News Stories
The Muslims of Mongolia
06/10/2006 11:59 am Tony Waghorn <twaghornSPAMFILTER@omf.org.uk>
Think about East Asia’s Muslims and you’re probably not thinking Mongolia. But God is at work among Mongolia’s 109,000 folk Islamic people.
‘I’m an old man, and I won’t have many more years left,’ lamented Jargal. ‘How old,’ he asked, ‘are you?’ -In Mongolia, asking a woman (or anybody) her age is common and not impolite.
Jargal looked surprised at my wife Janet’s response and said, ‘I thought you were younger.’
Then Jargal explained how worried he was about having to find money to pay the Mullah. ‘If I don’t pay the Mullah to sacrifice a sheep on behalf of my family, we will all go to the eternal fire.’
‘Sacrifice a sheep?’ asked Janet.
‘Mullahs annually sacrifice sheep to get people and their ancestors out of the eternal fire,’ explained Jargal.
‘How do you know the eternal fire is there?’
‘I don’t know. That is what the Mullahs say.’
Janet took out a Mongolian Bible and read about the eternal fire from Revelation.
Jargal exclaimed, ‘Yes, that’s it!’ He marvelled at the Bible as he had never seen one before.
Janet went on to explain from John’s Gospel how Jesus was the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world and how he was sacrificed for our sins. Then she showed from Hebrews how Jesus was the final sacrifice.
‘What good news! What good news!’ Jargal was almost jumping up and down. ‘Why haven’t I heard this before? Why has nobody told me? Why hasn’t the Mullah told me about this?”
‘Because the Mullah does not know,’ said Janet.
Not long after this conversation, Jargal and his wife prayed with the Mongolian Christians and us to receive Christ. Afterwards they beamed with joy.
Janet and I left their tent praising God. It had only been one year since we started making these trips, and family after family was coming to Christ.