WARNING: This is not a typical fundraising letter. For years I have been told by the experts that letters are not meant to communicate complex content.
They are by design meant to “pass the offering plate.” In other words, solely to solicit donations. Nevertheless, I feel led to write what presently is bubbling to the surface in my heart. So, here goes, anyway. 🙂
In writing this letter to dear friends and co-laborers in the ministry of the Christian Research Institute, there are two seemingly unrelated events I’d like to draw to your attention.
The first is an event that took place at the beginning of 2025. The second is scheduled to take place toward the end of the year.
The first event I have in mind took place January 1st. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Muslim terrorist, drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. His intent: to drive our attention to what he described as a “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”
In doing so, he reinforced what I have written in MUSLIM: What You Need to Know About the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion. Namely, that Islam is the only significant religious system in the history of the human race with a sociological structure of laws that mandate violence against the infidel (in other words, against the disbelievers).
This graphic global reality makes Islam a religious ideology espousing terrorism as a permanent policy rather than as a temporary expedient. Such is the historical reality from the early seventh-century Medina massacres to the 9/11 twenty-first-century Manhattan massacre and beyond.
In ad 635, just three years after Muhammad died, Damascus, the city where Saint Paul was heading when he experienced his dramatic conversion, fell to invading Muslims. Two years later, Antioch, where disciples of Christ were first called Christians, fell as well. And shortly thereafter, Jerusalem itself fell to marauding Muslims.
From the fall of Jerusalem to the present, the world has experienced the terror of jihadists such as Shamsud-Din Jabbar.
Indeed, Muhammad’s trail of terror is the legacy of Islam.
Muhammad migrated to Medina but never assimilated. After reaching critical mass, he slew the disbelievers, taking their houses and lands. He later seized Mecca and made it the centerpiece of his conquests. He harassed the cities of Arabia, taking their women and their wealth as his private property.
He founded the world’s fastest-growing religiopolitical cult and brutally subjected the Arabian Peninsula to tyrannical terror. In the greatest of his conquests, he had a Jewish man beheaded, took his wife as booty, had her beautified, and then forced on her his bed.
Muhammad promised his devotees (and vicariously Jabbar) either earthly goods or an eternity in the graces of houris (voluptuous women). Yet three years after he had slaughtered the Jews of Khaybar, he died in the arms of one of his many wives — Aisha, whom he married when she was age six.
Most egregious of all, the religion Muhammad founded denies the deity of Jesus Christ. In fact, to the Muslim Allah, calling God “Father” and Jesus “Son” suggests sexual procreation.
The second event I’d like to draw to your attention is scheduled to take place near the end of 2025. Namely, the 1700th anniversary celebration of the Council of Nicaea in ad 325!
Though seemingly unrelated, the January carnage and the end-of-the-year celebration have a common denominator — namely, the deity of Christ.
Here’s what I mean. Shamsud-Din Jabbar swore allegiance to the Islamic State — a state birthed in 1999 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, of course, was the murderous Muslim personally responsible for posting one of the first decapitation videos on the internet — that of American hostage Nicholas Berg (May 2004).
Moreover, the ISIS flag in Jabbar’s truck during his murderous January 1st rampage is believed to be replete with iconic blessings. As the Islamic State puts it, “The shade of this blessed flag will expand until it covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth, filling the world with the truth and justice of Islam.”
The foundational truth of Islam being that Jesus Christ is not divine. In other words, is not God in human flesh! Rather, Jesus is the mere “slave of Allah.”
Indeed, for Muslims, the incarnation of Jesus Christ entails the gravest of all sins.
How so? Because for Muslims the doctrine of the incarnation — that Jesus Christ is God come in flesh — is tantamount to the sin of shirk — the unforgivable sin of assigning partners to God.
While much more can be said (as I do in MUSLIM), suffice it to say that believing in the deity of Christ is regarded by Muslims as a blasphemous negation of Allah’s absolute oneness.
Thus, while Muslims readily affirm the sinlessness of Christ, they dogmatically deny His incarnation as both insulting to the majesty of Allah and logically incoherent.
So, where’s the connection between what happened January 1st, 2025, on Bourbon Street and the 1700th anniversary celebration of the Council of Nicaea at the end of 2025?
The answer is this. Ideas have consequences. And theology (the study of God) matters!
Think with me for a moment about what happened back in the fourth century. A popular Alexandrian priest named Arius famously denied the cardinal doctrine of Christ’s unique deity. And with this denial
sabotaged the very essence of Christianity.
In response, the Council of Nicaea affirmed the unique deity of Jesus Christ. Later that century, the first Council of Constantinople (381) in conjunction with the Council of Nicaea formulated the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which has served for time in memorium as template for the historic Christian faith.
For the truth that is to be “believed everywhere, always, and by all.”
From then till now, the Nicene Creed has constituted the basic confession of faith for Christians worldwide. Indeed, every Sunday, millions of Christians in myriad churches around the world recite this
creed as the standard of faith “once for all delivered to the saints” ( Jude 3).
Most notably, the Nicene Creed was initiated by a controversy over a single letter. Imagine that! Over a mere iota. Over the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet!
Yet this letter, this miniscule iota, makes all the difference in the world! It’s the difference between homoousios and homoiousios. The difference between Christ being of the same essence with the Father or merely being of a similar essence.
What can be said of the Council of Nicaea, as of the other ecumenical councils, is that they established the significance of precision in theology. Why? Because ideas truly have consequences!
Consequences for good, as in biblical Christianity. Or for evil, as in the ISIS dogma that believing Jesus to be God is an unforgiveable sin. A sin worthy of murder. In this case, the murderous mayhem wreaked on Bourbon Street, January 1st!
As I sat in Church yesterday, I could not help but focus on a former Muslim man passionately reciting the Nicene Creed. I could audibly hear his recitation, as together with the rest of the gathered saints he expressed his belief in “one God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through Whom all things were made…”
This is what will be memorialized at the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea at the end of 2025.
And what a Muslim terrorist was willing to kill for at the beginning of this year. Moreover, this is why in 2025, while we are still alive, we do well to emulate Messiah rather than Muhammad — the man responsible for founding the world’s fastest-growing religiopolitical cult and brutally subjecting the Arabian Peninsula to tyrannical terror.
Since contrast is the conduit to clarity, consider Messiah in contrast to Muhammad!
Christ elevated females to ontological equality with men and taught followers the principles of a kingdom that would never end. He commanded devotees to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them. He instructed adherents to turn the other cheek — to be peacemakers rather than makers of war. When a disciple struck a soldier with his sword, Jesus said, “Put your sword in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” He defended the downtrodden and condemned the self-righteous.
Above all, He set the ultimate moral example by dying so that others might live!
Allow me to close this letter by simply asking you to stand with me shoulder-to-shoulder in the epic battle for life and truth in our own lifetimes. Your support through praying and giving will truly make a difference for time and for eternity.
For the role you play “24/7” in equipping believers at home and around the globe to stand for life in Christ and truth in His commission, I’m grateful each and every day!
…because Truth Matters, Life Matters More,
President
P. S. We thank God for you and the blessings brought forth in 2024! We meet 2025 with energy and enthusiasm for the opportunities that the Lord has already placed in our path for the year, in addition to the unexpected pleasures of providence we are likely to encounter along the way.
Thank you for your continued partnership as we earnestly honor the commandments of Christ — for time and for eternity.