Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? JD Greear Controversy, Neil Shenvi & Billy Graham

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Testing the Spirits podcast. In this episode, we're going to be addressing the question, do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? A controversy has broken out.

J .D. Greer of the Gospel Coalition, he was also the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, so this matters. J .D. Greer has come out and made comments where it seems to indicate he thinks that Christians and Muslims actually worship the same God.

Now, in the past few videos, I've been talking about Hillsong. The past few podcasts, we've talked about Hillsong. The leader, founder of Hillsong, Brian Houston, came out and explicitly taught this, that the God of Islam, Allah, is the same God that Christians worship.

We call him Abba Father. They call him Allah. It's the same God. Even Billy Graham made some statements, concerning statements about this. I'm going to play you that clip in a moment. So this is a relevant issue.

This is actually nothing new. Many people have come out and said that, yes, Christians and Muslims do worship the same God. All religions worship the same God, and there's many paths to God, and this really does eventually take it to its logical conclusion.

It leads to universalism. So I think we need to address this, and I want to be clear where I stand. No, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. Why? Because the God that we worship as Christians, he became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

And the Bible teaches that if you don't have the Son, you don't have the Father. But let's read these comments by J .D. Greer. And like I said, this is important because Greer was the president of the SBC, the largest Protestant evangelical denomination in the country.

He is a very well-known, influential pastor within mainstream evangelical Christianity. And his comments, while I don't think this is a new quote, has been dug up because another leader in his church, a man named Neil Shenvey, who also is part of TGC, the Gospel Coalition, Shenvey has made similar statements in defense of his pastor, J .D. Greer.

So let's read what they had to say, and then we'll compare it to what the Bible says, and then we'll play that clip from Billy Graham. So let's read this. This is from J .D. Greer's book, Breaking the Islam Code.

He says, Muslims claim to worship the God of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Most missionaries find it therefore helpful to use the Arabic term God, Allah, meaning literally the deity, to refer to God, and to explain that the God Muslims believe in, the God of the prophets, was the God also present in bodily form in Jesus Christ, and the one worshipped by Christians for the past two millennia.

You might ask, but isn't the Islamic God so different from the Christian God that they cannot properly be called by the same name? Aren't we worshipping two different gods? J .D. Greer says, believing wrong things about God and worshipping Him incorrectly does not mean one is worshipping a different God.

Many first century Jewish people rejected the Trinitarian nature of God, and that Christ was a messenger of God, yet the apostles did not say that those Jews were worshipping a different God. Now, I totally disagree with that.

I think that is exactly what the apostles said. Well, we're going to read 1 John chapter 2, but I referenced it a moment ago, so I would say yes, they actually did say that, but that's what J .D. Greer says in his book, and then Neil Shenvey came to his defense.

This is what Neil Shenvey wrote, do Jews and Muslims worship the same God as Christians? I was inclined to say no, but Acts 17, 23 seems hard to square with this. If pagans worshipping at a pagan shrine to an unknown God were worshipping God in ignorance, what are the implications?

And obviously he is indicating that he agrees with J .D. Greer that no Muslims and Christians do worship the same God after all. My friends, that is simply not true. And what Paul did at Mars Hill in Acts 17, Paul's point was not that the heathen were actually worshipping the true God after all.

He was simply using the altar to the unknown God as an opportunity to say, okay, this God who you don't know, let me tell you about him. Okay, that was just what Paul used as an opportunity, nothing more.

That cannot be twisted into a justification that, hey, Christians and Muslims and Jew, we all worship the same God after all. No, that's outlandish, absolutely outlandish. So what does the Bible say? Okay, we heard what J .D. Greer said, we heard what Neil Shenvey says, but what does the scripture say?

1 John 2, 22 and 23, the apostle John writes this, who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is antichrist who denies the father and the son. Whoever denies the son does not have the father either.

He who acknowledges the son, that is the son of God, has the father also. So this has always been the Christian teaching. If you don't believe that Jesus is the son of God, if you don't have the son, you don't have the father.

And it's an established fact that the prophet Muhammad and all Muslims, they deny that Jesus is the son of God. It's written in the Quran, Allah has no son. Now they do claim that Jesus was a prophet, which is what confuses some people because Muslims, sometimes they will say, we believe in Jesus, but they don't.

They're sort of like the Mormons. It's a different Jesus. Okay. It's a different Jesus. He's not the son of God. He didn't die on the cross. So they will use the same terminology, but they redefine terms.

So when a Christian says, when I say, I believe in Jesus, I'm saying, I believe he's the son of God. He died on the cross for my sins. He rose again the third day. Muslims, again, they reject all of that.

In short, they deny the Trinity. So when, when J .D. Greer says that they were all actually worshiping the same deity, why would, why would anyone think that? It's just not the teaching of the new Testament has not been the teaching of Christianity for 2000 years.

Why are they saying it now? You know, why is this just coming forward in the last, you know, 60, 70 years? Well, it's because there has been a shift in the culture. The culture is moving away from Christianity towards, you know, tolerance and inclusion and universalism.

I think people want to be up with the times and they want to scratch itching ears. This is what people want to believe. So high profile leaders, I think, compromise and tell people what they want to hear.

That's my take on it. So we looked at the new Testament, first John. What about the old Testament? How many old, think about it. How many old Testament verses talk about the true God being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Muslims reject that as well. They say that the true God is the God of Abraham and Ishmael. So they claim that Ishmael was actually the chosen son. In other words, they reject the teaching of the old Testament.

So again, J .D. Greer is wrong. And this is why many people are now accusing him of heresy. Now, listen, if he wants to come out and clarify, I don't know how you get around what he wrote, but if he says, that's not what I meant, or I recant, or he takes that paragraph out of his book, then great.

But even if he does, let's be honest, J .D. Greer is anything but a sound Bible teacher. He's woke. He preaches CRT, that is critical race theory, in his sermon from Romans 1 a few years ago. He concluded in a sermon from Romans 1 that Christians should be the fiercest supporters of gay rights.

That was his conclusion from Romans 1. Yeah. So Greer is heavily compromised, to say the least. But this idea that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, this is more common than you think. I remember back when George W. Bush was elected, yes, I'm that old, I guess, right?

Billy Graham came out back then when Bush was elected in 2000. Billy Graham came out, I remember he said how wonderful it was to have a born-again Christian in the White House. George Bush is a born-again Christian.

I know him. I've been discipling him. And I thought, oh wow, George Bush is a born-again Christian. Then I saw George Bush on ABC News saying that the Bible wasn't literally true, that Islam was a religion of peace and that all religions get you to God.

Well, where would George Bush get such an idea? Where would Greer get such an idea? Is it possible they learned this from the man that both say they so greatly admire, Billy Graham? Well, let's listen to what Billy Graham had to say in this interview about his friendship with Muhammad Ali.

Listen. You recently played host to Muhammad Ali. Black man. You're a white southerner. He's a black Muslim. His religion, as I understand it, doesn't speak too kindly of Christians.

Well, you know, it's very interesting. If you study the Koran, you find that Muhammad had a great deal to say about Jesus Christ. He was a great admirer and follower of Christ. He felt that Christ was the greatest of the prophets.

And you find that he, all the Old Testament, of course, Muhammad accepted. And I think there's a lot of evidence to say that if the Christians had treated him properly at that time, he would have been a great Christian leader instead of starting what was later to become a new religion.

And Muhammad Ali is a very devout person. From the time he got off the plane, and I met him at the airport, and he was quite surprised. He thought I would have an assistant meet him at the airport. And he kissed me.

And he said that he had listened to me ever since he was a little boy. And he said, every time you're on television, I watch. And he said, I've always wanted to meet you and be with you. But from the moment he got in the car and I was driving, he talked about nothing but God and religion and faith.

And he's trying to find a way in which he can serve God the rest of his life and sort of reconcile different groups that may be apart.

Okay, so a few things. First of all, Billy Graham said that Muhammad, the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a follower of Christ. That's not true. If Muhammad was a follower of Christ, he would be a Christian, because that's what a Christian is, a follower of Christ.

Just because, again, just because you use the name Jesus or because someone says, I believe in God, the question is, what do you believe about God? Do you accept the teachings of Jesus? And how do you know what Jesus taught?

Well, it comes down to faith in the Bible, God's word. Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Besides Muslims claim that the Bible has been corrupted, which is why they follow the Quran and not the scripture.

And then Billy said about Muhammad Ali, who was a Muslim, that he just wants to serve God. Muhammad Ali just wants to serve God and reconcile these different groups. It's interesting he used the word reconcile, because the only way people can be truly reconciled, that is to God, is through faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 12 -21.

But this is something that Muslims clearly reject. So the fact is, when it comes to Christians and Muslims worshiping the same God, Muslims, they don't even claim this. So why are Christian ministers trying to push this idea?

I think the answer is simple. This is what people want to hear. This is what is popular in the culture, that everyone is okay. All religions have their own path, tolerance, inclusion, universalism. This is what most people are inclined to believe.

And I'm really convinced you can't be a big name, famous Christian celebrity and have everyone love you unless you severely compromise in your doctrine. And that's what we see here. So in conclusion, if there is someone listening right now, maybe you have never believed on Jesus, that is the true Jesus found in the New Testament.

It is my prayer that you would believe on him today. Or maybe you know someone who has bought into this false gospel of universalism. We need to point people to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.

Romans 10, 9 says that if you would confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And Jesus said in John 14, verse six, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes unto the father except through me. Jesus is the only way. So if you have trusted in him, the next step is to get baptized and to join a good local Bible believing church and make sure it's a church that believes what I just said, that they believe the Bible, because there are far too many churches today that are willing to compromise on the gospel and fundamental issues.

Only Christians worship the true God because to get to the father, the Bible is very clear. Jesus himself was very clear. You have to go through the son. Amen. Amen. Thanks for listening. And until next time, may the Lord be with you.

Have a great day.