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Alright, you're saying that I'm going to reject, if you quote the church fathers I'm just going to reject it. I'm not rejecting anything. I'm actually accepting all the testimony, but I'm looking at the full picture here.
You see, this type of fraud and deception about penning books with your own hand and claiming that they are from the disciples of Jesus, you know as well as I do, this was a common practice back then.
So in the midst of all this fraud and deception, asking for a little bit of evidence isn't exactly a bad thing. I told you I'm not an executioner here tonight, I'm just going to ask some very basic questions.
Okay, pretty much what you did was you were just kind of preaching to us and hoping that maybe it will create a warm fuzzy feeling for this man who claimed to be a prophet named Paul and maybe people will start believing in him.
That's not going to work tonight. Okay, so there's no evidence for church fathers being the students of the disciples of Jesus or else we would have heard it. Now, I ask you right now, where is the evidence that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, James, etc.
Go ahead, where is the evidence for that?
Actually, what you heard me say in the last response was that the entire premise of the preceding question was false and therefore to ask questions based upon false premises is not to engage in honest discussion.
One could very easily demonstrate from the early church fathers, from Clement, from Ignatius of Rome, the early existence of not only the Pauline writings. Clement, for example, writing around AD 95 is soaked in Paul's language whereas Ignatius is soaked in the language of the Apostle John.
And these are individuals, Ignatius is an individual who lives, again, contemporaneous with eyewitnesses, knows the disciples, and does give us that traditional evidence in regards to the Gospels themselves.
However, the Gospels, I know your Bible may say the Gospel according to, but that's not a part of the original manuscripts. The idea that, well, this name, you have to defend this name or you can't believe that this book was inspired and like that.
There's all sorts of books in the Old Testament that there's no name attached to at all. The very idea that you have to have that kind of specificity is something that Christians have never believed and reject as a foreign standard to be placed upon it.
What we can tell you is that those Gospels are known from the earliest writings that appear in Christian history. And I will point out to you that those early Christian writings appear far earlier than any Islamic writings in regards to the history of Muhammad.
And so again, if you're going to be consistent, if you're going to use the same standards, and you're going to reject what we find in Ignatius or Clement or Polycarp, then do you apply the same standards in regards to the sources of your own Islamic history?
That becomes the question, and that's why I invite the thinking Muslim here this evening to really give some consideration to. All right, that wraps up the first 15-minute session. Now we're going to switch roles.
James is going to ask questions of Nadir. So James, you'll have one minute to ask a question, and Nadir, you'll have two minutes to respond. Mr. Ahmed, we are told in Surah 4, verse 136, O believers, believe in God and his messenger and the book he has sent down on his messenger and the book which he sent down before.
Whoso disbelieves in God and his angels and his books, plural, and his messengers in the last day are surely gone astray into far error. Could you explain, in light of what you have said concerning the New Testament this evening, how it is you can fulfill the command to believe in the books that were sent down before, that is, the books that were sent down before the Qur 'an?
How can you believe in them if you believe that what we possess today has been completely corrupted?
Well, first of all, I told you to read chapter 5 of the Qur 'an. Thanks for asking me the questions on Islam, because I totally forgot to respond to that. But still, for this question and answer period, you also need to start presenting what you believe is evidence for your beliefs and corner me with that.
But let's go ahead and talk about that. You've got to read chapter 5, starting from verse 10 to 115, because this tells you what the New Testament is. Inside this passage over here, it first accuses the Christians that they are hiding scripture from us, and that they have abandoned the message of Jesus.
And then it gives an example of what we're talking about. Inside chapter 5, verse 10, it says, Jesus Christ made a bird out of clay. Yeah, made a bird out of clay. Now, where is that in your Bible? Because remember, the Qur 'an is accusing the Christians of hiding this message.
It's not in that present-day New Testament. This is found inside the infancy gospel of Thomas. So, what you have in the Qur 'an is that you're having, really, an indictment against the Christians, that they are hiding scriptures from us, and that's exactly what's happening.
Because these books are, you know, you are not presenting them to your church, because these books talk about Jesus, and, you know, they have many of his messages in there, and you won't teach it to them.
So, the New Testament, or the revelation which was given before, it's not just the 27 books of the New Testament. It's talking about all of those books which were from the different churches. I mean, yeah, of course, the different churches and the different books, you might find errors in them, no problem.
He talked about, he tried to attack Gnosticism. Well, we can also attack the Gospels and find problems with that as well. So, let's be consistent over here. So, chapter 5 tells us that you are suppressing books from us, and he gave a beautiful example of this by showing the truth present inside the infancy gospel of Thomas.
But, ask me a couple more questions on Islam, but we've got to go back to what you're presenting as evidence.
So, if I understand what you just said, you believe that the Gnostic Gospels, the infancy Gospels of Thomas, were not solved by Allah?
Okay, well, what we have is, we have basically fragments, according to chapter 5, if you read that, and of course, there's other passages. When you look at that, you have fragments of Jesus' message which is present in all of those Gospels, okay?
So, that's what chapter 5 tells us. But, James, here's what I'm going to want to ask you to do. You know, your reasoning, which you're claiming why the New Testament were authored by the disciples, you had certain arguments.
If you feel like, you know, I did not answer something correctly, you need to present that right now and corner me with that. If you feel that there is evidence that I'm overlooking, that I'm holding a double standard of why Paul is a true prophet, I need you to present that to me right now, okay?
Because time is very precious here. I don't want to waste time, you know, debating Islam and stuff like that, because that's not the topic. But we can do that some other time. But anyways, my debate challenge is still out there.
The evidence for Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. I'm not sitting here and attacking Paul and not willing to debate our Prophet Muhammad. I debated David Wood here, what, two years ago, and he presented clear evidence why he is a true prophet.
So, will you debate me on that?
So, Mr. Achmed, I did not get an answer to my question. Evidently, you said there are fragments of Jesus' message in these books. So, how are we to determine which fragments are inspired in a book that specifically says, for example, that God can never create the world because that would be something that's evil to do?
Where did you get, for example, from Surah 5, the phrase, fragments of the truth? Could you show that to me?
Inside Chapter 5, it clearly speaks that the Christians are hiding the message of Jesus. And they gave a clear example of that message which was being hidden. And that was the story of Jesus turning a bird out of clay, and that's not inside our Bible.
So, common sense here tells us, wait a second. We have fragments of truth in these other documents, but I'm not going to answer any more Islam-related questions. You need to start answering questions and direct the topic to the Bible and these radical claims which the New Testament is making.
So, no more discussion on Islam, please. But anyway, just some of the things that you were mentioning about Hadith. Hadith is not like what you see over here. I didn't ask a question. Let me just finish here.
Hadith has been verified, but this is not a debate on how we know the Hadith is authentic. So, I just want to please focus the question on the Gospels. It's radical truth claims. Number one, that it claims Paul to be a prophet.
Number two, that these were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And somehow the church followers are really what they claim to be. All I'm showing tonight is that biblical New Testament is a religion based on 100 blind faith.
And this is just not, I'm picking on the New Testament, but all religions are based on 100 blind faith. He's going to give you all kinds of fascinating facts and figures, but they're all meaningless and all senseless when you really start thinking about it.
And you walk into the office of a Baha 'i or a person who believes in Joseph Smith. In the beginning, they're going to give you lots of fascinating facts and figures. Our disciples of Joseph Smith said he's a true prophet.
But then you start taking it apart and you find out it all doesn't mean anything. So, no more talk about Islam. Let's talk about the Bible. Let me jump in for just one second.
Nadir, you seem to be answering the question in, say, 35 or 40 seconds and then moving on. But I would just ask that you focus on addressing the question that's asked. Because if you finish it in 35 or 40 seconds, that's fine.
Because then you'll just have time to ask more questions. Because we are continuing for 15 minutes. So, question and answer, back and forth. Other issues you can bring up in your conclusion and so on.
There will be more time to speak during the question and answer at the end.