Islam Vs. Biblical Christianity Series

Islam vs. Biblical Christianity

What’s the difference?

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Good morning, I am glad that you are here this morning.

We are at the front end of a series called Faithology that is helping us

to compare other religions to Biblical Christianity and

to help us know the truth of what we believe and

to better be able to communicate with people of different faiths

understanding a bit of what they believe.

Last week on Easter, as we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we looked at the essential beliefs of Biblical Christianity. If you happened to miss that message, the audio is up on our website.

But to recap, we saw that Biblical Christianity teaches that

Jesus is God in the Flesh

Jesus Died for your sins

Jesus Resurrected from the Dead

Jesus is the Only Way to Heaven

Salvation is a Free Gift Received by Believing in Jesus

It is my prayer that each person here know the truth of Christianity and will receive Christ as your Savior by believing in Who He is and what He did and confessing that to the Lord.

Transition

As we seek to grow in our faith, I think it is important that we have some understanding of other religions so that we can be assured of why we believe what we do and be able to help others come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

So, this morning, as we begin looking at other faiths and how they compare to Biblical Christianity, we are going to take a look at Islam.

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Now I believe there are a lot of us who don’t know much about many other religions and specifically don’t know much about Islam other than some of the things we see on TV such as the head scarves and face covering of the women as well as appears as hatred toward the west and Israel.

The world is changing and America is changing and I think as men and women of God, we need to have an understanding of our times and the world we live in if we are going to be wise and know how to best live in this world.

When David was battling against Saul, he had all kinds of men coming to him and volunteering to help him as the Lord led them.

Some of them were men from the tribe of Issachar and it says that these were men “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” (1 Chronicles 12:32)

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We need to be people who understand the times we live in and know how we can respond

to these times and

to the people who live in these times

to the glory of God.

Now if we are going to understand some of these other religions, it is important that we understand some facts and some history about them.

Facts about Islam

So we are going to take a look at some facts about Islam

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Islam began in 622 AD.

Islam is the second largest religion after those who call themselves Christians

There are over 1.5 billion people in the world who call themselves Muslim compared to 2.1 billion people who call themselves Christian (including 1 billion Catholics)

That is 22% of the world’s population vs. 31% for those calling themselves Christian

It is the fastest growing of the major religions of the world growing at 2.9% vs. 2.3% for Christianity.

Background of Islam

The founder of the Islam is Mohammad.

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He was born in about 570 AD in Mecca in what today is Saudi Arabia

and when he was 40 (610 AD) believed he started receiving revelations from the Angel Gabriel. These revelations continued until his death in 632 AD. It is these revelations that have been gathered together and were written down by those around Mohammad that have become known as the Koran, the Islamic Bible.

When he started to preach these revelations a few years after they supposedly started, he was met by some resistance in Mecca because he was preaching monotheism, one god and one god only vs. a system of polytheism, multiple gods which the people and leaders of Mecca believed in.

After a number of years the resistance and persecution from the people of Mecca, Mohammad migrated in 622 AD to the town of Medina.

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Medina had a significant Jewish population as well as some Christians. Mohammad sought to convince the Jews and Christians that he was a prophet like the Biblical prophets and he even adopted some of the practices such as praying toward Jerusalem. But the Jews and Christians failed to embrace him as a prophet, so he ordered the Muslims to stop praying toward Jerusalem and instead pray toward Mecca, the city of his birth.

His influence and leadership in Medina grew and it was here where he established the first Islamic state and became both its religious leader and political leader.