Confession and More

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My eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold, and I know how
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I ought to be alive to you and dead to me
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What can be done for an old heart?
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I'll fill it up with oil and wine The oil is you, your spirit of love, please wash me anew in the wine of your love
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My eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold, and I know how
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I ought to be alive to you and dead to me
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What can be done for an old heart? I'll fill it up with oil and wine of your love My eyes are dry, my faith is old, my prayers are cold, and I know how And I didn't read very deeply into it, I'll be honest with you. But I read enough of it to know what was going on.
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I'll read you the whole story here, or at least most of it. This is the version from the
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New York Times from a week ago today. Geneva. The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that the
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United States would use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.
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In a memorandum issued by President Obama in Washington and in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here, the administration vowed to actively combat efforts by other nations to criminalize homosexual conduct, abuse gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgendered people, or ignore abuse against them.
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Some have suggested the gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, Mrs. Clinton said at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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But in fact, they are one and the same. Neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs.
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Clinton specified how to give the initiative teeth. Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council's deputy spokeswoman, said the administration was not cutting or tying foreign aid to changes in other nations' practices.
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Down below it says, with campaigning already underway in the 2012 presidential contest,
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Mr. Obama's announcement could bolster support among gay voters and donors who have questioned the depth of his commitment.
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He chose the Reverend Rick Warren, a pastor who opposes same -sex marriage, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
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Mr. Obama himself has not come out officially in favor of same -sex marriage, but he successfully pushed for repeal of the
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Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that prevented gays from openly serving in the military. And the
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Justice Department has said it will no longer defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
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As I read the headline and took in the thought that the
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United States of America was going to be using its considerable wealth and influence around the world to promote homosexuality and gay rights and homosexual marriage and the like, what
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I did is I went on to the next news story. There are many of them like that.
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And if you, like me, scan through, I don't know how many. If I didn't clear my queue a couple of times each day, it would probably, during weekdays,
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I don't know how many things would show up. I don't know, 700, 800 in a day.
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I don't know, a lot. And it's the data fog.
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We're exposed to so much of this stuff and it happens so fast. It used to be, you know, you'd read the newspaper and some of the stuff in there would be a day or two old because it takes time.
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It took time back in the olden days for news to travel. It's not the case anymore. And yet, as things change so quickly in our day, and that's one thing, it's just totally changed since, you know,
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I'm old enough now. My birthday is coming up this weekend. And I'm going to be starting my, wow, sixth decade,
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I guess. Yeah, 50th year, sixth decade. Yeah, hee -haw. As I'm old enough now to recognize things change much faster now.
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It's not just, oh, well, you older folks, you're just not used to it. No, the way that our society is changing is at an incredibly rapid pace now.
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When you think about 25 years ago, could anyone have thought about what would be happening with the utter degradation of marriage?
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The complete overthrow of centuries of cultural commitment to one understanding of what marriage was.
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I mean, 25 years ago, we were talking about the plague of divorce. Now, in Washington, D .C.,
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more than 70 % of the African -American children are born to unwed mothers.
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70 % don't have dads. Marriage has been thrown under the proverbial bus, and now it's being extended to people that cannot get married.
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No matter what you do, you cannot redefine marriage in this way without absolutely destroying the institution.
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And you see what's happening to the society as a result. And we see this, and we know this, and we know what the
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Bible says about a nation that would do what this nation is doing. It's in the back of our mind.
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We know what it is. Even the most liberal person who calls himself a Christian, for whatever reason a liberal would call themselves
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Christians, knows, and the liberal may be embarrassed by this, but knows what the
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Bible says about God's wrath coming upon a nation that would use its wealth and its power to promote that which is simply ungodly.
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And the fact of the matter is, when we pray, God deliver us from unrighteous rulers, we have ungodly, evil, unrighteous rulers.
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Anyone who would promote the destruction of the God -ordained, the
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God -ordained institution of marriage is an evil person. Not someone of a different perspective.
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They are evil. They are promoting ungodliness. And we're afraid to say that.
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And how long we're going to have the right to say that is a real question. I read that story, and I knew in the back of my mind,
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I know Romans 1 .32. And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
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Sin loves company. And the vast majority of people who are promoting the destruction of marriage and a sexual perversion that destroys life, and it does destroy life, the vast majority of these people are not themselves homosexuals.
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They're not. And yet they are promoting what is ungodly.
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They encourage ungodliness amongst others. It's a part of the rebellion of man.
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And this is what's happening at the highest levels of the government, the United States of America.
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And I read that, and I rolled my eyes, and I moved on to the next story.
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Maybe it was about Tim Tebow, or maybe it was about something in the elections.
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I don't know. And the reason
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I talk about confession this morning is I have to confess that I have fallen into the trap that I have a feeling most of my listeners have fallen into.
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And that is we are bombarded with this stuff so often that we develop some sort of a defense mechanism and we become jaded.
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We become insensitive. Our eyes become dry.
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And unlike the psalmist in Psalm 119, who talked about how his eyes flowed with rivers of water because of the fact that he saw
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God's law being trampled underfoot. And people showing disrespect to God's law.
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Unlike that psalmist, my eyes don't weep anymore for that because it's all around us.
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And I'm not saying that I know exactly how to find the right balance.
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But I know that if we try to find the balance in ignoring it, in not thinking about it, that eventually leads us to apathy about these things.
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And we don't communicate to the next generation. And that next generation then, well, it's always been this way, hasn't it?
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No, it hasn't always been this way. I think that's one of the things going on in our nation is that the generation that fought
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World War II is passing away very, very quickly. Thousands dying each week as the last of those people pass from the earth.
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And the generations that have come after that don't know almost anything about sacrifice for the freedoms and all the blessings of liberty that the
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United States of America possesses. Same thing in Europe. The generation that fought against totalitarianism and fascism, that generation has passed away.
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And the next generation took for granted everything that had been given to them, and we did not communicate to the next generation, the current generation of young people, the value of the sacrifice of those who went before us.
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We had it given to us. We knew the people. We still had some commitment to those things, but we haven't passed that on.
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And so the ideas of our liberties, the freedoms that we have, and the foundations upon which they are built, the moral foundations upon which they are built, we haven't communicated that to the next generation.
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So the next generation thinks on the basis of, well, what I deserve and what
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I am owed. Nothing about self -sacrifice to get those things. It's all connected together.
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And when we talk to the younger generation about the issue of homosexuality, how do they judge it?
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They don't judge it on the basis of viewing ourselves as creatures made in the image of God, and that God has the right to determine what is and what is not appropriate sexual behavior.
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And there's such things as perversions. It's all whatever makes you feel good. And if that's what makes you feel good and happy, then that's good.
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And the result is the utter degradation of our view of humanity.
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We no longer see that we are creatures made in the image of God. And as a result, we do not view
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God's law as something that is good and honorable and something that we should meditate upon and present to people and let's face it, the vast majority of evangelicals are embarrassed by God's law.
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It's that stuff in those books back in the Old Testament that I barely made it through when I did my one -time reading through the
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Bible thing. And so we don't talk about what the
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Christian life should be about and that is a life of repentance. Of course, we have some people amongst us that don't think repentance is even a part of the
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Christian life and it's sort of hard to even understand how that's even a part of Christianity. I don't think that it is. But sometimes people say, how can
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I live my life in such a way as to really stand out from the world? Well, it's not by dressing like the world and speaking like the world and acting like the world and everything else.
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I would suggest that the way to live your life in a way that is utterly unlike the world would be to live a life of repentance because that's the one thing the world cannot even begin to understand and cannot begin to do.
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Now, we look at this situation and the United States promoting homosexuality around the world.
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Well, I'll tell you, if you want to, if the
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Obama administration wants to give something to the Muslims to help them recruit people to be jihadists, do that.
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Just brilliant. There's the great
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Satan over there promoting homosexuality. There you go. But the reality is it's easy to become angry.
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It's easy to become angry at something like this. But that doesn't, our anger accomplishes nothing.
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And I can't repent for somebody else. I can only repent for myself.
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I can only repent for my own attitudes. And I can pray for my nation. But what do
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I pray for? A nation whose leaders are absolutely intent and spitting in God's face.
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Because that's what these people are intent on doing. Why isn't anybody saying this? I guess it's because there are some people who say it and then they do it in such a way that shows they've never really looked all that deeply at it and we don't like the you know, the wild -eyed
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King James Only guy talking about how evil the United States is.
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But at the same time, people who should be saying this seem to be frightened. Absolutely frightened at saying what needs to be said.
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And that is, and this needs to be communicated to the leaders of this nation with clarity.
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If you promote that which is in direct opposition to God's truth, you are engaging in evil and you must repent.
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You will be judged by God. Not by me.
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I don't have the right to judge you. I have the right to vote against you as long as I still have that right.
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As long as I still have my freedoms. There's a lot of people who would like to see a totalitarian system of government that guarantees free speech for only one side.
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We already see this happening in Europe and it's heading our direction, folks. But the reality is we need to be proclaiming
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God's judgment. God will not be mocked. If you sow these things, you can only reap what you have sown.
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And if you promote that which is directly in opposition to godliness, you will reap death.
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Eternal death separated from God. It seems a lot of Christians have confused the
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Bible and the Constitution. Well, actually, not even the Constitution. A post -constitutional concept.
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Separation of church and state which in their mind becomes separation of what
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I do in my culture and God's law and what's right before God.
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So that, oh, a politician isn't going to be judged for what they've done? Really? You really think that on the judgment day, those people who made it possible for us to swim in the blood of innocent children murdered in the womb because we know more about the humanity of the pre -born child than we have ever known in the history of mankind.
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Folks, if the amount of light determines punishment, then all those people who killed little children in the dark ages, well, they'll be punished.
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But what about us today? We have all watched videos of the development of that little child in the womb.
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We have no excuse at all. We know that's human.
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We know that if you don't go in there and kill it with salt or rip it apart with a knife, it's going to be a human being with separate
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DNA, a separate genetic code, a unique individual. We know that. We have no excuses.
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None. Zero. And yet we become apathetic.
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There's just too much. No one can keep up with it all. And so, like I said,
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I read this story. Sorry about the sermon, but I read the story and I moved on.
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And a few days later, I heard somebody mention, oh, I heard, might have been the next day or the day after,
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I forget when it was, when Al Mohler mentioned the same thing in the briefing.
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That is a that is a webcast, by the way, that you need to subscribe to.
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I certainly do. I listen to it every day. Well, I listen to it every day when he's doing it. Anyways, he mentioned as well.
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And I started thinking about it. So, you know, I read that story and I just, I just passed over it.
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And I did not, you know, in the back of my mind, you know, all the, all the theological truth is there.
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But I just passed over it. And so maybe you like I need to need to confess that it's it's become far too easy to find a means of accommodation, a way around having to face the cultural suicide that our nation and Western culture as a whole seems to be absolutely intent upon committing.
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And I'm not sure where the balance is there. But I know that I would rather continue to be sensitive to God's truth and to God's law than to be comfortable in this present evil age.
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That's not it's not that we're the first people to live in an evil age. How did Jesus describe this age? Is this present evil age?
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But there does seem to be such a a present reality of the evil in the sense of the the the access we have to it that we can see it right in front of us.
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Unlike any time in the past, maybe it was a mercy from God that news of evil could only come to us at a certain speed in the past.
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Now it's instantaneous and it's just all around us. It's just all around us.
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So I confess I read that story and it didn't you know, I mean,
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I I added it to the you know, I have a bookmark folder in Chrome on my
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Mac. I think I called it cultural decay. And I may have even dragged it in there.
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I don't know. Sometimes I get tired of it. Just dragging stuff in there. There's so much.
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But I confess I just I just passed it by and I shouldn't have done that. I have to say that I often more and more lately considered what must it have been like day -to -day life in Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Yeah. Would we ever look back and consider that there might have been those who say
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God bless Sodom and Gomorrah. When I hear politicians and others get up these days and say
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God bless America. I wonder is that appropriate any longer?
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Is that a reasonable request? Well, obviously remember
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September 12th 2001. We were on the air that day and what
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I said was not what most people were saying. And in fact, if I recall correctly
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Carla even made a T -shirt from what I said and that was God bless
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America with a heart -rending soul -shaking repentance because that's
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I think that is the only blessing that we can pray for our nation.
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I don't know how we can look at a nation that will take its money to promote godlessness around the world and say
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God bless us with more money to do what with? To continue to spit in your face? Well, you wonder was even a voice in Sodom anymore?
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Or was he just there? He was known and the way they turned on him so quickly
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Who are you a foreigner to judge us? I'm sure they had observed his life and when they observed his life they felt conviction.
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But he had had to have come to a point of accommodation. There's no question his wife had. And in fact, even at that the angels literally had to drag him out of there.
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And you would think that someone with a righteous soul would have been so well,
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Hebrews says he was vexed but did he find a means of accommodation? I don't know. We have to be careful of it.
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I wanted to raise the issue for folks and to think about it because I would imagine that almost every person in this audience has seen those stories over the past week and like me just moved on because the feeling is what can
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I do about it? And it's true. I can't, you know I mean, I can do what I can do as a citizen.
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I certainly pray and of course the way we pray the way we pray at the
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Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church is not the way that I was taught to pray when I was younger.
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And what I mean by that is we pray that God would protect us from evil leaders and if that God would be pleased to either change their hearts or to remove them from office but protect us from evil leaders and I led the pastoral prayer
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Sunday morning and I prayed about this very issue. Confess, our nation has done this.
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We cannot ask for your blessing upon our nation unless we repent, unless we are repentant.
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That is absolutely what we have to do. Let me close with that text from Psalm 119.
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Then maybe we'll just go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back with the
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Diya Muhammad debate and the Bart Ehrman will continue those those series.
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But that text is Psalm 119, 136. The 136th verse of the 119th
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Psalm. My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law.
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My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law.
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Well, I don't want to I don't want to become a person who doesn't understand what the psalmist was saying there.
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I want to be a person who does have a sensitivity to God's law and holds that as a much higher standard than any accommodation
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I might seek with this world. When we come back Diya Muhammad and subject of Islam.
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We'll be right back. Passion and peace are what sets
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The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
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where the ministry extends around the world in thenissence of the most important gospel.
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Well, someone on the channel just said, great sermonette, Doc, unfortunately on Sunday our deacon was talking with the elders and he said, well, remember, sermonettes make for Christianettes.
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So, hmm, ba -dum -boom, yes, poor Pastor Fry went about 15 minutes shorter than the full period on Sunday, so the deacon was saying, well, remember,
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Pastor Fry, sermonettes make for Christianettes. I don't remember the last time
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I got done anywhere, no, I always take the full time, but anyway.
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Yes, I know, LaShawn's trying to get in, but she says she got in and then no one's there, which means she's either on the wrong network or didn't join the right channel or something like that.
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So, someone has to go find her. Poor LaShawn's wandering about in the, not the blogosphere, the
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IRCosphere, and we're going to send out search parties, see if we can drag her into Prasapalagia, because I guess she's trying to make the effort to get in, but she hasn't found our, either our network or our channel yet.
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Spelling Prasapalagia can be fun anyways, but anyways. Oh, by the way,
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Lord willing, we will need to move the Thursday program to Friday morning.
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I and a friend are going to be doing something absolutely insane on Thursday.
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I hesitate to make mention of it because then I have to actually do it, but our goal, our goal is to climb on our bikes 10 ,560 feet, 10 ,560 feet on Thursday, which is two miles, two miles of ascent.
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It should take about 72 to 73 miles at the particular spot we're going to be doing this at.
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And so I've never climbed over 10 ,000 feet in one day. And with my birthday coming up over the weekend, some of you know,
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I've tried to do something to sort of mark that. And so between the ride I'm going to do then and on my birthday,
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I'm shooting for 15 ,000 feet before this particular birthday.
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So only a few years ago, I was only able to do 100 feet per year. So in other words, about 4 ,500 feet or something like that, and I'd have to prepare for that.
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And then it was really exhausting and stuff and things have changed. But anyhow, so we're going to move it to Friday morning and the weather should allow for that and stuff like that.
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All right, let's get back to, we're going to jump into the Diya Mohammed debate first. We have been listening to his opening statements and he is, of course, making the argument that the
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Trinity has been removed from the Bible because of 1 John 5, 7, which he keeps calling
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John 5, 7. And let's continue on listening to his presentation.
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With God, how can he be clean that he was born of a woman? So the Bible says, how can anyone be justified with God of he who is born of a woman?
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Now, there's an interesting objection. How can Jesus be clean if he's born of a woman?
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Of course, from the Islamic perspective, he was. So I'm not really certain why you would make an objection that would actually refute your own perspective, because from the
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Islamic perspective, Jesus was sinless. In fact, even that famous Hadith about the end times, when all of humanity comes to first to Adam and then to Noah and then
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Abraham and Moses and Jesus and stuff, and they all say, it's not for me to intercede with my
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Lord. Jesus is the only one who doesn't make any reference to sin. And one of the forms, if I recall correctly, of that Hadith actually even points that out.
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It doesn't just pass over, but actually even points out. He said nothing concerning sin. So I'm not really sure how that's an argument.
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But be that as it may, obviously, the Bible does say that man is born of a woman.
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And as a result, those who are naturally born are unclean. And that's the doctrine of original sin.
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I don't think that Mr. Muhammad actually believes that either, does he? I think you can make the argument that Muhammad had that understanding.
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Certainly some of the Hadiths support that. Certainly the famous Hadith where Adam and Moses are sort of arguing with one another supports the idea that Adam in his fall brought his progeny and his posterity into sin.
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But the Bible clearly differentiates between Jesus' birth and the birth of most men through the concept of the virgin birth, which again is a part of Islamic theology.
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So I really don't know on what basis Mr. Muhammad is bringing this issue up, because on any basis we approach it from, he's contradicting his own faith in making that kind of argument.
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Not our words, words that you find in the Bible. And it continues, How much less is man than is a worm?
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The Son of Man, the Son of Man, referred to Jesus, is a worm. I don't know,
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I've heard a few other people use this. And I guess it just sort of gets passed around or something.
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Son of Man as a title does not always refer to Jesus, obviously.
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There is the Divine Son of Man in the Book of Mark when Jesus applies that, applying the prophecy of Daniel to himself.
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But Son of Man can simply be a reference to a human being. And in this context, it is talking about the
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Son of Man as a human being in comparison to God. In fact, this goes back to part of my response to Mr.
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Barron a few weeks ago. I remember we did that two -hour mega -DL that we dedicated to Big Ralph.
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And one of the things that was brought up there, likewise sort of touched on this, and that is these
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Unitarians will say, Well, that phrase doesn't always have to mean this. It can mean that or it can mean one of these.
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That's true. And like Ego -I -Me, for example, doesn't always refer, it is not always a claim of deity.
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When the blind man in John 9 says Ego -I -Me, he's not claiming deity, duh. But any word or phrase has a meaning in the context in which it was used.
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And Jesus uses Son of Man and Son of God, even interchangeably, in contexts that indicate he's drawing from Daniel and the specific eschatological
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Son of Man, who is brought before the Ancient of Days, so on and so forth. And he has servants who worship him and all the rest of that stuff.
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So just because you can find the phrase Son of Man, and here you have the vast difference between the created order and the uncreated
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God, that was the other thing I was going to mention about responding to Mr. Barron, was that Unitarians are always saying,
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You shouldn't say that we believe Jesus is merely a creature. Yes, we should say you believe he's merely a creature.
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Because the chasm between the creator and the created is infinite.
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And so no matter how exalted you are on the created side, you're still created.
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And you're a mere creature in comparison to God. In the same way, the Son of Man, even though created in the image of God, is like a worm in comparison to God on a level of being, which of course is what's being referred to there.
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Again, not my words. These are from the Bible. And Brother Slim will correct me if I'm misquoting.
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Well, that's exactly what we're attempting to do. It's not so much misquoting as completely ignoring the context of the quotes that you give.
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Now, in John 3 .16, any Christian will know... Okay, now here, this is...
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Okay, here we go. This is where I really think...
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I'm watching Twitter over here. And I'm watching the channel a little bit. And Squirrel just said, Breaking news! Dozens of channel rats on Twitter work diligently to get
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Leshawn into CrossFile again. You know, the sad thing is,
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Leshawn, is that we get lots of folks on our channel that we don't really want on our channel.
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There are all sorts of lamers who show up. Yes, and who come in to tell me about what a terrible, horrible person
40:54
I am. And we want you in channel, and we can't get you there. It's just not fair. It's sort of funny.
41:01
Anyways, this next section is going to be very, very educational, if I ever get around to it and stop playing around with the channel. Here is where you need to be able to explain to someone, to a
41:20
Muslim. Diya Muhammad is very representational of the standard set of complete misunderstandings on the part of the
41:36
Muslim in Western culture. And so, what you have to be able to do is to be able to explain basic fundamental things to them.
41:48
That they may already actually know when it comes to... You know, I have a feeling Diya Muhammad would recognize that when you're studying the
41:55
Quran, there are certain words used in the Quran. You need to see how the Quran used those words, and the context of those words.
42:02
And would probably recognize that certain Arabic words and certain surahs have different meanings than what are used in other surahs, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
42:09
But when it comes to the Bible, they don't want to extend to us the same privilege,
42:20
I guess. And so, what you're going to hear here is
42:26
Diya Muhammad has imbibed a certain understanding of the word begotten.
42:33
Only begotten, specifically. He doesn't know what the Greek is. He doesn't know what monogamous is.
42:40
He doesn't understand that monogamous comes from genous, and not from genao, which means to beget.
42:49
It only has one new, not two news in it. And he's not taking the time to look at any of that stuff.
42:55
He wouldn't even know where to look. And unfortunately, probably hasn't run into too many Christians who can explain it to him.
43:03
And so, he's got this idea of what begotten means. And the primary source of Diya Muhammad's understanding of Christian theology is
43:17
Ahmed Didat. Yes, Ahmed Didat.
43:25
The showman, the storyteller, the deceiver. And he was.
43:31
You cannot tell me he wasn't. I have documented.
43:36
Look at our YouTube site. And we haven't even commenced to begin. If we really wanted to invest some time in it, we could document.
43:46
So, it's just as easy as documenting gross errors on the part of Zakir Naik, who is still alive, and will not debate people who can document his errors.
43:58
And he knows it. He is hiding in fear from those that he knows could demonstrate his utter errors.
44:07
He's hiding in fear. And those of you who are Muslim apologists know it.
44:13
In fact, I will point out something. The better a Muslim apologist you are, in other words, the more you actually study the other side, and you understand the issues, and you can present a consistent perspective, the more you're going to recognize that your most popular speakers don't have a clue what they're talking about.
44:29
Don't have a clue what they're talking about. I could name names of Muslims I have debated over the past couple of years.
44:39
And I know if we sat down and I started presenting to you the arguments of Ahmed Didat and Zakir Naik, you know they're bad arguments.
44:49
And one of the reasons I know that is because you don't repeat them. If you thought they were good arguments, you wouldn't repeat them.
44:55
But you know that they're bad arguments, and yet they are absolutely the most popular arguments out there.
45:01
And unfortunately, D .M. Muhammad, likewise, has done the same thing.
45:07
He has just followed Ahmed Didat, and what you're going to hear is exactly what
45:14
Ahmed Didat says. Listen to what he says about begotten. What John 3 .16
45:19
is. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, begotten not made.
45:27
And he was named Jesus. Now, I get the feeling, honestly, because he said this a number of times, that D .M.
45:36
Muhammad actually believes that the phrase begotten not made is in the
45:42
New Testament. He's even going to say it. That's a creedal statement. That's from the
45:48
Nicene Creed. It's not a New Testament statement, in any way, shape, or form. But, do you remember when we were playing this earlier?
45:57
He even pointed out, he didn't bring his Bible. This is all stuff in notes. He can't even check the context of these things if he wanted to.
46:05
He really, I think, he really thinks that's what John 3 .16 says. His mother's one, and his begotten not made.
46:11
The brother changed the words a little when he referred to it. Where he said, the one and only son.
46:19
See, did you hear it? He changed the words a little. Here's a man who knows that the
46:27
Quran was written in a language other than English. And so he would know that if we tried to present an argument based upon differences in English translations of the
46:48
Quran, he would go, that's not right. That's not how you handle the Quran. The Quran was written in Arabic.
46:57
You've got to look at the Arabic. You can't be looking at English translations. Let's say we made an argument based upon the difference between the
47:02
Sahih International translation and Yusuf Ali. And then we compared those with Piktal.
47:10
And we said, see, the Quran, they're changing the words of the
47:15
Quran. What would be the only meaningful way that you could argue that the words of the
47:25
Quran are being changed? Well, that the Arabic is being changed.
47:31
And so when I present examples of this from the early Tafsir literature, it's not from translations.
47:40
It is specifically in regards to the
47:46
Arabic text of the Quran that we're talking about, right? And yet here, because Samuel Green had more accurately translated
48:00
Monoghanese as unique or one of a kind, then the result of the accusation is you're changing the words.
48:13
Fundamental basic errors. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says begotten, begotten.
48:19
And we all know what begotten is. The Bible says begotten. No, sir. The Bible says Monoghanese.
48:27
You're making an English translation the standard of what the Bible is, even when you know that you'd never do that with the
48:34
Quran. And what is the famous saying that I've been saying now?
48:40
You know, it's been over five years. It's been over five years now since I coined this one. I remember where I was when
48:47
I came up with this statement. And it has become famous.
48:52
And I think it's a very good statement. Inconsistency. It's a sign of a failed argument.
48:59
And I appreciated the fact, I appreciated the fact, that Abdullah Kunda said to me after our debate, he said, well,
49:11
I'm trying to be that consistent Muslim that you're always looking for. Because I keep looking.
49:16
I keep looking. And I appreciate the effort to move that direction. But I'll be perfectly honest with you.
49:22
I don't think it's possible because of the essence of the religious system of Islam coming after Christianity and the statements that are made about Christianity in the
49:34
Quran. That's where the problem lies. So, you will find folks applying double standards.
49:45
And you have to try to gently and clearly point out to them that they're doing that.
49:51
Begotten refers to the lower animal functions of sex. There you go. Begotten refers to the lower animal functions of sex.
49:58
Well, the term ghena 'o might refer to that. And by the way, that comes straight out of the
50:05
Akhmed Didat quote book. I mean, it's been years since I've played any Akhmed Didat on the program.
50:12
I need to do that again. Because I do want, I think after we finish the
50:17
Diya Muhammad thing, I do want to play some of the sections from the
50:22
Didat debate with Josh McDowell. I mentioned to you
50:27
I listened to that. And one of the things, one of the reasons
50:32
I hesitate to do that is that even for me, who has listened to this guy for years now, if my mind wanders for even a moment,
50:43
I lose the context. And his accent is so thick, his South African accent is so thick, that it can take me two or three sentences before all of a sudden it starts making sense again.
50:55
I mean, literally, if you lose the context, it's like gone. It's just words. But there was this, there was just a, it was very much on the level of Jerry, I'll take just one.
51:13
If those of you who know my debates know, that's one of the most famous instances in 1998 or 96, 1996, in the first Marion debate on Long Island.
51:27
Algo has this entire thing, the entire thing memorized, and quotes it each morning.
51:33
And when he gets up, it's a frightening thing. But there's this incident in the
51:40
Didat debate with McDowell, where McDowell just, Didat throws him a moon ball, and he just cranks it up and sends it over the fence.
51:50
And the thing that's amazing to me, is that after that embarrassing crushing of Didat on that very same point, guess who, to this very day, continues to repeat the same error that Didat had made?
52:06
Zakir Naik. Zakir Naik. It's just, the man has no shame.
52:14
That's what it means. You and I, we're all begotten. What I was going to say is, Gna 'o can mean that.
52:22
Now, monogamous, in this context. How about Gna 'o in a spiritual sense? Does Gna 'o always have to do with sexual reproduction?
52:31
No. Can it refer to sexual reproduction? Sure. How do you know the difference? It's called context.
52:38
It's called, how is the term being used in any given context? And we know that monogamous does not come from Gna 'o.
52:48
And so, if you're going to make the argument, you're going to have to go much more deeply into the language and the context to make your argument.
52:57
And it's clear that Mr. Muhammad has no earthly idea what the information is that he would have to be getting into to substantiate the assertions he's making.
53:07
And the Bible's going out of his way to say, no, he wasn't made, he was begotten.
53:12
See, he really thinks that it says begotten, not made, in the text of the Bible. And he's confusing the text of the
53:18
Bible with the Nicene Creed. This is what you're attributing to a holy man, the prophet, or even your
53:25
Lord, that he was begotten. Well, I do believe he was born of a virgin, just like you believe that.
53:37
That's what the Quran says. Have you read Surah 19? It's there. So, what he's reading into that is some type of a sexual act, all based upon his misunderstanding of monogamous.
53:55
In Acts 2 .22, it says, Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God.
54:03
A man. Now, again, if you've dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses at the door, or people like that, you've heard all of this before, and it does give you the strong sense that what we're getting is coming from secondary sources like that.
54:22
Go on the internet, find arguments, cobble them all together. We believe that Jesus was a man.
54:28
And what's the false assumption that has to be dealt with here? Obviously, Unitarianism.
54:35
And what's the fundamental assumption of the Muslim at this point that we dealt with in the debate with Abdullah Kunda?
54:42
There can be no incarnation. He's a man! You can't be anything other than a man. You can't have a God -man. Not possible.
54:50
It's just the presupposition of the position that is not being defended.
54:59
A man. There was a time in the story relating to the Bible, where Jesus arrived in a town, and he saw a fig tree.
55:09
Here comes the fig tree argument! Ah, it's the fig tree! Ah, we love the fig tree!
55:15
Some of you are going, what are you doing? If you've never seen the fig tree video, it's definitely on the
55:24
YouTube channel. Fig tree! Yes, the fig tree. I don't know where he was from, but we had a questioner during the first debate we did with Muslims, with Hamza Abdul Malik in 1999.
55:38
And I play this. It's a part of my regular presentation on Islam, to give you the varying views.
55:45
And I love watching the audiences when I play the fig tree. And when
55:52
I watch people's faces, when they hear the fig tree argument, a lot of people, at first they don't get what the argument is, and then they think they get it, and they start to chuckle.
56:05
It's like, man, I thought the Jehovah's Witnesses were wild, but that's amazing.
56:12
And they sort of go, okay, well, you know, whatever. But then once it's over with,
56:23
I go, all right, I saw you all chuckling at that, but how would you respond to it?
56:28
How would you answer this? And that's when it becomes a little bit more difficult to deal with.
56:35
Let me see if, you know, let me, I don't have it on this one, drat. I'm going to find this.
56:43
Let me pull this thing up. There it is. Okay. I want to play the fig tree argument.
56:49
In case you haven't seen it, some of you have, some of you have, but let's listen to the fig tree argument. This is from 1999, and this is during the cross -examination period with Hamza Abdel -Malik.
57:02
I'm sorry, not cross -examination, audience questions. And here is the question that was asked to me, the fig tree argument.
57:10
Yes, my question to the doctor. I heard you repeating many times, you're saying he's a creator about Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, because we
57:20
Muslim believe in Jesus, the mighty prophet of God. I heard you many times, you're saying he's the creator of everything and all things.
57:30
So I want you to explain to me, if it's possible, if he's a creator of everything, when
57:36
Jesus, peace and blessing be upon him, when he was walking by, the fig tree was his companion.
57:42
The fig tree was his companion, and he wants to eat some fig.
57:48
And they told him, Master, the fig is not in season. So if he was
57:54
God, how he don't know if he created the tree, how he doesn't know if what's in season or what's not in season, if he created everything.
58:04
And if the fig was not in season, and he's God, first of all, we don't accept
58:10
God to be hungry, he wants to eat, but you, Christian, you said God choose to do so, so that's your faith.
58:18
But I'm saying, even if he was God and fig is not in season, why he couldn't order the tree to bring fig?
58:25
Isn't that God the one create everything? So there you go. There's the fig tree argument.
58:31
And I point out to folks that that is a Quranic argument. The Quran makes that argument when it talks about Jesus and his mother eating food.
58:44
Now, of course, it also applies that to Mary, which makes you go, you mean the author of the Quran thought
58:49
Mary was a god too? And so, you know, you have to get into that. But I go, how do you respond to that?
58:57
Now, here's the version as it is offered by D .M. Muhammad. He was overjoyed.
59:03
And he went to the fig tree, and he was angry because the season was not yet. You know, when we travel, we get lost.
59:10
Is it spring? Is it autumn? Is it summer? Whatever it may be. He was going, thinking there was fruit bearing on this tree.
59:17
But then he saw there was no fruit on the tree, so he got angry. If he's God Almighty, he's all -knowing, why would he get angry for the tree that's following his commands?
59:25
The tree wasn't bearing fruit. It wasn't seasoned. And so he got angry. How can a man, Jesus, the all -knowing, get angry at the fact there was no fruit when the tree is following his commands and bearing fruit at certain times?
59:40
Now, you hear the paper turn. So, you know, example done. Let's move on from here.
59:49
Has D .M. Muhammad taken the time to look up the context of the fig tree? Does he understand how the fig tree represents
59:56
Israel? And does he understand the concept of doing things? The thing that bothers me, honestly, here, is these guys know how many times
01:00:10
Muhammad did things in the Hadith that were meant to communicate something.
01:00:18
They know how many times the Quran, for example, refers to ayat, signs, and how things in nature are taken to have certain meanings.
01:00:33
Do you not understand how this means this and that means that? There's parables, even in the creation, according to Quran.
01:00:42
And yet, when they read the New Testament, Jesus isn't allowed to have parables.
01:00:49
Jesus can't have parables. No, Jesus is angry at the tree because there's no figs.
01:00:56
And he's supposed to know that if he's the creator, then he knows when figs... Well, if he lived in Israel, he knew what the season for figs was, for crying out loud.
01:01:05
Are you telling me he wasn't as smart as his disciples? I mean, are you really going to be that disrespectful? The point was that it had the appearance that it would have figs, just as Israel had the appearance of having fruit unto godliness, but it had nothing.
01:01:25
It was a parable. To quote from my favorite heretic, it's a parable, dummy.
01:01:32
And I'm not calling Diya Muhammad a dummy, I'm quoting from John Dominic Crossan, who uses that phrase all the time.
01:01:38
It's a parable. It's not an objection. Read it in context. Show enough respect for the
01:01:47
New Testament writers to at least understand what they're saying. At least, you know, I call for Christians to handle the
01:01:55
Quran correctly, to read it in its context, to not be unfair and to not be surface level in your criticism of it.
01:02:02
And therefore, I can say to you, Muslim apologists, man, you really need to step up your game.
01:02:09
And I don't mean doing it the way Shabir does it, by quoting all the liberals. Let the text speak for itself.
01:02:17
Apply the same standard. Apply the same standards of scholarship, worldview, exegesis to the
01:02:27
New Testament that you do the Quran. How about that? I don't think you can do it. Because when you do that, the
01:02:34
Quran doesn't do so well in comparison to the New Testament. All right, let's shift gears.
01:02:41
And now that we have LaShawn in channel, she says,
01:02:47
I was about to give up and I thought, I can do this. Believe me, LaShawn, like we said, all sorts of people get in there that we wish weren't.
01:02:55
What? Did I miss something? Yes. Yes, it is.
01:03:01
With two minutes after, of course, it's a jumbo deal. It's just a jumbo deal.
01:03:08
Just for Ralph's benefit there. This is just a jumbo deal. It is not a mega deal.
01:03:18
And I don't want to get excited about that or anything like that. But just so you know. Anyhow, yes, we are going to.
01:03:26
My plan was to do the first half hour on the cultural issue, half hour on the Diya Muhammad debate, and the last half hour on the
01:03:37
Bart Ehrman situation. I want to finish my cross examination of Dr.
01:03:43
Ehrman here so that we can we can press on here with his actual presentation.
01:03:50
God could have inspired the originals and then decided to allow scribes to change the originals. God could have inspired all the textual variants.
01:03:57
I mean, if you're saying if it's impossible, then when you're talking about God, nothing is impossible.
01:04:04
Now we're continuing on analyzing his own theological presuppositions, which he seems loath to defend and didn't like the fact that I brought up, even though it's in the book that he demanded that we debate.
01:04:20
But now he's just talking about, rambling on about the range of possibilities.
01:04:26
But then he gets to what his own view is. The church father origin maintained that all of the textual variants were inspired by God, that he inspired the scribes.
01:04:36
So, well, that's perfectly fine if that's what you want to think. I simply don't think so. My view is that if God wanted us to have his words, he wouldn't have allowed his words to be changed so that we don't know what the words were.
01:04:50
So there you go. My view is that if God inspired the words, he would not have allowed them to be changed.
01:04:59
Who else shares that perspective? Who else shares that presupposition? Now, obviously,
01:05:05
I don't believe he's allowed his words to be changed in the sense it's lost. He's using that in the sense of any textual variation.
01:05:15
There would be no copyist errors. There would be no textual variation whatsoever if it had been inspired.
01:05:25
Now, that is a radical view. That has not been the view of the great textual critics down through the ages.
01:05:34
And so Bart Ehrman seems that that was not the view of his teacher. You cannot tell me that was the view of Bruce Metzger.
01:05:41
It wasn't. That was not the view of Tischendorf. So he's decided to chart a new path, as he has in many other areas.
01:05:55
You need to understand that Bart Ehrman has an agenda. And he has been pursuing that agenda and been very successful in pursuing that agenda because, unfortunately, my apologies ahead of time here, many of my brethren who are wedded to the academy are unwilling to talk straight.
01:06:22
In other words, this man has hijacked not just the textual critical area, but if there is an entire book out, in fact,
01:06:31
I have it for assigned reading for the
01:06:36
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary class that I'm teaching in January here in the Phoenix area.
01:06:41
Still time to sign up if you want to join in. One of my assigned texts is called
01:06:50
The Heresy of Orthodoxy. And it is a specific response to Bart Ehrman.
01:06:56
And the beginning of the book is a response to Bart Ehrman on what is now being called the
01:07:01
Bauer -Ehrman hypothesis. So his name's been attached to it. What is the
01:07:07
Bauer -Ehrman hypothesis? Well, the Bauer there is not F .C. Bauer, even though he would hold similar views, but Walter Bauer, the same
01:07:15
Walter Bauer of the Bauer -Donker -Arndt and Gingrich Greek lexicon.
01:07:21
And Walter Bauer is the one who developed the hypothesis back in the 1930s that originally
01:07:31
Christianity was a loosely connected group of differing views and only over time did the, as Ehrman refers to them, proto -Orthodox come to have victory over everybody else.
01:07:49
And then they rewrote history to make it look like they had always been around.
01:07:57
The Bauer hypothesis is that when you look at major cities in the ancient world, there's no evidence, according to Bauer, of an orthodoxy and then a growing group of heretics rebelling against it.
01:08:14
Now the great irony here, the great irony here is that many people will admit, many scholars will admit, that in its specifics, the
01:08:27
Bauer hypothesis has been refuted, most would say, in every specific, every specific location, geographical location, the cities he looked at, with the possible exception of Odessa.
01:08:42
But even that is debatable. Entire doctoral theses have been written, dissertations, sorry, have been written on the
01:08:53
Bauer hypothesis, refuting it. And yet, while many people admit, I've even heard Ehrman admit that in its particulars, it has not fared well, but overall, it remains the predominant view of historians.
01:09:09
Now what kind of a theory can survive when its foundation's been washed away?
01:09:22
Doesn't that mean that the people who continue to hold to it must have some other reason for holding to it?
01:09:31
I would suggest that's the case. And I couldn't help but thinking about one other entire structure, political, religious, theological structure, that in its particulars, in its historical foundation, has been utterly refuted and washed away by modern historical research, and yet it still stands.
01:10:05
You know what I'm referring to? The papacy. The papacy.
01:10:11
When you look at Rome's use of bogus documents, false citations, the pseudo -Isidorean decretals, the donation of Constantine, the papacy as it exists today could not have developed without those fraudulent works.
01:10:32
Everybody admits that they are frauds today, and yet the papacy still stands.
01:10:39
The papacy still stands. It's standing in midair. It's got nothing to stand on, but it still stands.
01:10:47
And just not very long ago, August of 2010, in a debate with a
01:10:56
Roman Catholic attorney, what did we have to deal with? His use of a bogus citation, a bogus quotation attributed to an early church father.
01:11:08
There are books filled with these things. Who made all this stuff up? And what kind of a theory can continue to exist even when its historical foundation has been wiped away?
01:11:19
Well, the Bauer -Ehrman hypothesis can, and the papacy can. But let's make another connection here, which
01:11:26
I think is rather interesting. Ehrman has just said, if God inspired it, there'd be no variations.
01:11:35
There's Bart Ehrman, Bible critic, happy agnostic, though I'm not so sure about the happy part, and primary opponent of biblical
01:11:48
Christianity in the English -speaking Western culture. Who else says exactly what he says?
01:12:00
Most of you already thought about it. King James -only folks. The King James -only folks have the exact same view.
01:12:09
If God inspired it, there won't be any variations, so there must be one translation, and God's preserved it in the King James version of the
01:12:14
Bible. What's the difference in outlook? None. Absolutely none.
01:12:21
The foundational presupposition is identical between the two of them. One just says, and since there ain't none, then
01:12:28
I have no reason to believe the Bible at all, and I'm going to become an agnostic.
01:12:36
And the other says, well, I'm going to continue to believe the Bible, but I need to find one particular English translation that fulfills my standards, and I choose the
01:12:47
King James version of the Bible. Now 150 years from now, will someone be doing that with NIV -only -ism or ESV -only -ism?
01:12:54
Who knows? I hope not. I hope not. But they have the same presupposition.
01:13:02
They start at the same wrong place, and I find that quite interesting.
01:13:09
So the standard, then, that would have to exist for you to have maintained the position that you held would have been either the originals or some perfect copy thereof.
01:13:24
Now remember, that's a short version of the question that the lady asked.
01:13:31
Remember, a couple weeks ago, I realize sometimes these programs are extended out over so long a period of time that you forget something that was a couple weeks ago or you didn't hear it or whatever.
01:13:46
I understand how that works. But remember, I started off with a lady asking Bart Ehrman a question at the end of the debate.
01:13:53
What evidence would you need? And remember what his answer was. Well, if we found 10 copies of the
01:14:01
Gospel of Mark that we could tell had been written within 10 days, not 10 years, not 10 weeks, 10 days of the original, and they agreed with it...
01:14:14
You didn't hear this, did you? I can tell by the look on your face. Here was... Oh, great.
01:14:20
You know, when the guy behind the soundboard hasn't heard it. If it's not the case that there was this massive recension at some...
01:14:28
Against that. That's good evidence. Got it. Discovered. And the original autographs, what would it be in between that that would...
01:14:37
There's a standard of evidence. That's trustworthy, other than the autographs. Well, if we had early copies, if we had copies of Mark...
01:14:43
Suppose next week there's an archaeological find in Egypt. Say it's in Rome, an archaeological find in Rome.
01:14:51
And we have reason to think that these 10 manuscripts that are discovered were all copied within a week of the original copy of Mark, and they disagree in 0 .001
01:15:06
% of their textual variation. Then I would say that's good evidence. There you go, folks.
01:15:12
There you go. So, 10 copies within a week of the original, and they agree 99 .991%.
01:15:26
That's what he needs. That's what he needs. Now, everybody knows, and he knows, everybody knows, and he knows, that, in fact, the reason
01:15:39
I played this is if you listen very, very carefully. Let me see if I still got it there. Let me turn this up a little bit so we can hear it.
01:15:45
And that's precisely what we don't have. Wow. Did you catch that? Wow.
01:15:51
That's Dan Wallace going, wow. And I wrote to Dan to make sure. I said, is that you,
01:15:57
Dan? Because that's what I was saying when I heard it. Wow. What an outrageous demand.
01:16:06
I mean, that is so, there has never been a textual critic alive who has ever had that standard.
01:16:14
Never. This man is out in the weeds beyond the left field fence with something like this.
01:16:24
And yet, for some reason, everyone just bows and scrapes because, well, he's dead under Bruce Metzger.
01:16:30
Well, Bruce Metzger would find that to be absolutely absurd. But if you want to get invited to the conferences, you don't say that kind of thing,
01:16:40
I guess. I don't know. It's frustrating. But there was the answer that he gave to that guy was 10 copies, 99 .991
01:16:50
% agreement, 10 days. How would you even know that? None of them would be dated anyways. But my assertion is this.
01:16:59
Bart Ehrman's standard for the New Testament to be considered trustworthy is a photocopy machine.
01:17:05
There had to have been a photocopy of the original. That's it. Nothing else will do. So no matter how superior to anything else in history the
01:17:15
New Testament is, by his standard, it cannot be trustworthy. And by the way, as I said last time, let me repeat it to my
01:17:24
Muslim friends who are still listening. That means that by his standard, your
01:17:30
Quran is not trustworthy. Stop quoting people who don't believe in your book as if they're somehow relevant.
01:17:39
He won't talk about your book because he's scared. He won't talk about the Quran because he likes his job and he likes his income.
01:17:48
But if he were to apply the standard that he just applied to the New Testament, your
01:17:54
Quran doesn't cut it. Which means he would have to say if he'd be willing, if he'd have the guts to stand up and be consistent with his own perspective, no, we can't trust the
01:18:06
Quran either. But instead what he does is he dodges that and says
01:18:11
I tried to compare him to a Muslim or something like that, which of course I never did. But that just needs to be said.
01:18:18
Was there something you wished to? Well, it strikes me that it would even be higher than the photocopy standard because if you think about the photocopiers we used to use in the 80s, remember the little wire down the middle and all that you always had to clean and they'd get dirty?
01:18:31
I don't think those would measure up. I don't know. As long as you can read them, I guess. But the point is, photocopiers were invented in 1949 and I guess
01:18:41
God could not speak in written form until 1949, according to Bart Ehrman. Good evening,
01:18:46
Dr. Ehrman. Oh, sorry about that. Need to switch back to this one here. Why would God not allow the originals to be preserved?
01:18:53
I used to ask myself that question. I mean, if he inspired Mark to write down this book, why wouldn't he let it?
01:19:01
I mean, it wouldn't be impossible for it to be preserved. There are other books that are preserved that long. Why wouldn't he tell
01:19:07
Christians? What other book, Dr. Ehrman, what other book has been preserved for 2 ,000 years in its original?
01:19:16
Do we have anything, anywhere, that has been preserved in its original for 2 ,000 years?
01:19:23
Especially given the nature of the persecuted church, given the ferociousness of that persecution.
01:19:35
Are you serious? I do not know of any work of antiquity whatsoever that is that old.
01:19:46
None. And I don't think he does either. I have no idea, earthly idea, what he's talking about.
01:19:53
He actually said there are some books that have been preserved that way. Christians, you know, keep that book so that you have something to judge the copies by.
01:20:02
But he didn't do that. We don't have the original. So it made me suspect that maybe
01:20:09
God wasn't that interested in giving us his words. If he was, why didn't he give them to us? That was my question.
01:20:14
So clearly that's not the perspective of the apostles themselves who themselves did not have access to any originals of the
01:20:22
Old Testament and yet they quoted freely from the Old Testament based upon even translations of the Old Testament.
01:20:27
That's right. It was not their view. Did you catch that? A lot of people go, why did you ask the questions?
01:20:33
I wanted people to hear this stuff. Did you catch what he said? So your view is not the view of the apostles.
01:20:41
Your view is not the view of the authors of the books themselves, right? And he said, you bet, that was not their view.
01:20:50
I do not hold the view of the apostles of Jesus Christ in regards to scripture. No question about it.
01:20:56
And again, to my Muslim friends, are you listening to this? Is this the man you want to trust? How many times have
01:21:05
I been in debates with Muslims over the past couple of years and the primary books on their table were by Bart Ehrman?
01:21:14
And you wonder why I look at you and say, excuse me? Why the double standard?
01:21:20
Why the double standard? I'm sorry? That is not their view.
01:21:25
That is not their view, no. Right, so as you are thinking about this then... I should say, though, when they quote the Old Testament, it's a very interesting thing because...
01:21:33
See, now he's not going to let me continue. Let's go off on a tangent here.
01:21:44
He's going to go off some other direction into the issue of the trans...
01:21:52
quoting Greek Septuagint and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And anyways, that's...
01:22:00
I wanted you to get that material from the cross -examination. I really thought that that brought out some of the most important issues and hence will help us to understand even better his presentation in...
01:22:17
his opening presentation in the debate with Dan Wallace took place, as I recall, October 1st, which
01:22:23
I will return to now. We're getting close to the end of the program, but we'll be able to get a few minutes worth of material in.
01:22:30
And let's... This is where we ended, and I jumped into the cross -exam so that you could...
01:22:38
I think we've got a real good idea now of exactly where Bart Ehrman is coming from in his presentation.
01:22:44
We have a complete copy that survives. There were lots of copies made before this complete copy, and there were lots of copies made before P45.
01:22:55
P45 is not a copy of the original mark. It's a copy probably of a copy made a few years earlier, which is a copy of a copy made a few years earlier, which is a copy of a copy made a few years earlier.
01:23:07
Now remember, if you've listened or we got into this, listen to Bart Ehrman's presentation and what is the vision in the mind, what is the example in the mind that you get from this?
01:23:26
You get a single line Chinese whispers telephone game thing.
01:23:33
Down in Australia, they told me the telephone game doesn't work for them. It's Chinese whispers. So that's what it's called down there, and I think the same thing in the
01:23:42
UK. So we have a different word for it, so I've got to realize we have a worldwide audience.
01:23:48
So we need to make the translations available when possible. But it's a single line to where P45, which
01:23:58
I've seen scraps of. P45 is a quote of, is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.
01:24:07
And what you have to do is just as he did in our debate where he said, well, you know, maybe, you know,
01:24:15
Philippians is only copied once or twice and then that was copied. And all we can get back to is the third generation.
01:24:22
What Bart Ehrman has to present, and Dan Wallace is going to bring this out, by the way. What he has to present is a minimalized perspective on the copying of the originals so that you do not have multiple continuing lines.
01:24:42
He has to minimize the reality of the early
01:24:48
Christian fellowship so that you do not have
01:24:53
Christians comparing scriptures with one another in their meetings. He has to minimize the presence of the authors in the continuing church after the writing of their works and the eyewitnesses.
01:25:14
So you can see why Jesus and the eyewitnesses is such an important book. He has to minimize all of that because if there are multiple lines coming from the original, then the vast majority of his theory collapses.
01:25:31
It really does. Because if you have multiple lines, then major changes in any one of those lines will be seen by textual variation when compared with the other lines.
01:25:43
And now you have to come up with this weird idea that all these other lines got destroyed and only one corrupt line somehow managed to make it into modernity.
01:25:53
That's what he's banking on, in essence, to create this modern hyper -skepticism.
01:26:00
And that's what needs to be called modern hyper -skepticism or radical skepticism.
01:26:06
That's the phrase that Dan's going to use in this debate. It is modern radical skepticism.
01:26:13
But that's how he does it. And look, I realize that it's pretty unusual to challenge
01:26:21
Christians to be thinking through the early textual transmission of the New Testament before the first papyri appear.
01:26:28
But look, if we won't do it in this context, in the context of faith, in the context of the church, then we'll be forced to do it out there in the public square.
01:26:40
We'll be forced to do it out there where the cards may well be stacked against us in the sense that we won't be given the time to really develop things the way that we need to.
01:26:55
And so listen to the presentation that he makes and you can see that it does not fit with what we would expect.
01:27:00
I mean, think for just a moment. We're talking Mark here, right? Do you really think
01:27:06
Mark went through all the effort to write that gospel?
01:27:13
I mean, for us, well, it's a surest gospel. Yeah, you want to write it out sometime? Want to see how long that's going to take you?
01:27:20
By hand? You want to do that? Do you think he went through all of that effort to have it copied once?
01:27:29
Really? One time? What would his desire be?
01:27:37
His desire would be many copies to be made. And if you buy the idea that Matthew and Luke are copying from Mark, excuse me, where did they get their copies at?
01:27:54
There had to have been many copies made. And if you have many copies made, then you have many lines of transmission.
01:28:03
And if there's corruption and change in one, then that is seen by comparison to the others.
01:28:10
See how important that is? Well, there you go, folks. Another eclectic dividing line. Remember, next dividing line will be
01:28:16
Friday morning at this normal time, the Tuesday normal time.
01:28:22
I'll put something on the blog about it. We'll see you then. God bless. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.
01:28:38
Let this moment of self away. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.
01:28:45
We need a new reformation day. It's a sign of the times.
01:28:52
The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm. Won't you lift up your voice?
01:28:59
Are you tired of playing religion? It's time to make some noise. I'm not waiting, but you are.
01:29:04
I'm not waiting, but you are. I'm not waiting, but you are. I stand up for the truth.
01:29:11
Won't you live for the Lord? Because we're pounding on. Pounding on. Waiting, but you are.
01:29:17
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01:29:31
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