Islam & Christianity: Two Roads to the Same God?

Are Islam and Christianity two roads to the same God? Find out with guests Dr. David Reagan and Marko Kiroglu and hosts Tim Moore and Nathan Jones on the television program, Christ in Prophecy!

Air Date: October 29, 2022

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Tim Moore: Greetings in the name of Jesus, our Blessed Hope. We’ll get back to our series on Jesus in the Old Testament soon, but today we are honored to have two special guests to help us discuss a very important topic. In our morally and spiritually confused culture, our secularized media is incapable of distinguishing truth claims, let alone delineating between religious faiths. Sadly, many supposedly Christian churches are similarly confused about the relative truth claims of the world’s major religions.

Nathan Jones: And there are millions of adherence to Buddhism and Hinduism in a dramatically rising tide of secularism, agnosticism and atheism. All of those belief systems constitute religions in the classic sense of the word, but a major spiritual and ideological contest in the West is between Christianity and Islam.

For a season, the West was alarmed by a dramatic increase in Islamic terrorism, and that awareness was heightened after 9/11, when radical Islamists unleashed unprecedented destruction on the United States.

Tim Moore: But as the war on terror has waned and groups like ISIS have fallen out of the headlines, Americans might be tempted to think this religious conflict is behind us. Nothing could be further from the truth. As demonstrated on the peaceful and serene campus of the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, when a radicalized Muslim attempted to carry out a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, Islam is not fading. If anything, it is growing even more powerful and threatening.

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Part 1

Tim Moore: Which brings us to today’s conversation about a new book, Islam and Christianity: Two Roads to the Same God? And to discuss this new book written by Dr. David Reagan and really several of us, we are delighted to have Dr. Reagan himself and Marko Kiroglu, another major contributor to this book. Dr. Reagan, thank you for being here with us on set and Marko from halfway around the world.

Dr. Reagan: Yes, I’m glad to be here. And I’m glad to have Marko with us, it’s amazing.

Tim Moore: Well, we’re glad to have both of you. So, Dave I’ve got to ask, what motivated you to want to write this book?

Dr. Reagan: Well, the Bible says over and over that in the end times the church is going to become more apostate. People today are talking about a great revival, the Bible does not talk about a great revival in the end times, it talks about growing apostasy in the church. It even says there will even be doctrines of demons in the church in the end times. And in fact, when I was heading up this ministry, one of the most common questions that we got every day, it seemed like, was: I live in so-and-so place, I’m looking for a Bible believing church. Do you know of one? I’ve looked, you know, and I can’t find one anywhere. They’re teaching pop psychology or something.

And as I began to study apostasy in the modern day church, I noticed that one of the fastest growing of all apostasies is the idea that the god of Islam is the God of Christianity, and that they’re the same God. And in fact, I began to do some research about that, and I found something very disturbing. I found that the Roman Catholic Church has actually taken that position. In their catechism of 1994, the first one in 200 years that they changed, it says: The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

They claim now, the largest Christian group in the world, they claim that Muslims are worshiping the same God as we. And that is not true. That is a doctrine from Hell. And I got very upset about it. I got very concerned, and I decided to write a book about it.

But I didn’t make that decision, because I kept trying to figure out how to do it, I didn’t make the decision until I ran across two short booklets by Marko Kiroglu, in South Africa who was born in Turkey, raised as a Muslim and converted to Christianity, and the religion of peace, tried to kill him. And he fled to South Africa, where he has a very successful ministry.

So, what I did was to put together a book. I’m actually kind of the editor of this book. In which I wrote the introduction, I wrote the major first article about the nature of Islam. And then the second section is four chapters by Marko on whether or not Yahweh is the same God as Allah. Then the third part is you, Tim writing on– well the third part is me writing on end time Bible prophecy, and the fourth part is you writing on the fate of Islam. What’s the fate according to the Bible? And it ends with a tremendous chapter by Nathan talking about how to witness to a Muslim.

I want to make world one point this book was not written for Muslims, it was written for Christians who have been deceived, I mean terribly deceived, into believing that Muslims have the same God as Christians.

Nathan Jones: It seems like the history of Islam is done in blood and violence. After 9/11, especially George W. Bush came out and constantly kept saying it was a religion of peace, it was a religion of peace. In your research, what evidence do you find that it’s not a religion of peace?

Dr. Reagan: Well, let me just say, in response to that and I have a good friend who was born and raised in Egypt. He had the Qur’an memorized by age 12. He graduated from Al-Azhar University, I guess, the finest Muslim university in the world. Out of 2,000 students, he was ranked number two. He became a professor of Islamic history. And he said, you can sum up Islamic history in one sentence, and that sentence is the history of Islam is a river of blood. Everywhere Islam is the major religion it became the major religion by the sword. Everywhere it is the major religion, it is kept that way by the sword.

Tim Moore: Wow. Well, this brings us to Marko. And Marko, quite frankly, you are the expert when it comes to Islam, having lived it personally, you were raised in a Muslim home, grew up in a country that officially embraces Islam. So, tell us a little bit about your experience and the idea that Allah, as some would claim, is the same as the Christian God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Marko Kiroglu: Tim, thank you. It’s a great, great privilege for me to be here with you and Dr. Reagan. It’s really a great honor to be with you, also here today. Yeah, I think the truth, the claim cannot be further away than the truth as it is already. As Dr. Reagan very rightly said, the history of Islam, I will put it if I can put it in my own words, the history of Islam is war, war, and war. Literally nothing else. No one to this day can show us any country, or any civilization, or any human group who peacefully accepted Islam. Every land that has been Islamized have been Islamized, literally as a result of war. And in fact, this is in the book we also talk about it, in Islam there are two strategies. I often say these two strategies are like the two wings of a bird. On the one hand, there is the idea of Dar al-Islam. Dar al-Islam is the House of Islam. On the other hand, Dar al-Harb. Dar al-Harb is the House of War. In the Islamic worldview, the world is divided into these two camps, either you are a Muslim, in that case you are part of the House of Islam, or if you are not part of the House of Islam, you belong to the House of War, and we will fight you until either you die or you accept Islam. That’s the ideology in a nutshell.

But when we look at the Scriptures, the God of the Bible has absolutely nothing to do with this. I often say to people, God of the Bible has sacrificed His own Son to save people. God of Islam says we will kill you unless you believe in the god of Islam. Can you see the diabolical opposition? God of the Bible says I kill My Son so that you can live. God of Islam says, if you don’t worship me, I will kill you.

Nathan Jones: Marko, now that we’ve discussed the nature of Islam, that’s a good segue way here. The big question we’re trying to answer and this book answers is Allah and Yahweh, which is the name of Jehovah or the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh God the same? Because we hear that all the time from people that yes, the god of Islam is the same as the God of Judaism and Christianity. What are some of your arguments against that?

Dr. Reagan: In that regard we’re seeing Christian leaders today saying we all know there is one God. And since there’s one God, we must be worshiping the same God that the Muslims are worshiping because they take the same position, there’s one god. So, it has to be the same God.

Marko Kiroglu: This whole thing is a very cheap name game, I will put. It’s a very cheap game. A really cheap trick. It doesn’t take two brain cells to figure that out, actually. It is so cheap that let’s say my name is Marko. You spell it with the letter K, Marko. And someone else comes, his name is also Marco, but with a letter C and he says, “Well, there is only one Marco that is associated with the Lamb & Lion Ministries. And I am that Marco.” But he is not me. And the whole world believes him. It’s as cheap as this example.

And Allah, the word Allah has never been associated with the God of the Bible by any people group other than the Muslims themselves. Jews never use the word Allah. Christians never use the word Allah, throughout the 2,000 years of Christian history. However, only in the countries where Christians have been killed, murdered, and their countries have been taken control over by Muslim armies, only in those countries, because of persecution, because of systematic denial of self-education in Christian churches, because of linguistic limitations, in the generations following the Islamic invasion, let’s say Islamic invasion happened in 700 AD by the time we reached 1000 AD in those countries, Christian descendants have opted to use Islamic vocabulary in religious conversations with the intention of primarily evading persecution, drawing attention from Muslims so that they won’t draw attention and they won’t get persecuted.

Secondarily, their libraries have been burned down by Islamic armies when they were invaded. Their churches were denied any permission to build new buildings, to build Bible schools, to train theologians and pastors. So, they have been deprived of their history. They have been deprived of their own written language. They’ve been deprived of even self-improvement. As a result of that, they became completely dependent on Islamic narratives. That is the very much the case today in some Middle Eastern countries, although there are Christian minorities, they use in some, not all, in some countries they use Islamic vocabulary to express biblical concepts. Allah is used in some Islamic countries as a reference to the God of the Bible, but that’s an exception.

However, in majority cases, Christians, even Islamic countries do not use the word Allah in reference to the God of the Bible, rather, they use Yahweh. Rather they use Yeshua instead of Isa. Muslims claim that Isa is the Islamic name of Jesus, but that’s a false claim. Christians don’t use the word Isa, they rather use the word Yeshua. They rather go and tap into the Hebraic vocabulary rather than Arabic vocabulary.

Tim Moore: So, Marko, what is another indication? Obviously, the God of the Bible has revealed Himself not just in His son, Jesus Christ, but throughout Scripture with certain characteristics, and Allah has revealed Himself through the writings of Muhammad in a diametrically opposed characteristic. So, what distinguishes the true and living God of the Bible from Allah as is revealed in the Qur’an?

Marko Kiroglu: Tim, I can give you a long list. I will encourage our viewers to buy the book, read the book that is the most complete form of information. But to mention only a few things. One of the most fascinating, most mindboggling characteristics of the God of the Bible is that He is the God of Creation, but He is the Father, He identifies Himself as the Father of His people. This is the combo narrative in the relationship between the God of the Bible and the Jewish people in the Old Testament. He defines Himself as their Father, and then later on in the New Testament, we are told that we are adopted as the children of God through Jesus Christ. He becomes our Father, we become His children.

Now, in the Islamic doctrine of religion, this concept is unimaginable. They cannot imagine. They can never accept this. In fact, this concept is refuted in the Qur’an as a heresy. So, Allah never identified himself as a father. Allah in his own book, Qur’an, which is written down by Muhammad in the most powerful, most authoritarian texts of Islam, is the Qur’an. Even in the Qur’an, Allah is not introduced as father. Instead, he is introduced as a very brutal, very harsh, despotic ruler, almost like a moody ruler. And to go as far as I can imagine now, there are even verses in the Qur’an that actually identifies Allah as a deceiver. Muhammad himself said, Allah is the greatest of all deceivers.

On the other hand, in the Bible, God is introduced to us, God of the Bible is introduced to us as righteous. Everything can change, but God never changes. God is righteous. He’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His truth. His promises. He promised the Jews that He will bring them back to their homelands. And after nearly 2,000 years, He fulfilled His promise. He is so trustworthy. Can you see the contrast?

Dr. Reagan: Make the contrast between Yahweh and Allah by talking about the Trinity.

Marko Kiroglu: True, yes, that is another amazing detail. God of the Bible from the beginning introduced Himself as one God and Trinity. And in fact, this is almost like something that he is proud of. If you carefully studied the doctrine of Trinity in the Scriptures, it is not just a detail, it is something that God is proud of. God of the Bible. It is an important aspect of who He is. On the contrast, in contrast to that in Qur’an and Islamic writings, dating back to the days of Muhammad and afterwards, there are set of other writings besides Qur’an, they are called the Hadith. Even in the Hadith, Trinity, is refuted as a great sin, as a great rebellion. And Islamic doctrine, boldly, pridefully, proudly teaches that God of Islam is not in Trinity. God of Islam is not part of Trinity.

So, I want to take what the Qur’an says at its face value. Qur’an says, Islamic Hadith said, Islamic doctrine says Allah is not part of Trinity. Then I say, great, let it be so. In that case, Allah is not part of my God. He’s not my God.

Dr. Reagan: And yes. And one of the one of the attributes of that would be that Jesus is not divine.

Marko Kiroglu: Exactly. When Allah denies Trinity, it is not just out of the fact that he doesn’t have a good appetite for trinity. No. When Allah denies Trinity, with that Islamic doctrine pulls the carpet from underneath the Christian theology of Trinity, in which Jesus Himself is God and the Son of God 100% man and 100% God, and He is coming back.

At the same time, the Holy Spirit is completely thrown out of the equation as well. So as Bible believing Christians who depend on the empowering of the Holy Spirit to live a godly life, and to witness about Jesus in these days, how can we say that the God of Islam who denies the Holy Spirit, denies Jesus, denies Trinity, denies God’s most important aspect of being a loving father, denying all of that? Not only denying, vehemently refuting all of that, rejecting all of it. How can we say that deity or that that entity is the same as the God of the Bible?

Tim Moore: Well, clearly, Jesus, in His own testimony of Himself, says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Me.” So, there are two persons of the Trinity in one single verse and Jesus testifying to Himself. So, either deny the validity of Jesus words and the Gospel itself to embrace Allah, or to think He is the same God, or you accept Christ.

Dr. Reagan: And not only do they deny that Jesus was God in the flesh, they deny that He was virgin born. They deny that He was crucified, they claim that an imposter was. They deny that He was resurrected from the dead. And they deny He is coming back to reign over this earth.

Tim Moore: Well, Dave, obviously, they also would deny He’s coming back, as you said, and that’s our message, but you have studied probably as much as anyone else I know Muslim eschatology. So, what do they believe? And it’s very confusing, but in a quick nutshell, what is their eschatology?

Dr. Reagan: There is no quick nutshell because almost nothing is mentioned in the Qur’an about the future. All of this information about the future from Islam is taken from the Hadith. The Hadith is not supposed to be the words of God, it is supposed to be the words of Muhammad, and 7,000 statements that he made. They considered to be really, I guess, to be not equal to the Qur’an, but at least to be something inspired. And it is such a conglomeration, it’s hard. I studied this for years, just tried to put together some concept of it, they look for what they call the hour, and that hour is not when Jesus Christ returns. That hour is when the Mahdi, their Messiah, appears on the scene and he begins to fight against the Dajjal, which is the Antichrist. And Jesus comes to the rescue as a man, not as a divine being, but as a man. He saves Muhammad from this. And Jesus reigns for 40 years, during which time he gets married and has children.

Tim Moore: It’s a hodgepodge.

Dr. Reagan: One thing that Muhammad did was to take stories he had heard about from the Gospels and stories he had heard from Zoroastrianism, and he put them all together. It’s a confused mess. For example, he argues that the mother of Jesus was Mary the sister of Moses.

Nathan Jones: Yeah.

Tim Moore: Yeah. Confused.

Nathan Jones: Well, we get to a chapter here that Tim wrote, and Tim wrote about the fate of Islam. So, what does the Bible say about the fate of Islam? Because this is a false religion and the Lord will defeat it at some point. Right?

Tim Moore: Well, I actually break it down into perceptions by different people. So, if you’re a radical Muslim, you think the fate of Islam is to conquer the world. And everyone will either submit or, as Marko has said, will be killed.

If you are a marginal Muslim, in other words, someone who’s not radicalized, and many of them are very gracious, very hospitable, but they acquiesce when the radicals take control of a given country. And so, they may not actually agree with that, but they go along all too often.

If you are a secular Westerner, well, you don’t see Islam as a threat, which is why they are embraced, ironically, even though they reject all of the secularist mantra of today.

But if you’re a Christian, if you believe Scripture, you know that every religion that denies the person of Jesus Christ will end up on the trash heap of history and will be rejected because Christ will reign. And we know that He’s coming soon and very soon to do that. So, the fate of Islam, like every other faith, every other religion that denies Christ, is to be relegated to history soon and very soon.

Nathan Jones: Through three major wars, right?

Tim Moore: Through three major wars. And yes, we have a whole another lesson we need to do on the wars. But Nathan, since this book is written for the Christian reader, I think the most important thing to understand is not only that there is a lie being perpetrated, that Allah and the God of the Bible are the same, or that there are multiple paths to the same God that we know of as God the Father. But the other important thing to glean from this book is something that you bring up in your chapter, and that is how to witness to a Muslim. Because there are millions and billions of people who believe that the path to salvation is through Islam. And those are people that God sent His son, Jesus Christ, to die for. He loves them and we love them as well. We want them to be saved. So how can we relate to our Muslim friends and neighbors and share the Gospel with them?

Nathan Jones: Yeah, it’s 25% of the world population is under the veil of Islam. It’s a mission opportunity. You hear about the 10/40 window that many ministries are pursuing. And there’s quite a number of ways you can reach a Muslim for Jesus. You could do like Marko, who actually had a Bible given to him and he read it and attended a church service. In Sura 5:68 Muhammad gives permission for the Muslim to read the Bible, so it’s okay to read the Bible. When you read the Bible, the Holy Spirit speaks through it, and speaks to their hearts. A point that Dave makes all the time is let a Muslim actually read the Qur’an. I mean, not the Arabic version, because most people they’ll say the Arabic is the only version.

Dr. Reagan: Especially Arab women.

Nathan Jones: Arab women. Once you read it and realize it’s filled with blood, and death, and sadism, you realize, hey, this isn’t a god of love, this is a god of hate who sees you as a slave. So let him read the Qur’an, because once they do, it opens their eyes.

Another thing is look at the life of Jesus compared to the life of Muhammad. Jesus who sacrificed Himself on the cross, who loves people who died for us, who’s a servant. Whereas Muhammad, who was a pedophile, he took a nine year old to be his wife. He was a murderer. He was a thief and a stealer. And he did all these horrible things. And when you look at the difference between the two lives, you realize, hey, there’s something special about Jesus.

Others too, the love of God. For a Muslim, God is distant and unknowable, and he has basically a hatred for you. But the God of the universe created you, and He loves you. Too there’s some others the assurance of salvation, even in eschatology a Muslim.

Dr. Reagan: Even Muhammad didn’t know whether he was saved or not.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, Muhammad, he’s got to you got to go through all these trials, like falling off a bridge and stuff, and yet for a Christian, we know that our salvation is secure in Jesus Christ.

They don’t know grace, it’s all a works based salvation. So, the grace of God.

And that you can actually have a relationship with God. You share any of these with the Muslim and it opens their eyes and it allows the Holy Spirit to work through them.

Tim Moore: So, to get to the bottom line and again, there’s much more information, as Marko said in the book, but all of us would agree in terms of answering the question, are there two roads to the same God?

Dr. Reagan: No.

Tim Moore: Marko, two roads to the same God?

Marko Kiroglu: No. Definitely. One is to Hell. The other one is to Heaven.

Tim Moore: That’s a good way to put it. Nathan I would agree, absolutely. But to be able to see all the depth of information that is presented to you here, you have to get the book. So, I want to thank Dr. David Reagan and Marko Kiroglu for joining us today, both in studio and from halfway around the world.

Closing

Tim Moore: You know, while a battle is raging in the West right now between faith and secularism, Islam continues to be a religion that is a growing threat around the world.

Nathan Jones: Muslim terrorists are still wreaking havoc around the world. They’re lashing out in Africa and Asia, Europe, in the Middle East. And as demonstrated by some of our own radicalized members of Congress, they’re gaining influence through immigration and outrageous demands in places like Detroit and Minneapolis.

Tim Moore: If you want to understand this growing threat and the unmitigated lie being foisted by the media and political and religious leaders throughout the West, you need to get a copy of this book. And if you want to understand the Muslim mindset and be motivated to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with your Muslim friends and neighbors, you need to read and heed this book.

Nathan Jones: For only $20, we’d be glad to send you a copy of “Islam and Christianity: Two Roads to the same God?” Just call the number you see on the screen or go to our online store.

Tim Moore: Well, Dave, any last minute words of encouragement to our readers regarding this book?

Dr. Reagan: What I want to do is thank Marko, and Nathan, and Tim for your contributions to this book. The chapters you wrote were absolutely fantastic. They’re down to earth. They’re easy to understand. This is written not for theologians, it’s written for the person sitting in the pew, and for those who have been terribly deceived into believing that Allah and Yahweh are the same God.

Tim Moore: There you have it. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the eternal Word made flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ who was, and is, and is coming again, said of Himself, “Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.” On behalf of Nathan Jones, and David Reagan, and Marko Kiroglu and all of us here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, this is Tim Moore saying, “Look up and be watchful, for the true and living God, who gave Himself that we might be saved, is drawing near. Godspeed.”

End of Program

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