OPINION:
On one of his recent podcasts, Tucker Carlson said, “The people in charge don’t want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus.”
Is this true? Do Muslims really love Christ?
The answer is no, and not only do they not love him, but they also deny who he even is.
Proof? Let us go to one of Islam’s most “holy” sites, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and read what Muslims actually say about Jesus there. What did Muslims choose to inscribe on this building in the seventh century as they were conquering Christendom?
Here is a summary, written on the outside of the building: “There is no god but God. … He begetteth not nor was begotten. … Praise be to God, who hath not taken unto Himself a son.”
Here is what is written on the inside: “O People of the Book … Jesus is but a messenger of God. … Do not say, ’Three.’ Desist! God is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son.”
Now, you might be asking, “Isn’t this a direct contradiction to how Jesus defines himself? Did Jesus not say he was more than just another ’messenger,’ and did he not say he was both God and God’s Son?”
The answer is yes, and here are just a few examples:
In John 8, Jesus says, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am,” and thus, he claimed the same name that Yahweh did when he defined himself to Moses.
In John 10, Jesus doubles down and says, “The Father and I are one” and “whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” a claim of godhood so clear that the Jewish leaders immediately accused him of blasphemy and tried to kill him for it.
In Matthew 12:8, Jesus unequivocally states that he is “Lord of the Sabbath,” a title reserved for God himself.
Then there is John 3:16, the quintessential Bible verse, which reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” a declaration that God indeed has a son, and that Jesus himself is that son.
The record is irrefutable. Jesus never pretended to be just another messenger of God, but instead, he repeatedly said he was God: the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Lion of Judah, the Good Shepherd, our redeemer and our Lord.
Jesus was not just another wise man. He was the “Word” and “the Word was God,” and the apostles went to their deaths saying so. Thomas called Jesus his “Lord and [his] God.” John declared him to be the one “true God.” Paul said, “In Him all the fullness of deity dwells.” Peter called Jesus his “God and Savior.” The writer of Hebrews was more than clear: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”
The bottom line is that Mr. Carlson and the Muslims he seems so oddly determined to defend and elevate do not get to make up their own Jesus. In that vein, Mr. Carlson would do well to read these words from C.S. Lewis:
“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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Pretending to love someone while at the same time accusing them of either being insincere or insane — or even worse, a demon from hell — is at best self-refuting if not blatantly hypocritical.
You cannot love Jesus while at the same time denying him. It just does not work that way.
“Many will say to me, ’Lord, Lord …’ and I will say to them, ’I never knew you. Depart from me.’” —Jesus, The Sermon on the Mount
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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