Jesus is God

What is The Gospel?

I had the opportunity to go to a Missions Conference this past weekend. It was truly awesome. I learned many things, and definitely felt the call of God for my life – which is something that I had probably known for the past seven years. I had never been to a conference, tough 🙂

Ever since I became a Christian, I have enjoyed talking to others about God and how much God loves them. At times, I guess, my family and friends have thought that I am crazy, brain-washed or just a “lost cause”.

But that is what happens when something radical is observed in your life. I was the worst of sinners. I know that is how Paul describes himself… and maybe he was, but I also killed a baby in my womb. And I have a history of sexual immorality that does not make me proud. I had a history… of so many things. But I am not that person anymore. I have no other explanation for the radical change in my life that the fact that I gave my life to follow Christ almost eight years ago.

I would like to encourage you to read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

I understand it might be too long to post it so I won’t, but I will definitely talk about it – even if it’s little by little.

One [Jesus] has died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.

I no longer live for myself, but for the One who died for me. He died for my sake and for everybody’s sake. But you have to believe – you have to trust in His Death and Resurrection. You have to trust that His death takes your sins away. It doesn’t cover them – it wipes them away.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

It is Christ’s death what actually made me have peace with God. It is trusting that God is good, and that He actually wanted to be reconciled with me what made me follow Christ. If you owe someone a huge amount of money, and He himself hands you a ton of cash to pay Him back – wouldn’t you take the money? Wouldn’t you say “Thank you for paying yourself what I actually owe You?”  Why would you be proud and try to pay off a debt that you know you will never be able to repay? God forgave me everything that I rightfully owed Him.

Do you see how I cannot longer live for myself? Do you see how I cannot do anything but to live for Him who died for me?

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come… in Christ God entrusted to us the message of reconciliation.

I am not the woman I was when I was 20 – thank God. And I am not the woman I was when I was 24. My life was radically changed when I trusted Jesus as my Savior. And at times, I forget that God has a purpose for my life, but He never forgets. At times, I don’t trust Him, but He has proven Himself faithful to me. If Jesus died to reconcile me with God… now He trusts me to reconcile the world to Him.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He [God] made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.

Paul implored the Corinthians, I implore you – make peace with God. What is it that you feel you are going to loose? What is it that you feel you will have to give up? If you don’t believe in God, of course, I cannot convince you. I would argue, tough, that the evidence for God is huge. But if you do believe that this life is not all there is, then, what are you waiting for?

Salvation is a free gift from God. Why wouldn’t you take it? Is it because the cost of following Jesus is too much for you? You know, I get it. In all honesty, i never consider the cost of following Him. This Following-Jesus- thing sounded great at the beginning, but then it became hard. It became hard to stop thinking about me all the time, and let the Spirit of God control my anger… It was hard to hold back my tongue, and to be patient, and kind. And you know what? I still mess up… But God knew that, and He still choose to die for me. He still died for you. But you have to make a choice: Will you choose to be reconciled with God through Jesus?

This past weekend, I felt so happy that I had decided to go to the conference. I was completely exhausted after spending my Friday night – and literally all Saturday – talking about Jesus. We were actually joking about having a Jesus overload. There was so much information and even theology given – it blew my mind.

I actually bought a book of one of the speakers – Jackson Wu. His lecture impressed me so much. It was something that I had never listened to before. He basically said that if Jesus did not die then God is a liar. 

God gave a promise to Abraham. God told Abraham that though him all nations would be blessed. Abraham always believed and he was declared righteous because of this. All through Israel’s history, the LORD (YHWH) always saved His people, and it was not because they deserved it, but because of God’s name sake. It was always because of God’s sake – because God promised to bless them.  

So if you fast forward to all the events in the history of Israel – the slavery in Egypt, the exile in Babylon… all until the moment God Himself enters history in the person of Jesus… God has always been in the business of keeping His promises and saving His people – all the nations. So if Jesus (God in the flesh) does not die, then God cannot keep His promise.

Of course, there are a thousand objections if you have other worldview, like if you’re a Jew or a Muslim or whatever. But then, that is a discussion that might have no end until Messiah comes (which at least is something that Jews, Christians and Muslims can partially agree on). Of course, Muslims and Christians would rather say until Messiah comes back.  Again, this is not an apologetic post.

In my life, there have always been two Bible passages that make my heart beat faster, and I have always known that is definitely something God has purposed for my life:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

2 Timothy 4:1,2,5

What exactly does that mean? I don’t know. I don’t think I have been called to be a Pastor. I am of the idea of male leadership in the Church, but I also agree that there were a lot of women that did very important things in the years of the Church in Acts.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Romans 10:1,13-16

I know what this means. It has always been obvious to me or maybe not. I don’t know. But I want to go.

Salvation comes when somebody listens to the good news about God wanting to be reconciled with them. They only have to take action – Repent from their wrong doings, and Trust in the name of Christ.

But how are they gonna call in the name of the Lord Jesus, if they don’t know about Him first? And how will they know if nobody tells them? Somebody has to go and tell them! Somebody has to be sent… I know the Lord Jesus. I wanna go and tell them.

What does that look in my life? I have no idea. I think I will figure that out with my pastors. I am definitely telling my computer right now, ha!

That Romans chapter has so much meat. In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes directly from the Prophet Joel 2:32, “Everyone who calls in the name of the LORD shall be saved”. This is in the mind of Paul, along with other Christians, understood as events described for when the Messiah comes. In the Hebrew Bible, this is a Messianic prophecy. Do you see how LORD is uppercase? That LORD means YHWH.

It is YHWH who saves. But Paul is applying the ability to save to Jesus Himself. People need to hear about Christ in order to be saved. How can Jesus save unless He is more than a mere human being? You see? Jesus is YHWH in the mind of Paul.

But if you think that Paul made up the divinity of Christ, then how can you explain away Acts 2:21, where Peter ends up quoting Joel 2:32 also? This is within the context of believing in Jesus as both Lord and Christ for the forgiveness of sins (verses 36-38). In Peter’s mind the name who saves is Jesus. This points to Jesus’ deity – for who can forgive sins but God?

I will end with my deepest thoughts.

During the conference, it was really humbling to see many people walking forward when an African missionary asked them to respond to God’s call in their lives. I saw people responding to the call of being pastors, and leaders. I saw people answering the call of becoming missionaries. And I cried when people responded to the call of going to places where they know they might die.

You see, these people don’t feel like dying. They do not want to kill or be killed. They don’t gain anything by going to these places – they have everything. They have peace with God already. They have salvation already. They have been reconciled with God. And that is exactly the reason they are going. They want to reconcile others with God.

They want to go because there are people who don’t know about Jesus. And they actually want to tell them – even if it costs them their lives.

You can watch this beautiful video about what the GOSPEL is all about.

YOU were Jesus’ destination when He left heaven 🙂

The Leftovers – INTERMISSION

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A VERY LONG POST. 

I don’t really know if people who read this blog actually click on the links that I have uploaded. In case you don’t, you might want to know that the account of Jesus feeding the five thousand is over in Mark 6:44. If all I wanted to talk about was Jesus feeding a ton of people, it would be over. But it is far from over. If you go back to The Leftovers – Part 2, you can recall Jesus making the disciples get into a boat.

When you open a Bible in the Book of Mark 6:30-44, that section is called Jesus feeds the Five Thousand. But the account of what happens to them in that boat continues in the next section called Jesus walks on water (Mark 6:45-56). I am expanding here because if you are not familiar with Bible reading, you might think that these two sections are completely separated, and that one has nothing to do with the other.

These division of Chapters, Verses and Sections DO NOT exist in the oldest Hebrew Bible and New Testament Greek manuscripts. Actually, the examination of these texts reveals only upper-case letters, no spaces between words while writing, and no punctuation. Sometimes an occasional blank line was inserted to mark the end of a major section, but this was not always done. This constitutes the scripto continua fashion that is typical of non-Biblical manuscripts as well.

Why ancient Greek is written like this, I have no idea, but we have to consider that papyrus was greatly used back then. It was not very expensive so it was a top choice. However, papyrus was also very scarce outside Egypt due to climate destruction, so it makes sense that these manuscripts were written scripto continua to save on papyrus. You would like to squeeze as much text as you could. Manuscripts were copied, by hand, tens of thousands of times, long after the original manuscript had been destroyed. Imagine trying to do that when the words are written in all upper-case letters, with no spaces between words, and no punctuation. If that’s not enough, you’re writing on poor-quality paper with a scratchy reed pen, and using ink you made yourself.

As you can already realize, New Testament scribes DID NOT copy Bible verses, since there was no Bible to start with. What scribes copied were HUMONGOUS amounts of information. They copied strings of letters, one after another, one after another. After a few centuries of that, it’s easy to imagine that the text of the New Testament would no longer bear any relationship to the original. But the fact that copies were being made constantly, by intent scribes under the supervision of careful proofreaders, meant that the text remained fairly fixed. Welcome to the Science of Textual Criticism.

I applaud the division of the Bible into sections, chapters and verses, as it is very helpful for Bible Study and memorization of Scripture. It is definitely easier to ask someone to read John 3:16, than to ask him to open his Bible and find For God so agape-loved the world that…

This New Testament division was developed around A.D. 1227 by Archbishop Stephen Langton, followed later by Jewish Rabbi Nathan in A.D. 1448 for the Hebrew Bible. Beginning with the Geneva Bible in 1555, the chapter and verse divisions have been accepted into nearly all the Bible versions. It is helpful, but it can be devastating, because sometimes you can focus on one single Bible verse without taking into account the whole context of the teaching.

The placement of the chapters and verses were done in a complete ARBITRARY manner. The divisions DO NOT follow any logical or consistent method, DO NOT represent literary units, and DO NOT define the author’s unit of thought. In a word, focusing ONLY in Bible verses rather than whole units within a context can mess up our understanding of the text. A single Bible verse can be manipulated into agreeing with what people want to believe.

 Context is everything.

One cannot single out one verse and discard the other.

Either take it all, or discard it all.  

Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors. And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

– Quran 2:190-191

“Oh, no! You are taking it out of context”, say the Muslims. Of course. Because context is everything, you see.

Dr. Maher Hathout  explains that these verses were applicable to a particular situation. After the migration to Medina and the establishment of the Islamic state, Muslims were concerned with how to defend themselves against aggression from their enemies. The verses mentioned were revealed by Allah to enable them to protect the newly formed state by fighting in self-defense against those who fought them. And that’s it. That verse ONLY applied to that historical context, but unfortunately it is misused by the media when talking about jihad.

Why am I going to great lengths to study these divisions and contexts? Because it relates to the concept of Bible Corruption that Muslims love to bring about. I will focus on five Bible verses for now, but then I will expand from there. Let us take, for example, John 14, verses 13 and 14.

And I [Jesus] will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

– John 14:13-14

These verses, according to Muslim interpretation, are a good example of the corruption the real gospel of Jesus – the Injil – underwent. When was it corrupted? They don’t know. Who corrupted it? They don’t know. The Christians did it – in general. The logic behind the subject of corruption is that these verses contradict the Quran. Why are they in contradiction with the Quran? It you read carefully, it is clear that Jesus is telling His disciples that they can pray TO Him, and that He himself will answer those prayers.

In the original language of the manuscripts, Jesus is saying something like this:

Whatever you might ask in the name of ME, this I will do (verse 13). If anything you ask ME, in the name of ME, I [from greek EGO→First person pronoun] will do it (verse 14).

– Jesus (John 14:13-14)

Jewish Jesus is elevating himself  to God-like status. His disciples can actually pray TO Him and He will answer those prayers. But Muslim Jesus would never do such a thing. Muslims will never dare to pray TO anybody other than Allah. They definitely do not pray to Prophet Muhammad. Praying TO Jesus, TO Mary, TO an ancestor or TO an idol is considered shirk, the unforgivable sin in Islam. You are associating partners with Allah. Once we grasp this, it makes sense now why Muslims consider Christians to be polytheists. The Theology of The Trinity presents a challenge to the Theology of Tawhid (where God is ONLY One). The Theology of the Trinity basically explains how God is God, how Jesus is God, and how the Holy Spirit is God. But Muslims interpret that as 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 gods.

I personally worship One and Only One God. One day I will get to the Trinity – God willing. You might be surprised to know, though, that there are Muslims who are all about Jesus is God. That affirmation does not freak them out as much as saying God is Jesus. Believe me, it is not the same. But as far as verses 13 and 14, they cannot be accepted by a Muslim as authentic. Let’s explore the verses that follow after that.

If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

– John 14:15-17

I had already mentioned before that this Advocate, according to Muslims, is Prophet Mohammad. The world definitely saw and knew Prophet Muhammad. Muslims say he lives with them through Quran, Sunnah and hadith. I wonder if they will say Prophet Muhammad lives in them. Actually, the preposition for in, is ἐν, and it can be translated as on, in or among. So I guess I have to be fair to Prophet Muhammad as He could be that Messenger. But then, I also have to be fair to Jesus, as He can also live IN through the Holy Spirit.  Mostly, as of right now, I have to be fair to my God-given intelligence.

The Bible was not intended to be read in bits and pieces. You cannot pick and choose the verses you like. At least not if you want to be consistent. These five verses (John 14:13-17) are contained within the Upper Room Speech (John 14-John 17) – a series of instructions and comforting words Jesus spoke to His disciples before He gets arrested.

I have heard Zakir Naik agreeing with Jesus being the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6). All within the same context of the Upper Room. And Zakir loves context. But then, he twists that context into saying that Moses was also the way, the truth, and the life in Moses’ time. Muslims not only agree, but also believe that Prophet Muhammad is the way, the truth and the life for this generation. Muslims believe that following Prophet Muhammad will grant them paradise.

What happened then to the scale of good deeds versus bad deeds? Why is it unfair of me to think that Jesus can give me salvation? Is it not unfair of them to think that Prophet Muhammad can give them salvation as well?

It is beyond question that the Christian Western societies thrive on sex. The Jews and Christians in the West have caused so much mischief and misled so many innocent and pure Believers into grave sins. Their life styles and core beliefs are far more dangerous than all of the porn sites combined out there.  The bikinis that their women wear in the summer on the beaches, the virginity that they lose at early teenage years, the open sex between “boy friends and girl friends” without marriage, the inappropriate cloths that both their men and women wear, the ridiculous daily songs and the foul words that they contain, the liquor and getting drunk that they thrive on, all combined build nothing but an evil satan-worshiping society. 

– An angry Muslim

It is sad this is what the average Muslim on the web might think of me. But you see, I cannot pick and choose what Quran or Bible verses I like, or what hadiths I like, and discard the rest. If I become a Muslim, I take all that Quran says, and all that Prophet Muhammad said, or else, I’d better not become a Muslim.  

In John 15:12–13, Jesus said, “My command is this: [Agape] Love each other as I have [agape] loved you. Greater [agape] love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. And how did Jesus love? He gave His life. But once again, this is corrupted. When it comes again to the Advocate in John 15:26, it is not corrupted. Prophet Muhammad actually has all the verses in John 16:7-15 talking about Him as the Advocate again. But John 16:23–24, where Jesus tells the disciples AGAIN that they can pray in His name, is corrupted.

But you see, all these verses and divisions are ALL within the SAME CONTEXT: The Upper Room Speech.

I have to take either the whole speech as TRUE or the whole speech as FALSE – I cannot twist the speech to my satisfaction. If the whole speech is false, then I cannot pray TO Jesus, and Prophet Muhammad is NOT the messenger. If the whole speech is true, then I can pray TO Jesus, and the Spirit of Truth is Prophet Muhammad. But those are conflicting arguments. Either Jesus is encouraging me to commit shirk by praying to Him OR Prophet Muhammad is a false prophet/teacher like the ones Jesus warned about.

If I were a Muslim scholar, I would take the whole speech unit as false rather than coming up with conspiracy theories on scribes foreshadowing exactly what strings of letters they had to corrupt in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Are Muslim scholars asking me to logically consider the possibility that all the scribes knew exactly what to corrupt? Are they seriously implying that after those scribes were dead, or replaced, the scribes who kept on producing more copies of the same manuscripts also knew exactly what to corrupt? They were the same manuscripts, but still, more people copying might mean more corruption. And what about the manuscripts in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and other languages? Did the scribes get in touch with each other to organize the corruption of the same string of letters at the same time? What about the scribes in different cities? Did they travel for miles on foot in order to plot all this?

Almost all Biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century. If Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30. (let’s say He didn’t die, and Allah placed Judas on the cross as Muslims say) that means the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were written – people who could have objected the corruption. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, there were plenty of good Muslims who would have pointed out that these copies were in contradiction with the original Injil that God gave Jesus. They would have started a revolution because scribes were altering the actual message of Islam Jesus preached.

If I were a Muslim, how could I ever trust any Bible prophecy about Prophet Muhammad if I cannot even trust the whole paragraph? If I cannot trust a whole division, and the divisions that constitute whole teachings of Jesus, why would I trust a single Bible verse?

I am not buying the corruption conspiracy. As Zakir said, context is everything. One cannot single one verse out and discard the other. Either take it all, or discard it all. If Muslims want to read the New Testament, I would encourage them to do it. Start with the Book of Mark – the least corrupted, according to Shabir Ally. After all, I did open a Quran (which I am still reading) because I love my Muslims.

If you, as a Muslim, are really submitting to Allah’s will, then you have definitely nothing to lose and absolutely nothing to fear. But please, be consistent in your thinking. Allah will guide us all, In shaa Allah.

And Allah knows best.