The Fig Tree and the Woman Healed

Responding to the Muslim Apologetics Podcast’s Critique

Last week on the dividing line. I sort of on the fly Played a video that was being promoted in social media. On the subject of Islam is an Islamic video, and I had not actually seen it yet. I Been linked to it right for the program started so sort of gave a response on the fly.

Well the individuals involved with it specifically Abu Zakariya Is one who put it out and They're part of a group called Muslim apologetics podcast. With Abu Ayub who put out the video that I had interacted with about a year ago.

But it made similar types of arguments very good in.

Graphic.

Presentation. They were very similar presentations and so I respond you know I played the whole thing and Then just gave my honest interactions with it, and they did a podcast the to the to Abu's Did a podcast response and linked me to it and They want to have some interaction that'd be great.

Well. Well, we'll definitely do that on their podcast and on the dividing line. That's that's fine. But I was I was just really disappointed with the response. In general there was Just just not a lot of really hearing what I was saying.

There was a lot of filtering and You know we all do that we filter through what we're familiar with and what our position Demands of us, and it's it's a rare person that that can get past that really.

But.

What I was really concerned about was well a lot of things but I Wanted in this video to just look at one area which You know I criticized the fact that the video Once again brought up the fig tree argument and I've said the fig tree argument is simply the worst apologetics argument that Islam has ever dreamed up and and I stand by that and somehow Even these two young men who are clearly Talented intelligent young men there.

They're not getting it. They they don't see why and It seems pretty clear to everybody else, but for some reason they are struggling to understand Why this is such a bad? argument and so I wanted to talk about a little bit about the issue of the knowledge of Christ and especially the argument of the fig tree and The woman who touches Jesus these are these arguments dealt with before, but they are so common that I felt it would be useful to respond to these things so Let's take a look at them and hopefully this will be helpful to folks Along the way in trying to understand.

What is being what is being said? Let's begin with the Issue of the fig tree. My Muslim friends certainly would recognize that in interpreting surahs of the Quran Especially surahs where there is actually some indication of what its historical context is.

That that context would be important to bring into consideration for example some of the surahs the background is one of the battles most famous battles of The people of Medina versus Mecca and so on and so forth and and in those situations that kind of information is Brought to bear and understanding what is being said in the surah well when you look at Mark chapter 11 We're getting right down toward the end of Mark's gospel.

We're coming right into the passion week narrative and the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish Jewish leadership is is at its height and.

All.

All the Gospels and especially the Synoptic Gospels agree that it is during this time that Jesus pronounces his woes upon the Jewish leaders. You have the Olivet discourse and Much of this is focused upon the coming judgment upon the people of Israel and The destruction of the temple and in fact the way that that Mark Does this?

Unlike Matthew's version which again Matthew telescope is what Mark expands out in Mark's version the cleansing of the temple takes place between the cursing and then the interpretation of it or the the fact that they see that the tree has withered and So It's just so Painfully obvious that if you're trying to understand Mark now if you're The funny thing is they as we will play they will accuse me of coming at this from the Trinitarian perspective.

So I hear what I want to hear the problem is Who's doing the actual exegesis here? If you're trying to understand Mark then you're going to recognize that there is a reason when you compare Mark to Matthew and Mark gives the initial encounter with the tree they go in there's the cleansing of the temple there's and there's statements Concerning about you know, my house should be called a house of prayer for the nations.

You've made a robber's den. You've got the you know chief priests and the scribes and they're seeking how to destroy him and Then going out they see the fig tree is withered. It's very obvious that Mark is trying to communicate something to us here.

So.

Here's here's the text. The next day when they had left Bethany he became hungry seeing it at a distance a fig tree in leaf. He went to see if perhaps he would find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves.

For it was not the season for figs. He said to it may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples were listening and. Then they have the encounter in Jerusalem beginning at verse 15. Then beginning in verse 19 when evening came they would go out of the city as they were passing by in the morning.

They saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Being reminded Peter said to him rabbi Look the fig tree which you cursed is withered. Jesus answered saying them have faith in God truly I say to you whoever says this mountain be taken up a cast to the sea and does not doubt in his heart but believes what he says is going to happen if we granted him and then you've got a whole discussion of Not only what Christian prayer is to be.

But it's in contrast to the false views of prayer that were being practiced by the Jews for the public. Adoration of their holiness and piety and so on so forth. Jesus doesn't really take the time to Satisfy their curiosity in regards to the fig tree so the argument that is Presented by our Muslim friends really on its on its face is Again really hard to understand how anyone could come up with this.

Jesus is 30 some odd years of age. He's not an out-of-towner. You know, I suppose if he had always lived his life in a place or any fig trees he might not know when the fig was in season, but Do you really really think that this prophet of God was so dull So out of it that he didn't know what season there is for figs.

I Mean you really want to go there. You really think that's what Mark was communicating. That mark mark puts us in there. So that we can know that Jesus was ignorant of agriculture. That was the point.

And he puts the cleansing the temple in between. Ignorance of agriculture. Really? I'm sorry. It's just really hard to have respect for that. It's just there's just obviously something else going on here and when you go on and mark and Jesus says learn the lesson of the fig tree.

He's talking about Israel and stuff. It just it becomes really clear and and rather rather compelling. That the cursing of the and in fact, that's. You know, I just I just sort of went went by that real quickly, but if you if you go to Mark 13 28 from the fig tree learn its lesson as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out at least its leaves.

You know that summer is near so also when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates. Truly I say to you this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

What does that mean? This is the same author. He's using the same illustration here. Jesus knows Wow all about the agriculture. He didn't know about before. Isn't that interesting? And what's he talking about the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the Roman Legion?

So.

Any I.

Know this sounds extreme, but it's quite true any honest interpreter who simply sits back and says I want to know what mark meant is given plenty of information. Plenty of information to understand exactly what was going on the cursing of the fig tree and To take that and say Paul safe.

Jesus couldn't been God and current didn't even know when figs were on trees isn't in. It's insulting to Jesus and insulting to mark. And it just I'm sorry y 'all need to abandon this. It's not a meaningful argument by any stretch of the imagination.

There's a there's another that came up in this and that's a mark chapter 5 and it's the height at the healing of Jairus's daughter. A text that I've spoken on many many times as I Think one of the best illustrations of the relationship between Matthew marks and optic studies.

Telescoping all that kind of neat fun stuff and. Specifically here though. In mark 524 Jesus Gone off with Jairus a large crowd was following him pressing on him. A woman who had had a hemorrhage for 12 years.

Endured much at the hands of many physicians and I'd spent all that she had and was not helped at all. But rather had grown worse after hearing about Jesus. She came up in the crowd behind him and touched his cloak where she thought if I just touch his garments, I will get well.

Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Immediately Jesus perceiving in himself that the power proceeding from him had gone forth.

Turned around in the crowd and said who touched my garments. Now, let me just stop for a moment. Do you really think one who has this kind of power to heal? Turn around said what what happened? Who who is that?

Who is it? I don't know who that was. I need know that one that's that's. You consider that a good reading of what Mark is recording for us here. Let's see what happened and his disciples said to him you see the crowd pressing in on you and you say who touched me and He looked around to see the woman who had done this.

But the woman fearing and trembling aware of what happened to her came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her daughter your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your affliction.

Now.

Here's Jesus he's going to raise Jairus his daughter from the dead. He knows what he's going to do. Even though that's not actually their knowledge yet because when you look at the parallel with Matthew and Luke both agree that the actual words of Jairus Jesus was she's about to die and then the men come and Inform them in the next verse 535 that she has died so that when they get there They know that that is what has taken place.

Matthew just puts all that together. He's going to raise a child from the dead and a woman touches him and The point is that he's now confused. Where is the indication anywhere in here that Jesus is not in full control of what's going on?

Why does he ask and Then ignore his disciples, why does he ask to bring forth her her confession of faith? She comes and bows down before him. He stops and he asks a question that seems to his disciples to be silly when you touched you.

There's people all around you, but there was only one touch and Jesus knew what the touch was and he knew what he was doing. So he could minister to this woman.

Now.

Both of these are so obvious that the question has to be asked why would intelligent people continue to well really abuse these texts and it's obvious you as Muslims you have a tradition and Now it's interesting this is not this is not an Islamic this is not a I'm sorry, this is not a Quranic Argument.

The Quran doesn't force you to this Quran doesn't know anything about these stories. The author of the Quran didn't know anything about these stories. I Mean these would have been the perfect stories to cite if you were going to have some authoritative Quranic interpretation and argument against the deity of Christ, but it's just painfully obvious to me that the author of the Quran did not understand The content of New Testament did not have access to it understanding of it anything like that.

So.

This.

But you still have you still have to come up with these arguments and. As far as ignorance of Jesus, well, you don't have much because there's all this these other places in the gospel of Mark for example where Jesus knows what men are thinking within their hearts and and he has this supernatural knowledge of things and so you you're sort of you're sort of stuck with a small amount of stuff to go for and so.

But gentlemen, you're not exegeting the text of Mark. You cannot look at yourself in the mirror and say you know what my first priority is to really accurately understand what Mark intended to Communicate it.

No, it's not. That's not what you're doing with the text. Sorry. So it was disappointing then to hear the statements but let's um let's listen to the statements and Interact a little bit with them here.

The Fig Tree as a Sign of Israel’s Judgment

All right, so to on the final note that let's let's go over the issue of Jesus and His knowledge and how the Bible actually depicts what he knows. James White in in the video. He said well the the the passage of the fig tree that this is metaphorical.

Okay, and that there's an interpretation for it that this is supposed to mean. You know Israel and then being cursed or what have you?

So.

Well, you have to respond to that because I've given you so much evidence the the the mark 13 usage of the same metaphor for Israel judgment. The breaking up of the text around the encounter with the Jewish leaders cleansing of the temple.

I've given you so much. You can't just dismiss that. Can you give counter-argumentation? Can you give counter-exegesis? No, you can't. So what would it take for you to go? You know what? You're right.

It's bad argument. But what would it take? Well, what would the evidence?

Require.

What we find though and I'd like you to touch upon this this isn't the only case you talked about. I mean you only had so much time to give some examples and. So you're giving one example, and I think it's quite a quite disingenuous from James White's Perspective to actually act like this was the only time that this was done and.

Wait, what do you mean disingenuous? I? Have said that this is a horrific argument and it is it involves eisegesis. It is not exegetical. It is not a meaningful scholarly honest handling of the biblical text.

It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim an atheist a Mormon a Jehovah's Witness. I don't care who it is. It's not a meaningful handling of the text and I call upon everybody to handle everybody's text in a meaningful fashion.

Okay, I've written an entire book on the Quran. Where did I manhandle the text of the Quran the way you're manhandling the text of Mark. Where? Maybe that's something we could discuss but I haven't seen anyone pointing to anything like that.

So why is it disingenuous of me? It was the only example presented in the video and it's a bad Example, it doesn't work. It doesn't prove the point. It's in error. So why is that disingenuous on my part?

Why why get personal and And and express it that way. I don't understand it. I.

Mean from from what I've read in the Bible and even in the Old Testament as well. They're in comparison to Islam the Islamic View of God, it's quite low. So God does things that are quite humanistic quite low.

So the idea being evidently that an utterly transcendent God. That's a high view. But if God is Actually involved in his creation now. Of course, I would I could take you to sections of Isaiah and Jeremiah that I just don't believe there's anything even close to that high in the Quran.

But I do find this kind of language a low view of God. Just want to bring out what it's about. It's well high view is transcendent not involved. Not sullying himself in his creation. And I reject. Obviously, obviously the Christian message is the high view of God is the God who condescends in mercy and grace.

So it's it's a it's a both and you've only got one one half of that we've got both.

Even in the Old Testament, so you have in Genesis God coming down to to To the garden and asking Adam, where are you? Right? So in Islamic theology, we say that God says these things Because he's usually when he asks a question because he knows these questions are gonna be written in Revelation in history so to give Somewhat of a dialogue he will ask the question.

It's not that he doesn't know it. It's a question to get the answer.

Which is exactly what Jesus did with the woman. Yeah, exactly. You just gave the proper interpretation of a text that then you're not going to be willing to use the same thinking on later on.

Right, but what we find with Jesus's depiction. Even even in the Old Testament as well when God came down and he said where are you. And apparently Jesus according to Christian Christian theology or their their commentaries.

It was actually Jesus that went and went into Adam and made him reply to God.

Well.

Yeah, the one who has been seen. No one has seen God any time. I'm not gonna stay us. Who is in the bosom. The father he has made him known. So the one that Jacob wrestled with the pre-incarnate theophanies of the Sun.

That is his role is the revelation of of the father.

So that's quite odd. I just ran across that.

And.

But when you go and when you're looking at the New Testament this person this individual Jesus that's supposed to be God incarnate. Fine. I mean if we were to actually imagine this picture of a person that's supposed to be God incarnate.

Now who's supposed to be God incarnate. And now we're gonna get a description of what you think God in flesh is supposed to be like. You can't even begin I'm sorry but you can't even begin to honestly engage this hypothetical for one really obvious glowing reason and That is the reason for the incarnation is The gospel.

It is the self-glorification the triune God and the salvation particularly people through the incarnation death barrel and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You don't believe in the death row and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Hence.

Any.

Hypothetical theories that you're gonna come up with in Regards to what the God man is supposed to look like it's gonna be irrelevant. Because Jesus was doing what he was doing. He said it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem so all this stuff about what the God man had been like is irrelevant and it misses the point of Why Jesus acted and did the thing why he acted the way he did why he did the things he did.

Because it's not gospel centered. You don't have The core and I know why you don't because the author of the Quran didn't know any of these things. He was ignorant of these things he did not know the gospel did not know the content of the New Testament and So he could not interact with it in a meaningful fashion.

So when you take that as your ultimate Authority and then through that lens of ignorance that that filters out the content of the New Testament Look at the New Testament. Well, it doesn't really make sense.

For for a person that never picked up the Bible What would be if they were to give if they were to approach this issue from a hermeneutical perspective. Meaning that you're coming with a theology of who God is and you want to.

Try to picture what God would be as an incarnate person. It's clear as day that the G the character of Jesus. Would not. He doesn't characterize what a God man would be even if that was the case. Philosophically or theoretically.

Theoretically on.

What basis. Because you said you came with a theology. If you come with the theology of Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant. Then he's exactly what you expect. Because he's accomplishing exactly what he was sent to accomplish.

See you're just I'm sorry, but This isn't even relevant.

To.

To really what's what's being discussed and on a number of occasions. We find that Jesus is Saying he doesn't know what's going on around him. It's not just the fig tree. So for instance when you have him when he was healing people and he was walking and then a woman went up and she She touched his garment and she was healed and Jesus turned around and said who touched my garment.

He didn't know who it was right. No now we've just seen that. And in fact if you applied What you just said about God asking Adam where he was To the same situation that Jesus is asking his question to bring forth the confession of faith from the woman.

Then you wouldn't have even made this mistake.

So, there you go, then you had. When Jesus calmed the storm, you know the people had to wake Jesus up. To let them know this storm. They're about to die.

Again this isn't a matter of ignorance. Jesus is a human being who trusts the father implicitly and Therefore he's resting. He's he's asleep. I know people like that. Don't you? We believe that Jesus was truly man.

I know you all just. You can you can talk you all talked about the hype stack you even defined it correctly a few times. But you will never follow through with it. We'll talk about that another at another point because you know, I I appreciated the fact that there was some accurate definition but then when it came time to see if you would stick with that app accurate definition and Really provide a compelling argument against it.

You just wouldn't do it. You just wouldn't do it. Let's let's look a little bit more at this. I'm I'm going longer than I wanted to. I want to keep this under about 20 minutes. Sorry 26. Sorry about that.

Let me speed it up here a little bit.

Well just get using the the fig tree incident as an example. This is a perfect illustration of of Not just not not accepting what the text is telling you at face value and what you know. The apparent meaning of the text I mean my mark is very clear in what he's saying.

Jesus was hungry. He saw a fig tree and he went to approach it to find out any fruit. You know, where does the text say that he approached it to to Make make a lesson out of it. Or to you know as a metaphor about about Israel.

You know.

It gives the reason gives the circumstances he was hungry and it gives you the reason why he approached the tree. To find out that any fruit, you know. If you already knew that didn't have any fruit. We'd have to approach it if you already knew there wasn't a season for figs.

He wouldn't have to approach it in the first place. So it's a perfect example of a clear clear and apparent meaning of a verse. It's been turned into metaphor and you know if you approach it with the mindset of Jesus is definitely God and he's all-knowing then of course you can have to go down the route of metaphor because if you don't then it just destroys your whole belief system about Jesus.

So.

In the same book Jesus can accurately give information about the fig tree and that accurate information actually tells us that Having the leaves should have indicated the presence of fruit Which of course perfectly matches up with Israel looking like they have something that they don't.

Mark cuts it up gives the encounter you have you have here. Those who will listen to Mark and Carefully read him have no problems, but the plain meaning.

From.

Abba, Zechariah Is the opposite. Who's really doing exegesis. Here, it's not obvious you're doing this because you have an external authority it's called eisegesis and you are alleging something of the text that the author would never have indicated and.

I.

Think that that is very very clear, and I just wonder can you all admit this I?

Mean.

What what what level of information would you need to be able to admit? You know what if we're gonna be consistent And we're gonna ask that you handle the Quranic text in such a way as to allow For it to speak for itself then.

Yeah, we don't really have a basis for making this argument. What would it take that's really the question that I would have to ask and so much more to be said, but I Want to respond to that particular?

Portion and Point out that when you actually go to the text What you see And what you hear is very different than what's being reported by our Muslim friends who obviously are intelligent young men. But what does this show?

That this isn't a matter of intellect. In this instance you have countermanning tradition and In every instance when it comes to obedience the Word of God. It's a spiritual thing. It's a it's a It's a matter of submission.

Yeah submission. Yes guys. I just use that term. We use it, too. We use it before you do submission To God's Revelation which we know requires the work of the Holy Spirit of God, so I pray for Abu Ayub and Abu Zakariya.

And I appreciate Their response and we'll have more conversation in the future, but I hope they'll consider What I've said here If I have time. I also want to talk about John 17 in another video. But you know how long these things take the process and upload and stuff like that so might die in the divine line.

Maybe in a conversation.

In fact, let's do it that way.

Let me just openly say right here. Let me let me join you.

You guys.

On the map podcast let's talk about John 17.

Can we do that?

Because You know the past I've tried to get some Muslims to do just you know we tried to get Use of Ismail to do a thing where I did John 5 and he would do surah 5. But he didn't he didn't want it. He wanted to do it more broadly than that.

But.

Let's look at John 17. I think that would be a great discussion and Maybe maybe let me come up with a Section from surah 4 maybe. Or maybe surah 3 surah 5. I'll look and see what would be best and we'll we'll have a conversation based on that.

That's out. I think that I think a lot of people would find that to be interesting. So let's let's think about it and let's continue having the dialogue and hopefully this has been useful to more than just us folks.

That are directly involved. Thanks for watching.