Interview with Georges Houssney

How Georges Houssney Came to Christ and Began Missions

Thank you for sitting down with me, George. You're welcome. I really appreciate you taking the time. Talk to us briefly about your past, where you came from, how you became a Christian.

Well, I grew up in a Greek Orthodox church, and religion for me was just a religion. I didn't know anything about Jesus, God, Bible, all this was foreign to me. Until a young man came and handed me a Gospel of Matthew, began to read the Bible.

I thought Jesus was fictitious. Then I saw the genealogy, that he lived, he had a mother, he was born on earth, human. And as I began to ask questions, I realized that God visited the earth in the form of a man, because it was a great love for me.

And the preacher told me, if you're the only man on earth, God will come down to rescue you, and he'll die for you. And that blew me away. So I began to respond, and in about a year of studying, researching, going to church, enjoying the worship, singing, prayers, I gave my life to Christ at the age of 12.

I was a mature 12, because in the Middle East I grew up in a very poor neighborhood, lifestyle poor, but a good education, so I was able to understand a lot of things. And at the age of 14, I sensed God's calling for me to do missions.

I began to witness and participate in planting a lot of churches.

Church Planting, College Ministry, and Bible Translation

So tell me a little bit about your ministry, how it started, and that sort of thing.

Well, I began at the age of 14 with four men from Europe challenging me, came to my country to reach my own people. And I was challenged by that. So I began to go with them door to door. And as I went door to door and saw people open, I started enjoying it.

And I saw people saved, people prayed for salvation, and groups formed in the ensuing years, churches, and now several of these churches, large churches. So that's how it began, with evangelism, door to door, house to house, village to village, town all over Lebanon.

And then a few years later, in my college years, I began to witness international students coming to my university in Beirut, Lebanon, where I was going to school. So people from all over the world were flocking into this university, and I saw the world right here at my fingertips, and began to share the Gospel with them.

I saw fruit in that ministry. From church planting through evangelism to college ministry, then after college, I was invited to participate in a glorious project, which is translating the Bible into the languages of the Middle East.

And many of these languages, like Kurdish, Kabir, North African, Berber language, did not have a Bible before. So I spent the next 12 years translating the Bible and training translators. I personally got training first, and supervising the projects in five languages.

And I personally participated in translating the Arabic Bible, which has reached millions of copies in circulation.

Horizons International and Its Evangelistic Strategy

Excellent. And so what's the name of the ministry that you run?

After the Bible translation work, I was eager again to get back away from scholarly work to people work. So I heard of this incredible strategy that God sends to America people from around the world. So I was invited to go to Colorado and start a ministry with international students, and formed a 501c3 called Horizons International, formed a board of directors.

We have staff at many campuses around the country, and we're seeing people saved from many nations.

And so what would you say. The main thrust of your ministry at Horizons International is?

Well, we have, the goal is to draw people to Christ, to disciple them, and to train them, to send them to draw others to Christ. So we have like a pyramid, evangelism, discipleship, training. And that training will start a new pyramid of people evangelizing, discipling, and training others.

So we have evangelistic programs, Bible distribution, preaching, mass evangelism, one-on-one. We also have friendship partner programs where churches can participate. They sign up and we give them a student from some country they're interested in to be a friend.

They take them to church, share the Gospel with them. So, you know, there's the big picture and the small picture. The big picture, we want to reach the whole world for Christ. How do you do it? We start with one Christian, sharing the Gospel with one non-Christian.

And we're seeing great success from that. So that leads to church planting. And we're seeing a lot of churches grow. We have movements of churches among Muslims. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims coming to Christ.

And some claim millions a year. So God knows how many, but we know it's a lot better than it was a year before, two years before, or ten years before. Every year we're seeing the growth of the church.

It's so much so that we can't keep up with all the demand. For people who want to know Christ, those who want to be disciples, and others who want to be traitors. It keeps me busy. It keeps all my staff busy.

And I'm adding staff all the time. Excellent. So you guys focus in on the Middle East, on reaching Muslims, or is it everyone everywhere?

Horizons International has a broad vision for the world. But we realize the Muslim world is the most needy. So we're concentrating on the world without ignoring. We're concentrating on the Muslim world without ignoring the rest of the world.

But most of our staff work with Muslims.

Excellent. And so what are you guys working on right now? What projects do you guys have going on? Anything new, exciting?

Of course. We have, my board meets every three months and they say, hey, my, in three months, so much happened, so many new things. The latest thing is a center for reaching the refugees coming out of Syria into Lebanon.

So we have started that a couple years ago when the war broke. And we're seeing hundreds of Syrians come to Christ through this center. So they come and receive some aid, but mostly a spiritual challenge to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.

And we provide discipleship. We have 12 meetings a week. Every night and in the daytime, youth meetings, women's meetings, couples meetings, as well as general evangelistic and discipleship meetings. So that's the newest thing.

And I was in May in Algeria and I saw a huge need to disciple the over 100 ,000 Muslims who have come to Christ in the last 30 years. And many of them are falling away because they don't have somebody to establish them and ground them.

So that's another project is Algeria to train leaders and disciple them to grow as mature believers.

Reaching Muslims Through the Book and Teaching Series on Islam

Excellent. So let's focus in, if we could, a little bit on this issue of Islam. You've written a book on Islam and have a teaching series. Tell us a little bit about that.

Engaging Islam, I have copies out there. Engaging Islam, you can find it on Amazon .com under my name, George Wisley, or just Engaging Islam. You can also order it from our website, which is engagingislam .org.

This is a book that's a culmination of 40 years of ministry with Muslims. So it has a lot of stories, also practical steps, how you can reach Muslims, how to engage them in question and answer, how to answer their questions, and spiritual elements of the power of prayer and fasting and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you to reach Muslims.

And we're seeing a lot of success in that.

The Biggest Misconception Christians Have About Muslims

Excellent. So let's talk about Islam specifically, if we could. What would you say is the biggest misconception Christians, especially in America, have about Muslims and Islam in general?

Well, the first thing a Christian feels about Muslims is fear. Islam is like a mystery to them. They think, their misperception is they think every Muslim is the same as every other Muslim. So they hear about the terrorists, they hear about the violence, and they think every Muslim wants to come and destroy Christians and Christianity, which isn't true.

Many Muslims are peace-loving. They just want to work and find food for their family and survive. There are those who are fundamental and want to destroy the world, but most Muslims are not that way.

But they don't know about Jesus Christ. So we come to them as friends, with love and care and compassion, share the Gospel with them. So that's the biggest misperception that causes fear. And some get angry with the terrorism of Islam.

And so we're trying to show the love of Christ, that that's the most effective thing to do with Muslims, is to demonstrate the love of Christ by caring for them, befriending them, and snatching them out of the fire by telling them, hey, Jesus died for you to save you from sin.

You don't have to do all these difficult works. And anyway, they do it and they're not sure they're going to be saved anyway. So we assure them of God's love, assurance of forgiveness, and eternal life.

Excellent.

The Biggest Misconception Muslims Have About Christians

And on the opposite side of that, what's the biggest misconception. Muslims, especially not familiar with America, who maybe are coming here for the first time or that we might see people interacting with, what's the biggest misconception they have about Christians?

Well the Christian lifestyle, if you were a true Christian, praying, fasting, and worshipping God and so on, is not visible to Muslims. So they think that Christians don't have a religion, think Christians are immoral people.

They see TV programs of, you know, men cheating on their wives and men and women living together freely. They see them half naked and so on. They think this is Christianity. Even Madonna has a cross on.

A lot of prostitutes have crosses on and they show that. So they have this perception that Christians are not religious, their religion is bad, and it encourages immorality. When they come to America and they come to a Christian home and they see that there are decent people who are not cheating or not stealing, they're honest and true, they get shocked.

Wow, we didn't think Christianity was like this. And so they change their concept. That's our mission, is to give them, like Jesus said, let them see your good works and then they glorify God.

Excellent. When it comes to Islamic theology specifically, when it comes, let's talk about a little bit if we could, Islamic Tawhid. Explain the importance to the average Muslim, not even the scholar Muslim, but just the average Muslim, what Tawhid means to them and how they then interact with Christianity because of that belief.

Tawhid, the Trinity, and the Relational Nature of God

Well, the Christian doctrine of Trinity is major in Christianity. Opposite that in Islam, it's contrary to Trinity. They say God is not three, He is only one. Now, the word one in the Christian sense is a unity of multiplicity.

Three in one is a tri-unity. To Muslims, oneness is singularity. That means God lives alone. He has no companions. He has no son or father or brother or anything like that. He's just all alone. But that is drawn from paganism more, where they believe in a supreme deity from Greek thinking, that He's far away, transcendent and aloof, and He has some kind of power that created the world, but He does not interact with the world.

So, it makes God unrelational, unapproachable, unknowable. So, when they hear that God loves you, that smacks against their thinking that He's alone because love is a relational quality of God. So, when I talk about the Trinity, I say, can God exist without love?

If He is love, if He is mercy, any of His attributes that are relational would not exist if He was alone. He can't love Himself. He can't relate just to Himself. So, the Trinity begins to make sense when we say, this father loves the son and the son loves the father eternally.

I know Christians don't understand that, but it's in essence telling them that father and son, there is a father-son relationship in the sense that they share the same nature. The son comes from the father, means he carries that nature.

So, there's no distinction between father and son, except like the rays of the sun, they come down to us from the ball of fire out there. The ball of fire is in a sense the father to the light that comes to us, but they're the same.

Light and fire are the same. They're connected. So, that helps them to understand this. Excellent.

What Christians Need to Know to Converse Meaningfully With Muslims

As a Christian, what do I need to understand about Islamic theology to be able to converse in a meaningful way with my Muslim neighbor?

Well, in the grassroots, most Christians will never understand Islamic theology and doctrine. So, if you are interested in learning and studying, good, go ahead and read it. But, if you don't know Islamic theology, it does not mean you're not effective, because in your love for Muslims, even if you are dumb and stupid about Islam, they'll see in you things that will attract them.

So, I always tell people, whoever you are, educated, not educated, you know, you don't know, God will use you as you are. But, of course, we have to choose to learn. We have to choose to understand Muslims and know, it would be good to have a quick read of the Quran, even if you don't finish all of it, just to understand what the Quran is and to understand some things about their concept of God.

For example, God is far away. What do you do with that? You share how God means to you. He is walking with you and talking with you and He is present at the table when you're eating and so on. When I have done that, Muslims get really surprised that I'm talking so intimately about God.

He's as my father. I pray Heavenly Father. I don't pray God and say Heavenly Father. And that helps them. So, that aspect of the transcendence of God is something you need to understand, so that you can counter it with His presence with us.

He's not far, He's also near. He's both far and near. There are others about Jesus, for example, they don't understand the salvation. Because they say, man does not need salvation because he's born good.

And, you know, he gets into weaknesses and sins and so on. But he can do certain things, like good deeds, to counter all those sins. And God carries them in the balance. If your good deeds outweigh the bad deeds, you're okay.

Well, that formula is not very convincing. Most Muslims are very insecure about their salvation. So, you bring in Jesus as a Savior. God has a plan for your life to change you, to cleanse you from your sin, forgive you of your sin, and give you eternal life.

How the Quran Portrays Jesus

How do Muslims, via the Quran, understand Jesus? What is the Quranic Jesus like?

There are 93 verses in the whole Quran, over 7 ,000 verses. 93 that speak about Jesus. Some of them are repetitive. Basically, He's a prophet. Just one of thousands of prophets. God sent prophets to every nation and people, and Jesus came to the Jews.

So, He's limited to the Jews. Well, Moses was to the Jews, and Jesus was to the Christians. Where Jews became Christians. That's their idea. And Muhammad came to all the people of the world. But then, there are some things in the Quran about Jesus that describe Jesus in greater esteem than Muhammad.

And some Muslims have noticed that without reading the Bible. They read the Quran and say, Oh, Jesus created the bird from nothing, from clay. He healed the sick, He healed the blind, He healed the deaf, and He performed many miracles.

Muhammad didn't do that. So, they become curious and they go to the Bible. And if you're there to help them, tell them Jesus is not just any prophet. Not every prophet does these things. Only God can do these things.

And Jesus is God in the flesh.

The Quran, the Infancy Gospels, and the Question of Authorship

Excellent. Touching just on that issue of the clay bird for just a brief moment. How do you, coming out of Islam, out of that culture, that lifestyle, knowing, I assume, that that is part of the infancy Gospels and Gnostic writings.

How does that impact your view of the authorship of the Quran?

Well, I'm convinced the Quran is not from God. Muhammad himself questioned when an angel, he didn't see an angel, he just heard a voice, was telling him stuff. He said, Oh, that's a demon. And so, he thought he was possessed by a demon.

Well, we don't see any prophets who say God is a demon. Because God introduces himself, says, I am the God of heaven. I'm the God of Abraham, Jacob, Isaac and Jacob. And they're not afraid anymore. They begin fearful and then God calms them down.

But Muhammad got very fearful. So, I believe, like with Mormonism and other religions and innovations, I believe Satan inspired the Quran. And Satan designed the Quran in such a way as to look like the Bible in many ways.

But at the core, it speaks against Biblical doctrine. So, when a Muslim hears you speak about Jesus, they say, We believe in Jesus too. We love Jesus. But they don't because they deny his deity. They deny his son of God.

They deny that he died and so he's not a savior. So, what does that make him? Not the Jesus of the Bible. Some kind of a mysterious other. And we call him Esau. We call him Esau. Maybe somebody else.

But it's not Jesus. Excellent. Let's talk about briefly, in just kind of our last few minutes, dialoguing with Muslims. What would you say are the three most important things for Christians to remember when they're discussing anything with Muslims?

Compassion, Relationship, and Diagnosing the Person

Well, first of all, you need to have a heart of compassion. Don't judge them because they are Muslims. Don't judge them and say, You are wrong. Islam is wrong. Quran is wrong. Muhammad is wrong. But they are not wrong in the sense that they didn't know any better.

So, I often tell Muslims, I don't blame you for being a Muslim. But I blame you for not trying to find out if what you learned is true. If this is God's true religion. If this is the truth. So, the first thing we need to do is to have a heart of compassion.

Secondly, we need to develop a relationship with people. You can't dump the Gospel on people. They need to know that you love them, you care about them. Out of a heart of compassion, many of the people who have come to Christ through me, they say, You know, you've loved us into the Kingdom.

Because we love the way you're treating us with respect and honor. Not respecting their religion, but respecting them as human beings. And they realize that I am sharing the Gospel because I want to snatch them out of hell.

And because I love them. And thirdly, you need to try to understand where a Muslim is. Not every Muslim is the same. Every Muslim has a different understanding of their own religion and practice of their own religion.

So, don't assume when you see a Muslim, Oh, you pray five times a day, do the fasting and so on. Most of them don't pray five times a day. Some of them pretend they're praying and they don't pray. They pray once in public and they don't pray.

So, you have to ask questions to find out where their level of commitment is, loyalty. You have to understand who you're dealing with. Like a doctor diagnoses a disease or sickness, you have to diagnose where they are spiritually.

What makes them tick? What are the things that bother them in life? What are they insecure about? And then you cater the Gospel to meet those needs. So, compassion. And also, what did I say? The three things.

Compassion toward Muslims. Realizing they're not all the same. Diagnosing them. And also trying to understand where they are so you can fit the Gospel for each person you're talking with differently.

Going to that issue of they're not all the same. There are many sects of Islam. How does understanding or dialoguing with these different sects change? I mean, is your conversation with a Sufi the same as with a Shiite?

It's only different, the way I talk is different, that they are different individuals. I don't pay too much attention to the sect where they come from. Because my message is always the same. Forgiveness of sin.

Salvation through Jesus Christ alone. Eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. So, all of them need the same. As I talk with a Shiite, as I talk to a Sunni or a Sufi, I try to understand where they are.

And I deal with it. But I am different than most people. Most people don't understand the difference between Shiite and Sunni and Sufi. I've studied it. I've lived with these people. So, naturally, I can contextualize to each one.

But I'm speaking to a larger audience. And in the public arena, most Christians will not understand much the difference between those three. So, don't worry about it. Just share what you know. Share your testimony.

Share who Jesus is, what He means to you, what God intended for Jesus to come for, to save and to salvation. And then, however they respond, you will know and you will cater a message that will help them.

So, to me, the sex is not a big problem. Excellent.

Responding to the Claim That the Bible Is Corrupted

You know, a lot of Muslims often will approach me on the street when we're talking with Muslims. And they'll say, the first thing is, your Bible is corrupted. And I'm sure you've heard that more times than you want.

Two million times. How do you, in general, respond? How should the Christian respond to that assertion?

Well, there are various ways, depending on how serious that guy is. Many of them just don't know what they're talking about. They just have heard. And I tell them, can you tell me what else you know about this?

How did the Bible get corrupted? Who corrupted it? In what century? And so on. And they realize they don't know, so they start getting a little bit weak in their argument. And then I can come in and give them the proofs, manuscript proofs, the internal evidence, external evidence, and so on.

But if they think there are specific verses that have been changed or something, then I address that. But most people don't really know what they're talking about. So I say to them, do you believe that God is too weak to protect His Word?

And sometimes, I try not to do it, but sometimes I quote a verse from the Qur 'an that says, I have sent the revelation and I can protect it. So I say, do you think God can protect His Word or is He too weak to protect it?

And that alone shakes them a bit. Because they believe God can do anything. So how did He allow His Word, this important Word of God, to be corrupted? And so that's one argument. Another argument is from manuscripts.

That we have 24 ,000 plus manuscripts. Most of them are from the first five centuries and that's before Islam. And those manuscripts have been studied and the translators work with these manuscripts with some variations, but most of it agrees with each other.

Dead Sea Scrolls is another argument. And there's even more recent discovery of the Gospel of Mark in the last few months. Yes. So we talk about these things. This is for the intellectual. But for those who are not intellectually inclined, it's enough to say to them, hey, God can protect His Word, don't worry about it, trust me.

And many Muslims will actually like to trust you. Say, trust me, Bible is not corrupted. And then let's go on, let's read about it. And we start reading the Bible and it impacts them.

The Quran, the Hadith, and Why Islam Is Hard to Understand

Given the nature of the coalition of the Qur 'an and the Islamic revision, doesn't it seem like it's a bit of a hypocritical thing for a Muslim to come and say, well, your Bible has been changed or corrupted.

When there's even Islamic evidence within the Hadith, it says, look, the number of surahs isn't even agreed upon based on different people.

Well, most Muslims don't know how the Qur 'an was collected. Most Muslims believe that God wrote the Qur 'an in heaven and then sent it down with the angel Gabriel. And Gabriel opened it and he started reading to Muhammad.

And Muhammad memorized what Gabriel read to him. So, they think it's verbatim, it came from God through an angel to the papers that now we have printed. And so, if they were to be aware of the history, that the Qur 'an was collected years after Muhammad died and a lot of the manuscripts were burned.

If they were to understand this process of collection, and some people in modern times, they're even questioning that story that Uthman bin Affan has actually done it. And so, the earliest manuscript of the Qur 'an that is present today, that's visible, is 200 years after Muhammad.

So, there's no proof. So, if they had textual criticism like Christianity allows it, they would leave the Qur 'an anytime. So, a lot of apologists and polemics bring this up and they're shaking Muslim faith in the Qur 'an because they thought, oh, it's unquestionable, you can't question the Qur 'an.

Now, they're seeing grammatical problems, they see errors in science, errors in facts in the Qur 'an, and they're beginning to wonder, is the Qur 'an really the word of God?

I've heard it said a few times by different sources that without the hadith, the Qur 'an wouldn't make a lot of sense.

It is true. The Qur 'an in the translations make more sense than in the original. Because the translator goes to the Arabic, and to translate it to English, you have to make sense. But it's a 7th century Arabic language.

If you had English from the Middle Ages, which is only 400 or 500 years ago, it's very hard to understand. Gulliver's Travels, Shakespearean original writings, here today even a little bit modernized.

But this is even worse, 7th century. Now we have 1400 years of language development that the Qur 'an does not have because it's stuck in that 7th century. So terminology and language is not clear, but also it is disjointed by nature.

It's a verse thrown here, another verse next to it. Chronologically there is no relationship from verse to verse. It just jumps from one thing to the other. The power of the Qur 'an is not in its message.

The power is in its beauty. It sounds poetic. And to create poetry and rhyme, sometimes you just have to insert words that are not connected with the meaning. And that's how the Qur 'an is. It just throws in, and God is merciful.

Just so it rhymes with some other word that says full. So you just add all kinds of words that don't have a contextual meaning. So you cannot have a Qur 'anic study like you do a Bible study, because it doesn't make sense.

And so the Hadith, which came almost 300 years later, is a collection of what was traditionally understood to have happened. Muhammad said this to this guy, to this guy, and this guy heard him say this.

And so they write it down in 300 ,000 Hadiths. And only 6 ,000 of them are agreed on by all Muslims. So they don't believe them. But the Hadith interprets the Qur 'an. There's a verse in the Qur 'an there.

They don't understand it in this context, so they go to the Hadith and say, What did Muhammad say about this topic? And the Hadith is more story form. Then they begin to interpret the Qur 'an. So it's really difficult for a Muslim to understand their faith, their religion.

And that's our advantage. We bring in understanding. We bring in a story. The Bible is a story. God loves the world. He sent his son. Jesus walked and did this and said this and taught this. And the disciples asked him questions.

There's a story there. But even the Hadith does not have a continuous story. It's just thrown in lots of stories here and there. And Muhammad said three verses down the road. And Muhammad said something else that could have happened ten years later.

It's not related. So Muslims, as they begin to know more about this, they're starting to say, This is a piece of junk. I know Muslims who've said, I look at the Qur 'an, it's a piece of junk.

Because it's just not understandable. It doesn't mean anything.

And it has a lot of negative things about sex and all. Some weird stuff as well. So I'm not here to bash Islam, but just to help you understand. Having read the Arabic myself, that's my first language, I have to read English to understand what the Qur 'an says.

Because Arabic is so disjointed.

Which is somewhat ironic that they say it must be kept in Arabic to be understood.

Yeah, yeah. And they forced you to read it in Arabic. And the idea of reading the Qur 'an is not to understand it. It's to get merit before God. To get brownie points. That you read the Qur 'an so you get some checks on your...

You get more stars.

So there's no real desire for a deep relational understanding of this book.

Islam is not based on an understanding of the faith. It's based on doing certain things that are required. Fasting, prayers, and things like that. Excellent.

I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and chat with me. Sure. It's certainly been edifying for me, and I'm sure it'll be edifying for anyone who gets a chance to watch this. And again, give us your website and your ministry, so that if people want to look you up, they know how to do it.

Our training program is under the website engagingislam .org. Horizons International is the big umbrella for many different projects. One of them is the training program. But before we end, I want to give a positive note.

The Growth of Muslims Coming to Christ

End on a positive note. These days, like never before, Muslims are coming to Christ in large numbers. I was in Algeria two months ago. I was incredibly blown away by how many hundreds of thousands well, tens of thousands, over 100 ,000 who have come to Christ.

Hundreds of churches all over the place. This was unheard of 40 years ago. And Indonesia, great numbers are coming to Christ. In India, in Africa. And so, it's amazing. Egypt, the things that are happening there are causing Muslims to shy away from Islam, run away from Islam.

Not all, but a number of them are going to churches and hearing the Gospel, being baptized and joining the church. So, let's now take advantage of the presence of 100 ,000 Arab Saudis in America, Saudi Arabians, plus hundreds of thousands of others from all nations.

40 to 50 of internationals are Muslim. Let's take advantage of their presence in our backyard and reach them with the Gospel of love and salvation and hope for eternal life. Thank you.