Christianity and Islam, Session 3

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On the screen you have a surah of the Qur 'an that Muhammad in the hadith literature indicated was the, to quote this particular surah is to quote a third of the
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Qur 'an, so in other words it's very important. This is, you do not have a creedal statement of Islam like we have a
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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
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Qur 'an 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.
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And it says, say he is Allah, the one and only, Allah, the eternal absolute.
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The third ayah says, He begetteth not, nor is he begotten, and there is none like unto him.
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Now, we as Christians could hear three of those four ayah and say, you know that sounds a lot like what we have in the book of Isaiah.
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That sounds a lot like what we have in the book of Jeremiah. In the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 -48 for example.
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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.
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But you come to the third ayah and I've mentioned, we passed out the
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Qur 'an, 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.
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And Yeled is one of those roots, Y -L -D. And this in the third ayah says,
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He begetteth not, nor is he begotten. And I took one of my classes to the mosque near Arizona State University.
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We listened to the prayers. We talked with the Imam and I asked him, would you say at the third ayah of Surah Taliqlas, is in reference to Christianity and Christians belief that Jesus is the son of God.
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And he said, well there's no question of that. Now that very same term, Yeled, does appear in the
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Hebrew Old Testament for example in Isaiah chapter 9. You know the text, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.
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It's literally, unto us a Yeled is Yeladed. A child is born to us. Jesus was truly human.
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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
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Quran did not understand what was found prophetically in the book of Isaiah, let alone the fulfillment of that in the
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New Testament scriptures. There's just no evidence that that's the case. So it's important to recognize that here in one of the most important surahs of the entirety of the
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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.
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Now Muslims and Christians need to talk, but we need to be allowed to argue with one another.
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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.
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Any believing Muslim knows that you cannot abandon the key elements of the teachings of Islam and still have
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Islam. And any meaningful Christian knows you cannot abandon the key elements of the Christian faith and still have
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Christianity. And there's no way to put the two together. They are in absolute opposition to one another when it comes to the person of Jesus Christ.
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We have to debate these things. We need to do so respectfully. We need to do so in such a way as that we honor the truth.
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One of the 99 beautiful names of Allah in Islamic teaching is Al -Haq, the truth.
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And so we need to be truthful. We need to be consistent in our argumentation. But we cannot compromise.
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And there is no way of taking Islam and Christianity and somehow molding them into something. When as we will see, the
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Quran 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.
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Shirk is unforgivable. Notice some of the words of the Quran. Surah 31, 13, The term shirk in secular
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Arabic simply is like an English word corporation, to associate together. When it's brought into the religious realm, then it's association of anyone or anything with Allah.
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Very similar to what we would refer to as idolatry, giving to any created thing that which is due to God alone.
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And so, Surah 31, 13 says that that association, shirk, is a great injustice. And all praise is due to Allah, Surah 6, 1 says,
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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
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Lord. There is an association of others with their Lord, and that is an act of disbelief, according to the
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Quran. Now, in Surah 4, 47 -48, we read the following, Interesting enough, that would only be in reference to the
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Torah and the Injil. So there you have the exact statement from the text of the
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Quran, that shirk is unforgivable. Allah will not forgive that sin.
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Now, what I may be doing in the time frame that we have here, the last hour has been reserved for telling
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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
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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.
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What I mean by that is in describing how serious shirk is.
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Now, I realize there are secular Muslims that are not overly concerned about this. Most of the
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Muslims that I have studied most closely, and what I like to do is I like to listen to Muslims lecturing to Muslims.
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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
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Muslims. Just as I don't really have a whole lot of time in my life to take up with, quote unquote, liberal
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Christianity that doesn't take seriously the Bible, liberal Islam that does not take seriously the idea of Muhammad as a prophet, or the
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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.
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They're not the ones going out doing proselytization, they're just sort of doing their thing, and okay, that's fine.
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So I like to listen to the believing Muslims. And amongst believing Muslims, Tawhid is vitally important, and shirk is a huge subject.
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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
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Muslim believe that my Trinitarian worship amounts to shirk? Now, I think a very strong argument can be made that the
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Quran specifically identifies our worship as an act of shirk. And most Muslims with whom
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I have spoken believe that we are mushrikun, that we are people who commit the sin of shirk when we worship the
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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.
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But there are Muslims who say other words. Hamza Yusuf, a well -known American Muslim scholar, does not believe that Christians are mushrikun.
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Why? Because the Quran allows a Muslim man to marry a Christian woman.
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And a mushrik is najis. He is detestable in God's sight. He's unclean, or she would be unclean.
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So the idea that Allah would allow a Muslim man to marry an unclean person doesn't make any sense to him.
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So therefore, he argues that Christians, and of course he knows as a scholar, that we are monotheists, that there's only one true
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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
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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.
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But just to illustrate, let me borrow from the next hour and tell you one of the
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Hadith stories. 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.
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Why? Because if you've ever read the Hadith, the stories are told repetitively. There is one particular
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Hadith story about a woman who comes to Muhammad and she offers herself in marriage to him.
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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.
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I very much want to be married. And Muhammad says, well, do you have anything to give her?
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There's a necessity of giving something to the wife, sort of, in our language, dowry type thing, but not really.
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It's another issue. But he says, I have nothing. I have absolutely nothing at all. And he says, go to your family.
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Do you even have an iron ring, anything? He goes to his family, comes back, I have nothing. And so finally, he sits down and he's dejected and he's sad.
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And the woman's dejected and sad. And so finally, Muhammad calls him forward and he says, have you memorized any of the
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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
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Quran that you have memorized. Now, between Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, I think
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I heard that story, that exact hadith, a minimum of 45 times.
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A minimum of 45 times. After about the 15th time, I wanted to ride my bike off the road into a sorrel cactus to feel better.
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Okay, you know, I mean, but since it's on my iPod back here, there's nothing
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I can do about it. I have to hear them over and over and over. And what's the Latin phrase?
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Repetitio mater memore. Repetition is the mother of memory. So I think the reason I remember them so well is
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I've had to listen to them so many times. It's not that I wanted to, it's that I had to.
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So that's one way of, if you were 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.
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Anyways, the hadith that I would share with you. Muhammad's parents died as mushrikun, as unbelievers, as idolaters, as polytheists.
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And it's interesting, the hadith give us contradictory stories about the background of a particular section of the
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Quran. Some of the stories indicate that Muhammad asked Allah permission to intercede for his parents.
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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.
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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,
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Abu Talib. And Abu Talib was not a Muslim, but he protected
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Muhammad. And on his deathbed, Muhammad came to Abu Talib and he said, you know that I'm a prophet.
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If you will, but say la ilaha illallah, I will be able to pray for you. You will, you'll, you'll be able to go to paradise, et cetera, et cetera.
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The rest of the family's going, don't you dare deny the ancestral gods. Don't deny the family. Well, Abu Talib died without saying the shahada.
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And an exception is granted to Muhammad, where he can intercede for Abu Talib.
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And as the result of that, Abu Talib has the best spot in hell.
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Now you're all sitting there going, okay, what's the best spot in hell? You're all wanting to ask that question.
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What is the best spot in hell? Oh, according to the Hadith, Abu Talib. Now there's, there's, there's two ways it's put,
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I'll tell you what both of them are. Abu Talib is wearing sandals that are so hot that his brains boil.
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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 only reaches up to his ankles, but his brains boil.
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So he's got the best spot because of Muhammad's intercession for him. That's how bad shirk is that even when
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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.
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Okay. That's just the picture that you need to get. Shirk is a bad, bad thing.
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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, in, in punishment.
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So shirk is a bad thing. It is a tremendous sin according to Surah 4, 78.
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Now Surah 4 continues on. There we go. In verses 171 to 172 to say the following,
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Oh, people of the scripture, that's us again. Sometimes Allah Kitab refers to Jews, sometimes to us, sometimes to both.
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Sometimes you can't tell. Uh, this one's fairly clear. This is to us. So people of the scripture do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth.
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What you need to understand is in the vast majority, and I always try to make that distinction.
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I'm not saying every Muslim is mine, but the vast majority of Muslims, we are guilty of excess.
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It's a, it's one of the Arabic words that I, I don't know that I can pronounce. I've tried.
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There is, there are just some combinations of sounds that the, that my Scottish mouth was never designed to actually utter.
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Uh, and, uh, is, uh, is one of those words. I just cannot get the shine and the, uh, it just, it just doesn't want to work for me.
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Anyways, it is to go into excess from their perspective. Uh, Jesus was a mere prophet.
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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.
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And so it says, Oh, the people of the book, do not commit excess in your religion. Feed Dini comb your
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Dean. There's a program on called the Dean show. Uh, Dean means religion, uh, in, uh, in Islamic thought, the
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Dean show. Do not say, uh, uh, do not commit excess in religion or say about a law, except the truth.
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The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary was, but a messenger of Allah. He was a result of Allah and his word, which he directed to Mary and a soul created a command from him.
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And so believe in the law and his messengers. And so the assertion is that, now you need to understand, again, not only do
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Muslims believe that Jesus was a Muslim in the sense of being submitted to a law and, not doing five daily prayers, but doing daily prayers, so on and so forth.
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Uh, but, uh, he was, he was virgin born.
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Most of them would understand this text referring to that, that Allah simply said be. And he was, is the terminology of the
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Quran uses. He was virgin born. Uh, and he worked miracles that you and I do not believe he worked.
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You and I do not believe that he even did some of the miracles of the Quran attributes to Jesus. Why? Because the author of the
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Quran thought that certain of the stories he had heard were in the NGO, but they're not. For example, the
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Quran tells a story of Jesus forming birds and breathing upon them and they become alive and fly off.
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Now, where'd that come from? That came from the infancy gospel of Thomas, a second or third century
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Gnostic tinged gospel. Uh, it's not historical. It doesn't go back to the real Jesus of history, but the author of the
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Quran didn't know that. And in fact, the author of the Quran draws upon numerous sources that existed before the
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Quran and assumes that they were a part of either the Torah and the NGO, and they're not draws from Jewish sources,
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Jewish mythology, uh, in Surah 19, which is the only Surah named after a woman, uh, in the, in the, in the
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Quran, Surah Maryam, Jesus's mother, uh, in Surah 19, Jesus speaks from his cradle, speaks from his cradle.
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Uh, now, uh, where'd that come from? That's certainly not in the new Testament. No, it's not, but it is from the fifth century
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Arabic infancy gospel. Uh, and so there are a number of places where the author of the
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Quran assumes the things he has heard are part of the Torah NGO, but they're not. They're later, uh, myths or legends that grew up around that.
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And so there are stories in the Quran about Jesus. You and I would reject as being a historical, having no foundation whatsoever.
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Jesus's name appears. Well, it's a variant. No one knows where Lisa came from in, in, uh, the utilization of that in, in the
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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
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Arabic word for Jesus's name, but it appears 25 times in the Quran. There's just under a hundred verses that would make some reference to Jesus in one way, shape, or form.
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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
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Islamic apologist friends will question the accuracy of the gospels, which all undoubtedly come from the first century, but they will accept without question, the quotations of Jesus from a source that were written 600 years later.
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So the source that comes from the same century as Jesus, we reject that. But 600 years later, with no historical evidence, we'll accept that.
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Double standard, rather, rather obvious and rather clear. Um, so, here you have the assertion, the
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Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah. Uh, he was the Jewish Messiah, though there is no understanding on the part of the author of the
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Quran what the Messiah was supposed to do, be or do. None. The term Mashiach is used of, of Jesus.
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He's called the Messiah. You can see it right there. Uh, but who is the Messiah? What's the Messiah supposed to do? The author of the
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Quran has no, no earthly idea, never even, uh, enters into that discussion, uh, in, in any way, shape or form.
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Continues on to say, do not say three. Now, there are some translations of the
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Quran, and, and please realize in, in the minds of most Muslims, uh, nobody in this room, uh, well, maybe some of you, uh, but have actually read the
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Quran because the Quran really only exists in Arabic. Um, when you're reading a translation, you're not really reading the text itself.
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You're not reading the Quran itself. and in some, but in some translations, or some prefer to say transliterations of the
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Quran, the term that is found here, like in Yusuf Ali, is do not say Trinity. The term Trinity does not appear in the
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Quran. The specific theological term that was being used by Arabic Christians in that day for Trinity does not appear in the
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Quran. This is the ordinal number three. It's just the, the normal Arabic term for three.
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Do not say three. Desist. It is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one
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God. Now here's the point. Every single time the Quran says something about three, the next sentence will say there is only one
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God. Now, why do I emphasize this? It's really simple. If I said, um, there do not say that there are, um, two teams.
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There is only one, the St. Louis Cardinals. Now, when I said do not say there are two, what was
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I talking about? Two baseball teams. Because when I say there's only one, I'm defining what that genre is.
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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
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Canadian Major League Baseball team, though, you know, so you might want to, you know, I'm sorry, what?
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Well, there you go. They've won, they've won two games now. Good. That's excellent. Um, but, uh, pretty soon they'll be right up there.
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Anyway, um, I know what you mean. The point, obviously, is that if we're going to take the
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Quran seriously, the author of the Quran thinks that the Trinity is saying there are three gods.
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If every single time it says, do not say three, if the law is but one
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God, then what is the understanding of the author? That we're saying there are three gods.
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Now, there is a group that calls itself Christian and believes that. They're called the Mormons. But they weren't around back then.
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Christians have always believed in one God. So, notice what it says.
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Indeed, the law is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. What does that mean?
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I have challenged my Muslim, uh, debaters over and over again. Show me anywhere where the author of the
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Quran 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.
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In fact, there's good evidence that he completely misunderstood what we believe about the sonship of Jesus. Jesus is the
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Son of God eternally. He did not begin to be the Son of God. It is not a, a term where He arises and becomes the
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Son of God. There's no wife involved. There's no, nothing like that. It is a relationship term that has no beginning.
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But the author of the Quran does not understand that. As, as we'll see. Indeed, the law is but one God. Exalted is
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He above having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Insufficient is the law as disposer of affairs. Never would the
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Messiah disdain to be a servant of a law. And, of course, what was the Messiah? Was He not a slave, a slave, a servant of a law?
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Of course. That's, it's a servant song, so on and so forth. But He did that voluntarily. The Son voluntarily submitted
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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,
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He will gather them to Himself all together. Then in Surah 5, Surat Al -Maidah,
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Ayahs 72 through 77. They have certainly disbelieved who say,
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Allah is the Messiah, the Son of Mary. Now, I just stopped there for a moment. That's not what we say. That's not even an accurate representation of what
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Christians say. We don't say, God is the Messiah. We say, the Messiah is deity, the Messiah is divine, but the
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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
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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
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Muslim believes Jesus said, but there's no historical evidence that He did. O children of Israel, worship Allah, my
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Lord and your Lord. Indeed, He who associates, what's associate? Sure.
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He who associates others with Allah, Allah has forbidden Him paradise, and His refuge is the fire.
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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,
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Allah is the third of three. That's a good translation of the Arabic.
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Allah is the third of three. Three what? Well, look at the very next sentence.
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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
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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,
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I don't care what you do say, you all are polytheists, you believe in three gods. At least he just came straight out and said,
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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.
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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.
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It continues on. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, and what are we saying?
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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.
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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.
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He was a Rasul. Other messengers have passed on before him. Now listen.
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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.
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Now I stop there for a reason. You know, you've eaten lunch since I last talked about this, so you may have forgotten.
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Remember the fig tree argument? I said that's a Quranic argument. Here's where it's from.
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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.
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It's plural, isn't it? Who's the they? Jesus and Mary.
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Well, what does Mary have to do with anything? Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind.
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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
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Allah who is the hearing, the knowing? Say, O people of the scripture, do not exceed limits in your religion.
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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.
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Now, there is a prayer that every Muslim knows by heart in Arabic because it is repeated very often in the daily prayers.
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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
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Quran is chanted or sung, you will hear them say, wala dhalim, and they lengthen out the vowel in dhalim.
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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
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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.
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Now, every Muslim repeats this prayer over and over and over again, knows these words intimately. Well, in the
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Hadith, going back to the earliest collections of the Hadith, Muhammad was asked, who are these groups?
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Who has earned God's wrath and who has gone astray? And his answer is unambiguous.
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It's the Jews who have earned God's wrath and it's the Christians who have gone astray. So every day the
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Muslim prays not to be you, not to be you. And here you have the very same language.
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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.
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All right? Keep that very much in mind. Now, what does the
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Quran understand about sonship? Is there ever a discussion of father, son, Holy Spirit in the Quran?
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No, nowhere. In fact, for most Muslims, the Holy Spirit is the angel of Gabriel. So, what does the
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Quran say about sonship? Well, in Surah 39, 4, we have,
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Had Allah wished to take to himself a son? He could have chosen whom he pleased out of those whom he doth create.
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But glory be to him, he is above such thing. He is Allah, the One, the Irresistible. So it sounds like here, the idea of sonship is from a relationship with a woman to bear and have a child.
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And, of course, what was Muhammad preaching against in Mecca? Were there not many of the idols in the
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Kaaba that were a male deity and a female deity and an offspring deity? Sure, lots of situations like that.
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So, is that what the Quran is understanding Christians to say? Well, Surah 39, 4, interesting.
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Let's take a look at another text, Surah 6, 101. To him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth.
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How can he have a son when he hath no consort? He created all things, and he hath full knowledge of all things.
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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
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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.
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But maybe back then, it was just another word for wife or something like that. But the point is, how can he have a son when he hath no consort?
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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.
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So you have a rather consistent testimony of this idea of sonship in the text of the
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Quran itself. And so we come to one of the key texts in the Quran, probably one of the ones you definitely want to write down.
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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.
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This Surah, I think, is very, very consistent all the way through. And now we're talking about the
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Now, I have challenged my Muslim friends on this over and over again. And I've never gotten an answer. It's real simple.
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Show me any other place in the Quran where three are mentioned in this context.
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Any place else. You say, where are the three? Pretty easy, isn't it? Allah, Mary, and Jesus.
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Allah, Mary, and Jesus. Did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?
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There's your three. Allah takes a wife named Mary and they have a kid named
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Jesus. Now, I can understand where this came from. Put yourself in Muhammad's shoes.
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You're on caravan. You go up into Syria. You're 13, 14 years of age.
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And it's gonna take some while to load the camels or maybe to water the camels or people are bartering over there or something like that.
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So you've got a little time before you're pulling out. And what do kids that age wanna do? They wanna go exploring, right?
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They wanna 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
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Christian church. And you stick your head inside and look around. What are you gonna see around, oh, 580 -ish?
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585, 590? What are you gonna see? Well, you're gonna see representations of God as Creator.
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You're going to see crucifixes. And what else are you gonna see? By that point in time, there's already been a major development in devotion to Mary.
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And so you're gonna see a woman. And what's the woman frequently gonna be presented as? Holding the baby.
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Holding the baby. Now, if you see a dove, is that gonna make any sense to some guy from Mecca?
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That that represents the Holy Spirit? Of course not. So you're gonna see God as Creator, Jesus as a baby and then on the cross and a woman being exalted.
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Did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities besides Allah? So I know where he got it from.
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Some people say he got it from Gnosticism. Maybe. But I think there's a simpler explanation.
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And 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.
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And so you have these words. Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah. Now, there is one other possibility.
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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.
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That's exactly what the Mormons believe. They do believe that God, Elohim in a physical body had sex with the
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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.
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So there's about a 1 ,200 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.
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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.
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And by the way, I've said many times, and I'll say it again because it will help wake you up because your blood sugar levels are already dropping after all that food.
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But when it comes to the foundations of religions,
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Islam is considerably closer to Christianity than Mormonism ever could be.
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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.
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Mormonism makes the Hindus look monotheistic. Mormonism literally posits an unlimited, infinite number of gods.
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Not just 330 million, an infinite number of gods. So on the most basic level of religious identity,
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Christianity is as far removed from Mormonism as possible. And Islam is considerably closer to us than Mormonism ever could be.
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But they're the only group to say this. There was nobody. You say, well, there were the
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Coloridians. There was a group, according to some historians, that existed that baked little cakes to Mary and worshipped
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Mary as a god. There are a few references to that. There's no evidence they ever got down to Mecca.
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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?
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Doesn't make any sense at all. There's only one logical result here. The author of the
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Quran thought that Christians believed that the Trinity is God, Mary, and Jesus. And it never has been, never will be.
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Didn't understand it. Now, even if you say the Trinity's wrong, you've got to understand one thing. In 632, did
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Elam know what the Trinity was? Of course he did. All the Christological controversies were over.
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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
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Trinity anywhere in the Quran. Nowhere. I challenge you to show it to me. I've taken on the best they have to offer.
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They can't. It's not there. The author didn't know it. That's all there is to it.
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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.
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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 words in the mouth of Jesus.
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I'm offended by it. Notice what it says. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within yourself.
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The Jesus of the Bible never said those words, nor could He have ever said those words.
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And what's obvious to me is I really wish someone had explained to Muhammad what Jesus said in these words.
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In Matthew 11, 27, all things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows the
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Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the
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Son wills to reveal Him. You know how we can know
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God? Because we have a perfect representation of Him in the person of Jesus Christ. And He is able to reveal the
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Father to anyone to whom He wills to reveal Him. Words that the author of the
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Quran never read, never understood, and ended up contradicting because of that.
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Now, there are three major barriers to presenting the Gospel to Muslims.
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Major barrier number one is the assertion on the part of Muslims of tarif al -nas, the corruption of the very text of the
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Torah and the Injil. And that's a tough thing to deal with. It's a prejudice. Most of the people you're talking to can't read the original languages of the
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Bible. But then again, most of us can't either. I mean, obviously I have an advantage of having taught
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Greek and Hebrew. But interestingly enough, when I talk with people who think the Bible has been corrupted and I actually translate the text for them, they normally question that I'm actually able to translate the text for them anyways.
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So I don't really gain much of an advantage there. And so it's a tough area. It's a difficult area, but it's one that we have to deal with because it's not just the
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Muslims raising these issues. It's the Mormons, and it's the atheists, and it's the Bart Ehrmans of the world, and so on and so forth that are constantly raising these issues of the corruption of the scripture.
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That's barrier number one. We just saw barrier number two. Barrier number two is the concept of shirk and the fact that most
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Muslims, when they hear you presenting the gospel and what you're calling Muslims to believe and to do, is that you're calling them to commit shirk.
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You're calling them to commit the one sin that if you die upon that sin, there is absolutely no forgiveness for you whatsoever.
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You cannot be saved. You can be a mass murderer, as we will see, but you cannot be saved if you commit that one sin and you die in that state without having repented.
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That's the second. We've got the corruption of the Bible, alleged corruption of the Bible, and you have the concept of shirk.
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The third is on the screen right in front of you right now. On the screen in front of you right now, you have the translation of 40
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Arabic words. 40 Arabic words. There is only one verse, one ayah, in the entirety of the
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Quran, that denies the crucifixion of Jesus. If it were not there, the
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Quran would naturally speak of the death of Jesus in Surah 355 in 1933. And those verses, if they are translated naturally from the
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Arabic, speak of the death of Jesus. And there are even some translators like Muhammad Asad that insist upon translating them that way.
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But, because of this one ayah, the vast majority of the Muslims with whom you will speak do not believe that Jesus died upon Calvary's tree.
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They do not believe that he was crucified because of Surah 4, 157. And before I read it, let me point out something out to you.
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Remember what I said about how some verses like the end of Surah Tawbah was found in the memory of one person?
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Well, what's interesting to me is many times when you read a particular verse like Surah 547 or Surah 5, 116 or whatever else it might be, you can go to the
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Hadith and you can find places where Muhammad addressed these things and commented upon these things.
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There is no Hadith commentary on this verse. For some reason, for over 200 years after the days of Muhammad, no
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Muslim could remember anything he ever said about this verse. Not a thing. Now, what's so surprising about that to me is this one verse places the
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Quran directly in opposition to all of secular history. Everything. Everything.
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There is nothing in history that supports the Quran at this point and everything contradicts it. Even the people they love to quote like Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, they all say the same thing.
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The most documentable and sure element of Jesus' life was what? His crucifixion. And yet the
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Quran turns history on its head with 40 Arabic words that nobody for 200 years could remember anything
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Muhammad ever said about it. Now that is not a solid foundation for anything. And yet that's the foundation upon which the vast majority of the
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Muslims in the world do not believe there was ever a crucifixion and hence no resurrection and hence no redemption in Jesus Christ. 40
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Arabic words written 600 years after the events, 765 miles away in a completely different language by someone who had no contact with the events of history itself.
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And yet a Muslim says I believe it. And then they question my dedication to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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The double standard is massive. What are the words? And for they're saying indeed we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the
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Son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah. This is the Jews. The Jews are boasting we killed the Messiah, Jesus, the
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Son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah. And they did not kill him nor they crucify him but it was made to appear to them.
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Shubihallahum. And indeed those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption.
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And they did not kill him for certain. The next verse 158 says rather Allah raised him up to himself and ever is
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Allah exalted in might and wise. Let's go back to the preceding one if I can get it back to the there we go.
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Now interesting thing is that the Quran claims to be
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Mubinun. Mubinun meaning clear, perspicuous, easy to understand. This verse sure ain't.
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I sat with my Arabic tutor and I've said well what if we took it this way or could we translate it this way and I've tried to find every way and the fact of the matter is this is not a clear verse by any stretch of the imagination.
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I mean just look at it. Do Jews call Jesus the Messiah? We killed the Messiah. Doesn't sound like something
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Jews would say to me. But not only that when it says they did not kill him nor did they crucify him.
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Why the two phrases? There's a group of Muslims called the
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Akhmadi. The Akhmadi Muslims they do believe Jesus was crucified but he survived. And interestingly enough Shabir Ali takes the same point which is really weird.
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Most Muslims would not believe Jesus was crucified at all. But there are some who would say why separate it out like that?
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Why have the two statements? And then what is Shabih al -Ahami? Well for most non -Western
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Muslims they believe in what's called the substitution theory. They believe that phrase means that someone else was made to look like Jesus and was put upon the cross.
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Guess who the normal suspect is? Judas, Judas Iscariot. I had one
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Muslim send me a long email once proving beyond a shadow of a doubt especially because he used blue lettering, boldface and underlining which proves every point there is to prove.
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We've all seen that. That Simon the Cyrene was the one who was crucified.
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He proved it beyond all dispute and I was just supposed to believe that. So the substitution theory.
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Somebody else was put in Jesus' place and Jesus was physically raised up to heaven so that he would not be crucified.
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And you can, I had a friend who went to Uganda a number of years ago and he was doing missions work there and there would be
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Muslims that would literally come out of the jungle. They were living in huts in the jungle and they would come out to him and say, I don't understand why you
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Christians think that Jesus was crucified. How could Allah allow one of his most precious servants to die in such an ignoble way?
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And that's what they were asking. Now by the way, in case I forget to emphasize this, this is why we as Christians must emphasize the fact that the
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Bible says that Jesus gave himself voluntarily.
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No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord is Jesus' words.
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This is the work of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. We have to emphasize that so they can understand, so they can hear.
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But again, majority of the world's Muslims, substitution theory. But Western Muslims tend to go, allahu alim,
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God knows. Why? Well, because when you think about it, the substitution theory really doesn't make a lot of sense.
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I mean, if I was Judas, I would be going, I'm Judas! You know, something like that. But there's something much more foundational.
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Think about it. If that's true, then
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Allah started Christianity by mistake. Because he did such a good job fooling the
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Jews, he also fooled the followers of Jesus and he fooled the Romans. And they went out and started preaching the resurrection of Jesus and ended up producing a religion that produces all this shirk and Allah started it all by mistake.
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And so a lot of Westernized Muslims are like, well, we're not sure, we don't know really what happened, but all we know is there was no crucifixion.
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But we don't know that somebody else was put in this place or whatever else it might be. So the
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Westernized Muslims sort of, you know, allahu alim, God knows, not sure. But the assertion is still made for a certainty they did not kill him.
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They did not kill him. And so there you have the words. What do they mean?
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Do we even know what should be halal means? No. No. The Jews wouldn't have made a boast like this.
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And what about the fact that every single bit of historical information we have, whether it's from Christian or non -Christian sources, for the first hundred years after crucifixion, all says the same thing.
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And the first time you start running into anybody who denies the crucifixion, it's the Gnostics.
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And why did the Gnostics deny the crucifixion? It's not because they had a historical reason to do so. They were dualists.
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And that which is physical is bad. That which is spiritual is good. So their view of Jesus was that he didn't really have a physical body.
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It's pretty tough to crucify someone who doesn't have a physical body. So they denied the reality of the crucifixion because the real
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Jesus couldn't be crucified because he wouldn't have a physical body. Now, the Muslims can't grab onto the
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Gnostics because the Gnostics believe the creator of this world was an evil god. They would believe
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Allah was an evil god. And yet I've had Muslims say, well, those Gnostics, do you know what the Gnostics really believed?
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You know, all of it? And generally they don't. And so there's just, they're completely without a foundation in denying the crucifixion.
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There's just nothing there. All the evidence is on our side. That's why I've had some of my Muslim opponents say,
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I'm just not going to debate you on that. Because, you know, the Quran says that Allah made it look that way so all the historical evidence will be on your side so I'm just not going to debate it.
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Well, okay. There you go. But this, of course, if you deny the crucifixion, then you don't have a resurrection.
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You don't have a risen Lord. You don't have a second coming. You don't have redemption. You don't have atonement. You don't have anything. And so it strikes at the very heart of the
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Gospel. But this is the only verse that does it. When you think about the
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Old and New Testament, the relationships in the Old and New Testament, think about the book of Hebrews with me for a second. The writer of the
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Hebrews is intimately familiar with the Old Testament. Quotes from it.
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Just quote after quote after quote. Argument from it. Do you remember this? Do you remember that?
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Think about this. Think about that. This means this. This means that. You cannot read.
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I think one of the reasons that Hebrews is a closed book to a lot of evangelicals today is because most of us don't know the
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Old Testament well enough to understand it. The author of the Hebrews expected you to know about the
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Levitical sacrifices. You know what I mean? And once the division between the
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Jews and the Christians takes place early on, it's no wonder that Hebrews is pretty much a closed book through a lot of church history.
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Which is a shame because it's the essence, it's the very heart of the explication of the atonement and the sacrifice of Christ and the high priesthood of Christ and all the rest of these things.
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It's a beautiful, beautiful book. But my point is this. If the
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Quran is the continuation that the Torah is given to Moses, the Injil is given to Jesus, the
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Quran is given to Muhammad, why is it that there is exactly one verse from the entirety of the
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Bible that's quoted in the Quran? One verse. You know which verse it is?
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It's the Lex Talionis. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Now some people say there may be a passage in Psalms that's quoted, but even
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Muslim scholars doubt that. Let's just say for certain, one verse.
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Nothing else. And right now, Christians in the room, how many of you are certain you can give me the exact biblical reference to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?
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But how many of you know that that's in the Bible? Oh yeah. So in other words, it's something you heard orally, not necessarily that you've read and remembered where it is.
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I submit to you that the author of the Quran had nothing but an oral knowledge of anything in the
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Bible and that was extremely minimal. Extremely minimal. There is nothing like the relationship the
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Old Testament has with the New Testament. Deep familiarity. Direct citation. Nothing in the
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Quran. Nothing. It cannot be a continuation. Though I think the author of the
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Quran thought that what he was saying was consistent with what was in the Torah and the Injil, but he was wrong.
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It was an error. Just a falsehood. So with that in mind, we've already seen that.
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Notice what Yusuf Ali says, the Orthodox Christian churches make a cardinal point of their doctrine that his life was taken on the cross, that he died and was buried, and on the third day he rose into body with his wounds intact and walked about and conversed and ate with his disciples and was afterward taken up bodily to heaven.
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This is necessary for the theological doctrine of blood sacrifice and vicarious atonement for sins, which is rejected by Islam.
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Rejected by Islam. The Quranic teaching is that Christ was not crucified nor killed by the
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Jews, notwithstanding certain apparent circumstances which produced that illusion in the minds of some of his enemies.
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Well, it actually produced that illusion in the minds of everybody, not just some of his enemies. And it wasn't an illusion.
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It was, of course, the fact. And Mohammed Asad makes the interesting statement. Compare Surah 3 to 5, where God says,
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Jesus, verily I shall cause thee to die and shalt exalt thee unto me. The verb rafahu, literally he raised him or elevated him, has always, whenever the act of raf, elevating of a human being, is attributed to God.
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The meaning of honoring or exalting nowhere in the Quran is there any warrant for the popular belief that God has taken up Jesus bodily in his lifetime into heaven.
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That puts Asad against the majority of Muslims. But he happens to be right on a linguistic and Quranic level.
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The more liberal the Muslim, the more likely they are to agree. The less liberal, the more likely they are to not agree with that particular interpretation.
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All right. Now, let me, we've got five minutes before we're supposed to take a break.
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Let me narrate a hadith to you before we go into the next hour, where I'll narrate some more to you, but also finish up this theological section, okay?
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So it'll sort of be a little bit of a mixture there toward the end. And if we want to take some more questions at that point in time, maybe we'll be able to do so.
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I'm only putting the beginning of this hadith up here because it's very long and I tell you my own version of it, and I'm going to drive the poor guys on the cameras insane because I'm going to sit down here a second because it's story time with Uncle Jim here.
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Actually, when you consider, yeah, Grandpa Jim, that's right. When you consider how many times
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I have spoken between South Africa, Texas, and here, I have set a new record for one month, and so I get to sit down.
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Story, I've told this story for years, and I'm not cherry -picking this story.
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I had told it for years and then I did a debate with the imam of the largest mosque in New York City. We did a radio program before we did the debate.
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He told this story before I did. So if the imam of the largest mosque in New York tells the story, then
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I think I'm being fairly fair as well. A number of different versions of it appear in the hadith literature.
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The story is told of a Jewish man, not all the versions say he was a Jewish man, but of a Jewish man who had killed 99 people.
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And he went to a priest and asked the priest if Allah would accept his repentance.
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And the priest made the mistake of saying no, and so he killed the priest. So now he's killed 100 people.
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And so he goes to a scholar, and he asks the scholar, will Allah accept my repentance?
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Now, none of the versions that I read made any reference as to whether the scholar knew about the priest. But the scholar says to him, go to such and such a city, which is filled with godly people, and they will tell you what is necessary for your repentance to be accepted by God.
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And so as the man is going, the time for his death comes. Remember when I said 40 days, the very point of your death is written down for you.
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Some would say written on your forehead. And so the time of his death comes, and he dies. Plop right there in the middle of the path,
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I guess. And so when you die, an angel from the fire and an angel from heaven come, and they argue over your soul.
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And I don't know about you, but it would seem to me that this would be a slam dunk. The angel from the fire comes and goes, he's killed 100 people.
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I mean, I can't think of a mass murderer like that, at least outside of military context in a long, long time.
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He's killed 100 people. He hasn't repented. He's never said the shahada. He's going to the fire.
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But evidently, the angel from heaven was a lawyer, and he says, well, but he was going to find out about repentance.
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So Allah decrees that if the man is one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the city he was coming from, that he will go to paradise.
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And then in some of the versions of the story, it is said that Allah then causes the earth to shrink between the man and the city he was going to, so he's found to be one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the one he was coming from, and therefore, he goes to paradise.
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Now, my imam friend gave this as an illustration of the mercy of Allah.
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I don't know about you. I hear that story, and I'm deeply troubled by it. I'm deeply troubled by it. And as a
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Christian, I can explain why I'm deeply troubled by it. I start off my presentation in the masjid in Erasmia by saying that I am concerned that in Islamic theology, there is a fundamental disjunction, a disconnection between the character and nature of God and his law.
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In Christianity, God's law represents his holy nature. It cannot be separated from him. It's not just something he decided to reveal, and it's just sort of something out there.
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It is representative of who he is, and that's why atonement must be made because to allow
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God's law to be broken and to be left broken, as in this situation, we have a man who killed 100 people.
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No atonement is made. The law remains broken. Justice is not done.
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It is to fundamentally violate the very nature of God and the reason why he is engaged in creation in the first place, which is to demonstrate all of his attributes to his creation.
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His love, his mercy, his grace, his holiness, and his justice as well. And so what we see in this hadith is not for a
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Christian the illustration of mercy and goodness. It is a cavalier attitude toward the very holiness of God.
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Now you would think that in light of this hadith, most Muslims would go, well,
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I'm going to, I've got a straight shot into heaven because I keep all of the five pillars. I've gone on hajj.
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I do the prayers, and I give zakat, and I mean, there is not one morning this past summer when
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Fajr prayers were for something in the morning that I was not up doing my prayers, and I did my wadu correctly, and they should be a shoe -in, right?
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No. That's the problem. That's the problem, is that same hadith literature also contains other stories that we'll talk about after we take a break.