Jesus and Isa: Discussing Christ with a Muslim

There is a version of Christ found inside the Islamic faith written into the Qur'an.

Muslims will tell you is the same Jesus that is written about in

the New Testament, but they don't call him Jesus, they call him Isa.

So in this episode, we're going to be talking about the differences between

Isa and Jesus, , what they are, why it matters, and how to discuss this topic

with any Muslims that you may know.

You're listening to Base Camp, a podcast where we equip Christians

to engage the darkest places and the least reached people with the gospel.

My name is Michael Collins.

In this episode, I sit down with Jeremy Jenkins, the president and

founder of All Things All People.

And we discuss the difference between Jesus and Isa.

The idea for this conversation came from an article that Jeremy wrote

for the All Things All People blog.

I'll put a link to that article in the description.

The goal is by the end of this episode, you will have a much better

understanding of the way people of the Islamic faith see Christ,

what some of the main differences are, and how to best talk about this subject

with any Muslim people that you may know.

So let's get right into the episode.

you started the last episode asking me to share the story that was in my

article, so Jeremy, I'm just going to ask that you share the story that was in your

article that we have on Jesus and Isa.

Am I saying it right?

Is it Isa?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, When I wrote that article, I I'm not always the best at titling things

because if somebody doesn't know that Isa is the Islamic name for Jesus, then they

have no idea what that article is about,

yeah, I

so, yeah, so Isa, Isa is the name that the, the Quran uses to refer to

Jesus and a lot of people don't know that.

That Jesus is referenced a ton in the Quran.

I mean, he's one of the most talked about people in the Quran.

And I was in North Africa sometime recently, and I was there with a team

of people and we were working with some missionaries in North Africa.

And obviously I can't say where, and we had gotten really tired of not being

able to find people who speak English.

And we don't speak any Arabic at all.

And so we decided to go down to this touristy area of the city we were in.

Hoping to find people to speak English.

And, and of course that works.

Cause if you've ever been, you've not been out of the country yet.

Right.

never been outta the country.

That's going to be a lot of fun whenever.

The summer will be the first time I'm going to Guatemala

my goodness.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well that, okay.

That'd be cool.

Well, and yeah, you'll experience that there too.

So there's not a ton of English speakers, and so.

Anytime you get the opportunity to speak your, your heart language,

it makes things a lot easier.

So we went kind of hunting for that.

The other thing too, is when you're in a tourist area and you're walking around

and they can tell you're not from there and that you're a tourist, they also

assume you have a pocket full of money and they want to sell you something.

And so JR and I were walking and we met this guy and he started talking to us.

I think he owned a, he owned a travel company.

So he wanted us to take his tours and all of that.

Well, I'm like, you know, the guys that we work with, those of them who've

traveled with me know that I'm pretty good at saying no to people who are

trying to sell us stuff overseas.

And so we started off just like kind of really in a friendly way, just saying no

to this guy, but he was pretty persistent, but he seemed pretty nice anyway.

So we just started talking to him and asking about the company, asking

about what he provided and Eventually he kind of figured out like we

weren't looking to buy anything, but he was still really friendly.

Well, J.

R.

and I both love coffee, as you know, and , in a lot of parts of the

The Middle East specifically like predominantly Arab populations.

They'll have like these coffee shops.

They call them our was and I was a HWA and it's outdoors.

So it's like an outdoor patio and people will sit, older men, especially

during the middle of the day, we'll sit at these hours for hours

eye on us

is.

It really, yeah, it really is.

And but you know, it doesn't bother them.

It really, it really didn't bother me.

But yeah, it can be but they'll sit there and they'll smoke

Shisha, which is like hookah.

Do you know, you know, like and they'll play chess or backgammon all day.

And so that's kind of like like I'm built for that kind of like, not the Shisha,

not the hookah, but but like sitting and drinking coffee and playing backgammon

and chess and talking to old men all day, like to me, I was sort of like, I

wanted to sit in that environment, look for opportunities to talk to people.

So we asked this guy and, and asked him, Hey, where's a good ahwa.

We don't want to go to a touristy place.

And so he kind of lights up and he's like, well, Hey, I'll take you to mine.

I'll take you to the one that I go to.

And so he walks us, I don't remember, maybe a quarter mile.

Kind of in this hidden little alleyway system, we would have never known to

go down and he takes us to this, this Alwa, which is filled with locals,

which was really my idea of fun.

I, I, I actively try and avoid tourists as much as I can

when I'm doing missions work.

And so we ended up sitting down.

Well, he, he's going to walk away and we Ask him, Hey, would you let us, you know,

buy you a tea or coffee or something?

And and so he sits down and we just start talking.

And for me, I have a really easy time.

Talking to people of other religions, partly because I'm super interested

in them and their faith, but then also because I teach religions.

And when you tell somebody that you're a world religions, like professor or

teacher I've never really had any like bad reactions to that, at least not yet.

And so I told him I was super interested in Islam, told him I was super interested

in the culture and all of that.

And so I was just asking him questions and everything he was saying.

Was kind of leading us to the point where it was just like,

well, he knew we were Christians.

We had mentioned that.

And, and of course he was, he was Muslim.

I actually asked him, I said, cause I didn't want to assume even though I knew

it's just like, Hey, are you Muslim?

And he smiled and was like, yeah.

And.

It seemed like everything he wanted to talk about was about the similarities

between Islam and Christianity and presumably there's, there are a

lot, you know we believe in one God.

We believe in an afterlife.

We believe in a day of judgment.

We believe that, you know, submission to God is important.

Mm-Hmm.

. A lot of Christians don't know, like Islam literally just means submission.

Mm-Hmm.

and Muslim just means submitted one.

So our Venn diagram overlaps.

Yeah.

I've heard a lot of different missionary stories.

People that were evangelizing to Islamic people and.

they said the people that they were hanging out with told them,

you're so close to being a Muslim.

if you were just accept this one thing.

In fact, what's so funny because most of my, the first few

years of my travel and research and studying religions, I was

doing a lot of work in South Asia.

Mm-Hmm.

and Hinduism and Buddhism and things like that.

And the worldview does not overlap hardly at all.

With groups like that, like there's, there's hardly any similarities

at all between what Christians assumed to be true, believed to

be true and what a Hindu does.

There's, there's really not that much similarity.

So when I started, and I'm not, I'm not an Islamic expert, but when I started,

engaging Muslims with the gospel.

I was like, Oh, this is so much

easier.

You know what I mean?

Because, because of the same thing, what you just said is like , they have

a deep love and reverence for Allah, which is just the Arabic word for God.

And they, they believe that Allah is the same God that the Bible is talking about.

In fact, most of Islamic history, at least what Muhammad said was Islamic history

is, is Jewish and Christian history.

I mean, and that's why, It is really easy to talk to Muslims about matters

of faith because they believe in Adam and Eve, they believe in Noah, they

believe in Abraham, they believe in Moses

in Noah, believe Moses um, Somewhat.

the the, the

the Quran on top of it.

Well, somewhat.

So, yeah, so , I mean, there's a lot of differences, but the main

difference is that they believe, so if you're familiar with the story of

Abraham and Isaac, Abraham has a son.

Well, before he had Isaac, he had another son.

Is this

Ishmael

and what Jews and Christians believe is that Isaac was the promised son and that

through Isaac seed is the chosen people of God, which Jews and Christians would

say in some form or fashion is Israel.

Muslims would say that.

Actually, the chosen people of God came through Ishmael.

And in fact, they believe that Ishmael was the son who was almost

sacrificed when God provided the Ram.

And so ultimately they view themselves as the seed of Ishmael.

And if you, if you read the account in Genesis of when.

When Abraham you know, essentially banished Hagar and Ishmael, it says that

he brought them out to the desert and that Hagar was distraught because her

son was going to die, Ishmael and God, and this is in Genesis, God speaks to,

to Hagar and says, Hey, I I see your son.

I will not let him die.

And in fact, he's going to become a great and mighty people.

And that's the end of it.

But when Mohammed says that he began to receive revelation from Allah through

the angel Gabriel in a cave outside of Mecca, what he said was that Jews and

early Christians actually corrupted.

What they call the Torah and the Injil.

Injil is just the Arabic word for gospel.

And so ultimately what we have is we have essentially two streams of promise.

Is Jews and Christians say that the promise of Abraham came

through Isaac and Muslims say no.

In fact, it came through Ishmael.

And that early Jews and Christians corrupted, specifically Jews,

corrupted The old, the Old Testament, and then the New Testament after it.

And so we do have a tremendous amount of similarities, but there are,

there are these tiny differences there at the beginning of the

narratives that, that changed the

trajectory of

everything.

So do they believe that Jesus is a descendant of Ishmael or Jesus was.

still a descendant of Isaac, but they just still hold him in

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know specifically what they would say about his genealogy.

They do believe that Jesus and all of the prophets that came before were actually

prophets of a law and they hold those men in high regards, but the difference

being that they would say that Jesus and Noah and Moses actually all came Came as

prophets of Allah spreading the message of Islam, which is submission to Allah.

And that Mohammed brought the restored revelation of Allah

in the form of the Quran.

And, these few key differences that point Muslims towards a life of submission and

really, I mean, a works based salvation.

They wouldn't disagree with that at all.

Whereas Christians say, no, Jesus was the son of God.

He was God and his death, burial and resurrection redeemed humanity

and bought them from their sin.

We, will get into maybe more of those little differences about Christ.

But back

to

You in, this and what

is it?

and this awa.

with your friend and with JR.

Yeah.

You guys go and sit down and, and then this.

this

So what what's funny is like, it's a beautiful thing because.

What otherwise can be like kind of an academic

conversation,

like, oh, here's these differences and all that they proved to be really important

because this conversation centers in on the idea of him saying, well, hey,

there's actually a lot of similarities.

Kind of what you said, like, you guys are just this

close to being really good Muslims, you know?

And I said, you know, there are a lot of similarities.

You're right.

In fact, we both agree that we're sinful.

And, and what kind of fall out of this is this really great evangelistic method.

I don't know who pioneered it.

But we call it any three which is asking.

This guy, the question, how do you believe that your sins are going to be forgiven?

And so he begins to list off the various things that, that Muslims

believe, including like the five pillars, like you have to confess.

That Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet.

You have to what's called a zakat, which is like, you have

to give, you have to be generous.

You have to fast during Ramadan.

You have to pray five times a day called Salat.

And then at least once in your life, as you're able, you have to perform a

pilgrimage to Mecca called the Hajj.

And there's other things too.

I mean, the Muslims really are mostly A devout group of people who place a

high emphasis on living a good life.

And so he lists off all these things and.

He kind of finishes and I said and once again, this isn't my question, but okay.

Do you believe then that your sins are forgiven

already?

And he shook his head.

No, you know, no, I don't , which is the standard Islamic answer.

Even Mohammed said that he couldn't be sure that he had done enough to warrant

salvation into paradise upon his death.

And so Muslims really operate on the sense that no one

can

know.

And I said, okay, so see, here's the difference then.

And this is where it's important.

Like any conversation that you're having that's evangelistic in nature, even if

there's a lot of similarities, sometimes those can be really helpful to highlight,

but eventually we have to get to

the differences.

And I said, see, here's the difference.

We believe that our sins are already forgiven.

And the way that I believe that is because of the work of Jesus.

And I shared kind of an aversion and this kind of goes along with, the any

three method, and maybe we can, we can link to some, any three resources in

the podcast notes, but the story we call it the first and last sacrifice,

and that kind of, once again, leans on.

The, the overlap between the Abrahamic faith, Islam Judaism and Christianity,

because you reference, you say, Hey, we believe in Adam and Eve in

the garden sinned against Allah.

And the first act of really compassion that God had for humanity was that

he clothed them and he clothed them in the form of animal sacrifice.

He killed he killed a lamb and provided them clothing.

And, you know, he's nodding, right.

As, as most good Muslims would.

Yeah.

And you say, you know, and you see throughout the old Testament narrative

or the Torah narrative that really for humanity to come into the presence of,

of a law there had to be sacrificed.

There had to be a toning sacrifice, usually in the form of, of, of

animal sacrifice so much so that right between Abraham and his son,

and it's important, most Christian missionaries would say you don't.

Like there on the street in an hour, get into an argument over whether it

was Isaac or Ishmael, you just say Abraham and his son, you know, Abraham

and his son, there, there was a needed sacrifice between Abraham and God.

And instead of making him sacrifice his son, he provided a Ram.

And then so on and so on through the, the, the Torah, the old Testament.

And, and then I shared with him and I said, and then we meet the person of

Jesus, who we believe was the son of God.

And there on the cross, we see him and we see what his cousin, John the Baptist

said, which, which was interesting.

Cause he had never heard of John

the

Baptist.

We see that John the Baptist calls him the lamb of God who

takes away the sins of the world.

And this man had never heard that phrase.

And and I said, well, it's appropriate because on the cross he was killed.

And this, this also brings us to another huge difference between

Muslims and Christians, because Muslims don't believe that Jesus was

killed on the

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they believe Jesus lived a sinless life.

They believe he was born of a virgin.

The Quran actually lists like a ton of really interesting

things, presumably about Jesus.

They believe when he was an infant.

That he spoke.

So they believe all sorts of miraculous

things

about

Jesus.

It's not that he

died.

It's not

that

he

died.

Or is it not that he died at all, or just not that he died on the

They believe no, they believe that he didn't die that he was taken up by a

law and that he'll return one day He's actually jesus is a huge part of Islamic

eschatological beliefs, like at the end of days that he's going to come back.

So they, they actually, and this is a sort of an important thing to

understand about the Islamic worldview.

They think that, well, if Jesus was sinless, They don't believe

he's the highest prophet.

They believe Muhammad is the highest prophet.

But if, if Jesus was sinless, then it, then Allah would have

never allowed him to die on a

Interesting.

So they accept that he's sinless, but they,

Yeah.

It's a kind of a strange thing.

Yeah.

And like I said, they believe he's born of a virgin.

They actually hold Mary in really high regard to they would have referred.

Yeah.

And usually they refer to her as Miriam.

So do they think that The New Testament, the Gospels

are lying or that they've been

corrupted.

Yeah, they believe that they believe that the Gospels, yeah, the Injil.

Is that we have is corrupted, but interestingly enough I mean, most

Muslims have never read it because, because all they hear from their

leaders, from imams, from the culture is that it's, it's corrupted.

It can't be trusted that early Christians changed the original message

of Isa to fit some other narrative.

Yeah.

And, and of course they reject Trinitarianism.

They reject that Jesus is God.

They reject that he's the son of God.

Probably the One of the most memorized passages in the Quran is where Muhammad

wrote that God would never have a son.

Yeah.

And so they reject, they reject really the totality of

who Christians say Jesus was.

I'm curious because you know, you talk about in this article

They, don't believe that it is befitting of God to have a son and at the same time

they hold family in such a high regard,

but if it's not befitting of God to have a son, that seems that

there's something negative about

having

a

son.

Yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, I think it all boils down to Islam.

Islam is probably the purest form of monotheism that you

could find.

In the sense, I mean, Christians are monotheists, but they believe that God

is, is three persons in one essence.

The first thing you have to do to become a Muslim is say, there is no God,

but

God

in, in Muhammad is his prophet.

it's called the Shahada.

And so the true essence right there with submission.

Of

Islam, the true essence is that God is one.

I remember my professors using the word unicity, the idea

that God is one in nature.

God is one in person.

And so I don't think that they would That they would view it as the insistence that

God couldn't have a son as a negative.

They view God interacting with anything other than, than

himself as a defiling of the

nature of

God.

And so, so the Islamic view of God is, is very transcendent as well.

I would not call the Islamic view of Allah as like imminent or near.

to humanity.

And Muslims would say, that's why angels are so important.

That's why Allah did not speak to Muhammad.

Gabriel spoke to Muhammad.

And then if you can take it even a little step further and think

about the, the Christian concept of incarnation, when you learn then

what Muslims view about Allah, the incarnation is hugely offensive.

The idea that God took on flesh and dwelt among us is seen as, as a defiling.

Of the nature of God, because why would God become

a human?

That's so, so much lower than he is.

And what's funny is like Christians

funny,

like Christians

You know what I mean?

say,

That's how much he loves us.

Right?

And so Christians operate with this, this idea of God is transcendent yet imminent.

He is, he is, he is far and above creation, but he has chosen to

make himself near and lowly.

Right.

And that's actually an interesting thing to like Christ describes himself as

gentle and lowly, right?

These are not Islamic concepts at all.

And so what they say happened at Calvary and this is actually what my friend

in the Iowa said is, is he stopped me and he said, see, we disagree.

Isa was not killed on the cross

and one of the beliefs that developed that explained what happened at Calvary is

that Allah took Jesus from the cross and replaced him with somebody else and sort

of fooled People into thinking that it was

ESA, that

it

was

Jesus.

Interesting.

Yeah.

and, And

actually, and is this, is this in the Quran?

This is, or is it just a belief

so there's like one, there's like one mention of it.

It's kind of like a throwaway comment.

And then really throughout time.

Muslims have developed this

belief,

Which is sort of common in some instances like how the Quran interpreted the Old

and New Testament, there's sort of these asides that that Mohammed threw out.

In the Quran in that throughout Islamic history, the Hadith and then

the Sharia, like the consensus sort of developed into what maybe most

Muslims would consider to be true now.

And so, you know, sitting in that coffee shop you know, he expressed

that it was like, no, we don't believe he said died on the cross.

We believe it's somebody else.

And, and I had actually had a conversation with a friend of mine who

we were working with that, that while we were there basically like, . What

do you say when people say that?

And.

He had kind of told me what he shared and I thought it was brilliant.

And what I, I shared with, with my friend in the Iowa and Jr was sitting

across the table and I found out later, cause he hadn't said anything.

He was just praying the whole time, which is, which is great.

And it's a big reason why I always encourage to like for people to as

best as they can, you know Do this

kind

of work

in community

is what I said is what my friend had kind of shared with me that he

says, which is, Hey, listen, I know that that's what Muslims believe,

but let me ask you this question.

I know that family is really important to most Muslims and especially

here in the Arab part of the world.

Like family is essential.

And he agreed because it is.

And I was like, let me ask you this, you know, that Miriam was at the cross

and he said, yeah.

And I said, okay.

And I, I won't share his name, but you know, Hey.

If, if that was

you

on that cross and your mother was there, don't you think she would have

known if it was somebody else in your

place?

And He stopped.

He was actually, it was kind of a funny moment because he was

drinking his tea and he stopped and kind of gave me like a look out

of

out of the corner of his

eye

and he paused and I'll pause here to not that there's not a

response to be given to that.

Because obviously we are talking

about

God.

Right.

So it would be very easy for a Muslim to say, well, yeah, like Allah could

have done that, which then kind of begs the question of like, why

is Allah being so deceptive here?

Right.

But we didn't even get into that because he just stopped and he kind of laughed

and me and JR just kind of laughed because it was like this funny moment.

And he said, Well, you know, if I understood as much about Christianity,

as you know, about Islam, then I think I could answer that question.

And I was

like,

that's

fine.

That's a perfectly acceptable answer.

, but listen,

when

I want to learn more about Islam, I read the Quran and I talked to Muslims.

If you want to learn more about ESA and Christianity, you should read

the NGO and talk to Christians.

And I said, and I believe that the NGO that I have is Is the true in

Jill and that it wasn't corrupted.

Would you be willing.

If we came back tomorrow to read it with

us, And the Inge is just the

the gospel, yeah, the new Testament is usually the word that they

use for the gospel or the new Testament.

And amazingly, he said, yes.

And and you know, we, I still actually I'm in touch

with

that guy.

Yeah, through, through the wonders of, of WhatsApp.

And, and we, we, we did make more contact with him while we were there.

To this point, , he's not a believer.

I do believe he's open to, to the message of Christianity, but even the reason

that I wrote that article was that really.

What I learned from that conversation is not even so much about teaching others

is that Getting people to the point where they understand that just because you call

someone Jesus And I call somebody Jesus.

We're not necessarily talking about the same

Jesus

And we see that too with other groups like latter day saints, you know And

i've done a lot of other writing and podcasting about the idea that just

because we're talking about God or we say Heavenly Father, or we, we say Allah,

which is just the Arabic word for God.

Or we say Jesus or Isa doesn't mean that we're talking about the same person and

that it's important to get people to the point where you ask those questions

that lead them to the conclusion.

Okay.

Who actually was Jesus and what did he

do?

And give them the opportunity to say, like, Well, no that's

not what we believe about Jesus.

Right.

Cause at the beginning of the conversation, I think, yeah, that

was in the Middle East and an Arabic population in this open air.

Ah, wow.

But like conversations like that happen here in the, in our context as well,

which is like, that's not my Jesus.

And I actually joke all the time.

Like when I was a student pastor, I used to use the scene from Talbot.

You've ever seen Talladega nights, right?

Not an appropriate movie necessarily, but not one that you would typically get

sermon illustrations from, but there's the scene in that movie where will Farrell.

Is praying and he's like, well, I like

to

pray to

baby Jesus,

right?

And John C.

Riley's like, I like to picture Jesus.

It's like the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd, right?

And it's stupid and it's silly and it, you know, it's not

academic at all or whatever.

It's not missional at all.

But I really don't think even what we experience here in the West

is that different than what we experienced in an Arab population,

which is, we all just kind of like to say, well, this is who Jesus

is

to me.

Yeah.

Right.

But the merit of the conversation really boils down to, well, who actually

was

Jesus and

what did he do?

Who did he say that he was,

, Jeremy: the conclusions that we come to those conversations are important,

just like the conversation I had with this guy, which is to say like,

well, Hey, one of us is wrong.

Or, or maybe both of us are wrong.

That's the other thing.

Just like, Hey, either, either one of us is right, or both of us are wrong, but

we both can't simultaneously be right.

I believe he died on

a cross

and was resurrected

three days later.

And because of that, my sins can be forgiven.

Now you believe he wasn't killed on a cross and you believe that you have

to do all these things to please God.

So which one of us is right.

If one of us is, you know, and, and the answer to

that matters a great

deal.

Mm-Hmm.

.And it goes kind of along with the last episode we just did on on truth,

but when we're trying to reach people, the discussions about religion, I think

can sometimes feel almost like a game of tug of you know, and that's kind

of the debate mindset of I'm trying to pull you over to my side and you're

trying to pull me over to your side.

and we'll see Who's stronger.

who really knows their stuff more and whose beliefs are stronger.

But if truth is real, if truth exists, we believe that Christianity

is

the

truth.

And so we don't have to try to pull them over.

If we get the attitude of coming alongside them and saying,

Hey, let's seek truth together.

Let's work together to try to figure out what is true because we

believe that this is what is true.

So if we're honestly pursuing truth, we're going to end up at Christianity.

Right.

Yeah.

And, and one thing that I, I, I, in my experience is like talking about faith

with Muslims is you don't experience as much of Like the relativism that we

were talking about in the last episode with them because really what they're

saying is no actually you're wrong

about Jesus

and we're right and I'm like, okay.

Well we can have a conversation about this, right?

Another thing that is important to remember And this is one thing I've just

learned extensively from missionaries to The predominantly Muslim world is to

try and get them to read what they call

the Angeal because most of them haven't.

And something amazing really happens when you really

read

the gospels and you really, Oh man, like, no, like if, if this Jesus

is the real Jesus, I like, there's something really desirable about that.

And not just that it's like, well, our narrative is better than the Islamic

narrative, but it's like, man, if what the Christians are saying about Jesus is true.

Right.

That's the end of the any three method, which, which I really didn't

get to be able to, to, to get to.

With our friend that day, because of the objection

to

the

fact

that Jesus

didn't die on the cross, but the end is no, but I can know that

my

sins

are

forgiven now.

And so works are important, but they don't save me.

And that's really like, so, so the end of that story is right.

We, We walk him back to his travel agency.

We're, we're kind of laughing.

We had, we had really in a very short amount of time

had, had grown close to him.

Weirdly, you know, I mean, just, and I think actually a lot of it was

because we were talking about issues of faith, like in our, in our society.

We're not supposed to talk about faith.

We're not supposed to talk about religion.

And so we kind of don't know how.

And so we hear about conversations like this.

We're like, I,

I'm

scared

to even

ask

these questions.

Mm hmm.

You feel like somebody's going to be mad at

Right.

And luckily, and this is an encouragement to listeners that if

you're talking about a population.

Or a religious demographic that isn't a Westerner from the

United States, most of the world

doesn't feel

that way about religion.

I mean, you can talk

up

to

a

Muslim

about Islam.

Like they're usually not going to be taken aback by that.

And so we had, You know, we had gotten really friendly with him.

So we're laughing, we're talking, and then the ending of that story

for us was walking away and looking forward to telling someone more

about Jesus who only knew Isa, the hope, was that we could convince him.

Through the merit of scripture through the merit of the work of the Holy

Spirit in his heart and mind, because ultimately we're not going to convince

him that no, he wasn't just a prophet who

was pointing

to Muhammad.

He was

God in human form, like he took on flesh and blood.

He took on your sin so that now submission to God is a joy.

It's

not a

duty, you know, and that's really the hope of those types of conversations

with, with not just Muslims, but really anybody who thinks that they

know Jesus, but has sort of fallen for some counterfeit version of him,

which

I feel like the longer you're in Islam, trying to earn your way into

heaven without ever knowing that you can never really know if you've been

good enough or, or done enough good.

with Your life that the longer you're in that the more appealing

. grace has to become that to, To think of, of isa as, as taking

the punishment

so

you

don't

have to

earn it.

Yeah.

I mean, you would think so and, and, and, and ultimately, like the

people who have come out of Islam.

To convert to Christianity.

I think that's the testimony, but it is, it is a tough pill for them to swallow

because, because they do and part of

is like, honor tied up in that

yeah.

I mean the idea, yeah.

So I think it's important for Christians to understand like what, what, what

we're asking them to believe it goes against the entire nature of a law,

like the idea that, okay, so you're telling me he took on flesh, became

a human, or also that he's three, he's three persons in one, right.

Which is, goes against, you know, the whole confession of, of Islam,

which is that God is only one, but that even after all of that, that

he died, he, he experienced one of those brutal, brutal execution methods

that the humanity has ever known.

And then he came back to life.

So it's, it is a tough pill to swallow.

And I think that when you say honor, like the idea that God

would allow that of himself, once again, kind of goes to that idea, that's not

befitting their, their version of a law, which kind of goes once again to that

great exclamation point of Christianity,

which is, yeah,

that's the

whole point.

And actually I find that, I find that.

When I, when I have those conversations with the Muslims,

my appreciate your, I'm like,

actually,

you're

right.

It's not

befitting.

It's not befitting.

It's like Peter saying, Lord, you will never wash my feet.

And Christ says, You don't

get it.

don't get it.

Yeah.

Or it's same thing.

Well, we'll kind of keep it along with Peter too, is like, you know, when Jesus

is saying like, Hey, all these horrible things are going to happen to me.

And Peter

pulls

him

aside

and

it's like,

no, no,

no, no,

that no,

we're not

going to let that happen.

And

he's, you know, get behind me, Satan, because he's like, you don't understand.

And it is part of me kind of goes, no, you are right.

You, it wasn't befitting of God, but God is so loving of the world.

Right, you know, John, John three, God so loved the world that he gave his

son that whoever would believe in him, Paul later would say, whoever would.

confess with their mouth that he is Lord and believe in their

heart that God raised him from the dead, that they would be saved.

And that's the message for Muslims or for anybody really.

But it is a tough pill for Muslims to swallow because it goes

against, yeah, we, we have all

those similarities, but

the underlying worldview of who and what is God is so intrinsically different

that , it

probably is going to take

more

than

one conversation.

I think that the image that most people within Islam have of

Christians is something akin to maybe what we would say is cheap

grace

, and of course, some of this fault, the blame for some of this falls at

our feet, which is that they believe Christians can do whatever you want.

Say whatever you want, live however you want, believe whatever you want, and that

everything's going to be fine in the end.

And, and so I think that there's a balance that Christians need to begin striking

better with, with their communication to the Islamic world and the witness

that we're living at least publicly.

Which is to say that like, no, we don't believe you can do and

say and be whatever you want.

In fact, right.

The whole point of Paul's words there is like, no, Christ has to be your Lord.

He has to be your master.

Like, and because we do believe he's God, we hold him in, in, in as

high regard as Muslims hold Allah.

But we just believe he loves us personal relationship is a very

weird thing for them to think.

About with a law, , there's been instances where I've talked to Muslims and, and

and asked like, Hey, how can I pray for

you?

I've had Muslims kind of struggle

with that because the idea that like, well, we don't pray

to a lot to receive things.

And this isn't all of them, of course, but some Muslims would even say I

don't want you to just pray for me so that I get something and it's like,

well, no, that's not the point, right?

The point is, let's Revere and adore and worship God,

but

he does

want good

things for

us.

And he wants us to bring our petitions to him and our needs

to him because he is our father.

And, you know, once again, kind of going back to God would never

have a son is like, they don't look at Allah as their father.

They, they look at him as God, as, as Allah, as, as, as the high

one, who's worthy of worship and that if I want to be in paradise

one day that I'll submit to him

as

a

far and

distant king

and So I hate to speak generally in that sense, because of course there,

there are Muslims who, who, who are more personal and how they view a

lot, but generally they, they look at the Christian image of who God is and

say, no, you guys have them all wrong.

He, he's not.

He's not concerned with your day to day life.

He's not concerned with becoming one of you and redeeming you from your sin.

You have to submit to him and please him.

And ultimately that's why the communication of the gospel can

be so tricky because yeah, like I said, we, we, we use the same names.

We use a lot of the same words, but ultimately who, the

question of who and what is

God is so different and it can make things really

difficult to, to communicate with them.

I actually do think Christians need to get a more holistic view of that.

Like we we greatly

lack

The

call to submission and obedience we do buy too much into cheap grace and,

and therefore validate their, their

claims about us, but that doesn't make us wrong about the gospel.

And, and ultimately that's what I think is, is the, the invitation

to the Islamic world, which is, no, there's a, there's a fuller and more

beautiful understanding of who God is.

And what he's done for humanity, and it's found in the person of Jesus, who you

say was just a prophet pointing towards pointing towards submission to a law.

Yeah.

Islamic

faith seems to me and I haven't studied

it nearly

as

much

as

you

have.

so I'm really curious if

this seems

accurate to you,

but

it seems

like

what

you would

get if

you

took Christianity?

Removed

the

cross.

and then

let

it

develop in the hands of mankind for 150 200

years.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I think you're probably like, kind of onto something there.

I think if you take the cross.

And the resurrection, of course, out of Christianity, you

really just have a new branch

of

Judaism,

, and so you find yourself with a lot of law and you find yourself with a lot

of, like, just trying to please God.

Have you ever read the cross of Christ by John

Stott?

No

You would, you would really like it because you like Anglican

theologians and he just talks about how Christians have really forsaken the weight

of the cross and the work of the cross that we find kind of this.

Even bigger emphasis on the resurrection once you really understand the cross.

And so when you think about Islam, and then you also think about a cross

list Christianity is, yeah, you end up with like, Oh, it's really all

about what I can do then when the cross and the resurrection actually

show us that you can't do anything.

Right.

Paul in Galatians talks about how the law was a tutor, you know,

it pointed towards our need for God's rescue God's redemption.

And so, yeah, so I think, yeah, I think for Christians to imagine what it would

be like to not have Jesus in the cross and the work of the resurrection and what we

received from God in those things, that's, yeah, I mean, that's the state of, of

not just

Muslims, but

I

think that's, that's what we have to offer.

You know, that's the message of

the

across the US, right?

So you mentioned

Does the Quran have stories of Jesus, like the gospels

of

him

walking and

talking

and

doing,

I mean, not a ton, not a ton.

I mean, so they talk about, Yeah, they talk about him as a baby, and then

they, they talk about him in, in his ministry, like what the gospels, but

yeah, I mean, but their mention of Jesus and their mention of Christianity

is anytime, usually, usually if Jesus or, you know, the book, what would

they usually refer to Christians and Jews as the people of the book?

Usually those things are mentioned to further validate the message of the book.

The Quran or what the Quran didn't exist at that point, but the message

of what they call the UMA, which is the collection of the early Muslims.

Yeah.

So, so, so, so, so Issa Issa is a signpost.

In

the Quran for Muhammad

and

the

message

of

Allah that's

being

recited

in the Quran.

Yeah.

This is the problem.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I mean, the, the role that Jesus plays in Islam is the role

that

Moses played or David played, or, you know, pick, pick a old Testament prophet.

It's pointing towards something greater to come.

And that ultimately, like they even look at the New Testament

where Jesus says, Hey, there's going to be one that comes after.

Me who's going to bring comfort and Christians would

say, that's the Holy spirit.

A lot of Muslims say he was talking about Muhammad and so they view Muhammad as

the highest prophet, the last prophet.

So, yeah.

So, so

a

conversation with

a

Muslim

Should

the goal

Of the conversation.

as we attempt to reach them with the gospel, be to point out these

differences in, between Esau and Jesus?

Or

I think, I think in some sense, you're going to

have a

hard

time

if

you're, if you're avoiding that, you know what I mean?

But , I think it can get very argumentative and you can put somebody on

the defensive by, you know, kind of like

when you were

a

kid

find the 10 differences

between these two pictures

kind of thing.

What I prefer to do is just realize most Muslims as, as most non

believers have not read the Bible.

And so I firmly believe that the

best

thing

is

just,

are they willing to read the Bible with you?

And.

If they are, then show them who Jesus actually was and

allow the Holy Spirit to do

the work

of

convincing.

Now you're going to be there to help navigate some of the questions

and, and point out, okay, this is who Christians actually say Jesus

is and was and, and then just prayerfully walk them through that.

Now there will be times

for.

You know, debate and that's where apologetics and things like

that comes in and understanding.

But because, you know, because most of us aren't textual critics,

like

we're not

Greek and Hebrew scholars and things like that.

I try to, avoid getting too deep into the validity of the

Quran versus the validity of the

new Testament.

Even though, I mean, the new Testament greatly wins out in that, in, in like the

historicity and the validity of the texts.

But at the end of the day, I think because most of us, the whole point is.

I want this person to know Christ if they're

willing,

, introduce them to him through the word.

If they're not willing, then that doesn't mean you're not that

you're done with a person, but.

You know, I mean, that

person, we

would say

that person's

probably

not

a

green

light

for

the gospel.

You know what I mean?

And continue in a relationship, continue having those conversations.

But if somebody is willing to sit down and read the scriptures with you, then that's,

I mean, that's, that's the beginning of hopefully what will be a fruitful journey

is to them

going from Issa to,

to

Jesus

to, to Yeshua, to use his, you know, Arabic name.

But you know, And really beginning to understand, okay, no, he,

he died for humanity took on the curse and was raised again.

And I can be forgiven now.

And that was the whole point of that conversation, which is trying

to get our friend there in the coffee shop to understand like,

no, your sins can be forgiven now.

And you can live a life of freedom and liberty still submitting to God, but being

known by him and knowing him in return.

And that's the invitation to the

to the Islamic world.

So if

there's a Muslim listening to this who I would say, if

somebody's listening to this and they

of it at this point.

Is there anything that you would say directly to them?

I would, I would say, I mean, if somebody is listening to this and they come

from a Muslim background, I mean, along

Muslim,

know, a tremendous amount of resources there was an, there was

an apologist, an author named Nabil Qureshi who wrote, Tremendous book.

He was a, he was a Muslim and he was a very devout Muslim and he wrote a book

about his testimony of finding Christ called seeking Allah finding Jesus.

I would read that.

Yeah.

There is a a version of the Quran which is, is highly regarded not just within

Christianity but even most religious scholars would say that it's called

the Quran with Christian commentary, which was, is a, is a very faithful

translation of the Quran with Christian commentary written by a scholar named Dr.

Gordon Nicol who I've had who've actually had on the podcast many years ago.

But beyond that is if, if Christ is calling you To

know him,

look into those resources, but then also just find, find a

believer, find a Christian to walk through the Bible with you.

And if you can't, if you can't find that, then just open up to the gospel

of John and just start in John one and read about who Jesus actually

was, who he is, what he's doing now on our behalf and what he's calling you

to, which is to a deep relationship.

With god with allah, that goes far beyond just

submitting

to him

But actually

knowing

him

and being loved

by

him