Islam

You have structured notes. They're a little bit less extensive. But I wanted to provide for you. If you've got a good memory, you're gonna retain 15% of what I said today.

About 24 hours from now, you're gonna only retain 15% at most. And so I'm highly committed to, putting things on paper so you have an opportunity to look back at it. You might remember a couple of stories, hopefully you do, especially, have you ever been lied to? Hopefully it sticks in your mind because that's very, very useful.

I was at Texas A&M University, I think I was talking on the topic of the occult. I actually got into this topic By the back door, a friend of mine actually did a lecture in Saint Louis, Missouri while he was a college student, and him and his friends, college students, passed out like 15, 5000 flyers all around town, all the occult bookstores and which which which is they just passed it out all over town. They rented an auditorium, 15 1500 people came out and he spoke for like 3 hours on a topic and then he did Q&A for like 6 hours, the whole night he was doing Q&A.

And it just came unglued in a good way and he had an opportunity to deal with all these counterculture people and, and so I got the idea from him.

I said, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it on my campus, man, maybe somebody will come out. So I did some research on Satanism and we did some publicity and about 250 students came out, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, so it was huge for us. Actually, the lecture, part of the lecture was on the 10 o'clock news in Wisconsin, regional news. They interviewed me, so it's a, a fairly big thing and then it just spread.

I started doing it all over the US and then the lecture shifted from devil worship. I changed the title to The Occult Doorway to the Supernatural or Dangerous Dabblings. So I did it all over the place. So, it's, it's ironic, I get to talk about Satanism and use it to tell people about Jesus, but, whatever.

So anyways, at Texas A&M I was doing this lecture on the occult and then I do, I always do Q&A time and now when I do Stump the professor, I only speak for 15 minutes and then I do Q&A because Q&A is where you really get to deal with what people are thinking and dealing with. So, but Q&A time, a number of people ask me questions, but one guy asked me, he's like, what do you think about Islam? and some questions are a little bit more dangerous. You have to, be a little bit, Gentle and mm, you better not say too much too soon.

And so I said, well, there's a lot of things that I agree with Islam. Islam says there's one God, Islam says God is just, says that God is the creator, says that God is gonna judge people. I said, I agree with all of those things. I think those are actually right.

But then I said, but I would be dishonest with you if I told you that I agreed with everything. Within Islam because I don't. And Another story, my friend Hassan from Syria, it's quite a long time ago, but he was doing a master's at University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. I spent 14 years there with Campus Crusade, developed a great friend, friendship with Hassan.

He just loved hanging out, saw, saw him like 2 or 3 times a week in the union. We always hung out, talked about. International students love to talk about politics and religion. but they say in America, there's two things you should never talk about politics and religion, but, those are my two favorite topics, and, but, internationals love talking about it, so we talked all the time about politics and about religion and so I had a lot of friendship with them.

One day I pulled out a piece of paper and I wrote down Quran, Bible, and I started listing things that were differences. And he saw that there were differences, and I said, I looked at him very sincerely. I said, Hassan. Somebody's lying to us.

I don't know about you. But I don't like to be lied to. And he said to me, John, I cannot consider this. Because if I consider this and if I were to become a Christian, I lose my wife.

I lose my daughter I lose my job back in Syria and I go to jail. I cannot think about this. So, letter A, isn't it just the same God, just two different names? Some people say that.

Isn't Allah just another name for the same God? It's a very wishful thought, especially in a relativistic diversity postmodern culture. People want to buy that, but consider this following deductive argument, philosophy. If Allah and Yahweh are the same God, then they would have all the same attributes.

Allah and Yahweh do not share all the same attributes. Ergo conclusion, therefore, Allah and Yahweh are not the same God. Or the German philosopher Leibniz, his law of identicals, he says if X is really equal to Y, then every property that X possesses Y has to possess it also. And everything that's true about Y has to be true of X if X and Y are the exact same thing.

If I talk about my friend Mike Maynard and then I talk about another person, the head football coach at the University of Redlands. If I'm talking about the same person, every quality about Mike Maynard has to be true about the head coach at University of Redlands, head, head football coach, and everything I say about the head football coach at the University of Redlands has to be true about Mike Maynard if I'm talking about the same individual. So if Allah and Yahweh are the same God, then everything that's true of Allah has to be true of Yahweh, and everything that's true of Yahweh has to be true of Allah, but that's actually not the case.

So If I answer this question philosophically, are we talking about the same God?

The answer would have to be an extremely strong, emphatic no, of course not. Amos 9:6 says, the Lord or Yahweh is his name. So here's a comparison, you have the charts. Yahweh's unique attributes, God, the God of the Bible is triune.

He's a trinity He's one God, but he's three persons. I, I personally believe that God is a social community. The Trinity is a social community. Is the Father the same person as the Son?

Of course not. Is the son the same person as the Holy Spirit? Of course not. There's 3 distinct but not separate persons.

Your vocabulary has to be very, very cautious whenever you talk about the nature of God or the incarnation, and you, you can become a heretic in 5 seconds or less by the words that you use. It's very, you have to be very careful. So my students will say things I'm like, no, actually you're a heretic, I'm gonna have to kill you. And they're like, 00, please, no.

So Allah, Allah is one person. He's not a trinity. He's actually he's a Unitarian, one God, one person. Now, there's a, there's an area of philosophy that talks about the per the perfection of God.

God is a perfect God. He's a God of perfection, not in his, only in his actions, but in his nature and his character. So, if the God that exists is a God of perfection, that means that he does not lack any quality. That is desirable to possess.

This is philosophical theology. So is it desirable for God to possess relationship? Yes. But if God is one person, God does not possess relationship.

He might possess the capacity for relationship, but he does not in actuality possess relationship. If God is one person, he does not, he does not possess love. He possesses maybe the capacity for it, but not the actuality of it. So if God is one person, he does not possess love, not as an exemplified character.

He clearly does not possess relationship. But there's another thing that God is, well, I'll get to it in a second. So if God is two persons, he possesses in his internal nature, he possesses relationship and he possesses love. But if he's only two persons, he does not possess community.

But if he's 3 persons, he possesses relationship. He possesses love, and he possesses community in his essential nature if he's a trinity. So philosophically speaking, I would derive the Trinity if I think deeply philosophically about the perfectibility of God or the perfection of God. And that's what we find in scriptures.

The the proof statement for the, the Jewish religion, Deuteronomy 6:4, it's called the Shamah and it's called the Shamah because the first Hebrew word in the verse here, the Hebrew word is Shamah. Here, listen, here, heads up. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. But the word God in the text is Elohim.

It's a plural masculine. The singular is L. And the plural is Elohim. It's a plural masculine.

The Lord, Yahweh, the Lord, Yahweh Elohim is one. Yahweh is one. But right in the shama, it contains information or a tip that God is more than just one person. The baptism of Jesus when Jesus is getting baptized in the River Jordan.

From heaven, God the Father says, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, and the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and landed upon Jesus, came upon Jesus. You got three distinct persons. So Christianity says Yahweh is triune. If he's not triune, if he's Unitarian, he's not a God of, he's not a perfect God.

He lacks something. God didn't create because he needed relationship. God created Because of prerogative and choice. He doesn't need us.

He wants us. Second thing, God is personable. He's intimate. He wants to have a relationship with us.

Allah is an impersonal being, impersonal in that he's not, he doesn't want a relationship with you. When I ask Muslims at times, I'll say, if you could know God personally, would you want to? I've gotten the same response 100, 100% of the time for 40 years straight. That is not possible.

Does the God of the Bible care about how you feel? She care about your problems, your stress points, your cares. So you care about the, just the big things, whether or not you've got cancer and you're gonna die or does he care about, a parking place at Walmart. He actually cares about it all.

A friend of mine prayed for, he lost a dime. It was very special to him. It had memories associated with it. So he prayed, he's like, God, please let me find the dime.

That day he found the dime. A year later, he prayed for $3 million. He's like, God, I need $3 million. And 30 minutes before the deadline, God brought in all the money.

The name of that man is Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. God is concerned about a dime. Such insignificant. But significant to God because it's significant to me.

The God of the Bible cares about you. Does the God of Islam, the God of the Quran care about you? Heck no, he doesn't care about you. So you want to know the details of your life?

No, absolutely not. To care about whether you're sad or happy. He has no, no connection. You exist simply to serve him.

He doesn't care about you in the least bit, so don't bother telling him it. Pretty different, quite different. Yahweh desires relationship. Jeremiah 31, he says, I've loved you with an everlasting love.

He wants to bring us close to him. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. This God that is real wants relationship with us. This is, this is wild.

This is crazy, but it's good and it's true. The God of Islam does not desire a relationship, nor can you have it. Yahweh is eminent. He's involved.

Jesus Christ intervened in human history. He became a human being. He lived among us. That's what John says.

He set up his tent with us. He pitched his tent, he tabernacle with us. This is a guy that wants to be involved in our lives. This is just, this is just mind boggling.

I can't understand why people don't want a relationship with God. I'll ask, I do a lot of work with Chinese international students. I go to China all the time. Go.

I've been to China 7 times in the last 3 years. I'm going in January. I love China. Got tons of friends all over the place.

Half of them not Christians. And I'll ask them, wouldn't you want a friendship with somebody like this? They're like, yeah. It's available.

Allah is distant and removed. He doesn't care a rip about your life. Yahweh is filled with grace. From start to finish, he's filled with grace.

Even when God has to judge, he's filled with grace and mercy. Allah has mercy sometimes if he wants, but probably never grace. What are some common attributes I mentioned, Creator, just, transcendent. He's bigger and better than us.

He's holy, he's merciful. So philosophically, are we talking about the same God? Absolutely not, no. If I responded to the question evangelistically, I might say something to my Muslim friend.

We're both talking about a holy, just Creator. But you Muslims misunderstand some critical things about the nature and the character of God. That's how I try to reproach it. If I'm talking to somebody evangelistically, I want to try to build bridges, not blow them up.

And it's easy to blow them up. It's very easy to blow them up. So what are the major points of conflict? We already mentioned the first one.

Jesus is God. Islam says Jesus is not God, he's simply a prophet. Now, I'm not saying But I want to say about somebody saying hypothetically. Thankfully I can say this in America.

If I were in another country, I'd get shot for saying this. If theoretically speaking, Mohammad, is a prophet of God. It would be blasphemy for me to lower him to the position of being just a normal average run of the mill person or even worse yet, that I would take him as a prophet of God and I would lower him to somebody who is greatly evil. That would be blasphemous.

And if I were to suggest that in another country, I would lose my life. In fact, I actually could lose my life actually in America if I suggested something like that. If I said that publicly on a college campus, I could end up dead. A friend of mine, Jason Storm, he was doing, he does free speech.

He's really quite good at it. He's more courageous than me and he was speaking at Pasadena City College. He likes talking about hot issues, abortion and other things, homosexuality. He's very congenial.

He's not bombastic, but he definitely engages the audience, and so some Muslims on the campus had heard he was speaking evil about the Prophet Muhammad. And so about a group of 5 of them were literally going there to beat the hell out of them. This is in America. This is California.

But they were going to do some serious bodily damage to this guy. Because they had heard through the grapevine he was speaking evil about the Prophet Muhammad. To them, that's blasphemy. Every time a Muslim when he speaks publicly, when he says the word Muhammad, he'll say, the Prophet Muhammad, blessed be his name.

The Prophet Muhammad, blessed be his name. Every time they say that. Because they're giving honor to him, but if I were to say, Muhammad's not a prophet, he's incredibly evil, he's satanic, he's demonic. If I say something like that, I could be in serious dog doo doo.

Even in America. So, principle, if Muhammad's a true prophet and I lower him to be just a human being or an evil person, that is a great dishonor, correct? If Jesus Christ perhaps is God. And you lower him to the position of being a prophet.

That is an infinite disgrace because God is infinitely greater and better than us. He's infinitely greater than any prophet that ever existed. So if Jesus is truly God and you're saying he's a prophet, you are actually committing the most offensive blasphemy possible theoretically. Do I kill you when you say Jesus is a prophet?

Do I kill you? No, I don't. I love you, but I tell you, I think you're seriously mistaken. John says he who denies the son denies the father too.

You deny the identity of Jesus. You do not have the Father. Nor can you have the father if you reject his son. So Muslims say Jesus is not God.

This is one of their marching orders. Any discussion with a Muslim is going to have two major issues, the identity of Jesus and the corruption of the Bible or the New Testament. Every discussion is going to go to those two areas. You're gonna have to cover those issues.

Second, Jesus died on the cross. Muslims say or Islam says Jesus never experienced death, so you probably don't realize this, most of you, some of you might. But Muslims believe that Judas Iscariot impersonated Jesus and he was crucified on the cross. Jesus never died.

God would never allow His prophet to experience death. Jesus was translated into heaven apart from experiencing any physical death. Now we got, it's like, the space flight program. Houston, we have a problem.

We got a big problem because the whole centrality of Christianity, it rests on two foundations, Jesus being God and His resurrection from the dead. Ami Diat was the head of the Islamic Propagation Center in South Africa for many, many years. Quite a number of years, he's dead now, but a number of years ago, Josh McDowell actually debated him. And during the debate, Ammi Didat said very sarcastically, Christians are being taken for a ride on the cross.

And Josh came in his rebuttal and said, You're right, they are being taken for a ride. And its destination is heaven. After the debate, Ami Didat's brother came up to Josh and said one thing was evident from that debate, Josh. You love my brother I'm like, wow, that's a good balance.

Sharp mind But a warm heart. That's what we should strive for as Christians. Gary Habermass, he's a professor at Liberty University. He's written a book called The Historical Jesus.

He documents 28 secular sources, historians from the 1st century and early 2nd century. 28 secular sources that talk about Jesus, 28. None of them are Christians. Half of them killed Christians or hated Christians.

8 of them described the crucifixion. 8 secular historians from the 1st century chronicle Christ's crucifixion and death. So history is on our side. Jesus clearly died.

Whether he rose from the dead is an additional question which is critical to our faith. 4th, the Bible is without air. We as believers believe that the Bible claims it, that it's inspired and infallible. In Islam says the Bible has been corrupted.

A couple of years ago I was, helping one of my Chinese friends look for a car. We went to the local Nissan dealership in San Bernardino. We test drove one of their vehicles, a used vehicle, and the guy, was from, Pakistan. And so, he's going to be Muslim, so I asked him, are you Muslim?

He's like, yes. So, I'm, I've got a captive audience, so hey, we're gonna use it. And so I said to him, I said, Is God all powerful? He's like, well, yes, of course.

I said, would God ever allow His holy book to be corrupted? Now he thinks I'm thinking about the Koran. I'm actually thinking about the New Testament, but I don't tell him that. So I said, would God ever allow his holy book to be corrupted?

Absolutely not. Is the New Testament corrupted? Yes. Is God all powerful?

Yes. Would God ever allow His holy book to be corrupted? No. Is the New Testament corrupted?

Yes. Is God all powerful? Yes. Would he ever allow his holy book to be corrupted?

No. Is the New Testament corrupted? Silence. Because he's being logically inconsistent.

If I say I love all people, but I hate everybody here except for me. And you'd say, whoa, wait, whoa, wait a minute. You said you love all people, yeah, I'm a people, yeah, but you don't love me? No.

Who who who who, you're gonna, you're gonna re-examine my statements because something's inconsistent. Something's not true. So he was thinking through his inconsistency, but he didn't like the conclusion. This is a belief in Islam.

God will never allow His holy book or books to be corrupted. Fourth or next, atonement for sins. The Bible says there's got to be a sum, atonement, somebody's got to pay the penalty. How do you pay a $100 speeding ticket?

$100 How do you pay a death penalty ticket? Death. Jesus experienced two deaths on the cross. Relationship death And physical death.

In Genesis, God said to Adam, You eat the fruit, you're going to die that day. He ate the fruit, he lived another 700 years. He didn't die physically that day. He died relationally.

He got kicked out of the garden, his relationship with God got broken. He experienced spiritual death or relationship divorce. What do we call divorce in our country? It's the the death of the relationship.

So Adam experienced the death of his relationship with God. Jesus when he was on the cross, one of his seven statements, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I'll tell you why. He knew why, because the burden of sin had been laid on Jesus, and now he's paying the penalty and he's experiencing spiritual separation from the Father, relationship death.

And then after that, he breathed his last and he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, and he experienced physical death. Experience both. So it takes death to be able to pay a death penalty. $100 speeding ticket, pay it by $100.

How do you pay a death penalty? Death. Jesus died to pay it for us. That's atonement.

In Islam there's no atonement for sins. If Allah is merciful, if he feels good that day and he flips the coin, OK, you get to go to heaven. If he doesn't feel good that day, he's going to shoot you down the tube, you go to hell. This is a redeeming quality of Islam.

They actually believe in heaven. They believe in hell, although they don't believe in a biblical concept of heaven. But they believe that you will have a body and a soul. And you'll have some level of delight, but it's not framed in a biblical manner in the least bit.

I, debated a Muslim scholar. He used to teach up in Montreal and, his name is Jamal Badawi. My debate is actually on YouTube, so if you want to see it, you can go to Google and Google Cal Poly Pomona debate. It should come up and the debate is on there on YouTube.

And, but I was debating him and the topic was Jesus, God or prophet. And I presented all kinds of data that one, the Bible is reliable, and the Bible clearly says that Jesus is God. And in the cross-examine time he got to ask me questions. I got to ask him.

So at one point I asked him, I said, Jamal, Who knows more about your mother, you or me? He said, well, I, I do, John, of course. So, why? It's like I've lived my whole life with my mother, John.

You've never met her. So, Jamal, I wanna ask you a similar question. Who knows more about Jesus? The 12 men that spent 24 hours a day for 3 years with him or somebody that never met him and was born 600 years after he lived.

I did not get an answer to my question. Because the answer is obvious. I've asked Muslim students at Cal State San Bernardo, same question. Who knows more about your mother, you or me?

They look at me like I'm, just clueless, like, well, John, me, of course. Why? The answer is obvious. Then I say, well, who knows more about Jesus?

12 men that spent 24 hours a day with Him for 3 years. Or somebody 600 years removed from his life that never met him. And I don't get an answer to my question. Are you going to be logically consistent with your worldview?

They're not. Sometimes we're not. So who should I trust for information about Jesus? I think I should trust.

The individuals that spent 3 years with him 24 hours a day. Who wrote the New Testament. I should trust them. They're a better source of information.

Additional problems with Islam. God does not desire a relationship with humans. They're only his servants, not his friends. John chapter 15.

Don't you love it? Jesus says, I no longer call you servants. But I call you friends, wow. Crazy, great, unbelievable.

Here's the God of the universe. And he lowers himself so that he can have friendship with us. My class at bio, this is, I do this every semester, every time. I say, I'm only going to be your professor for one semester.

But I'm going to be your brother in Christ forever. And it's much more important to me that I'm your brother in Christ. That I am your professor. And so I prefer that you'd call me by my first name, John.

Now some of you I know because of your cultural background, that's going to be very difficult, maybe impossible. So if you want to call me professor, Professor John, Professor right now, any of those are acceptable to me. Don't call me doctor. It's, I don't have a PhD and it's much too formal for me.

I don't like it, even if I had one. One of the reasons why is because We have to be on a peer level to have the deepest friendships. And intrinsically for 40 years I've tried to develop friendships with people. And when there's titles, they tend to remove us, they tend to create distance.

And I'm trying to do the exact opposite in relationships, even with my students. I want to get close to them. I don't care if I'm a professor. I don't care if I have a master's degree.

It's point, it's important and stuff, but it's not that valuable to me. It's good, but it's not in my thinking process. I'm their brother in Christ. They're my brother and sister in Christ.

We're part of the same family. And so I want connection. This is a tiny illustration of what God does. He says I no longer call you servants, I call you friends.

It's very different from Islam. Islam just doesn't have this concept. Allah doesn't have care, concern, or interest in a person's life. Allah is not involved in our world or in our lives.

He does not personally involve himself in the affairs of the world. Second point, God is driven by justice and sometimes mercy, but not grace and love. The God of the Bible is driven by grace and love and mercy all the time. Even in the Old Testament where he's ticked off, he says to Moses, just Moses.

Move, move aside. I'm just gonna destroy them all. I'm gonna, I'm gonna recreate people. I'm gonna start and build a whole new nation for you.

I'm just gonna get rid of them all. I'm so ticked off. I love the discussion, Moses this. You can't do that.

I love it. Moses argues with God. It's awesome, a mark of friendship. Mark of friendship.

You can't do that. God can't do that. There's this relationship here. God cares for us.

So even in his judgment, God is incredibly merciful. Unbelievably merciful, all the way through the Old Testament. He judges Israel, but he's merciful even in his judgment. He's a God that's filled with grace.

The law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Islam says Judas Iscariot was the one crucified on the cross, not Jesus. History says that that's false. I can prove it based upon history.

Islam is a highly fatalistic religion. Everything that happens is the direct will of Allah. That's very depressing. A lot of bad things happen to good people because that's what God wants for you.

That's a very inadequate answer, and it's inconsistent. A little bit of a tangent, the problem of evil. There's two components to the problem of evil are pain and suffering, intellectual and emotional. So if somebody comes into your, your life or say you're a pastor or counselor or just a Christian friend, somebody comes and says, my child is dying of cancer, or my son died of leukemia.

And they ask you the problem of evil. Why does God allow pain and suffering? They're not looking for a theological or philosophical answer. They're looking for an emotional response, counseling response.

And I would say in response to that. God knows. What it feels like. To lose a son God shares your emotion, your pain, your heartache.

In your heart, he understands that pain. God of Islam has no association with that type of response. Islam teaches and the Koran commands violence towards unbelievers. That's you and I.

I was at the University of Nebraska at Carney. I was doing a lecture entitled One True Religion. It was a culmination of a week of events that Campus Crusade sponsored there on the campus. They brought me in.

I spoke on this topic entitled, Is One True Religion really Possible? Well, our culture would say no. Of course not. And I start by saying, have you ever been lied to?

Yeah, that proves that truth exists. 2 + 2 equals. 4. How many right answers?

1. How many wrong answers? Lots. Actually, I'll tell you a little side story.

When I was at one of the schools in Ohio, that comment was 2 + 2 equal. I got into trouble actually. So sometimes I'll correct my mistake. Usually I do and I, I am now, but there were some math majors there and so they said, well, John, it depends upon what base you're talking.

So I'm like, OK, fine, I'll, I'll fix the problem. So if you'll notice in your notes, your previous notes, I put 2 base 10 plus 2 base 10 equals what base 10 expressed in a whole number integer. It's only one right answer to the question. So I do that all the time when I'm in mixed audiences, secular campuses, I'll say, what's 2 base 10 plus 2 base 10 expressed in a whole number integer base 10.

And the math majors are like, yeah. and everybody else is like, what? Wait, what? What are you talking about?

Could you be, human? Just get it to us in English. So there's only one right answer, 4. How many wrong answers?

Infinite. So that was the context of this talk and so, I was talking about one true religion, truth exists, 2 + 2, Christianity is that religion, the true religion. There's a girl there from Nepal. Nepal is the only country in the world where the official religion is Hinduism.

It's against the law to change your religion from that of your father. It's 2 years in jail if you get baptized into a different religion other than Hinduism. She was from Nepal and she says, I'm insulted by what you said. Cause I said Hinduism was false.

I said, well, I, I'm sorry for offending you, but, truth still stands. Hinduism is not a possibility. Because it says the universe never had a beginning. And I know that to be false.

And so the very foundation of your religion starts with a false premise. It doesn't have very much likelihood of having true conclusions about a lot of other things. those math problems, the professor gives you a series of 10 problems, but you have to get the right answer to question one in order to get the right answer to question 2. You have to have the right answer to question 1 and 2 in order to get the right answer to question 3, because you have to use the data for the following questions.

So if you get the wrong answer to question 1, you're screwed. You're just screwed. You're gonna get all 10 of them wrong. That's how worldviews are.

If you start with a false premise and your premise is linked to all your conclusions, you're gonna be screwed. Hinduism is screwed. Now, if you want to choose Hinduism, be my guest. It's a free country, at least in America it is, not in Nepal.

And so she got offended and then her neighbor next to her, right next to her was Mohammed, who is from Saudi Arabia. And so he asked me a question. I said, could I ask you a question? He's like, yeah, sure.

I said, am I an infidel? I don't know. I said, I believe Jesus Christ is Allah. Am I an infidel?

He said, yes, you are. I said, what do you do with infidels in Saudi Arabia? He looks at me and says, we put them to death. I said that's why I'm glad in I'm in America, not in Saudi Arabia.

Yup. And after the, after another the first debate I did at Cal State Long Beach with Jamal Badawi, I was having a conversation with one of the Muslim guys that was about my age, I had a great conversation. I really liked him. And he says to me, and not, not unkindly, but he says, John, I think you're going to hell.

I said, I really appreciate your, your belief actually, because I think that truth is exclusive. 2 + 2 excludes wrong answers. And one of the things I appreciate about Islam is it's actually claims exclusive truth. I like that.

If it's truth, it should be exclusive. It should exclude everything that's false. So I, I greatly appreciate that actually. I said, we're on equal footing because I believe you're going to hell.

So we both agree, one of us is going to hell. And I said, I, I like that. We're, we're good, we're, we're doing good. The question is which one of us is right?

As Bill Heibel says, I'm going to bet my money on somebody who conquered death, not somebody who's still dead. Jesus Christ is alive. Muhammad isn't. So, Islam teaches violence towards believers.

I've had a couple of Bible students, one in particular in my apologetic class. He is from Afghanistan. when he was in Afghanistan, he wanted to learn English. So one of his friends said, hey, there's this American teacher that is doing, English classes.

What's she using for the textbook Bible. And so they come over to her house, she's actually, undercover missionary for Jesus. She's part of the CIA, Christians in Action. And so she's sharing the gospel in the context of teaching English.

Muhammad comes along that day and sits in an English class. It was the last day of the series of the classes and she offers a New Testament to them. And so he accepts one, all of his friends gave him grief, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be accepting that, that's the Christian Bible, you shouldn't be doing that, which is actually contrary to what Muhammad said because Muhammad told people to read the book, the Bible. So they're actually disobeying Muhammad, but, hey, what, whatever.

And so he accepts it, he gets a lot of flak from his, from his friends and he says, I'm not interested in becoming a Christian. I just want to read something in English. So he starts reading the New Testament, and it dawns on him that the New Testament talks in language like Jesus is God, and it ticks him off like crazy. And so he goes back to this teacher to pigeonhole her and argue with her and set her straight.

And so he does, and she just keeps on going to the text. Telling him what it says and, it's been corrupted. No, actually, it's not been corrupted actually. And so, actually the light finally comes on and he becomes a believer, but he's got a problem.

He's in Afghanistan. His whole family is Muslim, so unfortunately he lets the information out that he had converted and become a believer, Christ follower. So his uncle threatens his life, his father threatens his life. He starts getting, the writing on the wall, I better get the heck out of Afghanistan, otherwise I'm going to be dead.

So he buys a ticket to America, but it's got two ticket stubs, 2 ticket boarding passes, one to Dubai. And then one from Dubai to America. So when he goes through security to get out of Afghanistan, he doesn't show him his boarding pass for America because that will, that will be an alert. why are you leaving?

Why are you going to America? So he doesn't he just gives it to him for Dubai because lots of Afghan Afghanis go to Dubai to work and they'll come back after a week or whatever. So she gives him the boarding pass, he stamps it clear security he's like, thank God. Thank God.

And when he gets in Dubai, he's like, I made it, I'm alive. He's been in America like 6 years. When he calls his dad, his dad cusses at him and hangs up the phone, won't talk to him. That's the response of Islam.

What do we do with unbelievers? We kill them. We put them to death. I think that we have a time bomb ticking in our backyard in America, quite frankly.

We have a time bomb, it's called Muslims. It's called Islam. It's ticking, it's a time bomb. We have some Muslim terrorists, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

We have some of them that will bring their wife here and their kid will be born in America and they get an American passport, then they bring them back to whatever country they train them as a terrorist. You can't deny them entrance in America because they have the platinum entry thing. American passports highly valued. Tons of Chinese will come to America, bring their wife during the last couple of months of pregnancy, so that they can be born here and they have American citizenship.

If, if they're Chinese, I have no problem. The more the better, OK. But we should be a little bit more discriminating on who we issue passports to. But America doesn't wake up until the Russian proverb says this, you'll know it's too late when it's too late.

We woke up on 9/11 that you shouldn't let people hijackers into the cockpit of airplanes. I think any fool should have figured that out before 9/11, but it took us until 9/11 to figure out the stupidity par excellence, but it cost us about 4000 lives to figure that one out. Yeah, oops, and so, we're going to figure this other thing out we got a time bomb in our backyard. every Muslim wants to kill you?

No, no, of course not. But the Quran is a violent document. The Quran 106 times, you can find it on the websites in your notes. Go to it, the religionofpeace.com.

Go ahead and look at some of that stuff. They have a body count on that website every day. How many more bodies have been, people have been killed because of Islam. So when people say peace loving religion, I literally, I'm, I'm sorry, I apologize, but I want to vomit.

Because it's not true. Do individual Muslims sometimes appreciate America and want to have peace? Yeah, of course, yes. But they're not being consistent with their religion.

So when our politicians say, well, those are radical Muslims. It's, it's an oxymoron again. If a Muslim truly follows the Quran. It advocates violence towards anybody that does not embrace Islam.

That's what it says. You can look at it. The website Chronicles 106 verses that says treat unbelievers harshly, put them to death, get rid of them, all kinds, 106 times in the Koran. This is a violent document.

It's in a big contrast to the New Testament. What are we commanded to do? We haven't always done it right. But Jesus says, love your enemies.

Not only love your neighbor, Jesus ups the ante on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, you have, you have heard that it is said, you have heard that it is said, but I tell you, so Jesus goes farther and he applies the spirit of the law, the spirit behind it. You've heard it's wrong to murder, but I say anybody who says to his brother, I hate you, is guilty of this. And he applies it to love. We get this verse gets gets misquoted.

Matthew 5:48, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Now that's nice, but the context is actually love. He's not talking about moral and ethical perfection. That's good too, but that ain't going to happen until we drop dead.

He's actually talking in that paragraph about love. He, so he's saying, I want you to love perfectly like your Father in heaven loves perfectly. And part of that is loving your enemies. That's hard as heck.

I don't want to love my enemies. But the text says love your enemies, so who would you like to have living next door to you if you're an unbeliever or an atheist? A Muslim who follows the Quran or a Christian who follows the Bible. I would like to have a Christian who follows the Bible.

Because the Bible commands me to love him. No matter what his disposition is. And my non-Christian friends in China, they, they picked this up. I tell them, I say, you never have to become a Christian for me to be your friend.

I'm your friend and I love you no matter what, but because I love you and I'm your friend, I want you to become a Christian because it's in your best interest. The God of the universe offers you forgiveness and friendship. How can you reject that? How can you, how can you say no to that?

This is the best offer in all of human history. The God of yours wants to forgive you. He wants friendship with you. That's why I spent my whole life, the last 40 years, telling college students about Jesus.

Graduated in chemical engineering, got offered an $80,000 updated for today's dollars. Got offered a job for $80,000 when I graduated. I said I'm not interested. I went to work with Campus Crusade, got the equivalent of $20,000 instead of 80,000.

Could barely, could barely pay my rent. Because I made so little. I made $395 a month back then, $395 a month. My rent was $175 to figure out the math.

I didn't go on staff because of big bucks. I went on staff because I had a driving passion. I want to have the greatest influence for Jesus Christ in my life. And making more money for Amoco Oil Company, albeit it's totally good and fine.

I didn't think I was going to have my greatest impact for Jesus doing that. So I said no to chemical engineering. I said yes to being a full-time minister, and I've been doing that for 40 years. The ethics.

Let's see, where am I at? OK. 7 minutes. The ethics of Christianity, Love your enemies and bless those who persecute you.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now Christians haven't always done this. Whether it's the Crusades during the Middle Ages, whether it's the thirty-year religious war in Europe, whether it's the Inquisition, Christians haven't been perfect.

We haven't always applied this perfectly. We need to take the black eye when it's deserving. But we need to remind them that the ethic and the foundation of Christianity is love God. Love people and we're commanded to love those that we don't agree with, those that we consider our enemies.

We're called to love them. So as Christians, we should love the Muslims, but it's like Ronald Reagan when he was president and he started dealing with Russia and reducing nuclear arms, and he said related to Russia, he said trust. But verify So we need to be careful. We need to be mindful of the influence of Islam in our culture.

We love them as individuals, but their worldview is significantly different. Yes, they have some commonality. And we need to have conversation with them, meaningful conversation. In America, we can actually do that.

Muslims that are becoming believers, oh, I know what it was. Why don't you click up that video and go ahead and show that video. This is off of YouTube. It's a Muslim.

Kinda like a Muslim imman would be the equivalent of like a pastor, and he begins to read the Quran and some things start to come to a surface and he becomes a believer, actually a Christian, follower of Christ by reading the Quran. So we'll close with this. Go ahead and show up whenever you're ready. Audio, there we go.

So I preached there's no God. Then somebody asked me who is Jesus from the crowd. Maybe a Muslim, but he asked me who is Jesus. I was preaching he's not God, but the question is who it is.

To know who is he, I read the Quran once again, 114 chapters, 6,666 verses in Quran. When I read it, the name of Prophet Muhammad, I found in the Koran 4 places, but the name of Jesus I found 25 places. There itself. I was a little confused to why the Koran giving more proof.

And second thing, I could not see any woman's name in the Koran, Prophet Muhammad's mother's name or wife's name or children's name. No. In the Quran, there is only one woman name I found, Maria, the mother of Jesus. No other woman's name.

And in the Holy Quran chapter 3, the name of the chapter is Family of Maryam, and the Holy Quran chapter 19, the name of the chapter itself is Maryam. One chapter is Maria. So I was very curious to know why this Quran says all these things about Mariam. The Holy Quran chapter 3, verses 34 onwards says that Mary was born without ordinary sin.

She never committed any sin in her life. She was ever a virgin. Koran chapter 50 verses 23 says that she went to heaven with her physical body when the assumption is written in the holy Koran. And then about Jesus, when I read chapter 3 verses, 45 to 55 verses, there are 10 points which Quran makes about Jesus.

The first thing the Koran says Kalimaullah. The Arabic word which means word of God, and the second thing Rufullah, which means the spirit of God. And the third is I al Masi, which means Jesus Christ. So Quran gives the name for Jesus, Word of God, Spirit of God, Jesus Christ.

And then the Koran says that Jesus spoke when he was very small, like 2 days old after his birth. He began to speak. The Koran says that Jesus created a live birds with mud. He took some mud from the bird.

When he breathed into it, it became a live bird. So I think that he can give life. He give life to a much clay. And the Quran says that Jesus cured a man born blind and a man with leukoderma, leprosy, etc.

And thenously Quran says that Jesus gave life to dead people. Jesus went to heaven. He's still alive and he will come again. When I saw all these things in the Koran, my thinking was what the Koran says about Muhammad.

according to the Koran, Prophet Muhammad is not the word of God, not the spirit of God, never spoke when he was 2 days old, never created any bird with marks, never cured any sick people, never righted any dead people. He himself died, and according to Islam, he's not alive and he will not come back. So there is a lot of difference between these two prophets. I don't call Jesus as God, my idea was he's a prophet, but he's a prophet greater than Muhammad.

So one day I went to my teacher, the one who taught me 10 years in Arabic college, and I asked him, Teacher, how God created the universe. Then he said God created the universe through the word. Through this word, then my question, where is Creator or creation? Must clear it.

My question is whether the word of God is Creator or creation. The Koran says Jesus is the word of God. If my teacher said the word of God is Creator, which means Jesus is Creator, then the Muslims must become Christians. Yeah, amen.

Yep. So he actually becomes a Christian. I'll be available after this if you wanna ask questions.