THE BIG (UNTOLD) STORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

According to this post in one of Joel Rosenberg's blogs, Muslims in the middle east are trusting in Christ for their salvation in record numbers! Of course, this big news isn't being reported in the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening. Here is an excerpt from Joel's report:

Consider the latest evidence:

* AFGHANISTAN --
In Afghanistan, for example, there were only 17 known evangelical
Christians in the country before al-Qaeda attacked the United States.
Today, there are well over 10,000 Afghan followers of Christ and the
number is growing steadily. Church leaders say Afghan Muslims are open
to hearing the gospel message like never before. Dozens of baptisms
occur every week. People are snatching up Bibles and other Christian
books as fast as they can be printed or brought into the country. The Jesus
film, a two hour docudrama on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of
Luke, was even shown on television in one city before police shut down
the entire TV station."God is moving so fast in Afghanistan, we're just
trying to keep up," one Afghan Christian worker told me, requesting
anonymity. "The greatest need now is leadership development. We need to
train pastors to care for all these new believers."

* UZBEKISTAN -- There were no known Muslim converts to Christ there in 1990. Now there are more than 30,000.

* IRAQ --
As I shared during an interview on Fox & Friends on Easter morning,
in Iraq, there were only a handful of Muslim converts to Christianity
back in 1979 when Saddam Hussein took full control of that country. Yet
today, there are more than 70,000 Iraqi Muslim background believers in
Jesus (MBBs), approximately 50,000 who came to Christ as refugees in
Jordan after the first Gulf War in 1990-91, and another 20,000 who have
come to Christ since the fall of Saddam Hussein. John Moser, the
executive director of The Joshua Fund, and I just returned from nine
days traveling through five provinces in Iraq. We met with 19 Iraqi
evangelical Christian leaders. I had the privilege of preaching in a
church of more than 100 MBBs from Baghdad -- a church that didn't even
exist in 2002 before liberation. We also had the privilege of meeting
and interviewing numerous former Islamic jihadist terrorist who have
come to Christ and are now pastors and church planters.

* KAZAKHSTAN
-- In Kazakhstan, there were only three known evangelical Christian
believers before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today there
are more than 15,000 Kazakh Christians, and more than 100,000
Christians of all ethnicities.

* EGYPT --
More than 1 million Egyptians have trusted Christ over the past decade
or so, report Egyptian church leaders. The Egyptian Bible Society told
me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the Jesus film a
year in the early 1990s. But in 2005 they sold 600,000 copies, plus
750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half
million copies of the Arabic New Testament. "Egyptians are increasingly
hungry for God's Word," an Egyptian Christian leader told me. Last
Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting the largest Christian
congregation in the Middle East, which meets in an enormous cave on the
outskirts of Cairo. Some 10,000 believers worship there every weekend.
A prayer conference the church held in May 2005 drew some 20,000
believers.

* IRAN --
In 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution, there
were only about 500 known Muslim converts to Christianity. Today,
interviews with two dozen Iranian pastors and church leaders reveals
that there are well over 1 million Shia Muslim converts to
Christianity.

* SUDAN -- Despite a ferocious civil war, genocide and widespread religious persecution, particularly
in the Darfur region -- or perhaps because of such tragedies -- church
leaders there tell me that more than 1 million Sudanese have made
decisions to follow Jesus Christ just since 2001. Since the early
1990s, more than 5 million Sudanese have become followers of Jesus.
Seminary classes to train desperately-needed new pastors are held
mountain caves. Hundreds of churches have been planted, and thousands
of small group Bible studies are being held in secret throughout the
country.

This is very exciting news! This changing of the heart from the inside out of those middle eastern countries that want to bring about our destruction may be our only hope in avoiding a major war with them. I pray that God will continue this massive revival in the Muslim world.

Also, I believe that only the power of God could bring about such a dramatic change in the hearts of these people whose culture is so violently anti-Christian. Even some jihadist terrorists are turning to Jesus! Jesus is also appearing to some Muslims in their dreams (Joel 2:28) and they are coming to the local church, already believing in Jesus, and asking for help in knowing how to follow Him. What a testimony to the reality and greatness of God.