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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Islam
And Christianity In response to an article
I wrote, I received an email from my friend Jay Comfort.
I met Jay while in Bible college in the mid 1970's.
He now lives in Jay wrote.
"Islam encompasses the whole of society. Islam is a
religious, political, economic, military, and cultural way of life.
It never intends to accept other's way of doing things in societies in
which its numbers have begun to lean toward the majority. In the past,
it pushed its way into societies in military ways so as to insure the
numerical odds were in their favor. I agree with Jay, and He
is one who speaks from personal experience. The Bible teaches Christians
to love everyone, whether Muslim, atheist, or whoever.
Anything we say or do in relation to people of other religions
should not be based on bias or prejudice, but on what the Bible says.
We are to love as Jesus loves.
That means we do not compromise the truth of Scripture, because
love demands the truth. Jay rightly points out
that Muslims have, and do, spread their religion through military force,
as well as through, immigration,
social, political, and economic domination.
Islam sees itself as a theocracy that penetrates all aspects of
social life in a nation. There
is no separation between religion and state, as there is, or should be,
in Christianity. Our
allegiance as Christians is first to the Kingdom
of In Matthew 28:18 Jesus
said, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,
therefore go and make disciples of all nations…"
Note that Jesus is the final authority over all things.
Based on His authority, He has commanded us to disciple those in
every nation. How are we to
do this? Should we follow
the Islamic example? Did the first followers
of Jesus use military force
to disciple nations? No.
Jesus specifically said that His Kingdom was not of this world so
His disciples would not fight to expand it. (John 18:36)
Did the first disciples try to influence the economic and social
life of If anyone could have
entered the sphere of Roman political life, it would have been the
apostle Paul. He had the
intellect, the education, the Roman citizenship, and the drive to do so.
Paul obeyed the call of Jesus to preach the gospel, which he
admitted was foolish in the eyes of the kingdoms of men. (1 Corinthians
1:17, 18, 21, 23, 25) The New Testament does
not teach us to Christianize a nation.
It also doesn't teach us to separate ourselves from the rest of
the world and create our own Christian society.
As God the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sends us
into the world. (John 20:21) The
Bible teaches us to go into the world, preach, teach, and disciple
people from every nation in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's one difference between Islam and Christianity.
I see no problem with
Christians entering the world of politics or any form of social
activism. That being said,
we don't base such involvement on any specific Biblical mandate.
We base such involvement on the fact that many of us at the
present time live in nations that allow us to be so involved.
Attempting to change a nation through the political or social
process should be seen as secondary to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus
through the power of the Holy Spirit.
A nation is truly change when the hearts of its people are
changed. I'm sure Jonathan
Edwards and other great revivalists of the 18th and 19th
century would agree. It
wasn't government legislation, and it certainly wasn't Mohamed, who
brought men out of the bar rooms and prostitute parlors of |