What Every Christian Should Know About the Qu'ran, Part 2

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I want us to move on to conversation and look at what you started with in chapter 4 of your book where you start looking at for instance the doctrine of the
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Trinity and I should almost say the misunderstanding of the
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Quran concerning that. Do you want to speak about that? Yeah well see when I was doing the book I think it's pretty obvious I'm not revealing anything untoward here but I utilized the
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Quran as the organizing principle to address the key issues that separate
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Christianity and Islam as a whole and by using the Quran I'm addressing you know the foundational document of Islam at the same time but it's more of an organizing tool than anything else and so most of my debates that I have had with Muslims over the years have focused upon the key issues of who
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Jesus is, the nature of God, and the gospel. I mean those are the key issues that we're dealing with in talking with Muslims and so it's to me a rather clear reality that the author of the
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Quran had a fundamentally flawed understanding of what the doctrine of the
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Trinity actually is. There is no evidence that I can find that the author of the
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Quran had ever been accurately instructed on the subject and hence the refutation of the doctrine of the
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Trinity that is plainly being attempted in the text of the Quran primarily in Surahs 3, 4, and 5.
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That's really the focus. There's a couple other places but Surahs 3, 4, and 5 are the epicenter of the apologetic of the
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Quran against the three and it never uses the term Trinity. The Quran uses the word three because the
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Quranic author plainly believes the doctrine of the Trinity is tritheistic, that there are three gods and this is illustrated by the fact that every single time the word three in this context is found in the
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Quran, the next phrase is going to be there is only one
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God Allah. So if every time you say three you then say there is only one
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God Allah, what you're saying is do not say there are three gods. I mean this is just absolutely necessary for these words to have any kind of meaning at all.
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And so I then ask the one question that no one wants to seem to want to address in fullness and that is does the
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Quran ever identify the three? We can assume father, son, and spirit, we have that background but does the
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Quran ever identify the three? And it does.
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That's in 5 .116. In Surah 5 .116. It does but the problem is the three that it identifies and I don't like to just jump straight to Surah 5 .116.
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You can trace, in fact it's fascinating. I did a debate in London with a sharp young Muslim man and the thesis was does the
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Quran misrepresent Christian belief? Because if the Quran is the eternal word of God then whether a
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Muslim understands the Trinity or not doesn't matter, God does. God gets it and so even if it's wrong
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God understands it and he can respond to it and he can refute it accurately. But if the
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Quran misrepresents the doctrine of the Trinity then clearly the Quran is a human authored document in opposition to its own claim.
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And so in this debate we went through Surah 5. We're walking through it very carefully and at the end of the debate
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I was the one arguing that you can interpret Surah 5 consistently all the way through the
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Surah and that it identifies who the three are. The Muslim was saying you can't interpret
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Surah 5 in context and you can't follow a particular meaning in that Surah.
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I was the one arguing for the consistency of the Quran and the Muslim was arguing for the inconsistency of the
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Quran at that point. It was amazing because if you allow Surah 5 to speak for itself then it is plainly identifying the three that you are not to say as Allah, Mary, and Jesus.
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That is the understanding of the author of Surah 5 as to the three you're not supposed to say is
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Allah, Mary, and Jesus and it makes perfect sense because if you walked into or just peeked into a church in the year 600 in Syria where Muhammad would be going on trading caravans, what would you see?
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You would see representations of God as creator. You would see obviously
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Jesus all over the place. There would be crucifixes, things like that. Then you're going to see a woman.
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Mariolatry was on the rise. Mary was very central to various liturgies and things like that at that point in time.
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You're going to see a woman. She's going to have a baby in her arms. She's going to be at the foot of the cross.
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You're going to see God. You're going to see a woman and you're going to see a baby and then on the cross as well.
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What you're not going to see or maybe not pick up that you're seeing is that dove. That dove's probably not going to just stick out to some young man coming in from the deep desert.
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And so if you hear them talking about three, the Trinity, what three are you going to assume?
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Well, if you're worshiping in the Kaaba and there are numerous gods in the
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Kaaba that have wives and children and then you see God, Mary and a baby, how are you going to interpret it the way that the author does in Surah 5, verse 116?
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Now it's amazing the lengths to which people have gone to try to get around this rather obvious interpretation to try to rescue either
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Muhammad or just simply they don't want to go, hey, I couldn't have been that far off.
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But there are just too many places where the Quran is saying, well, he's above having a child.
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He'd have to have a consort. This whole idea. And here in South Africa, you have
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Ahmadinejad. And okay, Ahmadinejad does not rank as one of the leading scholars in the history of Islam, okay?
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He's not at Al -Ghazali or something like that. But he was straightforward in reading the text of the
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Quran and saying, hey, you people are tritheists. And how many times in his presentations, there's a sexual aspect to what you people are saying.
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He said it over and over again. A lot of Muslims in America want to try to stay away from that as much as possible, but not so much down here.
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Absolutely. You might hear it again this weekend. I might. It's quite possible.
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So to me, almost everything else is subservient to this because the fact of the matter is, if this book, see, what
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I like to do is, is Surah 5 is a rich, it's called the table, Surah Tamayrah, the table, because the names of the surahs come from just whatever is mentioned in it.
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So it's rather a random thing. But Surah 5 not only contains that discussion, but it also contains, to me, one of the most important texts in the
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Quran. And that is the argument that is found in basically starting around Surah 5, 44.
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And so here's the study Quran, beginning in,
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I believe, verse 44. I say, I believe, because they print the numbers so small anymore that I'm not really sure.
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It's the joy of getting older, you know. I may have to borrow your reading glasses out there.
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Truly, we sent down the Torah wherein is a guidance and a light by which the prophets who submitted unto
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God judge those who are Jews as did the sages and the rabbis in accordance with such of God's book as they were bidden to preserve and to which they were witnesses.
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So fear not mankind, but fear me, and sell not my signs for a paltry price. Whoever judges not by what
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God has sent down, it is they who are the disbelievers. And therein we prescribe for them a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds, retribution.
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But whosoever forgoes it out of charity, it shall be an expiation for him. Whoever judges not by that which
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God has sent down, it is they who are the wrongdoers. So some people will say, well, there's a quotation from the
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Old Testament, the Lex Talionis. That's a quotation. The funny thing is
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I often ask my audiences, how many of you know exactly where that's found in the Old Testament? And almost nobody ever knows because we've all heard it orally.
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And I think that's how he heard it as well. It was oral transmission. And the
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Lex Talionis had been brought over into Islamic law. And so here's the assertion, the
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Torah was sent down, it was given to Moses by God. So there's the first step in the chain.
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Then, and in their footsteps, we sent Jesus, Son of Mary, confirming the Torah that had come before him, and we gave him the gospel wherein is a guidance and a light, confirming the
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Torah that had come before him as a guidance and exhortation to the reverend. And so the first link, you send the
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Torah down to Moses. Now Jesus comes along and he confirms what came before, but then he receives the gospel.
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So you're building a chain here. And then here's the important verse, verse 47, Surah 547, let the people of the gospel judge by what
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God has sent down therein. Now, I am not a Hebrew, I'm not an Arabic expert, but I took,
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I had a native speaking Christian pastor from Syria as a tutor for a number of years.
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And one of the things that we did is we looked at this passage, I said, now look, when it says, let the people of the gospel judge by what
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God has sent down therein, the Arabic term is fihi, what does that refer to?
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And it refers to the gospel. We are to judge by what is found in the gospel.
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Now, this is very, very important because then it repeats, whosoever judges not by that which
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God has sent down, it is they who are iniquitous. And we have sent down unto thee, Muhammad, the book and truth confirming the book that came before it.
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So this is a chain. And so you've got Torah, Moses, then you've got gospel,
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Jesus confirmation, and now Quran, Muhammad confirmation. Yes.
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Well, so what you're saying is just for the audience to understand, the Quran is calling upon the
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Christian scriptures, the gospel to stand in judgment of what is written in the Quran. I would, when it says, let them judge, judge what?
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Exactly. I try to be very, very careful at this point, because I think this is one of the most important sections.
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I do not want to overstate what it is actually stating. And what's interesting is
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I've gotten minimally four different interpretations from leading
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Islamic apologists as to what Surah 5 is all about. So they don't have a consistent response to this either, to be perfectly honest with you.
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So I try to be very, very careful. I think that the fairest reading is that the
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Jews are supposed to judge themselves by what they have in the Torah, the Christians by what they have in the gospel.
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And now the Quran is being sent down. And I just don't think that as yet it has been exalted to the status of, it's going to be the worldwide judgment of everybody, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I think what you have here is Muhammad creating a chain of authority that props his authority up.
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And we tend to be dealing with people that are looking anachronistically back at it where the supremacy of Muhammad has already developed.
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I think in the lifetime of Muhammad, this is Jews, you judge by the
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Torah, Christians by the Injil, and you all need to see that God is doing something new in me.
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And since you all accept that in that way, then there should be acceptance in me. That I think is the fairest reading of the text.
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But what it means, no matter how you slice it, parse it, stand on your head and spin in circles, is these words would have no meaning in the days of Muhammad if the
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Injil, the gospel, still did not exist. If it had been lost, if it had been corrupted, if it was no longer available to mankind, these words make them.
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How can the people of the gospel judge what was contained therein if they don't have it anymore?
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So it's very plain to me that the author of the Quran believes that God, it says right there, sent down.
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The Torah, light and guidance, sent down by God. Gospel, light and guidance, sent down by God.
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And they still exist. He's simply saying there's something new. And it's only in later generations that you get this idea that this something new means that what came before has actually been corrupted.
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It's no longer viable. It's no longer useful. That was not, at least at this point, in the development of Muhammad's theology, what he's really trying to present.
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So what makes this so important is that Muslims, of course, assert that the
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Bible has been corrupted. And this comes up in pretty much every single debate that we have.
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In some form or another, it's going to come up in every single debate that we have. And the problem is that if this is from God, then these words had to have had meaning.
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And that means the gospel existed in the, let's say around the year 625, just for a good guess.
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Around the year 625, it's still an existence. Well, do we know what the New Testament looked like in 625? We certainly do.
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We have entire manuscripts of the New Testament that long predate 625. So if you're going to say that it's been corrupted, it's been changed, then you have to explain what
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Surah 547 actually means. And that's why I say I'm surprised that I've gotten such inconsistent responses from individuals on this particular issue.
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And that's smack dab in the middle of the same section that misrepresents the doctrine of the Trinity. So to me, what this demonstrates is that the
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Muslim needs to deal with the reality that the text that he is basing everything upon is a very human text.
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It's not been written on a tablet from eternity past. It's not uncreated. And getting a
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Muslim to even be willing to critically analyze for a moment the possibility that the
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Quran might not be what they've been taught is actually very important in the proclamation of the gospel.
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Absolutely. Because unless you get that, unless you make that step, then you're never going to be able to hear the cross, the resurrection, the centrality of things, because the
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Quran says it never happened. The Quran says, well, in 40 Arabic words, says there was no crucifixion.
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So there you go. The interesting thing, though, Doc, maybe to keep that in your thought, is also that we see quite a change in the theory of corruption.
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You've mentioned also that there was a difference between Tarif al -Manana and then between Tarif al -Nas, which changed completely.
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There's almost, in the beginning, an obscuring of the passages where now the actual texts have changed.
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So after your point you want to make, do you want to address that as well? Yeah. Today, 99 .5
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% of the Muslims to whom you're going to speak believe that the actual words of the
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Christian scriptures have been fundamentally altered, that this is a corruption of the actual text itself.
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Whereas I think the author of the Quran would have really struggled with that idea, because he says the
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Torah and the Injil have been sent down, the Quran has been sent down. If what's been sent down by God can be fundamentally altered by man, then why can't the
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Quran be altered in that same way? Absolutely. And so down through Islamic history, there were two streams.
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There were those who said that the corruption of the Torah and the Injil was in the interpretation of those words, not in the words themselves.
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And then there was another stream that did assert the actual fundamental changing of the words of the
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Old and New Testaments, is what we would call them. In 1864, a book was published in India, the
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Establishment of the Truth, the Confirmation of the Truth. And that book, especially here in South Africa, has been hugely influential here in South Africa, primarily because, again, of Ahmadiyyat.
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That was the book that turned him into an Islamic apologist, da 'i.
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And as a result, the vast majority of Muslims today, because of that book and because it presented the idea of the corruption of the scriptures, the
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Christian scriptures, one of those two streams has pretty much been turned off, and the other has become the predominant understanding amongst
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Muslims. An Indian written book in 1864 had that level of impact.
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And so you're always dealing, you're always going to be dealing with a
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Muslim who has a fundamental distrust of the textual history of the
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Bible, whereas they have a fundamentally implicit acceptance of the accuracy of the text of the
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Koran, in contrast to that. Yes, excellent. And while we're on the topic of corruption, the other great corruptor of the text is obviously
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Boulos, or Paul. And what we find is very early on in Al -Qurtabi, he in actual fact says that Paul spread the true message, but now the overwhelming evidence or pointing is that Paul preached something very different into what
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Jesus presented. Oh yeah, that's, that is, I mean, there is the reference, the possibly vague reference in the
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Koran to those preachers that some people identified as including Paul.
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But the idea today is that Paul was just the bad guy.
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He was, there is a deeply anti -Pauline rhetoric amongst
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Muslims. Some have taken the time to read a lot of anti -Pauline literature, and there is a lot of anti -Pauline literature out there, sadly.
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They don't seem to have taken the time to read any of the positive Pauline literature.
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But yeah, Paul is the big bad guy. He's the one that's, you know, Jesus just simply tells people to be
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Muslims, and Paul comes along and changes everything and turns Christianity into something different.
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It is strange that the Koran actually says that the true followers of Jesus would predominate over anyone else.
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Oh, absolutely, yes. If you turn into the anti -Pauline perspective, then that section of the
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Koran doesn't make any sense. No, that's sort of 355, isn't it? Yeah, 355, yes, that's what it says.
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When he said, O Jesus, I shall take thee and raise thee unto me and purify thee of those who disbelieved and place those who follow thee above those who disbelieved until the day of resurrection.
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Well, the day of resurrection is yet future. So you would think, I think I've heard some people try to interpret that as a future fulfillment, and the idea being that true followers will become
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Muslims. Yeah, for sure. In that text. But anyway, yeah, there's a strong anti -Pauline polemic that is out there today, and there are a couple really good books.
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Paul, Apostle, A Heart Set Free by F .F. Bruce and some others that I would recommend that Christians read just to be aware.
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I mean, that's not a particularly polemic book, but just be aware that within what is broadly called
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Christian scholarship today, there is just a massive amount of nasty material against Paul.
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You would consider David Wenham's Did Paul Get Jesus Right? I haven't read that one.
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That is a pretty solid resource where he shows that Paul didn't get Jesus right. Yeah, that is very good. Didn't get
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Jesus wrong. Absolutely. I thought you were saying right. You have to enunciate this a little bit better. I think the first title of his book was exactly that,
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Did Paul Get Jesus Right? And then the second book is more scholarly book where he speaks more on Paul in actual fact preaching exactly what
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Jesus said. Well, I think that's a highly defensible position, but unfortunately it's not something most of us spend much time thinking about because we're not dealing with people that would be questioning
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Paul's authority. Though, okay, I'll take that back. In the social context which we find ourselves today, there actually is more of that.
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Yeah, for sure. Far more than we would like to see. Yeah, for sure. You also started in the book and you looked at the
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Jesus of the Quran. And I think a lot of people assume that because Jesus or Isa in the
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Quran is mentioned that that is exactly succinct with the Jesus that is mentioned in the Gospels.
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It's just a, if you almost want to say de -deified Jesus, well, obviously the crucifixion also denied you mentioned that.
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But what is the perspective on Isa or Jesus in the Quran? Yeah, I have to agree with a very liberal
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Muslim scholar, who I believe I cited in the book, who made the argument the
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Jesus of the Quran is not a person. He's an argument. He's not a person.
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He's an argument. The Jesus of the, there are only, there's less than a hundred direct references to Jesus.
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His name only occurs a certain number of times. But only once, for example, does
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Jesus speak from an identifiable historical location in the Quran. And that identifiable location is his cradle, which is one of those two
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Gnostic references to the Arabic infancy gospel. And when in the actual
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Arabic infancy gospel, he identifies himself as a son of God, not merely as a prophet. So I found that interesting.
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But the point is Jesus just floats around and says stuff in the Quran, and there's no, there's not even an attempt to place any of this stuff in history.
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It's fascinating to me that Muslim apologists will question the accuracy of the synoptic
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Gospels and question that the Gospel of Mark could quote
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Jesus correctly if it's written, you know, 30 years after his death. But they believe implicitly that words that have zero historical evidence outside the
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Quran that no one had ever heard of before are directly the citations of Jesus. The inconsistency and incoherence is amazing.
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But I would simply say, you know, Muslims like to say that Islam is the largest religion in the world that teaches you to love
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Jesus. Yeah. You heard that one? Absolutely. Problem is, if all you have is the
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Quran, I don't think you love Jesus. He's not a person. The liberal scholar was right.
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He's an argument. Yeah, for sure. He's just, he's an argument for Muhammad's prophethood. He's an argument for monotheism.
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He's an argument against Christianity, but he's not a person. You can't love arguments, despite what people do on Facebook today.
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You can't actually fall in love with an argument. And so he is not a person.
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And that's why it's so vitally important to try to get Muslims to read one of the
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Gospels. I agree. Is because what they have been given in the Quran is utterly insufficient for them to even find
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Jesus attractive. There's really nothing attractive about the Islamic Jesus in the Quran.
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There really isn't. And even if you add whatever commentary you can get from the
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Hadith, you're still going to have such a horrifically deficient understanding of Jesus from those materials that there's going to be nothing that's going to be of any salvific level of attraction at that point.
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And that's why you have to try to get a... I was in Samara, Russia not too long ago, driving in a taxi through mountains of snow to where I was teaching, and our taxi driver was a medical student who was a
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Muslim, and my translator was with me, and my translator knows, has listened to all my debates, and so he knows my stuff.
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He even did the Surah 5 thing, which we just did. And he asked me through the translator, he asked, my translator told him, yeah, he's read all of Bukhari and Muslim.
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He's like, he had never met a Christian scholar that had read all of Bukhari and Muslim. He said, well, then how can you not be a
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Muslim? That's an interesting question to ask, and my response was, because the author of the
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Quran did not know who Jesus was. And he's like, well, well, but, and then
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I just, I sort of stopped him. Again, we're doing this through translation, and I said, have you ever read any of the
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Gospels? Now, he's a medical student. He's an educated young man, and he's like, well, no.
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And I was like, so I've read the Quran multiple times. I've read Bukhari and Muslim, and you know how many volumes that is, and you haven't read one of the
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Gospels. Don't you think that in this situation, you might want to take the time to read one of the
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Gospels? Just one. It doesn't matter which one to me, so that we can have a meaningful conversation.
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That's wonderful. It's an actual fact, quite inviting to approach
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Muslims when they say to me, we love Jesus more than what you Christians do. I always say to them, well, have you ever read
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John 14, 15, where Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commands? And then I'll say, have you ever read the commands of Jesus?
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And again, the standard response is, no. I've not endeavored to.
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I said, not if he's divine, just his commands. If you could read through just the
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Gospel of John, you can look at his commands. What does he require? Believe in God, he says in John 14, verse 1, but also believe in me.
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Can you say that you can adequately express the same belief that is essential for your salvation in both
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Yahweh as revealed in the Son and in the Father? And Muslims will be baffled.
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They will be like, no, they don't. That is incredible. Can I ask you two standard questions quickly, just as a little sidetrack to our conversation that we often hear when it comes to Jesus Christ, and I think you'll answer them adequately, but here's one.
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Where did Jesus claim deity? Because a lot of times we hear, where did Jesus say, I am
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God, worship me? Just for the audience, I think they'll love that. Well, the audience, I would hope that the audience will recognize where that comes from.
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Absolutely. This is the spirit of Ahmed Didat, who though dead, continues to speak, and it is, would you agree, because you've done a number of debates as well,
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I think it's probably the most common thing I've heard, and when you hear something that often, it can become difficult to respond to it patiently.
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Yeah, you're right. Because you've responded to it. You could respond to it in a comatose state. You know, someone could wander by your hospital bed and say it, and you'd be able to respond right then and there.
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But it's obviously considered effective, or it wouldn't be repeated so often.
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And so what's being demanded is a specific phrase to appear in Scripture, and it has to be on the lips of Jesus.
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Yeah, for sure. So I can show you direct statements where Jesus is called God. He's called,
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Thomas calls him our Lord and God, and he's called our God and Savior in Titus 2 .13,
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2 Peter 1 .1, but those aren't Jesus. And so where did
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Jesus say, I am God? And even when you point to Jesus's acceptance of Thomas's language in John 20, 28, his identification of Thomas's words as an act of faith, even when you go to John 8, 15.
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Even if it's seen as a, oh my God. Yes, yes, yes. Believe me, you know someone is really desperate when they try to do the
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John 20, 28 isn't actually Thomas calling Jesus God. It's Thomas going, my
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Lord, my God. You know someone is at their last, they're not getting very far right now, especially because just on the grammar of the text, he answered and said to him.
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Everything that comes after that is directed to Jesus, not some type of just a statement of shock or anything else.
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It just doesn't work, but even when you go to places like John 8, 58 where Jesus says, before Abraham was,
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I am. Well, but that's not these words.
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Yeah, exactly. And so I've literally spoken to numerous Muslims that basically said, well, unless these specific words in this order are recorded as being on the lips of Jesus, all the rest of that stuff just simply doesn't matter, and you can turn that around and demand that Muhammad would say, and you can make up anything you want as long as he never said it.
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The only way I'm going to believe it is this, but it does demonstrate the fact that there are a lot of people who will defend their faith by merely repeating arguments that in any other point in their life would be considered silly, and they would recognize that it's invalid argumentation.
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So, yeah, I mean, I will go to certain texts where Jesus says things that are pure blasphemy for someone who would be a mere creature, but unless it's just those words, then it doesn't fulfill the challenge, and that's why
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Didac did it, and that's why Zakir Naik repeats it today. A lot of guys still do.
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Karim is going to say the same thing probably in a matter of hours, and so just be prepared for it, and don't let it sidetrack you.
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Would it be a good response to say, well, where did Jesus explicitly deny it, and where's the exact words where he said,
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I am not God, do not worship me? Yeah, once you get to that level of conversation, you're probably getting the end anyway.
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For sure, for sure. Now, you also mentioned earlier on that the crucifixion of Christ is explicitly denied, which is fundamentally based on Surah 4, where there's one verse mentioned where in actual fact it denies the crucifixion.
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What I find is that, and maybe you can comment on this as well, Muslims themselves even wonder as to what happened to Jesus if he was not crucified.
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Could you just explain that? Yeah, it's 40 Arabic words. There is no commentary on that material in the
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Hadith sources, so we don't have Muhammad's own commentary on it, which is highly unusual.
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There are other texts in the Qurans, like Surah 1933, that taken in their natural language would refer to Jesus' death, and yet you have 40
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Arabic words, the Jews did not crucify him. It was only made to appear to them, and that can even be translated by some translations as he was made to appear to them, which would not be an accurate translation, but they do it because the majority of Muslims outside the
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Western world hold Jesus as their substitution theory, and that is that someone was put in Jesus' place and crucified on the cross.
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Most would say Judas Iscariot, some say Simon Cyrene, whatever. Someone was made to look like him and was placed on the cross, and this was a deception, such a good deception that it deceived not only the
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Jews, but the Christians as well, who then began proclaiming the resurrection.
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And given the history of the text of the Quran, given that, for example, we have verses in Surah 9 that were only found in the memory of one person, it really makes you wonder about Surah 4, 1 to 7, which is just completely disconnected from history.
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It puts the Quran in a position of being thoroughly refuted because even skeptics like John Dominic Cross and Bart Ehrman will say the most certain fact of Jesus' entire life is his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
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I mean that's just a given of history, and so to put the
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Quran in such a difficult position really makes you wonder. What is the motivation?
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Where did that come from? Could it have come after Muhammad? Who knows, but it's there.
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There's nothing we can do about the fact that it's there, and the Muslim can't do anything about the fact that it's there, and so what do they do?
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Well, in the debates I've done, you either have the
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Ahmadi view that Jesus was crucified but didn't die, which is what Shabir Ali likewise says, or what you do is you attack the resurrection and pretend that by attacking the resurrection, you're also attacking the crucifixion.
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That's what has been done in the debates with me on that subject, so it's a massive barrier obviously that needs to be.
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Often when I speak on Islam, I say if you can write any one verse down, write down Surah 4, verse 157 and be aware of what it says because any type of gospel presentation you're going to present has to deal with the reality of the crucifixion so as to have any meaning for the resurrection, and so it's central to our faith, and so to have it denied by one single verse without any historical context, and by the way, you could interpret the verse as Jesus still dying, just it wasn't the
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Jews that killed him. Yeah, for sure. That would be one way. It says surely they didn't kill him.
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Okay, but somebody did. Somebody killed him, so how do you deal with that?
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So Islamic history, tafsir, the commentary literature, has shown a lot of different interpretations of what that is.
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There's an Arabic term, mubinun. It means clear, prospicuous, and allegedly that's what the
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Quran is. It ain't here. It isn't here. There is a tremendous amount of difference in interpretation at that point.
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Incredible. Yeah, the chapter just after that, you move a little bit on. You talk about salvation in the
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Quran, and then obviously the scales. Do you want to quickly just tell the audience what do
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Muslims really believe about salvation? You can't answer that question.
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It's sort of like for years going up and witnessing the Mormons, one thing that I've known all through that time,
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Mormons have no doctrine or justification. There's no sense to even try to talk about it because they don't have a clue, and when you start talking with Muslims on how it is to be saved, once you get into certain people groups, you'll start getting a little bit more consistency, but in general, there is a tremendously wide variety of understandings of exactly what saved means.
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It's getting into the presence of Allah, and there's a simple reason for this. The Quran gives no consistent guidance.
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You can interpret numerous verses one way or the other, and the Hadith is just as incoherently contradictory as the
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Quran is. You can have individuals, and this is a real problem because you can have individuals who really want to be guaranteed entrance into the presence of God when they die, and they start looking for ways of getting it, and well, one way in the days of Muhammad was something called jihad.
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If you die in jihad, you go directly into paradise, so hey, let's try it, and we've seen what the result of that is, and then you had other, even companions of the
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Prophet who died in tears because of the fact that they did not have an assurance, and all this goes back to the fact that the
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Hadith tells stories about people getting into heaven, and the stories are mutually exclusive in their nature, so one of the most popular stories, of course, is the story of the man who had killed 99 people, and he goes to a priest to ask if his repentance would be accepted, and the priest says no, so he kills the priest, and now he's killed 100 people, and then he goes to a scholar.
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He asks the scholar. The scholar says, go to such and such city. They'll tell you what you need to do so that your repentance will be accepted, and while on the way, the time for his death comes because 40 days after conception, an angel comes, writes for you, whether you be male, female, successful, unsuccessful, heaven or hell, and the date of your death, and so when you die, according to Islamic lore, an angel comes from the fire, an angel comes from Jannah, heaven, and they argue over your soul, and you would think with this guy, mass murder, because that's one way.
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This would be a fairly easy argument, but evidently the angel from paradise maybe had taken some law classes or something like that, and he says, well, he was going to find out about repentance, and so Allah declares that if he is one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the city he was coming from that he would go to paradise, and in some versions of the story,
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God even makes the earth to shrink between the man and that city, so he's one cubit closer, so the mass murderer goes to heaven, and the
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Muslim will point to this hadith, and will say, see, here's the mercy of God. Here's the love of God. Here's Allah is all forgiving and gracious, so on and so forth.
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I have used this as an illustration in numerous debates of the fact that in Islamic theology,
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God's character as reflected in his law is simply sacrificed. If you can have a mass murderer go to heaven on a whim, then you can have a person who did good deeds in their life go to hell on a whim.
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Depends on the day. Depends on the day, and that's why there is a
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Mutawatir hadith where Muhammad specifically said there are people who do the deeds of hellfire until they're a hand's breadth from entering in, and then what is written for them overtakes them, and they enter into heaven, and there are people who do the deeds of the people of heaven their whole lives until they're a hand's breadth from entering in, and then what is written for them overtakes them, and they go into hellfire.
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The point is what that angel wrote down for you is going to turn where you go. What you do is irrelevant, so where is there any foundation whatsoever for any kind of assurance about any type of relationship with God or being accepted of him or anything like that at all, and the only thing that the
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Quran gives is if you die in jihad, and that's what's caused so many problems today.
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That is incredible. So there's all sorts of stuff about the Sirat, the bridge, the testing of the final day, the people of hellfire.
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There's questions about whether all Muslims go to hell for a period of time. The problem is...
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Christians even, sorry, in some passages in the hadith you even find that some of the sins of the Muslims are put on the
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Christians and Jews. Those are in Sahih Muslim, and they are singular readings.
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In other words, there's only one narrator, and so some Muslims will dismiss those. Vast majority others will not.
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So yes, they are there. There are hadith that specifically say that on the day of judgment you'll have
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Muslims have all these sins, and so God just takes them because they said the shahadah, and he places their sins upon Jews and Christians in their place.
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That is there, but just so that we are being fully transparent, there are
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Muslims that would question the Sahih status of those particular narrations. So the point is this is all because the
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Quran and the hadith are not consistent in what they teach on this subject. There can be real concern and real confusion as to what one's relationship to God actually is.
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That makes it... I just need to say another avenue for us to speak to Muslims in honesty and also to present the gospel to them, which
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I think you did brilliantly at the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque with Dr.
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Shabir Ali in your closing statement. When you look at Muslims as a whole, I need to touch upon this because there's general understanding created that when you deal with Muslims, their basic temperament is always hostility towards the gospel.
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And I'll have to be honest, it is not something I find generally in South Africa, and even with yourself.
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The places we've gone in, the people we have spoken with, there's almost a... from their side there's a fatalism where whatever
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Allah has decreed, that is His will and that is it. But from our perspective, the reason we preach the gospel is because we believe that God can still change the hearts and minds of men.
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And if you can say something while we speak on salvation, from a Christian perspective, some people go buy their groceries, some people do business with Muslims.
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Is it that I should keep my distance or should I engage with my Muslim friend? Oh goodness. No, when...
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especially in our secularizing world where we have to bend over backwards to get people to talk to us about the gospel at all, here you have an entire group of people that are generally open to having gospel discussions and religious discussions, and many of them want to share what they believe with you, and all it takes is a little bit of showing of respect, a little bit of kindness, a little bit of compassion, and you can end up having a wonderful conversation and starting something that may well lead to something of eternal consequence.
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So at the same time, most of those good conversations are not conversations that only extend over five minutes.
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It might require the investment of some time in getting to know someone and things like that over time, but oh goodness, what they need most are caring
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Christians that are willing to reach out and to love and to be good witnesses of what
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Christ has done in their life. That is incredible, and it's a wonderful opportunity. I think people think that they need to be astute in apologetics before they can reach out, and what
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I've found is that just to take time and just to have a meal, and this is something
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I've learned from you is even before you do a debate is you would go out for a meal. I would try to. You would try to, yes, and just really try to establish a common humanity, and you've been criticized about that.
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Let me just say this, and I just want to just bring perspective to that because a lot of people think that the only way to speak to Muslims is to belittle or even to come.
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We've just mentioned earlier on in an outside conversation before we started the recording where the polemic against Muslims are geared to offend, and it is something
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I've not seen from you or John Gilchrist, and it's not that you do not disagree. I've seen you disagree exceptionally well and with the strongest intent against Muslims, but a lot of people would accuse you of being a bit too soft, and that is just simply not true.
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I've never seen you being soft on the truth, and I don't want you to speak to those people because obviously it's negative airtime for them, but can
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I ask, is there a time to do it in a way where you offend rather than to impart?
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I think there can be some situations where you have to choose who you're going to seek to try to snatch out of the fire.
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Yeah, you're right. So if there's someone who is leading others astray through their misrepresentations, something like that, and you've got a middle group, and they're listening to both sides, and let's say they're
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Muslims, but this Muslim is railing against the gospel and misrepresenting someone, and I can sense that there's a willingness to hear upon the middle group.
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In a situation like that, I may open the Bombay doors and let somebody have it for the sake of the other people.
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I have to make that kind of a call. I have to make that kind of a decision. You're never going to find me utilizing profanity or utilizing the nasty types of arguments that some people do.
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They're just meant to offend somebody right out of their socks, but I do have a way of dropping original language terms and a few other things in the process if I need to go into a level of arguments that most of my opponents aren't able to respond to, but again, that's not your normative situation.
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You have to have the freedom to make that call if it's needed. There are times when you have to speak very firmly and very clearly, but I can't see how the gospel is ever in any way helped, proclaimed, glorified, beautified by my just letting go with my flesh and going toe -to -toe with someone who's offended me or insulted me or whatever else it might be.
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There are a lot of people who think that you're doing
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God's work when you see the fact that you're offending people, and the gospel does offend.
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There's no question about that, but make sure it's the gospel that's doing the offending and not you. Yeah, very good point.
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Dr. White, I want to thank you for your time and your friendship and also for being here and instructing us.
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I just really enjoyed this, but I know this is the first of many, and hopefully next time we can do a few of the other books as well.
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Maybe you've written a few when you come back. Who knows? But it's wonderful to have you in South Africa, and it's wonderful to have you here today.