A Brief History: Mohammed and the birth of Islam

"Mohammed Ibn Abdallah was born in the year 570 AD in the city of Mecca. His father died before he was born and his mother Amina died when he was 6 years old. Al-Muttalib his grandfather took charge of the youth and died 2 years later. Abu Talib his uncle adopted young Mohammed into his family and raised him as his own son. At the age of 12, young Mohammed was taken on a caravan-trading venture to Syria and experienced the world outside of Arabia for the first time. Here Islamic tradition informs us that a Christian monk named Buhaira, proclaimed Talib’s young nephew is the last prophet and warns him about the Jews. For the next 13 years little is known of his life except that he was involved in caravan trading in and out of Arabia.

At the age of 25, Mohammed married a 40 year old, wealthy widow named Khadijah who owned a small trading empire. During the next 15 years of his life he interacts with Arabs known as the Hanefites. Hanefites were Arabs who rejected idol worship and were searching for the true religion. They looked at Jewish and Christian religions as nearly perfect. The Hanefites had abandoned their idols and would retreat to the caves of Mecca in meditation and prayer.

At forty years old Mohammed had his first vision in which he claimed to have spoken with the angel Gabriel, in the year 610 AD. He was in a cave on Mt. Hera he felt as though he had been demon possessed. He went to Khadijah and told her about the event. She consulted with her uncle Waraca, a Hanefite who converted to Christianity, who assured them Mohammed's vision was from God. Waraca declared Mohammed was a prophet to the Arab peoples and died 2 years later never becoming a Muslim. Muhammad could not read and write. This is admitted by all Muslims, in that they claim that one of the miracles performed by Mohammed was that he was able to write the Qu'ran, "the pinnacle of beautiful majestic Arabic of all time", even though he could not read or write. Mohammed was a shepherd. In Arabia at that time, a person was a shepherd for one of only two reasons: you were mentally deficient, or two, you were dangerous or otherwise in need of being separated from society. Islamic tradition says that Allah chose a shepherd, to demonstrate the importance of humility. (The humble shepherd prophet was already a theme in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.) "

How you understand this very short biographical essay is entirely dependent upon your world view. While the atheist or agnostic might dismiss the idea of 'entertaining angels' as childish or imaginary and associated with mythology and fables, the Hebrew, Christian and Muslim all agree - angels and demons are at work in the spirit realm which is rarely revealed to the human eye. In the bio above we see that Mohammed saw an angel in a vision, who told him he would be the last prophet of God. This angel is said to have dictated the Qu'ran to him after appearing to him as a great angel of light. Jews, Muslims and Christians can agree that Biblically speaking, this event is one that could have happened. However, where Islam differs from Judaism and Christianity is of the utmost importance when interpreting who this angel was. In the Holy Bible, we find no instances of anyone anointed by God the Father for any work, being terrorized as by a demonic spirit. In fact, without exception it is always just the opposite. In the Hebrew scriptures as well as the New Testament, when the Lord calls a servant into divine duty, all are fearful of the magnificent glory of God and at the same time comforted and strengthened by our God who loves us.

Where the issue of the deity and personage of Jesus is argued, He is the most historically verifiable person of any age. The fact remains, Yeshua Ha'Moshiach - Jesus the Christ - was put to death for His claim to deity. The Islamic faith cannot get past this problem. Islam explains that Jesus did not die on the cross, but that Judas took His place. This does not, however, negate nor explain the "why" Judas would have had to die for Him. Maybe it was because He performed miracles, continuously healing people, as both the Jewish and Islamic faiths agree? Or maybe because He was a wise teacher and great philosopher? No! He was sentenced to death because He had claimed to be the Son of God - making himself equal with God. This brings us to the Islamic catch 22; Jesus must be one of two things. Either He is a lying, thieving egomaniac, drunk on the praise of the crowds that brought their sick and lame to Him, deliberately leading people away from the One True God...or He is God in the Flesh. There are no other intellectually honest answers. The same Man who claims to be the eternal Father cannot at once be a great prophet of Islam and yet a liar. The Man whose resurrection was attested to even by His enemies in various historical memoirs and records, could not be a great teacher and yet teach an apostasy - that He is Himself YHVH (Allah is simply the Arabic word used to mean God, even in the Coptic Christian Bibles of the Middle East) incarnate. For anyone who is ready to investigate with a contrite heart, ready to accept the evidence no matter the outcome - I challenge you to learn completely and read avery verse of the Bible with the intent to disprove it, OT and New, without being convicted of sin and reborn of the Spirit of God much like many great historical and contemporary men and women. The word of God does not return void - the change will happen if you simply follow the truth.

Not ironically, Islam is a culture of death. They teach their children to die as martyrs and to kill in the name of God (Allah) which is of course a works driven religious activity - in an attempt to win the favor of God, but they fail to see that several problems exist in this ideology. First, they are to generally to abstain from burning sexuality because of it's sinfulness yet they believe the afterlife will be full of this sin...with 72 virgins, making the Paradise of God a lair in which sin is able to dwell. Second, they do not believe you can have a personal relationship with God - whom we Christians call 'Abba Father' which is equal to "papa" or "daddy" in Arabic - so they are not working to please their loving Father but to defend a distant, mysterious, violent god. Thirdly, and directly related to number two, if God the creator of all things needs a spec of dust (which mankind truly is compared to His majesty) to protect His honor that doesn't make Him seem like much of a god, reducing Allah to an idol made with hands, in the heart or in the mind.

Since there is such a contrast between Christ and Mohammed there is also a polar contrast between the influences at work in the two men. Jesus, completely sacrificial in every way, without sin as all three Abrahamic religions agree, healed and taught truth, showed man the face of the Father, laid down His life willingly for the world - Mohammed, admittedly a sinner, married and had sexual intercourse with a child, waged Jihad (holy war) against non-Muslim infidels to spread his faith, shed blood in the name of God, taught lying is a legitimate tactic of war in Jihad, who was poisoned to death against his will. It should be obvious that the Spirit of God was at work in Yeshua Ha'Moshiach - the Christ - and that Satan, the spirit of Antichrist, was at work in Mohammed.

There can, then, be only one correct answer to the question of the identity of the angel who brought Islam into the world: Lucifer, the beautiful angel of light, the father of lies, the son of perdition, the dragon himself, that serpent of old - Satan the fallen angel who is destined to be cast into the lake of fire in the future.

When you look at the Qu'ran verses regarding the Imam Mahdi aka the 12th Imam or the savior of Islam, the muslim is looking for a mighty ruler to come in the name of Allah and rule for a period of seven years and then the end will come with judgment in tow. Conversely, the Christian expects a ruler that will invoke peace as his mantra and claim to be god in the flesh, who will rule for seven years and then the end will come followed by judgment. There seems to be a pattern here...wonder where it leads.

My last bit of evidence, much like the Roman highway and the invention of crucifixion as a means of death by torture that just happened to be in it's golden age, the practice of beheading, which was all but extinct for the past recent couple hundred years and seen as barbaric, has now resurfaced as a style of execution most favored by, you guessed it, radical muslims just as Revelation explains. We as Christians must pray for our enemies - they know not what they do.