Swine Flu, and the Egyptian Pig Farmers

Recently Egypt has been in the news. As part of the swine flu hysteria, Egypt has ordered the destruction of all pigs that are in the country. What many news reports neglect to mention the religious aspect of this action. Egypt is a majority Muslim nation, with a Coptic Christian minority. Since Muslims are not allowed to touch pork, the pig farmers are Coptic Christians.

Here are two articles from that addresses the religious aspect of the action:

• Egyptian Police Clash with Protesters over Pig Cull
• Egypt Swine Flu: Christians Allege Sectarian Discrimination

More than Dreams (Islam)

I recently had the pleasure of seeing a new believer get baptized. This young person came from an Islamic background. His testimony brought tears to my eyes. It is such a joy to hear the life story of a new follower of Christ. It is particularly amazing when the testimony comes from someone who risks everything to follow Him.

Here is a site with video testimonies from former Muslims who have become Christians. These are professionally done reenactments telling the story of these individuals, and how they came to know Isa (Jesus). They are spoken in the native languages (Arabic, Farsi, etc) of the believers. There are English subtitles also.

More than Dreams

These particular testimonies have several things in common:

• All were seeking to know Allah better.
• All had visions and dreams about Isa.
• All sacrificed much to follow Isa.
  

Our Savior is moving in the Islamic world He is making his name known among the nations. May the Lord give strength to Christians in Islamic countries. And may I learn from the example of these belivers who give up everything to follow Jesus.

Islamification of American Evangelicalism

Keith Drury wrote an interesting post a while back entitled: Islamification of American Evangelicalism.

He muses about 6 things we might see if Christians were take pointers from Islam:
1) Elevation of the Father over the other members of the Trinity
2) The glory of God is all that matters.
3) Elevation of males and subordination of women
4) Destiny
5) Nationalizing religious values
6) Holy war

He doesn't mention or even allude to Calvinism in the post, but I definitely see points 1-4 as applicable to the Calvinist system.

Drury is a professor/pastor at Indiana Wesleyan University. If you haven't checked out his site, give it a look. There's lots of good stuff there. He is opinionated, yet also has a knack for addressing serious topics in a disarming manner. (note: use IE on his site, firefox doesn't seem to render pages correctly)