Caner, Siljander, and E-Mail Questions

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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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.

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

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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

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

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James White. Well, as I say on the Tube all the time, mind the gap, mind the gap, yes, that's the gap between when we're supposed to be starting, which is an hour and a half from now, and when we are starting, which is right now.

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But I have things to do today, so I figured, well, a choice between just not saying anything at all or doing it early.

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So here we are on the Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, much earlier than, I don't think we've ever done a

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Dividing Line this early, unless I was overseas or something, I suppose that's a possibility, I don't know. But have much to catch up on as far as all the emails we were supposed to get to last time, which we hadn't gotten to.

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And your phone calls, and just, you know, catch up on the fact that it's so nice to know that we have listeners to this program.

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How do we know that? Is there some way, some way we have to, there's got to be a way to find out how many downloads of how many times the podcast is listened to, there's got to be stuff.

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No one's ever told me these things, because you don't look at them, huh? Twelve times, seven times, seven people listen to the podcast.

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Well, they all must be Ergon Kanner's Graduate Assistants. Someday there's going to be a cooperatively written book where all of Ergon Kanner's Graduate Assistants get together and tell their favorite stories of being

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Ergon Kanner's Graduate Assistants and how they had to listen to every Dividing Line as soon as it was posted.

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But some of you may not be aware of the fact that last Thursday evening, the last time we did the

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Dividing Line, I did an entire program on one subject, and that was

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Mark Siljander's book, A Deadly Misunderstanding. And I explained what brought my attention to it, and that actually a professor at a

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Reformed seminary had written to me and said, you know, have you written anything on this book? We're running into people that are quoting it and stuff like that.

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And I'd actually gotten that email, I found out later, the day that I left for London.

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And so when I got back, I think it was, I went ahead and purchased it on Amazon on my

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Kindle and recorded it and started listening to it and so on and so forth. And so, you know,

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I had theological reasons for addressing this particular book. I had, it never crossed my mind to do a

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Google search on Siljander plus Ergon Kanner or anything even closely related thereto.

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And it was only after I was well into the book that I encountered the section where Siljander meets

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Ergon Kanner, what Ergon Kanner says, went through all of this last Thursday. And the question that I asked last

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Thursday was, why did Ergon Kanner endorse this book? It came out over two years ago in 2008.

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My mind still is running on 2010. It was a nice convenient date, you know, 2010, you could always figure out how many years it was.

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Now it's 2011 and you had to add the one and it's a mess. But anyway, and, you know, it was a simple question and I think a meaningful question.

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How can Ergon Kanner endorse a book that promotes the insider movement, this messianic Muslim concept of someone who believes in Jesus but stays in the mosque and continues doing the prayers and reading the

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Quran and so on and so forth? How can someone who has criticized the camel method then support the insider movement?

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It just doesn't make any sense. And the reason for asking this question is rather obvious. It's a question we've been asking now since February of last year.

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And that is when it was made publicly known that Ergon Kanner has lied about his claims to have debated

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Shabir Ali. And basically what we discovered is that all of his claims to have debated anybody, including the outrageous claim that we have documented and others have documented as well, multiple streams of documentation,

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I guess would be the way of putting it, that he claimed to have done debates in Arabic in mosques with imams.

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Just bogus, it hasn't happened. He can't speak Arabic and so he hasn't done any debates anywhere in Arabic, let alone in mosques and all the rest of this stuff.

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In light of all of that, there's a real simple question that has to be asked. Why is this man considered an expert in Islam?

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Well, because he's the son of an Islamic leader. Well, his father was the head of a Turkish -American group and evidently gave the call to prayer at least a few times in a mosque in the

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Columbus, Ohio area. That does not make you an Islamic leader. It does not make you, as he has said many times, an ulema, which is actually a plural.

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That does not make him a scholar. And so the question again becomes, why is this man considered to be an expert in Islam?

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Why? What's he done? We know that the book that he has co -authored,

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Unveiling Islam with His Brother, utilizes a methodology of citing the

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Hadith that demonstrates he's never corresponded with a Muslim scholar because a Muslim scholar would have laughed had he sent to him a letter saying, well, as it says in Hadith 4157, because the

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Muslim scholar would have said, the what? And we've documented this, and the embarrassing defense of this continues this day on Norman Geisler's website, and all of this is a black eye in the apologetics arena.

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We've talked about all these things, but it again raises the question, why is this man looked to as an expert on Islamic issues?

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What has he done? Who has he debated? And where has he shown an insight into these things?

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I mean, I was just looking at an article that he posted within the past couple of days where he divides the

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Quranic surahs up in a non -standard fashion and in a misleading fashion.

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And I again just wonder, why is this man viewed in this way?

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And is this not just another example? Well, you all know what happened. Less than 24 hours,

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I'd say about 18 hours, maybe a little less, maybe 16, 17 hours after the dividing line aired and after we finally got it posted,

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Rich lost three years of growth trying to get the last dividing line posted. And his hair is much grayer this morning than it was last

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Thursday, all because getting that last one posted, how many hours did that take?

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It just took a lot of, about four hours. Yeah, it was ugly. Anyway, after the dividing line was posted on Thursday evening,

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Friday morning, someone comes into our chat channel and says, I'm trying to read the endorsement on Mark Siljander's page of his book by Eric and Ken.

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I can't find it. Now, I'd quoted it the night before. I was part of the, I quoted it in the dividing line announcement.

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And of course, we've, it's still in the archives, you know, Google archives, web archives, it's still there.

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Once you post something on the web, it never, ever goes away. Eric and Ken hasn't figured that part out, but hopes that as long as folks can't find it in an active

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Google listing, that they're not going to look for web archives. But it disappeared.

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The very next morning, poof, the endorsement's gone. And so the question we have to ask now is, now immediately,

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I assumed, as soon as I saw this, I had, I had something I had to go do.

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I assumed that Kanner had contacted Siljander and said, ah, you know,

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I've got these people, they're always picking on me. You know, I'm this poor, persecuted, former Muslim.

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And there's these, these Muslims and Christians, they all gang up on me and, and I'm just so persecuted.

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And, but could you pull my endorsement, please? You know, just be better. You know, I had all this stuff happen to me last year and they persecuted me and I'm not president of Liberty anymore.

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And could you please pull us? That was just my assumption, you know, because we know that as soon as we say something about Eric and Kanner on this, we've had people inside Liberty tell us that Eric and Kanner's graduate assistants listened to this program.

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And I had tweeted about it. I had put it on the blog where we were talking about it. So there was no question that the program was going to be listened to.

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And so the endorsement disappeared. It's not there anymore. If you go to adeadlymisunderstanding .com

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slash endorsements .php, which I'm looking at right now, Brian McLaren's still there.

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T. Davis Bunn is still there. Those are still there. Cal Thomas is still there.

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But Ergon Kanner has disappeared. He's gone. Yes, sir. What is, what was amusing to me was

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Saturday morning as I was getting up, wandering around the house, drinking a little coffee, I got curious about something.

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I started Googling Ergon Kanner Syljander. Yeah.

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Mm -hmm. And just like so many of Ergon's fans learned last year, you can take it off of your website.

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But when you've been running around the country and the world for that matter, bragging and bragging and bragging, lots of people grab this stuff off your website and post it.

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And that endorsement is all over the place. Of all radio stations that Syljander did interviews on, telling a little bio about the guest today.

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Still up on the web. All kinds of different places where that endorsement is right there copied off of Syljander's website.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can't get rid of it. It's there. And what did he say? The quote, which has now been put on our website, so he can't delete it.

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I believe passionately that Mark has discovered a real pathway here, a means to open dialogue that we have not seen in centuries.

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And in the acknowledgments, he is described as having done dynamic editing of the book.

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Dynamic editing. That's that's very interesting to us.

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And so I just assumed that in light of everything else, Kanner had contacted Syljander.

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And then later in the day, all of a sudden, it struck me. Why am I assuming that? It's it's possible that other people contacted

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Mark Syljander and said, do you know the real story of Ergen Kanner? I mean, your book says that he came here, raised in Turkey, and we all now know that he wasn't raised in Turkey and he grew up in Ohio.

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And all this stuff about being, you know, debating

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Muslims and all this expertise stuff is just utterly bogus. So do you know that you have someone like that endorsing the book?

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And maybe Syljander said, oh, man, I don't I don't need that. And he pulled it.

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I don't know. I was just asking if anyone in channel I specifically asked a

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Turretin fan, but because he's not actually human. He's actually a computer program that runs in our channel.

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That's that's the reality of that. That's those of you who've been, you know, that's just that's how it is. He's a computer program. And so I asked him to, you know, access all of Google, which he did in zero point four three seven seconds.

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And there hasn't been a peep. No one has said a word. No one has explained this from either side.

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That shouldn't surprise us, especially if it came from the Kanner side, because answering honest questions is not something that Ergen Kanner has showed himself to be overly big on since December of February of last year.

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And but the question is still there. Where did this where this come from? Were his words about this book true when they were written?

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And are they not true any longer? Has he changed opinion two and a half years ago, three years ago, did

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Ergen Kanner believe that the insider movement is a brilliant concept?

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You don't have to openly profess Jesus as Lord. Just just, you know, you know, in your

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Muslim prayers, put Jesus's name in there in your own mind. You have to say it out loud, just in your own mind. That's good enough.

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Did he believe that was good back then? And if he did, then what changed his mind?

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And wouldn't it be important for him to announce things like that? Yes. Well, I hear you say that.

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And I think, no, did Ergen Kanner passionately believe?

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Well, it's an endorsement. I mean, anybody who believes endorsements or book reviews on Amazon is, you know, but I know he said it, not me, but sort of makes me go,

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I don't know, you know. And it did bring up a new video.

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We watched the video where he was, you know, yammering away about he claimed to have been trained in two madrasas in this one.

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We know he's claimed three madrasas. This was the Istanbul and Cairo one. I guess Cairo is sort of big right now with Egypt and stuff like that.

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But it didn't include the Beirut one. And you know, you sit there and you watch

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Ergen Kanner speaking and you know, you know, when he said, we came here when I was a young man, you know, he's lying.

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Because, you know, at the very same time, he was telling other people other things. It's just like, how do you do that? And it is

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I'd sort of not looked at things for a while. And and I'm still somewhat amazed at the ability. But the point is, here's yet another another reason why these things matter.

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And that is people look to this guy and you got people like Cal Thomas running around going, he's an expert in Islam.

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Let's go talk to him. And and you just go, why is he an expert on Islam? Where does he show this expertise outside of the the faux story that he made up of his own life?

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He grew up as a regular kid in Columbus, Ohio. OK, so why is this?

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I don't know. But it here's where the rubber meets the road. Here's where here's a practical application.

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People say, oh, you know, I'm just getting tired of that. I don't want to listen. Well, this is empty.

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I want to talk about reaching the world for Jesus. Folks, there is almost no greater threat.

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To the evangelism of the Muslim world and the support of real missionaries who risk their lives to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and the insider movement.

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And here, Eric and Canada is promoting a book that promotes the insider movement. Hello. You see, it does matter.

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All of you have been sitting back. I don't want to hear him. That's it. It's over. You know, we lost, you know, the coverups work.

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Norman Geiser pulled it off. You know, he's got all the political clout in the world and all these discernment ministries just rolled over and, you know, twitched like the the cockroach when you spray him with a with raid.

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And and it's all over with. So we need to move on. Tell that to the missionary who has to leave the field because they can't raise the support to continue actually proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims because of the popularity of the, quote, unquote, insider movement amongst evangelical churches in the

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West that says, ah, you don't need to do that. You're actually calling people to embrace

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Christ and to profess Christ into that. That's just too radical.

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You know, just tell people that they can like some of the teach some some of the teachings. That's the whole problem with the insider movement.

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It's only some that radical stuff of Jesus teachings, you know, discipleship and profession and, you know, union with him and his death and being the only way of solving that.

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Just focus on the Sermon on the Mount and all of us can get together. We can get Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and we can all get together and sing

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Kumbaya around around, you know, some of the moral elements of Jesus's teaching. That's death to missionary work amongst

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Muslims. And Ergen Kanner supported a book for crying out loud. Why? Why is this man look like why people look at as an expert?

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And why are you apologists and you know who you are? Published apologists.

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Hello, Veritas Seminary. Hello, everyone involved with Veritas Seminary. I'm thinking of one guy right now.

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Respect him completely. He stands against the insider movement. He teaches for Veritas with Ergen Kanner.

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Open your mouth, brethren. Say something. Do something.

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I don't know. Get frustrated once in a while. Just get frustrated once in a while.

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It has impacts, folks. Theology matters. Truth matters. And it is an amazing that in Evangelicalism Day, we've adopted the world's view.

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What's the world's view? The world's view is your personal morality. Your character.

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Your honesty. That's one thing. But hey, if you do your job well, that's great. Isn't that how it is in politics?

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I mean, you know, there's so many people. And you know what they're really like.

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But hey, if they get the job done, that's all that matters. Certainly that way in sports, isn't it? It is an amazing.

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Evangelicalism now looks like the NBA. As long as you can score the points, get the butts in the seats, then you can lie through your teeth, refuse to repent, mock those who've called you to repent.

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But hey, it's cool. Go for it anyways. No, give me a break. All right.

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So that's what you would get for starting too early in the morning. But if people don't see how everything's connected together.

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Anyhow, I've got a bazillion email questions here I need to get to. I apologize.

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What? Somebody just typed in channel a fascinating correlation. What? Ergin also endorsed

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Lou Rugg's book. Well, I wonder if no one accuses Ergin of having a discernment.

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Yes, but I wonder what Lou thinks of that. I don't know. I have no earthly idea.

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He writes me all the time. Yeah, I'm sorry. Gee, Lou. What do you think of Ergin Cantor's endorsement of Mark Zildjian's book?

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Yeah, well. And you know, some of our loudest critics who are the biggest fans of Ergin Cantor haven't said, oh, silence, utter silence.

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We don't want to talk about this. No, no. Yeah, yeah, it's a little hypocrisy there.

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Anyway, maybe this is a question for the DL, but I was wondering how you would respond to the

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Islamic argument against Christianity, which says, why is God just to punish Jesus for our sins when doing a similar thing would be so unjust for a human judge to do?

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Maybe this is a false analogy. What are your thoughts? Well, of course, for a full response to such a, such a question,

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I would say, well, I don't think there's such a argument. I would direct you to the entirety of the debate we did with, with Shabir Ali on whether Jesus offered himself as a voluntary substitute of payment for sin for God's people.

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But yes, it is a common argument, and that's why we emphasize over and over and over again.

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And it's so important that you do so when you speak with Muslims on this subject. And that is the self -sacrificial nature.

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That is the fact that Christ gives himself voluntarily, that this is the cooperative effort of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the united effort, the eternal, the eternally chosen path of Father, Son, and Spirit is the cross.

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The cross is not a something you think of later on. Well, a man falls and, oh, what am

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I going to do now? And no, the cross is, is, you know, the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth is the terminology that we often refer to at that point.

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And hence it is, it would be unjust for a human judge who himself is a sinner, who is applying merely human standards to condemn an innocent man to die for someone else.

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That would be unjust. But the giving of Christ is a voluntary thing.

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It is Christ who gives himself. Yes, this is in complete union with the

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Father, but it is that self -giving that is truly the demonstration of the love that Christ has for his people, the condescension of Christ.

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And I think it's very important in counteracting part of the,

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I don't know, evangelical squishiness in presenting

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Christ to Muslims. Muslims need to know about a loving God.

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But the problem is when people recognize the need to present the love of God to Muslims, they then present a imbalanced view of God where God's commandments and God's authority and God's sovereignty, which they innately know is true, gets lost in a not divine love, but human sentimentality.

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Far too often people confuse human sentimentality for divine love. They're not the same thing.

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And so what Muslims need to hear about is a Christ who, yes, in incredible love gives himself for his people, no question about it.

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But the foundation of that self -giving is the divine sovereignty of the triune

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God. And that includes the authority and power of Christ as Lord, as Lord.

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He commands men everywhere to repent. And the Muslim is commanded to bow the knee before the

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Lord, Jesus Christ. That is not merely an option.

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That's what makes the still gender approach just so utterly without power. It might help you to make friends of Muslims, but it won't help you to get

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Muslims to heaven. And so that's a response to that.

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Next email thing here. In a few of his debates, James White held up and referred to a critical edition of the

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Bible. He explained that it contained both Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament with all the variant references in the critical apparatus.

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What is the actual title of this and where may I obtain a copy? Well, there are the primary one that I have held up is called

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Biblia Sacra, and it's published by the United Bible Societies.

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And it is a I had made I had I had had this made before the

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United Bible Societies made theirs back in the 80s. I would take I had two of them made.

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Actually, I knew a man here locally who was a Jehovah's Witness who did bookbinding on the side and a good job, you know, leather binding the whole nine yards.

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And I had him bind. One was a UBS text with the

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Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia. The other was the Nessie Allen with the Biblia Hebraica. And he'd have to trim the page sizes to make them fit because they weren't cut the same size.

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But I had them made and then UBS finally came out with Biblia Sacra, which

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I believe is still available. I assume it is. We don't carry it. But and it would be the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia.

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And if I is yeah, that would be that would be the Nessie Allen in the New Testament.

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I don't have it. I didn't bring it in here with me. But I have in the other room in a very nice Renaissance art leather cover.

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So that's the critical edition. And then, of course, now you can get the reader's edition. And I heard about I haven't checked this out for myself yet, but I actually heard about a reader's edition that might have some critical notes in it.

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I haven't somebody mentioned it to me. I haven't bothered looking it up yet. So if that's out there, that would be quite interesting.

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Of course, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Other than looks and certain circumstances.

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And some of you are going to be mad at me for this. I'm sorry, it just happens. But since I got my iPad, that's all

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I've preached from. I don't I almost never carry paper texts anymore.

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And there's a simple reason. There's a lot of reasons for it. With Accordance on the iPad now,

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I've got a huge library. I've got the CNTTS. I've got Metzger.

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I've got Comfort. I wish I had. And if I would just spend a little time on it, I could have the

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Nestle -Aland and the Biblihebraica apparatus on my iPad. I found a way to do it. I've got a couple books.

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And I could link them. I could have them as notes in both Olive Tree and Accordance because I can copy them and PDF them and stick them there.

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I could do it. I just haven't gotten around to getting the thing all done. But it's real simple.

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There's a very, very practical reason aside from the fact that it's thin and it's easy to carry and all the rest of that stuff.

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It doesn't get beat up when you put it into your bag. I don't care what book you get. Even if you have it in a really good cover, it's going to get damaged being slid in and out of bags.

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And you're trying to stuff stuff in and you end up messing up the page edges. And they just weren't designed for that kind of the amount of traveling that I do.

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But the real practical reason is simply this. It's easier to read.

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It's easier to read. Any book that's going to be small enough to carry, the font size is going to be pretty small.

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And so either I have to drag out reading glasses anymore. I'm pushing 50. Or the wonderful thing is that you sit behind me in church and I'll bet you, you can look over the pew.

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And on Sunday morning, we were in Romans chapter two, right? And what

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I've been doing is I've been bringing up Codex Sinaiticus in Accordance. And I'll bet you from sitting behind me, you could see the

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Greek and probably read half of it because I have the font so large. As you know, my wife has been using her

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Kindle lately in church. And so she, on Sunday morning, was like glancing over your shoulder trying to compare what you were looking at with what she was looking at and the quality and things like that.

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So yeah, you can see it from that far away quite easily. But I do want to, as an aside, you really make pushing 50 sound so much older than it really is.

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Since I'm already there, you know, you just want to, you know, it's not quite as bad as I don't know, like I said yesterday morning, you looked really tired.

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Anyway, so just simply getting back to the point here.

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Since I've gotten my iPad, that is what I use because the fonts are...

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Can you imagine how big Biblia Sacra would be? Now, Biblia Sacra is a thick book already.

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Can you imagine how... No, it's already that thick. Okay, now make it large print with the font size that I use on the iPad.

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Yeah, it's not the size of the, you know, the old family Bibles. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All it does is ever collect dust.

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Probably about that size. It would be absolutely huge. So that's why

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I've gone that direction. While you're... You may have the other email that I sent over on the subject that's along these lines, and that is when you're writing.

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Oh, I don't have that. Yes, I do need to do that. Since we're doing a geek segment here,

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I forgot to... I don't even have my computer here. I left it. Right now, ironically, my main

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MacBook, I have a MacBook Pro in front of me. It's my first one. My second one is at home. The one that I'm using now, the current edition.

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Well, relatively current edition. It is recording a very important book for me off of my

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Kindle. And it was recording all night. This is a long book. I mean, I don't know how many hours this thing's going to take to get through, but it's going to take hundreds of miles of riding to get through it.

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But it's recording right now. So people keep writing in. I have talked about it.

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There's a video. I think I did a video. But I haven't thrown it all together. I keep mentioning these things. It's driving people insane.

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We get lots of contact from people saying, James keeps talking about listening to books while riding or converting this book.

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How's he doing this? Because there's a lot of people who have long commutes. They have long drives.

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Not necessarily what I'm doing. Long bicycle riding. Currently averaging like 220 miles a week on the bike.

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And that's about 12, 13 hours. I'm redeeming that time. That's when I do my study. That's when

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I do DL prep and all the rest of that stuff. So how do you do that? Well, here's the two ways I have discovered that have made it possible.

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First of all, I'm using an iPod Nano. It is not the current edition of Nano. I am not happy with the fact that they have come out with a new edition of Nano and gotten rid of the kind that I have.

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I'm going to need to try to find some of them on eBay before they disappear because they've now gone to a touchscreen. Stupid idea because I'm an athlete for crying out loud.

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And what's it going to be like in August when I'm riding and I am absolutely covered from head to toe in sweat trying to use a stinking touchscreen?

32:44

Who ever thought? Yeah, well, my nose is soaked at that point. I can't even do that. What are you talking about? So I mean, that's just dumb.

32:51

I'm going to have to. I literally am going to have to go find. I'm going to have to get some. Anybody got a 16 gig of the old

32:59

Nano so that when this one croaks, because it does get wet. I've got it in a nice plastic cover, but even then it gets wet.

33:06

I use the iPod Nano. Why the Nano rather than the Shuffle? I used to use the Shuffle. Real simple. The Nano allows you to press the button and you have slower, normal, and faster.

33:19

So I can get through an eight hour book in about five hours and 45 minutes on faster.

33:26

All right, so that's what I'm using. And a good brother in the Lord just sent me, getting arrived this week.

33:33

Remember last time I mentioned I had to turn one of the books off because I was going downhill in the wind. I couldn't hear it anymore.

33:40

Someone sent me a link to earphones that will seal out the wind noise. I threw it on my personal list.

33:48

There's a couple of people who found my personal list and they're on their way. So thank you very, very much. Now I will get to listen even downhill into the wind when

33:58

I'm listening to these books. But how do I get... Let's just hope the trucks see you. Yes, well,

34:04

I do always wear the rear view mirror. I look like the geek with the rear view mirror, but that is very important to see the traffic coming before they see you.

34:12

Anyway, that's one thing. But how do I get it in MP3 format? Two ways.

34:19

Last year or the year before, one of the two, I had a book review I had to do. And I was sitting around going, man, it's going to take me forever to get this book.

34:27

And I've got to get through that one. I was just, I was getting frustrated, a little stressed. And all of a sudden

34:33

I remembered, wait a minute, I have that on my Kindle. So I could listen to it. And as soon as I realized

34:38

I could listen to a Kindle... Now you have to be careful when you buy a book, look at...

34:44

It'll tell you, is voice activated on this? Because some of the...

34:50

At first, everything you got on Kindle, the Kindle would read everything to you. Then they realized that's going to kill all audio book sales.

34:59

So they started deactivating on certain of the books. So you got to look and make sure that your

35:06

Kindle will actually be able to read it to you. But the Kindles from Kindle 2 onward,

35:11

I have a Kindle 3, Kindle 2 and 3 can both read the text to you. The Kindle 3, I think has a few extra voices and things like that.

35:18

Even it can read faster if you want it to. You can even choose speeds on that too. I don't do that,

35:26

I speed it up on the iPod. Because if you do it fast on the Kindle and fast on the iPod, now we're talking

35:32

Mickey Mouse, okay? Now it's a little bit difficult to follow, especially if there's anything technical in the book.

35:39

So what you can do, and this is how I did the Stillgender book, is

35:44

I bought the book, I take it home, I plug it into the input of my

35:50

MacBook Pro. I have a book called Maxim, M -A -C -S -O -M -E

35:56

Audio Recorder. There's all sorts of free or cheap audio recording software programs out there for Windows or for Mac.

36:07

You just put it in the input of your laptop or whatever. And I start it when

36:13

I go to bed. And I hit record in the thing. And I hit start speech on the

36:19

Kindle and chapter one. The nice thing about this program is it breaks it up into one hour segments.

36:25

So each hour it saves a new audio file. So right now, that's what's going on at home, is it's recording this book for me.

36:33

Then what I do is I take those, and I dump them into a

36:39

Wondershare video converter, which also does audio. And if I want to,

36:46

I will then recombine that into one file or just leave it that way, whichever it is. Take that from AAC to MP3, or I could even record in MP3.

36:55

Then I throw it in iTunes, turn it into an audio book, put it on my iPod, and it's ready to go. Make sure to use it as an audio book for one simple reason.

37:02

You can check the box that allows that once you stop it, it will restart at the place where you stop.

37:10

Because some of these are like six, seven, eight hours long. And if you don't do that, then you have to sit there fast forward to try to find the thing, duh, where you were.

37:22

So that's how I do it with Kindle. But, but that's just the first way

37:27

I found it. Did you have a question, sir? Because I'm not done yet. It's Maxim? M -A -C -S -O -M -E.

37:34

And then it's Wondershare? Is that what you said? I use Wondershare. This is all Mac stuff, but people will, yeah. And then rolling over into iTunes.

37:40

Right. This episode of Geek Class has been brought to you by Alpha Omega. Is not yet done. First year geek.

37:46

This isn't even done yet. Because then I discovered something even better, and that is

37:52

TechSpeech Pro. TechSpeech Pro for Mac. And I think it's the same folks that do

37:58

Dragon Naturally Speaking for Windows. I think. I could be wrong about that. I'm not sure about that.

38:04

But anyway. This is a program where you can take any

38:10

PDF, Word document, HTML, RTF, text file, and think of how much stuff is out there in that format now.

38:20

Archive .org, all these places, older books. Any, for example, if you want to have any shot of my endorsing your book, or even looking at your book, you got to provide it to me in PDF.

38:36

You got to. Why? Because I can take it, dump it into TechSpeech Pro.

38:42

It's just a matter of copy, insert. Once it's in TechSpeech Pro, I can select a voice.

38:49

I've purchased two voices. One's an American voice. One's a British voice. For example, when

38:54

I did Christopher Hitchens stuff, I put it in the British voice because it sounded like Christopher Hitchens. Why not?

39:02

You say export to sound file. Export to MP3. And it takes whatever you put in there.

39:10

Now, I have found that there's a sort of a limit. If you put a 300 -page book in there, it's probably going to choke on it.

39:16

I'd say I could probably do about 100 pages at a time. That's around what I've found. I think it depends on how many page breaks there are, and line breaks, and stuff like that.

39:27

Now, the Kindle has to record in real time. So I have to leave it running overnight for eight hours so I can get eight hours worth of reading stuff.

39:36

Not so with TechSpeech Pro. You put 100 pages into TechSpeech Pro, export it, and in about five to seven minutes, maybe, you will have a fully usable

39:49

MP3 sitting on your desktop. That is a very understandable. Now, people say, oh, it's that computer voice.

39:56

I can't stand it. There are some bad computer voices. There's no question about it. TechSpeech Pro, as long as you buy one of the voices, a purchased voice will be better than a non -purchased voice.

40:07

They actually upgrade them the whole nine yards. It is amazing how clear and understandable.

40:14

Yeah. Will they mispronounce words? Yes. Are sometimes the mispronunciations humorous?

40:21

Yes. I played for you. That was actually my Kindle. Remember, I played the Kindle speaking in tongues when I was doing the

40:27

Gnostic stuff back before the debate with Price last year. Is it fully understandable and non -annoying to listen to this for six hours or something?

40:38

Yes. You really can get used to it. It really is that clear. And so you're talking

40:44

PDFs, Word documents. Just think of how much stuff is becoming available in those formats that you can then just select it, dump it in.

40:55

That's how I get a lot of my Logos stuff. Select it, what you do, here's the trick.

41:02

In Logos, you can select the font size on the screen. You can make it super small.

41:09

That way you can select a bunch of it at once and then you sit there and hold it and it scrolls down and you get tons and tons of stuff into your buffer.

41:18

And then you copy it into TechSpeech Pro and export to MP3. Once it's there, you bring it into iTunes.

41:24

Remember, make it an audio book so that it will remember where you are. There's a little thing to tick that says remember position and you throw it on the iPod.

41:34

Obviously, my current iPod Nano is only eight gigs and I have to keep pulling stuff off because I have so much stuff on there at any one time.

41:44

And that's how you do it. So there you go. I think that's pretty much everything.

41:50

All the little tricks and stuff that I've learned to be able to do that. And you're right, that email is sitting in my thing.

41:57

I just hadn't put it into this particular list. It came after I made this list up. So that's how you do it.

42:03

Thank you for joining us on Geeks R Us on the dividing line. What's that?

42:09

Well, AO Tech. Some people wouldn't say it was overly technical, but that's how you do it.

42:17

Of course, I did help someone in our studio audience. In fact, she just mentioned this in channel, get iTunes set up last night.

42:25

So it's like, man, if you are so far behind, you're just now getting to iTunes. Well, anyway.

42:33

But hey, she's Canadian. We give them a little bit of extra break. Okay. That's going to get an interesting response.

42:44

There's the critical reading text. All right. I was recently in a conversation with someone who said that Dr.

42:51

White, will also attest to the deceitful nature of Bart Ehrman.

42:59

I know that Dr. White does not agree with Dr. Ehrman, probably on most biblical topics. But a comment like that sounds nothing.

43:05

Sounds like, let's try it again. But a comment like that sounds nothing. I have ever heard

43:11

Dr. White say. Dr. White is definitely passionate about his belief in Christ, but something like that sounds nothing like Dr.

43:17

White at all. I'd be very grateful if Dr. White would comment on this. Thank you very much. Well, I have said many times that when it comes to factual information, normally

43:27

Bart Ehrman tells the truth. It's what he does, the factual information, what he ignores the factual information.

43:33

That's the problem. I have said many times that while Bart Ehrman describes himself as a happy agnostic,

43:41

I did not find him to be very happy at all. And I have said many times that it seems to me that Bart Ehrman engages in the argument from authority constantly.

43:52

He did in our debate. What else would be the relevance in our debate to, do you sip lattes with the leading

43:58

French textual critical scholars, other than, hey, I am a student of Bruce Metzger. I am the man.

44:05

And we've even listened to him use the argument of authority with atheists. Remember with the infidel guy?

44:12

He didn't so much refute the infidel guy as he said, I've been doing this for 30 years, man. Just listen to what

44:17

I have to say. And I get email after email after email of people saying, you know,

44:22

I went up to Bart Ehrman after he spoke recently. And he said all the same things he always says. It must get boring after a while to say the same thing over and over and over again.

44:29

But he said the same things he always says. And I challenged him on such and such a question. He got upset with me.

44:36

And then did he refute him from scholarly sources and stuff like that? No, he just pulled his name.

44:42

You need to believe me because I'm a biblical scholar. So he definitely pulls the argument from authority constantly over and over and over again.

44:54

But the deceitful nature, well, Bart Ehrman is an apostate. And I've said that many times.

45:01

And there is a spiritual application. There are spiritual ramifications of being an apostate.

45:11

And I do believe if you look at the last... What are the scholarly works that Bart Ehrman is producing?

45:20

He's not. What he's doing is he is writing books for Harper One that make him lots and lots and lots of money.

45:27

And what is he doing in those books? He has a new book coming out in just a few weeks called Forged. Forged.

45:33

Now, what is this? It's going to be the same old, same old German liberalism from the late 1800s, repackaged and put with the leading apostate stamp of approval, which will make him more money.

45:49

And I'm going to use a term here because I think it accurately reflects the situation.

45:55

The mind numbed zombies who teach philosophy of religion classes at community colleges, who will never allow for the other side to be heard, have never examined what the other side has to say.

46:08

They just simply repeat the ultra liberal drivel as if it is gospel truth.

46:15

They are as bad as the worst mind numbed zombie on the King James only side of things that will never listen to what anybody says to them and considers you a

46:23

God hater if you ever challenge them. It's the exact same mentality, but it's on the left liberal side.

46:31

Those folks will grab that book and assign it as a textbook and cram it down the throats of young people who walk into their class for the next 20 years, just as they did with Jesus Interrupted and Misquoting Jesus.

46:46

And he will make the talk show circuits and he'll be on NPR and they'll throw all the softballs at him.

46:53

And he will make a fortune off of those things. That's just the way it is.

47:00

Now, is that deceitful? I would say that it is. But I put that in a very clear context.

47:06

And that is taking old liberalism that has been refuted and responded to since it came out and repackaging it and not really dealing with the refutations of it.

47:20

I mean, let's think about Bart Ehrman's Forged, okay? It's coming out.

47:25

We know what the arguments are going to be. I've listened to this. You know, my critics never spend as much time doing their homework as I do.

47:34

Now, I make mistakes and I can't keep up with everything there is to keep up with, because you know what?

47:40

I handle more topics than my critics could even begin to list, to be perfectly honest with you.

47:47

But before I debated Bart Ehrman, and I especially love this about the people who criticize my debate with Bart Ehrman, most of them have no clue.

47:56

Peter Lumpkins, for example, no clue what was going on in that debate. They don't even know enough about the background to even evaluate it meaningfully.

48:03

That doesn't stop them from commenting on it, but they don't even have the background to evaluate it meaningfully. They have no idea the goldmine of statements that I got

48:12

Bart Ehrman to make in the cross -examination. They don't even know. The people who do go, oh, yeah.

48:17

But the people who don't, you know, they're all over me and that's life. But before I ever debated the man,

48:23

I listened to so many hours of his lectures.

48:31

I, again, out there on the back of that bike, listening to his classes on different subjects, not even on necessarily the subject we'd be debating, but just simply to understand where the man's worldview is and his teaching methodology, the examples he might use, things

48:46

I might draw examples from depending on what the debate went to and what the nature was going to be and what directions he went and all the rest of that stuff.

48:54

And so I know what his arguments in Forged are going to be before he even makes them because he's already made these arguments in other books and in other contexts.

49:03

He's just putting it all together now in one place. And I can tell you right now,

49:10

I did a Bible study at the Phoenix Forum Baptist Church sometime in early 2010, where I specifically addressed the issue of the authorship of the pastoral epistles.

49:22

And it was primarily in response to Bart Ehrman's arguments. Been there, done that, got the

49:27

T -shirt. This isn't new stuff. And my critics wouldn't even know how to begin to respond to this stuff generally.

49:34

Some of them might, but generally most either don't or they've already bought into it themselves, one of the two.

49:40

But it's real simple. I'm going to have to look around and see if there is an app.

49:48

There's an app for everything, right? If there's a program or an app that will do vocabulary analysis of a written piece of material, because basically the arguments are, look, if you take what we think are the genuine

50:07

Pauline epistles and you examine the vocabulary of those epistles and create a database from that.

50:18

So for Bart Ehrman, that's seven epistles, seven Pauline epistles that he considers to be genuine. Hey, at least he thinks

50:24

Paul existed. That's a good thing. You know, got to go for any positive thing you can get these days.

50:31

But then what you do is you compare the vocabulary of the pastoral epistles with the genuine epistles.

50:39

You join this with the fact that Bart has a particular theory as to the nature of the early church.

50:45

This is very important. What was that book? I'm going to have to use the algo here or the

50:51

Turretin fan and channel. The Heresy of Orthodoxy. I'll bet you that's what it was.

50:57

I think that's the name. I read it a couple of months ago. The Heresy of Orthodoxy, which was a response to Ehrman that points out that there is this movement among scholars like him that in essence says, look, the early church looked like this and therefore anything that doesn't fit our picture of this must have come from a later period.

51:22

Yeah, Heresy of Orthodoxy. There it is. Thank you, Turretin fan. Available on Amazon .com, obviously.

51:29

In fact, that might be something for us to put into our Amazon store. Some of you need to know, and I need to blog this more often, that we have an

51:39

Amazon store. And so if you want to pick up the book, it's not the most fascinating reading. A lot of this stuff isn't.

51:47

But Amazon .AOMin .org, Amazon .AOMin .org, that you need to look at. And you help to support the ministry when you purchase things in that way.

51:56

Anyway, anything that doesn't fit our paradigm of what the early church looked like must have come from a later period of time.

52:03

So you take these word analyses and you join it with your theories about what the early church looked like.

52:11

And you come to the confident conclusion that the pastoral epistles come from the second century. What I'd love to do, and maybe there's somebody out there that has this software already or something like that.

52:23

Take Bart Ehrman's first and biggest major scholarly work, which he's doing a second edition of,

52:29

I understand, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which I have read, obviously.

52:37

And do a word and vocabulary analysis with Forged, or I'm misquoting

52:45

Jesus. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you will take that, his scholarly work, and compare it with his popular work, the computer will tell you two different people wrote it.

53:01

On the very same foundation as the arguments used to say that the pastoral epistles cannot be

53:08

Pauline because they have a different audience.

53:15

When you write to the churches of Galatia, when you write to the church at Rome, when you write to the church at Ephesus, when

53:26

I preach a sermon, I will use different vocabulary, cadence, and language than when

53:33

I'm sitting over the dinner table with my family. There's no question about that.

53:40

I will use different language here on this program. I will use different language in responding to a young caller than in responding to an older caller.

53:53

That's simply how human beings are. And I can guarantee you that we could demonstrate that Bart Ehrman didn't write a number of Bart Ehrman's books.

54:05

Now, Bart Ehrman's still alive, but we could do this with writers from 100 years ago, and 100 years from now, could someone make the argument using

54:14

Bart Ehrman's own standards that Bart Ehrman didn't write everything that has Bart Ehrman's name on it? See, that kind of thing, it has been pointed out that when you create a database of words as to an author's usage, your selection of the starting data determines the conclusions of the study.

54:40

And what if you isolate Galatians from the other six genuine ones, and now you create a new database based on that?

54:52

You could prove Paul didn't write Galatians. I mean, you determine your conclusions by your starting set of data.

55:02

And so, once again, we're going to have to talk about all this stuff.

55:08

It's not like this stuff isn't already out there. It's just not in the real popular books. You don't have

55:14

NPR calling up conservatives saying, we'd like to have a conservative voice concerning the unity of the

55:22

New Testament. That's not going to be covered. No one cares.

55:27

They're not going to do that. Are they? No, they're not. So it's coming, and I've already pre -ordered it, and I'll try to get to it as quick as I can.

55:38

I also pre -ordered Rob Bell's book, but it's supposed to be available next week.

55:45

I ordered on Kindle for the obvious reason that I have very limited sit down, do nothing other than run my eyes over a page of text time.

55:59

Right now, because I need to be taking advantage of the weather and checking out how the heart's working,

56:07

I've got lots of in -the -saddle time. And so I'm not going to be able to get to Rob Bell's book as fast as some people would like me to get to Rob Bell's book because they delay the

56:20

Kindle release for obvious reasons. If you really, really, really want the book, you have to buy the paper version.

56:27

I think the Kindle release is the 25th, so I think there's about 11 days, something like that delay.

56:34

It might be a digitizing thing. I suppose I shouldn't be utterly skeptical, but I am. That's just how

56:41

I am. So I'll get it later in the month, and that means I will take my Kindle, plug it into my

56:46

Mac overnight, record the thing in, stick it on the iPod, and go out and do an 80 -mile ride and come back all frustrated and everything else.

56:58

And no, I'll have to admit, if someone does have the question, we're about out of time here. If someone has the question, does it help you to go faster listening to these things?

57:07

The answer is no. There are times if I really want to try to keep up a good pace or climb a mountain or something like that,

57:18

I've got to reach back there and switch over to the riding music playlist that has some nice up -tempo stuff to get up that hill.

57:25

Because there are some times when an in -depth discussion of the contrast and comparison of Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih al -Muslim just is not what you need to get up that hill.

57:36

You know what I mean? It just, no. It's not quite as good as a good

57:41

John Tesh number that was actually designed to be played in the background of the Tour de

57:46

France, you know, for cycling. It doesn't work that way. So anyway, so I didn't get to, again,

57:53

I didn't get to Mark VI and I didn't get to Act XVII, but I do have some questions on Mark VI and Act XVII.

58:00

I didn't get to a question on Common Grace. But hey, we'll be back on Thursday, Lord willing.

58:07

And I'm just deleting the ones I haven't gotten to here. So we'll get to those as soon as we can. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

58:13

Even though it was early in the day, hey, it's a live program. We get to do it when we need to do it.

58:20

That's just sort of how it works. If it was syndicated and networked and all that stuff, we wouldn't be able to do any of that stuff.

58:26

So, and it would be a completely different program. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line. God bless. God bless.