church without Jesus
my neighbor the Jew (four gracEmails)
There is a church in my town which features inspirational speakers, although they never mention sin or salvation through Jesus Christ. Sometimes they seem to say that we are actually gods. What, someone asks, do I think of that?
is Allah God?A gracEmail subscriber writes: "Recently in Sunday school, our teacher said that Allah is not the same God that we know. I've always been under the impression that Allah and God were the same, just worshipped differently by Muslims and Christians. What do you think?"
why Muslims hate the West (two gracEmails)It is astounding to realize that millions of Middle-Eastern Muslims hate the West (and the USA in particular). . . . Political correctness says they hate us because they disagree with our democracy, our capitalism, our cherished freedoms . . . . In fact, widespread Muslim animosity toward us is grounded in Islamic religious conviction.
Chopra, Aristotle or Jesus?A midsouthern Bible professor summarizes author-guru Deepak Chopra's message as "Don't trust the intellect; go to the heart," then asks whether the same mindset infects much contemporary Christian thinking.
Buddha not so oldA gracEmail subscriber writes, "My husband was witnessing to a co-worker today who said that the Buddhist Bible was written before any other Bible. He asked how anyone can convince a Buddhist to believe in anything else but their own Bible since it precedes all others. Can you offer any suggestion on how we can deal with this when trying to share Christ?"
Buddhists and common graceA gracEmail subscriber asks, "I have a Buddhist friend who does not believe in God as I do, or in the necessity of Jesus for salvation. I see what look like fruit of the Spirit in her life which makes me want to find some kind of reconciliation between my beliefs and hers. Any thoughts?"
the prophet of the magiIt's a veritable United Nations, the "228 Park & Ride," where ... scores of solo drivers like myself ... pick up some trusting stranger so we can zoom down the barricaded high-speed lane into the city... Over the years I have chauffeured passengers from Africa and Asia, Barbados and Bolivia, Singapore and Scandinavia, Russia and Rwanda, China and Croatia. This particular day my passenger comes from Greece. His name is Farook, he tells me, carefully distinguishing it from Farouk -- "the Moslem name." "I am a Zoroastrian," he proudly announces as we whiz along.
A gracEmail reader who is weighing the claims of Christ writes: "I cannot hold in scorn humans whom I know to be decent and caring, simply because they have a different belief about salvation. Is my Jewish friend a sinner because he practices his religion? He certainly does many of the very things we ascribe to Jesus as being virtuous."
Jews and salvation"Judaism has lost favor with God," someone writes. "To say that it is still a path to God makes a liar of Jesus and therefore of God."
those who never heard (two gracEmails)"What about those," asks a reader, "who, through no fault of their own, never hear the gospel during this life? Must we assume that all such people will finally perish?"
In an earlier gracEmail, I stated that God will judge all people by the light they had and not by truth they could not know. A missionary in South America asks, "If that is so, am I wasting my time here? Why preach the gospel today? Are you saying that people are saved apart from Jesus Christ?"
The sky was pouring rain as I drove up to the Park-and-Ride bus shelter, where a line of commuters regularly chooses to ride to downtown jobs with strangers in automobiles rather than taking the city bus.... My rider today was a Vietnamese lady.... We quickly struck up a friendly conversation. After I dropped a comment or two about God, she asked me whether I was "Catholic or Baptist" -- the two kinds of Christians of her acquaintance.
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "In our Bible class yesterday, we were talking about Jesus' statement that the gate to life is narrow and 'few' pass through it. One class member has some relatives who believe that practically everyone will be lost, including most professing Christians, and other relatives who wonder, if that is true, why Jesus even bothered to die. Can you shed any light on this?"
Jesus came preaching: ..."The time is fulfilled." This is not the word for clock-and-calendar "time" ... but is a word which ... refers to a special era when God will send his anointed One to break the destructive powers that oppose his will.... By this divine intervention through his chosen agent, God will restore peace with his estranged people and usher in his beneficent rule over this broken and rebellious world.
From ancient times it was God's plan that Jesus the Messiah should suffer and rise from the dead, and that salvation through him should be proclaimed to all nations. Before ascending to the Father, Jesus commissioned his chosen apostles that "having gone" (literally) into the whole world, they were to herald the gospel message to all creation.