The Birmingham Qur'an, Bart Ehrman, Equal Scales, and the Biblical Text of the London Confession

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00:31

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. First time back in a long time. All the levels are different.

00:36

Everything has changed. Did John come in or something? No? Hmm. Strange. Anyway, and evidently we're having

00:44

YouTube issues and all sorts of stuff. So, yeehaw! I did just tweet out that you might want to grab the audio, even though I was hoping to show at least one video today.

00:56

So, we'll record it. We'll get it up eventually, but maybe not the normal way.

01:03

So far, so good? Well, let's hope it works. Anyway, just back from a great time up in Colorado.

01:11

I had not driven 13 hours in a row in quite some time, but it is survivable as long as you go into it expecting that that's what you're going to do,

01:20

I guess. That was something we used to do when I was much younger, and the body handles it a lot better when you're much younger too.

01:29

But some people, that's easy to do. Other people, not so much. But I had a great time up there.

01:35

Was at Flatirons Baptist Church last Sunday. Two weeks ago,

01:40

I was at L2 up there. I had a great time. If you follow me on Facebook, you probably got sick and tired of all the beautiful mountain pictures, but that's what you do in Colorado is you take pictures of beautiful mountains.

01:54

And sometimes from the tops of beautiful mountains, as I had the opportunity of doing a number of times.

02:00

Just a great time up there. As I said, I think my guardian angel is putting in for a very long vacation, given the kind of descents that I was on, especially coming down Mount Evans.

02:13

There is this one shot I put, Micah especially noted it, where the road just seems to go up and then just disappear into the, just like off a cliff.

02:23

And that's exactly what it looks like. I mean, that picture turned out real well. It's exactly what it looks like. It doesn't, obviously, but especially when you're at 14 ,000 feet above sea level and you're pedaling as hard as your little body can pedal.

02:40

I did the race on Saturday, and as I would be riding by folks or people riding by me, nobody...

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See, normally when you ride past someone, you try to quiet your breathing so you don't sound like you're working so hard.

02:58

But on Mount Evans, nobody cares because everybody knows this is the highest time trial in the continental

03:05

United States. There may be something in South America that's higher. I think they might have some paved roads that go higher down the

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Andes. But in the continental United States, this is it. This is as high as you're going to get, 14 ,130.

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So you just go by everybody going... It's the only way to keep going.

03:26

So there was no pride at that point, yes. But the normal process is to pass the guy and you're dying and you're killing yourself.

03:33

How you doing? Good morning. As he sees you and hears you, it's like, oh, it's just taking it easy. Then you get 10 yards ahead of him.

03:39

Yeah, that's exactly... That's what we do. That's what we do. So it was great.

03:46

So I had an awesome time. And if you follow me on Facebook, you know that I'm pretty excited because I crushed my goal big time,

03:56

Mount Evans hill climb, by a whole lot more than I ever thought I could do. I didn't really think I could break three hours, but I did 251 .34.

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So I'm very happy with that. And I got totally dusted, blown by, by one of the best cyclists in the

04:13

United States. Not in that race, but the next day. Climbing up Flagstaff, outside of Boulder.

04:20

Tom Danielson went by me. And when he went by the first time, climbing, like I was standing still,

04:28

I sort of looked and said, how did that look like Tommy D? But who knows?

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I mean, he's wearing a Garmin thing and who knows? And then go up a little while and he's coming back down and now

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I can see the face. And, but of course we all, you know, you're wearing a helmet and, and Oakley sunglasses, like everybody does.

04:49

We all look the same, but that, that was, that was Tommy D. That was Tommy Danielson. So I checked on Strava to see if they have this really cool thing where you can check your ride and see who rode past you, if they're also on Strava, but nothing showed.

05:02

So I'm like, well, you know, I still think it was Tommy D. Well, Doug McMasters said,

05:09

Hey, did you see the flyby? And I looked and the reason I hadn't seen the flyby before, he was just starting a 127 mile bike ride, climbing over 10 ,000 feet.

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He was out there for six and a half more hours. That's why when I had checked, there wasn't anything there because he wasn't done riding yet.

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So there, there you can watch him doing his ride and get right past me. I say, we, but, hey,

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I'll, I'll take being passed by Tommy Danielson any day. That's, that's, that's good. So we had a great time and, good to be back.

05:39

We'll not be here long because in September we're teaching, I'll be teaching in Zurich and Kiev, two weeks in one, one week in one place, one week in the other.

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And then shortly after that, heading to South Africa. And we've already talked a little bit about that.

05:57

We'll be talking more about that as well in the future. So lots and lots and lots of stuff to, to be doing and to be preparing for,

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I don't know how I'm going to get it all done. So your prayers be appreciated. While I was gone, a couple of things happened.

06:13

Probably the, other than the, continuing story of the exposure of Planned Parenthood for the

06:23

Nazi -esque, you know, if, if, if Planned Parenthood really wanted to stay true to its origins, here's my suggestion to Planned Parenthood.

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Let's just, let's just be out there and open about what we are and over each, over the doorways of each one of your clinics, quote unquote, abortuaries.

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I'll help you spell it, but the phrase is Arbeit macht frei.

07:00

Arbeit macht frei. That's what you need over your doorways. So that, so that the connection is appropriately made with your progenitors,

07:09

Planned Parenthood. If you're wondering what that is, all of the Nazi death camps had

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Arbeit macht frei, work makes free, over the entrances. So as the people would go through, work makes free.

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There you go. And that's, that's what Planned Parenthood should do. And will they ever be defunded?

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Probably not. Not in this, not in this, this culture and this nation, which, you know, is in, so in love with its own, quote unquote, erotic freedom.

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That's, that there you go. It's necessary to have

07:47

Planned Parenthood as your backup, just in case your erotic freedom gets you in trouble. Yeah, there we go.

07:54

So other than that, which is ongoing, evidently, I guess there's like, there's like another eight or nine of these videos just waiting to come up each week.

08:05

Just wow. What can you say? Other than that, what struck me in the past couple of weeks was all of the brouhaha that developed.

08:17

And obviously there wasn't much discussion of it in a lot of the mainstream media, but the brouhaha that developed over the discovery of, at the

08:29

University of Birmingham, of a few pages of what was reported to be an extremely ancient

08:38

Quran, or at least materials from surahs 18 through 20 of the

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Quran, which as people have pointed out, what's really interesting about what was found.

08:49

And by the way, if you're getting ready to tune out because of Muslim, Muslim Islam, I'm going to be transitioning directly into some stuff about Bart Ehrman and then into textual criticism and into the

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Texas Receptus and ecclesiastical text stuff, because it's all related. It's all related.

09:09

So you might want to stick around because it's all the same type of topic.

09:15

As soon as the story broke, the first thing that crossed my mind was it's from the

09:21

BBC. And I don't trust the BBC as far as you can throw the BBC, especially when it comes to any type of religious discussion.

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I mean, I've listened to BBC programs about Codex Sinaiticus that were just simply absurd.

09:35

I mean, they were just laughably ridiculous to anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the field at all.

09:41

So it's sort of like, oh, great. And then it appears in the

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New York Times and, okay, same difference as far as reliability on anything religious.

09:54

The anti -Christian bias of both is not even arguable.

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It is patent. It is obvious. You have to be trying to buy a bridge in the desert to not see that.

10:12

Anyway, so I, of course, read the articles, and immediately there were just so many issues that popped to the surface where no answers were given.

10:26

I mean, anybody who knows a little something, and this audience, if you've listened to this program for a while, you know a whole lot more about the background of the history of the

10:35

Quran than the vast majority of human beings do, because we actually take the time to be looking at this kind of stuff.

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I was immediately frustrated by the lack of really meaningful data and the emphasis upon stuff that may or may not be significant.

10:59

And so I'll talk about a couple of those things in a moment, but the first thing that crossed my mind was any really scholarly individual of whatever background, secular,

11:13

Muslim, Christian, it doesn't matter, any truly scholarly individual is going to immediately say, all right, we need to do with this the same thing

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I've said that we need to be doing with the Green Project, that is the allegedly, at least initially, first -claimed, first -century papyri manuscript fragments from the

11:44

Egyptian funerary mask, the Gospel of Mark. What have I said consistently, and I know that there are

11:51

Muslims who watch every single one of these programs, there are a lot of Muslims that sit out there, record everything, you're examining every single word

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I say. I'm glad you're listening, but I do hope you realize you will be held accountable for everything you hear, too.

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So if you can only try to refute a small portion of it, you're going to be held accountable for the great portion you can't.

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Just thought I'd mention that in passing. In fact, I wasn't referring to this gentleman, but I ran into a

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Muslim after the service in Denver, who quoted to me from the immediately preceding dividing line.

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He had notes written out. So we have an interesting audience, and I realize a lot of people in the audience do not agree with what

12:31

I'm saying. So, okay, that's fine. But if you have watched this program, or listened to this program by podcast or whatever, you know that what

12:44

I have said over and over again, even as I have included the CNN story in my

12:50

New Testament Reliability presentation, what I always say is, now, this has yet to be published.

12:57

It has yet to be vetted. It has yet to be examined. When some type of a discovery comes out, there is a process whereby it must be examined, and issues that one person might not see will be raised by another person.

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There's give, and there's take, and there's back, and there's forth. And the reality is, it takes time before something can therefore become settled.

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And even then, in any meaningful scholarship, there's always going to be some level of disagreement concerning especially historical factual issues.

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And so that's the process. And that's the process that these

13:45

New Testament finds are going to have to go through. There's going to have to be argument about the paleography.

13:52

There's got to be argument about the context in which they were found. Are there other papyri fragments included in the funerary mask that would give us beginning or end dates, for example?

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There's a lot of work that has to be done. Sometimes it's expensive work, and therefore it takes a while for it to happen.

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Raising funds, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. But I have been very consistent in saying, we can't jump on this and start using this.

14:27

And I criticized J. Smith when he presented material in his debate with Shabir Ali that had yet to be published.

14:36

Now, this isn't published yet. This isn't available yet. But okay, you can't do that in a debate because that leaves the other side that hasn't even had the opportunity of examining it.

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That's just not fair. So I have been very, very consistent in calling for that kind of treatment of the

14:57

New Testament stuff. And very obviously, there is a bunch of work that needs to be done in regards to these

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Qur 'an fragments that have been found. That so far, the articles I've seen do not answer all of the relevant questions that need to be answered.

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And so, for example, the first thing that the BBC was all excited about was the dating, the carbon 14 dating of the actual manuscript material itself.

15:38

Well, okay, that is an important thing to do. That is an exciting thing to do within, you know, the parameters of the accuracy of that.

15:50

But the writing material can be much, much earlier than what is written on it.

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If the manuscripts pointed out anything, it was that it was common to have palimpsest manuscripts in that day.

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A palimpsest is where you've washed off because these are animal skins. They're extremely thinly sliced animal skins.

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Vellum is a common term for what was used for the major unsealed manuscripts of the

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New Testament, for example. But you can wash them off. It's not like paper where if you get it wet, it just crinkles up and falls apart.

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And then write something over on top of it. And one of the things that we're gonna talk about here is the reality that Bart Ehrman has decided to opine about this.

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Now, the very same Bart Ehrman, who ran for the hills in our debate in 2009, whenever I asked him to, in any way, apply his methodology to the

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Quran, I don't know anything about Islam. I don't study Islam. He wouldn't touch it with a 10 -foot pole.

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But now that there is an opportunity for Bart Ehrman to take some shots at the

17:14

New Testament, all of a sudden, we're willing to talk about it. Now, in the process, he shows himself abysmally ignorant of the issues.

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And I'm one of the few people that will call him on that because nobody else wants to do that, evidently.

17:32

But yeah, we'll get to that in a moment. But no one seemingly wants to raise the other important issues.

17:43

Well, I take it back. Some people are. I've found some articles where people are going, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

17:50

A lot of those people are writing from a perspective that I do not share. So the

17:55

Ibn Warraqs of the world, who apply a basically secular methodology to everything, are going to have a different approach to this than I'm going to have.

18:08

I'm trying to be consistent. So far, I have not seen a single

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Muslim apologist trying to be consistent on this. Not one. Not one. They're all just, woohoo, look,

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Bart Ehrman. And it's like, long before anything meaningful can really be said.

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For example, has the ink been tested? Has there been paleographical examination of the style, the

18:41

Kufi script itself in comparison to other known and datable materials from this time period?

18:50

One of the first things that people brought up that was so obvious and the first thing that hit me, I should have brought it in here.

18:57

I didn't. Oh, drat. I should have brought in one of my copies of the

19:02

Quran so I could show you the Paris or London Qurans. We know that these are early 8th century, around that time period,

19:18

Qurans. And it is painfully obvious to even the casual observer that what we have in the

19:31

Quran fragments that have been published, very few that they are, contains the early forms of vowel pointing, dotting, punctuation that becomes a normal part of the later

19:50

Qurans, but is not a part of the London or Paris Qurans. There is a later development in these fragments.

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So I haven't seen yet, at least, especially amongst those people who are going, here it is, here it is.

20:07

This was written, right? You know, this is right after Uthman or whatever else, you know, this is, um, where did that stuff come from?

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Was that added in later? By whom? Another hand? Is it different ink? Has anyone even bothered to look?

20:22

If this was written before the Paris and London Qurans, then why would that stuff be taken out in them if it was present in this?

20:31

I mean, these are just basic level, fundamental questions that anyone who has even a outsider's general knowledge of these things should be sitting back and going, huh, has anyone else thought about this?

20:50

What are the answers to this? And so a careful

20:56

Muslim apologist would not want to be running out going, well, here it is.

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Just like the careful Christian apologist shouldn't be running out with the green findings and should instead say, well, this, this looks very promising.

21:12

This could be very interesting. We need to, uh, uh, there needs to be a complete, thorough, um, textual analysis done of what's here.

21:23

Uh, go ahead and use the Uthmanic revision, you know, wars or whatever.

21:29

Uh, you know, you can, whatever, uh, reading you, you know, there's different published editions and you've got the ones, you've got the one that's popular in India.

21:40

You've got the ones popular in Egypt and you can, all the rest of this kind of stuff. And pick one, make it the standard, do what, you know, for years they used the

21:49

TR as a standard really shouldn't have been done that way. But pick one and do the work of textual analysis and saying, are there textual variants?

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Um, are, were these pages concurrent with one another or is there stuff missing?

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Um, if there are variants, what, what's the nature of the variants? Do they, do any of the variants happen to match up with any variants we've discovered from the

22:19

Palimpsest manuscripts? There's just all sorts of stuff, um, that has to be done that I've seen nobody even mention it having been done yet, which is absolutely required.

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Um, so there needs to be textual analysis done. Uh, the, the issue of ink needs to be addressed.

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Where did the, the pointing come from, which was not a part of the earliest

22:45

Kufic script, but developed later on. Um, was that added in later? Was it, is it in the same ink?

22:52

Is it in the same hand? Um, these are all fundamental questions that until you have answers to everything else is just, well, it could be, this could be, that could be, this could be, that don't know.

23:07

Um, all this stuff has to be looked into. Someone has pointed out that these particular sections that are encompassed, the materials encompassed in Surahs 18 through 20, that's a section that's very heavy in, well, the

23:30

Muslim doesn't view it this way, but everybody but Muslims would go, this is a place where there's a great deal of borrowing from pre -existence.

23:40

Existing sources, um, the three sleepers of Ephesus, three sleepers, five sleepers, the sleepers of Ephesus, however many there were, um, and their dog and so on and so forth and stories from the

23:52

Bible and just a lot of, um, stories that were common in that day.

23:58

So some people said, how do you know this was from a Quran? How do you know that this wasn't actually pre -existent to the

24:04

Quran, that these were stories that, now, I don't, I don't go there. I mean, if it's, if it's in pretty much the same canonical order, that, that stretches the, the credulity for me, uh, to think that this is a, these are pre -existent stories that just happened to be in the same order or something like that.

24:22

But the reality is this is material that pre -existed the

24:27

Quran and, you know, some Muslims say, well, um, what, what actually happened is, you know, it's just, if it's found in another, another, uh, story, another version, it's just total coincidence, total coincidence.

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And I've had very intelligent Muslims say that. They would never allow us to do that in regards to sources for the

24:52

New Testament, Old Testament. Of course, we don't deny that there were sources that were used. That's not against our doctrine of inspiration, but it certainly is against the, uh, the

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Muslim doctrine of inspiration and the understanding that Quran is a uncreated, eternal word, at least in Sunni orthodoxy.

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Um, so anyway, uh, there's lots of questions that have to be addressed in reference to the actual text, the ink, um, the paleography, all these things.

25:27

And my concern to be pretty honest with you is will that work be done? Um, will that work actually take place?

25:35

That I've, I've not been able to find any, any more information, uh, on it, but, uh, there was a palimpsest manuscript that came up for auction at, was it

25:50

Sotheby's or one of the big London houses? Um, and it was purchased for an undisclosed amount of money and no one ever knows what happened to it.

26:01

It's just poof, gone. And that concerns me.

26:07

Now, if what we have in the pictures that have appeared is actually what's there, then

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I think we're okay because it seems that some fairly high quality images have already been made available.

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And if that's the case, then, um, then good. Uh, maybe we can do the analysis, at least some of the analysis, um, from that material.

26:35

That would be very, very useful. But there's just a lot of material that has to be looked at and it hasn't happened yet.

26:46

And so if you're a Muslim and you're running around touting this, um, massively premature and hypocritical, it's hypocritical because you don't apply those same standards to the

27:06

New Testament. And, you know, unfortunately,

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I know a lot of folks that they, when I press this upon them, it's like, I don't care. This is my religion.

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That's your religion. I'll do what I want. You know, and they don't see the necessity. And I know Christians don't see the necessity of applying the same standard just simply as a matter of truthfulness.

27:29

And so with that, I was, I was going to, I was going to try to do a

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ScreenFlow video. Um, didn't get time to do it.

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I was very busy with other things and I was just going to sort of say what

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I just said. And then lo and behold, what happens? But Bart Ehrman decides to jump into the conversation.

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And if anything, so this was created July 26th.

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So just a couple of days ago, uh, on the Bart Ehrman blog, the significance of an astounding new discovery.

28:12

Now I've been saying for a long time, you need to understand this man is a relatively wealthy man.

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And he is a relatively wealthy man because he is an apostate from Christianity and he is paid to be an apostate.

28:32

His major funds do not come from his teaching. His major funds do not come from his scholarly work.

28:40

His major funding comes from his popular books that ended up on the New York Times bestseller list, which we all know is a fiction anyway.

28:47

We all know New York Times determines who is a bestseller and who is not.

28:53

And then other people spend big bucks to make themselves bestselling authors. I have never been and will never be a bestselling author.

29:01

I don't think it's possible, uh, anymore, at least in the eyes of the New York Times, uh, to say the things

29:08

I say and be considered a bestselling author because that is just simply a, a cultural listing.

29:13

Anyway, his New York Times bestsellers have all been anti -Christian books.

29:21

Now he would say, no, no, no, no. I, I, there, there's a kind of Christianity that is bothered by what

29:28

I say. Yeah, it's called believing Christian. It's historic Christian. It actually believes in the deity of Christ and miracles and the, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the dead, so on and so forth.

29:38

Now we've mentioned many, many times that since that's where his money comes from, that's where he makes the majority of his funding.

29:48

He is a paid apostate and that explains the imbalance.

29:57

Well, if we didn't have enough evidence of that before, we've got it now because here you have a man who in our debate debate that I had with him in 2009 did everything in his power, did everything in his power to distance himself from saying anything in response to my questions about Islam.

30:20

I don't know anything about Islam. I don't know why you're trying to force me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have no evidence whatsoever that in the intervening seven, six years that he has been studying the subject of Islam.

30:35

There is no evidence in his article that he has any earthly idea what the

30:44

Hadith says about the collection of the canal. None.

30:50

There is no citation of Sahih al -Bukhari 6519510 in here. There is no discussion of Uthman.

30:59

There is no discussion of revisions. And given

31:04

Ehrman's writing on the New Testament, if he was aware of these things, he would be an abject hypocrite.

31:18

If he knew of these things to not raise these issues, he uses a completely different standard for his comments about the

31:29

Quran than he does the New Testament. And it's either ignorance of the controlled transmission of the

31:36

Quran versus the free transmission of the New Testament, or it's pure abject bias and hypocrisy.

31:44

One of the two. It's the only explanations you can offer. And it does end up impacting what he says in this article because it looks like the

31:55

Quran did not suffer textual change. Now, how does he know that?

32:03

How does he know whether what we're looking at here is pre or post Uthmanic? Does he even understand that concept?

32:12

Does he even understand the free transmission of the New Testament text?

32:18

He does understand that. He focuses upon that. Over against the controlled edited text.

32:26

Does he give any consideration, not only to the fact that we're talking about a much smaller book than the

32:35

New Testament, single author, at least from the Islamic perspective, much younger, far fewer generations of transmission in written form, governmental involvement in the transmission of the text.

32:57

The ruling authorities say, this is the text that we are to use.

33:04

Destroy anything else. If there was anything like that in the history of the

33:10

New Testament, Uthman would be all over it. It doesn't say a word about Uthman, Abdullah ibn

33:20

Masud. Does he know anything about this? I don't get the feeling that he does. So why is he blabbing about it? I don't know.

33:26

Other than to take a shot at Christianity. Other than to continue to justify his own apostasy.

33:33

Because that's very important, I think, in his experience. And so he asks, well, you know, why is it that there was not amongst the

33:48

Christians this same kind of care in the transmission of the text? So you need to understand something, especially my

33:54

Muslim friends. One in particular has been crowing rather loudly about Uthman and stuff like that.

34:03

Remember, Barth refused to debate his theological assertions back in 2009.

34:12

And what is his theological assertion? His theological assertion is this, if God inspires something, he will not allow it to be corrupted in any way.

34:22

In any way. So the wild theological assertion of Bart Ehrman is if God inspired the writing in the

34:35

New Testament, then there would be no textual variance in the manuscripts of the New Testament. Now that would, of course, make the

34:42

New Testament completely unlike any other ancient writing. I mean, we know there were textual variants even between the

34:51

Hebrew Masoretic, well, what would become the Masoretic line. There were different lines of Hebrew manuscripts in the days of Jesus.

34:58

Dead Sea Scrolls show this to be the case. The Aramaic Targums, you've got the line of the

35:04

Greek Septuagint. There was textual variation in that day. But ignoring all of that,

35:10

Ehrman insists that if it's inspired, then there could not possibly be any textual variation.

35:20

Now, how does that work out? Well, I guess this would require some kind of either automatic writing to where if a scribe is about to make a mistake, all of a sudden they're taken over and they're about to write the word brown and it should be blue.

35:39

So all of a sudden, blue. And then, oh, what happened?

35:45

I don't know. Some kind of miraculous scribal autocorrect system.

35:55

Or the more colorful version would be you're about to write the wrong thing and you just explode in flames.

36:03

Lightning, whatever. Spontaneous combustion. It would probably result in a lot fewer manuscripts in the end, actually, when you think about it.

36:13

But anyway, it's laughable because it's laughable.

36:21

I mean, and this is why he won't defend it, because his theological assertion is laughable.

36:29

And he keeps saying, well, I'm a historian, not a theologian, but he makes theological assertions. He just won't defend them.

36:35

And then he'll twist the history to try to substantiate his theological assertions, which he will not defend and get paid not to defend them.

36:44

So he has this wild and wacky thing. Now, has he, is he even aware of the

36:51

Sahana manuscripts? I don't know. There is nothing in his article that would seem to indicate that he's aware of this kind of stuff at all.

37:02

He's just looking at this going, well, this is just amazing. This is wonderful. But he asked the question.

37:10

And so back to my question, if Muslim scholars of the centuries from the very beginning made dead sure that when they copied their sacred text, they didn't change anything, why didn't

37:17

Christian scribes do the same thing with three question marks at the end? Is it possible that Bart Ehrman does not understand the difference between a controlled transmission of a text and a free transmission of a text?

37:30

I can't see how that's possible. But he acts like he doesn't, because that's what the answer is.

37:41

The answer is that Christians wanted, well, Christians were persecuted.

37:48

Now, as soon as I said that, I didn't get to see this, I've mentioned this before, but people in the audience, and I don't know if it ever showed up in the video because I've never watched the video of the debate, but people in the audience said that whenever I mentioned persecution during our debate, he rolled his eyes as if it's completely irrelevant.

38:10

Now, for a man who prides himself so much on being a historian,

38:17

I would think that at least the narrative of the early church and the centrality of persecution to that, he might be a little slower in just laughing it off.

38:33

But there is a vast difference between having a text that is barely half the length of the

38:43

New Testament, 14 % the length of the Bible, 600 years younger, one author, according to those proposing it as being scripture, controlled transmission by the state.

39:02

Multiple concurrent sources verifying the state control, the transmission of the text, the production of specific mushaf that are sent to specific cities that are to become the standard text.

39:26

Totally different system than that which underlies transmission of the

39:31

New Testament text, and yet he can ask this question, which any freshman should be able to answer with that data.

39:38

What does this tell you? It tells you either he is significantly ignorant or he's being significantly hypocritical.

39:45

Or a combination of both. I don't know which. But he doesn't even raise the proper questions.

39:57

And when my Muslim friends quote him without recognizing that, I just have to wonder, how much serious thought are you putting into this guy?

40:07

How much, I mean, do you really want us to listen to what you're saying?

40:15

Then you've got to start applying a standard that is somewhat meaningful.

40:25

It's troubling. It's very, very troubling. So, this stuff's out there, and you're going to be running into it.

40:36

We will take a little bit more time to look at specifics, but obviously what

40:42

I'm looking forward to seeing is if someone takes the photographs, if they're high enough digital quality, and it only looks like it's like four leaves, would not take long.

40:57

To do a significant study. I think,

41:05

I didn't check, but I think we have some portions of Fogg's Palimpsest Manuscript, the

41:12

Anafines, where we could correlate and do a little analysis of any variant readings to see what they would match up with.

41:25

If it's completely othmonic with pointing, then what's the basis for dating it as early as it's been dated?

41:33

Because you don't date a manuscript based upon its material. You date it based upon what's written on it.

41:40

That's just a given. That's just so basic. And we're talking Paleography 101 here.

41:49

It's child level, but it doesn't seem to have been done here yet. So, once it is, then great.

42:00

We want to look at it. We want to see what's there. We want to see what there is to see.

42:07

And if it's just straight othmonic, then is this one of the early copies?

42:15

Because Al -Kindi, in his writings, mentions he knew where the specific othmonic manuscripts were.

42:26

He knew exactly which cities they had been sent to, and even mentions in one of the instances that it's still there.

42:32

And this was well over a century and a half later. So, what if you found one of those?

42:41

Well, I've said all along, as long as you have a revision, as long as you have a major revision, such as Uthman does, if he is successful in destroying the materials that he used to produce it, you're still stuck with a revised text.

42:55

That doesn't take you back to the original. You'd have to go pre -uthmonic.

43:01

Could it be pre -uthmonic? Right now, nobody knows. And anybody who says they know is engaging in wishful thinking, and has not done the work that is necessary yet to actually find out.

43:14

Let's find out! I would be fascinated. There's much more work like this that needs to be done.

43:20

In fact, if you know the story from what I read in the BBC and New York Times, people didn't recognize that this was a part of the

43:31

Quran. That it had been included in something else. It's funny.

43:39

Dan Wallace and CSNTM have been over in Greece for months.

43:46

And there have been a number of discoveries they've found, which include, as you're photographing a manuscript, discovering that there's portions of different manuscripts all put together in one volume.

44:01

BBC didn't care. New York Times didn't care. There weren't any reporters following them around.

44:10

I wonder why that is. Well, you know how that works. Alright, so there's some of that.

44:18

Now, stick with me, because not only did we have

44:23

Muslim apologists, who I believe should know better. I like these guys, and because I like them,

44:34

I really want to call them to a higher standard when it comes to the utilization of sources.

44:41

And you know who I'm talking about. Then there are other Muslim apologists that I don't know, personally.

44:51

And I don't hold them to a very high standard, because they don't hold themselves to a very high standard. One of them has gone on an explosion recently, of posting video clips from debates, and basically letting

45:16

Shabir Ali argue for him, and then putting some graphics at the end, as if this is doing dawah.

45:22

Now, I think it's great, because generally, this guy doesn't get it.

45:28

Now, Muslim by choice doesn't get it, and this fellow doesn't get it either. And so what they're doing, is they're getting my material to people that I wouldn't be able to get my material to anyway.

45:40

So I'm like, cool, no problem. And, you know, putting a few little text screens, flipping a few little text screens at the end is, you know, if you really thought you had a decent argument, you'd probably be pursuing the opportunity for debate.

45:58

So we'll take that for what it is. But anyway, he was throwing a bunch of stuff out, and I just wanted to respond to one of them in particular, because it is about the fig tree.

46:17

Ah, yes. The fig tree. Yes, the fig tree argument. I just,

46:26

I don't know how to communicate to my

46:31

Muslim friends that if you can read Mark chapter 11, well,

46:42

I'm going to show the video first, but we'll look at it later. If you can look at Mark chapter 11 and Matthew chapter 21, and sit there and go, yeah, yeah,

46:55

Mark's point is that Jesus was ignorant, while quoting the same liberal silliness that is regularly quoted in regards to criticism of the

47:10

Gospels. You have zero credibility, as far as I can tell.

47:16

You just don't get it. You're just not even thinking. I have said many times,

47:23

I try not to read the Quran with the kind of simplistic bigotry and bias that you're reading the

47:32

New Testament with. If you really think that Mark's point, and Matthew's point, and Matthew telescopes it, he greatly, greatly summarizes it, squishes it down in comparison,

47:48

Mark breaks it up specifically to make the symbolism so obvious that if you close your eyes to it, you are not trying to understand

48:00

Mark. You are not trying to be honest with Mark. You're just simply looking for something to try to turn into a problem.

48:10

There's lots of folks like that, fine, just don't expect me to take you seriously. And you're not operating on the level that I'm operating on.

48:19

I'm trying to dialogue with you on a level of loving truthfulness.

48:28

I want to care about the Muslim person with whom I'm dialoguing with, and to be able to do that,

48:34

I have to be honest with the text. I have to hear what the text was actually saying, in its context.

48:46

Now, I may disagree with the Tafsir literature that comes 250 years later, but the issue is what was originally written, isn't it?

48:55

For a lot of people, it's not, let's be honest. Anyway, we'll take a look at the text, but I want to play the video for you.

49:08

And, like I said, he takes from two different debates, well, I'm sorry, two different presentations.

49:13

One was a presentation I made at Apologia Church on reaching out to Muslims, and that's the fig tree argument.

49:22

And then, the discussion of this that came up between Shabir and I at the mosque in Toronto. And then there you've got the little flip chart at the end, which we'll take a look at.

49:33

But let's get this out of the way so that you have it there, you got it ready to rock and roll over there?

49:41

Alright, here's, was Jesus ignorant of the seasons, James White's bad arguments.

49:49

Alright, I hope that's the right one to plug it into.

49:55

We'll find out here in a second. Next clip

50:05

I'm going to show you is, this was the first debate

50:11

I did with a Muslim, but I do not consider it my first Muslim debate. I had not studied Islam at this point,

50:17

I was simply defending the doctrine. This is 1999, I still had hair, I shouldn't have. How's that? Give up at that point, as you'll be able to tell.

50:27

But, this is Hamza Abdel Malik, who is not any longer even an orthodox Sunni Muslim, which is interesting.

50:32

But, this is one of the audience questions. And the audience questions were by far the most interesting part of that evening, if you've ever seen this debate.

50:41

Here is a Muslim from another country, and I want you to listen to his question.

50:47

And I love to watch you, I love to watch audiences. Put yourself in my position, how would you respond to this man?

50:58

And, well, just see what happens. Yes, my question to the doctor.

51:04

I heard you repeating many times, saying he's a creator of Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him.

51:11

Because we Muslims believe in Jesus, the mighty prophet of God. I heard you many times saying he's the creator of everything and all things.

51:21

So, I want you to explain to me, if it's possible, if he's the creator of everything, when

51:27

Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him, was walking by, the fig tree was his companion.

51:34

The fig tree was his companion, and he wants to eat some fig.

51:40

And they told him, Master, the fig is not in season. So, if he was

51:45

God, how he don't know if he created the tree? How he doesn't know if what's in season or what's not in season, if he created everything?

51:56

And if the fig was not in season, and he's God, first of all, we don't accept

52:02

God to be hungry. He wants to eat, but you Christians, you said God choose to do so.

52:07

So, that's your faith. But I'm saying, even if he was God and fig is not in season, why he couldn't order the tree to bring fig?

52:16

Isn't that God the one who created everything? Okay, thank you. Dr. White. He did so because the fig tree represented the people of Israel, and he made the application the people of Israel look like they have fruit, but they do not.

52:28

It was a clear application that he made. Secondly, he did eat food because the word became flesh.

52:33

He became hungry. He became tired. Because as the New Testament, as it was written, clearly indicates,

52:40

Jesus Christ was the God -man. The eternal Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.

52:46

He was a true man. He ate food. He became tired. He slept. He grew, etc.,

52:52

etc. Christians have always believed that. Why? Because we believe all the New Testament teaches.

52:59

Now, I was watching, and some of you are looking at each other going, you know, the

53:06

Jehovah's Witness that came to my door Saturday was a whole lot harder to deal with than that. Because you never heard of the fig tree argument before.

53:16

But you got to understand, this man comes from a nation where he's probably never dialogued with any kind of educated

53:24

Christian at all. And what's more, his argument is a

53:30

Quranic argument. We'll see it in the text of the Quran. And so it might strike us as a really bad argument, but how would you answer it?

53:42

I mean, we know what Jesus was doing. We know what the fig tree represented. But they really believe, and some of their top apologists will repeat this argument, obviously in a little better fashion, but they really believe that Jesus thought there would be figs on that tree, and he was just confused as to what the season was.

54:03

And that this is evidence of the ignorance of Jesus. Now, have they read Mark?

54:08

Have they read the parallel in Matthew? No, of course not. But that's what you're going to encounter.

54:16

And if your first reaction is, oh, come on, man, I haven't read Van Til, that's not going to get you very far with the

54:23

Muslim at all. It's really not. You have to be able to recognize that knowing the high end of Christian apologetics, if it doesn't allow you to deal with this kind of thing, you're not really going to be overly effective with these particular folks.

54:44

Was Jesus omniscient? Was he all -knowing, all -powerful? I'm reading the screen here. Debate.

54:49

Did Jesus claim deity? March 22, 2012, Ontario, Canada. Finally, there are improvements to cover the human limitations of Jesus.

55:00

For example, in Mark's gospel, chapter 11, verses 12 to 14,

55:06

Jesus approached a fig tree thinking that he would find fruit on it, but when he did not find any fruit on it, he cursed the fig tree.

55:15

Why didn't he find any fruit on it? Mark is very clear. Because it was not the season for figs.

55:20

But then in Matthew's gospel, chapter 21, verse 18, the situation is changed.

55:25

Jesus is hungry. He sees the fig tree. He went to it. He found nothing to it but leaves. And he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again.

55:33

The difference is that Matthew here has removed the mention that it was not the season for figs.

55:38

This allows Christians to meditate on Matthew's statement and make that into a parable about good and bad and what happens to those who do not fulfill their functions.

55:48

They get destroyed, just like this fig tree, because they do not do what they're supposed to do. But as Mark's gospel makes it plain, the reason there were no figs is because it was not the season for figs, and therefore it appears that Jesus here has made a mistake, which is natural for a human being.

56:05

Muslims would not have any difficulty accepting that such an error could occur. And by the way, the fig tree issue, why was

56:14

Jesus talking about the fig tree? And why are Muslims so fascinated with the fig tree issue? This has come up over and over again.

56:21

Folks, the fig tree represents Israel. Jesus is going into Jerusalem. He is about to have all the encounters of the

56:28

Jewish leaders. He's saying that Israel looks like it has fruit. It's got all the outward trappings and the pretty buildings and the prayer shawls and everything else, but there is no fruit.

56:39

There is no real life. That's what the whole fig tree parable is all about. It wasn't Jesus ignorant of what time figs were.

56:46

He grew up in that area. Do you really think? I mean, it would almost be like someone in Toronto saying, well, it's always snowing in March.

56:54

Well, it's not now, is it? You know when it's supposed to be snowing here. He knew when the fig... And it's not right now.

56:59

It's hot in here. You got some fans or something? I'm from Arizona and it's hot in here. I mean, really.

57:06

Jesus knew when the season of figs was. He was making a point about the people of Israel. They weren't walking after God.

57:12

This is clearly what is there. What about the fig tree episode? James did precisely what

57:18

I said that Christians do. They go to Matthew's recollection of the event, and then they make that into a parable, into a story, into a lesson.

57:27

And then he made a lot of fun about it. I enjoyed that. You're very funny about the weather and Jesus knowing about the seasons.

57:36

But Mark is very precise. The reason the tree had no fruit is because it was not the season for figs.

57:44

Jesus went up thinking that he will find fruit, but then he did not find fruit because it was not the season for figs.

57:51

In Mark's narrative, it is very clear that Jesus was mistaken. And then Matthew tried to correct that to remove this clear conclusion that Jesus was mistaken.

58:05

Mark tells us as follows. Jesus was hungry. Seeing the distance of fig tree and leaf, he went to find... Oh, it goes way too fast.

58:11

It is clear from this passage that Jesus had a lot of power to curse the tree and make it wither from its roots. It is also clear that Jesus was ignorant on two counts.

58:17

Can't read it that fast. I have to slow it down to go through the rest of this thing. God acting on ignorance.

58:27

Some would like to believe the tree was barren, therefore it deserved to be destroyed. But if Mark was right, the reason the tree had no fruit is because it was not the season for figs.

58:37

And there is the end of that, followed by Sura 4, 171. So, there you go.

58:47

Not a whole lot to add to what was said because Shabir ignored what I said, too.

58:53

It doesn't matter whether you go to the Matthew or Mark. Now, of course, Shabir's argument is, again, the slavish,

59:01

Matthew is editing Mark, trying to clean up Mark. Why is Mark still in the New Testament, Shabir?

59:10

The reality is, in almost every instance you bring up, Mark is the one giving more of the information.

59:17

And it's very clear in Mark, because he splits the story up.

59:25

And what's in between the two stories? What's going on in Jerusalem?

59:31

The coming destruction of Jerusalem. The rejection of Jerusalem. Mark, Chapter 13.

59:39

What is Jerusalem and the people of Israel likened to? A fig tree.

59:46

Oh, yes. Any meaningful, deep, fair reading of the

59:57

Gospel accounts, which, by the way, the author of the Quran never had the opportunity of doing. Any meaningful, fair reading of the

01:00:08

New Testament at this point, and of Matthew and Mark, is not going to communicate to you,

01:00:15

Oh, I think that Mark was inadvertently demonstrating that, even though all through Mark you have the deity of Christ being presented here, he was showing him to be ignorant.

01:00:31

And then Matthew decides to try to clean that up. That is so ridiculous.

01:00:38

And yet, that's what you're proposing. And you want us to be careful in handling your text, when you just...

01:00:47

It's like the woman touching Jesus. Who touched me? I don't know. I don't know who did it.

01:00:56

The continued use of... I don't care how many times D -Dot said it, D -Dot did not know what he was talking about when it came to the

01:01:04

New Testament. He did not read it in a fair, meaningful, equal, balanced way.

01:01:13

He didn't do it. And that's the problem. So, take a look at Matthew 21, 18 and following.

01:01:24

Compare that with Mark 11, 12 -14, then 20 -24. And see how...

01:01:33

When you see what goes in between those texts. You see what's going on in the ministry in Jerusalem.

01:01:40

You see the rejection of the people. And everything that's going along with that.

01:01:47

I think it's important to notice that. For example, what happens as soon as Jesus enters into Jerusalem?

01:01:57

In verse 15. You've got verses 11, 12, 13, 14.

01:02:05

Then verse 15, what happens? Then they came to Jerusalem, and what happens? Jesus drives out the merchants from the temple.

01:02:14

That's what goes on. He does not permit anyone to carry merchandise. He began to teach, and my house should be called a house of prayer, not a house of robber's den, and so on and so forth.

01:02:26

And it says in verse 18, The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy him, for they were afraid of him, for the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.

01:02:39

When evening came, they would go out of the city, and as they were passing by in the morning, what?

01:02:45

They saw the fig tree rithered from the roots up. Do you really think? Do you really think that Mark didn't put that there purposefully?

01:02:56

That he wasn't trying to communicate something? If you would just read the New Testament. With the level of honoring its authors, you would read any secular book.

01:03:07

The fact of the matter is, you know one of the things that upsets me? You people think the writers of the New Testament were stupid. You're really disrespectful to them.

01:03:17

You really are. And given that you don't know almost anything, I'm sorry, most of you don't know anything about New Testament backgrounds.

01:03:26

Very, very few of you do. Be honest. Be honest. How many of you have studied the backgrounds of the

01:03:34

New Testament? Know anything about the New Testament period? Know anything about the literature of the New Testament period? Know anything about the

01:03:39

Mishnah? How much that reflects back? You think these people were stupid.

01:03:46

You accuse them of basic level errors. And I know some people do the same thing to the

01:03:56

Quran. But if you thought I did, there would be all sorts of reviews of my book on that subject.

01:04:03

Documenting that. And there aren't, as you know. Alright. We're not done. We're going to go jumbo today,

01:04:10

I would imagine. It's been a little while. And we're still talking about textual criticism.

01:04:19

And textual issues. Yesterday on Twitter, someone was kind enough to direct me to a post that had been written on the

01:04:35

Logos Forums. Now, they probably call them the Logos Forums. But I've never gotten involved and didn't even know they existed.

01:04:45

Maybe I'd seen something before. I don't know. Link to it. I went and looked at it.

01:04:54

And an individual, and it didn't copy in here. It didn't copy into Evernote.

01:05:01

It was a KJB 1611 moniker. Nick, whatever.

01:05:11

This fellow talks about being, he says, I am KJB only, but I teach Greek and Hebrew in undergraduate level and in seminary level.

01:05:18

I can sight read most of the Greek New Testament and memorizing John's Gospel in Greek and read the Greek and Hebrew Textus Receptus every week.

01:05:24

Man, if I start off a response like that, can you imagine the number of people,

01:05:32

Oh, you're so arrogant. I guess if you're on the other side. In church, his preaching is done with the

01:05:40

KJB. I follow along in my Greek TR. You can get a free first year Hebrew class on my website. He says to this person,

01:05:51

Perhaps you would do well to purchase a KJB only bundle yourself and get a bit more of an accurate idea of what KJB only people believe.

01:05:57

Then he says this, Also, I am thankful for the work James White has done dealing with Islam, Catholicism, etc.

01:06:03

Regrettably, when dealing with KJB only people, he seems to pick out the most extreme and most indefensible people like Mr.

01:06:10

Anderson. The reality is that I've dealt with every strain of KJB onlyism.

01:06:21

My book deals with every strain of KJB onlyism. I've dealt with people like D .A.

01:06:28

Waite. I've dealt with ecclesiastical text stuff, TR only stuff.

01:06:36

The fact of the matter is the people that started this movement are the loudmouths.

01:06:41

They are the Steven Andersons and the Peter Ruckmans and the Gale Ripplingers. They are the ones that cause most of the trouble.

01:06:48

Are they not? How many churches have been split by these people? Dozens. Hundreds. So, it is simply dishonest.

01:06:59

It's totally unfair to say, Ah, you're just picking on the worst. Well, I have to deal with the

01:07:05

Sam Gipps that are putting out videos. Very high quality videos as far as the production, not as far as the material.

01:07:17

Steven Anderson is putting movies out there. You expect me to ignore them? My book starts off by saying,

01:07:26

Here is the spectrum. From people who prefer the Byzantine manuscript tradition, to the

01:07:31

Textus Receptus folks, into the different kinds of KJB onlyism, the text isn't inspired

01:07:37

KJB onlyism, to the text is inspired KJB onlyism, as in the English text. I laid all that out.

01:07:45

Why make it sound like I didn't? I don't know why that is. In my view at least,

01:07:53

Ruckmanism is extremely harmful to KJB only position, because it paints it in a very bizarre light. Okay, but who has had more influence on more people?

01:08:03

Peter Ruckman or you? I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

01:08:08

But then this is why I wanted to focus on this. And this is what was communicated to me last night. I wish

01:08:15

Mr. White, would agree with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, he subscribes to as an

01:08:22

Elder of Reformed Baptist Church, and recognize, quote, that the Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the

01:08:31

New Testament in Greek, which at the time the writing of it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, comma, end quote.

01:08:42

And recognize that when his own confession of faith, quotes 1 John 5, 7, Mark 16, etc., it means that Texas Receptus is the word of God, not a critical text that did not exist, nor was in use by God's people, and thus was not kept pure in all ages.

01:08:56

Now, I did a ScreenFlow video, I think it was during the week that I was home between Colorado trips, if I recall correctly, on some of the many problems with the ecclesiastical text position.

01:09:12

And I said in that video that the ecclesiastical text position, whichever one of the many it is, because the fact of the matter is, this kind of assertion being made here is vague purposefully.

01:09:34

We know that John Calvin, numerous times, corrected what would eventually become known as the

01:09:43

Texas Receptus. We also know that there was never a church council, the

01:09:53

Westminster divines did not meet and examine manuscripts, the fathers who wrote the

01:10:06

London Baptist Confession of Faith over the period of time of its development and its various early incarnations, etc.

01:10:16

did not meet in council and examine the issue of textual criticism.

01:10:25

They did not look at manuscripts, many of them were not aware, all of them would not have been aware of what is available to us today in regards to a knowledge of not only what the text looked like at the end of the medieval period going into the

01:10:50

Renaissance Reformation, but what the text looked like at the turn of the millennium, what the text looked like at the beginning of the 6th century, or what the text looked like at the beginning of the 4th century.

01:11:06

That information was not available to them. And so, it is pure pretense, it's make -believe that they're actually addressing textual issues.

01:11:21

They're saying that the Bible was inspired in Greek and Hebrew, but to jump beyond that to say, well, since the

01:11:29

Greek and Hebrew they had, since they had the

01:11:34

Textus Receptus, then that means that this has their authority as the final word.

01:11:43

That is historically absurd. It is, it is,

01:11:49

I'm sorry, I can't even respect that. I know there's a lot of people who believe it, I just can't respect it.

01:11:55

It's indefensible. When did they take this and take the critical text and go, oh, well, no, we, no, this is, when did they do that?

01:12:09

And if they didn't because they had no idea what these were, if this was simply the default that they had, yet they all would have read

01:12:20

Calvin, they all would have, they would have known what Beza said about textual issues.

01:12:27

They would have known about that stuff. They didn't address that. Why not? To take this work, which, well, this didn't exist in 1689.

01:12:48

No, it didn't. No, it did not. If you think this existed in 1689, you do not know what you're talking about.

01:12:58

This is Scribner's work, you know that. This is based upon the textual decisions of the King James translators themselves.

01:13:06

So which edition of the many Textus Recepti, Texti Recepti, is the one being referred to by 1689 that I allegedly don't believe as a

01:13:18

Reformed Baptist elder? Which one? If you can't produce it, don't put it in writing that I don't believe what the

01:13:26

Confession states. Okay? If you can't produce it, and you can't, which one is it?

01:13:31

Which of the five Erasmus, was it Basis 1598? Do I need to go get my Stephanus out of the fireproof safe in the other room?

01:13:38

The 1550 Stephanus text, maybe I need to look at that. Which one is it?

01:13:45

I mean, you've got to be able to provide me with the exact text. Which manuscript? Because as you well know, there is no manuscript in the universe that reads exactly as the

01:13:56

Textus Recepti does. Right? So which one?

01:14:03

That's the problem with this ecclesiastical text stuff. It can't give us a text.

01:14:10

Once you start poking at the TR and saying, well, do you mean this reading? Or this reading?

01:14:16

All of a sudden, you've got to do what Erasmus himself had to do. Erasmus, the

01:14:22

Roman Catholic priest, had to do textual criticism. He had to, even amongst a small number of manuscripts, he had to make choices.

01:14:30

And at times, he made choices based upon the Western text that was found in the Latin Vulgate. You've got to live with that reality.

01:14:39

Are you going to tell me he was inspired? Are you going to tell me Erasmus is the final authority in these things?

01:14:48

The fact of the matter is, there was no council that got together and said,

01:14:59

TR versus Alexandrian versus Western. We go with Byzantine.

01:15:05

Didn't happen. Didn't happen because they didn't know about these things.

01:15:12

So to try to cite their authority about something that they never even contemplated and had any opportunity of even dealing with is an abuse of their writings, an abuse of the

01:15:36

Confession, and to then use that to attack an elder in a

01:15:41

Reformed Baptist church is simply an abuse, period. All of this is utterly indefensible in the context of what we've been talking about today.

01:15:56

Because the parallel to this would be, well, we just simply take whatever

01:16:04

Uthman said and we won't look at anything else. And if Uthman was good enough for people long ago, he should be good enough for us today.

01:16:13

That's exactly what Adnan Rashid said in our debate in London. And that's exactly what the ecclesiastical text people say today to us.

01:16:20

It's the same argument. Same argument. Different text, same argument. It's indefensible.

01:16:29

It will not function out there in the real world where we're trying to present

01:16:38

God's truth within the context of doing meaningful apologetics with world religions.

01:16:45

It may work fine in certain reformed Facebook groups where you all just sit around and impress each other by how many chapters of Turritan you read today.

01:17:01

Might fly real well in there. Don't take it out anywhere else.

01:17:08

Because you'll be walking into an ambush.

01:17:15

Because it's indefensible. You can't take it out there. That's why

01:17:21

I'm very concerned as I'm seeing more and more people who are being attracted to this but who are not being attracted to it because they are interacting in an evangelistic sense with people outside the faith.

01:17:40

It's because they're becoming more and more desirous of being coolly reformed.

01:17:52

If your reformed -dom makes you only worthwhile within reformed -dom, get rid of it.

01:18:08

It's tying you down and ain't doing you any good. I am sick and tired of Calvinists.

01:18:19

Really am. I mean if your

01:18:25

Calvinism leads you to be so if you can't see how that relates to everything else if you can't see how it's to make you mature and grounded and steadfast and patient and calls you to serve in the church and Facebook is not the church.

01:18:49

The local pub is not the church.

01:18:58

If it doesn't if it ain't making you someone who is serving others if you're constantly going after this noodle reform thing or that noodle reform thing so you can be even more reformed than everybody else, you've missed it.

01:19:21

And 15 years from now you will not be reformed. Either you'll be in some little tiny cult someplace some hyper -Calvinist cult someplace with a circle drawn around your left foot and there's the elect and you have to stay on one foot to stay in it.

01:19:37

I've seen it happen. Or you're going to be one of those former Calvinists that saw the light.

01:19:48

So it concerns me. It really, really concerns me that in a day where we are now facing such massive opposition that the greatest gifts we've been given of evidence of the truthfulness of the

01:20:08

Christian faith some people are willing to sacrifice those things just simply to be the cool reformed ones.

01:20:21

Should not ought to be. Should not ought to be. The quote unquote young, restless, and reformed

01:20:28

I've never understood the restless part because to be reformed is not to be restless. To be reformed is to see

01:20:37

God as God is and ourselves as we are as his creatures to truly be reformed.

01:20:47

If you're truly reformed you have had that soul -shattering experience of recognizing that you don't get to run your life.

01:20:57

It's not yours to run. And that God can do with you whatever he will.

01:21:05

You've died, your life is hidden with Christ and God and if he wants to send you to the farthest darkest place of the world, which these days is in the

01:21:12

United States it seems then he can do that. And my coolness and my reputation and my everything else is irrelevant.

01:21:22

And if he calls me to clean bathrooms in a little church and I've cleaned bathrooms in little churches so be it.

01:21:35

It gives you patience, it gives you steadfastness, it makes you want to serve others but it doesn't make you want to be the coolest thing that's ever come down the pike.

01:21:48

And if you're in some competition with other people to prove you're more reformed than they are that you read more

01:21:58

Calvin or you read more Turretin or you read more whoever the flavor of the day is, you have absolutely lost it.

01:22:09

And if there is anybody in this audience that acts that way and uses me as your authority for doing it, you're misrepresenting me.

01:22:21

I mean, excuse me, isn't it fairly obvious I don't do the cool thing. Okay, I mean just look at me.

01:22:31

We don't do the cool stuff. I mean, we're talking about the same stuff that we were talking about 20 years ago.

01:22:46

We're not into the new fads and stuff. We get left behind all the time.

01:22:53

That's okay. It's alright. We can live with that. You grabbed your microphone.

01:22:59

It normally means something. Last week, I decided to sit down and listen to a couple of oldies.

01:23:07

Oldies? The Carpenters? 91, 1989. And one of them was the...

01:23:15

We weren't talking about Islam then, that's for sure. Crucifixion. Yes. And then the other one was on historic fundamentalism.

01:23:22

Yeah, I saw you note those in Facebook. And what prompted me to do that was

01:23:28

I get a call from this guy who said he had just listened to the Crucifixion one. And of course, he's got all the objections that you dealt with in that program.

01:23:39

In fact, you had a caller making those very objections. And of course, this guy's acting as if he...

01:23:45

So I'm like, I need to refresh my memory because I sure thought that that was dealt with. And sure enough, by the time it's over with,

01:23:51

I realize the guy never listened at all. He just saw the title and called. But I think about both of those and you're absolutely right.

01:24:02

And I had a guy walk up to me Sunday morning at church who said, I listened to those because you linked to them.

01:24:09

Now how old was James then? Because he's still saying the same things.

01:24:19

And it's like, yeah, we just keep doing the same thing. And the truth doesn't change just because the years go by.

01:24:28

No. They don't. And I have to remember we have a lot of new folks, a lot of people haven't heard how many times

01:24:34

I've addressed these things over and over again. I am not the world's most patient man. God's still working on me and those things as well.

01:24:44

Someone on Twitter just... I don't do the cool thing. Yeah, I renounced cool and took up wearing plaid shirts too decades ago.

01:24:53

I almost wore a t -shirt today, but I decided it was a fairly important topic, so I dress up a little bit.

01:25:01

Ever since somebody got the bright idea of sticking these cameras in here, then I have to worry about what in the world

01:25:08

I'm going to be wearing. And then our brother in Milwaukee, the

01:25:17

Bishop of Apologetics and Cool Shirts is going in on this DL. Well, look,

01:25:26

I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. I am very thankful that there are serious young men and women of this next generation.

01:25:40

You're going to have to be really serious because of the sacrifices you're going to have to make to stand for Christ. And I believe in Reformed theology with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

01:25:50

It is absolutely central to everything that I do.

01:25:57

I believe in a sovereign God who has preserved His Word. He didn't do it in the way that King James Onlyists or Ecclesiastical Texticists think he did, but I believe

01:26:13

God's preserved His Word. And I believe that there's everything good in reading

01:26:20

Calvin. I wish I could spend more time with Turretin. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but it's the motivation and it's the result.

01:26:33

If that isn't leading you to be a more stable person, to be a more supportive person of your church, if you're missing the fellowship of your local church to do

01:26:52

Reformed things, you're missing it. You're missing it.

01:26:59

It's a game for you. And it won't last. It will not last.

01:27:06

That's all there is to it. So, don't someone just recognize

01:27:17

Doc the Dwarf in the background on Twitter. Yes. And I told everybody that some flowers were coming.

01:27:29

And here's I just got this vase I got this vase on the

01:27:36

Navajo reservation yesterday. It's one of those horsehair Navajo vases. Yeah, are you familiar with those?

01:27:44

Oh. But these are dried

01:27:52

Indian paintbrush. Remember the Indian paintbrush pictures I've been posting as I've been climbing and I found them up on Mount Evans and stuff like that.

01:28:01

Well, I found some dried ones. They're the ones I could find. If anyone knows if anyone out there knows where to find

01:28:08

Indian paintbrush in silk so it actually looks like an Indian paintbrush because these are dried. Please let me know.

01:28:14

I do like the color scheme. It blends very well with the studio. It really does. Well, there you go. So I told you this could be there.

01:28:20

Good choice there. Thank you very much. There's a stop at Monument Valley.

01:28:29

I took some beautiful pictures at Monument Valley. I haven't put them up on Facebook. Every time I've ever gone through there the stops are empty.

01:28:35

Nobody's there. Oh, these were packed out. It was great. And there was one that had the horsehair pottery.

01:28:43

So there it is. If you're wondering what the flowers are I've fallen in love with the

01:28:48

Indian paintbrush flower. I don't know why but I just love it. It's gorgeous. I ran into it on Guardsmen Pass up in Utah above 9 ,000 feet.

01:28:58

They have them up on Evans and I don't know if it's just simply being able to look at the top of the world and look at that beautiful flower.

01:29:06

I don't know what it is but there you go. If anybody knows where I get some silk ones of those that would be really great.

01:29:13

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. Thank you very much for joining us on the Dividing Line today. I know that was some heavy subjects and things like that but should be here all of August so that means,

01:29:25

Lord willing, once again on Thursday we'll be back and we'll have other things to be addressing that hopefully will be just as useful to you as well.