Is Jesus Prophesied in the Old Testament? Part 2

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As we look at the subject of Jesus being prophesied in the

Old Testament, this evening I am going to be continuing a quest. I have been on a quest for quite some time now,

Shabir started me on it. I am searching for the consistent Muslim. The Muslim who will always keep his

Muslim hat on, even when he's criticizing my New Testament. I didn't mean the

Kufi. And I'll have more to say about this in the second half of the debate, but I am searching for the

Muslim who will continue to believe that God has spoken through the prophets, that there have been many books which have been

Natsal, sent down. I'm looking for the person who will use the same standards and the same kind of scholarship in defense of the

Quran, in defense of, for example, the early historiography of Muhammad, who is willing to use the same scholarship he uses there in talking about the

New Testament. I'm looking for that because I would like to suggest to you that if I stand up here and I defend the

New Testament as a believer in the supernatural, I believe in prophecy,

I believe in revelation, I believe that God can give supernatural knowledge to men about events that will not take place for 700 years.

And God knows they're going to take place, not because God's just looking down the corridors of time, but because God is sovereign over His creation.

But if I then turn around and seek to criticize the Quran on the basis of modern

Orientalists who begin with the assumption that there can be no such thing as revelation, there can be no such thing as prophecy, that you cannot even begin.

If I, and I will here, begin to respond to some of Shabir's points by saying, well, you need to allow the

New Testament to speak, he does let the Quran speak, I say, let the Bible speak. If you will allow it to speak for itself, if you allow for harmonization, he does that with the

Quran, and I say, if you're going to do that with the Quran, then you need to do it with the Bible. He brought up, for example, some synoptic issues, well, there are synoptic issues in the

Quran in the sense that the Quran more than once tells the same story twice. Now, I can point out that my writers are writing to different audiences at different times, and therefore that explains maybe the differences between the synoptics, but what do you do with the

Quran when, for example, in Surah 7 and Surah 38, it tells the story about Iblis in a different way?

What do you do when Surah 2, 58 -59 says very different things than Surah 7, 161 -162?

You don't have the idea of multiple writers. This is supposedly written by Allah in eternity itself, so why would there be differences and contradictions between them?

Well, you have to explain those things. You have to say, well, you need to allow for harmonization, and yet all the people that should be our elite quotes don't allow for harmonization.

That's the first thing is to dismiss, well, the one thing we can't do is harmonize. We can't do that. I had the opportunity of debating

John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading historical Jesus scholars, and it was very clear in our debates and then in the debate that I and Dr.

James Renahan did with he and Marcus Borg on the resurrection of Christ that the one thing that just simply isn't allowed in their circles of scholarship is the idea of harmonization, the idea of allowing the entirety of a text to speak for itself, and yet every

Muslim in this room who studied the Qur 'an would demand that right for the interpretation of the

Qur 'an. I say to you, I'm looking for the consistent Muslim. Now before I get into these various points,

I started a sort of a tradition at Biola University in 2006, and I'd like to continue it.

I would like to give to Shabir a gift. This is a diglot translation of the

New Testament. It is the Nesialen 27th edition large print with the New English translation on the facing page, some 30 ,000 -odd translation notes there.

This is a leather -bound edition, and so I'd like to give it to him. I'm just wondering what

I'm going to get back, so anyway. I know

Ramadan's over, so I sort of missed that one, but it'd be nice to know. I'm very appreciative of Shabir being here and the attitude that he displays in the debates.

I hope that as people look at the debates we've done in Seattle and at Biola University and now here in London, that they will see that you can disagree and disagree strongly, but you do not have to do so in an attitude of hatred, and I think we have accomplished that in the debates we've done.

Let's look at some of the points that were made. We were told that the New Drome biblical commentary says that this text,

Deuteronomy 18, can refer to a number of prophets. Well, why, when it says, well, it's in the plural, well, yes, prophets speak from God, but there is a specific application that is made here.

The Jews understood it to be this way. The New Testament understood it to be this way. Why should we take some modern interpretation and say, well, we can apply it to a large number of people?

Where in the context do we get that type of an understanding? He seemed to disagree with Arazi.

It seemed that Arazi was saying the Torah itself does contain testimonies of Jesus.

Would that not be Deuteronomy 18? Is it the protevangelium in Genesis 3? I'd be interested in knowing.

Then we had this very interesting approach to the text of scripture, and to be honest with you, no offense here attended at all,

Shabir, but it sounded like I was listening to John Shelby Spong. Now, some of you don't know who

John Shelby Spong is, but he is the very, very, very liberal former bishop in New Jersey in the

Episcopal Church, and he and I debated, and he's written books about the sins of scripture, and what he does, he says, well, you know, we can't actually think

God had anything to do with these texts, because that would mean God did these terrible, horrible things.

It's just the people who wrote them, they were very provincial, and they had their little tribe they were trying to promote.

I again simply ask for the consistent Muslim. Are there not all sorts of texts in the

Quran where a liberal Muslim would want to say, well, that was just, you know, the people in the first century, that's just sort of how they thought, and we would never think that Allah would tell you could do this, that, or the other thing.

You know, Surah 9 and all that stuff, no, no, no, no, no, this is just what people thought at that time. Again, looking for the consistent

Muslim, and simply saying, asking one question, did Jesus view the scriptures in that way? Did Jesus view the scriptures in that way?

Remember, in the second part of this debate, we're going to look at the fact that the Quran says that the Torah and the

Injil talks about Muhammad. Well, how could that make any sense, if the Torah and the

Injil that was possessed in the day of Muhammad was nothing but the thoughts and meanderings of people who were filled with hate, who wrote these terrible things in the

Old Testament. How can you even make sense out of the Quran if you do not begin with a recognition that at least the writer of the

Quran believed that God had sent those books down? You can't make any sense out of it if you don't start there.

That's why you can come up with so many different things found in these rather liberal books.

And so, you know, Shabir said, well, who likes negativity anyways? Well, you gotta have it in a debate.

It's just sort of necessary. You know what? I bet you Shabir is quite negative with his children when they start reaching for a hot plate on the stove or decide to go play out in the middle of a busy street.

Negativity has its place because truth is often denied, and we have to speak out against a denial of the truth.

He raised a number of issues, and I was very interested at the language that he used. For example, when he talked about the three days.

Now, again, if we just simply allow for the idiom of the language to exist, the

Jews counted any part of a day as a day. And so, when you say, well, Friday to Sunday, this ain't three days.

Well, if you have Friday night, Saturday, and the morning of Sunday to the Jewish mind, that is three days whether you like it or not.

And the chronology fits perfectly. And so, to just take that and say, well, we all know this didn't happen.

I didn't get the notice on that. I believe it did happen, and I believe that that language can be established, and that it makes perfect sense, and it causes the accounts to be harmonious with one another.

Why am I wrong to do that? Well, because there's a certain kind of theology that says, no, no, no, we have to start with the idea that this isn't divine revelation.

We just have to start there. And anything that harmonizes, we just don't even want to go there. We won't even allow for that to happen.

He even went so far as to say, it failed. This prophecy failed. Well, I really wonder if he would apply the same kind of standard in the study of the

Qanon. Jesus' return was disproven. He expected to return at a certain point in time.

And again, are there not entire volumes dedicated where godly men have taken the time to work through all these texts, and instead of starting with, well, we start with a contradiction and then just go from there.

We ask the question, are we misunderstanding something? Are we taking everything into consideration?

Let the Bible speak, and when you do so, you find a harmonious presentation of what the coming of Christ actually involves.

You don't just have to say, well, his return was disproven, these things failed, all the rest of these kinds of, when the genealogies are mentioned, well,

Jesus doesn't make the grade. He seems to fail, et cetera, et cetera. But once again,

I would suggest you look at the scholarly work of people like Gleason Archer and others who have dealt with these genealogies and have dealt with the

Old Testament text behind the genealogies and have presented to us what is a consistent understanding of the presentation.

It doesn't require us to go, well, very clearly, they're tracing the line through two different ways, one through Mary, one through Joseph, and well, since he's not, since he's virgin born, that Joseph line somehow is fraudulent.

Well, again, that immediately dismisses something we all believe. How could anyone who is virgin born be predicted to be the descendant of anybody on that basis?

Don't you believe in the virgin birth, my Muslim friends? You most certainly do. And so, upon what basis do we say, well, if anyone was born a virgin, you can't, he could never refer to Joseph as his father, which he did, by the way.

You just have to immediately have him saying, I'm virgin born. Yeah, okay, that's very helpful in starting your ministry.

So, he then mentioned, for example, he mentioned William Lane Craig, why the great doubt and difficulty concerning the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Yesterday I had the opportunity of preaching at Trinity Road Chapel and I preached from Luke chapter 24 and when

Jesus approaches the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he quizzes them, he draws out of them, why are they dejected, why are they sad, why are they debating amongst themselves?

And as they explain what has happened in Jerusalem, they talk about how Jesus had been proven by the works that he did, by the miracles, to be a prophet of God.

And then they said these words, we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem

Israel. And so, here you have these hopes that have been dashed, or have they been dashed?

You see, the problem with the Islamic position, the problem that Shabir Ali is in as a Muslim, is that he's stuck in the intervening hours between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Just as those disciples were. And when Jesus opens their eyes to reveal who he is, then they understand.

Then they understand that it's the resurrection that has vindicated him. It has not demonstrated that he is a false messiah.

Instead, now they see, from Moses to the end, that, what does Jesus say to them? It was necessary for the messiah to suffer and enter into his glory.

And that's what happens when you let the Bible speak. When you let it speak in its entirety.

And when you do not begin with the assumption of naturalistic materialism, that comes to the text of the

Bible and says, well, we know there's no spirit of God. We know God has no purpose in this world.

We're all just here by natural processes. We know, starting, that this is just the thoughts and meanderings of people about God that is self -contradictory, and we start there.

I challenge that assumption. And I say to you that any Muslim who picks up the

Quran and believes that they are seeing the very words of God has no business using the argumentation of naturalistic materials.

No business whatsoever. And so, my search this evening, I have presented to you numerous texts.

And I don't say to you that they might have something to do with Jesus. Yes and no, not sure.

I am not in the James D .G. Dunn camp. I'm actually one of those Christians who believes that God has spoken.

He has spoken definitively. He has spoken clearly. And therefore, he has not left us to grope about in the darkness and be left merely to the whims and the opinions of this scholar or that scholar.

Instead, I believe that God has spoken. And that's why I'm here this evening. He has, in his word, prophesied before Jesus ever came along, before Jesus was ever born into this world.

Think about the words that I read to you. Think of the description of his crucifixion. Think of the fact that not only after the crucifixion that his victory is prophesied in these texts.

And ask yourself a question, is that just happenstance? Or is it, as Shabir has said in the past, he's quoted

John Dominic Crossan, and Crossan actually says, well, that was just the early Christians ransacking the

Old Testament and they created the Gospels to fulfill these things. It never really happened itself. I'm looking for the consistent

Muslim this evening on this vitally important subject. Let's keep looking together. Thank you.

And the only light that ever brings a time. Just go ahead and hit start and we'll count down for you.

Oh, fantastic. Isn't he well prepared? And so kind as well.

Well, to return James' kind gesture, I cannot offer him a timer except my stopwatch, which is very difficult to see under this light.

But I'd like to also offer James a copy of the Quran, which is a pocket -sized edition. And though I don't always agree with the translation in this,

I carry one like this around because it is so easy for a person like James who travels around and debates

Muslims all over the world. So James, please accept that. And after the pleasantries to get on with the business of the day, the

Bono has written a book entitled Six Thinking Hats, and I would encourage you to read that book.

It just alerts us to the fact that, in fact, we can approach a subject from different angles.

We can, in fact, put on different thinking hats for the exercise of thinking and understanding. Is a

Muslim then inconsistent? No. I have already explained that consistently as a Muslim, I would believe that Jesus is a true prophet of God, the true

Messiah of God. My answer to the question would be yes, in that we can allow for certain passages of the

Old Testament to speak of Jesus as a matter of good gesture,

I would say. But when we look at the texts in detail, we fail to find a text in the

Old Testament that actually quite predict the coming of Jesus. If I were to take off the thinking hat of a

Muslim and look at the matter critically, then I see a no answer to my question.

And in fact, James encourages me to take off the thinking hat of a Muslim, because the whole purpose of our meeting here tonight is that James has challenged me to debate whether or not the

Old Testament and the New predicts the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. James wants to encourage me to believe that the

Prophet Muhammad is false. It is, though, by virtue of my belief in the Prophet Muhammad, by virtue of my belief in the

Quran, that I believe in Jesus. Some Christians think that if you take Muhammad and the

Quran out of the equation, Jesus will be left in the mind of the Muslim. But be aware that if you take away

Muhammad and the Quran from the mind of the Muslim, you do not remain with Jesus, you remain with atheism.

Now you have to, first of all, convince the Muslim to believe in Jesus. Then you have to show the Muslim the prophecies of the

Old Testament. A Muslim then would come with a neutral mind to examine the Old Testament and what would he find?

Lo and behold, that according to the criteria of the Old Testament, Jesus must be a false prophet because he failed in his predictions, his most major one, for example, and that he must be a false messiah because he did not fulfill the requirements of being the messiah, as I've already demonstrated.

So I believe that I am consistent in my approach here. As a Muslim, Jesus is a prophet of God, and I have no difficulty if we were to find a text that predicts him, though we do not find any that quite predicts him, but we are willing to grant that Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 18 would be a prediction about prophets to come in a series, and definitely

Jesus seems to qualify as one of the series. In fact, Muslims do believe that he is a true prophet in this series.

But if I take off my Muslim hat, not this one, but my thinking hat of Muslim, and I were to listen to James and leave aside

Muhammad and the Quran, then I would have to conclude, I believe, as I've demonstrated, the two negative conclusions which

I've already put before you. Does that mean we are saying that God cannot prophesy? No.

Even as a Muslim, by believing in God and believing in Jesus, that does not necessitate that God must have told people before Jesus came that Jesus would come.

God could send Jesus without telling anyone about it beforehand. The fact that al -Razi and other

Muslim commentators said this doesn't necessitate that Muslims must believe it. Muslims must believe in the

Quran, but not necessarily in the commentators on the Quran, such as al -Razi and others.

If they have good reasons for what they say, we might be persuaded by their reasons. But if they have no good reason, and if they have followed the claims of others without checking them, and if they themselves did not have the capacity, they were scholars of the

Quran, not of the Bible, and they just simply took the claims at face value and passed them down to us, we have the right to re -examine those claims based on what

God has guided us to know today. Now, James wants me to look at the Quran and to compare the surahs of the

Quran as scholars have done with the synoptic Gospels. Folks, in every field, there are scholars.

There are scholars who study the Bible, and there are scholars who study the Quran. Both Muslim and non -Muslim scholars study the

Quran. In studying the Quran, the synoptic problem is not something that the scholars discuss, but they do compare passages of the

Quran. They do compare surahs one with another to try and show that there must have been some sort of development in the mind of the

Prophet Muhammad as he went through his prophetic career over the 23 years. If, however, James could show us an actual example of any such claim that shows that the

Prophet Muhammad, in learning and getting more revelation from God over time as he would have claimed, was actually manufacturing the information, was actually changing the story, contradicting himself, then

I'd be willing to respond to that. He gave two passages that say that one example shows that the story of Iblis is told differently in surah 7 and in surah 38.

How differently? What is the difference, James? Tell me, and I will do my best to try and explain that for you.

What about Deuteronomy chapter 18, referring to a large number of prophets? Well, the fact that some

Jews said that that's what it means does not mean that biblical commentators will be forever bound by that conclusion.

I have cited the New Jerome biblical commentary, which is a massive and reputable commentary on the

Bible, written by some of the greatest Christian biblical scholars today. And I don't see why we should discount that automatically, just because some previous scholars had said that the conclusion should be the opposite.

I've also given good reasons for thinking that it is a series of prophets rather than just simply one.

Because to begin with, why would God confine all of his teachings just simply to one prophet when he can send prophets throughout time?

And he has, in fact, sent prophets throughout time. Immediately after Moses, there was Joshua. And not to speak of an

Israelite prophet or a Hebrew prophet, there must have been prophets to all people. Why would God confine his blessing of revelation only to the

Israelite people, to the neglect of the entire world? This seems to be rather strange. John Shelby Pong and John Dominic Crossan are not here debating tonight.

Why do we hear their names? Now, we might cite a scholar for referring to them and citing them as authority.

But James is referring to these scholars to associate me with those scholars. To tell our

Christian folks here, you know those bad guys out there? When you see Shabir, think of those bad guys.

This is actually called, in debating, guilt by association. It is a fallacy in argumentation.

Instead of refuting my points, I feel that James is actually pulling this one of guilt by association so that I should not be listened to.

You should just think of the devils that you know when you see me. But I don't think that's fair.

I think my points are very clear. They are referred to with reference to biblical commentaries and Christian sources.

I think that my point should be evaluated for their rationale and for their authentic references.

What about the Torah and the Injil? Do not Muslims believe that these books are the truth? Well, as far as I understand from the

Quran, these books contain truth. They contain messages that God has delivered to his prophets over time, including the last of all of them prior to the

Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet Jesus. But that does not mean that entirely these books are exactly the way they were revealed by God to his prophets over time.

So, they could contain both the inspired word of God and also the creative work of human beings.

And we have seen in my presentation how the storytellers went to work in the oral stage before these documents were written down.

The stories were molded and refashioned and reshaped in order sometimes to promote the Israelites over their enemies and to insist that all of the blessings would come only to the

Israelites. And in that case, we understand that we must be judicious in the way we evaluate the text from the

Bible. It contains truth, it contains the inspired word of God, and it also contains other material besides.

What about the fact that Gleeson Archer and others have dealt with the problem of the genealogy of Jesus?

Well, okay, so they have dealt with the problem. So, to give us what they have said, so that we can evaluate what they have said and we can see if their answers are actually measuring up to and real refutations of the problem and the problems that we have actually discussed here tonight.

I don't believe they have. We're not denying that Jesus could be called the son of Joseph if he was virgin birth and he wants to identify himself with the father figure and he calls

Joseph his father or Joseph is his legal father. There's no problem with that. We're not asking whether Jesus was born of a virgin.

We're taking for granted that he was born of a virgin. And we realize that since he was born of a virgin, he couldn't come from the seed of David.

He couldn't have David's Y chromosome. And according to the Bible, the Messiah had to be born of the seed of David.

So, we have, in fact, a real disqualifier in the case of Jesus for being the Messiah. What about Matthew chapter 12 verse 40?

I didn't invent the problem. Jesus said he's going to stay in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

The Abingdon Bible Commentary, 1929, published comments on Matthew chapter 12 verse 40 and says, the statement made is inaccurate.

Four, Jesus was in the grave only from Friday evening to Sunday dawn. I believe this is a reputable commentary on the

Bible written close to 100 years ago. And since that time, people have been admitting that this is a problem.

Are the hopes of the Israelites dashed with the crucifixion of the

Messiah? And are we not just simply using materialistic means of evaluating the end of the life of Jesus?

Folks, from where we stand, all we have are the New Testament documents that testify that Jesus came back to life.

Did these documents tell us that after Jesus was dead, he now reappeared to his disciples? When we read the documents, we do, in fact, have to cope with the synoptic problem.

We have to cope with the fact that the documents give us information that is dependable, and also information that is not dependable, such as, for example, the prediction that Jesus will stay in the earth for three days and three nights, which didn't actually work out.

But we have real problems. For example, Mark chapter 6 has Jesus sending out his disciples and telling them that they are to take a staff for their journey.

The parallel passages in Luke and Matthew has it that he told them, don't take a staff.

Now that's minor, but take a staff, don't take a staff, what does it matter? What matters is that we have the statement of Jesus recorded three times.

One in one direction, two in the other direction, and the two cannot meet. Either you take the staff or don't take the staff, you can't have it two ways.

Okay, maybe half a staff. We also have the problem with the crucifixion itself, that the gospel writers did not give us a consistent account of the dating of the crucifixion.

According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus had the meal with his disciples, the Passover meal, and then he was crucified the following day.

According to the gospel, according to John, Jesus was crucified on the day before he could live for the night to have the

Passover meal with his disciples. So either he died the day before the Passover meal, in which case he didn't eat it, or he died the day after, in which case he ate it, and you cannot have it both ways.

This is a problem that William Barclay in the Daily Bible Commentary remarked upon and said, we have a real contradiction here and there is nothing that can be done to reconcile this.

So in that case, we have documents which tell us that something remarkable happened, and we do not have any confidence, or I do not have that much confidence in these reports, to be able to base my faith on such a remarkable incident reported in these gospels, which

I find to be as non -dependable as they are. Finally, I believe that James misunderstands my reference to let the

Qur 'an speak. When we preach to a converted crowd, we can say, okay, that's what the Qur 'an says, and therefore listen to it.

And he can speak to a converted group of Christians and say, that's the Bible, let the Bible speak. Well, when we're speaking in a conversation like this, when we are looking at the evidence in an objective manner, we cannot say just because the

Qur 'an says it, that settles it. It may settle it for Muslims. Just because the Bible says it, it will settle it for Christians.

But when we deal with each other in a dialogue, we must in fact bring evidence and proof that is of a neutral character, so that we can examine it without our prior faith predispositions and presuppositions.

So finally, when we look at the passages which James has actually put before us, as passages which predict

Jesus before his coming, such as Isaiah 52, or Psalm 22, or the verse in Malachi, or Daniel 9, or Zechariah 9 -9, or Isaiah 9 -6 about the government being on his shoulder, and Psalm 2 about him being the ruler, and so on.

All of these predictions, actually if they're predictions about Jesus, they're predictions about somebody who will come and reign on the throne of David.

He must sit on the throne and assume rule and bring down the kingdom of God here on earth. But obviously he hasn't done that.

To begin with, he doesn't have the pedigree that will qualify him to sit on the throne. Secondly, in fact he didn't sit on the throne.

One night he was there saying to the high priest that he is in fact the Messiah. The next day he was out hanging on a cross instead of sitting on the throne.

So Christians had to readjust their thinking. That's why the gospel according to John has Jesus say, my kingdom is not of this world, because it was never of this world.

But it should have been had he been the true Messiah. So we cannot change the definition of what the Messiah is and then say he's the true

Messiah, and say okay well when he comes back he will assume the throne. Well that means that so far he hasn't done it.

And if all of these predictions that are cited really are predictions about a singular coming, in which the

Messiah should have brought the kingdom of God on earth. We're still praying for the kingdom of God, thy kingdom come.

And it hasn't come as predicted within the lifetime of the disciples who heard Jesus speak. It didn't come soon after in the lifetime of the writers such as Paul in 1st

Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 12 verse 17. Where he talks about the fact that Jesus will come back and scoop up all of those who are still alive in Christ, including obviously himself.

So it hasn't happened. In short, I believe that the no answer is really the predominant one.

Thank you very much. Okay Shabir, in looking at Deuteronomy chapter 18, you said you established, and I believe you did this primarily by quoting from the

Jerome Bible commentary. But where in the text do you get this plurality of prophets idea?

Especially when it says I will raise up for them a prophet. Isn't that singular in the Hebrew? In the

English it is definitely singular. I do not claim to know the Hebrew, but I can only depend on biblical scholars who

I assume to know the Hebrew. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing a commentary about Deuteronomy commentary. If you know the

Hebrew better than that, I'm willing to listen. But I cited the scholars. And obviously citation from non -authorities is a valid way of argumentation and proving the point.

Okay, well I don't think there's any, I looked at Jerome. I didn't see anywhere where they spoke of plurality in regards to prophet at that point.

So given that the terminology is singular and there isn't a variation either in the

Hebrew or in the Greek Septuagint. Then what is your objection to my statement that given that this is a

Jewish prophet who speaks the words of God and that the

New Testament views this of Jesus. Why would you view that as a yes and no?

Where does the no part come from Deuteronomy 18? Well the no part doesn't come from Deuteronomy 18 at all.

To begin with I should clarify that my citation was from the New Jerome Biblical Commentary.

And if you have just simply the Jerome Biblical Commentary, that should explain why you're seeing something different than I cited.

In any case, Deuteronomy 18 verse 18 I have granted could be a reference to Jesus if I have my

Muslim thinking hat on. But if I take off my Muslim thinking hat as you would want me to do and believe in Jesus but not

Muhammad. Then I would have to examine Jesus based on what is predicted about him as you claim.

And that prediction in Deuteronomy 18 verse 18 is followed by a qualifier. How do you know which is a true prophet and distinguish him from a false one?

It says directly that the false prophet is the one who predicts something and then it doesn't happen. And I have cited three areas in which

Jesus made predictions and these predictions did not come to pass.

So that is how I would remove Deuteronomy 18 verse 18 from being a reference to Jesus and be far from the answer.

You said that I want you to take off your Muslim hat. You seem to believe that I want you to somehow deny your

Islamic faith. Don't you understand my position to be that I'm just simply challenging you to be a consistent supernaturalist at each one of these points.

To apply the very same standards to the New Testament that you do. I've listened, as you know, before we debated

Biola to hours and hours of your talks. You were my constant companion on long bike rides and in doing

Dawah talks and doing Hadith discussions and so on and so forth. Do you understand that what

I'm asking of you is that you be consistent in applying the same standards to my text that you demand be applied to your text as well?

Well, the only supernaturalist I would be if I were to follow your line of argumentation and to believe that the

Quran is not the word of God, the Quran is not the new prophet of God, is to believe that God exists.

My belief that God exists is almost a part of my character and I found the expression of God's teachings in the faith of Islam.

But just that belief in the supernatural alone will not compel me to take the

Biblical statements as they are. Because knowing what I know about the Bible and knowing the passages that I have put before the audience here tonight, passages which clearly contradict each other, there's no reason why

I should take these passages as face value. It is only in giving my belief as a

Muslim that I can affirmly and confidently assert that Jesus is a true prophet and a true messiah of God.

You said that you have, the debate has seemingly become somewhat of a explain all my favorite contradictions idea.

But when you, for example, say the three days you quoted a commentary, the statement is inaccurate.

Well, certainly you know I can quote Wandsborough and anybody else to say that statements in the

Quran are inaccurate. But where did that commentary or you in your study deal, for example, with any of the commentaries, the believing commentaries by scholars who point out that if you look at the succession list of Kings in the

Old Testament, for example, they always count one portion of a time period as a full time period. It's the only way to make the exception list make any sense in the

Old Testament. The same thing happens with time. Jews count any portion of the day as a full day.

Did that commentary deal with that? How do you respond to that? I would just assume that it's an error.

To begin with, I think we should clarify that if you were to cite Wandsborough, you would be citing a non -Muslim critical scholar of the

Quran. And what I have cited tonight are actually Christian scholars.

You may not accept them as Christians, but their qualification as Christian scholars is actually quite well known.

E .E. Sanders, for example, that I've cited, I've cited the Bingham Bible commentary.

And so I'm actually referring to Christian sources. Now, as for the counting of each day by just simply its part,

I haven't seen in some of the material that you've cited, for example, in Gleason Archer's Bible Difficulties or in some of the other writings by Norman Geisler and others, answering critics of the

Bible, that they have presented any convincing reason for thinking that when Jesus said,

I will eat in the belly of the earth three days and three nights, that that could actually be parts of three days.

Because the emphasis is very clear. Three days and three nights. I do not find a similar sort of emphasized statement elsewhere in the

Bible that would help to explain this one to say that it could actually mean parts of three days. But you actually haven't looked at scholarly critical commentaries that present that.

In fact, that's been a historic explanation for literally almost 2 ,000. I have looked at a wide variety of commentaries, and I haven't found one that actually defends this by looking at other evidence in the

Bible that will give this sort of explanation in a convincing and persuasive manner.

And if I were to find the answer to this, to my satisfaction, it should have been in the work that cited

Mason Archer's Handbook of Bible Difficulties or when critics asked by Norman Geisler or some of the books by Josh McDowell answered the question, the answer that you guys have heard, and so on.

But I haven't found it. Evidently, I need to start bringing some better commentaries to the debates to give to you.

Sure. You'll take them. For example, have you ever, you said that John couldn't convict the other disciples.

This is exactly what Herman says concerning the time of the Passover. Have you ever read A .T. Robertson's Harmonization of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

A .T. Robertson died. Robertson. Robertson. Not Robinson.

Robertson was probably the greatest Greek scholar of American beliefs. And I would recommend that to you.

I'd be happy to send that to you. You said that the Christians were changing the definition of Messiah.

Wasn't it part and parcel of the earliest Christian documents that the problem was that Jewish tradition had missed the real definition of the

Messiah as the suffering servant? Why do you say they were changing the definition?

Why do you think the Jewish tradition that existed prior to Jesus becomes the definition of what the

Messiah has to be? Why can't Jews have missed it with their tradition, given how often

Jesus abraded them for adding the word of God and things like that? To do it that way would be circular.

If the Old Testament was always understood in an articulate way, very clearly, and then a claimant comes and says that the

Old Testament is exactly as it is, and then follows on with the basic definitions as they are, then somewhere along the line, when the prediction fails, when the

Messiah fails to do what the Messiah was supposed to do, as taken for granted all the while, then you cannot come along later on and say,

OK, but the Messiah will come back later, and then he will do it. The citations I've given from E .E.

Sanders in his book actually carefully go through the variety of statements that are found in the

New Testament. And what has been found is that the New Testament, over time, has actually adjusted what was being said about the

Messiah, so that now the second coming of the Messiah will be accommodated, that he failed the first time, but he didn't completely fail, he's going to come back the second time.

So you cannot adjust it along the way. You have to first of all set the criteria beforehand, and then see if we meet the target, not change the target, while we're attempting to find it.

In your presentation, James, you did refer to Isaiah 52 and 53.

Did you become familiar with the work of the womb about a hundred years ago, that identified the four

Isaiah songs, the servant songs of Isaiah? The four songs by whom? The four servant songs.

I'm sorry, I thought you mentioned a name. Doom. Doom, age 10. I'm not familiar with Doom, though.

Sounds like a bad name. I've not read

Doom, though. Don't do that just by association. Now, we look at passages from Isaiah that you have cited,

Psalm 2, and so on. How do you respond to the scholars who look at the statements of the

New Testament, that are descriptions of the life and teachings and words of Jesus, and find that these are statements actually borrowed out of the

Old Testament, rather than being actual historical recollections of what Jesus said?

In the same way that I challenged that very methodology in Dr. John Don Macrossan, because that's exactly where he comes from.

As you noted in your debate with Anish Shadosh in Glasgow in 2005, you quoted

John Don Macrossan, who basically says that the New Testament writers are doing exactly that.

They're looking at the Old Testament, and they're creating their text to create fulfillments. And that begins with a certain presupposition that there in essence cannot be what

Crossan calls projective prophecy. There cannot be predictive prophecy. It starts with an assumption that is a naturalistic assumption.

And that's why I asked Dr. Crossan, as one of the very first questions in our cross -examination, Dr. Crossan, what evidence could possibly exist in the first century that would convince you that a miracle took place?

Now, you and I believe that miracles took place in history. That God, in particular ways, violated what we would call natural law.

And I asked Dr. Crossan, what evidence would you accept that a miracle took place in the first century?

He said that there could be no other. It is that kind of presuppositional rejection of the worldview that you and I are supposed to share that if I'm debating

John Don Macrossan, I'm going to debate him on those presuppositions. What is frustrating to me in dealing with you is that you will embrace the scholarship that utilizes those presuppositions to simply dismiss any possible explanation of what you see as problems in the biblical text.

But then you will not do that for the canonic text. That's the inconsistency that I have been oppressing.

And, honestly, I went to a liberal seminary. And so all the commentaries, all the classes that I had to read in Old Testament were saying very the same things.

And so I've had, for years, had to point out the inconsistencies on a worldview level at the beginning of the assumptions that they have.

And when you actually start asking, why do you assume this? What's the foundation? It always comes back to a naturalistic assumption.

It does not come back to what the actual texts themselves say. And so that's how I respond to that information.

Given your supernatural presuppositions, you believe in God, and that God can perform miracles, and do what other people might call legendary things,

Do you apply that same sort of mode of thinking when you read the Bible of Nietzsche, of Amalien, the

Book of Mormon, the wider writing of scriptures out there? Fascinating you should say that, because as you probably may not know,

I don't know if we had a chance to sit down and talk, but my apologetic ministry began dealing with Mormonism.

And so the Book of Mormon is something that I've studied extensively. And you might say, well, how can you be consistent as a supernaturalist to reject the

Book of Mormon? Well, there are certain marks of truth. For example, the Book of Mormon claims that men were driving around in chariots with swords and bows and arrows pulled by horses, long before the

Spanish ever showed up in Mesoamerica. Well, that's just simply not a possibility. That's not historically accurate in any way, shape, or form.

And so I think it is valid to look at the possibilities of archaeology in the text of the

Old Testament and things like that. And I think that the Old Testament does very well. Again, you can start with naturalistic presuppositions, not allow for harmonization even in the archaeological realm.

But I think in looking at any of those texts, if they claim to be historical, you mentioned the

Book of Mormon, we can examine it and see that it has no foundation for being historical. If it does not make a claim to be historical, it's just a revelation that does not have any connection to what's going on in the world, then the question would be, is it consistent with what is taught by the one who rose from the dead?

Obviously, for me, the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his authority based upon that resurrection is extremely important, not only in my world view, but also the establishment of a meaningful epistemology.

And so if it does not teach what is consistent with the biblical teaching about man as a sinner and things like that, then

I would judge it on that basis. Now, aren't you then being as inconsistent as you are accusing me of being, in that while you are arguing for a supernatural predisposition, which you're asking me to assume in my reference to the

Bible, you are refusing to bring the same supernatural predisposition in reference to these men and charities being in America before historians could have found them?

Not at all. I am in no way, shape, or form bringing naturalistic presuppositions to the Book of Mormon, saying

I am going to start with the assumption that this cannot be revelation, and therefore it must be rejected on this basis.

I am not bringing that presupposition at all. I allow for the assertion that this is divine revelation.

If it's divine revelation, it will concur with history. It will live up to examination.

Since it provides us with the means of testing it, then we will be able to test it, and it will prove to be true.

And when we test it, we discover that it is not true. Now, I'm not saying that every single thing that is said in the

Old and New Testament, or even in the Book of Mormon, has to provide some sort of documentation of the reality of its existence, because especially when talking about things that took place 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 years ago, as you know in studying history, there's simply not a whole lot of data to be able to go on certain things.

But the Book of Mormon does make certain claims about locations and about the, for example, it says that they have gold and silver coins, and gives the whole coinage system.

We know what the people in that era had. Gold and silver is so plentiful, they never used it for coins.

They used jade and cocoa beans, two things never mentioned in the text of the Book of Mormon. And so, no, I'm not coming...

You seem to be hearing me saying that I think you should start with the assumption that something's true, as long as it claims to be supernatural.

I'm not saying that. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm simply saying to you, use the same standards in looking at the

New Testament that you use in looking at the Koran. You insist that we must allow the context of any surah to be examined.

And you faulted Robert Morley in your debate many years ago, because he interpreted one section, and you said if you had just gone back these number of ayahs, you would have seen that the definition is properly given here.

And you faulted him for that. I'm simply saying, you have to do the same thing with the New Testament. I'm not asking you to become a naturalist.

I'm not asking you to do anything like that at all. So now, applying this reason on the ground that you're now describing in detail, which

I have no difficulty agreeing with you on, isn't that what you have really been completing against, the looking at text and seeing that two texts contradict each other?

And so, you cannot have, take a staff, don't take a staff, and both be correct at the same time in the same place.

You cannot have it that Jesus was crucified the day before the Passover meal, and also the day after Passover meal, because obviously he wasn't crucified twice.

How do you respond to these things? Well, as I pointed out in my questions to you, for example, in my book,

Letters to a Mormon Elder, one of the specific alleged contradictions in the Bible that I address is the issue of the staff.

And what you seem to have missed is that when you allow all the synoptics to speak, it specifically states, do not obtain another.

And when you allow all three to speak, then it becomes understandable what's being said. The same, I mentioned to you,

A .T. Robertson, one of the greatest Greek scholars America has ever produced, has presented a strong and compelling argument that there is no contradiction between John.

If you just simply recognize that Passover in John is a week long, and he does, he provides you with the scholarly documentation that that's

Jewish usage. And remember, John's writing at a different time to a different audience, and that's why, for example, he even uses time numbers.

He uses third hour for him is not third hour for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, because they're talking to Jews in Palestine, and he's talking to people outside of that.

My point is that you seem to embrace the conclusions of liberal

Christians who have abandoned the belief that God has spoken in Scripture, and yet you don't do that when you look at it, when you choose the scholarship that you utilize in your presentation of the

Kanaan. That's what I find to be inconsistent. That's what I find to be contradictory, because if you would look harder, you would find that there are believing scholars who have answered these questions, and they have done so in such a way that they have not violated those things in any way, shape, or form.

Okay, thank you very much. We have our closing statements now, and I would like to point out that I believe we're going to have an opportunity of testing who is being consistent in their approach in the second half of this debate, because we're going to see that the

Kanaan specifically says that Muhammad is prophesied in the

Torah and the Injil. I would suggest to you that every single source that Shabir Ali has cited so far this evening would reject that thesis.

On its face would reject that thesis. Every single one. And so we're going to find out who's consistent.

I am not asking Shabir this evening. By the way, I did not use guilt by association. I'm sorry, I would not do that.

My point was that John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg, these men approach the text of the

Bible with particular presuppositions that preclude them from ever coming to the conclusion that the

Bible is actually the Word of God. They start with those presuppositions. They start with the idea that harmonization will not be allowed.

I went to a seminary where, as I said, I studied the scholarly material, and they never addressed the harmonizations that scholars for hundreds, even thousands of years had presented.

It was like, that's not even allowed. And that's why I asked the one that was cited that this statement is inaccurate.

Where did that commentary then go through the explanation that had been provided by many scholars for many years and say this is why that's wrong?

I can guarantee you, it didn't. It is taken as the starting point, and that's my point this evening, is that we cannot just start with naturalistic materialism and expect to get anywhere in examining either the

Bible or the Quran. Because both say God exists and God created.

The Christian epistemology, the Christian view of knowledge, is that we are created in the image of God. And that, in fact, the highest calling that we can have is to think

His thoughts after Him. That's what separates us from the animals. He has communicated with us.

He desires us to think His thoughts after Him. The naturalist materialist begins with the assumption that there is no

God, there is no revelation. We are simply the mere chance, random result of processes that might have created us, might not have created us.

There is no purpose for tomorrow. There is no purpose in life. And my friends, look at what is happening to our societies as a result of it.

The devaluation of human life and all of the aberrant behaviors that come with it.

And so I say to you, if we are going to be consistent, then we need to look at the presuppositions of these individuals that are being cited.

And if they start with the idea that, well, whatever this text says, it can't be consistent,

I say to you, why not? And I say to you, they don't take the time to look at those harmonizations.

I spent just as many hours preparing to debate John Dominic Cross as I did Shabir Ali. And over and over, and finally, one lecture

I heard, one, either Marcus Borg or John Dominic Cross would say, well, you know, of course there are some people who have tried to harmonize these, but we don't even deal with that.

And it just went on. That was it. There was never any option of saying, well, why don't you step back and allow the whole thing to have one coherent message.

That's what Shabir Ali asks for the Qanon. And I simply say to you, the scholarship that he relies upon to take apart the

New Testament begins with the assumption that those things are not true. You cannot allow the

New Testament to speak in that fashion. When he said, well, I'm quoting Christian scholars.

Well, how do you define a Christian? Many of you maybe have seen the story that just came out over the past, oh, about 36 hours of a

German scholar, a German Muslim scholar. Remember? Have you heard about it? Who has announced that the results of his study are that he's not certain any longer

Muhammad ever existed. Okay? Now, how many

Muslims in here think the man's a Muslim when he says he doesn't think Muhammad existed? Why not? You think the people who can deny the deity of Jesus Christ and resurrection are

Christians. Where is the consistency? There is no consistency. None whatsoever.

And if you're not consistent, then you're contradicting yourself. And that means your argument is invalid. That's my whole point.

I can quote liberals till the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is I've challenged them on their worldview and they have not been able to demonstrate the validity of their worldview.

And interestingly enough, every Muslim in this room would agree with my arguments that I made against them. And so what

I'm asking you, what I'm asking Shabir Ali, and Shabir and I have crossed swords, and I think

Shabir would tell you I've never compromised in his presence. I'm not going to compromise my faith, but I've also never tried to be purposely insulting to the man.

And what I'm asking him to do is not to just agree with me right off the bat and therefore reject

Islam. What I'm asking him to do is don't start with naturalistic presuppositions.

My argument is very simple. Shabir, here's my argument. If you will be a consistent supernaturalist, if you will use the same arguments that you use to defend the

Quran, to look at the New Testament, you will be convinced the New Testament is actually true, and on that basis would then have to question the

Quran, not the other way around. That's my argument. Why? Because one came before the other.

And as I've said many times before, as Surah chapter 5 says, we are commanded to examine, to judge, the people of the

Gospel, judge on the basis of what has been revealed in the Gospel.

And when I do so, I find that Muhammad not only did not teach the truth about Jesus Christ, but denied the truth about Jesus Christ.

But I've read the Quran on its basis. I have tried to allow it to speak for itself.

I didn't just come to it with Wandsborough and all the naturalistic presuppositions that Orientalists bring, and just go, well, you know,

I'm just going to chop this into little bits and pieces, and I'm going to make this contradictory to that contradictory. And by the way, if you look at Surah 7 and Surah 38, the term is gawa.

It is in one, Iblis says that he has been deceived, and in the other it says that Allah has actually deceived him.

He is going to gawa, he is going to deceive others. Why do the two differ from one another if there is only one author writing the two?

That's the question. Now, if you want to come up with an answer for that, that's great. The point is this. You have to examine those things.

You have to allow for context. You have to do the very same things I have to do with the Synoptic Gospels. If you just dismiss me right off the bat, then you can't do that in interpreting the

Quran itself. I'm looking for that consistency this evening. Thank you for being here.

Folks, in these closing remarks, then,

I would like to sum up where I believe this debate has gone tonight, so that we can think about all of the things that have been said, but in a summary form.

James began the debate by insisting that the Quran declares belief in Jesus, and therefore

Muslims must believe in Jesus. Moreover, that certain commentators on the Quran said that the coming of Jesus was predicted prior to his coming.

And then he basically gave us a long list of certain passages of the Old Testament that predict the coming of a king, and he believes that that king was

Jesus. In response, I said that the stories in the Bible have actually developed over time.

And as much as James has tried to apply, for example, Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 18 as a reference to Jesus as a prophet to come after Moses, that we should realize that this reference to the prophet being an

Israelite should be taken within the context of what we know to be the developing stories.

And I mentioned in that regard the stories of the births of the sons of Tamar, and of Jacob and Esau, and also of Ishmael and Isaac.

And I've shown that these legendary stories about the way in which babies fight with each other in the wombs of their mothers are actually reflections on what was happening on the ground, and the storytellers just simply projected that back into the wombs of the mothers of the men who are the patriarchs of the groups that are warring with each other.

And when we realize that, and we see that the history is written by the victors, the sons of Jacob, writing the story in Jacob's favor, saying to us that God hated

Esau should be taken exactly as what we know it now to be. In a similar vein, we realize now why the

Bible insists that the prophet is going to be from among the Israelites, because obviously it is written by the

Israelites, and the Ishmaelites somehow should be excluded from the blessing. But having said that,

I didn't deny that Deuteronomy 18 .18 could be a reference to Jesus if I think it through as a

Muslim. With my Muslim thinking cap, I believe that Jesus is the prophet of God, a true prophet, the

Messiah of God. I wouldn't be a Muslim if I didn't believe that. But I understand that the context of these debates is that Christians are encouraging

Muslims to stop being Muslims. Mind you, Muslims do not ask Christians to stop being

Christians. In fact, Muslims believe that their call to Christians is to be true

Christians, to keep being Christians. The word Christian means a follower of Christ. And Muslims believe that by following the last revelation that has come from God, they are followers not only of the last prophet

Muhammad, but by extension and by implication, followers of all of the prophets. So it wouldn't be technically incorrect to describe a

Muslim as a Christian. And the call of a Muslim to their Christian brethren, brothers and sisters, is actually to be true followers of Christ, to be true

Christians. Because Muslims believe that the message of Jesus has been changed over time.

And that we are therefore calling our friends back to the original message.

So as a Muslim, I believe that Jesus was a true prophet. But that does not require me as a Muslim to think that there was something said about Jesus before he was even born.

And hence, I could actually examine the prophecies that James has presented to see if they actually quite measure up.

But what I do find when I examine these prophecies is that Jesus seems, right from the get -go, to fail to be a true prophet if I wasn't thinking this through as a

Muslim. Just examining the Old Testament scripture, there is a criterion that true prophets must not give you false predictions.

And apparently, Jesus did. If I don't think this through as a Muslim. In other words, as a

Muslim, I would have to say that the documents that record that Jesus gave false predictions must be themselves, somehow, changed from the original and true story.

But if I didn't have my Muslim predisposition that tells me that, I would have to look at it with the critical eye and say that it looks like Jesus did make false predictions.

Moreover, I see that the qualifications which are given in the very texts which James cites to prove that Jesus is the

Messiah requires him to be born of the seed of David. And since the New Testament story is that he was born of a virgin, he couldn't possibly carry the white chromosome of David.

He couldn't be from the seed of David. Moreover, it is clear that in Matthew's account,

Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah. And according to the Bible itself, Jeremiah chapter 22, verse 30,

God has put a curse on Jeconiah that he should be written as childless and his descendants cannot sit on the throne of David.

In that case, Jesus disqualifies as being the Messiah. So I don't believe I've brought to this debate a kind of inconsistent approach.

I'm very clear in what I'm doing. As a Muslim, I believe in Jesus. But if you ask me not to be a

Muslim and to examine this carefully, then I would have to say that Jesus does not quite measure up.

Notice that James thinks that if I were to consistently cite Christian sources,

I would end up with a contradiction. It seems that he does not understand the manner in which citations should be made.

We cite a scholar when the scholar has said something that we agree with and we use that as a proof that this is a valid position.

We don't have to agree with everything a scholar says in order to cite the one thing that he says.

We can believe in some things that a scholar says and disbelieve in some other things that the scholar says, but we're citing him as an authority in the field in which he is speaking and we must explain then why we make a selective approach.

Easy. When I cite Christian scholars, as I've done tonight, I don't share all of their Christian presuppositions.

Christian scholarship has had a long history where things were accepted traditionally and gradually they're being rejected as more and more scholars open their eyes to some of the historical and archaeological data that forced them to reverse certain long -held conclusions.

When they do that, I cite them. If I do not cite them where they continue to insist that Jesus is the son of God and Jesus died for our sins, that's because I understand they're maintaining as they should be expected to do the traditional faith without necessarily basing that on evidence and proof.

But when the evidence and proof confronts them and they change their position, that is citable material for the

Muslim debater and I believe that I'm well within my rights to cite them in that respect and I believe

James does the same thing for example when he cited the German scholar. But by the way, I would ask, who is this

German scholar? Does he have a history within scholarship among Muslim scholars to qualify as a

Muslim scholar who should be citable and believable by all Muslims? I don't believe he's even mentioned the name of this

German scholar that he's referring to. So, in short, I have referred to things that are provable.

They are actual citations from the Bible, the chapter and verse. I've referred to the stories and showed you the reasonableness of the approach that I have taken and in short, my answer to the question was yes and no.

As a Muslim, yes, Jesus is a prophet of God. Not as a Muslim, I would have to say that he failed in the criteria given by the