People of faith including believers in Jesus can make trying to explain what they believe overly complex.

Before I did ministry work in Israel (2009-2013) I worked for Israel hi-tech company in 2007 as a contractor. One day after work I was reading an article in an IT magazine called “elevator pitch” – what do you do if you get into the lift with the MD of your company and what do you say to him, so I pondered on this. This was a great company to work for with some very smart people producing products for banks and financial institutions around the world, whereas I was just doing simple work of helpdesk and preparing PCs and laptops ready for the engineers.

Well whaddya know – a week after I read this article I got into a lift, with the big boss, I am going to call him G, he is a secular Israeli businessman.

Me: Morning G hows you sir, business going well?
G: Yes our business just produced its best sales figures this year, half a billion dollars.
Me: Erm, ah that’s nice
<door open after approx 15 seconds in lift>

In 2017 I was traveling to different schools to fix their computers. One school which was a really nice place to be but with kids with challenging behaviour, I got quite chatty with one of the teachers I’ll call “A” who was just curious why I go to church, and why I have visited places like Israel and Turkey.   I like A.  He’s about 40ish like me, has a real passion for young people, fun to be around, yet firm.   Him and his wife like to travel during the school summer holidays.   When he asked me why I visited those places, I just said I’m curious about the places of the bible and the events that happened there as a Christian.

I only visited this site every two weeks as to be honest, their IT systems were modern and ran like clockwork and issues were minor.   Whilst replacing a cracked LCD screen in a laptop which had been dropped,

A month later I saw A again, after just asking how he was over the Easter (2017) holidays, he told me him and his wife were going to a church and an Alpha course, as he felt his life had gone the wrong direction and wanted to get back into a life with Christ, after only going to church a few time when he was very young.

I praise God how in my secular job I get opportunities to see people find the Lord in different unexpected ways.

Since I visited China in 2017, recent news about the persecution of Christians in China is disturbing.   First, crosses were ordered to be removed from churches, and now entire churches have been destroyed by the government.

https://www.charismanews.com/politics/72518-chinese-christians-there-is-no-freedom-at-all

Where this greatly saddens me, for Christians like churches are defined as the body of people rather than the building, so I hope followers of Jesus in this part of the world can quickly find another location to meet and continue to worship their saviour.   This shouldn’t be a surprise to Bible-believing Christians of any nation, seeing as the scriptures would predict this kind of trouble would happen.

Something I noticed about decorations of roofs of buildings;

I’ve not properly researched this, but every single ancient building in China and modern buildings used for government or religious use has ornamental statues on the corners of the roofs here.

The awkward moment when you realise a famous leader has a similar receding hairline to my own!

This is also true of when I saw of some sort of strange Islamic temple on top of an office building.

Catholic Church in Shanghai

I believe that flags, motifs and other things can be used for good and bad, and historically churches have a cross on the roof to be seen from far away, and to give glory to Christ.   It’s also natural to assume that other religious systems have a need to proudly proclaim their own importance as well.

27. Unusual street food in China

29.

The other day I was working late for several days in a row, so decided to get a takeout on the way home.

This is a street near my house which is a mostly Islamic community, there is a mosque which looks like a normal building with a big Crayola attached to it.

I went to an Iranian restaurant which is another 200 yards down the road and got a chicken kebab with rice.   On the way out, I picked up this magazine.

There’s actually an English/Hebrew magazine for Israelis in London given away free in Jewish businesses here in London.    Similarly, there is a free magazine for Iranians in Farsi.

Not Arabic, but Farsi, similar looking curly right to left script

The interesting this about this magazine.   There is absolutely no mention of Islam whatsoever.   There is mostly ads and no editorial content.  I used to work a free ad magazine back in 2000/2001 and magazines can do well to sell businesses to a specific audience, and there are ads from Farsi speaking Iranians selling restaurants, money changers, legal services and car rentals amongst other products here to the Iranian community in London.

Articles like this:-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11776241/Friday-prayers-in-the-Islamic-Republic-of-Iran-but-where-are-the-worshippers.html
Despite the harsh regime of the Ayatollahs show that the attendance of mosques and Muslims holidays in Iran have dropped dramatically and that Iranian people in Iran and living in Europe have absolutely no interest in Islam.    The incredible thing is for a Christian lover of Israel, is that Iran has the largest number of people with a Muslim background coming to Christ in the world.

That’s right – the God of Israel wants to save the Jewish people’s enemies by loving them and showing them mercy through his son Jesus.

When I traveled to Turkey in 2016, that nation is about 50/50 religious and secular, so much so its easy to buy beer or a pepperoni pizza, the new mosques being built in relatively secular Tarsus (birthplace of apostle Paul in Christianity)   Turkey is going in the wrong direction.

Let’s pray many more people from Muslim nations to leave Islam and secularism to find true satisfaction in Christ.