Page 109 - Neglected Arabia Vol 1 (3)_Neat

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6 NEGLECTED ARABIA

Two men were recently baptized. From the first they came together,
and together expressed tlu-ir desire to know inure about our faith. I(
smued a bit strange at the lime that two men should come together, fur
as a general rule no man trusts another enough to (ell him about t
desire to become a Christian. Hut we soon (bscovered that the two
men were fast and firm friends and had shared everything that their
life had brought them, whether it was plenty or penury. Their friend­
ship reminds us of the friendship of David and Jonathan, and hallowed
by the presence of their common Friend, this partnership has been i
great support to them in the trials that befell them when they together
“rose up and followed Jesus." Nearly every Sunday they take part in
our afternoon prayer meeting and their prayers are a real help to all
who are groping and finding their way to the light. One of the men is
a mechanic, although at present he is working in our new hospital. The
other man is a carpenter, and I took him with me to Bahrain to assist
in our building operations there. He soon became known to all as a
man of great industry, and the tribute when he left, as given by Moslems
who had a chance to get acquainted with him, was: “There is a man *
with no guile." Their families are also coming for instruction and we'
trust that ere long they may all walk in this new way together.
There are others whom we cannot call converts, but by steadily attend­
ing our services and by occasionally taking part, they show that they
have a very strong desire to enjoy with us what we possess of the mc».
sage of salvation. One of these has been coming regularly for over i
year. His regularity and persistence were very marked. But he did not
grow in grace to the extent that his interest gave us reason to hope. And
yet it would be rash to say that he does not have the root of the matter
in him. If finding and bringing others is a characteristic of a follower
of Christ, he is such a one. After he had been coming for some monthi.
a second man began to appear with him at our services and he has been
coming ever since. 11 is name means “Silence,” and I have a suspiciut
that the name was fastened on him because of his habit of sitting ab*>.
lutcly speechless for long periods of time. So for a long lime it wai
very difficult to find out what he thought. But when he did speak a
was to acclaim his faith in Christ and the Gospel and his desire to walk
in that way. With these two a third man later appeared and the trio
have been coming faithfully ever since. One Sunday evening they called
us to tell us that they had had a hard time in the coffee shop just then
and that they had decided to make what to them is an equivalent ol i
public confession. I am telling this so that we all may have an instgbn
into the mind of the Moslem not only, hut also into the mind ol tho*
who are coming out. They wanted us to take them the next day to th*
government offices and have it declared there publicly that they wc;c
Christians, in order that henceforth no one would persecute them. TU
is a way used when a convert from Judaism or Catholicism is made u.
the ranks of Islam, and this simple act places such a renegade under th«
complete protection of the “mass. * It took a long time to make plain u
their simple minds that the new life in Christ works from within 124
will show itself in due time, and that any action of this sort on our p*,
would not give them the security and the freedom from persecution tfc*
they hoped for.