Dr. James White: Reaching Muslims

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All right, well it's great to be with you guys this evening and a few gals as well out there. I don't want to exclude you at all.

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I just want to mention on the screen right now, actually since we're talking about proclaiming the gospel in the masjid, masjid is the place of worship.

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We normally use the term mosque. They're really the same word with slightly different meanings.

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The masjid is probably more the place of actual worship. And this is actually a couple pictures from October of last year.

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This is in Erasmus, South Africa outside of the capital of Pretoria. And I'm debating, there's

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Shabbir Ali, Yusuf Ismail is seated next to him. Those are two of the leading Islamic apologists in the

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English speaking world. And if you see the Arabic up here, this is what's called the Mimbar.

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And there's an area behind me that goes in a semicircle, that's the Qibla. And this is the actual place of worship.

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I'm standing where the imam leads the prayers. And I'm a little shorter than normal because everyone in the room is in stocking feet.

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You do not wear shoes inside the masjid. And this was certainly the first time in South Africa.

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And as far as we know, really around the world in at least a century that there has been a debate actually inside the masjid.

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I debated a number of mosques before in Toronto and East London mosque a week after the attack on the

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Benghazi consulate, we were debating there. But it was always like this would be a room attached to a church rather than inside the actual masjid itself.

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So we're hoping in just a matter of weeks literally to go back to South Africa and to do the same thing in Durban.

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And this is in the, as far as moderate and radical Muslims go, this area is probably the least radical and then

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Durban's more radical and then Cape Town's the worst. Boko Haram is in Cape Town. So who knows what's gonna happen there.

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But we will see what will happen. And here's a picture of some of the Muslims in the audience.

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You'll notice that is the audience because they're all sitting on the floor. It was a very strange thing to be talking down to people.

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You weren't trying to talk down to people, but you sort of had to because they're sitting on the floor. So there were a few

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Christians who were too much of a wimp to survive two and a half hours on the floor and they had to sit in chairs. But the

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Muslims are used to that. They didn't have any problem with it. So we've had some incredible opportunities.

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I never saw these opportunities coming. But this particular presentation,

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I've only done it one other time. Since I had the opportunity of going to South Africa.

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So it's got all the latest material, shall we say, we'll be using this evening.

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And so let me start with a brief clip from that debate in the Masjid in South Africa.

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I want to really just focus upon one text from the New Testament that sort of summarizes all of it because there's so many things that could be summarized.

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But I want to look at just one text and allow that one text to summarize the entire essence of what the

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Christian message is on sin and salvation this evening. And it's found in Paul's second epistle.

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It's Paul's epistle to Titus. And in those words in chapter two, he describes

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Christians in these ways. Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great

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God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

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There is a tremendously balanced presentation of what the triune

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God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's listen to what it said. First of all, we are looking for the blessed hope.

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We have a blessed hope. What is it? We are looking for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.

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Both the words God and Savior here are applying to Jesus the Christ. This is not some doctrine that came up 325 years later.

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Here in Paul, which interestingly enough was just said, but he was even before Mark. I would actually dispute that as far as the writing of that goes.

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But he's such an important person and yet in his own writings, we have

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Jesus described as God. And it's God and Savior. See those two words together?

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Isn't that the most wonderful thing that any person who knows their own sin could ever hear are the words God and Savior together?

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Because you see, God is our judge. And if we didn't know that he was a merciful person, if we didn't know that he was one who wanted to provide salvation, then to hear of him only as judge would be a frightening thing.

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Because I know my heart and I know his holiness, but he's called God and Savior.

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And then he's described as having given himself for us. Unfortunately, I didn't hear my friend

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Shamir present my understanding, and I think the biblical understanding of the role of Jesus Christ.

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Because here you see, who gave himself for us, it was voluntary, it was purposeful.

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It was his intention, it was the whole purpose of the incarnation itself, that Jesus entered into human flesh to give himself.

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He said, no one takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord. It was an act of love.

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Even the incarnation, according to Philippians chapter two, it says he made himself of no reputation.

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This was something Jesus did voluntarily out of his great love that he has for us, for men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

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Who gave himself for us, for a purpose. Not so we might just go live our lives as we want to live them.

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Instead, notice, to redeem us from every lawless deed. There has to be something about the death that he died.

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The fact that he was sinless and we are sinful. The fact that he does this in the fulfillment of God's law, and we've done the breaking of God's law.

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There's something in the death of Christ that provides for redemption, for taking us out of the bonds of slavery.

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We have these shackles on our arms and our hands, and because we're sinners, we can't get them off.

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But he comes along and he provides perfect redemption in himself.

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To redeem us from every lawless deed. There is nothing beyond the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

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No sin, no matter how great, is beyond his power. He is a perfect savior, and I can tell you this evening, folks,

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I have no right to stand before you as some type of perfect man, because I am not. I am a redeemed sinner, and it is a privilege for me to be able to speak the gospel, because I know my unworthiness.

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The only worthiness I will ever have to stand before a holy God, is to stand the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is mine by faith.

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How can you stand before a holy God? Will he not look into your heart? Will he not know that even when you do your good deeds, you do them with a stain of sin?

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You know that people are looking at you. Isn't there some arrogance? Isn't there some pride? Do you go home and treat your wife badly?

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God knows all those things. The only way I'm gonna be able to stand before a holy God, is if I'm clothed in the righteousness of another, because my righteousness will never avail, and that's why

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I need to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. To redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession.

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Notice, his own possession. I don't have time to develop it, my time's going so quickly. But if you look at all of the phrases that is used in this verse, they go back to Yahweh in the

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Old Testament, redeem a special people for himself. These all have to do with God's redemption of the people of Israel, now being fulfilled in the redemption of the people in Jesus Christ.

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And he is purifying for himself a people for his own possession. That means God is at work in my life to purify me.

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He's conforming me to the image of Christ. He brings conviction of sin. He teaches me what it means to follow in his footsteps.

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But you see folks, the reason, notice it says, zealous for good deeds. Why do Christians do good works?

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It's not out of fear. I'm not trying to add something to what Jesus did.

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His righteousness is perfect for me, it is enough for me. I'm not trying to add to his works.

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My friends, the reason that I do good works is because of the fact that I love

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God. And I want to be like my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. When he saves his people, he sends his spirit into them and begins conforming them in the image of Christ.

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And in fact, the wonderful thing is, the Bible says Jesus is living his life now out in me.

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I'm a part of the body of Christ. All the believers here this evening, my brothers and sisters, we are joined together by the spirit of God and that spirit of God is conforming us to the image of Christ.

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He is purifying us and that's why we're zealous for good deeds. Not because we're trying to earn something from God.

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Not because we're trying to add something to what Jesus did. Jesus just didn't make us savable and we have to do good deeds to somehow get that.

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Instead, Jesus' work is absolutely sufficient for us. And I do good deeds out of the love of my heart, out of my desire to show my love for the one who loved me before I took my first breath.

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In fact, so intensely personal is the message of the New Testament that it tells us that we who are in Christ will unite with him in his death so that his death is our death, his burial is our burial, his resurrection is our resurrection.

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We have already been seated with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus is the message of the book of Ephesians. And so you see, when the

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Bible talks about doing good deeds, Shabir mentioned working out your salvation with fear and trembling. What's the very next verse?

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For it is God who has worked within you both to will and to do according to his good purpose.

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Now, why would I start off with such a long clip? Because not only was it an amazing thing when you see the camera panning around to realize the context that I'm getting to speak in, but everything that I said there,

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I was hitting on the key issues that those men and women in that room who were not

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Christians, there were a number of Christians there that evening, but all the Muslims in that room had been given false information about in all of their religious upbringing.

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I emphasized the voluntariness of the giving of Christ. I emphasized why it is we do good works.

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I emphasized the perfection of his work, that no one took his life from him.

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He gave it of his own accord. This is what the Father, Son, and Spirit had intended to do. These are all things that the vast majority of the people seated literally at my feet had never heard before.

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And in fact, had heard basically the opposite. And so, what's one of the first things

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I'm communicating here? When you witness to a Muslim, and obviously one of the first things you have to look at is, is this person from another country?

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Or are they a second or third generation Muslim living in America? That's gonna make a huge difference in your ability to communicate with them and with what they have been taught and how deeply they've taken it in.

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Obviously, we're talking about non -American Muslims here because we're in South Africa. And so, when they're coming from a

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Muslim culture, there's gonna be an entire set of barriers that we're gonna have to get through to be able to communicate the gospel with clarity and to get over the language barrier.

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Because just as you have a language barrier with Mormonism, you have a language barrier with Muslims. Because of the fact that the

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Quran, and I'm gonna pass my Quran around here for a second, the Quran comes after the Bible. It tries to deal with our beliefs, but it misrepresents our beliefs.

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The author of the Quran did not understand what we believe, but that's what the Muslim thinks we do believe.

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And therefore, when they hear you saying certain things, they're going to translate your words into their way of understanding.

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And you have to be aware of that because the onus is always gonna be on us to build the bridge of communication.

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They're not gonna build the bridge of communication. We have to do that. So that's why we need to have a modicum of understanding of where they're coming from, what they believe.

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How many of you have read the Quran? All of it? Anybody read all of it?

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Okay. Well, since there's nobody, I was gonna say, from an Islamic perspective, unless you've read this, you've not read the

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Quran. This is the Arabic Quran. This is the 1924 Egyptian printing. I'm gonna pass it around, go ahead and take a look at it, see what it looks like.

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From the Muslim perspective, that is the only Quran that exists. The Quran does not exist in translation, even though only about 16 to 19 % of the world's

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Muslims are Arabic and hence speak Arabic. And hence the vast majority of them are dependent upon English translations in their own language.

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To read the Quran, you have to read it in Arabic. There is a very strong Arab centrism in modern

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Islam. And you'll notice that even as I explain key Islamic doctrines to you this evening,

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I always have to do it using Arabic terms because that's just the way Islam is.

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There's no way around that. And so there is the Quran from their perspective. We'll talk a little bit more about that.

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I just want you to take a look at it. Notice what it does and does not have. You won't be able to make head or tails unless you read

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Semitic languages. But you will not notice that there will be any footnotes. There are no introductions.

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There are no notes in the sides like you have in your, well, especially if you have the ESV study Bible, which is a deadly weapon in and of itself.

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But you'll see none of that in the text of the Quran. We'll talk about why that's relevant maybe a little bit later on, okay?

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So I wanted to get that going around. See if we can try to make sure it gets everywhere. If a table gets skipped or something like that, just put your hand up later on.

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But everything I was emphasizing there, and by the way, Shabir did compliment.

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No, it was Yusuf that complimented me on my bow tie. So that was good as well, so.

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All right, in Surah 582 we read, you will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers to be the

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Jews and those who associate others with Allah. The term for associating others with Allah in Arabic is shirk,

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S -H -I -R -K. That is a term that you will want to know. We will be defining it. There's where it's defined right there.

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Associating anyone or anything with Allah is shirk. Shirk is an unforgivable sin. It's unforgivable in the sense that if you die in the state of shirk as a mushrik, you cannot be forgiven of your sins.

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If you become a Muslim, then you're forgiven of your previous acts of shirk, but shirk is very, very important.

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And you will find the nearest of them in affection to the believers are those who say, we are

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Christians. That is because among them are priests and monks and because they are not arrogant.

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Now, when you look at the Quran, you will discover, well, when you study the

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Quran, what you discover is that if you try to read it beginning to end, you'll never figure it out because it's not in chronological order.

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The Quran has 114 what are called surahs. We would call them chapters. But given that surah two is over 300 verses long, that's really not much of a chapter.

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It's a small book unto itself. But the order of the surahs is based on length.

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The first surah, Surat al -Fatiha is a seven verse prayer. Then beginning with the second surah, the cow,

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Surat al -Baqarah, it is the longest. And then surah three is a little bit shorter. Surah four is a little bit shorter.

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Surah five is a little bit shorter until you get to the last few surahs, which are only a few ayah or verses, ayat, verses long.

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So what happens because it's done by size rather than when it was written, if you read from beginning to end, you're jumping back and forth, back and forth between the key periods in Muhammad's life, assuming that Muhammad is the author of this book, which is the

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Islamic perspective, but historians have certain issues and questions about certain elements of that.

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I will normally refer to the author of the Quran simply to avoid any of the debates and the hard feelings that normally come up when discussing

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Muhammad. But as it may, the point is that in the first half of his life, from 610 until 622,

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Muhammad is a minority prophet in Mecca. Mecca is filled with polytheists.

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There is a shrine in the middle of the city called the Kaaba and a lot of the money of Mecca comes from trade and people coming in to worship at the

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Kaaba where there's like 360 idols inside. And there are certain worship seasons and that's when they get a lot of their money for even existing, they cannot grow their own food.

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So Muhammad comes along, he's called to prophethood in 610 by the angel Jibril, and for the first 12 years, he is persecuted.

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And because he's preaching monotheism, he's preaching there's only one God, Allah, and hence he's preaching against the very thing that makes

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Mecca a special place. And his family, his tribe, the Quraish tribe, are in charge of the

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Kaaba. So he's in a really difficult situation and he only gets a few disciples during this period of time and they are persecuted.

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Some are killed, some are beaten. There is, according to the Hadith, there's one story. The Hadith are various acts and sayings of Muhammad and his companions that were collected over the first couple hundred years after Muhammad.

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And according to the Hadith, there's a story where Muhammad was prostrate in prayer and someone came along and dumped camel innards on his back and he just stayed in that position until his young daughter came along and pulled the camel intestines off of his back.

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And you would think, wow, that's a pretty harsh story. Of course, the odd thing is

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I noticed in reading through the Hadith, which are many, many, many thousands of them, that every time that story was told, it was also narrated how those men by name who did that were eventually killed by the

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Muslims. So there was a definite retribution that was brought against those particular individuals.

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But that's what happens from 610 to 622. Then in 622, you have what's called the Hijra. And the

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Hijra, that's when Muhammad's followers leave Mecca and they go to Yathrib, rename it

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Medina, the city of the prophet. And Muhammad goes there and now he's basically the prophet in charge of armies.

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And now the original revelations were talking, even talked about religious freedom, no compulsion in religion, because he was a minority prophet.

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Now he is the prophet and he has an army and all of a sudden what's written in the

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Quran after that point is strike the coffers, strike the unbeliever on the neck, and so on and so forth.

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And so there's a change. And if you read straight through the Quran, you'll bounce back and forth between those and it won't make any sense at all.

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If you do decide that you want to read the Quran, which is an excellent way to get into a conversation with a

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Muslim, it's much shorter than the New Testament. It doesn't take all that long to read. Whatever you do, don't read it from beginning to end.

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There's a chart in my book, Whatever Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. I was going to bring some copies tonight, totally spaced it. I'm not real good at marketing.

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And there's a chart in there that gives you the best guess that we have as to the actual order of the surahs.

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So if you follow that, you'd at least be reading the Quran in chronological order. It might make it a little bit easier to understand at that particular junction.

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This obviously comes from a period of time where Muhammad is still trying. For a while, he was trying to get both

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Jews and Christians. It seems to me that the author of the Quran did believe that he was being consistent with what was found in the

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Old and New Testaments, which he calls the Torah and the Injil. He did not have any firsthand access to our scriptures, and that's why there's so much misunderstanding on his part as to what is contained in them.

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But it seems pretty clear that he did think that what he was teaching was consistent with what's found in the

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Bible itself. But then eventually he comes to the conclusion that there's never going to be this big love fest.

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And that's when more of the harsher material begins to appear in the text of the Quran toward both

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Jews, you have it here, as well as toward Christians as well. But Christians are the only people, the only religious group that has anything positive said about them in the

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Quran at all. And that's the one verse in all the Quran that says something positive about Christians is

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Surah 582. Now, the interesting thing is, Surah 5 is also the source of the majority of their misunderstanding of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, as we'll see. So it is interesting to note that that's where it is. Oh, okay.

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That's one of the problems in having that back there is I can't see what's up next. Now I want to, one of the things

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I like to use the clips for is since I've had the opportunity of debating Muslims, generally it's hard to get

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Muslims to come and speak to you while I'm speaking to you at the same time. Though I do have a

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Muslim friend in Australia that has twice now in seminary classes that I was teaching joined our class via Skype to dialogue with the students.

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And that's a great way to get students to take their studies a little more seriously. At the end of the week, you're going to be dialoguing with a

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Muslim apologist and he'll see you, you'll see him, you'll get to ask questions and so you need to have good questions. They read their assignments so much more, with so much more focus, it's great, it's wonderful.

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But anyway, but being able to use these clips allows me to sort of bring some of my

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Muslim friends along and give you an insight into things. This next clip I'm going to show you is, this was the first debate

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I did with a Muslim but I do not consider it my first Muslim debate. I had not studied Islam at this point.

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I was simply defending the doctrine of the Trinity. This is 1999, I still had hair, I shouldn't have, I should have already given up at that point as you'll be able to tell.

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But this is Hamza Abdel -Malik, who is not any longer even an Orthodox Sunni Muslim, which is interesting.

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But this is one of the audience questions. And the audience questions were by far the most interesting part of that evening, if you've ever seen this debate.

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Here is a Muslim from another country and I want you to listen to his question.

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And I love to watch you, I love to watch audiences. Put yourself in my position, how would you respond to this man?

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And well, just see what happens. Yes, my question to the doctor.

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I heard you repeating many time, you're saying he's a creator about Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, because we

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Muslim believe in Jesus, the mighty prophet of God. I heard you many time, you're saying he's the creator of everything and all things.

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So I want you to explain to me, if it's possible, if he's a creator of everything, when

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Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, was he walking by the fig tree with his companion, the fig tree with his companion, and he wants to eat some fig.

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And they told him, master, the fig is not in season. So if he was

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God, how he don't know if he create the tree, how he doesn't know if what's in season or what not in season if he create everything.

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And if the fig was not in season and he's God, first of all, we don't accept

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God to be hungry, he wants to eat, but you Christian, you said God choose to do so, so that's your faith.

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But I'm saying, even if he was God and fig is not in season, why he couldn't order the tree to bring fig?

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Isn't that God that won't create everything? Okay, thank you, Dr. White. He did so because the fig tree represented the people of Israel and he made the application the people of Israel look like they have fruit, but they do not, it was a clear application that he made.

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Secondly, he did eat food because the word became flesh, he became hungry, he became tired, because as the

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New Testament, as it was written, clearly indicates Jesus Christ was the

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God man, the eternal Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. He was a true man, he ate food, he became tired, he slept, he grew, et cetera, et cetera.

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Christians have always believed that, why? Because we believe all the New Testament teaches. Now, I was watching and some of you were looking at each other going, you know, the

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Jehovah's Witness that came to my door Saturday was a whole lot harder to deal with than that. Because you've never heard of the fig tree argument before.

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But you gotta understand, this man comes from a nation where he's probably never dialogued with any kind of educated

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Christian at all. And what's more, his argument is a

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Quranic argument. We'll see it in the text of the Quran. And so it might strike us as a really bad argument, but how would you answer it?

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I mean, we know what Jesus was doing, we know what the fig tree represented, but they really believe, and some of their top apologists will repeat this argument, obviously, in a little better fashion, but they really believe that Jesus thought there would be figs on that tree and he was just confused as to what the season was.

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And that this is evidence of the ignorance of Jesus. Now, have they read Mark?

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Have they read the parallel in Matthew? And no, of course not, but that's what you're going to encounter.

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And if your first reaction is, oh, come on, man, that's, I'm Jered Van Til, that's not gonna get you very far with the

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Muslim at all. It's really not. You have to be able to recognize that knowing the high end of Christian apologetics, if it doesn't allow you to deal with this kind of thing, you're not really gonna be overly effective with these particular folks.

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Now, I think, it's really hard to see a teeny tiny thing from up here, but I think this next clip is from my debate at the

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University of Johannesburg. How many of you have ever heard of Ahmed Didat? Okay, Ahmed Didat is still revered, greatly revered in South Africa.

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And I may be doing a debate with this gentleman again at Northwest University in Potsdam in just a matter of weeks.

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But this was at the University of Johannesburg. Listen for yourself.

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Right, that's why, question one. When God the Son died on the cross, did all three also die with him?

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As you say, they are one in Trinity, then you are saying God died, or one person of God died, so now there is only two persons of God left.

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Can you just explain that, please? Thank you very much for the question. Again, if we understand the doctrine of the

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Trinity, then we understand that what we are asserting is that Jesus was the God man. That is, that he was one person with two natures.

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They are not intermingled with one another. This is why Jesus can give his life voluntarily on Calvary's tree.

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If he did not have that human nature, then he could not give his life. And so it is the

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God man who gives his life. Now, of course, we as Christians and you as Muslims do not believe that death means cessation of existence.

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And so when Jesus dies upon Calvary's tree and he voluntarily gives his life, he does not cease to exist.

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So in answer to the question, was there only two left, that would assume that Christians believe that people cease to exist when they die, and of course, we don't believe that.

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So that's always been a question that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're saying. The giving of that life was voluntarily on Christ's part, and it was the giving of his human life.

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This was not God dying in the sense that the divine being ceased to exist, or the divine being in some way, shape, or form was caused to undergo some kind of a change.

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The whole reason for the joining of the human nature to Jesus is so that a perfect sacrifice could be given, and we could be joined to him so that his death becomes our death, and his resurrection becomes our resurrection.

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And so in answer to your question, no, there's no cessation of existence, and therefore, the idea of one ceasing to exist would not even be relevant to us.

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And it is the giving of the human life of Jesus Christ, that perfect human life, that is in view when we speak of his having given himself in that way, out of love for us and to establish the gospel.

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All right, question two. In your whole presentation you gave us, you didn't give us one verse from the

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Bible, from the lips of Jesus, peace be upon him, where he clearly defines

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God as being three in one. As this should be well -emphasized and given special importance, could you maybe show us this verse, or from any prophet even, it's fine?

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Well, first of all, I have to point out that the demand that is often made of a single verse to define the doctrine of the trinity is an irrational demand, and I reject it.

31:42

You do not apply that standard to the Quran. You, in your interpretation of the Quran, allow for the reading of numerous ayahs to be brought together.

31:50

This is found in the Hadith, this is found in all the interpretation, the early tafsir, so you again are asking us to do something that you folks, yourselves, do not do.

31:59

I think that's unfair. Secondly, what I did point out in my presentation is the fact that Jesus said and did things that a mere prophet could not do.

32:08

Since Jesus then also spoke of how he and the Father were gonna send the spirit, and by the way, that cannot possibly be someone in the sixth century in Arabia, but is one who proceeds from the

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Father and the Son, and if, by the way, that is someone other than the Holy Spirit of God, Jesus is the one who sent him.

32:26

Given that the Father and the Son send the spirit, and that both the Son and the

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Spirit do things that only God can do, this is what has caused Christians, forced

32:37

Christians who believe in all that God has revealed in the scriptures to understand the doctrine of the trinity.

32:42

You have to reject elements of the biblical revelation, both prophetic in the Old Testament, as well as fulfilled in the

32:49

New Testament, to reject the doctrine of the trinity, and so looking for a single verse is inappropriate.

32:58

Looking for Jesus accepting worship, Jesus recognized, being identified as Yahweh, Jesus teaching with the authority of God, Jesus doing things that no mere prophet could ever do, all of those things have to be taken together, and that's why the person who honestly approaches the text of the

33:18

New Testament is forced to the conclusion that those writers were telling us that Jesus Christ truly was

33:24

Emmanuel, God with us. Just by the way, this young gentleman right here is

33:32

Pastor Rudolf Buschhoff. He made that whole trip work.

33:38

He's already making the next trip, putting it together. Tremendous brother.

33:44

As soon as I landed and he picked me up in Johannesburg, it's wonderful to be able to travel around the world and see the spirit of God at work in other places and the unity we have in Christ.

33:58

It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. He's a great brother. That gentleman, the Muslim gentleman, represents the

34:05

Ahmad Didat mindset, so how could Jesus have died because now you've only got two of the three left, et cetera, et cetera.

34:12

You really find out how much you know about your basic Christian theology when you have to explain it to someone who does not share with you the foundations that you're so accustomed to using within the context of the church.

34:26

And those of you who've dealt with Mormons, you know what that's like, but they have the same vocabulary. It just means different words.

34:32

Here you've got folks that are much farther out as far as their social context, and it makes the conversation all that much more challenging.

34:43

Now, what I was asked to address is reaching Muslims, and so what you need to understand are the barriers that stand in your way, and you've already heard a lot of them.

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I've illustrated them, and I'll give you more illustrations, but these are the three things I want you to understand when you leave this evening.

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If someone asks you what was the main thing about, these are the three things I want you to understand and want you to hear.

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Number one, Tawhid, shirk, and the canonic misunderstanding of Trinity. Tawhid is the central affirmation of the

35:21

Islamic faith. It is the oneness of Allah. So today on the dividing line,

35:32

I played a clip. I may grab it and use it in future presentations, but it's from Syria.

35:40

It's recent. It is some of the ISIS people, and you have a teacher teaching young people, and he's identifying kafirs.

35:52

Kafirs are unbelievers, and what defines an unbeliever for him?

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They do not accept Tawhid. They practice shirk. Shirk is the association of anyone and anything with Allah, and for the vast majority of Muslims in the world, you'll find some minority westernized

36:17

Muslims for whom this is not the case, but for the vast majority of Muslims around the world, you and I are mushrikun.

36:26

We are mushriks. We engage in shirk, why? Because we worship

36:31

Jesus, and Jesus was merely a prophet. He was just sent by God. He was merely a man, and therefore if you worship

36:39

Jesus, you are associating a mere man with Allah, and therefore you're guilty of shirk. Shirk is the unforgivable sin.

36:45

If you die as a Christian, there is no forgiveness for you. Hellfire is your only possible destination, and so combine that with the fact that the

36:57

Quran, the author of the Quran does not understand the nature of sonship and believes that our saying that Jesus is the son of God is the same thing as saying that God had a wife and they had a kid named

37:09

Jesus. That's what the vast majority of Muslims believe we believe.

37:14

Again, there are westernized Muslims. If you're on the campus of ASU and you're talking to a

37:21

Muslim professor who is a third generation American, it's quite probable that he has grown beyond that understanding, but that now puts him in the minority, not the majority.

37:34

The last couple times I've taken a cab ride, I've had a Muslim cabbie, and they're always from another country, and they universally had these views.

37:43

They had not been westernized, and so they did believe all these misrepresentations, and so you have to know where the person you're talking to is coming from.

37:51

So the first thing is, if shirk is the one sin that cannot be forgiven, you die as a mushrik, you're going to be bathed in the flames of hell, and believe me, the

38:06

Quran and the Hadith are much more vivid in their pictures of hell than anything we have until you get to Dante.

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There's not even a question amongst Muslims as to the issue of eternal punishment or anything like that.

38:25

In fact, just to give you an illustration of this, Jeff said we had till about 1130, so I'm not really in any hurry.

38:36

But I will narrate a Hadith for you. I love narrating

38:41

Hadith. You want to get a Muslim to listen to you? Narrate Hadith, oh my goodness. Talk about getting, just kicking the door open, and getting to sit down in the living room for a while.

38:51

Most of you know I'm a cyclist. I spend an absurd amount of time riding around mainly in the

38:58

North Valley. And over the course of the past number of years,

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I listened to all of the two major collections of the Hadith and major portions of the other collections, the

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Sunni Hadith. The Shia have their own, which are really weird. And I'm talking primarily about Sunni Islam this evening, because that makes up 85 to 90 % of the world's

39:17

Muslims, by the way. That is Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

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They're nine and eight volumes in Arabic, English, respectively. And so it took a lot of time to listen to all of that while riding along.

39:32

And I've always said, if I ever get hit by a truck, and somebody picked up my iPod and started listening to it, they'd go, call

39:37

Homeland Security immediately! You know, and they'd come out, and black helicopters would whisk me away, and I'd never be seen again.

39:43

So, but one of the stories in the Hadith is about Muhammad's uncle,

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Abu Talib. Remember, I told you, between 610 and 622, Muhammad's a minority prophet.

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And the only reason he survived that time period is because his uncle,

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Abu Talib, protected him. On his deathbed, Muhammad comes to Abu Talib, and he says, look, you know that I've been sent by Allah.

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You know that I'm the prophet of Allah. Say the words, and I will be able to intercede for you before Allah.

40:23

To become a Muslim, and I'm, no, that's not the next, yep, the next one. You'll see what, the next screen will tell you about how to become a

40:33

Muslim. So I won't tell you about that right now. But he says, say the words. Abu Talib, the rest of the family is sitting there, don't you dare abandon the ancestral gods.

40:42

Don't you dare shame the family. Back and forth, back and forth. Long and short of his, Abu Talib dies as a polytheist.

40:50

He does not embrace Muhammad's religion. And so, Muhammad is given two special intercessions.

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I might get around to the main one later on. But the minor one is, even though Allah forbade him to pray for his own parents who died as polytheists, he was allowed to intercede for Abu Talib.

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And as a result, Abu Talib has the best place in hell.

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Abu Talib has the best place in hell. Now, you're all sitting there wondering, so what is the best place in hell like?

41:35

According to Muhammad, Abu Talib wears sandals that are so hot his brains boil.

41:45

That's the best place in hell. There you go. So, when Muhammad intercedes for you, you get piping hot sneakers.

41:54

That's the result of that particular story. So, it's amazing the things you can learn while riding a bike in Phoenix.

42:03

It's great, it's wonderful. So, that's the first one. The second of the barriers,

42:09

Surah 4, 157 and the crucifixion. I'm gonna obviously expand out on all these. I just want you to get them written down.

42:14

Surah 4, 157 is the one ayah in the entire Quran that denies the crucifixion of Jesus.

42:21

You don't have a crucifixion, but then you don't also have resurrection. You don't have crucifixion, you don't have resurrection, you don't have gospel, you don't have redemption.

42:29

There you go. Third, the alleged corruption of the Christian scriptures, Tarif al -Nas versus Tarif al -Man 'a.

42:39

99 .9 % of the Muslims with whom you're going to speak are going to believe that the

42:44

Bible you have in your hand has been corrupted. Should sound familiar for those of you who go out to the

42:50

Mormon temple. You're used to dealing with the eighth article of faith, so this isn't nothing new, but there are obviously some twists when dealing with the

43:00

Islamic perspective on this particular subject, even though there's some interesting parallels as well.

43:05

So those are your three barriers. They believe that you're asking them to commit shirk, and if they die in that state, they're toast.

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And they don't believe there's a crucifixion, there wasn't a resurrection, therefore the whole thing you're asking them to do doesn't make any sense.

43:23

And then thirdly, and I can't trust anything your Bible says anyways, almost all the debates

43:29

I've done all around the world, I've debated in Australia, South Africa, London, Canada, and Dublin, I got to debate at Trinity College Dublin, that was a high point in my life.

43:47

All of them eventually devolve down to one of these three, or almost always number three.

43:56

If the Muslim is feeling pressured, they'll default back to that, sort of like the Jehovah's Witness, you get going at the door and boom, let's go talk about the

44:04

Trinity if you got them into something they're uncomfortable with, because they normally find Christians not to know anything about that.

44:10

So they'll end up going to number three. Okay, now, those of you who've seen parts of this presentation before, you can not put your hand up, but how many of you have ever seen someone become a

44:20

Muslim? You've seen someone become a Muslim? Okay, you're the only one, so everyone else, this will be new for you.

44:29

I hope this bothers you. It's designed to. I chose this particular example of it, you can go on YouTube and find, could watch all night, people doing what's called taking the

44:44

Shahada, or saying the Shahada. You become a Muslim by saying, la ilaha illallah wa muhammadun rasulullah.

44:55

What does that mean? It means there is only one God worthy of worship, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.

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But you have to say it in Arabic. You cannot say it in English, you can't say it in German, you can't say it in Hebrew, you have to say it in Arabic.

45:14

And you have to, there's like seven conditions for saying la ilaha illallah, that make it true.

45:21

And it has to be public. So what you're about to see is an Islamic altar call. And this was in Sydney, Australia.

45:31

It wasn't all that long ago. In fact, the first time I got to lecture at Moore College in Sydney, some of the students in the class

45:37

I was teaching had been here, attended this, had watched this. And I specifically chose this guy, because most of the

45:47

Islamic speakers are from another country and they're difficult to understand their speech. This guy is from Brooklyn.

45:55

So he's nice and easy to understand. The sad thing is he could probably get a show on TVN.

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They probably wouldn't notice. And so he has just done a multi -day, primarily anti -Christian presentation.

46:12

And then here's what happens at the end. So here is how you become a

46:18

Muslim. The simple words, and these words are nothing more than what

46:26

I have explained. There's no trick, no curve, and we don't have a pool in the back for you to dip in.

46:37

But let's say the words. What might that be about? Let's just go over the words called the shahada, the bearing of witness.

46:46

And I'll tell you what it is. Essentially, it is the saying of that there's none to be worshiped except almighty

46:52

God, and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Saying that word and then adding to it,

47:00

I testify or I declare or I announce that there's none to be worshiped except almighty God, and that I testify or I declare or I announce that Muhammad is the messenger of God, brings you all into the transition of Islam.

47:15

From that point, it's your sincerity. It's your acts of worship. It is your commitment that will make the difference.

47:26

Now, whatever you owe God of something you did that only you know and God knows, after tonight, your board is clear.

47:35

Because God is the forgiver of those that come back to him. But whatever you owe somebody, money, rent, a loan, you still owe that.

47:48

Is that fair? Okay, please, just say after me the words, la ilaha illallah

48:07

Muhammad rasulullah ashhadu an la ilaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan abduhu abduhu wa rasuluh.

48:36

Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, amen. That's how you become a

48:51

Muslim. Now, there's so many things

48:56

I could say about that, but we only have a certain amount of time. There's a lot of similarities.

49:02

I have a longer version I frequently play where you see the people coming forward and the people are encouraging you to come.

49:08

No, they were not seeing just as I am, but there was the pressure, the encouragement to come forward, and there's applause and saying of allahu akbar and so on and so forth.

49:21

And there's giving of gifts, sort of like giving people a Bible and discipleship material and that kind of thing.

49:30

And then you have the leading in a prayer, but it's the differences I want you to notice.

49:36

How many in here made your profession of faith in Christ in either Koine Greek or Biblical Hebrew? There's always one guy that starts going, you know, somewhere in the back, some seminary student that wants to play with me.

49:51

But we don't have to do that because we had Acts 15. We have

49:58

Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council. You don't have to be circumcised. You don't have to become Jewish before you become a

50:04

Christian. They never had that. And so you'll notice even the gentleman,

50:11

Khalid Yassin, is wearing something pretty similar anyways to what

50:17

Muhammad would have wore. So you have to remember Islam is a political, religious, or a religio -political system, depending upon the number of Muslims in a society.

50:29

And once the number starts going up, the political emphasis starts overtaking the religious emphasis. But they never get completely separated.

50:37

And that's what's causing all the problems in the world today is that Islam has to bring Sharia law into, and along with it, and it's a cultural thing.

50:47

It's not just a system of law, it is cultural. I mean, Sharia tells you what hand to use when you wipe yourself in the bathroom.

50:55

It tells you how many stones to use. I guess that was before Sharman, but it tells you which direction to face when men urinate.

51:02

I mean, it is a every single aspect of your life type thing.

51:08

That was one of the other fun things about listening to the Hadith. I really enjoyed all that too, because there's whole sections on that as well.

51:16

But it is bringing 7th century

51:22

Arabic culture and forcing it into the modern world.

51:28

It's not a system of law that deals with man's true ethical and moral situation.

51:34

That's the real problem with it in that sense. But something to keep in mind. There's so much more we could say about that.

51:41

But like I said, time is our enemy this evening. So, Tawhid is the central affirmation of Islam.

51:48

It is the assertion of the essential oneness of God. In modern Islamic beliefs, this includes oneness in person as well.

51:53

That is Unitarianism. When you're talking to a Muslim, you're talking to a person who is going to assume

51:59

Unitarianism in everything. So just as when you're talking to a Jehovah's Witness, they're going to assume

52:05

Unitarianism. When you look at any passage of scripture, they're gonna be assuming Unitarianism. You're gonna be dealing with the exact same thing with the

52:12

Muslim. You have to keep that in mind. Again, it's up to us to be clear in our explanations in light of the confusion in the part of the person we're talking to.

52:25

That slows the conversation down. It makes it more difficult. But again, the onus is on us to do that.

52:33

Shirk is the association of anyone or anything with Allah. It is unforgivable. And when

52:38

I say it's unforgivable, what I mean by that, as I mentioned before, it's unforgivable after death.

52:44

Sometimes people hear that and go, well, if I'm a mushrik, then how can I ever be forgiven?

52:49

By becoming a Muslim. It's forgivable in this life. It is not forgivable once you die, which obviously means in Islamic theology that there is forgiveness of sins after death.

53:00

Allah can forgive anything. Allah can forgive anything. We'll be taking questions. Association.

53:08

Well, like what we do with Jesus, what they did with the idols in the Kaaba. Worship is to go to Allah and Allah alone.

53:16

If there's anybody else that's worshiped, if that worship is in any way given to any intermediate beings, lesser beings or anything, that's shirk.

53:24

That's shirk. So they would, the vast majority, consider our worship to be shirk because we worship

53:29

Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And of course, the Quran never defines Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in Quran is the angel

53:36

Jibreel. So there's real confusion when they, if they attend your service or something like that, there's gonna be real confusion as to what in the world's going on.

53:46

Here's a good example of this. Surah 112 in the Quran. Surah Al -Iklas. Muhammad said to quote this surah is to quote a third of the

53:54

Quran. It's, all of it's right there. So you can see we're getting toward the end of the

53:59

Quran. The surahs are much shorter. Say he is Allah, the one and only, Allah, the eternal absolute. Lam yalad wa lam yulad.

54:06

In Arabic, he begetteth not, nor is he begotten. And there is none like unto him. Only four ayah, four verses.

54:14

But you'll notice that three, that the third, one quarter of this important, this is as close as you can get to a creed in the

54:22

Quran is Surah 112. And one quarter of that surah is directly aimed at who? Us.

54:29

He begetteth not, nor is he begotten. He has no son. I took a,

54:35

I took one of my Golden Gate classes when I was still teaching for Golden Gate out to the mosque next to ASU.

54:43

And we met with the, we met with the Imam. And I asked him, would you say that the phrase, lam yalad wa lam yulad in Surah Talaqlas is specifically directed to Christians?

54:55

And he said, oh, there's no question. There's no question. Islam comes after us. Islam tries to define itself in light of the al -al -kitab, the people of the book, and the al -al -injil, the people of the gospel.

55:07

And so very clearly in what the, one of the most important surahs in the

55:13

Quran, you have a direct enunciation of what we believe. Now, did the author know what begetting means?

55:19

Oh, that's another question we'll look at from other portions of the Quran. Let me give you another clip here.

55:30

This is from my favorite debate with a Muslim so far, so far. This is

55:38

University of New South Wales in Australia, Sydney. The debate is on can

55:45

God become man? Because the fundamental issue, the presupposition of the

55:51

Islamic mindset is that Allah cannot enter into his own creation. And so I invited the, so I will say it directly,

56:03

I think the best Islamic apologist

56:08

I've dealt with, best in this sense. He listens, he tries to understand.

56:15

I sent him, his name, I sent this young man, I've debated him twice. Abdullah Kunduz is his name.

56:23

I sent him my book, The Forgotten Trinity. He read it, he sought to understand it, and sought to express his arguments in light of what was in the book.

56:32

He is the only Islamic apologist that I have so far met that has done that. Only one. It's not that I haven't sent my books to many other

56:39

Islamic apologists. It's just that there is such an overwhelming mindset amongst most of them that we really don't have anything that they need to know.

56:48

And so it made for the best debate because he's respectful, he's kind, we had some humor.

56:55

He's young. He, in his opening, said he was very honored that I would debate him because I'm older than his father.

57:03

So when I got up, I congratulated him on having such a young father. So it's all on YouTube if you wanna watch it.

57:11

If you really wanna watch it, in my opinion, the best debate we've had so far. This one with Abdullah Kunduz.

57:17

But listen to the back and forth a little bit in the cross -examination here.

57:23

You'll get the sense of Tawhid and Unitarianism in Abdullah's responses to this part of the cross -examination.

57:32

Mr. Kuda, I think we have to really focus. When I say the central question is this, and your response is that I have diminished capacity,

57:44

I think we're talking past each other somehow at this point. So let's look at that question again.

57:50

I ask the question, does God as creator have the power, ability, or capacity to join the human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?

57:59

Now, did I understand in your rebuttal that you likened that to, can God create another

58:05

God? That's correct, that's what I'm looking at, or any of the other illogical fallacies that I've mentioned.

58:14

Okay, can you explain how that question involves a logical fallacy?

58:21

From a Muslim perspective, obviously not from a Christian perspective, but from a Muslim perspective, as I said,

58:27

God has certain attributes which we consider are essential and which only apply to him.

58:34

So, for example, without a beginning and without an end are two of these attributes. Now, these are not possessed by anything else in creation, they're only possessed by God.

58:44

So we say that for God, or even if we were to entertain the argument that there's three persons of God, that for one of those persons who is apparently co -eternal and co -equal with the other two to then give up one of these essential attributes for us would be an illogical fallacy.

59:02

Because for us, by definition, if God doesn't have one of these attributes, he's not God. What essential attribute do you see the question assuming when it says, does

59:13

God as creator have the power or ability or capacity to join a human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?

59:21

What essential element is being abandoned? Well, all of them, because human nature, by definition, we're dependent upon things.

59:29

I'm dependent upon three dimensions of space that I exist in. I'm dependent upon time. I'm dependent upon sustenance.

59:35

So it immediately removes him from being subsistence. I do not have independent knowledge.

59:42

I apply my knowledge from other people or from books, et cetera. So it denies him having knowledge. I cannot see beyond the walls of this building.

59:50

So it denies him having universal sight, so and so on. It was a very, very interesting exchange.

59:57

And it really got down to the fundamental issues, far more fundamental issues than I've had in any other debate with any other

01:00:05

Muslim. So I recommend that to you. But you can see, I think, the centrality of the assumption of Unitarianism there.

01:00:15

Let's look at some text from the Quran real quick. Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with him.

01:00:20

There's the very text in the Quran that says Shirk is unforgivable. But he forgives what is less than that for whom he wills.

01:00:26

And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin.

01:00:32

Shirk is very, very important. Also in Surah 4, 171 to 172, O people of the scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.

01:00:43

Our deen, that's our religion, they believe we engage in excess, that Jesus never taught us to worship him.

01:00:53

He never allowed worship of himself. And so we have gone beyond. We have gone into excess. They accept that Jesus was a prophet.

01:01:02

They believe Jesus was a Muslim. The apostles were Muslims. But we've gone beyond that.

01:01:07

We've gone into excess. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was but a messenger, a rasool of Allah.

01:01:13

And his word, which he directed to Mary in a soul, created a command from him. So believe in Allah and his messengers.

01:01:20

And do not say three, desist, it is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is he above having a son.

01:01:27

To him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as disposer of affairs. Never would the

01:01:32

Messiah disdain to be a servant of Allah, nor would the angels near him. This is very, very important. In some translations of the

01:01:38

Quran, it says do not say trinity. The word trinity does not appear in the Quran. It is the ordinal number, three, teleth.

01:01:46

Do not say three, desist, it is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Every single time it says do not say three, the next phrase is there's only one

01:01:56

God. Now if every single time I say do not say three, and I immediately followed up with saying there's only one

01:02:03

God, then what does three mean? Three gods. Clearly, it's accusing us of polytheism.

01:02:10

But that's not what we believe. And yet, I've had some Muslims say, oh yes, you do, because the

01:02:17

Quran says so. And since the Quran is not the words of Muhammad, by the way, you need to understand, they believe that that book was written in eternity, in Arabic, in heaven.

01:02:28

Muhammad has nothing to do with it. You can't even ask the question, did Muhammad understand the trinity?

01:02:35

It's irrelevant. Because the Quran has nothing to do with what Muhammad understood in the first place.

01:02:40

It was dictated to him by the angel Jibril. It all came down in one night called Laylat al -Qadr, the night of power during the month of Ramadan.

01:02:48

It's either the 21st, 23rd, 27th, 29th of the month of Ramadan. It all came down to the angel

01:02:56

Jibril, and then he piecemealed it out over the next 32 years, no, 22 years, to Muhammad as he needed it.

01:03:04

And so it is the perfect, absolute word of God, no admixture with mankind's thoughts or anything.

01:03:10

So you can't even ask questions like, what did Muhammad understand the Christian scriptures? It's irrelevant to Islamic scholarship.

01:03:16

They don't care. That's why you will not find the kind of analysis of the text and exegesis of the text of the

01:03:25

Quran amongst Muslims that you find amongst Christians in regards to our text. Just doesn't exist. It's just not allowed to.

01:03:32

Now, there are some westernized Muslims. I'll take that back. There are some westernized Muslims at Oxford, but every single one of them knows he could never go to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan and survive, which says a lot when you think about it.

01:03:46

I keep doing this because you're sitting right in front of my computer. So I just keep going to see if the next screen, no, not you, you.

01:03:53

So the next screen, just to see the next screen is text or whatever it is. So don't think I'm doing something weird.

01:03:59

And notice, exalted is he above having a son. Above having a son.

01:04:06

Keep that in mind as we look at what the Quran says. Look at Surah 5, 72 to 77.

01:04:11

They have certainly disbelieved who say Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary. Folks, this isn't just words on a page and stuff that we can study for a little while on a

01:04:24

Thursday evening here. Again, when you go home tonight, if you wanna watch it, we played it on the dividing line today, just a few hours ago.

01:04:35

Did anybody see the dividing line live today? Anybody catch it? I played the clip, the recent clip from Syria.

01:04:45

And the guy teaching these young people to slaughter the coffers quoted this as part of the reason.

01:04:53

So this isn't just theoretical. There are Christians who have died as the

01:04:59

Muslims were chanting this in Arabic while they're cutting their heads off. I've seen it.

01:05:05

I listen, I can hear enough Arabic to figure out what they're saying. And it's, remember the young Egyptian boy about two and a half years ago?

01:05:13

The video came out where they decapitated him for apostasy. This is what they're chanting.

01:05:20

This is what they're quoting in Arabic. They have certainly disbelieved. They're a coffer who says

01:05:26

Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary. While the Messiah has said, oh children of Israel, worship Allah, my

01:05:31

Lord and your Lord. Indeed, he who associates others with Allah, Allah has forbidden him paradise and his refuge is the fire.

01:05:40

Now, it's gonna continue here, but I just wanna point things out here. Don't bother looking in a concordance where Jesus ever said that.

01:05:47

It is amazing to me, absolutely amazing to me that my opponents like Shabir Ali, if you wanna see our debate we did at the

01:05:55

University of Pretoria on the earliest testimony to the deity of Christ, he will embrace the most liberal views of the

01:06:05

New Testament. Redaction criticism of the Gospel of Mark and all the rest of that stuff, but he'll believe that that's actually what

01:06:12

Jesus said. And there is not a shred of historical evidence for 600 years that those were ever the words of Jesus.

01:06:21

The inconsistency is glowing on the part of the Muslim. But he who associates, what's that?

01:06:29

Shirk. He who associates others with Allah, Allah has forbidden him paradise and his refuge is the fire.

01:06:34

And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers. They have certainly disbelieved who say, Allah is the third of three.

01:06:41

Also quoted in the thing that I played today. Allah is the third of three and there is no

01:06:46

God except one God. Notice again, the word three is immediately followed by what? There is only one God.

01:06:52

So what's the author think we're saying? There are three gods. And if they do not desist from what they're saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.

01:07:03

These are the quotations from the Quran that are being used by ISIS to substantiate their murder, their wholesale genocide of entire people groups in Mosul and places like that in Iraq today.

01:07:16

It's right there in the text. So will they? Because that's what

01:07:37

Muhammad told him to do. It's in the Hadith. Yeah, sadly. That's where the argument ends up being is the moderate

01:07:45

Muslim who does not want to kill you gets his interpretation from a certain portion of the

01:07:54

Hadith and ISIS gets their interpretation from another portion of the Hadith. And the problem is the Hadith is not consistent with itself and can be interpreted in many different ways.

01:08:04

And Islam does not contain within itself the answer to this issue.

01:08:13

And that's just the way it is. And that's a sad thing to keep in mind. But we do need to keep in mind that there are

01:08:18

Muslims, the vast majority of Muslims do not want to kill you. If the vast majority of Muslims in the world wanted to kill you, this world would be aflame from north to south.

01:08:28

There are a billion Muslims in the world. And I am very concerned that as more and more of the absolute demonic activity of groups like Boko Haram and ISIS are seen, that the result is we hate

01:08:44

Muslims. It's them against us. Let's just get the guns out and start shooting each other. The vast majority of Muslims do not want to kill you.

01:08:52

And just as we hate being painted with a broad brush and being held accountable for what everybody else does, we can't do it in reverse if we want to be consistent.

01:09:03

I continue on. So will we not repent to Allah and seek his forgiveness? And Allah is forgiving and merciful. The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger.

01:09:11

Other messengers have passed on before him and his mother was a supporter of truth. They both used to eat food.

01:09:16

Look how we make clear to them the signs. Then look how they are deluded. There is the

01:09:22

Quranic basis of the fig tree argument. The fig tree argument, remember?

01:09:28

The fellow asking me the question, there it is. They both used to eat food. They can't understand how

01:09:33

Jesus could be God and yet he eat food. But notice something. It says they both.

01:09:38

Who's the both? Mary. Mary and Jesus. Why would Mary be included?

01:09:44

We don't think Mary's God. Yeah, but what did the writer of the

01:09:50

Quran think? Well, say, do you worship besides Allah that which holds for you no power of harm or benefit while it is

01:09:58

Allah who is the hearing, the knowing? Say, O people of the book, people of scripture, do not exceed limits, that's the excess again, in your religion beyond the truth and do not follow the inclinations of the people who had gone astray before and misled many and have strayed from the soundness of the way.

01:10:12

If you've ever heard the Islamic prayers, the Islamic prayers include

01:10:18

Surah al -Fatiha, which is the opening, the opening of the book, Surah one. And at the end, it says, do not lead us in the way of those who have gone astray and those who have earned your wrath.

01:10:33

I'm sorry, Linda, it's those who have earned your wrath and those who have gone astray. And you can hear the term gone astray, while a dhalim, they'll always greatly extend out the vowel in dhalim at the end of their prayer.

01:10:48

They asked Muhammad in the Hadith, who is it that has earned God's wrath that's mentioned in Surah one?

01:10:54

Guess who that is, pretty easy. This does not take rocket science here to figure this one out. Who do the

01:11:00

Muslims hate? The Jews. So the ones who have earned God's wrath are the Jews. And those who have gone astray, guess who that is?

01:11:08

Christians. So every day, the faithful Muslim prays not to be you. Not to be you.

01:11:18

That's part of that barrier. We're still on the first barrier here. I gotta pick up my pace here, unfortunately. Now, had

01:11:24

Allah wished to take to himself a son. In regards to sonship, look at Surah 39, four. Had Allah wished to take to himself a son, he could have chosen whom he pleased out of those whom he doth create.

01:11:34

But glory be to him, he is above such things. He is Allah, the one, the irresistible. What does the

01:11:39

Quran understand sonship to mean? Sounds like he could have taken someone from the creation.

01:11:45

And then notice this, Surah 6, 101. To him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth. How can he have a son when he hath no consort?

01:11:53

He created all things and he hath full knowledge of all things. I asked my Arabic tutor years ago, what's this word here, consort?

01:12:04

What is that? And he says, well, in modern Arabic, that's sort of the other woman.

01:12:12

That's the woman on the side. And so, how can he have a son when he doesn't have a wife?

01:12:21

Well, what kind of sonship is being talked about here? Certainly not the sonship we believe in.

01:12:26

Keeping that in mind, Surah 5, 116. Where's the reference?

01:12:33

Well, it's Surah 5, 116. And beware of the day when Allah will say, O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?

01:12:43

He will say, exalted are you, it was not for me to say that to which I have no right. You hear that?

01:12:51

Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah. Here's the three,

01:12:58

Allah, Mary, and their kid, Jesus. Now, I can understand where Muhammad would have come up with that.

01:13:06

If, as a young man, he was on a caravan up into Syria, and the camels are getting watered, he's got some time, he wanders off, he's 14, 15 years old, sticks his head in a

01:13:18

Christian church, what's he gonna see around the year 580, 590?

01:13:25

He's gonna see crucifix. He may see some statues of the creation or something like that.

01:13:32

He's gonna see Mary, and he's gonna see Mary with a baby.

01:13:39

He might see a dove, but that ain't gonna tell him much, is it? And so, if he hears about three, and you've got

01:13:48

Allah, and you've got Jesus on a cross, and a woman with a baby, makes sense.

01:13:56

Too bad it ends up as alleged scripture, but there you go, Surah 5, 116.

01:14:05

Next clip, I can only see from here. It's from the mosque in Toronto. But let me see what it's about.

01:14:13

So, how come these guys were willing to lay their own life for such a lie that they have own fabrication?

01:14:21

Yes, to begin with, I do not say that the disciples fabricated what we are hearing about now.

01:14:27

I say that the idea that Jesus is God actually came after the disciples of Jesus.

01:14:34

If we look at what the disciples themselves believed, as is depicted in the Acts of the Apostles in the

01:14:39

Bible, we find that they were continually in the temple, they were observing the Jewish Sabbath, they were praying along with Jews, they were speaking of Jesus as the servant of the

01:14:50

God of Abraham. And we know from the Old Testament that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as they were speaking about, is the only one

01:14:56

God, Yahweh Jehovah, who declared that he is the only God. And throughout, we find that the disciples make a distinction between God and Jesus.

01:15:04

They're referring to Jesus as a servant of God, and God as someone else other than Jesus. It is later,

01:15:10

Stephen, for example, who prayed to Jesus. It is Paul who went into the temple and immediately began preaching that Jesus Christ is the son of God in Acts chapter nine, verse 20.

01:15:20

But the disciples were continually, every Sabbath, proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, according to the last verse of chapter five of the

01:15:27

Acts of the Apostles, and that is precisely what Muslims do believe. Unfortunately, what Shabir said does not begin to disprove what

01:15:34

Christians believe about this subject. We believe everything that the disciples said, but that's not all they said. The problem is, if you're going to say that Stephen or Paul or those other people perverted the truth, then you have no reason to trust anything in the

01:15:50

New Testament whatsoever. I demonstrated that the earliest traditions we have, that you can identify in the

01:15:55

New Testament text, identify Jesus Christ with Yahweh. That does not mean another

01:16:01

God. To say, well, that means you believe in two gods, is to misunderstand what we believe about the doctrine of the

01:16:06

Trinity. Next question, please. Just to get one shot at this, so Muslims believe that Jesus is the

01:16:16

Messiah. Who is this addressed to? Oh, sorry, this is addressed to both, actually. I'd like you both to respond, if you don't mind.

01:16:22

One minute each for you. The book of Zechariah, the book of Micah, and Isaiah all claim that the coming

01:16:30

Messiah would be eternal. Zechariah 2 .10, Isaiah 9 .6, Micah 3 .5,

01:16:35

or 5 .3? Forget, anyway, sorry, 5 .2 and 3, says that his origins would be from everlasting, from eternity, so if he was the

01:16:45

Messiah, and not divine, not eternal, God alone is eternal, was he indeed the

01:16:53

Messiah, or was he a false Messiah? The Messiah has to be eternal, and God alone is eternal.

01:17:00

Well, my response to that would be to say that the Bible is comprised, as you know, of many books, of varying levels of divine involvement in their writing.

01:17:13

Of course, from one perspective, all of the Bible is inspired of God and profitable for teaching and so on, we know that, but at the same time, there are direct proclamations from God.

01:17:21

There is the Torah, which is distinguished from the rest of the Old Testament, and in the Torah, the 10

01:17:26

Commandments has a special position. When in the 10 Commandments, it is so very clear that you shall have no other

01:17:32

God, but Jehovah, and Jehovah is not like anything that walks on the earth, or flies in the sky, or swims in the ocean, he's not,

01:17:40

Jehovah is the creator of all of these things. Now, if later on, there are writers of some parts of the

01:17:47

Bible who start to speak of other creatures, whether it be angels or other spirits, who are conceived of as being of very high stations, then that is their understanding, but we should not have confused that with the understanding that there is only one

01:18:05

God, Jehovah. From a Muslim perspective, it is that one God, Jehovah Yahweh, who sends his servant, and Matthew recognized that that is what is happening.

01:18:14

In Matthew chapter 12, verse 18, Matthew presented Jesus as the servant of Yahweh, and that servant was spoken about in Isaiah chapter 42.

01:18:25

So that's the Messiah in Isaiah 42, that's the Messiah in Matthew, and the

01:18:30

Messiah is the servant of Yahweh, it is very clear. Dr. White. Dr. White. Took a little extra time there, so I'll try to talk it past that.

01:18:38

I mean, you know. The texts were not addressed. Isaiah 9 -6 does say that that child who is to be born, that son who is to be given, notice the two descriptions.

01:18:50

A child is to be born, Jesus was truly born as a child, but a son was given.

01:18:55

That's the same root that's found in the third ayah of Surah Tal Iqlas, Lemuelet wa

01:19:00

Lemuelet. Yeled, a child, was given. This one who is called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and by the way,

01:19:08

Everlasting Father there, avyad means Father of Eternity, the one who created all things. That's the description that's given of Jesus in Colossians chapter one.

01:19:15

That's the fulfillment that's found there. Each one of these texts specifically do refer to the fact that the Messiah is going to be more than merely a rasul.

01:19:24

He has to be more than that to fulfill the Messianic prophecies. And yet those same New Testament writers, where are the people who denied this is what

01:19:32

I want to know. Those same New Testament writers identified Jesus as Yahweh, not as a separate

01:19:37

God. You're assuming that Yahweh is Unitarian. The whole point of the revelation of the incarnation, the outpouring of the

01:19:44

Holy Spirit is that Yahweh is Trinitarian. It is the Father who sent the Son. The Father is not the

01:19:49

Son, the Son is not the Father, but there is one being of God identified as Yahweh, and the Father is identified as Yahweh, the

01:19:56

Son is identified as Yahweh, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh. That is, again, the amazing early testimony of the

01:20:03

Christian people itself. Now, I hadn't shown you a clip of Shabir.

01:20:09

Most Muslims cannot quote the Bible by memory, but Shabir can and does, and that's why he's considered one of the best that they have, and that's why we've engaged each other in so many debates, and in fact, are co -authoring a book right now on Trinity and Tawhid with Bethany House Publishers.

01:20:29

So, we're trying to, anyways. Shabir is being a little slow right now on getting the next material that we need to be working on, but you can see how what we were just talking about enters into the assumptions that he brings to the text, the

01:20:42

Unitarian assumptions that are there. Bury number two, I'm gonna pick up the pace here real quick. The cross, here is

01:20:49

Sura 4, 1 to 7. If you're gonna write down any of them, this is the one that you probably want to write down. The only ayah in all the

01:20:56

Quran that denies the cross, and for they're saying, indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, speaking of the

01:21:02

Jews here, the messenger of Allah, and they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear to them, and indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it.

01:21:11

They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption, and they did not kill him for certain.

01:21:17

Here is the one verse, if this wasn't in the

01:21:23

Quran, there are other places in the Quran, Sura 19, 33, Sura 35, that would naturally speak of the death of Jesus, but since this is here,

01:21:32

Muslims believe, the vast majority of Muslims around the world believe in what's called the substitution theory. Substitution theory is the idea that someone else took

01:21:41

Jesus's place on the cross. The primary candidate, they suggest, is Judas, that God punished

01:21:48

Judas for his betrayal by making him look like Jesus, and he was the one that was crucified. I once had a Muslim send me a lengthy article, electronically, that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, because it used bold, underline, and blue, which, of course, is ultimate proof on the internet, that Simon the

01:22:10

Cyrene was the one that was crucified. Americanized Muslims tend to back off from that theory and basically say, allahu alam,

01:22:21

God knows. Why? Because, if you think about it, the substitutionary theory makes

01:22:27

Allah start Christianity by mistake, because he did such a good job in substituting somebody on the cross that the disciples go out and start preaching the resurrection.

01:22:39

So, they sort of back off on that, but the vast majority of the Muslims around the world do believe in the substitution theory for Sura 47.

01:22:47

I can't tell from here what this is. I'm just gonna click it and see what happens. Well, you know, the irony here is that Sanders, Ehrman, and all these others substantiate my position in the debate tonight.

01:22:59

They all believe that Jesus was crucified. They all recognize that the historical information is, without question, that it was

01:23:06

Jesus, not someone who was made to look like Jesus. It was Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified on the

01:23:11

Roman cross outside of Jerusalem during the days of Herod and under the orders of Pilate.

01:23:18

So, if Ehrman can say that one of the clearest facts of history is that Jesus died, then what we're dealing with here are the interpretations they then make of what that meant.

01:23:32

So, we can't change the focus of the debate to the resurrection, because the reason that someone like Abarth Ehrman, by the way,

01:23:37

Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, but that's not all he was. You see, the problem is they want to limit

01:23:43

Jesus to something much smaller than he actually was. Jesus was a first century Jew. He lived in that context.

01:23:49

That's what he taught. That's how he should be understood. There's no question about that. There are insights you can gain from all of that.

01:23:55

But the fact is, you then have a limitation of the application those folks will allow.

01:24:01

But the fact is, for the debate this evening, they're on my side. They agree with me. And you say, well, it has no bearing on your faith.

01:24:08

Well, again, the question, Sammy, is, is the Islamic faith a faith that has historical grounding, or is it something that has no historical grounding whatsoever and ignores the mountain of historical evidence?

01:24:24

All right, I've actually addressed that, and I made that point first in my presentation. They affirm your point that he was on the cross, but again, all these historical references do nothing to contradict my point, because the

01:24:38

Quran says a crucifixion did take place, and people thought it was Jesus. So that affirms my point, and I actually raised that first.

01:24:47

But secondly, as we all know, your faith doesn't revolve around the cross only.

01:24:53

Your faith also revolves around the resurrection. And as Paul said, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then your faith is null and void.

01:25:02

And they all reject the resurrection of Jesus. Now, you say it's because they reject the supernatural, but that's a bit unfair on them, because they've given evidences as to why those stories are doubtful, just as I have given my evidence as to why those resurrection accounts are doubtful as well.

01:25:24

So they reject the resurrection. And if you can prove that the resurrection wasn't taking place, then it also affirms my point, which

01:25:34

I made in my presentation, that these resurrection accounts were made up later to account for their misunderstood belief that an alive

01:25:43

Jesus was a resurrected Jesus, and that's why you find all the contradictions in the stories, and that's why you find these academics rejecting it, because of all that evidence.

01:25:55

A meeting of a live Jesus, as we have pointed out, would require that Jesus correct their misapprehensions, or Jesus is the worst teacher who has ever lived.

01:26:04

Can you imagine Jesus allowing his disciples to begin an entire religion based on falsehood, because he just didn't take the time to tell them, guys,

01:26:11

I wasn't crucified. I'm sorry, that is utterly untenable from any logical, rational, historical perspective, and there's not one person that's been quoted this evening who thinks that's what happened.

01:26:21

That's not what Siamese does, that's not what Erwin says, that's not what any of these scholars think happened. But the interesting thing is, these very same scholars that you are quoting against the resurrection, which isn't the debate this evening, but quoting against the resurrection, they would also reject everything you believe about Jesus's life.

01:26:37

I mean, Bart Ehrman would not believe that Jesus formed little birds of clay and breathed on them and they blew away.

01:26:44

And he would say to you, that's a story that came from the Nostagostics, because it did. And Bart Ehrman and E .P.

01:26:50

Sanders would not believe that Jesus spoke from his cradle, because that's another story that came from early

01:26:55

Christians but hundreds of years after the event, and they would point that out too. And so my question is, where is the consistency in relying upon these individuals when they would say the evidence would clearly refute the

01:27:06

Quran as well? Where is the consistency at this particular point in time? That's what we've been looking at.

01:27:12

And again, I simply point out that these scholars are on my side in regards to the thesis of the debate this evening, and that is the

01:27:20

Quran's denial of the historical reality of the crucifixion itself. That's from a debate with Sami Zatari at Trinity Road Chapel in Wandsworth in London.

01:27:31

And we've had a number of debates there at Trinity Road Chapel over the years, but it's one of the few that we've had on the subject of specifically the crucifixion.

01:27:40

Real quickly, barrier number three, the corruption of the Bible. Muslims today believe the Bible has been corrupted, is no longer reliable.

01:27:46

A strong case can be made that this was not the view of the author of the Quran, but it is surely the position we must deal with in minds of almost all

01:27:53

Muslims around the world today. I think I really could make a strong case, and I did in my book,

01:28:00

What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran, which is sitting at my office, which maybe two of you might have picked up this evening.

01:28:11

But this certainly is the perspective that they're coming from. This, again, comes out in the debate that I had with, this is my, this one

01:28:19

I do consider to be my first debate, Muslim debate, and this was with Shabir at Biola University in 2006.

01:28:29

Is there any way that you can give to us this evening to explain to us how we can determine what is still inspired in the

01:28:39

New Testament and what is not? Well, I believe that Muslims have a simple answer to this in saying that whatever is in the

01:28:46

Quran, that would be a judge of whatever is there in the Bible. So whatever of the

01:28:52

Bible agrees with the Quran, that obviously is inspired. What is contradictory is obviously not from God, and that which is neutral, and neither in agreement nor in disagreement, may be treated with some bit of silence.

01:29:06

Usually the classical scholars have recommended silence, but I believe that Muslims who are quite familiar with the

01:29:12

Gospels and familiar with the development of the text over time can make some judgments, though these judgments will be tentative.

01:29:21

So everything about the cross, resurrection, atonement, deity of Christ, Jesus is the son of God, the

01:29:28

Holy Spirit is a divine person, not an angel, Gabriel. All of that stuff is uninspired and a corruption of the original intention of the

01:29:36

New Testament in light of the Quran. A Muslim would say that the Quranic revelation is here now as the pristine word of God.

01:29:42

That teaches us that there is only one God, that Jesus is his Messiah, but nevertheless a servant and messenger of the one true

01:29:50

God. And so anything that is contrary to that, something that teaches, for example, that human responsibility as described in the

01:29:56

Quran is to be somehow evaded, that would be contrary and would be thought to be a later development.

01:30:04

Now, of course, that could be studied from another angle. One can look at the history and development of Christian teaching over time.

01:30:10

One can look at the Gospels even without Islamic presuppositions. And it seems to me that many biblical scholars are coming to conclusions which are very close to the main conclusions which

01:30:21

Muslims insist on, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet like the prophets of the

01:30:27

Old Testament. He preached the belief in God, similar to the belief that was known from the

01:30:35

Jewish prophets since he himself was Jewish. He lived in a Jewish milieu. He made people like the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg.

01:30:42

It doesn't have to be them. The scholars are so numerous, it'll be hard for us to list them and to name them now.

01:30:47

So is there any New Testament book that Mark, for example, which you've referred to many times,

01:30:55

Mark clearly identifies Jesus as the son of God, puts words in his mouth that you would never be able to accept as a Muslim. Isn't that correct?

01:31:01

Well, it is clear that even Mark must have suffered from a similar sort of phenomenon that we described in the case of Matthew.

01:31:09

And John Bowdoin has made specifically that point in his book, Jesus, the Unanswered Questions. If we look at Mark chapter one, verse one, which in many

01:31:16

Bibles begin the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, it is noted in the NIV, for example, that the title, the son of God, in this particular verse is not found in some of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts.

01:31:29

So I'm not saying that the Gospel according to Mark does not present Jesus as the son of God, but we have to be aware of scribal changes that have affected the

01:31:37

Gospel according to Mark in places as well. And in fact, we are working with the Gospel according to Mark only as it has come down to us, knowing the history of scribal changes, we would not be out of our grounds to wonder if in fact we do really have the original

01:31:51

Markan Gospel. Would you admit that you do not have any hard manuscript evidence from the first or second centuries that gives to us a

01:32:00

New Testament that looks like a Muslim would expect it to look like? We do not have such a document. We do not have such a document, as Wei said there.

01:32:07

I wanna get some questions, so I'm going to... Let me just... I'm gonna have to skip a couple of these.

01:32:15

I have two minutes and 53 seconds. Sorry, I know, they're lots of fun. Let's wrap and get to some questions.

01:32:23

Here is a video. There's no sound to it, so don't worry about that. This is from 2007,

01:32:32

I believe, if I recall correctly. There is a Jeep in that doorway.

01:32:39

Here's the cameras inside. This is the Glasgow Airport. People are running, being evacuated from the building.

01:32:48

Two Muslims have driven the Jeep into the airport, and it is on fire.

01:32:56

Their intention, they filled it with gasoline, and they expected it to create a huge fireball that would just basically go in there and engulf all those people.

01:33:08

Well, the only people it engulfed were the people in the car. And they lived for a couple of weeks and then died of their burns.

01:33:20

Now, of course, when I see this, this really strikes me because I've been through that doorway many times.

01:33:27

I've had the privilege of ministering at the Foreign Baptist Church of Annie's Land, which is a suburb of Glasgow.

01:33:34

And in fact, we're planning on scheduling a Muslim -Christian debate in Glasgow in December of this year.

01:33:43

And I have preached there. We've done things like having, where people go out in the streets, they invite people in for coffee and cakes, and then you sit down and witness to them.

01:33:56

Witnessing to a Glaswegian is fascinating, but I needed a translator.

01:34:04

If that's English, well, the Glaswegians are well -known all across the

01:34:10

UK for speaking in a way that's just sort of like, eh? It was fascinating.

01:34:16

So I've walked through there. I called my friend Jim Handyside, the dad, happened because I know he travels to Russia all the time and to make sure he was okay.

01:34:26

And so when you see something like that, it certainly strikes you. But when you think about the two men in that vehicle, often we think of them as down -and -outers, people that didn't have any futures, things like that.

01:34:42

And sometimes they are, but what really struck me when the facts of this came out is that the two men in that vehicle were

01:34:49

National Health System physicians. They're medical doctors.

01:34:57

And yet they drove into that doorway and pressed that button undoubtedly screaming Allahu Akbar. Why?

01:35:05

Well, because in Islam, you have a holy God, you have a law, you have hell, you have punishment, but you have no mediator.

01:35:21

We don't know enough about Muhammad's life to really know what his exposure to Christianity was, but one thing is for certain, the resultant religious system that came from his teachings has no mediator.

01:35:39

Jesus is a mere rasool. He did not intend to give his life. The whole gospel issue was completely unknown to Muhammad in any meaningful fashion.

01:35:50

And so most of you who know me have heard me say theology matters, and this is where it matters very, very, very clearly.

01:36:00

You have men here who are trying to earn their way into the presence of Allah, and the only way that the

01:36:08

Quran reveals that you can know when you die that you will be accepted of Allah is if you die in an act of jihad.

01:36:16

It's the only way. You can do everything else. You can do the five pillars. You can say the shahada.

01:36:22

You can go on Hajj. You can say the five daily prayers. You can do all that stuff. And still,

01:36:30

Allah is very arbitrary. You will find stories about some of the sahaba, some of the companions of Muhammad, crying at their own death because they did not know whether they would be accepted by Allah.

01:36:47

Now, at the same time, one of the stories of the hadith that's well known is the story of the man who killed 99 people.

01:36:56

Now, if you think I'm cherry -picking this, I'm not. I had used this story for years, and then

01:37:03

I did a debate with the imam of the largest mosque in New York, and we did a radio program beforehand, and he told the story before I did.

01:37:13

So, I'm not cherry -picking this. This is a well -known mutawattir hadith, those of you who know what that is, a universally accepted hadith.

01:37:25

According to Muhammad, there was a Jewish man who had, well, one of the stories, the story is told many times in the hadith, and there are variations between it, but in one of them, he says he was

01:37:34

Jewish, who had killed 99 people, and he went to a priest and asked the priest, would my repentance be accepted by Allah?

01:37:42

And the priest said no, so he killed the priest. So, now he's killed 100 people. Then he goes to a scholar, and he says, will my repentance be accepted by Allah?

01:37:50

Now, none of these stories in the hadith indicate whether the scholar knew about the priest or not, but the scholar says, well, go to such and such a village, and the people in that village are very righteous people, and they will tell you what you need to do for your repentance to be accepted by Allah.

01:38:08

As he's going, the time for his death comes. According to Islamic theology, on the 40th day of gestation, an angel comes and writes everything in a book for your life, whether you're gonna be saved, not saved, male, female, successful, happy, it's all written down for you on the 40th day after conception.

01:38:28

And that includes the day of your death. It's written on your forehead. There's nothing you can do to avoid it, and that's why so many

01:38:34

Muslims say, inshallah, if God wills. It is a form of fatalism, really, because while we believe that the date of our death is known by God and decreed by God, they take that completely different direction in the sense of we have

01:38:54

God's decree, and that includes his interaction with us in time. They can't have a God who interacts with them in time, and so it becomes fatalistic instead of personal, the major difference between the two views of that subject.

01:39:07

But anyway, the time for his death comes, and so he drops dead. And when you die, two angels come.

01:39:14

One comes from paradise, and one comes from the fire, and they argue over your soul. You would think this one would be a slam -dunk case, okay?

01:39:24

I mean, if you're the angel from the fire, and you lose this one, you ain't much of a lawyer.

01:39:32

He says, he's killed 100 people. He hasn't repented. He's never said the shahada. I mean, this is easy, but the angel from paradise says, but he was going to find out about repentance, and so Allah decrees that if he's one cubit closer to the village he was going to than the village he was coming from, that he will go to paradise, and then he causes the earth to shrink, and so that he is found to be one cubit closer to the city he was going to, and so he goes to paradise.

01:40:05

Now, I told that story, and maybe one of the ones I skipped there, but I told that story in the mosque in Erasmiya because they know these stories.

01:40:13

They know the Hadith stories, and they're really, really, really impressed when the Christian knows them because they don't talk to Christians who've taken the time to read the

01:40:22

Quran, read our Hadith. Wow, they take that as an act of respect, and I told that story, and I said, this is what truly concerns me about this.

01:40:34

From a Christian perspective, this leaves God's holy character and his holy law separated from one another because from the

01:40:46

Islamic perspective, God can simply wink at sin. He can just simply forgive what he wants, not forgive what he wants. There's no standard.

01:40:52

There's no fulfillment of his law. There is no intimate connection between his law and his character.

01:40:59

They can be easily separated. Now, do I know if anybody in that mosque understood what I was saying?

01:41:04

I don't know, but that's what I know. That's up to the spirit of God, but this is what you have in Islam is this arbitrary nature of a law.

01:41:15

You can have gone on Hajj and prayed the prayers every day and still end up in hell for at least, well, there's a good deal of evidence in the

01:41:24

Hadith that, and many Muslims believe, that every Muslim will end up in hell for a while, almost a purgatorial concept, but that eventually every

01:41:33

Muslim who said la ilaha illallah will be taken out of the hellfire and will go to paradise.

01:41:40

There's so much more I could say about the Hadith there, but that just gives you an idea. So the three barriers,

01:41:46

Trinity, Shirk, misunderstanding the Trinity in the Quran, that's one. Number two is crucifixion,

01:41:56

Surah 4, 157, and the third is the corruption of the

01:42:01

Bible, the alleged corruption of the Bible, the changes in the Bible. Those are the three barriers that you're gonna have to get over in dealing with the

01:42:09

Muslim. Okay? All right, how about about a few minutes of, got some questions?

01:42:15

I'll bring a microphone to you. If we could keep them short. Dr. White's a madman and gets up early to ride his bicycle, so I'm gonna let him out on time.

01:42:24

Let me do a - Yeah, Norm, I am currently 20 minutes past my latest bedtime. So short questions.

01:42:30

During the summer, during the summer. Quick and pointed. I'm gonna go this way. I'll let Jerry. No, I knew you when you were young.

01:42:38

But now your hairline's receding, so it's saying. Hey, I'll be looking like you soon enough.

01:42:47

The very first debate of the guy who asked the fig tree question, you said that was one of the very first times you had had one of those

01:42:53

Muslim debates. 1999, yeah. So given like back then and how you interacted with Muslims and all that you've learned with all the interactions and things like that, what are some of the biggest perspectives just going and knowing things intellectually and actually from having interacted with them, just some of the biggest,

01:43:10

I guess you'd say paradigm shifts of things you've learned from them? Well, that first debate wasn't all that great of a debate because the guy turned it into a debate on alleged contradictions of the

01:43:24

Bible and eventually, he's the one that you've ever, if you've ever heard Radio Free Damascus is the one that says that Paul was just messing with them

01:43:31

Philippians when he wrote Philippians chapter two. The messing with the

01:43:36

Philippians defense, I had never heard that one before, so I guess that, but obviously for me, one of the biggest things is

01:43:46

I have learned what

01:43:51

I'm trying to do and I can't always do this, but I have really tried to start to get to know my

01:43:58

Islamic opponents. When I had lunch with Adnan Rashid in Dublin between the two debates we did in February of 2013,

01:44:07

I think it was, when I had lunch with him that day, I was able to explain to him why I do what I do and to really talk with him.

01:44:13

It fundamentally changed the debate that night. You can just, if you watch the two of them, you can see that the second night's debate was much more useful, it was more respectful, it was more personal and hence it was more understandable, so I think to the people in the audience.

01:44:30

I can't always do that, but I did a debate with Bashir Varnia in the mosque in Lanasia, South Africa, which is primarily an

01:44:37

Indian population. Couple nights later, Rudolph and I, the gentleman

01:44:43

I showed you, the young pastor down there, we had dinner in his home and his wife brought out just the most amazing

01:44:51

Indian treats. They were just incredible and we're really looking forward to having dinner with him next time.

01:44:59

We can only stay a little time because it was the night I did the other debate at Johannesburg, but you discover it's really, really important for us to get out of the

01:45:12

Fox News understanding of Islam. All that does is create fear.

01:45:18

You will not witness to people you fear. We hate the broad brush strokes, we've got to stop doing it and once you find out that this is a human being, not just a representative of a false religious system, it makes all the difference in the world, makes all the difference in the world, really does.

01:45:46

I was considering what you were talking about, the fatalism, what is their view on free will and stuff like that, because if they're fatalistic.

01:45:54

Well, they've got a lot of the same divisions that we do. You've got your free will

01:45:59

Muslims and your really strong determination

01:46:04

Muslims, but there really isn't any question about what the Quran and the Hadith say on that. There is a

01:46:12

Hadith where Muhammad said that there are some people who will live their entire lives as if they are the people of paradise and then when they're a hand's breadth away from entering the paradise, what is written of them, that 40 days after conception will overtake them and it was written that they would go to hell and it will overtake them, they'll go to hell and there are people who live their entire lives as people of the fire until they're a hand's breadth from entering in and then what is written of them will overtake them and they will go to paradise.

01:46:42

If that isn't a very strong form of fatalism, I don't know what is. Yeah, two quick questions.

01:46:50

That first one with the - You all think I'm a crazed writer. The altar call type situation there, what was the context?

01:46:59

Do they have evangelistic outreaches? Yeah, it's called Dawa. If you want to watch some of this, find on YouTube the

01:47:07

Dean Show. D -E -E -N in Arabic means religion. So the Dean Show is this show where they basically do what's called

01:47:16

Dawa and they've got this right. Dawa is evangelism and apologetics all rolled into one.

01:47:22

They recognize you can't separate them. And so, because normally they're in the minority anyways and especially here, this is how they think.

01:47:30

And so Dawa is calling to Islam. And so what he had done for two or three days was had lectured about Islam, but it was primarily an attack on Christianity.

01:47:43

All sorts of false information about the Council of Nicaea and three gods and all the rest of this silliness. But what you saw there at the end was at the end of three days worth and then calling people forward doing

01:47:55

Dawa to embrace Islam by saying the Shahada. So yeah, they have

01:48:02

Daoists who do Dawa. In fact, there's a YouTube channel called

01:48:08

Dawa Made Easy if you want to watch them encountering people primarily in London.

01:48:14

And it's amazing the conversations that take place and the incredibly superficial arguments that get alleged

01:48:22

Christians to become Muslims on the street corner. So it's amazing. The second question is, as it pertains to Shirk, I can see

01:48:33

Christians committing that in their understanding or misunderstanding of the Trinity, but how is it that Jews that do not believe in the

01:48:43

Trinity, they're monotheists, how are they? Well, there is one

01:48:50

Ayah in the Quran that says that they commit Shirk by making, who was it,

01:48:56

Eliezer or something, the son of God or something like that, which has always made everyone go, what is he talking about?

01:49:03

But most of the anti -Jewish sentiment is, well, it's quite honestly irrational.

01:49:12

It's shocking to read some of the Hadith. Where, for example, it is said that the day will come in the end times, when

01:49:21

Jesus returns, interestingly enough, every rock will cry out, there is a

01:49:27

Jew or a Christian hiding behind me, come kill him. The irrationality of Mohammed's detestation of Jews, which is where the modern issue comes from, which is why we have what's going on right now in Israel and Gaza, really goes back to when

01:49:48

Mohammed was in charge in Medina, and he said that the

01:49:53

Jews in Medina were seeking to betray him in war. And so, after a certain battle, which they won, which the

01:50:03

Muslims won against the Meccans, Mohammed besieged the compound of one particular

01:50:10

Jewish tribe, marched, or they gave up, they marched all the men out, 800, and Mohammed participated in the beheading of 800 men in one day.

01:50:21

And that's the root of the irrational detestation of Jews to this day, it goes that far back.

01:50:30

That kind of follows up on my question. You said it's very difficult to understand the

01:50:36

Quran because it's not in a chronological order. That's not the only reason. No, but I found that true too, but would it be helpful if we can divide the pre -Medina and post -Medina writings?

01:50:49

And that would also account for the hatred for the Jews because of their rejection of him as a prophet in pre -Medina.

01:50:56

In Medina, that's right. In Medina itself, there really isn't anything in the Meccan surahs that would be really relevant to that, as I recall, and the chart in my book specifically does divide the, it lays out between the

01:51:11

Meccan and the Medina surahs, so I do that in the chart, but yes, you're exactly right. But the difficulty in understanding the

01:51:19

Quran is not just because of its lack of order. There are sections that even

01:51:26

Arabic speakers really can't figure out what the world is talking about because there's almost never a historical context.

01:51:33

Very rarely do we have historical context, and there are other times the Hadith gives us multiple historical contexts for the same surah, so it's very, very difficult to understand.

01:51:42

Very difficult. We're just gonna do one, two, three. One, then two, then three, and then we're gonna close out after that, okay? Yeah, would you please comment on the political reasoning behind the liberal left wanting to blindly accept some of the things that are going on with the

01:52:01

Muslim community in the United States, for example, certain school systems are allowing more and more of the

01:52:09

Muslim prayers to come in, the tolerance, and just ignoring what

01:52:16

Sharia law means and how it's kind of creeping in this country. We can see what's going on in London and England.

01:52:25

Well, if you're asking me to explain how the liberal left mind works, that's the whole point.

01:52:32

I don't think it's working at all. But no offense to any liberal leftists in the room, but I doubt there are too many of you left.

01:52:42

But I think it, personally, I think it has a lot to do simply with the detestation of Christianity, and certainly in England.

01:52:52

It's Islam filling the vacuum left by the UK just collapsing religiously and morally and ethically.

01:53:02

It's not so much, oh, we like these guys. It's that these guys are something other than what we really detest, which is

01:53:09

Christianity. It just seems to me that what unites the leftists in all of Western culture is a detestation of Western culture, and specifically, its historic

01:53:22

Christian roots, and a desire to completely redefine that. Marriage, sexuality, everything is just simply, we hate where we came from.

01:53:30

And I think it's a judgment of God. It's gonna destroy that kind of culture. But other than that,

01:53:38

I can't figure out what they're doing. Nobody can. James, I wanna thank you for bringing this whole presentation today.

01:53:47

Right after 9 -11 happened, I was in New York, and a Muslim came into my office, and we began a discussion, and so I just wanna confirm number two and number three.

01:53:57

It's exactly what happened to me. And at that time, I had no idea about Islam, any information on them.

01:54:04

So he, for about a half an hour, told me that Jesus didn't die on the cross, and Judas took his place, and the

01:54:12

Bible, actually, the New Testament, specifically, was perverted. He actually still believed in the

01:54:17

Old Testament. Have you heard that? Well, yeah,

01:54:24

I can see how they could go there, but it's a little unusual. Normally, they will say the entire

01:54:31

Bible has been corrupted, and they won't make that kind of distinction, but there are some very high things said about the

01:54:38

Torah in the Quran, so I can see how they might go there. So what happened was he spoke for about a half an hour, and then

01:54:43

I just basically leveled the playing field that we both are gonna be presenting things by faith.

01:54:49

And so I gave him six messianic prophecies, and I did not tell him where I was reading it from, and I asked him who it was speaking about, and he said it was

01:54:57

Jesus. This is all from the Old Testament. So then he said to me afterwards, well, everyone knows that's

01:55:03

Jesus, and I said, well, the point is is that it was before he even came. So he actually, and I preached the gospel through those six messianic prophecies to him, and I just found that that was a very good way of circumventing that and actually having him make the confession that this was speaking about Jesus without even using the

01:55:20

New Testament. Yeah, except they also believe that Muhammad is prophesied in both the

01:55:27

Old and New Testament as well. So they do believe in prophecy, and they believe he's the

01:55:33

Messiah. So what you'd have to demonstrate is prophecies that he's something more than the Messiah.

01:55:39

They would accept the idea of prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament, even though the exegetical system they use to come up with prophecies for Muhammad from the

01:55:53

Old and New Testament is what really causes them problems. If you wanna see how that works, see the debate I did at the

01:55:58

East London Mosque, which is the largest mosque in Europe, the week after Benghazi. That was the subject of the debate was is

01:56:05

Muhammad prophesied in the Bible? That was an interesting evening, let me tell you. There were riots going on all over the world, as you may recall, at that point in time, and there we are in the largest mosque in Europe debating that subject.

01:56:20

It was a fascinating evening. Thanks again,

01:56:26

Dr. White, for being here, appreciate it. Really just what you believe to be the credibility of or lack of credibility.

01:56:33

I have a couple things I've seen on Christian websites, one specifically referring to Muhammad's first wife that she was a

01:56:42

Catholic nun sent by the Vatican to corrupt. Baloney. Okay, I'm good with that.

01:56:48

Was that a clear enough, yeah, Baloney. I'm good with that, it's on several of them, so it's kind of confusing.

01:56:54

There's a lot of weird stuff out there. There is a ton of it, and this other one also might be a bit off, but there's a story that says that Muhammad said that Allah was the same as Asherah, the moon goddess, and it is the same goddess, and that's why they use the crescent moon.

01:57:13

Yeah, well, there are Christian apologists who have promoted the idea that Allah is the moon god.

01:57:23

I don't find any solid foundation for that. I've heard it debated a number of times, and in my opinion, it's always lost that particular debate.

01:57:33

Muhammad certainly never made any statement along those lines, certainly not in any of the recognized sources.

01:57:39

You'd have to really stretch things for that, so there's no reason to go that direction. The real issue is to compare the god of the

01:57:48

Quran with, the Quran tells us, the al -al -anjeel, the people of the gospel, to judge by what is contained in the gospel.

01:57:57

I think there's some really strong arguments to be made for a person who knows the Quran to at least get a person to start thinking about the relationship between the

01:58:06

Islamic scriptures, because they come afterwards, and they, when you look at the

01:58:11

Old Testament, and then you look at how the New Testament has such an intimate knowledge of the old, and then allegedly the

01:58:17

Quran then is the fulfillment and the protector of all these, and yet it never quotes these things.

01:58:23

The only thing it quotes in the Old Testament is the lex talionis, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, et cetera, et cetera.

01:58:29

There might be a quote from the Psalms, but it's very highly unlikely. That's it. There's no other citations of the

01:58:37

Bible. The author clearly did not have any knowledge, and he thought that there were all sorts of things in the gospel that were actually in much later gnostic and semi -gnostic gospels.

01:58:49

So that's really the real issue. That's really the real issue. You guys blessed?

01:58:56

Just thank you, Dr. White, for such an awesome presentation, and staying with us so long when you get to ride your bike in the morning, and it's just a huge blessing.

01:59:03

So just, I forgot to mention, I can't believe I did, Dr. White's book on the Quran, you guys can get that at AOMIN, A -O -M -I -N dot