Project North Africa

Are you a preacher?

This came as a more difficult question to me than it would first appear. I was standing at a tire shop where I had given a New Testament to a worker there the previous day. He called a friend over, Ayoub, and the conversation got loud. The man I gave a New Testament had appeared quite friendly and still was not reacting agressively but his friend, on the other hand, had just two questions and was asking them loudly:

1. What do you think of Mohammed?

My national friend answered this one in the negative. So that made the conversation even louder.

2. Are you preachers?

The word for preachers in Arabic is “mubashareen”. The word has been on the front page of all the magazines here. It is accusation made against foreigners and nationals who try to convert Muslims. So I reacted against the term and said, “no”, we’re just Christians trying to help.

My national friend answered the opposite. He said, “All Christians are commanded by Jesus to be preachers of His Gospel.”

So, the bottom line after leaving that conversation is that we decided to be faithful to Christ and at the same time avoid angering people unnecessarily, we’d go with my response on the first one (which is here) and his response on the second question.

If God would forgive all our sins now, then wouldn’t we continue sinning?

This is the funnest question of all. I love answering this one. See my post on justification and regeneration to see what I would recommend to be the answer.

Basically, a Muslim cannot accept the total forgiveness of all sin because it isn’t logical…according to his view of God and motivation for good works. According to the Muslim, the only thing that keeps him doing anything good is the idea that he may not be forgiven if he doesn’t make some effort to obey, make penance, appease wrath, etc. The only motivation he has to not live according to every lust of the flesh is that God reserves the right to send him to hell forever or not based on an arbitrary system of balances.

We understand that the motivation to do what’s right comes from a completely new heart with new desires when Christ lives within us. This is totally ununderstandable outside of being enlightened by the Word of God.