The Predestination Debate-Christianity & Islam

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All right, well, it is truly an honor to be with you here this evening. Unfortunately, we have a very short period of time to cover a lot of material.
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And so let me just explain my intentions here. We may be calling it the predestination debate, but it's not like there is a thesis that can be proven or disproven.
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My desire this evening is to present to you a reformed Christian understanding of the relationship between God and His creatures,
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His creation, His purpose in having created us, and demonstrate the consistency, the beautiful consistency that I see in Christian theology in regards to this subject, the incarnation of Christ, the gospel, etc.,
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etc. And then Yusuf is going to present his understanding of the concept of hada in Islamic theology, and then we're going to have some discussion concerning how these two concepts relate, how they differ, how they're related to our understanding of how a man is made right before God.
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But given that we are in an Anglican church, I thought I would start off with this definition from the 39
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Articles of the Anglican Church. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby before the foundations of the world were laid,
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He has constantly decreed by His counsel secret to us to deliver from curse and damnation those whom
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He has chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honor.
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Wherefore, they which are endowed with such excellent a benefit of God are called according to God's purpose by His Spirit, working in due season.
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They through grace obey the calling. They are justified freely. They are made sons of God by adoption.
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They are made like the image of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. They walk religiously in good works, and at length by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.
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Now, you can tell by some of the language there, that's from 1562. I happen to believe that God's truth remains
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God's truth, whether it is 500 years old or 1 ,000 years old or anything else it might be.
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And that, the 17th of the 39 articles, expresses very succinctly what
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I believe concerning this truth. But if I might turn to Scripture, here is,
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I think, a very excellent summary from the Apostle Paul from his epistle to the
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Ephesians. He says this, in all wisdom and insight, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention, which he purposed in him, that is, in Christ Jesus, with a view to administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ.
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Now, let me just stop there for a moment. This is the essence of Christian theology, that the triune
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God in creation is summing up all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth.
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In him, that is, in Christ, also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.
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So here is this description of God as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will.
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Well, how can this be? We live in a day where mankind is king. Mankind gets to determine everything now, does he not?
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Well, not from a biblical perspective. Let me just share a couple of texts from the
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Old Testament with you on this subject. Whatever Yahweh pleases, he does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps,
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Psalm 135, 6. Whatever he pleases. Not whatever man pleases, but whatever he pleases, he does.
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Isaiah 14, 27, for Yahweh of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it?
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And as for his stretched out hand, who can turn it back? This is often said in the context of mankind trying to resist
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God's purposes, and the scriptural response is, if Yahweh of hosts has planned it, who can frustrate it?
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In the book of Isaiah, chapter 46, verses 9 through 10, remember the former things long past, for I am
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God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, my purpose will be established.
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I will accomplish all my good pleasure. This is God speaking, and he says he will accomplish all of his good pleasure.
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The 33rd Psalm, we are told, let all the earth fear Yahweh. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke and it was done.
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He commanded and it stood fast. You see, very central to the biblical understanding of God is he is our creator.
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And I honestly believe that much of what's happening in especially Western culture today is the loss of that understanding that we have a creator and we are his creations, and we have a responsibility before him.
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But there in Psalm 33, he commanded and it stood fast. Yahweh nullifies the counsel of the nations.
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He frustrates the plans of the peoples, but the counsel of Yahweh stands forever, the plans of his heart from generation to generation.
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There is the direct assertion in inspired scripture that while the Lord nullifies the plans and intentions of man, his plans and intentions are absolutely certain and established.
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Going back to the prophet Isaiah chapter 41, present your case, Yahweh says, bring forward your strong arguments, the king of Jacob says.
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Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place. As for the former events, declare what they were that we may consider them and know their outcome.
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This is where God is asking the people to bring their false idols and put them up on trial.
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This is, well, this is very good because we have some jurists here. This is the trial of the false gods.
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And here God challenges these false gods to answer some questions and here he says to tell us what is going to take place.
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Only the true God knows the future. But how does he know the future? That's one of the questions we'll need to be asking this evening.
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Does he simply have knowledge of it? Does he learn at some point in time what the future is going to be? Or is it because of his sovereign decree?
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But then a lot of people miss what is also said here. As for the former events, declare what they were that we may consider them and know their outcome.
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Do you understand what's being challenged here to these false gods? You see, a historian can tell you what's happened in the past, but a historian can often not tell you why things happened in the past.
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God can tell you what the future is and he can also tell you the past and why the past has taken place the way that it did.
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God is not only omniscient and having all knowledge, but he says there is a reason why he is omniscient because he is the one who is accomplishing his purpose.
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Or announce to us what is coming. Declare the things that are going to come afterward that we may know that you are gods, indeed good, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together.
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So here there's even mockery of these gods because they can't know the future and they can't tell us why things have happened the way they did in the past.
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Even in Proverbs 21 .1, we're told, the king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of Yahweh. He turns it wherever he wishes.
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God is in control even in the matters of human affairs. Even the pagans understood this.
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The pagan king Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter four. But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the most high and praised and honored him who lives forever for his dominion is an everlasting dominion.
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His kingdom endures from generation to generation. Then listen, all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?
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Even the pagan king understands when he comes to his senses after he has been humbled by God, he comes to his senses and he understands no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?
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He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth.
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There are many people who'd be more than happy to let God do what God wants to do out there in space someplace, out there where it doesn't impact me as long as I remain sovereign in my life.
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Well, this is not the testimony of the scriptures. These are the scriptures that the Lord Jesus honored.
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So what did the Lord Jesus teach upon this subject? Did he contradict the Old Testament scriptures? Certainly not.
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He considered them to be the very word of God. When he quoted from them, he said, for example, David said, by the
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Holy Spirit, he identified his very high understanding and high view of the
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Old Testament scriptures. And so it's not surprising to us, for example, in John chapter six, that Jesus in speaking to the unbelieving
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Jews in explaining why those particular individuals were rejecting his teaching, why they were not listening to what he was saying.
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This is what he said, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me,
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I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
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This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
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You hear what he said? He says to these individuals, all that the Father gives me will come to me.
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That sounds pretty certain to me. He doesn't say most, he doesn't say some, he says all that the
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Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out.
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Many Christians love that last line, oh, if I come to Christ, I will never be cast out.
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That's wonderful, but that's the second half of a sentence. And the theology of that sentence starts in the first half, all that the
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Father gives me will come to me. Who is the one who's coming to Christ? Who is the one who's constantly coming to him?
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The one has been given to the Son by the Father. And then Jesus says, I've come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
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And what is the will of the Father for the Son? That of all that he has given me, I lose what?
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A small portion? I do a really good job as Savior? No, I lose nothing.
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The Father's will for the Son is that he be a perfect Savior. For him to be able to do the will of the
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Father, and the Father, Jesus himself said, the Son always does what's pleasing to God, always does what's pleasing to the
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Father. So for him to be able to do that, what does it mean? Jesus must be a powerful
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Savior. He must be able to accomplish that which the Father has tasked him to accomplish.
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This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day, to raise up on the last day to give eternal life.
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Sounds like the Father and the Son are able to bring about the salvation of a particular people, and that is the teaching of Scripture.
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Jesus went on to say a few verses later, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
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It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught of God, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.
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No one can come to me. What do you mean no one can come to me? Well unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
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If the Father draws to the Son, the Son raises that person to everlasting life.
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The perfect work of Father and Son together in bringing about the salvation of God's people.
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It's not just in the Gospel of John, there's this very tremendous text in the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 11, where Jesus says, at that time
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Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.
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Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my
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Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the
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Son, and what's the next line? And anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.
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To know the Father truly requires the revelatory action of the Son. He is the one who reveals the
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Father to us. And so I could have started with the first part of Ephesians chapter one, but now we've sort of laid a foundation in the words of Jesus and in the
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Old Testament, so now we can understand, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is speaking to Christians, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him, that is in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.
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In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of whose will?
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His will. To the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved one, that is in Jesus Christ.
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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.
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This is the consistent testimony of Scripture. Oh, I am well aware of the fact that there are many today who find ways around this, because in our day, mankind has to be sovereign over all things.
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Man's will must be sovereign over all things, but that is not the testimony of Scripture. But someone might say, well, how can you put together the sovereign decree of God, working out all things?
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You read from the 39 articles, working out all things in accordance with the law. How can you do that and man be anything more than just a mere puppet?
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Well, there are three texts. I don't have time to read all of them, but let me just give you a reference to them, and we can expand upon them when we have the opportunity to do so.
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The Bible does give us an understanding of how we can relate together the sovereign will of God and the fact that God holds man accountable for acting upon his desires.
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The first is the story of Joseph and his brothers. Remember Genesis chapter 50. The brothers of Joseph have sold him into slavery.
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Remember the whole story of Joseph in slavery and finally his revelation of himself to his brothers and his father.
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What they had done was a terrible thing. They had sold their brother into slavery. They had deceived their father.
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And so after their father dies, they come to Joseph. They figure they're now toast. And what does Joseph say to them?
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As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people alive.
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Joseph had come to understand. He did not excuse his brother's evil. He recognized what it was.
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It was evil. But you meant evil against me.
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God meant it for good. Same action. It was a sinful action. They are held accountable for acting upon their desires.
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But God was sovereign over that situation. God predetermined it so as to save many people alive.
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It was his intention. Joseph had come to understand. It was his intention to send him to Egypt so that he might save his very family and to save many people alive.
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Likewise, when you turn to Isaiah chapter 10, and it's a very lengthy section. I can't read all 14 verses. But Isaiah chapter 10,
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God proclaims judgment upon the people of Israel and says, I'm bringing Assyria against you, and Assyria is going to trample you down like mud in the streets.
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They are going to bring judgment upon you because you've broken the covenant. But they don't intend to do that.
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They don't intend to be my instruments. Instead, they are very haughty, and they are very proud, and they are very arrogant.
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And so when I'm done using them as the instrument against you because of their arrogance,
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I'm going to punish them. That's what it says in Isaiah chapter 10. Because they said,
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I will do this. I will do this. They didn't recognize the sovereignty of God over them, and their dependence upon God.
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So God uses them and then judges them on the basis of what? The intention of their heart, the attitude of their heart.
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But obviously, the greatest example, the greatest example is found in the early church. When the church is persecuted, told to stop preaching in the name of Christ, they gather together and they pray.
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And what is the beginning of their prayer? For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant
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Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
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Do you hear that? Think of the people that were involved in the crucifixion of Christ. Herod, Pontius Pilate, Gentiles, the peoples of Israel.
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All had different motivations, completely different motivations. And what did the early church profess?
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To do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
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Here you have, in the inspired words of scripture, the sovereignty of God, and you have the responsibility of man.
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You have Herod. You have Pontius Pilate. God holds them accountable for their actions because they act upon the desires of their hearts, and yet what they did was whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
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And so we have a sovereign God. How do we avoid the idea that man is merely a puppet?
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Well, here is where I hope we will be able to focus some of our time this evening as I close my opening time with you.
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How do we avoid the idea that man is just merely on a string? Well, in Christian theology, there is something very, very important called the incarnation.
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The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, entered into human existence.
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He entered into time. He walked amongst us. We beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten
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Father, full of grace and truth. And that means that if God is willing to enter into this time realm, this time realm matters.
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Jesus wasn't a puppet. He wasn't just dancing on a string. What He did mattered.
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What He did accomplished the eternal redemption of His people. And so what we see is these divine truths, they are tied together in a beautiful tapestry.
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The incarnation, the condescension of God, together with the hard truth that God is sovereign and He is accomplishing
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His will and His purpose in this world. I believe that the beauty of divine truth is seen in the
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Christian message and that it is that consistency over time that is so attractive to the heart that is under the influence of the
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Holy Spirit of God. And I hope that this is something that we will be able to expand upon in the brief time that we have this evening.
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I thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much,
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Dr. James White. We've stuck to the time, more or less, it's exactly.
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So it's now Mr. Yusuf Ismail. And Yusuf, I'd also appreciate if you do your best, 20 minutes.
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Thank you. So, are you more or less ready to go ahead? I seek protection in God from Satan, the accursed one.
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It means, in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. These are not incantations, these are universal declarations which we can all basically allude to.
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I want to thank all of you for attending this program. I want to thank, firstly, the moderator, Dr. James White from Phoenix, Arizona.
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It's a privilege to speak in a church which is 125 years old, or so I'm told. I was just having a chat with Reverend Faree two weeks ago, and he told me that sometimes things go bump in the night.
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So if there are any spirits or ghosts that are attending this debate, I also welcome them as well. And I hope we have a good and informative session, and I hope we basically share and exchange our ideas, that we effectively are brothers in humanity and sisters in humanity, if not brothers and sisters in faith.
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How do we focus on this particular topic? How do we deal with this? I'm going to basically, in my presentation tonight,
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I'm going to argue that the Islamic concept of qadr, which can be viewed as the equivalent of predestination, but the
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Islamic concept of qadr, or takdir, is far more reasonable and in fact meaningful than the
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Christian concept of predestination. Now, why do I say this? Firstly, the term Christian itself is loaded, because within Christianity, as within Islam, you've got a various array of interpretations on this particular issue.
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So it's important that when you deal with subjects of this particular nature, and the topic, and the theme, that we go to the primary sources.
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What you effectively saw in the 20 minutes when Dr. White was presenting his opening statement to you, was inherently something which was from the reform position, something which was basically
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Calvinistic. A Calvinistic understanding of predestination would differ from, I would argue, even the
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Anglican Church or some of the other denominations. At a primary level, he would, for example, believe, and I'm not going to focus too much on that, but he would, for example, believe that Jesus came and died for the sins of the elect.
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Not for the sins of mankind, but for the sins of the elect. Who are the elect and who are the non -elect? Well, this is something which is determined by God himself, but there is no discerning criteria existing in humanity to decide, these are my elect and these are the non -elect.
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There's nothing within them to say, this now basically entitles you to be the elect. So I think that's important to make that distinction.
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What are some of the basic concepts and definitions we're going to look at? Well, firstly, we're going to focus and look at and unpack what the definition of the word qadr means.
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Is it the same as predestination? Do we have an equivalent to the Calvinistic understanding of predestination in Islam?
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And I would argue that, and I was chatting with him this afternoon, that within the Islamic worldview, you have had a sect in history called the
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Jabariyya who believed in this notion of absolute predestination, that man is, in many instances, just simply a puppet, a lemming, and that God basically decides and decrees from time eternity what's going to happen.
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And how does the Quran define qadr? And finally, we're going to try and contrast the will of man versus the will of God.
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Can one in fact speak about the whole notion of free will, limited free will, or basically absolute sovereignty from God?
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So, how does the Quran define this? Well, there's a dictionary called raghib.
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Raghib is a dictionary, he's an individual who wrote a dictionary called the al -mufradat fi gharib al -quran, and in it, it lays down certain understandings of certain concepts within the
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Islamic worldview. In describing the concept of qadr, he says that this can be described as the making manifest of the measure of a thing, or simply, measure.
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So God's takdir is in two ways, one, granting qadr, power, or by making them in a particular measure or manner as is required.
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So, for example, what is the takdir of a date stone? What do I mean by that? What is the penultimate outcome of a date stone?
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It's going to grow into a date. If you take popo seeds, and you basically plant them, as my wife does, you plant them, what's going to grow?
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An apple, an orange, you're going to get a popo. Similarly with anything else, human embryo, unless you obviously are
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Jeff Goldblum in the fly, or in the island of Dr. Morrow, a human embryo is going to be a human being.
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So from that perspective, one can see that when you look at the notion of qadr, loosely translated predestination in Islam, it's effectively the law, or the ordinance, or the measure which is working throughout creation.
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In other words, in the language of the Quran, takdir, God's ordinance, it's a universal law of God operating in man, and operating in nature.
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Now, why do I say this? Well, we'll look at certain passages of the Quran, and we'll focus on some of the utilization of this word, qadr and takdir.
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In Surah Yasin, chapter 36, verse 38, And the sun moves on to its destination.
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That is the takdir, the ordinance of the mighty, the knowing. In other words, the sun is rotating, basically, on its own axis.
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If you look, basically, at another passage of the Quran, Surely we have created everything according to a measure.
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Surah 54, verse 49 Qadr, again, measure.
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Allah, God, measures the night, and He measures the day. Again, the word is yuqadr, qadr.
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So, and in Surah 80, verse 18, The word is qadrahu.
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So, in other words, qadr, the final, this is what is decreed by God, this is how you are created.
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In Surah 57, verse 14, we have an interesting passage. Man causes his own fall, not
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God. They will cry out to them, were we not with you? They shall say, yes, but you caused yourself to fall into temptation, and you waited and doubted, and vain desires deceived you, till the threatened punishment of God came, while Satan deceived you about God.
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Surah 8, verse 23, And if God has made known any good in them, He would have made them hear.
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And if He makes them hear, or if He made them to hear, they would still turn back while they withdrew.
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Now, this doesn't mean that God fails, or that God is a failure, but it simply means that man has a choice of discerning between right and wrong.
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The Calvinistic understanding or interpretation of Christianity doesn't afford man that prerogative.
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Everything is from God, and that in fact creates fundamental problems, if I understand it correctly, and Dr.
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White can correct me in his time, when we deal with the subject, in the second half of the discussion. Surah 11, verse 19,
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If thy Lord had willed, He could have made mankind one people, but they will not cease to dispute.
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So, nothing stops God from engaging in certain actions. Nothing stops God from exercising
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His will. But in certain instances, even if that were the case, people will still be engaged in wrongdoing.
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So, according to all Arabic lexicologists, and in fact, Arabic linguists, Taqdeer is a universal law of God, extending to the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the heavens, all that rests in them.
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The law of life has witnessed in nature. And so, Taqdeer of a thing is a law, the measure of its growth and development,
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Taqdeer of a man is no different. What are some of the myths that we need to effectively confront?
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Well, here's a myth, number one, I would argue, the creation of good and evil. And I think here's where the parting of the way is, not necessarily with Christians, but maybe myself and Dr.
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White. Taqdeer, meaning the absolute decree, or predestination, meaning the absolute decree of good and evil by God, an idea which is collected in people's minds, is absolutely unknown to God, the
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Quran, or even to Arabic lexicology. And I would argue, as many scholars have argued, that the doctrine of predestination, in the sense of God decreeing good and evil, is of a later growth, more particularly from Persian religious thought.
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Why do I say that? Because in Persian religious thought, particularly amongst the Magians and the Zoroastrians, they had the whole notion that there are two creators.
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That there is a creator of good, and that there is a creator of evil. And that became the central doctrine of the
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Magian religion. And just as the Trinity became the central doctrine of Christian faith. And so,
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Islam taught monotheism in its purest form. I would argue that, probably in controverting the dualistic notion of the
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Magian religion, that this discussion arose as to whether God was a creator of evil and many other side issues subsequently sprang up.
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So the Islamic view is that God created man with certain limited powers which he can exercise under certain limitations.
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Does that make sense? And, to give you an example, man's speech.
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If you look at man's speech, for example, the power of speech can be used for good, can be used for evil.
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If you punch someone, that punch that you blow that you lay on someone, it could be either an act of virtue or an act of vice.
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If you're acting in self -defense to protect an old lady, that could be an act of virtue. If you're acting aggressively, that could be a vice.
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So, from that perspective, it's not just simply a black and white issue. You need to look at a more nuanced, broader understanding of this, as opposed to simply black and white.
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There's only one instance in the Quran in which a derivative of takdir, translated as predestination, is used to indicate the fate of a person.
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Only one instance. And that is in relation to this woman, this lady, the wife of Lot.
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In Surah 15, verse 60, it says, We ordain, qaddarna, that she should be of those who remain behind.
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This is what the Quran states. And then, subsequently, the whole Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed with the wife of Lot.
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Bible says she was a pull of salt. Quran doesn't say she was transformed in a pull of salt. But she was of those that were destroyed.
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Now, in that context, it doesn't mean that she is ordained to be evil. What it means is that there is an ordinance from God which holds good in respect of all evil people, that they should, in fact, suffer the consequences of what they should do.
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So, when divine punishment overtook them, she was basically ordained to be one of the people of Lot.
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And so, was consequently punished. And so, it's important that when you look at the will of God and when you look at the will of man, there's a great deal of misunderstanding that exists as to the relation of the divine will of man and the divine will and, of course, the will of man.
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All the faculties which man has been endowed emanates from the divine attribute. In fact, there's a hadith which says, imbue thyself with divine attributes.
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Just as God is just, you are to be just. Just as God is, in a sense, holy, you are supposed to be holy.
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But not in the absolute sense. Just as God is perfect, you are to be perfect. But this is relative perfection.
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Just like Jesus says, be ye perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect. You cannot be as perfect as a heavenly father.
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You can fall down, make amends, repent, and then, if you're on the right path,
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God will guide you. So, what you see there, effectively, is that these so -called faculties that God has endowed emanates, effectively, from divine attributes, as I basically see.
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And so, consequently, man's will would stand in the same relation to God's will as his other attributes, which would mean that man would exercise his will under certain limitations and laws dependent on the variety of circumstances which may determine his course of action.
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The choice to exercise it has not been taken away from him. Let's look at an example, a classic example here.
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If you have this notion that man has no free will, or limited free will. Let's assume you have an old lady walking with a puppy on Musgrave Road and she's mugged, she's raped, and she's brutally murdered by a gang of savages, thugs.
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What happens there? If John Calvin was living amongst us today, he would have argued that that is under the decree of God.
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Unless I'm mistaken, unless I'm mistaking Calvinistic theology. But that's what the implications are when we have this particular notion.
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So the Quranic position, I would argue, is that man is free to exercise his will, and therefore though he may not be responsible to the same extent for everything that he effectively does in all cases, circumstances will obviously determine the extent of his responsibility, which may be small, but nevertheless by and large he is a free agent.
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He has to be, otherwise it defeats the very purpose of existence. If God decrees that this group basically is unelected, and this is the elect, and that he's damned the unelected from inception, then what's the very purpose of existence?
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Why even bother punishing them? Why reward people who have already determined that they are your elect? That's a problem that we have as Muslim and so we would argue that from that perspective the notion of limited free will makes more sense, and in fact is scripturally valid if we look at the
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Quran, and I would argue even from the perspective of the Old and the New Testament, which we may look. Now this is not an indictment on Christianity, or an indictment on Dr.
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White, whom I respect very highly and certainly his worldview, but I'm just saying that the potentiality of the problems we create when we make these absolute statements.
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Here's another verse in the Quran, from Surah 6, verse 149 -150 I know time is at a premium, as usual Here the polytheists were saying, they made the claim that if God so willed, we would not have set up any partners with him nor our fathers, nor would we have made anything unlawful.
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You see, God should have done, God should have willed, we wouldn't have done this. Thus did those before them rejected the truth until they tasted the punishment.
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Now here's the issue The Quran responds, it says Say, have you any knowledge so that you would bring it forth to us?
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You only follow a conjecture and you only tell lies Say then, God is a conclusive argument, so if he had willed he, who had willed, pleased he would have guided you all
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And so, there's a two -fold argument here. Previous people and previous generations were punished by God.
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Why were they punished if they were, if God had willed their evil?
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Why would they be punished? Because here's the argument by the polytheists, that God should have willed us to be on the right path, he would have willed us not to engage in polytheism
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And the second argument is that if God had willed, then people would have been compelled to one trajectory or one cause, not the opposite direction
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And so, from that perspective, what you can see from the contention of the polytheists is that the conclusion is clear.
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If it were the divine will that people should be compelled to one cause, then they would have been on the course of guidance, but men are not compelled to accept even the right way much less could they be compelled to follow the wrong way
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And this is writ large in many passages of the Quran. Another verse of the Quran God does not change a condition of a people unless they themselves change it
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You have to change it yourself Now, the fact that God doesn't will you in one direction or will you in another direction doesn't mean that he's not been glorified or that he's a failure.
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That's silly It's actually basically the purpose of existence in the end.
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Do you attain your salvation depending on how you live your life in this world? The doctrine of absolute predestination or the decreeing of good cause for one man and an evil cause for another man has absolutely no basis in the
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Quran Then we may ask the question, what about foreknowledge? Because this is a common argument. What about foreknowledge?
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Because, basically, if God knows what will happen in the future, whether a particular man will take a good cause or whether he will take an evil cause, it follows that that man must take that particular cause, for the knowledge of God cannot be untrue
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Well, here's the problem Because time really doesn't exist You cannot subject the
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Almighty to past, present, future. How can you? Time is linear
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It's within our confines. You can't confine God to the realm of us So you can't say what does
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God say about the future There is no future for God There is no past for God and there is no present for God.
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All this is within our realm of existence God is outside the realm of existence, so even trying to place a category of time on God is effectively meaningless
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But more particularly we would argue also that man's knowledge of things is limited both by time and space and I would argue that if you were to talk about future conventionally, then we could argue that God sees or knows the future as a man would know what is passing before his eyes
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But God's knowledge of the future is in fact far above and far superior to man's knowledge.
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So to now kind of create this sort of parallel universe really doesn't basically make sense.
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We could even argue that the future is an open book to God for knowledge has nothing to do with predestination What about God's writing down of adversities?
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Well, there are certain passages in the Quran in terms of which God says, I shall certainly prevail, I and my messages and we would argue that these terminologies are used interchangeably.
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No mentioning or fixing beforehand an evil cause for the evil doer. It's not necessary to reference from any previous writing or any previous order
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The Islamic position I would argue tonight is more balanced
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Man works, or man's will works under certain limitations but God does not compel him to take a certain cause
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There are 101 causes for his decisions and his responsibility may vary according to the circumstances, but the choice is his and so is his responsibility
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Because if you leave everything to God and say, God decreed this, then I understand that Dr.
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White tried to say, well man is not just simply a puppet and he tried to present an exegesis, but in reality man is a puppet.
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That's what you're saying that man is reality a puppet. Man has a free will but that is exercised under certain limitations within the
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Islamic worldview. It's only the divine will that can be called an absolutely free will Everything created and human is subject to to a divine measure
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Human knowledge, human power and will are all subject to the limitations placed upon God by the divine measure which is called
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Qadr And so it's in only that sense that a Muslim can said to have faith in Qadr We do have individuals we have had historically individuals that have had similar views to Dr.
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White Those views were indeed heretical The main Islamic position is that God is penultimately sovereign but that the free will that he exercises is exercised under certain limitations
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That is a far more meaningful understanding. Thank you very much So now it's back to Dr.
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James White who will speak now for 15 minutes
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Now I think we need to understand, especially to the Christians in the audience, we need to understand that Islamic theology is not simply based upon the
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Quran. Historically Islamic theology has developed especially in light of what is called the
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Hadith And when we look at the Hadith, I want to point to probably the single most important section
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If you look at the most important collection of Hadith within the Sunni tradition
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This is Sahih al -Bukhari together with Sahih Muslim, but Bukhari especially And Bukhari has an entire section on the subject of Qadr And one of the primary stories that is related in that section goes like this
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He will be wretched or blessed in religion Then the soul is breathed into his body, so a man may do deeds characteristic of the people of the hellfire, so much so that there is only the distance of a cubit between him and hell
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Then what was written by the angel surpasses, and so he starts doing deeds characteristic of the people of paradise, and enters paradise.
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Similarly a person may do deeds characteristic of the people of paradise, so much so that there is only the distance of a cubit between him and it, and then what has been written by the angel surpasses and he starts doing deeds the people of the hellfire, and enters the hellfire.
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Now this is just the beginning of an entire section of statements that have been interpreted by a very large number of Muslim interpreters down through the ages.
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I think Yusuf just said deemed heretical, but this would require the identification of a very large number of Islamic scholars as heretical, so much so that this particular book by Kahn that I'm reading from called
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Authentication of Hadith Redefining the Criteria is an attempt to basically say that we need to overthrow all of the criteria by which
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Sahih Hadith have been determined in the past, so that you can determine that things like this are not to be utilized as being truly representative of Muhammad's understanding of the
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Quran itself. Now that obviously would result in a complete overthrow of the standard
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Sunni understanding of many things, not just this particular subject but what it shows us is that yes, both of us in our traditions have had disagreements on this particular subject, and the objections that Yusuf has presented so far to the idea of an overarching decree of God sound very much like the objections that many
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Christians make to me as well. But here is the question, here is where we all need to dig in this evening.
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Who can give a consistent answer to some of the most foundational questions that will come before us this evening?
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We just heard it said for example that, and I need to try to verify this, maybe I can only do this during the cross -examination period, but it sounded to me at one point that Yusuf said we could say that the future is an open book to God.
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Was that what was on the screen? How can that be if God has all knowledge?
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If God knows that I don't know,
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I shouldn't admit this on tape, but I like going to Spurs. And some people may really now dismiss me as having any meaningful culinary taste whatsoever, but I like going to Spurs.
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I love their chicken quesadilla. Now if God knows me so well, if God knows the future and he knows that the next time
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I go to Spurs, hopefully tomorrow in the Johannesburg airport, that I am going to have a chicken quesadilla, if God knows that today, can
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I have something different tomorrow? Can I have a burger tomorrow rather than chicken quesadilla?
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If today God knows what I'm going to do, well that would invalidate God's knowledge and make God in error. Can God be in error?
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So if God has absolute knowledge of future events, where is this myth of autonomy come from?
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If God knew on September 10th what was going to happen on September 11th, 2001 in the city of New York, could it have gone any other way?
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Could God's knowledge be invalidated? Could God be wrong about the future? The Bible tells us plainly that God knows the day of our death.
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But the date of my death is dependent upon an innumerable free actions of man.
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This is raised within and I do not consider this to be a valid Christian perspective, but there are people who believe in something called open theism.
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The idea that the future is an open book to God and it may come out differently than God expects.
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That when God created, He did not know you would exist because you are the result of numerous free actions of many free creatures.
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And if God doesn't know what free creatures are going to do, then He can't know that you will ever come into existence. Now my
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Bible tells me the exact opposite of all of those things. I gave you numerous texts of Scripture that say the exact opposite of that and so that's why
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I did attempt to say you see, I have a grounding for God's foreknowledge. God's foreknowledge is grounded in His decree.
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And Yusuf is exactly right. God is not bound by time. And so the issue is not, well, couldn't
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God know the future simply because He's outside of time and if time's like a line, God knows the end from the beginning.
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He's eternal. I agree with that. But here's the question. When did He get that knowledge? When God created, did
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He know what was going to happen in the future? Or did He just know what possibilities were?
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If He only, if God just basically took the cosmic dice and said whoo! Snake eyes!
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I win! Whoo! Praise me! Is that really a reason to praise Him? How does
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God have knowledge of future events? I did not, I did not know this but I now know,
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I won't mention names but I now know of an Islamic apologist and theologian and speaker who has come out and basically said
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God doesn't know with exact knowledge what the future is going to contain. I didn't think that that was a part of historic
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Islamic teaching on the doctrine of God but maybe I'm wrong about that.
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I'll let Yusuf address that but that does not seem to have been the historic understanding of God's relationship to His creation.
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And so really I think I'm going to ask Yusuf could you expand upon what you meant if I'm correct in what you said when you said the future is an open book to God I need to know what that means because does that mean that Allah learns based upon man's actions?
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And when Allah created did He not know what could happen as a result of His creation? Did He set all of this in motion not knowing what the end result was going to be?
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That it might get as bad as it's gotten? That we might develop nuclear weapons and blow people up?
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Is that the God that we are talking about? That's certainly not the God of the Bible. That's certainly not the
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God of the Bible. We also were told that foreknowledge has nothing to do with predestination.
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I'm not sure how you can maintain that assertion unless you adopt the idea that foreknowledge is the passive taking in of information on God's part but that means you have to confess that God learns.
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I just direct any one of you to Isaiah chapters 40 through 48 and ask yourself a question is the
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God who is described in those chapters a God who is learning things?
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And if you learn things does that mean you're growing? Does that mean you're improving? How could
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God's knowledge increase in that way? You see both of our communities have had to deal with these issues.
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If you're familiar with Christian church history you know that there have been debates on these issues all along.
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I understand that. The question is from the Christian perspective we have a large corpus of inspired material called the
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Old and New Testaments and as I demonstrated in my presentation there is a beautiful consistency between the two.
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The one takes advantage of the other and vice versa. The God who speaks in the one is the one who acts in the other and there is consistency between what is taught by the
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Apostle Paul, by the Lord Jesus Christ was found in the prophets, was found in Genesis etc. etc. There is beautiful harmony even in the doctrines of the
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Incarnation, the Trinity. It all comes together as a singular whole but it's interesting that Yusuf presented primarily a study of the term
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Qadr from the Quran itself. The Quran is a rather small document in comparison to the
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Bible. It's only 14 % the length of the entirety of the Bible. Only 57 % the length of the New Testament.
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And so I can draw from a large well of revelation and point out the consistencies of well look what happened with Joseph's brothers, look what happens with the early church, look what happens with Assyria, look at these places where we see that God acts in such a fashion and His prophets understand that He acts in such a fashion that He holds men accountable for acting on the desires of their hearts even when
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He is acting in the exact same moment, in the exact same way to accomplish His own purpose.
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That's right there in my text. If the Quran, and here's a question that Yusuf and I have talked about a number of times before but we'll need to talk about it again this evening.
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If the Quran is the continuation as laid out in Surah 5 to where Allah gives the
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Torah to Moses, He gives the Injil to Jesus, now He's given the Quran to Muhammad and there's this chain, they are related to one another.
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Why isn't there seemingly any understanding on the part of the Quran of the discussion that has already taken place in the
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Old and New Testaments on this very issue? If that intimate relationship actually exists.
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It seems to me that there is a vast gulf between where the New Testament lets off and where the
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Quran picks up as to an understanding of this particular issue and especially about how God relates to mankind at the time.
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Now, here's another area that's going to be, look, I'm putting myself in a tough position here and I know it because these are very, very difficult subjects to address in 3 minutes and 39 seconds.
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But He gave us an example of a horrific crime that would take place on the streets of Durban and there are probably, sadly, going to be some horrific crimes take place on the streets of Durban this evening.
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Was that part of God's decree? Let me ask you something. When Allah created, did
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He know that that crime was going to take place? If He didn't, then He's only learning and He started events in action that leads to that but didn't even know that.
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How can you praise the wisdom of one who begins things that result in these horrible things, didn't even realize it was going to happen?
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Did God know when He created these things were going to happen? Or did He just come to learn these things over time?
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And here's the question. If God is the one who is responsible for creating this world, then is there such a thing as meaningless, senseless, pointless, unredeemable evil in God's world?
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Many people today say yes. Many people today say yes, God He's just got to deal with the cards
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He's been dealt. He's just got to do the best He can. And I just remind you, what did
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Nebuchadnezzar say? He's the King of Heaven. No one can stay His hand. What did the psalmist say?
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He accomplishes His purpose in the heavens and the earth. And what that means is, no matter how horrible the evil is, the promise that the
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Christian has based upon inspired scripture is, I may not know the purpose now. I may not know the reason now.
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It may just look like utter chaos to me. But God has a purpose. And in the end, in the end, justice will be done and established.
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That is the promise that's given to me. And how in the world can I look at this horrific world and you not laugh when
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I say something like that? You know how I can do that? Because I know that approximately 2 ,000 years ago, on a hill outside of Jerusalem, the
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Son of God, veiling His power and His might, the One who had created the very wood upon which
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His hands would be impaled, gave His life to accomplish what
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had decreed to do when they began creation itself. There is no purposeless evil because Jesus Christ demonstrated upon the cross of Calvary that He has the power over all evil.
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And He can defeat all of evil. He can defeat our final enemy, death. And He did so.
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And so if someone says, oh yes, there's purposeless evil, I simply go, then why would God create the way He created?
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Couldn't He have done it better? But the reality is, the Christian message is, yes,
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He has His sovereign decree. And the amazing thing is, the center point of that sovereign decree was
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He Himself and the person of His Son entering into human flesh.
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Emmanuel, God with us. That was prophesied all the way up to 700 years earlier in the book of Isaiah.
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Numerous times, not just in Isaiah 7, but beginning in Isaiah 6 all the way through. There you have the consistency.
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There you have the demonstration. No purposeless evil. God knows because God has decreed.
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And I'd like to hear what Yusuf has to say about that. Thank you very much. Thank you for sticking meticulously to the time.
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And now we're going to Yusuf. And you also have 15 minutes.
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Well, thank you for that. And thank you for that engaging response, Dr. White. I will attempt to deal with some of the issues that you raised.
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But I want to also present a critique from what Dr. White has presented. I did commit debating blasphemy tonight.
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He gave me a book called The Potter's Freedom. I never read it. I just got it this afternoon from him. But maybe in the next future sessions we can engage with this in far more detail based on the chapters and the discussions that are contained therein.
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Now, what are we dealing with tonight? I would argue that we are dealing with what has been presented as effectively
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Calvinism or the Calvinistic interpretation of Christianity. That's a theological belief that's named after John Calvin, a
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Protestant reformer from Switzerland. And predestination is a doctrine of Calvinism dealing with the question of the control that God exercises over the world.
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If you look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, some of you may be familiar with it. God freely and unchangeably ordained whatever comes to pass.
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And so in the 20th century you had someone in Holland who came up with something which is called TULIP, based on tulips in Holland.
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But effectively, I could call it an acronym for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the
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Saints. Now, what do we mean by this? Because this is effectively the thrust of what Dr.
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White has presented in many words in both the opening and of course the response.
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The first point, total depravity. You look at Romans chapter 3 verse 2, there will be the argument there is none that does good, not one.
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So even the elect, they would not be good. Rather it means that every part of us, including our reasoning ability, is so damaged by inherited
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Adamic corruption in a manner of speaking, original sin, that we cannot do what is truly good apart from grace.
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That's the first point. The second point, unconditional election, what does this mean? This means that if a person comes to Christ and he is saved, it's only because he was chosen by God to be saved.
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God selects some people out of the mass of perdition that humanity is to be saved. Like the sinking ship, I think there was an analogy in a debate he did with Robertson Jenners, the story of the sinking ship, which
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Dr. White said is unbiblical. If people are drowning on a sinking ship, why would you decide to save only some and would you leave the others to drown if they're all of the same category?
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Is there something in them that allows them to be saved? Irresistible limited atonement.
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Limited atonement would mean that Christ died only for a particular people. So it does not mean that the value of Christ's death was limited, but according to five point
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Calvinism, Christ bore the punishment only for the elect and not for those God decided not to save.
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Now I don't want to play a game here tonight, but how many of you would subscribe or accept that? A few hands.
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And the vast majority of you, you may believe that Christ died for the sins of humanity. And how can we know who the elect are?
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How do we know who the elect are? We can never know who these elect are, can we? And if we cannot know who these elect are, then how can you even have assurance of your salvation?
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You know, that's always been the throw, not by Dr. White, but by missionaries in past in the
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Muslim world. You Muslims are not assured of your salvation. You know that? I am assured of my salvation.
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But if salvation is only for the elect and the elect are chosen by God and you can never know who the elect are, then how can you even be assured of your salvation?
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Can you see the problem we have with respect? And lastly, perseverance of the saint, it simply means that a truly saved person cannot fall away and is lost forever.
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This is a meme I came across on Facebook. For God so loved the elect that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever was unconditionally elected before the foundation of the world, should not perish but have eternal life.
01:00:01
For God sent his son into the world to condemn the world and in order that the elect might be saved through him.
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That would be a better reading of John 3, 16 if we take into account the
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Calvinistic interpretation. And so Calvinist doctrine of God's sovereignty in Providence includes its doctrine of predestination so according to it, absolutely nothing can happen that God did not decree.
01:00:26
Now decree means an active decree by God. When a king decrees that a man be executed, that's something active on the part of the king.
01:00:37
So even sin and evil are part of God's plan as Dr. White said, evil is not you don't have anything like meaningless evil so in other words, the crimes of Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin, these were all meaningful evil.
01:00:52
There was a meaning behind the evil. R .C. Sproul, a noted scholar he states that if there's one maverick molecule in the universe,
01:01:01
God is not God. Meaning everything is under the control of God, which is fine in that sense, but does it control your ideas, your thoughts?
01:01:11
Paul Helm, another Calvinist theologian, not only is every atom and molecule, every thought and desire kept in being by God, but every twist and turn of each of these is under the direct control of God.
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Now that's what people need to spell out, this is what Calvinism in fact teaches In his book
01:01:26
The Institutes of Christian Religion John Calvin, he has Calvin gives an illustration of a wandering merchant who gets lost from his friends on a walk throughout the forest he's brutally murdered by thieves
01:01:38
Now Calvin asks how does a Christian regard this event? This man is walking in the forest he gets lost and then he's set upon by a group of bandits and then he's murdered
01:01:48
How should a Christian view this? Well, according to Calvin, the merchant's death was not only foreseen by God he says, but planned and rendered certain by God.
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Even the reprobate sinners, he says, are compelled by God's power to obey his plans.
01:02:05
In other words, if you're sinning, you're operating in accordance with what God decrees for you
01:02:12
So, let us place some context in what we mean, because we need to spell this out. Let's just break it down and simplify it.
01:02:19
If a man murders, it is by the decree of God. If a man rapes, it's also by the decree of God.
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If a man lies and steals I don't accept this is what Calvinism would teach us or maybe the reformed churches.
01:02:33
If a man lies and steals, it's by the decree of God If a man domestically abuses his wife it's by the decree of God.
01:02:39
Hitler therefore, was acting under the decree of God Pol Pot was also acting under the decree of God.
01:02:45
And as insane as it may sound, ISIS today this psychotic death cult in Iraq, acting in the name of Islam is also operating under the decree of God If you want to take it to its logical conclusion you can see how silly and ridiculous it basically becomes
01:03:03
So, taking that into account, we now look at terms and concepts like the fall of Adam Few Calvinists hesitate to admit that they even consider the fall of Adam, all sin, all evil, all agony they are decreed and rendered certain by God and some would argue that you come across these phrases like divine determinism
01:03:21
You know, many people don't like the idea of divine determinism, but effectively you are saying that God determines everything.
01:03:28
He determines sin He determines evil. He determines innocent suffering. And so you have an interesting quotation that don't waste your cancer
01:03:37
Do you know where that comes from? It comes from this man here John Piper.
01:03:43
He's written a book called The Pleasures of God. This is another book of peculiar glory. What Piper says is that effectively is that if somebody has cancer, if you have cancer, it's from God and has a good purpose
01:03:58
And so many people hearing the sermons would argue that yes, God is in control and knows what he's doing but they fail to consider that this also means that sin and hell are planned world designed and rendered certain by God for good purpose but what's a good purpose for God's glory?
01:04:15
Now why would God want to glorify himself by doing this? Does he need to glorify himself by engaging in this?
01:04:22
I would argue no. And so we would argue that if Calvinism is true then in fact God decrees that people do what he forbids
01:04:30
What do I mean by this? In the Old Testament, like in the Quran, you have the sayings thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery
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Am I correct? That's a command That's what God forbids That's what God commands
01:04:47
But on the other hand, he decrees based on the Calvinistic understanding that thou shalt murder, thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal
01:04:55
It's like a bit of an oxymoron So in other words, God intends the murder he decrees and renders certain for a certain glory.
01:05:01
That's the argument that's presented So the murderer according to the Calvinistic understanding could not do otherwise other than what
01:05:08
God decrees and so he's guilty because his intention is hateful but he has a problem Where does a man's intention come from?
01:05:17
The man's intention comes from God according to the argument So how do we explain this?
01:05:24
How do we explain this I don't know what the word is, it's a conundrum How do we explain this? That he decrees something and he basically commands something
01:05:34
He commands one thing, decrees something else Not surprisingly Jacobus Arminius, founder of the
01:05:40
Armenians, otherwise known as Jacob Hermanzoon or Jacob Hermanzoon from Netherlands, he stated that if Calvinism is true, not only sin, not really sin, but God is the only sinner
01:05:53
As blasphemous as it may sound, it basically means that God is the only sinner and further on, if Calvinism is true, it would mean that salvation is a condition, not a relationship
01:06:04
Now what do I mean by that? A relationship requires free consent, with anybody You have to have free consent in a relationship, but in the interim between the fall in the garden and the return of Christ in judgement,
01:06:17
God is sovereign by right but not exercising that sovereignty over everything, so he could but he doesn't, so sin evil, innocent suffering hell, are not
01:06:29
God's antecedent will, but God's consequent will, and so God's antecedent will is what he perfectly wanted to happen,
01:06:37
God's consequent will is what God permits to happen that is contrary to his perfect will so it is consequent to our free choice then, to rebel against God and push him out of our lives and out of our will and he decrees it for us so how do we explain this?
01:06:55
If God is good, he has some serious questions that we need to ask, and could effectively save everyone, because election to salvation is absolutely unconditional and the question we need to ask is why doesn't he?
01:07:07
How can you say that God is good, if he could, but he doesn't save? Well maybe it's because certain people are damned, but according to the belief here, everybody is evil, all are reprobates, all are sinners so I need to understand and maybe
01:07:20
I'm missing something but according, maybe Dr. White could explain what are the discerning criteria that God uses to choose, these are my elect and these are not my elect how does he choose?
01:07:30
Is there something that the elect have that the unelect do not have? How can God hold the non -elect responsible for not believing and then condemn them for it when he deliberately did not give them the faith to enable them to believe in the first place, because here's the argument that God is going to give you the grace, he's going to allow you, he's going to decree that you are going to believe in him another point during the period before an elect person gets saved how then are they condemned already for not believing when their unbelief, which in itself is a sin, has already been paid for by Christ on the cross but more importantly how can you have assurance of your salvation based on this idea you can never have assurance of your salvation and I'm saying, all this is meaningless for me friends
01:08:21
I don't believe in the idea that someone comes and dies for the sins of humanity, I don't believe in that I believe that God rewards forgives and punishes but I'm just looking at this from an outsider, that these are some of the implications when we make a particular point theologically speaking and if repentance is a gift only given to the elect, what did
01:08:44
Jesus mean when he said that some of the people in hell would have repented if they had the same opportunity as the people to whom he preached why does he speak about them having the opportunity when in fact they already have been condemned why does the spirit of God strive and convict some sinners who later prove by dying and going to hell that they were the non -elect what's the purpose of such movings of the
01:09:07
Holy Spirit and if God wants all men to be saved and come to knowledge of truth in 1
01:09:13
Timothy chapter 2 verse 4 then are we going to say that God has two wills
01:09:19
I don't want to be cynical by saying that does he have a multiple personality disorder, I command one thing and then
01:09:25
I decree another, I command that you should not kill but I decree that you should kill I command you should not rape but I decree you should rape it doesn't make sense 2
01:09:37
Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 10 says that the reprobates perish because they refused to love the truth and be saved now from a
01:09:44
Calvinistic world view how can one refuse to love the truth and be saved when your
01:09:50
God determines that the reprobate can't love the truth, he can't be saved and therefore can't refuse
01:09:56
God at all we have to finish it I understand what Dr.
01:10:01
White's position is but spell it out explicitly what the implications when we say certain things because they refuse to love the truth but how can they refuse to love the truth when basically
01:10:13
God determines that they can't love the truth I would argue in conclusion that the
01:10:18
Calvinistic concept of God creates more problems that we solve, I will attempt to deal with some of the issues that Dr. White raised in his earlier thing but again what would the determining criteria be that God chooses some as his elect why does he mercilessly punish those when he already damned them in the first place and lastly
01:10:35
I gave you the argument and the example of the old lady walking down Musgrave Road who is attacked, raped and murdered by a group of savages according to Calvinistic theology that is meaningful evil, it's not meaningless evil and when you say that then the theology itself becomes fundamentally flawed,
01:10:59
I'm not saying this out of sense of disrespect thank you very much now folks we have what is referred to as the rebuttals so I'm going to ask
01:11:16
Dr. James White to speak for 10 minutes and then he will be followed once again by Mr.
01:11:24
Ishmael well it seems our topic changed all of a sudden I'd be happy to defend
01:11:32
Calvinistic theology as Yusuf said I've given him my book, every objection he just raised fully addressed and answered in there for more than a decade so I will simply direct you to that, these are not things that we have not addressed before, here's my problem with just simply going after that, you'll notice that in my response what
01:11:50
I did is I raised questions from sources, Islamic sources, recognized
01:11:56
Islamic sources any of you who are Sunni Muslims are well aware of the fact that your theology is deeply influenced by for example
01:12:03
Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim Sharia itself is based upon these same sources these same things so if there is an entire section on the issue of Qadr and the statements seem to very plainly and directly refer to God's absolute knowledge of all things, decreeing whether a person is going to Heaven or Hell they can even do the actions of the people of Heaven their entire life to their hands breath away from entering in and then what's written of them catches up with them and they end up in Hellfire or in Paradise the opposite of what they had lived their lives these are the things we need to be discussing because there is obviously this very important element and then we can talk about all the implications we want,
01:12:48
I don't think that we really have the time this evening to be happy, I've done extensive work in explaining and defending particular redemption and its consistency with Biblical texts and so on and so forth, it just seems to me that the criticism that was just leveled was not from a specifically
01:13:04
Islamic perspective, that was the standard stuff you get off the internet I've seen all those questions before, that's why
01:13:11
I wrote a book refuting them in, well, 17 years ago so there's nothing new about that, what
01:13:18
I'd like to see happen is a specifically Islamic understanding, especially from someone who accepts the authority of the
01:13:26
Hadith to provide a criticism whereby you're not cutting off your own position to criticize the other side
01:13:34
I think that's very, very important now, I would like to at least respond, for example to some of the things that was said why would
01:13:43
God glorify himself and this is the fundamental issue what was asked is, why would
01:13:48
God glorify himself in this way that was asked during Yusuf's presentation
01:13:54
I've already answered that and I'd like you to recognize that I have answered that, why has
01:14:01
God done the things that he has done in this world, well, first of all I do not, as I said have knowledge of all of God's purposes in regards to every single individual and every single event, but I do have
01:14:15
God's promise that God works all things after the counsel of his will, there's been no refutation of the biblical presentation, that's not his role, so I wouldn't expect it but I would hope that you would recognize
01:14:26
I gave a fair amount of scripture that very clearly presents God's absolute sovereignty, and what we're getting is, well, it can't be that because of, well, because of what?
01:14:36
What other authority are you going to have? For a Christian, the scriptures are my authority and it does strike me that what would be important in our context would be well, and how does the
01:14:47
Koran demonstrate that its author understood what the Bible had already said, there is no evidence that the author of the
01:14:52
Koran understood what was actually in the text of scripture, certainly not on who Jesus Christ was, what Jesus Christ's work was, and there's certainly no evidence that the author of the
01:15:00
Koran understood what the Bible's teaching on God's sovereignty, his prescriptive and descriptive will is, and so on and so forth, so that's where the real rubber meets the road, that's where the real issues between our communities need to be discussed is if you claim that you have a revelation that comes after the
01:15:18
Bible why doesn't it show knowledge of what the Bible had already revealed if as the
01:15:23
Koran says in the Torah and the Injil there is light and guidance, so that's something that we should keep in mind, but why has
01:15:30
God glorified himself in this way? I answered that question he glorified himself in this way so that the incarnation would be the mechanism and the means of the greatest glorification of God, I do not back down for a moment,
01:15:49
I am not embarrassed to stand before you and say yes, the most amazing thing about the
01:15:55
Christian faith is that we proclaim that the one who made us and sustains us entered into his own creation to demonstrate the full range of God's attributes yes, to demonstrate
01:16:07
God shows his wrath, God shows his power God shows his might in the great things that the
01:16:13
Koran even admits for example, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah you can't avoid that, you can't avoid the fact that God destroyed
01:16:19
Sodom and Gomorrah, the Koran confirms it, so he demonstrated his justice, he brought judgment against sinful men and yet and yet, this is what separates us, in Christianity he then demonstrates his love and his mercy and his kindness and his grace and his condescension by he himself and the person of his son entering into his own creation and voluntarily giving himself in behalf of undeserving people, it was just said, well
01:16:52
I'm just going to save these people and that people, you need to realize we are all under, justly under the wrath of God, each one of us does what we desire in our hearts and in fact,
01:17:01
God restrains the evil of men something we almost never thank him for but he restrains the evil of men he keeps people from sinning against him, could he keep all people from sinning against him, of course he could why didn't he, because he's fulfilling his purpose, to demonstrate the entirety of his attributes, not just his power and his wrath and his glory and his might, but also his love and his mercy and his grace and his condescension, so why do it this way because that's the way
01:17:30
God chose to demonstrate the depth of his love and his condescension in the coming of the person of Jesus Christ, that is why he's chosen to do it that way you say, but I just you actually said that there would be meaning and purpose in all suffering, yes
01:17:50
I said that and I stand by that because the only other option is that your
01:17:55
God created this world and it turned out to be a mess and he didn't even know it was going to happen is that the
01:18:02
God you want to worship that he knew that there was going to be all sorts of meaningless, unredeemable evil that was going to exist and it has no purpose if you're if you say that your
01:18:15
God is the creator, then we need to hear an answer from the other side how is it that we cannot accuse
01:18:21
Allah of being the one who created all this, he gave us the ability to create this mess and then he's not responsible for it it's real easy to make the argument, well
01:18:34
I just don't like this idea that God is sovereign over all these things and I don't like the idea that he holds us accountable for our actions and you're saying that he decrees both one and the other and you're not dealing with what
01:18:47
Joseph said, and you believe Joseph was a prophet you're not dealing with what Isaiah said, you're not dealing and I can understand why you might reject what the early church said, but the fact is as a
01:18:57
Christian, as I look at the entirety of scripture, I find a beautiful and consistent presentation of God's purposes from Genesis all the way through to Revelation and for me, one of the things that we need to talk about as Christians and Muslims is why is there this huge gap between Revelation and the first surah of the
01:19:24
Quran in regards to what the authors of those books understand about what has come before all the writers of the
01:19:32
New Testament understand what was found in the Old Testament they're quoting from it all the time, they're dealing with it all the time, why is there this chasm of silence between the
01:19:42
Quran and everything in the Bible, where the author of the Quran clearly does not know what has been said or is this only going on oral stories that he's heard and except stories that aren't even biblically and canonically accurate in creating the perspectives that are found in the
01:19:59
Quran these are some of the issues we have to bring up, but here's here's here's what we need to understand,
01:20:07
I think I've presented a pretty strong case that God is sovereign in the Biblical Revelation and I've not heard any contradiction only conundrums that have been raised if God is sovereign in the
01:20:18
Biblical Revelation and if He is redeeming a people for His own purpose and by His grace undeserved an extension of His own grace and power then from the
01:20:32
Islamic perspective aren't you just basically demonstrating that you are better than others in the sense that you are able to make yourself right before God is there not a huge difference between the grace that we see in the
01:20:49
Christian faith and the idea of you are capable of bringing yourself into right relationship with Allah within Islam What are the purposes of God in Islam?
01:21:03
Why did God create? Is there purposeless evil? Did He know that this evil would exist?
01:21:10
Does God have exact knowledge of the future? These are questions that I hope in the next 10 minutes and it's only 10 minutes unfortunately
01:21:18
Yusuf will address because I think they're very important to our understanding this evening Thank you very much Thank you very much for sticking to the time
01:21:30
Now we go to what is known as the rebuttals and no sorry we're still busy with the second speaker the rebuttal second speaker and if you'll go ahead
01:21:46
Mr. Ismail Thank you for that Thank you for the response. I don't think
01:21:51
Dr. White you had to dismiss what I stated by saying it's from the internet certainly the information that I've collated are legitimate questions that I've got
01:21:59
I don't think and I'll be honest, it's easy to dismiss some of these important points when
01:22:04
I gave the example of the woman in the Musgrave Road I never picked it up from the internet that's a reality of what you're basically saying these questions are related to the topic tonight we are discussing predestination the predestination debate all this are related that God predestined that certain people are going to go to hell and certain people are going to attain salvation that's part of the topic, it's very much related and all
01:22:26
I was asking were simple questions how do you know who are these elect? how do you determine that?
01:22:32
how do you know that your salvation experience was in fact genuine? how do you know you were regenerated and that God determined at the outset prior to creation that you were to be given the gift of faith how does he know this?
01:22:44
how do you know that your faith is genuine that it came as a gift from God and not from yourself how do you know you have the right kind of faith in the first place and I think these are meaningful questions
01:22:52
I would like to read your book maybe in the future we can have something more in line with some of what you directly said but I think a lot of what
01:23:01
I said basically is unchallenged you cannot challenge it these are legitimate problems that cannot meaningfully be you can attempt to put any forth of answer but I don't think if you were to study the issues in detail that you can really provide a meaningful response now you raise the issue about the hadith which is a good point that he raised there is a chapter in Bukhari on Qadr and I may argue that some of the traditions from which the whole doctrine of Qadr or predestination in fact comes from it can be considered but it has to be borne in mind that the tradition hadith which is a collection or a saying of the prophet must be read and juxtaposed with the broad established principles in the
01:23:50
Quran so if you've got in the Quran something which lays down for example the will of man or where the polytheists are saying or making the claim that why did
01:23:59
God not put us on the right path we would not have associated or created partners or if you've got something along that line and the hadith tells you something else then the common scholarly consensus has been that you reject what is contained in the hadith the other point is that there is a great deal of difference between tradition and tradition relating to rules and regulations in daily life for example in the hadith it tells you how to pray, how to wash yourselves, how to engage in your day to day ablutions and so on and there are aspects in the hadith which in fact relate to the metaphysical subjects where the ideas of the transmitters themselves because how hadith you know what hadith is?
01:24:37
Hadith is basically tradition you've got traditions that developed two, three, four hundred years after the demise of the prophet and what happened is that these hadiths were transmitted via chain of narrators, it works something like Chinese whispers,
01:24:50
I tell something to this gentleman he tells it to this good lady she passes it on to her and it goes on right to the end, at the end of that chain how can
01:24:57
I confirm or determine what I originally told him is exactly what he basically relates and that's very much what hadith is it's like Chinese whispers, the isnads you need to determine the chain of narrators in many instances the narrators themselves are deceased and in many instances you find some of the narratives in fact go against the entire crux and thesis of the
01:25:18
Quran so what you would find is that there may be a single word misunderstanding, they may have a certain situation in terms of which somebody may change the underlying idea entirely and I may also argue that within the hadith narratives you cannot necessarily make a consistent account for either one way or the other why do
01:25:41
I say this well I can give you other hadiths from the hadith book which Dr.
01:25:46
White basically drew from this is a hadith from Bukhari it draws a picture of the unbounded mercy of God when it speaks about how the prophet on seeing a mother pressing a child to a bosom remarked to his companions do you think that she can throw this child into the fire and on their replying in the negative added
01:26:06
Allah is much more merciful to his creatures than his woman is to her child so could
01:26:11
God with all this mercy which is beyond human conception be in the same breath described as saying these people to the fire and these
01:26:19
I do not care because you have other hadiths you have other weak hadiths like in Musnad of Ahmed not
01:26:25
Bukhari where God apparently or allegedly says these I have created for hellfire these
01:26:32
I have created for heaven and that would give you similar to what Dr. White is basically arguing tonight many
01:26:39
Islamic scholars have stated that these are weak narratives and so you need to always tie up what's contained in the hadith with what is in fact mentioned and articulated in the
01:26:50
Quran and I think I've been more than clear in the this evening in terms of what the
01:26:55
Quranic view on that particular point is and so there are many issues you've raised the aspect about the aspect of foreknowledge and I argue again that foreknowledge and decree is not the same you see if God knows in our limited sense from our perspective what will effectively happen in the future whether a particular man will take a good cause or whether a particular man takes a bad cause that doesn't mean that he decrees that the man takes a bad cause or that a man takes a good cause if you for example and I'm just giving you a crude example of a habitual criminal he's so habitually addicted to crime that you know that when he's going to be released on bail he's going to commit crime again now when the man is released on bail and he goes and commits the crime and released by the magistrate knowing full well that the man is going to commit the crime does the magistrate or the judge decrees that the man is going to commit the crime no and so similarly with God the fact that God knows that X that myself, that Dr.
01:28:14
White or any of us do such an action or that someone commits an evil act, doesn't mean that this is part of the decree unless we have misconceptions on what decree is what's your definition of a decree maybe your understanding of a decree is something else but decreeing something and having knowledge about something is not the same that's basically what the issue is and when
01:28:41
I said that the fact that the future is an open book to God I know this is a term that is used by open fears and I use it in a slide presentation
01:28:52
I was using it loosely in the sense that each and every single individual has a potentiality ingrained in him by God to either do good or to either do evil does
01:29:05
God know whether the man will do good or do evil, of course he does does God decree that the man has to do evil of course not and you see that's basically the distinction so I think that distinction is basically critical and again speaking on the whole notion about comparing man's knowledge of things which is limited to God's knowledge you can't put the two together so I think
01:29:32
I have presented a meaningful discussion I would like to read his book and see if some of the issues that I have raised in my response has been addressed
01:29:42
I do believe that it is on point I know Dr. White was suggesting I was talking about salvation in the context of the debate related to the whole topic of predestination, not salvation as a separate topic but in relation to what we are discussing tonight and so the problem
01:30:01
I find is that when you look at the Bible speaking about consistency which
01:30:07
Dr. White says, you look at Hebrews chapter 2 -1, he did a sermon I believe many years over Hebrews Hebrews 2 -1, it speaks about many warnings in the
01:30:15
Bible to believers not to drift away not to fall away, not to come short or shrink back, not to be carried away by unprincipled men and fall by their steadfastness, 2
01:30:28
Peter 3 -17 not to desert Christ now the issue is this that if all the elect are assured of persevering to the very end then why in the first place would there be any of these warnings and why even evangelize this is also a common contention raised by many people, not by myself why evangelize in the first place why even bother spreading the gospel
01:30:54
God decrees that these are his elect, they are going to attain salvation, these are people that are damned, why even evangelize in the first place
01:31:06
Jonah chapter 2 verse 8 says those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs does
01:31:13
Jonah not say that? and if Dr. White who has Calvinism with John Calvin teaches that God determines before time immemorial or before time began who would be the sinners who would be those damned to perdition who would be the reprobates and therefore cannot extend grace to them by which they could be saved then how are we to understand that passage forfeited the grace that could be theirs, it means that there is some act on their part, some choice on their part, some moral decision that they are making and I have no problem with that I have no problem with that and I'm speaking as an outsider on Christianity that I have no problem with the
01:31:50
Bible but I do have a problem with the perspective of Dr. White and so thank you very much
01:31:59
Now folks we move on to what is called the crossfire and we will ask
01:32:04
Dr. White now to speak for 15 minutes followed by Mr.
01:32:11
Ishmael for another 15 minutes I think what's going to happen is for the period of 15 minutes he asks me questions more of a conversation more of a dialogue so I control the first 15 minutes, he controls the second 15 minutes so I'll get started are you going to start?
01:32:32
and since we're both speaking I'm just going to sort of turn toward him the fire is going to go right past your nose so be careful you don't want to get caught in that so we'll go ahead and get started okay thank you 15 minutes okay
01:32:49
Yusuf does God have exhaustive and infallible knowledge of all future events infallible knowledge you meant infallible knowledge so God knows exactly what you are going to do tomorrow, what you're going to eat, what you're going to wear and you cannot falsify that knowledge?
01:33:13
well again here's the issue that I have, when we think about God having future knowledge from an
01:33:20
Islamic perspective it's problematic because we're placing him in our time span, in our realm, we think of things, and this is the issue maybe just for the audience also to understand is that when we think about the future, when we think about what happened in the past, when we think about what's going on in the present from the
01:33:37
Islamic position and I would argue even from the Christian position we can't think or conceptualize a
01:33:43
God that thinks about the future in the same fashion that we think about the future or thinks about the past in the same so I would argue that he's outside this realm of time which is manufactured and constructed by him, he operates outside the realm and so I would argue that even the categories of God foreseeing the future which we use loosely is not an appropriate category to apply to God.
01:34:09
So he created time did he create the events in time? Well that's an interesting question because we need to ask and this is something which people philosophize about is that God is not subjected to time, before the creation of time, time never existed, there was just eternity, if you can call it eternity past, eternity present whatever the case is.
01:34:32
Now if we are talking about the creation of Adam does this mean that at some point in time
01:34:38
God created Adam? But how could that be? Because time didn't exist to God so this is what we would call ilm -e -ghayb from the
01:34:45
Muslim perspective things that we cannot understand because if we are going to argue that at some point in time
01:34:51
God created Adam it would mean de facto that God himself is also subjected to time But that's not what
01:34:57
I asked, you said that God created time if he created time did he create the actions in time?
01:35:04
So in other words is there a divine decree from Allah that fashions and forms time and what time contains?
01:35:16
Well he creates a divine decree pertaining to the ordinance of nature, how nature operates
01:35:23
Laws, rules Well laws and rules can be invented and created by men
01:35:29
God gives man the ability to erect laws and regulations for themselves.
01:35:35
I meant laws of physics things like that. Yeah the laws of physics when I look at it from the this may be different from your perspective but from the
01:35:43
Quranic perspective when we talk about the whole notion of taqdeer or qadr, ordination it's a law of physics, law of nature, the fact that a human embryo is going to become a human being not an alien or something, plant kingdom animal kingdom, everything is in accordance with their particular divine decree.
01:35:58
From that perspective yes, but he allows the individual he creates a capacity in the mind and inside the individual for him to choose the actions that he needs to basically engage in.
01:36:12
Those actions are known to God, but it doesn't mean that God himself decrees that the individual is going to take a specific path.
01:36:20
Those actions are known to God when he created time well of course he knows about this particular event prior to the existence of time.
01:36:29
So he knew every evil act when he created but he still chose to create those individuals that he knew would commit all those evil acts.
01:36:40
Well the Quran states you know when he creates Adam the angels ask the question you know that I'm going to create a khalifa and the angel is vicegerent and so the angels ask
01:36:50
God are you going to create someone that is going to commit much bloodshed and evil and then
01:36:56
God says I know something which you not know and what God in fact what he's basically saying in that context is that in every single human being there is an inherent quality of goodness in man.
01:37:09
The potentiality to be good to the highest level and that was known because angels for example from the
01:37:16
Islamic perspective this may be different from Christianity but angels cannot they cannot choose, they cannot do they are in perpetual worship and obeisance towards God.
01:37:25
Man has a choice of doing good and evil and so what God was saying in response was that there is a potentiality that man is going to engage in evil.
01:37:35
This is dependent upon what he does and at the same time there is a potentiality internalized in every single human being that he can be good to the utmost level but that doesn't now necessarily mean that when someone basically engages in an act of evil that somehow or the other
01:37:53
God decrees that you have unless you have a different understanding of decree what would your understanding of decree be?
01:38:02
I'm not throwing the question back to you but if that could clarify the position how would you understand decree? You'll have to ask me that question
01:38:09
I'm just trying to find out because it sounds like you're saying God has absolute knowledge of everything that's going to take place but since he did not decree the very fabric of time his knowledge is based upon the actions of man in time, the observation of these things?
01:38:29
He doesn't observe God does not observe the actions we can only talk about God observing the actions if we assume that he's operating within our timeline, which again is problematic
01:38:40
No, but if... Well, I mean human beings, you have a past you have a present, you have a future and so we can observe what's going to happen tomorrow, what happened in the past I would argue that God doesn't operate in that fashion.
01:38:53
I'm not asking you to place him in time, but I am simply saying if you say that God's knowledge of all future events is infallible and certain, and yet at the same time you say that there is a distinction between decree and that knowledge
01:39:08
I'm asking, if it's not from God's decree, where does this knowledge come from? What is the basis of this knowledge?
01:39:15
It sounds like God's knowledge of what is going to happen in eternity itself as a result of his creation is based upon both his determining the general rules, but then there's a second force that determines these things, and that's us
01:39:32
We become the ones from whom solely our choices flow
01:39:38
So how can... So God may know what the end is but God can't be responsible for what the end is because it's a joint venture between man and God But how can
01:39:49
God be responsible for the evil that man commits? That's the point I mean that's the very purpose of existence because if I were to take the position that God decreed certain actions of evil that were committed by man, then what's the very basis for punishment?
01:40:04
Why would God even choose to punish his servants when he decreed in the first place that he... Feel free to ask me those questions, but I'm asking for consistency.
01:40:13
I'm asking in a rhetorical sense, not for you to answer, but in a rhetorical sense I'm trying So what you're saying is you'll accept the idea, you'll go ahead and accept the conclusion that when
01:40:25
God created the outcome does not flow solely from his will, but it's the result of his will plus the wills of every creature that he has created and the basis of saying that is because you can't see any other possible way that that could be.
01:40:43
Well it's not a juxtaposition of wills. God gives humanity limited wills, and I think this is a point we're making when
01:40:51
I spoke about in my opening presentation I think I've got it here, about the divine will and the human will
01:40:58
God gives human beings that limited will not the absolute will.
01:41:03
So it's not it's not a question of two competing wills here, or the will of God vis -a -vis the will of man.
01:41:09
Well not competing Well God has the absolute will. Working together. Well God has the absolute will, and he grants humanity that limited will in order to choose a discern right from wrong.
01:41:21
Now how is that problematic? And humanity using that limited will has now brought about all sorts of evil that God did not desire to exist?
01:41:31
Well I mean this is the whole point of existence. When the angels ask God, why are you going to create a person that's going to shed so much of bloodshed in the world
01:41:38
God says, that's the purpose of existence. That's a test. That's why there is punishment. That's why there's heaven and hell
01:41:44
It's because of the fact that God desires good for each and every single human being.
01:41:50
The fact that people do not engage necessarily in good does not in any way mean that God is a failure.
01:41:56
In Calvinism, God is a failure because basically we understand it from that perspective because it would mean that the evil that has been committed by man is not in accordance with God's will.
01:42:08
So man is acting totally outside God's will. That's not the Islamic position. So God's purpose in creation is actually focused upon man not upon his own self -glorification.
01:42:23
Why should he want to self -glorify himself? He's already glorified. When you say self -glorified does he need to boast about it?
01:42:32
I don't understand. When you speak about self -glorification, why does God need to self -glorify himself? So the answer to my question is yes.
01:42:39
But the point I need to ask... You keep coming back with rhetorical questions backwards.
01:42:45
The question again, Dr. White, is why would God want to decree? Let's think about it.
01:42:50
Why would God want to decree that someone is going to be murdered simply to glorify himself?
01:42:55
What's the purpose of that? Just to show that he's just and is going to damn someone and then save his elect. And how is that glorification?
01:43:02
In fact, it's a God with a multiple personality disorder. He's saying these people are basically good.
01:43:10
These are damned. I'm supposed to be asking the questions. You're asking many, many rhetorical questions in response rather than going to the heart of the issue.
01:43:16
It's taking a lot of my time. So you will admit then that what you're saying is that God's purpose in creation is focused upon mankind's decisions and not the demonstration of anything about a law.
01:43:35
That's what I think you just said. You say yes. Okay. Alright. So how do you explain...
01:43:42
Just on that point, man was created just on that point. Man was created in the Islamic worldview.
01:43:48
Man was created for man's own self -development and to recognize the oneness of God. God did not create man to just decide one day
01:43:57
I'm going to create man for my own enjoyment. Or like Two -Face, you know, Harvey Dent, he tosses a coin and he says this man can die and this man can live.
01:44:05
We would argue that God doesn't use us as toys or like puppets. God creates man so that man develops himself spiritually.
01:44:14
Man was created for man's own development. It may be different from Christianity, but we don't believe in the idea that man was created just so that God can show, hey, look,
01:44:24
I'm God here. I'm self -glorified. I created you. We don't believe in that. Real quickly, were you basically saying that the
01:44:32
Hadith that are considered Sahih by Bukhari should... Do you agree with Khan that there are problems, not in the
01:44:43
Isnad chain, but in basically him saying this is contradictory to his understanding of the
01:44:49
Quran, and if that's the case, how would you respond to my statement that it seems to me that the vast majority of Tafsir is based upon taking a presuppositional
01:45:02
Hadith position and using the Hadith as the lens through which to interpret the Quran? How can you go both directions?
01:45:08
Well, I think that's not always the case. If you look at some of the early commentators, for example,
01:45:13
Muqatil, Ibn Sulaiman, who was arguably one of the first Quranic commentators that existed, he had no
01:45:20
Hadith material to rely upon, and I think you're familiar with Muqatil's commentary. And he's frequently rejected by Sunni scholarship for that very reason, is he not?
01:45:27
Some have rejected, and some of the Hadith Mufassireen haven't basically relied on the...
01:45:33
I'm sorry, some of the Tafsir haven't relied wholly on a lot of the Hadith, but one needs to bear in mind the fact that where you've got
01:45:41
Hadith that are focused on the metaphysical, or on subjects where the ideas of the transmitters themselves could, for example, basically be introduced into the
01:45:54
Hadith, we need to view these Hadith with a certain amount of caution, because the same Hadiths, which you quoted from Bukhari, which gives you the indication that there's absolutely no free will, you'd find within the corpus of Bukhari, other
01:46:06
Hadiths, which give the indication that man does in fact have limited free will. And so, I would argue that there is an inconsistency in the
01:46:14
Hadith literature on that particular point. Having looked at that, what is the average
01:46:19
Muslim to do? Well, he's got a primary source, he's got the Quran. And so, we need to basically use the
01:46:24
Quran as a yardstick in terms of determining whether a particular Hadith is sound, whether it makes sense, or whether...
01:46:30
because there are certain Hadiths which says, Allah says, I decree this group to hell, fire, and this group
01:46:36
I decree to heaven. That goes strictly against some of the verses of the Quran that I pointed out tonight.
01:46:42
But have there not been those who have engaged in Tafsir who have interpreted the Quran consistently with those
01:46:49
Hadiths? Is there not a way to do that? Well, it depends what your definition of consistently is. I would argue that there were people who would interpret the
01:46:57
Quran based upon their particular theological leanings. Similar to... Are you doing that?
01:47:03
Well, I'm looking at the text. I mean, in the discussion that I presented tonight, was there anything where I read into the text?
01:47:10
When I gave you the verse on the polytheists stating the fact that why did God not will us to do such, or why did
01:47:16
God will us not to engage in polytheism? I was not reading into the text. You know, the learned men tell us, even in Christianity, the plain reading of scripture makes sense, signore the sense.
01:47:26
I mean, and we do this all the time. Even in Christianity, you have a Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible, you've got an
01:47:32
Anglican interpretation of the Bible. We're going to have these differences till the cars come home. But I think it's important that we discuss these particular issues.
01:47:40
And I appreciate the questions, Dr. White. Ismail is now going to pose the question.
01:47:47
Okay, I just want to... And you will also have 15 minutes. Would you like to go ahead?
01:47:54
Yeah, sure. Welcome, Mr. Ismail. Okay. I just want to bring something for your attention, Dr. White.
01:48:01
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Item 3 .1, it says here, God does not actively work unbelief into the non -elect.
01:48:12
All are already under sin. God is not responsible for the sin of Adam.
01:48:19
God is not responsible for the sin of Adam or the fall of mankind. God is not the author of evil.
01:48:25
Would you accept that? Yes. So, if that is the case, that God is not the author of evil, is not responsible for the sin of Adam, then how do you juxtapose that with the fact that in the
01:48:42
Institutes of Christian Religion by John Calvin, he states, we also note that we should consider the creation of the world so that we may realize that everything is subject to God and ruled by His will, and that when the world has done what it may, nothing happens other than God decrees.
01:48:57
Here's the point. If you agree with the Westminster Confession of Faith about the fact that God is not responsible or the author of evil, then the question is then, who did the work of unbelief in the heart of men?
01:49:10
If all men are under sin, what was God doing when it happened? Every one of the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith agreed with everything
01:49:18
John Calvin said in the quote that you gave him. So, as I explain in the book, right toward the first or second chapter in there, what you're missing here is the difference between decreeing the ends and the means.
01:49:33
What you need to understand is that because God is seeking to glorify Himself, as we are told in the
01:49:39
Psalms, in Isaiah, in numerous other texts and passages, including Romans 9, since God is seeking to glorify
01:49:46
Himself in all of creation, He has determined not only what the ends are going to be, which is
01:49:51
His ultimate victory, the redemption of the people in Christ Jesus, exactly as I did, as you may have noted, read from the 17th section of the 39
01:50:01
Articles of Faith of the Anglican Church at the beginning, but also the means by which that is going to be accomplished.
01:50:07
And so you have primary means and you have secondary means. And what is being spoken of in the
01:50:13
Westminster Confession of Faith is the fact that God judges those secondary means, the ones that He has brought into existence.
01:50:21
He, knowing your heart and my heart better than anyone else does, in fact, He knows our hearts better than we know our hearts, is in the position, particularly because of the incarnation, to judge us on the motivations of our hearts.
01:50:37
And that's the basis of His judgment, not any kind of cosmic standard that exists outside of God, which is why,
01:50:46
Yusuf, He can judge Joseph's brothers, as Joseph did. You meant this as evil to me.
01:50:52
And it was evil, and He knew that. He didn't short shrift that. But He also recognized that God was active in the exact same thing with pure motivations.
01:51:02
And so what Westminster and Calvin both believed is that God ordains both the ends and the means to those ends, and in so doing maintains
01:51:13
His holiness. So you can't put a wedge between the Westminster framers and Calvin, who they all knew very, very, very well.
01:51:21
But here's the issue that I want to understand. So are you saying that when God, for example, God decrees the sins of humanity, am
01:51:28
I correct? God ordained everything that the Westminster Confession of Faith says, that God ordained whatsoever comes to pass in time.
01:51:38
Okay. But I just want to clarify this point, and I don't want to interrupt you, but if He decrees or ordains the sins of humanity, then why does the
01:51:47
Westminster Confession seem to indicate that God did not decree or ordain the sin of Adam?
01:51:53
If you understand their language, what they're saying is God has decreed everything that takes place in time, including the means by which that happens, and He judges the motivations of those means.
01:52:05
So notice the word that it used. What does it use? It says God is not the what? God is not responsible for the sin of Adam.
01:52:12
Or the fall of mankind. God is not the author. There it is. God is not the author of evil.
01:52:17
Do you know what they said about that? What they said, I won't do the rhetorical thing that you like to do because you're an attorney.
01:52:24
Did he get that from you? He's saying yes. Okay. So now see, He's the primary cause, you're the secondary.
01:52:31
So we can go ahead and blame Him and not you for your use of rhetorical questions. Okay. But when they use the term author, they're talking about author in the first sense, that is derivative from God's, that God desires sin to exist for the sake of sin.
01:52:49
That's what the person who, you talked about, what did you call them? Thugs, I think, out on the road.
01:52:56
Yeah. They are doing that because they want to cause pain, agony. They're fulfilling their own lusts, desires.
01:53:03
That's the primary thing. What they're saying is no, that does not come from a holy
01:53:08
God. But to accomplish His ultimate purpose in and through the person of Jesus Christ, He decrees the existence of things that will come into existence through a different author, and that is through the sinner himself.
01:53:22
It doesn't make that any less certain in the same way in the crucifixion. God ordained
01:53:27
Herod, Pontius Pilate, Romans, and the Jews. They all took completely different roles in the crucifixion of Jesus.
01:53:33
And yet they had different motivations. And yet the crucifixion of Jesus was as certain as anything possible. Okay, to take that further then, and I appreciate your response, and I want to just tie this up with something.
01:53:45
The word believe. Have you noticed that when we look at each other, we're nicer to each other? Certainly. Have you noticed when we're looking at them, we can take shots at each other.
01:53:53
When we look at each other, it's different. Sure. So from now on, any more debates, you sit in the front row while I speak and vice versa.
01:54:00
Okay, that's good. Just to clarify one point, the word for believe in the
01:54:06
New Testament, what's the word used? Pisteuo. Am I correct that that's in the active voice? Well, it can be used in many different ways.
01:54:15
I was reading it somewhere. I don't know if it was Wallace's. Again, bring up Dan Wallace's. But he gave the example of the word believe.
01:54:21
Be careful using Wallace. Well, yeah, I know that. I don't want to be attacked again. But he used the word believe. He says that, or him or somebody else, that the word believe is used in the active voice in the
01:54:31
New Testament. Well, for example, in the Gospel of John, it's used in the present active, ongoing, versus aorist active, which would be a point action.
01:54:40
So it's not so much the active voice as it is whether it's present, aorist, perfect, or something along those lines as to its real signification.
01:54:48
But go ahead and make your point and see if I can figure it out. The point basically I want to give is this, is that I'm just looking at the, as a definition you pointed out, if the faith to believe, and this again ties up to our discussion to believe in Jesus Christ, it's given through irresistible grace as a gift.
01:55:09
Would I be correct? Right. Now, if that is the case, and hear me out in this, why does the
01:55:15
Bible command us and exhort us to believe in Christ? Because here's the issue, and this ties up to the point that if believe is used in an active sense and used in an active voice in the
01:55:28
New Testament, if belief were just simply a gift given by God, then in the
01:55:33
Greek New Testament the word believe, or belief would be used in the passive voice, denoting that the subject in fact receives belief.
01:55:40
Because from your perspective you would argue that a person receives faith in Jesus Christ through irresistible grace as a gift.
01:55:49
And the point is that if belief is in that sense, then belief would be used in the passive sense, in the context of the
01:55:56
Greek, yet in almost, subject to correction, in all 233 times that the word believe is used in the
01:56:02
New Testament, it is used in the active voice. So why would the word be used in the active voice when in fact belief is something which is given to you through an irresistible grace as a gift by God?
01:56:13
Okay, you're confusing the action with the ability. But it's never used. The point I want to drive home is that throughout the
01:56:19
New Testament it's used primarily as in the active sense. Believe. Okay, but see, there's two things.
01:56:25
It's also used as a noun. Yeah. And so when we're talking about the gift of faith, that's a noun.
01:56:30
And then you're talking about the exercise of that gift is a verb. So of course it's always going to be something that you're doing.
01:56:38
Faith has an object. It is something, I believe in Jesus Christ. No one believes in Jesus Christ for me.
01:56:44
But it's the ability to do so in a saving fashion that is, that's the gift of faith itself.
01:56:52
So for example, in 2 Peter 1 1 off the top of my head, the noun form of pistis is used, and there it is said to be the gift of God given to his elect people.
01:57:06
So there is the capacity to believe savingly in Jesus Christ. And what that results in is, as John says, true saving faith is always this ongoing action in constantly believing in Jesus Christ.
01:57:21
But why do I have that ability? Why will I be saved, and a person can have a point action faith in John chapter 8?
01:57:28
People believed in Jesus, Arist, by the end of the chapter they're picking up stones to stone him. So why is, where's the difference?
01:57:36
For me, it's not because I'm better than someone else. It's because the faith that has been given to me will be ongoing because God is accomplishing his purpose in the salvation of one of his elect people.
01:57:46
I have no reason to boast, Joseph. Are you one of the elect? I believe in Jesus Christ, yes.
01:57:53
But wait a minute, but I do not claim, wait a minute, we are not given the ability to identify the elect.
01:58:00
We are given the ability to profess our faith in Jesus Christ. And one of your questions was, why have warnings and exhortations if what
01:58:09
I'm saying is true? Because God ordains the ends as well as the means.
01:58:14
And you see, what you're missing, Yusuf, is the purpose of the New Testament. And you know this. Why is
01:58:20
God keeping us in this world? What is God's purpose amongst believers? He is forming in us the image of Jesus Christ.
01:58:27
He is making us like Christ. And so he gives us warnings and directions on what we are to believe, how we're to believe, and how we're to behave so that we will have guidance and direction in so doing.
01:58:38
That's, I think, what you need to understand is a lot of your questions would be answered if you would, instead of looking, and I'm not blaming you for this, because from an
01:58:46
Islamic perspective, you believe you have the capacity to do all these things. If you would look at it from the
01:58:51
Biblical perspective from the top down, that God is accomplishing something in Jesus Christ and we don't have these abilities outside of God's grace, then you'd see that there's a consistency in what the
01:59:01
New Testament says. Well, here's the point. I don't know how long we've got in time, but in your dividing line,
01:59:08
I think probably a couple of months ago, you're speaking about this gentleman from the United States, Qureshi.
01:59:14
Nabil Qureshi. And I think the discussion there was that he had been invited, I think he's got cancer now, but he had been invited to do a seminar where he was going to interact with Roman Catholics and various other people.
01:59:26
And I think the point you're making there... With Ravi Zacharias? I think with Ravi Zacharias, yeah. I think the point you're making in the dividing line was
01:59:34
I can't get the thrust, but the gist of what you're saying is that you know 20 years from now whether they would be the elect, whether they would apostatize and so on.
01:59:43
I need to obviously clarify what you basically stated. I think you were alluding to the fact that one can really never know who the elect are.
01:59:51
I think what you're talking about is the fact that Nabil believes that he had a vision of Jesus, which is why he left
01:59:59
Ahmadiyya Islam and became a Christian. And what I said to Nabil was, from my perspective, when someone says they have a vision of something, give it time.
02:00:11
Because the Scripture Jesus himself said, he who endures to the end shall be saved. So give it time.
02:00:16
If that person remains faithful and that person remains focused upon the word of God, that person doesn't go off into some odd thing.
02:00:23
Well, the proof is in the pudding as we understand it. I understand this. But just to wrap this up is that you can never know who the elect are in this life.
02:00:34
So here's the point because we Muslims get this all the time. In the South African context, you Muslims are not assured of your salvation.
02:00:40
We have our salvation. Here's the key issue. If you cannot know who the elect are and you believe that God saves the elect, then how can you on an individual basis know that you're one of the elect?
02:00:51
How do you know your salvation experience is genuine? And how do you know that you are in fact regenerated and given the gift of faith?
02:00:59
We've joined two things there that need to be separated. One was my own personal knowledge of my relationship with Christ versus me having knowledge externally of who the elect are.
02:01:10
So when I say we don't know who the elect are, what I'm saying is God does not give a revelation to His church.
02:01:16
Those are the elect people. If God could do that, if I could have special glasses I could put on and the elect glow green, that's going to make my evangelism a lot easier.
02:01:25
Because there are certain people I'm not going to bother with. But we are not given that. We are told to proclaim the gospel to every creature because we are not given that knowledge.
02:01:33
So when I said that we can't know the identity of the elect, I'm talking about externally to myself. When I talk about myself,
02:01:40
I recognize my own ability of self -deception. I recognize my own evil heart. And so when we go to 1
02:01:46
John, and someone's probably thrown this at you in an evangelistic context. Go to 1 John chapter 5. These things
02:01:51
I've written that you might know that you have eternal life. The problem is when people use that verse in that way, they're frequently ignoring what are these things?
02:01:59
It's the rest of 1 John, which includes walking in the light, loving your brethren. The point is that I grow in the grace and knowledge of the
02:02:06
Lord Jesus Christ. So you're talking about 1 John 5 .13. Am I correct? Right. And when it says... We know we can have eternal life.
02:02:12
We know we have eternal life. But the point is that if God selects the elect for salvation, you can never know who the elect are.
02:02:20
And how can you say that you don't know who the elect are, you don't know if they're saved. How can you say that you are saved? Because you don't know if you're part of the elect.
02:02:26
Okay. Again, there's a difference between my having external knowledge of who the elect are and the witness of the
02:02:32
Holy Spirit in my life as to my relationship with Jesus Christ. And what I was saying is, if you look at 1
02:02:37
John 5, when it says, by these things we know, that these things was the rest of 1
02:02:43
John. So when I love the brethren, as John tells me to, as I walk in the light, as he is in the light, if I am constantly looking to Jesus Christ and confessing my sins,
02:02:51
I grow in my confidence. If I've known Lord Jesus for 50 years as I have, then
02:02:57
I better be growing in my confidence that I know him as my Lord and Savior. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the last item was open floor questions and answers, but we are bound by practicalities.
02:03:15
And I'm informed that there are people that need to go, so what I'm going to suggest is that the questions and answers can be dealt with informally so that we are going to now terminate the very fascinating discussion we've had here.
02:03:34
And all I can say that this debate has been to the glory of God, to the glory of Allah.
02:03:43
And I've enjoyed it enormously and I sense that everybody else here have enjoyed a really great theological and intellectual exercise.
02:03:57
So thank you so much to our speakers and we will now stop, but you can engage the speakers informally and then we will allow those who need to go and to get out of the parking garage, and that's a practical question.
02:04:14
I'm very sorry about that, but very often in this church we find we have to cope with the practical issues.
02:04:21
Thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you to our speakers. It's been a wonderful evening.