What's Happening

Part 2
The rest of Jacob's message is at the Moriel link on the right.

Here in the world's most populace Moslem country I am often speaking to thousand daily. In a country whose government admits to a 7.5% Christian population, actual numbers are at least three times that and in some areas Christian populations are reaching 30%. The growth in The Molukkan Islands where Christians faced genocide (that CNN, The BBC, and Channel 4 were almost happy to ignore in comparison to their anti Israel coverage) the churches are exploding.

Here it is rather Islam that is showing clear indications of decline and Sharia law, Saudi money, and Islamic terror cannot stop it. Here I find churches supportive of Israel with a love for The Jews who pray for Israel and salvation of The Jewish people and who want to know about Israel and the return of Jesus.

This has gained momentum after the tsunami when most international aid came from Christian organizations, while oil rich Gulf Arab states donated mere pocket change in comparison, despite the over whelming majority of the victims being Moslems.

Here where the church is persecuted, the American/ South African style "you don't have to suffer - you're a King's kid" lies of faith-prosperity tele-evangelists don't quite work. Many suffer precisely because they are King's kids. One church I was speaking in received a letter the day I was there from Moslem officials warning it to close down. Christians cannot get land to build churches, home meetings are sometimes declared illegal, and zoning ordinances against using rented facilities for religious meetings are selectively enforced only against believers in Jesus. As usual, Western press and Western governments seem to have no problem with plight of believers.

For sure they have tremendous problems with persecution, poverty and often (Biblical) ignorance and a growing vulnerability to the gimmicks and lies of the Western tele-evangelists due to that ignorance. But defeating Islam's growth is not among their problems. Neither is Rick Warren's false teaching to avoid end times prophecy (based on his butchery of text of Acts chapter 1) in his warped book ''The Purpose Driven Church".

Please pray for the persecuted church here in Indonesia. Please also pray that God will grant their pastors discernment to see through the heretical false prophets, the money preachers, the ecumenists, and people like Rick Warren and C. Peter Wagner trying to import their poison wares into the Third World. We need to ask The Lord that these same deceptions and deceivers bringing about the death of Christianity in the developed world will not make further inroads into the growing churches of The Third World. The book of Revelation tells us that demonic attacks of Satan follow a two-fold strategy - the dragon (persecution) and the serpent (deception). The dragon is failing. In The Lord's mercy, may the serpent also not prevail.

Above all, we must pray earnestly that God will continue to shed His grace on Indonesia and other developing countries like it and more souls will be saved out of false religions such as Islam, Buddhism, animism, and nominal Christianity. Also pray that these converts will not remain mere converts but become disciples.

When one sees and experiences true moves of God like this, one easily sees through the cheap counterfeits like the Toronto Experience, its clone in Pensacola, Alpha, The Elim Movement, Purpose Driven and other such pseudo biblical nonsense and idiocy.

In nearby Malaysia where I also speak, people becoming Christians are arrested and their children taken by the Bush 'religion of tolerance', and it is here in the Islamic world where the lies of evil Western politicians and the popular media are self evidently obvious.

But it is not the blatant lies of politicians and the media I find most disturbing; frankly I have learned to expect it from them. It is more the lies of the church I find most troubling:


With the anti Israel bigotry of Sabeel and many Protestant denominations and the doctrinal error of replacement theology pretending not to be anti Semitic.
With their con artist money preachers pretending to have faith in Jesus instead of faith in faith.
With a hype artist Christian music industry pretending to be a music ministry.
With their paraphrased 'The Message' pretending to be a revival.
With their ecumenical deception pretending to be unity of The Spirit.
With entertainment pretending to be worship.
With motivational speakers pretending to be preachers.
With psychology pretending to be spirituality.
With marketing based gimmicks of men pretending to be a biblical philosophy of mission.
With theocrats pretending to be leaders.
With hirelings pretending to be pastors.
With Christian tabloids pretending to be scripturally valid edifying periodicals.
With manufactured delusions pretending to be revivals or 'moves of God'.

In Indonesia and other countries of South East Asia, they have the real thing. I have indeed encountered a fair amount of junk but little of it is homegrown. Most of the junk I have encountered is junk imported from The West introduced courtesy of Benny, Kenny and Joyce.

Moreover, this move of God in the demographic heartland of the Islamic world is gaining momentum (as it is in certain regions of Islamic Africa) in Malaysia and has begun to reach as far west as Bangladesh. In God's grace may it continue west and reach Pakistan, Iran, and even Mecca itself. Our God is able.

In the largest Moslem nation on earth, Satan's unbreakable cube has certainly begun to crack under the fist of Christ and a persecuted and under resourced church that knows both the cost and the blessing of true victory in Jesus.

As an avid reader of "Foxe's Book of Martyrs", I know it is a cost and a blessing that the modern Church of Laodicea in the Western world now has forgotten.

In Jesus,

(J. Jacob Prasch)