This video presents a comparative analysis of historical manuscript evidence for Muhammad and Jesus, arguing that while Christians have extensive early manuscript support for Jesus (including 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin Vulgates, and 19,000 manuscripts in 11 languages dating back to the 2nd-4th centuries), Muslims lack comparable early manuscript evidence for Muhammad. The earliest surviving manuscripts for Muhammad's life and sayings date to the 11th-16th centuries, meaning the foundational Islamic texts were compiled 400-900 years after Muhammad's death, raising significant questions about the historical reliability of Islamic sources compared to the well-documented manuscript tradition supporting the New Testament.
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The 1st Making Jesus Known Among Muslims - North Jersey - Session IIAdded:
Heat.
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away. So, we should probably lift them up in prayer. And I don't know about the rest of you, but if you've been here for a couple of days, maybe you've been making some friends. And uh that's a good thing. I just made a new friend today and slow. So, I want to welcome you here.
>> Hey, >> probably something I wish I would have known yesterday. They actually have a ministry in Patterson where we were handing out gospels.
>> So, remember, it's not just about the speakers today.
It's about getting to know one another and where we can help each other. Uh Jesus never sent us out alone. You know, he said two by two. And uh I know yesterday uh when we were talking to this Muslim fellow uh my partner out there was praying and when you know while I was talking and when I stopped talking and he started talking and I pray so even in my we didn't pray but uh anyway to get us started there will be people coming in and that's all right. Um, later on we'll we'll see who wants to stay for lunch and we're going to order some food for you. Um, I'm looking right here. I don't know that's not up there, but um, try and get some u websites from folks. Um, my friend Olen has a great website with a lot of helpful material. George who's sitting in the aisle. Um, wonderful ministry to Muslims. Olen is radical truth. You and com ornance.net.
Lauri, you got one.
>> Yes. Lauren Z.org.
>> Laura Ze.org.
Did I get it right?
>> Yes.
>> And um Dr. J is fan ps.
So again, lots of great information. I don't have one. I'm a little dumb. I I just if I I got something going on with the computer and the phone, I look for one of my grandkids, you know, that's all right. Jesus didn't have a computer either. So maybe not today.
Anyway, I was glad when they said, "Let us go into the house of the Lord." Are you glad today?
>> Isn't it amazing the freedom we have in this country? We come together. Nobody was checking our names at the door. You know, I used to serve a church where they had a couple guys with guns outside. They were there to protect us is what they said. But it kind of intimidated our Muslim friends and wanted to know what church was all about.
>> So we don't have that here in America.
We have great freedom. That window is open. But I have a suspicion it's closing. So you know I'm glad you're here. I hope you'll just love your neighbor. Love your Lord. Love your neighbor. Right. Great commandment and the great commission. Go out and make disciples. much more than that.
George, what are we doing? Who's going to be up first?
Dr. J.
>> You sleep? Okay.
Uh, I want to welcome Dr. J. Smith to the podium. Um, he's a brilliant man. You know, in churches we talk about high church and low church. I was always low church means blue jeans and t-shirts. And then we got I just love and listen to you.
So, if you weren't here last night, you gave a great talk on what's happening with this war uh with Iran. And George, is that online already?
>> Yes.
>> Ministersons.com, you can pick it up and listen to it and learn.
Okay, let's go ahead and get started.
How do I get that over to my >> It is ready. Just go to the next slide.
It's yours. This is your PowerPoint.
>> It is ready. Just go to the next slide.
>> Look at that.
>> Okay. Today, what we're going to do, we're going to change gear and we're going to ask the question is M what is the historical background for Muhammad?
I'm not going to say today that Muhammad did not exist. All right, I'm not going to say that. I just said it, didn't I?
There has been a lot of controversy over that statement. And I got hammered last summer pretty bad by a lot of Christians, uh, colleagues, people who I've worked with, have been in, uh, internet with, and been in Ethiopia with, and we've traveled together. And I lost about a third of my funding because of that statement that Muhammad did not exist.
And the problem is this. When people hear that immediately they think it's the same problem. Is that someone's phone?
>> So I'll let you do now. I'll just keep talking. When people hear that, they think we're saying the same thing. Did Jesus exist? But let me ask you this.
Did Jesus exist?
>> Yes.
>> Which Jesus are you talking about?
>> Jesus. The Bible. See, when you're saying yes, Jesus exists, you're talking about the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, died and rose again in Jerusalem, and called himself son of God. Right?
>> And that's the only Jesus we care about.
But there were many Jesuses in the first century. It was a very common name.
>> But we're not here to talk about those other Jesuses.
>> So if we demand that as Christians, the same we must give to the Muslims.
Because the Muslims demand only one Muhammad.
There are many Muhammads in the seventh century. And I'm getting sick and tired of Christians always saying we just so you can find the name Muhammad. As long as you find the name Muhammad, he existed. We dare not do that anymore.
>> Because if that's the case, we're going to have to do that with Jesus.
>> And I don't want to defend any other Jesus but the one again. In the same token, we have to give a right to the Muslims to defend the Muhammad they believe in. And the Muhammad they believe in was born in Mecca, lived 52 years in Mecca, received the Quran in two different cities in Mecca and Medina, and called himself Muhammad, called himself a Muslim, and did this long before 632 AD. That's the only Muhammad they care about. And that's the only Muhammad I care about. So stop wasting our time with other Muhammads.
I get angry about this. You can see I'm angry. Have you ever seen me angry before? Now you've just seen.
>> So, but here's what's happened. Back in in July of last year, we suddenly got a lot of help. And not from who I thought it would be. We got a lot of help from the Muslims themselves on this very issue. So, what I'm going to do today, God, this is lovely, isn't it? I'm going to ask a much more indepth question. I'm not going to sit here and try to prove whether Muhammad existed or not. I'm going to let the Muslims do it. Are you ready?
>> Yes.
>> And you're going to love this. And what the Muslims are going to do is not only shoot themselves in the foot, but they don't know how deeply they're going to shoot themselves in the foot because I'm going to introduce some new material that they're not even aware of. And you're one of the first to hear it. So, here we go. So the first thing we need to ask is it's apologetics and palemics.
Now Laura, you're doing your doctorate in this area. So this is good for you because you know apologetics and you know pmics. And they're two different words, two different skills, aren't they?
>> Yes, sir.
>> One is defense, the other is offense.
And Laura, when you defend, you know Jesus Christ and you know the Bible. But when you go on the offense, you better know the Quran. You better know Muhammad.
>> Yes, sir.
>> Two different skills, two different categories, two different people. And most people get that get that confused.
So some of us need to use the model of love and reconciliation which is best suited for our time. And that's really the only model you've been taught here in America. The identical approach is another way they call it.
Others of us need to confront the foundations. Every one of you can defend Jesus Christ. Please say yes.
>> And you can defend the Bible. Please say yes.
>> Now, you may not do it well. You may not know all the categories. You may not know how to answer all the questions.
But at least that's all we're asking you to do. So when you go out into the streets, when you go into the universities withstanding, when you go into the homes, then maybe even your own home, when you go into the communities where the Muslims are, defend Jesus and defend the Bible. Please, please do that. And you all can do that.
Some of you, however, need to go the opposite direction and need to start playing offense. And it's the offense that gets you into trouble. Because in order to do the offense, you better know the Quran. You better know Muhammad pretty well. And we are not teaching people about the Quran here in America.
>> And we're not teaching people about how to take on Muhammad because that's one thing you do not do on the pain of death. You start taking on Muhammad and they will kill you. They will kill you more so than the Quran, more so than uh Islam itself. So all of us need to use verbal and public defense. That's apologetics. But only a few of us need to go the other direction. And that's where we train you up to do that. Master of arts and apologetics and blemish Islam. It's an entire master's degree, but we also have an audit level and we have a personal enrichment level for those of you on the field and don't want to have an academic degree. And we're training you up. We do 10 courses over a period of two years every Monday night.
So even last Monday night, all by Zoom.
So you don't even have to leave the comfort of your own home. and we will train you up on how to do the plemitics, how to go in the office, and how to shut down Islam because that's really what we're all about. You have to shut down Islam before you can preach the gospel.
You've got to break down those walls that impede the gospel. And so is something you need us to help you with. what Paul said in vers 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Remember he said in 2 Corinthians, well, I am meek when I'm with you, but I'm bold when I am away. So, I am meek when I'm in the church, but as soon as I leave those doors, I become bold.
We do just the opposite, don't we?
We're bold as ever in the church. We love to sing with our hands up and praise the Lord and dance in the aisles.
But as soon as we leave the door, we become very meek and mild and timid and shy and Christ.
We've eurized Christ so much that he no longer ever raises his voice. He's always smiling.
Never ever argues. He has blonde hair and blue eyes. See, that's the Christ that we are. And that's the Christ that we teach once we leave the door without realizing that's not the Mediterranean Christ that I see in the New Testament.
The Christ ice in the New Testament was very much a bold individual overturning the tables there in the temples confronting the Pharisees in Matthew 23 the entire chapters you hypocrites you deaders you white sufferers that's the Christ that Paul was like that was the Christ that Paul modeled in his own ministry and everywhere he went as I've said many times in Leodysia in Capidosia in Burya in Ephesus everywhere he went he went right to the synagogue uninvited. Never made any relationships.
Went right up to the Pharisees and confronted them with what they had done to the Messiah. Oo, I love Paul.
>> And we need to start to learn to do that. But then he says we don't use weapons of this world. We don't use knives, swords like he had back then or stones to stone people. We don't use that anymore. He did have Saul, but not a stall.
>> So what weapons do you use? We use principalities and powers against principalities and powers. We use the Holy Spirit. We use prayer. And then verse five, we use arguments and take captive every thought and make it obedient to Jesus Christ. Arguments.
That's what we're called to do.
>> You notice the talk I gave last night was a very warlike talk, wasn't it?
>> Yes.
>> And yet I'm a pacifist.
>> I am a pacifist. I ain't come from the brethren of Christ. We are menites. You didn't expect that from a pacifist, did you? No. Come tell me and talk to me afterwards and say, "Why can a pasmist make a talk like it did last night?" I love it. We get into I didn't want to bring that into the talk last night because I was running out of time and I saw four minutes up here like a good old I know he's missing today. So, I can go as long as I want.
>> So, how is politics being employed in the 21st century? Well, as I've said before, and I think I mentioned it before, there's really three forms of calmics that we're using. We're talking about internal kmics. That's looking at the Quran, looking at Muhammad, just opening up the book and confronting what we read in the book and looking at Muhammad's life and confronting we see in what he said and did. That's what D Wood does so well. That's what Sam Shmoon does so well. Avery is amazing in that. Uh Anthony Rogers is terrific in that. Everybody really does that. That's the most popular form of clinics. I did it for 30 years. I'm pulling away from that now. I'm not using it as much because it's that close to hate speech.
And this is what gets you killed places I go because I don't stay in America very much. You're all in America. I go to Nigeria. I go to Ethiopia. I go to Kenya. I've got to go. I just got back from Germany where I had to use Pummics in five different cities. Go right there at the bottles getting up on a ladder and showing them how to use Plemics.
They had never used Plemix before three weeks ago. We've just trained them on how to do that. And there in those places right there where all the Muslims are when you use pmics there they're going to react >> and they're going to I got knocked off the ladder. I got spat upon two weeks ago. So pmics when you use it in a public context in that context if you use internal pmics you're going to get killed.
If you use her polics, that's why he turns cing calling out what Muhammad did, the Alz argument, terrible argument. But all his misogyny and all of his all of his violence is very good for internet where you're safe.
>> No one's going to kill you on the internet. They don't even know where you live >> until they do.
>> Until they do, then you move.
But people like me, I have to go public.
I'm not Indian. I am on the internet but I'm listening all over the world in public. So I've got to be careful about the eternal critique. I cannot use it there.
So what the other form is what we call cultural polyics and cultural polyics is what clutch does probably better than anybody else. My colleague she is amazing on the cultural polyics but that also can be seen as hate speech. And that also will kill you if you start seeing and saying look what Muhammad did but look what Muslims are doing here there look at the cultures of Islam.
Look how they're being degraded and look how is that they're all coming this direction. They're coming to the west.
They're coming to our Christian countries. Why? Because of who we are and how we live and the freedoms they have here which they don't have there which suggests there's something different and something wrong with Islam.
>> That's the cultural politics and it's brilliant. Now I still do use that but I have to be careful. But the one that I like the most is the third one, the external polyics. And basically it just asks questions. All we're doing is asking questions, but we're asking historical questions. The same questions that were asked of us, we're now asking of Islam. And I don't get death threats anymore.
When I was in Nigeria, I went to one of the largest seminaries there, Obash, which is the Southern Baptist Seminary there just outside of Lord. And when I arrived on campus, so many students started crowding where I was supposed to be doing my talk that we had to go to the chapel. They crowded out the chapel.
So finally the administration gave up and they shut down the school and they gave me the assembly hall and we had a thousand students and I got them for two days just to teach them train them on how to use historical plemics historical criticism cuz that's what they want.
These seven Arabics they know this is the only type of plemics they can use in Nigeria and they won't be killed and believe me they are being killed in Nigeria more so than any other country on earth. 83% of all Christians killed last year were killed in Nigeria.
one country.
So historical politics is what I have to use because of the where I go. But here in America, you can use all three of these politics. So do what David Wood is doing. Learn from him. Learn from Selu, Avery, God logic. Learn their arguments.
Learn from what Tony is doing, Aora is teaching you, what Holland is teaching you. Learn from these people. These people are the ones who have been using it. They have been engaging with it.
They have t they're tried and true. So use them because here in America we have the freedom to do so. You have all the right to do so and we must never give up that freedom.
But I want to look at the historical climate. Now historical is really based on just three things. One book one man in one place. The book is the Quran. The man is Muhammad and the place is Mecca.
It's like a stool with three legs. And when you start to attack one of the legs the other two start to fall. And when you eradicate that one leg, in this case I have Mecca, the other two collapse because it doesn't if you can eradicate Mecca, it doesn't matter what Muhammad you find. It doesn't matter what Quran you find. If it's not from Mecca, it's not the Muhammad. It's not the Quran in Islam.
It's another Muhammad, which there are many, and it's another book, which there are many that I'm going to talk about this afternoon.
But today, this morning, I want to talk about Muhammad, the most dangerous of three. If we eradicate Muhammad, then there is no Islamic Quran because who received it? It has to have come to a one man named Muhammad between 610 and 632. And also Mecca that becomes Moot.
Without Muhammad, who cares about Mecca?
So what I want to do is I want to look at Muhammad the second. But I'm not going to do a thing. I'm going to let the Muslims do it for me. I'm going to ask two Muslim scholars to see what they do with Megal. just happened. I just lost it again.
>> Oh, what's happen?
>> See, look at Mama's missing again.
>> You guys know what I'm looking at? We're looking at like a thousand different good languages.
It's because the computer is scared to do this.
Okay. So, this is what we're going to ask him. The Muhammad of faith versus the Muhammad of history. Now, this was asked of Jesus Christ. Is it the Jesus of history or is it the Jesus of faith?
And this is a very well-known argument and it's still going on even today. And many of your scholars in your university are asking which Jesus are you talking about? the Jesus that you believe that you concocted, that you created over a period of 2,000 years, or is it the Jesus that actually existed? And we say, "No, it's the Jesus that actually existed." We go back 2,000 years, and there in Germany is where this person raised its head when they said, "How do we know that we can trust what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John said, uh, what they wrote something?" Because they wrote down what Jesus said and what Jesus did.
Now, what Jesus said would be the hadith of Jesus. Are you following that? The saints of Muhammad, the saints of Jesus.
So that's the hadith of Jesus. And what Jesus did would be the sitta, which would be the biography of Jesus. So the very two genres that Islam have, we have as well. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John both were respons all four of them were responsible for writing down what Jesus said and what Jesus did. But they wrote it down.
That's the beauty of it. They wrote it down before they got it. And that's why when we were asked to find these manuscripts and say where are the original manuscripts we couldn't find them because what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote down was written on papyrus and papyrus disintegrates. It's just leaves that interlock and they disintegrated. So within a hundred years they those originals were no longer there. So copies of need to be made and copies of copies of copies of copies.
But those copies were proliferated and they were sent all over within the different churches. And because of that fact, we can today look and see when these were then finally put into velop or into what we call animal skins, parchments and that happened around the 4th century when you have Constantine who commissioned to have 50 of these created for the council na and that's where the city attus and the Alex andrinus novada catis start start come into play and that's why when you come to London you can see the city attus and you can see the Alex andrus there in the riglife gallery there in the British Library. If you go to Rome, you'll find the Vaticanis. And these are from the fourth and fifth century, the entire New Testament in Argent.
Okay. But we don't just have that. We have other manuscripts. You have the John Bonan papyrus, which is in Manchester. You have the sorry, the John Bonan papyrus is actually in Switzerland. Then you have the Chester Bey manuscripts, which are in Dublin, which are from the second, third up until the 4th century. Parts of different parts of the New Testament.
And then of course then you start getting into the Greek manuscripts which you have in Sinatus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanis. But then we have the Latin Vulgate. So we have 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin Vulgates. And then we have 19,000 manuscripts in 11 different languages.
All of them agreeing with each other.
That's the beauty of it. But that's just the manuscript evidence we have. We also have that the lectionaries in sixth century. There were 2,000 two uh 20 2,635 lectionaries that were written in the sixth century. That's 100 years before the Quran, which is a complete different genre than the manuscript.
Yet, they all parallel the manuscript evidence. Oo, I love that. But I'm getting I'm waiting. I'm giving the the best to last. The third genre that people have not really been talking about are the early church fathers quotations.
the quotations from the early church fathers when they were disputing with those who were coming into the church and they were bringing up lots of objections rather than debate them they just wrote letter after letter and they would write scripture verse after scripture verse and these scripture verses then were passed around to other people and so they were then destroyed during the edict of theian or dialesian in in 300 AD and as a result many of them were destroyed many of them were put into pits garbage pits like oxyus outside of ky error. Well, those those those vestigages of these early church fathers quotations were still there in the 20th century when the Christians found these garbage scripts and they started pulling them out and pulling them apart and starting to read them. And here they found that these were just scripture after scripture. 186,000 of these early church fathers quotations.
They wanted to find out how many of these early childhood quotations predate the 4th century predated the metropolitan and coticus of the sinaticus Alexandrinus and the Vaticanis and they found that 36,000 of these predate the 4th century including every chapter I'm sorry every book in the New Testament but they wanted to find out the Gospel of John.
The Gospel of John is the best one because that has the highest christologology and that's the one that really points to who Jesus hits and that's the one the Muslims like the least because of its high christologology.
So they looking at these early church notations just amalgamating the gospel of John they were able to reproduce the entire gospel of John except for 11 verses.
Show me any other piece of literature than just make the claim I just made about the New Testament. Isn't it great?
So we are absolutely dependent on the extent manuscripts. We agree with that.
We understand that. We know we have to provide the extent manuscripts and we have that's the beauty of it. Well, we have and God has God has preserved it.
Knowing that this is going to be the argument in the 21st century. So knowing that now what I just told you, let's ask the same thing of Islam. Where are their extent manuscripts? And last July, this came up in last July, who's a friend of he's not really a friend of mine. I call him a friend, but he has he calls me an ultra grepidarian.
In fact, he did a whole video against me and David Wood and Dan Brewaker about four years ago just really shutting trying to shut six years ago trying to shut his debt because of what we did with his get up argument. But Dr. Sakati I could consider to be the world's leading scholar on the historical uh critical approach and he was uh on a YouTube channel called Skeptislam Islamica. Have any of you seen Skept Islamica? Have you seen that? You've seen it Laura. What did you think when you saw that?
>> The holes in the narrative video.
>> The holes in narrative. Right. It's all the way through. Right.
>> Hit record button. Hit record button.
>> So you asked the question. It's called skepticus. It's right up there on the screen.
Look up on the screen. Okay, it's written there. Skeptislamaka. He was on skeptica and the lady there you see in that picture asked him this question. He had been talking about the Sahaba. The Sahaba are the companions of the prophet. And u he was talking about the difficulty we're having and he was pulling back himself from following the Sahaba. But he had written this book on the Sahaba. And the first question that came up was how do we know what the Sahabah wrote or how can we support what they saw and what they heard because they were right there listening to Muhammad and watching what he did.
Brilliant question.
And he said, "I'm probably the best person to answer this question."
He said, "I am the only one that has gone to Medina and got the highest degree you can get in Medina on the hadith sciences, but I also went to Yale University and got a PhD on historical criticism." So, in other words, I have a foot in both caps, both in the hadith sciences. And the problem is the difficulty is what they know as isnad. Isnad means that everything they know about what Muhammad said and did is based on hearsay. So so and so and so we're told so and so and so we're told so and so. Five generations of so and so before it was finally written down by Ibid Hisham in 8 just before 833 and Sunni Boui and Sunni Muslim and Ida and Tibidi and Maja in the late 9th century in the third 10th century and Alabi in the 10th century.
So these are all what we know as the Islamic traditions which includes the the and these four genre of traditions were finally written out in the 9th and 10th century by these people who wrote it down from so and so that's called oral tradition how can we know what Muhammad said did is what she was asking and he said here's the difficulty and he goes over and he says over here when I am in the mosque when I am in the mosque I quote from Muhari in Muslim because there I know that they will accept it. But when I come over here to Yale University or to Dallas to Epicenter, Epic City where he lives outside of Dallas in northeast Dallas, when I'm there at Epic City, not Epic City, sorry, outside of Epic City, when I'm in any academic institution, I never quote Muhari. Why? He said because you're well aware that nobody in the kod academy that's the west affirms the mostly sunni sciences of the over here nobody he said it is considered to be completely discredited I mean when you heard that I just start clapping I said no kidding he's finally admitting it >> now he meant this as an aside but that caused such a huge furori in the Muslim community for him finally admitting that that it beca became the focus of the interview. The reason it is discredited is because it is entirely dependent on this chain of names called Isan. So and so got from so and so we got from so and so we got from the prophet himself.
Now the interviewer said that there was a problem between the west and the east which Dr. Knight needed to respond to.
So he said, "Listen, I'm the best one to do this." And that's why I'm going to introduce his two different authorities.
One, the Islad over here, I'm sorry, the hadith science is over here and this one on on uh what we call the Western Historical Academy.
Now he said this, there is no middle ground between these two epistemologies called epistemologies. the epistemology of the honey scientist and the epistemology of western criticism. The two cannot come together. They collide.
Then he went on and asked so at least he was being honest and at least he recognized that these could be reconciled.
Now he then continued by saying as for definitely stating that the hadith over here what the prophet said and what he did goes back to the prophet Muhammad at this stage in my life I would have to say that this is what I say as a believer not as an academic.
>> Wow.
>> Are you hearing this? Are you watching?
Are you feeling you see how significant this is? note that he was admitting that there is a very real problem Muhammad's historical penalty stipulating that academically his sayings are simply not viable >> and he finally concluded by saying and if somebody if somebody over here could prove me wrong oh there he goes again George >> oh my gosh I guess because I'm yelling too loud is that getting too excited So on these D I have this memorized so I can just go ahead and keep telling you what's going on. He said if somebody over here in the west could come over and prove that these is not correct. If somebody could do that he said I would be the first to buy his book.
I would be the first to buy his book.
And believe me so would I.
>> Yep.
So, can you see the difficulty he's dealing with?
So, it was clear to him at this point in 2025 that there was no academically proven way to support the histo.
Note, he was only bemoning the authority of the he was not questioning the written texts of the 9th and 10th century in hadith writings. Have you picked that up? His only problem was the fact that everything is oral tradition.
Everything is based on hearsake.
All right, hold on. We're going to come back to that. So his conclusion, Dr. Kari knew that the western historical method complete discredited the Islamic sciences as they are all dependent on Islam's chain of chain of things which with nothing written down thus no as yet has been able to prove exactly what Muhammad said or did though that at some time someone will. Now because of that a number of weeks later on the 28th of July my good friend debated six time Dr. Yas Dr. Shabir Ali was on the program called let the Quran speak that's put on by his daughter uh Dr. Safia Ali and she says what are we going to do with what Dr. Cotti said back on the 9th, this is on the 28th, so this is a few weeks later. What are we going to do with the statement? What does he mean that all western scholars discredit the honey scientist? How can they discredit the honey scientist? What are you going to do here, Dr. Sha? He said, okay, okay, let me explain. He said, we don't have to worry about this.
He said basically everything we know concerning what Muhammad said and did came from two and 300 years of isnah basically or tradition until it was tabulated from the 9th and 10th century. He went on to say that all Muslims could trust those Islam. Now here we go ready. You can trust those because the Sahabah, these are the ones who were right there listening to what Muhammad said and hearing what Muhammad did. Those Sahaba when questioned how many Sahaba are we talking about? He said 120,000 of them. Look at the number 120,000 were completely trustworthy since they had perfect memory and what they recited to others was 100% accurate.
I just sat there incredulous. A man with a PhD making that kind of statement.
Then he went on to say or now my question at that time is how could you know that they had perfect memories or what they said was 100% accurate or accurately passed down or only for four or five generations. Where did he come to this conclusion?
Prove to me that they were 100% accurate. Prove to me that they were pure.
He said they could not lie.
120,000 people and not one of them could lie.
Now let's put it on the other foot. We believe that we also have our hadith and our and our we also have our situp. And notice who wrote down our hadith and our situp. Well, Matthew, Mark, Link, and John, and Peter. They were right there with Jesus the last three years. Were they absolutely pure?
>> No. If you've been watching the chosen, they're anything but pure. They had all kinds of problems, personality problems.
God bless them. But we don't ask them to be 100% pure.
We don't ask our pastors to be 100% pure. Thank God you are. But but we don't ask anybody to be 100% pure. We don't care what we do care what about your purity. But what we demand of you is that you read scripture that you read the written text. And what we demand of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is that they wrote it down because they were the eyewitnesses. And the view would be the second generation. That would be Mark and Luke. That's the view. the second generation. They wrote it down what they had been told by those who saw what Jesus did and said and that's all we demand of them. They are certainly have all kinds of proclivities and all kinds of of difficulties and all kinds. Yes, they would have had emotional problems and God bless Matthew, little Matthew, he was probably autistic the way he he just sounded. But did you notice in all through the shows what is Matthew doing?
He's writing down everything Jesus said.
That's the important thing. You write it down. God and his wisdom chose Matthew for that visa. Thank God for Matthew.
Thank God for John. Oh, I love these guys. Well, let's go on. So, conclusion.
Everything Muslims are dependent on for what the prophet said and did is based on a written I not is not based on eyewitness accounts at all, but merely dependent on the memory of pure men.
Pure men without any fault. Even those who lived and passed what they heard.
See, here's the other thing. It's not just that the first generation were pure. What about those who got it? Oh, those who got it. Well, those who got it. You're talking about five generations of pure men. Notice until they finally wrote it down, then they could be impure, which is what I would agree. Most people need to write it down are not absolutely pure. Now, because what happened on July 9th, on July 31st, yes had it answered from his students. And so, God bless him, they put it right up there for all of us to see. so I could go and watch him. So he came to Epic City after he'd come back from making this amazing statement on July 9th that everybody on this side is credits. What's on that side? And he had to answer to his students at Epic City. And he responded to his Dallas space epic students who were questioning his July 9 comments. He said that the western historical method which discredited the hadith sciences western historical method which discredited the hadith sciences was a set of practices that was only appropriate for the bible. It was created for the bible and only could be used on the bible because it found that the bible had been authored over many centuries and then redacted back by the later Christians who misinterpreted what Jesus said. So we thank we thank the historical method over here and we thank the those who created the form for form criticism and source criticism and textual criticism and redaction criticism and higher and lower criticism. We thank the Germans over here for doing that to the Bible.
Note that this was the initial accusation on by western historians concerning the Bible. Since then, since the 1800s, textual redactism has supported the authenticity of the biblical record, especially that of the New Testament, which most Muslims have a problem with.
And guess not. So, he has only been told what they taught him in Yale University, a very liberal university. He has not come to see what we now know about the textual authenticity or what I just said about 10 minutes ago.
when asked whether the historical method could be used on the hadith the traditions not the Quran the traditions he said we will not agree with those tools over here because they are not neutral but have a western non-faithbased paradigm because they come from a bias is what he's saying in other words historical criticism is only for the west and it's only for the Bible and not for Islam yet historical criticism is absolutely neutral and asks the same questions of any historical text from any religion which makes historical claim which Islam does and so do we. Are you saying I only have one minute? My goodness. Well, let's get going. Okay, let's go. Go real quick.
You got to get in line five at least.
>> You did not see it.
>> You've been walking out and you didn't come back and you go.
He responded by saying this. when you don't have im when you don't have belief or lived in the bubble of im even call it the bubble of im you will believe that the Muslim sources are weak and over here they don't have belief but here we have belief and we live in a bubble of belief basically what he was saying the tools Muslims used was iman belief an unquestioning belief that the issides orientated yet the reverse is also true you can see it the same way and how was he so sure that those who saw and heard Muhammad said were credible. We know that the Sahabah, those that were right there, the first generation, the eyewitnesses, will never lie. There we go. Isn't that what Shabir Ali said just three days earlier?
This is the only thing they can fall back on. Our hadith system is amazing, unprecedented, yet some aspects require faith. He even call it a leap of faith.
And concerning the hadith, there is no system that any civilization has developed that comes even close to Islam verification. And why? due to the Salah's purity. He finished by saying, I believe you can easily defend the sanctity of the Quran. Why Muslims are completely dependent on immi and Ali admit that everyone can trust the 9th century written text concerning what Muhammad said and did. In other words, the Exod manuscripts. Once you get to the 9th century, then you can trust it. Then that then must be our criteria as well. So let's look at the days of the Muhammad's earliest exit manuscripts. Here we go. Now, just watch the screen. Don't look at me. Just watch the screen. This is going to go real quick. Let's look at the extent manuscript. This is two years of study.
We've taken two years to compile all of these manuscripts. These are everything that is out there for Muslims to look at. Now, the first one we're going to start with is the Sahaba. There's the Sahaba. And we've just lost it again.
>> Sure.
Maybe the animation. Can you do that?
social.
>> Uhoh.
doesn't want to work this time.
>> Go to recent. Go down.
>> Okay.
>> No, it's it's showing here.
>> It's all on the screen. This is something you really have to look at.
Basically what it is where what I'm going to show you and we're going to have to come back at it another time. In every case all of the exit manuscripts from the though they claim they're from the seventh and 8th century they don't even begin to appear to the 11th and 13th and the 14th century. When we get to the which is the bar of Muhammad there is nothing written in the 9th century at all is we have nothing from the 9th century from them. There's no manuscripts. The first manuscript we have is a manuscript that is found in Morocco in 1063. That's the 11th century. Then you have a manuscript that is there now in the soaz I'm sorry in the British library gallery that is from the 12th century. Another manuscript that is in the modern pap library in Oxford which is from the 13th century.
Another manuscript that is set up which is in the Dublin Ches man library which is from the 14th century. Another manuscript which is the biblotech national in Paris which is from the 15 14th century as well. And then finally a sixth manuscript which is there at the soaz library in London which is from the 16th century. So 11th 12th 14th 15th century that is 400 to 900 years after Muhammad. So who then took these six manuscripts and compiled it into the story of Muhammad that we use today a German scholar named Frederick Hinrich Worenfell between 1858 and 1860.
That's 160 years ago. The life of Muhammad that we all read today is only 160 years old taken from six manages from the 11th to the 16th century. And then we get to the hadith. The five emphatters of the hadith. So you have builti maja in those six are supposedly all died in the 9th century. We don't have any manuscript at all from any of them.
The first one is midi which appears in the 11th century. And then you have da which appears in the 12th century. We have Maja and Nai which are in the 13th century. We finally get Sunni Muslim in the 14th century and we don't get ali until the 15th century. That's 800 years too late.
Nothing at all. And then we get to the ali who was the one that put the together. He died in 923. That's the 10th century. We have nothing from the 10th century. We have two documents that are in Istanbul there in Turkey that are from the 13th century, but they were put together by a man named Michael Jean Duch who is a Dutch scholar between 1879 and 1901. So that's the last century and that's how we know how Islam began from 1879 to 1901. Taken from two manuscripts from the 13th century.
What I'm telling you right now is I wish I could show you on a graph. If you put a dotted line from the 11th century, there is nothing for the 11th century.
No documents at all before the 11th century. There are bits and pieces of fragment. So there was a sham. I have no doubt. There was a al-wini. I'm sure there was banani. I'm sure there was Muslim and tini and mas and I'm sure they existed. But we have none of their manuscripts. Everything we have has been accreted and deleted and corrupted over and over and over and over again until it's finally put together in the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th century, which is during the Ottoman period. So, what we're reading today is primarily Ottoman documents.
>> Now, can you see what Shab Ali and Dr. Yukan are going to have to deal with?
Thank God we don't have that problem.
>> Amen.
>> God bless you.
That's really awesome. Uh there's absolutely no foundation for Islam and we we challenge Muslims can you be a Muslim by following the Quran only.
There's a group called the Quranic only group. But most of the Muslims who say no you must follow hadith to be a Muslim. And now we challenge them for debate. that he trust the transmission of information in the hadith. That's the debate they would never touch. They refuse completely for the last 15 years we've been challenging them to debate that they trust the transmission of information in the hadith. They will refuse debate that uh if they apply Islamic law into the hadith, Islam will fall apart because according to Islam, you have to have two women to be a witness equal to one man. And quite feel that this was reported by Muhammad Yaka's wife. She was nine, eight, nine years old when he married her when he was 56 years old. Uh that if he applied the Islamic law and that for that principle that we need two women to report to be a witness then the hadith will fall apart. They cannot practice Islam without the hadith. uh the foundation the confession of faith that no god but Allah Muhammad his prophet that's if they demanded they demanding us to show them in the bible where Jesus say I'm god worship me the same exact words we can demand them to show us in the in the Quran no god but Allah his prophet the exact words is not found in the go to the hadith how many times you praying all that stuff they have to go to the hadith is very essential this is a great great topic uh now we have with us uh uh sister Laura Um would you come up here and u welcome our sister as um uh she comes here. Um sister thank you so much for being here. Can you before you start your topic would you just tell us for a minute or two about yourself, who you are and what you study, what degree you have and all that stuff.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Does that count toward my tantrum?
>> No.
>> My name is Laura Zeer. Um, I became a Christian. I first heard the gospel when I was 21 years old.
Committed my life to Christ after um a supernatural experience followed by examining the evidence to make sure that I had encountered the the God I thought I had encountered, the God of the Bible as opposed to the God of uh of Islam or some other religion. And I went to Denver Seminary a couple years after becoming a Christian. Absolutely loved it there. Uh three of the most fun um intellectually uh challenging and exciting years of my life. Uh I've been in vocational ministry most of my adult life and uh I am uh I've ministered in 35 different countries approximately uh over 25 years uh most a lot of Muslim majority countries. I've ministered in uh for about five years in the refugee community of uh Clarkston, Georgia, just out on the outskirts of Atlanta. I've ministered in Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan uh to Muslims in and and recent converts to Christianity in Burundi, uh in India, all over the place. So, it's been an incredible joy and and honor that I actually never sought to get into. When I was 21 years old, I was asked if you could be I just became a Christian. I was asked, "If you could be a missionary anywhere, where would you go?" And I said, "Uh, United States." They're like, "Okay, that doesn't count. Where else?"
And, uh, I was like, "I don't want to be a missionary. I don't I don't I don't know. I don't care." And they and they said, "Well, okay. If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go?" I said, "Florida." They're like, "I'm from Florida. Yeah. So, yeah, that's I'm not kind of a, you know, adventurous. I wasn't um you know, wanting to travel the world and minister to people, but God does things you don't expect. So, I'm currently studying at Birmingham Theological Seminary in Alabama. Uh it's an online program uh for my doctorate and uh doctor of ministry in public theology and I am uh writing my dissertation now. My proposal was just accepted. So writing my dissertation on Thank you. on um how to um effectively interact and and speak truth to uh uh to non-believers um and also disciple believers well um without um without simply resorting to quoting scripture to people who don't already believe the scriptures. um how else can we find common ground to get conversations started and um natural law is a big part of that. So that um yeah and uh so I am going to speak on the um evidence for the crucifixion and if I have similar problems uh as Dr. J had I may just I may I'll just do it without it.
>> Oh, that's it. It's up there.
Thank you.
I can just do this button A few years ago, I was visiting a Muslim friend in Washington DC and we decided to go to the National Art Museum and one of them came to this room that was filled with paintings. uh of biblical scenes. Adam and Eve in the garden, Abraham sacrificing his son, Piper's wife accusing Joseph, David meeting Abigail, Daniel in the lion's den. And as we walked along and um looked at these paintings, my friend would ask me, "Oh, what is that uh a painting of? What is that depicting?"
And I would tell her, and she would say, "Oh, yeah, we have that in the Quran, too."
Well, then we came to a painting of uh depicting the crucifixion and she said, "Who is that?" And I told her, well, that's Jesus on the cross having lived a sinless life, taking on the uh the wrath of the father, the u to pay the penalty for for our sins, so that we could be reconciled with God so that we could be adopted as into his family, so that we could live with him uh in heaven in the new earth.
She said Jesus didn't die and he wasn't even crucified.
She was expressing the most common belief among Muslims that is that that Jesus was not killed or crucified. And this comes from the Quran uh for 155 and 158. Uh I'm paraphrasing this first part, but it's uh because it's quite long, but it it says basically the Jews were condemned for breaking their covenant, for rejecting Allah's signs, for killing the prophets unjustly, and for boasting. Here's where it's a quote, exact quote. The Jews were boasting. We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.
I'll take a brief second there. Do you see anything wrong with that?
If the Jews had thought he was the Messiah, they would not have killed him.
>> So the Jews would never have been say, "Yay, we killed the Messiah." Makes no sense. But I'll continue. So I'm going to point out other problems.
But they neither killed nor crucified him. It was only made to appear so. Even those who argue for this crucifixion are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever, only making assumptions.
They certainly did not kill him. Rather, Allah raised him up to himself. and Allah is almighty all wise.
So according to the Quran, Jesus was not crucified or killed, but rather what happened was Allah raised Jesus directly to himself.
But if Jesus didn't die, then he didn't pay the penalty for our sins, right? And so we are left to pay for them ourselves.
So over the next 45 minutes or so, I want to look at um uh this question whether or not Jesus was crucified. For most of the beginning of it, I think this may be helpful for and encouraging for your your own walk if you are not aware of some of this information. Um it also can come in handy and be very useful for interacting with Muslims. Um a very good friend of mine who is um uh who Dr. J mentioned actually who is is one of the best cultural pmicists in the world uh came to know Christ in part by looking at the historical evidence for the crucifixion and realizing that that Muslims are actually wrong that Jesus was uh killed by crucifixion. So this this is valuable for that. But um if you feel like, oh, there's a whole lot of information. How would I ever get this across to a Muslim or anything like that? There will be a couple of points where I'll say this is probably what this is what I bring up with Muslims.
So the things I'm going to look at um multiple ancient sources and Dr. Jays did a great job of talking about those.
I'll probably move through those pretty quickly. uh for additional criteria for historical reliability. There are um different aspects of um of documents such that historians consistently look at to determine whether they are reliable or just fabricated.
We'll see that there is a coherent historical context that um uh the Jesus crucifixion fits the historical context of first century Jerusalem under the reign of the Roman Empire. uh crucifixion was a common practice at that time and the accounts that we have in the gospels fit the other accounts that we have uh about how crucifixions were done and things like that. We have archaeological evidence that indicates that the gospels are reliable. um we have scholarly consensus which in and of itself is not necessarily all that helpful but we'll look at people um who have devoted their lives to trying to destroy Christianity and draw everybody away from Christ uh who say well yeah obviously Jesus was killed by crucifixion. So they have no um inherent uh incentive to agree to the crucifixion except that it's just overwhelmingly attested um and historically confirmed.
And then we'll look at Muslim explanations for what happened and see the um extreme shortcomings in those.
So the crucifixion of Christ is uh considered by by many historians, most historians to be the best attested fact in all of ancient history. It is without a doubt one of the best attested facts in all of ancient history. Um we have written testimony that is uh that Jesus died on the cross. It's virtually unanimous among ancient historians. Uh we've got testimony from Jews and Gentiles, from uh Roman officials, lay people, uh philosophers, people of all different backgrounds.
And again, virtually all scholars today agree on the crucifixion. So, who are some of these um ancient non-Christian sources? Let's let's look at those.
For the sake of time, I probably won't read uh what they've written. Uh but Josephus lived in the first century. He is considered a very reliable historian.
He affirmed that Jesus was killed by crucifixion. He affirmed of course that crucifixion was practiced at that time.
And uh he referred to crucifixion as the extreme penalty which um one of these uh other historians actually then later uh said Jesus uh succumb to the extreme penalty.
We have Marabar Serapian who was also in the first century. um Cornelius Tacitus uh lived 56 to 120 AD and um he was a Roman aator and public official. He he um he mentioned Jesus' death when he was writing about how the Roman Emperor Nero had blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome. And he wrote, "You wrote this Nero fastened the guilt of the burning throne and inflicted the most explicit tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace." Chrisus from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty. So then thus crucifixion during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.
So this is a non-Christian uh Roman official who is a who's affirming in uh very early on uh in you know lived in the first century early second century that Jesus was killed by crucifixion.
Lucian of Salisand uh the Jewish Talmed these are additional sources that we have.
We also have Christian sources. And usually when I bring up the Christian sources, people will say, "Well, we can't trust the Christian sources because they're biased." What? So, how do you how do we respond to that?
Someone's just like, "I don't even want to consider what's in the Bible because it's they're biased or what any Christians had to say." The Christian fathers um uh fathers of the church that um that Dr. J mentioned. Well, first of all, everyone is biased. Everyone has some sort of thought or opinion on the topic about which they are writing otherwise they wouldn't write about it.
Um so we the question is not is this author biased the question is was this author so um uh so biased for some reason that they are unreliable in what they wrote. And what we see is that the the the authors of the gospels uh are found to be extremely reliable. Another thing to keep in mind, the Bible is not a single source. I was talking to a guy last year who told me um when I uh he said, "Oh, you can't trust the Bible.
The guy who wrote that book was biased."
I said, "The guy who wrote the book um who who might that be?" He goes, "I can't remember his name and I have I'm going to have to get back to you on that." I said, "Please do that. I would love that. Promise." And I saw this guy the other day, so I knew I was going to see him the next, you know, probably the next day. So next day I said, "Hey, did you find out who who wrote the Bible?"
And he said, "Uh, he said, "Yes, yes."
His name was King James.
Let's talk about that.
Great conversations.
>> Yeah, it's important to remember that the life is not a single source. It's a collection of 66 books written by about 40 different authors over about 1,500 years. And the authors were from different backgrounds, different education levels, different languages, um all sorts of different different cultures. And so I actually find it to be more miraculous that all these different people from different places and times and and backgrounds over 1500 years could could write these 66 different books and have them cohhere into one unified overarching story that explains reality and creates a world view that that fits with reality. That's amazing. That's remarkable.
>> The New Testament alone is a collection of 27 books written by about nine different authors and uh and they were included in the Bible because they were written very early. They were written by those who were considered reliable and they were embraced and accepted as true by the the early church, the first Christians.
It's also important to remember that there were no Christians before Christ.
There was no one who said, "Oh, we're Christians and this Christian teacher is coming along, so we need to agree with the Christian because we're Christians."
That that didn't happen. They were they were Jews who already thought they had the truth and um who had to be persuaded by the evidence, by what they heard and saw that Jesus was their awaited Messiah and he did not come um in all the ways they expected him to. Um so we are reading sources from people whom were persuaded by the evidence and that of course is a very valuable uh resource.
So who are these Christian sources? Of course we have the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We've got the independent uh testimony of Paul. We also have next century uh Christian authors Pepeus, Polycarp, Clement and Nishius.
When we contrast that with Islam, we uh which is uh one source by uh one man who claimed to have revelations from God through the angel Gabriel with no witnesses at all. Even his own contemporaries believed he was making things up. They questioned him. They asked him to uh do some miracles to confirm that he was delivering a message from God just as prophets of the past had done. And he admitted that he could do none. Uh he said the he said, "My miracle is that the the Quran is just so beautiful. It's ineitable. It's so wonderful and amazing and perfect and excellent that nobody could ever write a chapter like it. In fact, they could never even write a verse like it."
First of all, it's it's highly subjective, of course. Um, I'd be interested in in meeting someone who actually reads it in in any language other than Arabic who says, "Oh, yeah, this is the best book ever and speaks a hot mess.
It's not in any sort of helpful order.
It's beautiful. It's it vers you know this principle of reading it called abrogation where you know something that was revealed later that contradicted something that came before it uh replaces what came before it. So there were contradictions already within the 23 years that it was revealed to this one man in secret. Uh it's and and it's already changing, right? The eternal word of Allah is already being changed in a 23-year period during which Muhammad supposedly lived. So this is um uh also it's actually factually untrue even though reading it and concluding that it's beautiful is subjective. But uh um people have gone to the Middle East and read the Bible, the Psalms and other parts of the Bible in classic a classical Arabic style language. And on mass people did uh and do confuse it with the Quran. And so it's plain wrong to say that it's inimable uh when when Muslims themselves can think that that the Bible is the Quran. what they what is beautiful is um the Arabic language which is uh and that that too of course is subjective.
So I want to look at four additional criteria for reliability. I mentioned um so we had we had multiple at testation multiple sources uh was kind of the first thing that we looked at. And of course you know if a lot of people say that something happened it it's generally more reliable than if only one person said something happened all other things being the same. We have four other criteria for historical reliability that come into play here that I think are are um interesting, helpful, and I chose ones that all start with E so that they're easy to remember.
We have eyewitness attestation. So, the gospel accounts were based on eyewitness testimony. Matthew's Matthew was a disciple of Jesus, so he saw things firsthand.
Mark uh the gospel of Mark is based on the eyewitness testimony of Peter who saw everything firsthand. Luke was based on the eyewitness testimony of several whom he interviewed and of Paul with whom he traveled. And John uh of course was one of the inner circle of three disciples who also saw everything himself.
Throughout the gospels we also have numerous people mentioned who were there at the crucifixion who were eyewitnesses. And when Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he um he he said that most of the people who saw Jesus um alive after having been killed were still alive. And so you could just go ask them yourself. If this was not true, uh the gospel that the m the whole thing would have fallen apart very early on.
We also have early attestation.
Uh, one of my favorite passages uh, in the New Testament comes from 1 Corinthians 15 3-8. Um, verses 3 through six are um, an ancient creed. Paul did not write these. He is he is sharing a creed. Like if I shared with you right now the apostles creed, I'm sharing something that long predates me. Uh so Paul was sharing an ancient creed as he was writing to the Corinthians and it says um so Paul's words are for I uh I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received and then he goes into the creed that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cphus then to the 12 then he appeared appeared to more than 500 brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though that some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and Paul says, "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me."
And so there there are numerous reasons why um historians even non-Christian historians say will say yeah this this is certainly an ancient creed that that predates Paul and it um even non-Christian scholars will say this goes back to 6 months to three years uh within within six months to three years at the most of the the events themselves the crucifixion and the resurrection um that and they in fact um uh most people think that Paul probably received this from Peter and James when he went to visit them in Jerusalem uh after his encounter with Christ and that's recorded um we have that recorded in Galatians 1:18 and 19.
So that is pretty cool.
So that's this is exceptionally early.
There are several reasons why um why uh scholars agree that this was an ancient creed. First of all, um Paul's introductory comment I delivered to you um what I also received was kind of a a way of um denoting the impartation of um oral tradition. Also verses three to five appear to be Aramaic in origin.
Um which is you know which indicates it was very very early the original language of the disciples. Um the the text's content is stylized like like a um a creed and it's nonpolian language.
You study the the original language you see okay this is not the way Paul wrote at all. Those are a few of the reasons you can get entire thick books on on that though. Gary Habermass is a great um source if you're interested in that.
And there they are.
We also have enemy attestation.
So um in other words, if your enemies agree with you on something um especially on something related to your rivalry, then it's considered more reliable. Uh so that's exactly what happened here when when Jesus disciples began proclaiming that they had seen the risen Jesus and the tomb was empty like that. The enemies of Jesus did not say, "Well, how can someone rise from the dead without even dying? He didn't die.
How can he rise?" They didn't say that, right? They didn't say, "Well, he probably left town. It's about time."
They didn't say that. They said the disciples must have stolen the body. So, even his enemies there are implicitly agreeing he had been killed. He had died. Okay.
By the way, um this is also that enemy attestation is also um and it's for the resurrection as well, not only the crucifixion. If um uh when the when they when the disciples started proclaiming the empty tomb, uh if um you know that if Jesus body was not missing, they you know, they likely would have said something like um the body's not missing, it's in the common grave. I mean, how can you proclaim he's missing?
like we if we threw him in the common grace with everybody else. Um or or they could have said, "No, we left him up on the cross, which is like what Bartman uh skeptic extraordinaire claims. Oh, they just left the body up on the on the cross and the birds ate it." Well, that's then that's how the en the enemies of Christ would have replied is that his body is still up on the on the cross. The birds have been eating it like everybody can see it. What are you talking about?
>> That makes sense.
>> So, that's what they said.
They could have said well the body's right there where we put it in the grave of Joseph of Arabia or wherever they put it. But again what they actually said was the disciples must have stolen the body. So again they are agree admitting that the body was missing.
We also have embarrassing attestation.
Uh one one example of this is that women were the first witnesses to the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus. And as the women were proclaiming the what happened um and women were not considered trustworthy reliable sources of information in the first century in this culture. Um they their testimony was not permitted in court of law. And so this if you were going to make up a story you would not make this up. If you felt free to doctor the story change it even a little bit you would have you would have changed that immediately. Leave out the women. Say it was the men who found them. Found the empty tomb.
>> They were hiding.
>> The men, however, >> what were they doing? They were hiding behind locked doors out of fear for the Jewish leaders. Okay, so talk about making yourself look terrible.
That's embarrassing. And yet they it seems that they did not feel free to adjust adapt the story or the account of what happened. So they made themselves look stupid. They made women the heroes.
And and that actually was a stumbling block in the first century for people to accept to realize that this message was true because, oh, you want me to trust a bunch of women? Nice. Um, but what I love about that is that that is strong evidence in the 21st century because now we can look back and say, "Yeah, that was embarrassing. They wouldn't have made that up." So, that is actually evidence today.
Um, additionally, death by crucifixion was shameful, reserved for the worst of criminals. Uh, certainly not what you would want or expect of um your your expected conquering king. You would not want to follow someone who was who was murdered, who was killed on a cross in the most shameful death possible and go, "Yeah, yeah, that's my Lord." So embarrassing attestation.
When we uh contrast this with Islam on eyewitness testim uh testimony, there's not a single eyewitness. Like I said, it requires us to trust someone named Muhammad. um uh who could not do miracles, whose contemporaries questioned his reliability, whose only supposed confirmation was the inimitability of the Quran, who came along 600 years after the events and claimed to know uh what happened 600 years before he was alive.
Muhammad also by the way um initially knew and wrote or shared that uh he believed he was visited by a demon in the cave and that he was demonp possessed. So we expected to trust a man who believed he was demonp possessed and then it took some time for him to become convinced that oh yeah I'm a great prophet. Yeah, that's it was an angel.
So, um, and and of course, um, Islam, the the whole message of Islam as I read it is just, oh goodness, this is exactly what we would expect of a human invention.
Um, was out of time, said or no, >> no, I was agreeing with you.
>> We also have coherent historical context. So, uh, we know that, uh, a man I get, let me get his full name here.
Um, uh, Publius Quintilius Varsus, crucified 2,000 Jews um, in a response to a revolt in Judea in 4 BC. So in the what we have is just historical evidence that crucifixion happened to um to rebels.
Jesus was a potential political threat in Judea and um and the gospel's depiction of Jesus crucifixion fits the context of of Jewish Roman tensions. So um so the historical context completely fits. We also have archaeological evidence that confirms that the Romans crucified rebels and slaves and criminals during the first century in in Judea. In 1968, archaeologist Basilios Sappheris discovered the remains of a man named Yehoan uh in a Jerusalem tomb that dates to between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. So right in there in the time of Christ uh we have um the discovery of the remains of a man who whose heelbone was pierced by a 7 in nail, iron nail, which when they discovered the remains, the nail was still in the heel bone. And so they could see how kind of how this uh looked. Um and it was still attached to a piece of olivewood. So he had he had been crucified he had been his heel had been nailed to uh to a tree to a cross. Um and so uh the armbones also revealed places where the nails had gone through. Both of his legs were also badly fractured indicating a harsh blow to the legs uh which we read about in the scriptures.
um as the the means a common means of um basically speeding up the process and scholars believe Yehovan was probably a political descendant against Roman oppression.
We also have a skeleton. Oh, this is cool. I've got pictures. Um, so yeah. So here you can see the the the bone with the nail still through it and the pe and kind of the piece of the tree. the so um for that third picture there I think I uh I may have found that on the internet or I may have asked I think I found that on the internet but I may have asked um AI to create that given u that from you know such and such information and so we also have the gllo skeleton uh in 2007 the skeleton of a 2,000-year-old man was discovered in gllo Italy near Venice and he had a distinct hole through his right heelbone and there was significant skeletal trauma consistent with crucifixion.
The skeleton was buried directly into the ground. So um there was no no tomb uh no burial goods. This suggested that this was marginalized member of society probably a crypt.
So again, these are just um historical pieces of evidence that show that this is this all fits very much with the with the way things went historically with regards to crucifixion.
We also have um uh first century Jerusalem tombs. This is really cool. the between 37 BC and 70 AD there was a very distinct way of creating tombs and um these several of them have been discovered so from right around the time of Jesus and they correspond exactly with the biblical descriptions the biblical accounts. And so as we take a look at um the uh the photo of a tomb from Jesus era on your left uh this was uncovered during road construction in in Israel.
About a thousand tombs like this one have been discovered uh from the first century and uh all around the region.
Notice the large stone at the entrance which was rolled across to seal the tomb. Uh that that should remind you of the description uh that we read about in the gospels.
Inside the tombs, there was usually a stone slab as you see in the picture where the body was wrapped in it had been wrapped in burial cloth and it would be laid immediately after death.
after the body decomposed for a while, then they would collect the bones and put them in a bone box, an oushuary um so that there was room for the the next person in the family who would die. And uh they would kind of stack bones in the ouary, the bone boxes um in the little uh niches to make room.
So these archaeological discoveries match the description of Jesus tomb that we find in the gospels.
So the gospel of Matthew reports, quote, "When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arythea named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a linen shroud, clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. and he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there sitting opposite the tomb. And this wrote Matthew 27 uh 60 and61. And so that really describes what we see here and what has been found in about a thousand different tombs from that period in which this unique type of of tomb was was uh cut out of the rock.
So these again confirm the um that the gospel accounts of Jesus are certainly plausible. They're certainly realistic.
I'm not saying that these uh that this historical evidence proves Jesus was crucified, but that rather that it it fits as far as scholarly consensus. Um, another useful um, this I I I hesitate to to even use scholarly consensus now, but I think I do think it's significant because the people I'm going to bring up here again despise Christianity. They've devoted their entire careers to try to to draw people away from Christ. They have no incentive to agree to the crucifixion unless they just cannot get away from him evidential. And that's what we have in John Dominic Crossen, Bart Irman, Garrett Ludman, Paula Frederickson and many many others. And so John Dominic Crossen of the misnamed Jesus seminar says quote Jesus death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be.
For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for 100 years after his crucifixion, we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Favius Josephus and Cordelius Cacitus.
So he's saying, yeah, this is as sure as anything historical can ever be.
Uh Bartman says this is one of the most um certain facts of all of history.
Garrett Ludman, Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable. Non-Christian Paula Frederickson single most solid fact about Jesus life is his death. And she gives specifics. All of these specifics are basically indisputable. So what do Muslims say? I have about five minutes left. So um I'm going to get to that. The most common explanation that Muslims have is that substitution theory, right? that that um it was made to appear the Quran says it was made to appear as that Jesus was uh killed and crucified. He was not killed and crucified rather Allah raised him to himself. So what happened? How do he how did that what did that look like? Well, a lot of Muslims believe that it was um either Judas uh in some like poetic justice was actually crucified but it but Allah made it look like it was Jesus. Some say it was Sims.
But either way, when I ask Muslims what um uh who who made it who or what made it appear as if Jesus was killed by crucifixion, they cons consistently tell me, well, Allah only Allah could do that, make it appear, right? And so I think the that raises an obvious problem. If Allah made it appear as if Jesus was crucified and killed when actually he wasn't by by making the eyewitnesses own eyes and ears unreliable. Allah is the greatest deceiver.
Imagine Allah is personally actively intentionally responsible for Christianity and for leading astray millions or billions of of souls that Muslims say are going to hell.
because of uh following uh Jesus, right?
Allah, as it turns out, actually in the Quran on two different occasions boasts of being the greatest of deceivers.
Who does the Bible say is the greatest of deceivers?
>> Yeah, there's this I don't think that's a coincidence. Um, so, uh, going back to this, the story I shared at the beginning with my friend at the museum, and she said, 'Oh, Jesus wasn't killed or crucified. I said, well, um, I said, "What happened?" She said, "It just looked like it." I said, "Who made it look like it?" She said, "Allah." I said, "Well, then that makes Allah a great deceiver. You can't trust your eyes. You can't trust your ears. You can't trust the Quran. You can't trust you can't trust Allah." and she her husband was with us. Um, and her her face kind of went white. She she turned on her husband and she she starts speaking and Dari >> and he started speaking back and they're going to go and they just start kind of using it in their own little discussion like is everything okay? And uh and they're like we will go now. And so we left. And you know, one of the important things that that I like to keep in mind when discussing things like this with with Muslims is um is don't uh believe that their initial reaction is their final response. I guarantee you they have thought about that conversation many many times since and are trying to figure out what to do with it. I actually know this for a fact. And so, um, may may the Lord show them who he truly is.
There's also no evidence for the for the substitution theory. Um, uh, the eyewitnesses were present in Jesus.
Well, and there's no u there's no motive or explanation for why Allah would have done this. I mean, the the so the story goes that Allah to deceive people into thinking Jesus was killed by crucifixion.
Christianity was created. Millions of people become Christians. 600 years later, he decides to send his correction book. Why? No explanation is given. He just decided it was time, right? I guess the full number he really wanted to to be deceived. And I don't know, there's no explanation that really makes sense.
A a um uh secondary far far far less common belief among Muslims is the swoon theory that Jesus pass Jesus was put on the cross but he passed out. Um, the biggest problem with this, I believe there are many though, but the biggest problem with this is that if Jesus had passed out on the cross, he would have died very quickly because on the cross with the arms spread out in the way that they would do it, he'd have to lift himself up. He'd have to push up against the nails in order to exhale and then he could come down and inhale again. If you watch him for about two minutes and he doesn't lift himself up, you know he's dead, right? So, if he had passed out on the cross, he would have died. And I I I think the the substitution theory and the swoon theory and knowing how to respond to those are both important.
They're not only raised by Muslims. They were raised by agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, etc. as well.
So, um I want to just uh close with this. We can know from the evidence, from basic common sense, from the problems that we see with the u the Quranic explanation that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified 2,000 years ago. Um the evidence all supports that. It is one of my favorite topics to engage with um with Muslims. Virtually all historians of all worldviews agree to this. Muslims are basically on their own with this. Um unless you come across someone who doesn't believe that matter actually exists or something like that like um like the n the gnostics uh believed it was evil or whatever. Um but that's very uncommon. Basically Muslims are alone in this one in believing that Jesus was not crucified. And even a lot of Muslims are starting to say, "Okay, well, he was definitely crucified, but uh so we're going to have to figure out a different way to interpret the Quran." And that is happening as well. Uh if Jesus again was not crucified, but it just was made to appear. So then Allah is the greatest deceiver ever to exist, and we cannot trust anything we think, we see, or know. But the truth is that Allah of the Quran is the greatest deceiver. He is the enemy of the truth. He is the father of lies. He is the destroyer of souls.
And everyone needs to know this. So let's go out and tell him.
>> Amen.
I hope you were listening carefully because uh actually when we were out in front of the mosque the other day, I had a conversation with a guy and that's exactly what he said. Oh, Jesus didn't die on cross. God replaced them, you know. So, but I was ready.
I don't know if you listen like to talk a lot. Our speakers like to talk a lot too. Uh so be patient. They have so much knowledge to share with us and if we only have 10% of it, it would be great.
Now speaking of percentage, uh this is if you're into baseball, we are now going to have the seventh inning stretch. Your mind can only absorb as much as your backside can endure.
>> Stretch it out.
Yeah, there you go.
>> My favorite amount is shake your booty.
>> I hope not.
>> We are live here with us.
>> That we can look this over again. We're going to have lunch at stairs. um church, pastor Tim, I forget you, Pastor Tim Gand, a great friend of mine and he's opened the building to us. Um provided me lunch of course and all that. He's happy you're here. If you have any questions about the facilities, uh please speak to him. And also, uh if you're in the area, um we're going to be talking later. Hopefully, this you're going to see this >> local together >> and everything's been >> shake it one more time and have a seat.
Anthony.
>> All right. Well, it's good to be back with you all.
This talk I'm going to be addressing the Islamic claim. This is Islam's claim to fame if you were to ask them. I mentioned last time they say that the trinity is Christianity's Achilles heel.
I hope I did something to show that's not true. But this is now over and against that. what they think is their winning argument. It's their leading proposition, namely that Allah is one. Now before I explain why they think this is such a winning proposition, I want to tell you something of my own experience getting into Islam and some of what I initially thought would be helpful in engaging Muslims and how the dawning realization came that maybe I should have put some of my emphasis in a different direction. So I was converted in a context where Islam was very appealing to people especially people who were disaffected for various reasons. Islam was presented as the solution to what they were told or sold uh what they were sold on as being their problem.
Now all all the stuff that they were telling people about Islam was a bill of goods. It wasn't actually true. But uh in in that context uh I I came to faith and I wanted to be able to evangelize people and I quickly learned that it wasn't so simple that I couldn't just tell people the message that I found so gloriously true and expect people to jump at it. I was just telling somebody in the foyer a moment ago when I went to people and told them your sins can be forgiven. put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, your sins will be forgiven. The response that I got back was, "Are you calling me a sinner?" That's that's one example. Uh, and I I would think, well, yeah, I guess, but that's kind of missing the the point. At least it's missing where I'm trying to land. And the way I often think of this is it's like me coming to somebody and saying, "Look, I got a solution to your financial problems.
Here's a million dollars." And imagine the person responding back to you and saying, "How how dare you? Are you calling me poor?" And I would think, "Well, I guess it sense you've got a financial issue and this solves it. But you're you're missing the point when you take offense at this. The point is there is this issue and here's the solution."
Well, I wanted to be able to get over these objections that people had. I I learned that it wasn't the case that people would jump at the message. They would have objections and and sometimes the objections are grounded on the fact that they're taking offense to certain things. It strikes at their core values, what they think about themselves and the world and so forth. There are worldview differences between us.
Uh, and so when when I was thinking about all that, I I started to think that maybe one of the things that would help me is to take a logic course so I could reason with people. And I'm not discounting that now. I think that's very useful. There are all kinds of reasons why that might be something you might be interested in. Or you can just pick up a logic book and learn what the rules of inference are. What does it look like to make a sound argument? How do you detect bad arguments? All that's very good. But here's what I eventually learned is something that many people overlook and more and more the more I think about this, the more I think this is true. What I should have been focusing on, at least initially, is the whole area of propaganda.
Propaganda. We're all somewhat familiar with it, even if we don't necessarily benefit from it as well as we should.
We're we're all, you know, whenever you uh are inundated with commercials and there's all these ways that you're being when I was in uh we were in Arizona not long ago and we're driving through town and everywhere I looked there's a billboard and and there's a guy who basically looks like he was taking over the billboard scene and it reminded me when I was younger uh I got in an accident somebody came and hit me from behind and I was told that I should go see a lawyer. Now, the way this worked out is I, you know, I everything was settled.
There was no lawsuit or anything, but but some but somebody was telling me I need to go see a lawyer just as a matter of formality.
And I thought, what, you know, I don't know if I want to go see a lawyer. And my kids said, oh yeah, they they said call 87888.
And I thought, what they they have heard this jingle as they were coming up on the radio where it was constantly advertised from this particular lawyer and it was brilliant. It worked my kids and that's the number I called because it was the easiest thing to do. Well, there are a lot of propaganda techniques and people fall for them all the time. One of the propaganda techniques that Muslims are especially good at is repetition.
Repetition is where you constantly say something and people become persuaded of it, not because they've given you good reasons for it, but because they've repeated it so often.
And one of the things that Muslims will repeat over and over and over again is that their doctrine of God is clearly taught in the Quran.
It's simple.
Everybody can understand it and it's agreed upon. All Muslims have the same view. And by contrast, what you're supposed to think is the Trinity is not clearly revealed in the Bible.
It's not simple and it's not agreed upon. Now, we're not talking about the Trinity now, but that's that's how this is set up and that's how this is supposed to work.
You're supposed to think all these things with respect to the Trinity and all these things with respect to Islam.
And for years I would hear this from Muslims and I used to think it was true.
I used to think, okay, yeah, it's totally taught in the Quran and it's simple and it's agreed upon. Allah is one. Over and against those who say there are many gods and over and against that confused doctrine of Christians who say God is three in one. What does that mean? Okay. Our doctrine is clear and simple. The Quran says what's the famous chapter of the Quran that any Muslim can paradise surah 112 surah alas where it says say he is Allah the one the self-sufficient he begets not neither is he begotten and there is none like unto him. Okay that's that's the famous chapter of the Quran. There are other statements in the Quran that also factor into this, but this is supposed to be clear, simple, and agreed upon. Okay. Now, let me tell you what's really the case.
One of the things that happened in the history of Islam is uh it's not my water.
uh at at one point there there was a debate among Muslims about the status of the Quran.
How should we think about the Quran? Now here you're going to have to be a little philosophical with me for a moment.
Muslims love to be philosophical when they're attacking the Trinity. So we need to be a little bit philosophical in order to think through their view and raise some objections to it in light kind.
According to Muslims, the Quran is different from the Bible in this respect. We we say that the prophets were moved by God. God used the prophets to write what he wanted them to write.
God used Moses. God used Paul. He didn't override their personalities in the sense of destroying them. He ensured that what they wrote was true in what he wanted them to write. But he used them.
He really used them. They were really involved in the process. So so much so that I used to do this thing with my kids. I would say, "Read something from the Bible anywhere. Pick any place and I'll tell you who said it." And the reason I could do that is not because I've got the whole Bible memorized. It's because you become uh there are three knock over.
But you become familiar with somebody's distinctive style. Moses sounds like Moses. Paul sounds like Paul. Jesus sounds like Jesus. But all of them writing under the special providential superintendence of God. So it is God's word in the sense that he's inspiring men to write what he wants them to write. But the Quran on the other hand is supposed to be a dictation.
You're not supposed to see anything of the personality of Muhammad in it. This is the Islamic account. Not saying this is true. In fact, if you just listen to Dr. Smith, you know, there's all kinds of problems with all that, but this is their account. The Quran is supposed to be a literal verbal dictation from their deity. So through the entire Quran, there's no distinct personality that's ever in view other than the one personality of Allah.
So the Quran is viewed as Allah's speech, his direct speech.
Now if you think this through for a moment, this has certain entailments.
If the Quran is Allah's direct speech literally and Allah is eternal, then his speech as an attribute of his has to be eternal.
So for the orthodox Muslim, it became dogma to believe that the Quran is eternal.
The Quran was delivered to Muhammad from the angel Gabriel. Now, by the way, I want you to think this through for a moment. One of the things you often hear from Muslims against the incarnation is that God can't enter into his creation. God is transcendent. He can't enter into his creation. So the incarnation is an absurdity according to the Muslim. The question I like to ask Muslims in connection with the Quran is okay if Allah can't enter into his creation, how then can you say that the Quran is his eternal speech? How did Muhammad get the Quran?
>> Now what do you think the answer would be?
Anybody? If Allah can't enter into his creation and Muhammad gives us the Quran supposedly Allah's speech, how did he get that Allah if Allah can't enter into his creation? What do you think the Muslim answer is?
>> Gabriel, >> the angel Gabriel. Okay, but think this through. All they've done is kick the the ball down the road a little bit to kick the can down the road. If Allah can't enter into his creation and deliver his word directly to Muhammad, how does saying Gabriel gave it to Muhammad answer that problem? Isn't Gabriel part of creation? How did Gabriel get that word? See, already there's a logical problem here when Muslims argue against the incarnation and for the kind of deity that posits he can't enter in. Now, when you read the Quran, there's other problems with this.
Allah seems to be breaking this rule all the time.
There there's a story in the Quran picked up from the Bible where it mentions God appearing to Moses in a burning bush. In the Quran, it says he appeared and spoke to him from the right side of Mountur from the right side. So, Mah's on the right side of this mountain. So, the Quran creates all kinds of problems for all this. But the basic point, not to be forgotten, is that according to Muslims, the Quran is Allah's eternal speech. So here's the million-dollar question.
Is the Quran Allah?
Now, no Muslim would say the Quran is Allah. Of course, the Quran isn't Allah.
But wait a minute. What does that mean?
Doesn't that mean now that there are two eternal realities?
Allah and his word.
And isn't this starting to sound kind of strange?
Almost strangely familiar to you as Christians? Now, it's not the exact same claim. There's huge problems for this that we don't have. But don't we as Christians say in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. Isn't this the doctrine that's supposedly confusing, not clearly taught in the Bible, not simple? you shouldn't believe it. Now, what do we have over here? We have Muslims in their own development of their theology saying something that apes that. Now, I say it apes that because there really is a problem here.
When we as Christians refer to Christ as God's eternal word, we are saying that he is essentially one with the father.
He's personally distinct but essentially one.
But the Quran is something fundamentally other than Allah. There is a difference, a radical separation between them. You could, you know, carry around the Quran.
In fact, there's a story in the hadith that says that on the final day when people stand before Allah to be judged by him, it says the Quran is going to intercede for those that recited it during their lives.
Sounds almost like a person, doesn't it?
>> The Quran's going to intercede for them.
And now it gets even worse. Certain hadith say that it's going to appear in the form of a pale man. So the Quran is going to appear in the form of a pale man and intercede for Muslims on the day of judgment and say, "I was his companion in life and and other things."
So now you've got this eternal book that's other than Allah that's interceding for people and appears like a pale man.
This doesn't sound so simple anymore.
Doesn't sound altogether like an absolute oneness, does it? But now here's here's the thing. Now a lot of Christians point this out to you, but here's where it gets a thousand times worse.
According to orthodox Islamic theology, this is true of all Allah's attributes.
The attribute of speech is just one attribute of Allah. He has other attributes that are to be distinguishable from him.
Just like his speech.
So every single attribute that you can think of is an eternal reality distinguishable from essence. I know I'm being a little philosophical and theological, but hopefully you can at least see that there's there's an issue here. Now, in in historic Christianity, although we talk about God's attributes, we recognize that God is ultimately one with his attributes. We don't just say that God has love as though it's an attribute he partes of. We say God is love, right? We don't just say that God has light in the sense of, you know, he's he's knowledgeable. He has knowledge. We say God is light.
God isn't distinct from his attributes.
There aren't eternal attributes that God somehow participates in. But in Orthodox Islam, that's what they teach. So there's an eternal attribute distinguishable from Allah, known as his speech, known as hearing, known as known as seeing. And so if you were to uh ask an orthodox Muslim who knew his theology, he would tell you that there are as many uncreated and eternal realities as there are attributes.
One of the things that Muslims sometimes will say is that Allah has how many names?
99 names. Right? These 99 names correspond to attributes.
Now really important Muslims know that it's not limited to 99 nine. These are just especially important ones. There are hadith that talk about if somebody memorizes all of them they'll get paradise. But of course that has to be qualified because then you know you could have some wretched individual just memorizing these things he's going to go to heaven. So they say memorizing them means uh you know inculcating them and living them out in your life and so forth. But the point is there are supposedly 99 specially important names corresponding to attributes. So there are at least 99 eternal realities according to orthodox Islam.
Now now some of you are probably thinking I'm again that I'm I'm being a little bit too philosophical and so forth, but but this is the whole point.
Muslims are used to getting away with this when they come to us as Christians.
They're used to raising philosophical questions with us and we're not used to thinking through the issues and returning the favor in their direction.
And this is why they can get away with the propaganda technique. Allah is one.
It's simple. It's agreed upon.
Now, I mentioned that there was this controversy that arose. What I didn't tell you is that the position I just told you about is only one of many answers that Muslims have given. This is the standard one that Muslims believe today. But there were other answers that people have given. I'm not going to go through all of those, but the point is there were factions in the history of Islam that are just as much there as you know we have sects in Christianity, different sectarian groups. Some of them are outside of orthodoxy, some of them are just different, you know, they're shades of differences within orthodoxy. But Islam has had its differentiation over time. We know of the major divisions, Sunni, Shia, Sufi.
But even within them, there are all kinds of differences. The idea that it's all simple is simply false. Okay. But let me give you one of my favorite ways of bringing this out. So, I mentioned now this if if you all got lost with some of that other stuff, hopefully I can rope you back in with this. You're about to hear a story that I once told this story to a bunch of uh young Somali Christians. If you don't know anything about Somali Christians, they're an especially persecuted group.
>> The Somali Christians, Somalians boast of being 100% Muslim, meaning there are no non-Muslim Somali. that this is their claim. But what does that mean then? If a Somalian person becomes a Christian, well, in order to retain your identity and your boast, you've got to get rid of that person. They're an especially persecuted group of people. But I can tell you because I know them personally, there are quite a number of them. It's a myth. When a Somalian tells you they're all Muslims, it's a myth. Well, I was once talking to this group of Somalian Christians and a lot of the young people were listening the story and they were just cracking up to no end and it was it was delightful to see because you know when you're persecuted and you know especially if it's by your own family some of them were telling me stories about how their mother once they became Christian said if I ever see you again I'll kill you myself too. young girls, I met tweet girls that had a great relationship with their mother, became Christians, and their mother told them, "I ever see you again, I'll kill you."
So, there's not a lot of smiles on their faces a lot of the time. So, when I was able to bring a little bit of cheer to them and they could see something of the absurdity of Islam, they left, it was a special joy to me. Well, remember that chapter I I quoted for you earlier say he is Allah the one self-sufficient he begets not neither is he begotten there's none comparable to him there's all kinds of problems with that surah but one problem is that phrase that I cited as self-sufficient if you look up there's a good website online called islonawwaken.com if you Look up that verse in Islamawwaken.com. It'll give you 70 different English translations.
And when you look through those 70 translations, you'll notice there's an incredible number of variation. They can't agree on how to translate it. And I'm going to tell you why they can't agree.
Imagine if I told you or if I asked you a question. Let's say I'm giving you a math test and I say, "What's the answer to 2 + 2?" And I said, 'Before you answer, you can't say four. Four is not one of the possible answers.
Now, you're going to give all kinds of different answers because people are going to come up with different answers because none of them really work. And so, everybody's going to be taking their best shot at it, right? Two sounds the most or three sounds better than two. Somebody else might say five sounds better than uh three, right?
Five's. We can't say four. So what's the better option? Right? This is the kind of thing that's going on with the translators. The the actual meaning of the passage is ruled out in advance because it's it's it's not consistent with the propaganda.
So here here's the backstory about this sort of somebody the pagans came to Muhammad one day and you have to remember these were pagans. Muhammad was born in a pagan context. surrounded by pagans. His family, his tribe, according to the Islamic sources, they were responsible for taking care of the Cabba.
So he was entrenched according to their narratives, he was entrenched in these pagan modes of worship and ways of thinking.
Well, one day a group of pagans came to Muhammad and they asked Muhammad, "What is your god made out of? What does he consist of?
uh they're they're they're asking, you know, they have these idols of wood and uh precious stones and I mean I don't know all the the different materials in the case of the gods that surrounded the Cabba at the time, but that's just standard fair in ancient times that they would construct these things out of various solid substances.
And so they're asking Muhammad basically if their god his god is like that.
The word that Muhammad uses here in the Quran when it when it's translated in some cases self-sufficient is the word samad.
Samad, which if you look at the lexicons of the Arabic language, in fact, if you look at Alabori, who's one of their foremost commentators, he gives you a a chain going back to the time of Muhammad and his companions. He gives you various chains which are supposed to tell you what this word means. And the chain that goes back to Muhammad says that the word means solid.
So when Muhammad is answering the pagans, he's saying Allah is solid as opposed to hollow.
Okay? Because some of these deities would be hollow. But Muhammad is saying his deity is solid. Now, now here's a a narration, and this is where it gets good. There's a narration that Alabari tells that is uh related to this. It's not necessarily in the same spot of the of his commentary, but you you can see the connection. You you'll catch it in a moment. We're told according to Alabi, and there are many narrations like this, that Allah created Adam as a lifeless statute. At first, he created him and he caused him to stand erect and he stood there as a lifeless statue for 40 years before he breathed life into this statue.
Well, one day a group of angels happens upon this statue and they're alarmed.
Now, why would a group of angels be afraid of a statue?
You ever been afraid of a statue? Maybe as a kid, maybe. Maybe a statue was an alarming thing. But these are angels, mighty angels. They come upon this statue and suddenly they're alarmed.
Something has alarmed them about this statue. Well, then Satan comes along and basically, this is my paraphrase, basically says, "What are you guys alarmed at, fellas? What's the problem here?" Does I'm going to go over there and investigate and I'll come back and I'll let you know if your fears are justified.
So basically, Satan is going to go over and do some detective work. He's going to figure out whether they're alarmed for good reason. What Satan does when he goes over to this statue is he enters in through its mouth and then he goes out through its rear and he comes back to the angels and he says, "Don't worry, fellas."
He says that is hollow but your Lord is sad solid.
Can you now understand what the angels were possibly alarmed at? What did they think that statue was?
They thought the statue was Allah. It looked like Allah.
And so when they see this statue, they're afraid. They think it's Allah.
But Satan goes over to the statue and by virtue of being able to enter through its mouth and go out through its rear, he knew that it wasn't Allah because Allah is solid.
Now this gave rise and these are absurdities that has never entered in the mind of any Christian whom Muslims are telling we've got this complicated doctrine and all the rest. This gave rise to debate among Muslims who were trying to figure out how much of Allah is solid because because it can't be the case that he's completely solid because Allah speaks so there has to be according to them a chest pattern. So there were certain Muslims who said that Allah is solid from the stomach down.
Then there were other Muslims who said, "No, he's solid from the waist down."
>> And this was given as the explanation.
I'm I wish I was making this stuff up. I I don't have any special pleasure in making all this look dumb. But uh the I if you now put this back into the into surah 112 it says Allah doesn't begget neither is he begotten.
Why doesn't he begin?
Because he's solid right there there's there's no there's no ability to begin because he's at least solid ways down according to Islamic theology.
This is what it says in those. Now a lot of Muslims don't know all these stories >> but there are Muslims today who do very much believe that the Quran when it describes Allah and it assigns parts to it they take that literally and and this is one of the many disputes among modern day Muslims. Now, uh, when I when I first started reading the Quran, I told some of you before, I I first started reading the Quran because I was interacting with members of the Nation of Islam and I knew this wasn't Orthodox Islam. So, I wanted to use this against that. I wanted to say, "You guys aren't even following Islam." And so, I became familiar with the Quran before I actually started engaging ordinary Muslims. When I first met uh certain Muslims, I remember being shocked at the sorts of things they believe because I thought that's not how I read the Quran.
The Quran seems to me to be saying something very different. So, for example, does the Quran teach that the Bible's been corrupted? I never once had that impression. I read the Quran over and over again so I could deal with these guys. And when I went and talked to Orthodox Muslims, I was shocked to hear that they thought the Bible was corrupted. I thought that's that's nowhere in the Quran.
The Bible's the Quran's favorite book.
Well, there are all kinds of things that I was shocked by when uh when I started reading the Quran and before I talked to Muslims, I came to the conclusion that the Quran had an anthropomorphic conception of Allah. So, I've got a few minutes left. I just want to give you one very clear example. It also involves Satan. Satan is constantly exposing the the Allah of the Quranically is in the in the Quran.
There's a story it's told numerous times when Allah created Adam he told the angels to prostrate to it. Now you can understand if Adam looks like Allah, you know there there's you can almost see why this might make some sense but that's in any case with the matter of fact that Allah commands the angels to prostrate to Adam. In Orthodox theology, you're not supposed to bow out to anything other than Allah. is his shirt.
But Allah himself commanded the angels to bow out to heaven. There was one who objected and said he wouldn't do it. And it's Satan at least in the Quran.
When Allah comes to Satan and upgrades him for refusing to bow down to Adam, Allah says, "Why did you refuse to bow down to the one that I created with my own two hands?"
Now, as a Christian, when I first read that, I thought, "Oh, that's just a figure of speech." The Bible uses figurative speech, right?
I could say, "I gave somebody a hand writing a paper." And that doesn't necessarily mean I used my hand. Maybe I'm just verbalizing something. There are figures of speech. Bible uses figures of speech. And initially when I was reading the Quran, that's what I was predisposed to think that the Quran was like this. But the more I thought about it, the more I read it, the more the Quran made it very impossible for me to accept this because I want you to think this through. The way that Muslims will sometimes respond to this is they'll say when it says Allah created Adam with his hands, it's just an idiom for his power.
And I again, I was predisposed to think this because I used I read the Bible and the Bible uses idioms. But I want you to think this through with me for a moment.
Allah is telling the angels to bow down to Adam. Not everything, to Adam. And the reason they're supposed to bow down to Adam and not everything, Adam in particular, is because he was made with Allah's two hands.
If that's the rationale, if that's the grounding for why you're supposed to prostrate to Adam and it's just an idiom for how God created everything, then there's no reason you should bow out of Adam as opposed to everything else.
Everything would be a proper object of prostration.
So I started thinking, wait a minute, maybe the Quran really does mean that Allah has hands. There's another story in the Quran where it talks about Allah stroking Adam's or it mentions him bringing Adam's progeny out from him.
Before we were ever born, he brought up all of Adam's descendants and made us confess that he's the true God. And then he put us all back in the loss of Adam.
That's why Muslims will say when somebody becomes a Muslim that they're reverting because they were born Muslims. They left Islam and now they're coming back because you were a Muslim before you were ever born. That's why I always say you Muslims sometimes say that Islam is the fastest growing religion. And I say, well, not on your own account it isn't.
>> There's over seven billion what the current figure is. There's over seven billion people on the planet today and at least five billion of them are not Muslims. So if they were all born Muslims, then at least five billion people have left Islam.
Islam is the fastest shrinking religion on the planet. I don't know of any religion that's lost more of its members than Islam. But according to the hadith, Allah did this by stroking Adam's back and bringing out his progeny. Now in order to understand why he strokes his back, you have to know that the Quran says that semen proceeds from between the backbone and the ribs. So this is why Allah strokes Adam's back and brings out his proton. But notice he strokes his back with his right hand according to the hadith in in a famous hadith and I'll conclude with this. There's a famous hadith every Muslim should know this. It's known as the hadith of intercession. And it's a hadith that is talking about people standing on this open plane. All the people from all of history are going to stand on this open plane for around 50,000 years awaiting judgment. The sun's going to be beating down on people. And by the way, everyone's going to be naked. So how he's smart from this when Muslims pretend that theirs is a modest religion. They have their women cover up and so forth. But men, women, children, everybody's going to be standing on this plane naked for 50,000 years. Doesn't seem very modest to me. In any case, they're going to be standing there for 50,000 years and they're going to get anxious waiting the impending judgment. They want the day to come and and everything to be finalized.
And so they begin to to think, who can we go to to usher things on and get us a favorable response from Allah? And so they start thinking who they can go to and they they begin to think of prominent people, the prophets.
So the first person they go to is Adam.
They go to Adam, who's the father of mankind.
I'm going to skip over something, but I uh just hold on to this idea that they're going to prominent individuals.
They go to Adam and Adam says, "Don't come to me. I sinned against my Lord and he's angrier now than I've ever seen him before. Go to Noah."
Then Noah's going to say, "Don't come to me. I sinned against my Lord. He's angrier than I've ever seen him before.
go to Abraham.
Abraham's going to say the same thing.
Go to Moses. Moses is going to say, "Go to David." David's going to say the same thing. And uh he's going to say, "Go to Jesus." Now, here's an interesting little aside.
When Jesus directs them away from himself according to the hadith, he doesn't say he sinned or that God is angry with him. There's nothing said there. He just says, "Go to Muhammad."
So that's where it ends is is they go to Muhammad and he's supposedly able to intercede with Allah for them. But it does say that he sinned too, but Allah forgave the sins. But here's the thing I skipped over. The reason they're going to these individuals is because they're prominent prophets and each person has something special that distinguishes him from everybody else.
Who knows what's special about Moses that distinguishes him from everybody else? According to the Islamic sources, it it says that Allah spoke to him directly. That's why Moses so special.
Why is Abraham so special? Abraham's special because he was called the friend of God. They get some of this right.
He's called the friend of God. Nobody else.
What about Jesus? This is again starbling. Muslims don't know what to do with this. They go to Jesus because he's the word of God and his and and his spirit. What is that all about? Jesus is called Allah's word and his spirit from him. I don't have time to go into that, but you get the point. They're going to these individuals because there's something special or unique about them.
>> Why do you think they went to Adam?
What's special about Adam?
I can't hear what what you guys said, but the know the answer is he was made with Allah's two hands.
That's what made Allah or Adam special.
He was made with Allah's two hands. So when God raised Satan in surah 3875 for not bowing down to the one he created with his two hands, it's being it's it's intended literally. Allah is viewed as having literal hands according to the pagan Arabs or whoever produced the Quran.
The God of Islam is not absolutely one. This isn't simple. I think you can see it's also quite absurd.
But the Muslims get away with this because they keep repeating it and Christians don't know how to respond and challenge them on it. So, I would encourage you as you engage Muslims to think through this sort of thing more uh thoroughly because you'll encounter this. You're going to encounter Muslims who will just keep insisting that these things are so even though they're not.
I'll conclude with that.
>> Uh just some announcements before we go downstairs for the lunch. Ambassador, lunch is ready. That's great. Uh, and just would like to thanks the church, thanks pastor for providing the facility, providing the lunch for us and then being a blessing to our speakers as well. Thank you for passing down in the back as he invited us to be uh in New Jersey to reach out to the Muslims locally here. Um, it's uh I I just have a couple announcements. uh this these books the reason I bring books with me when we have conferences because we want people to be equipped we want a lot of these books are not available online um I had to carry on to to check in three big suitcases and I have to carry on inside and I was going against my doctor I had elbow surgery and and fist whatever this tumble surgery but because I really know that there people can be charged and they're going to need material to study and to learn more.
These books outside here available for you. One of the uh books alihoo is about the conflict between Jews and Muslims.
Uh this was written by Sam Solomon is an amazing brother. Uh he went to be with the Lord not long ago. Uh he was a judge over the Islamic world. He's from Sudan.
He when he came to Christ uh by that time he was unbelievable like he memorized the Quran in multiple languages. Uh he's very knowledgeable wonderful man of God and uh he's with the Lord now. But his books are really amazing books and he has a lot of knowledge. This is something he studied all his life. Uh but when he wrote these books he wrote as after he encountered Christ after he came to know Christ as the Lord and Savior. Uh it's really great. Um this book here Islam and veil is a very short book but the reason this book is important when you meet a young lady want to marry a Muslim man this is a great stuff this is the stuff that Muslim will hide from them Islam built on deception as our sister earlier said in chapter 3 verse 54 chapter 7 verse 99 and chapter 8 verse 30 says Allah the best of all deceivers and part of that deception if you go to the English Quran you will not find that verse. We change it to the best of all planners. Uh it's a very important is very important book uh to help people that interested in Islam to know the truth about Islam because languages and if you want to help us to translate into other languages and you speak other language would love to have that to be done as well. We have amazing gospel tracks. Uh one of the tracks written by brother Stanley. Where are you? Oh, here. Right here. Uh, that's that track that he always gave. Uh, does the truth matter?
>> Uh, it's free of charge. Uh, the gospel of John in Arabic free of charge. Gospel of John in English free of charge. We have plenty of it out there in the back.
We have Gospel tracks by or booklets by World Missionary Press like how to know God in English and Arabic. Uh, they are simply Bible, the word of God. There's nothing more sharper than God's word.
It's sharper than two edges and a sword.
There's nothing I can tell you that can replace God's word when it come to the salvation of Muslims or non-Muslims.
God's word what they need simply 300 verses in each book in Arabic or English. Very very powerful. And also the pass of the prophets is an amazing message written by a friend of mine. His name is Elijah. uh he's uh from Israel.
Uh this book here in Arabic and English uh but it's an amazing way that to take Muslims through the prophets they know and take them from one to one but they they know this prophets. They heard about Abraham. They heard about Moses.
They heard about um Adam and all the stuff but they don't know what really this story is pointing to. And we're showing that that the whole Bible is pointing to one person. His name is Jesus. It's a great message to use. It's free of charge on the back as well. Uh is the Quran infallible. It's showing every single mistake. Grammar historical and geographic. Geographic that the earth is flat. Mountains falling earth from turning. The sun comes every night in a big hole in the ground on earth and in a muddy water and it turn off. We will all be burnt if that's the case. M >> uh Mary the mother of Jesus historically they confused Mary with the Mary the Moses Moses and Aaron's sister let's make Mary 1500 years from when Jesus was born uh great great book to have uh very limited amount left in the back I encourage you to come out there um now the almost I can say all the expenses of this conference being covered by the church and by pastor Danny's ministry in the back uh they've been really a blessing to This is the only location where we come and everything is covered.
It be we are so blessed pastor and pastor Danny by that. But if in any way you want to support M2M network or any of the ministries uh presented here um uh pastor Olan or pastor Dr. J or reverend Anthony you can talk to us directly. Uh but we do have in our table outside a way showing you how you can support end to end. Uh please feel free to talk to us. But pastor, would you come and uh pray for the food, please?
For those online, please be attention to the message on the chat. We have a new link at 100 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
That's when we have to go to that new link. We're going to take our lunch break. Enjoy your lunch as well. Thank you.
Thank you, pastor. Lord, heavenly father, we thank you for your many blessings, your abundant provision. And thank you that you've provided for us that you might provide for others. And we Heat.
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