Latest / Journey Elgin / Sunday Message 9/20/26- Is Islam Just Another Religion?
Transcript
- Phillip Thomas: As we continue our our series, we're t talking about we're in the end game now. And ⁓ and I I've kind of intentionally hit lots of different points ⁓ throughout this series. ⁓ and and I I promise it's it's I'm I'm hoping that you'll see kind of how it comes together. But all of them can be taken separately as separate sermons, ⁓ but then I do think they all eventually fit together. So I kind of started off ⁓ talking more about looking at at our country, at our founding, what are our principles? What are the principles that ⁓ make us who we are, right? And and looking at those ⁓ biblical principles that were ⁓ the bedrock, if you will, of the formation of our system of government. And and and while this isn't necessarily a theological thing, it's important for us to understand that our system of government was unique. We had never seen anything fully like that. Now it was the it was the natural end goal of a group of people who were striving to put their biblical principles in work in every aspect of their life. Right? And that's that's our representative democracy that we have is a reflection of what the people back then, how they believed the best way to live a godly life in. within a government that this is the best way that it would work, right? Is it flawed? Yes. Why? Because we live in a world that is very flawed and very fallen. Are there are there people who take advantage of our system? Yes, there certainly are. Why? Because people are fallen, right? ⁓ it it it makes sense. Nothing is going to be perfect. ⁓ however we did create ⁓ or our founders created a A new system of government that allowed for freedom in ways that we had never seen before, allowed for prosperity, allowed for the spread of the gospel throughout the world. Right? ⁓ and and it's important to at least know that basis, right? Read some different passages about specifically the watchman on the wall ⁓ in Ezekiel, where God called Ezekiel and he and Called some of the prophets, but specifically in this case, it was ⁓ Ezekiel to say you need to warn the people of what's coming because the people are going away from their basic principles, right? And you need to warn them that, hey, if you keep doing this, here's what's going to happen. Right. And it's a pretty pretty sobering thing that that God tells Ezekiel. He says, Listen, if you ⁓ if you ⁓ tell them and they still don't change their ways and they end up ⁓ being conquered by another people says, you know, the the blood will be on their heads, right? It will be their in so their consequences. They are living, you know, ⁓ they are the enduring their consequences. However, if you don't tell them, right, they are still going to have to endure those consequences, but the blood is on your head. Whew, that's it's pretty rough, right? So Ezekiel wasn't responsible for if the people changed or not. But what he was responsible for is telling them, you need to change. And if you don't, this is where things are going. I do believe that the church that we have a responsibility to do that. Whenever we see things going in the wrong direction in a society, we should be speaking out and say, hey, pay attention. This is headed in an in a in a way that God does not desire, right? And here's going to be the consequences of that. That doesn't mean we can change the direction, but we need to try. We need to be, continue to be that voice of light in the darkness. Right. And ⁓ and so we need to know and we need to understand a little bit about what's going on around us, about what's happening in the world. So we've we spent a couple of weeks talking about the relationship between Jews and Christians, right? And and how we we have to be careful with that because you you can go down some really ugly rabbit holes really quickly. Right. And ⁓ and you know basically as as Christians, as is what I believe the Bible says, we kind of take the most offensive view because everyone's going to be upset with you. Right? Because we believe that ⁓ that yes, just because you're born Jewish That doesn't guarantee anything because Christ has come and and salvation is found only through Christ. So you can be the best Jew around and never miss a festival, never, you know, step one letter outside the law. And guess what? You are still going to be separated because you haven't accepted Jesus Christ. Right? ⁓ on the other side, the Jews are not the cause of all your problems. They're they're not the cause of all society's problems, right? We have to be careful not to get into this mindset where we just view people as just monolithic groups, right? And this group does this and this group does that. And there's something really dangerous because there I believe there's something spiritual connected to it when you start thinking of the Jews in that terms. And it and it it starts getting very ugly very quickly. We kind of went through some historical things that have happened throughout history. ⁓ and ⁓ you know, no one's hands are clean in all of this, right? No one group. We are all responsible for the mess that we're in because we're all part of humanity. And humanity is fallen, right? And we need to be the ones that recognize, yes, we are fallen, we are sinful, but we know the light. And we're going to share the truth ⁓ out there in the world. Now, we are moving towards eventually kind of tying this together as we look in a little bit into Revelation about what what are some of the things that the Bible talks about are the the signs of the times, if you will. All of this is working together to kind of get that to that place where we're paying attention to the signs of the times. We don't, we really don't, we don't put all of our energy into it. We don't put all of our focus into it, but we need to be aware of what's going on. And it's a actually a good way to engage people about Christ because many people are feeling the uncertainty right now. ⁓ and and I I I believe that we're gonna kind of talk about this ⁓ the next couple of weeks. There are are two I I've gotten to where I look at things one that we are in a spirit there's a spiritual ⁓ tension going on. If not I'll all, you know, full on spiritual battle. I think we could probably say there's a full on spiritual battle going on right now. and and ⁓ we have to be careful where we don't start just looking at people as groups and we don't want to look at people as Republican and Democrat and we don't wanna, you know, all of those things are are tem are tempting to do. ⁓ but the enemies that we're seeing are I think we step back, we don't label them as people, we look at the enemies. as ideologies, right? And they're they're ideologies and and and they get you to believe things that actually go against the things of God, that are directly against the things of God. There's two of those ideologies that we are seeing very, very clearly in in our day to day. And they're not new, right? They're just I I think they're they're they've seen a door kind of crack open. And they're trying to come in because there are ideologies that can't coexist. We've talked about our ideology as Americans, right? There's this there's this biblical Judeo-Christian viewpoint. It's based on an individual relationship with Jesus Christ, right? Well, there are other ideologies at play that we are seeing. One ⁓ would be considered kind of based on the the foundations of of Marxism, of looking at the collective, that you start by looking at the group, right? And then every you kind of see things through a lens of oppressor versus oppressed. Right? So which group is the oppressed, which one is the oppressor? Right? This is why this is why it can make sense if you understand that, because what that viewpoint does is it encourages you always to align with the oppressed group. Right. ⁓ which and so what you see is you see ⁓ people who are full in on this type of thinking, they look at Israel and Palestine or Israel and Gaza, right? And and so you you have to label those two, which one's the oppressor, which one's the oppressed, right? And so what has been labeled is Israel because they are more wealthy, they're more affluent, they are more free, they have been labeled the oppressor. And so the That naturally means, well, wait, we're supposed to support the oppressed. That's why you said ⁓ yesterday driving up ⁓ I thirty five ⁓ on a ⁓ a banner that said free Palestine and and ⁓ you know said no to APAC or something like that. And you know, it's very effective, you know, seeing that banner as I'm driving on I thirty five trying not to die. I really w it was like, you know what? I really want to ponder the huge things in life right now. It's like so But so so there there is that. So it's like, okay, we have to support the oppressed. Now, for many of you, if you pay attention to this stuff, the same people that will support free Palestine and things like that also are usually here in the United States very supportive of the LGBTQ movement. Very supportive. In fact, there are organizations that are called Gays for Palestine. Okay. Now, if you look At the government of Palestine and their viewpoint on people of alternative lifestyles, let's just say they're not real friendly. In fact, there are numerous documented cases of people being thrown off of buildings because they have a same-sex identity. All right, so the same people that support Palestine also are pro-the LGBTQ movement, and yet Those two movements cannot coexist. And so you wonder, how is this possible? Right? Well, because both of those movements have a greater enemy, and that is the one true God. At the heart of the ideology of Marxism, we'll talk about this in a couple weeks, it requires an anti-God movement. It requires that, right? Now it's not going to get rid of it all. It'll give you a little bit as long as you don't believe in the one true God. And then the second ideology that we started talking about last week, we're going to talk a little bit more today, is the ideology of Islam. It is, and man, it is effective because it comes across as just another faith or just another religion. It is much bigger than that. It's it is an ideology. That is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite ours. Even though there's a lot of common language, and even though people will try to say that we we have a lot in common, yeah, the devil's in the details. Right. And it's important that we do understand this. Again, as we talked about last week, not so that you hate all Muslims. That's ridiculous. That goes against Christian principles. We look at people as individuals. So if you cite see someone who is a Muslim, okay, you interact with them as an individual, as that they are created in the image of God just like you, and you treat them with respect and you pray that God gives you opportunities to have conversations with them, that maybe you can introduce them to Jesus Christ. However, at the same time, you recognize, listen, this larger ideology. It is not compatible with our ideology. Right? And and it never has been. And this is going to be messy moving forward. Because this is, as I said last week, this is going to split churches. This is going to be an extreme challenge. Because the easy thing is, ⁓ no, we just need to love everyone and we just need to accept and we need to affirm. Well, that's what the ideologies are counting on, because they just it They just start ⁓ over overcoming and they start conquering and they are they are trying to push out your understanding and your id idea of following Jesus Christ. They are trying to push that out slowly but surely. They would never say this openly. Well, they they actually do, but it's but we don't we don't we pretend that they don't, right? And and it it And so we need to recognize what is going on. And ⁓ so I I wanted to to start in Galatians, ⁓ again, and ⁓ just look quickly at a at a history, because I I've seen some posts from pastors and and things like that that are basically saying why are we worrying about why do we even talk about Islam? It's not a it's not a ⁓ a huge problem here in the United States. It's still a really small percentage. All of that is true. ⁓ I I'm also not saying we should worry about it. Don't lose sleep over this. But we should recognize what's going on, right? And and we shouldn't lie about what's happening. And and I feel like many churches are lying to themselves about what is going on. So in Galatians, and remember I am now old, Galatians chapter one says I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. So that passage, and I read this last week, that really jumps out, right? Is that, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we are preaching, don't listen to it. Don't pay attention to it. Says, let him be accursed, right? So that means. This is this is serious because this is something that's going against the true gospel message. Right? Well, if you know your history, if you look at your history, what what we see is Christianity, ⁓ after Jesus rises from the dead, right, it begins to spread out into the known world. And and the goal of Christianity was to what? Go and make disciples. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? That that is the goal. We, as a Christian, we should desire that everyone come to recognize that Jesus is the Christ. That should be our goal. But how was that accomplished? It was accomplished by Paul and Peter and all the disciples going out and beginning to minister first to those who were already. Had an idea of this one true God. And then to those who were worshiping these pagan gods, and as they started to see how this new group of believers lived together and lived their lives and withstood persecution, right? The Holy Spirit started to change lives. How did it do it? One person at a time. So often, what you see is that one individual that they would come to know Christ. And then that would lead to their household becoming Christians, right? It was it was done just one at a time, but it slowly started changing everything. And see, that is it is so important for us to recognize that that our faith, the starting point, is we wrestle with God. Right? What does that mean? That means that you and God have to come to terms with each other. Right. Not not you you don't you don't get there in the ring with God and say, ⁓ well, sir, ⁓ my parents, they were really strong Christians. They believed in you. And so did my grandparents, you know, and I my brother even does. And and you know, my my wife even believes in in you. And God will say, That's really good. What about you? Right? It starts with the individual. Now, is there a community aspect to our faith? Yes, there is. But it starts one-on-one. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Right? And then what do we choose to do? Once we make that decision, we should choose to implement our faith into all areas of our life. Right? The Bible kind of has different areas of headship, if you will. It's It's us, right? Then it's our family. Then it's the church. And then there's the government. Those all have separate places and different roles. As Christians, we should take our faith into all of those different areas, right? So when we interact with the government, no matter what that government is, we should take our Christian faith and and apply it. Does that make sense? It doesn't mean, in fact, I mean it doesn't mean that we should desire to bend the government to force everyone to become Christian. That's not what it is. But we should want a government to allow us to continue to go and share the gospel with people, which is exactly the system of government that was set up here. Why? Because our foundation foundational principles. Recognized that it's based on an individual, individual choice. We wanted to give people the freedom to make that choice. Right? And it is extremely important that we ⁓ understand that because you look at Islam and it doesn't start with the individual. It starts with the institution, if you will, of Islam. And once you enter into that institution, It will mandates that every aspect of your life falls under Allah. Submission to Allah. It's what basically Islam means is to submit. There is no wrestling with God. There's not really the individual relationship. Do people still practice that faith and have a relationship with Allah? Yes, but it is different than the starting point that we start from. Right. And where we are called to take Christianity into our family, into our faith and how we practice our faith, into the government. Right? We are supposed to take that into those places and make a difference in those areas. Islam is totally different. All of those are in one one bundle. You don't you don't pick and choose, right? And so Islam is a political system. It is an ideology. Now, its purpose is to make everyone a Muslim. Why? Because they believe that Allah is the one true God and that you should follow Him. This is not nefarious in itself, right? They believe they're doing what is right, right? To bring everyone to faith in Allah. But the way that that is done is that. All areas of life must submit to Alla Allah. That includes the government, that includes the family, that includes yourself, right? And so you are just part of a large group that is called Islam. Do you see kind of the difference here? And it and it plays out in a very dangerous way. And and I I want to share. This is not exactly the the case, but it's close. And ⁓ the principle, I believe, is there. This is in Deuteronomy. And so we're going to start off in Deuteronomy chapter 28. And what's happening here is that ⁓ the nation of Israel is being created, right? And ⁓ and Moses and is is telling the people, and God is telling the people through Moses hey, if you follow me. Here are the things that are going to happen. And then he goes on to if you don't follow me, if you quit keeping my commands, here's now what's going to happen. All right. This is not we can't we can't just put our country and say, ⁓ well, this is speaking to us. No, it was speaking to them. But there are similar principles that I think apply to today to today. So, chapter twenty eight, starting in verse seven. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you, they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on your barns and in all you undertake. He will bless you in the land and the Lord your God has given you. The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, and all the peoples of the earth shall see that the that you are called by the name of the Lord. And they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your livestock, the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its seasons, to bless the work of your hands, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail. And you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. All right. So it's pretty pretty self-explanatory, right? And we talked about this. There's different types of covenants that God had made. The covenant that God made with Abraham had no conditions on it. It didn't say, if you keep my commandments, ⁓ then you will be my people. No, it was a just flat out, I'm calling you, I'm choosing you. Remember, God was the only one who walked through the covenantal ⁓ sacrifice of the ⁓ the the ⁓ things being cut into half, right? God's the only one who walked through that because it was all on him. There was a covenant made about the nation though, the nation of Israel. That for them to succeed and to thrive, they needed to keep God's commandments. And when they didn't, it was going to go downhill. And through all that, we can find lots of l lots of passages about how to treat the foreigner, how to treat the sojourner, right? We we can kind of connect that with immigration to today. But what it comes down to is God was recognizing there are different ideologies out there. And you have to be careful. As long as you obey and follow God, it's going to be okay. And it says, says, You will be ⁓ the Lord will open. Gonna get really loud. ⁓ no, not too bad. it says, ⁓ the the purpose is to give your reign to the land in its seasons, bless the work of can, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail. So what's that saying? Is that their nation will will be able to dictate their future, not another nation. Right? So now, verse fifteen, and then we'll skip down. But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, or be careful to do his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses curses shall come upon you and overtake you. And now you can read and read and read and read, and you'll find all the curses, right? God is pretty serious. He's like, if you're gonna start worshiping other gods, I'm gonna give you what you want. I'm gonna give you the result of that. And so it c it starts going through and listing those of how the the land will be impacted, everything. Then we get to verse 43. The sojourner or the foreigner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. You hear how that differs from what we just read? He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. ⁓ And then it says, All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments, his statutes as he commanded you. There shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart. Because of the abundance of all things. Therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, and nakedness and lacking in everything, and he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like a eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand. All right. Again This is not specifically talking about us, but what are the principles here? The principles are he's talking to a nation that was established under the foundational principles of God. So this is how you're going to be. And if you don't do it, here's what's going to happen: is all the people that you have let in that still worship foreign gods, you shouldn't have let them in in the first place, many of them. In fact, there's places in scripture where it says, If the foreigner is going to reside with you and stay there, they needed to convert. They needed to become Jewish. Right? But ⁓ but because that didn't happen, it allowed foreign gods to come in. And eventually, if you stop doing what the one true God commands, there's no middle ground. You will start following another God. And that's what happened here. Well, I think the Principle applies to today. Our country, we chose to have biblical ⁓ principles and foundations, right? We chose to do that. And we were faithful to that at times, right? Well, clearly, culturally, we are moving in a different direction now, right? And and there are being other gods and other ideologies that we are starting to see. And so the question becomes how f how long until the tail Now is above the head. Does that make sense? And just real quick, I just want us to understand. ⁓ up until about 500, 590, 600 ⁓ AD, ⁓ this first picture is what the the Middle East, the world over there look like. So look how fancy I am. Okay, here's Israel. That's ⁓ Spain, right, France, Italy. By about five ninety AD, all of these blue areas, Egypt, all the way down, all the way across, all these blue areas were majority Christian. Whoop, go back to the there you there you go. ⁓ were majority Christian. Again, just so you know, this this is modern maps over. This area is a place called Syria. This is Iraq. This is Jordan. This right here is Turkey. All of these places majority Christian. In fact, strong majority Christian. These areas were not majority Christian, but they had had significant Christian populations. What is this? This is Iran today. Then you're getting all up. Here into to Russia and I I don't know all those geography there. I can't remember all those places. So this was this was what the world's map looked like, if you will, up until around five ninety, six hundred AD. Then slowly over the next thousand years, things started to change. But let's do the next slide. This is today. All the countries in green are now Muslim majority. Do you see a connection? Basically, these have remained, and they're not even necessarily Christian majority now. They're just not Muslim majority. Does that make sense? So you've got Egypt, which at one time wasn't it like ninety percent Christian? Now there's about a four percent of the Coptic Christians that live there. ⁓ essentially none in ⁓ in these areas. ⁓ Turkey, of course, you know, every church that Paul started, not everyone, but many of the churches that Paul started, all I think all seven, all seven of the churches in Revelation, ⁓ I believe, are located in this area. So those were clearly pretty strong Christian churches, right? But what happened over the years as this new ideology and so what happened in about six hundred AD? An angel came and spoke to a guy named Muhammad in a cave, according to Muhammad. But he claimed an angel came and gave him what? A different gospel. Now they would try to say that it's similar. They still believe in Jesus. They they do not believe in Jesus the way we believe in Jesus. Don't let anyone say that. That is 100% false. So all of a sudden this new gospel comes onto the scene. And sometimes this was done in overt violence. Sometimes it wasn't. Don't say it was all violent. It's not always violent, but there was a lot of violence. I mean, Constantinople, which Constantinople, I think, would be right over in here somewhere, ⁓ it was in Turkey. That was the head of the Eastern Church. And they ⁓ they withstood a couple of big battles. But ⁓ but see The ideology was in it for the long game, right? They they did a siege and then they came back about 400 years later and destroyed Constantinople. Because these are ideologies that are against the things of God. We need to wake up and be careful of what those ideologies are doing to us and in our country. And we have seen since nine eleven of twenty twenty one, so twenty five years ago. We have seen our our Muslim population more than double and it's continuing to grow. Now Same thing in Europe. They are ahead of us. They're since nine eleven, their Muslim population is growing rapidly. Do you know what the top boys' name in London and England has been for about the last ten years? Muhammad. Now that's just one spelling of Muhammad. If you combine the other two spellings of Muhammad, it's even greater. The other two spellings are still in the top twenty. So it's a slow march. This ideology desires and wants to get rid of the one true God. Because it doesn't believe that it's the one true God, right? Don't don't be hateful. They actually believe what what their scripture says. But they started off from a deception. That was not the angel Michael or Gabriel. I can't remember which one they claimed. It was not them speaking. That was that was a, I believe from the inception was created to go against the things of God. Right? And it's not always going to be violent. In fact, they intentionally, openly, are talking about how they want to change America into a Muslim nation. This is a little clip from a nineteen Ninety because they're potential Muslim. Education is one of the most important areas that Muslims have to address. And while our objective, our final objective is not just to become part of the system that we experience now that we see. Our objective, our final objective is to create our own Islamic systems and not only create Islamic systems for Muslims, but to look at all the other people who are sharing this country with us. As potential Muslim and in that long-range process of making America Muslim. Okay. So that was just a few clips from one speech in 1990. That is the goal. You can find modern day examples of Imams here in the United States that talk about that's their goal. Right? Now they are not talking about doing it violently. Right? They are just one step at a time, right? And you have cities now that are completely run by those of the Islam ideology. And guess what? They're starting to push out some of our basic understanding of how the law and should work. We should not be fearful of this, but we should recognize what is happening. Do you think that Christ wants us just to roll over and allow a false religion to push out the truth of Christianity? No, I don't I don't think so. Right? I also don't think he wants us to take up arms right now and go surround a mosque. That's stupid, too. Right? And and there are gonna be people to handle this really poorly on both sides. But we need to recognize what's happening. We need to be able to stand up for what is true. And don't pretend that Islam is just another, another faith just like us. We have we have politicians out there that are saying Islam, Jews, and Christians, hey, they all worship the same God. That that is just flat out false. It is not true. We need to recognize that. And we need to be praying that God opens up doors and opportunities for us to engage in the Muslim community. I I don't know how to do that. It's very difficult, right? But we need to be praying for churches who are in places that they can do that. Let's give that a shot. It's going to be hard. But we need to do that. And we also need to recognize listen, there are ideologies right now. Bombarding our country, trying to convince our kids, trying to convince us to embrace ideologies that go against the truth of God. Do not be deceived. Put your trust in the God who gave his life for you. Islam can't even imagine that Christ would have actually been crucified. But he did. He took on all of that sin and shame. He took that upon himself, a holy God. He did that for you so that you could live for him with him for eternity. Do not embrace. The false ideologies, the false religions that are out there that are trying to convince us that, hey, let's all just love each other. Yes, love each other in truth. Care enough to make sure you share the truth that if without Jesus Christ, you will not be saved. It is only through him. It's all about Christ. Hang on to that. Live that, take that light into the world around you. Let's go to him in prayer. His kingdom and love Sing to him.