Posted on 04/09/2011 10:24:59 AM PDT by wmfights
The future shape of the world appears to be a worldview competition between Christianity, Islam, and Western Secularism. For Christians, both of these worldviews represent real and lasting challenges to evangelism. Neither of these is a particularly new challenge, and the Christian encounter with Islam is now over a millennium in duration.
Writing over thirty years ago, when most American evangelicals had little knowledge of Islam, missiologist J. Herbert Kane of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School outlined six reasons why the evangelization of the Muslim world has been so difficult. His explanation of “Why the Muslim Soil is So Barren” remains both instructive and important.
1. Islam is Younger than Christianity
Having borrowed from both Judaism and Christianity, Islam “has just enough Christianity in it to inoculate it against the real thing.” As with Mormonism, Muslims claim a later revelation that corrects and supersedes the Bible. This represents a very real challenge to the Christian, who will base the argument for the Gospel on the biblical revelation.
2. Islam Denies the Deity and the Death of Christ
Islam not only denies the deity of Christ, it finds the idea abhorrent. “If a missionary but mentions the deity of Christ the fanatical Muslim is likely to spit on his shadow to show his utter contempt for such a blasphemous suggestion.” Furthermore, the Qur’an denies that Christ actually died on the cross, thus taking away the very act of our atonement. “There appears to be no way around these two obstacles,” Kane lamented. “The Christian missionary can find many points of similarity between Christianity and Islam, and certainly he will want to make full use of these; but sooner or later he must come to the central theme of the gospel — the cross. At that point he runs into a stone wall. He can remove many offending things, but he can never do away with the offense of the cross. That and the deity of Christ are hurdles that can never be removed.”
3. Islam’s Treatment of Defectors
“All religions, including the broadest of them — Hinduism — look with disfavor on the devotee who changes his religion,” Kane advised. “But it remained for Islam to devise the Law of Apostasy, which permits the community to kill the adherent who defects from the faith.”
For Islam, “conversion is a one-way street.” Even when death is not a real threat, losing the bonds of community and family are huge costs.
4. The Solidarity of Muslim Society
Even where Muslims are not in a majority, such as in Western nations, they often concentrate in specific areas or communities where this solidarity can be approximated.
Under such an arrangement, efforts by Christians to evangelize meet a unified resistance, and a decision to leave Islam can be construed as an unpatriotic act, tantamount to rejecting one’s nation and people.
5. The Public Practice of Religion
Often overlooked by many Christians is the fact that a faithful Muslim demonstrates that faithfulness in a public pattern of prayers and observances. A convert who ceases these observances becomes immediately evident. This system of public prayer and ritual represents a powerful support for Islam and a powerful deterrent to conversion to any other belief system.
6. The Memory of the Crusades
As Kane explains, “To Christians in the West the Crusades were a bad dream, of which we have only the faintest recollection; but to the Arabs they are the greatest proof of the Christian hatred for Islam.” Christians bear the burden of a long and intensely bitter Muslim memory. Though atrocities were common on both sides, the atrocities committed by Christians were uniquely a repudiation of central Christian teachings.
In the mind of many Muslims, the Crusades feel like a living memory. To many within the Islamic world, Christians remain Crusaders, and evangelism is just another way of continuing the crusading mission.
Professor Kane’s breakdown of these obstacles is not only interesting and helpful, it also serves as a reminder that these issues are hardly new. At the same time, Christians must evangelize, no matter the obstacles to Christian witness.
Christians must remember that the Holy Spirit can break down the greatest wall of resistance and the Word of God is, as He says, like a hammer that shatters a rock. Dr. Kane’s arguments help us to understand the challenge, but were not meant to suppress evangelism. To the contrary, he wanted the church to be better informed as we fulfill the command of Christ.
“The Muslim belief system must be treated for what it is, a thoroughly dark, malevolent, demon centered religion worthy of no respect by genuinely loving people.”
Amen.
Say, would you mind clarifying what you meant when you said that Allah is a demiurge? I’ve never heard it put like that before. It sounds Gnostic. Is there a Gnostic connection with Islam?
How about "Why is cancer so much of a concern". Bottom line that religion is cancer & no talking but action to rid the world of cancer.
Satan was very smart when designing his religion. For example, he didn’t design it to be suicidal like another evil movement known to us as liberalism.
Besides the fact that Islam is such a big part of Muslims’ lives and that leaving it can be very dangerous, Islam thrives on its simplicity and what it has taken from Christianity.
For example, their conception of Allah is much simpler and easier to grasp than the Trinity.
And monotheism, which was taken from Christianity and Judaism, is much better than polytheism.
I've got a great book you MUST read!
"Reasoning from the Scriptures with Muslims" by Ron Rhodes.
It's an easy read and for any Christian is eye opening.
One point he makes is to not go straight for the jugular with contradictions such as "abrogation", but to focus on their error about sin. For example, why did Abraham need to sacrifice his son if sin isn't a big problem and why did God provide the atoning sacrifice if it wasn't important.
BTW, if this religion is so pure why does it have to brainwash sheeple consistenly that it is the religion of peace?
Thank you for some great input.
“some have even put korans in church pews.”
Shades of the Abomination of Desolation that is to come. Many Christians are being seduced by multiculturalism, which will prepare them for the strong delusion that is coming.
If a “Christ” appears that is embraced by the Muslim world, how many so-called Christians will rush to embrace him as well, in longing for peace and unity? If they already deny the truth of the Bible, how hard will it be for them to deny a little more, when presented with a miraculous “saviour” they can see with their own eyes?
Interestingly that sounds more like a Christian problem than a Moslem problem.
I think you're right. All the more reason Christians understand it so when we get the opportunity to witness we can help the lost find the Truth. Our faith is the only one I know of that commands us to love our enemies.
What's more loving than preaching The Gospel?
There's more:
Qu'ran 2:191 "Kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter."
Qu'ran 5:34 "Slay or crucify or cut the hands and feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace and that they shall have a great punishment in world hereafter."
I’m not sure what you mean. Could you make it a little clearer for me?
Not sure I would call it a problem, it is simply situational awareness.
I would suggest that St. Tamara, Queen of Georgia (well, King of Georgia, since the Georgian language only has a masculine word for a reigning monarch) provides a model of how to evangelize Muslims: she managed to convert a fair number of Muslim hill-tribes around Georgia to Holy Orthodoxy. The first step was to decisively defeat them (and larger Muslim powers) in battle. It is also important that she offered them Orthodox Christianity, which provides a complete way of life, not a thin, half-secularized, salvation-by-faith-alone protestant version.
FWIW, because the vast majority of muslims are born into this totalitarian system, rather than choosing to be in it, they have never heard the Truth. For example, they will argue Christians used violence to advance Christianity through the Crusades. They don't know the violence of The Crusades was going against Christian teachings not embracing them.
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