Question of the week: What is the first direct prophecy of the coming of the Messiah in the Bible?

My answer: The first direct prophecy is by Moses in one of his last sermons. It is recorded in Deuteronomy 18:15–19:

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.

That God will provide a Redeemer appears hundreds of years earlier in the oldest book in the Bible. Job declares to his three friends:

• “I will wait for my renewal to come. You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin. My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin” (Job 14:14–17).
• “Even now my witness is in heaven; my Advocate is on high. My Intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend” (Job 16:19–21).
• “Give me, O God, the pledge you demand. Who else will put up security for me?” (Job 17:3)
• “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25–27)

Arguably the first direct prophecy to the coming of the Messiah came from God in the Garden of Eden when he spoke to Satan after Satan tempted Eve: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15).

According to Pew Research, if current trends continue then by 2050 there will be nine billion people living on the planet. Approximately three billion will be Christians, three billion will be Muslims, and three billion others will represent various beliefs (both religious and secular).¹

Since Christianity and Islam are the two largest (comprising about 55% of the world’s population²) religions in the world people often wonder where they disagree and how significant the differences are. A brief look at six doctrinal contrasts will help address this question.

First, it is important to note that Islam shares common ground with historic Christianity. For example, both religions are:

• theistic in philosophical orientation
• monotheistic in doctrinal belief
• Middle Eastern in origin
• biblically oriented Abrahamic faiths (they connect to the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament)

However, the differences between the two religions are profound. Since Islam emerged about six centuries after Christianity, we’ll outline how Islam reacts to essential Christian truth claims. As you’ll see, traditional Islam denies the essence of historic Christianity.

Six Systematic Doctrinal Denials

1. Islam denies the Trinity (i.e., tri-unity: One God in three persons). Muslims instead affirm a form of unitarianism where Allah is a single, solitary being (tawhid) with no partners, equals, rivals, or companions. Allah is not begotten nor does he beget; therefore, he has no son.
2. Islam denies the incarnation (i.e., Jesus Christ was God in human flesh: a single person with both a divine and human nature). In contrast, Muslims assert that Jesus was a mere human being. Yet Islam does concur that Jesus was virgin-born, performed miracles, and lived a sinless life.
3. Islam denies the crucifixion (i.e., Jesus’s atoning death on the cross). Muslims instead declare that Jesus either didn’t actually die on the cross (though he may have been impaled) or that someone else took Jesus’s place on the cross. But either way, Islam is not a redemptive religion.
4. Islam denies the imago Dei (i.e., human beings bear God’s image). In contrast, Muslims affirm that such an image would put creatures too close to Allah (the heresy known as “shirk”). Thus in Islamic theology, human beings are not made in Allah’s image.
5. Islam denies original sin (i.e., that human beings are born with a sinful nature and a natural propensity to sin). Instead, Muslims assert that people are born morally good. So Islam rejects the Christian doctrine of the fall.
6. Islam denies salvation by grace (i.e., that human beings are reconciled to God by God’s unmerited favor apart from works). In contrast, Muslims proclaim that personal submission is required to earn paradise. So both paradise (reward) and divine wrath (punishment) are earned.

Both Can’t Be True

While we live in a time that prizes religious pluralism, nevertheless the laws of logic are stubborn things. Given these six systematic doctrinal denials it follows logically that if Islam is true, then Christianity is patently false and vice versa, for Islam denies the very essence of Christian doctrinal truth claims.

Reflections: Your Turn

Why do you think Islam and Christianity are such popular religions? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

• For a further comparison of Islam and Christianity, see my two books God among Sages: Why Jesus Is Not Just Another Religious Leader (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017), 159–88; and A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), chapter 15, 247–63.
• For an introduction to Islam by a Muslim scholar, see Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).

By Stephen McAndrew

When I was five years old, Postman Pat was my favorite TV show. So, when I misbehaved my punishment included missing the show. I suffered, as only a five-year-old can, knowing that my siblings were watching while I was banished to my room.

Punishment involves suffering, be it big or small. Humans intuitively recognize that it is wrong to inflict suffering on someone, thus it follows that it is wrong to punish someone. So, why would an all-loving, all-good God make someone suffer by punishing them? Why would God send some people to suffer in hell as punishment?

Responsibility and Punishment

To address these questions, we will consider free will and how society rewards or punishes choices people make. In human society, we generally accept that it is morally justified to punish criminal behavior. When society punishes someone for committing a crime, it holds that person responsible for a free choice made. Likewise, when society praises someone for making a commendable choice, it holds that person responsible for praiseworthy behavior.

When society punishes a criminal, they are blaming that person appropriately for freely choosing to commit the crime. None of this is to say that there are not cases in the criminal justice system where we find that someone who committed a criminal act should not be held responsible because they suffer from a cognitive limitation. In these cases, we hold that the individual was not responsible for the act as they did not fully understand their actions.

Are We Humans or Animals?

Nevertheless, respecting free choice treats people as individuals who are rational and capable of exercising moral judgment. Yet some, like philosopher and political activist Bertrand Russell, have argued that we should not punish criminals, but treat their criminal actions as symptoms of a disease.¹ These groups often advocate for what they believe are more “compassionate” treatments. But a world that absolves criminals of responsibility for those crimes would be highly problematic. Christian writer and intellectual C. S. Lewis wrote:

To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason…and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we “ought to have known better,” is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.²

I agree with Lewis. If we don’t punish people for wrong actions they chose to do, then we are really treating them like animals. Animals are not morally responsible for their actions. If my dog relieves himself on the carpet, I work to train my dog not to do that in the future. However, if a person commits a crime, we do not merely train them not to do it again. They cannot be trained, like an animal, not to do certain things; rather they must freely choose not to do those things in the future. We cannot override their free will through training. And most people have a deep sense that it is inappropriate to treat a person in the same way we would treat an animal.

Philosopher Herbert Morris pointed out further problems with no-punishment treatments. He argued that a world that treats criminals as suffering from a disease would permit preventive detention before any offense is committed, if someone is believed to have dangerous tendencies. He wrote:

In the punishment system, because we are dealing with deprivations, it is understandable that we should forbear from imposing them until we are quite sure of guilt. In the therapy system, dealing as it does with benefits, there is less reason for forbearance from treatment at an early stage.³

It would also not allow offenders to pay back their debt to society. If you did not earn a punishment, then how can you earn back the respect of society? Morris wrote:

Infliction of the prescribed punishment carries the implication…that one has “paid one’s debt” to society, for the punishment is the taking from the person of something commonly recognized as valuable…What is clear is that the conceptions of “paying a debt” or “having a debt forgiven” or pardoning have no place in a system of therapy.⁴

Respect and Mercy

Punishment respects our free choices and respects us as persons capable of making moral decisions. If God holds us responsible for our moral actions, then he treats us like rational people who are responsible for our choices. In punishing those who do wrong God is not being unfair or mean, but is treating us with respect. This is the same way the criminal justice system, when properly applied, respects offenders as persons by punishing them rather than treating their offenses as something they had no control over.

The good news is that God extends mercy—even though we deserve divine punishment due to our free choices to do moral wrongs. This is not to say that God takes our moral wrongs lightly and dismisses them easily. Rather, Jesus took the punishment that we deserved by suffering and dying in our place. His righteousness (moral goodness) is imputed to us if we choose to follow and obey Him. Moreover, as Morris and Lewis pointed out, mercy only makes sense if someone deserves to be punished and punishment is not carried out. Lewis wrote: “If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. How can you pardon a man for having a humboil or a club foot?^”5 Therefore, in order to be merciful, God must hold us responsible, and mercy is clearly an exercise of a loving God.⁶

With everyone’s life disrupted, I find I am having many conversations with worried colleagues, friends, and family. One friend even got me to do a video interview with her to share with her coworkers and friends. She said she felt selfish having access to a SARS virologist amid a full-blown pandemic.

I want to share some reflections that I hope will encourage you and that you’ll pass on to your friends and coworkers, too.

Here’s my COVID-19 advice for daily life: Love boldly. Serve wisely. Think clearly. Pray always. Let’s work our way through these, backwards.

Pray

It’s always good to start with prayer, which includes gratitude. I have heard and read many good things for which I’m thankful: many health care professionals, reporters, scientists, and civic and religious leaders are focused on our current public health needs and are taking positive action. Join me in giving thanks for these women and men, and let’s pray daily for those who:

• Serve others
• Treat the sick, and
• Work to mitigate the risk

Let’s also pray for God’s healing for the sick, comfort for the fearful, strength for caregivers and pastors, and mercy for the dying. Let’s pray that the pandemic would be abated as quickly as possible, even miraculously so, and that all of us will do what we can.

Think

We can all be proactive, adding to our prayers, actions in compliance with public health guidelines at local, state, and national levels. Precautionary behavior will help mitigate the risk and spread. It will alleviate burden on the health care system and stress on health care workers. We must think of how our choices impact the lives of our health care workers.

We can also choose to fight a culture of fear, uncertainty, selfishness, and any temptation to assign blame. All of these are easy to find in the public dialogue. As Christians, we can bring a message of compassion, hope, and mercy that will resonate deeply in contrast to the negative voices. We can look to Scripture and the lives of other Christians who have faced great adversity to find comfort as this disease crosses our homelands. Such a tact will help alleviate fear, especially when the disease is fueled by endless COVID-19 information and misinformation.

As I face a constant cascade of COVID-19 information, I’m posting frequently to Facebook and Twitter. (It’s faster and easier than blogging.) In one of my own favorite tweets, I addressed prayer and action, tweeting: “Let’s all be Lutherans this year,” and included a link to my former professor’s blog. He shared Martin Luther’s advice, made during the time of the bubonic plague:

I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.¹

Serve

Other helpful advice comes from a Christian pastor, advisor, and friend. He and his wife sent a letter to each of their neighbors offering to help if they found they couldn’t get out for trips to the grocery store or to pick up prescriptions. They offered to be available for outdoor, physically distanced conversations, especially if their respective experiences in pastoral care and as a nurse practitioner could be helpful. They also extended an invitation to neighbors by offering the trails on their country property for leisurely walks anytime someone found themselves going stir crazy. These are simple, practical gestures that demonstrate care and open up possibilities for future relationships. This couple provided their email and physical addresses along with contact phone numbers. They’ve already seen some neighbors respond!

We can also serve by doing particularly practical things. Consider these three:

• Contribute to food banks which may be depleted due to scarcity of goods in some stores.
• Contribute to blood banks which are always in need of donations, and even more so when many who are sick can’t donate.
• Don’t spread misinformation.

I would strongly encourage us to make the most of the days ahead for the sake of the kingdom and our neighbors’ and friends’ deepest welfare. As I’ve encouraged others to listen to and follow public health policy guidelines, I’m sometimes left with the unexpressed impression that others are thinking, “Okay, maybe . . . but I’ve never had to follow public health advice before. Maybe others should. I’ve been fine.” Well, maybe we have been fine even when disregarding public health advice before, but none of us has ever been in a pandemic before. And we all are now. We’re all in this together.

Maybe you’ve heard (or repeated) some things that aren’t true or won’t work at this point in time:

• We know who’s most vulnerable; just isolate them and we’ll all be fine.
• The very young and young, healthy adults are not at risk.
• I don’t feel sick, so I’m good to go.

We know now that none of these are true. We can’t always tell if someone falls into the vulnerable category of comorbidity (having underlying disease). Many young people have become seriously ill, required ventilation, and have even died. A handful of infants have died too. Estimates of asymptomatic cases range from 50–80% and are one reason widespread serological testing is needed and should be welcomed when available. We can’t rely on misinformation to guide our actions and choices.

One other item of misinformation that I tackled on social media and in private messaging this past week involves the conspiracy theories that unfortunately always arise. One rumor claims that SARS-CoV-2 is a human construct or a lab accident gone awry. It’s not true. Others have published data to discount these theories. I couldn’t agree more with one fellow virologist, Tom Gallagher’s comment:

Suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is a purposely manipulated laboratory virus or a product of an accidental laboratory release would be utterly defenseless, truly unhelpful, and extremely inappropriate.²

Love

Last week I finished watching Picard, the new CBS Star Trek series. It is quintessential storytelling with a strong transhumanist message in the final episode. Part of that message includes Picard’s ultimate wisdom that he shares with Soji, an advanced synthetic life-form (a la Data, the famous, self-aware android from Star Trek’s Next Generation series). Picard says that life’s purpose is that we are to save one another. It’s a deeply human message in the midst of the current pandemic, even if it reflects bad theology when left to itself. Nevertheless, your actions can save others’ lives, physically, in the days ahead. And your actions, prayers, and witness can also point others to the ultimate meaning and purpose in life: reconciliation with God, redemption and new life in Jesus, and eternal life—a transhumanist spin with flair!

Final Thoughts

A favorite meme making the rounds on social media shows an empty church and these words, “The church is not empty. The church is deployed.” In light of that, may I echo the words of one preacher from First Baptist Church in Dallas, interviewed on the news this past week. Now’s the time for Christians to act; to the church deployed: “be fearless, not stupid.”

#LoveBoldy #ServeWisely #ThinkClearly #PrayAlways

Resources

• For more on transhumanism, see Fazale Rana with Kenneth Samples, Humans 2.0: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives on Transhumanism

By Krista Bontrager

I frequently see comments on social media claiming, “We are all God’s children.” Generally, people intend this sentiment to mean that God has the same relationship with every human equally. The implication is that God relates to each person directly as heavenly Father. Sometimes this phrase is even used to affirm universal salvation (i.e., that everyone will ultimately be saved).

The question, however, is does the Bible actually teach that everyone is a child of God? Let’s take a closer look at some of the key Scriptures that address this question.

God as Creator

All humans are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). Even after the fall of Adam into sin, Scripture describes God making humans “a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). In fact, after Noah’s flood God declares that the warrant for capital punishment stems from humans being God’s image bearers (Genesis 9:4–6). The apostle James warns Christians not to verbally disparage someone else: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (James 3:9).

When we put these Scriptures together, two important truths emerge. First, humans are fallen. Second, humans maintain the image of God, inherent dignity, value, and worth amid their fallenness. Both of these descriptions are universally applied to all humans in all times and all places.

There is one reference in the New Testament where humans are universally described as being the “offspring of God,” and that is in the apostle Paul’s sermon to the philosophers in Athens. God is described as the Creator of everything, including all humanity.

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands . . . As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring” (Acts 17:24–28).

Paul’s description, however, doesn’t connote a direct father-child relationship between the Creator and all humans. Rather, it is more of a generic description about the origin of humanity, like saying that George Washington was the “father of our country.”

God as Father

God the Father has only one begotten Son (John 3:16). However, to become one of God’s children, one must be adopted—in, by, and through—the One Who is the Son: Jesus Christ. Those who are not adopted are not children of God. Christ, and Christ alone, is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

We get further insight into Paul’s theology on this matter when we observe how he opens many of his epistles with phrases like, “God our Father” (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3). In context, it’s clear that he is referring to Christians, not all of humanity. There are many places where Paul explicitly uses the analogy of adoption to describe the Christian’s relationship with the Father:

• But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. (Galatians 4:4–5)
• He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. (Ephesians 1:5)
• So in Christ Jesus you are all children of Godthrough faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26–28, emphasis added)
• For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirityou received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba,” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:14–23).

God has knit together a new people, consisting of Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, slave and free. These are the people who have become the children of God.

The apostle John explains that we become God’s children through grace rather than birthright. Even though Jesus was rejected by many, “yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11–13, emphasis added). In other words, not everyone wears the title “child of God.”

Interestingly, Jesus even goes so far to call some who are outside of his family as belonging to their “father, the devil” who carry out their “father’s desires,” including lying and murder (John 8:44). Paul makes similar statements in Ephesians, warning the church about the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (2:2) and again “let no one deceive you with empty words . . . the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (5:6). Who are these “sons of disobedience”? They are those who are not in a covenant relationship with the Father through Jesus.

That brings us to a critical point. While not everyone is a child of God, Jesus extends the invitation to become one to all. I pray for everyone to know what it is like to be a child of God, to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and to experience the forgiveness and love of the Father.