Was Brian Houston Taken Out of Context?

Back in 2014, Brian Houston, pastor of Hillsong Church in Australia, had these words to say in a sermon:

"Do you know – take it all the way back into the Old Testament and the Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God. Allah to a Muslim; to us, Abba Father God."

Later, after several people began questioning his already questionable theology, Brian accused his critics of taking him out of context. But did they? Observe what he said:

"The Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God."

Serve. Present tense. In other words, Brian did say that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Quite obviously, Brian has no clue what context actually is. But this is not surprising considering the false doctrines that he preaches, teaches, and believes; doctrines contrary to the Word of God.

Not only did Brian truly say that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, but his sermon demonstrates clearly that he has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. For someone who is supposed to be a pastor, one would expect him to do better research and actually know something about what he is going to attempt to talk about. But Brian is clueless.

When you go back to the days of Abraham, and the days of Isaac and Ishmael, there were no Muslims. Apparently, in Arabic, the two letters "MU" are similar to or equivalent to the two letters "ER" in English (e.g., bakER, butchER, farmER, etc.). So the word "Muslim" is a contraction of MU-Islam (a follower of Islam). Islam did not exist prior to the last 1400 years. Ergo, there were no such thing as Muslims prior to the last 1400 years. The predominant religion of the Persians was Zoroastrianism, while the Arabs had many tribal deities that were all worshipped in one city—Mecca. Arabians were polytheists. This pantheon of gods and tribal idols were held in the Kaaba, which was also seen and worshipped as a separate god.

When Muhammad destroyed all these other gods (except for the Kaaba, which is still worshipped by Muslims today) and erected Allah in their place, that is when Muslims began to exist; as they started following the false religion Muhammad created. The fact that Muslims worship the Kaaba can be seen from their actions. When you must travel to a particular city, walk around, touch, bow down before, and pray before an object, yes, you do worship it. And the claim that the Kaaba is the house of Allah only makes it worse for Muslims as they are committing shirk by doing what they are doing, because they are making it equal to Allah. Despite their protests, Muslims also worship Muhammad, above and beyond their worship of Allah. If you bad mouth Allah, Muslims do not do a thing. But if you bad mouth their false prophet, Muhammad (Peace Never Knew Him), they get irate and want to murder you.

Did the sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael worship the same God? For a time, most probably. How long a time, we do not know. But it obviously was not very long. Based on Scripture and the people groups who inhabited the Middle East after the times of Abraham and his sons, none of the other people groups believed in the God of Abraham. That means that if the sons of Ishmael did believe in the same God as the sons of Isaac for a time, eventually they turned to false gods instead. We see Israel doing this repeatedly in their own history, so why would we think the descendants of Ishmael would not have done the same?

Brian was absolutely correct in stating that his words were a clumsy delivery. But when you view more of his sermon, one wonders if it was "clumsy" or deliberate? And that after he received a backlash he attempted to save face.

"How do you view God? In a desert there's two types of birds: there's vultures and there's hummingbirds. One lives off dead carcasses; rotting meat. The other lives off the beautiful, sweet nectar in a particular flower on a particular desert plant. In the same desert, they both find what they're looking for."

That entire spiel is utter nonsense. It does not answer his question, "How do you view God?" It has nothing to do with his question, being totally and completely unrelated in any way, shape or form. But when you look at what is being said here, about the two birds, and what he said above, it is quite obvious that he is saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. If he was not, then this pointless illustration is precisely that—pointless.

Why ask the question "How do you view God?" and then answer with an illustration of two different birds both getting what they are looking for, only to continue on to say "The Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God"? Is he claiming that Muslims who follow Allah find what they are looking for? If they are looking for Hell, then, yes, they absolutely find what they are looking for. But they do not find Jesus. They do not find God the Father. They do not find salvation. So the illustration is ridiculous and ludicrous.

When you look at the facts, Muslims and Christians never worshipped the same God. Ever! We never worshipped the same God in the past, and we do not worship the same God today. Muslims serve a god created in the image of Muhammad. Brian would know this if he bothered to do his homework and research things the way a pastor is supposed to, instead of preaching empty, vain messages not based an iota on Scripture.