P.O. Box 1347, Issaquah WA 98027
October 2009 Newsletter Update Report
A Special Note from Ed
I am sorry to be so delayed in getting the newsletter put so late this month. Aside from recovering from knee surgery and the rehab experience, we have lost several family members and several close friends over the last six weeks and the process has consumed us.
Finally, we are back at home and I can turn my thoughts back to the ministry, the almost converted website, a backlog of e-mails and this very belated newsletter.
I have also agreed to do an audio reading of the God Makers book, working with the Berean Call office of my co-author, Dave Hunt and I am in the middle of setting up for that project.
I want to keep the report short this month and get the next one out on a timely basis, with some other things I want to discuss.
Please join with us in prayer and financial support as we continue to reach out to the lost. Your involvement has made the difference in our ability to reach out and share the Biblical truths that continue to set the lost free. Perhaps you can mail in a check to our PO Box today, or donate on-line at our website.
Gifts to us through PayPal would be especially appreciated this month. We have a debit card that allows us to utilize your gift the day it is sent and with some pressing needs, that would be great! Just PayPal us at:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Your brother in Christ
Ed Decker
************************************
15,000 Bibles in Malaysia Seized Over 'Allah' Reference
I have mixed feelings about the article below. On one hand, I am sorry to see that so many Bibles have been taken out of the hands of believers but I have also clearly stated for years that the god, Allah, is a false god and clearly not the God of the Bible.
To use his name as the Holy One is sacrilege. Those who publish Bibles for the Islamic nations run the risk of confusing the reader on which Allah the Bible is speaking about: The Islamic Allah all around them or the True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
There are many words in the English language I can think of that I would never use because the simple meanings have evolved to mean something other than original usage.
Today, you would be a very careless and insensitive person to tell someone that they are “such gay fun” when you only mean they are ‘showing a merry, lively mood” and the more recent usage is something very different.
Likewise, the name, Allah, may have been a generic name for god or idol, but Mohammed clearly made a point of destroying all the many allahs or idols in the Kabba except the idol of his tribe and that became the one and only ‘Allah.’
While well-meaning Christians may want to argue the point, the Muslims have no problem making a very clear differentiation, as you will read below. Now back to the story.
15,000 Bibles in Malaysia Seized Over 'Allah' Reference
By Ethan Cole
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Oct. 29 2009
Malaysian authorities have seized more than 15,000 Bibles that refer to God as “Allah” in recent months, said church officials Thursday.
About 10,000 Bibles from Indonesia were confiscated by authorities on Sept. 11, according to the Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, according to The Associated Press. The other 5,100 Bibles, also from Indonesia, were seized in March, according to an official from the Bible Society of Malaysia, who requested that AP not identify him to avoid angering the government
In Malaysia, Christian publications cannot use the word Allah to refer to God. The government contends the word “Allah” is exclusively for Islam, but church officials argue that Allah is not exclusive to Islam because it is an Arabic word that existed before the religion.
The confiscated Bibles were translated into Malay, the country’s official language, where the word for God is “Allah.”
“Malay has borrowed from Arabic, just as it has from Sanskrit and Portuguese,” said Shastri, according to CNN. “We have maintained the community has the right to use the word.
“But I think this has ignited a cause in the Muslim communities, who are interpreting it as a siege on Islamic beliefs.”
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20091029/malaysia-seizes-15-000-bibles-over-allah-reference/index.html
************************************
I Told You This was on the Way
The Hate Bill, a piece of legislation with far reaching tentacles and one that was tough to pass was quietly tucked into the $680 billion defense authorization bill and signed by the President this week.
While the front pages deal with hate crimes based on sexual orientation, the small print adds religious preferences to the lot and can extend to non-violent acts that are deemed by the complainant to offend or cause suffering.
Watch this carefully as we Christians continue to “defend the Faith” or to share the truth with anyone we may consider lost in a false teaching or religious group such as Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, et al..
************************************
Familiar Spirits???
The “God” of This Age
Lucifer
2 Cor 4:1-4
But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. NKJV
************************************
1. “Now is the great day of my power. I reign from the rivers to the ends of the earth. There is none who dares to molest, or make afraid.” Lucifer, bragging in the LDS Temple Endowment Ritual
2. “I have a word to say concerning these people. If they do not walk up to every covenant they make at these altars in this temple this day, they will be in my power!” Lucifer’s parting admonition: the LDS Temple Endowment Ritual
- “The light that reveals to us the path comes from Lucifer the light bearer. He is the light giver. He is aptly named the Morning Star [Venus] because it is his light that heralds for man the dawn of a greater consciousness. He is present when that dawn is realized .”
- Lucifer, the Light-Bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! It is he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable, blinds feeble sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not!” Albert Pike – Masonic Grand Master
*************************************
The Mormon Missionary Dilemma
Here is a Mormon Missionary joke I picked up from an LDS family website.
A young man is set apart to be a missionary. After the setting apart his stake president reminds him that he now must act like a missionary. The young man is troubled and asks the president, "You know I have a girl friend. Will it be alright for me to give her a kiss good-bye at the airport?"
The stake president considers this and says, "I'll tell you what, you can kiss her if you kiss her the same way you kiss your mother." The young man thinks for a moment and then asks, "Can I warn my mother first?"
Missionary jokes have been around as long as the Mormons have sent them out. Some of them are funny, but under the chuckles lies a deep underlying pain that goes along with the call to leave family, home and friends to serve the church’s goal to preach the LDS gospel across the world.
I remember an old LDS Church statement from the 90s that said that 75% of their missionaries completed honorable missions and 50% of those who fulfilled a mission call were still active after two years of heir return.
Of course, to a curmudgeon like me, that meant that 25% of the missionaries left the mission field and 50% left the church within two years of their return.
Pretty horrible statistics. One would think that their faith would be pumped up by the experience, but the opposite is true.
The most recent LDS statistic claims that there are presently 52,494 missionaries [http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/statistics/ ] in the field.
25% who were sent home or went home equals over 13,000 failed missions and disgraced families. That leaves less than 40,000 missionaries who somehow made it back home in good standing. Then take away 20,000 more from active involvement, which means that over 33,000 young people.
In 2005, more than 240,000 converts joined the Church. That equates to 5 converts per missionary per year, or 10 converts per mission.
Acknowledging I am being very lose with some of these numbers, the loss of 33,000 young people, many who also take loved ones with them into apostasy, is acceptable when you understand that almost ten times their number come in to replace them. That would be OK if these people stayed in the church and brought their loved ones in with them.
However, according to the Church’s Member and Statistical Records Division, first-generation members made up 64% of total Church membership as of July 2006. Per David Stewart, 70% to 80% are inactive." "Sociologist Armand Mauss estimates that 50 percent of LDS converts within the United States stop attending within a year of conversion, and 75 percent of foreign converts fail to attend after a year." http://www.mormonwiki.org/Population_and_growth_rate
What the Church fails to publicize is that the converts leave the church faster than the missionaries do!
Of the 240,000, most are foreign converts. To be safe and more than fair, let us assume that the mix is 60% foreign converts to 40% US converts. I am confident that the foreign percentage is higher, but bear with me for a bit.
If 75% of 60% of 240,000 leave the church within the first year, that is only 36,000 out of 144,000 that stay in the church.
To continue, if 50% of the remaining 96,000 American converts leave, it gives the church a net of only 48,000 US Converts.
That is a combined total of only 84,000 net converts per missionary year or 168,000 converts per mission. The ratio of active converts to lost missionaries is not a factor of ten, but only a factor of a little over three. A pretty tough figure when you consider the cost in dollars, relationships, education, emotional issues that sticks to every young Mormon who gave up two years of his/her life at one of the most significant time of ones life.
I have spent a lot of time over the years talking to spiritually broken Mormon missionaries, telling them that the real God above loves them without counting coup. Carol and I have hugged a lot of hurting kids sent out unprepared for the pain their going would cost them.
This all sort of came back to me today when I read an outstanding article in the New York Times by a returned Mormon Lady Missionary, Holly Welker.
Read her very moving article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/fashion/01love.html
All I Wanted Was a Hug
By HOLLY WELKER
Published: October 30, 2009
Remember
The generous gifts and prayers of friends
like you support Saints Alive.
You can do that by sending in a gift to our PO Box,
or on line at our website
Or by sending a PayPal gift to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.saintsalive.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Saints Alive Ministries
P.O. Box 13247
Issaquah, WA 98027
All material contained in the website, www.saintsalive.com and in its newsletters and other mailings is protected speech pursuant to the "inalienable rights" of all men, and the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution of
the United States of America. As it says on the Dollar Bill, "In God we trust." We sure do.
