God in any Language is God

James 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

This term: “If the Lord wills” or “God willing” has been around for a long time. Pastor Kyle used the Sermon illustration a week ago that his Middle Eastern Arab Christian friends use the Arabic word “inshallah”. Looking up the phrase on the internet, I read that In šāʾ Allāh (Arabic: إن شاء الله‎, often romanized as Insha'Allah or Inshallah, is Arabic for "God willing". The term is used in the Islamic world, but it is also common in Christian groups in the Middle East, in parts of Africa and among Portuguese and Spanish-speaking peoples. In sha'Allah is said when speaking about plans and events expected to occur in the future. The phrase also acknowledges submission to God, with the speaker putting him or herself into God's hands.

Pastor Kyle explained to me this week that the Arabic word goes back to pre-Islamic Arabia and is the common name for the God of Abraham in the Bible for Arabic language. Islamic traditions consider Abraham’s son Ishmael to be the ancestor of Arab people. But, Allah was common parlance even before the birth of Islam in the sixth century. Arabs used the word ‘Allah’ for the supreme being before the time of Muhammad. Inscriptions with ‘Allah’ have been discovered in Northern and Southern Arabia from as early as the fifth century B.C. (Before Christ). Muhammad’s father was named Abd Allah, translated ‘God’s servant,’ many years before his son was born or the religion of Islam was founded!”

Researching further, I found that "Zayd Ibn Amr" was another Pre-Islamic figure, claiming it was the original belief of Arabs father Ishmael. Jewish Historian Josephus, considered Ishmael the ancestor of the Arabs also. Plenty of academic evidence suggests that Allah has also been used by Christians and Jews in Arabia for generations. They have been calling God ‘Allah’ in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over 19 centuries. “And what about the 10 [million] to 12 million Arab Christians today?

Exodus 3:14 And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

For more than five hundred years before Muhammad, the vast majority of Jews and Christians in Arabia called God by the name Allah. How, then, can we say that Allah is an invalid name for God? And what about the 10 to 12 million Arab Christians today? They have been calling God ‘Allah’ in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over nineteen centuries. Of course, the word “God” does not actually appear in the original Hebrew or Greek manuscripts of the Bible, accepted as Holy by both Christians and Muslims. “God” is an old English word which developed from an Indo-European word, meaning “that which is invoked”.

Not every American is a Christian and not every Arab is Islamic. But Creator God is God in any language. In God we trust.

In Christ, Brian