Torch, Fall 2006

A Wake-Up Call O n September 11, 2001, America got a wake- up call to the world of the persecuted church. For the first time, radical Islam came into the living rooms of everyday Americans. Our nation embarked on a journey of sorrow and pain. It is not often that a nation corporately experiences the same emotions and becomes one. Suffering has a way of sifting through the fluff and differences of life, bringing all to the bottom line — the deepest, simplest meaning of life. Floodgates opened for opportunities to discuss the meaning of life and death. Not only were Americans appalled by the carnage, but many Muslims were humiliated that their own people in the name of their faith conducted acts of unspeakable violence and horror. While America stood united in pain, the Muslim world was suddenly divided. Their reaction was similar to ours when someone blows up an abortion clinic in the name of Christ. Our Muslim partners called us (Closed Door Ministries) together to apologize, to lay flowers at our embassies, and to weep. Working in lands steeped in Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, our greatest passion at Closed Door Ministries is to take the True and Living God to men, women, and children who live lives controlled by fear and who have never heard the Good News. The Mountains Cried Out in Praise In a faraway Muslim land rumored to harbor Osama bin Laden, there lived a man whose purpose in life was to persecute Christians. He took literally the words of the Prophet Muhammad in the Quran and Hadith that commanded him to “fight and slay the pagans” and “to fight with people until they agree … then their blood and buildings are safe.” Each day he waited with his friends, attacking believers and burning their Bibles, urinating on them, threatening to cut out their tongues if they used them to share Christ. These believers never backed down in the face of pain, but stubbornly clung to their God. The Muslim man took a Bible, determined to read it and argue P raying for the Impossible By Closed Door Ministries against it. The Living Word never returns void, and he was miraculously transformed, bowing the knee to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael. Immediately he shared his faith with his family and was jailed for 12 months. As he was tortured and ordered to recant, he stubbornly clung to his newfound Savior and Friend and welcomed death. On the day he was to be executed for blasphemy, a noose around his neck, a knock came at the prison door. An unexplainable court order for his release was presented. He changed his name to Lazarus, believing that God brought him back from the edge of death to roam the mountains of Pakistan proclaiming the True and Living God. This is a true story of a Saul-to- Paul, a walking testimony that the impossible is possible to an all-powerful God. God calls us to believe Him for the impossible. 20 TORCH / Fall 2006 TOP: SUPERSTOCK