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"Take
Heed" Ministries
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Cecil Andrews, PO BOX 13, Ballynahinch, BT24 8AL, Northern Ireland. Telephone/Fax 028 9756 5511. E-MAIL - takeheed@aol.com WEBSITE - http://www.takeheed.net |
‘Dear Muslim neighbour’
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Witnessing for Christ has never been and will never be an easy task and
this is probably truer today than ever before. Today, any notion of there being
an absolute, exclusive, narrow ‘truth’ in the spiritual realm flies totally in
the face of the ‘spirit of this age’ – an age that is characterised by an
unwillingness to accept the ‘truth’ of absolute ‘truth’, that promotes as
dogma, both religiously and politically, the supposed ‘truth’ of ‘truth’ being
relative and that despises those who would preach an absolute ‘truth’, such as
faithful Christian witnesses [a good example was both the audience and some
panel reaction to the participation of Stephen Green of Christian Voice in the
BBC’s Question Time on 29 September 2005] and ministers of The Gospel. In
recent years the focus of the world has been very much directed to the religion
of Islam. Constantly high-ranking politicians such as Tony Blair
and George W Bush tell us that ‘Islam means peace’. Well, even
the new Pope has more sense than to agree with such an erroneous statement. In
a report of an interview given by the Pope to journalists, the Roman
Catholic Zenit News Agency reported as follows [
Journalists asked the Holy Father today, after a
meeting with priests, religious and deacons of the Diocese of Val d'Aosta,
where he is on vacation… if Islam can be regarded as a "religion of
peace," Benedict XVI responded: "I wouldn't like to generalize. It
certainly has elements that could make peace prevail; it also has other
elements."
The
truth is that Islam means ‘submission’ to the will of Allah and the supposed fruit of this
submission is ‘peace’. This misrepresentation
of the meaning of Islam [‘peace’] was well illustrated in
email exchanges I had earlier this year with the BBC. I wrote to them to
challenge a view expressed on a Newsround Week of programmes on Islam that ‘Islam means peace’. This was part of the
BBC’s response to me –
For our report we asked a young British Moslem to explain to our audience of under 12s what Islam means to him. He said in the report 'Islam means peace, which means we try to be modest, kind and honest to all people.' This was his own interpretation as a young practicing Moslem. We spoke to his family who said ‘Islam is often translated as ‘submission’ but that is only due to the relative poverty of expression in the English language.....A precise translation of Islam would be ‘the act of peacefully accepting (God)’. Also a BBC World service guide to Islam states that: ‘"Islam" is an Arabic word which means surrendering oneself to the will of God, and achieving peace and security by doing so.’
The following is part of
my response to them
As regards the meaning
of 'Islam' the
definitions that you cited actually confirm what I said in my email that Islam
means SUBMISSION - it does not mean 'peace'. Your first
definition was 'the act of peacefully
accepting God' - that
simply means SUBMITTING to God in a peaceful manner - it does not mean
that the word 'Islam' itself
means 'peace'. Your second definition was 'surrendering oneself to the will of God and
achieving peace and security by doing so' - that simply again means SUBMITTING to
God and the 'fruit' of that SUBMISSION will be 'peace and
security' but again it does not mean that the word 'Islam' itself means 'peace'.
In these definitions 'peace' is simply the manner of SUBMITTING
and the fruit of SUBMITTING as required by 'Islam'.
Not only is Islam
being misrepresented to non-Muslims, including Christians, but sadly, on the
other side of the coin, supposed ‘Christianity’ has for a long, long
time now been misrepresented to Muslims and this is what makes the task of
Christians witnessing to Muslims even more difficult. Muslims have been fed
with a raft of false ‘Christian’ statements as to what the Christian
Gospel is and also as to how Christianity relates to their
non-Christian religion of Islam.
This devilish deception
has weighed heavily with me for some time now and so I have written an ‘outreach
letter’ tract that I hope Christians will want to use as a tool for
reaching Muslims with the true “gospel of Christ”. It is entitled ‘Dear Muslim
neighbour’ and the text of the tract reads as follows -
Dear Muslim
neighbour,
I am writing to you to correct a grave disservice
that has been done to you by some who claim to be ‘Christian’ leaders.
Over many years they have said and done things in the name of ‘Christianity’
that do not accurately reflect the true beliefs and practices of Christianity
as they relate to the beliefs and practices of non-Christian religions, such as
Islam. My desire is to correct the false teachings and impressions that they
have propagated so that you will actually have a true understanding of the
genuine Christian position in a number of key areas.
The Scriptures
As far as faithful Christians are concerned
the only God-inspired written Scriptures are to be found in the 66 books
of The Bible [39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books]. No
other written books are considered by Christians to be Scriptures because
God, in His Bible, forbids any other written works being regarded as Scriptures.
This prohibition is found both in the Old Testament [Proverbs 30:5-6
“Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in
him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee and thou be found a
liar”] and also in the New Testament [Revelation
This means that genuine Christians do not
regard the ‘Scriptures’ of other religions as being God-inspired
and authoritative, whether those ‘Scriptures’ are for instance ‘The
Bhagavad Gita’ of Hinduism, ‘The Book of Mormon’ of
Mormonism or as in your own case ‘The Koran’. In 1999 the Pope
was pictured kissing a copy of ‘The Koran’. Some people
claimed the Pope’s kiss was ‘a sign of respect for the book’ whilst
others claimed it was the Pope ‘demonstrating his awareness of the
suffering of the Iraqi people’. Whatever the reason for the Pope’s gesture
is irrelevant – it is the gesture itself that is contrary to true Christian behaviour
for the Pope was kissing a book that, as we shall see later, denies some very
important truths about the Person and Work of God the Son, Jesus Christ. By
this kiss Pope John Paul II was, in the eyes of faithful Christians, betraying
the Lord Jesus Christ every bit as much as Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Christ
with a kiss to His captors in the Garden of Gethsemane [Matthew 26:47-49
“And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve came…Now he that betrayed
him gave them a sign saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; hold him
fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, master, and kissed him”].
This action of the Pope probably conveyed to you, a
false and erroneous ‘Christian’ view of The Koran. Christians
do not kiss books, even The Bible – we certainly reverence and seek to obey
what God has revealed to us through its pages, but the materials, simply paper
and possibly leather, are just the carriers of God’s truth, and are not
themselves to be given any special, almost idolatrous, ‘holy’ respect.
The God of The Scriptures
In what is wrongly portrayed as a ‘Christian’ statement
of faith, the Roman Catholic Church stated the following in Vatican
Council II: Volume 1 on page 367 ‘But the plan of salvation also
includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are
the Moslems: 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’. This
statement is repeated in Paragraph 841 of what again is wrongly
portrayed as a ‘Christian’ statement of faith namely the 1994 Catechism
of The [Roman] Catholic Church.
In 1999, the late Pope John Paul II
said this during his general audience of May 5th “We Christians
joyfully recognise the religious values we have in common with Islam. Today I
would like to repeat what I said some years ago in
During a visit to America
in June 2004, friends that I was staying with had video-taped a couple of
religious panel discussions hosted by American broadcaster Larry King and
in the course of one of these discussions a Roman Catholic priest,
wrongly perceived to be a ‘Christian’, called ‘Father’ Michael
Manning, stated to all [including his fellow panellists that
included Jewish and Muslim religious representatives] that ‘Jews and
Muslims worship The Father’ and by ‘The Father’ he meant
the First Person of the Triune God revealed in the Bible.
True Christians would
both repudiate and disassociate themselves from all these supposed ‘Christian’
statements that are in effect Roman Catholic statements. Muslims and
many other religions have been ‘sold the lie’ that
When I watched ‘Father’
Michael Manning say that ‘Jews and Muslims worship The Father’ I
immediately thought of several portions of The Scriptures that show that
this is not true. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John
The Lord Jesus [2nd Person of the Triune Godhead]
Himself said this in John
The Christian truth of the Triune God of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit as revealed in The Scriptures is clearly
rejected in The Koran as we read in Sura 5:73
‘Unbelievers are those that say “God is one of three”. There is but one God. If
they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be
sternly punished’.
N J Dawood, in the
introduction to his translation of The Koran, states on
page x ‘The Koran accuses…the Christians of worshipping Jesus as the son
of God…Having thus gone astray, they must be brought back to the right path…The
Koran preaches the oneness of God’.
The statements made by the
Roman Catholic Church, in the name of ‘Christianity’, that as far as ‘Christians’
and Muslims are concerned that ‘they adore the one, merciful God’ and that ‘We believe in the same
God’ are patently not true as they are rejected by both The
Bible and The Koran.
The Roman Catholic Church
seeks to establish, in the name of ‘Christianity’, a common spiritual
bond between ‘Christians’, Jews and Moslems by inferring that we are all
the ‘spiritual offspring’ of a common ancestor, namely Abraham. This again is
another lie that The Scriptures expose in Galatians 3:29 where
the Apostle Paul writes “And if ye be Christ’s [i.e. Christians] then
are ye Abraham’s seed [i.e. Abraham’s ‘spiritual offspring’] and heirs
according to the promise”.
The Scriptures teach that The
God of The Scriptures is not the God of Islam despite the ‘Christian’ pronouncements
of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Salvation of The Scriptures
In the section we have just considered on ‘The God
of The Scriptures’ I quoted from the Roman Catholic
What then is “sin” and what are its
consequences? “Sin” is defined in The Scriptures as “the
transgression of the law” [1 John 3:4]. When someone breaks the “law” of
God that person has sinned in the sight of God. So much for “sin” but
what are its consequences? The scriptures show that they are twofold – (1)
GOD’S ANGER (2) MAN’S GUILT. In ‘the
plan of salvation’ there must be something that can turn away ‘God’s
anger’ and that can remove ‘Man’s guilt’.
According to The Bible, what turns away
God’s anger? In Exodus
What can remove Man’s guilt? Only full
payment of the prescribed penalty can remove the guilt for an offence
committed. In biblical, theological terms this is ‘expiation’ of guilt.
God’s law did allow for payment of this penalty by a SUBSTITUTE who was both
willing and able to discharge a debt or penalty on behalf of someone within his
or her family circle who could not himself or herself pay the prescribed
penalty. Such a SUBSTITUTE was known as a “kinsman redeemer” [see Leviticus
25:25 “If thy brother becomes poor, and hath sold away some of his possession,
and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his
brother sold”].
The Apostle Paul wrote the following
concerning the death of Christ on the cross at
But what about the problem of Man’s guilt
cause by his “sin”? To “expiate” means to bear away or remove and
in the Bible we read in Hebrews
The true ‘Christian’ understanding
and ‘gospel’ [good news] concerning The Salvation of The Scriptures is
based entirely upon the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ at Calvary and the
evidence that His work was effective in accomplishing “salvation” for
His people is that after 3 days He rose from the grave. This
demonstrated that His sacrifice was acceptable to His Father and Christ is now
seated in heaven until the time of His second coming when He will come to this
world as its judge.
The ‘Christian gospel’ or The
Salvation of The Scriptures are neatly summed up by the Apostle Paul in 1
Corinthians 15:1-4 “Brethren I declare unto you the gospel…by which also ye are
saved…how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that
he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
scriptures”.
Any faithful ‘Christian’ presentation
of ‘the plan of salvation’ will limit it to those who are
trusting alone in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross of
The Roman Catholic Church, again in the
name of ‘Christianity’ also falsely tells those followers of other
religions that ‘Those who through no fault of their own do not know the
Gospel of Christ or his Church but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere
hear and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it
through the dictates of their conscience, those too may achieve eternal
salvation” [Vatican Council II: Volume 1; page 367].
As a Muslim you will know what The
Koran teaches about ‘salvation’ and about getting to
Paradise – Sura 22: 56 ‘On that day God will reign supreme. He will judge
them all. Those that have embraced the true Faith [Islam] and
done good works shall enter the gardens of delight’. Sura 23:104 ‘[At the day
of Resurrection] Those whose scales are heavy shall triumph but those whose
scales are light shall forfeit their souls and abide in Hell for ever’.
According to
The Bible teaches that ‘salvation’
is not based upon an individual’s works but is a gracious [unearned and
unmerited] gift from God based solely upon the sinless life of Christ and His
substitutionary death on the cross at
According to the Bible ‘salvation’ is
only to be found in Christ or as the Apostle Peter said concerning Christ “Neither
is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven
given among men whereby we must be saved” [Acts 4:12].
The Peace of The Scriptures
The Scriptures teach that those who are in what
we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ” [Romans 5:1].
When the Roman Catholic Church falsely
asserted, in the name of ‘Christianity’, that ‘the plan of
salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place
amongst whom are the Moslems’ she was holding out to you, as a Muslim,
a false assurance of “peace” with God. “Peace” with God,
according to true Christianity is found only in Jesus Christ and through
acceptance of His Gospel. In the Old Testament Jesus Christ is referred to
prophetically as “The Prince of Peace” [Isaiah 9:6] and in the New
Testament the Apostle Paul twice refers in his writings to “the gospel of
peace” [Romans
The Scriptures clearly teach that this “peace” has
been earned alone by the work of Christ on the cross at
The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ was The Prophet
promised by God in Deuteronomy 18:15 “The Lord thy God will raise up unto
thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren like unto me, unto him
ye shall hearken”. This truth was
confirmed in the New Testament as we read in John
A Prophet was one appointed to
bring God to the people and after Christ there would be no more Prophets
and in fact Christ warned against those who would claim to be Prophets as
can be read in Matthew 24:11 & 24.
The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ was The Priest who
would deal once and for all time with the problem of “sin”. A Priest was
one appointed to bring people to God by offering a suitable sacrifice on their
behalf and in Hebrews 10:12 & 14 we read this concerning Christ “this
man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the
right hand of God…For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified”.
The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ is The King who
will one day return to judge this world. We read concerning Christ in Revelation
19:11, 13 & 16 “And I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse; and he
that sat upon him was called faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth
judge…And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called
The Word of God…And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written,
King of Kings and Lord of Lords”.
The Peace of The Scriptures are to be found alone in a living
relationship with God’s Prophet, Priest and King, the one
revealed in The Scriptures to be Jesus Christ.
Concluding thought
In writing to you my desire has been
solely to accurately portray what are the true Christian beliefs and
convictions in a number of crucial areas as opposed to the false set of
supposed ‘Christian’ beliefs and convictions put forth, in particular,
in the name of ‘Christianity’, by the Roman Catholic Church. I pray that you will realise that in so doing
it is certainly not my intention to insult or offend Muslims in any way but
rather to reveal to them the true nature of “the glorious gospel of Christ”
[2 Corinthians 4:4].
If you would like a free copy of further
literature that explains in greater detail what the true Christian Gospel is,
then please request it from me by writing to me at the address in the box
below.
Yours, a Christian neighbour
© Copyright
2005.
‘Take Heed’ Publications
PO Box 13 , Ballynahinch , BT24 8AL
Northern
Ireland
This ‘outreach letter’ tract has been printed up on good
quality green
art paper as an ‘attractive’ 8-panel tract for distribution to
Muslims and
can be purchased direct from us at a cost of 10p per tract
[it will cost more if purchased from Christian bookshops]
As you will see there is space on the tract for you to include
your own
contact details and to offer Christian literature that you deem
suitable.
If
ordering copies please also include an
allowance for postage
equivalent
to 20% of the value of the tracts being ordered.
If you live outside the United Kingdom
please email your order to me at takeheed@aol.com
and I shall reply to you with details of the costs including overseas postage
and where applicable the currency equivalent [such as US Dollars or Euros].
Above all please pray for this outreach to Muslims.
The
following ‘Order Form’ can be used for orders
from
people living within the
Order form for copies of ‘Dear Muslim neighbour’
Please supply _______ copies of ‘Dear Muslim neighbour’ to
Name:________________________________________________________
Address:______________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
The cost
has been calculated as _________ copies @ 10p each = £
Postage allowance of 20% = £____
Cheque, payable
to ‘Take Heed’ Publications’ enclosed for total of £____
This order form and cheque should then be
posted to
‘Take Heed’ Publications,