Originally published in The Christian Post
An evangelical church in the Swedish city of Uppsala plans to drop thousands of small, electronic bibles into areas controlled by the Islamic State terror groups using drones “to pass on the hope and love of the Christian gospel.”
The Word of Life Church told the local television channel SVT about its plan to fly drones high in the sky over the territory of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, and throw the bibles, according to The Local.
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The church’s mission director Christian Akerhielm was quoted as saying that the bibles are the size of pill boxes and have a display, and that they require no electricity.
“Our ambition is to pass on the hope and love of the Christian gospel to a population living in closed areas where they are being denied human rights,” the church said on its website.
“We start our project in a few weeks and hope to drop thousands of bibles.”
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The church also said that its contacts and the congregations and organisations it works with have testified “unanimously” that there is “a huge spiritual awakening in the Middle East, where millions of people turn to the Christian faith and the need and demand for bibles is gigantic,” according to media organisation Premier.
“It is this need, we want to help meet this demand through the effort,” it said. “To disseminate Bibles and therefore knowledge of the Christian faith, is something the Christian church has done since the invention of printing – in recent years also closed or inaccessible areas of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea.
This is not something new, with the exception of the practical approach. The project is done in consultation and collaboration with local partners in the area, with great knowledge of the conditions and terms. It occurs in parallel with humanitarian efforts, medical team in refugee camps and distributing food and clothing to the needy.”
Word of Life is “way more than a church building,” the church says on its website.
“It’s a home for thousands of people from all walks of life. A place where we come together to meet with Christ and one other, to share His life and be transformed by His love. We are all about missions and reaching the corners of the world with the gospel, but just as much about reaching the corner closest to home with that amazing and unfailing love of God,” says Senior Pastor Joakim Lundqvist
ISIS is an offshoot of al Qaeda, and wants to establish a caliphate in the Levant region and beyond.
While the Sunni terror group is losing territory in Iraq and Syria, from where it mainly operates from, it still has 18 000 to 22 000 fighters there despite some 13 000 airstrikes by the international coalition led by the United States, according to CIA director John Brennan.
The group uses brutal methods to torture and punish those who it considers to be its enemies, including Muslims who do not believe in its version of Islam. However, Christians and other minorities are among its main targets.
In its English propaganda publication, ISIS last year sought to justify its barbarity, saying it is “Islamic” to capture and forcibly make “infidel” women sexual slaves.
“Before Shaytan [Satan] reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shari’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narration of the Prophet, and thereby apostatizing from Islam,” stated the IS’ propaganda magazine “Dabiq.”
