Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith today. How does biblical Christianity compare to the religion of Islam? I'm beginning a series this summer at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sunday mornings, and I'm comparing Christianity with Islam and with Hinduism and with Buddhism, and I will ask three basic questions of each religion to get at them for comparison. And I will ask, number one, who is it revealed to me that I must worship? That's the first question of every religion.

Who or what am I to worship? Secondly, how am I saved if I need to be saved at all? In every religion, every religion answers this question, how am I to be saved? And thirdly, what are the fruits of the religion I am bidden to embrace? Jesus himself said, you shall know them by their fruits.

Well, this is going to be an ongoing series through the summer, and I invite you to come and visit us at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings at New Geneva to discover how Christ our Savior and the faith that he brings compares to what the rest of the world has to offer. And today, and for the next few weeks, I want to compare Christianity and Islam. Do you think it might be relevant to our world today, huh? Well, of course it is. Whether we know it or not, dear listener, we are in a life and death struggle for our very soul as a nation and for our liberties and our way of life, too.

Now, I've been preaching to you Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism for the United States of America. That's how we were founded. Each of these, Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism are under assault by the plutocratic tyranny of the world that has imposed, rather than Christ, it has imposed secularism for our spiritual life, and rather than our constitution for our political life, it has imposed statism. And, of course, rather than capitalism for our economic life, the plutocratic tyranny of the world has imposed socialism.

And Muslims, I want to say this about Muslims, who share many of the same goals as those plutocratic tyrants and, in fact, maybe are the tools of the plutocratic tyrants. In fact, we have supported the rise of ISIS, for example, in the Middle East, as a tool for destabilization for Syria, for example. Well, Muslims also desire to impose Islam for our religious life together, instead of Christ, of course. And for our political life together, they intend to impose Sharia law instead of the Constitution. And then instead of capitalism for our economic life, Islam intends to impose tribalism for our economic life together.

And, of course, under tribalism, you have the Sheikh or the Caliph and his clan who possess and distribute the wealth of the people. This is the system that is now extant in almost every Muslim country around the world. And unless we clearly understand these principles, dear listener, we will never be able to defeat our enemies. We will never be able to defend and articulate our own way of life. Presently, the plutocratic tyrants who rule us share a common goal with Islam.

That is, the destruction of the remnants of the capitalistic Christian republic that we once knew, that we once were. And they intend to replace it with the alternative that they wish to impose, respectively. So, look around you, dear American. Do you know the heart of Islam and how it compares to biblical Christianity? Is Islam a religion of peace?

Look around you. George Bush characterized Islam as a religion of peace soon after 9-11, trying to mollify and excuse. Or is it that jihad, which is holy war, is jihad an inseparable component of Islam's spread? Have the barbaric demons of the Islamic state, and what else can we call them but barbaric demons? They routinely slaughter Christians wherever they conquer, and they burn, behead, and crucify Christians.

Well, are the barbaric demons of the Islamic state, merely hijacking the label of Islam, and they don't really represent the religion, as the Obama administration, from the president down to the department, has regularly propagandized to us? Or does Islam, does the Islamic state, the Islamic state, or the Islamic state, or the Islamic state, or the Islamic state, or the Islamic state? So, at the heart of what I try to answer here, is this. Are the two religions, Islam and Christianity, comparable in what they believe, and what they inculcate? Are they comparable in the fruit that they produce?

Is Obama correct when he says, and Obama says this, remember that during the crusades and the inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ? Is he thereby equating the two religions and excusing the behavior of the Islamic state? Oh, let's spend some time then examining, excuse me, examining and comparing Islam and Christianity, okay? First of all, I want to ask of Islam, by what authority is this being you're telling me to worship? By what authority is he revealed to me to worship?

Oh, all of the religions of the world share this in common, dear listener. They rely for their authority and their believability upon revelation. They are, in fact, called revealed religions. By this, we mean that a transcendent authority has communicated to us in some fashion, revealing spiritual truth that would not otherwise be available to us, or, as in the case of Buddhism, would require ages of suffering and countless incarnations to acquire this knowledge. Now, what Islam and Christianity share in common is that they are revealed religions whose deity has chosen to disclose himself by means of a book.

Christianity, of course, the Bible, and Islam, the Quran. Also, both books reveal a monotheistic deity. The Bible reveals the Trinitarian God, that is, who is one in essence but expressed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of course, the Quran reveals the so-called indivisible Allah.

Now, as one Christian scholar, a converted Muslim, a man named Abdul Salib, Salib observes regarding the Quran, Salib says, and I quote him, the Quran is God's final word to Muslims, and is the final word to humanity, and is the only authentic, authoritative, and reliable information from God, because it is the only information that has not been tampered with and corrupted, unquote. Now, Muhammad, soon after he began receiving these revelations, he came to Christians and to Jews, and he tried to say to them, see, my book is just like yours.

Yet, when the Christians and the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula read the Quran as it was being developed by Muhammad, oh, they practically laughed it to scorn, because it was incoherent and inconsistent with the Bible. Well, then, how did Muhammad and later Islam resolve this issue? Well, they said Christians were responsible for changing the Bible, for corrupting the Bible, while the Quran is pure. As Salib says, and he sounds very familiar in describing other religions who say the same thing, what is the solution for the Quran and the Bible contradicting one another?

It is the doctrine of tarif, that is the Arabic word for corruption, and it claims that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures, and that is why their Bible no longer agrees with the teachings of the Quran, unquote. Of course, when other scholars, Christians and Jews, began to point out that the Quran itself has been compromised at many junctures in its history and its transmission from one generation to another.

For example, let me give you just one most egregious example, and that is the Satanic Verses, a book by the same name, written by Salman Rushdie, the Satanic Verses, in which Rushdie goes into great detail about the portions of the Quran ostensibly dictated by Satan instead of Allah and the inescapable contradiction and error. Nature of the book, consequently, well, those who point these things out, they are condemned to death by fatwas of every mullah from Mecca to Minneapolis, even as has happened to Salman Rushdie for publishing his book, The Satanic Verses.

But this gets to the heart of another issue, the so-called inspiration of the Quran, if there are indeed Satanic Verses, who inspires the Quran. Muhammad received visions of revelation over a decade of transmission in which he went into a cave at Mount Hira on the Arabian Peninsula, where the angel of Gabriel supposedly gave him his initial vision. Now, at first, realize this, dear listener, at first, Muhammad thought he was being visited by demons. I wonder why. And these demons are called jin in Arabic, plural, genie.

Once we get genie in English, right? The genie in a bottle, you rub it three times, and he appears and grants you three wishes. These genie, or this jin, these are the description of those visitations, and they bear every biblical evidence of demonic possession, I submit to you. That is, things like Muhammad was writhing on the ground. He fell into absolute catatonia.

He spoke gibberish and so-called heavenly tongues, and he also experienced great shuddering fear. He experienced terror for days afterwards. And it was only when his wife, Aisha, reassured him that the spirits must be good spirits. How did she determine that they were good spirits? Well, she said that one of those spirits left her presence when she was about to undress.

The spirit was modest, so it must be good. That was her reasoning. Only then, after Aisha's reassurance along these lines, did then Muhammad begin to write down what these jin told him. The result is the Quran. The Quran is arranged in chapters called surahs, They are composed in Arabic, and they range from the longest chapters to the shortest chapters.

And these chapters, these surahs, bear names like the cow or the house of Imran. And there's also a chapter on women. There's a chapter on cattle, these kinds of things. It is important to note this distinction, though. All those books in the Quran, aspiring to displace the Bible, were given according to the dictation theory of inspiration.

That is, Muhammad and those who take their books by dictation merely write down what is told them by these jin or these spirits. And they were all done within the brief lifespan of one purported prophet, who had them revealed by an angel of light or by angels of light, sometimes ostensibly Christ or sometimes an angel like Gabriel. But the Bible has been given to us in utter contrast to this idea of the dictation theory. No, the Bible has been given to us by a divinely inspired human agency, God and man working together, God working through the personality and gifts of a particular man.

The Apostle Peter says, for example, in 2 Peter chapter 1, he says, knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, unquote. This is that sense of the divinely inspired human agency, man speaking through the personality and being, or God speaking through the personality and being of a particular man and his personality and his gifts.

So all of these in the Bible, these prophets, inspired prophets, individuals whose message and themes and motifs nevertheless beautifully comport with one another and speak the same message one with another, these were all composed by multiple authors over millennia of time. So I submit to you this is a crucial test of the authority of those respective books. Are they given by one man in his brief lifespan and dictated, or are they given through human agency, through human personality and distinctions and gifts over millennia and millennia of time like the Bible?

Once again, commenting on the Quran, there's a website called thereligionofpeace.com. This is one of my favorite websites. They say, Muhammad's Quran did not contain a single original moral value, and it contributed only one new idea to world religion, and that is, Muhammad is Allah's prophet. In fact, Allah seemed oddly preoccupied with making sure Muslims knew to obey Muhammad's every earthly wish, as this mandate is repeated at least 20 times in the narration of the Quran, unquote. Well, secondly, as we explore the nature of Islam in comparison to Christianity, we also must ask, who is Allah, and who is his prophet?

Who is Allah, dear listener? Who is he really, at base, at core, and who is his prophet? Oh, the city of Mecca was on the desert trade route through the Arabian Peninsula. For centuries, Jews had a community there, and then in more recent centuries, as we approach the time of Muhammad, Christian enclaves began to appear. And with them, of course, with Jews and with Christians, the doctrines of monotheism came in their wake.

There is one God over all, says monotheism, one God over all, creator of all things, and who is alone deserving of worship, the essence of monotheism. And this message came to the pagan tribes of Arabia, one of those tribes being the Kirash, belonging to which was the young orphan Muhammad, who at the time was being raised by his uncle. And there, in the Kirash tribe, was a primitive form of animism. What is animism? Animism is still practiced all over the world.

Animism says that the realm of nature is occupied by animating spirits. Thus, we have animism from animating spirits. That is, rocks and trees and streams and animals, all of nature is filled with animating spirits. And the premier object of the Qurash was the Kaaba stone, a large black meteor. Still, of course, in Mecca today, the Kaaba stone, the large black meteor that ostensibly had fallen from the sky in the days of Adam and Eve.

And Muslim tradition has it that this Kaaba stone was originally white, but that over the centuries, it has turned black by absorbing the sins of believers. Now, the historian Alfred Juliome, in his book, Islam, Alfred Juliome says, these stones served as altars and the blood of the human victims, that is human sacrifice, the blood of the human victims was smeared or poured on these stones while the tribesmen danced round the stone. Herodotus states very credibly that blood brotherhood was established in this way.

Alfred Juliome goes on to say, the devotees licked the blood or dipped their hands in it, and thus reciprocal bond held them to one another and the deity to whom the stone belonged. This is indeed, unquote, then, too. This is from Alfred Juliome and his book, Islam. Dear listener, this is partial history of the Kaaba stone that is still revered and to which pilgrimages are made yet by Muslims. When Muhammad entered the shrine of the Kaaba stone, following his exile from Mecca to Benina and his return to Mecca, well, Muhammad found that the shrine was filled with 360 gods, only one of whom was Allah.

Yes, dear listener, very few people realize that Allah was originally only one of 360 gods in this panoply of pagan gods. And Muhammad, well, what he did in order to establish monotheism, ostensibly, what he did was to clear out all the other gods and left only the Kaaba stone and dedicated it then to Allah, declaring there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad, that is himself, and Muhammad is his prophet. He went on to say, then, superstition is not banned from Arabia. Oh, dear listener. Allah is early interpreted, too.

Not many people realize this, but in Arabic, Allah is early on interpreted as moon god. And this is who Allah was when he was indeed only one of 360 other gods of the Qurash. He was only relegated to the idea of a moon god. And despite the protests of Muslim scholars today, this is the case. And the practices of Muslims today, things like bowing in prayer five times a day in the direction of Mecca, every Muslim is expected to do this.

Well, it's the same practice as that practiced by the pagan tribesmen of Muhammad's day. Additionally, we can say that the moon god, Allah, when he was only one of 360 other gods, well, Allah's character has not changed from that day. For example, Allah still demands blood, even as the moon god, the pagan moon god demanded blood, the pagan moon god Allah. Well, Allah still demands blood, only it is the blood now of the sacrificial victims or infidels. We see this blood letting all over the Muslim world today as they slaughter Christians and non-believers.

And we must also point out that while Christ shed his own blood to save others, Muhammad shed the blood of others in order to save himself. And Muslims still do this today, do they not? That's a very pagan practice to shed the blood of infidels in order to save oneself. And indeed, in the salvation scheme of Islam, one's guaranteed salvation is only achieved when one practices jihad, that is the shedding of the blood of infidels in order to save oneself. This is a very pagan practice, dear listener.

And of course, Allah is absolutely transcendent, such that there is nothing personal about him at all. Not so with biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity says, in contrast, that Yahweh, that the God of the Bible, is transcendent, of course, in his nature, but he is also imminent in his presence in, but not of, his creation. Indeed, we say that the God of the Bible is imminent in his creation. That is, he is personal, and he is present, and he is accessible through the mediator, Jesus Christ.

So, Yahweh is utterly different than Allah. We do not worship the same God, dear listener, while others may try to lull you to sleep and to pave over the differences between Allah and Yahweh. There is a world's worth of difference. There is a salvation's world worth of difference between Allah and Yahweh. They are not the same gods.

God of the Bible is accessible. He is personal, and you may have contact. You may live with him through his mediator, his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, and we also must point out to you that while Christ brings peace, brings true biblical shalom with God through reconciliation of your sins, that is, in Christ, you have forgiveness of sins, and therefore, you are reconciled unto God, and you live with him. You have a personal relationship with him.

You have peace with him. You have shalom with God through Christ, and you have shalom. You have peace with your fellow man, too, because of Christ. In utter contrast, Islam, instead of peace, means submission. The primary relationship between Allah and those who serve him is that of master and slave, master and servant, master and slave.

That's what the relationship to Allah means with you, dear listener. If you adopt Islam as your religion, your primary relationship becomes that of slave or servant to master. You are then a servant or a slave to Allah and his will. What is his will then, dear listener? What is the will of Allah for you?

First of all, it is to practice complete submission of yourself to the house of Islam, the Dar al-Islam, and then you must fight in jihad against the house of war, that is, the Dar al-Harb. There is indeed in Islam only two houses. There is the house of Islam, that is, those of the fellow believer, and then there is the house of war, the Dar al-Harb, that is, those who do not believe, the house of the infidel, the house of those that must be converted or made to submit to Allah. And then there is, of course, the outward conformity to the five practices of Islam.

Islam is entirely an outward religion, not an inner change of the heart, but an outward change of the behavior. You must practice the five pillars of Islam, as they are called. You must practice the shahadah, that is, you must declare there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. There is the second practice, that is, the salat, which is prayer five times a day. The third pillar of Islam is the zakat, that is, the giving of alms to the poor.

There is the fourth pillar of Islam, and that is the psalm, that is fasting or observing Ramadan for one month of the year. And then there is the fifth pillar of Islam, which is the hajj, that is, the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime, if at all, practically possible. So these, then, are the things to which you must submit, to which you must serve as a slave or servant of Allah in being in submission to him and remembering, of course, always, that Islam means submission and not peace.

One of my favorite scholars, R.J. Washtuni, rightly observes that Allah demands outward conformity to the five laws, which are exterior to the heart, with no inward transformation required, that he might be saved, while, of course, Christ demands an inward transformation of the heart, that the sinner might be saved, and then that the law of love might be kept by the whole man in all of his life. Dear listener, I submit to you, Islam and Christianity do not share a common God. They are as different as night and day.

I encourage you to join us at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church as we explore these differences between Christianity and Islam. There are vast differences, as vast as the universe between the God of Islam, Allah, and the God of Christianity, Yahweh, and his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are exploring these differences at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. We encourage you to visit us at New Geneva. Once again, worship at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Join us on Sunday mornings or call us at 523-0196.