Although not officially deposed, the former dictator still hasn't given up. He gave a television address on the 42nd anniversary of the coup that brought him to power, encouraging his supporters to keep fighting and "Let Libya burn!"
It's no wonder the end game in the 6 months of civil war is so messy. Pockets of violence continue to flare, but many of the international observers believe the fight is over and have moved on to accepting the new council.
In Paris, delegations from 60 other countries joined France and Britain to help establish the council's legitimacy and to figure out how to reconstruct the country politically and economically. That sounds really encouraging after the bleak picture we've seen over the last few months, says Carl Moeller, CEO of Open Doors USA. "There are some indications that they are highly influenced by extremists and that Sharia law as the governing law of the land is one of their objectives."
Libya is ranked No. 25 on the Open Doors 2011 World Watch List of the worst persecutors of Christians. Indigenous Libyan Christians have mostly lived secret lives because they are often watched by security services. Anything that is "different" is cause for suspicion. Many believers have left the country. The remnant is smaller than the Christian community in Iraq.
Moeller explains that "the indigenous Christian community in Libya is tiny. By our estimates, it's far less than a thousand believers, but it's coming together to pray and to ask the world to pray for the next phase in the future of Libya."
In the midst of all the turmoil around the capture of Tripoli by the opposition forces, the churches and their members were covered by prayers from all around the world. "By God's grace and because of your prayers, we're still alive," said one of the pastors of a church in the Libyan capital of Tripoli to an Open Doors worker who contacted the pastor by telephone.
Post-war, there is a different kind of fear emerging. There are shortages of everything in the Libyan capital: lack of food, lack of drinking water and hardly-functioning healthcare. Moeller says, "There will be tremendous opportunities for Christian churches to reach out to Muslim neighbors who are suffering, who are perhaps going without food or without some of the basics of life."
That's why Open Doors co-supported the delivery of aid products with two trucks into Benghazi. Believers delivered food, cooking oil, and blankets with other aid and helped it get into the hands of people who needed it most. Although they're not typically an aid group, Moeller says in this instance, "If Open Doors and other organizations are able to come alongside those believers with the material resources they need to help, the church can actually see people truly blessed through the service of those individual Christians."
In a joint effort with other organizations, Open Doors also delivered Bibles and Christian literature, using the open frontiers with the neighboring countries during the battle in Libya. Why? "During the course of this Revolution, we've seen a ton of interest. In the first few months, several of the delivery areas where we were delivering Scriptures into Libya over the last few months have been emptied of all the Bibles that we had planned for the entire year."
A pastor added: "The most recent church services were just attended by some tens of people instead of the hundreds we were used to; there was almost no transportation. The service in Arabic was totally empty. Many of them will return, I believe." That pastor expects to have more members in church this week.
One of the greatest threats to the fragile new beginning is the diversity of the tribes. In the same way, fractures in the Body of Christ can undermine the paradoxical growth being seen now. Moeller says, "The church there is asking us to pray, and specifically to pray that they would be able to remain unified and strong."
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