Do Christianity and Islam Have a lot in Common?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. In this segment of our program we’ve been discussing Dave Hunt’s new book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations. 

Dave, before we pick up where we left off in Chapter 6, for our first time listeners, could you give them the gist - just kind of a brief summary of what the book’s about?

Dave: The book is dealing with prophecies that are specifically for today and no one can deny that. One of them that we point to is Joel:3:2I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
See All..., where God says, “I am going to bring all the nations to Jerusalem, and I am going to punish them there for what they have done to My people Israel.” Two specifics are mentioned: Number one - “They have scattered My people all over the world.” That’s been going on for centuries. Number two: “They have divided My land.” It never happened before in history until our time, and I say “our time” - I’m a little bit older than probably most of the listeners out there, and I remember these things, these events. Israel has been conquered by many nations, but a nation that conquers a land does not divide it up. Who would they give it to, why would they divide it, and so forth. So it never happened before, but in 1917, Balfour Declaration; 1919, Paris Peace Conference; 1922, Declaration of Principles by the League of Nations. Britain was given the mandate. The whole world recognized that that land that had come to be called Palestine belonged to the Jews, and it was to be set aside for the national Jewish homeland and the scattered Jews could come and return there. Instead, Britain betrayed the Jews. They gave it away to the Arabs for oil. They gave most of it, almost two-thirds of it, to make the nation Jordan. That was Israel’s land. And finally, UN Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, it’s called the “Partition of the Land,” and all the nations of this world, the United Nations, joined to divide this land. Israel ended up with 13 percent of what they had been promised, and I just gave you quotations from the Bible: God is angry! God says, “That is My land. It is not to be divided.”

Tom: God is the God of the universe, Creator of the universe. Why would He be concerned with a small piece of land? What’s the issue here?

Dave: Well, that’s another question, Tom, and we deal with that, of course. Well, why did God choose Abraham? He had to choose somebody; why did He have to choose anybody? Because He is going to demonstrate the relationship that He wants to have with the nations of this world, and Israel became an example of that. Number two, the Messiah is coming. The Messiah doesn’t step off of a UFO and say, “Voila, here I am!” He has a pedigree. He has a history. He has ancestors, because, although the Messiah must be God in order to pay the infinite penalty for our sins, He must be a man, because it is men who are the offenders, and He must represent mankind. So He comes through the virgin birth; the Bible says this consistently. You get that in Genesis:3:15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
See All..., that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. So these people have to have a land to live in. 

Tom, it’s a long and involved question, but we deal with it in detail in the book.

Tom: But again, the point is this land has a special purpose, and for God to be true to His Word, this land is critical to that taking place.

Dave: Absolutely, and it is to this land that Jesus came; this is where He was crucified; it is to this land that He will return…

Tom: He must return.

Dave: Absolutely, He must return to rule on the throne of His father David over Israel and over the nations of the world. I’ll just quote again Leviticus:25:23The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.
See All...: God says, “This is My land.” He says Jerusalem is the place that He has chosen to put His name forever, okay? So now the nations of this world are trifling with God. In fact, they are defying God, and we give you the Scriptures, the prophecies - there are so many of them in the Word of God proving that God set this land aside for a particular people and for a particular purpose, and now the nations of this world are defying God in taking that away from His people. And you notice that every so-called peace proposal is, “Give them more land. Israel, give them more land, give them more land.” And of course we document it for you in the book that the Arabs are not interested in more land. They want all of the land, and to take a little bit at a time is just a ploy in order to finally get what they want, and they make it very clear: Israel must be annihilated. The reason for that is Islam teaches that that land belongs to them. So there is a real battle, not between Arabs and Jews, but between the God of the Bible and the god of the Qur’an and the god of Islam, and Islam says that land belongs to the Arabs. So long as Israel has one square yard of that land over which they have autonomy, it is an affront to Islam. It says Islam is a false religion, Muhammad is a false prophet, Allah is not the true God, the Qur’an is not the word of the true God; therefore they must destroy these people. Now, of course, Satan must destroy these people, and we deal with anti-Semitism considerably in the book. Anti-Semitism is satanic. So when they say, “Well, that’s an extreme statement,” no, it’s not an extreme statement, it’s very simple and very logical. As soon as God said in Genesis:3:15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
See All... to Satan, “There is a virgin-born seed of the woman who is going to bruise your head [and] destroy you,” Satan had to stop that from happening. And so we have down through history Satan’s attempts to prevent the Messiah from being born. 

Well, the Messiah was born; the Messiah is a Jew. He’s got to wipe out all of the Jews, and you can read your history and read the Bible and see the many times that he tried to do that. But the Messiah came and defeated Satan on the cross by paying the penalty in full for our sins. So does that mean the battle is over? No, because the Bible has hundreds - literally hundreds - of promises where God said that although these people who are under His judgment today (make no mistake about that), although they would be hated and persecuted and killed like no other people, yet God would not allow them to be wiped out. He would preserve a remnant. In the last days He would bring them back into their own land, the land that He had designated for them, and there the Messiah would return to rule over Israel and the world. 

So if Israel is destroyed, there’s no Second Coming. Now, those of you out there who know the difference between the Rapture and the Second Coming, we would be raptured, we would be in heaven, but this world would belong to Satan, because Satan would have proved God to be a liar because of the hundreds of promises that God said He would preserve these people, their latter end would better than their beginning, and the Messiah would return to rule over them. But if there is no Israel, the Messiah cannot return - no Second Coming; the world belongs to Satan, Satan has won his battle with God, and he cannot be thrown into the bottomless pit, you know, into the lake of fire, and so forth. So that is what this is about, the battle in the Middle East.

Tom: Dave, last week, as you know, we were discussing the pagan roots and doctrines of Islam - that may be a shock to some, but it’s reality; it’s a historic fact - and in particular how contrary it is to Christianity. Yet many who call themselves Christians are blind to what should be so obvious, this paganism, this anti-Christianity that just permeates all of Islam. Now, you give some amazing examples, and just with regard to the paganism in this country, you give examples of what this country is doing to foster Islam. For example, the US Postal Service issued a 34-cent - this was in September of 2001, and the US Postal Service issued…I believe it’s called the Eid stamp. Can you explain that to us?

Dave: Well, the Eid is a festival at the end of Ramadan. There is also another Eid festival, and President Bush, President Clinton, all the presidents of the United States have honored Ramadan as a holy month mentioned in the holy Qur’an - they call it the Word of God (President Bush has dared to call the Qur’an the Word of God), and yet the Qur’an contradicts the Bible in almost every aspect. It denies that Jesus is God, denies that He died for our sins on the cross. It’s as anti-Christian, and of course as anti-Israel as you could possibly get, and yet our president calls it the Word of God, and he says that Muhammad was inspired of God. 

So each year they have a feast at the end - Ramadan is a thirty-day fast, so called; they fast from dawn till sunset, but then at night they can feast. And then at the end of this 30 days, they have a big feast, and this is what the presidents of the US have honored in the White House. We think that by catering to them, honoring them, and supporting them that we are going to gain their favor. So what do we get? 9/11 - we get terrorism. They think they are winning us over; they are converting us. We are giving in to their demands is what we’re doing. 

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, one of the feasts is called the Feast of Sacrifice, and of course, this is supposed to be a celebration in memory of Abraham allegedly offering Ishmael on the altar rather than Isaac, so contrary to the Bible.

Dave: There we have the heart of the battle, and again we give you all the data in the book. This is a battle between a people who call themselves Palestinians and the Jews over a particular land. The question is, “To whom does this land belong?” And the people who call themselves Palestinians claim to be descended from the original Palestinians, and we document that very clearly, nobody can deny it: there never were such a people! Abraham was the father of Ishmael; the Arabs claim to be descended from Ishmael. All right, let’s give them credit for that, although they are a mixture - not a pure descent like the Jews are from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - but Abraham was the father of Ishmael. Who was Abraham? He wasn’t a Palestinian, he was a Chaldean. Ishmael’s mother was Hagar the Egyptian. So here’s a child who has an Egyptian mother and a Chaldean father, and when they arrived in Canaan (this was what the land was called), the Canaanites were in the land, not Palestinians. When they arrived in that land it was already settled; it had been settled by Canaanites. They went by various national names. So now, how can you say that you are descended from the original Palestinians when your mother was an Egyptian and your father a Chaldean, and that land had already been established when you got there? And we explain how the name “Palestine” came about; we explained that the Jews were the ones who were called Palestinians. In fact, the Arabs, way up into - well, I quote Ahmad Shukeiri, 1956, an Arab leader who said, “There’s no such place as Palestine. There’s no such people as Palestinians. This is an invention of the Zionists. If there are any Palestinians, it’s those Jews.” I mean, a number of Arab leaders said that, and we quote them. But then eight years later, 1964, Ahmad Shukeiri becomes the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This is the man who said there is no such place. So they lie, they change their tune, and they rewrite history. And, Tom, I get angry because the world accepts it, and this is the basis upon which the United Nations deals with Israel.

Tom: Dave, I want to come back to President Bush, who professes to be a Christian, and he’s done some really good things, but on Islam - talk about stunning! - with regard to ignorance, this is unbelievable. I’m quoting him - two statements he makes, one at the Islamic feast celebrating Ramadan. This is 2002, and then I will go into much later, 2004, the same event two years later. But he says, “I am pleased to join you today in the celebration of Eid, the culmination of the holy month of Ramadan… Islam traces its origins back to God’s call on Abraham, and Ramadan commemorates the revelation of God’s word in the Holy Qur’an to the prophet Muhammad.” Wow!

Dave: Now Tom, that’s just unconscionable; that’s blasphemous, actually, to say that the Qur’an is God’s Holy Word, and to say that this is the faith of Abraham. It is not the faith of Abraham at all. Now, is this just politically correct language, or is this from ignorance? Don’t President Bush’s advisors know the truth?

Tom: Mm-hmm. Well, let me keep going. This is 2004: he says, “As we gather during this holy month…we honor the traditions of a great faith…. In recent years, Americans…have come to learn more about our Muslim brothers and sisters…. We share a belief in God’s justice, and man’s moral responsibility. We share the same hope for a future of peace.” Wow! “We have so much in common, and so much to learn from one another. Once again, I wish you a blessed Ramadan. I want to thank you for joining us at the White House for this Iftar, and may God bless you all.”

Dave: What god is he talking about? Is he talking about Allah? Is he talking about the God of the Bible? Tom, it’s just unconscionable that President Bush could make such statements. Now, he doesn’t have to expose the errors and the evils of Islam if he doesn’t want to, but he certainly should not honor them as worshipping the true God who created us. It simply is not possible for anyone to imagine that. And you read this book and you’ll understand what a grievous error that is.

Tom: Well, this is President Bush. What about Billy Graham?

Dave: Unfortunately, Billy Graham - you and I have to be careful not to do the same thing. He has a penchant for making authoritative statements about things that he knows nothing about. I guess that’s a hazard of people who speak in public, but he doesn’t know anything about Islam. I’ll give him credit for knowing nothing about Islam or he couldn’t have made this statement. You want to go ahead and quote it?

Tom: Yeah, he says, “Islam is misunderstood…. Muhammad had a great respect for Jesus, called Jesus the greatest of the prophets except himself…. I think we’re closer to Islam than we really think we are…”

Dae: Well, Tom, we are about as close to Islam as the distance between heaven and hell. Unfortunately, this comes as a result, perhaps, of misinformation that is being spread around the world. 

For example, my wife Ruth and I were in Hamilton, New Zealand when they had Islam Christianity Solidarity Week. Tom, it’s so ridiculous! Nobody - I mean, there were Anglican leaders there and government officials, and so forth - nobody had the brains to say, “Whoop, wait a minute!” Could they ever have a week like this in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan, in Sudan? Could you ever have a week like this where you would talk about the solidarity between Christianity and Islam in a Muslim country? Absolutely impossible. They’ll take your head off! So first of all, it’s a joke. What are we talking about solidarity between Christians and Muslims when it doesn’t exist? You couldn’t have such a discussion, you couldn’t have such a celebration in a Muslim country. 

Secondly, apropos to what Billy Graham said about “Muhammad had a great respect for Jesus.” Well, he said Jesus was the 27th prophet and he was the 28th. Jesus was just a notch below Muhammad. Isn’t that wonderful! Is that a great appreciation of Jesus Christ? And at this conference in New Zealand, one of the Anglicans said, “Oh my, I was so impressed because one of the Muslim speakers explained that the Qur’an has more to say about Jesus than it says about Muhammad.” Well, I would question that, and I could almost make you laugh if I told you some of the things the Qur’an says about Muhammad: you know, he’s not to be disturbed when he’s in his apartments, and don’t talk loud when he wants to sleep, and Muhammad gets a revelation when he needs someone else’s wife, and so forth. Okay, I think it says more about Muhammad than it does about Jesus. 

But anyway, nobody, again, had the common sense to ask, “Yes, but what does the Qur’an say about Jesus?” It says He didn’t die for our sins. He didn’t even die on the cross - someone died in His place. In fact, 16 times in the Qur’an it denies that God has a Son, and it says anybody who believes in the Trinity goes straight to hell! Isn’t that something to be pleased about! Oh my, how close Islam is to Christianity! 

Tom, I’m sorry, I lose patience. Why don’t they understand the facts? And that’s one of the reasons I wrote that book.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, we’ve had some Christian leaders who have stepped out - Jerry Falwell, for example; Franklin Graham - and talked about how evil Islam is. And then we have Christianity Today - and I am quoting from Christianity Today - rebuking people such as you and others. The magazine says, “Islam would not have become the second largest world religion if it were…as thoroughly evil as these comments suggest.” Come on!

Dave: Now, Tom, anyone who has taken elementary logic knows that that is just a ridiculous statement. Evil can’t become large? Of course. Evil is predominant this world. Let’s talk about Genghis Khan, or how about Mao?

Tom: Dave, and he goes on. People that you think should know - I mean, all these men should know. You quote Robert Schuller in here and how far he goes, but that’s normal for him. I mean, he is so far removed from biblical Christianity it’s disgraceful.

Dave: Remember, Robert Schuller spoke in a - well he was invited - he called him the Grand Mufti of the faith, and I watched his TV show. I happened to see it live, and I’m sitting there thinking, Grand Mufti of the faith…my goodness! This is the faith for which we are to earnestly contend, and it has a Grand Mufti? I never knew that. This is quite a revelation. And then he says - and I have a picture of this, several pictures - that he said, “As I was preaching, he held my hand.” There he is, and he said, “I never felt such oneness of the spirit with anyone as I felt with that man at this time.” Now, this is a Muslim leader. 

And then his son was on Schuller’s program and his son said, “Oh, yes, all Syrians are Christians.” 

“Wow,” Schuller says, “isn’t that wonderful!” 

Anyway, Tom, the lies, the misinformation current out there, the propaganda that people accept…and that is one reason why I wrote this book: simply to give us the truth. We need the facts.

Tom: Dave, one last example: Hank Hanegraaff, the “Bible Answer Man” - boy, there’s a title. It should be, the “Bible’s Answers, Man,” okay? But anyway, he says, “Allah does not belong to Islam. Allah is the God Arab-speaking Christian’s worship.” Whoa!

Dave: Tom, it’s true that every Arabic translation of the Bible uses Allah for God. But Allah - I think we have explained it in the past - Allah was the chief god in the Ka’aba. Allah is a contraction between Al-ilah. “Ilah" is the generic term for god; it’s all through the Qur’an. These people say, “Oh, no, there’s no other word for God except Allah.” That’s what Hank Hanegraaff’s magazine said. That is not true. “Ilah” is the generic term for god. “Al-ilah" means the chief god. So Allah was the chief god in the Ka’aba, a pagan temple. 

Just imagine, Tom, here is the Bible, now translated into Arabic - it says, “For Allah so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” But I just mentioned, 16 times the Qur’an says Allah does not have a son! “Far be it from his transcendent majesty,” it says, “that he should have a son.” The Trinity is denied, and so forth. Now, how are you going to put Allah as God, the God of the Bible? It simply is not true! Why this happens - is this a satanic delusion that has swept the world? I don’t think people are deliberately trying to do this. Is it misinformation? Well, then study it and find out what the facts are. 

Tom: And, Dave, because as your book indicates, and it’s amazing, in the last three or four years even the secular press is starting to come around, saying, “Wait a minute, we have to rethink this,” and I think that’s a good thing. But Christians especially have to wake up to these issues.

Dave: Amen.