Fire On Your Head

This entry is not going to be sensational or alarmist or anything. I’m just going to reflect on the last year of my life living in a metropolitan city in Europe, and being one of the only white guys living on a pretty Arabic street and ministering in a cafe that is located in a Muslim neighborhood with a large mosque around the corner from us.

If it weren’t for the Dutch writing on the signs and windows, one might not realize they are actually treading in Holland if they walked through certain areas of Rotterdam. Sad to say, I cannot say that I’ve developed a ministry to Muslims given how Arabic my culture is, but I’m seeing the increasing importance of that aspect of apologetics if we’re going to make an impact in this nation, and I think I’m going to start.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I had two interesting occurrences happen today at the Hodgeschool Rotterdam that make light of something interesting. Both tying to Islam, or “other religions” if you will.

The Gebedsgroep (prayer group) that meets on Monday mornings and does evangelism in the canteen, has been using a small prayer room for a few years, not sure how long, but before I ever started joining them. I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it has muslim paraphernalia in the room, and has red carpet, cloths and up until sometime this summer, a picture of mecca on the predominant wall of the room. In order to book it, a student has to trade their student card with the administration in exchange for the key to the room they wish to use. So, every Monday the prayer group meets here. I’m not sure who else uses it or how often, but it obviously would be conceivable muslim students have access to it whenever they want.  In Leeuwarden, when the FIRE team and students prayed at the C.H.N., we used the “contemplation room”, which was dedicated to anyone of any religious persuasion who wanted to use it, but it was obvious from the decor that mostly muslims would use it, so I imagine it’s a similar case with this school.

Anyway, today, about 8 of us were praying and worshiping together in song as usual, and around 9:45 someone knocked on the door to the room and in Dutch explained that she needed the room to pray, because she needs to observe Ramadan. I did not understand all the detail of the conversation, but basically, this one young muslim lady was kicking us out for 5 minutes so she could pray to Mecca, even though we were there first and had booked it (and frankly, outnumbered her).

But we didn’t behave like that about it. We all picked up our stuff and went outside and waited. While waiting we watched another Muslim girl come in and join her. But I found it peculiar. Oh, and it was explained to me (since I don’t understand all dialog I hear in Dutch) that she was offended that we were wearing shoes while sitting in that room since I guess in Islam that’s a big no-no for prayer. None of us were obnoxious about it, but it did break my heart a little and enlighten me at the same time to see how a spirit of religion can so dupe so many people into form and ritual, reaching out and grasping AT a god they don’t even know if they have his approval or not.

After five minutes, they both left, and smiled at us in appreciation I presume, and we went back in and I found that we had a different atmosphere. No, it wasn’t heavy or oppressive and we didn’t do warfare and rebuke any demonic spirits or some hokus pokus like that. But we blessed the two girls, asked God to reveal His TRUE self to them, and then we lifted our voices louder in worship than we had been prior to their 5 minute prayer stop. I’m glad the experience happened, but has provoked me to thought about Islam in this nation all day since it happened.

Later after prayer, around lunch time, I partnered up with a guy I met for the first time today named Egbert who also is a full timer with Agape (the Dutch Campus Crusade For Christ) and we went around with the surveys we use as an icebreaker to start chats, and I met a young man studying to be an English teacher and who had also studied in Canada for a year. A lot of what he was telling us was that all religions are essentially the same thing, and all have the Holy Spirit in some way and they just don’t all call it the same thing.

I couldn’t help but ask him a simple question and ask him if he believed that this “holy spirit” would teach one religion that feeding the hungry and clothing the naked was good and noble, and then this same spirit go motivate individuals in another religion to crash airplanes into buildings killing people and blowing themselves up in cars to murder all whom they view as infidels. This young man agreed with me without hesitation that murder is murder, no matter what a religion says to the contrary. He was willing to admit that it’s true not all religions believe the same thing. So how can we ignore or pretend that “all religions lead to the same god” if not only is that not true, but one worldview and mindset has world domination and submission as its ultimate goal?

I know sharing my thoughts in such candor is not politically correct these days, but anyone wanting to close their eyes to the threat of militant Islam might as well bury their head in the sand. I have not researched it for myself in preparation for this entry, since I’m being more reflective than academic, but someone told me that there are more mosques in the Netherlands than there are in the United States.

Think about this for a moment.

With a population of 300 million in the USA, and only around 17 million people living in the Netherlands, that figure is pretty staggering. And when you live in Rotterdam, the proportion of Muslims to the rest of the population seems to be all the more obvious. I believe the figure is one out of six children in this country’s public education system are Arabic and middle eastern. With the average size of Muslim families, and the number of broken Dutch families (and this is so in the West in general), it is totally conceivable for the population of Muslims in the Netherlands to outnumber caucasian Dutch people in maybe as fast as one generation.

Are you seeing yet another example of how this generation needs a Jesus Revolution to take place now or never? That if we don’t seize the opportunity, it might be generations before we are ever given another opportunity?

Our revolution doesn’t involve violence. It doesn’t involve suicide bombings. The Jesus Revolution doesn’t involve beheading people who don’t convert to Christ. But they will know we are Christians by our love. Even if it’s as simple as just getting up and leaving the room you’re praying in because a muslim girl wants to pray to Mecca right then and there.

A prayer, fasting and intercession based Jesus movement can and will change this nation if we go for it! Can you imagine the change we could see on this planet before Jesus returns, if JUST the Muslim community saw an authentic Gospel of miracles, signs, wonders and a prophetic witness they could not resist? How else do you explain such a large harvest in the book of Revelation? It’s not far off to believe something wide scale will happen like the backbone of a whole religion being broken and the witness of Christ filling that vacuum in its stead.

Can you believe for it? Can you pray for it? Can you do something about it? Or do you want to just twiddle your thumbs, and wait for the rapture to happen with or without you making good use of your time here on this earth to see a generation set on fire for Christ?

The Jesus people are coming….

Link of interest: Submission – familiarize yourself with it instead of naively believing all religions are the same.