Christianity and Islam, Session 1

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It is good to be with you this morning despite the fact I haven't seen the sun once again since I got here that is one thing it seems to happen down where I live in Phoenix Arizona we have this very bright ball in the sky it goes across and you get tan if you stand out and in it and things like that and I understand you all have not ever seen that thing before but it does seem that I when
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I come up here I run into lots of clouds but that's probably why everything is green here rather than brown where I live I guess that's the color of life or something like that I'm not sure how that works but it is a good to be with you again it's been a few years since I was up here in this a general neck of the woods in fact this has been the busiest travel month of my life over the past 30 days
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I was spent so far 56 hours and inside of an airplane and have traveled about I don't know 40 ,000 miles something like that I forgot what it is but it's it's a ridiculous amount and part of that took me to Johannesburg South Africa where I engaged in six debates with Muslim apologists there in Johannesburg I'll show you some pictures in the next section of our of our discussion but I had the opportunity of engaging in numerous topics with Muslim apologists there and I think after that particular trip
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I have now engaged in this topic at least as often as any of the other topics that I've engaged in over the past 30 years of ministry of Alpha Omega Ministries this is our 30th anniversary month we were founded in 1983 and I started debating actually in August of 1990 but I did not start addressing
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Islam until 2006 with my first major debate at Biola University with Shabbir Ali who is considered to be really the the leading
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Islamic apologist in the world today and Shabbir and I debated twice in South Africa one at the
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University of Pretoria and one as I'll show you as I said a little bit later on a historic event we actually debated in the
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Masjid in in Erasmus South Africa now there have been debates at mosques one week after the debate the attack on the
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Benghazi consulate I was debating in the East London mosque in London England but we are never in in our knowledge anyways has any of these debates ever taken place in the actual
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Masjid the place where the prayers are offered they're always in a room associated with it or something like that when
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I debated Shabbir in Toronto it was in a large room that was associated with the mosque but it wasn't where the prayers are being actually said this time it was actually in the
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Masjid I stood right in front of the Qibla my my table was in front of the mimbar where the the
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Imam stands to to give the sermons and so the most of the audience was seated upon the ground for almost three hours
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I think the Muslims had the advantage at that point most Christians are not accustomed to sitting on the ground without a pew to sit in for that amount of time but I actually got to debate sin and salvation standing in front of the
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Qibla of a major mosque there in South Africa it was a tremendous tremendous opportunity and we're hoping next year to actually arrange the similar kind of encounter at the mosque in Durban South Africa which until recently was the largest mosque south in the southern hemisphere anywhere in the world so you might pray that we were able to to actually have that to happen so I've had the opportunity now of engaging
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Muslims all across the world University of New South Wales and Sydney in in Toronto in the
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United States in England and now in South Africa and so I want to actually the the published schedule has me introducing you to Muhammad the
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Quran first I want to reverse that a little bit do that in the second session I hope no one will throw anything at me because I want to talk to you as fellow believers from my heart first and foremost we as followers of Jesus Christ must guard our hearts as we consider this particular subject it has been my experience that Muslims in general throw us all into one big pile and speak of Christianity now
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I don't like it and I'm sure you don't like it either when the actions of others are attributed to you without making the proper distinctions between what you believe and what others believe there have been many times when
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I've been asked by Muslims to be accountable for things the Pope's have said and done and I have said
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I'm not accountable for the Pope I do not believe the Pope is a vicar of Christ and I believe the Pope is the head of all
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Christians etc etc there have been other times I've been held accountable for the
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Westboro Baptist Church and their kinds of activities and especially due to the fact that I have addressed that subject in written form and in debates and things like that and it is unfair to attribute to me the actions and attitudes of individuals like that and we are very sensitive to that we want to be taken for what we believe and we want to be held accountable only for what we claim and what we teach and yet it is my experience that most of us most evangelical
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Christians to use a term that I'm not sure we can even define any longer in a meaningful sense most of us we do in fact in essence do the same thing to Muslims that people do to us we throw them all into one big pile and while we may make a distinction between Sunni and Shia because well we see on the television that the
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Sunni blow up the Shiites and the Shiites blow up the Sunnis and so there must be some division but we don't really know what it is most of us don't have a clue what the distinction between a
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Sunni Muslim which represents about 90 % of the world's Muslims and a Shiite which represents about 10 % of the world's
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Muslims what their differences are things like that but the reality is most of us are afraid of them we're afraid of them because we don't make proper distinctions we're afraid of them because we have not focused upon what the real issues are and when there is fear in our hearts we all know that when witnessing opportunities come up there's that that brief moment in time when you have to make a decision as to whether you're going to pursue this conversation or whether you're not and if you have fear in your heart the chances are you're not going to pursue that opportunity the chances are you're going to find an excuse now sometimes that fear is due to the fact well you know
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I don't want to offend somebody it's very unfashionable to offend anybody in our system Western society today and since I don't really know what they believe
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I might say something that's wrong there's all sorts of sources of fear but let's be honest part of the fear is what we see on television and we see people with AK -47s running around and we we see buildings collapsing and bombs going off and we we don't make the proper distinctions to recognize the difference between an
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Islamist an unthinking ideologue who is primarily politically motivated though he has a religious aspect about getting 70 virgins and going to heaven and the vast majority of the
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Muslims in the world who do not want to kill me and they don't want to die themselves they don't want to blow themselves up and many of them interestingly enough want to talk about religion now in Western society today and especially in your own society we will do handstands we will stand on our heads we will break our backs to try to get secularists to even talk with us about quote -unquote religious topics worldview topics eternity or anything of the kind they don't even want it they don't want to address it they don't want to want to think about it we have to come up with wild and zany ways of even getting them interested in talking about the subject and yet when it comes to the
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Muslims they want to talk to us they would welcome a discussion of the Bible of Jesus of things like that and yet very often were the ones who are passing by those opportunities because of fear in our hearts because we don't know what they believe or because we have failed to recognize that often what we see in the media let's face it if most of your knowledge about Islam comes from Fox News that's a bad thing or you don't even have
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Fox News maybe you get it online I don't know but if most of what you know about Islam comes from the
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CBC then you're in real trouble okay that's really really a bad bad thing we as Christians should want to know the truth we should also bend over backwards to be as fair as possible because we demand that for ourselves and therefore if we're going to point the finger that direction we have three pointing back at us we need to be consistent and so we need to recognize that there are different views out there there are different understandings and we have to be people who pray that the
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Lord would make us passionate about speaking these folks because as we'll see at the end we have the message that they need we have the message that they desperately need to hear because they've been given a
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God a God who has a law a God who is holy who punishes sin they have been given a message of eternal judgment there is more there are more pictures in the
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Hadith literature of the nature of eternal judgment than anything Dante ever dreamed of coming up with and yet the one thing that they need to have a mediator they have been denied and we know who that mediator is and so we have to pray that the
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Lord would get us over our biases and our bigotries outside of our nice comfy walls and be able to show the love of Christ to a billion people who have been given a false hope and so I want to in this first session try to help you to understand some of the foundational issues and the different viewpoints that exist amongst
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Muslims so that you when you do engage with them will have the ability to understand where they're coming from so in this session
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I want you understand the five pillars of Islam the five pillars of Islam the first is the
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Shahada the Shahada the Shahada is the mechanism by which you become a
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Muslim and the Shahada is a these words that are said must be said to become a
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Muslim you must say the Shahada in Arabic now how many people here made your profession of faith in either
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Biblical Greek or Biblical Hebrew still looking for the first ones
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I've been asking this for a while now I think it's sometimes just the light I can't see all the people out there but the reality is
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I've never met anyone other than a few seminary students who are being a little bit cagey who have ever made a claim to have made their profession of faith in that way and yet to make your profession of faith in Islam you have to say la ilaha illallah wa muhammadan abdullah you have to say that in Arabic and you have to say it in front of witnesses now
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I have been showing this this first clip and we haven't even tested this so I'm hoping this is going to work and mr.
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sound man wherever you are there you are these clips are of different so you will have to ride them a little bit so that we can hear them appropriately
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I love I love showing this first clip I've been showing it for years because it it discomforts it makes uncomfortable
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Christians you say well that's a weird thing to say you want to make us uncomfortable well in a sense
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I do I want you to get you out of your comfort zone this is a clip from number of years well not a number of years ago a few years ago from Sydney Australia a man by the name of Khalid Yassin gave a multi -day seminar
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I've listened to the entirety of the seminar purchased the seminar it was rather expensive it was mainly anti -christian and contained many errors concerning Christian history and things like that but basically this is at the end his altar call this is an
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Islamic altar call you are watching people in a Western society coming forward to become
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Muslims including women you will see that the first ones who come forward are our women and you will what
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I want you to watch or what things are similar and what things are dissimilar to things you have seen experienced within Christianity these are people who are becoming
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Muslims hopefully this will work wasn't tested but here we go anyways let's see what happens
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I want to make this
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I want to make this transition or this transaction because this is what it is these are human beings that's making a transaction with God they're not making a transaction for us they're making a transaction with God and a transition in their lives so I want to make this easy for them we have a gift for them and we're going to give them this gift now the gift that we're giving to them is something that will help them on their way one it's a copy of the
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Quran with the transliteration of the meanings secondly it's a short easy to read authentic biography of the
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Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him thirdly it is a set of seven books it is a set of seven books that have in it lessons for new
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Muslims now your acceptance of Islam is your acceptance of God not your acceptance of me or not your acceptance of these people nor your acceptance of the political dynamics in the world because it has nothing to do with that it's just your acceptance of God and this gift is to help you make that transition
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I want you to say with me the simple words and these words are nothing more than what
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I have explained there's no trick no curve and we don't have a pool in the back for you to dip in but let's say the words let's just go over the words called the shahada the baron of witness and I'll tell you what it is essentially it is the saying of that there's none to be worshipped except Almighty God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God saying that word and then adding to it
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I testify or I declare or I announce that there's none to be worshipped except Almighty God and that I testify or I declare or I announce that Muhammad is the messenger of God brings you all into the transition of Islam from that point it's your sincerity it's your acts of worship it is your commitment that will make the difference now whatever you owe
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God of something you did that only you know and God knows after tonight your board is clear because God is the forgiver of those that come back to him but whatever you owe somebody money rent a loan you still owe that is that fair okay please just say after me the words la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
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I want to dip in. I see who smiles, who goes frowns. It's interesting to watch.
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But first, let's talk about the similarities. You have people coming forward. You have the audience encouraging people.
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You have the giving of gifts. Very often in an evangelistic setting, you'll give new converts a
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Bible, some discipleship materials, you know, whatever else it might be.
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That type of a thing. You have the public setting and the profession of faith and all those things.
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But then there are some really important differences as well. The first I've already pointed out to you, you have to make your profession of faith a particular language.
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When you look at what the men were wearing, when you look at what Khalid Yassin himself was wearing, he was wearing garb very similar to what would have been worn by Muhammad in the seventh century, in a completely different culture, in a completely different time.
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That is due to the fact that Islam never had Acts 15. Acts chapter 15, the
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Jerusalem Council, very, very important history of Christianity, that is where we avoided the idea of having to become a
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Jew before you become a Christian. And as a result, the gospel transcends every language, every boundary, every culture.
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It is a message for all times and all peoples because of Acts chapter 15,
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Islam never had it. And that's what's causing many of the problems in the world today, is because Islam is a religio -political system, or a political -religious system, depending on the number of Muslims in a culture.
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And as the number increases, the emphasis moves toward the political. And so, Islam has a law,
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Sharia, and that Sharia cannot be separated from Islam and still have historic
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Islam. And so, when Islam becomes more predominant, it has to bring its cultural norms with it into a culture because of those intimate connections that define the religion itself, which are not a part of the
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Christian faith. Certainly, we believe that the Christian faith changes cultures, but it changes cultures by changing hearts, first and foremost.
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It is not the external emphasis upon a certain kind of dress or certain cultural norms that it brings with it.
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Now, the Shahada is central and important because it is the enunciation of absolute monotheism.
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The central theological assertion of Islam is a word you need to understand, Tawhid. Tawhid, though in itself, interestingly enough, does not appear in the
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Quran in that form. The term Wahad, to make one, does, but Tawhid does not, interestingly, appear in the
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Quran. How many times have you heard a Muslim say, well, the trinity is not even in the Bible? Well, Tawhid is not in the Quran. It's sort of a similar thing.
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But Tawhid is the assertion, in modern Islamic understanding, of the unitarian oneness of Allah.
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This comes, of course, in the period of time when Muhammad was a minority prophet in Mecca. He was preaching monotheism versus the polytheism of his day.
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And so, the central affirmation of Islamic theology, Tawhid, Allah is one. He is the only
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God worthy of being worshiped. Hence, the worst sin you can commit in Islam is to deny
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Tawhid, and that is the sin of shirk, S -H -I -R -K, shirk. We'll look at it a little bit more fully a little bit later on.
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It is the one sin, according to the Quran, that if you die as a mushrik, one who has committed shirk,
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Allah cannot forgive you. You can die as a mass murderer who has never even repented and still go to heaven.
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But if you die as a mushrik, you cannot be forgiven. And the big question will be, does
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Islam view our faith? Are we mushrikun? Are we those who commit the sin of shirk?
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For the majority of Muslims in the world, the answer to that is yes. Now, there are some who do not view it that way, but the majority of Muslims in the world do view us as mushrikun, as mushriks.
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Now, the second point, really quickly, because the clock back there is moving way, way, way too fast, is salat, the prayers.
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In some countries in the world, you do not ask someone if they're a Muslim, you say, do you do the prayers? There are five daily prayers during the summer.
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They become very, very, very early in the morning. But if you've ever lived in an
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Islamic country, you've heard the call to prayer going out from the minaret, and you know that the entire society comes grinding to a halt for that period of time during the prayers.
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I certainly have frequently encountered the prayers in my debates. There have been many times the time of prayer came up while in the middle of my statements and everyone just got up and walked out, and so it sort of damages your presentation.
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But anyways, I'm going to, I have a whole video on prayer, but I'm going to skip it really quickly here, because just time won't allow for it.
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We will look at some others a little bit later on. Number three is thawm. It is fasting, primarily during the month of Ramadan.
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Ramadan this last year was in July. It moves forward 11 to 12 days per year in our calendar due to the fact that Muslims follow a lunar calendar and we follow a solar calendar.
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The lunar calendar is about 11 days per year shorter than ours, 12 on leap years, and so it moves forward in our calendar.
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During the month of Ramadan, the observant Muslim will not eat or drink from before sunrise to after sunset.
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That includes drinking water. Can you imagine what that is like in Saudi Arabia this coming June, when it'll be at the end of June, the beginning of July, where it reaches 120 degrees in the shade during the day, and you cannot drink water from before sunrise until after sunset at night.
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However, studies have shown, and Muslims will admit, that observant Muslims take in more calories during Ramadan than any other month of the year, because when you're deprived of something, boy,
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I'll tell you, when it's time to eat, boy, do they eat, they really go for it. And of course, during Ramadan, Ramadan is the month during which, in Islamic lore anyways, the
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Quran came down from heaven. It was revealed on the night of Laylat al -Qadr. Laylat al -Qadr means the night of power.
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It was revealed as a whole to the angel Jibril, and then over the course of about 22 years, he then piecemealed that out to Muhammad, and that becomes the
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Quran as we know it today. Now, it either was on the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th, or 29th night of the month.
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Muhammad knew which night it was. He was gonna come out and tell the people which night it was, and they were fighting, and so he was caused to forget which night it is.
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And so, Muslims will stay up all night on those odd -numbered nights praying, because according to the
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Hadith, which I'll explain a little bit later on, the stories and actions of Muhammad and his companions, according to the
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Hadith literature, prayers said on a night are significantly more efficacious, have much more value than any other prayers any other night of the year.
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And so, since they don't know which of those nights it is, they'll stay up every single one of them and pray during those nights in hope of gaining that benefit.
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So, that is fasting during the month of Ramadan. Zakat is the giving of alms very quickly.
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It's normally 2 .5 % of anything you possess for over a year. Won't get into that discussion right now. And then finally, the
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Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. I will show you a video on that, but I will mention to you, as you look at this video, you will see the
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Kaaba, which is the black building in the middle of the
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Grand Mosque in Mecca. You will see thousands of people circumambulating the Kaaba. When Muslims bow in prayer, they face toward Mecca.
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What they are facing toward is not just the Kaaba, but specifically the black stone, which is in the corner of the
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Kaaba. The Kaaba itself is not sacred. It's been torn down and rebuilt a number of times since the days of Muhammad.
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And in fact, I'll skip over it, but I have a little video of what it looks like inside. It's just a very short little thing. But interestingly enough, people have run the numbers, and given the number of Muslims in the world today, and the number of people that Saudi Arabia allows in to do
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Hajj, this fifth pillar could no longer be accomplished by a certain number of Muslims, even if they wanted to.
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There are more Muslims in the world than could possibly fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam today, which some people find interesting.
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But very quickly, here is a description of Hajj. Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca is compulsory for all
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Muslims in good health and with sufficient funds to make the journey. The Hajj is the foremost of all
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Muslim rituals, even if less than 10 % of all Muslims ever manage to complete it.
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The Hajj's importance lies in its allowing the believer to approach the center of the world, as well as the place where the
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Quran's divine revelations began and continued for about 12 years. The performer of Hajj does not only reenact
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Muhammad's ritual, he or she also recalls acts of important people in Muslim history.
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The rituals performed around the Kaaba reenacts when Prophet Abraham and Ishmael transformed the
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Kaaba into the sacred place of worship and peace. In spite of some physical hardships, pilgrims who complete the
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Hajj consider it one of the greatest spiritual experiences of their lives. Many Muslims regard the
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Hajj as one of the great achievements of civilization because it brings together people from around the world and focuses them upon a single goal.
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A believer is required to make the pilgrimage at least once in his or her lifetime. So there's the
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Hajj. You saw the Kaaba there. Oh, sorry. Well, there's, oh, I guess you're gonna see it anyways.
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There's the inside of the Kaaba. I forgot that was the very next thing there. You'll notice it's not super ornate.
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There's not really a whole lot in there. You can go over a quarter here. This is just a cell phone video that was taken of the inside of the
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Kaaba. They did not go into the Kaaba during the Hajj itself, but it'll turn around here and there.
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You get sort of an idea, not a huge place. That's all it is right there. That's the entirety of the inside of the
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Kaaba. Like I said, what makes the Kaaba important is this, the black stone.
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Here you can see the black stone in this outer container. You can see people looking in at the black stone here.
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Here's Muhammad Ali years and years ago looking at the black stone there in the corner of the
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Kaaba. And that stone allegedly was white when it fell down from heaven.
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It's become black because of the sins of men. But that is really what people are bowing toward in prayer is that black stone in the corner of the
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Kaaba. Now, six articles of belief of Sunni Islam.
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This is different than the five pillars. The six articles, just to very briefly summarize them for you, is belief in Allah, belief in all the prophets and messengers.
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Muslims believe that there have been many prophets and messengers, that every people group has received a prophet and messenger from Allah, and they've all been united by one message.
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That one message is la ilaha illallah, not wa muhammadan mazoolallah.
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It's the, there is only one God worthy of worship, not that Muhammad is the messenger of God. That's only, he's the final prophet from their perspective.
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But the message that has bound all of the prophets together is monotheism, that there is only one true
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God. Hence, from the Islamic perspective, Jesus was a prophet of Allah. The disciples, Moses, Abraham, these, they were all, they're all
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Muslims. From the Islamic perspective, theirs is the original religion. All of us are departures therefrom.
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In fact, in most Muslims' minds, we are born as Muslims, and then we, in essence, apostatize from that.
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There is a concept in Islam called the fitrah, and the fitrah has amazing parallels to our understanding of the
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Imago Dei, the image of God. But basically, in Islamic theology, according to both the
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Quran and the Hadith, Allah caused Adam, he rubbed Adam's back, and out of Adam came all of his progeny, all of us who would ever live, and we stood upon this great plain.
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And a mithak, a covenant, was taken from us, and Allah said, am I not your Lord? We said, yes, you are,
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Lord. And as a result of that, we have made that commitment, and the remembrance of that is the fitrah, that we know that God exists.
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Like as Paul said, we know, but we suppress. It's that suppression part that isn't quite the same between the two, but they do have that concept that we are all born as Muslims.
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Belief in the angels, and in fact, in the jinn as well. The jinn, from which you get genies, are a race of beings that sort of parallel the human race.
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They are made of smokeless fire, and they, from what
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I understand, from at least conservative Muslims, obviously more liberal Muslims will spiritualize many of these things, but for the majority of the
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Muslims in the world, the jinn are faster than us, stronger than us, but not as smart as us, which
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I've often said sounds like a teenager in a Camaro. Very dangerous combination, you put them together.
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And so those are the jinn. Belief in the books, plural, sent by God, not one book.
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The Quran specifically says, the Torah and the Injil, the law and the gospel, were Natsal. They were sent down by Allah.
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They contain light and guidance. And there are other books that were sent down by Allah as well.
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Belief in the day of judgment. There will be a judgment of all men and women. And belief in destiny,
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Qadr. The Hadith very clearly says that 40 days into the development of a child, an angel comes and writes for it, whether it will go to heaven or hell, whether it will have a successful life or an unsuccessful life, male or female, poor or rich, and the very date of its death are all determined 40 days after conception.
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Now we know, actually, that a lot of that stuff, especially in regards to male and female, was determined before that, but that's the perspective.
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And so the concept of Qadr has parallels to the concept of predestination, but there is a major difference, and that is the
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Christian concept. You have a God who, while transcendent over his creation, is also intimately involved in his creation, the most obvious example of this being the incarnation itself.
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And the absolute transcendence of a law frequently leads to a form of fatalism, especially in many
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Islamic countries, where you have many people who don't really work real hard and just simply say, inshallah, if God wills, it's gonna be done, it's a fatalistic concept for many, many people.
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But these are the six articles of belief of Sunni Islam. Now, what
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I wanna try to do, and I'm gonna have to cram it into these last 20 minutes here, is to help you to understand the breadth of the mindset of the
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Muslim people that you will encounter. There are just as many different Muslims and Muslim understandings as there are
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Christians. And so, even amongst the Sunni, you can have a Sunni who has Sufi influence, more of a, almost a charismatic kind of understanding, experiential, spiritualistic type.
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You can have the Salafi Muslims, the Wahhabi Muslims, who are extremely fundamentalistic, very focused, out of which many of the
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Islamists and the radicals come. You, of course, have the Shiites, which are a completely different realm.
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Certainly many of the same beliefs, but a lot of different understandings, especially in regards to atonement and sacrifice because of what happened in their history and how the split took place between the two groups and so on and so forth.
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And so, there's a lot of different understandings. These are all clips from debates that I've done. I'm really looking forward to being able to include some from what just took place in South Africa that will expand my repertoire here a little bit.
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But this first clip is actually from a debate that I don't consider one of my Islamic debates.
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This was from 1999. I had not begun studying Islam yet. I was simply defending the deity of Christ and the
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Trinity against a man by the name of Hamza Abdul Malik. At the beginning of the clip, you will see my wife sitting down front and you'll see a little girl, about nine years of age.
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That's my daughter, Summer, who now has a little girl of her own, my granddaughter,
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Clementine, who might just pop up in some of these presentations accidentally, don't know, it's possible, but I'm a new grandfather, so you're gonna have to like it anyways.
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Amen, thank you very much, I appreciate that. I just have to put up with it, that's how it is. But anyways, but here's a man, let's just put it this way, he's not from around here.
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Obviously comes, obviously his background is a majority Muslim country. I want you to listen to his objection and ask yourself the question before I start responding, and I've only got a brief moment to respond.
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My response isn't nearly as full as I would like to have been but before I start responding, ask yourself the question, how would you have answered this man's objection to the deity of Christ as he presents it from this debate in 1999?
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Yes, my question to the doctor, I heard you repeating many time, you're saying he's a creator about Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, because we
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Muslim believe in Jesus, the mighty prophet of God. I heard you many time, you're saying he's the creator of everything and all things.
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So I want you to explain to me if it's possible, if he's a creator of everything, when
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Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, was he walking by, the fig tree was his companion, the fig tree was his companion, and he wants to eat some fig, and they told him, master, the fig is not in season.
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So if he was God, how he don't know if he create the tree, how he doesn't know if what's in season or what not in season, if he create everything.
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And if the fig was not in season and he's God, first of all, we don't accept
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God to be hungry, he wants to eat, but you Christian, you said God choose to do so, so that's your faith.
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But I'm saying, even if he was God and fig is not in season, why he couldn't order the tree to bring fig?
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Okay, thank you. Isn't that God the one create everything? Okay, thank you. To the doctor. He did so because the fig tree represented the people of Israel and he made the application to people of Israel, look like they have fruit, but they do not.
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It was a clear application that he made. Secondly, he did eat food because the word became flesh.
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He became hungry, he became tired because as the New Testament, as it was written, clearly indicates
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Jesus Christ was the God man. The eternal Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.
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He was a true man, he ate food, he became tired, he slept, he grew, et cetera, et cetera.
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Christians have always believed that, why? Because we believe all the New Testament teaches. Now, of course, he wants to argue that, but did you understand the argument?
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The argument was, how could Jesus not know when the season of figs was if he created fig trees because he's
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God? And if he was God, why couldn't he just say the fig tree bring forth figs because God can say to a fig tree, bring forth figs, and guess what the tree will do?
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It'll bring forth figs because that's what God does. So now, you and I are sitting there going, he's going into Jerusalem, the fig tree represents the nation of Israel.
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It had all the leaves because it looked like it was very religious, but it didn't have any fruit because that's the same thing as the people of Israel. He's just about to give the king, yeah,
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I can, the Olivet Discourse, and he's about to talk about the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore, he's giving an illustration in the fig tree which represents
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Israel. I mean, hello, but how's he supposed to know that? I mean, he's lived in an Islamic country his entire life.
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He's probably never talked to a Christian who knew the Bible very well. This is what he's been taught by his imams, so on and so forth, and in fact, as we're gonna find out later, his argument is an argument from the
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Quran. Now, the Quran doesn't mention the fig tree specifically, but I cannot tell you how many times
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I've had the fig tree argument presented to me, and in fact, I've had the fig tree argument presented to me by some of the best read and most advanced
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Islamic apologists, and so here you have the mindset, and you see, what happens for many of us is you might be sitting there, and if you're just watching this, you might go, man, the
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Jehovah's Witnesses at my door are better than that and I'm not gonna have to really prepare to deal with those folks. The problem is when you encounter an objection that you've never encountered before, laughing at it is not a sufficient response.
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This guy needs to hear a response. He needs to know someone who's gonna be able to explain to him, well, you know, and normally, what
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I'll put it in, I'll put it in this context. I'll say, you know, I've read the Quran a number of times. I've read it in a number of different translations.
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I've learned just enough Arabic to be able to translate portions of it, and when I read the Quran, I try to make sure
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I understand it in context. In fact, it's really ironic. If anything
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I say today catches your interest and you realize, you know, I wanna know more about this, if you go to aomin .org,
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there's a link there to my YouTube channel, and now we have our own YouTube channel, which we're putting a lot of debates on, too, so there's gonna be two different YouTube channels available, but on my
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YouTube channel, I will have a number of the debates that we have done with Muslims over the years, and one of those debates was a man by the name of Bassam Zawadi from London, and we debated does the
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Quran misrepresent the Christian faith, and what was fascinating is, if you watch that entire debate, which is up, by the end of the debate, the
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Christian is saying you can actually read the Quran and follow a context and understand what it's saying, while the
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Muslim is saying you can't do that, because if you read Surah 5, Surah Tahmidah, and you read it from the beginning to the end, and you allow it to have a context and to have a flow, it's going to conclude misrepresenting the
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Christian faith. There's no question about it, and so the only way to get around that is to say, well, what it says at the end isn't connected to what it says in the middle and what it says at the beginning, and so people were amazed.
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The end of the debate, the Christian's going, yeah, you can understand what the Quran's saying, and the Muslim's saying, no, you can't, and they found that very, very strange, but there's a reason for it, and so what
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I like to tell people is, I try to allow the Quran to speak for itself. You need to allow the Bible to speak for itself, and if we read what it actually says in the
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Gospel of Mark or in the Gospel of Matthew about the cursing of the fig tree, and there's two different stories there. They put them in different places for different purposes for Mark and Matthew, but the point is, here's what
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Jesus is saying. He's talking about the people of Israel. Look at what's going on there, and try to help them to contextualize it, because they've probably never run into anybody who's ever done that, and unfortunately, a lot of folks in our churches couldn't do it either, because we're not accustomed to that kind of a challenge.
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Now, the next fellow, the next clip, is a little bit hard to understand. If you grab hold of him immediately, you'll be able to follow it.
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If not, it sounds like he's speaking in tongues, and I apologize if that's the case. It's Sheikh Jalal Abu Alrub.
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This was a debate in 2008. If you look, there's a wide shot. You'll see
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I'm a little bit bigger at that point. I had started losing some weight by then, but in 2008. And Sheikh Jalal is
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Palestinian, and Sheikh Jalal has the proverbial chip upon the shoulder, as you will see, and listen to the confusion that is his.
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Now, here's a scholar. This is a man who's translated works out of Arabic and so on and so forth. He's known for his understanding of things, and yet, listen to the level of confusion that is his, and then he's going to say,
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I've been offended twice today. The terrible things my opponent said about Muhammad, taking words out of context, and then ascribing a son to God.
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Now, he's talking about a previous debate he had done earlier in the day with a friend of mine, David Wood, and they had debated whether Muhammad was a prophet, but notice he's more offended by ascribing a son to God.
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Listen to what he has to say. The last hour, this is only the father.
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You remember my opponent, he said that Christians don't consider Jesus the father. Well, then he doesn't know about the last hour, because he's not divine.
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Oh, but he is in complete harmony with the father. Really? One of them died, and the
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Holy Ghost and God had no idea what's going on. One of them died. No, the one who died is an addition, not a subtraction.
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Come on, people. Offer the creed the same way Abraham gave it to his people. Did he ever say anything like this?
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We're angry here, I was insulted twice here. The terrible stuff my opponent said about Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, taking stuff out of context, and using fabricated words, and secondly, calling a son to God is the greatest offense to us
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Muslims. So don't think that you can come here and act angry, because we are angry, because Allah doesn't have a son.
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He told you so. Jesus never said, I am Lord, I am divine, I am the God, the Creator, worship me as you worship
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God. The Holy Ghost is God. Adam didn't say it, Abraham didn't say it, Noah didn't say it.
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They must have known another God, a new one, the one you know. I ask Allah subhanahu wa ta 'ala to open your hearts and minds because Jesus said it in so many ways that he's not
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God. You just want to stick it to him no matter what. Well, there you go.
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You just want to stick it to him no matter what. That entire debate is on YouTube as well.
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So there's your, there are many, many Muslims who think they know what we believe, and to be perfectly honest with you, they're not interested in finding out that they're wrong.
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Most of my opponents, I'll send them my books, I'll send them the Forgotten Trinity, I'll send them my new book on the
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Quran. They won't read it. Not because they're trying, really trying to be mean or disrespectful, just because they don't really think there's anything they can learn.
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There are many Muslims who have the idea that we're just the coffers, we're the unbelievers, and we don't have anything worthwhile to say.
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The rare Muslim apologist is the one who will actually read my book and then try to make their arguments more forceful in light of what they've come to understand of what
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I believe, or to even modify their arguments, or maybe even discover that some of their arguments weren't good arguments in the first place.
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That is a rare person encounter. I will show you an example of that. But to give you an idea, the first clip on the other side will be from the first debate,
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I think I consider it my first Muslim debate, Biola University in 2006 with Shabir Ali.
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It's from the cross -examination period, and I'm asking Shabir, this is on the reliability of the
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New Testament, I'll probably replace this one with some of the interaction we had at the University of Pretoria just a few weeks ago now.
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And by the way, Shabir and I are co -authoring a book together right now. Ever heard of a book like this?
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It's on the Trinity and Tawhid. I'm presenting the case of the Trinity, he's presenting the case for Tawhid. We then exchange the chapters and respond to each other.
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We're gonna talk about the Muslim view of Jesus, the Christian view of Jesus, a believing Christian and believing Muslim in dialogue.
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Not many of those out. Not many of those out at all. But that's what we're doing right now.
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So here's Shabir and I, this is again from 2006.
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Is there any way that you can give to us this evening to explain to us how we can determine what is still inspired in the
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New Testament and what is not? Well, I believe that Muslims have a simple answer to this in saying that whatever is in the
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Quran, that would be a judge of whatever is there in the Bible. So whatever of the
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Bible agrees with the Quran, that obviously is inspired. What is contradictory is obviously not from God.
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And that which is neutral and neither in agreement nor in disagreement may be treated with some bit of silence.
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Usually the classical scholars have recommended silence, but I believe that Muslims who are quite familiar with the
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Gospels and familiar with the development of the text over time can make some judgments, though these judgments will be tentative.
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So everything about the cross, resurrection, atonement, deity of Christ, Jesus is the son of God, the
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Holy Spirit is a divine person, not an angel, Gabriel. All of that stuff is uninspired and a corruption of the original intention of the
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New Testament in light of the Quran. A Muslim would say that the Quranic revelation is here now as the pristine word of God.
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That teaches us that there is only one God, that Jesus is his Messiah, but nevertheless a servant and messenger of the one true
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God. And so anything that is contrary to that, something that teaches, for example, that human responsibility as described in the
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Quran is to be somehow evaded, that would be contrary and would be thought to be a later development.
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Now, of course, that could be studied from another angle. One can look at the history and development of Christian teaching over time.
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One can look at the Gospels even without Islamic presuppositions. And it seems to me that many biblical scholars are coming to conclusions which are very close to the main conclusions which
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Muslims insist on, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet like the prophets of the
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Old Testament. He preached the belief in God, similar to the belief that was known from the
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Jewish prophet since he himself was Jewish, he lived in a Jewish milieu. You mean people like the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg.
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It doesn't have to be them. The scholars are so numerous, it would be hard for us to list them and to name them now.
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So is there any New Testament book that Mark, for example, which you've referred to many times,
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Mark clearly identifies Jesus as the son of God, puts words in his mouth that you would never be able to accept as a Muslim, isn't that correct?
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Well, it is clear that even Mark must have suffered from a similar sort of phenomenon that we described in the case of Matthew and John Bowden has made specifically that point in his book,
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Jesus, The Unanswered Questions. If we look at Mark chapter one, verse one, which in many Bibles begin the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, it is noted in the
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NIV, for example, that the title, the son of God in this particular verse is not found in some of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts.
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So I'm not saying that the gospel according to Mark does not present Jesus as the son of God, but we have to be aware of scribal changes that have affected the gospel according to Mark in places as well.
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And in fact, we are working with the gospel according to Mark only as it has come down to us. Knowing the history of scribal changes, we would not be out of our grounds to wonder if in fact we do really have the original
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Markan gospel. Would you admit that you do not have any hard manuscript evidence from the first or second centuries that gives to us a
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New Testament that looks like a Muslim would expect it to look like? We do not have such a document. The final word is that we do not have such a document.
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Now, I was looking around. Now, honestly, be honest with me now. How many of you knew that, well, first of all,
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Shabir quotes Mark 1 .1. How many of us can quote Mark 1 .1, all right? And how many of you knew that the phrase the son of God is a textual variant in Mark 1 .1?
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Only a couple people. You'll notice Shabir was not using notes. And so, obviously,
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Shabir is different than the fellow who gave the fig tree argument, all right? Shabir has just recently completed his
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PhD at the University of Toronto where he studied Islamic tafsir, the commentary on the
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Quran. And so, he loves our liberals. Our liberals,
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I use that term very lightly. People who call themselves Christians, but he reads Christian liberalism all the time and utilizes that material constantly, as you'll see, especially when the
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University of Pretoria debate comes out that we did just a few weeks ago. But that, obviously, the majority of the
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Muslims with whom you're gonna be speaking are not on the Shabir Ali level. But he is one of the more popular speakers in the
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Western world today, and so, you need to be aware of that. Last clip I'll show you very, very quickly is a clip with a fellow by the name of Abdullah Kunda.
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Now, Abdullah and I have debated a couple of times down in Sydney, Australia. This is the University of New South Wales.
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And we were debating, we did a debate. He and I were the first ones to debate, can God become man?
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Because one of the presuppositions of Islamic theology is that God cannot become man. There can be no incarnation. And so,
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I wanted to find someone to actually debate that issue and to do more than just assume that, to actually defend that.
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And Abdullah is one of the few Muslims to whom I have sent my materials, and he reads them. He reads them, he understands them, he modifies his arguments as best he can in light of them.
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I really like this young man. I would ask you to pray for him. He has, for example, at the beginning of this debate, he got up and thanked everybody for coming and thanked me for debating him.
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He said, especially given the fact that Dr. White is older than my father, to which
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I responded during the rebuttal period, congratulations on having such a young father. But, so our debates have humor in them.
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He has twice now joined me, when I was teaching classes, once for Golden Gate, once for Cornerstone Seminary, he has joined me via Skype from Australia to interact with my students.
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So for an hour, and given there's a 17 -hour difference, and he's a new dad, getting up at all hours to do this, it's very kind of him, but we actually set it up to where there's,
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I put my laptop down there, we project him up on the screen, and my students have to stand there. He can see them, they can see him, and they interact with him.
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It's amazing how much more seriously they take their study when they know they're gonna be talking to an Islamic apologist as part of the class in front of everybody else in the process.
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They do their study much more intently. Now, the sound on this, unfortunately, is not all that good.
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It was a shame that this was, I think, my favorite debate, but the sound isn't all that good, and especially due to the fact that Abdullah has a
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German -Australian mixed accent. So that makes it really interesting. But we are talking about the issue of the incarnation, and just give you a sense of the level of the dialogue.
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Mr. Koudda, I think we have to really focus. When I say the central question is this, and your response is that I have diminished capacity,
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I think we're talking past each other somehow at this point. So let's look at that question again.
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I asked the question, does God as creator have the power, ability, or capacity to join a human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?
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Now, did I understand in your rebuttal that you likened that to, can God create another
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God? That's great, that's what I'm looking toward. Or any of the other illogical fallacies that I'm looking to.
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Okay, could you explain how that question involves illogical fallacies?
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Well, from a Muslim perspective, obviously not from a Christian perspective, but from a Muslim perspective, as I said,
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God has certain attributes which we consider essential, and which only apply to him.
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So for example, without a beginning and without an end are two of these attributes. Now, these are not possessed by anything else in creation, they're only possessed by God.
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So we say that for God, or even if we were to entertain the argument that there's three persons of God, that for one of those persons who is apparently co -eternal and co -equal with the other two, to then give up one of these essential attributes for us would be an illogical fallacy.
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Because for us, by definition, if God doesn't have one of these attributes, he's not God. What essential attribute do you see the question assuming when it says, does
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God as creator have the power or ability or capacity to join a human nature to himself if he pleases to do so?
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What essential element is being abandoned? Well, all of them. Because human nature, by definition, we're dependent upon things,
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I'm dependent upon three dimensions of space that are existing, I'm dependent upon time, I'm dependent upon sustenance.
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So it immediately removes him from being self -subsistent. I do not have independent knowledge.
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I acquire my knowledge from other people or from books, et cetera. So it denies him having knowledge. I cannot see beyond the walls of this building, so it denies him having universal sight, so on and so on.
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As I said, I think it's one of the best debates we've had, and it's available in its entirety on YouTube.
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It's not on my channel, though. You have to look up Abdullah Kunda, K -U -N -D -E, and James White, you'll be able to pull that up.
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Now, what have I tried to accomplish in just this opening session? Hopefully you understand the five pillars, the six beliefs of Sunni Islam, but also what
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I've tried to communicate to you is that there is a wide variety of belief. You need to get to know Muslims individually.
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Many of them want to talk to us, and you need to find out from them what their experience is, what their level of understanding is, so that you can be prepared to engage them and to present to them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And so I hope just by exposing you to this, that I've started the process. Now, in the next section, what we'll do is we will look at the background.
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We will look at Muhammad. We will look at the Quran, and then that will leave us the last session to be able to look at specifically what the
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Quran says to us, the al -al -anjeel, the people of the gospel, the al -kitab, the people of the book. The Quran directly addresses us.
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We need to know what it says to us, and fundamentally, we need to recognize that the author of the Quran did not understand what we believe.
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And that says everything about the authorship of the Quran, but it also will help us to understand the barriers that exist between us and the
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Muslim people that we need to overcome. All right, so I went about five minutes over there. I know
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I could've gone a little bit longer, but I wanted to get done right there, and that's a good place to break, so I'll turn it over to Heinz.