Good evening to you all. I didn't bring my whole library, I promise you. I appreciate your coming. I recognize many of you, and I do not recognize many others of you. I welcome you all equally. Considering Islam biblically was the topic I was assigned, Islam with Buddhism and Christianity is one of the three most widely spread religions in the world today. We are told that between one and one-tenth and one and two-tenths billions of people adhere to Islam. That's one-fifth of the world's population. I am not a Muslim. I am coming as a student. having sought illumination, having studied more than a little, and want you to understand the posture from which I address what I'm about to say. I intend not to present my opinions. I have made careful use of the Koran. This copy in English, Dr. Barrett hasn't taught me Arabic, I don't know Arabic, is about 50 years old. I can prove that by not only the copyright date, but the fact that on the cover it says 95 cents, and considering the cost of textbooks these days, surely. I will not be politically correct tonight. I say that with no pride, I say that with a straightforward effort to tell the truth. I have no ecumenical attitude except where truth is concerned. I am an American. As an American, I grant full tolerance to everybody in our nation to believe as he chooses, to practice as he will, and without coercion to hold his faith. I hate no one except the devil and his works, though in the flesh I might have reason to hate. I come from an Armenian heritage. My parents both came from Turkey and Syria. They were Armenians who met in this country. Armenia, some of you know, in the year 301, was the first country officially to embrace Christianity. This was surely nominal, it was the order of the king over his people, and it did not mean universal conversion to Christ, of course. But officially as a nation, in 301, in response to the missionary work of one Gregory, the wonder worker, Gregory Thaumaturgus, the king, Tirdate, embraced Christianity and declared it to be the official religion of the nation. My mother was born 100 years ago this month. She has been with the Lord for 15 years now. When she was 8 or 10 years old, There was in the Near East a holocaust, a genocide before those terms had come into our language. The Muslim Turks set out to destroy the Armenian Christian population which was under their power in Eastern Turkey. They were ordered to go through the villages and kill all the men. That would guarantee, within a generation or two, the virtual decimation of the population. My mother, this was about 1912, it's just before World War I. My mother was about 10 years old. She remembers the Turkish soldiers coming into their village and into her home. and killing her father in the presence of her mother and sister and young brother. The young brother was kicked into a corner. He much later died of diphtheria, which was compounded by tuberculosis, as his lungs had been collapsed by the kicking. My grandmother, my mother's mother, was very evidently pregnant, and one of the Turkish soldiers said to the other, let's rip her open and see if it's a boy. They did not. The other soldier replied, have you no fear of Allah? That was going too far. They just murdered my grandfather, but that was going too far. And they left. My mother was placed in an orphanage with her sister. My grandmother, her mother, was able, through the assistance of an uncle, to come to the United States just before the outbreak of World War I, and later was able to redeem her daughters, one of whom became my mother, and they came to this country. I say all that, which is none of your business, to be sure, in order to say that in the flesh, naturally, I have, and there are many thousands of Armenians scattered over the world who had the same experience, very nearly the same. Many were led out into the desert, which meant the wilderness, to die of starvation. The Turks to this day claim they were simply relocating the Armenians. They relocated them from their villages to the desert and into graves, that was the relocation. The Turkish government does not to this day acknowledge that any holocaust like that occurred. And I will say one more thing about this, when in the 1930s Adolf Hitler was considering the ultimate solution to the Jews within his people. His advisors are said to have reminded him that this would produce infamy unparalleled. And Hitler is supposed to have replied, who remembers the Armenians? And that's true. Are any of you old enough to have been told at dinner time by your parents when you didn't like the vegetables on the plate? Think of the starving Armenians. Any of you that old? Thank you very much. I'm glad there's one. I'll remunerate you later. Thank you. And your attitude was probably, well, let them have it. I'd like to give it to them. I don't want it. The starving Armenians. I say this in order to suggest that while I am an American, I have no hatred. I am a redeemed Christian. My parents came to know the Lord. My father's coming to this country was another story. They met in this country and married and the rest is history, particularly important to me. I hate no one. I'm an American. I'm a Christian. I'm a Bible Christian. I'm a regenerated Christian. I say that with no glory except to my Savior, but I say it as a matter of truth and as a clarification of the posture from which I come to this subject. Christianity is biblically exclusive. It is inclusive of all who will come unto the Father by Jesus Christ, but a Christian is One who affirms the authority of the Word of God, the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, having accepted that work as his own, indwelt by the Spirit of God, instructed by the written Word of God, seeking to represent God in this world and living for him. I will have to make it clear also that God is the author of revelation. God does not give to the world religions. God revealed himself to man. First to the prophets, to the fathers, then incarnated in Jesus Christ, and then in the written word. The first verse of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. The first chapter of Hebrews. The first verse. God who at sundry various times and in various manners spake in times past by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." I know no other truth spiritually. Oh, there's scientific truth and other kinds of truth, but spiritual truth is resident in the Word of God. I cannot prove that to anyone who doesn't believe it. I may list proofs of the authority of the Word of God. I may point to fulfilled prophecy over the centuries. I may point to the inherent quality of integrity which the Scriptures possess, very much in contrast to what I've been reading in the Koran. I may point to the remarkable miraculous transformation of lives converted to Jesus Christ, lifted out of the mire of sin and become saints in the sight of God. I may point to that indefinable witness of the Spirit of God who bears witness with my spirit that I am born from above. But all those things are no proofs to someone who refuses to taste and see that the Lord is good. I want to make clear, God is the author of Revelation. I don't mean the last book of the Bible, I mean the 66 books of the Bible. Man's refusal to retain God in his knowledge, according to the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the second half of that chapter, describes man's original state, his original knowledge of God, and his refusal to retain that knowledge, and his ingratitude, his becoming unthankful. Those are two, T.W.O., very significant errors of mankind. Perversity of will determined will to refuse the revelation of God, and in gratitude, in gratitude for the gifts of God, for the revelation of God given to men by those illumined by the Spirit of God as instruments of the communication of that message. In refusing to retain the revelation of God, They were given over to reprobation. They turned the truth of God into a lie. They created religions. Man makes religions. God gives revelation. These religions always retain some aspects of truth. In order to gain a following, there has to be some commendable truth. Truth plus error, my students have heard for 50 years, is the most fatal form of error. One does not look at all the good water in a glass of poison, liquid poison. He focuses on the fact that it is poison. There's a lot of good water in that glass. but drink it and you will never drink again. The counterfeit must seem to be real or it is not an effective counterfeit. Counterfeit money must look sufficiently valid to deceive. There is truth in every mixture. Man makes religions. Now, just as the word Christianity, as a world religion listed in the almanac, covers and includes a very wide range of ideas, opinions, interpretations, sects, denominations, attitudes, definitions, so also with Islam. Today infidels masquerade as Christian theologians, some of whom deny the deity of Christ and boldly say Jesus never claimed to be God. And they stand in Christian pulpits and in chairs of seminaries. They deny his deity, his virgin birth, the uniqueness of the gospel, the authority of the written word of God. Pulpits and lecture chairs are often filled by such men and now women who have strayed from a biblical definition of Christianity if they ever knew one. So also I say with Islam, not all who will agree who wear that label. There are diversities, there are interpretations. Therefore, in order to discover what is a true Christian, I must go back to the authority, the Bible. In order to discover what is a true Muslim, I must go to their holy book. I must return to the roots, to the founding character and the authoritative source. The word Islam means submission, submission. Submission to Allah. A Muslim, which used to be spelled M-O-S-L-E-M, is now more typically M-U-S-L-I-M, more approximating the Arabic pronunciation. A Muslim is one who has submitted to Allah. I say I must go back to the roots, to the authoritative source. Now all that is point number one. Introductory comment. I come to number two. The context of Islam. The context. It is born in the early 7th century of the Christian era. That's A.D., yeah. The Arab peninsula, this is the environment, the context, the setting for Islam. The Arab peninsula of the Near East, east of North Africa, east of the Mediterranean Sea, which with Mesopotamia, the land of the Tigris-Euphrates, became the seedbed of Judaism and of Christianity. This is the eastern part of the old Roman Empire. Much of it was desert in Arabia, fertile on the coasts, Another part of this background and context is the condition of Christianity in that part of the world. From the first six centuries, there had been a number of theological, Christological controversies in the early church, through which councils were held following the example of the Council of Jerusalem in the Book of the Acts, and a Clarified orthodox creed was agreed upon. Heresies had been rejected by these councils after having been defined and declared incompatible with the teaching of the scripture. But rejected heresies do not die. They find alternative audience in alternative areas. So, perverted forms of Christianity rejected by the Orthodox councils found fertile soil in this part of Western Asia. A second component of this context is Judaism, which had been scattered through many diasporas and engaged often in commerce and trade, with which they have been to this day peculiarly gifted. And in the Arabian Peninsula, Arab tribes, polytheistic, worshipping many gods, idolatrous with images, warring in nature, Among them were merchants who traded with the Jews and others. One of these merchants was the son of an important family in Mecca. Mecca, one of two most important cities on the western coast of Arabia, very near the Red Sea. Mecca was about in the central part from north to south, but on the western coast. This family was an important family, I say, in Mecca, charged with some duties connected with the Kaaba. The Kaaba. K-double-A-B-A. Most of you have heard of most of this. The Kaaba was a temple, a cubical temple, relatively small, flat-roofed, black, covered in fabric on the exterior. On the south wall of which was laid a black stone encircled in silver. A black stone, the Arabs believed, which had been given to Abraham and Ishmael by God, probably a piece of a meteorite. but it was believed to have come down from heaven, which as a meteorite it surely did, and it was held sacred by the Arab tribes. It is still a sacred, it is the most sacred part of the holiest mosque in the Grand Mosque in Mecca. It is that to which Muslims face as they pray, I'll explain that. Now, in the late 6th century, the late 6th century, he was born in 570. This merchant, this son of this important family in Mecca, came into the employment of a wealthy widow who had inherited her husband's merchant business, his trade business. Khadija was her name. He served her well, he traveled widely, was well reported to his employer by his companion who traveled with him. Khadija, who was 15 years older than Muhammad, asked him to marry her. That's a different approach. He, at the age of 25, she at 40. They were married. Thus he acquired wealth and leisure. He lived faithfully with her in monogamy until her death. They had six children together, two boys, four girls. All of them died, but one daughter, Fatima, who became the focus of a great deal of conflict thereafter, on the part of the successors to Muhammad those who could claim association or descent from Fatima seem to be most important. Alright, that's the context, that's the setting. Number three, the coming, the coming of Islam, the coming of Islam. Muhammad with his family practiced as a regular procedure spending about one month each year in a cave of which the Arabian desert was replete for meditation. He was known to be afflicted on occasion with what we would call epilepsy. This is historically reported. Around the year 610 This is the beginning, early 7th century. He claimed to receive revelations from the angel Gabriel, calling on him to read, in the sense of proclaim. Muhammad could not read. He was illiterate. That was well established, well known. And he pled that he could not read. The angel, presumably, confidently encouraged him and assured him that he could proclaim. He was illiterate, I say, but he was well acquainted with the three sources which I have indicated through his merchant contacts. Arab tribal superstition, Judaism, and corrupted Christianity. So corrupted already by then that He had heard that the Trinity was composed of God the Father, Jesus and the Virgin Mary already in this seventh century. Now having received these messages, revelations, he proceeded to preach them to his family. He gathered a few followers and in Mecca They soon came into difficulty with the Meccan worshippers at the Kaaba, because this would interfere with the traffic, with the commerce, with the attention to worship there. Now, I said I am not trying to give my opinion. What then is the source of these revelations? that Mohammed claimed to receive. God has spoken. God's word is final. In sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son. The apostles indicate that we have a more sure word of prophecy. We who were eyewitnesses of his majesty, we have a book That book is given of God. I say again, taste and see, take and read, as Augustine, the young rhetorician, speech teacher in Milan, to hear Ambrose, the preacher, whose fame, oratorical excellence was widespread, overheard children playing games over the hedge. He heard them say, take and read, take and read. And Augustine took that as a word from heaven and took up the scriptures, read them, and the Spirit of God winged the word of God to the heart of the seeking soul. He still does that. What is the source? If it is not of God, then our remaining options are few. If it is natural, and I do not answer this question, if it is natural, epileptic trances, Is it the result of long meditation on these religious ideas which he has received from these several sources? I will not think it was a hoax, a deliberate deception, a conscious effort to create something. I fully believe, he believed, that what he was proclaiming was what he had gotten from a higher source. Alternatively, I am left with demonic inspiration. Demonic self-delusion. I will leave that question. Muhammad was clearly at first a sincere reformer. He opposed polytheism, he opposed religious corruption, he opposed excessive abuse of alcoholic drink, all of which were characteristic of his peoples to them. These visions, these revelations were transmitted orally. He did not write them down, he could not write. Only later were they written down. And after his death, efforts were made by Ali, one of his successors, to collect the memory and whatever portions written down existed, so that an authoritative version could be established, which then could not be modified. For many years it was unlawful to translate the Koran into any other language. It was given in Arabic by Muhammad and he declared by Gabriel. The Arabic Koran became the academic tool of the Arabic speaking peoples for many centuries to follow. Just as in our nation's 17th century colonial experience, the versification of the Psalms and the use of the horn book and the primer in which letters and truths were communicated very simply by paraphrasing scripture. A is for Adam. In Adam's fall we sinned all. And they went through the alphabet with spiritual instruction for the simple tool of teaching the alphabet. The Lord to me a shepherd is, want therefore ne'er shall I. In pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet waters by. And as the scriptures became the academic vehicle for instruction to our own colonial predecessors, so also did the Koran in Arabic become the academic tool, I say, for the instruction for many years to follow. Number four, the course of Islam. IS indicated there was conflict in Mecca with the Arabs over this apparent competition of this new movement. The followers were growing in number and so great was the controversy that in a very significant event, in the year 622, we have the Hijra, H-I-J-R-A, or Hijira, which becomes the year one of the Muslim calendar. The flight, the Hijra is the flight, the flight from Mecca northward about 250 miles to the city of Medina, Medina. Any of you from Medina, Ohio? Do they say Medina there? Medina? Whatever. Medina. This was a mass migration of the followers of Mohammed, escaping the controversy and awaiting opportunity for reconquest. Within 10 years, that's 632, that's the year of Mohammed's death, The movement led by Mohammed had retaken not only Mecca but the entire Arab peninsula. And by 710, which if you subtract 622 from, you get the AH date, Ahno-Hedra, in the year of the Hedra, it had gone all across North Africa and into Spain. Later it was to go into Eastern Europe, on several occasions as far as the city of Vienna in Austria. It spread rapidly. It spread by conquest. Its missionary mood and method was conquest. It used the sword and it used taxation. The people of the scriptures, who are referred to often in the Koran meaning the Jews and the Christians were given the opportunity to pay tribute money but not allowed to propagate their message openly they suffered a humiliating status of tribute tax money and a highly restricted ability to maintain themselves. Divisions soon appeared within Islam. The Sunni became the majority group. The Shiite, a minority who claimed to be more orthodox than the Sunni, by retaining closer attention to Muhammad's extra-Quranic teachings Muhammad continued to teach long after he received these revelations. A third movement appears in the 18th century, in the 1700s. The Wahhabi, a radical movement led by, founded by Ibn Abdul Wahhab. who taught, which is taught today, and which we have been most recently conscious of, in thousands of religious boarding schools, the madrasas, sponsored largely by the Saudi Arabians, who teach there is no Israel on the map, and that a homicidal journey to paradise is encouraged Now this is extreme contemporary Islam. It is not typical. It is not historically continuous. I'm saying the word Islam is as diverse within its components as is the word Christianity. I mentioned contributions under the course of the movement. In the Middle Ages, 8th, 9th centuries and following, into the twelfth, there were tremendous academic contributions by the Muslim Arabic world, in mathematics, in science, in medicine, in astronomy, in philosophy, often superior to contemporary Western European civilization, much borrowing by the West from the scholars of Islam in the Middle Ages. Number five, the canon. The canon is the sacred rule by which a religious movement is identified. This is of course the Koran, their Bible, their holy book. I called it the vehicle of Arab education, a strange construct of Judaism, Christianity, and Arab tradition. greatly garbled. There are sections of it that are replete with similarities to the Old Testament and the New Testament. But you would not recognize the details. What knowledge Mohammed had received was received orally and was perverted because of the sources which I said earlier were heretical. I cannot explain to you what I mean, except to those who understand what I mean, that the Koran has nothing of the ring of Scripture. It does not speak to the heart. It speaks to the head. That means nothing to some of you. But if you have addressed the Word of God, if you have come indwelt by the Spirit of God, Humble before the Word of God, seeking the message of God for your daily walk. You understand what I mean? The communication to the soul, to the heart. We say the Word of God speaks to us. It was the Spirit of God who is speaking through the Word of God. We don't anticipate and would be quite skeptical of an oral word, but we have a written word. And I say as my testimony to you after the hours I have spent in what is called the glorious Koran, it is dull, it is heavy, it is dry, it is cold, Now I recognize, I fully recognize, that to someone who has not tasted and seen that the Lord is good, the Bible can seem cold. But one who reads it with a genuine desire to know its author and to come into a personal relationship with him, the Spirit of God will use the Word of God to communicate the love of God to the soul who genuinely seeks truth. Let me describe the Koran for you. It's two-thirds the size of the New Testament. It has 6,225 verses. I did not count them, but I accept that. It is composed of 114 chapters, or surahs. Surah, S-U-R-A-H. arranged very strangely according to length, but having no subject continuity, nor are they listed in the order of their having been received by the prophet. There is an opening basic prayer which precedes the first surah, And therefore the first surah becomes the second surah because they call this opening, that's what it's called, the opening. I read it to you. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the beneficent, the merciful, owner of the day of judgment. The alone we worship, the alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path, the path of those whom thou hast favored, not the path of those who earn thine anger, nor of those who go astray." Then follow 113 chapters. The longest is first. It has 286 verses. The shortest ones are last. They range from three to five verses. Each is a single revelation. And it has been said by the Muslim commentators that surah number two, the one that has 286 verses, the longest one, the beginning one after the intro, contains most of the content of the Quran. The rest is elaboration and repetition. This canon, this holy book, teaches certain beliefs. I list them quickly. I think most of you know them. Number one, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. This is monotheism and the peculiar role of Muhammad as the most recent of the prophets. This is a paraphrasing of Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four. The Lord our God is one Lord and him only shall thou serve. But I hasten to say, as we will see that the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Christian faith is not Allah of Islam. Underline that in your thinking. A second belief is that God's truth is revealed to the prophets. The prophets have included 25 that are listed in the Koran. Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, Ezekiel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Zechariah, John, Jesus, three others not in the Bible, and Mohammed. The latest prophet is the greatest prophet. Each added and none could contradict. The last prophet is Muhammad. It has now been 1300 years since Muhammad's prophecies. There had not formerly been a space of time that long between the coming of more prophets, but somewhat arbitrarily, Muhammad is the last prophet. Belief in angels. Belief in angels who intercede for men. Angels. Number four, divine decrees. Belief in the divine decrees. This is fatalism. This is Omar Khayyam, the poet, the moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all your piety or wit can call it back, nor all your tears wash out a word of it. What is to be will be. Kismet. This is fatalism. This is not. God's sovereign good pleasure, His predestined will, this is a seemingly arbitrary predetermination and all must submit. That's the reason that Islam is submission, submission. You and I who know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior are called to submit to His gracious will. It is a loving submission to a gracious and loving Father. It is not a cold, arbitrary, despotic command to submit. We know not what the future holds. We know Him who holds the future and that gives us peace, confidence, security in the midst of our submission to His gracious will. This is different. Retribution, number five, retribution and reward, the promise of reward for virtue and punishment for evil. Paradise and hell after death. Life after death. And belief in the Koran as the revelation of Allah. There is no heaven for those who deny the Koran. Surah 7, verse 40. They claim to affirm and hold in high esteem the Koran, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David, and Jesus' Gospel. But all but the Koran are corrupted versions thereof. I'll make that clear as I proceed. Do we need to pause and take a break? Would you like to stand up for two minutes? I'm on number five and I have a total of eight. I think it'll go all right. Is that okay? Would you stand if you'd like to? Don't if you don't. I promised my granddaughter and I will. The duties of a Muslim. The duties of a Muslim. The duties. I am to repeat the creed. I'm to affirm and repeat the creed. There is no god but one. His name is Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Number two, I am to pray five times daily, facing Mecca, wherever I happen to be in the world. At daybreak, just before noon, in the afternoon, after sunset, so it will not seem as if I'm worshipping the sun, and at nightfall. I am to go through a series of procedures, standing, bowing, kneeling and falling prostrate. While I repeat verses from the Koran and the surah number one which I read a few minutes ago, I am called to prayer by the muezzin or crier from the minaret who chants the Adhan. And what he says in Arabic is, God is great. And he repeats that four times. I bear witness that there is no God but God. And he repeats that twice. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of God. He says that twice. Come hither in prayers. He says that twice. Come hither to salvation. He says that twice. God is great. There is no other God. That's what you hear in a Muslim city at the hour of prayer in Arabic. And in the early morning, the crier adds, prayer is better than sleep. A third duty is the giving of alms. Alms. A-L-M-S. Alms. I think the L is silent properly. Alms. Like Psalms. Alms. This is called a purifying contribution. A Muslim is required to give at least two and a half percent of his wealth for the benefit of the poor. In Muslim cities, the world over, beggars give you the privilege of earning favor with Allah by asking your alms. And in Istanbul, a couple of years ago, I was cursed And the tone was discernible, though the language was unintelligible to me, by a beggar to whom I did not make a contribution. He was giving me the privilege of doing my Muslim duty, and my failure to do so brought his curse. I did not stop to discover what I would have received as an expression of gratitude if I had made a contribution. But the stingy are cursed by the beggars. A fourth duty is the Hajj, the Hajj, the H-A-D-J, the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime if possible. This is the zenith of the life of a Muslim. to visit the sacred city to which hundreds of thousands go annually. And there have been all kinds of problems of sanitation, of suffocation, of food supply, of accommodation and transportation. because of the great gulf of Muslims the world over who come to Mecca. Fasting, fasting, number five, especially during the month of Ramadan, which requires that no liquid, no food, no sexual relations between dawn and sunset, of every day of the 28 days of the month of Ramadan. I must tell you how religiously this is followed. We use that term as an adverb and it has strange meaning here. Some years ago my wife and I were on a bus traveling from Cairo to the coast in a bus, I say, driven by a Muslim driver. It was the month of Ramadan. It was extremely warm. It was hot. It was humid. It was not air-conditioned. It was coastal breezes that were as hot as the sands. At sunset, the driver stopped, got out of the bus, We're all perspiring and hungry and thirsty and waiting to get back to the ship. He gets out of the bus. He goes to the side of the road around the bus. He unrolls his two feet by four feet prayer rug. He goes through his motions of kneeling, of prostrating, of reciting. He rolls up his rug, gets back into the driver's seat, reaches to the thermos cooler he has beside him. He pulls out a very fragrant sandwich, Hero, Sub, or whatever, and proceeds to consume it. And then, and I can see this sight yet, and I still can't believe it, he pulls out a bottle of Coca-Cola, a bottle. This was when the cap was crimped. It wasn't a screw-on, it was a bottle. He took that bottle, as we watched in amazement, he put that bottle in his mouth between his teeth, he yanks the cap off, spat it out, drains the... in amazement we watched. And we're not a little envious. It was faithfulness. It was sincerity. He was fulfilling his duty. Men and women, you who know Jesus Christ, let us be careful that we do not make the privileges of the Christian life cold duties, but gracious privileges. A final duty is jihad. Jihad. We have heard this in recent months in a particular context. The word means exertion. The word means exertion. And it is interpreted several ways. As protecting the faith, overcoming non-believers, and purifying those who have fallen away from conformity to Islam. So it does not in all cases mean what we have seen it to mean, although that is included. Number six, the character of Islam. I try not to be giving opinion here, but there is some degree of necessary judgment. The religions of the world, all human religion, teaches man to do in order to live. The gospel of Jesus Christ first enables man to live. and then to do, because he lives. It is spiritual life that is the prerequisite for spiritual works. The works, the religions of men, I say, this is works righteousness. Do, and thou shalt live. There is no transformation in Islam from the state of the sinner to the state of the saint. There is no passing from death into life spiritually. There is no original sin. There is simply works that cancel the effect of sins. Islam is monotheistic and to that it is due credit. It very significantly reduced the polytheism and idolatry that prevailed in the Arab world. It has been said that its greatest moral value has been its opposition to beverage alcohol and games of chance. It is teetotalling. Totally. It is sincere. I do not doubt. It promises good to those who die while spreading Islam. I refer to Surah 22, verse 58, Surah 47, verses 5 and 6, if you want later to check these. Promises good to those who die while spreading Islam. Now, in the 12th, 13th centuries, the Western Christian world of Europe engaged upon crusades. Those crusades, which are regrettable as we look back in history, and suffered great excesses and very unchristian practices, were nonetheless an effort to reclaim lands which Islam had militarily conquered. It was not a means of spreading the gospel. Islam employs military force to spread its power. As Islam had overcome the land sacred to three religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and Christian pilgrims had been denied access to the sacred places in the holy lands, the crusaders attempted to recover those lands to reclaim access for Christian pilgrims. And the excesses of Christianity in that warfare have been repudiated and regretted as not typical of and as a poor illustration of the Christian faith. Quite to the contrary of the manner of Islam. They are encouraged. It was this which brought to Romanism in the West the idea of indulgences. The pope who called the crusades in the end of the 11th century offered the guarantee that anybody who dies on a crusade is guaranteed certain entrance to paradise. All your sins are forgiven. You were given a clean slate. This was a corruption of Christianity learned from the Muslim practice. It is militant. Surah 8, verses 12 and 123 and 39. Surah 9, 14, 29 and 73. It developed, like the Pharisees in Judaism, a huge body of interpretations, of sayings, of additions, the teachings and opinions of the sacred doctors, the Muftis and the Ulema, and a body of Hadith, which was the sayings of Mohammed beyond the Qur'an. Like the Pharisees, I say, a whole body of attendant literature interpreted by the scholars creates a great diversity of opinion as to what Islam is. I remind you again that Christianity is a broad umbrella word in the world, under which is a great deal that has nothing to do with the core character of the Word of God, which is the basis and authentic source of the Christian faith. Islam's character is an effort to impose a religious pattern on an entire society. It is not a religion only. It is a government. It is an economic system. It is a social system. It is an external enforcement of a spiritual ideal. You and I, as Christian believers, are expected to be Christian in all our relationships, our dealings, our social, our economic, our political, our religious, our aesthetic, our enjoyments, our amusements, and so forth. But these are not imposed by government dictum. These are self-imposed by the walk of the Christian believer. This is an external enforcement, I say, of an ideal pattern under a despotic political priesthood. Those two words shouldn't go together. A political priesthood, that's Islam. The Western world has come to recognize the necessity of the separation of church and state. This is alien to the Muslim world. A Muslim is told to make no friends of Jews and Christians. Surah 5 verses 51 and 57 and many other places, make no friends of Jews and Christians. A Christian will make a friend of a Muslim. I love everybody as a potential believer in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I hate no one. No one is beyond the voice and care of the heart of a Christian believer. Number seven. The title of these remarks was Considering Islam Biblically. I will now recount quickly a number of comparisons between Islam and Christianity. I will not detail the Christian position in each point, for I think it is understood. Islam has a low view of women. They are in a master-servant relationship with men. Islam employs the use of violence and the sword. Christianity, I said, does not justify it when it is done and repudiates it. And the bombing of an abortion clinic is wrong. Abortion is wrong, but there's a right way to say so. There is no original sin in Islam. Adam was forgiven arbitrarily and brought in a system of works to counteract sins. Man is essentially good in Islam. There is no atonement. There is no redeemer. Just keep the rules. You are in a relationship of servant to master, the Muslim toward Allah. You are not children of the Heavenly Father. There is no father-son relationship, father-child relationship. There is no family of God. There is no fellowship with a loving Heavenly Father. There is no indwelling Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is Gabriel in Islam. Allah is called the all-merciful, but He only extends judgment, not mercy. It's a one-strike-and-you're-out arrangement. A cruel mutilation of violators. The most inhumane manner of treating sins. Cutting off of the hand at the wrist for a thief. Mohammed is reported in the Muslim literature as having received an adulterous woman who had become pregnant. He cared for her until the baby was born, then had her stoned to death. Mutilation of violators, death to defectors, Salomon Rushdie, the author of satanic verses that everybody's heard about, is still necessarily in hiding, a fear for his life. Violence toward unbelievers. The Jews were called sons of monkeys and pigs in Surah number 5, verses 59 and 60. Jesus did not die on the cross. Someone else was substituted for him. There was no resurrection. There was no atonement. The Trinity is misunderstood, I told you, God, Mary and Jesus. God had no Son. 17 verse 111. Jesus is not God. Jesus is only a prophet, a messenger. 575. Only perfect characters are the heroes and the prophets in Islam, not redeemed sinners. Another proof of the integrity of the Word of God is that it presents man as they are. I think I, if I were writing the scriptures, would have left out the story of David and Bathsheba. I speak as a fool. But God tells the truth. He emphasizes forgiveness, restoration. He is a loving Father. I say it perverts the Old and New Testament accounts, denies the Jews' claim to truth. There's no certainty of paradise unless you die fighting against the infidel. 22 verse 58, 47 verses 5 and 6. Polygamy. A Muslim man is permitted four wives. Muhammad was faithful to Khadija. After her death, he married a total of nine women, the youngest of whom was betrothed to him at age six. He married her at age nine. He left nine widows at his death. Easy divorce. No civil liberties in Muslim states. And finally, the contemporary condition. The contemporary condition. The Islamic world, and I'm not addressing political affairs, the Muslim world resents the progress of the West, which progress has been the combined product of a free economy, a free society, neither of which is present. There is a reaction against some Arab states who have adopted Western ideas, and this has been seen as a perversion of the Muslim faith. They want power and progress without the religious or political or economic foundations of freedom. Radical Muslims want no separation between Islam and the state. The emphasis is on Tawhid, that is a unicity, making everything united. Church, state, economy, society, and there is an inherent reluctance to accept the legitimacy of their own critics. The Quran says there is no compulsion in religion, but that has been interpreted to mean no competition is permitted. So today, religious freedom is not found in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Kuwait, Egypt. No propagation of the Christian gospel is permitted. If Christian worship is permitted, it is behind closed doors, and the Bible and the preaching must remain within those walls. The Bible cannot be carried out of the building. And that permission is considered a gracious condescension to infidels in our midst. Muslim countries are almost always run by dictators. I speak as a history student. This is not condemnatory or opinionated. My conclusion. There is diversity. Muslims in America are usually gentle, law-abiding, peaceful people who may live next door to you. But my burden tonight is that is not fundamental Islam. We are fundamental Bible-believing Christians. A lot has been said in the media, the public press, contrasting, comparing favorably Muslim fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists. We decry that as invalid, inappropriate, unfair, and scandalous. But having said that, there is a sense in which what I've been trying to present to you tonight is fundamental Islam. And you and I are fundamental Christians if we consider the Bible our absolute authority. There is a world of difference between what we represent, these two fundamentalists. We oppose violence in the propagation of our faith. Islam thrives on, its history reflects violence in the propagation of the faith. I said at the outset to discover which of these two systems is properly described, you go to its foundational source. We are Bible Christians and as such the Bible is our authority and we are unashamedly fundamental. We believe in the fundamentals of the Christian faith as revealed in the book of God. A fundamental Muslim does exactly what we have been seeing done as he follows his fundamental holy book, the Qur'an. Where is a word today from a major Muslim world leader condemning the event of 9-11-01. That silence is eloquent. It is deafening. It is instructive. Men and women, if you believe the book of God, you are necessarily opposed spiritually to any book of man which purports to be of God. We should stick to our message. The world needs it. The gospel is the answer. We will not solve the world's problems, but we may be instruments in the hand of a gracious God to give the gospel to individuals whose immortal souls desire truth. Amen.