The Bible Led me to Islam

Bible Led

Abdul Malik
LeBlanc tells How He Discovered Islam Within the Pages of Bible

 Taken from International
Edition Voice of Islam

November 1998, Page 25

During my Christian days there were
many verses in the Bible that made me question the religion I was
following (Christianity). There was one particular verse, 1 Thessalonians
5:17 which says; "pray without ceasing," that lingered heavily in
my mind. I often wondered how a person (Christian) was supposed
to pray (be in a state of worship) without ceasing? Without any
biblical or divine guidance, the only way I thought this to be possible
was to always do good deeds and keep the remembrance of God on my
tongue and in my heart.

However, I found this to be impossible
to do as a human being. But when I was introduced to Islam in 1987,
and began to read and learn more about this way of life, I found
that Islam provided divine guidance both from God (Allah) and Prophet
Muhammad (SAW) by which a person could pray (be in a state of worship)
without ceasing, if it was the Will of God. 

Whether waking up, eating, sleeping,
putting on clothes, being in the presence of a woman, looking at
a woman, going shopping, going to the bathroom, looking in the mirror,
traveling, visiting the sick, sitting in a non-religious meeting,
taking a bath, having sexual intercourse with one’s wife, yawning,
cutting you nails, sneezing, greeting people, talking, hosting guests
at home, walking, exercising, fighting, entering one’s house, praying
and many other acts, Islam and the guidance therein of the Quran,
and the acts and sayings of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), provided ways
in which I could observe 1 Thessalonians 5:17. In addition, it allowed
me to be at peace with myself and in submission to the one True
God - Allah (SWT).  

This divine guidance of Islam taught
me greatly about my duties, responsibilities and birthright to my
Creator (Allah), and more about the religion of Christianity as
a Muslim, I [By the Will of Allah (SWT)] felt it necessary to share
with you how the Bible led me to Islam.

Christianity

Given the fact that there has never
been in the history of the Torah (Old Testament) the religion of
God to be named after a Prophet (i.e. Adaminity, Abrahamity, Mosanity,
etc.), I hope to explain that Jesus did not preach the religion
of Christianity, but a religion that gives all Praise and Worship
to The One God.

One of the questions I asked myself
as I took an objective (second) look at Christianity was; where
did the word Christianity come from and was the word ever mentioned
to Jesus? Well, I did not find the word Christianity in the Bible,
not even in a Bible dictionary. Specifically, I did not find in
the Bible where Jesus called himself a Christian. 

The word Christian was first mentioned
by a pagan to describe those who followed Jesus. It is mentioned
one of three times in the New Testament by a pagan and Jew in Antioch
about 43 AD, (Acts 11:26, Acts 26:38 and 1 Peter 4:16) long after
Jesus left this earth. To accept the words of pagans as having any
value or association with divinity, Jesus or God is contrary to
the teachings of all Prophets.  

Jesus prophesied that people would
worship him uselessly and believe in doctrines made by men (Matthew
15:9). 

"But in vain they do worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." This verse, Matthew
15:9, is further supported by these words of the Quran: 

"And (remember) when Allah will say
(on the Day of Resurrection): "O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you say
unto men: "Worship me and my mother as two gods besides Allah?"
He will say: "Glory be to You! It was not for me to say what I had
no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, You would surely have
known it. You know what is in my inner-self though I do not know
what is in Yours, truly, You, only You, are the All-Knower o fall
that is hidden and unseen. 

Never did I say to them aught except
what You (Allah) did command me to say: ‘Worship Allah, my Lord
and your Lord.’ And I was a witness over them while I dwelt amongst
them, but when You took me up, You were a Witness to all things.
(This is a great admonition and warning to the Christians of the
whole world)." (Al-Ma’idah 5:116-117) 

I found that Biblical verses like
John 5:30, John 12:49, John 14:28, Isaiah 42:8 and Acts 2:22 support
the above mentioned verses of the Quran. 

Before leaving the subject of Christianity,
I should mention one small point of observation. If Christians are
Christ-like, why are they not greeting each other with the words;
Peace be with you (Salamu Alaikum), as Jesus did in Luke 24:36.
As you may be aware, the greeting from one Muslim to another Muslim
is Assalamu Alaikum; a Christ-like saying.

Various Holy Bibles

It is worth mentioning that the Bible
references cited might not be exactly as the Bible you are using.
There are MANY Bibles on the market that are used by different Christian
sects and all of these sects say that their book, though different,
is the word of God. Such Bibles are: The Revised Standard Version
1952 & 1971, New American Standard Bible, The Holy Bible; New
International Version, the Living Bible, New World Translation of
the Holy Scriptures used by Jehovah Witnesses, Roman Catholic Version
and the King James Version. A special note: I have not found in
any of these Bibles where the "New Testament" calls itself the "New
Testament," and nowhere does the "Old Testament" call itself the
"Old? Testament." Also, the word "Bible" is unknown within the pages
of the Bible.

In addition to the many different
Christian sects and Bibles, I have learned that there are also different
men, not Prophets, who founded these sects and are using various
interpretations of the Bible and/or man-made doctrines as their
creed. 

I would like to share with you some
thoughts that you may not have read or known about the Bible being
the word of God. Briefly, let me mention that on September 8, 1957,
the Jehovah’s witnesses in their "Awake" magazine carried this startling
headline - 50,000 Errors in the Bible. If you ask a Jehovah’s witness
about this headline, it may be said that today most of those errors
have been eliminated. How many have been eliminated, 5,000? Even
if 50 remain, would one attribute those errors to God? 

Let me pose another question:
if a "Holy" book contained conflicting verses would you still consider
it to be Holy? Most likely you will say of course not. Let me share
with you some conflicting verses both in the Old and New Testaments:


 

 

 

II Samuel 8:4 (vs)	II Samuel 8:9-10	II Kings 8:26
II Samuel 6:23	Genesis 6:3	John 5:37
John 5:31	I Chronicles 18:4	I Chronicles 18:9-10
II Chronicles 22:2	II Samuel 21:8	Genesis 9:29
John 14:9	John 8:14

 

 

Only two contradictions of the New
Testament have been mentioned, but others will be referenced when
the Trinity, Divinity of Jesus Christ, Divine Sonship of Jesus,
Original Sin and Atonement are reviewed. 

How could the "inspired words" of
God get the genealogy of Jesus incorrect (See Matthew 1:6-16 where
it states 26 forefathers up to Prophet David, and Luke 3:23-31 says
41 in number). Or for that matter, give a genealogy to Jesus who
had NO father? See II Kings 19:1-37, now read Isaiah 37:1-38. Why
is it that the words of these verse are identical? Yet they have
been attributed to two different authors, one unknown and the other
is Isaiah, who are centuries apart; and yet, the Christians have
claimed these books to be inspired by God.  

I looked up the word Easter in the
Nelson Bible dictionary and learned that the word "Easter" (as mentioned
in Acts 12:4) is a mistranslation of "pascha," the ordinary Greek
word for "Passover." As, you know Passover is a Jewish celebration
not a Christian holiday. I think human hands, all to human, had
played havoc with the Bible. 

From the brief points mentioned above,
and the fact that Biblical scholars themselves have recognized the
human nature and human composition of the Bible (Curt Kuhl, The
Old Testament: Its Origin and Composition, PP 47, 51, 52), there
should exist in the Christian’s mind some acceptance to the fact
that maybe every word of the Bible is not God’s word. 

As a side note to this subject, let
me mention that some Christians believe that the Bible was dictated
to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) by a Christian monk, and that is why some
of the biblical accounts are in the Quran. After some research,
I found that this could not have happened because there were no
Arabic Bible in existence in the 6th century of the Christian era
when Muhammad (SAW) lived and preached. Therefore, no Arab, not
even Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who was absolutely unlettered and unlearned,
would have had the opportunity to examine the written text of the
Bible in his own language.

 

The Gospels

If you read Luke 1:2-3, you will
learn, as I did, that Luke (who was not one of the 12 disciples
and never met Jesus) said that he himself was not an eyewitness,
and the knowledge he gathered was from eyewitnesses, and not as
words inspired by God. Incidentally, why does every "Gospel" begin
with the introduction According to. Why "according to?" the reason
for this is because not a single one of the gospels carries its
original author’s autograph! Even the internal evidence of Matthew
9:9 proves that Matthew was not the author of the first Gospel which
bears his name:

"And as Jesus passed forth thence,
He (Jesus) saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom:
and He (Jesus) saith unto Him (Matthew), follow me (Jesus). And
he (Matthew) arose, and followed Him (Jesus)."

Without any stretch of the imagination,
one can see that the He’s and the Him’s of the above narration do
not refer to Jesus or Matthew as its author, but a third person
writing what he saw or heard - a hearsay account and not words inspired
by God. 

It is worth noting, and well known
throughout the religious world, that the choice of the present four
"gospels" of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were
imposed in the Council of Nicea 325 CE for political purposes under
the auspices of the pagan Emperor Constantine, and not by Jesus.
Constantine’s mind had not been enlightened either by study or by
inspiration. He was a pagan, a tyrant and criminal who murdered
his son, his wife and thousands of innocent individuals because
of his lust for political power. Constantine ratified other decisions
in the Nicene Creed such as the decision to call Christ "the Son
of God, only begotten of the father." 

Literally, hundreds of gospels and
religious writings were hidden from the people. Some of those writings
were written by Jesus’ disciples, and many of them were eyewitness
accounts of Jesus’ actions. The Nicea Council decided to destroy
all gospels written in Hebrew, which resulted in the burning of
nearly three hundred accounts. If these writings were not more authentic
than the four present gospels, they were of equal authenticity.
Some of them are still available such as the Gospel of Barnabas
and the Shepherd of Hermas which agree with the Quran. The Gospel
of Barnabas, until now, is the only eyewitness account of the life
and mission of Jesus. Even today, the whole of the Protestant word,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and other sects and
denominations condemn the Roman Catholic version of the Bible because
it contains seven "extra" books. The Protestant have bravely expunged
seven whole books from their word of God. A few of the outcasts
are the Books of Judith, Tobnias, Baruch and Esther. 

Concerning Jesus’ teachings of the
Gospel (Injeel), the Gospel writers frequently mentioned Jesus preaching
the Gospel: Matthew 9:35, Mark 8:35, and Luke 20:1. The word "gospel"
is recurrently used in the Bible. However, in the New Testament
Greek edition the word Evangeline is used in place of the word gospel,
which is translated to mean good news. My question was: what Gospel
did Jesus preach? Of the 27 books of the New Testament, only a small
fraction can be accepted as the words of Jesus, and only of the
27 books are known to be attributed as the Gospel of Jesus. The
remaining 23 were supposedly written by Paul. Muslims do believe
that Jesus was given God’s "Good News." However, they do not recognized
the present four Gospels as the utterances of Jesus. 

The earliest Gospel is that of Mark’s
which was written about 60-75 AD. Mark was the son of Barnabas’s
sister. Matthew was a tax collector, a minor official who did not
travel around with Jesus. Luke’s Gospel was written much later,
and in fact, drawn from the same sources as Mark’s and Matthew’s.
Luke was Paul’s physician, and like Paul, never met Jesus. By the
way, did you know that the names Marks and Luke were not included
in the 12 appointed disciples of Jesus as mentioned in Matthew 10:2-4? 

Now the names of the twelve apostles
are these; the first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his
brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip,
and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son
of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the
Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. 

John’s Gospel is from a different
source, and was written in about 100 AD. He (John) should not be
confused with John, the disciple, who was beheaded by Agrippa I
in the year 44 CE long before this gospel was written. It should
be accepted as a reliable account of the life of Jesus, and whether
it should be included in the scriptures. 

Christians, as I once did, boast
about the Gospels according to Matthew, according to Mark, according
to Luke and according to John. However, if we think about it, there
is not a single Gospel according to Jesus himself. According to
the preface of the KJV (King James Version) new open Bible study
edition, the word "Gospel" was added (see below) to the original
titles, "According to John, according to Matthew, according to Luke
and according to Mark." 

The permission to call "According
to" writings the Gospel was not given by Jesus nor by any other
divine guidance. These writings; Matthew, Luke, Mark and John, were
never originally to be the Gospel. Therefore, Mark 1:1 can not be
a true statement that his writing is the gospel of Jesus.  

It should be mentioned that Muslims
must believe in all Divine scriptures in their original form, their
Prophets and making no distinction between them: The Suhuf (Abraham);
Torah (Moses); Psalms (David); Gospel - or the Injeel (Jesus); and
the Quran (Muhammad). It is clearly stated in the Quran 3:3 that
Allah sent down the Torah and the Gospel. However, none of these
scriptures remains in its original form now, except the Quran, which
was sent for all mankind everywhere and for all times. 

In addition to other
reasons why the Quran was sent to mankind, as mentioned in 18:4-5
it was sent to warn the Christians of a terrible punishment from
God if they cease not in saying: "Allah has begotten a son."

Muslims sincerely believe that everything
Jesus (May the peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) preached
was from God; the Gospel (Injeel): The "good news" and the guidance
of God for the Children of Israel. There is no place mentioned in
the present four Gospels that Jesus wrote a single word of his Gospel,
nor is it mentioned that Jesus instructed anyone to do so. What
passes off, as the "Gospels" today are the works of third party
human hands. The Quran 2:79 says:

"And woe to those who write the book with their own hands and they
say: "This is from Allah (God)." To traffic with it for a miserable
price! So woe to them for what their hands do write, and woe to
them for what they earn thereby!"

 

 

Jesus As the Son of God

Is Jesus the Son of God?  Matthew
3:17 could be used by some Christians to support the divine Sonship
of Jesus.  If Matthew 3:17, "And Lo a voice for heaven, saying,
this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased," is used to support
divine Sonship, then there should be no other verse that contradicts
or gives equal divine Sonship to another person or persons in the
Old or New Testament. However, many references were found in the
Old and New Testaments that mentioned someone other than Jesus as
having a divine Sonship to God. See Exodus 4:22:

"Israel is my son, even my firstborn."
II Samuel 7:14 and I Chronicles 22:10: "...and he shall be my son
(Solomon)." Jeremiah 31:9: "...and Ephraim is my firstborn." Also,
Psalm 2:7. 

The word "Son" must not be accepted
literally because God addresses many of his chosen servants as son
and sons. The Jews have also claimed Ezra to be the Son of God.
The New Testament Greek words used for "son" (pias and paida, which
mean servant or son in the sense of servant) are translated as son
in reference to Jesus and as servant in reference to others in some
translations of the Bible. 

Further, the term "Father" as used
by Jesus corresponds more closely to the term Rabb, i.e. One who
nourishes and sustains, so that in Jesus’ doctrine, God is "Father"
– Nourisher and Sustainer – of all men. The New Testament also interprets
"son of God" to be mystical: "For as many as are led by the Spirit
of God, they are the sons of God." (Romans 8:14). This mystical
suggestion is further supported with Jesus being called the only
begotten Son of God. 

In Psalm 2:7, the Lord said to David:
 

"...Thou art my son: this day have
I begotten thee." 

Does this mean that God had two sons?
Jesus also said that God is not only his Father but also your Father
(Matthew 5:45, 48). Luke 3:38 says: 

"...Seth, which was the son of Adam,
which was the Son of God." 

Who is mentioned in Hebrews 7:3 as
like unto the Son of God? It is Melchisedec, King of Salem, as mentioned
in Hebrews 7:1. He (Melchisedec) is more unique than Jesus or Adam.
Why is he not preferred to be the Son of God? Moreover, Adam did
not have a mother or father, but was the first human being created
by God and in the likeness of God to exist in the Garden of Eden
and on earth. Wouldn’t this give more rights to Adam to be called
the Son of God in its truest meaning? 

I would like to share with you an
obvious contradiction between John 3:16, Luke 10:25-28 and Matthew
19:16-17. John 3:16 reads:  

"For God so loved the world, that
he gave his only begotten, Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life." 

Now let’s read Luke 10:25-28: 

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood
up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life? He said unto him, what is written in the law? How
readest Thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And
he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and Thou shalt
live. 

These verses tell us that the inheritance
of eternal life is for anyone who believes and worships no other
God, but the One True God. Luke 10:25-28 agrees with Matthew 19:16-17
which says; 

"And behold, one came and said to
him (Jesus), Good teacher, what good things shall I do that I may
have eternal life? So he (Jesus) said to him, ‘Why do you call me
good? – No one is good but One that is, God. But if you want to
enter into eternal life, keep the commandments." 

There is no commandment that says
to worship Jesus, but there that tells us to worship God alone. 

In Luke 4:41, Jesus refused to be
called the Son of God by demons. Do you think that Jesus would rebuke
the demons, or anyone else for that matter, for telling the truth?
Unquestionably, no! Jesus rebuked the demons because they were saying
something false by calling him the Son of God. Also, if the demons
knew that Jesus was the Christ, for Jesus to shut them up because
they called him the Christ is a contradiction to Jesus’ mission. 

In Luke 9:20 & 21, Jesus said
unto his disciples: 

"But who say ye that I am? Peter
answered saying, "The Christ of God, and Jesus straightly charged
them and commanded them to tell no man that thing." 

Furthermore, verses like John 3:2,
John 6:14, John 7:40, Matthew 21:11, Luke 7:16 and 24:19 confirm
that Jesus accepted the title of teacher, Prophet and called himself
the son of man in Matthew 8:20, 12:40, 17:9 & 12, 26:24, Luke
9:26, 22:48, 22:69, and 24:7. The most conclusive verse that says
Jesus is the son (servant) of man is Mark 14:26 where Jesus is mentioning
the Day of Reckoning. Jesus specifically said we would see the son
of man, not the Son of God, sitting in the right hand of power,
and coming in the clouds of heaven. 

The act of begetting is a physical
act and such act is against God’s nature. The Qur’an 19:35 says:


 

"It is not befitting to (the majesty
of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! When He determines
a matter He only says to it "Be," and it is." (Maryam  19:35)

The teachings of Jesus as the Son
of God were not preached by Jesus nor accepted by Jesus, but were
taught by Paul as supported in Acts 9:20: 

"And straightway he preached Christ
in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God." 

Did Jesus ever claim to be God or
say, "Here am I, your God, worship me"? The answer is no. For there
is no single, unequivocal statement in the Bible whereby Jesus himself
declares, "I am God, therefore worship me." Virtually all of the
more than two thousand verses of the epistles of Paul are his own
fabrications to include Romans 9:5 that says, depending upon which
Bible you read: 

"...Christ came, who is overall,
the eternally blessed God." 

Christians should know that Paul
himself mentions his own gospel, not Jesus, in his epistle to the
Romans when he says in Romans 2:16: 

"In the day when God will judge the
secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel." 

In face, the Pauline epistle to the
Romans serves as the foundation of today’s Christianity. Thus, it
is the Christians whose efforts will be wasted in this life as they
think they were acquiring good by their works when they attribute
partners to God, as stated in Chapter 18:103-106 of the Qur’an:


 

"Say: Shall we tell you of those
who lost most in respect of their deeds? Those whose efforts have
been wasted in this life, while they thought that they were acquiring
good by their works?" they are those who deny the Signs of their
Lord and the fact of their having to meet Him (in the Hereafter):
vain will be their works, nor shall We, on the Day of judgment,
give them any weight. That is their reward, Hell; because they rejected
Faith, and took My Signs and My Messengers by way of jest.

(Al-Kahf 18:103-106)

Indeed, it is so strange and ironic,
knowing that none of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, more than 430
verses, were ever formulated by Jesus. Paul should have made direct
reference to the pristine teachings of Jesus, if only the former
claim for apostleship by divine inspiration was indeed true. Instead,
large parts of his epistles’ Biblical quotations (notably those
in the Epistle to the Romans) were taken from the Old Testament
– Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, Psalms,
Proverbs, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Hosea. His epistles were, indeed a
product of tedious efforts, but that does not make Paul far better
than any of the other men who authored the Bible, nor does it make
him a Prophet.  

Other practices that were adopted
under Paul included the following: the Roman sun-day as the Christian
Sabbath; the traditional birthday of the Sun-god as the birthday
of Jesus; the emblem of the sun-god (the cross of light) to be the
emblem of Christians; and, the incorporation of all the ceremonies
which were performed at the Sun-god’s birthday celebrations. 

As I come to a close concerning the
position of Christ, I would like to ask my Christian reader bow
down and pray earnestly to God and ask Him to invoke His curse on
you, your wife, your sons, and your daughters if what you believe
about Christ (Christ is God, Son of God or part of a trinity of
God) are false. Likewise, I have learned that if you asked a Muslim
to earnestly pray to God to invoke His curse on him, his wife, his
sons, and his daughters if what he is saying about Christ (Prophet,
Messenger of God, A Word from God) are false, the Muslims are firm
in their faith knowing that Christ is not God, nor the Son of God
and nor part of a trinity of God. This exercise of asking God to
invoke His curse on you and your family may sound a bit cruel, but
it would prove two points: (1) you would know that you are on the
wrong path; and, (2) it would put you on the right path.

 

The Crucifixion and Atonement

A very significant event in the Christian
doctrine is the Crucifixion of Jesus. Before talking about the many
controversies surrounding the Crucifixion, it should be mentioned
that it was a gospel of Paul’s which professed the Crucifixion/Resurrection
of Jesus (II Timothy 2:8):

"Remember that Jesus Christ of the
seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel." 

In addition, the gospel of the resurrection
in Mark 16:9-20 was already removed from the text by gospel writers
in the 1952 edition of the Revised Standard Version and then, for
some reasons, restored in the 1971 edition. In many Bibles, if not
removed, it is printed in small print or between two brackets and
with commentary (See the Revised Standard Version, New American
Bible and New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures). 

The traditional biblical account
of Jesus’ Crucifixion is that he was arrested and crucified by the
orders and plans of the chief priest and Jewish elders. This account
was denied in the 1960’s by the highest Catholic Christian authority,
the Pope. He issued a statement in which he said the Jews had nothing
to do with Jesus’ Crucifixion. 

Did any one of the disciples or the
writers of the Gospel see the Crucifixion or the Resurrection? No!
In Mark 14:50, it says the disciples forsook Jesus and fled. Even
Peter forsook Jesus after the cock crowed three times as Jesus foretold: 

(Matthew 26:75) And Peter remembered
the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou
shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly. 

The most likely persons whom may
have witnessed this moment in Jesus’ life were Mary Magdalene, Mary
the mother of James and Joses, the mother of Zebedee’s children
and other women (Matthew 27:55-56). However, there is no statement
or account in the Gospels from those women as to what they saw or
heard. 

The disciple(s) found the sepulchre
where Jesus was laid down, empty, and made the conclusion that he
was resurrected because the disciples and other witnesses saw him
alive after the alleged Crucifixion. Nobody saw the moment he was
resurrected. Jesus himself stated that he did not die on the cross
in Luke 24:36-41, as explained in the following paragraphs. 

Early Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene
went to the sepulchre, which was empty. She saw somebody standing
who looked like a gardener. She recognized him after a conversation
to be Jesus and wanted to touch him. Jesus said (John 20:17): 

"Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended
to my Father..." 

Now read Luke 24:36-41: 

"And as they (disciples) thus spoke,
Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and saith unto them, Peace
be unto you. But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed
that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are you
troubled? And why so thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me end see; for a spirit
hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus
spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet
believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here
any meat? And they gave him a piece of boiled fish and of a honeycomb.
And he took it, and did eat before them." 

Does a spiritual or dead body have
a need to eat food? Jesus eating of food was to prove to the disciples
that he was not a spirit, but rather, he was still alive and not
dead. 

Jesus being alive and not dead is
further supported in his own prophecy (Matthew 12:40): 

"For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 

Did Jesus fulfill this miracle? Christians
would say "yes," because Jesus died and rose three days later according
to Luke 24:36 and Matthew 20:19, to name a few verses. However,
in line with the miracle of Jonah and according to the Bible, Jesus
only spent one day and two nights in the sepulchre, and not three
days and three nights as he prophesied. 

Jesus was put in the sepulchre just
before sunset on Friday (Good Friday) and was found missing before
sunrise on Sunday (Easter). If we were to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the time
frame a bit, one may say that Jesus spent three days in the earth,
but there is no way and I repeat, no way, that Jesus spent three
nights in the earth. We must not forget that the Gospels are explicit
in telling us that it was "before sunrise" on Sunday morning that
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. 

Consequently, there are some inconsistencies
as to whether Jesus fulfilled his own prophecy. Whether he was actually
crucified, or if the day (Good Friday) of his alleged Crucifixion
is wrong. Another significant point to mention is that Jonah was
alive in the belly of the whale. The Christians says, Jesus was
dead in the belly of the earth/tomb, and this contradicts Jesus’
own prophecy. Jesus said (Luke 11:30): 

"As Jonah was...so shall the Son
of man be." 

If Jonah was alive, so was Jesus. 

One critical event that took place
before the alleged Crucifixion was the prayer of Jesus to God for
help. Luke 22:42: 

"Saying Father if thou be willing,
remove this cup (of death) from me: nevertheless not my will, but
thine be done."  

Jesus’ prayer not to die on the cross
was accepted by God according to Luke 22:43 and Hebrews 5:7. Therefore,
if all of Jesus’ prayer were accepted by God, including not to die
on the cross, how could he have died on the cross? 

In Matthew 27:46, it states that
while Jesus was on the cross, he said: 

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani (My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?). 

If Jesus said these words, it represents
a blatant declaration of disbelief according to all theological
authorities. This is a great insult as such words could only come
from an unbeliever in God. Further, it is incredible that such words
should come from a Prophet of God, because God never breaks His
promise and His Prophets never complained against His promise, especially
when the Prophet’s mission is understood. It could be said that
whoever relates that this statement was said by a Prophet (Jesus),
is a disbeliever. 

Muslims believe, as the Qur’an states,
Jesus was not crucified. It was the intention of his enemies
to put him to death on the cross, but Allah saved him from their
plot. Qur’an 4:157:

"That they (Jews)
said boasting, "We killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messenger
of Allah, but they (Jews) killed him not, nor crucified him..."