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, we are comparing Christianity and Islam. We've been doing this for the last few weeks. We've looked not only at what is Allah in comparison to the God of the Bible, Yahweh, but today we're going to be looking at how am I saved?

These are questions that every religion must ask. I'm approaching our comparison between Islam and Christianity with three different questions, posing three different questions for you. It's going to take us practically all of the summer to do it, but the first question that we must ask of every major world religion is who do I worship? And we see, of course, with Islam, it is the God Allah.

And we saw last week that Allah was originally, when Muhammad plucked him from the panoply of gods of the Kirash tribe of the Arabian Peninsula, he was one of 360 gods that were worshipped in the pagan tribes, elevated suddenly to the great creator, the great God of gods in competition with Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of Christians as well, of course, the God of the Bible he is. Well, today we want to see, we want to pose this question to both Christianity and Islam. How am I saved? Every major world religion must answer this question. How am I saved if I need to be saved at all?

Well, I would pose to you the question also, is not Christianity counterintuitive to the world's religions? Every other world religion, that we see on the face of the earth has to do with working one's own way to salvation, to earning one's way with God, such that he will be assured a place in heaven. How about the biblical Christianity? Well, we will take a look at this in the next few minutes, and we will see indeed that Christianity is counterintuitive to the world's idea of salvation, counterintuitive. There are many things that are counterintuitive in life.

For example, I grew up in western Michigan, where we lived and worked and recreated on the Great Lakes. I was always told growing up that I had to know how to cope with dangerous undertow created by the waves on all the Great Lakes, but especially on Lake Michigan. Under certain circumstances, the undertow on Lake Michigan could be so strong that it could pull a swimmer down into the water and out into the lake faster than he could swim towards shore. When a swimmer gets caught in such a situation, several things usually happen. First, he panics.

Then he swims even harder, which is the intuitive response to swim even harder if you're not going anywhere. But he is nevertheless carried down and further out into the lake, and then he exhausts himself. And then finally, what do you think happens? Oh, he drowns.

We were trained as kids by parents and aunts and uncles, swimming instructors, that if we were to save ourselves in such a circumstance, that we must do a counterintuitive thing, even as we must do a counterintuitive thing if we are to be saved as Christians, we must do a counterintuitive thing, that is, let the current of the undertow carry us out into the lake, and we must swim with the undertow further and further out until it weakened the undertow, such that it no longer pulled us down.

It demanded a counterintuitive response, that one not panic, that one stay calm, and that one do exactly what every fiber in one's body says is wrong, and that is swim with the undertow, swim with the current out so far into the lake that it no longer could pull you down and out. Then you are in a position to swim to another part of the beach where the undertow was not so strong like a dock or a sandbar or a jetty. Another counterintuitive way to save your life is in a bear attack. Oh, yes, we face this much more here in the area of Idaho, don't we? Bear attacks.

And the counterintuitive way to save your life is to have bear spray and not a gun. At first, I scoffed at this idea when it was suggested to me. I thought that pepper spray combined with rolling up into a passive ball instead of fighting like your counsel to do merely meant that you were a virtual seasoned peppered meatball for the bear. Surely, I thought, a .44 Magnum or a .30-06 is not only more macho, but more deadly and effective against a bear. But not so, says a whole raft of new evidence.

For example, the Journal of Wildlife Management published a study that concluded that in 269 close encounters with bears with guns, bear injuries occurred in 151 of these incidents with bears. But in contrast, in all encounters involving bear spray, and there have been 83 since 1985 when spray was introduced, 98% of the aggressive bears were repelled and there were only three injuries and none of them fatal. Bear spray is more easily deployed and it's more foolproof. In a panic situation, many of us respond as fools, don't we? Well, these are all counterintuitive ways to respond to save one's life.

And when it comes to counterintuitive ways to save, none is more counterintuitive than that of Christianity versus Islam. The consequences, however, dear listener, were down to eternity, not just this mortal life as significant as this mortal life may be. Each religion has an accounting of whether we need to be saved in the first place and then the standard by which one attains unto salvation, and then the means by which this salvation is provided. Let's look at each one of these in turn, comparing Christianity with Islam. First of all, we ask, how am I saved under Christianity and under Islam?

How am I saved? Well, first we must answer, what puts me in the situation where I need to be saved? Let me remind you, dear listener, of my approach. Who do I worship? How am I saved?

And what are the fruits of that religion too? We must ask, what are the fruits of the respective religions that we compare? The question asking, how am I saved? Presupposes a very important premise. That is, I need to be saved.

Biblical faith is the only faith which begins the salvation of man, putting him in the absolute worst status of any world religion. The apostle Paul says, for example, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which he once walked and were by nature children of wrath. Paul says, we were dead in our trespasses. And of course, Adam and Eve from Genesis that we know from the book of Genesis, that Adam and Eve are our first parents are the ones who put us in such a situation.

Now, those of us in Christian circles articulate this reality as total depravity in which man, while not as bad as he could be, we will become as bad as we possibly can be in the age to come in the period when we are cast into hell. But right now, total depravity means that we are dead in all of our faculties. That's in the fall when Adam and Eve passed on to their progeny, their nature, their nature included the idea that we are dead in our mind, in our heart, in our will to the life of God.

We are alive to other spiritual realities, perhaps, but towards the God of the Bible, towards the living God of the Bible who made us, we are dead in our mind, our heart, and our will so that we cannot even choose for God to be saved. Accounting for man as totally depraved, it does several things. I'd like to list three of those things. Number one, when we say as biblical Christians that we are totally depraved, we have this advantage. Number one, total depravity accounts for how evil man gets.

The ugly depths to which we sink as humans suddenly becomes comprehensible. Under the doctrine of total depravity. Things like torture, or cannibalism, or slaughter like we see before us with ISIS in the Middle East, or the Holocaust during World War II, or child abuse that we hear about every day, or the wicked idolatry that occurs all over the world. All these things can be attributed to the baseness of our nature in total depravity. If man is basically good, however, as most other world religions say, if man is basically good, then how do you reason to these depths of ugliness and sin?

Only total depravity accounts for it in the most comprehensive way. And secondly, the doctrine of total depravity means that there are no excuses or extenuating circumstances that need to be given to human nature. Yes, when we say that man is totally depraved in his mind and his emotions and his will, then we don't need to give excuses or have extenuating circumstances given to our human nature. But if you begin with man as basically good or partially good, as Arminianism says, or basically good as all other world religions say, then deep evil needs to be excused or redefined.

Like a woman's choice in abortion, for example, or sexual identity with homosexuality, these kinds of things. Or the wicked human nature must be made some kind of exception to the rule. Yet when, over the centuries, deep evil seems to be the rule, then man's goodness as a beginning, optimistic assumption. It rings so hollow, doesn't it, as we look past in history, it becomes impossible to explain the origin of evil and its ubiquity to on the premise that man is basically good. So, total depravity does this.

It offers no excuses or extenuating circumstances and need to be given to the idea of evil in human nature. Well, the third thing that total depravity also does is it says that only when we see how bad we are will we see how good God is. Total depravity consults and informs and reveals that only when we see how bad we are will we see how good God is. Human nature tends to flatter itself, doesn't it, to be better than it really is? Well-intentioned people bent on flattering an audience, they may tell them, as Joel Osteen does in his book, Your Best Life Now, Seven Steps to Living at Your Full Potential.

Joel Osteen says, you may think there was a lot wrong with you, but there's also a lot right with you. That's a thin gruel platitude, isn't it? While these simple platitudes may work for a while, as long as we measure ourselves on a horizontal scale with other human beings and we grade ourselves on a curve with other human beings, well, they do not work when we look upwards to a perfect and holy God. Then we say with Isaiah, when he saw the holy God seated upon his throne, Isaiah beat his breast and said, woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

Well, then we see when we compare ourselves vertically with an all holy and all perfect God that we need to be saved. Oh, this is the basic upshot of biblical Christianity. There is a need for us to be saved. And unless this opening premise of religion is squarely faced, all else will fail. If you set the depth charge of salvation, if we can liken salvation to a depth charge and damnation to a submarine lurking in the depths of our nature, if you set the depth charge of salvation too shallow, it will miss this target altogether, the submarine of sin, if I can put it that way.

The depth charge rather, as we see in World War II when they were hunting submarines, the depth charge must go as deep as that submarine of sin travels if it is to be destroyed. And only biblical Christianity squarely faces the depth to which sin travels in the sea of our soul. And only biblical Christianity is prepared to destroy it. Well, what about Islam? What does Islam have to say of salvation and its need for the human soul?

Islam teaches that man is basically good? Ah, aren't you shocked? Every other world religion on the face of the earth posits that man begins, at least, starts out as basically good. And the Imam Ishmael al-Tarruqi, who currently teaches and is one of the premier teachers of Islam today, especially among radical groups, he says this about human nature, and I quote him, Islam teaches that people are born innocent and remain so until each makes himself or herself guilty by a guilty deed.

Islam does not believe in original sin, and its scripture, that is the Quran, interprets Adam's disobedience as his own personal misdeed, a misdeed for which he repented and which God forgave, unquote. Well, this is the universal understanding of man standing before God, I submit to you. Islam only has a particular take upon this, and it is taken from accounts like this from the Quran. Here from the Quran is the account of Adam and Eve. The Quran in Surah number two says, O Adam, dwell in the garden, and eat of the bountiful things therein, as ye will.

But approach not this tree, or run ye into transgression. Then did Satan make them slip from the garden, and get them out of the state of felicity in which they had been. Get ye down, O mankind, from the garden. On earth will be your dwelling place. Then Adam learnt from his Lord and turned towards him, for Allah is oft returning most merciful, unquote.

This is from the Quran, Surah number two. So, according to Islam, man has no intrinsic need for salvation. The former Muslim, Abdul Salib, now converted to Christianity, reflects on these things. And I quote him, Abdul Salib says, Islamic theology actually has no room for any doctrine of the fall of man. Adam sinned.

God forgave him. That's the end of the story. Adam sinned had no consequence for people who came after him, unquote. Oh, this is quite the opposite, is it not, of biblical Christianity. In fact, another point of consensus in Islam, there are precious few of them.

They're always at war with one another. But one of the other points of consensus in Islam is that the fall was a good thing. Oh, they say this. Mullah Shabir Akhtar says this about the goodness of the fall. And I quote him, indeed, Muslims view Adam's expulsion from Eden as the occasion for the rise of man.

Adam's original disobedience to God's will is seen as being merely the joint result of ignorance and a weak will. Men need only mentors and the grace of God. Unquote. From one of the premier mullahs practicing, of course, in the Muslim world today. Well, Islam, I submit to you, sets the depth charge of salvation at a very shallow level and misses the target altogether.

Consequently, that submarine of sin runs rampant throughout the religion of Islam, torpedoing every effort of man to escape his predicament. And the God of the Bible does not turn away. Indeed, he will judge one day. Well, what is the standard by which all of this is measured, dear listener? This brings me to point number two.

And we are asking today of both Islam and Christianity, how am I saved? And we must know what the standard is by which I may attain unto salvation. And of course, the Bible gives us a very clear picture of what God expects and the standard by which he measures with whether we have achieved that point of salvation or not.

One example is from Deuteronomy chapter 10, where God says, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good, unquote. All too often, we begin measuring ourselves by the wrong standard, do we not, as human beings? We look around and we look at our own performance in relation to someone else. Dear listener, we can always find someone who's a little bit worse than us down the scale.

Even Charles Manson, you may remember in his jail time, his trial time, carved indeed a swastika on his forehead because he was pointing to Hitler as more of a mass murderer than him. So even Charles Manson can find somebody worse than him. So when we are finished grading ourselves on the curve, which we're fond of doing, we usually find ourselves with an A, perhaps. Or if maybe we're a nominal Presbyterian or maybe a Lutheran from Lake Wobegon, perhaps we're more modest than we give ourselves. A B, maybe, huh?

But this is not how God grades us. He does so by his own measure, and that measure is the measure of perfection. Oh, Moses says of this God, he says, the rock. His work is perfect for all his ways are just as a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright as he, unquote. Our dilemma as human beings is that because this God is just and holy and perfect, he requires that from us in our performance of the law as well.

Jesus himself said, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Now the man on the street is perfectly ignorant of this fact, I would submit to you. He's not perfect, but he is perfectly ignorant of this fact. And when he does become aware of it, cognitive dissonance and despair then ensues. He says, woe is me, I am undone.

Or as Paul says, I am the chief of sinners. Or as the Philippian jailer said, what must I do to be saved? Oh, this is right where God wants us, I submit to you, in Christianity. When he realizes indeed that God's standard is perfect, he measures us by perfection because he is a perfect God. Would you want any other kind of God, dear listener?

And would you want any other heaven except a perfect one in which a perfect God and perfect beings dwell? Well, what about Islam? Well, Abdul Salib, that former Muslim who is now a Christian, he reflects and he says this, in the Quran, God is portrayed in highly majestic and sovereign terms. However, in the entire Quran, holy is attributed to God only twice. Yet in one verse in Isaiah, holy, holy, holy, there are more references to the holiness of God than in the entire Islamic scripture.

This has shaped the limited understanding of the holiness of God, unquote. From Salib, of course, who knows now just how far short the God of Islam falls in his holiness and his perfection. And it has profound consequences for the performance of his creature, man. While Allah may be perfect, he is not holy. That is, he is not perfect in moral character.

That is part of what holiness means. Perfection in one's moral and ethical character. Salib says this about Muslims, and I quote him, Muslims do not believe that God has revealed his character or his righteousness. They say that God has revealed his will and his commands. However, that will and those commands do not reflect God's righteous and holy character because we cannot know God.

His law is not based on his own character. Because of that understanding of God and the diminished view of how holy he is, it is obviously very hard for Muslims to understand how sinful we are and the radical nature of human sinfulness, unquote. This is a great insight because of the lack of understanding of God and how holy he is. It is hard for Muslims to understand how sinful we are, how radical nature of our sinfulness actually is. And so the bar we must leap in Islam is much lower than that of the Bible.

In fact, it is a different bar altogether, I submit to you, where sin is not being zealous enough for Allah. That's the understanding of sin in Islam is that you're not as zealous enough for Allah. Or perhaps as the Quran tells us, you fail to pay back every slight to Muhammad's name or to Allah's name or for failing to do, for example, the five pillars of Islam. Well, the sense of a moral and ethical standard based upon the moral nature of God is absent from a consideration of Allah. It is nonsense to the Muslim.

This is why sin can be so easily forgiven. And I submit to you that sin is less forgiven in Islam than it is dismissed. That's a better understanding of sin, the forgiveness of sin in Islam. No price need be paid for moral demerit in Islam. Allah can merely dismiss it, brush it off the table, if you will.

Allah is called merciful, that is, and mercy, of course, is not getting what you deserve. And he is called merciful far more than he is called gracious. Now grace demands a price. That is having another pay the price that you owe. That is the sense of grace.

But even then, when Muslims call Allah merciful, that sense of grace is that of sweetness and grandfatherly mercy rather than true grace. Oh, this skewed sense of standard, dear listener, has profound consequences when it comes to asking, what must I do to be saved? So, we must also ask of every major world religion, we'll ask this of Islam, we'll also ask this then of Christianity, what are the means that God has provided? Of course, since man cannot save himself, the Bible makes very clear that another must do the saving, and that is God himself.

For example, Ephesians chapter 2, dear listener, God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. Here's your means of salvation, dear listener, it is Christ. Paul goes on to say, by grace you have been saved. Yes, not by works, your own works. No, not by your own labors, not by your own keeping the law, but rather by grace have you been saved, your listener.

Paul goes on to say, and he raised us up with Christ and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace. Once again, grace, dear listener, the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Paul goes on to say very crucially here, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this, that is, faith is not your own doing. Even faith is a gift of God, Paul says, not a result of works.

Are you listening? Every other major world religion says that you are saved by your own works, or at least partially by your own works. Biblical Christianity says that your salvation is not your own doing. It is not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Oh, dear listener, you are not saved by works, but by grace.

This is biblical Christianity. Salvation is holy of God and none of man at all. Excluded are our own good works towards being constituted as just and righteous and perfect. No, our works can be no such thing in true biblical Christianity. What about Islam?

Remember that low bar of holiness, if you will. Well, Abdul Salib says, and I quote him, since Islam does not view sin as a radical problem, it is very natural that salvation for Islam also is not as radical a solution as the Christian faith claims. Basically, Islam claims that salvation is earned by good works, unquote. Oh, dear listener, for the Muslim, then he goes clipping along through life, acquiring good works and bad deeds like marbles in a bag. And at the end of his life, on the day of judgment, those marbles are dispersed into the scales.

And if there are more white marbles than black marbles, then on to heaven he goes. But if there are more black marbles than white marbles, then zip down to hell he goes. In fact, the Quran says in Surah number 23, and I quote the Quran now, then those whose balance of good deeds is heavy, they will attain salvation. But those whose balance is light will be those who have lost their souls. In hell they will abide, unquote.

One of the persistent themes in Islam, then, is that good works are the thing that saves, when it is indeed just the opposite, as the Bible tells us. Christ is our means of salvation. Grace in Christ is our means of salvation, not our own good works, and not the mere dismissive mercy so-called of God. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a Moment of Truth, where we've been comparing, how am I saved under both Islam and Christianity? And you've seen today that, indeed, like every other world religion, dear listener, Islam tells us you're saved by your own good works.

This is a damning thing, in the end, dear friend, because none of ours can save. Only by grace are we saved, as in biblical Christianity, the only world religion that asserts such. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us at 523-0196.

Once again, we meet at New Geneva for holy worship at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Idaho Falls listens to KID Newsradio 5.