Yusuf Ismail

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line, at least I hope you can hear me.

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I was noticing in the introduction there that a few syllables got elongated in Rich's introduction, so something tells me you'll probably get that from my end as well.

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That's just an indication that, once again, I am coming to you live this time from Evergreen, Colorado.

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I was in Santa Fe last time we did a program. And so now we are attempting, anyways, to do the program live via Skype, and we will just see how that works out.

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We do have some storms in the area, and we have storms in the area in Phoenix too,

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I think. At least a little while ago, my iPad started—yes,

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Lord? Speaking of thunder, my iPad started making some noises at me and brought up a map showing a very large thundercell—well, it wasn't so much that it was large.

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It was purple. And the last time I saw a purple thundercell on radar was back in October of—what was that?

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2011, I think it was ?—when this wild storm came through Phoenix and did all sorts of—well,

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I'm not sure how much damage it actually did, but let's just put it this way. The roofing contractors said it did a lot of damage.

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I'm not sure the insurance companies necessarily agree, but anyway, it was—I've still got—I can see from sitting here looking through a window the dents on the top of my poor little

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Nissan Versa from that particular storm that I got caught out in. So it's—one of the two ways we might be gotten—we might get it here in Colorado or in Phoenix or both at the same time.

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I don't know. And I'm sure Gil Ripplinger would have something to say about that if that were to take place. I did see something somewhat humorous.

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And by the way, there was someone on Twitter who was asking if we were taking calls today. Basically, if you can convince

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Rich that it's a really, really good call, so much so that he'll actually get in a channel and tell me that, then we'll go ahead and take phone calls as best we can.

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Obviously, if I can't hear you, that's not going to work real well. But otherwise, we've got a number of things lined up in the program today.

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Unfortunately, when doing Skype, I do not have my normative cough button when

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I need to do something like that. So it's live, folks. It's as live as it gets. And we'll see how long it lasts.

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I did see something rather humorous on Fox News back on the 10th. It says,

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Kentucky pastor's wife criticizes Southern Baptists. Church wants him to resign. A newspaper column lampooning

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Southern Baptists, calling the group the, quote, crazy old paranoid uncle of evangelical

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Christians, end quote, is causing quite a stir in a Kentucky city and put a pastor's job in jeopardy.

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The column was written by Angela Thomas, the wife of Bill Thomas, an assistant pastor at the

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First Baptist Church in Madisonville. Her column was done in response to the Southern Baptist Convention's opposition to a new

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Boy Scouts of America policy that welcomes gay members. Sexuality doesn't come up and isn't relative to typical scouting activities.

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But now, thanks to Southern Baptists, the parents of little innocent scouts everywhere are having to have the talk, she wrote

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June 19th in the Madisonville Messenger. She writes a weekly humor column for a community paper, which publishes daily.

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In the weeks since, the status of Bill Thomas' job at the church has become unclear. I love news reporters.

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Unclear. The First Baptist pastor said he had accepted Thomas' resignation, but Thomas wrote in a letter obtained by the newspaper that he had not quit.

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Thomas has worked at the church for 10 years and was also its musical director. Bill and Angela Thomas declined to be interviewed by the

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Associated Press on Tuesday, but he previously told the newspaper he agreed with what his wife wrote. Now, this is the actual reason that I picked this up.

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The column said Southern Baptists have become, quote, raging Shiite Baptists, end quote, after drifting, quote, to the right, end quote, for the past four decades, quote,

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Santa and the Easter Bunny are simply the devil in disguise and cable television and the Internet are his playground.

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The Boy Scouts are his evil minions, end quote, she wrote. Well, I don't have any comments whatsoever about whether Pastor Thomas is still leading music at this particular church or not,

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First Baptist Church in Madisonville, but it did catch my attention that someone who's actually a member of a

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Southern Baptist church would make light of what happened at the convention, where there was a very serious discussion concerning the events in the

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Boy Scouts of America. And if any of you listened to Dr. Albert Mohler's debriefing, you know that he has been very concerned about this, has raised the issue a number of times, and in fact, is way ahead of the curve on developments within it and used it as an example, a good example, of the pressures being placed upon Christians in society to abandon moral and ethical mandates that are plainly presented in the pages of Scripture.

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And of course, then we have people starting to use terms like Shiite Baptists. You can tell someone using terminology like that doesn't know much about either

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Baptists or Shiites, because I know both and either would appreciate the joining of the two terms.

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I'm not really sure what that's meant to communicate anyways. But this kind of discussion, this kind of pressure being placed upon us in the public square, nothing unusual whatsoever.

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It is only going to increase, especially because, remember, it's amazing, this particular

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Supreme Court decision, the recent Supreme Court decision, where, in essence, the presidents of the

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United States up until the current president of the United States were all identified as having acted via animus and bigotry.

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It's amazing. We have such short memories now. I mean, 50, 60 years ago, that would have been the topic of discussion for I don't know how long.

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But these days, well, that's just so yesterday, you know, that's so two weeks ago.

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We move on from there, and there's almost no discussion of it. And yet, the ramifications of that decision, especially the language of Kennedy in writing for the majority, will have ramifications that we, well, some people do see coming, but I don't think all of us can even begin to see what the ramifications are really going to be, but they're going to be very major.

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And we will be talking about them, well, let's put it this way, let's hope we have the freedom to be talking about them for a long time in the future.

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But my concern is we probably won't have that kind of freedom because of the very nature of that.

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I am going to try, I've set things up a little bit different this time. You know, most people don't confess to their own dumb actions, but I tend to fairly regularly.

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I was talking into the wrong end of the iPad in Santa Fe. The microphone's on the other end.

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So same thing with the little speaker that I had to be playing

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Michael Brown stuff. It could have sounded better if I had just been thinking straight there in my hotel room.

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So I may be coming through a little bit better because I'm talking to the top of the iPad now where the little microphone is rather than the bottom of the iPad where the speaker is.

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They're not the same thing. On the MacBook Pro, there's a little bit more confusion as to what's where, but I should have known that.

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I have it set up to where the iPad is sitting right next to the MacBook and right above its speaker. So I'm not going with an external speaker.

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I'm doing it a different way. And Rich said it sounded okay before, so we'll see how it works.

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I'm actually going to try to go back and do a little bit of the Yusuf Ismail, try to finish up his opening statement because right afterwards is the

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William Lane Craig avatar statement. I don't know. Something makes me want to play that.

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I'm not sure. It's sort of painful, but we're going to try anyways.

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And so people in channel are saying, might have sounded better on Tuesday.

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What do you guys think? Oh, great. Fine. Look, honestly, I can see the little hole for the microphone.

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It's right there. Honestly, I can. So anyway. All right. So let's go back.

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For those of you who haven't heard it before, we've been listening to a debate that took place a few years ago between Yusuf Ismail and William Lane Craig in South Africa.

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I will be debating Yusuf Ismail, Bashir Varna and Adnan Rashid in South Africa in really a matter of weeks now.

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Lord willing, please keep. No, that's not the earpiece. I know where the earpiece goes.

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It's the other thing. It's the other teeny tiny little thing. Don't try to. If I was into multitasking,

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I'd kick him out of channel right now, but I'm not going to do that. Anyway, just a reminder that there is a banner ad on AOMIN .org

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and we could continue to use your help in getting all the finances put together for getting to South Africa.

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It is a long trip and lots of costs involved.

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So if you can be of assistance, click on that banner ad. It's the one where I have a zebra in the background and I'm hitchhiking.

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A clear, clear example of what is called Photoshop, in case you're wondering, because I've not really been there to be able to hitchhike to Africa.

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Anyhow, I've actually slowed this back down though to 1 .0 because Yusuf Ismail is talking fast enough as it is and the quality is such that I've slowed it down so we can make sure to hear it.

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Let's go back to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement. As far as we've gotten, he is providing various criticisms of the concept of the deity of Christ.

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God speaks on himself. Jesus, please. Jesus says, what have I heard?

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These things do I speak. The words you have heard are not mine, but the Father that sent me, even as a father himself said

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I speak. Now, again, last time I pointed this out, I've pointed this out many, many times before.

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If you are going to speak, especially to a Muslim that has any experience in Dawah, that is the offering of an apologetic against Christianity, the presentation of Islam, I would highly recommend that you be familiar with John Chapter 5 and the abuse of John Chapter 5 by Muslims at this point.

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We have put videos up on YouTube on it. We've discussed it many, many times before, but one of the most valuable things you can do is to know

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John 5 and to know that the point of John Chapter 5 is not Jesus denying his deity.

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It is the assertion of the absolute unity between the Father and the Son in accomplishing

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God's will, that the Son is not some deity off on his own, doing his own thing.

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There is perfect unity, the words that he speaks are the Father's words, and yet we are to honor the Son even as we honor the

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Father. The Father is the source of life, the Son is the source of life, there is this perfect unity between the two, a clear distinction is drawn between them, and yet the unity is well the very same balance we have in the rest of the

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Gospel of John. But you need to know that most Muslims who use this text only know a few verses of John Chapter 5.

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I have not personally ever encountered a Muslim who has presented a discussion of this text beginning at least at verse 16 or 17, and then walking through the text, that's just not generally how

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Muslim apologists approach the Bible, that's one of the differences hopefully in how we approach the

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Quran, is that we attempt to find if there is a context that we can follow, things like that, but that's not normally how the

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Muslims do it. So know John Chapter 5, be prepared to respond to those things. Now, two errors in one sentence, when

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Jesus said, He's quoting from Psalm 22, of course, and another text that you really want to put on your memorization list, your familiarization list, especially if you have taken the time, and I would highly recommend to you taking the time, to listen to the debates that took place in Dublin, when both in the audience questions at the

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University College Dublin and Trinity College, we had a tremendous opportunity of discussing

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Jesus' words, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, and what they really mean, what Psalm 22 really means, etc.,

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etc. But Jesus did not then fall upon His face like any Muslim would, because Jesus was on the cross when

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He said these words. So two errors in one, evidently

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He's thinking of the fact that in the garden, Jesus does bow down, but there are numerous places where Jesus does not pray in this way.

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And so, again, Muslims will sort of cherry -pick the data, and they're not really honestly trying to come to the answer, how did

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Jesus pray? They're assuming they already know that answer, and therefore they will pick the texts that support that, and then just ignore the presence of texts, for example,

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John Chapter 17, where Jesus is not bowed to the ground as He's uttering these words, and there are other places where Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven while praying.

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So again, just be aware of these kinds of very common errors that Muslims make in their apologetics for Islam.

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In Matthew 26, study 9. Please, please, please.

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Now, notice what's going on. Been there, done that, heard this. When Muslims in the audience, especially certain kinds of Muslims in the audience, start getting excited, and they think that their speaker is making good points, they will start doing the

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Takbir. And in fact, right at the beginning of what I played, I heard in the audience someone say Takbir, and now the

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Muslims are trying to respond by saying Allahu Akbar. This happened to me in my debate in London last year.

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During the Quran debate, there was a good deal of Allahu Akbar -ing going on.

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And the irony is that in almost every time, in fact,

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I can't think of an exception to this. I didn't sit down and do an exhaustive study of this.

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But every time that I can think of where Muslims have broken into the

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Allahu Akbar chant during a debate, they were normally chanting and rejoicing at the falsehood that had just been uttered, at a misuse of scripture, a simple factual error.

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I cannot think of a single exception to that. And here's a good example. Yusuf Ismail is not presenting a contextually relevant argument here.

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He's misrepresenting the text, and yet you are hearing his own people interrupting him at this time, and he's trying to quiet them for the obvious reason that he only has a certain amount of time.

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Thank you, thank you. Give me another definition of the Prophet in Acts 2 .22. Dear men of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, among you by miracles and wonders and signs.

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Now, whenever you hear someone emphasize something we already believe, then you recognize they don't understand what we believe.

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We believe that Jesus Christ was fully man. You can call him man.

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You can call him prophet. But he wasn't just that. That would be like someone, that would be like me quoting from the

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Hadith where someone refers to Muhammad as a man and going, see, he's not a prophet. Well, no, that would be an abuse of logic, the language, everything else, and yet that's what you have going on with this kind of argumentation.

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Which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know. A man approved of Jesus identified as a prophet.

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It's not necessarily an Islamic belief. It's a biblical belief. That's what the New Testament says. I must walk today and tomorrow, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

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A prophet perish outside of Jerusalem? Jesus saying that? Well, again, two things.

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We believe Jesus was a prophet, prophet, priest, king. The issue is not that we deny that Jesus was a prophet in any way, shape, or form.

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It is the fact that Islam comes along in light of the biblical teaching that goes beyond that.

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The biblical teaching that speaks of him as the son of God. The biblical teaching that speaks of him as the creator, and ignores those things and denies those things, even though the very same people who were calling him prophet also called him the son of God.

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I mean, quote from Acts 2, quote all of what the sermon was about, including the truth of the resurrection of Christ, even though the

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Quran denies the crucifixion, hence resurrection. This is classic cherry -picking of the text, ignoring the actual intentions of the authors, something that I exhort

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Christians not to do to Islamic texts, even though Muslims continue to do them to Christian texts.

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What's the belief where Jesus was killed? Where was he killed? Outside Jerusalem? He says here, a prophet cannot perish outside of Jerusalem.

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So, Yusuf Ismail thinks that because Jesus is outside the city walls, that means he's outside of Jerusalem, therefore

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Jesus is a false prophet. Of course, anybody in that day would understand Jesus' language when he talks about going up to Jerusalem.

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In fact, this trial takes place there, and nobody would say, well, okay, you know, technically by GPS location, the mount of Calvary is 0 .01

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degrees outside of actual Jerusalem, therefore Jesus is a false prophet. This, again, is the use of modern standards that no one at that time, anyone at that time would have looked at Yusuf Ismail and gone, really?

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Seriously? You think that that means Jesus is a false prophet because he was crucified technically outside the walls, as if anybody thought that that was not

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Jerusalem and the environs of Jerusalem? Again, you could find numerous examples of the same type of thing.

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In regards to place names and get really specific about, well, is that really there? That is a, again, an abuse of the language and abuse of the text that we don't want to go there.

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No man has seen God as any time. You cannot see his shape or hear his voice.

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So when he told Philip he was seeing me, I seen the father, he must have been meaning something else. I'm not sure what he means there.

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Obviously, when Jesus told Philip he was seeing me, I seen the father, Jesus was affirming the fact that he is the perfect revelation of the father, which is, of course, exactly what

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John started off his gospel by saying, that no one has seen God any time. The monogamous they ask.

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He has executed him. He has explained him. So again, only by ignoring the fact that the same author wrote

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John one who wrote John chapter 14 can you get around the meaning of these texts.

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And once again, just, you know, I know this sounds like a broken record, but we don't want to do this to the

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Quran. We simply ask that Muslims stop doing it to the biblical text. The problem is, if Muslims stop doing this biblical text, they're not going to have much dawah left.

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They're not going to have much of a real defense left because of the, I think, the reality of the fact that the author of the

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Quran did not understand the Christian faith and hence did not provide a meaningful argument that you can develop from the canonic text against real biblical

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Christianity. Now, the idea that Jesus is the son of God is an idea which basically is a later development.

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James Dunn, who is a contemporary of Dr. Craig, in his book Evidence for the Messiah, he states that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, statistically, one can determine that there is an evolution in terms of what

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Jesus said and how is he viewed. Now, once again, you have the Muslims borrowing from liberals, the same

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Muslims who will never apply these standards to their own text because if you were to do this, if you were to take the

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Quran and put it in chronological order, you can start coming up with developments in Muhammad's thought, developments in Muhammad's belief.

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You would have to do it. If Yusuf Ismail is going to use this kind of argumentation, he could have no objection whatsoever to someone outside of Islam doing the exact same thing and saying, see, here you have development within Islamic thought, within Muhammad's thought.

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And, of course, from the Islamic perspective, that's impossible because the Quran are the very words of God written on the heavenly tablets and brought down by the angel

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Jibril on Laylat al -Qadr, etc., etc. So, the inconsistency of the utilization of liberals who do not believe in divine revelation in the way that even

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Muslims believe in it, you just have to recognize this kind of double standard and when you're utilizing a double standard, you are abandoning the debate.

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You're abandoning the argument. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus speaks about the kingdom of God 47 times in the heart of himself.

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But in John's gospel, he speaks about the kingdom of God only five times. Now, he speaks hardly of himself in the gospel of Matthew.

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Again, this kind of incredibly shallow understanding of the text is very difficult to respond to.

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And, unfortunately, many Muslims listening to this will just accept this as factual. And it is not factual.

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Hopefully, once they check it, if they were to check it out for themselves, they would But, unfortunately, the vast majority would never be checking it out.

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In Mark, Jesus speaks about himself like I am this or I am that nine times. But in John's gospel, he speaks about himself a whopping 118 times.

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When we realize that Mark was the first gospel and John was the last... When we realize or theorize.

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Remember, it's theorize. It's not realize. There is no evidence of that. We have no manuscript evidence.

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It is a theory. There are counter -theories. And at this point, I agree very warmly with N .T.

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Wright, who has said, we don't know the order in which the gospels were written. And when you build entire theological mountains out of theoretical speculation, well, those mountains can then get knocked down by further evidence in the future.

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We can see then that the development in the way Jesus was represented over time. For example, in Mark's gospel,

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Jesus refers to God as the Father. Now, remember, we caught Yusuf Ismail a few weeks ago.

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Well, why would we call it a few weeks ago? Well, on a program a few weeks ago, we caught Yusuf Ismail repeating the very same error that Shabir Ali had made in talking about this alleged development over time.

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We caught him with the error regards to Kurios between Matthew and Mark. And I had already explained that error to Shabir Ali in 2006.

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And this debate, I think, was 2009 or 2010. So just keep that in mind in regards to the type of research that's being done here.

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Once. In John's gospel, he refers to God as the Father 73 times.

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In Mark's gospel, Jesus refers to God as Father 3 times. But in John's gospel, a whopping 100 times.

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Now, of course, the fact that John's gospel gives us a completely different level of dialogue and a completely different context than Mark's does, and that Mark is different than Matthew and Luke, for example, the material they include, they include.

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Again, we could take apart the Koran, and we could start taking different sections of the Koran and putting them at odds with other sections of the

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Koran, even to the point of arguing that, well, one person might have written these surahs, and then another person wrote these surahs.

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And it's very, very easy to do once you start with certain presuppositions. So, whereas in Mark, more about the kingdom of God and less about himself, in John, more about himself and less of the kingdom of God.

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There's an evolution in terms of what we see, in terms of how Jesus represents himself. So it seems to me that the high apostology, where Jesus represented himself as the

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Son of God, is thought to be a late -day insertion. Even though, as we've pointed out, and I did a series of sermons a couple of months ago, they're on Sermon Audio, we've blogged them, you can demonstrate the deity of Christ, without question, solely from the

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Gospel of Mark. In fact, I would be glad to do that in debate against Yusuf Ismail.

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Does the Gospel of Mark present the deity of Christ? It would be so easy to do.

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But I doubt I'll be taken up on that particular invitation. Now, by the way,

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Son of God and begotten Son are not the same thing. There's no way to...

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This shows confusion on Yusuf Ismail's part, even in the sources that he's reading. I would love to see some evidence of that.

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I would love to see evidence anywhere. Obviously, he's quoting from something that he does not understand, and has not provided sufficient information to even begin to respond to it.

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But where do you have evidence that the concept of Jesus as the Son of God is found only in the

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Latin Bible? Where are these massive differences between the Latin text and the

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Greek text? I'd like to see these things. The fact is, of course, there isn't. Maybe this is some type of theory without any manuscript evidence, but, of course, it's being presented by Yusuf Ismail in a way that I don't think he even understands what it is he's arguing.

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The word ordinarily means of a single kind, and as a result... And, of course, anyone who has read

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The Forgotten Trinity knows that I have about what? How many pages was that?

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I don't have my books with me right now, but I forgot how many pages I dedicated to the demonstration of the meaning of monogamist.

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Monogamist means unique, one of a kind. And so here you have something that is a given being used as an argument, as if it's somehow relevant to the assertion of the relationship of the father and the son.

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If he would just think this through, he'd realize that what this does is it decimates the vast majority of Islamic argumentation against the sonship of Christ, because the author of the

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Quran didn't understand the meaning of the word son, and had a physical idea to it. In fact, very clearly,

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Ahmed Didat did not understand this. I would challenge Yusuf Ismail to follow through with this information and come to the conclusion, the recognition, that Ahmed Didat and his arguments against the sonship of Christ were based upon an ignorance of these very facts.

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Unique is a good translation. That's the reason why you sometimes find a translation that renders the word only begotten.

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It has to do with an ancient heurisy within the church. In response to the

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Arian claim that Jesus was made not begotten, Jerome translated the Greek term monogamist into Latin as unigitis, only begotten.

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So, there is absolutely nothing. In fact, we'll deal with the issue of son of God later on, but before we can come to that, look at this quotation in John 20, 16 -18, when

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Jesus appeared before Mary Magdalene after the so -called post -crucifixion appearances, and she goes and wants to cling on to him.

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What does Jesus say? He says, I am ascending to my father and to your father, to my

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God and your God. And then Mary Magdalene went and conveyed that particular message to Jesus in respect of that particular point.

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Now, again, Christians believe this. We believe in the Incarnation. We believe

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Jesus had a God because he was the perfect man, et cetera, et cetera. But, again,

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I just have to wonder why in the world would Ismael be quoting these texts because he believes that they are corrupted.

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Does he not? Jesus never used the term father in this way, did he? According to Muslims? So why quote these words if you don't actually believe

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Jesus ever said these words? Just be straightforward and say, now, Jesus never said this, but it's in your

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Bible, therefore. I think that would be the way to handle it appropriately. And, by the way, I have kicked the speed back up so we can get to the avatar before the end of the program today.

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So with all the discussions that Dr. Craig has given us, he has not been able to basically give us a single point which illustrates that Jesus came to be

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God when he said that he is divine or commands people to worship him. Of course, you find passages in the

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New Testament which purport to suggest that, but that's not the case. In respect of the issue pertaining to the parable of the wicked tenants and the other so -called discussions,

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I will deal in the rebuttal section. So it does not mean that I concede that point. It's interesting to note that the

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New Testament that we have it today is an eclectic edition. It's a development which is recognized by the vast majority of biblical scholars.

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You've got the oldest manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, dates to when? 400 years after Jesus. Now, this is where it starts getting interesting.

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He's going a little bit fast, but when, you know, I hope that the trip in October will lead to further trips in the future and more in -depth discussions.

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I hope to get to know Yusuf Ismail. I hope that he will listen to these programs. I hope that he hears my heart, that I do want to get to know him and that I would love to see him grow in his knowledge of what

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Christians really believe rather than what he's been told we believe so that our interactions will be more useful to an even wider audience including himself.

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But when you come to this particular area, I again just want to strongly encourage

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Muslims to think before speaking on this topic because when you compare the mountain of information that we have on the text of the

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New Testament and the openness of the Christian Church in dealing with this information, any

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Muslim in the world with a computer could download a mountain of textual evidence that is widely available.

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It's not hidden, anything else. You need to realize that's not the case with the Quran and you need to realize your text has a textual history and the vast majority of you don't know what it is.

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And unfortunately even the books that have been put out there are not overly balanced, shall we say, in the approach they take to even discussion of what is clearly found in the

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Islamic texts, in the Hadith, concerning the history of the

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Quran itself. They're extremely biased and would not be considered fair renderings of the history at all.

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So just be very, very careful when you start discussing these things. In the 19th century.

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So in other words, what he's just referred to there are the textual differences between at least

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Sinaiticus's edition of the Alexandrian text and the

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Textus Receptus. Now again, I want to remind everyone in regards to Sinaiticus, this was a text that had been in use from about 325 to 350

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AD to 1800. So it had been in use for 1500 years and when you say there are differences, when you're talking about the original writings, the first corrector, the second corrector, you're talking about hands that are 700 years down the road that tried to make

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Sinaiticus read like the current Byzantine text of that day. What are you talking about? Unfortunately, in most of my experience, and I'm looking for those wonderful exceptions in the future, but in most of my experience, when

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I hear people talking about Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, any of the other early unsealed manuscripts, or the papyri, they're going on second, third, and fourth hand information.

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They've not examined the text for themselves and are not familiar with the history of those particular texts either.

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So these are points of note. It's not scholarly to say or speak about multiple independent multiple attestations when we don't even have the original words of Jesus amongst us.

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We don't even have the original words of Jesus. What do you mean it's not scholarly to discuss these things? We do not have the original words of Muhammad amongst us.

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We don't have the original writings of the Quran amongst us. Just be fair. Utilize the same standards.

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We don't have originals of the Torah, and yet the Quran itself says that the

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Torah was sent down by God and contains light and guidance, and Muhammad, when the Torah was presented before him, got off of a cushion he was sitting on and had the

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Torah placed upon that cushion and said, I believe every word in this book. So where is the consistency?

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It's amazing to me when I listen to Muslims who will buy into modern liberalism and its arguments against Christianity, and yet they don't realize that by buying into those arguments they are absolutely cutting off their own legs.

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They are decimating their own faith, but they don't apply those standards in that way.

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Jesus never spoke Greek. He spoke Aramaic. Maybe. Most everybody in Jesus' day at that time would have spoken at least some

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Greek. You wanted to know what that Roman soldier was yelling at you. You'd have to have some concept of that.

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But again, what's the problem with that? Evidently the idea is that for the

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New Testament documents to be authoritative, the Spirit of God could not possibly utilize the language that would allow the

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New Testament documents to go all over the known world. He couldn't do that. That's too big for the

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Spirit of God. He has to use Aramaic, a language that would limit the application of the

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New Testament documents to one tiny little corner of the Roman Empire. You just have to take apart the assumptions of these statements to see just how vacuous they really are.

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I'd like to end with one particular quotation from a particular scholar.

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I've just got one minute left. This is Charles Cammer in his book Ethics and Liberation.

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He says, and this is a message I leave for all of you, Muslims as well as Christians, if we are truly to respect the person of Jesus and live out the implications of his life, death and teachings, we can no longer make claims about...

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His what? His life? His what? Oh, death and teachings. Oh, I thought

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Surah 4, verse 27 said that Jesus wasn't crucified and Surah 4, verse 28 says he was taken up to heaven.

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Just pointing out, once again, the sources that are being utilized end up contradicting the person utilizing the sources.

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And what does that tell you? The absolute uniqueness of Jesus or the necessity of the encounter with the person of Jesus for human liberation and salvation.

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To be true to the person of Jesus, his life, love and concern for others, his openness to persons of both sexes and all economic classes, all cultural backgrounds, we must repudiate a

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Christology that measures the worth of persons on the basis of their relationship with Christ alone.

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I thank you for the time with all the discussions that Dr. Craig has had. Unfortunately, he has not proven the point and I'd be interested in hearing the rebuttal.

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I'd like to end with the verse of the Quran which says, وَقُلْ جَعَالْحَقُّ وَسَحَقَ الْبَاطِلِ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَزَهُكَا That when truth comes and throws itself against that which is incorrect, that which is incorrect is bound to fall away.

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Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and God bless you. Okay, so there's the opening statement. Now, I'm going to slow it back down to normal speed because I want you to hear this.

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William Lane Craig gets up, he says a couple of things, and then, remember, I don't remember which program it was on now, but remember when

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Yusuf Ismail demanded that we present, demanded

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William Lane Craig present to him a model for the Incarnation. And I stopped and said,

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I will not for one simple reason. If I could, then the Incarnation is not true.

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Because when you ask for a model, what you're asking for is, show me something in the created order that is on this order, that mirrors this, that helps me to understand this.

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And if we are saying that the Incarnation is unique, absolutely unique, never repeated, had not happened before, the

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Incarnation is unique, then there can be nothing in the created order that is going to mirror it.

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And any type of example or model is going to break down. And so,

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I said immediately, no, you cannot do this, that is improper, that's inappropriate, don't go there.

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Well, of course, we already know that Dr.

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Craig, unfortunately, is willing to utilize certain illustrations that our

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Muslim friends find to be rather humorous. We all remember Kerberos, the three -headed dog illustration that Muslims rightly realized was a really, really, really bad idea.

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Well, now we're going to get another really, really, really bad idea. And that is a movie that I finally did see it,

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I forget why I saw it. I must have been on a plane or something and had nothing else to do.

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But it was, I guess, one of the all -time biggest movies of all time, Avatar.

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And so, at least I understood this illustration from that perspective. But for those of you who have solid theological grounding, what you need to do is you need to put away any sharp objects from yourself, possibly tape your hands to the table, something over the course of the next few moments.

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As you listen to this illustration, of the hypostatic union based upon the movie

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Avatar. I apologize ahead of time.

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History tells us, well, can you have a man who is both a fat man and a thin man?

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Well, if that man has two natures, yes, you can. Let me give an illustration. How many of you have seen the movie

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Avatar? How many have seen the movie Avatar?

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Okay, a few at least. An avatar is another name for incarnation.

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And this movie tells the story of Jake Sully, who is a disabled marine who becomes an avatar among a race of extraterrestrials called the

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Na 'vi. Now, Jake Sully is physically disabled, yet he becomes physically incarnated among them as a

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Na 'vi. At the same time, however, he doesn't cease to be human. So Jake has both a human nature and a

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Na 'vi nature. And these two natures have strikingly different properties.

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If you were to say, can Jake Sully run? The answer would be, well, yes and no.

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He cannot run as a human being in his human nature, but certainly in his

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Na 'vi nature, he can run. Now, if you can make sense of Avatar, then you can make sense of Christ's incarnation.

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Because in exactly the same way, Christ has both a divine nature and a human nature.

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And these two natures have different powers. In his human nature, Christ experienced all of the limitations intrinsic to humanity.

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But in his divine nature, he had supernatural powers. Just as Jake Sully, in his

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Na 'vi nature, became the savior of the Na 'vi people, so Christ, in his human nature, becomes the savior of humankind.

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So I think this model makes perfect sense of the incarnation, and there's nothing logical or incoherent about it.

43:34

Well, he said it himself. He said there's nothing logical. He meant to say illogical, but I think the truth was actually stated there in the statement.

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Wow. Okay. If you've not seen Avatar, you're probably going, what?

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I'm not going to try to retell the story. He already did. This was a computerized mechanism whereby this

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Jake Sully goes into a trance -like state, and his mind is sort of transferred to this

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Na 'vi avatar, and he can control it and run and stuff like that. The number of disconnections here are legion, and I think most people in the audience can automatically start picking them up, and it's cringeworthy to hear him saying, just as Jake Sully was the savior for the

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Na 'vi people, and he said it, I didn't say it, in the exact same way

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Jesus is the savior for humankind. So Jesus saves humankind by taking on the evil military complex that's trying to destroy the environment.

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I'm sorry. Even Yusuf Ismail is going to find something to chuckle about in that, and unfortunately we have to agree with Yusuf Ismail, who will chuckle appropriately at this particular illustration that is provided.

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Again, the fundamental error is to not properly enunciate the uniqueness of the

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Incarnation. In fact, to go where Craig did is to fundamentally deny the very essence of the uniqueness of the

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Incarnation, and to be able to say that in some kind of environmentalist wacko movie.

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He said it in the exact same way. I would like to think he didn't really mean that.

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I want to hope he didn't mean that, but he said it in the exact same way. And so he said the words, not me.

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So that is not in the exact same way. There was nothing at all about the fact that, for example,

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Jake Scully did not create the mechanism whereby he could have this avatar, yet Jesus is the creator of all things, including the human nature that he himself takes on.

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You have the voluntariness of Jesus' action. To compare the depth of the

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Carmen Christi in Philippians 2, 5 -11, and what it reveals concerning the condescension of Christ with the avatar movie is just an amazing, amazing thing.

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So if you're ever worried about hearing me utilizing that kind of illustration in the future, well, if I ever do, you can remind me that I'm a glowing hypocrite, because I can't even begin to understand the motivation of going that direction.

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You might say, well, but they need to have some kind of a model to understand this. I think the

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Spirit of God is good enough. I think the Spirit of God can cause a person to understand that.

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I'll never forget explaining the Carmen Christi of Philippians 2, 5 -11 to a pair of pioneer

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Jehovah's Witnesses once. This was many years ago, but walking through the text with them and showing them the fact that Jesus, that Paul's using this as an illustration of humility.

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So what would have been humility? For Jesus to be Michael the archangel, he doesn't reach at equality with God?

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Or is that humility? No, that's just not committing blasphemy. Or is the humility the fact that Jesus has eternally had equality with the

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Father, and yet he does not hold on to that equality, but for the service of others he lays that equality aside.

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And I remember when one of the two pioneer ministers saw what

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I was saying, she sat back in her chair like the Bible on her lap had become a snake, because she saw that that's exactly what that text was saying.

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And so I think you let the Word of God speak. I think this is, this does illustrate one of the fundamental differences.

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Once again, even going back oppositional, covenantal apologetics versus an evidential,

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I'm, again, I'm not going to apologize for saying this. I do believe that Reformed folks, when they present the authority of Scripture, have a higher view of Scripture than folks who say that the

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Bible is dependent upon man's philosophical systems to be understood. It is my experience, and you know what?

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I think our opponents see it as well. I think they sense it as well. And it's just, it's just an important thing.

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So there was the avatar example, and it truly, it truly leaves me stuttering.

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Before, I'm going to stop there, because this will allow us to go to Yusuf Ismail's rebuttal period the next time we do that, and I think that would be a good place to go.

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I think in the last few minutes, it would be good to pick up with a couple of the statements where we had left off with Michael Brown and the

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Calvinist call -in show. We're actually getting toward the end. I can very briefly scroll between where we are and where the end of it is, so that means we're getting close.

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In fact, I would say, according to my screen, there's only about, I don't know, there's about 25 minutes of program left, but obviously

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I have not selected all of that to listen to. So we will finish this up. I promise we'll finish this up, maybe even before he does his second

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Calvinist call -in show. Possibly, maybe. We'll find out. But anyways, let's pick up where we left off last, listening to Michael Brown.

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All right, thank you, Jason, for the call. And look at the overall testimony of Scripture. God says choose,

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God says believe, God says humble yourself, God says repent. It's because He chose to give us a choice, and His grace draws us to Himself so that we can say yes or no.

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Now again, we struggle because we love

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Michael and we know that in other areas, I really think Michael would be able to see that that statement is not a relevant statement to the position that he's denying.

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We know that the Bible says all these things, but you have to take, when you say the whole tenor of Scripture, okay, the

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Bible talks about choosing and the Bible talks about, so the assumption that's being made is if you say something, then everyone in your audience has the capacity to do whatever you say.

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So when Jesus says be perfect, then we need to open up the possibility of sinless perfection, right?

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This idea needs to be balanced with the fact that it's not the whole tenor of Scripture to miss entire strains of Scripture, such as Jesus' statement to the

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Jews in John chapter 8 that they were in bondage to sin, that they are slaves to sin, that they needed to be set free.

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Is the idea that, well, slaves can just simply choose to be set free? What about the heart that is set in love upon its sin?

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What about that individual? Are they beyond God's help until they change their own heart?

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You see, one of the things I'm going to notice in the next sections where Michael is talking about these things is say things, and then he'll say, well, yeah, we definitely need

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God's grace. Well, why? What does that grace do? If God's trying equally with every single person, then what is that grace going to accomplish?

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These are the questions that I think need to be addressed, and maybe now that we've had these discussions and these debates, maybe we should go back and address these particular aspects now.

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I don't know, possibly. All right, so both Arminians and Calvinists would agree on substitutionary atonement, that Jesus took our place, died for our sins, and in that sense paid the price of justice, that we were not ransomed from Satan in terms of what the cross did, but that the wrath of God was poured out on sin that Jesus carried on the cross.

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So if we come to the debate about the atonement, the Calvinists and Arminians that I know both agree on substitutionary atonement.

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That's not the case. Now he says the Calvinists and Arminians that he knows, okay, but historically penal substitutionary atonement is a reformed doctrine.

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It did not come from Arminianism. And in fact, the strain of theology, and Dr.

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Brown can verify this in his own historical sources, the strain of theology that comes from Arminius leads to the representational view of the atonement and to other views of the atonement that stand in direct opposition to penal substitutionary atonement, and this is clearly seen in the books being published by Arminians today attacking the concept of penal substitutionary atonement.

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And so historically, no. Substitutionary atonement was a reformed doctrine, and those non -reformed individuals who hold to it today

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I would argue do so inconsistently. They may not know they're being inconsistent. They may not recognize it, but the early

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Arminians did recognize that if they believe in penal substitutionary atonement, then they would have to believe in divine election, because if Christ dies for all people, then all people are going to be saved.

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And so they recognize that that would be the case. So I'm going to finish off with a section where a guy tries to call in, and I think this is important to play, we should have just enough time to sneak it in, where Michael is trying to be fair in responding to someone's misrepresentation of reformed theology.

54:19

So I think it's fair to play this. I'm not a Calvinist, but I've been listening to the broadcast, and in my opinion, that's pretty dangerous thinking the way they think.

54:30

They think everybody is predestined before they're born. They pick, you know,

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God picks and chooses whomever he's going to save and whomever he's not going to save. They can think on the lines of they can do whatever they want to do while living here on earth.

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Is that true? Well, actually, no. In other words, a Calvinist would say that those who are truly saved will persevere in holiness.

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Those who are living in sin, those who are claiming to know God and living in sin were never truly saved, or if they ever were saved, they'll come back to the

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Lord. So a Calvinist does not believe in once saved, always saved. A Calvinist believes in perseverance of the saints.

55:08

A Calvinist would say, in other words, that a truly saved person will continue to live a godly life. And if they don't, they would point to, say, verses like 1

55:15

John 3, that whoever continues in sin has never seen him or known him. They would point to verses like that.

55:21

And a committed Calvinist would say that God has ordained the preaching of the gospel to save the lost and that it's their sacred task to bring that message, let

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God do the saving. In other words, they knock on every door and let God determine who's elected and who's not.

55:36

But they're going to knock on every door. And some of the greatest missionaries who've ever lived, some of the greatest evangelists and soul winners who've ever lived have been

55:43

Calvinists. Unfortunately, the great majority of Calvinists that I know today do not light a candle to Marminian friends in terms of burden for the lost and going to the mission field.

55:54

And that's a shame because that's different than the Calvinism they would point to. If you take a man like a

56:00

John Piper who has a tremendous burden for the nations and for world missions, he tends to stand out among Calvinists.

56:07

I don't mean to insult my Calvinist friends in saying that, but when I was a Calvinist from 77 to 82, you know,

56:12

I'd read Spurgeon. I mean, he's one of the greatest soul winners of all time with this incredible passion and burden for the lost.

56:18

And his Calvinism seemed to help him have a greater burden to the lost. But the Calvinists that I traveled with and everyone I'd get to meet seemed to be kind of the opposite.

56:25

They almost had this mentality of God will save and we'll do our part, but the burden was much less acute.

56:31

So it can lead to that. You know, I commend folks like my friend James White who's actively involved in outreach and even got into debating because of his outreach to Mormons and things like that.

56:40

But all too often, let's say if wrongly applied, it can absolutely lead to complacency. I'm trying to be fair here as much as possible.

56:47

Thanks for the call. Well, we have to appreciate Michael's attempt there not only to accurately represent what we believe in response to the caller who's going, well, that doesn't mean you can just go out and live any way you want to.

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One of the things that I've appreciated, even though we are providing a response to Michael in these things, you have to appreciate that.

57:09

You have to give him credit for that, for responding in that fashion. And it elevates the level of conversation.

57:16

That's what all of this hopefully has been is an elevation of level of conversation. Certainly in the debate we had at Southern Evangelical Seminary, the debates we've done on the dividing line.

57:25

And who knows? Maybe we will, after Michael gets a chance to listen to all these responses, have an opportunity to talk about it.

57:32

Really focus in upon, is God trying to save every single individual equally? What is the nature of prevenient grace?

57:39

How do you prove prevenient grace biblically and exegetically? These are some of the issues that are clearly becoming central to our dialogue and to our discussion.

57:50

And maybe that will be something that we'll be able to continue with that in the future. Well, thanks for listening to this live dividing line from up here in Evergreen, Colorado.

57:59

We had a little rain pass by. I don't know if there was going to be some more wandering by, but we didn't get any real big thunderclaps.

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Just one there at the beginning. But anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. And Lord willing, probably

58:13

Tuesday afternoon at best. I won't be getting back until Tuesday morning. Might have to put off until Wednesday.

58:19

We'll see. Anyways, we'll see you next week. God bless. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.

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Let this moment slip away. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.

58:42

We need a new reformation day. It's a sign of the times.

58:50

The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm. Won't you lift up your voice?

58:57

Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise. I stand up for the truth.

59:09

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59:18

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59:26

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59:31

That's a -o -m -i -n -dot -o -r -g where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.