FAITH UNDER FIRE
1 Comment Published by Office 2 November 12th, 2010 in A Call To Action, Christian Church Issues, Christian Persecution, Courage, Freedom of Religion, Insight Into Islam, Islam, Miraculous Testimonies, Prayer, United States of America
September 27, 2010Â By Bob Unruh WorldNetDaily
Jury clears Christians who dared to preach to U.S. Muslims
‘My clients were there to evangelize, change minds and challenge Islam’
Jurors in Michigan have rejected the concept of a “dhimmi” status for Christians, ruling that four evangelists who went to an Arab festival not just to be present but to “change minds” did not commit a breach of peace as police had claimed.
The word comes from the Thomas More Law Center, which defended the four Christians after they were charged for being at an Arab festival June 18 in Dearborn, Mich.
The verdict came from a jury of six Dearborn residents late Friday, who concluded that Nabeel Qureshi, Paul Rezkalla, Negeen Mayel and David Wood were not guilty of breach-of-peace charges.
The issue strikes directly at the heart of what many fear is developing across the nation: Muslims given special treatment that subjects those of other faiths to second-class status.
Robert Muise, a senior counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, told WND that’s exactly the situation in this case, since other organizations with a Christian message whose representatives simply “were there” were not subjected to any charges by police.
Those organizations, said Muise, already are complying with Islamic religious law, or Shariah, by not presenting the Gospel message of the Bible to others.
“They were, ‘Let’s just get along, just be present,'” Muise told WND. “They are being used. They are not a threat [to Islam]. They already are suppressed.”
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His clients, however, went to the festival to present the message of Jesus and “change minds and challenge Islam with the teachings of Christ,” he said.
In a video, the Christian missionaries reported police told them they would have to be five blocks away from the festival to give away copies of the Gospel of John:
Ultimately they were arrested and charged.
Muise said the idea of a special prohibition on saying something that could be interpreted as challenging Islam is scarily close to becoming reality.
He cited Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent comment on a Florida church’s plan to burn a Quran in which he suggested the demonstration might not be protected by the First Amendment.
Specifically referencing freedom of speech, Breyer said, “[Oliver Wendell] Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. Well, what is it? Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?”
George Stephanopoulos, who reported on the comments on his ABC blog, said Breyer indicated that, in the Internet age, he was not prepared to conclude that the First Amendment protects burning a Quran.
The Florida church later canceled its plans, but there were worldwide threats from Muslims of violence if the Quran was burned in the planned public spectacle.
Stephanopoulos reported that Breyer said the issue has yet to be decided.
“It will be answered over time in a series of cases which force people to think carefully. That’s the virtue of cases. And not just cases. Cases produce briefs, briefs produce thought. Arguments are made. The judges sit back and think. And most importantly, when they decide, they have to write an opinion, and that opinion has to be based on reason,” Breyer said, according to Stephanopoulos.
Muise said such a statement illustrates how the nation already is adopting a “protected class of speech directed toward Muslims.”
He noted that he defended a schoolteacher in California who was penalized for having biblical principles posted on his classroom walls. The teacher was told a Muslim student “could be offended,” so they would have to come down.
His Dearborn clients were driven to the Arab festival because of their love for the people who were attending, as well as their love for Jesus, he said.
The jury acquitted the four after 90 minutes of discussion, although Mayel was found guilty of failing to obey a police officer, which the law center described as “unrelated to the actual incident” and likely to be reversed on appeal.
The organization also noted the public condemnation for the Christians despite the acquittals. It reported Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly “continued his ongoing and unprecedented personal attacks on the Christian evangelists, accusing them of being anti-Muslim bigots.”
The mayor’s statement, the law center said, “was clearly an attempt to curry favor with Dearborn’s large Muslim population, which also explains the police department’s alarming mobilization to arrest the four Christians.”
Wood and Qureshi are co-founders of Acts 17 Apologetics, a ministry group that defends the Gospel.
An online resource explains that “dhimmi” status is the Islamic fundamental that “mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians,” a lower-class existence. It explains the non-Muslims are considered “protected people” and free to exercise their own religion “but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Quran’s command that they ‘feel themselves subdued.'”
As WND reported, Michigan state Rep. Tom McMillin had called on the state attorney general to investigate the arrests, saying the Christians were just “engaging festivalgoers in conversation about religion on public property.”
Officers arrested the Christian missionaries and illegally confiscated their video cameras, which were being used to record the events, according to the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich.
In a video posted after the arrest, Qureshi said his group took “extra precautions” to prevent disruptions by not handing out pamphlets and to speak only to people “who first approached us.”
“This was to limit accusations of instigation and disruption,” he explained. “We knew people have a tendency to accuse us of being disruptive, of inciting and instigating. So we wanted to make sure we did absolutely nothing of the sort.”
Qureshi said people at the festival recognized his group from its visit in 2009. Last year, the Acts 17 Apologetics team was escorted from the grounds while being allegedly assaulted by security personnel and several attendees. The following is the group’s footage of the 2009 incident:
This year, Qureshi said his group was able to engage in civil conversations with many people who initiated discussion during the multi-day event. But the group was arrested by local police.
One witness named Steven Atkins, a resident of Toronto, Canada, said, “I never thought I would see this in America.”
“When Dr. Qureshi was arrested I heard people clapping and applauding, and some said ‘Allahu akbar,'” he said. “It was an intense discussion, but it was not unruly. … There was no threat of violence.”
Atkins added, “It’s becoming more restrictive here than in Canada.”
Meanwhile, Dearborn Mayor O’Reilly released a five-page letter defending the police department’s arrest.
“The City of Dearborn has been under attack for several years by a group identifying themselves as Acts 17 Apologetics,” he wrote. “They arrive in Dearborn with the intent to disrupt a local cultural festival and misrepresent facts in order to further their mission of raising funds through emotional response.”
O’Reilly said the festival is “not about the Muslim faith or its believers” and that five Christian groups and two Muslim organizations lawfully reached out to attendees at the event this year. He said groups are given opportunities to purchase spots at booths or preach in “free-speech zones at the festival.”
He said the festival site is designated a “special-event site” and is not considered open to the public.
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At last someone is writing about what is really happening in America and is happening elsewhere around the globe.
Good on those people for standing up for Jesus and the real gospel. The early disciples turned the world upside down with their faith and preaching of the real gospel. Now we are called upon again to be bold and preach the gospel and real signs and wonders will follow the preaching of this gospel. They are prepared to count the cost and the preaching of the gospel is costly. The powers of darkness are being threatened and one day their spiritual thrones will be toppled, the very stars, the universe will be shaken Hebrews 12:18-29, this means spiritual powers as well.
God is going to judge both the physical and the spiritual world and shake them both, so that what is not of Him will be shaken but only His kingdom and throne will remain unshaken. God is asking us will we too count the cost and stand for righteousness or will we be silent and say nothing. Good on these people who showed that they loved the Muslim people enough to go and witness the gospel of Christ to them even at their Muslim festival. I am sure the Muslims will go along to a Christian festival and will try and proselyte the Christians. If they do so nothing will be said, but woe betide Christians who go and speak to Muslims the truth about Christ at their festival. To say nothing is to condemn these people to hell, either we serve a risen and living Savior who is worth dying for and we have the truth about God or we don’t.
Enough of this political correct nonsense get out there and preach the word of God like these people are doing and make a stand for God. Our freedom to share the gospel is being eroded away and has been eroded away over the last number of years and no one has noticed because the church has been asleep in the light and playing religious games. Now the Lord wants us to make a stand for Him and it could even mean losing our lives for His and the gospel’s sake. Listen the time is getting late and darkness is coming upon the earth, such darkness and time of turmoil and trouble the like of which has not been seen before and will not be again this is the time when God will allow satan in the person of the antichrist to rule on this earth. This is because ungodly man wants satan and his world’s system over God and His kingdom and God will allow this and even the saints will be affected and he satan will have power over the saints to wear them down this is written about in Daniel and Revelation. None of this is being taught in the church. We are expecting to be raptured out of the Tribulation the early stage of it at least. May I ask a question what if we don’t get raptured out of the early stages of the Tribulation what then and we start to be arrested, thrown into prison, tortured and killed for our faith? What if whole towns and communities and police forces, armies and governments start to turn to Islam and Sharia law comes in and it is outlawed to preach the gospel and we are hunted down because we serve the risen Christ and proclaiming the true gospel.
What if this happens? How will we stand? None of this is being taught from the pulpits, the church is silent on this very thing, when they should be preparing their people for this very thing to happen. After all Jesus said in Matthew 24 the discourse on the last days that the love of many will grow cold because of lawlessness and people will fall away and stop trusting in Him in whom they should trust. That they will hand those who follow Him Jesus to the courts and magistrates and synagogues and they will be persecuted and put to death. Jesus tells us not to prepare ourselves on what to say but He will give us the words to say in that time, parents will hand up children and children parents to authorities to be put to death. That anyone killing Yeshua’s followers will be thinking that they will be doing God a favour. This is rapidly becoming a reality in the west this is just not for the third world church. God is now starting to judge the church in the west and He is shaking it to its foundations. What is not of Him will fall away, what is of Him will stand.
God did not give us the Holy Spirit so that we can feel good and have a bless me club He gave us the Holy Spirit so that we have the power to go out and witness the gospel to the unbelievers around us to the Jew first and then the gentile. He wants His end time church to shine like stars of righteousness in these forthcoming days of darkness Daniel 12. He will give us the power and boldness and authority to speak His word and He will protect us from harm. He will cover us with His pinions but only if we walk in His ways and are obedient to Him will we be protected from danger. We must be prepared to be obedient to do exactly what He says nothing more and nothing less. Not to do so will be doing so at our own peril. God requires a high price of obedience. It is costly to follow Him, I know He is asking me to walk this walk with Him; it will cost family, work, friendship, popularity. To go into the wilderness with Him and learn His ways is costly, it will meaning losing our lives for His sake but to lose the flesh life to gain the spiritual life far outweighs what this temporal life has to offer. We need to sow into the eternal or else our works would be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ as being worthless.
We must work while we have the time the day to do so as Jesus said we must work while we have the day the night is fast approaching and the night of the antichrist is fast approaching where no man can work, unless God gives him the ability to do so. I believe that God will take His true bride home to escape the hour the final hour of testing that is coming upon the earth Revelation 3:10 but that is at the end at the time of the Great Tribulation the last seven or three and half years on the earth when the antichrist breaks his treaty with the Jews and all hell will break loose and Jerusalem and Israel will be invaded by the antichrist’s armies as he wants to take Jerusalem for himself. Yet God will be bringing these armies up to Israel so that He can enter into judgment with the nations of the world who oppose Him and His beloved people of Israel.
God will protect His true church and keep her safe in these dark days of the tribulation and when the Great Tribulation aka as Jacob’s Troubles happen He will take us home to be with Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb. God has His prophetic calendar and all of these things happening now are the result of His prophetic calendar being worked upon for the coming of His Kingdom upon this earth. Yeshua the Messiah is coming the second time in His glorified risen body to rule physically on this earth from the throne of David in Jerusalem. By the way a lot of churches don’t teach these things either they are very silent about this fact too. You know why because they have bought into the evil social gospel that is now teaching humanism rather than God’s principles and teaching the word of God from man’s perspective rather than from a Holy and righteous God’s perspective. They are teaching that all roads lead to God, they are encompassing all faiths and being tolerant of each other. My God is not tolerant of lies and false religions, all roads don’t lead to God. The gospel is exclusive and their is only one way to salvation and that is through the man Christ Jesus who stated I AM the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Me. Since when have we become ashamed to say that Jesus is the only way and have watered down this truth? Jesus is the Spirit of Truth He is Truth. He paid an awful price for our salvation and how dare we be ashamed of Him and not say anything for the sake of this political correct gospel.
This political correct gospel is preparing the church if they are not careful for being part of the hideous baby ionic one world government system and one world religious system and many people who think they belong to Jesus and did this and that for Him ie heal the sick and cast out demons will say to Him on that day Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons and heal the sick in your name and He will say to them depart from Me you workers of iniquity I never knew you and they will be cast out into the outer darkness. You know why they were it is because they followed a false christ and preached a false gospel they followed a false revival with all of its lying signs and wonders and they did not know the true and risen Christ. They didn’t know His flavour which is a Hebrew flavour they never ate of Him they never fed off of Him and broke bread with Him. They never spent much needed valuable time with Him and got to know Him intimately to get to know His heart and what concerned Him what was precious to Him. They were more concerned with their own agendas and building up their own kingdoms on this earth playing right into satan’s hands.
So now America and other nations of the world are now becoming Islamized to such an extent that people preaching the gospel are being arrested for speaking the truth about Christ. The time is later than what I originally thought it was. While you still have time to do so, get into God’s word now, spend time with Him in prayer, develop an intimate relationship with Him, learn to be led by His Holy Spirit and to get to learn to recognize His still small voice and be quick to obey what He tells you to do. Be prepared to count the cost to lose your fleshly earthly life for His sake but oh the rewards of the Spiritual life and eternal life. The time of darkness is really rapidly coming upon the western world, also be aware the Christians in Iraq and now being persecuted big time and they have declared war on Christians in that country.
Don’t think for one moment that is an over there thing and it won’t happen in Australia or New Zealand because it will they have sleepers in both countries that could rise up at a given signal to take over the countries. Why do you think that they are getting into politics the Muslims? That is so that they can gain power through politics in order to change the laws of the land. Don’t think for one moment that it won’t happen to our countries because it will. God will allow this to happen to test the hearts of the people in Australia and New Zealand and to bring judgment upon unrighteousness in both nations. When people really call out to Him from deeply repentant hearts then He will hear and will turn and heal the land and to raise a standard against the enemy that will be coming in like a flood into both nations. He will save both nations in a day probably when He returns to the earth is when He will do it, when He saves Israel, He will more than likely save those other nations who are His from the beginning of the world.
The church is not going to save the world and hand it back to Yeshua on a plate when He returns to earth after 1,000 years of church rule that is nonsense and it is not in the scriptures. First must come the man of perdition the antichrist before Yeshua returns and satan must rule on the earth first and oppress all those on it before Yeshua comes in the time known as the Day of the Lord or the second coming of Christ which will probably be around the Autumn Feasts of the Lord the three most Holy Feasts. The Feasts of Trumpets to announce His coming for He will descend with a shout, the voice of an Archangel and the sound of the Shoffar/trumpet 1 Thess 4 the snatching away of the church for the Marriage supper of the Lamb and then is the Day of Atonement the repenting of sins and cleansing of sins the time of Judgment of the nations and the earth and for Him to reveal Himself to His Jewish brethren and to save and cleanse Israel as a nation, then the Feast of Tabernacles when the great King appears to set up His kingdom on earth, this will perhaps be His coronation.
This time is only known to Him of what year that will be and what hour. Jesus fulfilled the Spring Feasts at His First coming as the Passover Lamb so don’t you think that it is likely He will fulfill the Autumn Feasts at His second coming.
Be ready, look up for your redemption draws nigh, the Lord is coming swiftly, He is almost at the door, get ready, be alert, be vigilant, be prayerful, guard your heart. Rejoice for the time of the Lord is near and these things happening are a sure time that we are in the last days and He is coming swiftly, but first these things must take place, do not be alarmed at these things happening. God is aware of them and nothing takes Him by surprise, He is sovereign and He is working everything out sovereingly according to His prophetic timetable and calendar of events. Every word that God has spoken has to come to pass and all of His prophecies have to come to pass, no word that God speaks does not go and fulfill that He has sent it forth to do. His word is powerful and will accomplish that which He has purposed it to do, even if it may take centuries to come about. Now He is rapidly bringing all things to an end and many prophecies will be fulfilled one after another. Look to Israel she is a mirror of what is happening on the earth she is a reflection of the secular world and the church. What happens to Israel will affect the earth both spiritually and physically she is God’s time piece, do not disregard her but stand prayerfully with her and stand with God in support of His beloved land and people.
What is happening now in America is a warning that time is short so get ready for the dark days that are coming up, do not be alarmed by them, war is coming upon the earth in the Middle East, disasters will happen, economic upheaval and climatic changes will happen do not be alarmed by them. Look up your redemption draws nigh and seek YHVH draw close to Him while He may be found, cling onto Him tightly your lives are dependant upon Him, be sensitive to His Spirit and His leading shun flee away from wolves in sheep’s clothing, test the Spirits, get into the word of God, don’t accept all that they teach you from the pulpits, test the spirits especially behind the extreme prophetic movement, test everything don’t just accept these things at face value. Check it out with God and measure it by His word, Jesus said you will know them by their fruits. Check the fruits do they measure up to how Jesus would want you to live and walk Eph 4, live in manner worthy of the Lord, do these people live in a manner worthy of the Lord if not flee from them. They are preaching another Christ and another gospel have nothing to do with them, shun them and flee from them. The days are getting short. Again I say watch out do not get drunk with wine or go for this false drunkenness move this is not of God, flee from it. Jesus is coming soon and we must be ready for Him and leading lives pleasing to Him. We must be willing like the people in this article to go out and preach the gospel to those who don’t know the truth about Yeshua and the cross of Calvary and His shed blood on the cross and how it has paid for our sins at great cost to our God and Savior and we must be prepared to lay down our lives for Him by being obedient and preaching His true word.