Some people may like to find any number of things in the Qur'an. But an honest method in examining this book, looking for evidence of the Divine origin, is to take things at their value, to look for things that are clear and to look in those places where we are invited to look. Remember the passage that I quoted earlier: "Have not the disbelievers seen..." This a common phrase of the Qur'an: "O Man, Have you not seen." The invitation is to examine the evidence in these places. We are doing the sensible thing if we examine the words used to look for the doubted meaning and to find evidence of the Divine origin.

Each one of us is an expert on something. One does not have to have a degree in a particular subject to decide that now, "I can take my expertise to the Qur'an and see what I can find." We all now something for some from our own experience and life.

I heard a story, several years ago in Toronto, of man who was given the Qur'an to read. The man was a member of the merchant marines who spent his life on the sea. When he read a verse in the Qur'an describing the wave on the ocean, "waves within waves and the darkness between," he was surprised because the description was just what he knew the situation to be. When he returned the Qur'an to the man who gave it to him to read, he asked him (because he was completely ignorant of the origins of Islam): "This Muhammad, was he a sailor?" Well, of course, he was quite surprised to know that the man spent his life in the desert. So he had to ask himself: "From where did he get this knowledge of what looks like on a stormy sea?"

We all know something that we can be confident of and if we can turn to the Qur'an to read what it says about that subject, we are asking for confirmation of our belief in the Divine origin of the book.