BEWARE THE BILLBOARDS

 "Chrislam," you can see the word in giant letters on billboards as you drive on the Interstates or city streets. What's going on with that word? Absolutely nothing good. 

Chrislam" refers to a movement that's attempting to blend elements of biblical Christianity and Islam into a single religious practice. It's what God warned Israel about; syncretism with the pagans around them.  

Those pushing Chrislam want a gullible public to believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same God and that certain theological differences may be minimized to promote unity. Biblical Christianity and Islam can be blended together into one if you can blend oil and water. 

HOW SO?

1. The Bible teaches that there is only one path to God the Father, and that path is found in Jesus Christ. As Scripture states: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6).

Christianity affirms the deity of Christ (John 1:1,14) and proclaims His death and bodily resurrection as central to salvation (I Cor. 15:3-4). Islam, by contrast, sees Jesus merely as a prophet and denies  His crucifixion and resurrection.

2.the Bible teaches salvation is by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). This contrasts sharply with Islamic teachings, which emphasize obedience to certain practices to earn favor with God.

3. Biblical Christianity holds the Bible is the inspired Word of God. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). 

Chrislam, however, typically accepts both the Bible and the Qur’an as holy texts. This approach raises significant conflicts because the Qur’an and the Bible differ fundamentally in describing God, Christ, salvation, and humanity’s fall into sin. (From The Bible Hub)

OBAMA'S INAUGRURATION: DID YOU CATCH IT?

One of the most inF\fluential pastors in the whole wide world is Rick Warren. not only that, he's author of "The Purpose Driven Life" and "The Purpose Driven Church" which sold copies in bazillions, purchansed by evangelical churches and Christians all over the globe and translated into language after language. 

Pastors jam his conferences by the thousands to learn how they can have a mega church just as he does. He draws them like a super magnet from all over the world; they hang on his every word; they buy enough of his books to propel him into the NT Times best-seller lists week after week. The secular world has designated Warre as "America's Pastor."

But did you catch what Warren said when he prayed at the 2009 ingugration of President Obama? His closing sentence was, "I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus, who taught us to pray: then he quotes Matthew 6:9-13. 

"Yeshua" is the Hebrew name for Jesus, next came "Jesus" i. e. Spanish pronunciation. but who is Isa? That's the Muslim name for Jesus.(!) As stated above, Isa is that "Jesus" who, accorfing to Islam, is merely  a prophet who Islam teaches was not crucified and there was no resurrection.

Billboards aren't the only problem as we see in Warren's public statements at a World Economic Forum panel discussion: 

"To my Islamic brotherher from Italy, I would say I'm not really interested in interfaith dialogue; I'm inereted in interfaith projects. We've got enough talk. So . . a few weeks ago, at Georgetown University, we brought in three imams, we brought three Catholic priests, we brought in three evangelical pastors and we bught in three Rabbis and we said, 'What can we do about AIDS?' And we started on some comon ground  on those issues; what can we do that we all care about?"

Red flags go up after reading that speech. First, no believer is a brother of an Islamist. Second, the mission of the church is not to "do something about AIDS:" Christ gave the church its marching orders--the Great Commission to evagelize and make disiciples. Warren expands the Great Commission to include social work, which distracts the church.

Eric Barger, a world religions expert, writes, "Warren's use of the name of Isa, the false Jesus of Islam, was a slap in the face to all he that he had alrady prayed. . .  In fact, in Islam, the prophet  Isa ("eee-sa) is actually the destroyer of Christianity, not its Savior."

BEWARE THEBILLBOARDS

THE BIBLE VERSE ERIKA KIRK QUOTED

 At the memorial service for her husband, Charlie Kirk, his widow, Erika, quoted Luke 23:34: "But Jesus was saying, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.' And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves." (NASB, 1995) This was a highly dramatic moment in the memorial as she put this text front and center, in the hearing of an estimated 90-100 thousand in person and an estimated 25-30 million online, with Turning Point USA claiming over 100 million views, although this number cannot be verified .

This is the first of seven things Jesus said while enduring the inconceivable horrors of the crucifixtion. It is thought that, from its position in the record, to have been spoken very early, probably while the Roman soldiers, the crucifixtion team, were driving the nails into His hands and feet. The soldiers would have heard Him say that, up close and personal. They had never heard such words as those. They were accustomed to the wild, raving curses of the condemned. 

We need to ask a question at this point: about whom is Jesus praying to the God the Father conceerning forgiveness? In other words who are the ones who "know not what they are doing"?

Let's begin with the process of elimination. His prayer wasn't for Pilate; he knew that he had condemned an innocent man. It was he who "took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this Man’s blood; see to that yourselves.” 

Jesus wasn't making the request for the chief priests and scribes, because their sin was against their first-hand knowledge of the words and miracles of Jesus, His credtials to prove He was the Messiah, even to the point of their not being able to refute the raising of Lazarus from the dead: "Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs." (Jn. 11:47) 

In addition, in Matthew 12, the leadership of israel commited what Jesus called, "the unforgivable sin," that of attributing Jesus' miracles to the occult. 

He wasn't making the request for the people of Jerusalem and Israel; they had heard Him speak and teach; they had seen more miracles to the extent that "There are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I [John] suppose that even the world itself *would not contain the books that *would be written." 

Despite this massive amount of revelation, the people joined with the Pharisees --in an uproar they shouted their verdict raging to Pilate, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate *said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The answer: “We have no king but Caesar. (Jn. 19:12, 15)

In the last week of His earthly life, Jesus renered this verdict on the people and predicted a coming judgment on them: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling." (Matt. 27;24) And the judgment to come: "And He said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down," i. e. the destruction of Jersalem in 70 AD by the Romans. They weren't forgiven; they were disciplined according Deut. 28 and its worst of the cycles of punishment, dispersion from the land. 

Therefore, by the process of eliminattion and the context of Jesus' prayer, for whom is He making the request? The crucixtion team, the Gentiles hammering the nails. They were in the city only because of the massive influx of Jews from all over the known world who have come for the Passover. 

We also see that the context of the prayer reveald the object of the supplication: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.' And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves." Immediately after the prayer of Jesus, the Gentile soldiers are mentioned as gambling over the clothing, thus demonstrating their ignorance as to the significance of what was happening on Calvary. 

Barnes Notes on the Bible gets it right: "The Romans knew not what they did, as they were really ignorant that He was the Son of God."