Can a Non-Marriage Experience Divorce? And Ergun Caner on Mormonism

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Started off with a bit of a discussion on Eugene Robinson's "divorce" and how a non-marriage's "divorce" cannot be viewed in the same way as a true marriage's end. Then we moved on to listen to Ergun Caner, from 2005, absolutely destroy Mormonism—not in a proper apologetic fashion, but by his own unique style of ridiculous and errant assertion and misrepresentation. Of course, we heard more of the same lies repeated as well in the process. A valuable lesson in how personal aggrandizement produces black eyes to the apologetic effort of the faith.

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00:33
And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon. Good to be back. It wasn't like I had a week off or something.
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We were traveling and now we are back and much to get to today.
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Let me first start by thanking some special people. While I was gone, we put some stuff on the ministry resource list and I'm going to tell you very honestly, it's incredibly encouraging when we put things on the list and in a very brief period of time, those things are taken care of and that's exactly what took place in that situation.
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It's very, very encouraging. It lets me know that should there be a day when things get tough around here, maybe we're not going to have the same freedoms we have now, there will be people who will stand with us.
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So that is exciting. So thanks to those folks. While we were gone, a number of things happened.
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I want to touch on a few, just a few items here and then get to the main stuff today.
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I'm not sure whether we'll be taking calls or not. We'll sort of see. Oh goodness, this is all wrong though.
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There we go. There we go. It was covering the lava lamp.
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And so that's just, I might've even gotten up and moved the camera.
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I just double checked our sound and it sounds very good. So you know, you can tweak with the mic a little bit, make sure the lava lamp can be seen.
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Yeah, I want to make sure and I've still got to be able to see the video over here at the same time.
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But yeah, I want to make sure that everyone who is stuck in the early 1970s can still see that.
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You can bring that down a little. Down a little bit? Because you tend to look down when you talk. And so, you know, that can go down and, you know, adjust right there.
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Very good. Now, see, now you got a real good shot at the lava lamp. Yes. Yes. And that actually looks like the lava lamp now.
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Yes. It doesn't, it didn't really look like the lava lamp before. Yeah. And the Borg Regeneration Cube light is looking good.
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Yeah. Looking good. It's regenerating. Yep. It's doing its thing. Yeah. Good. Great. Wonderful. Well, I'm so pleased.
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We obviously have really important stuff to get to today. Really do, actually. One of the articles that I had saved,
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I use this program called Pocket to, you know, I see stuff in my RSS feeds and I throw it into Pocket.
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Yeah. Yeah. The monitor is pretty clear, isn't it? You can see there's, I mean, where's, yeah,
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I can actually, yeah, there you go. There's Kerrigan Skelly right there. And I suppose I should, you know, bring Accordance up so it looks a little bit more, you know,
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I don't know, biblical or something there. There. There's Accordance. That makes it look a little bit more. Yeah. There's Kerrigan Skelly.
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We may get a chance to listen to a, parts of a conversation with a Calvinist, open air preaching
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MTSU and just catch a few of the further errors of Kerrigan Skelly who so far, as far as I can tell, hasn't said a word in response to the rather in -depth refutation that's been offered of a couple of his positions.
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But be that as it may, one of the articles that I saved to Pocket is of course about the story about Gene Robinson and the dissolution of what was called a marriage between Gene Robinson and another man.
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And I was thinking about addressing this and I realized that to do so meaningfully, is that a screaming baby on your desktop?
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That's my daughter asking me that on Twitter. Screaming baby on my desktop?
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When you have four monitors to get your thing around, you mean right there? Oh, that's a ladybug. Boy, my poor daughter is so into living with a 16, 17 month old child that she sees a ladybug.
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Is that a screaming baby? I don't know what happened, but I've got the standard
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Mac backgrounds going at the moment. I need to go back to my Monet backgrounds and my
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Fractal backgrounds. I just didn't have them set up right. So I'll get that fixed so we can get rid of these things.
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But we'll get the Fractals back up there and then everybody will be complaining because that'll be brighter than the board regeneration light and stuff like that.
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Anyway, as I was thinking about how I was going to have to address the Gene Robinson situation,
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I did realize that this is sort of what we're all going to be looking at. We're all going to be having to make a decision as to how we're going to be dealing with people in our society that demand that we respect.
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Not just that you accept legally, but that you respect the viewpoints of the society in regards to the redefinition of marriage.
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Now, I was very heartened this morning then when
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I listened to the briefing with Dr. Mueller that he likewise pretty much expressed the same things that I was going to say.
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But as always, Dr. Mueller is always nicer than I am, I guess.
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I'm not sure. Maybe it's the athlete stuff. Maybe it's because I, you know, when
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I ride a bike, I see another guy up the road and this thing kicks in.
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And every cyclist I know will tell you that this is the case. Once you see a guy in front of you, you can already be on the rivets, you can be working as hard as you can.
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If you see another guy in front of you, you will kill yourself to catch him. And then as you go by him, when you're five yards behind him, you're going, but then when you go by him, it's like, hey, nice day for a ride.
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Then you get five yards ahead of that. That's just maybe that's why
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I'm not as as nice as Dr. Mueller, because that's the one thing that Dr. Mueller and I do not share together is is a passion for extreme aerobic sports and stuff like that.
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So maybe that's what it is. I don't know. But he was pretty straightforward in in what he had to say about this, because, look, let me get my mouse back.
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I need to make my mouse bigger. The cursor bigger. Here's here's the third paragraph of this is
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Gene Robinson's own own article. As my marriage to Mark ends,
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I believe him to be one of the kindest, most generous and loyal human beings on Earth. There is no way I could ever repay the debt I owe him for his standing by me.
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The challenge is the last decade. I'll be forever grateful to him. And as I tell couples in premarital counseling, marriage is forever and your relationship will endure whether positively or negatively, even if the marriage formally ends.
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There are just so many, many problems here.
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Just so many disconnects that it is it's hard to even know where to begin. The fact is, while this particular relationship, whatever the world wants to call it, is, quote unquote, ending on a legal basis, there is never a marriage here.
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So I do not mourn the loss of a non marriage. There is two men.
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And if you don't have a husband and a wife, you don't have a marriage. That's all there is to it. And so you had two men in an illicit relationship and evidently they're going to stop the illicit relationship, which would actually be a positive thing, wouldn't it?
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Now, we mourn divorce because we recognize that it is a tearing asunder of something that, according to Jesus, God put together.
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So it's sin. And it damages the people that go through it.
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And everybody knows that. Everybody who's gone through it knows that. Everybody who's observed it knows that. And there is that joining together.
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What God has glued together, let no man try to tear apart. God never joined
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Gene Robinson and another man. There is nothing that anyone could ever produce out of the text of scripture that would suggest that that's something
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God wanted to do. In fact, one of the things I did since we were last together is
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I worked through a new book that I think probably is the book we're going to have to use as the basis for doing the series on homosexuality eventually.
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Because Matthew Vines was just basically repeating the arguments anyways. So there's really nothing new there.
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And I refer specifically to the Bible, gender, and sexuality by Brownson.
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That's the new Boswell. You know, Boswell's old, dated.
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And now Brownson is the big one that people are referring to. And so I got through that on Saturday on a single ride, actually.
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Not the wisest thing I've ever done. First day here in Phoenix, over 100 degrees, and I was riding 109 miles.
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But I got through it. And as I was listening to it, was utterly amazed at what it was saying,
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I again was struck by the fact that over and over and over and over again, the fundamental exegetical insight offered by the revisionists, including
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Brownson, who tries to picture himself as a Bible -believing Christian, so on and so forth, is that, well, the scriptural writers just didn't know.
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Paul just didn't know about, and then they always have the same line. Committed, monogamous, homosexual relationships.
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Well, first of all, the fact of the matter is that's an extremely small minority of male, especially homosexual relationships.
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The vast majority of the studies have indicated that male homosexuals are considerably more promiscuous than male heterosexuals by any stretch of the imagination.
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And so you're talking about a small, okay, you're talking 3 % of the population that would self -identify as homosexuals, and so you're talking about maybe, maybe at best 5 % of that.
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So what's that, .15? Yeah, it would be about .15 % of the population.
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We are redefining marriage in our nation for .15 % of the population.
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Obviously, the biblical writers don't make reference to individuals who are seeking committed, committed, monogamous, sanctified homosexual relationships.
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There's a reason for that. But the effect of constantly reading that in and saying, well, we can't really, this isn't what the
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Bible's addressing because we know things today that they didn't know back then fundamentally undercuts our confidence in the scripture's ability to address anything in the modern day where we say, well, they just didn't know back then.
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We know better now. We know better now. It is a fundamental denial of the sufficiency of scripture and of the inspiration of scripture.
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And one of the questions I really want to get to is, someday
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I want to, you know, I would love to see a debate with Brownson or someone like that. I want to ask him, especially when they start pushing this, well, we need to use
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Jesus's perspective and we need to, you know, we need to have that kind of concept.
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If Jesus was who Brownson by creedal confession must say that he was, then
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Jesus knew that there were homosexuals who wanted to have marriage in his day, right?
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As God, he would know this because he, well, he made it that way,
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I guess. So the question obviously comes up.
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If, if we are to follow after Jesus and Jesus wants marriage equality, why did
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Jesus reinforce stereotypical views of marriage in his day rather than promoting homosexual marriage?
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I mean, weren't there homosexuals in his day?
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Isn't the percentage of homosexuality the same now as it was then? Even if people didn't understand it the way we now understand it, didn't
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Jesus know as God that some of his children were in great pain and struggling?
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And, and therefore when, when people came to him and they, they asked and he talks about marriage, wouldn't there have been a, an absolute necessity for him to have rebuked the narrow mindedness that, that is part and parcel of Christianity, Christianity's understanding even to this day.
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I'd like to find out what they would say about that because they don't really address that. They don't really address that.
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That, that didn't, that didn't sort of come up. So someday we'll, we'll have to ask.
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But anyway, so when we look at this now, we don't, we don't have numbers yet and we won't for a while on divorce percentages amongst homosexual marriages because it's too new.
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Um, I actually, I guess there are some from some places in, um, in Europe, but I don't know that they're, uh, you know, the timeframe sufficient enough for them to be overly relevant.
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But from my perspective, once again, the emotional temptation is to go, oh,
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I, I hate to see whenever anybody breaks up. I don't. There are a lot of relationships that should break up.
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What shouldn't break up is a relationship where a man and a woman have stood before witnesses and have made a pledge before God and witnesses of their fidelity and faithfulness to one another.
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That's the one relationship. No, but if it's an illicit relationship from God's perspective, it's a, if it's a relationship that, that is fundamentally destructive to both individuals in that relationship, it breaks up.
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That's pretty much natural way of things. And, uh, that's so, so it really makes it amazing when he says marriage is forever and your relationship will endure whether positively or negatively, even if the marriage formally ends.
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Well, the core of truth that is
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Robinson's only by having borrowed it from the tradition that was given to him.
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The core of truth there is that true marriage, the marriage
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G has talked about, the marriage that God blesses, um, is a relationship that will endure whether positively or negatively.
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Uh, that's true. The perversion is that that can be transferred to a relationship between two men, three men, four men, one, two women, three women, four women, two men, three women, whatever.
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Um, that's just not marriage. Never will be. And any nation that demands on the basis of moral, um, pseudo moral grounds that we celebrate this and believe that is a nation that is spitting in God's face and rushing to self destruction.
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Absolutely. Rushing the self destruction. So there you go.
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A Bishop's decision to divorce. How long did that one last? Not very long. Not very long.
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Um, not very long. A lot of developments in the Jesus wife story. Uh, pretty much the wheels have completely fallen off.
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Now may remember a couple of weeks ago, uh, Harvard put out some publications and people go,
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Oh, it looks, it looks like it's genuine. Well, pretty much has completely fallen, um, fallen apart.
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Now, uh, a lot of people are saying, well, you know, King and others at Harvard were just taking advantage of maybe,
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I don't know. Um, the reality is right now the, uh, vast majority of evidence is pointing to the, the complete fraudulent nature of this papyrus.
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And of course, from my perspective, what we should have understood, I hope you all understood that the real issue here is that even if someone four or 500 years after Jesus wrote a stupid
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Gnostic gospel, uh, that talked about Jesus being married, there's nothing news worthy there.
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Um, there are some disgusting things amongst the Gnostics. When I wrote the book on the tomb story,
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I had to read some Gnostic stuff. It was just like, Oh, just pornographic. Nothing new.
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It's no big deal. Uh, but because of ignorance on so many people's parts, uh, it ends up being allegedly really important.
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All right. Uh, as I mentioned on Saturday, I got back from a trip, did something stupid. I should realize the day after you fly is normally a bit of a low energy day.
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I, I wanted to try to catch up. So hadn't written all week. I had had a chance to ride when I was in New York, had a great time with Doug McMasters and Brian McLaughlin and the folks at new
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Hyde park Baptist church. And, uh, then ended up in, uh, in, in prior Oklahoma. And, uh,
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I had run when I was in prior, but I, I hadn't had a chance to ride. So I was going to try to make it all up and didn't get out of the house as early as I needed to.
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I only had an hour to ride in the dark and then the sun comes up and, and it gets a little warm here. Like I said, we, we, we broke 100 degrees at 2 19
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PM officially at Sky Harbor international airport on Saturday and tomorrow it's only supposed to be in the upper seventies.
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So that's, that's pretty nice, but, uh, it'll be, it'll be back there pretty quick. Anyway, the summer has started.
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And so when you're trying to do, you know, I did 109 miles that just about kills you. I got through Brownson on the ride, but before I started
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Brownson, I had queued up something that a
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Turretin fan had blogged about a while back, but I hadn't heard yet.
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And it was a presentation from 2005, September of 2005 by Ergon Kanner.
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Now, part of what's interesting to me is that I, at this point knew
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Ergon Kanner. In fact, um, the way back right before we were starting had, um, a program from 2006,
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I think may of 2006 or something like that was playing and, um, uh, old red goatee called in, uh, this is back when he was young and, uh, uh, and I was picking on him even back then.
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It's just sort of been a tradition. And, uh, he was talking about Kanner and it was very, very interesting to hear that.
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I first ran into Kanner in, in early 2005. It was online. I got this email about stuff he was saying on some forum about Calvinism and that's how it all got started.
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And probably right around this time period is where, uh, there's still a PDF floating around somewhere on our, on our website.
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I forget where it is, but it's there someplace. Um, with all the documentation of all the back and forth, all the emails between myself and Ergon Kanner, uh, back in 2005, 2006 before the debate that never happened at Liberty University.
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And I said, you know, uh, what's interesting is what, what struck me back then was the real lack of concern, care, accuracy, just the, the braggadocious, uh, bullying of Ergon Kanner.
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If he does not respect a, a people group, he doesn't care whether he accurately represents them or not.
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So his many misrepresentations of Islam, his many misrepresentations of Calvinists, um, it just seems to be a standard for him.
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It just seems to be how, how he does things. And so I saw this,
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I don't even remember how I grabbed it, but I saw this fairly brief presentation, 21 parallels between Islam and Mormonism.
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And I thought, you know, something tells me that's going to be interesting. Well, it was, it was.
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And, uh, so I listened to that first on Saturday and I said, wow, do we need to, we need to address this because, um, it really gives now, now let me, let me play something for you.
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Let's start off and play something. Listen to what Kanner says to his audience because he sets the standard here.
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He sets the standard here. Here's a, here's what he said. And once again, for full disclosure, I'm playing at 1 .2,
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a little bit faster, so we can get through quicker, but most people can't tell the difference. But anyway. And they come in categories.
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You don't need to write down the categories. I'm just doing it to show you that I think this through because this is what I do. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what
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I do for graduate level students. I teach doctrines of Islam at Liberty University, at the Liberty Theological Seminary.
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Uh, the class is a 597. It's considered a graduate postgraduate doctoral class, but knowing Vernon Lyons and knowing
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Sam Lyons as I do, and knowing this church as I do, having been here, I mean, we did an entire week in June, having been here before then,
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I'm just saying, I think that knowing the discipleship that this church has, I think you can risk this. I think I can take something that that's, that's that deep and it's not going to make you go, this is too hard.
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I want a poem. Make this easy. You want meat? Here we go.
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Okay. So this is, this is meat. Okay. This is, this is Islam 597 graduate doctoral level stuff.
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Okay. That's, that's what he's, that's what he's saying. So when we discover that Eric and Kanner not only claims to have done, you know, 60 some odd debates here and all the rest of this kind of stuff, but, um, obviously hasn't a clue what
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Mormonism actually teaches, has never engaged Mormon apologists, scholars or anything on any level at all.
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Should we really be shocked? No, we shouldn't really be shocked, but it is amazing.
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It is amazing. Um, let's just, let's just dive in.
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Let's, uh, let's listen to what he had to say. Well, then how do you and I understand Islam or for that matter, any other system?
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Well, every system has manmade elements. This isn't the time to go into that, but when it comes to Islam, I've got something that I want to drop in your hat.
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And if you were making a chart, if you were writing on a piece of paper, I would ask you to make two columns here in a second, because I'm going to give you a comparison.
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I'm going to show you how this works. The best way to understand Islam, the best way to explain
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Islam to your children, the best way to, to filter Islamic teachings is to use what you know already.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Islam is nothing more than medieval
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Mormonism. Okay. So the best way that this is, this is from a guy who is identified as, as the leading expert on Islam.
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The best way to explain Islam to people is that it's medieval
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Mormonism. Now, don't get me wrong, folks. There have been some actually scholarly, well thought through articles that draw some interesting parallels between the life of Muhammad and the life of Joseph Smith.
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However, there are severe limitations to the value of these parallels.
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They're very limited, very limited. And I can assure you that the best way to explain
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Islam to someone is not to parallel it with medieval Mormonism.
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And what we're about to hear is just beyond ridiculous in its foolishness and its utter ignorance from a man who claims to be, well, a scholar of apologetics.
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In fact, ironically, somebody on Twitter wasn't even sending it to me, but posted a picture of Encyclopedia of Apologetics, Ed Hinson, Ergon Kanner.
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Wow. That must be great with the things we're going to hear from Ergon Kanner. So let's, let's listen to some of the things that Ergon Kanner, and by the way,
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I say this as a person who has explained Islam to many audiences, far more than, than Ergon Kanner ever has, and with far more accuracy than Ergon Kanner ever has.
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So, all right, let's listen to him. Central proof, central truth. Everything that Joseph Smith did in the 19th century,
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Muhammad did in the 6th and the 7th. Everything Joseph Smith did. I need a little more volume on that.
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Everything that Joseph Smith did, Muhammad did. Uh, not really.
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What were, what were the parallels in Muhammad's life to the many banking scandals involved with Joseph?
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How about, how about the seer stone? Let's, let's see what the seer stone was about. And, uh, just so many things.
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I mean, if you don't know anything about Joseph Smith's life, then maybe you could, you know, come up with something like this, but, um, no, that's, that's, that's just simply not a, not, this next,
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I'm going to have to take little, I'm going to play three snippets, then I'm going to go back because the, the, the errors are, come too fast.
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Of course not. A Mormon denies that Jesus is God. A Mormon denies that Jesus is the son of God.
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A Mormon denies the personalness or the intimacy of the father. Okay. Did you catch that?
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Let's, let's start with the first one. Of course not. A Mormon denies that Jesus is God. Really?
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Um, did, did you ever talk to a Mormon? Ever read the Book of Mormon? Ever read the
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Doctrine and Covenants of Porgy Price, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Marvelous Work and a Wonder, Articles of Faith by James Talmadge.
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Any of those books? Dr. Super Apologist Kanner? Um, no,
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Mormons do not deny that Jesus is God. Um, they obviously have a complete redefinition of who
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God is. Uh, but they do believe in the deity of Christ. They do believe in the deity of Christ.
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No, no question about that. Completely, completely redefined. Because there are many deities.
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But they do believe, they believe Jesus is Jehovah. He's the son of Elohim. Hello?
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Uh, does Kanner know that? Not in 2005. Has he, um, has he figured this out since then?
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Doubtful. He doesn't seem to be concerned about the accuracy of, of the, what he's saying to people. Okay, so he says they, they deny the deity of Christ.
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Next phrase was. A Mormon denies that Jesus is the son of God. Wow, can you imagine what a
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Mormon would think listening to this? Because as I have truthfully explained to many audiences,
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Mormons believe that Jesus is the son of God far more literally than we do.
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Because we recognize that that relationship of sonship should not be defined in a human context.
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And they define it in a human context because they believe that Jesus is the literal, spiritual, and physical offspring of Elohim who is an exalted man who has a body of flesh and bones.
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So they talk about Jesus as the son of God constantly. They emphasize he's the son of God constantly.
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But of course, so are you and I. We're all sons and daughters of Elohim, just not in the flesh.
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Jesus is the only begotten in the flesh. Now, I have an entire chapter on that phrase in the flesh, the teaching of Mormonism on that subject.
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In Is the Mormon My Brother? But I think it's pretty obvious that Ergin Cantor doesn't access information like that.
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And so he says they deny the deity of Christ. They go, no we don't. They say they deny that Jesus is the son of God.
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And they go, no we don't. So can you imagine a Mormon missionary, some knowledgeable Mormon, listening to this presentation going, this guy is a graduate level teacher at Liberty?
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Really? I guess it's even worse now. They'd go, oh, and then he went to Arlington and now he's president of Bruton Parker.
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Ah, I see, good, wonderful, great. A Mormon denies the personalness or the intimacy of the father.
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Really? Really? No, they don't.
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In fact, they believe that God's exalted man from another planet and that he personally appeared to Joseph Smith.
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I didn't even get the feeling in this presentation that Cantor even knows about the First Vision stories, plural, evolving story over time as most folks who know
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Mormonism know. But there, in a matter of a few seconds, in fact, let's see, how, 10 seconds, three major foundational flaws in Cantor's understanding of Mormonism, just right there.
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And we're not talking, this isn't in -depth stuff, okay? This is stuff you can be talking with the missionary on the sidewalk with and get it straight.
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But he doesn't get it straight because his whole purpose is to entertain, not to actually teach.
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And you know how you can get away with that? Because he knows he's never going to be engaging a Mormon in any meaningful encounter. Now, he'll claim later on to do these debates and all the rest of that stuff, but we know he didn't do that.
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So when you know you've just got this audience in front of you, that's why he thinks he can get away with it.
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Now, I still can't even begin to conceive that because if I were in front of an audience like that, the thought would cross my mind,
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I wonder if there's an ex -Mormon in here. I wonder if there's someone who really understands Mormonism. Will they catch all the silly things
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I say? He doesn't seem to care. Doesn't seem to care. It's amazing.
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It's amazing. We press on. You've heard me say, I said it the first time I ever came here, and now it's 60 debates,
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I just had two more debates, but in 60 -some -odd debates, I have never met one Muslim. Not one.
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Who has ever said, not one, who has ever said that the Allah of the Quran, the 99 names of terror and glory, that the
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Allah of the Quran is the same God as Jehovah God of the Bible. Now, again, he didn't do 60 debates.
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He's lying through his teeth. He can't show these to us. And we have caught him so many times now.
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When he was at Southern Seminary. Well, when I debated Shabir Ali, Shabir Ali said this.
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Well, we know that he never debated Shabir Ali. Never met Shabir Ali. Shabir Ali didn't say that. And then in 2007, he's saying the same thing.
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And so, whenever he draws on his debates, we know he's just making stuff up.
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Out of whole cloth. I've debated Muslims who insist that Allah is
36:17
Jehovah of the Old Testament. Now, they don't like to use the divine name. And it doesn't seem that Muhammad even knew what the divine name was.
36:25
But the assertion of the Quran is that there is only one God. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is
36:30
Allah. That is the assertion. Now, a good thinking Muslim is going to say, well, as far as what you
36:38
Christians believe, the Trinity, things like that. No, that's not. But he's just making this stuff up.
36:43
Just pulling it out of the air. And people are sitting there going, wow, this is great. You see, the
36:48
Quran teaches Allah does not beget nor is begotten. Do not say Trinity, the Quran says. Decease from saying this.
36:54
Well, again, I only marked that one very briefly because it would be nice if Kanner would be accurate in communicating to people that the
37:07
Quran does not ever use the word Trinity. It says, say not three.
37:13
I don't think I have ever heard him actually make that appropriate and important distinction.
37:21
Maybe because he doesn't know that. And because, well, maybe the distinction isn't really clear in the
37:30
Swedish version of the Quran. Which would be the only foreign language translation of the Quran he would have access to.
37:36
Despite the fact that he will in this claim to speak Arabic again. Which makes light of the
37:43
Geisler excuse sheet. Which tries to make it sound like he's only claiming to know as much
37:49
Arabic as any other Muslim would use to say the prayers and things like that. Which again demonstrates the fundamental dishonesty of the
37:56
Norman Geisler excuse sheet. Which is still posted at Norman Geisler's website. And will be because Norman Geisler will not accept any level of correction even when it is fully documented.
38:07
But we continue on. But what I want to do in our time together is point out over 20 absolute similarities between Mormonism and Islam.
38:19
Absolute similarities. Now those two terms really don't go together well. Similarity, and I mean if it's absolute it would be identity.
38:28
So we'll just skip past that. But absolute similarities. Gabriel, Muhammad on his 40th birthday, the very beginning of the
38:37
Hadith which is the recorded biography of Muhammad. At the very beginning of Hadith, Hadith 1 -1, it says
38:42
Muhammad was in a cave on his birthday. All of a sudden his wife Khadija sees him fall to the ground.
38:48
He rolls on the ground, roars like a camel, almost swallows his tongue, foams at the mouth. He comes out of this and he said, you and I would know it as a grand mal seizure.
38:56
But he said, he came out of this and Muhammad said to his wife Khadija, he said, I don't know if this was demonic or divine.
39:02
I don't know if this was from God or from devil, shaitan. And she said, oh it's from God. Well once again, the level of accuracy that Dr.
39:12
Kanner brings to the apologetic realm is heartwarming.
39:18
We don't know what Hadith 1 -1 actually says because no one can find
39:26
Hadith 1 -1. Maybe he's talking about Bukhari or something.
39:32
I mean, various sources do record some of the multitude of ways in which
39:40
Muhammad experienced the receipt of revelation from Jibril.
39:48
That is a rather interesting way of expressing it. But we continue to ask where Hadith 24 -25 is.
40:00
And we know we're never going to get an answer because the question is the answer.
40:07
There is no Hadith 1 -1. It's like saying in the
40:12
Bible 1 -1. I mean, it's shocking. And this is right after, this is within a minute or so of his talking, maybe two minutes of his talking about his teaching this on the graduate, doctoral level.
40:33
So within a matter of moments, he's then demonstrating that his familiarity with the original sources of Islam, specifically the
40:43
Hadith collections, Bukhari, Muslim, primarily those are the two that he makes reference to.
40:50
I don't know if he even knows Jamia At -Tirmidhi and all the others, Sunan Abu Dawud and things like that.
40:55
I don't even know if he's ever looked at them. Can't tell. But you have this kind of miscitation within a matter of moments after making big claims about,
41:06
I think you all are smart enough to follow what I'm going to dish out for you here. Number two, in both
41:17
Mormonism and in Islam, only the prophet heard the voice. Only Joseph Smith ever heard the voice.
41:25
And only Muhammad ever heard the voice. No external evidence. Everybody had to take their word for it.
41:34
Not quite. Not quite. Part and parcel,
41:39
I've said that twice now, I apologize. Central to Mormon epistemology is the personal testimony of the
41:50
Holy Ghost. And if you look at the testimonies of the
41:55
Twelve Witnesses and the Three Witnesses and things like that, you will find claims to divine revelation.
42:07
He doesn't seem to recognize, he sort of conflates things here. And so, is he talking about when
42:14
Moroni Nephi appeared? Because the sources change. Whether it was Moroni that appeared to him and in other sources it was
42:20
Nephi that appeared to him. Are we talking about when the angel first appeared and told him about the golden plates?
42:26
Are we talking about the first vision? There's a difference between them. I realize that the early sources are conflicted on this as well, but again, anyone who's serious in their studies of Mormonism know these things and can differentiate between these things, but Cantor doesn't know these things and cannot differentiate.
42:45
So it's sort of hard to say as to exactly what's being referred to. Number three.
42:52
Both involved the transcription on tablets. Boy, here we get into some fun.
43:00
Muhammad said, the revelation I'm receiving, he was illiterate, so they had to write it down on tablets. But Joseph Smith said they were golden tablets that he discovered.
43:07
Well, where are the tablets at? We don't know. Huh. Well, if your entire system hinges on those tablets, don't you reckon it'd be nice to have them?
43:18
Huh. Huh. Huh. A couple problems here.
43:24
The tablet concept within Islam is that there is a heavenly tablet that contains the
43:31
Quran and the revelation of the Quran sent down to Jabril on Laylatul Qadr, on the night of power, is a divine transcription, shall we say, of the heavenly tablet.
43:48
And it's not written down on tablets. It's not written down on tablets.
43:55
It's written down on some other things, but in many ways it's just orally passed on. So you don't have that on the
44:04
Islamic side. And then on the Muslim side, the Mormons say that the angel took the tablets back to heaven.
44:14
Now, I've often pointed out that is rather convenient. And given what we have discovered in regards to the book of Abraham, probably really good for Joseph Smith that any tablets disappeared.
44:36
Because, obviously, if you can't translate a few scraps of Egyptian papyrus accurately, which
44:45
Joseph Smith could not in the book of Abraham, then you certainly couldn't get 531 pages of the
44:50
Book of Mormon right either. So there is something rather convenient there.
44:56
No two ways about it, but the parallel just doesn't really exist. No, Justin, I'm not taking phone calls.
45:07
And two people, Will Hoffman has told me, he says, I think Steve Anderson did the same sermon.
45:13
Yeah, you know what? I did see. Now that I think about it, I saw at least a portion of this
45:18
YouTube thing where Anderson was trying to draw the same parallels, and it was just as badly done.
45:25
What can I say? Anyway, so we press on here.
45:32
Let's see, where is the next pretty color? There it is. Because, ladies and gentlemen, both in Mormonism and in Islam, the
45:38
God that they invented does not speak to men. That one.
45:46
I was actually thinking on the bike. I was thinking, I'm going to watch through the window when he says this for Rich.
45:56
I think we need to send a couple of Mormon missionaries with their portable video player to Bruton Parker.
46:06
No, we better not, because they might convert the whole place, because they can make mincemeat out of this guy.
46:16
Some of you don't realize, I started teaching on Mormonism back when
46:21
I had a full head of hair and had yet to graduate from Grand Canyon College.
46:29
And then after teaching that class, I don't know how many times, then Mike took over for me.
46:35
And then you took over for Mike, right? Right. And so that was 1980...
46:44
88, 89. By the time you started doing it. 90, yeah. Because I left there in 89.
46:52
Had to have been a little bit before that. Didn't you team teach with Rich for a while? No, I thought you left at the very end of 89, 90.
47:01
I left slightly before you did. No, because Summer was born in January of 89 and she was only in the nursery once or twice.
47:07
We joined PRBC in June of 89. So anyway...
47:14
We tagged team for a little while. We're talking ancient history here. So I got trained. We're talking ancient history.
47:21
When I heard him saying, the Mormon God does not speak to men. I'm just like, really?
47:30
Wow, I guess he really doesn't know the First Vision. Maybe we should put things in apologetic terminology that he can understand.
47:39
Son, I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. Oh, I like it again.
47:48
The simplest Mormon missionary could take the president of Bruton Parker College absolutely apart and just say, sir, you have no idea what you're babbling about.
47:58
Because he doesn't. Just once again. Ladies and gentlemen, both in Mormonism and in Islam, the
48:04
God that they invented does not speak to men. The God that they invented does not speak to men.
48:11
Now folks, put yourself in the position of an honest
48:18
Mormon listening to this. Because at the end, I'm going to play for you a section where Cantor is going to give you a fairly decent summary of Christian belief.
48:30
And that's what makes this so reprehensible. Is that when you join all this foolishness, this error, these mistakes with the truth, what does it do to the truth?
48:47
How many times when we were in Salt Lake City or out in Mesa, you go to hand somebody a tract and they, oh,
48:54
I've heard it all before. I've heard it all before. They just, I know what you guys say about us and it's not true and I don't want to hear anything more.
49:05
And you listen to this and you go, oh, yeah, okay. Now I know why. Now I know why. Exactly. I know,
49:11
I know. It plugs right in. I have to keep that in mind when I'm down in South Africa and I talk to Muslims and they look at me like I land from another planet because the
49:19
Christians they've been talking to have so misrepresented the faith and now here you've got this.
49:25
Now here you've got this. All right. I didn't think it would take this long, but there's still more. There's lots more to get to.
49:32
Allah would never dare. The Quran is explicit. Allah does not speak to men. Allah is transcendent.
49:39
He is opposite. He is removed. He is different. Allah is judge.
49:44
Allah has the lightning bolt in his hand, but Allah does not touch man. And yet in Mormonism, the alleged parallel here is what?
49:53
God is a man. The biggest difference between Islam and Mormonism is right here.
50:06
You have hyper -transcendence in Islam and you have no real
50:12
God, but you have an exalted man in Mormonism. And Ergon Kanner doesn't seem to understand that or chose to ignore that.
50:22
Whatever it might be. I don't know. How dare man think. Guys, I put it this way in the most simple of terms.
50:28
When Muslim prays, do you know what we do? We face Mecca five times a day at prescribed moments and we repeat the first chapter of the
50:36
Quran over and over. Really? That's what the Muslim prayers are? I know enough about the
50:45
Muslim prayers to know that Ergon Kanner obviously doesn't know almost anything about them at all.
50:52
Is Surah Al -Fatiha repeated in the Muslim prayers? It is. Is that all you do?
50:59
No. Maybe this explains why Ergon Kanner doesn't seem to know how many verses there are in Surah Al -Fatiha.
51:05
He keeps saying six, it's seven. But here's the guy who claims five times a day who's doing this and why can't you accurately represent what
51:16
Islamic prayer is about? Don't you know what the Niyah is? Dr.
51:22
Kanner? The intention that you can express prior, to, during, and after the
51:31
Islamic prayer is in Arabic. You can express the Niyah in your own language. You can pray to God in your own language.
51:39
I know that. Maybe because I would show my seminary classes actually
51:46
Islamically produced videos on prayer. Videos meant for other
51:52
Muslims. But that would actually require you to interact with original sources and things like that which
51:59
Ergon Kanner doesn't seem to do. Allah will do what Allah will do. We call it fatalism.
52:06
The only equivalent I have for it is hyper -Calvinism. Hyper -Calvinist falls and breaks his leg and he goes, God wanted me to have that. Everything's predestined.
52:13
Everything. You fall, you trip, predestined. God forced me to do this against my will. Dragged, kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God.
52:19
Yada, yada, yada. Yada, yada, yada. This is the same time period, remember, as the
52:27
Liberty Sermon on Romans 9 that was just filled with the most absurd misrepresentations.
52:36
And so, are we really shocked that this guy misrepresents his former religion,
52:43
Calvinism, Mormonism. He's just throwing it out there and people go, oh,
52:49
I like this. Shouldn't really surprise us that much.
52:56
It's not overly shocking. And so, in the revelation of Mormonism as well as the revelation of Islam, their invented
53:03
God is removed from his creation. And thus, an angel doesn't come because he's a mercy agent, which is what the
53:10
Bible teaches. But he alone is the one who can carry the message because their God will not speak to man.
53:17
You got that? So, both in Mormonism and in Islam, you have a removed deity. Okay, which is exactly backwards as far as Mormonism.
53:25
This is actually the fundamental difference, the definitional difference between Islam and Mormonism is that the problem with Mormonism is you don't have a creator
53:39
God. You have an exalted man who is dependent upon his creation. And therefore, this is a complete disjunction and Cantor doesn't even seem to realize it.
53:51
So, I think just on the basis of what we've heard so far, if you go someplace, if you walk into a class and they hand you a book on apologetics written by or edited by Eric and Cantor, you might want your money back.
54:06
Might want your money back. Because this is just absolutely, positively reprehensible.
54:13
Reprehensible. And you know why it gets away with it? Because a lot of evangelicals, the idea is we don't care if we misrepresent people that we don't like or distrust.
54:29
And there is absolutely no excuse for that. As Christians, there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of cavalier, no one is going to care if I misrepresent people we don't really like anyways attitude.
54:45
But it's all too common. It is all too common.
54:51
Both Mormonism and Islam taught that there is no true religion on the earth. Every other religion in the world is corrupt.
55:00
Both of them, both Joseph Smith and Muhammad, believe that every religion that existed on the planet was absolutely, completely corrupt.
55:12
There are save two religions according to the Book of Mormon. Two churches.
55:19
Church of the Lamb and Church of the Devil. And you can make a real strong argument especially from the leadership in Salt Lake City once Brigham Young gets to Salt Lake City.
55:33
And so from the Prats and people like that. You can get a very strong interpretation of that text where you have the
55:42
Mormon church and you got everybody else. There is no question about that.
55:48
That is not quite an accurate understanding of Muhammad's perspective.
55:56
Is Islam the only religion established by Allah? Yes. But the
56:05
Quran's view of the Allah Al -Injil and the Allah Al -Kitab, the people of the
56:12
Book and the people of the Gospel, little more complex. There is one religion that actually has a positive statement made about it in the
56:28
Quran. Only one. Christianity. It's only one part of Christianity. We can't really identify what it is.
56:35
Which part? It talks about priests so who knows. But there are texts in the
56:43
Quran that talk about the fact that in the Torah and the Injil you have light and guidance that people are to follow what's contained therein.
56:54
We've talked about that many times before. Again, the accuracy of the statement is questionable.
57:06
I was just asked an interesting question somewhat. Are we good for a jumbo?
57:13
We're going to go for another half hour. I don't want to rush this. All I know is the equipment is working.
57:18
That's the important part. Keep going while it still does. Yeah. You want to look and see if a time estimation has...
57:29
Just hit the spacebar. No, I'm serious. Hit spacebar on it. See if a time estimation... I'm trying.
57:36
I'm really thankful that I've got a new Mac today.
57:44
But it's always been real easy to load your new Mac. Your old Mac, new
57:49
Mac. No time estimation. Just simply a bar. Just simply go undo. That's going to be doing that for a long time on wireless.
57:57
Oh, yeah. How do you feel about 122 hours? Really? It says.
58:07
Windows does that. It's not very accurate. No, that's... No. 122 hours is what?
58:15
Five, four days? Something like that? No, I think it's longer than that.
58:22
No, it says it's around five days. Yeah. Yeah. Uh -huh.
58:30
I think I need to go back by the Apple Store. Yeah. And buy that patch card that does the...
58:38
does the fire to Thunderbolt. Yeah, take the one you already bought for no good reason back.
58:43
Back. I think you've got to... Even though the fellow on the phone didn't object. No, no. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's...
58:50
We're all fine here now. How are you? May the fourth be with you. May the fourth be with you.
59:01
Yeah. May the fourth be with you. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I know what I'm doing after we get done here.
59:10
I think I still got the box somewhere. We're going to take that back. Anyway, yeah. 122 hours, huh?
59:18
Yeah. Don't think so. No, me no, me no think so. Would you consider
59:23
Mormons semi -Pelagians? No. I would not.
59:29
Because semi -Pelagianism is a title that only has relevance within monotheism.
59:38
It only has relevance within a broad Christian framework. And as I've said many times, and I can defend this,
59:48
Islam is considerably closer to Christianity than Mormonism ever could be. So you can talk about the
59:55
Mormon view of grace. You can talk about things like that.
01:00:03
But no, that doesn't work. You should get the cable -adapted ethernet. We tried that. We thought we had that.
01:00:09
But that didn't work either.
01:00:15
I'll have to ask them. Maybe they have an ethernet to Thunderbolt, and then I could just use the backup drive to do that.
01:00:23
That's a possibility. Why don't, while I finish up here, you find out about that.
01:00:31
Please? Please? Possibly? So you need me to call Apple?
01:00:38
Yeah. Okay. Tell them what's going on and that we don't have 122 hours to load that computer.
01:00:48
And they have a telephone number in the U .S., right? Actually, they do. I would call the
01:00:54
Biltmore store, actually, if I were you. Anyway, what were we talking about here?
01:00:59
I don't know. I got distracted there by the 122 -hour estimation that is really depressing me now.
01:01:07
What are we talking about? Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's just keep going here. I was in San Diego, August the 21st.
01:01:13
I was in San Diego, David Jeremiah's church at Shadow Mountain. And at Shadow Mountain, one of my best friends, Charles Billingsley, has become their worship guy.
01:01:19
And Charles, for some reason, was being stupid. He announced on television, former Muslim coming. Well, if a former
01:01:24
Muslim is coming, present Muslims are going to show up too to yell at me. And so they showed up. And what did I hear?
01:01:30
You know what? One of the things that really offends me about Eric and Ken are it's offended a lot of people.
01:01:37
Some of you looked at the Marine videos, the very off -color language that he used there.
01:01:43
He was obviously trying to be very manly in front of the Marine. His, not only is the racial stuff about towel heads and sand monkeys and all the rest of this kind of stuff that he used just all the time.
01:02:03
But once you actually get to know Muslims, other than the hotheads that you might encounter in some contexts, it's really offensive the way he represents them.
01:02:23
So the only Muslims that are going to show up at an Eric and Kenner talk are just going to yell at Eric and Kenner, right?
01:02:34
I think of all of the positive, meaningful conversations
01:02:40
I've had with Muslims after, even after debates, I think of the dinners
01:02:49
I've had in some Muslim homes. I'm thinking one specifically in South Africa. And I just go, you know, this kind of behavior and attitude is absolutely reprehensible.
01:03:08
Why does man get away with this for so long? Why did he get away with this for so long?
01:03:16
That's what I really want to know. There has to have been people in audiences where Kenner was speaking that caught this stuff and went, he can't speak
01:03:31
Arabic. Why is he being so disrespectful? Weren't there?
01:03:39
Didn't somebody have to do it? Didn't somebody go to someone at Liberty and say, seriously? Did it really take me to listen to videos that a
01:03:50
Muslim posted? Really? I don't know. Please hear this.
01:03:59
Muhammad and Joseph Smith both had access to the Bible. Now, you don't have to write this down yet. I'm just making my point.
01:04:06
Both saw the God of the Bible, rejected the God of the Bible, and when they made up their own, here's what they did.
01:04:12
Number seven, both incorporated parts of the Bible they wanted. In their case, both
01:04:18
Joseph Smith and Muhammad incorporated the Pentateuch. Pentateuch is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
01:04:24
Penta, the five. Penta is five in Latin. It's the five books of Moses. No, Muhammad did not have access to the
01:04:33
Bible. There is no evidence in the Quran or in the Hadith that he had direct access to the
01:04:41
Bible. And it's far easier to understand the form of the stories in the
01:04:50
Quran as having been orally transmitted to him, and hence that's why he doesn't, he can't tell the difference between Jewish folklore and what's actually in the
01:04:59
Jewish scriptures. He can't tell the difference between what's in the canonical scriptures and what's in the folklore of the
01:05:07
Christians. That's why it's all mixed together as a jumble in the Quran. But then, check this out.
01:05:17
If you speak Swedish and you read a Swedish Bible, it's not called Genesis or Exodus. It's called, because it's the first book of Moses, the second book of Moses.
01:05:28
Ah, doing a little Swedish speaking there. I wonder where we learned that.
01:05:34
Maybe it's because we were born there rather than Istanbul. Yeah, mm -hmm.
01:05:42
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. That's why. Let me show you. In Mormonism, any time
01:05:48
Jesus is crucified, the story's changed. Islam does the same thing. Okay, let's hear it again.
01:05:53
Let me show you. In Mormonism, any time Jesus is crucified, the story's changed. Islam does the same thing.
01:06:00
What's he referring to? I don't know. He doesn't tell us. He doesn't give references?
01:06:09
Are we talking about the Book of Mormon? Are we talking about the Doctrine and Covenants? The Pearl of Great Price? What are we talking about?
01:06:17
Don't know. Don't know. Now, does Mormonism have specific errors in its teaching on the subject of the crucifixion?
01:06:28
Sure does. Sure does. I remember for years and years, and I was going to try to get out this year, but I thought
01:06:36
I'll give it one more year. Maybe someday we'll get to go back out to the
01:06:43
Easter pageant regularly. I just figure if I start showing up out there again, the wacko
01:06:48
King James Only guys are going to show up again too. Maybe it's just better I stay away because I'm the one they hate.
01:06:55
Maybe that's just something I won't get to do again. Years and years and years ago, when we would be out there every single night for the
01:07:02
Easter pageant at the Mormon church, if I wasn't in a conversation, and man, back in the olden days, we would be in conversations all the time.
01:07:12
End of the week, well actually it was over, it got to the point where it was six nights, so it was two weeks.
01:07:19
Because there was a Friday, Saturday, and I forget how it worked, but it ended up being over two weeks. You'd just be hoarse.
01:07:25
I mean, you would have been in so many conversations. One of the reasons I haven't pushed to get back is because there's just not nearly as many conversations there used to be.
01:07:32
Mormons are just not as talkative as they once were. But anyway, if I wasn't in a conversation,
01:07:38
I'd be watching the pageant. It would be interesting to go see how they've changed the pageant over the years. If you watched the garden scene, and you knew what you were watching for, you'd be able to see the
01:07:54
LDS doctrine of atonement. Because the atonement takes place in the garden. It's simply finished up on the cross.
01:08:03
And they sort of muted it, sort of hid it.
01:08:09
I mean, they'd have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Christian hymns beforehand and all that kind of stuff.
01:08:18
But it was still there. It was still there. If you knew Mormonism well enough.
01:08:24
And so there is a fundamentally flawed, bad, horrible doctrine of atonement within Mormonism.
01:08:33
There's no question about that. But changed the crucifixion in the same way that Surah 4, 1 -7 denies the crucifixion?
01:08:43
No. No. I don't think so. When I take tours, I'm leading a tour to Israel in March. Okay, now here's...
01:08:50
Now, we have played this. We've played the video of this when my
01:09:00
Arabic tutor and I demonstrated the errors in Aaron Cantor's claims to speak
01:09:06
Arabic. This is not the same one. But notice, this is another example where he's telling the same story.
01:09:15
And this time, though, he doesn't give us any fake Arabic. Students, March 12 -20,
01:09:21
I'm taking like 300 students to Israel. And I can't take all of them at once, but I take them. If you've ever gone down, it's a stairwell down to the rock where there's two
01:09:27
Muslims sitting, both are ulemas, scholars. And it's the rock... Both are ulemas. Has he figured out yet that the term is alim?
01:09:41
And that ulema is the plural? Has he figured that out yet? We've corrected him I don't know how many times.
01:09:47
Both are ulemas, scholars. And it's the rock, quote -unquote, supposedly, where the sacrifice took place.
01:09:53
I tell them before we go in, we're going into the mosque, you have to take your shoes off. You have to take your shoes off whenever you walk into an
01:09:58
Islamic mosque. And when you take your shoes off, we're going to go downstairs. I'm going to tell the story in Arabic, just to make them mad.
01:10:06
You crackers won't understand a word I'm saying, but I'm telling the story. And I will say, here is where Abraham sacrificed
01:10:12
Isaac. And they lose their mind. But you see, that is exactly what
01:10:20
Muhammad did. They lose their mind. Really? Really?
01:10:30
Once again, stereotyping Muslims as mindless.
01:10:37
Have I run into Muslims that if you contradict anything they believe, they lose their mind? Yes, I have. Have I run into James Only Fundamentalist Baptists that if you contradict anything they believe, they lose their mind?
01:10:49
Yes, I have. So, same thing, isn't it? Both sides have their odd people.
01:10:59
But if they're truly ulema, are there
01:11:07
Muslim scholars that would hear him speaking in Arabic? Well, first of all, they wouldn't hear him speaking in Arabic because he can't speak
01:11:13
Arabic. Please notice the contradiction, once again, to the dishonest
01:11:19
Geisler excuse sheet. Is there anybody in this audience that has
01:11:25
Norman Geisler's ears? He won't listen to me. Oh, no, no, I'm too young. He can't be corrected by me.
01:11:32
But with love for Norman Geisler, you don't want these lies on your website, man.
01:11:39
You need to do the right thing. Has anybody got enough guts to stand up to Norman Geisler and say that?
01:11:48
A lot of us found out what it's like to stand up to Norman Geisler. He's not nice to people that disagree with him.
01:11:56
Lots of folks know that. But somebody, if you actually care about the guy, you might want to say, you know,
01:12:02
Norm, you need to take that down. Because just too much documentation about Erdogan.
01:12:09
So, you see, both use the same methods. Well, let's look at their ethics. If Mormons believe they are the lost tribe, does that affect what they believe?
01:12:16
Oh, yes, it does. And if Islam teaches that they are the sons of Ishmael, does that affect?
01:12:21
Yes, because the next point is they are both nationalistic. They both set out to build their own nation.
01:12:28
To build their own. It's not just a religious movement. It's a nation. That's what the next point is. They're both theocratic.
01:12:35
Theocratic, which means God ruled. I'm watching Rich and he's going, what is he talking about?
01:12:42
I guess what he's trying to get to here is, you know, after Smith's murder, then they go out to Utah and they sort of build their own little kingdom out there and stuff like that,
01:12:58
I guess. You could certainly say Mormonism has been an American religion for the vast majority of experience.
01:13:06
That's certainly true. But this is really stretching things.
01:13:12
Big time. To try to make the connections that he's making at this big, big, big time.
01:13:18
Of course, you know what their answer is. You cannot build one building that's dedicated to Christianity. Okay, now this is another common thing with Cantor.
01:13:29
He'll say, you know, I'll be speaking and a Muslim will come up and he's lying, he's lying, I want equal time.
01:13:35
And he says, well, I'll tell you what, you can have the pulpit right after I get to speak in your mosque. You can't speak in the mosque.
01:13:43
And, of course, then he confuses Saudi Arabia with every Islamic country because there is a difference between Saudi Arabia and every
01:13:51
Islamic country as far as the pact of Umar goes and things like that. But he sort of told that part of the story and then we'll pick up with this.
01:13:59
Of course, you know what their answer is. You cannot build one building that's dedicated to Christianity. Not one.
01:14:05
You can't paint an existing Christian church in an Islamic nation. You can't.
01:14:11
You can't remodel. You can't add one square meter. It's called the pact of Umar in Islam.
01:14:17
It's called Salt Lake City in Mormonism. Hey, Rich, you ever seen a
01:14:25
Christian church in Salt Lake City? You know someone named
01:14:31
Jason Wallace up there? Yeah. Like, what you talking about,
01:14:36
Willis? What you talking about? Where did you get this stuff? Well, it's so obvious.
01:14:44
I think I heard Herbert W. Armstrong a few minutes ago. It's like, wait a minute. No, that's the other cult.
01:14:52
Yeah, and this is the professor of global apologetics.
01:14:58
I just keep thinking back to where the associate pastor at the
01:15:05
Hicksville Oneness Church tore him apart in the dialogue at Liberty and go, look, if that guy can do it, it says a little something about where this guy is coming from.
01:15:17
Wow. Wow. Wow. No. Believe it or not, folks, there are actually
01:15:24
Christian churches in Salt Lake City. I've actually spoken at them. Yeah.
01:15:29
Yeah. It's amazing. Amazing. So there really isn't a meaningful parallel between Mecca and Salt Lake City at that point.
01:15:39
I told you you were going to be amazed. Well, I mean, think about how many
01:15:45
Baptist churches we've passed through southern Utah. I mean, you really want to get strict.
01:15:50
They're small ones. What's that? They're small ones. They're small, but they're there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and those are the real strict, strict fundamentalist types.
01:15:58
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, some of those houses you drive by, they got three or four doors.
01:16:04
That's exactly right. Yeah. The Learning Channel is trying to do a reality show on every single one of them, too.
01:16:10
Believe me. Anyway, we press on. But in both systems, women have secondary status. We continue.
01:16:16
I got to move quickly. Both have a secret compound for secret ceremonies. In Islam, it's called
01:16:22
Mecca. In Mormonism, it's the Mormon Tabernacle, where the unbeliever is not allowed to go.
01:16:31
It's called the Temple, Dr. Kanner. Not the Tabernacle.
01:16:37
The Tabernacle is the public meeting place, which is different than the
01:16:43
Temple, where you do have secret ceremonies. But if you're trying to parallel the
01:16:49
Masonic ceremonies in the Mormon Temple with what's done publicly in Mecca with the
01:16:59
Hajj. Wow. Major disconnection here.
01:17:08
You know, I mean, seriously. I mean, honestly. Wow. Yeah. OK.
01:17:14
Every now and again, I do a speech in a church. I speak in a church, and a Muslim gets nuts. A Muslim there comes forward and screams to the pastor, this is wrong.
01:17:21
He is lying. He does not know Islam. I want equal time. And I tell them, here's what you say. OK. Here's what I was telling you before.
01:17:27
I will be happy to give you my pulpit. I will be happy to give you my pulpit this coming
01:17:32
Sunday. Because, ladies and gentlemen, let's be really honest. They want that. They want to stand in the pulpit and tell you that they believe in Esau, Jesus.
01:17:42
September the 23rd, 2001. Largest church in Chicago. Found itself up the
01:17:48
Willow Creek without a paddle when he allowed the imam to speak in his pulpit without anybody refuting him.
01:17:56
The largest church in Chicago. One of the largest churches in America. Allowed an imam to speak in their pulpit. So here's what you say, though. He comes, he says,
01:18:02
I want to speak. He's lying. I want equal time. You say, man, I would love to let you. This Sunday. I will let you do it the Sunday after I get to preach in the mosque.
01:18:12
You can't. Not one of y 'all can speak in a mosque. Because if you stand on the stone, we don't have pulpits.
01:18:19
We have the stone. If you stand on the stone as a Christian and share the testimony of Christ, you've defiled the stone. They have to tear it all down. Because you are an unbeliever.
01:18:26
They cannot do wudu on the stone. So they can't clean the stone. They have to tear down the mosque. You say, well, they say, well, we cannot do that.
01:18:31
Well, then why should I give you my pulpit? Didn't you just.
01:18:42
Yeah, yeah. And I don't remember a stand on a stone. I stood right there at the
01:18:49
Qibla. Yeah, yeah. No stones. And as far as I know,
01:18:55
I'll have to check with Brother Rudolph. I don't think they tore the mosque down after he left. I don't.
01:19:00
I think it's still there. Does he think that the Qibla is a rock? I don't know what he thinks.
01:19:08
I don't know what he thinks. Remember, this is the son of an ulema. This is the son of a scholar who came here to build mosques.
01:19:18
And. Starting to wonder if I spent more time in one than he has.
01:19:25
But yeah. The Mormons live for the story from New York to Ohio to Illinois.
01:19:35
Where are they going between New York, Ohio, Illinois? One more place. Missouri. Oh, Missouri. Yeah, Missouri on the way to Salt Lake.
01:19:41
Oh, we've been expelled for telling the truth. Missouri on their way to Salt Lake. Makes it sound like it was
01:19:48
Joseph Smith's intention to go to Salt Lake. Trust me. He had no intention of going anywhere after Missouri.
01:19:55
But they went to Salt Lake because Brigham Young took over. And. The other followers of Joseph Smith stayed right there in Missouri, actually.
01:20:06
But again, does he know that? Given what we've heard so far. That's number 16.
01:20:13
Number 17. Both have been expelled. Now let's look at the final ones. Their theology. Both Islam and Mormonism.
01:20:20
Don't like Israel. I was raised hating the Jew. I was raised being taught that the
01:20:26
Jews drink the blood of our children. So Islam. Rejects Israel.
01:20:33
Mormonism replaces it. We are the final tribe. So in their theology, both hate
01:20:39
Israel. Next. So.
01:20:47
How. What's the connection between. OK. Lost 10 tribes.
01:20:52
I get Joseph Smith's part. Patriarchal blessing. I doubt he knows anything about patriarchal blessings. I get that part.
01:21:00
I missed the connection where he demonstrates that because of that, they hate. Israel.
01:21:05
Did you catch that? I didn't skip anything. I didn't edit anything out there. I'm just lost going.
01:21:12
How do you make that connection? But he did. Number 19. Both quote
01:21:18
Jesus as saying he was a prophet. Wow. I had never.
01:21:25
I had never thought about. They both quote Jesus saying he was a prophet. That's.
01:21:32
That's insightful. I. You need to write something about that. And number 20 is tied to that.
01:21:40
Both say that Jesus spoke of their prophet. The final one. In Mormonism, Jesus says that I must go so that a comforter must come.
01:21:48
And Mormons believe that was Joseph Smith and then later Brigham Young. In Islam, Surah 61 of the Koran says when
01:21:54
Jesus said, I must go so that a comforter. The word for comforter is messenger and messenger is Mehmet and Turkish Mohammed in Arabic.
01:22:02
So both have Jesus as a prophet, not the best prophet, not even the final prophet, but the next last prophet. Speaking of their prophet.
01:22:08
And finally. Yeah, I. What's that?
01:22:15
There was a lot in that one. Yeah, I'm just. Just trying to remember the places where John 14 and 16 were applied to Joseph Smith.
01:22:24
Now, there's some there's some really high, disgusting later.
01:22:31
Theological development. In the Journal of Discourses. Relating to Joseph Smith.
01:22:38
But the prophecies about Smith. He inserted in Genesis 50. Well, in Genesis.
01:22:48
I don't remember anything about comforter. Never heard that. I mean, they talk about the
01:22:53
Holy Ghost and. Yeah, yeah. I never heard that. This is these. These are the most forced.
01:23:01
Alleged parallels that I've ever heard. I've ever heard. He's taking his very surface level, shallow knowledge of Islam.
01:23:10
And saying, well, if the Muslims say this, Mormons must say this to somehow. I don't quite get it.
01:23:17
The only thing I. The saving grace and all of it for me is that he's not going as far as some of the folklore stories that we heard early on.
01:23:27
I mean, there's people I've heard say things that are going on inside that temple are really nasty and stuff like that.
01:23:34
I mean, when I was teaching that class back in North Phoenix Baptist, there were people be people coming in and saying, I want to hear about the things going on in the temple.
01:23:42
And. Like, no, it's not happening. And. Oh, we did. I mean,
01:23:47
I. What was. The guy named Kit. Remember?
01:23:53
Remember a guy named like Kit Harrison or something like that? Was that his name? Yeah. He was a former Mormon, former missionary that came up to me after one of the classes.
01:24:02
In fact, I think during one of the classes and helped do some of the signs and tokens and stuff like that.
01:24:07
I remember that. Demonstrating the class. So we did talk a little bit about that, but not the all the sensationalistic stuff.
01:24:13
But I don't remember anything. They're going that far, but he's there's just stuff coming out of thin air, right?
01:24:18
Oh, yeah. We're almost done here. We're going to get through 21. Both built an entire system on works.
01:24:26
Both Islam and Mormonism are the perfect picture of an absolute work centered system.
01:24:32
There is none other as more work centered than Mormonism or Islam. None. None of them come close. They stand alone in that.
01:24:37
All the others have some works, but only Mormonism and only Islam have God weighing everything you do on the balance.
01:24:44
Both use scales to describe this. I don't remember anything about scales, but there is no question that Mormonism is a work salvation system.
01:24:53
Why not just quote some of the texts that say that so clearly? By grace, you've been saved after all you can do.
01:25:00
Hmm. Why not? Why not go to Moroni chapter 10? Love the Lord your God, thy heart, soul, mind and strength. Then is his grace sufficient for you?
01:25:08
I'm not even opening the LDS scriptures. He doesn't even bother with that level of study.
01:25:15
It's just ridiculous. But to say, to make this kind of extreme statement that Islam and Mormonism, they are the most works oriented is ridiculous.
01:25:27
Have you watched a few? Have you watched some people crawling up to Roman Catholic statues on their knees?
01:25:36
I mean, it just devalues the entire work of apologetics to have this kind of stuff.
01:25:43
And here's where I want to make the application. After he says this, Cantor will say, true, thanks.
01:25:51
But he is now, what he has done, any Mormon that was sitting in that church, any
01:25:59
Muslim that was sitting in that church, is sitting there going, this man doesn't have a clue.
01:26:06
And therefore not having a clue, he then says these things. And what's the result as far as the
01:26:13
Christian witness is concerned? And in the midst of it, what do we know? We know that Jesus declared himself to be
01:26:20
God. Jesus said he was the God -man that incarnates, son of God. We know that the Bible teaches that Jesus died so that we wouldn't have to.
01:26:27
That Jesus shed his blood so that my works are not necessary. We believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus didn't say he was just a prophet, that Jesus was prophet, priest and king.
01:26:34
That Jesus didn't come to be a prophet, he was the prophet and the final prophet. And that he is God, the God -man, he is
01:26:40
Lord. And that there is no work good enough that gets me into glory.
01:26:46
There's only one work. Repentance, and it's not a work. You know what repentance is? Repentance is the end of work.
01:26:54
Repentance is surrender. Repentance says all my works are filthy rags. Repentance says I give up, I'm tired of trying.
01:26:59
Repentance says everything I've tried failed. Now, I don't have a single objection to anything you just said there.
01:27:07
The problem is, when you put all of that at the end of a pack of absurdities, you are not adorning the gospel, you're blaspheming the gospel.
01:27:22
That doesn't redeem this mess. That's the problem.
01:27:32
You throw the truth in at the end after a bunch of ridiculousness, and then go, it's all good.
01:27:39
One last thing. Did you guys get it? Both Joseph Smith and Muhammad were delusional, paranoid, schizophrenics.
01:27:45
Both believed they could be good enough to satisfy whatever vengeful god they had invented. Both systems decided that every person had to follow their prescriptions, and that to elevate themselves they became a prophet.
01:27:56
Never follow a movement where the man is a spokesman for God higher than you.
01:28:04
I don't get the last part, but what he does there at the end, after having said all these good things, is he then throws some red meat to the folks in the audience, insults
01:28:21
Smith and Muhammad, makes sure that any thinking person has completely turned off their thoughts at that point.
01:28:26
Maybe he's trying to get the people to yell at him at the end. I don't know. There was no reason for that.
01:28:33
There was no reason for that kind of conclusion, especially given the horrific nature of what came before.
01:28:42
2005. Ergon Kanner. Here's the question for y 'all folks, and we're done with the program.
01:28:48
Has he changed? Has he changed? When we look at his tweet explosions, is that the same man that gave us this example of apologetic abject failure?
01:29:01
I don't see any evidence that he's changed at all. I really don't. Next time we need to get to William Lane Craig and his new
01:29:10
Reasonable Faith podcast, responding to James Anderson and some criticisms. And I've also got a
01:29:16
Kerrigan Skelly thing where he's talking with a Calvinist, and we'll try to get that too. And since this worked,
01:29:22
I imagine, I don't know, maybe my Mac will still be loading come Thursday. Let's hope not.