Islam is outgrowing Christianity

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Claudiu

Puritan Board Junior
I found this interesting. I've been researching a little more into Islam and started looking at statistics. This is not meant to be a dispensational moment where we look at the middle east and Islam and freak out. But it was interesting to just see the numbers. I have relatives in Europe, so I know that the population in Europe is going down, while the immigrant and Muslims population is really starting to sore.

With the statistics showing that the number of Christians is not decreasing or increasing, the number of Muslims is slowly starting to increase at a rate that it will soon surpass Christianity.

[video=youtube;6-3X5hIFXYU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU[/video]

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 05:38:47 EST-----

Also, when I use Christianity I mean it in the sense that it is used in statistics where all denominations fall under. While there are many people that are considered "Christians" we know the number is a lot lower (the number of actual Christians). So Islam passed the number of actual believers a while ago.

My emphasis is just on the increase of Islam all over the world right now, not how we are going to become a "minority" in the religious aspect. I think true believers have been a minority compared to the people around us since Christ's time.
 
I could have told you that Islam would outgrow Christianity. My rapture chart predicted it. :wink:

(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)
 
It's a shame that so many professing Christians seem to despise children/having children.

:agree:


It seems like this problem is not only happening in the West, but in the East as well. I think it was China or Japan that is having similar problems as Europe. Not Sure.

But most people claim that the present day conditions, such as the cost of living, is why people are not having children (as it is more expensive to have children).

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 05:50:26 EST-----

I could have told you that Islam would outgrow Christianity. My rapture chart predicted it. :wink:

(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

You aren't too far from Dearborn, MI.
How is the Muslim population where you are?

I heard there are many efforts in evangelizing to the Muslims in Dearborn.
 
(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

How about this:

15.gif


2.gif


Practicing for the secret rapture:

12.gif
 
(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

How about this:

15.gif


2.gif


Practicing for the secret rapture:

12.gif

Good ones, but they don't leave pants and shirts behind.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 06:37:09 EST-----

I could have told you that Islam would outgrow Christianity. My rapture chart predicted it. :wink:

(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

You aren't too far from Dearborn, MI.
How is the Muslim population where you are?

I heard there are many efforts in evangelizing to the Muslims in Dearborn.

Michigan holds the largest Arab population in America. Dearborn is the tenth largest Arab community in Michigan. There are all kinds of crazy Sha'riah law type stuff going on over there that nobody ever seems to deem newsworthy. I met a woman from one Arab community in MI that is hiding from her father because she became a Christian and if he ever finds her, he will kill her. No, the authorities are not doing anything about it. There are many Chaldeans in that area, however, that are Christians who fled from their countries to escape persecution. Most of them are Reformed Baptist. There are many who are trying to evangelize Muslims. There is a great missionary opportunity right here in Michigan. This site is a good place to go to keep up with Muslim news worldwide: Jihad Watch
 
(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

How about this:

15.gif


2.gif


Practicing for the secret rapture:

12.gif

Good ones, but they don't leave pants and shirts behind.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 06:37:09 EST-----

I could have told you that Islam would outgrow Christianity. My rapture chart predicted it. :wink:

(This gives me an idea. Someone needs to come up with a rapture smiley. He could fly upwards leaving his pants and shirt behind or his car unmanned.)

You aren't too far from Dearborn, MI.
How is the Muslim population where you are?

I heard there are many efforts in evangelizing to the Muslims in Dearborn.

Michigan holds the largest Arab population in America. Dearborn is the tenth largest Arab community in Michigan. There are all kinds of crazy Sha'riah law type stuff going on over there that nobody ever seems to deem newsworthy. I met a woman from one Arab community in MI that is hiding from her father because she became a Christian and if he ever finds her, he will kill her. No, the authorities are not doing anything about it. There are many Chaldeans in that area, however, that are Christians who fled from their countries to escape persecution. Most of them are Reformed Baptist. There are many who are trying to evangelize Muslims. There is a great missionary opportunity right here in Michigan. This site is a good place to go to keep up with Muslim news worldwide: Jihad Watch



Wow! Thanks for sharing.
I heard similar insight on the situation there. It's unbelievable.
A friend of mine who visited an evangelism effort taking place there. He shared with me their frustrations to the fact that there are Muslims who convert, yet because they fear of being found out they still do all the Muslim prayers and whatnot. If one converts they are deemed as an infidel, and worthy of death. The only way to live without fear of death is to escape the community, which has a big stronghold on religious politics.
 
I think what we're seeing in Europe is that atheism, agnosticism, wishy-washy liberal spirituality, and what have you, is no match for religion. They don't fill voids. Islam has begun to fill the void left by the widespread rejection of Christianity.
 
I don't doubt the overall trend in Europe (I am living several hundred yards from a very Muslim area in London) but this video is full of factual and statistical errors. I started checking some of the "facts" and found many of them to completely wrong (eg, the claim that 25% of Belgium is Muslim - the highest reliable recent number I can find is 6%; the Muslim birth rate figures for the Netherlands, France are completely exaggerated; the quote from the German Federal Statistics Office is not actually from that source, etc).

It's late at night here so I've stopped Googling the real statistics but I've just found links to several websites that were coming up with similar statistics to mine. Sadly, they were then able to use the more accurate numbers to rip apart this specific video.

That's a shame because the growth of Islam in Europe is a concern but using inaccurate and scare-mongering figures in videos doesn't help.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 07:12:30 EST-----

It's a shame that so many professing Christians seem to despise children/having children.

What do you base that on? I have not experienced that to any discernible degree. Do you mean many Christians don't want to have large numbers of children (say, 4 or 5) or simply don't want to have them at all?
 
I don't doubt the overall trend in Europe (I am living several hundred yards from a very Muslim area in London) but this video is full of factual and statistical errors. I started checking some of the "facts" and found many of them to completely wrong (eg, the claim that 25% of Belgium is Muslim - the highest reliable recent number I can find is 6%; the Muslim birth rate figures for the Netherlands, France are completely exaggerated; the quote from the German Federal Statistics Office is not actually from that source, etc).

It's late at night here so I've stopped Googling the real statistics but I've just found links to several websites that were coming up with similar statistics to mine. Sadly, they were then able to use the more accurate numbers to rip apart this specific video.

That's a shame because the growth of Islam in Europe is a concern but using inaccurate and scare-mongering figures in videos doesn't help.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 07:12:30 EST-----

It's a shame that so many professing Christians seem to despise children/having children.

What do you base that on? I have not experienced that to any discernible degree. Do you mean many Christians don't want to have large numbers of children (say, 4 or 5) or simply don't want to have them at all?



I wasn't able to check if the statistics were accurate or not. But thanks for the insight.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 07:19:32 EST-----

I do not know if I would count "4 or 5" as "large"...

4 or 5 is just getting stated. :)

Most people I've talked to already consider 3 children as a "large family" :rofl:
 
4 or 5 is just getting stated. :)

Most people I've talked to already consider 3 children as a "large family" :rofl:

That's because you're from California. :smug:

Haha, and I'm only in the suburban area of Sac (which doesn't have that many liberals- althgouh there are plenty already) and I hear that...but San Fran on the other hand is the liberals headquarters. :offtopic: Imagine what one would hear from them. Actually, I did. They don't really believe in the family concept. But then again the libs there are fighting for something they call a "family"....gay marriage (which is really an oxymoron).
 
I agree with jonmo.

The expansion of Muslims is a problem. However, scaring people into having kids is not the answer, nor is adding to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children. Such I ideas reduce who has God's truth down to who can have the most children.

I would say that every covenant community must have people who are about the task of having and raising covenant children, just as every covenant community must have elders and deacons. That has, no doubt, got to be a concern.

However, we also need to realize that Islam is an entirely anachronistic religion. The way it does its study is to read back into the New Testament period ideas that came from a man 600 years later who had never read the Hebrew Bible or the Greek New Testament. James White has done good work in pointing much of this out.

In other words, Islam is very vulnerable in the intellectual realm. What good is it to have all of those children, if you are only going to teach them something that is going to simply be refuted by Christian scholarship anyway?

God Bless,
Adam
 
I agree with jonmo.

The expansion of Muslims is a problem. However, scaring people into having kids is not the answer, nor is adding to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children. Such I ideas reduce who has God's truth down to who can have the most children.

I would say that every covenant community must have people who are about the task of having and raising covenant children, just as every covenant community must have elders and deacons. That has, no doubt, got to be a concern.

However, we also need to realize that Islam is an entirely anachronistic religion. The way it does its study is to read back into the New Testament period ideas that came from a man 600 years later who had never read the Hebrew Bible or the Greek New Testament. James White has done good work in pointing much of this out.

In other words, Islam is very vulnerable in the intellectual realm. What good is it to have all of those children, if you are only going to teach them something that is going to simply be refuted by Christian scholarship anyway?

God Bless,
Adam


I don't know if your response was directed at anyone here on PB...

"scaring people into having kids is not the answer"...I agree. But, I don't think anyone here was arguing for having more children to solve the problem. The video does not make that suggestion either. The video only shows the expansion of Islam in our times. At the end it does not scare people into having more kids, but rather, making a call to action: evangelism.

"nor is adding to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children" :confused:

I don't think anyone was arguing this point either...did someone here add to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children:scratch:

"Such I ideas reduce who has God's truth down to who can have the most children." :think:

Again I don't really think anyone was arguing for having more children.

in my opinion evangelism seems like a better response to the growing number of non-Believers in the world...as opposed to breeding them out.
 
Claudiu, the important thing is that someone took the time to look at the video (I didn't since those types of videos are almost always done by liars or dumb people) and pointed out that the video was peddling false information.

We've enough to worry about without making things up, brother.
 
Claudiu, the important thing is that someone took the time to look at the video (I didn't since those types of videos are almost always done by liars or dumb people) and pointed out that the video was peddling false information.

We've enough to worry about without making things up, brother.



Point taken
 
The expansion of Muslims is a problem. However, scaring people into having kids is not the answer, nor is adding to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children. Such I ideas reduce who has God's truth down to who can have the most children.

Scaring people into having children???? God's own Word says very plainly that they are a blessing. You don't scare people into it, God blesses these families as He will. He open and closes the womb, we're not vermin that breed without thought or purpose.

That being said, telling God that He may call it a blessing, but you've got a 'better' idea seems to me just a tad unbiblical.

Islam will help separate the sheep from the goats. I love Pergy's take on the immigration/breeding (from an earlier thread): the fields are now white with harvest here, we need not go half way around the world to take the Word to the Muslims.
 
cecat90,

I don't think anyone was arguing this point either...did someone here add to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children

No, my point was to take several solutions the Christian church is pedaling to this issue, and point out that we are thinking about this problem all wrong, because our solutions are all wrong.

While people on this thread may not have argued this, there are many people who argue that deliberate childlessness is a sin. I am just pointing out that the church is doing everything it can to avoid solving the population problem Biblically. I have found that there are wonderful solutions to this problem in scripture, but we seem to be a culture of reaction rather than calm and careful reasoning. I fear that, because of that, these social problems will remain.

God Bless,
Adam
 
kvanlaan,

Scaring people into having children???? God's own Word says very plainly that they are a blessing. You don't scare people into it, God blesses these families as He will. He open and closes the womb, we're not vermin that breed without thought or purpose.

That being said, telling God that He may call it a blessing, but you've got a 'better' idea seems to me just a tad unbiblical.

Children being a blessing is totally irrelevant to the subject. The only way it would be relevant is if you are trying to argue that, if something is a blessing, you must pursue it. However, that is logically problematic. For example, it is a blessing to have a Phd in Hebrew Bible. However, are you currently pursuing a Phd in Hebrew Bible?

Also, you say God opens and closes the womb. As Calvinists, we believe God causes all things. In fact, the Bible says that God raises up nations. Now, don't you agree that it would be rather silly for Egyptians to have avoided battling the Hittites because the Hittites were an up and coming power, and it is God who raises up nations?

Again, as is always the case in this discussion, I see no exegesis from people who argue this way.

God Bless,
Adam
 
I think what we're seeing in Europe is that atheism, agnosticism, wishy-washy liberal spirituality, and what have you, is no match for religion. They don't fill voids. Islam has begun to fill the void left by the widespread rejection of Christianity.

Excellent observation.

Might I add that whether or not the statistics are accurate, if the world is at some point enveloped by the dark curtain of Islam, that will make the subsequent triumph of the Gospel that much more glorious.
 
cecat90,

I don't think anyone was arguing this point either...did someone here add to God's word some command that every married couple who can have children must have children

No, my point was to take several solutions the Christian church is pedaling to this issue, and point out that we are thinking about this problem all wrong, because our solutions are all wrong.

While people on this thread may not have argued this, there are many people who argue that deliberate childlessness is a sin. I am just pointing out that the church is doing everything it can to avoid solving the population problem Biblically. I have found that there are wonderful solutions to this problem in scripture, but we seem to be a culture of reaction rather than calm and careful reasoning. I fear that, because of that, these social problems will remain.

God Bless,
Adam



Ok, I see what you mean. I understand where you are coming from with that. For example, I know many eastern Europeans who tend to have large families and look down upon couples that don't have kids. Some even argue "that deliberate childlessness is a sin."
 
Children being a blessing is totally irrelevant to the subject. The only way it would be relevant is if you are trying to argue that, if something is a blessing, you must pursue it. However, that is logically problematic. For example, it is a blessing to have a Phd in Hebrew Bible. However, are you currently pursuing a Phd in Hebrew Bible?

False.

When we as married couples decide to take measures to halt conception, that is taking measures to take God's sovereignty into our hands (and by our actions saying that we do not want His blessings - thus 'we have a better idea'). It is not logically problematic, but it is biblical.

Man and wife are to freely consummate their relationship. We may not deprive each other, save by mutual consent, so that we may devote our time to prayer. What is the product of that consummation? Children.

Please, exegete away.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 10:16:34 EST-----

For example, I know many eastern Europeans who tend to have large families and look down upon couples that don't have kids.

This act of looking down on others is a sin. But it is completely divorced from the issue at hand.

-----Added 7/10/2009 at 10:18:08 EST-----

Also, you say God opens and closes the womb. As Calvinists, we believe God causes all things. In fact, the Bible says that God raises up nations. Now, don't you agree that it would be rather silly for Egyptians to have avoided battling the Hittites because the Hittites were an up and coming power, and it is God who raises up nations?

I'm not a big fan of fish. Please take the red herrings off the menu.
 
We really don't know what God's will is in this matter. Maybe God wants to use Islam to whittle us down until we are just a small, embattled group of Christians believing something that is totally ridiculous to the world and living like loons(loving loons, but loons) in the eyes of most people. It would be rough if that happened, but I could see us regaining a vital Christian witness that I think has been lost when Christianity stopped being a separatist movement.

I'm also skeptical of Philip Jenkins and his optimism. He argues in God's Continent that we shouldn't be alarmed about the rise of Islam in Europe, because it's a secular, pluralistic environment, and other fundamentalist religions(Christianity) have not been able to thrive there. But the Christianity of most people is not nearly as life-encompassing or community oriented as Islam is. What do most Christians do? Well, according statistics I've heard, most Christians don't even go to church. They aren't even part of a community. And from my experience, those who do go to church can't be said to have a radically Christian way of viewing the world. I don't see how that classifies as a fundamentalist religion, except for maybe the emphasis on the exclusivity of Christ.


Also Muslims are separatists, in most cases. They speak their own language, they go to their own schools, their main associations are with other people of the same faith; they have a degree of separatism that Christianity has not had in a long time. With that distance from Western culture which so many of them have, even when living in Western Culture, how do we know that they will suffer the same attrition as Christians have suffered? I feel that Philip Jenkins didn't focus enough on that difference, that Islam is a separatist movement and is therefore not as susceptible to be contaminated by the culture as other religions.

Hey I'm not too qualified, these are just my thoughts. Jenkins could be right and Islam could become secularized, but the impression I get from all of my media intake is that it's not happening. If he's expressing false optimism on the issue of Islam in Europe, I just wouldn't be too surprised if he is expressing false optimism over the rise of Christianity. Again, from my reading on the subject, with Mark Noll saying that the type of Christianity spreading all over is Charismatic in nature, and then with Joel Osteen coming on my TV every Sunday at 8, it's hard for me to believe that Christianity is spreading.

BUT, I haven't read the book. I will put it on the list. :book2:
 
"This act of looking down on others is a sin. But it is completely divorced from the issue at hand." :scratch:.....ok?
 
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