The Abrahamic Faith

By Mohammad Rehman

As Abraham lay on his deathbed, he was surrounded by his

sons Isaac and Ishmael-who, despite seventy-five years of conflict and

separation, were at last brought together on that day.

This moment between his family

was one that mirrors the true unification between three religions

that flow from the same river.

Abraham, considered the father of religion,

was the first to guide the world in believing in a higher power.

It was his belief and faith that served as a root to the tree

that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam sprouted upon.

These three religions follow a common belief in one God,

and in submission to Him.

Despite their deeply shared values,

the world has grown to create divisions between them.

Other books by this author:

Angels Are Crying (2015)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636925318

Mohammad Rehman

Mohammad Rehamn is an American Author who had written two books previously titled "Angels Are Crying" and "Abrahamic Faith".

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Abrahamic Faith

Mohammad Rehman

Copyright © 2021 Mohammad Rehman

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-63692-530-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63692-531-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Origins of Man

Abraham as per Judaism

Abraham as per the Gospels (Christianity)

A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths

ABRAHAM,

I will make your name great and you shall be a blessing, I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the Earth shall bless themselves by you.

Torah (The Five Books of Moses)

The Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text by the Jewish Publication Society

GOD

Special thanks

to

KAISER RAFIQ

for providing research

on Abraham and designing the

cover page of the book

The Abrahamic Faith.

For

My wife and my children

Prologue

I shall start by explaining the cover of the book. The iconic photograph of Jerusalem has been carefully chosen due to the fact that it reflects the authenticity of the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

It is the only place on Earth that depicts the importance and coming together of these religions.

The dome, Mosque Al-Aqsa, has its utmost significance as Abraham came to this spot to sacrifice his son.

This is from where Prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven, as per Islamic faith. Jesus not only prayed here, but it is the Mount of Olives where he gave his sermons and from where he was arrested; the mock trial was set up leading to his crucifixion.

The Wailing Wall is here, so it is where all these faiths come together. Jerusalem is considered the navel of the Abrahamic faith.

The back cover page is also very relevant to the nucleus message of the book, as it shows Abraham being buried by his sons Ishmael and Isaac. They came together after seventy-five years, at the cave of Machpelah in Hebron, to bury him together. Even at his death, Abraham brought his sons together, so the significance is of togetherness. If they can shed their differences and come together, maybe we can too. Maybe, instead of demarcations of faith, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we can come together as the Abrahamic faith.

May God’s blessing be on all the three religions.

Abraham is considered as the father of the three religions. When the world believed in deities and the sun god or when the people were idolaters, it was Abraham that kind of showed the world and his elders that there was a much larger force that was at work, and a lifeless statue, irrespective of size or kind, or whether made of gold, bronze, or stone, was not going to make any difference, no matter how strongly one believed in it.

The faith that eventually followed was Judaism, who believed in Abraham, followed closely by Christianity and lastly Islam.

These three religions, as they are known, comprise of the Abrahamic faith. The books that followed these religions, also termed as books of God, are Torah (Judaism), the Gospels (Christianity), and the Quran (Islam).

As per history, three messengers of God—namely, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad—carried the message of God whether it came in the shape of the Torah or the Gospels or the Quran.

The spirit of religion was to believe in one God, in the Day of Judgment, and to be a righteous person. What followed in time to come was division, and people kind of sidetracked the spirit of religion and followed different rituals and sects. It is like the main artery continues to be the Abrahamic faith, but different formats led to so many roadways, though everyone following these faiths basically talks about the one God and submission to him.

Unnecessary rituals have brought nothing but divisions, separations, wars, segregations, genocides, anarchy, leading to famine, death, sects, borders, and racism, leading to religions further getting divided into further rituals, causing disarray among humans, whose basic and fundamentals are supposedly the same or one. Had this not happened and had everyone continued to have just believed in the Abrahamic faith, maybe it would be a much better world with more justice, intermarriages, and classification of generations based on rituals given to customs.

Religion also, because of divisions created by man, became the biggest source of business and moneymaking, so many funds are created in the name of religion, charities are collected in every format by synagogues, rabbis, churches, mosques, seminaries, all their offshoots, books, sects probably running into a billion-dollar industry.

Writers, lecturers, and history books target the abovementioned three religions, mainly criticizing each other’s religions and books, for example, The Satanic Verses, which was written on grounds just to gain fame through the adversary, to enjoy fame through misconceptions and making money, any which way one can.

Imagine life on earth if man was not divided and if the wars were not fought on grounds of faith and religion, the carnage brought upon civilizations, simply on the way they chose to believe in God. Imagine all that not ever happening and harmony being practiced solely on the fact that all believed in one God, the day of judgment and being righteous, the lives that could have been saved and utilized righteously, then wouldn’t that have made the world a better place? We would not have had so much division and hatred, man would have concentrated on art, and resources would have had been positively used—if only we had instead of being divided—and had we not been used and abused by rituals, had we simply followed the beauty of the message of a single phrase: The Abrahamic faith.

Origins of Man

From Adam, Noah, to Abraham

The three religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all agree through their prophets and holy books—the Torah, the Gospels, and the Quran—on the thesis of God’s creation of the universe and man:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and God said,

Let there be light, and there was light. God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.

Then God said, Let there be a vault between the waters, to separate water from water, so God made the vault and separated the vault from the water above it, and it was so. God called the vault sky, and there was evening and there was morning. The second day.

And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let dry ground appear, and it was so. God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas, then God said, Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and trees on the land that bear fruits with seed on it, according to their various kinds, and it was so, and there was evening and there was morning. The third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the nights, and let them serve as signs, to mark sacred times and days and years, and let the lights of the sky give light on earth, and it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, and there was evening and there was morning. The fourth day.

And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth, across the vault of the sky, so God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which water teems and that moves around in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. God blessed them and said, Be fruitful, and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. The fifth day.

And God said, Let the land produce living creatures and according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move around the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind, and it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds and God made the livestock according to their kinds, and God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground, so God created mankind in his own image; in the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them.

Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food, and to all the birds in the sky and all creatures that move along the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it. I give every green plant for food, and it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was good. The sixth day. Thus, the heavens and earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing, so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

Adam and Eve

Then God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the Lord had planted a garden in the east called Eden, and there he put the man he had formed.

God commanded the man, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if you eat from it, you will certainly die.

God said, It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him, so God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh, then God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. God named them Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Satan (serpent) said to Eve, Did God really say you must not eat from a tree in the Garden of Eden? Then Eve said that God did forbid them to eat from one tree, and if they did, then they would die. Satan (serpent) said to Eve, You will certainly not die, but when you eat from that tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be all-knowing, like God, knowing all good, all evil. Eve ate from the tree and also gave it to Adam; they both ate it, then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

God called them and they tried to hide from God. God asked them, "Have you eaten from the tree I did