Egypt, the strategic gateway to the Middle East
The Middle East stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to Afghanistan. It is home to nearly 300 million people who live in 21 countries and who speak four main languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and Turkish. That’s further broken down into roughly 60 mother tongues, all with their own local dialects.
The region encompasses Sudan, Mauritania, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahr, Yemen, Qatar, and Oman), Egypt, and Libya.
Of these countries, many recognize Egypt as a strategic location when it comes to the issue of reaching Muslims with the Gospel. After all, it’s a gateway into the Middle East. Greg Kelley, Executive Director of World Mission, says it’s also the cultural center for all of North Africa.
On his recent visit, he saw, firsthand, that Christians aren’t the only ones looking at mobilizing and training. Recognizing that an effective strategy to reaching Muslims in the Middle East needs to go through Egypt, and more specifically, through Cairo, he filed the following report:
“Here is an amazing University and incredibly large university 60,000 students. It’s a missions training center located in Cairo, where the students are from over 100 countries around the world, all being trained as Muslim missionaries. Some 24,000 Graduates every year are being launched out to every country imaginable in Asia, in America and Canada, and all of Latin America throughout Europe.
It’s an incredibly aggressive strategy that Muslims have, and a lot of these students that are graduating are radicalized; they are taught on how to advance Sharia law there, they’re imams in these places. We need to be aware of that.
Jesus has called us to make disciples of all nations and here in the Middle East, So be praying for the Middle East be praying for the Christian leaders that are reaching Muslims for Jesus in this area.”
SOURCE: Mission Network News, R.B. Klama
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