A Little Bit on Eugene Peterson, a Whole Lot on James Simpson

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:04

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line.

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My name is James White coming to you via Skype from Evergreen, Colorado, where I will mention

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I a couple hours ago crushed my PR on the Witter Gulch climb.

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I didn't expect to. I really didn't. I did not expect to. I expected to be two minutes behind.

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I took a minute off. None of you care about that except for just a few people. But there's been one or two people that have said,

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I really appreciate your encouraging us along those lines. I like to hear about it. There's one or two. The rest of you are just going, would you please get to something important?

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But hey, you know what? See, it says Mount Evans, Colorado here. I tweeted a picture of Mount Evans from part of my ride today earlier, said my nemesis on Saturday.

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And I'm sorry, but I do have to get a little psyched up to be able to ride a bike for,

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I hope, you know, my whole goal is just under three hours. But last year I did 245, two hours and 45 minutes of absolute agony.

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I mean, you are right on the rivets. You're breathing as hard as you can, your maximum heart rate for almost three hours.

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And most people find that really stupid and they don't understand it. But the feeling is, it's hard to explain standing at the top of Mount Evans, 14 ,130 feet above sea level.

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You can see the curvature of the earth. You successfully dodged the mountain goats down there.

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Once I couldn't use the restroom at the top because the mountain goats took over the restroom. I'm not sure how that works. But anyway, it happened.

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And the feeling, I don't even, I don't know, only weird people understand what that's all about.

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And so that's what I'm doing on Saturday. And coming down is sort of the bummer.

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That's the easy part. It's the going up part. That's a lot of work. So I PR'd the

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Witter Gulch climb today. And so not even what we're going to be talking about later on the program can bring me down.

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I've still got the post super hard effort high going.

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I guess that's a good thing because otherwise the stuff would be really, really depressing.

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Anyway, the studio audience is laughing, but that's OK. We can we can make the studio audience laugh.

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So before we get to the Janet Mefford show today, which aired today, the interview with James Simpson, wherein the fact that he never contacted me, did any meaningful research and so on, sort of just got ignored for some strange odd reason.

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But anyway, before we respond to that, some big news broke yesterday and then then it changed just today.

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And I am thankful for a few folks on Twitter who let me know about this because my attention has been elsewhere, as you can imagine.

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Lo and behold, there's been a retraction. Let me tell you the story. Yesterday, the story broke concerning Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message.

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Now, let me just mention The Message is a paraphrase. OK, it's not a

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Bible version. It is a paraphrase. Whenever I find people using paraphrases in sermons and things like that,

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I. It gives me hives, especially if they're making some kind of theological point from it.

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Paraphrases, you know, I suppose in some devotional context or something. OK. All right.

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Whatever. Not my thing. But it's just one person's, you know, reference to what the

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Bible supposedly taught or something along those lines. OK, I'm not saying it's sinful.

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It just needs to be recognized for what it is. It's it is a paraphrase. It's one person's interpretation. And, you know, preachers paraphrase in the pulpit all the time.

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And if you're basing your paraphrase upon a knowledge of the original languages and things like that, OK, and I'm sure

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Eugene Peterson knows the original languages, but it's still just that it's paraphrases, one person's opinion. So I'm never

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I've never been big on paraphrases, whether it was the Living Bible or or even super simplified

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English translations. To be honest with you, my I've repeated this many, many times. But if if the

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New Testament is written at level 10 and you produce a translation at level five or three, that seems to be the ones that sell these days.

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What happened to all the meaning that is found in vocabulary, grammar, syntax, the construction of sentences?

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So what happened to all the meaning between the 10 and the three? Well, it's gone.

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And I remember I think it's I think it was when the message came out. I think it was when the message came out, the message came out somewhere around ninety five, ninety six.

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Then it was when the message came out. But there was some some paraphrase that came out when I was at the Christian bookseller sellers convention with Bethany House Publishers years ago, right on the same time, the

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King James only controversy came out. And I remember going and getting one because that's one thing about CBD and Christian booksellers conventions,

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CBC, whatever. Um, you end up back then, I'm not sure if they had weight limits on your on your on your luggage, but you ended up with all these free books, which was sort of fun to be able to go do that kind of thing.

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And so I remember picking one up and I took it back to the Bethany House booth and I was sitting there thumbing through it.

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And I remember so clearly the thought that crossed my mind was I could never defend the doctrine or justification from this because it just it's so badly lax.

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Um, any kind of sufficient specificity and language, propitiation, imputation, you know, sometimes

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I had to get out my Greek New Testament to figure out where is he? I I don't understand what he's trying to say here.

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And I don't I'm sure I am in the text. And so, yeah, it was it was pretty it was pretty messy.

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So I I've never read anything by Dr. Peterson, to be perfectly honest with you. Um, just hasn't really crossed my radar screen.

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So yesterday when the story broke, um, that, uh, yeah, New Testament published in 1993 and 1998.

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OK, somewhere around there. Yeah. Um, when the story broke, I was like, well, is this really all that shocking?

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I guess his denominational background years ago was PCUSA. We know about the

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PCUSA type thing that that that goes along with that.

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And the issue for a lot of liberal Presbyterians is sort of water under the bridge.

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And so I was going to talk about that because the comments that he made about basically saying, you know, it seems like that argument is sort of over with.

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And I've I've I've known all these wonderful homosexual couples. It was your standard collapse of someone who used to hold a different view with the culture type thing until a few hours ago.

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And then a few hours ago, well, first of all, this morning, I see people saying, well,

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I'm not going to, um, you know, we saw what was it,

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Lifeway? Lifeway saying we're not going to sell his books anymore. And then shortly after that, all of a sudden there's a retraction.

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And I affirm everything that's biblical and the statement that, well, the reporter asked me if this and if that and if this and if that.

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And I was a little hesitant, I mean, you know, OK, you're 84 years old, so maybe you can just go, well, there is some confusion or something.

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I don't I don't know. But the retraction, you know, I believe marriage between one man and one woman.

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OK, why? Why? What's what's the foundation?

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What's changed from what you said in the report to what you're saying now? How has anything been altered during that that time period?

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And could it be that maybe possibly the fact that bookstores are saying they're not going to sell your books anymore might have something to do with the retraction?

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It would be nice if there had been a little something more in the way of substance to the retraction, some explanation of really, well,

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I said this, but but but I should have said this when someone says, well, I answered in the moment.

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I've never really understood what that meant outside of oops, or I didn't expect that kind of response or I didn't expect there to be any blowback from this or I don't know.

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But we've been saying for a long, long, long, long, long, long time just to, you know, do not be surprised by the tsunami and of of apostasy on the issue of the definition of marriage, human sexuality, gender.

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Isn't it? It just still continues to strike me, still continues to strike me at how quickly there was a pivoting.

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I mean, it's like the day after. Well, OK, two weeks after Obergefell.

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So everybody can get to party and do stuff like that two weeks after Obergefell.

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It's like homosexuality has become yesterday's big thing, and now it's transgenderism, now it's the transgender movement, now it's trans rights.

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And all the rest of this stuff, it was it was just like, OK, got that one. Let's move. It seemed to be fairly well planned, actually, to take place.

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And if you didn't have a solid foundation for dealing with homosexuality, you probably didn't have a solid foundation for dealing with gender issues and things like that.

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And so those denominations and churches that have abandoned biblical authority a long time ago, abandoned the idea that God has spoken, already come up with the idea that I can be smarter than Jesus was and I can have a view of Scripture different than Jesus.

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I'll still trust him for my salvation, which again, I'll never, never figure that out on the part of liberals.

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I will trust Jesus for my salvation. However, I'm not going to trust him in his view of Scripture or marriage or manhood, womanhood, any of that type of stuff.

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How does that work? How is he trustworthy to bring about your salvation and eternity, but not so much on the views that he had on other things?

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This is why I'll never be a liberal. In fact, watching some people accusing me of being a liberal recently really does, you either have to laugh or cry.

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So you might as well laugh because it's just it's so absurd that you just you just wonder what is what is in the air?

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I haven't seen any black helicopters around, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe they've adopted invisibility cloaks and they're spraying something because there's something in the air or in the water, something because just the world has just gone every single day.

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You wake up and go, really? No, I can't stop the world. I want to get off things just so, so, so, so, so weird.

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But anyway, like I said, you know, so so one fellow who did a paraphrase collapses on the issue and then the next day he tried to do damage control.

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This is this is should not be something that is overly surprising to us. Many people did respond by basically saying, yeah, so we sort of expected something along those lines.

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But it's going to it's not so much these folks. I mean, the you know,

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PCUSA is a tough place to be. That's why I, you know, one of the leading voices in this field is

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Dr. Robert Gagnon, and he teaches at a PCUSA seminary. And a lot of us have sat back for a long time going, how long can that happen?

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How long can that go on? Because the the sexual revolutionaries are totalitarians.

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They do not allow for any other perspective other than their own. They have proven that over and over again.

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And once they take over the denominational machinery and things like that, they will not brook opposition.

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You've seen that it's Princeton and what happened with Tim Keller there and stuff like that.

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They're totalitarians. You cannot you cannot disagree with them. And so it's one thing to see it in those denominations, but you're going to be seeing it more and more in historically much more conservative denominations.

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It's going to it's going to continue happening. Just get used to it, not in the sense of stop thinking about it or stop praying about it.

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But it shouldn't be something that just makes you go, oh, the sky is falling and God's lost control and and and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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There really isn't any reason to go there because of the fact that what we're seeing is a part of the giving over.

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That's the language paradigm is the is the term that is used. Pareto can

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God gave them over. And if our society is so in love with the fulfillment of its own lusts, that it will do what it's doing in regards to.

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Human sexuality and marriage and children, I mean, the abuse of children that that is going on this.

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Well, I'm not going to I'm not going to force my child into any gender stereotypes.

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I mean, this is just child abuse. It's insanity. It's being given over.

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And if our society goes, you know what, we're going to embrace that, that's pretty cool. We're good with that.

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What do you expect other than judgment? How can you read the scriptures and not see that what you sow is what you're going to reap?

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And if you so to the flesh, if you so rebellion, if you so so hatred of God's law and God's ways.

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Can you really say God bless this mess? You really can't. And I think it was like September 13th, 2001, that I sort of said to people, the only way we can ask for God's blessing upon this nation.

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This was before Obergefell. This was before all the trans stuff and everything else said about the only way we can ask for God's blessing upon this nation is

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God bless us with repentance, because that is really that is really what this nation needs.

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So the the Peterson stuff I'm thinking is going to be an ongoing thing because, you know, there was a bunch of people all excited on one side yesterday.

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And now today it seems like a different story. And it's sort of like I have a feeling there's going to be a little more coming out on that over the next next few days.

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The reality is that one guy who does a paraphrase cannot paraphrase out of the text, the plain statements of Scripture.

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And you can't get rid of what Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 19, verses four through six.

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You can't get rid of First Corinthians. You can't get rid of Romans one. And believe it or not, you really I know a lot of people think they can.

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You can't get rid of Leviticus 18 through 20 either. Not if you're going to seriously read the New Testament, not if you could seriously listen to what the

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New Testament says in regards to God's law issues like incest.

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First Corinthians mentions these things. And if you're going to be serious, you can't get rid of this stuff.

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And just because one person decides to start ignoring that doesn't mean that the authority of those things have changed.

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So we have to be firmly rooted, grounded so we're not blown about by every wind of doctrine.

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And especially in the field of the revolution going on and the willingness of the revolutionaries to use government authority to persecute those that will not go along with the revolution.

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Got to stand firm. But you've got to know why. And when you hear other people entering into apostasy, you can't let that bother you.

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In the sense of you can't go, oh, you know, maybe I was wrong or, oh, what if what if these guys have seen something

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I haven't seen? That kind of stuff. Of course, that does mean you have to have thought through the arguments.

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That's why we do the debates that we've done and done all the programs we've done on the various books that have come out and continue to come out pretty much all the time.

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And there you go. I'm seeing some stuff in Twitter that is that is confusing me here.

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Oh, OK. All right. Micah is talking to people and responding to a bunch of stuff all at once,

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I guess. So we'll just let that slide at the moment. OK, so.

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Got notification, I'm going to. Well, that's that's a problem.

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I don't have as much screen room as I have in the past. There we go. I'll have to do it that way.

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Got notification. Was it yesterday?

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I think it was yesterday concerning the fact that Janet Mefford was going to be airing an interview with James Simpson, who wrote the

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American Thinker hit piece on me on June 24th.

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I am very thankful that though Janet disagrees with the dialogues

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I did with Yasir Qadhi, we're going to be listening to why and I'll be responding to those claims and those questions that she's at least going to do something

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American thinker wouldn't do. And that is allow me to respond. That's I would think that would sort of be a given in most situations, but in the world we live in today, whether on the far right or the far left, that's that's not the way things are.

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You're allowed to rail at people and not really take any responsibility in most situations.

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So tomorrow I'll be recording with Janet in response to what was aired today.

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I did. I've listened twice now to the program.

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I've taken the time today to put it into audio note taker. So we're playing major segments of it and I'm going to be responding to the comments that were made by Mr.

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Simpson and by Janet on the program today. I have more time to do so.

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Janet's program is a syndicated program and therefore there are breaks and things like that.

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And you don't get as much time as I have just doing a webcast. You don't have to stop for things like that and take breaks and so on and so forth.

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And so we're going to respond. I did a preemptive response yesterday and it is interesting to compare what

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I said then with what ended up airing. And I need to start off by saying that my primary objections to Mr.

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Simpson's article were not even raised. Never was it pointed out or even discussed that Mr.

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Simpson did not contact me. That he could have. That any meaningful journalist would have.

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That there were numerous errors that could have been corrected had he contacted me.

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Never even mentioned. Not even mentioned. For example, we will see later on, he will actually raise the issue, were

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Yasser Qadhi and I making money? Because, and again, this man's an investigative journalist but he evidently doesn't like to do the investigative part.

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I'm sorry that may sound mean but this is simplistic stuff. We're going to hear him saying, well here,

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I want to start off with this. Let me play a section here and we also need to find out if the sound's going to work.

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The sound doesn't work. It's not going to be good. Here's, let me play a section and I'm not speeding this up or slowing it down.

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We're just going to go ahead and play it at standard speed here. Let me play this section right here.

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And I hate that. And I think Dr. White is of the position that he has been doing debates for a long time.

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His goals are noble because he says we're just talking about our differences. I'm not compromising the gospel. I've shared the gospel with Muslims all over the place.

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What reason do you have? I'm just going to ask you straight so we can let listeners know about this. What reason do you have to suspect that this particular dialogue puts someone like Dr.

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White into the role of the useful idiot, a man who could be used by his opponent for nefarious purposes?

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Well, for example, he talks about how he's gone over the world and he has spoken in mosques in other countries, which would normally be considered a dangerous thing to do.

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And I know for a fact that that's true because the church that I belong to, we support

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Christians who proselytize to Muslims in Muslim countries.

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And they can't even say what countries they're in, let alone what they're doing, what city, what town.

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They can't talk about it. Everything is in code because it literally is dangerous for them.

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So that begs the question, if it's so dangerous for them, how does James White walk in to these dangerous areas and get an open door invitation to a mosque to proselytize to however many

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Muslims are sitting in the audience and listening? That's a good question. Why would they put up with it?

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Why do they do that? Because under normal circumstances, somebody genuinely there to attempt to make converts or even discuss the

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Bible is risking their life, and yet Mr. White has no problem at all.

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That stinks to me. And the other thing that I don't like about it is one that really bothers me the most is how he manages and why they let him come in and talk.

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And I think, cynical me, I think it's to establish what he's doing as legitimate and establish the misinformation that these people are going to be open -minded about this.

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Yeah. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. Wow. That's one of the most insulting things that have been said to me, and it's also one of the most absurd things

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I've ever heard in my life. I'll be perfectly honest with you. Again, this man's done no research. What mosques have

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I been in? East London Mosque in London. You know, there's been some terrorist attacks in London, but that wouldn't be one of those places where you couldn't tell people where you are.

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That's not a Muslim -majority country quite yet. South Africa, less than three percent of the population is

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Muslim, so the majority of the mosques I've been in have been in South Africa.

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So that doesn't fit the paradigm. So the entire parallel that the man tries to put together, because, see,

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I know people who are in majority -Muslim countries, and I know they can't mention where they are. I have friends right now, by the way, friends who have access to Muslim -only countries in very special ways, who, by the way, think the

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Qadi dialogues were awesome. By the way, Mr. Simpson, that's exactly how those people that you're supporting in those countries do their missionary work.

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They're not standing on street corners with signs, and they're not doing formal debates saying that Muhammad was a false prophet, because they wouldn't be able to do that.

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You know how they're reaching people in those countries? Yeah, they're actually getting to know people and investing themselves in their lives and opening up the opportunity of showing

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Jesus to people so they can explain the Gospel to them. That's how it's done in the rest of the world, and we sit in our safe little

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American homes and take potshots at people when they try to do the same kind of thing. Isn't that amazing?

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So why am I able to waltz in? Well, it's really simple, sir. The reason that I've received these invitations is that when we do our debates, we do them in a straightforward fashion.

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Now, Mr. Simpson hasn't watched these debates. He doesn't do research. He's an investigative reporter that doesn't investigate, because if he did, then he would have seen literally hours of my doing the exact thing that he's saying

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I'm not doing, because when I go into those mosques, watch the debate that I did with Yusuf Ismail.

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Now, Yusuf Ismail is a pretty aggressive guy, so it was a straightforward debate, and right there in the

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Juma Masjid, used to be the largest masjid in the southern hemisphere. It's the second largest now.

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Right there in the Juma Masjid, I am specifically not only proclaiming the deity of Christ, but saying that Mr.

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Ismail would not pass my beginning Greek class because of the errors that he's made, that the author of the

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Quran did not understand what is found in the New Testament, that Jesus Christ is God, that every single Muslim in that room, he is your maker, he's your creator, he sustains you, you cannot view him as a mere prophet.

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But you see, we can't bother Mr. Simpson with these facts, because that would just mess up the whole political perspective that we're saying, and that's what this is.

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It's a political perspective. It's not a gospel perspective. It's politics with religion smeared on the top, rather than having the heart of the gospel, and then dealing with ramifications that might have.

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And so why can I waltz in? Because I actually treat Muslims with respect, and that's,

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I guess, one of the great heresies, is that I actually seek to understand, accurately represent, but you know, that's what

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I've been doing with Roman Catholics and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses for a long, long, long time, and I guess

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I just didn't know I was doing it wrong that whole time, but evidently I was.

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And so it has nothing to do with the left. Why in the world would people in the

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Juma Masjid in South Africa be concerned about what's going on in the

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United States as far as some leftist politics? I mean, they're not on the same page there.

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They've got a lot of differences, even with the Muslims in the United States, on certain things. So this whole conspiracy theory idea that, well, our missionaries have to be in hiding.

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Yeah, if I went to those nations they're in, I'd be doing the exact same thing. But South Africa or Australia or England are not those situations, and if you'd done your homework, then you'd know that's where those debates took place, and you wouldn't be making these kinds of incredibly, incredibly foolish statements.

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But we also had this in this section. I don't like about it is who's paying for it all? Good question.

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We don't know any of these things. Good question. I don't know. I do know that, you know, Dr.

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White... Now, who's paying for it all? The church that sponsored the first night paid for it.

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They didn't pay for me. My ministry paid for me. See, what we do is we try to make pennies scream, and so one of the reasons we set this up the way we did is

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I've been invited to go speak someplace else. And so I had already been at one place.

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I had already been in Atlanta, and then I went to Memphis for this dialogue, and then

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I was speaking in southern Mississippi at the Deep South Founders Conference. And so what I was doing is

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I was putting this in between other speaking events so that we can save money.

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And I stayed at a—it wasn't a fancy hotel. It was a cut above, sort of, a

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Motel 6, but pretty much along the same lines. And who paid for that? Alpha Omega Ministries.

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We did that. Because see, this is called reaching out to people and doing evangelistic ministry and seeking to equip the saints and reach out to Muslims, and that's sort of why people support the ministry, and that's why we do what we do.

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So who's paying for this? We did. Are you insinuating that we're on the take or something?

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You want to substantiate that kind of slander against Christian ministries? I don't consider that a good question at all, not if you don't have any evidence, but Mr.

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Simpson doesn't seem to be concerned about having evidence one way or the other anyway, so why not just throw the insinuations out there?

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Why not? That, you know, Dr. White objected to saying that this was something that he—a meeting that he held in a church, and so as part of a church service, you know, that would really truly be very sacrilegious for him to bring in somebody else to proselytize to Christians.

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So he raised the point that no, this was a forum specifically for that, and there was even a fee to get in.

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Stop. Never said it. Never said it. What did

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I say? I said it was a ticketed event. Oh, but you have to buy tickets.

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No, you don't. Haven't you ever heard of having to get tickets so you know how many people are coming and whether you're going to have enough seats?

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There was no charge. You had to register. You had to get the tickets. Why? Because there were only so many seats in the church, and so you didn't want to have 150 people standing outside in the dark not able to get in.

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And so there was tickets. At first, they had a certain number, and they increased them because we had such an interest in it and so on and so forth, but no, there wasn't any charge to get in.

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You had to get the tickets so that people would know how many people were coming. This was not a money -raising event.

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And again, if you call and ask people, then you don't make mistakes like this.

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Now, I'm sorry about being sarcastic, but this man's called an investigative reporter. He doesn't know how to investigate. I am sick and tired of being lied about by people who call themselves

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Christians, and I think I have a right to be sick and tired of being lied about by people who call themselves

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Christians, okay? This thing about money is so absurd, so offensive, and not a single shred of evidence is brought forth.

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But hey, as long as we're defending America, we can say anything we want.

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We can slander as much as we want, and we don't have to worry about facts. We don't have to worry about facts.

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Is this really how things are now in the church? No. So, okay, that's fine.

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So are now Yasser Khadi and Dr. James White, they turned this into a profit center going around the nation, having debates about Christianity versus Islam?

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I mean, I don't know, but these are all questions to ask. I don't know, but I'm going to throw the slander out there anyways, because I'm irresponsible.

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I don't know. You could have found out. You could have called the church.

34:37

I think that some people have even shown the website's still up. There's all sorts of things you could have done.

34:43

But you didn't, because it's not about actually finding out the facts. It's about pressing forward with a particular meme, a particular idea, a particular political perspective, that this is a stealth jihad, and so we're going to promote this, and what the facts are.

35:01

And the second thing is, and that was the first thing. So the first thing was, no discussion of the fact that Mr.

35:08

Simpson has no idea what he's talking about when he talks about me, my ministry, or motivations, even though we've made it very, very plain.

35:16

He simply cannot be bothered to do any meaningful research on this subject whatsoever.

35:22

I get that. Okay. Secondly, why? I listened to the whole thing.

35:30

Nothing about the content. Nothing. We did ours. We did deep theology.

35:36

We did trinity. We did nothing about the content at all.

35:42

Could someone please explain to me? Can someone please explain to me? Even if you consider yourself a fair -minded critic, why is it that I have yet to hear any of these critics?

35:56

Now I'm, okay, let's be honest. I've stopped listening to the criticisms, because they're just repeating themselves.

36:02

I mean, Brandon House, isn't it funny? Brandon House does this stuff, and then

36:07

Paul Flynn attacks me, and two days later, Paul Flynn is now on Brandon House's network.

36:13

And then Andy Webb attacks me from Dallas, and two days later, he's on Brandon House's network.

36:19

I wonder what the connection is. It must be pure circumstance. There's no connection, right?

36:26

No, of course not. And so then they start interviewing each other, and it's just the same stuff that we have refuted over and over and over again.

36:35

You just repeat it enough times, and unfortunately, people start to believe it. That's what we see going on.

36:42

So I'm not listening to a lot of it anymore, because it's just like, you want to come up with something new, let me know.

36:47

But we've blown away everything else, so if you won't respond to what we're saying, why continue to waste our time?

36:57

But nobody, why is it that no Christians are going, now, okay,

37:03

I don't necessarily like the idea of the encounter, but to be honest, they specifically denied this was your standard ecumenical interfaith dialogue thing, they denied that they were doing anything like that, and the subjects that they dealt with, my goodness, they were specifically on how a person's saved, on the

37:24

Gospel, the Trinity, the Bible, Quran, and so on and so forth. I mean, it was specifically on theological issues.

37:32

Why isn't there anything like that? Why do I not hear Christians saying, isn't it amazing that a

37:37

Christian minister got to sit in a mosque and explain the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the necessity of the atonement, and that's something really to be thankful for.

37:48

I haven't heard one of you people saying that, and it really makes me wonder what your motivations are. What are your motivations?

37:56

Why doesn't that make you rejoice? I don't get that.

38:01

Can you explain that to me? I'd really like to understand that. I'd like to understand that.

38:07

So going back to the beginning of the program, just, you know, like I said, the ideas of Mr.

38:15

Simpson, no research, continues to make face -plantingly amazing errors, even weeks afterwards when he could have had time to be doing maybe some catch -up research, maybe.

38:27

You know, that would have been helpful. No, won't do it. Secondly, nothing about the content, nothing about the fact that all this interfaith dialogue stuff, we blew that away.

38:36

We specifically said that's not what we're doing. I said, you know, all this stuff about Yasser Qadhi says things that conservative

38:43

Muslims say. Yeah, I said that at the beginning, the first two minutes. You know, the reason we want to have this is because he represents a conservative

38:50

Islamic perspective, and this is what conservative Muslims mean. If you're gonna minister the gospel to them, you need to know what they believe, and guess what?

38:58

I don't like some of the things they believe, and they don't like some of the things I believe, and if you don't like that, then maybe you're never going to actually minister to Muslims.

39:08

But those of us who actually do that already know those things, and hence are not only shocked and surprised.

39:15

So when people start playing clips of Yasser Qadhi, Yasser Qadhi believes Muslim things. I just sort of go, yeah, that's why we talked.

39:26

Okay, anyway, let's get back to the start because we're never gonna get done if we don't play stuff.

39:33

Should I pick it up? Yeah. All right, I'm gonna take it up to 1 .2. I don't know why

39:39

I feel the need to let everybody know that I play things a little faster so we can get done faster, but I just figure someone's gonna—it's not gonna stop anybody from saying, hey, you played that fast.

39:49

You added the audio, but I still say it anyway. So let's get started at the beginning. Thanks for joining us again.

39:54

Well, we are going to tackle a very important issue on today's broadcast, and that is interreligious dialogue with Islamists.

40:00

Now, in the last several weeks, there has been a growing controversy over an interreligious dialogue that actually took place several months ago between Dr.

40:07

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Dr. Yasser Qadhi, who is Dean of Academic Affairs at Almagrib Institute, as well as a resident scholar of the

40:14

Memphis Islamic Center. Now, if you've listened to me on the radio for any length of time, you know that I have interviewed Dr. White many times over the last several years.

40:21

He is a very smart man. He has written some great Christian books that I have found to be very, very helpful. But I have to admit that as more and more people are weighing in on this particular controversial dialogue that occurred in Memphis, I do have some very serious concerns about what happened there, which is why

40:36

I wanted to do this show. And primarily, I wanted to address it because of the dangers of interreligious dialogue from both a biblical and a civilizational perspective.

40:43

Now, I would just simply offer a real obvious correction. Interfaith dialogue, every time you witness to somebody, is that not an interfaith dialogue?

40:55

We had four Muslims show up last evening at my presentation on Islam in Aurora, Colorado.

41:02

We talked afterwards. Well, they actually participated in the Q &A session as well.

41:08

And is that an interfaith dialogue? Well, yeah, because we were dialoguing in between faiths.

41:14

And I guess every debate I've ever done is an interfaith dialogue. So don't we have to define what we're talking about?

41:20

And didn't we define with repetitive clarity our intentions and purposes in what happened to the dialogues in Memphis, specifically that there is absolutely, positively no desire on our part to be trying to find some middle ground, that we recognize that we can't both be true, that we can't both be right in what we believe?

41:41

Didn't we make that as clear as— how could we have made it any clearer? Could someone tell me that? How could we have made it any clearer?

41:48

No one—I don't think anybody can answer that, because we couldn't have. We were that clear, repetitively, over and over again.

41:55

Anyone who's actually fairly listened to the dialogues—and I guess I should rejoice, because I would imagine the dialogues are getting watched a lot these days, and that's a good thing.

42:06

Now, whether they're being watched all the way through, I think a lot of people that would look for them start—are going to start listening to them and find out that they aren't anything like what they were advertised to be, that they're really too theological, and stop halfway through.

42:18

But hey, maybe some others will find them to be extremely useful, because that's why we did what we did anyways.

42:24

We continue on. And so a very nice -sounding answer is what they call the interfaith dialogue, where Christians and Muslims and Jews and people of other faiths get together and talk about their religions and talk about their similarities, talk about their differences, and talk about, you know, why can't we just get along together?

42:54

But it really isn't that. The interfaith— It really isn't. Why can't we just get along together?

43:01

We specifically said we're not here to sing kumbaya and sweep our differences under the rug.

43:07

But we did say if we live in the same city, we sort of need to get along with one another. We can't be at warfare with one another.

43:15

This is a community. Many of these people honestly believe—now, you may go, oh, that's ridiculous, but many of these people honestly believe that with the election of Donald Trump, they could find themselves in camps like the

43:28

Japanese beginning of World War II. Now, when I first heard one say that, when

43:34

I first had a Muslim say that to me, I was sort of like, huh? What? But they really believe that.

43:41

Now, I don't think that's a possibility. But if you live in a community where people become convinced—the majority of the people around you become convinced that that is what's going to happen, that's going to impact how you see things, isn't it?

43:55

Yeah, yeah, it is. So we were very, very clear in saying this is not that kind of ishy -squishy ecumenical dialogue.

44:06

We do not believe the same things. We need to understand what we believe, and we need to be able to argue about what we believe.

44:13

But at the same time, we need to get along in the same community.

44:19

And it's not good when various groups become isolated from every other group.

44:26

That's not a good thing. You may think it's a wonderful thing. Some of my critics, they want the wall.

44:33

They not only want the wall at the Southern border, they want walls between every single community. That's what they want.

44:41

I'm absolutely convinced of that now. I'm hearing, I'm seeing it in the attitudes of these people. Listen to Brandon Howes.

44:47

Listen to his guttural responses as I'm introducing Yasir Qadhi. There's a man who wants more than one kind of wall.

44:55

There really, really is. There really, really is. Dialogue, like so many of the projects being foisted on us these days, is a calculated strategy of the left to—

45:16

Yeah. Calculated strategy of the left. Yeah. I'm so far on the left.

45:22

I left the Republican Party years ago because they were supporting pro -choice candidates.

45:28

I'm so, so far to the left. Yeah. I'm a real leftist.

45:35

May I point something out? Yasir Qadhi did not arrange this with me. I contacted him and had to talk him into it. So this whole idea that, well, this is all about this stealth jihad thing, and they're trying to chummy up with Christians and make the

45:48

Christians to compromise and stuff like that, all you got to do is a little research to find out

45:55

I'm the one that pursued him. I'm the one that asked him. We had to have lunch beforehand.

46:01

Even then, Yasir Qadhi will admit—I'm sure he will admit if you'll ask him—he was still skeptical. He doesn't want to do debates.

46:08

This is not his kind of thing. I was the one pursuing it because I felt it would be worthwhile.

46:15

And I am—if you want to sit around and say, hey, James White's on the left, hey, you know, fine.

46:23

But I bet you watch the sci -fi channel all day long, too, because he ain't working in the real world. You have no earthly idea what you're talking about.

46:31

It's a sad thing. But, you know, there you go. The left.

46:36

That's what's going on here. Dr. E. J. Dionne Jr. Under the guise of engaging in an equal dialogue about various faiths, it is actually a vehicle for Islamists to insert their supremacist narrative, and for Christians and other majority religions in this country to step aside to make room.

47:09

It's really— Dr. Michael Hayden Hmm. Majority religions. I didn't know that being majority is what made you right.

47:19

In fact, from a Christian perspective, I don't believe that Christianity is the majority in the

47:24

United States. I know a small majority of people actually say they're Christians, but you don't really—do you really honestly think that the majority of people in the

47:34

United States bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ? I don't believe that. I haven't believed that for, well,

47:41

I've been doing this ministry now for 34 years, and I've said it over and over again. I can't believe anybody would think that.

47:47

But, oh, this is how the majority step aside, and so on and so—well, that's fascinating.

47:56

Why didn't you mention that, you know, yeah, Yasir Qadhi gets to explain his views, but I got to present the fact that Jesus Christ is the maker and creator of every

48:08

Muslim in that audience, too. Got to talk about the cross, the resurrection, and again, never any balance, never any accuracy in what these people are saying.

48:20

Never. Because it doesn't fit the meme. It doesn't fit—why tell the truth about what happened when that really won't help you?

48:30

Like so many other things, like the Black Lives Matter movement, it has a name that seems justifiable, but when you look behind it, you just find another strategy to impose radical ideas on the

48:49

United States and provoke and marginalize traditional religion, traditional culture in this country, and it's a game that the left has been playing for almost a century.

49:04

Wow. So the left was behind this. It wasn't what we said it was. I'm so glad that these people are able to discern things that I didn't know because I don't know my own motivations and Yasir Qadhi's motivations, and that is that we're actually leftists, and we are actually promoting these radical ideas, rather than having a discussion concerning the fact that, you know, as we pointed out, our two perspectives are in direct contradiction to one another.

49:38

Islam directly states that my belief in the Trinity is going to lead me to hellfire.

49:46

So if we're going to disagree on that, wouldn't it be helpful if the Muslims understood what the Trinity was in the first place?

49:52

And wouldn't it be helpful if our side, we understood what Shirk was? You know, in other words, if the two sides actually understand each other, then we can have meaningful conversation, not compromise.

50:01

We can actually maybe come to the scriptures and maybe come to some conclusions and really make, you know, from the

50:08

Christian perspective, we might actually be able to communicate gospel truth to someone with much more effectiveness, and that's what we want to do.

50:15

And guess what? Yasir Qadhi knows that's what we want to do because we said it right out loud during the dialogues, but that gets skipped because people don't care about why we actually said we were doing it because it's all this political stuff.

50:27

It's just the left. The left was behind it. The left had nothing to do with it, people.

50:32

Hello. Good morning. Let's start dealing with reality here for just a little while, possibly.

50:38

The left had nothing to do with it. Okay, could we just lay that one aside?

50:44

This is silly. Stop it. Now, this is interesting because Dr.

50:49

White is known for doing a lot of different debates with different people, especially with different imams across the world, I believe, as well as across this country.

50:56

What about Yasir Qadhi? Because this is a man of particular concern for a lot of Christians.

51:02

He was educated in Saudi Arabia. He has said some very uncomfortable, at least, I would say, beyond uncomfortable things about denying the

51:10

Holocaust. Excuse me. Excuse me. Time out. Wait a minute. He's called Christians and Jews filthy.

51:16

Okay, there's the Robert Spencer theme, okay? Don't have time to go through all of it, but Yasir Qadhi has apologized specifically for his statements as a young man regarding the

51:30

Holocaust. He went and visited locations of Holocaust centers,

51:37

Auschwitz, Buchenwald. I forget which one exactly he went to. I've been to a few myself, and he has apologized for that.

51:44

Again, people who do honest research will know that, but if you follow the people who are just trying to blackball him, then you're not going to go there.

51:53

I dealt with the issue of calling Christians filthy. And again,

52:00

Janet, you should — for Jared, this one bothers me a lot, because this is doing to Yasir Qadhi what

52:09

Bernie Sanders did to voters just a few weeks ago. He went after him. How dare you say that Muslims are under the condemnation of God?

52:20

How dare you say that? And what did you and I both do, Janet? We both said, how dare

52:25

Bernie Sanders tell us what to believe as Christians? I mean, we have the right to believe that all men are under the condemnation of God, and that outside of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.

52:37

And how dare you, Bernie Sanders, push your secular religion upon us as Christians?

52:43

This is part of the gospel. This is why you needed to have the cross, right? That's what we did, and we were right to do that.

52:49

Yasir Qadhi and any orthodox Muslim believes that shirk is the worst sin you can commit.

52:57

We call shirk — well, okay, I'll take that back. The corollary from our perspective would be idolatry in its most serious sense, but since this is a violation of the very central aspect of the affirmation of monotheism, the shahada, the association of anyone and anything with Allah, then anyone who commits shirk has committed the worst sin.

53:20

It's the unforgivable sin in Islam, and they are najis. They are filthy in God's sight.

53:27

Just as we say that anyone who commits sin is filthy in God's sight, Yasir Qadhi says if you commit the worst sin against God, you're filthy in God's sight, and that's what the worship of Jesus is.

53:39

It is shirk, and therefore that makes you najis. And you go Bernie Sanders on him? What should you do when

53:47

Yasir Qadhi says that? You should demonstrate that the worship of Jesus Christ is not shirk.

53:53

You look for the opportunity to be able to explain to Yasir Qadhi, as I got to do in the mosque, that since we believe

54:00

Jesus has eternally been God, that that's not association. It's not shirk. And then what you do is you trust the spirit of God to open hearts and minds.

54:12

That's what you try to do. That's the whole point. That's what we were doing in the mosque.

54:20

So let's not Bernie Sanders the Muslims, okay? Let's—and I know where that came from.

54:27

That's straight from Robert Spencer, I get it. He was filthy. These sorts of things, and these have been raised in the context of why would

54:33

Dr. White have a dialogue with somebody like this? Well, who else am I going to have a dialogue with?

54:40

Let's say everything you say about Yasir Qadhi. Yasir Qadhi denies being a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, all the rest of that stuff.

54:46

But let's say it's all true. Are you saying the gospel isn't for the

54:51

Muslim Brotherhood? Are you saying that we shouldn't be witnessing these people?

54:57

I thought this was the only power that's been given to us to change hearts and minds.

55:03

I actually think that the gospel is even for members of ISIS.

55:13

In fact, I only have one solution to all these things. It's called the gospel. And I am not going to sit here and run a political correctness filter on the people that I am going to sit down and present the gospel to.

55:28

I'm not going to do it. I don't care how many people jump on the bandwagon of this thing. That's not how you do it.

55:37

So why would I choose him? I explained why. He's the head of the Al -Mughrib

55:42

Institute. He has impact upon people. He's a very clear teacher. I learned a lot from him.

55:47

I had never read about what Muslims believe about the jinn before I heard what

55:53

Yasir Qadhi said about them. Hadn't been a part of the reading, I had done. But you know what? There's things

55:58

I learned about Islam from other perspectives and other people. But you know what? He represents a large number of Muslims around the world.

56:09

So you know what? When I talk with him, I'm actually helping to equip people to talk to a large number of other

56:15

Muslims, which is the whole point, which is not the purpose of the vast majority of my critics, who have political motivations, not gospel motivations.

56:24

And those are always going to run into each other. Those are always going to run into each other. Because the gospel is not an

56:29

American thing. It's for Americans, but it wasn't made by Americans. And we better keep that straight.

56:36

We better keep that straight because the gospel is going to be true after America is gone. It really is.

56:41

And if we don't keep that in mind, oh boy. What about Qadhi himself? Why should people be concerned about this being the

56:47

Muslim who is doing the dialogue? Well, I just explained that. I mean, immediately people came out of the woodwork to attack me and to attack...

56:58

And by the way, what was he attacked for? Like not contacting me, being inaccurate, and the graphic that I put up where I tweeted him and said, did you do any of these fundamental things?

57:11

Look at any of my books, look at any of my debates, look at my refutations of Brandon House. Don't need to, you're wrong.

57:18

I mean, what do you do with something like that? That's why people went after him. He may want to make this into something else, but the reason that people have gone after James Simpson is because he did a face -plantingly bad job here in being truthful.

57:35

That's the reason. The person who actually brought it up, and I added to that by...

57:41

That's Brandon House. He didn't want to say Brandon House, but that's Brandon House. Talking about the interfaith dialogue.

57:48

But the response in my mind tells you all you need to know about why Yasser Qadhi is the wrong person.

57:55

He immediately flipped, I mean, instantly flipped and called us haters and bigots and bigots and Islamophobes.

58:02

He didn't bother to consider any of our arguments on their merits, which to me is just like dealing with anybody from the left.

58:15

Mr. Kettles calling on line one, you haven't dealt with any of my arguments.

58:21

You didn't deal with any of the content of what I said. You went with this completely different perspective, didn't even bother with the arguments or the rebuttals because I'm wrong.

58:31

You don't see the hypocrisy there? Seems pretty obvious to me.

58:37

Seems really obvious to me. But Mr. Simpson can't see it for some odd reason.

58:43

He also has some really unsavory people that he defends and hangs out with.

58:50

One of them, the most... You know, the guilt by association thing is really, really, really easy to do.

59:00

And I've become less and less subject to the force of this argument since it's been used against me so often anymore.

59:11

Hey, did you hear White? He was on Michael Brown's radio program again. Can you believe it?

59:18

Oh man, it's just unbelievable, the people he hangs out with. Yeah, yeah.

59:25

Then he brings up Linda Sarsour. Now look, I actually wrote to Yasir Qadhi and said, hey, question for you.

59:35

People are saying, hey, you say this man's a... It's really funny. In this one radio interview, on the one hand, you'll have, oh, he's hanging out with Linda Sarsour.

59:44

She's a liberal. How can you hang out with somebody like that? On the other hand, then you have clips being played. Man, he's really a conservative.

59:50

He's talking about jihad so which objection do you want to work with?

59:57

Because I'm not really sure how to handle that. But I wrote to him and I said, what about your defense of Linda Sarsour?

01:00:05

And he says, look, before I wrote to him, my answer would have been, and I think this still has a lot to do with it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

01:00:17

In other words, we have such... They really believe themselves to be under such siege and such constant attack that anybody in their group, even...

01:00:29

Well, it's... Let me draw a parallel. Many conservative Christians view ourselves under such attack that there is now a willingness to sort of forget about the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics because, well, that Roman Catholic says, well, let's use...

01:00:49

Oh, I hadn't even thought about this. Let's use a good example here. This is a nice seat, but I've been sitting here a long time.

01:00:57

Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh. How many times have you seen conservative

01:01:02

Christians quoting Matt Walsh? Oh, man, this guy just nails it. Oh, I just love how he's ripping on this.

01:01:09

Even J .D. Hall. Man, I love this Matt Walsh guy.

01:01:15

He needs to get saved, but I love this Matt Walsh guy, you know? And everybody's, why is that happening? Is it that we don't have anybody on the

01:01:24

Protestant side that says similar things? No, we've got lots of people that do that. But as we're pushed into what we consider to be a smaller cultural area, the temptation is to sort of overlook differences because, well, we're all under attack from the same people.

01:01:40

And my answer would have been, my guess would have been that from Yasir Qadhi's perspective, she's under the attack, she's under attack from the very same people that he is.

01:01:50

And therefore, yeah, I don't really go with her perspectives on feminism and sexuality and stuff like that.

01:01:57

But hey, if you're being attacked by the same people I'm being attacked by, I'm going to stand with you.

01:02:04

And so I wrote to Yasir. And I said, hey, what about this Linda Sarsour thing?

01:02:10

And he says, you know, we've had serious conversations, we have serious differences, and I've told her about those serious differences.

01:02:17

But when she's being attacked by the very same people in their bigotry and hatred that I am, then

01:02:23

I'm going to stand with her, but I'm going to tell her where I think she's wrong, and she's wrong on this issue, that issue, so on and so forth.

01:02:29

So it was pretty much, I didn't know whether they had had conversations about what their differences are, but he says that they actually have.

01:02:38

And so he was very quick to respond, wasn't offended by my asking.

01:02:45

And it was sort of what I pretty much guessed. And we sort of see the same thing happening, even in our own context.

01:02:51

She's a Hamas -tied leader. She was the Women's March leader. I mean, this woman is bad news. That alone,

01:02:57

I would say, as a Christian, why in the world would you want to do dialogue with somebody who would appear at a conference like that? So, Janet, are you accountable for every person that speaks at a conference you're at?

01:03:09

You must clear every single person. They have to dot every T, dot every

01:03:15

I, cross every T. There we go. Agree with you about everything. The reason

01:03:21

I did this, well, first of all, Linda Sarsour never came up in our conversations. I don't even know if I knew who she was back then or any connection, anything at all, never came up.

01:03:34

And nothing I'd ever listened to him in lectures, in his mosque, ever brought up Linda Sarsour.

01:03:40

I did the dialogue because here is a man who, in fact, we're going to play a, you know, let me skip down.

01:03:47

Let me see where I am here and see if I can mark that. I think

01:03:53

I can remember where that is. Let me play a clip. And this is for Janet.

01:03:59

Janet was playing clips from Yasir Qadhi at the end of this. And she played this one.

01:04:06

And I just want you to listen to it because evidently these were meant to say, you know, this guy is a bad guy.

01:04:12

I mean, these are really troubling things. He's saying, listen to this. I think it will be illustrative of what we're talking about.

01:04:19

It is not my right to legislate or your right to legislate. No Supreme Court, no system of government, no democracy where they vote.

01:04:26

Can you believe it? A group of people coming together and voting. And the majority vote will then be the law of the land.

01:04:33

What gives you the right to prohibit something or allow something? Who gave you this right?

01:04:39

Are you creators? Are you all knowledgeable? Do you understand the repercussions, the implications of the laws that you're going to pass?

01:04:48

Do they wish to follow the laws of ignorance? Verily, Allah is our judge. He knows what's best for us.

01:04:55

So we have to be aware of following in this path of those people. Because unfortunately, we have many

01:05:02

Muslims today who are influenced by this. And they'll say, okay, we'll take the laws of worship.

01:05:07

We'll pray five times a day. We'll give the zakah. We'll go for pilgrimage. We'll fast the month of Ramadan. But as for family laws and the economic system and the punishments,

01:05:18

I don't have to follow that. This is the modern world we live in. We're not living in the seventh century anymore.

01:05:24

We're living in the 21st century. My dear brothers, is the Allah of the seventh century any different of the

01:05:30

Allah of the 21st century? There's something else you could discuss. I sat here going, why did you play that?

01:05:40

What is offensive about that? Now he's talking about Sharia. He's talking about Islamic law.

01:05:47

But what's his point? His point is that governments do not have the right to abrogate what

01:05:55

God says in his law. We disagree on what that law is. But we don't disagree on the principle.

01:06:01

Because what he just said is exactly why we reject

01:06:08

Obergefell. We say, it doesn't matter if we elected people who selected these judges, and these judges sit legally upon the

01:06:20

Supreme Court, God will judge this culture for following what they said.

01:06:28

Isn't that our argument? That God's law transcends man's law? I thought it was.

01:06:34

I thought we were on the same page there. So I was like, that's my argument.

01:06:42

You change the context and how many, you change the words there. There are lots of Christians who will say, oh,

01:06:48

I'll do this thing in worship, that thing in worship. But we live in the 21st century. It's not the first century anymore. So there's other things about sexual morality or whatever else it might be.

01:06:56

We need to update these things. We go, no, no, no, no. God's the one that determines these things. God knows what sounds like the same principle.

01:07:07

And if you will not admit that that's the same principle, then you'll never be able to get to the point of saying, here's where the

01:07:14

Christian understanding is consistent and the Islamic understanding is not consistent.

01:07:20

Because if you won't get past the simplistic stuff, if you won't get past where the agreements are, you're never going to have a meaningful conversation.

01:07:30

So that was just sort of like, wow, that illustrates exactly what we're talking about here.

01:07:37

Let me go back up and see if I can remember where we were. Oh, yeah, here we go. And how, if he is such a committed religious person, how would he ever want to have anything to do with a woman like that?

01:07:54

If he really is trying to convince us that he's open -minded and he's not a hater himself, why on earth would you want to be seen with and support and defend somebody who is such an obvious hater, such an obviously polarizing, deliberately polarizing person and someone—

01:08:21

So in other words, we can only have dialogues with Muslims that fit our parameters of nice Muslims that don't have, well,

01:08:29

Muslim ideas, basically. Well, that's not going to work real well.

01:08:34

Not really going to. Maybe in America, but it's not going to work real well. Is stealth jihad. They're not like Al -Qaeda.

01:08:41

They don't want to go in and bring violence to America. What they want to do is infiltrate Western civilization. What better way of infiltrating than buddying up to Christians?

01:08:51

Exactly. Buddying up to Christians. Again, as I pointed out beforehand, I'm the one that pursued this, not them.

01:08:58

They weren't trying to do some stealth jihad with me. And could someone please explain to me, in light of—you know what,

01:09:06

I'm going to do this right now. There's so many of these that we could bring up, but I think it would be good to do this right here.

01:09:17

And I'm not going to bother trying to do the screen share thing. Sorry. You can go look at this yourself.

01:09:24

Could I play a section from the dialogue? You know, the dreaded dialogue. It's sort of interesting to actually hear something that took place.

01:09:33

Let's see how this is stealth jihad. Okay. Here's stealth jihad.

01:09:40

Lesson number one. So another question that many Muslims have, why does a god or a part of God have to die for our sins, and what does it mean that God died or Jesus died?

01:09:54

It's very important that you recognize that what we believe about Jesus is—first of all, we do not believe death means cessation of existence.

01:10:03

I've very frequently been asked, well, when Jesus died, who was running the universe? Well, we don't—all of us, none of us believe that death is a cessation of existence.

01:10:13

And so even in the death of Christ, he does not cease to exist as a divine person or a human person.

01:10:20

But we also believe that Jesus was the God -man. He was not a mixture. He was not 50 -50, because that would be a demigod.

01:10:27

We believe that the—what's called the Lagos, the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, took on a perfect human nature, and that there is no intermingling between the two, and that as that one person with two natures, he gave his perfect life on behalf of his people.

01:10:43

So there's two different questions here. One is the nature of the death of Christ, and how that could be in light of his being divine.

01:10:51

That's one issue. And could I mention that debate that I had? I had a—it's my favorite debate that I've had with a

01:11:00

Muslim gentleman. His name is Abdullah Kunda. I've known Abdullah for a number of years. It's in Sydney.

01:11:06

And so he has a very interesting, almost Germanic -Australian accent, which is really—it may challenge you just a little bit to follow sometimes.

01:11:16

But he's a brilliant young man. I consider him a friend, and we debated the subject, can God become man?

01:11:21

We actually cut to the chase. We cut to the real issue. And it was fascinating, the depth that we got into, especially in the cross -examination that's available on YouTube.

01:11:30

So if you want to hear—I mean, he read my book. He attempted to, you know, communicate in that way, and I really appreciated that.

01:11:36

That made it, like I said, one of the best debates I've ever been engaged in. So if you want to look more into that, and some really strong objections from your side on that subject, that debate would be helpful.

01:11:49

The other subject, because there were two subjects in that question, the other subject is why is it even necessary?

01:11:56

Why does there have to be a sacrificial death? And this is a major area of discussion between us.

01:12:02

And again, I can reference, I could direct you to a debate with Shabir Ali.

01:12:08

Most of you probably know Shabir. I've debated him, I'm starting to lose track, six, seven, eight times, something like that, on multiple continents.

01:12:14

And we did a debate in the Abu Bakr Asidic Mosque in Erasmus, Pretoria, South Africa, and it was the first time in South African history that a debate had taken place, and I stood in front of the

01:12:29

Qibla. So it wasn't a room associated with the mosque. It was right there. I mean, we observed the prayers before the debate started.

01:12:37

This is a mosque, by the way. We'll be praying after our talk. Oh, I know that, but what I mean is it was the first time in South African history that debate itself had taken place, and they put chairs out, too, for the wimpy

01:12:49

Christians, so they knew we couldn't handle what you guys can handle sitting on the floor. So cross -legged.

01:12:54

Cross -legged, that's exactly right. But in that debate, we discussed this very specific issue of why is it necessary for there to be a sacrificial death within Christian theology?

01:13:05

And I had much more time to expand upon that, but fundamentally, this is what I would like, the bug I'd like to put in your ear in response to that, and that is, from my perspective, the key issue to remember is that God's law, from my perspective, and I think from a biblical perspective,

01:13:22

God's law reflects His nature. It is not something separate from Him that He could change if He wanted to change it.

01:13:30

It reflects His essential holiness, and so when it is broken, there needs to be atonement.

01:13:36

There needs to be justification. There needs to be a rectification of the breaking of that law.

01:13:41

God can't just simply say, my law has been broken, but that's okay. I don't mind. I'm just going to forgive a person anyways.

01:13:48

This is reflected in the sacrificial system under the Old Covenant, and then its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

01:13:53

And so from my perspective, the necessity is related to the fact that God's law reflects

01:13:59

His very nature. And if we had more time, since I have a Hadith expert, and most of my understanding of Sahih and Hassan and everything else comes from listening to him in some very unusual context,

01:14:12

I'm probably the only student he has ever had that has listened to his entire Hadith lectures in cotton spandex shorts, because I listen,

01:14:21

I ride a bike, and I ride many, many, many miles. I did almost 9 ,000 miles last year on my bike, and that's when

01:14:27

I study. And so I've told him I have distinct memory in July in Phoenix, and if you've ever been to Phoenix, it's very hot in July.

01:14:37

And so if you want to do a 60 mile bike ride, you have to start about 3 o 'clock in the morning. And I remember very clearly waiting for a light at Union Hills and 16th

01:14:46

Street, going northbound, and I'm listening to Yasir Qadhi. Specifically, in fact, this is going to freak you out,

01:14:52

I'm sorry. You were talking about the rules by which you analyze the criteria that have to be passed for something to be

01:15:01

Sahih. I remember you were about halfway down, I was at that light. Isn't that weird? Okay, I'm strange, I realize that. You're probably all saying you tie your bow ties way too tight.

01:15:09

But one of the Hadiths that I would love to discuss sometime, maybe in the future, is the one about the man who killed 99 people.

01:15:19

Because I have used that as an illustration of this for many years, and then I did a debate at the largest mosque in New York, and the imam, we were on a radio program beforehand, he brought it up as well.

01:15:31

So I didn't feel like I was cherry -picking anything, given that it is obviously one that comes up very frequently. And so I brought that up in that debate.

01:15:40

That particular Hadith, and how many of you know which Hadith I'm talking about? Okay, most of the Muslims in the room know who

01:15:46

I'm referring to. Sorry Christians, you'll have to look it up later. Look at the debate, don't have time to go into it right now.

01:15:52

But the forgiveness of that man, especially in some of the versions of the

01:15:57

Hadith, the fact that Allah actually makes the earth shrink between the man and the city he was going to,

01:16:05

I think that's directly relevant to, from a Christian perspective, a person who understands the

01:16:11

Christian doctrine of atonement. That's one of the key issues we need to talk about, because that's where we have a major disconnection in our understanding of the justice of God, and how forgiveness takes place.

01:16:21

And so I just want you to know, you're talking to someone who is, I didn't read all of Sahih al -Bukhari.

01:16:28

I'll just go ahead and stop right there. Do you know how unusual it was for the

01:16:38

Muslims in that mosque to hear that kind of a discussion that brought in their own material to say, see, here's where the differences are.

01:16:51

We really struggle with this idea that you can forgive a mass murder with no propitiation, no atonement.

01:17:01

God's law is left broken, and hey, there's this entire two and a half hour debate on this subject, and why don't you go listen to that?

01:17:09

And why don't you go listen to that debate on whether God can become man? Do you have any idea how unusual that is?

01:17:19

It breaks my heart that so many Christians go, I don't care if those Muslims heard something they'd never heard before.

01:17:26

I just don't. It's sad. It's just sad.

01:17:32

It breaks my heart, but I thought I'd give that illustration. Exactly. Well, buddying up to them, and at the same time, diluting their message and making the message more confusing.

01:17:47

Was that confusing? When I defined the

01:17:53

Trinity before that, I could roll it back, we could play that. What was confusing about that? In fact, what we did in the dialogue, what

01:18:00

I was able to do in the dialogue was to actually communicate with significantly more clarity for the Muslim people than I could in any other context.

01:18:08

And because it wasn't a debate, and because it didn't have the time limits on it, that I was able to do so even more clearly.

01:18:16

So what he's saying, again, it's a political thing, you know, that, you know, he's just doing the general political meme thing, but it had nothing to do with what we actually did.

01:18:26

Why not deal with what we did in the dialogues? Because it doesn't fit. And there are so many

01:18:32

Christians today, unfortunately, who are really have such a limited, you know, they just don't go to church enough.

01:18:46

And they can be persuaded, or at least swayed by some of this flowery rhetoric.

01:18:56

But as I point out, now, you know what, I've got a problem with that. If theologically,

01:19:03

Christ cannot lose his sheep. And if someone becomes a Muslim from watching these dialogues, theologically, they weren't a

01:19:11

Christian. That's, there is a theological issue here. And I think there's a bunch of people out there that have absolutely zero confidence in the power of the gospel.

01:19:22

They're just, well, okay, maybe the gospel is proclaimed. But hey, if it really was, then praise

01:19:28

God for that, because that's what God uses to drive people to himself. But there's a bunch of people out there, it's like, oh, well, we've got to be really careful, you know, and, you know, don't you don't you believe that the proclamation that that's what

01:19:41

God uses? That's what I believe. My article, Connie reveals his utter ignorance of what it means to be a

01:19:50

Christian, right off the top. Oh, so we should only talk to Muslims who know what

01:19:57

Christianity is, we shouldn't be talking to the ones we have to explain it to. I've been spending all this time clearing up all these, these misconceptions and trying to remove all these barriers.

01:20:09

And, and I should only have been talking to the Muslims that already know that stuff. Yeah, well, great.

01:20:14

Right, right, exactly. Exactly. Now, one of the things that has come up, I know Dr. White was none too pleased with your article and some of the people who really know they're all very upset.

01:20:23

They're all they hated being called a useful idiot. I hate being called a useful idiot by someone who doesn't do their homework, who doesn't contact me who misrepresents me.

01:20:32

Yes, I think everybody doesn't appreciate that. Yeah. But I think it was kind of like it struck a nerve because they couldn't look at anything else about it.

01:20:41

They couldn't look at anything else about like the errors I made the fact that I didn't contact anybody and didn't, you know, and that I was biased because I even admitted, well,

01:20:49

I don't need to look at all that stuff because you're wrong. That was the reality. And I have his screenshot of him saying that.

01:20:56

Why not mention that? Well, look at all the facts that are raised. They totally ignored all of the list, the itemized list of problems that I have with Yasir Qadhi.

01:21:09

Yeah, he's a Muslim. Oh, no. Yeah, we just ignored all that because it wasn't relevant.

01:21:16

And you mentioned the Alma Grape Institute. You know, he personally taught the underwear bomb.

01:21:23

I know. Oh, Lee personally taught the underwear bomber. I think that you just disqualified yourself from interfaith dialogue.

01:21:29

Sorry. I mean, come on. And and. Oh, my.

01:21:37

I, I, unlike others, have heard Yasir Qadhi commenting on the fact that this particular individual had attended some classes through Alma Grabe.

01:21:50

I wonder, again, if we were just simply to put the shoe on the other foot, what what would

01:21:57

Janet Mefford say if someone who had posted on her

01:22:03

Facebook page, I listened to the Mefford show all the time, goes out and shoots an abortion doctor?

01:22:10

What's she going to say? Well, I never encouraged that. I I've been very clear in what

01:22:15

I've stated. I have stated that you can't hold me accountable for that. I didn't even know this person.

01:22:21

I had no interaction. Neither did Dr. Qadhi. So why isn't it fair to point that out?

01:22:28

There seems to be on the part of many individuals, as long as it's a Muslim, it's OK to throw all this stuff out there.

01:22:36

It's OK to make all the connections. But if it comes back our direction, it's OK to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:22:43

It's sort of like someone, what if what if someone that was a member of my church 20 years ago and left or maybe even worse?

01:22:52

I remember a situation happened down in Australia. Some some I forget what the act of terrorism, there was a guy down in Australia, did something horrific.

01:23:00

And I wrote to an Australian Muslim friend and I said, hey, is there more to this story that's not getting reported in mainstream media?

01:23:07

Because even about a decade ago, I realized that that's sort of what goes on. And he says, well, yeah, it's well known down here that we had actually excluded this man, which is pretty unusual, by the way.

01:23:18

I even had a conversation with Dr. Qadhi about the fact they don't really have like the ability to they don't have membership in mosques.

01:23:26

So you can you know, mosques can get together and say, we're not going to have such and such a person. But then they can't do the kind of pastoral or church discipline type thing that we do.

01:23:35

And I think that's I think it's a major issue. It's something I like to discuss with him because it's it's very interesting.

01:23:41

But anyways, my Australian friend said, yeah, this guy's been excluded, been kicked out of the mosques for a long, long time.

01:23:50

But the media doesn't want to report that. So what if someone from my church went out and did something 20 years down the road?

01:23:58

And then it says this person used to be a member of James Wyatt's church. And don't you think people might use that as a mechanism of attacking me?

01:24:06

Yeah, I think people would. And it would be invalid and it would be unfair and it would be prejudiced and biased and all the rest of that stuff.

01:24:13

And that means we can't do the thing in reverse, can we? Well, if we're going to be consistent with ourselves, if we're going to be fair,

01:24:20

I played the next section. And that was pretty much the end of James Simpson's part.

01:24:26

And so the last section here are some of Janet Mefford's objections. And so I want to respond to them.

01:24:34

And I will play them at one point, too, so we can get done, hopefully, in as a mega size dividing line here.

01:24:43

Discussion that I was having just moments ago with Jim Simpson, because I want to add some of my own thoughts about what's going on with Dr.

01:24:48

James White and his dialogue, his interreligious dialogue that he did a few months back with Dr. Yasir Khadi. I have a number of concerns of my own.

01:24:55

I'm not interested in the personality aspect of this, all of the players who have jumped into the discussion online. I don't care about any of that because I'm looking at this with very simple eyes.

01:25:04

Well, but I think some of those things are extremely relevant. Much of the criticisms come from people who hate this ministry, who had their own personal reasons, from people who think that it's good to offend

01:25:15

Muslims who specifically do so. I think of this one individual who, in responding to Dr.

01:25:22

Michael Brown's article in defense of my dialogue, respond by saying if James White would spend more time defending the gospel rather than defending filthy

01:25:31

Muslims, then everything would be fine. That aspect of things, the fact that Brannon House's original attack was based upon having guests who had not even viewed the dialogue,

01:25:44

I think is extremely relevant because so much of what started this all was based upon abject ignorance.

01:25:51

And then once the ball gets going, then it's like, well, now, ex post facto, I'm going to go back and I'm going to substantiate these things, even though a fair and honest reading of what had taken place, a fair and honest listening would not have led to these things.

01:26:06

So I think it is relevant. I'm looking at this as not being about whether or not Christians should love Muslims.

01:26:11

I'm not looking at this as whether or not Christians should share the gospel with Muslims. It's not even about whether or not Christians should formally debate

01:26:17

Muslims in an appropriate setting. Okay. All of these things I've done, I would just simply point out that it's one fine thing to say, we should love

01:26:26

Muslims. The question is how are you going to do it? And if we sit around and allow artificial barriers to remain, if look, the

01:26:37

Muslims in Memphis living in the South recognize there are two kinds of Christians.

01:26:44

They recognize that there are the liberal Christians who don't seem to have any problem with them that they can talk to, but they recognize those liberal

01:26:53

Christians don't really believe anything. They haven't remained faithful to their own faith tradition. And then there's the

01:26:59

Christians that say they believe the Bible and they're uncompromising in their belief in the

01:27:04

Bible, but they won't say a word to them. They're afraid of them. Many of them hate.

01:27:10

They feel that they're hated by them. Their wives are insulted in public if they wear

01:27:16

Muslim garb. And so they have no communication with them. And is that right?

01:27:24

Or whose responsibility is it to bridge those barriers to express the love of Christ?

01:27:33

If we just sit around and let that situation stay the same, I'm comfortable with it because I think most people in my church would be a little uncomfortable having any, you know, talking to any

01:27:41

Muslims or anything like that, you know. Are we really fulfilling the command of Christ at that point?

01:27:49

That's a question that would have. Dr. White and I have known each other for a number of years. He's been on the radio with me multiple times.

01:27:55

I think he's even guest hosted for me a number of times. I have great respect for him. I've had a very good relationship with him.

01:28:00

I don't want that to change. And she even attended a presentation I did on Islam at, what was that church in Dallas?

01:28:08

I remember where she sat. And Tom Pennington's church in Dallas.

01:28:15

I gave a presentation on Islam. And I said there what I said in the dialogues.

01:28:21

There is no inconsistency between what I said that night and what I did in the dialogues.

01:28:26

There's none. There's no difference between what I've done. We've traced it back to the beginning.

01:28:32

Thirty -four years without the mega ministries. There's no inconsistency. I'm certainly not jumping into this because I want to have another sort of flap.

01:28:40

That's not my motivation here. What I'm concerned about is biblical truth. I agree a thousand percent.

01:28:47

And I'm going to have the chance, by the way, I had talked to Dr. James White's staff. We're going to have Dr. White on the program on Monday.

01:28:53

He's going to be able to listen to the show today and to be able to respond to it on Monday. I thought that was only fair because we have had such a good relationship.

01:28:59

And I think it's an important thing to allow people to defend themselves and to field questions. So that's what we'll be doing on Monday's broadcast.

01:29:05

I think that's great because, like I said, that's exactly what American Thinker did not allow me to do. And that is how it should be done.

01:29:14

That that, you know, that's the appropriate way of handling such things.

01:29:20

And so I am very certain, given what Janet says here, I know she's going to have some tough questions.

01:29:28

And if I actually have tougher questions for me, then I wish she had had for Jim Simpson. I wish she had asked

01:29:33

Jim Simpson, why didn't you contact James White? Why didn't you bring in anything, any of the content of the dialogue whatsoever?

01:29:42

I wish he had been asked those questions. He doesn't seem to want to answer those questions publicly on Twitter or things like that.

01:29:49

But I wish he had been asked those questions. I'm going to be asked the tough questions. He wasn't. That's good. I'm glad.

01:29:55

I am thankful to have the opportunity to do it because I have absolutely nothing to apologize for.

01:30:02

I was straightforward. If you actually listen to the dialogues, I was straightforward and honest with what

01:30:07

I said. And unless you're going to do what the world has done and said, we don't care what you said your motivations were.

01:30:15

You're just a stupid idiot for Islam. And we don't care what Yasir Qadhi said because he's just engaging in Zakiya.

01:30:23

Unless you're going to do that, then you have to admit that we were straightforward in rejecting the idea of interfaith religious dialogue in the sense that the accusation is being made.

01:30:34

We rejected it from the start. And that's not what we did. That's not what we did. So I'm looking forward to getting a chance to defend that.

01:30:41

What this is about, from my perspective, is basically three things. Number one, the question is, is inter -religious dialogue with a false teacher conducted in the manner of—

01:30:49

First thing, false teachers in the New Testament are people who claim to be Christians and are perverting that doctrine.

01:30:57

So, for example, in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, the false teachers, there are people who went out from us.

01:31:02

They're claiming to be Christians. Yasir Qadhi does not claim to be a Christian. The reason he won't do a debate with me is because the fact that he says,

01:31:09

I don't know enough about Christianity to debate you. He's honest about that. I appreciate that. The man has integrity.

01:31:16

He says, I haven't studied Christianity. You've studied Islam. That gives you an advantage. You're a Christian scholar, and you've studied

01:31:21

Islam. I'm a Muslim scholar, but I haven't studied Christianity. So I have no interest in doing a debate. It's not what

01:31:27

I'm called to do. And I don't think you can force somebody to do something they don't feel they're called to do. But to say, well, he's a false teacher.

01:31:35

Well, that means every unbeliever could fall into the category of false teacher, because every unbeliever has a worldview.

01:31:43

But the specific idea of false teachers, for example, in 1st John, is someone who claims to be a Christian. Nobody, nobody in the first night or the second night was confused about the fact that Yasir Qadhi is a

01:31:56

Muslim who is not pretending to be a Christian. Nobody. Nobody. I just provide that interaction.

01:32:03

White Qadhi debate, ever biblically defensible. Is there any kind of biblical model or command for interreligious dialogue with false teachers in front of the assembled saints of God, whether they're in a formal church service or not?

01:32:14

What do you mean whether they're in a formal church service or not? That's everything. These are not the gathered saints of God.

01:32:20

This was a mixed Christian Muslim audience. They knew why they were there. They had to have a ticket, which means they knew exactly what their intention of coming was.

01:32:29

This would be the exact same argument against the debate. What you're saying is there can never be this kind of dialogue.

01:32:37

There can never be any situation. Because see, Janet, what happened here, and maybe you're not aware of this, what happened here is the debate part, the discussion part moved from just Yasir Qadhi and I to all the

01:32:51

Muslims and the Christians in the audience. After this conversation took place, there were wonderful conversations going on between the

01:33:01

Christians and the Muslims afterwards together. And this is what I think scares a lot of people.

01:33:07

If you don't have confidence in the gospel, then you're going to be scared about that. And if your motivations are primarily political, you're going to be scared about that.

01:33:15

But if you have confidence in the gospel and you're not pushing a political thing, you're going to go, yay, that's what we want.

01:33:23

We want believers meeting with Muslims and getting to know them and explaining, well, this is what

01:33:29

Jesus means to me, and this is why I do this as a Christian. You want that to happen because, look,

01:33:34

I don't think Islam has anything to offer to me. It has a system of ethics and morals, and it's monotheistic, but Christianity has all that.

01:33:43

I have a savior. I have a mediator. I have an empty tomb. I have peace with God.

01:33:49

I have so much more than the Muslim has. And to have the opportunity of saying that and showing that, oh my goodness,

01:33:57

I cannot believe we're spending hours arguing about whether that's something we should be doing or not, when there are people living in Muslim lands all over the place that are

01:34:07

Christians that wish they could have just a moment of what we have. That's why

01:34:12

I've not had a single person, not a single missionary, contact me and say, oh, I think this is terrible.

01:34:17

The ones that I know that are really good, they've all said, oh man, that is awesome.

01:34:23

That's fantastic. That's great. Why are we sitting around? I don't know why we're sitting around arguing about it, but there you go.

01:34:30

Or do we instead find a biblical model of gospel proclamation and even intentional confrontation by God's people, even the

01:34:36

Lord himself, when there are false teachers or false doctrine involved? Okay, false teachers, false doctrine.

01:34:43

We're talking here about the Judaizers. We're talking about Galatians. We're talking about within the church. We're not talking about reaching out to the world's religions.

01:34:53

And when you can open those avenues of communication, overcome the barriers of communication, that's exactly what we want.

01:35:04

That's exactly where we want to go. You talked about Paul at the Areopagus. Who shut down the conversation?

01:35:12

It was the other side. When? When he mentioned resurrection, because they found that to be so foolish.

01:35:18

But that wasn't the only time that Paul had those conversations. Paul regularly reasoned in the synagogue.

01:35:24

Once he was kicked out of the synagogue, went to other places. Do you really think that whole time he was going, now by the way, if you have a different view, all you can do is listen to me.

01:35:34

You can never talk back. We can never have a discussion about any of this. Do you really think that's how it happened? I don't think that's how it happened.

01:35:41

I don't think that's how it happened at all. I heard a little bit of the podcast that Dr. White had done talking about Jim Simpson and Jim Simpson's article and why he thought that it fell short of journalistic credibility.

01:35:52

Which is because he didn't do his homework, didn't contact me, and it was filled with errors. One of the things that he did was he rebuked

01:35:57

Jim Simpson. Now, I wonder if he has ever rebuked Dr. Yasir Qadhi. Dr. Yasir Qadhi does not claim to be a

01:36:03

Christian. Jim Simpson does. It would have been nice if Jim Simpson had treated me as a fellow Christian and done his due diligence.

01:36:10

Have I ever rebuked Yasir Qadhi? Ask Yasir Qadhi how many times I have contacted him and corrected him on things he has said about the

01:36:20

Bible or the doctrine of the Trinity. And you know why he listened when

01:36:25

I contacted him and accepted the correction? Because I earned the right to be heard.

01:36:33

You know how many people there are that have contacted Yasir Qadhi and said, you're wrong about this, you're wrong about that, and he didn't listen?

01:36:41

Probably just as many people as contact me and say, you're wrong about this, you're wrong about that. And I didn't listen to them either. You know why? Because they didn't earn a hearing.

01:36:49

I earned a hearing. And so there have been—for example, Council of Nicaea. Yasir Qadhi will tell you.

01:36:56

I contacted him about something that he said about the Council of Nicaea, and I corrected him on the level of church history.

01:37:03

And guess what? He accepted it. Because I didn't write to him and call him a nasty, filthy

01:37:09

Muslim. And because he knows that I'm a person who's taken the time to listen to him, so guess what?

01:37:16

He'll listen to me. That's how it works. That's how it works in the mission field.

01:37:22

And so yes, I have. And there's no parallel between the two. Because Yasir Qadhi has never lied about me.

01:37:32

Yasir Qadhi—if Yasir Qadhi was going to write something about me, guess what he would do? If he had any questions, he'd actually contact me.

01:37:41

Jim Simpson didn't. Jim Simpson just ran with the slander of Brandon House.

01:37:46

That's what he did. Those are the facts. Can someone refute those facts? I've laid them out there. I've provided the screenshots.

01:37:53

I've provided the facts. We've got the video. I've laid it out there. There's a difference.

01:38:00

Dr. White says he has known Dr. Yasir Qadhi for, I think, about 10 years. And I'm wondering if he's ever been aware of the shocking nature of Dr.

01:38:06

Qadhi's radical associations, his radical statements, and his personal appearances at conferences linked to radical organizations.

01:38:13

I also know, Janet, that he has been threatened with death twice by ISIS, which for some reason doesn't get mentioned by anybody.

01:38:22

Yep, I listen. You know why? You know one of the things I like listening to Yasir Qadhi about? As well as Hamza Youssef and other

01:38:28

Muslims? I like listening to what Muslims say to Muslims. And so I hear all of it. And that's why they need the gospel.

01:38:37

Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I don't get this idea that we should only witness to Muslims that aren't really

01:38:43

Muslims. I said in the first five minutes, consistent believing

01:38:48

Muslim. He believes that Islam will predominate the world. That's the teaching.

01:38:55

I'm a Christian. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. So now let's talk about it.

01:39:01

Let's get these things out of here. Let's get all the misconceptions out of the way. Because you see, from my perspective, and see

01:39:06

Yasir Qadhi knows I believe this. From my perspective, once you get the misconceptions out of the way, then you get to communicate the gospel.

01:39:14

And like I said, they got nothing as good as the gospel. Nothing at all. It's great. If Dr.

01:39:19

White is aware, I'm wondering why he picked this particular man as a dialogue partner. Knowing Islam, in my mind, is not a good enough reason when you look at the substantive information that's available about Dr.

01:39:29

Qadhi and all of his radical ties. All of his radical ties. He speaks at Isna. Again, denies being a part of the

01:39:36

Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who speaks at Isna is automatically considered to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood, all the rest, that kind of stuff.

01:39:43

I don't do the politics. The man is the head of the

01:39:48

Almagrib Institute. He is influencing many Muslims. Therefore, if you dialogue with him about theology, you're opening the door for all those people who listen to him to hear you.

01:40:00

It's all about the gospel. I'm not into all the conspiracy stuff. I'm not into all the political stuff.

01:40:06

I think the ultimate answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why

01:40:12

I chose him. I'm almost done.

01:40:18

Believe it or not, we might get done in time here. Let me see which one this is here. I need to slow this down because some of the recordings aren't really good.

01:40:32

Yasir Qadhi can speak quickly, and if the recording's not good, it's really hard to follow. There were these quotations that Janet played, and I didn't want to play them.

01:40:47

I already played one of them, so I'll skip over that one. There's four, and they're not all that long.

01:40:53

Even she admitted, Janet admitted, these are contextless, don't have time to establish context, so on and so forth.

01:40:59

Why in the world would you talk with someone like this? Because he's a Muslim, and every

01:41:06

Muslim. Go back to 2008. Watch the debate

01:41:11

I did with Sheikh Jalal Abu Alruq. Wow! You will think

01:41:18

Yasir Qadhi's on Prozac if you listen to—he was the guy who was yelling about Christianity invaded

01:41:27

Iraq and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And you know why I debated him? Because he's a

01:41:32

Muslim, and I want Muslims to know about the true gospel. That's why I did it. So here's some of the clips.

01:42:09

I'm confused. On the one hand, we have, well, how can

01:42:19

Yasir Qadhi be what he says he is if he's cavorting with Linda Sarsour?

01:42:25

And then here, and this sounds rather old, but in his lectures on Fiqh, on Islamic jurisprudence, he admits correctly that the historical perspective in Islam is the death penalty in Islamic states for homosexuality.

01:42:44

Every time I hear people saying, well, the

01:42:49

Muslims are trying to lie about what they actually believe, here is Yasir Qadhi saying what they actually believe.

01:42:55

This is the historical rules of Sharia. Have you defended

01:43:05

Deuteronomy chapter 20 recently? That was the Old Testament mosaic law.

01:43:10

The Muslim says, see, that's the mosaic law. We're consistent with that. And so what you do is, that's your law.

01:43:17

That was the law in Deuteronomy 20. Let me talk to you about the fulfillment of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. And then you make the application to First Corinthians and the fact that no one who is a homosexual will inherit eternal life.

01:43:31

But the difference now is, under the New Covenant, we don't have the penal clause that the church can then apply within the society.

01:43:41

And you can get to talk about the New Covenant, the cross, all sorts of neat stuff. And so what's the issue?

01:43:49

I don't know. But there it is. Yes, that's what Islam teaches. And Yasir Qadhi was honest about what

01:43:56

Islam teaches. Here's the next one. These were actually very controversial remarks, and it led to an investigation of Yasir Qadhi over in the

01:44:03

UK. The Times of London reported back in April that the British Charity Commission asked Islamic Relief why it invited what they called a hardline

01:44:12

Muslim preacher, that's Yasir Qadhi, to star in a fundraising tour of Britain. This is what the

01:44:19

UK media used to describe Yasir Qadhi, a hardline, others have called him an extremist preacher.

01:44:24

Well, he's not an extremist. Those are the laws of Sharia. And so why would you dialogue with him?

01:44:32

Because he's a Muslim, and that's the people we want to talk to. There are liberal Muslims, I suppose. There are not many of them, but why would

01:44:38

I necessarily – they don't represent the world's Muslims. So what am I going to accomplish?

01:44:44

And by the way, that same British media also would point out to you that Robert Spencer is banned from going to England for being a radical himself.

01:44:55

So I'm not sure we necessarily want – well, let's just be fair and apply the same standard.

01:45:01

The Islamic state allowed them to worship other than Allah in their lands, but within their temples.

01:45:09

They were not allowed to go public in this regard. So here we have an extremism that we see in our times of these groups, that they want to destroy anybody that doesn't agree with them.

01:45:20

And in our religion, firstly, if you want to do this properly, you need to have authority in the land.

01:45:26

You need to have statehood. Our Prophet ﷺ didn't begin his da 'wah by the idols around the

01:45:31

Ka 'bah, did he? Did he begin his da 'wah by destroying the idols around the Ka 'bah? No. When did he destroy the idols? When he conquered

01:45:37

Makkah, after 20 years of preaching. And these guys, they want to start from this exact point when nobody will accept this from them.

01:45:45

And then number two, they selectively apply. They don't know properly which thing to go and destroy.

01:45:51

Our Prophet ﷺ allowed and the shari 'ah allows the freedom of worship of other religions if it is done in their own places of worship.

01:46:01

And this is the standard position, the majority position. And also historically, this is how the ummah has always done it.

01:46:08

Okay, there's that. Why play that? That's Yasir Qadhi arguing against ISIS.

01:46:15

That's Yasir Qadhi arguing against al -Qaeda. He's saying that the historical perspective was to allow for limited—we would say limited—worship, but it was still allowed, especially with the people of the book.

01:46:31

He didn't say that particular point, but I've heard him talking about it in other places. And again, it's just simple Islamic history and Islamic jurisprudence.

01:46:37

So he's arguing against the radicals who are destroying these places of worship and not allowing those people to worship in their temples, in their churches, in Islamic lands.

01:46:51

That's against ISIS. So there was no comment there. I don't know why it was played. You know, because we always hear people saying, well, why aren't there any

01:47:02

Muslims out there that say anything other? They're all supporting ISIS. And then you get someone who's saying, no, they're wrong.

01:47:07

And then that's quoted as if he's doing something wrong. So I didn't understand why that was—but that's what he was doing, in case people didn't understand what he was doing.

01:47:18

This is the point of this chapter. How can you make fun of something that Allah has said? How can you make fun of something that the

01:47:23

Prophet ﷺ said and did? Anyone who makes fun of it is as if he is making fun of Allah and his Messenger.

01:47:29

And we've said that certain things, even ignorance is no excuse to curse Allah and their Messenger, to make fun of Allah, to make fun of Allah's Messenger, to make fun of the

01:47:37

Qur 'an, reading through the Qur 'an, no excuse. Obviously, you don't have to have knowledge for this type of stuff. Unless the man is insane, obviously.

01:47:43

If he is insane, there is no excuse. To make fun of Allah and his Messenger, the punishment is death.

01:47:50

You ridicule, you curse Allah and his Messenger, the punishment for that is death. And the scholars say, he who curses

01:47:56

Allah's Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, it doesn't matter. Obviously, when we are in an

01:48:02

Islamic state, we're not talking about America or England, okay? When we're in an Islamic state, it doesn't matter what he does after that.

01:48:08

Even if he repents, he is going to be killed. Okay, tough words there. Again, okay, tough words.

01:48:15

He's not making this up. I recall a section from the

01:48:21

Hadith on this. I don't remember exactly where it is, but I recall it's a part of Islamic jurisprudence.

01:48:29

Now, you and I will go, we don't want that. This is where you get the Pakistani blasphemy laws and stuff like that.

01:48:36

Totally agree that I have no interest in blasphemy laws, no question about it.

01:48:42

But he specifically says it's in an Islamic state, and in the Islamic state, that's the law. Okay?

01:48:48

I'm not following what the objection is, other than, are you objecting that Yasir Qadhi teaches accurately

01:48:55

Islamic history? Because it's really strange. I get all these people who are attacking him for misrepresenting

01:49:04

Islam, and then when he accurately represents Islam, he gets attacked too, so I'm not really sure.

01:49:10

How does he win? I don't know. I disagree with him on all these things, obviously, but what he's doing is he's accurately representing

01:49:17

Islamic law. We need to know what the Islamic law is to be able to contrast it with the truth. So that's why you talk to these folks.

01:49:24

Do they have to stop being Muslim before we can talk to them? I'm just not following what the reasons are.

01:49:29

There's only two more quotes. It is not my right to legislate or your right to legislate. No supreme court, no system of government, no democracy where they vote.

01:49:39

Okay, I actually played that one. Sorry about that. Okay, maybe, was it this one? Let me see. And then he said, or fight in the name of Allah.

01:49:47

Oh, okay. Okay, this is a section on jihad. So you fight, you use

01:49:53

Allah's name, in other words, you always take help from Allah. You always say, and when you say it, it is as if you're making a dua to Allah, that give me barakah in this act of mine.

01:50:02

Help me in this act of mine. I cannot do this act without your help, O Allah. Okay, so the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is telling them, when you fight, fight in the name of Allah, in the way of Allah subhanahu wa ta 'ala also.

01:50:12

Okay, in the way of Allah. Okay, fight those who disbelieve in Allah. And by the way, this shows you that jihad is an obligation upon the

01:50:20

Muslims whenever there is a khalifa or an army or a

01:50:27

Muslim state is capable of doing jihad. Because the general ruling is that the Muslims will always be at physical war, at physical war with the non -Muslims.

01:50:37

Okay, the general ruling is that the Muslims will always have a physical jihad with the non -Muslims unless the situation is weak, or like we are in our times, we don't have a khalifa or an

01:50:46

Islamic state. Otherwise, jihad is going to last until the day of judgment, like the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said. Okay, so this is the reputation of those modernist groups that try to downplay jihad.

01:50:55

No, we fight literally with our swords and our guns, if you like, in our times. We fight the non -Muslims when we have the capability of doing so.

01:51:02

When we don't, when we don't have this capability, then temporarily, not a permanent thing, temporarily, we do not do jihad until that time comes back.

01:51:10

So we fight those who disbelieve in Allah. Again, that's fundamental

01:51:16

Muslim theology. And I do wonder if Yasir Qadhi has, would express himself quite as directly today, because I'm aware of the fact that when that was recorded, he identified himself as Salafi.

01:51:43

And I even identified him as Salafi in my book. When I quoted from his book on Shirk, I identified him as a

01:51:51

Salafi scholar in a footnote in What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. Shortly after the book came out, article comes out,

01:52:00

Yasir Qadhi no longer identifies himself as Salafi. I was like, oh, great.

01:52:07

Well, maybe in the next printing or something like that. So I have to wonder if there, how there would be a difference.

01:52:14

And I may write to him and ask him, how would you view that differently today?

01:52:21

But that's historic Islamic theology. When the caliphate exists, the caliph can proclaim a state of jihad.

01:52:32

Now, he's not talking there about offensive, defensive, but he believes very clearly, as any historical

01:52:39

Muslim would be, you have the Dar al -Harb and Dar al -Islam, and they're always in warfare with one another.

01:52:46

That's Islamic theology. No question about it. And what's the only way to change that? Gospel? Not politics.

01:52:53

It's not politics. It is not politics. It will never be politics. It's gospel.

01:52:59

It's gospel. Right. But if you're talking about conservative Islam, there are some really horrible parts of it.

01:53:06

Is this really something that is a matter of dialogue or ought it to be a matter of rebuke? Let me tell you who the real

01:53:12

God is. Not just a matter of, well, we believe this, you believe this, you believe in divine revelation, so do we.

01:53:18

Yes. But the Christian answer to this would be our divine revelation is actually from the true God. And let me tell you why.

01:53:24

Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you what you had to say on the crucifixion is an offense to a holy

01:53:31

God. Let me explain to you why. These kinds of interactions I have no problem with. Well, if you watch the dialogue, that's what happened.

01:53:41

Well, okay. If you want to say is what you have to do is say you're an idolater and so on and so forth.

01:53:48

But let me close with this because I don't know if Janice could take the time to watch all this. It's been two hours.

01:53:53

We're coming up. I did pretty good in coming up right at two hours. I don't know if she's going to watch all this. She has a lot of things to do, may not have time to, but we're going to put it out there.

01:54:03

Maybe she'll watch it another time. I don't know. Here's the difference, Janet. We were very clear and have always been very clear.

01:54:14

When Yasir Qadhi allows me to refer people in the mosque or in the church to debates, you know, he didn't want to do a debate, but he's like, oh, sure.

01:54:23

Refer people to, they want to go watch debates. Great. And in those debates, we lay all of this stuff out very, very clearly.

01:54:31

The difference is that after the evening in the mosque, I was approached and I've mentioned this before, but a lot of people aren't going to see what

01:54:39

I said before. I was approached by two young women. One primarily spoke to me in full hijab, beautiful hijab, embroidered with flowers and so on and so forth.

01:54:54

And she said to me, thank you very much for coming. May I ask you a question?

01:55:00

And I was, I was munching on a chocolate chip cookie. I think it may have had M &Ms in it too.

01:55:05

It's really good. Shouldn't have had it, but anyway. And I said, sure.

01:55:12

And here was the question she asked me, she said, how do you deal with the influence of pagan religion on the development of the doctrine of the

01:55:20

Trinity at the council of Nicaea? You know what a privilege it was to have the opportunity to stand there as someone who's taught church history for decades.

01:55:33

First class I taught after I graduated seminary was church history, teaching it right now at my church and to sit there, stand there with her hanging on my every word, getting to talk to her about Ignatius of Antioch and his testimony, the deity of Christ and Constantine's actual role at the council of Nicaea, which wasn't coming up with terminology like homoousius and all the rest of that stuff.

01:55:58

And for 10 minutes to speak the truth to her about what really happened to council

01:56:03

Nicaea and the only reason I got to do that was because we had those dialogues in the spirit.

01:56:11

We had those dialogues. It wouldn't have happened after a debate. Wouldn't have happened after debate. How much is her soul worth?

01:56:18

How much is that opportunity worth? These are the questions that I don't see my critics even asking, even considering they're just so concerned about the left and politics and all this conspiracy stuff.

01:56:35

They're not overly concerned, it seems to me, about that kind of conversation.

01:56:41

That's why I do it. And as long as God allows,

01:56:48

I'm going to keep doing it. And if people watching this have listened to all this and gone, yeah, that's what we need to be doing, stand with us, because obviously there's a lot of people that don't want this happening, that don't want this happening.

01:57:05

Two hours of response. Thank you very much for listening to all of that.