Why should I become a Muslim, and why you should become a Christian.

[inJESUS]

And if the word took the human additional nature , the Father and the Holy Spirit should also take it since they are one in action and Whatver the Father does, the Son also does.

you do not understand what am saying so I will ask it as question: if the eternal and unseperate Word took a human flesh, does it stop being the eternal and unseperate Word of the Father?

As I said before, your example of the Quran doesn’t apply here as the Word of God is an attribute as His Sight and Hearing, once you believe in sight and hearing the same as you believe in God’s word, you may have a point, but you have a clear distinction…

 

[inJESUS]

The word “right arm” means a helper which is different from authority, so does God need a helper?

the word right arm in Biblical use is about authority and power.

Heb 1:3
3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Besides the scriptures you gave are talking about God’s right hand, which is different than sitting down at God’s right hand,

 

[inJESUS]

So is it the human nature who also raises from the dead or this is his divine nature?

i already said this has to do with the hypostatic union where Jesus’ Divine and human nature are united . beyond that i don’t know. Eating can be easily attributed to the humanity of Jesus, as feeling tired , but what He did/utter cannot be easily explained in terms of His 2 natures. I can give an example of Jesus telling the thief at His right, “today you will be in paradise” since no ordinary human can tell another human that he will be surely in paradise today. Here Jesus is talking with His divine authority . Other than that, i don’t think anyone can explain how God does things.

Actually you suppose that I believe John is the one who said so which is not true, but anyway, where did John say that the word is the wisdom present in the OT? or where did the OT itself say that God’s word is God’s wisdom? The OT tells that God’s wisdom was possessed and set up which cannot be the case for God.

you do not understand many things in both OT and NT and i believe John knew a bit more than you . John was affirming Jesus’ eternality and ontological oneness with the Father by connecting Him with the Wisdom tradition so John was affirming something and you fill in the blanks

Well, then by your logic do you take the Ebionites’ belief in Jesus as a proof for the early belief that Jesus is NOT God? Ebionites were earlier than Theouphilus. They win

it is not only about dates as the shia and Sunni are of equal history yet contradict each others in too many things. It is more about authority. Who were the Ebionites? to which church did they belong? did they belong to a church established by the apostle? who was their authority? were they appointed by the disciples? did they have the same belief?

as to the last question, no, they had opposing beliefs and some of them were gnostics. Some of them denied the virgin birth and Jesus’ divinity and some believed matter is evil and an illusion created by an evil deity. These, of course, cannot be orthodox but heretics because they cannot reject Jesus’ divinity and His virgin birth and be called “orthodox”, at least, by rejecting the virgin birth which you believe in as well. And because these people has no authority and surely no apostolic authority, they were divided into different opposing beliefs and they exerted only the slightest influence in the East and none at all in the West. Historically speaking, they were a bunch of heretics divided within themselves with no authority when the apostolic churches were striving in different lands and continents.

Let’s look at the full verse:
Isa 11:2 And the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and **of the fear of Jehovah. **

So accroding to the verse, we can also call the Trinity: God, His word and His fearing of God. Does this make sense to you?

Theophilus refers to the Spirit as life-giving breath.

Who is the Physician? God, who heals and makes alive through His word and wisdom.
… God by His own word and wisdom made all things; for

“by His word were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” [Ps xxxiii. 6.] [Same word as holy Spirit]

He is quoting a Trinitarian verse about the Father creating by His Word and Holy Spirit.

 

[inJESUS]

And even if the case was that we don’t know the wisdom for that, this would change nothing.

to you it doesn’t change anything, to us it means you believe in that which you do not understand when it is understood by those before you because it was revealed. In Islam it is revealed but no explanation when Islam is supposed to “clear doubts”. So when the reasons you give do not make sense, that’s because they are not the real reasons, and this is why to us it does matter.

Yes, it has, as all are the acts of God and only Him who knows the full wisdom in them, you don’t know why it is the time for it to happen, but you take it as the suitable one because you believe God is wise, not necessary because you know why.

 

[inJESUS]

but lost verses, addition, replacement, anonymous writers, textual variants in the core of your beliefs, errors,…

something you still have to prove and which deserves another thread. Now refering to Bruce Metzger that Muslims love to quote, he says:

Still, the high number of “variants,” or differences among manuscripts, was troubling. I had seen estimates as high as two hundred thousand of them. However, Metzger downplayed the significance of that figure.

“The number sounds big, but it’s a bit misleading because of the way variants are counted,” he said. He explained that if a single word is misspelled in two thousand manuscripts, that’s counted as two thousand variants.

I keyed in on the most important issue. “How many doctrines of the church are in jeopardy because of variants?”

"I don’t know of any doctrine that is in jeopardy," he responded confidently.

So the variations, when they occur, tend to be minor rather than substantive?"

“Yes, yes, that’s correct, and scholars work very carefully to try to resolve them by getting back to the original meaning. The more significant variations do not overthrow any doctrine of the church. Any good Bible will have notes that will alert the reader to variant readings of any consequence. But, again, these are rare.” (Strobel, pp. 82-85)

If we compare the present state of the New Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we must… declare it to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care with which the New Testament has been copied- a care which has doubtless grown out of true reverence for its holy words… The New Testament [is] unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of its text as actually transmitted and kept in use. (Strobel, p. 91)

but lost verses,

refering to Justin and Chrysostom?

addition,

the only addition am aware of is the Johannine comma which i understand was written on the margin as a note which resulted in being written later as scripture, and when refering to the original document where it is not, it was removed. This addition does not change any doctrine so it bears little consequence. Of course you might consider it a corruption for the sole reason that it was “added”, but this is based on your belief in the “munzal” Quran,a belief alien to us since we believe in the preservation of the message and this addition does not compromise neither scripture not the church belief.

replacement,

of what?

anonymous writers

according to 20th century critics? The writings of men such as Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian ecc provide an unbroken chain of evidence for the apostolicity and historical veracity of the NT. To say that the early Christians and apostles’ disciples who were eyewitnesses to either Jesus or His apostles did not know the gospel authors is hilarious. Irenaeus for example mentioned there are only 4 gospels according to John, Matthew, Luke and Mark. What you are refering to is called “textual” criticism, the same textual criticism that led some to say the Medina and Meccan chapters were written by different people, which is based on “textual” analysis rather than history.

You see these are their own views?

The Church does not teach what both of them claimed so either they were wrong (Infallibility in concensus, not as individials) or as our Catholic link says : “a statement that rests on no positive evidence” , or they could be refering to the translations . When Christians began to cite the Alexandrian version in proof of their doctrines, the Jews began to question its accuracy so mutual recriminations are reflected in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho. Justin says: “They dare to assert that the interpretation produced by your seventy elders under Ptolemy of Egypt is in some points inaccurate.” Jews interpreted “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 as “young woman” . Justin retaliates by charging the Jews with deliberate excision of passages favorable to Christianity.

And yes i talk about chaos in Islam because it is a chaos surrounding this “preseved” book with different recitations, some being burnt, and the remaning have differences, in addition to God knows how many abrogates and forgotten suras, all in the name of “not one letter was changed”. The canonicity of the OT has nothing to do with abrogations still in Quran, forgotten verses, abrogated chapters not in the Quran and effaced verses as a test.

So if Muslims in Mecca were really proven false when the Arabs refuted the Sura like it challenge, why did they continue on and die for a false belief?

you still have not given me any evidence that the Arabs tried and failed, and you did not tell me who was the judge.

I read what you said about the translation, but I couldn’t understand your point, as for the Bible verse, could you tell me where is it?

my point was that the English translation says that the ocean waves refer to the depth of the ocean when the Arabic words show the ocean waves refer to the sea, not its depth.

Your translation says: world of darkness similar to that found in the depth of an ocean ***where ***billowy waves are superimposed upon billowy waves.

this translation gives the impression that billowy waves are in the depth of the ocean.

The Arabic aya says: أَوْ كَظُلُمَاتٍ فِي بَحْرٍ لُّجِّيٍّ **يَغْشَاهُ **مَوْجٌ مِّن فَوْقِهِ مَوْجٌ مِّن فَوْقِهِ سَحَابٌ ظُلُمَاتٌ بَعْضُهَا فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ إِذَآ أَخْرَجَ يَدَهُ لَمْ يَكَدْ يَرَاهَا وَمَن لَّمْ يَجْعَلِ ٱللَّهُ لَهُ نُوراً فَمَا لَهُ مِن نُورٍ }

the boldened part refers to the sea, not its depth, because the verb used is masculin whereas “its depth” in Arabic is feminine plural.

As to the Biblical verse, it is Psalm 107-25

 

[inJESUS]

So I see that your criteria is your faith only,

 

[inJESUS]

God didn’t tell us about another prophet who didn’t die.

is it a Shia belief that prophet Elijah did not die?

The Quran didn’t say it was a betrayal, it just said he wasn’t crucified, but he was made to appear that way to them.

 

[inJESUS]

So is it the human nature who also raises from the dead or this is his divine nature?

i gave an example of Jesus divine authority when He told the one convicted next to Him that He will be today in paradise. As to your question , the answer is the same . Two people raised dead people in the Bible :

Prophet Elijah :

Then he stretched himself out upon the child three times and called out to the LORD: “O LORD, my God, let the life breath return to the body of this child.”
22
The LORD heard the prayer of Elijah; the life breath returned to the child’s body and he revived.

The same applies to prophet Elisha:

When Elisha reached the house, he found the boy lying dead.
33
He went in, closed the door on them both, and prayed to the LORD.

Now notice how Jesus did it when He raised 3 people:

1-Lazarus, come forth
2-“Young man, I tell you, arise!”
3-Little girl, I say to you, arise!"

But if you are questioning about the two nature of Jesus, how the divine can assume a human body, the answer is called hypostatic union which has to do with God’s omnipotence that i doubt someone can grasp.

 

[emarc]

This is nice and all, Hamba2han, but it does not address my post at all. My question is about how the linear progression of history is supposed to work if everyone is a Muslim (including God, apparently?) even before the Prophet came forth with the Qur’an (or any part of it). I realize that this is an impossible question for a Muslim, since to you every prophet of the past who taught in any monotheistic religion is by default a Muslim since Islam is the only true monotheism for you, but to everyone else on the planet who can see that A comes before B, this creates a HUGE logical problem. The problem is not specifically with the idea that God should send other prophets, but with the idea that all prophets of the past mentioned in the Qur’an were Muslims because they preached monotheism.

It should be mentioned that “monotheism” is not in and of itself a religion, but an approach to religion. To recognize that Abraham was the first monotheist and the great patriarch of the Jews is no problem for us Christians, since we know we descended from Jews anyway (heck, we worship one!), but Islam wants to make Abraham a Muslim since he believed in monotheism. I do not know how this would work. Is he a Muslim and then the people coming immediately after him have messed up by claiming to be “Jews”? This is a problem of time: If Abraham is Muslim, how come his people aren’t Muslim? How come they are calling themselves Jews and not declaring their belief in Muhammad’s prophethood, like Muslims must do? (I’ll give you a hint: Islam did not exist)

This is the same problem that comes up when Jesus is on earth, preaching what would become known as Christianity. If the people who initially followed Jesus were Jews (and they were), and Jesus Himself was also a Jew (He was), then why can you say Jesus was a Muslim? What made Him a Muslim? Only preaching a form of monotheism that apparently not even His disciples followed, even though He would have been around to correct them? If Jesus was a Muslim then He was a REEEEALLY bad one, since He kept Jewish customs (since, of course, Islam did not exist), not Islamic ones.

So how you make sense of that? In the Christian case, you cannot say that later generations messed up the message for everybody, since it was a message preached by Jesus’ apostles (and Jesus Himself, but I won’t get into that) that came to be known as “Christianity”, not “Islam”. Jesus could have easily corrected any of His apostles if they started preaching something that was wrong. If He wanted them to follow Islam, all He would have to do is tell them to, but then that would make Muhammad totally unnecessary, right? Oops…I guess THAT’S what we’re really dancing around!

Face it: Islam did not exist before Muhammad. To say that it did requires such a complete abandonment of logic, I honestly do not even understand how anyone can be Muslim if that is what you are required to believe. To believe that Islam always existed, you have to believe that Muhammad and the Qur’an are unnecessary, and that people who were alive alongside the past prophets and followed them as they lived somehow got their messages very wrong even when those prophets themselves would have been alive to correct them. So I guess not only Muhammad was unnecessary, but also Abraham, Jesus, and anyone else.

Islam: A religion based on nothing, for people who believe that there is no such thing as history. NO THANK YOU.

La illaaha ilallaah wa ismuhu YESUAA! Find me a verse written by anyone who was his disciple where he says “wa Muhammadun rasul Allah”, like a Muslim must do, and I will believe all of your claims and convert to Islam immediately.

i just started reading this thread and i appreciate your comments w/c are clear and to the point. thx.
God bless.

 

[planten]

i just started reading this thread and i appreciate your comments w/c are clear and to the point. thx.
God bless.

** In the post of dzhereme, it is said that Islam was not the religion of all the people before Muhammad. Then what was the religion before Muhammad? Surely not Christianity? There are many countries in the world and people are not all Jews (Israelis). There are Hindus too and Budhists.

Islam stands for spiritualism and Unitarian faith and submission to the One God. That was the teaching of all prophets (men) of God from the very beginning. Do you deny it? Mankind was created to serve God and no one else. Unnecessary suppost has been given by emarc to the post of dzhereme.

Another wrong notion by dzhereme:

if everyone is a Muslim (including God, apparently?) even before the Prophet came forth with the Qur’an (or any part of it). I realize that this is an impossible question for a Muslim, since to you every prophet of the past who taught in any monotheistic religion is by default a Muslim since Islam is the only true monotheism for you.**

I quote here a part of poetry by J.W.Goethe: (German)

Narrisch Das jeder in Seinem Falle,
Seine Besondere mainung Preisst,
Wenn Islam Gott ergeben heisst,
In Islam lieben und sterben wir alle.

Translation:

It is foolish to praise ones own thoughts,
If Islam means submission to Allah,
Then we all live and die as Muslims.

Goethe is admitting that Islam means submission to God and all the christians and Jews etc live and die as a Muslim.

If you do not like the word Muslim then please read Submitters in its place. BUt do not deny a universal truth.

 

[dzheremi]

I do not believe that German poet you quoted. Even if Islam means (in Arabic language) “submission”, this does not mean that I am a Muslim. I do submit to God, but to be Muslim is more than just that; it also requires its creed to be professed (that I will never do, because I do not recognize Muhammad as a prophet of God), and to follow the Sharia law code, which is absolutely alien to Christianity. Its version of “submission” is unique to it, and it is not a vision that we share. Neither do the Jews or the Hindus or anyone else who is not Muslim. Islam, my friend, is NOT all things to all people!

I am not a Muslim, I will never be a Muslim, and there are no other Christians who have been or will ever be Muslim. If you decide to leave Christianity for Islam, you do not continue to be a Christian. That is not how things work.

And I know you will hate to hear it, but before the arrival of Islam in lands that are now Muslim, most people WERE Christian, Jewish, or some sort of native religion. The exceptions to this of course were the Central and East Asian countries, which were Hindu or Buddhist, but also had some minority populations that were Christian, Jewish. Some of these populations are well known to Western history (e.g., the Jews of Bukhara, in modern day Uzbekistan), some are not (e.g., the pre-colonial Christian communities of India, which have always been minorities for obvious reasons).

IIf you are going to try to rewrite history, you should not base your attempt on a line by a German poet about his perosnal opinion.

 

[Kaninchen]

I seem to remember that there was a very minor Austrian painter who admired Islam.

 

[Charlotte2008]

** In the post of dzhereme, it is said that Islam was not the religion of all the people before Muhammad. Then what was the religion before Muhammad? Surely not Christianity? There are many countries in the world and people are not all Jews (Israelis). There are Hindus too and Budhists.

Islam stands for spiritualism and Unitarian faith and submission to the One God. That was the teaching of all prophets (men) of God from the very beginning. Do you deny it? Mankind was created to serve God and no one else. Unnecessary suppost has been given by emarc to the post of dzhereme.

Another wrong notion by dzhereme:

if everyone is a Muslim (including God, apparently?) even before the Prophet came forth with the Qur’an (or any part of it). I realize that this is an impossible question for a Muslim, since to you every prophet of the past who taught in any monotheistic religion is by default a Muslim since Islam is the only true monotheism for you.**

I quote here a part of poetry by J.W.Goethe: (German)

Narrisch Das jeder in Seinem Falle,
Seine Besondere mainung Preisst,
Wenn Islam Gott ergeben heisst,
In Islam lieben und sterben wir alle.

Translation:

It is foolish to praise ones own thoughts,
If Islam means submission to Allah,
Then we all live and die as Muslims.

Goethe is admitting that Islam means submission to God and all the christians and Jews etc live and die as a Muslim.

If you do not like the word Muslim then please read Submitters in its place. BUt do not deny a universal truth.

Everyone being Muslim is not a universal truth. Being Muslim is being completely the opposite of Christianity and demoting Jesus Christ to below mohammed is sacrilege to all of us. I would never be labelled Muslim. Ever and neither would 99.99% of people in Christianity. Fact is Christianity came first so if anything all of you are Christian. Fortunately, millions of Muslims are realising this and reverting to Christianity. They are now saved. Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation - not a false Prophet. Please realise this before it is too late. Who is Goethe anyway - he is not God or Jesus Christ so why does his opinion of anything in life matter? If he was of any significance in the world we would have heard about him before today. Please study a Bible and see the word of God for yourself instead of believing people like Naik and his propaganda. You have been deceived.

Here is one passage John14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.

Show me one thing in the Quran than can match Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount for morality:-

1Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them saying:
3"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

If you would like to read a Bible email me and I shall send you one.

 

[Kaninchen]

As a promoter of architecture, his taste was pretty bad, too.

But anyways I’m off to eat some sausages with the turkey and possibly drink a glass or two of wine (which is pretty rare for me) and eat it all in the living room next to the statue of the Virgin belonging to my late mother which is on the window ledge there. I guess I’m just a true infidel but I’ll try and have a happy Christmas admist the debauchery that MW seems to think characterises daily Christian lifes. Unfortunately there’s no ‘love childs’ here though today to completely validate MW’s hilarious mental picture of what us bad Christians get up to at home.

As a way of spending the day, it beats polishing the stones for the next public execution of some unfortunate, to my mind at least.

 

[Charlotte2008]

Yummy. We are having roast pork and crackling for Christmas Lunch. Can’t wait!

 

[Xiaahmad]

People must become muslim coz Islam gives the complete way of life. Given by GOD

www.thetruecall.com

 

[hamba2han]

… Show me one thing in the Quran than can match Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount for morality:-

1Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them saying:
3"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you…

Not in the Qur’an but there is a supplication which is similar to the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ which is to be found in the ahadith as follows:

Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 28, Number 3883:

Narrated AbudDarda’:

I heard the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say: If any of you is suffering from anything or his brother is suffering, he should say: Our Lord is Allah Who is in the heaven, holy is Thy name, Thy command reigns supreme in the heaven and the earth, as Thy mercy in the heaven, make Thy mercy in the earth; forgive us our sins, and our errors; Thou art the Lord of good men; send down mercy from Thy mercy, and remedy, and remedy from Thy remedy on this pain so that it is healed up.

This is just one of the very numerous supplications which the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) taught his followers throughout the 23-year period of his prophethood.

 

[Charlotte2008]

Not in the Qur’an but there is a supplication which is similar to the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ which is to be found in the ahadith as follows:

Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 28, Number 3883:

Narrated AbudDarda’:

I heard the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say: If any of you is suffering from anything or his brother is suffering, he should say: Our Lord is Allah Who is in the heaven, holy is Thy name, Thy command reigns supreme in the heaven and the earth, as Thy mercy in the heaven, make Thy mercy in the earth; forgive us our sins, and our errors; Thou art the Lord of good men; send down mercy from Thy mercy, and remedy, and remedy from Thy remedy on this pain so that it is healed up.

This is just one of the very numerous supplications which the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) taught his followers throughout the 23-year period of his prophethood.

Yes, something else mohammed stole from the Bible. How can you not see he is a liar and a fraud? Read a Bible - it is a complete word of God and doesn’t need several other books to back it up to make sense. The Quran jumps around from story to story and then threatens you with Hell if you don’t beleive it. How can you believe God is threatening?

 

[Charlotte2008]

People must become muslim coz Islam gives the complete way of life. Given by GOD

www.thetruecall.com

It doesn’t actually. Thousands of Muslims in Indonesia are coming to Christ. Their story is listed here freewebs.com/pleasegod/quranfatalerror.htm - read them you will find them enlightening. You may even become and enlightened apostate yourself - inshallah. Come to Christ and find out how wonderfully peaceful life can actually be. Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. Peace.

 

[hamba2han]

… How can you believe God is threatening?

Muslims have no problem at all believing that God is the Creator of Hell.

Christians, on the other hand, have a really hard time accepting this to be true because they always attach a caveat that the denizens of Hell have sent themselves to the Fire and NOT God who according to Christians is “all-loving and all-compassionate” and therefore does not have the heart to send His creations to the Hell-fire.