Salvation in Islam & Christianity – vs. Samuel Green
Date:
Channel: Adnan Rashid
File Size: 73.47MB
Episode Notes
2018
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of faith and graduation in achieving salvation and achieving God's ability to save. They also discuss the history of the Bible's use of Christ as a destination and the confusion surrounding Islamic salvation. The speakers stress the need for foundation and atonement in fulfilling prophets and getting rid of the world. They emphasize the importance of sharing their ideas in a friendly way and the use of faith and actions in Christ's faith.AI Generated Transcript ©
Okay, so without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Adnan. We don't have to applause and clap after every stage of this presentation. But I thought it would be appropriate both at the start and the end, to welcome them in the customary way should we do that together?
Thank you, Tom, for that
important reminder in the beginning, that we are not here for
a hateful match,
mudslinging, or even
escalating a sense of misconceptions about each other. Rather, we are here to share our values, our views, how we see religion, so that people can learn about it. The purpose is not to criticize, to insult to hate each other. Rather, the purpose of this particular endeavor is to come close, so that we can better appreciate each other as humans primarily and then as Christians and Muslims. So I will begin with my presentation without any delay. It's a lot of mana Rahim in the Name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent, the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, and the God of Mohammed, salvation in Christianity. And Islam is the topic, which is a very interesting topic,
every Christian and Muslim is concerned about salvation. And this is one of the reasons why we follow religions, we follow religions, because we want to have salvation. We do believe in a life after death, we do believe in retribution
in front of God.
And we do believe that certain individuals were sent by God to convey these messages of salvation to us. And in due course, we will see how these messages were understood by people later on.
So salvation through faith works. This is the Islamic view. Firstly, I will convey the Islamic view very quickly. And then I will move on to the New Testament and Old Testament, and how salvation is seen by Christians and whether it's clear or not. And what is the reason as to why Muslims do not follow that particular way. View of salvation, salvation through faith with works is the Islamic view, we must have faith in God. And with this faith
must come, righteous works, good deeds. And without good deeds, there is no faith.
And this is exactly what the biblical view is, as we will see in due course. So Islam hasn't broken away from the biblical tradition, rather, Islam has come back, or Islam has emerged,
by the help of God, by the grace of God, to revive the old biblical tradition of salvation through
faith and works. So what is
a man of faith in Islam, we believe in Allah, God Almighty, who created the heavens and the earth. And he is the same God, as the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, he is below him. He is a la He,
who is referred to in the biblical texts, Allah is the same God as the God of other prophets or biblical prophets, then we believe in angels. We believe in messengers God sent to different nations at different times in different places. We believe in books sent by God with these messengers. For example, Moses came with the Torah. David was given the Psalms. And Jesus was given the gospel, the good news, in general in the Arabic language, or evangelii, on in the Greek language.
And we believe in destiny.
And what does disbelief actually constitute? Is it just abstract belief you believe in these ideas? And that's it No, with this belief must come works. For example, the definition of Eman the definition of faith in Islam is fallen, but listen, you have to proclaim it with your tongue. Then the deacon will help you have to accept it in your heart, and then will am alone will or can which is to work according to your belief. This is exactly what faith is. Faith without works is empty. It is not real faith, as Muslims believe, based upon the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.
In conjunction with what Jesus had taught, and other prophets had taught before him. So Islam is basically based upon five pillars. Again, these five pillars of work, these are good deeds, acknowledging God's oneness and his uniqueness, then praying to that God five times a day.
So this acknowledgement is not abstract, rather, it is real, you actually pray to that God to demonstrate your obedience and you believe in that God. So there is a very strong relationship between God and Muslims in that sense.
Then we have charity, which is the third pillar of Islam, you must give charity every Muslim must give charity 2.5% of his savings
every year,
and there is a certain amount one has to calculate to give the 2.5% for fasting in the month of Ramadan, which is to feel again again to feel the pain and the hunger of those who do not have the provisions you may have had is a yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. Those of you are those of those Muslims who can afford to do it once in the lifetime they must do it. It is an obligation. This is in a nutshell, Islamic belief and faith. So faith with works is what Islam stands for.
So Quran and salvation, what is the Quran tell us tell us on this on this on this issue. Quran has a number of verses on this matter. And to summarize, the more Koran simply wants people to believe, do righteous deeds, believe in God firmly and hope to have rewards from him and they will have salvation. simply believe in God. Follow his commandments brought by the messengers. Be diligent about those commandments, do your best, and God will save you you will be saved by God Himself directly, they will be reward for you in the hereafter. And all these verses in front of you, you can see, this is what they tell us. Repentance is a very important aspect of Islam. If one has
sinned, if if one has transgressed against his soul, then he can simply turn to God and repent and never do that sin again. And must be remorseful and repair the damage if it has been done to someone else. Okay, that's the way to repent in Islam. Once you repent, your repentance will be accepted and God will forgive your sins. No one has to die for you. No one has to shed his blood for you. You simply turn to God, God is all hearing. God is powerful. He hears you. The Quran tells us that when you call upon God, he is close. He listens to you. When you call upon him, and you're lonely, whether you're lonely or whether you are in public, wherever you are, you may call upon God and He
will hear you. And when he hears you that he in he knows who needs to be forgiven and who needs to be punished.
So
in Buhari or in prophetic tradition, we are told that God's justice to sinners is that those who do not repent will definitely pay for the crimes. They will go to Hellfire temporarily. Those who believed and did not repent. They died in a form of sinfulness. They will go to Hellfire, they will serve their time and then they will be taken out of Hellfire after an appointed term once they have done their time in hellfire. This is justice. This is this is justice. It is not as someone else comes and kills himself for your sins, and then you are scot free. Okay, one of the examples we could give is the bankers, the New York bankers in 2007 and 2008. There was a global economic
crisis. Remember what happened trillions of dollars lost around the world. And then what happens the US government bails them out the bankers, instead of getting punishment, instead of getting retribution. What they get is money from the government and the people who suffered the people who lost everything are still in jeopardy. This is not justice. This is not justice. So you cannot kill a person for humanity and let the sinners scot free rather, as the book of easy iziko states clearly in chapter 18, that those whose sin shall die
those who sin must pay for the crimes, the father will not bear the iniquity of his son and the and vice versa as we will see in due course. So this is the biblical message with the Quran agrees with what happened later. It was changed our wills, as we will see in due course.
Again, this Hadees from the prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad clearly states that anyone who had an atom's weight of Eman an atom's weight of
They will be taken out of hellfire.
In other words, the Muslims have a guarantee of salvation. Let me clarify this. Ladies and gentlemen from the start. There is a misconception among many Christian friends that the Muslims do not have any guarantee of salvation. They don't know how they're going to get salvation we the Christians do. Jesus died for our sins on the cross. Therefore we have salvation. We believe in it, we have salvation. No, it's not simple as that. And we will see due course, Muslims have a guarantee of salvation so long as we die Muslims. And we died in a state of Eman what we call in a state of faith, we will be eventually taken out of Hellfire, and we will have salvation, then onwards, we
will pay for our crimes those who did not repent, and they will be in Paradise, and they will have God's pleasure.
salvation in the Bible, what does the Bible tell us about salvation? It is very important for us to understand the biblical view on salvation and the Christian view on salvation. Why do I divide the biblical view and salvation and the Christian view and salvation? Because these two are different things altogether, as I will see, as I mature in due course,
in the Bible, in the, in the writings of Paul, we get this idea that Jesus died for your sins on the cross as a substitution, right for you. And this idea is most prominently put out by Paul himself. You cannot find this idea clearly put in the Synoptic tradition in the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And in the Gospel of john, there is a higher Christology. So there is some development in the Gospel of john john goes a bit further and starts changing things. No, no, no. Behold the Lamb of God who take it away the sin of humanity or the sin of the world. And then we get Paul, Paul goes completely guns blazing. And he says, Jesus simply died for your sins is believe in that. And you
don't need to do the works of the law. You have salvation. We will see how Jesus and Paul are two opposite ends.
of they are standing on the two opposite sides of the fence. Firstly, is poor right? When he says, Sorry, when he says that blood sacrifice without blood sacrifice, there is no redemption, there is no forgiveness, right? Well, when you read the Bible carefully from cover to cover, you will see tons of passages where salvation and redemption was achieved by other means jeweled flower, okay, simply repent to God, as the Quran says, as the book of physical states later on, that simply turned to God and repent, you will have your redemption, you will be forgiven, no one has to die.
And injustice doesn't need to need to take place. So all of these passages on the screen, you can see I have the references. People have been forgiving the people of Jonah, for example, they were simply forgiven
by praying to God for forgiveness, no blood, no flour, no jewels, none of that simply turned to God pray and you will be forgiven. Likewise, in the book of Ezekiel, as you can see in this verse, But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins He has committed, and keeps all my decrees, and does what is just in right, He will surely live, he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him because of the righteousness or righteous things he has done.
He will live his eco Bible, the Word of God, the same God who revealed allegedly the New Testament. There is clearly a break from this tradition in the writings of Paul, in the writings of Paul, you do you do not see this idea? Paul is saying no. You don't need to do this anymore. You just thought this is simpler. This is easier turn to God, God forgive policy no believe in a blood sacrifice, a human sacrifice. In fact, some people even call it cosmic
cosmic child abuse, because the father is punishing his son on the cross. And the son dies for the sins of humanity. So he takes away the sin of humanity. This idea is very bloody. As you can all imagine, repentance and then forgiveness. This is how biblical scholars or biblical prophets rather taught the idea of
redemption and forgiveness are times getting moving very fast. For some reason, the clock is ticking very fast today. So let us go back to the New Testament, salvation through following commandments. Now in the New Testament, amazingly, we get different ideas of salvation, because the New Testament was put together
Later on in the second and third century CE II, and this is not something while I'm throwing at you rather, this is historically accurate. What I'm telling you right now is, the New Testament did not exist in the first century, it did not exist as a document in the first century, it was accumulated in the second century, slowly and steadily, and that it was finally canonized in its current form in the fourth century, and the festal letters of Athanasius are a witness to that, where he said, add no more take out no more. This is the fountain of salvation 27 books of the New Testament, right? So it took a while for the church fathers to collect the New Testament, right. And for that reason,
there was no set view of salvation in the early period, right? Different people reading different documents at different times in different places. So for that reason, you get different ideas in the New Testament of salvation. In the book of Matthew, you read that Jesus tells his companions, or one of his people, or one of the guys who comes in asked him, What is the first what is the best way to attain to achieve eternal life? In other words, salvation, Jesus tells him, go and follow the commandments.
Now imagine if Jesus was a Pauline Christian, or if Jesus himself was a follower of Paul, he would have said, No, no, no, I am here. Now. You have been following the law, don't follow the law. Don't worry about the law. The law is a curse, I will remove that curse from you, I will die for your sins on the cross. So Worry not, don't worry about it. Just go and have a party not and I'm not saying go and have sins, or go go and commit sins, rather just relax. Don't worry about I have come to take away your sins. Jesus doesn't tell him that. To the contrary, Jesus tells him, follow the commandments, and sell everything you possess. And follow me. Follow me. Right. And in fact, Jesus
in the Sermon on the Mount, he tells his followers to enter the kingdom of heaven, to have salvation. Not one of the commandments can be relaxed. Can you imagine, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, that Jesus telling his disciples, not one of the commandments can be relaxed. And the righteousness of the disciples must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
Paul comes along later on, and he abolishes the law completely forget about one commandment, or one point of the law, rather, he removed the law collectively, altogether. And he had problems because of that. And we will discuss that in due course. So, in the New Testament, as I showed in the Synoptic tradition, we had Jesus telling his disciples, it doesn't tell them that I've come to die for you, I will redeem you, I will sacrifice myself on the cross. And you do not have to worry about salvation. It doesn't tell them that rather, in the Synoptic tradition, and the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he's repeatedly telling them follow an ethical code, follow a strict code,
cell, everything, follow me and follow the law, the law of Moses, it is very, very clear, and you cannot, any of the points of the law cannot be relaxed. This is the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, in the Gospel of john certainly Behold, the Lamb of God. And if you see on the screen there, the Lamb of God formula, when Jesus is baptizing, john, in the River Jordan, the Lamb of God formula cannot be found in the Synoptic tradition in the three gospels, john brings this idea in from somewhere, and adds it Lamb of God who take it away the world of sorry, the sin of the world,
the Lamb of God, okay, this idea. So john, again, he added stuff into this idea, and he moved towards redemption through the cross, Paul comes along, and he breaks away from the tradition. Now, in the Gospel Choir in the New Testament. James is a very important figure.
The book of James is there, as you can all read, and Martin Luther, during the Reformation period, was of the opinion that we must throw out the book of James, because because it directly contradicts the works are the writings of Paul. James is against Paul. And you can see the courts there. He said, it is impossible to reconcile, Paul with James because James teaches exactly what Jesus taught, follow the law, do the good works and have faith. Paul is teaching Don't worry about the law, the curse of law has been lifted, you just have to follow me and my view, which is to believe in the cross and that's enough for your salvation.
So Paul has this to say on the law. Thank you. Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we to have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that he we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because
By the works of the law, no one will be justified. He goes on to further said, law is a curse. For as many as are of the works of the law.
No flesh will be justified, for we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. So, again, Paul is saying law is not necessary anymore. You just believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and you will have salvation. We will see in due course. I will come back. And then I will elaborate on this more in my 10 minutes that James did not actually believe that rather James was more in line what Jesus had taught. Thank you so much for listening.
Now, we just need to swap this over. Yes.
Well, thank you for that admin. and good evening to everyone. This evening, it's great that you can be here. And I'd particularly like to thank the organizers for organizing this event. My prayer to God tonight is that we will listen to each other, ask some new questions of each other, and I hope, make progress in our discussions I've been debating for, I think about 15 years now. And I can honestly say that there's been progress in Christian Muslim dialogue. We've had, you know, rigorous discussions, but we've been making progress. And I think that that's really good. My
my outline tonight is I'm going to look at three points salvation in Islam, salvation in Christianity, and I'm going to put forward why you should accept the Christian position. So that's what I want to hit tonight. Let's look at the first of these salvation in Islam. Now, the general principle in Islam, as Adnan has pointed out to us is that salvation comes from God being merciful to you and forgiving you. This mercy and forgiveness is something you are to seek and earn. And so we read here, God has promised those who believe in do righteous deeds, they will have forgiveness, and a great reward good deeds in Islam, show your intentions and earn God's mercy and forgiveness.
bad deeds disqualify you from from mercy and forgiveness. I want to say God doesn't simply forgive you need to go through this process that I'm outlining here. And the Muslim goal is to accumulate more good deeds than bad deeds throughout their life. So that on Judgement Day, when their deeds are weighed, they'll have more good deeds. And so we see this here.
When those whose scales are heavy with good deeds, they have a successful and those whose scales are light, or those who lose their souls in hell abiding. Now, when we read the Quran and Hadith we see that not all good deeds are the same. And this leads to three different paths for being saved within Islam. Now, the first path is for the the martyr, the Prophet and the righteous. And so we see here if you are killed or die in God's way, pardon and mercy from God are better than what they collect. If you die or a killed, you'll be gathered up to God. And so for prophets, martyrs, and the righteous there is this direct taking into God's presence.
Now, the matters of themselves when they are there, they can then act as a source of salvation by interceding for people. So narrated every data The Prophet said, the intercession of a martyr will be accepted for 17 members of his family. And so that's sort of one path that the Quran puts forward.
The second path is where you go into the grave. And then from the grave, you then go to Paradise. Mohammed spoke about the grave in this Hadith, it says the Messenger of Allah Muhammad said, Indeed, the grave is the first stage among the stages of the hereafter. So if one is saved from it, then what comes after it is easier than it and if one is not saved from it, then what comes after it is worse than it and so this is where you go to the grave now in the grave. Different things can happen to help you stand on Judgment. I hope you too have Allah's mercy on judgment day. Now the first one is that somebody else can do good deeds on your behalf and there are many headaches like this and
Got a Muslim friend who did this for his mother narrated even a bus A man came to the Prophet Mohammed and said, O Allah's Apostle, my mother died, and she ought to a fast and one month, for she missed it, she missed fasting during Ramadan, shall I fast on her behalf. The Prophet replied in the affirmative and said, others debts have more right to be paid. So someone can do a righteous deed and it's credited to you.
Somebody else on can also be your sins, it's under certain conditions. But the Quran says he, they will bear their own sins in full on the Day of Resurrection, and also the burdens of those whom they misled without knowledge. Evil indeed is what they is that which they shall bear. And so if you've misled somebody, or there's some connection, then you will bear the scenes that you were in somehow responsible for them doing. And there's an extended headways, which we'll just quickly look at here where this is teased out. And there are many references to this in Sahih Bukhari, which, at the end, narrated Abu Musa Allah's Messenger said on the Day of Resurrection Mike Ouma, that is the Islamic
nation will be gathered into three groups, one sort will enter Paradise without rendering and account for their deeds, and other sort will be reckoned and easy account and admitted into paradise. Yet another sort will come bearing on their backs, heaps of scenes, like great mountains, Allah will ask the angels though he knows best about them. Who are these people, they will reply, they are humble slaves of yours, he will say unload the sins from them and put the same over the Jews and Christians, then let the humble slaves get into paradise by virtue of My Mercy. And so
that's a second way that when you're in the grave and coming before judgment that you'll be saved with other people bearing your sins. Then the last way is that people can intercede for you narrated Ennis, I heard the Prophet saying, on the Day of Resurrection, I Mohammed will intercede and say, Oh, my lord admit into paradise, even those who have faith equal to a mustard seed in their hearts. And so that's, that's the third way. And so within Islam,
also just go back to that, because I want to just get within Islam, they're the, they're the three ways of getting helped when you're in the grave. Now, then, the final path that I want to look at is, as Adnan has pointed out, that you you go into the grave, and then you go to hell, and then you go into paradise. And and as Dan pointed out, whoever said, none has the right to be worshipped, but Allah and has in his heart, good faith equal to the weight of a barley grain will be taken out of hell. So to me, when I was studying salvation in Islam, it seemed to me that there are three paths that a Muslim can take. And I want to completely agree with what Adnan was saying that Muslims can
have confidence that in the end, they'll get there. But I think where they where they don't have confidence is to know which path they are on. And so there may be uncertain about which path they're on, and so on to say that in one sense, it is arms complex.
There is a complexity to this type of salvation, and that there is no real assurance as to which path you're on. And so it's not as straightforward, I think, in Muslim thinking. All right, to move on now to salvation in Christianity. Honestly, salvation in Christianity is is pretty straightforward. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
And then from the book of Acts, then know this, you and all the people of Israel, by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed, they just healed somebody in Jesus name, salvation is found in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. So in Christianity, there is only one way to be saved. And that is to put your faith in what God has done for you in Jesus. Jesus is your sacrifice for sin. Salvation is all of God, we are dead in our sins. We are dead and unable to contribute anything towards our salvation. But God has saved us through
the death of Jesus. He is the sacrifice for our sins. He is the sinless one who can bear our sins. He is God with us dealing with our sins himself. And I want to say to you tonight, that God loves you, and God has done something for you, when it's up to yourself is when it's going to be all these different paths, but when God
Does something for us. There is one way, God's way. And we know that it works because it's what God has done. As the apostle john says,
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Well, I've spent the first half outlining the two different positions there, I now want to put forward the case, why I believe the Christian position is right, and the one that you should follow,
I'm going to look at two particular areas. The first is that the Christian position is the message of the prophets. And the second reason I'll be putting forward is that there is no one like Jesus. So let's look at the first of these. So the first is that the reality is that.
So I want to speak about what is the Bible? First of all, as we think about the message of the prophets, the Bible is not one book. It's a collection of many books from many prophets, over about a 1500 year period. It contains the Torah, the law of Moses, books of many prophets, the books of the Psalms, and the books that contain the gospel.
And you can see them there. And so what Christians believe about God doesn't come from just reading one man, it's not just from one prophet. It's from from reading many prophets. And I guess this is a point in which Christianity and Islam are different. Islam is based upon the Quran and the Sunnah of Muhammad. So it is round one man. But in Christianity, it's many prophets over a 1500 year period. Now, when you read these prophets, they are very clear that we cannot earn our salvation. We see this in the story of the Exodus, where the which is the big story of salvation, in the law of Moses, and in the law of Moses is that the Israelites are in Egypt, and they can do nothing to get
themselves out from Pharaoh. It is God alone, who saves them, they're not saved by their works to get out of Egypt. They're simply saved by the power of God rescuing them, that's the first big act of Salvation, the Israelites just just follow. That's all they do. They just trust and follow.
Then as they are called upon to keep God's law and to live for God, what we see is that the Israelites continually, as we would file to keep God's laws. And so when the Israelites
have out with Moses, they worship the golden calf. When they have judges, they turn aside to our other gods, when they have kings, they turn aside to other gods. And it doesn't matter what system of government of God, sin affects them. Sin is always there, as it would be with us sinners, affects the Israelites. And so what the prophet say, in the Old Testament, in books, like Ezekiel 36, and in the book of Isaiah, is it says that God has to change us, God has to save us, because on our own, we are unable to keep God's laws. And so for the Israelites, that that was a heavy price for them to pay. It meant that they came under God's judgment, and were cast into exile into Babylon.
And so the the promise of the Old Testament of the Old Testament, the prophets before Jesus, it shows God rescuing his people, giving them his law, his people completely unable to keep his law. And it's over a long period of time. So they try every type of government, they try every type of opportunity, everything they get, and humanity continually fails to keep God's law. And so God says, I need to work I need to change you. I'm the one who needs to save you. And we're going to see some more of that later on. Now, what God says in his promises in his prophets is he says, I'm going to bring about a new Exodus. God says, I'm going to bring about a new Exodus. And so Isaiah, chapters
40 to 55 are this big chapter about the salvation God's going to bring. And it's all about a new Exodus, and it's peppered with Exodus language about parting the waters and rescuing these people. Now, what, as I've mentioned the exodus already, but it was when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. And the chief event that comes with the exodus is what's called the Passover. The Passover was one of the sacrifices that the Israelites had to make before the final plague of God came upon the Egyptians.
And the way that the Israelites were going to be saved from this judgment of God was what was called the Passover. And that's where they took a Passover sacrifice.
Fishel lamb, they kill that lamb and they painted the blood on the doorframes of their houses. And then when the angel of death when God's judgment came, those people were saved. They were saved from the judgment. And so the lamb was a substitute sacrifice. And the lamb died in place of the people. And those people were saved from the judgment of God when it came. This is the new. And then God is saying, I'm going to bring a new Passover, I'm going to bring a new Passover. And so whoops,
go back there. Let me just go back here.
And so this is the language that Jesus picks up on, Jesus speaks of himself as the Passover lamb. He says, while they were eating, Jesus took bread and gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, Take an eat, this is my body. Then he took the cup gave thanks and offered it to them saying, drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And so Jesus is celebrating the Passover with his disciples. And he identifies himself as the new Passover sacrifice. And this is what Christians continue to celebrate today, in what's called the Lord's Supper.
Now, not only does God promise, a new
partner, a new Exodus, he also promises A New Day of Atonement. Now, what was the Day of Atonement? Well, the Day of Atonement was the day when
when your sins would be taken away, and you'd be clean, so that you could come into God's presence, because I want to say that salvation ultimately is not about forgiveness. Salvation is not about ultimately about forgiveness, yes, forgiveness is part of it. But salvation is ultimately about coming into God's presence. It's coming into God's presence. And so for the Israelites, they had the temple, and in the temple, in the law of Moses, that was where the presence of God dwelt. And if you wanted to come into the temple, and before God's prisons, a sacrifice of atonement had to be made, so that you could be forgiven and washed, clean, and come into God's presence. Now, the the
sacrifice of atonement was done with a sacrificial lamb and a scapegoat. And the, in this case, you would put your hands on the lamb, you would confess your sins over it, and then it would die in your place, it would be your sins. And so it was a substitute sacrifice. And when Jesus dies on the cross in all of the Gospels, it has the temple curtain being torn into and the deck temple curtain was what separated you from God's presence. And it's saying that Jesus is the perfect act, an act of atonement. And so we see that the and then I've got his the quote from Ezekiel, so I will establish my covenant with you so as he was the Prophet before Jesus,
have established my covenant with you. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I make atonement for you, for all you have done.
And so we say that the prophets before Jesus are speaking about God's act of Salvation, that it's going to be a new Exodus is going to be a new Act of atonement. And I just want to read to us now from the prophet Isaiah, he's got a famous chapter here, we may not have time to read all of it. Now, let me just see how I'm going here. No. So we'll just read a couple of verses. And I encourage you to look this up. It's a whole chapter about a person who's separate who suffers on behalf of the sins of others. We could verse five, he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was laid upon him and by his wounds, we are healed.
We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned his to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of our soul in verse 12, for hiball, the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Here is this outstanding prophecy about one who in the future will bear the sins of others to bring them before God.
So that's why I think you should believe in the gospel message because it's, it's what the prophet said would happen. And when we look at what Islam says, with this diagram, we just basically don't find that message in nearly profits at all. And so I can't see any miss any reason from the earlier prophets to accept the message of salvation, its message, but I can see your reason for the Christian message. Now, the final point I want to look at, for why you should apply for why you should accept the Christian position is that there's no one like Jesus. And what I mean by this is, Jesus was seamless, for Christ died for sins once and for all the righteous for the unrighteous to
bring you to God. God
Him who had no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God, how is it that Jesus can be your own sins? Well, because he doesn't have any of his own. He didn't need forgiveness. Now this is different to Mohammed, Mohammed throughout the Quran is encouraged to confess his sins. And you can see there's a preheat Mohammed prayed, Oh my Lord, forgive my sins in my ignorance and my, my exceeding the limits boundaries of righteousness in all my deeds and what are what you know better than I Oh ALLAH forgive my mistakes that I do intentionally and out of ignorance, or with or without seriousness, I confess that all such mistakes are done by me, oh,
Allah forgive my sins of the past and of the future, which I did openly and and secretly. So why should you accept the Christian position because Jesus actually can save you, he doesn't have his own sin that he needs to deal with. So he can do with yours. Mohammed has his own sin that he needs to deal with, and so on. So he can't help you with yours.
So there's no one like Jesus. So to conclude, we've looked at an important question tonight. And what we've seen is that Islam has three different views of being saved. The result of this is that there's no real assurance as to which path you're on. And it's not the message of the prophets, but of one man, the Christian path is a clear path, one path of what God's done for us, it is the message of the fulfillment of all the prophets. And you can be sure where you stand with God because of what he has done for you. Thank you.
Okay, each of our speakers after their opening presentations, will now have an opportunity to respond to what the other has said. And those responses will be will be 10 minutes each Adnan first. Thank you.
Thank you, Samuel, for that presentation. are very passionate, very humble. presentation. Samuel is a very
This is the first time I met Samuel and he's a very soft person.
He doesn't come across like me, like I do. I have people tell me I'm I'm a very imposing figure. Sometimes my voice is raised, and people think I'm trying to shout at them. But it's nothing like that. This debate is in spirit of friendship and love and compassion for each other.
So coming back to the presentations, I was talking about Paul and James. Before I get to that, because this is my rebuttal period. I'm going to address some of the points Samuel raised in his presentation intercession. And the diagrams I will put in front of you of Islamic view on salvation. Actually, that diagram is made by Samuel, we don't actually accept it we don't believe in it is something Samuel himself made up. And this is how he understands Islamic view and salvation, which is incorrect. In reality, all scholars of Islam actually are agreed that once you repent to God, you turn to God you do
good deeds, and have a firm belief in God, you will have salvation. Now, how do we how do these different people attend salvation differently? They don't actually attain salvation differently. Rather, they have different statuses, martyrs, prophets, truthful ones, these are categories of people in Islam, those who are the highest
achievers rather, right, there could be those sinners who have not repented. And they have little Eman little faith in their hearts, they will they will also be rescued. So Samuel is conflating categories with different methodologies or different methods of salvation in Islam. Far from it, all of them attain salvation by the same means by turning to God by committing good deeds, doing good deeds, and attaining salvation through that. So that was a misunderstanding on your part, complexity, there is no complexity in Islamic salvation simply it's very simple. turn to God like the book of Ezekiel, in my presentation, if we go back to it, you will see what book of iziko states
in this regard this is it, this is the Islamic view on salvation very simple, no blood sacrifice, no shedding of blood on the cross, no killing of the sun, no confusion, note theories afterwards, the Christians have to come up with these theories. The
I mean, there are so many theories of atonement, we will go into that in due course, very quickly. So here,
you see iziko. Now, amazingly,
Samuel also quoted from iziko, if you remember, near the end, right. But for some reason, Christian scholars hardly refer to these passages where they view on salvation is directly challenged by the Bible itself. Here God is telling you via his ego
Repent, even if you have sinned, Repent, and you will have forgiveness and you will have nothing to worry about simple as that.
So Mohammed was a sinner rather, actually, Samuel again has a misconception about Prophet Mohammed. He was not a sinner, rather he was teaching sinners. That prayer. Samuel read was Mohammed teaching his companions how to,
you know, pray to God for forgiveness, not that he himself was a sinner, and he was praying himself rather, Mohammed, by example, was teaching his sinful companions, followers, we're all sinful. We're all sinners, we are all sinners, all humans are sinners. We make mistakes, we make errors, right? So Muhammad is teaching a bunch of sinners how to pray to God, right? For example, Muhammad was on print once praying, peace be upon him. So the law is so Lemmy was praying at night. And his wife said, O Messenger of God,
have you not been forgiven? You are guaranteed forgiveness, you are guaranteed salvation, you are the Messenger of God. He said, shall I not be a thankful servant to God? Shall I know. So this was his way of teaching his companions, how to be thankful to God. He didn't have to do any of this. He was he was guaranteed salvation, he was promised that he will be in Paradise, he has the pleasure of God. So this is something I wanted to raise. Going back to my presentation where I left, James versus Paul Martin Luther, was of the view that James and Paul can never be reconciled. It's impossible. Why? Because they're doing the same two different things. And there's a reason why
Christian scholars when it comes to redemption and salvation, hardly refer to the Synoptic tradition, the Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke. You know, why? Because these gospels go directly against
the view Christians have adopted in this current day and age and for last few centuries. This particular view, Samuel upholds is the penal substitution theory, we will talk about it in new course, it was pioneered or it was, you know, accomplished. During the Reformation period by Calvin and by Luther. Some people said, Luther in the second quote, if you see, hardly mentioned any of the Synoptic Gospels, he says In a word, St. John's gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians, and St. Peter's first epistle are the book books that show you Christ and teach you all that it is necessary and Salvatore, for you to know, even if you
were never to see, listen carefully, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, even if you will never to see or hear any other book or doctrine.
Basically, or the the works he has mentioned are enough. St. James's epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to the others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it. So James, why was James
a problem? As we see in the writings of James, in the Epistle of James, which is to be found in the Bible today as we speak right now, in the Epistle of James chapter two. This is what James has to say, What good is it my brothers and sisters? If you say you have faith, but do not have works? Can faith save you? And the worst 20 continues? Do you want to be shown you senseless person? Now this is another question Why is he using this language? You senseless person? scholars have speculated for centuries as to who James is talking about many things. He was talking to Paul directly. That faith apart from works is barren.
So James, in other words, is rebuking Paul for believing in what he believed in that faith alone in the crucifixion of Christ is enough for salvation. One doesn't have to do works. And this is why Martin Luther was of the view that it is impossible to reconcile James with Paul. And if anyone wants to reconcile them both, then I will let that person called me a fool and I will give my doctor's hat to him. This is how adamant Martin Luther was during the Reformation period. That's why he was of the view that the book of James with the book of Jude and some other writings should be thrown out of the Bible, because they are a problem for us. Okay, so now, another issue in the Bible
very quickly, I want to raise this point. Paul was of the view that the law is now dead. We don't need to practice the law as a curse. Christ died for our sins, Christ lifted
that responsibility towards law for us because he died in the cross. We don't have to follow the law anymore. His sacrifice alone is enough for us to attain salvation. But in the book of Acts when we read the same Bible, as we read today, in the book of Acts chapter 15, we see a dialogue
Between James and Paul Paul is Paul was insisting on converting the Gentiles. While the close disciples of Jesus who spent time with the by the way Paul never met Jesus. He didn't know Jesus while Jesus was alive. Paul allegedly had a vision on the road to Damascus. And he woke up to a Jesus he saw in his vision. And then Paul started to change everything Jesus had done. Everything Jesus, Jesus said, Follow the commandments. Follow the commandment of the book of Matthew, as we already talked about it, but Paul comes along, he goes, No, Jesus died for your sins. You don't need to follow the commandments. You don't need to follow the law. There is a direct
opposition between Paul and Jesus Christ when we look at Paul and Jesus carefully, and Jesus in the book of john chapter 14, verse 12, he clearly stated that if you love me, follow the commandments. If you love me, follow the commandments. Paul comes along, commandments are not no longer necessary. Thank you. commandments are not necessary anymore. Rather, you follow my view, which is that Jesus died on the cross. And that's it. That's enough. In chapter 21, of the book of Acts, we see that Paul was actually attacked by the Jews of Jerusalem for blaspheming against the law, to an extent that the matter was brought to James and James insisted that Paul follows the law. This is happening
after Jesus had disappeared. Jesus is gone, if Jesus has already paid for the sins, and we do not need to follow the law anymore. Why are the disciples still discussing law? I want Samuel to come back in just this point directly. Why is James, a close associate of Jesus still insisting on following the law and to an extent that he's telling Paul to go to the temple and sacrifice according to the law? Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks. Thank you for that. And then and a reply to the the points you made in your presentation there. I wanted to look, first of all at the claim that the there are many passages in the Bible which say, God simply says, repent. And and I'll forgive you. I want to say that when you go back and read those passages, they're actually not saying that, because they're speaking to people who are in a covenant. They're speaking to Israelites who are in a covenant. And what does repentance mean, to an Israelite, to an Israelite, what repentance means is, you go to the tabernacle or to the temple, and you offer up a sacrifice for the sin that you've done. So yes, God will forgive you if
you repent, but repentance has content. It's the same way if within Islam within Islam, repentance has content, it means do the five pillars. You don't just simply say I repent, and God will forgive me, it's I've got to repent, and repentance looks like something. And so the references that were up there where it says, God will forgive you if you repent or agree with those, but that's in the broader context of the relationship that God had with Israel. You did hopefully, make an exception to that by referring to the ninevites, the ninevites, in the book of Jonah, they are forgiven. God promises judgment on them. And they don't offer up blood sacrifice that they just they do repent.
But I want to say the difference between them the ninevites, and the Israelites, who were those other quotes you looked at was that the ninevites weren't going to come into the presence of God. They were forgiving in terms of God didn't judge them. But they weren't coming into God's presence because they were in Nineveh. They weren't in the temple in Israel. So they had a different type of repentance that theirs was simply I'm not going to destroy you.
But for the Israelites, its repentance with this sacrifice for sins of income into God's presence. So there are two different outcomes for those different events.
You mentioned, the sacrifice of a son as cosmic child abuse. I think you got to be a bit careful there because Abraham being commanded by Allah to sacrifice his son is also in the Quran. So it's something that we both have to address.
As Christians and Muslims, I don't see a problem for us there.
Now I'd like to look at zekiel 18, which is one of those examples. If you refer to a zekiel 18, a few times where it says that the soul who sins is the one who will die, and that he is responsible for his own deeds. But as I pointed out in chapter 16, this is in the context of atonement. And so it says there that
where are we, then I will establish my covenant with you. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I make atonement for you for all you have done. So again, those references in Ezekiel, they're not saying repent and don't make atonement, they're saying, repent and keep all my commands, which are making your time and I sort of say to that point enough, now, you were setting the, you make statements about the, the Synoptic Gospels and saying that they were different to, to john, and that there's a development now let's see if I can get my development thing here. I want to say that the Gospels do not develop, the Gospels do not develop. And if you look at the main themes of the
gospel, which you can see here, all of the main themes are throughout them. I know it's popular amongst liberal scholarship to say the Gospels develop. But when you actually actually look at what they're saying, they just say the same thing in slightly different ways. And they have all the identical themes. And and so that there is no development there. In the Gospels, Jesus is often talking about his sacrifice for sins in the synoptics. It's not just that he does in john, in Mark chapter 10, verse 45, he says, For the Son of Man came not to serve, but to serve, and to give his life. So the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many. Now that's in the synoptics, that he would, he's given himself as a ransom for many. And on the, on the Lord's Supper, which we've looked at already, Jesus said, This is my body, which is given for you, this is my blood, which is shed for you. And so the synoptics do have this idea. And as I said, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have the idea of the temple curtain being ripped, so that you can come into God's presence. So all synoptics have this,
this salvation theme, running all the way through them. And in fact, that probably the main way that we see Jesus, and the salvation theme is that people come to Jesus desperate, and he just goes around saving people all the time. So whenever people come to him, and they're desperate, he just saves them. And I say, if you're desperate, and you know that you can't save yourself, then come to him, because in the same way that Jesus healed people who came to him and asked for mercy from him, and he just gave it to them. That's what he will do for you. Now, in in contrast to that, you spoke about the the rich young ruler in Matthew chapter 19, who comes to Jesus, and says, What must I do
to be saved? Now, this man, is this sort of the exact opposite of everyone else you find in the gospels? in the gospels, it's always people saying, I'm desperate, please help me, these men come saying, I'm pretty good. Can you just tell me what, what I need to do so I can save myself? And Jesus says, we'll keep the law. Now the problem is, the guy can't keep the law. If you just keep reading it, people can't keep the law. In fact, you can't keep the law. If you think you can keep the law that I want to say, You're fooling yourself.
Don't go comparing yourself to somebody else. compare yourself to God's law, and you'll see that you can't keep it. Now I want to finish up by looking at the Apostle Paul. Well, so first of all, with James, you're saying that Luther rejected,
rejected James to some degree and said it shouldn't be in the canon. And that may well be the case. I want to say that Christians though love the Epistle of James, one of my favorite ones, I love James, we don't have a problem with it. Martin Luther may have, but I don't. And in fact, if you read
James chapter two, you need to read these things carefully. Because James uses his own language to describe the gospel. Let me read it to you. He says exactly the same thing as Paul. This is James chapter two, verse 10. He says, For whoever keeps the law, for sorry for whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. Now, what he's saying there is, if he did you think he can keep the law, you think he can keep it you think you don't need God's mercy? If you keep the law and stumble at one point, you're a law breaker. You see, James actually does teach exactly the same thing as Paul. Paul teaches that in Galatians, that exact same idea.
Yeah, they use slightly different words for James he talks about the law of mercy or that through mercy trampling over judgment, and he uses different language, but when you
Language, it's precisely the same content just expressed in a different way. Now regarding Paul,
Paul does, Paul, Paul's relationship to the law is twofold. What Paul is very clear about is that you cannot keep the law in order to save yourself. You cannot keep the law in order to save you. So he's very clear on that. And honestly, that's not just Paul. That's all the prophets, the Old Testament prophets are saying, hey, Israelites, you can't keep the law. I need to give you my spirit, I need to help you, I need to change you wanting to resurrect you, because you can't obey me, you keep turning away like we all do. And that's all Paul saying. He's saying, if you think you can say, God, look at me, I've kept the laws, you say you should accept me. He's saying, Forget it.
Forget it. If that's not the case, is not going to work. So on one hand, Paul will say, you know, Christ has abolished the law. Right, because you do not approach God through keeping the law. But on the other hand, Paul will say, we uphold the law, we, we follow the law, we see how it's fulfilled, and how it leads us to walk in God's ways. And so Paul, you know, in one letter, say, the letter of the Ephesians, Paul will, in the first part, talk about how Christ has abolished the law as a way of coming before God. But in the second part of the letter, he's quoting the law and saying, this is how you got to live.
It's just you don't live that way. In order to approach God, we only come before God based on his mercy to us in Christ on what Christ has done. And so there's a discontinuity with the Old Testament law, but also a continuity. And it The difference is there. The difference is Jesus, because Jesus was the one who truly kept the law. He's the one who truly kept the law and is worthy to come into God's presence on our behalf. Jesus is that that sinless one who can offer his life up as a sacrifice for sin, in conformity with the Old Testament sacrifices so that our sins can be paid for? And that we can know exactly where we stand before God? Thank you.
Okay, so that that session of 10 minute rebuttals has now concluded and before our question and answer time begins, each of our speakers is just going to have five minutes now to respond to anything to which they would like to respond to. So I'm going to invite Adnan up for his five minutes. Thank you.
Thank you, Samuel, again, for that presentation. Very quickly. I want to address on the point Samuel raised ninevites, if God can do it for ninevites, Why can I not do for humanity?
the Gentiles are not Jews. Jesus died on the cross for humanity, as is clearly claimed in the epistles of Paul. So if God can do it for ninevites ninevites, can simply turn to God and say, God, forgive us, and God simply forgives them. Why does God need to do this new drama where He sends his own son, who is God, fully God and fully man, and then kill him on the cross? Do that bloody exercise, and then leave confusion for the future generations? The Christians were confused for over 1000 years.
For five centuries, Queens Christians were holding councils to solve these problems. Who is God? What is God? Is Jesus God is a generate in generate is a man is a fully man is a fully God is both What is he?
Did he die on the cross for our sins?
Or is there another way to attain salvation? Christians divided into 1000s? I mean,
maybe hundreds of groups in the first three centuries and later on these denominations grew in numbers and they're still growing To this day,
because of the confusion found in the text of the Bible. Now with regards to Abraham, Abraham did not actually kill his son. This was a vision he was shown. And God saved him because God himself in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 1231, forbids human sacrifice. Listen carefully, God the same God forbids human sacrifice. In Deuteronomy 1231 also kings 1717. The same God forbids human sacrifice and then what he does, he kills his own son who is fully God fully man doesn't make sense. There are so many problems with this theory that one can simply not fully address it in in such a short span of time, but I will go back to Paul and James
Samuel, respectively.
did not respond to my points on James, and Paul, and they dispute in the book of Acts, if James is a clear disciple, or or a close disciple of Jesus Christ, which he was, because of his book in the Bible, then why is he telling Paul to go to the temple and sacrifice when the assumption is that all of them have the same belief? Right, James and Paul should know that Jesus died, the curse of the law has been lifted, we don't have to follow the law. But when Paul is attacked, and the matter is brought to James, in chapter 21, of the book of Acts, read it carefully, ladies and gentlemen, and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Jesus has already died, and he has disappeared, and he
has lifted the curse of law. But James and Paul are still talking about the law. And James tells Paul to go to the temple and sacrifice according to the law. What is going on? What games are Paul and James playing? It doesn't make sense. It simply doesn't make sense. Obviously, they had different view on salvation. James was on the side of Jesus, Jesus is simply saying, If you love me, follow the commandments. Samuel thinks that it is impossible to follow the commandments fully. Jesus should have known that better.
He should have known better.
In fact, some will believe that Jesus God walking on Earth, God in flesh, he should have known better, he should have told his followers, law is impossible for you. Don't follow it. I will die soon on the cross. And the curse will be lifted, chill, as I say, in the street language.
Right. But Jesus didn't he didn't do that. Rather, he confused his disciples If he did, if he did it. It is it is actually Paul who came afterwards. So our vision never met Jesus. never walked with Him, talked with him ate with him, never. This new person comes along, and he starts to change everything. And what did the Christians do later on? They ignore Jesus, His commandments, and they start following Paul. Paul is the man Jesus the following. So Christians are falling today. This is why Martin Luther was so adamant. This is you. This is where you find, find real Jesus in the writings of Paul, and john and Peter, you don't find the real Jesus in the Synoptic tradition, which
is the earliest tradition, arguably. So my time is nearly up. And there's a lot more I had to say about Paul and sin, and the nature of sin and salvation. Hopefully, we can cover that in q&a. Thank you so much listening to both of us, we really appreciate your presence. And please do not take any of our words, as an offense, or as an insult. Rather, our purpose is to share our ideas in a friendly, you know,
setting and we don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings. Thank you so much.
Okay, so I will respond to your 10 minute reply. Now. I want to say that the diagram that I put up, I think is valid, I think is valid, because the references I gave paint that picture. And so I know you're saying that my diagram did not represent what Muslims believe. But I, I'm quoting from the Quran and the Hadith. And I think that that's the picture that we get off the grave. And those things happening. I mean, you could say that my references weren't good. And maybe you could show that.
Now, you also mentioned that Mohammed did not seem we'll have there plenty of references. Let me just get them up here where I'd say he, the scriptures are saying that he does, and I'll just put them up here for people.
It talks about Mohammed confessing his own sins and this and the sins of others. I don't think he's just an example here. I think it's actually saying that this is what he did. And so my point was that Mohammed needed forgiveness. Jesus doesn't And so Jesus is in a better position to save you.
Now, again, coming back to the ninevites, there is a difference between the ninevites and what is spoken about elsewhere. Because for the ninevites, they did not come into the presence of God. They were in Assyria. And if they wanted to come into God's prisons, then they would need to go to the temple. And they would need to offer up a sacrifice of atonement to come into God's presence. That's just how it worked. The fact that they weren't coming in
Cross they weren't coming into God's presence meant that they didn't have to do those things, and God just
didn't judge them at that time. So there is a difference. And this is where I think the difference here is also that
Islam doesn't have temple theology in the presence of God, in the Torah prophet Samson gospel is that God comes to us, God made us and God comes to us. But by the time of Mohammed, the tap, the temple had been destroyed for 500 years. And so that temple theology is no longer being discussed. It's not in the Quran. And so when in Islam, God's presence is in paradise. And so in Christianity and the Torah, Prophet, Psalms, and gospel, God comes to us, in Islam, we're on a journey to God. And so it's a different direction. And so you need to understand that when you think about the ninevites, because we're talking about God's presence here on Earth, and that you knew to sacrifice
to come into His presence. Now, in terms of the the Christians being in confusion, and this is sort of a way you can say, you know, there are all these different Christian groups, and they're discussing these issues for centuries. Now they did, they did discuss issues for centuries. But just because you
discuss and debate points, it doesn't mean they're false. Right, I want to say that some of the best moments in science and in human history have come about from rigorous debate over what was true. And in fact, you got to be careful because Islam has had plenty of debates itself in the early centuries with the Morteza lights. And the, I guess you could say, the developing orthodox Muslims, they debated rigorously over what talpade is, they debated rigorously over God's sovereignty and human responsibility. There's a whole range of issues. If you go and study early Islamic theology, you'll see they argued, for centuries over those issues. I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a
problem with that, because that's just what happens. People need that people get the scriptures, and they're going to work out what it means. And people have different views. And over time, we sharpen each other up in dialogue, which hopefully we're doing today. So I don't think it's fair to use confusion as as an adequate term, it means that they're discussing these ideas and try to work it out in their context, in that case, which was the Greco Roman world. Now, again, just finishing up with Paul,
why did Paul in the book of Acts go and offer up sacrifices once because he was free to this has got to do this has got to do with the fact that with the coming of Jesus, we now have a freedom. We have to do everything in order to earn our salvation before God. And so there are some matters in which we're free to wait this or not to wait this, we're free to do certain things. And in case of those that sacrifice, Paul was still free to go to the temple to do it. But he wasn't doing it as I am offering this up as a sacrifice for my sins. It was something that he had the freedom to do with any existing thing that God had instituted.
And let me say,
right, now then you also mentioned that Christians are following Paul. Now, that's simply not true. Paul is only about 7% of the Bible, the writings of Paul's only 7% of the Bible, Christians read and follow the Torah, the law of Moses, the Psalms of David, all the books of the prophets, the gospel, we actually believe and read all of the prophets. When you become a Christian, you have to read all of the prophets, not just one, man, you got to read all of them. It's hard work. So we got to come to a church to hopefully get some good teaching. But but but that's what we do. We don't just follow Paul, we follow all of the prophets.
Okay, ladies, gentlemen, we're gonna get going with our question and answer time now. And here's, here's how it's gonna work. Basically, we've got 25 minutes allotted for this time. And what we've agreed with the speakers is that we're going to take approximately three, maybe four questions each depending on time. And what's going to happen is we're going to have one question for admin, one question for Samuel, one for admin and one for Samuel. And we'll work it that way round. And then each of these speakers will have three minutes to answer the question, and there won't be a rebuttal from the other speaker. Okay. I would kindly ask that if you have a question, you have actually
articulated a question. And it's not just something that you would like to add to the debate and you don't just give a couple of minutes of making your own points that you feel were left out. That is not the purpose of this time. This is for genuine questions. And so that's how we're going to go Adnan spoke first. So we'll have the first question for him as anybody got a question that they would like to ask Adnan.
Yes.
First one. Okay, thank you.
Okay, you can. Okay. Thank you very much for that question. Very good question. To summarize the question,
our sister asked this question that.
Do Muslims believe that faith alone can save because when you are eventually going to be eventually going to be forgiven? Then obviously it's it is faith that is saving. And then she read a verse from Isaiah. I'm assuming as if 53. Right. Is it from Isaiah 6464? Six. Okay. So my response to this question is that it is faith that safe, no doubt, but faith constitutes actions. In Islam, our understanding of faith is like Jesus is understanding like the understanding of Moses and Abraham and James, unlike Paul, in Islam, we believe that faith definitely constitutes works without works. Faith is not no faith, it is not a faith, it is just an idea in your mind, that you have this
conviction that something is true, but you're not actually demonstrating physically how you actually believe in that conviction, right? For example, if you believe charity is virtuous, if you don't indulge in charity, that, you know, your thought actually means nothing. So this is what I Islamic view is. Now those who will be saved later on after they have paid for the crimes is because of this idea, because they failed to do good enough works. And for that reason, and they did not repent. There are two issues. Two issues here. Firstly, they were not good workers. Okay, they were not good believers. They were believers, but they were bad believers, who committed sins and did not do many
good deeds. So they will eventually end up in Hellfire for and they could be committing number of crimes right. Now, if they did not repent for those crimes, then they will be punished for those crimes. That's God's justice. That's retribution. Right? God will punish the guilty. I don't believe Jesus can simply free Hitler by simply dying on the cross. I don't believe Ganga Khan will simply be, you know, let free on the Day of Judgment just because, or maybe one of the children of Genghis Khan, you know, some of them, Mongols became Christians. So if one of the Mongols cons became Christian, and he's still killing hundreds of 1000s of people around the world, and on the Day of
Judgment, he just stands there and say, okay, Jesus died for my sins. I'm scot free. It doesn't work like that. I know, Christian understanding is like, not as crude as that. I do understand that. Christians do understand these things. Are you timing it? Sorry? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So Christians do understand this issue of salvation and salvation to the cross differently. Because I do understand the Christians believe that if you believe in the cross, then you will do the works of the cross cross, you will be a good person, you will not sin. Right. But in the real world, we know that doesn't happen. And that's a huge problem. I can read, I can read passages from Paul where he says
that once you have received grace, in the book of Hebrews, chapter six is there. Once you have received grace, you have believed in the spirit, you have all have all these good things and you fall away by committing sin, then there is no return. It is impossible for you to be reconciled with God. That's, that's simply you're telling people that you finished if you send you finished? So this is a very important point. You know, I hope I answered your question. Islamic view is very simple, straightforward. Okay. Thank you.
Okay, so we'll have our first question for Samuel. Now, Would anyone like to ask Samuel a question?
Yes.
Okay, for the sake of the recording, if God is both loving, and just how is it that he can deal with our sin in both a loving and adjust way?
Well, in many ways that gets to the heart of what the gospel message is that with the death of Jesus, God is both loving and just in that when Jesus dies on the cross, it is God's love to save you.
But it's also His justice being fulfilled. Because the Bible is clear that sin deserves death. If you rebel against God, the punishment is death. And so how do you forgive? How does God who is merciful and just how do those two go together? And so the answer of the cross is, well, they go together perfectly at the cross because at the cross, God is dealing with our sins himself, so the sins are dealt with himself.
is offering us forgiveness and justice.
Okay, next question for Adnan.
Okay, in Islam, is there a theodicy in relation to God's justice?
Okay, yes, there is theocracy in Islam. And if you read the works of Samia, one of medieval scholars who was a great scholar who was alive in the 13th century, in fact, there's a book written by a scholar from the University of Nottingham. His name is john Hoover, who has written
a book on the Odyssey of Tamia. Why I mentioned about me is that his view is very comprehensive on Islamic theocracy is it's a it's a vast topic, and we simply cannot address it in in three minutes. But I will very quickly raise some points, that the problem of evil in this world and and suffering is directly linked to the wisdom of God. God knows why things happen in this world. Because he knows the plan, he knows what's going to come in the future. Right? We see what we see. Basically, we only see what we are able to see, but God His vision is far,
far bigger than humans. So to put it in, not in a nutshell, gods,
you know, wisdom is behind all the happenings in this world, or in the universe, for that matter. So it is God's wisdom, based upon God's wisdom, and what he wants to do, what his plan is for the future. This is why we see suffering and suffering in this world and in the hereafter. So God is better aware of those who deserve repentance, those who deserve forgiveness those who do not, for example, there will be people who will be in Hellfire forever, they will last in Hellfire forever, they will never come up. Okay. And one of those people could be easily people who are mass murderers, people who are committing atrocities, atrocities on a massive scale people, you know,
depending on crimes, people will pay for those crimes. It's not as simple as someone dying for your sins on the cross, and then you get go scot free. Okay, and some of the points raised by Samuel is a very interesting one. You cannot kill someone innocent. For the guilty. Rather, in the Bible. It is clearly stated in the book of Proverbs, that it is the guilty who is killed for the righteous, not the other way around. Okay. So this idea of redemption through the cross is unbiblical is non biblical, okay, it goes against the Bible on a number of different levels, we can, we cannot possibly address all those points in a short setting like this. For that you will have to go and
read the books of theologians from both sides, Christian theologians and Muslim theologians and see where, you know, one can see the reality, like broad daylight. Thank you.
Okay, second question for Samuel.
Yes. So the question is, if somebody is conscious that they have committed some of the terrible crimes and sins that Adam was just talking about, is it not possible for someone who's so totally weighed down in their conscience by what they've done for them to be forgiven? Why don't we give Samuel three minutes, and then you can have the opportunity to respond as well. Okay.
One of the things that the gospel promises us is a, a clear conscience, a clear conscience before God.
And if you have done a serious crime that you shouldn't have done,
then before God, you can be forgiven. That is that is the promise.
And to us, that may sound like how can you do that? That's outrageous, but
that's what God's doing for us in Jesus, Jesus, sacrifice on the crisis of the divine Son of God is that of it is of infinite worth.
And it will pay for your sin so that you can be clear before God
and you can be saved. So yes, you can and even those horrendous figures in history.
If, if it's hypothetical, isn't it, but
so if you're a pedophile or something, is there forgiveness for that? There are people that are despised in our community today.
In Jesus day, there were people who were despised.
And when they repented and came to him and sought his help, he forgave them. He brought salvation to them and people were scandalized by this. They said, How can you do that? It should just be for me. It shouldn't be for others. But Jesus is saying
I'm coming to do something so remarkable that it's even going to bring forgiveness to those who you think don't deserve it.
We have a response to that question in the Quran, which is very direct. A God says in the Quran as we believe as Muslims, that those of you who have transgressed against their souls.
In other words, you have committed sins, do not despair from the mercy of God. He forgives sins, collectively, so long as you repent, right? So it's a clear verse in the Quran, no matter how big your sins are, there are a number of ways to handle your sins or treat your sins. Number one, if you have sinned, and only you know about your sin, you can simply turn to God and seek repentance, seek forgiveness, you will be completely forgiven. That's a promise of God, so long as you do not return to it, and you stop it and you are remorseful about it. These are the three three conditions of repentance than Islam. Right, and they are based upon the prophetic tradition, you stop it, you do
not return to it, and you are remorseful about it. Right. Now, in the case where you have been caught, for example, you have committed a sin, you have committed a murder you have raped someone, God forbid something like that you've been caught, you will be punished in this world, according to the law, for that crime. But once you have been caught, it is now between you and God, you will be punished for your crime because you have wronged someone. But now when you are alone in that cell, where you are being kept, due to the punishment in this world, you can repent to God again that God I am sorry, I did this, I will never go back to it. Please forgive me. You know, you will be
forgiven. Definitely you will pay for your crime in this world, but you will not be punished in the hereafter. The third scenario is that you have committed a crime you have been caught. You have paid for your crime in this world. And if you have not repented, you will be punished in the hereafter as well. And eventually, if you are a believer, you will be taken out of hellfire. This is how simple the Islamic view is.
Okay, well, we've got until nine o'clock for this q&a. So we do have time for one more question perhaps for both Samuel and Adnan. Let me remind you, this is a unique opportunity. One more question. Who would like to ask Samuel the question? Oh, there's two. Okay.
Okay, nine o'clock is 10 minutes away? Yes, roughly. Yeah. So yeah.
Thank you for that question.
This is exactly why I'm here today, to test our ideas to possibly debunk debunk Islam or debunk the Christian view on salvation, not Christianity, I'm not interested in debunking anyone or anything. I'm only here to exchange ideas. The purpose of these dialogues and debates is to test your ideas and see how much water they actually hold. With regards to things against Islam, of course, my my life is about this. This is what I deal with every on every single
on a daily basis. With regards to the gospel of john before Abraham was I am. If you want to talk about the that verse we can appoint in the time and discuss about it. I know of the verse I know, the commentaries on it, I know what it means. My understanding and the Christian understanding, I understand the Christian understanding as well.
So we can go on on we can go on and on and on about other verses in the Bible. And there are other claims against Islam or the Quran.
We cannot possibly cover every single thing, every single idea in a short sitting like this. For that we will have to have other debates like we are having two more debates myself and Samuel, having two more debates, one is on the Trinity and tawheed. And the other one is was Christ crucified, very interesting debates, and you are invited or you are requested to attend if you can. Just to come back to that question. What was your question? Because I think you partially answered was the question. If the scriptures by which I mean the Bible, the New Testament is unreliable? And then why why Adnan? Would you quote it as part of your presentation? If it's untrustworthy? Was that
what you were getting at? Yeah, very good question. I firmly believe now this, let me clarify my position on the Bible. I firmly believe there is definitely truth in the Bible, in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, I'm a firm believer, and every Muslim will understand his theology and his literature and his, his his.
His scripture will tell you exactly the same thing. Our view on the Bible is that there is definitely truth in there. Having said that, we also believe that there is definitely definitely falsehood in there. It is a mixture of falsehood and truth. Okay. And I'm not telling you this, actually, this is not my view. This is the view of the Christian scholars, conservative scholars, as well as liberal scholars. Conservative scholars are telling you certain passages passages of the gospel of john for example, were not written by john. They were
Written by someone else later on it was added into the Bible, the famous Baraka adultery. The Gospel of john chapter seven, verse 53, to 811, this entire chunk, the story of the adulterous who was brought to Jesus Christ to be stoned. The story cannot be found in the earlier manuscripts and scholars, conservative as well as liberal scholars, they believe that this passage simply doesn't belong to the gospel of john, it was added later on. And there are many more examples. So the reliability question ism is not a Muslim objection. It is actually a well known fact among all scholars.
Okay, is there another question for Samuel? And the floor? Yes, sir.
Okay, so the question is regarding the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and Paul, and the question is, why would Jesus teach one thing, and then God said, Paul, to teach something which seems contradictory?
Well, I'd simply say that that scenario doesn't exist. That what Paul and
and what Paul and Jesus teach are exactly the same thing. Paul actually passes on Jesus teaching. So if you read the book of one, if you read some of Paul's letters, he often just quotes what Jesus said. And so this idea that Paul's over here, and Jesus is over here, it's simply not true. Jesus was continuing the message of the prophets before Jesus before him. And the message was, you cannot keep the law, you failed to keep the law, and God's going to do something, God's going to make something new, he's going to make atonement for you. He's going to change your heart, he's going to bring about a new Exodus. And so the idea that Jesus is simply saying Koop, the law, that none of
the prophets are saying that,
right, because you can't do it, you cannot keep the law. I mean, I don't know how much I need to say this, but you can't keep the law. And the history of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament shows this time and time again, in the book of Joshua, when the Israelites say, we will keep the law of God, that Joshua says to them, you can't do it, you can't do it. So
the idea that Jesus is saying this, and Paul saying that is simply not true. They're both saying the same thing. And all I can say is that you've just got to go and look at the scriptures to see this. And I'd encourage you to look at it. But Paul and Jesus are saying the same things. And as I said, Paul, is only about six or 7%. of the Bible. The rest of the Bible is made up of the law of Moses, the books of the prophets, the Psalms is made up of a whole, like posing a small amount, and Christians read all of the prophets, not just one man like in Islam. In Islam, it's one man who tells you what to believe about everybody else. In Christianity, it's all the books of the prophets,
and you got to go and read them and see what they say. And that's what I'd encourage you to read. And if you're a Muslim, he asked a Christian and he'll give you the books of the prophets.
Okay.
Yeah, we've got another six minutes actually. So if there is one other question, perhaps for Adnan, and then one more for Samuel, and then we'll move on to our concluding statements, Harriet for Adnan.
Okay, the question is regarding a illustration, or a diagram that Samuel used in his presentation about the three different paths in which one could be saved in Islam, Adnan dismissed it as untrue in his presentation. Why did you do that? I gave my reasons as to why I rejected that particular diagram. Because one can read our scripture and understand our scripture in a way and come out completely disagreeing with us, right? We understand a scripture in the light of the prophetic tradition, how prophet explained the Scripture, and then his companions, his disciples who were nearly 100,000 people, we know 10,000 of them by name. So this tradition is very thoroughly
preserved, right? So we understand the tradition in that way in that light. But if someone comes along and reads the Scripture and builds a diagram, or couple of diagrams, or maybe 50 diagrams, those diagrams can possibly serve Samuel or someone else. But that doesn't mean we believe in that. So we believe in a very simple way to attain salvation, which is to repent to God, turn to God, do as many good deeds as you can possibly do, and then hope in God's mercy He will forgive you. And salvation is guaranteed to those who believe number one, number two and do right is deeds, salvation is guaranteed to those guaranteed and that's Muslims. Basically, we believe in that anyone who
doesn't believe in God and doesn't do righteous deeds, salvation is not for them. Simple as that and this was the Christian view is with regards to very quickly do I have no I think rebuttals normally but for the in the, in the, but there's something I wanted to quickly point out with regards to
Paul and Jesus, you know,
I believe when you look at what Jesus is saying in the New Testament, it's very clear that he said follow the commandments. That is the law. Is this a rebuttal? Yeah, this is what I was taught. I think we shouldn't. We should.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, one last question for for Samuel. Yes.
Okay, so is the question about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and how that is taught in john 316? Yep.
Thank you. So
the idea that the the teaching of the Son of God is not a Christian idea. And people need to understand that the idea of the Son of God is actually the message of all of the prophets. So the nation of Israel was called the Son of God, and God was their father. And he dwelt amongst them by His Spirit. The King of Israel, the Messiah, was also called the Son of God. So this is in to Samuel chapter seven, where it talks about God's covenant with King David. And he says, to David, he says, David, your son, I will be his father, and he will be my son. And so the Son of God is in the prophets, and God is, is is the Father. In Psalm chapter two in the Psalms, it speaks about God as
Father and the Messiah King, as the Son of God. And so this is the first point I want to bring up that whatever the Son of God means, it's not a Christian idea. It's actually the message of all the prophets, the fatherhood, and the Son of God goes throughout all of the prophets. It doesn't appear it that, you know, it's not at the Council of Nicea, that it begins. It's not that the Apostle Paul invented, it's it's, it's all the way through, it's all the prophets. Now, it finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. Absolutely. He's the true son, the true one who represents the Father. And he is that one who gives his life on our behalf.
Now, why should Muslims believe in the Son of God, I'd say they need to go and look at what the prophets teach about the Son of God, because the Quran, in the Quran, there is no son of god teaching. In fact, God is not your father, and there is no son of God. And so that's a significant part of the message of the prophets that the Quran doesn't have. And you really need to have that foundation of the fatherhood and the Son of God, going throughout all the prophets in order to understand what it means for Jesus to be the true son. But the Bible's message is that he fulfills the prophets. He is the true son, and he's giving his life for your sins. Just leave it there.
Thank you very much. Nine o'clock. Exactly. Okay, so now we're going to move into the concluding statements. Were due to finish at half past nine. So we should be well on time here. And we're going to begin with Adnan, who is going to give us his four minutes concluding speech. Thank you.
Stop my time.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for attending the debate today. It was a pleasure having you listen to us and what we have to say and hopefully you will take away a lot of information to internalize this evening. I want to come back to our discussion. Again, I want to insist that Paul and Jesus are two different entities, completely different teachers, teaching different things to different people. Paul, went to the Gentiles, despite the opposition of the Jerusalem church, the leader in Jerusalem was James James, who is also known as the brother of Christ, who spent a lot of time with Jesus Christ. In fact, he was the leader of the Jerusalem church, he was the leader of the
affairs of the flock of Jesus Christ when He disappeared. James is directly against Paul, in teaching that the law is necessary. If you believe in God, and do not follow his law than your faith is in vain. Your faith is void isn't this null and void. Paul, on the other hand, is saying Jesus died for our sins on the cross. And that's enough. This is how simple it is. And for this reason, a lot of the Christian scholars later on, they had to come up with theories to justify atonement. atonement is simply that Jesus died for the sins of the world on the cross and He atoned for the sins of humanity, but to suffer substantiate to justify this theory. Many Christian scholars later
on had to come up with theories to explain it. For example, one of the theories was
ransom theory, which was upheld for over 1000 years in the Christian world.
ransom theory was basically simply that the devil has power over humanity and to take away that power, God has to kill his son to give a ransom to the devil. And God was actually in fact, deceiving the devil because the devil couldn't keep the sun to himself rather, the sun escaped back to God. This is what we call the ransom theory, it was upheld by the Christian scholars up to the year 1000. Okay, St. Augustine is one of those people who, who was one of the proponents of this theory and many more theories, there is a Christus Victor theory of atonement, and there is a satisfaction theory of atonement, which was put forward by St. Anselm. And that theory was later on,
developed further by reformers like Calvin and Martin Luther. And that's the theory. Samuel believes in today, he is a believer of the theory of penal substitution. And in fact, this penal substitution theory is heavily governed by Christian scholars to this day, it doesn't make sense it is a very unjust theory in which God simply takes his son who is innocent, and kills the son to protect the to protect the guilty. So here, an innocent person is taken to free the guilty. And the question one asks is, how is this just it's like, Tom, not this time.
I'm giving an example. Let's listen, David, for example, someone called David, he commits a crime against me. And there is a friend I have called Michael and I, instead of punishing David, I take Michael by the hand and chop his head off. Does that make sense? It doesn't make sense. That's injustice, to put it in simple terms. Likewise, how can you punish or have an a finite punishment for finite crimes in finite number of humans, because according to the Bible, Jesus died for humanity. So this brings a lot of problems. His theory is a highly problematic theory. My time is really up. Thank you very much for listening to us tonight. I hope we didn't.
Again, to emphasize the point, hurt anyone's feelings. This was an exercise to share our love and compassion with each other. Thank you so much for listening, we'll handle a lot of anatomy.
Well, again, I wish to echo and Nance comments there of thanking you for coming this evening. And for wanting to think about this question, because we live in a world where religion is getting pushed to the side. But for those of us who do feel God, and do see God as our our Creator and our judge, then the question of salvation is a significant one. And it's one that I hope, tonight, you're a little clearer on both sides as to how we how we understand that. But again, I want to say this is an important question.
Tonight, just to summarize my talk, I showed how Islam has three different paths of being saved. Now, I'm not convinced that at Nan said, Why my diagram was wrong. Because I tried to support it with the the references in the way and that seems to me how it fits. So I'll let you make up your own mind there. But it seems to me that there are those paths of going straight to paradise as a martyr, into the grave, and then in into paradise, or via Hill. And it seems to me there are three ways. This means that you don't have as a Muslim and assurance as to which path you're on. You may not know which one, even though in the end you may get through you still may be in hell. And as I
pointed out, this understanding of salvation is not the message of the prophets, but of one main, it's this message that comes from Muhammad from one man, I showed that Christianity is a has one simple path, that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus is what God has done for us. There may well be different passages as we try to save ourselves. But when God saves us, there is just one way. And that's what Jesus has done for us. We looked at the message of the prophets, we looked at the prophets before Jesus, and we saw how they are very clear that God has promised a new Exodus, a new
act of God to save his people from sin. We saw how the prophets before Jesus said God was going to have a day of atonement, A New Day of Atonement that he himself would do. There is no indication from the prophets before Jesus that we that we're just going to keep following the law.
Following the law in the Old Testament just bought wrath and judgment on people. And I think if we look at our own behavior, we see that we fail, and we can't keep the law. If we look at the history of Israel in the Bible, we say they couldn't keep the law. If we look at those periods of Christian history, when Christians tried to keep the law, we said that they failed to do it. And when we look at Islamic history, we see that the Islamic societies have failed to keep even their version of God's law. And they're always arguing as to who's keeping it the best, because we don't keep it. What we simply don't keep God's laws. And so this is why God has done something to save us. This is
why we need God to save us. We This is what God has done for us in Jesus. He has sent Jesus to be that sacrifice for sin, to make atonement for our sins so that we can come before him pure and spotless, and confidence because we're trusting in what he has done alone. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much to both of our speakers. That concludes our evening this evening. And just before a few very brief notices, why don't we once again show our appreciation to our speakers