6 - Islam, Part 1

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17 - The Triune God, Part 1

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. This is our class on a study of the major Western religions.

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We are glad to have you with us. If you are a student and you have a syllabus, you can grab it.

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We're going to be going through that. It is helpful to have the syllabus. You can pick one up at strivingforeternity .org.

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That's where you can find out more about the Striving for Eternity Academy, the other classes that we teach, as well as ordering the syllabus.

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The syllabus is about $25 each. We try to keep each syllabus around that price.

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You can go to store .strivingforeternity .org to get directly to the store or go to the general website strivingforeternity .org.

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We'll say that these lessons are based off of a book that I have written called

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What Do They Believe? It is something that you can get at our store. But What Do They Believe?

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It's also available on Amazon. The book here that we will be going through some of the material in that book.

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If you want to get that book, you're going to find more material than we are going to go over in each lesson.

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Just so you know, it's a good companion along with this. The syllabus is good because we're going to give you the blanks to fill in, help you with the important issues.

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Also, what we're going to do that we don't do in the book is we're going to go through a Christian response to each of the doctrines that we look at.

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So again, what we're doing is looking at different religions within their authority systems, seeing what it is they actually believe, giving some response,

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Christian response to it. But primarily trying to be accurate with what they believe from their sources.

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We're looking at six major doctrines. What's their authority? What's their view of God? What's their view of Christ?

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What's their view of sin? What's their view of salvation? And what's their view of end times? So those six we're going to be looking at.

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And this week, we're going to be looking at Islam. We're in lesson number three on Islam.

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And so that is going to be today's lesson. We will complete it next class, but we will start today, give you a background.

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This is a world religion that has gotten a lot of interest ever since September 11, 2001, where in, well, for a lot of the

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Western world, it suddenly became aware that there was this major growing religion known as Islam.

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And so Islam is the name given to the religion founded by Muhammad of Arabia in the early 7th century.

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The word Islam is actually derived from a verb, S -L -M in English, would be the letters.

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But it means to resign or to surrender or to submit oneself.

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And so in Islam, OK, means the act of submission.

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And that is your blank there. The act of submission. That's what Islam means. It means the act of submission and of resigning of oneself.

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And submission is an important part to understanding Islam and the mindset. And so you must understand that.

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One who professes Islam is called a Muslim. Again, you see the

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S -L -M in there again. And so that's the concept there.

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So one who professes Islam is a Muslim. And that means one who has submitted.

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OK, so the Islam is the act of submission. The one who does submit is a

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Muslim. The word Muslim finds its root in the same word for peace, Salaam.

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Now, that is where many see that people will say Islam is a religion of peace.

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They base it on the fact that the root word for Islam is the idea of peace.

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But though that is the name given to it, it's the idea, you know, submission. And the thought that many have is that true peace will be discovered through submitting to Allah.

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Now, we would kind of disagree with some of that as Christians, but that is the idea that they have.

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And I do, I should, two things I do have to say is sometimes there will be times where I'm speaking because I'm reading from documents.

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So sometimes people think that I am condoning what I'm saying. I'm reading from the documents and explaining what

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Islam will be teaching. All right. But there will be times where I'll try to give some commentary on that.

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Now, Islam is one of the youngest of the world's major religions.

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Or it started in the 7th century with the life and mission of Muhammad. It was not a totally new religion when it started.

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The conceptual roots of it are found in Judaism and Christianity. Muslims see their religion as the continuation, really the ratification of the

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Judeo -Christian tradition. Muhammad was born in 570

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AD in Mecca. He was illiterate all of his life. He was an orphaned slave to a wealthy woman whom he eventually married.

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By marriage he became a person of importance and was able to find time for uninterrupted meditation on religious matters.

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He was concerned about idolatry and polytheism of his countrymen.

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Forced out of Mecca because of his teachings, he and his followers moved to Medina where he developed his teachings more fully.

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Muhammad used the teachings of Islam to unite the Arab tribes in warfare against their enemies.

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Islam won much of the Middle East by force. Now when we look at the background, the history,

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I'm going to give some history. I took an online class on the history of Islam taught by a

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Muslim. And it was very interesting taking it as a non -Muslim, the things that they would see and someone there from a

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Christian background would see things and recognize, I would say problems in what they believe.

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But let's go through some of the background and I'm going to give you a synopsis. If you want, I strongly suggest you get the book

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What Do They Believe? written by Andrew Rappaport, that's me. To be able to see more,

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I put a little bit more of the history in there just so that you kind of get an idea.

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But Muhammad originally, let me start with his early life. The earliest accounts of Muhammad's life were not written until about 150 years after his death.

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They're all Muslim sources. There's no external evidence supporting the early life of Muhammad.

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And let's not get too bogged down with that. There's nothing on the early life of Jesus other than some

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Gnostic writings which we wouldn't see as accurate. But the idea that much of his life is not written down until after his death could be concerning.

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And that there are no external documents, external to Islam. With Christ, there was external documents,

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Jewish and Roman documents from historians that document the life of Christ that we have.

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So there is a difference there. Muhammad was born, as I said, in 570 AD. This was a few months after the death of his father.

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His mother died when he was six and his uncle took care of him. He ended up becoming a slave, a very wealthy woman.

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Now you've got to keep in mind that in the area they were, much of it was trading, was how people made money. And this becomes important in a historical understanding of Islam.

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But he became a slave and eventually the woman that owned him as a slave, he ended up marrying.

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She was much older than him. She was 15 years older than him, in fact.

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And when he married her, he was only 25 years old. The marriage produced seven children. All except one died.

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One daughter was the only to survive childhood. And we end up seeing that his marriage, as I mentioned, gave him...

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He no longer needed to be working as hard. He was more of a tradesman now. He wasn't the slave.

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And he got... He was in contact with different people and would discuss with different people things of religious nature.

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Keep in mind that he would be trading in the areas outside of the Roman Empire. So really where he focused was he was learning and dialoguing with Jewish people and also those

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Christians that were outside of Rome. In other words, to be outside of Rome as a Christian at that time meant that you were a heretic.

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And therefore, he did not come in contact with biblical Christianity but heretical

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Christianity. We end up seeing that with some of the views he held of Christianity because it's not the views held by the majority view of Christianity nor by anyone that was ever seen as orthodox within Christianity.

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So that becomes an important thing when we look at the view. He actually thought...

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Muhammad thought he was a Jewish prophet. And he did... When he first started his teachings, he saw that there was many people...

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There was polytheism. There was many, many gods. At the time that he was...

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Let's see if I have it in my notes here. At the time that he started out, there were 360 deities that were worshipped.

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And Allah was one of those deities. He was a minor deity. He was a deity of the moon.

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That's why you'd see in Islam the crescent moon. But Allah was a deity that Muhammad ended up saying was the deity.

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And he wanted monotheism. He saw polytheism as a problem as it is.

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And he was teaching a monotheism. This caused lots of problems. The Arab world at that time was very, very much against his teaching.

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He used to encourage everyone to pray toward Jerusalem for many years until the

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Jews rejected him as a prophet. And then he turned and said no longer we do to Jerusalem but to Mecca.

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And so this was a change not only in those practices but others. And this becomes important.

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I may mention it later when I talk about the Quran. But in the early writings, the early times of Muhammad's life, he was very friendly and approving of both

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Judaism and Christianity until the Jews rejected him. And then he was feeling that rejection.

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It seems he's turned to be more violent in his wording and language, at least what's recorded in the

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Quran, toward Christianity and Judaism. Now, one of the things to keep in mind that the

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Quran is written, is dealing with a long period of time. And therefore when it started out, we often forget that this is a long period of time that is written and people's views change.

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When Muhammad started out with teaching on Islam, he really was to gain money being someone that was in the trade and traveling from place to place, understood the importance of protecting the tradesmen and their goods from pirates.

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And so he was in the business of basically protection. He would travel with them with small groups of armies to protect from thieves.

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And as he started getting a larger and larger following, according to Muslim history, that ended up changing.

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I think it's basically because he had too many mouths to feed. It became a real problem that we do end up seeing where there was lots of issues going on and he was needing to deal with his own tribe, kind of, if you call it a tribe.

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And what ended up happening was he turned from protecting those trade routes to invading those trade routes.

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And Muslims became really the pirates of the day. That is, some think, the founding of the pirates.

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But Muhammad died in 632 at the age of 62. His first non -family member that was a convert,

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Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr was a very wealthy merchant. And the first non -family member to be converted to Islam.

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And he succeeded Muhammad. Under Abu Bakr, Islam consolidated as a stable power and Syria fell to its advancing armies.

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Now Abu Bakr was succeeded two years later by Caliph Umar, who in turn was succeeded 10 years after that by Caliph Umar.

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We'll mention Umar in a little while. And during this time,

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Iraq, Pakistan, and Egypt fell in quick succession. And so by 656, the boundaries of Islam had reached

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Afghanistan in the east, Libya in the west. And so you end up seeing that the conquest remained actually in North Africa, advancing through Spain, France.

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It was halted in 732 by one of the history's crucial battles, the

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Turs and Politurs. Now the reason to see that his rapid advance is not hard to find.

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There was a fall of the Byzantine Empire. And Islam just filled in that gap, just went in where there was a political vacuum.

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I actually think that you're going to see that again. You see that in Europe and you see that happening here in America.

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As the nations have gone more liberal and are starting to collapse in on themselves as Rome did, you're seeing

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Islam fill in those gaps and just suck up into that vacuum. Now there's two main divisions within Islam.

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You have the Sunni and the Shias. Maybe you've heard this mentioned if you watched the news. Islam's two main divisions.

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The Sunni form 90 % of the majority and the Shia are basically only a majority in Iran.

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So that's the only place. And the split originated over a dispute in leadership of succession a little more than 20 years after Muhammad's death.

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So there was much activity 20 years after Muhammad's death. There was a lot of conflict and we see it with Muhammad's son -in -law was in the middle of it.

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So Muhammad's successors were known as Caliphs and I had mentioned some of them already.

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So I mentioned his son -in -law. Let me just give you that history real quick. It was not universally accepted.

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His son -in -law Ali, he was the husband of Muhammad's daughter

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Fatima. He was not universally accepted as the rightful successor of Islam to fight and they fought over these issues and Ali was murdered in 661 and his two sons

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Hassan and Hussein continued the struggle. Hassan was poisoned in 670 and Hussein died at the battle of Kabbalah in 680.

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And so Ali's followers, Shia Ali, the party of Ali became the

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Shiite Muslims. So those were those smaller, the Shia Muslims that are primarily, as I mentioned, you only see them in Iran.

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Those are a smaller subsect that followed after Muhammad's son -in -law

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Ali. So let's begin by looking at our doctrines. That was some history.

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Let's start with the authority. What is an authority? What's their view of authority within Islam?

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Let's start with their view of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. All right, Muslims believe that Allah has revealed his commands to men through the prophets, through 104 sacred books.

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And of those 104 sacred books, only four remain and they were written by prophets.

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So the first is written by Moses. That's your blank there. Moses wrote the

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Tanar or what we call Tanakh or the

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Torah in Hebrew. But it's the Pentateuch, those first five books. So Moses supposedly wrote those first five books.

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So first blank there is Moses. Then you have David. David is your second blank.

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He wrote the Psalms, the Zebrur. And my pronunciations may not be accurate.

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I'm not a native Arabic speaker. So please forgive that.

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The third is written by Jesus. And that's called the Injil. Those are the Gospels in the

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New Testament in general by Jesus. And the fourth blank that you have there is Muhammad writing the

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Quran. So you have four books. Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad are the four prophets that wrote the

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Pentateuch, the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Quran. Okay. So, although we know that not all of the writings were written by David or the

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Gospels. Jesus didn't write any of the Gospels physically. But we see that they attribute them to those prophets.

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Now, the issue that we have here is that we have to keep in mind that out of these 104 writings, only four exist.

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The others have fallen out of existence. It should cause us to have some questions.

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What happened? Did God not keep his word? Is he not capable of keeping his word? But let's see what their scriptures say.

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And by the way, when I give this, I'm going to give you the Quran. Let's put it up and I'll show you that first one. There we go.

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That's the first one. So it says Q. Q stands for Quran. Two is the Surah.

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And then the 136 is the verse number. Okay. It's not a chapter and verse. It's a

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Surah and a verse. Just so you know, so you're familiar with how to read the Quran. So you'll sometimes see this worded this way there.

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Q just stands for the entire of the Quran. There is no other books. Well, there's some other documents that could be.

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So when you see anything referring to the Quran, it's going to have that. Now, let's read this. It says, Say ye, we believe in Allah and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the tribes and that given to Moses and Jesus and that to all prophets from their

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Lord. We make no difference between one and another of them. We bow down to Allah.

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So what you see there is they're saying here are these other prophets. They're written. There's no distinction.

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This is something to keep in mind because this was remember I said the Quran is formed over time.

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A lot happens in the history. And so you're going to see a change as we go through this. You're going to see a change of the early understanding of these scriptures and a later understanding.

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But let's continue on to the next. It's 44163. Thank you.

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We have sent three. Sorry, we have sent the inspiration as we sent it to Noah and the messengers after him.

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We sent inspiration to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the tribes to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron and Solomon and to David.

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We give the Psalms. Let's do the next one. That's 1094. And this one reads, if that were to doubt as to what we were, what we have revealed unto thee, then ask those who've been reading the book from before thee.

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The truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord. So be in no wise of those in doubt.

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Now, this is really important. This is leave this up for one second so people can look at it. It's Surah 10, verse 94.

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This is one that you want to have kind of in your repertoire if you're going to talk to Muslims.

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Why? Because as you see, it says, if we doubt, if a

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Muslim doubts, who does the Quran say they should go to? The people of the book.

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All right. So there's over 120 references in the Quran to the scriptures of the

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Jews and the Christians. Now, they would argue this is testifying of them being genuine revelations from Allah because they have this continuation.

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But the Jews and Christians are referred to as the people of the book. And as you saw in 1094, who do we go to?

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We go to the Jews and the Christians, the people of the book. That becomes really important. Why?

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This is going to become, well, it's going to become important because in a moment

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I'm going to talk about how they think that the scriptures got distorted. And the reason this verse is important to keep in your repertoire is because at the time that he's giving this in the 600s, okay, that this is being either explained by Muhammad or written down later.

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When this is explained, it's stating that you can trust the people of the book to help you understand and therefore you could trust the book that they have, right?

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That means that the book that they had in the 600s was trustworthy. All right.

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The people who understood the book were trustworthy at that time in the early time of Islam. Later that changes.

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We're going to see in a moment. But the reason that becomes important is because if you could trust that book, then we have the same

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Bible now. We have many more. We have older copies of it, older manuscripts.

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And so we can trust it even more in that sense, I would argue, because, well, when we look at it, if it didn't change by the time of Muhammad, when did it get distorted?

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But I digress and get ahead of myself. Let's look at the next. It's that lengthy quote. It's 5446 and 48.

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There we go. This is a little bit lengthy quote. Let me read this to you. All right. So read along on your screen if you can.

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It was we who revealed the law to Moses.

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Therein was guidance and light by the standard we have been judged, the

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Jews, by the prophets who bowed as in Islam to Allah's will, so the rabbis and the doctors of the law.

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For to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's book, and they were witnesses thereto.

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Therefore fear not men, but fear me, and sell not my signs for a miserable price.

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If any do fail to judge by the light of what

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Allah hath revealed, they are no better than unbelievers. This is now

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Surah 546. And their footsteps we sent

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Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming the law that had come before him.

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We sent him the gospel wherein was guidance and light and confirmation of the law that had come before him, a guidance and an admonition to those who fear

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Allah. To thee, this is now Surah 548, to thee we sent the scripture in truth, confirming the law that had come before him, and guarding it safely.

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So judge between them what Allah hath revealed, and follow not their vain desires deriving from the truth that hath come to thee.

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To each among you we have prescribed a law and an open way.

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If Allah had so willed, he would have made you a single people, but his plan is to test you in what he hath given you.

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So strive as a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah.

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It is he who will show you the truth of the matters which you dispute.

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Now the importance of that kind of lengthy quote there is so you understand that we see that in the early part they trusted the scriptures.

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They don't make distinction between that which the Jews and Christians followed as scripture and what was being disseminated at this point.

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Alright, and so when we look at this we see that the early scriptures were supposedly trusted and if you didn't understand what was being explained you go to the people of the book and they would explain.

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Remember I said the early years he saw himself as a prophet of Judaism as a continuation.

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Not a separation of it which came later. Now the Muslims claim that the Jews and Christians changed and distorted.

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That is your blank there. That the Jews and Christians changed and distorted their own scriptures.

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So Allah sent the Quran as the final revelation to humanity. The previous scriptures, anything prior to the

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Quran were meant for a limited purpose and their use ended with the revelation of the

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Quran which abrogated them and exposed their distortions and changes.

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And that's why they were not protected from corruption. And they went through distortion, addition, and omission.

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Now if you're looking at what we had read before you're going that's not seeming like they're saying there's these omissions and these different things.

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Let's look at 5, 15, and 16 if you could put that one up.

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People of the book, our messenger has come to you making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the book and forgiving you much.

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A light has come to you from Allah and a glorious book with which he will guide whoever follows his pleasure in the way of peace and brings them forth from darkness into the light of his will.

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So you see this is the idea that they would argue later in different things that the truth was concealed, it was hidden, it was removed.

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Later in history they would write things like, so woe to these who write, this is in Quran Surah 279.

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I don't have a slide on this. So woe to those who write the book in their hand and say this is from Allah that they may sell it for a little price.

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So woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for them making their earnings.

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Now I find this interesting because this is a surah that has been used against me saying that Christians sell

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God's word and that's why it got corrupted. I have four volumes, four different translations of the

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Quran into English and I have one that is in Arabic. I had to pay for all of them, just saying.

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The Quran was to be the permanent though in their thinking, the permanent scripture that replaced all others.

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And they do not consider the Quran, they consider that it has to be handled with care.

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And so we're going to, let's look at the Quran itself now. So this is the way they look at the scriptures.

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Now here comes a dilemma that I see. If God, and there is a, in Surah 5 it says that God's word cannot change.

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Now this becomes a dilemma. If God's word cannot change and you're seeing in Surah 5 that you can trust the scriptures of the

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Jews and the Christians and the scriptures can't change, then what do you do with the fact that it did change?

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It got corrupted and destroyed. And here becomes the thing. How do you know you can trust, if you can't trust those scriptures, how do you know you can trust the

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Quran? Well let's get to that. The Quran, the word Quran is derived from an

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Arabic word, qura, which means to read or to recite, that's your blank there, to read, to read or recite.

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And this is something that you have to understand, the Quran is not written in chronological order. It is really organized and divided into 114 surahs or chapters and they're done by size order except for the first surah.

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Surah chapter 1 is a prayer addressed to Allah and that is the first surah and after that it is in size order with the largest ones first getting smaller.

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The Quran is the sacred book of Islam believed to have been revealed to Muhammad by the angel

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Gabriel. In piecemeal, in sections, and occasionally he would disseminate it.

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Now Muslims take the fundamentalist attitude of God's word that the Quran holds a place of exalted reverence in their hearts.

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The Quran is said to have existed eternally in heaven engraved in tablets of stone.

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The language of this is in Arabic. They do not accept any translations as being authoritative, it must be in Arabic and therefore the language inherently that must be spoken is

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Arabic so speakers of Arabic have a special prestige in the Muslim world.

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You must memorize the Quran in Arabic when you memorize it. Now Muhammad claimed that the

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Quran was revealed to him when he was under the control of spirits. He testified that he himself was not always certain whether the visions were divine or demonic.

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He thought they were from these demons, these angels that would torture him.

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However his wife urged him to submit to the revelations because she was convinced they were from Gabriel.

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Therefore for 22 years from AD 610 until 632 he received revelations from the spirit that controlled him.

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They were collected, memorized, passed down orally at first. Soon his followers took them from memory and started to compile them in written form.

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Now here's the thing. When you speak to someone that believes in Islam a question you can ask them is do you believe that a woman's opinion is equal in authority to a man's?

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Because if they're going to be honest with the teachings in Islam and the Hadiths and what not, a woman's, her opinion only counts one fourth of that of a man's and so here we have a dilemma.

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Well, we don't. I think Muslims do. You see, Muhammad got these visions and he thought they were demonic.

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He did not think they were from God. That's what a man's opinion was, that they were demonic. But a woman's opinion was it was

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Gabriel and that they're from Allah and therefore he should submit to them. So you have a dilemma.

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Muhammad, whose opinion should count more than his wife's, submitted to his wife's opinion that this was from God and it wasn't demonic.

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I actually kind of think that I agree with Muhammad that they were demonic. So we end up seeing though that these were written down later.

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They were compiled by, remember I said Khalif Amtrah, we said we'd bring him up again.

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Khalif Amtrah decided to bring order because what happened was that people started writing down these different recitations that they had from memory, things they were called and that were part of the

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Quran and they were being written down. Now they were being written down and there were different versions of them.

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And so Khalif Amtrah decided, this is now 12 years, 12 to 18 years after Muhammad's dead, he decided to bring order to the situation and had scholars create an official text that was developed between 650 and 656, which circulated widely.

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And then he ordered that all other versions be destroyed. Right there you have a dilemma because remember what we said about the teachings of Islam on the

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Christian scriptures. They believe that God wrote his scripture through Moses, men corrupted it.

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Through David, men corrupted it. Through Jesus, men corrupted it.

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Through Muhammad and it couldn't be corrupted. How do you know? How do you know if God couldn't keep his word from being corrupted the previous three times and all of those other times their followers believe that they are following after the truth on an uncorrupted documents?

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They don't think it's been corrupted. So how in Islam would you be able to say that it isn't been corrupted when we know that there were other versions?

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And you say, no, no, no, no, because I've had Muslims tell me though there weren't any other versions. Then what did Khalif Amtrah demand to be burned?

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He said to have to burn the abhorrent texts. What was he demanding to destroy?

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What were the other texts, the other copies of the Quran that were wrong?

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And what most Muslims will say, well, they weren't the Quran. How do you know? They were destroyed.

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He actually put a decree to collect them, have one copy and destroy all the others.

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How do you know he destroyed the right ones? Because according to Muslim history,

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God had this happen three other times and his followers didn't realize that this happened, that it was corrupted.

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So if it happened three other times, wouldn't it make logical sense to assume that it could have happened a fourth time?

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This is why I hold to the fact that actually the Quran is right when it says that God's word cannot change.

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It's just that I don't believe the Quran is part of God's word. You see, because the

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Quran has contradictions, and if it has a contradiction, it can't be God's word. What are those contradictions?

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Well, we have one that we're going to look at this week, one next week. One contradiction is just this. God's word is said that it cannot change as we read, referring to the

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Jewish Christian scriptures, cannot change. It cannot be altered. It is from God. It is no different than any other scripture.

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And then later it says it was altered. It was changed. It was deleted. It was added to. It was corrupted. Which one's right?

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You can't have it. Those two are mutually exclusive. You can't have God's word not being able to change and then having been changed.

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Those are mutually exclusive. That's a contradiction, and that's why I would reject it as being from God, because it can't have a contradiction if it was written from God.

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And so, Muhammad built his whole system of religion on these demonic revelations, adapted and merging various forms and features from idol worship that had existed in Mecca.

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He stressed the monotheism, which was its novelty, and ultimately he used it to unify

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Islam. Now, let's go into some other authorities to close. The Sunnah.

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The Sunnah are the writings of the Prophet Muhammad that he had said, did, or approved of, comprised of hadiths.

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Sometimes you hear of a hadith. So, these are comprised of hadiths, short stories, which are reliably transmitted reports of Muhammad's companions.

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So, in other words, you have Muhammad's companions writing these things down afterwards. They're stating, this is what we have, what

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Muhammad said or what he did, recording it in history. They're written in these short stories, sort of things of, they're called a hadiths, and stored into a

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Sunnah. Now, that becomes an authority, and those are the things that are used for Sharia.

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That's your fourth one. The fourth authority. So, first authority is the scriptures, the Jewish Christian scriptures. Second and most prominent is going to be the

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Quran. Then, third is going to be a Sunnah, which is made up of the hadiths. Fourth is going to be

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Sharia, which means Islamic law, and we hear a lot in the news of Sharia law.

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So, where in the Quran and traditions are silent on particular subjects, rules are derived by a consequence of religious leaders.

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So, what you have in this Sharia law is leaders that see areas where the

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Quran or the traditions are silent, and they fill that in with these laws.

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And so, the combination between the Quran, the hadiths, and then this

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Sharia law have been used by Islamic scholars to create the immensity of detailed body and rules and regulations known as Sharia.

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Now, you have to understand with this is that Sharia is a governing system where the

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Quran is the religious, but you cannot separate these. This is the thing that many people don't understand.

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You cannot separate Sharia law from the Quran. In other words, you can't separate the political system from the religious system in Islam.

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They are one and the same. So, you have both. You can't separate these.

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And this becomes important when we look and study into Islam.

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We have to understand that this is something that in America, at least, we have this notion of a separation of church and state.

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This idea that there is a political power, there's a religious power, and the one does not dictate to the other, sort of.

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So, we see other countries that have this distinction between the ruling class, the religious class.

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In other words, the ruling political laws and then laws that are religious. In Islam, you don't have that.

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Okay? And so, you have to understand that. Let's get to, and we'll wrap up with this. Let's wrap up with their view of God.

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Their view of God, because this is going to be a short one, if you look in your syllabus there, paganism is offensive to a

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Muslim. All right? Islam believes in a strict monotheism. That is your blank there, monotheism.

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One God. One God -ism, really. It's the belief that there is only one

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God. Islam does not accept any God that has multiple persons as a

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Godhead. Now, they would believe that polytheism is an error.

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Islam, however, thinks that Christianity is polytheistic. Islam denies the

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Trinity because it misunderstands the definition. It defines the Trinity as three gods consisting of, you ready for this?

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I was going to leave this for next week, but here's the other contradiction in the Quran. The definition of the

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Quran, or the Trinity within the Quran is the Father, Allah, the

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Mother, Mary, and the Son, Jesus. Now, any Christian just went, what did you just say?

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Yeah. Any Christian knows that the Trinity is defined as three persons, the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit as one single God.

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Now, Islam sees them as three separate gods and refers to it as Father, Mother, and Son.

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That is another contradiction that means that if God stated that this is the view that Christians have, that's not the view that Christians have.

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Christians have never held to that. You'll sometimes get some scholars in Islam that will go and research and they find some heretical groups that were never part of mainstream

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Christianity, never even accepted as anything but heretical, that would maybe have

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Mary as being God. It's really poor documentation they have for it. We don't see evidence of it outside of, you know, much of it's from within Muslim circles.

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But even the Catholic Church, we just got done studying Catholicism, and they venerate

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Mary and hold her up and almost worship her, but they clearly would never claim that she's

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God. So, does the Quran say that? Well, let's look at some passages. 4 -171, thank you.

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It says this, Surah 4 -171, O people of the

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Book, commit no excesses in your religion. Now, remember, who are the people of the

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Book? Those are the Jews and the Christians. Commit no excesses in your religion, nor say of Allah anything but the truth.

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Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, who was no more than an

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Apostle of Allah and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary and the

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Spirit proceeding from Him, so believe in Allah and His Apostles, say not

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Trinity. Decease, it will be better for you, for Allah is one

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Allah. Glory be to Him, far exalted is

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He, above having a son, to Him belong all things in the heavens and on the earth, and enough

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Allah as disposer of affairs. Now, what do you see? You see that A, they have a misunderstanding of what it means to be the

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Son of God. They think He's an offspring. Okay, they're having the same mistake that many people make that mistake today and not understanding that Son of means essence of, not necessarily offspring of in a

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Jewish mindset. And so, a misunderstanding there. But you see, he's saying, stop with the

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Trinity. Remember, where Muhammad was, the Trinity was not as well known. Why? Because most of his interactions were who?

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Jews and heretics. So, it wasn't the people that would believe in a

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Trinity, but he'd hear this definition of a Trinity from those that don't always hold to it. And he had wrong views of a

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Trinity. He taught those views. And that is one thing that we'd end up seeing. So, let's continue on though. 5 .116,

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Surah 5 .116 says this, And behold,

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Allah will say, O Jesus, the

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Son of Mary, Didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods?

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In degradation of Allah, He will say,

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Glory to thee! Never could I say what I have no right to say.

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Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is in thee.

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For thou knowest in full all that is hidden. Now, what you have here, this is another one.

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Surah 5 .116, this is another one of those that you want to put into your repertoire, save into memory so you can go back to it.

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Why? Because this is one that clearly says that in the Quran, thinking that Christians say that we are to worship

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Mary as God. And never, ever in the scriptures are we to worship

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Mary as God. Not even Catholicism would make that argument. I mean, Catholicism that holds up Mary on high and venerates her so much, they would not say she's

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God, even though they seem to give her attributes of deity. We looked at that in the classes on Catholicism, but they would never say she's

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God. Nowhere in the Bible do you have that. The idea that Mary is

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God. And so again, you also see the confusion.

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You see Jesus not being all knowing in that passage, which when you look at the

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Gospels, Jesus is knowing everything. He knows the hearts of men. And so there you have a case that shows this issue.

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Let's look at if we have, do we have Surah 5, 73 to 75?

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Okay, this is a longer one. Surah 5, 73 to 75. Do not blaspheme who say

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Allah is one of three in a trinity. Sorry, forgive the cough.

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Let me start again. Do not blaspheme who say Allah is one of three in a trinity.

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For there is no God except one Allah. If they desist not from their word of blasphemy, verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.

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Why turn they not to Allah and seek his forgiveness? For Allah is oft -forgiving, most merciful.

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Christ, the son of Mary, is no more than apostle. Many were the apostles that passed away before him.

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His mother was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their daily food, see how

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Allah doth make his signs clear to them, yet see what, in what way they are deluded from the truth.

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And so what you see here again is basically if you believe in the trinity, you're in trouble.

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That's bad, bad news in there. Now what you end up seeing is they're trying to say Jesus is just a man.

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And this is something that's important to note is that this, just like in Judaism, is in response to Christianity.

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Much of the Talmud, that writing we said, was in response to Christianity. Much of the Quran, and the Quran is about the size of the

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New Testament, it's not very large in volume. And yet much of it is in response to Christianity.

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Okay? Why? Because Christianity is the truth, that's why. You know, let me just put,

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I'll end with this. If we have Surah 448, just put that one up. And this is, the belief in the trinity is the only unforgivable sin.

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Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with him.

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But he forgiveth anything else. To whom he pleases. To set up partners with Allah to devise a sin against the most heinous indeed.

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Now here in these two, Surah 573 to 75, and then

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Surah 448, you see a contradiction again.

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You see, in Surah 573 to 78, they're saying, why don't these people that believe in the trinity, why don't they ask

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God for forgiveness? Allah for forgiveness. He's all forgiving. He's most merciful. Why don't they ask him?

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But later in history, in Surah 448, it says Allah will not forgive them.

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This is the only unforgivable sin, believing in a trinity. That's the one thing Allah will not forgive you for.

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And so he'll forgive for anything else but that. Why should

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Surah 5 tell you to throw yourself before the forgiveness of Allah when

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Surah 4 says you can't be forgiven for believing in the trinity? Again, I think that's a contradiction.

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But this is what you have with something that's written over time in response. So real quick, if you have any questions, we're going to pick this up next class.

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We'll continue looking at the beliefs of Islam. If you have any questions about this or anything else, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

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academyatstrivingforeternity .org. Again, you can go to store .strivingforeternity .org, all spelled out, and pick up my book,

52:27

What Do They Believe? Or you can pick up our syllabus. Either one, both are there.

52:33

And so you can get that. So also, remind you, if your church would like to host one of our

52:42

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars. It's a two -day seminar, a weekend seminar that we come into your church over a weekend in eight hours, six sessions, and we will teach you how to interpret

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God's Word. It's a great seminar. Really enjoy having people teach that. Another way you could support us, by the way, is to go to amazon .com.

53:04

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53:19

We really appreciate it. We've been getting those checks, and that has helped us to continue putting on things like this academy for you.

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Lastly, as we like to do, we want to always encourage someone. We always have a belief in trying to encourage other people and teaching others to do that.

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It's one of the many ways we try to disciple, is by example. And we want to encourage a sister of encouragement who just went through a little bit of a fright.

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We actually were given her name beforehand, before this ended up happening. But Elaine Muniak, we want to encourage you to encourage her.

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Her child, a newborn child, had just been in the hospital, had some issues. I don't want to go into more detail than she might want to share.

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I do know things were shared on her Facebook wall, but more people watch this than her Facebook wall. So, but you can contact her on Facebook.

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You can go to the Striving Fraternity Facebook group, and you can get to know her through there, and you can communicate with her there.

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You can encourage her there. It is really rough for a mother who already has several children to have to go through having a child and watching a child.

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I know watching my one -year -old when he had to go through surgery, it was hard. It is really hard when it's a newborn, and you have other children, and you're having to take care of them.

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I was given her name as someone that needed encouragement long before this incident a couple weeks ago.

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We were given a whole bunch of names, and so if you want people to encourage, let us know. But encourage Elaine. She is a wonderful woman.

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I've gotten to know her personally, got to meet her several times, and I know her husband better because I've done many outreaches with him.

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But I have gotten to know her. She's a sweet, sweet lady, just someone who really seems to have a very godly character, and I love people that are humble and always looking to learn and to grow in their knowledge of Christ, and she is that type of person.

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So I encourage you to encourage her this week. And until next lesson where we'll continue talking about Islam, I encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.