Responding to an Islamic Challenge

Few days ago, I received a challenge from a Muslim in a forum I moderate. I thought my reply to him there might interest some of you.

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Thanks again Tasbhih Iman to share with us once again your Islamic convictions. However, I remember that in your last post of the 30th March you did a similar thing and on the 31st of March i wrote on this forum (Jeunes de sacre coeur pretoria) asking you a simple question which you have yet to answer. I asked you what was your motive for writing on our forum. I am willing to engage you if only you can tell me what kind of purpose you are pursuing here.

But since you might once again ignore this simple request, let me start by making a simple and brief remark about your two recent posts.

The first post deals with the book of Deuteronomy and the second post speaks of the gospel of John. Let's start with the first one.

A. Does the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible speaks about Muhammad?

The simple answer is you wish! But i am sure that the readers will be interested in the longer answer so let me give that too.

"I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name." Deuteronomy 18: 18-19

You quoted these two verses of Deuteronomy 18 and you strangely concluded this: "Il sera issu des frères des Israélites, c'est-à-dire les Ismaélites" [in English: He will come from the brethren of Israelites, meaning the Ismaelites] .. only a Muslim can read things like this in the Bible. Pulling out of fine air information that is not found in the text. So let me help you understand something dear. When you are interested to study the Bible, or any book or document for that matter, make sure that you read the context. That will help you so much in getting the meaning of a text.

I'll start quoting this chapter from verse 15 and let see if maybe you'll have enough courage to admit that the author of Deuteronomy was not talking of the Ismaelites.

"15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. ¹⁶ For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lordour God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”¹⁷ The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹ I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name."

The text in verse 15 emphases that the prophet will be "from among you" and you just have to read this whole chapter to figure out that the author was talking to the Israelite. And when we say among you the Israelite, this means among you the Israelite and not from another cousin nation, brother nation, sister nation, uncle nations, half-brother nations or else. So please dear Tasbih, be attached to intellectual integrity and truth and not to religious fanaticism.

B. Is the predicted New testament Comforter of the Gospel of John, Muhammad?

The simple answer is you wish! Not even in the wildest dream of any prophet!

This is even easier to refute than the first one. It was reported that Jesus said this in John 14:15-16

"¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be^[c] in you."

1. Jesus spoke to the disciples. 2. The paracletos (advocate) was already known by the disciples in the first century. 3. The paracletos (advocate) will be in the disciples and not only with the disciples. And 4. the paracletos will be with the disciples forever.

If Muhammad was that advocate/ paracletos, this means that Jesus would have lied to his disciples by telling them that the Father will give them another advocate to fill in Jesus place when he left them, because by the time Muhammad was born all the disciples were already dead. Hence, they would have never met the paracletos. But thank God Muhammad was not the paracletos. And more, Jesus already informed us in that verse that the disciples already knew the paracletos for he lived with them and that he will be in them.

It is a mistake to assume that the advocate couldn't be a spirit because Jesus said that he can speaks.

You said: 

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 Jesus said the parakletos is a human being:

John 16:13 "He will speak."

John 16:7 "for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." It is impossible that the Comforter be the 'Holy Ghost' because the Holy Ghost was present long before Jesus and during his ministry. 

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The ability to speak is not only reserved to human beings. God speaks too, but that doesn't make Him a human being. The angel Gabriel spoke too, but that doesn't necessarily make him a human. And the fact that the comforter will speak doesn't make Him necessarily a human being. A baby doesn't speak and yet it does not make it less than a human being. Speaking is the attributes of intelligence. And that which speaks has a conscious personality. That what you should infer from this text about the counselor that Jesus spoke about. He had a personality but he was not a human being. That is why he could be IN the disciples. Matter of fact He came upon the disciple and in the disciple through a series of event surround the resurrection. The principal one is the event that happened at the Pentecost of the Jews few weeks after Jesus' resurrection.

I guess this will suffice for now. 

Beside that, i am always impressed to see critics of the Bible like Muslim always coming back to the bible to find evidence for their belief when in the first place they keep accusing the manuscripts to be inaccurate, corrupted and more. Why on earth do they always try to find solace in what they believe to be a corrupted document? This has always been to me a mystery. Maybe some of them will really need to sit and think through these things and decide if the bible is a reliable document hence start referring to it, or it is not a reliable document, hence stop to make reference to it in their argumentation. Some people really need to decide what they really want in life, because they apparently don't know!

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Anyway .. I hope you all have a pleasant day and week in Jesus' name.
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