The Prophet Muhammad
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 4.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Who was Muhammad? Today, James Anderson provides a biographical sketch of this seventh-century figure. He explains that for Christians to understand the religion of Islam, we must know about its founder.
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Meet Today’s Teacher:
James Anderson is Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary.
Meet the Host:
Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Christians look to the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles as examples, |
| 0:04.6 | but not as perfect ones, they're flawed. |
| 0:07.0 | For us, only Christ is the perfect example and the perfect human being. |
| 0:11.7 | For Muslims, Muhammad plays that role. |
| 0:20.7 | So who was Muhammad? That's what you'll learn about today on renewing your mind. |
| 0:26.6 | This week you've been hearing teaching on the differences between Christianity and Islam. |
| 0:32.6 | Today, our guest teacher is James Anderson, a professor of theology and philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary. |
| 0:41.7 | Let's go back and get a biographical sketch of the man who became the prophet of Islam. |
| 0:48.3 | Here's Dr. Anderson. |
| 0:51.7 | In December 2013, Time magazine published a feature with the title, |
| 0:57.0 | Who's Biggest? The 100 Most Significant Figures in History. |
| 1:02.0 | The methodology that they used to come up with their rankings was interesting, |
| 1:06.0 | but of course what everyone was most interested in was the list itself and the figures on the list. |
| 1:12.6 | According to time, the most significant figure in history was Jesus, rightfully so. |
| 1:20.7 | In second position was Napoleon Bonaparte. |
| 1:25.2 | In third place was Muhammad. Now, I'm neither a historian nor the son of a historian, |
| 1:33.0 | but to put Muhammad below Napoleon in terms of historical significance seems strange to me. |
| 1:39.7 | I don't know how many followers of Napoleon there are in the world today, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't come close to the 1.8 billion followers of Muhammad. |
| 1:50.1 | In any event, there can be little question about the historical significance of Muhammad, |
| 1:54.4 | given the prominent place held by Islam in the world today. |
| 1:59.5 | So the question before us is, who was he? |
| 2:02.9 | Who was Muhammad? |
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