And they sang the song of Moses: “Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations (Ethnos) will come and worship before you.” Revelation 15:3-4
You can share Jesus Christ with a Muslim. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. The meaning of the name Jesus Christ
Since Jesus Christ is mentioned in the Koran known as Isa Masih, ask him what does the name Isa Masih mean.
The meaning of a name is important.
Isa: What does his name mean?
3:45 (and remember) when the angels said: “ O Maryam! Verily, Allah gives you the glad tidings of a Word from Him, whose name is Isa Masih (Jesus Messiah), the son of Maryam, held in honor in this world and in the Hereafter, and one of those brought near to Allah.”
Surah Ambiyaa 21:91 “.. and she (Maryam) guarded her chastity, therefore We breathed into her of our Spirit and made her and her son a sign for all people.”
Isa Masih means Savior Messiah
Al-Masih means “the anointed or promised one”
For more explanation click and read this article al-Masih
Isa Kalimutaullah (The Word of Allah)
Isa Ruhullah (Isa the Spirit of Allah)
Isa is the Word (Kalim) and Spirit of Allah. He is savior. What did he save us from. The Injeel says:
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 1 Peter 3:18
2. Talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus
The Koran tells us that Isa Masih died and was raised to life
Surah al-Imran 3:55 Allah said:
“O Isa! I will cause you to die and raise you to Myself.
Surah Maryam 19:33 Isa says about himself:
Blessed was the day I died, and blessed was the day I was resurrected.”
What was Allah’s purpose in the death and resurrection of Isa?
Isa was not born in sin like you and me. He the is the only one who had no father except Adam. He was the second Adam. He lived a holy and blameless life.
It was Allah’s plan for Isa to be the sacrifice for our sins. Just as Ibrahim made a sacrifice so God cause Isa to die for your sins. It was Allah’s plan for Isa to die as your savior. That is the meaning of the name Isa. The meaning of Masih is the appointed one.
Isa is the appointed one of Allah to die as your savior.
Believe in Isa. Read how one man came to that discovery.
3. Have them read the Injeel (New Testament)
The Qur’an tells to read the before books.
Sura Al An’am, 6:115 Perfected is the Word of the Lord in truth and justice. There is nothing that can change His words. He is the knower.
Sura Al-Imran 3:48 And He (Allah) will teach him the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah (Tawrat) and the Gospel (Injeel)
Give them a New Testament or full Bible and ask them to start reading the Torah and Injeel
The one who is persecuted is blessed
When a radical extremists broke into a Christian meeting the comment from the one who was beaten, taken away by his extremist captors by vehicle, had his valuables stolen, said he knew something incredible spiritually was about to happen.
2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
Romans 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Persecution is glorious?
I remember having said that suffering for Christ is glorious. But when I visited Gowda, a persecuted Christian in the hospital I remember thinking, “this is not glorious, this is hideous”. Then I began to think of the ultimate glory, the cross. It is also the ultimate hideous act. There is a paradox that while persecution and suffering for righteousness sake is glorious, it is not going to look that way. It looks very ugly, because in one sense it is ugly. Only a spiritual perspective will enable you to view persecution as glorious.
1 Peter 4:12-14 12Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 14If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
Persecution backfires
One radical extremist boasted, there will be no Christians worshiping on my watch. He died of a massive heart failure about forty-eight hours of his public statement. There was murmuring through the whole community that God avenged him for his persecution of Christians.
When Dinesh was persecuted for his faith a group of extremists stole his money, roughed him up and broke into his house, burned his Bibles and tracts in the road. They kept his important documents like graduation certificates and told them they would be returned if he re-converted to Hinduism. Many people were praying for Dinesh.
Later his persecutors brought by his documents apologized for all they had wrongly done to him and asked him to pray for them. They said that since the group of twelve persecutors did all the wrong to him there had been a string of misfortunes including road accidents, illnesses and family problems. They concluded that God had judged them for the wrong they did and they would have problems until they asked Dinesh to pray to God for them. It does not always happen this way but we do know it is not a good outlook for the persecutors.
Jeremiah 20:11 NIV But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.
Those become our best partners
I mentioned visiting Gowda in the hospital. The ironic thing is that Gowda had 15 years before been behind Christian persecution that put a man in that same hospital. The persector had become the persecuted. That is what happened to the Apostle Paul. This man who so persecuted the church was beaten, stoned and imprisoned for his faith. Those who were radical extremists against Christ often become the radical extremists for Christ. They didn’t drift into their faith in Christ and they live with passion and become our best partners for the sake of the gospel. Think about that the next time one of your ministry partners is beaten for the sake of Christ. The one who beat him my soon become your best partner in the ministry. Pray for those who persecute you.
Acts 9:3-6 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.
“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
Prepare to respond rightly
When I became aware that a friend of mine was persecuted I became angry. That is the natural response. We become like Peter who struck the guard who came to arrest Jesus. But Jesus told him to put away his sword. Our call is to love our enemies and pray for those who would persecute us. We need to be prepared. To be walking in the Spirit to respond rightly when persecution comes.
2 Timothy 3:12 (New International Version)
12In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
John 15:18-20
18″If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
Red dots represent populations less than 2% evangelical with no known church planting within the past two years.
What do you see when you look at the red on this map?
Romans 15:20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. (NIV)
This map is published annually by the IMB, SBC www.imb.org
Ralph Winter has influenced an untold number of mission leaders. His life was greatly used of the Lord. I have posted his official biography and an interview with him on Youtube. As you watch this video you will find that his insights and passion for the unreached peoples continue to inspire.
Official obituary of Ralph Winter
Ralph D. Winter, 1924 – 2009
Renowned Strategist Redirected Church’s Worldwide Mission Efforts
Recognized by TIME magazine in 2004 as one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals, Ralph D. Winter, a world-renowned scholar of Christian mission and the founder and creative activist in a wide range of mission initiatives, has died. He was 84.
Winter died Wednesday, May 20 at his home in Pasadena after a seven-year battle with multiple myeloma and after additional struggles with lymphoma since early February.
Many of the accomplishments of Ralph Winter’s long career as a missionary, mission professor and “mission engineer” stemmed from his conviction that Christian organizations accomplish more when they cooperate in strategic ways. It was at the Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 that Winter burst upon the world stage with innovative analysis and advocacy that have redirected evangelical mission energies ever since.
Born in 1924, Winter spent his boyhood years in South Pasadena and was nurtured in Christian faith by devout parents and membership at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena. He pursued a degree in civil engineering at Caltech, an M.A. at Columbia University in teaching English as a second language, and a Ph.D. at Cornell University in structural linguistics, with a minor in cultural anthropology and mathematical statistics. While in seminary at Princeton, he served as a pastor of a rural New Jersey church.
He married Roberta Helm in 1951 while studying for his Ph.D. at Cornell. Roberta’s expert help in research, writing and editing, among many other gifts, made her a valuable partner to her husband from the time of his doctoral studies onward.
Ordained in 1956, Winter and his wife joined the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. They worked for ten years in Guatemala among the native Mayan people. Along with the development of 17 small businesses for bivocational pastoral students, Winter joined others to begin an innovative, non-residential approach to theological studies known as Theological Education by Extension (TEE), which has since been reproduced in countless mission contexts around the world.
Winter’s creativity with TEE and other initiatives caught the attention of Donald McGavran, who in 1966 invited Winter to join the faculty of the new School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA). Between 1966 and 1976 Winter taught more than a thousand missionaries, but he also claimed to learn much from his students. During these years he founded the William Carey Library, a specialized publisher and distributor of mission materials. He also co-founded the American Society of Missiology, helped in starting Advancing Churches in Mission Commitment (ACMC), and inaugurated what is now the Perspectives Study Program (first called the Summer Institute of International Studies).
Building on McGavran’s emphasis on people groups, and gleaning insights from his interaction with students and faculty, in July 1974 Winter presented a seminal address at Lausanne, Switzerland to the International Congress on World Evangelization, underscoring the necessity of pioneer, cross-cultural missionary outreach to thousands of “hidden peoples”, later more commonly known as “unreached peoples”. Winter’s statistics and careful reasoning stunned an audience (and their constituencies) that had previously assumed that “near-neighbor evangelism” by existing churches would be sufficient in world evangelization.
To facilitate creative outreach to unreached peoples, in 1976 Ralph and Roberta Winter founded the U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM), and in 1977 the related William Carey International University, on the former campus of Pasadena Nazarene College, mobilizing evangelicals to pay for the acquisition of the $15 million campus through a series of campaigns that culminated in 1988 and that emphasized mission vision more than fund-raising. A community of workers in Pasadena and other locations, now known as the Frontier Mission Fellowship (FMF), has developed to sustain an array of cooperative mission projects, and until two weeks before his death Winter served as General Director of the FMF.
John Piper, author of Desiring God and Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis, MN), commented, “Ralph Winter was probably the most creative thinker I have ever known. On any topic you brought up, he would come at it in a way you never dreamed of. This meant that stalemates often became fresh starting points.” Likewise, Dale Kietzman, a professor at William Carey International University, noted, “He was constantly thinking outside the box. He did this to such an extent that you weren’t sure what the box was anymore.” C. Peter Wagner, a colleague at Fuller Seminary, has observed, “History will record Ralph Winter as one of the half-dozen men who did most to affect world evangelism in the twentieth century.”
At 84 Winter continued to work full-time, finding personal satisfaction in addressing a wide range of new challenges and perplexing questions. John Piper noted on his Weblog, “He did not waste his life, not even the last hours of it. He was busy dictating into the last days. He taught me long ago that the concept of ‘retirement’ is not in the Bible.” Greg Parsons of the USCWM observed, “He died with his boots on.”
Winter is preceded in death by his parents, Hugo H. Winter (a civil engineer recognized as “Mr. Freeway” for his leadership in the development of the Los Angeles freeway system) and Hazel Patterson Winter, and by his first wife of nearly 50 years, Roberta Helm Winter. He is survived by his second wife, Barbara; by his and Roberta’s four daughters (all of whom are active in Christian mission), Elizabeth Gill (Brad), Rebecca Lewis (Tim), Linda Dorr (Darrell), and Patricia Johnson (Todd); and by 14 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
He is also survived by his older brother, Paul H. Winter (Betty), a graduate of Caltech and a well-respected structural engineer; by his younger brother, David K. Winter (Helene), president of Westmont College in Santa Barbara for more than 25 years; and by nephews, nieces, and numerous friends and colleagues worldwide.
A memorial service is scheduled for Sunday, June 28, at 3:00 p.m. at the Worship Center of Lake Avenue Church, 393 N. Lake Avenue, Pasadena, CA. Details will be posted to the website of the U.S. Center for World Mission at http://www.uscwm.org.
God made you to be in fellowship with him. God’s purpose for you is relationship with you.
Adam and Eve experienced this relationship with God in the Garden of Eden. Because of only one sin the relationship with God was broken.
God tells us that a sacrifice is required to restore the relationship that was broken between us and Him.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:2)
Not only Adam and Eve, but the Bible says each of of has commited sin that seperates us from God.
For all have sinned and fallen short of the golory of God. (Romans 3:23)
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)
God loves us so much that He came to us.
Jesus Christ born in a humble manger came to provide the sacrifice that was required of us. Jesus Christ came lived a perfect sinless life and died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sin.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, (1 Peter 3:18) God tells us that if you believe that Jesus and ask God that his death on the cross count for our sins, then our relationship with God will be restored. We will be back into God’s hand.
The punishment that was for us was inflicted upon Jesus.
God has already provided the sacrifice that is necessary to bring you back into His hand.
If you refuse the sacrifice then your bad works remain between you and God.
You are unable to do enough good things to overcome that barrier. If you die in this position you will be cut off from God’s protection forever.
We cannot do good works to retore our broken relationship with God.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
If we are in God’s hand we will remain there, protected and safe forever.
John 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.
When you have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord you have assurance of eternal life.
1 John 5:12 He who has the son has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
1 John 1:9 NIV
9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
