Theology Matters in Sydney and Pakistan, and, Many New Debates on YouTube!

Welcome to the dividing line it is. It is good to be back here in Phoenix Arizona and right above my head right right there okay right right there that okay all right now so not about my head anymore now it's over my shoulder with the shoulder no that shoulder.

It's reversed what what can I say it's it's different up there we have a new addition to the to the background here and I if I turn away you can't really hear you that is so cool and did you notice the the

TL on it there you saw the TL on there. So we still have any of his oh have we in fact

I think we were playing some of his music before the program earlier not today but I mean yeah yeah yeah so but Todd Lindstrom has blessed us with a number of his talents and the music and I don't think you should be able to do that many things

I can't do that. Yeah I can't do that I couldn't touch that with a 10 -foot pole and that's just he he had to email me.

Can you do that John? No John says he can't do that Dave. He had emailed me a few weeks ago saying that something was coming in the mail and just keep an eye out for it and that arrived when you were gone and everything happens when

I'm gone. I wanted to wait to make the public announcement post it until you got back and and thank him for that it's it's a very very nice gift and he's he's done by his own hand.

Done by his own hand that's right I don't I don't think everyone should have quite that many skills and talents that's not that's not fair.

But thank you to Todd for for adding to our our little abode here and that's that's always very very encouraging.

Obviously I need to thank everybody who made the the trip to Ukraine and and Germany successful I was teaching while there

I did not do any debates during that period of time.

And I likewise want to thank John Sampson who's hiding in the other room.

I think I think he just showed up just because you know just thinking maybe after a while I think he just got used to the place.

Yeah. There might be a groundswell of support of him you know sort of just taking over.

Maybe maybe he likes my office and was going to start measuring for curtains and stuff like that.

I don't know. But I personally though think he would need to respond to that devastating

YouTube reputation of his of his last appearance before he could prove his worthiness to.

I think he would start off with his little diddy there. The ESV for me.

That's the book for me. Whatever. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. So anyways.

Thank you John for filling in. Are you thinking about January because I'm going to Norway.

So there's there's there's going to be. Yeah. Norway is going to be very cold and dark.

Six hours of light in Norway. Oh you might as well be going to Alaska. Oh yeah. In the winter.

Very much so. It's gonna be it's gonna be cold and dark. But anyways that'll be mid mid

January. So you might want to think up something else to cause people with interesting accents to make fun of you and post

YouTube videos in response to you. They do. They do it to me all the time. I don't even look at him anymore. So it just comes to the territory.

But anyways I'm part of the family. You're part of the family now. That's right. That's right. You're my first YouTube video made against me.

That's it. That's there you go. So hey anyway. Let me ask you very very quickly because I've got a lot of stuff to get to and a lot of it's extremely important but I think this was too.

You know we have it. We have a good here. We're not sitting here expecting the lights to go off at any particular point in time.

And as some of you may know I got to Ukraine. I preached on Sunday there and I on starting

Monday. We had we were just starting class and the class was on the

Trinity and I was going to have live translation which means that my dear brother

Nick. If you if you followed any of the I've posted the sermons that I've done at the church there in Kiev and if you've seen any of those then you've seen

Nick translating for me and I first met Nick when I taught textual criticism at EBTC.

I'm wearing an EBTC shirt today. The European Biblical Training Center in Berlin and I was just so impressed with this young man because he goes in this other room listens to me on a microphone and then he live translates me into Russian for eight hours a day on textual criticism.

That is not easy to do. That is not easy to do. And we've worked together a number of times now and we have become

I hope he would say dear brothers in the Lord. Despite the fact that we also went to a gym in Kiev together and we rode against R .O

.W .E .D. rodents. Yeah and he's still my friend. At least

I think he is. I'll have to see if something comes up on Twitter saying nope never gonna speak to you again.

But anyways Nick was going to be in another room and live translating the whole class on the

Trinity. Well that's a whole lot easier on me. If you've ever done any speaking.

Have you preached by translation? Yeah. The first time I preached by translation was in Brazil and I almost went home afterwards.

It just throws you off so much. You feel like you're stuttering and stammering and you can't put a coherent thought together because every preacher whether he knows or not and every teacher whether he knows or not has a cadence has a rhythm.

Your speech patterns and your mind sort of go together. At least they should. And you have to stop and start.

And if you have to be thinking about how to phrase things so someone can translate you and not using idioms that aren't going to make any sense.

He just hit that one out of the park. Well that doesn't mean a lot outside the United States.

We salt our language with this kind of stuff. It just throws you off so badly.

Well I've gotten better at it over the years. And there are good translators and there are mediocre translators and there are bad translators.

And so the better your translator is the less energy it takes. But still no matter what my being able to speak in English and have it.

The guys are wearing earphones and they're able to listen to Nick translating for me. That makes it you know the speed is much faster and everything's great.

I still have to be careful and I think a couple times I overran Nick. At least that's what he indicated. Because I would get rolling and things like that happen.

But the lights go out and the technology leaves. And so as soon as the lights go out

Nick has to come out of his little cubby hole over there and we've got to go stop start stop start.

Well Nick's really good at translation. So like I said we work together hand in glove and we still were able to press on.

Two hours that day. Unannounced. And then it comes back on.

And the next day was four hours. And on Wednesday it was six hours. We have pictures. The sun was down by 430 in the afternoon.

Dark by 440. And we have pictures of the class with candles and one of these

USB lights someone had that I plugged into a battery pack that I had. And aimed it up the roof.

And that's the light that we have for the for the class. It's it was pretty amazing.

Thankfully the last two days is only two hours. I guess they hit us with the six hours one day. So that once they started doing two hours were like we'll take it.

We'll take it. You know two hours better than six. You know. So it was it was a very.

Yeah. Yeah. The European translation of hit out of the park is go. Yeah. That's that's that's pretty much that's pretty much true.

So anyway it was a challenge. These are the same guys I taught church history to back in February.

And so I've gotten to know them and they're special brothers in the Lord. And even though we don't speak the same language

I've gotten to know their personalities some.

And it's really neat. It's it's it's a tremendous opportunity for me. And and it's good for me to teach.

I think it's good for me apologetically to be teaching these classes but also you know knowing what's going on over there helps give me a little better perspective on things.

And so pray for the folks there in Ukraine. I mean they're they're obviously in a very difficult situation with the war going on there.

And it is a war that there's only I think a couple of days ago was the first day since the cease fire that no one died.

I think they've averaged like 13 a day 13 deaths a day during the cease fire.

So it's a it's a very tough situation. And I certainly look forward to going back there again in the future and continuing to assist there.

And then we flew along with Nick. Nick now became one of my students in a THM justification seminar at EBTC in Berlin.

I love going to Berlin. Christian Anderson we had them on the program sometime earlier this year and talking about the work of EBTC there in Berlin.

And I'll be teaching in Zurich. I'll be teaching the book of Hebrews in Zurich in September of next year.

And I had the opportunity of going into Berlin and and meeting Dr. Null the world's leading expert on Thomas Cranmer.

And he gave us a quick tour of downtown Berlin amazing historical sites.

Brilliant fellow. Fascinating evening that we had with him. And again great students.

A number from the Czech. I keep saying that from the Czech Republic. I grew up with Czechoslovakia but that doesn't exist anymore.

But from all over Europe some all could speak

English so I didn't have to have translation at all. That was nice. So we had Germans and we had

Czech and it was amazing to listen to the stories of those who who were raised under communism and how they're they're they're having to start from scratch.

They're you know theological libraries destroyed. They have nothing absolutely nothing in their language.

And they have no elders. You know churches are just starting from from scratch and and the the the damage done to the mind that the spirits of the peoples in these lands by the enforced secularism.

And it's it's amazing. We we have it good here. Problem is sadly it seems that our people don't know that we have a good here.

And so we're willing to trade our liberties and freedoms for that kind of stuff. The people that lived under there are looking at us going are you people idiots.

And the answer is yes is the answer to that question. But anyway wonderful time preached and both preached both in a

Russian service. Again I had Nick translate for me and then a German service there at EBTC at the church that is associated there share the same facilities and stuff and just a wonderful wonderful opportunity and came back mainly in one piece picked up a little something

I may cough. What happens is it was very cold in Ukraine. Very cold in Ukraine.

Nick is absolutely convinced that it's because I ran in the cold that I got this.

Well it probably affected me but I picked something up. It was not really affecting me very much. But what it frequently does is it'll trigger this asthma stuff that especially when

I exercise afterwards I sound like I did a 66 mile ride yesterday and I got back and sound like I had smoked 12 packs of Marlboro on the ride which

I did not but sounded that way. So but other than that which is which happens almost every winter it just normally waits till January February but it doesn't get as cold as it got in Ukraine here in Arizona.

So but we're all in one piece and hopefully we'll be all ready to go come a month from now when we get to do it all over again where we go to Norway and then on the way back we have the

G3 conference in Atlanta. So my many thanks

Christian Greg Nick Tomas Matias everyone.

Theo there at EBTC thanks for everything you did made it a wonderful time. They even found gyms for me so I could row and run and stuff like that and had a great time with with the guys there.

So many many thanks to them. All right. I want to talk a little bit about what has happened in.

Well if I were to talk about if I were to say to you what is the great story in the news today about yet another

Islamic attack. Sadly for most people the first thought would be

Sydney. We all saw it we all saw the coverage we saw that the

Shahada on the flag that the hostages were having to hold up against the window.

You know the Merry Christmas thing you know the lint chocolate thing and we all look at that and go man

I could have been me and all that kind of stuff. But really two people died and that's tragic.

That's a terrible thing. But in reality what happened in Pakistan is 60 times worse as far as the number of deaths and with 170 wounded scales of magnitude worse.

And that's what I want to talk about is the fact that how we respond to those two different situations says a lot about how we understand what's going on here.

The guy in Sydney was a loon. Okay. Why he was on the street

I do not know other than Australian law is way too lenient.

I'm sorry. Someone who is under charges for burning his wife stabbing her death and burning his wife 50 counts of indecent exposure and has already been convicted of sending nasty letters to the families of Australian soldiers who died in battle in Afghanistan should not be on the streets.

And what you've got here is this this socialist agenda in essence that is just so afraid of offending anybody that you'll let loons run around the streets of your cities.

Just amazing that this guy was out there. But at the same time he is a loon.

And what we need to realize and I need to I need to back the volume down here a bit without necessarily losing the passion.

What we need to realize is that I did not bring any water into the studio today.

There is something on my desk actually that would there's a bottle there. And John Sampson is waving and running even now.

What we need to realize is that what that man did we cannot because of the fact that he is so clearly a loon draw much significance from those actions.

But see folks here he is. Oh there's a there's a hand. There is there is there is there is another hand.

It's he's wanted to give me a hand. I appreciate that. Thank you very much

John. What is in other words

I don't see almost anything almost anything. There's there's some relevance as to the sources that he used things like that.

But he's a loon and a loon can misuse anything and abuse anything. And the people that are running around going oh here's what

Islam does with a loon that that concerns me. But but the

Taliban the Taliban multiple numbers of people attacking a school.

And the vast majority probably all of the victims of the brutality that was unleashed in that place were

Muslims were Muslims Muslim on Muslim violence.

This is what concerns me. This is what concerns me.

Because I follow Sheikh Yasir Qadhi Dr.

Yasir Qadhi from Memphis on Facebook. And I even sent to Michael Brown because Mike had

Mike's in Malaysia. And yet he's still doing his program which means he's doing it 3 a .m.

in the morning. Yeah. A little more dedication than I would have.

Let's put it that way. He made some comments about what happened in Sydney. And so I sent him these two articles from Yasir Qadhi and Yasir Qadhi in regards to the

Sydney thing. You know just very bluntly said hey Breivik in Norway was in Norway was where Breivik was.

One of the Scandinavian countries I think it was Norway. Breivik identifies himself as a Christian. And he says no one no one asked

Christians to apologize for him killing how many people did he kill

Breivik. It was a lot. Teenagers.

No one no one asked him to do that. And this guy is clearly a loon. So why are you asking me as a

Muslim to apologize for what he did when he's a loon. Then. A few hours later the

Pakistan news breaks. And he's beside himself absolutely beside himself with rage that anyone would do this in the name of Islam because he can see these aren't loons.

These are clerics. These are these are people who should know better from his perspective.

But they they can't be identified as loons in the way this other guy in Sydney was.

Every time this happens. We try. I try.

To. Maintain. A balance.

That I'm pushing. I'm pushing a big rock up a hill.

To do this. I really am. It's very hard. Because it is so so easy.

To give in to the temptation. Of developing the.

Us versus them. It's so much easier just throw them in all one pile.

And take up the clubs and start the warfare. Far too few of us.

Far too few of us. Are praying to God. That he stop.

The murder of Muslims in the world. Because. The primary.

The primary victims. Of these. Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda and ISIS and Boko Haram.

They kill Christians. Sure do. They kill apostates. Who have converted to Christ.

They sure do. Our hearts break. But the vast majority.

Of their victims. Have no hope. Of eternal life at all. Because they're

Muslims. They have not been given. They've been given a false hope and a false

Jesus. They cannot save. And it just seems like for a lot of us.

Even us Christians. Yeah I think it's natural. For us to go. Oh. Christians are dying.

This is terrible. We need to bomb these people. But when it's. Oh Muslims are dying.

Well you know. What do you get. You know Muslims killing

Muslims. I think we have to. Consider our own hearts at that point and ask where our priorities are.

And then we really have to ask. Ourselves. How much. Does truth really matter to us.

And how much is balance really matter to us. Will we control our emotions.

If we allow. Our detestation. Of these folks. Bye John.

See you later. Hasta la vista. If we allow our detestation of the actions of these folks to be expanded to an entire.

Religion. We will not be reaching out to these people. We will not evangelize.

We will not give ourselves. It's real easy to fall into that. I understand that.

I get it. I hear it. I understand. But. I'm not sure what

I'm looking at in. In Twitter right now. But. Obviously missing something

I don't understand about. I'll skip it. In the Quran in Surah 3 .31.

Say. If. You love Allah. Then follow me.

And Allah. Will love you. And will forgive you for your sins. These are words that are given to Muhammad.

And notice. If you love Allah. Then follow his prophet follow me.

And when you follow the prophet Muhammad. As a result. Then Allah will love you.

As a result. The result of your love for Allah.

Should be. It's fa is the. Prefix result.

Particle in Arabic. Then follow me. And then that is.

Followed by. Allah. Will love you. And he will forgive you for your sins.

And Allah is all forgiving and merciful. And then what comes after that is.

Somewhat frightening. Further. When you have the word cool.

In Arabic say. These are. These are what the prophet is to say to the people.

So cool. Obey Allah. And the messenger.

So submit. To Allah. The only way to show that submission is by obedience to the messenger.

Then if they turn away.

Then indeed. Allah. Does not love. Disbelievers.

The coffers. The coffers. Plural here coffers. Allah does not love coffers.

He does not love disbelievers. Now. The best.

Construction that I can place upon this. You might say why would you even try.

Because if you're prepared to deal with the best construction. Then you have a solid footing upon which to deal with lesser constructions.

If you haven't thought about the best possible interpretation. And you've gone for the lowest interpretation.

The easiest one to go after. And you encounter a smart. Well read proponent of the side.

You're going to look very foolish. So you go for the best argument first. And that will always put you in the proper stead to respond to lesser arguments below that.

Does that mean more work. It does. Why do it. Because I think the gospel is worthy of it.

Best possible construction I can put upon this. Is that. If they indeed.

Turn away. So in other words. The only. Unbelievers.

That are being referred to here. Are those who have already been given a clear. Testimony. Of the truthfulness.

Of. Allah and his prophet. I'm speaking from the Islamic side. And that therefore.

This statement. Allah does not love. The unbelievers.

Is that this is a special subgroup. Of unbelievers. Who in fact

I could see. How a. More liberal Muslim. Living in the

West. Might look at this and say. Well. Might look at this.

The same way some Christians look at the unpardonable sin. I asked my class in.

In Ukraine. I asked them. Can anyone today commit the unpardonable sin.

And we were talking about the Holy Spirit so we were. Talking about the relationship the father and son and how you can blaspheme the son of man but blaspheme against the

Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven and so I was trying to get them to think through. What blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was.

And. A couple of students had the view which is not uncommon today.

That no one today can. Commit the unpardonable sin.

Why because it was. A sin against such an amazingly.

Grand. Bright. Full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. They were.

Right there. Son of man. They were out there identifying him as acting by. The power of Beelzebub.

And that kind of. Excuse me. That kind of revelation is not.

Is not available today so you couldn't do that. Now I. I disagree with that. I think that there could be some who can commit the unpardonable sin today.

But it's a different issue. Anyway. I could see how someone could see this and say well.

These disbelievers could only have existed in the days of Muhammad. Because.

They they had turned away from the messenger himself.

So I could see how a liberal Muslim living in the West primarily. Would take it in that way.

Could take it in that way. Or next step.

That these unbelievers are simply. Those who have received a clear testimony.

And they've rejected that. And hence it wouldn't be all of humanity. The problem is that.

There would be a lot who would simply take this as all. Unbelievers because there is in.

Islamic theology. The concept. That we were all born.

On Fitra. We were. We were all. I've explained the

Fitra before but we always have new new listeners. So let me at least explain it to you to understand what I'm saying so you can see what what this is here.

The Fitra. Is is one of the most similar Islamic concepts. To the result of the image of God in Christian theology

I can think of. If you want to see a place where Islamic theology and Christian theology come close to it where there's a connection.

The Fitra in Islamic theology comes from the fact that according to the

Quran and then it's expanded in the Hadith. God.

In some of the narrations rubbed Adam's back and out of Adam came all of his progeny all human beings that would ever exist and stood in this great plane.

And. Allah. Took a covenant a mythic from them.

And said am I not your rob. Your your lord and they said you are a lord so.

In this covenant. There's almost a federal headship idea here when you're if you're thinking about it.

This covenant. Has a result in that when we are born we have.

The Fitra we have a. I don't know a a a a primal.

Remembrance. A knowledge that God exists. And of course in Christian theology we call this the image of God we've been creating image of God therefore we know

God exists he's his. He is revealed this inwardly within us and outside of us.

And it's something that we suppress and so on and so forth. But in Islam it's do this this mythic this covenant that was taken.

Well because of this. There is in Islamic theology the idea that we were all born as monotheists following a law.

And we have apostatized if we have become Christians Jews whatever we have. We have left. We have abandoned the

Fitra we have we have gone against our Fitra. And hence for many

Muslims. They take the fact that that apostates it's very clear.

That in Islamic law historically an apostate is to be killed.

That the only legal. Recourse to abandonment of Islam is death.

And hence if we've all abandoned Islam. Then we're all apostates and therefore there are no innocents.

That's why you can blow up an entire plane. Because there are no innocent people on it.

And so that's where the problem comes in obviously. Now. The Muslim might say well look.

Just as you demand that the Bible has to be taken in its context. And you would reject somebody.

Oh. Taking the command to Joshua. To wipe out a certain city.

The command of Moses regarding the Amorites and so on and so forth. Just as you would demand that those texts be placed in a context.

You've got to do the same thing for the Quran. And you know what they're exactly right. And the media.

Who in the media knows anything about the Quran. Has actually read it.

Has any knowledge of its background. Any knowledge of its original language. I am no Arabic expert. I've never claimed to be an Arabic expert.

But I know enough Arabic and I know enough Semitic languages that I can use the resources and handle the text accurately.

There are very few people in the media that can even come close to doing that. Or even care to do that.

And if they try. They'll frequently be the ones that are dismissed really quickly because you don't get the ratings from them.

Here's the problem though. As I've said many times. The Quran is not like the

New Testament. It's not like the Old Testament. There are entire sections we can't put in a context.

And the context of the Hadith. To try to use the

Hadith to become the context of the Quran is anachronistic. Those are gathered 250 years after the time of Muhammad.

There's clear development and there's massive inconsistency in the body of the

Hadith themselves. Of the Ahadith since we want to use the plural form. It just doesn't work.

And the fact that you have the divisions that you have amongst Muslims. And that those who say this is wrong.

The Yasir Qadhi's whose stomachs are turned. Not only by what the loon did in Sydney.

But much more so by what the Taliban did in Pakistan. They stand up.

They write papers. They give speeches. The media doesn't cover them. Unfortunately.

But there are people who are willing to take a stand. But here's the problem. I just don't think they have the foundation to stand upon.

To really make the argument in a compelling fashion. And the other side gets to use every kind of emotional argumentation.

And appeals to well let's all hate the imperialist

Americans or imperialist British or whatever else. And bring up every kind of thing that happened to generations beforehand.

And let's revisit all that stuff again. That's why we have what's happening within Islam today.

That's why we have what's happening. And here's something I've raised over and over again.

Listen to the coverage and see if you don't see it. Because even as Christians talk about this. Fundamentally this is a spiritual issue.

Religion cannot control the evil of men. I speak as a reformed theologian.

And as a reformed theologian I believe as many of the founding fathers of the United States believed.

In the total depravity of man. It does not mean man is as evil as he could be. God restrains man's evil.

But what it does mean is that every aspect of man's being. Not just his body.

Not just the fact that we decay and die over time. His mind. His will.

His heart. His emotions. Every aspect of man is impacted by sin.

We cannot save ourselves. Our best morality will turn into self -righteousness.

And some of the most evil men in the world were self -righteous men. Who turned what they thought was good into evil.

And would give their lives for it. And so despite the fact that everyone else is now stealing this and they don't care that I have a copyright on it.

Theology matters. And here you see exactly how theology matters.

Because without regeneration. Without that radical change.

You have a religion that is struggling to deal with the fact that it's adherence can engage in absolute gross evil.

Without giving you a way of saying clearly these people were false professors of our faith.

What is a false professor of Islam? What does he look like? As long as you say the

Shahada. Say it in the presence of witnesses.

Fulfill the seven. I believe it's true. You're a Muslim. Doesn't change the heart.

Doesn't bring about regeneration. Because they don't believe there's a need for regeneration. Because they deny that man is fallen and dead in sin.

That's why you don't need a mediator. That's why you don't need the cross. That's why you don't need the resurrection.

That's why you don't need atonement. It also means you don't really have any way of explaining.

And if some guy who calls himself a Christian goes out and does what the

Taliban did or what the guy down in Sydney did. We can consistently say this individual is described in scripture as going out from us because they were not of us.

That these individuals violate this text and this text and this text. We can go to first John.

We can go to Hebrews. We can go to Jesus. We can go all the way through the New Testament and say this man is not a

Christian. The best that Islam can do is say, well, he acted in an un -Islamic way.

Wow. Okay. Theology matters.

And here's where it matters. Here's where you see it. Just some thoughts that I was thinking as I, this morning, read

Yasir Qadhi's visceral reaction to the attack upon the school in Pakistan.

It was visceral. Look up Yasir Qadhi, Q -A -D -H -I on Facebook. And it's one of the first articles.

He was absolutely disgusted.

Absolutely disgusted. And I understand why.

But what can you do about it? What can you do about it? That's, I really, I got,

I was contacted by someone in Memphis about three weeks ago. It was right before I went over to Europe.

And if I can get somebody on the ground in Memphis, a church in Memphis, I want to go to Memphis.

And I want to go there having contacted Yasir Qadhi. And I want to have some dialogues with a believing, conservative, outspoken

Muslim who really represents, from my perspective, a very, he wants to be

Quranically faithful. He really does. And yet, he has put himself on the line to condemn

ISIS and to condemn the acts of radicals. Now, don't get me wrong.

He's just as condemnatory of U .S. foreign policy and the bombing of civilians and all sorts of other things.

But he's one of the few people I can think of that we could have one of the most valuable interactions on the theology that underlies all of this.

And I really want to see that happen. I really, really, I would do anything to try to make that work.

Because I think it would be of great value. Really great value. I really do. So, there's that.

I'm sad to say, I'm sure we're going to have numerous other opportunities to address this very issue.

I am really concerned that very rarely will this issue be addressed as we just addressed it.

The media cannot talk about this in a meaningful fashion. Secularists cannot approach

Islam in a meaningful fashion. Fundamentally, the only real solution to all of this is called evangelism.

And yet, the Muslim people are some of the least evangelized in the world, including

Western Muslims, because we're afraid of them. We are afraid of them.

Which reminds me, which reminds me, I am excited.

I will freeze at that point. You know, I was about to say,

I am tired of being a meme generator. Did you see the picture that was put on Ken Gentry's last response to me on Second Timothy 3 where they have a picture of B .B.

Warfield holding a gun and I'm doing this? No, I missed that one. How did

I miss that? Oh my goodness. Please tell me it didn't say, hands up, don't shoot.

Yeah, I'm trying to find it humorous, but I'm not doing real well at it right now.

But anyway, yeah, putting yourself on one of these things where anybody can download it and then freeze frame and oh man,

I'll tell you, you've got to have, you got to be crazy. Anyways, I didn't know about this.

Rich says he told me, but the thing is, both of us are progressing.

Tomorrow I progress even farther into the second half of my first century.

And he's, man, I can barely see the dust trail with how far down the road he is beyond me.

Right? I don't know what you're talking about. What?

He is older than I am. He is older than I am. Trust me. But we can blame each other now.

I thought I told you that. You didn't tell me that. I think I did. Maybe I forgot. I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about.

That's what it's like around here all the time now. It's great. I love it. Someday we're going to be sitting on the old

Alpha Omega Ministries front porch in our rocking chairs and we're going to be talking about old times and going, do you remember?

I don't remember that. It's just going to continue what we're doing now. He says he told me.

I don't remember he told me this, but two of the videos from South Africa arrived,

I guess, shortly after I left. Somewhere in that general vicinity. And they are now on our

YouTube channel. And as soon as we are done with this program, I am going to be blogging them and Facebooking them and Twittering them.

I'll even fire up Google Plus, which I never use, but I'm going to fire it up anyways.

And they are two of the most useful Islamic debates we've ever done.

And I'm going to ask for your help. I want to get these things out there.

We don't have an advertising budget. This program does what it does 100 % based upon people telling other people about debates or whatever.

So I'm going to ask, I've never asked this before, but I'm going to ask you if you're in Facebook, if you're in Twitter, if you're in Google Plus, whatever means you have.

Once I post these things, share them, like them, share them, retweet them, whatever it is, get it out there, get it to as many people as we can get it to.

What debates am I talking about? The first, Gray Street Mosque, the Juma Masjid in Durban, Yusuf Ismail and I on the subject of the

Christology of John and the Christology of the Quran. Historic debate, historic in many ways.

Topic was real good, well attended. And of course, the fact that this debate is taking place in the very room where Ahmed Didat used to speak and say his prayers is still beyond my comprehension and belief.

And so that is on our YouTube channel. You can watch it right now. I just haven't linked to it yet on the blog, but if you go to the

Alpha Omega Ministries YouTube channel, you can pull that one down right now. I'll obviously be putting it on Facebook and stuff, but if you want to beat me to it,

I don't care. Get it out there because I think it's that useful.

I had the opportunity of explaining John 1 -1 and John 8 -58 and John 20 -28 and etc.

etc. And so get it out there. The other debate, the other debate is the debate with Ayub Karim.

And that was the debate on the crucifixion. And I told you that Ayub Karim dressed like Didat, spoke like Didat, stood like Didat, put his microphone like Didat and used all of Didat's arguments.

And he did. And you'll be able to see it. This is as close as I'll ever get to debating

Akhmed Didat. And I am thankful that Mr. Karim was faithful to Didat's arguments.

But that also means that Didat's arguments, which are laughably bad, were torn apart consistently by the facts, just by the simple facts.

We've done on this program. We did it in Durban, South Africa. And I want to see that getting out there.

We just had, I just saw the first tweet pop up with the debate with Yusuf Ismail standing in front of the

Qibla in the mosque that until just recently was the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere of the world.

And that's where that debate took place. So I want to get them out there.

What? We were busy beavers while you were gone. And just while we're in the mix here, we remixed the debate with Shabir Ali.

Where you put techno behind or something? That's funny. No. What Biola had done was a live video mix with three camera shoot.

And we actually took the three camera shots and remixed them in Premiere Pro here.

A little bit better end product. So that was posted. The two debates with Dan Barker.

Isn't that funny? Because that's exactly what I thought of while I was gone. Was I realized, you know, we've never put the first debate with Barker on the existence of God up.

And I really want to be able to link people to that. Actually, we hadn't put either one of those Barker debates up. That's what

I discovered. So they're both up there now in the atheism section. The Trinity debate with Roger Perkins is now up.

That's another one I thought of. The debate on the Bible versus the Koran with Shams Ali is now up.

The debate with what is.

Oh, back up the truck here. Don't do that. All right. Back away. No, don't do it. Why am

I drawing a blank on his name? I don't know. I don't either. Well, well, Saeed. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

That's the one where we have a clip. You just want to stick it to him from the

Damascus Radio Free Damascus theme.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You just want to stick it to him anyway. That's that's no, that's a 2008 on the deity of Christ with.

I think I explained on the chat channel earlier today that we're actually to the point now we're going through we have this computer called the beast.

It has a hard drives in it. Two of those hard drives are four terabytes each.

The rest are two terabytes. And we're actually going through and combing through every single folder now.

To find out whether or not we've actually made the YouTube video and uploaded it. And so at this point in time,

I count as of this afternoon was we have 61 debates on the YouTube site and the rest are various, you know, 108 dividing line programs, et cetera.

So we've been busy. Yep, yep, yep. Yes, there's some great stuff out there. I've now seen

Armin that's out in has put those up in Twitter. I will post them as well.

But especially those two debates, if you have

Muslim friends, man, I forgot to mention the one that you did with Shabir Ali in 2013 down in South Africa.

They sent us an updated version of that. I don't see it on the YouTube channel. I know that Matt was really, really close.

What's that? Does it have everything in it now? That's my understanding. Yes. That's in the University of Pretoria. Yes. Oh, another vitally important.

So that one will be up soon as well. You know what people should do? And we wouldn't have any problem with you doing this.

Because what's the difference in someone watching it online or you handing it to somebody? If you know

Muslims and you want to put these debates on a jump drive, download a, you know, it doesn't have to be

HD. You know, YouTube gives you the option of downloading lower, you know, smaller size ones.

But if you want to get some of these teeny tiny little jump drives, I mean, I've got, where did that jump drive go in here?

I had one of those. While you're looking for the jump drive, a little bit of an explanation on what you're just saying. Because we have on every single one of our debates this disclaimer.

Yeah, do not reproduce, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've just basically formally given permission.

Well, not to post every place they want to post it, but to give to somebody. Give somebody to watch as a tract or something like that.

And for technical purposes, I get a lot of calls on this, believe it or not. People don't understand.

You can link to these. Oh, sure. If you want this, these debates or any one of these debates on your

YouTube channel, you don't have to download it and then upload it to your YouTube channel. Why waste their space?

That doesn't make sense. All you have to do is link to it. And now guess what? It's in both places and it's playing through our channel.

And maybe you'll bring more people our way. Yeah. Get people to watch these debates.

I'm really excited that you're finally going to start seeing what we've been doing down in South Africa, because the debate with Shabir Ali on did the earliest followers of Jesus believe in the deity of Christ?

I thought that was extremely important. Every time we got sent something, it was missing portions of it.

And so hopefully we will now have all of it a year after it took place, but we'll get it up there.

Shabir wrote reviews on it. Sam Shamoon responded to Shabir Ali on those particular things.

You can look up that stuff if you want. But these are going to be available. They are really great resources.

We've put a lot of effort. Those of you who've helped to fly me down there, finally, you're going to be able to see some of this stuff and see how important it really is.

And so I'm really excited about it. Get that information out there and get people watching these things.

All right. So I didn't get back to it, but I want to continue with the

Michael Brown material on Calvinism.

And there's lots of stuff that I'm falling behind on, but that's what happens when I leave and I'm busy doing stuff.

And that's good. That's what we're supposed to be doing. So we will press on, Lord willing, on Thursday.

Probably about the same time on Thursday and on The Dividing Line. Thanks for watching.

Thanks again to John Sampson sitting in. For everybody that made my trip over to Europe so successful and so useful.