Islam and other Believes
updated 11-08-2009
Is this the truth?
There is at least one big problem with this claim. Each believe says
at some point that they are the ONLY WAY to God, or the only way of
life.
If Christianity for example says it is the only way to God and Islam
says it is the only way to God, they can not be both right. At least one
HAS to be wrong. There is also a possibility that all believes are
wrong, but they certainly can not ALL be right.
I have read the bible several times and I have read the Quran, the Holy book of Islam twice. The biggest difference between Christianity and all other religions, if I may call it that, is the SAVIOR. Only Christianity has a savior that died for us to forgive our sins and therefore make a way to heaven for us. And then Jesus Christ rose from the dead. No other believe has this, all of their founders are still in their graves.
The interesting thing is, that I found lots of connections in the Quran to the bible.
Many connections to the bible
I found Adam, Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David and many other bible
persons in the Quran. A lot of Old Testament stories are mentioned in
the Quran. The people of Israel are mentioned as God's special people.
Jesus is clearly mentioned as being sent by God, being the son of the
virgin Mary and being filled with the Holy Spirit. But the Quran denies
Jesus to be the son of God and it denies the crucifixion.
The Quran teaches forgiveness.
It teaches to fight and kill for Islam, but it also teaches to stop the
battle, when the enemy stops. To attack an enemy that stops and offers
peace is forbidden.
The Quran teaches to be generous in giving money and posessions.
It declares the Thora (Old Testament) and the Gospel to be given by God
as earlier writings. But at the same time teaches to hate Christians and
Jews - a contradiction.
The Quran teaches about hell, paradise and the resurrection.
The Quran clearly forbids
suicide.
Contradictions
There are clear contradictions found within the Quran.
It declares God (Allah) to be almighty and that he can do anything he
wants to do. At the same time it denies Jesus to be the son of God,
because Allah does not have a wife and therefore is not able to have a
son.
The Quran teaches to forgive and stop fighting the enemy, when he retreats. In another chapter however the Quran teaches to decapitate and kill unbelievers everywhere and keep on fighting until Allah's religion is everywhere. Later on it teaches not to force an unbeliever to become a Moslem.
In one place the Quran teaches to fight against and kill the unbeliever, in another chapter it teaches to patiently bear evil.
Now we have two major problems:
1.) How can we reconcile the teachings of the Quran with the current blood thirsty, murdering and hateful behavior of many islamic leaders and their followers?
2.) The bible does not contain any contradictions, but the Quran does, which makes the rest of its contents questionable.
A partial answer is, that the vast majority of Moslems can not read
or write. That makes it very easy for islamic leaders to teach other
things besides the Quran. The same thing has happened in middle age
Europe, when few people could read and write and the bible was written
in Latin only.
Moslems have added more rules to the Quran which are commonly referred
to as Shariah law. This makes it even more difficult to get to the truth
and easier for islamic leaders to teach which ever way it pleases them.
Most Islam countries have vowed to annihilate Israel and the USA. They want to forcefully spread their believe over the whole earth. They kill everyone who converts from Islam to any other believe. Women in Islam live under total oppression. The sanctity of life that is still commonly observed among judeo-christian nations does not exist in Islam.
What the bible says about the Arabs:
Some scholars believe, that Ishmael was the father of all Arabs. He was
the son of Abraham and Hagar. But Hagar was not Abraham's wife. She was
the Egyptian bondservant of Abraham's wife Sarah.
The scholars draw their reasoning from the following Scriptures:
Ge 16:11 The angel of the LORD also said to
her:
“You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him
Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery.
Ge 16:12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against
everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers. ”
Ishmael's half brother is Isaac who is the
father of all Israelites. This shows that the hostility between Arabs
and Israelites was laid here as consequence of Sarah's doing and
Abraham's agreeing with her.
Ge 17:18
And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your
blessing!”
Ge 17:19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son,
and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an
everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
Ge 17:20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him;
I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will
be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.
The promise, which God tells Abraham about
Ishmael only tells us, that a great nation with many rulers will derive
from him. But the promise, which God gives to Ishmael's mother Hagar
before Ishmael was even born, tells us a lot about the attributes of
this nation and gives us another clue about the problems we are seeing
today in the middle east. Gal
4:22
Those are the consequences of Sarah taking matters into her own hand
instead of completely trusting in God. If Sarah would not have given her
maidservant to sleep with Abraham (and Abraham agreed to it), Ishmael
would have never been born. The apostle Paul explains this in his letter
to the Galatians:
Gal 4:29 At that time the son born in the ordinary (fleshly)
way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same
now. Gal 4:30 But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of
the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share
in the inheritance with the free woman’s son."
(Emphasis mine)
The only way an Arab or Moslem can ever have peace with a Jew or
Christian is through the saving grace of Jesus Christ by accepting the
forgiveness of HIM who died on the cross as
the atonement for all of our sin.
Out of all of this I conclude the following:
Because Islam has derived from the bible, but has
become the total enemy of Christians, Jews and the nations they live in,
it must be the devils counterfeit to Christianity.
Satan is the declared enemy of the followers of
God, just as Islam has become the archenemy of Christians and Jews alike.
The bible agrees with this by telling us, that Israel
is surrounded by enemies and that the final battle of this world will be
between Israel and its neighboring nations.
The good news is that God will be fighting for HIS chosen people Israel.
(compare Ezekiel chapter 38 & 39 and Revelation 19)
Other Believes
For this paragraph I will just quote what Maurice S. Rawlings M.D. writes in is excellent book "To Hell and Back".
Charlie's hell experience forced me to dust
off the old Bible that night, and to look at other books of faith as
well. All these faiths seem based on the afterlife, but their ideas are
different. One book of faith often refutes the other. So which doctrine
is more authoritative? It was important that I know for myself. I felt
my own life was too important to entrust to any one denomination or any
one minister. Which book of faith represents the truth? To compare with
the Judeo-Christian Bible I selected the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of
the Dead, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tripitaka,
the Agamas, the Avesta, the Tao-te-King, the Kojiki, the Talmud and the
Koran.
Surprisingly, most of them described both a heaven and a hell. But each
claimed their own god or tradition as the only way to heaven. More
generous, however, were some of the eastern faiths. They allowed that
all roads lead to heaven.
While several of these books of faith claimed miracles, none compared in
number and veracity with those contained in the Judeo-Christian Bible.
In addition to miracles, there was still another area unique to the
Judeo-Christian Bible: the area of prophecy. Precise accuracy for past
prophecies suggested a similar expected accuracy for future prophecies.
And I found another astounding thing: the slightest errancy in prophecy
mandated the death penalty. The Judeo-Christian prophets had to be
right. What about today's modern prophets--the fortune-tellers, the
mediums, the clairvoyants, the astrologers--would they bet their lives
on the outcome of their prophecies? None of today's psychics are 100
percent accurate, and this becomes a marvelous focal point to
differentiate the psychic secularist, who can be wrong, from God's
psychic, the prophet, who can never be wrong. To me, the insignia or
proof for the one true God is the inerrant accuracy of Judeo-Christian
biblical prophecy.
With this in mind, I made it a point to visit the graves of most of the
world's religious founders during my teaching travels. And I was amazed.
All of the graves were occupied except one. And that empty grave
belonged to the only religious founder who claimed deity. It was Jesus
Christ.
I want to add, that the Judeo-Christian faith is the only one to offer forgiveness and salvation.
Experiencing an Imam
This is what Rick Mathes leader of Mission Gates Prison Ministry experienced in a conversation with an Imam, a Muslim priest:
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