Shedding of Blood
Shedding of Blood
by Bill Lockwood
A chasm as wide as the world separates Christianity and Islam. Whether one compares the founders or the doctrines or the practices, the difference is as stark as beams of sunlight piercing the gloom of inky darkness. The living Christ is the light of the world while cultures created by following a dead Muhammad are comparable to descending into dark dungeons of ignorance. To see and feel the distinction, consider in the following the doctrine of what might be called The Shedding of Blood. Christianity and Islam each have a teaching surrounding the shedding of blood.
Prophetic Preparation
Christianity. The Old Testament canon was completed almost four centuries prior to the arrival of Christ and contains more than 300 specific prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ. At the heart of these predictions is Isaiah 53 which, with great specificity, speaks of the shedding of blood in the life of the Messiah. It was a vicarious suffering on behalf of mankind.
“Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrow: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. … And as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people for whom the stroke was due? … Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he has put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul of offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:4, 5, 8, 10).
Islam. What does one find when one turns to the religion founded by Muhammad? There were no predictive prophecies of him, of course, because true prophecy requires divine inspiration, which is lacking in Islam. However, later biographers of Muhammad invented “predictions” which they put into the mouths of individuals which were supposedly spoken by persons before Muhammad. One of the earliest of such biographers was Ibn Ishaq.
And what “prediction” do we read in Ishaq’s treatment of Muhammad? Ishaq relates that a “Jew” came to the Muhammad’s Arabian tribe of the Koreish which lived in Banu Qurayza. He was looking for a “prophet” from among that people and he issued a “warning.” This “Jewish warning” was that a “prophet” would “emerge” who would be “sent to shed blood and to take captive the women and children of those who oppose him.” Ishaq reminds the reader that later, when Muhammad “besieged Banu Qurayza” (626 A.D.) the “young men” remembered this prediction. (The Life of Muhammad, p. 94).
One was predicted to shed his own blood in a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of mankind; the other was to wear an iron sword and “shed blood” by besieging cities and destroying people.
The Founding of the Religions
Christianity. One fourth of the gospel material (Matthew-John) centers on the voluntary self-sacrifice of Jesus shedding His own blood on behalf of others. The writer of Hebrews emphasizes that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). Actually, the very theme of the Hebrews demonstrates that the Old Testament has been replaced by the New and that all of the sacrificed animals under the Old system were but types of Christ who has now “once for all” shed his blood for the redemption of mankind. He “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26).
At the core of Christianity is the blood of Christ. Through faith “in his blood” which was voluntarily shed (John 10:17, 18) our redemption was purchased (Rom. 3:23-25) and we are now “justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9). The entirety of the New Testament is summarized in his blood (1 Cor. 11:25).
But the shedding of blood is only efficacious to us because, as all four gospel records relate, Jesus was bodily resurrected from the dead. Hinging upon this truth is the entire corpus of Christianity (1 Cor. 15:1-4; 12-15). This is why Christianity is “good news.” The late New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce explains:
“For the Christian gospel is not primarily a code of ethics or a metaphysical system; it is first and foremost good news, and as such it was proclaimed by its earliest preachers. … And this good news is intimately bound up with the historical order, for it tells how for the world’s redemption God entered into history, the eternal came into time, … in the great events of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” (F.F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?).
Therefore, it matters not how many times President Obama or those of his ilk point to the bloody Crusades of Medieval times as a period of shame. These were apostate Roman Catholic physical wars that had nothing to do with any doctrine of Christianity.
Islam. What do we find when we turn to the religion of Islam? There is indeed the “shedding of blood.”
Islam is defined by the trilogy of texts: Koran, Sira (the biography of Mohammed) and Hadith (his traditions). The complete foundation of Islam is laid in these authoritative texts. What did Mohammed do, and what did he say? Without this there is no such thing as Islam.
Muhammad claimed that Allah commanded him to fight bloody wars with unbelievers in Islam until they become Muslim and carry out the ordinances of Islam. All Muslim scholars without exception agree on this. In the hadith collected by Bukhari Muhammad said, “I have been ordered by God to fight with people till they bear testimony to the fact that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger, and that they establish prayer and pay [money]. If they do it, their blood and their property are safe from me.” (Bukhari, vol. I, p. 13).
These wars were not just “defensive wars.” Dr. Muhammad Sai’id Ramadan al-Buti, one of the modern Azhar scholars in Egypt, his book Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography, explains: “The Holy War, as it is known in Islamic Jurisprudence, is basically an offensive war. This is the duty of Muslims in every age when the needed military power becomes available to them.” With this dictum all Saudi scholars agree.
The practice of Islam is the Iron Rule. Might makes right. “And one who attacks you; attack him in like manner as he attacks you” (Surah 2:194). There is nothing “defensive” about “Fight and slay the pagans wherever you may find them” (Surah 9:5). “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly” (47:4). “Know that Paradise is under the shades of swords” (Jihad in Allah’s Cause, Bukhari, Vol. 4, book 56, no. 2818).
The above texts are not aberrations. This is the heart of Islam. Measuring in the complete trilogy the amount of texts devoted to Jihad is one-third. The Koran gives the great vision of jihad and spells it out in detail. The Sira is a strategic manual of how to wage jihad and two-thirds is dedicated to violent jihad. “Basically, when Mohammed was a preacher of religion (the first period of his life, bl), Islam grew at the rate of 10 new Muslims per year. But when he turned to jihad, Islam grew at an average rate of 10,000 per year” (Bill Warner, Factual Persuasion).
The founder of Christianity shed his own blood in sacrifice for others; the founder of Islam personally shed the blood of multitudes to force compliance.
Marching Orders
Christianity. Following the example of Jesus Christ himself, Christians are commanded to copy their Master. Instructed “not to please ourselves” (Rom. 15:1) but, like the Lord, be self-sacrificial for others. “Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not Himself…” (15:2, 3).
Going forward, the purpose of the cross and the shedding of Jesus’ blood is “leaving you and example that you should follow his steps … who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judges righteously” (1 Pet. 2:22,23). The New Testament is replete with such-like admonitions of self-sacrifice, putting others and their needs above our own.
Islam. Since Mohammed’s time his doctrines have inspired the murder of more than 270 million and the rape of tens of millions of women. Led by the example of the false prophet Mohammed himself, Islam hacked its way across Europe, violating treaties and destroying kafir (unbeliever, non-Muslim) cultures. The pretended inspiration of the Koran has motivated centuries of violence after the order of the marauding Bedouin.
Muhammad’s final instructions to his followers were to wage jihad which is why his religion is named “Islam”—submission. This violent fighting is not optional for the Muslim. “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing that is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and ye know not.” . How then are we continually lectured today by our cultural leaders that violence-mongers are only a “handful” of Muslims who are somehow “misinterpreting the Koran”?
The contrast between Christianity and Islam is as stark as can be imagined. Turning to the Bible from the Koran is like stepping off of shifting sand onto solid rock. Most damaging of all, therefore, is the common paradigm that Christianity is a religion and Islam is a religion, and the two somehow must be on an equal footing before our Constitution.
With the ongoing blood-letting rampages in America, from the Ft. Hood shooting by Maj. Hasan, to the Boston bombing at the hands of the Tsarnaev brothers, to the recent San Bernardino, California Islamic terror massacre by Farook and his female partner Malik, it would seem that Americans would be willing to peer beneath the false façade that Islam is merely another religion. But alas! Too many are still scratching their heads in bewilderment, unable to understand that Islam is nothing less than political communism with a sharp religious edge.
The late Belgian Muslim jihadist responsible for the recent Paris blood letting, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, can be seen in a photograph that has now been published world-wide. In a silent message he is seen holding forth in his outstretched right hand a copy of the Koran and in his left he clutches the flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). From the professorships in the university to the media and law enforcement the question that continues to be so elusive is, “How did he become radicalized?” But to those who have not been so willfully blinded by politically correct whitewashing the answer is obvious.