Apologetics and Islam

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me over there. It is an honor to be with you. How many of you were at the debate this afternoon?
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Okay, that's about maybe 20 -25 percent. That's good. No, it is really good,
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I mean, because it wasn't here. It was in -city and it's a little bit difficult to get to that, but we had a good time this afternoon.
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I really enjoyed the exchange. It wasn't as long as sometimes I would like them to be, but it was a good exchange and I've lost track of how many that means with Muslims.
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For a long time, the large portion of my debates had been with Roman Catholics on all sorts of different subjects, but a number of years ago, the number of debates
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I did with the Muslims passed any other single group, and so that continues to be the case around the world.
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Just did some debates down in Durban, South Africa, Johannesburg, and now
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Sydney and Melbourne, so I'm covering the southern hemisphere as best as I can in doing the debates, but it is a topic that obviously, let's just put it this way, if you want to keep your ministry nice and small, be reformed, talk about Roman Catholicism and Islam.
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That should pretty much do it. That'll keep you really nice and unpopular, and that's certainly what we've been doing for a while now.
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My first debate that I consider my first debate on Islam was in 2006 with a man by the name of Shabir Ali.
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I had debated a Muslim, Hamza Abdel Malik, in 1999, but I was simply defending the
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Doctrine of the Trinity. I was not really, had not really begun studying Islam at that point, and even when
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I began doing debates with Muslims, it was a number of years before I did a debate where the subject was a specifically
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Islamic topic. So in other words, I would do defense debates, but I became convinced as a young man when
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I first started studying Mormonism, that was the first religion that I studied outside of my own, that you need to, if you're gonna honor
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Christ, who called himself the way, the truth, and the life, then you need to be very truthful in your representations of others.
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And so when I studied Mormonism, I read all the Christian books I could on Mormonism, but then I realized I needed to read
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Mormon books to understand Mormonism. And so I started obtaining the best literature
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I could from their perspective, to have firsthand knowledge of what they believed.
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And so for a number of years, you know, I do not call myself an expert on Islam. I am a student of Islam.
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There is much to know in that area. I'm scared of anybody who thinks they've got it all figured out, because the reality is they don't.
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And so when we started this work, I didn't know many
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Muslims in 2006, when I first met Shabir Ali. And thankfully, over the years, since we began doing these debates, not only in the
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United States, but then around the world. Numerous debates in London, I've debated the London Mosque, and I've debated in the
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Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa, at the Juma Masjid in Durban, which for many years was the largest mosque in the
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Southern Hemisphere. That was Ahmad Didat's mosque, in fact, if you're familiar with him.
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I, over that time, began to get to know Muslim people.
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And let me start in talking about how we reach out to Muslims with a very strong word of encouragement to my fellow believers here.
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I believe that one of the reasons that our communities have very little interaction that is meaningful,
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I believe that the reason that evangelicalism as a whole has relatively small impact, is because we, as Christians, are fearful.
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We have fear in our hearts. Partly it is fear of what we see on television, fear of violence, fear of jihad, whatever it is we think that is.
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But then there's also another kind of fear. It's a fear that I'm going to say or do something that is going to cause an offense and I don't even know what it is, because I don't know enough about what the
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Muslim believes to be able to approach them in meaningful fashion. I fear they're going to ask me questions
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I cannot answer. I fear, I fear, I fear. And most of us know that when we have opportunity for witness, very often there's that one moment when the door is open.
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And if you hesitate, the door will close. And if we are filled with fear in our hearts, that door will often end up closing.
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And I think that's what happens so often. And that's why we don't have nearly as much of the interaction that we would like to pretend that we have or that we would sincerely desire to have with the
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Muslim people. And so I just simply have to ask us a question. When was the last time any of us prayed, Lord give me a love in my heart for the
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Muslim people? Now why would you even pray that prayer? Well let me tell you why. If you believe firmly and fully in the
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Christian message, you have the most incredible message in the world.
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The Jesus that you believe in is not the Jesus of the Quran. The author of the
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Quran didn't know the Jesus you believe in. And the
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Jesus that you believe in is worth living for him, dying for him, serving him with every breath of your of your body, with every beat of your heart.
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He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the eternal Son of God made flesh. As Colossians chapter 1 says, for by him were all things made, whether in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.
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He is before all things, and him all things soonest they can they hold together.
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That's an amazing description. And the
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Jesus you know is the source of your peace with God. You don't have peace with God because you're better than a
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Muslim, or better than a Mormon, or better than anybody else. If you're a true believer, you realize your peace with God is completely due to someone else's work in your behalf.
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That you need a perfect righteousness to stand in the presence of the Triune God, the Holy God whose eyes can see into your heart and know the motivation of everything you've ever said or done.
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There'll be no excuses before him. So you need a perfect righteousness, and where's the only place to get that?
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In Jesus. Because he is the only one who ever lived who not only did not sin, but he fulfilled the law of God perfectly.
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What's the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.
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Right? There's no one in this room that did that perfectly today. Not a one.
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So if that's the greatest commandment, and not a one of us even kept it today, let alone throughout our entire lives, you need a righteousness that is far better, far greater than your own.
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And what's the only way you can get that? By faith in Jesus Christ. The great exchange. My sins imputed to him, he dies upon Calvary's tree in my place.
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His perfect righteousness, both positive and negative, he takes my sins as well as he fulfills
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God's law. That perfect righteousness imputed to me by faith. That's why the only place that will be safe when the wrath of God and judgment comes upon this world is not next to Jesus, it's not behind Jesus, it's not in front of Jesus.
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Where is it? In Jesus. It's one thing to know about him, but you have to be in him.
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You have to be in him. Now, if you agreed with everything I was just saying, that's the message the
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Muslim people need to hear. Because once the Holy Spirit of God begins to work in someone's heart, and they begin to realize their own status as sinner, and the holiness of God, they're going to recognize that all the things they do are never going to be enough.
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Remember Luther? Remember the story of Luther? It was only two years ago we had the 500th anniversary.
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Everybody knew about Luther two years ago. We've already forgotten, right? He would spend as much as six hours in the confessional as a monk.
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What can you get into in a monastery that takes six hours to confess? But that's what happens when the
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Holy Spirit of God brings conviction to a heart. He recognizes the impurity of all of his motivations, even in doing good works.
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He is tortured, and the sacraments of Rome do not give him any satisfaction.
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They do not give him peace until he comes to realize, it's not up to me. I'm not the source of my righteousness.
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There is a righteousness, and it comes from God. And in the Muslims life, the only way that any
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Muslim will ever be converted is the same way you and I were. And that is by the
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Holy Spirit of God working that miracle of regeneration in our hearts. And so you have a message.
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You can be the instrument to explain that beautiful gospel to a people who need to hear that beautiful gospel.
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Because that gospel is not in the Quran. It's not in the Hadith. The author of those things had no idea what the
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Christian gospel was. But you can be used to communicate it. And so my question is, when was the last time you prayed to God?
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Give me a love in my heart for these people. Give me an opportunity to speak. Give me an opportunity to to be the one that you use to bring that message to one of these precious people.
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Take the fear out of my heart. Make me an instrument of your peace.
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We sing the song, but do we really mean it? Do we really practice it? That's the question. It's real easy to say, well
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I want to I want to get involved in this because I like to defend what the Bible says. I want to defend this. Look, there is a reason for giving a defense of the faith, but it is always to glorify
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Christ. And Christ is always about bringing his people unto himself. And so we, on the one hand, must be firm and direct in defense of Christian truth.
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We need to be accurate and forthright in our knowledge of what Islam teaches and our criticism of it.
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But none of that means anything if it is not joined with a true, heartfelt, spirit -born love for the people to whom you're ministering.
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A Muslim can tell when you're just in it for the battle. What's confusing to a lot of them is when they run into someone who knows what they believe, knows what
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Islam believes, will not compromise, and loves them in the same moment. That is what we need.
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That's what we want. Now, I got into a lot of trouble two years ago, just a while ago.
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I had a dialogue. It wasn't a formal debate. I had a dialogue with a
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Muslim scholar, a Muslim scholar by the name of Dr. Yasir Qadhi. I had learned of Dr.
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Qadhi from Shabir Ali, who I'll be debating in just a few weeks in Atlanta, Georgia, by the way. Not Dr. Qadhi, Shabir Ali.
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And Dr. Qadhi had sent me his 16 -CD series called Light and Guidance, and I had devoured them.
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Some of you know I am an avid cyclist. I turned them into MP3s and went for a lot of bike rides. And I started writing to Dr.
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Qadhi and asking questions, and he was stunned. In the dialogue, the second night at the mosque, where he was an imam in Memphis at that time, he's in Dallas now, he said to the gathered people, both
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Christians and Muslims, he said, I just figured he'd put these CDs on his on his shelf someplace and I'd never hear anything more.
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Instead, I start getting these questions from this guy. He's using Arabic, and he's asking me, well, what
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I think about this, and about shirk, and about major and minor shirk, and so on and so forth. And he said,
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I've never met anyone who has taken such a deep interest in accurately understanding what we believe.
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And I made a huge mistake in that dialogue in the eyes of some
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Christians. I openly admitted, I said, I have learned a great deal from Dr.
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Qadhi. Oh my, oh my. In the minds of many a
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Christian, that's an unforgivable sin. I'm serious. How dare you learn from a
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Muslim about Islam? Well, I ain't gonna learn it from a Mormon. But there are many
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Christians that honestly believe, no, no, no, no, no, you can't believe a word they have to say. I haven't heard about taqiyya. That's always an easy way around things.
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The reality is that I did learn a great deal from Yasir Qadhi, and from others who disagree with Yasir Qadhi, because there's not just one viewpoint out there.
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There's a lot of different viewpoints out there. But I learned a lot from him, and because of that, that's why we can end up having the dialogues that we had.
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And there were a lot of Christians that were afraid. They feared the fact that I showed respect to a
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Muslim. Now, if you have that same kind of fear, please pray that God remove it from your heart.
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Please pray that God remove it from your heart. If you cannot listen to what someone else believes without thinking you're automatically going to collapse in your own faith, you shouldn't be doing much evangelism in the first place.
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You're not ready to. You're not ready to. We had a great conversation because we respected one another.
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Dr. Qadhi knew, and I made sure the first night to emphasize this. I had a section of that conversation where I said, what is the greatest thing you want for me?
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I'm going to express the greatest thing I want for you. It's easy to understand what a
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Muslim wants for you. They want you to say the shahada. They want you to say it with true faith.
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There are about seven conditions for a true shahada. You have to say it in Arabic as well. And they want you to submit to Islam and to follow the teachings of the
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Prophet. And for me, I wanted
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Dr. Qadhi to come to know who Jesus Christ truly is. That he is not just a prophet. He is his creator, his maker.
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To recognize his own sin and his need for a Savior. And to bow in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ.
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Every bit of our dialogue about every other subject was predicated upon the acceptance of the reality that we don't believe the same things.
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And we were not trying to make it look like we believe the same things. And we were not trying to sweep under the rug the fact that we do not believe the same things.
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We're not trying to produce Chrislam. There is no such thing. Chrislam isn't
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Christianity. It ain't Islam. It ain't either one of them because he can't put them together. It's not possible. There is a surah in the
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Quran. There are 114 surahs in the Quran. 112th surah taliqlas. There's only four ayah long, four verses long.
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And the third ayah says, he begetteth not, neither is he begotten.
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And most exegetes would recognize that those words are aimed at Christianity. God does not beget, nor is he begotten.
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And of course we believe Jesus is the only begotten son of God. And so now what the author of the
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Quran thought we meant by that, and what we mean by that, may be two very different things. But the point is surah taliqlas is one of the most important surahs in the
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Quran. According to the Hadith, Muhammad said quoting surah taliqlas, it's like quoting a third of the Quran as far as its value is concerned.
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It's about as close as you get to a creedal statement actually in the text of the Quran. And so as long as surah 112 is there, we don't believe the same things.
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And we can't pretend that we do. But recognizing we don't believe the same things, do we have to hate each other as a result, is the question.
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Since we don't believe the same things, we must never stop talking about the truth and seeking to persuade the other.
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But it does not flow from that, that that means that you have as a
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Christian the right to harbor in your heart hatred toward that person who bears the image of God.
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Instead, your heart should be broken, and constantly seeking a way to be able to bring the message of life to that person.
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And that may be over a long period of time of just simply being a great neighbor, always there to help, but always ready with the gospel.
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Never put yourself in a position where you can't present the gospel, because that's the very power of God in the salvation.
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Now when I give this talk, sometimes I'll have a presentation, sometimes
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I'll go through the history, a little bit of history of Muhammad, a little bit of history of the
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Quran, describe the Hadith to you, so on and so forth. We don't have quite that amount of time.
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And so what I want to do when I have a limited amount of time after the opening sermon, that hopefully brought some conviction to your heart, or at least that's my prayer, is to talk to you about the three biggest barriers to bringing the gospel to a
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Muslim, other than our own fear, our own imperfections, our own ignorances, so on and so forth.
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There are three major barriers you simply have to keep in mind and seek to overcome when the opportunity arises to truly present the gospel to a
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Muslim. Now, and I'm speaking of a believing Muslim, a
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Muslim that does the prayers, you know, there are nominal Muslims in the world that is in name only, they really, you know, it's what we do around here, but it's not like it's a central aspect of their experience, just as there are a lot of nominal
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Christians as well. But when you're talking to someone who has a serious faith, or they come from a majority
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Islamic country, and so they have these as backgrounds in their thinking, what are the three barriers?
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The first one is an Arabic word, and as some of you know who study
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Islam, you cannot meaningfully interact with Islam without engaging
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Arabic terminology, which causes a lot of people some problems.
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I was speaking in Boulder, Colorado once, and there was a Muslim in attendance, and he came up afterwards and said, I sort of disagree with your belief that, you know,
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Arabic is so central to Islamic theology and stuff like that. So we talked for about half an hour, and about half an hour through,
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I stopped him and I said, by the way, how many times have you and I exchanged Arabic terms in our conversations so far that these brothers over here have no idea what we were talking about, but they were
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Arabic words? And he sort of stopped and went, okay, point taken. Because it's true, you cannot talk about the central affirmation and definitional belief of Islam is called
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Tawhid. It's from Wahad, to make one. Tawhid is the oneness of Allah, and in modern
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Islamic understanding, that is what we would call radical, complete, Unitarian monotheism.
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There is only one being of God, and there is only one person of the one being of God.
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So monotheism and absolute Unitarian monotheism as well.
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The negation of Tawhid, so Trinity for us would be the definitional doctrine that is correspondent to this, but the negation of Tawhid is called shirk.
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Now in secular Arabic, a corporation, you know, could be described, it's association, it's joining things together.
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So there's a non -religious use of the word shirk, but religiously, shirk is the unforgivable sin.
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It is the unforgivable sin. The Quran specifically states it in that way. Any other sin will be forgiven to man, not shirk.
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Now shirk, in a sense, is idolatry. It sort of has the connection in our own thinking to the concept of idolatry, but even more so, it's more specific.
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There's major and minor shirk as well. We won't get into all those distinctions this evening. There's shirk in regards to the names and attributes of God, the worship of God, and there's a whole field of study when you when you delve into it.
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But shirk is unforgivable, and when we hear that, when we hear the the unforgivable sin, we get confused.
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Because you're like, well, okay, if I've committed shirk, then I'll never be able to be saved because it's unforgivable. Don't read those categories in that way.
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In Islamic theology, if you die as a mushrik, one who has committed shirk, then that is unforgivable.
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But Allah can forgive all other sins to a person, even at their death.
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So you and I, we view death as the, you know, the state that you're in at that point is what you will be judged upon.
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But in Islamic theology, there is, in essence, a concept of post -mortem forgiveness.
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This is illustrated in one of the most important of the Hadith. I'm going to narrate a few Hadith for you this evening.
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Hadith are the actions and sayings of Muhammad and his companions that were gathered together two, three hundred years after the time of Muhammad.
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The Sunni have their Hadith, the Shia have their Hadith, and amongst the Sunni, the two most authoritative collections are
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Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. And there are certain Hadith that are called
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Mutawatir Hadith that are universally accepted, and then you have gradations as to how there's, again, a very, if those of you who are at the debate today, you already heard part of this discussion when
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Abdullah and I had a discussion about Sahih and Hassan and Mutawatir and so on and so forth in regards to the
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Hadith. Anyway, one of the most famous of the Hadith, which almost every
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Muslim knows, is the story of the man who had killed 99 people. Now, some of the versions of the story make him a
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Jew. The Hadith are narrated multiple times in the collections, and there will be subtle differences between the narrations.
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But this man had killed 99 people, and he went to a priest, and he asked the priest, will Allah accept my repentance?
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And the priest, rather, in light of what happened, unwisely said no, so he killed the priest. So now he's killed a hundred people, and so he goes to a scholar, and he asks the scholar, will
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Allah accept my repentance? Now, none of the Hadith tell us whether the scholar knew about the priest, but his advice is to go to such -and -such a city, and the people in that city will instruct him as to how his repentance can be accepted by Allah.
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So as the man is going, the time for his death comes, because there are many
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Hadiths that say that 40 days after conception, an angel comes and writes for you, male, female, heaven, hell, your entire life, including the exact time of your death.
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The time of his death comes, he, in the middle of the road, and an angel comes from heaven, and an angel comes from hellfire to argue over his soul.
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Now, I don't know about you, but if you're the angel from hellfire, and you lose this one, you're not really good at arguing about anything.
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So he goes, killed a hundred people, he's a mass murderer. But evidently, the angel from heaven was like, sort of like a paralegal guy, or something like that, and you know how lawyers are.
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And he says, ah, but he was going to find out about repentance. And so Allah decrees that if he is one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the city he was coming from, he'll go to heaven.
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And in some versions of the story, he actually makes the earth to shrink between the man and the city he was going to, so that he is closer to that city, and he goes to heaven.
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Now, I'm not cherry -picking this story. If there are any Muslims amongst us, they know the story, they've heard it.
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I had told the story for years when I did a debate in the largest mosque in New York City.
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And beforehand, the imam of the mosque and I did a radio program together, and the imam of the mosque told the story before I could get to the story.
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So it is a well -known story. On one hand, if you'd like to see the criticism
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I make of that story in regards to the difference in our doctrines of salvation, see the debate that I did in the
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Abu Bakr Asidic Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa with Shabir Ali in 2013, because I used that as one of my primary arguments, that it is necessary in Islam for there to be a distinction made between the character of God and his law.
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Because the law of God was left broken. There were a hundred people who lost their lives at this man's hand, and justice was not done.
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So in Christianity, the law of God reflects the character of God, and that's why we have atonement.
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There will be nothing left that has not been made right at the final day of judgment in the Christian understanding of salvation, because we have an atonement, because we have a
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Savior who took our sin. We will either receive justice, or we will receive mercy. But no one receives injustice, which is what every 100 of those people who died did receive in that particular story.
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So if you want to see how that fleshes out, I would recommend that debate to you. It is on YouTube.
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But the point is that in that context of that particular story,
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Allah forgave mass murder after death. So there is post -mortem forgiveness.
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And so when I say it's the unforgivable sin, what that means is if you die in that state, that is the one sin in Islam that will not be forgiven.
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It doesn't matter who prays for you. And let me illustrate that one with a story to show you how serious Shirk is.
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I'm gonna make a point here, trust me. I'm not just narrating Hadith for the fun of narrating Hadith. Muhammad's uncle in Mecca, when he was called to be a prophet around 610, was a man by the name of Abu Talib.
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And Abu Talib was one of the most powerful men in the Quraysh tribe. And Muhammad was not well loved because the
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Quraysh tribe made most of its income from the people coming to worship in the Kaaba, worship the idols that were in the
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Kaaba. And now Muhammad's coming along saying, you shouldn't do that. So they're not really happy about this. But he is protected by Abu Talib.
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But eventually the time comes for Abu Talib's death, and he is on his deathbed. And Muhammad comes to him and says, you know that I'm a prophet.
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Say the shahada and I will pray for you. The rest of the family is on the other side of the bed going, don't you dare do that.
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Do not deny the ancestral gods, etc. etc. So the point is that Abu Talib dies as a mushrik.
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He does not become a Muslim. He is an idolater. He is guilty of Shirk. And so Muhammad asks to be able to pray for Abu Talib.
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But this is the only exception. Muhammad had asked to pray for others but was turned down, including his own parents.
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But he is granted permission to pray for Abu Talib. And as a result,
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Abu Talib has the best spot in hell. I always stop and start looking around, because everyone sits there going, what is the best spot in hell like?
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Everybody wonders. There's two versions of the story, but I like the first one that I heard.
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Abu Talib is wearing sandals that are so hot that his brains boil.
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That's the best spot in hell. And that's how serious Shirk is, because even when
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Muhammad prays for you, that's the best you can expect. And he ain't gonna be praying for anybody else who's committed
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Shirk. So Shirk is a bad, bad, bad thing.
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Now why all this discussion of Shirk? Well it does illustrate how central Tawhid is, the oneness of Allah, in Islamic understanding.
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That's why, once again, Shabir and I will be debating Trinity and Tawhid at a university in Atlanta.
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It's not the first time we've debated it, it probably won't be the last. But it is a central topic of discussion and a necessary one at that.
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But the reason I've spent all this time is to point out to you that that first barrier in reaching a
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Muslim is when the Muslim hears your call, your gospel call, most often that is interpreted in their mind as you inviting them to commit the sin of Shirk.
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Because they believe, very few exceptions to this, there are a couple of academic
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Muslims I know in the West who will say, who will have a different position on this.
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But even just a few days ago in Sydney when I debated Abdullah Kunda on this subject, he confirmed in his closing statements, no question, the
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Christian worship of the Trinity is Shirk. So all
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Christians are Mushrikun, the plural form of Mushrik. We're all guilty of Shirk.
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Because in the Muslim mind, Jesus is merely a prophet and therefore to worship him is to associate something with Allah, in the worship of Allah, that's major Shirk.
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So that is a huge barrier. So what does that mean for you and I? You know,
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I'm not having, I don't have a microphone in front of me so I can actually, I can become peripatetic.
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I can move. Oh, I feel so good. Well, I can't because there are cameras. I'm sorry. The poor cameraman's going, don't you dare, what are you doing?
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You start moving, I'm throwing stuff at you. And he was recording the debate today so I'm not going to make him run back and forth.
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I can just see that, you know. Oh, move that one. That'd be sort of fun. That'd be most mean too.
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Anyways, I can do that. I used to do professional video when I was a, when I had hair. Which means it was a very long time ago.
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You know, anyways, I won't go into that right now. So what that means for you and I as Christians, and here is a challenge for any believer in this room, there should be absolutely, positively, no reason, my friends, none, why any man or woman who is a believer in Jesus Christ in this room should not be able, with confidence and solid biblical argumentation, to explain to a
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Muslim why our worship of Jesus is not shirk. Not a one of us.
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Don't you dare sit there and say, well that's just for the theologians to do. That's what for you apologists to do. No. No. I was, my daughter is homeschooling my grandkids.
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And I can guarantee you that it would be her goal that by the time they're about 12, they should be able to answer this question too.
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So for every adult in this room, my challenge to you is, if you are going to sit here and say to a
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Muslim that the doctrine of the Trinity is the central aspect of how we worship him and how we know him, how dare we live our lives without understanding it and being able to explain it to others.
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How much time we spend on worthless things in this world that will never have any eternal value, and yet how little we know about our
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God. It's amazing to me that in the days of Arius in the fourth century, it is said that through Alexandria, Egypt, the conversations in every street corner were about Jesus and the dispute between Arius and the others.
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How many of us today have even half that level of zeal for an understanding of who our
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God is? It's fairly straightforward. If you understand that the
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New Testament writers, every one of them identifies
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Jesus as Yahweh. You know who Yahweh is? That's the name we slaughter as Jehovah, the
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Tetragrammaton, Yod -Heh -Wau -Heh in the Hebrew language. That name of God is applied to Jesus numerous times in the
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New Testament, purposefully by those writers. In Psalm 102, verses 25 to 27,
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Yahweh is described as the one who never changes. He is the immutable God. He creates all things, but he himself never ages.
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It's a beautiful section. Look it up. And then realize that the author of the epistle to the
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Hebrews quotes the exact same words in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 10 through 12, of Jesus the
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Son. Eternal God never changes. Words about Yahweh, words about Jesus.
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Paul in Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, the Carmen Christi, says that Jesus eternally exists in the very form of God, was equal with the
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Father, but he humbled himself, he dies upon the cross, and then God highly exalts him, the
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Father highly exalts him, so that the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess, right?
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Where's that from? It's a quotation from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Yahweh who first said, to me every knee will bow, every tongue will confess.
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Paul applies it to Jesus. He does so purposefully. You see, if Jesus was a mere prophet, then worshiping him would be wrong.
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But Jesus, as I've already quoted from Colossians chapter 1, is the creator of all things.
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He has eternally been God. He is as to his nature God, and the fact is, he took on a human nature.
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He did not cease to be God. He took on a perfect human nature. He created it. He can take one on.
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Don't tell me he doesn't have that power capacity, if he chooses to do so. He has become the
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God -man so that he is able to give his life as a ransom for many. And so I am not engaging in shirk to worship the one who created the universe.
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That's not shirk. Did the author of the Qur 'an understand any of what
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I just said to you from Scripture? Not a word of it. Not a word of it. There is no evidence anywhere that the author of the
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Qur 'an had ever read the Karmic Christi, ever read Colossians, or ever heard anyone who had, as to have accurate knowledge of what we believe.
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That's why it's never interacted with in a meaningful fashion. So we need to be able to explain to a person who thinks we're engaging in idolatry, while we are not engaging in idolatry.
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And that might mean memorizing some Scripture. That's a good thing for all of us. It's a good, great thing for all of us.
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We have, as most of you know, Chinese brothers and sisters under oppression in communist
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China, just as there are Muslims under oppression in communist China. Over a million, maybe as many as three million
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Uighur Muslims in concentration camps in China. And you know they just blew up a major Christian church, dynamited it to the ground.
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Many of our brothers and sisters who are experiencing that same persecution, you know what they spend their time doing? They memorize all the
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Scriptures because they can't be taken away from them. Man, that's a whole lot better than most of the
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TV you and I watch, isn't it? Oh, sorry about that. I don't watch
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TV, I watch Netflix. Okay, okay. We need to be prepared to give that type of an answer.
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So remember, what they hear you calling them to do is to commit the one sin that they can't be forgiven of.
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We need to be able to explain why that is not the case, why
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Jesus is who we claim that he was, and to do so with clarity. Number one.
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Number two. This one's easy to write down. Surah 4157.
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Surah 4, the 157th ayah or verse of the Quran. Surah 4157 is quoting the
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Jews who in boast said that they had killed Jesus, the Messiah, the
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Son of Mary. But of a surety they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but so it was made to appear to them.
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But of a surety they did not kill him. Now, instead, the very next verse says he was raised up to Allah.
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Now, there's some question as to what Raphahoo means there. Nowhere else in the
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Quran is it brought up to God, but a lot of Muslims believe that's what happened. I'll get into that in just a moment. The point is that here in Surah 4157, you have 40
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Arabic words. 40 Arabic words. If they weren't in the
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Quran, there would be other places in Surah 3, Surah 19 that in the natural form of the
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Arabic language refer to the death of Jesus. What's really interesting to me, and I would mention this to any
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Muslim who seriously takes, you know, takes the Quran seriously and wants to know what its history is and its coherence and its truthfulness, there is no commentary on Surah 4157 in the
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Hadith. Now, commentary on the
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Quran is called tafsir. And so you can have works of tafsir, just whole commentaries on the
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Quran. And then you can have interpretations of portions of it within the body of literature called the
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Hadith. We don't know what Muhammad's understanding of Surah 4157 was in the form of a
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Sahih Hadith traced back by an Isnaad chain to Muhammad. There are all sorts of other verses in the
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Quran that we've had interpreted for us, and we understand what the background was and things like that. It's so strange that this, the one verse that sets the
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Quran against all history, we don't know where it came from, and no one seemed to even know anything about it for a couple hundred years.
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That's weird. Why would that be? Think about it.
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Even the most radical skeptics of the Christian faith,
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Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Jesus Seminar people, what will they say?
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The most historical truth that we know about Jesus is that he died on a
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Roman cross under Pontius Pilate at the beginning of the first century.
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That's the one thing, you know, John Dominic Crossan says, that's the one thing we can know about Jesus's life.
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Bart Ehrman, it's as certain as anything in history can be, and it's the one thing that the
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Muslim can't believe. Now, there is a group of Muslims, the Akhmadi Muslims, that believed
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Jesus was crucified, but he didn't die. He only appeared to die, sort of the swoon theory type thing, and for some reason
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Shabir Ali holds that position as well. I'm not sure why. You can see the debate we did on that subject a number of years ago,
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I think 2005, no, 2008. Anyway, so what happened on the cross?
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I mean, the Quran stands against Christian history and all of written history on this subject, and yet we don't know why.
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It's not explained to us. So what do Muslims do with that? Well, one thing, the Quran claims to be mubinun, clear, perspicuous.
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I can guarantee you one thing, Surah 4, verse 157 ain't any of that. It's not clear.
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It's not perspicuous. What does it mean, so it was made to appear to them? What does that mean?
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It's been interpreted in many ways. Many Muslims, especially those outside of Western culture, in majority
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Muslim countries, believe in something called the substitution theory. They believe someone was put in the place of Jesus, and he was made to look like Jesus.
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So many believe it was Judas Iscariot, fitting punishment, right? I had one Muslim write to me once, and man,
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I mean, it was a long letter, and it had lots of bold and underline and red and blue, which proves the point.
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I mean, if you put something in red and blue, bold underline, that means it's obviously true. That just, it's automatic.
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But he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Simon the Cyrene that was crucified in Jesus' place.
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He just, he was absolutely certain about it. Now, I said that's probably, and yeah, you'll run into a lot of Muslims here in Australia that also believe that, but there are a lot of Westernized Muslims that sort of back away a little bit on this, and when you say, so who was crucified?
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They'll go, they'll go, Allaho alam, God knows, instead of giving you a specific answer.
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Because there's a problem with the substitution theory, and when you think about it, it's a real obvious problem with substitution theory.
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If God made someone else look like Jesus and had him crucified in Jesus' place, well, he took
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Jesus up to himself. He did such a good job in not only fooling the
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Jews, he fooled the Romans, he even fooled the disciples of Jesus, who then went out and started a whole new religion that creates a whole bunch of shirk.
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He did too good a job. So a lot of them are like,
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I'm not gonna go that far. We just don't know. All we know is the Quran says, he was not crucified, he did not die.
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We don't know about who was put in the place, what should be halal and really means, and we'll sort of go from there. Now obviously, if there is no crucifixion, there is no burial, there is no resurrection, there is no redemption.
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So this is central. Ironically, you would think that would become a central part of the
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Quran's argument against the Christian faith. It is not. It's 40 Arabic words, not commented on, go on from there.
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Go on from there. Very interesting to me. It really makes me wonder where these words actually came from, what their origin was, what their purposes are.
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But for you and me, it's obvious. If you're going to be presenting the centrality of the cross, the fact that the cross is the center point of history, it was prophesied of old, you've got
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Isaiah 53, I have yet to get a Muslim. I have been trying and I'm going to keep working on it.
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But I have yet to get a Muslim to be willing to debate me on Isaiah 53. Because if Isaiah 53 is what
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Isaiah 53 is, that's a prophecy of Messiah who gives his life. Who is that?
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There's only one Messiah. Islam really struggles with the definition of the Messiah to begin with. But I have invited,
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I could give you the names, a lengthy list of names. Let's do Isaiah 53. Let's do it on the basis of the original language text.
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We can use the Greek Septuagint as well, but we'll do it out of the Hebrew. Mmm, don't think so. Because if he was prophesied, if the cross is the center point of history, then the entire understanding of the
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Quran as to how you're made right with God cannot possibly be true. Can't possibly be true. So it's good for us to know, for many reasons, the historical reality of the cross, the consistency with Roman procedures at that time, its historicity, all the historical issues regarding the resurrection.
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All of that is great apologetic material. And it greatly increases our faith and is very, very useful.
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But in this context, there is one thing to always keep in mind. A dear friend of mine went to Uganda.
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Oh, I forget how long ago. It was many, many years ago. A Muslim man came out of the bush, came out of the, well, the bush, and was talking with him through a translator.
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And with deep sincerity, he said to my friend, how could
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Allah allow one of his most dear prophets to die in such an ignominious fashion as upon a cross?
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How could Allah allow that? So I ask each believer, how would you respond to that?
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Don't question the guy's sincerity. He sincerely thinks that's a meaningful objection.
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He probably has never heard a meaningful response to it. Now you get to give it. What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say?
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The one thing you must keep in mind and that you want to immediately communicate to a Muslim, Jesus's life was not taken from him.
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He voluntarily laid it down. It was the intention of the
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Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past that it happened that way.
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Jesus lays down his life. He has the authority to take it up again.
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He does so voluntarily. It's not taken from him. Yes, it's an ignominious way to die.
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To be hung upon a tree is a curse. He takes the curse for us. That's the whole reason it was done the way that it was done.
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And the scriptures are plain. This was God's intention. It wasn't a backup plan. It was God's intention.
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He does it voluntarily. Talk about love. Talk about condescension.
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Talk about grace. That's our Jesus. That's not a
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Jesus the Muslims know. You are the only ones could be able to tell them about it. You.
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And Christian women, there's many a Muslim woman that needs to hear from you. Because they're not gonna, the vast majority of them are not gonna be listening to me.
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I'm not gonna have that opportunity. I've had a few in the West, but in many instances you're the one that the
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Lord will use. She might be your nurse, might be your hairdresser, might be whatever. Your opportunity.
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Your opportunity. Jesus's death, God's intention, God's grace.
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No one takes his life from him. He lays it down of his own accord. Surah 4, verse 157 puts the
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Quran in direct contradiction to history itself. Second barrier.
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So what's first? Shirk. Second, Surah 4, verse 157. Third, will almost always come up in a discussion of the first two.
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And unfortunately it has become central to any conversation that we have. Down through Islamic history, there were two streams of belief on the subject.
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The concept is tarif, alteration, change of the scriptures.
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There is one form of tarif that is a change of the meaning and hence interpretation of the scriptures.
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That was one stream. The other stream is a change of the actual words of scripture.
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And these two streams existed next to one another at that particular point in time.
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Now, in 1864, in 1864, a book was published called
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Itzaar -ul -Haqq, The Confirmation of the Truth. And in that book, an
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Indian Muslim scholar basically pulled from German rationalism,
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German liberalism, all the rest of this stuff, and he put together just a massive attack upon the
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Bible, alleging contradictions and changes and everything else. That book had a huge impact upon world
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Islam, all around the world. It was done in India, but if you know who Ahmed Deedat was,
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Ahmed Deedat became involved in Dawa because he read that book. And so that particular book has pretty much made it certain that 99 .9
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% of the Muslims with whom you speak will believe that the
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Bible has been corrupted in its very words and hence cannot be trusted in anything that it says.
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So obviously, that ends up impacting everything else. You want to talk about the cross, open your mouth to quote from a verse of scripture, it's been changed.
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Want to talk about the trinity, been changed. When was it changed? They don't know. And I'm sort of bummed that all the
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Muslims just walked out anyways, as you may have noticed, or maybe not. Maybe you all here, concentrating on me, you didn't see it happening out back.
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I've had this happen before, by the way. I've had Muslims come to presentations and they wanted to make objections.
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What they found was somebody who was accurately representing what they believed, and they rarely stayed at the end.
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I wish they had, would love to have talked to them. Anyway, I think some of the brothers went out to do that very thing. Pray for them.
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So, being able to give a defense of the integrity of Scripture today is central for every apologetic encounter you have.
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It's central to teach your kids before they go to university, obviously, but it's also vital in being able to give that same kind of defense to the
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Muslim. And of course, this is in a religious context. It's very, very similar, in my experience, to giving a defense to Mormons, because Mormons believe the
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Bible to be the Word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. Eighth article of faith, the Mormon Church. They will raise all sorts of objections.
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Muslims raise all sorts of objections. But what's interesting is, we have an even greater advantage in talking to the
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Muslim, because the Quran assumes that the Christians and the
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Jews still have access to their scriptures. So, if that was true as late as 632, then the change would have to have been after that.
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But that doesn't make any sense, because we have entire manuscripts of the Bible that existed well before 632.
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So, I don't get real clear answers on this particular subject, outside of, it's been changed.
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It's been altered. When? Don't know. But it must be, because the Quran is the ultimate authority.
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And so, the Muslim is always looking backwards, through the lens of the Quran, backwards at the
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Bible, at the New Testament and Old Testament, through the lens of the Quran, which means they're looking backwards through time.
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It's anachronistic. It becomes their ultimate authority, but in itself, even though it talks about its relationship to the
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Torah and the Injil, even though a chain is forged in Surah 5, where Moses is given the
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Torah. Jesus comes, he confirms what was in Moses, and then he has the
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Injil, the Gospel. Then Muhammad comes, confirming and protecting what came before, and he's given the
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Quran. There's a chain of authority. If you say that the first two links of that chain can actually be corrupted and changed, why can't the last?
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And they have to come up with explanations. I see no reason to believe that the actual author of the Quran believed that the words of the
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Bible had been changed. That's, I believe, a modern Muslim interpretation. I don't think that's what the author himself actually originally believed.
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So, here's the point. They believe the scriptures have been corrupted, but they rarely encounter
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Christians who know almost anything about the history of their own scriptures to be able to counter that argumentation. And if any of you were at the debate today, you already know, yeah, there's a lot to know there.
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And it is central, and it is vitally important. But you see, once again, preparing to deal with that objection with the
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Muslims is preparing you to deal with atheism and Mormonism and everything else all at the same time. So it's not like, oh,
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I just can't do all this stuff. There's so many, no, so much of what I'm talking about. What was I talking about? Knowing the centrality of the cross, being able to identify who
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Jesus Christ is from scripture, knowing the history of the Bible. That's all stuff that we should be doing, whether we're engaged in apologetics or not, but all of it prepares us for apologetics.
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And I'm gonna tell you something, it is a great blessing to see how
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God has preserved his word, the mechanisms he has used, and to grow in your own trust that God has in fact given us his word.
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What we were talking about last night is relevant right here. How do you know Jesus said those words in Matthew chapter 19?
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Well, you need to know how you got the history of the Bible. See, it's all related. It's all related.
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So there are your three barriers, but I suppose there was a fourth that I started with at the beginning, because if our heart is not filled with love, even for those men who just walked out, how did
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Paul describe it in 1 Corinthians chapter 13? You don't have your bell with you tonight, clanging gong, bing bing bing bing bing bing.
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Yeah, you left that at home, oh well. Gong, gongs, clanging cymbals, that's all we are.
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We just make a lot of noise, we're not really gonna accomplish anything without what? Love. Without love.
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Without love. So with that, I think we probably have a few questions that have come in,
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I would assume so, and so we'll hopefully be able to answer some of your questions, but we have a song first. Let's do a song and then let's get to the