Andy Lines General Secretary of Crosslinks

I have recently returned from Ethiopia, which is right on the African interface between Christianity and Islam. Not many here at home live in communities where there is engagement with other world religions. So we may think that the question of Christianity and other faiths is an exotic one. Actually, however, those who follow other beliefs are all around us, because secular materialism is as much another faith as Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam. What’s more, as some leaders from the global Anglican Communion have pointed out, the continuing crisis over biblical authority is not about a choice between two legitimate traditions of Christianity, but between biblical Christianity and another faith altogether, masquerading under a ‘Christian’ veneer. 

We are probably familiar with Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” But what did Jesus mean by the word ‘witness’? He deliberately used an Old Testament word from Isaiah. In Isaiah 43 the author describes a court scene where the Lord accuses the false gods and idols of not delivering on promises of salvation and life. He calls witnesses, but they are blind. They have seen his deeds but have closed their eyes. So he sends his Servant who opens ‘the eyes that are blind’ (Isaiah 42:7), and he repeats the phrase: “You are my witnesses” (43:10, 12 & 44:8). They are witnesses to the fact that the Lord is the only God of heaven and earth and the only Saviour. 

By quoting these words Jesus claims to be the one and only Lord and Saviour of heaven and earth, and those whose eyes are opened are witnesses whether we like it or not. Jesus commands “all people everywhere to repent” while there is still time. In a world of other faiths there is only one Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and he is the only ‘judge of the living and the dead’. Our duty is to witness to these truths so that our neighbours may respond in repentance and faith. This is no polite invitation to a dialogue between equals, but a command to respond to the one, true God. 

  Crosslinks magazine January 2006 index