David Garrison > Quotes

“When asked what God had used to bring them to faith in Jesus Christ, Turkestani Muslim-background believers talked about the role of dreams, the importance of having a New Testament in their own language, watching the JESUS Film, and other factors. But the most important thread linking each testimony was the discovery of a living Christ who heard and answered their prayers. Unlike the empty offerings of Communism or secular atheism, Christ touched a deep place in their soul that nothing else had ever filled.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“Examining case studies from around the world, Nik learned that failing to disciple the women in a movement had dire consequences in times of persecution. Ahmed said, “We learned that when the persecution becomes severe, and the men are killed or put in prison, our wives would be given over to the mosque or to the tribal leaders. Our children would have no one to teach them the way of Jesus. Within a short time, our movement would cease to exist.” Joe added, “Ripken taught us that women are the key to the movement’s future.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“For this reason, history may yet identify the atheist Joseph Stalin as the greatest gospel deployment strategist in the history of Turkestani evangelization.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“These Isai Muslims revealed that the biggest obstacle they faced in coming to Christ was their own Muslim family and community.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“Though they do remain within the Muslim communities, they often face persecution because of their steadfast assertion that they are Isai Muslims, meaning they are followers of Jesus (literally, Muslims who belong to Jesus).”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“Though Christians in the West typically associate the name Allah with Islam, it was, in fact, Christian in origin. Arab Muslims borrowed the name from Arab Christians who had been praying to Allah for centuries before Muhammad was born.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“In some republics churches were shuttered and disbanded; in others, the foreign leaders were expelled, leaving the communities to make their way under fledgling local leadership. However, rather than cause the communities to shrivel and die, the new crisis brought about changes in the way the gospel spread in Turkestan. Since it was no longer feasible to rely on Western leadership and institutions for the gospel’s advance, indigenous Turkic believers began to emerge from the crucible of persecution. These new leaders, though less formally trained than their Western predecessors, had the advantages of being native: their language was flawless, their residence irrevocable, their worldview identical, and their skills for living under persecution well honed.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“More than half of all Iraqi, Mauritanian and Yemeni citizens are illiterate, with illiteracy among women in those countries as high as 76 percent.5”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“These days, we don’t dare carry Bibles with us openly. We gather in groups of two and three, and use our smart phones to download Scripture from the Internet. We meet long enough to read a passage, discuss its meaning, then encourage and pray for one another. After that we disband.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“A 2011 survey of 204 Muslim-background believers who would be more closely described as C4, revealed that, before coming to Christ, most of these believers came from a strong Muslim background, and held a very negative view of Christianity.10 In fact, only one out of 204 surveyed expressed a positive view of Christians prior to becoming a follower of Christ. These Isai Muslims revealed that the biggest obstacle they faced in coming to Christ was their own Muslim family and community. When asked what God had used to change their views of Jesus, 168 of the 204 mentioned the salvation they had found in Jesus Christ. Most of them cited specific biblical passages such as Romans 8:1 (“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”); Acts 4:12 (“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”); and John 14:6 (“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’”).”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ

“When we fail to see that our culture, even our Christian expression of our culture, is not the same thing as the gospel, we may identify those who practice their Christian faith differently than we do as aliens and enemies.”
― David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to faith in Jesus Christ