Dr. Dudley Woodberry, professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, states that Muslims are coming to recognize Christ because Christians befriending them have shown them a better way than Islam.
Woodberry cautions Christians from staying aloof from Muslims. In fact, he asks his Christian friends how recently they invited a Muslim family to dinner.
Woodberry has made a study by which he has found that Muslims are impressed by the courtesies shown them by Christians in contrast to the rudeness shown them by non-Christians.
The professor believes that “most Muslims are not would-be jihadists” per Chuck Colson’s “Drawn to the Light.”
Woodberry prepared a “detailed questionnaire. Over a 16-year period, some 750 Muslims from 30 countries filled it out—and the results are eye-opening. The number one reason Muslim converts listed for their decision to follow Christ was the lifestyle of the Christians among them.”
It is true that practical example is the best Christian testimony. Walk the walk. Live the life.
If hypocrisy reigns, then Satan wins. If the Holy Spirit truly lives through the daily life of the Christ disciple then those looking on have no other conclusion to reach but that the Christian is definitely different from the self-centered worldling.
Christ Himself told His disciples that they would be known by their love. The apostle Paul wrote that there abides faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these three is love.
God’s incarnation in Christ was supremely because He “so loved the world” that He gave His Son to die the sacrificial death on the cross in order for repentant souls to discover salvation—the hope of heaven and daily companionship of the Spirit of Christ.
Therefore, considering that Islam espouses hate and fear, it is no wonder that sincerely questing Muslims find in the genuine Christian a stark difference between Islam’s Koran and the Christian’s New Testament.
Islam’s Koran is laden with bloodletting verses whereas the New Testament is the testimony to good news—love in action.
“As Woodberry, Russell Shubin, and G. Marks write in Christianity Today, Muslim converts noted that ‘there was no gap between the moral profession and the practice of Christians’ they knew.
“’An Egyptian convert contrasted the love shown by Christians ‘with the unloving treatment of Muslim students and faculty he encountered at a university in Medina.’”
Muslims also note that the Christians’ regard for the female far outdistances the Muslim mistreatment of females.
God has no bias against the genders in Scripture. In fact, Christ lifted womanhood in His public ministry. When He encountered women abused, He was their advocate every time. That was in a time and culture when women were treated as low-class.
At the Bible’s outset, God states that He created male and female in His image. There was no creating male in His divine image and then creating female in a lesser image.
From the start, God regarded male and female in His image. No other world religion proclaims such. If would be helpful if secular feminists realized this biblical truth; however, Satan blinds their spiritual eyes to divine truths.
Muslims also noted Christians’ fervent prayer power. Prayer was not mere ritual but an open friendship with the invisible God, the latter controlling their surrendered consecrations.
Even when facing persecution and death, Christians remained true to their loving Savior rather than recanting or lashing out at the enemy.
Of course, Christ explained in the Sermon of the Mount that His children were to pray for their enemies and treat them with loving care.
This has been evidenced particularly in Iraq as Muslim haters have slaughtered countless Christians. Yet Christians remain loyal to the loving Christ and exhibit that compassion to their foes.
Read Drawn to the Light at www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7783
Read: jgrantswankjr.blogspot.com
