Tom Lennie reviews ‘The Challenge of Islam: Understanding and Responding to Islam's Increasing Influence in the UK’, by Tim Dieppe (2025)

The acts of violence – real and threatened – that make Islam disturbingly unique among the world's major religions

Britain must stop ignoring its child rape gang scandal 

Getting to the root of the matter

Praying for Muslims to see that Jesus is the true Messiah

Is there an answer?

Evangelist Mark van Niekerk reports on his latest trip to the war-torn region

David Lindsay reviews a challenging new film about the underground Church in Iran.

How the West was lost – and what God's people ought to do about it.

Editorial Introduction: Randall Hardy concludes his interview with Bishop Ashenden, who speaks about how believers can respond in these turbulent days.

Part 2: Paying the Price

RH: Many Christians, from a broad cross-section of Bible-believing backgrounds, are holding on to a hope that the secularisation of the West could be reversed. The bolder ones expect this to be the case. Do you see such hopes to be realistic?

GA: I've spent the whole of my adult life trying to reverse secularism in the West. I've done it energetically and I've done it in its heartland, which is the university where I spent 25 years arguing - enthusiastically and joyfully - for the Kingdom and for belief. I enjoyed tripping up my atheist friends with the weaknesses in their own arguments, but I have to say that no matter how many arguments I won, they didn't often result in the change of the human heart.

If I look at the extent to which the churches have changed human hearts in the West, however, whatever you put it down to, we haven't succeeded very well. So some of us can enjoy scoring points philosophically, but that isn't the goal and it doesn't achieve very much.

We ought to give some thought and pray for discernment to understand why we've lost so many hearts, but I think you have to take into account…the notion of spiritual conflict…and also the inevitable hubris of technological innovation.

I'd like to think that as time [goes] on and secular society [begins] to collapse under the weight of its own ambition and cleverness, we could [make] more impact on hungry human hearts. But long before that will happen, [I believe that] Islam will overtake us and we won't have the opportunity.

RH: For centuries the Western church has considered itself to have a role in governing the state. Do you think this has been helpful in fulfilling its main mission? How do you think Christians can most helpfully engage with the state in the future?

GA: The role of Christians is always to Christianise people and, again, the human heart. The Gospels ought to have taught us the danger of hoping to produce a Christian state, because of the constant danger of imbalance between the life of the Spirit and the life of the flesh, speaking theologically.

So the best Christianity can do is to infiltrate and infect the state for good, but its influence grows and wanes. There have been times when we've done that very effectively, partly because our rulers have been hungry for God, and [there have been] times when we have done it very badly, partly because our rulers have had hard hearts. But it's always ebbed and flowed. The great temptation is to imagine that we can capture the state for the Kingdom of Heaven, and that's a category error.

We ought to give some thought and pray for discernment to understand why we've lost so many hearts.

What we now find is that we live in a period of time when the state [is] resentful of Christianity…to some extent the animus we experience as Christians in [Britain] is driven by hatred and resentment of moral constraints that Christianity offered as an understanding of the virtuous life.

And in that sense we're experiencing a delayed reaction of revenge from a culture that is in rebellion against God the Father and the transformation He calls us to. [The culture] takes some delight in taking that revenge out on a weakened Church.

RH: The rise of secularism in the West and globally suggests that we face a very uncertain future. What advice do you have for Western Christians as they look ahead?

GA: I think the first thing I would say is make sure you understand the history of Islam, and don't believe the propaganda about the convivencia in Spain. The suffering of Christians and Jews in Spain reached the most dreadful scale - until Muslims were driven out by force.

There are only two ways to deal with Islamic ambition in history - and they're either to convert Muslims from Mohammed to Jesus, or to meet force with force. I'm still puzzling and praying about my own response to these two ways. I obviously prefer the first, and I don't know to what extent the second is accessible.

I think if Christians want to preserve any kind of safe space to worship Jesus without interference from the state, we need to enter the public arena with more courage than we've found in the recent past and tell as much of the truth about the human heart, the prophet Mohammed and Jesus the Messiah as we can, in the hope that some secularists will listen and that this will buy us a bit more time.

I think as I look at the history of Islam and the weakness of hedonistic secularism, my own sense is that we have to prepare for a Europe entering a period of darkness in spiritual terms, with the Church having to go underground.

I say that in the appreciation that the Holy Spirit is bringing renewal and new life to people in Russia and in China, and astonishingly within the heart of Islamic culture: Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whether we are paying the price of our faithlessness as a Church or the hubris of Enlightenment culture, it looks as though Europe is about to enter a period of darkness - so I'm grateful for the light that the Holy Spirit is bringing elsewhere in the world at the same time.

If Christians want to preserve any kind of safe space to worship Jesus, we need to enter the public arena with more courage and tell as much of the truth about the human heart, the prophet Mohammed and Jesus the Messiah as we can.

RH: You've just mentioned that Christians in places such as China and Iran, to name but a few, face intense persecution in various ways. How do you think their experiences can inform our thinking as Christians in nations where freedom is being eroded rapidly?

GA: Christians are always persecuted - even in Europe. As Christian voices have called rulers and populations to account; the Christian voices that have done that, whether they have been Catholic or Protestant, have always faced a reaction of anger and repression from the state.

When Christians aren't persecuted, it may be a sign that they're too deeply steeped in an accommodation to the culture around them. Jesus makes this very clear in the gospels.

So I think that when we look at people who love Jesus paying a very deep price in repressive states around the world, we ought to see them as an inspirational norm and perhaps count it as a privilege that we too may be called to suffer for him in ways that in our more relaxed society we have escaped up until this point.

You can read the first part of Randall's interview with Gavin by clicking here.

Author Biography

Gavin Ashenden read Law at Bristol University, before studying theology at Oak Hill Theological College in London. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1980, subsequently serving in a London parish for 10 years. He spent 23 years at the University of Sussex as a senior lecturer and senior chaplain, lecturing in the Psychology of Religion and Literature.

Over the years he has written occasional newspaper articles and worked for the BBC on a freelance basis presenting a weekly faith and ethics radio programme.

In 2008 he was appointed a Chaplain to the Queen. In 2017 he resigned from this position in order to be free to speak out for the faith in public. Later that year he resigned from the Church of England, convinced that its leadership was replacing apostolic and biblical patterns with the alternative values of Cultural Marxism.

He is now a Missionary Bishop to the UK and Europe in the Christian Episcopal Church.

You can find out more about Gavin’s extraordinary life, journey and ministry on his blog.

Christians pay the ultimate price as biblical prophecies are played out

The shocking story of Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi, and the persecution of Christians generally in that country, alongside the alarming news of plans to implant microchips in humans, is convincing evidence that we are surely living in the last days.

It was apocalyptic scenarios like this that the risen Jesus graphically conveyed in his Revelation message to the Apostle John, in exile on the Isle of Patmos, as a picture of what life would be like towards the end of the age, shortly before his return.

It would be particularly marked by vicious persecution of his followers, who would nevertheless be rewarded with eternal bliss in his presence by standing firm in refusing to bow to worldly pressure.

Ready to Die?

Asia Bibi was a poorly paid farm labourer who has incurred the wrath of an entire nation for apparently insulting Muhammad – a nation, it seems, that appears unable to protect her from being lynched by angry mobs after the Supreme Court acquitted her of ridiculous charges of blasphemy for which she has endured the best part of the last ten years on death row.

Her alleged crime was committed during an argument with colleagues who accused her of contaminating a vessel used for drawing water from a well – simply because she was an ‘infidel’. Now, finally, she has been freed – or has she?

The Pakistani Government, led by former cricket international Imran Khan, claims no country has so far offered her asylum – we know, shamefully, that this is so far the case with Britain, who fear reprisals from Islamists here – so she is being held in a ‘safe house’.

But she and her family remain in fear of their lives. In fact, at least two of those who have stood up for her, including a former state governor and a Government minister, have already paid with their lives for doing so.

Asia Bibi was a poorly paid farm labourer who has incurred the wrath of an entire nation for apparently insulting Muhammad

Governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer was gunned down by his own bodyguard – shot 27 times in central Islamabad – who was subsequently hailed a hero with an estimated 100,000 mourners attending his funeral.¹

Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister for minorities and himself a Christian, also protested against Asia’s conviction and sentence. And less than two months after Governor Taseer’s death, his car was riddled with bullets as he drove through Islamabad. He died in hospital.

But he had evidently known what was coming, as was learnt through a video released after his assassination. Speaking to the camera, he said: “I believe in Jesus Christ who has given his own life for us, and I am ready to die for a cause. I’m living for my community…and I will die to defend their rights.”²

Persecution…and Then the End

Christians in Pakistan have suffered dreadfully, with hundreds of lives lost through suicide and other bomb attacks on churches. It is a despicable situation which none of our weasel Western governments have the spine to address.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus warned: “The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me” (John 16:2f).

And in his revelation to John, this was spelled out a little more graphically: “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been” (Rev 6:9-11).

Later on, a great multitude appeared from every nation, tribe, people and language – all dressed in white robes and worshipping God who would “wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:9-17).

Speaking of the last days, Jesus had earlier said:

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:9-14)

Alarm Bells Over Implants

Meanwhile alarm bells have been ringing over the prospect of British companies implanting staff with microchips to improve security, according to a report in The Guardian.

UK firm BioTeq, which offers the implants to businesses and individuals, has already fitted 150 in the UK. The tiny chips, implanted in the flesh between the thumb and forefinger, are similar to those for pets. They apparently enable people to open their front door, access their office or start their car with a wave of their hand. Another company, Biohax of Sweden, also provides human chip implants the size of a grain of rice.

Christians in Pakistan have suffered dreadfully, with hundreds of lives lost through suicide and other bomb attacks on churches.

In earlier articles I explained that we would appear to be approaching the days when the biblical warning, also in Revelation, against taking the Mark of the Beast is about to be fulfilled. The prophecy reads: “It [the Beast] also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark…” (Rev 13:16f).

One of our readers, Patricia Jelbert, has already witnessed moves towards using this kind of technology in South Africa, where she warned politicians, churches and schools about it. She writes: “We need to teach our children and grandchildren to say ‘no’. The cost will be high, eventually with no access to anything money buys, but the need not to succumb is vital.”³

In another alarming step towards this apocalyptic scenario, the BBC were recently reported to be encouraging ‘straight’ staff to wear badges indicating their support for LGBTQ+ colleagues, which is likely to ensure that those whose conscience will not allow them to back a gay lifestyle will be discriminated against.

I rest my case. We are living in the last days. Christians, look up, for your redemption is near (Luke 21:28).

References

1 Pendlebury, R. Row over a cup of water that led to murder, riots and global outrage with a Christian mother sentenced to death over blasphemy charges in Pakistan. The Daily Mail, 14 November 2018. 

2 Ibid.

3 Private email communication, 14 November 2018.