Which Religion is True?

Chapter 20

Islam’s Theories on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus

Here are the verses in the Koran that appear to deny the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The following quotes are from the translation by M.H. Shakir:

[3.55] “And when Allah said: O Isa [Jesus’ Arabic name], I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me and purify you of those who disbelieve and make those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection; then to Me shall be your return, so l will decide between you concerning that in which you differed.

Translation of this verse by Abdullah Yusuf Ali reads this way:

“Behold! Allah said: "O Jesus! I will take thee and raise thee to Myself and clear thee (of the falsehoods) of those who blaspheme; I will make those who follow thee superior to those who reject faith, to the Day of Resurrection: Then shall ye all return unto me, and I will judge between you of the matters wherein ye dispute.”

The Muslims interpret this passage to mean that Jesus did not die but ascended to God. This interpretation is made when this verse is read in conjunction with other verses.

[19.33] And peace on me on the day I was born, and on the day I die, and on the day I am raised to life.

The sequence of events mentioned in the life of Jesus in this verse is His birth, then death and then His resurrection; exactly as the sequence in the Bible. This verse does not mention the return of Jesus Christ to earth as mentioned in the Bible. Muslims claim that the sequence in Jesus’ life will be birth, then ascension, then return to earth and then death? This passage in the Koran is also speaking of the resurrection of Jesus and not His ascension to God without first dying as claimed by Muslims. Thus this verse is contrary to the prevailing Muslim view.

With these verses, the Koran seems to say similar things to the Bible. But next look at Sura 4:157-158:

4.157-158] “And their saying [meaning the Jews’ saying]: Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium [Mary’s Arabic name], the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure. 158 Nay! Allah took him up to Himself; and Allah is Mighty, Wise.”

Here in verse 157 the Koran is saying that the Jews boast that they killed Jesus the Messiah, but denies that they killed Him or crucified Him; it just appeared to them to be so. The Koran then flatly denies that they killed Him, but that Allah took Him up to himself.

The same two verses are translated in the translation by the King Fahd Complex for the printing of the Koran in Madinah, SA with commentary in this way:[4.157-158] And because of their saying (in boast), “We killed Messiah Isa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary), the Messenger of Allah” – but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the resemblance of Isa (Jesus) was put over another man (and they killed that man) and those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no certain knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely they killed him not [i.e Isa (Jesus)] son of Maryam (Mary)]. 158 But Allah raised him [Isa (Jesus)] up (with his body and soul) unto Himself (and he is in the heavens). And Allah is ever All-powerful, All-wise.”

The words in verse 157, “but the resemblance of Isa (Jesus) was put over another man (and they killed that man)” are not a literal translation but added as a commentary based on a Hadith [which are the sayings of the companions of Mohammad based on what Mohammed said or did] narrated by Ibn Abbas mentioning that Mohammed told about the last day of prophet Isa on Earth that he gathered his pupils in a house and asked them "who among you shall be given my appearance to be crucified in my place and be my companion in Paradise?" The youngest among them stood up and said: "I"” This may be the reason for the Muslim belief that another disciple who looked like Him was substituted for Jesus to be crucified to die on the cross, but the people thought it was Jesus who was crucified and died.

When we consider these verses that discuss Jesus Christ’s death or ascension to God, we see that the Koran does not give us its own detailed version of what actually happened at the crucifixion, or death or resurrection of Jesus Christ. It just seeks to discredit the detailed version of events contained in the Bible. The Koran does not give us a clear picture of the events surrounding those 4-5 days of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While these verses in the Koran are open to alternate interpretations, the Muslims interpret them to believe that in essence Jesus was not crucified and did not die on the cross but ascended to Allah in heaven. Since He did not die, there was no need for Him to be resurrected from death. Thus the Koran denies the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But according to the Bible these are a central part of God’s Plan of salvation for mankind in Christianity.

Since these verses in the Koran can be interpreted in different ways, it has led to many theories among the Muslims to try and explain the actual event of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the gospels in the Bible. These theories include:

1) Jesus didn’t actually die, He simply swooned or went into a coma and appeared to be dead, but woke up after 3 days and was claimed to have been resurrected.

2) Jesus did actually die, but his disciples stole the body. This saying was actually reported among the Jews and is mentioned in the Bible. But it contradicts Sura 4:157 in the Koran which asserts that Jesus did not die.

3) There was a person who was crucified and died, but that was another person who was substituted for the real Jesus. So it wasn’t Jesus who actually died. Since He did not die, He could be claimed to have been resurrected the third day. This theory as mentioned earlier is not in the Koran but based on a Hadith, which could be just conjecture on the part of the one to whom the Hadith is attributed.

4) Muslims also say that there was no need for another man to die for the sins of other men. That is unfair. So they question the story of the death of Jesus Christ for the sins of mankind. That is why they do not believe the story of the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.

5) The whole resurrection story is a myth.

6) Some even go so far as to say that Jesus is a myth.

You can see that these theories to try and discredit the Biblical account of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus by first accepting what the Koran claims is the truth about Jesus are contradictory among themselves. Some of these theories claim that Jesus died whereas others claim He did not.

Even the account in the Koran itself about the event is contradictory. Sura 4:157 says Jesus was not killed whereas Sura 19:33 says Jesus died or will die and be resurrected. To reconcile these two verses Muslims have invented the sequence in the life of Jesus to be the life, ascension to God, return to earth and then death of Jesus Christ. But this sequence contradicts the sequence in Sura 19:33 which says: “And peace on me on the day I was born, and on the day I die, and on the day I am raised to life.”

Muslims could explain this contradiction by stating that Jesus lived, ascended to God, will return to earth, then die and then be resurrected to life again at the Muslim idea of the Resurrection, by which they mean physical resurrection of all of humanity and being judged and then offered the eternal rewards of either paradise or hell. There are more details to these Muslim rewards for the faithful which we will not address.

How Would a Liar Try to Discredit a True Story

Have you wondered how a liar would try to discredit a true story that is the very essence, the very centrality of God’s plan of salvation for mankind?

Soon after the start of God’s Church in 31 A.D., God’s adversary, the devil first made assaults on various aspects of the true religion. These assaults were on keeping the Sabbath, God’s Passover and the other 6 of the seven annual holy days that picture God’s plan of salvation for mankind, and substituting pagan festivals in their place such as Sunday worship, Easter, Christmas and the like. Ultimately such falsehoods became the dominant religion headquartered in Rome, the capital of the greatest empire on earth at that time. But the centrality of God’s message that led to the birth of Christianity, the fact of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ remained unchanged. Christianity continued to gain adherents and accept the fact of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Messiah for the next 580 years.Though a vast majority of the adherents were being gained for false Christianity, the new adherents nevertheless accepted the fact of the birth, life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, some of these who had the means and could gain access to the Bible would then be exposed to the truth from its pages rather than blindly accept the paganism of the false Roman Church. And that is how God’s Church gained adherents over the centuries.

So what do you think the adversary of God, and an originator of lies would try to do to counter the spread of the central message of the Bible: Salvation for humanity through the life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Why obviously, he would try to discredit that message. He would try to spread lies that the message of the crucifixion, death and resurrection was lies and pure fiction. And that is exactly what the master liar and deceiver set out to do about 580 years after the start of Christianity, when he saw that the religion continued to spread. For 580 years nobody had seriously questioned the fact of the birth, life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the adversary of God with his cohorts planned out a strategy to try to change that.

Satan set out to try to discredit the truthfulness of every aspect of the message. He would first try to discredit the message by saying that the message itself has been corrupted. So what we today have is not the truth. He would try to say that the Old Testament and the New Testament have been corrupted so that the account we have of the life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Bible is not correct. It has been altered. Next the liar would then give his own version of events about the crucifixion, death and the resurrection. Then the liar would form his own religion, and propagate it with all his vigor and cunning so that the spread of the message of truth would be halted, and instead his religion based on his lies would spread, and hope to challenge the truth by force whenever possible. He would try to convert Christians to his religion by force.

That is exactly what Satan did about 580 years after the birth of Christianity. He used the man Mohammed as his agent to spread his lies to discredit the truth. For 580 years humanity had not questioned the true central message. But then 580 years later comes Mohammed questioning the very central message, armed with lies of the master deceiver of mankind, Satan the devil.

Satan did not use Mohammed to cast doubts about the fact of the birth and existence of Jesus Christ. In fact, he confirmed the existence of Jesus Christ and the prophets mentioned in the Bible. But he used Mohammed to discredit the facts about the life of Jesus Christ. Mohammed may have been a very sincere man. But he was a thoroughly deceived man, deceived by Satan’s lies, with which he deceives more than a billion people on earth.

About 1400 years after Mohammed came on the world scene, nobody questions that Mohammed existed. But Satan uses others to question the existence of Jesus Christ on earth around 2000 years ago. If the existence of Islam is proof that Mohammed existed, then the existence of Christianity should be proof that Jesus Christ existed and is not a myth.

How can we Prove the Resurrection

Human beings have great difficulty believing in miraculous events. Miracles (such as healings) in the lives of human beings involve miraculous intervention. After receiving those miracles the human beings still remain physical human beings. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a unique event in the history of mankind so far. A physical human being died and was resurrected into a spirit being. That is why human beings find it so difficult to imagine, comprehend and hence believe. That is why they do not accept it and explain it away as best as they can. That is why Muslims want to believe the Koran when it says Jesus Christ did not die and hence was not resurrected.

Even Jesus Christ’s disciples could not imagine the event when Jesus Christ told them in Luke 18:31-34 (NKJV): “31 Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. 32 For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. 33 They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again." 34 But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.”

The disciples could not imagine a human being dying and then being resurrected into a spirit being. This is the human tendency at work when Muslims are able to easily discredit the version of events in the Bible in their minds and accept what the Koran says. Satan has tried to exploit this human tendency to the hilt in his attempts to deceive mankind.

How then can we prove that the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are a fact? We cannot see the resurrected Jesus Christ today. The event occurred more than 1980 years ago. To find proof for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we must examine the account in the Bible to verify that it is consistent with reality of human life and how humans behave under circumstances surrounding such events. We will look at 3 kinds of proofs:

1) To prove that a version of events is the truth, we must first look at the source. That means we must first prove that the Bible is the source of truth and the Koran is a source of lies or vice versa. We have already done that.

The God of the Bible demonstrated that He is the Almighty by giving numerous prophecies which continue to be fulfilled even in our time. This also means that the words of the Bible even today are backed by the power of God. That means we can rely on the version of events surrounding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This then means that the Koran is inspired by a liar, and/or an adversary of God because it contradicts the Biblical account surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

2) After proving the truthfulness and reliability of the source for our description of events, we must then find incontrovertible proof that the events actually happened. If the source is completely reliable and truthful, we should be able to believe its version of events without further proof. But critics will still question or contradict the version of events. Then we must offer incontrovertible believable proof that the events surrounding the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ really took place.

In the case of Jesus Christ, His crucifixion and death was a publicly witnessed event carried out with typical Roman thoroughness. He had powerful enemies in the Jewish leadership hierarchy who wanted Him dead, and the Romans had condemned Him to death. Both sides wanted to make sure He was dead. And they made sure He was crucified and was dead. A Roman soldier knew when a man was dead, especially when one of them had driven a spear into His side when He was on the cross to kill Him. Roman soldiers certainly knew when a man was dead. We will look at all these proofs from the Bible and see that there is incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross.

3) After proving that Jesus Christ was dead, we must then provide incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ was resurrected back to life as a spirit being. One of the proofs was that the tomb in which Jesus Christ was laid was found to be empty. No dead body was ever found or produced by anyone. Of course the critics can argue that Jesus Christ did not die. That’s why there was no dead body. But if we can find incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ died, then the empty tomb is proof that He was resurrected because no dead body was found.

Can you imagine the huge impact a unique event like the resurrection would have on those who were witnesses to it. It would transform their lives. We would expect the resurrection to transform the lives of Jesus Christ’s disciples. We will see how the transformed lives of the disciples of Jesus Christ are proof of His resurrection.

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