Sin and Salvation

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In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful, peace be upon you.

On behalf of the Imams, officials, and the congregation of Masjid Abu Bakr Siddiq, I would like to sincerely welcome our honored guest speakers for this evening, namely

Dr. James White and Dr. Shabbir Ali. Also, our moderator for this evening,

Advocate Yusuf Ismail, IPCI Chairperson Mr.

Harun Kala, IPCI Coordinator, Organizer, and a man for all seasons, of course, our beloved

Mohammad Khan. Also, a special welcome to Mr.

Rudolf Boschoff and the congregation from the

Sarah Church and members of Antwoord and all of our friends and guests.

I feel somewhat inspired this evening, and there's a very good reason for this. It is a very special,

I think, and blessed evening, undoubtedly, because we have witnessed the first rains of the season.

We give thanks to Almighty God for the gift and the great abundance. In fact, all of creation draws inspiration from the gift of rain.

There's no doubt about that. Did you know that the Sand Bushmen of the Kalahari believed when a person died, the soul went up to the house in the sky, to the great

God, from whence the rain fell? In fact, Robert Frost was inspired enough to say that sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing and exhilarating.

Our beloved Isa, Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, said,

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your

Father who is in heaven. For he makes his Son, the celestial body, rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

And then, of course, in the words of Henry Longfellow, into each life some rain must fall.

We have gathered here this evening in the house of God, a place of worship and sanctity.

We meet in the spirit of goodwill and mutual respect. And hopefully, we will leave here this evening with wisdom and insight that will prove beneficial to us as individuals and to our social circle.

I would like to leave you with a reading of chapter 49, verse 30. Surah Al -Hasrat, in the

Quran, the chamber. Bismillah ar -Rahman ar -Rahim.

O mankind, we created you from a single pair of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other.

Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you.

And God has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things.

Thank you. Jazakallah. And I'll call upon our moderator, Brother Yusuf. Thank you, Mr. Abdelkader.

Now, you know, without wanting to take any further time, I must have emphasized that this is a rare occasion indeed, even for myself.

We rarely do debates inside the mosque. I don't think we've ever had a debate in South Africa inside the masjid.

So this is probably a historical occasion from that perspective. I don't know if it happens around the world, but in South Africa, subject to correction, this would be the first time that in our history we've ever done a

Christian -Muslim debate inside a mosque. And it's a privilege for me to be here. And I would presume that a privilege for all of you to be attending this particular event.

It's an open book. It's something which is rooted in Islamic tradition. It's not something which is new.

But from the 6th and 7th century, during the time of the prophet, you had him engaging with people from different faiths and different communities, more specifically the

Christians in Najran. Let me go into a brief introduction of the debaters for tonight.

Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. And that's based in Phoenix, Arizona.

It's a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. And he's obviously the elder in the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. He's also an adjunct professor with the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

He's married to Kelly and has two children, Joshua and Summer Marie. He's also, I'm told, recently a grandfather.

So that's quite a long way for me to be there yet. He's written numerous books including the King James Only Controversy, the

Forgotten Trinity, and most recently, it's the Christian Perspective on the

Development and the Origin of the Quran. And I had the privilege of engaging him in a stimulating session on Thursday night.

I might also add that he reminds me of both Winston Churchill and Jerry Lewis because he's probably one of the only debaters in the world that comes to every debate wearing a bow tie.

And as you can see that, he's smartly dressed and sometimes his dress can be quite overwhelming.

So it's a privilege to have you on this historic occasion. On my right, we have

Shabir Ali, Dr. Shabir Ali. Both Dr. James White and Dr. Shabir Ali prefer to be called

James and Shabir. Shabir Ali has a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Laurentian University with a specialization in Biblical Literature.

He has an MA in Quranic Exegesis and recently acquired his doctorate in the study of Quranic Exegesis, what we could colloquially describe as Quranic Tafseer.

He's a noted debater in the world having debated since 1994 with a leading number of personalities, including probably one of the greatest

Christian philosophers of the 20th century, William Lane Craig. He is, in my opinion, arguably one of the best, if not the best proponent in Islamic, in inverted commas, apologetics in the world today.

And so it's my privilege to be moderating a session involving such two amiable individuals of such a high caliber.

And I think we are in for a treat tonight. The discussion, as has been agreed between the parties, is salvation in the

Quran and the Bible. The concept of sin and salvation in the Quran and the Bible. The format for tonight's debate will be as follows.

There will be opening arguments of 20 minutes each. This will then be followed by a rebuttal session of 10 minutes.

So in other words, the first speaker who speaks for the first 20 minutes would have the first 10 minutes to rebut what the second speaker says.

There will then be a question and answer session, and bearing in mind that most people in Pretoria sleep early, we're probably going to have it for approximately half an hour.

And when we come to the question and answer session, I will briefly explain and zero in onto the format.

This will then be followed by a rebuttal session of 10 minutes. And how this will work is that the first 10 minutes will be engaged in by the second speaker, and the first speaker, in the opening 20 minutes, has the final 10 minutes.

And this will then be concluded by closing arguments of 5 minutes each.

Again, the second speaker will have the first 5 minutes, and the first speaker will have the final 5 minutes.

It's been agreed between the parties that Dr. Ali will be addressing us for the first 20 minutes, and then

James White will be addressing us for the next 20 minutes. Tomorrow night, we will be having a debate at the

University of Pretoria where the format will be reversed. This will be an intensive engagement between the parties.

They are the best of friends. They are both co -authoring a book together, I'm told. So they are still the best of friends.

Listen attentively. Engage with each other. Take notes. And of course, during the question and answer session, don't hesitate to ask them questions on their particular themes, and indeed, propositions.

So, as you haven't come to listen to me, and I do tend to get long -winded, I will leave the floor to the first speaker that I will call to the platform, and that will be

Dr. Shabir Ali, who will be addressing us for the first 20 minutes. Thank you. Hello, everyone.

I start by praising our creator and fashioner. I ask him to send peace and blessings upon all of his prophets and messengers, and upon all of us and upon all of the righteous people until the last day.

I want to thank the IECI for hosting me in South Africa, making it possible for me to be here.

I thank the organizers and management of this mosque for giving us the opportunity to speak here tonight.

I want to thank my friend James for agreeing to have this dialogue with me. He has had a very busy schedule, and I'm so glad that I'm part of that schedule with this debate tonight.

Now, the proposition before us is about sin and salvation in both the

Qur 'an and the Bible. Let me say something first about the Qur 'an. Obviously, as a

Muslim, I would be in favor of the Qur 'an, but let me tell you what my view of the

Qur 'an is more specifically. It seems to me that the Qur 'an has a unified view about sin and salvation that runs throughout the text, and this is a reasonable view.

First, it is a unified view. Even if one did not take the Qur 'an to be the word of God, one would take it to be the writing of one man, the

Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace. And in that case, one would want to interpret the text in the light of that belief, that it was authored by one man.

And so we would expect that the book would interpret itself. What is unclear in one place might be clear in another place.

And because we have only one author, we would expect that the author is consistent with himself.

Now, when we read the Qur 'an, we find that the basic idea about sin is that sin involves some kind of disobedience, a transgression of God's law.

It may be an omission of a command, or it could be some harm to God's creatures. The response to sin is for human beings to seek the forgiveness of God.

And the promise in the Qur 'an is that if one is sincere in seeking that forgiveness, that God is always willing and ready to forgive, and that He will forgive.

Now, in the final reckoning, on the Day of Judgment, the deeds of people will be weighed, and what will be considered is whether a person in his or her situation did his or her best in that situation.

So that the deeds will be weighed to see if the person has had predominantly good deeds as opposed to bad deeds.

And that means that human beings in the Qur 'an are not expected to be absolutely perfect.

In fact, we cannot be human beings as we are. We are frail, we are weak, and God created us with our weaknesses.

He knows them, and He is ready to overlook our shortcomings. He is just looking for sincere servants who are trying their best to serve

Him. In the story of Adam in the Qur 'an, we find a lesson of original forgiveness.

Not a lesson about original sin, because Adam disobeyed

God according to the Qur 'an. But then the Qur 'an says, And God then chose him, and forgave him, and guided him.

And the prayer which Adam was taught, by which to seek forgiveness from God, is a prayer that Muslims recite to this day,

And if you do not forgive us and have mercy on us, then certainly we would be the losers.

We believe that when we recite a prayer like this sincerely, that God forgives us. Moreover, if we have harmed

God's creatures, then we are required to do the best we can to repair that harm.

It makes no sense to harm others and then ask God for forgiveness, because we understand that there are two basic rights that are due on us.

One is the right of God, and two is the right of the creatures of God. We say,

And it's not necessarily in that order. In fact, if we wrong God alone, then

God can easily forgive us, and he loses nothing. If we harm other creatures, then

God does not forgive us until we do our best to repair our harm to the other creatures. So if you hurt somebody, try to do the best you can to seek their forgiveness and to repair what wrong you have done.

And when we do that, again, we ask God for forgiveness, and God forgives us. So the

Islamic doctrine, then, is one that is based on the Qur 'an, and the Qur 'an's presentation of this is unified throughout, and it is a reasonable doctrine.

Now when we come to the Bible, we must deal separately with the Old Testament and with the New Testament. The Old Testament is basically the

Jewish Bible, which Jews refer to as the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Scriptures. Now, in the

Jewish Bible, which has now become part of the Christian Bible, we find the basic proposition that human beings must do their best to follow the commands and teachings of God.

And if they do that, they will have all the rewards which are promised in the Book of Deuteronomy, for example, in Deuteronomy 28.

And on the contrary, if people would turn away from the law of God, and not follow God's teachings, then they would have all the kinds of diseases and plagues and negative effects that are mentioned in Deuteronomy 28.

Deuteronomy is one of the books referred to as the books of the Torah, said to be the

Torah of Moses, the most important part of the Old Testament. The idea that God rewards good deeds, and he punishes for wrongdoing, is found throughout the

Old Testament, and that is then a basic teaching. Moreover, in the

Old Testament it is clear that if one commits wrong, then there is a way to seek the forgiveness of God.

Specifically, there are animal sacrifices which are detailed in the Book of Leviticus. And several times, the

Book of Leviticus, part of the Torah as well, promises that if you do this, you will be forgiven.

So, just very quickly, you can see Leviticus chapter 4, verse 20, verse 26, verse 31, and verse 35, and then going to Leviticus chapter 5, verse 10, 13, 16, and 18.

And there are several other passages where the same thing is mentioned. If you've committed sin, you do this sacrifice, and your sins will be forgiven.

Some people think that the sacrifice is only by blood, as if God somehow wants blood, and only by blood he will forgive sins, but that's not the idea, because some people could not afford the animal sacrifices, and then the substitute would be some cooking ingredients.

And that is mentioned too in the Book of Leviticus chapter 5, verse 12. Again, it is said that if you do that, you will be forgiven.

You bring the flower, you offer it on the altar, and God forgives you as well. And of course, after you've gone, the priest then uses the...

It is not only by sacrifice that one gets one's sins forgiven. What is important in the

Old Testament is the contrary part of the broken spirit that the Bible speaks about.

So the idea is for one to feel remorse after one has committed sins. This is the essence of seeking

God's forgiveness. And then it is promised that that too brings forgiveness. In fact, many of the biblical prophets in the

Old Testament say that what God desires is not the sacrifice, but this very broken spirit and contrite heart.

There is a verse in the Psalms which some take to mean that somehow we are born in sin.

But as Herbert Cage in his book, His Original Sin in Scripture, has pointed out, this passage could not be taken to mean that, because that would run contrary to the whole thread of the

Old Testament. If somehow we are born in sin, then nothing else makes sense in the

Old Testament. In fact, the overwhelming teaching is that which I have already presented, and that runs throughout the

Old Testament. How then do we regard the sons? Well, sons is a poetic work, and in poetic works people exaggerate the way they say things.

So when David says that in sin my mother conceived me, we don't know what exactly he means.

Does he mean that his mother conceived him through an adulterous relationship? Or is

David looking at his own life and feeling such remorse that he pities himself, he finds himself so absolutely despicable on that occasion, that he attributes that to the time of his conception.

And in that case, because this is a poetic work, as opposed to the kind of prosaic and legislative works in the

Bible, we cannot build too much on that and say that this means that there is such a thing as an original sin which has passed on to later generations.

Let's then look at the book of Genesis and see if that gives us an idea of original sin, because this is often misunderstood.

The story of Adam there in the book of Genesis is not really about original sin, in that nowhere else in the

Old Testament does anybody go back and say, you know what, we are in a real problem because Adam committed the first sin.

No, the story of Adam and his sin is told in the book of Genesis, and then it's overridden and forgotten about.

It's as if Adam committed a sin, he bore the consequences, and then that's the end of the matter.

We just move on, we live, we have commandments, we have to keep those, in which case God will reward us, or if we default and do not seek the forgiveness of God, then

God will penalize us. That then is the Old Testament view on sin and salvation in a nutshell.

Now I come to the New Testament. The New Testament is that part of the

Christian Bible which is added to the Old Testament.

Now Christians call it the New Testament because they believe that through Jesus a new agreement has been made with humankind.

So the Old Testament describes laws which God has given to people in the past, and that's an old agreement.

You do those laws, and you practice those laws, and you get these rewards, but now we have a new sort of commandment and teaching, and hence it is called the

New Testament through Jesus. Now when we look at the New Testament books, we see that there are 27 individual documents that comprise the

New Testament. 13 of them are attributed to Paul, in that Paul begins by saying,

I, Paul, am writing this. And that shows his tremendous influence, in that about half of the

New Testament writings are credited to him. It turns out as well that Paul is the earliest writer of the

New Testament books. His first letter to the Thessalonians is said to be the earliest, written approximately 49 or 50 of our current era, the year 49 or 50.

Whereas by contrast, the Gospel according to Mark is 70 of our current era, or some say 70

AD, current era, AD, same thing. And the other

Gospels follow after that. So the writings of Paul have actually had a tremendous influence in the shaping of later

Christianity. Some say that in fact Paul's writings have shaped

Christianity much more than the teachings of Jesus himself. Michael Goler, for example, in his book,

St. Peter vs. St. Paul, has made this statement. And the historian, Michael Grant, has made the same statement in his book,

Jesus, in Historians' Review of the Gospels, and also in his biography of St.

Peter. So this is common knowledge. In what way then did Paul shape

Christianity when it comes to our question of sin and salvation? Paul looked at a statement in the book of Deuteronomy, in the

Torah, a statement which said that the one who hangs on the cross is accursed. The statement in Deuteronomy was referring to a person who was legitimately crucified for his transgressions.

And so he is said to be under the curse of God, not because he's crucified, but because he transgressed.

And so he is crucified because he transgressed. And he is under the curse of God because he transgressed.

That's the whole point. But now, if you take an innocent person, and by hook or by crook you try by any means possible just to put him to death using false accusations and false charges, then who deserves the blame?

This innocent person, or you, who have trumped up the false charges against him? Obviously, the ones who falsely accused him.

But Paul misunderstood the point, it seems to me. And he said that because Jesus hung on the cross,

Jesus was accursed. But now he tried to make a good thing of that bad conclusion. If Jesus is accursed, okay,

Paul said, but he became a curse for us. And so in Galatians 3, verse 13,

Paul says now that Jesus became a curse for us. So he died in a bad way, but that's a good thing.

Paul, with this understanding, what I would refer to as a misunderstanding, then constructed a whole idea about justification through the death of Jesus Christ.

So Paul then, you don't need the law to be justified. You don't need to do the laws and then you are considered righteous.

You just need to believe in Jesus, and you are saved because Jesus died for your sins.

But the idea of how this works, and in fact, it's problematic.

On the one hand, you can say that Jesus died as a substitute for us. Instead of God killing us for our sins,

Jesus took the blame and God killed him for our sins. But this view is problematic.

In the book, The Atonement, Four Views, which is written by mainly conservative scholars, and it is mentioned by one of these scholars that some conservative

Christian scholars have complained about that view, and they have actually referred to it as cosmic child abuse.

It's as if God is angry with humankind and he takes it all on his son, and that does not seem right.

And the Atonement according to Mark is following from Paul's teachings, and in Mark 10, verse 45, it quotes

Jesus as saying, and I would say this is not Jesus' original saying, but Mark somehow has got this as a saying of Jesus, and it ties in with Paul's doctrine, and Mark is representing it as Jesus is saying, that Jesus said that he came to die for the sins, so as to save many.

But in what way then should we understand this passage?

William Barclay in The Daily Bible Commentary says that it is difficult to understand in what way that Jesus would have substituted for the sins of humankind in this way, and he prefers to just speak of love, that this is the way of God showing love for humankind, or something like this.

Because now, one way of thinking of this, as we mentioned in that same book that I referred to, is that Jesus somehow is victorious over Satan, and some of the scholars try to put it this way.

I have five minutes remaining. So, they said that Jesus was victorious over Satan by dying on the cross, but that too does not seem to be a reasonable explanation, because that explanation entails somehow that God put

Jesus on the cross as a kind of bait for the devil, and when the devil tried to snatch him, that's when the devil himself was trapped.

Another way of putting this, they have said, is that Jesus somehow is paying our penalty.

Well, if Jesus is paying the penalty, to whom is he paying that penalty? Obviously, to God, because it's only to God that that penalty is due, and why would

God be taking the penalty out on his son? So, in no way does that make any sense, but it is clear that the

Gospels, while trying to follow from Paul, have somehow evolved the sayings of Jesus, and the representation of Jesus.

So, the later the Gospels, the more it appears as if Jesus himself is teaching the very same.

So, we have, for example, the baptism scene. It's recorded in all of the Gospels. In Mark's Gospel, it appears that Jesus came to John the

Baptist to be baptized for the forgiveness of his sins, and that's the earliest of the Gospels.

So, one might wonder, well, why does Jesus need forgiveness of his sins if he's going to die for the sins of humankind?

That doesn't look too good, but for the later part, when

Jesus went to John the Baptist, John the Baptist protested. Why do you come to me? I need to come to you.

And Jesus says, let it be so for now, so that all righteousness should be fulfilled. So, in Matthew's Gospel now, it is appearing that, okay,

Jesus didn't really need this, but he's doing it as a kind of a formality, and it's very clear, it's

John the Baptist who needs to be saved by Jesus, not Jesus who needs to be baptized and forgiven through the practice of John the

Baptist. You see how the story has changed. Luke's Gospel mentions it in passing, when Jesus was baptized, without going through all that detail about the forgiveness of sins and so on.

So, you see, there is a kind of embarrassing situation that the earliest Gospel presented, and the later

Gospels are overcoming that sort of embarrassment. And this is mentioned in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, and many commentaries on the

Bible. I'm not making this up just because I'm a Muslim wanting to criticize the Bible. This is what Christian scholars themselves say.

John's Gospel doesn't mention the Baptist at all. It just has Jesus present there on the scene, and instead of Jesus being baptized, now

John the Baptist declares, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

So you see that now, suddenly we hear that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This comes in the latest

Gospel, the last of all of the four to be written. You can see that if you take each Gospel as a snapshot of what people believed at the time when each

Gospel was written, you can see that the belief in Jesus was evolving over time, and rather than the

Gospel directing us on what to believe about Jesus, the Gospels are actually reflecting what people believe about Jesus.

So it's the other way around. Finally, we see that the idea of Paul is so problematic that Paul himself at times slipped up, and he mentioned things which are contrary to his own idea.

For example, in Romans 2, verses 5 and 6, Paul spoke about God rewarding each person according to what they have done, which is contrary to his own view that you don't really need works anymore.

Paul, in Philippians 2, verse 12, says, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

So the underlying idea, which is so basic and so reasonable that you must do right, and God will reward you and avoid wrong, otherwise

God will punish you, that is so basic that even Paul, on occasion, mentions the same thing.

He slips up and he forgets his main doctrine. But there are other writers in the New Testament who didn't agree with Paul.

Most notable is James. James chapter 2 is an obvious reply to Paul's writings, his letter to the

Galatians and his letter to the Romans, in which Paul is elaborating his doctrine about justification through the death of Jesus, and James is replying to that and contradicting

Paul. I will have more to say on these points, especially in response to James' response, and I will be back with you.

I look forward to the further engagement. Thank you very much. As you can see, in debates, you hear one convincing account, which seems so convincing, and then you wait and hear the other account, which is so convincing as well, and then you have to make up your mind.

So with this I call James White. Well, thank you very much. It is truly an honor to be here this evening, on this historic evening, to see this full house of people for this incredible conversation.

I am so thankful to the leaders of the Abu Bakr As -Siddiq

Mosque here in allowing this to take place. This is actually the fifth debate that I have done since I came here to South Africa, and we have one more tomorrow evening, and then

I get to go home. It's only a little 32 -hour jaunt to do that, but I'm looking forward to that.

It is truly an honor to have all the Christians here, all the Muslims here, and of course to have Shabir Ali here.

This is our sixth debate and our third continent in the debates that we have done, and I'm just wondering when we're going to debate in Antarctica.

But we have very little time and something very, very important to discuss this evening.

The law of God is something that's very important to Christian people. The law of God is reflective of his nature.

In our theology, there is an intimate connection between God's law and God's nature.

It is not just simply that God makes up rules, and they're just sort of over there, he can lay them aside, he can just simply ignore them when he wants to.

The law of God reflects the holiness of God. It necessarily flows from his being as a good and holy creator of this universe, especially of man, who is created in the image of God.

That is why in the Bible, God says to us, you are to be holy, for I am holy. If you are created in my image, then you need to be holy, as I am holy.

You need to reflect who I am. If we are to be like God, then we must be holy, as God is holy.

Since man is created, according to the Bible, in the image of God, then we are to delight, we are to take great joy in that image, and hence we are to take great joy in the law of God as well.

It should be the natural thing for us to want to do what God would have us to do. That's why, my friends, this is why

God does not will to simply suspend his law and leave it broken and disrespected by man's sin.

Forgiveness must have a ground that maintains the intimate and vital connection between God's nature and God's law.

So however salvation is brought about, God's holiness must be maintained in that process.

That's the most important thing. In fact, I'm going to emphasize to you tonight, salvation is centered upon God and his glory.

Man is the one who is saved, but salvation is not a man - centered thing. It is a God - centered thing.

Now one of the places where we really disagree with one another on a fundamental basis is on the nature of the fall of man.

Adam was made perfect. He was without sin. There was nothing that was impure in God's sight in Adam's creation.

And as I said, he was made in the very image of God. Not in the sense of being an idol of God, but that man, unlike the animals, is able to engage in relationship with God, to seek to worship him.

We are the only worshiping we are the only worshiping creatures that are out there anywhere.

We have been made to desire to worship our God. Now Adam, we believe, was appointed by God to represent all of humanity.

He is our federal head, just as Jesus becomes the one who represents those who are in him. Adam represented all of us, and he was a perfect man.

He was the perfect person to represent all of us as fallen creatures, could not in any way stand in the way that Adam did.

Adam's fall was in full light and knowledge of God's command. God explained to Adam what his law represented, what

Adam was to do, and Adam rebelled against that law. It was a willful rebellion, plunging he and his progeny into spiritual rebellion and death, separation from the holy

God. Now the biblical view of man is very stark. He is likened, for example, in the prophetic scriptures, to dry, dead bones, incapable of life outside of God's supernatural action.

His heart is likened to a heart of stone, requiring God's supernatural gift of a heart of flesh.

It is said every thought of his heart is evil continually, and that he is so accustomed to doing evil that he cannot do good unaided, any more than a leopard can change his spots.

Now, many people in our world would say that's just too stark a view, that's just too dark. But obviously from my perspective,

I look into the eyes of every person in this room and I ask you, what is the greatest commandment that Jesus himself said to each one of us?

You are to love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I know my heart, and ladies and gentlemen,

I think I know a little bit about other people too, and there's nobody in this room that has loved God completely and perfectly with every breath you took and every heartbeat you had this day.

We all know what's in our hearts, and we all know that the Bible is true when it says these words from Romans chapter 3.

None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside, together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive, the venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.

The final summary statement is there is no fear of God before their eyes.

You say, Moyden, I know people who are better than that, but you see, what is the standard?

What is the standard? In Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah, one of the holiest men of the nation of Israel, got to see

God sitting upon his throne, and what was the immediate result of his realizing how holy

God was? The angels surrounding the throne saying, Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, holy, holy, holy is

Yahweh Almighty. And what was his immediate response? His immediate response was, woe is me,

I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips and I live amongst a people of unclean lips. He knew what the standard was and recognized his own need in the light of that.

As a result, the Bible teaches that no one is able to come to Jesus Christ unless the

Father who sent him draws him. John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.

So much are we slaves of sin that we lack the capacity outside of God's gracious drawing and enablement to even come to Christ.

In fact, Jesus taught the Jews, he said in John chapter 8, some of the Jews had heard what he was saying, and he said, this guy sounds pretty good,

I like him. And Jesus answered them and says, if you continue in my words, then in my disciples deed you shall know the truth, the truth shall make you free.

And they were offended when Jesus said that and he set free. And Jesus' response then was this, truly, truly,

I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever, so if the son sets you free, that's

Jesus speaking of himself as the son of God, you will be free indeed. The Christian message is it's the son who sets us free.

That's why the freedom we have is a perfect freedom. It's not something we can add to because it's a freedom that comes from the son of God himself.

Man is held accountable for the fact that he loves his sin and he chooses to follow in its path.

If the only category we could speak of is strict justice, then there would be no hope, for none can bring about his own ransom, none can tear off the chains of slavery.

But thankfully, the Bible introduces us to the category of mercy and grace, which does not undo justice.

If we were simply to wink at sin, then his law would be violated, he would be disrespected.

But you see, mercy and grace transcends justice and because of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, because my sins were laid upon a substitute, then his law is honored and yet then his grace and mercy is exemplified and demonstrated in that.

And so what is God's provision? It is Emmanuel. The prophecy, if you go back into Isaiah, he prophesies of Emmanuel from chapter 7 to 11 a number of different times, that phrase

God with us becomes fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

And it is there that we find the gospel put together and I want to really just focus upon one text from the

New Testament that sort of summarizes all of it because there's so many things that could be said. But I want to look at just one text and allow that one text to summarize the entire essence of what the

Christian message is on sin and salvation this evening and it's found in Paul's second epistle, it's

Paul's epistle to Titus. And in those words in chapter 2, he describes

Christians in these ways looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great

God and Savior Christ Jesus who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession zealous for good deeds.

There is a tremendously balanced presentation of what the triune

God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's listen to what it said. First of all, we are looking for the blessed hope.

We have a blessed hope. What is it? We are looking for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus.

Both the words God and Savior here are applied to Jesus the Christ. This is not some doctrine that came up 325 years later.

Here in Paul, which interestingly enough was just said that he was even before Mark. I would actually dispute that as far as the writing of that goes, but he's such an important person and yet in his own writings we have

Jesus described as God. And it's God and Savior. See those two words together?

Isn't that the most wonderful thing that any person who knows their own sin could ever hear are the words God and Savior together?

Because you see God is our judge. And if we didn't know that he was a merciful person, if we didn't know he was one who wanted to provide salvation then to hear of him only as judge would be a frightening thing.

Because I know my heart and I know his holiness, but he's called God and Savior.

And then he's described as having given himself for us. Unfortunately, I didn't hear my friend

Shabir present my understanding and I think the biblical understanding of the role of Jesus Christ.

Because here you see who gave himself for us it was voluntary. It was purposeful.

It was his intention, it was the whole purpose of the incarnation itself that Jesus entered into human flesh to give himself.

He said no one takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord. It was an act of love.

Even the incarnation according to Philippians chapter 2 it says he made himself of no reputation.

This was something Jesus did voluntarily out of his great love that he has for us.

For men from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. Who gave himself for us, for a purpose.

Not so we might just go live our lives as we want to live them. Instead notice, to redeem us from every lawless deed.

There has to be something about the death that he died. The fact that he was sinless and we are sinful.

The fact that he does this in the fulfillment of God's law and we've done the breaking of God's law.

There's something in the death of Christ that provides for redemption. For taking us out of the bonds of slavery.

We have these shackles on our arms and our hands and because we're sinners we can't get them off.

But he comes along and he provides perfect redemption in himself.

To redeem us from every lawless deed. There is nothing beyond the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

No sin no matter how great is beyond his power. He is a perfect savior and I can tell you this evening folks

I have no right to stand before you as some type of perfect man because I am not. I am a redeemed sinner.

And it is a privilege for me to be able to speak the gospel because I know my unworthiness.

The only worthiness I will ever have to stand before a holy God is to stand the righteousness of Jesus Christ which is mine by faith.

How can you stand before a holy God? Will he not look into your heart? Will he not know that even when you do your good deeds you do them with a stain of sin?

You know that people are looking at you. Isn't there some arrogance? Isn't there some pride? Do you go home and treat your wife badly?

God knows all those things. The only way I'm going to be able to stand before a holy God is if I am clothed in the righteousness of another because my righteousness will never avail and that's why

I need to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. To redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession.

Notice his own possession. I don't have time to develop it. My time is going so quickly. But if you look at all of the phrases that is used in this verse, they go back to Yahweh in the

Old Testament redeeming a special people for himself. These all have to do with God's redemption of the people of Israel now being fulfilled in the redemption of the people in Jesus Christ.

And he is purifying for himself a people for his own possession. That means God is at work in my life to purify me.

He's conforming me to the image of Christ. He brings conviction of sin. He teaches me what it means to follow in his footsteps.

But you see folks, the reason it says zealous for good deeds. Why do Christians do good works?

It's not out of fear. I'm not trying to add something to what Jesus did.

His righteousness is perfect for me. It is enough for me. I'm not trying to add to his works.

My friends the reason that I do good works is because of the fact that I love

God. And I want to be like my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When he saves his people, he sends his spirit into them and begins conforming them to the image of Christ.

In fact the wonderful thing is the Bible says Jesus is living his life now out in me.

I'm a part of the body of Christ. All the believers here this evening, my brothers and sisters we are joined together by the spirit of God and that spirit of God is conforming us to the image of Christ.

He is purifying us and that's why we're zealous for good deeds. Not because we're trying to earn something from God.

Not because we're trying to add something to what Jesus did. Jesus just didn't make us savable and we have to do good deeds to somehow get that.

Instead Jesus' work is absolutely sufficient for us. And I do good deeds out of the love of my heart.

Out of my desire to show my love for the one who loved me before I took my first breath.

In fact so intensely personal is the message of the New Testament. That it we are in Christ.

We're united with him in his death. So that his death is our death. His burial is our burial. His resurrection is our resurrection.

We have already been seated with him in heavenly places in Christ. Jesus is the message of the book of Ephesians. And so you see when the

Bible talks about doing good deeds, Shabir mentioned working out your salvation with fear and trembling. What's the very next verse?

For it is God who has worked within you both to will and to do according to his good purpose.

Paul wasn't contradicting himself in any way, shape, or form. I think I've sent to Shabir, I'm not sure, a 400 page long book called

The God Who Justifies. And every text that Shabir mentioned regards to Paul. Lengthy discussion of what it actually means in the original languages.

If I haven't given it to you yet Shabir, I will. I promise. I'm not sure if it's in your library or not, but take a look at it.

This evening we gather here and we have fundamental differences between us. I hope and pray that because we are here, because we are here together, because we are honoring one another, we're listening to one another, we are here in the bonds of friendship but we have differences and we're not putting them aside.

Shabir and I are writing a book together. We are not compromising with one another.

We are presenting exactly what we believe, but it can be done within the bonds of friendship and respect toward one another.

And we have to understand where the differences really lie this evening. And I hope it's not going to be in my having to deal with liberal reaction criticism especially since Shabir has said, well there's a unified view of the

Quran. Well there's all sorts of scholars who don't think there's a unified view of the Quran. I don't want to waste time bringing them up and bringing up their arguments and wandering off into the wilderness of your scholar versus my scholar.

We have fundamental differences as to how we view God's holiness and God's law.

One of the big questions I'm going to ask Shabir and I'm going to ask all of you Muslims that are here this evening. How can God simply forgive?

Remember the story in the Hadith about the man who killed 99 people and then he asked the priest, you know, would you accept my repentance and then he kills the priest and so he's killed 100 people and he dies on the way to find out my repentance.

Remember the Hadith that I'm talking about? If God can simply forgive by saying,

I forgive. My law has been broken. There's been no atonement. There's been no means of justice being done.

I just simply say, I forgive. Then how can God's law actually represent his being because now there's been a split between the two.

And what about man's fallenness and his sin? Are you really able to do what is good in the sight of a holy

God? I'm not saying can you do good in the sight of other men. Our standard is pretty low. Can you do what is good in the sight of a holy, just God who can look right into your heart and see every motivation that you have?

That's the question that I would ask. And in light of that, what then is the foundation we can have to have peace with God?

I say to you this evening, I have peace with God not because of who I am but because of who Jesus Christ is.

And I say to you that is the only way we can have true shalom with God. It's because of what

Jesus Christ has done. I hope that's what we'll be able to talk about this evening. Thank you very much for being here.

We now come to the rebuttal session where speakers will be engaging each other's arguments.

Shamir Ali will be speaking for 10 minutes and then James will be speaking for his 10 minutes and then we'll go to the question and answer session.

You'll notice I'm back without my jacket this time because things are heating up a little bit now. Thank you.

Should I start my timer? Yeah? Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, listen carefully to James and I've taken some notes.

I'd like to respond to some of the things that James mentioned. One of the last things he spoke about is that hadith where a person has killed a hundred persons and then according to the hadith

God forgives him because this person was remorseful. He wanted to repair his life. He was going towards a solution to his problem.

He wanted to get rid of this and God forgave him. To James, this is a problem. Now, our topic tonight is not about hadith.

So if I go into details about this that might be a distraction to deal with the specifics of the hadith.

But if I deal with the general question that James has been speaking about, it is this. Can God forgive sins and if he does so, would that somehow be contrary to his justice and his holiness?

The answer to that is that God can forgive and that is not contrary to his justice and holiness. So long as God is even and he forgives everyone for the same kinds of sins and that he's not arbitrary.

In fact, some would say that even if God is arbitrary in that he forgives one person but not another, then this is within the rights of God.

In the Gospels it is mentioned that Jesus said that a man went out and hired some workers at the early part of the day and he promised them a fixed sum of money for the day's work.

And then later on in the day, towards evening, he went out and hired some other person for the same amount of pay to just work for the remaining portion of the day.

The earlier workers complained because they worked all day for the same money and then the employer said, this is my money.

Do I not have the right to do with it as I please? Did I shortfall you in any way?

Did I not pay you exactly what I promised? So with that parable, Jesus was showing that in a way,

God can reward some people more than some others and this is within the prerogative of God.

It is his treasure. He can give it to whoever he wants. But to me, what God does is that God forgives people across the board.

When we hear in a hadith or some such anecdote that God forgives a person, usually that anecdote shows that there is something that moves

God, that appeals to the mercy of God and then God exercises his mercy. We shouldn't think that the mercy of God is limited only to the one person, but it could go across the board to all people but starting with that one person who so moved the mercy of God.

This might be like a university professor. He knows that his students will not be all perfect and he knows the circumstances.

So let's say there were events occurring that prevented students in general from studying very well and when he looks at the results and he sees that many students have done poorly based on the past measures, he can have the prerogative to, let's say, upgrade everyone by 5%.

So in that case, he's not doing anything wrong. He's using his judgment. He understands the circumstances and he is fair to people.

He's not unfair in any way. But James is saying no, God cannot do that because God is holy and somehow holiness will be affected.

But notice that James also said that the Bible calls upon us to be as holy as God is.

But that means that we ourselves should not be able, should not tolerate any kind of deviation or wrongdoing and we must penalize everyone who does something wrong.

But we know that we are actually called upon in the Bible itself to forgive others. In fact, the

Bible says you should forgive your brother 70 times 7 and then go present your gift to the altar.

So we are to forgive others, which means that we don't penalize them. The Lord's Prayer in the

Bible actually says that we are asking God to forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us.

When we forgive those who sin against us, we don't penalize them. We just let them go free. Another version of the

Lord's Prayer says as we forgive those who are indebted to us. If somebody is indebted to us, we don't claim the money and then say we forgive you.

Saying we forgive you means we don't want the money back. We let it go. And this is what God does with us.

It doesn't affect His holiness, just that it does not affect our holiness if we forgive others.

James says that human beings are somehow depraved. No matter what, all our deeds are like filthy rags.

We cannot please God. Anything we do might be done for show. We can't really do anything right.

Well, that's not entirely true. Some people can do a lot of things right. I'm not saying that human beings will be perfect or that anyone will be perfect, but I'm saying that on balance, human beings can do more good than bad.

In the Islamic tradition, we are actually told that when we do a good deed, we are rewarded ten times over. But when we do a sin, we are only faulted for one.

So it is easy to rack up good credits as opposed to bad credits. And this is mentioned in the

Quran itself. So it's not true that human beings are so depraved, but to support

Paul's doctrine, one has to start with the absolute depravity of humanity. Otherwise, Paul's doctrine doesn't work.

But Paul's doctrine doesn't work because in the Bible itself, it is clear that there are people who are righteous.

Jesus in the Gospels refers to Abel as righteous Abel. What fault was there of Abel?

In the Gospel according to Luke, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, in Luke chapter 1 verse 6, are said to be righteous.

So too is Simeon and Anna in the first two chapters of Luke's Gospel. So they have been people who are declared righteous, even though we're not saying that they did not commit any faults, but by the measures of God, human beings can be declared righteous, even with all of our shortcomings and all.

James quoted a lot from John and from Paul. And this actually confirms my thesis that Paul is the proponent of this doctrine of justification by faith in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ.

And the later the Gospels, the more they support that theory, such as the Gospel according to John, the last of the four, to be written.

James questioned the dating of Mark that I presented when I said that Mark was written around the year 70.

This is not liberal scholarship. James continues in our debates to say no, Shabir is just quoting liberal scholarship.

But some facts about the New Testament and its history are so clear that even though they have fundamental consequences for Christianity, some of the most conservative

Christians accept these prepositions. One of them is the dating of Mark's Gospel. For example,

Richard Boughton in his book, Jesus a Short History, dates Mark from anywhere between 68 and 70

AD. Since Paul died in the year 64, it is clear then that Mark was written several years after Paul and after Paul's writings were already in the scene and already affecting

Christian societies and Christian thought. And several other scholars have given similar dates for Mark's Gospels, but this is not modern liberal scholarship.

This is an idea about Mark that is so demonstrably true that some of the most conservative

Christian scholars accept that dating. F. F. Bruce is a conservative

Christian scholar, according to James himself. And F. F. Bruce in his book, The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?

says that the Gospels were written from between the year 60 and 100, meaning that Mark was written around the year 60 and John around the year 100.

And in his article, The Fourfold Gospel, which is found in the New International Biblical Commentary, F.

F. Bruce says that Mark was written in the mid -60s. That would be approximately 65, and since Paul died in the year 64, obviously

Mark is writing later than Paul. Uh...

James questioned my use of Paul's writing when Paul said, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

He said we should add the next verse which says that it is the will of God who causes you to work in that way. Okay, maybe so, but that doesn't stop the principle or prevent or negate the principle that you still have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

And the point even if God is enabling you to do that, you still have to do that. And if you have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, then how is it true to say that Jesus already guaranteed your salvation?

The two are in contrast with each other and obviously the main idea and teaching of the

Old Testament and also in many passages of the New Testament is that you really have to work out your own salvation, but of course

God assists you, God helps you, and it is by the will of God that you do anything good.

That is true, but in the end, you have to do it, and you cannot just simply rely on the death of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice for you.

Thank you. Alright, ten minutes is not a long time, so let's just dive right into it.

The first thing I want to say is fresh up on your mind. The Apostle Paul did not say work for your salvation, he said work out your salvation.

Something you already possess. You're not adding something to what Jesus did. You're working it out. It's something you possess, but as I said,

God has a purpose in what he is doing in our lives. He is conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ.

He is making us a people who are pure and zealous for good deeds. So the point of Philippians chapter 2, see what

I mean is, even Paul contradicted himself. No, I just don't think that my friend Shabir understands Paul's theology.

Shabir can say there's a consistent Chronic view. I say there's a consistent Biblical view, and my problem with a lot of the scholars that Shabir cites is that they're the ones that begin with the assumption that there is no consistency in the

Bible. Certainly the Jerome Biblical commentary, things like that starts with the assumption that there can be no consistency.

I went to Fuller Seminary, trust me, I've read these guys, I'm used to the liberal perspective, and I understand the assumptions.

I would much rather hear quotations from people who, like you, you allow for supernaturalism, you allow for a book to be consistent from beginning to end, even though the

Quran is much shorter than the New Testament. It's only 56 % the length of the New Testament, only about 14 % the length of the

Bible. You allow for consistency in that. I'm simply asking you to consider the possibility, maybe our scriptures are consistent too, and when you do assume that, the

Apostle Paul does not contradict himself in any way, shape, or form. Now, we also have the assertion, well, see, if you're to forgive your brother, then

God can just forgive us without atonement. Completely different context. We are sinners. We don't have any basis for withholding forgiveness from somebody else because we ourselves have already been forgiven.

That's not God's situation. God's not a sinner. He's not been forgiven of something. There's a completely different context.

The reason that I must forgive others is because, as Jesus told the parable of the man who had been forgiven this huge debt, then he went out and found somebody who owed him a little bit of money, and he had him thrown into debtor's prison because he couldn't pay.

Well, that demonstrates that he was not thankful for the forgiveness that he himself had received. So it's in the context of people with one another.

This isn't the context of the holy God who has made us and given us his law that we have sinned against.

So they are not in contradiction to one another in any way, shape, or form. Now, we've started to really get into the real issue at the beginning of Shabir's rebuttal period because it almost sounds to me like he was saying

God can be arbitrary. Is that what he was saying? I hope I misunderstood that.

But that does seem to be a real problem. Because for example, when I've read the Hadith, there seems to be some people who get to go into paradise, and they were pretty nasty individuals.

And then there are other people that they've gone on Hajj, and they've done the prayers, and they seem to be very godly from the

Islamic perspective, and yet they're concerned about what's going to happen when they die because they don't know. There is that arbitrariness.

And that is one of the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity is we don't have an arbitrariness in that way because we have had one who has provided a perfect ransom sacrifice in himself.

And so God's law is perfectly fulfilled in the life of every person who receives that grace from him.

It seems that, and please, Shabir, tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounded like he was saying

God can grade on a curve. He talked about the professor and people do so bad, he can bump things up by 5%, he can bump things up by 10%.

How does that work in regards to the holy standards of God? Why would he have to do that?

I mean, when he created, didn't he know what we were going to be like? Did he not know the future perfectly? Is he not accomplishing a specific purpose in this world?

These are some of the issues that it's very concerning from the Christian perspective to hear the idea that God can grade on a curve.

We don't need to be graded on a curve when we have a person who aced the test. And when we can have his righteousness, then we stand in God's presence.

And again, God's law, which is what we're really talking about here, it's not a test and grading on a curve.

It's God's perfect law. And that's why I started off, what did I say? The relationship between God's law and his nature.

I honestly believe this is a fundamental problem with the perspective that's being presented by my friend Shabir. Because I think that there has been a disjunction, there's been a breaking of the relationship that must be there.

Now, he pointed to Jesus' parable. He said, well, what about the parable of the men who worked for the man for a longer period of time than others, and he went out and hired some more, hired some more.

And this is somehow indicative of the idea of God being able to give differing rewards to people. Actually, what that parable is about, is about the fact that the

Jews were resisting the idea of what was going to really be happening once the death of Christ took place, and that is the

Gentiles coming in. Same thing with the parable of the prodigal son. He was talking there about the fact that there were people saying, hey, we've been serving you all this time, and now these new people are coming in, and we're not going to like that.

We're not going to appreciate that. That's what he's talking about. Yeah, God has the right to do what he wills with his servants in regards to giving rewards.

We're not talking about rewards here. We're talking about salvation itself, whether we are in Christ, whether we're going to have peace with God, or whether we are not.

The issue of rewards is a completely different matter other than that. Now, it's very interesting that Shabir said, well, like Mark 10 .45,

that comes from Paul. Now, this is where my problem with Shabir's utilization of scholarly sources comes from.

Because I don't know of anybody that says, well, Mark 10 .45 came from Paul. But the argument has been, well, if Paul's writing before Mark, then

Mark's just automatically going to be slavishly following Paul, and if Mark's later on, now, I would like to see what the exact evidence is that the

Gospel of Mark could not have been written in AD 50. What's the evidence for that? There is no evidence for that.

There are theories, but as N .T. Wright has said, nobody knows even the order in which the Gospels were written, let alone when.

And there have been people who have argued for all the Gospels being written before AD 70. And there's good evidence for that.

Maybe someday we're going to have to debate specifically on that, because most of the people doing this dating stuff is just going on what somebody else said, rather than the actual sources of the information itself.

But my point is this. Once you get the idea that, well, okay, now Paul's writing before Mark, so now

I can make Mark depend upon that, and so now I can dismiss what Mark says in Mark 10 about the ransom sacrifice of Jesus, because, well,

I can just trace it back to Paul. What's the evidence that came from Paul? Isn't there much better evidence that came from Jesus? Yeah, there's a lot better evidence that came from Jesus.

And there's no reason to be flattening things out in this particular way. Now, Shabir made an interesting statement in his opening statement that the

Psalms are exaggerated. They're exaggerated poetry. Now, I'm sure that Shabir had lots of classes with biblical scholars who said that.

But, you know, we're in a situation where we've got Christians here and Muslims here. How many in this room believe, not that Jesus was a mere prophet, but at least that Jesus was a prophet of Almighty God?

Anybody? We all believe it, don't we? How did Jesus interpret the

Psalms? Ever thought about that? He quoted from them more than any other book of the

Old Testament. Did he treat them as exaggerated poetry? And wouldn't a prophet of God be a better person to follow in your interpretation of the

Psalms than some modern scholar? I think it would be. And the reality is that Jesus quoted, in fact, have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus quoted from Psalm 22 from the cross?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Many Muslims misunderstand that statement. Jesus was not saying, oh,

God has abandoned me. Those are the first words of Psalm 22. And just as you all, if someone began, if someone begins to quote, to sing

Sert al -Fatiha, do they have to finish it for you to know what they're talking about? Of course not. You know the rest of it.

You know it real well, don't you? Well, Jesus quotes from the Psalter, the

Psalm, the Songbook of the Jewish people, and he expects the people to know the rest of the

Psalm. Have you ever read the rest of the 22nd Psalm? It's all about the suffering servant. It's all about the crucified servant, and it ends with the vindication of that servant.

Jesus was saying, these words are now being fulfilled in me. He didn't treat it as some type of exaggerated poetry.

He knew that it had to have a fulfillment. In fact, he said the Jews, the scriptures cannot be broken. And then he quotes from the

Psalms in that process. So, I would simply suggest that a consistent Islamic view of the

Psalter is not this just exaggerated poetry, because if you go to Jesus' own interpretation, he gives us a different perspective from that.

So, what then is the real issue this evening?

We have already, I think, expressed it. Is God's law something that is intimately connected to his very nature, and therefore holiness is an absolute, and the fulfillment of his law is representative of his nature, or can it be separated off so that a man who's killed a hundred people just because he was going to find out about repentance can be ushered into paradise without any vindication of God's law taking place?

That really is one of the major issues that stands between us, and I hope we really shined some light on it for you this evening.

Thank you for your attention to our discussion. Okay. Thank you for that,

James, and thank you, Shabir. We now come to our most interesting part of the discussion.

Greetings to all you beautiful nations of God. My name is

Glenn. I lived as a Blessed Jew for 29 years. That's what I used to be called, Blessed Jew.

And they called me a Blessed Jesus. So my question is please, what brought me to Christ?

You're talking to me? Please. When I came to Christ from the

Jewish Paganites, I was kicked out of my Jewish community for this. Abel brought it down, and I'm sure the

Bishop was like, can you kill Abel? Leviticus 17, 11 says, without the shedding of blood is there no remission of sin?

And Daniel 9, 24 -27 says that that time the Messiah would die for our sins and be cut off.

Isaiah 53 says he was led back to them to slaughter to pay for our sins. Turn 53, verse 3.

Please can you elaborate on that? My wife made this t -shirt from he was led back to them to slaughter.

Isaiah 53. So which text do you want me to focus on? Salvation is the subject.

Okay, all right, thank you. I think I understand the question, especially in light of the text that we're citing.

Let me just look at the two of them and try to tie them together, and I will try to do it within less than two minutes.

Leviticus chapter 17, if we look at the Levitical Law, and Shabir mentioned the Levitical Law, I would invite everyone to take the time, read that section of Leviticus, and it will talk to you about the

Yom Kippurim, the Day of Atonement. And I want to just very quickly, if I can, remind you what happened that day.

The high priest, he offers the sacrifice, he takes the blood into the Holy of Holies. That's the one day during the year where he would go through the veil into the holy place.

And he sprinkled the blood upon the place of atonement. And this was what all the other sacrifices pointed to this.

And in the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, we are told that that was a picture of what Jesus Christ did.

Now think about that with me for a moment, folks. What would happen if you were a high priest for 20 years? What would you see the 20th time you went into the holy place?

What would be on top of that altar, the place of atonement?

All the dried blood from all the years you had been there. And wouldn't it speak to you and say, there must be something more.

This must be pointing to some greater fulfillment. And the writer of the Hebrews argues that the repetitive nature of that sacrifice points out that it never perfected anything or anyone.

It's the one sacrifice of Christ. And because of his resurrection, he enters into the presence of God, having obtained eternal redemption.

That's why the veil was rent from top to bottom. That's why the way it was opened up into the presence of God was so that that perfecting sacrifice could take place.

And that's the picture that is found in Leviticus. That's the picture that's found in Isaiah. I can't even read it in two minutes, but that just gives you an idea of how central this is, and how the

New Testament is a fulfillment of the old. Thank you. My response to that would be to say that the passage from Isaiah 53 is not really a prediction about Jesus, but when the

New Testament writers went about writing about Jesus, they looked back to Isaiah 53, they took it to be a prediction about Jesus, and then they wrote the details about Jesus to match the predictions.

Now when Christians are looking at the Gospel, they're thinking, oh, that is just like what is said in Isaiah. What a wonderful coincidence.

But, in fact, it's not a coincidence. It is a deliberate writing of the history of Jesus to make it correspond to what was already thought to be a prediction.

So it's not that Jesus' life fulfilled the Old Testament. This is not the prophecy now being fulfilled.

It is the history being written as though it were fulfilling the prophecy.

So it's the other way around. As for the forgiveness of sins, it is clear from the Old Testament that a broken heart and a contrite spirit will gain the forgiveness of sins.

It is the book of Hebrews that says that only through the blood you can get forgiveness, and that is credited to a

Pauline circle. It is amazing to hear Shabir using the arguments of John Dominic Crossan, a radical, skeptical liberal, who questions the

Isaiah 53 text. I don't see that as a consistent Islamic response, and here's why.

How many people in here believe that Muhammad is prophesied in the Bible? How many of you believe that Muhammad is prophesied in the

Bible? You have to. There's two places in the Quran where it says it. On that basis, no one who takes the position that Shabir just took could possibly say there's anything about Muhammad in the

Bible at all, because there's really no prophetic text. All I have to do is simply say, well, that was just Muhammad looking back and using

John, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, or the Song of Solomon, Deuteronomy 18, and just applying it to someone who came later on.

You see, I don't encounter consistent Islamic responses on Isaiah 53, because you do believe in prophecy, so you need to look at Isaiah 53 for what it really was.

James, do you believe that your Bible is 100 % the

Word of God? Is that the whole question? If you're answering the affirmative, I would like to know why is there so many contradictions in the

Bible? Thank you. First of all, the Bible is written... Oh, I need to start this thing.

Thank you. Can I mention the contradiction? Can I mention one contradiction? I think the question is taken.

Alright. First of all, the Bible is written in Hebrew with a little bit of Aramaic and Greek, and so when we're talking about the

Bible, we need to talk about it in original languages just in the same way. If I'm going to criticize anything Quran says,

I'm going to look at it in Arabic and not in English translation, first of all. Secondly, the vast majority of alleged contradictions evaporate when you actually examine them in the original languages.

I have been debating people who want to try to find errors in the Bible for many, many, many years, from atheists through Mormons, for example.

I've written a book called Scripture Alone that contains a whole chapter on samples of alleged contradictions.

It's really easy to allege contradictions. It's something more to demonstrate that you've actually taken the time to find out what the real issues are.

And I would just simply like to suggest to the Muslims in the audience, hold us to the same standard.

In other words, if you think there are contradictions in the Bible, then take a look at believing scholars who have provided meaningful original language responses to those alleged contradictions.

In the same way, take a look at my book, Whatever a Christian Needs to Know About the Quran, and ask yourself a simple question.

Did this man attempt to be fair in his handling of the text of the Quran? And I think you'll find out that I did.

In other words, I'm using the same standard in analyzing the text of the Quran that I use in analyzing my book.

Why? Because that's the only way you can know truth, is to be consistent.

And so, when I analyzed the Quran, I didn't present a vast majority of the alleged contradictions that people throw out there, because I recognize that there's a way to explain it that might be consistent.

The issues I raised are really based upon a much more careful reading of the text. And that should be the same way you approach the

New Testament. Don't just accept what atheists say. Do the work yourself. And remember, since the

Torah and the Injil are sent down, be careful how you treat them. Treat them with the same standard.

Thank you. Well, the fact that we believe that the Torah and the Injil have been sent down does not mean that the

Torah and the Injil as they exist now in Christian hands are the original books. Certainly, over time, mistakes could have crept in, and the

Quran seems to indicate this. For example, in Surah 3, verse number 78, it is clear that it is not possible that anyone who has been commissioned by God thinks that he himself is

God. So a passage like the earlier one where James cited to show that Jesus is

God, this to Muslims would mean that it is a later insertion into the whole story about Jesus couldn't be the original story.

Some time ago, I wrote a book entitled, a little booklet rather, 101 Contradictions in the Bible. Some Christian missionaries have written a response to that, but in their response, while they try to eliminate many of these, they admit in the case of nine of these that these are copyist errors in the

Bible, which means that they're saying, yes, as it is now, there is a contradiction between this and that, but the reason for this contradiction is that copyists have introduced this error.

It's not in the original. The originals are fine, but that's precisely our point. Originally, what

God revealed is fine, but what you have now is contradictory. Well, the problem with that response is that if you can know what the original reading was, you're admitting that we know what was originally in that particular text, so we can't get into text criticism.

Listen to the debate that Yusuf and I did just this past week if you want a little bit more information on that, but I would just simply point out that this seems contradictory from an

Islamic perspective as well, because in Surah 5, 47, we, the people of the gospel, are told to judge what is contained therein.

Now, if we're supposed to judge by the gospel and we no longer possess the gospel, or we didn't even possess the gospel in the days of Muhammad, how can we fulfill this command?

If the words in Surah 5, 47 had meaning when they were uttered, then the gospel existed in the days of Muhammad.

We know exactly what that gospel was. We have manuscripts that long predate that, so either the words are meaningless or we can't fulfill the command.

Which one is it? Again, I'm looking for that consistent Islamic stance on this particular issue. Mr. Shabir, I would just like to know, do you also really like the

Al -Bukhari that he says that if you build a mosque here or this, Allah will build one for you in Paradise.

If you give a dog that's thirsty, watering, you go into Paradise. If you have a good thought, you'll get 70 credits.

If you do the good thing, 700. If you think about a bad thought, you'll still get one credit, but if you do the bad thing, you'll get one day better.

Do you believe in that? Well, this debate tonight is not about Hadith, it's about the

Quran. And I would like to address the question with reference to the Quran. In the

Quran, it says that, whoever comes with one good deed will get the credit of 10 times over, but whoever does an evil only gets one demerit as a result.

Well, this shows that God makes it easy for us to enter Paradise by giving us good credits.

Furthermore, He forgives sins, so even after a person has committed a sin, if we are repentant,

God forgives that. Moreover, when we do good deeds, God uses that as a reason for obliterating our sins.

It says, that's said in the Quran. So when we do good things, the good things are a reason for God to blot out our iniquities, just like the

Bible has the prayer in the book of Psalms. So with all of these in mind, we find that it is very easy for a person to enter

Paradise, and we do not have to be absolutely perfect in order to do that.

The idea that we have to do good deeds, according to James, is that that follows from the sacrifice of Christ.

But that means that in the end, both Muslims and Christians have to do good deeds. So if we all have to do good deeds anyhow, and we still have to follow the law, then we should ask our

Christian friends, well, why is there no law in Christianity? And how do we know that Paul influenced

Mark? Well, Paul said that all foods are clean, in his letter to the Romans, and then

Jesus says that Mark says that Jesus declared all foods clean.

But we know that historically, this is impossible. Jesus could not have declared all foods clean, because the early church, the disciples of Jesus, were still debating.

After Jesus had left the scene, they were still debating as to how many of the laws they should still impose on Gentile followers.

And they said that three food laws should be imposed on Gentile followers. The meat of strangled animals, blood, and the meat offered to idols.

These are forbidden. So if you still have laws there, in the New Testament, why do you not have it in later

Christianity? Because later Christianity follows Paul's version about Jesus, saying that all foods are clean.

Two things really quickly, I only have one minute. First of all, there is no law in Christianity. I don't know how you can read the

New Testament and come up with that. We have the law of Christ. We have the clear revelation of what we are to do, and God's will in our lives.

There is law in Christianity. But when it says, well, so if you do that because of Jesus, well, we all still end up having to do good works anyway, so what does it matter?

It's the motivation. One becomes the grounds of our acceptance into the presence of God, and in Christianity, it is motivated by our love for God, and it has nothing to do with adding to the grounds of our peace with God.

Really, what it comes down to is the reason a Christian has peace with God is because I'm looking away from my own good deeds to the perfect deeds of another person.

I'm looking to Jesus Christ. That's why I have true shalom with him and can have confidence in my relationship with him.

So it is extremely, it's a completely different concept, and that's what we need to try to understand.

That's what I'm trying to be able to explain this evening, and I appreciate the opportunity. Yes, of course, everybody wants to have laws, because you can't function without some laws.

You need to know how to govern life, and even Christians need to have some laws, but in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, the writer says, and it's probably

Paul or one of his disciples, says that Jesus abolished the law with all of its commandments and regulations.

Well, the idea then is that the Old Testament law is all abolished, and yet in the Old Testament we have the Ten Commandments, so thou shalt not murder.

Is that law abolished? Obviously, Christians need that law as well. Yes, the motivation to do good deeds now sounds good.

You're looking to the holiness of Christ, who died for you. Now you do good deeds as a result. But you still have to do good deeds, and that draws into question the idea that he died for your sins, because if he died for your sins, literally, you should have gone free.

But now you still are obligated to do good deeds, otherwise you would lose the salvation. So what benefit then has the salvation brought about?

What difference did it make if you had to do good deeds without it, and now you have to do good deeds even with it.

It amounts to the same thing. Thank you. My question is directed to Dr.

James. You mentioned something in your beginning that God and his nature are together.

And you also mentioned something that you said that how can you stand before a holy

God except that you be clothed by another? In my understanding of what you said there, you're saying that in essence there's two

Gods. So there's the God who you stand in front of, and the one who is clothing you in order to be holy.

But you can explain that if I'm misinterpreting it. But also Jesus said that the most important of the

Ten Commandments is that God is one. And that you should worship him alone.

And in Islam we're taught that God forgives all sins except the sin of associating partners with him.

So that's in essence the great sin in the sight of God, that you associate partners with him, and that you say that there's more than one

God. And for Jesus to say that that is the most important commandment is that you know your

God is one. So please just elaborate on that. Thank you. Obviously the confession of faith of the

Jewish people is Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one.

In the New Testament that is expanded out in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 where we are told that we have one

God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. We do not believe in the plurality of Gods. I have defended monotheism many, many, many times.

I am not clothed in the righteousness of a second God. All the New Testament writers identified Jesus as Yahweh, as the incarnate one.

We believe there's only one God and we affirm that fully. I'm glad you were listening because you understood what

I was saying, and I want to get back to that particular subject because it does touch on this. How is it that the righteousness that I can have and be clothed in is perfect?

It doesn't come from a different God. It is the fulfillment of the laws of that one God, Yahweh. But the point is, he is the one who has provided it.

He has provided it in the fact that that one name, Yahweh, is used of the Father, the Son, and the

Spirit. One God. The difference is, you're assuming Unitarianism. You're saying that the being of God cannot be shared by three persons.

Somehow it's limited. Somehow that's not a possibility. I'm going with Revelation. Revelation tells me you have the one name of God that is shared by three divine persons.

And what has happened is God has given himself and the person of his Son so that I can have perfect righteousness and to stand in his place.

That's why Jesus had to be the God -man. Not some other God, but Jesus had to be the God -man so that the perfect salvation he provides to me would avail before God.

I've debated this subject. Shabir and I have discussed it before. We did a debate just sometime this week.

We debated Thursday, so I guess it would have been Friday on this very subject. Two minutes is not long enough to do it, but it is something that's very important for us to continue talking about because there's a lot of misunderstanding from both sides as to what we're really talking about.

We're talking about the nature of God. James, in listening to you, you wouldn't believe how many contradictions

I think you've made in that two -minute speech. You said that God is

Father, I mean, Yahweh is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then you cited Paul's writing saying that we have only one

God and one Lord. One God, the Father, one Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, in the

Old Testament, when it said Yahweh is the only God, when you say that Yahweh is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that means there is only one

God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Old Testament does say that Yahweh will send his servant,

Isaiah 42. Then Matthew 12, verse 18 says that Jesus is that servant of Yahweh.

So if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sends Jesus, then Jesus is not anything of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Obviously, there's a distinction there. And when Paul is saying we have only one God, the

Father, then that means only the Father, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God, and there's one

Lord, Jesus. There's a distinction between God and Lord. Whereas the Old Testament said we only have one

Lord God, that is Yahweh, Paul is saying we have one Lord and one

God, which is obviously a difference, departure from the Old Testament law, and that was the point that Sister was making.

It is a very significant point, I believe, and you need to address that. Okay, can I get the minute 15 there?

Because we did go around, it's minute 15. You're assuming Unitarianism, and you're ignoring the fact that those very same

New Testament writers that you cited identified Jesus as Yahweh. John identifies Jesus as Yahweh in John chapter 12.

The prophecy of the coming of Jesus is found in Mark, even, make way the straight of whom? The way of whom?

Yahweh. You're assuming Yahweh is unipersonal. The reality is, once again, and this is the fact of the

New Testament writings, that the New Testament writers identified Jesus as Yahweh, they identified the

Father as Yahweh, they identified the Spirit as the Spirit of Yahweh, and yet they distinguish between the persons.

This is why I'm a Trinitarian, it's because I allow for the New Testament to speak for itself. I do exactly what you do.

You assumed that there is a consistent testimony of the Quran. I assume there's a consistent testimony of the

Old and New Testaments, and when you believe all that the Old and New Testaments says, that's the only conclusion you can come to.

The only way around that? Cut pieces out, say, I'm not going to believe this, I'm not going to believe that. I won't do that to the Quran.

I ask you all, don't do it to the New Testament. Thank you. For the last 25 -30 years,

I've been struggling to understand one thing that the

Bible says. God is eternal. I understand. I want to elaborate a little bit.

I understand God's human nature, the nature, the nature of God as we were told in the qualifications, kindness, compassion, generosity, forgiveness.

I have to ask a question. Therefore, when you say nature,

God's nature is not depicted on those lines because you mention that God is a jealous

God. If God is a jealous God, how can you attribute these qualities for the other realm?

God is nothing like man. I think I understand the question. How do you explain that God is a jealous

God? Thank you. I think

I understand the question, and something tells me that Shabir and I are probably not going to actually disagree on this. When God says he's a jealous

God, he's speaking in the context of worship, and he is demanding that his people worship him and him alone and that they not engage in idolatry or what you all would identify as shirk.

When it says he's a jealous God, he's jealous of having his people's worship, his people's love.

That's not contradictory in any way, shape, or form to God being kind, gracious, merciful.

It seems like some people want to shrink God down and make him much more like us, but the reality is we have to look at all that the

Bible says about God and accept it, and you all, I don't know why that would be an issue for you, because if I were to take one of the 99 names,

I could take it in an imbalanced way and make it contradictory to some of the other of the 99 names, but I'm not going to do that, and you don't do that.

Don't do that with God of the Old Testament either. Recognize that God can be absolutely jealous of the worship of his people and yet still be, he proved himself to be incredibly merciful and gracious to them.

The term is chesed, loving kindness. That's the term used in the Psalter where over and over again it says the loving kindness of the

Lord is everlasting. These are all true statements, and our role is to allow for all of those things to be true, not to just make one true at contradiction of something else.

I think, yeah, we don't disagree on the idea of God being jealous, but what arises out of this,

James, and you need to address is how have Christians maintained that Old Testament focus on the one jealous

God who does not want to share his divinity with anyone else? It is very clear that the one who spoke to Moses said to him,

I am Yahweh. Exodus chapter 6, verse 6. Now, that one that is said to be

Yahweh, you're saying is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Well, if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost sends Jesus, then

Jesus is not Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He's neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Ghost.

You have to explain this. It is obvious that the New Testament writers, Paul in particular, and John whom you're citing, are writers who have exaggerated the position of Jesus.

They have raised him between man and God. They have made him into the creator of the world, and as such, even though they believe that Jesus is not

God, this is clear in Paul's writings and in John's writings, still they have elevated him beyond a human being, and so they have confused the matter of the worship of the one jealous

God. So how do you as a Christian maintain that? Okay, 1 and 7. Well, when you assume,

Shabir, that you can simply put every author in contradiction to himself, without allowing for any harmonious interpretation of them, which is what you do not do with the

Quran, you're operating on a double standard, and I can't deal with the double standard. You just said that Paul and John make

Jesus the creator of the universe, but they also say he's not God. That's not true. The consistent interpretation of Paul, John, Matthew, and Mark, as I'll demonstrate tomorrow evening, is that they recognize that Jesus is the

God -man, they recognize he was a prophet, priest, king, but that also that he was the incarnate one. That's the only consistent way.

What you have to do is you have to take this verse and say, well, I'm going to throw that, I'm going to throw this one out, I'm going to throw that one out. That's not interpretation, that's taking your conclusions and pressing them on the text.

The fact of the matter is, when you say, well, Yahweh sent Jesus, the being doesn't send anybody, the persons do.

And so, when Yahweh is used of each of the persons, you're assuming Unitarianism and just automatically saying

Trinitarianism can't even be true, I won't even allow the data to enter into my argument. That's not the way to do it.

Thank you. Sir? The issue of original sin is very important.

And as you spoke, you mentioned that original sin is, well, it might sound like it was a

New Testament invention of Paul. It was only mentioned in an exaggeration in the book of Psalms.

However, when Paul elaborates on the condition of original sin and our total depravity in Romans chapter 3, he is quoting the

Old Testament. There are numerous verses, including in Jeremiah where he says, the heart of man is desperately wicked.

Who can understand it? Are you unaware of these? Or how do you explain that away?

Thank you. Now, Paul in the New Testament, yes, he is appealing to passages in the

Old Testament to support his theory. But notice that that theory was never there before. You don't find the

Old Testament writers saying that as a result of this, okay, because man is wicked, because man is depraved, we need somebody to die on the cross for us.

This was never an Old Testament idea, and this is why it is not an idea among Jews. Jews don't have this idea, though they are assiduously studying the

Old Testament and trying to follow its detailed laws and commandments. Sure, there are failures among Jews as well, but no one points to them as failing to understand this point.

Academic scholars will not point to an Old Testament text and say, this shows that Jesus should have died for the sins of the world, and the

Jews should have recognized this. No. This is a New Testament idea, and it is fairly credited to the writings of Paul, like you've quoted

Romans. What Paul has done here is that he has taken passages out of the Old Testament, out of context, and he's given them an entirely new meaning.

Let me illustrate that with the story of Adam in the Old Testament. Well, the story of Adam is a story that Adam failed, and then

God gave him a punishment. This never said that that means that somebody has to die for your sins now, otherwise all human beings are in total depravity.

The rest of the New Testament, of the Old Testament, in fact, let me say that the rest of the Old Testament does not have anyone saying, oh, because Adam sinned, that means now we need somebody to die for our sins.

Now let's go to the New Testament. Let's look at the Gospel of Luke, for example, presenting the life of Jesus. The whole life of Jesus and all of his preaching shows that he is a prophet of God trying to appeal to people, and that if he had not been sent to the people, maybe the condemnation would not be justified against them.

It is only after he has come and he has preached, then that means the people are finally condemned because they refused

Jesus. That is what has been going on in Islamic theology. A prophet comes and he preaches. What about Jesus talking about the story of the prodigal son?

The son goes away from the father. When he comes back, the father welcomes him. That's forgiveness. It's not Paulian theology, but Muslim theology.

And since you have taken a few seconds there... Two and seven. Notice what just happened.

The Jews didn't have this belief, but when Isaiah 53 was presented, well, that was just Paul reading back into that, and we don't have to worry about that.

There's a double standard here. What do you do with Isaiah 53? What do you do with Psalm 22? There was wide

Messianic speculation and wide understanding of the relationship of sin and things like that. You can't say there was a single

Judaism. If you're going to make Judaism the standard, were the Jews looking for a prophet like Muhammad? No, they weren't. So does that mean he's not a prophet?

I mean, again, let's have equal scales. Let's use equal arguments of the Jews. If you say, well, the

Jews didn't have the view of original sin, which I would dispute because there's lots of Jews in the New Testament period that had very similar concepts, even though they didn't use that terminology, then you're going to have to say they weren't looking for a prophet like Muhammad, so he can't be a prophet, right?

We've got to be very, very careful about that. Saying that Paul used Old Testament passages out of context, really? I'd like to see some proof of this.

Making the assertion, go back, I can't prove it right now, but go back, look at him. You'll see that Paul does a very good job in his

Old Testament exegesis. Yeah, the Jews do not now have a belief that there is a prophet to come after Moses looking like our prophet

Muhammad, peace be upon him. But when they read the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 18 verse 18, they understand that there is a prophet to come.

They just don't know who is that prophet going to be, and they don't say it is the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, but the prophecy is there.

Isaiah is not a prophecy about some future figure to die on a cross. According to John McKenzie in the

Anchor Bible commentary, this is part of what is known as the Suffering Servant Psalms, and probably refers to Israel as a people suffering because of their sins, and that becomes now an example to the nations.

It's not about Jesus, but the New Testament wrote about Jesus as if Jesus is a fulfillment of that.

So too with Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is about David suffering. It's not about some future person suffering on a cross, but they made it look like Jesus fulfills that as a prophecy.

... ... ... ...

... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... Fascinating question.

Excellent one question, and let me compliment you on it, but there's some fundamental misunderstandings on your part.

First of all, the New Testament never says that the Romans have any type of sacerdotal position. The one who is doing the offering is

Jesus, and he is the high priest after the order of Melchizedek. May I suggest to you the in -depth reading of the book of Hebrews in the

New Testament, which I think you're assuming Paul wrote, but the text does not actually say that. There are some excellent works on this subject, but according to the book of Hebrews, it is

Jesus who does the offering of the sacrifice, and his priesthood is not traced to the

Levitical line. In fact, the book discusses that very thing. He has a superior priesthood, because remember, when

Melchizedek does appear in the book of Genesis, Abraham, who is the forefather of the

Levitical line, gives gifts to him, showing that he is superior to him. That's one of the arguments of the book of Hebrews.

I think you would find a fair analysis of that book to be really useful, especially if you've done, it seems, a study in the

Old Testament. And if it is of any help to you whatsoever, I've been preaching through Hebrews for three years, and I'm now in chapter 12, and so I've gone pretty much in -depth through that.

It's on sermonaudio .com if you want to listen to that. So if you'd like to sort of get into some of how those pictures are fulfilled, the

Romans are never viewed as the ones who are offering Jesus. He takes the role of high priest, and that's really, really central to the understanding of why it is that he is both sacrifice as well as offer, which makes him superior to the

Old Testament priests, because they died off. They had to keep being replaced. Jesus, because of his resurrection, doesn't have to be replaced, so his one sacrifice has efficacy forever.

That's the argument of Hebrews. I certainly accept it. Well, James, you're referring to the book of Hebrews as not being authored by Paul, which means you are taking this as an anonymous document.

And when you take that as an anonymous document, the question is why should we put our faith in this book that we don't know who wrote?

He's telling us we should believe that Jesus died for our sins, and Jesus is the priest like Melchizedek and all of that, but why should we believe any of that?

In fact, the whole situation is like the questioner described. You have the Romans crucifying

Jesus, according to the Gospels, and that has no relationship to the Old Testament laws which said that the priest should bring the animal and sacrifice it according to the law of God.

This is a situation of injustice, and that is a situation of complying with the law of God.

The two do not match, and this shows how Paul and his circle have misinterpreted the

Old Testament. They've actually twisted, distorted the Old Testament to make it look like Jesus is somehow the sacrifice of God for the sins of humankind.

Okay. Well, did I get a minute? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Go about that. Let's do this gentleman with respect.

Someone put up their hands. Sure, make an excuse. Go ahead. That's all right. Shabir, you've done it again.

You've said, well, why should we believe this, and we don't know who wrote it? You're anachronistically demanding it's not James of people who never provided it's not

James. Jesus quoted from Old Testament books. We don't know who wrote them. Was he wrong to quote from them? We don't know who wrote every

Old Testament book, and Jesus held people accountable for everything from Genesis to Malachi. And so, again, the prophet,

Jesus, doesn't take the view of the modern liberal skeptic that you're quoting, Shabir. And so,

I don't consider that to be a consistently Islamic criticism. I believe that it's inspired scripture because not only did

God inspire it, but then he led his people to recognize it as scripture over the same period of time that he led the

Jewish people to recognize the Tanakh as scripture. And so, I don't need to have an isnad chain.

And as you well know, all sorts of things could have isnad chains that are then rejected as being unreliable anyways.

The reality is, it's consistent with the Old Testament revelation and with the rest of the New Testament as well.

Okay. I would like to take questions from a Christian lady. Sister, we haven't heard from anyone.

And probably in the back, if you have any questions for us, specifically a

Christian. The other one was speaking about the platform. I want a Christian lady. All right.

And I don't know, I know most of you seem enthusiastic. I did say that was the last question.

I am really glad I do not have your job. Okay, I'll give you the last question. Good evening, everyone.

So my question will be to you, first, my speaker. So, as I heard in your, in the first session, you spoke about having to save yourself from wet.

So my question is, so if you cannot do anything or any good thing that can save you, so I'm saying that there is no hope that you will be saved.

Whereas in the Christian, we've got hope that Jesus Christ has already done everything for us, so we don't have to do anything.

So we are already saved through him, if we believe in him. So if I'm wrong, please correct me.

If I didn't hear you correctly, you said you have to do something and then in terms of forgiveness, you said if you wronged your brother, you will ask forgiveness from God as well as you also need forgiveness from your brother.

So what happens if your brother doesn't forgive you? Thank you. Okay. No, you didn't hear me incorrectly.

I can see why you would get that impression as if we have to save ourselves. But actually the

Islamic view is that people are automatically saved. The Quran says that God created us on the fitra.

That's the natural inclination to do what is right and to believe in God. And then people become separated from God by deliberately disbelieving and turning away from God's laws and teachings and the message of his prophets.

So one naturally without doing anything is automatically saved. And then one may deliberately turn away and get oneself unsafe or lose oneself.

That's the Quranic view. But if one has lost oneself, one can always come back to the right path by asking

God for forgiveness. And yes, if we have harmed other people, then we have to try to repair our harm to them.

But your question is also legitimate. What if the other person does not want to forgive us? Well, then that is his fault.

Now he's in the wrong in that if we sincerely are repentant and we try to do our best to repair the wrong and he's still insisting, oh, you've wronged me, so I must get my pound of flesh.

Well, then he is now doing something wrong and we have done our best and God knows that we have done our best.

Now this view actually makes perfect sense in the light of the teachings of Jesus, especially as represented in the gospel according to Luke.

What did Jesus teach by the story of the prodigal son? He taught that when you return to God, God forgives you just like that father forgave his son without requiring anyone to pay the price of your sins.

So he says that when one sinner repents who having committed sins now repents, there is more rejoicing in heaven than if there were 99 righteous persons who did not need to repent.

What is the whole point of praying to God through the Lord's prayer and saying to God, forgive us as we forgive those who are indebted to us?

James is saying, no, God cannot forgive. We can forgive because we are just as faulty as the other person, but this prayer presumes that God can forgive in the same way.

It is still very frustrating to me to have Shabir quote from Luke.

Luke tells us about the crucifixion. Luke tells us about the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ.

He introduces us to the Lord's supper and all the things are related to it. He clearly comes out of the early church and his belief in the crucifixion, the resurrection, the centrality of Jesus, but then he takes one parable and says, well, this is consistent with Jesus' teaching here.

That again is taking a text out, isolating it, ignoring what its author intends, and putting a completely different understanding on it.

I refuse to do that to the Quran to the best of my ability. And I'm simply saying that I think

Muslim apologists need to stop doing that to the New Testament and then just falling back upon liberal scholars who likewise do the same thing.

They don't think there's any consistency to it all because as naturalists, they don't think there's anything called inspiration. If you're a

Muslim, you believe in inspiration. So you can't start from that presupposition. I think that's extremely frustrating to me.

Well, in my opening presentation, I showed that there is a consistent Old Testament teaching and that even though Paul tried to reverse that teaching with his own theology and many of the gospel writers actually followed

Paul in presenting Jesus in that way, that some of the writings, even Paul's own writings, sometimes contradict

Paul's theology. And it so happens that even though the gospel writers are trying to present Jesus as conforming to Paul's theology, there are instances in the gospels where they slip up just as Paul has slipped up.

And in fact, Luke has not slipped up. Luke does not buy in totally to Paul's theology. This is why in Luke's presentation of the

Lord's Supper, you're wrong about this, James, Luke does not show Jesus as saying that this blood and this is his flesh and blood for the sins of humankind, except in the insertion, some copyist has inserted in Luke that passage to correspond with Paul, but that's not what

Luke has originally written. So in sum, I'm not picking and choosing, I'm showing that there is a consistent teaching from the

Old Testament onwards, and we can see Jesus following that consistent teaching, even though there were attempts to rewrite it and present him as teaching

Paul in theology. Thank you for that. In terms of salvation, certainly, most of the questions are very simple.

I'm gonna address my question to James, okay. In terms of salvation in sin, we find that both in the

Quran and in the Bible, Jesus Christ is sinless. So around 19, Aya 19, he's the righteous son, 1

Peter 2, verse 32, no sin is found in Jesus. So when Christians follow

Jesus for salvation, they're following the sinless one. However, when

Islam follows Muhammad, we have in the Quran, Surah 48,

Aya 2, Muhammad begin to ask forgiveness for his sins.

So when the Muslims follow Muhammad, they're following one that is sinful, whereas Christians are following one that is sinless.

And Jesus provides eternal life. Can you elaborate on the fact that eternal life is unique in the salvation of the poor people?

Well, I think one of the things that we need to point out is that the sinlessness of Jesus Christ is not a comparative thing to say that he's somehow better than someone else.

His sinlessness is the necessary corollary to the fact that he is the God man. And that is why he can give his life as a sacrifice for sin.

And this is the message of all of the early Christians, not just a bunch of people influenced by Paul.

This is not just Paul hijacking. You can't find anybody else that didn't have this perspective. Even one of the earliest books in the

New Testament, James calls him the Lord of Glory, speaking of Jesus the

Messiah. So this has always been the issue. And so I would doubt that most

Muslims would want to say that, well, I am following Muhammad in his sinful actions. But what

I have found very, very interesting is that there seems to be a lot of difference between Muslims as to exactly how far you're supposed to take things.

And this evening, Shabir has said, well, I don't want to talk about the Hadith. I don't want to go there. I don't want to have all the recording equipment stop functioning right in the middle of things.

You must have said something wrong in the mosque. Yeah, really. The lights go out, and then who knows what's going to happen after that.

But I know you're right there, Yusuf. The point is, however, that from the

Christian perspective, it's not Jesus as far as an example. It's Jesus for who he is and what he did for us in salvation.

We try to follow his example, but it's not my following his example that brings me salvation. I want to follow in his footsteps because he's changed my heart.

The biblical perspective is that I have a heart of stone. He had to take that heart of stone out and give me a heart of flesh.

And the reason I follow in his footsteps is because I have that heart of flesh. That really, to me, is the fundamental difference in our views on that matter.

Well, it is not entirely true to say that Jesus is sinless because in the gospel, according to John, in chapter seven, verse eight, when he says to his brothers,

I am not going up to this feast, well, some of the copyists changed that to say

I am not yet going up to this feast because they recognize the problem. If he says I'm not going up to this feast and then later on he does go, as the gospel shows that he does, well, then there is a contradiction between what he said and what he did.

But I'm not quoting this to say that Jesus was sinless from an Islamic point of view because from an

Islamic point of view, we have nothing in our traditions that depict any sin of Jesus.

So we respect him, we admire him, and we recognize him as a prophet and messenger of God with all due respect.

At the same time, in following the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, we're recognizing that he, like all human prophets, are as sinful as human beings can be expected to be, meaning that there must be a difference between God and man.

God is perfect, human beings are imperfect, the prophets were human beings. But by following the prophets, we are following their guidance, which actually comes from God, and that is as dependable as God is.

About 115 on that. Yes, I agree, go ahead. Let me put that accusation against Jesus to bed.

It's based upon a complete misunderstanding of John chapter seven. When Jesus, Copius also misunderstood it, just like Shabir misunderstood it, that's why they made a change.

When Jesus said, I am not going up to this feast, to go up to a Jewish feast, you had to do it in a particular way.

There were certain psalms that had to be sung, you went in procession, there were certain places you stopped. Jesus was not going up to the feast in that way, he went up secretly.

So Jesus did not lie. Later, Copius, ignorant of the Jewish background and history, were concerned about it, made the same mistake

Shabir just made. And so they put in, not yet. But the reading that we know is original, was not an accusation of lying on Jesus' part in any way, shape, or form.

If we really understand what was going on, then we'll recognize Jesus did not lie. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Then there's a question about cessation prayer. Since we've done a reading with that, which is a possibility,

I'm gonna go straight into the second part of the debate, which is the final revival session, where James White will be addressing us for 10 minutes, then

Shabir will be addressing us for another 10 minutes, and then we'll have a closed argument for five minutes, after we conclude the debate.

So, it's James White addressing us for the first 10 minutes. Should I just stay here?

Yeah. Would that be okay? That's fine, that's fine. Because we're both miked up, and so we'll stay here at our seats.

Yeah, but I would prefer to go there. So, but I mean, you can stay where you are. I'm not. You can speak, but we don't have time.

So, that's fine. It's about faith. There were some things that I really want to correct, because they really do not represent a biblical viewpoint of Christianity at all.

For example, he quotes from the Apostle Paul, and I really feel for Shabir as far as the education he's received on Paul.

I really wish that he had had an opportunity to study with some people who were at least semi -friendly toward the

Apostle Paul, and allow him to at least begin to define his own terms. For example, he quotes the text where the

Apostle Paul says that the law that was against us was nailed to the cross. It's been done away with.

And then he says that means for Paul, the entire Old Testament law has been abolished. Of course, that's not the case.

Paul recognizes the law is good. The law is just. The law is righteous. The law has a role in the life of the

Christian, because it reveals to us what is good and proper in the sight of our God. And it is vitally important in that way.

He says, even by our faith, we established the law in Romans chapter three. So it's just a complete misrepresentation of Paul to say that the

Old Testament law was simply done away with. It's done away with in the sense that any

Jew who was misusing it as if he thought that was the means of approaching to God, that is not the way to approach

God. That's true. But the right use of the law is what Paul is all about. And so that is, again, simply allowing

Paul to speak. Unfortunately, what happens is, many of the sources that Shabir uses will not even allow all of Paul to speak.

They'll cut Paul up. You know, as he said in Ephesians, well, maybe it was one of his disciples or something like that. They won't even allow

Paul to be the author of all the epistles. And again, not because there's any solid evidence of that or that could survive meaningful cross -examination, but because scholars like to come up with theories.

And I really think there is a fundamental difference in the way that I approach the Quran. There's all sorts of theories about the

Quran. There are theories about the Quran having a major revision in 705 AD, and we don't know who did it, and there were things inserted at that point in time.

There's all sorts of theories like that. But I'm not going to even raise those issues unless I can actually provide evidence, documentary evidence that would prove those things.

So again, we need to use equal scales. And so Paul does not say the Old Testament law is all abolished.

And then he said, you have to do good deeds or you'll lose your salvation. I do my good deeds because I have my salvation.

The certainty of my salvation is found in Jesus Christ, not myself. And if I don't do, quote unquote, do good deeds, and I deny

Christ, and I do not continue in the Christian faith, as it says in 1 John, they went out from us, so it might be demonstrated they're not truly of us.

Jesus himself said in John chapter six, he had come down from heaven to do his Father's will, and the will of the Father for him was that he lose none of those that were given to him.

And let me tell you something, to you Muslims who are still here. For me as a Christian, as I deal with the difficult issues of life, as I deal with the passing of parents, the passing of friends, the tragedies of cancer and things like that, that we all have to deal with in our lives.

The foundation that gives me joy, the foundation that gives me peace is a recognition that my salvation is not dependent upon my working up inside myself the ability to do the good deeds that someday are gonna please my

God. The reason that I have peace with God, Romans 5 one says, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. That's true shalom. You know what shalom is. You have a very related term in your

Arabic language. And you know that true shalom is not merely a ceasefire. True shalom is a wellness of relationship.

And if my relationship with God could be broken tonight by something that I would do, that's not shalom.

The reason I have peace with God is because the righteousness that I have comes from someone else.

All that law that was against me, that condemned me justly for my sins was nailed to the cross of Calvary.

That's the only way we can have peace with God. That's why these things are so important. That's why I have to try to bring correction to the misrepresentations of Paul's theology.

He's being taken grossly out of context. He's been accused of taking Old Testament texts out of context. We were not told which ones.

I would be happy to defend those. But what's really going on is it's Paul that's being taken out of context.

And as a result, the rest of the New Testament is not allowed to have its say either. The reality is that when you allow the

New Testament to speak for itself, when you use equal weights, what you discover is not the idea that the law's been thrown out.

It's not that, well, I have to do good works to maintain my salvation. The basis of my salvation is the finished work of Jesus Christ and him alone.

It was just said that, for example, and again, one of my primary areas of study is the textual criticism of the

New Testament. And Shabir was making reference to the fact that there's a textual variant in regards to the

Lord's Supper. What I just have to reject in Shabir's representation of Luke is that because there's a single textual variant, that means

Luke was not writing his entire book focused upon the sacrifice of Christ, and he was not writing that book within the milieu of the

Christian church, which was teaching all of these things. The reality is that Luke, and especially if Luke is written as late as Shabir would like to push it, is written within a context that does not require that textual variant to be there to recognize

Luke is talking to us about the finished work of Christ. It's right there. Leave it in its context, and realize, how does

Luke finish his book? He finishes his book with Jesus walking on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection with two disciples, and he rebukes them saying, did you not realize that the scriptures from Moses all the way through the prophets were testifying of me?

And he rebukes them for being little in their faith. And so if that's where he is concluding that Jesus has to then open their minds to understand the scriptures, what is the real purpose of Luke?

And I just wanna ask all of you a question. Why should we take an interpretation of a book that ignores the author's own conclusions rather than allowing him to speak for itself?

That's not how we should be doing this interpretation. I still don't understand why it is. I mean, I could make a pretty strong argument, to be perfectly honest with you, from the history of Islam, that the accusation of Tarif al -Nas, the corruption of the actual text, was not the best and earliest.

Tarif al -Mana was the original accusation, and I think I can make a pretty strong argument from the Quran itself, that that which is sent down by God, that which is

Netzal, sent down by God, cannot be changed. And since Surah 33 says the Torah and the

Gospel was sent down, you have to ask yourself a question. If those things could be perverted, then why couldn't the

Quran? Well, the promise is there, but there's also texts in the Quran that talk about the fact, bring forth something like both the

Quran and the Torah. And yet you say the Torah has been corrupted, and yet we know exactly what the Torah was 700 years before Muhammad came along.

There are so many of these issues that unfortunately in these brief debates, we can't get into. But what

I hope these debates do allow you to do is to give consideration to them. And I honestly believe that if you're still here this evening, and you're still listening at this point in time, that you have an obligation before God, whether you're a

Muslim or a Christian, to follow up with what you've heard this evening. In fact, I think the worst thing you could do would be to walk out of this place tonight, and immediately allow your mind to go wandering off to other things, to just put these things on a back burner, and to stop thinking about them.

Christians, you need to know why Shabir Ali is wrong to embrace the methodology he does that atomizes the text of the

New Testament, and destroys its textual reliability, and allows you to just take everything out of context.

You need to know why that's wrong. There are excellent, awesomely scholarly books that absolutely refute that form of scholarship.

They really do. They're not the most popular ones, but I can guarantee you one thing, those liberals don't like to debate people like me, and if you wanna see how well they do, watch the debates

I've done with people like John Dominic Crossan, or Bart Ehrman, or people like that, and you'll discover that when you get them down to where you can actually ask questions, there are solid answers to all of that kind of radical skepticism.

But to Muslims, I say to you, the people of the book are saying to you, listen to what we say.

We read our scriptures. In your Quran, Muhammad is told, if you doubt, ask the people of the scriptures.

Now, we're not sure what we're supposed to be doubting about. Some people think it's whether he was prophesied in the scriptures, so on and so forth, but you are supposed to ask us, and unfortunately,

I don't find a lot of interest amongst a lot of Muslims to hear the other side and then go back and say, why have

I accepted this? Do you have a solid foundation? Are, and here's the big question, are you being consistent?

If you're not being consistent, what does that say to you? Don't leave this place this evening and say, well,

I had a really interesting time at mosque tonight, it's the first time that's ever happened. Don't leave here with just that.

Please, whatever you do, take the time to consider these things. Listen to both sides, weigh them fairly, weigh them evenly, and when you do so,

I think that you'll find that the message of sin and salvation from Genesis to Revelation is a beautiful tapestry of consistent message that brings peace to those who bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

Thank you very much. Now, Yusuf has asked for you to show your respect for the speakers by staying.

For my part, I want to show my respect to you by saying something useful and meaningful,

I hope. James has spoken a lot about the Muslim inconsistency in picking faults with the

Bible but treating the Quran as the word of God. Are Muslims being inconsistent in this way?

Well, for my part, as I've explained, I wrote a book entitled 101 Contradictions in the

Bible and Christian apologists have written a reply to it in which in nine cases, they're admitting that there is an error in the

Bible, but they're saying, I mean, they're not admitting in so many words, but they're saying, look, the reason for this difference between this and that is because the copyists introduced that error, but that error was not in the original manuscripts.

The original manuscripts written by the original authors, they're saying that was inspired by God and free from error, but the copies we have now, they have a difference between this and this because the copyists made a change.

So what I'm saying is that that means that the books that we have now has errors. I don't know how many, but at least, even the best defense is saying, at least you have these nine.

So now, when we know that, you can no longer start with the assumption that, okay, the Bible is all the word of God, and you must interpret it as though one author wrote the whole thing.

Now, you must come to grips with it and say, well, many authors wrote this, and sometimes it differed with each other.

And sometimes, as human beings, they even differed with themselves. Now, in the case of the Quran, we have a book that academic scholars say was written by one author.

Muslims believe that that one author is not an author technically because he just simply received the book by revelation from God, and he promulgated that book.

Muslims have not found any reason to disbelieve the Quran is the word of God, and so they interpret it from the point of view that this is the word of God, and therefore free of error.

But even if you did not assume that this book is the word of God, you must assume that it is written by one person.

And when you have a book that is written by one person, you interpret the book in the light of itself, whether that be the

Quran or any other book, and you assume that what the author has made obscure in one place, he might have elaborated on in a different place, and then you put all of the statements together to be fair to the author and give the author the benefit of the doubt.

I want to give that benefit of the doubt not only to the Quran, but to any book, whether it be the

Bible or any other book. But having given that benefit to the doubt and having studied, having given that benefit of the doubt to the

Bible and studied it carefully, I have been attracted to those Christian scholars who have concluded that there are in fact errors in the book and having tested the field myself, put out the book and then seeing the reply to it and seeing that in the reply there is an admission that there are errors in the book, now we have to treat the book from that paradigm of knowing that it is a book that is prone to error.

When we know that then, we can then study the books as individual writings. They're written by a number of scholars who may differ with each other.

What about Luke? Did Luke differ with Paul in some respect? Yes, by Luke presenting

Jesus not as the sacrificial lamb who dies for the sins of the world, by Luke hesitating to insert that part which has

Jesus saying this is my blood which has been shed for the sins of the people and this is my flesh which has been given for the sins of people,

Luke is now showing a different theology. He's not quite sold on the theology of Paul. Previously I mentioned

Mark's Gospel which says that Jesus said that he came not to be served but to serve and to die as a ransom for many.

Well, that's problematic. How did Jesus die as a ransom for many? Luke represents the same saying but he drops the statement that Jesus died as a ransom for many.

Luke has a different theology here and that has to be taken into consideration. So in the

New Testament you have the writings of Paul which are many, 13 letters are credited to him and he expounds this doctrine.

The Gospels are written after Paul and they follow Paul's doctrines and they represent Jesus as though he preached the same doctrine but Luke is not quite sold and Luke hesitates at some very key instances.

Moreover, Luke shows us for example in his chapter 15 many parables in which it is clear that God forgives sins when people are repentant.

Luke also shows that people have been forgiven even before Jesus was sacrificed. So in Luke's Gospel we do not have the clear support for Paulian theology as we would have expected and this is significant because Luke is said to have been a traveling companion and the personal physician of Paul and yet he is not sold on that Paulian idea.

We should look at that carefully and ask ourselves should we really be sold on that idea as well. Now, James is asking me to believe in the

Gospels and in the Bible as a whole as they are because the Quran says we should believe in the

Bible. Well, in Surah 10, verse number 94 when the Quran commands the Prophet, peace be upon him, fas 'alillatheena yaqra 'oona alkitabu min qablik or ask those people who have received the scripture before you if you are in any doubt.

The problem here was that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as a human being was speaking to the

Quraysh people who could not believe that God revealed messages to human beings. They thought that if God wanted to send a message you should send an angel with his message, not a human being.

Yeah, and the reply from the Quran is that this was God's consistent method. He always sent human beings.

If you're in doubt about this, ask the people of the book because they have a book full of prophets who were commissioned by God, they were human beings, so you will get comfort and solace in knowing that while people are opposing you, this has been the case all of the time.

So that does not mean that the Quran is telling the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, to believe in every single word of the

Bible. Moreover, in the Quran, in Surah 5, verse 47, when the Quran tells Christians to judge by the

Injil, it actually says it indirectly, wa laa yakhkum ahlul -injili bimaa anzalallahu fee. It's saying, let them judge by that which

God has revealed therein. It is not that all of the Injil is said to be the word of God, but the

Quran is saying, go to the Injil, find out what God has said therein, and judge by that.

Of course, in the Injil, you have not only the saying of God but mostly you have the sayings of human beings.

And of course, you have the sayings of Jesus as well, but you have the sayings of other writers interpreting Jesus, and you have writers who have misinterpreted

Jesus. Now, James is saying, but we have no way of knowing which is the real word of God in the

Injil and which is not the real word of God. But then, isn't the Quran trying to get you to think about your situation?

If you have a book, and in that book, you don't know which really is the word of God and which really is the word of the human being, isn't that the

Quran's point, that you really need to come to the Quran ultimately? But if you won't come to the Quran ultimately, and you want to decide cases like punishment for adultery, as was the case with the verses that are speaking about this, then judge by your own book.

But don't judge by the whole book, try to find the word of God in there. And if it's not very clear, do the best you can.

So the Quran is being fair in saying, human beings are in a certain situation, they can only do the best they can in that situation.

The best that the Quran wants them to do is to embrace the Quran and judge according to the

Quran, but if they won't come to the Quran, well, let them resort to a book, which they themselves are not really sure about which parts of it are the word of God and which are not the word of God.

James questions my treatment of Paul, and he says that Paul still insists on following the law.

Yes, in some places, Paul does insist on that. For example, I can even cite you another passage where Paul says in 1

Corinthians 7, verse 19, what matters is keeping the law. But in the previous breath, he said circumcision doesn't matter.

And Paul is therefore confused. And Michael Grant, the historian, in the book on the

Gospels, actually refers to Jesus as being confused, refers to Paul as being on the one hand brilliant, but on the other hand, confused, because circumcision is one part of the law.

So if the law says to circumcise, and Paul is saying, it doesn't matter if you circumcise or not, all that matters is that you keep the law.

You see, the man is confused, it just so happens. So he doesn't know what to do with the law.

And this actually translates into Christian practice today.

Every Christian knows you must have some law. You can't break the law, thou shalt not murder. So you must have to have some law.

You must follow the law. But at the same time, Paul is saying, no, you don't have to follow the law in some instances.

And in some instances, he's saying, you need to follow the law. So he is confused, and Christians who follow him also remain confused, unfortunately.

But I'm not saying this to belittle Christians. I'm saying that there is a way out. You don't have to remain confused. You can come to the

Quran, which is a unified book. It is the guidance, and it's the message from God for all of humankind, including all of you.

And the Quran says that God has now sent you a message from himself, and this message is guidance for you.

I have just one minute left, or is it half a minute now since you walked up here? Anyway, I'll leave it at that then.

It is getting late. I thank you very much for your patient listening. I'll have another five minutes later on. All the best.

Thank you. Cool. Just keep this? Okay. All right, these are my last words that I'll be able to share with you this evening.

I would like to, first of all, give Shabir a little something. I started this tradition back at Biola University in 2006.

I was a bigger man and had a darker goatee then, and his entire beard was black in 2006.

I thought I'd mention that. He's been under some stress recently, evidently, and actually.

From dealing with you? Yeah, from dealing with me. Actually, I think both of us have just recently become grandfathers, and we're pretty much close to the same age, too, so looking forward to writing a book with him.

I want to give him, I gave him a whole stack of books that first night. I'm gonna give him a book that proves that I have a heart.

This is my second most popular book, and it's called Grieving Your Path Back to Peace. It's on dealing with loss, and I wrote it as a hospital chaplain, so I hope you'll find it to be a useful book.

Thank you for that. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Shabir. Thank you very much. Now, very, very quickly, I have very little time.

Let me just respond to one point that Shabir just made, because I think it's foundational to everything else we do. He just said, well, look, this is why

I embrace the liberal view of the Christian scriptures and not a liberal view of the Quran is because I've found there are nine places where there's been a copyist error in the

Bible. Okay, I wish I could project this, but this is an image I myself took of BNF 328A.

This is one of the earliest Quranic manuscripts in the library in Paris, France, and right down here, very clearly, it can be examined under ultraviolet light, infrared light, et cetera, et cetera, is a clear textual variant.

Something else has been scratched out. Something else has been written in its place in a different hand. Interestingly enough, as a result, and I showed these things to Yusuf in our debate, here a little bit later on, an entire page has been cut out.

There's the remnants of the page, and on the next page, you can see that they had to squish things in because an entire verse has been added in later in the book.

So there's a textual variant in the Quran. There's the manuscript. You can go examine it yourself. So does that mean

I now have the right because, well, there's errors in the Quran. Therefore, I can embrace liberal views of the

Quran, and I can come up with the idea that the Qibla was changed later on, and that means it was 705, and I can do all that kind of stuff because of a textual variant.

Do I now have the grounds to do that? I say to you, I do not. I do not. That is not how you do this.

We still have the example of using different scales. We're not allowing Paul to speak for Paul.

We're assuming relationships that have never been proven, that these other people are just following Paul, even assumes that Luke doesn't buy all of Paul's theology, as if Paul was trying to force him on this.

I would really suggest to you all, Shabir mentioned a very good

Christian scholar by the name of F .F. Bruce. Read his book, Paul, Apostle of the

Heart Set Free. He recommended him, so I'm gonna recommend him to you. Read Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and you'll find that if you just simply would be even semi -fair, you would have to discover that the entirety of the presentation that starts with the assumption of the error of the

Bible is based upon sand. What have I tried to say to you this evening? That there is a consistent, beautiful, biblical message from Genesis all the way through to the book of Revelation.

From Genesis to Revelation, you have the fact that God is just, God is holy,

His law has been broken, but the wonderful thing is, He is always the one who provides the means by which we come to Him.

He rejects it when we provide the way. He provides the way to come into His presence, and I'll finish with just one story.

Remember Jesus? He talked about the people who were invited to the wedding feast. He said, go out on the highways and byways, compel them to come in.

And then there's this weird aspect of the story. Jesus says the head of the wedding comes in, and He finds a man who doesn't have a wedding garment.

And what does He say? Bind the man hand and foot, and cast him out into outer darkness. Why? Because you see, if you invited people into the wedding feast, you had to provide them with a wedding garment.

And if that man was there, it was because he had rejected the very means and the very provision that that person had provided.

He had decided to come in a different way. And Jesus' point was, there's only one way into the presence of the

Father. There is only one way of having peace with Him, and we can't come up with another way. He's provided that way, and He's proven that way in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is His testimony, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, that He was the Son of God, and that He accepted

His sacrifice upon the cross of Calvary. The resurrection proves God has accepted that work of Jesus Christ.

That's what I proclaim to you this evening. Thank you for your attention. May God bless us all. So, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the last five -minute segment of our program tonight.

Before I speak on the issues, if you will allow me, I would like to reciprocate with something for James.

James, you have initiated a wonderful tradition. I'd like to copy you in doing that, a book which

I hope you'll find useful when it comes to the book we're writing together. Okay, and with compliments of the local community here, a nice leather -bound copy of the translation of the

Quran by Muhammad Asad. Yes. Okay, I hope you'll enjoy those and find them useful. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, as we come to the end now, let's summarize what has happened here tonight.

And in order for me to do that fairly, let me deal with the issue of the manuscript which

James showed before you, because it relates to a larger point that we have been discussing here tonight.

James is saying, look, we have a manuscript here which shows that somebody wrote this and then somebody came and made some changes to that ancient manuscript.

Well, does that mean that there's a problem for Muslims? Oh, no, suddenly we can't rely on the Qurans that we have because there is an ancient manuscript which somebody has changed.

When we know how the Quran has been compiled in Muslim history, we realize that this manuscript does not make any difference to Muslims.

Muslims in their history have tried to memorize the Quran exactly as promulgated by the

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and also recorded it on writing materials that were diverse at the time.

Those writing materials were compiled within the lifetime of the disciples of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, whom we refer to as companions in Islamic terminology.

Now, if we had something which was compiled by the disciples of Jesus without doubt, then that would be a very reliable set of documents about Jesus.

But by comparison, the Gospels we have are written by anonymous persons long after Jesus, some decades after Jesus, and in that case, we do not have a similar situation.

So now, for Muslims, the Quran that we have is dependably traced back to the

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So if we find an ancient copy in which we don't know who wrote it, who copied it, who thought they were making the changes and for what purposes, then we have a reliable document in our hands and something that is unreliable.

This relates to a question that James thought had something to do with Isnad. It had nothing to do with Isnad.

It had to do with the book of Hebrews, which James admits, indirectly, is anonymously authored.

We don't know who authored it. And the question is, why do you believe in this book and you don't know who authored it?

He says, well, we should believe in the Old Testament though we don't know who authored it. Well, again, why?

He says, but because Jesus believed in it. But how do you know Jesus believed in it? Because some anonymous documents in the

New Testament says that Jesus believed in the anonymous documents of the Old Testament. Therefore, we should believe in that.

No, a Muslim would say, why should we believe some person, we don't know who he is, who told us that we should believe in some other books and we don't know who the authors of those books are.

So the standard that James thinks we have violated, we have not violated. We have not violated reasonable standards of fairness and equity.

We are dealing with like situations and like ways and different situations in different ways. We have a reliable book.

We're treating it as reliable. We're looking at a book which is written by anonymous authors. We treat it as a book written by anonymous authors.

To me, that's fair and square. If James wants us to treat both books as though they're the words of God, well, that's not fair and square because that's treating a book which reliably is traced back to a prophet of God as being on par with a book.

God knows who wrote it. Now, the liberal scholars that James is talking about, and not necessarily liberal scholars,

I have quoted scholars tonight who are in fact admitted by James to be conservative scholars.

Tonight, James mentioned the name of F .F. Bruce and he's saying because Shabir recommended him, he's also recommending him.

But it's actually the other way around because in our last debate, I asked James specifically, is F .F.

Bruce a conservative scholar? And he said, yes. So what has been happening all of the time in our debates, past and present, is that James is saying, oh,

Shabir is quoting all of these liberal scholars. We shouldn't listen to those scholars because those scholars also deny God's existence and deny that Muhammad is the prophet of God and those liberal scholars will also find problems in the

Quran. I say, okay, leave those liberal scholars aside. Who are your conservative scholars? F .F. Bruce? Yes, okay.

So F .F. Bruce admits that Mark is written at this time. So now, it's not that I have recommended

F .F. Bruce. No, it's James who recommended F .F. Bruce and now I am fighting

F .F. Bruce as a proof against James. And now he says, no, Shabir is recommending

F .F. Bruce. He's got it all reversed, actually. So finally, in conclusion, what we have seen tonight is that there is a consistent teaching in the

Quran that God rewards us for good deeds, he punishes us for evil deeds, but he's ever ready to forgive us.

What remains for us tonight, Muslims and Christians, is to seek the forgiveness of God. We have seen that the

Old Testament teaches a similar teaching and that in the New Testament, Paul taught something different, but when one reads behind the lines, one sees that the original

Jesus, especially as reflected in teaching in Luke chapter 15, actually taught the same thing as the

Old Testament and that too is the Muslim teaching. That is the teaching that I commend to all of you tonight.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you very much for that, Shabir. And thank you, James. And thank you to all of you for attending this particular event.

And thank you to Muhammad Khan and Rudolph for making this event possible. I know most of you are tired.

It's quarter past 11. Before you leave, let's give a derrick to the chairman of this mosque who's afforded us this opportunity for the first time in South Africa, in my knowledge, to have a live debate between a

Muslim scholar and a Christian scholar. Thank you. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, to all of you.

Let me just take this opportunity once again to remind you that you are invited to attend tomorrow evening, 6 .30

p .m., TOUKIS, that is the University of Victoria, where once again, we'll be entertained by Dr.

James Wan and Dr. Shabir Nassar. I'd like to take this great opportunity to thank all my board for allowing us this opportunity to share together this beautiful evening.

Our sincerest thanks and appreciation to Dr. James Wan and Dr. Shabir Nassar for your thoughts that you shared with us this evening.

Certainly enjoyable. Also, to our very, very capable moderator this evening,

Brother Yusuf Ismail and, of course, Brother Mohammed Khan from IPCI. Our friends from Antwerp and the

Serra Church, students and teachers from Dartmouth, Victoria, perverts from ITV, grateful for the sound and role for the photography.

And all friends and guests, a heartfelt thanks for your attendance. God bless and stay tuned.