MidnightCall Magazine
In this issue:
- Before the Last Flood — By Norbert Lieth
- Gaza Flotilla: Aggression or Self-Defense? — By Arno Froese
- Far East AsiaTrendsToday – Part III:Geo-prophecy or Geopolitics? — By Wilfred Hahn
News From Israel MagazineIn this issue:
- The Myth of the Al-Aqsa Mosque: Part 1 — By Herbert Novitsky
- ON THE HORIZON:
- Obama Honors Jewish Heritage Month
- Building an Electronic Human Brain
- ‘Iran Critics Must Get Rid of Nukes,’ Says Turkish PM
- Israel Joins Prestigious OECD Club
- Israel Accepted after Unanimous Vote
- Spy Satellite Successfully Launched
U.S. Military Says Afghan Bibles Have Been Destroyed
Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated and destroyed to ensure that troops did not break regulations which forbid proselytizing, a military spokeswoman said.
The U.S. military has denied its soldiers tried to convert Afghans to Christianity, after Qater-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a bible class on a base with a stack of bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages.
U.S. Central Command’s General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty – including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan – from trying to convert people to another religion.
“I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera’s clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed,” spokeswoman major Jennifer Willis said at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
Military officials have said the bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. The soldier brought them to the bible study class where they were filmed.
Trying to convert Muslims to another faith is a crime in Afghanistan. An Afghan man who converted to Christianity was sentenced to death for apostasy in 2006 but was allowed to leave the country after an international uproar.
It certainly is, from the United States military’s perspective, not our position to ever push any specific kind of religion, period,” chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a Pentagon briefing.
http://news.yahoo.com, 5 May 2009
The natural question to ask is what would happen if the Muslim Koran would be destroyed or forbidden in the United States? It would result in an outcry from the entire world—not so when copies of the Bible are destroyed. The zeitgeist (spirit of the time) has determined that religions, by whatever name, are to be respected globally. That, of course, means that Christianity will be watched closely as missionary activities are being monitored more than ever.
While we realize this tendency and acknowledge the danger for missionary activities in many countries in the world, we must not lose heart to be His witnesses. After all, it is the Lord Himself who stated, “I will build my church.” He is continuing to do so in spite of persecution, destruction of Bibles by the U.S. military, or making it a crime to become a believer in Jesus Christ. Now more than ever, we must be Christians in essence: that means light instead of relying on the infrastructure of Christianity. Our Lord in His grace has His saints placed all over the world, and the Church will continue to grow until it is complete. That will be the moment when the Rapture takes place, when all who are truly born again of His Spirit are called into His presence in the clouds of the air.