Posted on 11/16/2012 7:28:39 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
BEIRUT (BP) -- The Christian relief team heard about the needy Syrian widow living outside a Lebanese Muslim village near the Syrian border. So they took food to her.
Apparently, Jesus had been there first.
A refugee from the civil war in Syria, the Muslim widow, along with her three children, had sought shelter in Lebanon -- like more than 100,000 other Syrians. She was observing a traditional 40-day period of solitude to mourn her dead husband, so she had received nothing from the local Islamic aid society.
When the Christians knocked at her door, the widow appeared fully covered in black, including an opaque veil over her face. She explained her period of self-isolation. They offered to leave the food outside, but she unexpectedly invited them in. They sat with her and her children on the floor of the temporary dwelling.
"Who are you?" she asked anxiously.
"You don't know us, but we have great love in our hearts toward you," the team leader answered, explaining their reasons for helping Syrian refugees. "That love comes from God, who has worked in our lives."
To their amazement, she responded by removing her veil --— unheard of in her conservative Muslim culture. Then the words came flooding out.
"I want to tell you what happened to me yesterday," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "As I was sleeping during the night, someone knocked on my door. I was so scared, but I opened the window to see who it was. No one was there. After a while, I heard the same knocking. My heart was beating so fast, so I went and sat beside the door, and I fell asleep there.
"As I was sleeping, someone put His hand on my shoulder. He said, 'You don't know Me. You have passed through a great pain. I experienced a great pain, also. But I will not leave you alone. Tomorrow I will send you someone who will tell you about Me. Listen to him.'"
When she finished the story, she began to weep. She turned to the team leader and said, "Tell me about this person that I saw in my dream."
Through his own tears, the leader told her about Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the friend of widows, orphans and outcasts. "This Book that I'm going to give you will explain to you about God's love," he promised, giving her a Bible along with additional aid to help her and her children survive the mourning period.
The widow later returned to Syria. No one knows for sure what has become of her. But God knows.
'Dead or alive?'
Sami*, the Lebanese Christian pastor who told the widow about Jesus, has had similar experiences with other Muslims. He and several Christian partners have been reaching out to Muslim villages in Lebanon with the simple Gospel message. They expanded their outreach to Syrian Muslims when refugees started streaming across the border last year.
"When we started to serve among those villages and communities, I had a doubt in my heart," Sami admits. "Will it work? Are we going to experience what we hear from different parts of the Middle East and the world about Muslims coming to know Jesus as Savior and Lord? It was a challenge, a discovery process for me personally and for many with us in the ministry. But as we have shared the Gospel faithfully, the Lord is showing us signs of people who are opening up, asking questions and opening the door for us to reach a wider community.
"We started a couple of house groups in different areas with Lebanese and Syrian Muslims, and we are discipling those people. Some of them have come to know Christ. Others are discovering who Jesus is. They are showing signs of changing in their lives."
A Muslim community leader the Christians befriended last year helped them gain entrance to the homes of many Muslims -- Lebanese and Syrian. During those visits, he heard the Gospel message of God's offer of salvation through Jesus Christ perhaps 100 times.
At the beginning of one such visit, the Muslim leader walked up to a refugee family, pointed at them and said, "Are you dead or alive?"
The family was taken aback; so were the Christians. He repeated his question: "Are you dead or alive?" Then he pointed at the Christians and declared, "These people have a Book, and it's going to tell you how to find life. You need to read it!"
"This is a Muslim guy who probably has never read the New Testament himself," marvels Christian worker David James*, who participated in the visit. "But he's opening doors for us now because he saw something different in us as he heard the things that we were sharing."
In another village, the relief team made a repeat visit to the home of an influential Syrian Muslim. He knows many other needy families, so they brought a large supply of food for distribution.
"We don't need your boxes of food," the Syrian leader said. "What we need is somebody to come and teach us how to walk in the way of Jesus and how we can forgive one another. We don't know how to live with each other." The Christians were happy to oblige.
'I want to follow Jesus'
Perhaps the boldest new evangelist in Lebanon, however, is an older Syrian woman whose home has become a center for teaching truth.
Sami met Noora* at the end of a long, exhausting day of aid deliveries to refugees. He was ready to go home, but his guide insisted on one more stop to a particularly needy group of families. Reluctantly, he agreed. They distributed food portions and New Testaments along with a simple Gospel presentation.
Noora, one of the Syrian Muslim women in the home, started asking questions about baptism. As it turned out, she already was reading the New Testament. She had plenty of other questions about Jesus: How do you address Him? How does He differ from the other prophets?
"We read Matthew, the first chapters, about Jesus' incarnation and that He is Immanuel," Sami recounts. "Immanuel means 'God with us.'"
"I don't understand," Noora replied.
Sami explained the concept of a king visiting his people disguised in plain clothing and humility, yet remaining in every aspect a king. He told her about Jesus' sinless life compared to the other prophets, all of whom had failed God in various ways, despite their greatness.
"Who do you want to follow -- Jesus or the prophets?" Simi asked.
"I want to follow Jesus," Noora answered.
During another visit Noora suddenly declared, "The message that you shared with me changed my life. I'm a new person." The changes in her life proved her words.
"Once we visited her and she was reading the Old Testament," Sami recalls. "After another week, she was in the New Testament. She told us, 'This is my third time of reading the whole Bible.' After that we continued visiting her, encouraging her and discipling her. She said, 'Everything you tell me, I go and I share it with others. I tell the traditional Christians that worshipping saints is not good; you have to worship God. I'm sharing with the Syrians [Muslims] about how God changed my life.'"
Recently Noora returned to Syria for a visit with family, despite the dangers. When Sami called her to make sure she was OK, she reported: "I have a group of women gathered in my house from Muslim and Christian backgrounds and I'm teaching them.
"It's hard," Noora acknowledged, "but God is helping me."
So this article would have us believe that Jesus is appearing to and trying to save the Muzzies?
He had the gift of Faith, did not let the traditions of men get in the way. It is exciting to see God reaching these people held in the darkest of human traditions. Being introduced to the Word of God is a good first step. Many of these new disciples of Jesus Christ will achieve martyrdom before they ever get to graduate from theological junior high. The Holy Spirit works with souls where they are. They will sit at the low table until the Groom notices and says, “Friend, come up higher”.
Jesus doesn't care who you are. He only cares about who you can become.
FYI, Jesus died for ALL! Whosoever will...........
You made several mistakes:
“They are teaching her the things that no Catholic bothered to teach her.”
Show me a Catholic had a chance to do it. It took a war for this woman to be able to hear even an incorrect version of the Gospel.
“Had they bothered to preach the Gospel to them thenmaybe they would not be outnumbered by the muslims that want to kill them .”
Your point would make sense ...if it was rational. Catholics are suffering in Syria right now - from both sides.
“Putting anything before God is idol worship , what ever you choose to call it doesn’t change what it is .”
And veneration of the saints doesn’t put them before God, so you’re not actually saying anything. Your ignorance is comparable to hers.
The key is her ignorance.
Actually, when you truly know Jesus you want to know His saints as well since He made them. They are your family.
According to this woman, Jesus said, “Tomorrow I will send you someone who will tell you about Me. Listen to him.”
Jesus didn’t say that she’d be told about your “saints,” but that she’d be told about Him.
You demean Christ by insisting that Jesus is insufficient.
You wrote:
“According to this woman, Jesus said, “Tomorrow I will send you someone who will tell you about Me. Listen to him.””
First, that’s what we are being told. We have no idea if this actually happened.
“Jesus didn’t say that she’d be told about your “saints,” but that she’d be told about Him.”
Right. So, she is being mislead by the Evangelicals.
“You demean Christ by insisting that Jesus is insufficient.”
You bear false witness by claiming - FALSELY - that I EVER insisted, claimed, wrote, suggested or even thought that Jesus is insufficient.
True to form, a Protestant here is already resorting to lying. You can now claim all you want that you love Jesus, but I will have no reason to believe you because you’ve proved to be a bad witness. I suggest you do some serious soul searching about the lack of integrity you offer in your service to Christ.
Acts 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
So, a Roman Catholic Freeper resorts to name-calling and ad hominem attacks. I totally expected that.
Go waste your time talking to dead people, and encourage others to do the same. I’ll talk to the living Christ, and will never stop encouraging people to go directly to Him.
Wait, why do you want to burn the saints?
im·mo·late
1. -- to sacrifice.
2. -- to kill as a sacrificial victim, as by fire; offer in sacrifice.
3. --to destroy by fire.
Adoration is for Christ alone!
Agreed.
Glorious good news!
Everyone who is a believer in Christ, including the angels, are known as saints. The Catholics like to pick certain people out and hold them to a higher standard and label them as saints but they are wrong. Read the Bible and you’ll see.
Wouldn't that make you an intercessor? If somebody asks you to pray for them on their behalf, do you turn them away and tell them they should go directly to Christ and stop bothering you?
I’m alive, though. Talking with the dead is specifically prohibited in Scripture.
Certainly the Bible prohibits consulting mediums and necromancers. However, if we define the Christian Church as the community of all believers in Christ, and we believe in eternal salvation and the immortality of the soul, I would suggest that those who have departed this earth are still quite alive in Heaven, and remain members of the Christian church (unless somehow they stop believing in Christ once they get to Heaven.)
When I *pray* to the Saints I really don't consider it anything different than me asking a fellow church goer, friend or family member to pray for me - to Christ. I also meditate on their lives, actions, faith and in many cases martyrdom not to worship them, but as a means of inspiration as to how my life may be better spent in Christ's service. I think we can agree that God (in three persons) should be the sole object of our worship, and the Scriptures the primary directive for implementing that worship. I think we can also agree that some of us implement the above better than others, so why not look to them as examples?
You wrote:
“So, a Roman Catholic Freeper resorts to name-calling and ad hominem attacks.”
Everything I said was true. What you said was not. I never said, claimed, insisted, nor suggested, nor even THOUGHT that Jesus was insufficient. Yet that is EXACTLY what you claim I did. That’s bad witness on your part.
“I totally expected that.”
You totally expected to say something about me that was untrue?
“Go waste your time talking to dead people, and encourage others to do the same.”
Those in heaven are not dead. God is the God of the living. Mark 12:24.
“I’ll talk to the living Christ, and will never stop encouraging people to go directly to Him.”
Talk to Him more often. Ask Him to give you grace so you don’t bear false witness against others. Apparently you are asking for that right now.
Excuse me but this entire are is loaded with Catholic Arabs and there has not been an Evangelical presence their until very recently . Catholics Arabs got outnumbered by Islamic Arabs because they did not share the Gospel . Where the Gospel is preached people come to Christ even former Muslims.
Catholics have had a couple thousand years to do this but chose not to . BTW I know who the pastor is in the article . He is a former Catholic who heard the Gospel in Israel from a Jew.
You wrote:
“Everyone who is a believer in Christ, including the angels, are known as saints.”
Everyone in the early Church was called a saint (Cor 1:1, Rom 1:7,Phil 1:1, Col 1:2, Eph 1:1). Today, not everyone who says they believe in Christ can be called a saint in the same way. Too many heresies have gotten in the way. Also, angels are called saints by convention - “sanctus”. It is largely a quirk of language. They are holy, but they are not saints as human beings can be saints. EVen when people cite verses for angels being called saints, they are rarely very clear on that point: see Deut 33:2-3 or Zech 14:5 or Dan. 7:18 for instance.
“The Catholics like to pick certain people out and hold them to a higher standard and label them as saints but they are wrong.”
False. Catholics do not “pick certain people out and hold them to a higher standard and label them as saints”. God gives grace to men to make them saints. The Church merely recognizes what they are and treats them accordingly as the children of God they are. Perhaps you never knew that. If you don’t know what the Catholic Church actually holds to or teaches you probably shouldn’t be stating your opinions on it since they will be poorly informed to say the least.
“Read the Bible and you’ll see.”
I read it often - probably more than you do.
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