Report on Trip to Birmingham, South Africa, and London, Along with More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon, back after two weeks overseas, and so that obviously is going to take up most of my time filling in on what took place, and it's relevant to a lot of the topics that we normally would be addressing.

00:53

Of course, we continue to pray for the situation down in Houston developed very, very quickly.

00:58

I guess that storm just blew up, and I was looking at a meme online just a few moments ago.

01:06

The Houston area has received an inch more rain in this storm than Phoenix as a total has received since January of 2012, which ain't saying much for Phoenix, obviously, but the point is it happened really, really, really, really, really fast.

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It's the speed at which it comes that's the problem. You can handle 40 inches of rain if you just spread it out over time and let it all get out of the way.

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Anyway, so a huge situation down there, and everyone continues to follow that.

01:42

Please notice, oh, it went and changed. Please notice in the background, I need to start off with that.

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We now have warp capabilities. Up until now, certainly back when this was just a white wall with ugly shade things behind me, that was clearly nothing but a very low -level auxiliary engine impulse drive, purely impulse drive.

02:13

I'm not impressed with your warp core given the fact that it took me ... I had to lower all the

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YouTube settings today to just get us to be able to feed. It has nothing to do with the warp core. It's not doing the job here.

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It has nothing to do with that. That is actually completely and totally your fault. You're the one who has been doing all this computer stuff and the network stuff.

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You and that guy lives up north. He knows who he is. You've all been talking about how fast everything was going to be, and you're going to be able to be doing these super high -resolution things, which

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I don't think we need, and we can barely get a connection. It just has nothing to do with the warp core.

02:58

What I'm going to do with the warp core, if I remember to do it, you can sort of see right now we're just barely doing warp one because that's sort of how

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I feel today. I've been home for 20 hours, and so I'm feeling a little bit on the just barely able to get to light speed right now.

03:21

But if we've really got something going, then I can speed it up. If you've ever seen the warp core at warp nine, it's a pumping.

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It's moving fast. There's the warp core back there right next to ... It looks like it's about to be assimilated by the

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Borg, who look like they're about to be eaten by the Tribbles, which completely messes up the

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Star Trek timeline, but we don't worry about things like that here. We really don't. So very, very thankful for the warp core, and what's really neat is it was made on one of those 3D printer things, which is just ...

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I don't even ... That's sort of like a replicator to me. That level of technology is sort of replication level technology to me.

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So yes, there's warp core warping back there, and I love it.

04:08

It's great. So it has a permanent spot in the background there. So we're going to have to swap a few things out once in a while.

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The Enterprise E is in front of me now, because we still have so much space back there.

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It's still 2017, so Martin has to have some place back there. But there you go.

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There you go. And the picture of the D is still up there, but it just isn't visible.

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Yes, and I thank you very much for getting P -45 up on the wall without it falling down this time. That's really cool.

04:43

That looks really good. I like it. So anyway, so let me go backwards.

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Let me go backwards on the trip and cover a bunch of topics sort of along the way.

04:57

Really, really, really encouraging trip for me. I'm only home for three weeks. Three weeks from today,

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I head for Berlin with my wife. She finally gets to go with me on something. And so a short time home, and if you want to,

05:16

I've mentioned this in the program before. When I figured it all out, I'm spending one out of every six days in 2017 overseas.

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That's pretty amazing for me, and I have gotten better at it.

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We learned something. We learned something this trip. Well, by the way, have you all noticed?

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I was in Randberg, South Africa one morning, and I realized that for 16 years, since 2001,

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I have been dragging sharp shards of metal over my cranium, and I got tired of it, mainly as an issue of time and blood loss.

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I sort of wonder how much blood I'll not have to produce over the course of the year.

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But so I've let it grow out to level two on a beard trimmer.

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That's not much. That's where I am here. That's where I am here, and it saves me a lot of time, and I like it.

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So there you go. So if you're wondering, did I just forget to shave after I got back from the trip or something?

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Nope. It's actually purposeful. It is. And while I was in London, we could do the rest of the program like this.

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While I was in London, some friends, they said we have to do a little bit of walking.

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It was, oh my gosh, I think I had 18 ,000 steps that day. You do a lot of walking in London, and we walked past Buckingham Palace through the park into the really swanky part of London, and we went to a hat shop.

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And I got myself a hat. I now have a

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Bates, a Bates hat. Rich just looks at the window, and he's talking on the phone, and he's going, what's going on?

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Because he's not listening to me. This is a Bates hat from London. It's a dark blue, and it's a rabbit felt, and I love it.

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It is great, but the problem is, it's felt. And in Arizona, not this time of year, no, no, you don't, no, because rabbits stay very warm.

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And the last thing I need up here, I wore it while walking to the Westminster train station, tube station, and just about overheated, just about died.

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So great little hat, and I appreciate, we had a lot of fun down there. Anyways, back to the story.

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I've got all sorts of stuff to show you here, and so it's easy to get distracted. What was

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I saying? Yes, going sort of backwards, we learned a lot of things on this trip, and one of the things we decided to do is we scheduled and actually booked the flights so that I could have the debate with Zaka Hussain in Birmingham.

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I've been invited there more than once, and we looked at how to get there, and I know how to get to the underground station from any of, from basically terminals three, four, and five,

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I've gotten there. And I have an Oyster card, which is how you travel on the tube, and I've got the app on my phone, so I can plan my journey, where do

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I get off, where do I do all that kind of stuff. And so we thought, well,

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I just need to get to London, Euston, E -U -S -T -O -N, Euston station, and catch the overground train to Birmingham, and I'm staying right across the street.

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So you don't have to have anybody to take me or anything like that, technically sounds like a plan.

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Let me give everybody a warning. The tube was not designed for you to carry check luggage and your carry -on luggage on and off those trains.

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You've heard the phrase, mind the gap, well, there is a gap, and there's also an up and down. I mean, I was getting off at, and I made the mistake of getting off at Leicester Square instead of Green Park, I realized that was a mistake,

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I'll tell you why in a second. And I got the heavy check baggage down, because it's 15 days overseas,

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I've got suit jacket and shirts and shoes and ties and all kinds of stuff. And as I get that down,

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I'm turning around to get my other bags and they fall off the train on my back.

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And then I start hanging toward the way out, which is exit, that's what we call it here, way out there.

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That's when I realized something. The reason I should have gotten off at Green Park is because it has the little handicap thing on it.

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Leicester Square doesn't. What does that mean? No lifts, we call them elevators, but lift is obviously a better term and it takes less energy to say it.

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No elevators, it's all stairs. And I will say it was pretty amazing how many times as I was dragging those four pieces of luggage up those stairs, totally anonymous

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Londoners just grabbed a piece of luggage and ran off.

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No, they grabbed a piece of luggage and brought it up the stairs for me. And then just kept going, just didn't even, you know, just help me out.

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They're probably all obviously going, ah, great, another American got off the wrong place, better get him out of the way.

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But it was really nice of folks to do that. But I destroyed my neck. I'm still this morning,

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I woke up with a horrific headache. I just destroyed myself getting my luggage up those stairs.

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And it was just, could it be done if I knew which, if I know now what

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I knew then, I suppose. But you know, I'll just be honest with you, dragging that much stuff on off the tube, just not a good idea.

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If you just got your, just got your carry ons, you're okay. So anyways, I get up to Birmingham and had lunch with Zaka Hussain and a friend of his.

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We had a great lunch. We really did. We had a great time talking about all sorts of things. And again, unlike my critics who don't understand,

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I've yet to meet a critic in this recent spate of attacks upon me who actually has any close relationships with any

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Muslims at all. Any at all. Could even name a Muslim by name that they've actually sat down and eaten with or have any type of meaningful relationship with at all.

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And Zaka is a really nice young man. I could tell that years ago when we first met.

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He's pretty high strung in debates. He tried to be a little bit more focused this time around.

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I appreciated that. But we had a great conversation and we talked about a lot of things.

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And we had the opportunity to, you know, sort of compare and contrast how our different worldviews encounter and discuss things.

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And it was just, it was a great time there in Birmingham.

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And then Martin picked me up and we found a tortillas at the train station, which was nice.

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Or was that? I don't think that was before. No, that wasn't before we went to... Or was that? I don't remember when we ate, but we found tortillas one place or the other.

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And tortillas is sort of like if you go to Moe's here in the

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States or Qdoba up in Colorado, that type of a

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Mexican place. And it's really good. Really, it's a Mexican food place. It's actually good in London or this in this case,

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Birmingham. And so went to the hotel.

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And again, the arrangements were a little rough, but it was because in each of these situations,

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I really want to thank both Yusuf Ismail and Zakir Hussain. We arranged this stuff really short notice.

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We did not exactly know what my travel schedule is going to be like, what we'd be able to get booked, so on and so forth. And we had to do it on short notice.

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And so, you know, some people go, oh, well, you know, you could have done this, could have done that. Well, yeah, if you have plenty of time and lots of money and neither of none of us had any of that.

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So I appreciate the amount of effort that went into putting it together. And I could not believe it was posted the next day.

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Did you see that? Then they took it down and fixed some stuff. There was some audio, something like that, and they put it up, put it up on a different link.

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So but you need to grab it rather than just linking to it. We just need to have an archive of everything.

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I don't know. I don't know. So anyway, it was up pretty quick. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the debate later on.

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I want to address a couple of things that Zacher said just briefly, not go into too much depth right now.

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But it was a very interesting evening because it's very clear to me that the quote unquote new direction or new information that some of the

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Muslim apologists are talking about is basically tapping into standard Jewish apologetic.

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It's not actually specifically Islamic. And I would argue it's not consistently Islamic. Because if you utilize the argumentation that Zacher was using against the prophetic fulfillment of Jesus's death in the

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Old Testament, you've got zero reason to believe whatsoever what the

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Quran says about Muhammad being prophesied in the Bible. In fact, I think if Zacher will think about it, the two debates we've done.

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If he will take the standard that he used in regards to the Psalter, in regards to the death of Jesus and apply it to his own comments from just a few years ago in the

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East London mosque, he just refuted himself massively. And that's the problem with the

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Islamic perspective is because it's inherently anachronistic. It's having to go against something that the author of the

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Quran simply didn't understand. And so you end up with some serious problems there. But I want to thank

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Zacher for the amount... He found out how much work really goes into trying to arrange these things.

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We had technical problems. Zacher wanted to use his computer and they didn't, we didn't, the hotel didn't have the connections and we ended up having to use my computer and somebody downloaded the thing.

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We did the best we could with what we had. We got started late as it was and so we did the best we could.

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So I thank Zacher for that and I look forward to further encounters with him. And you know, it's funny,

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I'm sure that both Zacher and Yusuf Ismail, both, if my critics were to contact either one of them and ask them, do you think that James White believes like you, that he's engaging in Chrislam, do you think he's clear in calling you to believe in Christianity and do you know what he believes and why he would want you to follow

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Christ as he proclaims him, do you know what repentance is, do you know what faith is? They would go, of course, we're not ignorant of where he's coming from.

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He's very clear on things like that. I think they would all testify to that. And yet at the same time,

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I'm able to correspond with them and to talk with them and to make application of these things to so many other things.

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Someone has already put a picture of me with the hat, just from this program, as a meme.

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Christian Anarchist has already put it up on Twitter. You know, you could go for the vocab look.

17:54

The vocab malama look? Yeah. Get the sunglasses. Oh, the sunglasses. I do have my

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Oakleys. And always look down, keep your eyes, you know, shaded.

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I like that. Yeah. You know? This is a classy hat, folks. Look up Bates, you know,

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Bates has been in continuous operation even during the Battle of Britain since 1898. That's amazing. So, and we're talking downtown

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London. I know you're not overly excited about this, but my daughter should be because she wants to go to London so bad that it's not even funny.

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Yeah, but I'll bet she wouldn't get the hat. Oh, she might. She might. She might. And the hat lady, oh my goodness.

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She knew these hats inside and out. It was amazing what everyone was made of and how it would handle moisture.

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And oh my goodness, she was the hat lady expert. If you want to talk to someone who knows hats, find the lady at Bates Hattery in,

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I forget what road it was on, but it was right across, if you walk across the park from Buckingham Palace, it was right in there.

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It was great. So, anyway, so what was

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I saying? Oh, yes. So, went from Birmingham, took the train back down, oh, again, dragging that luggage on and off that train is just so much fun, down to Heathrow.

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Actually took a train from Houston to the thing so I could avoid having to try to go down the stairs with the luggage.

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That could have been deadly. Apologize. I had a broken neck thrown down the stairs in London too.

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And then flew, of course, down to Johannesburg and on the next day had the opportunity to go out to Pacha's room and to meet with Dr.

19:53

Yordan where I'm working on my PhD. We had a wonderful conversation. Some of you saw the pictures that my dear friend

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Rudolf Bussoff posted. By the way, just real quickly, on Facebook, I linked to the fact that Rudolf was doing a presentation at an apologetics conference and there was a video included.

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And people were actually asking me, have you become a heretic? That video was heretical.

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Yeah, it's the group that Rudolf was refuting. It's a brand new cult in South Africa called

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Christ in Me. It's fascinating because right now, I mentioned this

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I think when I came back last time, but it's sort of like the E .D. Howe period. Remember when I mentioned E .D. Howe last time?

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Rich isn't listening to me anymore. I mentioned that there was an early period, like 1834, when

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E .D. Howe wrote a book against Mormonism, like early, early on. And it's very valuable because of what it tells us about what

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Mormonism believed in the early stages. Well, that's where Christ in Me is. Their theology is still changing and evolving and stuff like that.

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So Rudolf, who is a Christian pastor, who is my contact guy in South Africa, if you've been blessed by anything that's happened down there in South Africa, you can thank

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Rudolf for all of that. Because when I land, he picks me up and he's been my connection down there.

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And he's just a dear, dear, dear friend and a dear brother in Lord. And he was responding to those folks.

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And people are like, this is heretical. Yeah, that's why you respond to heretical stuff. But that wasn't Rudolf in the video.

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And I guess I can understand if you're not familiar with what's going on in South Africa, how you were confused. But what I can understand is why anybody would think that I would be promoting heretical stuff.

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I've sort of been doing this for 35 years, OK? I haven't changed. I've been very consistent all along.

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So anyway, yes, the hat does go well with bow ties, especially with a nice jacket, someone's asking in channel, especially in London, if you're asking.

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So anyway, I had a great discussion with Prof Yori, especially, and just real quick, a geeky thing here, just for a second, for those of you that are sort of interested in this kind of thing.

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And by the way, I'm wearing my NWU shirt, Northwest University Poster. Um, there's that's just one campus, but they it's a long story as to what happened, what the government forced them to do and is forcing them to do.

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And you pray for the pray for the folks down there. South Africa has got serious, serious problems. Again, I guess we all do, but there's serious corruption problems and things like that.

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And there's really isn't any opposition party in South Africa. And that's that's a that's a problem. Uh, but, um, geeky point here.

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Um, the. Um, Skyman says you have changed that hat is proof.

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No, no, it's not because I have worn people. Remember, I wore those driving caps, the driving cap things.

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Yeah. And I was actually looking for a driving cap when we found this. And they're all like, oh, that really looks good. So we went with it.

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Um, the. Uh, newest textual apparatus in the

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ECM project from Munster, the newest release has been the

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Book of Acts. And if you're familiar, I'm sometime over the next couple of months,

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I'm going to take a program. It's going to bore some of you absolutely serious. You're not going to get through 10 minutes of it. And others of you are just going to be enraptured by it.

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Um, the coherence based genealogical method.

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CBGM. Um. It is being used.

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It was used in the. Catholic epistles. General epistles of the

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Nestle Island 28th edition. It is somewhat of a revolution.

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I think there are 35 places where the application of this methodology changed the textual reading.

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From what would be currently in the NA -28 to what will be in the NA -29. And it is utilization of computers.

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To relate. Witnesses, not so much manuscripts. There's a difference between manuscript and witness in this methodology.

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And like I said, sometime in the future. It's taken people sometimes a full year of doctoral level study just to get their minds wrapped around this thing.

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So please give me some patience in trying to make it so it's understandable to other folks.

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But the point is, Acts is now done. And Rich just ordered for me the full set from Munster.

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Why is that relevant? Why is that exciting to me? Because I'm working on P -45. What does

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P -45 contain? Elements of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. And a bunch of Acts.

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And so what that's going to allow me to do. And I think John's coming up pretty soon. And so what's going to allow me to do is to at least in Acts.

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And then if they get anything else done over the next two years, maybe. Bring that information to bear as well.

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They've published an entire volume of their. What the computer does, it creates family relationships between manuscripts.

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And so that's gonna be published now online. That's gonna allow me to make that application to P -45 and to relate

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P -45 more accurately to families of manuscripts.

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Which is one of the key issues in dealing with the textual background of P -45. So I'm going to, that's going to be exciting.

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That's neat stuff. And I'm really looking forward to getting into that in the thing.

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So I was talking with Dr. Yordan about that and about some other issues. And we had a really good meeting.

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And it's just, it's a privilege to work. For those of you who don't remember,

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Dr. Yordan did his PhD in textual criticism under Metzger at Princeton. And so people wonder, why would you do this study down there?

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Because Dr. Yordan's there. And he's interested in it as well. And when your advisor is interested in the same subject you are, it makes for better work.

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So there you go. Had that meeting. And then on Saturday, I spoke at, if you could be a member of more than one church.

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If Antioch Bible Church had an associate members program for when you're overseas,

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I would be a member at Antioch Bible Church. Tim Cantrell and the elders at Antioch Bible Church.

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It is my home away from home. I literally have a home away from home. I now stay, when

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I go to Johannesburg, I stay with Damon and Linda. And they're grown kids in Randburg.

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And I've got my room. And I can run there.

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I know all the paths around the very safe development. And we know where the local gym is.

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So I can go and row. And we know where Spur is because I love Spur.

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And Spur is the completely politically incorrect South African American Indian restaurant.

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It would be sued every way from Sunday if it existed in the

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United States. But it exists in South Africa. So they can't get sued. It's great. Anyway, Spur has a really good chicken quesadilla.

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I mean, it's really good. And so I get to eat there all the time. Anyway, I went to Antioch Bible Church and did a very quickly put together conference on three of the solos specifically.

28:30

Well, I was asked to speak on three of the solos. What I did is I sort of changed it all up.

28:37

And I sort of addressed those solos through the story of Martin Luther because next month, three weeks from now,

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I'm going to Germany. I want to be able to give some meaningful insights to that particular aspect of the

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Reformation. And so that's where my mind was. And I just simply have to thank the

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Lord. The teaching and the preaching ministry in this trip was really blessed.

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Everywhere I went, people were talking about how convicted they were, how blessed they were, how helped they were, even by sermons, which for me is sort of like, really, you liked one of my sermons?

29:15

Yeah, we really did. And folks really liked how I placed the study of those solos within the historical context of what happened in Luther's life.

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It really helped them to get a much better handle on it and to be much more interested in the subject because I'm giving the history of Luther and not just in a dry way, but in hopefully a rather exciting way.

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And those have already been posted on the Antioch Bible Church website.

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I think I linked to them on my Facebook page. I think. Anyways. Yeah, I did. In fact,

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I put it on the blog. I put a link of South African stuff. Not all of it, but what I had up to that point is on the blog.

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So you might find those to be useful. There was like three hours along with questions and stuff. A fellow by the name of Marco did a really good job in asking questions, even though I was sort of throwing him curves by doing things differently than expected.

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So that was Saturday. Sunday morning, went to Heritage Baptist Church. Also, it's,

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I think, a church plant from Antioch, if I recall. They're in Johannesburg, and they're actually doing a church plant out in Potsdam.

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Oh, and I suppose I should, well, I don't know if I should mention this. I don't want to get in trouble. But when

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I went to Pots on Friday, Potsdam is just called Pots out there. Just Johannesburg is called

30:38

Joburg, et cetera, et cetera. I had lunch with a local pastor who was trained under Peter Reckman.

30:51

And I sort of wondered what this would be like because, look,

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Peter Reckman identified me as the Antichrist. And if you've read any of the correspondence that went back and forth between us, if you don't know who

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Peter Reckman is, put the name in the search engine on our website and go, really?

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OK. We had a really nice lunch. And I'm not going to say much more than that other than it was encouraging.

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And the gentleman has a good head on his shoulders. And I look forward to further conversations with him.

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It was not what I expected it to be at all. It was quite nice. It was quite nice.

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So anyway, the Baptist Church is putting a church plant together in Potsdam.

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And I have spoken there once before, and I think I mentioned to you about two years ago when I spoke there that there are a bunch of university students that go to the church.

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And that was where I received some extremely encouraging statements.

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One young man that had said it was the dividing line that helped him to keep his faith during university. And those guys were there.

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And I spoke from Colossians chapter 3. It really went well. I think I've posted a link to that.

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A lot of people commented on how challenged they were in their

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Christian lives to consider the command to be seeking the things that are above, set your mind on the things that are above.

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It went really well. And then Sunday afternoon, I heard

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Damon saying that at Antioch that evening, where I was going to be preaching, that they were going to be doing the

32:39

Lord's Supper. And so I texted Tim Cantrell, and I said, so would you mind if I did the sermon on the supper since you're going to be doing that?

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And we'll have the supper afterwards. They were going to do the supper beforehand, and then I was going to preach. But instead of just sort of having it sort of disjointed like that,

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I said, let's do something about the supper. And so I preached a sermon on the

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Lord's Supper before we had the Lord's Supper there at Antioch. And it changed.

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Well, some of you saw, when I left Johannesburg, Tim Cantrell wrote a really nice note to myself, and I guess he sent it to you as well or something like that, which you posted on the blog, didn't you?

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And just a really kind word of encouragement, testimony for the impact that the ministry's had in South Africa.

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I certainly have spoken to a lot of churches there and really encouraged folks. And part of that was as a result of just how many people came up to me afterwards and said, wow, we really needed that encouragement.

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And it was a special evening. It really was. And by the way, if you want to see what

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Antioch Bible Church looks like, see the

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Vatican in the back and then the church in the front? That's Antioch. Why would that be?

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Well, take a look at this book. The gentleman who translated this, this is the new

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Polish version of the Roman Catholic controversy.

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Roman Catholic controversy. This is the Polish version, I think came out in 96. And for the last couple of times

34:27

I've gone to Antioch, this older gentleman has come up to me and has talked to me, I guess it was probably two, three years ago, maybe more.

34:36

He came up to me and said, I would really like to translate your book on Roman Catholicism into Polish because my people in Poland need that information because Poland is a heavily

34:47

Roman Catholic nation. And I have people come up to me when I travel all over the place saying, we need

34:54

X, Y, and Z. And I have to say the same thing. It's still in print.

35:00

You have to talk to Bethany House. And 9 .5 times out of 10, nothing happens.

35:08

Well, not this case. Last time I was there, he said, it's done. It's done. And I'm like, really?

35:15

And then this time it came, he had a picture of the cover. And I said, wow, they haven't sent me one yet. Well, I got back and they had. And so here it is, the

35:21

Roman Catholic Controversy, available on Amazon, now available in Polish and translated by a man from South Africa at Antioch Bible Church.

35:31

And we put the picture of the cover up on the screen before I spoke on the

35:37

Solos, the Reformation and stuff like that. So another connection. But that actually is a picture of their new...

35:43

Because they didn't have this building when I first started going down there. Uh, this has only been the last two or three times

35:49

I've been there. Uh, well, for example, last time I was there and I had the debate in Linasia in the mosque,

35:55

Tim and a bunch of other guys came. And that night the church was broken into while we were at the debate at the mosque.

36:02

Uh, that didn't really take much. But, uh, they, but that's, that's their new building there.

36:07

And, uh, they're sort of the flagship church in the Five Solos group. A lot of churches are leaving the

36:14

Baptist Union and joining the Five Solos group because of liberalism and things like that.

36:19

So they're doing a great work down there. And, uh, they're, uh, next month they have the resolutions conference there with Votie Balcom.

36:27

And the thing was, we had almost no time to advertise this or anything. We had more folks show up for...

36:34

We had, we had a packed house. We had a pretty packed house, uh, for the, for that, uh, that thing.

36:39

And, uh, we had people from literally all over, uh, South Africa, churches all over South Africa, uh, come and attend.

36:47

It was, it went really, really well. So please pray for Tim Crenshaw and the folks at, um, at Antioch Bible.

36:54

Uh, great place, uh, great church. And, uh, we're very, very thankful to be able to partner with them in, uh, in what we are, what we're doing.

37:02

So then I flew from, um, uh, Johannesburg to Durban.

37:07

And for the first time, Rudolf didn't get to go with me, which is a bit of a bummer. Uh, he's teaching more and more and, uh, really having an impact in some unusual circles.

37:19

So pray for Rudolf as well and his wife and, um, their ministry there in, in South Africa.

37:25

Like I said, um, I, it's all, it's all been because Rudolf has worked so hard.

37:31

And, uh, uh, you know, I've just, I've just gotten to know brothers, uh, especially brothers, obviously around, around the world that just, just mean the world to me.

37:41

And Rudolf and Tim, uh, some of those people that, uh, that mean the world to me down there in, in South Africa really, really love those people.

37:49

Um, so I went down to Durban and normally I would, um, uh, go down, uh, into sort of like the area around what's called

37:58

Phoenix. There's actually a Phoenix, uh, suburb of Durban, uh, visit with the Palais.

38:03

That's who I've stayed with in the past. Uh, this time though, for some reason, uh, the connection was different.

38:10

When I had the debate with Ayub Karim, if you saw the one on the crucifixion, um, in attendance that night was a young man who gave me a

38:20

CD and I was mentioned in the liner notes of the CD and he is a tremendous guitarist.

38:26

In fact, this time down, I really got much more of a sense of, of just how great,

38:32

I mean, he, he did two songs before I spoke at the church. Seb Goldswayne, Sebastian Goldswayne is his name and he is a tremendous guitarist.

38:41

And, um, so poor, poor Seb, he's the music guy, um, uh, at Hillcrest Baptist Church.

38:48

And Hillcrest is sort of Durban's down by the sea and then it sort of goes up. And so, you know, about halfway up is

38:54

Hillcrest. And, oh, by the way, when we were landing in Johannesburg from London, uh, the pilot comes on and says, temperature in Johannesburg are landing one degree.

39:09

That's one degree Celsius, of course. So that's about 34. They had just had a, the, the coldest cold front of the winter blow through.

39:18

So I'm like, yeah, I mean, I did some, I did some runs in, in Johannesburg and seeing the breath and I brought warm stuff and, uh, but it was cold and I loved it, uh, because it's winter down there.

39:33

It's the middle of winter. So it was, you know, it's 110 here and it was cold down there. I, I enjoyed the cold.

39:40

It was, it was very nice. I, I enjoyed that. But they had actually had snow up on the mountains up above.

39:47

So it was, it was, it was, it was nice. It was really, really nice. So, um,

39:54

Pastor Clint Archer and the elders there at Hillcrest Baptist Church, um, we arranged two, we had two things.

40:01

I had one thing at the church on Tuesday night, I believe it was, of this past week, a week ago tonight.

40:07

I spoke on grieving and loss. Now I've already,

40:13

I think I linked, I know I linked on, uh, I don't think this is on the blog article. I linked both

40:18

Twitter and Facebook. Uh, they've posted, if you look up Hillcrest Baptist Church, uh,

40:24

South Africa, it'll come up and spoke on grieving and loss.

40:30

And, uh, that's a, you know, people ask me to speak on it fairly regularly, but, you know,

40:38

I even told them, I said it'll be easier for me to do the debate tomorrow night with a, with a Muslim than it is for me to address this subject because it's just, it's tough.

40:49

It's a, it's a hard topic and yet it's a very important topic. And my little book on that subject has helped a lot of people.

40:57

And so we, we did that. We had a really good turnout at, at Hillcrest. We really, really did.

41:03

Seb did, um, uh, if you're familiar with the, the song, Classical Gas, that's a really, really tough.

41:09

I, in fact, the funny thing was, you know, Glenn, Glenn Campbell had passed away a couple of weeks earlier and I was looking at some

41:15

Glenn Campbell videos and one of them was him doing Classical Gas. Cause I guess it's sort of a, you know, most guitarists will do

41:22

Classical Gas. Well, he did it live right before I spoke and man, that was fun to watch. Uh, cause he's doing it solo and, uh, he did a great job.

41:32

And they had had a young kid with leukemia in the congregation and for a long time, it just did not look like he was going to make it, but miraculously he pulled through.

41:44

And, and so, uh, Seb had written a song for this, this kid, uh, sort of a lullaby that he played right before I spoke.

41:51

And it's just beautiful. I can't wait for it to come out on CD. So watch for Seb Goldsway and stuff. He's really, really good.

41:57

Uh, I think, I don't know if you, I didn't even look, but if check iTunes, uh, cause it'd be well worth getting anything that said

42:03

Goldsway does. Uh, he's a really, real, real great young man. Um, then the next night was the debate dialogue with Yusuf Ismail at an old, old

42:16

Anglican church in Durban itself. And, uh, uh,

42:24

Anglicans, oh my, um, you know, we've, we've got our good brothers down in Sydney, but outside of there, it just gets weird.

42:35

And I mean really weird. And they know that in Sydney that it gets really weird. They just can't say about, talk about as much as the rest of us can.

42:43

And, um, uh, we had a decent group show up eventually.

42:50

It wasn't huge. We had a decent group show up and Yusuf, Yusuf, I knew

42:56

Yusuf would go after Calvinism and basically Yusuf pulled some stuff from some Armenian websites.

43:02

Uh, you know, I, I sort of expected that, but it was a good, but what, what was really useful was, and unfortunately the night was called a little bit early.

43:11

The moderator who was one of Yusuf's professors from law school, um, who was one of the wardens of the church, um, sort of called off before we could even have the audience questions or even make much of a closing statement, but it was still useful.

43:26

What was most useful is when Yusuf and I actually started talking. And some of you, I don't know if I remember,

43:32

I think I did say on the program, I'm never going to debate Yusuf Ismail again. I said that a couple of years ago. Um, if you go to Durban, you got to deal with Yusuf.

43:41

And so I honestly think, I honestly hope that the dialogues that I had with Yasir Qadhi helped to make this dialogue possible and better.

43:52

I think Yusuf understands he doesn't have to, um, he doesn't really have to use a flamethrower with me.

43:59

I'm going to be straightforward, but I'm not going to try to hurt him or damage him in the eyes of others.

44:08

I'm focused upon the issue. And so when he and I started talking to each other, we really got down to some, some good stuff.

44:16

I was really surprised by some of the things he said. I'm really surprised that a lot of the Muslim apologists are really starting to back off of a strong Sunni commitment to the authority of the

44:30

Hadith. Um, it's really interesting and, and maybe we'll have more time to talk about some of that in, in the future, but it was, it was very, very interesting, um, how that, how that worked.

44:43

Um, but we had a good conversation and a good debate. There was only about two hours long, uh, but, uh, that will be made available eventually.

44:52

Part of it was put up. Someone was, saw this guy sort of staying there, holding his camera. He's doing

44:57

Facebook live. And, uh, so some of that, but obviously it was recorded much higher quality than that.

45:04

And, and we'll obviously get that posted when, when, when we can. So, uh, next morning, uh, fly back to Johannesburg.

45:14

And then I've got a fair amount of time between when I get back from Durban to Johannesburg, when

45:20

I fly out overnight over the evening back to London. And so Rudolph took me and I spent the afternoon or at least, well, about the afternoon, a couple hours.

45:30

Um, cause I, you know, the, the, the

45:36

Joburg airport isn't all that bad, but it's not all that good. I mean, if you, if you, you can get tired of shopping after a while, that's pretty much all you can do.

45:43

But I spent the afternoon with brother John Gilchrist. He's called uncle John down there. And John Gilchrist has had a long, long ministry to Muslims.

45:54

Uh, he debated Ahmed D dot, uh, he was going door to door in Muslim communities under apartheid years and years and years ago.

46:03

And it's interesting. Uh, John Gilchrist has received the exact same kind of criticisms that I have.

46:12

He's written a little booklet that's coming out soon on how we must view our, how we must view the

46:20

Muslim and how we, we, we must be honest in what's going on in the world.

46:25

There's no question. There's no reason to, to whitewash Muslim extremism and violence and Jihad, but none of that is an excuse for having any kind of animosity, hatred, or anything else for the

46:40

Muslim person that we must be, uh, very, uh, gracious as he has always been.

46:48

Uh, some of you have seen the debate that John and I did. Um, I think it was last year, uh, with, uh,

46:53

Bashir Varnia and Mohammed Cavadia, uh, at the university of Johannesburg. So I just wanted to talk with him a little about what my experience has been over the past few months and get some of his insights from his own experiences and his own, um, his own being attacked, uh, for showing such, uh, compassion over the decade decades to Muslim people there in South Africa.

47:19

It just confirmed what I'd already seen. Um, the criticisms of my critics are, are very

47:25

American and, uh, the consistent, uh, response of people to whom

47:33

I have spoken from overseas has been, what are those people talking about? They obviously are not out here in the real world where we live in mixed cultures and, uh, where Christianity doesn't have the historical, uh, majority or whatever else it might be.

47:50

And, and they just don't understand what these people are talking about. And so we had a good, good talk with, um, with uncle

47:56

John. Got to London, stayed at a beautiful hotel because, uh,

48:03

Michael Fallon, who is doing, uh, the, the, uh, tour that we're doing just next month happened to be there between tours and had a group coming in.

48:13

So he had a block of rooms. We were able to get a block of rooms at the block room price because there's no way we could afford

48:20

Royal Horse Guards at a normal room price. And Royal Horse Guards is the perfect spot.

48:25

Some of you may have seen, I, I ran, um, up to the monument on the side of St.

48:33

Bartholomew's hospital. It's just, it's just a little over, it was, it was a 5k round trip. So it was about two and a half kilometers from the

48:40

Royal Horse Guards by running along the Thames and took pictures of the, the Wallace monument and then the three

48:48

Marian martyrs monument, which is like 10 feet to the left, which I didn't know the first time.

48:53

So I ran up there twice, but, uh, took some pictures, posted them on Twitter and things like that. Uh, ran around past the eye and, and past the silent

49:03

Big Ben. Big Ben will be silent for four years, four years, a total remake of its internal stuff.

49:10

And, um, I just hope it still sounds the same anyways. Um, but, um, anyway, uh, had a, had a great time there.

49:21

Um, after I, I, I flew in, I flew in in the morning and actually made, you know,

49:29

I'm glad I did, but at the time it didn't seem like a wise decision. I, I made the decision to go ahead and speak the evening I flew in. It's an all night flight, but I spoke

49:36

Friday evening at Selhurst Evangelical Church, Pastor Rob's there. My connection was Ashley Charles and evidently

49:42

Ashley has been chasing Rich around, uh, for quite some time. Uh, uh, sort of the, the persistent knocking upon the door, uh, at night, uh, or persistently asking the judge or whatever.

49:53

And, um, so Ashley and I met up that afternoon at the, um, uh,

50:00

William Shakespeare pub, which is right near the Royal Horse Guards. And it's a fascinating little place

50:07

I've eaten there before. And so I'm sort of getting filled in as to who he is.

50:13

And lo and behold, um, Ashley says, you need to understand my, my conversion was because of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

50:21

And that sort of explains why he wanted me to come speak at the church. Um, and he gave me his testimony of, of, and this is the thing he said he stumbled upon.

50:32

Well, obviously we believe it's providential, but stumbled upon our stuff on YouTube. And that's one of the things, things that, you know, we know that Michael Brown has, uh, been attacked by YouTube now, and it's only a matter of time.

50:45

It's only a matter of time folks, uh, before it'll be very difficult for people to stumble upon anything on YouTube that does not fit

50:54

YouTube's thought police mindset. Uh, the left is totalitarian and the left does not believe in freedom of speech, liberty.

51:05

Uh, the left is anti -human, uh, because you do not allow people to have differing opinions from yourself.

51:12

Uh, it's, um, it's coming. And, uh, that's certainly something to, to be praying about, but, um, here you've got this, this bastion of, uh, biblically based, uh, reform teaching and, uh, in South London.

51:29

So we have to walk from the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, well, no, it's not

51:37

William Shakespeare. Did I say William Shakespeare? It's, uh, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes. Why did

51:42

I say William Shakespeare? Anyways, Sherlock Holmes pub, uh, it's got all this Sherlock Holmes stuff and it's really cool.

51:48

Uh, Basil Rathbone, pictures of Basil Rathbone ever. And, uh, so, uh, we went from the

51:55

Sherlock Holmes pub up to the Westminster station. I have my own, I am so proud. I am a true

52:00

Londoner. I have my own oyster card. I have my oyster card. I, I just realized I have my oyster card. Uh, it happens to be in here with me and, uh, there it is.

52:09

There's your, there's your oyster card. It's an older one, but it still works. Uh, there's, there's actually what it looks like, but everybody keeps it in these, uh, these, uh, plastic cover type things.

52:21

And, um, so, uh, we hit the, hit the tube, uh, took the

52:26

Jubilee line over to, uh, London bridge station and, uh, then caught an overland train to, uh,

52:35

Selhurst, the area around Selhurst. You do a lot of walking folks. You do a lot of walking in major cities when you use public transit.

52:42

And, uh, I got a lot of, a lot of walking in, uh, in, in London. Uh, but, uh, we had fish and chips when we got there.

52:48

I don't know how many fish and chips I had, but that's the only time I ever had fish and chips. I ever spent, what was that place up on Northern 35th?

52:56

The fish place that closed, um, Long John Silver's. That's right. That, that was, that was about the last time.

53:02

And believe me, Long John Silver's was nothing like British fish and chips, uh, which is, which is much, much better.

53:09

Anyway. Uh, I did, I spoke Friday night and Saturday morning, or Saturday afternoon, um, again on reformation themes there at Selhurst evangelical church.

53:25

And I did Sunday morning and Sunday evening, uh, there. And again, the, the, the folks really responded very positively.

53:34

Um, I just, I just walked through a section of Romans eight Sunday morning, just directly translating from the text did

53:40

James two, uh, Sunday evening. And I think those will be posted fairly soon from what

53:45

Ashley said. And, uh, again, if you're in the London area, in the

53:50

South London area, uh, people are always asking me about churches. Everybody knows about grace life,

53:56

London and things like that. But, uh, in, in the Southern area, Selhurst, Selhurst evangelical church, short, uh, short walk, just around the corner from the, uh,

54:07

Selhurst station, uh, there on the, on the, uh, the train line. Uh, so visit pastor

54:13

Rob Ashley and the folks there met some really nice folks there. Uh, and what

54:18

I'm hoping is a couple of the folks that I met will become a part of that church because they came there to hear me, but they're looking for someplace.

54:24

And that, that, that always warms my heart when I see, um, churches grow because I actually came in because honestly, it crossed my mind.

54:34

Do I even want to mention, um, these guys' names because there's just so many nasty people out there that, you know, contact churches and you shouldn't have that man in and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

54:46

So anyway, we need to go back over here because not enough people are seeing the, uh, not enough people are seeing the warp core.

54:53

Uh, we, we gotta have, gotta have, um, there we go. It's gotta have the warp core going. There we go. Good. Uh, I think it's really cool to see the warp core and then you've got the glow of the, of the board cube there.

55:03

That's, uh, this is all gonna be changing soon. It must change soon. Uh, whether I have to do it a different way than we planned on, uh, all, all my textual critical stuff needs to be in one spot cause

55:13

I got work to do. Um, so we're going to have some other stuff back here and I've got some swords that we'll, we'll put, we'll put back here to fight off the hordes that attacked during the program.

55:23

And, uh, maybe we'll have a little bit more room for a couple of, uh, uh, the little fun things that people send in at that point.

55:30

But, um, uh, we'll, we'll go from there. So, uh, then, uh, uh,

55:36

Monday morning got a good 5k run, 5k row and, uh, uh, a couple of times.

55:45

And here's one things I wanted to address a couple of times. Uh, yeah, we took the train a number of times, but then other times of miscarrying at late night, they, they would get me an

55:55

Uber car. Uber is all over the place in, in London. And, uh, the first three cars that I took,

56:06

I had a Muslim driver and I was listening before the program started to the beginning of the interview on Bible Thumping Wingnut with Steve Camp.

56:23

And, you know, poor Steve, uh, just won't listen, just won't listen.

56:29

He's just, just got a blank sector in his hard drive when it, when it comes to just being fair about who

56:35

Yasir Qadhi is or about any of these things. It's just, it's a political aspect again, sadly. But he had tweeted yesterday, fact, if IFD has gospel centered proclamation as its chief goal, where is the fruit?

56:53

Where is the gospel dialogue following up or conversions? Steve, let me tell you something.

57:02

Every single conversation I had with a Muslim cab driver, and these were all at least half an hour of length because driving in London takes a long time.

57:10

As you yourself know, each one of those conversations, I brought up those dialogues and you know, what opened the door for the clarity of conversation and the continued interest on that Muslim person's part to follow up, to listen to more were those dialogues.

57:36

Because they recognized in me, one man, one of the Muslims said to me, I've never had someone like you in my cab before that knows so much about Islam and yet as a

57:44

Christian and shows us the respect that you show us. And I am sure that he not only watched those dialogues, but next to the dialogue and the side are all the other things that we've done, including, for example,

57:58

I referred him to the debate with Abdullah Kunda on can

58:03

God become man or the last one that Abdullah and I did on the issue of sin and salvation and related issues.

58:13

And those opportunities, those conversations with those

58:19

Muslims in those cabs were made a reality and we'll have the opportunity of truly communicating to these people what the gospel is because I didn't short circuit things with an artificial shallow for spiritual laws.

58:45

I did my duty by using the right words in one shot without actually explaining what any of it means type of approach, which is what you are saying we should do.

58:57

I'm glad I got to talk to those Muslim cabbies and not you, Steve. Really do.

59:03

Because now there's an opportunity for them to follow up. There really is. So it was amazing.

59:12

I actually tweeted at some point, is there a law here that says only

59:17

Muslims can drive cabs? Well, there isn't because on my ride to Heathrow from the

59:24

Royal Horse Guards yesterday morning, I had a fellow from Nigeria who had a

59:35

Roman Catholic background and had a great opportunity of explaining to him what the gospel is.

59:42

And at one point, we were talking about some bad things that had happened. He said, there's just so much sadness in the world, he said.

59:49

And I said to him, you know, there is. And if you ever get to the point of wondering whether God has shown his love, he did.

01:00:00

At the cross of Calvary, the very center point of history. If you look at the cross, you see

01:00:06

God's judgment against sin, hence the necessity of repentance. But his love shines all the more brighter against that dark background and got a chance to,

01:00:18

I didn't get any, there was only one guy that I had a pretty quiet ride with.

01:00:23

He was from Bangladesh. He just didn't want to talk. He just didn't want to talk. I tried, he didn't want to talk. Everybody else, great opportunities, great, great opportunities there in London.

01:00:34

It was really exciting. It was neat. One other thing, and then I want to do something serious, we'll probably go for a jumbo today, hour and a half.

01:00:48

Yeah, someone on Twitter just said, there are quite a few Reformed churches in London, but they're usually all very small. I go to Reformed Baptist Church.

01:00:54

Yeah, they do tend to be smaller. And I love going to those smaller churches and getting to meet people.

01:01:02

And it's great. It's neat. Where did you get

01:01:10

WarpCore? I want one for my desk. Well, ask the guy whose tweet is right below yours on my screen, because he's the one that made it.

01:01:22

Oh, and then there's, if 720p looks good to you on that big of a screen, you may need to get your eyes checked, brother, giving you a hard time.

01:01:32

Yes. Well, what can I say? At least it's still streaming. We're still streaming.

01:01:37

That's the important part. Yeah. Yeah. The WarpCore will look even cooler when we get a better connection sometime, if we ever get a better connection.

01:01:45

I don't know. I don't know. I came in and brother

01:01:51

Guerrero, who had bound that ESV for me, remember that ESV, has sent me another bound

01:01:58

Bible. This is an NASB. This is an NASB. And this looks like the

01:02:04

Uber Bible to me, at least as far as the printing is concerned. Much easier to read font size.

01:02:11

I can actually read this without my glasses on, or at least most of the time without my glasses on. And I love the app.

01:02:18

Oh, and it just smells wonderful. So my sincere thanks along with a very kind letter encouraging me in light of all the attacks and everything else.

01:02:26

And this has such a good overlap that this is almost a travel Bible, because it's almost its own cover, its own case.

01:02:35

It would be hard to mess up the pages, given that the app really can close pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.

01:02:42

Yeah. You could zip it, but that ruins everything. It says Dr. James R.

01:02:47

White on the front, and it's a beautiful Bible. So I very much, very much appreciate that.

01:02:54

Now there is something. So again, to everyone who contributed and makes it possible for me to take these trips, you go to the travel link at AOMN .org.

01:03:11

All those conversations with those Muslim cabbies and the people in the churches and everything else, you helped make that possible.

01:03:21

So I thank you very much for that. And we are looking at a major, major trip next year, probably somewhere around May that could be getting close to a month in length.

01:03:37

How else can we do it? If we do it around the world, how else? I've done three weeks.

01:03:44

And if we go London, Joburg, Zambia, back to Joburg, Sydney, Wellington, home.

01:03:59

That's minimally a little over three weeks. A little over three weeks is close to a month. So folks, make sure you give generously because I don't want to have to rent him a balloon.

01:04:10

Around the world. Around the world in faster than 80 days. Yeah. Yeah. But Lord willing,

01:04:18

I heard from Voda Balkam, extended invitation to speak at the African Christian College in Zambia.

01:04:25

So we would go to Joburg. And the trick for this is going to be, if that's our anchor, then we've got a back date from there and forward date from there on numerous different continents.

01:04:39

And it's going to be a challenge to put all that together. It really will be.

01:04:45

But hey, I've got Rich to do all that for me. We can get you one of those trunks and you can put the stickers on it.

01:04:52

Yeah. No, I'm not going to do that. That's not happening. Not happening in this lifetime.

01:05:00

Now, real quickly, I want to try to cover this in the time we have left.

01:05:05

I've got about 25 minutes. There were two items in the debate with Zakir Hussain I wanted to address as teachable moments, as opportunities to go a little bit more in depth into a few items.

01:05:20

And in both instances, if I have changed, it is in the fact that it would have been much more tempting before coming to get to know my opponents, having lunch or dinner with them, get to know them as human beings.

01:05:49

It would have been much, much more tempting for me to go after somebody and try to, and it wouldn't be difficult to make them look bad on a technical issue rather than give a proper response in the debate and then expand upon that at a later point in time in a way that would be most useful.

01:06:17

What do I mean? In the course of the debate, there were two issues that came up.

01:06:22

One was during audience questions. During the audience questions,

01:06:30

I think a Christian raised the issue of John 17 .5.

01:06:38

And if you're familiar with the text, it's come up a number of times, especially in refuting the misuse of John 17 .3,

01:06:48

the Unitarian misreading of John 17 .3, not the INC, cultic, almost mindless mantra of John 17 .3.

01:06:59

But as it's used by Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims and others. And now glorify me together with you,

01:07:10

Father, with the glory which I had in your presence before the world began. And I forget the exact context.

01:07:18

I did not have time to grab the video and try to do the video editing. We're doing this program literally less than a day after I landed from flying back from London.

01:07:29

But what I recall is that in Zucker's comments, now what

01:07:36

Zucker does, and this is meant both as a criticism, but as a constructive criticism, what

01:07:43

Zucker does is he throws out statements, but rarely grounds them in a serious scholarly approach to the material.

01:07:55

It's more like, this is my position, and this looks like it supports it, and this looks like it supports it, and this looks like it supports it.

01:08:00

But the problem is this, this, and this are actually contradictory to one another and to my own worldview, but I'll still draw from anyways.

01:08:06

And this is one of the primary problems with the vast majority of Islamic argumentation, is a lack of consistency and being able to draw from a consistent worldview.

01:08:18

And to put a meaningful scholarly position together as a result. And one of the things that Zucker said was, he said, there's even a textual variant in John 17 5 that says that the pronoun, which

01:08:31

I had with you, isn't there. And, you know, it's going so fast,

01:08:38

I just had time to just tap a little something out. I was using, we bought me an iPad

01:08:44

Pro before I left, and man, that thing worked awesome. That was the best investment technologically we've made in a long time.

01:08:51

That rocks. Not only do I use it for all my preaching, but the debates and everything, and that screen, there's so much real estate on it.

01:08:58

It's easy to type on. It's fantastic on aging eyes. iPad Pro, really, really good unit there.

01:09:07

Anyway, I tapped something out, and I did quickly look.

01:09:12

I was able to pull it up on my iPad, and there just wasn't anything in CNTTS. There wasn't anything in NA28 that was even relevant.

01:09:20

So I really had no idea. So I wrote to Zucker after the debate. I said, what were you talking about?

01:09:27

Well, what he sent me, and he sent it to me immediately. So give him credit. What he sent me is, of course, from Raymond Brown's commentary on the gospel.

01:09:38

They love the liberals. They love the folks on the left. Even though their position's on the right, they love the folks on the left when it comes to the others.

01:09:49

It's the uneven scales. They get tired of me pointing it out, but I just have to point it out.

01:09:57

One of the reasons that I don't use, and they appreciate this, that I don't use certain arguments against Muhammad and against the

01:10:05

Quran is because I don't believe that I can. But then they'll turn around and use that kind of argumentation and then dismiss the use of the same liberal liberalism against the

01:10:17

Quran. It's just not consistent. I've got to be consistent. So anyway, Zucker sent me the material, and evidently, this is what he was referring to.

01:10:30

Again, if you're not familiar with utilizing mainly scholarly material, commentaries, especially liberal commentaries, tend to be broken up into text and then meaning.

01:10:47

And that meaning, of course, is determined by their particular application of their liberal liberalism to the facts.

01:10:57

But in commenting on the phrase, which I had with you,

01:11:04

Brown says, seemingly, some of the Greek textual witnesses once read ain, a form of the verb to be in place of icon, a form of the verb to have.

01:11:17

Well, that is true. There is the original hand of Sinaiticus and manuscript 579 both have ain, which is the imperfect form of aimi, which is interesting because that is the form, the very form of the verb that is used in John 1 .1.

01:11:42

In the beginning was the word, n -r -k, ein halagos. And John uses ein, because that's an imperfect.

01:11:50

And so it doesn't refer to a point in time of creation. And so might describe of Sinaiticus been thinking of John 1 .1

01:12:01

or something along those lines. I don't know, but there are some witnesses that have that form, which would actually only strengthen and emphasize the point that Jesus was making here.

01:12:19

In regards to the glory of God, among the Latin fathers and in some Ethiopic manuscripts, there is support for the reading, the glory, which was with you or that glory, which

01:12:35

I was with you. And then you're given a well,

01:12:47

Boyce Mard, RB 57, 1950, 396, followed by Millat, NSB, suggests the originality of a text without any connecting verb, that glory with you, a reading for which there is some evidence in other

01:13:02

Ethiopic manuscripts and in the Diatessaron. I think that's what he's referring to. Now, this is called giving the most minute information.

01:13:23

Nowhere is Brown suggesting the originality of these readings. Let me read this again.

01:13:30

A reading for which there is some evidence in other Ethiopic manuscripts and in the

01:13:35

Diatessaron. There's no Greek manuscript evidence whatsoever.

01:13:41

This would be like a Muslim accepting as an original reading of the

01:13:48

Quran, a non -Arabic translation of the Quran from 300 years after Muhammad.

01:13:54

I criticize Shabir Ali for this too, because none of you would accept that. Not a single one of you would accept that.

01:14:01

You've got no business throwing this stuff out there when you're contradicting your own principles with your own book, but you're doing it.

01:14:11

And from my perspective, it really strikes me as a little bit of desperation. What it says is,

01:14:18

I can't deal with what was originally written by John, which is in all the Greek manuscripts where Jesus himself said this.

01:14:26

And you guys depend on the gospel of John for your... Again, Zakir, didn't you use

01:14:33

John 14 and 16? Don't you think that's relevant? If that portion has been transmitted properly in Greek, you have no reason to be running off to some minority

01:14:44

Ethiopic manuscript someplace where it might possibly indicate some of this. Because remember, this is in the

01:14:51

Ethiopic language. So you're having to read that and go, well, what might have been the Greek original?

01:14:57

You're going backwards. You're going away from clarity to un -clarity. And that tells me that you can't actually deal with what

01:15:03

John 17 and 5 says directly. Because John 17 and 5 says something you don't believe.

01:15:10

You don't believe. And here's the problem, Zakir. The author of the Quran didn't know what John 17 and 5 said.

01:15:16

If he did, he would have offered some kind of apologetic against it. But I don't think that... I see no evidence whatsoever that that author had any idea what

01:15:25

John 17 and 5 ever said. That tells you something about the Quran and about the author of the Quran. So there was that.

01:15:33

But again, I don't want anyone to get me wrong. Zakir offered up the documentation immediately, and I very much appreciated that.

01:15:43

And I thought that was very useful. Then the other issue that came up was in reference to Psalm 22.

01:15:58

And I sent an article to Zakir, and I suggested that he read the article.

01:16:10

I haven't heard back from him on it yet. I'll be honest with you. I think I know who gave this material to Zakir.

01:16:16

And I could be wrong, but I don't think that Zakir reads

01:16:23

Greek or Hebrew. I could be wrong about that. But if he does, he didn't directly make that claim to me.

01:16:30

But one of the issues that came up was Zakir made the assertion that I had made reference to Psalm 22.

01:16:40

And I had made reference to, they pierced my hands and my feet. And he came back and said, that's a later

01:16:49

Christian alteration. And then I came back and said, I don't think so, because you might be aware of the fact that the manuscript from Psalm 22 at Naqal Hever, it's called 5 -6

01:17:06

Hev, column 11, fragment number 9, actually supports the reading pierced or dug rather than tore.

01:17:20

Well, he came back, and we're sitting at the same table.

01:17:26

So I can look over and see what he's reading. He was reading a Wikipedia article.

01:17:33

And I think it came from sort of like a Jewish, maybe Jewish commentator or something, but basically made the argument, it can't mean pierced because it has an olive and that word never has an olive.

01:17:43

Well, at this point in time, I had a choice to make. What I did was

01:17:51

I simply said, well, that's not taking into consideration what's called defective writing. And that fragment actually does have the reading for pierced.

01:18:04

It was pre -Christian. And I just left it at that. I obviously could have pressed

01:18:10

Zacher much more strongly on that. I chose not to do so because I think it's more important to get the information out than it is to score some type of cheap debating point at that particular point in time.

01:18:23

But here's the issue. I'm not sure that Zacher can critically analyze the material that he was reading.

01:18:32

And unfortunately, a lot of Christian pastors can't anymore either, because I've decried the fact that one seminary that I used to teach at, you can fulfill your

01:18:44

Hebrew requirements in a 13 -day jantorm class, and you're not going to have any idea either.

01:18:50

But I want to show you something. This is the

01:18:58

Brown Driver and Briggs Hebrew lexicon. You could kill somebody with this thing if you threw it at them just right.

01:19:09

It is huge. And these days,

01:19:17

I've got BDB in Logos and Accordance.

01:19:24

I think I even have BDB in my Olive Tree software. So I've probably got three different electronic copies.

01:19:31

And when you look up a word electronically, you can just click on it, look it up in BDB, and there it is.

01:19:36

Oh, that's nice. That's wonderful. We didn't have any of that when

01:19:42

I was in seminary. No, didn't have it. Late 1980s, if you wanted to look something up in Brown Driver and Briggs, you did it.

01:19:54

You did it the old -fashioned way. And what you discovered in that process is what you don't discover anymore if you're using electronic stuff.

01:20:05

And that is that roots, Semitic roots are extremely complicated.

01:20:14

When you think about it, one of the things that made Hebrew really tough for me was trilateral roots.

01:20:22

All your vocabulary, almost all your vocabulary words have three letters in them. Three letters, only three letters.

01:20:29

All the verbs anyways. A lot of the nouns. That ain't easy to figure out.

01:20:36

And most of the nouns are derivative from verbs anyway. So it all goes back to the roots. It all goes back to the roots. And especially when you're dealing with Aleph, Wau, Yod, Hebrew's an old language.

01:20:55

It's changed a lot. And the primitive roots and then their changes over time and all the philological stuff is extremely, extremely complicated.

01:21:06

And what you discover is there are some trilateral roots that are completely different words.

01:21:12

They're completely different words, completely different meanings, completely different meanings. You discover that when you start looking in here and you find root one, root two, and you can go down the page and, wow, it looks like the same word to me, but down here it's a completely different meaning.

01:21:32

Well, it all goes back to how all these words developed millennia ago, millennia ago.

01:21:40

Well, the issue in Psalm 22 is what the ancient spelling of these words were.

01:21:50

And there are numerous places in the Old Testament where you have words where Wau and Yod, because again, these were introduced at a later period of time.

01:22:00

They're introduced unevenly. You have defective writing. There's all sorts of reasons behind this that I'll just be honest,

01:22:07

I don't think Zacher understands those things. He hasn't had the opportunity that I've had. I'm much older than he is.

01:22:13

To study these things, there is very strong reason to recognize that the argument that Zacher read from another source is not a valid argument.

01:22:26

But the greatest argument, the greatest argument doesn't come from BDB.

01:22:34

It comes from Psalm 22, and I want to finish up with that.

01:22:40

It comes from Psalm 22. And I'd just like to ask Zacher to think with me for a moment.

01:22:48

Psalm 22 begins, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, in Aramaic.

01:22:54

Eli, Eli, lama, az. Put the things back on so I can read.

01:23:03

Az, az, az, sabachthani. It's not easy to say.

01:23:10

It's easier to say in Aramaic. Who quoted those words? Well, Jesus did.

01:23:16

Well, I suppose you could decide that he didn't say those, but if you're going to, the only way to say

01:23:22

Jesus didn't quote Psalm 22, and I can't tell you how many Muslims have had to say, Jesus wouldn't have said that.

01:23:28

God wouldn't have abandoned him, blah, blah, blah. He's quoting Psalm 22. Jesus makes the application himself.

01:23:34

Jesus makes the application himself. Listen to what Psalm 22 says.

01:23:43

Because one of the arguments, and the primary argument that Zacher gave was, well, all these quotes from the

01:23:51

Psalter, the original person didn't die. They came close to death. And as I pointed out, that means that the type, the shadow determines the fulfillment.

01:24:04

It can never be greater than the type, but the fulfillment is always greater than the type. Of course, it's true that in the

01:24:12

Psalter, they didn't die. That's not the point. The point, and well,

01:24:17

God heard them and delivered them. The point is the deliverance of Jesus is in this awesome thing called the resurrection that defeats death.

01:24:28

And so unless you buy the idea that the shadow exhausts the possible meaning of fulfillment, then that argumentation, again, drawn from Jewish sources is a vacuous argument.

01:24:40

But listen to what Psalm 22 says. My God, my

01:24:47

God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance, the words of my groaning. Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer by night, but I have no rest, yet you are holy.

01:24:56

You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel, and you our fathers trusted, they trusted and you delivered them.

01:25:01

To you they cried and were delivered, and you they trusted and were not disappointed. But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people.

01:25:09

Despised by the people, where have we heard that before? In one of the prophets, it's called

01:25:16

Isaiah 53, despised. All who see me sneer at me, they separate with the lip, they wag the head saying, commit yourself to the

01:25:27

Lord, to Yahweh, let him deliver him, let him rescue him because he delights in him. I mean, honestly guys, and I'm speaking to my

01:25:35

Muslim friends, you'd have to accept the most radical reconstruction of this, that the

01:25:43

New Testament writers were making all of this up in light of Psalm 22. Because if what actually took place and the gospels took place, it's clear fulfillment of prophecy.

01:25:53

You'd have to actually say it never happened, it could not have happened. You take that position and you destroy the

01:25:59

Quran, because the Quran assumes that you've read the New Testament and you have that as the background.

01:26:07

Now the author of the Quran's understanding is very shallow as to what's in it, but the assumption is there, because how many times does the

01:26:15

Quran say, remember this, and then there's something, there's some story. Sometimes it missed it. And by the way, that's something else, if I remember,

01:26:22

I want to get to. Zacher made a statement about the infancy gospel of Thomas trying to say it wasn't

01:26:29

Gnostic. And the source, again, that he used there was one of the

01:26:35

Jesus Seminar associates from the

01:26:40

University of Pretoria. Jesus Seminar, you know, yeah, the guys who vote for things by dropping marbles and bags, yeah.

01:26:46

Again, use of sources, not good. But you'd have to, you have to get that radical and destroy the

01:26:53

Quran in the process. You know, which poison do you want? Yet you are he who brought me forth from the womb.

01:27:00

You made me trust and upon my mother's breasts. Upon you I was cast from birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb.

01:27:05

Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bastion have encircled me.

01:27:15

They open wide their mouth at me as a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

01:27:22

My heart is like wax, it is melted within me. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws.

01:27:27

You lay me in the dust of death, for dogs have surrounded me. A band of evildoers has encompassed me. They pierced my hands and my feet.

01:27:34

I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me, they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

01:27:40

It's not just that one line. Even if you take it, what does a lion do?

01:27:46

He doesn't lick your hands. He tears at them, which is what nails do. It doesn't matter whether it's lion or pierced.

01:27:53

What's being described here? What are you seeing here? I mean,

01:27:59

Zakir, if you can come up the stuff that you came up with as prophecies of Muhammad from Ecclesiastes, how could you miss this?

01:28:10

You're not using the same standards. Unequal scales, big time.

01:28:17

But you, O Lord, be not far off. Oh, you, my help, hasten to my assistance.

01:28:22

Deliver my soul from the sword, my only life, and the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and the horns, and the horns of the wild oxen.

01:28:31

You answer me. Now, why does Jesus quote this? Because of what happens at the end. Not only is it being fulfilled in him, but also for what happens at the end.

01:28:41

I will tell of your name to my brethren. Amidst the assembly, I will praise you. You who fear Yahweh, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel.

01:28:50

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him.

01:28:55

But when he cried to him for help, he heard. From you comes my praise in the great assembly.

01:29:01

I shall pay my vows before those who fear him. The afflicted will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him will praise

01:29:07

Yahweh. Let your heart live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to Yahweh, and all the families of the nation will worship before you.

01:29:14

For the kingdom is Yahweh's. He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust will bow before him.

01:29:22

Even he who cannot keep his soul alive, posterity will serve him. He will be told of the Lord of the coming generation.

01:29:28

They will come and will declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has performed it."

01:29:36

This is the essence of what we are saying, that it was God. It was

01:29:41

God who brought about the crucifixion. It was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And a people who will be born.

01:29:47

This is exactly what Isaiah 53. He will see his seed. His kingdom has been established.

01:29:54

It exists within the heart of every person that bows the knee before Jesus Christ. It was fulfilled.

01:30:02

It was fulfilled. It happened. It happened. So, the real strength of the

01:30:11

Psalm 22 passage is the consistency of all that is around it. What a tremendous text.

01:30:18

That's why on many Lord's Supper evenings, before we partake of that supper, which the

01:30:24

Lord commanded his disciples to participate in as a remembrance of him, we either read

01:30:30

Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22. Words written hundreds of years before the events that took place on a hill outside of Jerusalem.

01:30:39

And, of course, Zachary made the argument, well, was Jesus in Jerusalem? A prophet can't die outside of Jerusalem. He went.

01:30:48

He said, I must go to Jerusalem. He went there. Well, but he died technically outside the wall.

01:30:54

Really? I mean, seriously, you really think that Jesus had that idea in mind?

01:31:04

I forgot to turn it upside down. So, for some reason, Siri, how did he get Siri out of Jerusalem?

01:31:10

I guess there's something there. I don't know. Sorry, the phone wanted to talk to me for a second. You really think that the technicality of the wall was the issue?

01:31:20

The point was this had to be fulfilled at Jerusalem. It was.

01:31:26

There are many places in the Old Testament where entire geographical areas referred to by the major name.

01:31:33

It's straining at gnats to try to say, well, that means it historically didn't happen.

01:31:40

The fact remains, you've got 40 Arabic words that go against all of history, all of history.

01:31:48

And there's still no meaningful commentary. It's interesting. In all these debates I've done on this subject,

01:31:53

I've still yet to have a Muslim provide me with any meaningful commentary from the Hadith on what Surah 4, verse 7 actually says, because there ain't none.

01:32:01

I think that pretty much establishes the fact of that. Anyways, a lot of stuff we've gotten to there.

01:32:08

I wanted to get to it there toward the end. I wasn't able to follow the stuff on Twitter once we got into the important things.

01:32:15

But I wanted to address some of those things and to, again, thank everybody that made that trip possible.

01:32:22

Please pray for the ministry down there in South Africa. Good churches, good people, but it's a difficult place of ministry, what's going there.

01:32:32

And then pray for the tour coming up next month, three weeks from today.

01:32:39

We head over there. And I'm certainly looking forward to getting to know the folks on that and certainly looking forward to preaching in the

01:32:46

Castle Church in Wittenberg, preaching in the Cathedral in Eisleben. Pray for those sermons.

01:32:54

There's going to be others attending, I think, I hope. We like to try to open that up to other people. And I want to give a good gospel presentation in those places and pray for health and safety in travel as well.

01:33:10

And then I've got stuff coming up after that. Let me just mention real briefly, since we already went over a little bit.

01:33:16

In October, I'm going to be down in Dallas twice. I'm going to be with Emilio Ramos at the conference there.

01:33:23

I'm sorry that I haven't pushed that as hard as I should, but I've certainly put it out on Twitter and Facebook.

01:33:31

And I should have it in front of me, and I don't. I'm sorry. Do we have something on the website?

01:33:39

Don't we? Isn't one of the banner ads? There is a banner ad. I just want to make sure that's there.

01:33:47

Let's see, which one is it? There it is. The Power of God Evangelical Summit, Dallas, Texas, October 13th through 15th.

01:33:54

Me, Todd Friel, Phil Johnson, Emilio Ramos, and Jason Lyle. And I think the other one's, yeah, that one's passed.

01:34:04

Unpopular movie. Okay. So I'll be there in October, and then I'm going to go from there out to Tom Buck's church in Lindale right after that on the 16th.

01:34:17

We're still working on how to arrange all that. It's going to happen. Then at the end of the month, I'm actually going to be there, Reformation Weekend at Jeff Neal's church, sort of more toward Fort Worth.

01:34:29

We're going to have one meeting there that's going to be open to the public and one just for the church. I forget which one's which, but I'll hopefully get details on that fairly soon.

01:34:37

And then headed directly to Washington, D .C. for a conference there. I'm going to be doing a dialogue with Sheikh Muhammad Musri on war and peace in Christianity and Islam.

01:34:52

And then my regular trip to St. Charles in December. So I'm still going to be racking up the miles.

01:34:59

By the end of the year, I am very proud to say I am going to be an executive platinum flyer on American Airlines, which is the highest level that they have.

01:35:10

And that means I have stood in lines for long periods of time. And I now personally know

01:35:17

TSA agents. That's all that means. Yes, I do get to go into that lounge and you don't.

01:35:24

I'm sorry, but I paid for it dearly. Really, really, really dearly.

01:35:29

So anyways, that's the stuff coming up. We got lots and lots of stuff coming up. And in the midst of this,

01:35:35

I'm all trying to do all the other stuff that we do around here. So thank you very much for letting me tell you all about the story and tying things together and talking about defective writing in Hebrew and textual variances in John 17, 5 and Raymond Brown and all the other things we've covered today, which is a wide variety of things.