Why Allah cannot be the God of the Bible

Introduction

The inter-faith movement, ecumenism, poor regard for the authority of scripture and inadequate doctrinal understanding has left Christendom exposed to the false belief that Allah and the God of the Bible are one. There is clear evidence of an end times desire to create a one-world church embracing all faiths:

• The Pope has publicly kissed the Quran and told Hindus in India that the Catholic Church respects the spiritual insights offered by eastern religions.
  
• The Anglican Archbishop has permitted inter-faith services in Canterbury Cathedral.
  
• All the main Christian denominations are fully committed to ecumenism.
  
• Influential evangelical leaders in the United States have signed an accord with the Catholic Church called Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT).
  
• The apostate Robert Schuller actively promotes monotheistic union between Christians, Jews and Muslims. He has publicly stated that he would have no difficulty with his grand children converting to Islam.

For Christians looking for the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ these indicators all point towards an end-times one world union of faiths that denies Jesus Christ is the only way to the one true God and one true faith of the Bible. It is only a matter of time before multi-faith ideas begin to invade the evangelical church community.

Why Allah cannot be the God of the Bible

Islam's Quran and its own adopted practices prove that Allah cannot be the God of Christianity. In Arabic the word 'Allah' may mean 'god' but that does not mean Allah and the God of the Bible are one and the same. They cannot be because:

• Islam has come to mean 'submission'¹. The goal of Islam is to bring the whole world into submission to Allah. The Quran (Sura's 2, 4, 5, 9 and 47) teaches that all 'infidels' (non-Muslims) must either convert to Islam or be killed or enslaved². The God of the Bible tells us that conversion is the work of God, therefore no-one can be forced to convert to Christianity.
  
• The Quran says God has no son and is not a father. It rejects the Trinitarian God of the Bible. Muhammad taught that Jesus and Christians were not to be taken as friends (Sura's 5 and 9).
  
• Allah was the pagan moon god of Mohammed's Quresh tribe represented by various idols, including a sacred stone³. The God of the Bible forbids idolatry.
  
• Islam teaches the creation of a Muslim empire and the use of lethal force against opponents. The God of the Bible affirms that His kingdom is not of this world and commands that Christians love those who oppose them (John 18:34 and Matthew 5:44).
  
• Muhammad, the founder of Islam and supposedly the last of God's prophets, performed no miracles. Jesus Christ the true Son of God and seal of all God's prophets performed many miracles - proving His claims to divinity. The God of the Bible performs miracles. The God of Islam is unconcerned with the human condition and has never miraculously demonstrated a loving concern for individuals.
  
• Muhammad is declared a sinner in the Quran (Sura's 9, 40 and 48). Jesus Christ was and is sinless.
  
• The Quran often contradicts the Bible. It denies that Jesus was God incarnate or that he died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. Within this context alone the following verses testify that Allah cannot be the God of the Bible:

Romans 10:9: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

1 Corinthians 12:3: Therefore I tell you that no-one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed", and no-one can say, "Jesus is Lord", except by the Holy Spirit.

• That Jesus paid the penalty for sin or that God should pay any penalty for our sin is foreign to the god of Islam. Islam teaches that Allah need only forgive sins of ignorance when individuals quickly ask for forgiveness. But 'ignorance' and 'quickly' are not defined in the Quran. Muslims can never know if they are forgiven. The God of the Bible confirms that all sins [past, present and future] are forgiven:

Luke 3:3: He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 23:34: Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Luke 5:24: But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins....He said to the paralysed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home."

Psalm 103:12: As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

• Allah provides Muslims with no assurance of salvation, accept in a 'Jihad'. The God of the Bible provides absolute assurance:

Romans 10:8-11: But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," (Deut. 30:14) that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." (Isaiah 28:16)

• Most importantly the 'good news' or Gospel of Jesus Christ is not found in the Quran.
  
• Muhammad himself failed to follow Allah's revelation. Despite ruling that a Muslim could have no more than four wives Muhammad is recorded to have married 21 women. Would the final prophet of the one true God [as he claimed to be] fail to obey his god's commands? By contrast Jesus Christ obeyed His Father (God) and was sinless.

John 15:10: If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.

Matthew 12:50: For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

The Christian God never contradicts Himself in the Bible. The Quran is full of contradictions. For example:

• It states the Quran is the guardian of the Bible yet later claims the Bible is corrupted (Sura 5:48).
  
• At various points in the Quran Allah is said to have created everything in 2 days (Sura 41), 4 days (Sura 41) and six days (Sura 7:54, 10 and 32).
  
• A day can be a 1000 years (Sura 32) and 50,000 years (Sura 70:4)
  
• Jesus is not the Son of God in Sura 4:171 yet is affirmed as the Son of God in Sura 19:17-21.

The God of the Bible is knowable (John 17:3; Jeremiah 9:24), personal, spiritual (John 4:24), full of grace and love and trustworthy but the Quran denies these attributes apply to Allah:

• No man can know Allah personally - he is far off and transcends personal relationships.
  
• Of the 99 attributes of Allah in the Quran not one describes his nature or essence. They all describe what he is not.
  
• The Quran denies the Christian understanding of God's grace and love. Allah is neither saviour or intercessor. He does not intervene in Human history. He is simply unknowable and transcendent (Morey, 1992).

Finally, the God of the Bible is limited by his own unchanging nature (Morey, 1992). The Christian God cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18) or break His own laws. His character is unchanging. According to the Quran Allah is not bound by anything. He is therefore capricious. He cannot be trusted with certainty to always act in defined ways.

Conclusion

That Allah cannot be the God of the Bible is evident in the Quran and in other Muslim religious writings. Islam is simply a Seventh Century pagan Arabian religion that adopted an existing tribal moon god as the one true god and was forced on the Arab people by a self-proclaimed prophet. Its spread has not relied on the force of its arguments or proof of its truth. Rather, its expansion depended on military force and subjugation. The Jihad sanctifies murder and warlike violence. Muhammad himself led 27 Jihads.

Jesus Christ preached a gospel of peace and reconciliation and rejected the use of armed force.

Muhammad and Allah have nothing to do with Christianity or the one true God of the Bible.

Footnotes

¹Originally the word meant the strength of a desert warrior who would fight to the death for his tribe. This concept has been captured in the Jihad and other fundamentalist Islamic practices (Morey, 1992).

²For example Sura 9:5 states: "Fight and slay the pagans (infidels) wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war (Morey, 1992, p. 39)".

³Arabic writings from the Fifth Century prove that Christian influence had reached pagan Arabia. The Arabians around Mecca (Muhammad's home) identified with monotheism and Abraham - possible because of some perceived lineage link through Ishmael. Eventually, under Muhammad's influence his tribe abandoned all but one of their many gods, represented by sacred stones found in the Kabah at Mecca (Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, 1980).

References

Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq (1980). Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim (buy it here). Bethany fellowship, Minnesota.

Geisler, N.L & Saleeb, A. (1996). Answering Islam (buy it here). The Crescent in the Light of the Cross. Baker Books, Grand Rapids.

Morey, R. (1992). The Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World's Fastest Growing Religion. Harvest House, Oregon.

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Supporting Articles

Please click here to visit the Answering Islam website.

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