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**Below is the relevant information. To read the entire post of Joel C. Rosenberb the link is HERE.
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Did you know there are at least ten different evangelical Christian satellite TV networks now beaming their programming into the Middle East? Or that evangelical Christian websites in Arabic and Farsi are springing up by the hundreds and being visited by thousands every day, including Saudi sheikhs and Iranian mullahs? Did you know that more than one million Sudanese have become followers of Christ just since 2001. Not despite of the genocide, but because of it.
"People see what real Islam is like and they want Jesus instead," one Sudanese leader told me. Indeed, the church there is growing so fast new pastors are having to be trained in make-shift seminaries held in caves!
I just got back from three months in the Middle East, working on a non-fiction book about the future of the region, including a chapter on the future of Christianity in the lands of its birth. Many in the U.S. and European media erronously report that Christianity is dying in the lands of its birth. But I found just the opposite to be true.
I had the privilege of meeting with some three dozen Arab and Iranian evangelical leaders from all over North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Their message was unanimous: more Muslims are turning to Christ today that at any other point in human history.
It is a story the Western media isn't reporting but the Muslim media is beginning to. Stories are popping up throughout the region quoting Islamic leaders alarmed by the growing number of Muslim converts to Christianity, and the growing influence of evangelicals.
A leading Saudi cleric, appearing on Aljazeera, tried to sound the alarm back in December of 2000. "In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity," warned Sheikh Ahmad Al Qataani to a stunned audience. "Every year, six million Muslims convert to Christianity."
Those numbers are wildly exaggerated, but he's got the trend right. And all of the evangelical leaders I met with say the numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity has only accelerated since 9/11.
In Cairo, I visited the largest "church" in the Middle East. It is held in an enormous cave, just below an Egyptian military facility. Some 10,000 new and growing followers of Christ worship there every weekend. More than 20,000 assembled there in May for an entire day of prayer -- all asking God to turn Muslims to Jesus. What's more, the sermons and worship services were broadcast by SAT-7, the leading evangelical satellite TV network, allowing millions more from Casablanca to Kabul to hear the gospel, some for the first time in their lives.
Perhaps, then, it should not be so surprising that for the first time in the 54 year history of the National Prayer Breakfast, a Muslim King was the keynote speaker. Jordan's King Abdullah II not only gave brief remarks at yesterday's breakfast, he later delivered the main address at the luncheon for some 3,000 clergy members and political leaders. It was an intriguing sign, I believe, of the influence evangelicals are having in the Middle East these days.
"We behold with horror and disgust the recent targeting of Christian churches in Iraq, breaking with a 1,400 year tradition of Christian-Muslim friendship and mutual acceptance amongst the Arabs of the Levant," said King Abdullah. He quoted from Psalm 34:14, saying we must all "Seek peace and pursue it," and the words of Jesus urging all men to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love their neighbors as themselves.
"September Eleventh; the train bombings in Spain; the underground and bus bombings in London -- these outrages have led some to believe in a 'Clash of Civilizations,'" said the King. "Nothing could please extremists more; that is their view of reality. Its falsity is made clear to all by the extremist bombings in the Islamic world -- in Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and more. Almost every day Muslims are killed by extremists in Iraq. Their targets are not Christians, not Jews, not Americans or Europeans, but indigenous innocent Muslims."
"Extremists, of any religion, who teach intolerance and violence, mutilate Scripture to advance their cause," he went on to say. "Together, we have a duty to this generation and many to come, to witness to the positive role of faith in public life. Humbled through that faith, strengthened by that faith; we can, with God's help, create a more just and peaceful future. It begins by standing together -- and upholding the principles transgressed by those who oppose us. As the Bible says: Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)"
When was the last time you heard a Muslim King quote the Apostle Paul?
Aslan really is on the move.
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