Great Apostasy Questions

A while back, I produced a post in which I listed some Canon Questions, some specific questions I ask when talking to non-Catholics about the Table of Contents found in their Bible. Following my post concerning my recent encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness, I’ve decided to do another post similar to my Canon Questions, but this time concerning the “Great Apostasy”, the belief that that the Church effectively disappeared from the earth some time after Christ’s death.

Apostasy

Groups like the Mormons hold to the Great Apostasy and use this as an explanation for the significant differences between their doctrine and the doctrine of historic Christianity. Muslims hold to this narrative too, to justify the teachings of Muhammad which stand in stark contradiction to the New Testament. Additionally, most Protestant groups, while typically not holding such a radical version of this doctrine, usually hold to some variation of it, saying that somewhere along the line the Church went off-track in a rather major way.

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What’s the difference between Sunni and Shiite?

Those of you who know me will know that I’ve spent the last few weeks with my head in a lot of books about Islam. You can expect some blog posts on various aspects of Islam in a couple of weeks.

However, today I would just like to share a short video concerning one issue within Islam which confused me for the longest time. We hear them mentioned quite a bit on TV, but what is the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims? Dr. Shabir Ally answers…

“They did not kill him”

One of the major points of divergence between Islam and Christianity is that, in addition to denying Jesus’ divinity, Islam asserts that Jesus did not die on the cross. We find this assertion in Surah 4 of the Qur’an:

Just in case you don’t read Arabic(!), here is the English translation:

[They said] “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah”… [But] they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them… Rather, Allah raised him to Himself – Surah 4:157-158, Sahih International

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No compulsion in religion

A Tunisian man was recently martyred for converting from Islam to Christianity. As hard as it is to believe, video of his death was broadcast on Egyptian TV:

The footage shows a young man being held down by masked men with a knife to his throat. One man chants a number of Muslim prayers in Arabic, mostly condemning Christianity. The man holding the knife to the Christian convert’s throat begins to cut, slowly severing the head amid cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“god is great”). – GodReports

Allah says: “Let there be no compulsion in religion…”
– The Qu’ran, Surah al-Baqarah: 256

May he rest in peace. Please pray for that man and for all those in the area under persecution.

Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? – Mark 8:34-36

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