How the mention of “Christ” and “the gospel” in the Quran literally destroys Islam
As we saw in my previous article, “Christ” is not a name. It is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word “Mashiach” (Messiah in English) which means “anointed”. It carries within it thousands of years of prophecies from Jewish scripture as well as a Jewish expectation of liberation. Messiah is thus a title.
The Quran however for some reason fails to understand this. In the Quranic Christmas story, the angel Gabriel says to Mary,
“when the angels said, “O Mary, indeed Allah gives you good tidings of a word from Him, whose name will be the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary — distinguished in this world and the Hereafter and among those brought near”
(Surah 3:45)
According to the Quran, the name of the child Mary would bear will be “The Messiah”. Interestingly, nowhere in the Quran does it explain what “Messiah” means. In Islam, “Messiah” is a title reserved only for Jesus. Question though is why exactly is Jesus the Messiah according to Islam? It is something only Allah knows but by admitting Jesus is the Messiah, the Quran has entirely destroyed its own theology. Here’s how.
Why is Jesus the Christ in Judeo-Christian scriptures? Because He is anointed to do something. What exactly is He anointed to do? Bring liberty. How does the anointing happen? Isaiah in Jewish scriptures prophesies how the anointing of the Messiah happens,
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound”
(Isaiah 61:1)
In the Christian scriptures, Jesus confirms this,
“So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
(Luke 4:16–21)
Do you see what is being said here? Do you realise what the Quran has just done to itself?
The anointing with which “Christ” is anointed is the Spirit of the Lord! Peter confirms as much in his sermon to Cornelius’ house,
“how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power…”
(Acts 10:38)
This anointing of “Christ” was attested to in all four gospels as the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus during His baptism and providing evidence to John the Baptist that He is the Son of God. The Jewish and Christian scriptures thus agree that the Messiah would be anointed by the Spirit of God.
So the fact the Quran calls Jesus “Christ” acknowledges that Jesus was in fact anointed by the Spirit of God. This would force the author of the Quran’s hand to accept the divinity of Jesus and even more blasphemously from an Islamic point of view, the trinity! Unfortunately for the Quran, almost nowhere in human history do we see the three persons of the Godhead interact as clearly as they do when Jesus was “anointed” with the Spirit of God and announced to be the Son of God by the Father during His baptism!
How can Islam on the one hand claim God is an absolute unity and Jesus is just a messenger while on the other hand call Jesus “Christ” which means He was anointed by the Spirit of God in the river Jordan and announced to be the Son of God by the Father?
If this is not the case, I look forward to a Muslim explaining what “Christ” means from an Islamic perspective and in a manner that does not destroy Islamic theology.
Our Muslims friends might tell us there is also a spirit of Allah in Islam but then that would mean the Allah of the Quran is not an absolute unity and further, the Quran also says Jesus is the Spirit of Allah so multiple problems going that route…
But I digress…
As if this is not enough of an internal refutation of Islam, another question would be this; the Jewish expectation of the “Christ” is that he would bring some kind of liberation as per Isaiah 61. In Christian theology, Jesus’ death and resurrection liberates from the power of sin and death. In Islam, what liberation exactly does Jesus bring?
Isaiah 61 talks about the miracles this Messiah figure performs and at this point our Muslim friends might say that Jesus in the Quran performs miracles as well. The pushback would be, in Islam what would the POINT of the miracles be? In Christianity, the point would be to show that He is the Messiah anointed by the Spirit of the triune God to bring redemption from sin by His death and resurrection. What would the point of Jesus’ miracles be in Islamic theology?
Still on Isaiah 61, the Messiah is also to proclaim the gospel to the poor and this brings us to the “gospel” mentioned in the Quran. What is the gospel exactly?
The Quran lets us know Allah revealed it,
“He has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.”
(Surah 3:3)
Our Muslim friends might be tempted to point out that the gospel is a book that was revealed to Jesus hence cannot be the gospels we have in our possession. The issue with this though is that both Allah and Muhammad make it clear that the Christians had this book at the time of Muhammad.
“Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them.”
(Surah 7:157)
And again Allah tells the people of the book to judge by the gospel,
“Let the People of the Gospel judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein”
(Surah 5:47)
In our human laws we have the Latin maxim, “Lex non cogit ad impossibilia” meaning “The law cannot compel the doing of the impossible”. How can Allah command the Christians to judge by a book they no longer have?
As if to emphasize that the book was still very much around in the time of Muhammad, the Quran says,
“Say O People of the Scripture! Ye have naught (of guidance) till ye observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto you from your Lord…”
(Surah 5:68)
And Muhammad in the hadith says to his companion,
“…The Tawrah (Torah) and Injil (Gospel) are with the Jews and Christians, but what do they avail of them?…”
(Jami At-Tirmidhi Book 41 Hadith 9)
So whatever our Muslim friends say these books are, they were still around at the time of Muhammad. Today we have copies of the gospel and Torah from before the time of Muhammad and from during the time of Muhammad and they look very much like the gospels in my bookshelf today. This puts Islam in a cul-de-sac from which there is no escape.
The gospel, which Allah orders Christians to judge by and which contradicts the Quran in every conceivable way, especially in the context of “Christ”, is either true or false. If the gospel is true, then it contradicts Islam rather than confirms Islam so Islam would be false according to Surah 10:94 which makes the acid test for Quranic revelation if it lines up with the Bible. If the gospel is false then Islam would be false for telling Christians to judge by a false book. So Islam is in a weird position where it ends up false even if it turns out to be true.
But back to this “gospel” matter. What does “gospel” even mean in an Islamic context? The closest explanation we get in the Quran is in Surah 61:6,
“ And [mention] when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, “O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad…”
The glad tidings Jesus brings is of a messenger called “Ahmad”. One problem though. This prophecy does not exist anywhere, not in the gospels we have, not even in the gnostic and heretical gospels! At this point our Muslim friends might say this was part of the original gospel that has now been lost but the burden of proving this rests on the Muslim not on the Christian! If the Muslim wants to assert that there is this gospel revealed to Jesus which there is not one mention of in secular history or church history or after the time of Muhammad, it is their prerogative to do so, but they must prove that such a book exists…and that is one “Jahannam” of a burden of proof to discharge.
Put it this way my Muslim friends. If I were to say A.B. Melchizedek is a prophet and you say “What is your proof?” and I say “Jesus prophesied about me”. The logical question would be “Where can I find this prophecy?”. If I were to say, “We no longer have the book where this prophecy was recorded and we have no records of this prophecy anywhere”. Would that be an acceptable answer to you? Would you be willing to take my word for it that Jesus prophesied about me? Now think about this, there literally is no difference between what I just did and what Surah 61:6 does! The only difference is that you have been so brainwashed that when the Quran does it, it is absolutely fine even if you would never accept this from anybody else ever!
But again, I digress…
The word “gospel” is from the Greek “euangelion” which means “Good news”. (If we are getting super technical, the English gospel comes from God spel which means “Good story”)
It originally signified announcement of victory after battle and later, the content of that message. The term also came to describe the birth or the rise to power of a new king. In the context of the Old Testament verses like Isaiah 52:7,
“How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace,
Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims salvation,
Who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
the term came to signify the news that Yahweh the God of Israel was going to defeat His enemies, end the exile of His people and establish His reign. In the context of Christian theology, Jesus by His death and resurrection established his kingdom on earth, defeated sin/death and welcomes as many as were exiled from the presence of God because of sin back to the presence of God. Again, I am not trying to prove the truth of these claims here, the point being made is that it does fit well with the theology of Christianity.
What enemies did Jesus defeat in Islam? What victory did He win that translates to good news for the people He brought the message to? In fact if the Islamic Jesus is true, He was the biggest failure on the planet because He came and left with no revelation of what God gave Him since His original message was lost and what’s worse? He gave everybody the impression He was the son of God thus leading not just His followers all through history but more than 2.5 billion people on the planet today, including yours truly, to commit the one unforgivable sin of Shirk (associating partners with Allah) which earns all of us eternal punishment from Allah,
“Lo! Allah pardoneth not that partners should be ascribed unto Him. He pardoneth all save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah hath wandered far astray.”
(Surah 4:116)
That sounds like very horrible news to me!
In conclusion, Christ and the gospel do not fit Islam. Muhammad and Allah made a very grievous error in trying to squeeze them into Islamic theology. The fact Allah does not know that “Christ” is not a name shows that He did not reveal the Torah and the Gospel as he claimed. The fact the very idea of a “gospel” does not line up with Islam also shows there is no continuity from Judaism/Christianity in Islam and it really is not an Abrahamic religion.
I challenge any Muslim on the planet to prove me wrong in the comments section if they can. I challenge them to square Jesus and the gospel with Islamic theology, I challenge them to make “Messiah” in Islam make sense…and if the challenge cannot be met, it is time to find a different religion my Muslim friends.
