- 00:08
- Surely no believing Muslim can question that if Esau the Messiah was in fact the son of God, then he would have this kind of authority, this kind of power.
- 00:17
- And this is indeed the testimony of the New Testament. But truly there isn't any reason to belabor the point, indeed if Surah 4, verse 157 in the
- 00:24
- Quran is as understood by most Muslims today, that God made it appear that Jesus had died upon the cross, then should not all available historical records reflect this?
- 00:33
- Shouldn't it be the verdict of history that this happened since Allah made it appear so? Indeed if one accepts the idea that Allah in essence deceived the
- 00:41
- Jews and everyone else at Calvary, then is it not Allah who invented the Christian faith by so doing?
- 00:47
- Should it really be surprising that all the credible first century sources say Jesus died if Allah made it appear so?
- 00:54
- But it is just here we encounter the real question of the debate today. To believe the Islamic denial of the crucifixion we must accept the following.
- 01:00
- First that the original followers of Jesus were significantly less brave and noble than the followers of Muhammad, for they failed to communicate the truth about who
- 01:08
- Jesus was. They allowed a usurper like Paul to take over and spread lies about Jesus, resulting in literally hundreds of millions of people committing shirk for 2 ,000 years.
- 01:18
- This, even though the Quran promises the true followers of Jesus would be victorious over the unbelievers. Secondly we must believe
- 01:25
- Paul, Mark, Matthew, John, Peter, Luke, and all the other New Testament writers were likewise either deceivers or themselves deceived, for they all taught us to believe
- 01:34
- Jesus is the son of God and that he died upon the cross. Next Muslims must believe that even though Allah gave the
- 01:41
- Torah and the Injil, that he did not safeguard them or protect them, but instead allowed them to be corrupted so quickly that we cannot even find them in history any longer.
- 01:50
- One must ask the Muslim if Allah could not protect those revelations. Well I believe he has protected the
- 01:55
- Quran. And so in closing I come back to the only real issue Christians and Muslims must debate this evening.
- 02:03
- If you're a Muslim tonight, let me ask you. Let's say someone came along in the middle of the 13th century, claiming to be a prophet who never once read the
- 02:11
- Quran, though he claimed his teachings were consistent with it. And let's say this person wrote a single short verse, say of 40 words or so, and said the
- 02:21
- Hijra never took place. Never happened. And what's more, for some reason this alleged prophet never says another word about it.
- 02:29
- Never explains it. None of his followers for another 200 years seem to know anything about this amazing assertion.
- 02:36
- Now honestly, how much weight are you going to give such a claim? Obviously I'm drawing a parallel to help you see the situation as a
- 02:43
- Christian sees it. The reason we are here this evening is because of Surah 4, verse 157. The evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus is really not in question in many historical sense, not even from a biblical sense, clearly.
- 02:56
- What we must question this evening is why anyone would believe that 40 Arabic words, traceable only to the middle of the 7th century, written by someone without first -hand knowledge of the
- 03:03
- Christian scriptures, without any meaningful historical connection to the events that took place that day in Jerusalem, and themselves liable to all sorts of different meanings and understandings, are sufficient basis upon which to ground a denial of the testimony sealed in blood by the original followers of Jesus.
- 03:20
- As for me, I see no reason whatsoever to accept these 40 words while rejecting the thousands of historically sound, consistent words of the apostles of my
