Nestorian

Nestorius died around 451 and is the father of Nestorianism. This false doctrine teaches that Christ was two separate persons, one divine and one human. The Bible teaches Jesus Christ was one person with two natures. The United Pentecostal Church International, for example, teaches that when Jesus prayed, he was praying to himself. This assaults the common sense more than it contradicts the Bible! Muhammad would likewise not be impressed with a religion that not only considers Mary "the mother of God", but that Jesus is a "schizo" split personality that goes around talking to himself. Between the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic church and the outrageous heresy of the banished Nestorians who were driven from civilization into Arabia, not much wonder Muhammad what he thought was Christianity! The devil always uses false doctrine to turn people away from the truth!

1. "the Eastern [Nestorian] Christians believe in one God with three attributes, instead of three persons." (George M. Lamsa, The Short Koran, p15)
2. Although most of the Arab tribes of the Syrian desert became nominal Christians, however, their new religion seems to have been little more than skin deep. It was doubtless difficult for a people who held such strong views on the honourable duty of revenge to absorb the spirit of a religion which commanded them to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek to aggressors. Unfortunately, in 420, a monk called Nestorius preached a new interpretation of the Incarnation, which was condemned as heretical by the Council of Ephesus in 431. As a result, the Nestorian Christians migrated in considerable numbers to Persia, where they established themselves chiefly in the Euphrates valley as far south as the head of the Persian Gulf. (The Life and Times of Muhammad, John Bagot Glubb, 1970)
3. Under the dominion of Byzantium they achieved power and wealth in the role of a 'buffer state' and adopted the Christianity of their rulers. In A.D. 195, another branch, the lakhmids, established the kingdom of Hira near the ruins of ancient Babylonia. While serving as a 'buffer' for Persia, many of its people remained pagan under the non-proselytizing policy of Persian Zoroastrianism.' Nevertheless some important elements among the Lakhmids became Nestorian Christians. (Islam and the Arabs, Rom Landau, 1958 p 11-21)
4. The influence of Christianity was brought to bear upon Arabia both from Syria in the northwest and from Mesopotamia in the northeast. In the sixth century A.D. the Arabic kingdoms of the Ghassanids in Syria and the Lakhmids in Mesopotamia were allied respectively with the Byzantine and the Persian empires and were strong centers respectively of Monophysite and of Nestorian Christianity. From these regions and in this time if not also earlier, Christian ideas spread on into the farther reaches of Arabia. A careful study of the relevant data particularly in the Qur'an shows that Muhammad had a very considerable store of knowledge of Judaism and Christianity, and that it was of the sort which he would have been most likely to obtain through oral channels and personal observation over a long period of time. He was specially impressed, it seems, with the fact that both the Jews and the Christians were People of a Book, and it was his desire likewise to provide his own people with a Book which would be to them what the Torah was to the Jews and the Bible to the Christians. (The Archeology Of World Religions, Jack Finegan, 1952, p482-485, 492)