Galations #12

[0:00] In case anybody is interested, we have a few CDs of previous Thursday morning sessions. We don't have last Thursday, but we've got some before that. Feel free to pick up one according to the date if you're interested in it.

[0:14] Of course, they are free, and you help yourself to them. Last week, one of the questions surfaced regarding Islam, and I told you I would bring a Koran this morning, and we'll just pass it around.

[0:30] In fact, the particular place that I'm going to quote is where the book has a bookmark in it, so you are free to look at it and see the text for yourself.

[0:43] We'll just pass this around. You can glance it over if you would. I'm happy to say I did not shell out good money to buy this book.

[0:54] It was given to me, so I wouldn't invest the money in it, because for obvious reasons. Anyway, in Koran, the second surah, the Koran does not use the term chapter like we use in our Bible.

[1:12] They use the word surah, S-U-R-A, and of course it goes back to the Arabic. And all surah means in Arabic is that it's their expression for chapter means the same thing.

[1:24] And then they give the verse that is involved, and it is in Koran 2 and verses 190 through 193 that refers to killing your enemies and slay them where you find them.

[1:42] And other aspects that are involved in Islam are, of course, found throughout the book. And it is a very laborious reading.

[1:53] It was difficult plowing through it. One of the things that greatly distinguishes Islam from Christianity is the refusal of Islam to recognize the freedom of conscience.

[2:09] They do not believe that human beings are entitled to that. And what I mean by that is simply this. When God created us, he created us with a volition.

[2:22] That is a will. We have a decider. We are able to make decisions, moral decisions. We have an innate knowledge of right and wrong, and Romans chapter 1 makes it quite clear that God has built that into us.

[2:39] It involves the conscience but is not limited to that. And we are given a volition by God. That means we are a free moral agent.

[2:49] It means if we do something right, we are responsible for that. If we do something wrong, we are responsible for that. The whole idea of a volition is that it provides the Creator with a basis for evaluating and judging human beings.

[3:09] If we did not have a will, then we would not have any responsibility. But we do have a will, and we are responsible to God for how we use it. This means that even when it comes to the area of accepting the existence of God and the Word of God and believing in the message of the Word of God, which centers around the person of Jesus Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection, we are provided with that information.

[3:39] God has given it to us in His Word. And yet, at the same time, while God makes it quite clear we are disobedient, if we do not respond to that in a positive way, we don't have to.

[3:54] We have that volition intact. You can, as a moral being, you can fully reject the claims of God and of the person of Christ, who He is, why He came, what He did, and why it matters.

[4:10] You can reject all of that if you choose. You've got the ability to do that. That's what the volition is all about. We, as believers who have come to this truth, we beseech people, we plead with people, we invite people to come to faith in Jesus Christ, and we encourage them to do so, and we warn them what will happen if they do not.

[4:35] But, we do not have the liberty, nor the right, to impose our will upon them and force them, or try to force them to believe, or intimidate them to believe, or threaten them.

[4:52] That is not our prerogative. We must respect each individual's conscience before God. That is, they have the ability to believe or not believe.

[5:02] We want them to believe. We teach in such a way that they will believe. We warn them what will happen if they don't believe. But the decision is theirs. Entirely.

[5:14] In Islam, that recognition is not there. You do not have the freedom to reject the divine provision.

[5:27] You must accept it. And if you do not accept it, you are labeled as an infidel. That is, an unbeliever. And you become fair game for anyone who is a Muslim.

[5:39] They actually can and will take your life as an infidel. That is what this ISIS thing is all about. And what these Muslims are doing, going through Iraq as they are, and creating the havoc they are, beheading people as they go, murdering people, they are doing that in what they believe is obedience to Allah.

[6:08] Because the Quran makes it quite clear that when the truth of Islam is presented, people do have options.

[6:19] They may accept it and become a Muslim. And you do that by simply reciting the Shahada. There is, Allah is the only true God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

[6:30] That makes you a Muslim. Assuming that you do it with a, with a hard attitude and a right spirit. And if you refuse to do that, then you have one option.

[6:40] If you are in a land which is dominated by Islam, the option is you will pay a fine. It is an ongoing fine. They will assess different fines to you as an infidel, and you will have to pay them.

[6:55] If you refuse to pay them, then you have to leave the country. If you will not leave the country, the only option is to execute you. And this is what goes on in many of these countries, even today, even as we speak.

[7:07] So, they do not recognize the freedom of conscience. You do not have the right, not to believe. And you can be, and will be, under the right circumstances, executed for not believing.

[7:20] So, that is one essential difference, in that they do not recognize the freedom of conscience. We place a great deal of importance on that. And not only, not only religiously, but politically.

[7:35] It is, it is an axiom here in the United States, and it couples in with the freedom of speech. It is a freedom of belief, freedom of religion, or no religion. We are committed to the principle of fighting and contending for your right not to believe.

[7:56] You have that freedom. We don't recommend it, but we will fight for it, because that's part and parcel of what this country is all about. And let me just say this. I believe that, under God, this is the principal reason why this nation has risen to the height that it has.

[8:14] It's because of the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here, that are so foreign throughout much of the rest of the world. And that's the thing that has enabled this country to become what it has.

[8:27] And even now, it is in jeopardy. Did I see a question or comment? Roger? How do we understand the Sunnis and the Shiites fighting each other then? They're both Muslims.

[8:39] Yeah, well, the Sunnis and the Shiites, these are two different camps of Islam. And what the big rhubarb is about has to do with the succession to Muhammad.

[8:50] And there are two different camps, of course, as we mentioned, the Sunni, S-U-N-N-I, and the Shiite, S-H-I-I-T-E, Shiite. And the one group believes, and these are the Sunni, about 80% of the Muslim world is made up of Sunni.

[9:12] And they believe that the rightful successor to Muhammad was actually a council, a group of men who took over the reins of Islam when Muhammad died.

[9:30] The Shiites, that represent about 20% of Muslims worldwide, believe that it was a nephew of Muhammad that was to have been the rightful successor.

[9:45] And these two groups have squared off ever since the 8th century. So they've been going at this conflict for several hundred years. It is safe to say that neither group regards the other as genuine Muslims.

[10:07] In other words, the Shiites see the Sunnis as infidels. The Sunnis see the Shiites as infidels.

[10:18] They are not legitimate Muslims. And this is the way that they can wantonly kill each other because they consider the other an infidel. And an infidel simply means one who does not have faith.

[10:31] So to a Shiite, if you are a Sunni, you do not have the true faith of Islam. So you are fair game. And of course, it is just vice versa.

[10:43] So this has gone on for a long time. And not only that, but when these people engage in jihad by taking the Quran literally, they have no difficulty at all, even among Sunnis, of killing other Sunnis if it is done in the name of Allah and if it is done to further Islam.

[11:08] For instance, a Sunni or a Shiite, either one, can go into a crowded marketplace wearing a suicide vest that is going to explode, kill themselves, and 30 other people, most of whom will be Muslims of one stripe or another.

[11:31] But it doesn't matter because even if you kill a bunch of so-called innocent people, if you are doing it to further Islam, that's okay.

[11:42] And then, as a martyr, you are rewarded with a guarantee of paradise, all of your sins forgiven, and you will be with Allah, and so on. And by the way, I do not know, and I did not find this in the Koran.

[11:57] If somebody else can find it, more power to them, but I don't think that it's there. The idea that if you die to further Islam as a martyr, you are guaranteed sins forgiven, and you are guaranteed the 42 dark-eyed virgins to satisfy your sexual pleasure in the garden with all of the fruits and wonderful things like that.

[12:18] I don't know that that's anywhere in the Koran. I haven't been able to find it, but, this is what the imams are teaching and preaching in many of the mosques throughout the world.

[12:30] And people believe this stuff, because these men are positioned as so-called experts and official communicators of the Islamic faith, and these people believe this stuff.

[12:46] They take it at face value, and they carry out these terrible, terrible schemes. Dan? Are mostly the rank and file of these tribes uneducated that are being manipulated by those who are?

[13:01] Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's a lack of education, a lack of... a lot of them, a lot of them, a lot of them, and this is another issue, but it all ties in together.

[13:13] It's all part of a curious dynamic. And uneducated people are relatively easy to control. Don't let them learn to read and write, and you can control them a lot more easily.

[13:26] Why do you think they called the Dark Ages the Dark Ages? It was the Dark Ages intellectually, because essentially the clergy, as vested in the Roman Catholic Church as it existed at that time, was the only educated group.

[13:44] The only ones who were really reading and writing were in that religious position, and the others were discouraged from reading. Matter of fact, to tie this in and bring it up a little closer home, I can well remember reading accounts about it being a crime in the South to teach a black slave to read and write.

[14:11] It was considered a crime. You don't do that, because an educated people start thinking for themselves, and the next thing you know, you're going to have a revolt or a rebellion on your hands when people learn some of the things that they really need to know.

[14:28] So the idea is keep them dumb, keep them in the dark, and you can control them. That's always been the way it has been for a long, long time. So, Dana?

[14:39] With the Koran, I understand that the first five books of the Bible are in the Trinity. of the Koran. I was wondering, are there Ten Commandments in the Koran?

[14:51] Do you know? I can't recall right offhand. It's very possible that they either are or their equivalent is. And they, Muslim theology is quite bizarre.

[15:06] For instance, they accept Jesus as a prophet. And he is found in the Koran. And they believe Jesus was a prophet. But, they don't believe that he died on the cross.

[15:16] They believe that somehow there was a substitute switched, and Jesus didn't die on the cross. Therefore, of course, there was no resurrection. And they've got some pretty bizarre ideas regarding the person of Christ.

[15:30] And one thing that they are really anathema on, and that is the idea that Allah has a companion. The way they view Christianity, and what Christians portray as the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, they view our concept of the Trinity as suggesting that God the Father had sex with Mary, the mother of our Lord, and that Jesus was born as a result of that.

[16:04] Well, I don't know any Christian that believes that. I don't know any Christian that ever did believe that. We do believe that the Spirit of God, in a way we don't understand, did impregnate the womb of the Virgin Mary with a holy seed.

[16:25] And that holy seed, uncontaminated, came forth as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so that He was God in the flesh. But insofar as the deity having sex with humanity, the Virgin Mary, that's preposterous, and like I said, I don't know of any Christian, Catholic, or Protestant that believes that for a moment.

[16:47] But we do believe in the virgin birth. And we believe that that is the principal way that Jesus Christ avoided being born with a sin nature like all the rest of humanity.

[17:01] Because apart from the virgin birth, had He been conceived in the womb of Mary by Joseph or any other human being, He would have been born with the same moral, spiritual contaminant that we have, which of course is sin.

[17:16] And that's unthinkable. unthinkable. So, there are so many misconceptions and erroneous ideas that Muslims have about Christianity. And, there are a lot of erroneous ideas that Christianity has about Islam.

[17:31] So, it goes both ways. There's plenty of ignorance out there, to be sure. Yes? Who do the Muslims believe wrote the Koran? They believe Muhammad wrote the Koran.

[17:43] And that Muhammad was under divine direction from God to write the Koran and that he penned the whole thing. It was strictly from Muhammad.

[17:56] And, of course, they believe that Muhammad is not only God's prophet, he's the only legitimate prophet. And, there are all kinds of books available and stuff available online if anybody is interested in researching the history of Islam.

[18:11] You see, you must realize that Islam didn't even exist, although they claim it did. They claim that Abraham was the first Muslim. But, but Islam and the Koran didn't actually even exist until Muhammad came on the scene and Christianity had been up and running for over 600 years because Muhammad was born in the 7th century.

[18:39] That's A.D., not B.C. So, Islam, for all practical purposes, has only been around about 1,300 years as opposed to Christianity, a couple of thousand, and Judaism, which even predates that, goes all the way back to the time of Abraham.

[18:54] So, there's a great deal of ignorance out there on the part of both Christians and Muslims as to these issues. So, and one other thing, let me just mention this.

[19:06] One of the reasons that Islam is so fanatical about Israel and they claim that Israel does not have a right to exist, what they base that on is the fact that there was a time like 6th century, 5th century, when the Islamic invaders with the sword occupied the land of Israel and were in control of it.

[19:44] And they massacred thousands of Jews through beheading and crucifixion and other ways. And they were in control of what we call the Holy Land for several years.

[19:57] One of the tenets of Islam is that any geographical territory that is ever under the authority of Islam must always remain under the authority of Islam.

[20:13] And if that territory is ever lost or ceded, the present generation of Muslims have an obligation to Allah to retake that land.

[20:25] And that is precisely why they keep saying they want to drive Israel and the Jew into the Mediterranean Ocean. They have no right to the land. It is Islamic land, always will be, and that's their reasoning and rationale for that too.

[20:41] So that's one reason that they are so fanatical about that. Okay, now what we're doing with these questions, we're just briefly interrupting, I trust briefly, our study of Galatians.

[20:54] we intend to return to it, but it occurred to me that there are a lot of guys with a lot of questions, and some of the questions may be kind of sensitive, and yet they still deserve an answer, so we've invited guys to just write out any question they have about anything.

[21:11] I don't care what it is. And don't sign it, because we want privacy to be protected, and hand the question in, and the way you hand the question in is you just take the sheet. If you don't have a question, you just fold it up like this, and hand in a blank piece of paper.

[21:27] If you do have a question, write it out, and fold it in quarters, and submit it, and eventually we'll get to the question, and I want to emphasize that these are really intended for discussion rather than just lecture, so you need more input than just the answer that I give you, and we'll provide opportunity for that.

[21:45] Here's the first question we'll deal with. Playing the lottery, is this a sin? Even though I don't take money to play the lottery, that I need to pay bills or buy food.

[21:57] Also, I pay tithes on my winnings. I do pretty good playing the lottery, and I play it for my personal entertainment. Show me a reference in the Bible that it is wrong to play.

[22:09] I do enjoy playing, and I hope I'm not hurting anyone else. Over the past 20 years, my winning has been 3 to 1 over my payout. Well, I would say they've hit on a stroke of luck there.

[22:22] You say, show me in the Bible where it is wrong to play. I cannot show you that, because there is no place in the Bible where you will find that. And where most people get the idea that gambling is sinful is related to the fact that when our Lord was crucified, you're all familiar, that the soldiers cast lots.

[22:47] they gambled. They played dice or whatever it was, cast lots, for the robe of Christ to see who was going to get it. So it wouldn't have to be torn in several pieces and divided up.

[22:59] It would be a lot more practical and beneficial if just one person got it. Well, who's going to get it? Well, they cast lots for it. That's a gamble, and whoever wins got the robe. So Christians have, down through the years, associated evil with gambling because of that incident.

[23:17] But that does not support the idea. The Bible, what the Bible does enjoin is that we labor and we work for our reward.

[23:35] The Bible does not condemn gambling, but it does put a premium on hard work and working and earning what you get with the sweat of your brow.

[23:50] There is a certain element in, I guess you would call it risk-taking or gambling. Someone has said you can buy a plot of land and you can farm on the land and you can contend with the price of seed and the price of fertilizer and the market price when the crop comes in.

[24:15] But it is a gamble. You are a risk-taker if you're going to be a farmer. I've heard some farmers say, maybe next year I'll just take what money I have and go to Las Vegas rather than plant it in the ground.

[24:29] So if you play the stock market, you're gambling. If you farm, you're gambling. And what are you doing when you buy fire insurance on your house?

[24:41] You are gambling that you won't need it. You are paying protection. And in a certain sense, this is what is involved here.

[24:53] It involves risk-taking. What the Bible does condemn is the idea of getting something for nothing. And of course, the whole concept behind gambling is you want to place a $2 bet on that nag because it's a 50 to 1 long shot and you're only out $2 if you lose it.

[25:14] But if a 50 to 1 long shot, if that old nag should happen to win, you come away with $100. Is that a good deal or what? So we play the odds. And then someone has pointed out, hey, you know, much of life is a gamble of one kind or another.

[25:30] But I would just say that that the Bible looks upon gambling from a distasteful point of view for the simple reason that it is trying to obtain something without working for it.

[25:48] And that pertains not only to playing the ponies and the lottery and everything. You know, the biggest problem I have with the lottery, the biggest problem I have with the lottery is the fact that it is government induced.