Dwight Nelson and Allah

I often wonder when listening to some Adventist Pastors how totally out of touch with the world around them they are. This week brought several elements, together that really should focus us on some of these leadership problems in Adventism.

First a bit of sad news as reported on the First Things Website:

Shahbaz Bhatti was a Catholic and a Pakistani minister for the defense of minorities who dedicated his life to the “struggle for human equality, social justice, religious freedom, and to uplift and empower the religious minorities’ communities.” He was assasinated yesterday because of his opposition to the country’s blasphemy law:

Watch his testimony recorded before his death with the instruction to be published if he died: https://youtu.be/oBTBqUJomRE

Last week I received an email of a letter or article by someone who had a problem with the emerging church, it was not specific and was pretty much the usual they don't have the truth so they must be against us view. So I thought I would look up the author and see what else he wrote. He is pretty much a run of the mill Traditional SDA of dubious interpretation abilities but I did discover something interesting. On a website where he has some articles I found this article entitled “SDA Pastor Dwight Nelson says "Allah is GOD" and that "ALLAH IS THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE”

The article by Phil Moore correctly points us to the following:

In a sermon on Sabbath Dec. 11, 2010, Dr. (Pastor) Dwight Nelson of Pioneer Memorial SDA Church told the world on air, 3ABN and via the Internet that: "Allah is the name of the LIVING GOD; ALLAH IS THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE."

This sermon was titled "Star Still Rising Over Islam" ...

After listening to the suggested area I saw that Phil Moore had given an accurate description of what Pastor Nelson said. Moore's analysis I will leave to you to read if you are interested, it did not strike me as anything special so I will offer up my view on Nelson's statements. While you can download the file from the above link I will give you a transcript of the relevant statements.

Leading me to this question. (unintelligible) If God was able to shine the light of truth upon those children of the East [wise men at Jesus birth] Those sons of Ishmael 2000 years ago come folks think with me could he not would he not be doing the same today? Among the same people's of the East? By the millions are there not honest hearted seekers after truth in the Muslim faith too? Huh? And if the answer is yes and by the way I believe the answer is yes then does it not follow that Bethlehem not Rome ought to be our example today? And that instead of alienating the children of the East with our anti Islamic rhetoric we ought to be at the forefront of a movement that seeks to share with them the light that shines upon both of our communities of faith.

I recently listened to a series of CD lectures given by the late Dr. Robert Darnell a member of our community of faith, an expert on Islamic studies, he's an anthropologist. In which he carefully chronicled how that the Koran teaches the seeds of every divine truth that you and I embrace. The seeds are all there. It was Darnell's lifelong mission and conviction cultivate those seeds in dialog with the children of the East and in an hour of history when the West is turning against those children ought we not to be the first to raise up our voices in their behalf?

Think. Why shouldn't we? For what if, by the way that story of Christmas could hardly let us do otherwise could it? What if the spirit the mighty spirit of Allah by the way I got some letters from viewers after that last teaching, and one viewer said don't you know that the name Allah is a name for Lucifer? I hope you never never never never never embrace that. Allah listen carefully now Allah is closer to Elohim the Hebrew name for god then is our English word god. In fact hold on to your seats the English name for god is a Nordic pagan god. We have taken a pagan god's name and we've said that is the name of our God. And we all call him god. That's a pagan a Nordic pagan myth. So don't you ever get pushed into the corner where your saying Allah is a demonic name, Allah is the name of the living God. Allah is the creator of the Universe, Allah is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael Jethro, Job and even Baalim.

What if through dreams the mighty spirit of Allah is raising up a movement within Islam in preparation for the Messiah's return. Would we not want to partner with that mission? I want to end with a story...

The main thing we should deal with are as follows:

--the Koran teaches the seeds of every divine truth that Christians embrace.

--Allah is closer to Elohim the Hebrew name for god then is our English word god

--the English name for god is a Nordic pagan god.

--We have taken a pagan god's name

--Allah is the god of the Old Testament folks.

First, does the Koran teach the seeds of every divine truth that Christians embrace? Read John chapter One. The Word became flesh and lived among us. That Jesus Christ is God, does the Koran teach that Jesus was God incarnate or that Jesus was a great prophet who did not die on the cross and who never was resurrected from the dead? The central core of Christianity is who is Christ yet here we have an SDA pastor telling us that the seed of the central core of Christianity is found in the Koran which even though written 600 years after the time of the New Testament denies Christ to be God or to have died on the cross and the resurrection.

Which means either Pastor Nelson is willingly ignorant of the Koran or he is lying or what he means by seeds is something like a concept that is present in such a tiny way that it is infinitesimal. Now think about this, the Koran is written hundreds of years after the New Testament and thousands of years after the Old Testament, would you really expect a divine addendum of truth to discredit the previous inspiration or to offer only seeds of what was previously clearly expressed? See more in the article Revisiting the Quran’s gross errors concerning Christian theology

Allah and Elohim are related, but they are both words from paganism since paganism predates all monotheistic religions, even if one believes there was always one true religion they were it seems outnumbered by the surrounding cultures. In the article Is the Word Allah Similar to Elohim? by Penny Warren B.A., M.A., D.D we read the following:

The Hebrew title of God is "Elohim;" in Arabic it's "Allah." These two words for God have a common bond that most people don't understand. Both of these words have their origin in pagan deities of the ancient past...

Webster’s Dictionary gives the definition and etymology of Allah as follows. Allah is the Muslim name for "the God." Allah is derived from two words "al," which means "the" and "ilah," which is related to the feminine Hebrew word for God, "eloah."

Now the Hebrew title or name for God is 'Elohim' and it is the plural form of eloah. It is made plural by adding "im," which is masculine. This corresponds to adding "s" to make a word plural in English. So the commonality between Allah and Elohim is "eloah" and "ilah."

According the Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions (p. 222), it states: "Allah is formed by joining the definite article al meaning ‘the’ with Ilah (God). Literally, Allah means ‘The God.’ … When the masculine plural ending im is dropped from the Hebrew word for God, Elohim, the two words sound much alike." Eloah (Hebrew feminine) is similar to Ilah (God). Both Elohim and Allah are titles and not names.

Most Christians should know by now how frequently the “El” term is used in the Old Testament for various gods and in peoples names honoring their god.

Elohim (אֱלהִים) is a plural formation of eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֱל, ʾēl [1]). It is the usual word for "God" in the Hebrew Bible, referring with singular verbs both to the one God of Israel, and also in a few examples to other singular pagan deities. With plural verbs the word is also used as a true plural with the meaning "gods".[2]

Is the god the name of a Nordic pagan deity? The short answer is no, in the following article

Etymology of the Name God :

 Oddly, the exact history of the word God is unknown. The word God is a relatively new European invention, which was never used in any of the ancient Judaeo-Christian scripture manuscripts that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin.

According to the best efforts of linguists and researchers, the root of the present word God  is the Sanskrit word hu which means to call upon, invoke, implore.
Nonetheless, it is also interesting to note the similarity to the ancient Persian word for God which is Khoda.

The following is a survey of some of the efforts of those who have been trying to decipher the ancient roots of the word God:

What is nice about this article is that it then quotes multiple reference works, you don't have to go all over the place, just scroll down the page. 

Of course the whole concept of god means that there will be overlap between any and every superhuman being in whatever country or culture. The obnoxious thing about Pastor Nelson is he ignores this simple fact so that he can denigrate god in English because we don't speak Aramaic or Hebrew and those two languages that we don't use, are closer being they were near to each other in origins.

It is hard to even formulate an argument against such foolish ideas as Pastor Nelson presents. It is as if he desires to ignore the hatred and cruelty through much of the Islamic world, he acts as if when we observe the cruelty and violence it is anti-Islamic rhetoric. Well, the fact is there is a lot of problems going on in the world of Islam and Pastors like Nelson do nothing to help the situation with fictional facts and intentional distortions of the truth. He should be ashamed of himself and if he wants to deal with something a little closer to the heart of Adventism's love of eschatology he might consider the Islamic tradition of the 12th Imam and it's possible connection to the Christian conception of the anti-Christ. 

Glenn Beck The Twelfth Imam 2/4/2010 Part 1

Glenn Beck Part 2 The Twelfth Imam- 2-17-2011

Glenn Beck Part 3 The Twelfth Imam- 2-17-2011

Speaking of the news, only this last week Louis Farrakhan stated that the Great Mahdi is present in the world now.

This is a sign that The Great Mahdi that the Muslim world has been looking for is present in the world. That “The Christ” that you hoped for, “The Christ” that you longed for is present in the world. And all tyrants will be set down—God is stimulating the rise of the masses, and soon it will come to America's shores. Indeed it has already begun.

Lastly here is a good short article on Why Christians do not accept Muhammad as a prophet.

I would like to take a more conciliatory approach to answer this question by starting with some common grounds that Islam has with Christianity about Jesus:

1. That Jesus historically existed
2. That Jesus was a true prophet sent by God, the God of Abraham
3. That Jesus had the title "the anointed one" although understood differently in Islam as al-Masīḥ
4. That Jesus has the title the Word (Logos) although understood differently in Islam as kalimat Allāh
5. That Jesus was born without sin and remained without sin
6. That Jesus was born to Mary as a result of virginal conception
7. That Jesus performed miracles including raising people from the dead
8. That Jesus had foreknowledge of what was hidden to others
9. That Jesus is an important religious model, possessing the highest knowledge and intimacy with God
10. That Jesus was raised up to heaven (although this is not unanimous among Islam scholars)
11. That on the Day of Judgment (Yawm al-qiyāmah) Jesus will be witness against the wicked and destroy the anti-Christ (al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl)

But Islam denies the following Christian teachings about Jesus:

1. That the 4 canonical gospels faithfully recorded the teaching of Jesus and about Jesus. Instead, Muslim scholars consider the true gospel, Injīl, to be lost or hopelessly corrupted in the form of the NT gospels we have today, thus consider information about Jesus in the Quran as more authoritative.
2. That Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, with the full implications of what Jesus said to be understood in Christianity as,
   • being the second person of the Trinity and thus having pre-existence before conception
   • being fully divine yet fully human (i.e. Incarnation according to the Chalcedonian definition)
3. That Jesus was crucified until he was truly dead on the cross (see journal articles on medical evidence and a 2021 review of medical views). Instead, Muslim scholars's view is more similar to Gnosticism or Docetism (see the 2009 School of Oriental and African Studies journal article The Muslim Jesus: Dead or alive?).
4. That having truly died on the cross and buried in a cave tomb Jesus was raised from the dead on Resurrection Sunday. Muslim scholars believe that he was taken down from the cross alive (though unconscious) and later recuperated from his wounds.
5. That the Counselor/Advocate whom Jesus sent in John 14 and John 16 is the Holy Spirit. Instead Muslim scholars understand Jesus to mean Muhammad (pbuh) (see here, refuted here).
6. That Jesus is present in Spirit in the world today (see What is the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives today?). Instead Muslim scholars understand Quran references to "Holy Spirit" (Rūḥ al-qudus) to refer to the angel Jibrīl (Gabriel) (pbuh). The Quraanic Exegesis article Who Is the Holy Spirit? concludes:

   So it is clear that Ruh al-Qudus here refers to Jibril… No one suggests that Ruh al-Qudus means the life of Allah ; nor is this indicated by the wording and this phrase is never used in that sense.” (Daqaiq al-Tafsir, part 2, p. 92)

Although Islamic prophet Muhammad (pbuh) spoke highly of Jesus as possibly greater than the OT prophets before him, and spoke highly of his mother Mary as well, all branches of Christianity cannot accept Muhammad (pbuh) on the same level as all canonized OT prophets and as the prophet Jesus himself because Muhammad (pbuh) denied that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. Instead, Muhammad (pbuh) believed that Jesus, as a holy prophet sent by the true God, would never have "blasphemed" God by claiming to be God himself.

It's a pity that he probably got the wrong idea of the Trinity, thinking that Christians taught what we now call Tritheism (see Islamic view of the Trinity). Naturally, as Christians today ALSO denounce Tritheism as a denial of monotheism, this distorted view of the Trinity led him to exhort Christians to repent, such as in Quran Surah 5:116-118:

And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, "O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?'" He will say, "Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen. I said not to them except what You commanded me - to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. And I was a witness over them as long as I was among them; but when You took me up, You were the Observer over them, and You are, over all things, Witness. If You should punish them - indeed they are Your servants; but if You forgive them - indeed it is You who is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.

CONCLUSION: Since Jesus's being the Son of God whose true death on the cross and who is present in spirit in our lives today are both so central to salvation, and since true faith has to be based on agreeing with this, there is no way that any Christian can accept Muhammad (pbuh) as a true prophet despite many things he taught in common.

Christians trust that the 4 canonized gospels are the only authentic ones, that the other NT letters and books give us trustworthy accounts of what Jesus taught, trustworthy understanding of who Jesus is, and trustworthy interpretation of the OT. No true prophet would teach truths contrary to the truths presented in the Christian Bible.

Sources

1. University of Alberta Muslim Students' Association pamphlet Jesus: a Prophet of Islam
2. Vox 2019 article Muslims love Jesus, too: 6 things you didn't know about Jesus in Islam
3. U.S. Catholic magazine 2016 article What do Muslims think of Jesus?
4. Christianity Today 2002 article Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus
5. Wikipedia article Jesus in Islam
6. Wikipedia article Names and titles of Jesus in the Quran
7. Wikipedia article Islamic views on Jesus' death
8. Wikipedia article Second Coming - Islam
9. Wikipedia article Messiah - Islam

 https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/89037/why-don-t-christians-accept-muhammad-as-the-true-prophet