Wonders of Creation - The Bible, The Koran, and Creation

Islam is a religion with many adherents, and many intelligent, educated people believe in the teachings of the Koran. In a similar way many intelligent, educated people believe in the altered Bible of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The same can be said of followers of Buddha and his collected sayings, Mary baker Eddy and her own ?Bible, the Mormons and their leader's books and so on. Every religion has a body of beliefs which are either contained in some sort of text for transmission to new converts.

Obviously, the fact that a person is intelligent and educated gives us no assurance that what they believe is reliable truth.

Christianity shares some things in common with all the religions of the world, but also stands in stark contrast to all of them. Only Christianity, for example, teaches that Jesus is God the Son. Only Christianity holds Jesus up as the one and only Saviour of the world. But despite this exclusivity, religions other than Christianity have much appeal, and satisfy, to a certain extent, the spiritual hunger within people's hearts.

Dr David Catchpoole, plant physiologist and science educator, has made some careful comparisons between the Bible and the Koran. Comparing the accounts of creation he noticed the following differences:

The Koran says Man was created not on Earth but in "janna" from whence he was banished to Earth. The Bible says Man was created in the Garden of Eden on Earth.

The Koran says the days of creation were vaguely merged together and could have been the same as many millions of years. The Bible says creation took six literal 24 hour days.

The Koran says death and suffering, meat-eating, ageing and death were a normal part of the world right from the start. Cattle, it says, were created for Man to eat. The Bible says there was no death or suffering at the beginning, and that meat-eating, ageing and death came later.

The Koran implies that Adam and Eve were clothed before they sinned. The Bible says they were naked until they sinned.

The Koran says Jesus Christ was created, as all the animals were. Koran 3:59 says, "The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of Adam; he created him from dust . . ." The Bible says Jesus created all things, and that Jesus Christ is the pre-existent one, God the Son, equal in all ways and attributes with God. (Gen.1:26, 3:22, 11:7. Micah 5:2, John 1:1-3 and 10, 3:13, 6:62, 8:35 and 58, 17:5 and 24. Romans 11:36, 1Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16-17 and Hebrews 1:2.)

If we follow the Koran we are left with the impression that death is not an enemy, but a normal part of this world. According to the Koran death was integrated into the created world and all the catastrophes which history has recorded (droughts, famines, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, etc) are expressions of Allah's original creation.

If we follow the Bible we find that death is an enemy. The Bible says death came into the world when Adam and Eve rebelled against God (Genesis 2:17, 3:19, Romans 5:12, 17, and 1 Corinthians 15:21,22 and 26) and death will reign over all living things until Jesus returns. At the cross Jesus suffered and died for the whole world, taking all of Mankind's sin and the punishment for it. Now all who accept what Jesus has done for them can be forgiven all their sins. The Koran offers no such hope, and in fact denigrates Jesus. It denies Jesus? death and resurrection, his deity and his offer of salvation by grace through faith alone - and not by works.

The Bible says God is love, (1John 4:8,16) but the Koran does not. The Bible says salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. The Koran says salvation comes through joining Islam.

The differences between the Koran and the Bible, the fundamentals, are massive, beginning with the foundational teachings in Genesis, but in the end, after all the differences have been discussed, the most important question is whether a person is saved or not. The Koran offers a kind of salvation, but it is through obedience, or ?works? as a means of earning it. The Bible offers salvation that begins with the free gift of grace which rests on faith. Christian works are separate in that they are done out of gratitude.

The appeal of Islam, and in fact all religions, is that Man is given a sense of earning his own way to heaven. In this area Christianity is absolutely the opposite, yet religion is attractive because it caters for Man's desire to ?get there under his own steam? - unfortunately that is the worst way to try to get there.