Destroy and root out the abominations, idolatry, and heresy of the Turk, the pope, and all false teachers and fanatics who wrongly use Thy name and in scandalous ways take it in vain and horribly blaspheme it...in persecution they believe they render Thee a divine service.
This prayer is from Martin Luther's small book A Simple Way to Pray. Luther's book was written in request from his barber about how to pray. Luther took the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer and offered prayers based on them to serve as a pattern for how we might pray. The above quote is from the petition "Hallowed be Your name." The "heresy of the Turks" to which Luther refers is their religion of Islam, which teaches that the name of Jesus is decidedly not "the only name given under heaven by which men must be saved" (Acts 4:13). Heard or uttered any bold prayers like this in church lately?
Might want to start. For the Muslims are starting to pray to Allah in churches in the United States. This was brought close to home recently, as a Protestant church here in Kokomo has opened its doors to allow a gathering of Muslims to use its building. According to two trustworthy witnesses who were there, at a public meeting explaining this to the congregation a few weeks ago the pastor invited the Muslim leader to pray. At the end of his prayer offered in Arabic, the Muslim restated it in English and clearly called for Allah to bring victory over those who were not following him. Many of the duped churchgoers there bowed while he was praying, arguing later, "We all worship the same God any way."
Sorry, but that's not what the Apostle John said. "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22). To the Muslim, they may want to persuade you all day long they respect Jesus as a prophet, but to them He is definitely not the Christ.
The lazy, gluttonous, post-Christian West does not understand the mindset of the Muslim. The sincere Muslim wants and preaches a worldwide spread of Islam. As a book like Robert Spencer's The Truth about Muhammed shows, embedded in the very root of Muhammed's life and teaching in the Qur'an is the belief that there must be constant warfare and struggle - jihad - to establish Islamic rule over the nations.
You might want to go to this website, watch the trailer for the movie Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West, then consider purchasing a copy. A professional and expertly-done news documentary, it contains clip after clip of sheiks and Muslim clerics who have been videotaped or televised in various countries preaching about bringing Islam to the West. Watching such things as thousands chanting "Death to America!," children's shows seen on Arabic television with seven year-old girls citing passionately poems about being a martyr for Allah, and Muslims in public in London and New York burning American flags and encouraging the bombing of the USA has quite a sobering effect. And if that's sobering, then seeing the documented deception of Islamic leaders using the West's freedoms, media and naivety against us gives you the nauseousness of a hangover.
Does not the covenant God both promise and show us in His word that when His people no longer honor Him, He will bring a more wicked nation against them? Read Genesis 28:49-52 of how "a nation from afar...a nation whose language you do not understand...a nation of fierce countenance" will be brought against those who turned from the Lord. Read Habakkuk who foresaw the horror of the Babylonians coming against Israel for doing that very thing. Then, when you have sought to console yourself by saying that was Israel and God does not treat other nations that way, read Amos' warning to six other nations besides Israel, read Obadiah telling of Edom's destruction, read Nahum telling of the end of Assyria...
Yes, we have a great military and most of these nations appear too backward to be of consequence. But as Obsession shows, the Allies did not think Hitler was much to worry about either. And Hitler was a godless man in one nation with few sympathizers on our soil. This Islamic movement has the sanction of Allah himself and is multi-national. They are already here converting churches into mosques. Is it not time that we long to see it turned the other way around?
So let our trust be not in our military (Psalm 20:7), but in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as we pray as Luther:
Dear Lord God, convert and restrain them. Convert those who are still to be converted that they with us and we with them may hallow and praise Thy name, both with true and pure doctrine and with a good and holy life. Restrain those who are unwilling to be converted so that they may be forced from misusing, defiling, and dishonoring Thy holy name and from misleading the poor people. Amen.
