The Dividing Line - The Return From South Africa Report

Technical Difficulties and Gratitude for the South Africa Trip

James White, sorry about the technical difficulties, I want to send out my sincere thanks to the Microsoft Corporation for designing Windows, so that when you need to do a fast reboot, that's when it decides to install 21 updates.

Thank you very much, Bill Gates and the team there at Windows, another reason why I use a Mac. Anyway, good to be with you today, hopefully some of you are able to be watching on YouTube as well. I want to explain my dress today very quickly.

I am wearing an official, real, genuine Springbok jersey. It is a rugby jersey from South Africa. It is the jersey that I wore during the Christian Worldview Conference at Antioch Bible Church. I want to thank Tim Cantrell and all the elders and folks there at Antioch Bible Church for a great Saturday in South Africa.

Really warm and loving folks, well attended, great questions, we covered a wide range of things. Tim tried to get me to cover some things that I had absolutely no interest in covering whatsoever during the Q &A.

Tim, I'm going to have to get you for that someday. Anyway, he dragged me off into some areas, I'm just looking at him going, really, seriously, you're asking me about this? What am I supposed to know about this?

What are you doing? But anyways, the stuff that I actually knew something about went real well. But the Springboks were playing the All Blacks that night, and those of you who live in the United States, you cannot begin to understand the cultural significance of rugby in places like New Zealand, Australia, basically anywhere south of the equator, and a few places north, but especially south of the equator.

Rugby is a cultural, religious experience, it really is. And when I was in Australia, when I was in Sydney a couple years ago during the World Cup, we had to actually move the evening service I was speaking in, so it would not conflict with the Australia-New Zealand rugby match.

New Zealand? What's that? New Zealand rugby match between the Australian team and the All Blacks. That's where I first saw the haka, for those of you who have never seen the haka, Google All Blacks plus haka, and be ready to be amazed.

But anyway, so I knew how important it was going to be, and of course that's why we finished up the Worldview Conference well before the beginning of the game. But unfortunately, the All Blacks are the best team in the world right now, and while the Springboks did their best for the first, oh, I'd say three-quarters, injuries and stuff took them out, and the All Blacks prevailed rather handily at the end.

So are you asking me if I actually understand rugby? No, not really. I mean, you watch it enough, you start picking up what you're supposed to do, sort of, but I definitely need to find an in-depth, extensive YouTube tutorial, video, to figure it out completely.

So that's what I'm wearing today. Thanks very much to the folks at Antioch Bible Church. Next time maybe I'll wear my South African football jersey, which, if you understand what the meaning of football is outside the United States, that's soccer in the United States, which the guys at Antwerd got me before I left as well.

And so we'll do that. Anyway, today on the program, let me just give the announcement, and next, Lord willing, next Tuesday, whenever we schedule the program on Tuesday, I think we're going for like 10, if I recall correctly, or was it 11?

I don't know. I've got an interview next Tuesday, which is going to be very, very interesting. But we're going for a morning dividing line next week, and on Tuesday.

Yeah, but don't we have to do like one every day next week so you catch up on all the work you've missed while you're out on vacation? I mean... Yeah, sure, whatever you say.

Yeah, I was taking it easy there yesterday, you know, real, real easy day, just flight from Jo 'burg to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Chicago, and Chicago to Phoenix, 23 hours in the air, not including the fun running from the international arrivals in Chicago to my gate at gate B4 in Chicago.

Just made it as they were boarding. That was, I needed to be running after sitting for so long. I needed to run. Yeah, that was my longest trip ever. I think I was the person to travel the farthest on the Chicago flight by a long shot.

No one else was close. But there are people that do that regularly. I don't know how. I mean, I did pretty well. I mean, I got home and got on the bike and went for a 27 mile ride with the wife. So I think I did pretty well.

I don't think that's what you would do after that. In fact, yeah, yeah, we'd have to tie him up and gag him and get him home.

I'd be looking for the door and this handle is going to work somehow, someway, because I'm out of here. Yeah, yeah. I hear you.

Anyway, I wanted to give you a report, obviously, on just certainly the most amazing trip overseas I've ever had. Not just because of the fact that this is my first trip to Africa and certainly the farthest I've ever gone or any of the rest of that stuff, but just simply what happened.

It was absolutely amazing. Now, we are going to be trying a new feature on the program today that we have not done before. And if it works, we'll be using it more in the future. But of course, we did happen to crash our software in the process.

But this is different software. It's a different software that crashed. So it was the old one that died, but the pictures are in the new software, right?

Well, yeah. No, the new software is fine, but what locked the machine up was SAM Broadcaster. And I don't think it likes the competition. It's feeling... Yes. Ancient.

It's feeling challenged. I understand. Anyway, we are going to try to provide you with some of the pictures as I'm describing them on the program today. And I have some audio. Now, this is not the high-quality audio that, Lord willing, we will eventually have, of course.

Most of you know that in my debates, I use a LiveScribe pen. A LiveScribe pen allows you to record an audio recording, and hence, when I am finished, I upload it to my computer. I can click anywhere in the notes.

My handwritten notes appear on the screen. I can click anywhere in there, and it'll play what was being said at that particular point in time. It's amazing technology. I think anyone who's going to school, who's going to be listening to lectures and things like that should have one of these things.

I really, really, really wish I had had one when I was in school. Anyway, this is the audio from my pen, and so it's not nearly as good as it will be. But it also allows me to come back before we get all the...

Sometimes it takes quite some time to get the audio and video files and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But it allows me to report on things very quickly after the actual events themselves. Oh, little, my granddaughter is watching.

Hi. Hi, Clementine. How are you doing? Nice to almost not really see you. I managed to slip a few pictures of Clementine into the worldview presentation for Antioch Bible Church. It just, poof, in the middle of the thing, oh, look, it's Clementine, and she's chewing on her straw, and she's very happy.

But anyhow, and in fact, when I was at the old Potsdam University, now Northwest University in Potsdam, South Africa, and they were introducing me at the beginning of the double debate with Yusuf Ismail.

They mentioned that I was a grandfather and mentioned Clementine's name, and I was going, yay. And all the girls, all the university girls were like, aw. I sort of won the debate right there. Yusuf might as well have gone home at that point, because I got the girl vote by being all excited about Clementine.

So that's really all there was to it. Someone just informed me that Clementine is grinding her teeth at me, which I'm really not sure what that means, but when you have brand new teeth, I guess it's just fun to grind them.

Anyhow, let me tell you about the trip, and then we get to some of these points. We'll be trying to project those pictures, and hopefully you'll be able to get to see them. As you know, oh, by the way, this coming Saturday, so tomorrow, probably 12, 13 hours from now, is when Justin will first post the audio.

The first of the two programs that I recorded in London will be up on the unbelievable website. So I flew from Phoenix to Newark, Newark to London, had a wonderful time getting to my hotel, since there were three Holiday Inns right near Heathrow, and of course it was the third one we tried.

But the hotel was great. You had said, checkmark against that. No, we just need to know which one it was. The hotel was fine. Food was good, room was clean, it was comfortable, et cetera, et cetera. Just need to know which one it is when we get there.

So it actually is, I mean, look out the window, and there's the Jets taxiing by. It's that close, but it was perfectly quiet. They've insulated it really well. So it was actually a good hotel. Anyhow, I managed to get myself from there via buses and underground.

My Oyster card worked fine. Yes, I am proud of myself that I can get myself around London on my own. I am very proud of myself, thank you very much. And it's fun. That is a city that you would hardly ever really need a car in.

There is no two ways about it. Public transport is just that good there. Of course, I've never had to try to get someplace in snow, so I won't even go there. But I've been there in good weather. And got to the Premier Studios and got there really early, I mean, really early, and met with Justin.

And then Peter Williams came in, wonderfully nice fellow. I think he and I could have some great Roman Catholic debates. If we could ever find anybody in London that would host them. That's the problem.

Neither one of us have lots of money, and so we actually would need to find some Christians there that would like to actually host some decent debates. He was a fair fellow, and I think he and I can get along pretty well the same way that Mitch Pacquiao and I have gotten along.

He's stuck to the subjects, and he's a good guy. So we had a discussion on ultimate authorities, and of course, as it always does, he was talking about, you know, immediately went to canon issues, I immediately went to Marian issues, because obviously the Marian dogmas are the things that have been defined by tradition, as is normal along those lines.

But it was only an hour and five minutes or something like that, or maybe just an hour. So you know how that works out. That will air this Saturday. Then we were joined on air by Yusuf Ismail, and he and I were supposed to be discussing the role of Jesus in Christianity and Islam.

It really didn't go there, to be honest with you. It was sort of a preview of what we'd end up talking about later on at Northwest University. But that one, maybe the next week, I haven't been told by Justin.

Logically, it would probably be the week after that on Unbelievable. But he might have his stuff come up, and sometimes he moves the schedule. So we did the Unbelievable programs. That was on Monday. I went straight back from Premier to Heathrow and got checked in for my flight on South African Airways down to Jo 'burg.

I had a, I would call it a smooth flight in the sense that nothing happened, but it was not a smooth flight. It was a vibrator flight. I mean, the whole way it was just, it was, it was, there was some storms over Africa, I guess.

But anyhow, I flew to Johannesburg and got into the airport there. And of course, no one calls it Johannesburg in Johannesburg. It's Jo 'burg. And I noticed people calling it Jo 'burg. And then once I got to Jo 'burg, I found out that's what everybody calls it is Jo 'burg.

So I guess Johannes, I guess that Hannes is just too long to pronounce, and was picked up at the airport by Rudolf Buschhoff, Pastor Rudolf Buschhoff picked me up. And I just want to say that when we get to the debates, and we look at some of the pictures and we really start considering what happened in South Africa.

And I think some of the most important things we've ever done took place over the past couple of weeks there. Just historic things. A lot of people were involved in making that happen. I mean, you know, getting my flight set up and stuff like that on this end, on Rich's part, a lot of work, a lot of work, a lot of work on my part.

I mean, a lot of work on your part as the audience listening to this, listening to the preparation that we were doing and things like that. And of course, everybody who donated to the large costs of a worldwide trip like this, all those things, everyone, very important.

And to the folks in South Africa, to Johan and Antwerd and Tim Cantrell and the elders at Antioch Bible, and to the Muslim side, to IPCI, to Yusuf Ismail and Shabir Ali for coming down, and Bashir Varnia, and the folks at the mosque in Lanasia, and especially the folks at the mosque in Erasmia, the Abu Bakr Asidic mosque there, thanks go to all these folks for just an amazing time.

And the staff, especially the staff, the New Testament department, Prof Lip and others there at, again, I like to call it Pachastun University, but Northwest University now, everybody, University of Joburg, University of Pretoria, everybody was involved.

Tremendous thanks for an incredible time. But I will tell you, the reason that I'm home and seemingly in one piece, I think the reason that I was able to get good sleep and to stay healthy and to stay focused and hence to have good debates, the reason it all took place, fundamentally, once I got down there, was Brother Rudolph.

When I went to the United Kingdom in 2005 and I met Pastor Roger Brazier, Roger and I just automatically, we just linked. We just, it was like brothers that had been separated at birth type of a situation.

And that sometimes happens when you travel. Well, Brother Rudolph and I did the same thing. And though I could never convince him to call me James, other than that, we just connected. And he did so much work.

I mean, so much thanks goes to his dear wife, who basically lost him for about nine or ten days during that period of time. But he just made it all happen. He's the one that drove me all over the place.

There were only a couple of days that Johan had to drive me around. When we were out in his neck of the woods, out toward Pochesterum, Lenasia, that area sort of south, what is that, southwest of Joburg Central, he was the one that took care of me in those places, took me back and forth.

I decided to stay with the family I was staying with an extra night because the room was so nice. And so he drove me back from Pochesterum there and then back in the morning. It just went so far beyond the call of duty.

It was amazing. And he's just an awesome brother. And I really hope I had a positive impact upon his life. But if you appreciate what you're going to see in the debates when they become available, really, you need to express your thanks to Rudolph and to all that he did.

And I am very much looking forward to seeing him and the folks down there again next time I head down there, because I will be heading down there again. It was a very fruitful time. I also learned from Rudolph that the church in South Africa is in bad shape.

And in fact, I guess what we should say is that the church is very, very small and what calls itself Christianity is very, very big. The Word Faith movement, wild-eyed Pentecostalism is the norm there.

Basically, we export all of our wacky theology to South Africa. And I tried to keep that in mind in talking to the Muslims, because sadly, folks, that's what they think Christianity is. I must have looked like an absolute freak to them, because I don't sound anything like TD Jakes.

And he goes down there and all the big names, the Creflo dollars and everything else are big stuff in South Africa. And when Rudolph picked me up, we went to a shopping mall. I got a SIM card for my phone.

So glad I bought that little teeny tiny droid in London a couple of trips ago that's unlocked, because I can just throw SIM cards in there and the thing works for me. It's way too small, but I'll stick with it as long as it keeps working.

That's it. It's great. But we got a SIM card. I was getting something to eat and he just starts filling me in on, look, he says he's never, ever, ever, ever heard a sermon on the Trinity anywhere in South Africa and doubts anyone's ever preached one.

I mean, obviously, there are places like Antioch Bible, which is associated with the Master's Seminary and John MacArthur and stuff where you will get that kind of thing. But in the mainstream of what calls itself Christianity in South Africa, there is just a horrible level of preparedness when it comes to apologetics issues, the gospel, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, defense of the New Testament.

And the word faithers don't care about apologetics. That's not even on their radar screen. And so those that are influenced by that kind of perspective are just defenseless when it comes to the Yusuf Ismail's and Shabir Ali's of the world and the attacks of Islam.

So that was very troubling right from the start. I also immediately began my cultural education, my cultural education. Now, Rudolph speaks Afrikaans fluently, and I didn't know much about Afrikaans until I got there.

But immediately, I began realizing that I was not in Kansas anymore. Because, for example, you pull up to almost any intersection, anywhere in Joburg, and there are people crawling all over. Not people crossing the streets.

They're walking between the cars selling things. They're walking between the cars trying to, you know, they start cleaning your headlights, and then they only clean one headlight and then ask you to pay for the other headlight.

They are selling everything under the sun, from cigarettes, to car chargers, to sunglasses, to who knows what. And they're everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And I've never seen more people just standing by the side of the road, sitting by the side of the road, walking here, there, and everywhere.

There is, of course, a lot of crushing poverty in South Africa. On Sunday morning, I spoke at a church in Tambisa. And some of you have seen what Tambisa looks like, because you saw a movie a few years ago called District 9.

And if you saw District 9, it was shot in Johannesburg. It was actually shot in a portion of Soweto. But Soweto and Tambisa are pretty much the same thing, just in slightly different locations. Shacks, tin roofs held on by tires, just not the kind of thing that I've experienced much in my life here in the United States.

And the church I spoke at, such a study in contrast. You can see through holes in the walls. It's a tin roof, bare light bulbs, and a digital projector. It's just you will drive through neighborhoods.

I remember apartheid ended in 1994, but it really hasn't fully ended in South Africa and Toto in the sense that you can say, OK, it's over. But it takes time for the barriers that have been there to dissolve.

And one thing is sadly sure. And that is in all of South Africa, in any of the places where you have a real house, that house will be surrounded by solid walls, topped by razor wire, just strands of razor wire everywhere.

Every house, every business, every business, every building is covered with bars, locking bars. And they all keep saying the same thing. It wasn't this way only 20 years ago, but that's the way it is now.

And you are locked down in South Africa at that point. There is just so much theft. And so it's a cultural thing. And I also discovered very quickly that I needed to buy a donkey. I needed to buy a donkey.

Now, what do you mean by that? Those of you who know anything about Afrikaans know exactly what I'm saying. Buy a donkey. I kept hearing from the very first very start when I ran into Rudolph, because Rudolph obviously speaks fluent English as well.

But his mother tongue is Afrikaans. And so he's talking to people and he's ordering something. So I said, buy a donkey, buy a donkey. And of course, me being the stupid American, I had to make a joke about it and say, well, could I get a horse instead?

Buy a donkey is how you say thank you very much in Afrikaans. Buy a donkey. And so for the first day or two, I tried to buy a horse joke, and then it got really old and I gave up after that. But anyway, so if you want to at least know one phrase in Afrikaans, it's real simple, buy a donkey.

That's, or if you want to say very, very much, it's buy a buy a donkey. So anyway, so I, the, the culture education, cultural education began, you know, we were driving out to Potshus room the second morning and we got stopped on the freeway by a herd of cattle crossing the, crossing the freeway.

I got a picture of that on my phone somewhere. And just, just stuff like that. And trash everywhere. Trash everywhere in certain areas. In other areas, none. But in other areas, it's just, just everywhere.

And, and no vegetation because everyone has cut down anything that has wood in it to burn it in their shacks. And, you know, little fires alongside the road. And, and of course, gold mines everywhere, huge 24 hour gold mines all over the area, especially between Joburg and Potshus room.

I saw many, many of them there. And as everyone told me on the plane, as we were landing, if you don't see Cape Town, if you don't see places like that, you really haven't seen South Africa. That, that Joburg is actually higher than Denver.

Joburg is 50, almost 5 ,600 feet in altitude. So, but it's, it's, it's, it's not the garden spot of, of South Africa. If I wanted to see, you know, I did see some, some ostriches, some springboks and some zebras just wandering about.

But it's not the place you'd necessarily, you want to, obviously you want to go out to Cougar, places like that to get to see all the, you know, African, the African element of things like that. But Joburg is, is not the best part of, of South Africa on that level, obviously.

And so anyways, I got in on Tuesday morning. Thankfully, we did not schedule anything that day because I would have been, you know, completely brain dead. But had, you know, was dropped off with some folks from Rudolph's church.

And we had dinner that night. And I did start discovering South African food at that point in time, eating stuff that again, not only would my mother pass out in, in a shock that I actually tasted these things.

But I think my own family today, I think my daughter would be amazed that, that I partook of many of the things that I partook of in, in, in South Africa. But anyway, the next day began the work that I had come there to do.

Debates, Lectures, and the South African Apologetics Context

And the first major event was the debate at the mosque in Venasia with Bashir Varnia. Now we've played a lot of Bashir's presentations here on the program in preparation. I did get to, I had, it was an honor on Friday night.

So we debated on Wednesday night, but on Friday night, on our way to the University of Johannesburg for my debate with Yusuf Books, we stopped at Bashir Varnia's home. And Rudolph and I were honored guests of he and his wife and his son.

And I ate all sorts of Indian food there because they're Indian. And it was wonderfully good. I mean, she loves to cook. Just a wonderful, warm welcome. And Bashir and I just talked about stuff and he discovered that I'm a complete cycling geek.

And his son is technically oriented. So I was talking with him about some things, but we had a wonderful time there. Unfortunately, it was way too short because we had to get all the way into Joburg for the, for the debate.

It was, we were barely there an hour and I would look forward to an opportunity of spending more time with Bashir in the future so we can just talk with one another and get to know each other better. But I want to thank Bashir Varnia, especially for his kindness in allowing us to come by his home and to express my thanks once again to his wife for just how kind she was in providing all the food that she did and, and putting up with the strange looking man, Scottish fellow from America.

So anyway, that evening we had a debate with Bashir Varnia at the mosque in Venasia, South Africa. And I think they probably would have allowed the debate to take place in the mosque. Now, mosque and mosque pretty much mean the same thing.

I'm using mosque to refer to specifically the place of worship. That is where the prayers are offered, where the mimbar is, the Qibla, et cetera, et cetera. All right. When we say we've had, when I've debated mosques in the past, whether it was the East London mosque, the mosque in Toronto or the mosque in Venasia, we were meeting in a, a large room associated with the mosque on the property.

It was sort of like be the fellowship center or something like that at a church, if you want to use that, that type of thing, that kind of thinking. I had never been, I had never debated inside a mosque.

That's what took place. Monday night, we did not talk about it publicly because we did not want a great deal of pressure to be brought against the mosque not to do this. But we'll talk about that in a moment.

But we knew that was coming. So the first debate, and I guess this is a good time to, to try to bring the first picture up. And hopefully this will be the picture of Bashir Varnia. He's speaking from, from the podium and I'm taking notes.

I have a wry smile on my face. I think that probably means, I can't see this, by the way, I'm just going by the memory. But I think that that was probably where he was making a point that I knew I was going to be able to make a very strong counterpoint to.

That's probably why I'm grinning, I would assume. But you can see the debate there. It was very well attended. The room was packed out and it was a very good evening of exchange on important issues with Bashir Varnia, including John 1 -1 and issues like that.

Now, unlike some debaters who will remain nameless, I do, when things allow, enjoy conversations after the debate. Now, I'm not going to sit there until three o 'clock in the morning, especially with the schedule I had, which not including the Unbelievable broadcast was 18 talks in six days.

And yes, my voice did survive. I'm very thankful to the Lord and for all of your prayers in regards to that. But I do like to talk with folks after the debates. And after that debate, I had a gentleman come up to me.

Younger man, huge beard, all black hair. One of the most beautiful robes I had ever seen. It was gorgeous. And the first thing he asked me was, why do you think the Quran had an author? Because I was referred to the author of the Quran.

Led to an excellent conversation with him. And it was very obvious he had never heard, never heard the arguments I was presenting to him. And folks, once again, man, I'm looking at the clock going, I'm not even close here.

Yeah, you can come back to me if you want. And I said, folks, this is something you've got to hear me saying. I've mentioned this many, many times in my talks. When you present stuff to people they've never heard before, don't sit there and expect them to come up with an answer.

They'll come up with an answer. Maybe the dumbest thing they've ever said in their life, but they will come up with an answer and they'll probably go to their graves defending that answer. You've got to give people room to think about what you're actually saying.

And so I assured him, look, I'm not asking you to answer these questions. I'm just asking you to consider what it is that I said. And I found it very, very interesting that when the conversation drew to a close, the last thing you want to know was, what was that website again?

It was an excellent conversation and it illustrated, again, why we do what we're doing and the impact that it can have in faraway places. And I pray for that man. I don't know his name, but I sure remember his face.

And I just pray that these people can sense how much I care for them and that I'm there because I do care about them. And I believe that what I'm saying is important. And I think they get that. I think they get that.

So the next day started our work out at Northwest University. And I may get some of these out of order. I apologize if I do. But I had the opportunity to speak to the theological students on the importance of Reformed theology.

Many of them are Reformed, but many of them have been Reformed their entire lives. And so I basically gave them a talk about how Reformed theology needs to be experienced, not simply believed. That it's easy for folks to really embrace the form of doctrine, but not necessarily translate that into the heart.

And so I had a good talk with them. And then what did I do that afternoon? Oh, well, no, because it was the next day that John Gilchrist and I gave a talk on Islam in the morning. And then Gnosticism right before lunch was the next day.

There's something that afternoon that honestly, after I knew I'd probably forget some things. But no, no, actually, I think I just had the opportunity of resting that afternoon. That's right. That's why I don't remember, because there wasn't anything overly much to remember.

Rest of that afternoon and that evening had two debates with Yusuf Ismail there at Northwest University in Pachastrum. I didn't give you any pictures on that. That's why I didn't put anything up. I have posted some pictures on Twitter.

I just forgot to throw them in there. And the venue is huge. We had some technical difficulties because there wasn't any way to plug in to our computers down there. And so we had to use remotes to get our computers to do things, had to switch between computers.

And so I had my iPad on the thing, and I'm having to swipe the iPad, press the thing, turn around, make sure that it's actually worked. And reading it, it made it a little bit difficult. But we did the same topics I had done in London with Adnan Rashid on the transmission of the text of the Bible and the transmission of the text of the Koran.

They were good debates. Yusuf did exactly what I expected Yusuf to do. It's the shotgun approach. It's just throw out as much stuff as you can, knowing that no one—it's far easier, takes far less time to make accusations than it does to prove them.

But I was very successful in doing what I intended to do in this situation, and that was to explain to the people the difference between the free transmission of the text of the New Testament and the controlled transmission of the text of the Koran.

And this was something they did not understand. Now, Yusuf was very bright. He brought up, for example, the long grinding of Mark and the Prick of Adultery. I was a little upset with Yusuf. He went personal on a number of things that he didn't need to.

He really didn't need to. You know, he would accuse me of—in fact, at one point I just identified his approach as cheap debating tricks, because even before I had the opportunity of having my rebuttal time, he was staying there saying, James didn't rebut this, and he didn't address that, and he didn't talk about that.

Why isn't he telling you these things? And especially it's about stuff that I've had in print for 20 years. So to accuse me of not telling people that stuff that I published and have spoken on literally hundreds of times just was unworthy of him.

And it's something I just don't want to engage in myself, no matter how effective it might be with some people. He's debating for a different audience than I am, if he's using arguments like that. But he was doing throughout all the textual critical stuff, and he brought up the long grinding of Mark and the Prick of Adultery, which I've talked about a million times.

You all on this program have heard about that stuff a million times. I've talked about John 73 through 811. I've talked about where it's found, the fact that in some manuscripts in Family 1, Family 13, it's found in Luke, and all the rest of this stuff.

I've addressed it many, many, many times. But he tried to make it look like I was trying to hide this from people and stuff like that, you can get away with in South Africa, I guess, if people don't know who I am.

Anybody who's read my books is sitting there going, oh, come on. But it was effective along those lines. But then, even after we addressed these things, he then would ask the audience, so how many of you Christians still believe in the story of the woman taking adultery?

And they're all putting their hands up. Sure, yeah, yeah, no problem. So it did illustrate the fact that we have a major gap between where our people need to be educationally and where they actually are.

Because he wasn't asking how many of your Byzantine text priority proponents read like that, he's just demonstrating that most Christians don't know much about where their New Testament came from and why there are footnotes at the bottom of the page or any of those types of things.

So it was a good evening, and John Gilchrist was there. Now, some of you don't know who John Gilchrist is. He's written many, many books. He's been involved in Islamic apologetics for a long, long time.

In fact, he debated Ahmadinejad and knew Ahmadinejad for many, many years, sued Ahmadinejad, in fact, and won at one point. He's an attorney himself. But people call him Uncle John. He's been at it for so long there in South Africa.

He was at a number of my debates, and I'm very, very thankful to say he was extremely encouraged by the ministry in South Africa. And if we accomplish nothing more than to encourage John Gilchrist, that's a very good thing.

He actually met me at the airport before I flew out, and we had a lovely time talking, Rudolph, John, and I. And he and I, the next morning, did talks there for the students and the staff at Northwest University on Mormonism, I'm sorry, Islam, and Gnosticism.

I guess the Gnostic part made me think of Mormonism. But anyhow, and so that was the ministry we had out there at Northwest University. I will be heading out there again in the future and doing some work with them, and I'm very excited about that.

But I'm running out of time, and I haven't even gotten to stuff here. I may have to go 15 minutes late. We don't even know when we're supposed to get done anyways, because we don't really know what time we got started.

But I need to pick up. Let's go ahead to the next picture. On Friday, I went to the University of Johannesburg and had a debate with Yusuf Bux. I believe that picture is showing Yusuf speaking. I think I'm seated, and seated right behind me is Rudolf.

He was moderating the debate, and that's the young man that, again, I'm just so thankful for his friendship and being a brother in Christ and just having made this whole thing work for me. And I hope he realizes how much his friendship has meant to me.

Yusuf Bux had been doing everything in his power to make sure this debate took place. He had called constantly. He was contacting everybody. He had contacted Antioch Bible Church. He wanted this debate very, very badly.

And so it was arranged, and you can see it was in a round conference room. It was actually the Senate Chambers for the Student Senate at the University of Johannesburg, beautiful university there in Johannesburg.