BST No.1 The Cross and The Crescent

The book of Galatians in chapter four, I'm reading from the authorized version of scripture, especially because it makes one sentence a little more punchy than does the NIV. Start often when a man is very old, that he's told by God that he and his equally elderly wife are going to become parents. That was the situation with Abraham.

He'd already been so impatient about the matter of not having a son that he had responded positively to his wife's misplaced advice to take her maid and use her as a concubine. And as a result of that union, Abraham had born via the maid, a young child called Ishmael. Later on, God was to grant Abraham and Sarah, however, another son and his name is Isaac.

And if you were to trace the origin of the Christian, the Jewish and the Islamic religion, you would have to bring them back to this significant incident in the Old Testament. For Ishmael becomes the father of the Arabs and it's basically the Arab race that have become the strongest Islamic community in our world. Isaac, well, from his descendants came our Lord Jesus.

And so Isaac is, if you like, responsible for the Judeo-Christian religion. It's interesting how history turns on significant decisions made in the lives of fairly ordinary, though in this case, important people of yesteryear. So let's break into the story of God telling Abraham that he is going to grant them a son, Abraham and Sarah, that is.

Genesis 17, 15. God said unto Abraham, as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her.

Yea, I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her. Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said, in his heart, shall a child be born unto him that is 100 years old and shall Sarah that is 90 years old bear? And Abraham said unto God, oh, that Ishmael might live before thee.

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed and thou shalt call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee.

Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. 12 princes shall he begat and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

And he left off talking with him and God went up from Abraham. In Galatians chapter four, not the easiest reasoning on the part of the apostle Paul, I speak with respect. Scripture needs a lot of attention sometimes for you to extract its full meaning.

Paul speaks of the nations of the world in terms of those who are under the bondage of Ishmael and those who come under the freedom of the promises that God makes to Isaac, extended through and made even more glorious through our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul asks the question, verse 21 of Galatians four, tell me, speaking to Gentile people like you and me, tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman, one by Hagar, one by Sarah. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise, which things are an allegory, a parable.

For these are the two covenants, the one from the Mount Sinai, which generous the bondage, which is Hagar, for this Hagar in Mount Sinai in Arabia and answers to Jerusalem, which now is and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem, which is above is free, which is a mother of us all. For it is written, rejoice thou, barren, that bearest not, break forth and cry thou that travailest not, for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband.

Now we brothers, as Isaac was, are the children of promise, but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the scripture, cast out the bond woman and her son, for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then brethren, we are not children of the bond woman, but of the free.

May God help us to understand his inspired word as later we come to some explanation within the context of Islam, Christianity, its common denominator, and its acute difference. What I want to try to show you this evening is something of what Islam stands for and how it contrasts with the faith of us Christian, we Christian people. You can't really back away from the fact of Islam, can you today, unless you've got your head like the proverbial ostrich in the sand.

After all, the war between Israel and its neighbors, which got for them the possession of Sinai, which they ultimately returned to Egypt, and the war that got them Palestine, which they haven't returned to the Palestinians. In one sense, it was around that time that the surrounding countries came to a realization just how they literally had the world over a barrel because they controlled the oil supplies to the west. It's interesting, and the Islamic community around the world which really has woken up as though it was some sleeping giant for centuries, believes that Allah made it possible for Muslims to become significant because of those great deposits of black gold that you find in those Gulf countries where so many Islamic people have their home.

And you will know that Islamic monies that have come through the sale of oil have not just been directed towards the ordinary Arab in his hometown, but a good percentage have been channeled into Islam to the extent that now in prime sites in Geneva, in London, in Frankfurt, in Paris, and in Rome, there are enormous mosques which have been built. Even the Pope was not influential enough to be able to stop a great mosque being put up in Rome. And our own queen, head of the Church of England, felt it was incumbent upon her to open the mosque in Regent's Park because of the political situation in the Middle East and the repercussions that there may have been in this nation had she not agreed.

The name of the Ayatollah Khomeini has been a household word for more than a decade until his recent passing. Colonel Qaddafi of Libya is also a man whose name, having been mentioned, immediately brings the recognition in your imagination of what he looks like because so often he's been central stage as the media have expressed their concerns as to what is happening in North Africa as well as the Middle East. When the oil sheikdoms speak through their leaders, we take notice.

Islam is on the march in France. It's perhaps the most significant religion. In this country, there are more Muslims than there are Methodists.

There are centers in our larger cities which are well populated with Muslims. The city of Bradford has for a long time known great Muslim influence. Even though in Worthing the impact of Islam is perhaps not so easily seen, nonetheless, you have to have been dead for the last 15 years not to appreciate that in our own island home of the United Kingdom of Britain, Islam has a great amount of political clout.

Well, what is this Islam? And why should Christian people get concerned about it in any case? Well, let's deal with the latter question. I've argued from this pulpit and will continue to argue until I quit it that we Christians have been given a mind by the Lord to use. We are not uninformed people.

I believe the Christian community should outthink any other community in the world. And as a result of that, it's necessary for us to have some understanding of the so-called great world religions and the repercussions that those religions have, not only internationally, but specifically in our own land. Islam virtually means submit.

There are many millions, probably one billion people throughout the world who have submitted to the message of Muhammad and recognize themselves as being Muslim. You can draw a crescent shape from North Africa all the way through to the Middle East, taking in a good amount of the Far East. I'm referring now to India, to Bangladesh, to Pakistan, and back through Afghanistan.

The whole of that belt of land is largely populated by Muslims. And the Islamic community, in a way that's perhaps been unequaled in history, is now at the front of a mission movement in terms of the rest of the world religions seeking to proselytize, seeking to evangelize. And its proselytization and its evangelism is not restricted to the mere distribution of literature, but the use of political clout around the world.

So what I want to do, without making this too long an address this evening, is to take up four or five aspects of contrast between Islam and Christianity. Now my main goal is to make the gospel clear. I'm not here to give a lecture on comparative religion.

So let's zoom in on the central characters of both these religions, just to hold them in contrast for a moment or two. I refer, of course, to Muhammad and Jesus. Now it's right to ask the question who these men are, because Jesus put that question to his disciples, as I told you this morning, when he was in northern Palestine, a place called Caesarea Philippi.

Whom do men say that I am? And the disciples, by way of response, put up a number of options that were going around the bazaar. Some people say, well, you're Elijah. Some say you're Jeremiah.

Others say, well, you're one of the prophets. All right, says Jesus, let's cut through what they're saying. Who do you say I am? And Peter, who was so often a brash individual, speaking before he really thought issues through, has divine intuition granted to him.

And he says in the language of the authorized version, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus handed Peter a bouquet that was handed to no one else. And he said, blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

It is important to know who Jesus is. And when Peter makes that declaration that he is none other than the Son of God, he is implying that Jesus is part of God, as indeed Christians claim him to be. You know our Lord Jesus was born of a virgin.

You know that he went around performing miracles. You know that ultimately he was done to death on the cross by the Jewish authorities with connivance with the Roman authorities. And you know how Christians really appreciate that the death of Jesus was not caused by the interaction of Rome and Jerusalem and its authorities as much as by the fact that every man and every woman is a sinner, that Jesus died on the cross to save us, and that therefore we're all guilty of sending him to the cross.

He died as a substitute atonement for the sins that you and I have committed. Tell that to the Muslim. And you're in great difficulty.

Because when you ask the Muslim who Muhammad is, he will tell you that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Allah is God. There is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet.

Now the Islamic community will never be insulting in their reference to the Lord Jesus. They appreciate that Jesus was a prophet. They will speak with great reverence about Jesus.

But you suggest to them that Jesus is an extension of or the representative of God, a better way of putting it, on earth, and then you run into great difficulty. For them, Christians are people who have elevated the prophet Jesus to a standing that he does not have. Muslims are one with us in appreciation of Abraham, the great friend of God, as they refer to him.

They stand alongside us in appreciating who Moses is. And the prophets of the Old Testament. God has sent a series of prophets to speak his word to the world.

And each prophet that comes in turn is greater than the prophet who preceded him. And Jesus was not the last of the prophets. Muhammad was.

So if Jesus were back on earth, says Colonel Gaddafi, he would have more in line with Muslims than with Christians. He would back down from the elevation that Christians have wrongly raised him to and he would accept that Muhammad has brought the final, inerrant word of God to society throughout the centuries. It's almost impossible for you and for me to appreciate the miracle, are you hearing me, of Danny McGrubbie's testimony.

That's why I asked Tim, as skillfully as he did, to tease out the circumstances behind Danny's conversion. When I was flying to Israel, I happened to have fall on my lap a paper I sometimes read but not too often. The Daily Telegraph.

I would like to say to readers of The Guardian, occasionally I do read that newspaper. Somebody says I never quote The Guardian from the pulpit. My wife bought it on Saturday.

Checked it through but it wasn't saying anything about my subject matter. However, here's The Daily Telegraph. Have I got the date? July the fourth.

Muslim cut throat of daughter in row over Christianity. Did you read it? Devout Muslim, prayed at a mosque three times a day, cut his 16 year old daughter's throat when she told him she was attending meetings of the Jehovah's Witnesses and planned to become a Christian. Birmingham Crown Court was told yesterday.

Some of you know that I have the privilege, perhaps more than a lot of pastors in the UK, of traveling into Islamic lands and taking missions, conferences amongst missionaries and sometimes evangelistic campaigns in Muslim countries. I never go, I think I could say this honestly before the Lord, I never go and take a campaign in India knowing I will have Muslims in my congregation without appreciating what I'm asking them to do. Because if they believe by the power of the Holy Spirit that what I am saying is true and they make a commitment to Jesus Christ, it's going to mean for them their social, that they will become social outcasts.

They will be ostracized. I remember other testimonies like those of Danny's of Muslims and in the case of India of Hindu who have turned to Jesus Christ and as a result of that they have paid a tremendous cost in terms of social and family deprivation. For a Muslim to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord is in effect to cut away from all family ties, probably lose also his professional advancement if not his job in the various Muslim country where such a convert might be found.

Jesus is a prophet, said the Muslims. Jesus is more than a prophet, said the Christians. He is the Son of God.

Now who, my friend, do you say that he is? Because I'm not just concerned as I repeat this evening in telling you about Islam, I'm out for souls. Not just to inform you about some other great world religion. Who do you say that Jesus is? Because unless you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and have that trust in him in terms of his saving, death and mighty resurrection, then you're as far from the kingdom of God as any Islamic person or as any Hindu.

Muhammad and Jesus, there are five pillars of Islam. Five things that mark the Islamic community out. They will repeat the Korma, or the Kalma, I'm not too sure how you pronounce that.

They will say that Allah is one and that Muhammad is his messenger. They will pray five times a day. They will give alms.

They will fast during the month of Ramadan and they will make a life's pilgrimage. Pilgrimage once in their life at least to Mecca. The pillars of Christianity as we understand them are to confess the Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ and to acknowledge the authority of God's word.

So from Muhammad and Jesus, let me go on for a moment or two and speak to you about the Koran and the Bible. What is the Koran? Well you know the Koran is the Islamic equivalent to the holy scriptures of the Christians. The word Koran actually means readings.

Originally the Koran was written in Arabic. Muslims will tell you that originally it was written in Arabic in heaven. If you're not very good at languages and you're hoping to get to heaven and the Islamic community have got it right, then you've got great problems because you've got to learn Arabic.

Would do some of us British good, wouldn't it? To learn another language in any case. We're so lazy expecting everyone to speak our language. Muhammad, he was given the revelation of the Koran over the last 23 years of his life.

He taught his disciples over that period various fragments of this divine revelation that was given to him by Gabriel. When Muhammad died, then all those fragments were brought together and they were placed in one book called the Koran. The Koran has 114 chapters.

They're known as surahs. Each chapter begins in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Islam is the religion of a book.

And the book is the Koran. And that's precisely what was said about England in the 18th century when a Dutchman had a question put to him about the religion of our land. England is a land of the book and that book is the Bible.

It could hardly be said today even if it was accurate 200 years ago. But in Islamic countries, it is true that they, the communities there, are people of a book. The book is the Koran.

I have the Bible in front of me that I used to use before somebody who saw the fact that it was almost falling apart in the pulpit bought me a new one. And quite frankly, I was rather proud of this Bible. It's somewhat tatty.

But I once learned that a Bible that was falling apart usually belonged to a Christian who wasn't. And this Bible, which has been well-thumbed, marked, traveled I don't know how many thousands of miles with me, I had open on a table in a restaurant in Karachi International Airport. I was waiting for a connecting flight somewhere some years ago.

And I was working out my address for the tab when I got back to the UK. And a couple of Muslims came and sat down and seemed to be watching me drinking my coffee and eating my toast and thumbing my Bible. And then they looked at my Bible.

And they were amazed. How could you treat a Bible like this? Marked, tattered. And I tried to tell them, well, really, it's not the book in terms of the pages and the print that are important.

What's really important is what's written there and how much of what is there is upon my heart and how much my heart so registers it that it affects the way that I live. But I did a very wrong thing in Karachi International Airport and I never take this Bible with me anymore. Because in an Islamic community, you show your respect for the Quran by wrapping it up in a towel, by placing it on a little stand, by never allowing it to go anywhere near your feet.

You read it. You immerse your mind in it. You learn it, if you can, off by heart.

And if you go into many of the beautiful mosques around the world, you will see extracts from the Quran written across the, if not the roof, the border before the roof of the mosque. The people who are Islamic, they respect the Quran as being God's final message to mankind. Does the Quran have anything to say about the Christian Bible? Actually, it does.

Now some of you will remember a good brother whose name just escapes me from the Middle East, the fellow that you know. Tom Hamblin, who was here just a few weeks ago. And his knowledge of the Quran has often got him out of scrapes when he's tried to get Bibles into Middle Eastern countries.

Because in the Quran, it says this, of Christian people and of their book, dispute not with people of the book, save in the fairer manner. In other words, dispute kindly and feelingfully with them. And say, believe what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you.

Our God and your God is one, and to him we have surrendered. And here's another passage directed to Christian people, because remember the Quran was written years after the Bible was compiled in both sections. Oh, people of the book, you have no ground to stand on until you observe the Torah, the Old Testament law, and the Injil, the gospel, and that which hath been sent down to you from your Lord.

So the Islamic community, they put great importance in the Quran, but they also recognize the Bible. What they don't recognize, however, is that the Bible is free from errors. They say it's been corrupted.

And so the idea that Jesus was placed on the cross, that to them is utterly incomprehensible. And the Quran is really quite unclear as to what ultimately happened to Jesus. But if some of you have ever come across a Muslim evangelist, they're equivalent to Billy Graham, called Ahmad Didat, who's debated in Brighton, Islam over against Christianity, you will know that he's written a book called, rather cleverly, Crucifixion, F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

Because they don't believe that Jesus, a prophet of Allah, was actually crucified on the cross. Most would argue that someone else was substituted for Jesus. Some would even say that Jesus went off to India.

But the point is that if you have an understanding of Jesus, which doesn't finish up with him being crucified, then there is no salvation in the way that Christian people understand it. So we discover, as we do a contrast between Islam and Christianity, that both religions are religions of the book, the Quran and the Bible. Evangelical Christians recognise the Bible as being authoritative.

They recognise the truths of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, someone has said that if a Christian is debating the resurrection of Jesus, I mean by that, if he has any doubt in his mind, the best thing for him to do is never to go into an Islamic community. Because far from advancing the cause of Christianity, he'll advance the cause of Islam.

That's the reason why they plundered some of the most sensational sayings of the Bishop of Durham and have used them in terms of the advance of Islam over against Christianity. For as I understand the Bishop, and it's not always easy to understand where he's coming from, he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, and that accords with what the Islamic community is saying. So we've looked at the contrast between the two persons that are basic to our religions, Muhammad and Jesus.

We've looked at the two books, the Quran and the Bible. Now let's deal with, or look at in passing, the subject of Jehovah and Allah. Jehovah is the name that we give to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You come across it often, do you not, in prayers, and sometimes in the translations in the Old Testament scriptures. I was talking to a young Jewish rabbi 10 days ago when I flew to Israel. He looked about 40, I thought, but actually was 19.

Got these dangling tassels and a beard, and that sort of threw me in terms of his age. And because I was sitting next to him, and born in Yorkshire, I have a rather large mouth and can't stop talking when I'm next to a religious person about my own beliefs, I opened my Old Testament and I started to talk to him about Jesus. And I took him to Psalm 22 and I took him to Isaiah 53 and I got a fantastic audience because he couldn't shift.

The plane was so crowded he had to stick in the seat next to me. But I can't say I won the argument. But what I did try and tell him was this, that when I try to evangelize a Jew, I don't want the Jew to betray his Judaism.

It seems to me that when a Jew accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior, all he does is deepen his Jewishness. He comes to a full understanding of who God really is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there is a debate that goes on amongst theologians as whether Jehovah and Allah are the same.

I'm not a Muslim scholar. I can't really get involved in that argument. But it seems to me that a great deal of emphasis must be placed upon the testimony of a couple of missionaries who say this as they've been working in Islamic communities.

One, I have never met a Muslim convert who regards the God he previously sought to worship as a holy false God. Instead, he is filled with wonder and gratitude that he has now been brought to know that that God as he really is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Another, I have yet to meet a single individual who has the feeling that he came to meet a new God when he became a Christian.

The experience in every instance has been the same. The God who was far off has suddenly come closer. In Christ, I believe that when a Muslim gets a full appreciation of the sensitivity of God for Allah, it appears to me he is insensible.

He lacks emotion. Then what he really has is a correction of his God perspective. And one of the things that we ought to be doing to our Muslim friends in terms of our evangelism is showing them that the God that we believe in is a God who has a deep, compassionate love for each one of them.

That their life is not capricious, it's not lived as a result of fate and chance, but rather they're caught up in the cross current of the love of God, a God who is so concerned for them that he has a plan and a purpose for their life. We have to bear in mind that most Muslims, when they think about the Christian God, believe we're talking of three separate gods. I don't understand the word trinity.

I don't even like the word trinity. It's not a biblical word. I fully acknowledge that God exists within three persons.

I can't mathematically explain it. But the Muslim, you see, he has the idea that we believe in three gods, the Father, Mary, and Jesus. The Father marries Mary, and the result of the union is Jesus.

Now that's a distortion of what we Christians believe in terms of the Godhead. You know it, I know it, but they don't know it. What we have to try to show to our Muslim friends is that we too are monotheists.

We believe that God is one, but he reveals himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. And Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And when the Spirit comes to dwell in your heart, he is so close in essence to me that it's just as though I took up residence with you.

Not easy to explain it theologically. Most of us don't have a very deep, profound grasp of God. But what we can say to our Muslim friends is that this God of Christianity is a feelingful God who can bring into your heart an assurance of sins forgiven and direct your course through this life until ultimately you are in his presence in heaven.

Which brings me to the last thing that I'll say quite quickly and that is the Muslim understanding of salvation and commitment over against that of the Christian. How does the Muslim make heaven? Well, by doing good works, by the acceptance of Muhammad as God's prophet. But he's no assurance.

I remember once speaking to a fighter pilot. I was traveling down from, where was it now? It was on the borders of Afghanistan, a place called Peshawar. And I got a flight down to Karachi and there's a little man sitting next to me and he got a Muslim dress on and so I turned to him as I turned to the Jewish rabbi just a few days ago.

And he says to me, I'm a lazy Muslim. And eventually I discover that far from being a lazy Muslim, he got up from the conversation that I was involved in with him after we'd been talking about half an hour and I thought he'd gone to the toilet in the back of the, I was gonna say train, in the back of the plane. Actually, it was the hour for prayer.

And he will pray in the plane. I remember chaos when I flew out of South Africa to Nairobi just a few weeks ago when a lot of Muslims got in in Johannesburg and it happened to be the time of prayer as we were 20 minutes down the road, so to speak. And all the Muslims got up and they just thronged the aisles.

And the stewardesses, they were nearly going bananas trying to get their way through with tea and coffee. They had so many baptisms in terms of tea and coffee on that day as they were stepping over literally Muslims and it didn't matter what was said by the captain, they weren't gonna shift. Why? It was a time for prayer.

And captains of airplanes may be authoritative people but as far as Allah is concerned, their influence is limited. But my man who I was talking to in the Pakistan aircraft, he tells me that he had no assurance of salvation. He was working, hoping that somehow or other in God's grace he might get saved as a result of his evangelistic exploits.

He was interested in Muslim evangelism in North Africa. The day of judgment, Muslims believe that all will be made to walk over a thin edge of a sword. Can you imagine this? Stretched across a deep abyss, those who succeed will get through to an eternity of sexual bliss.

Those who fall off have had it, they're in hell. And the way in which you'll keep balance is by the good works and the faith and all that you've done while you've been this side of eternity. Christians don't believe that God deals with us in such a capricious fashion.

But sometimes my friend, I wish that Christianity was more Islamic. Now hear me and those of you who get this tape, hear me. I'm not asking for a modification of Christianity.

What I'm asking for is a full understanding of what Christianity speaks in terms of our commitment to the faith that we believe. We are not just saved to sit back in a chair and do nothing. We are saved to make a commitment to Jesus Christ, which is as costly for us as Colonel Gaddafi said it could be for him being a Muslim.

He said if Allah said so, he would go back into the backwoods where he was born as a lad and live off dates and camel's milk rather than be the head of the Libyan nation. We are called as Christian people to exercise faith in the living God and to live as though we are people who have been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the only way in which we will ever make an impact upon Muslims, upon Hindus, upon Buddhists, or Uncle Tom Cobblin or all, is when we Christian people live the lives that God has called us to live in the power of the Holy Ghost and prove that we are different from the rest of people in major religions or those who are members of groups who claim to be atheists.

One of the most wonderful things that's happening in the world today, Pamela Massey, who works in Jerusalem, was telling me this amongst the Jews and it applies even more particularly to the Muslims. Is that in an incredible fashion, God is bringing into the consciousness of thousands of people, Jew and Muslim, the fact that he is. Theology is the explanation of the word of God.

Theophany is the experience of God. There are Jews and Muslims, I'm told by some Muslim experts, up to 60% of Muslim conversions come about by God sending dreams, mystical experiences, strange happenings into the lives of Muslim people. Then sooner or later they meet up with a Christian or somebody's handed a Bible, hands the Bible to them and they read it and they discover the truths of what has been mysteriously being formed in their minds.

What we as Christians ought to be doing is praying more and more that Jehovah God, by the power of his spirit, will cultivate the minds and the hearts of Jews and Muslims and prepare them to receive the truth of the gospel, to bring them into contact with people like yourself or myself, maybe on a train journey going to London. There are many Muslims in this area, as Danny will tell you in regard to Brighton. Maybe some of you who fly on planes will find yourself sitting next to a Jew or a Muslim.

Why in the name of God do we Christians keep silent when we should be speaking? Why is it that we sometimes who claim to be evangelical are evangelical in doctrine but not evangelistic in practice? There may be people who you will be meeting during this coming week, be they Muslim Jew or so-called Christian but not committed to the Lord Jesus Christ who are desperately waiting for you to tell them what you know of the good news of salvation. So what we've been saying this evening is that Islam is a great world religion but it represents a distortion. It represents an inadequate understanding of who God is and who Jesus is.

It's a problem of Ishmael, the disobedience of Abraham and so many people being misled. But the possibility is for Islamic people and all peoples to come to a knowledge of the truth through confessing Jesus as Lord. So we're praying that Islamic folk may deepen in their understanding of Allah and come to a realization that somewhere there must be an explanation as to how they can know that their sins are forgiven.

We're praying that Jewish people might enter into the Lord and know the full inheritance of what it means to be a Jew and acknowledge that Jesus is Messiah. We're praying that Gentile people in our country might return to the God of our forefathers and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let's pray.

549, let's stand and sing. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Father, the singing was easy, but the outworking is challenging. We thank you for every Christian who gave his life in the Islamic communities for the advance of the Gospel.

We pray for every convert to Christianity in the Middle East today. Be with them and bless them. For those who are trying to reach others, bless and protect them.

And help us here in the tab to do our bit. Bless these dear people. Bless them for coming and sweating it out on a hot evening.

May something of the challenge of this service live on in their hearts and minds. For Jesus' sake, Amen.