GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: To All: World Religions and Mission

Glenn Russell

01-“The Cross and the Crescent”: Islam and Missions 101

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I see that the audio is working quite well.

I don't have any way to control the volume so you might have to plug your ears.

Ahlan wa sahlan, we're glad to have each of you here this morning and I'm just delighted that you decide to wake up and give God this day and join us for this session and I pray that there'll be something worthwhile for you.

Dear gracious Lord and God, we come here recognizing that we are in your presence wherever we go, and we're so thankful that you are Lord of all.

We ask that we may recognize you as Lord of our lives, and particularly now, Lord, as we think of the cross and the crescent, as we think of the vast mission field of the Muslim world and Muslims scattered throughout the world.

We remember that these children of the East are your people.

And we ask that you will equip us and inspire us to serve you and to serve them.

Just very briefly, my name is Glenn Russell.

I have absolutely no qualifications for presenting this seminar.

That's why you were born wherever you were born.

And so my parents were missionaries in the Middle East for 27 years.

I grew up in the country of Lebanon and have always had an interest in the Middle East and an interest in things of Islam.

So I'm very happy that I have some people who are far more qualified here with us this morning.

And I'm going to ask our guests from Egypt and Lebanon to stand please.

1 of them has run to the back of the room with the camera.

That's Pastor Andres, who is the chaplain at Lebanese University.

And Marshall is from Lebanon serving as a missionary.

We're glad to have each of you here this morning.

As soon as I saw them here I said I'll go through my stuff quickly so they can share the real stuff coming from those lands there.

So let's spend a little time talking about the Crescent and the Cross and because I don't know your backgrounds I don't have any idea how much or how little you know.

So we're going to start with some very basic things.

If you feel like I'm going too fast, don't worry.

The PowerPoint is available online as a PDF file for all the sessions.

The longer address is like this, but if you put that much in, it'll work.

And that'll come up again at the end of our presentation this morning as well.

So you can get the handout of everything we're saying so you don't have to furiously write notes or something like that.

I'm used to teaching, so that's how things go.

And so you can get your online handouts and that will help you just a little bit.

1 of the first things we should know, and now that I have people who speak Arabic, I can ask them if no 1 else answers.

Does anyone know what the word Islam or Muslim comes from?

Lots of people think it means war, it means something else, you know, it doesn't.

We might say surrender to God, but submission is probably a better word.

And so a Muslim is someone who submits to Allah, Do you?

In some parts of the world, there are even national laws that no 1 but a Muslim should use the word Allah.

In other places they say, no wait a minute.

When any Arabic Christian opens his Bible and reads in Arabic, what do you think it says?

Just like Christ is not an English word, it comes from the Greek word and so forth.

What you have to understand is the difference in meaning that you might have.

But the word itself, there's nothing wrong with using the word Allah.

I know there's been YouTube videos and other kinds of things saying, you know, Pastor Dwight at 1 point referred to Allah and they're saying he's bringing Islam into the Adventist church and so don't fall for those things.

Now how we interpret that and understand it, that should be considered further.

Now the shahada is the statement or testimony of faith.

There's none worthy of being worshipped except Allah, and Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the apostle, Rasulullah, the messenger of God.

And my name, Russell, gets confused sometimes in the Middle East at customs and other places.

I finally have to say Rasul, and then they get, okay, the messenger, Russell, they get close at least.

Now, as you know, Islam originated in the Middle East, in the Arabian Peninsula.

And if you want to think about dates, if you're historically inclined, there's only 1 you really need to keep in mind for sure, and that's 622.

Because Muhammad grew up in the pagan area of Saudi Arabia.

He was in some contact indirectly with some Christians and Jews.

Now, unfortunately, they weren't very good Christians and Jews.

They were merchants and were more after God than they were after evangelism.

So they didn't represent their faith well.

But he had some contact and some connection, even through some family members who had become Christians.

And so Islam begins as a religion, as he enters into a time in his life when he has some prosperity.

At the age of 40, Muhammad is illiterate.

He's not able to read or write, but he's very spiritually inclined.

He begins going out of the city and meditating, reflecting upon God, and begins to receive visions.

I'll not answer the question right now as to whether the visions were from God or from something else.

First, spend some time learning about it.

And those revelations lasted for 23 years on and off and they eventually became the Quran.

Now, as the movement grew, it faced opposition.

Interestingly enough, when they went from Mecca to Medina, they were welcomed initially by the Jewish community.

The Jewish community was very happy to have some other monotheists among the polytheist tribes.

They were very happy for that until they began to realize that they couldn't convert Muhammad to Judaism, that he was going to stay with his own brand of monotheism.

And then there were some conflicts over economics.

And the number of his followers and the number of theirs, there's eventually an assassination plot against him by the Jews.

And those were some of the early signs of some of the tensions that may still continue.

So Muhammad's followers faced more and more persecution in Mecca.

Eventually they were driven out and in 622, or the starting year of the Muslim calendar, they fled from Mecca to Medina And this marks the official beginning of Islam.

This is the date that their calendar and so forth is dated from.

Eventually, Islam grew to become a theocracy that spread larger than the Roman Empire.

02-“The Cross and the Lotus”: Hinduism and Missions 101

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.dycweb.org.

I see that you're wide awake and you've already been through some sessions.

We're very, very glad to have you here with us this morning to our sessions about to all taking God's gospel to the world.

And we hope just to stir up some of your thinking and let God, through His Holy Spirit, work in your hearts and your minds.

I'm just delighted to have in each of these sessions people who have more background than I do.

I don't consider myself to be an expert at all.

But I'm very glad to have a good friend, John Baxter, with us today.

Any of you know Avenus Frontier Missions?

So talk to John afterwards or come by the booth.

John has had the opportunity to serve in India and I've asked him to have opening prayer for us this morning.

I'm gonna pray in Hindi, that's what he asked me to do, so let's bow our heads, and then I think I'll pray in English afterward.

You had your UIC may also take a key home.

Seek something you have to watch in Kibar.

We thank you for coming to the GYC today, so that we can learn about your teachings.

We want to know how we can give the news to the Hindus so that they can also be united with your family.

We want your holy soul so that we can understand what you teach us.

Father we're thankful to be able to be here at GYC.

We come here to worship, to learn, and particularly this morning we want to learn about our Hindu friends, how they can become part of your family.

So please give us your Holy Spirit so that we can hear your voice teaching us and be able to share with these people.

John will be back with us a little bit later at the end as we talk more about the mission component.

If you missed our last session on mission in the Islamic world, I encourage you to go online.

You can download that and they also are doing audio of the sessions and I think that you'll find that to be very, very interesting.

I'm always amazed at God's answers to prayer and how God puts people just in the right place.

In our last session, in walk 3 guests who are from the Middle East.

And it was just great to have them participate and help us out.

1 of them is still with us here, Marshall.

Marshall serves the Middle East North African Union as the Director of Literature.

And if you are interested in serving the Muslim part of the world, talk to Marshall today.

He'll be here afterwards and he'll also be at which booth, Marshall?

Look for the materials on the Middle East North African Union, also tremendous mission field.

Let's shift now to talking a little bit about Hinduism and may I say to you right off from the beginning there's much I'm trying to learn about Hinduism And I've asked everybody that I know who knows a lot about Hinduism, they keep saying the same thing.

Hinduism is vast, it's complicated, it's perplexed.

In fact, 1 man said to me, everything you say about Hinduism is true.

In other words, it's filled with all kinds of anomalies, what seem to be inconsistencies, all kinds of things like that.

And so I'd like to spend just a little bit of time trying to introduce you to Hinduism and then talking about some of the opportunities for missions.

When we think about religions of the world, as we consider the various numbers and as we consider the various entities, It's very hard to decide which numbers stand.

I mean, do you take everybody who's at all within a religion or just born in the religion?

Do you take those who attend the temple or the mosque or the synagogue or the church, how do you decide how many numbers you count?

For example, we know in the United States when they do surveys, 3 times as many people say they're Seventh-day Adventists as we have on our church books.

There's a lot of people out there who feel they're affiliated even though they haven't officially become members or may no longer still be members.

So where does Hinduism rank in the process?

The world's largest religion, about 33% of course is Christianity.

Second largest at about 22% is Islam, and then we have Hinduism as the third largest religion of the world with about 15% of the world's population.

In other words, 1 out of every 6 or 7 people comes from a Hindu background.

When we're involved in missions, we always want to have a strategy.

We need to know what people believe and practice before we teach them the scriptures or as we teach them the Scriptures.

Missions is a wonderful way for you to learn more about your own faith.

Because as you share with others, they will ask questions that you haven't thought of.

It'll drive you to search the Scriptures.

So missions become a very, very positive way for you to know more about your own teachings.

And by the way, which came first, theology or missions?

Actually, you could make a strong case that mission came first.

And as they went out from the church in Jerusalem in the New Testament, as they went forth, they hammered out theology according to the needs.

Now, it's not the only view, but you can make a strong case for that.

So the fact that what we believe has been developed, but it's been developed not in a vacuum, but in dialogue with others as we're sharing our faith.

So knowing what they believe is important because you want to speak to people in a way that's intelligible.

These are kind of hermeneutical keys or interpretive keys.

You look for something in the culture that you can use to explain the gospel.

And those are very, very important things to do when you're wanting to share the Gospel with anyone.

In any cultural situation, look for something that you can use to take to something else.

For example, Jesus did this with a woman at the well.

And then he talked about the fountain, the springing up of life through the Holy Spirit and so forth.

I will say a little bit about Hinduism as we get started here.

I'm saying it in ways that are framed for the Western mind.

But for us to understand it, I'm trying to put it in some ways.

When we talk about Brahman, this is kind of a Universal divine consciousness, if you like.

Understand that Brahman has no person, no form, no attributes, can only be known through other gods.

Brahman is eternal, infinite, unknowable, sexless, without a past, without a present, without a future, totally impersonal.

So think of Brahman from that perspective.

This is a non-personal God with no attributes that can be known directly, only through other gods.

03-“The Cross and the Endless Knot”: Buddhism and Missions 101

It looks like we didn't get that part recorded, so we'll do this again.

We're very glad to have you with us for our workshops on mission and world religions.

And what we've tried to do is not just talk about a world religion as some kind of intellectual thing, but then also talk about, alright, what does that mean for us in terms of missions?

I believe that God has called us all to be missionaries, right?

My wife goes to the mission field every day as she teaches in an inner city school and she loves those children there and I grew up in the mission field and often take students on mission trips and so forth.

So we each need to find our place, right?

God has a place in mind for us on this earth, just as what?

That's a very positive promise from the Spirit of Prophecy.

The fact that God has a place for you and a place for me to serve.

He is doing 2 roles here because he currently serves as the chaplain at Middle East University in Beirut, Lebanon.

So he's more and more familiar with the Middle Eastern and Arab and Muslim world, but he also spent time serving in Thailand before he came to Lebanon.

So I've asked him to share on that part a little bit later.

First, we'll spend a little bit of time getting an overview of Buddhism or I would say a slice of part of Buddhism and then we'll try to go a little bit further with some practical applications for missions.

Dear God of beauty and form and God of peace, we think of these things when we think of Buddhism and we think of those who are seeking to find tranquility and peace and justice and joy.

And we're very thankful that you have created us in your image and you give us the opportunity to know you.

Thank you for the truth of scripture that we have.

Thank you for the truth that we find in the spirit prophecy.

Thank you also for the fact that we do not have all monopoly of truth, but you have also given truth, scattered it throughout the world, that it may lead others to you.

There's a couple of things that actually I was going to pull a couple of slides over in the next session we'll talk about a little bit more.

Sometimes we get the idea that there's the Christian believers and there's the pagan world.

And we kind of get the impression these 2 never have any overlapping or they never have anything like that but may I just say to you that you need to be very aware that there are those in what we call the pagan world who may actually be closer to God than we are.

You know We think of the wise men who came at Jesus' birth, we think of the Greeks who came near the end of His life, people coming from the East and the West, looking for more truth, looking for a deeper understanding, following what they knew.

And there's some profound statements that I'll be sharing with you in the next session about the fact that there are those, even among the heathen, who are following the Holy Spirit and following God.

If you read the first 2 chapters of Desire of Ages, you'll also see something else, and that is a very profound statement that there were truths that had been neglected by God's people that were then cherished and preserved by those outside the community of believers.

That there are truths of God that we may be neglecting, that God is having others retain and cherish in order for that truth not to be lost.

So I think there's much that we can share and much that we can learn.

Let's talk a little bit about Buddhism and the endless knot, the cross and the endless knot.

The endless knot is not a symbol for all of Buddhism.

In some places the wheel or the Mandela might be another 1, but at least in Tibetan Buddhism this is 1.

And may I just say as we talk about Buddhism as is true with Islam, as is true with Hinduism, as is true with Christianity, location makes a big difference.

An African Muslim is very different than a Muslim in Saudi Arabia.

A Malaysian Muslim is different than 1 who comes from Pakistan.

And the same is true when it comes to Buddhism.

Geography makes a big difference whether you're talking about Tibet or Thailand and so forth.

So let's spend a little bit of time talking about Buddhism.

Well we would say God through Jesus if you want to look at it that way.

Don't ever say to a Muslim that Muhammad founded your religion.

That would imply that it's a human religion to them.

So you always, they believe God founded their religion, not a human being.

So you really, you don't talk about Muhammad as the founder.

We don't really even know when it starts or how it starts.

You see the happy face of the happy profile of Buddha here.

This is not how Buddha always was, or at least the 1 who is the founder.

And so There is a reform movement that began within Hinduism in the 6th century BC.

In other words, around the time of, give me a biblical person around that time period.

So around the time of Daniel, we have a reform that starts within Hinduism and it's, therefore because it comes out of Hinduism we began as a reform.

There's some similarities and differences that come through.

By the way I forgot to mention here, Right here is a place you can go for the entire handout.

It's online at this location through Dropbox.

Series

GYC 2013 Seminar: To All: World Religions and Mission

03-“The Cross and the Endless Knot”: Buddhism and Missions 101

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Coexist - Understanding World Religions...

3. Hinduism/Buddhism/Confucianism/Daoism

1h

Atheism, Apatheism, or Adventism

1. Do We Need to Win Arguments to Win Souls?

1h 9m

Religious Liberty

Science, Vaccines, and Religious Liberty: Thinking Critically in the Pursuit of Truth

1h 12m

Plenary Sessions

Final Charge: Will Your Anchor Hold?

1h 52m

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

5. Delusions of Grandeur? (Panel Discussion)

1h 18m

Winning Postmodern Souls to Christ

The Postmodern way of Thinking and Modus Operandi

54m

Coexist - Understanding World Religions...

2. Islam

57m

Plenary

2. Can I Be Certain God Exists? Does It Matter?

1h 11m

GYC 2013 Seminar: Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

03-The Experience

1h

Coexist - Understanding World Religions...

5. Contemporary Secular and Post-Secular Worldviews

56m

Religious Liberty

Religious Liberty: Did You Just Say That? Pt. 2

1h 11m

The Dragon of the Adventist Church

05 Dragon’s Den: Kickstarting Your Digital Ministry

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine