As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Mankind Is Utterly Powerless Without Christ

Being powerless in this instance does not mean that in his spiritual death man cannot respond to God. In his book The Potter’s Freedom Dr. James White put it well when he said that while:

Unregenerate man is fully capable of understanding the facts of the gospel: he is simply incapable, due to his corruption and enmity, to submit himself to that gospel. And he surely responds to God every day: negatively, in rebellion and self-serving sinfulness. (101)

Below is a quote by Dr. Amina Wadud taken from the DVD Christianity and Islam. Dr. Wadud is author of Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective a Muslim and Associate Professor, School of World Studies Islam and Women at Virginia Commonwealth University. You’ll see the denial of original sin by the religion of Islam, which then skews proper understanding of the total depravity of man and his helplessness before an all-holy God.

You can also clearly see the works righteousness of this false religious system as well. What should then come to light is just how closely apostate Roman Catholicism and the non-Christian cult of the Mormon Church both reflect Islam in their own false soteriology rooted as it is in righteousness of the self.

And as Dr. Wadud is speaking we see a chart vividly illustrating this self-love called “A Description of the Righteous” which says — “Those who spend (in Allah’s way), in prosperity and adversity, and who subdue their anger, and forgive their fellow men;- for Allah loves the doers of the good” (Qur’an 3:134):

Those who will be successful, those who will be brought into paradise, those who will be felicitous, etc., etc., we tend to relate those things to the doctrine of salvation, but [in Islam] we don’t actually have a doctrine of salvation.

In order to be saved, you have to have something wrong. And Christians have the notion of an original sin. So as a consequence of an original sin, they’re saved by the blood of Christ. [Muslims] don’t have a sin to be saved from; we’re born with a clean slate in Islamic theology.

So we don’t have to be saved, we have to be successful. And so the Qur’an gives us guidance as to the ways and means that we can be successful. And how we can be permanently rewarded for that in the afterlife.

Of course that which determines whether or not you’re going to be successful has to do with whether or not you surrender your will to the divine will. And the easiest way to understand that is that you obey what God commands.

You obey what God commands through the prophet and you obey what God commands in the Qur’an. By your obedience, you demonstrate your willingness to surrender to the will of Allah and that is what guarantees you your success. (Program 4, Chapter 1, 16:16-17:43)

In the end Islam is successful in one thing; for by heeding the defective advice of Dr. Wadud, one will successfully send themselves to eternal Hell. So this is an admonition for you to forget what Allah is supposed to have said because following are the Words of the one true and living God of the Bible:

In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent… I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me… Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…

It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead… He is “the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.” Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other Name under Heaven given to men by which we must be saved. (Acts 17:30; John 14:6; Acts 2:38; 4:10-12)

See also:

KEEPING YOU APPRISED OF: ISLAM

ISLAM—THE SAME GOD?

JESUS OF ISLAM