Posted on 04/07/2004 1:38:48 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Doha (AsiaNews) – “”Do you have the New Testament in Arab? Me and all my friends would like to read it.” This was the request of 2 students from Qatar, after seeing Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”.
Already on the second day after the film started showing in Qatar, many local newspapers are reporting the film on their front pages. According to the English language daily, The Peninsula Qatar, since the first three days of its release, 66,321 tickets have been sold –smashing the record once held by Matrix Reloaded, which had sold 59,000.
The film is becoming so popular in Qatar that some theaters have cancelled showings of other films in order to increase viewings of Gibson’s blockbuster.
Middle East Christians are spellbound by the interest Arabs have taken in the seeing the Gospel portrayed on the big screen.
The movie has sparked hours of discussion between Christians and Muslims regarding questions of faith. Many Arabs were interested in seeing the film only because of the anti-Semitic controversy surrounding it. However the movie’s theme is an unavoidable subject. “The message of loving your enemies and Jesus who, even while up on the cross, prayed for and forgave them strikes all viewers deeply,” said David and Natalie, an American married couple working in Qatar.
The American couple said they were amazed the government had permitted the film to be released in an Islamic country like Qatar. “In the next few weeks tens of thousands of people living here will go and see this powerful retelling of Christ’s suffering and death. Many moviegoers react to the film. For example, those sitting next to us in the theater were moved and breathless. Others wept or had looks of disgust on their facers when watching the brutality Jesus underwent,” they said.
"This film is generating huge interest in Jesus and the Bible,” said David and Natalie. “All this has never happened before!”
It's all related to the Islamic take on Christian (and Jewish) scriptures. They see both the Old and New Testaments as corrupted and revised(even though there is no evidence of that...) and Mohammed 600 years after Christ had revealed to him the truth, correcting the biblical accounts.
This in spite of 4 separate, apparently eye-witness accounts to the life of Jesus, and his death (and ressurection) written down--and tens of thousands dying by that time for the belief that Jesus is God (as opposed to the Roman Emperor) who died and was raised...(contra the Quoran's teaching).
Simlarly they see the Old Testament as corrupted by the "evil" Jews (without a shred of evidence) and so Mohammed set the record strait that it was Ishmael (Abraham's b*stard son) not Isaac who was the heir to God's promises to Abraham.
As a Christian, I can't help but see Islam as a conterfeit to real faith--which spits in the face of recorded history--in the name of a supposed revealed history.
What is that statisitic? Of the 41 current wars around the world 38 involve Islamic peoples? Jesus said you shall know them by their fruit.
The Catholic Church wrote, canonized and preserved Sacred Scripture for 1500 years before Luther removed 7 books. Sheesh.
There are Christian Arabs too. Prior to Mohammed, and even for several centuries after there were more Christians than Muslims.
Eternal life with God? They want to know and serve the Truth?
I think that's true in China, too. But there's been a lot of evangelizing there.
That's pretty much what I think too. "Conquest" is out of style these days, but that's the effective way to change a backward nation for the better. A few decades of occupation, light on the bombing and conversion, would certainly improve the Arabs.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.
Was your question answered?
Oi vey. Not to start yet another round of debate, but: Bull!
Your statement that the RCC wrote the Bible presupposes that the Apostles (not to mention the prophets before them) were Catholics in the modern sense, despite the lack of evidence of a host of modern Catholic teachings in the Scriptures that they wrote.
Your statement that the RCC canonized the Scriptures ignores what the canon actually is: A list of authoritative books, rather than an authoritative list of books. A list of sacred books is useful to save the dilligent student time, but not evidence of the listing group's authority over them.
Your statement that the RCC preserved the Scriptures is true (and our thanks), but ignores the fact that for several centuries the RCC did it's damndest to avoid letting the laity actually read it, even to the point of threatening excommunication and death to those who rendered a translation. And you can't complain that the laity weren't literate--if the RCC had had the motivation, it could have corrected that problem in short order, as the Reformation did.
Finally, your statement that Luther removed several books ignores three major points: 1) Those books are not listed in the earliest canons. 2) Those books contain contradictions to the rest of Scripture, so either they're wrong or God is unable to communicate a clear message. And 3) even Catholics call those books the Deuterocanonical books, i.e. the "second canon," and therefore assign them a lesser position to the true canon. It wasn't until the Council of Trent that they suddenly went from "useful" (which at least a few are) to "essential."
Besides, no major doctrine of Christianity depends upon a single passage, or even a single book. At worst, you may lose some resolution about a given teaching, but not the essential teaching itself, if you remove a book or even several books. Far too many modern Catholic teachings depend upon a heavily-disputed interpretation of a single passage, if they have any Scriptural backing at all. The Inquisition's excesses stem from just such a hermeneutic.
Regarding the actual article: This sounds like wonderful news to me! God is using Gibson's movie to open up opportunities to share the Gospel all over the world, it seems, and I can't understand those who are "wary" about that. Yes, there may be a backlash--Muslims are prickly that way. But there may also be thousands or millions of souls saved because the Holy Spirit used this movie to prompt them to ask about the Gospel.
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