Be Like Christ in Hospitality! - Episode #10 Summary of the episode: In this episode, we explore chapters 22 through 24 of Loving Your Muslim Neighbor, diving into the powerful call for Christians to reflect Christ’s love through genuine hospitality. We'll discuss practical ways to open our hearts and homes, build trust, and nurture relationships with our Muslim neighbors rooted in biblical principles. Join us as we unpack how Christ’s example challenges us to go beyond cultural differences, offering grace and kindness in the name of love. Please tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that encourages us to live out the gospel in everyday interactions. We must be like Christ in hospitality and not purposely offend our neighbors of a different religion. Our Christian witness should aim to represent Christ and the love He demonstrated to the world. Tune into this discussion with Brandon and Timothy! Meet the Guest: Timothy and Miriam speak in churches everywhere to educate, equip, and energize Christians to gain God’s heart for Muslim people and to love them. Please listen to Episode #1 of this season to learn more about Timothy and Miriam Harris. Calls to action: Please check out their website, www.lovingyourmuslimneighbor.com. You can also purchase a copy of the book from the website and follow along during this season! To connect with Timothy and Miriam Harris, email them at [email protected]. Note: This podcast is part of the Christian Podcast Community. You can click here to access more episodes and similar podcasts. Works Cited: Cover Art: Brandon Queen | Bible Translations – English Standard Version (unless stated/noted in the interview) | Quotes: authentic from the host and guest (unless stated/pointed out during the podcast) | Song: Turkish Beat - Music by: Muzaproduction from Pixabay --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elderqueen/support --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elderqueen/support
You can find my podcast and other podcasts similar to mine on the Christian Podcast Community at podcast.strivingforeternity.org.
The Ear, Evangelical and Reformed, Christian Podcast. Welcome to The Ear, the Evangelical and Reformed, a Christian podcast that urges you to think deeper and draws you closer to God through faith. Through powerful sermons, teaching segments, and discussions, The Ear hopes to give you a different perspective on secular topics from a Christian worldview. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Please welcome your host, Brandon Queen.
good morning podcast world welcome back to yet another amazing episode of loving your muslim neighbor this is a book written by timothy and miriam harris on their experiences with sharing the gospel with muslim people guys this is an amazing book thus far and this season in my opinion is going pretty well would you say the same mr tim
Well, I know I have enjoyed it so much, Brandon, and counted a great privilege to share with you and your listeners.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm hoping that by God's grace that this would actually reach the ears of Muslim people as well.
Oh, that would be that would be great because we love them.
Yeah.
We want them to hear of his love. Oh, that's great, brother. I agree.
Absolutely. Now, I'm going to do something a little unorthodox here, which is something I'm not used to. I do everything decently in an order. That's the mark of a Presbyterian. But today we're going to go back one chapter before we go forward. All right. Now, Christians, we have what we call Christmas. We have Easter, you know, the resurrection of Christ, the birth of Jesus.
We have those two holidays we celebrate. The Jews have the Passover and I think Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, Purim. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. So, you know, we have all these holidays based around God and Jesus and Christianity and Judaism and all that good stuff and, you know, whatnot. Well, your book, Chapter 21, asks a question. Why don't they have an I Love Muslim Day? So let's talk about that before we move forward, if you will, if you will.
All right. Well, I Love Muslim Day was basically kind of born out of what I feel like was a really sad time in our country. And it was when there was a pastor in Florida of a really small church. And he was going to, on the anniversary of 9-11, He was going to publicly burn copies of the Quran, 200 copies of it. This was in 2010.
And I remember Brandon when I heard about this, I was just really incensed. I was really.
i feel like i had a really righteous anger because you know i want all your listeners to know and hear that obviously i'm not a muslim i don't believe in the message of the quran absolutely yeah so i want to make that unequivocally clear but i also want to say that um to what he was doing to me was reprehensible and
We talked earlier last week and the week before about adhering to cultural differences and trying where we can to be kind and gracious and generous to Muslims. Well, the idea of burning their book creates so much anger in them. And, you know, this was such a big deal that this little pastor became famous overnight.
And our president, a vice president at the time, our president, our secretary of state, the pope, even all of them weighed in on this and begged this man not to do this. He held off.
uh for a little while but eventually he did burn some copies of the quran publicly and sure enough it stirred things up in different countries around the world and sure enough people were killed as a result of it and so i remember when i heard about him getting ready to do this i was having um Lunch with my accountability partner.
I'll call him Solomon because he's very wise And I told him about this and he said to me. Why don't you why don't you counter this guy? Why don't you do something positive? for the Muslim community and so he said why don't you have an I love Muslims day and So it was really from the boy, you know, the Holy Spirit through him that gave us this idea. So I
We went to the leader of the Muslim Student Association at a large university here in Michigan. And we told him about our idea that we just wanted to have an event where we would gather Christians and Muslims together at this students from this university and just have a time of breaking bread and friendship. And we wanted to show our love for them.
I had to send it to him by an email because he was out of town. And we had built some relationship actually with him, built a friendship with him. And I still remember his email. He said, when I saw your email wanting to do an I Love Muslims Day for us, he said it brought tears to my eyes. Nobody's ever done something like this for us. And so we began to train him.
some Christian students on campus about cultural differences, as we keep talking about, and said, hey, guys, we're going to have a night where Miriam's going to put together a super meal. It's going to be halal, which means the meat will be something that the Muslims feel that they can eat, kind of akin to or similar to kosher for Jewish people.
and so it wasn't big it wasn't a big event we had about 55 christian students and about 55 muslim students but brandon it was the neatest night i mean we we ate together had that excellent meal we got the students together christians and muslims in small groups where they could meet each other we had icebreaker questions they were sharing getting each other's phone numbers
we ended the night by having a top 10 reasons uh i create a powerpoint top 10 reasons why we love muslim people nice and yeah and we ended we ended so most of those were things like uh some of the common ground things you know that we have like we have some prophets in common uh that that muslim people are um very interested in family
uh they have a respect for jesus they try to follow god's commands and so forth but we uh we ended with two things uh our top uh reason one uh b was jesus said love your neighbor as yourself right but one a we said to us as followers of jesus the word islam
i s l a m stands for i sincerely love all muslims nice yeah then we put under that right so they could see it so clearly we spelled out john 3 16 in our last uh powerpoint slide and so uh that didn't offend them uh they don't believe it but it didn't offend them why
because we built the whole night around telling them how much we loved and appreciated them we've felt uh badly for them compassionate for them about some of the uh islamophobia that they do experience from people some of the meanness that people can have i mean i know i know young muslim women here in the states that have walked down the street and have had
Men roll down their windows as they drive by and say, F you, you blankety people, go back to where you came from and all that. So, you know, they've had that. And so when we came and said, we love you, we want to show it, they just ate it up. And then when we shared John 3, 16, they saw that as an expression of love, not of some kind of hardcore proselytizing, you know, thing.
And so I tell you, man, I remember seeing one of the Muslim young ladies a couple of years later. And she said that some of the students, some of the Muslim students that went to that event were still talking about it two years later. Wow.
Interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. It was a great night, man. It was. And out of that came some cool things like an interfaith dialogue. that was good and also one of the churches on campus that we worked with they began to do service projects with the muslim students uh the christian students and with the muslim students and then they began to invite them even to their small groups and bible studies
So it was cool, man. So this I Love Muslims Day was a really neat success, we believe, in planting seeds for the gospel and the love of God for these Muslim people.
That's amazing. That's literally John 3.16 on display, in my opinion. You know, for God so loved the world, and then we have his people showing that love to other people that's not part of the fold. It's amazing. Yeah. All right, so moving into chapter 22, I found this a very interesting title. purses and pens. And then later on in the chapter, you ask, what is your most expensive pen?
And before we get into this story, I actually want to share what my most expensive pen is. Okay. So, and it's a pen that I did not purchase. Now, if you know me, I like to write and I like nice pens. It's okay. I don't know why I just do. Don't judge me. But My most expensive pin I recently got, and it all stems from back in April 2021. No, 2022, I'm sorry.
When the Secor Power down here in Louisiana flipped off in the Gulf, we had a wake low that came through, a very bad pressurized storm that came through the area, caused a lot of tides and waves and wind and stuff. And it flipped this platform, if you will.
And this platform, if if you are not from Louisiana or from our area or understand what the oil field looks like, these platforms have three legs. So when they're going out to sea, they're floating, basically, and the legs go up 192 feet or however high they build the platform.
So when the vessel gets to the area in which they're going to do work on the oil rig, the legs drop down and bed themselves on the ocean floor, if you will. So the platform is suspended above the water. OK, so, well, this the C Corps, you know, it's it took off. It's going to its job site.
And this wake low comes through, causes turmoil, if you will, and flips this vessel to which we lost about, I think, 17 people. Very, very, very, very tragic moment. And I think there were four survivors. Don't quote me. I got to go back and look at the articles. Well, I was a juvenile detective at the time for Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office.
And during that time, I was also volunteering and kind of heading up the chaplaincy program for the jail. Well, I got dispatched to Port Fouchon as the chaplain representing Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office. And I was sent there at request of the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard chaplains, they came in. started up everything.
And then when I got there, I'm not going to say I took over because I didn't even want the position. I was going there to assist them, but I got thrown in charge, if you will, to deal with the families as they went and dealt with the divers and the survivors that they pulled out of the water. Well, there was this guy there that had this gold pen. It was brass.
It wasn't really gold, but it was brass, this brass pen. And I had to write something down. I'm like, hey, can I borrow your pen? So, you know, he gives me the pen. I write down what I have to write down. I'm like, man, this is a nice pen. Let me have it. And he's like, nope. And this went on for two weeks.
Well, a year later, they just had the anniversary for the C-Core Power, you know, search thing and whatnot. Well, I was not able to attend the ceremony, but one of my old coworkers went and he gave her a gift from me. So I'm like, OK, what possibly can I be getting from? I was I'm just a chaplain, you know, nothing serious, you know, hold on yards.
Well, she gets to my new place of employment to give me this gift. And she's like, you got to open it. You got to do it in front of me. And I got to take a picture and send it to him and whatnot. I'm like, well, that's cheesy, but I want to open it and see what it is. So I open it up and it's literally it's not the pen that I used.
It's a brand new pen identical to the one I was using that he gave to me. And I'm like, man, this is almost and if not probably on the same level of respect. Whenever I got a challenge coin from one of the captains in the Coast Guard for my work as a chaplain there. And I got this pen and I did find out how much the pen cost or whatever. But to me, that is my most expensive pen.
Wow, that's a good story, brother. So why did you name it Pins and Purses?
Yeah, so in 2011, we were back in the Arabian Gulf. So a little different Gulf than you're talking about, right? And so we're back in the Arabian Gulf. And one day, we went to this luxurious mall because this place in the Gulf, as I mentioned in another one of our episodes, some of the countries... in the Arabian Gulf are just so wealthy.
Saudi Arabia, of course, comes to mind, but also Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. They just have so much oil and gas money. So they have very luxurious malls. So one time I just had the idea just popped into my head. Let's go, I said to Miriam, let's go on a scavenger hunt at one of these luxurious malls
and because we had seen that uh the men um in that part of the world they loved to have expensive pens and cufflinks and watches and so i said let's go let's go see what we can find for the most expensive pen in this mall so we finally went to one and we went in and they were very kind and they brought out uh they went back to their safe
and they brought out this gold uh pen swiss a swiss pen not gold in color but gold gold with diamonds on it and this was in 2011. so this is 11 years ago i don't know what it'd be worth now but it was priced at thirty thousand dollars yeah yeah thirty thousand dollars so
um that gives you a little bit of an idea of what kind of money is in some of these uh arab muslim countries in the gulf the arab gulf then i said uh to miriam we had heard that you know we'd see these women carrying around these purses and somebody told us These purses value from something like between $2,000 to $6,000.
So much to Miriam's embarrassment because I'm an extrovert and I just love doing some of these crazy things. And she's quieter and has a little more common sense. But we set out on this search for the most expensive purse we could find. We went into a store and they said this is our most. They went in the back and got it. It was made from the belly of an Asian crocodile.
And again, this is 11 years ago. And it was $39,000 for that purse. Wow. And so the Filipino salesman that worked there was kind enough to let us take our picture with it. But the moral of the, you know, the chapter wasn't just about scavenger hunts for pens and purses.
It was the concept that we wanted people to get out of it was that we need to pray for these wealthy people in the Middle East that they will hear the words of Jesus. Luke 12, 33, sell your possessions, give to the poor. And then this fascinating verse based on our title, provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out a treasure in heaven that will never fail.
And then in the questions to ponder, we asked people these questions, which is more disturbing to you?
the abject dire poverty of muslim refugees who've had to flee for their lives to find safety in a new life or the ridiculously wasteful spending habits of rich muslims blessed with oil and gas under their desert sands ouch and then yeah and then two more questions how would you as a follower of jesus reach out
with the good news to poverty-stricken Muslim refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, or Europe, or even that have moved here to the U.S.? And then how would you reach out with the good news to incredibly wealthy Muslim people? So on the other end of the spectrum, living in the Arabian Gulf countries that we mentioned, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia.
So the chapter really is to provoke uh thought about um wealthy people and poor people how do you share the gospel with both groups uh of muslim people okay can i answer can i answer
Oh, please do. OK, if you're listening and you have a pen, maybe not so expensive. I want you to write down Matthew 28, 19 to 20, where it says, therefore, go and make disciples in all nations and be sure of this. And this is a different translation that I am with you always, even until the end of the world. Oh, what a statement.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As you know, that's the way we end that chapter, because every Muslim, rich or poor, is needs a follower of Jesus who will love them and and follow the Great Commission that you just read about from Matthew 28. Right.
Absolutely. And that's a beautiful thing. Now, the next chapter kind of reminds me of James chapter two, verses one to 13. But, you know, that's a I'll get into that explanation later. You know, so why why should we visit Muslim mosque and why should we encourage our Muslim friends, if you were to visit our churches?
Yeah. So one morning I woke up in 2011 and the Lord just laid this impression on my heart that we should start something called a goodwill tour. And the idea was that we would take Christians to visit mosques on Friday afternoons when they had their primary, that's when they have their sermon. Like we have our Sunday sermon. Well, their primary day of worship is Friday around the
kind of around the noon hour, one o'clock in the afternoon. So the idea was to take followers of Jesus to mosques to observe their sermon of prayers, but then also take Muslims to visit and observe Sunday morning worship services in churches. And so, yeah, and if we could do them in the same weekend, all the better, you know, and then have Q&A at each place afterwards, you know, and so,
We started doing that and it had really good results. The Christians who came with us to the mosque learned a lot. They interacted with Muslim people. And then the Muslims who came and visited church services were really struck by, you know, I think the worship really impacted them. And I think hearing the word of God impacted them. And so we had these nice Q&A times afterwards. It was great.
So that's what the Goodwill Tour was about.
Man, I think I want to steal that idea or any paperwork you got and probably start one down here if I can.
Oh, that'd be great, brother. Now, I do want to say, with kind of a caveat, we do not recommend that Christians just walk into a mosque. We recommend that you...
uh set something up ahead of time you call you set an appointment you know so you're not just walking in cold turkey and then we recommend that you get some training you don't just go in without some understanding of islam and cultural differences and we also recommend that you never go alone especially as a woman but you go in groups and you set it up ahead of time and you make sure that
I don't think it's a place necessarily, Brandon, to take young believers or immature believers because Islam is seductive, and you don't want to really take a believer that's not firm or solid in their faith that might be tempted, for example, to become a Muslim.
yeah that that makes a lot of sense that that's good point so let me ask you this um and we should know the answer but i'm gonna get you to give us some context behind it are good kind devout muslim people going to heaven oh man and that boy i tell you yeah what a great question so
um i want to read i want to read something from a friend of ours named tom in this chapter related to that he said i keep running into believers who have embraced some shade of universalism this even includes former missionary colleagues who would not say that they are universalists but at the same time they're inclined to believe that they're very kind
generous faith-driven muslim friends surely must be in the kingdom not because this muslim friend has surrendered to jesus as king and lord and believes in his death burial and resurrection but rather because the muslim friend is such an amazing person who seems to love and serve god so well and so we really really want your listeners to hear the old adage
that is so true good people don't go to heaven forgiven people do amen yeah and the bible has just said to us so clearly right brother in romans 1 16 paul made it clear that the gospel is the power of god that brings salvation to those who believe and so we know ephesians 2 8 9 right that we're not saved
uh by the good works that we've been uh that we've done but solely by the grace of god right and so yeah so good people um so we need to be careful as we reach out to muslims that we don't let the devil come along and and do like he did to eve and to adam in the garden has god really said you know and so what he what he tries to whisper in the ears of people now
as it relates to good Muslim people, is he'll say to a Christian, has God really said that Jesus is the only way to heaven? Has God really said there's no other way, there's no other name under heaven by which we must be saved? And so the devil can create doubt, because when you fall in love with a Muslim person through a deep friendship,
um you you let your it's easy to let your emotions dictate too much of your theology and then the devil comes along and creates doubt and so we have to do what you how you finished an earlier episode stand firm ephesians 6 says stand firm in your faith stand firm in the word of god that jesus truly is
the only way of salvation, even whether a person is good or not, be they Muslim or any other person.
Amen. And, you know, we shouldn't neglect our hospitality to strangers. That's in Hebrew. That's Hebrews 13, 12, where it talks about, you know, show hospitality, be that hospitable person that, you know, purposely seeks out to dine with a Muslim, you know, like be that person.
Yeah, and be that church even that in context of this chapter, be that church that says, you know, why don't we invite some Muslims to visit sometime? And we can have a Q&A with them afterwards if they'd like. I mean, you'd need to prepare. You'd need to, you know, study. But yeah, that hospitality that you just mentioned, brother, is so important. Amen.
Now, the last, let me not say last chapter. The third chapter that's in this episode, it's named the Dearborn International Arab Festivals, Christians Giving Christianity a Bad Name. Now, I want to spend some time here with that because there are so many so-called Christian groups that do not represent true, pure Christianity.
They don't represent true, pure love that Christ came and died and gave us. You know, so I want to spend some time here. And we got a few minutes to kind of talk about it. But but what sparked this chapter?
Well, this chapter was based on we never lived in Dearborn or actually made that our center of ministry. But we lived about an hour away from there. And we go there often to do ministry to Muslims with some of our dear friends there that were missionaries to Muslims and lived in Dearborn.
And so this chapter really there were three different groups that more than that, but three groups that we mentioned in this chapter that were called Christians came into Dearborn during the Arab Festival, which took place every every summer. I think it was in June and they would come in. So the first group came in and they were passing out gospel tracts on the sidewalk.
and the city of Dearborn as to the entry point of the, the Dearborn, uh, Arab festival, the city of Dearborn told them, you can't do that. Um, those Christians took the city of Dearborn to court. Now the Christians won, but Brandon, to me, they lost in a way, in a way, because it was a nasty fight. And, um,
and i'll get to why i think what they did was wrong in a minute the second group that came in was a smaller group and they came in with a video camera and they went around the arab festival just kind of watching things interviewing people and they saw that there was a there was a booth in this in this arab festival run by muslims
And it said something like, you know, talk to us if you want to know more about Islam, the religion of Muslims. So they went over there and they said, hey, we'd like to talk to you guys about Islam. And the Muslims at their booth said, well, we'd like to talk, but turn off your camera. They said, no, we're not going to turn off our camera. This is America. We have the right to film.
and it developed into kind of a skirmish really kind of a just this verbal and then almost a physical you know i think altercation and um finally
uh the police came and arrested these three individuals that were there christians that were doing their their filming and um and so um it just gave kind of it was just another thing that gave kind of a bad name to christians and then the third thing that really topped it off brandon was this group came in and oh i just heart it's hard for me to even talk about them but they call themselves the bible believers
So again, all three of these groups are out-of-towners. They're not there investing in Muslims like some of our friends are every day. They don't live in Dearborn. They just come in, try to do their thing, and then send out their newsletters saying, you know, kind of how great they are, all the results they had. Well, this third group came in.
Again, they called themselves the Bible Believers, and they had these huge, huge, tall signs saying, that they would kind of march around with and you know one of the signs is okay it was john 3 16. but another one of their signs said that muhammad is a pervert and a pedophile wow and and you know i mean to a muslim person when you say something like that you offend them to the core
and it creates it has created violence around the world when something like this has been said or done like probably one of the most famous instances of it are the danish cartoons uh that created so much uh issue years ago but um so these guys marched around with these signs and they had megaphones and it just grieves me i mean i wrote about it in this chapter
they would shout out at some of the Muslim teenagers, you're going to melt in the fires of hell, you dirtbags. They called them animals. And all I could think about was what Bible do these Bible believers, so-called Bible believers, believe in? I mean, they were just such haters. They came three years in a row. The third year, it was really bad.
um it was so bad that that uh riot police came out from the city of dearborn on horses you know and they have the shields and the and horses and all of this and they came out and why because these so-called they call themselves the bible believers they brought into the arab festival a severed pig's head and put it on a stick and marched around the arab festival you're kidding me
no it was it was so horrible so reprehensible so i mean everybody knows and they know that muslims don't eat pork and here you are marching around with this grotesque you know terrible pig's head on a pole and and so what happened then uh brandon was some of these teenagers
uh they started pelting these guys with uh plastic water bottles you know full of water and and these these guys the bible believers um had their own film uh equipment and they were filming themselves being you know hit with these water bottles um and then they put something on youtube which went viral and it was called something like this Christians are stoned by Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan.
For something they created.
Yeah, something they created, something they kind of deserved. I mean, it wasn't right. And the police should have done a better job of controlling it and breaking it up. And so this went viral. And so what it did is, was it caused so many Christians around the country to look at Dearborn as this place where, you know, Christianity, you can't get in there and share the gospel.
You can't do anything, you know, for Christ. We talked about this in the last episode. Well, one more story about this Dearborn International Arab Festival. Josh McDowell came there. Josh McDowell has been criticized lately because he did make a few ridiculous statements that were just not right. I don't know if you heard about those.
I haven't. I don't watch the news anymore.
I really respect him a lot, but he made some comments which
i don't think he's a racist but they sounded like it he did he did immediately apologize he's in his 80s now so i don't know you know kind of what was up but back then he came to the arab festival and he did it the right way brandon um weeks in advance actually months in advance he came to dearborn he went to the mayor the chief of police some of the muslim leaders in town and he said i'm going to get a booth
I'm going to rent a booth at the Arab Festival and I just want to share my books and my materials with Muslim people." And they said, welcome, come. And Brandon, it was so fun to see all of the Muslim people that got in lines to come and see Josh and talk to him and get his books. I mean, he's written some amazing books.
So he was giving away like more than a carpenter, that great book about the identity of Jesus.
Oh, that Josh McDowell. Okay.
Yeah. He was giving that away for free in English and Arabic, you know, and he was so winsome when he talked to Muslim people. Now, going back to that first group that came in and wanted to distribute the tracks and took Dearborn to court. Hey, why didn't they just do it like Josh? Why didn't they just do it like the Arab Festival asked people to do? Rent a booth. Rent a booth.
Give away as much as you want. But they didn't. And so Josh was just such an amazing example in that case.
Being a lover instead of a hater and it and it bore so much more fruit and so Yeah, and then our friend John a friend John Oh a delightful assembly of God Guy he was just he just got cold water and he was passing out cups of cold water because it was just sweltering humid at that time of the year and he was just passing out cups of cold water to Muslims and he had tracts available and
and uh so yeah one of our chapters uh subtitle is lovers haters and a man named john and so the dearborn international arab festival was was quite an event sadly it doesn't exist anymore at least not like that because these outside groups of so-called christians ruined it and god it got shut down the the city just said this is too much of a hassle because these christians come in and
they're just so they're stirring up so much trouble though so they stopped it so man man and you see that was a prime place where the gospel could have reached thousands of people oh and it and it did through people like josh and others but then these outside groups man that that came in with ulterior motives and terrible terrible methodologies and and lack of love you know they they messed things up and so
Yeah, we quote in the beginning of that chapter that this is from the message. And I know the message is not, you know, it's not ESV, but I think some scriptures are done well in it. In Philippians 1.11, it says that we should make Jesus Christ attractive to all. In verse 20, it says we should make Christ more accurately known.
And in verse 27 of Philippians 1, it says we should be a credit to the message of Christ. And so let's don't be those kind of Christians. that give Christianity a bad name to Muslim people.
Absolutely. I agree. You know, and right before we close, one of your questions in this chapter says, if you had the occasion to speak to one of the haters mentioned in this chapter, one of the Bible believers, what would you say to them? I would literally say to them, shame on you. Shame on you for trying to tarnish the very thing God told us to share.
God told us to share love and here you are perpetuating and spewing hatred. Shame on you and may God have mercy on your soul.
Amen, brother. Oh, man. Brandon, you and I are kindred spirits. And I actually did walk up to one of the guys and tell him that very thing. And he just berated me. Of course. That's the devil. Yeah, what would you expect from his behavior? But brother, what you just said, man, that right on.
But look, John Calvin said it best. Without the gospel, everything is useless and vain. Without the gospel, everything is useless and vain. So if you walk up to someone of a different faith and you start spewing this hatred in the name of Christ, everything you just said is canceled out. It's useless.
And like I said in the previous episode, and I've said most of my life, is that the word of God does not return to him void. So what makes you think that you, a so-called Christian, is what I'm going to call you? Yes, I'm going to judge you because you claim to be a Christ follower.
What do you think is going to happen when you walk up to a person of a different faith and start telling them that they're going to hell? I mean, obviously, they're going to learn that if you show them love. They're going to know that if you preach the gospel to them in a loving manner.
You can't just walk up to him and say you're going to hell or, you know, your your God is a child pedophile or whatever. Like, what are you thinking? Your your job as a messenger of Christ is to preach Christ and Christ crucified. Nothing else.
And really, yeah, so amen, brother. And I always want to say to you, Brandon, man, you preach it and I'll turn the pages. And I think that our listeners need to hear, right, the Great Commission, without the Great Commandment, it just doesn't, it's not right.
We, you know, the Great Commission is essential that we make disciples of all nations, that we share the gospel with all people and disciple them
baptizing them but also the great commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves you know that has to go hand in hand the great commandment with the great commission and that's what this chapter was meant to be all about was hey let's don't let's don't be the kind of people that put obstacles in the way of the gospel right you know uh second corinthians 6 3
in the esv says we put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry yeah so and then uh colossians 4 6 in nlt let your conversation so we could say in this case let your conversation with muslim people or any any unbeliever be gracious and attractive
so that you will have the right response for everyone amen so great great commission with great commandment let me let me close with another quote by john calvin uh and and and this one is probably hits home a little bit more for those quote unquote bible believer group people John Calvin says that without the gospel, all wealth is poverty. All wisdom is folly before God. Strength is weakness.
And all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God. So by happenstance, if one of these people of these groups that attended the festival in the past, everything you did will be judged. And I can't be the one to say anathema. That will be God.
You know, so to my listeners, I am begging you to be patient with yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to work through you and to love people of different ethnic groups or different religions so that God's word can go forth and pierce those hearts so that they can see the love of Christ. And not the hatred of your religious group, if you will. We have to start showing love. I know this country.
I know this world is far gone and there's no redeeming it by my own merit, by your own merit, Tim, by the church's own merit. It's got to come from Christ. But what we can at least attempt to do for the rest of our days on this earth is to love our neighbor via Muslim, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, you know, Muslim, Buddhist or what have you. Love your neighbor, period. And I end with that.
So thank you guys for listening to this episode of Loving Your Muslim Neighbor. You can find a copy of this book at lovingyourmuslimneighbor.com. You can also find a link to this podcast on the website as well, as well as another interview that Tim did on a radio station. Thank you guys for tuning in to this season. God bless y'all.
And I hope you find this material and content enriching to your soul. God bless you all.
You have reached the end of yet another episode from the ear. We hope that God's word remains on the ears of the listeners. We pray that this podcast would urge you to go forth and spread his good news to the world. Thank you for tuning in. Please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. See you at the next episode. God bless you and may his glory shine upon you.