Muslim wake-up call

Reaching 'most neglected segment of mankind' means West must wake up

By Called and Sent staff

Ann Davidson photo

David Arzouni says more Muslims have come to faith in Jesus Christ in just the past few years than the previous 1,400 years combined.

SO WHAT NOW?

1. Read this story. Tell your friends about it.

2. Visit the Arzouni's prayer page:

www.arzouni.com/praiseprayer.html

3. Pray that Muslims will respond to the Gospel and that recent converts will be bold in the face of persecution.

4. SUPPORT THE ARZOUNIS:

Write your tax-deductible check to:

AGWM Assemblies of God

Memo line: For Account #2326049

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Assemblies of God
1445 Boonville Avenue
Springfield, MO 65802

A Muslim man in West Africa goes to Friday prayers in a mosque. Face down on his prayer mat, he sees a vision: a man ensconced in light, telling him to go to a nearby church to get the answers to questions he has. The man goes, meets the pastor through a mutual acquaintance, and comes to Christ.

Former Muslim David Arzouni is watching God work like this in Mali, where he's been a missionary for 11 years, and all over West Africa. But as thousands of Muslims are embracing Christ worldwide, Arzouni questions whether Christians here can see through the footage of riots and bombings to the fact that God has drawn more Muslims to Himself the past few years than in the previous 1,400 years combined.

Though many have cited Islam as the world's fastest-growing religion, there are big signs that the veil is cracking. As quoted in Islam Review, Muslim cleric Ahmad Al Qataani told the Islamic news agency Al Jazeera in a November 2003 interview that 16,000 Muslims per day are converting to Christianity -- 6 million converts a year. The individual stories behind those numbers are what ought to motivate Western Christians to action, according to Arzouni.

"These stories, we tell them not so they can excite us," Arzouni told Called and Sent. "I share them so that we can understand that God is on our side in this, and He's calling us to join Him. It's our privilege; it's our honor to join Him in this, in what is probably the greatest harvest that has yet to be.

"We don't want to just be informed. God has called us to care about what is dear to His heart."

That would be bringing people to Himself, in this case people Arzouni called "the most neglected segment of mankind."

Arzouni knows that segment well. Born Faouzi Arzouni to Lebanese parents and raised in Dakar, Senegal, he grew up a Shia Muslim and came to faith in Jesus after meeting a Christian missionary. He and his wife, Linda, have ministered in West Africa for 25 years in countries such as Ivory Coast and now Mali, which is 97 percent Muslim.

Truly Hearing the Word

These days, Arzouni's voice takes on a fervent tone when he relates how God is reaching people behind the doors that Islamic authorities are slamming in the Gospel's face. A living example is Dauda Djeme, a once-illiterate laborer whose spiritual trek took him from reading lessons to faith in Christ, with a supernatural visit in between.

'Will we be positioned to help bring in the harvest?'

Dj'm' came to work for Arzouni and some other missionaries in Ivory Coast, Mali's southern neighbor, mixing cement for construction of a new Bible school. Djeme heard Arzouni sharing his faith with some other Muslims one day and started asking questions. Arzouni offered him a Bible. Djeme, embarrassed, told him he couldn't read or write. Arzouni, though he'd never done it before, offered to teach him to read, using a Bible in the West African trade language Bambara as the text.

Concentrating solely on Genesis 1-3, Arzouni and Djeme met regularly until the local imam (Islamic leader) caught wind of it. The imam bullied Djeme, who missed some lessons before he came to Arzouni and told him about the imam. "He said, 'I don't understand it, but they don't want me to learn these things. I cannot go on with the reading,'" Arzouni related. "What do you do? We prayed with him, 'God, what you begin, you finish. If we can't talk to Dauda, Lord, speak to Him yourself. Just do what you have to do.'"

God answered that prayer.

That night, Djeme was awakened three times by a voice speaking to him. After convincing himself it was just a dream twice, he was shaken awake a third time by a voice and a bright light.

"And Dauda, who said he wouldn't be coming back, early in the morning is at my house. He tells me the story - and then he says to me, teacher, what does it mean?

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Dauda. I heard you, but you have to tell me what the voice said. What did the voice say? What words?

"Now I want to remind you, he's unchurched, never heard a word of the New Testament, doesn't know how to read and write, and I never made any reference to the New Testament, even when speaking of Jesus. And this man said, 'Here's what the voice said: "Dauda, Dauda. Don't give up on the learning and reading. Don't give up on that, because I will show you things that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him."'

"When he said that, I said, 'What? Can you repeat that?' And he repeated it word for word. He was quoting flawlessly, word for word, Paul in Corinthians (1 Cor. 2:9). And then he asked, 'What does it mean?'

"I first had to get over my shock. The only answer I could give him was to take the Bible we were using as our textbook. I opened it up to that passage and I read it back to him. When I read it back to him, this Muslim -- who grew up like me, a Muslim, with the belief that Allah ... speaks only to prophets, he doesn't speak to the common man -- suddenly realizes that this is the word of God. And I tell him, 'This is the Injil [Gospel] I was telling you about, and that's what you heard.' And he has the realization suddenly that God Almighty came down to his lean-to in the ghetto part of town [and] met him there."

'The multiplication of believers right now

among Muslims is greater than we?ve ever seen.'

Djeme accepted Christ that day, and as happens to many Muslim converts, he was ostracized. When he met Christ, Djeme was preparing to wed; local Muslim leaders took away his fiancee instead. He lost his property, as well. But Djeme not only went on to become literate but to graduate Bible school with good marks. He now pastors a growing 100-person church in Mali's capital city, Bamako.

"This is the kind of thing I'm talking about - the untold stories," Arzouni said. "The God who said to Dauda, 'I will show you things that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, is also our God. He will show in the Muslim world, I believe, things that eye has not seen and that we didn't think possible. He will do that. The point of concern I have is, will we be ready when God does this? Will we be positioned to help bring in the harvest?"

The Gospels: Ministry Guidebook

Arzouni likens present-day Islam to the legalism of first-century Judaism: tradition-bound and oppressive. Anything but liberating. Just like the religious elite of Jesus' day had codified Mosaic law into 613 edicts, the Koran regulates every facet of Muslim life, all the way down to its more than two dozen laws about how one uses the bathroom.

However, referencing Galatians 4, Arzouni says the Father sent Christ to a setting very much like Islam "in the fullness of time." Looking at the results Christ and his disciples had in that setting, missionaries to the Muslim world have reason to take heart.

"In the Gospel, we have a model of how to reach 1.2 billion Muslims," Arzouni says. "God built his church in an Islamic situation, and that gives me tremendous hope because that means the mission is possible. God has demonstrated that it can be done."

Arzouni should know. After becoming a Christian, he was forced to flee Senegal for two years. Today he can count more than half a dozen of his family members as brothers and sisters in Christ. It was a slow process, but Arzouni is watching that tide shift in radical ways.

Disaster Brings Opportunity

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York shook America, but it shook the Muslim world in a way that has sent great numbers of people searching for the truth, Arzouni said.

"We're seeing a polarization: The radicals are getting more radical, and those who are seeking are getting more expressive and open about their seeking.

"The multiplication of believers right now among Muslims is greater than we've ever seen. In times past, we'd have one who would come, and then it would be a long time, like in my family, before someone else in the family would be won to Christ. We're seeing something happen now that's just quite different: Someone will come to Christ, and quite rapidly, they're leading other Muslims to Christ. It's like there's a greater openness to share; there's a greater freedom there, in this sense. Not lesser persecution or consequences, but also there's a realization more and more among such people that Christianity is not really the purview of the Western world."

The stories abound:

Of Zainab, a woman who came to Christ after being healed of a disease she contracted from her sexually promiscuous lifestyle. Ostracized, she stuck with the faith.
Of a young man in Tombouctou (Timbuktu) who refused to renounce Christ even after being beaten and tied to a post for three days in the desert sun -- three times.

Arzouni hopes that stories like these, once they're heard, don't just hit people like another news bulletin.

"It's taking place in so many Islamic arenas," he said. "It's just unfortunate that people are not too aware of it. All we hear about when it comes to Islam is all of the garbage and the terrorism and everything else.

"When the spirit of God breaks through in that darkness that Islam is, will we be there?" Arzouni said. "Will we be ready to lend a hand? Can God count on us, or are we just going to go on, same old, same old? Will we look at the Muslim world a certain way and miss totally what God is doing? That's my concern, and as long as God gives me voice, I'm going to voice these things so that people wake up."

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