Contending for the Faith:   

Holding Bible Translators Accountable

Dear Partners in the Gospel to Muslims,

Over the past few months I have become aware of an attack on God's Word that has disturbed me deeply, especially since it changes the message of His Word to Muslims.  

The issue is that organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators and Frontiers have been replacing or removing "Father," "Son," or "Son of God" language from Bible translations because Muslims are offended by these terms. For example, Wycliffe has produced Arabic Scriptures that use "God" or "Lord" instead of "Father" and "Messiah" instead of "Son" so that passages such as Matthew 28:19, "...baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (ESV) are translated as "...baptize them with water in the name of God and His Messiah and the Holy Spirit." In fact, in the October 2011 edition of WORLD magazine, Wycliffe admits that already thirty to forty of their translations in Muslim contexts use similar "alternate renderings" for "Father" and Son." However, this practice changes the heart and soul of the Gospel message that every Muslim needs to hear. In my own conversion from Islam, those very intimate family terms of "Father" and "Son" in the Trinity were what the Holy Spirit used to bring me to faith; it was the center of the relationship that I was baptized into. Jesus Himself did not change the terms "Father" and "Son" when His own people the Jews accused Him of blasphemy and sought to kill Him for claiming to be God's Son (Matthew 26:63-65 and John 10:36).

I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for our Christian brothers and sisters at Wycliffe for studying the Scriptures so diligently to communicate the Word of God to our Muslim neighbors. But I regret to say that they presume to communicate the will of God in their own way while ignoring what His actual will is: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life..." (John 6:40). In other words, they are trying by their own efforts to get Muslims to accept the Bible and in doing so are not only putting up a barrier to them truly knowing God the Father and God the Son, but are also denying Muslims the power of God the Holy Spirit to work faith in them through the true Gospel.

When I first heard the Gospel in Luke 1:35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy one to be born will be called the Son of God," as a Muslim I saw this as a direct attack on the Oneness of Allah, which in Islam is considered the greatest of all sins that a Muslim can commit. This blasphemy is called shirk, which is the association of God's deity or attributes with anyone except Allah. According to the Quran, shirk is the only sin that Allah cannot forgive (Surat An-Nisah 4:48). So of course Muslims will be offended by references to Jesus as the Son of God because it communicates to them that He is God, a truth that the Quran rejects and condemns. That is why we must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of God's Word to open their eyes.

As Luke 1:32-35 and Matthew 1:18-25 make clear to Muslims and everyone else, the language of "Father" and "Son" has nothing to do with a sexual relationship between God and Mary, yet this is the main reason given by these translators to justify changing the familial terms God used to describe Himself. In my own struggle as a Muslim in comprehending the "Father" and the "Son," the Holy Spirit helped me to understand the mystery of the Gospel and to truly appreciate the work of Jesus the Son who put a face on God the Father for me: "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). The above passage in Luke proclaims the true Gospel, that Jesus is indeed the "Son of the Most High," and Matthew 1:23 confirms that He is "God with us."

Muslims do not need another "pseudo Gospel" that portrays Jesus

In these verses, Jesus makes it very clear to His disciples that the Holy Spirit will reveal to them, and to others as well, that same mystery of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit alone is capable of doing what no Bible translator in Wycliffe or any other organization on earth can ever do--if we will only get out of His way and let Him do His saving work among our deceived and dying Muslim neighbors.

Therefore, removing or changing the terms "Father," "Son," or "Son of God" is a direct attack on the work and power of the Holy Spirit whose primary role is to work faith in the heart and mind of sinners, including Muslims. "Father" and "Son" are a vital part of the Gospel message that the Holy Spirit uses to bring slaves of Allah to faith, changing them  into children of God. In the Quran, Satan directly attacks the doctrines of the Trinity, baptism, and the Lord's Prayer because these all use the terms "Father" and "Son" to teach Muslims and all sinners about God and His plan to save them from eternal hell. These Bible teachings are also under attack in Bibles that use substitute terms for "Father" and "Son" which do not communicate that Jesus is God or that He is God's actual Son.

Satan knows all too well that a Muslim's salvation depends on faith in the Son who came to do the will of His Father, especially because of the intimate relationship that the Father has with the Son, which is absolutely denied in the Quran. If Satan can get Bible translators  to remove the salvation language of Father and Son from the Bible text, attacking the Trinity and denying the deity and actual Sonship of Jesus in a pseudo-Gospel translation, he has succeeded in communicating to Muslims these same false doctrines of the Quran, which deny the resurrection and even the necessity of the cross. Satan would love to see the words "Father" and "Son" disappear from such passages as John 3:35-36, "The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" and 1 John 4:14, "And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world." Removing these terms from Bible texts for Muslims obscures the heart and soul of God's entire plan of salvation for them; all aspects of the salvation message are centered in God the Father and God the Son.

Can the church witness the truth of God's Word being hijacked by Satan like this and do nothing about it, especially when the spiritual well-being of millions of Muslims is at stake? No! We are all called to contend for the faith and hold our brothers accountable for this grievous error as the Scriptures command us: "I urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints..." (Jude 3).

I urge you, brothers and sisters of the true Son of God, to please humbly pray and sign the petition to stop these unfaithful Bible translation practices: http://www.change.org/petitions/lost-in-translation. Please share this information with as many people as you can. For more information about this Father and Son crisis, go to http://www.SonOfGodCrisis.com/.

Saving the lost together,

Rev. Karim Baidaoui

POBLO-TX