Copts

If you look at Egypt, and I say this with great sadness as an Israeli, I mean, not just as a human being that wants things to be good, but from an Israeli point of view, I would want Egypt to be successful, because Egypt could be the only anchor of stability.

90% Sunni Muslims, 10% Copts, 5,000 years of stability, of everything ruled from the citadel in Cairo, it could have been a major contribution to the region.

And unfortunately, Egypt is between starvation and the verge of starvation.

And it has 110 million or 120 million people and it's going nowhere because for Egypt to join the 20th century, again forget the 21st century, the 20th century, they need a cultural revolution that is not coming.

I believe in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and most Protestant churches.

Probably the Coptic churches, too.

I believe there are people following Christ the best they know how, and I believe he recognized them as his own.

But every one of us, myself included, is fallible.

Yeah, well, you know, that's a great question.

I mean, you know, one of the biggest differences between, you know, Protestant and Catholic worship, or I'll say even the ancient communions like Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, you know, in the Protestant world, you know, a lot of times, especially in the evangelical Bible churches, you know, you might get one Bible passage and a half hour or 45 minute Bible study disguised as a sermon, right? Which is not a bad thing.

Bible study is a good thing.

Whereas in the Catholic Church, you get four Scripture readings, Old Testament, Psalm, which is often sung, New Testament, and Gospel.

But the problem is they do have the financial power to make a change, to make an impact in all these countries, in Nigeria, in Egypt, for example.

I interviewed a Coptic activist from Egypt and she told me, for example, the United States, the EU have the financial power to make Egypt stop persecuting Christians.

I mean, a lot of the persecution comes from society, but still, those Muslim states, governments, they can do much more to force, and I'm using this word intentionally, to force their societies respect their Christian citizens.

But this is not happening because think about the Canadian PM who went to that mosque, so-called mosque, the church in Constantinople.

But past that, we're really talking about things that eye cannot see and ear cannot hear and can't even come up in the hearts of men.

What the New Jerusalem does, and this is from the beginning, this is from Papias, and it goes through the Cappadocian fathers, Augustine, East, West, even in Syriac and Coptic reception, which is a little bit more sketchy, but it's still there.

This is the function that the New Jerusalem is playing.

It's playing the role of the cosmic end, the cosmic direction, right? Yeah.

I believe in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and most Protestant churches.

probably the Coptic churches too, I believe there are people following Christ the best they know how, and I believe he recognizes them as his own.

But every one of us, myself included, is fallible, and the best way to be correct, given our vulnerability to being fallible, is to make sure that we test everything by Scripture, because Jesus said to God, your word is truth.

And Isaiah says if they don't speak according to this word, there's no light in them.

And I think, like, thank God, like, I thank God deeply that we haven't seen so much the effect of that in our community.

And I think it would be a miss to waste the opportunity or the value of our beautiful Coptic community in that way.

We are a very close-knit community and we, you know, especially being a Christian community, it's all founded on love, right? And so I think it's very important that we don't allow that loneliness or that isolation to happen.

A lot of my friends that I know have struggled with certain things, you know, gambling, you know, addictions of any type, marital issues.

What I'm talking here about, Egypt, where I was born, is the most civilized, peaceful and nice version of Sharia law, which have apostasy laws and blasphemy laws in every single Muslim nation in the whole entire world, and Egypt is one of the most moderate nations in the whole world.

Yep, because the Copts have existed there since the time of the Apostle Mark, as you say, and And you just gave the stats of their decline, but there's still a very substantial minority in the millions in Egypt.

We are a small minority, 10% of the population.

We're second class citizens.