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On July 16, The Daily Beast reported:
The killer of four U.S. Marines in Chattanooga maintained a short-lived blog that hinted at his religious inner life. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s blog had only two posts, both published July 13 and written in a popular style of Islamic religious reasoning.
The first post was entitled “A Prison Called Dunya,” referring to the temporal world. In it, Abdulazeez uses the hypothetical example of a prisoner who is told he would be given a test that would either take him out of his earthly prison—or send him into a more restrictive environment.
“I would imagine that any sane person would devote their time to mastering the information on the study guide and stay patient with their studies, only giving time for the other things around to keep themselves focused on passing the exam,” Abdulazeez wrote. “They would do this because they know and have been told that they will be rewarded with pleasures that they have never seen.”
This life is that test, he wrote, “designed to separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire.”
Abdulazeez martyred himself in the act of killing “infidels” to be rewarded with unimaginable pleasures in his paradise. According to one commentator, such martyrdom would result in pleasures ten times greater than otherwise. We have a glimpse of the reason for his radical obedience to the cause of Islam.
What are believers of the Lord Jesus Christ promised? The promise is the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in the Father’s house in heaven. Unlike what Abdulazeez believed, this promise from our Heavenly Father who is the one true God is ironclad. But despite this promise, few believers in Jesus Christ appear to be radically obedient to the cause of Christ as Abdulazeez was to his. Why are believers generally not strongly urged to obey God’s holy commands?
However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”– the things God has prepared for those who love him– (1 Corinthians 2:9) And if we love him, we will keep and obey his commands (John 14:15). He has prepared unimaginable things for those who obey his commands. So why can some believers be so lukewarm?
We can find one explanation in the teaching on God’s wonderful grace which prevails very strongly throughout the Church. Because of this emphasis, something very important from Scripture may have been left out. Watch this thought-provoking short video to find out what.