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How Can Christians Best Reach Out to Muslims With the Gospel?

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by George Braswell

Four Ways of Reaching Out To Muslims

Christians can best reach out to Muslims through education, understanding, relationships, and communication. One needs to be familiar with the basic beliefs and practices of Islam found in the Qur’an and the sayings and traditions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. To know the origins and expansion of the religion is helpful. An understanding of various sectarian movements within Islam that delineate differences among Muslims will give the Christian helpful hints that all Muslims are not alike. To be proactive in seeking relationships with Muslims around a social occasion will provide opportunities to break down stereotypes. And to learn verbal and non-verbal skills in communication will be a positive approach in meeting and engaging in conversations with Muslims. [Read more…]

Why Baptism Is Required for Membership

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By Bobby Jamieson

Why must someone be baptized as a believer in order to join a local church? Because church membership is a public affirmation of someone’s public profession of faith in Christ, and Jesus has appointed baptism as the means by which his followers publicly profess their faith in him. A church can’t affirm the profession of someone who hasn’t yet made that profession.

Baptism is how you publicly identify yourself with Jesus and with his people (Acts 2:38–41). It is how you visibly signify that you are united to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:1–4). It is how you become identified before the church and the world as one who belongs to the Triune God (Matt. 28:19). It is how you publicly embrace Jesus as your Savior and submit to him as Lord (1 Pet. 3:21). [Read more…]

Aleph and Omega — Inspiring Quotes: Studying the Greek New Testament

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Codex_Vaticanus_B,_2Thess._3,11-18,_Hebr._1,1-2,2By Rob Plummer

In his book on fasting and prayer, John Piper includes an extensive appendix of inspiring quotes. He writes, “Sometimes just a passing comment can have as much impact on us as a whole chapter of a book. It may be that God would use one of these brief statements to awaken in someone A Hunger for God.” Similarly, we, the authors of this Going Deeper with New Testament Greek, hope the quotes below might awaken in you, the reader, a hunger for reading the Greek New Testament. We commend you to the Lord’s grace as you strive to become workers who need not to be ashamed because you are making every effort to handle God’s word of truth accurately and with care. [Read more…]

Why Are Relations between Muslims and the West So Strained?

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by George W. Braswell, Jr

RELATIONS BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS PRESENTLY

Among the 1.6 billion Muslims around the globe there are various relationships with non-Muslims. Mass media daily reports the violent actions of some Islamic groups against not only non-Muslims but also against other Muslims in the name of Allah and Jihad. Not reported are the peaceful relations of Muslims with their non-Muslim neighbors. A brief review of the origins of Islam under the Muslim prophet Muhammad and its missionary expansion together with select examples of contemporary movements of Islamic groups’ views of non-Muslims and the non-Muslim world will be offered. [Read more…]

What Are the Core Beliefs of Islam?

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by George W. Braswell, Jr.

CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

Muslims practice the religion Islam and number some 1.5 billion globally. Research indicates that in 1900 they composed 6% of the world’s population. They had doubled their numbers by 1975 to 12%. By 2014 they had nearly doubled their percentage again to 23%. Islam is considered the second largest religion, second only to Christianity, and the fastest growing one. Although Islam originated in the Middle East in present day Saudi Arabia, it spread quickly both east and west. Today the four countries with the largest numbers of Muslims according to rank are Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which compose 43% of the world’s Muslims. [Read more…]

An Excerpt from Truth in a Culture of Doubt by Köstenberger, Bock, and Chatraw

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In their conclusion to Truth in a Culture of Doubt, co-authors Köstenberger, Bock, and Chatraw discuss the trustworthiness of the Bible in the wake of Bart Ehrman’s influence. They state:TruthInCultureDoubt_cover.indd

Can the Bible be trusted? Ehrman, as well as other critics, answers with a resounding no! They insist that the Bible’s difficulties are so extensive that skepticism is the only reasonable conclusion for an unbiased scholar. However, this is simply not the case. This is not to say there aren’t difficulties in the Bible—such as apparent chronological differences and theological tensions—but as one scholar noted more than twenty-five years ago, “The difficulties raised by the biblical phenomena are on the whole a good deal less intractable than is sometimes suggested.”  [Read more…]

Aleph and Omega: The Devil’s Lie (Acts 16:16-18) by Chuck Quarles

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Have you ever wondered why Paul cast the demon out of the slave girl in Philippi? Doesn’t her message actually seem helpful? “These men are the slaves of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” Or so most English translations read. At first glance, the girl’s words appear to be a puzzling confirmation of the missionary team and their message. It almost sounds like she is assisting the missionary team by vouching for Paul and Silas to her own townspeople. A closer look, however, suggests otherwise. [Read more…]

Video: Interview with Darrell Bock on “Truth in a Culture of Doubt,” Part 1

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TruthInCultureDoubt_cover.inddIn the two video segments below, Dr. Darrell Bock talks about his, Andreas Kostenberger, and Josh Chatraw’s new book Truth in a Culture of Doubt.  He explains how it compares with the earlier, popular-level book Truth Matters, and the topics he and his coauthors tackle in the new volume.  Truth in a Culture of Doubt releases September 1. [Read more…]

Theologica – Scripture and the Task of Theology, Part 3

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The following is adapted by Keith Whitfield from “Theological Method: An Introduction to the Task of Theology,” by Bruce R. Ashford and Keith Whitfield in A Theology for the Church, Revised Edition (B&H Academic, 2014).

In our previous two posts, we asked the question, What does the Bible have to say about the nature and function of Christian theology and how theology should be conceived? We asserted three answers to this question, the first being that Scripture anticipates the task of theology. The second answer tells us that the Bible’s grand narrative provides the framework for Christian theology. Finally, in this post, we assert that Scripture provides the trajectory for the theological task.

 There are eight biblical paradigms that provide a trajectory for the theological task. [Read more…]

Theologica – Scripture and the Task of Theology, Part 2

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8759112815_a729556243_z

The following is adapted by Keith Whitfield from “Theological Method: An Introduction to the Task of Theology,” by Bruce R. Ashford and Keith Whitfield in A Theology for the Church, Revised Edition (B&H Academic, 2014).

In our previous post, we asked the question, What does the Bible have to say about the nature and function of Christian theology, and how should theology be conceived? We asserted three answers to this question, the first being that Scripture anticipates the task of theology, which we discussed in the previous post. [Read more…]

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