To Speak Truth in Love vs. Not to Judge

What does the Bible mean that we are not to judge others?

What does the Bible mean that we are not to judge others?

Jesus’ command not to judge others could be the most widely quoted of His sayings, even though it is almost invariably quoted in complete disregard of its context. Here is Jesus’ statement: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Many people use this verse in an attempt to silence their critics, interpreting Jesus’ meaning as “You don’t have the right to tell me I’m wrong.” Taken in isolation, Jesus’ command “Do not judge” does indeed seem to preclude all negative assessments. However, there is much more to the passage than those three words.

The Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean we cannot show discernment. Immediately after Jesus says, “Do not judge,” He says, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs” (Matthew 7:6). A little later in the same sermon, He says, “Watch out for false prophets. . . . By their fruit you will recognize them” (verses 15–16). How are we to discern who are the “dogs” and “pigs” and “false prophets” unless we have the ability to make a judgment call on doctrines and deeds? Jesus is giving us permission to tell right from wrong.

Also, the Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean all actions are equally moral or that truth is relative. The Bible clearly teaches that truth is objective, eternal, and inseparable from God’s character. Anything that contradicts the truth is a lie—but, of course, to call something a “lie” is to pass judgment. To call adultery or murder a sin is likewise to pass judgment—but it’s also to agree with God. When Jesus said not to judge others, He did not mean that no one can identify sin for what it is, based on God’s definition of sin.

And the Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean there should be no mechanism for dealing with sin. The Bible has a whole book entitled Judges. The judges in the Old Testament were raised up by God Himself (Judges 2:18). The modern judicial system, including its judges, is a necessary part of society. In saying, “Do not judge,” Jesus was not saying, “Anything goes.”

Elsewhere, Jesus gives a direct command to judge: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly” (John 7:24). Here we have a clue as to the right type of judgment versus the wrong type. Taking this verse and some others, we can put together a description of the sinful type of judgment:

Superficial judgment is wrong. Passing judgment on someone based solely on appearances is sinful (John 7:24). It is foolish to jump to conclusions before investigating the facts (Proverbs 18:13). Simon the Pharisee passed judgment on a woman based on her appearance and reputation, but he could not see that the woman had been forgiven; Simon thus drew Jesus’ rebuke for his unrighteous judgment (Luke 7:36–50).

Hypocritical judgment is wrong. Jesus’ command not to judge others in Matthew 7:1 is preceded by comparisons to hypocrites (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16) and followed by a warning against hypocrisy (Matthew 7:3–5). When we point out the sin of others while we ourselves commit the same sin, we condemn ourselves (Romans 2:1).

Harsh, unforgiving judgment is wrong. We are “always to be gentle toward everyone” (Titus 3:2). It is the merciful who will be shown mercy (Matthew 5:7), and, as Jesus warned, “In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2).

Self-righteous judgment is wrong. We are called to humility, and “God opposes the proud” (James 4:6). The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collectorwas confident in his own righteousness and from that proud position judged the publican; however, God sees the heart and refused to forgive the Pharisee’s sin (Luke 18:9–14).

Untrue judgment is wrong. The Bible clearly forbids bearing false witness (Proverbs 19:5). “Slander no one” (Titus 3:2).

Christians are often accused of “judging” or intolerance when they speak out against sin. But opposing sin is not wrong. Holding aloft the standard of righteousness naturally defines unrighteousness and draws the slings and arrows of those who choose sin over godliness. John the Baptist incurred the ire of Herodias when he spoke out against her adultery with Herod (Mark 6:18–19). She eventually silenced John, but she could not silence the truth (Isaiah 40:8).

Believers are warned against judging others unfairly or unrighteously, but Jesus commends “right judgment” (John 7:24, ESV). We are to be discerning (Colossians 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:21). We are to preach the whole counsel of God, including the Bible’s teaching on sin (Acts 20:27; 2 Timothy 4:2). We are to gently confront erring brothers or sisters in Christ (Galatians 6:1). We are to practice church discipline (Matthew 18:15–17). We are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

At the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx

Universe with a Beginning

In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, "What is your estimate of the age of the universe?" Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology - the deep physics of understanding the universe - was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American - the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer. The answer that two-thirds - an overwhelming majority - of the scientists gave was, "Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says 'In the beginning.' That's a nice story; it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning."
That was 1959. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning. Science had made an enormous paradigm change in its understanding of the world. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning. I can't overestimate the import of that scientific "discovery." Evolution, cave men, these are all trivial problems compared to the fact that we now understand that we had a beginning. Exactly as the Bible had claimed for three millennia.
Of course, the fact that there was a beginning does not prove that there was a beginner. Whether the second half of Genesis 1:1 is correct, we don't know from a secular point of view. The first half is "In the beginning;" the second half is "God created the Heavens and the Earth." Physics allows for a beginning without a beginner. I'm not going to get into the physics of that here. "The Science of God," my second book, examines this in great detail.
...

Believe in God in 5 minutes

Biblical God

1)Not Physical

2)Acts on Physical

3)Created the Physical from nothing

4)Predates the universe

Schroeder’s work

Remember the quote by one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, 

but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you”? Unlike Flew, or majority of the Nobel Prize winners, you avoided the bottom by continually filling the glass 

with jargon or circular reasoning. But I suspect you knew what was at the bottom, and the continual avoidance of it told me that deep inside your sub-conscience, 

there was fear.

…

Finally, in regards to the mystery of where we came from, can I ask you to consider MIT physicist and Rabbi Gerald Schroeder’s model for the beginning of the universe?

 Professor Anthony Flew credits Schroeder’s work 

as significant in him renouncing his atheism at the end of his career.


Flew claimed that Schroeder’s work in cosmology and 

understanding of the Book of Genesis showed how

 the 6 days of creation is coherent with the billions of years of the 

creation of the universe when taking into account relativity and 

cosmic time...

Here below is Einstein's "General Relativity"

reflected in God's Word! 

8Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your 

notice: With the Lord a day is like a 

thousand years, and a thousand years are 

like a day. 

9The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some 

understand slowness, but is patient with you, not 

wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to 

repentance.(2 Peter 3:8-9)

Also think about this famous quote“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. 

He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
― Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers

...

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx

...How we perceive time

We look at the universe, and say, "How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is approximately 15 billion years old." That's our view of time. But what is the Bible's view of time looking from the beginning? How does it see time?
Nahmanides taught that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" - all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Nahmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing... but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a description for the speck: something very tiny, smaller than a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life, Genesis 1:21) and the Neshama (the soul of human life, Genesis 1:27) are spiritual creations.
There's only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nahmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" - very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance, so thin that it has no material substance, turned into matter as we know it.
Nahmanides further writes: "Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman" - from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Time is created at the beginning. But time "grabs hold" when matter condenses from the substance-less substance of the big bang creation. When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no material substance, that's when the biblical clock starts.
Science has shown that there's only one "substanceless substance" that can change into matter. And that's energy. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change form and take on the form of matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold. Nahmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don't know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy - light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays - all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, time was passing, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock of the Bible begins lasted less than 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and biblical time flows forward. The Biblical clock begins here.

Day One and not a first day: seeing time from the beginning

Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is "evening and morning Day One", comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective, from near the beginning looking forward.
If the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses on Mount Sinai - 2448 years after Adam - the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, hundreds of thousands of days already passed. It would have said "a first day." By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says "a second day," because there was already the first day with which to compare it.
We look back in time, and say the universe is 15 billion years old. But as every scientist knows, when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there's another half of the sentence that we rarely bother to say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates of the earth.
The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. Since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time. Imagine in your mind going back billions of years to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there's an intelligent community. (It's totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it's going to shoot out a blast of light every second. Every second -- pulse. Pulse. Pulse. And on each pulse of light the following formation is printed (printing information on light, electro-magnetic radiation, is common practice): "I'm sending you a pulse every second." Billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish antenna and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light we read "I'm sending you a pulse every second."
Light travels 300 million meters per second. So at the beginning, the two light pulses are separated by a second of travel or 300 million meters. Now they travel through space for billions of years until they reach the Earth. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. The universe expands by space stretching. So as these pulses travel through space for billions of years, space is stretching. What's happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses get further and further apart. Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we read on it "I'm sending you a pulse every second." A message from outer space. You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because the amount of time this pulse of light has traveled through space will determine the amount of space stretching that has occurred, and so how much space and therefore how much time there will be between the arrival of the pulses. That's standard cosmology.

15 billion years or six days?

Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 15 billion years of history. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning of stable matter, the threshold energy of protons and neutrons (their nucleosynthesis), relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. A dozen physics textbooks all bring the same number. The general relationship between nucleosynthesis, that time near the beginning at the threshold energy of protons and neutrons when matter formed, and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see a pulse every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.
The Talmud tells us that the soul of Adam was created at five and a half days after the beginning of the six days. That is a half day before the termination of the sixth day. At that moment the cosmic calendar ceases and an earth based calendar starts. . How would we see those days stretched by a million million? Five and a half days times a million million, gives us five and a half million million days. Dividing that by 365 days in a year, that comes out to be 15 billion years. NASA gives a value of about 14 billion years. Considering the many approximations, and that the Bible works with only six periods of time, the agreement to within a few percent is extraordinary. The universe is billons of years old from one perspective and a mere six days old from another. And both are correct!
The five and a half days of Genesis are not of equal duration. Each time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time halves as we project that time back toward the beginning of the universe. The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the earliest of the six days have most of the15 billion years sequestered with them. For the duration of each day and the details of how that matches with the measured history of the universe and the earth, see The Science of God.

CORRECTION TO THE CALCULATION OF THE AGE OF 

THE UNIVERSE

Following a talk I gave at AZUSA Pacific University, February 2011, a participant noted that when calculating the expansion ratio of space [that is, by what fraction space had stretched] from the era of nucleosynthesis to our current time, I had neglected to correct for the effect that the increase in the rate of universal expansion has on the current cosmic microwave radiation background. This increase introduces a non-linear effect. [That is, the rate of expansion is not constant, rather the rate is increasing.] The correction is in the order of 10%. Had the expansion been linear [and not super-linear resulting from the increased rate], the CMRB would be, not the currently observed 2.76 K, but 3.03 K. Introducing this correction into the exponential equation that details the duration of the six 24 hour days of Genesis Chapter One results in an age of the universe from our perspective of 14 billion years [14, 000,000,000 years]. From the Bible’s perspective of time for those six evocative days of Genesis, the number of our years held compressed within each of those six 24 hour days of Genesis, starting with Day One, would be, in billions of years, respectively, 7.1; 3.6; 1.8; 0.89; 0.45; 0.23.

If Robert Jeffress is a bigot, then Mitt Romney is too

If Robert Jeffress is a bigot, then Mitt Romney is toowww.washingtonexaminer.com

Mitt Romney calls pastor delivering US embassy blessing a ‘religious bigot (獨斷論者)’

...Clearly Romney confuses bigotry (偏執頑固)with advocacy.

It is well within mainstream evangelical orthodoxy for Christians to believe the Bible teaches there is only one way to salvation (a restored relationship with God and forgiveness of sin) — the free acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord. Christianity is by definition an exclusive faith because we claim Christ as Lord to the exclusion of all other ideas, persons, or things that may claim to be God. Evangelicals believe that the truth of reality and of the Bible teaches that faith in Jesus is essential.

This is a pretty basic point of logic that to hold an opinion on a matter means that you have excluded all other possibilities. This is true for facts, conclusions, and opinions in matters other than matters of faith.

And most religions are exclusive in the sense that a person claiming to be a follower of that belief system must affirm its core tenets, to the exclusion of any other belief or affirmation that is in conflict. This is a basic requirement of Christianity, and of truth to exclude all nontruth, even though there is a progressive, emergent movement burgeoning for universalism, which is the idea that all religions lead to God. Orthodox Christianity holds that universalism is in conflict with an essential part of our faith, pursuant to John 14:1-6, Acts 16:31, Romans 8, et. seq.

This is hardly a revelation for anyone remotely familiar with basic Christian doctrine and familiar with the Bible. And in our constitutional republic that protects freedom of speech and free exercise of religion, Christians are free to advocate for the truth of the gospel and talk about why we believe what we believe. Romney and others are likewise free to advocate for what they believe, including universalism or Mormonism or whatever-ism.

This is what the Founders meant that government cannot establish a religion. We are not compelled by our government to believe anything or disbelieve anything about God. We are all free to discuss and debate and eventually determine what we as individuals believe about the truth of God. This is actually consistent with the Bible too: Christians believe that God does not compel belief in Him, but offers salvation as a free gift, if we choose to believe Jesus is Lord to the exclusion of all other worldviews.

But what is remarkably self-defeating about Romney’s tweet is that he is calling the discussion itself bigotry, while actually doing the very same thing in his own tweet that he criticizes Jeffress (and the wider evangelical swath of traditional Christian orthodoxy) for doing. Romney clearly doesn’t like Jeffress’ position on the lordship of Jesus Christ. But that does not mean that Jeffress is a bigot.

“Bigotry” is a current favorite insult to throw at anyone who holds any firm position to the exclusion of conflicting opinions on matters of faith. But this is often a very inaccurate label. By definition, a “bigot” is someone who is intolerant of someone else’s views and attempts to forcibly compel compliance with another view (usually through government action), not someone who just disagrees with someone else’s position.

Jeffress, like all genuine Christians, has sincerely held religious beliefs that he advocates for, including insisting that Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, and other religious beliefs are in conflict with Christian beliefs. That’s called advocating for a position. Saying that “you can’t be saved by being a Jew” is a position statement on matters of faith, not bigotry toward any other position.

Ironically, Romney is himself advocating for a position that differs from Jeffress, but apparently thinks he may do so without the label of bigot. Why? Romney may not prefer Jeffress to speak at the embassy ceremony, and he is free to voice his opinion on that (for whatever it’s worth). But calling Jeffress a bigot is simply ignorant and actually showing himself intolerant of Jeffress’ beliefs.

One of the best, most wonderful aspects of America is that we have the liberty to disagree with others while allowing the other side to disagree with us. It’s called a fundamental, unalienable right to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.

Jenna Ellis (@jennaellisJDFI) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. 

( * However, I am against Pastor Jeffress' hypocrisy to defend Trump blindly. That of course includes Jeffress' followers who blindly following the leader. Click the link below for further thinking.--BH--_)

Character Should Still Count for Robert Jeffress, for James Dobson, for All of Us

BY JOHN MURDOCK

Jeffress is correct (?) that a sex scandal or two (or twenty) and layers of lies surrounding them should not flip our assessments of entire party platforms. But neither should a general allegiance to a party blind us to the failings of our politicians and the impact that those can have on a nation.

Studying Koran an Imam found Jesus!

Mario Joseph

Imam found Jesus by studying the Koran, paid a price for rejecting Islam

Changing Tracks: Mario Joseph, Muslim Imam convert - YouTube

▶ 34:21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUXd4qW9mg

Apr 21, 2014 - Uploaded by HM Television (English)

As a Muslim imam, Mario Joseph was well-versed in the Koran and in the teachings of the Islamic religion. In ...

During his mother’s pregnancy doctors wanted to abort him due to an infection in his mother’s womb, but as a devout Muslim she refused.

“The doctors compelled my mother to kill the child (me), but she is a very good devotee of Allah, God. So she did not accept their advice,” Mario Joseph explained on HM Television.

At the time of his mother’s pregnancy crisis she prayed: “Allah, life belongs to you so I know you can give life. If you give life to this baby I will surrender this baby to you.”

Joseph was led to believe his birth was miraculous, but his mother’s vow of dedication to Islam carried unwanted consequences. “Because I had been dedicated to God, my parents did not send me to school. My childhood was very bad,” he recounted.

At eight-years-old they sent him to a Muslim-Arabic college so he could prepare to become an imam. Remarkably, after 10 years of study, he completed the goal.

Working as a parish priest, he preached that Jesus Christ is not God. “For me, God was only Allah and I believed that Allah never got married, so no sons for Allah. So I preached that Jesus is not God.”

Then someone asked him one day, “Who is Jesus?”

While he was certain Jesus was not God, he wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question.

He studied the Koran exhaustively for an answer. “When I read it, the name of the Prophet Mohammad I found in the Koran in four places, but the name of Jesus I found in 25 places,” he told HM Television.

He began to wonder, Why does the Koran give more preference to (the name of) Jesus?

Even stranger, the only name of a woman he found in the Koran is Mariam, the mother of Jesus – no other woman’s name.

In other places in the Koran he found Jesus referred to as the “Word of God” and the “Spirit of God.”

Another pointed to his title: “Jesus Christ.”

“The Koran says that Jesus cured a man born blind and a man with leprosy. Curiously, the Koran says that Jesus gave life to dead people, Jesus went to heaven, he is still alive and he will come again.”

He realized that Mohammad never cured any sick people and never raised the dead. “He himself died. And according to Islam he is not alive and he will not come back.”

Joseph discovered many differences between Jesus and Mohammad. As a result of his study, he was not ready to call Jesus God, but it slowly began to dawn on him that Jesus might be a prophet greater than Mohammad.

A return to the college

He went back to his professor at the Arabic college and asked him, “Teacher, how did God create the universe?”

“God created the universe through the word,” the man replied.

“Is the word the creator or the creation?” Joseph inquired. He thought, If my teacher says that the Word is the Creator, then Jesus is the Creator, and Muslims must become Christian. If he says the word is the creation, then how did God create the word?

His instructor began to fume, realizing he was trapped by Joseph’s logic. “He was quite angry. He pushed me out of his room and said, ‘Word is not the Creator nor the creation, you get out of here.”

They met later and the professor told him, “If there is a son of God I must show him the wife of God. Without a wife, there is no chance of having a son.”

Then Joseph showed him a portion from the Koran. “The Koran says God can see without eyes, God can talk without a tongue, God can hear without ears. If that is the case, he can have a child without a wife.”

After arguing with the man, Joseph left, went home and opened the Koran randomly. It fell open to Chapter 10, verse 94, which says: “If you have any doubt in this Koran which I give to you, go and read the Bible or ask those who read the Bible.”

Joseph put the Koran on his chest and said, “Allah, tell me what I should do, because your Koran says Jesus is still alive and Mohammad is dead. Who should I believe?”

Studying the Bible

“I decided to study the Bible and I went to a retreat center called the Divine Retreat Center in India.” He read John chapter one: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…’

“So my holy Koran says Jesus is the Word of God, now the Holy Bible also says Jesus is the Word of God.” He vacillated in his thoughts, thinking he was a Muslim one day and the next that he might be a Christian.

John 1:12 had a big impact on him. “It was such a lovely word for me. It says that if anyone receives Jesus, he gives them the power to become children of God.”

He was also struck by Jesus’ teaching about prayer, which begins with the word Abba. “I cannot express my joy whenever I call my God dad and whenever I think that the Creator of the universe is my dad I have a kind of joy which I cannot express…it’s beyond my experience…an experience I cannot explain.”

The power of the Word and the Spirit touched his heart and he exclaimed: “I need Jesus because I want to be a child of God and call my God ‘Daddy.’

He was born again!

“I was gone a long time and I was missing from my home,” Joseph recounted. “My parents thought I was in the moscheet and the moscheet people thought I was in my house. Then they communicated and searched for me everywhere.”

When his father learned he was at the retreat center, he erupted in fury. “My dad came there and beat me very badly. I was bleeding from my nose and I was unconscious. Then he took me home.”

When Joseph regained consciousness, he found himself in a small room without any clothing. “I was completely naked and my hands and legs were chained very tightly and I could not even speak because there was chili powder in my mouth, nose, eyes and wherever the wound was they had placed some chili there also to burn me.”

His father thought he was obeying the law of the Koran, which metes out harsh penalties for those who reject Islam.

“They did not give me food or water. Within a few days I was dried up and my lip broke. I was trying to lick a little blood to wet my throat, then my brother came and passed urine in my mouth. He said that’s the punishment for you to believe in Christ.”

After 20 days confined in the small room Joseph became like a dead man.

“My dad came to the room and removed the chain and I was not awake. He choked my throat very deep to know if there was life in my body. When he choked very deep I couldn’t breathe. So I opened my eyes and I could see a big knife in his hand.”

“It’s your last moment,” he said. “If you need Allah, I will allow you to live. If you need Jesus I will kill you.”

Jospeh knew his father well enough to know he would carry out the threat. Then something strange and unexpected happened.

“Suddenly a light fell on my forehead, like moonlight. Something fell on me and there was a kind of electric shock and something passed through my veins. From somewhere energy flowed through my body. I couldn’t control myself there was so much energy in my bones. I pulled my dad’s hand down and I cried out ‘Jesus!’

When he cried ‘Jesus’ his father fell to the ground – on top of the knife. “There was a big wound on his chest and there was bleeding, and some kind of foam was coming from his mouth and he was screaming.”

His mother, brothers, and sisters didn’t know what was happening. “They thought my dad was already dead so they took him and ran to the hospital. When they ran to the hospital they forgot to lock my room from the outside.”

With a burst of supernatural energy supplied from above, he left the room, put on his father’s clothes, ran outside and hailed a taxi.

The taxi driver who picked him up was a Christian! He bought Joseph some juice and food and took him to another city.

“That day I understood Jesus is alive, even now. I know he is present everywhere,” he told HM Television.

“After my conversion 18 years ago I never thought that the Muslims would allow me to live. I have preached in the Middle East. My Jesus is alive and he is protecting me.”

Later, his parents conducted a mock funeral service for their son. “In my hometown I have my own grave,” he noted.

“If you ask me who made me Christian it’s not any fathers; it’s not any sisters; it’s not any bishops; it’s not any cardinals; it’s not even the Pope; but the holy Koran converted me to Christianity.”

If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here