Christianity and Islam, Session 3

On the screen you have a surah of the Quran that Muhammad in the hadith literature indicated was the, to quote this particular surah is to quote a third of the Quran. So in other words, it's very important.

This is, you do not have a creedal statement of Islam like we have a Nicene Creed or something like that. But what you have here in Surah Taliqlas is as close as you're going to get in the context of the Quran to a creedal statement.

You have the entirety of the surah on the screen right now. There's nothing else. It's only four ayah long. And it says, say he is Allah, the one and only Allah, the eternal absolute. The third ayah says, Now, we as Christians could hear three of those four ayah and say, you know, that that sounds that sounds a lot like what we have in the book of Isaiah.

That sounds a lot like what we have in the book of Jeremiah in the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 through 48, for example. There are many places where God says, I am God. There is none like unto me.

So there's much that we can agree with there. But you come to the third ayah. And I've mentioned we passed out the Quran, the fact that this is written in a Semitic language. Hebrew is a part of that language family.

And so there are many roots that are the same between Hebrew and Arabic. And Yelid is one of those roots, Y-L-D. And this in the third ayah says,. And I took one of my classes to the mosque near Arizona State University.

We listened to the to the prayers. We talked with the imam and I asked him, would you say at the third ayah of Surat al-Ikhlas, is in reference to Christianity and Christians belief that Jesus is the son of God.

I said, well, there's no question of that. Now, that very same term, Yelid, does appear in the Hebrew Old Testament, for example, in Isaiah chapter nine. You know the text. Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.

It's literally unto us a Yelid is Yeladid. A child is born to us. Jesus was truly human. But then the next phrase is unto us a son was given. It is interesting that very clearly in my mind, the author of the Quran did not understand what was found prophetically in the book of Isaiah, let alone the fulfillment of that in the New Testament scriptures.

There's just no evidence that that's that's the case. So it's important to recognize that here in one of the most important surahs of the entirety of the Islamic faith in the Quran, you have one quarter of the verses can be understood and is understood by many people as a denial of what you and I believe.

Shirk, Tawhid, and the Unforgivable Sin in Islam

Now, Muslims and Christians need to talk, but we need to be allowed to argue with one another. Compromise is not a possibility. Someone asked me earlier, you could talk about Chris Long. And I said, no, not really, because there is no such thing.

Any believing Muslim knows that you cannot abandon the key elements of the teachings of Islam and still have Islam. And any meaningful Christian knows you cannot develop, you cannot abandon the key elements of the Christian faith of Christianity.

And there is no way to put the two together. They are in in absolute opposition to one another when it comes to the person of Jesus Christ. We have to be to debate these things. We need to do so respectfully.

We need to do so in such a way as that we we honor the truth. One of the ninety nine beautiful names of Allah in Islamic teaching is Al Haqq, the truth. And so we need to be truthful. We need to be consistent in our argumentation.

But we cannot compromise. And there is no way of taking Islam and Christianity and somehow molding them into something. When, as we will see, the Koran specifically denies what we believe about this subject.

Now, I mentioned to you that the one unforgivable sin in Islam is the violation of Tawhid called shirk. Shirk is unforgivable. Notice some of the words of the Koran. Surah 31, 13. Oh, my son, do not associate anything with Allah.

Indeed, association with him is great injustice. The term shirk in secular Arabic simply is like like an English word corporation to associate together when it's brought into the religious realm. That's association of anyone or anything with Allah.

Very similar to what we would refer to as idolatry, giving to any created thing that which is due to God alone. And so Surah 31, 13 says that that association shirk is a great injustice and all praise is due to Allah.

Surah 61 says, who created the heavens and the earth and made the darkness and light. Then those who disbelieve, the kafirs, those who disbelieve, equate others with their Lord. There is an association of others with their Lord, and that is an act of disbelief, according to the Koran.

Now, in Surah 4, 47 to 48, we read the following. Oh, you who were given the scripture, that is the Al-Kitab, the people of the book, believe in what we have sent down to Muhammad, is an insertion in this translation, confirming that which is with you, interesting enough, that would only be in reference to the Torah and the Injil, before we obliterate faces and turn them toward their backs or curse them as we curse the Sabbath breakers.

And ever is the decree of Allah accomplished. Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with him, but he forgives what is less than that for whom he wills, and he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin.

So there you have the exact statement from the text of the Koran that shirk is unforgivable. Allah will not forgive that sin. Now, what I may be doing in the time frame that we have here, the last hour has been reserved for telling Islam's stories.

What I'm going to do for you during that time is I'm going to narrate Hadith, narrate some of the Hadith stories with you. But I think what might be even better is to sort of mix some of that in now and take up some of that time with some of the theological materials when they're related to one another.

What I mean by that is in describing how serious shirk is. Now, I realize there are secular Muslims that are not overly concerned about this. Most of the Muslims that I have studied most closely, and what I like to do is I like to listen to Muslims lecturing to Muslims.

Hadith Stories About Shirk, Muhammad’s Family, and Abu Talib

It's one thing to listen to Muslims talking to Christians. It's another thing to listen to Muslims talking to Muslims. But I also have gravitated toward the really believing Muslims. Just as I don't really have a whole lot of time in my life to take up with, quote-unquote, liberal Christianity that doesn't take seriously the Bible, liberal Islam that does not take seriously the idea of Muhammad as a prophet, or the Quran as the word of God, or things like that.

Those aren't the people that are going to want to be debating me in the first place. They're not the ones going out doing proselytization. They're just sort of doing their thing, and okay, that's fine.

So, I like to listen to the believing Muslims. And amongst believing Muslims, Tawhid is vitally important, and shirk is a huge subject. What is shirk? What's major shirk? What's minor shirk? There's all sorts of discussions of the nature of shirk.

And of course, the biggest issue is does the Muslim believe that my Trinitarian worship amounts to shirk? Now, I think a very strong argument can be made that the Quran specifically identifies our worship as an act of shirk.

And most Muslims with whom I have spoken believe that we are Mushrikun, that we are people who commit the sin of shirk when we worship the Trinity because they accuse us of associating something which is created with the eternal God.

Of course, that's not what we're doing, but that is an issue we'll get to in a moment. But there are Muslims who say other words. Hamza Yusuf, a well-known American Muslim scholar, does not believe that Christians are Mushrikun.

Why? Because the Quran allows a Muslim man to marry a Christian woman. And a Mushrik is Nejas. He is detestable in God's sight. He's unclean, or she would be unclean. So the idea that Allah would allow a Muslim man to marry an unclean person doesn't make any sense to him.

So therefore, he argues that Christians, and of course he knows as a scholar, that we are monotheists, that there's only one true God, etc., etc. But I would just simply say that Hamza Yusuf knows a whole lot more about Christian theology than the author of the Quran did.

That's the issue. That's the key issue. But from his perspective, that would mean that Christians are not committing the sin of shirk. But just to illustrate, let me borrow from the next hour and tell you one of the Hadith stories.

Now as I mentioned to you, I read all of these while riding a bike. And the funny thing is that probably helped me remember more than if I had read the books. Why? Because if you've ever read the Hadith, the stories are told repetitively.

There is one particular Hadith story about a woman who comes to Muhammad and she offers herself in marriage to him. And he does not say anything, which is his way of rejecting her offer. And she sits down, there's a man there, and he stands up and says, please give her to me in marriage.

I very much want to be married. And Muhammad says, well, do you have anything to give her? You know, there's a necessity of giving something to the wife, sort of in our language dowry type thing, but not really.

It's another issue. But he says, I have nothing. I have absolutely nothing at all. And he says, go to your family. Do you even have an iron ring? He goes to his family, comes back, I have nothing. And so finally, you know, he sits down and he's dejected and he's sad.

And the woman's dejected and sad. And so finally, Muhammad calls him forward and he says, have you memorized any of the Quran? And he says, yes, I've memorized these surahs. And he says, I give her to you in marriage for the portions of the Quran that you have memorized.

Now, between Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, I think I heard that story, that exact hadith, a minimum of 45 times. A minimum of 45 times. After about the 15th time, I want to ride my bike off the road into a sorrel cactus to feel better.

OK, you know, I mean, but since it's on my iPod back here, there's nothing I can do about it. I have to hear them over and over and over. And what's the Latin phrase? Repetitio mater memore. Repetition is the mother of memory.

So I think the reason I remember them so well is I've had to listen to them so many times. It's not that I wanted to. It's that I had to. So that's one way of, if you're reading, every time I came to that story, I just skip over and keep on going once I heard it two or three times.

But I couldn't do that the way that I did it. Anyways, the hadith that I would share with you, Muhammad's parents died as mushrikun, as unbelievers, as idolaters, as polytheists. And it's interesting, the hadith give us contradictory stories about the background of a particular section of the Quran.

Some of the stories indicate that Muhammad asked Allah permission to intercede for his parents. And a particular verse in the Quran came down saying you should not do that. Others say that this was in reference to another situation.

That was during those first 12 years when Muhammad was a minority prophet in Mecca. He was protected during the first part of that time period by his uncle Abu Talib. And Abu Talib was not a Muslim. But he protected Muhammad.

And on his deathbed, Muhammad came to Abu Talib and he said, you know that I'm a prophet. If you will but say la ilaha illallah, I will be able to pray for you. You will be able to go to paradise, et cetera, et cetera.

The rest of the family is going, don't you dare deny the ancestral gods. Don't deny the family. Well, Abu Talib died without saying the shahada. And an exception is granted to Muhammad where he can intercede for Abu Talib.

And as the result of that, Abu Talib has the best spot in hell. Now, you're all sitting there going, okay, what's the best spot in hell? You're all wanting to ask that question. What is the best spot in hell?

According to the Hadith, Abu Talib, now there's two ways it's put. I'll tell you what both of them are. Abu Talib is wearing sandals that are so hot that his brains boil. That's the best, that's the garden spot of hell.

The other way it's put is he's standing in such shallow fire that it only reaches up to his ankles, but his brains boil. So he's got the best spot because of Muhammad's intercession for him. That's how bad shirk is, that even when Muhammad intercedes for you, you get the best spot in hell, but it's still an awfully bad place to have your brains boiling for eternity, okay?

That's just the picture that you need to get. Shirk is a bad, bad thing. Even when Allah will not allow Muhammad to even pray for his parents or when he does pray for Abu Talib, all he gets is that kind of reduction in punishment.

So shirk is a bad thing. It is a tremendous sin according to Surah 4, 78. Now, Surah 4 continues on, there we go, in verses 171 to 172 to say the following. O people of the scripture, that's us again.

Sometimes Allah Al-Kitab refers to Jews, sometimes to us, sometimes to both, sometimes you can't tell. This one's fairly clear, this is to us. O people of the scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.

What you need to understand is in the vast majority, and I always try to make that distinction, I'm not saying every Muslim is mine, but in the vast majority of Muslims, we are guilty of excess. It's one of the Arabic words that I don't know that I can pronounce.

I have tried. There are just some combinations of sounds that my Scottish mouth was never designed to actually utter. And ta 'aglu is one of those words, I just cannot get the ghayn, it just doesn't want to work for me.

Anyways, it is to go into excess. From their perspective, Jesus was a mere prophet, and then what we've done is we have elevated that prophet above where he was supposed to be to a position he was never supposed to have.

And so it says, O people of the book, do not commit excess in your religion. Fidinikum, your dean. There's a program on called The Dean Show. Dean means religion in Islamic thought, The Dean Show. Do not say, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.

The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah. He was a rasool of Allah, and his word which he directed to Mary, and a soul created a command from him, so believe in Allah and his messengers.

And so the assertion is that, now you need to understand, again, not only do Muslims believe that Jesus was a Muslim in the sense of being submitted to Allah and not doing five daily prayers, but doing daily prayers, so on and so forth.

But he was, he was virgin born. Most of them would understand this text referring to that, that Allah simply said be and he was is the terminology the Quran uses. He was virgin born, and he worked miracles that you and I do not believe he worked.

You and I do not believe that he even did some of the miracles that the Quran attributes to Jesus. Why? Because the author of the Quran thought that certain of the stories he had heard were in the Injil, but they're not.

For example, the Quran tells the story of Jesus forming birds and breathing upon them, and they become alive and fly off. Now, where did that come from? That came from the infancy gospel of Thomas, a second or third century Gnostic-tinged gospel.

It's not historical. It doesn't go back to the real Jesus of history. But the author of the Quran didn't know that. And in fact, the author of the Quran draws upon numerous sources that existed before the Quran and assumes they were a part of either the Torah and the Injil, and they're not.

He draws from Jewish sources, Jewish mythology. In Surah 19, which is the only surah named after a woman in the Quran, Surah Maryam, Jesus' mother. In Surah 19, Jesus speaks from his cradle. Speaks from his cradle.

Now, where did that come from? That's certainly not in the New Testament. No, it's not. But it is from the 5th century Arabic infancy gospel. And so there are a number of places where the author of the Quran assumes the things he has heard are a part of the Torah and the Injil, but they're not.

There are later myths or legends that grew up around that. And so there are stories in the Quran about Jesus that you and I would reject as being ahistorical, having no foundation whatsoever. Jesus' name appears, well, it's a variant.

No one knows where Risa came from in the utilization of that in the Arabic. There's all sorts of theories. I've heard at least a dozen different theories as to why it does not use the standard Arabic word for Jesus' name.

But it appears 25 times in the Quran. There's just under 100 verses that would make some reference to Jesus in one way, shape, or form. And Jesus speaks. We're going to see that Jesus will quote a couple of texts where Jesus will speak in the text of the Quran.

It's always struck me as ironic that most of my Islamic apologist friends will question the accuracy of the gospels, which all undoubtedly come from the 1st century. But they will accept without question the quotations of Jesus from a source that were written 600 years later.

So the source that comes from the same century as Jesus, well, we reject that. But 600 years later with no historical evidence, we'll accept that. Double standard, rather obvious and rather clear. So, here you have the assertion the Messiah Jesus, Son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah.

He was the Jewish Messiah, though there is no understanding on the part of the author of the Quran what the Messiah was supposed to be or do. None. The term Mashiach is used of Jesus. He's called the Messiah.

You can see it right there. But who is the Messiah? What's the Messiah supposed to do? The author of the Quran has no earthly idea and never even enters into that discussion in any way, shape, or form.

Continues on to say, do not say three. Now there are some translations of the Quran. And please realize, in the minds of most Muslims, nobody in this room, well, maybe some of you, but have actually read the Quran because the Quran really only exists in Arabic.

When you're reading a translation, you're not really reading the text itself. You're not reading the Quran itself. And in some, but in some translations, or some prefer to say transliterations of the Quran, the term that is found here, like in Yusuf Ali, is do not say Trinity.

The term Trinity does not appear in the Quran. The specific theological term that was being used by Arabic Christians in that day for Trinity does not appear in the Quran. This is the ordinal number three.

It's just the normal Arabic term for three. Do not say three. Desist. It is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Now here's the point. Every single time the Quran says something about three, the next sentence will say there is only one God.

Now why do I emphasize this? It's really simple. If I said do not say that there are two teams. There is only one, the St. Louis Cardinals. Now when I said do not say there are two, what was I talking about?

Two baseball teams. Because when I say there's only one, I'm defining what that genre is. I'm talking about the World Series going on in the United States. You all may not care much about that. You all do have a Canadian Major League Baseball team, though, so you might want to

What? Well, there you go. They've won two games now? Good. That's excellent. But pretty soon they'll be right up there. Anyway, I know what you mean. The point, obviously, is that if we're going to take the Koran seriously, the author of the Koran thinks that the Trinity is saying there are three gods.

If every single time it says, do not say three, Allah is but one God, then what is the understanding of the author? That we're saying there are three gods. Now there is a group that calls itself Christian and believes that.

They're called the Mormons. But they weren't around back then. Christians have always believed in one God. So, notice what it says. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. What does that mean?

I have challenged my Muslim debaters over and over again. Show me anywhere where the author of the Koran understands what Christians believe about the sonship of Jesus. And he can't because the author has no idea what we mean by sonship of Jesus.

In fact, there's good evidence that he completely misunderstood what we believe about the sonship of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God eternally. He did not begin to be the Son of God. It is not a term where He arises and becomes the Son of God.

There's no wife involved. There's nothing like that. It is a relationship term that has no beginning. But the author of the Koran does not understand that, as we'll see. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son.

To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is the law as to dispose of affairs. Never would the Messiah disdain to be a servant of Allah. And, of course, what was the Messiah?

Was He not a slave, a servant of Allah? Of course. It's a servant song, so on and so forth. But He did that voluntarily. The Son voluntarily submitted Himself to the Father. The author doesn't understand that.

Nor would the angels near to Him and whoever disdains His worship and is arrogant, He will gather them to Himself all together. Then in Sura 5, Surat Al-Ma 'idah, Ayahs 72 -77, they have certainly disbelieved who say Allah is the Messiah, the Son of Mary.

And I just stopped there for a moment. That's not what we say. That's not even an accurate representation of what Christians say. We don't say God is the Messiah. We say the Messiah is deity, the Messiah is divine.

But the Messiah does not exhaust the entirety of the category of God, because you have the Father and the Spirit in there as well. So there's not even an accurate representation of the Christian perspective at that point.

Allah is the Messiah, the Son of Mary. While the Messiah has said, here's some of those words that the Muslim believes Jesus said, but there's no historical evidence that He did. O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.

Indeed, He who associates what's associate? Shirk. He who associates others with Allah, Allah has forbidden Him paradise, and His refuge is the fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers. They have certainly disbelieved, so it sounds like Christians are being described as disbelievers here, who say Allah is the third of three.

That's a good translation of the Arabic. Allah is the third of three. Three what? Well, look at the very next sentence. What does it say? And there is no God except one God. So once again, as soon as three appears, oh no, there's only one God.

As if we were saying there are three gods. And at least one of my opponents down in South Africa was kind enough to say I don't care what you do say. You all are polytheists. You believe in three gods.

At least he came straight out and said I don't care what you show me from your New Testament. I don't care what you show me from your creeds. I don't care what you show me from your history. My Quran says you believe in three gods, so you believe in three gods.

That's all there is to it. At least he was honest in putting that forward. It continues on. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, and what are we saying? We're professing the deity of Christ.

We're professing the very heart of our faith. There will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment. So will they not repent to Allah and seek His forgiveness? And Allah is forgiving and merciful.

The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger. He was a Rasul. Other messengers have passed on before him. Now listen. And his mother was a supporter of truth. They both used to eat food. Look how we make clear to them the signs, the ayat.

Then look how they are deluded. Now I stop there for a reason. You know, you've eaten lunch since I last talked about this. You may have forgotten. Remember the fig tree argument? I said that's a Quranic argument.

Here's where it's from. They both used to eat food. God doesn't eat food. So Jesus can't be God because He ate food. But notice what it says. It's plural, isn't it? Who's the they? Jesus and Mary. What does Mary have to do with anything?

Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. Look how we make clear to them the signs. Then look how they are deluded. Say, do you worship besides Allah, that which holds for you no power of harm or benefit, while it is Allah who is the hearing, the knowing?

Say, O people of the Scripture, do not exceed limits in your religion. There it is again. You've gone beyond the bounds. Beyond the truth, and do not follow the inclinations of a people who had gone astray before and misled many and have strayed from the soundness of the way.

Now there is a prayer that every Muslim knows by heart in Arabic, because it is repeated very often in the daily prayers. And it is, of course, Surat al-Fatiha, the opening surah of the Quran. And if you listen to it recited, at the very end of that particular prayer, you will almost always in tajweed, in the way that the Quran is chanted or sung, you will hear them say, wala dhalim and they lengthen out the vowel in dhalim.

Well dhalim means those who are led astray. Now, the prayer is to be led in the proper path, the path of those who receive God's grace and God's mercy and God's kindness. And then it mentions two other groups.

Not of those who earn your wrath, or those who have gone astray. Now every Muslim repeats this prayer over and over and over again, knows these words intimately. Well, in the Hadith, going back to the earliest collections of the Hadith, Muhammad was asked, who are these groups?

Who has earned God's wrath and who has gone astray? And his answer is unambiguous. It's the Jews who have earned God's wrath and it's the Christians who have gone astray. So every day the Muslim prays not to be you.

Not to be you. And here you have the very same language. Do not follow the inclinations of the people who had gone astray before and misled many astray from the soundness of the way. If you say three, so this is what's addressed to you in this book.

Alright? Keep that very much in mind. Now, what does the Quran understand about sonship? Is there ever a discussion of father, son, Holy Spirit in the Quran? No. Nowhere. In fact, for most Muslims, the Holy Spirit is the angel Jibril.

So, what does the Quran say about sonship? Well, in Surah 39 .4, we have, So it sounds like here, the idea of sonship is from a relationship with a woman to bear and have a child. And of course, what was Muhammad preaching against in Mecca?

Were there not many of the idols in the Kaaba that were a male deity and a female deity and an offspring deity? Sure. Lots of situations like that. So, is that what the Quran is understanding Christians to say?

Well, Surah 39 .4, interesting. Let's take a look at another text, Surah 6 .101. Now, that term, consort, I asked my Arabic tutor about that term, and he sort of said, well, to be honest with you, in modern Arabic, that's sort of the woman on the side.

You know, that's the woman you don't want your wife to know about. But maybe back then, it was just another word for wife or something like that. But the point is, how can a man how can he have a son when he has no consort?

So we've had, he is exalted above these things, has to take part of creation, he doesn't have a consort, therefore he cannot have a son. So you have a rather consistent testimony of this idea of sonship in the text of the Quran itself.

The Quran’s Misunderstanding of the Trinity and Christ’s Sonship

And so we come to one of the key texts in the Quran, probably one of the ones you definitely want to write down. This is at the end of Surah 5. Now, we already looked at Surah 5, 71 and following. You could actually, could have gone earlier than that, looked at Surah 5, 17 and following.

This is a surah I think is very, very consistent all the way through. And now we're talking about the Day of Judgment. And beware 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.

He will say, Exalter you, it was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, you would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within yourself. And indeed, it is you who is knower of the unseen.

Now, I have challenged my Muslim friends on this over and over again. And I've never gotten an answer. It's real simple. Show me any other place in the Quran where three are mentioned in this context.

Anyplace else. You say, where are the three? Pretty easy, isn't it? Allah, Mary, and Jesus. Allah, Mary, and Jesus. Did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities besides Allah. There's your three.

Allah takes a wife named Mary, and they have a kid named Jesus. Now, I can understand where this came from. Put yourself in Muhammad's shoes. You're on caravan. You go up into Syria. You're 13, 14 years of age.

And it's going to take some while to load the camels, or maybe to water the camels, or people are bartering over there, or something like that. So you've got a little time before you're pulling out. And what do kids that age want to do?

They want to go exploring, right? They want to go look at stuff. And so you're Muhammad, and you start looking around these small villages or towns in Syria, and you stumble across a Christian church.

And you stick your head inside and look around. What are you going to see around, oh, 580-ish? 585? 590? What are you going to see? Well, you're going to see representations of God as creator. You're going to see crucifixes.

And what else are you going to see? By that point in time, there's already been a major development in devotion to Mary. And so you're going to see a woman. And what's the woman frequently going to be presented as?

Holding the baby. Now, if you see a dove, is that going to make any sense to some guy from Mecca? That that represents the Holy Spirit? Of course not. So you're going to see God as creator, Jesus as a baby, and then on the cross, and a woman being exalted.

Did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities besides Allah? So I know where he got it from. Some people say he got it from Gnosticism. Maybe. But, I think there's a simpler explanation.

That is simple misunderstanding. You look around, you see it, you associate with what you're familiar with in the worship back in Mecca of a male deity with a female deity and they have offspring. And so you have these words.

Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah. Now, there is one other possibility. I've offered this and I've never had anyone take it up though. There is one group of people who call themselves Christians that this actually describes.

That's exactly what the Mormons believe. They do believe that God, Elohim, in a physical body, had sex with the Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus. That is what Mormonism teaches. The problem is, Joseph Smith didn't start teaching that until about 1840.

So there's about a 1200 year gap there. So I said, hey, if you want to see the Quran as a prophetic refutation of Mormonism, I suppose you can go there, but that's really not going to fly anywhere other than Utah, so I'm not sure how much that's really going to do you any good.

And by the way, I've said many times, and I'll say it again because it'll help wake you up because your blood sugar levels are already dropping after all that food. But when it comes to the foundations of religions, Islam is considerably closer to Christianity than Mormonism ever could be.

Do you hear me? You say, well, Mormons talk about Jesus and they look just like us. Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion in the world. Mormonism makes the Hindus look monotheistic. Mormonism literally posits an unlimited infinite number of gods.

Not just 330 million, an infinite number of gods. So on the most basic level of religious identity, Christianity is as far removed from Mormonism as possible. And Islam is considerably closer to us than Mormonism ever could be.

But they're the only group to say this. There was nobody. You say, well, there were the Coloridians. There was a group, according to some historians, that existed that baked little cakes to Mary and worshipped Mary as a god.

Well, yeah, there are a few references to that. There's no evidence they ever got down to Mecca. There's no evidence they were in existence in this century at all. I know you're really telling me that an eternally written book is going to refute a group that had already passed away, wasn't even in existence any longer in this context?

Doesn't make any sense at all. There's only one logical result here. The author of the Koran thought that Christians believed the Trinity is God, Mary, and Jesus. And it never has been, never will be.

Didn't understand it. Now, even if you say the Trinity's wrong, you've got to understand one thing. In 632, did Elam know what the Trinity was? Of course he did. All the Christological controversies were over.

Even if the Trinity was untrue, God knew what it was, and if He wanted to refute it, He could have refuted it accurately. But you will never find an accurate representation of the doctrine of the Trinity anywhere in the Koran.

Nowhere. I challenge you to show it to me. I've taken on the best they have to offer. They can't. It's not there. The author didn't know it. That's all there is to it. Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you.

We hear a lot about how Muslims are offended by this, and Muslims are offended by that. But I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I'm offended by this verse. Not only am I offended by its misrepresentation of my faith, I'm offended by the false words it puts in the mouths of Jesus.

I'm offended by it. Notice what it says. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within yourself. The Jesus of the Bible never said those words. Nor could He have ever said those words.