In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the victory that Jesus won on behalf of believers. He explains that when someone believes in Jesus and accepts him as their savior, they are filled with the Holy Spirit and given the power to be set free from sin. The preacher highlights the importance of personal relationships, especially when evangelizing to Muslim individuals, as they value personal connections over accomplishments. He encourages Christians to demonstrate God's love through their actions and to present the Gospel in a way that makes sense to non-Christians and Muslims. The sermon concludes with a prayer of gratitude for God's love.

Well, again, good morning. This morning we're privileged to have Sammy Tanaga with us. Sammy is the director of Good Shepherd World Evangelism, a ministry to Muslims. He's the author of a book called Glad News, God Loves You, My Muslim Friend, which we actually have available in the lobby. I encourage you to pick one of these up on your way out, purchase one, to read it, to really digest it, and then to pass it on to someone else. And pray that God would actually bring you across the path of someone here in our fair city who is a Muslim. This book is really directed towards someone who is a Muslim, to share the good news with them that God loves them and desires that they would know Him. Sammy also teaches a class at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, entitled How to Share Your Faith with a Muslim. And in a rather short form, that's what we're going to get this morning, is a class on how to share our faith with someone who is a Muslim. So please let's welcome Sammy Tanaga. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. I have been looking forward to it since Pastor Corey extended the invitation to me. And as I was thinking about coming from Orange County, California, to share with you this message, I felt that God is reminding me that He brought me out of Egypt to share with you this message. I had no idea that I would be coming to America. I was working as a lawyer in my father's legal firm, enjoying a big family and servants at home, wonderful style of living, successful career. Had no idea that God is going to move me out of Egypt and bring me here. But we serve an awesome God and the sky is the limit on where He directs and guides us and how can He use us. So today we will start dealing with the topic, witnessing to Muslims. And I want to start by mentioning in the Gospel of Matthew 22, we read that a Jewish man asked Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the law. Jesus answered at once, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your soul. This is the greatest commandment. And the second is like, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And I want to suggest to you from the beginning that loving God with all our mind requires that we should use our mind every day and throughout our life the best way possible to think how can we bring pleasure to the heart of God. And my own feelings and conviction is that there is nothing brings pleasure to the heart of God more than His children having a good relationship with Him and helping other people to come to know Him. And the reason is simple. Because God is love, the Bible tells us. God so loved the world. This is the heart of God that He gave His own and only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God so loved, this is the passion of God. This is the heart of God. The source of evangelism and nations is the heart of God. God is in love with His creation. He has that thing with people. He just loves people. He is unlike you and me. We are affected by outside circumstances. We try to look for something good in the other person, admirable, something beautiful, something that can merit our respect and our affection and our time. God is not like that. God is love. His nature is love. And He is longing to have a relationship with every living person. And this relationship will last for eternity. God is in love with His creation. The Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should perish but all will come to repentance. And that is really what I feel God is putting in my heart as a primary reason why we should bother and learn how to witness to Muslims. Because God is in love with Muslims. Now, Muslim believers number 1.3 billion people in the world. Almost 20.9% of world's populations are Muslims. According to statistics, only about 4% of Western missionary force is endeavoring to reach Muslims with the gospel. Even though Muslim people comprise about 38% of the unevangelized people of the world. So, as you see, for the most part, most of the Muslim world is unplanted seeds, unevangelized. And that is the primary reason why the Church of Jesus Christ hasn't seen many Muslims coming to Christ. Not because Muslims heard the message of the gospel and understood it and rejected it. No, it hasn't been communicated to them, especially in a way that they can understand and accept. Because it's one thing to communicate the message and it's a different thing that the receiver will understand what we are talking about. Now, to penetrate the Muslim world with the message of God's love, there are two things I feel God is putting in my heart. The first thing is that church in America can and should become a partner with a church in a Muslim country. And the most important Muslim area in the world is the Middle East. And some of the most important Muslim countries in the Middle East is Egypt and Jordan. And the West Bank and all these areas where Jewish people live right now. Now, the church in America through this partnership will provide the church in a Muslim country with many valuable things like technical skills or skills to use a computer or to use applications or printing or teach programs for the youth, children, teach English as a second language. The church can, through this partnership, strengthen the feet and the hands of the church in a Muslim country, which usually Christians in a Muslim country try to survive and communicate the faith against all kinds of pressure, economic, political, social pressure. So by you doing that, you are helping the church accomplish the Great Commission, which is go to all the nations and baptize people from all over the world in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. You are helping the church to fulfill the Great Commission. You are fulfilling the Great Commission. By doing that, you are also demonstrating God's love to your brothers and sisters, the other weaker part of the body that is not as blessed as you and not living in a comfortable, wonderful circumstances as you are living. And you are fulfilling the greatest commandment of Jesus, love one another as I have loved you. Now, when you look at the big picture, I know that you can do that. And I will give you very small evidence that church in America, tens of millions of Americans go to the Middle East every year only to visit the Holy Land. While I admit that you can be blessed by visiting the Holy Land and learn many valuable biblical lessons, but in my opinion, I feel that you will be more blessed not only when you walk where Jesus walked, but also when you walk as Jesus walked. In my opinion, having one child, whether Muslim or Christian in the West Bank in the name of Christ, will bring the Bible alive to more than walking a hundred miles where Jesus walked. Because that's what I understand from God's word. God's word says, God is love. And he who abides in love, practice love, abides in God and God in him. Not to mention also that the Bible says, by this all will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another. So really the love that unites us here as a local body with each other and unites us with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Muslim countries, is the biggest demonstration that the Holy Spirit indwells us and unites us not only as one family, but also as one body. It's the biggest evidence that the father sent to the son and the son sent to the Holy Spirit. And we are children of God. Now, when you look at the big picture, you will know that this makes sense. Because the church in America every year spend hundreds of millions of dollars to re-evangelize people that we have been evangelized before many times and don't spend 0.1% of its time and resources to take the message of God's love to Muslims who never heard it communicated to them one time in their lifetime. Something wrong in this picture and it's going to change by God's grace. God is going to reach Muslims. God accomplishes his purpose on earth. The only question remains is, is he going to use you and me or is he going to use someone else? But God does whatever he pleases. I want to find out what God is doing and I want to take part of it. I want to become his partner because I want to be blessed and I want to, in the end of my life, I want to, before I die, before I go to heaven, I want to know that I invested my life, every day of my life, to bring the pleasure to the one who gave his life for me. Now, Jesus prayed also in John 17, I pray that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent to me. This is the first course of action that the church in America can take and it's a very important thing that the church of America can do to penetrate the Muslim world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, the second thing the church can do, the church in America can become a genuine friend and feel and have God's love for the Muslims that God brings here to America. In spite of the church's failure in America to go where Muslims is, God, in his love and in his grace, has been working through political, social, economic circumstances in many Muslim countries around the world and he drove millions and millions of Muslims outside of their Muslim lands to come here to be in our universities, our neighbors, and our fellow citizens. This is not a mere coincidence, it's an act of divine providence. By the hand of God, a new door has been opened to penetrate the Muslim world at the feet of the Christian church in America today. God brought Muslims where the best, most powerful, resourceful, blessed church is in America. And it is definitely God's will for you and me to seize the opportunity and to win at least some of these Muslims that he is bringing here. Let's say 20 percent or 30 percent. In America we have at least 10 to 12 million Muslims. Don't believe anybody or say 60 million, I have the truth. In California we have only 2 million Muslims. Now if we want some of these Muslims here, through them, working with them, we can penetrate the Muslim world, their families and their friends, much more effectively than we trying to send an American over there to struggle with the language and culture and so forth. The presence of Muslims in the United States is one of the greatest challenge and opportunity that facing the church today. And it is God's will that we should start thinking using our minds, love God with all our minds, and start praying that the Holy Spirit will provide us, guide us, to how can we win many of these Muslims. And I see many encouraging signs all over the United States right now, and I am very optimistic that it is going to start to happen. Now I want to open your eyes more about witnessing to Muslims. This is one of my goals that God put in my heart to accomplish. In Genesis 17, well let's start by Genesis 12, God promised Abraham that he will bless him, and through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. So we see from the beginning that God is not only interested in Abraham, but he is interested that through Abraham he will bless everybody. And that is the God we worship. God is love, he loves us, he wants to shower his blessings on us, and then he wants to use us to channel some of his blessings to the people around us. We serve a God of love, who loves everybody. Isn't it cool, fun? I love it. In Genesis 17, God promised Abraham that he will bless Ishmael, and as for Ishmael, I have heard you, I will surely bless him, I will make him fruitful. Fruitful, bless him, we thought that God is interested only in Isaac. Not so. Not so. God chose Isaac to make his covenant with him, his descendants, and Jesus came from Isaac, so what? Jesus has to come through someone, and God has to make his covenant at the beginning with some people. It is God's will from the beginning that through these people he will manifest himself to all the nations. There are so many clear verses in the Old Testament and in Psalms to indicate this truth. In Isaiah 19, God promised that he would be known in Egypt, saying, so the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. A prophecy that God will be known in Egypt. That's why I chose Egypt, not because I was born and raised there. I have more biblical, spiritual, objective reasons for that. In Isaiah 19, God also said, blessed be Egypt, my people, Assyria, my handiwork, Israel, my inheritance. I don't know why I don't hear that, these promises from our Christian scholars who have been living here for 20 years. All the focus is on Israel. I don't know why. Somehow we need to reach a more balanced approach to the world that we are living in, and to manifest our love and show God's concern for everybody. We cannot focus on the Jewish people, a few million people, and run the risk of losing 1.3 billion people. I don't really think this is God's will at all. Now, Muslims are much closer to the hidden knowledge of Jesus Christ than you think, and than Satan would like you to believe. Let me illustrate a little bit. The great majority of the Muslim people of the world are not fanatic. They are very moderate. They have a strong, abiding belief in God who created everybody, heaven and earth. They are God's conscious people. They have a longing and a strong desire to submit their lives to God's will, to Allah's will, who created everyone, who created heaven and earth. They believe in the day of judgment, of God's harsh judgment. They are aware of their personal sins, and they are in many ways longing to gain God's acceptance and God's approval. So, they are in many ways restless and deserting for spiritual reality, and they revere and respect Jesus as a great prophet, as I will explain to you in a few minutes. Now, in this sense, they are closer to the hidden knowledge of Jesus than many non-Christian Westerners, in my opinion, the way I see it. I deal with many non-Christian Westerners. I am like you. I have a job that supports me full time. I do the ministry because it's God's calling upon my life, but I earn my living like you, struggling with secular people, non-Christians, and living with them 40 hours a week. I have been dealing with a white man, blue eyes, blonde hair, for about three years now, witnessing to him, loving him, buying on my self-centered life with him, praying for him, and he can encourage me, he can curse God, he can curse Jesus, he can tell me the F-word, he can tell me the hell with Jesus, I don't care about your Jesus, Jesus was a man who loves you, how come you love Jesus, he's a man, are you homosexual, and he can make fun of me, and he can insult me, and insult God, he has no reference to God. Now, you will never find a Muslim person act like that. See the difference between a Muslim person and a non-Christian Westerner? Now, maybe you find a Muslim person like that every hundred million, you find one. That's it. Just to be honest, I hate to exaggerate, especially from the public. God's conscious people, the Muslim people, they have the fear of God implanted in their blood. That's something that we have in Muslim countries and in Muslim lands. Now, they have great values and the culture that you can respect and appreciate. As I mentioned to you, I was working as a lawyer in my father's legal firm, my father wrote a couple of his condos by my name, some of his properties, but I would leave my condos empty the whole year and live with my parents. Why? Because I want to wake up in the morning, I want to hug my mother, I want to kiss my mother, I want to hear my father arguing with my mother, and I hope he will make a mistake and tell him he should not have said that. Apologize, father. We all make mistakes, it's okay. I want to interact with them, I want to be with them. The thought of becoming independent never occurred to my mind, and I wasn't dysfunctional or anything like that, of course. I was a normal, average Egyptian man living in a Muslim country, and many times we exchanged harsh words, me and my father, through arguments, especially when I was in law school and I learned how to argue. He never insinuates something like, oh, as long as you are under my roof, you will abide by my rules, or you should leave, things we hear here in American culture. He will never dare, if he dares to say something like that, I will tell all my neighbors he will have a hard time living there. He knows better. Families stick together, blood is thicker than water. Most of the Muslim people have beautiful emotions, and personal people. That's why, number one general rule, when you meet a Muslim, not to focus on eliciting his response to the gospel, or trying prematurely to make him make a decision for Christ. One, two, three, four, five, take it, or you are going to hell. This is not really the most favorable approach in evangelism, especially witnessing to Muslims, because Muslim people are personal-oriented people. The most important thing to us is personal relationship. How you say good morning to me, how you are looking at me, what is your eyes telling me, what is your spirit when you are talking to me. This is the most important thing to us, even in the workplace. Not the work itself, but the personal relationship in the work. So, unlike Westerners, the most important thing to them is accomplishment, achievement, strategy. We are terrible achievers, I admit that to you. We want to have a good time talking with each other, and enjoying each other's company. That's why all Muslim countries, most of them, and Arab countries are backward, third world countries, they don't have much inventions and accomplishments like Americans and Westerners. But for you, when you meet a Muslim, the most important thing is to enter into a genuine, loving, personal relationship with him, and ask God to pour some of his love through the Holy Spirit in your heart toward him. And this is especially important with Muslims. I can give you an idea about the background, the West, Christians dealing with Muslims, they left negative impressions on Muslims in history, starting from the crusaders, Christians invaded Muslim lands, carrying the sword in one hand and the shield with a cross in the other, and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslims to recapture Jerusalem. After that, the colonial period, Christian Europe invaded, occupied 85% of Muslim land, and exploited sheep, labor, and land. All these countries gained independence, with the exception of the homeland of Palestine. Jewish people came from all over the world with the support of Christians in America and Britain, equipped with sophisticated weapons, bombed hundreds of Muslim cities, my city was destroyed 80% of the way, killed tens of thousands of people, took hundreds of thousands of people outside of their land, of their homes, refugees, among these people are 60,000 Christian Palestinians, Jewish army broke human rights laws, United Nations sanctions, Old Testament commandments, treated Arabs like dogs, you name it, they have done it over there. And Christians blindly collapsed at the fulfillment of the prophecy and supported the Jewish people because they were God's people, and God is going to save them in the end, and did not show any love almost, to Muslims and Christians, your brothers and sisters, who need medical help and who need many things to sustain life. So the Muslim people view all these actions of aggression from Western Christians as representative Christianity, and Satan would come to them and tell them, look at Christians, who is attacking who? Who is attacking who? Are you going to America or the West to attack them? They are coming to you, American warplanes bombing your cities and taking your land, and you must go back to God and carry the sword and be like your prophet in the beginning and be a fundamental committed Muslim 100% so God can have mercy on you and can heal your land and give you back your home. So the Muslim people, for the general part, do not trust American Christians, do not trust Western Christians, and they have a very good logical reason of not trusting you. My job here is not to tell you who is land is this, or the prophecy, this is not my job, thank God, it's your pastor's job. My job is to give you a feel of what they perceive you, and so you can know that Satan's strategy is widening the gulf of separation between Muslims and Christians so the message of God's love will not reach them, but it is definitely God's will that you bridge the distance that exists between you and them, because at the same time that this distance is bridged, they can see God's love in you, and they can see that you love them because God is in you, manifesting his love to them, and they can see that the Christian faith is the true faith, through what they see in you, your love, your gentleness, your self-control, your joy, the hope in your life, and the faith that the Holy Spirit produces in your life, and they can see the difference between you and your brothers and sisters here, and their friends, and their religion. That only can happen when the two people become close to each other. Now, winning his trust, winning the Muslim trust is extremely important. So, when you come to the Muslim, the most common mistake of Christian Americans, when they meet a Muslim, the gospel, boom, Jesus son of God crucified for you, you take him or you're going to hell. Wrong approach. The Muslim will say, well, serious, God doesn't have a son. The Quran tells us that God doesn't have a son because he doesn't have a woman. Second, the Quran tells us Jesus is not crucified. Third, you want to convert me to your Western religion, to be against my people. You don't love me and you don't love my people. You just want to score a point and convert me. You don't have time for me. You don't listen to me. You want me to lose my family, my country, everything, and to be like you, an aggressor, and the money-greedy, and capitalist. No, thank you. I'd rather die with my people than become a Christian. Good, that's good. This is a good start. I can see potential in this church. Yeah. Open with me, please, to Acts 17. If you please go to verse 22, Acts 17, 22. Now we are going to advance one more step and go to the biblical foundation for cross-cultural evangelism. Acts 17, verse 22. I will read a few verses for you. Then Paul stood in the midst of the Ariobates and said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious. For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Therefore, the one whom you worship without knowing him, I proclaim to you. Now, I learned two valuable lessons from Paul's approach to the Athenians. The first lesson is, Paul found common ground with his hearers. He sought a point of contact through which he could communicate his message. And he found it in the inscription, an unknown God. Paul went to Athens. He saw the people worshiping many idols, many statues. He could have said, there is nothing in common between me and these people. They worship all these deities and I worship the God of Abraham, the Messiah. I cannot relate to them. Thank you. I'm going to go to a Jewish synagogue. He did not do that. He prayed until God gave him a common ground between him and the Athenians, the unknown God. And he did not hesitate to relate his message against this background, against this unknown God. He told them, this unknown God that you worship, I came to declare to you, to tell you about. Ah, they are listening now. In doing so, he very effectively set the gospel against the background of their beliefs. Now, the second lesson I learned from Paul is, Paul quoted their point to validate his message. The only text used by Paul were not taken from the Old Testament, but were taken from Greek sources. In him we live, move, have our being, and we are his offspring. So the principle here is, the gospel could be vindicated and supported from non-biblical sources, at least in the beginning. Now, in Acts 18.5, when Paul was with the Jews, we read that he was testifying, witnessing to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. Again, he found a common ground in the hope of the Israelites of the coming Messiah. So Paul adapted his message to the environment he found himself in, and always sought to set it against the background of the belief of his listeners, of his hearers, even to the point of quoting their own scripture to validate his message. In Athens, Paul walked around the city and saw the idols and the statues, many objects of worship. He could have easily told the Athenians, excuse me, you guys, what's happening here? You use wood to make a god to worship, and then the rest of the wood you barbecue your meat, you foolish, excuse me, you are out of it. Let me tell you about the Abraham. No, no, no, no, no, no. He did not do that. He did not belittle them or criticize them or make fun of them or attack them or assail them or anything like that. As a matter of fact, not only did he have self-control, but he went to the other extreme. He commended them. He told them, you guys are in every way very religious. Wow, Paul, very religious? Aren't you compromising me a little bit? No, of course not. Paul, no doubt, prayed. He asked God to pour his love in his heart, and he prayed, God, let me connect with these people. Let me say something that will make sense to them. Let me communicate your love to them and tell them about you and about Jesus Christ. And God's love in his heart gave him the right approach and the right spirit and the right attitude, and consequently the right words to say. He said the right words. He connected with them spiritually and culturally, because he had God's love and because he used a term they were familiar with. He established a common ground with them. And it is interesting to me to notice that Paul used the word he used for God, the common Greek word for God. And it is frustrating to me to hear some of our great Christian teachers and public speakers and radio hosts accuse Muslims of worshipping Allah, the moon god, because the moon god was worshipped by pagan Arabs before Islam. Now, first of all, Allah is the Arabic universal word for the supreme being who created heaven and earth. I worship Allah. It's in my Arabic Bible. That's why I mentioned to you partnership between Christian Americans and Middle Eastern Christians is very important, because the Quran came down, as they claim, to Muhammad through the Arabic language. So Christian scholars, Americans, they're trying to approach Muslims and trying to share information without knowing that this information that they share will widen the gulf of separation between Christians and Muslims and offend Muslims and offend the Christians also. Christians worshipped Allah hundreds of years before Muhammad started the Islamic religion. Add to that, who cares if it's technically correct or not technically correct, the word Allah. This is not really the gospel message. Why we should put more stumbling blocks in his path to the cross more than he already has. We are making it more harder. He is telling us we worship Allah, the God who created heaven and earth, whom we're going to stand in the day of judgment. And we are telling him, oh, no, you are a blasphemer. You are infidel. You are worshipping the moon God. OK, I am worshipping the moon God, you are worshipping God. OK, we are apart from each other. Who are we going to evangelize now and tell about God's love? What are we going to do now, play basketball, baseball, play hockey? What are we going to do? We lost the means to accomplish the goals that God wants us to accomplish. Tell him about his love. I remember a sad story in my Christian life a few years ago. There was a lady that used to enter my office every morning and she is putting something on. She called it perfume. I call it substance or gas or something else. I don't know what it was. It was something horrible. But she used to come to my office every morning. Good morning, Sammy. What's up? What's happening? What is this? What is that? And I'm the day I want to say good morning to God. I want to drink my coffee. I want to have some peace of mind. I don't want her to come with her. This substance, this is substance abuse. Now, one day I made, I made the unforgivable mistake. I told her the truth. I told her if you please, this is not right. Try to buy something more expensive. I said it with as much love as possible. She looked at me and I lost her. Even though we have a Bible study, I work for the county of every Wednesday and I try to serve God and I'm asking God to use me. Do you think after this statement, I can invite her to the Bible study? Do you think I can tell her I love you or God loves you? Of course, God told me, are you happy now? You want to start your day right? Okay. Enjoy your life now. Now that was so many years ago. Now I'm doing better. Now it is God's will. When you deal with non-Christians and with Muslims, anybody who doesn't know God, that everything that you say and everything that you do will bring the non-Christian closer to you, to you. You cannot separate yourself from the message of the gospel. The apostle Paul in Thessalonians chapter 2 said, we love you so much that we were delighted not only to share the gospel of God with you, but to give you our life as well. Because you have become so dear to us. Somehow giving the gospel message to non-Christians is strongly and directly connected with you and with me. Everything we say, everything that we talk through our eyes, the expressions of our faith, our spirit, our actions must tell the other person, I love you and not a compliment or being nice because I prayed and God poured his love in my heart toward the other person and the other person in the same time, gradually hearing the gospel message, God's love, he is seeing a strong demonstration through your eyes and through your lips and through your faith and through your actions. And this is God's will. And of course, God told me, do you think I care how you feel about her perfume? I told him, no God, I think you don't care. Now we want to now move one more step ahead. So the principle is we should meet the Muslim where he is and make our message relevant to his background and his beliefs. And we can do that by establishing points of doctrines or beliefs which we hold in common with them. And we must, this common belief leads to the gospel of God fully revealed in Jesus Christ. And now I put all the area of common belief and the common ground in this book, glad news, God loves you, my Muslim friends, and the proof to the Muslim, God guided me to address the Muslim in the book and to prove to him the original sin. And we are all sinful, even starting from the Quran, the story of the fall of Adam, to prove to him that through the story of Abraham, that God gave his son through Abraham sacrificed his son. And to prove to him the story of the cross, even starting from his background, the story of the cross in the Quran. And I made a comparison between the relationship of God to the believer, master to slave in Islam or father to child in Christianity. Today, I will only briefly mention to you one area of common ground. Later on next year, if we have time, we can do a seminar discussing all this area of common ground. So right now, let me mention to you the positive teachings about Jesus in the Quran, and how can we use them as a stepping stone to the gospel. Now, the Quran gave Jesus three eminent titles, which is the Messiah, the word of God, and the spirit from God. Through a discussion in each title with the Muslim, it is very easy to help the Muslim see that Jesus is divine and he is the savior of the world. Through the Messiah, word of God, because the word of God and God is one, uncreated and eternal. And the spirit from God is equal to an admission of the pre-existence of Jesus. That Jesus is not a creature made out of dust, but that eternal spirit which took on human flesh. And the title Messiah, who is the Messiah? The Messiah is the final messenger of God's salvation. He is that apocalyptic personage to be awakened to come in the fullness of time. And the Jews long awaited his coming. He is the savior of the world. And the Jewish and Christian believers used the two titles simultaneously, the Messiah and the son of God. The Quran admits that Jesus is born of a virgin, conceived miraculously through the Holy Spirit without a father, lived a sinless life, did not commit one sin in his life, ascended to heaven and he is alive today, enjoying the presence of God. And he is coming back to herald the day of judgment and the climax of human history and to defeat the false Christ, the Dajjal, Antichrist, to win the most important battle in the history of humanity. Jesus, according to the early great Muslim theologians and the scholars, received the worship. The prophet Yahya, John the Baptist, bowed down to him when both were in their mother's womb. Jesus enjoyed divine attributes, including the ability to create. He created birds the same way God created Adam. And he raised the people from the dead. And he had the ability to know the unseen. Things are not seen by the human eyes. And the Quran states only God can create, only God can raise people from the dead, only God can know the unseen. Now, in my witness with Muslims, and when I teach in the Bible College at Costa Mesa, I teach that first we should establish that common ground. Now you are simulating a process of reflection. Now he is thinking, wow, we agree about this awesome truth in the Quran and in the Bible. So now he has to think not only of what you say from a purely Christian point of view, and he doesn't believe in it anyway, your Bible is corrupted, but now you are saying what you believe is the same as I believe. What is the implication and what does that mean? So now you move into the implication of the uniqueness of Jesus. Why? All the prophets we read and heard about were ordinary men, born of a father and mother, lived a sinful life, went to the dust, they are not coming back again, they never enjoyed divine attributes. The suggestion that Jesus is only a prophet or only a messenger cannot be sustained against the wealth of evidence of his distinguished and exceptional life and his particular closeness to God. All these unique features in the life of Jesus that God lifted on him at the expense of others demand that there is something glorious, majestic, heavenly about the person of Jesus. To knit all these unique features together and to make sense out of them, or surely they will be meaningless if Jesus is just a prophet like all the other prophets. Now whatever that thing is that knits them all together, the Qur'an is silent about it, because the Qur'an, Islam, by denying the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity, Jesus divinity, he is the son of God and he is our saviour, has simultaneously robbed all these unique features it admits of their significance. Now our job is, and that's what I attempted to do in the book, is to help the Muslims see how all these unique features harmonize and define their meaning and their significance in the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity, namely Jesus is the son of God in a spiritual sense and he is our saviour. And I will give you quickly an example of that. Let's take the virgin birth. If Jesus is the son of God, he absolutely must come through a virgin, through the power of the Holy Spirit, if the son of God decided to come in the likeness of men. He could not have been born through a father and mother, because the son of God pre-existed. So his creation could not, must be, the only exception to the created order, to the natural process of procreation, because the life of the human race is in the male field. For this reason, his coming was an entry, he entered our world, he did not come through a father and mother. So the spiritual sonship to the father explains the necessity of the virgin birth and gives the reason for it. At least we can see the significance. And I always tell my Muslim friends that, listen, God is a spirit. We agree about that. They say, yeah. Jesus, according to the Quran and the Bible, he is a spirit from God. Yes, he is a spirit from God. He is born of a virgin, conceived miraculously through the Holy Spirit. We agree about that. Many Muslims don't know, open and show them. He is not related to any human father, by the admission of the Quran and the Bible. Right? Right. If the Bible is not correct by saying God is his father, who is his father then? You tell me, who is his father? Find him a father. Who is his father? There is no answer. So you explain to him the meaning of the spiritual sonship of Jesus to God. And that Muhammad misunderstood what the Christians were saying about the sonship of Jesus. Jesus is the son of God, means he came from God, means he has the same divine nature as God has, as you and me have the same sinful human nature as our father. And if it needs to be, you get into Adam. We inherited the same nature from Adam because we are the children of Adam, but Jesus, the son of God. That's why he was sinless, according to the Quran and the Bible. Who can be sinless in action except one who is sinless in his nature? And he is sinless because he and the father is one, as he said, I and the father are one. And he ascended. Who can enjoy the presence of God? He came from God and he went to God and he is coming back again from God. His home is heaven. And that's what Jesus said. I came from heaven to do the will of God. And that's what Jesus said to the Jews, you are from below, I am from above. So you are using the Bible. And the second coming, the same thing, explain the second coming, why he is coming back again. Now, quickly, in a couple of minutes, as I have to close, Jesus is unique, reason number two, because he is our savior. And you tell him the story. Sin is an integral part of the human body. All manners of iniquities and dwell the human body. Lust, greed, envy, jealousy, hatred, you name it, and dwell the human body. The human body is captive to the power of sin. Sin has vicious control over the human body. The human body is the breeding ground and the playground of sin. Problem. Because we inherited the same nature of Adam, sinful nature. Jesus came, Romans 8, 3, tells us, in the likeness of human body, the incarnation, help him to understand the incarnation. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh and he condemned sin in the flesh. By resisting Satan's temptation and by not committing one sin, he defeated Satan and sin in its own dwelling place, the human body. He won the battle on our behalf. And the good news of the gospel is the moment, my friend, you believe in Jesus, that he came and died for your sins and rose again. He will indwell you through the Holy Spirit and he will give you the power to be set free from the love and captivity of sin. And many of us experience that. The moment that you believe in Jesus, the chains of sin that Satan held you captive is broken. Now I don't have to live to my lust and sinful nature. I don't have to live for myself. I don't have to hold a grudge. I can forgive, I can love, I can deny myself. I don't have to live for the pride of life or the approval of man. I can live for God because I am free. Jesus said in John 8, anyone who sins is a slave to sin, but if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. Not only Jesus came as a savior to save us from the power and captivity of sin, but Jesus came and endured on the cross the wrath of God against all of our sins. And he, on our behalf, took the penalty that we should have paid for the sins that we committed. The righteous demand of the law of God was met when Jesus took upon his body all of our sins. And the good news of the gospel, that Jesus came to save us from paying the penalty for our sins, because the penalty is such a huge debt that we could not have paid, except by eternal separation from God. So Jesus came and endured on the cross the most horrible consequence for your sins and my sins, death, separation from God. And the moment the person believed in Jesus that he died for his sins and rose again, at this very moment, that person enjoyed peace with God, and enjoyed the knowledge that his sins are forgiven. I walk every day, I live, and I know I am not under condemnation. I am accepted by God and I am forgiven because Jesus died for my sins and carried all my sins. And the person feels that the moment he believes. Not only that, Jesus came and conquered death itself and reversed the worst consequence of our sins. When he rose from the dead, he entered heaven as a human being and as a divine, eternal spirit. And the moment the person believed in him, he became united with Jesus and the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, indwell that person and the same Jesus that lived in heaven come and indwell that person and the person will know for sure that he is going to heaven and heaven is our home. Listen to that Bible verse in 1 Corinthians, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep. So Jesus came and conquered death itself. So Jesus is unique, the divine son of God came in the likeness of man as a savior to bridge the gap that exists between a holy God and sinful man. That is why he is more than a prophet and that is why Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one can come to the father, but through me. That's why Jesus said, I am the gate. If anyone enters through me will be saved. That's why the Bible said there is no any other name given by which we must be saved, except the name of Jesus. Now, most of the non-Christians and the most of the Muslims never had a chance from a loving Christian to present the gospel to them in a way that can make sense and in a way that they can understand. And this is our duty and our job. And it all starts with two decisions that you take in your life. I want to live my life to love God with all my heart and with all my mind and with all my soul. Because God deserves to get everything from you. The reason is simple, because he gave you everything. And I want to live my life to love my neighbor as myself. Let's end up with a word of prayer. Join me in prayer, please. Our dear heavenly father, we thank you so much for loving us. I thank you for loving me. Even there were not much good things in me, but you loved me when I was bad, when I was arrogant, when I was harsh, you loved me when I was against you. You are an awesome God and you still love me in spite of my shortcomings and the mistakes and failure and the weaknesses. You still love me, God, every day. You still bless me every day. Oh, God, you are a wonderful God. You are an awesome father. And I cannot help it by falling in love with you. Oh, God, today we are coming before you as your children and we are asking you to enable us to love you as you deserve to be loved. And we are asking you, God, to pour out your love in our hearts so we can love every person that doesn't know you. Pour out your love in our hearts, God, so we can manifest your love so you can love people through our bodies, through our faces, and through our actions. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.