Debate Report Including Gagnon/Kirk Encounter

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday at 2 p .m.

I believe it is October 20th of 2015.

We are back here in Phoenix, Arizona where the weather is tremendously unsettled at the moment.

We just, I was just picking up a sandwich on the way in and all of a sudden I start hearing on my car and It's a hailstorm.

Yes It was it was great. It didn't last long. Thankfully, but we have we have gotten is

October's not supposed to be a rainy month. Is it I Mean apparently El Nino is

I is gonna be really I read this year Yeah, I read that on that the El Nino is bigger than 97 to 98, which is the last big one

So we're gonna we're gonna have one of those Seattle style winners apparently Well, you know what?

Been up north enough to note the the forest could use Use all of it. I mean

Mormon Lake is Mormon puddle Well, and actually I was up there in August since you mentioned it and we like to you know, do rabbit trails here

Yeah, and I asked a fellow about that because I'm like, you know I've never actually seen a lake out there and he said something happened in the late 1980s early 1980s somewhere in there

Where I guess an aquifer underneath collapsed and the whole lake just went underground Well, no,

I've seen I've I've been up there many many times riding and I've seen the whole thing filled

Well, you're talking about Lake Mary out that well like Mary and then down to the camp area on Mormon Lake, too

So I've seen it. I've seen it. But anyway No question we need the we need the rain as does

Southern, California Though I'm not sure that rain can help the stupidity of Sacramento, but that's another issue

We are back from South Africa and it Had we wonderful time wonderful.

I'm I'm here. I don't think I've ever have I ever sipped tea before Certainly not on the air.

Oh my I discovered Rebus South African Rebus tea

Rebus means red bush in Probably Afrikaans or one of the many Zulu.

I don't know one of the many many languages spoken in South Yes, is that a bush that's legal in the

United States? Amazon thinks it is I could say and On could have a whole new meaning to high theology right now on Tuesday on Tuesday of last week

Well, we go we go today. That's first time I had Rebus was a week ago today Now, why would that matter because I needed something to help my voice.

Oh my goodness when you hear the audio of the

Monday night debate With Yusuf Ismail in downtown

Durban at this echo chamber we ended up in we didn't know till Sunday We thought we were gonna be in a mosque.

We thought we were gonna be in the Juma Masjid We thought it'd be well attended. None of those things were true Um If you once you hear the audio, huh,

I Did not even realize How bad my voice was until I tried to actually start speaking with a public speaking voice.

I Bet man, I'll tell you I wasn't certain I was gonna make it through I that was some of the worst laryngitis

I've had and Part of it was just simply strain and part of it was

I Haven't even added up how many hours I spent in a plane between flying to Zurich Kiev Kiev back to Zurich to Heathrow to Phoenix two weeks later

Phoenix Heathrow Heathrow Joburg Joburg Durban Durban Joburg Joburg Heathrow Heathrow Phoenix But What happens in those many many many many many many hours

In that enclosed cabin is you're with well through all that probably what 1 ,500 different people and There's a there'd be a lot of diseases in those 1 ,500 people and You end up with and I I've gotten really good at I take a supplement called epic or that really really helps

It turbocharges your immune system. And if you get anything if I get anything anymore, it normally is Much minimized and goes a lot faster

But I still got something you still hear something in my in my chest and I'm telling you

I Was putting the pedal to the metal as far as trying to give me power Give me speech and just there wasn't much coming out

It was that was that was one of the toughest debates I've done just simply on the physical level of trying to speak

It's amazing how much energy it takes To try to speak when you can't speak and when you're trying to debate at the same time

It was it was something else. Well Tuesday. I'm at uncle Dennis's house and I'm gonna tell you something

Dennis Palais his his son Adrian his family have been so kind to Rudolph and I when we come down to Durban that's where I stayed the last two times that well,

I've only been now there two times but And Uncle Dennis is the the king of Cola tonic

He makes the best cola tonic on the planet. Oh, it's just good stuff They sent me back We even stopped and bought me the the tonic that he uses and I got it back in one piece a bottle a glass bottle

I got it back in one piece and But I just don't have the skill and evidently

I don't have the ingredients quite quite right. I made one yesterday. It was okay, but Maybe it's just the location.

Maybe it's just Dennis's uncle Dennis's smiling face. I don't know but Anyway, they were saying what you need something warm and I thought you know what, you know warm to drink

I never drink warm stuff. Okay last winter I got into a little bit of tea for a while, but yeah, we live in Arizona I'm also time you just well you drink coffee, but I just never gotten coffee thing.

It's just not I Just don't like to taste it anyway, so they say you need rubles and so they make me some rubles tea and I start

I start putting that down my throat. Oh It does feel good on the throat.

Let me tell you something. It really really does And it has the most unique taste.

Oh my I Normally would be something I would do but maybe it was just the context and the fellowship and You know all that stuff, but I love it good stuff good stuff, so When people say would you like some tea in the future?

I'm not gonna be so quick to say no. They got a rubles Good stuff good stuff. Oh, by the way while I was down in Durban before I I'm gonna forget this if I don't mention this

Wednesday night we had a great debate in Durban with a you cutting.

He's the head of Ikra And you know they did a great job organizing it and Are you cutting is the

Is my Akhmed D dot debate partner? Okay? I use a wonderful guy a little older than I am

Both got grandkids about the same age and Now because I you

Debates like Akhmed D dot uses Akhmed D docks arguments a you doesn't understand what

I believe and So I have to spend a lot of time correcting things but the reality is that's what you have to do with the vast majority of Muslims and so he engages in debate in a honest fashion with integrity and we had a great debate on the deity of Christ and I got to correct all sorts of misapprehensions

I got to respond to the D dot challenge and to just all sorts of stuff

And it was it was a great evening It really was and the Muslims were very attentive and they listened carefully and I really really did appreciate that was good evening well during the break there were some young guys there from the area and one of them gave me a

CD of his music Said gold swing and He's a guitarist

I love guitar music My son for example is

Taking has been taking for years lessons From just one of the most fantastic guitarists around today

Jason Truby is his name and I love listening to Truby stuff and in fact,

I was I have a Truby playlist and iTunes that I was listening to while preparing for the debates and putting the

Keynotes together and stuff like that. So acoustic guitar great stuff and So Seb said well, here's uh,

I want I want to give you my my album here and he said you're mentioned in the liner notes and so I I Didn't open it up standing there and the audience didn't have time to but and I couldn't listen

Because who puts a CD drive in a computer anymore? Seriously, my MacBook Pro doesn't

I have a CD drive Because it's so thin I mean it's a mechanical you got a little motor in there and you can only make motors so thin Evidently, so I just now got a chance to burn this

Because these two MacBook Pros still have them and so now I've got them on my in my library But He says my heroes and role models

He mentioned some people and then the last two he mentions are James White and Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

I'm maybe we're just close in age Maybe Maybe there's these are in the order of age.

I'm not sure For each of your glowing bodies of work, which you receive thousands of hours My attention and focus and have shaped me as a musician human being in ways

I can't possibly understand or thank you enough for so I thought that was really special. That was really cool.

So hey Turn up the turn up the volume here. I've got one. I've got one here. Just just queued up for a second.

We can It's called meditation

There you go there's Seb Goldsway pictures of a thousand words is the is the album there and he gave that to me during the break in the debate

Wednesday night in Durban South Africa as we were talking about the arguments that were being made and and so on so forth

So Seb, there you go Much appreciate that and I'm sure that I will

Get to listen to that. I have an acoustic only playlist that we'll be putting there and maybe put together a

JSON Truby Seb Goldsway playlist for future Times and I'm working on presentation.

So on so forth. So there you go. I Actually want to report on five debates.

I did four Spoke a number of times spoke at Antioch Bible Church Tim Cantrell and the folks there.

I've spoken there every time that I've been in South Africa so far and they're in the

Johannesburg area and always Encouraging always good to be with them get a chance to preach and a large church for evangelical churches, and I mean sound evangelical churches in South Africa and So very very very good

Kofi says listen to Dividing Line and Dr. Oakley's 1689 starts spinning some tunes one ever knows what will happen on the

DL Well, this is true. I am a former disc jockey, so But I've ever wondered

Kofi what spinning a tune meant I used to spin tunes

I mean, I've got a picture someplace of me a senior in high school as a disc jockey and You can see the 33

RPM vinyl records over there on the turntables and and that's that's how you played music back then and So that's what it was to spin a tune to spin that disc.

Anyways So As you know or main should as I mentioned but that way

I was pretty concerned about the

Schedule that we have for South Africa's fairly short trip, but a pretty intense one Because I was arriving

Thursday when did I get in Thursday morning and The debate was

Friday night and So, you know that first day

You can sort of muddle your way through but it's really the second third days where Nine time zones catches up to you, you know anymore when people you know when

I fly across the u .s. Three hours big deal but nine time zones It's gonna catch up with you.

The worst though is going to Australia That's 17 the other direction. It's just leaves you completely befuddled as to what's going on and where you are and everything else and I was very focused upon the debate with Graham Codrington for a couple reasons

He's a professional speaker. He is he's known around the world speaking in the field of futurism

Trends and economics employment business so on and so forth He speaks all over the place and and I had spoken with Michael Fallon Michael has seen him speak and Michael was like wow

This is gonna be one of the toughest debates we've ever had. So when Michael said that I'm like, okay All right. I I'm not

I'm not certainly not going to walk into this one thinking this is going to be easy and Of course,

I had read all of Graham's blog articles, which he had posted which was very helpful and He had done a very good job in collating

The revisionist arguments in support of homosexuality and today that's not easy to do because there are so many and There are now so many people pushing this movement that they're coming up with new stuff all the time all of which

Fundamentally undercuts biblical authorities. We're about to see here in a moment, but That's that's the way it works so I Was pretty focused upon Upon Graham Codrington and spent most of my time.

In fact, I I put together my presentations for The two debates of Durbin with Yusuf Ismail After that because I totally been focused upon on Graham Codrington so I Was all concerned

It was very warm Johannesburg was having a heatwave there's almost very little air conditioning available and We had the debate at a really nice church and thankfully they had air conditioning and So because when we first walked in I was like, oh this is going to be a really long night

But then I heard somebody say we need to get the air con on. It's like, oh Good So it was

Really nice. It was live streamed. So many of you have already gotten to see it at least the live stream

Rich said it your comment was you it seems like you're next door. Oh, yeah, it was like you were right

I was in the same room with you. Yeah, it was it was awesome. Yeah, so that was that was good and Fundamentally, you know,

I have here this is my Notebook that I use for my debates my live scribe pen, which

Dummy me. I didn't know that the new live scribe pen If I don't have it

Bluetooth connected to my iPad It doesn't record the audio. So I didn't

Talk it. We already have the audio of the Codrington debate. We're just waiting for the video actually So it doesn't make any difference and it wouldn't have made any difference

Even if I had recorded both the Ismael use of Ismael and Are you cream debates because given the sound quality of where I was sitting?

Wouldn't have able to stand understand anyways But I remember that next time but I have my notes here and it is helpful to have them because it certainly reminds me of what was going on and You know brings things back to mind but I Mentioned five debates because I did the debate with Graham Codrington and Then one week and one day later.

I attended a debate Here in Phoenix. I had gotten word of this on Facebook that There was going to be a debate between Daniel Kirk who teaches at Fuller's, Northern, California campus and Dr.

Robert Gagnon now, of course, dr. Gagnon is really the leading scholar in this field all of us are very indebted to him for a lot of the work that he has done and Some of you

May recall what about Four months ago five months ago something like that He was on unbelievable

And I think I played Did I play portions of that or did I just mention it

You're not you're you're looking at me strangely so you don't see this at the perfect temperature right now

It's no longer scalding, but it's still nice and warm. It's it's good stuff well, if I didn't

I should have I'm sure I at least made reference to the very interesting encounter he had with a lesbian

Anglican woman on the unbelievable radio broadcast it got

It got a little heated shall we say and I Know Justin Briarley pretty well haven't been on the program out and how many times?

14 17 I've lost count And I could I could just see because they were in studio

This wasn't something where somebody was on the phone or something like that I I can I can just see

Justin's face. He's trying to dial dial down the Temperature in that particular encounter anyway

Dr. Gagnon is a straightforward debater shall we say and so I You know, it was the next morning right after I landed.

I knew I was gonna be a hundred percent functional, but I Decided to show up. Dr. Gagnon wears bow ties.

And so I had actually bought him a bow tie To give as a gift And I wore my one of my bow ties and It was a little scary because I had like seven people just walk up to me out of the blue and Knew who

I was and I talked to why it's great to have you here and so on So I didn't expect anyone. I thought

I'd be a little bit incognito though. Maybe the bow tie was not a good idea anyway Somebody in channel says

Yeah, some people yeah, you did play it. So some people in general are saying definitely So, um that debate

Getting to sit there and be quiet and to know that your position was going to be adequately defended

That was enjoyable. It really was I mean You know, it wasn't close

The Kirk did not present any meaningful arguments to dr.

Gagnon did not thoroughly refute But what really concerned me?

was the combination of the two debates and let me explain why at night this is where you might want to tune in people like to Say they skip the first ten minutes, but okay

That was all background for I think something. It's pretty important. I have said for a long period of time that the quote -unquote gay

Christian movement Simply cannot Maintain even a surface -level

Christianity it cannot maintain Christian orthodoxy because if it's fundamentally compromised view of Scripture They don't believe in scriptural sufficiency they can't the forms of argumentation that they use to get around the clear teaching of Scripture Will Require them to adopt a hermeneutic in a system of theology that is so different than what

Christians have always understood Scripture to be that the the flow that brought us the central doctrines of the faith the

Trinity the deity of Christ the person of the Holy Spirit the whole concept of atonement and Salvation and all of eschatology and eschatology is much more than the various views of Millennium's Eschatology is heaven and hell and punishment and final justice and all the rest that kind of stuff

Cross Resurrection everything that's absolutely central to the Christian faith. There was a hermeneutical system that Gave us those things but to affirm that God approves of and Wants us to approve of homosexuality for the profaning of marriage all the rest of these things

Requires such a radical departure and the interpretation of Scripture that there's no way you can any longer maintain

Those other doctrines now you may still you may be schizophrenic You may be a

Matthew Vines. It says I'm an evangelical Or a Justin Lee or even a

Graham Codrington but If someone starts pushing you to be consistent

It's a house of cards. It's gonna it's gonna collapse Because you've gutted it of what?

The thing that makes Christianity Christianity and that is this is a supernatural faith. It's been revealed by God in Scripture all right, so It has been my thesis has been my assertion you all have heard it those of you who've regularly listened

You've heard me say this over and over and over again But now

I have two glowing examples of it and Once the videos are available because both of them were recorded.

I'll probably put together a screen flow to show you So what do

I mean? Well Let's start with Graham I mentioned before I went to South Africa that in listening to Graham Codrington's discussion of Romans 1

I was blown away I Was blown away Why?

because his fundamental argument on Romans 1 Well, he he backed off on this in the debate

I mean if you knew what his position was you can still hear he was saying it but He knows better He knows in his heart of hearts that the position he has now taken in Romans 1 is so radical

That it's indefensible. It can only be of use to the already convinced and That was the position that fundamentally

Romans 1 18 through 32 is a Greek rhetorical device

Where Paul is quoting from a Jewish source and people like to point the wisdom of Solomon though.

There are some actually fundamental differences between the wisdom of Solomon and Paul's understanding but That may be something we may we may want to look at.

In fact, I would I would recommend to you if you have a copy of the

Apocrypha That you read the wisdom of Solomon, especially chapters 11 through 15 or so and There are some fascinating parallels to what

Paul says. There's also some fascinating differences that tend to get glossed over. But anyway The idea is that he is giving the standard

Jewish understanding of that day and Then in chapter 2 he says but who are you he changes the point of address and now what he's doing is he's arguing against the

Jews and The position that was just enunciated in verses 18 through 32.

So the rest of the book is an argument against Verses 18 through 32 and he jumps all the way to chapter 14.

I mean talk about skipping massive Context changes and everything else.

I mean, it's it's a It just destroys Romans just and that's why like I said 1994 article

Calvin Porter a couple of people have picked up on that. It is such a tiny little minority view off of the corner someplace, but hey

The homosexual movement will use anything. It doesn't matter The last thing they're concerned about is maintaining any kind of biblical exegesis.

So grab anything you can but It makes mincemeat out of the book of Romans jump to Romans chapter 14 and the whole idea is judge do not be judging one another and So it's the you know

You're trying to get peace between the Jews and the Gentiles in the church, and that's what Romans was although well

That is not the exegesis That led the church to any of its

Orthodox beliefs And Graham starts off talking about how he's an evangelical

Christian How The Bible is

God's final authority those are his specific words. I'm looking at my notes here and yet once you adopt this type of radical reinterpretation of something as central as I mean

Romans 1 1832 is part and parcel of Paul's her martyrology his doctrine of sin so once you dismiss that What are you gonna do?

I mean you can't put it back together again And the only reason you've done this is to get around Versus 26 and 27.

That's the only reason and so Here you have this this willingness and and by the way,

I I had an interesting experience. Why is this cooling down so fast?

I need I need a more Insulated mug for the future because we're only we're only halfway through and it's it's really

We'll find out what the microwave does After the program's over that's too good to throw out.

Um Had a very interesting experience during the break in the debate

Graham Comes up to me with a older lady next to him introduces me to his mom and He says

I want you to know she's firmly on your side now that that was almost as weird as when

George Bryson's wife went after him after the debate We're not having brought this up and that up and all the rest this guy's stuff.

It was like really see Graham is a graduate of the Baptist Union Seminary down there in South Africa and a lot of people in the conservative churches knew who he was and so You know, they're even people in his family that are rooting for the other side on this in this particular debate

So that was a strange experience But the point is here's a guy who though he has a conservative background has been moving farther and farther and farther away from that conservative background and The question is why?

well The Bible's teaching on Sexual ethics and morality is not difficult to discern but once you buy the idea that The church has been wrong and The church has been

Mistreating our LGBTQ RST UVW XYZ brothers and sisters and so you just You grab hold of experience?

You meet some people and You meet some lovely people some kind people

Who experience same -sex attraction and may even have come to the conclusion that they can act on same -sex attraction but you know what, they're nice people and I've never met people like that before and There are many conservatives who have the idea that if you hold to fundamentally aberrant theological beliefs you must be a weird person in real life and because a lot of us stay in a

Shell and don't meet these people once we do and find out that many of them are real nice people

It may even root for the same teams we do or have the same sports interests. We do.

Well, they can't be all that bad and Our priorities get all mixed up because we just really haven't thought these things through.

I mean if Arius and Athanasius If they had lived in our day and they had had a televised debate

It would have been a wipeout. What do I mean by that?

Athanasius evidently was a little dark swarthy unattractive, dude and Arius evidently was a good -looking tall guy who could sing up a storm could put words to music could entertain the audience could sway people right and left and so in our day of a visual

Decision an emotional decision Where we are we are moved by our emotions rather than by our minds

Which is what makes us humans actually is that the mind part, but anyway In our day

Athanasius wouldn't have had a chance wouldn't have had a chance and so when people

Come out of a conservative background and discover that homosexuals can be really nice people

Nice in a worldly sense all of a sudden they start questioning the foundations especially if they've only taken in And understand homosexuality is wrong

Just by osmosis rather than being convinced of it by the positive teaching of scripture regarding God's purposes and sexuality and marriage and male and female and so on so forth and then that is the ground for understanding the

The negative texts in their proper context and Seeing it as a as a whole

You know, it's sort of like the same thing with Roman Catholicism, you know if you're raised the Baptist, you know the Roman Catholics are just going to hell just because they are and Then you meet a

Roman Catholic and they know what they believe and if you are opposed to Roman Catholicism solely out of tradition and taste and even bigotry you run into a

Good Roman Catholic apologists and they can knock you right off your pins Because you weren't really convinced for the right reasons

So I think that's what happened to Graham and The problem is

Once you make the decision that you know why I've decided that these people are my brothers and sisters in Christ now

What determines whether someone is your brother or sister in Christ Your emotions

Your personal feelings I Mean there is an objective

Standard that is supposed to determine these things. There isn't there's an objective Delineation of what

Christian theology is and who is and who is not a brother or sister in Christ and and But a lot of people just don't think about that They don't allow that to determine

Their their priorities and their thought patterns and so you meet somebody and it's like well, maybe

I've maybe I've misunderstood these things Well, no, actually, you've just never really understood why it's important to view the scriptures in the way that we do and so on so forth, but the reality is

You're still not in a good position to be doing biblical exegesis Because before you're operating on surface level tradition.

Now you're operating on emotion. Neither one of them is the basis for doing exegesis Neither one so I think that's what's happened here

And what you see is just this this pendulum swing and it may be slow or it may be fast depends on the individual

It may start off slow and then accelerate in time, but the reality is there's no stopping point

There's no, you know once you've abandoned The only meaningful means of doing exegesis a high view of Scripture and understanding of it is being the

Anustos That's it. You can keep saying you believe it, but you're eventually going to collapse

Now, what does this have to do with the second debate? Well, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm It's starting to get weird for me.

I don't know if this happens for everybody Couple years ago.

I was sitting in dr.

Michael Kruger's office in Charlotte Talking with dr.

Kruger and dr. Anderson When all sudden I realized I was the oldest person in the room he's the president occurs the president of the seminary and Dr.

Anderson had been one of our channel rats back in the late 90s. Oh yeah, yeah, he was our

Edinburgh channel rat at night one of our ops and Here I am. I'm the oldest guy in the room and I just don't feel that old

So, you know that that'll I think we both kind of still feel like we're back there in the 80s in the early 90s

We're in our 20s, and we're just still cranking along Not so much 20 as I am a grandfather, but Well, it doesn't really.

Yeah expecting expecting the second here Summer wants to it wants to go for October 31st to have a

Reformation Day, baby so Hey, I'm all for it. I'm I think that would be

I think I'd be great anyway Just as well, I don't care when the baby comes as long as she doesn't have to labor for 44 hours again, okay, that's that's

Summer we were all we're all pulling for you on the No more record labors, please for all of our sakes

Man, that's good. Wow, and you have to I have to make you a cup this you might you might actually like it anyway, um

Dr. Kirk is not an elderly man He's not an elderly man and When I when

I looked him up he teaches theology and fuller NorCal and Is a graduate of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, but then it is

PhD at Duke folks. Let me tell you something If you haven't already realized that the big -name universities are to their core

Opposed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about Westminster. I'm talking about Duke If you haven't realized that these places

That people go. Oh you went to the great school. What makes it great?

When when are we as Christians gonna realize that That doing education on a worldly basis leads to worldly Christians Went to Duke He had the opening statement and he gets up and We may be going more than an hour today.

I hope you don't mind Though I may have I'm Could you wear my tia? Seriously, it's helping my voice is a little bit on the on the iffy side and it's no longer doing its nice hot warm thingy, so Just cuz you're such a nice guy,

I appreciate that He Gets up and He says

I'm not really gonna talk about what the Bible says about homosexuality today He says the fact dr.

Gagnon, and I probably pretty much agree that When the Bible addresses the subject of homosexuality

It's Universally negative and what it says debate over well, not quite not quite

So what happens what's his what's his argument Fundamentally here is the argument and he wandered around and I guess this was his coming out.

I Guess this was his big Announcement that he is now gay affirming, you know and So the argument fundamentally was this

Gentile inclusion into the church Gentile inclusion in the church

He points out that the biblical testimony for Circumcision is that it's to be an eternal thing

He even brought up Sabbath keeping Point being that you can make a strong biblical case against Gentile inclusion and yet the

Spirit did a new thing And therefore his argument is that in light of the clarity of the fact that our

LGBTQ brothers and sisters love

God and Give clear testimonies that loving of God then the

Spirit is doing a new thing in our day and Therefore we should follow the lead of the

Spirit Now, dr.

Gagnon Pointed out obviously had a whole slide just simply on this the fundamental differences between The Inclusion of the

Gentiles in the church and the subject of homosexuality And he pointed out

That obviously the Old Testament had prophesied this as the New Testament says

I Don't think dr. Kirk would accept that because I discovered that dr.

Kirk's view of Scripture is

Unbelievably How do I put it the term is not weak?

It is unorthodox it is unbelieving The only way to put it

You'll see what I mean in a moment but he pointed out that that was a a bad argument and That there was a fundamental difference that the

Gentiles Were Separated from the community of Israel and God had broken down that wall through the work of Jesus Christ to make one church and It it's always it had always been his intention to do exactly that there is no prophetic announcement of some future work of the

Spirit where a Fundamental moral law based upon God's creative purpose in male and female was somehow going to be overturned in the same way

But it was right toward the end of dr. Kirk professor at Fuller Theological Seminary Now everybody got all excited a few weeks ago

I didn't get chance to mention this and I didn't bring this up, but everybody got all excited a few weeks ago because Fuller denied tenure

To a professor because that professor Affirms gay marriage and so they they denied tenure to him let me see if If I have this in here someplace

Yeah, I don't see it here cuz I'm sure it was after the

Kim Davis stuff Um No, no, there it is. No it is him.

Ha ha Okay. Well, I wondered about this and now

I've got a little more information for you Well the seminary decided not to offer tenure to a new test professor J .R. Daniel Kirk his view of marriage does not comport with Jesus's view

So everybody was all excited about this and it's ends up being the same guy. He didn't mention this during the debate but same fellow

I Went up to dr. Kirk after the debate

To make sure that I had heard him correctly and what he had said and I'm just here to tell you right now

It's one thing to deny tenure to a person. But as long as you let him keep teaching your students,

I'm not impressed Okay, I'm not impressed there are lots of Seminaries today that would love to have dr.

Kirk teaching for them. I mean go to Claremont Graduate School You can't even get a job at Claremont if you believe in the deity of Christ Yeah, there's plenty of plenty of place to get a job teaching.

I went up to him and I asked him if I had heard him correctly

What he said toward the end of his presentation was this we need to allow the

Spirit to lead us to change our ways of thinking and to even

Cause us to think in ways that are different than the

Apostles and even different than Jesus and I'm just Sitting here going

It did I did I just hear? this man say that the

Spirit of God is leading us So that even though we have the mind of Christ, we should think differently than Christ did

Because he wasn't he wasn't trying to argue that Jesus held That homosexuality was a good thing gift from God He knows better.

I went up and asked him and He said well, yeah

He said Jesus was wrong about a lot of things He had a lot of mistaken ideas he was a man like you and I And then you know what his example was he said for example at least three different times

Jesus said Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Nobody believes that anymore. In fact, what he said was even dr.

Gagnon doesn't believe that so I'm I'm dumbfounded.

I shouldn't be I graduated from Fuller I Mean, I know

I I had to read all the books, but I guess it's still a good thing

That when faced with just rank unbelief just and I explained to him

I said sir, I defend The Trinity and the deity of Christ and debates with Muslims.

I just got back from South Africa standing in majority

Muslim contexts Defending the faith against the very position you are now enunciating your view and the

Muslim view of Jesus are Actually, the Muslims have a higher view come to think of it. Sadly now think about it.

I don't believe that the man's Trinitarian I don't believe the man holds in fact,

I when I when I defined Nicene orthodoxy said that the Apostles didn't believe when I see a belief and this is this these these are people teaching

In what used to be evangelical seminaries? But used to be evangelical seminaries.

I Mean, I'd be happy to debate. Dr. Kirk on this subject. That's not gonna happen Be happy to do it.

But is it any wonder that? He has become affirming

Once you actually believe that the Spirit of God can lead you To think differently than Jesus.

I mean, that's a good way around Romans 1 and Matthew 19 Spirits led me to think better than that, you know

Paul Jesus this products of the first century Wow There you go now has

Graham Codrington gone that far no hasn't yet Yet But you see there's always a constant the constant pressure of the testimony of the scriptures and the

Word of God Against these individuals. They will not stay where they are for long They can't and they have no stopping place.

It's not a slippery slope. It's a cliff and so That pressure is always going to be on them

It's always going to be on them They can't stay there. It's not a neutral position. I Should have realized it was probably the same guy should have realized this price thing.

Yeah, this is it. Yeah. Okay now it's all coming together Let me read you from his own blog for a couple of my senior

Bible colleagues One had to like the idea that we define Christianity by what we believe So when I say the synoptic gospel showed

Jesus as an idealized human figure I have not said enough if I cannot say and also shows the divine

Jesus as we learn in the creeds I have articulated a theology that is on a trajectory away from our shared statement of faith.

Yeah, you better believe it You you better believe it. It's not the gospel showed Jesus as an idealized human figure.

Well, I'm sorry But dr. Kirk is not a Christian Hello It seems

That the Muslims have a higher view of Jesus then dr. Kirk does and he's teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary There you go, folks.

There you go. There you go any reason why we should be surprised at Where these folks end up by the way, you know as I look through my notes a lot of people like One of the things people liked and I could do this because since I did do this on with my live scribe pen and I've connect live stride with Evernote.

I could have And you know what I still can yeah, yeah, look at this

I I can transfer electronically my

Let's see window Evernote you have it.

I can I only did this one page. I could do all of it Sure if you want here's

This is what and I am not selling I do not have a Sales license or that no,

I uh, you know, it's a nuclear powered No, this isn't warm at all.

Okay, I can I can do more if you want. Well, I mean, it's it's it's Warmer than it was but it's not hot. Okay.

All right, um The last guy pen wonderful system, it's it's it's amazing

I Just went into my live scribe thing shared this with Evernote I could do this with all the pages of all my all my debates and a lot of people did find interesting couple times in The past when

I've shared on the blog some of the my my note pages and said no see here's what here's what

I did Here's what I did there. Yeah, I didn't one of them turning into a bidding war once. Oh No, no, no,

I know that that was the yeah, that was the notebook Yeah, I found the notebook still have it someone offered to buy it

I think I think Jeff Durbin offered to buy it But it was the notebook that I had the day I did the Dave Hunt thing on KPX Q Oh, yes, where he said,

I don't know anything about that's right. Yeah, I've got that at home We should we should auction that off actually but here you can see and only this is the beginning you'll notice

I put a Circle next to it. This is this is how when I've written stuff down and I want to go back and I want and I want to make sure to put this into my response

I Put that and then if I want to make sure it's one of the top ones I'll put a second one in it. So it's it's doubled and then

I can't like I said, I can't do with a lot of this but You could actually see on this one

If you go back to this DDD that I see you can see these circles a little over long aside

Some of them are doubled circles some of numbers next to them. That's when I'm saying, okay I need to get to this first and this second

Like on here, you know, here's number one, you know right here

Oh, okay. There's there's number one right there and there's number four down here. So I'm Prioritizing the points for my rebuttal period basically and here in the

Graham Codrington debate In his closing statement

He presented seven arguments he said I want you to think about seven I want to make seven arguments

I want to think about seven things and that was the almost the entirety of his closing statement other than the point where he started to cry and said

I You know, I was asked to keep the emotions out Someone just asked is that your handwriting?

Yeah Who else's would it be my notebook

It's not handwriting it's printing I've always printed better than I did longhand and So I wrote down the seven arguments

I had ten a ten minute closing statement and I shocked him because I responded

I replied to all Seven arguments in the first five minutes of my closing statement and then gave my closing statement after that I don't think he was expecting that to happen

But it went well, I think it's going to be a very useful

Very very useful Debate for people to view I really do Now a lot of people said it was sort of one -sided.

Well, that's because if you're sticking with biblical exegesis It better be one -sided

The Bible is really clear on this But I think it'll be very useful

Let me skip to the last debate I've already mentioned it briefly the debate with a you cutting once again,

I for those looking for New debates

Uncovered ground not gonna be useful to you for those looking for debates where Ahmed D dots arguments are aired and Thoroughly refuted.

This is your debate and if you're dealing with 99 % of The Muslim population

That's the debates gonna be most helpful to you The reality is that the vast majority of Muslims who listen to Shabir Ali and Yusuf Ismail have no worthy idea what they're talking about None They they they don't know what the topics are.

They don't know why they're talking about The things they're talking about they just get excited because that sounds good, but they really don't know what what that is all about for the vast majority

Muslims They don't understand the Trinity They don't understand the history they have

Fundamental misunderstandings of the most basic things and what they need to hear is they need the truth presented to them

Within the context that might actually break through that that ignorance that is theirs that is

Promulgated and promoted by their own leadership who themselves are ignorant of these things because Fundamentally the author of the

Quran was ignorant of these things too. And so if you want to bait where the good stuff is is right there, you know the

Good responses we had we had solid responses had time to give solid responses as I look over the stuff with a you

I I Don't think yeah, there was there was maybe

One thing That I didn't get to and that was he spent some time looking at Job 25 6 6 through 7 the son of man

That that may have been the only thing I think I got To every single other point that he made really did

And the cross -examination Well wasn't even cross -examination the question answer with a you

Really useful. I mean the questions he asked of me

Just became wonderful opportunities of proclamation including Eloy Eloy Lama Sabak the knee and I love when

I get asked that question. It's just like time to start preaching Because it's just so great and then the questions

I asked of him Wow the responses were Well Again debate takes place in cross -examination and it it did it really really really did so I'm very much looking forward to those being made available

Because we never got a chance to debate Akhmed didot and so at least to debate a faithful presentation of his position incredibly valuable

Now some of you saw on on Facebook That Tuesday of last week a week ago today.

We hit a milestone now again How you count these things over the years?

You know should we have counted The debate

Where we did two different topics as one debate or two debates you know, there's stuff like this, but you know, we sort of came up with a

With a number A couple years ago and then

I've just sort of kept track of it there have been a couple times I've gone back over lists and looked at stuff and you have to make decision as to whether a

You know, Jimmy Akin and I did a radio debate there was a moderator there's a thesis there was specific amount of time

Okay, that's a debate But Being on with Jimmy Akin on the

Bible answer man, is that the same as a debate because there wasn't a moderator there wasn't a thesis there was an equal amount of time, you know all that stuff, but as best we could

As far as we could tell Tuesday night was my 150th moderated public debate

I Didn't get a didn't get the pizza party. That's always been promised to me or anything like that, you know, but I'm a little sad about that Name what it would make me fat.

Thanks But you may have seen on Facebook that a bunch of the guys there in Durban Got together and I threw a bunch of my bow ties in my bag when we went over to uncle

Dennis's house And you may have seen some pictures that Adrian put up Of my helping some of the young guys including

Adrian Put on real bow ties. So all of our guys in the audience

Were wearing bow ties that night. So that was that was cute. That was that was neat and I think

I got them all back because I was having to lend them out pretty good I never might saw my best ones. I think I got them all back.

Anyway, I I wish I could say that the debates with use of this mail are going to be extremely useful and and All the rest that stuff now were they complete waste of time?

No But the topics were really cool the potentiality of Those debates was very high, but they remain potentiality.

They didn't actually end up Being what they could have been and The topics were great war and peace in the

Bible in the Quran and The synoptic Gospels and the parallel accounts within the

Quran What do they tell us about the nature of our scriptures? inspiration and Do we use?

Even scales do we use double standards now the first topic it wasn't that it's unusual there's been lots of debates on the issue of is is the is

Islam a religion of peace or a religion of violence or things like that Lots of lots of debates on that and anyone should realize

I'm not gonna just redo that debate. I Want to get to something more foundational and basic what

I wanted to do Was to recognize that both of our scriptures

Have texts that speak of violence we have the destruction of the

Midianites and the passages in first Samuel 15 and Deuteronomy and Leviticus and things like that in Israelite come

Israel coming into the land and so on and so forth and there's even some New Testament texts

You know Jesus is parable Those who would not have me to rule over them bring them before me and and slay them before my eyes and you go to the book of Revelation and Jesus rules of the nations of the rod of iron and and in Revelation chapter 19, you know, so on and so forth

So so you've got you've got stuff like that you've got stuff like that and So I wanted to honestly recognize the existence of these texts and then ask a fundamental a

Fundamental question How do our texts Speak to how we have peace with God and how we should have peace in this world

How do they do that what's what's the mechanism what's the process and I Think one of my greatest

Disappointments is that I actually Had hoped that Yusuf Ismail was making progress toward recognizing the need to do these kinds of things

I Listened to his talk Which he had done in 2014

Against Isis and Even though in the past Yusuf has

Both debates we've done in the past and whether it was two day debates or four debates that depends on how you want to count them

Had done the I Will use any source that will support my side type argumentation

We had demonstrated beyond all question his misrepresentation of Dan Wallace I mean Dan Wallace demonstrated beyond question his misrepresentation of Dan Wallace When when you can get

Dan Wallace to do that I don't think there's any argument, but Yusuf is still trying to argue that one amazingly but He also does the shotgun thing

Yeah, you throw out You know 20 different topics that can never be meaningfully addressed in a debate

Just make a bunch of assertions, but my my hope was that we were making progress toward The necessity of being able to address some topics that no one else is talking about He's a smart man.

He's an attorney and I think a lot of my disappointment is just that he just has obviously refused to go there and if anything got worse not better in these last two debates and I Expected fully

For example a Discussion of the the texts in the Bible about violence.

It's perfectly logical to do that What I didn't expect for example the first night was for the first five minutes of his presentation to be about Miguel Cervantes Yeah, I wonder who suggested that one

Um Yeah, you know

The first night wasn't overly bad until the end What what

Yusuf likes to do is what he did was he said well Jay Smith said this Jay Smith said that Western culture has been

Influenced by Christian values and So here's what Western culture does and he starts putting pictures of deformed and dead babies on the screen that have been killed by depleted uranium bombs by the

US military Now, you know It would have been really easy really easy

For me to have put up all sorts Of Decapitated heads and people shouting allahu akbar saw in people's heads off and Isis having little kids do the same thing

I could have filled my time with stuff to inflame the emotions and numb the mind

But I thought maybe Possibly There might be some

Muslims on the other side They're sick and tired of the violence and might actually

Maybe on to attend a debate where we actually used our minds rather than flaming emotions

Silly me. Oh I'll take that back Maybe there were Muslims there, but their representative decided.

Yeah, let's not go there Let's do the dead baby pictures thing, but that was nothing compared to the second night

Cervetus I can handle Cervetus, you know Throwing out canards and misrepresentations and ignoring history and all the rest of that stuff.

It's nothing new about that Second night tough topic tough topic and I fully expected all of the

Alleged allegations of contradiction and he didn't let me down on that.

We did the Bible first. I Gave a meaningful presentation on how to handle synoptic parallels.

I talked about telescoping. I I and Yusuf didn't even bother to try to engage any of that really he just in his presentation he absolutely

If it if they're not photocopies one another they're contradictory, you know, just a really surface level

Thing that again shows no interest whatsoever in actually hearing what we're saying

Allowing for the authors to have different audiences and and and purposes and none of that's just and of course from my perspective, he's he's

Destroying himself because now we're gonna have to look at the Quranic parallels and he's now given us his standard absolute verbal I Identity or it's a contradiction

Well, or we're just going to admit that we're going to use different standards. Well, I get up and I give my discussion of the chronic parallels and I go through the parallel texts and and I and it it was this oh

Almost all not it wasn't identical. I I actually brought in one parallel one

Series of parallels that I didn't had not included in my book But most of it was just from the book from the chapter where I talked about these things and I I raised the questions

All right Yusuf has laid down the standard if you have

I can't do this because I didn't save it to Dropbox and I didn't didn't transfer it to this unit.

I was gonna show you one of the examples But if you have

In surah 7 and I think it was surah 29 off top my head

Allah Quoting Allah in the exact same context

What Allah said at this point in time and It's different fundamentally different Fundamentally different which one's right and I even said

I recognize That it's not a matter of right and wrong

What I'm asking is from your perspective of inspiration understanding of of the heavenly

Tablets and that there is nothing of man in this and that this is Jibreel You know

The Quran is sent down on Laylatul Qadr and given to Jibreel and it's dictated to to Muhammad Oh, and by the way, but wait, okay, wait, hold on All this stuff

I present and it was very fair It was focused. I Didn't wander all over the place.

I didn't do any shotgunning. I gave multiple examples focused upon the same issue

Here was an opportunity for us to really learn about what each other believes about inspiration and about our texts.

Here it is And he gets out and he's got his 25 minutes and I have never seen anyone sabotage a debate more

Purposefully than Yusuf Ismail did in my hundred and fiftieth debate never

Never I mean He dismissed everything

I had said with a wave of my hand saying it's irrelevant pretty much same words doesn't matter Then he faulted me for not dealing with The Quran's use of external sources

He has since said an email. Well, you covered that in the chapter, but we never said that that was the topic of the debate

There I had I had raised all sorts of possibilities It was a nabbit josh and and what

Qadr means in Islam versus the New Testament. I raised all sorts of issues

But to fault me for that it was just I'm sitting here going in fact Here's the page

Starts right here. I wish really wish I had transferred this He he totally

Missed the whole point of my gyrus discussion. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put it up there I it's too small to see but he totally missed the purpose of my gyrus discussion the discussion is raising jars his daughter and Even see me doesn't even understand the text because he said that in one the young lady had died and in the other

She didn't and so the whole purpose of Jesus healing was different. I Mean we hadn't even listened.

I mean, it's very painfully obvious that unlike me Who examined when

I put those sections Yusuf because you said you're gonna watch when I put those sections in my book

Did you notice that I commented on the Arabic? I Wasn't getting that for somebody else

This wasn't drawn from some website someplace. I Checked it out myself in the original languages and you know

You've never done that with Matthew and Mark and gyrus his daughter, you know, you haven't you know it

Oh cool Note note a bene Brian Matheson just tweeted me that the

Gagnon Kirk debate is on vimeo vimeo .com I'm not gonna.

Yep. Dr. Gagnon just posted that about four or five Well, probably about ten minutes ago by now, but I didn't want to good get you off the rails.

So good. Excellent We were talking about it I have doubt now retweeted it and You'll get to see what

I saw It's up it's good anyway, um

So here in my notes under I have part two

Parentheses meltdown parentheses close. That's what said that's at the top of the page says meltdown

What Yusuf did I don't know if he was just concerned That maybe

I was making some inroads maybe he had gotten some criticism but since a

Bunch of this stuff was in his slides. This was a purposeful planned attack

One of the things he's waving my book around Okay He's waving my book around.

Well, that's interesting. I don't know where my copy in here went

But it has seemingly Disappeared on me here. That's uh, great.

I'll have to Fix that because that might be something I need to reference once in a while But he's waving my book on the

Quran around and he actually says why not be open about? your rejection of the

Quran I Can laugh now

I couldn't then I could just sit there and look at him like what is someone's confused

So someone someone thinks I might think that it's actually a revelation from God and Then he raised the missionary trilemma the missionary trilemma

You might say what on earth is that? well, he says the missionaries and He that's me

That's a Christian who actually seeks to minister the gospel to Muslims Um The missionaries say that Muhammad was either mad

Possessed or lying. I Demand you tell us where you stand on the missionary trilemma

Yeah, that's directly relevant to parallel accounts in the Quran, right?

Mm -hmm this is was absolutely Transparently an

Attempt to inflame the emotions of the Muslims in the audience and to completely derail

The effort to deal with this issue It's all it was You can you can make excuses you can try to But it's it's transparently the case just all there is to it he says

Let's stop engaging in duplicity duplicitous double standards Mr.

Pot kettle on line one. I Mean, here is someone who is in the middle of doing it

Here is someone who is demanded of Matthew Mark and Luke what he won't apply to his own text can't see it refuses to see it won't discuss it and then

Without providing any basis for it accuses me of engaging in duplicitous double standards

And Then talked about and he says why I didn't mean this about you.

I'm sorry. Yes, he did Yes, he did About trying to deceive uninformed

Muslims Deceive uninformed Muslims, that's what I was trying to do. You have an agenda is to deceive uninformed

Muslims and then the whole last portion of His presentation now.

He said all this was just incidental. I'm sorry when it is slide after slide

In your prepared Presentation. It's not incidental Don't give me that he presents the

Quran codes Now, I'm not gonna do it today because we're almost out of time

But I'll be pretty honest with you. Shabir Ali's been doing this Yusuf Ismail is just borrowing it from him, but I can not

I Can not work up within myself any

Capacity to show the slightest respect for the

Quran Numerological argument I can't do it

I was consistent you go back to the very early dividing lines that we have available and you'll find a number of them where I addressed the

Bible code stuff and I was merciless Lost some friends over it, too

But I was merciless I have no respect for using numerology as a means of defaying the

Bible The Book of Mormon The Bhagavad Gita or the

Quran it is Ridiculous, I gave an example on Facebook because I googled it while I was in Heathrow I googled it and Lo and behold the very slide that Yusuf put up.

I found it first page of Google it borrowed it from somebody else and And it was the the number for mankind is 65 and here are the stages of man's development and look

They all add up to 65 to it. So it's a number of times this words used in the Quran say And it all adds up to 65

Well, not only are there issues as to what forms of words they're using and what forms are counting what forms are not counting and stuff like that but you'd have to be a person who is constantly buying stuff

On certain Cable channels that that promise to make you look 21 again to buy this kind of absurdity

Where does the Quran tell you that these are the specific stages of man's development? Well, it doesn't so these are made up.

They're contrived and Do you really think that if the number of these?

Added up to 68 and there's one that had three in it you really don't think the person would have just dumped the one with the three in it to make the numbers work out and What if there's another thing that could be said to be a part of the development of man?

But that would give you too many numbers. It's all contrived people

It's so hard for me to maintain myself Because this and yet and here's the sad part.

Here's the sad part. We're about out of time Here's the sad part he shows this stuff and What happens in the right -hand side of the audience talk?

And you just sometimes you just go I'm on the other side of the planet doing this

Now I know Video taped people are gonna see it. They're gonna be

Muslims. We're gonna look at that and go No Good and There are gonna be some they're gonna go.

Oh my and They're gonna be saved So it's worth doing it.

It's worth we've seen it. We've seen it and I pray God uses it but at the same time

You just it's that it's that and I said

I I wrote it down right here and We had two different moderators a member of Parliament moderated the first debate

But Rudolph push off moderated the second debate and here right top.

There are only a few lines Written after it right at the top of the page last debate

With Yusuf Ismail, it wasn't even done with this 25 minute and I said and I showed it to you

I don't need to travel halfway across the world

If the person I'm debating with is going to engage in that kind of behavior It's not worth it.

Now. I'm not Making a I'm not swearing an oath. I Could see some type of situation where I might change my mind but as far as Trying to think that Yusuf will work with me to address and advance

Advance the topic advance the dialogue add your shot

You purposely sabotaged it. There we go. There we go. So hopefully

Especially the discussion of Graham Codrington and Daniel Kirk Hope you heard that And I hope it helps you to see this is a gospel issue.

It's gospel issue. It really is pray for those debates as they're made available and Lord willing we'll be back on Thursday.