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The Christianity of Jesus Christ was not meant to be universal. Though as far as its message and basic teachings were concerned ,the religion of Jesus was not different from Islam , yet it did not contain complete guidance for all aspects of life and for all nations ages. During the countless centuries of human history, when the different races of mankind were living in more or less complete isolation and there was no quick means of communication between one nation and another ,God was sending different prophets to the different nations, Jesus was one of these national prophets. He was the Messiah of the Israelites.
This is what Dr . C. J. Cadoux , in his The Life of Jesus ,authority in Christianity writes with regard to the limited or national scope of Jesus's mission.
" The office of Messiahship with which Jesus believed himself to be invested marked him our for a distinctly national role : and accordingly we find him more and less confining his preaching and healing ministry and that of his disciples to Jewish territory, and feeling hesitant when on one occasion he was asked to heal a gentile girl."
Each nation having been separately guided to the truth by the national prophets, the time was ultimately ripe in the plan of God to raise the World - Prophet and reveal through him the Universal Religion. and so, when the world was on the eve of becoming one, God raised the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to represent the essential message of all the prophets , shorn of all that was a temporary or limited nature and purged of all the later accretions and misinterpretations . He amalgamated the religions and traditions of the different nations into a single universal faith and culture and united the peoples of all the races and lands into a single world -wide brotherhood.
In considering the preposition whether Jesus is a Universal teacher or as an alternative whether Christianity is a universal religion , the reader must bear in mind the facts disclosed in the Bible itself.
Jesus says :
"Think not that I come to destroy the law, or the prophets, I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For ,verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled " . (Mathew 5 :17 -18)
What Moses and the earlier prophets have taught in this respect forms part of the history of the religions of the world, but Jesus himself had no such plan to change the history of the world. The question to ask is what was the intention of Jesus himself ? What was the design of God who sent Jesus ? This , nobody can express better than Jesus himself and Jesus said clearly :
" I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house Israel" (Mathew 15 : 24 )
" For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost " (Mathew 18 : 11)
The teachings of Jesus, therefore, is only for Israel, not for others. It is said by some Christians that Jesus exhorted his followers to go to other people:
" Go ye therefore , and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father , and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" (Mathew 28 : 19 )
But to argue from this that Jesus had commanded his followers to take his message to people other than Israel is not correct. It means only this that the followers of Jesus were commanded by him to preach his message to all tribes of Israel and not to all nations and people as such. Jesus speaks in clear terms :
" Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel " (Mathew 19 : 28 )
" I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs" (Mathew 15 ; 5 - 6 )
Again we read :
" These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying , Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not ; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mathew 10: 5 - 6 )
Nobody should imagine that the idea here is that Christian preachers should first go to Israelite towns, then to others. For ,to go to the lost sheep of Israel dos not mean only to visit their towns, but to convert them to Christianity. The idea, therefore , is that until the Israelite have become Christian, no attention is to be paid to the others. Jesus makes it quite clear that the task of preaching to the Israelites and converting them will not be completed until his second coming.
Thus we read:
" But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into anther ; for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come" (Mathew 10 :23)
From this, it is clear that Mathew 28 :19 required Christian preachers to establish Christianity in the towns of Israel and not merely to visit those towns. It is made quite clear that this duty of preaching to the Israelites will not be over until the Second Coming. In preaching to others, while the Second Coming of Jesus had yet to take place, Christian preachers are acting against of Jesus.
The apostles also regard it as incorrect to preach the Gospel to non-Israelites. Thus we read :
"Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that those abut Stephen travelled as far as Phenice and Cyprus, and Antioch , preaching the word to none but the Jews only " (Acts 11:19 )
Similarly , when the apostles hear that Peter had preached the Gospel to non-Israelite in one place, they were annoyed :
" And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem , they that were of the circumcision contended with him , saying . Thou wentest unto men uncircumcised , and didst eat with them" (Acts 11: 2 - 3 )
On the other hand , the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) from the very beginning of his ministry addressed himself to all mankind, It is the Holy Prophet who declared :
" Say: O mankind : truly I am a messenger to you all from Allah" (Holy Qur'an 7 :159)
"We have not sent thee (Muhammad) but as a mercy to all nations" (Holy Qur'an 21: 107)
The revelation of the Qur'an . therefore , was meant to remove those differences and divisions which existed between religion and religion and between people ,and which had first arisen out of the inevitable limitations of earlier teachings. If the Qur'an had not come, these divisions would have endured. The world would never have known that it had but One Creator, nor would it have realize that its creation had one large purpose in view. differences between religious prior to Islam seem to require rather than to resist the coming of a teaching which should unite them all.
Christianity believes that the Israelite are a Chosen People, and that God has sent his revelations and prophets to them alone. The Christians accepts only the Israelite prophets ; all others they consider to be imposters. But Islam says that it would be a denial of the universal providence of God to assert hat prophets were raised only in one nation.
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Source : "The Myth of the Cross "
(ICRA)