What Does a Christian Need to Know About Islam? Session 2

Love hearing that singing. I must have been right at the right point where it just echoes right back at me.

It sounded, I was gonna say it sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, that didn't sound, it didn't come out that way. We're not doing a session on Mormonism today, but some of you know that we were just up there last weekend and stuff going on there.

There was really major, major things going on there. Just so, such a blessing how many people came up to us and told us that they had been delivered out of Mormonism through our ministry over the years.

It's, you know, we went up there for a long time. The first time I, I remember one of the first trips up there was in my 1964

Dodge Dart. No two body panels were the same color. And for years we stayed at Motel 6 and just barely made it and sowed a lot of seed.

And we're seeing a harvest. Pray that that will, pray that that will continue.

It's very, very encouraging. All right, how many of you saw the presentation

I made at, I think it was this, I think it was this January at G3 on reaching out to our

Muslim friends? Two, all right, whew. Yeah, there was only four views on the

YouTube video, so we found two of them. So I don't have to worry too much about repeating myself.

Let's just put it that way. Actually, many people there felt it a very convicting presentation.

Certainly not the way to make myself popular amongst my own people, but there are definitely some strong things

I need to say. And if they apply to you, great. If they don't, just pray for me as I speak to others.

Over the past, starting in 2006, so we're just coming up on, you know, 13, 14 years ago,

I began seriously dealing with the subject of Islam with a debate that I did with Shabir Ali.

Ironically, I'll be debating Shabir in a couple weeks in Atlanta in the United States. Once again, I've lost track of how many times we have debated, but from that time onward,

I have had the opportunity to get to know a number of Muslim men primarily.

You can understand that culturally. Somewhere, I forget where it was, but I had done a debate with Adnan Rashid in London.

And Adnan is a big Pakistani guy. He's much bigger than I am. And he was used to engaging with people at Speaker's Corner.

Everybody know what Speaker's Corner is in London? I've actually not gone there myself.

That's not really my style. Believe it or not, yelling and screaming is not my thing. And that's pretty much what happens there.

But that's what he had grown up with as far as his experience with Christians. He and I were doing two debates in Dublin, Ireland, one at the university, the

City College, and then the next night at Trinity College. And between the two, we had lunch together.

And that was the first time we had done anything other than to shake hands, sit down at a table, and then start arguing with one another in a debate.

And I wanted to do this because I just sensed something about Adnan. And what

I did during that time period is I explained to him why I do what I do. Why I do what

I do with whether it's Roman Catholics or Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever else it may be. And basically introduced him to a human being who he already knew that I really do seek to accurately represent those that I, even those with whom

I disagree. No one ever came up, I never took a class on apologetics until seminary, and I was already deeply involved in apologetics at that time.

No one ever came up to me and said, the most important thing you can do as a Christian apologist is to accurately represent what the other side says.

No one ever told me that, but I am absolutely convinced of it, and I'm convinced of it because if you're going to present to someone, and I believe that there's no reason, there's no reason for me to be an apologist if I am not seeking to present the gospel in all of this.

That's why we're here, that's what my calling is, there is no office of apologist. And so yes, apologetics does encourage the believers and it grounds them in their faith and all those things, but especially when

I'm engaging in debate, I have to represent Christ, he is the truth, therefore I cannot be untruthful in anything that I do in a debate, even if it gives me an advantage.

I'm absolutely convicted about that. And so I'm not saying that I've been perfect in that, because I'm, when it comes to Islam, I've said many, many times,

I am a student of Islam, I don't think that starting at the age I started, you could ever exhaust the amount of information on that particular subject or many other particular subjects these days, does that matter?

So I may misrepresent out of ignorance, but I never do it out of intent to try to gain an advantage over someone, and so I had the opportunity of sharing with Adnan, and I think if you go online and you watch those two debates, knowing they took place on consecutive nights, and now knowing that in between, there is a personal meeting, you will see a real difference in how

Adnan and I interacted with each other the second night, because now there was a personal connection, the other person isn't just simply a target, isn't just simply a mouth speaking certain words, it's a human being, you understand more about where he's coming from, he understands more about where you're coming from, and especially amongst the

Muslims with whom I can become familiar, they realize that I am a Christian who will not compromise, who has read the

Quran numerous times, who has read all of Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, on major portions of Jami' at -Tirmidhi and other of the

Sunni hadith, and even portions of the Shia hadith. I have done my due diligence, if you've read my book on Islam, I've done my due diligence in accurately representing what the text of the

Quran says and things like that, you may disagree with my conclusions, but at least you see that, and so I'm uncompromising,

I defend the Trinity, I defend the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I defend things that there are other people who debate

Muslims will not defend, and yet for all of that, what they don't really know what to do with is

I care about them as individuals, I don't treat them as just some enemy,

I treat them as an individual, I want to see the best for them, and of course

I make it very clear, the best for them is to know who Jesus really is, and I know what they want for me. For me, it changes everything when you have that kind of an encounter, and it changes your heart.

Some of you know, how many of you have seen my dialogue with Yasir Qadhi? Okay, that's about 20%.

I would highly recommend it to you as a follow -up to this conversation, to watch that two -night discussion,

I think it was a Tuesday and Wednesday evening, the first night was in a church in the

Memphis area, and the second night was in the mosque, where he's the imam there in the Memphis area. It was not a worship service for those people who tried to lie about that, the church made itself available, provided the security, and the food, and the goodies, and then the next night we did the same thing at Yasir Qadhi's mosque, where he was one of the imams, he's left there now, he's now in Dallas, but it truly opened my eyes to see how people responded to my encounter with Yasir Qadhi.

Not only was it very obvious that I was the one that got the blowback,

Yasir Qadhi did not. His community did not have a problem with him having me in, and if you've watched those dialogues, you know that the introduction he gave to me at the mosque was stunning.

He told of sending me his 16 -CD series, Light and Guidance, which

I had listened to multiple times, that I started sending him questions with Arabic about things that he had said, and he basically told his people, well, we've never met someone on the

Christian side who knows as much about what we believe as this man does, and then he starts asking me questions like, we

Muslims don't get the trinity, could you explain it to us? Why did a part of God have to die?

And there's no pushback. One of the things that Yasir told me, he says, look, James, I don't wanna debate you, because it's not fair,

I'm not stupid. You studied my faith, I have not studied yours. So that really puts me at a disadvantage, and I get it, but I sensed in Yasir Qadhi the first time he began listening to his materials, and I had listened not only to his

CDs, but I had downloaded everything I could from the net. His lectures, I listened to his in -depth lectures on Hadith sciences, and the rules of how you determine the

Sahih Hadith, and Hassan, and all the rest of that stuff, and yes, I'm riding through August weather in Phoenix on a bike, sweating profusely, listening to Yasir Qadhi lecture on Hadith sciences, and he's impressed by that.

He says, I can't get my own students to do that. And why? Well, in those dialogues, and the first night, one of the things

I brought up was, what do you want from me, and here's what I want for you. And I did the same thing, if any of you were watching live just last week, with Alma Allred, a

Mormon at the University of Utah. We need to make it clear, we don't believe the same things.

So what is it that you want from me, and what is it that I want for you? And we made that very, very clear, that I wanted him to come to know who

Jesus Christ truly was, that he was King of kings and Lord of lords, that is not shirk. I'll explain what that is in a moment.

To believe that, and to come to have peace with God through faith in Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course, for him, he wants me to say the shahadah, which is the means by which you become a

Muslim, by confession in Arabic, la ilaha illallah wa muhammadan wazool

Allah, there is only one God worthy of worship, and Muhammad is his prophet, and to submit to Islam, and to the teachings of Islam, and to not engage in shirk, which most

Muslims believe we Christians are doing in regards to Jesus Christ. And so we made it very, very clear, that both of us understood, but that there were other things we needed to talk about.

We also needed to talk about how do we live in the same community, when both of our communities are being put under tremendous pressure by the secular society around us, to abandon our fundamental beliefs, and for example,

God created men and women, and it was good. How do we, do we just ignore one another in that context?

Or how do we, is there any way we can get together to try to stop the society from forcing our children out of our homes and into beliefs like that?

So there were things we needed to talk about. Well, the pushback was all on my side. You would not believe the attacks that I experienced from Christians, especially because I said

I had learned so much about Islam from Yasir Qadhi. Oh my goodness, you apostate, you servant of Satan.

How could you learn anything about Islam from a Muslim? Seriously, seriously, these people were literally saying that the only way to learn about Islam, if you're a

Christian, is from another Christian. Now don't get me wrong, I have learned things about Islam from other Christians. There are other

Christians that know more about Islam than I do, that's fine. But, for example, when

I was studying Arabic, Yasir Qadhi's Arabic is really clear, it's really good, it's easy to understand, and this guy knows a lot about the subject, and so I was able to gain a tremendous amount of information.

And I've learned about Mormonism from Mormons, and I've learned about atheism from atheists.

Got some press tone down here, I'm not sure. But, I learned a long time ago, when

I first met my first two Mormon missionaries, it was only a month or a month and a half before I had exhausted pretty much every

Christian book that was available on Mormonism. And I had noticed in those books, they're constantly quoting from books like Teachings of the

Prophet Joseph Smith, Marvelous Work and Wonder, Articles of Faith, Mormon Doctrine, Resound with Conquered, Journal Discourses. So I realized,

I've got to, I'm done with reading the Christians, I need to go read the Mormons. And so I built my library.

And when I started studying Islam, I started building my Islamic library. Because that's how you get meaningful first -hand knowledge of what somebody else believes.

And yet there are many Christians, and I believe it is primarily because of fear, that think that that's a terrible, horrible thing to do.

So let me start by saying, we've been started for quite some time now, but let me start by saying, that for me, one of the greatest things we have to overcome in reaching out to our

Muslim friends and neighbors is fear. Part of that fear is the physical fear, the fear of jihad, the fear of, look, how long ago was it that I saw the video of someone running through the streets of downtown

Sydney with a knife? Was that six months ago, eight months? I forget when it was. And we see these things.

I was getting ready to teach my first day of Christian high school on September 11th, 2001.

And we see these things, and they enter, I ran across London Bridge less than three weeks before the guy drove his car across, running people over, and then jumped out and started stabbing people.

So I get it. So I understand that level of fear.

But to be honest with you, for most of us, it is a fear of saying or doing something out of ignorance that will end up causing some type of confrontation that we just don't want to engage in.

And as a result, you all know that there are certain times in our lives when we have an opportunity to say a word in behalf of the

Lord to someone, to open up a conversation of spiritual truth. There is that one opening. And if you don't take it almost immediately, the door closes.

And if we're filled with fear, if there is a higher fear factor than love factor, we won't take those opportunities.

The door will close. And so I am convinced that one of the first messages

I have to deliver to my brothers and sisters is we are in a situation where we have a message that this community desperately needs to hear that is not available within the borders of their community.

The vast majority. Let me just do it. Let me go ahead and do it. How many of you have read the Quran? Okay, is that all the

Quran or parts of the Quran? Okay, if it's only parts, put your hand down. All the Quran. Okay, that's actually more than normal.

Half of you are going, that's because I'm a Muslim. Okay, nevermind. Most of the time when

I ask that question, it is a very small percentage. And normally somebody's going, parts, you know,

I read a little bit of this or a little bit of that. If I asked the same question in a

Muslim audience, you'd get about the same percentage, probably a little bit less. There is not a lot of meaningful communication going on between our two communities.

And most of our people are frightfully ignorant of what the Quran teaches and what it says, especially because we are addressed in it.

We're called the Al -Kitab, the people, the book, the Al -Anjil, the people, the gospel. We are specifically addressed in it.

And yet, if a half a percent of Western Christians have any knowledge of what the

Quran actually says to us, I'd be stunned. And when it goes the other direction, the vast majority of Muslims have never read any of the gospels.

They've never read any of Paul. They've never worked through Hebrews, which surprises me a little bit because,

I mean, the Quran says that the Torah and Injil were sent down by God. And yeah, the modern Muslim may not think that Hebrews is a part of that, but if you read it in context, it's pretty obvious that the writer intended the

Injil to refer to the gospel, to refer to the scriptures that the Christians had. Now, I know the author didn't understand what the canon was, and we can get into all that, but if it seems strange to a

Muslim that Christians are not overly concerned about what the Quran says to them, realize it seems pretty strange to us that given that Surah 5 specifically draws a chain of authority from Moses in the

Old Testament, Jesus in the New Testament, to Muhammad in the Quran, might wanna know what's in those previous revelations where it's specifically said would be

Natsal, sent down by God. But that's not the case. And I think part of the reason for that goes back to Muhammad.

There is a story in the Hadith when one of the companions of Muhammad was reading from the

Old Testament. Muhammad came in, he asked him what he was reading from, and he said from the Old Testament, and Muhammad's face changed color.

In other words, he became angry. And basically said, is not what I have given you enough for you?

And so there's sort of a tradition there that has led, I think, the vast majority of Muslims to not have any real idea what is contained in the pages of the

Christian Bible. And hence, the only Jesus that they know is the

Jesus that is presented in the pages of the Quran. There are very few references, less than 100 grand total, either by direct use of the term

Isa, or by reference by other names to Jesus in the Quran. And the

Jesus of the Quran, this is a quotation from a liberal Mormon scholar in England, is not a person, he's an argument.

He's not a person, he's an argument. He only speaks once from identifiable historical location, which ironically is from his cradle.

And that's a story that was actually borrowed by the Quran from the Arabic infancy gospel, which was written about 500 years after Christ.

The author of the Quran did not know what the New Testament canon was, or what was contained therein. And hence, a number of times assumes that certain stories that actually came from the

Gnostics were a part of the New Testament. And they're not, not even historical. But that's the only time

Jesus speaks from an identifiable place, is that one time. So otherwise, Jesus just sort of floats around and says things.

And the fact is, if that's the only Jesus that you've been exposed to is what's in the

Quran, you could never love him. Because he's not lovable, he's not a person. He's just an argument.

And so one of the greatest things that you can do is to get your

Muslim friend to start reading the Gospels. It doesn't matter which one. Mark would be fine.

I've had a long -term project that I just can never get around to doing. I don't know if I ever will. But I would love to translate

Mark, so I don't have to worry about copyright issues, translate Mark and provide study notes in a booklet form that could be just handed out for free.

Introducing Muslims to the story of Jesus from Mark, because there's a lot about who Jesus really is in Mark.

There really is. It doesn't have to be John. You don't have to have that, you can have much more.

You can get all that in Mark as well. Anyway, if you can get them to read anything from the

Gospels, this is a great move forward on our part. But again, we won't do it if the fear factor is greater than the love factor.

You can call it the obedience factor. Christ tells us to bear testimony. So if you wanna go that direction, if you need to have a drill sergeant to tell you to do it, okay, fine.

But in reality, if we recognize that we have here a people who have been given a message, in essence, when you think about what we disagree with, with the

Muslims on, you can think about it like this. You have the Jews, and they had a particular understanding of who they thought the

Messiah was going to be. Jesus comes, and he's a whole lot more than that.

He is the fulfillment of all sorts of different streams of prophecy that were found in the Old Testament. Most of the intertestamental theories about who the

Messiah would be had focused in on one stream of that, and maybe a stream over here. He's all of that and more.

And so when he starts focusing upon who he himself is, when he, in John chapter six, identifies himself as the living bread, this scandalizes people.

And in John chapter eight, he goes so far as to start using the language of I am of himself. P 'n 'abodah am genesai ego ami.

Before Abraham was, I am. They pick up stones to stone him. Who are you? You're only 50 years old, and you've seen

Abraham's day. Yeah, before Abraham was, I am. And earlier in that chapter, he had said, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

Those are strong words, very strong words that the vast majority of Muslims have never, ever heard.

And so the Jews, you have fulfillment in Christ, and the

Jew says, no, I'm not going there, and rejects Jesus as Messiah. So you have the great fulfillment, the incarnation, the

Christian scriptures, the cross, everything else there. And basically what Islam does is does a

U -turn back to where the Jews are. So many of the prophecies of who

Jesus is in the Old Testament are interpreted by many modern Muslims about Muhammad. Or you have texts about, for example,

I mean, I've literally listened to a Muslim Jamal Badawi, he's pretty elderly now,

I never got a chance to debate him, but I wanted to. But he had a whole series of lectures out on Muhammad in the

Bible. And he actually went to Isaiah 9 -6. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

But when he went through the descriptions, he skipped mighty God. He applied all the rest of them to Muhammad, but not mighty

God, which is right there. You can't just skip that one, you gotta keep it in there.

But it's Judaism, fulfillment in Christianity, you turn back to the

Jewish stance. And in fact, many Muslim apologists, it's called dawah in Arabic.

It's interesting, they recognize that evangelism and apologetics, you can't separate them. So dawah is just calling to Islam.

Those who engage in dawah, they will frequently utilize Jewish sources and Jewish argumentation against Jesus, Isaiah 53, and things like that.

Because that's what they've done, they've basically gone back to the starting place. And so our job, and it's a tough one for a lot of us, is to try to overcome our fears, our ignorances, to be used of God in the lives of the

Muslim people that God brings us across, to begin that process. And it can be a very long process.

Another thing, if you're into the quick convert type thing, this is not what you wanna be involved in.

It's frequently a very, very long process, and a lot of people just aren't in it for the long term.

And so I encourage Christians to pray and ask God, God, have

I been obedient to you in preparing my heart to be a witness to those that you might place in my life, and that includes the

Muslims, or do I have a prejudice that would keep me from doing what

I need to do? And knowing what I know, do I keep that to myself?

That's really the question that we have to ask ourselves. Now, it has been, on Thursday evening, we're gonna have a debate right in here, right?

Right here, hopefully not using Skype this time, with Abdullah Khanda, and Abdullah has five times joined my seminary classes via Skype to interact with my students and answer questions about Islam, which means if it's during the day in America, you know he's been getting up at three o 'clock in the morning to do that.

He did that once wearing a New England Patriots jersey because he's a big Tom Brady fan, which we'll try not to hold that against him.

And some of you have no idea who that is, don't worry about it. By the way, I haven't kept up with the

World Cup. It's done? Lots of games still ahead, but how's

Australia doing? Oh, doesn't look like you all are overly excited about this, so we'll just move along.

I was in South Africa, and they were really, really excited about it, but you all are just sort of like, eh, whatever, do a haka, man, who cares, you know?

But Abdullah, Abdullah is extremely unusual because Abdullah actually read my book on the

Trinity, and before we had the debate here in New South Wales in 2011, he attempted to express an

Islamic perspective in such a way that a Christian could understand it. That's extremely unusual. I've known many

Muslims for many years. He's the first one who has read my book and then attempted to then communicate his objections in a meaningful fashion so we could understand where he was coming from.

That's extremely unusual. Almost always, we are the ones building that bridge. But you can just tell that Abdullah and I have great respect for one another.

It doesn't mean we believe the same things. It doesn't mean we believe that these issues are negotiable.

We can't create Chrislam, there is no such thing. If you try to change

Islam into something that's amenable to Christianity, it's no longer Islam. If you try to change Christianity into something that's amenable to Islam, it's no longer

Christianity. The reality is that Surah 112 in the

Quran, the third ayah says, lem yellid walam yulid, he begetteth not, nor is he begotten, and it's very, very clear that that ayah, that verse in that surah is aimed at the

Christian faith, and since that surah was considered by Muhammad to be particularly important, it's about as close to a definitional or creedal statement you're gonna get in the

Quran. There is no way that we can both be right. We can both be wrong,

I suppose, on a logical basis, but we can't both be right at the same time. And the world doesn't seem to understand that, but a believing

Muslim and a believing Christian should. And so that leaves us in the situation of having to engage in constant and respectful dialogue with one another.

We can't just lay it on the side and say, let's just pretend like our differences don't exist. What are those differences that we have to be most concerned about?

Well, I'd say that there are three major barriers that exist between you and the Muslim to be able to communicate the gospel to them, okay?

Three major barriers. One, the biggest one, right at the start, there's two theological, and one that's both theological and historical.

Number one is the issue of shirk. Now, shirk is the unforgivable sin.

Now, when we hear unforgivable sin, we hear something that doesn't actually map over to Islam.

When we think of unforgivable sin, that means if you've committed it in your life, there's never forgiveness and you're lost.

You'll never be saved. In Islam, if you die upon shirk, as what's called a mushrik, if you die upon shirk, there can be no forgiveness for you.

What that means is you can die outside a right relationship of the law and still be saved in the sense of received paradise.

Allah can do that. He can simply forgive sins. One of the most famous hadith is of the man who had committed, who had murdered 99 people.

And when he inquired about repentance, he was sent to this particular city, he died on the way, and Allah commanded that if he was one cubit closer to the city he was going to to find out about repentance, then the city he had come from, that he would go to paradise.

And then in some versions of the story, God actually made the earth shrink between him and that city, so he was one cubit closer, and he went to paradise.

Mass murder, 100 people. But he wasn't a mushrik. He hadn't engaged in idolatry.

And so he was able to be saved. So we have a different understanding of when we hear that, be careful. Shirk is unforgivable because it is the worst sin.

It is what we would call idolatry, but it's actually worshiping anyone or anything in the place of Allah.

There's actually different forms of shirk. There's major and minor shirk, and there's shirk in the name and attributes of God, and shirk in God's worship, and so on and so forth.

But it is associating anyone or anything with Allah. The vast majority of Muslims, not necessarily in Western countries, but certainly in Islamic countries, but a large portion in Western countries as well, believe that what we do, what we just did in the hymn we sang, was to engage in shirk.

Because Islam believes that Jesus was a mighty prophet of God, but he was a mere rasool.

He was merely a prophet. He was merely a man. Virgin born, taken to heaven, not resurrected from the dead because he wasn't crucified.

We'll get to that in a moment. But merely a rasool. Allah has no sons, according to the

Quran, because he has no wife, which tells you what the Quranic understanding of that relationship is. And it has nothing to do with what our belief in Jesus as the son of God means.

God doesn't have to have a wife to have a son in the sense we're talking about. But the author of the Quran was confused on that point.

But he is merely a prophet of God who raised people from the dead, created little clay birds, breathed life into them, and they flew away, which is a story the author borrowed from the infancy gospel of Thomas, a

Gnostic source, which of course did not happen historically. So he was powerful, but only a prophet of God.

Virgin born prophet of God. So if you acknowledge that what

Paul taught is that Jesus is Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton, the very name of Jehovah, Yahweh, in the

Old Testament, that the fathers identify as Yahweh, the sons identify as Yahweh, the spirit is the spirit of Yahweh.

If you believe that Peter taught that in 1 Peter 3 .15, that Paul taught that in Philippians chapter two, and numerous other places, that John taught that in John chapter 12.

If you believe in the deity of Christ as it is enunciated in the New Testament, then the vast majority of Muslims will believe that you have engaged in shirk because they believe he's a mere human, you are elevating him to a position that was not his.

Now obviously, if all those passages I just mentioned to you, and many others in the New Testament happen to be true, then that's not shirk because Jesus has always been

God, and so I'm not associating something lesser than God with God. I'm not engaging in shirk. There is no interaction in the

Quran with any of those texts. There is no evidence whatsoever in any source I've ever read that would indicate that Muhammad or any of his companions had any serious knowledge of the theology of the

New Testament, at all. None. And I can say that as a person who's not only read the early,

I've read through Tafsir literature from the early periods, I've read the historical stories of historical histories of Muhammad, and like I said,

I've read all of Bukhari and Muslim. That should give me a firm ground for having found something that would substantiate the idea that Muhammad or any of his companions did have a meaningful understanding of the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Instead, I get all sorts of reasons to believe otherwise. In fact, in Surah 5, 116,

Allah says to Jesus at some point in the future, did you say to men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah?

That's the only place in the entirety of the Quran I've found three. Because the Quran says, do not say three, it is better for you.

There's only one Allah. Every time it says, do not say three, the next sentence is, there is only one

God, Allah. So what the Quran is saying is do not say there are three gods. Well, we don't say there are three gods, that's the whole point.

There's only one God, three persons, they are distinguished from one another, one God, Yahweh, there are not, there's not three different Yahwehs or anything like that.

Being in person are not the same thing. But the author of the Quran did not understand what the doctrine of the Trinity is, even though he's writing 300 years after the

Council of Nicaea. And over 200 years after the conclusion of the last of the Christological controversies.

So it's not like the information wasn't there. Remember, for the Muslim, the Quran is not Muhammad's understanding anyway.

For the Muslim, at least the believing Sunni Muslim, the Quran is eternal. So the

Shiites don't believe that, but the Sunnis, well, depends on what the Sunnis believe. I just did a debate on this subject and it's pretty obvious my

Sunni proponent didn't believe the Quran is eternal in any meaningful sense either. So, but at least historically, the

Sunni have stood by the idea that the Quran is uncreated. It's as eternal as a law.

That's becoming a less and less popular belief, it seems amongst many. But it is the very words of a law.

It's not the words of Muhammad. This is not Muhammad's interpretation. Muhammad is basically what we would call a dictation machine.

The angel Jibril received the Quran from Allah on what's called

Laylatul Qadr, the night of power. It's one of the last days in the month of Ramadan. And then over the course of about 32 years, he piecemeal dictated the rest of the

Quran to Muhammad who then gave it to his followers in memorized form, not in written form.

And so it's not Muhammad thinking about God, it's not Muhammad theorizing about God. These are the very words of God that are eternal.

So it doesn't matter how much the trinity Muhammad understood. If the

Quran is God's very word, God knew what the trinity was in 625 or 632.

Whether the trinity is true or false, God at least understood it, right? And so God could have accurately represented it, but it's nowhere to be found in the

Quran. And so this idea of shirk is that because Jesus isn't

God in Islamic theology and we treat him as such, then you are engaging in the one sin that will not be forgiven.

Now, Muhammad asked permission of Allah, according to Islamic sources, to pray for his parents who died as Mushrikun.

Sorry, I just used the Hebrew rather than Arabic. Mushrikun, it's the plural ending.

It's im in Hebrew, un in Arabic. Died as Mushrikun and Allah said no.

Would not allow him to pray for his parents. The one exception is the story of Abu Talib.

Abu Talib. I like narrating Hadith, especially in a taxi cab with a Muslim driver. It's very fun.

I think I've probably gotten the long route more than once because of that, but that's okay. Because they were fascinated.

To find somebody sitting in the back of your cab who's a Christian scholar, but is narrating

Hadith to you, gets a lot of conversations going, and trust you me. So one of my favorite stories is the story of Abu Talib.

Abu Talib was Muhammad's uncle. He was one of the leaders of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca. And the

Quraysh controlled the Kaaba. And hence profited from the pilgrims coming to worship at the

Kaaba. And so when Muhammad starts preaching against the Kaaba and against polytheism, there are many people in the

Quraysh tribe, of which he is a member, who want to get rid of him. Well, his uncle Abu Talib protected him. Would not allow them to do this.

So from 610 approximately, so for about 12 years or so, there is this situation in Mecca before they leave for Medina.

And Abu Talib protects Muhammad up to the point of his death and he's on his deathbed.

And Muhammad comes in and he says, uncle, you know that I'm the prophet of Allah. You need to say the

Shahada, I'll pray for you. The other people, the other rest of the family is on the other side of the bed going, don't you dare deny the ancestral gods.

And long story short, Abu Talib dies as a mushrik. He does not embrace Islam.

But Muhammad is given permission to pray for him. And so as a result, when

Muhammad prays for Abu Talib, Abu Talib gets the best place in hell.

I always stop right there because the look in everyone, anyone who's still awake anyways, and once it gets quiet, you see some people like, hell, what?

Me? Sort of fun to watch. That's why you stay awake. Everybody always goes, so what is the garden spot of hell anyways?

I've always sort of wondered, you know, what's that like? There's two different versions, but in one,

Abu Talib is wearing sandals that are so hot that his brains boil.

That's the garden spot of hell. The other one, he's just standing in fire that goes up to his ankles. I think the sandals one is a little bit more fun, more fun to sort of visualize in your mind.

But in either case, your brains are boiling, so it's not a really good place. And so the point is, shirk is bad.

Shirk is bad because even when Muhammad prays for you, you're still wearing sandals that boil your brains.

So when you think about it, if the Muslim has been taught that what you are calling them to do by following Jesus is to engage in shirk, can you see how that's somewhat of a barrier?

You're calling them to commit the one sin that if they die upon that sin, no hope, the dude that kills 100 people, he might make it, you don't have a chance.

That's a huge barrier. So what do you need to be able to do? You need to be able to explain why what you're inviting them to do is not shirk.

And that means knowing what you believe about Jesus. That means knowing in context, not just a list of verses, but verses that are actually in their proper context indicative of the fact that Jesus Christ is who we claim that he was.

So you saw earlier, I just sort of in passing, pointed out that numerous of the early apostles,

John, Peter, and Paul, did what? They identified Jesus as Yahweh. You need to know where those passages are because if Jesus was

Yahweh, if Jesus is actually our creator who entered into human flesh, then it would actually be shirk not to worship him.

If the New Testament is right in saying that every breath of your mouth, every beat of your heart comes from his hand, then if you refuse him worship, that's idolatry too.

So the question then becomes, does the New Testament teach that? Is that what was being taught?

And why didn't the writer of the Quran know that and engage with that? But you need to be able to explain what you believe about Jesus because many

Muslims, again, every group has its lenses. We do too. And their lens will distort what you're saying unless you very, very clearly and forcefully make the definitions so that it communicates with the

Muslim person with clarity, okay? So barrier number one, shirk, shirk.

Have to be able to explain why we don't engage in shirk, why we're not engaging in shirk, why we agree with them that idolatry is bad.

Yeah. Barrier number two, mentioned it briefly, Surah 4, 157.

Just write it down, Surah 4, the fourth Surah, Ayah 157, verse 157.

40 Arabic words that have spawned numerous interpretations. And what's interesting is there is no meaningful tafsir or commentary on Surah 4 found in the

Hadith literature. Now, what does that mean? Well, the Hadith literature, all the actions and sayings of Muhammad and his companions collected hundreds of years after their time.

There are many, many, many, many thousands of Hadith, and that's what the whole science of Hadith studies is about, is determining which ones are accurate, which ones are not, which ones have a proper is not chain, et cetera, et cetera.

And in all of that, there is no meaningful commentary as to what Muhammad interpreted Surah 4, 157 to mean.

Why is that a problem? Well, because it's not clear. The Quran says it's mubinun, it's clear.

Well, it ain't here, because it says that the Jews boasted that they had killed

Isa bin Maryam, Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messiah, but they killed him not, neither was he crucified, but only it appeared to them, but of a certainty, they killed him not.

What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, the phrase, it appeared to them, is actually rendered in some

English translations of the Quran, well, it's not even translated. Something's being smuggled in there. He was made to appear to them in a certain fashion.

Most of the Muslims in the world, especially outside of Western countries, believe in what's called the substitution theory, that someone was substituted for Jesus.

They were put in his place upon the cross. Many of them believe it was Judas. Some believe it was Simon the

Cyrene, but someone was made to look like Jesus. Jesus was taken up to Allah, because it would be,

I had a friend who went to Uganda on missions about 25 years ago, and this Muslim fellow came out of the bush and was talking with him, obviously via translator, and said,

I just don't understand why you Christians believe that Allah would allow such a great prophet to be so humiliated and shamed as to be put on a cross.

Now, you've got to be ready, immediately when someone says that, what should be the very first thing you think of?

Jesus said, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I lay it down that I may take it back up again.

The harmony of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the sacrifice of Christ, you've got to be ready instantly to bring that forward and say, you need to understand, it's not that Allah allowed a great prophet to die in an ignominious way.

It's in fact, it was in fact the intention of Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past that this exactly is what would take place, and Jesus does this voluntarily.

God's people are united to Him in His death, His burial, His resurrection. That's how we can have peace with God.

This wasn't something that was simply done to Jesus. Read Acts chapter four. When the early church gathers together,

Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Romans, the Jews did to your servant Jesus what your hand had predestined to take place.

God wasn't surprised by this. It was His intention and His purpose. And so, but you've got to understand the objection from their perspective, and to recognize that especially those from a country that does not have much of a

Christian witness, has probably never run into a Christian that could give them a meaningful response to these issues and explain these issues to them.

And so, the second barrier is simply the denial of the crucifixion.

If you don't have a crucifixion, you don't have a resurrection, you don't have redemption, you don't have forgiveness of sins. But what's strange is that those 40

Arabic words, there are other passages in the Quran that taken in their natural

Arabic language would refer to the death of Jesus. Muslims don't know where these verses came from.

There's no background to it. And it puts the Quran in direct contradiction with, well, even the most skeptical scholars.

I've debated Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan. Now, John Dominic Crossan is getting way up there in age now, unfortunately.

But Dom, as he's known, Dom knows that I call him my favorite heretic.

Because he and I debated on a, right before a cruise went on, then we did a debate on the cruise on the resurrection.

And he's just a wonderfully nice, he's just a nice little wee Irishman. And he's a wonderful guy, super nice guy.

But he was raised in, you know, he was a monk in a cell studying the Gospels in the 1960s, for crying out loud.

I'm like an alien to him. He has no earthly idea where in the world I'm coming from. But he tried mightily to at least try to understand what

I was saying. Watch our debate, it was quite an entertaining and interesting debate. John Dominic Crossan, who isn't even fully a theist, says, well, by far, the most easily documentable and reliable aspect of the history of Jesus is that he died on a

Roman cross under Pontius Pilate. I mean, that's not even arguable. Bart Ehrman says the same thing.

And we don't know much about the rest of Jesus' life. One thing we do know, he died under Pontius Pilate on a cross.

And that's the one thing the Quran goes, nope. Nope, didn't happen.

600 years after the event, all of a sudden, nope, didn't happen. And it places the

Quran in direct contradiction to documentable history. And you wonder why, and you wonder where these verses came from.

And when you go read Sahih al -Bukhari, volume six, pages 509 and 510, the history of the compilation of the

Quran and the fact there were verses that were missed during the first compilation and verses that were put in in the second compilation, really makes you wonder, where did that verse come from?

It's only 40 Arabic words. And we have no idea of where it came from or what its history is or anything else.

And we have the entire New Testament that's 550 years older that says otherwise.

Hmm, that's a big issue. That's a big issue. So we've tried to, I've done a few debates on this subject.

I've done debates with Shabir Ali, but Shabir Ali does not hold the historic Orthodox Sunni position.

He holds a sort of a form of what's called the Ahmadi position. He does believe Jesus was crucified, but he didn't die.

It's sort of the swoon theory type thing. I did try to do a debate with Sami Zatari in London on that subject, but Sami decided to focus mainly on the resurrection rather upon the crucifixion.

So still looking for a good focused debate specifically on Surah 4, verse 7.

Maybe we can work that out someday. We keep seeking to do so. So you've got two barriers so far, right? What's the first barrier?

Got one person that's still awake. Everybody else is gone. Thank you for those who are sleeping for not snoring.

That really, man, I'll tell you, when people start snoring during a sermon, or especially during a prayer, it's just like, it's done.

You know? And so Lord, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. And we're done. Especially when everyone can hear it.

It's like, I'm not fighting that, no. The Lord allowed that to happen for a purpose. Obviously, I was about to get wandering to heresy or something, so we're done with that.

So the second barrier we just mentioned is Surah 4, verse 7, the crucifixion.

And so what's the third barrier you need to be aware of? Well, this is one that is a barrier with many of our groups.

It's a barrier in talking to Mormons. It's not primarily with Jehovah's Witnesses, but it is very much a barrier with the

Muslims. Now, what's interesting, I've already gone over my time, I just realized, so I'll be quick. He's going, whatever.

In Islamic history, there have been two streams, Tarif al -Nas and Tarif al -Mana.

The idea of the corruption of the meaning of the scriptures versus the corruption of the words of scripture.

And I would say the earliest perspective is that the

Christian scriptures or the Torah and the Injil were corrupted in their meaning in the viewpoint of the

Muslims rather than their words. Because according to the Quran, the Torah and the Injil were sent down by Allah.

And so if the Torah and the Injil could be changed in their very words, then why couldn't the Quran? But in 1864, a book was published by an

Indian Muslim scholar called Itzar al -Haq, the

Confirmation of the Truth. And what he did is he drew from all sorts of liberal Christian sources to attack the

Bible, its history, its compilation, contradictions, so on and so forth. So he used German rationalism to attack the

Bible. And because of Itzar al -Haq, today, 99 plus percent of the

Muslims that you will talk to believe that the Bible has been fundamentally changed in its actual wording.

They're not sure when. They're not sure exactly when. Because as I point out to them,

Surah 5 tells the Al -Anjil, the people of the gospel, to judge by what is contained therein.

Fihi, that Fihi only has one antecedent and it's in the gospel. We as the people of the gospel are told to judge by the gospel, which makes no sense if we no longer have it.

If it's gone, that doesn't make any sense. So if the gospel existed in the days of Muhammad, then we know what that was because we have manuscripts, entire manuscripts of the entirety of the

Bible that predate Muhammad by hundreds of years. So when did it happen? They're not really 100 % certain.

But because of that book, the Muslim is simply going to give priority to anything.

You show them anything in scripture, anything in the Old or New Testaments that contradicts Islam, well, it's been changed, it's been altered.

And that's the same type of thing you deal with with the Mormons as well, for the very same reason. And it's interesting, it's

Aral Haq, that book was the primary book that made Ahmadiyyat who

Ahmadiyyat was. And so really, the genesis of the modern

Dawa movement around the world, if Ahmadiyyat was a major portion of that, and he has been, can be traced back to that particular book.

So there are your three. Obviously, that last barrier pretty much comes up in every debate, it really does.

I sort of am glad when it does, it's sort of my area, so we can talk about it, that's great. But it is a challenge for a lot of Christians because we don't spend a lot of time in the history of our text and where it came from.

And yes, I do have Muslims all the time that bring up the Kamiohaniyam and stuff like that. And so it is very helpful to have a good, solid understanding of where we're coming from on that particular issue and be able to provide responses.

So before we take the questions, we do have some questions? Good, before we take questions. It's good to know all the stuff that I just mentioned.

It's good to have the resources available to you. It's good to accurately represent. Nothing is gonna change the fact that we're not making huge inroads amongst the

Muslims unless God changes our hearts and rids us of fear and fills us with love.

Paul was stoned by his fellow Jews. He had his fellow

Jews hiding alongside the road and taking oaths not to eat until they killed him. What did he say?

I would be willing to be anathema. I'd be willing to be separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, the Jews. What the

Muslims need are some Christians that would say, Lord, use me. Use me. I wanna be a light amongst the

Muslim people. Will any of you pray that? Will any of you pray, Lord, use me?

I think we've had the impact that we have had because we don't come into this with hatred toward the

Muslim people, and they know that. People can tell when you love them by the way you respond to them.

So pray that the Lord would use you in that way. That's the most important thing, reaching out to them.

Michael? Again, we have many questions. And little time.

That's okay. Some Muslims attribute their conversion to Christianity to a dream, but the content of some of those dreams seem superstitious and contradictory to the gospel.

How valid do you see those dreams? Some of you will remember the name

Nabeel Qureshi. I knew Nabeel. Actually, there was a series of debates done in Norfolk, Virginia, I think in 2008.

Nabeel was a part of that, I was a part of that. I think I moderated one of the debates. We were setting up one day, and Nabeel brought up the fact that he had had a dream.

And he asked me, what do you think about that? Because there's a lot of people talking about having had a dream of Jesus.

And he said, I had a dream of Jesus. And I said, Nabeel, it's real simple for me.

I've finally gotten to that age where I can go, the proof is in the pudding. If 20 years down the road, you are

Orthodox, you're looking to scripture alone, you're not looking for sources outside of that, you've remained faithful, and you're not directing people to some strange scriptures, and so on and so forth, then

I don't have any problem with, look, if the Ethiopian eunuch can like do the, can do the

Star Trek transporter thing with Philip, you know, hey, cool.

Then the dream thing's easy for God at that point. If it leads a person to constantly questioning the sufficiency of scripture, and going to other sources, there's a problem.

But I can't just sit here and go, well, because of my presuppositions, I just,

God can't do that. So that's what I said to Nabeel. And that's the best response

I've been able to come up with. But the problem is that requires someone saying, let's let time tell us something about this, rather than just a, you know,

I can't judge a person's individual experience, I can say the only way you're gonna have truth about, the only way to know about who

Jesus Christ is, is in the word that he's given to us by his spirit. And so if, that's the best response

I've come up for. How do you approach nominal, non -intellectual

Muslims, who just blindly live their traditional ways without question? Well, obviously, nominalism is a huge problem amongst

Islam, just like it is amongst Christianity, and quote unquote Christian countries. And so, you're dealing with a person there who may not have a real strong commitment.

If they're not doing their prayers, they're probably not, don't really have a real strong commitment. But they've probably still gone to mosque, at least as a younger person, and that means they have imbibed, again, those lenses that I talked about when we talked about Roman Catholics.

And so you can bring the very same gospel to bear, you bring the, you know, have you lied?

You know, what is your basis for believing when you stand before a holy God, that you're gonna be accepted of him?

And just make sure that as you present that, that you're aware of what the lenses are gonna be that might distort what you're saying.

And you cannot assume that even that nominal Muslim has any seriously true knowledge of who

Jesus is. And so you have to be prepared to fill in. You just can't assume that because this is a person with some religious conviction that they're gonna have true knowledge.

You have to be very, very clear in your expression as you bring that forward.

But you don't have to get him lost to get him saved. You don't have to get them educated in Islam to get them uneducated from Islam.

Now, there are some people that are sort of, a little bit farther down the line, have a little bit more commitment that you do need to push them out to the point where they really know what it is they're saying, and then demonstrate that that's contradictory to what the word of God says.

But if that's not the case, don't waste your time, you know, on side issues, arguing about Muhammad and Aisha or something.

I don't think you should ever argue about Muhammad and Aisha, personally. Muhammad and Zaynab, different story, but we can get into that at some other point.

So yeah, once you start running into a barrier, then start dealing with the barrier, but don't just assume it.

Wait till the barrier pops up. Is it accurate to say that taqiyyah is a legitimate concern for Christians engaging with Muslims?

Generally, no. Let me explain what it is. Taqiyyah is a concept that in a position where a

Muslim is in danger of their life, they can use dishonesty with unbelievers to save their lives.

It's become an idea that that means that any Muslim you're talking to will just automatically lie through their teeth to you as long as you're a kafir, an unbeliever.

That has not been my experience, and that's not really, I think, a fair application of the concept.

Have I run into a few Muslims like that? I have. Have I run into a few Christians like that? I have.

Sadly. Sadly. But if you're going to assume the worst of the person that you're talking to immediately, hey, make them prove that they're gonna be doing that.

Don't just assume that. There are a lot of Christians, like I said, on the internet that just throw that out there and say, see, you can't believe a word that any of them are ever saying.

You start there, and you are never going to have any ground for any meaningful conversation with anybody.

You're just not. And if you get taken advantage of by someone who's willing to lie to you, fine.

Leave it to the Lord. Leave it to the Lord. The world's not gonna end. When explaining the

Trinity, should we say that God is one in substance and three persons, or should we say simply

God is incomprehensible, and we should just accept the Trinity without understanding it?

Best to last. Do you have a copy of the Forgotten Trinity around here someplace?

They're reprinting it. They're reprinting it. It's sort of like when the atheist said, do you believe in the

Trinity? And everybody in the room's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sort of wrote a book on that.

No, obviously, I think one of the most important things you can do is to give a biblically grounded doctrine of the

Trinity to a Muslim to demonstrate you actually seriously believe what you're saying you believe.

And that's why I've emphasized for decades now, you must know the three foundational doctrines that are plainly presented in Scripture that give the foundation for the doctrine of the

Trinity. There is only one true and eternal God. We are monotheists.

The Muslim needs to hear that. There are three persons described in Scripture that are not confused with one another.

The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. Even when Jesus said, I and the

Father are one, he used a plural verb, I and the Father, we are one. There was no confusion of the persons.

They've run into a lot of Christians that are confused about that, so you need to clarify that. And thirdly, the equality of the persons, not that they take the same role, but that they participate in the nature of God equally.

So the passages that teach the deity of Christ, the passages that teach the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit, those are the texts that you'd be looking at.

Anybody who denies the doctrine of the Trinity has to deny one of those three doctrines, or more than one of those three doctrines.

And so that allows you to go into the word, let the word be your foundation at that point, rather than saying, well, the

Council of Nicaea said blah, blah, blah, blah. So obviously, I do not recommend to anyone, you just go, well, we can't really understand it, but you have to believe it anyways.

That's not gonna be an effective approach in any fashion. Thank you,

James. Before you go, James has written a book on Islam. I've benefited from this book a lot.

I've given it away. In fact, I looked at my bookshop the other day. It's gone? Pardon? And it's gone? It's gone.

Yeah, there you go, yeah. So I need to buy another copy, so it's a good reminder for me. I know it's helped me with -

I've heard there's a bookshop next door. Have you heard about that? Yeah. Yeah, they might even give you a discount. I don't know.

Well, it's not far from where I live, so I'm sure I can do it. No, this book has been very helpful for me, talking to Muslims on the

Trinity, on hope, assurance. Is there anything else you'd like to add about -

Well, some people have asked about the title, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. Some people complained about saying, no, every Christian doesn't need to know that much about the

Quran. It's a fairly thick book. But what I did is

I used the Quran as the template to address the key issues of what does the

Quran say about who God is? Why does it say do not say three? What about salvation, about Muhammad, things like that.

And so I used the Quran as the template sort of just to organize the information. So it's about more than just the

Quran, though it does give you a lot of information about the Quran as well. And so it's interesting that I've just not -

I've not seen much in the way of Islamic response to it. It's not that they've ignored it. It's just that I didn't give them a whole lot to shoot at by trying to be very focused in what