With question (a) I am not sure what English translation Deedat used for 2 Samuel 24:1 but no translation I looked at used the word tempted but rather words like incited (NIV, ESV) or moved against (KJV, ASV). The full verse in context says “Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.””

That aside, the question remains why does Samuel say God and Chronicles say Satan was the one doing the inciting?

The answer is quiet simple. Satan is the one who schemes and plots and attacks God’s children. God blocks most of Satan’s work (otherwise he would have wiped us all out a long time ago), but when bad things befall us, that is because God allows it because he has a greater purpose. That purpose can be many different things. It may be to discipline us to sort out a part of our life that is contrary to his will and to make us trust him more or love him more. It may be with the non believer to bring them to their knees before him to cause them to turn to God in repentance and accept his free gift of Jesus. Sadly this appears to have never happened with Deedat.

So the Author of Chronicles is telling us who is the one responsible for the deed while Samuel is telling us that God is allowing it for his purpose to bring judgement on Israel because “the anger of the Lord burned against Israel”.

You would think Satan would know his evil plans are going to be used by God and turned to his wonderful purposes. It appears that Satan can not help himself but has to do evil even when it backfires – it is his nature.

 

Statements (b), (c), and (d) all are related in what the is problem with these numbers. It is often claimed that the problem lies in Semite languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic and yes also Arabic. It is how numbers are written where the letters of the alphabet are used to represent numbers. With some occurrences it only takes a slip of the pen and then you can’t be sure which letter the author meant to write. Not a problem for a word but can be for numbers. Think of it like this. Using English as an example, if we spell a word wrong, most often we can work out what the word was meant to be because of context and the word with the error might not have an alternative meaning. For example if I wrote I have a stable to keep my horce in, you will easily recognise that horce should be horse. Like wise if I wrote house instead of horse you would likewise work out I meant horse because who keeps a house inside a stable. Now numbers are a different situation. If I meant to write 7000 but accidentally wrote 700, then we would have no way to identify that it is an error, unless that is we have an another account. With another account we may not know which is correct but at least we would know that something is wrong and could do further investigation.

Further investigation has helped with some cases. For example we use the Masoretic text mainly for the Old Testament but we do have other Old Testament sources we can refer to. An example of this is found with 1 Kings 4:26 where the Septuagint (ancient Greek manuscript) has 4000 stalls, so therefore newer translations into English have gone with that value, rather than the 40,000 stated in the Masorectic.

 

Now Deedat might have said that is all well and good but it is still a contradiction. Deedat is being dishonest again here. All old manuscripts had to hand copied and they all have what are called variation because of scribal errors. Deedat and many others have tried to say that the Bible has these variances but the Quran is perfectly preserved and the version we have today is exactly the same one that was delivered to Muhammad. This is a massive deception and it is easily checked out with a bit of investigation. There is a process or science called textual criticism. This might sound like you look at a book and then have a discussion about what you liked and disliked about it, but it actually about looking at the available evidence you have and then trying to get back to the original (known as the autograph). What we have with the books of the Bible is that we have so many manuscripts, that we can get back to the autograph nearly all of the time. Something like 98% for the new Testament and 99% for the Old Testament. The most important point here is that, none of these variances change a doctrine of the Christian faith. For example 4000 stall versus 40000 stalls makes no difference to the message of the Bible.

 

There is another point here that Deedat chooses to overlook. Why don’t we just change one of the values to make them all the same? Apart from the fact that, that would be difficult because it would involve the changing of a lot of manuscripts and commentaries around the world, the reason is that no Bible scholar wants to. The aim is to get back to the autograph. No one wants to change God’s word. What if we change 4000 to 40000 and it should be 4000. We would end up with a mess.

This is exactly what happened with the Quran. The third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan had all the different versions of the Quran collected, had one version made into the canon and then had all the other copies burnt. Question is how did he know which one was correct. The original might have gone up in smoke.

The fact that no one has tried to change the Bible verses with variance shows that no one is prepared to change any of the Bible. Therefore we have confidence in what we have received.

 

For statement (e), no contradiction here. Both accounts are correct. Saul was an ungodly man who didn’t need God so never called out to God or sought his guidance and that is what Chronicles is referring to. He comes to the end of his life and he is in a big mess and guess what, he calls out to God, but God is not listening. This is the Samuel account. We see this a lot in the world – people who call out to God because they are in a mess but they don’t mean it. God knows their heart.

 

Did Enoch and Elijah ascend into heaven? This is the subject of part (f). If Jesus said that no man has ascended into heaven accept he who came from heaven – the Son of Man, then how can Enoch have ascended to heaven?

The common held opinion of Christians is that both Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven and did not face death but it seems that on closer inspection this is not what the Bible was saying. Let us examine the detail of each of them.

To start we will look at Enoch first and then Elijah. We are told this in Genesis 5:21-24, “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” The Hebrew word for took is Laqach which simply means to move something from place to place or person to person. It doesn’t say where he was taken to and it does not say it was heaven. We also have a verse in Hebrews 11 that says “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God” (emphasis added). I use to read the part of the verse “he did not experience death” to be that he was translated to heaven without dying. But at the same time we have the verse “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). The way to understand this paradox is to look at the words of Jesus to Martha in John 11:26 “And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” Now we know that to date Christians have died all the way back to the beginning of the church. Of course we immediately identify that Jesus is talking about being saved from eternal death. We know that anyone who believes in Jesus with live for ever, regardless that we will die in the body.

In Hebrews 11:13 we read “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.” Now this all inclusive verse is speaking about various saints who were an example of living by faith that the author has mentioned - and that includes Enoch. So this verse tells us two things. Enoch died and also that he had not yet received the promise. Of course the promise is everlasting life in the presence of God. This tells us that when Enoch was translated it was not to heaven.

Do we know where he was translated to? We can not be 100 percent sure but we do know that something was going on. In Jude 1:14-15 we read “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”” We see from this that the people on the earth at time had become evil, which was to eventually lead to the global flood and Enoch was prophesying to them God’s word. It may be that they murdered him in response to his preaching and God moved his body away from them to a hidden place so that they could not abuse it for some sick motive. Of course this is speculation but without doubt Hebrews is clear that Enoch died and is resting and awaiting the eternal promise.

Just another point on this idea of God taking a body. We see that this happened with Moses. In Deuteronomy 34:6 we read how God took Moses from the people after which he died and was buried by God. “He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is!” It could be that God hid both the bodies of Moses and Enoch so that their graves would not be treated as a religious site, as often happens.

 

With Elijah we have a different situation because the account actually says in 2 Kings 2:11 “As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” The question is which heaven? There are three heavens mentioned in the Bible and the same word (Shamayim) for all three is used in the Hebrew. The three are the sky that the birds fly in(Genesis 1:28), the place where the stars and planets are (Genesis 1:14) and finally where the temple of God is (Daniel 4:31). To work out which heaven 2 Kings 2:11 refers to we need to see that Elijah was still on the earth at a later date. We read in 2 Chronicles 21:12-15 that the evil King Jehoram received a letter from Elijah. This occurs some time after the Chariot of fire incident so unless Elijah wrote his letter from heaven (not likely) then he wrote it after he had returned from his trip in the chariot of fire.

So what was going on here with Elijah, Elisha and the separation between them that God obviously orchestrated. It looks like God in his sovereignty wanted Elisha to take over the mantle of being the leading prophet to Judah and Israel. We see reading the full account in 2 Kings 11 that Elisha had, had it revealed to him that he was going to be separated from his mentor, Elijah and he was very reluctant to accept that. We see in the account that three times Elijah tries to go somewhere and instructs Elisha to remain behind and each time Elisha says “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you” (verses 2, 4, and 6). In the end God sends the chariot and Elisha recognises that he can not do anymore. If Elijah had remained with Elisha then it would have undermined his authority – especially in the eyes of the other prophets. God not only removed Elijah from Elisha but he also hid him from being found (2 Kings 11:17). Elijah probably slipped out of the public eye for sometime – maybe until his death – just writing a letter or two.

So it looks like the heaven that the chariot of fire took Elijah to was either the first, that is the sky, or possibly into space itself, though of course special provision would have to have been made for his survival in such a scenario.

In conclusion, again Deedat’s claim has a very feasible explanation.

 

 

For Deedat’s question (g) the solution is very simple. If we read John 17:12 fully we read this “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” That is very clear – none lost but the one and that prophesied. In John 18:9 we find that the verse refers to the arrest of Jesus and the incident is been related by the author John. John adds the quote from Jesus but there is no need to give the full quote in the relating of the incident. That would be superfluous information in this situation.

It is interesting that Deedat is so consumed with denying the Bible that he misses the beauty in front of him. To a Christian this is a beautiful verse of assurance that once we belong to Christ, no one can snatch us out of his hand. Deedat rejects this and chooses to remain in Islam where even Muhammad didn’t know if his sins were forgiven (Surah 46:9). Tragic.

 

Regarding point (h) we find Deedat again denying the subtlety and expression of meaning that we find in the Bible. It is hard fact that we are all sinners. That includes every human who has ever existed with the one exception of Jesus Christ. Adam sinned. So did Moses and King David, and Peter and Paul and so did Muhammad. The bottom line is that we are all sinners and need salvation. A better translation of 1 John 3:9 is the NIV translation which says “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.” What it is saying is that because we have been born of God, we are unable to continue on a path of sin. We may struggle with some sins for some time but the Holy Spirit will always be working in us to cause us to see our sin and desire to be rid of it. The motivation is the love that we gain for God. As Jesus said “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching” (John 14:23)

 

For a list of contradictions in the Quran Click Here