Wide Ranging Dividing Line

Webcasting around the world from the 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. Well, those numbers might actually be relevant today. Maybe in the last half of the program, last 45 minutes maybe, we'll possibly look at some phone calls.

We haven't done that in a while, and it's always a little bit scary to do this stuff at the beginning and then at the end, because then if you don't get calls, then you sit there and talk about other things.

But we'll see. So be thinking about it. If you have had some questions you want to get into, then we'll do that.

I wanted to jump right back into where we were at the end of the last program, because, like I said, there's some really cool stuff right here at the end of this presentation by Bashir Vania that's just standard apologetic stuff, not just for Muslims, but for all sorts of folks.

And getting an opportunity to address it is really, really good. So welcome to the program.

We're going to just dive right back into it. Last program, we're listening to Bashir Vania's presentation, and he quoted from the

Quran, and I was taken aback a little bit, because the version that he gave left me going, eh.

And I said, I'm going to have to look that up. So I did find just enough time to look at just a couple

Tafsir sources, specifically Tafsir al -Jalaliyon and that of Ibn Kathir.

And if you can't find it in one of those two, then it's probably a little questionable. And I—well, let's listen to what he said, and then we'll jump back into it.

Chapter 80, verse 11, verse 15, the Quran tells us. This Quran is a magic message of instruction.

It is written by the hands of scribes, honorable, pious, and just. Internal evidence, the

Quran says, to us, this Quran— Now, let me give you the translation I have of that, and you'll see it's very, very different.

No, indeed, these verses are a reminder. And Ibn Kathir records interpretation of that being just this particular ayah, not the entire

Quran, though it could be applied to that—this particular surah, I'm sorry. So, whoever wills may remember it.

It is recorded in honored sheets, exalted and purified. And carried by the hands of messenger angels, noble and dutiful.

Very, very different interpretation to the rendering that was just given there.

I did not have an opportunity. I was going to, ran out of time before the program. I had to get some audio stuff edited.

I just barely got it done in time. And I was going to look up QuranBrowser .com and see—maybe somebody out there listening in the audience, like, look that up in QuranBrowser .com

and see what translation he's reading. Because that was—that's very, very interesting.

The Quran was written during the lifetime of the Prophet, peace be upon him. And the scribes are described as honorable, pious, and just.

Except some of the earliest interpretations is that that's talking about angels. Not talking about the specific scribes who allegedly wrote down the

Quran during Muhammad's lifetime. Which goes against what you have in Sahih al -Bukhari.

Which—why did anyone come to Abu Bakr and say, wow, if any more of the Qura die after the battle of Yamama, if we have another battle like that, we're going to lose major portions of the

Quran. If it was already written down. There's just a—I know exactly why

Muslims want to come up with this idea. But it's pretty tough to substantiate it from their own sources.

Let us look at what the Bible says about itself. Jeremiah, chapter 8, verse 8. Now, if you aren't ready for Jeremiah 8 .8,

you're not ready to deal with Muslims yet. Let me just put it that way. If you're going, well,

Jeremiah 8 .8, what's that about? You need to know about the constant misuse of this particular text.

What we have in the next—in this example and then the example from Paul is the fact— and I know

I'm looking forward to meeting Bashir Vania and I'm looking forward to getting to know him and things like that.

I don't want to needlessly offend or anything like that. I'm not trying to be offensive here.

But what you're going to get in this type of argumentation is clearly from other sources.

This is not from someone sitting down and dealing with the text and reading through Paul and going,

Oh, this is—these are errors that have been responded to many, many times. And as a result,

I hope— My hope always is that when I respond to these things and I have reason to believe that these individuals are listening, that maybe this will result in their no longer presenting these bad arguments, because they are bad arguments.

These are bad misrepresentations of the text of Scripture, especially the Pauline one.

I can at least understand something in the Jeremiah text. But my hope is that they'll hear this and this will ultimately improve the level of discussion.

When I hear someone repeating these types of arguments when we've provided rather entire and complete refutations, that's normally not a good thing.

But anyways, you need to be prepared for Jeremiah 8.

Let me just give it to you before he even gets there. But I'm going to give it to you in context, because I've never heard any of my

Muslim friends actually give it a context.

This is in the context of—similarly to what you have in Isaiah 5 and places like that— talking about the depth of sin into which the people of God have fallen.

At least the people of Israel, anyways, I suppose we should say. And you'll notice verse 3.

Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains this evil family and all the places where I have driven them declares the

Lord of hosts. This is talking about the judgment that's going to be coming. Then verse 4. You shall say to them, thus says

Yahweh, when men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return?

Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit.

They refuse to return. He's talking about the fact that he sent all these prophets, he sent all these—

I mean, he's brought the people low, he's brought other nations against them, he's brought judgment, but they are in perpetual backsliding.

They hold fast to deceit. Very similar. I spoke this last evening, and as soon as we get

Sunday night's— I'm not sure where Sunday night's audio from my sermon went. It's not posted yet. But as soon as we get that posted,

I'm going to put this up. And including—no,

I actually need to post it. It was last Wednesday. Last evening at church,

I spoke on Isaiah chapter 5. And it's interesting, the parallel here, because in Isaiah chapter 5, it talks about men drawing iniquity with cords of falsehood.

It pictures them dragging their sin with them with ropes made out of lies.

They're just wrapped up in this, and they're drawing their sin with cords. They hold fast to deceit.

They refuse to return. Both prophets picturing the very same kind of situation when

God gives people over to their sinfulness.

I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly. No man relents of his evil, saying,

What have I done? Everyone turns to his own course like a horse plunging headlong into battle. What an incredible description of men who are absolutely in love with their sin.

God just lets the brakes off. I'm afraid I'm getting close to speaking about where we are in our own society today.

The brakes are off. Everyone turns to his own course. Remember day before yesterday?

We were talking about what—or did I mention this? No, this would have been yesterday morning.

Well, you tell me if I mention this. Because once I start preaching and doing other stuff, I don't remember where I was mentioning what.

But what Al Mohler was talking about in regards to the gender issue.

Did we talk about that? So remember on Tuesday we talked about the gender issue and the fluidity.

People just getting to choose, well, you know, today I feel like I'm male. Or maybe

I'm not any gender. I'm something else. This utter act of rebellion against God's created order.

And everyone turns to his own course. I'm just—I don't care about what

God has said. I don't care about what the reality is around me. I can just determine things on my own.

Like a horse plunging headlong into battle. What a picture of man heedless of the destruction he's going to bring upon himself.

This is all what we have here in Jeremiah chapter 8. Even the stork in the heavens knows her times.

And the turtle does swallow and crane keep the time of their coming. But my people know not the rules of Yahweh.

So the natural realm, brute beasts have at least a recognition of what has been built into them in instinct.

But man in his sin can be so given over to his sin that he goes against that which would be instinctually right.

And again, can't help but go, wow. When you talk about transgenderism, you talk about homosexuality.

You talk about the profaning of marriage. You talk about the killing of our infants. Wow, it's just—the brute beasts are not this stupid.

Is what Jeremiah is saying. Even the turtle dove, the swallow, the crane, keep the time of their coming.

He's talking about the migrational stuff. They know to follow nature.

My people don't. My people don't. My people know not the rules of Yahweh.

Then, finally, you get to verse 8. Believe it or not, this all has something to do with what Besher Vanya was saying.

How can you say we are wise and the law of Yahweh is with us?

But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame.

They shall be dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh.

So what wisdom is in them? Now, if they just read 8 and 9 together, they would see their argument isn't going to work.

Can you guess? I haven't even played what he said here. Can you guess what his argument is? Can you guess what his argument is?

I bet you can. Let me read it again. How can you say we are wise and the law of Yahweh is with us?

But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. There it is. See, the idea is...

Oh, see? See? Your own Bible says that the scribes have altered scripture.

And you're going, that's not what it says. I know, but that's what the Muslim thinks it says. That's what they've been told it says.

The lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. But it can't mean that because the very next verse says they have rejected the word of the

Lord. How can they know what the word of the Lord is if they... I mean, it doesn't make any sense. I know. But so much of the argumentation that is out there, it's just a little verse.

It's quoted. It's given a context. And they believe it. They don't look it up themselves. They don't examine it themselves. And sadly, many times, the

Christians that they're talking with don't correct them. Now, my recollection is, in this debate,

J. Smith did. J. Smith did address this. I don't have it outlined in Audio Notetaker, so I can just jump to it and play that for you.

But he did in this one. But certainly...

But what does it mean, then, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? Well, the idea, evidently, in the mindset of the person reading this is, okay, well, the scribes are responsible for the production of the

Scriptures, and therefore, they're altering the actual words of the Scriptures. Now, certainly,

Jeremiah experienced something similar to that. Remember the destruction of his prophecies? Remember that the king was so angry that he had the writings of Jeremiah torn up in front of him?

Which is one of the reasons, I think, anyways, that you have the difference in the streams of transmission of the text of Jeremiah between the

Masoretic text and the Septuagint text. Now that I've mentioned it, let me just once again warn you, warn you, warn you.

Don't fall for one of the most common apologetic traps. It happened in my debate with Bart Ehrman.

This guy gets up. Remember this? If you've not watched it. The fellow meant well, but as soon as he opened his mouth,

I was just like, oh, no, no, here we go. Oh, no, don't do this. And I've heard so many people do it.

He gets up and he says, well, you know, in light of what you were saying, how do you explain that the

Isaiah scroll in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know, up until the discovery, and I can just see

Ehrman going, go on, come on, toss that softball my direction.

I'm getting my bat ready. Up until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 900 years after Christ, we had the

Masoretic text of Isaiah, and then we find the Dead Sea Scrolls 100 years before Christ. It's the exact same text for a thousand years.

There had been no change. How do you explain that? Now that's factually true.

That's a factually true statement. But the problem is

Jeremiah is about one -third shorter between what was found in Dead Sea Scrolls and what's in the

Masoretic text. So you see, if you only got a part of it and you try to make a big point out of that, what is the point that that shows you?

The point that that shows you is that a text does not have to be changed over a millennium of handwritten transcription.

It does not have to be changed because the Isaiah Scroll shows that. But you need to be aware of the fact that there are other textual traditions in the

Old Testament. And the Greek Septuagint represents one stream, the

Masoretic another, and the Dead Sea Scrolls has a mixture of these. And then you've got others, even with the

Targums and stuff like that. Don't have time to get into that today. But anyways. So just be careful.

I think that's what's behind why there is a rather radically different textual tradition in Jeremiah, because Jeremiah himself discusses the fact that his writings were destroyed at the king's command.

Because he was saying, look, you need to submit to these, you know, the 70 years God has...

And they're like, no, no, no. And so he's tossed in the pit and his writings are destroyed, etc.,

etc., etc. So what is it that the lying pen of scribes are doing? Are they somehow changing the actual word of the

Lord? Or are these scribes those who are writing down the false prophecies?

I mean, remember, Jeremiah records this. He gives us the exact names of people who were false prophets and who were prophesying peace.

And you don't have to submit to the Babylonians, etc.

He gives names of these individuals. But is there any hint in Jeremiah himself that he's going, oh,

Lord, the very words that you've given to me have been altered by the scribes, and now no one knows.

No, there's nothing like that at all. There's not even a hint that they've been going back and, oh, they're changing.

What were they changing? They couldn't just be changing Jeremiah's words. So who were they changing?

What text were they changing? No, the very next verse itself says,

Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh, so what wisdom is in them?

There's the interpretive key, because notice what you have in verse 8.

You have, how can you say we are wise?

And then at the end of verse 9, using the exact same

Hebrew word, Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh, so what wisdom is in them?

They're lying because they've rejected the word of Yahweh. They haven't believed it while claiming to be wise.

There's nothing here about changing things, nothing here about corrupting scriptures. That is not what

Jeremiah is talking about. So, we just went through the text. Now, we go back to the comments and hear what, well, we sort of preemptively refuted this, but that's...

Let us look at what the Bible says about itself. Jeremiah, chapter 8, verse 8. Jeremiah bewails the fact, he says,

How can you say we are wise, for we have the law of the Lord, when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?

So we have a problem here. Simply saying we have a problem here is not actually demonstrating that there is a problem here.

Assertion and proof, not the same thing. Assertion requires exegesis.

Assertion requires actually working with the text, going to a much deeper level than what is normally offered in these particular encounters.

And so, I'm hoping that we'll get something deeper than that. Let us look at the New Testament. Now, here we go.

Here we go. Now, folks, again, if you are a believer, listen to this argument and then answer it before I do.

You should... If you've been a Christian for more than just a few years, you go into a good Bible -believing church, you're studying the

Word of God, this should be straightforward. It really should be. This should not be a difficult argument to respond to.

But it may be new to you. And sometimes, just because something's new, it throws you a curve.

That's why we do these things. That's why I say to you, hang in there with me, listen to this stuff, because some of you go,

I don't know, I don't want to go through it. But once you've heard an argument refuted, then what are you going to be prepared to do the next time you hear it?

Hopefully, you'll be prepared to do it as well. So here you go. Oops, I clicked on the wrong window.

Christians insist every word, every letter inspired by God. First Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 25,

Paul tells us, now about virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my own opinion.

No command of the Lord, from the Lord, his own opinion. First Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 40, he says, in my judgment, she's happy if she stays, and I think that I too have the

Spirit of God. So, Paul is not claiming any inspiration. He's being quite upfront. He's giving his own opinion, his own judgment.

And he's not too sure whether he has the Spirit of God or not. And in fact, things get so bad, that if you look at 2

Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 3, some of the early church members accuse Paul of being an imposter.

Now, let's start with that first one. Because, yeah, I do know, we have dealt with this over the years, a number of times, if you've listened.

But, how do you respond to that argument? Paul says, now concerning virgins,

I have no command of the Lord. And then you go down to the bottom, but in my opinion, she is happier if she remains as she is, and I think that I also have the

Spirit of God. So, is that Paul saying, none of this is inspired, and I'm not even sure

I have the Spirit of God? That's what Bashir is saying. Is that what the

Apostle Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians, chapter 7? Well, the answer, of course, is no.

So, what has Bashir missed here? Well, it's pretty straightforward, but, again, it requires you to have some context.

Have some context. You go back to chapter 7, verse 10.

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband.

But if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband, and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

Now, using Bashir's thinking here, Paul is claiming inspiration for this, right?

Because it says, not I, but the Lord. So, to be giving inspired instruction, you have to say, the

Lord says this, not I, then here he is claiming inspiration, right? But is that what

Paul is even talking about? No, it's not. What do we have here? Well, what we have here is something that's really, really interesting, actually.

And it demonstrates that so much of the

Islamic argument against, where they buy into the most wild -eyed, liberal theories about the construction of the

New Testament, the writing of the New Testament over time, is just completely off base.

What's actually going on here? Well, just think about it for a moment.

Did Jesus say the wife should not leave her husband? Yeah. That's part of the Jesus tradition.

That's part of the Gospels. That's part of Jesus' teaching. That's Matthew chapter 19. So all

Paul's doing here is saying, I know what Jesus taught. I've been instructed.

I'm aware of the oral transmission of the Jesus tradition, and the fact that Paul gets it right exactly on the nose all the way through this before the

Gospels are even written tells you something, doesn't it? Because when he says, but to the rest

I say not the Lord, verse 12, that if any brother has a wife who's an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.

Jesus didn't talk about that, did he? No, he didn't.

So all Paul is saying is, here's what Jesus taught in the Gospel. But you've asked questions that go beyond what

Jesus talked about in the Gospel. And so I, as an apostle to the Lord, I'm going to tell you what to do.

No denial of inspiration, just a clear distinction on Paul's part between what was in the

Gospel tradition. And remember, this is before the writing of the Gospels. A clear distinction of what's in the

Gospel tradition and what is not. Now, I hope you're hearing that. First of all, it clearly explains the text, doesn't it?

Paul's not in any way, shape, or form denying inspiration or saying this is just my opinion.

You can take it or leave it. This isn't inspired. No, what he's doing is he's differentiating between his words and the

Lord's words. Now, this is one of the good arguments that Mike Licona has picked up on and he used it in his debate with Yusuf Ismail.

We may get to that one, I don't know. But what he points out is, you know, there's something else you should think about.

First of all, this tells us that the Gospel tradition that is written down for us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John predates them.

It was a part of the earliest experience of the

Christian community that you have the very teachings of Jesus that end up in writing decades later.

And Paul knows what that teaching is. And you know what? So do the Corinthians. So, so much for the, oh, people decades later just made all this up and stuffed these words into Jesus' mouth theory.

Thank you very much for pointing this out to us. But there's something else.

There's something else you should really see here. And that is, Paul, by clearly differentiating between what he's saying and Jesus is saying, only increases our confidence that we know that when

Jesus spoke, when Jesus gave us instruction in the Gospels, and when

Paul gives us, Paul's not making stuff up. In other words, if Paul had wanted to have more authority to his words, why didn't he say, and the

Lord said, but he didn't. He couldn't, because these things were already known.

So this takes us back. This takes us back to Jesus and the eyewitnesses, you know, Balcombe's work. This takes us back to a reality that no one could come along.

And this is one of the big, this is one of the big theories of liberals and one of the big theories of the Muslims that, you know, these people were just making stuff up right and left.

No, they weren't. They couldn't have. The eyewitnesses are still there. If Paul had come along and said, and then

Jesus said this, and he introduces something new that's not a part of the Gospel tradition, then the eyewitnesses are going, when did he say that,

Paul? So he doesn't do that. He says, I, not the

Lord. He distinguishes himself when he starts talking about things that it's not a part of the

Jesus tradition. So when he says,

I think I have the spirit of the Lord, he's not in any way, shape, or form saying, oh, I'm really not sure.

I just, I think. I don't know. No, what he's saying is, you need to recognize the commandments that I'm giving to you come from the spirit of God.

Come from the spirit of God. Now, Christians view, Christians view the method by which we got the

New Testament very differently than Muslims view the Quran. We don't believe the Apostle Paul was an

MP3 recorder. We don't believe some angel came along and said, now, Paul, write down these words.

That's a very mechanical, and no offense intended, but I think very simplistic understanding of inspiration.

And yet, that's what you've got in the Islamic concept of the

Quran coming down on Laylat al -Qadr, being given by the angel, being given to Angel Jibril, and then he piecemeals it out over 22 years to Muhammad as he needs it, including, even amazingly, when he falls head over heels for Zaynab bin

Josh, the section that basically gets rid of adoption in Islam and destroys lives.

Allegedly, that was all written in Arabic on plates in heaven before there was an

Arabic. But we don't have that understanding.

That's not how inspiration takes place. So there is a contrast there. And that's what many

Muslims struggle with, is that they're like, well, how can this be the word of God when he's saying, I'm not, this is not the

Lord, but I, and how can Paul say to Timothy, bring the cloaks and the parchment, and because they don't understand that God can use men in their context in exactly the way that he wants to, to give us the word exactly in the way he wants us to have the word, so that it might speak across cultural barriers and across everything else.

And actually, if people want to start calling in, sorry, I just saw,

I saw that, and then I was in the middle of thoughts, so I didn't know, but probably about a quarter after, we'll take a break, and then if there's calls, we'll take calls.

So that's cool. So if any of you want to get in line, then that's fine.

877 -753 -3341, about 15 minutes from now, we'll take a break, and then we'll start taking phone calls. So whoever just called, if you want to call back, don't trust that man behind the glass or anything like that.

He doesn't know what I'm going to be doing, because nobody knows what I'm going to be doing. This is live webcasting, friends, and that's just the way it is.

Okay, I hope that was clear. I hope that was clear. And then he said right toward the end, there were people who questioned the apostleship of Paul.

Well, there certainly were. And again, the Muslim finds that troubling, because they have a text that has been completely sterilized.

What do I mean by that? Well, how many times do I point out to you that, for example, one of the more fascinating artifacts of the

Quran is the fact that the Quran still records the coming of Nathan to David, but it has cleaned up David's act, so there's no reason for Nathan to come to him.

There isn't any sin with Bathsheba. There isn't any murder of Uriah. But Nathan still comes. For what reason, we don't know, because you see, the

Quran gives such clear evidence of being secondary. It's not a primary revelation.

It is one man's consideration of the oral stories he's heard.

He doesn't know what is actually in or out of the canon of the Bible. He doesn't really know what's in the

Torah or the Injil. He's just heard these things. He's heard stories. He tries to interact with these things, and he does so by cleaning up the prophets.

David would never do that bad stuff. No, no, no, no, no. And Solomon, no, no, no, no. He'd never.

No, no, no, no, no. We've got to clean these prophets up. And so the

Quran would… Well, you know, it's interesting to me. While the former people have been cleaned up,

Muhammad sort of isn't. In fact, it's interesting.

Why would it be an argument against the New Testament? Just going back to Bashir's specific statements. Why would it be an argument against the

New Testament that there were people who opposed Paul's apostleship when the Quran is very clear that there were people that opposed

Muhammad's as well? I mean, the

Quran is very clear that over and over and over again, people are saying, ah, this Quran is just a bunch of stuff from the ancients.

He's borrowing from previous people. Now, the Quran says it's not true. But the reality is it is true.

When you can go back and demonstrate the very sources from which Muhammad was taking some of his stories.

The story of the Queen of Sheba, we can demonstrate that preexisted the Quran. The story of Jesus speaking from the cradle, that preexisted the

Quran. The very interesting story, I've got a bunch of them in whatever Christians use to know about the Quran, but a very interesting one about the mountain hovering over the people.

Again, you can find the sources that preexisted the writing of the Quran. And of course,

Islamic apologists are always trying to argue that anything you can find a parallel to is actually post -Quranic.

I can understand that with one or two of them, but they have to do that with a dozen of them.

And after a while, it just becomes special pleading. It just becomes special pleading. It really does.

So I do find that rather interesting. They want to know if God is really speaking through him.

And that is a serious charge. Because out of the 27 books of the New Testament, Paul's letters are in the majority.

Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, those are the two eschatological letters.

Then 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, the three pastoral letters of Philemon. Some scholars even throw in the book of Hebrews.

So, do the math. Well, you know what? I thank Bashir for recognizing, and not just automatically saying that all

Christians believe that Paul wrote Hebrews. I appreciate that. That was an interesting exchange I had with someone in Dublin during the

Q &A section at Trinity College Dublin, where they just assumed that Paul wrote

Hebrews. And I'm like, well, why are you assuming that? It has a very, very, very, very different style to the rest of the

Pauline corpus. Now, whoever wrote Hebrews knew Paul. No question. Whoever wrote

Hebrews may have been actually writing in Greek a sermon that Paul delivered in Aramaic for the

Hebrews. I think that's a really cool theory, personally. Because the grammar and syntax of Hebrews is so much like Luke that I think a really good theory there is that this is

Luke's Greek transcription of an Aramaic or Hebrew sermon on Paul's part.

That would explain pretty much everything. Really would. That would explain the deep Pauline themes that you can trace through the rest of his work.

And yet, then the grammar and syntax. It would explain all of it. So that's sort of what

I lean toward, personally. Either that or Apollos, which would sort of have the same way of answering things, personally.

But anyways. Again, the Gospels. Luke 1 -3 admits he is not receiving inspiration from God.

He is a historian, and he is not writing for the glory of God, but for somebody known as Theophilus. So since Luke is recording something for Theophilus, that means you're not doing it for the glory of God.

Well, there's an odd way of looking at things. But once again, it is very, very common, and you need to be aware of this, that Muslims find the prologue of Luke troubling.

Because, again, they have a non -Christian understanding of inspiration.

A non -Christian understanding of the mechanism whereby Scripture comes into our hands in the first place.

And as much as many have undertaken to compile and count all the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent

Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. Now, you and I listen to that and go, wow, that's important, that's deep.

I mean, here Luke is saying that he's talked to the eyewitnesses, he has direct access to that initial oral tradition, the servants of the word are these eyewitnesses, and that this accounting that he is giving is so important and so good that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

It's not, you know, well, I'm going to do my best here for you, bud, but I may have messed up a few times.

That's not the prologue of Luke. And we're glad that he's done his homework, that he's done research, that he's even utilized written sources.

That's a good thing. I mean, and I would think, honestly, if my

Muslim friends were being fair, I mean, these folks all the time come after the

New Testament books and come after us, well, you don't have an Isnod chain on that, you don't know anything, you know, if you've got any anonymous books or if you don't have a chain, this person said this person said this person said this person, and yet here

Luke finally says, well, actually, here's my sources, and here's where I'm getting this stuff from, and well, that's bad, too.

You know, you're in trouble if you do, and you're in trouble if you don't. It seems to me,

I would think they would actually go, you know what, I'm actually glad that Luke did that homework and that he carefully examined these things.

But once again, from their mindset, it's either an angel gives this to you from heaven, or it's not inspired.

They cannot comprehend the idea that the Spirit of God can utilize the minds of man and the language of man.

And the funny thing is, given the concept of Qadr, you would think that they would actually have a basis for understanding this, but they just don't make the connection.

They just don't go that in -depth on it. Let us continue. Chapter 16, verse 103, the

Qur 'an. The Qur 'an says, the Qur 'an is Arabic, pure, and clear. You understand that? But then there's the problem of all the non -Arabic loan words that Jeffries and others have pointed out.

There's all sorts of words in the Qur 'an that are not actually Arabic. They come from other languages.

And so, what do you do with that? How do you handle that?

How do you respond to that? Now, I don't buy into this stuff that actually was originally in Syriac or something along those lines.

There are some wild theories out there. There really are. But at the same time, it's very, very clear that the actual language of the

Qur 'an came into existence at a point in time. You can see the influences of other languages and movements of peoples and so on and so forth in the peninsula, and you can sort of say, ah, this clearly is the type of language that was being used at this time.

It's not some eternal, never -been -changed Arabic stuff up in heaven somewhere.

The original Qur 'an, Arabic. Let us take a contrast,

New Testament. The Book of Acts, chapter 26, verse 14, Jesus supposedly in a vision speaks to Paul in the

Hebrew language. Acts 21, verse 40, Paul speaks to people in the Hebrew language. Matthew 27, verse 46,

Jesus speaks Aramaic. And throughout the Gospels, he speaks in Aramaic.

Or at least some verses, and so forth. And, of course, the

Gospel writers then translate certain phrases. I mean, that's why you know, you know, when Mark says, which being interpreted means child arise or something like that, no question about it.

But here again, the objection from the Muslim is, we need to have the word, the

New Testament cannot, let me put it in the boldest way. If the

New Testament is going to be the word of God, then it has to be only in the original language of what people were saying.

God can't look into the future and know that the best way to transmit his word would be in Koine Greek rather than Aramaic.

That's what's being said. I mean, you and I know, historically, that for the

Gospel to function the way that it functioned in that first century, to allow the Gospel to go all across the

Roman world, would be for it to be in what language? Koine Greek. That's going to allow the message to transcend all these dialects that are all over the place.

And, you know, God also happens to know what's going to happen in A .D. 70. Okay? He knows what's going to happen, and he knows that Jerusalem is going to be brought down to rubble, and, therefore, the idea of writing this down in a language that soon is going to be representative of a very, very small group of people, that's not his intention.

His intention is for the Gospel to go across the entire world. But, you see, again, by looking backwards, anachronistically, at the idea, at the whole subject, that's why

Bashir doesn't understand what we've got here. Yet, the Gospel that we have in our hands today is in Greek, not in Hebrew or Aramaic.

And Mark's, which is the earliest Gospel, is in Koine Greek, the simple vernacular. Luke and Matthew's is in sophisticated

Greek. The Gospel, according to John, philosophical Greek. Uh, not quite.

Not quite. There, certainly,

Luke's style, Luke's perspective, his grammar, his syntax, is much more classical than Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

Matthew, Mark, or John. No question about it. Philosophical Greek? No. John...

Certainly, when you read John and Mark in the original language, you can sense a difference between them, surely.

I mean, if you spend enough time with any particular writer, you really start getting a sense of the cadence and how they do things.

But the idea that Mark is in Koine and John is in philosophical, no, that's just not the case.

You can tell the difference between them, but it's all Greek that would be understandable across the

Roman Empire at the time it was written. Luke's is much more educated in the sense of classical in form, but everyone could have understood it.

It's hard to translate. No doubts about that. Anyways, all right, we got through a little bit there, but I did spend a lot of time on Jeremiah 8 because, again, especially the stuff about, well, see,

Paul was not saying he was inspired and all the rest of that kind of stuff. Very, very common argumentation.

And you need to know how to respond to these things because in the vast majority of instances, the person presenting to you has actually never read those texts themselves.

They didn't get it from actually studying the text.

They've gotten it from some secondary source, and that is a bit of a problem. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

We're going to take a break and come back with your phone calls right after this. Pulpit Crimes The criminal mishandling of God's Word may be

James White's most provocative book yet. White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.

Based firmly upon the bedrock of Scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see. The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from His Word.

What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows. Prostitution, using the

Gospel for financial gain. Pandering to pluralism. Cowardice under fire.

Felonious eisegesis. Entertainment without a license. And cross -dressing, ignoring

God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town? Get Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at www .aomen

.org The history of the

Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the Reformation, the

Church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book,

The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key

Scripture texts on this theme. Justification is the heart of the Gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,

James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.

Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.

This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.

The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.

Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White in his book,

The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt

Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author

James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .AOMN

.org. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.

We're taking your phone calls for the next, oh, 40 minutes or so on the program.

And we've got a bunch of folks lined up and ready to go. Let's talk with James in Seattle.

Hi, James. Hey, how are you doing? Doing good. Can you hear me okay? Yes, sir. So, can

I share a quick story to preface my question? I suppose, as quick. So, if you remember,

I was getting through some Hadith by listening to Arabic instrumental music in the background.

Yes. Well, so, after that, and after reading your book, which was fantastic, by the way,

I started actually getting to meet some Muslims up here in Seattle, and even got invited to a wedding.

So, not only did reading the Hadith help me prepare to interact well,

I'd listen to the music, and I recommend a ton of the songs they played. Yeah, they don't have quite as wide a selection as we do, given the

Islamic view of music in many quarters. Yeah, this wasn't a salafi wedding.

Otherwise, it would have been. Oh, yeah. They're pretty, yeah. But anyway, so, I was just wondering, as far as,

I wanted to ask you about presuppositional polyethics in Islam, whereas I found it useful to be able to reference the

Quran as far as things like Surah 550 -152, where it talks about believers making a distinction between God and His books and His messages, saying, we disbelieve some of them, but believe in others, seeking to choose a path between faith and disbelief.

Surely, they're among the disbelievers. Okay, you lost me there, though.

There is no Surah 550. It ends at 117. Sorry, Surah 4150.

Oh, okay, all right, okay. So where it talks about people believing in some of God's messages and not others, and them being considered disbelievers, seeking to find a way between faith and disbelief, and I like to quote that, but I also want to get your opinion on presuppositional in Islam.

I don't want to base my argument off an Islamic foundation, I want to base my argument off a biblical one.

And do you have good advice on navigating how we use the Quran that way, not granting it more authority than it deserves?

Well, I've addressed this before, and the last time I made comments on this,

I think an entire article appeared on the net, actually addressing how some people would understand the presentation of a transcendental argument to Muslims.

As I've said, I struggle some with how the specific utilization of a transcendental argument is applicable to especially a monotheistic religion with a

God who is the creator of all things. And hence, I think it is more of the issue of demonstrating the incoherence of the system itself, and the fact that the

God of Islam, because of Tawhid and the

Unitarian aspects of God's being, cannot answer the questions of the one and the many, there's all sorts of stuff like that.

In fact, in fact, in fact, in fact, I don't have it in here. You might find very interesting there is the dialogue that is included by K.

Scott Oliphant in his new book, Covenantal Apologetics. I found it very, very interesting.

I didn't get a chance to talk with him about it when I interviewed him on the Janet Mefford Show last week. We just didn't have the time to.

But I would like to have talked to him about it because it would really fit what you're talking about.

It really would give you an example of a somewhat transcendental presuppositional approach, but it requires not only a pretty specialized knowledge on your part, but on the

Muslims' part, of some fairly advanced theological knowledge. To be perfectly honest with you,

I don't know I've ever met a Muslim who would have known what is presented in that dialogue.

Let's just take it that direction. So that might be something for you to take.

Have you gotten that book yet? Sorry, which book? K. Scott Oliphant's new book,

Covenantal Apologetics. No, I haven't read that yet. Okay. I would recommend that to you.

It's probably the most, right now, the big book on presuppositional, or as he puts it, covenantal apologetics.

He doesn't like the phrase presuppositionalism, so he uses covenantal apologetics.

But he's certainly one of the most popular interpreters of Van Til right now. So he has an entire chapter on Islam that I would direct you to if you really want to see how that might be applied in that context.

But I understand what you're saying in the sense that I do want to maintain the balance that I am presenting the

Scriptures as the Word of God and not the Koran. Normally I do that by making sure,

I mean I think your approach from Surah 4 is good. And obviously

I really emphasize Surah 5. And it's, you know, on the last program

I went through Surah 3, and it's assertion that the Torah and the Injil are Netzal, it's sent down.

And so I try to keep that as my foundation, and I'm always asking questions as to why the Koran does not seem to understand what is found in those revelations which truly are divine in their origin.

Okay? Excellent. Can I ask one more question? I got a lot of people online.

Got a lot of people online. We'll have to hold that one for next time. Okay. Thanks, James. Thanks for taking that one.

All right. Thank you. Bye. All right. Let's talk with Kyle in Canada.

Hi, Kyle. Hi, James. How's it going today? Doing good. I enjoyed your time in the

Janet Mefford show, by the way. That was a lot of work, let me tell you. Yeah. Just recommend your listeners listen to that.

It was very helpful. My question is on, and I hope I'm relaying this, and it's an objection to,

I think I got this from an atheist website somewhere, but it's an objection to the

Trinity and penal substitutionary atonement, and it relates to, and maybe you can expound on what exactly took place on the cross.

There's a statement here from Dr. MacArthur. It says physical death could not have brought redemption apart from his spiritual death, whereby he was separated from the

Father, Matthew 27, 46. And so I just want to know, did

Jesus die spiritually on the cross? And when he took on the sin of the world, because of Habakkuk 113, which says,

Thou art of pure eyes, and to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity, would there of necessity be a division in the two natures of Christ?

Would the divine nature have not been able to, or would have been appalled by, the human nature taking on sin?

I don't know if you kind of get the gist of where the argument or the objective is going. Well, I guess.

Sorry. Yeah, well, very frequently my Muslim friends will raise

Matthew 27, 46, and I address, I actually like when they do.

It came up in both debates in Dublin back in February and really allowed me to preach the gospel in response to both.

For those who are not familiar with Matthew 27, 46, about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Ila, ila, lama sabachthani.

That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In the Forgotten Trinity, I don't remember the footnote, but there is a fairly lengthy footnote, endnote,

I guess, technically is the term we should use, where I address what

I think is a very common misconception held by many, many, many, many people, including many, many, many well -known people, but that I feel is unbiblical, and that is that there was some kind of a disruption in the

Godhead, some kind of a, well, it's even in beautiful hymns, I was listening to one of those beautiful hymns, what is it,

God Turns His Face Away, what's that particular hymn? I don't remember.

It's one of the, yeah, but it says, you know, God Turns His Face Away. Again, this is almost, it's similar to Father Forgive Them Till You Know What They Do, which is a textual variant, and yet 99 .99

% of the people don't know it's a textual variant, and therefore it has sort of taken on a life of its own, and you create your own theology out of it and all the rest of this type of stuff, and in the same way, this is sort of a tradition that has just been taught so many times that no one ever really thinks it through, and I mean,

I certainly heard it taught this way for years and years and years, but the reality is that if we apply the same standard of exegesis that we always should apply, everyone should, the first thought across everyone's mind should be,

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani is a quotation of Psalm 22 -1. Yeah, how deep the Father's love for us.

Thank you, someone in the channel identified for it. And, you know, beautiful, beautiful song, but that line just makes me go, eh.

The first thing we should recognize is that Jesus is quoting an Old Testament passage, and anywhere else, anywhere else in the

Biblical narrative, that would be the first thing we'd be looking at. We'd be looking at the context, we'd be going, okay, why is

Jesus quoting this? What's the background of this? This is the one place we don't do that. This is one place where we ignore that, we don't care that this is from Psalm 22 -1, and what we do is we go, well, there must be this, at the very point of Jesus' ultimate obedience to the

Father, there's a division in the Godhead, and the Father turns His back because He can't look upon sin as if God's not looking upon this entire sinful world in the first place.

Obviously, that text has something other to do than, well, God has to turn away from anything that's sinful.

No, it says that what is sinful will not dwell with Him. In other words, there needs to be redemption, there needs to be purification, etc.,

etc., etc., but the whole idea that, well, this is when Jesus becomes sin and therefore there's a disruption in the

Godhead, no, this is the point, yes, Jesus does become sin, He becomes sacrifice, He's doing exactly what the

Father said to do, and the very next words out of His mouth are in the second person, Father, into Your hands

I commit my spirit. There is no sense of disruption there any longer, and I don't think it was there in the first place.

The point is Psalm 22 -1 is a Messianic prophecy, and if you read

Psalm 22, how does it end? It ends with the vindication of that suffering servant, and by quoting those first few lines,

Jesus is bringing to the minds of... And every Jew who heard it would know it.

It's like quoting the first few words of Amazing Grace or It is well with my soul or whatever else.

I don't need to sing the whole song to bring the entirety of its message to mind.

Neither could Jesus do so, or neither did Jesus need to do so. And so I think, unfortunately, that we've really...

If there was something about the Father being separated from the

Son, why isn't that in Hebrews? Why isn't that anywhere else? Why isn't that expanded upon, explained, exegeted?

Why isn't that a part of the in -depth discussions of atonement and everything else that we find in Hebrews? It's not.

And I don't think that we should come up with that idea. I think we should look at it as a quotation,

Psalm 22, and see it as Jesus identifying himself as that suffering one who will be vindicated.

And to go beyond that and to do all the rest of that stuff, I don't buy it, and I haven't bought it for a long time.

Okay. And so, just specifically, when Jesus died, was it a physical and a spiritual death, or was it just merely a physical death, if that makes sense?

Like, Adam died spiritually first before he died physically, right?

If that makes sense. Well, yes. Yes, Adam did. But Jesus gives his life as there is only one life to give.

And I think we get into a problem. In fact, this was going on in our chat channel this morning when we start trying to parse things out and start dividing the

God -man up in ways that the Scripture does not. Given that, for example,

Paul can speak of the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. They would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Paul's not dividing

Jesus up and saying, Oh, well, they just crucified his physical nature and not his spiritual nature.

No. I think Westerners especially are so mechanically inclined and sort of legally inclined that we divide stuff up in that way that I don't think is an appropriate thing.

There was one life to be given. The sinless Son of God, who was the

God -man, fully God and fully man, gave his life. Now, death is not the cessation of existence.

But there was a life of that one person with two natures, and that's the life that was given.

We try to go, Well, what really died? How does that deal with natures and all the rest of that stuff?

The Bible doesn't get into it. And to try to even get into it is to start utilizing categories that the

Scriptures aren't even trying to get to in the first place. It is the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the

God -man, that was given voluntarily upon the cross. And it's interesting that Jesus determined when that was going to happen, not anybody else.

Because as he says in John, No one takes my life from me. I give it in my own accord. And notice that even in Mark, in very early tradition, you have

Pilate saying, Oh, he's already dead? Because many people could survive crucifixion for a number of days.

But Jesus breathes his last. He's the one who gives his life.

And to try to parse out, Well, could we put a mass spectrometer on this and figure out exactly?

No, that's not even the intention of the text to even go there.

The intention of the text is to say that the life that was given was the perfect life of the

God -man, given in substitution for his people, and the Father accepts that as a sufficient payment for all those that are united with him.

And to try to go beyond that, I think, is to miss the point of the text.

Okay, great. Thanks very much. Is that helpful? That's very helpful, yes. Okay, thanks, Kyle. Thanks.

Now, were you just trying to ride that because of the feedback? I was sitting here going, What are you doing?

Either you're extremely interested in what I'm saying, or something's going on. I don't know which.

877 -753 -3340. We have two folks online, and hopefully we'll be able to get through them, maybe sneak a third person in.

It all depends on how much I talk. And I've been talking a lot in the first two. So we'll see. Let's talk with Adam.

Hi, Adam. Hi, Dr. White. I wanted to call because I've actually studied

Old Testament sexual criticism, taken a class in it, and I wanted to comment on the whole

Jeremiah issue and Qumran. Whenever I hear that argument, it concerns me, because there's a lot of information.

What is said is true, but unfortunately it's what's not said that is problematic.

For example, in the Isaiah scroll, we have a complete copy of Isaiah.

Right. In Jeremiah, we do not. What we have are four fragments, four

Q Jeremiah, A, B, C, and D. And the only way we know the recension is by looking at them and saying, okay, well, is this typical of the

Septuagint, or is this typical of the Masoretic text? And the orders of the chapters as well, right?

Right, right. If you have a chapter order, that plays in. And my understanding is that the

Jeremiah scrolls generally represent the tradition that is represented in the

Septuagint more so than the Masoretic. But because they are fragmentary,

I mean, there's other possibilities. It's not as simple as just, well, this is all we've got, but clearly you can see the primitive nature of the line of transmission that underlies the

Septuagint rendering of Jeremiah in that time period, right? Well, actually, the interesting thing is, the evidence is actually divided up pretty evenly.

Two fragments are from the Septuagint tradition, and two fragments are from the

Masoretic tradition. Well, that's very, very interesting, but very expected,

I would think. Because both are very clearly early, and they coexisted with each other.

Exactly, and that's the problem. In fact, I had this quotation from Cove here. It's rather long since we were going, but if anyone's interested in this,

Emanuel told the textbook that we had textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, page 178. He goes into this whole notion of how these things probably became authoritative at different times, and so therefore the one couldn't eradicate the other.

But the reality with Jeremiah, the difficulty of his textual criticism, is here you have two different texts in existence as far back as we can go, so which one do you take?

How do you deal with that? And it's as much a literary issue, because people back in the ancient

Near East did not necessarily write a book from the start to the end, and sometimes would go back and ask. Well, and Jeremiah even mentions that.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And it makes Jeremiah a very frustrating thing. It is.

I do think that these facts need to be brought up, because it's a grossly simplistic comparison to compare the great

Isaiah school with a modern Masoretic text, but in Jeremiah, and it's our earliest tradition where we already have a mess, and we have a mess as it is today, the two just really aren't parallel.

What it shows is that in that time, both a good, solid text can be passed on, and a mess can be passed on.

Well, yeah, and we have to be a little bit careful in— which one are you identifying as the mess?

Jeremiah, because of the difference— Oh, okay, you're talking about Isaiah -Jeremiah. I thought you were—the way you said it, it almost sounded like you were comparing the

Septuagint line with the Masoretic line. Oh, no, no, no. But Adam, what it also demonstrates— and we're losing some folks right now at the end of the program going quite into this level of discussion, though I'm appreciating it and enjoying it— but what

I think we can bring out of this that most people will appreciate is the fact that we know of the existence of those two traditions, and why is that relevant apologetically?

Well, if the Islamic interpretation of Jeremiah 8 was true, or the conspiracy theories, why didn't somebody fix it?

If you're just willy -nilly changing stuff, don't you think they would have eventually come along and come up with just one text?

But they didn't. And the fact that we can tell that is very, very important, and you understand, and I understand, and very, very important to being able to have confidence that those traditions still carry for us something that goes back to the original, rather than just something that was willy -nilly created at some later period of time and has no historical grounding at all.

Well, and that's the problem. You know, I remember my professor, Dr. McGarry, if he's listening, he'll probably laugh at this.

He said, if you want to work in Old Testament sexual criticism, you've got to like to work in a mess. Well, that's true. But how else could it be, given that we're talking about one of the most ancient documents that we could possibly be examining?

Yeah, but that's why I also resist. I mean, a lot of these ecclesiastical textbooks that I've had interaction with, they want to just say, well, the

Church has spoken, this is it. And that concerns me, especially because of what you said. You know, why wouldn't someone just make it a standard?

You know, I want to know what the hyperarchetypes are. I don't want to know what, you know, the final, what people at Westminster, the

Westminster Assembly said about this, because, you know, they were fallible human beings. Well, you know, you just, you just,

I'm sitting here, Rich can see I'm racking my brain, there was just last week in my sermon prep, out of Hebrews, Oh, oh, it was the

Mata Mitte issue in the

Septuagint rendering in the head of the bed, or the bed or leaning on staff in Hebrews chapter 11.

And again, I'm not trying to lose folks. I'm just, I'm just enjoying, I'm enjoying Adam's call.

What you reminded me of was, I don't know if you ever looked at this, but I think you'd find it fascinating given your background.

But one of my commentaries related John Owen's attempt to combine bed and staff into a singular understanding of what

Joseph did. I'm talking about the text in, for those who are not familiar, I'm talking about in Hebrews chapter 11 where it says he worshipped upon his staff.

And the Old Testament Masoretic reading is he worshipped upon his bed. And because Owen came from that perspective where the

Masoretic text had in essence been given almost a canonical status over anything else, he had to somehow try to work them together in a way that was extremely artificial.

I mean, it just, it's just almost painful to see the attempt to do it. And what it points out is exactly what you were just talking about, and that is, we have to be careful of some of the traditions that we get passed down to us.

You know, we have to examine even the traditions of people that we have tremendous respect for. And I have tremendous respect for John Owen, obviously.

I'll give you another one too, Habakkuk 1 .5. Look, among the nations is what the

Masoretic texts have, but if you look at how it's quoted in Acts 13 .41, it says, look,

O scoffers, and the difference is just simply a confusion of a yod and a dalet.

You know, there just simply is no way to reconcile it to scoffers or among the nations.

They're two totally different reasons. Well, same thing in Hebrews 8. I was a husband, even though I was a husband of them,

I did not care for them. You know, there's a number of these things.

We can't ignore them. They won't go away. We have to recognize they're there. But Adam, we have now completely destroyed their entire audience that I had before you called.

Thank you very much. Okay. All right. You're welcome, Shane. Thanks for the call, Adam. I appreciate it.

No problem. Thank you. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. I actually did enjoy that a lot. I hope, you know. Hey, I get to have a few calls

I enjoy too. So, you know, I'm sorry if... Let's talk with Daniel down in Tucson.

Hello, Dr. White. Hi. My question is about the precipitate adultery and the long ending of Mark. I've recently been in some discussions, and people want to base their theological points on those texts.

And when I try to explain to them that they probably don't want to do that, they write me off. And specifically, I want to ask, how do

I explain that to someone who doesn't have really any knowledge of textual criticism or church history?

Daniel, unfortunately, what it requires you to do is to become a patient, clear, and succinct teacher on the fly.

There is no way to do it. And I've been there, done that, got the t -shirt, believe you me, many, many, many times.

But the reality is we're dealing with an ancient text that has a history. And unfortunately, the majority of Christians are presented with the

Bible in a way where they are not told that. They don't know that. They think that it arrived with a leather cover, gold page edges, and thumb indexing.

And when someone tries to point out that that's not the case, they become sometimes very emotional, sometimes very accusatory.

I've been told that I'm a God -hater, that I'm destroying their faith in God, et cetera, et cetera. But let's be honest,

Daniel. If we don't address these issues in the context of faith, people like Bart Ehrman and others will come along and address it in the context of anti -faith.

And so we're actually doing the person a favor to try to explain to them, no,

I actually do believe that God has spoken, but I also recognize that this book we call the

Bible has a history, and we have to know what that history is. And what we really want to know is what

John originally wrote. We want to know what Mark originally wrote. And so thank goodness that unlike our

Muslim friends who do not possess a critical edition of the Quran, we have critical editions of the

New Testament. We have this information, and we need to know this information, and we need to be honest in the handling of our text, just as we demand that other people be honest in the handling of theirs.

We demand that the Mormons be honest in looking at the changes in the Book of Mormon and the lack of history of the

Book of Mormon and things like that. If we're pointing the finger at other people, there's three fingers pointing back at us, as the old saying is.

And so we have to be consistent. And so unfortunately, the only answer that I have to your question is that you have to be able to succinctly, with clarity and accuracy, and none of these things are easy to do.

It requires you to really know the field very well and to be able to explain it to others. You've got to be able to do the education.

And can you force someone to listen to you or believe you? Nope, can't do it. Doesn't matter what your background is or how good you are at it or how much preparation you did.

There are going to be people who are just simply going to shut you down, and you know it. You can tell when it happens.

You see the lights go out, the shades come down. And is there anything you can do about it? Nope, not a thing.

All right, well, thank you. Hopefully I'm not discouraging you. No, you're not.

I just was wondering, kind of, the presentation. I've tried to talk through those things with these individuals.

It's multiple individuals. A friend of mine that's a nominal Roman Catholic, sort of liberal, and then also a

Southern Baptist, co -worker of my brother's. And they both come back with, well, that's the

Bible. There's no easy way to do it. Yeah, interestingly enough, they're both being inconsistent with their own leadership because the

Pontifical Biblical Institute would recognize the later status of both the proclavated adultery and the longer ending of Mark.

And Southern Baptist seminaries, I've taught at a Southern Baptist seminary many, many times, in their

Greek and textual critical classes would likewise recognize the exact same thing. I doubt that they could find a single professor of New Testament at any

Southern Baptist seminary that would not confirm not only that those are textual variants, but that they should be viewed as secondary in their canonical authority, quote -unquote.

So they're both being inconsistent at that point, which is interesting. But just on a practical level, what

I would say to you would be, you start off by affirming your orthodoxy, that you're not simply dismissing the

Bible, but then say something that they have to agree with. I would say to them, well, you want to know what

Mark originally wrote, right? Not what a scribe 100 or 300 years later thought he should have written, right?

Well, yeah. And you want to know what John originally wrote, not something that just pops into the text 400 or 500 years later, right?

Well, yeah. Well, here's why we, you know, point out that the earliest manuscript to contain the

Prick of Adultery, Codex Besi Canterburgiensis, is especially subject to editorial commentary, and it comes almost half a millennium after the time of Jesus.

None of the earlier manuscripts contain it. So why would that be, you know?

And so what you've done is you've sort of gotten them to say, well, yeah,

I do want to know what was originally written. I don't want to necessarily be stuck with what some scribe later on came up with.

Maybe that's one way of diffusing some of the situations, but again, it depends upon the person you're talking to.

It really does. Okay, thank you for your help, Dr. White. Okay, thanks, Daniel. I'm going to be down there again in November.

El Tour de Tucson? I sure will be. I'll be out there cheering for you then. Well, I'll also be speaking, though, maybe even before El Tour in the evening, and then maybe on Saturday and Sunday we're going to try to put something, not

Saturday, but on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Where will that be at, Dr. White? Faith Community Church.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I met you, actually, the last time you went down there. I was the young Navy corpsman that goes over to the

Guadalcanal. Oh, great. Great. Well, yeah, we're going to try to put something a little bigger together this time, so assuming that I don't either crash out or anything else while we're doing that.

So we'll see you then. All right, thank you, Dr. White. Thanks, God bless. All right, we're going to sneak them all in here.

We have to be fairly quick here. Let's talk with Matt in Maryland. Hi, Matt. Hi, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call.

Yes, sir. I'm looking for some help in harmonizing a couple passages. The first one is

Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, writing to the Gentile believers in 28 and 29.

They say it's good to the, seemed good to the Holy Spirit to abstain from presumably meat that's been sacrificed to idols.

And how can I reconcile that with passages like 1 Corinthians 8, 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul says, you know, it's okay to eat meat that's been sacrificed to idols.

And Romans 14, this law of conscience, eat what we want to eat. So I'm struggling with that and looking for some help.

Well, when you look at the Jerusalem Council, you're looking at the attempt on the part of the council there to maintain unity between the

Jewish Christians and the Gentile congregations, where it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials.

You abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well.

Farewell. And so the idea here is that there would be an absolute disruption of Christian fellowship between the

Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians if the

Gentile Christians forced the Jewish Christians in their fellowships to eat and to participate in the common meal when food that was sacrificed to idols was brought in.

I think the way to see what's going on here is that what Paul is saying is that outside of that common meal context, that the stronger believer does not have to be going through the meat market in Corinth looking for the

USDA label, shall we say, that there is no compulsion upon the

Gentile believer to examine the history of the food so as to follow some absurdly literal letter of the

Jerusalem Council. The idea would be that, even as Paul says, now, if you know that the food has been offered in sacrifice to idols and you know that that would scandalize your weaker brother, then you abstain.

You don't disrupt the fellowship. But the point is, if you don't know, then you don't need to find out.

And so I don't see that the two are in contradiction to one another.

It seems pretty clear that the Jerusalem Council is talking about within the

Jewish context where that would be something that would be of knowledge. The Jews are always going to be looking for that.

I mean, that's their tradition. That's what they've been raised with. They're used to issues of kosher stuff.

It's like amongst my Muslim friends. They know what's halal and haram and that kind of stuff.

So they're going to know about that and that's going to be something they're going to be bringing into the context. And therefore,

Paul would say, if you're going to scandalize your brother, then you don't eat. But in the context where no one's even asking that question, where the

Jewish issue is not the issue, where you don't have a mixed group, then you don't have to be looking for that information.

But if you do have a mixed group, then you do what's right in not damaging your weaker brother.

And for conscience's sake, then you forego that meat sacrifice to idols if you know that that's what's going to result in.

So that's how I've always understood it. I mean, you'd have to sort of take the

Acts 15 prohibition as for all time in all contexts, even when there are people...

Well, how would that even be relevant now? Because, I mean, meat isn't sacrificed to idols.

I think the point is there is a concern of maintaining...

The whole point of Acts 15 is maintaining the unity of the church so you don't have a

Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. And that's one of the ways you do that, is you recognize how much of a stumbling block that would be, and you forego it if it's going to cause that.

And if you have the knowledge that's there, which, of course, the Jews are always going to have. They're always going to bring that in, especially in the common meal.

So I guess I do it primarily by emphasizing the common meal and the knowledge aspect, but maybe there are others who've done more work on that.

But that's how I've always understood how they're fit together. I truly appreciate your insight there.

Okay, thanks, Matt. Thanks. All right, God bless. All right, we got through them all. With what, about 30 seconds?

Not half bad. All right. And great questions. I'm never going to... You know what the problem is?

First of all, I'm never going to remember what all those questions were. And then secondly, once we've answered them, because I don't remember what they all were, then no one can ever go back and look and find out, oh, you addressed

Matthew 27, 46, and the whole issue of the separation of the

Father and the Son theory and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And so that is the only problem with a program like this, is you can't index it like you can a book,

I guess. So, at any rate, hopefully those were still helpful and Algo will at least remember.

He will remember, and so we can just always ask Algo, and he'll go, oh, yes, back on August 8th of 2013 at the 21 minute and 53, whatever.

That's just sort of scary. Anyways, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line. Should be regular schedule next week.

If not, we'll let you know on Twitter. Because I don't remember. Am I going someplace? No, I think I'm here next week.

I think we're good next week. The next trip is to Tulsa, prior Oklahoma, actually.

We'll let you know more about that. Thanks for listening to the program. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the world wide web at aomin .org,

that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.