Why Sudan is so important in the scheme of world missions today.

       
The largest unreached people group for the gospel today is that of the 70% of Islam that are tribal and mixing that faith with the occult traditions of spiritism, and animistic practice.

The Sudan received their original Muslim teachings and influence from the Sufi’s who offered an experiential form of Islam. These teachers were unlike the hardline legalistic Egyptian Islamic practioners, who strictly adhere to their deity being a “non-complex-entity” and with whom no one has a relationship.

Islam rejects the gospel that God is a personality, and does not adhere to the Christian concept of seeking out a personal, direct relationship with a living God. Thus they reject any identity as children of faith in the similitude of the patriarch Abraham. Most of Islam found in Sudan is open to the miraculous demonstration of the Christian Spirit-filled movement of today. The Sudanese people have the potential to be a catalytic avenue into the rest of Islam in North Africa.

Southern Sudan Christianity in the flood plain of the Nile has been under Islamic aggression since the inception of the Muslim movement. Several years before the British colonialists were driven out by an Arabic Islamic invasion, oppression had begun specifically against the Christianity of the indigenous Africans of southern Sudan.

Historical Background:

Since 1954 Khartoum’s Islamic government has attempted to eradicate the movement of Christianity in Southern Sudan by limiting the language of education imposed upon the Christian and Animistic tribes of indigenous people groups. As the British Colonialist presence was driven out by an Islamic invasion and uprising, Islam has been striving to over come the presence of Christianity and its growth amongst the indigenous tribes of the Sudan.

In 1954 Khartoum‘s Islam declared classic Arabic to be imposed by education under the oppression of Shirea Law. To further their cause the driving out of Bible translators was imposed, leaving 34 dialects out of 96 totally unwritten with out even an alphabetic system.

Sudanese Christianity has been under Islamic aggression and genocide more epic than any other people group in North Africa. For the past fifty years the Christianity of Southern Sudan has resisted an invasion with oil rich first world money and munitions in the form of a present day Islamic crusade. The Islamic Khartoum government of the north has told the world that it has been a civil war and that the southern are embroiled in tribal wars. In fact these wars have to a great extent been financed and perpetrated by their northern Sudan's agenda.

During the eleven years of peace out of the past fifty years of war, southern Sudanese Christians were placed under the abject despotism of Islamic law. Under that peace agreement of Adis Ababa what was known as the great channel was undertaken by the Islamic government of the north. It was basically devised to straighten the west head waters of the Nile and prevent its flooding action during rainy season. The project was well over three quarters completed by the time it was understood that if they would succeed that within a few years that eco-system would no long be able to sustain life to the largest tribe in North Africa, by name the Dinkas. It has been said that the flood plain of the Nile is somewhere around eighty to ninety percent Christian. Under this agreement the Islamic plan of social-architecture financed by the Arab League is very aggressive to proselytize the south via social development through the 50% of the oil finance that the south had to give up to the Khartoum government.

It is absolutely essential that the first world Church does not sleep through this one. If tribal solidarity and evangelism of the south is done in the next six year period of time, of which a year has gone by, the south may withdraw from the north and become a separate nation. It is an intolerable thought that they may again be forsaken by the world community and lose the potential to influence the vast amount of Africa that have in history been evangelized by the sword of Islam and are living under its tyrannical feudal system.