Through Force or Faith? — Page 256
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 256 Concept of God Compared with the perfect concept of God as presented in Islam, the views of earlier religions about God are only rudimentary. Prior to Islam, though God was considered to be the Creator and Master of the universe, He still was only the God of a tribe or a race. In the Old Testament, God is depicted as ‘the Lord God of Israel’ and ‘the Lord God of Hebrews’ (Exodus 5:1; 9:1). Even a casual study of the Old Testament would suffice to prove that its God had a special interest only in the Children of Israel. They were a special chosen people of God (Deuteronomy7:6) and God had chosen them above all other people (Deuteronomy 14:2). For this reason, according to Bible, God granted them the lands of seven nations, and commanded them to completely destroy those nations (Deuteronomy 7). It is worth noting that according to the Bible, the Children of Israel, not the Jewish religion, were selected (Amos 3:2). For this reason, on the return from Babylon, the peo- ple who belonged to Jewish religion but could not prove their genealogy were declared as ‘polluted’ (Nehemiah 7:64). It is also mentioned in the Old Testament that God loved Israel ( Jacob), but He hated Esau, Jacob’s brother. (Malachi 1:2, 3) The same state of affairs persisted at the time of Jesus. Jesus also said, ‘Salvation is for the Jews’ ( John 4:22). Through his con- duct he repeatedly proved that he had come with a message for the Jews and only the Jews. Giving a command to his disciples, he said, ‘Go not unto 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’ (Matthew 10:5–6). He restricted his message only to the Jews so much so that he declared ‘I am not sent but unto the lost