Origins & History of Islam-Interactions With the Church
Vern Peterman · Sep 28, 2003
Church History, No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262259132644

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, now the question, how relevant a topic is Islam? One of the things we brought up last week is that Islam has been, since its beginning in the 7th century, it's been a pendulum swing. It rolled from its beginnings in the early 600s into, finally in the early middle 700s AD, having finally been turned back in the middle of France. I mean, Islam just swept largely with the sword. Islam swept, and not just into Europe, but also into Asia. Actually, today we think of Islam as being a Middle Eastern religion.

Yes, that's where it originated. It's prominent there. Only 20% of Muslims live in that area. The other 80% live elsewhere. So it indeed has spread. You think, how relevant is Islam? It is exceedingly relevant. And not just as a news story, certainly that, but also in terms of the fact it is the world's fastest growing world religion. It's growing by leaps and bounds. And we'll keep that in mind. Okay. Here's some examples.

There's a church building up in Nigeria, destroyed by Muslims three times. They keep having church anyway. Islam is a religion that still carries on slavery. Christian women and children are captured and then sold as slaves. And that's one of the ways that they try to break apart Christianity, tearing apart Christian families. Slaughter the men, capture the women and children. Marry off the women, sell off the kids.

Here's a church that's been, the ruins of the church you see there, they're gathering anyway even though the church has been destroyed by Islamic invaders. Something around 200 Islamic military attacks against Christians in Sudan alone every year. Massive. Here's another ruined church up in the foreground to the right. And up.

Question, what is Islam? It means submission. It's a religion of all who believe that Muhammad was God's prophet. As you step through here, to become a Muslim, easy enough. All you've got to do is, God's got his laws, you follow them. You're a Muslim.

It's not the same ones that the Jews use, but we'll go into what there is. It appeals to a man's intellect and a desire to do something for his foundation. It appeals to the flesh. Because the flesh says, what can I do? And Islam says, here is exactly what you can do. One of the reasons why it's the world's fastest growing religion It appeals to the flesh. It appeals to the sin nature. Yes? Just as a prophet. They see him as the final prophet. The Quran presents God as transcendent or unknowable.

You'll see in our Philippian study here This morning, what did Paul say? He is wanting to know Him. Islam says forget it. You're not getting there. God is unknowable. He is wholly other. It's not a matter of knowing Him, just doing what He says. Allah reveals His will, but not Himself. Again, you can't know Allah. All you can do is do what He says. Man's separation from God, which, of course, we look at that as a problem, right? Islam says, of course. God's wholly other, and I'm not like Him, and I'm never going to know Him, so of course we're separated.

I'm just doing what He says to do. Period. Reconciliation isn't the issue. Just submit. Bottom line. There is no new nature. There isn't anything that happens in the person who is converted internally. It's just, here's the rules, you do it. See the difference? Huge difference. Massive difference.

Although not considered divine, Muhammad's example was considered perfect. Abdullahi, who is an Islamic author, writes, he stands in the history of the best model for man in piety and perfection. He is a living proof of what man can be and of what he can accomplish in the realm of excellence and virtue. We'll look a little later at what they consider excellence and virtue, but anyway, so far so good, or so bad.

Adam was the first man created in heaven and removed after his sin. How about that? They agree Adam was the first man. He was created not in the Garden of Eden, but in heaven. Created in heaven and then dropped off. Mankind was created innocent, but chose to sin. Mankind is misled, but not fallen. Do you see why you don't need a new nature? Because mankind isn't fallen, he just needs to get the right story. That's the perspective.

So, the revelation of Allah to man is through the Quran. It says that prophets are sinless, or almost. And you have this Koran, which basically is the recitations, that's what the word Koran means, and the Hadith. Most people hear of the Koran and don't hear of the Hadith. The Hadith are the sayings of Muhammad. The Koran are the revelations, the recitations, from the angel Gabriel, we call it Jibril in their own language, to Muhammad.

Jesus Christ was human. He was a prophet, according to Islam. He is known by different names, Esau, son of Mary, and a few other terms in there. He was primarily the prophet to the Jews. He is not a superior prophet to Muhammad, however. As a matter of fact, as we'll see later, Jesus Christ will come back a second time, and when he does, he will point everyone to Muhammad. Oh boy! How about that? Jesus Christ foretold the coming of Muhammad, according to their belief. When it talks about, I'll send a helper, they interpret that helper as Muhammad. Not the Holy Spirit, Muhammad. The Holy Spirit, by the way, drops out of the Muslims' understanding of Christianity.

They believe that Christians believe in God the Father, God the Son, and Mary the mother of Jesus. That's what they understand the Trinity to be. Jesus Christ is not God or the Son of God. There are several quotes there, and those quotes are from the Koran. There are several quotes there that make it clear they don't believe in Jesus as God or as the Son of God. He is simply a second-tier prophet compared to Muhammad, who was the final and most perfect and most complete prophet.

They believe, of course, in salvation by works. Here are the key things. The oneness of Allah, Muhammad is his prophet, Quran is Allah's revelation to the angel Gabriel, or I put there Jibreel, if you read it in Arabic, it looks like Jibreel, not Gabriel, but that's what they mean.

Life after death, and God decrees everything. If various things happen that are bad, including the Muslim in the first century of Islam, he'd go and slice somebody open and disembowel them or cut the head off and he'd say, it happened so Allah willed it. Rather than taking personal responsibility for it and considering it an ethical decision on their part. It happened so Muhammad must have willed it. Salvation by works. Look at the huge crowd. This is the mosque at Mecca. Good works consist of these. The confession, the shahada. Allah is one and Muhammad is his prophet.

Prayer five times a day. Fasting during Ramadan, where they fast during the daylight hours and then can eat whatever they want during the evening for that roughly one month period. Almsgiving, two and a half percent is the right number. And pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time in your life if possible.

And finally, the jihad, struggle. And we'll talk about that in a little bit, as obviously different Muslims have a different understanding of what jihad means. How are we doing so far? Holding together? Ready to convert? Not so fast, huh? Two and a half percent. Two and a half percent is not bad, you know. Five times a day is a little disruptive, but all right, I can handle it. And by the way, you can do it.

Let's look at the Koran a little bit more. By the way, it's interesting, the Koran has sources, you can read things in it, out of the Jewish Talmud, the Jewish Apocrypha, these are extra-biblical writings, Christian Apocrypha, that is, books outside of the New Testament but considered Christian, and Zoroastrian doctrines.

Zoroastrianism was a religion founded about the same time as Buddhism, very roughly 600 BC, and it was popular in the Middle East. It was one of the prominent religions, may have been the source of the Magi in the birth of Christ. And it borrows practices and symbols from pre-Islamic and pagan Arabia. There were over 300, some estimate around 360, tribal religions among the Arabs prior to Islam.

What happened is Muhammad selected the moon god, hence that's your crescent moon, he selected the moon god from among those tribal religions and said this is the one who is called Allah. and so what he did is brought these various tribal religions together and now they are under Islam. What you find though is the tribalism among the Arab tribes is still there. Alright, here's an interesting thing. One of their ceremonies is throwing stones against a stone pillar at the mosque which symbolizes Satan. That's their way of spiritual warfare. You ready to do that? Okay, here we go.

The source of the Qur'an was the angel Gabriel to Muhammad through some companions and then a couple other fellows further on and this is the sequence that they attribute the Qur'an as coming from. The Hadith, which is the sayings. These are sayings of Muhammad, just kind of proverbs, and there are thousands of them. And so those have been gathered up Imagine originally collecting 300,000 of these things and finally kind of whittling it down and saying this is the one.

The thing that's interesting is there are different versions of it and here we talk about in Christiania we've got different denominations. Islam's got all sorts of varying traditions as well and this is an example of it. There's different versions of that collection. Islam on final things. This life is a preparation for the next.

Every person will taste death. There are two angels, and they even give the name, that are going to question the dead in the grave. By the way, have you ever seen pictures of a good angel and a bad angel? One talking on each shoulder? That's also a part of Islamic tradition. That's where that comes from.

Unbelievers will be tormented in the grave and after the final resurrection. And the final hour will be preceded by disintegration of nature and universal sin, somewhat parallel to the tribulation. They have a tribulation concept. Jesus will come again, pointing all toward Muhammad. That will be the end of the tribulation period. Jesus will come again, all will be converted to Muhammad. So as far as the Islamic people are concerned, they might as well kill anyone who doesn't believe in Muhammad, because in the end, all will be forced to confess that Allah is God.

Now, jihad. The word means striving or struggle. It's obviously one that's gotten to be well-known in terms of the words heard in our culture even. Often used in the sense of personal striving in the path of God, the more common interpretation is that of the overwhelming majority of classical jurists and commentators presents jihad as armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates. as a quote from a professor who knows such things, from Princeton.

Here is a quote, this 9-5, from the Koran. Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem. So you wonder why, if you take that literally, and by the way, most Muslims do not take that literally, but those that do, you can see where they get the motivation and the understanding that they have. Yes, this is a quote from the Koran. Those references are from the Koran. What happens is that these are things revealed to Muhammad by Jibril, Gabriel as we would say.

Fight those who believe not in Allah, nor the Last Day. The Last Day, of course, is when everyone will believe in Allah. Nor hold that forbidden which had been forbidden by Allah and His Prophets, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book. Jews and Christians are called the People of the Book in the Islamic scriptures. Until they pay the Jizya, that is a Christians and Jews are to be forced to pay a tax for believing what they do, for being so stupid, and feel themselves subdued, feel themselves under the power of Islam. So here it is.

That's why you would attack the World Trade Center. You've got to slaughter them, and then those that don't get slaughtered, they've got to submit to Islam and pay the idiot tax. Here's another reference, similar kind of thing. When you meet unbelievers, smite their necks. So you can see if someone takes the Koran literally, this is what they're going to end up with. In order not to end up with that conclusion, you have to allegorize it. Doesn't that sound interesting? So they have an interpretive issue within Islam, just like Christians have. and the majority of Muslims have gone to allegorizing this.

Okay, let's look at this first period of time, 30 through 590. I'm going to go through several periods there, and the reason being that Islam didn't start until just after 590, so we'll take a look here first. This is a little dark, but here's the Roman Empire. It's the two areas here Largely here is the homeland of Islam, and this area here to a secondary level. Let's take a further look here. Here's the eastern end of the Roman Empire. Here's the Parthian Empire, which was kind of the northern end of the extent of Islam in the original establishment. And then you go into the Arabian Peninsula, which is in the lower right corner.

Petra was a city that was a part of this that was captured by Rome. Think about this. You're a Roman strategist. If you're a Roman strategist, you're going to capture something like this, which is fixed and solid. But the problem is, the rest of the area in the Arabian Peninsula looks like this. Are you going to go chasing after a bunch of nomadic tribes that are moving all over the place and once you feel like you've captured an area they just move around? You're going to go out there where you don't know where water is and everything else.

So the Roman officers looked at that and they said, uh-uh, we're not taking this on. This is craziness. So they captured Petra and along that line and then stopped. I said that we're not going to go chasing around in the desert around these people, they're just going to run around in circles and have no territory per se. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Interesting. And Petra appears to be in the area that will be in the last days a refuge for the Jews. Very fascinating. Okay.

Here's a brief history of Muhammad. Now, one of the things I frankly have to tell you that I struggle with on this, a lot of people will say, well, here's the history of how things happen. The only problem is that there are some facts in very substantial conflict with what the Qur'an says is the actual history. Okay? So what I'm going to do is give you a brief outline of the history, but recognize, and I'll tell you what the facts are that just stand in sharp conflict with it.

Muhammad was born into the powerful Quraysh tribe in Mecca at 570 A.D. So we see him coming onto the scene. He married a wealthy widow, Khadija, 15 years his senior, one of his several wives. Of course, Islam believes in having multiple wives. In 610, at 40 years of age, Muhammad received his calling from the angel Gabriel, or as we read in the original Jibril. and Muhammad was afraid of the source of his revelation. He thought he was seeing a jinn, which is like an evil spirit. But his wife convinced him it was from God.

Anyway, there are some key events that are outlined in there. Essentially, what happened is he first took over Medina and slaughtered roughly two-thirds of the Jews in Medina. Two-thirds were released, and then a third of the men were slaughtered. The women and children were taken. So now you see the pattern that they're carrying on in Sudan. Marry off the women, sell the children as slaves, and that's what you see. Mecca falls finally. He made a ten-year treaty with them, broke the treaty two years into it, and then took over Mecca, slaughtered the leaders there. You'll see in a minute why I'm doubtful about this history. Muhammad died in 632, leaving the sacred documents and matters to others. Here's a copy of one of the very early documents. Some puzzling and interesting facts.

The Qur'an says that Muslims are to pray toward Mecca. Here are the references. By the way, instead of having book names like we do, and then chapter and verse, everything in the Qur'an is surah, and then the numbers, chapters and verses. Yes, right. They do have chapters and verses, but it's not broken up like we do with Old Testament, New Testament, different books. It's all just one ongoing thing. You're right. Yeah, one continuous book.

All of the earliest mosques do not face toward Mecca. Some have been faced towards Jerusalem. How about that? For example, we had our troops enter Baghdad earlier this year. the oldest mosque in Baghdad does not face Mecca. It faces Jerusalem. Case in point.

But all of the earliest mosques do not face towards Mecca. It's not like there's some variation in the pattern. All of them, the earlier ones, do not face Mecca. And yet, what we find is that the Quran says that you're all to face Mecca. Further, we have this Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, it's called the Dome of the Rock. You see there?

It has eight sides but no direction. Furthermore, you'll see, and it's a little bit hard to see, but the rock that they see in the middle there, it has some carvings in it that fit the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant. Interesting. there doesn't appear to be a front end to it. It has eight sides but no front, no entrance. On one side it doesn't face some direction. It appears to be kind of equal on all sides as if this was the center point. Interesting. Some puzzling and interesting facts.

The earliest copies of the Quran are from about a hundred years after the life of Muhammad or later. And those earliest copies date to the period after we find mosques facing Mecca. So it appears that rather than from the earliest times, all the mosque-facing Mecca, it appears that that came about later, and the Quran was written to fit what came about later. So that kind of throws into question the whole, you know, have I really got the right story? Furthermore... Pardon? No, at least not Islamic. Yeah, not Islamic. Mecca, the first most holy place of Islam, may not have the significant origins that the Quran describes.

It talks about it being a major trading city. It's off the major trading routes, up in a kind of a mountain valley, and it's not on the way to anything. And archaeologists are questioning whether it was even any kind of a significant establishment at all until the period of time that we have the earliest copies of the Quran. So it appears that the Qur'an was written to describe Mecca as it was at the time of a century later writing, not at the time that Muhammad was there. So the account in the Qur'an does not seem to match up with history, either the direction of the mosques, the establishment of those mosques, or Mecca as the major city. Here is a quick summary of the history of Islam.

And again, this is assuming the dates given and the description of things given is correct. A lot of the later dates, for example, the conquests and the Battle of Tours from then on down, those are well established. The construction of the Dome of the Rock is correct. And later there were some subsequent modifications, but that was the original construction.

And notice, right after the death of Muhammad, you can see how quickly the conquest of Jerusalem and Damascus took place. It's like, alright, Muhammad's dead, Muhammad had his last wish. And I think you have a copy of an article to that effect. Muhammad had his last wish, and instantly the scimitars came out. It's spread by the sword. And this is the spreading that you see coming out from Mecca. Finally, with Islam spreading, and here, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, here is the Battle of Tours, France.

Charles Martel, and by the way, he's called Charles Martel, I think that last name, as we would call it, may not have been his last name, but it may have been a name given based on what he did. He fought back the Islamic advance. and finally turned it around and pushed it back.

Up until that point, they were just having victory after victory after victory. They were moving so fast that the word of their attack could hardly get through Europe. Here in this battle, the name Martel meant hammer. That described the way in which he came after the Islamic hordes that were coming in with the scimitars.

Another battle, and this was a naval battle, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm out of phase here. Constantinople, this was another attack, and this was just prior to the time of the Reformation. So here's kind of in the century before, it was about the same time printing was invented in Europe. And so Constantinople was on the European continent and it was sort of a stronghold and again remember we have the pendulum swing where first you have Islam taking over and then you have the crusades pushing back and then now you got the pendulum swing coming back the other way where the Islamic invaders are pushing back into Europe and they attacked about 50,000 strong against about 8,000 strong on the defending side and one of the things that changed the battle was the introduction of gunpowder driven firearms and so Constantinople fell to Islam and again there's a pendulum swing coming back towards Islam again at this time. Then right after the Reformation was starting to get in play you have the naval battle, this is the one I began to refer to a lot of faiths, Lepanto was a battle, 1571 They defeated the Islamic naval forces.

Can you imagine? This is interesting. We think of the Islamic fighters, you know, being on land, but they actually had a dominance for a period of time. Middle 1400s to the middle 1500s in naval forces. And they came against Europe with naval battles. And there was a turning back by the European forces of the Islamic naval forces there. and the pendulum swing going somewhat the other way.

Okay, as we get into the present era, we step into a time, and this is within a sect of Islam, this is not all of Islam, but there was a fellow by the name of Wahhabi, and there's the Wahhabi reforms that came in there, and it's funny, about half the guys in the Arabic countries are named Muhammad, Here in 18th century Arabia, he called for the purification of Islam. Obviously, centuries have gone by and things have changed and what not. He called for the purification of Islam. Some listened, some didn't. So that's why what you end up having is this is sort of Islam's reformation. Some listened, some didn't.

Encouragement of original thinking. Let's go back to what the Quran says. Forget all these traditions and everything. Let's get back to the original, right? Sound familiar? Focus on the application here and now. In other words, a lot of it was, okay, let's look at, how do we implement this? We need to look at what does it look like when you do it, okay? What does it look like here on Earth?

And so that was a big focus then. It favored militant methods. Hmm, wonder where that came from, okay? because they were looking at the original writings, because they were looking at the original way things were done. So, again, the focus on militancy, because that was built into Islam.

Now, in our own era, we've seen Osama bin Laden, and of course we keep hearing the name, by the way, you also see variant spellings of that, right? Osama, and things like that. He was born in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. By the way, Some 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 two years ago were also Saudis. Saudi Arabia ended up being the source and the seedbed for a lot of the more militant action. His father became a billionaire during the oil boom of the 70s, doing a lot of oil work construction for a lot of the piping and things of that sort. He has a degree in economics and business. Isn't that interesting?

Okay. What's that? Oh, okay. All right. He has four wives and 15 children. Okay. Boy, I'm glad I'm not trying to do that. Okay. He has three complaints against the U.S. Okay. They are Americans are in the Muslim holy land. Okay. Matt Malloy was one of those. Okay. Americans are in the Muslim holy land. That's just absolutely, you know, inconceivable. Totally unacceptable. The oppression of Iraq and American support of Israel. Those were his three complaints.

And by the way, Saudi Arabia is having some real political instability issues. Real tough, tough time holding on to power. We may see some, some real disheveling politically. in Saudi Arabia and some folks who are in military intelligence are saying don't be surprised if we have to end up sending troops there. And of course that won't be well received. Yeah, Richard?

Are there any of these complaints in the Koran? Well, if you look at it, yes, because basically the Muslim concept is from the birth, the homeland, Islam spreads out and to have Infidels coming in and establishing a place is not acceptable. After seeing the way that Muhammad dealt with the Christians and the Jews that were in Arabia, they just weren't allowed to be there.

They were either exported or killed. If you look at that scenario, they've got the perfect pattern. So, yes. The oppression of Iraq. Iraq is a Muslim land, and of course that's a major complaint. And then the American support of Israel. The United States supplies some 7 or 8 percent of Israel's national budget. Just directly. Here it is. Plus we have other political support for Israel. And that's not appreciated. Israel, according to Islam, has no right to exist. That's one reason why you're not going to solve the problem over in Israel by whatever treaty you come up with. The Koran gives no right for Israel to exist.

By the way, there are one or two verses that appear to be exceptions to that. But what you find in the Koran is a shift in what is said because initially Muhammad was friendly to the Jews and Christians when he was trying to gain power. Once he gained power, he became more aggressive and pushed them out. Here's more. Osama Bin Laden gave, in 1988, some fatwas. A fatwa you'll hear from time to time is an official Islamic declaration, a call for some action to kill Americans and their allies. These are quotes, obviously translated, but quotes.

To liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In other words, the fact that you've got this mosque in a land that's occupied by the Jews. Boy, we've got to liberate that. So here's the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Here's an interesting fact. These are a couple of years old. I think they're probably still indicative of where things are, even though the numbers might shift a little bit. A poll of England's Muslim community revealed that 98% would not fight for Britain. 48% would fight for Osama or Islam. Isn't that interesting? Over 30% of Muslims in Kuwait believe that Osama is a freedom fighter.

Former Sudanese President Sadiq el-Mahdi has prophesied that Islam will dominate the world by 2010. Sudan is the country where the northern part of Sudan and the political and military control is under Islamic power. The southern part of Sudan is substantially Christian.

As a matter of fact, there is a revival you know, can tolerate the term, going on. The Christians are spiritually doing well, even under, they're under great duress. I mentioned previously the Islamic government comes in and makes military attacks. There's been about 200 a year in recent years upon the Christians in southern Sudan, and that's exactly what the Quran tells them to do. They take it literally, so I got all these Christians there, they're right in their own country, why not attack them? So they target killing the pastors and killing the men, marrying off the women to Islamic husbands, even if it means that the Islamic husbands have multiple wives, and selling off the kids as slaves.

That's the usual pattern. Sometimes they'll just come in and just strafe and bomb a village that's a Christian village and then take off. Other times they'll come in with tanks and fire away at them. Of course, it's tough to fight back when you're not the government and equipped. So the Christians, frankly, just typically get slaughtered pretty badly.

28 of the current 30 conflicts in the world involve or include Muslims. How about that? Islam is the source right now of most of the military conflicts that are out there. and it is also one of the major contributors to Christian persecution, either injury and political oppression or outright killings.

Just to kind of give you perspective, and I think you've got this in a larger version in your handout so you can see it there more easily, there are three major world religions that claim descendancy from Abraham. And Judaism is one of them, Christianity and then Islam. The Islamic account, both the Christians and Jews would look to Genesis, right? Here's how we come from Abraham. The Islamic account is a bit different. It has, instead of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, it's Abraham sacrificing Ishmael on the Dome of the Rock. That rock there.

There are also the Aryan religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in the Asian countries. And there are places in Asia where you have some crossover in there, like Sikhism, which also has around 18 million followers. Sikhism is a cross between Hinduism and Islam. Interesting. Of the Islamic nations, they have Sunni and Shia sects. And by the way, that's not all the different sects, but those are the main ones.

And what you see mostly here is this lighter green color. That's the Sunni predominant areas. And then the Shiite areas are the ones in the darker green. And as a matter of fact, one of the problems that they have in Iraq, you see here's the nation of Iraq here. And what do you notice? Here's this area in the southern part around Basra. Basra is Shiite and the rest of Iraq is Sunni.

So what happened since the political power was from the Sunni portion of Iraq, the people in the Shiite portion were constantly oppressed. So there's this inter-sect rivalry going on. It is only in Iran where the Shiite has the majority. Everywhere else, it's a Sunni majority.

There are also other kind of smaller groups and smaller sects as well. A couple trends that we want to bring out in the Islamic world. One of them is just secularization. Same thing we have here. We'll have people who call themselves Christian, but they haven't donned the door of a church since last Christmas or longer. And it's a tendency to look at the religion as more cultural. There's a secularization trend.

Christianity is not well tolerated, for example, in Turkey. But you'll find an awful lot of people that the prayer call will go out, and most people just keep walking around, just totally ignored. And it's largely the secularization pattern. Turkey is the Islamic nation that is part of NATO, and it has much more connection with Europe. And so the secularization is moving in.

At the same time, people from a lot of these Islamic countries are moving into other parts of the world, into the mainland continent and into England and coming to the United States. The latest numbers I see are about 7 million Muslims here in the United States. Another trend that's taking place is to have these Islamists are radical Muslim groups. They actually account for less than 10%, but it's a 10% with huge impact, isn't it? They're very vocal and they also, many of them are very powerful.

Heidi. Yes. Isn't that something? Yeah. Yeah. 40,000 people and they've got a mosque there. Yeah. I hear numbers like in France, approximately 10% of the population being Muslim now. So it is moving out away from the origins, and no longer being just a Middle Eastern religion, but it's moving into other areas. And gaining converts, by the way. Not just Arabic and Muslim people moving to other places, but gaining converts.

Okay, here's other groups. We talk about the Sunnis and the Shiites. There's also other subgroups. And by the way, one of those subgroups under Shiites are the Druzes and Freemasonry. Freemasonry falls under that particular group. The Shiites are the ones like in southern Iran, around Basra. It is descended from that group that we have the Freemasons. and that's why you have these guys going around the shriners and they run around and they got these cute little clown outfits and little cars on the parades but basically what they're carrying about is Shiite symbols from the Druze as a subsect of the Shiites so anyway they also have just like we have in Christianity different groups you've heard of Baha'i a group that has a number of people following that in the United States And so that's another one, and again it's under the Shiite connection.

Here's an interesting quote from the Roman Catholic Catechism. Very fascinating. I was amazed when I was looking through it, when I caught on to this one. By the way, the one that says the church, it means the Roman Catholic Church. I scanned directly out of the Roman Catholic Catechism, so this isn't What you see there is exactly what's in there. It is graphically scanned directly from the Catechism.

Paragraph 841, the Church's relationship with Muslims. The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place, amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.

Whoa! What does that say? Do they here acknowledge that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God. Is that what that sounds like? Yeah, isn't that amazing? So, I saw that, I just couldn't believe it. And by the way, as you go through the sequence, because they've got other groups that are mentioned right after this, remember this is the first one, Protestants aren't on the list.

So interesting, Muslims are listed first, Protestants aren't even on the list. Do the Muslims say that too? Well, what's interesting, the Muslims don't agree with that, because their perception is that the Trinity consists of God the Father, God the Son, and Mary the Mother. They obviously have a mistaken impression, but the Muslims call Christians the polytheists, because they see that as polytheism. That's one of their terms. Norm? Yes.

Yes, it does. Yeah, if you look at just Evangelical Christians, that cuts the number down quite a bit. Catholicism claims somewhere around a billion. So that cuts the number roughly in half, it's right there. Yeah, that's right. In other words, if you look at Evangelical Christians, those who believe in the scripture alone, salvation by faith alone, you're looking at Islam already being ahead of that group. Yeah, substantially ahead. Yeah, good point.

If you look at the scripture though, the scripture is very clear. And what you see is Jesus makes claims that are not reconcilable with the claims of Islam. Further, here's the interesting thing. Islam comes roughly six centuries later and says that the New Testament is corrupted. And so what we have is not what Jesus said. and yet Islam came later claiming to say what Jesus said, but the earliest documents that we have of what Jesus said say this. Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me. Where's Muhammad?

Beloved, and here's the Jude 3 passage, Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints."

Remember, we looked at this before. Hapax means once given, perpetually valid. What the Apostles presented has been given once, it is perpetually valid. We don't need another prophet. Not Muhammad, not Joseph Smith. Perpetually valid. And finally, here in Philippians 3.8-10 More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Remember, Allah cannot be known. He is wholly other and unknowable. What does Paul say? Knowing Jesus Christ. Radical difference. Impersonal God versus personal God. Real different story.

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him." Not having a righteousness of my own, like following the five pillars of Islam, derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Faith, not stuff I've got to do. Righteousness on the basis of faith. The message that the apostles came with, based on their personally knowing Jesus, while on earth, as well as knowing him as the resurrected Lord. It just flies in the face of the claims of Islam, which came centuries later, centuries after the Jewish Old Testament scriptures, centuries after the New Testament scriptures, claiming both of those to be corrupted. Which one is corrupted? Which one's corrupted?

Do we believe this? Or a guy that came six centuries later and said, no, that's not quite right. And doesn't quite have the story together. I think one of the things that's clear, there is no basis for claiming that we worship the same God. Is He knowable or unknowable? Is he one in whom we find salvation by faith, or one in whom we find salvation by following a set of rules? Is man indeed in need of salvation, or can he save himself?

They don't claim Christ being the Son of God. Yeah, excuse me, I need to clarify that, because they see him as being, that's how the Christians claim as the Son of God, that's not their perspective. Their understanding is that Christians believe in God the Father, God the Son, and Mary the Mother. Does that help? In other words, they don't believe it, they understand Christians believe that.

Well, here's what happened. Muhammad had exposure to both Jews and to Christians. What he liked was the monotheism. Because the Arabic tribes were hundreds of different gods. You know, I follow the god of the moon and the rock and the sand and, you know, this rock over here and everything else. And so there were hundreds of gods. He saw the advantages of monotheism, but the Jews he was in contact with, he initially used them to gain power.

Once he did, then he either exiled or slaughtered them. And then the Christians that he came in contact with, similar treatment. The Christians he came in contact with, however, talked about God the Father and God the Son and Mary, and didn't talk about the Holy Spirit. So that's where he got his concept of what Christians teach.

Any other thoughts, questions? Yeah? I was thinking earlier about the slide you had on the quote from the Catholic Church in relation to Mary the Mother. Their perception of what Christianity is and I wonder if the Catholics haven't sort of Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is it's a more Catholic concept. It's not what the Catholics teach themselves, but it's in line with a more Catholic understanding of things.

Obviously, they're talking about Mary so much that the Holy Spirit just dropped off the scene, so far as Muhammad perceived it, which is real interesting. So, yeah, Nancy? No, Muhammad said that hell is mostly full of women. That's a quote. Muhammad said hell is mostly full of women. Women are definitely second class spiritually. Yes? Ah, yeah. Each man who goes to heaven gets 72 perpetual virgins. What's that? Well, yeah, what happens is if you're a martyr, then you've got heaven locked in. If you are not a martyr, then these two angels are going to kind of weigh things.

Yes, Doug? Yes, Jesus is just a prophet. Son of Mary he is sometimes called, yes. That's right. Jesus was not crucified. It wasn't Jesus, it was another guy. Yep, that's exactly right. And see, one of the reasons that they would say that, you don't need to have any crucifixion.

Because all you need to do is to follow the rules, and you have the right nature. You don't have an old man to crucify. So, what's the point? So yeah, you're right. The way they explain it, there isn't any need for the crucifixion. It's a ridiculous thing. Why crucify a prophet if in fact you don't need any of that? Does that make sense?

Anything else? Any other questions? Yes? Well, here's the strange thing is we'll get an attack on the Twin Towers and if we go back though and try to do something we have to go back to the Middle East to try to deal with it And then that gets them all the more irritated and upset. It's like, what did you expect? But anyway, that's their perspective. We've completed all 13 titles in church history. This ends the quarter.

So what we had talked about doing, I'd gotten input from people, and I want to thank you for those who had turned in sheets and given me some feedback. This is what we're going to be looking at here for this next quarter, starting next week. And these will be special topics. There may be some reorganization in terms of the sequence and groupings and things of that sort. But we'll be starting these this next quarter. What we will do is these, rather than like we have been just slicing kind of through church history and time, there'll be a few of those where we do that, but a lot of these will be specific subjects or periods of time. For example, we'll be looking at the Crusades, looking in more detail at that. We've kind of hit the high spots on that so far. We'll be looking at, for example, books that didn't make it into the New Testament. Anybody ever hear of the Gospel of Thomas? The Gospel of Barnabas?

There's different ones like that out there. We'll be taking a look at those and, you know, what are they? You hear about them. Why weren't they included? So we'll examine that. One of the things we'll take a look at is the variant readings. People will look at, well, my Bible says it might also say this. How do I figure out which one's right? So we'll be taking a look at that. So anyway, there's a number of different subjects. Seminaries. Should we? Shouldn't we? How some start off good and why they go bad. There is no seminary on record that stayed on course for a century. Some of them never were. We'll take a look at that, and what does the Bible say? Lots of interesting subjects, the history of Christian music and worship. That's a fascinating one, too. Again, there's a CD there.

If you have a CD player, Nancy's got them there on the table. They're passive files. If you don't have PowerPoint, because it's got all these overheads from everything we've been through. If you don't have PowerPoint, there's a PowerPoint reader on the disk.

So you can run that and be able to read through everything that's on here. There's also a whole library that would fill a bookshelf. Shaw's History of the Christian Church, which is about that thick if you were to do it. The History of Protestantism, which is I think about a dozen volume series if you have it printed out. That's on there. Fox's Book of Martyrs. A whole bunch of quotes from the early church fathers. So lots of different things that are on there. It's passive files, not a program.

So if you need some help pulling something up, give me a holler. Those are available. When we continue next week, we'll start off with this. I think your binder will hold some more. Continue to use that and have handouts. Go through this similarly. By all means, if at any time you have further questions or questions that come up later, say something about it and we'll work on it together.

All right, let's pray. Lord, we do thank you. Lord, you are indeed a marvelous God. And we thank you, Lord, that you are not only omniscient and omnipotent, you know all and are all-powerful, but you also are knowable. And Lord, that is a marvelous and wondrous thing. And we thank you for your marvelous grace. Thank you that we do not have to depend upon ourselves, but upon all that you have done and accomplished. We just praise you for that. In Jesus' name, Amen.