waves of intercessory prayer seem to be having a real effect.

While it looks like we will not be able to share the message of Jesus Christ inside the venue, there are expected to be outside protests from various groups – mostly non-Christian groups I understand. As the media loves controversy, that could prove to be an explosive situation.

Keep praying folks. Between a lot of movements behind the scenes, and all your prayers, it seems like things are really getting out of hand for these organisers. And that’s fine by me.

www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/islamic-council-defends-planned-muslim-peace-conference/story-e6frf7kx-1226596676650

www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/peace-talkfest-needs-scrutiny/story-e6frg71x-1226596722460

[1310 words]

They will be coming to something quite different. It is all about one thing: Islamic dawah. This is the Arabic term for mission, evangelism, or proselytism – propagation for Islam in other words. It is all one-way traffic. It is an Islamic propaganda event designed to conceal the real nature of Islam, and bring many more infidels into submission to Allah.

Indeed, if it was really a “peace conference” then why does it feature so many speakers who can hardly be said to support peace? Invited hardcore clerics and leaders have been quite open about their desire to see all Jews annihilated, women beaten into submission, and jihad enacted.

It is really most frightening just who is being allowed into this country to speak at the event. And the fact that they seem to have such easy entry into our nation shows what a complete bunch of hypocrites we have in the Gillard Government. They did everything they could to prevent a Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, from coming here to warn about the threats of Islam, yet they welcome in these firebrand clerics with arms wide open.

Consider the organiser of the conference, Waseem Razvi. He has boldly declared his support of sharia law here, and last year he said this: “You don’t have to try to convince by being compromising on Islam … you don’t have to say that Islam is all about peace, ‘no we don’t fight, we are not violent.’

“You know, the Prophet fought 30 wars … yes, we are not non-violent, we are violent but when there is a need for it. We are battles people. We are not like Buddhists wearing an orange dress and always saying we want peace, and you never get your own country. No, we fight for our country. We have in Islam Jihad, yes, but we will never do terrorism. Yes Jihad is very Islamic, so you don’t have to retreat from that.”

So nothing wrong with a bit of violence and jihad to spread the faith. And he has admitted that spreading the faith is exactly what this conference will be all about. He said this: “Comparative religion is our tool which we use to convey the message of Islam…we want to make Islam the fastest growing religion [in Australia] in the next five years …we need to have interfaith, multifaith and debates with the non-Muslim community to engage them, and to bring them over to Islam…

“We don’t accept every religion. We are there to convey the message that Islam is the only right religion …We want the dawah to reach the authorities. So unless we invite them for an event like this, if you call the Prime Minister to the Islamic centre or the mosque, it’s not going to happen, so we need to have a bigger event … so we can convey the message to them…The title of the conference is Australian Islamic Peace conference… but the main purpose of the entire conference is dawah. So most of our topics will be revolving around dawah.”

Did you get that folks? He emphasised, “the main purpose of the entire conference is dawah.” And note also what he said about interfaith meetings: “we need to have interfaith, multifaith and debates with the non-Muslim community to engage them, and to bring them over to Islam”.

What is the purpose of these meetings? To just all get along? To bring about world peace? To show that all religions are the same? To highlight all the common ground we have? That is what very gullible and naive Westerners and Christians think it means, but the organiser has very nicely spilled the beans for us. He wants this meeting, and all others like it, for only one purpose: “to bring them over to Islam”.

Whenever you hear the word “interfaith” you should run for the hills. But I discuss this in more details elsewhere:

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2006/09/19/right-and-wrong-interfaith-dialogue/

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/11/30/peace-on-earth-and-interfaith-dialogue/

www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/11/19/why-can%E2%80%99t-they-all-just-get-along/

And consider some of the other invitees. Razvi said “the chief guest that we have is Abdul Rahman Al-Sudays, the imam of Mecca”. So just who is he? A rabid anti-Semite and Bin Laden supporter. Islamic expert Mark Durie says this about him: he “has called for annihilation of the Jews, referring to them as ‘the scum of the human race, rats of the world, violators of pacts and agreements, murderers of the prophets, and grandsons of apes and pigs’.”

Andrew Bolt has discussed some of the other invitees: “In a recorded speech in December, Razvi said one of the speakers he had invited for the conference was Indian sheikh Zakir Naik,’my boss’s boss’, who has a very different line on terrorism. A YouTube clip shows Naik declaring: ‘If (late terrorist chief Osama bin Laden) is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him.’

“He adds: ‘Every Muslim should be a terrorist.’ Razvi talks big, and none of the overseas speakers he claimed in December he had asked is yet listed in the conference schedule. But his wish list suggests the Islam he wants to push.

“Another invited speaker is Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem, who says ‘homosexuality is an abnormality’ to be punished by death. He says polygamy is allowed, genital mutilation of girls ‘recommended’, and wives refusing their husbands sex ‘a sin’. Leaving Islam ‘is apostasy and it is punishable by death in an Islamic society’.”

And again: “Another speaker, Abu Hamza, head of the Islamic Information Services Network of Australasia also says women ‘must respond’ if their husbands want sex and could be beaten ‘to shape them up’. ‘Don’t hit your wife,’ Hamza says on YouTube, before instructing men to do so in an Islamic way as a ‘last resort’ without causing bruising or bleeding: ‘The beating the prophet Mohammed showed is like the toothbrush’.”

That’s a pretty impressive list of speakers – and those are only some of the folks invited to speak. In the light of all this, the words of Mark Durie are worth citing here: “But for me there are even bigger questions. Why are politicians, journalists and Jewish leaders now demonising Geert Wilders for warning against exactly the ideology of Islam as preached by many speakers at this conference?

“Why do they pretend Wilders has misrepresented Islam when the very things he describes are preached openly? Why are they silent over or even complicit in attempts to silence or frighten Wilders – who has not advocated violence – yet apparently happy that true hate-preachers who preach death for gays, Jews and enemies of Islam may speak freely in this country? Why the hypocrisy? Why the fear?”

In sum, the Islamic Peace Conference is nothing of the sort, and that for three reasons. Peace in Islamic thought means having everyone in submission to Allah. Peace can only happen when there are no infidels left, or they have all become dhimmies.

And dawah is what this conference is really all about. They have made that perfectly clear. Finally, this is also about another important Islamic term, taqiyya. This Arabic word has to do with deception and dissimulation. In Islamic thought it is quite acceptable to deceive one’s enemies, even lie to them, to gain an advantage.

We are seeing that occur here big time. But we have been warned. This conference is about getting all Australians to submit, and getting Australia to come under sharia law. This is just not going to happen – at least not under my watch.

www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/cowardly-critics-of-geert-wilders-shame-our-country/story-e6frfhqf-1226584547791

blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_wilders_is_wrong_explain_this_conference/

markdurie.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/hatred-sounds-sweeter-in-arabic.html

www.jewishnews.net.au/anger-over-hate-speech-imam/28786

www.theage.com.au/national/fiery-imam-invited-to-speak-here-20121211-2b7td.html

[1282 words]

Here is how one news report begins the story: “A Christian girl with Down’s Syndrome has been arrested on blasphemy charges in Pakistan, accused of burning pages inscribed with verses from the Koran. Police arrested Rimsha, who is recognised by a single name, on Thursday after she was reported holding in public burnt pages which had Islamic text and Koranic verses on them, a police official told AFP.

“A conviction for blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. The official said that the girl, who he described as being in her teens, was taken to a police station in the capital Islamabad, where she has been detained since. Angry Muslim protesters held rallies demanding she be punished, said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.”

Or consider the horrific beheading of a Christian in Tunisia, another country that was supposed to have benefited from the Arab Spring. Yeah right, try telling Christians there about how much better things are. Oh, and the mob was happily chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they slit the Christian’s throat.

The sad thing is, these are not just isolated incidents. All over the Muslim world Christians are being persecuted, attacked and killed. And an even sadder truth is this: the West, and even so many Christians in the West, don’t seem to be concerned about this at all, or actually doing anything about this.

Indeed, why does it take an article in the secular Wall Street Journal for example, to raise this issue? A recent piece found there made an impassioned plea for standing with our persecuted brethren overseas. It begins: “This month the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani marked his 1,000th day of incarceration in Lakan, a notorious prison in northern Iran. Charged with the crime of apostasy, Mr. Nadarkhani faces a death sentence for refusing to recant the Christian faith he embraced as a child. He embodies piety and represents millions more suffering from repression—but his story is barely known.

“Mr. Nadarkhani’s courage and the tenacity of his supporters, many of them ordinary churchgoers who have crowded Twitter and other social media to alert the world to his plight, bring to mind the great human-rights campaigns of recent years: the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or the movement to assist Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate from behind the Iron Curtain. As Nelson Mandela represented the opposition to South African racism, and Anatoly Sharansky exemplified the just demands of Soviet Jews, so Mr. Nadarkhani symbolizes the emergency that church leaders say is facing 100 million Christians around the world.

“Yet Mr. Nadarkhani has almost none of the name recognition that Messrs. Mandela and Sharansky had. Despite the increasing ferocity with which Christians are targeted—church bombings in Nigeria, discrimination in Egypt (where Christians have been imprisoned for building or repairing churches), beheadings in Somalia—Americans remain largely unaware of how bad the situation has become, particularly in the Islamic world and in communist countries like China and North Korea.

“The principal reason public opinion hasn’t been galvanized around the persecution of Christians is that the various church leaderships either ignore or dance around the issue. If churches don’t speak up forcefully, then it is unrealistic to expect the world’s democratic governments to do the same.”

So, what to do? “To begin with, they need to shake off the aura of naivete that clouds their testimony regarding persecution. Throughout the dark years of the Soviet Union’s existence, Orthodox bishops despaired at the readiness of outsiders to take at face value their assurances—offered with a nervous eye on the reaction of the authorities—that life was really not that bad. We discern a similar tendency today with regard to the Islamic world.

“Christian leaders in Muslim countries are concerned with surviving from one day to the next. We can help them not by engaging in bland dialogues but by compelling those who rule them to respect their right to worship, as well as their desire to stem the flood of Christians fleeing oppression for safer havens elsewhere.

“The church also needs to press the reset button on its priorities. It is a bitter irony that Israel, the one country in the Middle East where Christians live in freedom, is the main focus of church opprobrium.”

Another article on this has also recently appeared, and is worth noting. Says Bill Warner, “If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world. However, there is a place where you can go to escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can just go to church.

“For example, Christians were killed this week in Nigeria. Nothing out of the ordinary – indeed, in the world of Christian persecution, this is routine. And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is…wait for it…complete silence. Not a mention or reference to it, or to the brutality against Christians that happens almost every day in the Islamic world.

“This is not a passive silence, because if you try to change it, you will fail. The silence is an active, working conspiracy that goes throughout nearly all of Christendom.” Indeed, we sit around seeking to have dialogue with those who have openly declared their intent to enslave us, or kill us.

“Even worse than the silent ministers are those who go to ‘interfaith dialogs’ and smile while the Muslims assert religious and political dominance over them. The nice, oh so nice Christians and Jews show up to tie, while the Muslims are there to win, and they do.

“Christians need to follow the example of Jesus and willingly suffer the condemnation by the Establishment and fight against the political Islam that murders Christians. Said another way, Christians should demonstrate courage and sacrifice to support their cruelly murdered brothers and sisters.

“We cannot defeat political Islam until we get Christian boots on the ground. Do the math. The pulpits must become a source of courage and knowledge and stand up for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others who suffer under Islam’s persecution today and who have suffered for the last 1,400 years. It isn’t just about religion; it is about the survival of our civilization.”

Yes quite so. Political Islam seeks to force everyone to submit to Allah and sharia law. All opposition will be swiftly dealt with. Do we care about this? Do we intend to do something about this? Or will it just be more business as usual?

news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8518809/downs-syndrome-girl-accused-of-blasphemy

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/06/arab-spring-muslims-behead-christian-man-in-tunisia-while-reciting-anti-christian-islamic-prayer/

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577531031387938506.html

www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/the_silence_of_the_pulpits.html

[1146 words]

The Baha’is first observed this day on January 15, 1950, and it has been progressing since then. Before looking more closely at the day, let me offer just a very quick overview of Baha’i. Calling itself the world’s newest religion, it seeks to bring all religions and all humanity together in one big melting pot.

It is a monotheistic system which argues that all religions come from God, who has sent various messengers over the centuries, culminating in Baha’u’llah, a 19th century Persian. He is the latest and greatest revelation of God, meant to unite all of humanity and all religion. But I will need to write a separate article on this faith some other time.

WRD gives us more of the same. Here is what its homepage states: “The aim of our website is to foster the establishment of interfaith understanding and harmony by emphasizing the common denominators underlying all religions. Mankind, which has stemmed from one origin, must now strive towards the reconciliation of that which has been split up. Human unity and true equality depend not on past origins, but on future goals, on what we are becoming and whither we are going. The prime cause of age-old conflict between man and man has been the absence of one ethical belief, a single spiritual standard – one moral code.

“The history of man’s cultures and civilizations is the history of his religions. Nothing has such an integrating effect as the bond of common Faith. The history of religion shows that all religions had this unifying power – the power to instill in the hearts and minds of their adherents the fundamental verities, the vital spiritual standards, and thus establish a unity of conscience for motivating man towards founding great cultures and civilizations.

“Thus, through various events, dedicated towards encouraging the leaders and followers of every religion to acknowledge the similarities in each of our sacred Faiths, a unified approach to the changes that confront humanity can be agreed upon and then applied on an ever-expanding scale to permeate the very psyche of mankind, so that it can be made to see the whole earth as a single country and humanity its citizenry.”

There you have it folks: a global religion and a global world government. One-worldism has always been around of course, and this is just the latest hard religious push for it. Indeed, while the concept might sound appealing, the one who should know best about all this is not at all too thrilled.

God himself forcefully took steps way back in mankind’s early history when humanity sought to establish a global religious and political body. Thus he very decisively squashed the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). More such attempts have been made, and will be made by mankind in rebellion against God, as we read about in the book of Revelation.

Another important thing to note about this WRD document is the total absence of the concept of truth. And that is for good reason. If there is such a thing as absolute truth, and the law of noncontradiction applies, then of course there can never be any such thing as world religions living together in complete harmony.

That would be like claiming that Jews and Nazis can exist in complete unity and harmony. Complete unity will never exist in a fallen world as long as competing truth claims are being made. Truth must go missing in any attempt at religious syncretism and harmonisation. Indeed, the very concept of unique truth claims would of course undermine such a utopian and naive goal.

Anyone who has studied the world religions even a little will know that the most accurate thing to say about them is how much they differ from each other, not how much they are alike. Simply compare and contrast the core teachings of Christianity with the core teachings of Islam for example.

The very heart of the Christian belief is that Jesus is God’s son, that he died on a cross for our sins and then rose again. Islam denies all of this in no uncertain terms. Thus if Islam is true, Christianity cannot possible be true. And if Christianity is true, then Islam cannot possibly be true.

It is that simple, and the most basic principles of logic tell us this must be so. The law of noncontradiction states, as Aristotle put it, that “one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time”. That is, no two contradictory statements can both be true at the same time and in the same sense.

Thus either Jesus is the Son of God or he is not. Either he did die on a cross and rise again, or he did not. There is no other way around this. Thus by the very standards of truth and logic, the major aims and goals of WRD are unrealistic and unachievable.

But of course because we live in postmodern times where absolute truth has been rejected big time, such an observance seems to be just peachy keen. Plenty of misguided folks will get on board with this, including plenty of naïve and biblically-illiterate Christians.

Indeed, we have a perfect example of this in today’s press. True to form, the Christophobic Melbourne Age happily ran an opinion piece on all this. A Sydney academic penned a rather muddled piece entitled, “Here’s another golden rule: let’s look at what we have in common”. And she even drags in WRD.

There are plenty of problems with her piece, but let me just mention two of them. She informs us, “Tomorrow is World Religion Day. It arrives with a benign intention: to draw our attention to the best of what religions share. This neither assumes nor hopes that all religions are the same. Arising in differing historical moments, and expressive of different mores and stages of spiritual development, how could they be the same?”

But she is simply wrong here. The goal of both Baha’i and WRD is to get all people to recognise that at the end of the day we are all part of one big religious family, and to understand that, we must embrace the latest revelation of God as given us in the teachings of Baha’u’llah.

He gets the last word obviously. He is said to be the latest and therefore most authoritative revelation from God. So what happens if another  revelation of God comes on the scene, giving us yet another, newer and different message? Will Baha’is insist that he is wrong? But how can they given their religious syncretism and epistemological relativism?

Indeed, their evolutionary view of religious progress, culminating in this Persian prophet, smacks a bit of religious arrogance and exclusivism. Our academic misses this, and she also misses the most important reason why religions are different: the ol’ T word again.

Sure religions have had differing historical beginnings and the like, but the number one reason the religions differ so greatly is simple: they make radically conflicting truth claims. They differ because they are different – big time. Hinduism claims there may be as many as 330 million gods. Buddhists don’t even have to believe in God, while Jews and Muslims insist that there is only one God. Sorry folks, but they can’t all be right.

Finally, consider this remark by the NSW academic: “The current Dalai Lama is famous for saying that his religion is kindness. He’s not the only one. Jesus of Nazareth, in whose name so much harm as well as immeasurable good has been done, was clear: ‘Love one another’.”

Sorry, but by mangling a major teaching of Jesus, you distort and corrupt his entire message. While Jesus did tell his disciples in John 13 to love one another, the main summary statement of his teaching is found in the three Synoptic gospels when asked what the greatest commandment was.

He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind  and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Thus we have a two-fold command, and the order is absolutely crucial. The assumption here, as throughout Scripture, is that the latter can only be achieved by means of the former.

Unless one first loves God, and loves him on his own terms, one will not be able to love others as they ought to be loved. The Ten Commandments of course display this same priority of order: the first four Commandments are God-ward, followed by six commandments which are toward others.

Unless we are in right relationship with God, it will be impossible to properly love others. And as Jesus made crystal clear, the only way we can love and serve God is through him. Jesus is the only door to God, and he is the only mediator between God and man.

He insisted that all others are in fact false shepherds and wolves in sheep’s clothing. These are arrogant, radically exclusive, and highly divisive claims to make, if you think all religions are the same and all roads lead to God. So we are back to the issue of truth and logic.

If Jesus meant what he said, then all religions are not of God and other religious leaders are not the true path to God. Only Jesus is, not Muhammad, or Baha’u’llah. When Jesus forthrightly claimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me,” he was not engaging in postmodern relativism or religious syncretism.

He was making an exclusive truth claim and he expected his hearers to understand him that way. Thus Jesus would never approve of something like WRD, nor would he endorse the Baha’i faith. Instead he would say, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. . . .Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ, and will deceive many’” (Matt 7:15; 24:4-5).

www.worldreligionday.org/about-us/origin

www.worldreligionday.org/

www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/heres-another-golden-rule-lets-look-at-what-we-have-in-common-20120113-1pzet.html

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But one counter-example has just appeared, so I guess I was wrong. It seems there is hope yet. It appears that there is a Melbourne Council which is actually using tax monies to fund Christian outreach and evangelism. So I guess the secular crusade against Christianity is not so bad after all. Indeed, read for yourself what the Darebin Council is advertising:

“Darebin Christians Reaching Out – Project Officer…
An opportunity exists within the Community Planning Partnerships and Performance Department for a motivated Project Officer. This is a temporary, full-time (38 hrs per week) position….
You will be responsible for implementing the Jesus Peace – Darebin’s Christian Reaching Out project, funded by the Federal Attorney General’s department.
You will be responsible for:
• Working in partnership with the Christian Society of Victoria to strengthen its role and effectiveness in organising events, dealing with the media, resolving conflicts, and managing stakeholders
• Developing and implementing activities that assist the Christian Society of Victoria to dispel myths and misconceptions about Christianity and Christians
• Organising a series of seminars and events around interfaith and intercultural dialogue targeting community members to learn about Christianity and its practices.”

Well, I guess there is hope after all for our secular society that the state and Christianity can peacefully co-exist and work together. I guess the wall of separation between church and state is not as bad as I had previously thought. Wow, that is such a relief…

Oops…

Oh, sorry, I just went back and reread that ad, and I actually made a minor mistake. All of the above information is completely true, but I misread ‘Islam’ for ‘Christianity’, and ‘Muslim’ for ‘Christian’. Hey, my mistake. So simply replace every Christian term in that ad with a Muslim term, and you will in fact have the real story.

So the Darebin Council is actually funding an evangelistic outreach with our tax dollars, but it is not Christian outreach, but Muslim dawah (mission). The Islamic Council of Victoria will get our big bucks, and you and I will be happily subsidising Islamic outreach in Melbourne and beyond. Aren’t you glad to know your tax dollars are going to such a vital cause?

Gee, for a moment there a few of you thought a ghastly thing was occurring: public monies being spent on Christian evangelism. Well, I am so glad I discovered my mistake. We can all now rest assured that Christianity will receive not one penny of taxpayers’ money. The strict separation of church and state will be fiercely maintained and enforced.

At least when it comes to Christianity. Evidently when it comes to Islam, our secular lefty Councils (and Federal Government) have absolutely no problem with cosy cooperation. I guess in our multiculti society, Christians dare not raise their heads in public, but we can all subsidise Islamic outreach, bringing mosque and state into real close alignment.

It is such a relief knowing that our vigilant secularists have not slipped up here. They are still fully committed to maintaining their policy of ugly anti-Christian bigotry. Maybe if Christians just changed their names to Muslims, they too could be the recipient of all this government help and promotion, and all those cool tax dollars.

blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/taxpayers_pay_for_a_muslim_missionary/

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