Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Our Muslim friends like to say that "Allah is great!" According to the first chapter of the Qur'an, they speak of Him as being "beneficent, Lord of the worlds, the merciful owner of the Day of Judgment." When they know they are about to die (that is, for example, suicide-bombers), they love to repeat that phrase, "Allah is great!"
But the Bible says that God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator, is far greater than the Muslims understand "Allah" to be. God is our Father, who loves the world so much that He gave His only Son, who sent Him to die for us. The God who is revealed in the Holy Bible is more than being "Lord of the worlds," He is the Savior of the worlds!
He is the Author of life, and yet He is also the Conqueror of death. He is the One who has defeated Satan. The Bible describes the true God as the One who Himself "is love," that is, "God is agape." The Quran knows nothing of a God who is love--the kind of love that led the Son of God actually to go to hell in order to "save the world." He died what the Bible calls "the second death" (Rev. 2:11). That is a death that is eternal; it is hell itself. Isaiah 53 says He "poured out His soul unto death," like you empty a bottle of its last drop. When one dies hoping for a resurrection, the Bible says that is not "death," it is only "sleep." Death, the real thing, is death forever; it is forfeiting all the joys of life itself, forever. It's hard to imagine how terrible hell is--the utter defeat of all that you are, it includes eternal shame and disgrace.
And that precisely is what Christ chose to endure in our behalf! Peter says that the Father would not leave Him in hell (Acts 2:25-27), but raised Him up. But the resurrection of Christ does not weaken the extent of His love for us. "Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Phil. 2:8). And Galatians 3:13 tells us that the death of the cross involved "the curse of God." Christ "was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21).
Love that dies our second death for us, that takes our hell upon Himself--that is the measure of the true "beneficence" of God, His true "mercy." This is what qualifies Him to be truly "the Lord of the worlds, Owner of the Day of Judgment."
The time has come for Christ to become "King of kings, Lord of lords," and be known among the Muslims for what He is in truth--"the Savior of the world" (John 4:42).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 1, 2002.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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