The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Preaching illustrations to win Muslims - with Samuel Green
How to preach to build confidence so members want to invite Islamic friends and workmates to church and better educate our Christians for conversations with Muslim friends.
What topics might we address? How to best engage with the authority and authorship of the Bible vs the Qur’an, plus Jesus and Muhammed, the Trinity, Incarnation, Sin and human nature, Judgement and Salvation.
Sam Green works for the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students and is the author of ‘Where to start with Islam.’ https://bit.ly/3N0wx6Q
Plus Sam Green shares his pastor’s heart ahead of a big debate with Muslim Apologist Abdulla Kunde at the University of Sydney hosted by the Islamic Students Society.
Further resources:
Sam Green debating at Sydney University, 2023 https://bit.ly/3BbmKIy
Sam Green reference page on ‘Sermon Illustrations and Islam’ https://bit.ly/3zsaqDq
Church Suite Taster Days in Sydney and Brisbane
Check out the new church management software ChurchSuite. Gavin and Luke are hosting five taster days in Sydney and Brisbane in November.
The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is an excellent website and app platform built specifically for churches.
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It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele. And today, engaging with Islam in our sermons? We need to, and how can we do it better? Australia's leading evangelist to the Islamic community is Sam Green. He is our guest today. He works with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students and is the author of this book when to Start with Islam A New Approach to Engaging with Muslim Friends. He's here in Sydney to speak tonight at a debate at the University of Sydney with an Islamic apologist, sam. I'm going to get to our topic of how to engage with us as pastors, engaging with Islam in our sermons. But tonight, this big debate and I'm imagining I mean I've never been in a confrontational debate like this in front of 300 people and eternal destiny for people at stake in this way how are you feeling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on your program. It's always great to be here. Look, I'm nervous. I'm nervous. Before any event like this, I get nervous. I'm nervous. Before any event like this, I get nervous. I get nervous before I preach the word of God too, so I certainly-, but this kind of confrontational moment is Well it's confrontational.
Speaker 2:Look, I've had a lot of experience in this area, so I get nervous. But as soon as it begins, I'm in the zone and I'm doing it. Yeah, okay, now it's an event. I mean, I'm in the zone and I'm doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Okay, now it's an event I mean I've got the graphic here, the promotional graphic, and we'll put it up on the screen the inter-society debate. Islam versus Christianity, salvation and redemption.
Speaker 2:And it's put on by the Muslim Students Association. Yes, the Muslim Society is running it, but the Christians are saying you know.
Speaker 1:Let's do this, you know because. So what's going on with Muslim Awareness Week at the university? Lots of us don't. I mean somebody like me. University 30 years ago it wasn't a thing.
Speaker 2:We're not the only ones on campus preaching Jesus. The Islamic societies are very busy around Australia giving a very different Jesus and during Islamic Awareness Week at Sydney University they have set up I was in there yesterday maybe six stalls along a whole walkway. It would have gone for about 40 or so metres Free food all that kind of thing. Free food, all that kind of thing, Free food. And there was local sort of Anglo converts there amongst them, and you know books and posters.
Speaker 1:Raising the plausibility that I could become a Muslim.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So they're very busy teaching a different gospel and you know it's not just that they're presenting a different gospel. The way that Islam presents itself is as a correction to Christianity.
Speaker 1:So that's their main approach to say Christianity is wrong. Look at us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to debate them, because it's not like the Buddhist society or the Hindu society, which don't talk about Christianity. When it comes to Islam and the way it promotes itself, it speaks against and is critical of Christianity. And so we're saying well, if you're going to be critical of us and accuse us of all these things that they do, we want a chance to have a joint meeting and discuss these things, and that's what this debate's about.
Speaker 1:And you've done a few of them at these universities. Yeah, I've done quite a few debates, yes, yeah, and so tell us about some of the wins.
Speaker 2:Well, what I can say is that you mentioned before that it's confrontational, that it doesn't have to be. It depends on your manner and how you go into it. So I'm always kind and gentle. I don't raise my voice and I'm careful in what I do. Kind and gentle, I don't raise my voice and I'm careful in what I do, and I exchange gifts with the Islamic speaker shake hands.
Speaker 1:Have you got to know some of these guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, they're on my phone and if I go to the UK we can have debates, yeah, so I've been doing it for a long time and I know basically all of the main.
Speaker 2:Islamic debaters around the world so I do things with them. So it's very cordial, because they're convinced that they're right. And the Quran? Remember that the Quran spends more time discussing or trying to discuss it does it incorrectly, but discussing Christianity than it does for the five pillars of Islam. So we're a major subject in the Quran and it's a debate with us, you know, amongst other things. But there's a significant amount of space given to us in the Quran, and so the idea of having a debate with a Muslim is not a big thing. That's what their book encourages them to do, and so that's why I've tried to establish a ministry in this space, because that's their culture. For Christians it might be strange, but for Muslims it's not strange.
Speaker 1:That's what their book does, and they've worked hard, I take it, to make sure it's fair. Yes, or is it going to be fair tonight?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it will be fair. They're normally pretty good at those types of things, mm-hmm. Yeah, now you spoke about any wins before. We've certainly made a lot of progress. I would say that over the last sort of 20 or 30 years that I've been doing this, we've made significant progress, I think, in our explanations of the Trinity and the incarnation, we're doing a lot better than we used to At communicating to them, at communicating to them, yeah, and so I think we've made great grounds in that area.
Speaker 2:And in terms of the Bible and the Quran, their standard argument is the Bible's been changed and so you've got to listen to the Quran.
Speaker 1:Now, that's not what the Quran says, but that's what they say yeah, I remember Ahmed Daddad or someone like that saying that years ago.
Speaker 2:Yes. Now what's happened is when they were saying that in the 90s, we would give our evidence for the Bible not being changed and being preserved, but we didn't know what to say about the Quran. And so they can say things about your book, and then all the focus is on you. Since that time, I've got Qurans from around the world and guess what? They're different. They're actually different Arabic Qurans. There's 10 canonical Arabic Qurans, not translations, and so in my last debate, which people could look up, I raised all of this and this was a huge shock to Muslims, because they're told by their leaders there's one Quran, the Bible's changed. That's why you don't need to listen to the Bible the way the Quran says they're meant to listen to the Bible.
Speaker 1:And you actually had a pile of Qurans there.
Speaker 2:I had some Qurans there and I was showing the differences I've learned Arabic so that I can engage sensibly on this subject and the Muslim speaker, who's quite an enthusiastic Muslim, he was up there. He actually raised the issue before I got up because he knew I'd be raising it, and so he was showing these Qurans as well. So we had the Muslims showing all the different Qurans, the Christians showing the different Qurans, and it was just really helpful because it's now giving us a level playing field which we haven't had, because they've come in and the information about Christianity has been widely accessible and so they've grabbed hold of that and we don't know as much information about them, and so it's taken us a while to catch up, but I think we're making great progress. Well, we are, we're making great progress.
Speaker 1:Now when you and I spoke a few weeks ago about you coming on today and you said let's talk about engaging with Islam in our sermons, I actually felt rebuked because over the years I've thought. I remember when I started here I thought I want young families to come. Even though there are no young families coming, I'm going to speak as if they're in the room. And if I speak as if they're in the room, people will think oh, Dominic's ministering to people like that, I'll bring them. And then, gradually, there started to be people there and then I started to speak as if there were divorcees in the room and people worked out. It was safe to bring a friend who was going through a marriage breakdown or gone through a marriage breakdown. And then I started to speak as if there were people struggling with different sexualities in the room. But I've not done that really with people who are Islamic, and so I felt rebuked. Go on, then, rebuke me.
Speaker 2:Well, look, I don't want to rebuke you, but what I've done is I've written an article called Sermon Illustrations and Islam, so I'm trying to help you. This is my pastor's heart While I do do this Islamic work.
Speaker 1:You want us all to be engaged?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see myself first as an evangelist and a Bible teacher and that type of ministry, and so I've done that for many years. But I've got this focus on Islam now, and so I wrote an article a short time ago and I thought it would be of interest to you, and it's called Sermon Illustrations in Islam.
Speaker 2:And we're linking to it in the show notes below yeah, and so the idea is it's to help you to know oh, what's out there, what could I do? So I can give a few illustrations which might be helpful, yeah well, let's do a couple of them.
Speaker 1:Let's just think I mean, we've already talked about the Bible and the Koran as whole books, but when I'm just on the person of Jesus, how can I helpfully do a compare and contrast with the?
Speaker 2:person of Muhammad. Yeah, so say, for instance, if you're teaching a part of the Gospel where Jesus is casting out a demon from someone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll just think, luke 8. We're in Luke 8. He's raised a little girl from the dead.
Speaker 2:You know he's healed that woman in the bleeding. It's the unclean spirit.
Speaker 1:Unclean spirit legion. What do we do? What do we do? What do you want us to do?
Speaker 2:Well, something you could consider is to say, because I actually had a night, a few weeks ago we were doing Introducing God.
Speaker 1:I just hadn't thought it through. What could I have actually added to that talk that would have connected with them?
Speaker 2:Now there's a few things we can say here. One would be that in the Hadith, which is the sacred accounts of Muhammad, it actually says that people worked black magic and cast a spell over Muhammad so that he began to. He was affected by malevolent forces and was imagining things that he thought he was doing, that he wasn't doing, and he needed to be delivered from it. So in the Gospel story, Muhammad's more like the person who needs to be delivered Legion.
Speaker 2:Yeah he's more like someone in the gospel story that Jesus helped. Now, you're not misrepresenting Islam, but you can bring that up and say you see, Jesus and Muhammad they're not the same and I'm not trying to misrepresent them here, they're just different. And you could also look at the fact that Muhammad is commanded in the Quran to confess his sins and seek forgiveness. Now, that's a great thing. If you're teaching about the sinlessness of Christ, you can say I'm not trying to misrepresent Islam here, but it just doesn't claim the same things that Jesus claims and the Bible claims about Jesus. We're talking about different people here.
Speaker 2:Yahweh and Allah, Yahweh and Allah. Well, I've got a few notes in there just to help clarify what we should think of those names. Very often we'll have the idea that Allah is just the word for God, and that's often how it's translated. But Allah is not the word for God. That's a different word. In Arabic it's called Ila and the word Allah is actually the name of God in Islamic Arabic, Not Christian Arabic. That's a different thing. But in Islamic Arabic Allah replaces Yahweh. So there is no Yahweh in the Quran. That name has been replaced with a different name.
Speaker 1:So what do you do in these debates? When you're talking of the person of God, what name do you use?
Speaker 2:I will normally just say I'll use the word God. I normally wouldn't use the word Yahweh. It depends on the context of what I'm saying there. But I just raise that because it's a question.
Speaker 1:And you're assuming that the English listener understands what God means. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, talk to me about salvation.
Speaker 2:So one of the problems we have when we talk to Muslims is we can assume that Islam is about salvation. Christianity is about salvation. Islam is about salvation. Salvation about salvation. Islam's about salvation.
Speaker 2:Salvation is not the main message of Islam. The main message of Islam is there's one God and Muhammad's his prophet, and that's what the early jihadist armies went around with. They didn't go around with the message of salvation. They went with this message there's one God, muhammad's his prophet, and you've got three choices. So salvation is important in Islam, but it's further down the line.
Speaker 2:Allah hasn't come to do anything for you, to save you, and so Muslims try to save themselves in different ways. It's absolutely a salvation of works. You can actually do enough good works. So the jihadist martyr is guaranteed paradise. They go straight to paradise. Everyone else goes to the grave, where different things can happen to you in the grave to help you, and I list them out in there. I'm not going to go through all of them now. I think one of the most important points, though, with salvation is that in the Quran and in the Hadith, muhammad says he does not know what will happen to him when he dies. Now, from a preaching point of view if you're doing an evangelistic sermon or something, that's gold, as far as I'm concerned, that is a contrast between what I say about the resurrection.
Speaker 2:I am the way yeah, and Jesus in John's Gospel says I know where I've come from.
Speaker 1:I was dead, and now I'm alive, forever and ever. And the other bloke says I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yes. And so, again, what I'm trying to do with these examples and these references is to give accurate information that you can use in your sermon, but also fully referenced, so you can look at it and say, yeah, that's in the Bible, sorry, that's in the Quran, and I can quote it with confidence. And so that's what I'm trying to do gather this material in one place so that the Christian preacher can have confidence in these and say I'm not misrepresenting Islam, I'm not going to be caught out, for that wasn't what the quote said, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to help you in that regard. It's imperative that we do it fairly. Yeah, absolutely yeah. Sin and human nature.
Speaker 2:Yes, so in Islam you are born pure. Muhammad doesn't have an understanding of the prophets, original sin, of original sin, of the corruption of human nature, and so what that means is that they have a very different view of humanity. Because for us, as Christians, because we're all corrupted by sin, we're all level. There's this one level and there's Jesus up here and God up here, but we're all at the same level, and so if you're a priest or a minister, you're not at a higher level than anyone else. But as soon as you have the idea that people are born pure, Well, you could have all gradually improved to different degrees.
Speaker 2:There become steps, there become levels that you can go up to. There become steps, there become levels that you can go up to. And so, for Muslims, the goal of life is to stay pure and, you know, to progress and get closer to Allah as best you can, and so I give references there where it will talk about how. So this is I think Surah 9, I think it's verse 18, where it says do not think that the person who helps provide water for Hajj, you know, for the pilgrimage, do not think that person is equal to those who go out on jihad. Right, they are different in others' eyes.
Speaker 2:Or I do know this reference directly, Surah 4, verse 95, where it says not equal are those believers who sit at home and those who fight and strive in Allah's cause. Allah has made one a degree higher to the other, and so there's a real hierarchy amongst Muslims with this, and so it's just helpful to go. Oh wow, this is the consequences of original sin, that when you take it away, you get these different levels and people obviously start comparing themselves because how could you not? And also, if you want to get to the higher level, what is it that gets you to the higher level?
Speaker 1:Judgment. Judgment.
Speaker 2:Judgment. So, when it comes to judgment, one of the criticisms Muslims will have of us is, they'll say, the cross is not fair and in a sense, it's the gracious act of God.
Speaker 1:It isn't fair. I don't deserve it. I don't deserve it.
Speaker 2:So you're right. But what they will say is Islam is just, isn't fair, I don't deserve it. I don't deserve it, so you're right. But what that will say is Islam is just, Islam is fair. However, when you read the Quran, it will say things like Allah will multiply your good deeds by two or elsewhere. He'll multiply your good deeds by 10. And so, because the idea in Islam is that there's this set of scales and your good deeds have got to outweigh your bad deeds it talks about the scales. Now just randomly multiplying your good deeds by two or by ten. Where's the justice in that? You know it's his way of getting you over the line. I'll multiply your good deeds by ten. So they've got small things like that.
Speaker 2:But ultimately, the hope of the Muslim is not really a hope. It's that they go to the grave and then all Muslims, apart from the jihadist martyrs, go to hell. So you all go to hell, and at hell you'll find out whether or not you're going to be saved or not, whether or not you've got enough good deeds. So it's a bit of a fearful thing for Muslims that even the good Muslim goes to the mouth of hell for the decision that's going to come to him. So there is no assurance Again with the judgment. If Muhammad does not know what will happen to him, how can any normal Muslim know what will happen? And so there is no assurance of judgment and salvation and assurance in that regard.
Speaker 1:You haven't got this listed in your articles here, but talk to me about gender and Islam, and I mean, I'm imagining you're going to Sydney University tonight and there'll be a lot of women in the audience and you're aware that. I mean even that, just when you alluded a moment ago too, the jihadist goes and virgins and all that kind of thing. Yeah, which he does say I mean, I'm not a young woman, but I find that whole idea of being one of 14 virgins provided for a military guy repulsive.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's certainly what the Quran says, so it does teach that.
Speaker 1:Is that the case that a female uni student Muslim also finds that?
Speaker 2:idea repulsive also finds that idea repulsive. Look for the female converts from Islam to Christianity that I've spoken to and I've only spoken to a few. They've said they just tend not to talk about it. It's just not a topic that they bring up. That was the experience of excuse me, that is the experience of those ladies. So you know, there are things in the Quran about how to bring your wife into submission, which includes beating her. So Surah 4, verse 34. That's obviously a challenging thing for them to have to work through and sometimes they'll say well, polygamy is just for the social benefits that it can give If a lot of men die and you need polygamy or something like that. But that doesn't really work because it's part of their eschatology as well, in that you'll get the multiple women in the future and so obviously that's not just dealing with a present problem, it's part of your eschatology.
Speaker 1:So is that a helpful apologetic in the debates.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I don't bring that up because I tend to want to talk about, you know, trinity, incarnation, salvation, the Bible and the Koran and those types of things. But many Christian women will bring that up with Muslim women and just say you know, how does this make you feel? In fact, I heard a man who was talking to some of his staff about this and he just raised it and the woman goes oh no, no, we don't teach polygamy. And then she went away and found out and goes oh yes, yes, we do. And you know, okay, I didn't realise that, because I guess for many Muslims they may not even have any idea what the religion teaches in that regard.
Speaker 1:Back on track Trinity. I mean, when I'm wanting to teach the Trinity, I'm honestly thinking there's so many complex balls here to juggle. How do I do it? But how do you want me to do it with this line in as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, first of all, I think that the Trinity has a bad reputation among Christians for being the most difficult doctrine or something like that, and it's just not true. Many of our doctrines have their difficulties, and I don't think the Trinity is any different, and that's the first thing. I think we need to stop saying that this doctrine is difficult and you can't understand it, or words like mystery or anything like that. You know sovereignty and human responsibility. We've got plenty of other doctrines where which are complex yeah.
Speaker 2:Which are complex Now. So that's the first thing I want Christians to stop doing is saying that this doctrine is difficult. It's just one amongst many of our doctrines and as I've studied it, I've thought you know what. It's actually not that difficult. Now, the way that I would talk to Muslims about this, or talk about it with Christians, would be to simply say okay, you're saying that there's one God. The Muslim will say to us there's one God, there's one God. The simple answer to show that, why he knew the Trinity is to say is that enough? Is that enough? If you want to describe God, he's saying there's one God, is that enough?
Speaker 1:Well, there's going to be more to say, isn't there?
Speaker 2:So Genesis 1, in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. Okay, there's one God, is that enough? No, read verse 2. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. So you're going to have to include the Spirit of God in your description of God, somehow, aren't you Okay? So the Spirit of God in your description of God? Somehow, aren't you Okay? So how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, for the Muslims, they say that the Spirit, and in the Quran, remember that the Holy Spirit. God breathes the Spirit into Adam. God breathes the Spirit into Mary. So he's taken our stories. Because they're just trying to say that saying one God is enough. They say the Holy Spirit's the angel Gabriel. Now, this just doesn't work. It's like the Jehovah's Witnesses. It doesn't work. It's like saying, well, it is saying that God breathed the angel Gabriel into Adam to bring him to life. So this is the thing I want people to realise Saying one God is not enough. It's not enough.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to add a bit more description to this. You're going to have to talk about the spirit of God. How is that included in your description? You're going to have to talk about the word of God. God's doing all these things by his word. His word is powerful. We have his word in scripture. How do we understand that? Why don't you start talking about those types of things? That's how I do it with Muslims.
Speaker 2:I could say a lot more on the Trinity there, but I guess the last thing I would say is what problem do people have with it? And people normally say well, how can three persons share one nature? How can three persons share one nature? How can three persons share one nature? And I want to say that is true for a man, that's true for a man. How can three persons share one nature For a man? But you can't take what's true of a man and project that onto God and say, oh, therefore, that must be what God's like. And I'm going to use that logic to say what's logical about God, which is what we do all the time. So I guess what I'm trying to do is just look at some of our simple assumptions, because we've got the doctrines. The doctrines are there and they work beautifully, but we just need to know some of the assumptions that just stop us from making progress.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about David and Bathsheba, Muhammad and Zaynab.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you may be preaching and you come up to David and Bathsheba in the Bible and, if you wanted to, you could illustrate this with a parallel event in Muhammad's life. So I assume everyone knows about David and Bathsheba. Yeah, a parallel event in Muhammad's life. So I assume everyone knows about David and Bathsheba. So there was a time when Muhammad had an adopted son called Zayd, and Muhammad went around to Zayd's house and he saw Zaynab, zayd's wife, undressed in a state of undress, I don't know to what degree in a state of undress, I don't know to what degree, but a state of undress.
Speaker 2:And we're told in the story and I've given you all the references there that he went away saying you know, praise be God who changes the hearts of men, who changes the hearts of men. And so Muhammad wanted this woman, he covets this woman. And so Zayd says well, I'll divorce her, so you can take her. I'll divorce her, but of course, taking your adopted son's wife because you just want her, even in our culture would be a bit weird. You know your adopted son. You don't go taking your adopted son's wife.
Speaker 1:There's adultery, there's power imbalance, there's sexual predator, there's all those things.
Speaker 2:And so what happens is Muhammad's in this situation where he wants this woman, but of course Zayd has said I'll divorce her. But Muhammad said, oh well, that's not really going to work. So it's Surah 33 is where this all comes out. And in Surah 33, verse 4, what we're told is that Allah has now cancelled all adoptions. So in Islam there's no adoptions. You know how adoption is very important for Christianity adoption. There's no adoptions in Islam. They have fostering, but they don't have adoptions. And so, all of a sudden, allah has cancelled all adoptions, which means Zayd is no longer Muhammad's adopted son, right, so not his adopted son anymore, which means Zaynab is no longer his daughter-in-law. And then you keep reading I think it's around verse 30 or something where it then says we have given Zaynab to you. So God has given Zaynab to you. So God has given Zaynab to you. So it's like the story of David. How is a?
Speaker 1:Western woman a 25-year-old educated Western woman who is Muslim. Comfortable with this.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't even know if they're familiar with it to what degree, Like the reason I'm familiar with it is that I use the exegetical skills that I've been trained in on the.
Speaker 2:Bible. I use those same exegetical skills on the Quran and so as I read the Quran, I write. You know, I've written exegetical papers on every surah to do its structure and everything else, and so I don't know how Muslim women think about these particular examples. I just bring them up in my training where you know if we're going to read a surah together. I take groups through reading Surah 33, where we can actually read this, and so what happens is David covets another man's wife and is rebuked by God.
Speaker 2:Muhammad covets another man's wife and Allah changes the law so that he can take her. So that's what happens. So you can just lay it out there. I mean, I'll leave that up to the preacher as to what they want to do with it. But I'm saying here is an almost parallel example, but where the God of each religion goes in a different path.
Speaker 1:Just run down whole books. For me the comparison between the Bible and the Quran as whole books.
Speaker 2:One of the key things that I think Christians don't understand is how amazing the Bible is. The Bible's not one book, it's a collection of many books from many prophets over about a 1500 year period, and so for us, as Christians, what we do is really novel. We read the law of Moses, we read the Psalms of David, we do the hard work of reading Isaiah and Jeremiah I mean Jeremiah at the moment. It's hard work. It's hard work. We read all of the prophets, and what we believe about God comes from all of the prophets. But if you get a Koran and have a look at it, isaiah is not in there, the Law of Moses is not in there. So there's not Genesis or Exodus or anything like that. There's none of those books. There's not the Psalms, it's all just Muhammad. It's one man, and this is a great comparison because it just shows you that Islam is not the religion of all the prophets, like Muslims claim. It's the religion of one man, giving you his interpretation of the prophets, and so this is a significant thing for Christians to understand that we actually read Leviticus, we read Genesis Numbers. We read all of those books. We read Moses, we read Jonah, the Psalms, we read all of these prophets, we don't have someone telling us what they mean.
Speaker 2:So the illustration I'm giving now is imagine if I came into your church and said it's great to be here this morning. From now on, you don't need to read the Bible. You don't need to read it. It's hard work, but people misunderstand it. I will tell you what it means. From now on, I will tell you what it means. This is what Muhammad does. This is what he does, and so showing the contents of the Bible and the Quran shows how different our religions are. Islam is the religion of one man telling you what to believe about the prophets. Christianity is the religion of all of the prophets, and they lead us to Christ.
Speaker 1:I don't understand how Islam got such a grip when he's such an unattractive man. Islam got such a grip when he's such an unattractive man, I mean in terms of sexuality predator, all those kind of things.
Speaker 2:Well, the simple reason is the jihadists were highly successful. They conquered all the Arabian Peninsula. They came out, took all of Egypt, right across North Africa, all of Spain. They went all across Syria, iraq, right up to Western China, and they were the empire, they were in charge, and that's how they got a grip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing, all righty. Well, I'm looking forward to sneaking in the back and watching you doing this debate tonight and praying for you, as you represent Jesus. In fact, let me pray for you now.
Speaker 1:Heavenly Father, we just pray for Sam. We thank you for him, for the work that he has done in reaching out as an evangelist and an apologist to such a significant section of our community. We pray that he might hold the Lord Jesus high as he speaks about salvation and redemption in this debate tonight, and we pray that it might be that men and women are saved saved from hell, saved from the clutches of false teaching and brought into the kingdom of the Son that you love. We pray that people might understand that it's only in Jesus that they can be redeemed, that his forgiveness is available. It's not about our own works, and we pray for your spirit to be at work through Sam's words tonight. And we pray for our own sermons, our own teaching that you would help us to preach in such a way that we're aware that Muslims could be in the room and because we preach in that way, there might be many more men and women of Islamic background who come to church, come to our churches and then eventually come to a trusting faith in Jesus Christ through our ministries. We pray this in Christ's name.
Speaker 1:My guest on the Pastor's Heart today, sam Green, the author of when to Start with Islam. We'll put the link to his article going through those various preaching topics in the show notes below. My name is Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
