Exposing Islam – Part 1

Shahram Hadian

Exposing Islam, Part 1

March 11, 2018

Good morning everybody.  It is such a blessing to be back with you again.  I can’t tell you what a blessing it was to be here a few years back and have a conference here; of course you’re going to be over tomorrow at Chafer and I’m having a conference there but I want to tell you what an amazing pastor you have.  [Someone says amen, someone else says yeah, then clapping]  I want to tell you how much I appreciate Pastor Andy and everything he’s doing for the kingdom of God and for bringing the truth and standing here as a courageous pastor, a shepherd, a true shepherd and your leadership here.  So it is truly an honor to co-labor, to be here and to serve this body and serve the Lord however He desires.

So my prayer for this morning and for these sessions and for the conference is really, I think Andy would share this, is really that we want to see this impact, equip the body because we are at a critical juncture.  As Andy just mentioned there is so much confusion and misinformation and deception, intentional deception about the issue of Islam.  Yet, as believers in fulfilling the great commission it is our number one challenge.  Right? We’re talking about 1.7 billion Muslims.  So it is our number one obstacle to fulfilling the Great Commission.  Yet the church is so confused and it’s actually opening the door, as you’ll see in the 11:00 o’clock service, opening the door for the wolves to come in among the sheep.  So this is very, very important.

So what I wanted to do this morning is actually focus a little bit on the missional side of things in this time because as Pastor Woods said very poignantly, and I say in all my presentations because you know, a ministry like ours we get accused as I travel and speak we get accused all the time of being anti-Muslim, you hate Muslims, you hate Muslims!  You’re inciting violence. That’s nonsense because every single time we will stress that we want to have the heart of Christ for those who are lost, like myself.  I was lost without the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  So we want to have that heart for these individuals who are lost, yet we want to expose an ideology that you’ll see it altogether in the 11:00 o’clock service, is directly the opposite of our faith.  It is set against that.

But sadly we see the encroachment of compromise even coming into our missional practices in reaching out to Muslims and fulfilling the great commission.  So I wanted to start with just a… you see the screen there, a little about my background.  I’ll share a little bit more in the 11:00 o’clock service on that but basically I was born in Iran, I grew up as a Muslim, my dad was in the military, we fled there right before the revolution in 1978, the overthrow of the government happened in 1979.  And then through a lot of different circumstances in1999 is when I got saved, when I became a Christian, so 19 years now; it’s sort of my journey and the predominant reason, there’s two very, very specific reasons why the Lord opened my heart and I’ll share that with you in a minute.

But what I want to tell you here is that when I travel and talk about the issue of Islam and the concerns that I have for our nation, our church, our freedom, it’s not coming from a textbook; I didn’t read it in a textbook, I’ve seen it firsthand in my birth country.

Iran was a monarchy under the Shah; it now is an Islamic Republic.  When the overthrow happened in 1979 the Constitution was changed.  That’s why it’s called The Islamic Republic of Iran.  In fact, you have theocracy, it’s the only Islamic theocracy on the planet.  Maybe you could argue Saudi would be there but Iran is a true Islamic theocracy on the planet today.   So I’ve witnessed this firsthand that the absolute shift of the culture, the absolute loss of freedoms, and of course in Iran today there is great persecution for Christians, true Christians, born again Christians.  YET, Iran by many estimates is the fastest growing church in the world.  The underground church before the revolution in 1979 they estimated was maybe a thousand born again Christians, not Arminian, born again, Muslims who converted to Christianity.   Today that number is somewhere between 500,000 and 2,000, 000.  We don’t know because of the underground church; it’s all underground.  But some estimate it is the fastest growing in the church in the world and Iran has lowest mosque attendance in the world; it has less than 8% because a lot of the young people there are rejecting Islam.  In fact,  you just saw about a month ago the protests that were there.  Right!

So I share that to say when I talk about the issue of Islam I’ve witnessed it, I’ve lived it, I fled my birth country because of it and here we are in America and it is now coming around us.  And sadly many in the church are embracing it.  That’s what’s really, really concerning.  You can see on the screen there that after I became a Christian I [can’t understand word], I became a pastor, and currently pastor a church in Spokane Valley, Washington.  I was a police officer, teacher, coach, I’ll talk a little bit about more of my experience during the conference as well as law enforcement, elected official, things like that.

But I wanted to share two aspects of my testimony here this morning very quickly and then we’ll jump into the content.  People ask me, well what was it for you Shahram, what was it for you that really showed you Christianity is the true way?  Two very specific things; the number one issue is an issue of salvation because as a Muslim growing up when I would ask my parents… and it’s weird, I have to think it was the hand of God, the true God, because I would ask my parents at a young age, if I die how do I know I’m going to go to heaven?   This is a question I asked them all the time.  And their answer was well, we don’t know, Allah is just, the god of Islam, he’s just, he’s fair, he decides.  I never liked that answer,  you understand?  Because I want to know… well what do you mean he decides?  Is there anything I can do?

So as you know within Islam, Islam is works based, Islam is about works; it’s a scale of works.  So within that works [can’t understand word] there’s only one guarantee of salvation, and you can probably guess, martyrdom.  Right?  According to Islamic text the only guarantee of salvation if you are martyred for the sake of Allah then you are guaranteed to go to paradise, heaven.  And the big trick within Islam is not the seventy-two virgins that we hear about; that is one of the seven blessings, according to Islamic texts, given to the martyr.   But it’s the seventh blessing, not six, the seventh blessing that most people admit that is the shedding the blood of the martyr he gets the key… by the way, there’s no text for “she,” Islamic scholars are not consistent on what happens to female martyrs, but he will intercede for seventy of his relatives.

Do you understand?  That’s collective salvation.  So now you know that when there’s a suicide bomber, have  you ever wondered why the family throws a party?  It’s because they believe they are all going to go to heaven.  Now don’t ask me who gets the cutoff at seventy, I don’t know.  But it’s collective salvation and that’s the motivation, is that Islam is a cult of death because it promotes death as the highest goal whereas here’s my testimony, when the gospel was shared with me in 1999, and by the way I had Christian friends growing up because when we left Iran, came to the west, I had Christian friends.  But can I tell you none of them ever shred the gospel with me.  They were nice, but how many of us know nice doesn’t get people saved.  The truth sets them free.   They were very nice but they never… now I don’t know why, maybe they were afraid, maybe they didn’t know, but it was not until the gospel was shared that it set me free.

And here is the gist of it then I’ll get back to the part of my testimony, the gist of it is this: the god of Islam says the highest aspiration for a Muslim is if you are willing to die as a martyr for him, to go to heaven.  The God of the Bible says I love you so much that I have come and died for you so you can live for Me and have eternal life.

Now how is it in 2018 as we’re sitting here talking about we have a common God and common faith and we have so much in common?  For  us as former Muslims we’re pulling our hair out; you notice I have no more hair left [laughter], I pulled it all out… I’m just kidding.  That’s my excuse for…  So for me salvation was number one because to know that I… because as a Muslim I thought I don’t want to die, I like life, and so growing up the older I got the more I realized I am not a good Muslim because if I’m not willing to wage jihad, if I’m not willing to become a martyr then I’m not the best Muslim.  Do you understand?  If you’re not the best Muslim then everything else is based on works.   You have to be a faithful Muslim based on works, called the five pillars, everything you’re comman­ded to do and then, here’s the thing, here’s the caveat, you hope that Allah will accept for me.

One of the things that I’ll talk about in the conference is that most people don’t know that Islam teaches that every person that dies must first go through hell to get to heaven.  That’s why Mohammed, they say, “peace be upon” him; Jesus, “peace be upon Him,” because they don’t know if they’re in heaven.  Mohammed didn’t die as a martyr; there is controversy about how was he killed.  Some say he was poisoned, so we don’t know, they don’t know.  So here’s my question to you: do you want to wait to go to hell before you find out if you go to heaven?  Yet that is the reality of what Muslims have to endure, if… IF they’re honest with themselves.  And when I became honest I realized I have no hope of salvation. Does that make sense?

Now, number two, the secondary applicable that was critical for me was relationship, because the other question I asked my parents is if I die and go to heaven can I be with God?  And they said well, no.  Why?  Well the teaching of Islam is that Allah, the god of Islam, is not  personable.  He’s not knowable, he doesn’t interact with his creation. That’s why the concept of God becoming flesh is foreign for Muslims because the idea that God would enter His creation is impossible because according to Islam the god of Islam can’t enter his own creation.

Now if you’re me you’re thinking well, how powerful is this god that he can’t enter his own creation?  Because he’s so holy that he can’t enter his own creation?  So I have no knowledge of God and then I thought well if this is God, if Allah is God, what’s the point of going to heaven if  you don’t get to be with God?  Think about it, these are questions I had as a child and there was no answer.  So I grew up with no relationship because the god of Islam is not personable; Muslims when they pray every day they don’t get to pray personally, they have to recite prayers, and so all of this led me to thinking well, if this is God I don’t want to follow God, I don’t want to know God.  In fact, probably I would say I became a little more agnostic towards my mid 20’s before I got saved.

Well, here is the good news; the good news is that the true God is personable.  The true God is relational.  The true God is our heavenly Father, He asks us to call him Allah.  The true God loves us and the true God wants us to know that there’s a guarantee of salvation.  That’s the good news.  Right?  So 1999, a young lady in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was working, had the courage to talk about her faith in Jesus Christ.  And I thought wow, this is a different kind of Christian.  Do you understand what I’m saying?  This is not… remember, I had Christian friends, they were nice but none of them ever told me.  She was bold and so she gave me a tape to listen to; I listened to this tape because it was a tape from her church that two sides; the first side young people in the room.  You know what the tape is, right?  I was just going to clarify, I say that and people go ah, what’s a  tape?   Before we  had CD’s and I-pods and whatever else.

So she gave me a tape to listen to, one side was the crucifixion, the necessity of the crucifixion.  Now remember, as a Muslim I’m taught that the Bible is corrupt, Jesus is not God.  And I’ll show you at the 11:00 o’clock service that He wasn’t even crucified.  So when this was shared with me I thought well, this is garbage.  The second side of the tape was about the resurrection.  So when she gave this to me I politely took it from her, planning on lot listening to it; I put it in my car.  But here’s the interesting thing, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  For a couple of days I had that tape in my car, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  I kept driving around and would just keep thinking about it.  Finally I broke down and I said fine, I’ll listen to it.

And I popped that thing in and I couldn’t stop listening to it because now the truth was piercing my heart.  But at the same time, I’ll be honest, it was very difficult.  In fact, when a few days later when I saw her she asked me did you get a chance to listen to the tape, I said yes, I did, and it offended me.  And to her credit, which I’m not sure many Christians would do today, she didn’t get phased by that.  She just said okay, great, what questions do you have?  And from there I had a whole bunch of questions, she connected me with a gentleman, Bill Shaw, who’s [can’t understand word]  I met with him and the Lord used all of that, that a few days later I was driving in my car, I had met with him, we had gone over the Bible, there was a lot of miraculous things that I don’t have time to share, by the way, we have a DVD in the back called Chrislam Exposed, that I’ll be covering some of this stuff here in this Sunday School time.

My testimony on the special features recorded there along with the testimony of two other former Muslims from Iran as well, very powerful to listen to those testimonies, but for me it was where a few days later, maybe about a week later, I was driving in my car, I was still listening to that tape, and the Spirit of God came upon me (I now know it was the Spirit of God), I began to weep and I pulled over to the side of the road and right there in that car… right there in that car I felt the Lord speak to my heart, Shahram, you now know the truth.  Choose!  And here’s what He said to me, in my heart, not audibly—Shahram, both can’t be true, one is true, one is a lie.

See, when we sit here today in 2018 at the church and we talk about ecumenicalism and interfaith and all this stuff we’re going to talk about, as outreach options for Muslims not only are we doing ourselves a disservice we are doing them a disservice because we are basically holding their hands to help, we’re ushering the way in for them.  AND, we’re bringing confusion into the church because the God of the Bible didn’t say Shahram, let me show you how much you have in common with Islam!  Let me tell you how much Islam is like Christianity.  The God of the Bible showed me this is a lie, this is true, they are the opposite of each other; choose today whom you’re going to serve because only one can be Lord… only one can be God!

And right there in that car I prayed and I chose the Lord Jesus Christ; I chose the Bible, I chose the God of the Bible, I renounced Islam.  Three days later I told my parents, they had come down to visit my brother in Atlanta, I went to dinner with them, I told my parents and my culturally Muslim dad disowned me because I disgraced my family.

Well, here’s one of the concepts that we’ll talk about this morning; there are missionaries, well-meaning, some well-meaning some foolish who are telling people like me, you don’t understand, Muslims don’t get the concept of God as Father so we have to take those things out.  I’ll show you that, it’s called contextualization.  And here’s what I would say to them: On day three, when my own dad disowned me, God became my Father.  On day three I had no problem understanding God as Father.  That’s the good news.

So when I became a Christian, no longer did I have a fear of death because now I have the guarantee of salvation; I know where I’m going so I live for Christ and “to die is gain.”  Amen! And number two, I know that I have a relationship with the living God.  Amen!   These are the beauties of the gospel, of Christianity and we’re not sharing them; instead we’re doing some things that I’m going to show you here in a minute.

Here’s a warning from 2 Timothy 4:3, I believe we are in these days.  “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;” we’re talking about Christians now, right, “but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, [4] and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”  This out of the NASB.

So this is what I believe we are seeing today; we are seeing those surround themselves in the church with a message that tickles their ears, a  message that feels good.  This is the impact of the social gospel, that is a cancer to the church.  But look at the admonition here, for the true believer, [5] “But you,” who’s that?  That’s all of us who are alert, right?  That’s all of us who are not in a category of deceived, because I say all the times in my presentation there’s only three camps you can be in: you’re either in the camp of truth, you’re in the camp of being deceived, or God forbid you’re in the camp of a deceiver.  Go home, think about it, you will see there is no other camp that you can be in.  And the Bible clearly tells us to be in the camp of truth.  “But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”  That’s our calling; that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

Now, sadly, as I said, we’re seeing Chrislamic practices, again when we talk about the idea of Chrislam you understand what that means?  Right?  We’re seeing a syncretism.  Does the Bible warn us about syncretism?   Does the Bible not warn us about blending?  That’s exactly what we’re seeing, we’re seeing a blending and a mixing of Islam and Christianity.  That’s where the word “Chrislam” comes from.  But we’re seeing these practices come in missions, that’s why I want to focus on the [can’t understand word] gospel.

So let’s talk about some specific things.  First of all, we’re seeing the majority of our missional practices now promote a common word and a common God movement.  I’ll be talking about this at 11:00, Pastor Andy just talked about this on his podcast, Fifteen Reasons Why Christians and Muslims Do not Worship the Same God, excellent teaching because it’s talking about the fact that the common word “movement” is what’s driving this mixing and blending.  So we’ll talk about how that’s affecting things.

Number two, more recently we’re seeing now a push, even within missional practices, that indeed Islam is an Abrahamic faith.  REALLLY???   Well by definition if Islam is Abrahamic doesn’t that mean that it would have to then be the same God?  Isn’t that where they’re going?  If Muslims can trace their lineage back to Abraham and Jews can trace their lineage back to Abraham and we can by extension of the Jews as Christians trace our lineage back to Abraham there you go Shahram, calm down, sit down, we all can get along, have world peace, kumbaya, we’re all good to go.  The problem is that these are deceptions that are just directly from the pit of hell.   I don’t know how else to say it.

I was interviewed by a reporter from the Idaho State thing because our ministry, Truth in Love Ministries, our church ministry, is on the list of the Islamic phobic network; the Muslim Brother­hood has a list, no surprise.  Last year we got added to the SPLC Hate List, and so we’re on both lists.  And as such the reporter was interviewing me and he says well why are you on this list?  Why did the SPLC put you on the list with a bunch of Neo-Nazi skinhead groups?  Eleven groups in Washington State, where I’m from, nine of them are Neo-Nazi skinheads, us and one other ministry were put on that list.  He says why?  He says are you anti-Muslim. I go no, we’re not anti-Muslim.  Are you anti-Islamic?  Well, I have to be; I have to be because I have to be standing and resisting an ideology that denies my faith.  Otherwise, if I’m supporting it what am I saying?  If I’m saying that it’s the same what am I saying?  So from this Abrahamic move then we see now a brand new push among missional practices, which is oh, you know what?  Muslims actually believe Jesus the Messiah… really!!!!  So there you go, we’re even having more in common.

You see this movement towards this one-world religion?  We’re moving and moving and moving.  And finally we now see interface practice becoming normative, not abnormal, not something that would have been taboo ten years ago maybe, or fifteen years ago, it’s now becoming normative.  That means that if myself and Pastor Andy and others teach against it we are now in the minority, WE are now the outcasts because this is becoming normative.  And it’s going to continue!  And of course the ecumenicalism, right, all faiths are equal, all faiths have respect… I’m sorry, how can I give respect for an ideology, as Andy said earlier, that is victimizing and enslaving people?  How can I give approval to an ideology, folks, that again denies everything I believe?

And the ecumenicalism and Interfaithism is coming from the social gospel.  What is the social gospel in a nutshell?  It’s all about love.  I just heard a brother in the Lord preach this yesterday. He was doing a conference and he said this:  he says the message of the Bible is not about love.  I thought finally I have a pastor who’s willing to say this.  Some of you are going well hold on,  where’s he going with this?  The message of the Bible is not about God’s love; the message of the Bible is about God’s glory.  We live for His glory and in His glory is manifested His love.  If we compromise God that denies His glory.  I thought man, praise God that we have those who are saying these messages.

Where is the missional, specifically the missional [can’t understand word] is coming from, I’ve got to go faster here, there’s a little book that a colleague of mine did on Chrislam, how missionaries are promoting the Islamite gospel, I think this is available on Amazon, we don’t carry this, but this is heady, this is for missionaries; if you’re a missionary, you  know a missionary, you want to get into it I recommend… it’s a slow read because there’s a lot of detail, but they try to break it down into basically that the mindset of current missional practices that’s been going on for a while, probably 15-20 years, they have now come up with a concept called contextualization.  And they’ve created a scale, a C-1 to C-6 scale so when we’re looking at reaching unreached people groups we’re going to evaluate, this is their mentality, of a C-1 to C-6 scale.

What is contextualization?  The concept of contextualization is that basically when we go into another culture, another ideology or belief system, there are things about the gospel and the message of Christ that we have contextualize for that culture.  We’ve got to make it relevant for that culture.  You go ahh—where are they going with it?  That’s my question.  When I started hearing this ten years ago that was my question.  When I started going to missions, because I was a missions pastor and I’d go to mission conferences and they’d start talking like this and I thought where are they going with this?  Now I know where they’re going because C-1, C-2 is, I would say, fairly safe and innocuous, meaning this: if I go into a culture and let’s say that culture has a certain dress code, well, I can contextualize my dress code to the culture in order to be able to have open doors for the gospel.  Does that make sense?  Maybe they have certain music, language, certain customs that are not real religious, meaning it’s not tied to any ideology and so therefore in being respectful in the sense of wanting to have an open door for the gospel I can observe some of those concepts of that culture.  Does that make sense.  Okay.

And they do this for C-3, to get to C-3, which is with church planting.  The idea is when we’re church planting we have to take some of these aspects into culture, so let’s say, for example, you start a church in Hawaii and everybody comes to church with sandals and a Hawaiian shirt.  Okay, so do we get offended or do we say well that’s kind of the culture there so we go with it.  I was in… we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, my wife and I, in 2001 and we went to a church service.  I dressed up like this and I stood out like a sore thumb.  I was like, gee, where am I, because all, you know… vast contextualization, that is somewhat, we would say, safe.

The problem is when they get past C-3, that’s what I want to talk about today.  Now we get into a danger area.  So what is C-3 to C-4; now the concept comes to what’s called bridge building.  There are bridge building ministries, I’ll put three of them up here for you, these are three examples of a bridge building ministry.  What’s the concept of bridge building.  The concept of bridge building is can we within those cultures and ideologies find a bridge, meaning that we have to find something they believe in that we have common ground and make that bridge over to Christianity, to the Bible.

Okay; now there are parts of this that I go okay, maybe it could work but it’s dangerous because in the concept of Islam if I’m going to bridge build Islam is not a culture; this is a mistake we’re making.  Islam is an ideology, it’s a spiritual phenomenon, right, and being an Arab is a culture; that’s cultural.  You have an Arab culture.  But are all Arabs Muslims?  No, in fact, most Arabs are not Muslims.  So the context  of culture versus religion and ideology is being confused.  So they’ll say well Muslims go to the mosque and pray five times a day, that’s cultural.  Ahhhhh! Ehhhhh! That’s NOT cultural, that’s spiritual.  Yes, the mosque is the part of a life of a Muslim but that’s not a cultural phenomenon.  Does that make sense?  So now let’s find common grounds, they’ll say well let’s go to the Qur’an, open the Qur’an, find common themes and bring them to the Bible.   Okay, well, there’s some basic common themes.  Pastor Woods covered some of this on his show, for example, if Muslims believe in one God they’re monotheistic, they claim they’re monotheistic, they claim Mohammed came and destroyed polytheism, which they call shirk, it’s the worst sin in Islam, shirk, s-h-i-r-k, it means to be a polytheist.  By the way, that’s what they believe we are.  You understand Muslims view Christians as the worst sinners because they claim we’ve made God into three.  So when you hear the Muslims tell you how much they love Christians and how we have so much in common, we don’t understand the concept of ideology.

But when we get into the Quran and we start looking specific examples and specific stories that seem like they’re biblical, and we’re trying to make common ground there now we’re getting into trouble, because the average Christian doesn’t know the Quran, and here’s the thing, sadly, many don’t know the Bible.  So what’s the Hub Community?  Well, frontier, you’re going to talk about frontiers quite a bit, I talk about them quite a bit, sadly they’re very, very compromised, Frontiers put something together called Hub Community where they encourage Christians to go find Muslim friends and sit down and have tea or coffee or break bread and then have conversation about our faith.  You go so far no problem?  Or [can’t understand word], we want to encourage them to have a Bible study.   I have the booklet, I read through it;  A Bible study, for the Muslim?  Oh wait a second, you’ve got to read towards the end of the booklet; it’s not a Bible study, it’s a Bible/Quran study.  The idea is hey Christian, you open the Bible; hey Muslim, you open the Quran, let’s find common ground.

This is all built upon the common word concept so  you’re trying to build a bridge.  But here’s my supposition for why C3 C4 is dangerous.  How do you build a bridge if one side is sinking sand and one side is solid rock?  Has anybody been an engineer and tried to build anything like that?  It doesn’t work very well, does it.  It collapses.  So it’s very dangerous.

Now is it heretical?  It depends, that’s why I put it in the dangerous category, so when you have Crescent Projects or Camel Methods.   [From Internet: Crescent Project is an American based Christian ministry with international impact focused on mobilizing the Church to reach Muslims with the Gospel.  Camel is an acronym for Chosen Angels Miracles Eternal Life. This method aims to win Muslim converts to Christianity by beginning with passages about Jesus in the Qur’an.]

These are all “ministries,” quote unquote, that are using this concept  of let’s sit down with Muslims, find the Muslim [can’t understand word, sounds like: man a peas] let’s find this common ground.  And the problem is, for example, I was at Moody Bible College in Spokane, Washington four years ago I spoke at that, and some students came up to me and talked to me afterwards and they said, yeah, we’re so excited, we’re doing Bible studies with Muslims and antennas go up, right?   What do you mean “Bible studies with Muslims?”  I go don’t tell me, is it the Hub Community, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah… Oh… and then guess what the Muslims were doing to the Christians.  The Muslims were critiquing the Bible… well, you know your Bible is corrupt?  You know you can’t trust that?  And these are Christians that are supposed to be in Bible college who don’t know how to defend the faith, AND don’t know Islam.  So I would argue Muslims are better trained to be apologetic for their faith than we are as Christians to be apologetic for our faith.  That’s part of the challenge we have.  Let’s move on.  Again, there’s a lot of examples, I’m just trying to kind of give you just a surface look this morning.

Now, C-4, we start seeing now what’s called reconciliation efforts, King’s Way Document, Peace Catalyst International, there are ministries.  King’s Way Document came out of Rick Warren’s church.  One of its pastors got together with an Imam in California, his name was Jihad [can’t understand word], and they came up with a document called The King’s Way Document.  The idea is look, we’re going to stop trying to evangelize each other; we’re going to seek peace and reconciliation.  We’re going to find a way to live in peace; we’re not going to make conversion our number one priority because we can reconcile our differences.  You go ahhh… WHAT?  We can reconcile Islam and Christianity?  [can’t understand words] They’ve been trying that for 1400 years and it hasn’t worked out very well, right?

So they’re trying to spiritually… now we’re not talking about you have a Muslim neighbor down the road or in your backyard or a co-worker at work and you want to get along with them and you want to be peaceful; I’m not talking about that.  We’re talking about ideology, spiritually reconcile.

Rick Love.  Rick Love signed A Common Word document, one of the top promoters of the Common Word movement.  [from the internet: A Common Word:  historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. “A Common Word Between Us and You” identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism.”]

If you look at the Peace Catalyst website, you can go look at it yourself, right at the very intro they say “we believe Muslims and Christians can live in peace.”   Can Muslims and Christians live in peace?  No!  Why?  Because we have differing ideologies.  Do you understand or did I lose some of you.  An individual Muslim and an individual Christian can choose to live in peace; it does not mean their ideology will override peace; in fact, (I’ll show you in a little bit where I got all this) when Islam is an antichrist spirit it can never be at peace with the gospel.  In fact Islam, according to Paul, when he talks about ideologies that are enemies of the cross, I would argue that Islam is the number one enemy of the cross, because it literally denies the cross!  So this is C-4, very dangerous, and I would say C-4 is now heretical.  Bridge building, maybe.  There are some parts of bridge building that could work, if you’re well verses in the Qur’an there are some ways you can go through the Qur’an.  For example, the Qur’an tells Muslims to respect the Injil, the gospel.  Of course they believe it is the uncompromised gospel, before we added things like Jesus is God, the Son of God, was crucified, was raised from the dead, you know, those minor details… right!

But we can go to the Qur’an and say well, look, the Qur’an says respect the Injil, let’s go the gospel and read it… if  you are well-versed.   How many Christians do you know that are well-versed on both sides?  C-4 heretical!

Let’s go to C-4-5, Insider movement, what’s the insider movement.  What’s the insider movement?  This is literally a tactic now that is being imported across the world by major mission or [can’t understand word] agencies, including sadly many wire-land based.  My brother-in-law is a wire land base leader, I have debated him on this numerous times.  I’ve talked to other wire-land based leaders, I’ve talked to other missionaries [can’t understand word] who are pushing this.  Here’s the concept: we believe that a Muslim can accept Jesus as Savior and remain as a Muslim for a while.  Did I lose anybody?  That’s why it’s called an insider.  So what the missionaries are encouraging them to do, and if we have time I’ll show you a couple of videos, is basically what if you’re a Muslim believe in Jesus as the Savior, not as a prophet, but remain in your community was a Muslim, go to the mosque, do your prayers, tell people you’re a Muslim, because it may not be safe.  So the argument that I hear from people advocating insider is basically well, it’s not safe for them to come out, they could get killed.

Well this happens in Iran all the time; Muslims that become Christians immediately become outlaws or could be black-listed by the family or by the government.  Many have to flee to Iran.  I don’t have a problem with someone getting saved and going underground for a while.  Right.  Get discipled, get trained, and then many times those Iranians will go back to Iran to reach their people, once the Lord strengthens them, builds them up, equips them, they go back.  But to say remain in the mosque… because remember, they view it as cultural.  Remember I said earlier, contextuali­zation, this is part of the contextualization madness, that it’s cultural.  Going to the mosque is not cultural, if, and I’ll show you in the 11:00 o’clock hour, if Muslims pray every day in their daily prayers Sera 1:12 verse 4 out of the Qur’an that a law is not begotten nor does it begat, they have to pray that verse at least seventeen times in their daily cyclical prayers.  So in their daily prayers they are saying Allah is not a father nor is he a son.  Yet the Bible very clearly says in 1 John 4 and 1 John 2 and 2 John 7-11, when it describes an antichrist spirit, it says he who denies the Father and the Son, this is a spirit of antichrist.

[1 John 2:18-19, “and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”

1 John 4:3, “and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world”

2 John 1:7-11, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. [8] Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. [9] Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. [10] If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; [11] for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”]

And you have western missionaries telling Muslims, who supposedly are believing in Jesus stay in… heresy in my opinion.  I talked to a missionary, a couple from the Philippines, who worked with Muslims, who thirty years served in the mission field, and said now the insider movement has so taken, again normative, these are becoming normative practices, they said that what they saw was eighty-five percent of those Muslims who supposedly believe in Jesus, after a while go back to Islam.  Well, that makes sense because they’re basically one foot in, one foot out.  Doesn’t the Lord call us out?  Doesn’t the Lord call us to renounce our past allegiances, our past beliefs?  Would we say this for someone who was in witchcraft?  Would we say to a wiccan hey, you know what, go to the [can’t understand word], do your thing, it’s okay, believe in Jesus.  We’d be nuts.  Would we say this to someone who, let’s say is in Satanic practice?  You know it’s okay, go to the satanic temple, do your rituals?  And believe in [can’t understand word], no, we would say renounce, right.  Repent, renounce, come out.  Does the Lord not call us out?

What are we doing?  It gets worse.  Now we have C-6, the worst.  What’s C-6?  A concept called Messianic Muslims.  You go ahhhhhh, what? ??  You’ve heard of Messianic Jews, right?  The idea of a Messianic Jew is biblical in the sense of you have a Jew that then finally their eyes are opened, praise God, they see Yeshua as the Messiah.  But do Jews not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?  If they are [can’t understand word] a believing Jew.  So now they are a Messianic Jew because they have finally recognized the Messiah, the true Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus is the Messiah.  So these missionaries took that concept and apply it to Muslims.  We have Muslims that can be Muslim and believe in the Messiah, not like the insiders, for a period of time but forever; they can do both.  In fact it’s called the common pact.  I’m going to show you a quick little video, I think I played this the last time I was here, I want to play it again.  You guys are ready.  This is a quick little video about the Common Pact.  Watch this.

[From video] So let’s say this circle represents the kingdom of God, in Arabic you could say [says something in Arabic] the upper circle represents Christians, this circle represents Muslims.  What’s happened for so many years is that Christians have been telling Muslims you’ve got to come over into our circle, become a Christian, that’s the only way you can come into the kingdom of God.  Muslims have been saying hey, come over here, you’ve got to become a Muslim, that’s how you really know God and are able to move in the right direction.  But really those things aren’t the issue.  The real issue is how can we both move into the kingdom of God and find a straight path to God.  That is the question.]

Shahram:  That is the question.  How can we find a straight path?  Muslims [can’t understand word] pray this daily.  One of the verses they pray daily is for Allah to show them the straight path.  So Allah sends Christian missionaries to show them the straight path.  Christian missionaries show up and start promoting, and I have to use the word “Christian” loosely, the concept.  You know what he says?  Here’s what he said.   [can’t understand word; sound like mel-ho-kah Allah] not

[same word] Jehovah, not [same word] Adonai,  [same word]   mel-oh-kah la Allah.  Oh really, so Allah is now the same god.

And number two, for years we’ve been saying you ought to become a Christian, for years how about that’s the gospel, how about  “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through Me.”   “There is but no other name under by heaven by which we must be saved.  How about this, the gospel.  For years they’ve been saying there’s no [can’t understand word]  you can just find a straight path.  Heresy!  Heresy!!!  And this is being promoted in many of the emergent church, social gospel like churches now.  Frontiers is promoting it, because why?  We’ve found a new way, new strategy, as if the gospel is not the same that it was 2,000 years ago.  In my testimony new strategy didn’t save me, the gospel saved me.

And then it gets worse.  Now I’m going to actually, for time, fast forward here, I was going to show you a video, this is called Half Devil, half child, we won’t play this clip, but you’ll see here… I have it linked on my website, if you want to go look at it under my resource tab, it’s a video about the fact that they interviewed insiders in Bangladesh and what they’re doing is the insiders used Muslim insiders who were supposedly [can’t understand words].  We’re confused, and you have the local former Muslims Christian believers in Bangladesh saying listen, we don’t need your western influence, these western missionaries are what’s the problem.  In country nationals we know how to reach our own people.  That’s the same way it’s in Iran, the best way to reach people in Iran, and this guy, Bill [can’t understand word, sounds like Niketas ], is the one who made this video and he will tell you, he says listen, the reason I made this documentary is because we have to expose that this is becoming normative.   And one of the things he talked about in his documentary is this [can’t understand word, sounds like C-6] contextualization now of the Bible itself.  Dear God help us!

So what do they do?  We’re going to contextualize the Bible when we translate.  Now we know Wycliffe has been part of this (sadly) and a  year and half ago there was a split in Wycliffe on this issue.  Wycliffe USA finally said we’re going to stop contextualizing.  Thank God.  Wycliffe international has not as  yet, because what happened was a colleague of mine George [can’t understand word: sounds like Who sty ], we’ve had him on our radio show before, he led a boycott against Wycliffe, he had 13,000 somewhat assemblies of God churches and other churches to lead a boycott because they weren’t listening.  They were contextualizing.

For example, the Bible says “Lamb of God,” well, maybe a culture doesn’t understand “Lamb.”  So maybe in that culture they’ll say dog of God, or cat of God.  Or maybe in the Hindu culture we’ll say cow of God.  NO, “lamb” is a specific textual premise, you can’t change it.  But it gets worse than that.  So Wycliffe, because of pressure finally said well, Wycliffe USA said we’ll stop.  Here’s the problem though—what about all the Bibles that are out there?  What about all what they call Muslim friendly Bibles they produced.  Here’s some of the things that are in the Bible.  Wherever the word “Our Father,” “Heavenly Father” appears you know what, Muslims don’t understand it, so we’re going to have to take that word out and put the name Allah in place of it, because Muslims, remember, they don’t understand God as Father.  Allah is not a father, so we’re confusing them so let’s take it out.

And as you watched that documentary, I love the line of one of those missionaries, “in country,” in country nationals trying to reach their own people for Christ said if God is not our Father then what good news are we giving to these Muslim?  And by what authority are we doing this?  Whenever the term “Son of God” is there they’ll take it out because this is confusing Muslims who don’t understand that God has a Son.  In fact, they believe Allah [can’t understand words] to have a Son.  So what do they do?  Sometimes they put the term “Messiah” in because the Qur’an uses the term Messiah.  But you’ll see later that the term Messiah does not mean what it means to you and I.  It’s a copied term; this is where Mohammed took terms that the Jews and the Christians would use and they just threw it in the Qur’an.

In fact, the fact that Jesus in the Qur’an denies He’s the Messiah.  So what do they use in place of it?  They either omit it or they use Christ of God or Christ sent from God.   Well, is that the same term?  No, because the Son of God, Son of Man, these are specific terms that have incredible meaning.  You understand when Jesus used the term “Son of Man” that meant something to the Jews.  They knew what He was saying.  What was He saying?  He was saying I AM the long awaited Messiah.  He wasn’t mincing words.  And here we come along two thousand  years later and decide you know what, we know better, we’re going to change the Bible.

By what authority are we doing these practices?   And Bill Nikita in the video says listen, the problem is western missionaries are not listening to in country missionaries.  They’re coercing, forcing their views upon these in country missionaries, and the in country missionaries are saying cut it out!  We don’t need your corrupted Bible and your corrupted gospel to reach our own people.  We have abandoned the true nature of the gospel because the Bible always, from the very beginning established the best people to reach a certain people group is the same people group.  That’s why God saved us.  But no, we have these western missionaries who are telling former Muslims like me, you just don’t know any better.  Hello… I came out of Islam.

Why are they doing this?  Because it offends Muslims?  By the way, what does Islam teach about the Bible?  It’s corrupt!  Why is it corrupt?  Because of things that’s put into it like God is Father, God is Son, so what do we do, we take it out.   Guess what?  We just proved them right. Do you think they’re going to get saved?  No!.  They’re going to hell and we’re being compromised.   God help us.

Now I put George Hosny’s website there, instead of being compromised if you want to be set straight Hoostie has a website called Biblical Misseology.org.  Not only does he look at how to evaluate… I get this e-mail a lot, Pastor Andy, maybe you do too: Pastor, how do I know a certain mission organization isn’t compromised.  We don’t know every mission organization because mission organizations are popping up all the time, right?  So what George Hoostie does on that website is they go through and they look at not only statements of faith and how to evaluate statements of faith, but actual statement of practices.  In fact, they just have an article, I just looked at it last night, on the aspect of contextualization and the Bible on their website.  Go read it, unbelievable.  And they make the argument why this is there.  Now my argument is there, I’m putting it in the [can’t understand word] category because I believe this is heresy.  It is absolute unbiblical heresy; it is apostasy and we have to cut it out.

And the last thing I want to show  you very quickly here is this is affecting our missions program.  For example, Biola, I’ve got to be very quick here, I got a call from a gal who’s a supporter of ours, her granddaughter was an missionary student intern at Biola’s mission program.  She was in Guatemala, Honduras, somewhere like that, she’d gone on a mission.  And the lady made the statement to her daughter that Muslims cannot be saved without the gospel of Jesus Christ, they’re going to hell.  She said her daughter, a grown woman, went in her room, broke down and started crying, she said I don’t believe it.  I have so many Muslim friends, I don’t believe you, that they can’t go to heaven without the gospel.

So that led us to look at Biola, what are they teaching at Biola?  So we looked at their… here we go, it’s coming up, their minor admission program: we found out that Frontier has their fingerprints all over it.  In fact, they call it Frontier missiology.  Here is part of their write up:  “An examination of the theology in missiology of the Frontier mission movement and emphasis on unreached people, including its historical background leading proponents, anthropological conception and strategic implications, the dynamics of pioneer church movements and…” here you go, “contextualization in Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhists tribal societies, insider movement and other models of mission breakthrough.  All of this is coming from Frontier, all of it is coming from the emergent church movement.  They have completely infiltrated the majority of our missions program.  That’s why a lot of mission pastors, in fact a lot of mission pastors were the entry doors for the Hub Community, those Hub Communities that I talked about, coming in, they were the ones that’s supporting them.

Let’s look at the next part.  They go on to say, “Approaches to the Islamic world, exploration of historical contemporary approaches to Muslim people, including an analysis of an effective interactions and Muslim perceptions and individual and organizational approaches like evangelism, (we’re good), apologetics (we’re good),  interfaith dialogues [ehh!] evangelism, they said it again, I don’t know why they said it twice.  Education, development and compassion ministries, reconciliation ministries, peace building ministries, you see the fingerprint, all of these concepts now are within our missional program.  They are training our future missionaries with these concepts.  Why is interfaith dialogue now a premise of Viola missions?  Why is contextualization the primary aspect?  Because they’re now taking the C-1, C-2, C-3 doable; there aspects that I agree are legitimate to contextualization, but when we get past the line and we cross that boundary we now have compromised the gospel.

So look it up, this is not just at Biola, we’re seeing this happen.  But Biola came to our attention because of one of our supporters who said look, this is my granddaughter, she’s training to be a full time missionary, and she’s crying because I told her Muslims can’t get saved without Jesus Christ.  Isn’t that supposed to be Christianity 101?  And of course, we’ll talk about it in the 11:00 o’clock hour, Pastor Woods already talked about some of this, I’m going to show you’re seeing billboards like this just down the road pop up from you by the Islamic Circle of North America Muslim Brothers front group, pushing this ecumenical interfaith message.  Right.  One family, one message, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Islam… Why Islam?  Call us, why Islam, please nobody call.  Please!

This is the push and I’ll show you in the 11:00 o’clock hour this is not accidental, it is an intentional push to  compromise the church.  A compromised church has no power.  Right?  We deny the gospel, we deny the power of the gospel, we have no power and I would argue we’re losing our saltiness.  And if we’re losing our saltiness then what are we good for but the dung pile.  God help us if that happens!  That’s why you see places like Dearborn, Michigan and other places around the country where you have churches on every corner but Islam is winning the day.  In Washington state where I come from we have interfaith [can’t understand word] becoming normative up and down Washington State because it is the way to go.  And churches are afraid to even engage because we’ll be called names.  We’ve got to stand up for the gospel!

In wrapping up I want to just cover this and I’ll cover it at 11:00 o’clock, there’s no common word,  there is no common God, Islam is not Abrahamic, I’ll go through that and I’ll show you that at 11:00 o’clock.  Muslims do not worship Jesus as the true Messiah.

Here’s what we should be doing?  We must declare the gospel and call them to repentance, as someone did with me.  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek  , for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written,  [17] For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’” [Rom. 1:16-17]

And folks, we’ve got to return to biblical evangelism; there are simple things and I’ll talk about it later, simple things that we can do to share the gospel, your testimony, ask if you can pray for them, in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?  Not Allah.  Proclaim the gospel, tell them  who Jesus really is.  Don’t be…  listen, thank God that young lady 19 years ago, when I said I was offended she didn’t say oh no, I’ve offended a Muslim, I’ll stop.  Thank God she was persistent and pushed through because listen, the offense, what I thought was offense was really the piercing of my heart by the sword of the Spirit.  The truth sets us free.  We have to return to biblical evangelism.  We’ll talk about that more in the conference, we’re going to be equipping people.

And listen, a couple of things that are number 1, stop compromising the Word of God.  Number 2, I believe that one of the things… outside I was talking to Russ Miller about this in Coeur ‘d Alene last weekend that I believe that this is one of the biggest issues in the church today is that we have lost the concept of what it means to have God as our Creator.  That’s why we’re so confused on LGBT this and transgender this and if we don’t’ know who God is as Creator we don’t know who we are as His creation.  And I believe that we have to restore God as our Creator to us and our children.  And as such we have to train the next generation in apologetics.  We’ve got to get better at actually knowing how to defend the gospel in apologetics.

You know, one of the things that… I want to say this about the Woods that I appreciate, because you can tell I’m a little bit of a hmm what’s the word when  you’re… expressive… demonstrative  I’m a little demonstrative, right.   And sometimes emotions can get the best of us but when I listen to Dr. Woods calmly, patiently, defend the Word of God, defend the gospel, we need that!  We need more of that!!!  We need to be believers who are not caught up in our emotions that the social gospel has done.  We’ve got to deal in facts and truth and our faith because we are standing on the rock, the Word of God.  And let us prepare ourselves and more importantly this next generation, who’s being bombarded, to defend our faith and defend the gospel.  And listen, when it comes to the issue of Islam they’re doing the same thing.  If you don’t think that they’re training in their Islamic centers and their mosques how to be apologetic towards Islam and break down Christianity then we don’t know what we’re talking about.  That’s why they’re winning today; they have evangelism too, it’s called dawah, they’re trying to convert Americans and they’re trying to convert Christians.

So in wrapping up again I just pray for great boldness, we’ll talk about more in the 11:00 o’clock hour.  Pastor Woods, I’ll turn it back to you.  Folks, God bless you and again, the call is [clapping] the call is very simple, we are called to fulfill the great commission, not invent another gospel.  So let’s commit to the mission of the church and if we do that and stand with God we will be able to stand before Him on that day and He will say “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  Amen.  Thank you pastor, God bless!