"Allow me to try and explain Tiffany"

Submitted by Lactantius Jr. (United Kingdom), Nov 7, 2006 at 17:54

Dear Tiffany

How attractively you have written, thank you, and yes, how great it is to have an intelligent conversation about Christianity and Islam. However, something that makes for difficulty, unless we are careful to explain exactly what we mean, is that Christianity and Islam both use words such as God, sin, salvation, heaven, hell, faith etc. which carry very different meanings for Christians and Muslims, so to ensure a meeting of minds, it is vitally important to ensure our words communicate the intended meaning.

First off, let me say I'm a deeply committed follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who has been on my case since I invited Him in some 25 years ago, and I write as one who has accepted Him as my Saviour from sin, who knows Him as my best friend, and who worships Him as my Lord.

I accept the 66 books of the Bible as my ultimate religious authority, and consider them to be all-sufficient in all matters of doctrine and conduct, and in my interactions with others, I seek to be obedient to the Biblical injunction to, "In your heart set apart Christ as Lord, and be always ready to give a reason for the hope you have within you, doing so with gentleness and respect"

1 Peter 3:15 and by His Grace I will.

I seek to focus on the absolute essentials, saying that if Islam is true, Christianity is false, and Christians are hopelessly and eternally lost. So, having outlined my focus, I continue by saying that Muhammad the prophet of Islam was born some 600 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, with Islam denying the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ by saying He was just a man, a good man, but nowhere near as good as Muhammad. It denies He was crucified, claiming that Allah put a "lookalike" on the Cross, and since Islam claims He wasn't crucified, it knows nothing about His glorious resurrection from the dead, on which Christianity absolutely stakes its claim to validity; well may the Apostle Paul, inspired by The Holy Spirit, say, "And if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, my preaching's useless, and so is your trust in God."

1 Corinthians 15:14

If you know nothing else about Islam Tiffany, know that with its "lookalike" claim for who was crucified, deception lies at the very heart of Islam, and ask yourself what this says about the nature and character of Allah, comparing and contrasting that with the nature and character of the God of the Bible Who cannot lie. You notice I refer to the God of the Bible, and to Allah, and I do so, because whilst the Qur'an claims they are the same, saying, "And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, ‘We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our God and your God is one; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam).'"Surah 29:46 they are not the same, the Qur'an saying Allah is not a Father and doesn't have a Son, compare and contrast the following mutually exclusive references to Bible and Qur'an:-

"And they crucified Him, and parted His garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet" Matthew 27:35

"They killed him not, nor crucified him" Surah 4:157

"This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased" Matthew 3:17; 17:5

"No son did Allah beget" Surah 23:91

You ask Tiffany, whether Islam considers the Bible to be the inspired word of Allah, and indeed it does, giving massive and eloquent testimony to the Bible as the unaltered, unalterable word of Allah, and I mention just three ayat (verses), found in Surah (book) 5, and these are, "Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel." Surah 5:47, "If only they had stood fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that was sent to them from their Lord, they would have enjoyed happiness from every side. There is from among them a party on the right course: but many of them follow a course that is evil." Surah 5:66 and "Say: ‘O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.' It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy. But sorrow thou not over (these) people without Faith."Surah 5:68 all translations those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, but I suggest you refer to them yourself, using the online Qur'an browser at http://www.quranbrowser.com/ which provides 10 different English translations of the Qur'anic Arabic.

However, the Bible and Qur'an are different, only in incidentals I should add, differing only in such matters as the difference between God and Allah, about the nature of human beings, about sin and salvation, about heaven and hell, and about how to get into one and stay out of the other, they don't differ much do they?

"Why did the one true Creator God rename Himself?" you ask, He didn't Tiffany, saying this of His Name:-

"God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' God also said to Moses, ‘Say to the Israelites, The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation." Exodus 3:14-15

Of all the Names of the God of the Bible, the one appearing most frequently in the Hebrew Scriptures ("the Old Testament"), is the tetragrammaton YHWH (‘Yahweh' or ‘Jehovah'), and it appears 6,823 times. It is not to be read aloud, and is rendered ‘Adonai' or LORD. It never appears in the Qur'an, and there is no evidence that Muhammad even knew this most holy and ineffable ("incapable of being expressed in words") Name.

I am well aware that Allah is used by Arabic-speaking Christians, and I have no difficulty in accepting that they are referring to the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, when they call Him Allah, they cannot use anything else, this being the only Arabic word available to them. In fact, the root from which the name is derived, ilah, stems from the ancient Semitic languages, corresponding to the Mesopotamian IL, as well as the Hebrew-Aramaic EL, as in Ishma-el, Immanu-el, Isra-el. These terms were often used to refer to any deity worshiped as a high god, especially the chief deity amongst a pantheon of lesser gods. As such, the Holy Bible uses the term as just one of the many titles for Yahweh, the only true God.

Yet the problem for Muslims using the name Allah, arises from their insistence that Allah is not a title, but the personal Name of the God of Islam. This is problematic, since according to the Holy Bible the Name of the God of Abraham is Yahweh/Jehovah, not Allah

"God spoke further to Moses and said to him, ‘I am Yahweh (YHVH) and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty; BUT BY MY NAME, YAHWEH, I did not make myself known to them.'" Exodus 6:2-3

There is much more that could be said Tiffany, but most importantly of all, is not knowing about Him, but knowing Him personally, and if you want to know Him, He'll have you, for keeps, no messing!!

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