118 Sermon Illustrations on Islam

118 illustrations Page 3 of 3

Islam, as the world's second-largest religion, often appears in Christian preaching as a contrasting belief system emphasizing salvation by works rather than grace, highlighting the fundamental differences in gospel messages (Ephesians 2:8-9). Illustrations frequently use images of conversion, spiritual conflict, and the fulfillment of biblical prophecies about opposition to Christ, underscoring themes of redemption and the call to witness to Muslim peoples (Galatians 1:8).

Mideast Turmoil: More Complex Than the Ishmael-isaac Rift

Amos 9:7

While it’s an oversimplification to say the strife in the Middle East at its core is just bad blood between brothers, some people believe there is biblical justification for that position.

They’re referring to Abraham’s two sons by two mothers: Ishmael, the firstborn to handmaiden Hagar, and Isaac, born in God’s timing to 100-year-old Sarah.

Islamic studies professor Samuel Shahid, however, sees the biblical justification theory as flawed, cautioning that it plays to Islamic interests.

“Muslims insist that all Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael in order to give legitimacy to Muhammad as a descendant of the prophet,” said Shahid, a Palestinian educated in Lebanon who teaches at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Arabs actually belong to many different branches.”

All Arabs could not have come from Ishmael, Shahid said, because after Sarah died, Abraham married an Arab woman, Keturah.

“Where did she come from, if Ishmael were the first Arab?” Shahid asked.

R. Dennis Cole, professor of Old Testament and archaeology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, concurred.

“The current designation 'Arabs' is itself multifaceted, including many groups which have no Semitic ancestry,” Cole said. “It includes many whose native tongue today is Arabic, but whose ancestry may be Indo-European, African, Arabian (as in from the Arabian peninsula), and many others.”

A look at the past provides a roadmap of events leading to the current war raging between Israel and Hezbollah, who are Lebanese Shiites said to be undergirded by Persian Iran, and between Israel and Hamas, who are Palestinian. Both groups call for the eradication of Israel.

BIBLE TIMES

Some people in discussing the current crisis between Israel and Hezbollah to the north and Hamas in the south point to the Roman destruction of Israel by Hadrian less than 150 years after the birth of Jesus. That’s when the Romans, to obliterate any connection Jews might have felt to the area, renamed Canaan with a Latin name -– Syria Palestina –- which corresponded with the Hebraic word rendered “Philistine.”

The name was chosen to remove any connection Jews might have had for the land, Cole said. The Philistines had been Israel’s enemy during the days of Israel's judges. Who were the people who imprisoned Samson and who grew a giant named Goliath? God in Amos 9:7 said He brought the Philistines from Caphtor, which some say is another name for Crete.

“The majority of the Philistines came to the region as part of a mass migration of Aegean and Mediterranean tribes known collectively as the Sea Peoples, who had repeatedly attacked Egypt,” Cole said. Ramesses III drove them out from much of Egypt, but he was unable to oust them from what today is known as the Gaza Strip and north to what today is modern Tel Aviv.

Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria by 732 B.C. had conquered the Philistines, and all traces of them “as a people or ethnic group” disappeared by the time of Alexander’s conquest of the land in 332 B.C., Cole said. He said he sees no geneaological connection between ancient Philistines and modern-day Palestinians.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian, from A.D. 132-135, squashed a major Jewish uprising, banned Jews from living in Jerusalem and dispersed most remaining Judean Jews throughout the Roman Empire, Cole said.

Arab conquests took Palestine from the Roman Empire in the seventh century, Shahid said, and for the following 850 years, the biblical “Land of Canaan” known as Palestine was occupied by various Arab peoples before becoming part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire in 1517.

19th CENTURY

By the early 1800s, Jews, the largest non-Christian group in Europe, were targets for ridicule and discrimination, just as people often are by those who fear anyone “different.” The concept of a homeland for Jews in Palestine was mentioned as early as 1840, Shahid said. By the 1880s, European Jews were buying land in Palestine and farming it, to the chagrin of Bedouin Arabs who didn’t like the fences, and the cry for a Jewish homeland intensified.

WORLD WAR I ERA

The Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I with the help of Arabs inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia,” a British intelligence officer. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919 the British Empire was given control of “Palestine,” an area that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq. That same year, Britain approved the Balfour Declaration, which appeared to favor the establishment in Palestine of a homeland for Jews, said Nancy Duke, associate professor of history at Louisiana College.

Three years later, the newly formed League of Nations gave Britain a “Palestinian Mandate,” which included “the establishment of the Jewish national home” and “safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine,” according to Article 2 of the mandate.

Three months after the signing of the Palestinian Mandate, Britain separated what today is known as Jordan; it then was known as the Transjordan because it was on the other side of the Jordan River from the rest of Palestine. That separation limited Jewish expansion in Transjordan, which resulted in its intensifying in what today is known as Israel, Duke said.

GROWING RESENTMENT

During the 1920s, 100,000 Jewish immigrants settled in Palestine, and the British began to set quotas to stave off rising Arab resentment. One outcome of the resultant hostilities was the separation of the Jewish and Arab economies in Palestine, which had been more or less intertwined until that time.

“That disengagement was a pivotal point at which the Jewish population in Palestine became independent and self-sustaining,” Duke said.

The Great [Arab] Uprising of 1936-39 was essentially a revolt triggered by increased Jewish immigration stemming from European anti-Semitism. The British response included the MacDonald White Paper of 1939, which appeared to many people to rescind the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper indicated that since more than 450,000 Jews were at that time already living in Palestine, the “homeland for Jews” aims of the Balfour Declaration had been met.

“It should be noted that, according to ‘The Modern Middle East from Imperialism to Freedom: 1800-1958’ by Emory Bogle, the Jews remained a decided minority of the population and owned about 5 percent of the land,” Duke said.

Jews felt betrayed by the White Paper; Arabs felt squeezed by Jews buying land that the Arabs hadn’t seen any need for “owning.”

Then came World War II. In its aftermath, 250,000 Jews were stranded in displaced persons camps in Europe, unable to get into Palestine because of British-imposed immigration quotas, set to appease Arabs. Leon Uris’ best-selling book “Exodus” and an Otto Preminger movie of the same name describe that tumultuous time.

“The British continued the immigration ban because they considered it more important to support Arab interests, because of British interests in Egypt and other Arab lands, and especially to guarantee the friendship of oil-rich Saudi Arabia,” Duke said. “As Bogle states, ‘It [the Labour Party] had to protect British interests in the Middle East while it considered necessary adjustments upon the possibility of ending its long domination of India and elsewhere. Also, the Labour Party only endorsed a limited Zionist presence of a Jewish National Home in a bi-national Palestine.’”

STAKING CLAIM

The Jewish underground militia, which had been growing in strength since the late 1930s, began terrorizing the British, including bombing British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.

“Seeing that the situation was quickly spiraling out of hand, the British announced their desire to terminate their mandate,” Duke said. They were gone by May 1948.

“The Jews seized the opportunity and declared their independence as a state,” Shahid said. “The Arab League fought them, and lost, and the borders were redefined.”

More than 700,000 Arabs scattered during the fighting, mostly to Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Most expected to return to their homes within a few months, but when the Jews won, Arabs were not allowed to return. Resentments festered, Shahid said.

20 YEARS PASS

Political tensions between Israel and her neighbors erupted as armed combat in 1967. That’s when Egypt expelled United Nations forces from the Gaza Strip and closed the strategic Straits of Tiran to Israeli vessels. Israel attacked on June 5, 1967. Six days later, “the Jewish state emerged victorious,” Shahid said. “Israel had defeated the armies of three large Arab states and decimated their air forces. Territorially, Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.”

Egypt’s foiled attack on Yom Kippur six years later, in 1973, was a blip on an otherwise relatively calm 15-year period, except for near-continual resentment-fueled skirmishes between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

LEBANON

With ancient roots growing into the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon became part of France’s Syrian Mandate, the mainly Christian part of it, after World War I. Enough Arabs lived there, though, that when Lebanon acquired its independence in 1943, agreement was reached that its president would be Christian; prime minister, Muslim; and the head of Parliament, Shiite.

“That is the same still today,” said Shahid, who moved to Lebanon from Jordan in 1960 to study at American University of Beirut.

More than 110,000 Palestinians left their homeland in 1948, when Israel declared itself a Jewish nation. Most expected to return within a few months, but when the Arab League forces were defeated, Arab resentment festered. Starting in 1968, several factions of Palestinian militants began to use southern Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks on Israel, said Shahid, who studied, taught and pastored in Lebanon until the late 1970s.

Resentment simmered between Palestinians and native-born Lebanese as well, and boiled over into a civil war starting in 1975, which ultimately left the nation with no effective central government, Shahid said.

“The civil war reached its peak in 1975, but it continued and continued and things were so bad for 18 years,” Shahid said.

Israel took advantage of the weakened government and retaliated in 1978 for the Palestinian attacks on Israel but was curtailed by the United Nations. Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982, this time capturing Beirut in its desire to eradicate the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon. That’s when Hezbollah with the support of Iran started developing, Shahid said.

Israel occupied about a five-mile-wide strip of southern Lebanon until 2000 to protect northern Israeli cities from Hezbollah attacks. U.N. peacekeepers have -– ineffectively, Israelis say –- occupied southern Lebanon since 1978.

Most recently, a seemingly unending series of Hezbollah-driven rocket attacks into northern Israel erupted into retaliatory action July 12, 2006, after eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two soldiers kidnapped, according to multiple news sources. Israel went on the offensive, and that’s where we are today.

The Real Teachings of the Koran

During the Cold War, American intelligence loved getting its hands on defectors from communism. The reasoning was that these people had the best information about the plans of the other side, information that would help America defeat them.

In the present war against what President Bush has properly labeled “Islamic fascism,” defectors are just as valuable.

The Israel Project, an international nonprofit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel, recently made a former leading imam and radical Islam expert available for media interviews and I had a chance to speak with him. He goes by the name of Sam Soloman because of death threats from those not happy with the information he has about their plans to dominate the world.

Soloman was brought up in the Islamic tradition and became a “recruiter,” which he says is something like an assistant teacher. One of his responsibilities was “brainwashing people in the Koran.” He tells me “The suicide bombers go through stages, and the most important stage is not when they blow themselves up. The most important stage is conforming them to the [Muslim] ideology. Once they are conformed to the ideology, the rest is easy. That is the role I had.”

Soloman is in double trouble. Not only did he abandon Islam and the terrorists' objectives, he has also become a Christian, which has marked him for death. Born in the Middle East, he visited Washington from his adopted country, which he declines to name to protect his family.

Soloman speaks with knowledge, credibility and conviction. He has memorized large sections of the Koran and tells me, “There's not a single verse in the Koran talking about peace with a non-Muslim, with the Jews and the Christians. Islam means submission. Islam means surrender. It means you surrender and accept Islamic hegemony over yourselves....”

I ask him about the best strategy for fighting it: “It cannot be combated simply by force. It needs to be combated ideologically, spiritually [as well as] through arms.”

Soloman says the outlets for Islamic ideology are religious -- seminaries, the madrassas (Koranic schools) and especially the mosques. “From the beginning, Mohammed used the mosque to propagate this ideology. It was in the mosque that jihad was declared [and] that troops were sent to conquer the rest of the world. The mosque was the seat of government and Americans are right to be concerned about [their growth].”

He asks Americans to inform themselves about the real teachings of Islam and not to fall for what various Islamic groups say it teaches. Soloman says, “The simplest Islamic book you open” teaches that all unbelievers [in Islam] are profane people. “Because of the [Koranic] text and what it says, it incites violence.” He begins quoting verses from memory, too quickly to write them all down. One is, “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush” (Surah 9:5).

“This kind of tactic of taking verses out of context can be used against any religious faith,” says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights and advocacy group. “It can and has been used against the Bible and has been used against the Koran.”

“These verses deal with the real experience of the Muslim community at the time when they were under attack. It's not a general injunction to go out and harm people. The only people who take it that way are those who want to promote hostility toward Islam and Muslims. They would object if the same thing were done to their faith.”

Yes, but virtually all Christians and Jews denounce the infinitesimal few who claim to be Jewish or Christian and use their “holy books” to justify violence against others as a direct command from God.

Asked whether the Koran commands the killing of or violence against all nonbelievers, Ali Khan, national director of the Chicago-based American Muslim Council, replied: “No. [That's] far from the truth. There's nothing in the Koran, no verse that I'm aware of, that advocates the killing of nonbelievers.”

The terrorists and those who preach from mosques throughout the Middle East must be reading a different version, then, because virtually all of their sermons that I've read claim their God wants them to kill all “infidels.”

Soloman says Americans must demand from the leading Islamic hierarchy, such as the Muslim World League and the Union of Imams, a fatwa that makes it clear “that this is not what the text means and that these texts are no longer effective. They have passed their date. But if they remain effective and eternally valid, then in America we have a serious problem.”

How serious? He says “they are infiltrating and undermining every part of this society. We are promoting Islamic mortgages, Islamic insurance companies. There are 29 banks in the United States promoting Islamic banking. Since 1999, Dow Jones has launched Dow Jones Islamic Index and has subjected itself to be governed by an international Sharia board.” (Sharia is the religious law of Islam outlined in the Koran.)

Soloman adds, “The Islamic organizations have their missionaries and there are active or sleeping cells in this country.” He mentions one, Tablighi Jamaat, “a Pakistani organization that is hand-in-glove with the Wahaabis, strong Muslim sects known for their strict observance of the Koran, and a strong facilitator of al-Qaida and other factions of terrorism. They alone have 1,000 missionaries in New York, 50,000 across the United States. This is only one organization. In 1994, I took a map and started putting pins in it. I found there is not a single state without a mosque. Since then (the number) has increased.”

Americans must see past their natural reluctance to paint all members of a group with a broad brush and realize our failure to act now against this clear and present danger in the ways Sam Soloman recommends will lead to a disaster for us that is far worse than our Cold War enemies had envisaged.

________

Heresy In the Church of High Art

Opera seldom makes the news these days. Once a major force in the culture, opera is now the concern and fascination of a narrowing elite. The reasons for this trend are many, but among these is the fact that opera has followed the trend that now characterizes the world of high art -- it is often transgressive, vulgar, and highly political.

Such is the case with Berlin’s Deutsche Oper [German Opera] and its scheduled performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo under the direction of Hans Neuenfels. Neuenfels is one of those pushing the artistic envelope. Mozart would no doubt be surprised to see his opera end with this dramatic flourish added by Neuenfels: Idomeneo the Cretan king enters the last scene with the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed.

The controversy erupted when Berlin police warned the Deutsche Opera’s director that the scene might be the cause of Muslim violence. The Berlin authorities -- quite aware of what followed the publication of newspaper cartoons earlier this year -- wanted to warn the opera that the performance of the Neuenfels production could be incendiary. In response, the Deutsche Oper canceled the performances, scheduled for November.

Artistic forces rallied in outrage to this form of “censorship.” As of this week, it appears that the Neuenfels production will be back on the schedule.

There is a great deal to this story, of course. There is the very real danger of Muslim outrage and violence -- just witness the response to the Pope’s speech in Germany last month. The authorities were not concerned about violence from the followers of Jesus, Buddha, or Poseidon.

But the more telling story here is the worldview of the modern artistic elite. As critic Martha Bayles rightly commented, the world of high art has transformed itself into a religion.

From her essay published in The Boston Globe:

In Berlin last week, a great offense was committed against one of

the world’s major religions: the high church of art.

When the director of the city’s leading opera company, the

Deutsche Oper, responded to a possible terrorist threat by

canceling the scheduled performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo,”

howls of outrage were heard among the priesthood -- a highly

visible group in most cities, but especially Berlin, marked by

their black clothing, shaved heads, and bizarre designer glasses,

through which they gaze contemptuously at the rest of humanity.

First question: Why would terrorists care about an 18th-century

opera about a bunch of Greeks on their way home from the Trojan

War, traditionally performed in powdered wigs and silk

waistcoats? Well, because when the Deutsche Oper stages this

opera, they add a few flourishes, such as a final scene in which

Idomeneo, the king of Crete, opens a bloodstained sack and pulls

out the gory, severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and

Poseidon (Neptune to you Romans). For three years this has not

bothered anyone, because as the Berliner Zeitung pointed out:

“Nowhere else on earth does so much stage blood flow as

in our theaters. Liters of the stuff are poured over

people’s heads, actors defecate, [and engage in sexual

acts] naked onstage. And when people run out of ideas

for how to get a few people to leave the theater in

anger, they stick a cross right next to the orgy so that

at least the local bishop will be obliged by his

congregation to write a letter of protest. Then, the

amassed intellectual forces of the Republic rally in

defense of artistic freedom and give the poor bishop a

proper scare.”

Bayles argues that the Church of High Art was established in the 19th century, and its creed is simple -- aim for maximum offense.

In the high church of art, Mozart is a semi-failure who secretly

yearned to play football with the severed heads of prophets, but

due to the repressive attitudes of various princes and

archbishops, was forced to write gorgeous, immortal music

instead.

Today, of course, it is hard to get a rise out of German bishops.

Like the rest of us, they are tired of being pilloried by

artists. That’s why Islam is starting to look like the new

target of opportunity for transgressive artists -- and their

amassed intellectual defenders -- in Europe. For example, the

publication of the celebrated Danish cartoons was a clear case of

a newspaper taking 100 yards when 50 would have sufficed.

This is what inevitably happens when the aesthetic is severed from the moral. Truth, beauty, and goodness are, in truth, inseparable. Any effort to separate truth from beauty leads to ugliness -- but ugliness is the reigning style within the magisterium of this “church.” The unification of the good, the beautiful, and the true is its main heresy. And its version of original sin? Censorship, of course. And the artist who avoids the transgressive offensiveness of the Church of High Art is guilty of the most damning sin -- self-censorship. No wonder so few attend the modern opera.

Assyrian Haircut

Genesis 10

Last week, while I was running my traps in downtown Evanston, Ill., I stepped into an unfamiliar barbershop on impulse. I was rushed, and on foot, and my regular place was about a mile away, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I sensed something of a divine appointment immediately, for the young woman barber wore a T-shirt with the word, “Assyrian” above an image of a human-headed, winged bull.

I told her I was the pastor of a Baptist church meeting in an office building a few doors down. She picked up on my Bible focus, reminding me that the world’s first man came from her region, modern-day Iraq. I assured her I knew that, and I added that one of my sons had served in Iraq, where he’d visited sites associated with the scriptural figures Abraham and Ezekiel.

She was Orthodox, and we spent a little time talking about how difficult it can be for Christians in Muslim-majority lands. She spoke of Iraqi Christians who had been menaced and robbed by their Islamic neighbors and of her own experience in Syria, where her native tongue (Syriac, which is essentially Aramaic) had been suppressed. This wasn’t surprising, for Christians in Islamic regions are used to “dhimmi” status (second-class or worse) in one form or another.

When I told her that Aramaic appeared in the English New Testament, she was surprised, even skeptical. So I tried “Abba” on her, and she was on board immediately. (She wasn’t familiar with “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” and “Maranatha,” so I began to plan a return with a marked New Testament.) She then asked if I’d seen “The Passion of The Christ” and she was happy to report that the film was full of her language. She even quoted some dialogue.

I told her that I’d once happened into an Assyrian diner on Devon Street in Chicago, and they, too, had helped educate me. When they heard I was a pastor, they made sure I knew that Christianity had sprung from one of their own, Abraham. They also told me that Christian Iraqis identified themselves as “Assyrians” and “Chaldeans,” but I didn’t get clear on the distinction between the two. No problem; my barber was happy to help.

By her account, Khaldi and Asshur were brothers from which the two peoples sprang. Without my Bible dictionary handy, I wasn’t ready to evaluate that proposition, so I moved on to ask if the latter were connected with King Ashurbanipal of Assyria. Sure enough, she knew that one, but not King Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria. We got back on track when I mentioned seeing King Sargon Drive in Chicago; she assured me that, yes, he was family. (By the way, the winged bull mentioned in the first paragraph came from the palace of Sargon II.)

It was a good time, not unlike the one I had when I visited the Assyrian American Civic Club of Chicago. I was walking down Clark Street toward Wrigley Field when I saw their sign. Since my boy was in Iraq at the time, I particularly was interested in any background material they could give me. When I told them what he was doing, they expressed warm thanks for his service. John Nimrod (yes, Nimrod, as in Genesis 10 and Micah 5), who had served in the Illinois senate, gave me some colorful brochures to send to my Marine.

Isn’t it amazing? For years, the Assyrians and Chaldeans were giving Jesus’ kinfolk the dickens, and now they claimed Jesus as their Lord. That could make for interesting study-Bible notes:

2 Kings 17:6: “In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria

took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria ...” *

2 Kings 25:10: “And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with

the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round

about.” *

* These invaders would later call themselves Christians.

It makes you wonder what people groups now tormenting Christians might one day themselves be persecuted for identifying with the Lord.

What Are We To Do About Islam?

Luke 6:27

In the spring of 2006 1,000 British Muslims were polled. The results were alarming:

• 28 percent wanted to see Great Britain become an Islamic state

• 68 percent held that Brits who insult Islam should be arrested & prosecuted

• 25 percent had either never heard of the Holocaust or contended it never happened

• 45 percent held that 9/11 was a conspiracy between the U.S. & Israel (another 35 percent said “don’t know”)

The objective of many Muslims is to Islamicize the world. When a person or a country stands in the way of Islam’s efforts, these regard it as a “war on Islam.” This does not mean all Muslims hate Christians. For over a thousand years there have been many friendships between Muslims and Christians. However, Muslims who have befriended Christians have disregarded the Koran in the process, since it prohibits such friendships (Q 5:51). So what are Christians to do? I would like to suggest three initial responses by evangelicals to Islam.

• Understand that we stand in the way of Islam intentionally. We believe that Islam is a religion that promotes false teachings about God. The Apostle Paul wrote, “But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a Gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell!” (Galatians 1:8). Since Islam’s message differs fundamentally from the Gospel, it is clear what Paul taught regarding the fate of Muhammad and those who propagate Islam. A few years later Paul wrote, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). It is the responsibility of evangelical Christians to promote the Gospel of Christ to the exclusion of the core messages of other religions -- including Islam. In the eyes of Muslim Islamicists, this places evangelical Christians at war with Islam.

• Love Muslims! Jesus predicted the current dilemma. He warned that false prophets would come (Matthew 16:11-12) and that the day was likewise coming when religious zealots will kill Christians and think they are offering a service to God (John 16:2-4). It is natural to feel anger and hatred toward Muslims who want to kill us. On a national level, we can support politicians who are committed to hunting down and destroying terrorists, upholding free speech, and standing in the way of Muslim thugs who declare war on everything which does not allow Islam to dominate. On a personal level, Jesus tells us plainly what our response should be:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.... If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ... But love your enemies, and do good ... and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men” (Luke 6:27-35).

Jesus calls us to a “holy war” -- the difference is that our holy war actually involves, well, holiness, and does not involve weapons and violence. These words of Jesus were not easy to hear for the early Christians who were persecuted and killed by Jewish and Roman authorities. It will not be easy for us either. However, this is a day when cooler heads must prevail and holiness is our goal.

• Know that God is bringing Muslims to Christ. A few years ago, Al-Jazeera reported that roughly six million Muslims are leaving Islam and becoming followers of Jesus every year in Africa. In 2005, roughly 250,000 Muslims converted to Christianity in Iran. Between 2003-2005, roughly one million Muslims converted to Christianity in Arab countries. Muslims are coming to Christ in North America, too, although not to the same extent as in Muslim countries. Ergun Caner came to North America in order to build Mosques and Islamicize the U.S. A persistent evangelical Christian led him to Christ. Ergun then led his entire family to Christ, with the exception of his father who disowned him. He is now the president of Liberty Theological Seminary and his brother Emir is the dean of The College of Southwestern.

Abdu Murray is an attorney in the Detroit area who became a Christian after wrestling with the preponderance of evidence in its favor. He is now active in sharing the Gospel with Muslims. Nabeel Qureshi was a committed Muslim whose father is a Muslim leader in Virginia. In 2005 Nabeel became a Christian. After being shaken by the evidence for the truth of Christianity, Nabeel traveled to Europe and Canada and met with Muslim leaders in search of answers to his questions. In both cases, he returned unsatisfied with the answers he was given. Wanting Islam to be true, Nabeel prayed that God would give him three dreams that would provide guidance. His prayer was answered. Against what Nabeel had hoped for, God confirmed the truth of Christianity to him. Nabeel is now in medical school and is simultaneously completing a master’s degree in Christian apologetics, and has already engaged in a public debate with a Muslim Imam.

In “Me and Becky,” Christian artist Chris Rice challenges believers to get out of their comfort zone. He sings about a girl who has a home on Abundant Life Blvd., butterflies in her yard and a fish on her car. She tears up in church and sings her harmonies loud. She reads her Bible, keeps a prayer journal, and is careful to give thanks before meals in restaurants. But is that enough?

There’s a world out there that we left behind

Full of souls as important as yours and mine.

Looks like a reckless road and a sacrifice

And I’m crazy scared it may cost our lives

But then I remember Jesus died

So come on Becky. Let’s go for a ride.

We may also remember Paul’s words: “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Now is the time for Christians to begin serious dialogue concerning how we may be used by God to get His glorious Gospel to Muslims in North America, a people whom God loves passionately.

The Seed of the Church: Martyrdom In Turkey

Mark 10:30

Just a few weeks ago, Christians gathered in the Holy Land to remember the Armenian victims of genocide. Between 1915 and 1919, 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were slaughtered. Shockingly, few today have even heard about the brutal persecution that nearly annihilated this ancient people — who, by the way, chose Christianity as their national religion in 301 A.D.

Ironically, one day after last month’s commemoration, Islamic extremists slit the throats of three Christians working at a Bible publishing house in Turkey — the very country where Armenian Christians were nearly exterminated. The world’s silence on this latest attack on Christians is deafening. As writer Daniel Pulliam wondered aloud at Getreligion.org, “What would the news coverage look like if three Muslims were found with their throats slit in an Islamic publishing house. . . ?” One can only imagine.

Necati Aydin was one of the three martyrs. Born into an Islamic family, he converted to Christianity in 1994. Necati openly and actively proclaimed his faith, even distributing Bibles on the street. In 2000 he spent four weeks in jail for doing so, even though such distribution is legal in Turkey. Because they could find no grounds for keeping him, authorities released Necati. Soon after, he relocated to Malatya, where he was a pastor of a local Protestant church. He also worked at the Zirve Publishing House, a Christian publishing house that has made some 10,000 Bibles available to interested Turks.

At the funeral in Izmir, Turkey, applause erupted when Necati’s coffin was carried into the church yard. Spontaneously, more than five hundred brave mourners broke out in a chorus based on Lamentations, singing “The compassion of the Lord never fails; His mercy never ceases.” And Necati’s wife spoke about the meaning of her husband’s death, saying simply, “He died for Jesus, because he loved Jesus.”

Sadly, this brutal attack against Christians in Turkey is not an isolated incident. In 2006, a Catholic priest was shot in Trabzon while praying. And a few months ago, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was brutally murdered. Dink had served time in prison for “insulting Turkishness” for an article he wrote about the Armenian genocide. Simply speaking the truth about the genocide had left Dink with many enemies.

You see, in Turkey, the potent mix of radical nationalism and religious extremism can breed this type of violence against the perceived threat posed by the Christian West. Dr. Christine Schirrmacher, an Islamic studies scholar in Germany, puts it this way: For these extremists “the mere existence of Christians on Turkish soil [is] an immediate assault which threatens to undermine the unity and character of the Turkish nation.”

You may be wondering what you can do. First, pray for God’s protection of Christians in Turkey and for the Turkish government to reign in the violence against Christians. Next, you can give of your resources. The seminary where Necati studied has established a fund for the families of the victims and for the churches in Turkey. Visit our website, www.breakpoint.org, for MORE INFORMATION. Perhaps through our prayers and gifts, as the early apologist Tertullian once wrote, the death of these martyrs will indeed be the seed of the Church in Turkey.

________

Who Holds the Real Pearl?

Around A.D. 800, Timothy, a patriarch of the Nestorian church, engaged in a famous debate with the Muslim caliph in Baghdad. The discussion was marked by reason and civility on both sides.

Imagine, Timothy said, that we are all in a dark house, and someone throws a precious pearl in the midst of a pile of ordinary stones. Everyone scrabbles for the pearl, and some think they’ve found it, but nobody can be sure until day breaks.

In the same way, he said, the pearl of true faith and wisdom had fallen into the darkness of this transitory world; each faith believed that it alone had found the pearl. Yet all he could claim - and all the caliph could say in response - was that some faiths thought they had enough evidence to prove that they were indeed holding the real pearl, but the final truth would not be known in this world.

________

Philip Jenkins, professor of the humanities at Penn State University

International Blasphemy Day

Job 1:11

Ready for a day to honor blasphemy? According to press reports, September 30 is set as the observance of the first-ever International Blasphemy Day. This could be interesting.

The choice of September 30 looks back to that date in the year 2005, when the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad’s face sparked outcry and protests in the Muslim world and threats toward the West.

Now, as Religion News Service reports, the CENTER FOR INQUIRY is planning a day of observances to mark the occasion. Ron Lindsay, a lawyer who serves as president of the Council for Inquiry International, said that the day was part of the group’s effort to expose religious beliefs to investigation. In the words of the RNS report, the goal is “to expose all religious beliefs to the same level of inquiry, discussion and criticism to which other areas of intellectual interest are subjected.”

Here is one feature of the day as planned by CFI:

You’ve never seen Jesus like this before: dripping red nail

polish around the nails in his feet and hands, an irreverent riff

on the crucifixion wounds. The provocative title of the

painting: “Jesus Does His Nails.” Blasphemous? Absolutely.

Deliberately provocative? You bet.

Artist Dana Ellyn told RNS that she is an “agnostic atheist” whose purpose is to be provocative. “My point is not to offend, but I realize it can offend, because religion is such a polarizing topic,” she said.

Among other things, CFI International also plans a “blasphemy contest,” “in which participants are invited to submit phrases, poems, or statements that would be, or have been, considered blasphemous.” Winners are to receive a T-shirt and mug.

Bet you can’t wait to see those.

More seriously, participants are also to be encouraged to take up the “Blasphemy Challenge“ in which individuals register their blasphemy in the face of Mark 3:29. In that verse, Jesus warns, “whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” [ESV]. Those who take up the “Blasphemy Challenge” record video submissions which must include the words, “I deny the Holy Spirit.”

The Blasphemy Day events are certain to draw media attention, which is no doubt the whole point of the observance. That is how a group like CFI can gain publicity for itself and its cause.

How should Christians respond?

First, take no offense. Refuse to play into the game plan of those sponsoring International Blasphemy Day. The Lord Jesus Christ was and is despised and rejected of men. Our Lord bore the scorn heaped upon him by his enemies. Christianity is not an honor religion. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are not commanded to defend his honor, but to be willing to share in the scorn directed to him. Is the servant greater than his master?

Islam is an honor religion, and the major forces in the world today seeking to criminalize blasphemy are Islamic. The riots on the streets of many nations in protest of the Danish cartoons do represent what faithful Muslims believe their religion requires them to do. Not so for Christianity. We must be those who take to the streets with the Gospel -- not with a protest against our honor or the honor of our Lord. When Christians forget this, we lose our Gospel witness. The history of the church includes far too many instances of this loss. We dare not add another.

Second, mourn the blasphemy. The warning of Jesus is clear -- blasphemy has eternal consequences. The worst form of blasphemy is the refusal to hear and believe the Gospel. For that sin there can be no forgiveness. We must mourn the blasphemy, not because honor is at stake, but because souls are at stake with eternal consequences. God will ultimately and perfectly defend his honor. On that day, there will be no escape for unrepentant blasphemers.

Third, see this observance for what it really is -- an unintended testimony to the existence of God and the foolishness of those who deny Him. The sheer foolishness of a blasphemy contest with T-shirts and mugs betrays the lunacy of it all. They can do no better than this? One testimony to the power of God is the fact that his self-declared enemies come off as so childish and manic. The heathen rage and God sees the foolish grasshoppers.

International Blasphemy Day will come and go. Take note, ponder its meaning ... and skip the T-shirt.

The Great Impostor

2 Corinthians 11:15

He was known as “The Great Impostor” and inspired a 1960 film by the same name. Ferdinand Waldo Demara impersonated everyone from physicians to monks and thus achieved notoriety.

Demara began his nefarious career during World War II by borrowing his Army buddy’s name, going AWOL and faking his suicide. A string of pseudo careers followed. He was, among other things, a sheriff’s deputy, a doctor of applied psychology, a lawyer and a child-care expert.

He was best known for masquerading as a surgeon aboard a Canadian Navy destroyer during the Korean War, successfully completing a string of operations. His final gig: serving as a Baptist minister.

Demara’s life is a fascinating but sad story of one man’s quest for respectability. His success as an impostor also exposes the soft underbelly of a society in which people are easily duped by one who talks smoothly and claims to serve the greater good.

For Christians, Demara’s story is a warning to be on guard against those who disguise themselves as “servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:15). But how can we know a religious impostor when we see one? The Apostle Paul gives us three clear markers in 2 Corinthians 11:4. False teachers proclaim “another Jesus ... a different spirit ... a different gospel.”

To illustrate, let’s look briefly at three large or influential religious systems: Islam, Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses -- all of which are growing worldwide and teach unbiblical doctrines concerning Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Gospel.

ISLAM

Jesus. Muslims say Jesus was one of God’s greatest prophets but inferior to Muhammad, who brought Allah’s final revelation to man (the Koran). The Koran denies that Jesus is the Son of God, and any Muslim who believes in the deity of Jesus has committed the unpardonable sin called shirk -- a sin that will send that person to hell. Muslims believe Jesus is the Messiah, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life and is coming back one day -- but only to establish Islam throughout the earth. They do not believe He died on the cross but was called to heaven by Allah before His death and was perhaps replaced by Judas Iscariot or someone else who looked like Jesus.

Holy Spirit. Islam denies the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, whom the Koran describes as “the angel which brought revelation,” according to Mualana Muhammad Ali in The Holy Koran with English Translation and Commentary. The Koran also calls the Holy Spirit “Gabriel” (2:97) and the “Faithful Spirit” (26:193).

The Gospel. Islam teaches that Christ was neither crucified for our sins nor resurrected; therefore salvation cannot possibly be attained through faith in Christ. In fact, sin is not man’s problem. Man is sinful by act only, not by nature. Original sin is viewed as a “lapse” by Adam. People are not really fallen in their nature; they are merely weak and forgetful. Sin is thought of in terms of rejecting right guidance. It can be forgiven through repentance. No atonement is necessary. Salvation in Islam is a combination of works and fate. Muslims pursue the five Pillars of Religion and hope Allah is kindly disposed toward them.

MORMONISM

Jesus. Jesus preexisted in heaven as a spirit child of Heavenly Father (Ehohim) and one of his goddess wives (as did Lucifer and all pre-existent human beings). He then took on a human body through sexual relations between Heavenly Father and Mary. Jesus is one of three gods in the Mormon godhead, although Mormonism recognizes the Trinity only as one in “purpose,” arguing instead for a multitude of gods.

Holy Spirit. Mormon.org says the Holy Spirit “witnesses, or testifies of the Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and reveals and teaches truth.” Sounds orthodox, but historically Mormon leaders have offered more disturbing views of the Holy Spirit. For example, founder Joseph Smith taught that:

• The Father, Son and Holy Spirit “constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.”

• “The Holy Ghost is yet a spiritual body and waiting to take to himself a body as the Saviour did or as the gods before them took bodies.”

The gospel. Jesus’ atonement secured “salvation” (meaning resurrection) for nearly all people, but “men will be punished for their own sins” (Article of Faith #2 by Joseph Smith). People may earn “eternal life” (godhood) by “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel,” meaning works (Article of Faith #3 by Joseph Smith).

Godhood is the goal of Mormonism. According to fifth LDS President Lorenzo Snow, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”

THE WATCHTOWER

Jesus. According to Watchtower teachings, Jesus was the first and direct creation of Jehovah God. Jesus then created all “other” things (Colossians 1:16 New World Translation). Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Trinity, speaking of Jesus as “a god” or “mighty god” but not divine. They deny His incarnation, death on the cross (he died on a “torture stake”) and physical resurrection. Jesus returned invisibly in 1914 and is working today to overthrow Satan’s kingdom.

Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that “holy spirit” (always lower case) is the invisible active force of God that moves His servants to do His will. They deny the personhood and deity of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming such beliefs to be inspired by Satan.

The gospel. Salvation in the Watchtower is a combination of faith and works, but there is no eternal security and virtually no hope of today’s Witnesses ever entering heaven, which is reserved for the 144,000 in the “anointed class.” The “other sheep” may, through faithfulness to Watchtower teachings and hard work, be brought back to life after an indefinite period of soul sleep and populate Paradise Earth. Jesus’ death is seen as a ransom paid to Jehovah that removed the effects of Adam’s sin on his offspring and laid the foundation of the New World of righteousness.

JUST SPEAK TRUTH

In each of his roles, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, “The Great Impostor,” was confronted with the truth -- in some cases by the persons whose identity he had stolen -- and exposed as a fraud. For Christians who encounter an array of false teachings today, our best defense is the truth of God’s Word.

The writer of Hebrews put it best: “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as to divide soul, spirit, joints, and marrow; it is a judge of the ideas and thoughts of the heart. No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account” (4:12-13).

An Eye For An Eye, A Spine For a Spine

Saudi Arabia was urged by a human rights group not to deliberately paralyze a man as punishment for injuries he inflicted during a fight.

Saudi Arabia media reports indicate that authorities have contacted several hospitals to ask if they would be able to sever the man’s spinal cord. One of the hospitals has indicated it is able to perform the operation.

The authorities are seeking the punishment at the request of the man’s victim in the fight. The victim, Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, is able to make a request under sharia law, since he himself was left paralyzed by the fight. The man, whose name has not been public, reportedly stabbed his victim in the back with a large knife in a fight more than two years ago. The injuries he inflicted paralyzed his victim, who later lost a foot as well, BBC NEWS reported.

Such cases of qisas (retribution) are not unusual in Saudi Arabia. Other sentences that have been passed include gouging a convict’s eyes, extracting their teeth and even death sentences as punishment for murder.

Human rights groups say such a punishment would amount to torture and is illegal.

Though few details of the case are known publicly, it appears that the court has not decided if it will seek to paralyze the man. Instead, it may impose a sentence of flogging, financial compensation or imprisonment.

Still, the victim’s family is pushing for a harsher sentence. “We are asking for our legal right under Islamic law,” his brother Khaled said, according to SKY NEWS. “There is no better word than God’s word -- an eye for an eye.”

Brave and Important?: Art Designed To Offend

John 15:8

Late in 2010, the National Portrait Gallery hosted an exhibit entitled “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” Cutting through the euphemistic title, the Washington Post said the exhibit “surveys how same-sex love has been portrayed in art.”

As part of the exhibit, the Portrait Gallery, which receives federal funds, displayed a video entitled “Fire in my belly” by the late artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz. Part of the video depicted a crucifix-that is, Jesus on the Cross-with ants crawling all over it.

Well, the Catholic League and several conservative members of Congress were none too pleased that U.S. government funds were in part responsible such an outrageously offensive display-and let the Portrait Gallery know it.

Portrait Gallery Director Martin Sullivan saw the wisdom of removing the video. Sullivan told the Washington Post that the video had become a distraction. “We don’t want to shy away from anything that is controversial, but we want to focus on the museum’s and this show’s strengths.” So the video was taken off display.

Good. Well, predictably, the arts community went nuts, crying “censorship,” and “insanity,” and accused the Portrait Gallery of “caving in” by disrupting such a “brave and important” exhibit.

Important? Well, if ridiculing the death of Christ and offending the faith of billions is important, then I guess this was important.

Brave? Hardly. The easiest thing an artist or playwright or movie producer can do these days in the West is mock Christianity and our God.

You want bravery? How about a museum displaying a similar video depicting Mohammad? Now that would be brave, on top of offensive and foolish.

The security costs for protecting the museum from outraged Muslims would be huge. And no artist would dare be so quote un-quote “brave” as to put his name on a piece of art that mocked Islam’s prophet.

Have you heard recently from the young woman who wanted to start “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day?” Of course not. She’s changed her name and gone into hiding. It’s a shame the art critics wouldn’t stand up for her right to be bold and important.

Or how do you think a museum’s patrons would react to a video of ants crawling all over a dead gay activist? They’d be furious. And they’d be right to be furious.

Of course this is a free society. We believe in free speech. We believe in artistic freedom. But we don’t believe the government has any business supporting those museums or media that display material patently designed to offend Christians or anyone else.

But if you’re a big fan of offensive art, I’ve got good news for you. The Modern Museum of Art in New York-to the sound of hosannas and huzzahs-has boldly and bravely purchased the video and will have it on display. Next time you’re in the Big Apple, you’re free to stop by and take a look.

But you’ll have to pay the museum’s $20 entrance fee yourself-no federal funds, I’m glad to say. And the only thing you’ll offend is your own sense of good taste and propriety.

________

What Good Is Christian Apologetics?

John 5:24

Apologetics simply is a reasonable defense of the Christian faith. The word is derived from the Greek noun apologia and means “a defense.” Apologia and its verb form apologeomai are used nearly 20 times in the New Testament, often in the classic legal sense, but more importantly to describe the call of God to all believers to defend the Christian faith with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15-16).

But how is sound doctrine applied practically? Put another way, what good is Christian apologetics?

Apologetics has at least four practical applications. We may use apologetics to:

Build

There is a positive case to be made for Christianity, and apologetics helps us get there.

The Bible, history, archaeology and other sources help establish that a real person named Jesus burst onto the scene 2,000 years ago. He claimed deity, performed miracles, spoke the truth, modeled compassion, died on a Roman cross, was buried and rose physically on the third day. His coming to earth was the most important event in human history.

Further, apologetics helps us know who God is; who we are; why there is purpose in life; how we can be restored to a right relationship with our Creator; why we can face death without fear; and what God is doing about evil in the world.

Defend

Christianity is under attack on many fronts, from moral relativists to radical Islamists to angry atheists. Many times they misrepresent Christianity, so we can go a long way in defending the faith by clarifying the Christian position on matters of faith, answering objections and clearing away difficulties.

For example, Jehovah’s Witness leaders historically have claimed that orthodox Christians worship a “freakish-looking three-headed god.” While we may not be able to convince our Jehovah’s Witness friends of the truth of the Trinity -- their New World Translation of the Bible and their official publications have stripped this biblical truth from JW doctrine -- we may at least provide biblical clarity.

The Bible teaches that there is one true and living God who exists as three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do not worship a three-headed god, or three separate gods, or even one God who shows up sometimes as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. Defending the faith against mischaracterizations of Christian doctrines is an important function of apologetics.

Challenge

Sometimes Christians have to go on the offensive by challenging critics to provide evidence for their unbiblical beliefs. For example, when a moral relativist boldly declares, “There is no absolute truth,” a good response is, “Are you absolutely certain about that?”

When our Muslim friends tell us that Jews and Christians have corrupted the Bible, it’s only fair to ask them how they came to that conclusion.

We have significant manuscript evidence that the scriptures have been carefully copied and faithfully preserved. Further, the Qur’an states in several places that the sacred writings of the Jews and Christians faithfully attested to the truth of Islam. If Muhammad believed the scriptures were intact in the 7th century, what happened since then to make them corrupt?

Sometimes the best defense of the Christian faith is to hold critics accountable for their unbiblical views.

Persuade

Ultimately, Christian apologetics finds its greatest application as an effective means of evangelism. When we build a positive case for Christianity, defend Christianity from attacks, and challenge critics to defend their views, we can bring them to a point of commitment to Christ.

We should never coerce another person to trust in Jesus. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit (see John 16:7-11). But we should eagerly invite our unbelieving friends to receive Christ and thus pass from death unto life (John 5:24).

In his book “Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions,” Gregory Koukl writes, “It may surprise you to hear this, but I never set out to convert anyone.... I have a more modest goal, one you might consider adopting as your own. All I want to do is put a stone in someone’s shoe. I want to give him something worth thinking about, something he can’t ignore because it continues to poke at him in a good way.”

May all of us be Christian apologists that gently and respectfully place pebbles in the shoes of our lost friends.

________

Rob Phillips is director of communications for the Missouri Baptist Convention with responsibility for leading MBC apologetics ministry in the state. This article first appeared in The Pathway (www.mbcpathway.org), newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

Has the Koran Been Copied Perfectly?

In 1972, construction workers renovating a wall in the attic of the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen came across large quantities of old manuscripts and parchments. They didn't realize what they had found and gathered up the documents, packed them away into some twenty potato sacks, and left them on the staircase of one of the mosque's minarets. Scholars soon realized the material represented the oldest Korans ever found, perhaps dating to the early 700s, with some fragments dating to the 600s, or within a century of the original writing of the Koran.

In 1999, Toby Lester, the executive editor of the website of The Atlantic Monthly reported that a close study of the material by German scholars found that some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.

The German scholars felt that when the Yemeni authorities realize the implications of the find, they would refuse further access - a prediction that soon came true. Von Bothmer, however, in 1997 shot 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, and has brought the pictures back to Germany. Puin wrote: “So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Qur’an is Allah’s unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Qur’an has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Qur’an has a history too. The Sana’a fragments will help us accomplish this.”

In a 1999 Atlantic Monthly article, Gerd Puin is quoted as saying:

“My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not — there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on.”

We Hate To Say We Told You So: Same-Sex Marriage & Polygamy [2 Articles]

Mark 10:6

In a scene from Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm, the mathematician skeptical about whether the park is a good idea, watches the T-Rex burst out of its enclosure and says, “I hate being right all the time.”

Princeton Professor Robert George and other defenders of traditional marriage understand these sentiments. For years, they’ve warned that redefining marriage beyond the union of one man and one woman wouldn’t — indeed couldn’t — stop with same-sex unions. The same reasoning that extends marriage to same-sex couples would easily be applied to polygamy and polyamory also.

The standard response to these concerns was scoffing and accusations of fear mongering.

Well, the fences are down and the beast is loose.

On Valentines’s Day, the Scientific American published an article claiming that polyamorists could “teach us a thing or two about love,” and the only reason to oppose it was bigotry because of outdated views about love and sexuality. As I said on my Point commentary about the article, the flow of the argument sounded far too familiar.

And now, as if on cue, Slate magazine published an article on April 15 by Jillian Keenan arguing that polygamy should be legalized. As Keenan notes, the arguments about gay marriage being a “slippery slope” that will lead to legalized polygamy is something “we’ve been hearing about for years.” To which she adds, “We can only hope.”

She continues: “While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice.”

Keenan adds that legalizing polygamy would help to “protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.” How? By ending the “isolation” where “crime and abuse can flourish unimpeded.” That is, if polygamy is legal, she says, victims of abuse would be more likely to report abuses to the authorities.

Finally, she argues that respect for religious freedom requires legalizing polygamy. It isn’t only fundamentalist Mormons she’s concerned about: she cites “academics” who “suggest” that there may be between 50 and 100,000 Muslims in the U.S. who practice polygamy.

What’s most significant here isn’t the quality of Keenan’s arguments. The quality is poor. The treatment of women in countries where polygamy is legal makes her optimism about the impact of legalizing it seem dangerously naive. And her appeal to religious freedom is — shall we say — selective. There are plenty of law-abiding Americans whose religious freedom is under genuine threat who could benefit from this kind of solicitude.

No, the most significant thing about Keenan’s argument is not, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, that it’s made well, but that it’s made openly.

As Dr. George pointed out in “First Things,” when Christians pointed out the logical link between same-sex marriage and polygamy, proponents of same-sex marriage rejected the connection. They insisted that “no one is arguing for the legal recognition of polygamous or polyamorous relationships as marriages!” George writes in response, “That was then; this is now.” The “then” he referred to was last week; the now is today.

George predicts that Keenan’s article “will not produce a single serious critique by a major scholar or activist from the same-sex marriage movement.” Now he would love to be wrong. But defenders of traditional marriage know that the enclosures that kept marriage a “monogamous and exclusive union” are being dismantled. And no one should be surprised by what emerges, least of all those doing the dismantling.

________

==================

A similar article from the Baptist Press, May 1, 2013.

"Polygamy, the next marriage battle?" by Evan Lenow

While the battle over same-sex marriage still rages, it is hard to imagine what the next battle might be. However, astute observers of the marriage debate have already seen the newest challenge to the definition of marriage -- polygamy.

In a recent article on Slate.com, Jillian Keenan proposes that the legalization of polygamous marriage is a desired result of the current marriage debate. She argues:

“While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.”

Keenan is not playing the “same-sex marriage is a slippery slope” card to argue against same-sex marriage. In fact, she ridicules that argument as a “tired refrain.” Instead, she brands herself as a feminist who believes polygamy is in the best interest of women and society and perfectly in keeping with the arguments for same-sex marriage.

Besides the 2011 lawsuit to decriminalize bigamy and polygamy in Utah filed by the stars of TLC’s “Sister Wives,” the discussion of polygamy and its connection to the same-sex marriage debate has been fairly silent. Keenan, however, wishes to end that silence.

While admitting that the argument against polygamy has generally been that it hurts women and children, Keenan believes legalization would actually benefit them. She claims that polygamists live in the shadows and fear the authorities. If they were allowed to live in the open, they would be more likely to report instances of abuse.

In addition, she believes feminists should support polygamy because it empowers women. She states:

“Finally, prohibiting polygamy on ‘feminist’ grounds -- that these marriages are inherently degrading to the women involved -- is misguided. The case for polygamy is, in fact, a feminist one and shows women the respect we deserve. Here’s the thing: As women, we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like. If a woman wants to marry a man, that’s great. If she wants to marry another woman, that’s great too. If she wants to marry a hipster, well -- I suppose that’s the price of freedom. And if she wants to marry a man with three other wives, that’s her ... choice.”

At the end of her article, she gets down to the fundamental argument for why polygamy ought to be legalized. On this point, her logic is sound -- I just disagree with her first premise. She declares:

“The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less ‘correct’ than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority -- a tiny minority, in fact -- freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States -- and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.”

Keenan’s entire argument is built upon the idea that the definition of marriage is plastic. She believes it is constantly changing and must always expand to include the newest idea.

This is the clear connection to the same-sex marriage debate.

The current battle over marriage involves the definition of marriage. Proponents of same-sex marriage (and supporters of polygamy) consider marriage to be an intimate, emotional relationship between individuals. They offer no basis for discrimination according to gender or number. Thus, the “new” definition of marriage would allow for same-sex marriage and polygamy. If culture, and specifically the government, adopts this new definition of marriage, then Keenan is right. There will be no choice but to legalize polygamy as well as same-sex marriage. However, Keenan does not go far enough. Incest is the next step of progression. We could add to her argument above: “If a woman wants to marry a man, that’s great. If she wants to marry another woman, that’s great too. If she wants to marry a hipster, well -- I suppose that’s the price of freedom.” The next line should read: “If she even wants to marry her brother, that’s her choice.”

This is the direction of the debate. Keenan has opened the door and publicly stated what others have been ridiculed for saying. The definition of marriage matters. A redefinition of marriage will undermine the entire concept of marriage that has been recognized throughout human history. As Chief Justice John Roberts stated during oral arguments before the Supreme Court: “If you tell a child that somebody has to be their friend, I suppose you can force the child to say, ‘This is my friend.’ But it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend.” If we tell people they can marry whomever they wish no matter the gender, number, or blood relationship, I suppose we could call that marriage. However, it changes the definition of what it means to be married.

________

Evan Lenow is assistant professor of ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Called From Islam

Mark 8:34

To reach Muslims for Christ, you don’t have to be an expert in Islam. But it does help to know your own faith.

Did you know that there have been more large movements of Muslims coming to Christ in the last two decades than in the preceding fourteen hundred years combined? David Garrison has documented these movements in his book, “A Wind in the House of Islam.” He also tells how many Muslims are reporting dreams and visions about the truth of Christ.

Nabeel Qureshi grew up in a solid and loving Muslim family — and not just any Muslim family, but a devout family that, though residing in America, was very serious about their faith. Nabeel’s grandfather and great-grandfather were even Muslim missionaries to Indonesia and Uganda.

As a young boy, Nabeel had memorized large chunks of the Qur’an. By the time he had reached middle school, Nabeel had learned how to challenge and stump Christians who tried to share the gospel with him by asking them, for example, to defend the reliability of the Bible or the doctrine of the Trinity.

“I found out,” he said, “from a very early age that Christians just did not have answers to these questions. Each time I had a conversation, it bolstered my Islamic faith,” he told John Stonestreet. Nabeel stayed secure in his Muslim beliefs and identity until college, when he met a sophomore named David Wood.

David was a Christian, but when Nabeel challenged him, something strange happened. “David didn’t react like other Christians I had challenged,” Nabeel said. “He did not waver in his witness, nor did he waver in his friendship with me. Far from it — he became more engaged, answering the questions he could respond to, investigating the questions he couldn’t respond to, and spending time with me through it all.”

That, my friends, is a model of witnessing that we can all follow: explaining our faith as best we can, admitting when we don’t know the answers, doing our homework, and remaining a friend. And let’s face it: A lot of us just don’t know why we believe what we believe. As a consequence, we’re not ready for those kinds of intellectual challenges. This dishonors Christ and shortchanges our faith. After all, the command is to love God also with all our minds.

David Wood hung in there while the back-and-forth went on for years. Eventually, Nabeel had to reluctantly conclude that the case for Christianity was very strong. And then David asked Nabeel to give the Qur’an the same sort of critical treatment that he had given the Bible. He did, and he was shocked to learn that the case for Islam was so weak.

Distraught, Nabeel asked God to guide him into the truth, and you might guess what happened. After one vision and three dreams, a continued study of Scripture, and the faithful witness of a friend, Nabeel was faced with an excruciating choice: Did he love Jesus more than his family?

Finally Nabeel knew what he had to do — come off the minaret, pick up his cross and follow Jesus, no matter what. When he told his family, his mother was crushed, saying, “Why have you betrayed me?”

They left Nabeel, but Jesus didn’t. Nabeel wanted to die, asking, “Why, God?” And then he felt Christ’s answer: “Because this is not about you.” Now, Nabeel is an itinerant evangelist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, and his story has been published in his book “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim’s Journey to Christ.”

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Islam's 'Protestant Reformation'

Mark 7:3

In order to prevent a clash of civilizations, or worse, Islam must reform. This is the contention of many Western peoples. And, pointing to Christianity’s Protestant Reformation as proof that Islam can also reform, many are optimistic.

Overlooked by most, however, is that Islam has been reforming. What is today called “radical Islam” is the reformation of Islam. And it follows the same pattern of Christianity’s Protestant Reformation.

The problem is our understanding of the word “reform.” Despite its positive connotations, “reform” simply means to “make changes (in something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it.”

Synonyms of “reform” include “make better,” “ameliorate,” and “improve” — splendid words all, yet words all subjective and loaded with Western references.

Muslim notions of “improving” society may include purging it of “infidels” and their corrupt ways; or segregating men and women, keeping the latter under wraps or quarantined at home; or executing apostates, who are seen as traitorous agitators.

Banning many forms of freedoms taken for granted in the West — from alcohol consumption to religious and gender equality — can be deemed an “improvement” and a “betterment” of society.

In short, an Islamic reformation need not lead to what we think of as an “improvement” and “betterment” of society — simply because “we” are not Muslims and do not share their reference points and first premises. “Reform” only sounds good to most Western peoples because they, secular and religious alike, are to a great extent products of Christianity’s Protestant Reformation; and so, a priori, they naturally attribute positive connotations to the word.

________

At its core, the Protestant Reformation was a revolt against tradition in the name of scripture — in this case, the Bible. With the coming of the printing press, increasing numbers of Christians became better acquainted with the Bible’s contents, parts of which they felt contradicted what the Church was teaching. So they broke away, protesting that the only Christian authority was “scripture alone,” sola scriptura.

Islam’s reformation follows the same logic of the Protestant Reformation — specifically by prioritizing scripture over centuries of tradition and legal debate — but with antithetical results that reflect the contradictory teachings of the core texts of Christianity and Islam.

As with Christianity, throughout most of its history, Islam’s scriptures, specifically its “twin pillars,” the Koran (literal words of Allah) and the Hadith (words and deeds of Allah’s prophet, Muhammad), were inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Only a few scholars, or ulema — literally, “they who know” — were literate in Arabic and/or had possession of Islam’s scriptures. The average Muslim knew only the basics of Islam, or its “Five Pillars.”

In this context, a “medieval synthesis” flourished throughout the Islamic world. Guided by an evolving general consensus (or ijma’), Muslims sought to accommodate reality by, in medieval historian Daniel Pipes’ words,

translat[ing] Islam from a body of abstract, infeasible demands [as stipulated in the Koran and Hadith] into a workable system. In practical terms, it toned down Sharia and made the code of law operational. Sharia could now be sufficiently applied without Muslims being subjected to its more stringent demands ... [However,] While the medieval synthesis worked over the centuries, it never overcame a fundamental weakness: It is not comprehensively rooted in or derived from the foundational, constitutional texts of Islam. Based on compromises and half measures, it always remained vulnerable to challenge by purists (emphasis added).

This vulnerability has now reached breaking point: millions of more Korans published in Arabic and other languages are in circulation today compared to just a century ago; millions of more Muslims are now literate enough to read and understand the Koran compared to their medieval forbears. The Hadith, which contains some of the most intolerant teachings and violent deeds attributed to Islam’s prophet, is now collated and accessible, in part thanks to the efforts of Western scholars, the Orientalists. Most recently, there is the Internet — where all these scriptures are now available in dozens of languages and to anyone with a laptop or iPhone.

In this backdrop, what has been called at different times, places, and contexts “Islamic fundamentalism,” “radical Islam,” “Islamism,” and “Salafism” flourished. Many of today’s Muslim believers, much better acquainted than their ancestors with the often black and white words of their scriptures, are protesting against earlier traditions, are protesting against the “medieval synthesis,” in favor of scriptural literalism — just like their Christian Protestant counterparts once did.

Thus, if Martin Luther (died 1546) rejected the extra-scriptural accretions of the Church and “reformed” Christianity by aligning it more closely with scripture, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (died 1787), one of Islam’s first modern reformers, “called for a return to the pure, authentic Islam of the Prophet, and the rejection of the accretions that had corrupted it and distorted it,” in the words of Bernard Lewis (The Middle East, p. 333).

The unadulterated words of God — or Allah — are all that matter for the reformists.

Note: Because they are better acquainted with Islam’s scriptures, other Muslims, of course, are apostatizing — whether by converting to other religions, most notably Christianity, or whether by abandoning religion altogether, even if only in their hearts (for fear of the apostasy penalty). This is an important point to be revisited later. Muslims who do not become disaffected after better acquainting themselves with the literal teachings of Islam’s scriptures and who instead become more faithful to and observant of them are the topic of this essay.

________

How Christianity and Islam can follow similar patterns of reform but with antithetical results rests in the fact that their scriptures are often antithetical to one another. This is the key point, and one admittedly unintelligible to postmodern, secular sensibilities, which tend to lump all religious scripture together in a melting pot of relativism without bothering to evaluate the significance of their respective words and teachings.

Obviously a point-by-point comparison of the scriptures of Islam and Christianity is inappropriate for an article of this length (see my “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam” [HolwickID #65027] for a more comprehensive treatment).

Suffice it to note some contradictions (which will be rejected as a matter of course by the relativistic mindset):

________

• The New Testament preaches peace, brotherly love, tolerance, and forgiveness — for all humans, believers and non-believers alike. Instead of combating and converting “infidels,” Christians are called to pray for those who persecute them and turn the other cheek (which is not the same thing as passivity, for Christians are also called to be bold and unapologetic). Conversely, the Koran and Hadith call for war, or jihad, against all non-believers, until they either convert, accept subjugation and discrimination, or die.

• The New Testament has no punishment for the apostate from Christianity. Conversely, Islam’s prophet himself decreed that “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.”

• The New Testament teaches monogamy, one husband and one wife, thereby dignifying the woman. The Koran allows polygamy — up to four wives — and the possession of concubines, or sex-slaves. More literalist readings treat women as possessions.

• The New Testament discourages lying (e.g., Col. 3:9). The Koran permits it; the prophet himself often deceived others, and permitted lying to one’s wife, to reconcile quarreling parties, and to the “infidel” during war.

It is precisely because Christian scriptural literalism lends itself to religious freedom, tolerance, and the dignity of women, that Western civilization developed the way it did — despite the nonstop propaganda campaign emanating from academia, Hollywood, and other major media that says otherwise.

And it is precisely because Islamic scriptural literalism is at odds with religious freedom, tolerance, and the dignity of women, that Islamic civilization is the way it is — despite the nonstop propaganda campaign emanating from academia, Hollywood, and other major media that says otherwise.

________

Those in the West waiting for an Islamic “reformation” along the same lines of the Protestant Reformation, on the assumption that it will lead to similar results, must embrace two facts: 1) Islam’s reformation is well on its way, and yes, along the same lines of the Protestant Reformation — with a focus on scripture and a disregard for tradition — and for similar historic reasons (literacy, scriptural dissemination, etc.); 2) But because the core teachings of the scriptures of Christianity and Islam markedly differ from one another, Islam’s reformation has naturally produced a civilization markedly different from the West.

Put differently, those in the West uncritically calling for an “Islamic reformation” need to acknowledge what it is they are really calling for: the secularization of Islam in the name of modernity; the trivialization and sidelining of Islamic law from Muslim society.

That would not be a “reformation” — certainly nothing analogous to the Protestant Reformation.

Overlooked is that Western secularism was, and is, possible only because Christian scripture lends itself to the division between church and state, the spiritual and the temporal.

Upholding the literal teachings of Christianity is possible within a secular — or any — state. Christ called on believers to “render unto Caesar the things of Caesar (temporal) and unto God the things of God (spiritual)” (Matt. 22:21). For the “kingdom of God” is “not of this world” (John 18:36). Indeed, a good chunk of the New Testament deals with how “man is not justified by the works of the law ... for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Gal. 2:16).

On the other hand, mainstream Islam is devoted to upholding the law; and Islamic scripture calls for a fusion between Islamic law — Sharia — and the state. Allah decrees in the Koran that “It is not fitting for true believers — men or women — to take their choice in affairs if Allah and His Messenger have decreed otherwise. He that disobeys Allah and His Messenger strays far indeed!” (33:36). Allah tells the prophet of Islam, “We put you on an ordained way [literally in Arabic, sharia] of command; so follow it and do not follow the inclinations of those who are ignorant” (45:18).

Mainstream Islamic exegesis has always interpreted such verses to mean that Muslims must follow the commandments of Allah as laid out in the Koran and Hadith — in a word, Sharia.

And Sharia is so concerned with the details of this world, with the everyday doings of Muslims, that every conceivable human action falls under five rulings, or ahkam: the forbidden (haram), the discouraged (makruh), the neutral (mubah), the recommended (mustahib), and the obligatory (wajib).

Conversely, Islam offers little concerning the spiritual (sidelined Sufism the exception).

Unlike Christianity, then, Islam without the law — without Sharia — becomes meaningless. After all, the Arabic word Islam literally means “submit.” Submit to what? Allah’s laws as codified in Sharia and derived from the Koran and Hadith.

The “Islamic reformation” some in the West are hoping for is really nothing less than an Islam without Islam — secularization not reformation; Muslims prioritizing secular, civic, and humanitarian laws over Allah’s law; a “reformation” that would slowly see the religion of Muhammad go into the dustbin of history.

Such a scenario is certainly more plausible than believing that Islam can be true to its scriptures in any meaningful way and still peacefully coexist with, much less complement, modernity the way Christianity does.

Beauty Out of Ashes: Something’s Stirring In The Rubble of Lebanon

Joel 2:28

You think America has problems? Spend a week or two in Lebanon, and you’ll get a taste of what real — as in existential — problems are. Even Scrooge would sympathize.

Imagine scrounging barely enough food to eat once, maybe twice a day — even if you are a college-educated professional in Beirut, the former “Paris of the East.” Imagine having electrical power for an hour a day. Or spending eight hours in car lines waiting for a quarter-tank of gas. Or losing more than 90% of your buying power, if you still have a job. Or discovering your bank accounts are frozen. Or getting sick and finding no medicine anywhere, at any price, to relieve your suffering.

Your “government” consists of corrupt clan chieftains who refuse to relinquish power, even as the nation collapses. The largest and most powerful group, Hezbollah (“Party of God”), represents militant Shi’ite Muslims and answers to Iran. But numerous other tribal godfathers aren’t much better. They just don’t have as many guns.

One of the worst non-nuclear explosions in modern history — resulting from years of criminally negligent storage of tons of hazardous materials — killed hundreds of Lebanese, injured thousands and destroyed much of Beirut’s port and surrounding neighborhoods in August 2020. The area remains in ruins more than a year later.

Welcome to Lebanon

Welcome to Lebanon. The once-vibrant and beautiful country of 6.7 million people, wedged between Israel, Syria and the Mediterranean, is suffering. Over the past half-century, Lebanon has endured Palestinian occupation, Israeli occupation, Syrian occupation, 15 years of viciously sectarian civil war, the 2006 war with Israel, multiple political assassinations, the influx of more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees fleeing their own civil war, the huge 2019 demonstrations demanding political change (which yielded nothing), and COVID-19.

And now, one of the worst financial meltdowns in economic history is destroying what’s left.

Regardless of their circumstances, the resilient Lebanese pride themselves on muddling through, often with cheer and gallows humor. Not this time.

“It’s an utter hopelessness and despondency,” said a veteran Christian worker about the national mood. “In many ways, the explosion that happened at the port a little over a year ago was the last straw. People usually say, ‘We’ll get through this.’ But now they’re saying, ‘This is harder than the civil war.’”

Those who can get out have left or are leaving. Those who remain depend on remittances from family members abroad, relief aid and grim determination to survive.

“If your income is in U.S. dollars, which is less than 1% of the population, you’re fine,” said “Robert Sacker” (named changed for security), another longtime Christian worker. “But the 99-percenters are doing very poorly indeed. The Lebanese currency is worthless. Now we have people who were making $600 a month trying to get by on $40 a month. It’s impossible.”

Failed state

What brought Lebanon to the brink of failed-state status? Neighborhood bullies, such as Syria and Iran. Political, economic and societal corruption. Ransacking of the national treasury by clans and powerful families who jealously guard their positions.

Even the political power-sharing agreement that finally ended the 1975-1990 civil war contained the seeds of future destruction. Too many factions want a piece of the shrinking pie. At least 17 different groups, to be more precise: Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims (the majority); a variety of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christian sects; the Druz;, the Alawites; and so on.

Lebanon is not so different from other places in the Middle East, where diverse and sometimes warring groups found themselves thrown together in new “nations” arbitrarily drawn by Western powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. There are just more groups jammed into a smaller space.

“Lebanon is not so much a nation as a collection of families, clans and tribes,” Sacker explained. “In a failed state, Lebanese have always turned to the family, clan and tribe for help. They’re doing that now, because the government is essentially impotent. It is a country of patronage, not a country of laws.”

But with so little to go around, and the rest of the world distracted by larger problems (or tired of bailing out Lebanon’s corrupt power brokers), even the old patronage system is breaking down. Along with poverty, bitter social disillusionment has set in — including disillusionment with religion, particularly among Muslims.

“Part of it is a rejection of (militant) Islam, with mainstream Muslims separating themselves from some of the more radical groups,” said “Linda Smith,” another Christian worker. “But a lot of them slide into ... I wouldn’t call it atheism as much as hating religion and anything to do with it, especially the young generation.”

Movements to Christ

So why are many Lebanese Muslims now turning to Jesus?

On the surface, Christian sects and churches in Lebanon are struggling as much as everybody else — losing young people to the great exodus abroad, sinking into poverty. But behind the scenes, something deeper is happening in Lebanon, the wider Middle East and the Muslim world: Muslims have become more responsive to the Christian gospel message than at any other time in history.

Iran and Afghanistan have the fastest growth rates among evangelical believers of any locations on the planet, according to Operation World. American missiologist David Garrison has identified 69 statistically significant “people movements” toward Christ in the Muslim world since the year 2000 (defining a “movement” as at least 1,000 believers or 100 churches). That is a staggering number, considering the painful and violent history of Muslim-Christian interaction.

Many observers credit the major, church-based prayer movements of the 1990s for this trend, along with generations of Christian outreach, widespread social turmoil in the Muslim world and a demand among Muslim young people for more freedom. But some things in the spiritual world cannot be chalked up to human activity.

Everywhere Muslims are coming to Christ, they talk about having dreams and visions — usually of a man dressed all in white. He tells them he is Jesus, or prods them to seek out a Bible or a particular believer they know. In my own journalistic travels in the Islamic world, I have interviewed many Muslims who tell this story.

“It seems to be a combination of things God is using to draw Muslims to himself,” Smith said. “The bold proclamation of his word, but also social media, satellite TV, internet and radio, while at the same time dreams, visions and in certain cases, miraculous healings.

“They’re crying out for hope. And in places of such sheer desperation like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, (Jesus is) all about bringing beauty out of ashes and showing people he is for them, not against them. More Muslims are coming to Christ now than ever before in Lebanon.”

More than bread alone

Many churches and Christian NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Lebanon are focusing intensively on distributing food, medicine and other aid to get the needy — whatever faith they may follow — through the current crisis. Muslims appreciate that, but they aren’t just looking for material help.

“Bill Kendrick,” a young Christian worker, lives in the heavily Shiite Bekaa Valley, east of Beirut, which also is crowded with Syrian Muslim refugees. They’re desperate for work to feed their families, to be sure, but they want more. The worse the economic situation gets, he reports, the better the spiritual climate becomes.

“There’s younger guys and women coming to faith left and right,” Kendrick said. “But even among the elders and heads of households, dreams and visions are very common.”

One Shiite man he befriended, who can trace his lineage back to Muhammad, planned to become a sheik (Muslim leader). But as he studied the Quran, he began to see contradictions. So he read the Bible and became a believer.

Kendrick urges new believers to count the cost of following Christ, because they almost certainly will face anger and shaming from their families, possible family or community expulsion, and maybe worse. It goes with the territory but doesn’t deter serious seekers.

One church holds a service most American evangelicals would recognize. “But then the pastor has a separate service, and you see all these covered (Muslim) women coming in, and Muslim men worshiping the Lord,” Smith explained. “It’s exciting.”

So if you’re worried about America’s troubled state this Christmas, take heart. Things could be worse. And even if they get worse, the light shines in the darkness.

Richard Dawkins, A “cultural Christian”

John 1:5

[In the spring of 2024] Richard Dawkins, one of the so-called “four horsemen” of the New Atheists and longtime implacable foe of Christianity, made a fascinating confession to host Rachel Johnson of LBCNews. The Oxford biologist and author of The God Delusion, expressed concern after seeing Islamic Ramadan lights on a street that once featured Easter lights.

I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. ... I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. ... We [in the U.K.] are a “Christian country” in that sense.

Dawkins then told Johnson that he’s “horrified” to see Islamic holidays and mosques taking the place of Christian feasts and cathedrals in Europe.

If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.

A torrent of interesting and often funny reactions followed the interview. Rod Dreher pointed out that for Dawkins to claim he likes cathedrals and Christmas carols but is glad church attendance is declining is like saying he enjoys eating but is glad his country’s farms are closing. Writer Henry George remarked that “Rebuilding [civilization] means accepting the source, not the effect, of Christianity.” He then quoted historian of philosophy Remi Brague who said, “We owe European civilization to people who believed in Christ, not to people who believed in Christianity.” Another posted on X that Dawkins’ desire for a Christian society without allegiance to Christ is a “hydroponic Christian culture that doesn’t actually have its roots down in that dirty soil of actual belief in God.”

Perhaps the best response was from historian Tom Holland, also not a Christian but who has long made the case that Christianity is responsible for the freedoms, science, and belief in human rights that made the West. He has also argued that even militant atheism, enlightenment, and progressive politics are ultimately garbled echoes of a biblical story in which “a people walking in darkness see a great light.” Holland wrote:

[S]ecularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture — as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise.

They’re all right, of course. Dawkins’ comments were a tacit admission that, for decades now, he has been wrong to claim that science and secularism are the source of all that’s good in Western culture. In fact, it is the worldview centered on a God who became man and died on a cross because He “so loved the world” that is the source of hospitals, churches, esteem for women and children, human rights, and even the music, art, and culture that Dawkins cherishes. For one of the world’s most outspoken God-haters to realize this is quite remarkable.

Still, there would be none of the fruits of Christianity without its roots, specifically the essential beliefs in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord; and the rest. Another Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis pointed this out in the 1940s in The Screwtape Letters. Lewis wrote, “Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop.” Lewis knew, better than Dawkins, that God will not be used as a means to an end. He is the end.

Of course, this isn’t the end of Dawkins’ journey. Given the things he’s said lately, Christians should be quicker to pray for him than to say, “I told you so.” Pray that God, in His kindness, would open the eyes of Dawkins as He did for Saul of Tarsus. Perhaps, he too, will be confronted by a Savior who asks, “why are you persecuting me?” Even more, we should pray that this atheist’s candid admissions are a wake-up call to a Western world who wants to feast at Christ’s table without bowing at His feet. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is more than capable of reviving a secular society.

Islamic Spiritual War #1 1:12:52

by Avi Lipkin

The sermon highlights the central role of Israel in God's plan, the threat of nuclear war, and the three-pronged attacks on Israel, emphasizing the need for vigilance and preparati

Islamic Spiritual War #2 - Wake Up America 1:15:11

by Avi Lipkin

Avi Lipkin discusses the existential threats facing Jews from Islamic extremism and the need for Jewish-Christian reconciliation in the face of these challenges.

Islam: Threat or Opportunity 1:01:19

by George Verwer

Islam is both a threat and an opportunity for Christians, and we must rethink our theology and witness in the face of Islam.

Apologetics and Islam 41:07

by James White

James White discusses the challenges of apologetics in addressing Islamic critiques of Christianity, emphasizing the need for a strong theological foundation.

Ministering to Muslims 1:08:48

by Wagdi Iskander

The sermon emphasizes understanding the Muslim mindset and the complexities of engaging with them in a culturally sensitive manner.

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