Transcript Slide 1

How Allah is
Saving
Humanity
(How Allah is Saving Humanity)
“Prophecy is a difficult business, especially when it involves the
future.”
Voltaire
Marx
“From Voltaire to Marx every Enlightenment thinker thought that
religion would disappear in the 20th century because religion was
fetishism, animistic superstition,”
says Harvard’s professor emeritus Daniel Bell
Freud
The Future of
an Illusion
H. G. Wells, in 1933,
predicted that before 1960, all
the world’s national
governments would collapse,
paving the way for a World
State based on worldwide air
transport.
By 1977, this state would
suppress all religions.
Will the Christian Church
Survive?
Bernard Iddings Bell
OCTOBER 1942
“… the Church is hardly likely
to matter any more tomorrow
than it mattered yesterday or
than it matters at the moment,
which is just about not at all.”
Burnham Beckwith’s The Next 500 Years (1968) listed 31 trends
he thought would shape the next semi-millennium. Trend #4 was
“the decline of religion and superstition.”
Episcopal Bishop Spong wrote a book called Why Christianity
Must Change or Die and fellow-Episcopalian Arthur Peacock
wrote that Christianity must abandon its “incomprehensible and
unbelievable” supernatural beliefs and present faith in a “credible
manner.”
The New York Times said, “Visit a church at random next Sunday,
and you will probably encounter a few dozen people sprinkled
thinly over a sanctuary that was built to accommodate hundreds
or even thousands. The empty pews and white-haired
congregants lend credence to those who argue that traditional
religious worship is dying out.”
In 1910, John R. Mott
predicted that by 2000 all
Africa would be Muslim.
In 1900, at the end of what Latourette calls “the Great Century of
Christian Missions” 40 million out of the world’s 1620 million
people were real Christians.
40
1900 AD
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
80
60
40
Percent of the nonWestern world under
Western political control
20
0
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
Lebanon, Syria,
Iceland
80
60
40
20
0
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
80
Jordan, Philippines, Korea,
Indonesia, Pakistan, India,
China
60
40
20
0
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
80
Sudan, Morocco,
Congo, Nigeria,
Cyprus
60
40
20
0
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
80
99.5%
60
40
20
.5%
0
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
1900-2000 The Retreat of the West
Two world wars left major cities in Europe and Asia in ruins.
The world-wide depression of the 1930s took away any feeling
of economic security.
The Holocaust showed human depravity.
The rise of Communism and the threat of nuclear annihilation
crushed an optimistic belief in inevitable progress.
Philosophers turned away from Kant’s sweet reasonableness
to Nietzsche’s pursuit of irrational power or Sartre’s
desperate embrace of the absurd.
Theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr scoffed at the last century’s
Pollyanna dreams of human perfectibility.
Thousands of missionaries exiled from China felt a deep
sense of failure.
With the withdrawal of the colonial masters tribal warfare
gripped Africa.
BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE KINGDOM?
Forty years later, the retreat of the West began
100
648
80
99.5%
60
40
20
0
40
.5%
19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000
The number of real Christians increased more than 1600% and
their proportion more than quadrupled.
9
2000 AD
Next Sunday
Where will more people go to
church?
Next Sunday
Anglicans
Next Sunday
Pentecostals
Next Sunday Presbyterians
By the end of what many think was the worst century in human history (two
world wars, the Communist revolutions, the AIDS epidemic) Christianity had
spread to 648 million of the 6055 million in the world.
If present trends continue, by 2025 888 million of the world’s 7823 million
people will be real Christians.
The turn of the twentieth century was marked by obsessive list-making--almost
all of which neglected religion.
This is comically myopic, akin to reviewing the 18th century and neglecting the
French Revolution.
For the last 500 years most Christians have lived in the West. In the last 100
years a revolution occurred. Today most Christians live in the South.
600
500
400
300
560
260
480
360
313
Europe
NA
SA
Africa
Asia
200
100
0
The turn of the twentieth century was marked by obsessive list-making--almost
all of which neglected religion.
This is comically myopic, akin to reviewing the 18th century and neglecting the
French Revolution.
For the last 500 years most Christians have lived in the West. In the last 100
years a revolution occurred. Today most Christians live in the South.
1000
800
600
820
840
313
West
South
East
400
200
0
By 2025 this situation will have changed dramatically with almost 2/3 of all
Christians living outside the West.
700
600
500
555
312
640
633
460
Europe
NA
SA
Africa
Asia
400
300
200
100
0
By 2025 this situation will have changed dramatically with almost 2/3 of all
Christians living outside the West
1400
1200
867
1273
460
West
South
East
1000
800
600
400
200
0
How could this happen? What were the causes?
Of course, the grace of God.
But God’s grace is not an innovation of the last century.
Why did Christianity explode at this time?
Andrew Walls argues Christianity grew when Christendom
ended.
Bible Translation
Helping people hear God’s Word in their own heart languages
Mark Noll: Bible translation is a second incarnation
God had preceded the
missionary in Africa
and everywhere else, too.
zwyl[ la
logoH
El Elyon Gen 14:18 Melchizedek
Logos John 1:1 Heraclitus
The unknown God Acts 17:23 Epimenides
Zeus
Theos
Deus
Allah The way to say God in Hausa and many other languages
So Allah is saving humanity in two senses:
1. Since Allah is just another name for God, God is saving
humanity through Jesus.
2. Since Allah is the vernacular way to say God, the use of
Allah in Bible translation helps people to know the God
they have worshiped ignorantly.
1. Don’t believe the pessimists.
2. Thank God for what he is doing.
3. Join God in doing his work of saving the world.
Pray
Give
Go