Saudi Arabian Christianity

By the grace of God, Christianity is growing in Saudi Arabia. I am not talking about foreigners who live and work there although there are many Christians amongst them of course.

I am talking about Saudi Arabians who have left Islam and have decided to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord, the Son of God and Savior of mankind. 

I have been aware for some years now of a growing number of Saudis coming to Christ. There are a number of them who are quite visible on the internet and are being used by God to reach many of their own people and other Arab Muslims with the Gospel. The testimonies I've heard coming out of Saudi Arabia in recent years are unprecedented since the religion of Islam took over the Arabian Peninsula back in the 7th and 8th centuries AD.

But what many don't realize is that there was a Church in Saudi Arabia BEFORE Islam.

These are chapters in Christian History that most Christians today are entirely unaware of. There are reasons for that. One reason is that Church History is largely ignored. A second reason is that the Christianity that was in Arabia, while being Trinitarian (affirming the Council of Nicea), was NOT considered canonical and/or orthodox by later groups of Christians. Sadly, Protestants largely inherited this fake theological news from their Roman Catholic roots.

Some years ago, a book was written entitled A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume 1 - Beginnings to 1500 by Samuel Hugh Moffett which I believe remains one of the most definitive works on Christianity on the Arabian Peninsula before Islam. 

Moffett's book brought to my awareness a thriving Church in the south of modern-day Saudi Arabia in an area known as the Najran. Muslims entirely wiped out this church in the earliest days of Islam (so much for the "religion of peace"), but the blood of those early martyrs cries out even today. 

This past week I was made aware of an incredible new resource documenting the powerful history of Christianity in that part of Saudi Arabia that I wanted to share in this blog:

LINK: Saudi Arabian Christianity 

Why is this important? Why should we care today? 

This new resource has been produced in BOTH English and Arabic. I believe that the majority of Saudis, who have been exposed to the Gospel in recent years, have been thus exposed via the Internet. 

The vast majority of Saudis know NOTHING of their Christian heritage. They don't realize that some of their ancestors were Christians. They call the time before Islam came as "The Time of Ignorance" (jahiliyyah in Arabic: ‏جَاهِلِيَّة‎).

What this new resource is doing is showing Saudis and Najranis in particular that their history is not one of "ignorance" but rather it was one of TRUTH. It was a time when Arabians followed the Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God who died for their sins and rose from the dead. 

And by God's grace today there is a new wave of revelation. The true days of ignorance, the days since the Islamic Religion displaced the TRUTH of Christ, are ending as Saudis are returning to their roots. 

God is working today in Saudi Arabia. Pray that this new resource and the other online ones penetrate the darkness and bring the Light of Christ once again to the Arabian Peninsula!