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Monday, October 3, 2016

What Jesus Christ Is This Pastor Talking About?

This op-ed appeared in the Huffington Post back in April. It was written by a man named Ian Mevorach, who calls himself a Christian minister. In calling for reconciliation between Muslims and Christians (leaving out Jews), Mevorach not only blames Islamophobia for the "rift", but ignores Muslim atrocities and uses theology to argue that Jesus Christ predicted the coming of the  next prophet, who, according to Mevorach, is none other than Mohammad.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-mevorach/did-jesus-predict-muhammad_b_9762934.html

First of all, if Jesus actually foretold a later prophet, I am sure he wasn't talking about Mohammad. Jesus never told his followers to go out and fight wars. He never led his followers in battle. He never killed anyone or ordered the killing of anyone. He never told his followers to "strike the unbelievers wherever you find them". He never told them to strike fear into the hearts of the unbelievers. He never told them to smite them on the necks until they are dead" (a reference to beheading).

Mevorach (a theologian)  is obviously ignoring the verses recited multiple times by Muslims in their daily prayers (Sura One) in which they ask Allah to lead them down the path of righteousness and not the path of those who had incurred His wrath or those who had lost their way. According to a hadith (the sayings and traditions of Mohammad) the prophet told a follower that the former referred to Jews and the latter to Christians.

In short, Jesus would never have envisioned a successor prophet such as Mohammad, and it doesn't take a religious expert or theologian to figure that out.

This is clearly a case of someone who calls himself a Christian calling for submission to Islam. Medvorach is what Muslims themselves  call a "dhimmi", a non-Muslim who submits to Islam and accepts second class citizenship in exchange for protection.

The problem is not Islamophobia as Mevorach terms it. The problem is the myriad of phobias that the Islamist jihadists have against those who don't share their faith or version of Islam. Christians are not going  out and murdering Muslims or blowing up buildings, cutting off peoples' heads, or forcing them to convert. That is being done by jihadist Muslims and Christians (and other religious minorities are the victims). It is not our hearts that need to be changed.

If Mevorach believes in latter prophets after Jesus, and that Mohammad is a true prophet, he could just as easily have selected people like James Jones or David Koresh. It would make about as much sense.

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