Biblical Christianity and Islam

The main difference between Christianity and Islam 

by Robert Krisztian Janko

 When it comes to Christianity and Islam, we find that there are a number of similarities of doctrines that both religions hold. What divides the Muslim and the Christian however is their view about God. Most of the time, when it comes to Muslim-Christian dialogues the most popular and debated topics are “Is Jesus God or was He just a mere prophet?”, “Was Jesus crucified for our sins or was it just made to appear so?” and “Is the Bible the preserved Word of God or is it the Koran?”. Beside all these arguments that form the fundamentals of both religions I believe that there is a much more important topic than this.

Every single Surah (chapter) in the Koran begins by this sentence: 

“In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.” Another translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali says “In the name of Allah, Most gracious, Most Merciful”. 

As I stated above, every single chapter of the Koran begins by these words so it seems obvious that the author of the Koran wanted to emphasize this fact in a very clear way. Having said that, let us look at the definition and concept of MERCY and GRACE.

Oxford dictionary gives this definition of mercy: “compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm:” In other words, it is having compassion on someone when they have done something wrong and they would deserve punishment. So, in the religious context mercy is always shown towards those who do not follow God, those who are NOT obedient to His Law.

Having established the meaning of mercy we now must look at how mercy is exercised by the God of the Koran towards the unbelievers:

Chapter 2: 81: “Yes! Whosoever earns evil and his sin has surrounded him, they are dwellers of the Fire (i.e. Hell); they will dwell therein forever.” 

Chapter 4:93 “But whoever kills a believer intentionally - his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment.” 

Chapter 4:169 “Except the path of Hell; they will abide therein forever. And that, for Allah, is [always] easy.” 

Chapter 7:36 But those who reject Our Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) and treat them with arrogance, they are the dwellers of the (Hell) Fire, they will abide therein forever. 

These are some of the verses that deal with the punishment of the unbelievers and as you have probably noticed I underlined a key word that is used in all of those passages which is the word FOREVER. The Koran says that the punishment for sinners will be eternal torture in fire, that means that according to the Koran sinners will burn forever in hell for the few years they spent on this earth rejecting Islam. Let me give you a scenario, which by no means will resemble the same 

amount of injustice but it will give you a good idea of what this involves. So, let’s say that I have an 8-year old son and one day as he is playing in the garden he picks up a hammer and he breaks the windscreen of my BMW that I had bought a week before for £50,000. You can say that it is a pretty expensive car so because of what he has done I am going to take a rod and spank him with it for a whole week. In addition to that, I do not give him food and drink I just carry on "beating" him for a whole week. Remember that I am his dad and I claim to love Him and be merciful to him however when he broke the windscreen of my car I punished him for a week. If you saw me doing that, what would you think of me as a parent? You would certainly NOT think that I love that child but more importantly you would NOT think that I am a merciful father. In fact, you would accuse me of being insane and violent.

I must emphasize that I am not against punishment but the punishment has to be just and if the person claims that he is merciful than mercy must also be exercised together with justice. To put it simply, if I live 50 years on this earth and during my whole lifetime I reject God then the maximum amount of punishment that I would deserve could not be more than 49 years. Why forty nine? Because if I was punished for 50 years than that would be the exact amount of years that I deserve so I would serve my deserved punishment and there would be no mercy exercised on the part of God. However, 49 years of burning in fire would still not be a HUGE amount of mercy because it is just a little bit less than what I deserve so when the Koran says that ““In the name of Allah, Most gracious, Most Merciful” then that would even more reduce the length of the punishment because Allah claims to be the MOST merciful. Unfortunately, we can see clear from the above Surahs that I have recited that such is not the case. The punishment of eternal torturing in fire is not only unjust but the exact opposite of merciful, namely cruel.

What about the Bible then? Many Christians today hold on to this very same idea and this is the reason why so many people throughout the centuries have given up on God. The Bible speaks of a punishment but is it taking place at this very moment or is it going to take place at a certain time in the future?

1 “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to RESERVE the unjust unto the Day of Judgment to be punished.” 2Peter 2:9 (The day of judgment must arrive before the retribution of the ungodly.)

2. “The heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” 2Peter 3:7. (The perdition of ungodly men comes at the judgment.)

3. “The wicked is RESERVED unto the day of destruction they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath.” Job 21:30

From all this, and many more bible verses we can see that those who have died so far and were not righteous are NOT being punished at the moment because the verses say that they are being preserved to the day of judgement when they will receive their punishments.

What then, will be the end of the ungodly men?

Psalm 37:38: “But all sinners will be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off.”

Malachi 4:1: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.”

Some more references: John 3:16, Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:20 (all of these verses show that God’s gift is eternal life but if we don’t accept that then we will DIE. Notice the contrast is not between eternal life in heaven and eternal life on earth, it is between Life and DEATH so by implication death cannot be suffering eternally in hell because that is still LIFE but only those have life who accept God)

Due to the limited time and space I have, I cannot go into any more detail but those two scriptures summarize well what the bible says on this topic. The last book in the Bible and the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament talk about the fact that when God destroys sin and sinners He will create a new heaven and a new earth and the Bible says:

Revelation 21:4 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

If at this time, sinners were burning in hell then this text would be a lie as it says that there will be no more SORROW and CRYING so by this time all the wicked will have been destroyed in the lake of fire and they will have ceased to exist.

In conclusion, I did not have the privilege of growing up in a Christian home because I have experienced things that I should never have experienced but the few times I spoke to Christians it pushed me even further from religion because it seemed that I as a human being was more loving and more caring than the God that was presented to me so if I had not found this amazing truth in the bible that God will not burn people forever, I would never have become a follower of Christianity or Islam. Some of the Muslims, do not really consider this as a good argument because all of their families are in the same faith, so they do not have to imagine what will happen if their children or their parents do not make it to heaven, however most of my family do not care about God and if God did not deal with them justly I would be the greatest follower of people like Professor Richard Dawkins or Peter Atkins who are “fighting” against religions because of this very reason. Can you imagine humans having more compassion on their friends and families than their very own creator? Praise the Lord, that I have found the truth and that I serve a God who says: “... As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” How long does God live? FOREVER, so that means He will forever be sad for those who have never made it to heaven but have died.

God's Love for man by Daniel Webber

                                                      Nature’s Apocalypse

“When through the woods and forest glades I wander,
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!” Hine S, 1899

How is it that we as humans find something so beautiful in nature; from the large mountains, to the sea, to the flowers and everything else fills us with a sense of awe? The hymn writer is bedazzled by its effortless beauty, how at their very own heart, they find comfort and peace whilst in it.  Creatures as small as birds can inspire nations, take for example the United States of America, whose emblem is the bold eagle or Russia whose emblem is the Bear or the United Kingdom who have many national animals such as the Lion and the Welsh Dragon.

After examining the beautiful things in nature the songwriter exclaims how great God is, their soul could not contain the wonder, not just of nature, but of a transcendent mind behind it. Woah woah woah, surely nature says nothing about anything transcendent. Surely, theists force their view upon everyone else, just like trying to convince a friend of the shape of a cloud in the sky. The songwriter suggests that the ‘creation’ reveals the hands of the creator as a watch indicates of a designer. But was the conclusion justified? Does nature really reveal to us the hands of a creator?

Interestingly enough, this same ridiculous claim is found in the bible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:  21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.  24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:  25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” Romans 1:20-25

The passage says something almost paradoxical, that the “invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen”. ‘GOD’ seems to explain that those things that have been created reveal himself, that no-one who looks at the beauty without presuppositions will exclaim the randomness of this purposeful wonder. The famed atheist Anthony Flew who was at the helm of confronting theism for decades published a book titled ‘There is a God: How the world’s most notorious Atheist changed his mind’ in which he said 

      “My departure from atheism was not occasioned by any new phenomenon or argument. Over the last two decades, my whole framework of thought has been in a state of migration. This was a consequence of my continual assessment of the evidence of nature. When I finally came to realise the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.” Flew A, 2009, p89. Flew, like Hines attributed the natural to the supernatural simply through observing nature.

This overwhelming revelation of a creator can be so powerful that it is written that “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” Crick F, 1988, p138. This ‘feeling’ must be so inescapable that Biologists are instructed to constantly keep evolution in their minds no matter what intuition tells them. So was God right? Was this a legitimate claim?

Coincidentally, another answer comes to us from the same text in Romans 1v 23,25, which says:

    “23 And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.…..25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”  History is littered with the idea of homosapien’s exalting themselves to the place of Deity, whether it be through religions such as in ancient Egypt, where Pharaoh’s ruled as Gods on earth or to what we can consider more ‘spiritual’, meaning, putting ourselves before God and our fellow men because we have a desire to be adored. We see so much wickedness that happens around us, from people being killed, to people being abused and the denying of basic rights as humans we need. A major problem is, is that when we “change the truth of God into a lie” we then have to deny ‘creation’ and are forced accept ‘nature’, and acts of cruelty, reduce down to primal instincts in which we are destined to repeat.

In a book called Steps to Christ, the first Chapter tells us that nature seems to testify of God’s love, the things that have been created have been wonderfully adapted to meet the needs of man and all living creatures; the rain that brings life to the earth through refreshing the lands, the sun that punctures warmth to the most impenetrable of places (White E, 2010).

I believe that there is compelling evidence that reveals to us a creator, but I believe that although he has revealed himself not just through nature but through the bible, history, archaeology, prophecy, there are points in which we can hang our doubt. But there is a point where evidence has to transition to faith and God calls us to search for him and he promises that if we do search for him with our whole heart, we will find him (Jeremiah 29:13).

References:

Crick F, 1988, What mad pursuit: a personal view of science discovery, Penguin Books, London, p138

Hine S, 1899, Seventh-Day Adventist Hymnal, no.86

Flew A, 2009, There is a God: How the world’s most notorious Atheist changed his mind, HarperCollins, USA, p89

White E, 2010, Steps to Christ, Lincolnshire, Stanborough Press Ltd