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How Anonymous Books Became the Bible! The Forgotten Jesus | Ep. 2 — Transcript

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0:00Imagine holding a book.
0:03A book that over 2 billion people entrusts their eternal life to.
0:07You open it and see the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
0:12But then you discover something shocking.
0:15None of them were actually written by the people they are named after.
0:19Today, we are uncovering a truth that biblical scholars openly admit
0:23yet the average Christian is never told.
0:26The Gospels are completely anonymous.
0:29They were written by authors who never saw Jesus, never met him,
0:33and were written in a language Jesus never even spoke.
0:36Koine Greek.
0:38What if I told you that the earliest Gospel was not written until 40 years after Jesus?
0:43And the others? 50, 60, even 70 years later.
0:48So how did these books come to be?
0:50Who actually wrote them?
0:53As Muslims, we believe Jesus brought a pure divine message.
0:56But when you look at the historical evidence,
0:59anonymous manuscripts, a gap of several decades,
1:02and thousands of textual variations,
1:04it becomes clear that human hands change the narrative.
1:08So our goal is simple.
1:10To uncover the original message Jesus actually brought to humanity.
1:14In our first episode, we looked at the core beliefs of the Church.
1:18The Trinity, God taking human form, and the cross.
1:21And today, we are revealing the truth
1:23behind how the Gospels were actually written.
1:41If I talk to you for days on various topics,
1:44and ask you to repeat my exact words just a single year later,
1:48wouldn't that be almost impossible?
1:50Now imagine if I asked you to accurately record
1:53those conversations 40, 50, or 60 years later.
1:57This is the massive problem we face with the Gospels.
2:01According to the vast majority of biblical scholars, the earliest Gospel,
2:04the Gospel of Mark, was written about 40 years after Jesus.
2:09Matthew and Luke were written at least 50 years later,
2:12and the Gospel of John, around 60 to 70 years after him.
2:17At this point, we need to be clear about one thing.
2:20A Gospel being written 40 years
2:21after Jesus does not mean we actually have that original text today.
2:26When you look for the very first physical manuscript in our hands,
2:29the picture looks completely different.
2:32The earliest surviving fragment we have of any Gospel is P52,
2:36the tiny fragment of the Gospel of John, dating to around 125 to 175 CE,
2:42roughly a century or more after Jesus left this world.
2:46Yet, this fragment does not even contain 0.1% of the Gospel of John.
2:51It's just a few broken lines.
2:53In fact, 90% of our 2nd and 3rd century papyri are tiny fragments,
2:59no larger than a credit card, with barely a few verses written on them.
3:03Even though P45 is often highlighted for containing all four Gospels,
3:08which dates back to around 250 CE, only 30 of its original 112 leaves have survived.
3:15The world had to wait roughly three full centuries after Jesus
3:19for the first complete manuscripts of the four Gospels to appear,
3:23the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus,
3:26generally dated to around 325 and 350 CE.
3:31And ironically, by the time these complete manuscripts were finally compiled,
3:36the Council of Nicaea, the pivotal event we mentioned in our first episode,
3:40had already taken place.
3:42“We have gathered here to settle this dispute and seek unity.“
3:47At this point, you might ask,
3:49can we perhaps trace these books through the early Church Fathers?
3:52For the first 150 years, the writings of early Christian figures
3:56like Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr,
4:00and even early texts like the Didache, contain very few quotes from the Gospels.
4:05In fact, all of them combined cover barely 10% of the modern Gospel texts.
4:11In the past, there was also a claim that the entire New Testament could almost
4:15be rewritten from the writings of the early Church Fathers alone.
4:18But Christian scholars themselves later refuted this claim
4:21and showed it to be false.
4:26“The four Gospels are anonymous, as you correctly say.
4:29You get the Gospel of Matthew, for example,
4:31the first one in the New Testament, the first book of the New Testament.
4:34It never says who it's by.
4:37Christians I speak to don't agree with me on that.
4:40So I say, okay, I'll wait.
4:42Give me a passage in any of the Gospels
4:44where it says a name of a person who wrote them.
4:47Oh, yeah, yeah, it does.
4:48It says it in John's Gospel. Fine, I'll wait.
4:51Here's your Bible.
4:52Show me where it says it.
4:53So I wait.
4:54And I usually give them two minutes because I've got things to do with my life.
4:57And I always know, because it's a game of chess,
4:59that they're going to come back and say…
5:02And they change the subject.
5:03They just change the subject because it doesn't say
5:05in John anywhere a named person who wrote it.
5:08It's simply not there.
5:09But they believe it is because that's what they've been told.”
5:13At the start of each Gospel in the New Testament, we see headings
5:16like "Gospel according to Matthew" or "the Gospel according to Mark."
5:20Have you ever wondered why it says "according to"?
5:23The truth is, whoever added those titles later wanted
5:27to attribute these texts to those famous names.
5:30If these men were the actual authors,
5:32the manuscripts would not say "according to Matthew."
5:35They would simply say "the Gospel written by Matthew."
5:38If they were actually eyewitnesses to the events they described,
5:41they would have definitely put their names on the text to build trust.
5:44But they didn't.
5:47Because they never claimed to be who most people think they are.
5:51This makes sense for Mark and Luke because they weren't even apostles or eyewitnesses.
5:56But what about Matthew and John who are believed to be original apostles of Jesus?
6:01Take Matthew 9,9, for example.
6:04It says,
6:05As Jesus went on from there,
6:06he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth.
6:10"Follow me," he told him. And Matthew got up and followed him.
6:14Think about how strange that language is.
6:17If you were writing your own story about the day
6:19your life completely changed, would you say,
6:22Jesus saw a man named Matthew and told him to follow him?
6:25No.
6:26You would simply say, Jesus saw me, he told me to follow him,
6:30and I got up and followed him.
6:32Moreover, modern biblical scholars agree on another shocking fact.
6:36The author of the Gospel of Matthew used the Gospel of Mark
6:40as his primary source and copied over 90% of its entire text.
6:46Think about the profound contradiction here.
6:48Matthew is supposed to be an actual apostle,
6:51a first-hand eyewitness who walked with Jesus while Mark was not.
6:56Why would an apostle need to copy the narrative, the structure,
6:59and the exact words of someone who wasn't even there?
7:02Why would Matthew need to look at another man's text to remember his own life?
7:07If the author were truly an apostle,
7:09he wouldn't copy a second-hand account written 40 years after the events.
7:14So who exactly was Mark?
7:17St. Irenaeus, an early Christian leader, wrote this about Mark.
7:21“Mark, who was a student and interpreter of the apostle Peter,
7:25wrote down his teacher's sermons after the deaths of Peter and Paul.”
7:29Think about what that means.
7:31Since the apostle Peter was no longer alive,
7:34he couldn't check Mark's text for errors, additions, or omissions.
7:38So the chain looks like this.
7:40The Gospel of Matthew copies Mark.
7:42Mark copies down Peter's words from memory, and Peter is already dead.
7:48Therefore, you're left with a copy of a copy of an unchecked memory.
7:55“My focus of studies was going to be textual criticism,
7:58which is studying the oldest documents we have of the Bible, etc.
8:01So digging into the Bible led me to understand that it is not,
8:05and even from a scholarly perspective, it is not a perfect book.
8:08And this is what I told one of the professors
8:10at Bob Jones University at the time.
8:12I had a conversation with him, and I asked him a question.
8:14This was a logical question.
8:15I said, is God perfect?
8:16He said, yes.
8:17I said, okay.
8:18If God is perfect, then by default, everything
8:20that comes from God should be perfect by its nature, right?
8:24He said, yes.
8:24I said, is the Bible perfect?
8:26He said, no.
8:26If God is perfect and He has a book, then that book should also be perfect.“
8:31And then we have the Gospel of John.
8:33The only Gospel that claims to have been written
8:36by a disciple of Jesus within its own text.
8:39But if you actually open it and look at the end of the book,
8:42you find something remarkable.
8:44Referring to this disciple,
8:46who is widely believed to be the Apostle John, the text says,
8:49“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down.
8:54We know that his testimony is true.”
8:58Read the last sentence carefully.
9:01We know that his testimony is true. Wait a second.
9:05Who is this mysterious "we"?
9:07If the Apostle John were the one holding the pen, why didn't he say,
9:10I'm the disciple and you know my testimony is true?
9:14So if it wasn't John, who actually wrote it?
9:18We don't know.
9:19And when we don't even know who the author is, how can we trust this testimony?
9:23In other passages of John, we continue to see the same third-person narration style.
9:29Throughout the Gospel of John,
9:30this figure is constantly referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
9:35Look at John 13:23.
9:38“One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him.”
9:42If the writer were John himself, wouldn't he just say, I was reclining next to him?
9:47Besides this third-person narrative style, there is another major difference
9:51that sets the Gospel of John completely apart from the other three.
9:56“And that's the least historical Gospel of all, and that's the Gospel of John.
10:01Only in one place in the Gospels does Jesus walk around saying,
10:06I am the light of the world, or before Abraham was, I am,
10:10or I am the resurrection of the life, or I am the light of the world.
10:15All these I am statements are only found in one Gospel, the last Gospel of John.
10:21If you look at the early Gospels, Jesus never speaks like this.”
10:24The first three Gospels, also known as the Synoptic Gospels,
10:27focus heavily on the humanity of Jesus, depicting him as a prophet preaching
10:32in parables, short moral stories to ordinary people and simple villagers.
10:37However, the Gospel of John is completely different in both style and content.
10:43It portrays Jesus like a Greek philosopher
10:45who preaches through long and complex speeches.
10:48If it were read in isolation,
10:50then one would never guess that parables were a primary teaching method of Jesus.
10:55Because the Gospel of John contains literally zero traditional parables.
11:01Instead, it replaces these simple stories with complex allegories and metaphors.
11:06The text contains many theological and philosophical concepts about Jesus
11:10But most importantly,
11:12contrary to the others that highlight the humanity of Jesus,
11:15the goal of the Gospel of John is to portray Jesus as divine.
11:19“In John, it gets a bit more complicated.
11:22Jesus comes across as a somewhat divine figure.
11:26In the beginning was the Word, the Gospel begins, and the Word was with God,
11:31and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, etc.
11:36Now, all of this is very late.
11:38And if Jesus actually went around saying these amazing things
11:42that John claims he did, why did no one else report that?
11:47So we have an earlier Gospel, the Gospel of Luke, for example.
11:50In the entire Gospel of Luke, Jesus never speaks like that.
11:54He never speaks about himself so much.”
11:57All these factors led many scholars to conclude that the author of John
12:00was likely a well-educated Jew raised in Greek culture,
12:04not a simple fisherman like the apostle John.
12:07In fact, in the second century, some Christians argued
12:10that this Gospel was not written by John, and they later became known as the Alogi.
12:16“This Gospel cannot have been written by John.
12:19Then who wrote it? I don't know.”
12:21But later on, it got accepted as canonical.
12:24“So, the bad news is,
12:25the Gospel of John is used by Christians more than any other Gospel to preach.
12:31For example, the American evangelist, who I saw in London some years ago,
12:34he'd say, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.
12:37And, you know, his scholars will say, no, he probably didn't say that.
12:41That's not historical.
12:42And this is the scandal.
12:44Christians generally don't know about what their own scholars are saying about this.
12:49That's worrying because how can you trust them now if they contain made-up stories?
12:55There are made-up stories in the Gospels.”
12:58So, why do scholars say this? The answer is simple.
13:01Because there were no scribes around Jesus, recording his sermons word for word.
13:07Nor were there official filters to check the accuracy of the narratives.
13:11To ensure authenticity, no critical questions were asked, such as,
13:15How strong were the memories of the narratives?
13:18Were they reliable people?
13:19Could they have narrated something inaccurately?
13:22Instead, there was just absolute silence about this for decades.
13:27All 27 books in the New Testament are attributed to well-known figures.
13:31But scholars widely agree that only seven of them
13:34were actually written by their named authors.
13:38And those are seven letters of Paul.
13:41And as for who Paul really was, we talked extensively about him in the first episode.
13:49“There are authors in the Bible that are still unknown.
13:52And as I'm learning the historicity of the Bible,
13:55so I can convince others of its authority, I am starting to have concerns, right?
14:02I'm learning what I didn't know.
14:04And going from certainty, I became more skeptical the more I learned.
14:08That process continued until I got to a point
14:11where I was upset that this isn't getting better.”
14:14Now, things get even more complicated.
14:17Jesus, peace be upon him, was speaking Aramaic.
14:20So he delivered his message in this language.
14:23But the Gospels we have today were all originally written in Koine Greek,
14:28not even in Hebrew, the traditional language of Jewish scriptures.
14:32This means, except for a few isolated words,
14:35we do not have a single recorded speech of Jesus in the actual language he spoke.
14:40When we put all these pieces together,
14:42we can see exactly how irrational dogmas we talked
14:45about in the first episode were mixed into the true teachings of Jesus.
14:50A noble prophet like him would never preach anything so contrary to reason.
14:54And all of this forces us to ask one critical question.
14:58Can a text shaped by an unchecked chain of memories
15:01and written in a different language decades
15:04after Jesus truly be what you entrust your afterlife to?
15:08All of this must have seemed unreliable, not just for us today,
15:12but also for those who wanted to present these texts as sacred authority.
15:16So they had to create a narrative.
15:18“We need a narrative that gives these writings divine authority.”
15:23They said these books were written through divine inspiration.
15:27However, there's no evidence for this claim.
15:29And more importantly, the original authors never made such a claim about themselves.
15:39Just put these four Gospels side by side.
15:41Remember, they are all supposed to tell the exact same story of Jesus.
15:45Yet, you will see them constantly contradict each other,
15:48changing the order of events, altering facts,
15:51and giving completely different details about the same events.
15:55Take the final moments of Jesus, for example.
15:57In Mark, Jesus cries out in despair, My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
16:03But in contrast, Luke paints an entirely different picture,
16:07portraying Jesus with peaceful submission as he says,
16:10Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.
16:14Actually, these contradictory accounts shouldn't surprise us.
16:17After all, none of these who reported
16:18these words were actually present at the alleged crucifixion.
16:22Let's continue.
16:23Mark states that Jesus was crucified at the third hour.
16:27But John claims he was still standing trial before Pilate,
16:30the Roman governor, at the sixth hour.
16:32Look at the Last Supper.
16:34The first three Gospels say it was a Passover meal.
16:37But John says Jesus was already dead before Passover even started.
16:41Even the fate of Judas contradicts itself.
16:44Matthew claims Judas hanged himself out of guilt.
16:47While the Book of Acts in the New Testament says he died
16:50after falling headlong in a field.
16:52Matthew says an officer in the Roman army came to Jesus face to face to ask for help.
16:57But Luke says the officer never came himself,
17:00he just sent some messengers instead.
17:02Even the simplest instructions contradict.
17:04When sending the disciples out,
17:06Mark says Jesus explicitly told them to take a staff and wear sandals.
17:10But Matthew claims Jesus ordered them not to take a staff or wear sandals.
17:15If these authors were truly inspired by God,
17:18there would be no room for even a single minor inconsistency.
17:21In fact, scholars have found
17:23over 300 contradictions in the Old and New Testaments.
17:27Today, we have only covered a very small fraction of them.
17:30For those who wish to examine more examples,
17:32we will share a source later in this episode.
17:37“I'm reading the Bible.
17:38The first verse that I read was no man can see God and live after that.
17:44And I'm thinking, but people called Jesus God
17:47and they all saw Jesus and no one died looking at Jesus.
17:51So the verse was, no man can look at God and live after.
17:54I turned the page to another verse, another story of Jacob.
17:57Not only does Jacob see God, he is wrestling God and says to God,
18:02I will not let You go until You bless me.
18:04Okay, wait a minute.
18:06You just said that if you even see God, that no man can live after that.
18:11Okay, so why is Jacob living after that? So what did I do?
18:1414-year-old me raised my hand.
18:16The pastor came over and said, how can I help you?
18:18I showed him the two verses.
18:20And his reaction was, hmm, I didn't even know that that was in the Bible.
18:25And I said, I kind of, what?
18:27But you're the Bible pastor.”
18:30The contradictions don't just stop with timelines,
18:32historical details, or these clear logical conflicts.
18:35They reach into the very core of divine justice.
18:39Just look at how God is described in the Old Testament, in Exodus 34:7:
18:44“Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished.
18:47He punishes the children and their children
18:49for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
18:53But if you turn to Ezekiel 18, verse 20, you find a completely opposite decree.
18:59“The child will not share the guilt of the parent,
19:01nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.
19:04The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them,
19:07and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.”
19:10So which one is the true law of God? You cannot have it both ways.
19:15Also, modern Christianity relies entirely on the concept of original sin, the belief
19:19that every baby is born guilty simply because of the mistake of Prophet Adam.
19:24How can anyone reconcile that core doctrine with Ezekiel's explicit words?
19:29“How do we come into this world with a sin? We've done nothing but be born.”
19:34“What Islam says is that Islam does not say original sin,
19:37Islam speaks about original goodness, that every child, every baby,
19:42every person is born with a clean heart, with a clean slate, innocent, pure,
19:47without any blemish, until you reach the age of puberty.
19:50And once, if you do right things, you'll be rewarded.
19:53If you do wrong things, there would be consequences.
19:55So according to the Islamic concept, after Adam and Eve,
19:58when they did the wrong thing, when they made the mistake,
20:02they both repented to God that, Oh God, please forgive us, and God forgive them.
20:06End of story.
20:07And every child is born with original goodness.
20:10I mention this answer many times, every single time,
20:13in the masjid open houses, when the Christians,
20:15when they ask this question, every time they say,
20:18you know what, Sabeel, what she mentioned about Islamic concept of salvation,
20:21it is logical, it makes sense.”
20:24Look at the book of Genesis and the story of Noah's Ark.
20:27In Genesis 6:19, the command is clear.
20:30“Noah is told to take one pair of every living creature into the Ark,
20:34one male and one female.
20:36But in the very next chapter,
20:38in Genesis 7, verse 2 and 3, the instructions change significantly.”
20:43Suddenly, Noah is ordered to take seven pairs of every clean animal,
20:46and one pair of every unclean animal, and also seven pairs of every bird.
20:51We are not comparing two different books
20:53written centuries apart by different authors.
20:56These contradictions are happening within the exact same book,
20:59just one chapter apart.
21:01In the Gospels and the rest of the Bible,
21:04many contradictions like these can be easily found.
21:07But these examples already make the point very clearly.
21:10Those who want to see more of them can look
21:12at Rahmatullah Kairanawi al-Hindi's famous work, Izhar al-Haqq.
21:16In his book, he documents 335 contradictions and errors,
21:20which is more than 33 times what we have discussed here today.
21:25“This Bible, I bought it in an antique store.
21:28It's from roughly, I think, 1825 or 1836 between that area.
21:33I perused, you know, the verses and some of the verses were gone.
21:38They're just not there anymore.
21:39I looked for them and they're just not there.”
21:42Remember the question we asked earlier?
21:44How closely do those early discovered
21:46fragments actually match the modern Bible we have today?
21:50Here's the jaw-dropping answer.
21:52We have around 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament,
21:58ranging from tiny fragments of papyrus to complete books.
22:02But among all of them, no two copies are identical.
22:06Every single handwritten text differs from the next,
22:10and there is not a single verse in the entire New Testament
22:13where every manuscript of that verse is completely identical.
22:18In fact, scholars estimate that there
22:20are over 400,000 textual variations across these pages.
22:25Now, think about that for a second.
22:28The entire Greek New Testament contains only about 138,000 words,
22:33meaning the differences literally outnumber the words in the text itself.
22:39After all this, isn't it crystal clear how impossible
22:42it is to determine what the original text actually said?
22:46So, is having 5,700 manuscripts actually a good thing,
22:51or is it worse for mainstream Christianity?
22:54Don't let this large number mislead you,
22:56because only 60 or 70 of these manuscripts
23:00date back to the first three centuries after Jesus.
23:03In fact, more than 90% of them belong to the 8th and 16th centuries.
23:09Does a manuscript written a thousand years
23:11after the events carry any historical weight?
23:14I'll leave that for you to decide.
23:16Scholars argue that 99% of these 400,000 textual variations are completely harmless.
23:22They consider them spelling differences, changes in word order,
23:25and other minor copying differences.
23:28But in a text that is claimed to be from God,
23:31no difference or change should be considered minor.
23:34Even if we accept their logic,
23:36that remaining 1% still leaves you with around 4,000 significant
23:41textual discrepancies, differences,
23:44that can affect meaning, interpretation, and even doctrine.
23:48How can anyone justify that?
23:50If this book were truly protected by God, wouldn't we have just one single text?
23:55Unfortunately, it seems that over the centuries,
23:58those who were writing these manuscripts
24:00were changing their sacred texts to fit their own religious beliefs.
24:05For example, in 1 John 5, verses 7 and 8, the phrase
24:09referring to the Trinity is a well-documented later addition.
24:13We see this addition in the famous King James Version.
24:16It says, For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
24:21the Word, and the Holy Ghost.
24:23And these three are one.
24:25However, modern Bibles like the New International Version
24:28removed this explicit reference to the Trinity,
24:31as scholars found that it didn't exist
24:33in any Greek manuscripts before the 14th century.
24:36Now, let's look at how they corrected it.
24:38For there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water,
24:42and the blood, and the three are in agreement.
24:45As you see, there's no longer the reference to the Trinity in the same passage.
24:50“One more example can be, in the Gospel of John, the 4th Gospel,
24:54chapter number 7, verse number 53, it speaks about the prostitute
25:00and how people gathered around her to stone to her.
25:03And Jesus came on the scene and he said,
25:05Okay, those who are without sin cast the first stone, right?
25:08You may have heard the story.
25:09That story is not there in the ancient manuscripts.
25:13King James Version has it.
25:14The RSV version of the Bible says, You know, this story is added.
25:18This is not there in the ancient manuscripts.
25:21So somebody added that story to it.” Let's give another example.
25:26Mark 16:9–20 is one of the most agreed upon additions to that Gospel.
25:31In fact, it's clearly marked in some versions of the Bible.
25:34In the New International Version, it says,
25:37The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.
25:42The original Gospel of Mark ends at verse 8,
25:45where the women flee from the empty tomb in fear.
25:48There is no resurrection appearance and no final command from Jesus.
25:52Also, in Mark 1, verse 1, the phrase "Son of God" is not found
25:57in some of the earliest manuscripts.
25:59As you can see, these are significant additions
26:01that aim to change the religious views fundamentally.
26:05“I'm a collector of the Bibles.
26:07300 Bibles in my collection. Yes. Come to my library one time.
26:10From different times in history, different languages,
26:13and different versions, every single one of them, they're different.
26:17Example, right?
26:18You have the King James Version of the Bible
26:20that was taken out in 1611 in the authorship,
26:24in the supervision of King James of England.
26:26So that Bible was revised in 1881 to 1885 because it has errors
26:32and it was not copied from ancient manuscripts.
26:36So they revised it in England in 1881. It also has some mistakes in it.
26:41So they started to revise again in 1901 called the American Standard Version.
26:46It also had mistakes in there because,
26:48you know, people started to discover new manuscripts.
26:52And the new manuscripts, they differ from this Bible,
26:55so they have to keep on updating the Bible.
26:57And I will give some examples, okay?
26:59So the 1901 version of the American Standard Version,
27:03it has mistakes in it, so they revised it in 1952.
27:07That has mistakes in it, so they revised it again in 1971, NASB.
27:12It has mistakes, so they revised it in 1989 and then 2020 and then 2021, by the way.
27:19So you may be thinking, okay, Brother Sabeel, what's going on here?
27:22The thing is, okay, fine, you have like one Bible.
27:25But if they discover new manuscripts, they have to update this Bible,
27:29not the translation of it, but the contents of it.
27:32So they do their best from their mind, you know, taking the majority of the words,
27:37what passage should go here, what passage should go there.
27:40That's how they make the Bibles.
27:42So, Muslims, when we make this statement,
27:44the Bibles have been changed, Quran has been preserved.
27:47We have ample credible evidence for what we say.”
27:51We are not even talking
27:51about the historical reliability of the Old Testament.
27:55Isn't this a profound irony that almost all the data
27:58we have listed today were exposed by Christian scholars themselves?
28:02The deeper people study Islam, the more reasons they find to accept the Quran.
28:07But the deeper they study the Bible, the result is the same.
28:10They still find reasons to accept the Quran.
28:13Whichever path of theological and textual research you choose,
28:17it leads to the same ultimate destination, the final revelation.
28:23Perhaps it was part of Allah's plan
28:25that so much research would be done into the Bible by Christian scholars,
28:29so that people could eventually recognize the true message brought by Jesus,
28:33and that this is, in fact, the very same message found in the Quran.
28:38The scholars who have courageously pursued these studies in their search
28:41for the truth deserve appreciation.
28:44And I believe that their sincere efforts
28:46will one day lead them to the right path, insha'Allah.
28:49In Islam, every question has an answer,
28:52as long as you are willing to seek it sincerely.
28:55“The scholar, who was the professor of the class, and also a minister,
29:00a leader of a church, he looked at me and he said, why are you questioning?
29:04And I said, well, I need to know what happened between what was written
29:07in Greek and what we have today in our English Bibles.
29:11And he said, look, this is the infallible, meaning the absolute,
29:17truthful word of God.
29:18And I said, how can it be?
29:20Because we've translated it, and something is missing in the translation.
29:23He said, I'll talk to you after class in my office.
29:27He said, okay, I'm ready.
29:28Class ended, and I went to him, and he said,
29:31if you don't believe this, yours is the hellfire.
29:34You must believe.
29:35I said, I'm sorry, but you can't convince me with those words.
29:39It doesn't make sense. It's not logical.
29:42And at that point, I had read enough about Islam and read the Quran
29:47that everything that I had read was logical and seemed to fit in place.
29:51And what he had told me didn't.
29:53If they've got the truth, and they've got the market on the truth,
29:57why are they having to alter it all the time?
29:59Why are you constantly changing it?
30:01When I ask you a question as a preacher,
30:05why are you giving me the runaround instead of answering my question?
30:09A lot of times I would ask questions, and the response I would be,
30:13I would get is, brother, you just have to have faith.
30:17Because it's not rational, it's not logical.
30:19You say that the Bible and the Torah are originally sent by God,
30:23and then you claim that they have been changed.
30:26Why would God allow this?
30:27The reason why God would allow this is because these particular
30:30revelations were sent for a specific people in a specific time.
30:34We don't believe that the Torah was sent for all humankind.
30:38Likewise, we don't believe that the Gospel
30:41that was originally sent to Jesus Christ was meant for all people in all times.
30:44We believe that the Quran was the only book really sent for all people in all times,
30:49accompanied with the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
30:51So there wasn't an impending need for all of humanity
30:54to have these revelations actually preserved.
30:57And that's why this is indicated in the meaning of the verse in the Quran,
31:00Bimas-tuhfizu min kitabillahi wa kanu 'alayhi shuhada.
31:04Which basically means that they were entrusted
31:06with the preservation of these books, i.e. the rabbis and the clergy of the old,
31:10and they failed, even though they were witness to it.
31:13So in other words, comparing that with what Allah
31:15subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran about the Quran,
31:18Inna nahnu nazzalnadh-dhikra wa inna lahu lahafizun.
31:20That He will preserve it Himself, there's a clear difference.
31:23And the difference is justified due to the fact
31:25that these books were specified to their people in time,
31:27and the Quran was sent for all people in all times.”
31:29“Even if God would have preserved the Injil or the revelation given by God to Jesus,
31:35it will not be enough for us for today,
31:38for all the solutions for the problems that we go through.
31:41So it was limited in scope, it was only for those people, and only for that time.
31:46For that reason, Allah in His wisdom did not took the commitment to preserve it.
31:52But Quran is for all of humanity, for all time, for all solutions,
31:57for any problem, for any culture, any race, for humanity.
32:00And it is the last revelation, so Allah took the commitment to preserve it.”
32:04Through the light brought by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),
32:07the Christian world was given a clear path back to the pure essence of Jesus' message.
32:13He brought back the truth of who he really was and what he actually taught.
32:18Allah sent His final messenger to lead the followers of Jesus,
32:22and the followers of all previous prophets, back to the right path.
32:27After all, Islam is not a new religion.
32:29It is the common, universal message preached by thousands of prophets sent
32:34to every corner of the earth since the time of Adam, alayhis salam.
32:38Through this final, unchanging revelation, the message of Jesus is finally
32:42being cleansed of human alterations, restoring its true, uncorrupted form.
32:48So we have come to the end of part 2, but the story is far from over.
32:53If you think the 400,000 manuscript variations were shocking, wait
32:57until you see how much textual corruption can reshape the core of a faith.
33:02In the next episode, we will place the concepts of God in Christianity
33:06and Islam side by side to explore the massive differences between them.
33:10We will look at the obvious logical failures regarding
33:13the attributes of God known as the Father in the Bible.
33:17And by doing so, we will highlight how the Quran
33:19provides the only flawless definition of God known to mankind.
33:24We will also reveal how the manuscript corruptions didn't just alter the text,
33:28but added horrific slanders against the noble prophets.
33:32Keep your curiosity and excitement alive.
33:35And to those in pursuit of the truth, see you in episode 3.

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