The leaders of a gospel church in West Yorkshire held two discussions with the leaders of one of the local mosques over issues of mutual interest.
The theme on this occasion, ‘Has the Bible been changed?’, was suggested by our Muslim friends, but it was a subject we were very happy to discuss with them. That is because so many promising conversations with Muslims founder on their confidently held conviction that the Bible we have today is widely changed from the Scriptures originally given by God through the prophets to the Jews, and through Christ to his followers.
Muslims often deflect anything from Scripture that they don’t believe (or want to face) with the assertion that what the Bible teaches isn’t what God originally said, but is a corruption of it.
First meeting
The first meeting, with three mosque leaders and six leaders from the church, was held in the home of the most senior of the imams, whose wife provided us all with a wonderful Asian meal as a preparation to our discussion. Indeed, noticing our pastor’s great enthusiasm for Asian food, an Indian man present, his face wreathed in smiles, offered to find the pastor an Asian wife to cook for him regularly!
Thankfully, the church leader graciously declined the kindness, pointing out that he is very happy with the wife he already has! It was then explained that Muslim men can have up to four wives, so the offer still stood! The pastor replied that he believed that the ideal situation was to have but one wife: indeed that is at the heart of God’s plan for marriage, shown in the fact that in the beginning God created only one Eve for Adam. He also said that men in the Scripture who had more than one wife, like Jacob, Elkanah and David, generally reaped tension and disunity within their family, showing that God’s perfect plan was for the union of one man with just one woman.
Relevant questions
After the meal, eaten sitting on the floor — all the meetings, however long, are conducted sitting on the floor! — our pastor spoke for a few minutes on the subject. He explained that Christians are very puzzled by the Muslims’ assertion of the Bible having been totally corrupted. For example, the Bible has incredible stress on the death of Christ. As Muslims believe that his death never happened, they conclude that the Bible must be wrong (corrupted) on this matter. To us the claim that the Bible is hopelessly distorted not only runs totally counter to manuscript evidence, but makes no sense. The pastor asked the Muslim leaders if they could consider, and then reply to, three questions which explain our puzzlement at their belief:
* Would God allow his book to be changed? (Muslims are adamant that Allah would never allow the Qur’an to be changed!)
* Would Jews and Christians, who loved their books and believed them to be the word of Almighty God, either be very careless in copying the Bible or allow other men to distort it?
* Would Muhammad have encouraged his followers to look to the Bible — the law, the prophets and the gospel — to confirm both the Qur’an and his teaching if he knew it to be hopelessly corrupt?
We anticipated that we would immediately begin to discuss these questions together, but the mosque leaders had another gathering to attend that evening. They had hastily arranged a meeting at the mosque, concerning a public meeting to be held in our town the next day by the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam. So we agreed to meet again a couple of weeks later to hear and discuss their reply to the questions that had been raised, and we left with warm handshakes and thanks, with our pastor promising to produce full notes of what he had said.
Second meeting
The second meeting was quite different from the first. Sadly, there was no meal, though the welcome was once again very warm. This time there were many more Muslims present. It began with a couple of bits of Muslim ‘testimony’, asserting that the Bible must have been changed. Two reasons were given. Firstly, the Bible says such terrible things about God’s prophets: it presents Lot as committing incest with his daughters, and David as an adulterer and a murderer. Secondly, the Qur’an has been passed down from generation to generation by men who have memorised the whole book verbatim, giving a total confidence in its unchanging text, whereas, they asserted that no Christian has bothered to learn his book.
These assertions were followed by the beginning of an answer to our pastor’s first question. They said that God could have preserved his book, but doesn’t always do all he can. From then on the discussion was largely conducted at great speed and in Urdu, sometimes with considerable vehemence! That left our one Urdu speaker to say most by way of answers, though we did have some success in returning to English, at least by translation. It is surprising that a number of the men who have been long in the UK can speak little English, though they invariably understand more than they speak. Sadly, we failed to keep our Muslim hosts to the questions we had posed to them, but there were very striking opportunities both to defend the Christian position and share the heart of the gospel with them.
Inspiration and examination
One key aspect of their approach was to raise portions from the Bible that they believed showed that it was not a revelation from God. So they took us to the opening verses of Luke’s Gospel, where Luke writes of his painstaking research, working with eyewitnesses of Christ’s life, which enabled him to write accurate history. To the Muslim, research is not compatible with writing under God’s inspiration. That is because they believe that true Scripture was dictated by God, whereas the Bible presents a far more sophisticated and wonderful view of God as the one who so prepares and works with his chosen scribes that they naturally write from their hearts and experience exactly what God wants them to say (see 2 Peter 1.20-21).
We have seen before that the Muslim leaders delight in quoting to us the views of unconverted Bible ‘scholars’ who love to parade their scepticism about God’s book. We reminded them that we hadn’t quoted Salman Rushdie to them, nor the Ahmadiyyas, as authorities on the Qur’an! Interestingly, one man they tried to quote against us was the godly scholar Bruce Metzger, but our youngest participant was able to read to them the context of their quoted words which showed a very balanced and helpful presentation of how we got our Bibles.
Christ in the Old Testament
Another element in their challenge was that we should show them where the Old Testament spoke of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the key speaker, an imam from a mosque in Bradford, offered us £1,000 if we could show him where the prophets speak of Christ! So we read with them the extraordinary prophesies of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, which speak so clearly and in such graphic detail of Christ’s death on the cross. The fact that we have not so far received the money is testimony to our need of a powerful work of God’s Spirit in these men if we are to see them embracing the God-given Saviour.
It was good to be able to clear away some misunderstandings, challenge prejudice and share the gospel of grace with these Muslim friends. It is for God to open their hearts so that they embrace the only Saviour for fallen sinners.
