My (E.G.’s) straightforwardly honest apostolic Christian view toward Islam

Cf.:

So as it came to pass, I found a few avenues—praised be Jehovah my God—for constructive theological dialogue with a few pious Muslims here on Substack over the months, opportunities I greatly appreciate receiving. In case any gap of understanding still remains from the Christian side of the sophisticated theological debate, I’ll try to address them in this posting for the sake of forthright open clarity.

In a nutshell, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that from my attained understanding of the origins of Islam, the baseline position I incline to lean toward is that the Islamic religion indeed was—from a sola scriptura apostolic/Ante-Nicene Christian standpoint of covenantal continuity between the testaments—more or less legitimately sanctioned into existence divinely by God.

Don’t get too excited now: just because I believe that is not tantamount to affirming in a simple linear trajectory that the doctrinal teachings of Islam are ones I automatically subscribe to. Before I explain what I mean by that, a quick rundown of Jehovah God’s judgments in the New Covenant era are necessary in order to grasp how and why Islam came to existence: the simplest encapsulation—as brief as it can get—is that if the vast bulk of “Christendom” retained the kenotic faith of their primitive 1st-century roots, there would have never been necessitated the springing forth of Islam into existence as an offshoot distinct religion of its own right.

(for context: I’m addressing Islam here as a legitimate religion according to its actual origins and not the grotesquely inflected forms as are propagated en masse by so-called “jihad”-ists and various earthly power-worshipers in the vast bulk of the modern-day “Islamic” realm—this here is a theological family dispute between people who sincerely fear God out of a pure heart and therefore automatically excludes from participation all religion-weaponizing perverters, namely also the nazijews who grotesquely hijack Judaism and the “Christian Zionists” misusing Christianity, a.k.a. this is for my friends who are actual traditionalist and piously heartfelt Muslims, not Zio-Hamas nor HTS/al-Qaeda/Taliban/ISIS esque idol-worshipers)

In the Book of Revelation, there are seven trumpets defining seven providential judgments in the New Covenant era, a.k.a. extending from 30 A.D. into the eventual Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The first judgment befell Jerusalem in 70 A.D. when apostate Judea was destroyed, and the second trumpet blowing likely commenced the Great Crisis of the Third Century plaguing the imperial pagan Roman Empire.

The apostle and prophet John testified that upon the blasting of the third trumpet, a certain magnificent star by the name of “Wormwood” fell from heaven and poisoned a third of the freshwaters into bitterness, whose drinkers died by reason of the bitterness. That was a representation of none other than Constantine the Great, who cynically inverted the precepts of Christianity to instrumentalize and hijack its manifested glory to justify the imposition of an earthly man-centered empire pandering a “Christianized” syncretism of paganism under the auspices of a universally ecumenical (read: catholic) Christianity the masses must accept. As the ultimate outgrowth of the Constantinian-Nicene color revolution, there came to pass its fruit known as the Dark Ages (commenced by the sounding of the fourth trumpet), because the ecclesiastical bureaucracy had shut off the light of the world from the everyday uninitiated Christian laity.

It was by reason of the grotesque abomination of the empirical propagation of a Constantinian-Nicene apostatized “Christianity” that Islam was divinely ordained as a necessitated counterweight, more or less as a rod of Jehovah’s anger to rebuke and punish the perverting backsliders within “Christendom.” It indeed is described in the events of the fifth trumpet blowing that a star—just listed as a star, not a magnificent one unlike the third trumpet description—fell from heaven and opened the bottomless pit, out of which came smoke and subsequently “locusts” from the smoke. If Constantine the Great was the magnificent star who fell from heaven in the third trumpet, then the primordial Islamic prophet Muhammad evidently befits the description of the star who fell from heaven in the fifth trumpet.

Why—according to this apostolic Christian apocalyptic reckoning—did Muhammad fall from heaven? Very simple: the earliest Islamic writings obviously reveal an abounding knowledge of the penitent humility that God leads His faithful servants to walk in, that a follower of the supreme Lord of the universe is behooved to live and breathe in the acknowledgement that the heavens where God dwells are higher than the land where man dwells. This is signified in the Islamic principle of the greater jihad vs. lesser jihad, where Muhammad explained more or less (if I’m summarizing this correctly) that the greater jihad is a person’s battle against one’s own mortal impulses/passions.

However, Muhammad failed to fully live up to that light in his own life’s walk, because had he accepted the supremacy of the greater jihad over the lesser (in accordance to that which he himself articulated), he would have forsook earthly empirical pursuits, renounced the mortal vanities of the world, and took the example of a servant to the maximus as an example of abandoning the love of the world toward seeking the love of God. Instead, he evidently chose to continue expanding Arab-Islamic conquests, thus his “falling from heaven”: once Muhammad chose to accept the position of an earthly ruler overseeing an earthly empire, he relinquished his heavenly standing that even in its lowest level was higher than the highest-possible earthly altitude of ranking prestige he could attain.

That was the primordial tragedy of Islam: its chief prophet possessed the knowledge toward the light of the truth, and exhibited veritable signs of grasping its ways thereof, but ultimately chose the path of continuing earthly conquest rather than abandoning those endeavors to entirely live out the heavenly-ordained primacy of spiritual conquest over broken mortal human passions. In the very end of Muhammad’s life, he evidently came to the realization that his decisions were snowballing toward an empirical monstrosity upending the very emphasis on God-fearing piety that he sought after, as he tried to anoint Ali as his successor but was prevented from doing so due to an orchestrated conspiracy by Abu Bakr and Umar. The very atmosphere of backsliding earthly power-centric prioritization, sowed by Muhammad, ultimately turned around to consume him and overturn his final wishes, as the one companion of his who actually adhered to a heartfelt kenotic spirit of spiritual integrity was robbed of his inheritance as successor, which instead was usurped by an image-weaponization ideology of superficially pedagogic self-declared human collective authority inverting the principle of the greater jihad.

Ultimately, the Arab-Islamic caliphates in that trajectory nonetheless served the purpose of judging its preceding and vastly more abominable Christian backsliders, since “Empirical Islam” (note that I’m addressing this as nonetheless an actual branch of Islam, in contrast to the modern-day neo-Qutbist “jihadist” Zionist Brotherhood offshoots that can barely be objectively considered Islamic to begin with)—as it namely came to be embodied by the Ottoman Turks—came to existence as a centuries-long rod of God’s anger against the Constantinian-Nicene satanically corrupted “Christendom” in both the east and west, against both the western papal “Catholic” confederation and the eastern “Orthodox” Byzantine Empire.

So really, from the apostolic Christian standpoint—at least as I (E.G.) have come to understand it—what is necessitated of nuance to be grasped here is that the kenotic a.k.a. traditionalist form of Islam as a religion of God-seeking piety is definitely not anywhere close to an enemy to be clashed with or denigrated, because fundamentally it reflects an unfettered authentic devotion to serving the one and sole God who looks upon the heart, at the innermost of a person. Even the historically manifested form of “Empirical Islam” as embodied by the Sunni Ottomans was not the enemy of a true Christian, because its purpose fundamentally was to punish Constantinian-Nicene corrupted apostates in Christianity, not to harm the remaining true apostolic Christians who seek after God from a pure heart and who renounced the love of the world and its lusts. A true and veritable diligent Bible-studying Christian of a kenotic spirit cannot in accordant sincerity hate their Muslim brethren who also in their own lived-and-breathed earthly walk also seek out the same God out of a pure heart.

In the description of the armies of the Turkish-Sunni Ottomans in the Book of Revelation’s prophecy of the fifth and sixth trumpet blowings, there is a notably stark reflection of the very motifs describing the ancient Assyro-Babylonian armies that Jehovah ordained to punish the ancient Israelites and Judahites. Just as in type the literal Israelites of the northern ten tribes were assimilated into Assyria and “lost” as what came to remain were the syncretic-offshoot Samaritans, so too in antitype the apostate spiritual Israelites (a.k.a. what one terms “Christians”) were conquered and dealt heavy blows by the Arab-Islamic hosts as a just punishment for their apostatizing rebellion against Jehovah.

So in substantive essence, the behooved apostolic Christian view toward devout Muslims in especially this late-stage empire modern context is the antitype of the 1st-century primitive Christian stance toward Samaritans as exemplified by Jesus.

(one is welcome in good faith to inquire for clarity on specific doctrinal disagreements in the comment section, i.e. “Trinitarianism,” who/what Jesus exactly is, the nature of atonement, the verifiable reliability of various biblical texts et al.—I can address in detail as anyone—especially and namely my beloved pious Muslim friends whom I greatly respect—are sincerely curious for my detailed input on)