Trinity and Tawhid

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:01

The following presentation is a production of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc. and is protected by copyright laws of the

00:07

United States and its international treaties. Copying or distribution of this production without the expressed written permission of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc.

00:16

is prohibited. The topic for tonight is a dialogue on the Trinity and Tawheed, a

00:22

Muslim and a Christian dialogue. You know, in our world today, people think that Muslims and Christians cannot dialogue and talk together, and we as South Africans had to import people, well, from America, next week we've got

00:37

Dr. Shabbir Ali, to show and to prove to the world that we can. As a rainbow nation, we've got, and I just want you to give yourself an applause, because that is a wonderful achievement.

00:51

I just also want to note that the IPCI will do the recording tonight, and afterwards a master copy will be handed to all the sides after debate, so if you want a copy of the dialogue that we have tonight, you're welcome to purchase it from all the

01:04

IPCI or Antwoord Bedieningen, or Antwoord, if you type that in on the internet, not the band

01:10

Da Antwoord, please, it's just Afrikaans for the answer, and you're welcome to get it from their website as well.

01:18

What I just quickly want to do is reflect with you on the structure of the debate for tonight, or the dialogue for tonight, due to the fact that we really need to lay down what we want to achieve.

01:27

First of all, there will be four categories that we will look at and that we will go through. Number one, we will have a conversation about the objective facts.

01:36

What we will do is we will give a definition on our concept of God, as deduced for Yusuf Pax from the concept of the

01:42

Quran, under Tawheed, the concept of Tawheed, and then from Dr. White's perspective, a biblical reaction or biblical definition under Trinity.

01:53

Every speaker's got 15 minutes from the lecture and right over here, and they can speak from here.

01:58

After that, we're going to have questions about the objective ideas, which simply means that Mr.

02:04

Yusuf Pax can give objections to the doctrine of the Trinity in 10 minutes, and likewise,

02:11

Dr. White can give objections to the doctrine of Tawheed from a Christian perspective. What we're going to do after that is we're going to enter into the third section of the dialogue, and we're going to have crossfire questions where each speaker is going to have approximately 15 minutes, which would equate to five questions, two minutes each with a response, a brief response from both sides to each other, which would be good.

02:35

Yusuf Pax will go first with his five questions on the Trinity, and then Dr. White will follow with that with five questions on the concept of Tawheed and the

02:43

Trinity for 15 minutes, and then after that, we will have our closing statements, and that will be the night.

02:51

I will now ask just from the Muslim side, and ask everybody just to respect that.

02:57

We're going to have Iman Mulana Pandu and Sheikh Sultan from Egypt basically coming to do the prayer for the

03:05

Muslim part of the debate, so we can invite them to come do that for us right now.

03:10

Thank you very much. Iman Mulana Pandu.

04:06

Iman Mulana Pandu. Iman Mulana Pandu.

04:52

Iman Mulana Pandu.

05:40

Iman Mulana Pandu. Iman Mulana Pandu.

06:52

Iman Mulana Pandu. Iman Mulana Pandu.

07:42

Iman Mulana Pandu. Iman Mulana Pandu. Peace be with you. Just a translation on what the esteemed brother from Egypt has recited.

07:47

He has recited a passage of the Qur 'an from Surah Maryam, the meaning of which is, and mentioned in the book, the story of Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place towards the east, and she took in seclusion from them a screen.

08:03

Then we sent to her an angel, and he presented himself to her as a well -proportioned man. She, Mary, said,

08:09

Indeed, I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, so leave me, if you should be fearing of God. He said,

08:15

I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you news of a pure boy. She said, How can

08:20

I have a boy while no man has touched me, and I have not been unchaste? He said,

08:27

Thus it will be. Your Lord says, It is easy for me, and we will make him, that is Jesus, a sign to the people and a mercy from us, and it is a matter decreed.

08:36

So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place, and the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree.

08:44

She said, Oh, I wish I had died before this, and I was oblivious and forgotten. But he called her from below,

08:51

Do not grieve. Your Lord has provided beneath you a stream, and shake towards you the trunk of the palm tree.

08:58

It will drop upon you fresh date fruit. So eat and drink and be content.

09:06

And if you see among anybody saying, Indeed, I have vowed to the most merciful abstinence, so I will not speak to anybody today.

09:14

Then she brought him to her people, carrying him. They said, Oh, Mary, you have certainly done a thing unprecedented.

09:21

Oh, sister of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil, nor was your mother unchaste. So she, that is

09:26

Mary, pointed to him, the baby, that is Jesus. They said, How can we speak to one who is in the cradle, a child?

09:33

Jesus said, this is the first words which Jesus ever spoke, spoken about in his life when he was born.

09:38

The first thing he ever said, he said, Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the scripture, that is the gospel, and has made me a prophet.

09:47

And he has made me blessed wherever I am. And he has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive.

09:54

And made me dutiful to my mother, and he has not made me a wretched tyrant. And peace upon me the day

10:00

I was born, the day I will die, and the day I will be resurrected. That is

10:05

Jesus, the son of Mary, the word of truth about which they are in dispute. It is not befitting for God to take a son.

10:12

Exalted is he. When he decrees an affair, he says to it, Be, and it is. Jesus said,

10:20

And indeed, Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship him. That is the straight path. Another verse of the

10:27

Quran which I'd like to share with all our friends here. Allah says in the Quran, The person who repents, and has faith in one

10:43

God, and does good deeds, that will be the criterion for him to be successful. I leave you with that, and I welcome our guest in our country, and I'd like to present him a present, and hopefully it will assist him in his studies, understanding

10:55

Islam. Thank you so much. And now for the

11:01

Christian side, we've got Pastor Tim Cantrell from Antioch Bible Church for the prayer for the Christian side. Let's pray.

11:13

Our God and Father, we do thank you for this special occasion. We thank you for this opportunity to study your word, and to understand your great salvation through the

11:25

Lord Jesus Christ for a sinful lost humanity. We who deserve nothing but your wrath are given your grace in the

11:33

Lord Jesus, the one of whom the angel said, You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

11:40

We thank you, Father, that there is a savior for our sins. We pray that you would be honored in this occasion tonight.

11:45

We as Christian people thank you for the gift of your son, the Lord Jesus, the gift of your

11:51

Holy Spirit. We thank you for the words of the Lord Jesus who said that we are to be baptized in the name of the

11:57

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank you also for the freedoms here in South Africa that we enjoy.

12:03

Thank you because of the blessing of Christian principle that there is religious freedom, that we are able to have this debate openly.

12:11

Thank you for our Muslim friends who are here and willing to openly discuss and dialogue about these important truths that are of eternal significance and great consequence.

12:24

And so we pray that you would be honored, that you would give wisdom, that you would be glorified through your son, the

12:31

Lord Jesus Christ, and by your Holy Spirit. We commit to you this time, we thank you for Rudolf and for his church and all those who have labored to bring this occasion about, that we could indeed know you and worship you more as the triune

12:49

God, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. We're now going to have

12:56

Ahmed Bax introduce his father as the first speaker, and then after that I'll just quickly make an introduction for Dr.

13:02

White. Ahmed. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. In the name of God, the most gracious, most merciful.

13:08

An introduction to my father, Yusuf Bax. Yusuf was born and raised in the

13:13

United Kingdom, England. He came to South Africa at the age of 18. Father from South Africa, a political exile to the

13:21

United Kingdom, mother from England. Brought up in an irreligious political household, his late father having

13:28

Marxist ideologies and mother from a Church of England background. Yusuf started attending the

13:34

Catholic Church with friends at about the age of 14. After two years he realized he could not understand the

13:39

Christian faith and became an atheist. For two years he had the view that there was no God, until he met the late

13:46

Ahmed Dirat on a visit to South Africa, where he accepted Islam in the hand of the late

13:52

Sheikh. Since that meeting with the giant from the Muslim world, Yusuf has had a great passion and love for comparative religion and propagating

14:00

Islam. He has been involved in open days at different mosques, giving church groups tours of the mosque, interfaith dialogues with churches and debates, public speaking on Islam and Christianity, and training programs on Dawa.

14:15

Yusuf is a husband and father of four, a businessman. His other hobbies include racing radio -controlled cars and cycling.

14:22

Thank you so much. Just a short introduction on Dr. James White. Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a

14:31

Christian apologetic organization that is based in Phoenix, Arizona in America. He's the author of more than 20 books, a professor, an accomplished debater, and has participated in over 130 public moderated debates, covering topics such as Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism, the

14:48

King James Only movement or controversy, Jehovah's Witnesses, and atheism. His debate opponents have been including scholars such as Bharti Ehrman, John Dominic Crossing, and Marcus Borg, and others such as Dan Barker, John Selby Spong, your own

15:03

Yusuf Ismail, and also Dr. Shabbir Ali. I also just want to advertise for next week, if you did not know about that, him and Dr.

15:11

Ali will be debating in Pretoria and in Erasmia. Dr. White is an elder of Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

15:18

He's married to Kelly and they have two children, a son called Joshua and a daughter called Summer, and he has one grandchild.

15:26

Thank you very much. And with that, allow me to introduce the first stage of this debate where every speaker will have approximately 15 minutes to present the case as produced from the

15:37

Koran and the understanding of the concept of Tawheed and the Trinity as reduced and deduced from the

15:44

Koran and the Bible. I know you do cycling, so that might help you.

15:53

And it's quite hot here in South Africa. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

16:01

In the name of almighty God, most gracious, most merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

16:14

All praise is due to the one God who reveals himself through his prophets, messengers, and divine revelation.

16:24

I bear witness that there is but one God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the last and final messenger from God to man.

16:37

I greet you with the greeting words of peace. As -salamu alaykum.

16:43

Peace be with you. Respected Chairman, esteemed guest, Dr. James White, ladies and gentlemen of the audience, it is so nice to see you all here tonight, friends and colleagues and some people

17:00

I don't know, my wife, my children, even my small babies here too.

17:07

Christian Trinity or Islamic Tawheed. I was meant to give a definition of Tawheed from the

17:19

Koran and the Bible, that's what I'm going to do. Some of the things I say might be sensitive to some of you, but please listen to all of the facts without any prejudice.

17:34

The glorious Koran in chapter Nisa 4 .1 .7 .1 sends out a very clear warning, and don't say three.

17:45

Desist. It will be better for you, for your God is one.

17:52

We read in the Bible very clearly stated in Isaiah 43 .10

17:59

-11, you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

18:06

Before me no God was formed nor shall there be any after me.

18:13

I am the Lord and besides me there is no saviour. Malachi 2 .15

18:21

has not the one God made and sustained for us the spirit of life?

18:32

The Bible in Deuteronomy 6 .4 says, Hear O Israel, the

18:38

Lord our God, the Lord is one. And Jesus repeated these very same words in the

18:47

Gospel of Mark chapter 12 verse 29. O hear

18:53

O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

18:59

Not God is three in one, God is one. Both the glorious Koran and the

19:11

Bible claim that God Almighty is one and only one.

19:18

Where did any Christian get this idea of God being three in one? In a

19:24

Trinity from? And how can any Christian believe such a thing when no prophet in the entire

19:32

Bible including Jesus, peace be upon him, never ever taught such a thing?

19:39

And the word Trinity is not in any version of the

19:47

Bible. The only place in the whole of the

19:52

Bible which unequivocally supports this doctrine is in the first epistle of John chapter 5 verse 7.

20:04

Here in this Bible, it's there. But it's not in my

20:11

Bible. In this Bible, it's not there. The Good News Bible. Now you see it, now you don't as it's on the screen there.

20:21

Did God Almighty come down and say, listen, that verse shouldn't be there, take it out.

20:28

No. Man took it out. Scholars of Christianity, they took it out.

20:35

They said it shouldn't be in the original manuscripts. It was just a footnote of the

20:42

Apostle John. And it crept into the text. Nowhere is it found in the modern

20:52

Bibles today. The newer versions of the Bible, you don't find it. There is no leg to stand on.

21:00

This doctrine of the Trinity is just a made up thing. It is just an idea, a fallacy created by man and not

21:10

God. And you Trinitarian Christians are believing an irrational idea, something made up, something

21:18

Jesus, peace be upon him, never taught. Dr.

21:24

Whyte, in your 15 minutes, would you be able to give me just one verse where Jesus or any prophet in the

21:34

Bible clearly taught the Trinity or just one verse where Jesus, peace be upon him, clearly defines

21:42

God as being Father, Son and Holy Ghost or three in one. As the

21:50

Trinity doctrine should be well emphasized from the mouths of the prophets and from Jesus, peace be upon him.

22:01

Coming to Jesus now. First off, I would like you to know that we Muslims believe that Jesus, peace be upon him, is a mighty messenger of God.

22:13

We believe he is the Messiah, the Christ. And he is mentioned 25 times by name in the glorious Quran.

22:23

Nowhere in any three versions of my

22:29

Bible does Jesus say he is

22:34

God. He is the 66 of the King James, the 88 of the

22:40

Good News Bible and the 73 of the Catholic Bible. Nowhere in any of these versions of the

22:48

Bible does Jesus say he is God. Or did he teach that he's the second person of the

22:57

Godhead and he never, ever taught the Trinity doctrine? Or that God is three in one?

23:05

In John 18, 28, Jesus says he taught nothing in secret.

23:11

Jesus, peace be upon him, refused to be called good in Mark 10, 18.

23:17

We read Jesus saying, why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone.

23:27

Jesus in this verse is clearly giving exclusivity to God Almighty when he said alone.

23:35

If Jesus, peace be upon him, was part of God or part of the Trinity, he would not have said this.

23:43

We read in John 14, 28, Jesus saying, if you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the

23:54

Father, for he is greater than I. We read in Mark 13, 32,

24:02

Jesus saying, but of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the

24:13

Son, but the Father. Only the Father knows. Jesus, peace be upon him, is clearly telling you that he is not

24:23

God or is equal. In Mark 12, 28, we read about the teacher of the law asking

24:30

Jesus, peace be upon him, which commandment is the most important of all?

24:35

Jesus replied, the most important one is this, O hear,

24:41

O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, Mark 12, 29.

24:49

Then in Mark 12, 32, the teacher of the law said to Jesus, well done, teacher, it is true as you say that only the

25:01

Lord is God and that there is no other God but he. If there was such a thing as the

25:09

Trinity, this would have been the right time and place to teach it.

25:14

But Jesus, peace be upon him, never, because there is no such thing in the religion of Jesus, peace be upon him.

25:23

We read in Mark 4, 5 -7, then the devil took him,

25:28

Jesus, up and showed him in a second all the kingdoms of the world. I will give you all this power and all this wealth, the devil told him.

25:40

It has all been handed over to me and I can give it to anyone I choose.

25:46

All this will be yours then if you worship me. How can this be if Jesus, peace be upon him, is

25:53

God or part of the Trinity? Jesus would have said if he was

25:58

God that I own everything, so how can you give me something I already own? Or that God would give up his power and give it to the devil and then tempt himself?

26:11

And if you were the devil, would you give it back? I certainly wouldn't. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

26:22

Jesus denies divinity. We read Jesus then saying to the devil in Mark 4, 8, the scripture says, worship the

26:33

Lord your God and serve him only. I think that clears it up from your

26:40

Bible, from the lips of Jesus, peace be upon him, that he is not

26:45

God or equal to him, as all the texts I just quoted are explicit texts.

26:53

The glorious Quran says in 575,

26:59

Say he, Allah, is one.

27:09

The glorious Quran says, sorry in 575, they do blaspheme who say

27:16

God is Christ, the son of Mary, but said Christ, worship God, my

27:22

Lord and your Lord, about the Holy Ghost. In Matthew 12, 32,

27:28

Jesus says, anyone who says something against the Son of Man can be forgiven, but whoever says something against the

27:37

Holy Ghost will not be forgiven now or ever. So how can Jesus, peace be upon him, be equal to the

27:44

Holy Ghost? So this means the Holy Ghost is more important and greater than Jesus, peace be upon him.

27:52

Coming to Tawhid, monotheism, is the belief in a single universal and all -knowing supreme being, namely

28:00

Allah. This forms the first pillar of Islamic belief and is the single most important concept in Islam and is central to the

28:10

Abrahamic faiths. Tawhid is the central theme of the Quran, that there is only one

28:17

God and he alone is to be worshipped. The Quran brings us back to basics, that God is one alone, without any partners.

28:25

The Quran stresses on it. The word Tawhid is not found in the Quran, but is well emphasised in the

28:32

Quran. The word Tawhid is a derivative from the Arabic word Wahada, to single out, unify, to make single.

28:40

The word Tawhid means to make something one. So the glorious Quran says,

28:46

Say he, Allah, is one, the eternal, the absolute.

28:51

He begets not, nor was he begotten, and there is nothing like him.

28:58

There is no God but I, so worship me, Quran 21 -25. Can there be another

29:04

God besides God? Say bring forth your proof, if you are telling the truth.

29:09

So there is no doubt whatsoever that the concept of Tawhid and the emphasis that God is one is in the

29:18

Quran. Allah is the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

29:23

Allah simply means the God and is used mainly by Muslims and Arab Christians.

29:29

Arab Christians today use the term such as Allah Al -Ab, meaning

29:34

God the Father. Your God is surely one, Quran 37 -4.

29:40

Tawhid is the realisation and affirmation of oneness, the unity of God, the divine unity in its most profound sense.

29:50

Allah is the real, the absolute. Allah is one in his essence, his attributes and his acts.

29:57

Before the existence of the universe, there was nothing but the creator.

30:03

He is the first and there is no last but his oneness. He is the first without anything before him.

30:12

Allah is eternal. Quran 59 -22, God is he than whom there is no other

30:20

God, the sovereign, the holy one, the source of peace and perfection, the guardian of faith, the preserver of safety, the exalted in might, the irresistible, the supreme, glory to God, high is he above the partners they attribute to him.

30:39

I thank you so much for being such an attentive audience. May God guide you to his truth.

30:46

Thank you. Thanks Yusuf.

30:55

And now we've got 15 minutes for Dr. White. Well it is indeed a pleasure to be with you all this evening.

31:01

Thank you for coming out for this dialogue. My task in my 15 minutes is to present to you why

31:08

I am a Trinitarian, why I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity especially as one very familiar with all of the arguments that were just presented and then to dialogue about the difference between that and an emphasis upon Tawhid which we will get to in the second part of our debate.

31:26

First and foremost, the reason that any person is a Trinitarian is because they read all of Scripture and not just parts of Scripture.

31:33

When you read all of what the Bible says, you are presented with three fundamental truths. The first truth is found in the

31:40

Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Here O Israel, Yahweh is our

31:46

God, Yahweh is one. The biblical testimony to monotheism is deep and broad.

31:51

It is found in both the Torah and in the Injil, in the Old Covenant and in the

31:57

New Covenant. It is without compromise. Isaiah 43 .10 was already cited,

32:02

Before me there was no God formed and there shall be none after me. Could we clear the screen please?

32:10

My presentation now. Go back to something there that's, there you go, that's good pictures of both of us even though that's from a long time ago and I don't look like that anymore.

32:24

But anyways, the testimony of Scripture is very clear. I have defended monotheism many times.

32:30

There is a group that calls itself Christian but is not a Christian group called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the Mormons.

32:36

I have debated them many, many, many times in the United States. They deny the fact there is one true

32:41

God and so I have defended the truth that there is one true and eternal God, all things are created by him.

32:47

And this is taught all through the Old Testament and the New Testament, not just in Isaiah.

32:52

If you start at Isaiah 40, go through 48, you will see it repeated over and over and over again. There is only one true and eternal

32:58

God, the prophet Jeremiah. He says that any God that did not create the heavens and the earth is a

33:04

God that will perish from under the heavens and from under the earth. This is the emphasis in the teaching of Scripture and I believe it.

33:10

And so every Christian believes there is only one true God. We do not believe in three gods. Anyone who says we believe in three gods does not understand we believe in any way, shape or form.

33:19

This is the earliest creedal statements. This is the earliest statements of the early church fathers writing after the time of the

33:24

Old and New Testaments. We believe in only one God. But we also believe that God has revealed himself.

33:32

In fact, I would submit to you that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed between the Old and the New Testaments.

33:38

That is, the New Testament is not where the revelation takes place. The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in the incarnation of the

33:44

Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So the New Testament becomes the record of what God has done in history.

33:51

We have to deal with the fact that when we look at the Bible as a whole, it reveals to us three divine persons.

33:56

We have the Father, clearly distinguished from the Son, clearly distinguished from the Spirit. We have the

34:02

Son, and we clearly have a differentiation made between the Son and the Father. The Son addresses the

34:08

Father. The Father speaks to the Son at his baptism. The Father and the Son speak of the Spirit. There is no confusion of them.

34:14

Unfortunately, there are groups, again, that call themselves Christian, that confuse the Father, Son and Spirit. They're called Jesus only or Oneness Pentecostals, and they deny the

34:22

Trinity. And they confuse the Father, the Son and the Spirit and make them one person. That is not what the

34:28

Christian church believes. But then we have all of the evidence found both prophetically in the

34:34

Old Testament and then in its fulfillment in the New Testament that tells us about the equality and co -eternality of the

34:42

Father, Son and Spirit. Now, there is confusion on the part of many people because Jesus is the

34:48

God -man. We believe that he is not a mixture of God and man. We do not believe he's 50 %

34:53

God and 50 % man. He was a true man. He was a prophet, priest, king. He is our intercessor.

34:59

All these things are true. He was a true man, and if he was not a true man, he could not have given his life upon Calvary's cross as an atonement for our sins.

35:07

But the fact of the matter is that when you allow the New Testament to speak for itself, when you don't cut it up into parts, when we use equal scales, that is,

35:15

I this evening will not cut the Koran up into parts. I will allow the Koran to speak for itself. I ask that everyone else do the same thing with the

35:21

New Testament. When you do that with the New Testament, you not only find Jesus speaking of the

35:26

Father, saying the Father is greater than I am in the context of saying to the disciples, if you loved me, you would rejoice.

35:32

I said I'm going back into the presence of the Father because just a few lines later he's going to be talking about the fact how in eternity past he shared the very glory of the

35:40

Father in his presence. His disciples should have rejoiced he was going back into that place. Not only do we have those texts, but then we have all the others that speak of Jesus Christ as Yahweh.

35:52

Yes, the one name of God in the Old Testament. The God who says in Isaiah 45, 23, to me every knee shall bow and to me every tongue shall confess.

36:01

Those very same words are applied to Jesus in Philippians chapter 2. The God who said in Isaiah chapter 48 that I will share my glory with no one.

36:11

That very God, that very text is applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

36:17

And in fact, Jesus not only accepts the worship of his followers, but after his resurrection, when

36:24

Thomas comes into his presence, and Thomas who had been doubting the resurrection, when

36:29

Jesus appears, and he says to Thomas, look at my hands and my feet, touch me and see that as I, a spirit does not have a body of flesh and bones to see that I have.

36:38

Thomas' response was to answer and say to Jesus. He answered and said to him, alto in the original language.

36:44

It can't be to somebody else, it's the singular. It is addressed to Jesus. He says to Jesus, my

36:51

Lord and my God. Now if Jesus was merely a prophet, he should have said, don't say that.

36:57

That's exactly what happened in the book of Revelation. When John bowed down before an angel, the angel said, don't do that. Worship God alone.

37:04

But when Thomas said these words to Jesus, what was Jesus' response? Thomas, because you have seen me, have you believed?

37:11

Blessed are those who do not see, and yet they have believed. Those words of Jesus that he uttered to the

37:19

Jews in John 8, verse 24, must echo in our minds this evening.

37:26

Jesus said to people who were closer to him than you are to me, he said, unless you believe that ego

37:33

I am, you will die in your sins. Well, they believed he was a man.

37:39

They would have accepted him as a prophet. They would have accepted him as Messiah, especially after he fed 5 ,000 people with a few loaves of bread and the fishes.

37:47

But that wasn't enough. What they would not accept him as was ego I am, the I am.

37:54

And at the end of that chapter, men who up to that point in time had found him to be an interesting speaker, had even believed in him in a surface level way, were picking up stones to stone him because he said, before Abraham was,

38:05

I am, and they understood exactly what those words meant. The Lord Jesus said things that no mere prophet could ever say.

38:15

And he did things that no mere prophet could ever do. And his followers then attributed to him the names and activities of God that, again, could never be attributed to a mere prophet.

38:27

And they were all monotheists. In fact, it's fascinating to me that one of the earliest confessions of faith we find in the

38:34

New Testament is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 8. And there, the Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Corinth in the very earliest decades of the

38:44

Christian experience, takes the Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

38:50

He takes that statement of monotheism, he takes it as it is found in the Greek translation of the

38:56

Old Testament called the Greek Septuagint, because, of course, that's the language of the people in Corinth. And he takes the very words that were found in the

39:03

Septuagint, the word God, Thaos, the word Lord, Kurios, and he reveals to us that already at this point in history, all the followers of Jesus recognized that they continued to believe the

39:21

Shema, but the Shema had now been fulfilled in a great way. You see, there have been prophecies in the

39:27

Old Testament, and those prophecies were of one who would come. In Isaiah chapter 9, it is said the one who would come is called

39:35

Wonderful, Counselor. And then what's he also called? He's also called El Gabor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Aviat, which means

39:45

Father of Eternity, the one who creates time, Prince of Peace. And those fulfillments had been found in the person of Jesus Christ.

39:53

He fulfilled those prophecies in a way that no one else possibly could. And so the early

39:58

Christians now recognize this, and what we have in 1 Corinthians 8, 6 is Paul saying, yet for us, for us followers of Jesus, there is but one

40:07

God, there's Thaos, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one

40:14

Kurios, Kurios being the translation of the name Yahweh, one Lord, Jesus the

40:20

Messiah, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

40:27

Now whatever else you do with this text, you must realize that first of all, Paul is purposefully utilizing the very statement of monotheism that every faithful Jew repeated every morning.

40:37

And we also must realize that he is saying that it is through Jesus that all things have come into existence, and that we exist through him.

40:49

That was the same confession of faith that we find in Colossians chapter 1. For by him were all things created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities.

41:00

All things are created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

41:06

My friends, there is no question that those words are describing our creator. And that is the testimony of the entirety of the

41:15

New Testament taken as a whole, allowed to speak consistently for itself. You cannot reduce the

41:23

Jesus of the New Testament down to a mere prophet. And here is the question.

41:30

If that was the consistent testimony, 600 years before the

41:36

Quran came into existence, in our knowledge of it, however you view its origins. If that was the consistent testimony of the

41:44

Torah in the Injil, which the Quran says are netzal, sent down. They contain light and guidance. Then we cannot be neutral about this person,

41:54

Jesus. Because if we are right, then every person in this room, every person in this room is the creation of Jesus.

42:06

Every breath you take, every beat of your heart, comes from his hand and continues to do so.

42:12

As Paul said in Colossians 2 .9, For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. That which makes

42:19

God, God, dwells in Jesus in bodily form. We cannot be neutral about him.

42:25

And that is why I am so passionate about this discussion. I understand what

42:31

Tawhid means. I honor the proclamation of monotheism. But what we really should be discussing this evening is not the misunderstanding that many

42:41

Muslims have of the Trinity and of the New Testament. What we should be discussing is how can we, as individuals, all individuals in this room, we all say

42:51

God is one. And you say, no, you're violating that. And I say, no, I am not. One being of God shared by three persons.

42:59

Why is it that all the monotheistic writers of the New Testament took that one name of God, the one name by which

43:06

God was known, Yahweh, and they apply it to three distinct persons? Clearly in the

43:12

New Testament, the father is Yahweh. It's Yahweh who lays our sins upon the suffering servant,

43:18

Isaiah 53. And yet they then over and over again, John tells us in John chapter 12, for example, that the person that Isaiah saw sitting upon the throne in his temple vision on Isaiah 6, you know who

43:30

John says that was? That was Jesus. In Hebrews chapter 1, the writer of the

43:36

Hebrews quotes from Psalm 102, 25 through 27, which is about Yahweh and how

43:41

Yahweh never changes and how all of creation will grow old and he will discard it, but he never changes.

43:48

And the writer to the Hebrews writing before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 very clearly applies that passage to Jesus.

43:57

Now in the same book, he calls Jesus a man, a prophet, a priest. But he also identifies him as Yahweh.

44:11

Tawhid, the oneness, wahad, to make one. Is it to be applied to the being of God?

44:19

We agree that is the prophetic message. There is only one God over against all the false gods of the peoples. No question about it.

44:25

That's the message from beginning to end of the prophetic scriptures. But where the problem is, is when you enforce that to the point of saying that God cannot reveal anything more about himself so that that one infinite being of God actually is shared by three divine persons, the

44:42

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One God, one name of God, not three gods.

44:49

Allah is not one of three. That is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. And one of the questions we need to ask is if even if you don't believe in the doctrine of the

44:59

Trinity, even if you don't believe in it, in the year 632, did Allah know what the doctrine of the

45:05

Trinity was? And here is my question for my Muslim friends. Why doesn't the

45:10

Quran ever show any understanding of what I believe and what my people have always believed? You interact with us.

45:16

You say, do not say three, and then immediately say, there is only one God. Well, we believe that. Even if the

45:23

Trinity is wrong, didn't Allah know what it was? That's a question we have to deal with when we dialogue with one another.

45:31

And so, what is my reason for believing in the doctrine of the Trinity? I believe all of the New Testament. I don't just take little bits and pieces of it.

45:38

I allow all of it to speak. And when you allow all of it to speak, it says to us, one

45:44

God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the

45:51

Holy Spirit. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much,

46:00

Dr. White and Yusuf. The section we will enter into next will be questions about the objective ideas.

46:06

This should not be a question directed to the speaker, but rather questions about the problems seen in the concept of the

46:11

Trinity or Tawhid mentioned in the proposed introductions we've just heard.

46:17

We'll give Yusuf again the first word. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Problems with the

46:24

Trinity. The Trinity doctrine is not unique to Christianity.

46:31

Neither is it original. It has deep pagan roots. Trinity was one of the most common beliefs among pagan cultures.

46:41

And now, Christian apologists like Dr. William Lane Craig are becoming so desperate that they are using a comparison, using an analogy of a pagan three -headed dog to describe

46:59

God in a Trinity, as you can see on the screen here. That's how desperate some of these apologists are becoming.

47:08

The Christian Trinity doctrine was basically established in 325

47:13

A .D. at the Council of Nicaea. And after debating man's ideas,

47:20

Jesus, peace be upon him, was declared to be co -equal, co -eternal, and of the same substance as God.

47:28

Not that God sent down some revelation. No. This is the idea of Trinity according to the

47:37

Affination Creed. Now, this is a lot to get your head around if you can understand it.

47:43

Augustine said, if you try to understand the Trinity, you will lose your mind.

47:49

Unfortunately, myself and Dr. White, we lost our hair. That we worship one

47:57

God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the essence.

48:05

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.

48:11

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one.

48:17

So likewise, the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, and the

48:22

Holy Ghost is almighty. And yet, they are not three almighties, but one.

48:29

So the Father is God, the Son is

48:34

God, and the Holy Ghost is God. Right? But they're not three gods, but one

48:42

God. Amazing. He says, person, person, person, but not three persons, but one person.

48:55

I'm asking, if one of them commits murder, can you hang the other one?

49:01

No. Why? As he is a different person. What makes him different is his personality.

49:09

And this sounds more like three gods, polytheism. And no matter how hard you try, you will always see three.

49:18

You will never see one. Ask these questions to a Trinitarian. So Jesus is

49:25

God, the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

49:31

Trinitarian says yes. And these are three different persons. The Trinitarian says yes.

49:38

So you have three persons. Each one is God. How many is that?

49:44

Trinitarian says three. Whoops. No, no, I meant one. Amazing.

49:50

It can't get any simpler than that. Trinitarians worship three gods, and they cannot deny it.

49:59

They are polytheists. On Dr. White's Alpha and Omega website, under the

50:05

Statement of Faith, we read the following. We believe the Bible teaches, I don't know where it teaches this, that there is but one being of God, and yet there are three persons who share this one being of God, the

50:21

Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Each person is fully and completely

50:27

God. Each is described in Scripture as possessing the attributes of God.

50:33

The Father, Son, and Spirit have eternally existed in the relationship described by the term

50:40

Trinity. This formula says one being and three persons.

50:50

So now the one God of Israel has become four instead of three. Hey, make your mind up.

50:56

You are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Nowhere in the

51:01

Bible is God referred to as a person or a substance. We don't want lengthy opinionated speeches and hypothesis.

51:12

Just give us the verse where Jesus or any prophet in the entire

51:18

Bible taught that God is three in one. As it should be given special importance.

51:26

And you mean it took so long before some church father came along and figured out that God is three in one.

51:34

Thousands of years went by, but no one knew that God is three in a

51:39

Trinity. I feel those Jews very sorry. They were just worshipping one

51:44

God, a Unitarian God. And now the Christians come along, the

51:50

Trinitarians say, you know what, you Jews are wrong. You should be worshipping three in one.

51:56

Makes no sense, you know. On the other hand, the

52:02

Bible clearly tells us that God is one. Here are a few more verses from the

52:08

Bible stating God is one. Isaiah 44 .6 I am the first and I am the last.

52:16

Besides me there is no God who is like me. Matthew 4 .10

52:22

Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. So you can clearly see from these verses that God is one alone and not three in one.

52:34

Now let's see what one of the Western encyclopedias have to say about the

52:39

Trinity. The New Encyclopedia Britannica says neither the word

52:45

Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament nor did

52:50

Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament.

52:55

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Deuteronomy 6 .4 The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies.

53:08

It was not until the fourth century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.

53:20

By the end of the fourth century the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since.

53:29

We read only by the fourth century the doctrine was complete. 400 years after Jesus' ministry it took to establish the

53:39

Trinity doctrine. Wow. Christians are always going on about how

53:46

Jesus, peace be upon him, is the Prince of Peace. Not so if he is part of the

53:51

Trinity and a God as you claim. Then he is also responsible for the following violence and killings in the

53:59

Old Testament. The Trinity God, including Jesus, commands the following.

54:04

Numbers 31 .17 -18 So now kill every boy and kill every woman who have had sexual intercourse but keep alive for yourself all the girls and all the women who are virgins.

54:20

Deuteronomy 20 .13 Then when the Trinity God, including Jesus, lets you capture the city kill every man in it.

54:29

Now how can God be a God of war and violence and a passive turn -the -other -cheek

54:34

God? This would mean that they are two different gods with different personalities. I see you quote from Paul.

54:41

Who is this Paul? We can dismiss Paul. He never saw Jesus. He never walked with Jesus.

54:49

He never ate with Jesus. Paul contradicts Jesus. Who is this

54:55

Paul? Dr. White quoted a lot of Paul. Paul, Paul. You know, we want to hear what

55:03

Jesus said. What the Master said. Not what someone else said. Tell us what

55:08

Jesus said. Dr. William Lane Craig said you don't have to believe in Paul to be a

55:17

Christian. Here on a letter he wrote to someone.

55:23

Dear Craig. This guy is writing to Dr. William Lane Craig.

55:28

Dear Craig, the reason for being willing to search for truth in these places while avoiding

55:35

Christianity was because I found the Christian faith in Paul unreasonable.

55:41

I now feel called to Jesus yet I remain repelled by Paul. Dr.

55:49

William Lane Craig's response. At one level, the answer to your question is easy.

55:55

Of course it's possible to be a Christian without believing in Paul or his doctrinal contribution.

56:02

After all, think of all the Christians who lived prior to Paul's letters being written. To begin with, though, you certainly don't have to believe in Paul in order to be a

56:13

Christian. Thank you very much. Thank you.

56:21

Now we've got Dr. White and he's going to react in 10 minutes. Now as I understand it, my duties now to remain within the parameters of the debate is to raise questions in regards to the presentation on Tawhid.

56:34

The problem was there wasn't that much of a presentation on Tawhid. The primary presentation was an attack upon the doctrines of Trinity and not a positive presentation on Tawhid which was very disappointing to me.

56:46

I'm currently co -authoring a book with Dr. Shabir Ali on this subject and it is on Trinity and Tawhid and in that dialogue there is a positive presentation that I can then interact with.

56:58

In the absence of something more than just simply the assertion that as we all know the Quran says that there is only one

57:05

God, Allah, yeah, could we clear the screen yet once again please? Here's your remote right here.

57:12

In contradiction, we all understand that that's what the

57:17

Quran says. The question is what does that mean and how does that impact our lives? That needs to be the question that each one of us needs to be thinking about.

57:25

And so in responding to the concept of Tawhid, I simply have to recognize that the

57:32

Quran attempts to present this to the Al -Anjil and to the Al -Kitab, the people of the book and to the people of the

57:40

Gospel. But every time that it speaks to us, it says things, as you've already heard it quoted, like, say not three, but every time it uses thala, three, right afterwards what does it say?

57:53

There is only one God, Allah. Now if I say to you over and over again there's only one, there's not three,

58:01

I'm putting them in the same category. So the author of the Quran seems to believe that Christians believe in three gods.

58:06

Mr. Buck says this evening, he said, you're a polytheist. And yet I've shown you from the scriptures, from Christian confession, from the entirety of the

58:14

New Testament, that we deny this. It is a complete misunderstanding. Unfortunately, my dialogue partner this evening does not understand what

58:22

I believe in any way, shape or form and is perpetuating the same errors that have been perpetuated by those before him all the way back to the author of the

58:30

Quran who did not understand what Christians believed. If we can't get past this, our two communities will never be able to speak to one another.

58:38

We will never be able to have meaningful, truthful dialogue. You see, let me point out something to you from the

58:45

Quran itself. In Surat Al -Maidah, Surah 5, we have these words, and we sent following their footsteps

58:55

Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which came before him in the Torah. And we gave him the

59:00

Injil, the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and confirming that which preceded it of the

59:07

Torah as guidance and instruction for the righteous. So we have a chain here, if you're familiar with this section of Surat Al -Maidah.

59:14

Allah gives to Moses the Torah, he gives to Jesus the Injil, and then he gives to Muhammad the

59:21

Quran. Muhammad becomes the final link in this chain. If the chain before it is broken, so does the argument for the prophethood of Muhammad.

59:31

The very next ayah says, and let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein.

59:37

All of you who are Arabic speakers know the word Fihi there, the only antecedent to it is the

59:43

Injil, it's the Gospel. Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein, and whoever does not judge by what

59:50

Allah has revealed, then it is those who are the defiantly disobedient. Now here's my question for you this evening.

59:57

How could the people of the Gospel in the days of Muhammad, assuming that when these words were given to Muhammad, assuming that the

01:00:04

Torah is given on Laylatul Qadr, and then Jibril gives it to Muhammad as the need arises over that period of revelation, assuming that when it was given, it had meaning to the people to whom it was addressed, which

01:00:17

I think we would all have to agree that it did. How could the people of the Gospel fulfill this command to judge by what is found in the

01:00:24

Injil? How could they do it? If, as most Muslims I talk to today, they don't believe that the

01:00:30

Injil even existed in the days of Muhammad. It was corrupted. Oh, well maybe it was corrupted afterwards.

01:00:37

The problem is we know exactly what the Injil in the possession of the Christian people was in the days of Muhammad. We have entire manuscripts of the

01:00:44

New Testament that long predate the days of Muhammad. And so we knew what the Gospel was. When I judge the understanding of the

01:00:54

Trinity found in the Qur 'an by the Injil, it fails. And I'm simply following what the Qur 'an says to do.

01:01:01

So what am I supposed to do? If I follow the command of the Qur 'an, then the Qur 'an is shown to have no understanding of the doctrine of the

01:01:07

Trinity. At all. Later on in this very Surah, if we just stay in Surah 5, they have certainly disbelieved who say

01:01:15

Allah is the Messiah, the Son of Mary. That's not how we speak. We don't say that God is the

01:01:21

Messiah. We say that Christ was truly God. He shared the nature of God, but we do not say that He was all of God.

01:01:27

This isn't even how we speak. And then it goes on to say they have certainly disbelieved who say

01:01:32

Allah is the third of three. We don't say that. We've never said that. Show me someone who was saying that.

01:01:39

Can you go back in history? Show me this religion. It certainly isn't the Christians. I've actually had some

01:01:45

Muslims saying, oh, this isn't about the Trinity. This is about something else. This is about some other group. Okay, fine.

01:01:50

Except Mr. Books has already said that's what this is about. This is about Christianity. So he asked to answer.

01:01:58

Where were the Christians ever saying this? Where were they saying Allah is the third of three? We've never said it.

01:02:04

There is only one place in the Quran where the three is defined. Have you noticed that? I've asked many

01:02:10

Muslims to show me where is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity actually given to us in the

01:02:15

Quran? There is only one ayah I've been able to find. And if you all can show me another one, I'd like to know where it is.

01:02:22

But there is one ayah where you have three in this context, and it's Surah 5, verse 116. And beware the day when

01:02:28

Allah will say, O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, take me and my mother as deities in derogation of Allah?

01:02:35

There you have the three. Allah, Mary, and evidently their son,

01:02:41

Jesus. Now there is a group that calls itself Christian that believes that. They're called the

01:02:47

Mormons. But they also believe that there's an infinite number of gods. They're the most polytheistic religion on the planet.

01:02:54

And they're not Christians. And so, if that's the understanding of the

01:03:00

Quran, and that's something Christians never believed, what does that tell you? What does that tell me is one of the

01:03:07

Ahl al -Anjil, who is commanded by Surah 5, verse 47 to judge by what is found in the Anjil. When I look at the

01:03:12

Anjil, I ask myself a simple question. Did the author of the Quran have any idea what was in this book? And the answer is no.

01:03:20

No. The author of the Quran did not know what was in the Anjil. God knew. Can you show me, using even scales, not using wild -eyed misinterpretation of the text that shows no knowledge of the original languages.

01:03:41

I am not a perfect interpreter of the Quran, but I try to read it in its context. Show me any place where the

01:03:51

Quran gives evidence that the author had any idea what is in what the author himself said contained light and guidance, the

01:03:59

Torah and the Anjil. That it was Natsal sent down by God. These are questions we must ask if our two communities are going to truly engage with one another.

01:04:13

And my friends, what I'm saying to you is this. I have yet to hear a consistently Islamic criticism of my faith.

01:04:20

What do I mean by that? We're all supernaturalists in here. We're not naturalistic materialists. Why is it that my

01:04:26

Muslim opponents are always quoting people like Bart Ehrman? He doesn't believe in God.

01:04:34

I'm waiting for a Muslim apologist to come along who A, will have accurate knowledge of what I believe, not misrepresent it.

01:04:39

I haven't encountered that yet. Certainly not this evening. And then we'll bring a criticism that's based upon a supernatural worldview.

01:04:48

Think about it, my friends. How many Muslims in this room believe in the Isra' and the Miraj? How many of you believe that Muhammad went to heaven?

01:04:55

None? Please. How many of the scholars that your apologists depend upon would believe that Muhammad could have ever done that?

01:05:06

Do they believe in the Barak? Do they believe in a winged animal that can fly? They would laugh at such a thing.

01:05:12

Just as they laugh at the virgin birth in the Bible. Yet you believe in the virgin birth and so do I. So why do you depend upon these people?

01:05:19

Why aren't you quoting the Christian scholars who have a supernatural worldview like you do? The Quran talks about using equal scales.

01:05:29

Does it not? That's not just in sales. We need to use the same standards in analyzing each other's arguments.

01:05:36

And my friends, that's not what's happening. That's not what's happening. I'm looking forward to the day when it will happen.

01:05:44

I'm calling for that to happen. Because my friends, we need to talk much more than we do.

01:05:51

We talk past each other. And as a Christian, I love you. I care for you.

01:05:58

And I want our conversation to be one that leads to truth, not merely making debating points.

01:06:06

So please, let's apply equal standards this evening as we dialogue about this vitally important issue.

01:06:13

Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.

01:06:24

What we will be doing now... Sure. Because it seems to like me more than it likes you.

01:06:33

If you were wearing a plaid tie, it would work. Makes sense. What we're going to do now is we're going to have crossfire questions.

01:06:40

How is this going to work? Because his questions to the opposing side should be brief. A response should be given in two minutes without interruption from the questioner.

01:06:48

And we're going to ask Yusuf Baks to start first. And he's got 15 minutes to do that. We love you also, you know.

01:06:56

The Quran also says in chapter 584, the nearest to the Muslim, to the believer, is those who say that they are

01:07:05

Christians. Right, that's why. Question one. When God the

01:07:11

Son died on the cross, did all three also die with him? As you say, they are one in Trinity.

01:07:19

Then you are saying God died, or one person of God died. So now there is only two persons of God left.

01:07:27

Can you just explain that, please? I'm sorry, I believe they have two minutes for that?

01:07:33

Yes. Okay, let me just really quickly... I am very punctilious, so I want to make sure I do it. Okay. Thank you very much for the question.

01:07:40

Again, if we understand the doctrine of the Trinity, then we understand that what we are asserting is that Jesus was the

01:07:46

God -man. That is, that he was one person with two natures. They are not intermingled with one another.

01:07:52

This is why Jesus can give his life voluntarily on Calvary's tree. If he did not have that human nature, then he could not give his life.

01:08:01

And so it is the God -man who gives his life. Now, of course, we as Christians and you as Muslims do not believe that death means cessation of existence.

01:08:10

And so when Jesus dies upon Calvary's tree and he voluntarily gives his life, he does not cease to exist.

01:08:18

So in answer to the question, was there only two left, that would assume that Christians believe that people cease to exist when they die, and of course we don't believe that.

01:08:26

So that's always been a question that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are saying. The giving of that life was voluntarily on Christ's part, and it was the giving of his human life.

01:08:38

This was not God dying in the sense that the divine being ceased to exist or the divine being in some way, shape, or form was caused to undergo some kind of a change.

01:08:51

The whole reason for the joining of the human nature to Jesus is so that a perfect sacrifice could be given and we could be joined to him so that his death becomes our death and his resurrection becomes our resurrection.

01:09:06

And so in answer to your question, no, there's no cessation of existence and therefore the idea of one ceasing to exist would not even be relevant to us.

01:09:16

And it is the giving of the human life of Jesus Christ, that perfect human life, that is in view when we speak of his having given himself in that way out of love for us and to establish the gospel.

01:09:27

All right, question two. In your whole presentation you gave us, you didn't give us one verse from the

01:09:37

Bible, from the lips of Jesus, peace be upon him, where he clearly defines

01:09:44

God as being three in one. As this should be well emphasized and given special importance, could you maybe show us this verse?

01:09:54

Or from any prophet even, it's fine? Well first of all

01:09:59

I have to point out that the demand that is often made of a single verse to define the doctrine of the trinity is an irrational demand and I reject it.

01:10:07

You do not apply that standard to the Quran. You in your interpretation of the Quran allow for the reading of numerous ayahs to be brought together.

01:10:15

This is found in the hadith, this is found in all the interpretation, the early tafsir. So you again are asking us to do something that you folks yourselves do not do.

01:10:23

I think that's unfair. Secondly, what I did point out in my presentation is the fact that Jesus said and did things that a mere prophet could not do.

01:10:33

Since Jesus then also spoke of how he and the Father were gonna send the Spirit, and by the way that cannot possibly be someone in the sixth century in Arabia, but is one who proceeds from the

01:10:45

Father and the Son, and if, by the way, that is someone other than the Holy Spirit of God, Jesus is the one who sent him.

01:10:51

Given that the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and that both the Son and the

01:10:56

Spirit do things that only God can do, this is what has caused Christians, forced

01:11:02

Christians who believe in all that God has revealed in the scriptures to understand the doctrine of the

01:11:07

Trinity. You have to reject elements of the biblical revelation, both prophetic in the

01:11:12

Old Testament as well as fulfilled in the New Testament to reject the doctrine of the

01:11:17

Trinity. And so looking for a single verse is inappropriate.

01:11:23

Looking for Jesus accepting worship, Jesus being identified as Yahweh, Jesus teaching with the authority of God, Jesus doing things that no mere prophet could ever do, all of those things have to be taken together, and that's why the person who honestly approaches the text of the

01:11:43

New Testament is forced to the conclusion that those writers were telling us that Jesus Christ truly was,

01:11:49

Emmanuel, God with us. Dr.

01:11:55

White, question three. According to Orthodox Christian belief,

01:12:02

Jesus was perfect man and perfect God at the same time. Please could you unpack a brief model demonstrating the two natures of Christ, one being perfect man and perfect God at the same time, being infinite and finite at the same time, being fallible and infallible at the same time, having to be free from contradiction, and please don't use the avatar example.

01:12:30

May I ask, Mr. Moderator, may I ask a clarification question? When you say a model, could you explain what you're looking for?

01:12:37

Like just like a quick brief model, you know, like... A model derived from creation?

01:12:44

Like a model unpacking this quickly. Okay, all right. Demonstration. All right, thank you, thank you.

01:12:51

First of all, since you just mentioned the avatar, I think you're thinking about the exchange between William Lane Craig and Yusuf Ismail, where Dr.

01:13:01

Craig used the avatar model in the same way that Dr. Craig used the carabass model. I hope that you will tell folks that I have publicly rebuked and challenged

01:13:09

William Lane Craig over the abuse of both of those, and I think any orthodox biblical theologian would challenge him on both of those things.

01:13:19

And likewise, I have pointed out that I reject the grounds of the question for one simple reason.

01:13:24

If you're talking about a model in the sense of an analogy to something in creation or something else that would be like that, since we believe the

01:13:32

Incarnation is absolutely unique, just as God's eternity is absolutely unique, nothing else is eternal as God is.

01:13:38

Since we believe the Incarnation to be absolutely unique, there can be nothing to which it can be compared, because if you could compare something about creation with it, it would no longer be unique.

01:13:49

And so there is one time, and only one time, where God has entered into humanity in the way he did that.

01:13:55

Now, there were physical manifestations of God for various purposes in the Old Testament. Yahweh walked with Abraham by the

01:14:01

Oaks of Mamre in Genesis 18 and 19, and ironically, in Genesis 18 and 19, Yahweh on earth rains fire and brimstone from Yahweh in heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

01:14:11

So you have two Yahwehs there, yet one God, according to the Old Testament. But since it's absolutely unique that at that one time

01:14:19

Jesus takes on a human nature and lives as a man, there can be no analogy to it, simply because if there was an analogy, then there would be other things in the created order, and the

01:14:28

Incarnation would not be unique. And so the answer to your question is no, I cannot. It is a revealed doctrine, just as the eternity of Allah is a revealed doctrine and has no created analogy that could go with it.

01:14:41

Question four. Jesus curses the fig tree. Jesus God was hungry.

01:14:48

He saw in the distance a fig tree covered with leaves. So when he went to see if he could find any figs on it, but when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the right time for figs.

01:15:05

Jesus said to the fig tree, no one shall ever eat figs from you again.

01:15:11

I would like you to concentrate on what Mark's Gospel says. Only Mark's Gospel, by Mark mentioning it was not the right time or season for figs,

01:15:25

Mark has shown Jesus' knowledge was limited. Can you explain that, please?

01:15:31

As I have many, many times, with all respect to Yusuf, this is one of the worst examples of Islamic misunderstanding of the

01:15:38

New Testament, and I call upon my Muslim friends, please, as I have invested hours in attempting to understand the

01:15:46

Quran in its context, spent hours with an Arabic tutor to try to have the rudimentary tools, would you please listen to what

01:15:54

I say here? There is a reason for the story of the cursing of the fig tree.

01:16:00

Jesus is going into Jerusalem for the last time. He is going into the temple. He's going to give the Olivet Discourse, where he is going to prophesy the destruction of the temple, the raising of the temple down to its very foundation stones.

01:16:12

He is going to speak about how the nation of Israel looks like it's godly, but it is empty of godliness, and that the scribes and Pharisees are hypocrites.

01:16:22

And the fig tree represents Israel. The fig tree wasn't supposed to have leaves, but it had lots of leaves.

01:16:31

In other words, it was giving an indication of something that was not a part of its reality. It, like Israel, was pretending to be something it was not.

01:16:40

And so just as the curse of God came upon the people of Israel in the destruction of the temple in A .D.

01:16:45

70, Jesus shows this in the cursing of the fig tree. It is a picture of the people of Israel.

01:16:51

This is Mark's intention. This is Matthew's intention. This is simply reading the New Testament for the purpose it was given by its authors.

01:16:59

It was not Mark's intention to say that Jesus was ignorant of when figs came out.

01:17:05

It was his intention to demonstrate that Jesus' actions in the Olivet Discourse were mirrored in his condemnation of this fig tree, which was pretending to be something it was not, just as Israel was pretending to be something it was not.

01:17:20

Shall we please put this away and get to things that really matter? Please, let's do it.

01:17:25

Thank you. All right. Question five.

01:17:32

I gave you an example of violence and killings in the Old Testament. Was Jesus, as part of the

01:17:39

Trinity God, responsible for these killings and many others in the Old Testament?

01:17:45

And how could he be a God of war and violence and this passive turn -the -other -cheek

01:17:52

God? Does this mean he's got two different personalities and they're two different gods with different personalities?

01:18:01

Can you explain that? It's very sad to me that in a dialogue on Trinity and Tawhid, we are discussing a standard objection that atheists raise to the

01:18:09

God of the Bible, in that in the Old Testament we have God bringing his judgment upon, for example, the

01:18:15

Amorites, even though he had patiently borne with them. Notice that it specifically says in the

01:18:21

Old Testament that God's judgment did not come until their transgression was full. It's a shame to me that instead of dealing with the actual relationship of our faith in regards to our view of God, that I have to be responding to objections that are normally raised by people like Lawrence Krauss, the atheist from the

01:18:38

United States. But let me just briefly do so. The God of the Old Testament is a

01:18:43

God of justice, but he is also a God of tremendous mercy and grace, just as the God of the

01:18:48

New Testament is a God of justice and wrath against sin, as he also is a

01:18:54

God of mercy and grace. Those who fall under his judgment do so always only justly.

01:19:01

God could call every single one of us out of existence right now and bring us into his presence and judge us for our sinfulness.

01:19:08

That is the holy God of the Bible of the New Testament and the holy God of the Bible of the Old Testament. But that same holy

01:19:14

God is the one who has provided a perfect way to stand before him in his perfect justice, but there's only one way.

01:19:21

I must be clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus had to be the

01:19:27

God -man, so that I could have that righteousness and stand in his presence. I have peace with God tonight, folks, not because of anything in me and not because of anything

01:19:36

I've done, but because I am clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. And see, I'd like to talk more about that because it goes back to our view of Trinity and Tawhid.

01:19:45

That's the real issue that we need to be dealing with. That's the direction we need to be moving in our conversations with one another.

01:19:52

What we're going to do now is we're going to give Dr. Watt an opportunity for 15 minutes to ask questions to you as a class, and he can then respond.

01:20:01

You made the claim that the Kama Yohaniyim had been taken out of the Bible and this is the only place where the doctrine of the

01:20:08

Trinity is actually explicitly taught. If, in point of fact, this text is so vital to the doctrine of the

01:20:15

Trinity, could you show me any place in the first 400 years of the

01:20:22

Christian experience, so from the time of the closing of the New Testament for 400 years after that, that any

01:20:30

Christian cited that text as their foundation for believing in the doctrine of the Trinity? Well, this is in the

01:20:38

King James Version of 1611, right? It's there in the 66 books here, right, which many

01:20:49

Protestants were using and swearing an oath by, and all of a sudden,

01:20:55

Dr. Watt is thrown out in this one here. I mean, that's...

01:21:01

And Christians used to... At one stage, I used to go to the Catholic Church, you know?

01:21:08

And many times, Christians quote that verse, John 5, verse 7, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the

01:21:17

Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. But, I mean, this is not really my problem or my issue.

01:21:25

This is a Christian issue. Why is it in this Bible and it's not in this

01:21:30

Bible, you know? Here's the Roman Catholic Bible, 73 books, right, in this newer version of the

01:21:40

Catholic Bible. Excuse me, I'm not hearing an answer to my question. Did you not understand it? I don't really understand what you're saying.

01:21:45

I'm sorry, let me clarify it. If this verse is so central to defining the doctrine of the

01:21:51

Trinity, can you show me anyone in the first 400 years after Jesus that cited it in defining the doctrine of the

01:21:57

Trinity? But it's in your

01:22:02

Bible. That's what I'm trying to say, Dr. Watt. Chapter 5, verse 7, it's there.

01:22:08

Many Christians say this is God's Word. I mean, come on, man, it's here.

01:22:15

I mean, I don't get your question. I don't get what you're saying. It's here. It's in the

01:22:20

Bible. It's in the King James. We'll move on. It was your assertion that the doctrine of the

01:22:27

Trinity was established at the Council of Nicaea in A .D. 325. Could you please respond to these statements made by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, in A .D.

01:22:40

107, which is 218 years before that?

01:22:46

There is one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life and death, both from Mary and from God, first passable and impassable,

01:22:55

Jesus Christ our Lord. By the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God, for our

01:23:01

God, Jesus Christ. And finally, await the one who is above every season, the eternal, the invisible, the one who for our sake became visible, the untouched, the impassable, who for our sake suffered, who endured in every way for our sake.

01:23:13

Could you please explain if the doctrine of the Trinity didn't come about until 325 why Ignatius could say these words in A .D.

01:23:20

107? The doctrine of the Trinity in 325 was over time.

01:23:28

It was a council of bishops. Ignatius of Antioch provides early support, yes, around 110, right?

01:23:36

Exhorting obedience to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit, right? But this idea of the

01:23:45

Trinity doctrine, it came over time. Look at that, 110 after Christ, and nobody knew about it.

01:23:52

It's amazing, you know? And then at the Council of Nicaea, the Nicaean Creed came in.

01:23:58

The Athanasian Creed, right? And then still after that, it still continued till the 8th century to become doctrine until it was basically completed in Christian doctrine.

01:24:16

So it actually took basically 800 years. I understand what you're saying, 110 years, but I mean that's 110 years after Jesus, and nobody knew about it.

01:24:28

Amazing, Dr. White. Okay, I would like to get your understanding, please, of the words of Thomas to Jesus when he says in John 20, verse 28, apokrythe tomos kai aipen auto ha kuriosmu kai ha theosmu, which

01:24:53

I would translate as Thomas answered and said to him, dative singular, my kurios, my

01:25:00

Lord, and my God. Could you please explain these words in light of your assertion that the

01:25:08

New Testament does not teach this doctrine, especially in light of Jesus' response found in verse 29? When I met you,

01:25:14

Dr. White, I said, Dr. White, my God, it is you. I kind of answered it for you, you know?

01:25:21

Right, the disciples were assembled. Jesus came and stood in the mist and said to them, peace be with you.

01:25:28

Shalom aleichem, like we say salam aleichem. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

01:25:35

Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Seeing and believing.

01:25:41

Now Thomas called the twin. One of the 12 was not with them when Jesus came.

01:25:46

The other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord. So he said to them, unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side,

01:26:02

I will not believe. Will not believe in the crucifixion, not that he's God. Not believe what?

01:26:08

That he's God? No. That he won't believe in the crucifixion. And after eight days his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them.

01:26:20

Jesus came, the doors being shut and stood in the mist and said, peace be with you.

01:26:26

Then he said to Thomas, reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it into my side.

01:26:34

Do not be unbelieving, but be believing. And Thomas answered and said to him, my

01:26:41

Lord and my God. I mean, he's just putting out an expression.

01:26:47

When I met you I said, Dr. White, my God. You know, I was shocked to see you. I've seen you on the internet, you know.

01:26:54

I mean, please, man. It's not even mentioned in the other three gospels, right?

01:26:59

It's only mentioned in John's gospel. John has added his own theology and John has exaggerated this gospel of his.

01:27:09

Thank you. I believe that was my third. I would like to use my fourth to redirect on the same text if I could, please.

01:27:20

You did not answer a rather clear fact. It seems that your answer would be that the phrase, my

01:27:30

God, is being addressed to someone other than Jesus. Could you please comment, sir, on the day or auto in the original language?

01:27:37

Thomas answered and said to him. It is singular. It is not plural. And if you think that there is a disjunctive use of chi between ha -kuri -asumu and ha -the -asumu, could you please give a scholarly substantiation of the differentiation?

01:27:53

The word for Lord is, I've forgotten in Greek, what is it? Kurios. Kurios, right?

01:28:00

Kurios and theos. Can you put them together? Right? That means it's two parts of the

01:28:05

Trinity. That means it's Jesus, the Lord, and the Father, theos,

01:28:11

God. So, you know, what I'm trying to tell you is, Dr. Wine, is, you know, it's such a weak case you are giving us.

01:28:19

I mean, when I go to court and I call the judge, my Lord, my

01:28:24

Lord, my worship, am I worshipping him? No. You know, like I say, show me in the other three

01:28:32

Gospels the same story where Thomas said this to Jesus, and I'll believe too.

01:28:39

It's not there. It's John's theology. John made it up. It's not in the other Gospels.

01:28:45

It's amazing. But he wasn't referring to Jesus as being a

01:28:52

God. He's just, like, shocked and saying, my Lord and my

01:28:58

God, that you're alive, man. That's how I see it.

01:29:03

You know what I'm saying? Okay. Last question. Not out of the

01:29:10

Gospel of Mark. It's one of those other, Gospel of John, it's one of those other three. Mark chapter 14, verse 61 says, but he, this is the trial of Jesus, but he kept silent and did not answer.

01:29:22

Again, the high priest was questioning him and saying to him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one?

01:29:28

And Jesus said, I am. And you shall see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

01:29:37

Tearing his clothes, the high priest said, what further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. How does it seem to you?

01:29:43

And they all condemned him to be deserving of death. Could you please explain how Jesus not only says he is the son of God, but then quotes from Daniel chapter 8 about the son of man, who has followers who give him

01:29:58

Latreau, the highest form of worship, applied these things to himself, and was understood by the

01:30:04

Jewish high priest as having committed blasphemy. Could you explain this text to us, please, in light of your comments?

01:30:11

Okay. Number one, Dr. White, my position is,

01:30:17

I feel John's gospel is very exaggerated, right? I would like to know from you right now, is it in the other three gospels before I start?

01:30:28

Sorry, question time is now, Dr. White, you need to answer. Okay, no problem. It's not in the other three gospels, the same story.

01:30:36

So, again, John has exaggerated this gospel. In John's gospel...

01:30:42

Excuse me, sir, I'm not asking about the gospel of John. The text, did you misunderstand? It's Mark chapter 14.

01:30:47

I know what you're saying, but I'm putting my point through that this is exaggerated. What I'm trying to say,

01:30:52

I don't believe what's written there. I don't believe that if that is so important, what

01:30:58

I'm trying to say to you is, you see, I'm a simple man, right? I tell you how it is.

01:31:06

What I'm trying to say is that this is not found in the other three gospels, right?

01:31:12

It's John's theology. It's like John 1 -1. John 1 -1 about the logos and the theos is taken from Greek.

01:31:24

Why are we talking about John, sir? I'm in Mark. Which gospel are you in now? This is

01:31:29

Mark chapter 14. Could we stop? Let's try this one more time because we're clearly missing each other.

01:31:36

I'm getting mixed up here. Let me try this one more time. Do you have a Bible in front of you? Yeah, right. Good news,

01:31:41

Bible. Oh, well. Right, right. Apologize for that.

01:31:47

You can tell where my translational prejudice is lying. Could you look at the gospel of Mark, please? You're telling me Mark, right? Mark chapter 14.

01:31:54

Right, 14. Verse 61. Okay, so this is not John. This is

01:31:59

Mark. 1461. Okay, 61. Let me read it again. 1461, hold on.

01:32:08

But he kept silent and did not answer. Again, the high priest was questioning him and saying to him, Are you the Christ, the

01:32:14

Son of the Blessed One? And Jesus said, I am, and you shall see the

01:32:19

Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Tearing his clothes, the high priest said,

01:32:24

What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. How does it seem to you? And they all condemned him to be deserving of death.

01:32:31

Now, the citation in verse 62 is from the book of Daniel about the Son of Man who appears before the

01:32:37

Ancient of Days. And the Son of Man in the book of Daniel is given worship. Jesus applied these words to himself.

01:32:44

The Jews understood him to be claiming deity. They tear his clothes and said, Why do we have further need of witnesses?

01:32:49

He's blasphemed. This isn't John. This is Mark. So, can you tell me how you understand that these words could be uttered by Jesus?

01:33:01

All right, number one, right? Son of the Blessed God, right? He's saying that there's many sons in the

01:33:10

Bible, right? Jesus, in the Jewish terminology, Jesus is basically saying he's the Son of God.

01:33:15

He's a pious man, right? And Jesus said to him,

01:33:23

You will see the Son of Man seated on the right of the Almighty, right? So, that's two persons of the

01:33:30

Godhead, the Trinity, like you're saying, right? And with the clouds of heaven, the high priest tore his robes and said,

01:33:38

We don't need any more witnesses. You heard this blaspheme. What is your decision?

01:33:44

Okay? I mean, again, in John, Jesus tells these priests that you say, they pick up stones, right?

01:34:02

He says, For what do you stone me? They say, For blasphemy. He says, But I say that ye are gods.

01:34:09

I say that I'm just the Son of God, right? So, there and here,

01:34:15

I don't really have much of an answer for you there. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

01:34:24

Thank you very much, gentlemen. What we're going to do now is we're going to have closing statements. What we're going to do is not interject with any new points.

01:34:31

What we're going to do is just sum up and conclude our thoughts that was espoused. First, we're going to ask

01:34:36

Yusuf Pax in five minutes to conclude. Bismillah ar -Rahman ar -Rahim.

01:34:43

In the name of Almighty God, most gracious, most merciful. I have proved without a shadow of a doubt that the

01:34:50

Trinity is not a biblical belief, that not one prophet in the entire

01:34:55

Bible taught it, that Jesus, peace be upon him, never taught it. So, why believe in something no prophet taught, something

01:35:04

Jesus, peace be upon him, never taught? First of all, the concept of the Trinity is fundamental to most

01:35:11

Christian denominations, yet it is the very same Trinity that remains the biggest single divider in the

01:35:18

Christian world today. The Jehovah's Witness and the Seven -Day Adventists are coming closer to Islam in their rejection of the

01:35:27

Trinity. Christian brothers and sisters, it is my humble request that you too consider the points

01:35:34

I have raised carefully. I urge Christians to go back to worshipping the one true

01:35:40

God that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace be upon them, all worshipped.

01:35:47

Abraham, peace be upon him, the father of monotheism, never worshipped a triune, three -in -one

01:35:54

God. He never worshipped Jesus, peace be upon him. He never worshipped a ghost.

01:36:00

He only worshipped God alone. The Quran had to come to take us back to worshipping the one true

01:36:08

God. This was the mission of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, to take mankind back to the worship of the one true

01:36:16

God, creator of everything, one without partners and sons. Come right with God now, as according to Islam, the only sin that God will not forgive is to ascribe partners, sons and triune gods with him.

01:36:33

This is a sure guarantee to damnation. Come to the truth of the one God. Worship the only

01:36:39

God that Jesus worshipped. If it was not for Islam, the true message of Jesus, peace be upon him, would be lost forever.

01:36:48

Islam is the way to God. Islam brings us back to worshipping the one true

01:36:53

God of Abraham and all of the prophets of God. Allah, there is no

01:36:58

God but He, the living, the self -subsisting, eternal.

01:37:04

No slumber can seize Him, nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth.

01:37:11

Who is there that can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth?

01:37:18

He knows what appeareth to His creatures as before or after, behind them.

01:37:24

Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth.

01:37:29

His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them.

01:37:37

For He is the Most High, the Supreme in Glory, Al -Qur 'an 2 .25.

01:37:43

It was a vote of men that established the Trinity, not revelation from God.

01:37:50

Christianity has rejected the God of Abraham and replaced Him with a pagan invention.

01:37:57

La ilaha illallah. There is no God but One. Thank you,

01:38:03

Dr. White, Rudolf, the IPCI, Aunt Wood, and to such a great audience.

01:38:11

Thank you very much. And now we've got

01:38:18

Dr. White with his five -minute closing statement. Thank you, Dr. White. First of all, once again, let me thank everyone for being here this evening for this rather brief dialogue on a very important subject.

01:38:28

I would like to thank Yusuf for his participation and provide you with a book.

01:38:33

This is an excellent book by a friend of mine on the prophetic proofs in the Old Testament of the Messiahship of Jesus.

01:38:39

I dragged it all the way halfway around the world for you. I hope you enjoy it. As long as he's silent. Well, I'm not

01:38:46

William Webster, but I can fake a signature. So we have to use equal scales.

01:38:57

And I believe I have demonstrated very, very clearly this evening that when we analyze the text of Scripture in a meaningful fashion, that it presents to us the fact that Jesus is identified as Yahweh.

01:39:11

No meaningful interaction has been provided by Mr. Books to my presentation on these issues.

01:39:17

He has denied it, but in the cross -examination we saw that when you actually get into the text and look at the material, he did not have any answers.

01:39:25

He cannot deal with the fact that the grammar of John 20, 28 absolutely denies his interpretation.

01:39:31

He can't read the language, so he can't deny that. He can't deal with it. He couldn't deal with Jesus' own words.

01:39:37

It's interesting to me that Muslims will quote words from the Gospel of John about Muhammad, but then later on when they have words about the deity of Jesus, well,

01:39:46

I just don't believe that's true. Where's the equal scales? What if I did that to the Quran? What if I interpreted your book the way you interpret mine?

01:39:55

If I'm going to say there's something wrong with a text in your book, I'm going to give you manuscript evidence that there's something wrong with it.

01:40:02

Muslims never do that with me. Why is there such a double standard, my friends?

01:40:08

Because, folks, this is a vitally important issue. Did you hear what we were talking about? This is not just an issue for us to go,

01:40:16

Well, I'm just going to repeat what I've always been told. I submit to you that this issue goes to the very heart of how it is that we have peace with God.

01:40:26

And if you're here this evening, Muslim, Christian, maybe not know what you are,

01:40:35

I want to have a message for you right now. I believe I have peace with God, not because of who

01:40:40

I am or what I've done. I have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ has done for me. And the only way he could do for me what would allow me to stand in the presence of a holy

01:40:50

God is if he was the God -man. No mere prophet could give his life upon Calvary's tree because any prophet was himself a sinner and under the wrath of God.

01:40:59

But Jesus was not. He was virgin -born as we all believe. But why was he virgin -born? He did not bear that penalty of sin.

01:41:07

And as the perfect God -man, he went to the one place where all of the wrath and holiness of God could meet all of the love and compassion and mercy of God.

01:41:19

And that's the cross of Calvary. The cross of Calvary is a historic fact. And the person who died upon it was a historic fact as well.

01:41:29

And you see, when I have repentance and faith, when I repent of my sins and put my faith and trust in that God -man

01:41:36

Jesus Christ, I receive his righteousness. And that is the only way I can ever have peace with a holy

01:41:42

God. And that's why this subject is so important this evening. And I say to every

01:41:48

Muslim in this audience, if what I have said is true, and if you're honest with the arguments, you know my arguments were not even addressed, let alone refuted.

01:41:58

If my arguments are true, then I ask you a question. How can you leave this room this evening thinking

01:42:04

Jesus is merely a prophet? What if I'm right? What if God has provided for you a perfect way of salvation, a perfect way of peace with him, that is not based upon your doing of good deeds?

01:42:17

I do good deeds out of love for God, not to add something to what Jesus Christ has done for me. But if Jesus Christ is your creator, if the words that were written 600 years before Muhammad are true, by him were all things made in the heavens and the earth, visible and invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, and authorities, all things are created by him and for him.

01:42:38

He is before all things, and in him all things. They hold together. That means you.

01:42:45

He holds you in his hand. Can you dismiss him as a mere prophet?

01:42:53

That is the question that lay before you. And that is why I continue to await a consistent

01:42:58

Islamic response to Christianity. I've never heard it. I didn't hear it this evening. I await it.

01:43:06

I long for it. I ask for it. Someday, I hope we can have that kind of dialogue together.

01:43:13

Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you, everyone.

01:43:23

Thank you for behaving. If you have any questions, please do not flock after the speakers afterwards. They're quite tired, and they've prepared, and they are very tired.

01:43:32

But you're also welcome to get some of the literature at the book table. You're also welcome to get some literature that might address some of your questions outside by the various tables.