Was Jesus a Prophet and a Muslim for praying on His face?
Poem
”And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
The way Jesus prayed (by falling on his face) does not, in any way imply that Jesus was a Muslim.
If anything, Muslims as well as many others, pray in the way Jesus prayed.
Islam came forth AFTER Jesus, therefore Muslims pray like Jesus and not the other way around!
He assumes a posture of humility and surrender. Christians view Jesus as a role model, whose God-focused life believers are encouraged to imitate. In Islam, Jesus (commonly transliterated as Isa) is one of God’s highest-ranked and most beloved prophets.
Jesus’s Testimony – That He Was “The” Prophet
Jesus Himself testified that He was “that” prophet – the One who spoke the words of God the Father.
So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me”.(John 7:16)
Jesus predicted the people would know He came from the Father.
So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught me. (John 8:28)
Jesus also said:
”For I did not speak on my initiative, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me”. (John 12:49-50)
Jesus again testified He was speaking the Father’s words.
He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:24)
The Testimony Of His Disciples
After the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, His disciples made it clear that Jesus was that Prophet like unto Moses:
For Moses truly said to the fathers, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brothers. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you. And it shall come to pass that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.(Acts 3:22,23)
The Bible says:
”No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” (John 1:18)
The Old Testament predicted that God would raise up a prophet like Moses who spoke with God face to face. The New Testament claims that Jesus was “the Prophet” predicted in the Old Testament who would be like Moses, dealing with God on a face-to-face basis. But Jesus was greater than Moses for He was the one and only God who had eternally been face-to-face with the Father.
Was Jesus a Muslim? No!
Muslims claim that Islam, a state of submitting to God’s will, is the natural way of how things are meant to be. Jesus was a good Muslim prophet, along with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Zechariah, John the Baptist … going on to Mohammed. This line of continuity testifies to Islam as the natural order since the beginning of time.
Not only that, Muslims believe that the Qur’an which dates from the seventh century AD is the correction of the earlier faiths of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity, they believe, became corrupted first by Paul, and then by many others, and Islam is the correction that was needed. A faith tarnished over centuries cannot compare with the final Revelation given to Mohammed.
According to the Qur’an, Jesus – or Isa in Arabic — comes in this established line of prophets:
[Jesus] said: ”Indeed, I am the servant of God. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet,”. (Surah 19.30)
But the specific arguments for Jesus being a Muslim – see inset – do not hold. They end up being contrived.
Furthermore, Muslims believe Jesus himself was neither God nor a Jewish Rabbi, and he didn’t die on the cross.
It only appeared so:
They did not kill him (Jesus), nor did they crucify him, but another was made to resemble him. (Surah 4.157)
A big problem for Muslims here is that the crucifixion of Jesus is an accepted event, archaeological evidence, in the nails, fragments of the cross, shroud, tomb, and witnesses, documented by non-religious writers as well as Christian writers in the first century.
It is a well-attested fact of the ancient world — and a headache for Muslim scholars.
Was Jesus a Jew? Yes!
He was a very good Jew and also a very troublesome Jew.
As Christians, we believe that Jews have a partial understanding of the revelation of God, but what we cannot doubt is that Jesus was a Jew, a first-century Jewish Rabbi. The Jews do not believe that Jesus fulfilled prophecies of the coming Messiah, nor that he was God.