Christians: Questions from Muslims

[Spiritus Naturae]

Lately I have been inundated by rather aggressive Muslims on Pal Talk who insist Christianity is a lie. One site I was directed to contained the following:

www.jesus-or-allah.com

"Sacrifice = Love ?


Dear Christians,


I have read and been told;


"Jesus dying on the cross is a demonstration of how much God loves us. God wants us to see that, by sacrificing Jesus on the cross, it is a demonstration of His love."


This has been a puzzle to me and I would sincerely like to ask you "how"?


How does allowing someone to die a demonstration of love?


If I am not mistaken, didn't Jesus cry and beg to be saved according to the Bible.


"About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" {Matthew 27:46}


If I had the power to save someone who was bleeding, crying, praying and begging to me to save him or her, I would save them. Not to save them would prove I was heartless, to save them would show I have Mercy, let alone love.


Not saving Jesus only demonstrates God does not listen to our prayers, does not have mercy, not even to his prophet according to the Bible.


Not to mention discrediting his prophethood to millions of Jews past present and future.


Please be logical in your explanation and kindly keep in mind that God is All Powerful and does not need "blood" to forgive sins.


One last question to consider in your reply, if Jesus's intention was to be a sacrifice, why would he "Beg" and "Pray" to God to be saved, and if your answer is that Jesus had a moment of weakness, than why say Jesus is 1/3 God, seeing many Christians say "Jesus is God in human form", because Jesus had the power to heal and raise people from the dead and walk on water, why then is Jesus at this moment helpless and powerless and most of all, not wanting to be sacrificed?


Wouldn't the point of love from God be to have peace, wouldn't there be peace between the Jews and the Christians, past present and future be a reality if Jesus was saved from the cross as clarified in the Koran??


Did you know that most of the original Muslims were Christians and Jews, who then searched, asked, and discovered peace and truth in Islam??


My concern is sincere, I would like to know the logic behind the thinking Sacrafice=Love.


If I were in a room full of people and there was one person singled out to be sacrificed so all the other people in the room could be saved, wouldn't the loving thing be not sacrifice at all, understand that if your sin is as large as a mountain, God Created the Mountains and can remove them as well.


If your sin is as deep as the Sea, God Created All the Seas in this world and the Universe and can remove them too, God loves and saved Jesus.

So let's take a shot at addressing this person's "sincere concern" in regards to Christ's sacrifice. I've been reading some apologetics literature, dealing with people of differing faiths and explaining why and what we as Christ's followers believe and they have helped a bit, but Muslims seem a bit more aggressive then dealing with a Buddhist or Hindu (my only experiences in dealing with differing faiths) and could use any and all insight from others who have dealt with those of the Islamic faith.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[Sparko]

quick response:

Jesus DID volunteer to be sacrificed. Right before the cross he said

Luke 22 15And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."
17After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. 18For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
19And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
20In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. But that doesn't mean it was EASY!
He suffered on the cross. And the Father had to forsake him for a moment in order to put the judgement of our sins on Jesus. This was the first time ever that the Son was separated from the Father and he cried out his anguish. "Why have you forsaken me?" - yet he knew the answer to that. The answer is that Jesus sacrificed himself for US, each and every one of us.

Why did the Father let Jesus die on the cross? because of his love. His lover for US! Why did Jesus volunteer for this sacrifice? same answer, his love for US!

Our not having to suffer for eternity was worth Jesus suffering for a moment on the cross. And dying.


Jesus' own words, just before his sacrifice:

John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

We are Jesus' Friends! He loved us that much.

But his death was not the end. He did not remain dead. but rose back to life on the third day to prove he has defeated death for all of us.

[Spiritus Naturae]

Check this out...I sign on to PalTalk to see whats shakin' and one of my Muslim "admirers" had left this IM for me to recieve when I sign on:

"In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful". Peace be upon those who follow the Guidance. After this, Verily I am a Sincerely advicer to you; I am calling and inviting you to the happiness of this life and in the life of herafter. Embrace ISLAM. Embrace Islam that you will find a true peace and Allah will give you a double reward. If you reject then on you shall rest the sin of your subjects and those who you misguides. Quran 3:64 "O People of the Book (Jews and Christians): Come to a word that is just between us and you, that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partners with Him, and that none of us shall take others as lords besides Allah. Then, if they turn away, say: "Bear witness that we are Muslims."

I guess he really does care...

[Sparko]

Wow! It is like an Islamic chain letter. If you accept this you will get a double reward. If you refuse this, you will have bad luck, like going to hell.

[Spiritus Naturae]

Very good analogy, Sparko...yes he is determined that we Christians knowingly lie and decieve well intentioned Muslims into following Christ, and that Allah will make us pay for it in the afterlife.

[Jude3b]

Jesus Christ said "Not my will - but thy will be done" - He never begged to not proceed with the plan of God to redeem the Human race. He willingly went to the cross for you and me and whole human race. All the whosoever wills - that accept Him and His perfect sacrifice on their behalf are his children and will go to heaven.

Muslims like every other "religious" person on planet earth are trying to "earn" their way into heaven. But they cannot. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE and no man, no Muslim, no Hindu, no Roman Catholic, no Buddhist, no atheist - no man will go to Heaven without having Him as their personal Lord and Savior. If He is your personal savior - than your religion is not the savior and your religious efforts are not the savior. All your righteousness is as filthy rags before a Holy God! You cannot and you will not ever be good enough to "earn" heaven. If you get to go, it will only be by the grace of God - provided by Jesus Christ, when He shed his blood for you and me. The Bible clearly states, "Without the shedding of blood, there is No remission of sins. Without the shed blood of Christ - on your behalf - you won't be in heaven.

The Koran teaches a false gospel, which is no gospel at all and those who trust it are being deceived. The Bible is the older of the two revelations and if you will read it and accept it as the true Word of God that it is - you will clearly see that the Koran is full of many many errors. You will also see how much Christ loves you - so much that He died for you, just like He did for me.
I urge you to read the New Testament and find out the truth. I also hope to meet you in heaven.

[bigsplit]

Well about what to tell the Muslim.

We know that they believe in eternal life and sacrifice.....Jihad is evident of this. What God showed through the cruxifiction of Christ is his love for humainity. Jesus could have easily raised an Army and expelled the Romans, but he did not, why? Jesus showed us that faith requires us to be willing to give up our lives for that which is right. Jesus showed us that our lives in this world are not what is important enough to sin in order to protect. What does a man profit if he saves his life but loses his soul. I find the message of the cross as this, there are many things worth dying for, but nothing worth killing for. To kill is of darkness no matter the reason, live by the darkness in this life and you will live in the darkness in the next...away from the light. Love you enemy, even those who would kill you.

Many Muslims would call this weakness and cowardess...The truth is that it would require much more bravery to not fight back with the sword, but with love in the valley of death. True faith means that you know you spirit is eternal and you will do nothing in this world to jeopardize that. Any man or ruler who tells you otherwise in the name of God....is a liar...

[Soundsurfr]

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[Sparko]

Why Did Jesus have to Die?

Because God is just. He can't just forgive sins without payment for them. He did not create sin, he created free will, and we used it against him, and sinned. Therefore we deserve punishment. God being completely just must punish us for those sins. But instead, He came, himself, as the one who was offended, the victim of our sin, as Jesus, and paid the price himself. He is now able to give that covering of forgiveness to anyone who asks for it and submits to his Son as Lord and savior.

Without Jesus paying for our sins, we would be left to pay them ourselves. And we are not worthy of being in God's presence. So we would be condemned to hell.

Basically, God is the Judge, but the victim, and he not only judged our sin as worth of death, but then loved us so much, he came down from the bench and paid the price in our place. He paid our bail. We only have to accept it as a free gift.

[heaven]

Oh Moslems:

Mohammed is a false prophet and Jesus is the son of God.

You perjure yourselves when you claim the Mohammed improved upon the
Holy Bible, when you do not read the Book and do you not know that a curse is
upon anyone who adds or detracts from the Holy Bible.

Jesus said"I am theWay, the Truth and the Light, no man comes to the Father
but by me".

Besides Mohammed was a very immoral person who was a pedophile and polygamist preaching another God, Allah, who has not the attributes of the
christian God.

[SilverRain]

Oh Moslems:

Mohammed is a false prophet and Jesus is the son of God.

You perjure yourselves when you claim the Mohammed improved upon the
Holy Bible, when you do not read the Book and do you not know that a curse is
upon anyone who adds or detracts from the Holy Bible.

Jesus said"I am theWay, the Truth and the Light, no man comes to the Father
but by me".

Besides Mohammed was a very immoral person who was a pedophile and polygamist preaching another God, Allah, who has not the attributes of the
christian God.

I would like to begin by responding to this insulting claim. I am a very proud Muslim and will adhere to my ethics and respond with reason and history, rather than rhetoric and returning the insult.

First and foremost, if you were to do what you ask Muslims to do and read the Qur'an you would find that the Qur'an does not "add or detract" from the Bible. It is actually your own Christain church who has added and detracted from the Bible, beginning in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, when Constantine agreed with the Athanasians on the concept of the Trinity which is Biblically unsupported.

Later the interpolation was inserted of 1 John 5:7
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

This was found to be a fabrication as transaltor Benjamin Wilson describes it in his book "Emphatic Diaglott":

"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious."

This is only one example of insertions and deletions in the Bible. Others are the deletion of "begotten" from John 3:16, and the deletion of the ascension in RSV Bible. The Gospels themselves are anonymous books. The ascribed names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were simply 2nd Century wishful thinking... but this is another topic altogether.

I could write essays on the other claims you have charged against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Islam... but time does not allow this at this time, so I will respond briefly but in detail.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was one of the most humble, kind, moral, God fearing man ever to walk the face of this earth. A simple study of his life and one would see this immediately. He used to donate generously to the poor, lived very modestly, and never asked anyone to do anything that he did not first do himself. He was known by his community, by even those who rejected him wholeheartedly as Al-Sadiq Al-Amin: "The Trustworthy and the Noble". I encourage you to read his biography entitled "The Sealed Nectar" which is widely acclaimed as historically accurate. You should educate yourself before making wild claims that you hear from decietful Christian missionaries. The wives he married (polygamy) were mostly politically motivated (i.e. to make ties between communities) and to support widows. Above all, he called for an end to tribalism and nationalism, and called all to the worship of the one true God.

Lastly, most Christians are not aware that Jesus Christ (PBUH) who spoke Aramiac (a sister language to Arabic... which Prophet Muhammad PBUH spoke), called God by the same name as Prophet Muhammad PBUH and Muslims do today. I invite you to go into the Aramaic lexicon dictionaries and type "God" and you will get "Elah, Alah"... which are the exact names Muslims call God today. Allah simply means "The God".

Here is the link to the Hebrew-Aramaic Lexicon proving this:
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/...ng&submit=Find

And a few points to be made about this:

1- "elahh" is the way the word "hhla" (spelled from right to left as it is Aramaic) is pronounced.
2- The words "Elahh", "hhla (read from right to left)" and "Allah" all have the "h" letter and pronunciation in them.

3- "Allah" in Arabic is pronounced as "Al-lawh" or "Al-lah" depending on the sentence that it is used in. In Arabic, the sound of the word "Allah" could be thicker (Allawh) or thinner (Allah) depending on the sentence.

4- The Aramaic word "hhla (read from right to left)", which is transliterated as "elahh" which means "GOD" is pronounced as "El-aw" as show above.

5- The Aramaic word "hla (read from right to left)", which is transliterated as "elah" which means "oak" is pronounced as "Ay-law" also as shown above.

6- "Allah" in Arabic is pronounced as "Al-lawh" or "Al-lah" depending on the sentence that it is used in. In Arabic, the sound of the word "Allah" could be thicker (Allawh) or thinner (Allah) depending on the sentence.

7- The Hebew word "Elohim" is the plural of "Elowah", which is derived from the Aramaic word "Alaha", or "Elahh"; the same as the Arabic word "Allah" or "Allawh" in pronunciation.

These points were made by a Muslim scholar on the topic.

[SilverRain]

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[Conductor42]

Wow! It is like an Islamic chain letter. If you accept this you will get a double reward. If you refuse this, you will have bad luck, like going to hell.

I'm not meaning to be rude, but there are many christian equivalents of that letter...

[Conductor42]

Besides Mohammed was a very immoral person who was a pedophile and polygamist preaching another God, Allah, who has not the attributes of the
christian God.

Abraham was a polygamist.

[CatholicSage]

I would like to begin by responding to this insulting claim. I am a very proud Muslim and will adhere to my ethics and respond with reason and history, rather than rhetoric and returning the insult.

First and foremost, if you were to do what you ask Muslims to do and read the Qur'an you would find that the Qur'an does not "add or detract" from the Bible. It is actually your own Christain church who has added and detracted from the Bible, beginning in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, when Constantine agreed with the Athanasians on the concept of the Trinity which is Biblically unsupported.

Absolutely false. The Trinity is quite a Biblical notion, and there have been numerous Biblical defenses of it throughout history. It is rather the Muslims who find themselves in a troubling position in which they must attempt to reconcile the obvious contradictions that exist between the Qur'an and the Bible. Islam fails from the start because of these contradictions.

Later the interpolation was inserted of 1 John 5:7
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

This was found to be a fabrication as transaltor Benjamin Wilson describes it in his book "Emphatic Diaglott":

"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers even when the subjects upon which they treated would naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is therefore evidently spurious."

It's rather common knowledge that this verse was not in the original manuscripts. Luckily for us, the doctrine of the Trinity was established far before this verse was (likely) fabricated and there are plenty of other defenses.

This is only one example of insertions and deletions in the Bible. Others are the deletion of "begotten" from John 3:16, and the deletion of the ascension in RSV Bible.

As far as I know, "begotten" is simply an alternate translation of the texts. Even without it, the meaning doesn't really change. You seem to believe that Christians hold individual translations of the Bible as infallible and authoritative. What we actually believe is the infallibility and truth of the original texts, though the meaning of them can occasionally be lost in translation to a modern language.

The Gospels themselves are anonymous books. The ascribed names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were simply 2nd Century wishful thinking... but this is another topic altogether.

Yes, it is. One that has been dealt with before by many intelligent scholars. The books were indeed written in the 1st century by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

I could write essays on the other claims you have charged against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Islam... but time does not allow this at this time, so I will respond briefly but in detail.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was one of the most humble, kind, moral, God fearing man ever to walk the face of this earth. A simple study of his life and one would see this immediately. He used to donate generously to the poor, lived very modestly, and never asked anyone to do anything that he did not first do himself. He was known by his community, by even those who rejected him wholeheartedly as Al-Sadiq Al-Amin: "The Trustworthy and the Noble". I encourage you to read his biography entitled "The Sealed Nectar" which is widely acclaimed as historically accurate. You should educate yourself before making wild claims that you hear from decietful Christian missionaries. The wives he married (polygamy) were mostly politically motivated (i.e. to make ties between communities) and to support widows. Above all, he called for an end to tribalism and nationalism, and called all to the worship of the one true God.

The man was a power-hungry conqueror in the same league as Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun; the world would have been better if he had never been born. He and his successors conquered much of Christendom (the former Roman Empire) completely unprovoked. This Jihad by Mohammed himself and his immediate successors is why I believe that Islam a violent and bad religion.