The Dream of a Worldwide Caliphate

One devout Muslim confided that the dream of every true Muslim is to have a worldwide Caliphate. However, this Muslim dream is a nightmare for all others. It means a degrading subjugation to the laws of Islam and death or imprisonment to those who won’t submit.

Achieving the Caliphate will require violence. Although Muslims would be glad to realize their dream through non-violent means, violence is a regarded as a necessary price, as a recent Al Jazeera poll found – 81% of Muslims polled approved of ISIS. This means that they largely approve of ISIS’ tactics - forced conversions, beheading, kidnappings, and sex slavery.

How is this possible? How is it that people who are pursuing a concept of righteousness could justify such horrors to achieve their worldwide Caliphate?

Before I was a Christian, I was “seeking.” I was given a Hebrew Bible and began with the Book of Joshua. Mesmerized, I read how my people, the Israelites, were defeating everyone by the hand of God. I was elevated, dignified, and thrilled by what I was reading. It felt like I was triumphing, that I was king and that I was finally bestowed with my due glory. However, this glory was short-lived. I finished the Book of Joshua and proceeded to the Book of Judges, expecting that my glory would only be intensified.

It wasn’t! Instead, the Jews rebelled against their God and suffered greatly – death, humiliation, and starvation. I was crushed and fled to the Hebrew Prophets, expecting that they would tell me what I wanted to hear – the greatness of my people. However, they charged them with the very opposite things:

• Isaiah 1:2-4 I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me; The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.…They have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.

• Jeremiah 1:15-16 For behold, I am calling all the families of the kingdoms of the north," says the LORD; "They shall come and each one set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls all around, and against all the cities of Judah. I will utter My judgments against them concerning all their wickedness, because they have forsaken Me, burned incense to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands.

• Ezekiel 2:3-5 And He said to me: "Son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. For they are impudent and stubborn children. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD.' As for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse--for they are a rebellious house--yet they will know that a prophet has been among them.

Their condemnations of Israel seemed endless but not my patience. I had enough of the Bible. It failed to feed my ego. End of story!

I wish the Muslims had something in their Koran comparable with the Book of Judges or the Hebrew Prophets – something to tame their dream of world conquest and domination. Even more, I wish that they would meditate on the words of Jesus:

• An argument started among them [Jesus’ Disciples] as to which of them might be the greatest. But Jesus, knowing what they were thinking in their heart, took a child and stood him by His side, and said to them, "Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me; for the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great." (Luke 9:46-48; NASB)

We all yearn for greatness, but I had a perverted understanding of what true greatness looked like. For me, greatness was a matter of power and conquest. However, for Jesus, it is a matter of humility – being least – and seeking the welfare of others.

Instead, the Koran reads:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion [Islam] reigns supreme, (Surah 8:37)

• “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Surah 4:5)

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Surah 8:12, cp. 8:60).

These are present obligations. To be a faithful Muslim is to be faithful to the revelation of the Prophet Muhammad. The Apostle Paul reminds us that we too are at war, but not the kind of war generally envisioned:

• Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:11-12; NIV)

While we do resort to armor, our armor is spiritual and mental. Our enemies are primarily spiritual forces who have taken captive the people of the world through deceptive philosophies and religions. The Charleston SC shooter had been taken captive by a philosophy of racism and a white earthly kingdom. Muslims have been taken captive by their own dream of an earthly kingdom. May we provide the light:

• And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26)

Are We Understanding the Bible Wrongly – Hellenistically?

A faith quarantined from life and obedience isn’t a real faith. It’s sterile, lifeless, and unbiblical (James 2:18-24). If we trust in Christ, we do what He tells us to do, albeit very imperfectly.

If we trust in our doctor, we do the things he tells us to do. Faith in Christ is similar. Brian Knowles starts with this point, but he builds upon it with wood, hay, and stubble:

• In fundamentalist Christian circles, it is often more important to believe and espouse "the right thing," than to live the right way. This is why we are so obsessed with creeds, doctrinal statements, Systematic Theologies, orthodoxy vs. heresy, and creating "Evangelical" or "Sabbatarian" or "Trinitarian" theologies. This mode of thinking is thoroughly Western, utterly Greek. 

Knowles is right to examine how our cultural influences – Greek, postmodern, or otherwise - might have skewed the way we understand Scripture. However, if he truly cares about living the “right way,” he errs by disparaging “creeds, doctrinal statements, Systematic Theologies” – our attempts to get our mind around what Scripture is teaching us. If we fail to systematically understand Scripture in a comprehensive way, we then fail to understand how to live our lives. This failure to grapple with Scripture was the very thing that Jesus criticized:

• “Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment." (John 7:23-24)

Jesus’ opponents were technically right. Healing was a form of work, and work shouldn’t be performed on the Sabbath. However, they failed to understand Scripture comprehensively (probably because their hearts were hardened).

If we are to “stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment,” we have to systematically grapple with Scripture:

   

• Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)

However, Knowles does not believe that a systematic preoccupation with the teachings of Scripture is a Hebraic Biblical thing, but the stealth corrupting influence of Greek thought:

·        In Biblical Judaism, it is precisely the opposite. Christians are inclined to subject each other to litmus tests of orthodoxy, while Jews are concerned mainly with behavior…It was gentile Christians, influenced by Greek philosophy, who both intellectualized and systematized Christian doctrine. Worse, they radically changed much of it. The Biblical Hebrews, and the Apostolic Era of the Church, had no formal theology as such. Nothing was systematized.

While Knowles is correct that the Judaism of today downplays doctrine in favor of “behavior,” “Biblical Judaism” is entirely different. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there is surpassing emphasis on what we believe/know. Hence, the Jews are often instructed to remember (know/believe) what God had done for them. Consequently, the Ten Commandments are prefaced by:

• And God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Exodus 20:1-2)

Commands require a faith-rationale. Israel had to remember and believe that their God had redeemed them from Egypt. Otherwise, obedience is foundation-less.

In fact, it is apparent that entire Biblical revelation rests upon knowing God and His character:

• This is what the Lord says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

If instead, God had been a sadist and a deceiver, everything He revealed to Israel should have be discarded. Obedience requires faith; any action demands a rationale.

Besides, what evidence does Knowles present that the early Jewish church was “concerned mainly with behavior?” And what evidence does he put forth that the “gentile Christians, influenced by Greek philosophy…intellectualized and systematized Christian doctrine” in a way contrary to the thinking of the Hebrew Scriptures? None! Knowles concludes,

• If we are to understand the Bible, and what it means to be a follower of Yeshua ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah), then we will have to understand it Hebraically, not Hellenistically. This will require a philosophical and intellectual paradigm shift on our part. It will mean coming at Scripture from an entirely different angle. It will mean learning to think like the Hebrew who thought more like God.

Knowles is correct that the Bible must be understood “Hebraically.” However, he has failed to show that it is he who understand the Bible correctly and “Hebraically.” Perhaps instead, Knowles has been unduly influenced by his prevailing culture?