Evidence from the Qur'an that I am greater than Allah

Quran, Surah 3, Ayah 32 reads, as you can see in the graphic, "Say, "Obey Allah and the Messenger."  But if they turn away - then indeed, Allah does not like the disbelievers." 

As you can see in the image above, however, the Arabic word "eyu-HAYB-bu" means "love," not "like."  Three witnesses for this:

1: the Hebrew word "ahvah" means "love," and sounds very much like the Arabic word (once you realize that the Hebrew letter "bet" can make a B or a V sound, and Arabic does not have a V, so Arabic speakers would pronounce the Hebrew word as "Ahabah").

2:  The website at Quran.com itself, when you mouse over the word (as I did in the graphic) translates it as "love."

3:  A very large number of other English translations of the Qur'an translate this passage using the English word "love," including (but by no means limited to) the following translations:

Muhammad Asad, M. M. Pickthall, Yusuf Ali (Saudi Rev. 1985), Yusuf Ali (Orig. 1938), Shakir, Wahiduddin Khan, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, T.B.Irving, Safi Kaskas, The Study Quran

There can be no doubt, then, that a proper translation of the passage above would be "Allah does not love the unbelievers." 

Now, let me state plainly:  I do not believe in Allah.  I do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet.  I do not believe that the religion of Islam is true in any sense. 

I am an unbeliever, with regard to Islam. 

Allah does not love me, according to the Qur'an.

But let's suppose that one night I am listening to Yahya Snow or Zakir Naik or Yusuf Estes and something one of them says convinces me.  Let's say that I finally see the truth of Islam and bend my knee to the Ka'a'bah and recite the Shahaddah.  I do so with full intent to become a Muslim, and immediately after that I begin attending services at a mosque, I enjoin in the 5 prayers a day, I do everything that is required of me to be a Muslim.  And let's say, for this example, that I truly come to believe that there is no god but Allah.

Now that I am a believer, Allah loves me. 

Do not miss this.  I have changed.  I have gone from a state of disbelief to a state of belief.  I have gone from being an unbeliever to a believer. 

I have changed Allah's heart.  He used to not love me, and now he does love me. 

If I have the power to change Allah, then I am greater than he is. 

A.J. Akbar.

If the Cross is good, why should we not sin?

There is often, by both Messianics and Muslims alike, a tendency to suggest that a Christian who believes that they are saved by the Cross only does so because they desire to sin. That is, they put forth the idea that because I plan to, say, have an affair this weekend, that I am relying on the Cross to save me from this.


This is NOT the case.


Paul addresses this argument very clearly in Romans 6.  “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Anyone who makes a different argument is unscriptural.  The Cross is not license to sin, and heaven forbid it is ever viewed as such. 

More clearly than even this:  I do not take the Cross as license to sin.

And Paul very clearly addresses this only one chapter later:  “18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

That is, Paul recognizes that sin continues in his flesh.  That he, himself, continues to sin.  Does he do this because the Cross has given him license to do so? Of course not.  He does this because he is a sinful human being. So does Paul then argue that his sin is not sinful?  Again, no. He continues:

"21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

That is, realizing that sin continues to exist and to reign in his mortal body, Paul cries out “Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  Note, Paul does not say “Wretched man that I was,” but rather “that I am.”  Paul is building clearly on the premise he established in chapter 6 regarding sin in his mortal body.  And yet Paul follows this with a sentence which must be a top three contender for the most beautiful sentences in all of Holy Scripture:  “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Some manuscripts have a scribal error here, which the KJV picks up on and publishes, but Paul ended the sentence at “Jesus.”  How do I know?  Because the added text to the end of Romans 8:1 comes directly from Romans 8:4, verbatim.  It is, therefore, very likely a copyists’ error, and the bulk of the manuscript evidence bears this out.  That Paul, who finds sin continuing to reign in his body, can say with absolute certainty that “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is a statement of earth-shattering proportions.   Now, we can debate about what it means to be “in Christ Jesus,” but whatever it means, it cannot mean any of those things Paul has already eliminated in the previous chapters.  That is, we cannot argue that one who is “in Christ Jesus” would not continue to sin, because Paul himself has already addressed that argument.