Hosea and Islam

 

Shahriq Khan

@RealShahriqKhan

You know what shook me when I was Muslim? The story of Hosea: In it, God tells a prophet to marry a woman He KNOWS will betray him. She does. She runs to other men. She ends up enslaved, sold, and used up. Essentially, she is worthless to the world. Then, God tells Hosea to go BUY HER BACK, to pay money for his own wife who cheated on him, and love her again. (Hosea 3) I thought it was the most humiliating command in the Bible. Bro, why would any man do that!? Then I realized I was exactly like the wife. I gave my heart to everything but God. I chased other masters and I sold myself cheap. In a way, I made myself worthless. But, God looked at me, the betrayer, and didn’t say “you’re not worth it.” Instead, He said, “Name the price. I’m buying her back.” What's beautiful about this is, that’s the entire Gospel. God doesn’t wait for the unfaithful to come crawling back clean. He pays to redeem them while they’re still dirty. Islam told me to make myself WORTHY of God. Hosea showed me an amazing, present God who pays to redeem the unworthy. The cross was Him naming the price. Praise the Lord! Follow for more Christian apologetics that doesn't stop at winning arguments but equips you to actually reach people!

https://x.com/RealShahriqKhan/status/2112333175087374623?s=20

Jeff Gray

@jeff_gray

·

1h

The Prophecies of Hosea are about the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea but looking at the replies I'm thankful to see how it helps people find their way back to God!

Johnny

@Johnnyapp3l

·

9h

Excellent Jesus called Judas his friend, even though Jesus knew Judas would betray him A very unnatural thing to do

Shahriq Khan

@RealShahriqKhan

When I was Muslim, I never noticed what the Quran DOESN'T have. Namely, exact dates, exact places or exact titles or names you can check. Bro, when you read the Quran’s stories there is literally zero chronology, almost no geography, kings called only “Pharaoh,” events floating in no particular year. It is incredibly vague. You cannot get answers to questions like: Where did the story happen? When? Under whom? The text doesn’t say. You can’t check it, which conveniently means you can’t check it. Now, contrast that to the Bible, read the opening of Luke 3: “In the FIFTEENTH YEAR of the reign of TIBERIUS CAESAR — PONTIUS PILATE being governor of JUDEA, HEROD being tetrarch of GALILEE, his brother PHILIP tetrarch of ITUREA and TRACHONITIS, and LYSANIAS tetrarch of ABILENE, during the high priesthood of ANNAS and CAIAPHAS…” SEVEN historical anchors in one sentence. An emperor, a governor, three rulers with their exact territories, two high priests. And people HAVE checked — for centuries, often trying to break it. Skeptics mocked Luke’s “Lysanias of Abilene” as an error… UNTIL an inscription naming Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene turned up. Pilate was called legend by some… until the Pilate Stone was dug up at Caesarea in 1961 with his name and title carved in it. Luke 1:3-4 tells you why: “Having followed all things closely… that you may have CERTAINTY.” Certainty. That’s the offer of the Bible. The Quran floats above history where nothing can touch it. The Bible planted its flag in checkable ground and said: dig. I dug. It’s still standing. Praise the Lord and His mighty God-Breathed scripture.

https://x.com/RealShahriqKhan/status/2112604521465778519?s=20

Metin Girgin

@mgirgin54

·

4h

Translated from Turkish

The Qur’an is not a historical atlas or a book of chronological events. Instead of narrating people, dates, and places in detail, it delivers a message to humanity. It teaches how to live and what to avoid. Because the Qur’an is not a history book; it is a guide to guidance. You are confusing it with an ordinary book of the world.

LDS Divine Father vs Catholic Divine Father

 

Kirk Rollins

@nicoraytruth

LDS Divine Father vs Catholic Divine Father In Gethsemane, facing agony and death, Jesus cries “Abba, Father.” He does not reach for a title. He reaches for the word a son uses for his own father at home. That has to mean something. Fatherhood cannot be central to how Jesus reveals God, only to become an inadequate human analogy whenever we take its implications seriously. When a frightened child cries for his father, he is not asking whether someone possesses perfect knowledge of his distress. He is asking whether someone loves him enough for his distress to matter personally. You do not cry out a metaphor when you are sweating blood. You cry out to someone. I know the Catholic answer: God loves perfectly without suffering, and impassibility does not mean indifference. But becoming a father has made that distinction implausible. When my child hurts, something in me hurts, and I would take that pain into my own body if I could. A father weeps beside the bed because his child is in pain. Love cannot watch suffering unmoved. Why should God’s knowledge and power to make all things right exclude his capacity to grieve over what is wrong? Here is the deeper problem catholics have. John does not say God is loving. He says God is love. And love is not a serene regard from a safe distance. It is a bond, and a bond can be wounded. Sorrow is not a flaw in love. It is what love feels when the beloved is in pain. You cannot keep the love and remove the sorrow. Strip the sorrow out and what remains is not a purer love. It is something else wearing love’s name. This is why Catholic theology, for all its reverence, cannot truly believe that God is a father. It has defined love in a way that excludes grief, and a love that excludes grief is not the love any father has ever known. A doctrine that forbids God to weep has not protected his love from weakness. It has quietly denied the nature of love itself. A god who cannot weep may be many things, but he is not a father. That is why the weeping God of the Mormons reaches something in me that argument alone cannot reach. Perhaps the great recovery Joseph Smith restored is not a new idea about God at all, but the oldest one. When Jesus said Father, he meant exactly what he said.

https://x.com/nicoraytruth/status/2108353623809720503?s=20

Fr. Chris Vorderbruggen

@FatherChrisVor1

When I read this Mormon reflection, I hear a father describing something real. When your child is hurting, you hurt. Of course you do. But then he makes a leap: God cannot truly be Father unless He suffers the way a human father suffers. That is where he leaves Christian teaching behind. Jesus calling God “Abba, Father” is no empty title (Mark 14:36). God is truly Father. Yet He is not a bigger version of us, with a body and emotions pushed around by events. Human fatherhood comes from Him, not the other way around. St. Paul speaks of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). When a child is in pain, my heart can break. I can be frightened, exhausted, and changed by it. God is not less loving because nothing can break Him. “I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). His love does not grow weak when the world is dark, nor does it need to be rescued from grief. That is what Christians mean by impassibility. God is never indifferent. He is never standing at a safe distance, merely observing. He freely acts. He saves. In the Son, God came to us. This is what Gethsemane and the Cross show. The eternal Son took our humanity. He really did sorrow, pray, sweat blood, and die. None of it was staged. Yet His suffering in the flesh does not make the Father an emotional creature like ourselves. God did not have to become wounded for our pain to matter. He gave His only-begotten Son to enter our suffering, overcome death, and bring us home. That is the love from which every good father learns to love.

Kirk Rollins

@nicoraytruth

·

12h

You are called Father by people who are not your children, and you are defending a God who is called Father by children whose pain cannot reach him; I do not think the resemblance is an accident. Your Church asked you to give up a child of your own so that nothing could divide your heart, and I honor that, but it means the only fatherhood you have ever lived is the kind that cannot be wounded, and you have now described a God who matches it exactly. Every father in your parish knows something about the Father that you have chosen not to know, and it is the one thing this argument turns on. I’m not trying to be a dick, but it’s like describing a sunset to someone who’s never seen a sunset.