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Live streaming at this time, Christianity .com, Christianity .com. We have a force of several hundred watching up close and we welcome them here to be with us on the Trinity Road Chapel in London. At this time we have Crossfire.
What you're about to witness now is called Crossfire and each of our speakers is going to be given 90 seconds and it's going to alternate back and forth in 90 second segments. There will be 14 of those that last about 21 minutes, exactly 21 minutes, and I think it will be a good interchange.
We're going to begin with Sammy and he's going to start in just a moment with the first word, Crossfire. I'd first like to turn to the scholarship because I've brought on mainstream scholars, E .T. Sanders and Elizabeth Barker.
These are respected mainstream scholars. Now I appreciate the fact that I disagree with them, but they remain accepted and respected academic mainstream scholars and they teach about Jesus' teaching in a prominent figure.
But don't you think it's a bit unfair to compare mainstream scholars to any great scholar out there? I'm aware that there are people who teach that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, didn't exist, but there are people who teach several things and one of those supposed scholars who teaches about the Prophet Muhammad not existing and published a book is Robert Spencer and he's not an Islamic scholar by any means.
On the other hand, people like E .T. Sanders, Mark Herman, they have done their studies, they know the Greek, they know the Hebrew, they know the language. In many cases, some of them were Christians, so don't you think it's a bit unfair to just throw all their scholarship out and at the same time, I don't invite these people to affirm my faith.
Whether they affirm my faith or not has no bearing whatsoever on the arguments that I make. In fact, I don't accept them to affirm my faith or the arguments. Well, you know, the irony here is that Sanders, Herman, and all these others substantiate my position in the debate tonight.
They all believe that Jesus was crucified. They all recognize that the historical information is without question that it was Jesus, not someone who was made to look like Jesus. It was Jesus in Nazareth who was crucified at a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem during the days of Herod under the orders of Pilate.
So if Sanders, if Herman can say that one of the clearest facts of history is that Jesus died, then what we're dealing with here are the interpretations they then make of what that meant. So we can't change the focus of the debate to the resurrection because the reason that someone like a martyr...
By the way, Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. You see, the problem is they want to limit Jesus to something much smaller than he actually was. Jesus was a first century Jew. He lived in that context. That's what he taught.
There's a question about that. There are insights you can gain from all of that. But the fact is you then have a limitation and you say, well, it has no bearing on your faith. Well, again, the question, Sammy, is is Islamic faith a faith that has historical grounding or is it something that has no historical grounding whatsoever and ignores the mountain of historical evidence?
...presentation. They affirm your point that he was on the cross, but again, all these historical references do nothing to contradict my point because the Quran says the crucifixion did take place and people thought it was Jesus.
So that confirms my point. I actually raised that first. But secondly, as we all know, your faith doesn't revolve around the cross only. Your faith also revolves around the resurrection and it's false that if Jesus did not rise from the dead then your faith is null and void.
And they all reject the resurrection of Jesus. Now you say it's because they reject the supernatural but that's a bit unfair of them because they've given evidences as to why those stories are doubtful just as I have given my evidence as to why those resurrection accounts are doubtful as well.
So they reject the resurrection. And if you can prove that the resurrection wasn't taking place, then it also affirms my point which I made in my presentation that these resurrection accounts were made up later to account for the misunderstood belief that a life Jesus was a resurrected Jesus and that's why you find all the contradictions in the stories and that's why you find these academics rejecting it because of all that evidence.
A meeting of a live Jesus, as we have pointed out, would require that Jesus correct their misapprehensions or Jesus is the worst teacher who has ever lived. Can you imagine Jesus allowing his disciples to begin an entire religion based on a falsehood because he just didn't take the time to tell them guys, I wasn't crucified.
I'm sorry, that is utterly untenable from any logical, rational, historical perspective and there's not one person who's been quoted this evening who thinks that should happen. That's how the Seerist says it.
That's how the Mormon says it. That's how many of these scholars think that should happen. But the interesting thing is these very same scholars that you are quoting against the resurrection which isn't the debate this evening but I'm quoting against the resurrection they would also reject everything you believe about Jesus' life.
I mean, Bart Ehrman would not believe that Jesus formed little birds of clay and breathed on them and they flew away. And he would say to you, that's a story that came from the Gnostic Gospels because it did.
And Bart Ehrman and E .P. Sanders would not believe that Jesus spoke from his cradle because that's another story that came from early Christians but hundreds of years after the event and they would point that out too.
And so my question is, where's the consistency in relying upon these individuals when they would say the evidence would clearly refute the Koran as well. Where is the consistency at this particular point in time?
That's what you'd be looking at and again, I simply point out that these scholars are on my side in regards to the thesis of the debate this evening and that is the Koran's denial of historical reality of the crucifixion itself.
It says it was made to appear to them so I'd expect them to say that. But sadly, that's another strong argument because I even said, I'm relying on these scholars to affirm my faith. Whether they affirm my faith or not has no bearing on the other arguments that have been raised.
And the arguments that they've done with their scholarship has been backed by evidence. And then you say, well, Jesus would have been a terrible teacher if he just let them misunderstand him. Well, he actually did.
The apocalyptic teachings are false yet disciples were teaching them. So, he was a bad teacher because they were teaching something that is false. The verses clearly say that those things were going to happen in his generation.
They never happened in his generation. Mainstream scholarship says he's an apocalyptic prophet. Now, you can refuse to accept the mainstream scholarship. You can refuse to accept the clear text. But, that's the evidence right there.
And that's the point I'm making. The fact that they misunderstood him on these apocalyptic teachings shows it's also plausible that they misunderstood a viral Jesus or a resurrected Jesus. That's the whole point I'm making.
So, I'm staying very consistent to my argument. So, he did teach them a false teacher. First of all, we need to find the crucifixion versus the crucifixion of Jesus. To say, well, the crucifixion didn't happen.
Of whom? Well, that's... We can't ask those questions except the assertion. If you're going to make the assertion, then you have to be able to back up the assertion itself. And so, when you say, well, the crucifixion took place.
Of whom? What happened to Jesus? Was he taken up to heaven? Oh, but you're being picky. Those are irrelevant. No, those are all very relevant. I think we all see that. If you can't answer those questions this evening, I don't think you can begin to substantiate the thesis of the debate in any way, shape, or form.
You say, these things have no bearing on my faith. What if I said to you, well, but Bart Ehrman says that's no bearing on my faith because the resurrection happened, whether Bart Ehrman believes it or not, in historical events.
Did it take place in time? In space? Was the moon split in two? Did the Yisra take place? Was there a cave? Did Gabriel... Did the Quran come out and the Injil, which came before? Was he taken in three moments?
Was it two? Those points. Now, what about the points you say, well, is everything going to go on just on faith and can things be backed historically? Yes, many things can be backed historically, but some things, not everything can be backed historically and that's not a problem for a theist.
Many things in the Bible can be backed historically as well. And anyway, tonight's debate is not about whether the prophet went to Jerusalem, which was reported by mass narrations, which passes the historical test out of it, but we can debate that on another day, which comes down to proving the prophethood of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
So that's not the debate for tonight. But I'd like you to answer those questions concerning the contradictory accounts of the resurrection. Two, three, who was at the tomb, and so forth. Thank you. So that one told me, yes, Jesus was taken to heaven.
Okay, so Surah 158 is saying Jesus was taken to heaven. So that means that the disciples didn't meet the living Jesus. Or was he taken to heaven after meeting with the disciples? But the only reason you know that he met with the disciples is because the Gospels say so, but you can't say you trust the Gospels because they're contradictory.
How does all that work? Surah 415 doesn't tell us that. In fact, it backs the story that Muslims believe that Jesus was taken to heaven at that point in time. Again, this is not being picky. If you're making a historical assertion that contradicts the written documents that came in the first century, you have to deal with these things.
Now, again, how many angels were there? If one person reports that they spoke with an angel and the other person says, well, there were two of them, say anything because that's contradictory. Why is that contradictory?
If one of them said that there was, for example, in the gathering of Demoniac story, in one version of it, the focus is solely upon the one gathering of Demoniac, in another, there is the brief mention that there was, and again, you can never parallelize the parallel accounts in the Quran if you engage in this kind of rejection of meaningful organization.
You just couldn't do it. Your cause. Now, you say one account is giving more details than the other. No, that's wrong because one account clearly says there was only one angel. Another account says there were two.
So, these are two different stories. You're just deciding to make your own story and say, oh, that guy decided to leave that information out and that guy decided to put that information in. You didn't address the part about where did they meet him.
It just clearly says in Luke and Acts, they met him at this town and Matthew says they met him at that town, whether it's Jerusalem or Galilee. There's no such thing as leaving that information out when you say the first place he met him in was in Jerusalem and the other account says Galilee.
Secondly, in my presentations, I gave your Gospels the benefit of the doubt. They're not my only case. Before I gave your Gospels the benefit of the doubt, I came to mention that these Gospels aren't written by the disciples.
I don't believe they're written by the disciples. I don't even believe they were transmitted by the disciples. I don't even believe I have any writings from the disciples. So, I make that point clear because I think there's not many actual first-hand accounts from Jesus' followers who supposedly preached his resurrection and so forth.
But I gave your Gospels the benefit of the doubt. Well, notice what we just had here. We were told that one of the Gospels says that only one angel is there. I'd like to reference and I'd like to know where the Greek monos appears there.
So, if you could show us where the Greek term monos appears, that's the term only, then we can deal with that. But notice what was just said here. These books are not written by disciples. So, where are the original disciples of Jesus?
We have a situation here where, again, we're talking about the crucifixion of Jesus. Basically, Samuel said, yeah, but, that doesn't really matter because the Quran says otherwise. We can't historically examine just requesting that 600 years later, for 600 years going back to the days of the disciples, that's over.
Is that consistent? If your faith does not rely on the crucifixion only and are baseless, then that helps my cause because if there is no resurrection, there is no death. The Gospels are saying two different things on the encounters.
Can you explain who went to the tomb first? Was it three women? Was it two women? Or was it one? Those are saying three different stories and if you don't think it's a problem that the ending of Mark has been added into with that full account of the supposed post appearances, then what would be a problem for your Gospel if an entire paragraph had been added to put in a supposed story of what happened after Jesus rose?
If that's not a problem, if someone's adding verses into your text about a supposed story, then what do you consider a problem if someone can tamper with the text and they can just make up whatever they feel like?
What would you consider to be a consistent argument if that's not a consistent argument without the authenticity of your Gospel? Another thing you want to get away from the actual thesis subject tonight is crucifixion because it's already been established to be honest with you.
Now we want to go on and talk about the legend of conviction. And the idea is, well, you know, the resurrection is connected to crucifixion so therefore you need to deal with all these convictions allegedly regarding being established as Jesus, not just a crucifixion.
I reject that idea that, well yes, crucifixion, there's no evidence of some other crucifixion that these people were talking about. But, Mark 16, 19, 20, all the textual evidence related to that, you say, what would be a problem?
The problem would be if we couldn't recognize that Mark 16, 19, 20 was an edition. And that's the problem we have. You see, we, because the later editions to the text, because we have the earlier texts, the materials that he, that he put in the suit on his readings and demanded that he turn over his evidence on both the crucifixions originally said that there are a lot of historical sources which backs my argument.
So let's get that out of the way. I am the first one who raises it. So when you keep repeating it and they giggle, that's affirming my points. Secondly, why do you do the resurrection? Because if you can clearly prove that someone rose from the dead, then the Quran is proven false because it says it was alive.
But if you can prove that the resurrection accounts are false, full of contradictions and unreliable, and that no death ever happened, then that affirms the Quranic point that nobody died. So, there's a connection.
If you can't follow along, that's not my problem. Now, what about the manuscripts? The manuscripts help you know the false from the right. Wrong. Because the manuscripts you have aren't even the original manuscripts.
They're the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the worst copy manuscript. And many mainstream scholars have even said you can't even go to the original Bible.
What you have is a copy not even of the original. So you know false stories, false stories from the copy not even from the original. If you're going to quote Carter, it's simply wrong. We have a number of papyri that could not be a copy.
It's simply impossible. He is being, shall we say, somewhat obtuse at that point. And you're wrong. Have you ever examined P52? P71? P66? These are not copies and copies and copies and copies and copies ten generations down the road.
So the facts simply don't substantiate that point. If they were, why are they so much alike to one another? But here's the problem. Here's what we're dealing with this evening. What Samuel Smola says, yeah, if it all makes sense, then God made him appear this way.
We can't tell you how, we can't tell you what he did, but he made him appear this way. So history's been telling you there was a crucifixion and so all that's more than a person was crucified. And that specific person, even according to Samuel's own assertions, then met with his disciples after that event.
And we are actually being asked, there's always in whatever, whether it's the Ahmadi view or whatever it is, there's always in whatever Islamic positions taken a fatal flaw. Here's the fatal flaw. What we're having to believe this evening, Jesus failed to correct the misapprehension of his disciples and the result was they all ended up taking place.
Can you imagine that happening? Before I get into conclusions, can I tell you what happened? I did tell you what happened. Jesus wasn't crucified, he was saved. Now, in order for me to completely prove all of that, I need a two-hour debate to prove the validity of Islam.
And then, that is the affirmation. But there are many things in your own Bible which you can't prove. It's not honest enough to prove that not everything in my book or my beliefs are always going to be proven through the historical method.
The second you are believing in God already affirms that point. So not everything has to be proven by historical record A, historical record B. I'm not shy to say that, but many Christians have compromised on that to appease secular atheists and to make the arguments a bit easier on themselves.
Secondly, the historical references that you bring up still affirm my point. The Quran says, Jesus, it was made to appear like Jesus. They thought it was Jesus. So when you tell me people are writing about Jesus on the cross, I tell you that's what the Quran says they thought.
And as I said in my presentation, in my presentation, I said, if you can bring me a huge amount of people who didn't believe that Jesus was on the cross, that proves the Quran wrong. So when you're trying to be a bit humorous on that, I already addressed that in my first point.
Secondly, back to the resurrection account, because this is very interesting, because we actually have a first-century source, some dated as early as the time of Paul, it's called the Didache. Now, this ancient source says nothing about resurrection, and this source is dated to the same time as Paul, and it was accepted by early Christians, and before you would argue, it's not an Gnostic text.
It was an Gnostic text. So that's the first-century report that casts major doubt on your supposed resurrection. In fact, the Eucharist, I'm sure you all know about the Eucharist. In the Didache, the Eucharist says nothing about Jesus dying for your sin.
In fact, here's something even more interesting. In the Eucharist account in the Gospel of Luke, we have a variant manuscript that talks about the Eucharist, which also says nothing about Jesus dying for your sin.
That this blood is for the new covenant. Now this, again, casts major doubt on your supposed resurrection accounts, which simply go back to my first contention that all of these resurrection accounts are doubtful, contradictory, and I'll say it bluntly, they're made up.
And how do we know they're made up? All these contradictions prove it, and what further evidence do we need? We have first century documents that prove it, and we even have a variant manuscript of Luke that proves it as well.
And why is that important to my case? Because if I can show that no resurrection took place, then it means that Jesus never rose from the dead. And if Jesus never rose from the dead, it means He never died, and the Qur 'an is right to say He never died.
Follow along. So I'm being very consistent. And you still didn't address the point, because you mocked, you tried to mock Islam, and you all giggled when He said, the Qur 'an says that the Jews said we killed the Messiah, yet you never addressed the points where your own Bible says the Jews killed the Messiah, where the Jews killed Him.
You didn't address your own gospels where it says they called Him the King of the Jews. So if you're going to giggle, giggle at your own text for consistency. And then the other point he makes, well, how did Jesus never tell His disciples He was alive?
How did He let them go on with this false belief? I've already proved He did with the apocalyptic teachings. He let them go and He let them teach these false apocalyptic teachings, which mainstream scholars like Bart Ehrman, E .P. Sanders, Paul F. Fredrickson, Giza Ermes, and the list goes on.
And if you want to compare these scholars to Robert Spencer, who can't even read Arabic, two-year-old children can read better Arabic than him. To even think that this man is comparative to these men is a joke.
These men, they read the Bible, they read the Hebrew, they read the Greek. So it's an insult to compare those two. At the end of the day, Islam is clear. It says that Jesus will save. That's how He truly conquered death.
And that's why it's Good Friday, because the Messiah was saved and He will come back. Thank you. The new testament, you see God in the days of this. When this person was governed, at this place, this took place.
There is a major doubt on the resurrection. I've never met any historian who's ever read the Biblical Encyclopedia. We translate major doubt from the New Testament that you do to the took place places.
Give us different narratives of when those meetings took place and go find someone at the same level of faith in the text of the Bible. Someone says and believes their faith. It would say that someone was crucified, but history doesn't say that.
Says that Jesus said he was crucified. And they all say he had the wound prints in his hands and his side and he taught them about the resurrection and he taught them about the resurrection and he taught them about and he taught them about and he taught them about years of age before.