THE INFERIORITY OF ISLAM (Part 4)

-{2 Timothy 3}

-Long before there was such a thing as a GPS, people would have to figure out how to travel to where they were going by using either an atlas book of some sort or get those fold out maps to try and figure out where you were and how to get to where you were going. At the time, these were your sources of authority to bring you to your destination. If you read the map wrong, it really threw you off course.

-This reminds us of the importance of first having the right source of authority, and then reading and using that source of authority rightly. As true as that is for traveling, it is also true for the journey of life. What authority you use to guide you in your life, and how you use it, not only determines the quality of the journey that you are on, but it also will determine the destination where you end.

-That is why for life it is so important to have that right authority, and Christianity alone has the right authority for life and faith. That is what sets it apart and makes it the most excellent of faiths.

-For our discipleship times on Wednesday nights I have been proclaiming the excellencies of the Christian faith, and I have been doing it by comparing and contrasting Christianity against false religions and false philosophies and cultic perversions of the true faith. I started out by comparing Christianity to Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world (and the 2nd largest religion in the world, right after the broad spectrum of Christianity).

-Tonight I want to close our comparison with Islam by looking at what they say is their authority, why it falls short, and why our source of authority is better. What is our source of authority? Look at the passage of 2 Timothy that I pointed us toward:

2 Timothy 3:14–17 LSB

14 But you, continue in the things you learned and became convinced of, knowing from whom you learned them, 15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.

-We believe that Scripture has been inspired by God, is inerrant and infallible, and is the only source of authority for our life and practice. Scripture tells us how to be saved, how to live after being saved, who God is, what God has done, and gives us wisdom to navigate the world that we live in.

-Islam too claims to have a source of authority, but it falls short, is contradictory, and will not lead anyone to the truth. What I want to do tonight is talk about Islam's source of authority, what’s wrong with it, and why the Bible is true by defending it against Islamic attacks against the Christian Scriptures.

-The book called the Quran is the authority that Muslims base their life, faith, and practice upon, and they take it very seriously. They are so committed to the Quran that there are schools dedicated to teaching children to memorize the entire Quran in its original Arabic. The Quran is about 1/10th of the length of the Bible when comparing words (or about 4/5th the size of the New Testament when comparing verses), and there have been many who have committed the entire thing to memory. Those who know it in its entirety are called HAFIZ (which means guardian). Oh, that we would be just as committed to knowing and memorizing. In fact, because of this study for tonight I have recommitted to memory as much as I can in my short years left since I have become slack in so many ways.

-They hold the book and the paper that contain the words to be of such importance that many Muslim homes have a small ledge that is as close to the roof as possible upon which the Quran sits when it is not being read because they believe it should be in the highest place in the home. When they refer to the Quran they often attach titles as the Noble Quran or the Magnificent Quran.

-Muslims believe that the Quran is an exact and faithful reproduction of an original that is found in heaven on engraved tablets that have been before Allah for all of eternity. They teach that when the time was right on earth, the angel Gabriel communicated isolated sections of the Quran to Muhammad over a 20+ year period. Since Muhammad was illiterate, others would write down what Muhammad would speak from memory from those encounters.

-What was recorded, however, was not compiled in Muhammad's lifetime. So, after his death there was sort of a race to put together all the fragmented pieces. When Muhammad would utter what he supposedly got from Gabriel, his followers would write it down on whatever was handy. So, we might could say that originally the Quran was written on a bunch of scrap paper that had to be found and put together (along with what we memorized from the oral traditions).

-Some of his followers took it upon themselves to unite the fragments, but it was a lengthy process, and it was found that there were some variations in what was distributed. So, at one point a man named Uthman (the third caliph) made an authorized version and burned anything that did not agree with it.

-Now Muslims believe that the Quran that they have is of divine origin and divine nature. However, there is a lot about life and faith that the Quran does not touch upon, so they have a second source of authority that come from the traditions relating to the life of Muhammad. They believe that since Allah directed the life of Muhammad, then those are authoritative in guiding different areas of life. These traditions are called Sunnah and they have been collected in what is called the Hadith.

-But there are some problems, issues, and contradictions about what Islam teaches about the Quran and authority in general. For example, Muslims teach that God had been giving revelations to humanity throughout history, including through the Old and New Testaments. However, they say that these were corrupted. So, this begs the question, how can you claim that Allah was able to preserve infallible copies of the Quran when he wasn’t able to do so with his other revelations?

-Muslims claim that the beauty of the language of the Quran demonstrates that it is divine. First, the Quran is not a literary masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination because it is filled with grammatical errors and in general is not well written. But secondly, beauty in literature proves nothing. Is Shakespeare divine because of his writings? Is the music of Mozart divine because of its beauty? We know that is not the case.

-Muslims claim that the Quran must be divine because of fulfilled prophecies. However, the prophecies that they refer to are very general in nature, saying something to the effect that Islam would have a great victory over someone. You find more specific prophecies coming from a fortune cookie. This is so different from prophecies in the Bible that are very specific, coming hundreds of years before the event occurred. For example, it is very specific that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. It was very specific Messiah would be born of a virgin. Jesus alone fulfilled somewhere between 300-500 specific prophecies. Predicting a victory for Islam is no more prophecy than predicting who is going to win a football game.

-Muslims claim that the Quran is divine because it conforms to modern science. However, that is questionable as it makes claims to the effect that humanity was formed from a clot of blood and the sun sets in a spring of murky water. On top of that, science doesn’t contradict the Bible in its context either.

-One of the biggest problems with the authority of the Quran is the doctrine of abrogation. The doctrine of abrogation states that God can give a divine word later on that replaces an earlier divine word--maybe even contradicting what was said or taught before. It refers to the destruction or annulling of a former law, and this doctrine is taught in the Quran at least three times. But if the Quran can be abrogated, there are a whole slew of theological problems that come along with this. Walter Martin points our six major theological problems for the Quran because of this:

1) The Quran cannot be trusted because it contains “divinely inspired” contradictions. If Allah has a history of abrogating his own revelation (which is called the ETERNAL SPEECH OF ALLAH) how can one be certain that he will not abrogate it again in the future.

2) It may be argued (like some Muslims bring up) that it cannot be abrogated again in the future since Muhammad was the last prophet. But how do we know that Allah will not abrogate that and send more prophets?

3) If Allah can abrogate his eternal speech, how can anyone trust him with their eternal soul? How would you know if Allah will continue some mercies in the future as he had in the past?

4) If Allah has done any abrogating, as the Quran indicates, it does not indicate progressive revelation, which is additive. It indicates a contradiction and annulment, which subtracts from revelation since at least some portion of past revelation has been canceled. This would mean that Allah either did not know how future contingent events would turn out, or that he did but purposefully changed his mind.

5) If Allah can abrogate past divine revelation, it seems to indicate intellectual weakness at the very least. It not only causes problems for omniscience, since he did not have sufficient foreknowledge to avoid the need for abrogation, but also for omnipotence since he did not have the power to carry out effective preventative measures.

6) If Allah is not consistent, then his creatures have no foundation for morality and ethics. Morality and ethics must either be absolute, invariant, and universal or not. And if not, there would be no consistency to hang your hat on.

-And all of these issues just scratch the surface to demonstrate that with such blatant problems and contradictions the Quran is not a divine word. Muslims claim that the Bible is corrupt, when in reality it is the Quran that is corrupt and is not a solid foundation for any sort of divine authority.

-And yet they try to tear down the inspired, God-breathed Bible with many false claims and charges. For example, they claim that the Bible has been corrupted--meaning that there was at one point a pure version but somewhere through history it kept being changed. If you ever hear a Muslim (or anybody else for that matter) make that claim, ask them to provide the historical proof. They wouldn’t be able to because it never happened.

-Second, the Quran itself commends Muslims to read the Bible? If their supposedly divine revelation says that the Bible is corrupted, why does it also tell Muslims to read it? Is it a contradiction in the Quran? Was Muhammad lying?

-Historically, it would have been impossible for the Bible to have been changed and corrupted to the extent that Muslims claim. By the time Muhammad came into the historical scene, there were hundreds of thousands of copies of the Bible dispersed over a large portion of the world with very minimal differences in the manuscripts, and no contradictions whatsoever. Did someone gather all the manuscripts and change them all? No, the Old Testament and New Testament have been the same throughout history.

-In addition, Muslims claim that the Bible is the word of God of some sort. And the Quran says that Allah’s words cannot be changed. So, their own theology does not allow for the Bible to have been corrupted as they have claimed.

-The Bible tells us that it will not and cannot be changed:

Isaiah 40:8 LSB

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.

Jesus said:

Matthew 24:35 LSB

35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

-We know that the Old Testament wasn’t corrupted because Jesus quoted it as the very Word of God. As Greg Bahnsen wrote:

Reasoning from the Scriptures with Muslims 12. A Defense of the Bible, Part One

Because Christ raised no doubts about the adequacy of the Scripture as His contemporaries knew them, we can safely assume that the first-century text of the Old Testament was a wholly adequate representation of the divine word originally given. Jesus regarded the extant copies of His day as so approximate to the originals in their message that He appealed to those copies as authoritative.

-We are told:

Proverbs 30:5–6 LSB

5 Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. 6 Do not add to His words Lest He reprove you, and you be proved a liar.

-The manuscripts of both the Old and New Testaments are the best in antiquity. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, they discovered that the Hebrew manuscripts of the Masoretes were nearly word for word with the Dead Sea Scrolls that came 1000 years earlier other than some spelling changes and missing words that were copyist errors.

-The New Testament has over 5000 Greek manuscripts available for study, again with only minor variations that do not change any theology whatsoever. There are nearly 86,000 quotations of the New Testament in the early church fathers. In fact, there are enough quotations that you would be able to reconstruct the entire New Testament other than 11 verses.

-The Bible has been kept. It has been preserved. It has been protected. It has proven itself abundantly to be the authoritative Word of God. Christians have a solid foundation for an authority. I pray that we would take the truth that we have as seriously and devote ourselves to that truth more than Muslims devote themselves to the lies that they have.

-And so, we want to pray that Muslims would find the truth of the gospel through the authoritative Word of the Bible, and that we Christians would devote ourselves to know and study and memorize that Word all our days...