Category Archives: Refuting Islam

ALLEGED BIBLE CORRUPTION: MAKES JESUS A LIAR AND MOCKS HIS WORDS.
This Post is the re-airing of an overdue response to those who peddle lies about Bible corruption.
Not to put too fine a pont on it, but whenever Muslims say the Bible is corrupted, they mock God and insult Jesus and yet again call Him a liar.
Throughout Scripture God reminds us of His faithfulness and truthfulness:
“My covenant I will not break, Nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips. Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David” (Psalms 89:34‭-‬35).
There are many places where we find God’s personal guarantees of truthfulness. In the hope that Muslims might respect at least the words spoken by Jesus, we shall focus on a sample of verses from the mouth of Jesus, demonstrating that the Bible is not and can never be corrupted.
□ “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” (Matthew 24:35) (cf Luke 21:33)
“My words will never pass away” … Where do we find Jesus words, including this statement? Only in the pages of Scripture. Written soon after the event by those who were witnesses or had access to the witnesses. No possibility at all then of any corruption here. We have Jesus own personal guarantee that what we have access to now is exactly what He spoke, is authentic, accurate, imperishable and inviolate.
□ “If He called those whom the word of God came to ‘gods’ — and the Scripture cannot be broken — [36] do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the One the Father set apart and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God?” (John 10:35‭-‬36).
“The Scripture cannot be broken” … Jesus makes a point of rejecting the suggestion that the Word of God can be “broken.” By this, Jesus means that the verses He quoted could not be dismissed as an error. They could not be written off as a mistake — this is the doctrine of inerrancy, which says that Scripture is perfectly accurate in everything it intends to say. Jesus, in this moment, not only implies inerrancy, He grounds His argument in it. Again no room for corruption here. Inerrancy automatically rules out corruption.
□ “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
“I am … the truth” … Jesus declares He is the embodiment of truth. In truth He and all He spoke and all He predicted, including multiple mentions of His death and resurrection, presupposes, are predicated upon and had, by definition to be, founded in the written record of all of it being likewise the truth, faithfully recorded and preserved. He could NEVER have made such a claim on any less a predicate. No point at all making such an absolute claim if He wasn’t being faithfully recorded and represented in the Gospel accounts.
□ “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
God’s word is truth. Period. No argument. There is no place and no scope for corruption in truth, which stands inviolable. And God’s word includes everything in the settled canon of Scripture. By this single verse alone Jesus affirms the truth of the Bible in its entirety. You challenge its accuracy and you make Jesus a liar right here. And anyone who does will answer to Him for it.
Finally, to those who would challenge the accuracy or timeliness of the New Testament, including authorship, it really makes no difference, because of this promise Jesus gave His disciples which would in turn ensure faithful and complete transmission of all that Jesus told them:
□ “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit — the Father will send Him in My name — will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:26).
“… will remind you of everything I have told you”.
The Holy Spirit is the seal of accuracy upon the Scriptures. The same Holy Spirit who had inspired the first pages of Scripture, who had given the record of the Law, of which not a word would pass away (Matthew 5:18), and all the hundreds of prophecies that pointed to the Messiah and would be fulfilled by Him, that same Holy Spirit would bring 20:20 recall to those who would be custodians of Jesus teaching. Again absolutely no scope for corruption, still less the absurd Muslim notion of a “lost gospel” of Jesus.
□ THE PROMISE AND THE OATH
Another bulwark against corruption is found in Hebrews:
” … that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.” (Hebrews 6:18) see also Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Titus 1:2.
The two immutable things are the promise and the oath.
Note the commentary:
“On the supposition that the “promise” was disregarded – if such a supposition may be made still there would be the security of the “oath” – and thus the assurance of salvation was two-fold. It seems to me, therefore, that the apostle refers to the “promise” and to the “oath” of God, as constituting the two grounds of security for the salvation of his people. Those things were both unchangeable, and when his word and oath are once passed, what he promises is secure.
In which it was impossible for God to lie – That is, it would be contrary to his nature; it is not for a moment to be supposed; compare Titus 1:2, “God – that cannot lie.” The impossibility is a “moral” impossibility, and the use of the word here explains the sense in which the words “impossible, cannot,” etc., are often used in the Scriptures. The meaning here is, that such was the love of God for truth; such his holiness of character, that he “could” not speak falsely.
We might have a strong consolation ¹ – The strongest of which the mind can conceive. The consolation of a Christian is not in his own strength; his hope of heaven is not in any reliance on his own powers. His comfort is, that God has “promised” eternal life to his people, and that He cannot prove false to his word; Titus 1:2.” (Barnes)
And another:
“God came through for Abraham, even sealing His promise with an oath. In fact, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself. This oath showed that God’s promises (like His character) are unchanging. Abraham’s trust in this was the gateway to the fulfillment of the promise.”
“The absolute reliability of God’s promise should impress us” (Spurgeon)
d. Strong consolation: God isn’t content to give us mere consolation. He wants to give us strong consolation. Spurgeon described some characteristics of strong consolation:
▪︎Strong consolation does not depend upon bodily health.
▪︎Strong consolation does not depend upon the excitement of public services and Christian fellowship.
▪︎ Strong consolation can’t be shaken by human reasoning.
▪︎ Strong consolation is stronger than our guilty conscience.” (Guzik)
CONCLUSIONS
Where do we find God’s promises, His Covenants and oaths which He swore by Himself, where do we find the immutable, incorruptible, inerrant truth? We find all this only in the Bible.
Muslims, do you want to persist with this baseless Bible corruption nonsense? Go right ahead. Accuse God of perjury, of lying and portray Him as weak and incompetent for being unable to record, translate or preserve His word. Make Jesus a liar, mock His words, and in due course answer to Him for every careless word spoken.
You can be sure that when Jesus took so much care and spelled out so clearly that His words and the Bible cannot be messed with, anyone who attempts to do just that is setting themselves up to face God’s wrath and judgment.
God has both promised and sworn an oath to His truthfulness and faithfulness. The promise and the oath are a double-lock guarantee that His word — the only place where we find His promises — is both immutable and incorruptible.
At both ends of the Bible God gives a dire warning to anyone who attempts to add to, or detract from, His Word. Yet again, the predicate is that God’s Word is complete and settled. As indeed the Psalmist affirms:
□ “Lord, Your word is forever; it is firmly fixed in heaven.” (Psalms 119:89 HCSB)
□ “You must not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, so that you may keep the commands of the Lord your God I am giving you.” (Deuteronomy 4:2 HCSB) (see also Deuteronomy 12:32).
□ “I testify to everyone who hears the prophetic words of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. [19] And if anyone takes away from the words of this prophetic book, God will take away his share of the tree of life and the holy city, written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-19 HCSB)
Muslims can never say they’ve not been warned.
FOOTNOTE:
“Strong consolation” this is the opposite of “strong delusion” (2 Thessalonians 10-12) which is sent to those who disbelieve and set their face against the Gospel ie includes all MusIims who continue to reject the truth even after repeatedly being shown it. God gives you over to your idolatry (Romans 1:24-31).
Further reading:
□ HOW TO TURN NUMBERS 23:19 INTO THE CONDEMNATION OF ISLAM 18 June 2023
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Alastair Tucker, The Truth About Islam And The Slave Trade

The Truth About Islam And The Slave Trade

2025-07-06 Alastair Tucker

THE TRUTH ABOUT ISLAM AND THE SLAVE TRADE
1). INTRODUCTION
Mention the slave trade and Muslims will quickly jump to the Bible to defend Islamic slavery, just as they jump to it in defence of Islamic violence. As ever when it suits them the Bible is an authority which Muslims appeal to, and when it doesn’t support Islam which is most of the time, it’s corrupt.
To explain why the Biblical concept of “slavery” is actually ‘voluntary indentured servitude’ with break clauses every 7 years, and why accusations of sexism and Old Testament “genocide” are false, watch the excellent video explanation given by Abdu Murray (see link below).

I challenge any Muslim to produce evidence for slavery today being authorised in any non-Islamic State. The fact is it’s Islam that to this day widely practices aspects of slavery which subjugate women. Make no mistake, child marriages, fgm, multiple wives, child grooming gangs, and honour killings where even rape vitims are stoned to death to save “family honour” are the legacy of a brutal era of slavery. In Islam women are routinely treated as the property of the husband’s, women can be taken captive and held as sex slaves and the Quran and Sharia law endorses and upholds all of this. And of course, Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and Isis make no secret of adopting slave practices and pleading the Quran as justification.¹
The idea of reform included the Turkish government recently making its second bid to introduce a law granting amnesty to child rapists in Turkey if they marry their victim, provoking outrage across the country.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-marry-rapist-bill-child-marriage-a9296681.html
In short slavery under Islam is incomparable to the Bible’s treatment of both slaves and women. How Sharia degrades women is beyond the scope of this post but will be covered separately in a future post
2). HISTORICAL SURVEY — HOW ARABS CAME TO BE IN NORTH AFRICA
Arab slavery had already begun in Africa more than 700 years before the European transatlantic slave trade. (It was from Islam of the pagan Arabians that the captive slave trade was established).
The slave trade began when the Arabs invaded North Africa for the first time in the 7th century AD. The first Arab entry into Africa was through Egypt.
An Arab military general named General Amir Aben Alas invaded Egypt in December 639 AD.
Amir had successfully conquered Egypt and went ahead and conquered other places such as Tunisia and western Libya.
Once these areas had been completely conquered by the Arabs, they imposed tributes of 360 slaves in all regions they occupied and controlled.
With this Islamic slave trade in Africa, North Africans were Islamized by their Arab slave masters.
Today, many Africans pose as Muslims without knowing how the owners of such a religion brutally enslaved their black African ancestors for over 700 years.
Its a little known fact that the Islamic slave trade was bigger and more brutal than the well documented transatlantic one that we all learn about in school. Watch “The Hidden Islamic Slave Trade & Colorism,” by Tony Gurule & Dr. Jay Smith: t.co/El5C6IaoP7 and https://vimeo.com/246339930
In 1899, Winston Churchill wrote about the Islamic slave trade: “…all [of the Arab tribes in The Sudan], without exception, were hunters of men. To the great slave markets of Jeddah a continual stream of negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder and the adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic…Thus the situation in the Sudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows: The dominant race of Arab invaders was increasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved them…The warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their oppressors.” ²
Muslims ask why if slavery was so prevalent in Arab Muslim states were there so few descendants compared to the Americas?
This is a very good question. There were a number of factors all of which impacted on mortality of Arab slave populations and prove their far more inhumane treatment in comparison to the African American slave trade.
According to Bernard Lewis ³ the growth of internal slave populations through natural increase was insufficient to maintain numbers right through to modern times, which contrasts markedly with rapidly rising slave populations in the New World. He writes that:
□ “Liberation by freemen of their own offspring born by slave mothers was “the primary drain”.
□ Liberation of slaves as an act of piety, was a contributing factor.
□ Other factors include: Castration: A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs. Levy states that according to the Quran and Islamic traditions, such emasculation was objectionable. Jurists such as al-Baydawi considered castration to be mutilation, stipulating law enforcement to prevent it. However, in practice, emasculation was frequent. In eighteenth century Mecca, the majority of eunuchs were in the service of the mosques. Moreover, the process of castration (which included penectomy) carried a high risk of death.
□ Liberation of military slaves: Military slaves that rose through the ranks were usually liberated at some stage in their careers.
□ Restrictions on procreation: Among the menial, domestic, and manual worker slaves, casual sex was not permitted and marriage was not encouraged.
□ High death toll: There was a high death toll among all classes of slaves. Slaves usually came from remote places and, lacking immunities, died in large numbers. Segal ⁴ notes that recent slaves, weakened by their initial captivity and debilitating journey, would have been easy victim to climate changes and infection. Children were especially at risk, and the Islamic market demand for children was much greater than the American one.
□ Many black slaves lived in conditions conducive to malnutrition and disease, with effects on their own life expectancy, the fertility of women, and the infant mortality rate. As late as the 19th century, Western travellers in North Africa and Egypt noted the high death rate among imported black slaves.
□ Another factor was the Zanj Rebellion against the plantation economy of ninth-century southern Iraq. Due to fears of a similar uprising among slave gangs occurring elsewhere, Muslims came to realize that large concentrations of slaves were not a suitable organization of labour and that slaves were best employed in smaller concentrations. As such, large-scale employment of slaves for manual labour became the exception rather than the norm, and the medieval Islamic world did not need to import vast numbers of slaves.”
Islam has a track record of destroying history and artefacts that is negative to Islam (the so called Golden Age was a myth – what survived from it was in spite of Islamic rule not because of it), so no surprise at all that nothing was recorded by them of their worst slave trade practices.
John Dewar Gleissner in “Prison & Slavery – A Surprising Comparison” notes:
“Terrible Aspects of Slavery in the Arab World. The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. Arab Muslims began extracting millions of black African slaves centuries before Christian nations did. Arab slave traders removed slaves from Africa for about 13 centuries, compared to three centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship. Slaves invariably died within five years if they worked in the Ottoman Empire’s Sahara salt mines. Black Africans did not enjoy immunity to many of the diseases found in the Arab world, which also resulted in high death rates.
Slaveholders in the Muslim world often castrated black African male slaves to serve as harem guards. This is a prime reason there are not many communities of blacks living in the non-African Muslim world today, despite the millions of black African slaves sold into the Muslim world. Many African boys did not survive their castration surgery. As late as 1903, there were still 194 African eunuchs in service to the Ottoman ruling family.
African women were enslaved by Arabs more than African men. Few black slave children survived in the Muslim world. In 1860, when 3,000 black female slaves were set free in Zanzibar, only 5% of them had children. Because under Islamic law a concubine bearing the child of the master could become a wife and her children would then share in the inheritance, Middle Eastern wives and children of masters had a strong incentive to interfere with the sex lives of female slaves and cause brutal abortions. Islamic jurisprudence historically allowed abortions in the first four months of pregnancy, long before the West allowed it. Islamic tradition supports the view that the soul enters the fetus at 120 days. If a concubine had the only son, the threat to the wife was even greater. The Koran allowed Muslim men to have as many concubines as they could afford, in addition to four wives.
The Arab history of anti-black racism predates European anti-black racism by several centuries. The early Islamic empire exhibited all the characteristics of anti-black racism, and blacks suffered the lowest form of bondage. By 869 AD, black African slaves in southern Iraq, the despised Zanj, launched an extended slave revolt that threatened Baghdad until 883 A.D. The main reasons we have not heard more about the horrors of slavery in the Muslim world are that Muslims did not express moral outrage against slavery and wrote no abolitionist literature against the institution of slavery. Dr. Thomas Sowell characterizes the moral indignation against New World slavery, and the lack of any such indignation against the Muslim or non-Western world, as “selective moral indignation.” The moral outrage against slavery was and is, in the grand historical context, a European-inspired cause gaining significant traction only in the 1760s. Europeans took photographs of chained black African slaves in Arab slave-trading vessels on the East Coast of Africa in the 1880s. Slavery persisted openly in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries in the latter half of the twentieth century, 100 years after slavery was abolished in the United States. As late as 1960, African Muslims still sold slaves when they arrived on pilgrimages, as a way to finance their pilgrimages. Arab nations lagged far behind the rest of the world in abolishing slavery: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, United Arab Emirates in 1963, Oman in 1970 and Mauritania officially in 1981. Today, according to U.S. State Department figures, Muslim nations condone international human trafficking more than Western countries do.
David Livingstone observed in Africa the horrendous slave trading practices of Arab and pagan slave traders, decades after Great Britain had begun to suppress the international slave trade, and almost a century after Lord Mansfield, with the stroke of a pen, freed slaves in England. The Ottoman Empire resisted British efforts to suppress slavery and the slave trade. Over the course of 70 years, 2,000 British sailors died to free 160,000 slaves. While Islam urged improved treatment of slaves in some ways, the rapid expansion of the Muslim empire rapidly increased the number of slaves, leading to crueler treatment. Africa and the Middle East never developed the moral abolitionist fervor seen in Western nations. Slavery is now most prominent in Africa.
From the time of the Crusades until the early 1800’s, Barbary pirates or corsairs from Muslim North Africa raided European coasts and waters, selling captive Europeans as slaves in North African ports and Istanbul. Barbary corsairs attacked shipping in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, raiding the coasts of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Britain, Ireland, and Africa for slaves. Some Mediterranean islands and coasts in Spain and Italy were abandoned due to the threat of Barbary slave raiding. The United States initially paid tribute to the Barbary pirates to obtain the return of American captives. After building ships, the United States fought the First and Second Barbary Wars to stop this slave trading and piracy. In fact, the desire to defend American shipping and sailors from Barbary piracy gave re-birth to the U.S. Navy. The Marine Hymn refers to the Battle of Derne on “the shores of Tripoli.” The traditional Mameluke sword worn by Marine officers today is based on the one given Marine First Lt. Presley O’Bannon by Prince Hamet of Tripoli.” ⁵
A quote from Booker T Washington: ⁶
“The ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually,morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”
3). ISLAMIC SLAVERY IN INDIA
Frighteningly high numbers of Hindus were massacred in India by Muslim rulers. A Sikh writer declares that the assault amounted to “the biggest holocaust in World history” ⁷ :
With the invasion of India by Mahmud Ghazni about 1000 AD, began the Muslim invasions into the Indian subcontinent and they lasted for several centuries. Nadir Shah made a mountain of the skulls of the Hindus he killed in Delhi alone. Babur raised towers of Hindu skulls at Khanua when he defeated Rana Sanga in 1527 and later he repeated the same horrors after capturing the fort of Chanderi. Akbar ordered a general massacre of 30,000 Rajputs after he captured Chithorgarh in 1568. The Bahamani Sultans had an annual agenda of killing a minimum of 100,000 Hindus every year.
The Belgian Indologist Dr. Koenrad Elst ⁸ wrote that:
“There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like “punishing” the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526)…. The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.”
He continues:
“Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, “Indian mountain”, was renamed Hindu Kush, “Hindu-killer”, when one cold night in the reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur conquered Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his journal that he made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim quarter, while in the Hindu areas, they took “twenty slaves each”.”
4). CONCLUSIONS
One might have thought that historical facts such as these cited in this post, would have provoked human-rights activists to put the Muslim empires into the same category as the later European ones. Not a word of it. The Islamic slave trade has always had a free pass from the liberal western press, not to mention being whitewashed by Islam’s own sources.
Slavery has been an integral part of Islamic practice from the start. It is scripturally endorsed, embedded in shari’a law, and has been practiced from the seventh century until today. The slave trade was notably carried on by Arab merchants across the Sahara and brought Africans to North Africa. Liberals rightly condemn the European slave trade and its impact on North America; they – again rightly – act to eliminate modern slavery through trafficking – which is estimated to involve some 40.3 million people worldwide by 2016. It is almost unheard of, nevertheless, for people on the left also to speak of the Islamic (mainly Arab) slave trade.
The educational website History World, for instance, has a substantial account entitled “History of Slavery”, in which it describes the use of slaves in Babylon, Greece, Rome, the European Middle Ages, and the Portuguese and triangular (chiefly the Transatlantic) slave trades. Yet it only mentions Islamic slavery in passing, despite its having lasted far longer than the European and American versions. Here one of three short paragraphs the site devotes to the subject, all of which appear to argue that supposedly Muslim slavery was not altogether a bad thing:
“Slavery is an accepted part of life in Arabia during the time of Muhammad, in the 7th century, and the Quran offers no arguments against the practice. It merely states, particularly in relation to female slaves, that they must be well treated.” ⁹
This post hasn’t had space to fully review the three centuries of the Barbary Slavers, where North African Muslims who went out as pirates into the Mediterranean to capture ships from European countries and take crews and passengers as slaves to be sold in the markets of Tunis, Algiers and other towns. Barbary pirates ventured as far as England and Ireland, where they would raid coastal villages, and carry residents off. Professor Robert Davis writes ¹⁰
“The fishermen and coastal dwellers of 17th-century Britain lived in terror of being kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa. Hundreds of thousands across Europe met wretched deaths on the Barbary Coast in this way”.
This piracy continued for 300 years and even as late as the early 19th century, the US Navy with Sweden and Sicily, fought two wars against the Barbary States, finally bringing the piracy to an end.¹¹
Research for this post has proved once again that history does not lie in spite of the best efforts of Islam and Nazism to rewrite and/or whitewash it.
Sources and further research:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-marry-rapist-bill-child-marriage-a9296681.html
“The Hidden Islamic Slave Trade & Colorism,” by Tony Gurule & Dr. Jay Smith: t.co/El5C6IaoP7 and https://vimeo.com/246339930
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world
www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Arab-owners-usually-castrated-African-male-slaves
Efraim Karsh, “Islamic Imperialism: A History” Yale University Press 2006
Footnotes:
¹ Slavery in 21st-century jihadism en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_21st-century_jihadism
² Winston Churchill. The River War, Vol. II, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899, pp. 248—50.
³ Bernard Lewis historian (1916-2018). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis
⁴ Ronald Segal (1932 – ) “Islam’s Black Slaves: the Other Black Diaspora” 2001 https://www.amazon.com/ISLAMS-BLACK-SLAVES-Ronald-Segal/dp/0374527970
⁵ John Dewar Gleissner (1952? – ) “Prison & Slavery – A Surprising Comparison” 2010 outskirtspress.com/prisonandslavery
⁶ Booker T Washington (1856-1915) Author and Presidential adviser.
⁷ www.sikhnet.com/news/islamic-india-biggest-holocaust-world-history
⁸ Koenrad Elst (1959 – ) “Was There an Islamic “Genocide” of Hindus?” www.academia.edu/16578319/Was_There_an_Islamic_Genocide_of_Hindus
⁹ www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistoriesResponsive.asp?historyid=ac41
¹⁰ Prof. Robert Davis (1948 -) “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters – White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800” (Palgrave Press) 2003
www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml
¹¹ en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars
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Alastair Tucker, Quran, The Quran And Its Errors: Internal Contradictions, Scientific And Historical Mistakes

The Quran And Its Errors: Internal Contradictions, Scientific And Historical Mistakes

2025-07-06 Alastair Tucker

THE QURAN AND ITS ERRORS: INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS, SCIENTIFIC AND HISTORICAL MISTAKES
1). INTRODUCTION
We constantly see Muslims praising the ‘miracle of the Quran’. The most recent I saw was Wilmer Caviliza.
As I said to him, the only miracle about the Quran is how anyone could believe its divinely inspired. Its so full of factual errors, fallacious nonsense and self refuting contradictions it’s derisible.
Just for starters …
Here are samples of how schizophrenic the Quran can be:
2). QURAN CONTRADICTIONS
Here are a sample of internal contradictions to be found in the Quran. There are many more — see memes for a schedule.
□ What does Allah do with apostates?
• Punishes them:
“But if any turn away and reject Allah,- Allah will punish him with a mighty Punishment” (Surah 88:23-24).
• Does not care:
“There was indeed in them an excellent example for you to follow,- for those whose hope is in Allah and in the Last Day. But if any turn away, truly Allah is Free of all Wants, Worthy of all Praise” (Surah 60:6).
□ Is there compulsion in Islam?
• No:
“Unto you your religion and unto me my religion” (Surah109:6).
• Yes:
“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” (Surah 8:12).
□ Will Allah reward the good deeds of non-Muslims?
• No:
“It is not for such as join gods with Allah, to visit or maintain the mosques of Allah while they witness against their own souls to infidelity. The works of such bear no fruit: In Fire shall they dwell” (Surah 9:17).
• Yes:
“And whoso doeth good an atom’s weight will see it then” (Surah 99:7).
□ Who sends disbelievers astray?
• Allah:
“Allah leaves stray whom He wills and guides whom He wills” (Surah 35:8).
• Satan:
“Who whispereth in the hearts of mankind” (Surah 114:5)
□ Keeping oaths
• It matters:
“truly righteous is he who … fulfill their promise when they have made one” (Surah 2:177) and ” … whoever breaks his oath, breaks it to his own loss; and whoever fulfills the covenant that HE has made with ALLAH, HE will, surely, give him a great reward” (Surah 48:10).
• It doesn’t matter:
“Allah does not call you to account for what is vain in your oaths” (Surah 2:225) and “(This is a declaration of) immunity by Allah and His Apostle towards those of the idolaters with whom you made an agreement” (Surah 9:1).
□ Having up to four wives
• It’s fair:
“If you deem it best for the orphans, you may marry their mothers – you may marry two, three, or four. If you fear lest you become unfair, then you shall be content with only one, or with what you already have” (Surah 4:3).
• It’s unfair:
“You can never be equitable in dealing with more than one wife, no matter how hard you try” (Surah 4:129)
□ Could Allah have a son?
• Yes:
“If Allah desire to take a son to Himself, He will surely choose those He pleases from what He has created” (Surah 39:4)
• No:
“The Initiator of the heavens and the earth. How can He have a son, when He never had a mate?” (Surah 6:101)
3). QURAN SCIENTIFIC ERRORS
□ Human reproduction errors
Here are four fundamental mistakes:
1. Allah did not mention the role of the women egg in human reproduction and appears to have no knowledge of it. This is not the only verse that fails to mention the important role of the female egg (86:6) makes the same mistake. The Quran says the reproduction is caused simply by the male semen. Women are just ovens! The human ovum is very small, though visible to the human eye, and only discovered 1827. It’s role is very important. It is the ovum that decides which sperm goes in and not the first sperm. But Allah only knows what 7th century Muhammad knows.
2. The lump turns into bones!!! Bones develop within the lump. Some apologists so desperate they reinvented this translation to fix this big problem!! Notice how they out in brackets (from) it is not actually in the text!!
3. Then the bones get covered with flesh. As if to emphasis the mistake in step before, the Quran goes on to show its lack of knowledge by suggesting after the bones…flesh covers it.
4. The Quran states, incorrectly, that sperm originates from a spot between the backbone and the ribs, (Surah 86:6-7). However, science has demonstrated that sperm comes from the testicles whilst semen issues from different glands behind and below our bladder.
4). MORE QURAN SCIENTIFIC INACCURACIES
□ Flat earth
The Quran is laden with verses which hint towards the impression of a “flat” earth. (Surah 13:3, 15:19, 50:7, 51:48, 71:19, 20:53) and many more write that the earth is “spread out”, “Laid out”, or “like a carpet”. Yet due to modern scientific discovery we know that the earth is actually in the shape of a circular sphere.
Just to further elaborate on this point, ever notice how the Islamic Salat indirectly hints at the idea of a flat earth? Muslims all around the world are instructed to pray towards the Kabba 5 times a day. This would only make sense if we lived on a flat earth. If, however, Islam endorsed the belief in a spherical planet, we would get the dilemma of wherever you are facing the Kaaba you also have your back to it.
□ All things were made in pairs
Within the Quran, Surah 51:49, it writes that all things were created in pairs. Yet, today we know of something called Asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction by which offsprings arise from a single organism. It serves as the chief means by which single celled organisms are formed. Such examples include the Archaea, bacteria, various plants and fungi.
□ Shooting stars are missiles to drive out demons
The Quran teaches that stars are fires set up in the sky to guard Heaven against demons. The demons want to hear what God is saying so they try to sneak up to heaven. If they are found, the guardians of heaven will hurl stars at them to chase them off: (Surah 15:16-18, 37:6-10, 67:5 and 72:8-9).
The dilemma, however, is that the Quran is confusing “stars” with “shooting stars”. Stars, as we know, are actually suns. Shooting stars on the other hand, are meteorites, or galactic debris. If we are to take the Quran seriously, then each time we see a “shooting star” we are to assume that it is actually a sun that is blasting across the sky in the pursue of a demon.
□ The sun settles in a muddy spring
In Surah 18:86, the Quran describes the sun as setting into a muddy spring. Yet we know due to modern scientific discovery that the setting of the sun is caused by the circular and rotational properties of our planet. There exists no place where the sun physically “sets”.
5). QURAN HISTORICAL ERRORS
□ Samaria
In Surah 20:85-88, 95 we read about the story of the Prophet Moses and the Israelite rebellion in their worship of the golden calf. The interesting thing within this passage, is that a Samaritan was accused of leading the people of Allah astray.
The story of Moses and the golden calf is dated to have occurred around 1400 BC. Yet the Samaritans did NOT exist until 530 years AFTER Moses. Samaria was founded by King Omri during the year 870 BC. The Samaritans did not exist until after the exile of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the resettlement of the area under King Sargon II in 722 B.C.
So the question arises: How could a Samaritan lead the people of Moses astray when Samaritans did not exist during the time of Moses?
□ The practice of Crucifixion
According to Surah 12:41, the Quran writes that during the time of Joseph (in the Old Testament), death by crucifixion was actually something that existed and was being performed. Not only that, but the Quran writes in Surah 7:124, 26:49 and 20:71 that Pharaoh threatened the magicians who believed in Moses with crucifixion.
The major problem with these statements from the Quran is that there is no archeological or historical evidence that the Egyptians used crucifixion as a form of punishment in the time of Joseph, or in the time of Moses (circa 1400 BC). Crucifixion only becomes a punishment much later in history — first used by the Persians in 6th Century BC.
□ Alexander the Great
In Surah 18:83-98 we read about a man named Dhul-Qarnayn. Now, it is very rare to find an Islamic scholar who will not state that this points to Alexander the Great. Here are just some of those people: Baydawi, p. 399, al-Jalalan, p. 251, al-Tabari, p. 339, al-Zamakhshari, part 2 of al-Kash-shaf, p. 743.
The problem, however, is that the Quran describes Alexander as being a “righteous and God fearing man”. That Allah is the one who guided him and that he led people into the fold of the Islamic faith.
However, when we even do a little research on the true and historical Alexander (born 356 BC), we see that he was an idolater, claiming to be the son of the Egyptian God Amun. Very few would even consider him to be even remotely close to a righteous human being. There is also not a shred of evidence to associate him with anything Islamic which was still at least 1000 years in the future.
□ Mary mother of Jesus
In many places, the Quran mentions Mary as the sister of Moses and Aaron and the daughter of Imran. The Quran has confused Jesus’s mother with Aaron’s sister because both of them carry the same name, though there are several centuries between them.
The Quran indicates that Mary (Christ’s mother) had a brother whose name was Aaron (chapter 19:28) and a father whose name is Imran (chapter 66:12). Their mother was called “the wife of Imran” (chapter 3:35) which eliminates any doubt that it confuses Mary, mother of Jesus, with Mary, sister of Aaron.
□ The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ:
We can unashamedly call out this as an egregious historical error. ¹
In Surah 4:157, the Quran blandly tells us that Christ was never killed nor crucified. But that it was made to appear so. Rather, Allah raised Christ unto himself. While there us no consensus of who was crucified and the Quran fails to clarify the point, one traditional interpretation of this verse is that Allah replaced Jesus with Judas on the cross, hence any historical substantiation of this event would fall short on disproving the Islamic position, for they do not doubt that the crucifixion took place, but that it was Judas who took on Christ’s form.
Yet when we look to the historical record, we see that it too, also successfully dismantles this speculation, because 10 out of the 12 apostles were martyred for believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. History shows that that they firmly believed that it was Jesus himself who was executed and raised from the dead.
In The Historical Jesus: Lecture Transcript and Course Guidebook, 2000, Ehrman says:
“ONE OF THE MOST CERTAIN FACTS OF HISTORY IS THAT JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED ON ORDERS OF THE ROMAN PREFECT OF JUDEA, PONTIUS PILATE”. (P. 162)
Atheist Professor of Early Christianity and the University of Gottinggen Gerd Ludemann says:
“JESUS’ DEATH AS A CONSEQUENCE OF CRUCIFIXION IS INDISPUTABLE”. IN THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST: A HISTORICAL INQUIRY, 2004, P 50
We have at least 11 sources for the crucifixion of Jesus: Pre-Mark Passion Narrative, Q, John, Paul, Hebrews, 1 Peter 2:24, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Martyr, Josephus Flavius, & Cornelius Tacitus. Pre-Mark and Q are very early dating to within years of the actual crucifixion. There is not a single reliable source that says no crucifixion took place or that it was anyone other than Jesus.
6). CONCLUSIONS
The above is only a sample of the sort of errors and contradictions which firmly establish that the Quran cannot be a divinely inspired book. These errors are unmistakable human errors which we would expect to find in a man made book consistent with the parochial knowledge of that period.
Contrasts with the Bible show what a truly divinely inspired book looks like. Not a single error of fact whether scientific, historical or geographical can be found in it. Every new archaeological discovery in the region only serves to support it. The same goes for the manuscript record which establishes how remarkably well preserved the Bible is.
For more Quran howlers see:
wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Quran
¹ See post: □ ISLAM’S NEMESIS: THE HERESY OF SURAH 4:157 25 June 2023
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Alastair Tucker, Why Christians Sing In Worship And Muslims Don't

Why Christians Sing In Worship And Muslims Don’t

2025-07-06 Alastair Tucker

WHY CHRISTIANS SING IN WORSHIP AND MUSLIMS DON’T
I). INTRODUCTION
It’s a theme seldom aired in debate with Muslims, but song as a part of worship is one of the starkest contrasts between Christians and Muslims and a striking illustration of why we don’t worship the same God.
# Have you ever wondered why God desires for his people to sing?
# What role should singing play in the life of a Christian?
# What is it about worshiping through song that is so important to God?
# You may not know it, but God has already answered these questions in the Bible. The seven reasons below in Section 3). answer these questions and declare the more important truth about singing in the life of an individual Christian and the church as a corporate body.
In answering these questions it will become apparent why Muslims do not sing as a part of worship.
2). GOD’S PEOPLE SING
The people of God sing. After escaping from the Egyptians and crossing the Red Sea, the people of Israel sang a song to the Lord (Exodus 15). Singing was part of Israel’s formal worship in both tabernacle and temple (1 Chronicles 6:31-32, 16:42). The Psalms bear rich testimony that in joy and sorrow, in praise and lament, the faithful raise their voices in song to God. Hymn singing was practiced by Jesus and his disciples even in the solemnity of the Last Supper. (Matthew 26:30).
“Now all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves regardless of their divisions. When the priests came out of the holy place, the Levitical singers dressed in fine linen and carrying cymbals, harps, and lyres were standing east of the altar, and with them were 120 priests blowing trumpets. The Levitical singers were descendants of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun and their sons and relatives. The trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the Lord with one voice. They raised their voices, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and musical instruments, in praise to the Lord : For He is good; His faithful love endures forever. The temple, the Lord ’s temple, was filled with a cloud. And because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord filled God’s temple.” (2 Chronicles 5:11‭-‬14)
See also Nehemiah’s description of the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem. (Nehamiah 12:27-43)
Is God glorified by worship with music singing and making a joyful noise? Does He respond to heartfelt exuberance? Imagine the sound a combined 120 trumpets along with cymbals harps and lures and a full chorus is going to make and you have an idea that God responds to corporate worship as if with one voice in unity of purpose.
This scene paints a picture and provides a model of how temple worship should be.
God’s people have sung hymns in honor of the Almighty since the time of Moses and before (Exodus 15:1). David sang the “new song” God gave him and taught others to sing “a hymn of praise to our God” (Psalm 40:3). Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn together at the Last Supper (Mark 14:26). The early church sang hymns as part of their regular gatherings (1 Corinthians 14:26). Paul and Silas, with their feet in stocks in a Philippian jail, were “praying and singing hymns to God” (Acts 16:25).
There is a direct connection between being filled with the Spirit and singing: “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:18 -19)
Let’s not mince our words or be shy of saying so — a Spirit-filled Christian is a singing Christian! Music is the natural overflow of a heart in fellowship with the Lord. The songs the church sings are not to be simply a musical exercise; they must be in the heart and not just in the mouth. The hymns the Spirit prompts are a means by which believers edify, encourage, and teach each other (Colossians 3:16).
This is worship “in the spirit” the first half of what Jesus was speaking of when He told the Samaritan woman by the well:
“But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23‭-‬24)
What true worship is not and cannot be is mere lip service:
“These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. They worship Me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.” (Matthew 15:8‭-‬9)
Jesus was quoting Isaiah 29:13 which goes even further:
“The Lord said: Because these people approach Me with their mouths to honor Me with lip-service — yet their hearts are far from Me, and their worship consists of man-made rules learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13).
Read it again … “Their worship consists of man-made rules learned by rote”.
Hmm now which religion is it that prides itself in learning by rote? 🤔
Again which religion is it that makes music taboo and frowns on any sort of musical accompaniment in worship? That would be Islam.
Music is a gift of God and part of the created order. From its inception, “when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy” (Job 38:7), to its consummation, when “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” will sing to the Lamb on the throne (Revelation. 5:13), creation is musical. “All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.” Human music-making participates in the music of creation and reflects the order, beauty, and diversity of God s creation.
Stepping back for a moment, how did Jesus tell us we are to love God?
When asked by a Pharisee “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest? ” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command.” (Matthew 22.36-37)
3). SEVEN BIBLICAL REASONS WHY SINGING MATTERS
(i). Singing is an act of obedience.
Singing isn’t an option in Scripture. It’s a command.
Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Ephesians 5:18-19: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart…”
God’s people are more than just invited to sing – we are commanded to sing. When we sing, we’re doing what God asks of us!
(ii). Singing taps into the Word.
Paul lays out this exhortation to let God’s Word dwell in us richly, and then, he tells us how to live out that command. The first, of course, is teaching. But the second, is singing.“Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…”
Singing is one of the two chief ways that the Word of God dwells in us richly.
The command to worship comes with a promise: as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs together, we are promised that the Word of Christ will dwell in us richly – which is what we should crave as believers.
Our singing is more than a warm-up for the sermon or a filler in the service. Colossians 3:16 is clearly laying out for us that: Singing stands alongside of preaching as one of the two great ways that God has ordained for His Word to dwell RICHLY in each one of us!
C.J. Mahaney calls church singing “Take Home Theology,” because the best songs we sing together end up serving you as a 3 minute, easily memorised, deeply biblical summary of important truths from Scripture. Take for example, “In Christ Alone.” There, in easily memorable form, we’ve got a thorough theology of the cross of Jesus Christ with clear and practical applications that we can use for our lives for the ensuing week!
(iii). Singing edifies the church, challenges unbelievers and welcome strangers.
Firstly, we build up fellow believers when we sing:
“addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…” (Ephesians 5.19)
When we do what the Bible says and sing together as a church family, we are hearing confessions of faith all around! We are hearing hundreds join with us and sing, “In Christ alone, MY hope is found!” Where else can we hear hundreds of testimonies of faith simultaneously all around us?!
Also know that as you sing, you’re welcoming strangers and helping unbelievers. Rousing songs of worship can simultaneously challenge, encourage and inspire the unbeliever. In Psalm 105:1-2, the Lord is calling the Israelites to be a light unto the nations, and to do this He tells them: “Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; tell of all his wondrous works!”
Think of the impact on someone who doesn’t know Christ to hear those hundreds of testimonies, those hundreds of confessions of faith as we sing together! This is why Pastor Tim Keller says: “Good corporate worship will naturally be evangelistic.”
(iv). Singing is a declaration of spiritual warfare.
Praise as a weapon is a theme visible in Scripture. The Psalmist declares:
“Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.” (Psalms 8:2) God will empower even the weakest and most vulnerable who will praise Him.
Again in Colossians chapter 3, Paul challenges the Colossians to literally put sin to death in their lives – to kill sin. He follows that with: “Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3.16). And so all the commands to love and peace and forgiveness and teaching and SINGING, are therefore, sound Bible principles that shape the attitudes and habits of the believer that will kill sin!
We see the same thing in Ephesians 5, the command to address one another in song comes right on the heels of “[make] the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16).
And the more you think about this, it makes total sense: What posture must be more hated by the evil one than the posture of a believer who is singing? I can’t think of any stance you can take that identifies you with Christ and against Satan more than the eyes, heart, mind and voice lifted to heaven in song!
It’s very hard to lie, be greedy or to be tempted by something inappropriate when, you’re “singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Ephesians 5:19). Simply, a heart that’s doing that will not easily give in to temptation.
A singing heart is a heart at war with the work of the evil one and the power of sin.
And this truth is nowhere better illustrated than by the complete absence of song in Islam. Not only absence of it but hostility towards it. Hence why Muslims will scorn and attack Christians for employing “instruments of the devil” to try and portray our worship as satanic! It is no coincidence that Islam’s founder Muhammad hated music and forbade it. Music is haram for Muslims. It is associated with the sins of intoxication and fornication as a snare to be avoided.
We find this Hadith quoted by those who are opposed to music:
Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 69, Number 494v: Narrated Abu ‘Amir or Abu Malik Al-Ash’ari: that he heard the Prophet saying, “From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks and the use of musical instruments, as lawful. And there will be some people who will stay near the side of a mountain and in the evening their shepherd will come to them with their sheep and ask them for something, but they will say to him, ‘Return to us tomorrow.’ Allah will destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them, and He will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection.”
(v). Singing is spiritually strengthening for trials.
Often times, we think only of singing when we’re happy and times are good, but singing bringing strength for trial comes out in Acts 16. Paul and Silas are unjustly imprisoned for the sake of the Gospel, and what do they do while they’re in prison? They sing! (Acts 16:25)
And this truth is confirmed in the lives of persecuted believers throughout history. Hear the words of one pastor who was imprisoned for his faith:
“…When we were in prison we sang almost every day because Christ was alive in us…they put chains on our hands and feet. They chained us to add to our grief. Yet we discovered that chains are splendid musical instruments! When we clanged them together in rhythm, we could sing, ‘This is the day (clink, clank), this is the day (clink, clank), which the Lord has made (clink, clank), which the Lord has made (clink, clank).”
Our persecuted brethren display the truth we see in Acts 16 with Paul & Silas. Singing strengthens you and helps you persevere in the face of trial. If it can strengthen them in the face of these trials – what can it do for you?
Even in suffering, SING!
(vi). Singing is a God-designed pathway to joy.
Here is a sample of what the Psalms say about singing:
# Psalms 5:11: “Let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.”
# Psalms 9:2: “I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.”
# Psalms 51:14: “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.”
# Psalms 59:16: “I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.”
# Psalms 63:7: “For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.”
For the doubters, here’s a clincher from James 5:13: “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”
A study of Scripture reveals that sometimes singing gives birth to joy and sometimes joy gives birth to singing. But persistently in Scripture, joy and singing are bound together. You can’t study one of those two biblical themes without encountering the other.
If you struggle for joy – SING! If you are joyful – SING! In God’s perfect design and in His perfect understanding of the human condition He has bound joy and singing together for His people.
The first 6 reasons get summed up with this:
(vii). Singing is glorifying God.
Truly obedience, deep roots in the Word, building up others, making war against Satan and sin, persevering, finding joy in God – all of these things bring glory to God – each person’s chief goal and chief purpose in life.
Colossians 3 & Ephesians 5 bring this out simply but powerfully telling us to sing “to God” and “to the Lord” because He is the object of our praise. Ephesians 5:19: “singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” It is to HIM and about HIM that we sing!
Singing has such a unique way of bringing your heart, soul, mind, and strength together to focus entirely and completely on God. In an age of distraction – singing grabs the attention of all our senses and focuses us on God.
In Revelation 7:9-10 we see a glimpse of eternity with a great multitude of people from every tribe, peoples, and languages singing before the Lamb, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
4). CONCLUSIONS
Eternity awaits. The choirs of the heavenly host will tell us when we are home.
Muslims think about how much you are missing. Satan hates the sight and sound of praises to our Lord. Its no coincidence that Islam employs no music or song in worship. Music and song are diametrically opposed to the controlling spirit of Islam. Singing releases the spirit which Muslims suppress or even deny exists. How can you hope to join the chorus of worship in the next life when song is a stranger to you in this?
Will you on that day be one of the great multitude that no one could number, singing the song of the Lamb, singing His praises? I hope you’ll be there, singing the song of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Honouring by lips is zero worship. True worship is from the heart and full of joyful expression. Its essence is a heart that treasures God above all things. What James said bears repeating: “Is any one [among you] cheerful? Let him sing” (James 5:13).
Was Paul wrong to say: “I will sing with my spirit, and I will sing with my mind” (1 Corinthians 14:15). And, again, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).
Make no mistake we cannot fulfill the command of Jesus to worship “in spirit” unless we give full rein and expression to the joy of knowing Him as our Lord and Saviour. Just as we shall worship Him in heaven so we should be doing here and now on earth.
I wish all my brothers and sisters in Christ a blessed day. May worship songs be in your heart and on your lips. To our Muslim friends I invite you to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Amen.
Sing now. Sing forever. Singing matters. Let’s sing together.
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Alastair Tucker, Why Muslims Demand A Single Verse For Jesus Deity, Why Muslims Demand A Single Verse For Jesus Deity

Why Muslims Demand A Single Verse For Jesus Deity

2025-07-06 Alastair Tucker

WHY MUSLIMS DEMAND A SINGLE VERSE FOR JESUS DEITY
On another thread Firash Hameed keeps demanding a statement for — and keeps claiming that in the absence of — a single verse where Jesus claimed to be God this proves He isn’t and so Christians are wrong to worship Him as such.
He isn’t the first Muslim to do so and he won’t be the last. Indeed they are doing this on a daily basis.
I think it’s worth sharing my reply to him (for which I’ve not yet seen any further response).
“But to put to bed his red herring diversion, in a sense Firash Hameed you are right there is no single verse where Jesus said “I am God” and for very good reasons.
The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with the very same challenge:
“When daylight came, the elders of the people, both the chief priests and the scribes, convened and brought Him before their Sanhedrin. They said, “If You are the Messiah, tell us.” But He said to them, “If I do tell you, you will not believe. And if I ask you, you will not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Power of God.” They all asked, “Are You, then, the Son of God? ” And He said to them, “You say that I am.” “Why do we need any more testimony,” they said, “since we’ve heard it ourselves from His mouth?” (Luke 22:66‭-‬71 HCSB)
Here is your answer Firash, “If I do tell you, you will not believe”. In other words even if there was a single verse.which proved the.point, given the weight of testimony He already gave which leaves you as it did the Pharisees unmoved and cynically unbelieving, one more verse is not going to make any difference!
Or what about this?
“Then the Jews surrounded Him and asked, “How long are You going to keep us in suspense? If You are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” “I DID TELL YOU AND YOU DON’T BELIEVE,” Jesus answered them. “THE WORKS THAT I DO IN MY FATHER’S NAME TESTIFY ABOUT ME. BUT YOU DON’T BELIEVE BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT MY SHEEP. My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish — ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:24‭-‬30 HCSB)
Read about yourself again here too and think about what Jesus just said. “I DID TELL YOU AND YOU DON’T BELIEVE”.
Exactly what I and all my Christian colleagues here are doing continuously — we have told you, shown you all the cumulative evidence for Jesus’s self identity and yet you demand a single verse! What arrogance!
Now notice how they react …
“Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone Him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. Which of these works are you stoning Me for? ” “We aren’t stoning You for a good work,” the Jews answered, “BUT FOR BLASPHEMY, BECAUSE YOU — being a man — MAKE YOURSELF GOD.” (John 10:31-‬33 HCSB)
Aha! Now we are getting close this is the point where you and the Jews part company! They weren’t afraid to acknowledge that Jesus was doing good works — what they were afraid of was His claiming to be God in so doing. They were actually at least that much more honest because they saw the evidence and heard His teaching and forgiving sins — a prerogative of God alone — they just weren’t prepared to believe Him. (Though in reality many Jews did and not only His disciples). Its Muslims who can’t even admit that Jesus was making Himself equal to God. Yours is the far greater sin because we have the 20:20 vision of hindsight which those Pharisees did not — for at these moments Jesus had not yet vindicated all the claims He made for Himself by His resurrection. His three dozen explicit and implicit predictions of it had not yet been fulfilled.
You are without excuse of any sort. They were expecting a Messiah, Jesus didnt match their expectations of one for reasons I can explain another time.
You on the other hand are in complete denial. Denial of Jesus as God and in denial that He ever claimed to be. The JEWS TESTIFY AGAINST YOU EVEN BEFORE WE GET TO WHAT JESUS DID.
Lastly, there are very good reasons why Jesus would not and did not make an outright statement such as “I am God” or “worship Me” and for any critically thinking person it’s very obvious.
I am not rehearsing the reasons for that here because they are fully covered in this post. Go and read it if you are seriously searching and want convincing but as with your kind the Pharisees you aren’t because you — like they — have too much too lose by admitting the truth.
□ THE DEITY OF CHRIST PART 1 — WHY JESUS NEVER SAID “I AM GOD” 3 July 2023
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Let’s see how the Muslims are going to respond and what diversions are coming next … 🙄
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Alastair Tucker, Prayer Posture Is Irrelevant — Its The Position Of Our Hearts In Relation To God That Counts

Prayer Posture Is Irrelevant — Its The Position Of Our Hearts In Relation To God That Counts With Him

2025-07-06 Alastair Tucker

PRAYER POSTURE IS IRRELEVANT — ITS THE POSITION OF OUR HEARTS IN RELATION TO GOD THAT COUNTS WITH HIM
Muslims get obsessed about prayer posture and prostration. But in the greatest prayer in all Scripture — that of Jesus high priestly prayer to the Father on the night of His arrest in the setting of the Last Supper ¹ this is how Jesus began:
“Jesus spoke these words, LIFTED UP HIS EYES TO HEAVEN, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You” (John 17:1 NKJV)
This is how one commentary describes it:
“Jesus lifted up His eyes when He prayed. This is a posture that we don’t usually associate with deep prayer. We tend to bow our head and close our eyes. This shows us that we should never confuse the non-essential customs of prayer with the essential aspects of prayer.” (Guzik)
Moreover, while Jesus prayed this prayer in the company of His disciples, He urges us to make our prayers a private matter between ourselves and God in a quiet one to one setting. Note His advice on prayer and how to pray and how not to pray:
“Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. I assure you: They’ve got their reward! But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5‭-‬6 HCSB)
Notice Jesus gives no advice on what posture to assume. Having shut the door the rest is between us and God. But on what to pray, we do not need vain repetition:
“When you pray, don’t babble like the idolaters, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7 HCSB)
God already knows our needs before we ask Him, it’s our readiness to come before Him and lay our burdens before Him that matters to God:
“… Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:7‭-‬8 HCSB)
While Jesus had in mind the Pharisees in Matthew 6:5 His words apply just as much to Muhammadians who are their latter-day counterpart.²
Muslims love to be seen and heard entering mosques to prayers. The Adhan (Azan) call to prayers let’s everyone know within miles of every mosque and its an imposition and intrusion on the peace of non Muslims. And prayers are often conducted in public spaces on roads and walkways as a show of piety.
Footnotes:
¹ We have to go all the way back to John 13 for the setting. John 17 is the culmination of a continuous sequential narrative which covers a lot of ground with the Last Supper the centrepiece. Unlike the prayers later in Gethsemane where Jesus prayed alone, here Jesus speaks for His disciples to hear Him.
² See Post:
□ WHY THE PHARISEES WERE THE PROTO-ISLAMISTS OF JESUS DAY 15 June 2023
m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1231283934417953&id=100026090748056&mibextid=Nif5oz
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No Salvation in Islam

2022-04-22 Alastair Tucker

NO BLOOD ATONEMENT OR COVENANTS IN ISLAM, MEANS NO SALVATION
1). INTRODUCTION
A Muslim on another thread asked "what does Christianity offer that Islam doesn't have?"
I replied:
"We have assurance of salvation. There is no atonement in Islam. No atonement means no salvation. The New Covenant age of grace was sealed in Jesus blood. It supercedes all that came before it. Muslims haven't a clue what it signifies and Islam has nothing like it.
To personalise it we have Jesus and Islam doesn't. Unless you believe on His name you are dead in your sins.
We have the truth. And truth is personified in Jesus and enshrined in God's word. Anything else is a lie. Including anyone preaching "another Jesus" such as found in gnosticism and Islam.
We have the cross of redemption. Islam doesn't. Without the Cross there is only condemnation.
There is an empty grave that holds no body, for behold He is risen and is alive and seated at the right hand of the Father and He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Any other religion including Islam has only graves of the dead holding corrupted flesh turned to dust.
A Christian worships the living God. Islam worships the dead which is idolatry. Necromancy is anathema to God.
Jesus always wins. He is the truth. And truth can never be overcome or defeated least of all by Islam's sword of tyranny.
Thats just for starters off the top of my head. Is it enough for you?"
I am not aware that he replied.
Let's examine two related aspects of what makes Christianity uniquely the path to life in more detail, - blood atonement and blood covenants.
2). BLOOD ATONEMENT
The very words are enough to make demons shudder. As the meme below is captioned "in the Bible you cannot escape it. But in the Quran you cannot find it, which is a fatal omission for all Muslims."
That's not to say the Quran makes no mention of slaughter, far from it. It wallows in shedding blood with all its gory references to cutting off heads, amputating hands and feet. It entreats every Muslim to fight and glorifies war; it has to be the most bloodthirsty compilation of exhortations to violence ever produced in the name of religion. Make no mistake the demon god of Islam is magnified and appeased by shedding other people's blood in his cause.
Surah 8:67: “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land.” (Pickthall)
Ibn Ishaq, who was one of the earliest biographers of Muhammad, clarified the meaning behind the chilling words of Allah in the above Quran verse. Ibn Ishaq: 327:
"Allah said, “A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.”
“Allah desires killing to manifest the religion.” sums up what Islam is about.
Which makes the Quran's omission of blood atonement even more striking. It bears repeating: forgiveness is based upon atonement and there is no atonement in Islam.
If the Bible teaches us anything its that forgiveness is based upon atonement. The Bible’s central theme is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for the redemption of mankind. The blood of Christ runs throughout the entire Bible, symbolically. It is seen in the animals killed in Eden to provide garments for Adam and Eve, the ram that took Isaac’s place on the altar of Moriah, the Passover lamb, the institution of the sacrificial system, the scarlet cord of Rahab, and the thousands of years of sacrifices performed at the tabernacle and temple. The scarlet thread runs all the way up to John the Baptist’s declaration, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) and to the foot of the cross, where Jesus finally says, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22), and that’s why its impossible to overstate the significance or the symbolism of the scarlet thread in the Bible.
For more on the doctrine of atonement see these posts:
□ THE DOCTRINE OF SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT 12 December 2021
m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=313632027433140&id=100063590342443
□ THE BLOTTING OUT OF SINS 25 July 2021
www.facebook.com/100063590342443/posts/213656150764062/
3). NO ATONEMENT IN ISLAM
What about Islam? Well its no surprise to discover there is no atonement in Islam. As Craig Winn puts it:
"Just as the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls disprove Allah’s assertion that the Jews corrupted their scriptures, the clay tablets of Ur, Babylon, and Nineveh prove that Muhammad lied when he tried to reshape Abraham into a compatriot of Nimrod. And this lie is not without consequence. If Abraham was not as Allah claims, the Quran disintegrates. Abraham is the lone, thin string that connects Islam to the Bible. And without the Bible, all that is rational and religious in the Quran evaporates, and Islam with it.Abraham’s story is repeated thirty times in the Quran in fifteen different surahs.
And yet the purpose of sacrificing his son is left unexplained. Tabari II:84 “When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, Satan said, ‘By Allah, if I cannot deceive the people with this, I shall never be able to do it.’” Satan not only swears by Allah, he says that the bogus connection between Abraham and Islam is his best way to fool mankind. He was right! It’s also interesting that the deception would be over sacrifice. Judaism, Christianity, and all rational civilizations use sacrifice as the means to promote justice and maintain spiritual or societal order. Commit a crime and you will be required to sacrifice your money, your freedom, or your life. If crime is without cost, anarchy reigns.
In Judaism, the sacrificial rite for the forgiveness of sin was rich in symbolism. It was based upon the “Mercy Seat” of the Arc of the Covenant. And it was connected prophetically to the blood of an unblemished lamb or dove. It’s all explained in the Torah. In Christianity, Christ became the perfect lamb and sacrificed himself on our behalf. But in Islam, there is no sacrifice. While the Sunnah perpetuates Qusayy ‘s senseless slaughter, it’s for appeasement, not atonement. There is no symbolism, no prophetic implication, no retribution, no justice and no moral reason, as forgiveness is capricious in Islam. And that’s why totalitarian governments use draconian measures to maintain order. Muhammad was an amoral thief empowered by situational scriptures, so he failed to appreciate the necessity of sacrifice and he never understood the Biblical concept of sacrificial atonement. It’s why the “ransom of great sacrifice” mentioned in the Quran is left unexplained." (Craig Winn- Prophet of Doom)
And this lack of explanation or provision for atonement is paralleled by the Quran's omission of blood covenants. Covenants in the Quran are only taken by Allah and they are not sealed in blood.
4). BLOOD COVENANTS
As another meme below comments "Muslims can't recognise the New Covenant until and unless they accept the crucifixion."
The New Covenant as with those made by God before it, was sealed in blood. In this case the precious blood of the Messiah "the Lamb of God" already noted.
When God called Abraham out of his hometown and away from all things familiar, He gave Abraham some promises. A covenant is a kind of promise, a contract, a binding agreement between two parties. Genesis 15 reiterates the covenant God had made with Abraham at his calling. Except this time, God graciously reassures His promise with a visual of His presence. He asks Abraham to find and kill a heifer, a ram, a goat, a dove, and a pigeon. Then, Abraham was to cut them in half (except the birds) and lay the pieces in two rows, leaving a path through the centre (Genesis 15:9-10).
In ancient Near Eastern royal land grant treaties, this type of ritual was done to “seal” the promises made. Through this blood covenant, God was confirming primarily three promises He had made to Abraham:
(i) The promise of heirs, (ii) The promise of land, and (iii) The promise of blessings (Genesis 12:2-3).
A blood covenant communicated a self-maledictory oath. The parties involved would walk the path between the slaughtered animals so to say, “May this be done to me if I do not keep my oath” (See Jeremiah 34:18-19).
However, there was an important difference in the blood oath that God made with Abraham in Genesis 15. When the evening came, God appeared in the form of a “smoking fire pot and flaming torch [that] passed between the pieces” (Genesis 15:17). But Abraham had fallen “into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him” (verse 12). Thus, God alone passed through the pieces of dead animals, and the covenant was sealed by God alone.
In the end, nothing depended on Abraham. Everything depended on God, who promised to be faithful to His covenant. “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself” (Hebrews 6:13-18). Abraham and his descendants could trust, count on, and believe in everything God promised. And this is how we know to this day the Bible and only the Bible can be trusted. It has God's covenant promises which cannot be broken never have and never will be broken
This specific blood covenant in Genesis is known as the Abrahamic Covenant. The blood involved in this covenant, as with any blood covenant, signifies the life from which the blood comes (Leviticus 17:11).
The Mosaic Covenant was also a blood covenant: "Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.” (Exodus 24:8)
It required blood to be sprinkled on the tabernacle, “the scroll and all the people” (Hebrews 9:19-21). “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). In the Mosaic Covenant, the blood of animals served as a covering, or atonement, for the sins of the people. The animal’s life was given in place of the sinner’s life. In the Abrahamic Covenant, God, in essence, was declaring He would give His life if His promises were broken. There could be no greater encouragement to believers, since God is eternal and can no more break an oath than He can die.
5). WHY A BETTER COVENANT WAS NEEDED
In the Old Testament, God had in His great forbearance "passed over sins" (as in the Passover), just as He had previously overlooked ignorance. But under the New Covanant, sin would be dealt with once and for all. Note how God changed His commands accordingly:
“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).
"[Jesus] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins" (Romans 3:25).
Because Israel’s sins were merely “passed over,” Jesus’ atonement had to work retroactively to cleanse the sins of the OT saints:
"For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant" (Hebrews 9:13-15).
It is only through Christ that our sins are cleansed and purified so that we can confidently enter into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-22). By contrast, OT forgiveness was only a matter of God passing over sins, not purifying them:
"Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1).
"Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?" (Micah 7:18).
The OT saints would only experience a “passing over transgression,” but they were also promised a New Covenant through which God would “remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
All of these things were only “copies,” or “shadows,” of the better covenant to come (Hebrews 9:23). The lives of animals could never remove sin; the life of an animal is not a sufficient substitute for a human life (Hebrews 10:4). The blood of bulls and goats was a temporary appeasement until the final, ultimate blood covenant was made by Jesus Christ Himself – the God Man (Hebrews 9:24-28). The New Covenant was in His blood (Luke 22:20).
The Old Testament shadows and antitypes became realities in Christ, who fulfilled all of the Old Testament blood covenants with His own blood. Christians can uniquely be confident that the gift of eternal life that God gives through Jesus is the true promise to people of faith. As the apostle Paul explains, the covenant was established with Abraham and his “Seed”—singular. Paul interprets this as the singular person of Christ (Galatians 3:15-16). Therefore, all who are “in Christ” are spiritual heirs of the promises made to Abraham (Galatians 3:29).
How do we know we can trust Christ's promises? Because He sealed them in His blood. To put it simply, a blood covenant is a promise made by God that He will choose a people for Himself and bless them. The covenant was originally for Abraham’s physical descendants but was later extended, spiritually, to all those who, like Abraham, believe God (Galatians 3:7; cf. Genesis 15:6). God’s promise of eternal blessing is given only on the basis of faith in the saving blood of His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9:12).
For more on how Covenants prove the Bible as God's word and expose the Quran which is not, see this post:
□ DIVINE COVENANTS PROVE THE BIBLE AND EXPOSE THE QURAN 27 Aug 2021
www.facebook.com/100063590342443/posts/237362678393409/
6). CONCLUSIONS
So when a Muslim asks what Christainity offers that Islam doesn't have, basically it's everything that God ever provided for our needs to overcome our inherited sinful nature, which we are incapable of doing for ourselves.
God first shed the blood of animals to provide a better covering for Adam and Eve's nakedness (Genesis 3:7 & 3:21).
God performed the rites of the Abrahamic Covenant while Abraham was in "a deep sleep" (Genesis 15:12).
And when it came to the New Covenant, Jesus freely and unconditionally shed His blood upon the cross that once and for all freed us from the penalty and the curse of sin. He didn't even wait for us to admit our need for His forgiveness:
"But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" Romans 5:8).
But while Jesus sacrifice is all sufficient, it has to be accepted, He has to be allowed to cleanse justify and transform us.
This is the bottom line: The Cross removes the curse of sin and death that has reigned since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. What it doesn’t do is remove the penalty of sin which is death to those who reject the crucifixion and resurrection. If you reject Christ, you will die in your sins. And Islam can NEVER substitute this cold fact of reality.
Make no mistake: Islam guarantees hell to its followers. Only Jesus can guarantee eternal life

Jesus as a Prophet of His own death

2022-04-22 Alastair Tucker

TODAY’S MUSLIM CHALLENGE: EXPLAIN HOW YOU RECOGNISE JESUS AS A PROPHET WHEN YOU DENY EVERY PROPHECY HE EVER MADE OF HIS OWN DEATH AND RESURRECTION
Below across the four gospel accounts we find three dozen references by Jesus Himself in anticipation of His death.
Notes:
▪︎ Every mention of “cross” is an indirect reference to His death and the method of it.
▪︎ Every mention of being “lifted up” is also a reference to His death (see John 12:33-34).
▪︎ The references in the parable of the wicked tenants killing the “son and heir” are clearly Jesus self referencing His own death in anticipation of it.
▪︎ Parallel verses are counted individually, properly so, for the repetition is signifying their importance.
1. Matthew 10:38 “And whoever doesn’t take up his CROSS and follow Me is not worthy of Me.”
2. Matthew 12:40 “For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the SON OF MAN WILL BE IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS.”
3. Matthew 16:21 “From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be KILLED, and be RAISED again the THIRD DAY.”
4. Matthew 16:24 “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his CROSS, and follow Me.”
5. Matthew 17:9 “And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be RISEN again FROM THE DEAD.”
6. Matthew 17:22-23 “And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: [23] And they shall KILL HIM, and the third day he shall be RAISED AGAIN. And they were exceeding sorry.”
7. Matthew 20:18-19 “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, [19] And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to CRUCIFY him: and the THIRD DAY he shall RISE AGAIN.”
8. Matthew 20:28 “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to GIVE HIS LIFE — A RANSOM FOR MANY.”
9. Matthew 21:38 “But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us KILL HIM , and let us seize on his inheritance.”
10. Matthew 26:2 “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be CRUCIFIED.”
11. Matthew 26:26-28 “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take and eat it; THIS IS MY BODY.” [27] Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and said, “Drink from it, all of you. [28] For THIS IS MY BLOOD THAT ESTABLISHES THE COVENANT; IT IS SHED FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS.”
12. Matthew 26:31-32 [26:31] “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.” [26:32] But AFTER I AM RISEN AGAIN, I will go before you into Galilee.”
13. Mark 8:31 “And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be KILLED, and after THREE DAYS RISE AGAIN.”
14. Mark 8:34 “Summoning the crowd along with His disciples, He said to them, “If anyone wants to be My follower, he must deny himself, take up his CROSS, and follow Me.”
15. Mark 9:9 ” And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were RISEN FROM THE DEAD.”
16. Mark 9:31 “For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall KILL HIM; and after that HE IS KILLED, he SHALL RISE THE THIRD DAY.”
17. Mark 10:33-34 “Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles: [34] And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall KILL HIM : and the THIRD DAY HE shall RISE AGAIN.”
18. Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to GIVE HIS LIFE — A RANSOM FOR MANY.”
19. Mark 12:7-8 “But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be our’s. [8] And they took him, and KILLED HIM, and cast him out of the vineyard.”
20. Mark 14:8 “She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to ANOINT MY BODY TO THE BURYING.”
21. Mark 14:27-28 “And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd , and the sheep shall be scattered. [28] But AFTER THAT I AM RISEN, I will go before you into Galilee.”
22. Mark 14:41 “And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is BETRAYED into the hands of sinners.”
23. Luke 9:22 “Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and BE SLAIN, and be RAISED THE THIRD DAY.”
24. Luke 9:23 “Then He said to them all, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his CROSS DAILY, and follow Me.”
25. Luke 9:44 “Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be DELIVERED into the hands of men.”
26. Luke 14:27 “Whoever does not bear his own CROSS and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
27. Luke 18:31-33 “Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. [32] For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: [33] And they shall scourge him, and PUT HIM TO DEATH: and the THIRD DAY HE SHALL RISE AGAIN.”
28. Luke 20:13-15 “Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him. [14] But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir: come, let us KILL HIM, that the inheritance may be ours. [15] So they cast him out of the vineyard, and KILLED HIM. What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?”
29. Luke 22:19-20 “And He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This IS MY BODY, WHICH IS GIVEN FOR YOU. Do this in remembrance of Me.” [20] In the same way He also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the NEW COVENANT ESTABLISHED BY MY BLOOD; IT IS SHED FOR YOU.”
30. Luke 24:6-7 “He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, [7] Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be CRUCIFIED, and the THIRD DAY RISE AGAIN.”
31. John 2:19, 21-22 “Jesus answered, “Destroy this sanctuary, and I WILL RAISE IT UP IN THREE DAYS.” [21] But He was speaking about the sanctuary of His body. [22] So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this. And they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.”
32. John 3:14-15 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man BE LIFTED UP. [15] so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life.”
33. John 8:28 “Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have LIFTED UP THE SON OF MAN, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.”
34. John 10:17-18 “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I LAY DOWN MY LIFE, that I might take it again. [18] No man taketh it from me, but I LAY IT DOWN OF MYSELF. I have POWER TO LAY IT DOWN, and I HAVE POWER TO TAKE IT AGAIN. This commandment have I received of my Father.”
35. John 12:7, 23-24, 32-34 “Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against THE DAY OF MY BURYING hath she kept this.”
36. John 12:32-34 “And I, if I BE LIFTED UP FROM THE EARTH, will draw all men unto me. [33] This he said, signifying WHAT DEATH HE SHOULD DIE. [34] The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?”
There is no doubt the subject to which Jesus devoted most attention in His prophetic ministry, more than any other event, is His own death and resurrection.
□ THE CHALLENGE:
So Muslims, since you recognise Jesus as a prophet why do you mock the subject of His greatest prophecies? All 36 of the above passages are challenged and yet left unexplained by the Quran. You call Jesus a prophet yet you reject the substance of what he prophesied most frequently about and attached most importance to – His own death and resurrection! What is this if not glaring contradiction and breathtaking hypocrisy?
Yes Muslims, you make Jesus, who told us and proved He is THE TRUTH (John 14:6), you make Him a serial liar and pretender for the dozens of occasions where He predicted His death and resurrection, which according to you never happened. Yet you still pretend to honour Him as a prophet!
I am yet to see any Muslim even acknowledge this glaring contradiction, still less attempt to reconcile how they claim to honour and respect Him as a prophet when they deny the substance of His greatest prophecies!
Let’s see if they can now respond to the challenge.

Heresies

2022-04-22 Alastair Tucker

NOBODY REJECTS TRUE CHRISTIANITY
I’m convinced people, especially Muslims, don’t reject true Christianity, what they reject is the false characterisation of Christianity they are taught or a prejudiced misconception they have formed about it. So many arguments against us come down to the one presenting the argument either, having no idea what true Christians actually believe or who God is, or worse of deliberately misrepresenting it.
Which is why the words of church fathers like Hilary of Poitiers still ring true.¹ The heretic has been quoting single detached utterances and ignoring what follows or precedes it to make the Scriptures say what they don’t actually say. And so we need to filter arguments against us, which do not follow the rules of logical reasoning, textual criticism or sound hermeneutics.
Identify the heresy, fallacy or other shortcoming associated with the arguments made against us. Then study the Scriptures in the light of the church fathers. It will be seen that no objection Muslims has ever raised was not addressed in the Patristic literature and their weak arguments rejected.
What the Quran describes of the Trinity for instance is a caricature of what it actually comprises. Nowhere does Islam reject true Trinitarianism. Islam’s god, prophet and book have NEVER understood or articulated what the Trinity constitutes or means.
The doctrine of the Trinity as properly understood, remains untouched, intact and unscathed by 1400 years of Islamic heresy and misrepresentation of it. There is no Muslim yet who recognises the Christian God, neither the two hypostasis (natures) of perfect man and perfect God as found in Christ, nor the nature of the Trinity doctrine which is always misrepresented in Islam as Tritheism. And what they cannot understand they cannot argue against.
Because when we have a firm understanding of what Christianity as based upon and of who God is in Father Son and Spirit, we come to see the truth for what it is. Truth says that there is no good argument against us, nor any sound basis for rejecting Jesus Christ who died for us or for disbelieving in our Triune God. Anything else is idolatry and paganism, supportable only by fallacious and specious reasoning and historical inaccuracy.
Footnote:
¹ Hillary of Poitiers “On the Trinity” (Book IX)
Heresy lays hold of words spoken by Christ Incarnate, appropriate to His humility as Man, and assigns them to Him in His previous state; thus they make Him deny His true Godhead. But His utterances before the Incarnation, during His life on earth, and after His return to glory, must be carefully distinguished (§§ 5, 6).
Hilary now examines the aims and achievements of Christ Incarnate, and shows that His work for men was a Divine work, accomplished by Him for us only because He was throughout both God and Man, the two natures in Him being inseparable (§§ 7-14).
After reaching this conclusion from a general survey of Christ’s life on earth, he examines in the light of it the Arian arguments from isolated words. They assert that Christ refused to be called Good or Master. He refused neither title, and yet declared that both belong to God only (§§ 15-18).
And, indeed, He could not have associated Himself more closely than He did with the Father, while yet He kept His Person distinct (§ 19).
The Father Himself bears witness to the Son; and the sin and loss of the Jews is this, that, seeing the Father’s works done by Christ, they did not see in Him the Son (§§ 20, 21).
The honour and glory of Christ is inseparable from that of God (§§ 22, 23).
The Scribe did well to confess the Divine unity, but was still outside the Kingdom because He did not believe in Christ as God (§§ 24-27).
Next, the Arian argument from the words, This is life eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent, is refuted by comparison with cognate passages (§§ 28-35).
For, indeed, if the Father be the only true God, the Son must also be the only true God (§ 36).
That Divine nature which is common to Father and Son is subject to no limitations, and the eternal generation can be illustrated by no analogy of created things (§ 37).
Christ took humanity, and, since the Father’s nature did not share in this, the unity was so far impaired. But humanity has been raised in Christ to God; and this could only be because His unity in the Divine nature with the Father was perfect. Otherwise the flesh which Christ took could not have entered into the Divine glory (§ 38).
There is but one glory of Father and of Son; the Son sought in the Incarnation not glory for the Word but for the flesh (§§ 39, 40).
The glory of Father and Son is one; in that unity the Son bestows, as well as receives, glory (§§ 41, 42), and this glory, common to Both, is evidence that the Divine nature also is common to Both (§ 42).
Source: www.newadvent.org/fathers/330209.htm

God’s Characterisation

2022-04-22 Alastair Tucker

THE HUMAN CHARACTERISATION OF GOD (REVISITED)
1). INTRODUCTION
Muslims as a whole seem to have a spiritual and intellectual blindness, (a deadly combination), in failing to grasp that the Bible describes God in ways we can relate to. I guess by having no conception of what the supposed god of Islam is like, and being forbidden from trying to imagine or liken him to anything, its impossible for them to relate to language specifically employed by God to help us relate to Him.
It’s this use of “anthropomorphic language” which Muslims frequently take literally, solely to disparage and mock the one true God. This is reflective of three failings:
i). A simplistic, lazy, if not dishonest, intellectual approach.
ii). A lack of spiritual understanding.
iii). The demonic and mocking spirit of Islam.
2). HUMAN CHARACTERISATIONS OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
We can find a wide range of examples from the Hebrew Bible, that ascribe to God human actions, attributes, and emotions. Remember, God works with us in our time frame. He has endured not only eternity, but also human history as He moves through it and through and with people to bring about His sovereign will and purpose. Should we then assume that God would not relate to us in terms familiar to our own actions? And should we not also assume that in so doing God will present aspects of Himself to us that would be paradoxical? Take for example the fact that:
□ God is all powerful (Jeremiah 32:17,27 ), yet He rests (Genesis 2:2).
□ God is in all places (Psalm 139:7-12), yet He asks Adam, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9).
□ We see that God knows all things (1 John 3:20). Yet, we see that God says, “Now I know that you fear God” (Genesis 22:12).
□ God has never made a mistake. He is as incapable of error, as was His exact likeness in Jesus on earth, who never made an error and committed no sin in thought, word, or deed (Hebrews 4:15). Yet God “regretted making man” (Genesis 6:6).
If, as the Muslim wants to assert that God does not know all future events because He says, for example, to Abraham, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me,” (Genesis 22:12), or when walking in the Garden, the preincarnate Jesus asks “Adam, where are you?”
… that such statements must mean that God is either not all knowing or not in all places, or both, since if God was in all places He would know exactly where Adam was? Or if God rests that does it mean that God is not all powerful? Of course not. Muslims are by habit and inclination there to mock ridicule and belittle God at every opportunity. To anyone who has debated with Muslims even for a short while this sad fact becomes all too obvious.
Muslims reduce the attribute of God’s omniscience by exalting the condition of man’s freedom and denying his sinful nature. Whenever man is exalted, God must be lessened. This is one of many fundamental problems in Islam. By shrouding God’s qualities and attributes in mystique and inscrutibility He must be lessened; Islam’s god is not approachable or knowable and this is just one of many reasons we do not worship the same God.
The following are various Old Testament verses that demonstrate God’s human-like manifestation to us in actions, emotions, and physique. Thus we can see that such condescension on God’s part to us will naturally result in God saying things that will require a deeper examination:
■ Human actions – changed mind, relented, remembered, rested.
□ Exodus 32:14, “So the Lord changed His mindabout the harm which He said He would do to His people.”
□ 2 Samuel 24:16, “When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough! Now relax your hand!”
□ Genesis 9:16, “When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
□ Genesis 2:2, “And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”
■ Human emotions – sorrow, jealousy, pity, regret.
□ Genesis 6:6 “The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
□ Exodus 20:5, “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.”
□ Judges 2:18, “…for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them.”
□ 1 Samuel 15:35, “And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death; for Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.”
■ Human physique – hands, face, mouth, eyes, arm.
□ Exodus 7:5, “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.”
□ Numbers 6:24, “The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you.”
□ Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”
□ Psalm 34:15, “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry.”
□ Psalm 89:10, “Thou Thyself didst crush Rahab like one who is slain; Thou didst scatter Thine enemies with Thy mighty arm.”
■ Other – Wings
□ Psalm 57:1, “Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, for my soul takes refuge in Thee; and in the shadow of Thy wings I will take refuge, until destruction passes by.”
■ Other – various metaphors
□ God “is a consuming fire” “a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24)
□ “The Lord God is a sun and a shield” (Psalm 84:11).
□ The Lord disciplines us “as a man who disciples his son” (Deuteronomy 8:5).
□ The Lord carries us “as a man who carries his son” (Deuteronomy 1:31).
□ As a “warrior roused from sleep” who fights on behalf of his people (Psalm 78:65-66).
□ As a “shepherd” who cares for his flock (Psalm 23:1).
□ The Lord is “like an eagle” (Deuteronomy 32:11).
□ The Lord is our “rock” (Psalm 18:2).
□ The Lord promises to be for us “a place of broad rivers and streams” (Isaiah 33:21).
3). JESUS THE DEFINITIVE HUMAN CHARACTERISATION AND ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF GOD
In one sense ALL of the Old Testament references to the human characterisation of God are pointing to the Incarnation. Just as all prophecy in the Old Testament is. Jesus is the personification and fulfilment of every human characterisation of God in all of those OT verses mentioned. And as we shall see in the next section Jesus, adopts for Himself several metaphors which are unique to Him.
Its quite easy to miss hence why its in caps – I wonder if Muslims have ever noticed this?
“Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come AS A MAN IN HIS EXTERNAL FORM, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth — and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:7-‬11 HCSB)
So if externally His form was human, what about His internal form?
What does Jesus mean when He says …
“If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him AND HAVE SEEN HIM.” “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? THE ONE WHO HAS SEEN ME HAS SEEN THE FATHER. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? DONT YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM IN THE FATHER AND THE FATHER IS IN ME? The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own. The Father who lives in Me does His works. BELIEVE ME THAT I AM IN THE FATHER AND THE FATHER IS IN ME. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.” (John 14:7‭-‬11 HCSB)
Muslims let me ask you? Don’t you believe that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus? If not why not?
As for “regrets” you need to understand the word regret in Genesis 6:6. When used of God, regret incorporates the thought of compassionate grief and an action taken. God was not showing weakness, admitting an error, or regretting a mistake. Rather, He was expressing His need to take specific, drastic action to counteract the wickedness of mankind: “Everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil” (Genesis 6:5). The fact that God did not consider His creation a mistake is proved by the world’s continued existence. We’re still here, sinful though we are. Praise the Lord for His grace: “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20b), and “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8). In short the regret is reflective of the change in God’s dealings with humanity. As Benson’s commentary puts it:
“Neither doth it speak any change of God’s mind, for with him is no variableness; but it signifies a change of his way. When God had made man upright, he rested and was refreshed, (Exodus 31:17), and his way toward him was such as showed him to be well pleased with the work of his own hands; but now that man was apostatized, he could not do otherwise than show himself displeased: so that the change was in man, and not in God.”
God has never made a mistake. He has had a purpose in everything, and outcomes are no surprise to Him, for He declares the end from the beginning: “I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isaiah 46:9-10).
Someone may think God has made a mistake in his or her own personal life. Certain experiences and conditions beyond our control make us wonder if God has maybe miscalculated. However, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28). This takes faith to accept, but “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). In everything we must understand that the things of this life are expendable and are being spent for our eternal reward according to the wisdom of Him who “is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 1:24). We can rejoice that our Lord God makes no mistakes in our lives but has a good and loving purpose for everything He allows.
There is no fault in our God; there are no mistakes He has made. And there is no fault in His Son; Satan was desperate to reveal even one fault in Jesus, but the devil utterly failed in his attempts (Matthew 4:1-11). Jesus remained the spotless Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:19). Pontius Pilate, declared, “I find no fault in this man” (Luke 23:4).
We live with our mistakes, big and little, petty and disastrous, and we get used to making them. But we serve an infallible, mistake-free God whose greatness cannot be fathomed. “Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare” (Psalm 40:5). It’s good to know that God’s in charge and that He who makes no mistakes can more than compensate for ours.
4). METAPHORS JESUS APPLIED TO HIMSELF
■ “I am the bread of heaven/life” (John 6:41, 6:48)
■ “I am the source of living water” (John 4:10, 13-14, 7:37-38)
■ “I am the light of the world” (John 3:19, 8:12, 9:5)
■ “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 10:14) cf Isaiah 40:11.
■ “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
■ “I am the true vine” (John 15:1, 15:5).
A prime reason why Jesus used such metaphors, is because they allowed Him to give a complex explanation in a simple memorable phase. The above examples are also ALL key for sustaining life here on earth and in the hereafter. Without light, bread to eat and water to drink there can be no life. Without a shepherd to guide us we easily get lost, which can have fatal consequences.
So Jesus’ metaphors are foundational but they always mean more than just the sum of the words.
For example, when Jesus told His disciples that He was a vine and that they were branches, He was making more than one simple point. A vine and its branches implies an organic relationship, one that changes and grows and is fruitful. Such a metaphor tells us that the disciples’ life is not static. It also implies a sense of connectedness, even a sense of extension. In this manner, Jesus’ disciples do not do works of their own power; instead, they must receive strength and ability from the source. The metaphor also suggests an extension of appearance: the vine and its branches are one, until a branch is cut off. Disciples must share in the public reputation of Jesus.
5). ANSWERING MUSLIM OBJECTIONS
According to Muslims, the Bible portrays Jesus as manifesting human traits not befitting God. For instance Jesus:
wept (cf. John 11:35),
slept (cf. Mark 4:35),
hungered and thirsted (cf. John 4:6-7).
God doesn’t tire, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t thirst and doesn’t get hungry (cf. Psalm 50:7-13, 121:3-4; Isaiah 40:28). How then can Jesus be God?
Answer:
The above question and statements misunderstand or distort what the Bible and orthodoxy teach about the Person of the Lord Jesus.
According to the God-breathed Scriptures Jesus is the Son of God, the eternal Word who is God in nature. The Bible also teaches that the eternal Word became flesh and took on a real human nature (cf. John 1:1-3, 14; 1 John 1:1-3; Matthew 1:18-23).
Christ is both fully God and fully man, having all the attributes belonging to both Deity and humanity at the same time. Jesus is truly God in every way, and is also a real human being in every sense (with the exception of the sinful nature). The things He experienced as man did not affect the integrity of his Deity, and yet at the same time his Divine abilities and qualities were not part of his human nature. He had (and continues to have) two distinct natures, two distinct sets of attributes simultaneously without either of them fusing in, compromising or diluting the other.
Thus, since Jesus became a real human being he truly hungered and thirsted like all men. Yet since He is also truly God He is the Bread of Life and the Living Water. Paradoxical? Yes. Contradictory? No.
“Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ … Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I WILL GIVE HIM will never be thirsty forever. The water that I WILL GIVE HIM will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” (John 4:10, 13-14)
“Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God IS HE WHO COMES DOWN FROM HEAVEN and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I HAVE COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.’” (John 6:35-38)
“‘This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I WILL RAISE HIM UP on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, AND I IN HIM. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. WHOEVER FEEDS ON THIS BREAD WILL LIVE FOREVER.’” (John 6:50-58)
“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come TO ME and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:37-39)
And being a real human Jesus got tired and slept. Yet since he is also truly God, He is the very Rest and Comfort of all those who are weary:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
That is why the Bible has no problem portraying the Lord Jesus as truly human and also as true Deity, as the very Sovereign Sustainer of all creation:
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and IN HIM all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,” (Colossians 1:15-22)
“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,” (Colossians 2:9)
“but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” (Hebrews 1:2-3)
Now about Jesus weeping, Christ is only visibly expressing as a man what God himself feels over the plight of sin and human pain:
“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” (Genesis 6:5-7)
“How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!” (Psalm 78:40)
Jesus is basically giving a human expression to God’s emotions, visibly revealing the very heart and deep compassions of God for the plight of fallen humanity.
6). CONCLUSIONS
Jesus became a true human being and in so doing experienced the weaknesses, limitations, and temptations that are common to humanity with one sole exception; Jesus was absolutely sinless and perfect. Thus, the statements that speak of Jesus’ human limitations do absolutely nothing to refute the clear Biblical witness that Jesus was also God. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God and man. It is not that Jesus has to either be God or man but that He is both God and man at the same time. What was true of His humanity didn’t apply to His Deity and vice-versa, i.e. as man He tired but as God his energy and power are infinite and inexhaustible.
The testimony of the Bible is clear. It states both, that Jesus is the eternal Son of God (one of the Persons of the eternal Triune God), and that this eternal Word of God, who was involved in all of creation, by whom everything was created, and who sustains all of creation to this day, Himself entered creation by becoming a human being.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. …The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-3, 14)
So Muslims in future think twice before mocking God for “resting” or having “regrets”, because you will answer to Him for every careless word spoken. God is not mocked.
Further reading:
www.scottrswain.com/2019/11/01/god-clothed-in-metaphor-the-lord-god-is-a-sun-ps-8411/

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