Is Muhammad Prophesied in the Bible?, Part 1

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Our second debate this evening is not asking whether Jesus Christ is prophesied in the Bible. The format will be the same as it was on the first half of the debate. We will have 20 minutes for opening statements, 15 minutes for rebuttals, 10 minutes each for cross-examination, and then seven and a half minutes for final statements.

I understand the time is moving on. It'll probably be getting on towards midnight by the time we finish. There will be opportunities when we have to do tape changes again if you need to leave to get home to do so.

The debates will be viewable on YouTube, so I hope if you do have to leave early that you will ensure you catch the rest of the debate. That's enough from me. Let's hand back to James White and Shabir Ali is going to begin our talk this evening.

Whether the Bible Predicts Muhammad at a Surface Level

And now, folks, for this part of the engagement, the question before me is, does the Bible predict the coming of Muhammad? And as I did with the previous segment, my answer again would have to be yes and no.

Let me deal with the no part first, since James says we can deal with a little bit of negativity tonight. Well, for the no part, certainly if one were to take the surface meaning of the Bible, one would have to say it doesn't speak about the coming of Muhammad or of anyone for that matter.

That it doesn't speak about Jesus, it doesn't speak about Muhammad. Things just happen as they are and there are no such predictions. Especially when we come to think of the Prophet Muhammad on whom be peace, if one were to approach the question from a Christian perspective, one would find that the two Testaments seem to be married to each other.

The New Testament fulfills the old. There is nothing more to come after the New Testament. The book of Revelation seems to indicate that this is a closed document. Nothing is to be added to it after this.

We seem to understand from the New Testament, especially the book of Hebrews, that the revelation from God used to come to the prophets over time and finally God chose to reveal his son. So no more prophets, now the son of God has come, the party is over.

Or the party now begins, depending on how you look at it. So there's no room for the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims have traditionally used Deuteronomy 18 verse 18 as a prediction of the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, but it might seem that this is a prophecy about an Israelite prophet.

How could the Prophet Muhammad fit that? Muslims have said that the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the paraclete was to come as a reference to the Prophet Muhammad, but John chapter 14 verse 26 clearly says the paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

That doesn't seem to sound like the Prophet Muhammad on whom be peace. So then on that surface level, we'd have to say the answer is no. Moreover, when we look at the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Christians will find that many of his teachings are quite contrary to the core teachings of Christianity.

Christians affirm that Jesus is the divine son of God, Muslims say no. Christians say that Jesus died for the sins of the world, Muslims say no, and they claim to get these teachings from the Prophet Muhammad.

And so naturally a Christian might be inclined to say that the answer is definitely no. But then if you go to the yes part of my answer, then one of the things I would point out very quickly is that we've already dealt with Deuteronomy chapter 18 verse 18, and we've explained why the biblical writers insisted that the Prophet or whoever the Prophet is to come, whether one prophet or a series of prophets, this must be Israelite prophets only.

Why should we exclude others from the grace of God? Moreover, James had previously said that the brethren of the Israelites must only be from among the Israelite tribes. But it is possible in the Bible itself to understand that the descendants of two great patriarchs are brethren of each other.

The book of Deuteronomy itself shows that the brethren of the Israelites include the Edomites, who are the descendants of Esau. So if the Israelites are descendants of Jacob and the Edomites are descendants of Esau, the one is the brethren of the other, we might say they're close cousins.

By a similar logic, it seems to me that we can also argue, though it would be a weaker argument, to say if we go one patriarch higher between Isaac and Ishmael, the descendants of one are the brethren of the other.

And so the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, technically does not qualify even on that score. But the greater share of my argument, I would insist, is that the emphasis on the Israelites, that this God is the God of the Israelites, this is the God of the Hebrews, and the Prophet must come from the Israelites, should be understood in the light of those stories that I spoke about when we refer to the birth of Tamar's two sons.

Do children really get born in that way? Do these kids just rush out? Or should we agree with Jamie Foxx in the movie The Kingdom, where he says actually we had to go in there and get him out, because his son wasn't going to be born very soon.

We refused to come out, he said. What about the story of Jacob and Esau? Again, we see that the births of babies do not happen like that. You don't have the midwife pulling out one baby, and another one comes out clutching on the heels of the other one, like you're pulling monkeys out of a barrel.

They just don't get born that way. But the story came to be told this way because the Israelites wanted to promote their own race, their own people, over and above others, especially the Ishmaelites. And so we have a story constructed about the son of Abraham, Ishmael, though he was the firstborn son, but there was every attempt made to exclude him from the covenant.

Why? My first point, then, is that God actually made a promise to Abraham that continued with Ishmael. God promised Ishmael that Ishmael will be a great nation. Now, if God promises any believing person that he will be a great nation, you will have many descendants.

Do you understand that to mean that you're going to have descendants who turn away from God, who are absent from and cut off from the guidance of God? Which Christian or Jew, whether Abraham or anyone else, would understand that the blessing from God should mean that he will have numerous descendants who worship the devil or worship some false deity?

Naturally, the promise should have been understood as a promise that not only there will be many descendants, but that the guidance of God will also be with those descendants. This is how I would understand that promise.

And when we look at it this way, we see that the promise, in fact, was fulfilled. The Qomash, a Jewish commentary on the Bible, looking at the promises of Ishmael, actually confirms in its footnoting that that promise was fulfilled with the birth of Islam.

Similarly, I debated Dr. Ali Sharoosh not too long ago in Glasgow, and in his book, Islam Revealed, though he's a Christian, he has actually admitted that the Prophet Muhammad is a descendant of Ishmael, and the promise of God to Ishmael was fulfilled with the birth of Islam.

And of course, we know that the birth of Islam was due to the preaching of the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace. So it wasn't a promise that God would mislead the Ishmaelites. It was a promise that God would bless the Ishmaelites.

Moses, John the Baptist, and the Paraclete as Prophecies of Muhammad

So then my second point I would like to make is that this prophet who was to be like Moses definitely could have been, or could include, the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace as well. That string of prophets who's to come after Moses, with God promising, look, Moses is going away, but I'm going to send you a series of prophets.

It shouldn't be just simply one line of prophets only confined to the people of Israel, but it should be universal. My third argument dealing with, or trying to show that the Prophet Muhammad was prophesied, actually, must be explained in some detail.

Because it's difficult to explain something, but it's more difficult to unexplain something when we think we already know something. So we all know that John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ, and we all know that Jesus is greater than John the Baptist, and I think Muslims themselves would have no difficulty in thinking that Jesus was greater than John the Baptist.

But if we are looking, without assuming ahead of time that Muhammad is the Prophet of God and the Messenger of God, without assuming ahead of time that Islam is true, looking at the Bible and asking, does the Bible actually predict the coming of the Prophet Muhammad on whom be peace?

Now we must look at it with fresh eyes. And so Muslims would have to suspend for a moment their idea that Jesus is somehow greater than John the Baptist. By the way, there's nothing firm in the Islamic faith that would definitively prove that Jesus is greater than John the Baptist, though Muslims would generally accept that on principle.

But let's think about it. John the Baptist, according to the Gospels, spoke of someone coming after him who would be greater than him, greater than John the Baptist. So much greater that John the Baptist does not feel worthy to stoop down and untie his shoelaces.

And we all know from the New Testament that that greater than John the Baptist turned out to be Jesus. But is it possible that what we know is actually contrived? Many biblical scholars, such as James Keith Elliott in his book Questioning Christian Origins, and many of the biblical commentaries, some of which I've referred to earlier today, actually tell us that the Gospel writers felt challenged by the followers of John the Baptist.

It appears that while John the Baptist was baptizing and gaining followers, Jesus was also baptizing and gaining followers. And the followers of one competed with the followers of the other to find out who's going to get more followers.

And just as the stories of the Old Testament were written by the Israelites, now the stories of the New Testament are written by the followers of Jesus, not the followers of John the Baptist. And so naturally, occasion after occasion, they have refashioned the stories to make it appear that Jesus is the one who is superior to John the Baptist.

So Jesus comes and goes up to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist is baptizing for the forgiveness of sins, as is very clear from Mark's Gospel. But the question for Christian minds at the time when the Gospels were being circulated orally and then eventually put into writing is, why should the Son of God, who is sinless, go to John the Baptist to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins?

So Matthew gives us the answer, let it be so for now, so that all formalities should be fulfilled. It's only a formality, it's not a reality. But biblical commentators, such as the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, for example, Raymond Brown in his two-volume work on the Gospel according to John, admit that, in fact, this is contrived.

The Gospel writers have so refashioned the story to make it appear that it must be so for now, because that's known. You cannot get rid of the fact that Ishmael is the firstborn, that Esau is the firstborn, that the firstborn son of Tamar was the one who stuck his hand out and got the scarlet thread around his wrist.

But you have to now deal with that as a problem. So the Israelites dealt with it by having the stories about the way in which the boys were born. The New Testament writers have the stories about the encounter between John and Jesus.

So John's Gospel has it that John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And that was a public declaration right from the start of the ministry. John chapter 1, verse 29, where do you go from there?

Now everybody knows that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How then do you explain the synoptic Gospels which show that people are still guessing who is Jesus? Maybe he is John the Baptist, maybe he's Elijah, maybe he's one of the prophets of old.

People don't know who he is. John the Baptist himself doesn't seem to know who Jesus is. Matthew chapter 11 has it that John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?

So then it is quite clear that the one that John the Baptist spoke about to come after himself who would be greater than John the Baptist is not Jesus. More than this, we have it in Matthew chapter 11, and the logic is very firm here, that Jesus himself says that there is none who has been born of women who is greater than John the Baptist.

And a commentator who consulted on this says there is none born so far of women who is greater than John the Baptist. Now the New Testament Gospels and the letters insist that Jesus was born of a woman.

So he's one of those born of a woman, and yet there is none who has been born of a woman who is greater than John the Baptist. But then a clarification is offered. When you look at form criticism, for example if you study Daniel Harrington's book Key to the Bible volume 3, then you understand how stories get formed and reshaped.

First there is an affirmation. Somebody has a problem with that, and then they tack on a commentary on it, and they come together to form a unit. Because people respect the affirmation as the already existing text, even though it is being circulated orally, they do not change that, but they just tack on something underneath it.

So what's tacked on underneath this affirmation that Jesus says that John the Baptist is the greatest of all of those born of women is now the clarification, but even the least of those in the kingdom of God are greater than he.

So this would have to mean, I suppose, that every Christian, if you have higher ranking Christians and low ranking ones, even the lowest ranking Christian should be greater than John the Baptist. Could it mean that?

Do Christians admit that this is what it means? I don't believe so. I don't believe that Christians are proud people. We are all humble individuals as believers in God. We don't claim to be greater than others, even if we were.

But how could we be? And by the way, isn't John the Baptist himself also in the kingdom of God whenever that appears and how it will be? So if John the Baptist is also in the kingdom of God, how could someone who is least in the kingdom of God be greater than John the Baptist?

The logic doesn't measure up. But you can see that there is a problem, and there's a way of dealing with the problem, and the way of dealing with the problem is not convincing. So the scholars admit that the problem is there.

They admit that John the Baptist spoke of someone greater than himself to come after him and that someone was not Jesus, but the writers refashioned the stories to make it appear that the someone is in fact Jesus.

Finally, the paraclete of John's gospel. We all know that the paraclete is the Holy Spirit. Just read John chapter 14, verse 26. But also read the commentaries, such as Raymond Brown's massive two-volume commentary.

Here they are. Now, size doesn't matter. What matters is the quality of the information and the scholarly work that has gone into this. Raymond Brown has actually shown that many biblical scholars question the identification of the Holy Spirit as the paraclete.

Let me see if I can find you his citations very quickly. If I cannot, then I will just have to summarize. I do have it somewhere.

That's why you need a map. Yeah, that's right. I have all of them.

I'll sit right there. Okay. So Raymond Brown writes in his two-volume commentary, Christian tradition has identified this figure with the Holy Spirit, but scholars like Spida, Delafosse, Windisch, Sass, Bultmann, and Betts have doubted whether this identification is true to the original picture and have suggested that the paraclete was once an independent, salvific figure, later confused with the Holy Spirit.

Page 1135 of his second volume. That's in the Anchor Bible series, volume 29a. Now, how could biblical scholars be so stupid? Do they not see that it says the Holy Spirit? Well, they see more than we see.

The old Syriac Sinaiticus manuscript of the Bible shows that the Holy Spirit there is absent. Like, it says Spirit, but not the Holy. Bruce Metzger, in his work, The New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, with reference to John chapter 7, verse 39, says that the Holy, in reference to the Spirit, is the most natural sort of addition that scribes have made in the text.

In this particular place, C .K. Barrett, in his commentary on John's Gospel, says that it may be the original reading without the Holy, in which case he just simply says the Spirit. Moreover, scholars like Windisch have actually written that the paraclete saves, the five of them which occur in the Gospel according to John, in chapters 14, 15, and 16, are later insertions into the Gospel according to John.

He argues that if you were to take those statements out about the paraclete, you would find that the Gospel according to John reads more smoothly than it does now. The Gospel according to John, in these chapters, speak about Jesus coming back a second time.

And it does not seem that you need the paraclete for Jesus to do that. In Matthew's Gospel, by comparison, Jesus says, I am with you always till the end of time. You don't need the paraclete for that.

If Jesus is always with you, what do you need the paraclete for? If the paraclete is the Holy Spirit. But now, there were factors at work that caused the Gospel according to John, or its writers, or its later redactors and editors, to insert these paraclete passages.

Which means that they existed once before the Gospel was composed, and there were some pressing reasons for including them now. Raymond Brown, in his two-volume work, actually explains to us the reasoning that led the editor to finally include the paraclete sayings in the Gospel according to John.

He gives two major reasons. He says that the apostles and eyewitnesses of the ministry of Jesus were passing away one after another. And there was a need in the Christian community to have a sense that we have the true and original teachings verified by divinity.

Not by eyewitnesses because they're no longer here. The paraclete fulfilled that particular requirement. Second, he explains in detail that there are many indications that the coming of Jesus was expected very shortly, and that did not occur.

When it did not occur, the paraclete fulfilled the need of the Christian community to have a sense that Jesus has occurred. So John then took sayings that spoke about the coming of the Holy Spirit and refashioned them to speak about the paraclete and coined a new term, the paraclete, in order to refer to this unique manner in which the Holy Spirit is going to come into believers.

But this is where I disagree with Raymond Brown. Why would John coin the term paraclete, which becomes such a confusing term? If one looks at the commentaries, generally the commentaries on the Bible proceed verse by verse.

Suddenly, in many of the major commentaries, there is a break or there is an appendix to deal with this question of how do you explain the paraclete? Nobody knows how exactly to translate it. Many propose we just simply leave the word paraclete as it is.

There's no suitable translation. But then, why would John coin such a problematic term? I more agree with Windisch, who says that the term paraclete already existed in these sayings. And for some reason, John then included these paraclete sayings in his gospel.

Now, if those paraclete sayings are to be examined carefully, especially the last of them, in John chapter 16, verses 12 and forward, one will find that, in fact, this paraclete is really a reference to a prophet, one who is going to come after Jesus and he is going to speak what he hears.

One can then look at the statements that follow it and seem to indicate, again, the spirit. But De La Fosse has shown that not only the term the Holy Spirit was inserted in John chapter 14, verse 26, but also in all of those passages that deal with the paraclete, there are little additions that seem to indicate, again, it looks like you're talking about a human being, but wait a minute, it is the Holy Spirit who lives in you and dwells in you, whom the world does not see, and so on.

So, De La Fosse would have us remove all of those passages again to get to the original paraclete sayings, which to me refer to a prophet. Thank you.

Quranic Claims and the Need to Find Muhammad in the Bible

Well, there you have a presentation concerning Muhammad in the Bible. Now, what we didn't hear, interestingly enough, was the Quranic statements that say that we have to find Muhammad in the Bible. For example, in Surah 7, verse 157, those who follow the apostle, the unlettered prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own scriptures in the law and the gospel.

Now, let me just tell you something right off the start. Raymond Brown wasn't around in the days of the Quran. There was no form criticism. There was no redaction criticism. There was no naturalistic materialism to provide that way.

The Quran says that they find mentioned in their own scriptures in the law and the gospel. And that's the standard that we have to look at this evening. Let's start with the last that Shabir presented.

That is, Muhammad as the paracletas, the paraclete. The majority of Islamic poets assert that the text of John's gospel has been corrupted. So, at the current reading, paracletas is supposed to be another term, normally periclutas.

There is, of course, no evidence of such an alteration. And I am very thankful that Shabir does not make that presentation, despite the fact that it has become extremely popularized by people like Ahmed Didat.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of such a corruption. In fact, it is particularly problematic for Muslims to attempt to allege textual corruption in John. For it is the earliest attested book in the New Testament.

This is true whether one tries to allege textual corruption, such as whether paraclete was a different word. Or, what we just heard, some kind of theoretical compilation of the text, later editors, so on and so forth.

Remember, the Gospel of John is the earliest attested, no later than A .D. 125 in manuscript P52, which you are seeing on the screen right now. And, in fact, we may have manuscripts that even go earlier than that, and they are of the Gospel of John.

There is no question as to the identity of the Comforter in the Gospel of John. There is a consistent theme of identifying the Comforter as the Holy Spirit, the one who will take Jesus' place in the Ascension back to the Father.

Though the majority of the information about the Comforter is found in John 14 -16, elsewhere in John, the Spirit plays a very vital role. That is why Shabir Ali attempts to cut the Gospel into pieces.

You just heard him using Raymond Brown, and you have these earlier texts, and later texts, and redactors, and forum criticism, and all these things. There is not a single shred of documented evidence anywhere in the world that supports any of those theories.

Not a one. And I remind you, there's all sorts of theories like that about the Quran, too. All the Orientalists say, well, this was added here, and this was added there, and you Muslims say, show us some evidence!

Well, that's what I'm going to be saying this evening. Show us some evidence. There is no physical evidence that John 15 -17 is to be separated from the rest of the Gospel of John. Speculative theories abound in liberal scholarship about how John wrote the Gospel, just as speculative theories abound in Oriental scholarship about how the Quran was written.

Multiple authors, redactions, and surahs, especially al-Baqarah, etc. But speculation without physical evidence is not solid grounds for debate. The Gospel witness to the Paraclete is clear. John 13 -17 is a consistent whole, providing the final ministry of Jesus to his disciples.

John 14 -17 is thoroughly Trinitarian, speaking easily of the divine roles of Father, Son, and Spirit in the divine economy of salvation. After encouraging prayer to himself, John 14 -14, Jesus speaks of another Comforter of the same kind as himself in John 14 -16.

The Paraclete will be with believers forever, according to John 14 -16. The world cannot receive the Paraclete because it cannot see him or know him, John 14 -17 says. The same verse tells us the Paraclete is the Spirit of Truth, and the Paraclete dwells with and in believers.

This is why you have to try to cut John 16 away from John 14. It's the only way you can come up with an identification of Muhammad in that way. The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, John 14 -26. I'll address the textual variant in a moment.

The Paraclete teaches all things and brings to remembrance what Jesus said. And given how few words of Jesus are in the Quran, that doesn't fit at all, does it? The Paraclete proceeds from the Father, John 15 -26.

The Paraclete testifies of Jesus, not of himself. The Paraclete is sent by Jesus. If the Paraclete is Muhammad, does Jesus send prophets? The Paraclete convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

The Paraclete guides disciples into all truth. The Paraclete does not speak on his own authority, but reveals what is to come. And the Paraclete glorifies Jesus, John 16 -14. Now, regarding Shabir's entire presentation on this subject, Raymond Brown's theory, I didn't drag the two volumes set across the ocean as he did.

But I'll tell you, that's fun to get through TSA screening. But theories regarding how a writer wrote his work are speculative. Many others disagree. Brown himself does not take his own theory to the length Shabir Ali does.

He certainly doesn't. Not a single person he quoted comes to conclusions that he did. And he interprets the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit, not Muhammad. It is simply unfair to say Christian scholars have concluded.

Christian scholars have shown. No. Men who call themselves Christians have speculated about something they haven't a shred of evidence to substantiate. They don't have any hard evidence. They can go, well, you know, we think that there was an evolutionary process that went into creating this book.

And here's how it might have happened. And you can get published that way. But that's not the stuff of solid scholarship in debate. Why doesn't Shabir note FF Bruce or Leon Morris or any of the other great, believing, conservative Christian scholars who have dealt with the Gospel of John who present no inkling of Brown's speculative reconstructions of the writing of the text?

It should likewise be noted. This kind of modern, redactional, critical, speculative scholarship was obviously unknown in the days of Muhammad. But remember, the Qur 'an says, whom they find mentioned in their own scriptures in the law and the Gospel.

The Text of John 14:26 and the Limits of Textual Criticism

Who in Muhammad's day would find mentioned in their scriptures Muhammad when one needs Raymond Brown's redactional speculations to find him? Now, regarding John 14, 26 and the phrase, What you just heard presented to you, C .K. Barrett mentions that the Sinaitic Syriac does not have the phrase,.

What you didn't have mentioned to you was that every single Greek manuscript on God's green earth of John chapter 14 does have,. All Latin manuscripts contain the phrase. All other translations into other languages contain the phrase.

The Sinaitic Syriac is alone here. Now may I simply ask the Muslims in the audience, Would you allow me to come up with a theory about Surah 2 in which I found a single translation of the Qur 'an from say 250 years after Muhammad into a different language.

And it has a different reading from every single Arabic Qur 'an known in the world. This translation stands alone. Yet I insist upon overthrowing all Arabic manuscripts of the Qur 'an based upon this single foreign language translation.

Would you allow me to get away with that kind of disruption of the text of the Qur 'an? That's what you're being asked to do right now. One translation, one version, the rest of the Syriac has it. One single translation.

We have earlier manuscripts which contain the phrase and yet you had it presented to you as, Oh, well, look at this. Think about that for just a moment. Hence, when the text is allowed to speak for itself and context is allowed to stand, The identity of the Parakletos is easily determined.

There is no historical, contextual, linguistic, textual, critical or theological reason to find in the Paraclete a reference to Muhammad. And the context itself precludes any such application by its consistent teaching that the Paraclete dwells within us.

These were promises to the disciples, not someone 600 years later. If Jesus said these words, as the scriptures say he did, then he was saying to them, he will dwell in you. How could that be 600 years later?

Song of Solomon, Shabir Ali, and Acts 3 on Deuteronomy 18

Now, maybe because of time, Shabir did not have a chance to get to Solomon 5 .16. I'll be very brief since he didn't get to it. He did present it to him. I'm not presenting something he's not presented in public talks before.

But again, it is very common. Ahmedidat and others have had many Muslims come up to me and say, Ah, see? Solomon 5 .16. His mouth is full of sweetness and he is wholly desirable. Muhammadin. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

And so we're told, see? Muhammadin. There's the very word in the Hebrew text itself. There's Muhammadin. Here we have an argument based upon an adjective, not even a proper name. The context has nothing to do with Arabia, prophets, or Islam.

To say that this is a stretch is a major understatement. What is more, linguistic parallels based upon similar sounds are notoriously worthless. Unless there is a contextual reason to turn an adjective into something more relevant, such arguments should be rejected.

But let's take it for a moment. Let's run with it. Let's look at the use of this term elsewhere in the Hebrew Old Testament. Is Muhammad taken away from a house in 1 Kings 20 verse 6? Is Muhammad destroyed by fire in 2 Chronicles 36 .19?

Did Muhammad become a ruin in Isaiah 64 .10? We need to be consistent. If in Song of Solomon this is a reference to Muhammad, why aren't these others? But I have the best argument. Is Shabir Ali in the Old Testament?

There is a Hebrew... You're going to thank me for this. There is a Hebrew word Shabar. Now in Psalm 105 .16 it says, And he called for a famine upon the land, he broke the whole staff of bread. Clearly there have been many famines in the past in London.

Have there not been? It's a fact, isn't it? Furthermore, much bread is made in London too. Think of all the bakeries that are here. So since a term that sounds like Shabir appears in this text, translated as he broke, then clearly we have here a prophecy of Shabir Ali coming to London.

How many of you are going to buy that one? I've got some books in the back I'd like to sell you. That's the problem with this kind of argumentation. Now, I'm going to skip past that particular one unless Shabir comes back to it.

But I'd like to look at Peter's sermon. This takes us back to the issue of Deuteronomy chapter 18. And it has been argued that, and Shabir actually said this in the last part of the last debate that we had, that if you really look at Acts chapter 3, it seems that there is a...

This is talking about a later fulfillment. In the sense that Jesus does not actually fulfill the requirements of being that prophet. In Acts chapter 3 verses 12 to 26, Peter preaches to the multitudes gathered in the temple.

Peter asserts the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection, by the way, against Islamic beliefs, in verses 13 through 15. I've always wondered, if you're going to try to find Mohammed and mention the Old and New Testaments, why do you get to pick which words are actually still correct and which words aren't?

I mean, here in one section has the same textual history. You have clearly presented the crucifixion of Jesus, which you deny. And the resurrection of Jesus, which you deny. And then you have Deuteronomy 18.

Same thing in John 14 and 16. You have the same stuff about Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection, he's going to be with the Father, he's called the Son of God. Why don't you accept those words? Why do you only accept the ones that you can try to apply to Mohammed?

There seems to be somewhat of an inconsistent standard at that point. Peter describes Jesus, interestingly, in verse 15, as the author of life. Is Jesus the author of life or is he a mere result? That's a good question.

Then in verse 18, what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he has fulfilled. The early Christian message was that the prophets prophesied the suffering of Christ, which again is rejected by Islam.

This determines the reading of the rest of Peter's comments. The text is announcing God's granting to Israel the opportunity to repent and believe in the Messiah for eternal life. Therefore, Peter's application of Deuteronomy 18 verses 18 through 19 to Christ is part of the call to repentance and faith.

The text is announcing God's granting to Israel the opportunity to repent and believe in the Messiah for eternal life. And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days, Acts 3 .24.