But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ
For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light
The
Quran says that Jesus was not defeated in His death, which He was not. The tradition among Muslims is that Jesus lived, but that is not a required belief as I understand it.
The Quran does affirm the Virgin Birth of Jesus and all His miracles (other than the resurrection which it does not comment on), so I do not understand why so many Christians think that Muslims are inherently hostile to Jesus, or even Christians as a group. The Salafists have issues based on their use of a non-main stream system of abrogation which is not something I think you and I really understand if at all.
I think that God sent Mohamed. His empire seems to be the best literal fulfillment of the Daniel prophesies of a coming Heavenly Kingdom that filled all the Earth.
Book of the Prophet Daniel, chapter 2
24 Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, “Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him.”
25 Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, “I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means.”
26 The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?”
27 Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these:
29 “As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. 30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.
31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
36 “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 37 Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 38 in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
39 “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. 40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
44 “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.
“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. 47 The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”
When you look at this passage in combination with the Four Beasts of Chapter 7, it is apparent to me that the four kingdoms are 1) Babylon, 2) Persia, 3) Greece and the four successor kingdoms of Alexanders generals, and finally 4) the Roman Empire, that later became divided and much of it loosely controlled. The phrase 'filling all the Earth' is more closely translated as 'filling or controlling all the civilized governments of the known world' in the view/perspective of the author.
The rise of Islam and its attendant kingdoms are the closest thing in its historical behavior (ignoring theological quibbling) to a description of the rock carved from the mountain by the hand of God that destroyed the fourth kingdom.
I am not a Muslim because of my love and devotion to Jesus Christ, but I see no reason to think that my faith in Jesus precludes recognizing the righteousness and inspiration of Mohamed and his generation. But like all things run by human beings, I think the Hadith has become flawed by governments who wanted to use Islam as a sustaining system of faith for war with what remained of Christian kingdoms. And so the Hadith was viewed in its harshest lights and traditions in order to energize the war against Christians, as we have done to them by our erroneous view we have of the Quran and of Mohamed himself.
I used to think that the prophesied Kingdom of Heaven was the Catholic Church, but recent events have dispelled that misconception.