Was Jesus Crucified? Part 3

All right, so much to get to in such a brief period of time.

I need to... I haven't gotten clarity yet on what Sura 4 .158 means.

Does it mean that Jesus was taken to Allah? Now, interestingly, many of the questions that I asked were just dismissed.

It was very interesting. All the questions that we can ask about the text are said to be irrelevant and being picky.

Now, here we have a text that's going against everything else history has recorded. We have a text that's nowhere else reiterated in the

Quran. There's no other ayah that repeats this. There is no interpretation in the hadith. All we have is 40

Arabic words. And when we ask why it's not clear, when we ask why it says they could not do this, well, the they antecedents the

Jews, and what about the Romans? What about somebody else? We ask these questions. That's irrelevant. They're just being picky.

Can you imagine if someone came along 600 years after Muhammad, claimed to be a prophet, gave one verse denying his night flight to Jerusalem, which is extremely important.

I mean, he said to them, they have the night flight to Jerusalem, all the things associated with that in Islamic theology.

A guy came along 600 years later and said that never happened. And he gives one verse that says it never happened, and then you start asking questions.

Well, what about this? It's irrelevant. They're being picky. Just accept what I said. And we're supposed to accept the overthrow of the entire testimony of the modern church, and those disciples themselves, based upon that, or based upon the fact that the women were not standing exactly at the foot of the cross, but they were at the back of the room.

I mean, I think those of you in the back of the room would know whether I was speaking up here, or whether Doug Masters took my place three months ago.

He's a foot taller than me. We both look about the same, but he's much better looking than I am.

And I don't care if you were across the street, you'd still be able to tell the difference. To dismiss the women's testimony because they were watching from afar, doesn't mean they were on the other side of Jerusalem.

That means the women probably did not want to be standing in the middle of the Roman soldiers. But they were watching the events, and their testimony is very, very clear.

Now, there's just so many things that we need to get to here. Let me just start going through all these things.

Basically, Sam Hiddleston has already said, Hey, look, if Surah 4, verse 7 is true, then historians should say that Jesus was crucified, because that's how

God needs to look at it. Well, there's a problem with that. It's one of the reasons there are a lot of Western Muslims that don't buy this particular perspective.

Because, in essence, God started Christianity by mistake. He did such a good job of fooling everybody that Jesus was crucified, that he started a religion that has produced a tremendous amount of shirk by mistake.

Why would he do that? What was the accomplishment in putting somebody else on the cross and making them look like Jesus?

And can we prove that Shabiha A 'ad means that someone else was made to look like that? And he said it was a strong man for him to mention

Jesus. Is it not pre -Muslims? Is it not that not the majority of you find Muslim role?

I said there are other theories out there. The Quran doesn't say, the Hadith doesn't say, but is that not the majority perspective out there?

It most assuredly is the majority perspective out there. Then we had, if the disciples, as I said, they met a living

Jesus, and evidently in the opening, Samuel even admitted, based upon the

Gospel accounts, that they encountered Jesus. But how does Samuel know they encountered Jesus? The Quran doesn't say they encountered

Jesus, does it? No, it doesn't. So his opening said that they did encounter

Jesus, but it was just because he had not died. Okay, but it's the very

Gospels that he then says we can't trust, because they allegedly contradict each other, that he's relying upon to say that Jesus met them, because the

Quran doesn't tell him that. So which is it going to be? And if the living Jesus met the disciples, he would have corrected them.

He says, well maybe he did. Okay, then we need evidence from the first century. These disciples would have been constantly fighting against all this proclamation that Jesus died, because if they love

Jesus, they're not going to model flies about Jesus if you preach in Jesus' name, are they? And so where is the evidence that anybody in the first century knew that Jesus had not died upon the cross?

Where is the evidence? If it is true, it is, well, a crucifixion took place.

Yeah, but it was somebody else. All that evidence was saying it was Jesus that was crucified, not somebody else.

So where are the true disciples that Jesus met, and that he corrected and said, guys,

I didn't die, where's their creature, where's the record of their existence? If you can't find it, you're still left with 40

Arabic words all by themselves, 600 years later, and every other scintilla of evidence standing against that position.

It was said that none of the disciples were eyewitnesses. Well, that ignores the rest of the Gospels. The very

Gospels that stand in the pens of Mark to know that Jesus met with the disciples. The other Gospels say that, for example,

Peter, yes, he initially pleased, but then he falls into the courtyard, and John, likewise, goes in.

That's what the testimony of the rest of the Gospels, you're picking and choosing at that particular point in time. Then we had all this stuff, well, you can't really trust what the

Gospels say because they're so contradictory. I've been teaching this not the Gospels now for almost a decade, and we're now getting to this very section.

And I can tell you, it's not easy. But every single one of these alleged contradictions, if Sandy and I could just sit down with him, if he'd like to arrange a dialogue where he names the contradictions, we can work through them.

We can work through them based upon the original languages. For example, they said, well, you know, this generation will not pass away.

I happen to believe that. It's called the destruction of Jerusalem. And there's all sorts of other scholars who have said that for a long time.

I just finished going through Matthew chapter 24. You have to recognize the difference between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end days and the final coming of the

Messiah. I just would suggest the same. You need to do some more reading on that and not misrepresent that particular text.

Mark chapter 14. Asa's day is in the plural, not the singular. You will see, he's talking to Jewish people, and they did see the destruction of Jerusalem and we'll see in the second coming of Christ the testimony of these things.

Then we have all these things about contradictions. He talks about William Lincoln Grave. I take a completely different position than he does on these things.

I'm actually responding to them, even though I can only do so very briefly. How many men and angels? Excuse me.

If you go online today and read an account of the first responders of the tragedy that took place yesterday with the two female police officers here in London, if you go online and read the details of who the first people to respond was yesterday, you'll find out.

You'll find differences in how many units arrived, exactly when they arrived, and some people will mention ambulances and some people won't mention ambulances.

Does that mean that no one knows what happened yesterday? No, it means that different people had different perspectives and they emphasized different things in their recording of events.

And so every one of these can be answered very easily out of an answer. Okay, I'll take that back.

Not very easily, but if you give it some thought and recognize that each author has his own intention and his own audience and why he includes certain things.

These aren't contradictions. They are exactly what you would expect when you have different people providing you with a historical perspective on what happened in the past.

And I would simply point out to you if you say, well, you shouldn't have to do these things. You have to do it with the canon.

One of the chapters in the book that I have coming out of the canon, and I spend a lot of time, and I had to convince my editors to let me do so, because they thought

I spent too much time, but I spend a lot of time on parallel accounts in the canon that tell stories, and they tell them in different words.

And in fact, look at the recording of the canon of the events regarding Lot and what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.

You have spent time harmonizing the differences in the wording of what is recorded there.

They don't all say the same thing. Are those contradictions? Using Sammy's example, the Koran is filled with contradictions.

We shouldn't believe what it has to say. And I consider it a false contradiction if you would say, so why should I believe Surah 4, verse 1 through 7 if it's over, right?

Not for thinking people. It's not. Not for thinking people. It's not. So the, well, if the

Gospels contradict themselves, therefore we shouldn't believe them, doesn't work because you can't do the same.

You have to do the exact same thing with the Koran in harmonizing those particular statements. Keep that in mind.

Then we were told, forgiveness does not require the atonement because there are people,

Jesus forgave the man's sin. And people of the Old Testament, they have their sins forgiven.

I just want to direct Sammy to the text in the Bible that refers to the answer to that question.

Romans chapter 3, verses 24 through 26. And there we are told that Jesus was set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood so that the righteousness of God might be demonstrated because in times past he had overlooked sins in light of what?

The certainty of the cross of Christ. Anyone who sins will ever be forgiven from the beginning of time until the last person takes the last breath.

The only forgiveness of sins that will be for anyone will come because of the cross of Jesus Christ.

The forgiveness to Abraham was due to the fact that God knew that there would be one who would take

Abraham's place. That all of God's people would be joined to that one sacrifice so that by his one atoning death all of God's people would have forgiveness of sins.

And that's why we do see forgiveness in other contexts in light of that. I would direct you again to the tremendous discussion of that.

Not only Romans chapter 3 but the entirety of the book of Hebrews. Jesus gave himself voluntarily.

He says, no man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. That's why there can be no meaningful or fair parallel to quote unquote human sacrifice.

The reason that a human sacrificed himself was because of this human life that needed atonement.

It was the God man who gave himself. He had to be

God so that he could represent all of God's people and he could live the perfect life. But he had to be truly man so that the life that he gave was a true atonement.

The wrath of God and the love of God had to be able to meet in one unique place.

And that one unique place required a unique sacrifice. And there was only one

God man and there was only one cross. And that is why the