Category: Apologetics

Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 10 (“The Angels”)

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angel

Today in Atlanta, my friend’s son was baptized and entered into the Body of Christ! However, there’s no rest for the wicked, so here I am writing up today’s text from Qur’an, Surah 35:

Surah 35 – “The Angels” (Fatir)
The chapter begins with a typical set of assertions relating to Allah’s soveignty and the denial of the existence of any other God. 

Some interesting things are said about Satan and evil doers. One phrase I really liked was “[Satan] only invites his party to be among the companions of the Blaze”. This is why Satan’s parties are the worst! Ayah 8 affirms that “Allah sends astray whom He wills”, once again suggesting that Muslims believe in double-predestination.

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Prophet or Messiah?

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john

As you will have no doubt noticed, I have been recently working my way through reading the Qur’an. As a result, over the last few days my inbox has begun filling up with messages related to Islam…

I received one such email from a Muslim who asked me about the time when the Jewish leaders questioned John the Baptist about his identity:

And this is the testimony of John [the Baptist], when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Eli′jah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” And he answered, “No.”

– John 1:19-21

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Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 8 (“Ya Sin”)

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hell

Today I’m going to be looking at a longer chapters of the Qur’an: Surah 36.

Surah 36 – “Ya Sin” (Ya-Sin)
This chapter covers the usual material. Muhammad’s commission by God is, of course, reaffirmed. He is told that some people to whom he speaks will not listen to him, but his job is to warn them anyway.

This chapter describes a pair of missionaries arriving at a city. It is not clear if this is an historic story or not. Either way, the message of the missionaries is rejected, but then a man comes from the city and pleads with his fellow inhabitants to listen to these men. He draws particular attention to the fact that they do not ask for money. For his own part, the man testifies that Allah made him, he will return to Him and thus Allah is worthy of worship and the intercession of the city’s false gods is worthless. The text abruptly switches to speaking about Paradise so my footnotes suggest that this means that the man was killed for his faith. While I can understand this explanation, the Qur’an seems to me to jump randomly from topic-to-topic without warning on a regular basis.

Allah then identifies various “signs” to be submitted for consideration:

  • The bringing forth of life from dead earth
  • The production of fruit from trees
  • The departure of the sun at nighttime and the cycles of the moon
  • The salvation of Noah’s family through the Ark

I’m not 100% sure, but it seems that these signs are all meant to point to new life and Allah’s saving help.

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Doug’s Journey Home

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Doug Beaumont‘s interview on the Coming Home Network is now up on YouTube. I’ve shared quite a few of Doug’s article’s here before. I’ll also be writing up a review of his book Evangelical Exodus sometime in January.

In the interview he speaks about the formation he received at Southern Evangelical Seminary, the relationship between philosophy and apologetics, as well as his wrestlings with “the canon question”:

Qur’an Cover-to-Cover: Day 7 (“The heights” and “The Jinn”)

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Today I’m going to be looking at two chapters of the Qur’an, one long (#7) and one reasonably short (#72).

Surah 7 – “The heights” (Al-Araf)
Mankind is reminded to follow Allah and also reminded of the cities which He destroyed to punish unbelieving people. The scales of judgement which weigh good deeds are also recalled.

The fall of Satan is described, in an almost identical pattern to Surah 38 (“The letter sad”). The narrative continues, however, describing the Fall of Adam and Eve. Allah told them “do not approach this tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers”. The nature of the tree or the consequences of eating from it were not really explained. Rather than saying that they will be like gods (as in the Genesis narrative), Satan promised that if they eat the fruit they will “become angels or become of the immortal”. Once they have eaten, they recognize their nakedness and sew together leaves as clothes. God arrives and chastises them. We don’t see “the blame game” which we see in Genesis, where Adam blames Eve (and ultimately God) and Eve blames the serpent.

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Islamic Glossary

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Turkey, Istanbul, Suleymaniye Mosque, crowd praying

If you regularly read this blog, you’ll know that at the moment I’m reading through the Qur’an, chapter by chapter. Each day I have been posting a brief entry discussing the material I’ve read that day. I’ve also been recording my questions about the text which I will ask when I meet one of the local San Diego Imams.

Since these posts contain words from Islam which may be unfamiliar to many Christians, this blog entry will act as a glossary of terms. I’ll be updating this post as I continue my reading each day.

UPDATE: Since this glossary is starting to get a little big, I’ve going to put the more obscure glossary items in a lighter font so that it’s easier to see which terms are more important.

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