About Holy GhostTheEvangel

How Faith Leaders View The God As Man Concept

Prophet Mohammed Reveals The Holy Spirit

Without a spiritual encounter it is difficult to fear God. Faith looks like believing in abstract. While you may not be able to explain your faith to others, you cannot deny the encounter. In other words, you may appear stupid but you are certainly not crazy. The encounter reinforces your faith, and your fear of God as you catch a glimpse of His might.

The one thing among others that Prophet Mohammed teaches is the fear of the Almighty God. He was resolute that a reverence of The Almighty is the beginning of human wisdom. Christianity teaches that an encounter with Jesus begins our understanding of God and God’s ultimate provision for eternal paradise. One common denominator but less discussed phenomenon among faiths is The Holy Spirit.

Clearly, The Holy Ghost provides the avenue to understand the mind of God while we manage our physical existence here on earth. We will attempt to unravel how Prophet Mohammed guides us into the expectations of The Holy Spirit as we navigate our destiny in this world in addition to the instructions Jesus Christ left for us in order to take hold of the Holy Ghost as we desire the promise of paradise in eternity and work at it.

The Prophet recognizes Jesus Christ and The Holy Ghost. He also encourages us to believe and follow the instructions of these persons. Christianity positions The Holy Ghost as the primary witness of Jesus Chirst and our guide. How do the sayings of Prophet Mohammed in the Noble Quran help us attain God’s expectations? Please don’t just read, let us learn from your contributions.

The Personalities In Islam

Muhammad, Jesus the Christ and The Holy Spirit

In order to shed more light on these issues related to Jesus and Islam, it is helpful to review the character of the personalities involved. By doing this, we may be better positioned in understanding the thought-processes and psychology behind the various guiding principles passed on to us by the people. In this section, we will summarize our knowledge of Prophet Muhammed, Jesus the Christ, and His witness – the Holy Ghost. The term personality as variably described in many definitions but this from psychology may be helpful:

The sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.

Further, let us define character as:

The aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.

Therefore, it is the total sum of a person’s features or attributes as exhibited in the physical, mental, emotional and social planes that determine how we describe that person. I have gone into these definitions in order to justify my inclusion of the Holy Ghost among the personalities. I am certain that there will be little quarrel with reading about the personality of the Prophet and Jesus Christ, but that the mentioning of the Holy Ghost as a person will raise eyebrows. But we will discuss it.

In the context of defining personalities, The Holy Spirit displays the mental faculties of intelligence, knowledge and will. The Holy Spirit operates on the emotional level with feelings of love and grief. The Holy Spirit interacts socially with us in prayers, teaching, speaking, in searching our minds, and in comforting us. It is true that we have never been able to hold his hands physically like we did with Jesus and Prophet Muhammad; it is also true that we cannot physically feel his presence in much the same way as we cannot hold air, wind, or cigarette smoke; yet we can testify of its presence. Therefore, because it appears ethereal does not under-define the Holy Spirit as a person. (Sura 16:102; 58:22; 5:110). (Nehemiah 9:20; Matthew 22:37-40; Romans 5:5; 8:26-27; 15:30; John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10; 1 Corinthians 12:11; Ephesians 4:30).

To move on, let us attempt to characterize these two men whose teachings continue to influence and polarize men long after their deaths. This discussion is not an attempt to compare these two people as equals. To explain, the comparisons are not in the same way that you may attempt to compare President Obama and President Clinton for example. However, understanding the personalities of these men may help us to understand their messages. Luckily, the two of them trekked this earth just as we do now. They dined with human beings just like us, even though, one of them is supposed to have created the other.

The Man - Jesus

Jesus was conceived by the Virgin Mary, and born into the carpenter’s family in a makeshift manger among sheep. He was not born a Levite; he was of the tribe of Judah, just like David. He grew up a Jew in our modern Palestine; and by the age of 12, he was already conferring with the Rabbis in the synagogue. Even though the prophecy proclaimed that a king was to be born in Israel to save his people, it turned out that the kingship of Jesus manifested in his ministry. His gospel, whose ministry of fire has been unstoppable, continues to spread through all the nations. This is in spite of the fact that he left this world over 2000 years ago. Could the word king have been translated as a leader instead of the royal expectations associated with kingship? Afterall, Moses, Joshua and Deborah were never kings. In addition, there are those who describe Saul as a captain rather than a king.

Jesus lived for 331/2 years, out of which he taught for 31/2 years before he was crucified. Jesus was never married. He had half-brothers and sisters born to Joseph and Mary, the mother of them all. Jesus’ ministry pointed out the futility of struggling to teach men the laws in order for them to acquire the ability to refrain from sin. That religiosity in keeping the law was useless because man was born a sinner into this Satan-governed world. Today, more than 2.6 billion (about 31 percent) of the 8.1 billion human beings in the world are Christians. David had prophesied that the Lord (the Christ) will come from his lineage, that when he died the Lord’s body will not rot, and that the Lord will be resurrected. King David called him Lord, not king.

In 2011, This year the Pope made a pronouncement concerning the culpability of the Jews in Jesus’ death. The Pope succumbed to the Jewish demand that Christianity declares that the Jews were not responsible for killing Jesus Christ. This proclamation is highly suggestive and confirmatory that Jesus Christ was actually crucified. Otherwise, why would the people whose histories reflect the reality of that event be squabbling about the details of the incidents for over 2,000 years? Then in order to establish a truce, the political head of the Christian Church was made to make this proclamation for the sake of peace. Jesus is certainly important to many people for many individual reasons.

Jesus also advocated that his blood, shed at the crucifixion was the atonement for our sins before God. He taught that the Holy Ghost will be released by God to us and will remain permanently on earth to guide, and to protect man from sin henceforth. Even though Jesus lived for 33 plus years, no sin or wrong-doing was credited to his name. This gives unrivaled purity to his sacrifice, as he died for us on the cross at Calvary.

Jesus lived long before Muhammad, and so we cannot verify any of Muhammad’s words from Jesus. This is unlike the case for Muhammad who had left instructions concerning Jesus and the Christians. Jesus took authority from the ancient prophecies such as of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the recent prophecies of John the Baptist to identify himself as the Christ. These prophecies and the personality of Jesus Christ were recognized by Muhammad.

The Man – Muhammad

Muhammad the Prophet was born about 570 AD, and lived for about 52 years. His mother died when he was only about 6 years of age, and Muhammad moved to live with his uncle. His uncle was a very successful and well-traveled businessman. Therefore, Muhammad grew up to be a highly sophisticated businessman exposed to various cultures, and he took interest in understanding those cultures, including their religious beliefs.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, which is the location of the black stone called the Kaaba, claimed to have been mystically descended by Angel Gabriel. Muhammad was married several times, and was blessed with children and grandchildren. Khadija, a more elderly woman, was his first and most prominent wife.

After spending about six months in a religious retreat in 610 AD, Muhammad emerged with the announcement that he had received a special revelation from God through Angel Gabriel. Soon after, he proclaimed the religion of Islam (Arabic for submission). In 622 AD, Muhammad was forced to flee from Mecca to Medina with his followers because of this new message being propagated. He successfully re-conquered Mecca in 632 AD. Today, more than 2.1 billion (about 25 percent) of the 8.1 billion human beings in the world are Muslims.

Initially, Muhammad was infuriated that the Kaaba which was supposed to have been sent from God through Angel Gabriel had now become a temple to so many polytheistic religions, and idolatry. These practices included the Jews who dominated the commerce of Mecca at the time. The Prophet later began to widen the scope of his objections to include other religious practices around him in protection of the monotheistic practice of worshiping the only true God.

He frowned at the concept of a Holy Trinity being propagated at the time, especially as the Virgin Mary was supposed to be part of that Trinity. He also rejected the veneration of the Virgin Mary to the extent that she became divine in apparent parallel with the Almighty God. However, the prophet did not refute that Jesus Christ was born by a virgin called Mary, the daughter of Imran.

Prophet Muhammad was also emphatic that Rabbi Jesus was never killed because he was too valuable a prophet. That God would not have handed him over to unbelievers to make mockery of His messenger. Prophet Muhammad claims that someone else was substituted in a grand conspiracy to die on the cross in the place of Jesus Christ. And that is why Jesus was never seen again in public until the ascension. The Ascension is sometimes confused with the Resurrection in many minds.

I am personally convinced that Muhammad had enough spiritual interaction for him to lead to a religious movement against what he had summarized as being unacceptable practices, and degrading religious cultures prevalent at that time, especially among the so-called ‘people of the Book’ who were expected to know better. We cannot overlook the fact that Prophet Muhammad had spent years studying, making the effort to try to understand the nature of the true God before he retreated into the cave for his meditations on the scriptures.

Like it or not, in all of the scriptures it is made clear that if you draw near to God, and seek Him truthfully with all your heart, God will surely draw close to you and answer your prayers. Herein lies the extra value of the retreat; the aim being to have God show him the truth. This is why I am convinced that since Muhammad sought to know the truth, God ministered to him concerning the scriptures. Anyone else may question his mandate. Yet, it is clear that Prophet Mohammed keenly sought the truth of God.

Without doubt, the point of this confusion remains the need to decide if the phrase 'Son of God' is to be used for the progeny of this biological miracle. In as long as no other applicable name has been proffered, it is really difficult to find any other name for this enigma. Son of Mary will not be adequate because Jesus Christ was born to a paternalistic culture. We only need to remember that some asked whether it was not the same son of the Carpenter that was doing exploits. They did not refer to him as the son of Mary. So, whose son was he since he was not a progeny of Joseph? The Prophet actually mentioned a meeting between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist at the River Jordan. The Bible makes us realize that this was at the baptism of Jesus, where God declared that Jesus was His Son and our guide [Matt. 3:17; Sura 3:46]. In fact, this corroborates the Prophet's confirmation that Jesus was the Spirit of God breathed into Mary, in order to bring about the physical baby called Jesus - the Son of God.

The Person - The Holy Spirit

While it is true that you will find many references to the Holy Spirit as a male in this and many writings, there is no firm evidence that the Holy Spirit has gender qualifications. So, at other times, it may simply be referred to as a female or neutral gender. Greek mythology helps us to understand that the word ‘spirit’ itself is a neutral gender, and so the pronoun ‘it’ is used more than any other qualification.

The Holy Spirit creates concern about its personality. This will be so as long as we continue to use human standards to evaluate the phenomenon. We tend to want to use yardsticks associated with the flesh to understand some of its parameters. Yet, these human standards do not stand up to measure. Hence, our confusion which continues to create concerns.

We have talked about the ethereal nature of The Holy Spirit, but that is not the only source of concern. People have equally expressed concern about its descriptions and operational techniques. The Holy Spirit has been described as a breath, some wind, power or even oil. We will look at him being called Angel Gabriel. Others have also described the Holy Ghost as something that God releases when He wants to interfere in a situation. However, we must not forget what the key is, that is, the presence of the Holy Ghost with us today.

Jesus Christ said that he needed to end his temporal manifestation in the flesh, so that the Holy Spirit can come and stay permanently with us. This is important, and we must understand the concept very well in order to fully appreciate the message of God. In other words, the manifestations of power as evidenced by people like Elijah, Samuel, Moses, Daniel and all of the prophets were temporal exhibitions of the Holy Ghost. The events at the Pentecost are confirmation of the fact that the Holy Ghost now domiciles in our world, according to the promise of Jesus Christ. This is another reason to trust the words of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Ghost administers the office of our Comforter, and this is proof that Jesus did not lie or deceive us, His prophecy reigns! (Sura 16:102; John 14:16-17).

Say, “The holy spirit has brought it down from your Lord with the truth to reassure the believers, and as a guide and good news for those who submit ˹to Allah˺.” (Sura 16:102).

This is the essence of the personality of the Holy Spirit today. The Greek define the Comforter as some reliable person called to one’s side or aid in times of trouble. In today’s language, we will be thinking of legal assistants, attorneys and defense counsels. The challenge is to see the Holy Ghost in this way instead of seeing him as Angel Gabriel, or some abstract. This person is real in people who believe in the words of Jesus Christ, confess their sins, repent of them, and wash clean in the blood that was shed for the remission of their sins on the cross at Calvary.

Scriptures taken from The Noble Quran Translation by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran © 2024 Quran.com and The New Living Translation from BibleGateway.com (2024) - The Zondervan Corporation.