Within the past couple of days an obscure Dutch bishop suggested it was OK for Christians to call God (Jehovah, Yweh, I AM etc.) Allah.

How about if your name is John and someone who poses as you is called James. Would you want to be called James if the two of you were exact opposites?

Thursday’s Omega Letter written and owned by Jack Kinsella, gives a better explanation:

The Doctrine of Demons

A Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands made headlines this week when he issued a statement urging Catholics to refer to God as “Allah.”

Martinus “Tiny” Muskens, the bishop of Breda, argues that there is no difference between God and Allah, and anyway, God doesn’t mind what you call Him. According to Muskens, “the Almighty is above such discussion and bickering.”

He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia, where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world, where he said that Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably.

“Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years,” Muskens said. “In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can’t we start doing that together?”

According to Bishop Muskens, “Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call Him? It is our problem,” Muskens told Dutch television.

Bishop Muskens is not without allies in his quest to rename God: Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations backs the idea as a way to ‘help interfaith understanding’ — or something.

“It reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God,” Hooper told FOXNews.com. “I don’t think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God’s moral principles. I think that’s true for all faiths.”

Christians who are Arabic speakers speak of Allah when they speak of God, Hooper added.

“There’s not a theological leap to make on the part of Christians,” Hooper said.

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago supports the idea.

“I think it will open up doors,” said Janaan Hashim, a spokeswoman for the group representing more than 400,000 Muslim Americans in the Chicago area. “Language is a man-made limitation. I think what God cares about is how we fulfill our purpose in life.”

Assessment:

If I saw a column that I had written published verbatim under somebody else’s name, should I care? Why?

It is my work. Because it is my work, the product of both my labor and my personality, and because it is unique to me, it should bear my byline and not someone else’s. It isn’t pettiness or self-aggrandizement to expect my work to bear my name.
My work is a reflection of me, not a reflection of someone else. If someone else puts their name on it, they are stealing a part of me.

There are even laws to prevent such theft, and there is a name for the person who tries to pass of my work as his own — plagiarist. We human beings think that taking credit for somebody else’s work is not just rude, it is a crime.
God is even less patient with plagiarism than I am. The universe is His work, and the God of the Bible is disinclined let somebody else take credit for it.

“. . . for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me.” (Exodus 20:2)
“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” (Isaiah 45:22)
“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me.” (Isaiah 46:9)

Is Allah another name for the God of the Bible? The word “Allah” means ‘the god’ — it is not a proper name. Prior to Mohammed, Allah was but one of 360 pagan deities worshipped by pagan Arab culture.

Christians worship one God in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But Islam denies the Holy Trinity and worships a different deity called Allah who is not a Father and who has no son.

Since the religion found in the Bible teaches the Trinity, then it does not take a Ph.D. to see that Islam did not come from the Bible.

These facts of history reveal that Islam does not worship the same God worshipped by Christians. Islam is not the religion of the biblical prophets, apostles or Jesus. So Allah cannot be the same God.

Why is it so important to the Council on Islamic-American Relations that Allah be elevated to the position of Jehovah God? Why is it so important to Islam that Christians recognize Allah as the God of Scripture?

Think it through. Christians aren’t seeking to claim Allah as their God, (except maybe for nutbars like Bishop Muskens. Jews aren’t claiming Allah as the God they worship. Both Christians and Jews recognize Allah as a different deity than the Deity revealed to them by Scripture.

On the other hand, it is very, very important to Muslims that both Christians and Jews accept Allah as the same God Who inspired the Scriptures. Why? The answer is simple.

Being worshipped as God is Satan’s number one objective to the exclusion of all else. Everything Scripture reveals about Satan exposes his agenda.

He tempted Jesus in the wilderness, demanding that Jesus bow down and worship him. Paul says he will sit, “as God, in the Temple of God” during the Tribulation. John says he will demand worship as a condition of participating in his economic/religious system.

Notice this very important spiritual clue: it isn’t God that wants to be worshipped as Allah, but Allah who wants to be worshipped as God.

It is both a distinction and a difference.

Christians and Jews worship a Living God. As a Living entity, God cannot be “reinvented” to suit somebody else, since He already is Who He is. God doesn’t need to claim to be someone else to confirm His legitimacy.

Allah evidently does, however. If Allah were a living entity, then Islam wouldn’t try to remake him as someone he is not. Allah cannot be the God of Scripture unless the God of Scripture suffered a bout of schizophrenia in the sixth century.

CAIR’s Hooper outlined the difference between Allah and God in his comment; “I don’t think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God’s moral principles. I think that’s true for all faiths.” The unimportance of the name of a deity might be true for MOST faiths, but not ALL faiths.

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Watch for an increased effort within organized Christianity to rehabilitate Allah as another name for God . . . something bigger than just some obscure Catholic bishop in some obscure part of the Netherlands. [This emphasis mine.]

Its all part of the Big Picture for the last days.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” (1st Timothy 4:1-2)

In his second letter to the Church at Thessolonika, the Apostle Paul sought to rebut a heresy that was being circulated among the Thessalonians that the Rapture had happened and that they had been left behind to face the antichrist.

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, [the Rapture] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ [the Tribulation] is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, [seducing spirits, doctrines of demons] and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” (2nd Thessalonians 2:1-3)

That ‘falling away’, [Greek apostasia] ties in with the doctrines assigned by the Apostle Paul to the False Prophet of Revelation 13:11, “two horns like a lamb, but he spake as a dragon.” The “lamb” symbolizes a kind of Christianity, and its doctrine is the doctrine of the dragon, [Satan].

The doctrine of Satan is that all religions are equally valid, that all paths lead to God, that God is impersonal, unknowable, and it is therefore irrelevant to Him what we call Him or how we worship Him. [underlining mine]

The purpose of Scripture is to reveal Who God is, how to worship Him and what to call Him.

The Scriptures were given to keep us from being persuaded by the doctrine of demons that there is another Gospel, one more inclusive of other faiths, one that reduces God the Father from a personal, loving God, to “The Man Upstairs,” a nameless, emotionless entity that we can remake to suit our tastes.

If Allah and God are one and the same, then wouldn’t the worship of the Hindu chief gods, Vishnu and Shiva, also be the worship Allah and God, only by a different name? What about the Kami of Japanese Shintoism?

If one accepts the principle that Allah is another name for God, then it is no great leap to extend that recognition to Vishnu, Shiva, the Kami, the Great Spirit, Jupiter, Zeus, Dagon, or any other god. Which is precisely the idea.

It is Allah seeking legitimacy as God here, and not the other way around.

“And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” (1st John 4:3)

Lies in hypocrisy, seducing spirits, Catholic bishops espousing what is literally and Biblically a doctrine of demons — a doctrine declared by Scripture to be spawned by the ’spirit of antichrist’ . . . can it get any clearer?
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .