Who was the Founder of Christianity? Jesus or Paul? Part 3

The Qur'an, the Injil, and the Question of Authority

Now, equality of control, which means that if you say anything against, morally against the Qur 'an, you can either accept it or reject it on the basis of the Qur 'an. The Qur 'an tells us, for example, in Chapter 10, verse 47, that unto every nation did we send a prophet.

In Chapter 4, verse 164, the Qur 'an tells us, of some of these prophets we have told you, and of others we haven't. There is no need for the Qur 'an to specify the story of every single prophet. Again, the Injil, the Injil of Paul and the Injil of Jesus.

The Qur 'an, when it talks about the Injil, it talks about the Injil of Jesus. I trust that Jesus did not go around with the letters of Paul in his pocket and, you know, in every human opportunity, try and attempt to read each one of them out.

It didn't happen. Again, Paul and the Law of Moses. He's not an extra, Chapter 21. You find that James, John, James, Paul, Jesus, and other believers, they say, they have been informed that you teach all the Jews to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children.

So, you know, Paul is challenged, now and again, about this teaching. And I gave you quotations where Paul stands against the Laws of Moses. Let me deal with some of the things that James wrote. Jesus accepted the worship of man.

He's talking about Thomas. Firstly, when Jesus was asked about God, He didn't say, They are One. He didn't mention Trinity. He mentioned the Shema, exactly as Paul and the other prophets did. The Jews knew nothing about eternity.

They knew nothing about a man God. They knew nothing about a God Incarnate. It is as simple as that. That was something new that Paul introduced. And James cannot, he could not show us one passage where Jesus spoke about a God Incarnate.

And I asked, give me a parallel where Jesus calls Himself Divine. There isn't one. Now, let's talk about Jesus accepting the worship of Thomas. Thomas says, My Lord and One must die. He says the same thing.

So, if Thomas said that Jesus was his God and his Lord, then He's blessed to be of the highest order. So, He must have had something else. It must have been simply a testimony to believing that He's confirming that what you call God, there is One God and Jesus is His Master.

And the word Kyrios simply means Lord and Master. In the book of Ezekiel, we are told that Sarah called her husband Lord, Abraham Lord. It doesn't mean much. If one looks at 1 Chronicles 29 verse 20, the Old Testament, the people worshiped God.

Now, why is it that no Christian or Jew says that Solomon and David must have been God? Because the people worshipped God and the King. And we are told that Solomon sat on the throne of God, so he must have been God.

In the Old Testament, God tells Moses, See, I make you as God, Elohim unto Pharaoh. And Aaron, he will be your prophet. No Christian tells me that you see, this is proof. Moses is God. But very conveniently, you simply take one verse out of context and you say, you know, Jesus is God.

Remember, let me give you another example. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus asked the sister of Lazarus, and she says, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And she turns to her sister and says, So, you know, you are reading an Eastern book, and somebody to read into things, I think is a little unfair.

James quoted again in 58, where Jesus is supposed to have said, You know, for Abraham was and I am. Again, you know, what does that mean? It's in the context. Jesus tells the Jews, that look, you know, Abraham was glad to see my day.

Now, how did Abraham know that Jesus' day was going to come? As God tells Jeremiah, even before you were born, I knew you and appointed your prophet unto the nations. So Abraham knew that. It had nothing to do with Jesus being God.

And Mark 14 verse 45 tells us that the council of Solomon came to condemn Jesus for bringing in many false witnesses, but the witnesses could not tell him. So there was no proof that Jesus ever came to be God.

James tells us, Jesus promised eternal life. But every prophet promises. The Quran tells us separately, if you say that you love God, follow. In the Old Testament, do you remember Abimelech? When he took the wife of Abraham, he has a dream.

And God tells him, return the man his wife. Then Abraham will pray for you. And Abraham will give you life. He promises eternal life. Not only Jesus. Jesus claimed that you are going to be a grandson of man.

I find it very strange that, you know, Jesus told the people. Jesus says, John chapter 18 verse 20, I spoke openly to the world. So Jesus says, I'm going to die and I'm going to be resurrected. But John chapter 20 verse 9 tells us very clearly that the disciples did not know that Jesus was going to rise from the dead.

So here's a direct contradiction. On the one hand, we are told that, you know, Jesus spoke clearly to the people. He was going to die for the sins of humanity and be a ransom. And John chapter 20 verse 9 tells us the disciples themselves didn't know that he was going to rise from the dead.

And Proverbs chapter 21 verse 18 tells us that the wicked will be a ransom for the righteous and the faithful shall abide. So how can Jesus be a ransom? When the Bible says the wicked will be a ransom for the righteous.

Are we trying to say that Jesus was wicked? Quran. I think my brother James, you know, brought up many emotional arguments. That, you know, why do you think that Muslims talk about God? Well, why shouldn't we?

I mean, Christians are looking outdoors and they talk about the Quran. They talk about our Prophet, Prophet Muhammad. They feel at liberty to do so. And I'm always astonished that when Muslims quote the Bible, we don't understand the Bible.

But every Christian seems to understand the Quran. So much so that they can come and preach to us about our Quran. I don't know that. But please, you know, I think it's ridiculous for Christians to come and tell us that we don't understand the Bible.

I gave you chapter and verse, chapter and verse. And the disciples ignore that. And to make emotional arguments, my brother James came a long way. You know, the local preachers tell the same thing. That, you know, you don't understand the Bible.

Explain it to me. What I'm trying to do is explain it to you. I would not say that most Christians know anything about the Quran at all, to be completely honest with you. But asking questions about where it came from, its relationship to the very books that it itself cites, I think is very important for our dialogue.

Paul's Gospel, John 14, and the Deity of Christ

Let me go through some of the things that Bashir said. Now, if I have an opportunity to rebuttal. He mentioned that Paul said, this is my Gospel. And contrast that with the Gospel of Jesus. That, yeah, Paul himself claimed that Gospel that he was preaching, he derived directly from Jesus.

It was given to him directly. And so he was contrasting his Gospel with the false Gospels, the Judaizers, who had no connection with Jesus. And, in fact, were contradicting everything that all the apostles had taught and that Jesus himself had taught in regards to faith in himself.

He mentioned Arius and quoted John 14, 28, a text that actually teaches the deity of Christ. When Jesus says, the Father is greater than I am, he's talking about himself in his incarnate state. And he's saying, the Father is not incarnate.

I am the one who is humble with myself. And if you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I said, I am going back in the presence of the Father. Don't tell the other prophets in the presence of God in the way that Jesus was talking about there.

Read John 14, 28. Read all of John chapter 14. And ask yourself a simple question. Could a mere Rasul say what Jesus said in John chapter 14 about himself? The answer very clearly is he could not. It was mentioned that there are people, there's reference to innocent blood and righteous men.

That does not mean sinless. That means people who have followed after God and have followed after that which they know, he commands them. But the Old Testament is plain in light of the law of sacrifice that every person who comes from Adam has fallen in Adam.

And that's what's explained to us in Romans chapter 5. There's no contradiction there. Then Paul or Peter's mention of the fact there are difficult things in the Apostle Paul's who are brought up at least once in the discussion this evening.

But I would invite you to read what it actually says. Yes, there are different things in Paul's letters. Which Peter then goes on to say, which untaught and unstable men distort their own destruction.

So what does that mean? Can untaught and unstable men distort the commandments? Of course. Does that say something about the commandments? No. So if untaught and unstable men can distort the words of Paul, does that say something about Paul?

Or about the untaught and unstable men? I'm simply asking that you allow the sentence to finish. Even if we don't go to the next verse, at least allow the sentence to finish. And to explain its own meaning.

It's right there in the text itself. Then we have a statement concerning... Bashir just said, why should the Quran speak of Paul? And contrast that with does it speak of Napoleon? There's a category problem here.

Paul wrote what the Alal Injil identified as their scriptures. And I simply would ask, how can any Muslim here tonight show that the author of the Quran recognized that the Injil about which Christians were speaking, that was supposedly sat down, contained what it contained.

What's happened is, because the author of the Quran didn't understand this, you must come to the assumption that while the gospel is something that was given to Jesus, it doesn't have anything to do with Madinah or Bukhara or anything else.

None of the Christians who heard the words of the Quran, none of the Christians who would have heard Muhammad preaching, would ever have understood that. Ever. I say, I'm the one interpreting the Quran in its original context.

You're interpreting it in the light of a developed system of theology that came hundreds of years later and had to explain why it is that the author of the Quran did not understand what was in the Injil and did not accurately identify it.

Think about that. What does that mean? We have to ask these questions and discuss these questions openly. We had Acts chapter 21 presented to us. There were people attacking Paul and saying, you're teaching this and you're teaching that.

It happened to him everywhere. It happens to me everywhere. Man, if I believed one-tenth of what I read about myself on Google, I'd slap myself. I couldn't live with myself. I mean, I've got enemies that make stuff up that's absolutely outrageous.

And the same thing happened to Paul and they didn't even have the internet. It's amazing. But that's what he's talking about. That's what Acts chapter 21 is talking about. And again, what they were saying was an imbalanced, unfair summary of Paul's teaching.

And basically they were doing to Paul what many people today do to Paul in attacking him. And they do so in an unbalanced and unfair way. We were told that Jesus knew nothing about the Jews. I'm sorry, knew nothing about an incarnate God.

Well, I'm not sure why you make the Jews of Jesus' day the standard of all things in light of what Jesus himself, whom you consider to be a prophet, said about them. Said they were hard-hearted and did not obey the word of God, so on and so forth.

But if what you're saying is there is no indication of Jewish scripture as the incarnation, then you would be wrong. And I say in chapter 9, verse 6, a clear messianic prophecy concerning Jesus Christ.

He is said to be a number of things. He's said to be the... Well, at first it tells us that to us, a child will be born, Gelid. That's a true human being. A son will be given, so he's the son who is given.

And his name should be called Wonderful Counselor. And then we get to a part where people get really uncomfortable because it says he'll be called Mighty God. The very same Hebrew phrase, El Gabor, that is used of Yahweh in Isaiah 10, 21.

One chapter later, it's of this one who is going to come, who is a child who will be born. Who is that? I have heard Muslims try to apply Isaiah 9, 6 to Muhammad, and when they did, they skipped right over El Gabor, Mighty God.

They could find a way of applying everything else, but they could not find a way of applying El Gabor, Mighty God. And that is applied to Jesus. How about Micah 5, 2? This one who will be born of Bethlehem, his origins are from of old, even from everlasting.

Who is the only one whose origins are from old, even from everlasting? But God himself. So the indications were, in fact, there. Now, I didn't quite follow what Bashir was saying about John 20, 28. Other than, it can't mean what you say it means, because of what the Quran says.

He said, that would be blasphemy, unless the Trinity were true. If the Trinity is true, it's not blasphemy. I didn't get any interaction with the fact that both Kurios and Thos are both used of Jesus.

They're both being addressed to Jesus. And when you put the two together, you'll find usages in the Greek Septuagint. They're all about Jehovah. They're never about anyone else. Read John chapter 20 and tell me that what Thomas is saying is, in light of the resurrected Christ.

Well, you're like Abraham to Sarah to me. Really? No. Because Jesus then identifies my Lord and my God as a station. It doesn't last me, because Jesus really is the believer's Lord of God. He really is.

Ego, I mean. I am. John 8, 58. Jesus uses this a number of times. Primarily in the Gospel of John. It's found elsewhere, but primarily in the Gospel of John. And in very important context. In John chapter 18, verses 5 through 6, when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus.

He says, who are you coming for? Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus says, Ego, I mean. And what happens to them? They fall down upon, they fall backwards. They're knocked over by the statement that Jesus makes.

Why? I've had some people say, well, they weren't accustomed to encountering such moral purism. Oh, yeah, right. No, because when you look at the Gospel of John. In John 8, 24, Jesus said, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

In John 8, 58, he said that the Judas, I am, and pick up stones and stone him. In John 13, 19, quoting from Isaiah, which was about Yahweh, applying the words to himself. He identified himself as the I am.

And in John 18, 5 through 6, the soldiers, they fall over. He says that. If you're going to let John speak for John, you can't avoid what he's saying. You can't avoid what he's saying. And that's the same Gospel from which you derive the Paraclete passage.

So if you're going to reject it, you've got to give it some solid foundation. Some consistent means of being able to tell what's right and what's wrong. And I have the courage to offer it this evening on a textual basis.

We're told that every prophet promises eternal life. What prophet ever said that eternal life is based upon believing in me? Not a one. Not a one. Not a one said, I give my life, I give my flesh for the life of the world.

Not a one. Not one said, I am the bread of life, I am the water of life, I am the light of the world. Not a one ever said that. The prophets all pointed away from themselves to Yahweh. And Jesus takes passage specifically about Yahweh and applies it to himself.

So don't tell me every prophet promises eternal life in the way that Jesus did to him. Finally, the Ransom Language. And I'm assuming I've got two minutes? We've got about a minute? No? Ten seconds? We'll get to the Ransom Language in a little bit of time.

Thank you very much for your attention. Again, I need to emphasize the Quran accepts the Injil of Jesus. Not the Injil of Paul. So James is putting that there are in fact two Injils. And he's demanding from the Quran that the Quran must accept both of them.

I say the Quran is under no obligation to accept both of them. Because we regard, the Quran regards Jesus as a prophet and not Paul. It's as simple as that. What was the relationship of Jesus to his disciples?

Look, the Bible is very clear. How did Jesus regard himself? Mark 6 verse 4. He says, A prophet is not without honour. He regards himself as a prophet, not as God. Luke 24. He says, What's happening? They say, Haven't you heard?

You know, Jesus was captured by the Romans. And, you know, he was a prophet. Great power and deeds. He didn't say he was born a mighty person. Peter calls Jesus a servant of God. You know, he calls him a man of God.

Acts 3 verse 13. Nothing about Jesus being God. This idea, again, about, you know, the El Gabor. This prophecy in Isaiah. That, you know, they say a child will be born and he will be called, you know, everlasting father and so forth.

Again, it cannot be that Jesus, it cannot be referenced as the everlasting father. There are two everlasting fathers. Jesus is the son, not the father. Also, let's not get carried away with these statues.

The name Elijah. Quite a common name in Judaism. What does it mean? It's a combination of Yahweh, God, and Eli, God. So, a person can be called God, God, Elijah. Ezekiel, Aziz in Arabic, or El. Kiyah, Great God.

So, a person in Judaism can be called Great God. That, you know, the Jews will give, but cannot take seriously as God. So, you know, I find it strange that Christians, when it suits them, all of a sudden, you know, these names are significant.

So, why don't we say Elijah is God, and Ezekiel is God, and so forth. James spoke about the Old Testament sacrifice. What he gets to mention is that in Bible 6, 7, it tells us very clearly that when you sacrificed a lamb, something, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it was for unintentional sins.

It says it very clearly. And it goes on. It says you don't have to be, there does not have to be a sacrifice. You can use flour. And it says he's not an arrogant. So, the atonement for Jews was for mindless sins.

You couldn't go out there, do your prayer, and then say, well, it's okay. You know, forgive me because, you know, it's A-okay. It doesn't work like that. So, I think James has got it wrong there. Sinlessness.

Well, Jacob is regarded as blameless before the Lord. So, to say that Jesus is God, again, instructs me that the Christians see what they want to see. Clearly, Jesus is not God, and we would be merely as sinners, as sinful.

At any rate, Jesus did give us, you know, the parable of the Holy Gospel. The idea that you can't ask God for forgiveness. You know, no parable when Jesus says... James? Let's talk about that ransom line here, since that's what I was about to do just a few moments ago.

If you will look at Jesus' background, the background from which Jesus is drawing when he talks about himself as a ransom, is Isaiah 53. And I would ask anyone, please, read Isaiah 53, and ask yourself the question, what is the ransom being spoken about here?

Who is this one upon whom Yahweh lays the sins of his people? This innocent one, who by his death justifies the man. I have asked, and I continue looking for, an Islamic opponent who will debate me simply on Isaiah 53.

Who's it about? I will do that based upon the Hebrew text. I can read it. Let's do it. I'm looking for somebody. We can't find anybody. We'll keep working on it. Number two, the Angeal of Jesus versus the Angeal of Paul?

No. My point was this. When Mohammed preached, did his words have meaning to the people to whom he was speaking? I think they did. Therefore, if those words had meaning, and you tell the people of the Angeal to judge by what's contained therein, they must possess it.

They must know what it is. What did the Christians of Mohammed's day believe the Angeal was? It included the Book of Romans. It wasn't just Gospels. The author of the Quran should have known that. Did not.

What does it mean? That's the question. You can say, oh, one has to, but the point is you can't reason circularly like that. Your revelation comes at the end and makes reference to ours. If it misrepresents that, it means something, doesn't it?

You can't change my revelation to make yours true when yours misrepresents mine. That's backwards. You would not build a car that way. You would not want the bank to handle your money that way. So we can't do that this evening either.

We've got to be very careful. Then we had a bunch of passages where Jesus was described as a prophet, as a servant. We believe all of those. Jesus is prophet, priest, king, servant. He's all of those things, but he's not just those things.

You can try to cut out the testimony of Jesus, but you can't get rid of the fact that Jesus is so much bigger than any one of those specific citations. And finally, we said Isaiah 96 can't be about Jesus because it calls him everlasting father.

The names father, son, and spirit are a New Testament revelation. Abihad in Hebrew, the term father, is normally used of God in the role as creator. Jesus is described as creator in the New Testament, Colossians chapter 1.

For by him were all things made, whether heaven or earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, divinities, or authorities. All things created by him and for him means before all things. And him, all things, soonest again.

They hold together. That's the description of Jesus. And therefore it fits perfectly with Abihad, the father of eternity, in Isaiah chapter 9. And so you're back to dealing with the fact that he is El Gabor, mighty God, which is used of Yahweh.

That is the prophetic word. So it wasn't unknown. It was right there if they had just opened their eyes and he were secure. And so what is the issue this evening? It's real simple. Who's the true founder of Christianity?

Jesus is. Paul is one of his faithful, chosen apostles, through whom much revelation was given to the church. And all the attempts this evening to try to drive a wedge between what Jesus taught about God, what Jesus taught about the atonement, what Jesus taught about salvation, what Jesus taught about the law of Moses, and that of what Paul taught, have been shown to require you to ignore the original context of both Jesus and Paul.

In other words, you have to adopt a different standard when dealing with my scriptures than you demand to use with your scriptures. That's uneven scales. None of us believe that that's the way we should do it.

And so I believe the way forward in our dialogue with one another is to stop doing that. Stop attacking Paul. Read Paul. Find out what he believed and ask yourself the question, does my scripture interact with that and in what way?

That's the only way forward for us to grow in our understanding of each other and in the level of the dialogue that we have with one another. That's why I wanted to invite us all to be in this evening.

Thank you very much.

Crossfire Questions on Parables and the Power of Christ's Blood

Thank you, James. Is there a break still with us? Okay. We're just going to spend the next 15 or so minutes on the crossfire. Maybe we'll cut out other questions and answers. We don't want to lose your guys' attention in the summation of this hearing.

But the crossfire is going to consist of two questions each from the Muslim side. We should all get started with the two questions. One minute maximum to ask the question. Just one minute to respond to the question.

And if there's a rebuttal, a maximum of one minute. We'll try to cut the time open shortly so that we can get more questions done for this evening. I'll assure you, it's free to start with the first question then.

All right.

I'll try and make it as brief as possible. The New Testament tells us that Jesus taught in parables. I certainly want one parable about Jesus being divine, dying for the sons of humanity and so forth.

You know, if he taught in parables, that should be easy. Number two. Okay. Okay. I think last year we got together. Hold on a second. Testing that. There we go. I think last year I addressed this and I'll need to address it again.

It is a fundamental, a-contextual assertion that Jesus said he taught nothing but in parables. If you'll read that text, it's talking about a specific period in Jesus' ministry to a specific audience.

He explained in parables to his disciples and that wasn't the only kind of teaching he did because he got all the sermon done. So it's just simply a complete misunderstanding of the text of Jesus' words to say, well, it has to be in parables or Jesus didn't teach it.

So there's no way to answer the question because the question is based upon a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus said. And there's no way to substantiate the assertion from the text itself. So basically, it's okay.

Thanks. Question number two. And I'll try and give, again, support. If you look at it as a question, I mean, after taking six million people and says, I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, what would you do to go to him?

Six million people. Sounds like you're asking about Hitler. Whenever anybody starts using the Hitler question, you know. Well, anybody. Why do you say six million people? Theoretically, if you're asking if there's any sin greater than the blood of Jesus Christ, the answer is no.

However, at the same time, the level of depravity that is involved in killing six million people is probably indicative of having been given over in God's wrath to one's own self-destruction. But if you're asking if there is any possible sin that is too great, I would just simply point out the fact that sinful humanity crucified the sinless Son of God.

That was the greatest sin that's ever been committed. And at least one of the people involved in committing it, the centurion, was saved. So there is nothing beyond the power of the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's more than the blood of Jesus. No, that's simply the need. You're asking for a New Testament answer. And so there is no discussion. Did Jesus say that or Paul? I'm sorry? Did Jesus say that or Paul?

Well, both discuss the ransom sacrifice of the cross. And if you take all the Bible says that it's teaching very clearly in the Gospels is that the centurion who was at Jesus' crucifixion was saved. So I'm simply answering on the basis of the entirety of the New Testament.

The New Testament does not address the specific question you asked in those words. Traditionally. Okay. Would you, I guess I would like to boil the subject of the debate down. Would you agree that your approach in analyzing both Jesus' teaching and Paul's teaching is to begin by looking at them through the lens of the Koran?

And therefore you're coming at it from Islamic presuppositions. Well, obviously my starting point is the Koran. But I did not quote the Koran when I quoted Jesus. I did not quote the Koran when I quoted Paul.

And I let both Jesus and Paul speak for themselves. All right. When you say you allow Jesus and Paul speak for themselves. Yet when we looked at John chapter 20 verse 28 and I gave you the only possible meaning in the original language of what Thomas said.

You said that's impossible because of the other blasphemy. Is that not applying an external interpretive grid and saying well I'm just not going to accept what this has to say? And is that really taking the New Testament on its own basis?

Well, I think there are two answers to this. I quoted 1 Chronicles chapter 29 verse 20. They worship God as the king. And no Christian says, whoa, David of Sodom is now God. Also, I think there are two words in the Greek.

Prosponeo, which means to honor. And Latria, to worship as God. I do not believe that the word here is Latria. It is Prosponeo. Definitely not Latria. At any rate, the point is, why is it that we are put to read into this passage the divinity of Jesus.

Because one person says, my Lord and my God. And 1 Chronicles chapter 29 verse 20 where he stated that the people worship God and the king. Therefore, perhaps David and Solomon are God as well. So, the psychotomy is unnecessarily very strange.

I didn't get a response to the last one. He didn't get a chance to respond. Well, I would just, okay, very quickly, I would just simply point out that that, the God, the worshiping God and king thing, in comparing that with Thomas, is completely mixing categories yet once again.