Test the spirits

Recently I was tagged in a video on Facebook. The video is of a Muslim man explaining his rationale that Mohammed is a true prophet of God based on 1 John 4:1-3 which reads:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

The speaker then declares that Mohammed was a true prophet because he proclaimed Christ Jesus and then quotes Surah 3:45 which states that Christ Jesus is the son of Mary. In researching what the actual verse in the quran states, I found two translations that seem to differ widely.

The first is found at http://www.islam101.com/history/people/prophets/jesus/christ_in_islam2.htm and says

Quran 3:45, “CHRIST JESUS THE SON OF MARY WAS (NO MORE THAN) AN APOSTLE OF GOD”

The second is found at http://www.quranexplorer.com/Default.aspx and reads:

Sura 3 – Al-E-Imran (MADINA) : Verse 45

Behold! the angels said “O Mary! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary held in honour in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to Allah.

There is little doubt that Jesus lived. He is a well documented historical figure even outside of the Bible like in the writings of Josephus. So, the real question is, what did John mean when he wrote, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God”? Let’s first look at two other scriptures from the Bible:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Matthew 16:13-20

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:30-31

It is clear from these passages that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” and that the reason this was written is so that others may believe and have life in the name of Jesus. So when John writes in 1 John 4:2, it must also be in this context.

So, the next question is: what did Mohammed mean when he wrote Surah 3:45 in the quran? Did he really intend to make the same declaration as John and Peter? I submit that the answer is a resounding no! In the first translation option, it is interesting that the words in parenthesis specifically state that Jesus is “no more than” an apostle. It is unclear (to me) why these two translations of the quran very so much and what the parenthetical “no more than” means in the first translation. So whereas John was pointing out the Deity of Christ and his excellencies, Mohammed is stripping Jesus of all of these things. The Bible declares that Jesus is “The King of Kings and Lord of Lords”, “The way, the truth and the Life” (John 14:6) and even God. These semantic differences between the Bible and the quran are very important. Similar to Matthew 22, even the Pharisees knew that Jesus would be the son of David, but they did not believe He would be greater than David.

C. S. Lewis wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”

1 John 4:1-3 is pointing to Jesus being God. Mohammed, in the quran, is merely mentioning that Jesus existed while stripping him of all of his Deity. Historically, many have acknowledged Jesus, but they failed to see who he really is. Oher religions like Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses acknowledge Jesus as a man, while denying him his Deity.

Therefore, Mohammed, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses when put to the test, are not true Spirit’s of God. These writings are therefore from “the spirit of the antichrist.” (1 John 4:3)