Here the Christian church is brought sadly into the story of Muhammad. The monastic movement was begun as a reaction to the worldliness that had crept into the church and wrested from it its former glory. Monks centered on the inner life. For some of these men we are grateful and in fact, in debt, as they discovered their own sinfulness and the cure for it.

Martin Luther was a monk.

But others went to extremes in lifestyle and teaching that are as unacceptable as Luther's was acceptable. Being a monk in and of itself is not the issue, but what monastic living can drive one to believe and do.

There was a monk, Bahira, who lived in the early days of Muhammad's life. He had been reading documents about a prophet to come. One day, per Lings, he saw a cloud over a caravan in which Muhammad was traveling. The caravan stopped, and in a story that reads much like Samuel's picking out the future king of Israel from Jesse's sons, we learn that Muhammad is indeed the chosen prophet foreseen by the document Bahira had been reading.

True? Supernatural? You will be asking yourself this question throughout as Lings, a dignified scholar of no mean reputation, treats these miraculous occurrences so casually. Keep in mind that supernatural is not the key. From Heaven, is the key. When we see what Muhammad believed and taught about the Son of God, we will no longer worry whether his life was marked with occurrences "beyond nature." We will simply identify the source of those occurrences as above or below.

How was Jesus identified? The Spirit of God took a bodily form, that of a dove, and descended publicly on Jesus. John the Baptist was an eyewitness of this event, and the testimony was recorded for all time. Here, said John, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This was in keeping with what the angels had said about Jesus. He is Saviour. He came to deal with sin. One would think from reading current Christian literature that He came to make us rich and happy in the world's sense. But no, it was always about sin, and still is.

Jesus' identification was clear, His mission was spelled out. He is to eradicate sin. . What Jesus has already done for sin in the hearts of millions, and what He plans to do on His return, will make the statements made about Him satisfactory.

Muhammad is to be a prophet. But in what sense Muhammad was a prophet is yet to be seen. Prophets prophesy, but Muhammad never did that. Prophets work miracles, but by his own admission in the Koran, he never did that either. Then we can just say that prophets speak the words of God to their generation. Those who believe that Muhammad spoke truth in his recitations (Koran) therefore can accept him as prophet on that basis.