Category Archives: Islam

News From The Front – June 2006

Dear praying friends,

As you will read in the first article we had a very stimulating ministry visit by Pastor Gary Gilley [thank you for all your prayers] and it was evident that his diagnosis of the problem that much of professing Christianity is afflicted with today is centred on ‘the heart’. What I mean by that is that, in much of today’s apparently ‘blossoming’ and ‘successful’ Christianity, the very ‘heart of the gospel’ has been removed in favour of ‘another gospel’. This new ‘gospel’ is all about ‘self’ and is ‘justified by men and women’. But truly found at ‘the heart of the gospel’ are Christ and the truth of ‘men and women being justified’ by God. Enclosed with this newsletter are copies of 2 very helpful leaflets that in one, identify the problem found at ‘the heart’ of the ‘gospel’ proclaimed in today’s ‘Market-Driven’ churches and in the other, restate the glorious biblical truth of God’s ‘justification’ of guilty sinners. Also enclosed is a leaflet with 2 emails from Pastor Jerry Moser of Bayou Du Large Baptist Church in Louisiana. Many of you sent contributions to our appeal for Jerry and the fellowship there as they coped with the damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I trust you will be as thrilled as we have been to see how God has gloriously used these difficult trials for the furtherance of His gospel amongst a very needy [spiritually and materially speaking] people. Margaret and I once more thank you for all your much-appreciated support.

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News From The Front – March 2006

Dear praying friends,

By the time this newsletter arrives with you that ‘landmark’ birthday that I mentioned in my December 2005 newsletter will be part of history. As I contemplated the passing of yet another decade of my life, a phrase that will be familiar to those who have travelled by air came to mind – it’s the one that is said to the cabin crew by the captain as an aeroplane nears the runway at the start of its journey – the intercom will sound and the captain will inform the stewards and stewardesses to ‘prepare for take-off’ and this instruction will usually be followed by feverish last-minute activity. Those of us who have tasted God’s ‘so great salvation’ should always be ‘prepared for take-off’ for truly none of us know ‘what a day may bring forth’ [Proverbs 27:1]. Is there any purging, pleading, ploughing, praying or even reparation that needs to be attended to? Well, do it now, for how close to or even how far down the runway that leads to ‘take-off’ we are, none of us know. Enclosed with this newsletter are several enclosures and on one are copies of faxes sent to Tony Blair. ‘The family’ as established by God is under attack as never before due to recently implemented legislation and it has also been recommended that God’s guidelines for raising children should be ignored and indeed outlawed. I have available [on audio cassette – price £2.50 – includes p&p] 2 sermons by a good ministerial friend entitled ‘Children obey your parents’ and ‘Parents discipline your children’. Although not quoting the AV the teaching is consonant with the AV translation and I heartily commend these sermons.

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Muslim Hypocrisy and Arrogance by Shaun Willcock

Cartoons of the Islamic founder and “prophet”, Mohammed, one of which depicted him with a bomb, were published in various European newspapers – and Muslims worldwide went wild with (albeit carefully choreographed) anger. Depicting Mohammed is prohibited by Islam. The cartoons were first published in a daily newspaper in Denmark. Later, other newspapers published them as well, insisting on the western tradition of freedom of the press.

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‘Dear Muslim neighbour’

Witnessing for Christ has never been and will never be an easy task and this is probably truer today than ever before. Today, any notion of there being an absolute, exclusive, narrow ‘truth’ in the spiritual realm flies totally in the face of the ‘spirit of this age’ – an age that is characterised by an unwillingness to accept the ‘truth’ of absolute ‘truth’, that promotes as dogma, both religiously and politically, the supposed ‘truth’ of ‘truth’ being relative and that despises those who would preach an absolute ‘truth’, such as faithful Christian witnesses [a good example was both the audience and some panel reaction to the participation of Stephen Green of Christian Voice in the BBC’s Question Time on 29 September 2005] and ministers of The Gospel. In recent years the focus of the world has been very much directed to the religion of Islam. Constantly high-ranking politicians such as Tony Blair and George W Bush tell us that ‘Islam means peace’. Well, even the new Pope has more sense than to agree with such an erroneous statement. In a report of an interview given by the Pope to journalists, the Roman Catholic Zenit News Agency reported as follows [25 July 2005]

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Christianity, Islam and British Politics – Clifford

  • Christianity, Islam and British Politics 
  • A lecture given at the UK Conservatism Conference
  • Oxford Brookes University, Saturday, 26 November 2005
  • Dr Alan C. Clifford
  • BA, MLitt, PhD

A glut of highly significant secular and religious autumn anniversaries provides a stimulating context for my subject. Using more broadly the now-universal convention of identifying momentous events like New York’s ‘9/11’, Madrid’s ‘3/11’ and London’s ‘7/7’, I cite first some famous secular examples from more distant history. First, we may recall ‘10/14’, the Battle of Hastings, the last of four major invasions of the British Isles in a millennium by ‘Europeans’ – 1066 and all that, of course! Then, more positively in this bicentenary year, there’s ‘10/21’ when ‘Europe’ was on the receiving end of Lord Nelson’s decisive broadsides at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Not until 1940 was this country seriously threatened again by a foreign power. I pass by ‘10/25’ in 1415. Agincourt, Henry V and the savage nationalism of the Hundred Years War warrant national shame rather than pride. Indeed, driven by the power-hungry Plantagenets, the whole era has something of an ‘Iraq War whiff’ about it! Another noted ‘10/25’ was of course the distant Crimean Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Inglorious for the British High Command, the heroism of ‘the six hundred’ is justly celebrated. Stepping into November, and closer to home, we rightly remember annually the enormous costly sacrifice represented by ‘11/11’, the Armistice of 1918, when the four-year horror of the First World War came to an end.

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The perverted ‘preaching’ of Rowan Williams

On Tuesday 1st November 2005 a service of remembrance was held in St Paul’s Cathedral in London in memory of those who died when Islamic suicide bombers detonated their devices in four locations in London on 7th July 2005.

In the course of the service, a ‘sermon’ was ‘preached’ by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The following is a transcript of a section of what he said –

‘The last few months have seen many people trying to respond to this widespread fear, trying to calm and reassure us. One reaction is through security provisions and new legislation [TV camera focuses on Prime Minister, Tony Blair]; another has been in the powerful and consistent response of all our faith communities [TV camera focuses on 6 young people representing Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism who will later each light a wick in a large communal ‘candle of hope’]. As it happens, today’s commemoration falls at a time when several of us are marking [Muslim ‘Eid’ and Hindu ‘D’wali’] or approaching [‘Christian Christmas’] very significant festivals in our religious calendars. So we face the tragedy together today, drawing on our most important resources.

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BBC 1 Newsround’s ‘ISLAM WEEK’

Earlier this year BBC 1 Children’s Television had a special week of programmes called ‘ISLAM WEEK’ that were broadcast on the children’s news programme called NEWSROUND. I had sent a number of emails to the BBC information office but eventually there was ‘silence’ on the part of the BBC so I then emailed the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson on 27 April and herewith is the email I sent him and subsequent emails that have been exchanged.

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“CATHOLICISM and ISLAM – TIES that BIND”

November 2002

The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk given at a recent prophecy conference. What I found curious about the commotion was that it came from Catholics (and some evangelicals) who had yet to hear my presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Rome has been tilling this “common ground” with Islam for decades, as evidenced by the 1994 Vatican publication, Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?

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