Posted on 10/06/2001 6:16:58 PM PDT by Dengar01
I just got home from church and I had to post this. I attended Willow Creek church which is north west of Chicago. It is the largest church in the area, it is a non-denominational Christian church, the main auditorium hold 10,000 people and was filled tonight. The topic of the 5:00 service tonight was the interview with a Muslim named Iama Fisal Hammounda, by Senior Pastor Bill Hybels. They will be having three more services between tonight and tomorrow, I pray to God they change their plans for the next services.
I knew this was going to get ugly when the church showed a video on ethnic diversity. I looked around at the church filled to capacity with over 10,000 people and noticed several Muslims.
The inteview started and the man was introduced as a Egyptian who moved here in 1974. He complained that his wife was in Florida and couldn't come home due to the fact that she would be harassed. The goal of Pastor Hybel's interview was to prove that Islam is a peaceful religion, lets just say that he failed, miserabley.
Pastor Hybels did ask some very good questions which surprised me since I thought the Muslim might take the questions as offensive. A few questions statements stood out. The Muslim declared that Islam was peaceful and that the terrorists did not follow Islam, fine I guess. He continued that a "Jihad" had to do with attacking sin he made the poor analogy of declaring a jihad on eating candy.
Continuing Pastor Hybels asked him about martyrs along with the virgins and the streams of wine and the Muslim responded I pray for that to happen. He was truly innappropriate and this is when everything went downhill.
After the Muslims were jumping for joy with the Mr. Hammounda's innappropriate remarks, many people got up and walked out disgusted. I stayed to hear his next remarks which stunned me worse than his previous remarks.
That is when I walked out.
Fortunately for me to write this my sister and her husband stayed while I was complaining to several people at the Service Desk. The final statement which I was lucky enough to miss finished with Mr. Hammounda saying that Christians and Muslims can be friends, only on Muslims terms.
Yes you heard it the slime being spewed by the left is false. I heard it first hand from this man answering innappropriately while joking about a serious issue. I made the statement that this was unnacceptable for a church and should not be tolerated.
If you agree with me you can FReep the church at:
Willow Creek Community Church
67 E. Algonquin Road
South Barrington, IL 60010
(847) 765-5000
Fax: (847) 765-9222
General e-mail: info@willowcreek.org
Don't worry because the church had many people furious, about 200 people walked out including myself and many people were venting their frustration to people who work at the church. I will be calling the church tomorrow to let them know how I feel.
Don't let her do that, she'll get arrested for a hate crime. Seriously.
God Bless,
Dengar01
I gotta wonder if in islamic countries, they put crosses on their outhouse doors? :)
On a lighter note, the ugly truth -- that little by little is forcing its way out of the recesses of "the unthinkable" -- is that it's only a question of time (and a few more attacks) before the gov't takes the detention camps out of mothballs and puts the entire class that serves as cover for the radical islamists under lock and key.
Personally, I think most people instinctively know that this is wrong, but many are too timid to stand up to a pastor.
But things have changed over the last few weeks. I will bet that if he tried to get Clinton to come back, there would be a revolt in the congregation.
I will tell you that I once left a mainline denomination with some other people and started a splinter church because we had a pastor that insisted that Jesus had girlfriends! I do not like the pulpit used for anything but preaching the Gospel, and I resent the attempts to inflict lame sociological claptrap on congregatiions. Because pastors speak with the authority of the pulpit, they often intimidate people and I think this is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Can you say 'New Age' = 'Old Hat'?............move along, nothing to see here.
All of the Christians in Saudi Arabia were put to death by the Muslims or forced to convert at the end of a sword. To which Christians in which part of Arabia are you referring? I am afraid you will find the oldest groups of Christians in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and the Holy Land use Syriac or Aramaic in their Holy Qurbana or Divine Liturgy when speaking to God or about God.
Excellent observation. In fact, I'll bet the directive for this "Multiculutral Understanding Night" came straight from national headquarters.
I believe there are good Muslims who are good as individuals and they believe in tolerance and peace and freedom of religion but the religion seems to have no oversight, no way to excommunicate so apparently bin Laden and all the killers are Muslims in good standing. Maybe you all need a pope or something so you can redefine who is and who isn't a real Muslim and people can't go so far out.
It has come to the point that you have to double check everything preached against scriptures to see if it jives. I admire your restraint in just getting up and walking out. You might remind your preacher that only one can be telling the truth, Jesus, or the other, if he believes that Jesus is telling the truth, then ask him why he would invite an anti-christ to speak to the church.
Hybels missed a very important opportunity to be genuinely useful for the work of Christ's Church. While Christians are supposed to love our neighbors, we have a special and higher obligation to first love our brothers and sisters in Christ. He just plain got his priorities wrong, and as a minister of the gospel, he of all people should have known better.
Maybe so, but a wildly popular perverion in major parts of the world, and its Islamic opponents have been pathetically inarticulate.
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