Last week, at Disney World, I went to retrieve our stroller from the stroller parking section. As I searched among the hundred or so strollers, I finally found mine and started to move it. As I pulled, it snagged on a woman’s garment.
Panicked, I looked up and saw it was a Muslim women in full Muslin dress. Her body was completely covered. Only a slit for her eyes was visible. I was careful not to yank, and I tried to apologize as the hook of the handle caught part of her garment. She didn’t say a word and we both quietly went on our ways.
As I walked away, I felt pity on her.
For one, it’s Disney World in June in Florida. I strode along in shorts and a very thin T-shirt. Both were soaked in sweat. I had already consumed two bottles of water and still felt weary. She was dressed head to toe in heavy garments. I can’t imagine how hot she was pushing a stroller with two kids through a mass of people in humid air and on hot pavement.
Secondly, she dressed that way and suffered in heat just to earn favor with a false god.
Allah is not God. Some Muslims will tell you we worship the same god, but the fact is, we don’t. The God of the Bible and Allah of the Quran are two very different entities.
The God of the Bible, the REAL GOD, showed grace. He came down to earth in the form of a man,
died for our sins and rose again on the third day. He did all this so that we could have something we could never earn: a relationship with God that extends into eternity in heaven.
Allah of Islam teaches that you must earn your way into heaven by honoring Islamic law and following the five pillars of Islam, including ritualistic prayers five times a day and a pilgrimage to Mecca.
In John 4:21-24, Jesus tells us to worship God in spirit and in truth, freely exercising our faith through our lives and to worship God. In Romans 10:9, Paul writes that believing in Jesus and confessing him gains us salvation. In Ephesians he makes the point that it is by GRACE we have been saved, not of works.
When I saw the Muslim woman and her kids, I felt sad. They were trying to earn their way to heaven by following the false ideas of a false god. They suffered in heat for a lie. I admire her devotion, but I weep at her eternal destiny. All of her devotion will gain her nothing.
You see Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father except through him. No other god, no other religion can get you in the gates of heaven. Only through a relationship with Jesus can you you get to heaven.
Islam is a lie. Any religion based on works simply won’t work. Only the grace of Jesus saves.