Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person
is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son
has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
1 John 2:22–23
By its very nature, Islam, like Christianity, is evangelistic and expansionistic to the core. The Qur’an demands a world that is 100% Islamic. Therefore, it cannot and will not stop until it has sought to extend the Islamic crescent across the entire globe! But, neither can Christianity rest until she has clearly communicated the message of the cross to the entire world. We, too, are under a Great Commission to evangelize.
Christianity seeks to extend the message of the cross in the spirit of the cross and in the agape love of Jesus Christ. The only force we are to use is the force of love! We are compelled by compassion, not by compulsion. However, we have no illusion that we will one day Christianize the world. Nowhere does the Bible even hint at the fact that every person will convert to Christianity. God’s true people have always been a remnant, a minority, or the few who enter at the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13–14).
Faithful Muslims are out to “Islamicize” the world, or impose the theology and ideology of Muhammad upon every human being. That is known as the forceful imposition of Shari’a, or Islamic law, upon the world under a Caliphate led by a Muslim ruler. In obedience to the clear dictates of the Qur’an, they must seek to make their religion and culture the dominant one in any country they are in—including America.
We Christians also believe in the spiritual superiority of our faith. When it comes to Islam, we firmly believe that Jesus Christ is superior in every way to Muhammad; the Jehovah God of the Bible is the only true and living God and not Allah; the Bible is a far older and superior revelation than the Qur’an; and the spiritual ethics symbolized by the cross of Christ are a far greater blessing to mankind than the crescent of Islam.
The revealed nature of the Triune God of the Bible and the Allah of the Qur’an are eternities apart. Islam and Christianity are mutually exclusive in their absolute claims about God, men, women, marriage, politics, law, and culture—about all of life.
Was Christ a great teacher, a great moral example, a wise philosopher, and a great prophet as Islam believes? Or was He God incarnate? The entire witness of the Bible is clear on this: Jesus was fully God while being fully man. That is the great mystery and miracle of the Incarnation, the true and living God!
Did the prophet Muhammad deny the Incarnation? Did he also deny the crucifixion of Christ? Clearly he did, according to the witness of the Qur’an (Surah 4:157–158). Does that put his witness in the realm of the antichrist (1 John 2:22–23)? I believe it clearly does by his own testimony. Does that mean further that Muslims are spiritually lost? Or do we worship the same father and just use different names? The biblical witness is clear.
We can only pray, then, that the living Christ will continue to sovereignly and supernaturally reveal Himself to millions of Muslims the world over, so they will come to true saving faith through Him. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). Amen!
