Someone drawn to the Nation of Islam is usually responding to two things at once: a hunger for Black dignity and identity, and a claim about who Jesus was. Respect means taking the first seriously and not dodging the second. The clearest way to make Jesus plain is to read a few passages slowly with that person, in context, and let the text show that Jesus claims more than a prophet ever could.
This guide works through those passages: Exodus 3, John 8, a handful of texts about what Jesus shares with God, and Deuteronomy 18, the chapter at the center of the claim that Elijah Muhammad is the promised prophet. It draws on Chapter Two of the Jude 3 Project curriculum Unspoken: Christianity’s African Roots. You can work through it alone in about an hour with a Bible and paper. A group can split it into two sittings, with the reading practice in the second.
Begin with the concern, not the counterargument
The Unspoken curriculum is candid that conversion away from the church is often not first about doctrine. It observes that “part of the allure in the black community to Kemeticism and Islam stems from a search for one’s identity.” The lesson draws on Damon Richardson, who grew up inside the Nation of Islam and wrote about it in Urban Apologetics. Richardson’s point, as the curriculum reports it, is that the Nation speaks directly to social, personal and ethnic concerns shaped by the Black American experience.
That means a doctrinal answer given too early can sound like a refusal to listen. The curriculum’s first suggestion is to respond to the social concern on its own terms by telling the history of the Black church: the founding of HBCUs, the Civil Rights Movement, legislative work such as voting rights, and local community efforts. The same chapter also tells of Cyprian, a North African bishop who urged Christians in Carthage to stay and care for the sick during a plague in the 250s when many people fled.
None of this is a scoreboard. The church has its failures, and a person who has felt them will notice if you pretend otherwise. The purpose of the history is narrower. It removes the assumption that caring about Black dignity requires leaving Jesus behind. Once that assumption is gone, the question of who Jesus is can be heard as a real question.
The curriculum then turns, and the turn is honest: “Most conversations across religious groups will include doctrinal differences.” The rest of this guide is about having that part of the conversation well.
Reading Exodus 3 first
The curriculum points to Exodus 3:13-15 as the first place God identifies himself with the words I Am. Start there, because John 8 makes little sense without it.
Notice the setting. Moses has been sent to Israel in slavery, and he anticipates their question: who sent you? He asks for a name. God answers in Exodus 3:14: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” In verse 15 God adds that he is the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that this is his name forever.
Two observations matter. First, this name is given to an enslaved people as the ground of their deliverance. The God who names himself is the God who frees. That is worth saying to someone whose interest in faith begins with Black suffering. Second, the name is tied to Abraham. Keep Abraham in mind as you turn to John.
John 8: watch the argument, not just the verse
John 8:58 is often quoted alone. Read John 8:48-59 instead, because the meaning of the verse comes from the argument around it.
The dispute is about Abraham. Jesus has said that Abraham rejoiced to see his day. His opponents answer in verse 57: “Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” They are pressing a question of age and time. Jesus replies in John 8:58: “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”
Look at the grammar, which is visible even in English. Jesus does not use a past verb for himself, as if he were only saying that he lived before Abraham did. He shifts from a past verb for Abraham to a present verb for himself. A claim to have simply lived earlier would use the past. The present tense puts Jesus outside the sequence altogether, and it lands on the very words God used at the burning bush, in a conversation about the God of Abraham.
Then read verse 59: “Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.” Under the law, stoning was the penalty for blaspheming the name of the LORD (Leviticus 24:16). The hearers understood Jesus to be claiming something that belongs only to God. A similar scene follows in John 10:30-33, where Jesus says “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), and his hearers again take up stones, saying plainly that he, a man, is making himself God.
Christian interpreters differ somewhat on how much weight to put on the echo of Exodus 3. Most read John 8:58 as Jesus taking the divine name. Others emphasize mainly his claim to exist before Abraham. Both readings already place Jesus beyond the category of a prophet, because no prophet claims to stand outside time before the patriarchs.
Not every “I am” saying carries the same weight
The curriculum lists many of Jesus’ I am sayings in John, including the bread of life (John 6:35), the light of the world (8:12), the door (10:7), the good shepherd (10:11, 14), the resurrection and the life (11:25), the way, the truth and the life (14:6), and the true vine (15:1).
A careful reader will notice two kinds of saying here. Most attach an image: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). On their own, these are metaphors, and a skeptic can fairly say a prophet might use a metaphor. Their force is cumulative. Jesus keeps claiming to be the source of things Scripture attributes to God: life itself, light, resurrection, the shepherding of God’s people. John 8:58 is different. It has no image attached. It is the absolute form, and it is the strongest link to Exodus 3.
This distinction makes your conversation more honest. If you lead with John 6:35 as proof of deity, a thoughtful listener will push back, and they will be right to. If you lead with John 8:58 in its context, then show how the image sayings fill out the same picture, you are claiming exactly what the texts support.
One more habit: check every reference before you use it. Lists get copied and drift. John 10:25, for instance, appears in the curriculum’s list, but that verse is Jesus appealing to his works rather than an I am saying. Looking it up yourself is part of reading Scripture with integrity, and it shows the person across from you that you are not reciting.
What Jesus shares with God
The curriculum’s second line of response is to show that Jesus’ attributes parallel God’s. Read a few of these closely rather than all of them quickly.
Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 28:20 ends the Gospel with a similar promise: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Observe what these words assume. Jesus promises to be present with his followers wherever they gather, in every place and every generation. A prophet can promise that God will be with you. Jesus promises that he will be.
Matthew 28:18: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” Colossians 1:17 says of Christ: “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” Here the claim moves from presence to creation itself. In context, Paul is writing to a church tempted to rank Christ among lesser spiritual powers, and he answers that all things were made by him and hold together in him.
Be careful about one thing. Matthew 28:18 says authority was given, and someone may ask how a given authority can be divine. That is a fair question. The New Testament presents the Son as receiving from the Father without being less than God, which is why Christians confess one God in three persons. Name the question honestly rather than skipping it.
Deuteronomy 18: let the Torah set the test
The curriculum addresses the claim that Elijah Muhammad is the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15-18. Read the passage with its context before discussing who fits it.
In verse 15 Moses promises that the LORD will raise up a Prophet from among the people, from their own brethren, one like Moses himself, and that Israel must listen to him. In verse 16 Moses recalls why: at Horeb, the people begged not to hear God’s voice directly or see the great fire again. Verse 18 gives God’s answer: “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.”
The key phrase is “like unto me.” What was Moses like? Deuteronomy answers that question itself, at its end. Deuteronomy 34:10 says: “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.” The following verses add the signs and wonders Moses performed. So by the close of the Torah, the promised prophet has not yet arrived, and the book has described what to look for: someone who knows God face to face, does mighty works, and mediates between God and the people.
Now compare the curriculum’s list of qualities that it says Jesus possesses and Elijah Muhammad does not: spiritual deliverance and salvation, covenant making, intercession and mediation, miracles, and this one: “Jesus spoke directly to God.” Read alongside Deuteronomy 34, the list is not arbitrary. It traces the profile of Moses himself. That gives your conversation a fair standard, one taken from the text rather than invented to win.
The New Testament makes the connection openly. Peter applies Deuteronomy 18 to Jesus in Acts 3:22, and Stephen does the same in Acts 7:37. Hebrews 3:3 then goes further, saying Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, as the builder of a house has more honor than the house.
Be honest about the range of readings. Some readers take Deuteronomy 18 to describe a succession of prophets God would send, not one final figure. Christians commonly read it as pointing ultimately to Jesus, partly because Deuteronomy 34 shows the promise still waiting. Either way, the test the passage sets is demanding, and it is the right test to bring to any claim.
The objection worth taking seriously
A friend drawn to the Nation may say: Jesus himself said he was a prophet, so Christians made him into something he never claimed. This deserves a real answer. Jesus did speak of himself as a prophet, for instance when he said a prophet is not without honor except in his own country (Matthew 13:57).
Christians agree that Jesus was a prophet. The question is whether the texts allow him to be only a prophet. John 8 and John 10 are where that question gets decided, because there the hearers’ own reaction shows what they heard him claiming. A response that begins with agreement and then turns to the text tends to go further than one that begins with correction.
The curriculum also offers a line that answers the deeper fear underneath the doctrinal one: “Embracing Christianity does not revoke your ethnic or cultural identity; it redeems it.” Jesus being God is not a threat to Black identity. It means the One who freed Israel from Egypt is the One who comes near.
A practice: two columns, three passages
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. Label the left column What the text says and the right column What I conclude.
- Read Exodus 3:13-15 aloud. In the left column, write only what the passage states: who speaks, what is asked, what name is given. Leave the right column empty for now.
- Read John 8:48-59 aloud. Record the question about Abraham, Jesus’ exact reply, and the crowd’s response. Then, in the right column, write what you conclude. Draw an arrow from each conclusion to the line in the left column that supports it. Any conclusion without an arrow needs another look.
- Read Deuteronomy 18:15-22 and 34:10-12. Before you look at any list from this guide, write the marks of the prophet like Moses as the text itself gives them. Then compare your list with the curriculum’s. Where do they match, and where did you see something the curriculum did not?
In a group, do the first two steps in pairs, then compare columns. Facilitators should watch for conclusions that outrun the text and ask, gently, which line supports them. The goal is a group that could open a Bible beside a friend and show its reasoning.
Then add one more step. Before anyone rehearses a response, have one person describe in their own words why the Nation of Islam might appeal to someone they know, fairly enough that a member would recognize it. Only then practice explaining John 8:58.
Questions for discussion
- The curriculum asks how you have usually responded when someone challenged Christianity from another faith. Looking back, did you respond more to the person’s argument or to their reasons for asking?
- Which parts of the Black church’s history named in the curriculum did you know well, and which would you need to study before mentioning them to someone else?
- In John 8:57-58, what does the shift from a past to a present verb do to Jesus’ claim? How would you explain it without technical language?
- Why might leading with an image saying like John 6:35 weaken your case, while the same saying strengthens it later in the conversation?
- After reading Deuteronomy 34:10-12, what standard does the Torah set for the prophet like Moses? What makes that standard fair to bring to any claim, including claims about Jesus?
- Where in your own conversations about faith have you claimed more than a passage actually says? What would change if you stopped?
Something to carry into the week
The curriculum closes its chapter by reading Ephesians 3:14-19, a prayer that believers would grasp the breadth and length and depth and height of Christ’s love. If your group ends in prayer, that passage is a natural place to go. Either way, take one question with you: if a friend asked you tomorrow who Jesus is, could you open John 8, read it with them, and show them what the text says before you tell them what you believe?