What does the Qur’an teach about the Bible?

Many Muslim apologists like to attack the Bible by claiming that the text has been tampered with and corrupted. Yet in doing so, they undermine the Qur’an which claims this is not the case at all. They cannot have it both ways. If they believe the Qur’an, then they must affirm that the text of the Bible has been preserved by God.

As Dr. James White has stated, “It is great to hear someone whose origins are from “the other side” of the divide confirming what we have been saying repeatedly in reference to this vital issue (i.e., he knows the Islamic sources from the inside though he is a convert). A full and complimentary study would be found in Gordon Nickel’s vital work from 2011, Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qur’an (Brill). The brightest and best of our opponents in the Islamic world need to start realizing that walking the path charted by Ibn Khazem which leads you to walk next to agnostics and skeptics like Bart Ehrman leads inevitably to the destruction of your own faith and text. It is grossly inconsistent with not only your world-view, but with the Qur’an as well!”

If only T. D. Jakes was asked….

If you have been reading the Evangelical blogs over the last 24 hours, it would have been hard to miss the talk and chatter about the “Elephant Room 2” controversy over whether Bishop T. D. Jakes has in fact renounced modalism and embraced orthodox Trinitarian theology. There seems to be mass confusion, which, most regretably, is what I thought might happen. The questions asked of Jakes needed to be rigorous and very specific. This was a time when great clarity was needed. If Jakes still embraced modalism in any form, he would need to be rejected as a heretic. If not, then he needed to make it clear that he considered his former belief heresy.

This of course, is not what happened and this is why, after all the talk and bluster has taken place and the smoke has settled, mass confusion abounds on the day after the dialog has taken place.

My friend, Dr. James White, author of the book “The Forgotten Trinity” has boiled it down to just one simple question that he believes should have been asked of the Bishop:

“Sir, did the Son, as a divine Person, distinct from the Father as a divine Person, exist prior to the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem?”

Jakes’ answer to this question (as stated) would have revealed all we needed to know. Sadly, this question was never asked.

For a full discussion of the issues here, I would invite you to watch this Dividing Line program with Dr. James White: