Angels, Messengers And Spirit (Ruh) Have Come By Allah’s Permission “This surah begins with an appeal to five things, as pointing to the substantive statements in verse 7, that the Day of Justice and Judgement is bound to come, and we must prepare for it. It is difficult to translate but easy to understand, if

“The Paraclete represents direct, intimate divine involvement, supporting and teaching believers and challenging the world, as Jesus did.” “The Paraclete, Jesus’ successor, is described in personal terms. (The noun and associated pronouns are masculine gender, which does not denote maleness. In fact, there is an old tradition in Christian theological and spiritual writing of referring

Regathering of Jews back to Israel “will occur right before the return of the Messiah “For thousands of years the Jewish people has longed for messianic deliverance; sustained by this belief the community has endured persecution and suffering, confident that they will ultimately be rescued from earthly travail. Yet with the rise of science and

The coming Messiah would inaugurate the age of salvation with the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh. “In Christianity the Spirit is God permeating God’s own creation. According to the creation study in the Hebrew Scriptures, ‘a wind [spirit] from God swept over the face of the waters’ in the beginning of creation

“For Lao Tze it is the Tao, in Jewish mysticism it is the Shekinah, and in the New Testament we find it in the image of the Holy Spirit.” “Many masters—and, alas, many false teachers—have taught about Yoga without explaining that it involves the awakening of this spiritual Energy. This has led to confusion, particularly in the

“Equally appealing for modern believers, the Jesus of the hidden gospels has many points of contact with the great spiritual traditions of Asia.” “Despite its dubious sources and controversial methods, the new Jesus scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s gained such a following because it told a lay audience what it wanted to hear. For

“For instance, Armstrong shows the revolutionary effect of the prophets in Judaism, beginning with Isaiah, at the time when the J and E material was still being written. She shows that prophetic Judaism was an ‘Axial religion,’ a development of the Axial age when cities became the centers of culture in Asia and the Mediterranean.

“This is reflected in numerous sayings. The Kingdom is like a treasure or a costly pearl whose possession outranks all other goods (Mt. 13:44-46). It is something to be sought here and now (Mt. 6:33) and to be received as children receive a gift (Mk. 10:15 = Lk. 18:16-17). In this saying the Kingdom is

“They are going, by the Holy Spirit’s power, to be part of the greatest miracle of all, bringing men to salvation.” “The theme of this section is reassurance and encouragement. Jesus gives the disciples three basic reasons they should cease being troubled in their spirits. First, He tells them that, although He is going away,

“While John uses the concept of the Spirit in a way very similar to other NT writers (e.g., 3:5ff.), he advances the Christian view of the Spirit with the concept of the ‘Paraclete.’ In five passages within the section called the farewell discourses (chaps. 14-16) John sketches a creative and original view of the Spirit.