Debate: 4/11/2024, Slick v Nadir, Is Jesus divine according to the Bible?

Greetings everybody. Welcome to CARM Ministries presentation of a debate between Matt Slick, the president of CARM Ministries, and Nadir Ahmed, a

Muslim apologist. We had a few technical difficulties just before going live, so we apologize that we didn't quite get it right after the five o 'clock time period.

By way of introduction, my name is Dave Kimball. I am one of Matt's assistants, and I will be moderating the debate.

And just to give you an idea of the general format, the topic will be in the form of a question.

The question is, is Jesus divine according to the Bible? And we will have a 10 -minute initial introduction by our presenters, and then there will be a about a 40 -minute period of back -and -forth where each of the two presenters will be asking and answering questions to each other.

And then at the end of that, we'll have a question and answer period where those of you that are watching the presentation will be able to get into the chat and pose a question.

And we would ask that you pose your question as succinctly as possible, and you're welcome to pose a question to either one of the two presenters or one for each of them, and we will see how that goes.

We are typically not too formal with these. We like the debaters to feel comfortable and to give the best presentation that they can.

And with that, I will bring our two participants onto the stage.

Nadir Ahmed, welcome to CAR Ministries debate, and Matt Slick, welcome to CAR Ministries presentation of the debate.

Nadir, you have the floor. If you would like to give a quick, brief introduction to the listening audience, feel free.

Yeah, I'll make it very short. My name is Nadir Ahmed. I've been a Muslim apologist for about 30 years now, currently working on college campuses with different Muslim students to spread the message of Islam, and I've had many debates with many different Christian apologists.

So, that's just a little bit about myself. Very good.

Matt? All right, yeah. Matt Slick, that's Founder and Director of CARM .org.

I've been debating for, well, since 1980, I guess it makes it 44 years. I think I'm a little older than he is.

And I love discussing theology, particularly this very topic about who

Jesus Christ is according to the scriptures. So, may the Lord be glorified in it, and I hope we have a good debate, good time.

All right. Okay. Did you two gentlemen, did you come to agreement on who was going to go first?

Yeah, I'm going first. Affirmative. Okay, Matt. You have about a 10 -minute initial presentation.

All right. I'll get my timer going. All right. I'm going to share the screen, and we'll get going here.

So, let's see. Nope, not there, and there, and there.

Okay. Sorry, folks. Got to share the screen here, and we'll get right into it.

Like I said, we had problems before. All right. Here we go. So, the question is, and I'm hitting go on the timer.

There we go. Is Jesus divine according to the Bible? And the answer, of course, is yes, he is.

Now, the debate tonight is, is Jesus divine according to the Bible? The debate is not about the validity of the

Bible. It's reliability or preservation. It's not about what the Quran says or what the church fathers said.

If the dear tries to undermine the Bible's truth and reliability, then he's not debating the topic, which is about what does the

Bible say about Jesus? All right. So, let's define our terms first. The Bible, the

Bible what I hold to as a Protestant is the 66 books, including 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the

New Testament. Of course, I reject the apocrypha. Divine means the quality of being

God. There's only one God in all existence, all place, all time. He alone is divine. Jesus has that divine quality in nature.

And Jesus here is the person prophesied about, spoken of, and described in the

Bible who was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later, as was described by the eyewitnesses.

You can check out the scriptures there for that. All right. So, one of the things that I always have to deal with, usually have to deal with, with discussing this topic is the hypostatic union.

And another doctrine we'll get into a little bit. To lay the foundation down, the hypostatic union is the biblical doctrine that in the one person of Jesus are two distinct natures, the divine nature and the human.

Each nature retains its essence and attributes and were not lessened or changed in the person of Christ at the incarnation.

Yet there are not two persons, but one person who is Christ. This is what is called the hypostatic union.

Very, very critical, very important doctrine. And so we can see here, and you can go to CARM and you can look up the chart here in the hypostatic union.

And I'm not going to go into all the verses. This is a summary. But Jesus as God, he is worshiped.

He is called God. He was called the son of God. He's prayed to. He is sinless.

He knows all things. He gets eternal life and all the fullness of deed dwells in him in bodily form.

And of course, he's a man. He's worshiped. He's called man, called the son of man. He prayed to the father.

He was tempted. He grew in wisdom. He died and he has a body of flesh and bones. All right.

There's another doctrine that's not as commonly known or understood and it's called the communicatio ideomatum.

And it's a Latin phrase and it means the communication of the properties. What this means is that the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the one person of Christ.

The one person of Jesus can exhibit attributes of divinity, omnipresence, all knowing, et cetera.

And at the same time, exhibit attributes of humanity, eating, walking, learning, growing, et cetera.

The communicatio ideomatum does not mean that anything particular to either nature was communicated to the other.

That's a little more technical stuff. Won't get into that last part though. But nevertheless, here are some scriptures that discuss and demonstrate what we call the communication of the properties or the communicatio ideomatum.

This is where Jesus, remember Jesus is one person. And he says that I am with you always, even at the end of the age.

So the person, I, this is who I am because he says, I am thirsty in John 19, 28.

That's demonstrating the human quality. Well, he says, I'll be with you always, even at the end of the age. Well, what does he mean by that?

If he's just an ordinary man, how can he be with people to the end of the age?

And it says in John 14, 23, my father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

This is saying that Jesus is saying that he and the father, he and God, the father are both going to be living in your heart, living within you.

Now, this is a claim of his deity. This is one of the communication properties that he is claiming for himself.

Jesus says in John 2, 19 through 21, he says, destroy this temple in three days,

I will raise it up. And in Greek, it's agairo, the future active indicative, which means he's performing the action of his resurrection.

Jesus says in John 14, 14, it should be there. If you ask me anything in my name,

I will do it. So now he's answering prayers and saying he can do it. And the slide in time doesn't allow me to get into how

Jesus says he will draw all men to himself. And Jesus searches the heart and the minds of people.

All right. So we see from the divinity of Jesus, John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was

God. Verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. In John 20, 28,

Thomas said to Jesus, my Lord and my God, he called him Lord and God.

And in Hebrews 1, 8, but of the son, he says, your throne, oh God, is forever and ever. So the father is calling

Jesus God here. Now, one of the things that I do when

I discuss this with people, I show different kinds of approaches and Isaiah 40, verse three, it's the prophecy.

A voice is calling clear the way of the Lord. Now that's Yahweh, the name of God himself.

This is God. Clear the way of Yahweh in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert, a highway for our

God. Now the word Lord there is Isaiah 43, right there is Yahweh, the name of God. In Mark 1, verses two and three, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet, behold,

I send my messenger, that's John the Baptist ahead of you, who will prepare your way. Verse three is a quote from a reference from Isaiah 40, verse three, the voice of one trying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the

Lord, make his paths straight. John the Baptist ministry was to prepare the way for Jesus.

And when this is quoted by Mark, it's quoted in the old Testament, the Lord, which is referenced to Yahweh, making the path ready for Yahweh to be there.

And that's attributed to Jesus right there. All right. Another verse that I like to use, which is a lot of people are surprised by this one.

I like this. It's one of my favorites. In Psalm 116, four and other verses in the Bible, in the old

Testament, there's a phrase that's really important that I called upon the name of the

Lord or Yahweh in Hebrew. Oh, Yahweh, I beseech you, save my life. The phrase called upon the name of the

Lord, calling upon the name of the Lord, call on upon the name of the Lord. The phrase is slight, very slight variations, but it's always in reference to calling upon prayer and adoration worship of Yahweh.

That's what's going on right there. And this is what's significant because when the Jews translated the

Psalm 116, four into Greek, and it was called the Septuagint around 200, give or take 200

BC, they, uh, they translated it into call upon the name of the

Lord in Greek is the Lord. That's really interesting because Paul, the apostle who knew the old

Testament said to the church of God, which is at Corinth to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, who by calling with all who in every place call the name of our

Lord, Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours in the Greek, it's actually says call upon the name of the Lord of us,

Jesus. So he is applying a phrase of the old Testament translated into the

Greek and the Septuagint that is in reference only to God, only to Yahweh, and he's referring it to Jesus.

I can go to a lot more verses like this, but we don't have time, you know? All right. Here's an important point.

The humanity of Jesus does not deny his divinity. Remember, Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but it says in Galatians 4 .4,

but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

So under the law, he had to pray to the father. Under the law, he had to do the things the law required because he's

God and man, and as a man under the law, he had to do that. And it says in Hebrews 2 .9,

but we do see him who was made for a little while lower than the angels. So he was made for a little while lower than the angels, but he was made under the law.

In John 14 .28, this would explain verses, typical verses people will bring up. You heard that it said,

I go away and I will come to you. If you love me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the father. The father is greater than I, John 14 .28.

It doesn't say the father is different in nature, but in position because Jesus was made under the law.

That's what's going on there. In John 20 .17, Jesus says, stop clinging to me for I have not yet ascended to the father, but go to my brethren and say to them,

I ascend to my father and your God, my God and your God. And we would expect him to say things like this because he's made under the law,

Galatians 4 .4, for a little while lower than the angels. And I don't think my timer, did my timer not work or something?

Oh, I got one minute left. Oh, sorry about that. I did something wrong. Okay. And so the

Bible teaches, we're at the end, good, it works out. The Bible teaches that Jesus is divine and there's the verses we've already gone through them.

And this is why this is so important. In Exodus 3 .14, God said to Moses, I am who

I am. He said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am, has sent me to you.

And Jesus says in John 8 .24, therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

And John 58, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am. Undoubtedly, the

Bible teaches that Jesus is divine, but it also teaches he's human. So we would expect humanity verses, and we would also expect divinity verses.

We get them both as what it is. So Jesus is both God and man. Amen. The presentation over to Nadir.

I could bring him up. Oh, hey, can you hear me?

Yeah. Hello. Okay. Wonderful. I think, great. Thank you for that, Matt. It's going to be a very easy debate.

You see, one of the main, one of the most important qualities, you see, the first criteria for Jesus to be

God is that the Bible has to clearly teach this. You shouldn't have to play any kind of interpretation games.

It should be right there. Now, Matt listed all these verses in which he thinks that it teaches that Jesus is

God. So it teaches him that he's a God and man, both put together.

I got no problem with those verses, actually. I have no problem accepting that those deify

Jesus. So does that mean Matt wins the debate? No. It's because there's lots of gods in the

Bible. There's lots of people who have divine qualities in the Bible, and that's where Matt is going to fail tonight.

How are you deciphering what is a real God versus the other gods?

In fact, let me go ahead and share my screen over here. I'll show you what I'm talking about. Inside Hebrews, chapter 7, verse 3.

Now, remember, Matt said, look, Jesus has divine qualities. This is what he said.

Okay, well, he's not the only one. There are lots of people with divine qualities. He says he has the attributes of divinity.

All righty. Look what it says over here. Talk about the priest, Melchizedek, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the

Son of God. He's a priest continually. He's eternal.

That's an attribute of God. So why isn't Melchizedek inducted into the

Holy Trinity? There should be four gods there, at least. So the problem where Matt is going to fail tonight is intelligently trying to decipher which is a real

God versus which one is not, and he's not going to be able to do that.

All he's going to do is give interpretation, personal interpretation. Let's take a look at another example.

In fact, I think the best argument against the divinity of Christ actually comes from Jesus himself.

You've got a lot of gods in this Bible. These Jews in John chapter 10, verse 34.

So they picked up stones to stone Jesus, as you can see on your screen. By the way, are you guys sharing my little screen over here?

Because I don't see it on that. Yeah. So I just, I don't know if I'm sharing right now.

So anyways, going very quickly, John chapter 10, verse 34, it says over here that the

Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus. And they said, why are you stoning me? He said, why are you stoning me?

He said, because you claim to be God. And you know what Jesus said? He says, isn't it written in your law that you are all gods?

What the heck? This was a good time to explain, hey, listen, I'm one in a trinity.

This was a time to tell people, yes, I am God. Of course. And those stones aren't going to hurt me.

But he says, you are all gods. So the question tonight is this. How are you intelligently, how do you know for sure that Jesus is

God and we're not gods? You're not going to I didn't say how you can believe for sure.

I said how you can know for sure, based on evidence, and you're not going to be able to do it.

Now, of course, Christians, they spend their own interpretations. But that's the problem. You've got to give your own wacky, quacky interpretations to exclude out all the other gods.

So Matt just comes up and starts giving some interpretations here. He fails a basic minimum requirement for us to even entertain this.

And that's your Bible's got to clearly teach this. You're never going to know for sure that, no, you're not the real

God, and I'm the real God. And so let me give you, I'll even show you some articles where Christians try to explain

John chapter 10, verse 34. It's pretty laughable, their explanations. And because of that, now

Christians are getting infused. A lot of people don't know this, but there's a lot of Christians who think they are gods, like Mormon Christians.

But wait a second, whose fault is that? You could say Mormons are misguided or whatever, but there's a lot of Christians who do believe this, that they're gods.

And the Bible says, God is not the author of confusion.

This is found inside Hebrews, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verse 13. It says, for God is not the author of confusion.

And so this is a criteria which the Bible gives, if this is really from God.

God is not the author of confusion, yet Jesus is confusing everybody by telling them that they're all gods.

And so, you know, you can, of course, condemn the Mormons as being heretical. But what is undeniable is that it is actually the teachings of Jesus, which confuse them.

Because when you tell people, you're all gods, you are, you're going out of your way to confuse people.

So this is a big contradiction, which Matt has to try to reconcile, and he won't be able to.

So the two, just to sum up the two problems are you're not going to be able to intelligently show that this one's

God, and this one's not God, because you're all gods. And you're not going to be able to reconcile the contradiction where it says

God is not the author of confusion. And Jesus is confusing everybody by telling them that they're gods.

And it's not just Mormons, you know, even celebrities like Akin, and so many other Christians believe that they're gods because of this, because they're doing exactly what

Matt's doing, taking the Bible literally, and say, look, he's got the divine attributes.

Okay. So this is a big confusion, which

Jesus created, and therefore he cannot be God. Simple. He fails his own criteria.

So, but how much more confusion is there? There's a lot more confusion. You know,

Jesus also confuses people between, creates a confusion between, allegedly

Jesus. Of course, I don't believe these are really his words, but this is just what the Bible records. Now, we believe in Jesus as being a great prophet of God, but he certainly is not the one creating all these, all this confusion.

So, you know, he creates confusion between people who are allegedly demon -possessed and people who suffer from epilepsy.

For example, you know, there are the, because if you look at like the flu and you look at the coronavirus, you'll see they share the same symptoms.

And that's why people think of that, that they've got the flu, when in reality, they've got the virus.

Okay. Because they share the same syndrome, they wind up dead. Well, that's the type of confusion which

Jesus creates. And actually the Bible creates with epileptic people as well.

Let's take a look. Mark chapter nine, verse 18. It lists the symptoms of somebody who's allegedly demon -possessed.

Well, guess what? They're the exact same symptoms of someone who suffers from epilepsy.

And as a result, just like between the coronavirus and flu, they get confused.

You don't know, what do I have here? It says here inside Mark chapter nine, verse 18. When it seizes him, it throws him to the ground.

He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. Those are the symptoms of an epileptic.

So as a result now, they're getting confused between the two. The Christians are getting confused. Let's take a look at this confusion.

It says here that, this is coming from epilepsy .com. It says, anyone had a problem with a religious family member whipping out

Mark nine? And it's a story which I just read for you. And he's accusing this boy of being demon -possessed.

Why? Because that's what the symptoms, which we found in the Bible teaches. Okay. Let's take a look at some research journals because scientists have also talked about this.

This is from two neurologists, Dr. Carl Oten and Mia Tuft in the research paper.

Look what they write. It's a Christianization which reinforced the belief in healing by religious rituals.

The New Testament describes how Jesus heals a boy suffering from lunacy.

And so it puts the blame straight on the teachings of Jesus, the alleged

God -man creating all this confusion. Let's go to the International League Against Epilepsy. Let's look at what their research tells us.

A passage in St. Mark's Gospel accurately describes tonic -clonic seizure, but concludes the child contained a spirit of dumbness.

In the Christian world, this biblical story led to the belief shared by many Greeks and Latins that epileptics were demon -possessed.

So in conclusion here, you know, Jesus is supposed to be a healer.

He's not supposed to be the one who creates this type of confusion between epileptics and demon -possessed people, allegedly, thus leading and causing the conditions for their persecution.

And so this is a contradiction. That's why Jesus cannot be God according to the

Bible. He cannot be God according to many of the attributes. He's supposed to be a healer.

He's supposed to be one not creating confusion, but he's going out of his way to create confusion.

So if you really believe, Matt really believes that Jesus is God, then what that means is that there's many people who are really suffering from, who have been diagnosed as suffering from epilepsy, but they're not.

They're really demon -possessed. So I would like to ask Matt if you will go to the Mayo Clinic and tell them, hey, a lot of your patients could be demon -possessed, because you see, our

Bible teaches that they have the same symptoms. If you truly believe Jesus is God, then you should do that.

And you know, many Christians do. Actually, in the last couple of my debates, Christians, they're doing the math over here, and they realize, yes, those people who have these type of seizures, maybe some of them could be demon -possessed.

So that's my challenge for Matt. Let's see if he will accept. I will actually pay his airfare, pay all the expenses for him to go down to the

Mayo Clinic and tell the doctors and researchers over there that many of their patients are actually demon -possessed because they share the same symptoms.

I think in conclusion, you know, there's no, all the verses which you quoted that, look, it's the

Bible teaches that he's actually God proves nothing, because these glaring contradictions clearly disprove the divinity of Christ.

I guess that's my time. Okay. Thank you,

Nadir, for your presentation. Now what we'll do is we'll have about a 40 -minute section of back and forth where you can each ask each other questions.

And did we decide who was going to ask the first question? Well, I'll tell you what,

Nadir, since you just gave your presentation, we'll roll it back over to Matt, if that's okay with you, unless you just have a burning question that you would like to present.

We'll go ahead and let Matt ask the first question up to a couple of minutes and then a response of up to a couple of minutes.

And then we will let Nadir ask Matt a question and we'll follow that format for about 40 minutes or so and see how it goes.

Okay. Now we can't hear you,

Matt. There we go. How about that? Sorry about that. So Nadir, I believe you've offered what's called a neological inference, that you have then stated that there's a logical necessity based on certain criteria, that if someone sees a similarity between something in the

Bible about demon possession and COVID, that somehow one leads to confusion and therefore

Jesus is not God. So you can't connect the logical dots with that kind of a thing.

You don't want to appeal to people's interpretations and issue of confusion about something on the deity of Christ.

What I did was I raised issues about the deity of Christ. And I do have questions that I could ask you.

So what do you do with the statement in the Bible that where Jesus said he would raise his own body?

What do you do with that? Oh, okay. So Jesus said he would raise his own body.

Well, okay, that sounds like a miracle. Yeah. I mean, definitely prophets do miracles. I don't think that would really prove he's

God. But even if it did, it's okay. You're God too, Matt. Who said, says

Jesus. Mark, I'm sorry, that was John 10, verse 34.

So the problem is you need to explain to us how, no, no, no, we're really not God, even though the Bible says we're gods, but it's really

Jesus who the God and explain that to us in an intelligent fashion, which I don't think you're going to be able to do.

But to go back to the point, which I think there's a little misunderstanding here on your part, you know,

I'm not the one claiming that there's a confusion between, you know, demon -possessed people and epileptics.

It's science who's saying that. I've quoted to you two scientific journals, actually three, epilepsy .com,

where you can see this confusion happening right before your very own eyes. This disproves the divinity of Christ because according to the

Bible, God is not the author of confusion. He's supposed to be a healer. He's not supposed to be the one who causes the misery and suffering, you know, with people who have disabilities, because that's exactly what happens.

So basically what the Bible does in Mark 9, 18, I believe, it starts listing the symptoms of someone who's allegedly demon -possessed.

And they're all the symptoms of a guy who's got epilepsy or who has some kind of seizures. So what happens now, the

Bible is creating conditions for these epileptics to be stigmatized and people talking behind their back.

That guy, you know, when he does this, that's the result of demons. That's what the Bible teaches.

I showed you that from epilepsy .com, how the father was whipping out Mark 9 and looking at those symptoms and seeing those symptoms in his son and say, you are demon -possessed.

You are demon -possessed. And that is what's so tragic, because obviously when you see your son, your own child suffering from something which science cannot cure him, then you, and your

Bible is saying, look, that guy right there, he's demon, those are the symptoms of demon possession.

Even I would do the same, God forbid, if I was a situation. So this is how the

Bible, you know, it takes advantage of people in their vulnerable situations and gives them a false hope.

So this cannot be from God. This is not God. And this is, I will ask you again, and I think that's my two minutes, but I would like to ask you again to go to the

Mayo Clinic and rescue these people. Tell them, no, a lot of your patients are actually demon -possessed.

So let's see if you'll accept that challenge, Matt. Okay. Just a little technical issue.

I mentioned in the initial stages of the show that we did have some technical problems.

I did want to let Matt know that your audio is just ever so slightly breaking up from time to time.

So if you speak a little bit slower, it might not be quite so noticeable.

Try that and see how that works. All right. I'm doing a speed test right now. Now it's much better than it was just a few minutes ago on the down and the up.

I'll tell you in just five seconds of how fast it is, because that's the one we want to be concerned about. And it's much faster, much better.

So it's more better. All right. So here we go. Well, Nadir, the debate is about the deity of Christ, not similarities between demon possession and COVID people or epilepsy people.

Drawing an inference from similarities of experiences has no bearing on whether or not

Jesus is God in flesh, according to the Bible. This debate is not about the reliability of the

Bible. That's not it. It's does the Bible teach this? And what I think was interesting is that you said it does.

You say you don't have any problem with the verses that I quoted that deify Jesus. By that statement alone, you've just acknowledged that you've acknowledged that the

Bible teaches his deity. And now you've asked a

And so I will go over that. It's in John 10, 30 is the context. And the father or one to pick up stones again to throw at him many good works.

The father, I've shown you for which of these are you stoning me for good work? We do not stone you, but you being a man, make yourself out to be

God. He says, is it not written in your law? I said, you are God's. He's quoting Psalm 82, verse six.

Psalm 82 is an imprecatory Psalm. An imprecatory Psalm is a Psalm of condemnation.

So what Jesus is doing is quoting an imprecatory Psalm against the

Jews right there. And he's condemning them. You read the next verse of Psalm 82, seven, it says, nevertheless, you will die like men.

So that's what he's saying and why he's saying it to them. That's why it's going on like that.

So that's all that is. I've written on this and it's commonly understood. Okay. So, so here's the question.

If Jesus is not God, if he's not divine, it's two natures, divine and human.

What do you do with the verses that says in John 14, 23, where he says, he and the father will come and dwell among us, in us.

You'll live in us. John 14, 23. How do you explain from the scriptures that if he's not

God, how can he do that? If he's not God and dwell millions of people, explain that. Yeah, sure.

It's very easy to answer. I guess that he is God would be a good explanation, but you're

God too. That's the problem here. Now you try to quote, you know,

John chapter 34 and give your own explanation, your interpretation. That's perfectly fine.

I guess that's one way you could answer it. You see, he's really condemning them.

You see, cause Psalm 82 is really some kind of condemnation. I don't read it that way, but definitely you're entitled to your own personal interpretation, which goes back to my point that there is no intelligent way that you will know for sure that Jesus is

God and you're not God in any way. There's no way you can do that.

Sure. You've got verses which deify Jesus, but you've got verses which deify you. You've got verses which deify

Melchizedek, and there's no intelligent way to decipher this stuff. I mean, definitely you can have your own interpretation, like I said, but that's all it is, just some interpretation that you're giving.

And this violates a basic principle that your scripture should clearly teach this thing and you shouldn't have to create some type of condemnation interpretation.

Here's what I think was really happening in this passage. And I see you trying to kind of run away from the issue of epilepsy that somehow this is related to the reliability of the

Bible. The reliability of the Bible is not in question here. I'm saying everything here is reliable.

The issue here is that if Jesus was God, how could he create this type of confusion between epileptics and allegedly demon -possessed people, leading to their persecution and suffering?

This contradicts what the Bible says God is supposed to be about. He's supposed to be a healer.

He's not supposed to be the one creating confusion. So yes, it's very germane to the topic. I think the problem here is you have no good answers for this.

You have no good answer for the scientific contradictions of God. So I will return to my challenge to you.

Look, if you really believe Jesus is God, then you should follow his words and take it seriously and go to the

Mayo Clinic and talk to them and tell them that many of their patients are really demon -possessed and you're falsely diagnosing them as having seizures.

No, our book says these same symptoms are the symptoms of demon possession.

Why don't you want to rescue them? That's what I don't understand. Don't you really believe Jesus is

God? As I said before, drawing subjective similarities of experiences between different people, different time, does not necessitate that Jesus is not

God. That's the topic. The topic is does the Bible teach he's divine, not does the

Bible teach some confusing message about epilepsy or whatever. That's not the topic.

I would just remind you that that is the topic and if you could address the exact scriptures.

You brought up certain things. I'm trying to address what you raised according to the topic. You said, as I asked you about in John 14, 23, where Jesus says he and the father will come and dwell in you, you said, oh, because he is

God is a good explanation, but you are God too. I hope I got that right for you.

No, the Bible doesn't say we're God and Christians don't believe that. We know from Isaiah 43, 43, 10, 44, 6, 44, 8, 45, 5, the

Bible said there's only one God in all existence, all place, and all time. Then what you do is you say just your interpretation.

Well, you're giving me your interpretation. What I would suggest is you actually look at what verses actually say.

I would suggest that you go to John 14, 23, where Jesus says, I and the father will come and make our abode with you.

Does that verse say he's God? You said, yes, it's a good explanation that he's God. Okay, great, but to say that also

I am God? No, because that's not what Jesus was saying. You are actually God's because he would never say that because he knew they were not.

It was actually Psalm 82, 6, where God inspired the writer to say this as a mocking condemnation in the context of the history speaking, historically speaking, of the unrighteous

Jews, the unrighteous judges who were in control and had the power of life and death. If you read

Psalm 82, you'll see it's an imprecatory Psalm against the unrighteous judges. It's a mockery condemnation.

That's what they understood. That's what the Jews always understood of that Psalm and Jesus applied it to those

Jews right there. So that's what's going on. And so you're misapplying the verse.

You're misapplying what it is, and you don't seem to be adapting to what I said about that.

You have any comment about that? Yeah, well, to the first point, I think you're trying to reinterpret the topic of this debate.

You're saying, okay, well, does the Bible teach if he is divine? That's not what the topic here is.

It says, if Jesus is divine according to the Bible, do you see that this is what is,

I believe, we agreed upon. And according to the Bible, he's not, because the Bible teaches that God doesn't create these type of problems which

Jesus is creating for people who suffer from epilepsy. So I think it's pretty clear that Matt is running away from this challenge.

He's not able to answer this, and he's being disingenuous. You know, people sitting in your shoes,

Matt, they did come forward, and they did say, I mean, they were listening to this debate, and I bet you many people listening to this debate will be doing the math.

They're like, yeah, yeah, dude, a lot of those people who have those disabilities, they're demon -possessed.

So it's not just me. And they did it because they believe truly Jesus is

God. So when he diagnosed that boy allegedly as being demon -possessed, God can't be wrong, right?

Well, you know, I think it's pretty clear here. I want to just share my screen here real quick, if I may.

Can you share my screen? I want to show you the Mayo Clinic. And I'm challenging you to go down there if you really believe

Jesus is God. The topic of this debate is what if Jesus is

God according to the Bible. This is the Mayo Clinic. It says, at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, you'll have a whole team of epilepsy experts who take the time to listen, provide the right diagnosis, and personalize your treatment, and personalize your treatment.

But if Jesus is God, then part of that treatment should be exorcism.

You should talk to these scientists and say, we want to perform an exorcism because our God, our book is telling us this is the same symptoms of demonic possession.

Jesus diagnosed him, people with those type of symptoms, as demon -possessed, and he's our

God. You know Christians did accept this challenge. They're like, Nadir is right. And it's really, really interesting to see how you're running away from defending your own

Lord and Savior. And I will pay for your expenses to go and sit down with the Mayo Clinic experts here.

If you truly believe Jesus is God, what you're trying to do, you're trying to run away. Oh, I don't think this is part of the debate topic.

No, no, no. You know, I'm calling your bluff. You should, you should, you should stand firm for what you believe.

And you should talk to the experts and say that many of your patients are being misdiagnosed.

They're demon -possessed. So I will repeat my challenge one more time for you. Will you accept this challenge?

Your challenge is not within the domain of the debate topic. The debate topic is not if Matt Slick believes that Jesus is

God, then he should go to the Mayo Clinic and tell epileptics that they're demon -possessed. That's not the debate topic.

The debate topic is, is Jesus divine according to the

Bible? That's the topic. The topic is, does the Bible teach it?

Is he divine according to what the Bible says? If I believe Jesus is God, then that's different.

If I believe that certain actions follow out of that, that's different. That's not what the debate is. You've made several logic errors here, and you're making a fallacious conclusion because I'm not a doctor.

I don't know who has or does not have epilepsy. That's not the debate topic. You aren't a doctor either, and you don't know what it is.

You're off topic. The topic is, does the Bible teach this? You've already admitted that yes, the

Bible teaches that the best explanation for Jesus indwelling people is if he's God, but then you said, but you're

God too, and I answered you and said, no, that's not what it is. You misapplied John 10 .34.

I said, you are God's in your law. He's talking in your law, not the law for everybody, but in your law.

It's a specific address to them, and he's applying that law to them. That's what's going on there, and when

I offer that, you don't do nothing with it. You don't learn from that.

I'm not trying to be condescending. I hope I'm not sounding like that. I'm just saying that is what the Jews understood it to be.

That's what the Christian commentators have said, and I would think that you'd want to represent Christianity accurately, and I don't think you're doing that, so this challenge idea is just a diversion away from, does the

Bible teach this? Back on topic, and so would you agree or disagree with the idea that Jesus says, ask me anything in my name and I will do it?

John 14 .14 is the best explanation for the reality of what the

Bible says about him here, that he is God or that he's not God. What do you say?

Okay. Yeah, so I just want to address your...

I want to call your bluff. You don't have an answer for the issue of epilepsy, so you're trying to create this facade.

This is not part of the topic. The topic is not about epilepsy. It's already been explained to you several times how this is relevant to the topic.

It's about you believing in it yourself. If I was in your shoes, and like I told you other

Christians did, I would go there. I'd say, Jesus is my Lord. My Lord diagnosed people with those symptoms as having epilepsy, and if I really believe he's

God, I would do it. I'd go to the Mayo Clinic. You remember that father who diagnosed his son as being demon possessed because that was on epilepsy .com?

I would do the same thing if I truly believed it. Of course, the topic is not what

Matt Slick believes, but I'm seeing if you're consistent with your own beliefs. So I think it's pretty clear

Matt is running away. He can see the error of his book, I mean of his so -called

God man, who if he was truly God, he would not have created this type of horrible confusion which led to the persecution or centuries -old persecution by stigmatizing people who have disabilities as being demon possessed.

God does not do that according to the Bible. According to the Bible, God is supposed to bring healing, not misery, to people who are vulnerable.

Jesus cannot be God. That's well within the topic, and you're just running away. But going back to your explanation of John chapter 10 verse 34, you know, you said he's just, he's mocking, you know, he's just, so like, it's like, he would never say that you're really mean, that you're really all

God. These are all your own wacky, quacky interpretations that you're trying to shove down our throats because that's all

Christianity is. You just take your interpretation and you shove it down people's throats. But it's not just me.

Look, I showed you the Mormon, Christian, as well as other celebrities who all believe they're gods.

We're just not buying into your interpretations, and that's the problem here.

This is where you are being defeated. You're not able to reconcile the contradiction without giving some wacky, quacky interpretation.

And the divinity of Christ should not contain any interpretation. It should clearly, explicitly teach the stuff, and it doesn't.

What the argument here is from the biblical point of view, it is inconclusive. There's no intelligent way you're going to know that you are not

God, but Jesus is the real God. There is no way you can know that for sure. You just can, all you're just doing is giving wacky, quacky interpretations maps.

Okay. Well, again, the debate is not about what I ought to do if I believe Jesus is

God. The debate is whether or not the Bible teaches that he is. The quote, I'll just remind you again, is

Jesus divine according to the Bible? That's what it is. The topic is, is he divine according to the

Bible? It's not what ought you to do if that is believed or denied. It's not it.

So you need to stay with the debate, the debate topic. You're outside of the topic. So I'm going to ask you here, in Hebrews 1 .8,

it says, God the father speaking, but of the son, he, he's the father, says your throne, oh

God, is forever and ever. And the righteous scepter is a scepter of his kingdom. Regarding this verse, that's what we're talking about.

Does the Bible teach that he's divine? Here's a verse in the Bible. Does this verse teach that Jesus is

God, that Jesus is divine? Does it? I can't hear him.

Really? Can you hear me? Oh, yes. You just tell me. Yes. Thank you. You just come in. Yeah. There was a little bit of blocking.

I think you, okay. Well, let me say it again then. Okay. Yes, please. All right. If you can't hear me, if something goes bad, just do that or go,

I'll do this here. Okay. That's good. Yeah. Okay. And because I don't know what's going on. Anyway, so I don't know what you heard.

I'll just repeat myself, but the, the debate is not about what a person ought to do. If you believe,

I heard that part. You were talking about something else, about some verse or something. Okay. So Hebrews one eight.

Okay. That says the topic is, does the Bible teach is divine? Is Jesus divine according to the

Bible? Here's a verse in the Bible and I'll put it in our common. I'll put it in the comments so you can see it right there.

Okay. And it says, uh, what are the son? He, he is the father in the context of the son.

That's Jesus. The father says of Jesus, your throne, Oh God is forever and ever and a scepter.

Uh, this is right. The scepter is a separate kingdom. So this is a quote from Psalm 45 verse six. And that's what it says.

Your throne, Oh God. So it's applied to Jesus. Does this verse teach that Jesus is

God according to the first? Oh, so it absolutely does. It teaches that Jesus is

God. And the Bible also teaches that you're God too. Like I told you, Jesus gave the best refutation to all of this.

I'm just using his argument. And you know, the thing is this, where, where you are, you know, not first of all,

I want to, let me, let me back up and expose what you are trying to do. You are, you are bluffing.

Okay. You're bluffing to everybody here. I want to call your bluff. You are trying to pretend to people that you really do have an answer for epilepsy.

It's just that you don't want to give it to people because it's really off topic. No, you, by now you could have given that response.

If you really had it, you spend more time trying to convince us it's off topic than answering it.

If you really did have an answer that that's called a bluff. You don't, irregardless of whether you think it's on topic or off topic, where you should just admit to people,

I don't have an answer for that. You should just admit that rather than bluffing and pretending that you do when in fact you don't.

And you're just trying to say, oh, well, I'm the only reason I'm not giving you my answers because it's just off topic. That ain't happening.

Okay. So going back to the where, because it seems like the only place you can address is, is how the

Bible is to be interpreted. Look, the issue is here. Jesus says you are God. Okay.

That disproves his divinity because he's going out of his way to create confusion. All those Mormon Christians, as well as many others, they think they're

God. They're not buying into your interpretation. And at the, what are the root cause of their misguidance?

It's the teachings of Jesus here. He's going out of his way to create this type of confusion.

He should have just said, yes, I am one in a Trinity. I'm in a hypostatic union. He should have said all of that, you know, that would have been very clear, but he goes out of his way to create confusion.

Bible says, God is not the author of confusion. Jesus is going out of there to confuse people. You try to give your personal interpretations on what you think it could mean.

Okay. Thank you. But they're just interpretations. You're not able to really present facts, not interpretation to reconcile the contradiction.

So I think in that sense, the debate's over. Well, I did explain

John 1034 and I gave the historical context for what was going on. You've dismissed that.

You said Mormons are Christians. No, they're not. Within Christianity, Mormonism is not considered Christianity.

I know the topic of Mormonism exceedingly well. I've been studying it since 1980.

And I have one of my best, a good friend is one of the experts in the world on Mormonism. Now they do teach that they can become gods, but not because of what

Jesus said. They teach that you can become God because of what Joseph Smith said, who denied that God was

God from all eternity and that he used to be a man on another planet and that he became a

God. But this is, Mormonism is not the topic. The topic is, does the Bible teach that Jesus is divine?

So that's what the topic is. I keep bringing you back to the topic and you keep introducing other things.

So you have to focus on what the topic is. And so far, several times you've said, yes, those verses teach that we're

God. Then you said, mistakenly, but it says we are all gods. No, it does not.

It says in John 10, 34, he's saying specifically to the Jews, is it not written in your law?

I said, ye are gods. He's quoting Psalm 82, 6. The Jews would understand what the context was.

He's quoting a Psalm, which is an imprecatory Psalm, a Psalm of condemnation of the righteous, unrighteous judges.

And he says, and nevertheless, you will die like men. That's the context of the quote. The Jews would have understood that, which is why

Jesus applied it to them. If you were to dismiss that context and then say, no, he's saying we're all gods.

Well, then you're just dismissing what the Bible actually says, what the context is about it. If you want, we can go to Psalm 82 and read that.

So you can actually see it's only seven verses. And we could read that and I can show you, there's what it is right there.

Yeah, well, let's do that. And so we got to count now.

Well, actually you were not able to defend yourself from my allegation that you're just bluffing to everybody here.

You don't have a good explanation or any answer for, you know, the issue of the so -called

God you're worshiping creating this type of confusion. And so I think that was, let us show for the record,

Matt was not able to answer that. But going back to your, you keep saying the topic is about does

Jesus, does the Bible teach Jesus is divine? He keeps going back to misunderstanding that what does it, what is the topic here?

Well, according to the Bible, there's a difference, but that's okay. You keep giving your personal interpretation.

You see, and let's, have you ever like just counted how many wacky, quacky interpretations you need just to get this argument to work?

I counted two wacky, quacky interpretations. The first one says, you see the Psalm, it's a condemn,

I'm just condemning you when it says you are all God, it's like condemnation. Yes, that's what it means.

That's one wacky, quacky interpretation. But even if we were to accept that, you could still be God. Okay, I'm condemning you, but you're, don't you understand you're

God too? So I'm condemning you and also reminding you that you're God too. So no, we need a new, another interpretation to interpret your first interpretation that when

I'm condemning, I'm actually denying your divinities. I counted two wacky, quacky interpretations.

He's interpreting his interpretation of the Bible. And of course, it's not just me.

I mean, many Christians see themselves as God. Now you said, it's not because of this verse.

Mormons are not misguided because of this verse. Let me go back to God questions and let me correct your misinformation.

It says over here, Mormons use these texts as proof text to show the eventual divinity of man.

They absolutely do use this test, I mean this text, and that disproves the

Bible. God is not the author of the confusion. Jesus creating a lot of confusion by calling everybody

God. Certainly you can have your interpretation of your interpretation, but you shouldn't be having any interpretation.

And it should clearly teach this so it doesn't fulfill the basic minimum requirement.

The thing is, anybody can just make up interpretations, Matt, and shove it down people's throats.

The Bible really means this, Nadir. Okay, fine.

I guess you could read it that way. You know, there's so many other ways you could read it as well.

That's not the only way you can read it. And that's where I think the debate is on.

You're not able to reconcile this contradiction. And you're not, we still haven't talked about the God man,

Melchizedek. He's got the divine attributes of God. And all you're going to do is give more wacky, quacky interpretations to try to reconcile that one.

And you shouldn't be having to do all this interpretation game. It should be working straight out of the box.

But divinity of Christ doesn't work straight out of the box. It takes a lot of reinterpretation.

It leaves you scratching your head like, oh my God, what are you doing? Just stop. Stop doing that with a

Bible. So you are not able to respond to the fact that all you are doing is just giving your own interpretation of the

Bible. And I think I've been repeating this to you several times. And if that's really what you're doing, the debate's over.

Well, let me share the screen. Oh, and by the way, Melchizedek, there are two theories about him. One, he was a king.

And the reason, without mother and without father, was just a designation of his greatness. Another theory is that he was a pre -incarnate

Christ. It's something worth considering and looking into. But let me share my screen here.

And let's see if I can do it this way. Oh, there we go. This is what Psalm 82 says.

And I was wrong. It's not seven verses. It's eight verses. God takes his stand in his own congregation.

He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked, vindicate the weak and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and destitute, rescue the weak and needy, deliver them out of the hand of the wicked?

They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes.

Arise, O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possesses the nations. So what that is, is simply him, the psalmist, giving what's called an imprecatory psalm.

He's condemning the unrighteous judges. We read it. That's what's going. They're not being right.

They're not being fair. The context of the statement is against them. The reason it says, you are gods, is because of the power of life and death that they had.

That's how the Jews always understood it. That's how the Christians have interpreted it. And for you to say, come along and just deny all that, is simply to deny what it's meant, what has been understood by it, so that when

Jesus applied it in John 10, 34, he was condemning the

Jews as their unrighteous judges, because they too were in the power and authority over the people of Israel, and they were unrighteous in the

Sanhedrin and in their pharisaical work. That's what's going on in the context. Have you ever heard of that kind of thing before from Psalm 82?

Yeah, I've heard about these type of, there's so many different type of interpretations of how

Christians try to reinterpret the text to try to show that you're not really

God, and Jesus is the only God, but no, no, you're not the only God, or you're not really

God. This is just one of the many ways people make up stuff and create their own interpretation.

But I like your creativity, I guess. Like if I want to condemn you that you're going to burn in hell, you are going to burn in hell,

Matt. You're God. No, I don't mean you're really God, I just mean you're going to burn in hell. Don't think you're,

I didn't mean you're really God. These are all wonderful ways to read the

Bible. We can try to put whatever spin we want on it, and like I said,

I can't stop you from reinterpreting it in a way that you like to interpret it.

That's perfectly fine, but I think you once again shot yourself in the foot with Melchizedek.

He said there's two theories on that. Theories? This man has the attribute of God, and wait a second, why is this

Melchizedek not inside your Trinity? There should be four Godheads in there. Melchizedek should be one.

Well, why is he not there? Well, I have a theory on that. There's like two theories. This is exactly my point.

Christians are just following conjecture. There should be no theories. There should be no creative interpretation.

All of this de lulu that you're giving us should not be there.

If it's there, then Jesus is not God. If you have to reinterpret these texts to try to show that, no, no, no, you're really not

God. Jesus is God, and you present all these theories and baloney interpretations, which is really what it is.

When I'm condemning you, I'm really telling you you're God. Hey, God, what? You call me

God? Yeah, what? You call me God? Really? That's how people talk? Okay, that's how you condemn and I don't mean to laugh at you,

Matt, but I think the debate is over. There's no intelligent way based on facts that you're going to be able to decipher you're the real

God, and I'm sorry, Jesus is the real God, but you're really not God, and Melchizedek really isn't

God. Jesus is God, okay? When you said all I have is theories to try to clear up all this confusion, that's it.

It's over. Let's go home. I'm hungry. Oh, Matt, are you there?

Yeah, if you want to go, that's fine. Okay, no, I think the debate's over. I mean, all you have are interpretations, so if that's the case,

I think we can leave it to the jury now. That's fine, if you want to do that, but since you've already...

I need you to accept that all you have is interpretations. Since you've already admitted that the Bible teaches that Jesus is divine,

I took several notes here where you said that. Yeah, the explanation would be that, and then you said, yeah, and that we're all

God, but you see, when I offer a contradictory explanation to what you believe, you dismiss it, and you don't seem to adapt.

No offense, Matt, but you don't seem to adapt to actually what I'm saying with the verses, the scriptures.

We Christians don't believe that we're God, and we understand what the context is of John 10, 34, which

I don't believe you understand that context. That's why we went to Psalm 82, to look at what was being said, why he applied it to the

Pharisees, so that we understand what's going on in the context. So obviously, they denied that he was

God in flesh. The Jews obviously denied that, and you agree with the Jews that he's not

God in flesh. That's why you're arguing against the deity of Christ. But you've already admitted that, yeah, the best explanation to Hebrews 1 .8,

thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, is, well, yeah, he's God, or that he's indwelling us, or that he can answer prayers.

Does the Bible teach that he has these divine qualities? Yes. When you bring up Melchizedek, and I addressed the issue of Melchizedek, and tell you there's two main camps of thought on this.

One is that he was a very high -ranking being, a king, who was just used as that title, without father, without mother.

And I understand that that comes, that it has existed as a title in other cultures around that time.

But the other one is as a pre -incarnate Christ. I'm just telling you different explanations. But you see, the thing is, the

Bible does teach that Jesus is divine. That's what we're going after. And I'm really kind of confused why you continue to offer fallacious argumentation, fallacious inferences, without addressing specifically what the text says.

You really, you know, maybe we go back to Hebrews 1a, where it says, but of God, but of the

Son, he, God, the Father, says, Thy throne, O God. Do you admit that that verse is calling

Jesus God, thereby saying that the Bible teaches he's divine? Do you agree?

Oh yeah, there are verses which deify Jesus, but there are verses which deify you, and there are verses which deify

Melchizedek. See, the problem, I think, you're not understanding is you say, okay, well, what you have are main camps of thoughts.

You said there's explanations. I'm just giving you theories. All of that should not be there.

You should not be having to do this. The Bible should clearly state that Jesus is

God. It should clearly state that and not cause all this other problems of, oh, wait a second, this guy's

God here. This guy's God here. No, that'll, and which now you have to go back in there and do this type of damage control and say, there's two main camps of thoughts.

There's explanations. You're, the right thing to do is hold off and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's put this book down.

We can't figure out in an intelligent, accurate way, who is really

God and who's not God. Not start giving camps of thoughts, theories, explanations, and interpretations.

No, you're supposed to stay away unless you have an intelligent, you know, way to figure out who's

God and who's not God. You shouldn't go near that book, but what you're doing, you're, you're going, trying to curve religion off this confusion.

So the two arguments here is number one, you, there's, you, there shouldn't be any kind of personal interpretation on this matter, but there is.

Secondly, what you are not able to deny is that Jesus did create this confusion himself by claiming everybody is

God. Now I understand you have your own personal interpretation and it's all cleared up for me, but it's not cleared up for other people.

People are not going to buy into that kind of, you know, weird interpretation stuff you're getting, and they're going to believe that they are

God's and ultimate responsibility on this all falls on the shoulder of Jesus because he is going out of his way to create confusion.

The Bible says God is not the author of confusion, and therefore Jesus cannot be God because he's a king of confusion.

So I think the debate's over. You said there shouldn't be any personal interpretation.

Unless you said, I was writing down what you said. Then you can't interpret it either, since that would be your personal interpretation.

So are you then giving me a double standard? No, what I'm telling you is whether if Jesus is

God, according to the Bible, it is inconclusive. One will not know for sure that if he is

God or not because you're God and everyone else is God, and there's no intelligent way to really know for sure what's going on here.

Were you giving me your personal interpretations of Melchizedek? No, that's explicitly stating, when it explicitly states that he has neither beginning of days nor end of life.

That is a divine quality, which you actually said in your opening presentation, that Jesus has the divine qualities of God, attributes of divinity.

Great. So does Melchizedek. Why is he not in the Holy Trinity? You said, well,

I can give you some schools of thoughts on that. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. One of the schools of thought is a pre -incarnate

Christ. So if he - That's a quacky interpretation that this is really Jesus, what he's, I guess he's like, this is something he's like a invasion of the body snatcher type thing, where he's putting on some costume and pretending he's

Melchizedek. Come on, man. These are all some bizarre, weird interpretations you're giving us here.

They're laughable. How you guys try to plug the holes in this divinity of Christ stuff. When I quoted

Hebrews 1 .8, where it says, you said, preamble this, you said, we need a clear statement in the

Bible that calls Jesus God. I gave you a very clear statement, Hebrews 1 .8, by your own words.

But at the sun, he says, thy throne, oh, God is forever and ever. So just to be clear, do you agree that that is a clear designation of the

Bible calling Jesus God? Yeah. And it's just as clear as John chapter 10, verse 34, stating you're

God too. Okay. So you said that there's verses that deify me. What verses deify me?

John chapter 10, verse 34, you are all gods. Okay. And did you not hear what

I said about John 10 .34 and how the church and their Jews have always considered that? It's not a statement of deifying anybody, but it's a statement of condemnation from an imprecatory

Psalm. Yeah. Didn't you hear me laugh at your silly interpretation? Yeah. And so what the

Jews have thought, what the Christians have thought about that before you and I existed, that's just a laughable interpretation.

They're trying to plug holes in this problem that they have in their book. Yeah. It's hilarious to watch them try to reinterpret and misinterpret their books to try to get it down to one

God. Yeah. It is kind of funny. So then it's a laughable interpretation, which means it's the wrong interpretation.

So why don't you tell us what your interpretation of it is without giving us your personal interpretation, because you said we shouldn't do that.

So if you take the passage, I don't give interpretations. I only give facts.

The fact about this passage is that if you take what is written there explicitly, just like how you use those passages to deify

Jesus, if you are consistent with that, then you will have to deify everybody.

But you're not being consistent. Now you're saying, okay, well, you know what? I'm just mocking, I'm just condemning you when

I say that. Yeah. Hey, God, you rotten God.

See, I'm just condemning you. And though there's a laughable type of interpretation, you can make up whatever you want.

That's perfectly fine. But I'm not playing any interpretation game.

Rather, I'm calling it out. I'm showing everybody what's going on over here. But I think, like I said, this is debatable.

You're not going to be able to, in any intelligent way, try to reconcile the contradiction of why

God is creating confusion when the Bible says God is not the author of confusion. You're not going to be able to, in any intelligent way, show that, no, you're not

God. Only Jesus is God, even though the Bible does say you're God. All you're doing is just giving interpretation and schools of thoughts.

No, you need to present facts and say, absolutely not. No, Jesus cannot be God. And here's the evidence on this verse right here for Melchizedek or something like that.

But you don't have that. So let's move on to question and answer time. Well. Okay, gentlemen.

Yeah, that pretty much exhausts the 40 plus minute of back and forth.

We appreciate both of your comments. If you, neither one of you have any objections, we'll move on to the

Q &A. Should we do a, we forgot, should we do a closing statement? Usually it was a closing statement before Q &A.

We didn't talk about that. Okay. I wasn't sure if you wanted to do one before the Q &A or after.

Oh, you guys pick it. Usually it's before and then we do a Q &A and that's it. Very well.

What do you want to do? Yeah, we could do, make a short one, maybe two minutes. I don't know. Okay. That's exactly what

I was thinking. Two minutes. Why don't you go first then? Go ahead. Okay. Well, I think the main evidence that clearly disproves the divinity of Christ according to the

Bible was the issue of creating confusion between epileptics and demon possessed people.

I called out Matt's bluff. You try to pretend, oh, well, you see, you spend so much time trying to argue.

This is not on topic. But the truth of the matter is if you were just invested the same amount of time of giving the right answer, if you had an answer to this objection, should have gave it.

But I pointed out tonight, he had no objection. And I think, okay.

And so the, and so the issue here is that clearly disproves Jesus as being God, according to the

Bible on so many different levels, because God is not, not only is not the author of this type of confusion, but he's not the author of this type of misery and suffering caused by the teachings of Jesus upon epileptics, you know, because now they're being stigmatized as being demon possessed people.

Not just my word, but I presented two research papers from science, substantiating that these

Bible verses are creating the type of confusion, which is not supposed to be creating.

We went back and forth on how he tried to reconcile the fact that you are all

God. I mean, when Jesus was asked, you claim to be God, that was a time for him to say, yes,

I'm one in a Trinity, hypothetically unified with all the other God heads or within a

God head. We don't see that. It's like he's playing games. You are all

God. And then we've heard these funny interpretations coming from Matt. He's really condemning that you're

God. You see, which is, of course, laughable, silly interpretations. You see, the problem here is you should not have to do these silly interpretation dances to substantiate that the

Bible is teaching Jesus as God. It needs to work out of the box and it doesn't.

And this is what Allah said in the Quran about the Christian, that they follow nothing but conjecture.

This is what you are following. You have no authority, clear authority to make the claims you are claiming that Jesus is the son of God or he is

God. And that's exactly what this Bible, I'm sorry, what this debate has proved tonight. Hit my timer for two minutes.

Okay. Well, thank you for coming on and trying to debate this topic.

I think it's worth debating. I will say that I believe that, in my opinion, you had trouble staying on topic.

I constantly bring you back to it. And dare I say that I thought you were mocking, accusatory, condescending, and with terms like wacky, classy,

I don't know what the second word was, wacky something interpretations, baloney interpretations, silly interpretations.

Okay. Maybe they were, but I didn't see you defending those accusations competently, intelligently.

I'm not saying you're dumb. I'm saying you're incompetent. I just didn't see any logical argumentation in the statements that were provided.

Okay. And you did admit, however, that on several occasions that the best explanations about the scriptures that affirm the deity of Christ is that, yeah, that it's really our calling

Him God. Well, that by definition means that you conceded the debate. But then you say, yeah, we're all called

God. And then I addressed that. Don't forget, I quoted out as a reference to Isaiah 43, 10, 44, 6, 44, 8, 45, 5.

And went to Psalm 82, and we read it where the one verse that you say demonstrates all of this, we're all

God's and stuff, which is inconsistent with what the scriptures teach, your interpretation, which is interesting because you said we should not give any personal interpretations, but that's exactly what you did as demonstrated from John 10, 34.

And we went back and looked at John 10, 34 in context of Psalm 82, 6, your interpretation didn't fit.

And yet you continue to do that and then continue to call my stuff silly and wacky and baloney interpretations.

And so therefore, there we are at a time. Okay. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, for your concluding remarks.

And now we will open up the floor as it were to questions for our two presenters.

We've had a couple of variations of this one, and a couple of people have commented, this one would be for Nadir in reference to the alleged confusion in Mark and the individual that Jesus did the miracle on.

So I'm going to kind of have to put this together. So the first thing is a question.

Do you believe that a person can be demon -possessed? Yeah, I believe that.

But I think where the problem is, is that what the New Testament did, it started giving symptoms of what a demon -possessed person would look like.

And those are all the symptoms of an epileptic person or a person suffering from seizures. So now what's happening here is the

Christians are getting confused here. Every epileptic is looking like a demon -possessed person to them because of what the

Bible did. Okay, so if we grant that you believe a person could be demon -possessed, what would prevent a demon who's in control of a person from mimicking epileptic seizures to that person?

Is that a question from the audience? More or less, yeah. Okay. Could Satan hypothetically give these people the symptoms of demonic possession?

I mean, of an epileptic person, I guess. I guess he could also make a demon -possessed person look like a person with down syndromes.

Okay, but we're only speaking in the context of Mark Chapman. Well, no, no, no, no, you can't be involved. It's just him.

I'm just posing the question as it comes in. We just ask him a question, he responds,

I respond, we go to the next question. Very well, okay. So is he done?

Well, let me grab the piece of this thing here. The follow -up on that from this person is a demon -possessed person exhibiting epileptic symptoms doesn't mean all epileptic symptoms equate to demon possession.

How would you respond to that? Well, I think he's kind of dancing around the issue of the fact that now we have a book, an alleged

Lord and Savior who is creating this type of confusion between the two.

That's undeniable. Okay, that's happening. And it's caused so much misery and suffering for thousands of years towards people who had epilepsy.

And that is wrong when you look at people who have these disabilities and say, that's a result of demon possession.

Mm -hmm. I hope you can see the error with that. And that cannot be

God, according to the Bible, because the Bible, God is supposed to be a healer, not the one who's causing these problems.

Okay, well, there's more to demon possession than simply some of the symptoms that you said.

They break chains, they break ropes, they recognize who Jesus is, they call him the son of God, et cetera, et cetera.

So the problem with saying that these two, three symptoms are similar to this, therefore the

Bible is full of confusion is illogical. You see, God's not the author of confusion, but people are.

So people misapply the truth of God's word. Hence the Bible is inspired. Nothing in the Quran says the

Bible has been messed up. So we could talk about that some other time. But the thing is that there are other options here.

So this has nothing to do with the topic of whether or not the Bible says he's

God in flesh. And so I think you've made a mistake on that. Next question. Okay, this one comes from Jay.

This would be for Nadir. Sticking to the topic of the debate,

Jesus said he has the power to forgive sins. Even the Quran says only

God can forgive. Where in scripture does it say Jesus was given that power?

Yeah. So it said something that Jesus could forgive sins. Right. And that would probably, you know, some people can interpret it that he's

God. But you're God too. That's the problem here. And I just want to just mention one thing because now we're trying to have a debate on epilepsy.

Say, well, he doesn't have all the symptoms. Some symptoms are missing. Look, when people have COVID and have the flu, there's differences within the symptoms, but there's also similarities.

But there's enough similarities to cause a confusion between. Okay, I'm going to have to interrupt.

I'm not trying to be rude. But we've passed the epilepsy question. That was part of your debate.

Question and answer. These are questions from the listening audience. If you would just address the question of the audience, that would probably suffice.

And we don't get caught up in going over the same thing over and over. Here's a question,

Nadir. This individual is wondering what sect of Islam do you belong to and what scholars agree with you in your interpretations?

Well, I'm a Sunni Muslim, and I guess a lot of scholars agree with me.

I don't really have too much of a problem with scholars. Of course, I don't blindly follow them.

There might be one or two I might disagree with. But no, there's no real issue that I'm giving some different version of Islam that scholars are all against.

That's not happening. Okay. Where does it say that Jesus can forgive sins?

Luke 5, 27, 48, he forgives sins. But it specifically says all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth.

That's Matthew 28, 18. So he has all authority to do that. And so I would go with the one who has all authority to forgive sins.

This is the advantage of Christianity in that we can go to the one who has all that authority, go directly to him and ask him to forgive us of our sins.

And Jesus is faithful to do that because he's not in flesh, he died on the cross post -mortem. Go ahead.

Very well. Okay. Nadir, as a Muslim, if titles held only by Allah are accredited to Jesus in the

Bible, such as the first and the last, the truth, then should you not at least conclude the

Bible is teaching that Jesus is Allah? Yeah, I'm actually agreeing with that.

But I'm saying the Bible is teaching you are Allah. The Bible is teaching Melchizedek is Allah. And I'm saying there's no intelligent way in the

Bible based on facts, not personal interpretations, that you are going to be able to decipher who is really

Allah and who is really not. Now, of course, we know that we are not gods. We all know that.

Matt doesn't believe that. But yet, so how are you now able to prove to decipher that in an intelligent way, without going to these weird interpretations?

And from the biblical point of view, you can't, it's inconclusive. So that's where the problem is.

And that disproves the Bible, because it fails its own criteria, that God is not the author of confusion.

But yet, Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, is creating a lot of confusion.

When you tell other people you're all gods, you're creating confusion. Jesus cannot be

God. That contradiction has not been reconciled in over, throughout the whole night.

So I, so I think that's what you really need to focus. Why do I see this contradiction in my book?

Well, the Bible doesn't teach Melchizedek is God. That's an inference that you're making on your own private interpretation.

See, you said we should not give our private interpretations, yet you constantly do it. So you break your own word in this.

You break your own approach. You break your own declarations in this. You say don't give the private interpretations, and that you do it constantly, constantly, constantly.

So it appears, Nadir, that when I give you information, that you don't seem to want to adapt to that information.

See, look, if I was debating you on something out of the Quran, and you know it better than I do, and I made a statement, and you said to me, that's not our position.

What I do, whenever someone says that to me, I get my notes. I said, okay, what is your position? I want to know your position. I want to accurately represent it.

I don't want to submit your scriptures to my private interpretation.

It's called an external critique. An external critique, for the most part, is invalid. So what you have to do is go internally.

And when I show you the internal context of things, what I've seen, you tend,

I'm not trying to, you know, disparage you, but it appears to me that you're ignoring them and not encountering them, which means you're not adapting to the internal critique.

So I just don't think that you've really been engaged in the debate topic all that much tonight.

Okay, next. Okay, let's bring up the next one here.

Nadir, you may have to help us interpret this. It might be a little bit off topic.

Are tafsirs interpretations on the Quran? I'm not sure what they're trying to say. Does that make any sense?

Questions for Nadir, are tafsirs, yeah, I think he's asking a question. What is tafsir? Tafsir are explanations and interpretations on the

Quran. The issue with, you know, if you pick up, you open the

Quran, who is Allah? Who is Jesus? These are things which are explicitly taught, where there really is no confusion.

There is, it is, there's no, you know, problems where you saw today with the Bible. And that's the basic minimum requirement we need is that type of clarity, which doesn't exist in the

Bible, but it does exist in Islam. But it doesn't mean it proves your book is correct. But that's the basic minimum requirement for us to even begin to entertain if Jesus is

God or not. And the Bible just doesn't have that clarity. And so it doesn't meet the basic minimum requirement.

Well, the question was, is a tafsir an interpretation of the Quran? Yes, it is. It's commentaries on the

Quran. That's what it is. Okay. Okay, next question.

Since Nadir is arguing against Christ's divinity, he has to explain how it is that Christ has the attributes of God by nature.

Mm hmm. Melchizedek has the attributes of God by nature.

You know, I'm not able to respond in the question and answer time to what Matt was saying. So he's kind of an advantage where he's able to answer everything

I'm saying. I'm not able to rebut him. But in Hebrews chapter seven, verse three, it said

Melchizedek has neither beginning of days nor end of life. That's a divine attribute of God.

Okay. If you have that attribute, then you're God. That's pretty clear. How are you now?

Why is Melchizedek not in the Trinity? He should have been inducted in the Trinity a long time ago. He should be worshipped as God because he does have the divine attributes, but he's not.

Okay. And when you ask what would the explanations we were given tonight, he will first of all, you should have had a very good, solid answer based on evidence.

He said there's schools of thoughts. There's theories on that. No. You see, this goes back to the issue of clarity.

Nowhere can you say now that Jesus is God in spite of all the verses which deify him, because there's verses which do deify other people.

And so now you got that lack of clarity. That's exactly what Allah said about the

Christians in the Quran in surah four, verse 157, that they follow nothing but conjecture.

And your attempt to try to make Melchizedek not God, it's all conjecture.

All you're doing is giving conjecture on the way you try to explain John chapter 10, verse 34, where it says you are all

God. That's all conjecture, exactly like Allah said in the Quran that Christians do.

And that's not what you should be putting your faith in. If we were to assume that the appellation or the titles in Hebrews 7, 3, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, made like the son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

Let's assume that those mean he's divine. We would have no problem with that in biblical theology, because God appears in the

Old Testament in many places. In Genesis chapter three, he walked with Adam and Eve. He appears to Abraham in Genesis 17, 1 and 18, 1.

In Exodus 6, 2 and 3, he appears to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty, as he does in Exodus 24, 9 to 11 to Moses.

The Bible tells us in first Timothy 6, 16, that it's the father can never be seen. Jesus says no one's ever seen the

God, the father specifically. No one's seen the father at any time. Only the one from God has seen him and understand him,

John 6, 46. This is a topic I'm extremely familiar with. I can quote these verses to you. I can go through them.

So if you want to say that that Hebrews 7, 3 means that it's God, well, then it would be the second person of the

Trinity who consistently appears in the Old Testament. It's called a

Christophany. There's many places where the pre -incarnate Christ appears in the

Old Testament. It's a commonly understood phenomenon within Christian theology. I happen to be well versed in it.

I'm not trying to boast. I'm just saying I know the topic. I've been debating it and teaching on it for a long time.

And if you want to say that Hebrews 7, 3 says that it means he's God, then we have no problem with that because it's consistent with what the scriptures would say about the pre -incarnate

Christ manifestation as being divine in the Old Testament. And that would be that he is part of the

Trinity in that. So it's not a problem at all. Okay. And on to the next question.

And we're coming pretty close to the end of our time. Are there any that are aimed at me so that he has the last?

Well, I don't see any specific. How about this?

How about this? If I answer first so that he can get the last one. I think it's fair.

I want to be fair to him. And so it's a little frustrating.

It should be back and forth, but it's not. So let's adjust that if that's okay. Is that okay with you, Near? Yeah, you go first.

I need you to respond to some of the things you said. Great. So we'll just put this out generically. Please give your very brief thoughts on 2

Timothy 3, 16 and 17, which says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for and on and on.

Well, I believe that the Bible is true and I've studied its reliability. I've studied its historicity.

I've studied the New Testament document transmission methodology. I've studied it in the original

Greek. I've studied it in different things and it's incredibly well preserved. And so when it says scripture, scripture is a graph.

It has to do with the handwriting, with the writing form. And the word inspired is the epnustos in the

Greek, which means it's God breathed that comes from him. And so because it is, it's worthy of correction or proof, et cetera, and things like that, because it's

God's word. Yes. And that's interesting because God said his word, let there be light and God, the word

John 1, 1 became flesh and dwelt among us. That's who Jesus is. Yeah, go ahead.

2 Timothy 3, 16 is talking about the Old Testament. Okay. It talked about the scriptures, which

Timothy knew as a child. This is not talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All these books were written afterwards, or even the epistles of Paul is not talking about letters and intercepted mail, which is what a lot of the

New Testament is. The, and so what this brings up an interesting point that if you look at the gospels and the

New Testament, it never actually claimed to be from God, that this is God's word. This is what

Christians impose upon the text, but those Bible writers never actually made that claim.

2 Timothy 3, 16 is only talking about the Old Testament. And actually one of the challenges

I would put out here tonight is, you know, the Quran. Is the Quran the word of God?

Can it, we've talked about scientific issues with the Bible. What I will tell you is unlike the

Bible, the Quran is in complete harmony with modern science. And I would even extend a challenge for Matt to try to show any kind of scientific problems like we saw tonight with the

Bible, with the Quran, you'll never be able to do that. So I will extend that challenge to Matt.

You want me to do that right now? Gentlemen, we want to thank you so much for devoting the time to enlighten us on your positions.

And we appreciate that. And thanks to all the individuals that sent in the questions.

Obviously in a forum like this, there's more questions than we could possibly answer in one sitting.

As you know, at the, to the asking of questions, like the writing of books, there seems to be no end.

And so with that, again, we want to thank you and we will end our live stream at this time, unless either one of you has anything else.

Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for being on Nadir. It was entertaining. It was interesting.

And I hope you have a good evening. All right. Thanks guys. I'll talk to you later.

All right. Okay, folks, I'm going to set up an after show. Give me 10 minutes.