David Wood has come up with a brilliant concept to describe the method of most major dawah figures in the world today. It’s called the 99-1 rule. It basically goes like this. A Muslim in a position of authority will preach total nonsense. Say there were 100 Muslims in the audience; about 99 of them will take it on faith, while one person will look it up and find the truth. The one doesn’t matter because the 99 can shout down the 1. Problem solved. I now see this method employed to an amazingly large degree.
A prime example of this is this clip above where Yusuf Estes spouts nonsense about the Catholic Church being started by Alexander the Great in Rome three centuries before Jesus Christ. He said that this was on the Catholic website and in every major encyclopedia. He talked about a bunch of other false information and at the end of the video the studio audience claps. The video cuts off as they start to clap.
I believe that this show is based out of Dubai. Obviously Dubai and the other gulf states are majority Muslim. I was angry when they clapped but then I realized that they’re victims. Victims of monumental frauds like Yusuf Estes and other equally disgraceful people who have lied to them by employing the 99-1 Rule.
I recently came across a young female convert to Islam on Twitter. She said the following and I retweeted:
I’ll admit that the comment was a bit snarky; it earned me the following:
Islamic apologist Paul Williams came in and told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about and that she should leave the matter up to people who know the subject better. Obviously Williams is no friend of Christianity or the Trinity but he knows enough history to know that this doctrine existed before the fourth century. He also knows that she shouldn’t be talking about this if she hasn’t studied it which she obviously hasn’t.
Obviously this girl is so angry that she’s largely exaggerating. She says that she has the Bible memorized which is ridiculous. A youth leader? Yusha Evans was a youth leader as well. Now he goes around lying to others using the 99-1 rule.
Why does Megan believe in this nonsense? She believes in it because somewhere along the line some Muslim used the 99-1 rule and she bought into the nonsense that the Trinity as a doctrine didn’t exist until the fourth century. Now to be fair, this statement isn’t nearly as outrageous as the one from Yusuf Estes about Alexander the Great and the Catholic Church, but it was spread by the same method, which is the 99-1 rule.
One last example and this one is from the Quran itself. In Surah 7:157 we read:
Those who follow the Messenger, the Unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in the Torah and the Gospel in their possession. He directs them to righteousness, and deters them from evil, and allows for them all good things, and prohibits for them wickedness, and unloads the burdens and the shackles that are upon them. Those who believe in him, and respect him, and support him, and follow the light that came down with him—these are the successful.
Now, obviously those who first heard this from Muhammad accepted it because they believed that he was a prophet. Muhammad obviously isn’t mentioned in previous Scriptures. If he was, you wouldn’t hear the nonsense about Muhammad being the “Machmadim” in the Song of Solomon based on a potential phonetic parallel to a language that probably didn’t even exist at the time. Muhammad seems to be the inventor of the 99-1 rule.
If you’re interested in more examples of the 99-1 rule, subscribe to the Youtube Channel Acts17Apologetics and watch the livestream videos that he does with Sam Shamoun and Anthony Rogers. You’ll get many more examples of the 99-1 rule.
Why would she dig herself deeper into a hole of embarrassment instead of simply ‘apologize and retract’?
For the same reason Democrats continually delude themselves that Trump is a hate-filled Nazi Russian puppet (but also simultaneously bumbling and incompetent!) and that half the country is just as bigoted as him. To admit they’ve been wrong since the 2018 Election would devastate their self-pride. The longer they wait, the bigger the fall – hence the longer they wait, into a vicious cycle.
Now extend ‘Since 2018’ to ‘Her entire life’ and it’s easy to see why it’s so difficult to admit she is mistaken about major issues. It takes real humility and dedication to the truth to do a 180 like David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi, J Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell did.
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Regardin Yusuf Estes, I tried to be as generous as possible with his remark.
Maybe he was trying to say that the Imperial Roman religious establishment (i.e. the ‘Catholic Church’) had existed for 300 years before the birth of Jesus.
And it was established/influenced by Hellenism and the Greek pantheon (i.e. ‘Alexander the Great’).
And when Judaism and Christianity got too uppity – say around 70AD? – the Roman establishment persecuted it for 200 years. Note that he didn’t specifically state it was 200 years of persecution BEFORE Jesus was born.
And finally, when Constantine came on the scene, he co-opted Christianity and syncretized it with the existing Roman religion.
But if this is what he was trying to say, he is as bad a communicator as his god and his prophet as David Wood would say!
No, that’s not what Estes meant. He said the Catholic Church and he said it was on their website.
The hellenistic influence of Alexander forced the NT writers to write in Greek instead of Aramaic so they could spread it.
He’s not mistaken. He’s using the 99-1 rule.