Doctrine for Life
After the conference in Alexandria, Egypt, we went home with Frank and Sherry. He is a professor at AST. We took a detour on the way home to see the pre-school that Sherry directs. It is in a Presbyterian church in a poor area of Alexandria. She is the only foreigner who comes in the neighborhood. The cube seen hanging over the street is the Kaaba; it represents the most holy place that Muslims on their pilgrimage walk around and pray towards.
On Thursday, I finished teaching the last four hours of the Reformed Experiential Preaching class in Cairo, Egypt. We loaded into a van with four others and were driven north four hours to a conference center on the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt. Sherif spoke the first evening on the Spirit’s role in assurance. Over the next two days, I spoke four times on assurance—its importance, the grounds, growing, and renewing assurance. I also did a workshop on family worship, and Mary did one for the women on casting our anxieties on Christ. There were also quite a few missionaries from various parts of the Middle East there.
Most of the 200 people in attendance were young people or young adults. Quite a few are students at Alexandria School of Theology (AST), which offers intensive classes on weekends so the students can continue their day jobs. These young men have been strongly influenced by our two PRTS students, Sherif and Mark, and also several other leaders, to bring the Gospel to parts of the Middle East, feeling called to suffer for Christ. The young men in the picture below were asking questions about a variety of subjects, such as “Why would the Lord harden Pharaoh’s heart?”
We came away from this conference with the conviction that God is beginning to do great things in Egypt. Pray that this aroused interest in the Reformed faith may continue to grow and that reformation and revival may be poured out on this nation.
