The Dividing Line - The Return From South Africa Report

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Sorry about the technical difficulties,
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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.
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Thank you very much Bill Gates and the team there at Windows, another reason why I use a
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Mac. Anyway, good to be with you today, hopefully some of you are able to be watching on YouTube as well.
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I want to explain my dress today very quickly. I am wearing an official, real, genuine
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Springbok jersey. It is a rugby jersey from South Africa. It is the jersey that I wore doing the
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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
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Saturday in South Africa. Really warm and loving folks, well attended. Great questions, we covered a wide range of things.
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Tim tried to get me to cover some things that I had absolutely no interest in covering whatsoever during the
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Q &A. Tim, I'm going to have to get you for that someday. Anyway, he dragged me off into some areas,
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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.
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But the Springboks were playing the All Blacks that night. 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.
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Rugby is a cultural, religious experience, it really is. And when
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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
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I was speaking in so it would not conflict with the Australia -New Zealand rugby match. New Zealand? What's that?
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New Zealand rugby match between the Australian team and the All Blacks. That's where I first saw the haka.
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For those of you who've never seen the haka, Google All Blacks plus haka and be ready to be amazed.
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But anyway, so I knew how important it was going to be. And of course, that's why we finished up the
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Worldview Conference well before the beginning of the game. But unfortunately, the
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All Blacks are the best team in the world right now. And while the
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Springboks did their best for the first, oh, I'd say three quarters, injuries and stuff took them out and the
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All Blacks prevailed rather handily at the end. So are you asking me if I actually understand rugby?
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No, not really. I mean, you watch enough, you start picking up what you're supposed to do, sort of.
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But I definitely need to find an in -depth, extensive YouTube tutorial video to figure it out completely.
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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
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South African football jersey, which if you understand what the meaning of football is outside the
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United States, that's soccer in the United States, which the guys at Antwerd got me before I left as well.
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And so we'll do that. Anyway, today on the program, let me just give you an announcement. And next,
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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?
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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.
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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?
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I mean... Yeah, sure. Whatever you say. Yeah, I was taking it easy there.
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Yesterday, you know, real easy day. Just a 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.
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Just made it as they were boarding. I needed to be running after sitting for so long.
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I needed to run. Yeah, that was my longest trip ever. I think I was the person to travel the farthest on the
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Chicago flight by a long shot. No one else was close, but there are people that do that regularly.
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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.
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So I think I did pretty well. I don't think that's what you would do after that.
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In fact, yeah, we'd have to tie him up and gag him and get him home.
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I'd be looking for the door and this handle is going to work somehow, some way, because I'm out of here. Yeah, yeah,
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I hear you. Anyway, I wanted to give you a report, obviously, on just certainly the most amazing trip overseas
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I've ever had, not just because of the fact that this is my first trip to Africa and certainly the farthest
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I've ever gone or any of that stuff, but just simply what happened. It was absolutely amazing.
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Now, we are going to be trying a new feature on the program today that we have not done before.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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It's feeling... Yes, it's feeling challenged, I understand.
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Anyway, we are going to try to provide you with some of the pictures, as I'm describing them, on the program today.
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And I have some audio. This is not the high -quality audio that, Lord willing, we will eventually have, of course.
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Most of you know that in my debates, I use a LiveScribe pen. A LiveScribe pen allows you to record an audio recording.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But it allows me to report on things very quickly after the actual events themselves.
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And so a little... My granddaughter is watching. Hi. Hi, Clementine. How are you doing? Nice to almost not really see you.
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I managed to slip a few pictures of Clementine into the worldview presentation for Antioch Bible Church.
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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
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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.
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They mentioned that I was a grandfather and mentioned Clementine's name, and I was going, yay.
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And all the girls, all the university girls were like, aww. I sort of won the debate right there.
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Yusuf might as well have gone home at that point, because I got the girl vote by being all excited about Clementine.
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So that's really all there was to it. Someone just informed me that Clementine is grinding her teeth at me, which
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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.
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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
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Saturday, so tomorrow, probably 12, 13 hours from now, is when
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Justin will first post the audio. The first of the two programs that I recorded in London will be up on the
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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.
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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.
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Food was good. Room was clean. It was comfortable, etc., etc. Just need to know which one it is when we get there.
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So it actually is. I mean, look out the window, and there's the Jets taxiing by.
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It's that close. But it was perfectly quiet. They've insulated really well. So it was actually a good hotel.
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Anyhow, I managed to get myself from there via buses and underground.
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My Oyster card worked fine. Yes, I am proud of myself that I can get myself around London on my own.
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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.
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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.
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But I've been there in good weather. And got to the Premier Studios and got there really early.
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I mean, really early. And met with Justin.
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And then Peter Williams came in. Wonderfully nice fellow. I think he and I could have some great
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Roman Catholic debates if we could ever find anybody in London that would host them. That's the problem.
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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.
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He was a fair fellow. And I think he and I can get along pretty well the same way that Mitch Pacwa and I have gotten along.
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He stuck to the subjects. And he's a good guy. And so we had a discussion on ultimate authorities.
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And of course, as it always does, he immediately went to canon issues.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But he might have his stuff come up. And sometimes he moves the schedule. So we did the Unbelievable programs. That was on Monday.
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I went straight back from Premier to Heathrow and got checked in for my flight on South African down to Jo 'burg.
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I would call it a smooth flight in the sense that nothing happened. But it was not a smooth flight.
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It was a vibrator flight. I mean, the whole way it was just rrrr.
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There were some storms over Africa, I guess. But anyhow, I flew to Johannesburg and got into the airport there.
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And of course, no one calls it Johannesburg or Johannesburg. It's Joburg, and I noticed people calling it
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Joburg, and then once I got to Joburg, I found out that's what everybody calls it, is Joburg. So 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.
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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.
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Just historic things. A lot of people were involved in making that happen. I mean, getting my flight set up and stuff like that on this end, on Rich's part, a lot of work.
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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.
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And of course, everybody who donated to the large costs of a worldwide trip like this.
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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
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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
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Abu Bakr Asidic mosque there. Thanks go to all these folks for just an amazing time.
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And the staff, especially the staff at the New Testament department, Prof Lip and others there at, again,
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I like to call it Pachisumi University, but Northwest University now. Everybody. University of Jo 'burg,
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University of Pretoria, everybody who was involved, tremendous thanks for an incredible time.
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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
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Brother Rudolph. When I went to the United Kingdom in 2005, and I met
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Pastor Roger Brazier, Roger and I just automatically, we just linked.
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It was like brothers that had been separated at birth type of a situation.
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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
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James, other than that, we just connected, and he did so much work.
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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.
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But he just made it all happen. He's the one that drove me all over the place, there were only a couple days that Johann had to drive me around.
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When we were out in his neck of the woods, out toward Potsdam, Alenasia, that area sort of southwest of Joburg Central, he was the one that took care of me in those places, took me back and forth.
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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 Potsdam there and then back in the morning.
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It just went so far beyond the call of duty. It was amazing. And he's just an awesome brother, and I really hope
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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
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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
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Church in South Africa is in bad shape. And in fact,
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I guess what we should say is that the Church is very, very small, and what calls itself Christianity is very, very big.
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The word -faith movement, wild -eyed Pentecostalism is the norm there.
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Basically, we export all of our wacky theology to South Africa, and I tried to keep that in mind in talking to the
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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 T .D.
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Jakes. And he goes down there, and all the big names, the Creflo Dollars and everything else are big stuff in South Africa.
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And when Rudolph picked me up, we went to a shopping mall. I got a
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SIM card from my phone. I'm so glad I bought that little teeny -tiny droid in London a couple trips ago that's unlocked, because I can just throw
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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.
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It's great. But we got a SIM card. I was getting something to eat, and he just starts filling me in.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Gospel, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, defense of the New Testament. And the word -faithers don't care about apologetics.
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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
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Yusuf Ismail's and Shabir Ali's of the world and the attacks of Islam. So that was very troubling right from the start.
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I also immediately began my cultural education, my culture education. Now, Rudolph speaks
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Afrikaans fluently, and I didn't know much about Afrikaans until I got there. But immediately,
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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.
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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.
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They are selling everything under the sun, from cigarettes, to car chargers, to sunglasses, to who knows what.
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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.
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There is, of course, a lot of crushing poverty in South Africa. On Sunday morning,
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I spoke at a church in Tambisa, and some of you have seen what
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Tambisa looks like, because you saw a movie a few years ago called District 9. And if you saw
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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.
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Shacks, tin roofs held on by tires, just not the kind of thing that I've experienced much in my life here in the
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United States. And the church I spoke at, such a study in contrast.
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You can see through holes in the walls. It's a tin roof, bare light bulbs, and a digital projector.
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You will drive through neighborhoods. Remember, apartheid ended in 1994, but it really hasn't fully ended in South Africa and Toto, in the sense that you can say,
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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.
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That house will be surrounded by solid walls topped by razor wire. Just strands of razor wire everywhere.
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Every house, every business, every building is covered with bars, locking bars.
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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.
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And you are locked down in South Africa at that point. There is just so much theft.
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And so it's a cultural thing. And I also discovered very quickly that I needed to buy a donkey.
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I needed to buy a donkey. Now, what do you mean by that? Those of you who know anything about Afrikaans know exactly what
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I'm saying. Buy a donkey. I kept hearing from the very start when
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I ran into Rudolf. Because Rudolf obviously speaks fluent English as well, but his mother tongue is
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Afrikaans. And so he's talking to people and he's ordering something. Buy a donkey.
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Buy a donkey. And of course, me being the stupid American, I had to make a joke about it and say, well, could
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I get a horse instead? Buy a donkey is how you say thank you very much in Afrikaans. Buy a donkey.
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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.
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Buy a donkey. That's, or if you want to say very, very much, it's buy a donkey.
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So anyway, so the culture education, cultural education began.
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You know, we were driving up to Potjesvrum the second morning and we got stopped on the freeway by a herd of cattle crossing the freeway.
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I got a picture of that on my phone somewhere. And just stuff like that. And trash everywhere.
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Trash everywhere in certain areas. In other areas, none. But in other areas, it's just everywhere. And no vegetation because everyone has cut down anything that has wood in it to burn it in their shacks.
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And, you know, little fires alongside the road. And, of course, gold mines everywhere. Huge 24 -hour gold mines all over the area, especially between Joburg and Potjesvrum.
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I saw many, many of them there. And as everyone told me on the plane as we were landing, if you don't see
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Cape Town, if you don't see places like that, you really haven't seen South Africa. Joburg is actually higher than Denver.
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Joburg is almost 5 ,600 feet in altitude. So, but it's not the garden spot of South Africa.
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If I wanted to see, you know, I did see some ostriches, some springboks, and some zebras just wandering about.
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But it's not the place you'd necessarily want to go. Obviously, you want to go out to Cougar, places like that, to get to see all the
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African element of things like that. But Joburg is not the best part of South Africa on that level, obviously.
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And so anyways, I got in on Tuesday morning. Thankfully, we did not schedule anything that day because I would have been completely brain -dead.
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But had, you know, was dropped off with some folks from Rudolf's church, and we had dinner that night.
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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 shock that I actually tasted these things, but I think my own family today,
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I think my daughter would be amazed that I partook of many of the things that I partook of in South Africa.
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But anyway, the next day began the work that I had come there to do.
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And the first major event was the debate at the mosque in Venasia with Bashir Varnia.
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Now, we've played a lot of Bashir's presentations here on the program in preparation.
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I did get to—it was an honor. On Friday night, so we debated on Wednesday night, but on Friday night, on our way to the
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University of Johannesburg for my debate with Yusuf Books, we stopped at Bashir Varnia's home.
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And Rudolf 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
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Indian. And it was wonderfully good. I mean, she loves to cook, just a wonderful, warm welcome.
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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.
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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 debate.
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We were barely there an hour, and I 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.
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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 putting up with the strange -looking man,
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Scottish fellow from America. So anyway, that evening we had a debate with Bashir Varnia at the mosque in Venezia, South Africa.
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And I think they probably would have allowed the debate to take place in the masjid. Now, masjid and mosque pretty much mean the same thing.
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I'm using masjid to refer to specifically the place of worship. That is where the prayers are offered, where the mimbar is, the qibla, etc.,
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etc. When I've debated mosques in the past, whether it was the
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East London Mosque, the mosque in Toronto, or the mosque in Venezia, we were meeting in a large room associated with the mosque on the property.
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It was sort of like the fellowship center or something like that at a church, if you want to use that type of thinking.
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I had never debated inside a masjid. That's what took place
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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.
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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 try to bring the first picture up.
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And hopefully this will be the picture of Bashir Varnia. He's speaking from the podium, and I'm taking notes.
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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
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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.
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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
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John 1 -1 and issues like that. Now, unlike some debaters who will remain nameless,
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I do, when things allow, enjoy conversations after the debate.
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Now, I'm not going to sit there until 3 o 'clock in the morning, especially with the schedule I had, which, not including the unbelievable broadcast, was 18 talks in 6 days.
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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.
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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
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I had ever seen. It was gorgeous. And the first thing he asked me was, why do you think the
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Quran had an author? Because I was referred to the author of the Quran. Led to an excellent conversation with him.
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And it was very obvious he had never heard, never heard the arguments I was presenting to him.
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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.
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And I said, folks, this is something you've got to hear me saying. I've mentioned this many, many times in my talks.
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When you present stuff to people they've never heard before, don't sit there and expect them to come up with an answer.
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They'll come up with an answer. It may be 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.
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You've got to give people room to think about what you're actually saying. And so, you know,
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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.
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And I found it very, very interesting that when the conversation drew to a close, the last thing he wanted to know was, what was that website again?
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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.
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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
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I care for them and that I'm there because I do care about them, and I believe that what
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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.
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I apologize if I do, but I had the opportunity to speak to the theological students on the importance of Reformed Theology.
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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
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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.
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And so I had a good talk with them. And then what did I do that afternoon?
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Oh, well, no, because it was the next day that John Gilchrist and I gave a talk on Islam in the morning, and then
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Gnosticism right before lunch was the next day. It was something that afternoon that honestly, after I knew
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I'd probably forget some things. But, no, no, actually,
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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.
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Rested that afternoon, and that evening had two debates with Yusuf Ismail there at Northwest University in Pachastrum.
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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.
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I just forgot to throw them in there. And the venue is huge.
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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.
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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.
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But we did the same topics I had done in London with Adnan Rashid on the transmission of the text of the
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Bible and the transmission of the text of the Koran. They were good debates. Yusuf did exactly what
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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.
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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
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New Testament and the controlled transmission of the text of the Koran. And this was something they did not understand.
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Now, Yusuf was very bright. He brought up, for example, the long writing of Mark and the
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Prick of Adultery. I was a little upset with Yusuf. He went personal on a number of things that he didn't need to.
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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,
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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.
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So to accuse me of not telling people about stuff that I've published and have spoken on literally hundreds of times just was unworthy of him.
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And it's something I just don't want to engage in myself, no matter how effective it might be with some people.
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He's debating for a different audience than I am if he's using arguments like that. But he was doing the throw -out all the textual critical stuff, and he brought up the long writing of Mark and the
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Prick of Adultery, which I've talked about a million times. You all in this program have heard about that stuff a million times. I've talked about John 73 through 811.
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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.
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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, which you can get away with in South Africa, I guess, if people don't know who
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I am. Anybody who's read my books isn't going, oh, come on. But it was effective along those lines.
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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?
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And they're all putting their hands up. Sure, 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.
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Because he wasn't asking how many of you are Byzantine text priority proponents or anything like that.
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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.
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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.
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He's been involved in Islamic apologetics for a long, long time. In fact, he debated Ahmadinejad and knew
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Ahmadinejad for many, many years, sued Ahmadinejad, in fact, and won at one point.
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He's an attorney himself. But people call him Uncle John. He's been at it for so long there in South Africa.
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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.
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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,
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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,
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Islam, and Gnosticism. I guess the Gnostic part made me think of Mormonism. But anyhow, that was the ministry we had out there at Northwest University.
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I will be heading out there again in the future and doing some work with them and I'm very excited about that.
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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.
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But I need to pick up. Let's go ahead to the next picture. On Friday, I went to the
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University of Johannesburg and had a debate with Yusuf Bux. I believe that picture is showing
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Yusuf speaking. I think I'm seated. And seated right behind me is Rudolph. He was moderating the debate.
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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.
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And I hope he realizes how much his friendship has meant to me.
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Yusuf Bux had been doing everything in his power to make sure this debate took place.
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He had called constantly. He was contacting everybody. He had contacted Antioch Bible Church. He wanted this debate very, very badly.
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And so it was arranged. And you can see it was in a round conference room.
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It was actually the Senate Chambers for the Student Senate at the
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University of Johannesburg. Beautiful university there in Johannesburg. To get there fastest from Bashir's home,
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Rudolph took me through the roughest part of town, the Muslim part. And we were sitting at a stoplight at one place.
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And here is this big, huge banner over this building. It says, We condemn the United States and all of its allies for their attacks upon the friend of Allah, Muhammad the
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Blessed Prophet. And it's in English and Arabic. And I'm just sitting here going,
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Oh, this is fun. And so there were a couple times, I'll be honest, there were a couple times that I did not feel safe.
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And that would have been one of those times. But we got through there.
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We got to the university. Very nice location there. I knew what to expect from Yusuf. Yusuf is a devotee of Ahmadiyyat.
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So what you will hear is the Ahmadiyyat style of debate.
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And for the opening statements and rebuttals, okay, you know, that kind of presentation can sound good to some people.
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But then we got into what is closest to cross -examination that we even got down there in South Africa.
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I need to encourage my South African brothers to do more in the way of cross -examination because that's where debates take place. He got to ask me five questions, and I had two minutes to respond to each question.
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And I got to ask him five questions, and he had two minutes to respond to mine. And that is quite simply where the wheels fell off for Yusuf.
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His questions to me were softballs. He thought they were tough. But if you know the doctrine of the Trinity, which he does not, how could he?
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He was raised in a basically non -religious family, was Roman Catholic for a little while, and then ran into Ahmadiyyat and has been a
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Muslim ever since then. So if all you know about Christianity is what you've learned from Ahmadiyyat, you don't understand Christianity because Ahmadiyyat didn't understand it either.
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And he made a life out of not understanding Christianity and refusing to accurately represent it.
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I've documented this many times. And so he asked me questions that he thought were difficult, and they weren't.
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They just gave me two -minute opportunities to preach and to preach with clarity. And so my time went very quickly.
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And then I started asking him questions. And after about the second question, you could hear rumblings in the audience, both from Christians and Muslims, that he simply was not answering the questions because he could not.
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And eventually I started interrupting him during his two minutes to say, sir, you're not answering my question. Let me try it again because you haven't.
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Once I was trying to ask him about the Son of Man passage in Mark 14, 61 and following.
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And he kept talking about John. So I just finally stopped and said, sir, why are you talking about John? I'm not asking you about the
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Gospel of John. I'm asking about Mark chapter 14. Do you have a Bible there? Okay, could you turn to the Gospel of Mark? All right, let me read it for you again.
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So I read it for him again. Now, can you explain in light of what you've said why Jesus says these things?
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And all I can come up with is I just don't believe that Jesus ever said that. And the Muslims in the audience are just, you know, they're groaning audibly at what's going on here.
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And I had a Muslim scholar come up to me afterwards. He's an economist. And he said, that wasn't fair. That wasn't fair.
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That man wasn't prepared to debate you. And I said, sir, he was put forward by two Muslim organizations. Are you telling me, you know,
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I mean, if I won't debate somebody, they'll claim you're hiding from them. And then when you debate him and you defeat him soundly, well, that wasn't fair.
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You know, so you're in trouble one way or the other. And I got to give Yusuf props.
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He called Rudolph afterwards and said, I apologize. I know that didn't go well.
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I recognize that. So I had hoped to get a chance to meet with Yusuf and to talk to him about some of these things.
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But that unfortunately did not work out due to his work schedule. But it was a very interesting evening.
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I do need to tell you one story. This is taking forever. I'm sorry. Well, I've got something
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I got to get to. So I can't go too much past our time. But one of the most heart -rending things
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I've ever had in a debate took place at the end of that debate. As Rudolph was closing the debate, a beautiful young girl, she's somewhere between 12 and 15.
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You know, I mean, somewhere in there. Just, just beautiful young lady comes up to Rudolph while he's still speaking in full
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Islamic garb. She doesn't have the face covering, but she's completely covered other than that. And she asks, she can ask me a question.
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And he says, well, we're not going to have audience questions. Well, I keep an eye out for her. And so as soon as the debate's over,
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I, I catch her eye and she comes straight down to me. She begins crying and she is passionately warning me to not say three.
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She's quoting directly from the Quran. And look, I fully understand what was going on here.
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What I had said had challenged her. She had no categories in which to respond to it. And she was just,
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I'll just never forget it. And obviously I didn't sit there and crush her arguments.
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There wasn't any reason to do that when, when a young lady is crying as she was crying, she's not really hearing what
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I'm saying anyways. All she's going to remember is how I responded to her. And the fact that I did so with compassion, not with compromise,
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I didn't say, well, you're right, or anything like that. I, I, I responded to what she said, but I kept other hotheads that were gathering around us from interrupting her constantly until she could say what she needed to say.
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There was a hothead staying next to her and I just, I just completely dismissed him. He's sitting there sticking his finger in my face and he's not listening to what
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I have to say. And I'm not there for folks like that. Someone else got to deal with them. If you aren't thinking,
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I can't deal with you. I'm, I'm there to debate with thinking folks. And other people saw that, other people, but I'll never forget that young lady.
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I will never forget that young lady. And what an honor it was to be able to speak the truth to her and to hope that in her future life, she will always remember that night and that there will be others who will come along and they will water that seed and that God will cause it to grow.
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So that was an extremely interesting experience. That was Friday night, Saturday. I spoke at the
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Christian worldview conference for Antioch Bible Church all day long. And I already mentioned, so they gave me the
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Springbok jersey and things like that. That evening we watched the rugby match and ate fish and chips at one of the church members' homes.
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That was very, very helpful. I was pretty tired by this point. Thursday, Friday, Saturday was the rough time because I was speaking all day and speaking in the evening and I was getting pretty wiped out, but made it through.
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And on Sunday morning, as I mentioned, I spoke at a church in Tambeza on Jehovah's Witnesses, on the
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Watchtower Society, and how to respond to Jehovah's Witnesses. And they were so very kind to me and so very thankful that I would come to the church in Tambeza and speak to them.
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And it was an honor to be there. And then that evening I was at Johan's Church. I did my
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New Testament Reliability presentation at warp speed. I had to get it done a whole lot faster than I'm used to doing it, but managed to get through there and enjoyed meeting folks there.
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I posted some of the pictures. That's where I was holding the little baby, was at Diyalug Church there.
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And it's an Afrikaans speaking church, but almost everybody can speak Afrikaans, speaks English as well.
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So that's what I did on Sunday. And then Monday, thankfully, during the day, didn't have anything to do other than to get ready for the debate that night.
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And so let's go ahead and put the third picture up I had contacted entire churches.
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I contacted pastors. I contacted Pastor Derek Melton. I contacted the church in Lindale. I contacted a number of churches.
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If I didn't contact you, it's just because I was too busy. If you're listening, I've thought of a number of other pastors.
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I know their churches would have prayed. But I contacted a number of folks and I said, look, we have found out about two weeks out that we are going to have an absolutely historic opportunity when we're in South Africa.
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And that is Yusuf Ismail and the folks at IPCI have arranged that along with, you know,
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Rudolph had been pushing for this for a long time. He was saying to folks, look, we're constantly having debates in churches, but we never had a debate in a mosque, actually in the mosque itself.
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And you all like to talk about how the fact you got to go to such and such church and proclaim Islam and la la la la, but you all never let us into the mosque yet.
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We're always at some room attached to the mosque, but not in the mosque itself. And so we had been told about two weeks out that it was arranged that the debate on Monday with Shabir Ali on sin and salvation would be in the
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Abu Bakr Siddiq mosque in Erasmus, South Africa, outside of Johannesburg. Oh, sorry, outside of Pretoria, not
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Johannesburg. And that it would be in the mosque. I would be speaking from where the mimbar is, where the imam gives the sermons and the central point of the prayer, that most people would be sitting on the ground, not on chairs, that it would be in the mosque itself.
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And so I didn't talk about it on the air, but we were certainly praying about it.
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And so you can see in the picture, and I'm not sure which one this is, but you can see the
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Arabic on the wall behind me. It's a beautiful mosque. It's a large mosque. It has a pool and a wellness center in it.
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It is a mega mosque, I guess is what you could call it. And we got there early enough.
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The prayers were just wrapping up. Actually, we were sitting along the back wall while the prayers were being done.
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And then they brought in tables. I thought I was going to be sitting on the floor, personally, but I had a table. I did have my shoes off.
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Everybody there has to have their shoes off. So actually, the first time I've ever debated in stocking feet, but we did.
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And you can see in these pictures, the Muslims sitting on the ground around us,
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Christians and Muslims intermingled together in the masjid. This is the first time it ever happened in South Africa.
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Yusuf Ismail, folks at IPCI, don't know this happening anywhere in the world, in our collective memory.
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We just don't. It may have. We've just never heard of it. We've never seen it. Never heard a report of it.
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Absolutely historical evening. And what a topic. Sin and salvation. Amazing.
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And what I'd like to do, and I'm probably not going to get to the second part of this. I'm just going to have to leave it for the next program or something.
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I don't know. But I would like to play for you a portion of that debate. Again, this is from my pen.
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Think with me for a moment and rejoice. Those of you who gave to make this happen, some of you sacrificially,
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I hope you listen to this and rejoice. This is me speaking at the very front of the mosque.
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The masjid itself in South Africa, on the subject of sin and salvation. Here is a portion.
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I'm going to go ahead and speed it up to 1 .2. I'm not quite this smart. But here's just a portion of my comments from the very front of the mosque.
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Let me just respond to one point Shabir just made, because I think it's foundational to everything else we do. He just said, well look, this is why
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I embrace the liberal view of the Christian scriptures and not the liberal view of the Quran. It's because I found there are nine places where there's been a copyist error in the
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Bible. I wish I could project this, but this is an image I myself took of BNF 328A.
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This is one of the earliest Quranic manuscripts in the library in Paris, France. And right down here, very clearly, it can be examined under ultraviolet light, infrared light, et cetera, et cetera.
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It is a clear textual variant. Something else has been scratched out, something else has been written in this place in a different hand. Interestingly enough, as a result,
51:25
I show these things to Yusuf in our debate, here a little bit later on, an entire page has been cut out. There's the remnants of the page, and on the next page you can see that they had to squish things in because an entire verse has been added in later in the book.
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So there's a textual variant in the Quran. There's the manuscript. You can go examine it yourself. So does that mean
51:41
I now have the right? Because, well, there's errors in the Quran, therefore I can embrace liberal views in the Quran, and I can come up with the idea that the
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Qibla was changed later on, and that means it was 705, and I can do all that kind of stuff because of a textual variant. Do I now have the grounds to do that?
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I say to you, I do not. I do not. That is not how you do this. We still have the example of using different scales.
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We're not allowing Paul to speak for Paul. We're assuming relationships that have never been proven, that these other people are just following Paul, even assumes that Luke doesn't buy all of Paul's theology, as if Paul is trying to force him on this.
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I would really suggest to you all, Shabir mentioned a very good Christian scholar by the name of Epheth Bruce.
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Read his book, Paul, Apostle of the Heart Sceptre. He recommended it, so I'm going to recommend it to you. Read Paul, Apostle of the
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Heart Sceptre, and you'll find that if you adjust him, it would be even semi -fair. You would have to discover that the entirety of the presentation that starts with the assumption of the error of the
52:35
Bible is based upon Sam. What did I try to say to you this evening? That there is a consistent, beautiful, biblical message from Genesis all the way through to the book of Revelation.
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From Genesis to Revelation, you have the fact that God is just, God is holy, His law has been broken, but the wonderful thing is,
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He is almost the one who provides the means by which we come to Him. He rejects it, but we provide the way.
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He provides the way to come into His presence. And I'll finish with just one story. Remember Jesus? He talked about people who were invited to the wedding feast.
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He said, go out in the highways and byways, compel them to come in. Then there's this weird aspect of the story. Jesus says, the head of the wedding comes in, and he finds a man who doesn't have a wedding garment.
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And what does he say? Bind the man's hand and foot, and cast him out of the outer garments. Why? Because you see, if you invited people to the wedding feast, you had to provide them with the wedding garment.
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And if that man was there, it's because he had rejected the very means, the very provision that that person had provided, he decided to come in a different way.
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And Jesus' point was, there's only one way into the presence of the Father. There's only one way of having peace with Him, and we can't come up with another way.
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He's provided that way, and He's proven that way in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is His testimony, that Jesus Christ was on the side, that He was the
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Son of God, and that He accepted the sacrifice upon the cross of Calvary. The resurrection proves God has accepted that work of Jesus Christ.
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That's what I proclaim to you this evening. Thank you for your attention, and God bless us all. So, you know, when those two students at Biola University back in 2005 contacted me, and said, let's arrange a debate with Shabir Ali at Biola, never saw this coming, that less than a decade later,
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I would be standing in the Masjid, in faraway South Africa, proclaiming the
54:32
Gospel to a mixed audience of Muslims and Christians, seated upon the floor, filling the
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Masjid in front of me. Unworthy of such an opportunity. Unworthy of such an opportunity.
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What an incredible opportunity it was. Just fantastic.
54:50
So, real quickly, the last debate, and we'll go ahead and show you two pictures, the last two debates, took place at the
54:59
University of Pretoria on Tuesday evening, and we had a full house, as you can see from the audience picture, you can see, for example,
55:09
Yusuf Ismail, seated down, bottom left, is there. He was not the moderator of the debate,
55:16
Yohan did the moderating of the debate, but he was there with Shabir Ali, and all the leadership of IPCI was there that evening, in fact.
55:25
Mohammed Khan and others were there that evening as well. This was a much sharper debate. This was a much sharper debate.
55:31
You can see Shabir and I during the cross -examination period, talking to one another.
55:37
I tweeted that picture this morning. It had to be done. I sent it to Ergin Kaner and said,
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Ergin, this is called a debate, and that man's called Shabir Ali. Just wanted to help you there at the
55:48
Apologetics Conference, because he's speaking at the National Apologetics Conference at Southern Evangelical Seminary today, which is just an amazing thing when you think about it.
55:59
I come back from South Africa actually debating the Muslims, and here's a man who has only pretended to do those things, and he's speaking at the
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National Apologetics Conference. Why? Well, because he has cover from people like Norman Geisler. It is a shame.
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There is no excuse for it. The documentation is clear. What can you say?
56:19
Politics have taken over, and it's a shame. But anyhow, we had a good cross -examination, but then something happened.
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I heard this sound, and then I realized it is the guy outside mowing the lawn, and just decided to worry about it.
56:45
I don't think anybody can hear it. What can I say? That is sort of humorous.
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I just wondered if I was losing my hearing or whatever. Anyhow, Do I play this or not?
57:07
Yeah, because the next dividing line, I'm going to be talking about Jason Reed. In fact, for those of you who are wondering, the next dividing line, did
57:14
I mention? I didn't mention this. I am going to be responding to the Jason Reed conversion video that was posted.
57:22
Jason Reed is a former staff member at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and he says about 15 people, staff and students, from Southern Evangelical are going to become
57:30
Roman Catholic soon. And so I'm going to be responding to his conversion story, and hopefully, once again, sounding themes
57:38
I've sounded many, many times before. Theology matters. Theology comes before philosophy. The Gospel comes before anything else.
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And his conversion story illustrates to a T why that is vastly important.
57:52
Was there something you wish to add, Mr. Pierce? Just before we sign off the show, there's just a little tidbit
57:59
I need to throw in, but go ahead. Oh, no. I'm sitting here looking at whether I'm going to go another 15 minutes here, to be perfectly honest with you, because I have
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IQ'd this stuff up to play it, went through all this effort, and I haven't gotten to it yet. Let me summarize, and then just let me play a little shorter section for you.
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So I'll skip the first part. What happened was, the thesis of the debate was, an interesting thesis.
58:23
Did the earliest followers of Jesus believe he was God? And I present a very strong case from what the vast majority of at least semi -believing scholarship would recognize are the earliest sources.
58:37
That is, I went to James, James 2, verse 1. I went to the
58:43
Carmen Christi, Philippians 2, 5 -11, a fragment of an early hymn. I went to Paul's discussion of the
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Shema in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, and 7. And then I went to,
58:55
I did an entire run -through of the Gospel of Mark, the whole Gospel of Mark, pointing to all those places that simply could not be applied to Amir Razul.
59:06
And I think you'll find the debate very, very interesting if you keep your eye on the ball. Now, what Shabir had to do is go into massive overdrive, kitchen sink shotgun approach, throw everything out there, because I really think he felt a tremendous amount of pressure in this debate.
59:22
It's the only thing that can explain the comment that he made later on. And I was not attempting to be unkind to Shabir, but I am not going to compromise either.
59:32
And so, during our cross -ex, I asked him, OK, what do you have that's earlier than the
59:42
Carmen Christi in Philippians 2, 5 -11? And he went to the Old Testament, his interpretation of the
59:47
Old Testament. Now, remember what the thesis of the debate is. The earliest Christians, that they believe in the deity of Christ.
59:54
And if you have to go, well, I have to go to the Old Testament, you've just abandoned the thesis of the debate, because the
01:00:01
Old Testament was not written by Christians. So his argument was, well, they couldn't have believed it because they believed what
01:00:08
I believe about the Old Testament. Well, that is not what the debate was about. That is not what the debate was about.
01:00:14
And so, I even did a follow -up question during the cross -examination, right? Basically said, why can
01:00:20
I not say that I've won this debate in light of what you just said? And Shabir simply could not answer the question.
01:00:25
And so, when I got up, this is what I said. And I want you to hear what
01:00:31
I said, and hear that I laid the case out very, very clearly. Here's part of my 10 -minute rebuttal from the
01:00:39
University of Pretoria. That Shabir handed the debate to me.
01:00:46
And I'll explain to you why. When Shabir made the statement, in our primary
01:00:51
Christian discussion, when I was talking with the chaplain, well, of course Paul is teaching the theory of Christ.
01:00:57
He's making Jesus God -like. Of course he did. What I pointed out to you already was that that material came from before the
01:01:05
Apostle Paul. And when I asked him the question, and I hope you all have this, because this is what the debate concluded, logically, and on any meaningful level,
01:01:14
I said, what evidence do you have, what is your evidence that before the current Christian that would demonstrate the original followers of Jesus did not believe in the being of Christ?
01:01:23
What was his response? The Old Testament. That's an abandonment of Jesus. Because what he means is not the
01:01:30
Old Testament. I didn't read the Old Testament. I cannot believe he's reading it correctly to miss its prophetic statements in any way, shape, or form.
01:01:38
But what he's saying is, well, I interpret the Old Testament in such a way that there can be no evidence to substantiate his position.
01:01:45
That's their argumentation. And when you have to say, well, I don't have any earlier evidence in the Department of Christianity. I can't point to anything that comes from that first generation of Christians.
01:01:53
I've got to go to my interpretation written 600 years after Jesus.
01:02:03
By someone who did not know the content of either the Old or especially the
01:02:08
New Testaments. That is self -importance. That is the interpretive grid that he places upon God.
01:02:14
And that's why Shabir's conclusions are always different than even Jimmy Nunn's are. Because he has another authority even above what they utilize in section critical.
01:02:22
And so I would suggest to you that when I ask the question, what evidence can you give me before I gave you the most proof?
01:02:29
Primitive evidence there is. He's dismissed Mark. Well, Mark wasn't one of the original disciples. And what's his basis for saying that?
01:02:35
Well, you know, Matthew's writing and all that kind of stuff. All right. Yet, the very scholarship of these sites recognizes that Mark contains primitive tradition regarding Jesus.
01:02:46
And if it doesn't, we don't know anything about Jesus at all. Anything at all. So I gave you the widest spectrum of the earliest information that we could have about the fathers of Jesus.
01:02:56
And what was the consistent element of all of it? A belief in Jesus. Said and did those things that could not be attributed to a universal.
01:03:05
And then Shabir closed the door on his own position with his evolutionary argument. Did you hear it? He said, well, you see, they started off and they started thinking
01:03:12
Jesus was a little bit special. And then he was a son of God, then he was the son of God, then he became God, and all the rest is stuff.
01:03:19
But then he turns around and says, these people were Jewish monotheists. Did Jewish monotheists engage in that kind of evolutionary argument?
01:03:28
Do they believe that there are any gods? Do they believe that there are divine sons of God that aren't truly
01:03:33
God? You can't put those two statements together. Either they were Jewish monotheists and had to resist any exaltation of their prophet.
01:03:42
Or if there was this element of Jewish monotheism, there had to be a reason for it. Now, you can't hear it in that, but I could hear a lot of people in the audience going, yeah, yeah, they were understanding what
01:03:53
I was saying. They got the point that I was saying, I won this debate because Shabir has abandoned the thesis.
01:04:01
So when he got up, here was the first thing he said. Now I think this is just simply because of the pressure he was under.
01:04:09
He's being introduced as the best the Muslims have. So if the best the
01:04:15
Muslims have, the other guy has said, you've just given me the debate and here's why, and the people understand that.
01:04:22
I did not believe this was worthy of Shabir. Shabir became a regular debater, not his normal good self in this.
01:04:34
But I told him after the debate, despite all that, I still like him. He didn't say much to me at that point. It's just a brief little segment here.
01:04:43
I'm going to put it at regular speed. Here's what he said. Folks, for my final five minutes tonight,
01:04:53
I have to say that I've never seen a man having lost a debate so badly, and at the same time claiming a debate that he's actually won it.
01:05:03
And so the Muslims were all, yay, they're all happy, but of course they were the only ones clapping, and I don't think all of them were.
01:05:10
So I've never heard anyone having lost a debate so badly claiming to have won it. Now, did he then explain where my reasoning was wrong?
01:05:18
No, he couldn't. He can't. But that was sort of the low point.
01:05:24
That was not an appropriate response at all. But it went very, very well, and had good conversations with folks afterwards.
01:05:33
The Christians there in South Africa were very encouraged by the experience, and as I said, the next day,
01:05:39
Wednesday, met with Uncle John Gilchrist at Johannesburg Airport, and had lunch with him and learned more about the experiences that he's had there in South Africa.
01:06:02
And along with Rudolf, we had a great time. And then the flight back was very long.
01:06:10
There's no two ways about it. That's the longest I've ever traveled in one day, but got back in one piece.
01:06:16
Everything was, you know, I did have to run between one connection, but I made it back in one piece.
01:06:22
And so we are very much looking forward to getting the videos from primarily
01:06:28
IPCI. We will, of course, make them available as soon as we possibly can, both in audio and video format as well.
01:06:36
And so there's the report. I'm going to be traveling again, not this weekend, but the weekend after, going down to Spring, Texas, with Vodhi Balkam and the conference there.
01:06:47
The next weekend, Sola Scriptura Ministries up in Canada. So October is going to be the biggest traveling month of my life, no question about it.
01:06:57
But my plans, I'm just going to tell you right now, it won't be long until we're going to be asking
01:07:03
Micah to put up yet another banner ad, because my plan next year is to go back to South Africa.
01:07:10
IPCI is talking about trying to set up some debates in Durban. I also will need to, for other reasons, be going by Potsdam University and hopefully getting to do some more lecturing there as well.
01:07:25
But my plan, the only way that I can see to make this work with all of the things,
01:07:30
I've already got Kiev in February, Lord willing, Berlin again during the summer. The only way I can see all this working is if I go from South Africa back to Australia.
01:07:42
And there are some Australian Muslims that we need to arrange debates with. And so my
01:07:49
Australian friends, I need to start hearing from you. If you're ready to pick up that part of the trip to help us out with that and then coming back from Australia.
01:07:58
So it literally would be a world tour because it would be from, I'd be going east and coming back from the west.
01:08:05
So I would have circled the globe, not only circumference -wise, but since I go so far south, it would be even more than that.
01:08:11
I don't know how many miles it would be. But that's the only way I can see in probably late September of next year to fulfill the desires.
01:08:19
Because as Rudolf told me, I could have stayed there. He could have had me speaking pretty much every day for three or four weeks in South Africa without any problem.
01:08:27
Of course, I couldn't survive that, but that would be the issue. So once again, my sincere thanks to everyone who made this possible, and I hope you're looking forward to seeing the debates as much as I do as well.
01:08:40
You had something you need to add? Yeah, I, last week, or actually earlier this week, this week seems like last week.
01:08:48
I've been working on the YouTube channel. I know that I'm a little late to the game on YouTube, but I'm learning all kinds of neat stuff about new tools and new things that they're throwing out.
01:08:58
And this week I've posted the first of the great debates, the Marian Doctrines, the Soul Scripture Debate that was the second one, and I'm just going to keep working my way through the whole thing, trying to get as many of them up there as possible.
01:09:13
A couple of days ago I posted on the blog a request for new equipment. We don't have the money for new cameras.
01:09:22
And you can look at that post and you can look at that camera and you can think it's an expensive camera. That's about what the cameras we bought 10 years ago ran each.
01:09:35
And if you want quality, these things cost money. And the bottom line is
01:09:41
I've just come to the conclusion it is time. We have a room that's prepared. We have a great auditorium.
01:09:48
We can get an audience in. It's time to get a couple of great cameras in there that are high def and get you back into the seminar room.
01:09:57
Yeah, I know. He's looking at the camera here. Look, the early days, you've talked about this briefly.
01:10:06
Back when I had hair and glasses. We would put on these seminars. That no one would come to.
01:10:13
The justification by faith seminar that six people would show up to and two of them were
01:10:19
Roman Catholics. Actually, a few more folks showed up to that particular one. Yes.
01:10:24
And so the bottom line is we've grown a good bit since then.
01:10:30
And with the advent of technology, the ability to take overheads, you used to have these plastic overheads.
01:10:36
I remember the days when somebody, I think somebody donated an overhead projector. I was so excited about it.
01:10:42
That was awesome. And it's like, we can actually project stuff on the wall. And then you'd learn how to put the plastic things through the laser printer.
01:10:51
I remember that very well. And we need to redo those. Without ever melting.
01:10:58
Yeah. The theology and apologetics seminar. We ain't redoing them. We're redoing the ones that I'm doing right now.
01:11:04
Well, that too. And putting them on DVD. And one of the things we've wanted to do for a long time, and now we'll have the opportunity of doing, is if we put my most popular presentations on DVD, we can send them to a church, they can watch the presentation, then we can hook up via the internet, via Skype or whatever.
01:11:20
What we're doing here. What we're doing here. And I can live interact with the churches that way, without me having to leave
01:11:26
Phoenix. It's a whole lot cheaper for the churches, it's a whole lot easier on me. It doesn't so much work overseas, but certainly within the
01:11:33
U .S., it would help out a lot to be able to do that. So yeah, no question. So Micah is going to be putting together a banner ad for this.
01:11:41
But there is a blog article there. And you can click in there and link to the item where you can donate directly to that project to get those new cameras, and start moving this project forward and making it a reality.
01:11:55
And then we take those videos, we post them on YouTube, and we also, if need be, put them on Blu -ray, because the quality will be that high, so it's as if you're right there, and all they need is a big
01:12:07
LCD or LED TV. Which lots of people have these days.
01:12:13
Yeah, it's getting real common. I noticed that Algo even recognized who we were talking about in the seminar from long, long ago.
01:12:23
So good. I hadn't even seen that, so that is good to know. So folks, thanks for listening to the program today.
01:12:29
As I said, just an announcement. On Tuesday, I'm going to be responding to the
01:12:34
Jason Reed conversion video. Let Jason Reed know, for that matter. And it's an important topic.