U.S. troops grew suddenly more interested in God in February and March, as war with Iraq approached. News accounts told of baptisms and Bible studies as soldiers, away from friends and family, faced the enemy and the threat of death. “Out here, people get very spiritual or religious,” a chaplain’s assistant in central Iraq told
Newsday.
“Golden Opportunity”
“Now is a golden opportunity to reach soldiers for Christ,” said Maj. Keith Kilgore, a Southern Baptist U.S. Army chaplain in Kuwait. “All I have to do is show up, and someone wants to talk to me about Jesus,” he told Baptist Press.
Spiritual openness was also evident stateside, as troops being processed for deployment to the Persian Gulf readily accepted Bibles and other religious literature offered to them. “At least 50 percent take something, maybe more,” Lt. Col. Donald Lindman, an Army Reserve chaplain at Fort Dix, New Jersey, told the
Washington Post.
The war-related spike in spiritual interest opened a unique door of outreach for Coral Ridge Ministries. As war approached in March, Dr. Kennedy launched “Operation Believe,” a special project to produce and distribute 50,000 copies of a special “Armed Forces Edition” of his book,
Why I Believe.
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The first shipment of 25,000 copies went to U.S. Central Command for distribution to the men and women serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom in early April. An additional 19,000 copies have been shipped to other service chaplains, and more will be sent as opportunities become available.
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The war-related spike in spiritual interest opened a unique door of outreach for Coral Ridge Ministries.
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The “Armed Forces Edition” of Why I Believe slips easily into a soldier’s pocket and has a heavy-duty camouflage-style cover. Inside, it offers compelling reasons to believe in God, the Bible, Heaven, Hell, Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Resurrection, and the Second Birth. While other ministries provide Bibles to the troops, there remains a need for good Christian literature, like
Why I Believe, that will strengthen the faith of believers and present the Gospel in a fashion that effectively challenges the doubts of skeptics.
Please see Operation
Believe, page 7
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