This week we are talking about apologetics. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to give a defense or to give an answer.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: (1 Peter 3:15)

God warned us that there would be false prophets and false teachers propagating false doctrine among God’s people. There will be tares among the wheat. We are to defend the faith.

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. (Jude 1:3)

Remember from yesterday, the word contend comes from a Greek word which means to agonize. It is not something we do passively, it is something we do with passion.

Here at Fortress of Faith we talk a lot about the teachings and doctrines of Islam and their Prophet, Muhammad. We try to be a fortress of faith that defends our faith and to be a tower to warn of the dangers around us. We warn the saints so we can be prepared to defend against the evil and false religion of Islam.

We often say, don’t blame Muslims for Islam, Muslims do what they do because of Islam. We wouldn’t blame every German for Nazism. Nazism is an evil and despotic ideology which oppresses and kills dissidents. It was dangerous to our society, so we went to war against it. Islam is no different. It has the same ideology, the same principles as Nazism. The only difference is that Muhammad claimed to be a prophet and attached a god to his ideology. Imagine if Hitler had claimed to be a prophet and attached a religion to Nazism. It would be no less evil that Islam. If Hitler had killed in the name of a god, it would still have been evil. That is exactly what Muhammad and Islam did, and continue to do.

Muslims are blinded and misguided by Islam. They have been told lies and are in darkness. They need the truth about our Bible. They have been told it has been corrupted, and we have been giving a defense for our Scriptures against these false accusations.

We have learned that the Qur’an doesn’t teach that the Bible is corrupt. It actually teaches that the Allah guarded the Scriptures that came before the Qur’an, which are the Old and the New Testaments. We must ask why the Qur’an says one thing, and the Muslims of today are saying something different. The answer is easy. The Muslims of Muhammad’s day couldn’t read or write so they couldn’t check out the Bible to see what it says and compare it with the Qur’an. Muhammad was, therefore, able to claim that his revelations agreed with the Book, the Bible. Today they can, and they can see the errors, and that Muhammad was a con-man. For this reason, the Islamic clerics tell them that the reason for the differences between the Bible and the Qur’an is that the Bible has been corrupted.

This is also why Muslims are not encouraged to study their scriptures. If they did, they would see the many errors and problems with the Qur’an.

Muhammad clearly told Christians and Jews to stand on all that was given to them in their Scriptures. Why would he have told them to stand on a corrupt text? That makes no sense at all.

The Word of God has been under attack since the Garden of Eden. They have tried to destroy or discredit it using every means imaginable. It has survived every attack that has been thrown at it with flying colors.

When we put the Qur’an to the same tests that the Bible has been subject to, it sinks like a brick. Let’s take a quick look at the evidence that proves this.

They claim they have the original Qur’an. Muslims should know that Muhammad did not write the Qur’an. He could not read or write, but he did have a scribe. Even so, no permission was given to write the Qur’an down until 20 years after the death of Muhammad. The very word Qur’an means the recitings. This means that it is to be memorize and recited. The first couple of caliphs that followed Muhammad resisted the writing down of the Qur’an. There was a battle during the reign of Uthman where they lost most of those who had memorized the entire Qur’an. Uthman, out of fear that the Qur’an would be lost, ordered that it be written down. He gave very specific instructions on how this was to be done.

At that time the Arabic language was not yet fully developed. Their alphabet was not complete, they didn’t have vowels. It was the same with the old Hebrew alphabet. The vowel markings came at a later date. The Arabic script at that time was the Nabataean script. It was a combination of Syriac and Phoenician. Because of the different scripts we can tell very clearly when Arabic writings were written. If it has no vowels it will be from an earlier time than if it does have vowels. If it was from Uthman’s time there would be no vowels. Uthman had four copies of the Qur’an made, and they claim that they still have two of them.

Let’s look at the instructions given by Uthman for the recording of the Qur’an. Before they started writing it down, there were seven oral versions of the Qur’an. This is clear from the writings of Muslims, it is no secret. There was a debate over which one they would follow. Let me give you the instructions of Uthman for dealing with this issue.

“Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, ‘Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and ‘AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. ‘Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, “In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.“… ‘Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. Said bin Thabit added, “A Verse from Surat Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur’an and I used to hear Allah’s Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaima bin Thabit Al-Ansari. (That Verse was): ‘Among the Believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.”

Sahih Bukhari 6:61:510

There were six men on this project, and Thabit was the chief scribe. If there was disagreement between the scribes, they were to go with the Quraish version because that was Muhammad’s tribe.

This all shows us that there is a big problem with the Qur’an. What Muslims believe to be the holy, inerrant word of their god, supposedly given by inspiration and preserved for all mankind, is now left to a committee of six men who are capable of error. Because of this, they were given rules to follow if they had a disagreement. Man becomes the judge over the supposed word of Allah. It is all left up to the intellect of these six men, who are, as I said earlier, capable of error.

You will notice that a verse was missed and is not in what they say is the original. It had to be added later. How many other verses may have been missed?

We also learn that all of the earlier portions had to be burned. Are we allowed to burn the Qur’an? Apparently so, because that was the command from Uthman, and they did it.

Since they burned everything that existed before we cannot validate anything like we can with the Bible. We can look at the more than 6,000 portions of Scripture and compare them to find the mistakes of the copyists. As far as the Christian Scriptures are concerned, we have nothing to hide, but in Islam they certainly do.

The thing that exposes the fraud of the Qur’an is, they claim they still have two of the original copies commissioned by Uthman. If they were the originals, they would be written in the Nabataean script. They would not have vowels in them. We find, however, that these supposed Uthman Qur’ans are written in a later script. They are in the Kufic, a script that did not exist at the time of Uthman. They have vowels, so they couldn’t have possibly been written at that time. They date to 100-150 years after Muhammad. Not only that, they were not written in Arabia, they were written in Persia (Iran).

When Muslims say that our Scriptures are corrupted, we have a sure record to defend. Muslims don’t, their evidence for the purity of their scriptures is lacking any credibility.

Let’s give praise to God. Aren’t you glad that the Gospel came to your address and that we have the truth? Let’s share it with those who don’t.