Are you interested in sharing your faith with Muslim friends? Dr. Andy Bannister shares meaningful ways to reach out with a surprising familiar approach.

Recommended Resources:

• Reaching Muslims: A One-Stop Guide for Christians by Nick Chatrath
• Solas: Persuasively Communicating Christ in Today's Culture

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute, where we explore discipleship of the heart and mind. And today, our podcast is drawn from an older podcast conversation I did with Andy Bannister several years ago. I've had several conversations with Andy that we've been using for our podcasts this year because they were so good and so rich. And Andy, he's the director of Solas apologetics ministry, but he has a PhD in Islamic study, which is a rather unusual thing for a Christian. But Andy has studied Islam and Muslim thinking perhaps more than just about any Christian, and he knows how to interact with them. And our conversation explored Islam and how to talk to a Muslim about Jesus. So join us now as we jump into the middle of this conversation about reaching Muslims with the Gospel.

So you're a Christian, you're a Christian apologist, you're a full-time evangelist, and you have a PhD in Islamic studies. How did that happen?

It's a strange world, Randy. Well, the simple answer is I just ticked the wrong box on the university application. I was three months in before I realized this was Arabic I was reading, not New Testament Greek. But the serious answer is all those things are connected, which is interesting. So, back in the late 1990s, I was a youth worker working for a group of churches in London and hadn't really thought about about public evangelism or apologetics or certainly Islam. And then one day, a gentleman came to our church and did a seminar on understanding and reaching Muslims, and in part of that seminar, he described how, every Sunday afternoon, he was going up to a place called Speaker's Corner, which is part of one of our big parks in London where you can stand on a ladder or a box and talk about anything and get a crowd, a very famous part of Hyde Park. And he was finding it was a great place to witness to Muslims. And so he was leading a team of people doing that.

And he was very persuasive, a very engaging speaker, so I thought I'd go and see what this looked like. In fact, he said to me, “Why don't you come to Speakers Corner, see what we do?” So the following week, I turned up at the train station at Speaker's Corner to be met by Jay carrying not one but two step ladders. And I said to him, “Why are you carrying two ladders?” He went, “One is for me. One is for you.” I said, “I thought you said, ‘Come and see what we do.’” He went, “Yeah. The view from a ladder is much better, especially at your diminutive height.”

Oh, no!

I said, “I’ve never preached on the street before.” “Oh, it's easy.” “I've never talked to Muslims before.” “Oh, they're easy.” Both those things were not true.

Okay, so this man was lying to you.

He was lying to me. And so I got on my ladder, and they tore me to pieces. The Muslims destroyed me. I remember going home from Speaker's Corner thinking, “I guess I need to become a Muslim, because they seem to have all the answers. I have nothing.” I laid awake that night, tossing and turning and thinking this through. About three in the morning, my long-suffering wife Astrid pokes me in the ribs and says, “Why are you tossing and turning, keeping us both awake?” I told her my story, and her sage words of wisdom were, “Why don't you read a book?” ideally in the morning, not at 3 AM.

So the following morning, I went to the local Christian bookstore, told them my story, and they told me, “You need apologetics.” And I thought this sounded like a breakfast cereal. I never heard of this before. But they explained what apologetics was. I bought my first few books, started reading, I read and read and read, got answers to every question, went back to Speaker’s Corner a few weeks later ready to answer them, and of course, they had new questions, and I looked foolish all over again. For the next three months, we would do this. I would read during the weeks, go to Speaker’s Corner on the weekends, and through this, God did a number of things. He gave me a love of public evangelism, a love of reading deeply, and a love of sharing my faith with Muslims. And I hadn't been to university at this point. I was 28. I didn't come from a university-going family, but really the Lord used this to draw me into further study eventually, firstly a degree and then that became a PhD. So it was Muslims at Speaker's Corner in London that set all of those pieces up for me.

How about that? Wow! So how much of your ministry, if it's possible to put, I don't know, percentages? How much of it is talking specifically to Muslims?

17.42% range.

Oh, good. Thank you.

No, sorry. You know, 43% of all statistics are made up on the spot. No. That’s a very good question. I don't actually know. I would probably say maybe about 20%. Where that comes through for me is, when you do evangelism in multicultural settings, especially university campuses, there are often Muslims in the audience. And so I love that when that happens, because I can bring that to bear if I talk to them afterwards or they ask a question in Q&A. Sometimes when we work with campus ministries and do events on campus, we will often do topics that touch into this area. And then I also get some really unusual opportunities. The PhD has opened up incredible opportunities. My favorite one was, earlier this year, I got a call from the Islamic Society, Edinburgh University, who were looking to do some, as they put it, interfaith events. And they'd heard that I was a Christian with a PhD in Islam, which they couldn't figure out. And they said, would I come and talk about my work and my study on the Quran? And I remember saying to them, I said, “Well, you do know my conclusions are different to yours?” They went, “No. That’s fine. I mean, as long as you can do it respectfully.” I went, “Absolutely!” So I did and did it quite respectfully. But then the Q&A was still very lively, but amazing opportunity, with about 40 people there that night, mostly Muslim. And I still remember most of the questions in that very long Q&A were around the identity of Jesus and the Trinity, and it was a real privilege. At the end of the evening, the head of the Islamic Society came up to me, and he said, “You know, it's the first time I've ever heard a Christian talk about the Trinity in a way it makes sense. I can see why you would believe it. I've always thought it was incoherent, and I realize I was wrong.” He said, “I don't believe it, but I can see why you believe.” And I thought, “Praise the Lord! That made that worthwhile.” So that was an opportunity that having that kind of specialism opens up.

So I think this is intriguing and helpful because I think some people who speak about, how do Christians talk to Muslims, are people who spend all of their time with Muslims, and in an odd way, they may be too immersed in that world. You spend a fair amount of time talking to Muslims, but you're talking to lots of people from lots of different backgrounds. And you've lived in London, which has a significant Muslim population, but you've never lived in the Middle East. So this is actually a plus, I think, because you're sort of in that world, and then you step out of it to be able to look at it from a vantage point, which is where most of our listeners, I think, are going to be. But we're all meeting more and more Muslims in our world. They don't just live far away. They live next door. That's just the reality of our world. So at the risk of driving some of our listeners away, tell me about this PhD dissertation a little bit. What did you zoom in on? It’s always scary to ask a PhD person.

Exactly. So for listeners who are scared-

I notice, by the way, that you're wearing a button that says, “Ask me about my dissertation.” And I'm ignoring that. I'm just kidding.

Absolutely. One of the things I found hugely amusing, actually, during the time I was doing my doctoral work, was that you would talk to other students doing PhDs in other subjects, and neither of us could understand each other. So I would explain what I was doing, and I thought it was very important. And they would get their eyes glazed over. Then, they would tell me what they were doing on the New Testament or something like that-

All right, so maybe I should rephrase the word. Answer my question briefly and in a way that people will understand. What did you study?

Yeah. So, in a nutshell, one of the things that I was intrigued by when I was at Speaker's Corner all those years ago, Randy, one of the things that Muslims would often say to me was, “Well, look, the Quran is a miracle because Mohammad was an illiterate 7th century Arab man. He couldn't read or write. Yet the Quran is this very sophisticated work of literature. Therefore, it's a miracle.” And if you think about those three statements, if they all hang together, that is actually quite impressive. How could a 7th century illiterate man who couldn't read or write produce something like the Quran? And I remember that really sort of intrigued me back then.

Well, as I began doing further study in Islam and around this whole question, as I was going into my PhD years, I came across the fact there are lots of cultures in the world that have bequeathed to us very sophisticated works of literature, but they didn't have reading or writing. Perhaps the most famous example would be the Greek poet Homer, not the little yellow guy, but Homer the Greek poet. He has two famous poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, which most people have probably not read but may have heard of, probably the founding texts of Western literature. They come from a time before writing. So how do they do it? Well, it turns out there are tools and techniques that allow you, as an oral speaker, oral preacher, oral storyteller to construct really quite long works of “literature” without having access to reading and writing. And you're often doing that live in front of an audience. And what becomes quite fun, when that work is eventually written down, it's passed down orally, but then when it comes to be written down, it actually leaves… there are signs left in the written text that it was originally constructed this way. And there's a whole field of study called oral literary theory that's devoted to that. And we know of hundreds of cultures around the world that have done this.

Well, my PhD basically came along with, let's apply that to the Quran. And when you do it, all the features we see in those other traditions are there in the Quran. In other words, the Quran looks like a document that was originally composed orally, performed orally, transmitted orally, and then eventually written down into writing. So it's not a miracle. It looks exactly like we'd expect a 7th century book from that context to look like. So it really takes all of the wind out of the sails of that apologetic argument. So that was my PhD in a nutshell.

Wow. It's interesting, the argument that the Quran is the work of… it's not a miracle, it’s not an inexplicable miracle, harms the argument about the Quran. With the Bible, we fully believe it is inspired by God. It is inerrant, it is authoritative, but he used human personality, good language skills, and so the human aspect of the Bible doesn't weaken our argument. We believe it is this absolutely miraculous work, but it is the work of people with individual writing skills and different personalities. But that's another podcast. Back to Islam.

Back to Islam.

So I think so many Christians are so very intimidated about beginning a conversation with Muslims.

Yes.

I mean, very few of our listeners are going to go get a PhD in Islamic studies. I'm not motivated by you. I'm thrilled that you did it, but I'm not going to go do that.

Very wise.

But I want to have conversations with Muslims. How do I even start?

That's a really good question, and I love the fact you grounded it in saying to people, “Don’t go do that.” Well, I would say two things, though, actually. I would say, for anybody listening to this show who is wired in a way that they do want to pursue further study, we do need more Christians to get involved in Islamic studies.

Great, great.

One of the things that persuaded me to actually was, when I was thinking about doctoral work, I remember a friend of mine who was a professor saying, “Well, look, Andy. You could go and do your PhD in New Testament studies and spend, you know, eight years investigating, you know, John's use of the semicolon in the first verse of his gospel.” Greek didn't have punctuation anyway.

That’d be a short written dissertation. “There's no semicolon there.”

A pretty short dissertation. And it’s completely pointless. Or you could do something meaningful with your research. And so I often encourage… so if there are people who are thinking about, “I want to do doctoral work,” if there are students listening who don’t know what, do Islamic studies, we need more Christians going into that field, but most of us are not called to do that.

So how do we start conversations with our friends? Do you know this is where actually knowing nothing about Islam or very little can be a huge gift. Because one of the dangers—you alluded to this at the start, with people who do nothing more than talk to Muslims. Even I, who only spends 17.43% of my time, whatever that ludicrous stat was I made up, talking to Muslims, the danger is I know quite a lot, and if you're not careful, you can sort of bring all that knowledge perhaps to bear in the conversation and be tempted when a Muslim says they believe something to say, “Actually, no, I don't think you believe that. You believe something else.”

If you're listening to this and you don't know anything about Islam, but you've got Muslim neighbors, coworkers, fellow students, a great, great way to begin a conversation, Randy, is find an opportunity to sit down for a cup of coffee. If it's a next door neighbor, invite them for a meal. So many Muslims tell me they've never seen inside a Christian home. No one's ever shown them hospitality. Well, let's show hospitality. And then you have the ability just very naturally to say, “Look, I hope you don't mind me asking. I'm a Christian. I understand you're a Muslim. I know lots about my own faith, but I don't know what Muslims believe. What what do you believe? Tell me what you believe about God,” and so forth, and just ask lots of questions. Genuinely. You’re taking an interest, which they will value, so you're building the friendship. Secondly, you'll get a crash course in Islam from your friend. And thirdly, there is every chance, after half an hour or so of you asking lots of good follow-up questions, that your Muslim friend will naturally say to you, “So what do you believe?” or, “What do Christians believe?”

And if they don't actually, after half an hour or so, it's actually at that point I think you've earned the respect in the conversation saying, “Now, this is interesting. As a Christian, we believe some things that are similar, but some things that are very different.” And now you're just talking about faith. And at that level, I would say, don't start out by going, “Well, you're wrong. Let me tell you three reasons why you're wrong.” You can simply go, “Well, okay, as a Christian, I believe something a little bit different.” But, yeah, that approach of just asking good questions.

And actually, Randy, that's the approach I use when I meet people from faiths I haven't studied. If I meet people who are from a Buddhist tradition, say a Hindu tradition, I haven't studied those religions. I'm in exactly the same position as most listeners here would be with a Muslim. And I just take the approach of going, “Oh, okay.” I remember, a few months ago, meeting someone who self identified as Wiccan, and I was like, “What? I know the word. I have no idea what,” and so I just said, “I don't know what that means. Tell me what that means.”

Yeah.

I regularly talk about all of the resources that we've put together at the C.S. Lewis Institute, and I want to highlight one right now. It's our Keeping the Faith, and it is a whole library and collection of resources for you, parents and grandparents. It's a whole entire program with courses and materials that have been developed to equip you, parents and grandparents and other caring adults, for intentional discipleship of the children that God has placed in your life. And we've got videos, we've got articles, we've got study courses. This is one of the things we've made as a major emphasis on our newly designed, award winning website. And I really want to encourage you to check it out. And even if you are not a parent, that you'll check it out and recommend it to the parents that you know or perhaps use it at your church in Sunday school. It's a wealth of things, resources for equipping the next generation of disciples.

There's so much ingrained, I think, in at least American culture. I don't know how it is over in the UK, but there's this mantra we've heard a million times that all religions are basically the same. They’re just different paths of the same mountain. Which is just so totally not true. I mean, it's not even close to true, but people have believed that for so long that when we say, “Well, what do you believe? Here's what I believe,” one of the first steps is, “Well, aren't these two very, very different sets of beliefs?” And just let the beliefs stand out there as very different. Christianity is rather different from Islam. Here's how. Before we're even getting anywhere near, “Here’s why yours is not as good as mine,” or, “Here’s why yours is wrong, and mine is right,” it’s just, “Let’s just observe these two very different worldviews.”

I completely agree with you. I mean, that idea is rampant in the UK as well. I wish it was just a US problem, because then we could solve it by having you guys just rejoin the Commonwealth.

Sure. That would be great.

It would work well, right? Make America Great Britain again. But no, I think it's the same for us. What I find fascinating—you're dead right. I think when I hear people say that, that all religions are essentially the same, that tells me they haven't really studied them. If I was to say to you, “There’s no point going and visiting the local bookstore, because every book in Barnes & Noble is exactly the same. Publishers are just trying to cheat us out of our money,” you wouldn't sit there and go, “How wise! How profound!” You’d go, “You blithering idiot! You haven't read any of them, have you?” Because the moment you do, you'd see that there are differences.

The other fun analogy I find is helpful here to make people just think a little bit about that one that you raise is it fascinates me that things that are actually wildly different are really the same. We wouldn't apply that philosophy in any other area of life.

A little thought experiment I've sometimes used with people, because humor can help sort of puncture some of these things without it getting too fraught. Just say, look, if you were to go and see your family doctor complaining of sort of stomach pains, and your doctor does some prodding and poking and then looks at you with an ashen face, and says, “Well, Mr. Newman. I’m afraid you’ve got a very serious medical condition that, if we don't treat this, you're going to be dead in three months.” And you go, “Oh, doctor. Is there anything we can do?” And the doctor goes, “Oh, yeah. That’s great. We can treat it. We just need to start the treatment now.” And you say, “Well, doctor, what should I do?” The doctor says, “Well, hang on. I wouldn't want to tell you what to do. Gosh, that's very arrogant and exclusivist. Actually, if you come on to my side of the desk, Mr. Newman, I'll open my drawer here, and there's a whole drawer full of pills, some yellow ones and some pink ones and some red ones. Maybe avoid the blue ones. Take a handful, whichever ones you think work for you, because they're all essentially the same.” Would we go, “Oh, Doctor. Thank you! That's so progressive!” Or would you go, “You crazy man! Tell me what's real.” And I love versions of that story because I think, at the end of the day, we would say we wouldn't apply the all things are essentially the same in any other area of life, so why do we do it when it comes to religion?

Well, I want to somehow interject and say to our listeners, I wouldn't use, “You blithering idiot,” in any kind of apologetic or evangelist thing.

I was being self deprecating. I was using it on myself.

Oh, oh, okay, good. Great.

But yes, do not use it on others.

All right. So now it's time for us to, at least for me, to alert our readers to a great book that you should know about. You don't necessarily have to read the whole book, you just need to know the argument. But it's a very important work by Stephen Prothero. Do you know the name?

God Is Not One.

Yes. He’s a professor of religious studies up at Boston University, I think. Not a Christian, not a religious man, but he's a professor of religious studies. And he says that all the great religions of the world are not the same, and it's insulting to the different religions to say that they're all the same. And you're right, those statements are usually made by people who haven't really looked at the individual religions. Prothero says they're not just paths of the same mountain. They're not even on the same mountain.

I think that’s very helpful. Yeah.

But, again, going back to Islam, so you've given us some ideas about getting to know Muslims, inviting them into your home. Ask them what they believe. Tell them what you believe. Let the differences stand out there. I know, for me—I come from a Jewish background, and I interact with Jewish people, and it does seem to me that there is a similarity with talking to Jewish people and talking to Muslim people, that there's very often a very, very, very big question behind any of the other questions. And that is, “If I believe this, my family is going to reject me.” That's not even a question, but it's this huge objection, of, “If I believe this, I'm going to be excommunicated,” or shunned or something really horrible, “from my family, my community.” And so how do we as Christians, as we're engaging with Muslim friends and neighbors, how do we deal with that reality?

I think you are absolutely right, Randy. That is the big elephant in the room behind conversations. Yes, certainly I would agree with Jewish friends, as well as Muslim friends, and actually friends from other faith traditions as well. I mean, some years ago now, I was very good friends with a young couple, and the wife, when she was a teenager, her family had been Jehovah’s Witnesses and had come out and were shunned completely. It was a horrific experience. And I think all that's really interesting that it goes on there, too.

So it's quite widespread, and right at the start, actually, let's name that elephant. Christians are not immune from this. Let's be very careful that, when we have people in our communities who perhaps fall away from following Christ, that we do not behave that way, that we extend love and grace and welcome, because it's very easy to point the finger at Islam and go, “Oh, look what they do.” Christians are not immune from this. So we just need to watch that.

In terms of dealing with it with our friends, when we're talking with them. Randy, I've always found, with Muslims, to try and get that issue out in the open early can be helpful. One of my friends who is himself a former Muslim convert to Christ, says that one of the questions he finds helpful, and I've borrowed variations of this myself, is, when you're talking to a Muslim friend, at the right moment—don't lead with this on the first conversation, but at the right moment in the conversation, to say to them something like, “If you were to become a Christian, if you were to become convinced that Jesus’ claims stand up, and He is who He claims to be in the New Testament, and you were to put your trust in Him and follow Him, what would happen next? Would your family kind of throw a big party and celebrate?” Do that with a twinkle in your eye, because that gives your friend the opportunity to either quietly begin processing or even sometimes to go, “Well, yeah, I'm not sure they'd be so happy,” and then, once it's out in the open, actually, you can begin dealing with the power of that, because I think sometimes with Muslims, the arguments are out there, “Oh, I couldn't believe the Trinity,” “The Bible has been corrupted,” all these other things that Muslims will go to. But behind them is that much bigger issue. And so we want to be talking about that bigger issue.

Once we've kind of talked it through and brought it out and identified it, the challenge is you can't really argue around it, because it's a reality that, if they become a Christian, there are going to be some implications. What we then need to be doing is thinking about, in the church, how do we—if the person chooses to follow Christ, they are going to lose their family or risk losing their family. What is the church going to do in terms of being an alternative family? And one of the things I know a lot of Muslim converts to Christianity find very hard is they come from very tight knit communities, and they become Christians, and they find the church doesn't do community so well. Sometimes our churches are just places where you turn up on a Sunday, and people are very friendly and warm, and then you don't see them until the following Sunday. And that is absolutely alien to a Muslim mind, probably to the Jewish community as well. And I think there's a real challenge for us as Christians that, if we are going to make an impact and inroads into reaching Muslims for Christ, how do we be family? How do we really do community well? How do we put those alternative support structures in?

And what's exciting is, when churches do that, I think amazing things happen. When you look at what's going on, particularly among, say, Iranians right now, there's an amazing work of God among Iranians. The Iranians are the fastest growing church in the world right now. But one of the things being is a lot of churches now have Iranian communities, because they tend to clump together and they do community really well, which means when other Iranian Muslims become Christians, there is an immediate family to replace what they have lost. So those are sort of how I'd begin thinking around answers to that.

Good, good.

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Yeah, I remember reading in Moishe Rosen's book about witnessing to Jewish people. Moishe started Jews for Jesus and came up with a really clever title for his book on witnessing to Jewish people, it's called Witnessing to Jews. Very clever. He said that, with many conversations, sooner or later you need to raise the question that they will never raise. And it's something like, “I realize this would be very, very difficult for you. Are you willing to consider that Jesus might be the Messiah, even if it means rejection from your family or the Jewish community? Are you willing to consider this? Are you willing to pursue this?” And it's this crucial moment where you're asking people to consider pursuing the truth no matter what the cost is, and we must be very, very, very careful—it’s especially true with Muslims—of not downplaying that potential danger. In fact, the danger is probably far worse than anything we can imagine. But I think there are a lot of people who, because of the self authenticating nature of truth, especially the Gospel truth, people are willing to say, “Well, yeah, this could be really difficult. I'm going to pursue it anyway,” and it's like this roadblock has been lifted.

Yeah. And there's a couple of thoughts there, aren't there? I think one thought immediately… well, actually both challenges to us. My first thought, of course, is that I think sometimes in those conversations, it can be helpful to show that you're willing to do the same, too.

Oh, good, good.

And so sometimes when Muslims say, “Let’s talk about truth together-”

Right.

… as you say, have the kind of “would you be willing to” and then to say—and don't get all cocky about it. Be humble and say, “I hope, as we talk, that if I was to come to the conclusion that Jesus is not the Messiah, that He didn't rise from the dead, I hope I would have the courage to act accordingly.”

Oh, wow!

Because we shouldn't be afraid of that, because such as Christians, we would surely want to be saying… that's Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15, “If Christ is not risen from the grave,”  and then you are showing a sort of epistemic humility of saying, “Look, I'm equally willing to pursue truth.” I've had that conversation with Muslims over the years and found it quite helpful, actually, to say, “Look, I want to know what's true. I think Jesus is true. But if I'd got that wrong, I really want to know, because I want to know God. I want to go to heaven. I don’t want to go to hell, and I want the same for you, my friend. I want you to go to heaven and not to go to hell.” That’s the first thing.

And then the other sort of thought, very quickly, in terms of what you just shared there. The other thing I found fascinating talking with Muslims over the years, but particularly Muslim converts to Christianity is it always challenges me, Randy, when I meet people who have paid a price for their Christian faith. Muslims who've lost family, perhaps friends who have become Christians from the LGBT community, who have had to give up quite a lot, actually, to become Christians. And it's a sobering challenge for those of us who have perhaps not come from those backgrounds to go, “What is the cost that I've paid?” Because the Gospel hasn't cost us anything. How really committed are we? And so it's been a real personal discipleship challenge to me, I think, getting to know people who, “Wow! They have really paid a price for following Christ.” It's quite sobering.

Very helpful. All right, so are there some resources out there that people can find, either websites or books about how to talk to Muslims, and then secondly, resources to give to our Muslim friends? Do you have any good … off the top of your head?

Yes. Off the top of my head. So by far the best book I think I know in terms of how we can share our faith with our Muslim friends is there's a wonderful little book by a colleague of mine in Oxford called Nick Chatrath. And Nick's book is called Reaching Muslims: A One-Stop Guide for Christians.

Great.

And it's a wonderfully thin little book. That’s a real virtue in books that authors don't feel the need to write 400 pages. Nick's book is about 150 pages. And it's brilliant. It's really easy to read, very relational, very friendly, and whether you've got lots of experience talking to Muslims or no experience talking to Muslims, it's a great book to begin with.

And then, to be honest, in terms of the best thing to be giving to Muslims, I actually think—and this is going to sound a horrible cliche—but actually getting them into the scriptures is the best thing. And so one way of doing that is you get to know your Muslim friend. A great way of having those conversations is to say, “Hey, why don't we meet for coffee? And why don't we do a Quran and Bible study?” By which I mean, “Why don't you come and share with me your favorite Quran verse? I'd love to hear what that means to you. And then I'll share with you my favorite Bible verse, and we can talk about what our scriptures mean to us.” Often, those conversations end up talking about the Bible far more than they do the Quran. And choose your Bible passage wisely.

And then, as you've got your Muslim friend dipping into scripture, I'd be looking for the opportunity when, at an appropriate point in your relationship, you can give them a gift of one of the gospels. If your friend is an Arabic speaker, get an Arabic copy of the Scriptures.

Good, good.

And then you can give it to them, saying, “Look, you're my friend, I value our friendship dearly, and I wanted to give you a gift that reflected this. Well, this is almost the most precious thing I can give you. I hope you enjoy this.”

Very good.

Yeah. Because arguments are helpful, and books are helpful, but actually, I want to see our Muslim friends come to just begin encountering Jesus in the gospels. And again, remember, our Muslim friends are not like atheists. They're not anti scripture. They may have some suspicion about the Christian scriptures, but they believe that God reveals Himself. They believe in scripture. They believe in revelation and so forth. So, yeah, I think I would go for one of the gospels.

Good. I love the way you said, about giving them one of the gospels, or I guess you could also give the whole New Testament, or the whole Bible-

You could give them the whole New Testament, yeah. Yeah.

… whichever it is. But it's not casual. It's not like, “Oh, hey, you should read this.”

Absolutely not.

It's more of, “Okay, I value our friendship, I want to give you a gift, and I want to give you something that’s the most precious thing to me.” I think sometimes we harm that whole process by being a little too casual.

Yeah.

And if it's that casual, then we're sort of undermining our own argument, of, “This really isn't all that big a deal. Here.” And it's a cheap paperback I'm giving you. No, no. This is something that's so very, very precious to me. That's good, that’s good. Well, we could talk for hours and hours, but we're not going to because we have other things to do. And the whole task about talking to Muslims is so vast. But one thing: I want to encourage our readers. Listeners, excuse me. Start the process. Who knows where it's going to go? Who knows how God will use it? Start the process of talking to Muslim friends, asking them what they believe, inviting them for a meal. You don't have to have the whole thing figured out ahead of time. There's no way you could. And ask God to use those small steps, to use them in really, really big ways.

I think that's good advice, Randy, is for listeners, listening to this, I would simply say a great way to begin: Why don't you just pray that the Lord would have you engage with Muslims, that He would bring a Muslim across your path and to your mind, and then see who the Lord shows up?

Wonderful. Well, thank you again for being part of our podcast.

Great to be with you!

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