Is Jesus Prophesied in the OT?, Part 2

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The Quest for a Consistent Muslim and the Need to Let the Bible Speak

As we look at the subject of Jesus being prophesied in the Old Testament, this evening I am going to be continuing a quest. I have been on a quest for quite some time now. Shabir started me on it. I am searching for the consistent Muslim.

The Muslim who will always keep his Muslim hat on, even when he's criticizing my New Testament. I didn't mean the Kufi. And I'll have more to say about this in the second half of the debate, but I am searching for the Muslim who will continue to believe that God has spoken through the prophets, that there have been many books which have been Natsal, sent down.

I'm looking for the person who will use the same standards and the same kind of scholarship in defense of the Quran, in defense of, for example, the early historiography of Muhammad, who is willing to use the same scholarship he uses there in talking about the New Testament.

I'm looking for that because I would like to suggest to you that if I stand up here and I defend the New Testament as a believer in the supernatural, I believe in prophecy, I believe in revelation, I believe that God can give supernatural knowledge to men about events that will not take place for 700 years.

And God knows they're going to take place, not because God's just looking down the corridors of time, but because God is sovereign over his creation. But if I then turn around and seek to criticize the Quran on the basis of modern Orientalists who begin with the assumption that there can be no such thing as revelation, there can be no such thing as prophecy, that you cannot even begin.

If I, and I will here, begin to respond to some of Shabir's points by saying, well, you need to allow the New Testament to speak, he does let the Quran speak, I say let the Bible speak. If you will allow it to speak for itself, if you allow for harmonization, he does that with the Quran, and I say if you're going to do that with the Quran, then you need to do it with the Bible.

He brought up, for example, some synoptic issues. Well, there are synoptic issues in the Quran in the sense that the Quran more than once tells the same story twice. Now, I can point out that my writers are writing to different audiences at different times, and therefore that explains maybe the differences between the synoptics, but what do you do with the Quran when, for example, in Surah 7 and Surah 38 it tells the story about Iblis in a different way?

What do you do when Surah 2, 58 -59 says very different things than Surah 7, 161 -162? You don't have the idea of multiple writers. This is supposedly written by Allah in eternity itself, so why would there be differences and contradictions between them?

Well, you have to explain those things. You have to say, well, you need to allow for harmonization, and yet all the people that should be our elite quotes don't allow for harmonization. That's the first thing that's dismissed.

Well, the one thing we can't do is harmonize. We can't do that. I had the opportunity of debating John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading historical Jesus scholars, and it was very clear in our debates and then in the debate that I and Dr. James Renahan did with he and Marcus Borg on the resurrection of Christ that the one thing that just simply isn't allowed in their circles of scholarship is the idea of harmonization, the idea of allowing the entirety of a text to speak for itself, and yet every Muslim in this room who studied the Quran would demand that right for the interpretation of the Quran.

I say to you, I'm looking for the consistent Muslim. Now before I get into these various points, I started a sort of a tradition at Biola University in 2006, and I'd like to continue it. I would like to give to Shabir a gift.

This is a diglot translation of the New Testament. It is the Nesiallon 27th edition large print with the New English translation on the facing page, some 30 ,000-odd translation notes there. This is a leather-bound edition, and so I'd like to give it to Shabir.

I'm just wondering what I'm going to get back, so anyway. I know Ramadan's over, so I sort of missed that one, but it'd be nice to know. I'm very appreciative of Shabir being here and the attitude that he displays in the debates.

I hope that as people look at the debates we've done in Seattle and at Biola University and now here in London, that they will see that you can disagree and disagree strongly, but you do not have to do so in an attitude of hatred.

I think we have accomplished that in the debates we've done. Let's look at some of the points that were made. We were told that the New Drome Biblical Commentary says that this text, Deuteronomy 18, referred to a number of prophets.

Well, why, when it says, well, it's in the plural, well, yes, prophets speak from God, but there is a specific application that is made here. The Jews understood it to be this way. The New Testament understood it to be this way.

Why should we take some modern interpretation and say, well, we can apply it to a large number of people? Where in the context do we get that type of an understanding? He seemed to disagree with Arazi.

It seemed that Arazi was saying the Torah itself does contain testimonies of Jesus. Would that not be Deuteronomy 18? Is it the Prodevangelium in Genesis 3? I'd be interested in knowing. Then we had this very interesting approach to the text of Scripture.

To be honest with you, no offense here attended at all, Shabir, but it sounded like I was listening to John Shelby Spong. Now, some of you don't know who John Shelby Spong is, but he is the very, very, very liberal former bishop in New Jersey in the Episcopal Church, and he and I debated, and he's written books about the sins of Scripture, and what he does, he says, well, you know, we can't actually think God had anything to do with these texts, because that would mean God did these terrible, horrible things.

It's just the people who wrote them, they were very provincial, and they had their little tribe they were trying to promote. I again simply ask for the consistent Muslim. Are there not all sorts of texts in the Quran where a liberal Muslim would want to say, well, that was just the people in the first century, that's just sort of how they thought, and we would never think that Allah would tell you could do this, that, or the other thing.

Surah 9 and all that stuff, no, no, no, no, no, this is just what people thought at that time. Again, looking for the consistent Muslim and simply asking one question, did Jesus view the Scriptures in that way?

Did Jesus view the Scriptures in that way? Remember, in the second part of this debate, we're going to look at the fact that the Quran says that the Torah and the Injil talks about Muhammad. Well, how could that make any sense if the Torah and the Injil that was possessed in the day of Muhammad was nothing but the thoughts and meanderings of people who were filled with hate, who wrote these terrible things in the Old Testament?

How can you even make sense out of the Quran if you do not begin with a recognition that at least the writer of the Quran believed that God had sent those books down? You can't make any sense out of it if you don't start there.

That's why you can come up with so many different things found in these rather liberal books. And so, you know, Shabir said, well, who likes negativity anyways? Well, you got to have it in a debate. It's just sort of necessary.

You know what? I bet you Shabir is quite negative with his children when they start reaching for a hot plate on the stove or decide to go play out in the middle of the busy street. Negativity has its place because truth is often denied, and we have to speak out against a denial of the truth.

He raised a number of issues, and I was very interested at the language that he used. For example, when he talked about the three days. Now, again, if we just simply allow for the idiom of the language to exist, the Jews counted any part of a day as a day.

And so when you say, well, Friday to Sunday, there's only three days. Well, if you have Friday night, Saturday, and the morning of Sunday to the Jewish mind, that is three days whether you like it or not.

And the chronology fits perfectly. And so to just take that and say, well, we all know this didn't happen. I didn't get the notice on that. I believe it did happen, and I believe that that language can be established and that it makes perfect sense, and it causes the accounts to be harmonious with one another.

Why am I wrong to do that? Well, because there's a certain kind of theology that says, no, no, no, we have to start with the idea that this isn't divine revelation. We just have to start there. And anything that harmonizes, we just don't even want to go there.

We won't even allow for that to happen. He even went so far as to say, it failed. This prophecy failed. Well, I really wonder if he would apply the same kind of standard in the study of the Kanaan. Jesus' return was disproven.

He expected to return at a certain point in time. And again, are there not entire volumes dedicated where godly men have taken the time to work through all these texts, and instead of starting with, well, we start with a contradiction and then just go from there.

We ask the question, are we misunderstanding something? Are we taking everything into consideration? Let the Bible speak, and when you do so, you find a harmonious presentation of what the coming of Christ actually involves.

You don't just have to say, well, his return was disproven. These things failed. All the rest of these kinds. When the genealogies are mentioned, well, Jesus doesn't make the grade. He seems to fail, et cetera, et cetera.

But once again, I would suggest you look at the scholarly work of people like Lisa Archer and others who have dealt with these genealogies and have dealt with the Old Testament text behind the genealogies and have presented to us what is a consistent understanding of the presentation.

It doesn't require us to go, well, very clearly, they're tracing the line through two different ways, one through Mary, one through Joseph, and well, since he's not, since he's virgin born, that Joseph line somehow is fraudulent.

Well, again, that immediately dismisses something we all believe. How could anyone who is virgin born be predicted to be the descendant of anybody on that basis? Don't you believe in the virgin birth, my Muslim friends?

You most certainly do. And so upon what basis do we say, well, if anyone was born a virgin, you can't, he could never refer to Joseph as his father, which he did, by the way. You just have to immediately have him saying, I'm virgin born.

Yeah, okay. That's very helpful in starting your ministry. So he then mentioned, for example, he mentioned William Lane Craig. Why the great doubt and difficulty concerning the crucifixion and the resurrection?

Yesterday I had the opportunity of preaching at Trinity Road Chapel, and I preached from Luke chapter 24, and when Jesus approaches the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he quizzes them, he draws out of them, why are they dejected?

Why are they sad? Why are they debating amongst themselves? And as they explain what has happened in Jerusalem, they talk about how Jesus had been proven by the works that he did, by the miracles, to be a prophet of God.

And then they said these words, we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel. And so here you have these hopes that have been dashed, or have they been dashed? You see, the problem with the Islamic position, the problem that Shabir Ali is in as a Muslim, is that he's stuck in the intervening hours between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Just as those disciples were. And when Jesus opens their eyes to reveal who he is, then they understand. Then they understand that it's the resurrection that has vindicated him. It has not demonstrated that he is a false messiah.

Instead, now they see from Moses to the end that, what does Jesus say to them? It was necessary for the messiah to suffer and enter into his glory. And that's what happens when you let the Bible speak.

When you let it speak in its entirety. And when you do not begin with the assumption of naturalistic materialism, that comes to the text of the Bible and says, well, we know there's no spirit of God. We know God has no purpose in this world.

We're all just here by natural processes. We know, starting, that this is just the thoughts and meanderings of people about God that is self-contradictory and we start there. I challenge that assumption.

And I say to you that any Muslim who picks up the Koran and believes that they are seeing the very words of God has no business using the argumentation of naturalistic materials. No business whatsoever.

And so, my search this evening, I've presented to you numerous texts. And I don't say to you that they might have something to do with Jesus. Yes and no, not sure. I am not in the James D .G. Dunn camp.

I'm actually one of those Christians who believes that God has spoken. He has spoken definitively. He has spoken clearly. And therefore, he has not left us to grope about in the darkness and be left merely to, oh, the whims and the opinions of this scholar or that scholar.

Instead, I believe that God has spoken. And that's why I'm here this evening. He has, in his word, prophesied before Jesus ever came along, before Jesus was ever born into this world. Think about the words that I read to you.

Think of the description of his crucifixion. Think of the fact that not only after the crucifixion that his victory is prophesied in these texts. And ask yourself a question. Is that just happenstance?

Or is it, as Shabir has said in the past, he's quoted John Dominic Crossan, and Crossan actually says, well, that was just the early Christians ransacking the Old Testament and they created the Gospels to fulfill these things.

It never really happened itself. I'm looking for the consistent Muslim this evening on this vitally important subject. Let's keep looking together. Thank you. Just go ahead and hit start and we'll count down.

Oh, fantastic. Isn't he well prepared?

And so kind as well. Well, to return James' kind gesture, I cannot offer him a timer except my stopwatch, which is very difficult to see under this light. But I'd like to also offer James a copy of the Koran, which is a pocket-sized edition.

And though I don't always agree with the translation in this, I carry one like this around because it is so easy for a person like James who travels around and debates Muslims all over the world. So, James, please accept that.

Consistency in Applying the Same Standards to the Quran and the New Testament

And after the pleasantries to get on with the business of the day, De Bono has written a book entitled Six Thinking Hats, and I would encourage you to read that book. It just alerts us to the fact that, in fact, we can approach a subject from different angles.

We can, in fact, put on different thinking hats for the exercise of thinking and understanding. Is a Muslim then inconsistent? No. I have already explained that consistently as a Muslim, I would believe that Jesus is a true prophet of God, the true Messiah of God.

My answer to the question would be yes, in that we can allow for certain passages of the Old Testament to speak of Jesus as a matter of good gesture, I would say. But when we look at the texts in detail, we fail to find a text in the Old Testament that actually quite predict the coming of Jesus.

If I were to take off the thinking hat of a Muslim and look at the matter critically, then I see a no answer to my question. And, in fact, James encourages me to take off the thinking hat of a Muslim, because the whole purpose of our meeting here tonight is that James has challenged me to debate whether or not the Old Testament, and the New, predicts the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

James wants to encourage me to believe that the Prophet Muhammad is false. It is, though, by virtue of my belief in the Prophet Muhammad, by virtue of my belief in the Quran, that I believe in Jesus. Some Christians think that if you take Muhammad and the Quran out of the equation, Jesus will be left in the mind of the Muslim.

But be aware that if you take away Muhammad and the Quran from the mind of the Muslim, you do not remain with Jesus, you remain with atheism. Now you have to, first of all, convince the Muslim to believe in Jesus.

Then you have to show the Muslim the prophecies of the Old Testament. A Muslim, then, would come with a neutral mind to examine the Old Testament, and what would he find? Lo and behold, that according to the criteria of the Old Testament, Jesus must be a false prophet because he failed in his predictions, his most major one, for example, and that he must be a false messiah because he did not fulfill the requirements of being the messiah, as I've already demonstrated.

So I believe that I am consistent in my approach here. As a Muslim, Jesus is a prophet of God, and I have no difficulty if we were to find a text that predicts him, though we do not find any that quite predicts him, but we are willing to grant that Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 18, would be a prediction about prophets to come in a series, and definitely Jesus seems to qualify as one of the series.

In fact, Muslims do believe that he is a true prophet in this series. But if I take off my Muslim hat, not this one, but my thinking hat of Muslim, and I were to listen to James and leave aside Muhammad and the Quran, then I would have to conclude, I believe, as I've demonstrated, the two negative conclusions which I've already put before you.

Does that mean we are saying that God cannot prophesy? No. Even as a Muslim, by believing in God and believing in Jesus, that does not necessitate that God must have told people before Jesus came that Jesus would come.

God could send Jesus without telling anyone about it beforehand. The fact that al-Razi and other Muslim commentators said this doesn't necessitate that Muslims must believe it. Muslims must believe in the Quran, but not necessarily in the commentators on the Quran, such as al-Razi and others.

If they have good reasons for what they say, we might be persuaded by their reasons. But if they have no good reason, and if they have followed the claims of others without checking them, and if they themselves did not have the capacity, they were scholars of the Quran, not of the Bible, and they just simply took the claims at face value and passed them down to us, we have the right to re-examine those claims based on what God has guided us to know today.

Now, James wants me to look at the Quran and to compare the surahs of the Quran as scholars have done with the synoptic Gospels. Folks, in every field, there are scholars. There are scholars who study the Bible, and there are scholars who study the Quran.

Both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars study the Quran. In studying the Quran, the synoptic problem is not something that the scholars discuss, but they do compare passages of the Quran. They do compare surahs one with another to try and show that there must have been some sort of development in the mind of the Prophet Muhammad as he went through his prophetic career over the 23 years.

If, however, James could show us an actual example of any such claim that shows that the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace, in learning and getting more revelation from God over time as he would have claimed, was actually manufacturing the information, was actually changing the story, contradicting himself, then I'd be willing to respond to that.

He gave two passages that say that the one example shows that the story of Iblis is told differently in surah 7 and in surah 38. How differently? What is the difference, James? Tell me, and I will do my best to try and explain that for you.

What about Deuteronomy chapter 18 referring to a large number of prophets? Well, the fact that some Jews said that that's what it means does not mean that Biblical commentators will be forever bound by that conclusion.

I have cited the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, which is a massive and reputable commentary on the Bible written by some of the greatest Christian Biblical scholars today. And I don't see why we should discount that automatically just because some previous scholars had said that the conclusion should be the opposite.

I've also given good reasons for thinking that it is a series of prophets rather than just simply one. Because to begin with, why would God confine all of his teachings just simply to one prophet, when he can send prophets throughout time?

And he has, in fact, sent prophets throughout time. Immediately after Moses, there was Joshua. And not to speak of an Israelite prophet or a Hebrew prophet, there must have been prophets to all people.

Why would God confine his blessing of revelation only to the Israelite people, to the neglect of the entire world? This seems to be rather strange. John Shelby Pong and John Dominic Crossan are not here debating tonight.

Why do we hear their names? Now, we might cite a scholar for referring to them and citing them as authority. But James is referring to these scholars to associate me with those scholars, to tell our Christian folks here, you know those bad guys out there?

When you see Shabir, think of those bad guys. This is actually called, in debating, guilt by association. It is a fallacy in argumentation. Instead of refuting my points, I feel that James is actually pulling this one of guilt by association so that I should not be listened to.

You should just think of the devils that you know when you see me. But I don't think that's fair. I think my points are very clear. They are referred to with reference to biblical commentaries and Christian sources.

And I think that my point should be evaluated for their rationale and for their authentic references. What about the Torah and the Injil? Do not Muslims believe that these books are the truth? Well, as far as I understand from the Quran, these books contain truth.

They contain messages that God has delivered to his prophets over time, including the last of all of them prior to the Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet Jesus. But that does not mean that entirely these books are exactly the way they were revealed by God to his prophets over time.

So they could contain both the inspired word of God and also the creative work of human beings. And we have seen in my presentation how the storytellers went to work in the oral stage before these documents were written down.

Their stories were molded and refashioned and reshaped in order sometimes to promote the Israelites over their enemies and to insist that all of the blessings would come only to the Israelites. And in that case, we understand that we must be judicious in the way we evaluate the text from the Bible.

It contains truth. It contains the inspired word of God. And it also contains other material besides. What about the fact that Gleeson Archer and others have dealt with the problem of the genealogy of Jesus?

Well, okay. So they have dealt with the problem. So to give us what they have said so that we can evaluate what they have said and we can see if their answers are actually measuring up to and real refutations of the problems that we have actually discussed here tonight.

I don't believe they have. We're not denying that Jesus could be called the son of Joseph. If he was virgin birth and he wants to identify himself with a father figure and he calls Joseph his father or Joseph is his legal father.

There's no problem with that. We're not asking whether Jesus was born of a virgin. We're taking for granted that he was born of a virgin. And we realize that since he was born of a virgin, he couldn't come from the seed of David.

He couldn't have David's Y chromosome. And according to the Bible, the Messiah had to be born of the seed of David. So we have, in fact, a real disqualifier in the case of Jesus for being the Messiah.

What about Matthew 12, verse 40? I didn't invent the problem. Jesus said he's going to stay in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The Abingdon Bible commentary, 1929 published, comments on Matthew 12, verse 40 and says,.

The statement made is inaccurate. For Jesus was in the grave only from Friday evening to Sunday dawn. I believe this is a reputable commentary on the Bible, written close to 100 years ago. And since that time, people have been admitting that this is a problem.

Are the hopes of the Israelites dashed with the crucifixion of the Messiah? And are we not just simply using materialistic means of evaluating the end of the life of Jesus? Folks, from where we stand, all we have are the New Testament documents that testify that Jesus came back to life.

These documents tell us that after Jesus was dead, he now reappeared to his disciples. When we read the documents, we do, in fact, have to cope with the synoptic problem. We have to cope with the fact that the documents give us information that is dependable and also information that is not dependable, such as, for example, the prediction that Jesus will stay in the earth for three days and three nights, which didn't actually work out.

But we have real problems. For example, Mark 6 has Jesus sending out his disciples and telling them that they are to take a staff for their journey. The parallel passages in Luke and Matthew has it that he told them, don't take a staff.

Now, that's minor. Take a staff, don't take a staff, what does it matter? What matters is that we have the statement of Jesus recorded three times, one in one direction, two in the other direction, and the two cannot meet.

Either you take the staff or don't take the staff. You can't have it two ways. Okay, maybe half a staff. We also have the problem with the crucifixion itself, that the Gospel writers did not give us a consistent account of the dating of the crucifixion.

According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus had the meal with his disciples, the Passover meal, and then he was crucified the following day. According to the Gospel, according to John, Jesus was crucified on the day before he could live for the night to have the Passover meal with his disciples.

So either he died the day before the Passover meal, in which case he didn't eat it, or he died the day after, in which case he ate it, and you cannot have it both ways. This is a problem that William Barclay in the Daily Bible Commentary remarked upon and said we have a real contradiction here and there is nothing that can be done to reconcile this.

So in that case, we have documents which tell us that something remarkable happened, and we do not have any confidence, or I do not have that much confidence in these reports to be able to base my faith on such a remarkable incident reported in these Gospels, which I find to be as non-dependable as they are.

Finally, I believe that James misunderstands my reference to let the Quran speak. When we preach to a converted crowd, we can say okay, that's what the Quran says, and therefore listen to it. And he can speak to a converted group of Christians and say that's the Bible, let the Bible speak.

Well, when we're speaking in a conversation like this, when we are looking at the evidence in an objective manner, we cannot say just because the Quran says it, that settles it. It may settle it for Muslims.

Just because the Bible says it, it will settle it for Christians. But when we deal with each other in a dialogue, we must in fact bring evidence and proof that is of a neutral character so that we can examine it without our prior faith predispositions and presuppositions.

So finally, when we look at the passages which James has actually put before us as passages which predict Jesus before his coming, such as Isaiah 52, or Psalm 22, or the verse in Malachi, or Daniel 9, or Zechariah 9 -9, or Isaiah 9 -6 about the government being on his shoulder, and Psalm 2 about him being the ruler and so on.

All of these predictions, actually if they are predictions about Jesus, they are predictions about somebody who will come and reign on the throne of David. He must sit on the throne and assume rule and bring down the kingdom of God here on earth.

But obviously he hasn't done that. To begin with, he doesn't have the pedigree that will qualify him to sit on the throne. Secondly, in fact, he didn't sit on the throne. One night he was there saying to the high priest that he is in fact the Messiah.

The next day he was out hanging on a cross instead of sitting on the throne. And so Christians had to readjust their thinking. That's why the Gospel according to John has Jesus say, My kingdom is not of this world.

Because it was never of this world. But it should have been had he been the true Messiah. So we cannot change the definition of what the Messiah is and then say he's the true Messiah. And say, okay, well when he comes back he will assume the throne.

Well that means that so far he hasn't done it. And if all of these predictions that are cited really are predictions about a singular coming in which the Messiah should have brought the kingdom of God on earth.

We're still praying for the kingdom of God. Thy kingdom come. And it hasn't come as predicted within the lifetime of the disciples who heard Jesus speak. It didn't come soon after in the lifetime of the writers such as Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4 12 17 where he talks about the fact that Jesus will come back and scoop up all of those who are still alive in Christ including obviously himself.

So it hasn't happened. In short, I believe that the no answer is really the predominant one. Thank you very much.

Deuteronomy 18 and the Question of a Singular or Plural Prophet

Okay, Shabir. In looking at Deuteronomy chapter 18 you said you established and I believe you did this primarily by quoting from the Jerome Bible commentary. But where in the text do you get this plurality of prophets idea?

Especially when it says I will raise up for them a prophet. Isn't that singular in Hebrew?

In the English it is definitely singular. I do not believe in all the Hebrew, but I can only depend on the biblical scholars who I assume to know the Hebrew. Otherwise, we wouldn't be writing a commentary about it.

If you know the Hebrew better than that, I'm willing to listen. But I've cited the scholars and obviously citations from non-authorities is a kind of way of argumentation and proving the point.

Okay, well, I don't think there's any. I looked at Jerome. I didn't see anywhere where they spoke of plurality in regards to prophet at that point. So, given that the terminology is singular and there isn't a variation either in the Hebrew or in the Greek Septuagint, then what is your objection to my statement that given that this is a Jewish prophet who speaks the words of God and that the New Testament views this of Jesus, why would you view that as a yes and no?

Where does the no part come from Deuteronomy 18?

Well, the no part doesn't come from Deuteronomy 18 at all. To begin with, I should clarify that my citation was from the New Jerome Biblical Commentary. And if you have just simply the Jerome Biblical Commentary, that should explain why you're seeing something different than I cited.

In any case, Deuteronomy 18, verse 18, I have granted could be a reference to Jesus if I have my Muslim thinking hat on. But if I take off my Muslim thinking hat, as you would want me to do, and believe in Jesus but not in Hamas, then I would have to examine Jesus based on what is predicted about him as you claim.

And that prediction in Deuteronomy 18, verse 18, is followed by a qualifier. How do you know which is a true prophet in distinguishing from a false one? It says very plainly that the false prophet is the one who predicts something and then it doesn't happen.

And I have cited three areas in which Jesus made predictions, and these predictions did not come to pass. So, that is how I would remove Deuteronomy 18, verse 18, from being a reference to Jesus and be part of the New Testament.

You said that I want you to take off your Muslim hat. You seem to believe that I want you to somehow deny your Islamic faith. Don't you understand my position to be that I'm just simply challenging you to be a consistent supernaturalist at each one of these points, to apply the very same standards to the New Testament that you do?

I've listened, as you know, before we debated Biola, to hours and hours of your talks. You were my constant companion on long bike rides, and doing Dawah talks, and doing Hadith discussions, and so on and so forth.

Do you understand that what I'm asking of you is that you be consistent in applying the same standards to my text that you demand be applied to your text as well?

Well, the only supernaturalist I would be, if I were to follow your line of argumentation and to believe that the Qur 'an is not the word of God, the Qur 'an is not the new prophet of God, is to believe that God exists.

I believe that my belief that God exists is almost a part of my character, and I found the expression of God's teachings in the faith of Islam. But just that belief in the supernatural alone will not compel me to take the Biblical statements as they are, because knowing what I know about the Bible, and knowing the passages that I have put before the audience here tonight, passages which clearly contradict each other, there's no reason why I should take these passages as face value.