The Church of the Closed Door Part I

     Some Christians will not wake up until they go to church and discover that the door is locked and a sign has been placed on it that reads, “This Church is Officially Closed,” said Frank Wright, the president of the National Religious Broadcasters association.[i] He was, of course, referring to the strong and growing anti-Christian bias exerted by many secularists, government officials, and even within the United States court system.

     As we know, there is a growing tide of opposition to expressions of Christianity in the so-called public square-to the point that some have even attempted to use legal means to criminalize such expressions. Our religious faith is expected to shrink until it is only a private matter that is not brought into politics, schools, or the workplace. If secularists cannot close a church, they at least want to render it powerless and irrelevant.

     But there’s another kind of experience Christians may soon come to face upon visiting their church. They will discover that the doors are open, but the building has been turned into a mosque. While that may seem a rather far-fetched and unlikely scenario to Christians in America, this has already been happening with increasing frequency in Europe and other parts of the world.

     For example, Gatestone Institute reported this in 2012:

The proliferation of mosques housed in former churches reflects the rise of Islam as the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Europe. . . The latest churches destined to become mosques are located in Germany, where the Roman Catholic Church has announced plans to close up to six churches in Duisburg, an industrial city in [the] northwestern part of the country, due to falling church attendance. . .

     Muslims in Duisburg are now clamoring to turn empty churches in the city into mosques, according to the Germany daily newspaper, Der Westen . . . some Protestant churches have also been converted into mosques in Germany, where the Muslim population has jumped from around 50,000 in the early 1980’s to more than 4 million today.[ii]

     The same phenomenon is occurring the United Kingdom, where “there are now more than 1,700 official mosques in Britain, many converted from former churches.”[iii]

     What many people don’t realize is the extent to which this is happening in centuries past. History and religious studies scholar Philip Jenkins, in an eye-opening book titled The Lost History of Christianity, says, “Much of what we today call the Islamic world was once Christian. . . In most cases, churches collapsed or vanished because they were unable to cope with the pressures placed upon them by hostile regimes, mainly Muslim.”[iv]

     With regard to the spread of Islam in Europe, one of the most respected Western scholars of Islam, Bernard Lewis, says that “some have even described the present situation as the third Muslim invasion of Europe, more successful than either the first or the second.”[v]

     As we survey what is happening there and in the United Kingdom, we need to have a wake-up call here in North America. And let’s not think it cannot happen in this country. As we will see, the conditions that have led to the situation as it stands now in Europe are becoming more and more prevalent in America.

     The main challenge for us as Christians is a lack of awareness. Many simply don’t know what is happening. One reason is that so much of what is taking place happens under the radar. Very little media attention is given to the growing influence American-based Muslim organizations are having on government agencies, the educational system, the media, politics, the legal arena, and more. And for many of us, the impact hasn’t been overt-at least, not yet. So Islamic encroachment continues quietly and largely unabated-at our peril.

     We must begin with understanding why the once-strong Christian presence in Turkey (Asia Minor) has essentially disappeared. While there is a small remnant of churches in Turkey, they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the mosques everywhere.

     Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Jesus Himself wrote letters to seven churches located in this very region, and Revelation 2-3 preserves these letters for us. And now, the visible presence of Jesus no longer exists in these cities. In fact, it no longer exists throughout Asia Minor. Muslims in Turkey will tell you that the victory of Islam over Christianity in these once-Christian lands proves the superiority of Muhammad over Jesus.

     You can go to the ruins of a fifth-century cathedral in the ancient city of Philadelphia today. Remember, Jesus had assured this church, “These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut” (Rev. 3:7-8).

     And yet next to the ruins of this ancient cathedral is a mosque, with a tall minaret, eclipsing the other buildings around it.

     The One who said He could open doors that could not be shut and shut doors that no one could open-the Lord Jesus Himself-appeared to have found the door firmly shut in His face in Philadelphia. The church of the open door had become the church of the door slammed shut.

     Think back to the churches to whom Jesus dictated these personal letters: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. There are no visible churches in any of these cities today; indeed, with few exceptions, there has been no readily visible evidence of Christianity in these locales for the past 800 years.

     Of course I don’t mean to say that there aren’t any Christians in Turkey. The 73 million people who live there are predominantly Muslim, and only .2 percent are Christian, Jewish, or of other religious backgrounds.[vi]

     For the most part, these believers meet in secret Bible studies or cell groups far away from the prying eyes of governing authorities. And I know there are a few media ministries in the country that are sharing the gospel in that region. There are also a small number of Protestant churches in the country.

     While the actual church to whom Jesus dictated His seven letters-churches that likely met in homes-probably disappeared in the early centuries AD, Christianity did flourish in that region for a time. Just as Christianity spread throughout Europe after the time of Constantine (who died in AD 337), so also Christendom came to dominate Asia Minor. Yet during the Middle Ages, all that changed drastically. Philip Jenkins notes the following:

     The statistics of decline are sobering. Look, for instance, at Asia Minor, the region that is so often mentioned throughout the New Testament: it is here that we find such historic names as Iconium and Ephesus, Galatia, and Bithynia, the seven cities of the book of Revelation. Still in 1050, the region had 373 bishoprics, and the inhabitants were virtually all Christian, overwhelmingly members of the Orthodox Church. Four hundred years later, that Christian proportion had fallen to 10 or 15 percent of the population, and we can find just three bishops. According to one estimate, the number of Asian Christians fell, between 1200 and 1500, from 21 million to 3.4 million.[vii]

     The fact that Turkey, which was once dotted with churches, is 99.8 percent Muslim today serves as evidence that Christianity does not always prevail in the places where it is established.

     Muslims say that Jesus was great, but Muhammad was greater. He was, in Muslim’s estimation, the greatest and last of all prophets. And they point to what happened in Asia Minor as evidence that the crescent is more powerful than the cross.

     Or is it?

     The short answer is no, the crescent is not more powerful than the cross. However, the particulars to the answer are multifaceted. Over the next week several weeks I will be unpacking the answer to this question. 

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[i] Frank Wright, during a message given on September 23, 2009 at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Washington, D.C.

[ii] Soeren Kern, “Muslims Converting Empty European Churches into Mosques” (January 16, 2012), http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2008), pp. 4, 30.

[v] Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 41.

[vi] Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, Silenced: How Apostasy & Blashempy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 127.

[vii] Ibid., p. 129.