Perhaps most remarkably, Dubai is home of the famed $4 billion Burj Dubai, which at nearly half a mile high is the tallest man-made structure on the face of the planet. I can personally attest that it is a breathtaking sight, soaring far above anything else on the horizon in any direction. Engineers and architects have come from all over the world to marvel at it.
In fact, the Burj is now triggering competition. An engineering company in Wales says it has been retained to build an even bigger structure, the Mile High Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which executives say will be at least 5,250 feet high. Meanwhile, the Russian press is reporting plans for a two-mile-high skyscraper in Moscow known as the Ultima Tower, complete with parks, gardens, artificial rivers and hills, apartment houses, schools, kindergartens, and all manner of stores, all built inside the tower.621
Can it be long before engineers announce plans to build new towers of Babel like these in Iraq, even in the new city of Babylon itself?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Join the Revolution
Christians have the “love your enemy” strategy all to themselves
Judeo-Christian civilization today faces the most dangerous moment in the history of the Islamic Revolution.
Three decades after the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the millions of Radical Islamic jihadists he inspired—both Shias and Sunnis—are determined to finish what he began. Some are driven by apocalyptic eschatology. They are using genocidal rhetoric. They are building alliances with nuclear-armed nations. And they are feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal weapons of mass destruction to accomplish their maniacal dreams.
Yet far too many in both the West and the East—political, military, and intelligence leaders as well as everyday citizens—are asleep to the gathering storm. In my judgment, this lack of awareness poses the greatest danger of all. An intellectually honest, spiritually strong, morally courageous, politically united global alliance against the Radicals could be enormously successful. We have more people, more money, better technology, and better ideas than the Radicals. But should we succumb to the ignorance, apathy, callousness, hubris, and fear already so pervasive among many of our leaders, we will find ourselves facing cataclysms of biblical proportions that will make the attacks of September 11, 2001, pale by comparison.
It is time to wake up.
It is time to awaken our neighbors.
It is time for every citizen who values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to shake off lethargy and join the Revolution to defeat the Radicals, encourage the Reformers, and strengthen the Revivalists—now, while there is still time.
My prayer is that some of you who read this book will be inspired to follow the powerful examples set by men like Jerry Boykin, Fred Schwien, Porter Goss, and others—men who have devoted their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of their nation. Free nations of the world urgently need more of such selfless public servants. We need men and women who willingly choose to serve in the military, in government security agencies, and in various intelligence agencies. We need men and women who will run for and serve in public office—and do so for the good of the country, not for their own personal gain. Might you join them?
My prayer, too, is that some of you who read this book will be inspired to follow the example set by leaders like Hamid Karzai, Jalal Talabani, King Mohammed VI, and Benazir Bhutto—leaders who have devoted their entire lives to fighting the Radicals and expanding freedom and opportunity for the people of the nations they serve. The Muslim world urgently needs more Reformers like these, men and women prepared to protect the poor, defend widows, care for orphans, provide justice for the downtrodden, and protect and advance the human rights of every single man, woman, and child in their countries, regardless of their race, religion, or political beliefs.
At the same time, the Muslim world needs hundreds of millions of sincere and selfless friends in both the West and the East who choose to help the Reformers succeed against the Radicals in every possible way. We need people who will invest in the economies of Reformer countries. We need people who will set up and run successful businesses in Reformer countries. We need people who will direct humanitarian relief organizations that serve people in Reformer countries. We also need people willing to advise and counsel Reformer leaders in areas of democratic change, religious freedom, science, technology, economic development, and the like. Now is the critical time to raise up a new generation of people to help the Reformers succeed against the Radicals. Will you be among them?
As you may have guessed by now, my deepest heartfelt prayer is that each of you who read this book will be inspired to follow the example set by the Revivalists, men and women who—regardless of their past religious beliefs—ultimately have chosen to follow Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation and in so doing have found true peace and forgiveness and personal transformation by His death on the cross in Jerusalem and His resurrection from the dead three days later. What’s more, I pray that you will be inspired by the Revivalists’ commitment to love their neighbors and love their enemies through the power of the Holy Spirit—just as Jesus did—and that you will be moved to stand with them and help them in this dramatic yet dangerous hour.
A Personal Journey
I did not grow up thinking I would write novels or nonfiction books about Muslims. I am the son of a Gentile mother and a Jewish father. Both of them became followers of Jesus in 1973, and I became a follower of Jesus in 1975. My wife is a Gentile with a deep love for the Jewish people, and she also became a Christ-follower in the early 1970s. When we fell in love in the late 1980s and married in the summer of 1990, we had a great passion to travel to Israel and bless the Jewish people in real and practical ways. But the Lord took us down an unexpected path.
For the first thirteen years of our marriage, the Lord prevented Lynn and me from traveling to Israel. Instead, He took us to Muslim countries and brought one Revivalist leader after another into our lives to befriend us and help us understand God’s heart of compassion for the Muslim people.
These Revivalists shared with us firsthand stories of how they had seen the God of the Bible transforming the lives of Muslims through the love of Jesus Christ. They taught us how to love Muslims by praying for them. They showed us how to love Muslims by providing food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, and comfort for the afflicted. They shared with us the sorrows and joys they had experienced serving Muslims in the name of Jesus while under the constant threat of persecution, arrest, torture, and death.
Along the way, their hearts became our heart. Lynn and I developed an overwhelming—and, honestly, unexpected—love for the Muslim people that has come to complement our love for Jews. We found ourselves wanting to bless Muslims as we had always wanted to bless the Jews. We certainly were not born with such love. We had to be born again first. And then we had to see such supernatural love in action. When we did, our lives were forever changed.
Love in Action in Iraq
In Iraq, I once met a dear follower of Jesus Christ who had nearly been killed for his faith. Several years ago, death threats forced him to flee the city where he was engaged in a very effective ministry, and he resettled in a city he had never lived in before. He began to pray, Lord, how would You have me serve You in this new city? How can I love my neighbors and my enemies? Please give me the wisdom and the courage to serve You faithfully.
The Lord loves to answer prayers like that, and soon He told this man to go meet with the mayor of the city and offer to bring several trucks filled with humanitarian relief supplies to the needy Muslims in that community. The man obeyed. Yet when he arrived in the mayor’s office and asked if he and his Christian colleagues could distribute such relief supplies, the mayor looked puzzled and for a moment just sat there saying nothing, seemingly unsure how to respond.
Rather than give the man an answer, the mayor pressed the intercom on his desk and ordered his secretary to summon the local mullah.
The Christ
ian leader grew scared. He had no desire to meet with a mullah. He was, after all, on the run from Radical mullahs. Nevertheless, a few minutes later, the Islamic cleric arrived.
The mayor said, “This man is a Christian. He has trucks filled with food, clothing, Bibles, and DVDs about the life of Jesus. Go back to the mosque and tell all the people to gather because the Christians have come to bless us.”
My friend was stunned. In all his years of ministry in Iraq, he had never experienced such a moment. Yet to his shock, the mullah agreed. He went back to the mosque, and a few minutes later, my friend heard an announcement booming from the loudspeakers on the minarets. “Come to the mosque,” the mullah declared. “The Christians are here to bless us!”
My friend made a quick phone call and told his colleagues to bring the trucks filled with relief supplies to the mosque. Before long, hundreds of local Iraqi Muslims had gathered. Rather than attacking the Christians, however, the Muslims were happy and excited. And when the trucks arrived, most wanted the copies of the New Testaments and the DVDs about Jesus first. Only afterward did they seek out the rest of the relief supplies.
When this Iraqi Christian leader told me his story, I found myself moved to tears. I was not raised to hate Muslims. But it had never dawned on me while I was growing up to specifically find ways to bless Muslims in the name of Jesus. Nor, for that matter, had it ever occurred to me that I might live in a period of human history when Rank-and-File Muslims might actually respond positively to practical expressions of Christlike love.
I immediately pledged to this Iraqi brother that I would go back to the U.S. and raise money through the Joshua Fund to help him and his team acquire more Bibles, more films about Jesus, and more humanitarian relief supplies to bless more Muslims. By the grace of God, this is exactly what we have done, and by the grace of God, we hope to do more and to mobilize others to do more as well.
Love in Action in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, I once met a man who told me he had been a Radical Muslim growing up in the 1980s and ’90s but had been imprisoned by the Taliban in 1999 for not being Radical enough. His beard wasn’t long enough to suit the Taliban fighters. Moreover, they thought he was a spy for the Northern Alliance, though he was not.
“There were 350 of us in the wing of the prison that I was assigned to,” he told me. “The Taliban didn’t feed any of us. It was winter, and they didn’t give us blankets or warm clothes. They wanted to starve us to death or let us die of exposure.”
He feared for his life. He feared he would never see his wife and children again. And his fears were well founded. Eighty men died over the next few weeks.
Then one day the Taliban guards permitted representatives from the Red Cross to visit the prison. “They brought some bread, shoes, jackets, blankets,” the man recalled. It wasn’t much, but the aid was desperately needed.
“I started asking myself, why are these people helping me?” he told me. “These Red Cross people are not Muslims. They are Christians. Yet they are showing me more love than my fellow followers of Islam. Why?”
This simple act of compassion set into motion a chain of events that would change this Afghan man’s life forever. It led this Radical Muslim to question whether Islam was even true. It caused him to ask himself, “Why do the people who love Jesus love me?” It made him hunger to know whether Jesus Christ was the One True God.
Looking back, the man told me he doesn’t even know if the Red Cross volunteers who came to his prison were actually born-again Christians. But they showed him compassion in the name of the cross, and this had a profound effect on him. Eventually he was released. He moved to Islamabad, Pakistan. He found his brother, who had become a follower of Jesus Christ. He found other Muslim converts to Christianity. And in time, he too became a fully devoted follower of Jesus.
Today this man is an effective MBB ministry leader on the front lines of the most dramatic spiritual Revolution of our time. He has a passion for demonstrating the love of Christ to other Afghans, and he prays that because of his efforts, they will be drawn to the love of the Savior and find forgiveness and new hope in His name.
The Road Ahead
These stories—and countless others like them—have led me over the past two decades to one fundamental conclusion: Jesus’ strategy of “love your neighbors” and “love your enemies” is the key to winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim people, and Christians have this strategy all to themselves.
No one else in the Islamic world is teaching people to show love, mercy, and compassion to those who hate them and want to destroy them. No one else in the Islamic world is offering forgiveness to those who have committed acts of evil against them. Only the true followers of Jesus are doing these things, because only people who have been born again and truly transformed by the Holy Spirit have the capacity to love their enemies. None of us have that ability in and of ourselves as normal human beings. So when we demonstrate Christlike love to our enemies, we show the Muslim world that we serve a different God, the One True God, the God of love and power and forgiveness.
Imagine if more of the Church around the world were mobilized to love our neighbors and our enemies in the name of Jesus. Already, Muslims are becoming Revivalists in record numbers. What if God wants to accelerate this trend? What if He wants us to be part of that acceleration?
Lynn and I and the Joshua Fund team believe that is exactly what the Lord wants, and we have dedicated ourselves to helping mobilize the Church to pursue four simple strategies: learn, pray, give, and go. Let me close, therefore, by sharing a few thoughts with those of you who want to know more about these strategies and who may already be considering joining the Revolution and aiding the Revivalists.
Strategy No. 1: Learn
“Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days—you would not believe if you were told.” —Habakkuk 1:5
First and foremost, I would encourage you to study the Bible for yourself and discover God’s plan and purpose for all the people of the Middle East. You will, of course, find much about the Lord’s great love for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. At the same time, a careful reading will help you discover God’s tremendous love for Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians, Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and many others in the epicenter as well.
The Iraqi people, for example, are central players in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Many Bible scholars and archaeologists believe that the Garden of Eden was likely in Iraq. Genesis 11 and 12 indicate that God chose Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans—a town in Iraq, located south of Baghdad—to bless all the peoples of the earth.
The Lord told the Hebrew prophet Daniel critical details about the promised Messiah and about events that would occur in the last days while Daniel was living in Iraq. Though Daniel and his friends were Jews, they were actually raised in Iraq, had a great love for the people of Iraq, and served the king and people of the Babylonian empire in the name of the God of the Bible.
The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel likewise received his visions of events in the last days while he was living in Iraq. And the Hebrew prophets Jonah and Nahum were sent by God to speak to the people of Iraq and urge them to repent of their sins and cry out for God’s love and forgiveness.622
What’s more, 1 Peter 5:13 suggests that the apostle Peter may have actually written his first letter to the Church from Iraq. Finally, the book of Revelation (chapters 17 and 18) indicates that all the eyes of the nations will be riveted on Iraq in the last days.
All told, of the sixty-six books in the Bible, fully twenty-two mention Iraq, referring to Babylon, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, or Shinar, the ancient names for the modern-day country we call Iraq.
The Bible is clear that the Iranian people are dear to God’s heart as well. After serving the Babylonian leaders, Daniel later served the leaders of Persia and spoke God’s Word to the Persian people. Daniel is even buried in Iran. I have Iranian MBB friends who have visited his tomb. The Hebrew
prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel were also used by God to speak directly to the Iranian people. The book of Esther describes how God raised up a young woman to become the queen of Persia and use her lofty position to bless both the Jewish people and the people of Iran. Many Bible scholars believe that at least two of the “wise men” who came “from the East” to visit baby Jesus were from Iran. All told, no fewer than eleven books of the Bible refer to Persia or Elam, the ancient names for Iran.
The Bible also teaches that God loves the Egyptian people. Abraham’s son Ishmael was born to an Egyptian mother. Moses was born in Egypt. The entire nation of Israel was, of course, sent to live in Egypt for 430 years. What’s more, many of the great men and women of Scripture were sent by God to Egypt. Among them: Abraham and Sarah; Joseph and his brothers; and later Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus.
One of Lynn’s and my favorite passages about God’s love for the Egyptians and how He will bless them in the last days comes from Isaiah 19:18-25, which reads in part: “In the land of Egypt . . . they will cry to the LORD because of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the LORD will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day. . . . They will return to the LORD, and He will respond to them and will heal them. In that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day, Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.’”
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