Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Check this out. Is Britain eventually to become Islamic? Two churchmen with two different views on the West and Islam.

Comments?

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Marty

From Creation to New Creation via Redemption

43When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.

44Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.

45Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

When the church goes into decline,turning from gospel light, darkness overtakes the land. They decline was gradual, but it seems to be accelerating at this point in history.
Worldly prosperity has the people at ease in Zion. While they are sleeping an enemy has done this.

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Anthony D'Arienzo
Sunday School Teacher
Hope Reformed Baptist Church:
Medford, N.Y.

It struck me as ironic that it's the westerner by birth who seems intent on despising his birthright, whereas the man with actual experience of Muslim rule values the Western system more.

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Ruben
Moderator

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Interesting partial quote: "a nihilism that leads inexorably to dhimmitude."

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Scott Roberts
Ruling Elder, Lakeside Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Southlake, Texas

Unless the Lord intervenes, I do believe that the whole of Europe (bar the vatican) will eventually become islamic in some shape or form.

Sheer apathy is coursing through the nations. Foul and vile behaviour is on the increase. There seems no answer...

But there is! Sharia Law! The majority of people who are law-abiding and don't care about religion would generally notice an improvement in their environment, and prison-building companies shares would rocket! Whatever parties see an increase in popularity, unless there is some belief system undergirding them, they will not succeed. Islam is well place to succeed, to be honest. Things just need to get a lot worse and people need to be more desperate. Give it 50 years and we'll see where we are.

Oh, and there would be a lot of one-handed people about.

But for the nominal believer, the secularist and the atheist, there will be no problem with reciting 'there Is no 'god' but A**** and M******** is his prophet' three times and getting back on with life. (I'm not even typing that phrase out as it is an abomination).

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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Jonathan Hunt

Preaching Elder
Cheltenham Evangelical Free Church (Confessionally Based)
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
-- Thomas Elsworth

There are about the same percentage of Muslims in the US as the UK, somewhere around 2-3 percent of the population of the two countries, depending on who you ask. Jews are a bit less, with about 2 percent of the US population Jewish and much less in the UK.

The main difference is that Jews have a huge influence on both countries compared to Muslims. Here in my home state both of our two Senators are Jews, and when it comes to those who influence public opinion like other politicians, screen writers authors, newspaper editors and owners, etc...Jews are hugely over represented, an example being the author of the article linked to in the first thread, who is affiliated with largely pro-Israel think tanks and writes those sort of articles not to warn Christians about losing their culture, but to rile up Christians against enemies of Israel. Notice the phrase "Judeo-Christian" that he uses. Even in Britain leaders of Jewish background like Jack Straw and Michael Howard have much more power and influence than Muslim leaders, so I don't think that the real life influence that Muslims have on culture is quite as profound as is often cited, although I don't live there. If anything recent large scale Muslim demographic increases seem to provoke anti Muslim/third world reactions, like in Holland and many other European countries.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member PCA church but currently attending EV Free church. San Luis Obispo County, California.

That is because for a hundred and fifty years the Jewish population has integrated economically, politically and socially with the mainstream culture. The same will happen when the Muslim population integrates to a greater extent than it has thus far.

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Mike
London City Presbyterian Church
London
England

"Surely, we wish to be orthodox, but we must first learn what real orthodoxy is. Surely, we wish to be progressive, but we must first have a basis to progress from."

I seriously doubt that it will.

I think that Islam will collapse in time as a militant form, after all what does it have going for it?

Order in society without a great burden on the adherents.

If the Archbishop of Cantebury has his way, Islamic Law will be imposed on the land. I do not understand why he does not become a Muslim. He is certainly not a Christian. Maybe it has something to do with the pension he collects from the Church of England.

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Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia

That's interesting. In the Cape area of SA the dominant ethnic group is the "Coloured" people. There are many subsets within this large group, and historically there was a small number of Muslims descended from Indonesians and Malays who settled or were settled there during the days of the Dutch Empire.

Now the numbers are growing, and the big thing seems to me to be the prohibition against alcohol. The Coloureds are like some other groups in other parts of the world in that they have a particular weakness (party genetic and partly otherwise) in that area and it's hard for the communities as a whole to stay healthy and prosperous. When they convert to Islam and stop drinking things change and it's easy to see how one could easily feel superior to those who surround them when they start prospering in a relative sense.

Still, in Europe the numbers just aren't there, and there are strongly competing forms of nationalism and ethnic identity. After all, if you were to plot a graph detailing the percentage of the European population that is Muslim over the last thousand years at one hundred year intervals, the graph line would consistently go downwards except in the last century.

An overly pessimistic columnist that goes under the name Spengler wrote about this in general, and even in a worst possible scenario he points out something about Eastern Europeans that needs to be factored in to the discussion, even in a climate of doom and gloom on steroids:

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News - Russia's hudna with the Muslim world

Islam - if consistent with its teachings - cannot integrate with British culture, instead it must replace it.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

This is a pretty outrageous statement on several levels. To begin with any such statement would require a fairly strong burden of scientific proof before it could be seriously discussed. Without such a basis it can easily be used as a basis for baseless paternalistic racial stereotyping.

You could just as easily make this statements about any group, lets face it the Irish Like to drink to excess and in the UK the national passtime is binge drinking.

The fact is every racial group tends to like to drink to excess, what stops most groups are social pressures and responsibilities.

The reformed community should really try to avoid giving racial offence, even if it is not intended.

The fact that you haven't studied the matter doesn't mean that there isn't a huge body of scientific material available. There is.

An interesting thing about Islam: When Muslims enter the West, they often loose a lot of cohesion, younger Muslims often fall into the same traps that Christians and Jews do in Secular Society, the younger generations tend to become (for lack of a better term" Moderates. They become watered down, look at the UAE (which has a LOT of Western influence and many Americans and Europeans who do Business there) they are not "good" Muslims (too the eyes of the Radicals), compare this to Saudi Arabia, the Royals are pretty compromised, but the average Saudi is very fervent situated as they are in ground zero of Islamic "Holy Sites", to be honest, LONG TERM: I think the greatest threat to the West and indeed the world, is Secular Humanism which will be taken to it's most destructive nihilistic expression.

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~etexas~

Though, secular humanism could so destroy the west that westerners could look to Islam for salvation.

Perhaps, UNLESS the West views being secular as a means to elevating " The Brotherhood of Man" to such a degree that there is a view (stated or unstated) than man is "deity" in which case, they would not want to submit to an "external" deity. France has been going down just such a road for a long time now.

I would say that every western nation presently worships such a "god", though when they find that autonomous man is a "god that failed" they might look to another god which man has created - the god of Islam.

Well South Africa devised a whole political and religious system on the basis of a scientific distinction between the races and at best such thinking is unhlepful and open to abuse.

Henrik Verwoerd's widow and daughter were neighbor's of mine and I can assure you that ethnic differences in enzyme metabolism did not factor into Apartheid laws. Not sure what you mean by religious system, but I don't want to go too far off topic. I was just struck by an insightful comment that Islam could provide structure in a moral vacuum.