Lynn Green

Tag: Middle East

  • Iran

    Iran

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    QUESTION:  How are John the Baptist and the Ayatollah Khomeini alike?

    I talked to a friend from Iran today; he had just returned from that region and he told me some amazing facts and stories.  But first, a little background.

    I first drove across Iran in 1970 and it impressed me as being much better developed and generally a more advanced civilisation than either Turkey to the west or especially Afghanistan to the east.  The roads were good; there were attractive public places,; new buildings and the people were fashionably dressed.

    What I didn’t see was the seething unrest and hatred for the Shah and SAVAK, his secret police (with 60,000 employees!) who had tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens.  That intense hatred was also aimed at the countries that put the Shah in power.  (This is where Brits and Americans hang their heads.)

    America and Great Britain conspired together in 1953 to assassinate the elected Prime Minister of Iran, who wanted to charge more money for Iranian oil.  so they could replace him with a sympathetic ruler who would not demand higher royalties.  The PM was duly assassinated and Shah (or King) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed.

    Towards the end of his reign, he also wanted more money from American and British oil companies, so support for him was withdrawn and an Islamic Revolution filled the vacuum.  The Ayatollah Khomeini arrived from Paris to a vast crowd of rapturous followers in 1979 and immediately declared that Iran was henceforth an Islamic Republic.

    The promised joy, peace and prosperity never materialized and the people of Iran gradually realised that they had exchanged one tyrannical system for another.  Instead of SAVAK, they had religious police and an extensive network of informers linked together via the mosques. Sharia law did not produce the promised liberation.

    Though Khomeini died in 1989, his successor, the Ayatollah Khamenei has continued the tradition of the religious “Supreme Ruler”, and discontent has saturated Iran.

    “What now?”

    So, back to my conversation earlier today:   My friend visited bordering nations where Iranian followers of Jesus come steadily and in large numbers for Bible training.  There are millions of Iranian exiles around the world and where ever they are, there are Iranian churches.  So, many are coming to faith, but then they say, “What now?”  We are working to get discipleship training and Bible knowledge to them.

    One of the men my friend met with, in a country near Iran, oversees three to four thousand underground churches in Iran.  He says what they all say.  “The Islamic Republic has shown them the true nature of Islam and they want nothing to do with it.”  He said that the mosques that used to be overflowing with young people are now deserted.  His estimate is that about 70% of the mosques have no young people at all.

    As you would expect, though, not all of them are coming to faith in Jesus.  Atheism is popular and even Satanism has become evident.  Here it is important to remember one of the clearest commandments Jesus gave us.  “The harvest is ripe, but the labourers are few.  So, pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send more labourers!”

    To illustrate the nature of the ripe harvest, my friend mentioned today that just a few years ago, when he talked to Iranians about Jesus, they would typically ask questions like:  “Mohammed came after Jesus, so how can you say he was wrong and Jesus was right?”  Or they might state, “We know that the early Christians changed the stories to make Jesus out to be God, but he never claimed that, so how can you believe the Bible?”  Now, he said, they never mention those objections; they just want to know more.

    So, how are John and Khomeini alike?  They both “prepared the way of the Lord”.  John brought a message which demanded a change of heart from legalistic religion to the Lordship of Jesus. The Ayatollah showed the people of Iran how ugly a legalistic and coercive religious system can be.  Then Jesus came.

    Lynn Green.

     

  • Will We miss the harvest?

    Will We miss the harvest?

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    That is a quote from my friend who works with Syrian refugees in Northern Iraq.  Here is the rest of it.

    “Working with refugees near Erbil: Went to a neighborhood today where Syrian refugees live, not in a camp. First got to go to a school some of the refugee believers have started for the kids because they’re not allowed in school locally. Did some distribution toys and warm winter hats for them. After that we did house visits.

    “One guy had had a dream of jesus and we got to pray for him and he felt heat through his body. 

    Another guy at the second house visit was super open, asked us why we came from so far, was super hungry, shared the whole gospel with him. He was so fed up with Islam. Also, he had had a dream last night of a white dove coming down (!!!!). He asked us why our faces were shining so bright. We prayed for him three times healing. First time he straightened up and his back popped in place and his back was healed. Second time was for his knee but didn’t fully heal. I felt to go over and kneel before him and pray for his knee laying on hands and blowing on his knees “the breathe of god, the life of god” and as a I prayed I felt something move in his knee and he was healed on the spot and the translator was super surprised. I was able to tell him how jesus was affirmed by the father as a son when he was baptized and I spoke over him how the father also speaks words of adoption and sonship over him.

    “I think God is saying that the prayers for openness in the Muslim world are being answered, but if nobody goes, we will miss the harvest.”

    Our teams and many others are still working to serve refugees, but there in Northern Iraq there is both a great need and opportunity for people to work on development.  It seems people are accepting that they will not go home in the foreseeable future, so they are starting their own schools, trying to develop businesses or find jobs and find houses rather than tents.  While there is still a need for hundreds or even thousands of short-term workers, they cannot be effective unless there are scores of longer-term workers who will plug into the daily organisational responsibilities.

    Some of those workers need to have training and wisdom in community development.  But the opportunities are unprecedented.   For example, “one guy had a dream about Jesus, so we got to explain and pray for him.  When we did, he felt heat through his whole body.  At the very next house, a man was clearly fed up with Islam, and wide open to know about Jesus.

    “He was so hungry;  we shared the whole Gospel with him.  He had a dream last night of a white dove coming down.  Then he asked us why our faces were shining so bright.   We prayed for him three different times for healing.  The first time he straightened up and his back (which was out of alignment and very sore) popped and was healed.  The second time was for his knee.  It was not completely better, so I felt to go over, kneel before him, lay hands on his knee and pray again.  Then I felt to proclaim over his knee the breath of God, the life of God, and I breathed on his knee.  As I did so I felt something move and he was healed on the spot.”

    One further testimony.  “In both of those houses families had beautiful birds as pets, but the birds don’t sing that much.  However, they said that when we walked in, the birds started singing beautifully, more than usual.  That happened in both homes and the people noted it.”

    I noted that amongst many young people today there is a great hunger to see the power of God in signs and wonders.  There is no doubt that the Holy Spirit works signs and wonders in places where the Gospel is first being proclaimed.

    If you want to see more of God’s power, there is room for you in Northern Iraq.  Our teams there report that it is safe, and long-term work is possible.

     

  • Seismic Shifts in the Middle East

    Seismic Shifts in the Middle East

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    Even though I have been travelling to the Middle East since the 1970s and have watched many changes taking place, I am astonished at the pace of change in the last few years.  I have been in the Gulf States and Egypt the past couple of weeks and have come back with the assurance that the prayers of countless intercessors are being answered  to a degree that I could not have  imagined.

    In Dubai I was with the YWAM family who are scattered around the Gulf area.  They are Chinese, Egyptians, Iraqis, Filipinos, Indians, Afghans, Brazilians, Germans, Danes, Brits, Americans, and so on.  I was so encouraged by the unity of believers in this part of the world, which is the heart of Islam, and by the number of traditional Christians who have become genuine followers of Jesus, as well as those who have been called from all over the world to minister in the Middle East.

    I was particularly surprised to meet Afghan workers. They were a couple who came to Christ as a result of the living witness of a Korean family in Kabul. Before they were married, the young man followed Jesus but his fiancée hadn’t decided to do so at the time.  Their lives were soon under threat by the Taliban who gave notice that they were going to bomb their home. Three times they had to leave their house at short notice, moving to a new location and leaving everything behind.  Finally this dear young woman, mother of three little girls, thought she would put God to the test, so she prayed for protection as a Muslim and saw no change.  Then she prayed for protection in the name of Jesus.  In a dream that night she saw her house surrounded by huge angels and knew that she was safe.  In the long run they felt that they should go to another country.  So miraculous provision and visas opened to them in the Gulf area and they are now discipling many others from Afghan, Persian and Tajik backgrounds.  One of the other leaders there says he has rarely seen anyone as fruitful as this young couple.  Again, this far exceeded my expectations.  When I was first in Kabul in 1970, the only known believers were a handful of blind people.  (The government did not object to a Christian helping the blind because they were social outcasts.)

    One of the most memorable moments in this trip was when an Egyptian leader said, “We have been praying for revival and God sent us ISIS.”  That may sound quite strange to many, but the rise of extreme Islam and the revelation of its cruelty and inhumanity has been a major reason for disillusionment and a hunger for change.  No one can accurately estimate the number of people who have turned to Christ in the last few years.  Some people would say millions; others would say no, it’s more like hundreds of thousands. But any figure needs to be seen in context—there were almost no Muslims deciding to follow Jesus until about twenty years ago.

    I could tell you many exciting stories like the South American who is a football coach in one of the least reached nations where visas are very hard to get, but the government has welcomed him with open arms.  There were so many encouragements during my days there!  Amongst them was the fact that many of the workers are under the age of 30 and are putting roots down for the long term.  Several of them have just finished two years of language school.  I was impressed with their commitment but also with the bubbling life that was evidenced amongst them.

    I had a little more than a day at home before I left again, this time for Egypt.  I have been to the Western Desert many times and I am always uplifted by the experience because, for more than 17 centuries it has been one of the world’s great spiritual centres.  Monks from the Western Desert took the gospel to Ireland.  Then, in the dark ages, monks in Ireland and Egypt kept the light of the gospel alive.

    There were understandable security implications for people from so many nations gathering there, even though great efforts were made to keep the numbers down.  When it was first planned, we learned that the Chinese wanted to bring 4000 and the Egyptians figured as many as 12,000 would come if the gathering were open.   When the security implications were considered, we made the event available by invitation only.  As a result, we were only about 1,000.  (But we believe more open events lie ahead.)  Around 3-400 of the thousand were Chinese, then about 300 Egyptians with the remainder coming from around 30 other nations.  The theme was the Isaiah 19 highway:

    23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing[b] on the earth. 25 The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

    As usual with these events, it is very hard to describe the significance of it.  I will do my best to explain that below.  What anyone would have experienced is an almost unique sense of family love between believers from so many different nations.  That led to a clear sense of spiritual authority for proclaiming that the Egypt to Assyria highway is open!

    I will try to explain a little more clearly:

    It is rare for followers of Jesus to gather from so many nations with only one purpose—to worship God together and then believe and obey anything he says.  When we do that, it seems that His priority is to prepare the Church, the Bride of Christ.  He does that by leading us to tear down the walls that divide us.  Nationality, race, language, culture and religious traditions all serve to separate us; but all those become insignificant when we focus on Him.  A powerful sense of love pervades and the usual gulfs between us disappear.  In that atmosphere, we are able to talk about sensitive subjects, such as Jews and the land of Israel, different views of the second coming of Jesus and different perspectives on current politics and events.  But the love and unity prevail even when we have different opinions on these important subjects.

    We must all be familiar with what Jesus said to his disciples, “This is how everybody will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other.”  I have always understood that to apply to us as individuals and I am sure it does.  But recently I realized it could equally apply to nations or races or any groups that are traditionally divided against one another.  When Koreans, Chinese and Japanese believers love one another, it is a powerful demonstration that the good news about Jesus is supernatural and a powerful force for good.  The same would be true between Germans and French and British, or Israelis and Arabs.  I am convinced that such love has spiritual power.

    A lot has been said about spiritual warfare and the Ephesians passage is well known:

    “The warfare we’re engaged in, you see, isn’t against flesh and blood.  It’s against the leaders, against the authorities, against the powers that rule the world in this dark age, against the wicked spiritual elements in the heavenly places.”

    Over the years, we have sought to wage this warfare in different ways.  Sometimes it seemed as if our efforts were futile and missing the mark.  However, when we gather as we did in Egypt (and have done in many other nations over the past five years) we know, beyond doubt that territory is being taken for the Kingdom of God and the “powers that rule this world” are on the run.

    A major factor in this spiritual power is the Chinese.  That part of the Church has been refined through suffering and they have a level of commitment and zeal that is too rare.  In addition, it just seems that God has decided to give them a gift for praying for the birth of new things in the Kingdom.  It is as if they are spiritual midwives.  In these gatherings, they worship will all their hearts and then pray and travail in the Spirit with all their hearts and new ministries or relationships or other breakthroughs occur.  Their spiritual leadership is indispensable and they have made covenant commitments to stand with both Arabs and Jews for the sake of the Kingdom.

    One final important point on this subject:  One of our good friends from Israel said, “The destiny of a nation is to be seen it its redeemed minority”, and Paul wrote that all things will be brought together in Christ.  That cosmic destiny is demonstrated when we worship together and love one another across the usual divides.  When people from different nations, races, social and educational backgrounds find genuine love and unity in Jesus, the King, it gives us a foretaste of the Kingdom to come.

    This has already been long, but I have to mention one more bit of encouragement.  I was visiting a friend whom I have known for about 30 years and, to my amazement, I discovered that he had a friendship with the man who has been announced as the next King of Saudi Arabia.  This Crown Prince has been in the news recently because he paid a world record for a painting—over $450 million for a Da Vinci depiction of Jesus.  That in itself is amazing!  Muslims do not approve of any pictures of people or animals.  Why would he risk the wrath of fellow Muslims?  More importantly, though, was the news I read last month.  Crown Prince Salmon was reported as saying that Saudi Arabia was no longer following strict fundamentalism.  He said they were breaking with their Wahhabi version of Islam and embracing what we would call moderate Islam.  So I asked my friend, “Do you know him well enough to know if this is a sincere change?”  He said, “Yes, I have a warm and growing friendship with him and he means it.”

    Yes, these are seismic shifts.  What will the next few years bring?  I know better than to try to make a prediction, but I am certainly eager to see it unfold!

    Lynn Green.

  • ARE MUSLIMS THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES?

    ARE MUSLIMS THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES?

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    Okay, so I am writing on a subject that has been written on by journalists and academics all over the world.  Still, I think I have some helpful things to say.

    Anyone who knows me knows that I have Muslim friends, have advocated on their behalf, have apologised to Muslims for the atrocities of the Crusades and the way Christianity has misrepresented Jesus, and have pointed out that the extremists do not represent the majority or even a statistically significant minority.  I do not believe that they are a true representation of Islam today.

    However, the Muslim community does have a problem.  They are being represented by that very small minority; at least partly because our press trains the cameras on them and holds the microphones to their mouths.  But it is not all the fault of our press; Muslims have also failed to understand and implement their most important priority in this time of great danger.

    Muslims turned out in their hundreds of thousands in many nations to demonstrate against the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo. At the same time, in the week or so that elapsed between the massacre at the offices of the satirical newspaper and its next edition, a number of horrific and highly offensive events occurred:  Muslim extremists executed, by stoning, women accused of adultery—and videoed it for the world to see.  They threw two men accused of being homosexuals from the top of a building, with a baying crowd watching below.  They cold-heartedly executed more prisoners of the war they initiated and, in at least one case, the executioner was a child.  The Saudi Arabian authorities continued with the weekly instalments of lashes of a cane to the back of a man who dared to criticise Islam and the Saudi Royal Family.  His sentence was prison and 1,000 lashes!

    But there were no demonstrations against any of these acts of terror.

    So what incensed them so much against the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo and the Danish cartoons published a few years ago?  They have a very strong aversion to any depiction of Mohammed.  It is very similar to the Jews and the Old Testament commandment that they should make no image of God.  This is very important to them.  It is a sin as heinous as making an idol was to the Jews.

    I understand that as a Christian.  I was very offended quite a long time ago when play writes and film-makers seemed to be doing their best to offend Christians by depicting Jesus in various degrading ways.  At the time, we had blasphemy laws in the UK, but the “entertainers” seemed to know that they had powerful figures in the establishment on their side so they fought their indictments for blasphemy right up to the highest courts and had the result they had aimed for from the start—the blasphemy laws were struck down.

    I wrote letters, I contacted my elected representative, I signed petitions, but we lost.  Part of me is now okay with that because it is very hard for the law to define what language is acceptable and what is not.  When the law begins to describe what we can say and what we can’t, we are liable to lose important freedoms and to give more power to the state than we should.  Of course, there are some words and subjects that “the powers that be” have decided are currently off limits.

    For example, when I was a child we had a little saying when we were playing a game that needed someone to be “it”.  Eenie meanie, minie mo, catch a ni***r by the toe….  It was all very innocent and actually did not affect our attitudes towards African Americans in our school.  Notice that I can’t write that word now.  (I can write the F-word, which I could not write then, but I would rather not.)  Political correctness changes constantly because….well, that will have to be saved for another blog.

    So, should there be laws against depicting Mohammed?  If so, surely we should reinstate the blasphemy laws that applied to the Christian faith. But, with the benefit of hindsight, I would rather we did not have blasphemy laws, so I don’t want a law against depicting Mohammed.  In the effort to stop offensive speech, we can easily create laws that end up giving away precious freedoms.

    There are, however, many things that we are wise to avoid, even though they are legal.  I do not approve of this current issue of Charlie Hebdo, with its drawing of Mohammed.  It exacerbates already strained relations between Muslims and most citizens of Western nations.  In a civilized society, those who have the privilege of a public voice should not use it to intentionally offend a large segment of society that already feels marginalised.

    But, I said that Muslims have a problem.  Indeed, they do.  Though the majority deeply disapprove of the violence being done in the name of Islam, they have not managed to get their voice heard.  That is partly the fault of the press that we all read, listen to and watch.  But it seems to me that it is also a case of misplaced loyalty.  There is a deep sense of commitment that Muslims should stand with Muslims whenever there are accusations or attacks from outside the Ummah (the global Muslim community).

    But Truth trumps loyalty, at least it should do.  When we are loyal to those whom we know to be wrong, we become promoters of wickedness.

    My hope and prayer is that non-violent Muslims all over the world will face the fact that their failure to get their voice heard is not only too bad, but it is a great threat to them.  I deplore the idea that Western citizens should rise up against Muslims, but voices like mine can’t really accomplish very much.  We need to see hundreds of thousands of Muslims taking to the streets all over the world to demonstrate in condemnation of Islamic State, of Boko Haram, of Al Shabbab, Al Qaeda and all the other splinter groups whose violent depravity, expressed in the name of Allah is causing so much pain, loss and global anxiety.

    When they do, our press must cover it and make it high profile news!