Apostacy and few other issues

To Bunter:

Also you say their is nothing in Bible that say to obey apostles. Even though I understood what it is saying (following verse) but care to shed light on its message which basically goes against your argument that Christians are told not to obey their apostles (how silly):
John 15:20 Remember what I told you: �A servant is not greater than his master.� If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
Hasan

Edited by honeto - 12 September 2012 at 6:00pm

honeto wrote: Bunter, you are just mistaken on a very simple issue. God is God, a prophet is a prophet. A prophet is not God, and God is not a prophet. Of course prophets were teachers, you must listen to your teachers what they tell you. It is the same fact that was before in the OT times, those who were obeying to Moses or Noah or Lot were not making them gods but obeying them as prophets. You cannot distinguish that? Proverbs 5: 12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

You are NOT reading what I have been saying. That is the Quran continually says "Allah and his prophet" and that puts Mohammed on a level with God. It is a link between a prophet and God that as far as I know we never find in the Bible.

As to the divinity of Jesus then I suggest you read the NT for yourself and find out the truth. Take the following verses as a starting point.

Mark 14:61-63 (AMP) But He kept still and did not answer at all. Again the high priest asked Him, Are You the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One), the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I Am; and you will [all] see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power (the Almighty) and coming on the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his garments and said, What need have we for more witnesses? You have heard His blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned Him as being guilty and deserving of death.

Now this seems clear to me and evidently the Jews had no difficulty in understanding what Jesus was claiming here.

honeto wrote: What I am trying to say is that a prophet is chosen by God to be our leader or a teacher, to guide us, to educate us about how to be good believers. We obey the prophet, because God communicated (sent scripture) and sent guidance through him, he teaches us who God is, and how to serve God better. Obviously you seem to not see the role of each one as different. Guidance comes from God, the prophet lives that guidance as an example, we copy his example and try to live it.

I understand what you believe and of course it is a matter for you. But all I pointed out was that Christians will ONLY say they obey God and Biblical prophets never point to themselves, they never say obey me but rather they say obey God. So they make if you like a distinction between their own words and actions and whatever revelation they may have received. Other than Jesus, there are sins listed agains virtually every Biblical prophet and so we do not follow their every action as if it was in some way a perfect example.

Rather making one of them as a God (like Christians did with Jesus)that is real blasphemy you oversee. Taking Jesus or Mohammed as prophets and teachers and following their examples is not blasphemy, taking them as gods is.

You words only make sense if Jesus is not God but there is abundant evidence from the Bible that he is divine. We can look at that evidence if you wish.

Its an odd idea to refuse a prophet without first establishing his credentials. In Islam you claim for example Adam as a prophet but Biblically we have almost nothing recorded of what he said. Similarly, you mention other Biblical prophets, such as Jesus but if you look in the Quran you would be very hard pressed to construct more than a sentence to two of what he said

Can a prophet be wrong, sometimes may be, since they were also humans, but if God chose them to be His prophets and teachers on earth, I am sure they would be of a good example.

But what authority do you have to decide who God might use? Its not a question of being human, but of being sinners. So I know that God uses sinners because otherwise he would be hard pressed to find anyone. I don't know anywhere in the BIble where God says he is looking for good people to be prophets. David is one example who committed murder and adultery but he is also described as being 'after God's own heart' - now that might seem strange but David was aware of his sin and sought forgiveness and repentance.

Take Jesus (pbuh) for example, as a Muslim I have no doubt that he was perfect in behaviour, but only God knows the absolute truth. The present day Bible shows Jesus to be not so consistent and hypocritical, and that's why I do not believe those verses to be true representation of Jesus. For example we hear a lot about love, but this goes against all that when Jesus don't find figs when he is hungry so he curses a poor tree, this is certainly not true of a beloved of God with so much faith,even an ordinary man would not do this, imagine a beloved of God is quoted to have said this (may God forgive):

But all you are really doing here is deciding what God can or cannot do. In the Quran there are hundreds of verses promising the worst imaginable suffering on unbelievers which no doubt you believe but then complain about treatment of a fig tree. I wonder who is being consistent here?

You complain about the way Jesus refers to his mother and have decided it was bad. But I don't see it like that at all because we know how Jesus treated people from other verses. Here we see that there is more than just family connections, indeed there is a wider family. For example, some years ago we had an important wedding anniversary but none of our immediate family could come and some refused to come to the celebration so we had a small gathering in Church on our usual Wednesday communion meeting and then I realised what Jesus meant when he said 'these are my mother and sister and brothers.' You might understand this better if you thought about what you mean by Ummah.