Closing Statements, Shabir Ally Debates, London

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Now, folks, we come to our closing comments for this segment, but I will also try to include some comments regarding the previous segment so that we tie up all of our thoughts about what we discussed here tonight very neatly.

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First, it should be clear that one of James's main arguments throughout has been that Shabir is consistent and inconsistent, and to support that position, he's even cited me, and I'm impressed by the detail that he has gone to to find quotations for me in front of my sayings from 1996 to 2002, and I do not disagree with what

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I said then. I've been saying the same thing here tonight as well, that one does need to be consistent, and if we are asking

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Christians to be consistent as Christians, that means we're saying that in inviting you to be a

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Muslim, we're not asking you to give up certain basic presuppositions that make a person essentially

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Christian, which in a nutshell means following Christ, being an imitator of Christ.

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If one were to look for what Jesus was historically, then one would find that Jesus was really a prophet and a messenger of God, and that the doctrines about his divine sonship and of his dying for the sins of the world are later developments that came from tens of people after him.

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In that case, we're not asking you to give up your supernatural presuppositions, your belief in God and your belief in Christ.

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In that case, I have found that Dr. Morley, for example, to be inconsistent, because when he tries to evaluate whether or not

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Muhammad and Muhammad peace could have been a prophet of God, he relies on the conclusions of atheist scholars.

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So in that case, he becomes inconsistent, because he gives up his belief in God, and he starts thinking like an atheist.

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I've never asked him to be an atheist. I've never asked him to be anything but a Christian. If a

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Christian believes that prophets have come from God over time, then what stopped the prophets? What confined them only to one area?

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Why couldn't there be an Arab prophet, an Indonesian prophet, a prophet in Argentina, anywhere in the world?

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What stopped the prophets from being in China or anywhere else? Why does Jesus have to be the last of the prophets?

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Could there not have been prophets after him? Are there not prophets mentioned in the New Testament, even though of a different sort of calendar?

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Isn't Agabus built as a prophet in Acts? So, why do we stop there?

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Why could it not be possible that God has revealed a message to another man sometime after Jesus?

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So I have asked him to be consistent. At the same time, in my last Q &A with James, it became evident that James had misunderstood me all along, and his constant repetition that Shabir Ali has been inconsistent is in fact an error.

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However, it is very clear that I can be consistently thinking an issue as a

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Muslim, or I can, for the exercise, imagine myself having listened to the call of James, and abandoned my belief in Islam, and now thinking about life and all of its big questions anew.

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In that case, I should very well be an agnostic, not being sure whether God exists or not. Because part of the confirmation for me that God exists is not only the philosophical arguments that prove that in some general way

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God exists, but also the specific revelation that God has given through the Qur 'an in the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that tells me really who

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God is. Otherwise, I might imagine God as being some kind of force out there, without knowing who

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He is and how to respond to Him, and what He does, and what plan He has for human beings. So I can consistently think issues through as a

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Muslim -American Muslim man, or imagine myself having listened to the call of James, and now having become an agnostic.

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If I think it through as an agnostic then, then I have to evaluate the teachings about Jesus and the records about His life and works from that perspective.

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In that case, I would find that there is no reason to believe in Jesus, because the very documents that were supposed to be the carpet under His feet have suddenly been pulled.

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I have demonstrated that Jesus' statements about His second coming have proven to be false according to the words of E .T.

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Sanders and John Bowden, recognized and known Christian Biblical scholars. So, in that case,

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He failed. He failed to be the Messiah, because He does not have the ancestry that is required of the

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Old Testament, nor did He fulfill the requirement of sitting on the throne of David and actually ruling in His stead.

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So, in that case, I would have no reason to believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus as a Muslim, but if I imagine myself abandoning my

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Muslim faith, I don't see how I could believe in Jesus. So, I believe I am quite consistent now in looking as an agnostic, or not even as an agnostic, as a

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Muslim who still believes in God, but examining, sorry, having left my

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Muslim faith, but still believing in God, now examining what proof and evidence lies for the life and teachings of Jesus.

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Who would I consult? Not Muslim scholars, but Christian Biblical scholars. Some of those who are cited tonight, and equally on Mars.

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I would examine the full spectrum of Biblical writings and their commentaries. I have done that.

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And I am convinced that the critical scholars do have something really tangible that they are looking at.

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They look at real and hard evidence. For example, contradictions in the Gospel according to John. For example, in John chapter 13, verse 36,

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Jesus is asked by Peter, where are you going? But in chapter 16, verse 5, Jesus complains to them, nobody asks me where I am going.

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And that shows that chapters 15, 16, and 17, it was a later insertion into an already complete

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Gospel that resulted in this contradiction. So, scholars do not invent these problems. They look at real problems.

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So, even Christians who existed in the time of the Prophet Muhammad, when they were called upon to believe in Muhammad by referring to their own books and finding

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Muhammad written in there, they did not need Raymond Rapp or modern critical scholars.

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There have always been people in all of history who have been thinking critically. They have been atheists in existence.

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Even if, for some time in our history, atheists are closet atheists.

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But people think rationally. And when we approach a document, if we don't already believe in it with the faith's presupposition, naturally, we might be skeptical about the stories.

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Even if you do believe from the faith's perspective, you must ask what these stories are doing.

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Is it really the word of God that says that these babies behaved in this way? That one baby is pulled out by the midwife and the other one comes out grabbing the heel of the first one like monkeys being pulled out of a barrel?

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Do babies behave in that way? Or is this just a writer trying to sell us a story? When we realize that, then the points that I've made actually gather more strength.

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I've shown, for example, that the Prophet Muhammad must be the fulfillment of that promise given to the

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Prophet Ishmael in the Bible. That the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, obviously qualifies as that prophet like Moses.

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He must be included in this string of prophets. Why not? And third, I've shown that he must be that prophet who was greater than John the

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Baptist. And finally, that he was apparently a person before that paraplegic was made into the

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Holy Spirit. Thank you. Once again,

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Shabir just said, well, I have demonstrated these things. And what Shabir has done is he has quoted liberal scholars who speculate about things.

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He has not given us any evidence whatsoever that there was ever a paraplegic tradition that existed before the

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Gospel of John or any of these things. What evidence has actually been given to us that Muhammad was prophesied in any of these texts?

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What about the fact that the text itself says that the person in Deuteronomy 18 was a Jew, singularly?

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This idea of yes and no, maybe, so on and so forth, just became obvious in conclusion. So I'm not sure how the argument skipped from yes and no, maybe, to obvious and demonstrated.

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But I don't think if you go back you will find any substance to that. We had an issue of standards.

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We had people like E .P. Sanders. These are my standards. Again, these very same people, if you adopted the worldview they bring to scholarship, it would cause you to reject the

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Quran. That's been my point all this evening. He says, well, I've demonstrated this, I've demonstrated that.

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These people, these scholars have demonstrated that Jesus' prophecy about a second coming failed.

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No, they didn't. I'm telling you something. Go read them. The one thing that cannot be a possibility for them is a harmony of the statements of Jesus.

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That's dismissed right off the top. You can't have that. So you don't even allow for that. The very thing that Shabir would demand for anything in the

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Quran, they will not allow for. And yet he will then be reliant upon them. That is where the inconsistency comes from.

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Shabir asks, why was it only Israel that received prophets according to your Bible? Why these revelations only?

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Why only Jesus? Why is He the last prophet? Well, Hebrews chapter 1 says that God has spoken to the fathers in incomplete ways, in various forms, in various ways in the past, but now

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He has spoken to us by His Son. And that Son is the heir of all things.

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He is the exact representation of His person, the radiance of His glory. And that book was written well before A .D.

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70. That is the belief of the New Testament church. That the reason that Jesus is the last is because of who

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Jesus is. And so we have seen that Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament. We saw that what

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He was going to do and who He was going to be was revealed in the Old Testament. And we have seen no consistent evidence whatsoever that anything in the

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Old or New Testament refers us to Muhammad. But I will refer you in our closing moments together to the words of Jesus once again.

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We have been given no reason to disbelieve this. In fact, I would say to you if you simply read the

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Quran from what it says, I don't have any reason to believe that the author of the Quran would have told you to disbelieve something like this.

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He believed that God spoke. And here in these words, as Jesus has appeared to the disciples after His resurrection,

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He said, Then He said to them, These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the

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Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds so they could understand the

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Scriptures. And He said to them, Thus it stands written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repent with forgiveness of sins, and be proclaimed in His name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

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You are witnesses of these things. I choose not to reject their witness. I have no reason to call them false teachers or cowards.

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They were witnesses to these things. They were willing to stand before the hatred of men for their witness to Jesus Christ.

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Many grieved and imprisoned and killed. Stephen was stoned. And they are witnesses to these things.

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To what? That Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Scriptures, and that therefore repentance and forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all nations.

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Do you realize that we are in living fulfillment of that this evening? Look at how far away we are from what these words were originally saying.

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And yet, this evening, repentance for the forgiveness of sins has been proclaimed in this place through Jesus Christ, through His atoning death.

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That person who recognizes his sin debt before God, recognizes his unholiness in God's holiness, and recognizes that God's law demands a sacrifice, that God cannot simply wink at sin, but instead

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He has provided the way of salvation in Jesus Christ. Why was it only Israel? Why is it only Jesus? Because it was through Israel that the

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Messiah was to come. And there is only one way of salvation, and it has been given to man. And that is why what we've done here this evening is so important.

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That's why the prophecies are important. That's why believing what God's word says is important. I submit to you that Jesus Christ did not use scripture the way that Shabir Ali does.

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Jesus Christ, very plainly, when He quoted scripture, that was the end of the story.

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He didn't fail in His prophecies of His coming. If you simply allow all the Bible to speak, He's very clear about how

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He's going to come, what must needs take place first, etc., etc. You see, when you believe that E .P.

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Sanders somehow has the divine, infallible, errant understanding, and he starts with the assertion that you can't harmonize these things, well, then you're never going to hear what

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Jesus actually said. Again, Jesus said the scriptures cannot be broken. Who are we going to believe?

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I thought Jesus was a true prophet. If the true prophet says the scriptures cannot be broken, why has the entire thesis, the presentation from the

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Islamic side meant that they can be and they were? That is a question we have to consider this evening.

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To the Muslims here, I ask you to read Surah 616 and 7157, and they tell you you will find

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Muhammad, but I think in your honest moments you will recognize that you have to stretch those texts completely out of shape.

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You have to do with those texts what you would never allow to be done with the text of the Quran, to come up with anything about Muhammad.

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So what does that mean? Shabir has talked about how he can become an agnostic and then he can wear an agnostic hat or something along those lines.

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All I've been saying is you have to use the same standards. And when you do, you discover that the

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New Testament presents Jesus very different than the Jesus of the Quran. My prayer is my hope.

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It's been my hope in each one of the debates we've done. I notice my opponents are here this evening. They're chatting with each other, but they're here this evening.

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I have debated earlier in the week, and I'm grateful. My purpose in engaging all of these gentlemen in debate, fundamentally, it's not because of who

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I am or who they are or who Shabir is. I very much appreciate all of them taking the time to engage me in these things.

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I don't matter. Who I am does not matter. But the issues that we have addressed here in London over this past week are eternal issues.

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And I hope and pray that you will not simply allow for a surface -level answer. You will go home.

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You will consider. And my prayer is that God, by His Spirit, will reveal His Son to you. Thank you very much.