Apologetics Session 44 - Islam

opening us in prayer. Lord God, I thank you for this day. I thank you for all that you've blessed us with,

Father. I thank you so much for sending your son to die on the cross for us. Just thinking of Easter that's just passed,

I thank you so much that he didn't stay dead, but Christ rose from the dead to provide a way for us to be reconciled and saved, and we just thank you so much for that.

God, I just pray that you would bless this time, that we would all learn something from it, and that we would grow closer to you as a result.

Lord, I ask all these things in Christ's name, amen. All right, so this is going to be one of my shorter ones because I didn't have to prepare quite as much as I did for some of the deeper topics that we were talking about.

This will, however, be a very sort of surface -level set of information about Islam.

It is a very deep and rich topic that you could dive into, and I actually have a series, it's probably seven or eight hours long, that I've linked in the back of this presentation to a particular apologist,

Christian apologist, who grew up Muslim named Nabeel Qureshi, who is just absolutely fantastic when it comes to thinking about Islam, thinking about Christianity, the overlaps, the doctrines, all of that stuff, so can't recommend it more highly.

I'll mention it again at the end just so you guys have it all kind of fresh on your mind, but this is essentially going to go over, and I will actually play like a seven -minute video of Nabeel Qureshi actually talking to a

Muslim at one of his talks to sort of cap off the end of this, but there's a much deeper sort of study that he did for Biola University that's all on YouTube, and so I've got a link to that that you guys can watch, and it goes into extraordinary depth with regard to doctrines and beliefs and contrasts,

I think, modern or Western Muslims from those, you know, in the original, sort of in older times.

So Islam first is, what is Islam? So Islam is one of the largest monotheistic religions in the world.

It's estimated nearly a quarter of the world's population are Muslims, and we'll talk about Islam and what the word

Muslim means actually. There are different varieties of Muslims in the world, but like a lot of other religions, it has very similar characteristics to Christianity.

It even has some overlapping beliefs with Christianity, but it grew up over about 200 years from essentially not being a religion at all to being one of the dominant religions for one of the largest empires in the world.

So I didn't steal exactly from what Drew had done for Buddhism and Hinduism, but like those and Christianity, there are sacred texts, there are leaders or prophets, and there's an idea, a soteriology, an idea of how you become saved.

And so it's similar in those regards. The origins of Islam.

So Islam, like I said, grew up over 200 years. The story, as I heard it, is that it started in about the 7th century

AD, where Muhammad had an appearance of Gabriel, the angel

Gabriel, who told him the exact words were to begin reciting the

Word of God. And so Muhammad apparently told his wife and family members, but it took him about three years from the supposed appearance for him to sort of accept the mantle of prophet and really found the religion of Islam.

It was believed at that time that Muhammad was already in his 40s, and he worked as a caravan trader in Mecca, which

I'm sure you've all heard of, which was his hometown. At the time,

Muhammad lived in a very tribal society, so there were a set of different tribes that had, you know, sort of different responsibilities.

So like a lot of sort of Middle Eastern countries, there were, you know, a sort of a tribal society.

He was a member of the tribe of Quraysh. Quraysh tribe. Yep. And his tribe mainly supported the trade with pilgrims to Mecca.

Pilgrimages to Mecca actually predate Islam, because there was, people would travel from all over to worship idols in Mecca, and so there were, there was this idol worship that people would make pilgrimages, and so his role and his tribe's role was really to essentially interact with trade.

So Mecca was already sort of a hub of trade, as it were.

So Saudi Arabia at the time was sort of a melting pot of religions. There are a lot of different religions, monotheistic religions as well, as well as polytheistic religions.

A lot of the the gods they worship were very similar to the Mesopotamian gods, and there were lots and lots of idols there.

And there was a structure called the Kaaba that sort of sat in Mecca, and around the

Kaaba there were rows of like 360 idols. And this is, people would make a pilgrimage to Mecca to pay homage to their specific god amongst all of these, all of these gods.

Wasn't Allah one of them? Allah actually was, was one of the those gods as well, yes.

That is true. Although I'm not sure if it's this,

I'm not sure that they, that Muslims consider that the same Allah as the one that they, that they worship.

But yes, there was, there was one idol that was to a god Allah. So there were, there were monotheistic religions in Mecca, so Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism.

So monotheism wasn't like a completely foreign thing to folks that, that lived in, in that time, and it wouldn't have been a foreign concept to Muhammad.

And Muhammad considered himself a, a monotheistic worshiper.

This is a picture of the Kaaba. This obviously is a modern picture of the Kaaba, but around the

Kaaba would have been the idols that people would come and, and worship their gods.

Now the Kaaba is a structure that Muslims believe was created or constructed by Abraham.

They believe that Abraham took Hagar and Ishmael to Mecca and constructed this, this particular structure.

Modern Muslims believe that the black stone that you see here was constructed from a meteorite that was sent from Allah, and modern

Muslims believe it was a meteorite. They believe that Allah sent the meteorite down, and that's what it was constructed out of.

In pre -Islamic Arabia, the building was surrounded with the 360 idols that I was talking about, and pilgrims would come there to worship.

But it's now one of the most holy sites in, in Islam. You're actually not allowed to visit it unless you're a

Muslim. Muslims are required, at least once in their life, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and, and pray.

There's actually a lot of rituals where they walk around it, where they pray, and they actually believe that, that you can be blessed by touching it.

So there's actually people that maybe have wounds, and they would rub their wounds on the, the actual building to try and, and get a blessing and get healing from it.

How did Islam spread? Well that, that's actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to that.

So pre -Islamic Arabia, the northern part of pre -Islamic Arabia, was sort of sandwiched in between the

Byzantine and Persian Sasanian empires, and those empires were constantly fighting each other.

And just like Judaism, Islam has a body of law. Their law is called

Sharia law, which we'll talk a bit more about later. There's actually a number of competing ideas about Sharia law.

Unlike Judaism, Sharia law is not a fixed set of actual rules.

Sharia law just, you know, really means, you know, Islam itself just means submission, and Muslim means one who submits.

And so you're submitting to the will of Allah, and so Sharia law is just following the

Prophet, following Allah. The problem, really, of Sharia law comes into interpretations of what the holy texts, you know, what their interpretation is.

And we'll get into some of, some of that a little bit later when we actually talk about the, the

Quran and the Hadiths. So when, when you become

Muslim, you become part of the Ummah, which is the community of believers.

And so when Islam was, was actually coming up, it actually got

Muhammad in a bunch of trouble, because people were devoted to the Ummah, or the community of believers, over and above their own tribes.

And so it actually got Muhammad in trouble. Also, Muhammad was an avid preacher of monotheism, which obviously, given the pilgrimage trade that was going on there, was not, not too keen to keep him in, in, in good standing with his own tribe.

So he was actually a member of the Banu Hashim clan within the Quraysh tribe, and the

Banu Hashim were traditionally stewards of, of the pilgrims who visited Mecca and pre -Islamic

Arabia. But, you know, he, he was, you know, preaching this monotheism thing, and ultimately got him kicked out of, of Mecca in 622

AD, where he went off and headed towards Medina. I think it was called something else at the time, and I think the next slide actually has a map.

So you can see you've got the Byzantine and Persian Empire, and this is pre -Islamic Arabia, now

Saudi Arabia, and there's, I think, a few others over here, but, but you can see the

Quraysh tribe over there, and Mecca was right around, right around there as well. But they ultimately kicked him out, and he ended up having to go to Medina, which was further,

I guess that's east. So when

Muhammad was ultimately kicked out of Mecca and went to Medina, that's about the time that he severed their ties with Judaism, because remember, this is an

Abrahamic faith, which means they, they, they believe some things that are different from Jews at the time.

So they, they believe, for example, that Ishmael was the chosen son and not

Isaac, and, and so forth. So there's, but they all believe that, that we, we sort of originated from the same sort of tradition, but somehow have been corrupted along the way.

Those of us who aren't Muslims, obviously. So in Medina, the Islamic community started to look more like an empire than a religion, because Muhammad was not only the prophet of Allah, but he was also their sort of civil leader.

He was their general, and he was sort of the, the caliph, or the head of state for them as well.

And so, you know, they, they had kind of a small, a smallish empire over there in Medina, and Muhammad was actually quite a good general, and orchestrated and took back

Mecca in 630 AD. So there really is no separation from civic and religious duty in Islam.

It is effectively a theocracy. So here are things like Caliphate, which is just the kingdom of the caliph.

And so Muhammad was the only prophet, but he served as a caliph. And then when he died, the religion didn't need another prophet.

It was fairly well established, but he, they needed to select a new caliph. The first one to be caliph after Muhammad's death was

Abu Bakr, who was Muhammad's father -in -law. And this caused actually a rift that exists today.

So if you've heard of Sunni and Shia Muslims, this is why they are in conflict.

Because one group believes that Abu Bakr was the correct successor to Muhammad as the, as the first caliph.

And the other believes that Ali, who was Muhammad's son -in -law, was the rightful successor to Muhammad as caliph.

And believe it or not, they still fight over that today. And so this rift was created back then.

Ali did become the fourth caliph, but this group still thinks that the first four caliphs were illegitimate.

And there was also a lot of, apparently a lot of difficulty about Ali's, there's a lot of assassinations and stuff going on.

So again, Shia and Sunni Muslims. The Shia believes that it should be

Ali, and the Sunni believe that it was rightfully Abu Bakr. And caliph is where the term caliphate comes from.

So when you hear about creating a new Islamic caliphate, that's, it's just a kingdom, a theocracy kingdom.

This next slide is sort of the campaign to take back

Mecca. So you can see Mecca here, and Medina there. So he was exiled over to Medina, but then over time orchestrated, you know, the take back of Mecca and, and the, you know,

Islamic caliphate, you know, began there. And then spread even further beyond that.

So over the next hundred and sixty years, and this is after Muhammad had died, the

Muslim Empire grew from Arabia and, and took over much of the

Middle East. And this is why it is said that the, the religion of Islam spread by the sword, although it didn't exclusively spread by the sword.

It, this, they kind of got this, the Islamic caliphate got, they were just really good at winning wars.

They were really good fighters, and so they sort of got the, the idea that, that Islam spread by the sword.

But there were a number of cultures that embraced Islam for lots of other reasons.

Some of them embraced it because they, they looked at the

Islamic caliphate's ability to win wars and thought, because when, when people fought wars back then, as, as you see in the

Old Testament, it wasn't just the country's fighting, it was their gods fighting, right? And so when the

Muslims would win all these wars, people would say, oh their gods must be stronger, we should worship their gods, right, or God in this case.

And, and then others converted because they had to pay taxes. If they, the, the

Muslims would allow them to live, but they would pay these taxes for not being Muslims, and so some people converted just because nobody likes to pay taxes.

If you have to pay taxes to worship a god, well maybe worship a different god, right? It depends on how devoted you are to your god.

And so there were many cultures that converted peacefully, and then there were certainly cultures that were conquered and, and, and ruled and converted by the sword itself.

And a lot of extremists nowadays are, are, are harsher even than, than they were in those days.

So this next slide is, it shows you, this is Arabia and where it grew up, and then it basically spread all the way over and took over much of the

Middle East and northern Africa. So the, the, you know, the

Empire really kind of grew, took over the Persian Empire and so forth. So Islam spread as a result of, of that, and this talks about the, and I'm gonna do what, what

Drew did, where I think, Drew, you put all of your documents in a folder and then shared the whole folder.

I think I'm gonna do that as well, that way you guys can all have access to all of the topics that we've covered, or that I've taught.

So this was essentially the spread of Islam. Now this gets into the sacred texts.

So there's two groups of, of sacred texts. The first is obviously the

Quran, and the Quran is an interesting book because the

Quran is not narrative like the Bible is. It is considered to be literally the words of God.

So God or Allah would dictate to Gabriel, and Gabriel would dictate to Muhammad, and Muhammad would just recite the words of God.

And so it's not, it's not really telling a story as much as it is sort of sayings.

And, and, and so the, the thing was is Muhammad was actually illiterate when he became a prophet.

He didn't know how to read or write. And so he didn't actually, and if you tell a

Muslim that Muhammad wrote the Quran, they'll actually get angry because Muhammad didn't write anything.

Muhammad recited and then others wrote down. So it was generally friends that would act as scribes to write down, write down his words.

And then shortly after Muhammad's death, all of those things that were written down were sort of compiled together into the

Quran by either what people had written down or even what some had memorized of what

Muhammad had said. And in the Quran, it actually mentions

Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Isaac, and it mentions a lot of, you see in our

Christian Bible and in the Jewish Torah, mentioned also in, in the

Quran itself. But you have to understand that the Quran was not written really from a human's perspective.

It wasn't like trying to tell us a story. It was more just the words of God written out on a, on a page.

And Muslims actually believe that all monotheistic sacred texts, such as the Torah and the

Bible, are also the Word of God. They would actually say that the Word of God, and that they believe that those books actually teach

Islam. They believe that they're from Muhammad and actually teach Islam, but were corrupted by man over time.

So they believe that the original Jewish Bible and Christian Bible and, and that all of these prophets, they would consider

Moses and Jesus and, and Abraham, they would consider them all prophets, but they believe that they were prophets of Allah and preached

Islam, and that it was just corrupted by others over time. Muhammad was the seal of the prophets.

That's right, and, and they believe that Muhammad was the seal of the prophets, or the final prophet that was meant to correct the, the actual corruption.

And so they believe he was the final prophet to bring God's Word back to the one true religion of Islam, and that was the religion that worshiped the one true

God. And they reject the Trinity, by the way. They just believe that there is one God, and they actually believe that God is not, it's not like a personal relationship.

It's a duty for us to please God, but we don't actually have a relationship with God. And he didn't have a son.

Yeah, and he didn't have a son, and, and, and they also, and we'll talk a bit about some other things that they believe as well.

The second body of, of sacred texts are called the Hadiths. The Hadiths are a collection of sayings or stories about the

Prophet Muhammad. The problem with the Hadiths is some are better sourced than others.

So just like, if you remember when we talked about the Bible, we talked about textual criticism, and we talked about, you know, certain books that were put into canon because they could be accurately sourced or reliably sourced back to their original writer, so Pauline epistles or, you know, the

Book of John being written, you know, by John, and why certain things were excluded or included.

Well, the problem with the Hadiths is they just kind of lump them all together, and some of them are very reliably sourced, and others are very unreliably sourced, and so the

Isnad, or the chain of narrators, is the official list of sources that go along with each

Hadith. The shorter and more reliable the list of narrators, the more accepted the Hadith is. So they have this, like, some

Muslims will just throw some Hadiths out and say, I don't believe those are, those are legitimate, but then because they are

Hadiths, you have some Islamic extremists who will hone in on one.

So the one example is the, you know, dying as a martyr and getting 72 virgins. That is a, what they consider, a poorly sourced

Hadith. So it's a Hadith, but they don't consider it a reliable one, but you'll see that that a lot of this

Islamic extremists will hone in on that 72 virgin martyrdom Hadith as, you know, for terrorist, you know, reasons.

So the way that I describe this is some of the Hadiths are accurately sourced, they're, you know, they can be reliably sourced back to something that Muhammad actually said, and others are more whispered down the lane, right?

Things that were just transmitted over time and are almost folklore in some cases.

So some Muslims don't consider poorly sourced Hadiths as scripture, but obviously it's hard to tell when you have this kind of fluctuation, right?

It could be, it could be accurate or not. So these are the two major bodies of sacred texts for Muslims.

Any questions about those? So now we'll get into sort of the doctrines of Islam.

So the first is what you'll mostly hear from any Muslim is the five pillars of Islam.

The first pillar is the Shahada. The Shahada is essentially their profession of faith.

You'll hear them speak it in Arabic largely. I tried, I can't. I can't do it.

We forgive you. Forgive me for that. But the English translation is there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is

Allah's prophet. That is their statement of faith, and Allah is just Arabic for God.

That's all it is. So we say Allah, but all it is is just the Arabic word for God. So you could read this as there is no

God but God and Muhammad is God's prophet. And believe it or not, this

Shahada is actually whispered into the ears of newborns by their parents, and they are supposed to recite it on their deathbed.

So their entire life is encapsulated by the Shahada. So and the one thing you can take from devout

Muslims is they are very serious about their duties, right? They take seriously the duties, the five pillars and their duties, which is something

I wish more Christians did about Christianity. But that is the Shahada and the first pillar.

The second pillar is called the Salah. This or Salah, I don't know if it's pronounced Salah or Salah.

This is the ritual prayer, right? The five times a day prayer. The first time is at dawn.

It's called the Fajr. The second is at noon, which is the Zuhir. The third is the afternoon, which is

Asir. The fourth is at sunset, and the fifth is in late evening.

And you must always face Mecca when you're praying. And believe it or not, I think they used to face

Jerusalem, but Muhammad changed that when he went to Medina and separated from Judaism.

The significance of this is, first, submission to Allah. Second, the fulfillment of religious duty.

Third, the inculcation of moral values. Fourth, the teaching of discipline to the youth.

Fifth, the development of community. And sixth, the journey to spiritual upliftment. So they view the ritual prayer as a way of breaking up their day and, you know, essentially praying to Allah.

And the ritual prayer is very ritualistic, meaning they're reciting portions of the

Quran. They're reciting certain things. They actually have to interject sort of supplication in the midst of that.

So Nabil Qureshi, if you watch the...and different Muslims do this differently. Some of them doing at the end.

Some of them do it in the middle when their face is on the ground. They'll do it at different times, but mostly it's a ritualistic sort of recitation of portions of the

Quran, and they would actually have to memorize portions so they can recite them.

So unlike a lot of Christians who don't do a whole lot of memorization of the Bible, they have to memorize because they have to have something to say during these prayers, and so they'll memorize portions so that they can just recite them during these prayers.

Now the only exceptions to the ritual prayer is if you haven't hit puberty yet, or if you're too sick to actually pray, or women if they're menstruating, which

I thought was an interesting one. Those are the only exceptions that you have to the ritual prayer. You're supposed to do this and actually work with a gentleman who literally does this.

We actually have prayer rooms in that they can go to and work and actually pray.

The next three pillars, the third pillar is psalm, which is the month -long fast they do during the month of Ramadan, which is based on a lunar calendar so it doesn't happen in the same month every year.

And actually I think there was recent news about Passover and Easter and Ramadan all sort of colliding in Jerusalem this year around the same time.

And so this is a month -long fast. Now it's a different kind of fast than you normally think of when you think of Christian fast.

They only fast during the day hours. So essentially what they'll do is they'll get up before dawn and eat a lot of food.

They'll feast before dawn. Then they won't eat or drink, not even water, because remember this is a sort of almost nomadic desert society, so water was very important.

So they won't drink even water. And some will even be spitting throughout the day so they don't swallow their own saliva.

That's how serious they are about the fasting. Where they don't eat, drink, or smoke cigarettes.

I'm not sure why smoking cigarettes is in there, but they don't do any of those things during the day hours.

And then when the sun goes down they will have another big feast. So this is like a community building thing where they'll have these sort of community feasts, you know, before and after the daylight hours.

So obviously it's probably a lot more fun to fast in the winter than it is in the summer because the days are shorter in the winter.

So Ramadan is in commemoration of what? So Ramadan is like their, is kind of like their atonement time.

So it's kind of like, I guess, I guess the equivalent is what, Yom Kippur for Jews, which is, you know, it's their holy month.

So they'll do that fasting then. Okay, the fourth pillar is

Zakat. Zakat is almsgiving. Now everyone in here has heard of tithing, right?

Giving 10 % of your income essentially, right? And there's also, you know, there's offering giving, there's tithing.

Well almsgiving for Muslims is not based off income, it's based off net worth.

So you're supposed to give 2 .5 % annually of your net worth, of all that you own, to the poor or to charity.

Now the funny thing about Zakat is you can actually be a recipient of Zakat if you're one of the poor. So again, this is, there can be exceptions to folks if they are poor themselves, and they can actually be recipients of it.

But the way that Muslims give is, and they have, it's crazy, they have both for praying, the ritual prayer, they have apps on phones now that tell you where Mecca is so that you can pray.

They have apps and complex calculations for calculating Zakat, the actual two and a half percent.

It's not just, oh I gotta look at my bank statement and two and a half percent of that. Like they have, it's possessions, right?

So they have these calculators that they can use to determine how much they need to give. And this is, you know, another major duty that they have to fulfill.

And the fifth and final pillar is Hajj. Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca.

This is where they actually have to fulfill, they have to fulfill going to Mecca at least once in their life, and praying at the

Kaaba. The only exceptions, again, are if they are too unhealthy to do it, or are too poor to do it.

Those would be the two exceptions to that rule. Amen.

Yes. So you haven't mentioned anything about sin or forgiveness or anything like that.

Is the whole concept here, is if you do these five things well enough, you're in right standing?

So it's, it's a deeds -based, it's a deeds -based religion. So essentially the eschatology is that, and it's very...

Not eschatology, that's not what you mean. No, but I'm getting at your judgment at the end, right? It's very weird to me because essentially it's, if your good deeds outweigh your bad, then you go to heaven, right?

And so performing these duties, there's also other things that they have to do, but essentially performing these duties, you know, for God, pleasing

God, is how you get to heaven. Now, the trick is that they also believe in sovereignty.

So similar to, you know, sort of predestination or or Calvinism, you know, for some of us who are more

Calvinistic, they also believe that it's preordained, who goes to heaven and who doesn't.

And they also, they believe that Allah can both multiply your good deeds so that they outweigh your bad, and they can, he can also overlook your good deeds because, so it's, it's entirely up to Allah whether or not you go to heaven, but, but the theory is if you, if you fulfill your duties, then you will go to heaven.

The only guarantees to get into heaven are dying as a martyr, or if you fought in the first war to take back

Mecca with Muhammad. Obviously nobody has done that that's alive today, but, but everyone that fought in that battle supposedly goes to heaven, and if you die as a martyr, you're guaranteed to go to heaven.

So a martyr for the faith, which you'll hear a lot of extremists talk about, that's why they do acts of, of, you know, suicide terrorism.

But, but yeah, it's basically a deeds -based, works -based, and, and again, it's not relationship -based.

It's not that you have a relationship with God, it's that you are doing these things to please God so that he can, you know, either multiply your good deeds so that they outweigh your bad deeds, and you can go to heaven.

So it's entirely a deeds -based religion. Sharia law.

It's, this is the moral law of Muslims. It is actually part of the laws of the

United Arab Emirates, believe it or not. It's built in, now it's, it's what they consider to be

Sharia law. Again, it's very, Sharia law is a very fuzzy concept. It is practiced by nearly all

Muslims, at least their understanding of Sharia law. It is perverted by Muslim jihadists.

They will interpret certain hadiths a certain way and consider that part of Sharia law.

But Sharia law as, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, if you, if you talk to a

Muslim scholar, they will say Sharia law is just about justice and the common good, and it's following Allah and the

Quran and Muhammad. And so, so the problem is that it's not really all that well defined.

So if you look at, if you look at Judaism, for example, right, you have, you have the law of Moses, and then

Jews go to excruciating detail to document hundreds of additional laws.

I'm talking about modern day Jews. They follow all these laws where you get things like, you're not allowed to work on the

Sabbath. Well, what does that mean? That means you're allowed to only lift this much. You're allowed to only walk this far. Like they're very into the details about what the law actually means.

Well, Sharia law is a lot more fuzzy than that. It doesn't have that level of, of sort of definition, which is why it can be perverted.

And so you have certain countries in the Middle East that practice a very harsh form of Sharia law. But if you asked an

American Muslim who is, you know, fully, you know, westernized, if they follow

Sharia law, they would say yes, right? So things like the Hajib would be part of Sharia law, right?

It's essentially just their moral law. So again, the problem with certain

Hadiths being very poorly sourced is that you can say, well, I'm following Sharia law because it's, in this particularly poorly sourced

Hadith, it says to do X and therefore, you know, like women can't read or something, right? They're not allowed to get an education or something like that.

So is there an interpreting body, like kind of like a Supreme Court of Muslims that Not really.

What you'll end up with is with things like the Taliban, right? Which again, it's a theistic, or theocratic, you know, governance.

So you'll end up with imams and and, you know, different bodies like the

Taliban who will be doing the interpreting. So you're really subject to whomever is doing the interpreting.

You could go to liberal, more liberal western imams, and they will interpret it totally differently.

So there's no So it differs by caliphate? It differs by, you know, whatever the sphere of influence is of that particular governing body.

Matt, I know there's parts of Minneapolis that is quartered off.

Yes. That's following Sharia law. There's some more Somali Yes. Because remember,

Islam, if you look back at the map, it's in northern Africa as well. Right.

And so Islam has grown even further there. Like I said, it's like a quarter of the population of the world.

So yeah, there are parts of France, there are parts of America, and in Great Britain as well, especially in like,

I think the London area, where you've got population centers that are full of folks that have immigrated from some of these

Muslim countries, who are, you know, not instead of assimilating into the culture that they have immigrated to, are essentially preserving their culture in that particular country,

Minneapolis, again, another example of that. So yeah, and they would practice Sharia law there as well.

Yes, and they don't seek to immigrate, they seek to dominate. Yeah. Well, think about it from their, like, try not to do this too much, but think about it from their perspective.

They believe that that is God's law. Right? So think about, in the Christian circles, theonomists, right?

We talked about theonomists, who want essentially a Christian theocracy, and think that that is the ultimate goal.

Probably, I don't want to equate them or have a false equivalence too much with them. But it's a similar concept.

If you truly believe that Sharia law, whatever form you consider Sharia law was

God's law, wouldn't you want to make it the law of the land? Right? So that's kind of the perspective you have to have with them.

Now, obviously, there are tremendous abuses because you're dealing with human beings here, but yeah.

The problem is that there's conflicts with the Constitution, and you have some of these elected officials that were elected out of these areas that follow this type of law, and then they want to just subvert the

Constitution. I know up in Maine, there's a whole section of Portland, which is, it's all

Somali refugees. You know, we go to these foreign countries, and we have these wars, and then to make amends for these wars that we have, we go ahead and say, well, we can bring thousands and thousands of them, and we'll put them in the middle of white landia, which is like, you know, where there's no

Muslims at all, and we'll just plop them down in Portland, Maine, and next thing you know, there's all these mosques and stuff like that, and it's definitely, they're definitely not trying to be a melting pot into our country.

They're trying to keep their culture the way it is and dominate. That's what they're trying to do.

Yeah, and yeah, I mean, I try to be gracious, though, and say, if I were plopped in an atheistic country, would they say the same thing about me because I decided to stand up a church and evangelize, you know, for Christ in that particular country?

So while there are certainly abuses, and certainly people trying to subvert the, you know, the laws of this land, the

Constitution, and so forth, and I'm not discounting that in any way, but when you think about it, someone's, you know, belief system, they're going to try and preserve their belief system.

Of course they are. We would try to preserve our belief system as well. So I try to give a little bit of grace, but yes, we have to stop.

We can't turn into a, you know, a Sharia law country, right? We can't allow that.

But, you know, people are going to hold on to their beliefs. But they're quick to interpret your grace as weakness.

They're quick to interpret what? Your grace as weakness. Oh, my grace as weakness. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure.

There are certainly some, and not everyone is acting in good faith, right, in those communities either.

So, you know, there's going to be that because you're dealing with, again, human beings. How about the

Spanish in general? You're talking about from, like,

South America? Spain. From Spain. Yeah, so in Spain there was, again, yeah, there was a lot of, the

Islamic Empire grew into Spain until they were thrown out.

What were the name of the... Ferdinand and Isabella? Yes, I think it was

Ferdinand and Isabella. But yes, they were eventually thrown out of Spain, but yeah, there's a heavy influence there for sure.

All right, Jesus in Islam. Isa. Isa, yes.

So, Jesus was, you know, you'll see Jesus referenced in the Qur 'an.

Jesus was thought to be a prophet of Allah. They, the Muslims... You did. Oh. Well, I did switch, but I guess it didn't switch.

Let's see if I need to reconnect. I'm embarrassed. Doesn't happen in megachurches.

That's what you said. Chris Lama.

I feel better now. You had an HDMI cable!

It's not fair. You are human. I thought machines just listened to you.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. All the way home, he's going to hear you. Thank you so much.

Tough crowd. All right, it is connected. Let's see if I can get this screen mirroring.

So, back to presentation mode here.

Jesus in Islam. Here we go. Jesus was thought to be a prophet. In the

Qur 'an, it states that Jesus spoke as a baby, as an infant. He spoke and said that he was a servant of Allah and was sent as a prophet.

As an infant, he apparently said that, according to the Qur 'an.

And Jesus is actually one of the most mentioned persons in the Qur 'an. He's mentioned 25 times in the

Qur 'an by name, which his name in the Qur 'an is Isa. And he's mentioned 48 times in the third person and 35 times in the first person as Christ or the

Son of Mary or the Word of God. They actually call him the Word of God, which I thought was super interesting. But they don't mean it the same way we do.

Because they just believe he was a human, but he was a prophet of Allah and that he taught Islam, but that it was corrupted over time.

Muslims do not believe in the crucifixion. In the Qur 'an, it states that they didn't kill or crucify

Jesus, but that another man was made to resemble him and was killed in his stead. They believe that Jesus foretold the coming of the

Prophet Muhammad when Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit. So when he spoke of the helper that was to come and guide them, they thought, they interpret that as him speaking about Muhammad, who was going to come later as the final prophet of Islam.

Muslims do not believe that Jesus was divine. They do not believe he was God. They believe that Jesus will return.

And this is funny about their eschatology. They believe that Jesus will return and that he will proclaim

Islam as the true religion and that he will rule the earth for 40 years and that all Christians will convert to Islam.

They believe that when he rules the world for 40 years, he will join forces with the Mahdi, who is the

Islamic Redeemer, and will defeat the Al -Dajjal, who is the

Islamic Antichrist. So they have a funny eschatology that overlaps a little bit with ours, but not quite.

Go ahead. So Matt, I know you've talked about the corruption of the Bible, the corruption of the

Bible. Muslims believe they can't trust that from the writings of the prophets and the apostles who penned the

Bible. But what do they say about the Roman historians and the Jewish historians who document the crucifixion?

Do they say that's corrupted also? No, they say that someone else was made to look like Jesus and was crucified instead.

But that's not what it says. That's not what it says, but they believe that that's, they believed it was

Jesus, but it wasn't really that's all they say about it. And as far as like the sort of history of textual criticism and preservation of manuscripts that we have with the

Bible, they don't have any of that with the Quran. There's nowhere near the level of sort of proof or evidence to the the, you know,

I guess accuracy of the Quran itself. So I just thought it was super interesting.

They believe Jesus will come back, that he will rule the world, only for 40 years, not a thousand, but that he will rule the world and that he will essentially join forces with the

Islamic Redeemer to defeat the Islamic Antichrist. It's pretty interesting stuff. And there's also someone that,

Nabil Qureshi, that's Nabil Qureshi here. He recommends someone,

I think it's David Cook. David Wood. David Wood. David Wood. I think David Wood helped to lead him to Christ.

No, no, no. There's another guy, David Cook, I think it is, that is a scholar of Islamic eschatology, that if you want to get into deep eschatology.

Nabil wrote a book called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Yes. Now, Nabil Qureshi grew up Muslim.

His parents were still Muslim, still tried to pray for his conversion. They actually did their hajj to pray for his conversion.

And he converted to Christianity and became a

Christian apologist. And he died, unfortunately, of cancer. And fairly young, too.

But he is a fantastic resource for all things, you know,

Islam and apologetics. And this is, I think, something I wanted to, the second to last thing that I wanted to go over tonight.

But this is just a seven -minute snippet of a talk that he gave.

And then in the index, there's a link to, I think, five different one - to two -hour things that Nabil Qureshi did at Biola University.

He also took questions from people at that time, where he went through everything from doctrines to their beliefs about Jesus, to how to even witness to Muslims and so forth.

But I wanted to play this. Oh, Matt, just real quick. So Muslims use him as Allah's, I guess, sentencing him to death.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they do. He's an example of when you go against Allah.

Ah, because he died from cancer young. Yeah, I see. I see. So the use is death.

I think I have this up in the browser already. I'll full screen this.

And we'll see if you guys can hear this. So being a

Muslim, as you can already imagine, my main problem is with the

Christian doctrine of Godhood of Jesus. So there's a couple of questions that are related.

First of all, I find this concept logically fallacious.

There are many aspects to its logical fallacy, as in maybe one of them could be that how can

God be finite and then infinite at the same time? Like saying that there could exist a square circle.

It's a logical fallacy. So when we say that Jesus was God or son of God, we are actually saying that God existed in finitude during the life of Jesus.

And he also is infinite at the same time. This is logically fallacious. Now, because you are coming from a historical standpoint.

Did you want me to respond to that? It's the same question continuing. So because you're coming at it from a historical standpoint, another thing that adds, like the historical evidence that adds, that supports this argument, is that the concept of Trinity, the word

Trinity itself, it doesn't appear as a theological term till near the end of the second century after Jesus.

So it was first used as trias by Theophilus, the bishop of Antioch in AD 180.

So we can, like adding up to that, when you refer to Mark chapter 14, verse 62, which is what you say is the proof that Jesus claimed to be

God. Are you really applying the same criteria of objectivity that you are applying previously to the

Quran when interpreting this as meaning that Jesus is claiming himself to be

God? Because if you look at it completely objectively, looking at the entire text, there is nothing in the entire text that's saying that Jesus claimed to be

God. And in fact, the verse that you yourself quote is actually saying son of man. So, I mean,

I don't know anywhere. What's your name? Munzer. Munzer, where are you from?

I'm from Pakistan. Pakistan. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um

You wouldn't think so. So Allah's omnipotence is limited. He can't come onto this world. It's like, basically,

Allah cannot do logically felicious things. He cannot create a square circle, right?

Because that's something logically felicious. There are certain things that Allah... But how do we know that's what this is?

Because, for example, in Surah Al -Imran, when Allah is talking to Moses, it says in Surah Al -Imran,

I think it's Surah Al -Imran, might be Surah 18, but double check, that Allah, as he spoke to Moses, Allah was in the bush.

Allah was in the bush. So if you want to say that meant something else, well, you're going to have to argue with the

Quran on that one. It seems to be pretty clear that Allah can emanate his voice from a physical place.

He can be in a physical place in a sense. In the same way, we don't believe, I don't believe, that God coming to this earth limits his omnipotence.

It's not a limitation of his omnipotence. Jesus has taken on flesh. God the Father is still everywhere.

God, Jesus, the Son, is here on this earth. It's a limitation in that sense, but it's not a limitation of his nature.

He is both a divine and human nature. That's the argument. Now, I want to talk about briefly, and then we're going to have to get to the next question, but let's talk afterwards for sure.

You asked about the Son of Man. You said he's not calling himself the Son of God, he's calling himself the Son of Man. I'm emphasizing to you, my friend, when this hit me, again, while I was practicing

Islam, when this hit me, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The claim, Son of God, according to Jews at that time, was not anything divine.

Adam was called the Son of God. Solomon was called the Son of God. In the Psalms, it says, you are gods.

It's not a divine claim to call someone a Son of God. But when someone refers to that Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, who's going to receive glory, authority, and sovereign power, and people of every nation and language are going to worship him with a worship due only to God, that Son of Man is more than just a human.

He is divine. He's going to be worshipped by all people of all time. So when Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, it's not the

Son of God title. And lots of Christians get this wrong, so I'm not pointing the finger at you. Lots of Christians say, oh,

Son of Man means he's human, and Son of God means he's God. No, it's the other way around. In the Jewish context, Son of God was a normal human title.

Son of Man, from Daniel 7, that was something divine. Go back and read Daniel chapter 7.

See that this man is worshipped by all people from all eternity. This man, or one who looks like a human anyway, is worshipped by all people alongside of God the

Father. That's the one Jesus is claiming to be. Definitely understand that point that I'm trying to make.

And so when you see that Jesus' claim is found there in Mark 14, 62, it's found in all the Gospels. And every time

Jesus uses the term Son of Man, he's alluding to that. You cannot extract that from the

Gospels. So please put Mark 14, 62 next to Daniel chapter 7, and see what

Jesus is claiming for himself. And we'll talk afterwards for the rest. Lord bless you, my friend. We'll take one last question.

I'm telling you, Nabil Qureshi, watch this guy. He's good. So, I also thought that whenever you read in the

Bible that Jesus claims to be the Son of Man, a lot of times they try to kill him after that, right?

Because they knew what he was alluding to. They knew Daniel just as well as he did, and knew that he was actually alluding to be that Son of Man, not just a son of men.

Daniel 7, 13 and 14. I'm going to need you guys to get your

Bibles out. I didn't want to spend the entire time talking about Islam.

I wanted to talk about what the Bible actually says.

So, why don't we just go around the horn.

We'll start with Matthew 24, 35. Matthew 24, 24.

Ivan, Revelation 22, 18 and 19. Dave, John 14, 6.

Matthew 24, 35. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Right. So, again, this is Jesus speaking, and he's saying that his words will not pass away.

So, this idea of the Bible being corrupted,

Jesus, if he is who he says he would claim to be, liar, loony, taker of the

Lord, right? That's what they say, the three L's, right? He can't both be a prophet preaching

Allah and be who he said he was going to be. And I think Nabil crystallizes that with what he says.

Matthew 24, 24. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.

Right. So, again, here we're talking about Muhammad coming and saying he's setting things right.

He is an example of what we Christians would consider a false prophet who's coming to lead people astray.

And there are people who are Christians who convert to Islam, there's no doubt. So, we should beware of all of these false prophets from all of these different religions, the ones that Drew's gone over, stuff that Ivan's gone over with the

New Age, and Islam especially as well. Revelation 22, 18 through 19.

I warn everyone who hears the word of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them,

God will add to them the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy,

God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

So, again, the Koran, the Hadiths, all of this would be after the

Bible, all of this would be in addition to that, and all of this would be false.

And then lastly, we've got John 14, 6. Jesus said to him,

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He's not just a prophet that came to preach the words of Allah or Islam.

He said he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him, not through Muhammad, not through the

Koran, but through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only way.

So, again, falls back on, I guess Muslims would have to say that Jesus didn't really say that, right?

That would be the only claim they could really make because it doesn't get any clearer than that.

Or they'll redefine the Father. Yep. All right, so the next slides that I have are just links to all the different videos.

So we'll end it here. Anybody have any final questions before we close up?

Yeah. Muhammad's horse was named Barack. Thank you, Mr. Obama. I did not know that.

Well, thank you for that. A little historical side note there. That's great.

Anything else? Drew, do you mind closing us up? Father, I thank you,

Lord, that when we take a look at the religions of the world, Father, we realize,

Lord, that it's just by your grace that you have revealed yourself to us,

Lord. Father, we would have walked astray and been in darkness for our entire lives and then on through eternity,

Lord, being cast away from you, not for your grace. We thank you, Father, that it certainly wasn't by deeds that we have been redeemed, but by the blood of your

Son and by forgiveness we receive in Jesus Christ, Father. We thank you,

Lord, for Matt's teaching tonight. We pray, Lord, if we encounter Muslims in our daily walk, that,

Father, we would have compassion and speak the truth, Father, and that, Lord, your Holy Spirit would move in their lives and in their hearts to let them know that they can have life in your name,