Persecution of Christians is hitting new highs around the world. We need to be praying for other Christians as the end of the age approaches….

A mob of nearly 20,000 radical Muslims, mainly Salafis, attempted this evening to break into and torch the Church of St. Mary and St. Abram in the village of Meet Bashar,in Zagazig, Sharqia province. They were demanding the death of Reverend Guirgis Gameel, pastor of the church, who has been unable to leave his home since yesterday. Nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Copts and torch the building. A home of a Copt living near the church and the home of the church’s porter were torched, as well as three cars.

The mob demanded the return Rania of Khalil Ibrahim, 15, to her father. She has been held with the Security Directorate since yesterday. Christian-born Rania had converted to Islam three months ago after her father, who had converted to Islam two years ago and took custody of her. She had disappeared from the village on Saturday, after claiming to go shopping. According to Reverend Guirgis Gameel, she had a disagreement with her father, who had arranged a marriage for her with a Muslim man.

Her father, Khalil Ibrahim, went to the police on Saturday and accused the priest of being behind her disappearance, and said she had gone to live with her Coptic mother.

Yesterday a Salafi mob of 2000 went to the priest’s home and destroyed his furniture and his car, surrounded the church and pelted it with stones. They demolished a large section of the church fence. In the evening security forces announced that they had found Rania in Cairo and that she was not abducted by Christians; she was brought to the police station in Meet Bashar.

‘After hearing this news yesterday everyone was relieved,’ said Coptic activist Waguih Jacob. ‘However, the Copts noticed that the Muslims did not completely disperse, but were hovering in all streets.’ The few security forced who were stationed in front of the church were dismissed as the village seemed to return to peace.

But the mob became more angry this evening when they heard that Rania refused to go back to live with her father, and returned in much greater numbers.”

I want to address what is beginning to occur in the Church and why it must be rejected outright. It’s becoming increasingly ‘in vogue’ to accept Islam in the Church. Consider a June 24, 2011 article from World Net Daily. “Dozens of churches, from Park Hill Congregational in Denver to Hillview United Methodist in Boise, Idaho, and First United Lutheran in San Francisco to St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, are planning to send ‘a message both here at home and to the Arab and Muslim world about our respect for Islam’ with a time to read the Quran during worship this Sunday.” It has been labeled ‘Chrislam’, the attempt by some Christians to find common ground with Islam. One person said it was wrong. Another called it dangerous. God uses stronger words than that. Scripture itself declares ‘Chrislam’, the mixing of Christianity and Islam, to be a Spirit of Antichrist!

The Spirit of Antichrist was already prevalent during the time of the Apostle John. In fact, he was the one who had the most to say about this demonic influence. In 1 John 2:18, he said, “…you have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists; whereby we know it is the last time”. Again, in 1 John 4:3, he said, “…this is that SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST, whereof you have heard that it should come; and EVEN NOW ALREADY IS IT IN THE WORLD”. The word ‘Antichrist’ simply means ‘against Christ’ or ‘opposes Christ’. Anything that would be introduced into the Church that would subvert the finished work of the Cross, that is, distract, corrupt, or take away from who Jesus Christ is and what He accomplished at the Cross, is a Spirit of Antichrist. I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Paul, “Now the Spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the Faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1). The acceptance of Islamic practices into the Church by these and other ministers is giving way to seducing spirits and is teaching the doctrines of devils.

What I am about to show you are the characteristics that the Apostle John himself used to describe the Spirit of Antichrist:

1) The Spirit of Antichrist denies that Jesus is the Christ. In 1 John 2:22, it says, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist…” The word ‘Christ’ in the original Greek means ‘Anointed One’. In other words, it is a declaration of Jesus as Messiah. Islam rejects that Jesus is the one and only true Messiah. They believe He was a prophet and maybe a type of Messiah, but not the Anointed One. If that’s not enough, John goes further by calling them liars.

2) The Spirit of Antichrist denies that Jesus is the Son of God. In 1 John 2:22, the Apostle continues, “He is Antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son”. Islam rejects that Jesus affirmed He was the Son of God. Furthermore, one well-known Bible teacher said that Muslims believe that the Mahdi is the future leader and that Jesus will return and follow the Mahdi to Jerusalem where He (Jesus) will deny He is the Son of God. Again, in this same verse, John said those who reject His Sonship were liars.

3) The Spirit of Antichrist does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. In 1 John 4:3, again the Apostle states, “And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that Spirit of Antichrist…” Did you catch that? Any spirit that rejects God as coming in the flesh is ‘not of God’. If it didn’t come from God, then it is a doctrine of devils according to the Apostle Paul himself, as stated earlier. Islam rejects that God came into this world in the flesh. This also tells us that the Christian God, who is Jesus Christ, is not the same as the Muslim god, Allah. It also proves that Allah is a false god.

Finally, the following are some of the last words the Apostle Peter would write before, according to tradition, he was crucified upside-down. “But there were false Prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord Who bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). For these Church leaders, who are blind watchmen, to bring Islam and the reading of the Quran into the Church is to deny the Lord himself, it is to deny who He is, and it is to deny what He accomplished at Calvary’s Cross 2,000 years ago, when He gave His life for the sins of the world! Just as bad, it is an open acceptance of the Spirit of Antichrist, which John said will bring swift destruction and ultimately, yet sadly, the damning of the soul.

What should the Church do now? We must get back to proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation without fear of reprisal. We must defend and preach the deity of Jesus, that He is the one true God and there is no other. Then we must also boldly proclaim the Holy Scriptures, not the Quran, as the inspired and inerrant Word of God.

Everyone should be free to practice their religion in the way they choose. What this is about is defending the truth of who Jesus Christ is and what He accomplished at the Cross, and preserving the purity of the Church against the infiltration of false doctrine. The Early Church Fathers (e.g., St. Polycarp, St. Irenaeus) defended the Truth against heresy, so why don’t we?

Great article from Newsweek on how Christians are being treated around the world today! Keep looking up!

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.

But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear. In Nigeria many have suffered all of these forms of persecution. The nation has the largest Christian minority (40 percent) in proportion to its population (160 million) of any majority-Muslim country. For years, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria have lived on the edge of civil war. Islamist radicals provoke much if not most of the tension. The newest such organization is an outfit that calls itself Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege.” Its aim is to establish Sharia in Nigeria. To this end it has stated that it will kill all Christians in the country.

In the month of January 2012 alone, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011 its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They use guns, gasoline bombs, and even machetes, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) while launching attacks on unsuspecting citizens. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, policemen, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication.

The Christophobia that has plagued Sudan for years takes a very different form. The authoritarian government of the Sunni Muslim north of the country has for decades tormented Christian and animist minorities in the south. What has often been described as a civil war is in practice the Sudanese government’s sustained persecution of religious minorities. This persecution culminated in the infamous genocide in Darfur that began in 2003. Even though Sudan’s Muslim president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which charged him with three counts of genocide, and despite the euphoria that greeted the semi-independence he grant-ed to South Sudan in July of last year, the violence has not ended. In South Kordofan, Christians are still subject-ed to aerial bombardment, targeted killings, the kidnap-ping of children, and other atrocities. Reports from the United Nations indicate that between 53,000 and 75,000 innocent civilians have been displaced from their resi-dences and that houses and buildings have been looted and destroyed.

Both kinds of persecution—undertaken by extragovernmental groups as well as by agents of the state—have come together in Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. On Oct. 9 of last year in the Maspero area of Cairo, Coptic Christians (who make up roughly 11 percent of Egypt’s population of 81 million) marched in protest against a wave of attacks by Islamists—including church burnings, rapes, mutilations, and murders—that followed the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. During the protest, Egyptian security forces drove their trucks into the crowd and fired on protesters, crushing and killing at least 24 and wounding more than 300 people. By the end of the year more than 200,000 Copts had fled their homes in anticipation of more attacks. With Islamists poised to gain much greater power in the wake of recent elections, their fears appear to be justified.

Egypt is not the only Arab country that seems bent on wiping out its Christian minority. Since 2003 more than 900 Iraqi Christians (most of them Assyrians) have been killed by terrorist violence in Baghdad alone, and 70 churches have been burned, according to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled as a result of violence directed specifically at them, reducing the number of Christians in the country to fewer than half a million from just over a million before 2003. AINA understandably describes this as an “incipient genocide or ethnic cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq.”

The 2.8 million Christians who live in Pakistan make up only about 1.6 percent of the population of more than 170 million. As members of such a tiny minority, they live in perpetual fear not only of Islamist terrorists but also of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws. There is, for example, the notorious case of a Christian woman who was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. When international pressure persuaded Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer to explore ways of freeing her, he was killed by his bodyguard. The bodyguard was then celebrated by prominent Muslim clerics as a hero—and though he was sentenced to death late last year, the judge who imposed the sentence now lives in hiding, fearing for his life.

Such cases are not unusual in Pakistan. The nation’s blasphemy laws are routinely used by criminals and intolerant Pakistani Muslims to bully religious minorities. Simply to declare belief in the Christian Trinity is considered blasphemous, since it contradicts mainstream Muslim theological doctrines. When a Christian group is suspected of transgressing the blasphemy laws, the consequences can be brutal. Just ask the members of the Christian aid group World Vision. Its offices were attacked in the spring of 2010 by 10 gunmen armed with grenades, leaving six people dead and four wounded. A militant Muslim group claimed responsibility for the attack on the grounds that World Vision was working to subvert Islam. (In fact, it was helping the survivors of a major earthquake.)

Not even Indonesia—often touted as the world’s most tolerant, democratic, and modern majority-Muslim nation—has been immune to the fevers of Christophobia. According to data compiled by the Christian Post, the number of violent incidents committed against religious minorities (and at 7 percent of the population, Christians are the country’s largest minority) increased by nearly 40 percent, from 198 to 276, between 2010 and 2011.

The litany of suffering could be extended. In Iran dozens of Christians have been arrested and jailed for daring to worship outside of the officially sanctioned church system. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, deserves to be placed in a category of its own. Despite the fact that more than a million Christians live in the country as foreign workers, churches and even private acts of Christian prayer are banned; to enforce these totalitarian restrictions, the religious police regularly raid the homes of Christians and bring them up on charges of blasphemy in courts where their testimony carries less legal weight than a Muslim’s. Even in Ethiopia, where Christians make up a majority of the population, church burnings by members of the Muslim minority have become a problem.

It should be clear from this catalog of atrocities that anti-Christian violence is a major and underreported problem. No, the violence isn’t centrally planned or coordinated by some international Islamist agency. In that sense the global war on Christians isn’t a traditional war at all. It is, rather, a spontaneous expression of anti-Christian animus by Muslims that transcends cultures, regions, and ethnicities.

As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, pointed out in an interview with Newsweek, Christian minorities in many majority-Muslim nations have “lost the protection of their societies.” This is especially so in countries with growing radical Islamist (Salafist) movements. In those nations, vigilantes often feel they can act with impunity—and government inaction often proves them right. The old idea of the Ottoman Turks—that non-Muslims in Muslim societies deserve protection (albeit as second-class citizens)—has all but vanished from wide swaths of the Islamic world, and increasingly the result is bloodshed and oppression.

So let us please get our priorities straight. Yes, Western governments should protect Muslim minorities from intolerance. And of course we should ensure that they can worship, live, and work freely and without fear. It is the protection of the freedom of conscience and speech that distinguishes free societies from unfree ones. But we also need to keep perspective about the scale and severity of intolerance. Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.

As for what the West can do to help religious minorities in Muslim-majority societies, my answer is that it needs to begin using the billions of dollars in aid it gives to the offending countries as leverage. Then there is trade and investment. Besides diplomatic pressure, these aid and trade relationships can and should be made conditional on the protection of the freedom of conscience and worship for all citizens.

Instead of falling for overblown tales of Western Islamophobia, let’s take a real stand against the Christophobia infecting the Muslim world. Tolerance is for everyone—except the intolerant.

Wycliffe Bible Translators is firing back at an allegation that it is softening the language of the Bible it prepares for Muslim countries in order not to offend the Muslim majorities there.

WND reported earlier on the developing controversy that involves Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frontiers, all of which were reported producing Bible translations that remove or modify terms which they have deemed offensive to Muslims.

Involved is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:

“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”

to this:

“cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”

While the Bible teaches throughout about God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, Muslims are told in the Quran that God has no children. They perceive Jesus as another prophet.

According to Joshua Lingel of i2 Ministries, “Even more dramatic a change is the Arabic and Bangla (Bangladesh) translations. In Arabic, Bible translations err by translating ‘Father’ as ‘Lord.’ ‘Guardian.’ ‘Most High’ and ‘God.” In Bangla, ‘Son of God’ is mistranslated ‘Messiah of God’ consistent with the Quran’s Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah), which references the merely human Jesus.”

In response to these translations, many within the evangelical missions movement as well as many former Muslim converts and indigenous Christians from countries where these translations are being used, are indignant. After numerous appeals have been rejected, a petition has been launched to call for the end to the translations.

Thousands have signed up.

Now Wycliffe Global Alliance American consultant Mary Lederleitner, while not saying whether the new translations actually say “Cleanse them by water…”, reveals the groups are searching for the best way to communicate the truth of who God the Father is so that the truth can be understood.

“Using a web-based system called change.org – a petition went live aimed at SIL and Wycliffe which expresses disagreement with the way the divine familial names are handled in the SIL Best Practices document and Wycliffe USA policy,” the statement said.

“At the heart of this controversy is a difference of position – one that hinges on whether or not one believes that using the most common term in a receptor language in translating the familial terms for God (Father, Son of God, Son) is the only acceptable translation or whether – in the minority of cases when the most common term conveys inaccurate meaning – there are times when other terms (terms which maintain the concept of familial relationships but are not the most common term) can be used,” the statement said.

“In their commitment to a position which does not allow for this second option, a group of individuals have created a petition to convince Wycliffe and SIL to take their position. In order to gather their stated goal of 5,000 signatures, they have used messaging of their position that falsely accuses our organizations of ‘producing Bibles that remove Father, Son and Son of God because these terms are offensive to Muslims,’” the statement said.

The petition by Biblical Missiology states that Wycliffe and two other Western mission agencies, “Are producing Bibles that remove Father, Son and Son of God because these terms are offensive to Muslims.”

The Wycliffe response says that’s not quite right.

“The titles are not removed, but are preserved in a way that does not communicate incorrect meaning. The issue is not that the Greek term is offensive to Muslims, rather the issue is that – unfortunately – for some readers, traditional translations may imply that God has sex with women, and give readers the impression the translation is corrupt.”

The petition further states that, “Frontiers worked with an SIL consultant to produce True Meaning of the Gospel of Christ, an Arabic translation which removes ‘Father’ in reference to God, and removes or redefines ‘Son.’”

In response, Lederleitner provided the following statement from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a partner with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

“In response to various recent public accusations, SIL restates emphatically: SIL does not support the removal of the divine familial terms, ‘Son of God’ or ‘God the Father’ but rather requires that Scripture translation must communicate clear understanding of these terms,” the statement said.

“Without reservation, SIL’s Scripture translation practice is to use wording which accurately communicates to the intended audience the relationship of Father by which God chose to describe Himself in relationship to His Son, Jesus Christ, as is stated in the original languages of Scripture. SIL affirms the eternal deity of Jesus Christ and insists that it be preserved in all translations,” the statement said.

“SIL appreciates assistance in dispelling the falsehood that ‘SIL supports the removal of the divine familial terms.’ Campaigns of misinformation can be damaging if left unchallenged, so SIL encourages readers to take time to investigate the erroneous information that has been written elsewhere,” the statement said.

Worldview Weekend President Brannon Howse says that his major concern is that groups that try to be culturally correct often miss the text’s meaning.

“My fear is that isogesis is often used in Bible teaching and translating. Isogesis is when we bring our subjective opinion, feelings or cultural beliefs onto the text,” Howse said.

“Christians, Bible teachers, and translators need to be committed to exegesis which is the study, teaching, and translating of the Word of God in context which includes using Scripture to interpret Scripture,” Howse said.

Howse points out that there is a way to accomplish a cultural explanation that is sensitive to the target group, but maintain the exact wording of the text.

“Thus, if there is a cultural confusion as to the meaning of a text, use the Scripture to confirm the meaning of the text to those living with in that culture. Translators can insert notes as well as cross references to assist the reader in understanding the text in context instead of relying on a cultural understanding to interpret the text,” Howse said.

“Speaking on a broader level to the issue of contextualizing; I believe a large part of contextualizing is the attempt to be politically correct,” Howse said.

“Contextualization is not preaching the Biblical gospel that transforms people living in the culture but the preaching of a politically correct gospel by people who were transformed by the culture,” Howse said.

Howse adds that he’s concerned that this movement is tied to a broader cultural trend that attempts to appease Muslims rather than tell them the truth of the Gospel.

“I am troubled by the trend to appeal to Muslims through political correctness. In 2007, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels and others signed the Yale Document that says that Muslims and Christians worship the same God,” Howse said.

“A Yale Document speaks of ‘one God’ when it declared ‘We applaud that A Common Word Between Us and You stresses so insistently the unique devotion to one God,’” Howse said. “Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God; that is blasphemy. Allah, as described in the Qur’an, matches many of the descriptions of Satan in the Bible.”

What is the body of Christ coming to when we now have Bible translations openly removing the core doctrines of our faith and appeasing Islam! The return of the Lord is very near and it is a bride without spot or blemish that He is returning for, not a lukewarm church!

The article below is from Joel Richardson. Keep looking up!

New Bible yanks ‘Father,’ Jesus as ‘Son of God’

By Joel Richardson

Islam-sensitive project ignites controversy, online petition

In the world of questionable and sometimes downright silly Bible translations, one would think that it couldn’t get any worse.

After all, we’ve seen the “In da beginnin’ Big Daddy created da heaven an’ da earth” Ebonics Bible, as well as the “Apostle’s Log” Star Trek English paraphrase Bible. In a more serious effort, the New Oxford Annotated Bible was created in part by pro-”gay” and feminist scholars in order to set forth a more “gay” revisionist interpretation of Scripture.

But now there is a major controversy developing as the latest altered Bibles are being created by organizations that most would think of as being more conservative and reasonable. At the forefront of the controversy are the Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frontiers, all of which are producing Bible translations that remove or modify terms which they have deemed offensive to Muslims.

That’s right: Muslim-friendly Bibles.

Included in the controversial development is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:

“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”

to this:

“cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”

A large number of such Muslim-sensitive translations already are published and well-circulated in several Muslim-majority nations such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.

According to Joshua Lingel of i2 Ministries, “Even more dramatic a change is the Arabic and Bangla (Bangladesh) translations. In Arabic, Bible translations err by translating ‘Father’ as ‘Lord.’ ‘Guardian.’ ‘Most High’ and ‘God.” In Bangla, ‘Son of God’ is mistranslated ‘Messiah of God’ consistent with the Quran’s Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah), which references the merely human Jesus.”

In response to these translations, many within the evangelical missions movement as well as many former Muslim converts and indigenous Christians from countries where these translations are being used, are indignant. After numerous appeals have been rejected, a petition has been launched to call for the end to the translations.

More than 3,000 already have signed up.

While the organizations that are promoting these translations are adamant that replacing such terms as Father with Lord or Master best conveys the inspired meaning of the text, many of the indigenous Christian leaders from the countries where these translations are being promoted are broadly rejecting the translations.

The indigenous believers see the introduction of these American-made translations with which they so strongly disagree as a form of American cultural imperialism or colonialism.

According to Turkish pastor Fikret Böcek, such new translations are, “an all-American idea with absolutely no respect for the sacredness of Scripture, or even of the growing Turkish church.”

According to the testimony of one leader from a church in Bangladesh, one of the most problematic aspects of this development is that it gives fuel to the often-heard Muslim claim that Christians are liars who change their Bibles to deceive Muslims. Once a Bible translation is well established within any country, the introduction of such radically different translations reinforces the Muslim charge and undermines trust in the Christian community.

According to Lingel, who can be contacted at info@i2ministries.org, the crisis in translation methodology is largely due to “a postmodern literary bias” that has crept into some translation circles in recent decades. Such translations would seem to demand that the divine author of the Bible change rather than the Muslim reader.

“But Jesus demanded that many of his listeners change,” says Lingel, explaining that instead of demanding that Muslim readers change their understanding of God, these translations seem to convey that God must accommodate the religious prejudices of Muslims.

“Lingel is also the co-editor of a new book, “Chrislam: How Missionaries Are Promoting an Islamized Gospel,” which represents the first major response against Muslim-sensitive translations as well as the larger movement often referred to as the “Insider Movement” or “Chrislam.”

According to reports, of the roughly 200 translation projects Wycliffe/SIL linguists have undertaken in Muslim contexts, about 30 or 40 remove the terms father and son with reference to God and Jesus.

Lingel’s response is quite direct, “These projects need to be defunded.”

Yet according to a recent Forbes “200 Largest U.S. Charities” report, the Orlando-based Wycliffe Bible Translators USA is the third most well-funded religious charity in the states.

Proponents of the Insider Movement claim that this method of reaching Muslims is bearing great fruit. Opponents, however, point out that the so-called converts within the Insider Movement remain “hidden” within their Muslim culture, continue to attend mosque, pray like a Muslim, acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet, the Quran as inspired, and make the Muslim credal confession, known as the “shahada.”

Some now claim that there are as many as 300,000-1.2 million new “Insider believers” in Bangladesh. But one former Insider who left the movement and speaks out in Lingel’s Chrislam book reports that the number of insiders couldn’t be more than 10,000. According to this source, many of the claims are greatly exaggerated so as to bring in more funding from wealthy American missionary organizations.

“Other former Insiders have reported publicly that many Insiders are really Muslims who will do whatever it takes for the jobs and money they are offered by pro-IM ministries to feed their families,” Lingel says.

Further questioning the funding and support of well-known Christian organizations of this movement, Lingel recounts, “I have consulted with the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention on missions and evangelism among Muslims at various times… [Who] stated that there are tens of thousands of Isa al-masih jamaats, or ‘Jesus congregations,’ in northern Africa. But the members of these jamaats call themselves Muslims, do not believe in the Trinity and believe Muhammad is a prophet of God. Are they Christians or Muslims? Why talk about them in terms of missionary success?”

In response to what many Christians see as a heretical movement based on deception, Lingel’s i2 Ministries is in the process of completing a video-based university called Mission Muslims World University, with 40 of the most experienced professors from around the world teaching courses in Muslim ministries, Islamic Studies, apologetics, evangelism and discipleship.

According to reports, a Kuwaiti royal prince has become a follower of Jesus Christ. In an audio file posted with his name, he affirms that if he is killed because of a recording he made where he talks about his conversion, he firmly believes that he will meet Jesus Christ face-to-face. The news comes from Middle Eastern sources which state that al-Haqiqa – a Christian satellite TV channel in Arabic that transmits Christian religious programmes – broadcast an audio file attributed to the Kuwaiti prince, identified as Abdullah al-Sabah. The al-Sabahs are the royal family of Kuwait, a country rich in oil. The name Abdullah (servant of God) frequently appears in the Emir’s family tree.

In his audio file, Abdullah declared: “First of all, I fully agree with the distribution of this audio file and I now declare that if they kill me because of it, then I will appear before Jesus Christ and be with him for all eternity.” In this statement, the prince demonstrates his awareness of the fate in store for a martyr of the faith, according to Christian doctrine. The television channel stated that Abdullah is a member of the royal family, and that he recently renounced his faith in Islam and became a Christian, without specifying which particular branch of Christianity he had chosen. After stating his full name, the prince declared: “I will accept whatever they do to me, because the truth in the Bible has guided me towards the right path.”

  In the audio file, Abdullah talks about the Islamic groups that are winning the elections in Egypt and declares: “Islamic communities have always wanted to attack in different parts of the world but God has preserved the world and still protects it. This is why we have recently seen disagreements appearing among Islamic groups who are now fighting with each other. They are about to divide further into different groups.”

 Mohabat News, a Christian Iranian website which has been following the fate of Christian minorities in the Middle East closely and which has monitored Abdullah’s statement, confirms that this news was published briefly by Arabic news agencies and also by the Iranian state news agency. Some independent websites with Shiite leanings denied the reports and quoted another Kuwaiti prince, Azbi al-Sabah, who said: “There’s no one by that name in the Kuwaiti royal family.” In actual fact, the name Abdullah does not appear on the list of the 15 members of the royal family who rule this small, extremely wealthy country in different capacities: from the Sheikh down to Princess Nijirah al-Sabah, who testified in the US Congress under the assumed name of “Nurse Nayirah” on the humanitarian situation in the country after the invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and just before the Gulf War. That isn’t to say that this high-profile convert is not hidden somewhere within the extended family, under a different name.

 In Kuwait the overwhelming majority of the population is Muslim (only 4% is Christian) and the country’s Constitution states: “Islam is the official religion of the country and Sharia is the main source for legislation.”

As is well known, the problem of conversions from Islam to other religions is a recurring problem in relationships between followers of the Prophet and other faiths and it is a very serious problem in all countries where the majority of the population is Muslim, even those that at first sight would seem socially progressive. The problem has always been there, but in the last few years the majority religion has become more sensitive in towards the increased evangelical activity being carried out, not so much by “traditional” Christian religions who have always been used to the insurmountable limits of living alongside Muslims, but rather by Protestant faiths.

 These seem to be enjoying enormous success – not just in Kuwait; it’s likely that the mysterious prince could be one of their followers – but also in countries that are definitely more mistrustful, such as the theocratic Iran of the ayatollahs.

  After Heidar Moslehi, the Iranian intelligence minister, asked Muslim seminaries to become proactive in stopping the spread of Christianity, a high-ranking cleric declared that Evangelical Christianity is the most horrifying intelligence and security organisation in the world. This statement seems to have appeared on press agencies close to the Revolutionary Guard.

  In a conference on “New Age cults” held in Varamin, a district south of Teheran, Akhond Mohsen Alizadeh declared: “We should not allow these cults to question Islamic jurisprudence under the cover of mysticism.” He went on to add: “They tell the youth that God is wrathful and horrible in Islam but is love in Christianity. Also, Christian preachers answer the questions and doubts of youth in their own interest and try to attract them.” Nevertheless a whole series of signs seem to indicate that non-traditional Christianity – there are Catholics and Orthodox Christians in Iran as well as a large Armenian community – is spreading. The regime’s press recently spoke of them with concern and the number of cases of repression and condemnation following conversions is growing.