Peace humble guest,
So do you go by man-made laws instead of divine laws when you find divine laws? On what do you base justice if not on God?
God is the Creator, not the Destroyer.
I cannot accept a God that demands for us to kill others.
That is not a correct depiction of God.
It's not, but the punishment for the sin of adultery, upon the testimony of four witnesses to the sexual act, is stoning.
Then tell me why Jesus did not allow the adulteress to be stoned??
She was actually caught in the act!!!
Did Jesus transgress the law of God?
Or did Jesus correct the Law of God?
Maybe God wants us to show mercy to adulteresses even when there are many witnsesses.
God is All-Merciful and Oft-Forgiving.
What the Messengers and Prophets say by the Leave of God is NEVER wrong. I would never say that any of the Prophets were wrong. They were each sent with a Message for a time and place or peoples. Moses (pbuh) would think that "he was wrong" when Jesus (pbuh) arrived, no believer should think that way because they all acted in accordance with God's will.
I don't use the phrase "improved upon" I say perfected. And when the messages come from God, there can be no conflict, each was for a time and place.
True that Moses was a prophet for Israel and wrote laws for the Israelites according to that time.
But Jesus came for all people and all times to give the true Law of God.
He corrected the Law of Msoes and purified it of legalism that was causing corruption.
He said the basis of the Law was love for God and neighbor, and Jesus's teachings were more focused on the basis of the Law.
So Jesus was the final peophet and nobody CAN supercede Him.
The Law has been fulfilled.
The Gospels is the Law of God that cannot be abrogated, IT IS the abrogation of previous Law.
It is the final Law for ALL MANKIND.
But I don't see there being any conflict. Only God makes revelation and laws, so it's not for a creation to ever decide "well I liked Moses' laws better so I will stick with those even though Jesus (pbuh) is saying differently". It's these types of arguments that were used to deny the Messiah: "well his laws are different, so they must be wrong"
I see a clear conflict when Jesus instructs us to love others, amnd even show love to enemies. And Muhammed incites his followers to act aggressive twoards their enemies, Persia and Byzantium.
Jesus teaches us to show mercy and love for one another, even unclean prostitutes.
In Islam such sinful people are persecuted.
What we see here is not a mere difference in teachings, but Islam not verifying any of Jesus's important teachings!!! It's like the whole Gospel has been ingnored!!!
No, but it means that the man-made isn't the source of the divine, the man-made happened to coincide with the divine but didn't precede it.
For example, when "Thou shalt not kill" was revealed to Moses, you can't have some Egyptian walk up and say "well I already thought of that, I already thought that Murder was wrong, therefore that is not a divine law, I made it up."
No, it is a divine law and divinity preceded the human judgement, even when they coincide. Murder was wrong since Cain and Abel even, way before it was revealed to Moses for example.
Moses only recieved the Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai.
Moses wrote additional laws for thr Israelites to keep them in order, they were rather rebellious and hard to control.
These laws are not meant for me, they are not the Law of God for all mankind.
But so does working hard at your job. And God loves His toiling creations. See, everything you do for the sake of God is a form of worship. That doesn't mean it can be replaced by the revealed rites of worship, but it also means that you have to obey God by sustaining yourself, by procreating, by doing everything that God has commanded mankind to do as people.
Having a job and having a marriage are two different things.
Generally I agree with you, but there are always execptions.
Some people say "well I'm going to worship even more than the Prophets and never sleep" or "I'm going to fast till I die from it". But how do they know this is what God Wills? God wants you to worship Him in the way He has revealed to you, not in one's own invention of what pleases God more.
That's quite extreme.
Not getting married is not an extreme like this.
Don't forget that people can live very full and productive lives as single people.
There are exceptions for the Prophets and Messengers, they HAD to work much harder than the ordinary person, but I believe people need to do exactly what God says is a perfect life. For example, how do you know how God ranks certain acts of worship? How do you know that being married and being chaste, raising devout kids and feeding your family and doing some missionary work as well is worth less in the sight of God than devoting your whole life to Missionary work but being celibate?
Because when one is a missionary in suffering countries, he works to improve and save the lives of many people.
One mission worker could easily save 100's of lives!!!
It would plase the Lord moreso to save 100's of people's lives and be celibat then to get married and just get a conventional job.
Well that's the choice one makes in faith. But make sure you make a choice based absolutely on facts, otherwise the people who misled you won't stand beside you on the day of judgment to share your personal accountability for believing them blindly.
{Seest thou such a one as taketh for his god his own passion (or impulse)?} (25:43).
It's likened to someone who interprets the Scripture, not to find out what God has deemed right or wrong, but to justify what they ALREADY THINK is right or wrong. Very dangerous forms of arrogance.
Then how do we know that David Koresh or Joseph Smith weren't prophets of God???
Allah means God, bro.
I mean I'm sure you saw Passion of the Christ, Jesus spoke in Aramaic he didn't say the word "God". Sometimes he says "Elahi Elahi!" which is the same as Arabic "my Lord, my Lord!". So don't let the foreigness of language stand in your way.
Jesus never spoke in English, he spoke Aramaic. Would you not harken to his message since he was speaking in a foreign tongue? Not everyone in the world spoke Aramaic at the time.
Allah means God, I know this.
Brahma is also a word for supreme God.
Ohrmazd means Wise Lord.
But I do not worship Brahma or other gods.
I do not recognize Allah has the
same God that I worship.
Bro, the "pagan stories" are not IN my faith. It's like the example I gave above of the Egyptian and Moses. Any man can claim they thought of something before God, that doesn't mean that the Divine, when it is revealed, came from man. God is Truth. Everything he reveals to mankind is Truth, and God does not change. So just because you found a bridge in one faith and a bridge somewhere else, doesn't mean that it is not Truth and that it did not come from God.
There were countless prophets that were sent to mankind, can you be so sure that where you find similarities in faith that it wasn't because some of the Prophets had relayed the same Message and it was preserved, and that's where the similarity lies.
A lot of people likened pagan faiths, even Zoroastrianism to Judaism. Can you imagine one of Moses' followers saying "no way, this faith has some similarities with that other false faith, I'm rejecting God's Message entirely".
I do not believe that God sent prophets to all peoples, or we would have more monotheists in the ancient world.
Zoroastrianism really deosn't have anything in common with Judiasm.
In fact, there is a Zoroastrian writing that totally bashes Judaism!
What you say here doesn't take for account late apocryphal stories that are found in the Quran. Such stories did not exist before they were fabricated by men. Some stories weren't even retold properly, and one actually a fusion of two different unrelated stories!
To say these stories are true is baseless conjecture.
Also, the Quran says things about other faiths including Christianity but shows serious ignorance of those religions.
Ignorance does not come from God, that comes from men that do not understand.
That is actually a major reason why I do not believe that the Quran is from God.
God never says that a Messenger would not come after the Messiah, should we stick with exactly what God has said?
God also never said pigs wouldn't start flying, but you see how ridiculous this train of thought is.
The Messiah is the King, the Expected One! He is the one the prophets all spoke about!
HE IS THE EXPECTED ONE!
No human messenger can supercede the King.
Any logical human mind can realize that.