Muslim Followers Of Jesus?
From The Global Conversation, a collaborative partnership between the Lausanne Movement and Christianity Today.
Can one be a Muslim and a follower of Jesus? Tens of thousands believe so, and in this discussion Yale University scholar Joseph Cumming describes the furious debate their example has fueled. The question of following Jesus while remaining within a practicing community of Muslims has great importance in regions where the two faiths contend. It also serves as an important example of a wider challenge. As the gospel moves across cultural boundaries, those who respond will answer its call in different ways. As missions historian Andrew Walls has written, “Conversion to Christ does not produce a bland universal citizenship; it produces distinctive discipleships, as diverse and variegated as human life itself.” The gospel must be contextualized, but how far can contextualization go without violating the gospel? And who sets the boundaries?
http://www.vimeo.com/7779912
Roger’s Comment:
Obvious questions must be asked of any practising Muslim who claims to follow Jesus include:
1. Do you believe that God is Trinity?
2. Do you believe the Jesus Christ is the eternal Son, the second member of the Triune God?
3. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God?
4. Do you believe that Jesus was the fully human, yet fully God, died on the cross and was bodily resurrected?
5. Do you belief that the only way to be reconciled to God the Father is through faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - that is, justification by faith in Jesus alone?
6. Where Mohammed and Jesus differ on matters of doctrine and theology, who is right?
7. Essentially, do you believe in everything contained in the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed?
I would think that correct answers to the above questions would be essential for a Muslim to be a true follower of Christ. Labels are not important, however this is somewhat more of a complex theological issue than say the Christian vs Messianic Jew distinction.
Hiram Diaz
on December 12th, 2009
Is this really a valid question?
Islam is Another religion, another faith, based upon extra-biblical revelation.
Just when I was starting to get used to the shock of the church at large accepting homosexual ordination…
the Great Apostasy is here…
I’m speechless.
Anthony Lee Vanover II
on December 19th, 2009
Matthew 6:24 - “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”