And the #1 Way to Convince the Muslims We're on a Crusade is..
1. Send lots of Arabic, Dari, and Pashtu language Bibles to convert the Muslims
Worse than any English language Bibles, even those stamped with official U.S. military emblems, are the countless thousands of Arabic, Dari, and Pashtu Bibles making their way into Iraq and Afghanistan, often with the help of U.S. military personnel.
In his autobiography,
It Doesn't Take a Hero, Gen. Schwarzkopf recounted his run in with Franklin Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse -- an incident that made it clear that the Saudis' fears and complaints of Christian evangelizing were not unfounded. While some of the Saudis' fears, as the general explained, had resulted from Iraqi propaganda about American troops disrespecting Islamic shrines, the attempt by Samaritan's Purse to get U.S. troops to distribute tens of thousands of Arabic language New Testaments to Muslims was real.
"The Saudi concern about religious pollution seemed overblown to me but understandable, and on a few occasions I agreed they really did have a gripe. There was a fundamentalist Christian group in North Carolina called Samaritan's Purse that had the bright idea of sending unsolicited copies of the New Testament in Arabic to our troops. A little note with each book read: 'Enclosed is a copy of the New Testament in the Arab language. You may want to get a Saudi friend to help you to read it.' One day Khalid handed me a copy. 'What is this all about?' he asked mildly. This time he didn't need to protest -- he knew how dismayed I'd be."
Lt. Gen. Khalid Bin Sultan al-Saud, commander of Saudi Arabia's air defense forces, appointed by King Fahd as Gen. Schwarzkopf's counterpart.
This was the incident that, as mentioned above, led to the implementation of strict guidelines on religious activities of military personnel. As also mentioned above, the adherence to and enforcement of regulations clearly aren't what they were back then.
Converting the Iraqis and Afghans is a pet project of numerous private organizations (some with the help of the military), as well as military personnel and military organizations. Some missionaries even take jobs with DoD contractors to gain access to the Iraqi people. All have found ways to circumvent the prohibitions on sending religious materials contrary to Islam into the region. There are literally thousands of people involved, and hundreds of thousands of Arabic and other native language Bibles, tracts, videos, and audio cassettes have made their way into Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Christian comic books, coloring books, and other materials to evangelize Muslim children.
A recent Al Jazeera English news report showed U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan discussing the distribution of Dari and Pashtu language Bibles to the local Afghans, a blatant violation of CENTCOM's General Order 1-A. The video showed stacks of these Bibles on the floor, so they were undeniably there, despite the regulations prohibiting the shipping to Iraq or Afghanistan of any bulk religious materials contrary to Islam.
In the Spring 2004 issue of "Gatherings," the newsletter of the International Ministerial Fellowship (IMF), Army chaplain Capt. Steve Mickel described the evangelizing he was doing while passing out food in the predominantly Sunni village of Ad Dawr:
"I am able to give them tracts on how to be saved, printed in Arabic. I wish I had enough Arabic Bibles to give them as well. The issue of mailing Arabic Bibles into Iraq from the U.S. is difficult (given the current postal regulations prohibiting all religious materials contrary to Islam except for personal use of the soldiers). But the hunger for the Word of *** in Iraq is very great, as I have witnessed first-hand."
Obviously, by citing the regulation prohibiting the materials he was passing out as something that was hindering his proselytizing, Capt. Mickel was admitting that he knew what he was doing violated regulations.
Another Army chaplain, Lt. Col. Lyn Brown, in an article titled "Kingdom Building in Combat Boots," stated:
"But the most amazing thing is that I was constantly led to stop and talk with Iraqis working at the Coalition Provisional Authority. I learned their names, became a part of their lives, and shared Jesus Christ by distributing DVDs and Arabic Bibles."
The private organizations sending Arabic Bibles and those in other native languages into Iraq and Afghanistan are too many to count, and many boast of the help they get from military personnel to distribute these Bibles. Here are a few quotes from some of these organizations.
"OnlyOneCross.com recently sent a case of Arabic Bibles to a Brother who is working in a detention center in Iraq."
The Salvation Evangelistic Association, which has soldiers in Iraq that their ministry converted at Fort Leonard Wood, now has these soldiers distributing the Arabic Bibles for them:
"Many young men in training at Fort Leonard Wood were converted to Christ. The Lord led us on to preaching in Army camps in the US, Korea, and the Philippines. We are now supplying Arabic Bibles for distribution by our troops in Iraq."
But, topping the stupidity list, we have a Lt. Col. who was being so stupid that a missionary had to tell him that he was putting his troops and other people in danger. The missionary was from Liberty Baptist Tabernacle, which had already shipped 20,000 Arabic "Soul-Winning Booklets" into Iraq, with more on the way. This Lt. Col., who knew the missionary from the states, went to his hotel and offered to use his troops to protect the people who were attempting to convert the Muslims. This is from the insane story of what this genius of an officer did to meet with the missionary, copied from the ministry's website:
"On another note, a dear Christian friend, that I had met some ten years prior, who was a deacon of an independent Baptist church in Missouri was also in Iraq. I was totally unaware of this. He was in the Missouri National Guard and holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonial. Col. Koontze immediately contacted me when he found out I was in country. He was made aware of my being in Baghdad by a pastor friend of his that he had spoken with in the states.
"Through his command intelligence office, he located the hotel I was staying at. When he came to the hotel, I was sitting outside with the other pastors on the hotel's terrace, waiting for Robert Lewis [Global Resource Group-Director], who was going to meet with us that afternoon. Col. Koontze must have had 15-20 soldiers with him; they literally blocked off the entire city block with tanks and humvees to secure the area. He then walked into the lobby asking if anyone could tell him where Pastor Furse was. As he was saying those words, he spotted me and immediately said, "It's good to see you again Bro. Furse." At first, I did not recognize him, until he took his helmet off. We spoke for about 20 minutes at one of the tables on the terrace of the hotel; all the while the tanks and humvees were being lined up and down the main street in front of the hotel. After renewing acquaintances, I had to tell him that it would probably be best if he and his unit left as soon as possible.
"The Iraqi people in the hotel and those on the street were to say the least, very concerned. I did not want to bring that much attention to the hotel; for fear that terrorists would target the area as well [over the previous four or five days, we had heard sporadic AK-47 gunfire going off just blocks away from the hotel]. Col. Koontze agreed fully with me on that assessment and ordered his unit to leave quietly and as quickly as possible."
There are also videos, like the one below of a chaplain admitting that Swahili language Bibles are being sent in to Iraq to evangelize the Ugandan workers employed by the U.S. military. In this video, from Soldiers Bible Ministry, Army chaplain Capt. Chris Rusack boasts about managing to get the Swahili Bibles into Iraq, in spite of the regulations prohibiting this. Referring to this shipment of Bibles, Chaplain Rusack said:
"Actually, they're in Baghdad right now. Somehow the enemy tried to get 'em hung up there. There was a threat they were gonna get shipped back to the States and all that. We prayed, and they're gonna be picked up in a couple of days. *** raised someone up right there in Baghdad that's gonna go -- a Christian colonel that's stationed there in Baghdad, and he's gonna go and get the Bibles..."
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0B7pBbkZpq0?feature=oembed
Last April, Soldiers Bible Ministry entered into an official partnership with an organization called Heart of *** International Ministries. To announce this partnership, Heart of *** International Ministries sent out an email about Soldiers Bible Ministry, featuring the Swahili Bible story as an example of the "supernatural things *** is doing in Iraq."
"Right now there are about 200 men from Uganda protecting 100 US Army soldiers in Iraq near Babylon. These men from Uganda have been having dreams, and these dreams have been of Jesus Christ as the Messiah which led them to begin asking questions about Christ to the Chaplain. Many of these former Muslims have come to Christ."
The email ended with this fund raising pitch for Soldiers Bible Ministry:
"The signs of the times are all around us ... Jesus, the Messiah, is coming back soon. It is our responsibility to make sure every man, woman, and child has had the opportunity to meet the Lord Jesus Christ. Seize every opportunity to share the Good News ... seize
this opportunity to put the Word of *** into the hands of US troops and allied forces."
In spite of their blatant violations of military regulations, Soldiers Bible Ministry is heartily endorsed by none other than the Army's Chief of Chaplains, Maj. Gen. Douglas Carver, with this statement on their website: "Thanks so much for your invaluable ministry of the Word to our Soldiers."
In addition to Bibles, other Arabic language Christian books are being shipped into Iraq and Afghanistan for distribution by our troops. The January 2009 newsletter of Worldwide Military Baptist Missions, for example, included these images of their English-Arabic proselytizing materials.
View attachment 2905
This is from the caption for these photos:
"In 2008, we shipped over 226,000 gospel tracts, 21,000 Bibles, New Testaments and gospels of John (to include English-Arabic ones!) and 404 'discipleship kits' to service members & churches for use in war zones, on ships and near military bases around the world."
And, last, but certainly not least, there is Jim Ammerman, a retired Army colonel and conspiracy theorist who heads a Department of Defense authorized military chaplain endorsing agency called the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), which currently endorses 270 military chaplains and chaplain candidates. MRFF has demanded, for a number of reasons, that the DoD investigate CFGC and revoke Mr. Ammerman's endorsing authority, as I wrote in a recent post titled "
MRFF Demands DoD Revoke Authority of Chaplain Endorser Who Suggested Democrats Should Be Executed." Among the reasons for MRFF's demands is that Ammerman, working with an organization called the International Missions Network Center (IMNC), set up a network of forty of his chaplains serving in Iraq to receive and distribute Arabic Bibles in order to "establish a wedge for the kingdom of *** in the Middle East, directly affecting the Islamic world," as he said in one of the CFGC's newsletters, and which IMNC called the "true reconstruction" of Iraq.
Time to wake up
