The Word

Two Muslim girls are hungry for the Word of God. A report we received from the Arabian Peninsula tells us that when local children gathered at a Christian’s house to get help with homework, one girl spotted a Bible and asked to look at it. The Christian let her look at an English Bible and then gave her an Arabic Bible to look at. She asked to take it home to borrow, but never returned it. Later another girl was working on a school project at the Christian’s house, and whenever the believer left the room she would begin to read a book about the Bible. These girls are starving for God’s Word.

Why are they so hungry for the Bible if their own religious text critiques the Bible? Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner explain in their book Unveiling Islam that Muslims believe the Bible is “unfulfilled (so needing the Qur’an to complete the revelation) and flawed (corrupted at its core).” Muslims also hold that “Allah sent the revisions of the biblical stories to Muhammed to ‘fix’ the corrupted Bible (surahs 6:34; 4:82; 10:65).” The Bible and the Qur’an may refer to some of the same names, but they make different claims about those names, especially concerning the name of Jesus. Muslims do not believe that God is triune or that Jesus the Son is one Person of the Trinity. They also do not believe that Jesus was crucified. Unveiling Islam explains, “The Jews boast in surah 4:157, ‘“We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Apostle of Allah”,--but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.’” Furthermore, Islam has some contradictory teachings about Jesus: “Surah 4:144 states that all messengers died before Muhammad, but surah 4:158 claims that Jesus was raised to God without death. In his commentary on surah 3:46, Yusaf Ali teaches that Jesus lived until he was about thirty-three, but surah 5:110 says He taught the people as an old man” (Caner and Caner 87, 89, 90, 93, 108). No wonder some Muslim children are hungry for God’s Word, and for the Word become flesh.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. --John 1:14
I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.—John 6:35 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved . . . . I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. --John 10:9-10