Monthly Archives: March 2010

GUESS WHAT? DEMOCRACY IS EMERGING IN IRAQ, DESPITE THE CYNICS: Big elections March 7

March 6, 2010 By in Epicenter

Even the mainstream media is starting to get it -- democracy is rising in Iraq, despite the naysayers.

 >> Ahmadinejad calls 9/11 attacks on U.S. a “big fabrication”

During the 2008 campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama declared: “We were told this [war in Iraq] would make us safer and that this would be a model of democracy in the Middle East. Hasn’t turned out that way….This [Bush] administration’s policy has been a combination of extraordinary naivety — the notion that, you know, we’ll be greeted as liberators, flowers will be thrown at us in Iraq, we’ll be creating a Jeffersonian democracy, that it’s a model.” (see Inside The Revolution, p. 321)

Guess what? The war was worth it, the surge worked, and a real democracy is emerging in Iraq, despite what the cynics and naysayers told us.
Please be praying for the people of Iraq this weekend. The country holds national elections for parliament on Sunday, March 7.  Nineteen million Iraqis are registered to vote. More than 6,200 candidates are running. The polls open at 7am local time and close at 5pm. Radical Islamic extremists are expected to launch a series of violent attacks in hopes of disrupting the elections. But as I reported in my book, Inside The Revolution, last year, the pro-democracy Reformers in Iraq have decisively gained the upper hand. Even the mainstream media is beginning to concede the Radicals are losing ground and the Reformers are succeeding. Last week, for example, a Newsweek cover story entitled,  “Victory At Last,” trumpeted “the emergence of a democratic Iraq,” and declared “it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.”

 

“This election is big. It is simply enormous,” U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill told USA Today. “If this goes well … and if the government formation goes well, this could usher in a whole new beginning for this country and also U.S. relations with Iraq.”

There is still a long way to go. Mosul (Ninevah) remains a hotbed of sectarian violence. But real progress is being made politically, economically, and spiritually, as well. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have left Islam and come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last seven years since liberation. Bibles are being printed in the country. Churches are being planted by Iraqis, pastored by Iraqis. And as I’ve reported to you before, The Joshua Fund has been helping encourage the Church in Iraq. The Joshua Fund has even helped set up a Christian radio station in northern Iraq that is teaching the Bible and preaching the gospel openly and to great effect. God is moving powerfully in this war-ravaged land. But let’s keep praying and doing all we can to be a blessing to our brothers and sisters there.

HEADLINES TO TRACK:

BIDEN IN ISRAEL NEXT WEEK

March 5, 2010 By in Epicenter

>> Wall Street Journal interview: “They Need to Be Liberated From Their God” — The ‘Son of Hamas’ author on his conversion to Christianity, spying for Israel, and shaming his family.

>> Forbes magazine story on “Son of Hamas”

Vice President Joe Biden will arrive in Israel on March 8. He will also go to Egypt and Jordan. The focus of the trip: dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat and trying to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Biden is expected to be on the ground in the region for three days. In Israel, he will meet with PM Netanyahu and other top officials, and deliver an address at Tel Aviv University. He will also meet with senior officials of the Palestinian Authority.

SON OF HAMAS HIRES BODYGUARDS

March 5, 2010 By in Epicenter

“Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas founder in the West Bank who recently revealed that he spent over a decade as a top agent for the Shin Bet security service, has hired bodyguards to protect him,” reports the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. “I feel safe,” Mosab said. “My father’s announcement that he is disowning me came because Hamas forced him to do it. But this will cause me to fight even more stubbornly against their god and against his movement. I love my father, but his movement is arrogant and evil….They want me to lose my father forever, and my response will be to fight his god until he is finished. I am fighting the god of hate, the god of Islam, by means of my god — that of Christianity, which is the God of love.”

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MOSAB: HOW DID THE SON OF HAMAS COME TO CHRIST? PART TWO

March 3, 2010 By in Epicenter
  

Joel and Mosab meet for coffee at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville to discuss "SON OF HAMAS" and how best to reach Palestinians and Muslims with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The following is an interview I did with Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of the new book, Son of Hamas. In emails last week and while spending several hours together at the NRB convention in Nashville on Monday, we talked about  how the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has supernaturally changed him from being a Radical Muslim leader of the Hamas terrorist organization to a born again follower of Jesus Christ and a friend of both Israel and the Palestinian people. His words are powerful and I highly commend them to you.

Last night, CNN International ran Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Mosab, but for some reason CNN in the U.S. did not air the broadcast. Please keep praying for Mosab’s courage, wisdom and physical safety. And please pray that many are touched by his story of Christ’s love and forgiveness.

JOEL: How has your life changed since becoming a born again Christian? Specifically, how have your attitudes towards Israel changed since your dramatic conversion?

MOSAB: My conscience is not the same. This doesn’t mean that I became a perfect person but at least when I do a mistake I know how to fix it and avoid it in the future. Today, I am free from sin because I am the son of the King. When I first understood how religion is imperfect in general — and in Islam in particular — and allowed myself to accept Christ as my personal Savior and get out of the box of religion, not only did Israel look different to me, I started to see everything differently.

I remember one day walking in Jerusalem right after I studied the Scripture that says give to those who ask you. [Jesus said in Matthew 5:42, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”] There was a homeless Jew in the Jewish side of Jerusalem, and I answered the call of the Lord to share with him some of the change in my pocket. Then I sat down and cried because I had the chance to understand the unconditional love God has for everybody. It was shocking to me that I never felt sorry for a homeless Jew. Then gradually — through God’s grace and mercy, through the years — all humans became equal to me.  My people see the sun every day but they never ask themselves why the sun shines on both east and west Jerusalem. The easiest thing to me was to hate my enemy but the real challenge was to love them. Later on I realized my enemy was not man anymore — not Israeli, not Palestinian — but sin and darkness within us.

JOEL: What can followers of Jesus do in real and practical ways to love the Palestinian people and reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

MOSAB: This is an excellent question, thank you. Christians have a huge duty to love his neighbor and his enemy.  Every Christian needs to carry this heavy cross. Loving Muslims and Palestinians is our responsibility. And our duty as Christians to show God’s love toward Muslims is more important than governments, the United Nations and the international community. All of those don’t have a clue how to deal with the Islamic problem. We know as Christians that the conflict is spiritual and ideological. You can’t kill an idea. You have to replace it. Governments can send troops to change a regime or kill terrorists, but they don’t have the type of weapons that we have — love and hope and grace.

Today, I need from my Christian brothers and sisters to understand the sensitivity of our mission of hope, love and forgiveness. Without these values humans will self-destruct everything beautiful. Be proud of our God and take Him to the Muslims. How come Christians are ashamed of such a loving, forgiving God? Our God is sending a great message of hope through my experience with Him. He is telling the Israelis, my people and everyone who is involved in the Middle East conflict that unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness through the example of Jesus Christ in our lives is the only hope for peace in the Middle East and the entire world — peace with God, peace within, and peace with others. 

Love is not an idea, it is a reality. Our Lord showed us His love through the shedding of His innocent blood. His love is a reality we live in everyday of our lives. We can’t be perfect, but if we show the world the minimum of our Lord’s love we will be able to change the entire world in few years. Get out of your churches! Remove the dust of religion and human traditions and go out to the world. Show humanity who we are in Christ and who our God is. Humanity is hurt and its wounds are bleeding. Let’s heal it with the cure of love, the love of Jesus!

JOEL: Are you worried for your safety as you release this book? And how can we be praying for you and your family as your book releases?

MOSAB: The One who saved my life in the past is able to save it in the present and in the future as well.  Physical death is not the worst thing that can happen to a man. Spiritual death is much more dangerous. This is not the time to give up. Our goal is to liberate people and our weapon is love. They can hate us but we will still love them. They can torture us but we will pray for them and they will accuse us but we continue to forgive them as we were forgiven! 

AP Interview: Hamas spy unafraid, criticizes Islam

>> To see more photos of Joel and Mosab’s meeting at NRB on the “Epicenter Team” page on Facebook, please click here

———————

As proof of how much God has changed him, Mosab risked his life to save the lives of Jewish Israelis as spy for Israel’s “Shin Bet” secret service agency. He also risked his life to save his own people in the West Bank and Gaza. Now he is not only willing but eager to share the good news of Jesus Christ’s love and forgiveness and transforming power to everyone he can, despite the fact that his family has publicly and painfully disowned him and that terrorists may want to hunt him down and kill him.

The more I learn about Mosab’s story, the more I find myself thinking about the words of the Apostle Paul. As Saul of Tarsus, he was a religious terrorist. But he had a supernatural encounter with Jesus Christ and was transformed into a man of great love, wisdom and influence for the Lord as a result. In Ephesians 2:8-15, the Apostle Paul — inspired by the Holy Spirit — wrote:

“For by grace [unmerited favor] you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh…remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace.”

HEADLINES TO TRACK:

>> HOW IS GOD MOVING AMONG ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS AND IRANIANS, AND HOW CAN YOU MAKE A REAL AND PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE? Please join us for the 2010 Epicenter Conference in Philadelphia on June 25-26

>> TO HELP THE JOSHUA FUND CARE FOR THE POOR AND NEEDY AND STOCKPILE SUPPLIES AHEAD OF THE NEXT WAR, please click here.

>> TO SIGN UP FOR JOEL’S WEEKLY “FLASH TRAFFIC” EMAIL UPDATES, please click here

>> TO JOIN JOEL’S “EPICENTER TEAM” ON FACEBOOK, please click here

EXCLUSIVE: SON OF HAMAS DISOWNED BY HIS FATHER, BUT VOWS TO FOLLOW JESUS CHRIST

March 3, 2010 By in Epicenter

UPDATE: Mosab’s first global TV interview will be tonight at 9pm eastern on CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour.

(Nashville, Tennessee) — Yesterday morning, I had the opportunity to finally meet Mosab Hassan Youssef for the first time. We spoke last year by phone several times, but this was the first time we had ever met in person. We spent about an hour together with several of our colleagues here at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, site of the National Religious Broadcasters convention. We talked at length about his fascinating new book, Son of Hamas, and the enormous challenges new facing him as he explains to the world why he renounced Islam and became a follower of Jesus Christ, and why he chose to become a spy against Hamas for the State of Israel for ten years.

Later, Mosab was my guest at the NRB “International Luncheon.” At the end of my remarks on “Israel, The Iran Threat and Modern Day Lessons From The Book of Esther,” I introduced him, explained a little of his story, described a bit of the book, and invited him to come up to the podium to share from his heart. He spoke for about five minutes, and received three standing ovations. However, what had been a very joyful meeting in the morning between us as two brothers – brought together by our mutual love for Jesus Christ — had turned very sad by lunch. Just moments before the luncheon began, Mosab learned the news through various Middle Eastern news services that his father and family disowned him. He was deeply pained and visibly shaken, but as he spoke he said he loved his family and would never disown them. What’s more, he vowed to follow his Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, no matter what, and he said he was at war with “the god of Islam” to liberate the Palestinian people and help them find freedom in Christ.

I was impressed with Mosab — his faith, his love for his people, and his great courage. And as I watched him speak to the NRB audience, I thought of Matthew 19:29-30, when Jesus told His disciples that “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

  • Please continue praying for Mosab as he embarks on a series of very important media interviews.
  • [To view updated media schedule from www.sonofhamas.com, please click here.]
  • Pray that the joy of the Lord would be his strength.
  • Pray that the Lord would show him what to study in the Bible every day.
  • Pray that the Lord would continue to surround him with strong Christian brothers who can teach him, disciple him, mentor him, and encourage him through this challenging season.
  • Pray that he can communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • Pray for his father, mother and siblings to come to know Christ personally, so they too can be forgiven of their sins and go to heaven for all eternity.
  • Pray that millions of Palestinians and other Muslims will hear the gospel through him and that many will come to faith in Christ.
  • Please pray, too, John 12:49 (NIV) for him, that the Father would command him “what to say, and how to say it.”

EXCLUSIVE: HOW DID THE SON OF HAMAS COME TO CHRIST? Part One

March 1, 2010 By in Epicenter

Must-read new book releases Tuesday, March 2.

(Nashville, Tennesee) —  Today, I am at the National Religious Broadcasters convention here in Nashville where I will address the “International Luncheon.” A colleague and I met this morning with Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of the Hamas leader who has come to Christ. Later, I had the joy of introducting Mosab to the National Religious Broadcasters convention, explaining a bit of his remarkable story, and asking people to pray for Mosab. He shared for a few minutes and moved many in the room to tears.
 
My remarks were entitled, “Israel, The Iran Threat, and Modern Day Lessons From The Book of Esther.” I believe the Lord is building a global movement of followers of Jesus Christ who will pray and fast for the Lord to save and bless Israel, the Palestinians, Iran and all the peoples of the epicenter. And just as the Lord had strategically positioned two believers — Mordechai and Esther — close to the leader of Persia to do His will at “such a time as this,” so, too, the Lord placed Mosab  right next to the leader of Hamas to serve Christ at a critical moment. I look forward to sharing part of Mosab’s remarkable story during my remarks.
 
Beginning in 1996, Mosab became a spy for Israel’s secret service, helping the Israelis to stop scores of terrorist attacks and arrest scores of terrorists from Hamas and other Palestinian jihadist groups. In 2005, after a long spiritual journey, Mosab renounced Islam, received Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord, and was baptized in the Mediterranean sea.
 
The extraordinary story of how this all happened is the basis of Mosab’s must-read new book, Son of Hamas (co-written by journalist Ron Brackin), which releases nationwide on Tuesday, March 2.
 
Mosab and Tyndale House Publishers have put an embargo on the book until tomorrow, meaning no journalist is allowed to publish excerpts from the book until then. But they have graciously given me exclusive permission to publish excerpts first. Here are a few of the extraordinary passages:
 
  • “My name is Mosab Hassan Yousef. I am the oldest son of of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the seven founders of the Hamas organization. I was born in the West Bank village of Ramallah, and I am part of one of the most religious Islamic families in the Middle East.” (p.5)
  • Mosab hated the Jews. He cheered when Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, and was disappointed when Israel wasn’t destroyed. He wanted Hamas to seize back all the land of “Palestine” from the Jews. But in 1996, at the age of 18, he was arrested for buying automatic weapons to kill Jews, and was sent to an Israeli prison. There he was stunned at what he saw: Muslims torturing Muslims. “I had never heard a human being scream like that guy did. What could he have done to deserve that.” (p.97)
  • “Nearby, fellow Hamas members — fellow Arabs, fellow Palestinians, fellow Muslims — shoved needles under [his friend] Akel’s fingernails.” (p. 100)
  • “Every day there was screaming; every night, torture. Hamas was torturing its own people! As much as I wanted to, I simply could not find a way to justify that.” (p. 102)
  • One day after being released from Israeli prison, Mosab was walking past the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. Someone — not knowing who he was — invited him to a Bible study. Curious, he attended. They studied the New Testament, and gave him a copy to read for himself.  “I began at the beginning [in the Gospel According to Matthew], and when I got to the Sermon on the Mount, I thought, Wow, this guy Jesus is really impressive! Everything He says is beautiful! I couldn’t put the book down. Every verse seemed to touch a deep wound in my life. It was a very simple message, but somehow it had the power to heal my soul and give me hope. Then I read this: ‘You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that  you may be sons of your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:43-45)….I was thunderstruck by these words. Never before had I heard anything like this, but I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all my life.” (p.122)
  • “For years I had struggled to know who my enemy was, and I had looked for enemies outside of Islam and Palestine. But I suddenly realized that the Israelis were not my enemies. Neither was Hamas nor my uncle Ibrahim [one of the torturers in prison] nor the kid who beat me with the butt of his M16….I understood that enemies were not defined by nationality, religion, or color. I understood that we all share the same common enemies: greed, pride, and all the bad ideas and the darkness of the devil that live inside us….Five years earlier, I would have read the words of Jesus and thought, What an idiot! and thrown the Bible away….But now, everything Jesus said on the pages of this book made perfect sense to me. Overwhelmed, I started to cry.” (p.122-123)
An amazing story….but that’s just the beginning….more to come tomorrow.
 
PRAYER REQUESTS:
  • On Tuesday, Mosab is scheduled to give his first global exclusive TV interview to CNN’s Christian Amanpour.
  • This will be followed soon by interviews on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, the “Today Show” on NBC and more.

Please pray for Mosab — for wisdom, discernment, courage and protection. Please pray John 12:49 (NIV) for him, that the Father would command him what to say and how to say it. And please pray that millions will hear the gospel, give their lives to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and develop a passion to pray for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the epicenter. Thanks so much, and stay tuned for more updates.