40 Words that Separate....Spanned

There are 40 words that separate Islam and Christianity.  Only 40 words that divide two of the most popular religions in the world.  What exactly are those words?  They are words that are found in the Quran. Words that allegedly Muhammad spoke and people remembered him saying it. The people of the Quran so well thought of the sayings of Muhammad, that they cataloged it a book.  This book is they compiled is full of his many other recitations and was prized so highly that they committed  them to memory.  The 40 words that separate Christianity and Islam is found in this one Ayat:

Sura 4, Ayat 157

“That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-“

Upon first glance by any reader of this Ayat, that has any factual knowledge of the death of Jesus, the Christ, on face value would understand that this Ayat  is a blatant contradiction of the Biblical record.  The key phrase that keeps getting stressed upon is “….but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them,…” All sorts of interpretations by Muslims attempting to assert or explain this contradiction of the Biblical record of the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ has been offered. 

For example, one such explanation states that Jesus was switched with someone else that was worthy to die on the cross.  This was surmised by Muslim evangelists from the phrase, “…it was made to appear to them…”.  By reason of this summarizing, many candidates were proposed by Muslims as to who died in Christ stead on the cross, such as the Roman prisoner Barabbas or Judas Iscariot or one of the Guards that came to arrest Jesus.  
Instead of getting involved with the impossibilities and improbabilities why it could not have been any of those men, which countless knowledgeable Christians have refuted.   I rather look to what the Ayat actually says in the context of who Muhammad allegedly said it to, when he said it and where he said it and who was he talking about, instead of what Muslims and Christians have over the centuries surmised it to what they think Muhammad said.  The only way to do this intelligently is to research when it was allegedly spoken. From there we can see whether the intent of Muhammad’s Ayat was to denounce the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ.

The first question to ask is who was allegedly Muhammad speaking to when he said the Ayat? We already know that Muhammad  allegedly said this Ayat when he was alive in the earlier part his ministry in Medina, in 7^th century Arabia.  The next logical question to ask is who were the “They” in the Ayat?  He was obviously allegedly speaking about someone’s claim of killing and crucifying Christ. Was it the people of Medina?  Upon investigation the city of Medina was made up of 3 religious communities; The Jewish community, the Nestorian Christian community and the newly developing Muslim community.  Muhammad became an arbiter between the contending Jewish and Christian communities which were debating about Jesus, the Christ.  Jews, that have not embraced Christianity, have since the inception of  Christianity have denied Jesus ever being the promised Christ. One of their arguments against Jesus being the promised Christ, revealed in this Ayat, was that they claimed to have killed Jesus, the Christ.  This is indicated in the first two words of the Ayat under discussion.  Evidently, the Christ that the Jewish community of Medina believed in was a character, a personality, that could not be killed or would allow himself to be killed at the least by them. On the other hand, the Christian community of Medina claimed that Jesus did die on the cross, but did so of his own free will.  Think about this for a second, the Jewish community in Medina admitted to being responsible of killing Christ on the cross, a position  that the Jewish community in Jerusalem did not deny nor did openly confessed, conversely, the Christians were stating that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, that Jesus laid his life down of his own free will, that nobody killed him.  The Jews were using this argument to refute the idea that Jesus was their Messiah and King. The Messiah that they were looking forward to, they unwittingly had put to death. In this hotly contended debate between Nestorian Christian community and the Jewish Community, Muhammad was brought in to resolve the matter since he was neither Jew or Christian.  Muhammad by this time had built a reputation of being fair and honest when negotiating between disagreeable parties. This was well known to the people of the city of Medina and was the reason they wanted him to be the arbiter.

After reviewing their respective arguments Muhammad allegedly said the 40 word ayat that was presented earlier in this article and was preserved in the Quran.  Muhammad allegedly and simply stated the fact that the Jews did not literally and physically kill Christ. They only requested that Jesus be killed.  The actual physical killing of Jesus was performed by the pagan Roman military, not the Jews. Even though Pilate, the Roman authority at the time, wanted not to be associated with the crucifixion of Jesus,  he granted the Jews request to crucify Jesus on the cross for the crime of blasphemy and claiming to be a king anyway, placing the Roman military captain under their direction.  Israel was under the dominion of pagan Rome and as citizens of the Roman empire, they were not allow to carry out capital punishment against their own people who they had accused according to their own laws worthy of death.  Jesus was accused by the Jewish religious authority of committing blasphemy and sedition against the Emperor of Rome by claiming to be a king. However, somehow Jesus survived the crucifixion and was still alive.   The part on how Jesus survived the crucifixion is what all three communities in Medina at the time were not certain about.  They did not have what we have today in the terms of technology and preservation of archaic writings.  They did not have access artifacts to substantiate their arguments.  Today we do and have the evidence that substantiate what was reported in the Biblical record is factual. The one thing that was clear at the time Muhammad allegedly spoke Sura 4, Ayat 157 is that the Jews did not kill the Christ, nor did that crucify him. It only appeared  to the Jews that Jesus was crucified because somehow he survived the ordeal. No body was certain at that time, in the city of Medina,  how Jesus survived it and this is where the conjectures were made from both the Jewish community side and the Nestorian Christian side. The reason  is clear why Muhammad said what he allegedly said in Sura 4, Ayat 157 in the 7^th century in the city of Medina.  He stated the ayat to bring to rest the confrontation between the Jews and the Nestorian Christians in Medina.   He  was not successful in accomplishing that peace between the two communities. What happened afterward was that the Jews began to oppose both Christian and Muslim communities in Medina.  Muhammad offered the Christian community protection from their Jewish detractors and both Muslim and Christian communities agreed to a compact.  Eventually the Muslims converted everyone to Islam in Medina who stayed in Medina.  The same thing happened in the smaller communities surrounding Medina.  The community of Najran is a prime example of this. See this word press article: Covenants of the Prophet at  http://covenantsoftheprophet.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/the-covenant-of-the-prophet-muhammad-with-the-christians-of-najran/. 

It is clear that Muhammad used the schism between the Jews and Christians to increase his Muslim community wherever he went and found Jews and Christians arguing about the death of Jesus. The problem with the Muslim community growth today is that in the United States of America many Jews have re-embraced Christianity and with the Christian community in America have opposed Islam.

The American Islamic response to this has been to discredit the Bible, discredit the idea that Jesus is the Christ (which is the opposite of what the Quran calls Jesus: Messiah), teach erroneously that Jesus did not die on the cross  and God and claim the un-provable argument of scriptural tampering is a legit probability.  If you have noticed I have used the word “allegedly” in respect to the quotations of Muhammad in the Quran frequently in this article.  The reason for this is that I discovered, in my personal research, that the written version of the Quran came 100 years after Muhammad’s death and was based upon what people remembered him saying about various issues. Here is the problem I have with that: No one who submitted an Ayat to be included into the Quran was alive 100 years earlier to hear Muhammad actually speak those words. They all got it from someone else who claimed to remember what was said allegedly by Muhammad and they got heard it from someone else. They all never heard Muhammad say those words.  This means that the Quran is entirely a second or even a third hand witness report that is not verified by any other witnesses. In other words, it is completely hearsay from beginning to end. The worst thing was that the 4 appointed teachers and reciters of the Quran died or was killed because they would not surrender their written copies of what they directly heard Muhammad speak from his very lips.  When the rulers of the Islamic world in the 8^th,   century, Abdul Bakr  and Uthman were able to get a hold of those written copies, Uthman in particular had them all destroyed!   Think about it, the words of the original and authentic Quran destroyed and in its place a book claiming to be the words of Muhammad.  This is why I used the word allegedly in this article in respect of the quotations of  the recitations of  Muhammad written in the Quran because there is no proof that he actually said it. 
So my question is this: Even with the fact that Jesus' crucifixion was not refuted by the Quran in Sura 1 and Ayat 157, coupled with today when we have even more proof that Jesus did in fact die on the cross and rose from the dead.  Is Sura 4, Ayat 157 subject to abrogation?  Yes it is. Because something better and more accurate has arisen to take its place: The accurate replication of the Biblical record;  A Biblical record that accurately records the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ in detail by verifiable first hand and second hand eyewitnesses.  So what? The veracity of first hand and second hand eyewitnesses is the fact that they either heard Jesus speak the words they reported themselves or received the report from someone else who was alive at the time that Jesus said those words.   This oral transmission of the Gospel accounts were written down within the first 100 years after Jesus's  passion. That quality of reporting you can’t get any better than being there yourself. This quality of reporting is lacking in the Quran and therefore subject to being abrogated by the Bible. For Muhammad allegedly said in Sura 2, Ayat 106:

“None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?

It very clear, that the Biblical record concerning Jesus’s death is better than the revelation in Sura 4 ayat 157, because it is based upon a better quality of witnesses and upon the accuracy of its replication. So according the Quran the Biblical record abrogates the Ayat and is to be believed over and above the Ayat under discussion. The Bible is the revelation that preceded the Quran and to which Muhammad said it was preserved by pious and honest men. (Sura 80, Ayats 13-16) It is the revelation that Allah protects and watches over (Sura 5, Ayat 48).    With that understanding the  Ayat  under discussion is abrogated  by the Bible because the Bible does not cause God’s revelations to be forgotten and it is better than what the Quran presents.  This also refutes the argument that the Bible has been tampered with. How? Because if the Torah and the Gospel were revelations sent down by Allah and Allah  watches over and protects them, then how can they be tampered with?  They can not be tampered with.  Furthermore, this argument puts on display the ineptitude of Allah to defend his revelations, if any Muslim dares to embrace it as a logical argument. Most intelligent Muslims don't bother with the illogical defense, in fact they avoid it at all costs.

Also in my research, I found that Muhammad was pointing to Christianity in the earlier days of his ministry. Not away from it as some Muslims in the United States have asserted.   What cause him to change?  I ask this because when Muhammad and his followers had swept  over the  Arabian peninsula  and  turned Arabia from a pagan idol worshiping country, into to Monolithic worshiping  country,  establishing the belief of only one God. He was pro-Christian in his early days but what caused the change? For there are writings in the Quran that instruct Muslims to war against anyone from other religions to the point of death or to the point of making those non-Muslims which they were in conflict with convert to Islam.  This was not so in the beginning, up to the time that  Muhammad and his teachings  reached  Western Christianity.  Muhammad supported Nestorian Christians and opposed Jews and Pagans holding the belief that he was preaching the same message Jesus and all the other prophets before him had preached. In fact, a Nestorian Christian Elder told Muhammad that he was called to be a preacher of God, after he received the alleged call to preach from the voice in the Cave. When the Western Christian world  heard his message, they deemed him as a heretic and a false prophet.  It was this rejection of his theology and his position as a prophet of God by the western Christian theological community is when he changed.   What proof I have of this?  Just ask any Muslim theologian this question. Did Muslims always prayed toward Mecca?  You may be surprised at the direction Muslims originally prayed in.  They prayed in the direction of Jerusalem. This was discovered when they found the foundation of an old Mosque in the vicinity of  Jerusalem with its head pointed toward Jerusalem. Why was the original Mosques  pointed in the direction of Jerusalem?  Because Muhammad did not see himself as the founder of a new religion, he saw himself as the continuation of the existing Christian faith.  The apostolic revelation he had, he believed was the natural progression from the other two monolithic faiths: Judaism and Christianity.  The change of direction when he was only two years in Medina, was Muhammad’s way of saying to western Christianity, Since you don’t believe I am who I say I am nor my message, therefore, I will take away the Arabian believing world from you forever until you recognize me as a prophet.  It has been that way ever since.

Did Jesus say that he was the Son of God?

One of the many arguments that many people insist on promoting is that Jesus never said he was the Son of God.  So what is the big deal if  he did or he didn’t say that he was the Son of God?  The significance of whether Jesus said he was the Son of God or not is that if he did say he was, then by his own testimony he admitted to be divine and thereby made himself equal to God. If he did not say that he was the Son of God, then many people’s faith has been misplaced in something that is not simply true. 

Many believers in Christ, can tell of a number of places in the Gospels that Jesus inferred directly or indirectly that he was the Son of God. Also that Jesus testified to being the Son of God deliberately so that there was no mistaking what he meant. To find this to be so, all anyone has to do is to read the reaction to whoever he declared that he was the Son of God to. When he said it to those who were willing to believe or did believed that he was the Son of God, they acknowledged Jesus as such and worshiped him. To which Jesus did nothing to prevent people from worshiping him and believing that he was the Son of God, in fact he took it to mean that people honored him and God, his father when they chose to believe. When he said that he was the Son of God, directly or indirectly to those who were not willing to believe his testimony, they thought it was their legal right to have him killed for committing blasphemy.  

Here are a few examples from both sides of Jesus’ declaration that he was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God:

A.   Examples of when Jesus told those willing to believe or did believe that was the Son of God.

1. John 9:35-38: Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” He answered and said, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?”  And Jesus said unto him, “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshipped him.

2. Matthew 14:22-33: And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.  And when he sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when evening was come, he was alone.  But the ship was not in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves; for the wind  was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto to them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, “It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.  But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, “Be of good cheer; It is I; Be not afraid.” And Peter answered him and said, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me to come unto thee on the water. And he said, “Come.” And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.  But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying,”Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”  And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.  Then they that were in the ship came and worshiped him, saying, “Of a truth, thou are the Son of God.”

3.John 4:20-26: “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him  must worship him in spirit and in truth.” The woman saith unto him, “I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.” Jesus saith unto her,”I that speak unto thee am he.

4. John 1:44-49: Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.  Philip findeth  Nathanael and saith unto him, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the Law , and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And Nathanael said unto him, “Can anything good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip saith unto him, ”Come and see.”  Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, “Behold and Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”  Nathanael saith unto him, “Whence knowest thou me?” Jesus answered and said unto him, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” Nathanael answered  and  saith unto him, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.”

  

5.  Mark 8:27-29: And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto to them, “Whom do men say that I am?” And they answered, ”John, the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.”  And he saith unto them, “But whom say ye that I am?”  And Peter answereth and saith unton him, “Thou art the Christ.”

6. Mathew 16:14-18: When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?”  And they said, “Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.”  He saith unto them, “But whom say ye that I am?”  And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  And Jesus answered  and said unto him, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The point is, whether he told them directly or indirectly, in private or in front of others, Jesus told those who were willing to believe him that he was the Son of God.  Furthermore Jesus did not refuse the worship of his adherents for he also said,

John 5:23: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.  He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.

B. Here now are some examples of when Jesus testified that he was the Son of God to those who were not willing to believe him.

1 John 8:47-59: “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, say we not well that art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” Jesus answered,  “I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and you dishonour me.  And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you,  If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Then said the Jews unto him, “Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest,  If a may keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? And the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?” Jesus answered, “If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced  to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.”  Then said the Jews unto him, “Thou are not yet fifty years old,  and hast thou see Abraham?” Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” Then took up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

2. John 10:27-36: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.  My Father, which gave them to me, is greater thatn all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.  I and my Father are one.” Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?” The Jews answered him, saying, “For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”  Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, Ye are gods’? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, ‘Thou blasphemest’; because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’”

3. Matthew 26:62-65: And the high priest arose, and said unto him, “Answereth thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee?” But Jesus held his peace.  And the high priest answered and said unto him, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.”  Jesus saith unto him, “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you,  hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”  Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, “He hat spoken blasphemy; what futher need have we for witnesses? Behold,  now ye have heard his blasphemy.”

4. John 19:4-7: Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, “Behold, I bring him forth to you, that you may know that I find no fault in him.” Then Jesus came forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe.  And Pilate saith unto them, “Behold, the man!” When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him.” Pilate saith unto them, “Take him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”

5. Matthew 27:37-40: And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.  Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, And saying, “Thou that destroyeth the temple, and buldest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

6. Matthew 27:41-43: Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, “He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let  him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

            The point is, that whether or not he told them directly or indirectly, they all heard Jesus declare that he was the Son of God and by his own testimony accused him of the crime of blasphemy, which is according to the Law of Moses punishable by death. For it is written:

Leviticus 24:16: And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well as the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

            By Jesus proclaiming and testifying  to be the Son of God, the people who heard him that were not willing to believe him, believed that he was committing the crime of blasphemy. Yet other people who also heard him believed his testimony because they also believed that God send the Christ, the Messiah and he would be God’s son.  When Jesus gave them the evidence to be believe that he was the Christ, the long awaited Messiah, the Son of the living God, some believed and some refused to believe the evidence.   They regarded Jesus as a man born out of wedlock, whose real father was a Samaritan and that he was possessed by a devil.  So when Jesus declared that their God was in fact his father, they believed he was committing blasphemy and they had a legal responsibility and recourse to kill him.  They just could not do so according to the prescription of  the Law of Moses.  The problem was they could not exact capital punishment upon Jesus for the crime of blasphemy because their Roman rulers  would not allow it without first hearing the offender’s plea. When the Governor of Judea, Pontcus Pilate,  heard that the  charge against Jesus was that he testified that he was the Son of God,  he knew he had a real  problem.  The Romans had only one man who they deemed divine, that man was Caesar their Emperor.  Therefore, anyone that proclaimed himself a God, or a son of God or divine and a king was considered a threat to Caesar and had to be executed under Roman Law.  

While Pilate was conducting a private inquiry about the charges against Jesus with Jesus, he testified to Pilate that he was indeed a king, but he was not a king of this world.  That he was a King of truth.  After Pilate heard that testimony, he reasoned that this testimony of Jesus is not worthy of the capital punishment of execution that the Jews desired, so he sought to let Jesus go free.  When the high priests and other religious leaders heard that Pilate was going to set him free, the Jews told Pilate that he was not a friend of Caesar, if he let Jesus live as a Messiah, and as their king.  This made Pilate more afraid and so the Jews were given authority to kill Jesus by Pilate.

 The method of punishment of a man for the crime of calling himself a king of the Jews was crucifixion.  The Jews did not care how Jesus died, they just wanted Jesus to die, in accordance with what they perceived was the directive in the Law.   They had no reason to suspect that Jesus was actually who he said he was. The Jewish religious leadership where given authority, again by Pilate, to command the Roman guards to guard the sealed tomb so that Jesus’s disciples  could not secretly steal the body of Jesus and proclaim that Jesus rose from the dead. 

After Jesus rose from the dead, the Jewish religious leadership paid  the Roman guards  to spread the story that the disciples were successful in stealing the body of Jesus.  The only problem with this lie was that Jesus, for being someone that was so openly and brutally crucified and buried in a sealed tomb, kept appearing everywhere after his death and burial to those who was willing to believe in him as the Christ, the Messiah and the Son of God, just as he is doing in various parts of the world today.

            So did Jesus say that he was the Son of God?  Yes he did. He said it to those who were willing to believe him and to those who were not willing to believe him.  The question remains are you willing to now believe in him now that you have the evidence that Jesus did say that he was the Son of God?

John 1:12+13: But as many as received him, who believed in his name, to  them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to those that believe on his name: which  were born, not of blood, not after the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

How did Africans and Afro-Americans became involved with Christianity?

 1 Why do we believe in the same God that our oppressors believed in?

First of all this type of question comes from a person who still believes that Afro-Americans or Black people are oppressed.  Why do some people still feel this way?  Perhaps it is the way some members of the Black community have been treated and are still treated concerning things that should be a basic right of human existence in areas like housing, employment and education.  When it comes to religion the reasons vary to the cause why Black people assimilated and embraced Christianity, but let us look at this more logically.  For centuries in Africa and in other parts of the world when one group or tribe of people conquered another group or tribe of people the conquered would be subject to worship the God(s) of their conquerors. People back then worshipped and prayed to all sorts of things, they prayed to Gods of wood and stone. They participated in animal sacrifice to pay homage to their Gods of wood and stone. When the Europeans arrived on the western coasts and southern tip of Africa, they contracted with African Tribal leaders to capture enemy tribes and in exchange for the African people captured  the African Man-hunting Tribes were given guns and munitions as well as whiskey. So the African Man-hunting Tribes that did business with the Europeans eventually turned on each other and the strongest militarily supported tribe wiped out the weaker ones. Before the all the tribes understood what was going one Europeans were laying claims to the lands that once belong to their ancestors and were moving in.  They could not fight back because they were weakened in numbers and in military might.  Weakened in numbers because the demand for slaves in the Americas (Central and North America) was so high it put a lot of pressure for slave traders to keep up with it.  When Black people came to the United States, they came as cargo and was sold as property, and was treated as such.  In contrast, this was very different from the indentured servitude that poor Europeans endured under richer house masters.  Under indentured servitude a man may serve his master for 7 years and at the end of those years he may choose to obtain his freedom.  This was not the case with the Black slaves, they were not indentured servants. They were property period. The only way for Black people to gain their freedom back then was to run away or rebel against their Slave Masters.  However, some Blacks were treated fairly and kindly by their slave owners and those Slave owners taught their slaves about Christianity.  Christianity was never forced upon an individual, but people living under a tribal mindset could not believe in a tribal God of wood or Stone that did not protect them from becoming slaves.  For this reason many slaves wanted to learn of the God of their Masters.  After learning about Jesus Christ and his sacrifice upon the cross for their sins many slaves became Christians.  But becoming Christians did not make them become free of the chattel slavery they were subjected to.  There were only certain things they were allowed to learn from the bible that was interpreted and was believed  it pertained to being a good slave.  They were not allowed to understand anything else until the coming of the civil war.  What people don’t understand that the civil war was not just about slavery, it was about what style of life all Americans wanted to survive and represent their Christian culture.  You see, the rest of the world was outlawing the slave industry, because black people were proving to be more than property or savages.  Take Crispus Attucks, He was the first man to die for the independence of the United States from Britian.  He was Black. He was not an indentured servant and he was not a slave. He was an intelligent Black man schooled in England who came to the United States seeking to own land and create a business enterprise for himself. It is documented sparsely throughout early American History were blacks were instrumental in the United States becoming a nation. Benjamin Banneker, designed the pocket watch and drew the city plans for Washington D. C.  Blacks were proving to be more than property, many entered the civil war to earn their freedom from slavery and free their own people from the same. The movie “Glory” is the true story of a regiment of United States Negro soldiers who broke through the lines of the United Confederate States forces at Fort Sumpter  during the close of the Civil war is a good example of this fact. After when the civil war came to a close and slavery became an extinct and illegal business practice in the United States .  Many slaves in America gathered themselves together and formed churches, and educated themselves through reading the bible. Like the Church of God in Christ or COGIC for short and the National Original Free Will Baptist Church, was started way back then.  Many of the Negro Universities in the South was founded by these black churches, like Grambling, Hillman and Lane College, These institutions are still here with us today.  As Black Americans better understood the scriptures, the more they advanced in the United States.  The more they fought for their civil and human rights and won them. The very rights that we take for granted today, like having the freedom to live wherever you desire to live, decent housing, being able to work a job to earn a living like anyone else and the power and the freedom to vote.   Today the average Afro-American  knows only a little about Christianity and how it became positively apart of their heritage and culture  It is this ignorance that being and has been preyed upon some  to assert that somehow Christianity was forced upon an enslaved populace.  No the truth is that the enslaved populace sought out and embraced Christianity because they saw that their tribal Gods were not powerful enough to protect them from becoming slaves.

Links:

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/church-southern/history8.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Will_Baptist

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/19/lomax.uncf.black.churches/

http://www.cogic.org/our-foundation/the-founder-church-history/

2. What was our original religion before Christianity prior to African colonization?

There was no one set religion prior to European Colonization.  There were many different pagan tribal religions in Africa before the introduction of Christianity.  Many of the African Tribes that were taken from Africa to the US were taken from the part of the African Continent which practiced prayer and worship through animal sacrifices.  This type of prayer and worship dates back to their forefather, Ham, the son of Noah. Who probably learned the worship of the divine through animal sacrifice from his father Noah and passed the practice to his sons who spread all over the African continent. That is the original religion of Africa.  Christianity then came and dominated the Northern part of the African  continent. Christianity spread over the Northern side of Africa not by bloody conquests, but by the preaching of the saint John Mark, the evangelist and the Apostle Thomas.   Islam came 600 years after the peaceful expansion of Christianity into Africa by bloody conquest and swept through  northern Africa and Spain.  There is no record except in Alex Haley’s “Roots” of Islam reaching the Central African region, but by that time the slave trade was in full production and most of the tribes of Western and Central African were gone.

I must say here that in my personal studies of this issue, I have found out that when the Muslim Arabs swept through northern Africa by force, they also acquired Africans as slaves for their great empire.

3. If Black folk (aka Afro-Americans) were meant to be Christians, why is Christianity

separated and segregated?.

What? Everyone is meant to be Christians through the preaching of the Gospel.  This is because the Gospel is available for everyone to receive including Black people.  This question shows the ignorance of what the black slaves found out about Christianity when they sought it out and embraced it.  They found out that Jesus died for all mankind, regardless of ethnicity or race for the salvation of all.  Many of these people do not know that one of Jesus’ disciples was a Canaanite, a descendant of Ham, the Father of all who are native to Africa. Jesus picked him to be a disciple and allowed him to partake in his ministry. The reason many Black people do not know this fact is because they don’t know that they are direct descendants of Ham, the son of Noah.   I ask you this: If African people were not meant to be Christian then why did John, the Evangelist and later the Apostle Thomas preach the Gospel throughout Northern Africa?   Why did Northern Africans convert to Christianity through the preaching of the Gospel if it was not for them to receive it?  It is because Jesus instructed his Apostles to preach the Gospel starting from Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth.  This is known as the great commission which is still being carried out today.  Christianity is now all over the world through the preaching of the Gospel.  Those who believe that black people were never meant to hear or receive the Gospel message have their history lacking verifiable information.   Why is Christianity separated and segregated then?  It could be from a number of things from a disagreement over doctrine or some people’s ethnic fear of other ethnic groups, ignorance of other ethnic groups that claim to be Christian, ethnic preferences or a preference of different worship styles. I remember visiting a Church long ago with my wife. We were trying to find a place of worship that we felt that was suitable for us.  This church did not have any minority members in it.  No one was friendly toward my wife and I, we really felt uncomfortable there.  Suffice it to say that we did not join that church.  The church we did eventually choose to join was a church where there was a mixture of races represented and were very friendly toward us.   My wife and I are an Afro-Hispanic-American couple. So I could say that we felt comfortable in a church where we were not representing the minority race. In saying that, people must understand that Christianity is not a white man’s religion; it is a black man’s religion. I say this because Christianity is not an American religion. .It did not take its form or start in the United States.  It is an African religion.  How can that be?  This is how that can be and is. Many map makers in Medieval times considered what is now known as Asia Minor or the Middle Eastern part of the world as a part of Africa.  They did this because they regarded the natural boundaries between continents such as Seas, Rivers and Mountains.  Now according to this, Asia is separated from Europe by a Mountain range that runs from North to South and the Black Sea. Asia is also separated from Africa by the Mountains that extend out of Eastern Turkey South of the Black Sea and to the west of the Caspian Sea and is on the Northern side of the River Euphrates and the Sea of Acquba.  Israel is therefore in Africa, therefore making Christianity originally an African religion. Since Christianity developed from the Land of Israel. This proves that Christianity is not a just an European religion. The Maps today do not necessarily follow natural boundaries and more modern Europeans segregated the north east of Medieval Africa from the rest of Africa and gave it to Asia and called it Asia Minor. In these modern times it is referred to as the Middle East. Meaning it is the in the Middle of the Eastern Hemisphere of the planet.  No regard is given to its natural boundaries. What you see today is black people reclaiming their religion, but some black people have been so alienated by what Europeans have done to them that they reject the very religion designed for them.

What does the Q'uran say about the Bible being Corrupted?

The Quran says that the Scriptures were not corrupted because Muhammad instructed Christians to judge the Quran by the Gospel! Why would Muhammad instruct Christians to judge by a corrupted Gospel?

Sura 5:47 Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein.

Sura 5:68 Say: "O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord."

Many say that our Bible that we Christians have in our possession is corrupted and the original scriptures that they were based upon are lost. Therefore, many also state that what we Christians have is a product of men’s interpretation and implication of what Christians believe.   According to the Quran they are wrong because Muhammad said 400 years after the Bible was completely complied, copied accurately and distributed by the millions throughout the known world in the 7^th century:

Sura 80:13-16 (It is) in Books held (greatly) in honour, Exalted (in dignity), kept pure and holy, (Written) by the hands of scribes- Honourable and Pious and Just.

(There were no Islamic books at the time of this Sura 80 "revelation" from Mohammed's early Mecca days.)

By Muhammad saying these ayats in Sura 80, he completely exonerates the producers of the Bible as well as the Bible itself. It clears them of tampering with the original texts. Who did he clear of any tampering? The Jews and the Christians who are the producers of the Holy books of God. So what does the Quran say about those who turn people away from God’s holy books?

Sura 4:136 O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.

At the time Muhammad said this Ayat in Sura 4, there was no Quran written.  So he was not speaking about the Quran or else he would have said “His Book ” not “His Books”.  In saying “His” denotes that the books were personally designated to Allah.  Allah is the Arabic word for God.  The only books that were in existence in Muhammad’s day that were considered God’s Holy Books was the Bible, both Old Testament (Torah in Hebrew or Tuarat in Arabic) and New Testament (Injil in Arabic).  Funny, the very same books that many people today cause many other people to turn from believing in, under the unprovable claim of corruption, is acting contrary to the instruction of the Quran!  According to Muhammad and the Quran, They that practice such activity have strayed very far away from God.

Now, someone will say that all those ayats were abrogated.  Really? Then how can anyone believe that which was abrogated?  The word “abrogated” is defined as completely wiping something completely out of existence or has no legal authority anymore.  The question is can you believe in something that no longer exists or has no legal power over you? No you cannot, for that which has been eliminated cannot be any longer believed upon.  For once it is removed from the recognition and memory of mankind it is impossible to ever retrieve it. It no longer exists. So the question is, what were those abrogated ayats superseded by? Furthermore, why recite it and commit to the memory of it if it is abrogated?  It appears that the Islam that is here in America, is a religion that produces unbelief in the words of the very book they believe in as well as the Bible.

By my observations and in my experience, the Quran abrogated ayats are superseded by the adherent’s level of understanding of the life of Muhammad in the 7^th century and Islamic Law as it relates to his life today, centuries later. The reason I state this is because many adherents of Islam state that you cannot effectively interpret the Quran without studying the life of Muhammad. Ok, Many have done so and have found, in the studying the life of Muhammad through the testimony of his companions many disturbing things. Such offensive things which are not the point of this article and out of respect for our Muslim friends will not be addressed here.  Just suffice it to say that in the view of many who has honestly researched the  life of Muhammad have found that he falls woefully short of his own standards, much less the standards of the great prophets of scripture which in the Quran, he associates himself with. The point is Muhammad is not a good example for Muslims or anyone to use to prove the inspiration or validity of the Quran.  I remember reading about the curse of death Muhammad placed upon himself in order to prove what he was saying was true from one the hadiths.   It was not that he predicted that he would live, he predicted rather that those who opposed him would die, if he was speaking the truth or he would die, if he was not speaking the truth.  He said in so many words, let their curse of death be his my head if  he is not speaking the truth or something to that effect.  Consequently Muhammad died thereafter in 632 AD.

It also has been said that the Quran only appeared because some error that needed to be corrected that was being made concerning the scriptures. Really?  Since we have read that the Quran proclaimed that the Bible is pure and holy, what needed to be corrected?  What Muslims deemed the part of the scriptures that needed correction is not the Holy Books in particular, but rather the interpretation of the scriptures that leads people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for their sins and rose from the dead.  The problem with this argument is that if anyone reads the pure and holy books of God (the Bible), that is exactly you come away believing about Jesus and his ministerial work on the earth.  However, many Muslims insist that Christians in the 4^th Century, in 325 AD, at the Council of Nicea inserted the interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God into the original scriptures. That before that, many believers did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God.   The truth of the matter is that at the Council of Nicea there were two camps of believers.  One influenced by the Marcionites of the second century, who believed that Jesus could not be God, or the son of God and be Jesus of Nazareth at the same time and the other camp was influenced by the Syrian Christian Church which believed that Jesus was the Son of God, thus making him fully God at the same time as he was fully a man.  There were also two Bibles at that Council, each supporting the beliefs of each camp. After much debate and consideration to the pre-existing written testimonies of the Apostles and their disciples, a vote was taken and the camp influenced by the Marcionite theology and bible they used to support their view of Jesus lost by a land side.  Now the important point here is that the Council of Nicea did not make up the idea that Jesus is the Son of God, rather they used existing written and oral testimonies of the church fathers as well as the pre-existing written testimony of the Apostles which were the Gospels and associated letters to make their decision.  The Council of Nicea was convened to confirm what already was believed by Christians concerning Jesus, the Christ, expose heretical teachings thereby and to unify the church.  It was not the council’s intent or will to insert, change anything that was already establish by verifiable written and oral testimony. So the Muslim suggestion that council was responsible for the corruption of the scriptures through the interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God is wrong.  Also as I have pointed out that the Quran agrees that the original scriptures were not corrupted, 300 years after the Council of Nicea.  If the Bible was not corrupted before Islam came into existence and was not corrupted during Muhammad’s life, then what does that make the Muslim argument of scriptural corruption in the first 3 centuries of the church?  It makes it a lie and a false accusation.  
If it be true that the Bible was not corrupted in the first 3 centuries of the church existence, then the Bible could not be lost, now could it?  This  argument that the original scriptures of  the Bible are  lost is also a joint claim that many Muslims make about the original scriptures being corrupted which is only partly true.  Which part you ask?  The part of that the original scriptures were lost. They just don’t know how they were lost or when they were lost.  The original scriptures were lost to decay, not from scriptural tampering as they have suggested. Decay is normal for written texts to experience when exposed to air for a long time.  It is known quite well that written texts turn to dust over time, which is why it is needed to make accurate written copies to replace them.  This means that  the original scriptures were lost to decay, but it also means that they were replaced by accurate copies of them.  So the original scriptures that were written on the earliest forms of paper vanished because of decay, but before they disappeared millions of  accurate copies were reproduced and sent all over the world.  Ah ha! Some Muslims state that is when the bible was corrupted and the idea that Jesus is the son of God was inserted into the Biblical text.  Wait now, see how hard it is for Muslims to admit that they were wrong:  First they said that the council of Nicea did the corruption of the original scriptures, that did not prove to be true.  They now run to the scribes who have copied the scriptures and accused them of proliferating the idea that Jesus is the Son of God in the replicas of the original scriptures.  That is also impossible as well as an insult.  Here is the reason why.  Back then they did not have printers, copiers and any other modern device to reproduce an accurate copy of a manuscript.  They had though was a pen and paper and a strict adherence to accuracy, particularly when it came to the Holy scriptures which we now know that Muhammad cleared them of doing any tampering of the scriptures.   If a book or a letter of the Gospel was not written correctly, it was destroyed and a new copy was made to take its place. This process of preservation of the Holy Books of God was adopted from the Jews.  The first Christians were Jews, remember?  So it is an insult to imply that the Christians and Jews who has dedicated themselves to the preservation of the Holy Books of God were the ones who inserted the interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God.  They not only insult Christians and Jews but they insult Muhammad who proclaimed that the Holy books of God are pure and holy and those who produce them as honest and pious. Now the Bible since that time has survived because believers took great care in its preservation, accurately making copies of it so its message would not be lost.  So yes, the original scriptures were lost, but not the copies of the original scriptures.  Since then, we have discovered so many old copies suffering the same fate as the original scriptures, they were also vanishing due to decay.  Therefore, many of the copies of the original scriptures were discovered with missing portions in different places, but believers dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the scriptures have complied and blended the relative pieces of  the copies of the original scriptures together to form an accurate replica of the original scriptures. So accurate was the replica they created that when another very old Bible was discovered, its contents matched that of the replica, what many believers have today in their hands is based upon that accurate  replica of the original scriptures.  Another reason that it was impossible to create a fraudulent copy of the scriptures is because if one was created, and many have been created and exposed as fraudulent copies, it would stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the scriptures.  I can name you a few Bible translations that are not the genuine scriptural copies of the original scriptures, but that would take a whole lot of time.  I have wrote another article entitled “New Testament corrupted?” that covers why it is impossible for the New Testament to be corrupted.  Besides, there is a simpler way to tell the difference between a fake Bible version and the True Bible version that based upon the original scriptures. I share that later in this article.

So what Muslims do believing that the Bible is lost, which it isn’t; believing that the bible has been tampered with, which it hasn’t? They go about interjecting concepts into the pure and holy text of the Bible in order to prove to people to how they believe the scriptures is correct.  Now,  I have in every instance where a Muslim has insisted that a word was rendered incorrectly or translated incorrectly in the Bible, after I have investigated their “proof”, I found that every one of them was incorrect time after time.  In fact, in my investigations of their "proofs", I have discovered that what the Muslims accuse of Christians of doing to their sacred texts, Muslims were guilty of the very same thing. I found that they did the same sort of thing to their own sacred text, the Quran. It is a recorded fact that Muslims long ago destroyed the original texts of the Quran and produced another based upon what people remembered Muhammad saying 100 years after his death.  Muslims today are divided over the Uthman Quran and thereby produced 20 different versions of the Uthman Quran of which only 3 are allowed into the United States. (So there is no such thing as one authoritative Arabic Quran) They also have divided into several different groups (So there is no such thing as an universal Islamic brotherhood) that constantly fight with each other. The kicker about this issue is that Muhammad’s appointed top 4 teachers and reciters did not approve of the Uthman Quran, citing missing Ayats and whole Suras.  They were also not asked  to assist in the written compilation of it, 100 years after Muhammad died, in fact they took offense to not being asked to assist in its compilation.  Those 4 famed reciters and teachers of the Quran died or was killed because they would not surrender the words of the Quran that they learned from the lips of Muhammad. Their written versions of the Quran were confiscated and destroyed.  Think of it, the original words of Muhammad lost forever and in its place, words that people remembered that they heard or believed that they heard from the lips of  Muhammad 100 years later than when he actually said it. That is either the most amazing feat ever accomplished or the most impossible feat ever accomplished, to have accurately remembered what one man has said for 100 years without the aid of modern recording devices.  Muslims claimed that this feat was accomplished and proves that the Quran is Muhammad’s standing miracle, which verifies him to be a prophet of God.  The problem is that Muhammad told  his followers that the Quran can be recited ( remember during Muhammad’s lifetime there were no written Qurans) 7 different ways.   This has become problematic for Islamic translators as they wrestle about what is meant by an archaic Islamic word that only appears in one version of all the Arabic Qurans that exist in the world.  One Arabic word in the Quran expressed 7 different ways can and has changed the meaning of the text within it in all the Arabic versions in the world, forcing many Muslims to embrace the Uthman Quran which makes it one of the most popular Qurans today, a book whose words of origin are questionable at best. What is worst is that the Oldest Quran that was discovered in Yehmen, a country on the southeastern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and instead of the contents of that Old Quran verifying the accuracy of the Uthman and the other 20 Arabic Qurans, it reads completely different from all of them! What a mess! Conversely, the New Testament was compiled and completed by AD 90, Jesus died in AD 33, a difference of only 57 years!  Of the Gospel portion of the New Testament, the first Gospel written, Mark, was dated as being composed 25 years or earlier, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, that means the earliest copy we know of was composed in AD 58 but remember it is a copy of the original version, so this means that the original, the first one written, was really composed earlier than AD 58  and the last Gospel written, the earliest copy we have in our possession dates back to AD 70, but it is clear that it was written before the death of John, the Apostle which was a few years before that year bringing the actual year of composition closer to AD 58.  The point is, the Gospels were composed more closer to the death of Christ in comparison to the written compilation of the Quran after the death of Muhammad. Also the resources from which the Gospel was composed are of a better quality than those who submitted the ayats for the compilation of the Quran. No one who lived 100 years after Muhammad died who submitted an Ayat (verse) to be included into the Quran ever seen Muhammad say those words.  They were only repeating what they were told that Muhammad said from someone else’s memory. Their source of information is from someone else who claimed that is what Muhammad said.  Thus these words we read in the written versions of the Quran can not be authenticated. Conversely the Gospels were written by first and second hand eyewitnesses. What is meant by first hand witnesses is that they actually saw Jesus say the words he spoke. What is meant by second hand witnesses, even though they did not see Jesus say the words they recorded in their Gospel record themselves, they documented the words of another eyewitness that actually saw the words Jesus spoke. You cannot get any better idea of what Jesus actually said from these eyewitnesses, than that except for being there yourself. The Apostle John states in the Gospel that bears his name:

“But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” –John 20:31

So let’s review:

1.      The claim that the Bible was corrupted by the Council of Nicea, by inserting the  interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God is not correct because:

a.        The Church council of Nicea convened to confirm EXISTING testimony about the status of Jesus, the Christ, repudiate FALSE teachings about Jesus, the Christ and unify the Church.

b.      Muhammad himself said 500 years after the Bible was compiled, accurately copied and widely distributed in the known world, in the Quran, that the Bible, representing God’s Holy Books, were keep pure and Holy by the scribes who produced them, which were the Christian and the Jews who dedicated themselves to the preservation of the holy scriptures. 

Now for some this is not enough proof of the Bible being tampered with, for they point to the many and various versions of English Bible Translations, claiming that it where the corruption is.  Now what I have say about that is this:  It is not surprising to find phony and fake bibles being circulated around as though they were legit copies of the scriptures.  Remember the Christian Church have been fighting against heresies from false doctrines and false Bibles ever since the first Church council was formed.  Even back then there were false bibles like the Nestorian Bible  which was the Bible with the first harmonized  Gospel record.  The problem with it was that the Gospel record within it denied the deity of Jesus, the Christ.  The church attempted to correct the problem by confiscating as many of these false bibles and replacing them with the true bibles, but some believers hid those false bibles, believing them to be the truth and circulated them throughout the Arabian peninsula all the way to western China.  It is believed that Muhammad befriended a Nestorian Christian monk and had him read his false Bible to him.  This is why possibly that Muhammad incorrectly proclaimed that Jesus was not the son of God, but rather the Son of  Mary who did not really die on the cross, but was raised to God in heaven.  Imagine what would have happened if Muhammad had gotten a hold of the true bible?  Looking at this issue another way, consider that if fake bibles are being circulated, what are they based upon?  The true one, of course, for you cannot have a fake if you don’t have the real thing to make a fake one from.   This means a true Bible version has to embrace what has been established by the church councils concerning Jesus, the Christ, meaning that any Bible version that does not embrace the interpretation that Jesus is the Son of God is a fake bible.

What separates Muslims from Christians is the view of who and what Jesus, the Christ is.  The Quran states many things about Jesus that is truly amazing. Then again we are looking at a testimony built on questionable resources.  Some of the things one finds in the Quran about Jesus is that he was born of the virgin Mary, but not as God’s son, that he performed miracles empowered by God and made a bird out of clay, that as an infant, he spoke from the cradle and prophesied about his own death.  In the Quran he was acknowledged as Christ and was a part of the line of the prophets of God, who was joined and assisted in the ministry by the disciples (who produced the Gospel records), who themselves testified that they were Muslims. That he taught people to adhere to the Law and supplied believers with the Gospel message.  That he did not die on the cross, but was taken back alive by God to heaven.  Now Christians have no problem with most of these representations of Jesus in the Quran, except for Jesus not dying on the cross and he not being born the Son of God.  Again we must consider that the quality of the sources of this Islamic testimony of Christ to be questionable because of the quality of the witnesses of what Muhammad said. It is not that Muslims are lying about Jesus, it is just the view of Christ they received from the Quran is the only Jesus they know about.  They are just speaking about what they know, even though the quality of their information is poor.  

Now the Quran also says that it comes as a guardian over the Holy Books which God has sent down to men confirming that which was said before.  The Quran certainly confirms as far as Christianity is concerned that Jesus was born of a virgin, but it also does not confirm that Jesus is the son of God.   But we know now that if the original scriptures was not lost and testifies to the fact that Jesus is the son of God. Therefore, the Quran is disqualified as a confirmer of the scriptures that came before it.  To confirm something is to support and verify it, but doing so also disconfirms whatever is not supported and verified.  The problem here is that the Quran complied by questionable testimony and the Bible is verified by eyewitnesses and authentic copies.  Which one would you believe? Furthermore, does the Bible need confirmation from the Quran? If the Bible is pure and holy as Muhammad said it was, then the answer is no.  The Bible does not need the Quran to give validity to it. The Bible can and has stood on its own, because of God’s design and will.  The Quran however needs the Bible and by claiming to be its guardian implies that its purpose is to protect the Bible from people who wants to corrupt it to their own means, but the Quran is guilty of the very thing it is supposed to protect the Bible from.  How does the Quran need the Bible?  There are many Quran passages that refer back to many biblical events, but they are revised, or changed.  Isn’t this the corruption of the pure and holy books of God by the Quran? Of  course it is, now consider the idea that the Bible is corrupted and the origin Bible is lost, what you have left is the Quran which made of the questionable testimony of men as the lone record of God’s dealing with mankind.  But without the Bible how would anyone know what the Quran says is true?  No one would know for sure what the Quran says is true. They would have to believe the Quran blindly that it is true without any collaborating evidence.  Or tear out every biblical reference mentioned in it, because if the Bible is corrupted the Quran is also corrupted.  The Bible has no reference implying the coming of the Quran, not one prophecy. Also the Bible does not need the Quran to prove what it says is true, it is the true and pure word of God. One only has to read its contents and its divine nature and character comes shining through, because it is written by eyewitnesses, its creditability is well founded and unquestionable.  It is no wonder that Muhammad told Christians and Jews to judge what he says by the Holy books of God they possessed, because he knew that those holy books creditability was unquestionable and they were the only written Holy and pure books of God at the time he said those instructions.   He felt that he was continuing the message of God that was given to previous prophets and supplying it to the people of Arabia, but he received the wrong gospel and thereby led millions, possibly billions away from their salvation by it.