Part Six: The Gospel, Al Injil
What is the Gospel, Al Injil? It is very evident that the (Christian) Gospel has been counterfeited as much as any other truth of the Holy Bible. Muhammed felt very urgent about presenting an injil, or gospel, to his followers, while he rejected the Gospel in the Bible. It is very clear that he got this compulsion from his very sparse knowledge of the New Testament of the Bible, from the Jews in Arabia, and from the little he gleaned from the Hanifs and his paganized Arab neighbors. Not all "Christian" Gospel is genuine. If we watch the television evangelists, we come to the conclusion that the Gospel is very profitable. But these men are not giving the Gospel. The Bible says in II Peter 2:3, And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. Can you not tell from their styled hair and Hollywood dress (or undress in the case of their wives) that these false "evangelists" are the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived such a simple and holy life? The Apostle Peter says they are all bound for hell, so I suggest that you completely ignore them. Specifically, ignore ALL so-called evangelists and pastors on Trinity Broadcast Network, the 700 Club, and all those who have no local church to which they are responsible. There are also these hucksters of the "Gospel" who give us to believe that Christ has called us to shoot our enemies. Such are the Catholic priests and raging preachers of Northern Ireland and Opus Dei, as well as many right-wing Arian Race American Christians, and we see this in some of the churches in England. They present an American or British Jesus. What a shock they will get when they find a Jew sitting on the throne in heaven! The Australians have a saying, "She'll be right, mate." This means that things have a way of righting themselves by good luck. Well, I can assure you that things will soon be righted by The Lord Jesus Christ, and it will not be by random good luck-- it will be done on purpose. Anyone who has not heard and received the Gospel, or Injil, of Jesus Christ will be totally unprepared to meet Him as judge. Another approach to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the alleged Injil of Islam, is to simply run them both together under the flag of "understanding" and contextualization. Here is this formula as defined by His Royal Highness Prince Charles of Great Britain,
(Source: SURVEY OF CURRENT AFFAIRS, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, Vol. 23, No. 11, November, 1993) Read a speech generated by the mongrel mind of Prince Charles Page 290 It is amazing to hear the future "defender of the Christian Faith" talk of Christianity having lost something that only Islam can again provide. Even more interesting is Prince Charles' notion that anything which separates Islam from Christianity is "poison." I count it a great honor to be part of this "poison," as defined by the Royal family of Great Britain, and I intend to lay all sorts of "suspicion and fear" on those who would follow a demented prophet, who thought the devil slept up his nose last evening! The real problem with His Highness' low down concept, of "understanding" and oneness between Islam and Christianity, is that he must throw the Gospel of the Bible AND the Injil of Islam into the trash bin, because both are mutually exclusive, as defined by Christ and Muhammed. So we shall have to leave the unity of religions to gullible royalty, mellow Mullahs, and the hucksters of Vatican II. "Unity" was the hall mark of John Paul's "New Protocol of Salvation." We on the Narrow Way dare to look at the eternal Gospel as given by The Lord Jesus Christ, and keep it unique and life saving. May the "unity" of Tich Chuck and the Vatican be damned. To my Muslim reader, thank you for reading this far. It must have been a hard book to read. But, I shall now give you the Good News, as it is presented in the Bible, and I pray that you will receive it with joy, as I did many years ago. Kindly forgive me, but I have a brief warning to give to Middle Eastern Christians in the next chapter, then we will get on to the Gospel, Al Injil ya Yitha, in Chapter Twenty Six. Page 291
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE:A Warning to Middle Eastern ChristiansCAN I GO TO HEAVEN THE ORTHODOX WAY?In this section I want to speak to you of the Middle East who reject Islam, yet you cling to the heritage of the Orthodox churches. Are you in a right relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ if you mouth some correct words from Christian doctrine and the Bible? If you leave the use of the name "Allah" and call Jesus "Yitha," or "Yeshua," is this not enough? After all, do you not have this ancient Christian heritage which has been handed down continuously from the very day of Christ? The dictionary definition of the word "Orthodox" is, "Sound and correct in opinion and doctrine, especially religious doctrine." We shall accept this definition, and we shall look at some of the doctrine of the Orthodox churches. For this discussion we include the churches in the Middle East and Greece known as the Greek Orthodox Church, the Eastern Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Orthodox Church, the Armanian Church, and the Coptic churches of Egypt and Ethiopia. All of these churches have their assemblies in the United States and in Europe, as well as in the Middle East. We might commend the Greek Orthodox Church for not entering into all of the blasphemies of the Roman Catholic Church. For example, they allow their priests to marry, thus preventing the ongoing picture of fornicating and child molesting priests, which we see in the Roman picture. Also, the Orthodox churches in some countries have allowed Bible preaching evangelists to roam free, declaring the teachings of the Bible. One such fellow preached the true Gospel in Ethiopia, while most of the Coptic church there hid the Gospel behind copious traditions and ceremonies. Most of all, we must be grateful to the Orthodox priests of Constantinople who fled from the Muslim invasion in 1453 AD. These Orthodox monks did two things which I find worthy of praise. First, they did not gather their possessions and trinkets to take with them, as many people would today. They gathered up all of the Greek manuscripts of the eastern Syriac and Byzantine families of texts, and they fled to Europe. Page 292 Secondly, they deposited these texts in the universities of Europe, rather than in the basement of the Vatican. Praise God, for this made it possible for Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, and Erasmus to find these faithful manuscripts of the Bible. They were kept away from the Alexandrian cultists in Rome, and it is this distinction which still rages as the King James Version stands on the one hand, and the Vatican texts stand on the other, undergirding virtually all of the other perverted English texts. Thank God for the zeal of those Greek monks for eagerly preserving the Holy Word of God. It will be a sad thing to arrive in heaven and find that any of these monks failed to precede their zeal for the Bible with faith in the Savior of the Bible. You see, rescuing manuscripts will not save a man from eternal fire. I now turn to the book, Introducing the Orthodox Church, by Anthony M. Coniarnis. Let me give you a quote from an Orthodox bishop. He was asked, "Have you been saved?" His answer is very good on the surface, "I was saved on a Friday afternoon at three o'clock, in the spring of the year 33 AD, on a hillside outside of Jerusalem." He agrees with the prophet who said in Isaiah 53:5, But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. This Greek bishop's answer has a ring of truth to it. Now let us see how the Orthodox bishop personally applied that to his life by a further quote from the book mentioned. "That is when we were saved, but God will not force this salvation upon us. We must-- each of us-- accept it personally as the great gift of God's love." That is even better. Now the Orthodox Church calls the present day sinner to appropriate the salvation in Christ. But what act is required of a potential convert, according to Orthodox teaching? The answer, "We were saved in baptism which is our personal Golgotha." Blasphemy! Listen to Ephesians 2:8, For by grace are ye saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: There is no baptism in this verse. Baptism is a "work" of a believer who has previously been saved by his faith alone. The works come AFTER the faith in Christ, and only then can he do anything "good." Furthermore, the bishop's statement above damns him. It is clear that the Orthodox church teaches that we must each accept the gift of salvation personally. Yet they baptize their converts while they are still babies. How can a baby make a rational choice toward his salvation? The bishop has sabotaged his own Gospel by administering baptism to the unknowing-- the baby sinner who has not a clue what is happening to him. In Ethiopia, in the church courtyard, they plunge the baby beneath the water in a green algae-infested pool beside the church. Does this baby know he is receiving the gift of salvation by faith? Of course not! He only knows that he just got very cold, he was nearly drowned, and he screams for his mother. So Orthodox salvation is a damning works-salvation, which is alien to the New Testament. Page 293 When the Eunuch in Acts 8 was being assisted in the study of the Word in the Gaza desert, Philip made two things very clear. Acts 8:35, Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. We can see that the Orthodox church agrees with Philip's first step in witness. They also see Christ as central to the Gospel. But, in denying the following text, the Orthodox Church (and the publishers of most modern Bible versions) cease to be biblically orthodox!
Acts 8:36, And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and
the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?
My dear Orthodox and Coptic friends, you must see that baptism FOLLOWS salvation-- baltism is not part of your salvation. Salvation is acquired as a gift from God when you show the act of the will through faith in Jesus Christ, without any works. Philip would not baptize the Eunuch until AFTER he had given a clear confession of faith in Jesus Christ. If you are trusting your baptism to get you to heaven, well, I am sorry to tell you, but you are bound straight to hell. How could you choose Christ as your Savior BEFORE they dribbled water on your head when you were a baby? Such "salvation" is nonsense and sub-christian. It is only through the Lord Jesus Christ By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:2). If water saved us, then every drunk who fell into the river, on his way home, would be in heaven ahead of us, right? Please read the Chapter Twenty Six on the Gospel, Al Injil, and reconsider your soul's destiny. I would dearly love to find that when we get to heaven, you are there. But you have to repent of your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, His death and resurrection for you, without doing anything "good" to save yourself, or you are lost. My Greek friend, M______ Poulos, saw this, and he realized that he was not a Christian at all, that is, a Christian by faith alone in Jesus Christ. He took that step of faith, and now he works, not FOR his salvation, but he works for his Lord out of sheer love and devotion. This is not the way of the Orthodox church. Brother Poulos soon saw that there was much hypocrisy in the Orthodox system. I shall mention only one example. Brother Poulos told me that the Orthodox church forbid the "veneration" of idols or statues, as is common in the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, he reports that the Orthodox priests encourage the making of pictures of saints and Mary. These framed pictures are then built up in relief until there is, in fact, almost half an idol of Mary protruding from the picture. Come now, is God mocked or fooled by this? Is worshipping half a Mary in Athens any different than worshipping a whole idol of Mary in Rome? Please stop trusting in your works and rituals. Turn only to Jesus in faith alone, and He will receive you as His child.
Page 294 I WALKED WHERE JESUS WALKED--DOESN'T THAT COUNT?The answer is, "NO." Judas walked where Jesus walked, and he is in hell right now screaming for water. Michail Gorbachev walked along the sea of Galilee, and said, "I have followed the steps of Jesus, the first socialist." Does that save him? Not if he refuses to publicly repent of his sin and be born again into the true Church of our Lord in a public testimony. Pope John Paul II walked around the holy sites of Israel. Again, trotting around Jacob's well, or gazing at Golgotha, will not make him like Jesus. John Paul II still dressed like a pompous Nicolaitan and lived a life vastly unlike my Jesus. Witness his puerile practice of encouraging his followers to kiss his toe. A Palestinian told me that he swung from the same olive tree that Jesus swung from. Maybe he did, and I admit, that would give a true Christian a real thrill, but it won't do a thing to get the man into heaven. The Bible teaches us how to get next to Jesus in a soul-saving way as we read His words in Matthew 11:29, Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So, how do we get into that yoke with Jesus? It is by our act of faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot inherit salvation from our parents, our nationality, or a church, nor can we acquire salvation by having it rub off on us in some physical journey through the hills of Palestine. We read in John 6:35, And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Coming TO Jesus for spiritual things will bring you into the yoke with Him. Do you want to satisfy that "hunger" and "thirst" in your soul? Jesus said that it is only in His death for you that you have hope, as He said in John 12:32, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. Page 295 If you have trusted in your Palestinian proximity to Christ's homeland, your Catholic heritage, or the works you have done, then you are in great peril. It is the PERSON of Christ that is your salvation. Acts 4:12, Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. You are a Gentile if you are not a Jew, so you cannot claim any spiritual heritage in Israel. Even a Jew today must come by Christ, the same way, to receive this salvation. Your heritage has to be made new in Christ, but the Apostle Paul says this is waiting for you in Romans 3:29, Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: What is the act that saves men from hell and starts them on the road to heaven with hope of eternal life? The Apostle Paul says that it is FAITH in Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1, Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: But you will have to do this on purpose. So, did they dribble some water on you as a baby in the Catholic or Orthodox church. And did you take a sip of wine which a priest lifted up in the air, while mumbling some magical religious words? Did it taste like blood? Did the wafer taste like flesh? My friend, are you willing to risk your eternal destiny for something your good mind tells you is not true? Can you really eat Jesus and go to heaven? Isaiah said in Isaiah 1:18, Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. It is time to use reason. Why should God have mercy on you if you refuse to follow His plan for your salvation? There is no salvation until we go after it with our whole soul and mind, and we have to speak of our faith, or it is not real. Romans 10:9, That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. No baptism, no chalice of wine, and no wafer to eat! The reason that some Middle Eastern and Orthodox Christians are not living in Christian victory is because they are not willing to leave large denominations like the Orthodox churches, the Armenian Church, and the Coptic Church, or the big denominations in America and England. They are not taught church history. They do not realize that the true Church of Jesus Christ met in homes and barns for 1500 years. The average size of a church in America is 70 people. In England the true believers meet in homes and row houses, and in Amsterdam, all of the big city churches are closed, and the true church meets in apartments in the suburbs. Will you let the comfort and cultural security of big stone churches, with their silver and gold gongs and trinkets, by your security and hope? Page 296 Is this serious? Yes, very! If you do not openly repent of your sin, and confess your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you remain the enemy of Christ, and you will go to hell when you die, in spite of the fact that you may have walked the same paths He walked in Palestine. Colossians 1:20, And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. 21 And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. Please do not put this off. You must come into the yoke with Jesus on his terms. Many Catholic, Coptic, and Orthodox Christians have struggled with this because they know that the Bible requires them to love their enemies. They know that if they openly stand forth and confess Christ by true faith, denying their own works, they will then have to love the Jews, because the Bible commands us to love our enemies. This alone shows the gross failure of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the Middle East. They cannot make men love their enemies, so they permit them to keep the centuries of hatred for the Jews. Northern Ireland, Croatia, and Palestine are also abundant illustrations of the hate that false churches allow in their "faithful." If you take refuge in the Roman or Orthodox Churches, and share their hate now, you will burn in hell forever with the very Jews who have tormented you, for they also reject Jesus. Think about that. I am waiting to hear from you. I suggest you kill these old moldy desires in your spirit, throw them away, and get a new mind by faith in The Lord Jesus Christ. Declare this openly so that you and your family will be known to the saints as new in Christ. Learn to be content with a small group of believers who are plain and distinct about sin and salvation. Find a group of Christians who insist on just one Bible-- The King James Bible, and if they use the Arabic Bible, be sure it is the Van Dyke, or old Arabic Bible. There is no power in a mere cultural religion, and I have met a good number of Middle Eastern Christians who could assure you that the new life is worth finding!
Page 297 DISCARD ALLAH AT ONCEWe have already talked about this, but I must stress the urgency of this blasphemous name. God was merciful until you read this book. If you still have doubts, call or write me. I shall send you plenty of bibliographical material so that you may study it for yourself. I have saved a powerful quote for you. It comes from James Hastings in his Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol 1, p. 664,
Hastings goes on to show that the IL and ILAH formations came much later. This means that EL was used by Arabs at one time as the name of God. This would be verified in the Bible, where the father of the Arabs, Ishmael, was given a name with the name of God, EL, in it. Ish-ma-EL means, "God sees a man." God looked on Ishmael in mercy and made promises to his descendents. God would NOT do this and then call this man "Ish-ma-Allah"! In Al Koran, Sura 22:37, we read, "It is not their (animal's) meat, Nor their blood, that reaches Allah: it is your piety that reaches him..." This Allah and his prophet, Muhammed, have ruled out the blood of animals to atone for sin. That sounds like the Bible's teaching, but when we realize that Muhammed also ruled out the Blood of Jesus for our atonement, then we know that Muhammed and Allah are in league with Satan and all of the other false religions. They reject the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins of man. There are two brothers from Egypt who live in Florida, and they help the Christians in Egypt to give the Gospel to Muslims and unconverted Coptics there. Brother W. had heard of my work on this book in its early stages, and that I was looking into the heritage of Allah. He called me one day, and he asked what I had learned about Allah's pagan origin from ancient Sumer and Babylon. Brother W. was very upset. He was not angry, but he was obviously frustrated. He said, "Dear brother Stephen, I have prayed to Allah since I was a small boy. Do you realize how hard this is to consider? Are you sure you really need to pursue this issue?" I told him, as kindly as I could, that I felt the Lord was pressing me into this work, and that I had a massive research on the subject. But, to tell you the truth, after I hung up the phone, I felt terrible. I asked myself how it would feel to have the name of "God" taken from my mouth and declared to be a vulgar word. I knew I had to go on, but I realized, very keenly, how this book would wound many Middle Eastern Christians. Perhaps you are one. Several weeks passed, and brother W. called me again. There was a strange sense of quiet and serious resignation in his voice. He told me that his brother had gone to New York City, and, while there, he had raised the question of the name of Allah in the Arab church fellowships. He reported that a number of Arab Christian fellowships, and leaders of the churches, were becoming very exercised over the name of Allah. Brother W. said this seemed to be coming from the Holy Spirit who was putting questions in their minds. Then brother W. said in a quiet but intense voice, "Brother Stephen, you must finish this book. I believe you are finding the truth, and we must be willing to face the possibility that Allah is not the name of God." Page 198 I was very moved by this dear brother's willingness to be cleansed of the name of Allah. In fact, he later called me to ask permission to use another Arab name for God, until the book was finished. He is waiting for another name chosen from the Bible. I was moved by his submission to me in Christ. I am not an Arab, I am not an expert in Arabic, and I am his junior humanly speaking. Yet, he sensed the work was of the Lord, so he already wanted to be clean, in his mouth, before God. My dear beloved friend, I told you this story to show you that there are Bible believing saints from the Middle East who are already responding to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I used to buy petrol from an Arab in Tucson, Arizona some years ago. I had heard about him from other Arabs in an Arab grocery store. When I greeted him, Salaam Alecham, he at once corrected me. He asked, "Are you a Christian?" I told him that I was. He then told me that the Christians in Lebanon, his homeland, greeted with the words, "Salaam Aychum." This was done intentionally to drop Allah from the greeting. Now, can you see that the name of Allah is being cleansed from the mouths of true Christians all around the world. The Spirit of God is crying out against the name, Allah. Regarding the name Isa, if you did not read Chapter Twenty Two,"Things to Do and Not Do," Sub-topic: "Don't Call Jesus Isa," then you must read that section carefully. The Arab name for Jesus is Yitha, and the inscriptions in stone in Saba and North Arabia verify this. Muhammed imported a vile name, Isa, from either Syria or India, and again, Satan succeeded in putting a blasphemous name into the mouth of Middle Eastern Christians. Is this as serious as calling Jehovah by the the name, Allah? That is the same as asking, "Is a little arsenic not as bad as a lot of arsenic?" My father used to wash my mouth out with soap when I said a dirty word. How does our Father in heaven feel when we call Him, or Jesus, by such dirty names. Please covenant with God today to cleanse yourself, and tell others in your circle of friends about this. I Peter 4:8, And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. It is very loving to cover sins, but they must be exposed, covered by confession, and then abandoned. Perhaps the name Yitha sounds too foreign to your mind. Then, you may call Jesus by his Jewish name, Yeshua. Your reverence for him must be higher than your feelings about Jews and Hebrew. Jesus is not ashamed to be a Jew, and you must not be ashamed that he is a Jew with a Jewish name.
Page 299 FIREWOOD FOR HELLOR CANDIDATES FOR HEAVEN?We close with a very stern warning. In 1938 there were only 25,000 Muslims in the United States. Today there are over 3,000,000. There are some mindless folk, in the Middle Eastern churches, who claim to be Christians, yet they have this saying about Muslims, "God made so many Muslims so that there would be plenty of firewood for Hell." I think these small souls might get along very well with most of our Reformed church pastors today. They have a doctrine (not found in the Bible) that God needs to keep Hell filling up to glorify Himself. This is a sick doctrine, I say. The Bible says in II Peter 3:9, The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is time for Middle Eastern Christians to act like they truly believe the Word of Jesus, who sent every Christian to give the Gospel to every sinner. If you refuse to witness to these Muslim people, you are in essence saying to them, "Go to Hell." It is bad enough that many of our American and British pastors have polarized and turned their hate on the Arabs. If you Middle Eastern Christians do the same, who will give the Gospel to these one billion Muslims in the world? No one understands a Muslim better than a Middle Eastern Christian. YOU are God's witness to them. We need tracts and preaching tapes in Arabic, not promoting your latest notions on tongues and faith healing, rather; we need testimonies to the power of God to change lives. We need to hear from Muslims who have been soundly converted. Where are the converted Muslims in "Arab churches?" All of such churches I know of in Detroit, New York City, and elsewhere, are only reaching out to Coptic, Orthodox, and Catholic Middle eastern people. They make little or no effort to reach Muslims who are their way to burn in hell. How sad! Every day thousands of Muslims around the world die and wake up in Hell with their souls on fire and scream for water. Could you have told one of them about Jesus? Would you today-- just one? Romans 13:11, And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep... Page 300
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