Mecca – The city never mentioned in the Bible
We’ve all heard Muslims try to find Muhammad in the Bible. They commonly use the Prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy 18 and the Paraclete of John’s Gospel; and let’s not forget my favorite prophecy of Muhammad, the Muhammadim in the Song of Solomon. I think a better way to challenge them would be to ask where they find Mecca in the Bible.
One episode that is covered in both testaments of the Bible is that of Moses and the burning bush. Ironically it appears in the Quran as well. We can draw some interesting conclusions when we read all three of these passages. Let us start with the Torah since Jews, Christians, and Muslims accept it as scripture.
I come from a German family. The main religion of the German people is Lutheranism and that is what my family is. Both of my grandparents died as practicing Lutherans. Although I inherited the Catholicism of my Ukrainian mother, I grew up around Lutheranism.
As all of my readers know, I like reading the writings of the Saints. That’s not too big a shock seeing as how I’m Catholic. I also like to study Church history. I recently acquired The Chronicle of Theophanes. It contains history from 602 to 813 AD.
I have long come to the conclusion that Muslim apologists cannot be consistent. They’ll quote a verse from the Gospel of John to support Muhammad being a prophet but when that same Gospel is quoted back at them to prove a Christian doctrine, it suddenly becomes “late and unreliable”. One ambiguous verse in Hebrews is quoted while the rest of the book is ignored. It’s worthless in their eyes. Countless other examples could be given.
St. Paul the Apostle
In the 19th century, a rabid anti-Catholic pseudo-scholar wrote this terrible book which included slanders against the Catholic faith. This work is such a joke that it makes John Foxe look like Edward Gibbon. Here are some of his statements against Catholicism:
If I were to encourage Christians to read one Surah of the Quran, I would suggest Surah 5. It’s one of the last chapters revealed and really does damage to Islam. If Muhammad had died a few years earlier before Surah 5 was “revealed” then it would have saved Islam a lot of trouble. I’m going to point out the three most damaging things to Islam in this Surah. There are more! Surah 5 is certainly a bag of goodies, but here are the top 3.
If one watches a lot of debates between Christian and Muslim apologists, John 17:3 gets thrown around a lot. It supposedly refutes the deity of Christ. An interesting observation about this is that if you look at debates from ten years ago, this verse doesn’t seem to be quoted. John 14:28 seemed to be more popular but it doesn’t get quoted that much anymore. It’s almost as if John 17:3 and John 14:28 swapped places in terms of importance to Muslim apologists. I wrote about John 14:28 a while back so now I’ll tackle John 17:3.
The Quran – The Holy Book of the Islamic Faith
Muslims seem to have a love-hate relationship with the previous revelations of God. The Quran on the other hand loves the previous scriptures and encourages the Christians and Jews of the day to follow them. This is a large amount of evidence in favour of my theory that the religion of the Quran and Islam are two different religions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69G6zQorM48
Before Christmas I wrote a post about Surah 2:62 and Surah 3:85 and how they contradict each other. I invited Muslims to harmonize these passages. Luckily I was able to find the work of elite Islamic apologist Yusha Evans. He explains how these verses are reconciled in the above video.