(Transcript of the video above, edited for readability)
The Quran mentions Jesus in a number of places, in a number of ways. So 11 times in the Quran, Jesus referred to as Isa Almasi, that is Jesus the Messiah. The Quran itself calls Christ the Messiah, and Muslims would have a similar understanding of what it means to be Messiah. I mean, it is borrowed really out of the Christian context, and the Jewish context. So the Messiah is the anointed one. What our Muslim neighbors don't understand is, anointed for what? And that's where we help them understand the gospel. He's the one who's been chosen and anointed to deliver his people from their sins to offer himself as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners, and to thereby redeem them and make them a people for himself. So, there are those places in the Quran that describe Jesus as the Messiah.
The Quran actually has its own version of the virgin birth as well. So, Muslims believe in the virgin birth. And when you read the Maryam, the chapter on Mary, you'll discover many parallels to the gospel accounts of the virgin birth. Again, that allows us to ask them some interesting questions. Well, if he is born of a virgin and doesn't have an earthly father, who's his father? Well, God is his father. Now Muslims have misunderstandings there. They sometimes think that Christians believe that God had intercourse with Mary in some way and impregnated her. That's not what we mean at all. We would share their abhorrence at that. That's not what meant at all. And so explaining that and moving from that bridge of the virgin birth account to why it was necessary that Jesus should be born of a virgin, and why it was necessary that he should come at all, and be faultless, as the Quran and the Hadith also teach that Jesus was faultless.
The Quran teaches that Jesus was a prophet. Again, that gives us a good starting place, a common starting place. We have very much the same definition of a prophet, the one who comes and speaks the very word of God. And so the next question really is, well, what did Jesus say? And we know that in the gospels we have that, recorded in the gospels, and every Muslim is obligated to obey the prophets. And again, what does Jesus say? "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me." What does Jesus say? He lays down his life as a ransom for his people. If he lays it down, he has power to pick it up again, anticipating the resurrection. Matthew chapter 16, I believe it is. But Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and says He must go to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of the chief priests and the scribes and Pharisees and be put to death when the third day rises.
He's a prophet speaking the very words of God. And I was bound as a Muslim to obey the word of God. This is a very interesting quandary. This is the kind of thing that made me leave Islam and accept the truth about Christ. So many things in the Quran... we also have in the Quran things that we would disagree with as Christians. Not only things that we agree with, but things we disagree with as Christians. So, for example, the Quran makes the claim that Jesus will come in the second coming, they believe in the second coming and Jesus' appearance at judgment, to condemn those who believe in his name and believe that he was the son of God and God the son. We certainly know that Jesus is coming again. He's coming to receive his church and he's coming to establish his kingdom, to consummate his kingdom. And he will judge when he comes, but it won't be his followers that he judged. It will be those that reject him, those that refuse him. And so those are some of the things that the Quran teaches about Jesus, some of which we would agree with, as at least part of the truth, and need to extend with the Christian explanation and things we wouldn't agree with and would understand to be false.
(First published on Christianity.com on November 26, 2012)
