Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we invite you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, we want to continue to challenge you to think seriously about Christianity and Islam. Now, we have been examining in weeks past some introductory ideas covering Islam's origins and its five main tenets or pillars, including that less acknowledged shadow pillar, jihad. And we examine jihad.

We saw that even this is broken into four types of struggle, including the inevitable element of armed conflict and propagation of the faith by means of conquest and subjugation. And we contrasted this with Christianity's principles of propagation of the faith by means of word and sacrament. And we demonstrated that from the Bible. So, we're going to continue to do some more comparison and some contrasting elements. And you'll hear some things that have been deliberately overlooked and played down in discussing our current struggle with radical, militant Islam.

And today, there is a major feature of Islam about which you may or may not have heard that sounds the death knell for any Christian republic. And that is the concept of Sharia, which is Arabic for way, or the way, or the way, Sharia. Now, the way, or Sharia, governs every aspect of life, from commerce to marriage and family to the treatment of slaves. Yes, slavery is and always has been rampant in the Muslim world. And governs as well what you eat and drink in the dietary cold, all these things, all these things, Sharia, inextricably bound up with the Quran.

And the more seriously and sincerely a Muslim takes the teachings of the Quran, the more he scorns the Western idea of a separation of church and state. In fact, the danger to Islam increases in proportion to the level of tolerance and diversity that is existent in a culture. Islam by no means is tolerant and diverse. The more liberal a society, the greater the threat to the Muslim who purposes to live his life according to Sharia. It is a strict code extrapolated from the Quran, an ancient 7th century tribal code, as narrow and unforgiving as the harsh desert from which it came.

In fact, the scholar Bernard Lewis, and I just encourage you to pick up any of his works that you can find. I'm quoting from Bernard Lewis's book, What Went Wrong? And he says there, in an Islamic state, there is in principle no law other than Sharia, the holy law of Islam. The idea that any group of persons, any kind of activities, any part of human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and jurisdiction, is alien to Muslim thought. There is, for example, no distinction between canon law and civil law, between the law of the church and the law of the state, which is crucial to Christian history.

There is only a single law, the Sharia, accepted by Muslims as of divine origin and regulating all aspects of human life, unquote, Bernard Lewis. So, Sharia is very static. There's no case law development, according to precedent, as there is in the West. All cases in Sharia are decided by judges. There's no jury of one's peers.

Courts do not allow circumstantial evidence, and there can be no cross-examination of witnesses, and no appeal can be made to a higher court. Under a strict Quranic system of law, for example, the police are charged with enforcing moral codes of dress and behavior. That's why in many Muslim countries, we have film of police roaming the streets, arresting women in the streets for looking lewdly at men in the streets, for example. Does America even remember the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? Oh, when the Quran prescribes modest dress for women, all come the burkas.

If the Quran demands death for adultery, then you have women being executed in soccer stadiums, as they were in Afghanistan. When you have ancient art and statuary in museums and temples, as the Buddhists did in Afghanistan, they get blown up and destroyed. One of the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind was the burning of the ancient library in Alexandria, for example, in A.D. 640, by conquering, butchering Muslims. And that library contained over 300,000 priceless volumes of antiquity. And then, when asked about this loss by one of his lieutenants, the caliph who ordered it said, they now have the Quran.

Pray tell, what other book do they need? Unquote. So, if you want to know what life would be like in America if Islam had its way, look to the recent history of Afghanistan. Oh, is this the kind of system you want for America? All across Europe, where Sharia displaces Western law codes, you have vast Islamic ghettos.

The ruling classes will not admit to this, but now, virtually, with Muslims being imported all across Europe, you now have vast swathes of major cities which are Islamic ghettos, where Sharia is practiced, where there's no more Western law codes. They don't call the local police. They enforce their own laws within their ghettos. In fact, they are often called no-go zones, these vast swathes of Islamic and Muslim ghettos, no-go zones for local cops and for local people, for that matter. Is this the kind of system you want for America?

Sharia law is diametrically opposed to all that we hold dear. America has a biblical foundation for law, despite progressive attempts to erase it from our collective memory. And there are three main points in this foundation of law based upon Christian principle, upon which we can only touch briefly. First of all, number one, the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom. We must always keep this in mind.

The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, first and foremost. As we discussed last week, God is ushering in his kingdom by means of invisible spiritual forces which conquer the hearts and minds of men by the invisible sword of the spirit, not by means of jihad, the sword of the state, or Sharia, the law of the state, no. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus about whether he was a king or not, because Pilate was threatened by earthly challengers, well, Jesus responded, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews, but now my kingdom is from another place, unquote.

Once again, this is why Christianity does not build earthly kingdoms and laws as if they were one and the same with the kingdom of God. No, the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom. Secondly, we must also keep in mind that Jesus emphasized two spheres of authority for his followers. Number one, his kingdom, and number two, that of earthly kingdoms. Two spheres of authority.

And this is especially clear in the parable of the coin where our Lord said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's. Though there is mutual influence, there is ultimately distinct spheres in which each has authority. The church must refrain from running and or dictating the government as the church and vice versa. The state must refrain from running and dictating to the church. Here, contained in this principle of two spheres, one has much of the history of the West.

How will the two relate? Who will have predominance? The temptation was always for the bishop to lord it over the prince, and the temptation for the prince was always to lord it over the bishop. Here's a tension, utterly unknown in Islam, a tension they see as absurd. In Islam, law is always religious, and religion is always the law.

And so that's why we have Muslim ghettos, where in fact, Sharia law reigns supreme, where it governs all aspects of life. In fact, there are no go zones in these Muslim ghettos, as we mentioned. The third thing we have to include here is that while there are two spheres in the West, church and state, each with its own sphere of authority, they were never intended to be separate, that is, without influence upon each other, as if they were hermetically sealed from one another, like the Supreme Court and the ACLU would have it.

No, Christianity must have influence in shaping the laws and institutions of the government as a profound moral influence. Christians are exhorted, whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, Paul says. And this includes the making of laws. American jurisprudence, developed over thousands of years of tradition, has been inextricably bound up with the Christian religion.

In fact, James Kent, who was a chief justice of the Supreme Court of New York in the early part of the 19th century, he said, Christianity in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is part and parcel of the law of the land, unquote. Well, in the Congress of the United States, the walls are covered with statues and carvings of great promulgators of law in the history of man. I've been there, I've seen it. And guess who is predominantly, prominently displayed over the head of the Speaker of the House? None other than Moses and the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared in a decision in 1980, religion has been closely identified with our history and government. The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion, unquote. So, the very ideals of compassion and justice and tolerance and diversity that are now DEI, right, diversity, equity, and inclusion, these are old takes on tolerance and diversity. Oh, they are all rooted in the Christian religion. Oftentimes, the biblical exhortation to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for example, is held up for derision as an antiquated law of exact retribution.

However, what most people do not realize is that ancient law codes in the primitive East, including the Code of Hammurabi invariably had provisions in them which let the rich and privileged of that society punish a poor man far in excess of his crime. If a poor man stole a chicken from a rich man, his wife and children could be sold into slavery or he could even be executed because he breached a code of conduct against the rich and well-placed in society. What was new and just about the biblical rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is precisely its exact justice.

The punishment was to fit the crime and no rich man could use the opportunity of a poor man's crime to plunder what little he did have. So, many other principles embodied in our legal system can be traced directly to biblical foundations. For example, corroboration of testimony from at least two witnesses, compassion in the courts for widows and orphans and the stranger traveling in your land. All of these were vulnerable peoples in society, and the law recognized that they were often subject to extenuating circumstances, and so compassion and tolerance must be extended to them.

Yet all of these things were well established in the larger context of righteousness and goodness based upon a biblical morality, a biblical sense of right and wrong. But if they are going to remain compassion and justice and tolerance and diversity, or as we put it now, diversity and equity and inclusion, if they're going to remain these things, they must not be severed from their roots as they have been in our culture. Oh, they all have roots in the Bible and the centuries of Christian tradition, but have been twisted today. What happens when these things are severed from their roots?

Oh, just look out upon our modern liberal progressive America. When compassion is espoused without the God of the Bible, you have a welfare state that funds everything from fatherless families to prisons filled with capital criminals and illegal aliens. When justice is practiced without the God of the Bible, you have fathers who spank their children that are thrown in jail while fathers who advocate sex with children are protected by the law.

When you have tolerance and diversity practiced without the God of the Bible, you have prayer and the Bible taken out of the classroom and witchcraft and the Quran introduced as required courses as they have been in the past in the American system. It is time to return to a biblical model of law and justice. Our present course of indulging compassion and justice and tolerance and diversity without a Christian foundation will only provide aid and comfort to the enemy.

So very briefly then we see the stark contrast between Christianity with its doctrine of two spheres of authority for law and religion and Islam with Sharia and its single sphere of authority for law and religion. Do we realize what's at stake, dear listener? It is the goal of every good Muslim, whether he is, if at all possible, wherever he is, that is, to establish Sharia. This is the great unconfessed secret that no Muslim wants to reveal here in the West outside of the safety of the mosque. This one question he hopes no political talk show host will ask him.

If you had your way, would you like to see the constitution scrapped and replaced by the Quran and its system of Sharia? Oh, if they were asked that, if you would be an honest Muslim, you would have to answer, Allah Akbar, yes, of course. If he were true to his principles and beliefs, he would have to admit that this is the fondest hope of every good Muslim living anywhere in the decadent West. Oh, this is difficult now in America, except for those previously mentioned Muslim ghettos around the America, and no spokesman for Islam would find it politically expedient to openly admit this.

But if they're honest, men like Hussein Ibbish of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or James Zogby of the American, or the Arab American Institute, and others like him, would have to admit in their hearts, as good Muslims, they want to see Sharia prevail. Millions of Muslims of every nationality have immigrated to America in search of a better life, and have begun contributing citizens, yes. But there is and always will be this inherent tension in their religion. As radical, militant Islam polarizes itself from the civilized world. It will drag the rest of the Islamic world with it.

Whatever you may say about the radicals, they are calling all Muslims back to basic principles of the Quran, Sharia being one of them, and millions are listening. We shrink back in horror at what is happening, perhaps, comforting ourselves with the illusion that certainly no reasonable civilized person could approve of such barbaric things like Sharia law. Well, millions of Muslims do. Whether they can jump up and down in ecstatic joy in the streets of Palestine, or whether they can only smirk and laugh in the privacy of their kitchens at home in America, this is what they want. America, do you know what you are up against?

The utterly naive tolerance and diversity which prevails in our culture is the very thing against which Islam fights and which they utterly despise. You will not win them over. They will not suddenly wake up one morning and say, oh, what was I thinking? Oh, we can't have Sharia. No, Islamic law will prevail wherever Islam held or holds sway.

Ah, the kind of tolerance and diversity practiced by the Muslim world, severed from Christian roots, will tolerate the very cancer in its body politic that will kill it here in America. The kind of tolerance and diversity practiced by us, that is. Radical militant Muslims use the very tolerance that naive simpletons extend to them to live amongst us and destroy us in the process. Our lax and tolerant immigration policies allowed 19 hijackers to obtain visas in order to study our ways and appear to adopt our lifestyle.

Diversity allowed five of them to learn how to fly commercial aircraft, not to improve their lot and become productive, contributing Americans, no, but to run them into our buildings and kill as many of us as possible in the name of Allah. So make no mistake, the struggle we face is first and foremost, a spiritual struggle, dear listener. A secular nation will never, never win against a militant Islamic people, no matter how sophisticated the weapons of the secular nation, because it is first and foremost, a spiritual struggle.

And although Muslims have not always been consistent here, they at least teach that there are only two peoples, that is the house of Islam, that is good Muslims, and the house of war, which are the infidels, that is all the rest of us. Technically, the house of Islam transcends all nationalities and reaches to Muslims in every country of the world, including America. Oh, at one time, for example, the FBI thought that there were no Al-Qaeda in America. Oh, we've learned better. The estimates now are over, well over five to six to seven thousand in cells all over the country.

What are we going to do? Bomb our own cities? No, that's not the weapon that we have to fight with. No, our battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle. Now, those secularists who trust in the outward fruits of our Christian foundations, they don't realize so many of the fruits of the West have roots in the Christian faith, and we can cover that at another time.

But those secularists who trust in the outward fruits of our Christian foundations, that is, things like a strong economy, just laws and courts, freedom of expression, a strong and creative military, all who trust in these fruits of Christian culture will be ultimately disappointed, and they will be defeated. Why? Because the struggle we face is first and foremost a spiritual struggle, dear listener. As the Apostle Paul puts it, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, unquote.

If you are unaware of this spiritual realm, of these spiritual forces that we just talked about, then you will be a victim of their control. You will be manipulated by them, and those actors on their behalf who exist now in places of power. Evil always seeks power. Like water running downhill, evil always runs toward power because of the desire, indeed, to affront and oppose the living God. They seek power.

And those who are not aware of that spiritual power at work and how Christ has triumphed over those powers will be controlled and manipulated and be victims of that spiritual power. So we must arm ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and be ready, willing, and able to fight in this spiritual realm, to put on the spiritual armor that Paul talks about, for example, in Ephesians chapter 6, so that we might be equipped to fight first and foremost that spiritual battle. And it will, believe me, work its way then from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the physical.

We, as human beings made in the image of God, are the only creatures in the universe that straddle these two realms, the spiritual and the physical. And so we must be equipped to fight the wars first and foremost in the spiritual realm, and then it will, believe me, make its way to the physical realm as well. Our strength as a people has always come, I would submit to you, our strength as a people has always come, incidentally, because we have first settled the issues of our spiritual warfare. We have first achieved victory in Christ over spiritual death by receiving eternal life and righteousness by faith.

True life is life with God, and that life is brought on by a spiritual birth as one believes in Christ and his work on the cross that redeems us from the temporal world of sin and death and ushers us into the spiritual kingdom of God, the kingdom of the Son he loves, as the apostle Paul puts it. Our 1400-year warfare now with militant Islam is only the most recently visible manifestation of the struggle.

If you wonder what the real issues are, where the real battle is joined, we invite you to a struggle that has been in progress ever since the Garden of Eden, a struggle whose victory is assured only in the King of Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is a struggle. While we're fighting, dear listener, join us, because it means the difference between eternal spiritual life and death. Oh, as the great King Nebuchadnezzar had to confess, and this is from the book of Daniel, chapter 4, after going through his ordeals, the great Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had to confess, his kingdom is an eternal kingdom.

His dominion endures from generation to generation. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard Boulevard, and we invite you to come and join us for holy worship. But we also want to inform you that if you do want to join us, and we hope you do, that we will be meeting for the month of September while we do some renovations in the church building proper.

We will be meeting for the entire month of September on Sundays at 10 a.m. in the Senior Citizen Center at the corner of 21st and Rowlandette, a beautiful facility, and we'll be meeting there at 10 a.m. all through the month of September. So come and join us there while our building is being renovated. Or you can call us for more information at area code 208-523-0196, or check out our website at newgenevaopc.org, newgenevaopc.org.