Hadith Qudsi 36

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Hang an afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon.
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Doesn't look like it's raining or anything outside here. We've been getting some real good rain the past couple of nights.
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I mean, woke up in the middle of the night with flashes of lightning and it's been good.
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We needed it. And I imagine there's a bunch of other stuff, other folks that wish they were getting that rain.
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And sorry about that. Trying to get into the Comrex stack and it says connection failed.
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Is it not on over there? You're having issues too, huh? Oh, not working for me.
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It's just moving very slow today. Great. Well, that's, and we just had it fixed, right?
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That's good. Great. Anyway, I want to start the program today.
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I haven't done this for a while, but I'm just about to work on this particular section in a chapter.
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I got a chapter done yesterday. The book is actually on Amazon and I'm a little concerned about that because they have it listed as a certain number of pages.
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It ain't going to be that number of pages. When I had estimated the chapter
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I finished yesterday, I'd put like 12 to 14, ended up being 31. So I missed it by that much.
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And so I finished a big, long chapter. There is actually a chapter that's a little bit longer than that, it's a 34 page beast in there as well.
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But it was really sort of the heart of the book and so I didn't feel like we could skimp on that.
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But I'm now working on the chapter on what the Quran says about Jesus.
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And we go through all the references to Isa in the Quran and look at their context and what they say and so on and so forth.
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So I think it's more quote than it is commentary. But anyway, at the end I'm addressing one other issue and that issue is the issue of intercession.
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And I'm comparing what is taught about the intercession of Muhammad with the intercession of Jesus.
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I think at some point in the past I have mentioned or read at some point the hadith that is found in various sources.
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There are different versions of it and if you haven't listened to our discussions of Islam in the past, well,
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I can't go back over everything but it is important to I think provide some backgrounds and especially in light of the fact that right now it looks like I'm doing a minimum of three, possibly as many as four debates on Islam in London coming up in September.
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And please don't ask me for the details yet, we're getting close, but we're not there yet.
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We've got the days down, we're just getting everything sort of tweaked and once we've got that information we'll get it up there for those of you who are in the area there.
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But as bad as it may, that's really what my mind is focused upon at the moment.
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And you probably learn, you get to learn Arabic. You get to learn some elements of Arabic when you study
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Islam. And one of the phrases that you might want to learn is hadith qudsi.
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Hadith qudsi. Now a hadith is a saying or action of Muhammad.
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The hadith literature are literally thousands of ahadith, ahadith is a plural form of hadith.
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And the primary collections are Sahih al -Bukhari, Sahih means sound or reliable,
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Sahih al -Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sahih Muslim, I'm sorry, Jami' at -Tirmidhi, Sunan Abu Dawud, etc, etc.
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This did come up, for example, in the ongoing Ergin -Kanner scandal because in the book by Ergin and Emir -Kanner, still published by Kregel, I believe,
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Unveiling Islam, you have in their references to simply hadith and then a number.
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And that's an irrelevant reference. That's like putting Bible 316. It means you've never looked it up yourself.
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It means you're going on secondary sources that you don't have Sahih al -Bukhari sitting behind your desk like I do, and you're not checking those things and so on and so forth.
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And now a hadith, Qudsi, is a special kind of hadith that has, in essence, for many people, a higher level of authority because in the hadith,
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Muhammad mentions something that Allah said to him. And so what you have are words of Allah that exist outside of the
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Quran. Now, they're not considered to be sent down in the same sense as the
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Quran. But obviously, if you believe that Muhammad is an absolutely truthful individual, then what he says
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Allah said to him would have to be absolutely truthful. So it's an odd thing.
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You have these words of Allah that are not in the Quran, but they are perfectly truthful.
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So it's almost revelation, but not quite. Okay, let's put it that way.
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So there are different collections of hadith Qudsi. And in one collection,
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I'm going to need to expand my bibliography on this particular one, but hadith
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Qudsi 36, I have the Mishkat al -Anwar of Ibn Arabi here, and they use a different numbering system.
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So this is not that numbering system if you're looking for it. But anyway, in hadith
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Qudsi, Qudsi is spelled Q -U -D -S -I, hadith Qudsi 36.
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Not Kuzi, mutato, Qudsi. There's a D in there, Qudsi. I just happened to look over at Channel Right as that was being posted.
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But anyway, let me read you hadith Qudsi 36, and I think you'll see why we're starting off with this, because it's a rather important hadith.
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The believers will gather together on the day of resurrection and will say, should we not ask someone to intercede for us with our
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Lord? Now I'm breaking from that for a moment. Other versions of this particular story include the great fear and trembling that all of mankind will be experiencing on this great day of judgment.
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Great fear, great trembling taking place. And that is what prompts them to say, should we not ask someone to intercede for us with our
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Lord? So they will come to Adam. They start looking for people, and you'll notice the order here. So they will come to Adam and will say, you are the father of mankind.
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Allah created you with his hand. He made his angels bow down to you, and he taught you the names of everything. So intercede for us with your
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Lord, so that he may give us relief from this place where we are. And he will say,
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I'm not in a position to do that. And he will mention his wrongdoing and will feel ashamed and will say, go to Noah, for he is the first messenger that Allah sent to the inhabitants of the earth.
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So everyone comes to Adam and they say, you are the first one created. God created you directly. And Adam's response is,
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I am not in a position to do that. I am not in a position to be your intercessor on the day of the great judgment with Allah.
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I can't do that. And then specifically, you'll notice what it says. It says, he will mention some wrongdoing, which he has done.
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Man, who is, that's a Turretin fan flooding the channel with the text of Hadeeth Qudsi.
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I was trying to click on it. I couldn't get to it because it just kept moving up and moving up and moving up.
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And I couldn't find it anywhere. But anyways, I was going, who's flooding the channel there? So he's going to mention some wrongdoing that he has done.
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So Adam, you know, Adam did wrong things. And yeah, this is the same one.
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If you want to find this, this is at iium .edu .my
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slash deed slash Hadeeth slash other slash Hadeeth Qudsi one word dot html.
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And it is number 36 in that one. So I've got two screens of this now, but I'll go to the one that's more directly in front of me.
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So Adam will say, I, I can't do this. I am not in a position to do that. He will mention his wrongdoing and will feel ashamed and will say, go to Noah for he is the first messenger the law sent to the inhabitants of the earth.
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So Noah is the first messenger. Adam is not a messenger. So Noah is the first messenger. So they will come to him and he will say,
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I am not in a position to do that. He will mention as having requested something of his Lord about which he had no proper knowledge.
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Which a reference is given to the Quran at that point, chapter 11 verses 45 through 46.
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And he will feel ashamed. We'll say, go to the friend of the merciful to Abraham. And so they will come to him and he will say,
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I am not in a position to do that. So what is each one of these people doing? They're saying, I am not, even though these are very important people, the first person of the human race, the first messenger that has been sent.
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Now to the very friend of God, Abraham. So they will come to him and he will say, I am not in a position to do that.
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Go to Moses, a servant to whom Allah talked and to whom he gave the Torah. So they will come to him and he will say,
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I am not in a position to do that. Now this is interesting because Moses did intercede for the people of Israel before God.
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And had a position of intercession. But Moses says,
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I am not in a position to do that. And he will mention the taking of a life other that for a life.
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And then a reference is given to Quran, Surah 28,
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Ayahs 15 and 16. And he will fell ashamed, it should be feel ashamed in the sight of his
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Lord and will say, go to Jesus. So Moses says, go to Jesus, Allah's servant and messenger,
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Allah's word and spirit. Now that's interesting because there is that very interesting text in the
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Quran where Jesus described as a word from Allah and his spirit which he cast into Mary.
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Now there is the orthodox interpretation is that Jesus isn't actually the word.
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But that it was at the word of Allah that Jesus was created. Allah just simply said be and Jesus came into existence.
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That really strikes me as a later explanation. Trying to explain something that the
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Quran itself does not explain. The text just isn't plain enough to actually explain what that is.
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And it strikes me as a later explanation. And here you have a Hadith Qudsi, identifying
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Jesus as Allah's servant and messenger, Allah's word and spirit. That's fairly exalted language.
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So they will come to him and he will say, now listen to this,
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I am not in a position to do that. Go to Muhammad. May the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him.
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A servant to whom Allah has forgiven all his wrongdoing, past and future. Now what's different?
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Adam mentioned his sin and Noah mentioned his sin and Moses mentioned his sin, but Jesus mentions
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Muhammad's sin. Isn't that interesting? He doesn't mention any sin of his own. All he says,
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I am not in a position to do that. Why? We're not told. We're not told. But when he says go to Muhammad, he mentions
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Muhammad's sins, but says that he has forgiven all his wrongdoing, past and future.
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Now, past and future is weird because this is at the Day of Judgment. So Muhammad's already dead, there couldn't be any more future sins, could there?
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But that's really, really interesting because this is Muhammad speaking, so maybe that's why he puts it in this context, is that he had at one point in his life received a promise from Allah of the forgiveness of all of his sins, which again takes me back to what
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Abdullah Kunda said during our debate last year in Sydney when he said that he didn't believe that Muhammad sinned.
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So why would there be a Hadith Qudsi specifically where Jesus makes reference to the sins of Muhammad but that they are forgiven if he has forgiven all his wrongdoing, past and future?
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So that's interesting. That's interesting as well. Now notice nothing is said as to why
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Jesus is not to do this. I would guess that the concept in the mindset of wherever this
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Hadith originated, obviously from the Islamic perspective, it originates with Muhammad himself, but there are a lot of us sitting on this side of,
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I'm going to have to come up with, there's really not any rivers near Mecca, so I'm going to need to come up with some valleys outside of Mecca.
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Find out where it is, what's the dividing line where non -Muslims are allowed to be outside of Mecca.
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That's what I need to find out. I need to get a map. Maybe somebody on the channel can do some quick research and find out what's the dividing line because when we talk about Rome, we're talking about being on the other side of the
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Tiber or something like that, so I need something like that for an illustration, an analogy such as this.
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Anyway, those of us sitting on that other side of the line, outside the
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Meccan, well you can't go into Medina either, so there's got to be sort of a, I don't know, some type of a dividing line there.
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Anyways, those of us on the outside looking in, not on the other side of the Persian Gulf, that's a little bit too big, no, but anyway, we don't just automatically go, ah, if it's in a hadith,
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Muhammad said it because we happen to recognize that Imam Bukhari and Muslim and others rejected literally thousands of hadith, thousands of hadith.
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And that means that there are fraudulent hadith, and just because you come up with a system and say, well, this is how you know it's real, that system does not exactly jive with most historical research, shall we put it that way.
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So just because it says it doesn't necessarily mean that that's necessarily what's going on here.
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So it sounds to me like whoever came up with this, if it was
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Muhammad or someone in the early generations, know that the Christians present
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Jesus as a mediator. Now there's no evidence that the author of the
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Quran had any idea what the New Testament teaches on the subject of Jesus' role as mediator, the basis of it, all the glory of the book of Hebrews, stuff like that.
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But as Islam would have had dialogue in those early generations with Christians, though there wasn't a whole lot of dialogue in the first century,
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I mean, you have the story of the meeting of the Christians from Najran with Muhammad, but all those stories come from the
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Muslim side. And what the Christians say isn't, if the Christians actually said that, then they weren't very good
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Christians. They weren't very knowledgeable Christians. And it's much more likely that what you have there is that the Christians are being represented as holding the same views as the
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Quran attributes to Christians, which are erroneous attributions. But anyway, it seems like in that early period, there would have been some encounters with Christians and Christians would have talked about Jesus as an intercessor.
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And so here, where Muhammad is being presented as the intercessor, when
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Jesus is mentioned, all he says is, I'm not in a position to do that. Go to Muhammad. He's been forgiven all his sins, but nothing is mentioned about Jesus' sins at all.
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So it goes on from there and says, they will come to me and I shall set forth to ask permission to come to my
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Lord and permission will be given. So Muhammad doesn't do what anybody else has said.
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Even though Muhammad has been forgiven of sins, as I guess was Noah and Abraham, they were forgiven sins, but for some reason they're mentioning of sin.
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And by the way, in the other versions of the story, some of them would say,
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I have never seen my Lord as angry as he is today. And because of my sins,
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I'm afraid as well. So I can't do this. Just go to somebody else. That's not in this version of this particular story, but that is in other versions of it.
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And so, if I recall correctly, and I'm going to have to look now that I think about this, because looking at this version, it doesn't have it in there.
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I'm going to have to see if I'm going to, yeah, you see the problem is I'm looking at the bottom of this. It was related by al -Bukhari, also by Muslim, At -Tirmidhi, and Ibn Majah.
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So this story is found in almost all of the accepted collections of Hadith.
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In fact, I wonder if Abdullah Kundu would consider this a mutawatir
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Hadith, a universally accepted Hadith. I wonder, because it's found in, if you find
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Bukhari, Muslim, At -Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, and it's a Hadith Qudsi. How can you question it,
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I wonder? I'm just going to have to remember, because I want to finish this chapter tonight.
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So this is one of the things I'm dealing with, is this particular one. I have to remember to find it in Bukhari and see if it's the
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Bukhari version. In fact, maybe, maybe someone in channel who just flooded the channel recently could find an online reference to the
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Bukhari version, because I think it's the Bukhari and Muslim version that has
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Noah saying, and my recollection is, I'm going off the top of my head here.
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Don't put up videos about how stupid I am, because I'm telling you I'm going off the top of my head here, and I bet you there's a lot of Muslims that couldn't go off the top of their head at this point on this particular issue.
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My recollection is that even Jesus says, I have never seen my Lord so angry. I know that Adam does, and I think
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Moses does, and stuff like that, but I think that even
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Jesus does in one of the versions of this story, and I'd be interested in looking at it. That would be helpful to find that.
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Anyway, that's not found in this particular version of the story.
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But, Muhammad says, I'll go straight to Allah, and He will give me permission to come before Him, and permission will be given, and when
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I shall see my Lord, I shall prostrate myself. He will leave me thus for such time as it pleases
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Him, and then it will be said to me, raise your head, ask and it will be granted, speak and it will be heard, intercede and your intercession will be accepted.
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So I shall raise my head and praise Him with a form of praise that He will teach me. And so there is some kind of type of worship that Muhammad will be taught.
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Now let me step aside for just a moment. It's so great to have an interactive bot and channel.
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Ours is named TurretinFam. And I made that request, and poof!
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It's just amazing. I didn't know that they could do this so well. But here is, and this is book number 60, hadith number 236 of Sahih al -Bukhari.
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And yes, this is the one that has all the stuff about anger. And Moses might say, my
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Lord has today become angry as He has never been before, nor will become thereafter. I killed a person whom
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I had not been ordered to kill, myself, myself, myself. Go to someone else. Go to Jesus. So they will go to Jesus and say,
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O Jesus, you are Allah's apostle and His word which He has sent to Mary and a superior soul created by Him. And you talk to the people while still young in the cradle.
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Please intercede for us with your Lord. Don't you see in what state we are?
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Jesus will say, my Lord has today become angry as He has never become before, nor will ever become hereafter.
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Jesus will not mention any sin, but will say, myself, myself, myself. Go to someone else.
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Go to Muhammad. So I was right. I remembered. I've been spending a little bit too much time with the hadith.
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I'm driving to church Sunday morning with my daughter and we're chatting about stuff.
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And I started telling her about something that happened in 632
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A .D. and she's just sitting there in the front seat looking like, wow, dad, that's really fascinating. I realized
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I'd probably been boring the poor girl all the way to church. I'm writing a book, folks.
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And everyone around here knows every time you walk into my office, what I'm doing. I'm writing. I've got when you see books stacked up in various states of disorder, some open with leather book holders holding them open to this page, that page and all the three stacked screens, three stacked 22 inch screens, one 23 inch screen and my laptop.
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So I've got four screens and it's all got all sorts of stuff there.
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What can I say? It's that's where my mind is.
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And so what was it? Oh, yeah. This morning I was trying to get into a safe, into my safe at the house.
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I couldn't remember what the combination was, but I can remember that in Sahih al -Bukhari, the story was
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Jesus says that my Lord's been angry, but it's not in the hadith Qudsi version. That's pretty bad. OK, I will admit that that's pretty bad, but I need to stay in this state not only till the book's done, but then for the debates, because that's a good state to be in for the debate.
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I just don't remember where I am when the debate's over and someone will have to lead me out of the car and and I will probably lose the hotel key and lose my passport and stuff like that.
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But I will do real well in the debates. I can just. All right.
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Anyhow, so we go back to the hadith Qudsi version rather than Bukhari version. Thank you, TurretinBot, TurretinFan, I'm sorry, for your interactive actions there.
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And so anyways. So in the other versions of the story, there's this anger and there's this fear.
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Muhammad doesn't say anything about the anger of Allah. And Muhammad doesn't say anything about his own sins.
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And he goes before Allah. And what I find really interesting. Is that he's promised that his intercession will be accepted and heard.
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But first, he has to be taught this. Form of praise that he will be taught that right now he doesn't know, but he'll know someday in the future.
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So once he then praises Allah in this way, then
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I shall intercede and he will set me a limit as to the number of people. So I shall admit them into paradise.
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So I shall admit them into paradise. That's what it says. Then I shall return to him and when
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I shall see my Lord, I shall bow down as before. Then I shall intercede and he will set me a limit as the number of people.
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So I shall admit them to paradise. So he does one group first. And they go into paradise.
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Then he goes back to Allah. And he does another group. Then I shall return for a third time.
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Then a fourth. And I shall say there remains in hellfire only those whom the Quran has confined and who must be there for eternity.
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Now, what is relevant here is that the people that he's admitting in the paradise are first in hell.
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Now, there are some Muslims that do not believe. That they will go into hellfire.
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Because, look, one of the toughest chapters that I still have to write is what does the
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Quran teach about salvation? Because I'm sorry, nobody knows. There are so many conflicting viewpoints expressed.
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There's stuff about the scales and those who have light scales and those who have heavy scales.
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But the problem is the vast majority of understandings of Muslims on this subject are not derived from the
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Quran, they're derived from the Hadith. And the Hadith tells different stories about the subject.
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And it's all a matter of to whom do you give the most weight?
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One scholar who strings together these Hadith, another scholar strings together those Hadith, and you have one slight difference between the version this guy accepts and what he strings up together with and a difference from what that guy accepts.
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And you end up with very different conclusions. And Muslims argue about these things all the time.
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All the time. But the arguments are different than what you hear on this program when
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I argue with Armenians. Why? Because the arguments are not based primarily upon the exegesis of the Quran at all.
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They're primarily based upon, well, my scholar, my Hadith scholar says that if you interpret this
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Hadith this way, then it sheds this light upon this Quranic text. And therefore, here's the conclusion.
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It's very, very different. It's much, much more like what you hear in Jewish argumentation amongst the rabbis.
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This rabbi said this and he interpreted this to say that. Except there's even one more level of complication, and that is at least the rabbis are normally talking about a scriptural text.
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It's sort of like the later rabbis who are talking about interpreting either the Mishnah or the
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Talmud, except now it's the Hadith that is in the way. So there you go.
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And so it's extremely difficult to answer the questions because there are some
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Muslims say we're not going to go into hellfire, there's this thing about the bridge that some people cross very, very quickly and other people cross slowly.
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And the only way across the bridge is if you have Iman, if you have faith and some people have more faith and other people have faith.
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But is that a bridge that goes over hell? Does it go through hell? I mean, there is no consistent answer to these questions in the
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Hadith. That's the problem. That's why I said when you talk about, you know, can the
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Muslims defeat the radicals in regards to the use of terror tactics and killing innocent people and things like that?
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My concern is no, because the tools at their people who oppose them, yeah, but the tools that they're using to do the fighting and the arguing and the debating can be interpreted in so many different ways.
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In so many different ways. That's the problem. So anyway, it looks like in this one you have four times where Muhammad goes and evidently the idea would be the first people that get out of paradise the quickest are those who have the most
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Iman. All of these people, when you look at, well, here, let me finish the rest of what says here.
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There remains in hellfire only those whom the Qur 'an is confined and who must be there for eternity.
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There shall come out of hellfire he who has said la ilaha illallah, there is no god but Allah and who has in his heart goodness weighing a barley corn.
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Then there shall come out of hellfire he who has said there is no god but Allah and who has in his heart goodness weighing a grain of wheat.
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Then there shall come out of hellfire he who has said there is no god but Allah and who has in his heart goodness weighing an atom.
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So there's Hadith Qudsi 36 and it's teaching.
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And so what do you what do you have there? Is if there is in the heart of man goodness weighing an atom and they said the
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Shahada, they've made the profession of faith. Who gets out of the hellfire?
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Only those who say there is no god but Allah. So the
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Shahada is absolutely vital. Has to be said. Evidently, according to this, everyone else is, the
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Qur 'an has confined them there for eternity because they have not said the
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Shahada. But even then, evidently, I mean the only way
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I can interpret this last section is who has in his heart goodness weighing barley corn then grain of wheat.
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Well evidently barley corn weighs more than a grain of wheat. And then the last one is weighing an atom.
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The point is there has to be some goodness in the heart. Now from a
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Christian perspective we go, that's mission impossible salvation right there because there ain't no such thing.
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That's one of the major differences but from the Islamic perspective there has to be at least the goodness weighing an atom combined with the
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Shahada results in being removed from the fire.
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But the next question is, is there almost a concept of purgatory here?
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Because think about it, if you're in the first group you get out before others. What's the difference? Well again if we combine this with the concept of the
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Sirat, this bridge that crosses over the hellfire.
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There are some people who cross the Sirat very quickly because they have great Iman and Iman, the
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Iman gives them light and so they can see the bridge and even though the bridge is razor -thin they can get across it because they have much light because they had much
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Iman, they had much faith. But other people have to crawl across because they have little
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Iman and therefore they have little light and they don't want to fall off into the hellfire. In the same way, you have these people and if you're in the first group that gets to go into paradise, due to Muhammad's intercession for you and there's a fixed number that is given to him by Allah, wouldn't you be the ones that had the most
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Iman? That had the most goodness in the heart? That would seem to be the logical conclusion of that thinking.
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It's not said directly, but it would seem that that is the concept that is there.
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So you have Muhammad's intercession as being absolutely necessary because we are not told, in this story anyways, of anyone who goes into paradise without Muhammad's intercession.
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Now think about that. So here you have in one story, Jesus denying that it's his position to intercede.
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Muhammad accepting mankind's call for his intercession and succeeding at it in removing everyone from the hellfire, who has said the
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Shahada, who has said there is no God but Allah, and has in his heart even an atom of goodness.
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Does that leave the possibility that there are people who have said the Shahada, who have not even an atom of goodness in the heart?
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I would think so. I would think that it would leave that open. And yes, that is right.
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It does remind us of stories in the journal Discourses, where, now we're going to really lose everybody at that point, but in Mormonism, where Joseph Smith is exalted, but notice that wasn't
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Smith that taught that. That came immediately after Smith by the people who were attempting to say, we have his authority.
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The people who are attempting to say, the second -generation people will often exalt the first -generation people as a means of exalting their own authority, and this is what happens in the people claiming to be the true followers of Joseph Smith in Mormonism, and therefore saying that Joseph Smith holds the keys, this dispensation, etc.,
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etc., etc., found in the journal Discourses, and that's why I say this story strikes me as being second -generational as well.
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It has the same kind of language and thinking behind it.
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That certainly strikes me in that way. But it raises all sorts of issues. It raises all sorts of issues.
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For the Christian, as we listen to this, I would suggest, I'm going to try to remember, remind me to do this, maybe
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Turgeon Fankin reminded me to do this, stuff like that. I'm going to try to link to this story, to a couple of versions of the story anyways, when
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I post the information on this particular dividing line. So you can read it for yourself, you can read a couple of versions of it for yourself.
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And I would suggest, obviously, you know, a lot of people come up to me and they say, how can
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I witness to Muslims? You know, where can I go? And there's a million places to go.
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I mean, you know, I always have said that you want to...
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Turgeon Fankin changes his nick to Tur -Siri. You don't have an iPhone, you don't know who Siri is, but I don't have an iPhone, but I know who
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Siri is. So I've just placed a reminder in my version of Siri, which is
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Tur -Siri. Anyway, I like to tell people, look, you need to get a
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Muslim to be reading Jesus's words in the Gospels, because very often they've not read the Gospels. But there's a lot of ways to get there.
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Many, many ways to get there. You just need to be open to the spirits leading and open to rejecting fear in talking to the
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Muslim about these things. But this would be a good story to know. You know why? Because 99 .99
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% of all Muslims have never talked to a Christian who has ever read or would know what
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Hadith Qudsi means. I mean, a lot of Muslims you talk to aren't going to be sure what
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Hadith Qudsi means, but a lot of them would. And I know in my conversations, you know,
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I told you all about what happened when I flew back from Cincinnati. I know that the reason that I had those opportunities of witness is because the
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Muslim was like, you've read the Quran, and you're reading through Sahih al -Bukhari, and you know what we believe about that.
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And it gives you an opportunity. Look, if you were talking to a Muslim who has read the
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Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, they've got your attention. They've got an opportunity to talk to you.
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It works the other way as well. And especially this story gives you so many different avenues to pursue.
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Once you've talked about it, you can go so many different directions. They can be very, very fruitful.
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The part that sticks with me in this is back in the beginning of the point of Jesus talking about Muhammad's sin.
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Yeah. And then you contrast that against Abdullah Kunda's denial that Muhammad had sinned.
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Right. How far can you go with this given the reaction that many
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Muslims have if you just put what some, if you just put this as Muhammad underneath the picture of anything?
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Is this a potential issue where if you start charging Muhammad with being sinful that you're going to have a reaction not so pleasant?
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Well, I mean, if you're just mentioning, I mean, the way I would do it is I would say that in every version of the story that I have read, what is explicitly stated in the
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Sahih al -Bukhari, which is Book 60, Hadith number 236, is repeated. And in fact,
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I guess it's also in Book 82, Hadith 817. Oh, wait a minute.
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Take that back. That other one's irrelevant. Drop that one. It's only in Book 60, Hadith 236, at least in this form.
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All of them that I have seen make reference to the fact that nothing is said about Jesus' sin.
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Now, it's explicitly stated in Bukhari's version where he specifically says that Jesus will not mention any sin but will say.
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Now, in the Bukhari version, there's no reference to Muhammad's sin, but there is in a Hadith Qudsi version. So, as long as you are actually making reference to the
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Islamic source, I can't see how there'd be an issue that would be raised.
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The issue would be to ask, I mean, again, you could use this and say, now, it's interesting.
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Have you ever thought, are you familiar with that story? This is what I would ask. Are you familiar with that story? Have you heard that story? A lot of Muslims will say yes, because this is a widespread early story, and it might even be mutawatir.
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I'm not sure. I'd like to find out if it is. But to ask, have you ever noticed that nothing is said about Jesus' sin?
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There is a mention in the Hadith Qudsi 36. Jesus mentions the forgiveness of Muhammad's sins, but no mention of his own.
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So, why wouldn't Jesus be in a position to intercede in light of the wrath of Allah, because Jesus has no sins for Allah's wrath to go against.
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And that would then give you the perfect opportunity of transitioning into a presentation of what the
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Bible says about Jesus as an intercessor. In fact, what you'd want to do, what you'd really want to do, is you would want to memorize maybe some sections from Hebrews 7,
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Hebrews 9, have them available, and say, hey, you know, in the very first generations after Jesus, in the very first generation after Jesus, this took place.
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And we have this writing, and here's what the followers of Jesus taught, and this is how they understood that Jesus is the only intercessor between God and man.
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And so you could go that direction if you want to. So, in other words, you're not necessarily trying to say,
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Muhammad's a sinner, and therefore you shouldn't believe in him, or something like that. You're not even really going there.
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You're just repeating what the text itself is saying. However, it does strike me, as you describe that, and you start off with pointing out, hey, are you familiar with this particular text, in this particular place, this
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Hadith Qudsi? Kind of important to make sure that you get that right, instead of Hadith 20 -whatever, you know, just throwing a number out.
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In other words, you're specifically bringing them to a place of familiarity rather than just throwing out a number. Well, you know, honestly,
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I don't think, I cannot imagine a Muslim that I might meet, let's put this into real life, on a plane, on the tube in London.
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I would have, it would be very unusual for a Muslim to be offended if I said, you know,
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I don't remember the number, but it's one of the Hadith Qudsi, and I know it's in Sahih al -Bukhari and in Sahih Muslim as well.
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For most of them, unless they've never heard the story before, that's going to be more than enough. Especially when you start telling the story, if you accurately tell the story.
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There you go, oh yeah, I've heard that before. And the vast majority of them know that they don't remember what the numbers were, that very rarely are you going to encounter a
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Muslim that goes, yes, that's in Sahih al -Bukhari, such and such reference. That's pretty unusual for someone to know that, and so I don't think that would be an issue at all, as long as you are accurately retelling the story.
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And then choosing where you want to go from that point into a gospel presentation.
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But it opens the door, because you've taken the time to know something about their beliefs.
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There's a number of Hadith stories like this. There's a number of Hadith stories like this. This one seems to me to have just so many avenues that you could then take into a gospel presentation that that would be a really good one to use.
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One of the others is one that I've talked about before, and since I'm obviously not getting to anything else today, and we only have 12 minutes left in the program,
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I might as well go with this one too. And we'll make this a, how you might want to witness to your
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Muslim friend on the bus program. Wasn't what I was intending to do today, but it works.
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Another story from the Hadith that would be extremely useful is the story about the man who killed 99 people.
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And I mentioned this one. I know I've told it before, so some of you who listen very constantly, like Algo has this one memorized.
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He can probably tell you exactly what day I first mentioned this, and how many times I've mentioned it, and all the rest of that stuff.
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But other people do not listen to the dividing line quite as faithfully as Algo does.
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But this is a story that I had told on the program,
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I had told in seminars, long before I ever engaged in the debate on Long Island with Sheikh Imam, largest mosque, what?
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Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was, that was, no, no, no. Shamsi Ali.
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That's right, Shamsi Ali. And we did a radio program together with Chris Arnzen before the debate.
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And I was amazed when Shamsi Ali began telling this story.
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Which, by the way, TursiriBot, in -channel, just posted in -channel, as I believe,
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I didn't see whether that was mentioned as whether it was Bukhari, or Muslim, or who it is.
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I'm going to assume Bukhari, because that was the reference he brought up before. Book 56,
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Hadith number 676. We can confirm that here within the next 30 seconds, that it's
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Bukhari and not Muslim, or Termite, or anybody else. But I'll go ahead and read it here, since I was just going to narrate it, but now
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I'll read it. Narrated Abu Sa 'id al -Qudri, the Prophet said, amongst the men of Bani Israel, there was a man who had murdered 99 persons.
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Then he set out asking whether his repentance could be accepted or not. He came upon a monk and asked him if his repentance could be accepted.
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The monk replied in the negative. And so the man killed him. He kept on asking until a man advised him to go to such and such a village. So he left for it, but death overtook him on the way.
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While dying, he turned his chest towards that village where he had hoped his repentance would be accepted. And so the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment quarreled amongst themselves regarding him.
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Allah ordered the village towards which he was going to come closer to him, and ordered the village whence he had come to go far away.
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And when he ordered the angels to measure the distance between his body and the two villages, so he was found to be one span closer to the village he was going to, so he was forgiven.
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And that is Sahih al -Bukhari, Book 56, Hadith number 676. That's a fairly short version of it.
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The slightly longer version, I use it to explain to folks the fact that, you know, when a person dies, in Islamic thought, in much of Islamic thought, an angel comes from heaven, an angel comes from punishment, from hell, the fire, and they argue over the soul.
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And of course, in this particular instance, the angel from hell had a much better argument. This man's killed 100 people.
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He had killed 99, then he killed the monk, then he talked to the scholar, the scholar said, go to such and such a village, they'll tell you what to do.
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I often make a little bit of a joke, saying I'm not sure if the scholar knew about the monk or not, but that's maybe that's why he sent him to the village to get the answer to the question.
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That always gets a little bit of a chuckle, you know. You put it in context. And then some of the versions of this story,
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Allah actually appears in the form of a man and says, measure the distance.
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Some of the stories mention that he makes the earth get smaller and some mention, some don't mention it.
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Again, almost all these Hadith stories have numerous versions with slight differences between them.
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Which, by the way, just in passing, is actually an argument for the authenticity of some of these.
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Because if someone had made them up later on, you would think that they would be pretty much the same.
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By the way, that is relevant, a little factoid for you.
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When you have a Hadith that appears in both Bukhari and Muslim, there's actually a specific phrase for that.
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Boy, this is weird. I heard that phrase in Texas Canyon driving east in my car during a lecture by Sheikh Yasir Qadhi.
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I don't remember what the phrase was, but I remember that there's a specific phrase for Hadith that are found in both
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Bukhari and Muslim. And it is in reference to the fact that it's even stronger when it's only found in one.
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For example, there's three Hadith right around that same area in Sahih Muslim that talk about a
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Christian and a Jew being given in the place of each Muslim for their sins.
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But that is not found in Bukhari. And so some people have argued that that means it is a less sound transmission because it's found in Muslim but not found in Bukhari.
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Anyway, a little bit of information for you there. Here you have a man who is forgiven, who is a mass murderer.
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And it wasn't that he was actually closer to the village he was coming from. Allah rigged the judgment.
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He made the earth shrink. So he's one span closer. Now, Shamsi Ali's application was, as long as a person desires forgiveness, they will find
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Allah to be forgiving. Well, that's a nice message, except for one thing.
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From the Christian perspective, it's one thing to be inquiring about repentance.
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But upon what basis does
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God's law against murder find any type of fulfillment in this forgiveness of this man?
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There is a need. And so that's where I would go. I would use that as a story that, again, might resonate with that person.
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They might be familiar with it. They may have heard one of their imams tell the story, even if they've never read it, even if they didn't have a turret and bot to turn to.
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And notice, he's correct. In the version in Muslim, this is why
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I say there's no consistency here. In the version in Muslim, the angels of mercy said, the man has come as a penitent and remorseful to Allah.
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And the angels of punishment said, he has done no good at all. Then there came another angel in the form of a human being in order to decide between them.
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He said, you measure the land to which he is drawn near. They measured and found him near the land where he intended to go, the land of piety.
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And so the angels of mercy took possession of it. And also tell us that Qatada said that Hassan told him that it was said to them that as death approached him, he crawled upon his chest and managed to slip in the land of mercy.
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The point is, he's got no good at all. But I thought that other hadith could see, we said you had to have at least that Adam.
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And there's nothing here that says that this man ever said the Shahada. So this is what
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I mean by saying you've got this vast body of material.
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And here was an imam of a large mosque of our day quoting this as the ultimate example.
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But I know all sorts of imams that would never quote this as the ultimate example. Or if they did, they would put it underneath another story in authority.
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And it's just it's a huge jigsaw puzzle. You can put together a number of different ways. That's the problem.
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That's the problem. But again, we can use these as a methodology to opening up a presentation of the gospel.
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I'm not talking about the camel method, you know, or using the Quran or something like that. I'm talking about demonstrating you've taken the time to learn something about what they believe.
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And it talks about these things. It talks about intercession. It talks about salvation. And then using that as a means of going, did you know what the
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Bible says about that? Or do you know what the book of Hebrews says about that? Or do you know what the very first Christians said about that?
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Because in 99 plus percent of the Muslims you're going to be talking to, the answer is no,
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I don't. And especially when you're talking about things like this, about intercession, about sin, folks, here's the connection.
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They are made in the image of God, just like you and I. See, there is the connection point, whether you're talking about a
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Muslim, an atheist, a Buddhist, and that's where the spirit of God can make application and bring the gospel to bear.
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Vitally, vitally important that you keep that kind of thing in mind and that you open up the door to where the spirit of God can utilize this kind of information and then you can bring the word of God to bear.
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And it's the word of God, together with the spirit of God, that brings salvation.
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You don't have to trick them. You don't have to play games. Go to what's important.
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Go to the fact that we have an intercessor who is in the very presence of the Father. Talk about your union with him, his perfect death on your behalf.
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You see, it's really not that difficult to do if we will just get over the fear that so many believers have of being able to do so.
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Well, I did not expect the program to go that direction today, but you know, I should have. I should have expected it to go that way because, well, that's what
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I'm working on right now. Continue to pray for the book, the upcoming debates. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line.
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God bless. We need a new reformation day.
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The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:31
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:36
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's a -o -m -i -n .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.