an article by C.Peter Wagner.

I truly believe that we are tuned in to something very important that the Spirit is saying to the churches these days. Since September 11, the name "Allah" has been appearing in our national media day after day. Who is Allah? Who is this person for whom large numbers of individuals are not only willing, but desirous, of sacrificing their very life? Is Allah just another name for God? Can over one billion people now alive expect to go to heaven because they pray to Allah five times a day, keep an annual Ramadan fast in his honour, and travel to Mecca to honour him? Ask them and they will tell you that there is no other way to be sure of getting to heaven, unless, of course, one is willing to die as a martyr to the cause of Allah in a jihad or holy war.

This poses a problem for Christians where freedom has always been one of our highest ideals. We will fight for the right of Muslims to worship in a mosque, teach the Koran, and wear turbans or scarves on their heads. But we are equally zealous to preserve the rights of Christians to inform Muslims that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but by Him.

This also poses a problem for those of us who are committed to focus our prayers on the 40/70 Window through until 2005. Many of the nations in the 40/70 window have been witnessing a rapidly-increasing Muslim population for years. While we are praying that God will bless the Muslims in the 40/70 Window, we are also aware that Allah is not a mediator between God and humans. Muslims will only receive the blessings of being part of the family of God if they turn from Allah and give their allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Because we as Christians will always defend our ideal of freedom as a basic human right, it is easy for us to go overboard on political correctness at the expense of spiritual correctness. Political correctness is a value related to the visible world and spiritual correctness is a value related to the invisible world. It is very important to understand the difference between the two.

While President Bush is a born-again Christian, it is his responsibility as president to assure Muslims that they have freedom to serve Allah if they so choose. In last years September 14 service in the National Cathedral in Washington, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian clergy participated, even though the service, keynoted by Billy Graham's message, was unquestionably and, very appropriately, Christian in nature. In the subsequent September 23 memorial event in Yankee Stadium, Christian leaders were accompanied by Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. This is the kind of political correctness that centuries of Christian faith have moulded in the United States.

A similar public reaction would scarcely have been expected if events of this nature had been conducted in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Qatar, or any number of other nations whose character has been moulded by centuries of submission to Allah. Political correctness is seen by many of them as only another manifestation of the inherent weakness of Christian civilisation.

However, our Christian principles of freedom and political correctness in the visible world do not carry over to the invisible world. In the invisible world the ideal is not liberty and justice for all, but rather the salvation of souls. God did not build multiple highways to heaven. He sent His Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (see Jn. 3:16). Those who do not believe in Jesus, including those who worship Allah, are destined to spend eternity in hell. They are on the wrong road.

Allah is the proper name of a spirit being. He is a person created by God. Even though he doesn't have a body, and even though he is not human, and even though he was not made in the image of God, he is an angelic being. But he is no more God than is Wormwood or Beelzebub or Apollyon or Shiva or Buddha or Baal or Lucifer. All of them are beings created by God, but who ended up agents of darkness, just as Satan did.

What does God think of those who choose to worship Allah? To express it in the vernacular, it makes God mad! Romans 1:18-32 says that the "wrath of God is revealed" (Rom 1:18) against those "who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Rom. 1:25). Make no mistake about it, Allah is not the Creator, he is a creature. Archaeological records show that he was one of over 360 deities, all demonic spirits, worshipped by different tribes of Arabs long before the days of Mohammed. Mohammed's tribe, the Quraish, had adopted Allah as their principal tribal deity long before Mohammed was born. Many traditional Arabs had regarded Allah as the "Number One" among their 360-plus gods, along with his consort, Allat, the moon goddess. When Mohammed received a supernatural revelation that Allah was the one god who created the universe, you can be assured that such information did not come from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who is also the Father of Jesus Christ. In other words, five times a day Muslims worship and serve a creature, not the Creator.

When God sees this going on, His holy nature does not allow Him to be politically correct. Worship of Allah, no matter how sincere or pure-hearted, will not get a person to heaven any more than will worship of Inti or Amaterasu Omikami or Zeus or Guadalupe or Maximón or Baal or Quetzalcoatl or Kali or whatever one's created demonic spirit of choice might be

If we keep these things in mind, we will not fall into the trap of being so politically correct in the visible world that we begin to imagine that Muslims are such good people that they no longer have to be evangelized. if we are true friends of Muslims we will not allow our political correctness to trump our spiritual correctness. We will assert their rights under the Constitution while at the same time we will share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

Years ago, God assigned Global Harvest Ministries the task of taking leadership in mobilising strategic prayer for the unsaved people first of the 10/40 Window, and now of the 40/70 Window. Our specialty is warfare prayer, the kind of strategic prophetic intercession that attempts to neutralise the forces of darkness, orchestrated by the god of this age, to keep people blinded to the gospel. Specifically, our desire is to see Muslims move from under the power of Allah to God.

Because of our commitment to obey this assignment of God, we have been the target of specific threats. My name has appeared on at least one hit list issued by those who worship Allah. Such things only remind me that I must not love my life unto the death (see Rev. 12:11). But meanwhile Global Harvest Ministries, the Strategic Prayer Network, and Target 40/70 Window will continue to promote political correctness in the visible world and spiritual correctness in the invisible world.

We invite you to join us!

Source: Global Harvest Ministries.