B
Bob_Crowley
Guest
My understanding of the resurgence of Islam is that God has a hand in it.
Frankly, when it first started, it soon became a means of trying to destroy the church, and came pretty close. For an answer to the accusation the Crusades were unnecessary, I’d suggest you refer to the following links -
answering-islam.org/Authors/Stenhouse/crusades.01.htm
answering-islam.org/Authors/Stenhouse/crusades.02.htm
You’ll note the following comment about bishops in North Africa and their reduction in numbers - “At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of ‘peaceful coexistence,’ there were only** five left**. In 1076 there were** two. **We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, ‘Hildebrand,’ wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]”
It was an attempt to destroy the church and replace it with another religion founded on Abrahamic precedent. The church had been pinging off the old European and North African tribal religions, Rome had become Christian, and Constantinople was Christian. A certain spiritual being would have been alarmed by this and would have looked around for a suitable means of stopping it.
Fast forward to the 21st century. In the early 20th Century, colonial Europe thought Islam was finished despite it’s resistance to conversion. Turkey became a secular Moslem state under Ataturk, Turkish hero of Gallipoli, after World War I. The Arabs were under European colonial powers and had little power.
But then the Arab nations saw the West tearing itself asunder in two world wars, and had the indignity of Israel being pushed onto them by the same Western powers who a few years before had been fighting each other.
At the same time, Europe lost it’s colonial powers and there was a surge of nationalism in many third world countries. But the difference is that in the Middle East, God let the Arabs have a lot of oil, so much so their energy supplies underwrote a tremendous expansion in Western industry.
And they’ve still got a lot of oil, or the West wouldn’t care what they did.
As far as I can see God is going to use Islam for three things -
Personally I think we’re being set up for one enormous show down. As my old pastor put it, "Suppose an Arab statesman does a bit of fence building, and gets them together. Then they say to us,
In Australia’s case, the main danger is Indonesia, which has ten times our population, is Islamic, and is our nearest neighbour. God hasn’t let Islam survive so long without his reasons, and I think they have a lot to do with judgement.
Frankly, when it first started, it soon became a means of trying to destroy the church, and came pretty close. For an answer to the accusation the Crusades were unnecessary, I’d suggest you refer to the following links -
answering-islam.org/Authors/Stenhouse/crusades.01.htm
answering-islam.org/Authors/Stenhouse/crusades.02.htm
You’ll note the following comment about bishops in North Africa and their reduction in numbers - “At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of ‘peaceful coexistence,’ there were only** five left**. In 1076 there were** two. **We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, ‘Hildebrand,’ wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]”
It was an attempt to destroy the church and replace it with another religion founded on Abrahamic precedent. The church had been pinging off the old European and North African tribal religions, Rome had become Christian, and Constantinople was Christian. A certain spiritual being would have been alarmed by this and would have looked around for a suitable means of stopping it.
Fast forward to the 21st century. In the early 20th Century, colonial Europe thought Islam was finished despite it’s resistance to conversion. Turkey became a secular Moslem state under Ataturk, Turkish hero of Gallipoli, after World War I. The Arabs were under European colonial powers and had little power.
But then the Arab nations saw the West tearing itself asunder in two world wars, and had the indignity of Israel being pushed onto them by the same Western powers who a few years before had been fighting each other.
At the same time, Europe lost it’s colonial powers and there was a surge of nationalism in many third world countries. But the difference is that in the Middle East, God let the Arabs have a lot of oil, so much so their energy supplies underwrote a tremendous expansion in Western industry.
And they’ve still got a lot of oil, or the West wouldn’t care what they did.
As far as I can see God is going to use Islam for three things -
- As a challenge to a Godless West. Whatever you might think about their theology, they take Allah seriously. It’s quite obvious they’re prepared to die, and kill, for their God. We kill our own unborn by the million, so I think God might be preparing something which regards our own mortality with equal indifference.
- As a challenge to a the doctrine of church - state division. Time and again I’ve seen posters defend that doctrine, and time and again I’ve seen politicians use it to ignore the church altogether - abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, non-Church marriage, recognising de facto relationships. As my old pastor put it, that doctrine “comes straight from the devil”.
- It will force the churches to think about reuniftying. If we don’t Islam is going to win, make no mistake. You’ve only got to see the way they are readily identifiable in our own Western society understand their dedication to their religion. Or as the old pastor put it, “We lost it in the Reformation.”
Personally I think we’re being set up for one enormous show down. As my old pastor put it, "Suppose an Arab statesman does a bit of fence building, and gets them together. Then they say to us,
We’d all be broke in a week!".
In Australia’s case, the main danger is Indonesia, which has ten times our population, is Islamic, and is our nearest neighbour. God hasn’t let Islam survive so long without his reasons, and I think they have a lot to do with judgement.
