Michael Dries then Calls on Islam and John 1:1

desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

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

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

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

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

James White. And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line.

On a Tuesday morning, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

I probably mentioned that last time and we never got around to actually having anyone call because I wasn't really trying to get anybody to call because on the last program, we looked at every reference to Jesus in the

Koran. I was listening again to that same lecture this morning, a little bit farther into it, and it was not

Jay Smith that made that quote. It was another gentleman he was speaking with. Oh, hello.

Thank you very much. And I was queuing something up there and it just decided it wanted to start.

I guess it's set to auto start. Anyhow, it was another gentleman who was with him and he was making the argument that the

Jesus of the Koran is simply a historical figure as we saw. And we didn't take any phone calls.

I was very encouraged, I must confess, that people in the channel found it to be very useful.

I saw some notes of individuals who were listening to it more than once. I find that encouraging because of the fact that I don't find a lot of Reformed folks that are quite yet aware of how important it is to understand

Islam and to be prepared to give a response to Islam. And so to find some folks who went, wow, that was actually interesting, was quite encouraging to me because basically a lot of folks would rather that we were just simply talking about Ergenkanner or something like that.

And while there is a place for all of that, of course, certainly believe that to be true, it needs to be prioritized,

I think, properly one way or the other. Speaking of which, as of yesterday evening, we are only two weeks out from the debate at the

Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. That is coming at me like a freight train, basically.

I don't know how I'm going to get everything done. I need to get done between now and then. I confess there have been a number of times recently

I've wanted to throw my hands up in the air and one particular project, just go, well, get it done when I get back from the cruise.

But haven't given up yet. Probably should not have responded yesterday.

It's sort of hard not to, you got to admit, it's understandable, I think, when you see someone just grossly lying about you.

And I do mean grossly lying about you. It's difficult not to point out the lies. And when

I saw, I did not know at the time, that it was a fellow by the name of Michael Dries, the fellow who had melted down on the

Puritan board back in March or so. I did not know it was him. And I wouldn't have had any reason to know it was him because, quite honestly, that kind of in -your -face, you're going to hell, you

God -hater, you perverter of all things that are good, followed by strings and strings of lies, is not unusual at all coming from King James -only cultic radicals.

There are King James -onlyists who are not cultists because they do not determine a person's salvation on the basis of whether they use a 17th century high church

Anglican translation or not. But there are others that do.

And those who send you off to the pits of hell despite your orthodox confession of faith and your defense of, say, the doctrines of grace, especially the

Calvinistic ones, are just simply loopy. They're nuts. And they almost always end up off by themselves someplace because nobody knows as much as they do and nobody has as much insight as they do.

And so they all sound the same. So there was no way for me just reading the one post to know that this would be the same fellow who had melted down so badly back in March.

And so I probably just should have let it go. But I want to challenge somebody. You put my words in quotes.

And if I didn't say it, then that's libelous and that's sin.

And we all know who the father of lies are, and that's a lie. And if you can't repent of that lie, and Mr.

Dries cannot repent of that lie and has not done so, then you actually prove my point in a way that I never could in any other way, at least for anybody who's honest enough to look at what the scriptures say.

And when you put quotes around someone's words and then you can't substantiate that, you know, that says something.

It's all there is to it. And Michael Dries cannot back up what he has to say. The phone lines are open right now, but he's not going to call because he knows he can't.

It's just not possible. He doesn't have the facts behind him, and he knows that. And it's sort of a sad thing.

Some people have said they sort of feel some level of pity for the man. You know, I just think that the people who are in churches that he's in need to be very, very aware of the fact that these folks love to split fellowships.

They love to cause dissension amongst the brethren. And they just live for that. And the fact that Team Pyro, people as diverse as Team Pyro to Dave Armstrong, have banned the man from their comment section only demonstrates that comment sections are rife for abuse.

And hence, some of us just don't even bother with such things.

But probably shouldn't have even spent the time on it, simply because, again, this morning

I wanted to have gotten some more progress done on the book project before the program started, and I did not.

Wasn't just that. There was all sorts of other stuff going on, but that's what happened.

Hey, I lost the pretty ship on my webpage. I don't know why it does that.

Oh, I know why it's doing that. It's McAfee. McAfee doesn't like ships, pictures of ships for some reason.

And it's just gone. It's just boop, done. And I know where the setting is, but it keeps going back to some default setting.

I need to work on that. Anyhow, so anyways, back to what

I was saying. So much heading our direction. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right.

It's officially sold out, isn't it? Yep. The ship is sold out. And yeah,

Michael Fallon's going, hey, yeah. Speaking of ships being gone, there's a reason for that. And that's because, well, how far?

It's what? We're only like three and a half. What would it be? 20, 24 days?

Is that what it is? Four weeks? It's less than four weeks, though, isn't it? I suppose

I could just look at the calendar and figure these things out. But I keep trying to make - I thought you said on the third. Yeah, OK.

Today's the third. Yeah, yeah. 31 days. Well, OK. All right, yeah. But that's - anyway.

It's getting close, getting really, really, really close. But before then, see, it's getting really close.

But from my perspective, I would say on the fourth, it's not that close, because there's so much that has to be done over the course of the next four weeks that it's just a day and night and constant thing.

That's just the only way that it's going to get done. I leave next week, end of next week, for Lynchburg.

And I will be preaching Sunday morning at the Old Forest Road Baptist Church. And from what

I'm being told, there might be some interesting folks in attendance that morning. And so that could prove to be quite interesting.

I have requested to be able to use PowerPoint. I almost never do that.

Don't know that I'm going to have time to put it together. To be honest with you, I may be doing it in the hotel room the day before.

Probably will be. That's how rushed everything is right now. But I'm going to be speaking from John 6 on Jesus's method of evangelism and how it calls us to avoid human methodologies and that we need to follow him and not what is most popular in our culture in regards to that.

And then the very next day, of course, the 16th, will be the debate.

And I would, once again, let me just mention, I would very strongly recommend to anyone who is planning on trying to be there that we cannot guarantee access to that debate.

We just can't. There are no tickets. The Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University intimately connected there.

I have a feeling that there's going to be a very heavy turnout from the university.

And they're already there and you're not. So I've just,

I've really, I've been told I cannot necessarily verify this.

But the plan is for a live webcast to take place of the debate.

I hope that works. But everybody in the audience who has tried to listen to a live webcast of a major event, put your hand up if it at some point completely bonked out on you, just died and you only got to hear the first five minutes.

Or if it was a video webcast, the voice and the mouth got all messed up.

And so you're listening to what someone's saying, you know, five minutes after the picture said that they said that or vice versa.

Or, you know, it just didn't work. Didn't work at all. And so it's supposed to be there.

But something tells me that that's going to be problematic at best.

Obviously I would like to have people recording it if it works. But we'll see.

The best you can do for us is to pray for us that the debate goes well, the debate is controlled, that the audience is controlled, that it goes like basically all the rest of our debates have gone.

And that would be something that we would very much appreciate. And so if I'm hearing from people again, as we're getting closer, people are going, well, hey, you know, we'd like to we'd like to come to the debate.

It's like, well, I can't guarantee you can get in. There's going to be a debate that has just as much importance in our witness in the world.

Just a few weeks later, not that overly far away. I mean, certainly to the south, but, you know, same side of the continent.

Anyways, people over in California, I was complaining that we do everything back east or something. And that will be with John Shelby Spong.

And we can guarantee that you can get into that one and provide you with a seat and so on and so forth.

So I would invite you to to consider that instead.

And, of course, if you if you want to see just how busy it's going to be over the next period of time, that's the 16th on the evening of the 18th.

So that's I have the 17th for travel the evening, the 18th. I will be speaking on Islam at the

Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church the next evening. I'll be debating the pastor of the

Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Pastor Bill Shishko. That's on the 19th of October on the subject of baptism.

It's it's proper objects. Those who are to be baptized. I will be defending credo baptism, the baptism of disciples alone.

And, of course, Pastor Shishko believes in Oiko baptism, the baptism of houses, believes the household principle remains valid in the new covenant.

And so we will be debating that on Thursday night, the 19th. And then on the 22nd,

I will be speaking. I have spoken at the Massapequa Church of God.

I think I think there's only one church on Long Island I've spoken at more often, and that would be probably

Hope Reform Baptist Church, I would assume, especially if you include, you know, going to Tuscarora with the youth in January for a number of years.

But I will be speaking both services morning and evening.

They don't have an evening service, but we'll be having one that Sunday evening in Massapequa. I think it's on the 110, as I recall.

No, no, no, no, no. That goes in Amityville. It's oh, it's right off the right off the freeway there.

Anyway, I can drive there. I'm just for and I. In fact, if I'm on the Sunrise Highway, I know which corner to take turn right.

And if I'm going that direction and and I'm just trying to remember the name is currently slipping me.

But anyways, you can look it up and I'll be be speaking there on that Sunday. Flying back on Monday and then

I've got what do I have, one week home, something along those lines. I think one week home before I fly back out to Tampa for the

Pulpit Crimes Conference and the debate with John Shelby Spong. That's actually in Orlando. Sorry, not Tampa.

And then we have the cruise and then we get back and it does not slow down there because I have numerous.

I've got a chapter in one book. I've got a major chapter in a new series of books.

It's going to be coming out that I need to be working on. I'll be teaching in January for Golden Gate. I'll be teaching back at the in New England in March, a class back there.

I've got the syllabi to write for those things. So having gone through all that,

I'm now going to collapse in a puddle on the floor and go from there.

So anyway, it will be it'll be quite a period of time. And Lord willing, that means a rich is going to have even more to do.

He not only has more shelves to make, of course, but then he gets to to to do

DVDs of of debates and put MP3s out and can just, you know, stop sleeping.

And after after about one day of that, he starts looking really, really shaggy. It's it's scary.

And you don't want him doing editing of your MP3s. You're getting at like three o 'clock in the morning or you're gonna end up with some odd audio inserts from Monty Python or something like that in the process.

But anyhow, so that's what's that's what's coming up. It is going to be quite the the experience.

Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. Let's start here with Rick.

Hi, Rick. How are you? I'm fine. Dr. White, I met you at the

Shabir Ali debate. Yes, sir. And you may not remember, but you were leaving with two,

I think, young men in there. There was a young black man and another guy and an older guy, which was me that was standing next to you as they were asking you questions.

Oh, and you're identifying yourself as the older guy, the older guy. So you're not. So you're not in denial then?

No, I'm not. In fact, most of the things I do, I'm usually the older guy. Well, OK.

I was feeling sort of like the older guy that night, too. So, well, you're younger than me.

Well, OK. I'll take your word for it. Yeah, well, a lot of people say my voice sounds young, so I confuse them.

When they actually see me, they're quite shocked. But in most of the cases,

I am the oldest. I attend Dr. Robert Morey's church, and he's one year younger than me.

So I was in his discipleship group for a while, and I told him, I said, I feel kind of funny because I'm older than the teacher.

But anyway, I got past that. But anyway, I just wanted to call and thank you.

You talked about your last show and the information that you gave and how people were talking about it and telling you that they were glad that you did.

And I just want to back that up by saying the same thing myself. I copied down all the verses.

I myself have a ministry in Santa Monica, an open -air preaching ministry that I took over from Ray Comfort.

I also work with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron and their ministry. But I just wanted to say that since the

Shabir Ali debate, I've got most of your debates.

I've got three of your books now. I'm learning a whole lot from you because my two things that I preach on a lot in Santa Monica is on Islam and Roman Catholicism, which you are quite involved in yourself.

Right. So I've learned a lot of things from you. In fact, I wanted to ask permission a while back.

I forgot what you call it where you go on the Internet and then you can talk back and forth with people.

A chat channel? Yeah, your chat channel. Yes. And in fact, I think you were on there one day. I went in there just one time just to look at it.

I don't know if you remember, but my handle is contender. Okay.

I think there's more than one who's come in with that one. Oh, really? Yeah, this says

Verizon .net, one week, four days, two hours and six minutes ago.

Well, I use that handle because my ministry that I'm putting together is called

Truth Contenders. And like I said, I use a lot of your information and I wanted to ask you because I quote things from you.

And I do a PowerPoint presentation in Santa Monica. And I've used some of your quotes from the

Shabir Ali debate. And I like some of these ones from this last one, your last show that you put up.

Like for instance, I think it's Muhammad had to defend his prophethood by humanizing Jesus and using prophecy from the

Bible about himself coming in the future. Yeah, and of course, that's fine.

I would just point out that that's not original with me. I think that that's really a conclusion from many scholars.

And in fact, the material that I was citing from was a joint lecture between Jay Smith, another very

English sounding fellow. I should have had his name with me here. And they're actually summarizing other work.

And in fact, that was a what they would identify as somewhat of a liberal Islamic scholar who has made this observation.

And but he's certainly not original with that either. In other words, anyone, I think, who examines what the Quran says about Christ and it's a historical nature and compares it with what you have in the

New Testament. And then starts taking seriously some of the questions about just how much of the theology of Islam really goes directly back to Muhammad himself and how much is later on.

When you put all that together, it's pretty obvious that there are some historical reasons why the

Jesus of the Quran and the Jesus of Islam is so different than the very full or Jesus of the

New Testament. And so, yeah, I did say that and maybe those specific words were mine, but I'm just summarizing what other people have said on that particular subject.

And was illustrating that by going directly to the Quran and basically reading everything it had to say on the subject.

So that people could see we're not doing what CNN does in just grabbing some brief little snippet and throwing it out there.

We're actually providing the original resources and saying here, here is actually what is said.

And the scary thing to me, really honestly, is I think back to the young man who spoke to me during the break in California.

And where he, as a former Shiite Muslim, was admitting that what

I had just presented about the Jesus of Islam was stuff he had never heard when he was a

Muslim. And so, it strikes me that in many instances, not so much within our culture because the fact that many of the

Muslims in our culture are faced with the challenges of Christianity. But outside of Western culture, many

Muslims are just completely ignorant of the most fundamental issues in regards to the history of their theology and things like that.

And so they respond similarly to when you hit a Mormon with all sorts of documented evidence of the first vision not having taken place in 1820 and things like that.

They tend to respond with emotion. Well, unfortunately, within Islamic context, that emotion can be violent emotion.

And that's what adds to the danger of that particular encounter.

Well, I've experienced the emotional part from many, many Muslims over the last few years.

And when we first started doing our ministry, we have sound equipment. Before 9 -11, they used to cut the cords to our speakers, throw our equipment over, and we had quite a few problems with them.

Many of them threatened to come back and kill us. Ray Comfort and others and myself that have been down there preaching, because we do and we have preached on Islam.

I studied under Dr. Robert Morey for a long time his stuff about Islam, both his books.

I am two -thirds of the way through the Koran, because when you debate with Muslims in the street, of course, or anyone, they tell you, have you ever read the

Koran? Well, of course. And you have no credibility if you haven't said yes. Right.

So now that I'm two -thirds and I hope to finish it this month, because most

Muslims, they say they don't understand Christianity. They don't even understand the

Koran as far as I can see. Most of them are just emotional about the whole thing and don't know a lot about it.

So when you do know some stuff and you know about the Koran, the Hadith, and some of those things, the only thing they can do is get violent and disruptive.

Yeah, and we obviously want to try to avoid as much of that as we can on our own end.

There's not a whole lot you can do about that. Of course, being able to cite the

Koran itself and to be able to present it and demonstrate to everyone around you that you are the one who is taking it seriously and representing it seriously,

I have found can be somewhat helpful. But there are certain people who you cannot control one way or the other.

You can do everything you can to control a situation and to tap down the emotions, but there are just simply some folks that are going to do everything they possibly can to interrupt and stop the presentation.

I've got a couple other callers. Is there anything else you need to ask? No, I just wanted to thank you for all the information that I've gained from your website and that keep up the good work on Islam because there are some of us out here that are in the fight.

All right. Thank you very much, sir. Let's head off to the United Kingdom and talk with Martin.

Hello, Martin. Good morning, James. How are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. How are you? I'm just enjoying getting to talk like I get to talk with Roger whenever I speak with Roger.

Well, the action has improved. Thank you very much. No, it's okay. It's a pleasure. At least I don't sound like Dick Van Dyke anymore, you know?

No, no. All Australian. Well, and that's quite a hit when you call someone an Australian.

But now I know how to queue up and I don't overtake on the wrong side of the car now.

It doesn't work over here, though. Oh, okay. If you ever come over here, we don't have that law. And if you abide by that law, aside from the fact you'd be on the wrong side of the road anyway, but if you abide by that law, you will probably be run over or shot, one of the two.

Okay, I'll try to avoid it then. Okay, all right. So what can we do for you?

I'd like your last caller, a question that's been running through my mind since hearing the show last week.

In the Koran, it's Surah 2, verse 87.

And it says, it's picked up, And verily we gave unto

Moses the Scripture, and we called a train of messengers to follow after him. And we gave unto Jesus the very clear proofs of Allah's sovereignty.

And we supported him with the Holy Spirit. Is it ever so that when they come unto a messenger from Allah, which ye yourselves desire ye not, grow arrogant, and some ye disbelieve and some ye slay?

It's that last passage, that last few sentence words that I had a question about. The only two people mentioned in that passage would be

Jesus and Moses. And Moses first. I'm wondering if that passage isn't trying to suggest through some of Muhammad's earlier ideas that he knew full well that Jesus was killed, in clear contradiction to later passages of the

Koran which say Jesus wasn't. Give me the reference. For some reason, I did not have the

Aleem in the proper place in my... Well, if I've got it, it's 287.

287, thank you. I just was sitting here attempting to get it up and missed the reference while trying to find it in my start menu.

Yeah, let me go ahead and read that again for everyone. And verily we gave unto Moses the Scripture, and we caused a train of messengers to follow after him.

This would be the prophetic line. And by the way, notice something. Just in passing, let's throw this out here, because this is going to be something

I'm going to be visiting a good bit more between now and next May, because it's something that I'm writing on. And that is, people need to understand that Islam believes that Muhammad, when we heard this over and over again last week,

Muhammad stands in the line of prophets, Muhammad is the seal of the prophets, Muhammad is the last and final prophet, and that Deuteronomy 18 is a prophecy of Muhammad.

That the prophet would come from that line, and they identified this through the line of Ishmael.

But listen to all the prophets that the Quran makes reference to. What line are they of?

Are they of Ishmael, or are they of Isaac? And when we look at these lines, and there are a number of them that I read last week, because they included

Jesus in that line, and every single one of them, they're all through Isaac. There's only one exception, and that's

Muhammad's claim to go through Ishmael. It's quite interesting that all of a sudden there's that sudden change.

So to, And verily we gave unto Moses the scripture, and we caused a train of messengers to follow after him.

And we gave unto Jesus the son of Mary, clear proofs of all his sovereignty, and we supported him with the Holy Spirit. Now, even that right there, determining exactly what

Holy Spirit meant to the early Islamic community, to Muhammad, the early

Islamic community, however you want to identify the sources of everything that's in the Quran. Very, very interesting subject in and of itself, worthy of in -depth study.

Is it ever so that when there cometh unto you a messenger from Allah, with that which ye yourselves desire not, ye grow arrogant, and some ye disbelieve, and some ye slay?

Now, let me take the devil's advocate position here. Let me take the

Islamic position here, and give you what I would take as their strongest response.

And that is obviously the term, some. If you look at other translations, you would have, for example, in Assad, some of them you gave the lie.

Malik, some you called imposters. Yusuf, Ali, some you called imposters, and others you slay.

And so, they would probably make the argument, this is similar to Hebrews chapter 11, where you have the faith chapter, and you have, you know, some were slain in this way, some were sawn into it.

It doesn't mean all of them were. It doesn't mean that you would take that, and apply it to everybody that came beforehand. So, I see what you're saying, but I don't think that it's going to hold water against someone who's just going to say, no, wait a minute, you can't push it that far.

And you have to use similar reading, careful reading, to avoid misconstruing certain aspects of your own biblical text.

And so, it reminds me again, and I realize that there are some major differences, but it reminds me again, of the fact that we need to be careful in looking at these things, in the same way that we have to be careful in the accusations we make against Joseph Smith of the

Book of Mormon. For example, people will allege the Book of Mormon is wrong because it says Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Well, okay, but does that really mean that Joseph Smith didn't know,

I'm sorry, Bethlehem, but in Jerusalem? Okay, they argue, well, Jerusalem is a major city in that particular area, and all the time in the

Old Testament, you have to utilize the same kind of reasoning, because there are examples of this in the Old Testament, so why are you using a double standard?

Now, was he ignorant of that? Well, it would be pretty hard and difficult to prove it, and the fact of the matter is, there's a lot stronger reason to reject what the

Book of Mormon says, or Joseph Smith says, than that particular one, and so in a discussion with a Mormon, especially if you don't have a whole lot of time, you don't necessarily want to bring up an issue that can be quite easily responded to.

And so, in the same way, when we look at issues in the Quran, issues like this, it's possible that that is the case, it is possible, however, if we put these in, remember,

Surah 2 is early, but that's only in the canonical order. It's not as early in the chronological order, and we just need to be careful that we're not using a double standard that would get us in trouble in essence somewhere down the line.

We need to be very careful about that, and basically just use the strongest type of argumentation that we can possibly find.

So, it's possible, but it's also possible in light of the fact that you have that term, some there, that you just don't want to go there.

In fact, looking real quickly here, yeah, Surah 2 is prior to Surah 4, so you could argue chronologically that something has happened between 2 and 4, whatever that time period was, which is difficult to determine in finality, that caused

Muhammad to adopt a particular perspective. But it's really difficult to prove that kind of thing, it really is, and it can really get difficult and get quite in depth to try to figure it all out.

Right. Okay. I was just wondering if that wasn't the case, that you could show that Muhammad's ideas, as we can probably prove in other places, have evolved over time.

I think that much more to the point is the fact that you do not have any fundamental and foundational reason to believe that Muhammad, as represented by the

Quran, and I hope everybody understands why I'm saying this, there's reason to believe that there's evolution in the text of the

Quran. I know that Muslims believe that it's exactly as it came from the lips of Muhammad, but there's reasons to question issues like that.

But be that as it may, as the Quran exists today, there is really no reason at all to believe that Muhammad had an accurate knowledge of what the doctrine of serenity was.

He never states it. Even when he says the word three, do not say three, what three is he referring to?

We read the text where Allah allegedly says to Jesus, did you tell people to worship you and your mother in derogation of me?

And it's like, wait a minute, Allah, Jesus, Mary? Yeah. What's going on here? It would be very difficult,

I think, for a Muslim to prove, to demonstrate from the discernible documentation that Muhammad even had an accurate understanding or knowledge of what the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity was. So you can therefore argue that he never condemned it, but in reality, all that's proving is that in essence, what is claimed to come directly from God truly could not have come directly from God.

If it's an error, and we saw not so much in the Shabir Ali debate, because he understands some of this, but definitely in the

Hamza Abdul -Malik debate, we saw the necessity on the part of the

Muslim to define the Trinity in the context that the Quran defines it, rather than the context that history and the

Christian faith and the Bible defines it. And people need to be aware of that in their conversations with Muslims, that they're going to be attempting to do that.

I find that, I'm currently teaching in a school in Birmingham that's 99 .2

% Muslim. 99 .2 %?

99 .2, yeah. What's the last eight -tenths of a percent? I think there might be somebody who's nominally

Christian and probably somebody who's nothing. So a Church of England -like? Well, of sorts, or probably

I've put down the form Christian because they're not anything else. Right. You know what I mean? My goodness. And I'm finding it very interesting the way that the children are, because of course they've got

Ramadan now, as you know. Yes. And I'm just, in talking to children, thinking these things through, it struck me one day when a young lad came to me and said he can't take his asthma medicine because if he takes a puff of his asthma medicine then he breaks his fast and it brings bad luck on him.

And I thought, this is quite strange. Oh, well. What am I supposed to do? Stand around and watch you, you know, asphyxiate?

Yeah, you really have to wonder. And he put it in the sense of brings bad luck?

That's exactly what he said. I'm finding they are very, very, very superstitious. Yes. Incredibly so.

They have talismans and all sorts of things. It shocked me. I didn't realise quite how superstitious they were.

But it made me think that Muhammad, when he makes his revelations, is very much a man of his time, as in he couldn't possibly have foreseen in the future medicine to cure people that when he was writing would clearly have killed you.

I'm sure Muhammad probably didn't have too many people worrying about asthma and diabetes and various things in his time because by the time they'd reached a certain age he would have already been dead, more than likely.

Yes, quite probably. And of course, the question, I think Jay Smith brings it up, is that Muhammad was not aware of time zones so that anywhere sort of north of the

Arctic, or sort of Arctic Circle and north, of course, they have long periods of time, don't they, where it's daylight all the time.

And of course, if you thought about Ramadan then, you'd actually starve to death before you actually get to see the moon. And of course, it's so clear that he was a man of his time.

Oh yes, no two ways about it. And again, we have to be careful that we're responding to the

Islamic applications of these things. I mean, Isaiah was a man of his time as well, and so we have to recognize that God has communicated with men of their time and he communicated with them in a language they can understand, in a way that they can understand.

What happens is, though, when you turn Muhammad into someone who is not expressing things, this is the difference.

I'm glad you raised this, Martin, I really do, because this will help people understand something else that's very important.

Do not fall into, and I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying this to the general audience, do not fall into the trap of thinking that the

Islamic understanding of inspiration is truly parallel to even the most conservative

Christian understanding of inspiration and inerrancy. We fall into that trap, and if anyone's heard the

Shabir Ali debate, we didn't really get time to develop it, but I had to mention the fact that there is a fundamental difference in our understanding of the process of revelation.

We may come to what sounds like the same conclusion. We say the

Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God, it is God speaking. But what we mean by that is that God intended the word to have the form that it has, and that that form has come through human language.

He puts the psalmist in a particular context of, say, suffering, and so we have those psalms where the psalmist is crying out,

Oh Lord, why have you abandoned me? And he's given us this revelation so that when we too are in that context, we have that voice that speaks with us in our hurt, or in our rejoicing, in our praise, in our sorrow, in our anger at the unrighteousness of other men.

We have all of this in the text of Scripture. We have Paul saying, Pray for me. That is his heartfelt desire.

This is a part of the nature of revelation. That has no place, at least in the conservative

Islamic understanding of the Quran. It is not

God using Muhammad's worldview and Muhammad's language. Instead, it comes down untouched by human hands.

And so when that happens, there are those who believe this existed eternally. So even the stuff about giving

Muhammad permission to have more wives allegedly was written from eternity past, etc.

So it's a very different concept. And then what happens then is what we do see as Muhammad's being very much a man of his time all of a sudden has to be extrapolated out to these eternal concepts, which would lead to the problems, for example, of having a

Muslim at the South Pole. And maybe the last place they can ever set up a Sharia state is because no one could ever live there long enough to survive it.

But that's where the problem comes from. That's why

Christianity wouldn't have the same issue that they would have in that context because we recognize the means by which

God has given us his revelation and we're not locked into that perspective that they have in regards to the

Quran. So I appreciate that very much and we will certainly pray for you as you seek to be a proper

Christian witness within the context of a massively Islamic context in which you are teaching there in the

UK. Yeah, it's very difficult. So in other words, you would not suggest that we attempt to set up a debate there in your area with Shabir Ali.

That might not be a good idea? I think it would be a great idea. And you've got my back, right?

Of course. All right. Thanks, brother. Thanks, James. God bless. Bye -bye. God bless. Bye -bye. Yeah. I remember this was back before Chosen but Free and The Potter's Freedom speaking.

I think it was in Philadelphia at a conference and Norman Geisler was speaking. And my book on the

King James only controversy had already come out. And I remember Norman Geisler making a comment somewhere along the lines dealing with my dealing with the

King James only -ness which reminds us of even what I was mentioning at the beginning of the program. And he said, well,

James, you go get him. We're right behind you. We're a long ways behind you but we're right behind you.

There's a lot of folks like that. Yeah, you go get him. We've got your back. With binoculars but we've got your back, you know.

We're right there. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

877 -753 -3341. Let's head up to the left coast and talk with Tim.

Hi, Tim. Hello, Tim. How are you doing? Doing good. At least

I know where I'm going to move if the Muslims take over. Well, there you go. You know, that's pretty cold.

Yeah, it's pretty cold down there. It may not be something that they'd really be overly interested in especially coming from Middle Eastern climes.

That's pretty cool down there. I finally get to use all my leather jackets. I'm just so boomed that I never get to do that out here in Phoenix.

It's just a total waste of time. Anyway, yes, sir. I've called a couple times about Joe as witnesses in the past, and I am now going through the appendices in the back of the

New World Translation just kind of as an exercise and kind of, you know, working out the things that they say and how to respond to them.

Okay, keep one thing in mind, Tim, immediately before we get into those particular sections.

There are today, okay, let me back up here. About 15 years ago, if you had said that,

I never would have stopped you because every Jehovah's Witness you were talking to 15 years ago would have been utilizing the exact same information you're looking at in those appendices.

And so it was actually easier to respond to Jehovah's Witnesses because of that very fact that you're going to know exactly where they're going, you're going to know exactly what they're thinking, you're going to know exactly what sources they're using, you're going to know exactly which translations, for example, they're going to be citing, these off -the -wall translations no one's ever seen before in their entire lives, you know, that sold all of, you know, 2 ,000 copies, but someone dug them out of a library someplace, and you could have all sorts of information about them.

Johannes Greber, for example, I don't know if you've ever looked into the Johannes Greber information, but the Society used to cite him, and he was a spiritist and got his translation of John 1 from spirits, and they, you know, they obviously didn't know that when they grabbed it and they put it into their publications, and now, of course, they've tried to cover all references to that and so on and so forth.

So you knew exactly where you were going. You've got to realize, you will still encounter Jehovah's Witnesses like that, you still will encounter

Jehovah's Witnesses who primarily rely only on what the Society gives them, and so since they're carrying around the exact same

NWT that you're looking at, you're still going to encounter that stuff, and doing what you're doing, and looking at the appendices in John 1, 1, and John 8, 58, and Granville Sharp's construction, and all the rest of that stuff, very, very good to do.

However, what has changed in the past 15 years is the advent of the

Internet, and now you have a whole new breed of Jehovah's Witness apologists who do not feel constrained to limit themselves to what the

Watchtower publishes in the appendices, and they have developed their own unique apologetic devices.

Now, back 30 years ago, the Society would have bounced them out on their ear, because the

Society wanted to have full control over its own apologetic program, shall we say.

They can't do that anymore, they've given up, they've recognized in Brooklyn, you just can't control the amount of information these folks are going to get, and so you're going to encounter a spectrum now, from people that are all the way out on the

Greg Stafford level, and they're reading our books, and they're reading, quote -unquote, the opposers, and they're going to quote from them, and they're going to do all the rest of that stuff, and then you have people in the middle who are mixing what they're getting in those appendices with what they're getting off the

Internet, and putting different spins on things that the Society never intended, and the problem is, some of the defenses that the

Internet apologists utilize, in essence, require them to repudiate the lesser scholarship that the

Society uses in its appendices. So, you've sort of got to know who you're talking to, and be prepared for a whole lot more curves today than there was only 15 years ago.

Well, see now, not only do I have to move down to the South Pole, I need to time travel back about 25 years, so, bummer.

And it must have been colder at the South Pole 25 years ago because of global warming, so, there you go.

Okay, well, I do have a technical question about Appendix 6A.

I don't want to put everyone to sleep, but I was reading through this appendix, and it has to do with John 1 -1, and what they say, and the word was, a god.

Now, it seems, I'm not a Greek scholar, you know, I have your Forgotten Trinity, I have

Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond Basics, you know, I am familiar with how language works, but I've read through what you've written and what

Wallace has written on John 1 -1C here, and about the three different senses when you have a, you know, anonymous predicate nominative, the qualitative, definite, and indefinite.

Now, it seems like a pretty clear mistake here, but I just want to see, is it really that obvious?

What they seem to say here in the appendix is they're defending against the definite sense, but they seem to be pushing for the qualitative sense, but then they kind of slip in the indefinite almost as if they're the same thing.

From what I read, they're not the same thing. They're not. So, is it that obvious? It is that obvious, and they would expect that the vast majority of their followers are not going to know that there is a difference between the qualitative description of the nature of the word as God and the definite identification of the word as a particular person or the indefinite, a member of a particular class or group or something along those lines, a god, as if there's multiple gods.

No, there is a legion of evidence, some of which...

Do you have Raymond Franz's book, Crisis of Conscience? No, I do not. I would track that down.

Raymond Franz was one of the Governing Body members of Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the few Governing Body members to ever quote -unquote apostatize.

He was responsible for putting together, for example, the Aid to Bible Understanding book.

I mean, he was in the very core of the society for a long period of time, and the insights into the working of the

Governing Body, at least back in the 60s and 70s, is still extremely valid and very, very helpful to this day.

And if you will look at that book, that will give you sort of a sense of how, when the leadership knows they're up against the wall, like he tells the story about the fact that...

You're familiar with their 1914 prophecy, right? Yeah. Okay, and you know that they're basically trying to get rid of it right now.

They're de -emphasizing it. They're slowly working on getting around the idea that the generation that saw the events of 1914 is still going to be alive when

Armageddon takes place, because we're getting close to 100 years, and there's no way you can... We're going to be dead. That's exactly right.

You just can't stretch it any farther. It's getting a little bit silly, and they realize that, and so they're coming up with ways to get rid of it.

But it used to be, especially back in the 70s, a very strong element of their theology, and one of the ways they substantiated it was they went back to Daniel chapter 4, and they did the seven times, and seven times 360, and 2 ,520, and 2 ,520 from the time the fall of Jerusalem was 1914, and they had to move the fall of Jerusalem back to 607

BCE. They used the BCE and CE designations in their writings.

The problem is they're the only people on God's green earth that believe that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed

Jerusalem the 19th regnal year in 607. The rest of the world thinks that was 586, 587, due to the fact that both the

Jews and the Babylonians had a different calendar, one starting the year in the spring, one starting the year in the fall, and so it was the year that took up part of what we would call 586 and 587.

Now, they knew that. The leadership knew that they were alone, and so what's fascinating is reading the book and seeing how they try to substantiate a positive teaching by doing nothing more than just attacking the evidence for the fact that they're trying to get around.

They're not actually substantiating the 607 date. They can't. So what they do is they take up all their time attacking all the information, all the data that demonstrates the 586, 587 date, and he admits that they searched everything that they could find in the

New York Public Library, which is one of the largest public libraries in the world, and every single thing they found in their research demonstrated the 586, 587 date.

They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they were wrong, but Franz was in charge of the entire section, and it's many, many, many pages in the

Aid to Bible Understanding book, which has now become the two -volume Insight series, many, many, many pages where they're doing nothing more than, in essence, blowing smoke.

They're throwing sand in the air and going, ooh, look, shiny thing, and it's every kind of misdirection ploy you can come up with, and that's the same kind of argumentation, reasoning they use in misdirecting people in regards to the

Trinity. That's why the You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth book has the infamous black page where within two paragraphs you have an accurate representation of the

Trinity followed by an inaccurate representation of the Trinity. What's that meant to do? It's meant to create confusion in the mind of the person who's reading it and to, in essence, help to make sure that they're not going to hear properly someone giving the right definition.

The same thing is true here. They will argue for a qualitative reading and then they will just slip in the indefinite and go, see, all is well.

That works really, really well as long as you can control the information to which your followers are going to be exposed.

The minute you can't do that anymore, and that's what's happening to them now, for a long, long time this was very effective. You made sure that all their friends were

Jehovah's Witnesses. You made sure that when someone left the society they were disfellowshipped. You couldn't even talk to them anymore. What was the real reason for all that?

So that you wouldn't spread. If you all of a sudden found out that the 1914 prophecy was a bunch of hooey or that originally the

Watchtower Society had said that Christ returned in 1874 and that he was going to return physically in 1914, 40 years later, and they changed that and it was 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1943, and in the 1970s and so on and so forth.

They just didn't want you to be able to spread that to other people so you just cut them out and so you're not talking to apostates.

You can't read apostate literature. You'd get kicked out. And you're being strongly encouraged that if you see anybody else doing it that you'd report them.

I mean, there is a deep attitude of fear that you'd be reported to the elders because,

I mean, let's face it, if you're a grandmother and your whole family are Jehovah's Witnesses, you have no interest at all in being cut off from seeing your children and your grandchildren but that's what's going to happen.

And what's worse is if Armageddon takes place the day after you disassociate or you're disfellowshipped from the organization,

Armageddon takes place and guess who gets wiped out at Armageddon is everybody but faithful Jehovah's Witnesses and that includes you if you're no longer faithful to Jehovah's organization.

So, I mean, it's a real nice cultic mindset you've got going on there. That all worked up until this thing called a cable came into people's homes and you get cable

TV and internet and now you just can't safeguard people within the society the way you once did and so they are really struggling with how they're going to handle their own history and a defense of the system called

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and you may notice you look at their baptismal numbers, you check out their...

you can go to watchtower .org and you go to their annual report and their baptisms are down over 20 % and it's a major trend and you look at that and you go, why is that?

What's going on? And part and parcel of it, I think, is that they just haven't figured out what to do now about this very issue of getting that information coming into people's hands and they can't handle it and it's impacting them and we're thankful for that but I'm not sure that that's so much...

You know, the sad thing is over a million people disappeared from the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society after the failed prophecy in the early 1970s after 1974, 1975, that time frame.

Over a million people simply disappeared from the rolls and you look at how many people were baptized, how many had been baptized, blah, blah, blah.

Over a million people disappeared but how many of those people ended up in a solid

Bible teaching church? Maybe a percent. Maybe one.

That means 99 % of those individuals are now in the range of what we would call the religiously abused.

You know, they're burned out, they think they've already experienced Christianity, they're the hardest people in the world to reach. So, I've just got a couple seconds here left.

Was that your primary focus you wanted there? Yeah, I was also curious, given what you had said, if there's maybe a more modern approach that you would hear from a witness on John 1 .1.

Yeah, there is. Real quickly, if you want to hear it, you can hear Greg Stafford try to bog down our debate in December of 2003 on that very issue.

His followers are going to try to basically clog the discussion and bring it to a grinding halt by a misinformed discussion of mass and count nouns.

Look up Dr. Hartley's work on that particular subject if you really want to get in -depth into it.

You're probably not going to run into too many of them in your context going door -to -door, but that's probably where they're going to be going. Okay? Okay.

Thanks for your call. God bless. Thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. We'll be back,

Lord willing, on this Thursday evening. If you're praying for us, pray that I will get lots of chapters written because I sort of need to get lots of chapters written.

you for your support. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on Thursday. God bless. .