The Gospel for Muslims

Guys, I’m officially in Month 6 of this crazy thing and at the halfway mark!! We’re in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and working with Treichville Church doing door to door and trucker evangelism. Côte d’Ivoire is a major country in African trade. Not just within the many ports, but the trucking industry as well. Truckers from all over the continent stop here, sometimes for weeks at a time. So, we show up with tracks, business cards and the Bible on SIM Cards for the truckers to listen to.

The majority of the truckers we come in contact with are Muslim and I’ve learned quite a bit about what the religion of Islam actually is.

You see, I’ve had a lot of misconceptions about what the majority of Muslims believe and what they’re like. I also know a lot of people who have no idea what Islam actually believes so I thought I would share a few of the things I’ve learned from my Cultural Coordinator (Sammiera) and from the truckers we have been in contact with.

1. Allah is Arabic for god. Regardless of religion. If you are speaking to an Arabic-speaking Muslim, you have to make a distinguish between Allah and Yahweh.
2. Not all Muslims speak Arabic.
3. The Quran is only considered Holy Scripture when it is in Arabic. They believe that once it’s translated in any way, shape, or form that it loses its validity and is no longer a holy book. As a result, most Muslims from Africa and other parts of the world only know what the Quran says from wise leaders, family members, and stories that are being told. If you want to be a devout Muslim, you must learn Arabic so you can read it. Ergo, MANY Muslims do not actually know what the Quran says. 
4. They believe that God created the earth and most of our foundational Old Testament stories are the same as the stories in the Quran with a few major differences. They believe in Abraham and Moses and other Old Testament prophets. 
5. However, Jesus was also just a major prophet. The miracles that He preformed and the virgin birth are legit: “all of the real prophets preformed miracles” (Abraham having a son in his old age, Moses parting the Red Sea, water from the rock, etc). They do not believe that He is the son of God, that He died or was resurrected. 
6. They think that the reason Christians believe what we do is because the Bible was written by man and that things were misunderstood, misheard, and misinterpreted. Whereas, the Quran was directly written by God using the hand of Muhammad (who is also a prophet and that was his only miracle).
7. Most generational Muslims (people who are mainly Muslims because that’s what their family has always been) are open to discussions/debates about Jesus and different beliefs and honestly, it makes it a lot easier to share the Gospel when you are also listening to what they have to say as well.
8. Yes, there are extremists in Islam. There are terrorists that operate under “the authority of Allah.” The majority of Muslims do not support this and are also victims of the violence. There are extremists in a lot of religions and causes…the entire religion should not be identified under this lens.
9. Since they do not believe in the Messiah or that Jesus was the Ultimate Sacrifice, our door to sharing Jesus with them is asking them if they died today, where would they go? Almost all of them say, “only God knows that.” Because they believe that they consistently pray for forgiveness of their sins and that God could choose to cast them out.
10. Jesus is appearing to a LOT of Muslims in dreams. I’ve heard countless stories of Muslims having a “Damascus Encounter” (Acts 9). I’m in awe of the ways Jesus is working in the world of Islam.

Listening and sharing with them has come a lot easier than I thought it would and I’m learning more and more about what the Good News of the Gospel is to each person, and how important sharing Jesus in different cultural lenses is. 

We’ve seen salvations already and I’m so excited to welcome more brothers and sisters into the Kingdom every week.