A Biblical Look at Islam
Some Chirstians have told us that our ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL statement is "extra-Biblical." That exact phrase is not used by Pastor Reza Safa, but he teaches that the Bible can be studied to find out about Islam.
In his interesting book, "Inside Islam," Pastor Safa, a former Moslem from Iran, compares Islam to the Baal cults of the Old Testament.
In my opinion, the spirit that raised Baal worship in Phoenicia and Canaan, and later in Babylon, is the same spirit that raised Islam in Arabia.
Pastor Safa gives the following reasons for his opinion:
- Allah is a pre-Islamic name corresponding to the Babylonian name, Bel (Baal). This worship always involved the worship of the sun, moon and stars. The symbol of moon worship was the crescent, adopted as a symbol of Islam.
- Baal worship involved the lascivious practices of fertitilty cults (Numbers 25:1-5), child sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:5), eating sacrifices made to the dead (Psalm 106:8), and cutting themselves with knives and lances (1 Kings 18:28).
- Jezebel, King Ahab's wife, and a prophetess of Baal, furiously opposed Jehovah and his anointed prophets, massacring many of those prohpets and creating an atmosphere of fear throught Israel (1 Kings 18, 19).
- Moslems claim that Allah is the same God that the Jews and Christians worship, but there is a "vast gap of character, nature, and personality that exists between the God of the Bible and the God of the Koran." These can easily be seen by studying the Bible and the Koran.
- A tree is known by it's fruit (Matthew 12:33), and the fruit of Islam is fear, terror and bloodshed.
Pastor Safa expands on these points throught the book, looks at Islamic history, the teachings of the Koran, and his own experience as a Moslem in Iran, America and Europe before he became a Christian.
He also challenges the American Christian church today, which he sees as pampered, and trapped by humanism, self-indulgence and apathy:
A Christianity that doesn't reach the unreached and touch the untouched, a Christianity that doesn't burn to tell the story of Jesus, a Christianity that doesn't have compassion for the lost and needy, is a Christianity that hasn't understood the message of the Cross. As our German brother Reinhard Bonnke puts it, "We are a lifeboat, not a cruise ship."
Do we understand the message of the Cross? Are we trying to build a cruise ship?
You can buy "Inside Islam" and his personal testimony "Blood of the Sword, Blood of the Cross," at Pastor Safa's website http://www.rezasafa.com/
