July 29, 2024 Show with Dr. Samuel Green on “Where to Start with Islam”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 29th day of July 2024, or if you're listening down under where my guest is broadcasting live from today in Australia, I'm wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 30th day of July 2024.

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They are 15 hours ahead of us there, and my guest had to get up very early in the morning to be with us today, and I'm so thankful for that.

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But before I introduce my guest and the topic at hand, I just want to remind our listeners, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free, biannual

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. And for the very first time, we are going to be featuring

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Dr. Joe Boot, founder of the Ezra Institute, as our keynote speaker.

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Boot free, but your rest, relaxation, fun feasting, and fellowship are not the only things that are free.

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You are also going to be leaving there with a heavy sack of free, brand new books, personally selected by me and donated by generous publishers all over the

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United States and United Kingdom. The whole thing is free of charge, so if you're a man in ministry leadership and you would like to attend this event,

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Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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You will automatically be registered for free for this event, and I hope as many of you as possible will attend.

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Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first -time guest today to discuss a very important topic.

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His name is Dr. Samuel Green, Islamic specialist for the

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Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, and one of the founding authors with EngagingWithIslam .org,

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and today we're going to be addressing his new book, Where to Start with Islam, A New Approach to Engaging with Muslim Friends.

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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Dr.

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Samuel Green. It is great to be with you, Chris, and thank you for that very generous introduction.

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It's my pleasure, and once again I give you my heartfelt thanks for getting up so early to be on the program today there in Australia.

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Well, before we even get into the contents of your book, we have a tradition here, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, including any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, so I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

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Of course. My story begins with my mother, who was a

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Christian. She married a non -Christian, unfortunately, and so that meant that she didn't attend church.

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There was no encouragement within the family to attend church, but I was sent to Sunday school for a year or two when

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I was quite young, and I can remember, even though that was a long time ago,

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I can still remember an important lesson that the Sunday school teacher said, and he was just talking about how

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God is all -knowing and the Bible is the Word of God, and those lessons stuck with me even when

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I was, you know, eight years old or however old I was at that time. Unfortunately, I turned my back on that and wanted to play sport and go out on the weekend and do other things, and then during high school,

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I took a path of saying that, you know,

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I don't believe in God. I don't want to follow the Christian path, and that's how it was throughout high school until I was about 17 or 18, and it was at that time that I started to ponder life, and as I was pondering life,

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I was searching for, you know, how do we understand what's right and wrong? Why do

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I get angry at this? Why should I get angry at things like this? And I started to see that without God, there was no basis to anything.

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There was no basis for me to say this was right and wrong, and I started to think that through, and that particularly came about through, you know, having an argument with a good friend and then thinking about that in terms of right and wrong and how that made me feel and how it made me understand the basis for things.

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I think there was another thing as well, and that was I was studying physics at school, and I can remember we were learning about the

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Big Bang, and I asked the teacher just, you know, what started the Big Bang, and he said to me, well, we don't know, and that shocked me because I thought we had sorted everything out, and then

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I thought, oh, well, maybe God did start the Big Bang. You know, maybe

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God started the universe. Maybe there's a creator. So it was a number of those types of things coming together.

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I was given a Gideon's New Testament at school. I went to a public school, and I can still remember the boys ripping up the

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Bibles and throwing them in the bin, but I said, oh, no, I'll keep this one, and I still have this Gideon's Bible, and so I started to read it, and I began reading at Matthew, and I used to get up in the morning and read part of the

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Bible as part of my routine before I got my day started, and I was reading through Matthew, and I saw the

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Lord's Prayer, and so I thought, oh, well, this is a good prayer. I'll start saying this prayer, so I was sort of getting discipled just from the

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Bible itself. I didn't know any Christians, and I wasn't attending church or anything.

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I was just reading the Bible myself, and then one day, I was working pumping gas in what we called a service station in Australia.

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It's where you sell petrol or gasoline, and I was an attendant at the service station, and a man came into the service station where I was and just walked straight up to me and said, are you a

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Christian, and I said, I think so. I think so. Up until that time,

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I'd been reading the Sermon of the Mount and trying to live according to what

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Jesus had said, but this had led to an acute awareness of my own sinfulness as well, and so I didn't feel that I was good enough to be able to call myself a

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Christian, and this man came in, and he said to me, are you a Christian?

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I said, I think so, and he said, have you been born again? And this is the mid-'80s, so I'd heard of born again on the news, and I said to him, what's that?

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And he said to me, if I had a Bible, I'd show you. If I had a

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Bible, I'd show you, and now he didn't know that I used to carry this Bible around with me, reading it, trying to work out what

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I was meant to do, right? And so I reached under the counter, and I pulled out this

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Bible, and I said, well, here's a Bible. Show me. And so he said, excellent, and so he took me to John chapter 3, and he explained about God's free gift, and the work of the

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Spirit of God, and how salvation is what God has done for us in Jesus, and it's not about what we do for God, but it's

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God's work for us, and he explained the cross, Jesus dying for my sins, Jesus giving you life, and when

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I heard that, I knew it was true, because I'd spent, I guess, the last year and a half trying to live a life under the law, to please

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God, and I was acutely aware that I wasn't able to do that, and when

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I heard what God had done for me, I knew it was true, and that it fitted into who

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God was, and it fitted into what the Bible was saying. And so I said,

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I think he said to me, do you want to become a Christian? I said, yes, yes, I do. And so we prayed in the service station there, and I became a

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Christian, and I can still remember the sun feeling different as I came out to do some work in the yard, in the service station, that I knew

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I now had peace with God, and I knew that I was now a Christian. So that's the short version of my story.

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Well, several things we have in common. I was saved in the mid -80s by the grace and mercy of Christ, and I also worked in a service station, but that was years before I got saved.

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I was a teenager when I worked at a service station, a mobile gas station in Amityville, Long Island, and years later in my mid -20s, which was in the mid -80s, that's when

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I was rescued by Jesus Christ and saved, and delighted to hear this story.

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Now, what was it that drew you to attend and join an

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Anglican church? Yes, so the gentleman who shared the gospel with me was a real evangelist, as you could imagine, and I started going to his place for Bible studies, and then

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I went to his church. That was a Pentecostal church, and that was where I started off.

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In time, I was also at university, and when

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I was at university, I was sitting under the ministry of a man named Philip Jensen, and he's an evangelical leader in Australia, and he was teaching the

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Bible during the university day, and I'd go along to these

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Bible studies that he would have, and he would be preaching, and it happened to turn out that he was preaching from Matthew's gospel, and it was all the sections that I'd been reading and not really understanding, you know, who are the

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Pharisees, who are the Sadducees, you know, why this, why that, and he would just do exegetical preaching, going through the passage verse by verse, and I loved it.

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I went, you know, this is what I want to hear. I want to hear the Word of God, and so I started off in the

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Pentecostal church, but I came across to the evangelical church because of the

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Bible teaching that I experienced under Philip Jensen, but I'm always thankful to the Pentecostal church because of their zeal of evangelism and church planting, but I ended up in the evangelical church through the ministry of Philip Jensen.

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And when you say evangelical, you're specifically talking about the evangelical Anglican church. I'm talking about the

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Sydney Evangelical Anglican church, yes. Yes, and that's the connection with Philip Jensen.

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Yes, and people may be aware of him. I'm not sure. Well, when did you realize that you had a burden upon your heart to reach the

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Muslim people with the gospel of Jesus Christ? So after being a

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Christian for about six months, the church

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I was attending, which at that stage was still a Pentecostal church, you know, they made it clear that we need to be sharing the gospel, and Philip Jensen was making it clear that we need to share the gospel.

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And so I was. I had done a training course called Two Ways to Live, which is about presenting the gospel.

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And so I was taking opportunities. I guess I was copying the man who shared the gospel with me, you know, by God's grace.

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I saw him as a model to my life and an example on how to live the

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Christian life. And so I was sharing the gospel wherever I could. And some of my friends were

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Muslim. And what I found was that when

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I shared the gospel with them, they were much more prepared to reject the gospel and not just reject it, but completely undermine the

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Christian position. Wow. So my general Australian friends, you know, so like my white

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Australian friends, I could talk to them about Jesus. And in the 80s, they sort of knew the gospel a bit already.

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You know, they knew Jesus was the son of God. They knew he died on the cross. They knew these things, but they just weren't living by it.

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And so, you know, they still had that Christian residue in their understanding. And so they would just say to me, we don't want to do this.

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We don't want to do this. And sometimes we might talk about, does God exist? So that might be the type of discussion we'd have.

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You know, we don't want to do it. That's your opinion. We don't even know God exists. But with the Muslims, they would say to me, we already believe in Jesus.

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The Bible's been changed. And, you know, you need to become a Muslim. And then they would have a whole lot of arguments.

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So I went to a meeting that was held in Sydney Town Hall with an

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Islamic speaker named Ahmed Dadat. And that was totally packed and spilling out onto the main street in Sydney with Muslims coming to see this man.

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And this man got up and just denounced the cross, denounced salvation by the cross and by the grace of God.

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And I saw that they were very well prepared to convert

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Christians. There were Christians getting up at this meeting who'd become Muslims. And I went, oh, wow, there's a lot of resources they've got here.

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There's a lot of preparation they have. I've never experienced this before. And within my evangelical community, there was nobody really engaging with the

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Muslim people. And part of the training I'd had from Philip Jensen was if you see an area in the church that needs a ministry happening to it, you know, go and do it.

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Go and do it. So Philip's very entrepreneurial. And so is my father, where my father was.

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And so I just started to learn in this area and to develop resources to help defend

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Christians in this way and also to be able to share the gospel with Muslims. Praise God.

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Well, can you tell us something about the fellowship of evangelical students,

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I'm sorry, the Australian fellowship of evangelical students? Yes.

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So we are a university student mission.

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We are like the inter -varsity groups that I assume you have in the U .S. where there's a

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Christian ministry that is run on the university campus. And the idea of that ministry would be that it gathers the

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Christians who are on campus together, a university campus, or I think you'd call it a college over there.

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And we would run, or we do, we run ministries on campus to gather the

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Christians where we'll have Bible teaching, discipleship. We'll do evangelism together,

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Bible teaching conferences. And so that's been going in Australia for quite a while now.

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And AFES, the Australian fellowship of evangelical students, is the main group, the main ministry in Australia that's across the university campuses.

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And so we have staff workers and student teams who work together on basically every campus across Australia.

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And we meet for a national conference at the end of the year. We have our own local conferences.

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And, you know, we get on with the work of the Lord on campus. Praise God.

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And now tell us how you became one of the founding authors with EngagingWithIslam .org.

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Okay, so there's two websites here. I'm one of the founding authors for AnsweringIslam .org.

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So that's Answering -Islam .org. I'm one of the founding authors for them.

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That was actually started by a German man, and I joined that in the late 90s as the internet was coming up and going.

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So I'd been developing this material for use in evangelism and answering Muslim questions before the internet.

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And then when the internet came up, like -minded people networked, and we all found each other on the internet.

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And Answering Islam is the main website that responds to Islam and helps

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Christians know how to talk to Muslims and how to answer their questions. I have made my own website called

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EngagingWithIslam, and that's the name of my own personal ministry. And that's where I have all of my training material.

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So I have an online training course that people can do. I have a whole lot of evangelistic leaflets that people can download and a whole lot of other things.

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I can't even remember all of them now, but there's a whole lot of training. So that's my hub. EngagingWithIslam .org

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is my hub, and that's where I direct people, and that's the one that I particularly work on.

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Great, and we'll be repeating that website later on in the program. Right now we've got to go to our first commercial break, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own about the

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Islamic religion, about how to engage with Muslims, about the very serious differences on our faith and how we are going to achieve a wonderful afterlife, well, send in your questions to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are a

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Muslim. You're starting to question your religion. You're starting to be drawn deeper and deeper into the

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Christian faith, or you're at least having more questions arise in your mind about it, and you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this point.

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We understand that. And I'm sure there are many other reasons why a person would be compelled to remain anonymous during a program about Islam.

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But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Samuel Green and where to start with Islam right after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's royaldiadem .com. I mentioned Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with Samuel Green, and we are discussing his book

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Where to Start with Islam, A New Approach to Engaging with Muslim Friends. Perhaps it would be wise for you to, as briefly as you can, because I do have other programs that give a more in -depth and more fully explained and detailed description of Islam as a religion.

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But if you could give us the primary issues, the primary things that must be believed as a

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Muslim, and perhaps in contrast with Christianity. The Islamic religion defines itself by what it would call the five pillars of Islam and its basic beliefs.

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And so for a Muslim to be a proper

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Muslim, they need to confess that there is one God whose name is Allah and that Muhammad is the prophet of God, the prophet of Allah.

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So that's how you become a Muslim. You become a Muslim by confessing really the oneness of God.

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It's not a confession of sin or of how to be saved in the way that we would become

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Christian. For them, it's about acknowledging that there's one

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God. The practice of this religion is then to be praying five times a day, to be celebrating the

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Islamic festivals. Ramadan is a big time when they do a lot of good works during Ramadan.

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Ramadan is when the good works that you do are multiplied by two.

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They're doubled. And so it helps you earn enough good points.

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So in Islam, Allah has done nothing to save you. And so you have to save yourself.

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You have to do enough good deeds to earn his mercy. And that's done through the number one way that you are saved in Islam, the guaranteed way.

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And so there actually is assurance of salvation in Islam. And that is to be a martyr in the cause of Islam.

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And so the martyrs are guaranteed paradise. They're the only group in the

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Quran who are guaranteed paradise. And so they do enough good works to have entry into paradise.

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For other Muslims, including Muhammad, they go to the grave first.

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And then in the grave, you know, hopefully they've got enough good deeds from what they've done during life.

37:37

Other people can do good deeds for them while they are in the grave.

37:44

And, you know, when all these things come together, hopefully they will make it to paradise. So it's a system of works for salvation.

37:56

But there is assurance for those who pay the price for Islam.

38:05

Am I covering the areas that you want me to cover here? Yeah. And just to go back to the monotheism of Islam, that's one thing we have in common.

38:17

We are, as Christians, monotheists. But the

38:22

Muslims believe it is impossible to be Trinitarian and a monotheist.

38:29

And in fact, from what I understand, according to them, we are guilty of the worst sin that could possibly be committed, the sin of shirk, because we believe that Jesus is

38:41

God. And they would categorize that as adding partners to God, which is an unforgivable sin in Islam.

38:54

It is. Well, I'll make a few comments then on Trinity and how we engage with Islam in terms of the doctrine of Trinity.

39:04

One of the things with Islam that is good is that Islam forces us to learn our doctrine.

39:11

It forces us to learn our doctrine. When we're engaging with the secular world, they don't encourage us to expound the

39:21

Trinity. They don't challenge us on the Trinity. They talk about, is there such a thing as male and female?

39:27

So that's what we're engaging with at the moment with our secular world, those types of issues.

39:33

But when you engage with Muslims, you engage with the doctrine of the Trinity. You engage with the doctrine of the incarnation.

39:40

You engage and have to articulate salvation. You've got to talk about the reliability of the

39:46

Bible. We actually get to talk about really good subjects with our Muslim friends.

39:53

They ask us, you know, what I would say are much more important subjects. You know, the character of God, Christology, those types of things.

40:01

Now, when it comes to the Trinity, my way of addressing that with Christians and with Muslims is to first of all say to Christian leaders, stop saying that the

40:15

Trinity is difficult. We really need to stop saying it's difficult, and we need to do some solid work in learning how to articulate the doctrine.

40:25

People might say, well, hang on. It is difficult. How can three persons be in one nature and one nature shared by three persons?

40:36

Now, how does that make sense? Now, that observation is true.

40:42

That observation is true for a human. That's true for a human. It's true from our human experience.

40:49

How do three persons in one nature fit together? That's true, but that's true for a human.

40:55

And so we mustn't take what is true of a human and use that as our standard for saying what is logical about God.

41:04

And for me, that's where we need to start. We need to start by letting God be God, by letting God just be simply different to us.

41:14

Then we need to learn how to show from the Scriptures what we mean, and obviously

41:19

I'm just going to do this very briefly here. But when we read the Scriptures, we see that there is clearly one

41:25

God that is reiterated throughout the Scriptures. But from the very second verse of the

41:33

Bible, we see that there is the Spirit of God. So it's not a monism where there's just this singularity of pure substance and that's all that can be said.

41:45

No, no. From the very second verse of the Bible, we see that there is the Spirit of God, and as we read through the

41:51

Scriptures, we see that God creates by His Spirit. The Spirit knows.

41:57

The Spirit is described in divine terms, and the

42:04

Spirit is spoken of as being the breath of God. Now when the Spirit is spoken of as being the breath of God, that's a description in which it's saying the

42:15

Spirit is of the same nature as God because God doesn't create His breath.

42:21

The breath is a way of describing part of God, and so the

42:27

Spirit is spoken of as part of sharing the one nature of God.

42:34

Yet as we read Scripture, we see that the Spirit intercedes for us and does the work of the

42:40

Father, and so we see that there's a distinction of persons. And so the way the Spirit is described in the

42:47

Bible is in monotheistic terms. There's one God who breathes out

42:52

His Spirit. The Spirit shares the one nature, but there's a distinction of persons, and we see the same thing with Jesus.

43:01

When Jesus is described as the Word of God, to talk about Him as the

43:07

Word of God is monotheism. It's a deliberate monotheistic statement.

43:12

There's God who speaks His Word, so it's monotheism. We're not talking about two gods. We're talking about monotheism.

43:20

The Word of God shares in the one nature of God because God creates by His Word.

43:26

He doesn't create His Word. He creates by His Word, and so it's a statement of nature that there's one

43:33

God with His Word, and that Word is of the same nature as God. Yet as we read the

43:38

Gospel, we see a distinction of persons. And so that's a very short summary of how we need to be clear on articulating these things of the one nature of God, which is revealed through the

43:53

Father, the Son, and the Spirit who all share the one nature and yet are distinct persons. Now when it comes to Islam, we need to push back with them because it's very easy to attack the

44:07

Trinity. It's easy just to say, oh, it doesn't make sense, and nobody can explain it.

44:14

I've even heard pastors in churches get up and say these things, and it horrifies me. If they haven't done the hard work of learning their doctrine, they shouldn't be saying that to their churches.

44:26

And so the thing is when it comes to the Trinity, we must not let people reject the

44:36

Trinity and leave it at that. They have to offer an alternative. They have to offer an alternative.

44:42

So I'll give you an example. The Jehovah's Witnesses reject the Trinity, but they still have to define

44:49

Father, Son, and Spirit. So how do they do it? Well, they say that the

44:54

Father is God. Okay, that makes sense. The Father's God. Then they say that the

45:01

Holy Spirit is a force. Now, that actually doesn't make sense because in the

45:07

New Testament, it's very clear, and even the Old Testament, that the Holy Spirit speaks, the Holy Spirit can be grieved, and the

45:14

Holy Spirit intercedes with us to the Father. So he's not a force. So that doesn't work.

45:20

And then they say that Jesus is the angel Michael. Now, that doesn't make sense because the whole of Hebrews 1 is about how

45:33

Jesus is greater than the angels, and Colossians 2 talks about how

45:38

Christians are not to worship angels. And so Jesus is not an angel.

45:44

And so the point I'm trying to make here is that if you reject the Trinity, you still have to define

45:51

Father, Son, and Spirit. And when we look at every alternative that is given, none of them are true to Scripture.

45:57

And this is also true for Islam. So within the Koran, it will speak about the

46:03

Holy Spirit, and it speaks about the Spirit as the breath of God. Now, how do

46:10

Muslims interpret the Father, Son, and Spirit? Well, they say that God is not

46:16

Father. So the Koran denies the fatherhood of God, and I guess that that can work.

46:21

Okay, God's not Father, even though all the prophets would teach that he is, but this is what they would say,

46:27

God's not Father. They would say that Jesus is just a man. Okay, I guess that that can work if you're going to take the

46:34

Islamic worldview. But then they say that the Holy Spirit is the angel

46:40

Gabriel. And this is how they define the Holy Spirit as the angel

46:46

Gabriel. Now, what that means is that when the Koran says God breathed out his spirit, they're led to saying that God breathed out the angel

46:58

Gabriel, that God breathed the angel Gabriel into Adam, that God breathed the angel

47:03

Gabriel into Mary. And of course, at this point, this whole system falls over because you've now got an angel who is

47:11

God's breath and coming from within God. And I hope you can see how it doesn't work. And this is where it's

47:20

Saint John of Damascus who brought this up. He said to the Muslims, you accuse us of associating others with God.

47:28

You have chopped God into pieces. You have chopped off his spirit.

47:34

You have chopped off his word. And this is how we need to push back to Muslims. We say we haven't associated anything with God outside of how

47:43

God describes himself. You're the ones who have chopped God into pieces. You've chopped off the spirit.

47:49

You've chopped off his word. We hold God together. The Trinity is the only doctrine that holds the oneness and the distinctions of God together, whereas Islam has chopped

48:00

God up and is just trying to hold his oneness together and fails to do so. Now, when you were saying earlier that the

48:08

Jesus of Islam is just a man, I'd like you to clarify that because obviously

48:13

Islam has a very high view of Jesus. It's still a false

48:19

Jesus because it is not a Jesus whom is deity, so therefore it is a fictitious

48:28

Jesus. But at the same time, they don't believe that Jesus and I are the same level of humanity.

48:35

They believe that Jesus is a very superior state of being and role in the life of Muslims.

48:48

They absolutely do place Jesus in a very high position.

48:53

Now, part of this comes because of, I need to take a step back.

48:59

This comes back to their doctrine of sin. In Islam, you are not corrupted by sin.

49:06

So human nature has not been corrupted by sin. And the result of that is that it's not just that Jesus is at a higher level than us, but there's a whole ladder of heights of closeness to God that you can achieve.

49:26

And so these are called stations in the Quran where, you know, the unbeliever is at a low station, the

49:35

Muslim is at a higher station, the jihadist is at a higher station. So Surah 4, verse 95 and Surah 9, verse,

49:46

I think it's 118, both talk about how the jihadist is at a higher level and closer to God than the normal Muslim who doesn't go out on jihad.

49:56

And then the prophets are at a higher level than them. And so it's that medieval idea of different levels and closeness of God that you can achieve through your own effort.

50:08

It's like a ladder and people can be at different stages. Now, of course, Jesus is right up there. He's, you know, he's one of the prophets, one of the great prophets of God.

50:18

And so he's at a very high level. And they would, in fact, say that Jesus has been raised up by Allah already and is with God in the heavens now.

50:30

So, yes, he's very different to us. But. And that was he in the religion of Islam, sinless and born of a virgin.

50:44

He's certainly born of the Virgin Mary. So there is a, you know, that is spoken about a few times in the

50:54

Koran. So he certainly has that story. Now, you need to realize, though, that Mary in the

51:01

Koran or Miriam, as her name is in the original language for all of us, that when

51:08

Muhammad talks about Mary, he is meaning Moses' sister.

51:14

So the Koran, the Koran talks about Mary or Miriam, Jesus' mother, as Aaron's sister and Amram's daughter.

51:27

And so Muhammad doesn't, he doesn't understand the chronology of the prophets.

51:33

And he's heard the name Mary associated or Miriam associated with Jesus. And he's heard the name

51:40

Miriam associated with Moses, Aaron and Amram. And he's thought they're one of the same.

51:45

So, yes, but yes, Jesus is born of a virgin, of the Virgin Mary. And yeah, and he is.

51:56

Well, it doesn't explicitly say he is sinless. It does say in the Koran that he is pure.

52:02

It also talks about his mother in the in the Hadith. And I may need to explain what the

52:07

Hadith are. But he, you know, the Hadith also talk about Mary being sinless as well.

52:14

Because remember, in common Islamic belief, all the prophets are sinless. You see, there's a couple of ways that Islam undermines the cross.

52:26

It's not clear on the crucifixion. And we might talk about that later. So it's not clear on the crucifixion and most would say it denies it.

52:34

But there's another way that you can undermine the crucifixion. And the salvation of Jesus death.

52:41

And that is to say that all prophets are sinless. And so when I talk to Muslims and I say that Jesus is sinless and he died for your sins.

52:53

The way they may interpret that is, well, all prophets are sinless. You know, all of them are.

52:59

And so when I talk to them, I need to show how Muhammad is sinful. And so you need to know how to do that.

53:06

And you can do that actually from the Koran. There's verses in the Koran which talk about Muhammad having to confess his sins.

53:14

So Muhammad's not equal to Jesus even in terms of Islam itself.

53:22

Let's pick up where you left off there when we come back from our midway break. And folks, again, if you have any questions about Islam or about engaging your

53:35

Muslim friends with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:44

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back. I'm Dr.

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01:12:41

Samuel Green, as we continue our conversation, where to start with Islam, a new approach to engaging with Muslim friends.

01:12:52

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And before the break, Samuel, you were talking about how

01:13:00

Muslims believe that their Jesus, which is obviously a false

01:13:07

Jesus because it is not Jesus who is God, but their Jesus is sinless, but that doesn't really exalt him to a completely unique position because, as you said,

01:13:23

Muslims believe all their prophets are sinless. Now, when you said that, are you speaking of the fact that they believe their prophets achieve sinlessness or that they were from birth sinless?

01:13:38

Well, the Islamic doctrine is that we're born pure.

01:13:45

So there is no doctrine of original sin. There is no corruption of human nature. In Islamic doctrine, you are born pure, and then it's up to you to live the pure life.

01:13:58

And so some things will make you impure. Some things will keep you pure.

01:14:04

And so the prophets have a special protection from God.

01:14:10

And so they live the pure life. They live the pure life. And so that's how they would say it, that the prophets are the example for us on how to live.

01:14:21

But how did they explain, as something you just pointed out before the break, that the

01:14:27

Quran itself describes Muhammad, their prophet, as asking

01:14:33

God for forgiveness? Yes. Now, this is part of what's happened within Islam in that you have what the

01:14:43

Quran teaches, but then Islamic theology develops in the subsequent centuries, and very often it develops in new directions.

01:14:57

So, for instance, the Quran says that the Bible is the word of God, that there should be no distinction between any of the holy books.

01:15:05

Yet, the way Islamic doctrine has developed for various reasons is that the

01:15:10

Bible has been changed, really against the Quran. You've got the idea that the prophets are sinless.

01:15:16

But when you go and read the Quran, it does tone down the sins of the prophets, but they're still there, and Muhammad still needs to confess his sin.

01:15:29

The Quran never talks about the return of Jesus or anything like that. These ideas all come from outside.

01:15:38

And so, I'm just trying to remember where we're going with that point.

01:15:44

I was just trying to show how Islamic doctrine develops. And so, yes, what this means is that very often when you're talking to a

01:15:51

Muslim, you can actually show them verses to bring them back and to challenge what they currently believe, because it's not what the

01:16:00

Quran itself is actually teaching. And that's what I do in my training course. I've got sessions on that where I help

01:16:09

Christians to understand, you know, what are some of the verses in the Quran that we can use. And one more thing about their

01:16:17

Jesus. Doesn't he have a unique role in their eschatology about – don't they believe he is returning and that he has some significant role in the end of civilization?

01:16:33

Yes, they – well, as I said, if you read the Quran, there is no indication or even assumption of the return of Jesus.

01:16:42

And so, Muslims who would call themselves Quran -only Muslims do not believe in the return of Jesus.

01:16:51

Most other Muslims will, but that's because they get their teaching from these other books, which, as I said, have continued to develop

01:17:00

Islamic theology. The Hadith. These are the books called – sorry? The Hadith. These are called the

01:17:07

Hadith. And these are the books which in practice are just as important as the Quran. And just a little point on this.

01:17:16

Often, Muslims will want to compare the Bible to the Quran, but you need to understand that the

01:17:22

Islamic canon is not the Quran. The Islamic canon is not the

01:17:28

Quran. Now, most people don't know. There are actually 10 different Arabic Qurans which are canonized so that they don't have one

01:17:37

Quran contrary to what they'll tell us. And their canon in practice also includes these other books called the

01:17:43

Hadith. And these are the short accounts of Muhammad's life as to how he practiced the religion and the things he said about God.

01:17:53

And so, they have these two components to their canon. They all agree today on the

01:18:01

Quran, although most would not know about the 10 different Arabic Qurans. But they disagree strongly when it comes to the

01:18:09

Hadith. So, Shia Muslims who are Iran and Iraq and a lot of other

01:18:19

Muslims associated with them, they have their own Hadiths, whereas Sunni Muslims have another collection of Hadiths.

01:18:29

But what you will find is when you talk to them and you show them something from the Hadith, they will just say it's not authentic and they don't accept it.

01:18:37

So, they've got a very loose canon. The Islamic canon is not fixed in the way that ours is.

01:18:46

But it's not just the Quran. It's the Hadith as well. And you need to know that because they will want to just compare the

01:18:52

Bible to the Quran. And that's not really comparing what they say.

01:18:57

Now, when it comes to the return of Jesus, they get this idea from the

01:19:03

Quran. I'm sorry, from the Hadith. And the idea is that Jesus will come back.

01:19:10

And this is what I mean by the theology developing in unusual ways, in that if you just read the

01:19:19

Quran, it never talks about the return of Jesus. And it says that Muhammad is the final prophet.

01:19:26

Okay? So, if Jesus comes back, well, he's a prophet. So, Muhammad's not the final prophet.

01:19:32

And this is what I mean as to how the Hadith can develop away from the Quran. And so, the idea is they say, well, he comes back, but he's going to teach

01:19:43

Islam. And so, now the Hadith develops this idea of Jesus' return, that he comes back as a prophet of Islam.

01:19:50

He's going to abolish the jizya. Now, the jizya is the terms of surrender that Christians pay so that Muslims will stop jihad against them.

01:20:05

I believe that the United States was even paying jizya back in the 1700s for U .S.

01:20:11

citizens to not be enslaved by the North African Islamic states that were there.

01:20:18

And so, it's something that's actually significant in our history, where Christians have had to pay

01:20:23

Muslims money so they won't enslave and conquer us. And so, the idea is that when

01:20:28

Jesus comes back in Islamic theology, he's going to abolish the jizya, which sort of sounds good.

01:20:35

You know, you don't have to pay the protection money anymore. But what that actually means is that there's no protection, that the jihad now goes against you with no restraint.

01:20:46

He's going to kill all pigs and he's going to break all the crosses. So, that's the eschatology that they have.

01:20:55

But again, it's found in the Hadith. Look, it's actually a really great way to evangelize

01:21:00

Muslims. So, I was talking to a young man at university and he came to me and he said, does the

01:21:05

Bible say anything about the return of Jesus? And I said, yes, it does. And Muslims, you know, they have their own fixation on the return of Jesus and the end times.

01:21:18

But when you read the Quran, as I've said, there's nothing there. And so, where do they go? You know, they can go to these

01:21:24

Hadiths, but the Hadiths, you know, they don't have much information. So, what I said to this young man was

01:21:30

I said, look, I'll give you a Bible. I want you to go and read Matthew Chapter 24. So, he went and read

01:21:35

Matthew Chapter 24. He loved it. He absolutely loved it. Now, did he understand every element of what is spoken about in Matthew 24?

01:21:43

And Matthew 24, for those who may not be sure, that's talking about Jesus and – sorry, that's

01:21:49

Jesus talking about the destruction of the temple and the end of the age. But this young man loved this and it got him reading the

01:21:56

Bible. And so, the return of Jesus is actually a great evangelistic tool that we can use because many

01:22:04

Muslims want to know about it. But they don't have any information about it.

01:22:10

And I have a leaflet on this called The Return of Jesus on my website. So, I've got a whole lot of evangelistic leaflets that you can download and print off and, you know, give them out to your

01:22:22

Muslim friends or have them on tables. And one of them is about, you know, the return of Jesus.

01:22:28

Okay. Well, let's move on to an important element of your book, which is revealed in your subtitle, the title being

01:22:38

Where to Start with Islam and the subtitle being A New Approach to Engaging with Muslim Friends.

01:22:47

Can you, before you give the new approach, can you describe perhaps, at least in summary form, what you think would be the dominant approach that you are offering a new version of, the dominant approach that perhaps you believe had flaws or needs to be updated?

01:23:11

Of course, we always have the same gospel. There's nothing that changes about the gospel of Jesus Christ or his inerrant word.

01:23:20

And God himself is immutable. He never changes. But the way that we relate to people on this earth may change.

01:23:30

And so what do you think was going on between Christians and Muslims that required a new approach?

01:23:41

Yes. So the new approach that I am proposing is, it addresses the context that I'm sure most of your listeners would find themselves in.

01:23:56

And that is that when it comes to learning about Islam, it's fairly low down on the agenda for most churches.

01:24:05

I'll come back to why that's the case in a moment. But it's low down on the agenda.

01:24:11

And so we normally only get, like people like myself, normally only get a few hours to train

01:24:18

Christians in general congregations. There are certainly people who will want to spend more time on learning about Islam, and we can give them more information.

01:24:31

But the question that I've had is, when I've only got people for one and a half to two hours, what am

01:24:37

I going to say? What am I going to say? How do I introduce the subject of Islam to any

01:24:44

Christian in a way that's going to be practical and equip them to talk to their Muslim friend?

01:24:50

So that's the context that I'm talking about. Now, the general approach that I did for 15 years, and that I see in the books on world religion, and I see in other training courses that people do, is that you say, okay, we're going to talk about Islam.

01:25:07

Here are the five pillars of Islam. There's the confession of faith in Muhammad and in God.

01:25:13

There's the five daily prayers. There's the pilgrimage to Mecca. There's the money for Islamic causes. And there's the feasting and fasting during Ramadan.

01:25:21

And so the Christian's there, and they're going, okay, I've got to remember the five pillars. And then there's the basic beliefs in the oneness of God, the prophets, the books.

01:25:32

And I can't remember the last two beliefs, but they're sort of overlapping with those other ones.

01:25:37

And so then the Christian's trying to remember those. And what I found was that I was teaching these things, and then people would go away, and they found it useless in their evangelism to Muslims.

01:25:51

And this is because when you talk to a Muslim, and they find out you're a Christian, they don't talk to you about the five pillars.

01:26:00

They don't bring them up. And there I was, you know, for years, getting university students to remember the five pillars, and this is how you understand

01:26:06

Islam. I came to see that there's actually a much better way when you've got limited time to prepare a

01:26:14

Christian, and that is to not talk about the five pillars and the basic beliefs, but rather to look at what does the

01:26:23

Quran say about Christianity. And so what I mean by this, and this is really the thesis of the book, what

01:26:31

I mean by that is when it comes to learning about Islam, the question is not so much first, what do

01:26:37

Muslims believe, but to consider when Muhammad was, when they started believing this.

01:26:46

Now, what I mean by that is Muhammad dies, A .D. 632, so he's roughly 600 years after Jesus.

01:26:54

That's a long time. Now, what this means is that when you read the Bible, Muhammad's not in it, right?

01:27:02

He's 600 years in the future. So you read in the Book of Acts, and the Apostle Paul is in Antioch in Syria.

01:27:09

He's not talking to Muslims, is he? You read the Book of Acts. There's no interaction with Muslims.

01:27:16

There's with Jews and magicians and all types of people, but not with Muslims.

01:27:23

It's for an obvious reason, that they don't exist. And so for Christians, for Bible -believing

01:27:29

Christians like you have on your program here, when we're reading the Bible, Islam just does not come up.

01:27:36

It's not on our agenda. It's not compulsory to learn. You can be a mature Christian and know nothing about Islam.

01:27:43

The situation is the exact opposite when it comes to the religion of Islam and Muslims.

01:27:50

Christianity is a major subject in the Quran. In fact, there is more time given to Christianity and attempting to refute it than there is to the

01:28:02

Five Pillars. And so what this means is that when you go to talk to a

01:28:08

Muslim and they find out you're a Christian, they don't bring up the Five Pillars. I've never actually had a

01:28:13

Muslim bring up for me the Five Pillars. I've spoken to hundreds of Muslims, and they've never brought up the

01:28:18

Five Pillars. What they bring up is what the Quran says about Christianity.

01:28:23

And so what I've done in my training is I say, let's teach

01:28:29

Christians. The first thing we teach them is what does the Quran say about Christianity?

01:28:35

What does it say about the cross? What does it say about the trinity? What does it say about the incarnation? Because just think about this.

01:28:41

The Quran prepares Muslims for the cross, that they write books on the cross of Christ.

01:28:48

Just as we've got John Stott's The Cross of Christ, they have their own books on the cross of Christ. So when you're sharing the gospel, they've already got a doctrine of the cross.

01:28:58

When you talk about God and you're talking about God the Father and the Son, they've already been primed to reject that.

01:29:07

When you talk about Jesus as God, they've been primed to reject that. So you're not speaking to someone who's neutral to this.

01:29:15

You're speaking to someone who has been prepared to push back to you, and they really have 1 ,400 years of historical theology on how to refute

01:29:25

Christianity. And for me, this is the number one thing that Christians need to understand, that Muslims are prepared for us.

01:29:36

They're prepared for us for all of our unique, distinct doctrines.

01:29:42

And I have found that when Christians understand this and take the time to look at these verses, that they remember this and they say, okay,

01:29:51

I now understand the context that I'm going into. Now, what this means is that when a

01:29:57

Christian and a Muslim talk, the Muslim normally is well -prepared to talk to the

01:30:04

Christian because they just know the Christian beliefs. They may have a wrong understanding of them, but part of being a

01:30:13

Muslim, part of going to the mosque on Friday is that you learn how to refute the Trinity.

01:30:19

You learn how to refute the cross. That's just their bread -and -butter lessons from the Koran. And so when a

01:30:27

Muslim meets a Christian, they're ready to talk to the

01:30:32

Christian and to bring up these issues, whereas the Christian generally is just trying to find out about Islam, that the

01:30:40

Christian knows no more about Islam than they do about Buddhism or Hinduism. And so the

01:30:45

Christian is there trying to go, you know, what is it you believe, and I want to find out what you believe, whereas the

01:30:51

Muslim is saying the Bible's been changed, the Trinity doesn't make sense, and they've got verses from the

01:30:58

Bible that they're ready to use. And so this is the first lesson that I give, where I say to Christians, understand your context, understand the context that you're in.

01:31:10

Now, once you understand that, you're in a position to say, I know what to expect and I'm not going to, you know, let them pull the wool over my eyes.

01:31:21

But on the one hand, the Koran prepares Muslims for Christianity, but the door swings both ways.

01:31:30

The door swings both ways, and what I mean by that is Muslims are meant to learn about Christianity.

01:31:40

Just think about that. Muslims are meant to learn about Christianity. I mean, this is actually a great thing that we can use.

01:31:48

You see, Buddhists don't have to learn about Christianity. They may learn about it, they may not.

01:31:54

They don't have to. Hindus, they don't have to learn about Christianity. Their religion is sort of complete as it is.

01:32:02

But when it comes to Muslims, they are meant to learn about Christianity.

01:32:08

And so this is the simple application that I give to Christians. I say to them, you don't need to know any of these verses from the

01:32:16

Koran. You don't need to know about the five pillars. When you meet a Muslim, the first thing, you know, you get talking and you can simply say to them, oh, you're a

01:32:26

Muslim, I'm a Christian. What does Islam teach about Christianity? What does it teach?

01:32:31

And just listen to them. Now, when you listen to them, you will find out who they are and where they're coming from and how you need to approach.

01:32:41

And so I'll give you two quick examples. I was on the university campus. I met a Muslim man there.

01:32:47

And I asked him, what have you heard about Christianity? What have you been taught? And he said, well, you've changed the

01:32:53

Bible, and Jesus never died on the cross. He would have learned that from YouTube and from satellite

01:32:59

TV. And I said, okay, and that was really good for me to know. And so he and I have now met up.

01:33:06

I brought him to a Franklin Graham crusade down here in Australia, and so we're long -term friends.

01:33:14

I was speaking to another young Muslim man, and I said to him, what have you heard about Christianity?

01:33:20

And he said, I've heard nothing. I know nothing about it. And that was great for me to know.

01:33:26

And he spent six weeks reading the Bible with us. And so this is my opening question.

01:33:32

There are two aspects to what I say to do. The first is to say to a Muslim, what have you heard about Christianity, and listen to them.

01:33:39

Don't try to correct them. Just listen to what they've got to say and find out who they are.

01:33:46

But then once you've listened to them, say to them, can I show you one thing about Christianity?

01:33:53

Can I show you one thing? And to date, I've always had Muslims say yes to me. I've always had them say yes because I've listened to them,

01:34:01

I've listened to what they've had to say, and now I'm just saying, can I show them one thing?

01:34:07

And then the one thing that I want to show them is what books are in the Bible, what books are in the

01:34:14

Bible. Now, why do I want to show them what books are in the Bible? Well, it's because one of the key beliefs in Islam is that Muslims believe in all the prophets.

01:34:25

And they'll say this to us. They'll say, oh, we believe in Jesus and all of the prophets. We make no distinction between any of them.

01:34:33

We love the prophets. You cannot be a Muslim unless you believe in Jesus and all of the prophets.

01:34:39

And for this, this is a type of assurance that they have. You know, we believe in all the prophets.

01:34:45

We believe, you know, we know the message of all the prophets. We know what they're all about. And so this is the

01:34:52

Islamic mindset, that they believe in all the prophets. Now, I want to show them what books are in the

01:34:58

Bible because why? Because the Bible actually contains the books of the prophets.

01:35:06

I'll do a simple comparison between the Quran and the Bible. See, what is the Quran? The Quran is a collection of what

01:35:12

Muhammad recited over about a 23 -year period. But the

01:35:18

Quran is just Muhammad. Okay? It doesn't have the book of Isaiah. It doesn't have the book of Genesis.

01:35:26

It doesn't have the book of Ezekiel. It only has Muhammad. And this is what people need to understand.

01:35:32

Islam is the religion of one man. It's the religion of Muhammad and what he says about the prophets.

01:35:42

And so when a Muslim says to you, we believe in Jesus, what they mean is they believe in everything

01:35:51

Muhammad tells them about Jesus. When they say they believe in Moses, what they mean is we believe everything

01:35:58

Muhammad tells us about Moses. And it's the same for, you know,

01:36:03

David, for Jonah, for Job. Muslims will say, we believe in all these prophets. But what they mean is they only believe what

01:36:11

Muhammad says about them in the Quran. Now, that's not believing in that prophet. That's believing in what

01:36:16

Muhammad says about that prophet. And this is a key point that Islam is a religion based on one man telling you what to believe about the prophets.

01:36:30

It's exactly the same as the Baha 'i religion, if people are familiar with the Baha 'is. You see, the Baha 'is believe in all the prophets.

01:36:36

You cannot be a Baha 'i unless you believe in Muhammad. You cannot be a

01:36:41

Baha 'i unless you believe in Jesus, in Moses, in David, in all the prophets. But the Baha 'is only believe what their prophet says about Muhammad.

01:36:50

They only believe what their prophet says about Jesus. You get my point here. Now, my first Bible study with a

01:36:58

Muslim for this reason is the table of contents. And this is sort of my new approach.

01:37:05

I ask Muslims what they've heard about Christianity. I don't ask about five pillars or anything like that.

01:37:10

I say, what have you heard about Christianity? I listen to them. I find out where they're coming from.

01:37:16

And regardless of where they're coming from, I just keep that in mind. And then I say, can I show you one thing?

01:37:23

And then I take them to the table of contents. And we look at the table of contents and we look at who's there.

01:37:30

And I say, have you heard of Moses? Yeah, I've heard of Moses. Here's the law of Moses. Christians read

01:37:37

Moses. Okay, and then I say, have you heard of Job? Yeah, I've heard of Job. Okay, here's the book of Job.

01:37:44

I'll show them Job. Now, this for a Muslim is a real eye opener because they don't know what's in the

01:37:52

Bible. They think it's just one book by Jesus or Paul or something like that. And when you start showing

01:37:58

Muslims that the Bible is not one book, but a collection of many books from many prophets over about a 1 ,500 -year period, and that Christians read all the prophets, you're showing them something which is profound.

01:38:15

You're explaining something about Christianity which is very different to Islam. And so you can compare the two books and you say, do you see how

01:38:23

Islam is just based on one man, whereas as Christians we read all of the

01:38:29

Bible? Can you see how from my perspective you don't believe the prophets? From the

01:38:36

Christian perspective, you don't believe the prophets, you just believe Muhammad. Christians are the ones who believe the prophets because we read them all.

01:38:45

Now, when I go through this with Muslims, by and large, they don't want to accept that because I'm undermining one of their chief foundations for why

01:38:56

Islam is a true religion. And so it may sound like a simple thing that I've just done here, but it's a profound thing that changes the whole discussion.

01:39:07

It helps Christians to not be deceived when a Muslim says, oh, we believe in all of the prophets.

01:39:13

The Christian now goes, oh, no, you don't. You believe in Muhammad. You don't believe in Jesus.

01:39:18

You just believe what Muhammad says. And it helps the Muslim to see that they don't believe the prophets.

01:39:25

And this is how I introduce the Gospel to a Muslim. You know, the Apostle Paul introduces the

01:39:31

Gospel in different ways in the Book of Acts to different people. You know, when he's in the synagogue, he begins in the

01:39:37

Old Testament. When he's in Athens, he begins with an altar to an unknown God. The way that I introduce the

01:39:43

Gospel to Muslims is I ask them, what have they heard about Christianity? And then

01:39:50

I say, can I show you one thing? And I take them to the table of contents and I explain what the Bible is.

01:39:56

And then I invite them, you know, to read the prophets, to come to the prophets and to read the

01:40:01

Gospel. So that's, yeah, go. Well, let me go to one question before we go to our final break.

01:40:11

From Tyrese in Hollis, Queens, New York. And Tyrese says, going along your thread of thought, would it be advisable to point out to Muslims that their book, the

01:40:28

Quran, cannot be from God because it has glaring errors?

01:40:34

For instance, the Quran, as you know, teaches that what they think the

01:40:41

Trinity is, is God, Jesus, and Mary. And no Christians in history ever believed that.

01:40:48

Would that be a good thing to point out to them? Well, it certainly is. And in my booklet on the

01:40:56

Trinity, I begin by saying the Trinity is not God, Mary, and Jesus.

01:41:01

And you want to bring up the point that you do not learn Christianity from the Quran. Because this is what

01:41:07

Muslims think they do. They think they learn Christianity from the Quran. The only thing

01:41:12

I would push back with what our friend has said there is that that requires a

01:41:19

Christian to know something about the Quran and where to get those verses.

01:41:25

Now, what I've just outlined to you in my evangelistic approach requires a

01:41:31

Christian to know basically nothing about Islam. And that's the question I've been trying to answer.

01:41:38

I've been trying to answer the question of Islam's not in the Bible. If I'm going to go teaching lots of details to Christians about Islam, they're going to forget them because that's what happens.

01:41:51

I've done it for 15 years. We need to have an approach which keeps the ball in our court.

01:41:58

And so the approach that I've just outlined to you requires no knowledge of Islam. It's just talking about Christianity.

01:42:04

What have you heard about Christianity? Can I show you what books are in the Bible? And this engages with Islam.

01:42:14

It inoculates Christians from the deceit of Muslims saying they believe in all the prophets.

01:42:21

And so that's why I'm beginning here. This is why I'm starting at this point. So what the gentleman's brought up is an excellent point to bring up when discussing the

01:42:31

Trinity. But I'm trying to do a little bit different at this point. I'm trying to say for your

01:42:37

Christian in the pew who doesn't, who's not going to learn much about Islam, and I've got one hour to talk to them and I want to equip them, where do

01:42:47

I begin? And that's what I've outlined. Okay, we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

01:42:59

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

01:43:04

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:43:11

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:43:18

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

01:43:36

Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

01:43:43

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

01:43:52

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

01:43:58

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:44:07

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:44:27

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

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I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

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That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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Buttafuoco & Associates. We are now back and we have Beatrice in East Quag, Long Island, New York.

01:50:40

And Beatrice says, do all the major Muslim sects believe that they are the only way to eternal life in heaven?

01:50:52

There are many Muslims in the media that seem to be very liberal. Are they really members of any true

01:50:58

Muslim sect or are they nominal, in other words, Muslim in name only? Some of them even supporting homosexuality and things that are an abomination in Islam just as much as in Christianity.

01:51:15

Samuel? Okay. Hi. So there's two questions there.

01:51:22

The first one about the different sects within Islam and do they see that each sect, if I've understood it correctly, is the true way to paradise.

01:51:34

That certainly can be the case. It's going to vary from sect to sect.

01:51:43

So you may know that in Afghanistan that the Islamic State group fight the

01:51:52

Taliban and consider them to be heretical.

01:51:59

And so, of course, not leading in the right way. So you certainly do get a very clear distinction between the different Islamic groups and you see that in the way that they fight each other and they fight each other because they think the other people are teaching heresy and are in unbelief.

01:52:19

So at one end of the spectrum, you would certainly have certain sects with saying that they're the only way.

01:52:30

But she's also right that there are Muslims who would want to hold on to an

01:52:39

Islamic cultural identity while at the same time embracing, you know, the ideas of modernity that, again, she was referring to homosexual practice and those types of things and they would accept these things.

01:53:00

So, yes, there is that spectrum. I guess the point I would want to bring up here is, you know,

01:53:07

I can say that there is that spectrum just as there is in Christianity.

01:53:14

We're going to have people who carry the Christian name in ways that we would say is wrong.

01:53:20

But I think the difference between Christianity and Islam at this point is that in Islam, there is a valid expression of being part of the world for a time before you actually implement

01:53:42

Islam as it is meant to be in the long term. And so what

01:53:47

I mean by this is, in the Qur 'an, there's two main types of surahs.

01:53:54

They're not chapters, they're surahs. They're the sections of the

01:53:59

Qur 'an. There are the ones that Muhammad said when he was in Mecca, and that was when he was a powerless teacher.

01:54:08

And then there's the surahs he said when he was in Medina. That's when he had an army.

01:54:15

And so when he's in Medina, sorry, when he's in Mecca at the first part of his life, he will say things like, you know, all religions, you know, you to your religion, me to my religion.

01:54:31

And he's sort of accommodating to the culture around him.

01:54:37

And so he will say only fight in self -defense or don't fight at all. But then once he gets an army, he then says, no, go and conquer people who don't believe in Islam.

01:54:51

And so what I mean by that is the Meccan surahs are what

01:54:57

Muslims in the West would be living by. And that is, as I said, it's much more engaging with the culture around you and not wanting to enforce anything.

01:55:09

And that is a true expression of Islam, because that's what Muhammad was like at that stage of his life.

01:55:16

But that does not represent Islam as a whole, because where the Quran ends, its trajectory is towards the formation of the

01:55:26

Islamic state and the conquests of Islam. Remember that Islam conquered most of the

01:55:31

Christian world, and most of the Eastern Christian church no longer exists because it was conquered by Islam.

01:55:40

So that's, you know, that's the long term goal of it. So what I mean by that is you may have

01:55:48

Muslims who are living peacefully among you in the West, and they're saying we're living according to the

01:55:55

Quran. And they are, and they are, because that's what the Meccan surahs of the Quran say.

01:56:01

And that's how they say to live in that context. But when the Islamic state are also setting up their state in the

01:56:10

Middle East, they're also doing what the Quran says. And so both can be true.

01:56:16

And you need to understand how the Quran functions in that way. And so it can be a little deceiving because sometimes

01:56:23

Muslims will say, well, the Islamic state, they're not true. They're not true Muslims, but I am here living in the

01:56:28

West. Actually, both are true expressions. And you need to understand the trajectory and the progress that the

01:56:36

Quran sees for itself as it moves from one to the other. By the way, I want to let our listeners who submitted questions know that you've both won a free copy of Where to Start With Islam by my guest

01:56:49

Samuel Green, compliments of MatthiasMedia .com, MatthiasMedia .com.

01:56:56

And I'd like you, Samuel, to wrap up the program in about 90 seconds.

01:57:01

What you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today. I would want our listeners to know that we as Christians follow all of the prophets and they lead us to Jesus.

01:57:22

But we follow all the prophets. We're the ones who listen to the prophets, who read the prophets in our church, never take that for granted.

01:57:29

You might just take for granted that you're reading the law of Moses or the book of Isaiah or any book of the prophets.

01:57:37

That is unusual. The other religions of the world have one man who tells you what to believe about the prophets.

01:57:45

We're the ones who read it. We're the ones who read them. And secondly, because of this, the other religions have nothing to offer.

01:57:54

I didn't get to discuss this today, but in the Quran and in the

01:58:00

Hadith, when Muhammad is faced with death, he says he does not know what will happen to him.

01:58:08

He does not know what will happen to him. Now, just think about that. Muhammad himself doesn't know what's going to happen to him.

01:58:17

You see, Islam actually offers you nothing. It has nothing to offer. It has nothing to offer.

01:58:24

What it says is try hard and hopefully you'll make it to paradise.

01:58:31

And so it has nothing to offer. It takes away from the glory of the

01:58:37

Lord Jesus Christ and what he's done for us. It takes away, you know, the work of God, how

01:58:44

God has loved us and sent his son to pay for our sins, to be the new Adam, to bring us to himself.

01:58:51

It takes away from the glory of God. It claims to believe in the prophets.

01:58:57

It doesn't. It claims to bring glory to God. It doesn't. It claims to be a way of salvation for humanity, and it's not.

01:59:06

It has nothing to offer. So that's where I'll be finishing up and hope that people can remember those things.

01:59:13

And don't forget about the website of Engaging with Islam. It is engagingwithislam .org,

01:59:20

engagingwithislam .org. Samuel, thank you for doing such a remarkable job today on the show.

01:59:25

I look forward to your return to the show. And I want everybody listening to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.