Publication of peace

Tribune’s Eyes of Islam of Friday, December 28, 2018, page 17 written by Mustafa Akyol,- titles, “The Islamic Jesus – a gap or bridge building book can be a harbinger of peace in Nigeria. To start with, let me quote verbatim, paragraph 2 of the article stating how Jesus is venerated throughout the Qur’an thus: “Jesus himself is also venerated throughout the Qur’an. We read that he was born of a virgin, He was “the Messiah,” and He performed amazing miracles. The Qur’an even calls Jesus “the Word of God”- a very powerful term, especially for those who are familiar with the beginning of the Gospel of John.”

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The Qur’an says, Jesus is the Word of God. This confirms the divinity of Jesus in the first instance. John’s Gospel also confirms that Jesus is the Word of God. This also confirms the Christian doctrine of Trinity when considered in the light of the revelation of Jesus in the Qur’an as ‘Rue Allah’, the Spirit of God. Our own will separates us from God. If the Bible says Jesus is the “Messiah” and the Muslim Qur’an also says, Jesus is the “Messiah”, then why the spate of unbelief that has warranted the persecution of Christians by the jihadist Boko Haram sect running rings around Christians, capturing them in their hundreds in the North East and murdering them in cold blood? The truth of the matter is that Jesus Sonship to God is a metaphor since He was not sired the way the rest of the entire human race is being sired.

He alone is, “the Word of God made flesh” to save mankind from the wrath of God, occasioned by sin and bring man separated from God through sin back to Him. Having said that, then the controversy in Muslim circles about the divinity of Christ is a needless one. The Qur’an also says, He is the Spirit of God. No prophet sent by God had even been so referred.

The Qur’an did not say Jesus was sired the same way human beings are sired through sexual intercourse with a woman, so also the Christian Bible. Jesus then is God’s miraculous creative originality. Jesus Sonship to God (ibn of God in the Quran) should not be lost to anyone who recognises Him as the Messiah who has come to save the world. Readers should join me in prayers to God that Boko Haram jihadists encounter the Lord Jesus, the same manner Saul of Tarsus, who later became Paul the Apostle encountered Jesus on his way to Damascus in pursuit of a misplaced jihad.

John R. Jimoh, Legunsen,

Sagamu.