Bart Ehrman/Newsweek Article

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:13

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

00:19

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

00:28

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

00:34

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

00:43

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

00:51

James White. I feel like I was just here because I was. Most of those of you who were listening an hour ago joined

00:58

Janet Mefford on her program. And I don't know, it's sort of hard to do those programs because you've got to talk really, really fast for a little while, and then you stop.

01:08

And you listen to very quiet music. And you talk really, really fast for a little while, and then you stop. And you listen to really quiet music.

01:16

That's one of the advantages. You know, the disadvantage of podcasting is that you actually have to want to listen to this program.

01:23

You had to set up iTunes, or if you're Red Goatee, you had to download a file and do something.

01:29

I don't know what it is that you can't use iTunes. I don't know what it is. But that's why he has to have it blogged, and you know, he was complaining about that earlier.

01:36

But anyways, you've made the choice to listen to this. Otherwise, the advantage to being

01:44

Janet Mefford is people get to listen, they're just flipping down the dial and there it is. But the disadvantage we all saw when

01:52

I was on Mike Brown's show, and then he was on ours, and the total time of our debate on his program was like 40 minutes, and ours was two hours.

02:04

That's the difference. We don't have commercials. Well, I suppose we, given how hard Rich works on commercials, how much time he invests on commercials, or did back in 1998.

02:21

Well, hey, how many times do you have to say, her name's Ashley. That was before 1998, wasn't it?

02:27

No, it wasn't? Oh, okay. All right. Somewhere around there. It was pretty, oh, 2000.

02:33

Okay, that was close. That was close. See, 13 years ago. Anyways, that's, yeah,

02:42

Farmboy Music should sponsor the violin. We could have lots of, I would like to hear some Milo Hotzenbuehler advertisements for some of my books.

02:51

I wonder what Milo could come up with for something like, yeah, the new

02:56

Islam book. Oh, that would, I don't know, that's starting to make me, I really don't want to see the news about Milo's death by some kind of gruesome bombing or something.

03:12

Yeah, it was a tractor accident, that's what it was, yeah. Right? We really don't want to set

03:18

Milo free on talking about the Quran. Anyways, we were on, we did

03:25

Janet Mefford because we had the opportunity of responding to an article that so fittingly appears in the final print edition of Newsweek magazine.

03:38

Now, I gotta admit, that is pretty weird. I grew up, I grew up, you'd go through the checkout stand at the grocery store and you'd have

03:51

Time and you'd have U .S. News and World Report and you'd have Newsweek and then of course you'd have the

03:57

National Enquirer and all sorts of stuff like that. But you'd have the big three and you'd go to a doctor's office and other than Sports Illustrated you'd have

04:09

Time and U .S. News and Newsweek. The world has changed a lot.

04:16

And I gotta admit, you know, I do have like at least one subscription that I've actually paid for on my iPad to a print magazine but I get it on my iPad and, you know, it's awful nice to be able to sit there in the airplane and read that and magazines get trashed going through security, that's for sure.

04:39

So things have changed and they're not even, this is it. No more Newsweek as far as print edition goes.

04:47

And so how fitting that they would go out with a bang or maybe we should say a whimper. But as Al Mohler so very wisely said, and I was a little bit jealous that Al Mohler got to respond to this before I did because I knew

04:59

I was going to be doing the Meffred show so I didn't want to, you know, necessarily jump on it before he did that. But as he pointed out, between Newsweek and the

05:07

New Testament, only one will still be in print after January 1st. And that's very, very true.

05:14

If you saw the article in the magazine, What Do We Really Know About Jesus?

05:21

And you have listened to this program, if you have listened to almost any of the reviews we have done of the debates between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman or Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman, Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman, though the ones with Wallace are normally a little bit more textually oriented.

05:43

But we have so many times pointed out the role of presuppositions in Bart Ehrman's historiography and his seeming incapacity or inability to see past the presuppositions of his worldview that determine what he can and cannot do, etc.,

06:02

etc. So there really wasn't anything new along those lines in here.

06:08

But it certainly is an article that you might want to catch the

06:14

Meffred show. I might go ahead and make some comments here. It is, basically,

06:20

I'm not going to go back over everything that I did then, even though I did find interesting that he very properly talked about the proto -gospel of James and the protevangelium of James.

06:33

And one thing I didn't emphasize as much as I could have on Janet's program is how many times

06:41

I've heard Roman Catholics defending the protevangelium of James. Why?

06:46

Because without it, you have a hard time figuring out where the Marian dogmas came from, especially concepts such as the perpetual virginity of Mary come directly from that kind of literature.

07:02

And so I've seen Roman Catholic apologists actually defending this rubbish of history because they have to.

07:10

It's where they got a lot of their stuff. That's where the tradition is found of the names of Mary's parents and all that kind of stuff comes from that.

07:21

And again, generally, Ehrman is correct in his facts, even if he is not correct in his conclusions or is not very self -reflective as to the process by which he comes to his conclusions.

07:34

And so after talking about the alleged gospel of Jesus' wife and then the protevangelium of James, finally, he gets around to making a connection, and here's how he does it.

07:48

Most modern readers who are not already familiar with these stories tend to find them far -fetched. These are the stories from the protevangelium of James.

07:55

That's almost always the case in miraculous accounts that we have never heard before. They sound implausible and obviously made up as legends and fabrications.

08:03

Rarely do we have the same reaction to familiar stories known from childhood that are also spectacularly miraculous and that probably sound just as bizarre to outsiders who hear them for the first time.

08:13

Are the stories about Jesus' birth that are in the New Testament any less unbelievable? So here's how he finally transitions into a very tired, standard, surface -level, shallow recitation of the issues relating to the census,

08:33

Quirinius, Josephus, Luke chapter 2, and then, of course, the issue of the genealogies of Jesus.

08:41

Things that have engendered entire books, extensive discussions, none of which is reflected at all in Ehrman's stuff, and to be honest with you,

08:53

I doubt that right now if we could look into history that Bart Ehrman has spent much time on those issues.

09:01

That would have been something he spent any time on at Princeton. Doing the work he was doing in textual criticism, he wouldn't be dealing with that.

09:12

And you can just tell by the very dismissive attitude he has of anybody who tries to harmonize Scripture that I doubt he spent any time looking at Bach or Michael Brown's discussion of it or anything like that, or any of the entire in -depth treatises on the subject.

09:32

That's just the way he is. But the point is he's trying to make the connection, and I would like to suggest there are fundamental differences between what you see in the

09:40

Protevangelium of James and its random, purposeless, superstition -style supernaturalism.

09:50

Does that make any sense? I'd say, let me change it, superstitious supernaturalism over against the supernaturalism of the

10:00

Gospel accounts. What's the difference? Well superstitious supernaturalism is what you find in Gnostic Gospels.

10:09

It's what you find when Jesus makes clay birds and causes them to fly away and then strikes his playmates dead and then raises them to life.

10:20

And this kind of random, almost dream -like, this is what

10:27

I'd be like if I had magical powers type stuff. That's not how the supernatural occurs in Scripture.

10:35

That's not how the supernatural occurs in the birth narratives. What is the lady's name on Twitter?

10:49

Let me see if I can back up here. There's two folks you want to follow on Twitter. You want to follow the church curmudgeon.

10:57

Like the last one the church curmudgeon had was, it's time to take the happy out of holidays. And then

11:02

I'm going back here. I haven't seen anything for a while. Let me see if I find one, because boy, wouldn't you see her picture.

11:08

There it is, there it is. It's Bitter Blue Betty, spelled that way,

11:14

Bitter Blue Betty on Twitter. She said yesterday, or day four on Twitter, giving birth without an epidural in a barn?

11:28

Silent night my tush. And she's right. Where did silent night come from?

11:35

I mean, where does little Lord Jesus know crying he makes come from?

11:43

He better have cried. First time you take a breath, every baby cries. That's the first time them lungs get a working.

11:51

It's pure Gnosticism to say that Jesus sort of beamed out of Mary. And it wasn't quiet wherever it was they were.

12:00

So, you know, there's a lot of tradition and stuff like that that doesn't come to us from Scripture.

12:06

And the supernatural elements of the birth narrative are only there in a, almost in the background.

12:18

For example, how does, Jesus is born, think about this,

12:24

Jesus is born in a Jewish town. Who comes to recognize the coming of the

12:34

Messiah? There's no room for them in the inn, or some people argue that the term should be translated room.

12:43

So they're crammed into this room and so they had to go into a place where there's a stable to go outside.

12:52

And so there are no Jewish leaders there. The Jewish leaders who actually know where Jesus is supposed to be born and inform

13:00

Herod, they're a long ways away. They don't see the signs. But who shows up?

13:06

You do get some Jewish shepherds. But they only get there, why?

13:12

Well, because an entire group of angels appears to them. And they're frightened out of their minds.

13:17

It's not just angels are popping up in front of everybody, hey, go worship Jesus. It's to, well, people who are on the low rung of the totem pole and maybe there is a connection to Lamb of God shepherds, maybe

13:30

David shepherd. I'm not really sure exactly what's going on there, but possibility.

13:38

But then who else comes? Not necessarily that night, but the Magi. We don't know how many there were.

13:47

They're not Jewish. They're aliens. So the supernatural stuff isn't front and center as in the flashy, superstitious, magic show type stuff like you have in the

14:05

Pro Evangelium of James or in the Gnostic Gospels. There's a fundamental difference.

14:11

I doubt that Bart Ehrman can see that because for Bart Ehrman, supernatural, supernatural, it's all silly.

14:16

It doesn't matter whether it's crass supernaturalism or it has a purpose and a consistency over time or things like that.

14:28

But when he asks us, are the stories about Jesus' birth in the New Testament any less unbelievable? I would say by a long shot.

14:37

By a long shot. Visions and dreams warning

14:45

Joseph. That's the same thing as the weird stories told about Mary and stuff in the

14:55

Pro Evangelium of James. No. No comparison at all. Now, why he can't see that, well, we'd have to psychoanalyze him.

15:02

But I think a lot of it comes from the subtle indications that he gives.

15:10

For example, we read in his article, speaking of the Pope's little book on the birth narratives that just came out.

15:20

The book will not be as well cherished, however, among those who are less interested in affirming the narratives of Scripture than in knowing what actually happened in the past.

15:32

Notice knowing what happened in the past and affirming the narratives of Scripture, two different things in Bart Ehrman's mind, of course.

15:40

And there is indeed a very wide swath of scholars, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, agnostic, and others who have a very different view of the accounts of Jesus' birth in the

15:47

New Testament and who realize that there are problems with the traditional stories as they are recounted for us in Matthew and Luke, the only two

15:53

Gospels that contain infancy narratives. Really? It's a shame that Bart has to keep propagating the myth that conservative believers are blissfully unaware of any problems at all in regards to, well, how do you fit the trip to Egypt in and isn't

16:15

Matthew just making this up so he can play around with Hosea and, you know, Luke says this, and Matt, what, you think this is, it's only the new critical scholars like Bart Ehrman that know things like this?

16:29

Nowadays has he ever known anything about this? Well of course not. Now, does that mean the average person a pew these days knows about this?

16:38

Well, depends on what church you go to. We've been studying through the synoptic Gospels for a decade now at my church, so yeah, we already dealt with that kind of stuff, but, and we'll be dealing more as we finally now, once I get done with a few chapters in John anyways, get back to the crucifixion narratives and all the things relevant to that.

17:01

But he likes to present this idea that you have your critical scholars, and then you have

17:06

Christians, and never shall the twain meet, and this comes out over and over again.

17:13

He talks about conundrums such as these have been debated for many years, with some

17:19

Christian scholars and a lay follower as finding ingenious solutions to them, and more critical historians insisting that in fact they are bona fide problems that show these

17:27

Gospel sources, whatever else they are, are not historically reliable descriptions of what really happened when Jesus was born.

17:34

So if you're going to be a critical historian, then the idea of harmonization is simply out the window.

17:45

Many Christians take offense to that claim, but in fact it need not be that way, as many less literally minded believers have long known and said.

17:52

Remember Barth had his liberal period as well on his way out of the faith, and that's probably reflected there.

18:00

But what a sad thing that Newsweek chose to write its own obituary basically by giving

18:08

Bart Ehrman yet another platform to not really say anything new, this is all old stuff, but to take its final shots, shall we say, as it goes off into Cyberville.

18:23

But I'm hoping if you want more information on that. By the way, I very briefly mentioned a couple of the sources on The Mefferd Show, but if you do want to do some reading, you'll find

18:37

Carson's comments in his commentary on Matthew, Bach's in his commentary on Luke, to be very helpful.

18:46

Jason Engler over at Triablog has put tons of stuff together.

18:51

Every year I look forward to his blog entry where he gives the links to his various articles that he's put together.

18:59

And if Jason hears this almost every year, I know this year, earlier this week, because I knew

19:04

I was going to be doing The Mefferd Show, I went in and I tracked down a bunch of the articles that Jason had put up.

19:14

And what I did is I converted them to MP3, dumped them all into TechSpeechPro, and converted them to MP3 and listened to them while writing.

19:28

And that was one of the ways in which I prepared for the program. So Jason Engler, look for his

19:34

Christmas Apologetics materials on Triablog, really good stuff. And then

19:40

I happened to be emailing back and forth with my dear brother Michael Brown, who had just gotten back from India.

19:46

I think he was still traveling at the time, amazingly. And I just happened to mention in passing that I was doing that program,

19:59

I was going to be addressing that, and he said, well, have you looked at my stuff in answering

20:04

Jewish objections to Jesus? And I hadn't even thought about it, such a goldmine of information. I need to just finally take all of that whole series and just MP3 it and plow through it.

20:16

I mean, it would take a long time because there's a lot of material, five volumes, it's big. But there's just so much stuff there.

20:23

And by the way, lo and behold, I was listening to the debate between Zaka Hussein and David Wood from London.

20:43

I think it was London, it may have been someplace else, somewhere in the UK. And I was listening to the audience questions and I had heard this question from the audience.

20:52

I thought, well, that's an interesting attack. I hadn't seen anybody using that before.

20:59

Lo and behold, as is so often the case, the Muslims were stealing from the Jewish folks again.

21:06

I remember this very clearly. First, the first Muslim I ever debated,

21:13

Hamza Abdel Malik, would borrow from Jewish sources and borrow Jewish argumentation.

21:18

And here was somebody in the audience borrowing from Jewish argumentation against the

21:24

Messiahship of Jesus, which is weird because the Muslims believe in the Messiahship of Jesus. But hey, they don't believe in the deity of Jesus.

21:30

So you can just sort of come to think of it. What the

21:35

Muslims did is they took the spin on it. That while Jesus is still the Messiah, the scriptures that announced him to be were wrong.

21:44

So they attacked the New Testament, but they're stuck having to still confess Jesus as Messiah.

21:50

But Muslims don't know who the Messiah was supposed to be or what the Messiah was supposed to do. Because they take so many of the

21:57

Old Testament texts that are supposed to be about the So it's really, really weird.

22:07

But anyway, the fourth volume of Michael Brown's work has a whole section.

22:15

The specific argument that the guy had come up with in the debate was Jeconiah. Jeconiah, his offspring were not to sit upon the throne of David.

22:28

And yet, was it Matthew? Matthew or Luke, one of the two, traces

22:33

Jesus's line through Jeconiah. So since that's the curse line, that Jesus couldn't be the Messiah. So therefore, the

22:39

Muslim argument, the Jewish argument was, therefore, Jesus isn't the Messiah. The Muslim argument is

22:45

Matthew or Luke, whichever one it is, is in error. Jesus is still the

22:50

Messiah. But the only reason you know that is because the Quran tells you. Of course, the only reason that Muhammad knew that was because the

22:56

Jews told him that, or the Christians told him that. But anyway, that's another issue. So they take different conclusions, but that's how they got around to doing that particular thing.

23:06

And so here, lo and behold, in Michael Brown's volume four, is a whole section on Jeconiah, his restoration, his repentance, the limitation of the curse, all this neat information.

23:20

And again, since I have both the printed editions, which Michael gave to me out of his kindness, and the

23:27

Logos version as well, which they mispronounce as Logos, the Logos edition as well.

23:33

Then I was able to pull out a Logos, turn it into an MP3 and listen to that while rowing as well. So that's how you do that.

23:39

But anyway, good stuff there. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, 877 -753 -3341.

23:49

I have my phone next to me on the desk set to low, but hopefully still loud enough to hear.

23:55

Should we have to cut the dividing line short today? I even told Janet, I said, I'm on grandpa watch.

24:00

So I hope you've done your studying here because you might have, if the phone rings five minutes, you've got the whole hour to yourself because I'm out of here.

24:09

But I really don't. There are so many people now praying that the baby comes

24:15

Monday. I just don't think there's any choice. Last night, Archie, during prayer service,

24:21

Wednesday night prayer service, prayed that it would be Monday. And then Janet said she's going to pray. So here's the whole world, the whole nation, the entire

24:30

Salem radio network is praying that Clementine will be born on Monday. And Summer's going, thank you very little, yes.

24:40

And I keep telling her, someday you're going to thank me for this. When little Clementine and I have the same birthday, you're going to thank me for this.

24:48

And she just glares at me right now. But time heals all wounds, at least we hope so.

24:58

Anyhow, well, I have some stuff to get to, but we also have a phone call.

25:03

So I think it might be best to just go ahead and take our phone call.

25:08

Even though I, after watching Rich sitting there for, I don't know how long, listening to the description of this, the description of the phone call is absolutely worthless to me.

25:19

But we'll, and I'm not sure how this is an apologetic question either, but we'll take a shot.

25:27

We'll take a shot. Jonathan. Hi, Jonathan. Hi, Dr. White. Hi. Yeah, the question that I had for you, something that I've been meaning to call in and ask for a while, but I'm in college right now, so classes and stuff like that.

25:42

But basically this past, I was talking to my uncle.

25:48

My uncle is a fundamentalist Baptist. And I showed him this video by Matt Chandler where he was talking about how people walk away from the church.

25:59

And it was, people are told, do this, don't do this, and they achieve it, but then something bad happens to them, they get mad at God, and it was basically the gist of the video.

26:06

So then we're talking about sanctification, and I said that, you know,

26:12

I said there was a fundamental misunderstanding as to sanctification, because it's not something that necessarily we do like we try our hardest to do.

26:21

It's rather the spirit working in us, you know, to make us more like Christ.

26:27

And so he told me that that removed all human responsibility. I tried to, you know, talk to him about it more, but honestly didn't know what to say.

26:40

To be honest with you, he was kind of upset that I was a Calvinist. But I don't know,

26:46

I was just curious as to what, you know, you would say in response to that. Well, you mean in response to someone saying that sanctification is the work of the spirit in a person's life?

27:06

Yeah, well, basically he was saying that taking that view that it's something that the spirit does in you, he said that that destroyed, you know, the call to, you know, all who are in Christ Jesus are a new creature, and you're called to change.

27:20

And he said if it's something that's done to you, that takes away the active, you know, command for you to do something.

27:27

Well, it doesn't, because, you know, I think probably one of the classical texts that helps to explain the relationship here is found in Paul's letter to the

27:41

Philippians, where he talks about the relationship of these things.

27:53

And he says, And so you have the command, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

28:19

And it's put in the context of obedience. It says, And so as you are obedient people, then my command to you is work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

28:36

And so the command to us is that we are to work out our salvation, but the fear and trembling is not because we are worried we're not going to do it right or we're going to lose it or something like that.

28:49

It is a recognition that the working out of our salvation, it is God who is at work within you.

28:56

So that the fear and the trembling comes in recognition that we as believers, everything we do is empowered by the spirit.

29:04

It's the result of the work of the spirit of God in our lives. We can't credit ourselves with anything, but that's placed within the context of the command of obediently working out your salvation.

29:19

And so it's only by positing some type of a conflict between our absolute necessity of the work of the spirit and the recognition that the new nature desires holiness, but the new nature also recognizes that apart from the spirit's work, we can do nothing.

29:36

The new nature recognizes its own weakness. And just as Jesus relied upon the spirit and didn't go running around acting like the

29:45

Gnostics presented him, just zapping people right and left, but was dependent upon the spirit. So we are dependent upon the spirit as well.

29:53

The regenerate mind, which is renewed after the likeness of Christ, likewise is dependent upon the spirit and looks to the spirit for assistance and aid.

30:04

And we recognize that the spirit intercedes for us in our prayers with groanings that cannot be uttered, etc.,

30:10

etc., etc. So only if you create some wildly unbiblical, almost form of Pelagianism, where we can do good stuff on our own and we can work up goodness in our own hearts, do you come up with any type of a conflict between the fact that Paul can command the obedient Philippians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

30:37

And yet the whole reason they have fear and trembling is not because it's dependent upon them, but because it's

30:43

God who's at work within them to will to do according to His good pleasure. So the lack of balance exists in the mind of the person who is deeply controlled by tradition rather than in the scriptures themselves.

31:06

All right. Thanks. That helps a lot. Okay, great. Well, hopefully you can ask him what he thinks of that text, and maybe it'll be useful to you.

31:17

I tried to give him the book, Debating Calvinism, because I had read through it, and he told me that he had heard enough about Calvinism and didn't want to read anything else.

31:26

Well, you cannot force the truth into someone's heart until they're willing to examine their own traditions, look at what scripture says, until there is a thirst for the truth of God and a desire to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

31:46

Lord Jesus Christ. If you are happy and content with your knowledge of the gospel right now, that's a bad thing for anybody.

31:58

And it's until you recognize that there's so much more to learn, that type of person is ready to start thinking about the deeper things of God.

32:07

So, anyway. All righty, Jonathan. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your call. God bless.

32:12

Bye -bye. All right. 877 -753 -3341. I have queued up here.

32:21

I always get just slightly distracted when a car pulls up outside and then just sits there.

32:28

Thankfully, it's not a Ryder van. If it was a Ryder van, at least it's parked next to you, anyhow.

32:36

Yeah, my car's small enough. It should be able to hide behind yours. I queued up some stuff from a recent debate in England I still have not seen.

32:49

Someone did actually, I think it was Farshad and Channel, put a link up to at least some of the discussion that took place at Speaker's Corner.

33:06

But what I was hoping is from a perspective other than Paul Williams. I'd like to be able to see what

33:13

Paul Williams was up to and what he was doing at Speaker's Corner. I'm still looking forward to that showing up online, hopefully.

33:22

But before that, I think this debate took place before that. There was a debate between Sami Zatari and David Wood on the message of Jesus and Muhammad.

33:37

And we've heard portions of this kind of dialogue before. But I did find it rather interesting that Sami responded to David's presentation in a particular fashion that I think will be helpful in untying the knots, shall we say, when you're trying to speak to a

34:00

Muslim and explain to them the things of the Gospel. This might be helpful.

34:07

So I've got this queued up. The problem is I don't know that I can start playing it right now because I don't have a board operator.

34:16

So I'm not sure if it's up. It's ready to go.

34:22

Okay. All right. So if my computer started making noises, it would have been good. Okay. All right.

34:27

So this is the rebuttal period. And I always find that to be when debates start taking off.

34:37

So we're just going to jump into some of Sami's comments here and respond to them as we move along.

34:43

All right. There's a lot of points. If I can't address anything, then please ask it in the Q &A because I usually try to answer everything.

34:50

But let's start with the last points because they'll go into the discussion. The Qur 'an affirms the

34:57

Bible. It's true. The Qur 'an does affirm the Bible. Now, let me give you some context.

35:03

David had just done a very good job in laying out the same kind of argumentation that I have often laid out, and that is that the

35:13

Qur 'an in Surah 5 leads to the Muslim conundrum, the Muslim dilemma.

35:19

Either you have to confess that the words of Surah 5, specifically 47, made no sense when they were spoken, that they were untrue at that time.

35:31

Or you have to confess that the gospel still existed at that time, which then undercuts the vast majority of other assertions that the

35:39

Qur 'an makes about Christian belief and things along those lines. And so David had just laid this out, and that's what

35:45

Sami is responding to. And the Torah. But nowhere in the

35:51

Qur 'an does it say it affirms the gospels, or the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of Luke, the gospel of John.

36:01

Now, this is the common Islamic argument that, well, yeah, it talks about the gospel, but it doesn't talk about gospels, so it's something different than what you have in the

36:10

Bible today. There is no evidence that the author of the Qur 'an understood that the gospels existed as individual books in the

36:20

New Testament. The modern Muslim is assuming a level of knowledge on the part of the author of the

36:26

Qur 'an that there is no evidence of within the text of the Qur 'an itself. And if you're going to call the

36:36

Christians, the Al -Anjil, the people of the gospel, you need to recognize that there is a proper and appropriate historical use of gospel singular.

36:46

We believe in the gospel. We believe that the gospel is recorded for us in the

36:52

New Testament. We believe that each one of the gospels contains the gospel, and that it was not uncommon for early

37:03

Christians to simply refer to the gospel as it was contained in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

37:12

And so what modern Muslims have done is they've gone far beyond what you could actually derive from the text of the

37:20

Qur 'an itself. And that's what Sami's doing here. He's saying, oh yeah, the

37:25

Qur 'an talks about the Anjil, but doesn't say anything about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

37:31

Problem is, Sami, that any Christians to whom the words of Surah 5 would have been addressed, that's what they had.

37:43

That's what they would have heard. And so you have to interpret the words in the context they're originally spoken or written, don't you?

37:51

But that's not the way that Muslims generally approach their text. They don't really think much about what the original context was.

37:59

It is how it's been interpreted in the Hadith and the various interpretations of the generations that have come thereafter that is the issue.

38:09

So that's what Sami's doing right here. The writings of Paul, that doesn't exist in the

38:15

Qur 'an. When the Qur 'an says it affirms the Bible, it's referring to the true scriptures that were originally revealed to who?

38:23

To Moses and to Jesus. If that's the case, then as David had rightly argued from Surah 5, that the result of necessity is that that original gospel and that original

38:40

Torah continued to exist in the days of Muhammad.

38:52

Otherwise, the words are meaningless. Otherwise, the words make absolutely positively no sense whatsoever.

39:01

Just a necessary conclusion. And unfortunately, it doesn't strike me that Sami really heard what it is that David said.

39:14

Because if this is talking about the originals, then how can Muhammad, when the

39:19

Torah is brought to him, remove the cushion he's sitting on, have the Torah put on it and say, I believe this book.

39:24

How can the Qur 'an itself parallel the Qur 'an with the Torah and say, let anyone produce anything like it or like them?

39:33

Plural, referring to both the Torah and the Qur 'an. How can you say to the

39:38

Alal Injil, judged by what's contained therein, if they don't contain it anymore? The point that Sami just doesn't seem to get or doesn't deal with is that the only way that Surah 5 makes any sense is if the

39:50

Injil continues to exist. In fact, the same thing with the Torah.

39:57

Just a few ayahs before that. When the Jewish people are told to judge by the

40:03

Torah as well. Those things have to exist for those words to have any meaning.

40:08

And guess what? It's a historical fact now, not according to Muslims, but to textual critics of the

40:15

Bible, that the Bible we have today is not the original Bibles that were supposedly given to Jesus.

40:24

They're not even the copies of the original. Now, I have no idea what Sami thinks that means.

40:33

Is he saying that the only way we could have the text of the

40:39

Bibles have the original handwritten autographs by the Apostles themselves? That's absurd because we don't have the original handwritten autographs of the

40:46

Quran. So that doesn't follow. And when he says textual scholars tell us today, well,

40:54

Christians have known from the start that we did not have the originals. So that doesn't make any sense at all. Unfortunately, one of the things that you have to be prepared to deal with are objections from Muslims based upon a less than educated reading of Bart Ehrman -esque stuff.

41:19

And that can be rather confusing. But again, it's up to us to make the effort to bridge the gap of communication.

41:30

It's up to us. We're the ones who in the same conversation may have to be doing education on the history of the text itself.

41:46

And that's not easy to do. It's a good skill to have. And as we encounter a more and more aggressively anti -Christian society, it's definitely something

41:59

I think we need to be thinking about, possessing in and of ourselves. But it does complicate things.

42:05

We don't have the originals. So when the Quran says follow or we believe in the

42:11

Bible, it's talking about the original Bible that was given to Jesus and to Moses.

42:17

That's not what Surah 5 is talking about, Sammy. It's amazing.

42:24

I would think by now, how many times, even those of you who only have a marginal interest in Islam, but you still listen.

42:34

How many times have you heard me talk about Surah 5? I went through Surah 5, 44 through 47, rather carefully prior to getting to that part in the section of the debate down in Australia with Abdullah Kunda.

42:54

And I went through it very carefully. You would think by now,

43:02

Bassam Zawadi tried to provide some slight response in our debate in London.

43:09

But you would think by now that there would be a unified, in -depth, textually based, grammatically sound interpretation of this text that the

43:21

Muslims would be putting forward that has a strong basis going back to al -Qurtabi and Ibn Kathir and has

43:31

Hadith foundation all the way back to Malik's Muwatta and Sahih al -Bukhari.

43:41

Rooted in the sources. You'd think that would be out there by now. It's been a few years.

43:49

But I mentioned a couple of months ago when listening to Abdullah Kunda's response to the citation of Surah 5.

44:00

There was stuff he said, the text said, the text doesn't say. It was confused. It was almost like they don't know what to do with this text.

44:11

And it does seem to be a bit of a conundrum for them. They just don't know what to do with it.

44:19

Even in the Old Testament, the supposed books of Moses talk about his death and things that happened when he couldn't have been writing about it.

44:28

So obviously those weren't given to Moses. Well, here's the problem.

44:34

I don't know if Sami is going to do what, I don't think he can do what some

44:40

Muslims do who just automatically dismiss anything from the

44:45

Hadith or other Islamic historical sources. But the

44:52

Quran says some very high things about the Torah. And Muhammad said high things about the

45:00

Torah. And you would have a hard time coming up with any basis for alleging the corruption of the

45:08

Torah. And I can guarantee you beyond any shadow of a doubt, we know what the books of Moses looked like 700 years before Muhammad.

45:26

We know what they looked like without any doubt. In the days of Muhammad.

45:32

And can prove without any doubt what they looked like for 700 years before that.

45:41

And of course since then as well. So that to me completely vitiates the argument that was just made.

45:56

And I don't know how Sami would respond to that. I'd be very interested in finding out. Secondly, when the

46:03

Quran tells the people to judge by the Gospel or the Old Testament. We have examples of that during the

46:09

Prophet's lifetime. So they need to be quoted in context. For example, once the Jews came to the

46:14

Prophet and someone committed adultery. So they said how should we be judged. And so the

46:19

Prophet took their book and he pointed the commandment. According to your faith you should be stoned.

46:25

And they tried to hide it but then he moved their hand. So it comes in context. It's simply referring to the true teachings that you can still follow that are in those books.

46:35

And the Prophet showed it to them. There are still many regulations in those books which

46:41

Jews can follow. So you're to judge by the

46:47

Torah that does or does not exist. I mean, I know the story he's referring to where allegedly someone held their hand over the section.

46:57

And then Muhammad had to move the hand and read what was under the hand. And it was this thing about stoning.

47:02

And so they had the couple stoned, etc., etc., etc. But that has nothing to do with changing the text.

47:11

They may have tried to hide something in that one particular instance. But you don't have to put your hand over something to hide it if it's gone.

47:19

If it's been edited out and changed. The point is they still possessed it.

47:24

And, in fact, that story proves the opposite of what Sami seems to think it proves.

47:32

Because even when they tried to hide it, they failed. Muhammad shows them that and then he binds them to what's found in the

47:38

Torah. So what are you supposed to do? It seems that it was there.

47:47

It seems that it existed in the days of Muhammad. And, therefore, the Injil exists as well, right?

47:54

That seems to be the case. Secondly, or thirdly, David doesn't seem to get it. That the Quran is also using rhetorical devices here when it's telling the

48:03

Jews to follow their own book. Because it's pointing their hypocrisy. Why are you coming to Islam telling us how we should judge when you have judgments in your own book?

48:12

Now, that is not what Surah 5 is about. There is nothing there that substantiates that interpretation at all.

48:20

I would love to see where he gets that from. Muhammad was put in a position, once he went to Medina, to be judged.

48:29

And the Jews would come to him. Everyone would come to him. And what the text seems to be saying to him is,

48:35

Hey, they have their own scriptures. Why aren't they judging according to what's found therein?

48:42

Because God sent down the Torah. He sent down the Injil. Here it is.

48:51

So, there's nothing here about the Jews coming and engaging in hypocrisy.

48:56

There's nothing in Surah 5 about that. This is a complete overturning of the text.

49:04

I don't see how Sami has come up with this at all. It is a rather weak way to try to get around what is actually there in the text.

49:13

877 -753 -3241 is the phone number. We've just barely gotten a start on that.

49:21

But, looking at the next phone call, I need to leave at least ten minutes for it, given the topic.

49:31

Let's go international and talk to Chris. Hi, Chris. Hi, how are you doing?

49:38

Good. I have a question. Are you familiar with a fellow by the name of Perkins, sir? I believe it was

49:43

W .T. Perkins, sir. A book called Eternal Security, True and False? No. Okay.

49:50

I'm in a community up here where I'm actually under church discipline because I believe one cannot lose their salvation.

49:57

Oh, my. And one of the arguments, one of the ministers who tried to persuade me otherwise gave me

50:02

Perkins' book. And on the chapter, on Hebrews chapter 6, he refers to the idea that, well, you know, of course, my argument would be if a person could fall away, then

50:15

Hebrews 6 would say that you've got no chance of being saved again if you do fall away. And he'd say, no, no, no. That doesn't work that way because it's in the present tense.

50:26

And it's only as long as he keeps falling away is he no longer able to repent.

50:32

But as soon as he stops his state of not falling away, then it's okay. He can be saved again.

50:39

And he's making his argument based on the nature of the Greek verb there. Now, I have a little kind of grammar by a

50:45

Dr. Davis. It's an old grammar from the early 1900s. And he would maintain that time is only significant if it's in the indicative mode or in the indicative tense.

50:55

And this is actually a participle, a past participle. Does it even fit his argument at all?

51:01

No, no, that's not the case. There are absolute statements in regards to time in the indicative.

51:11

But you're not talking about subjunctive here. And it's really this is an aorist active participle.

51:22

And so it is past tense for in the case of those who have once been enlightened and then have fallen away.

51:28

So it's an aorist participle because of its relationship to the aorist passive participle, fotostentos, at the beginning of verse 4.

51:40

And so you have all these intermediate descriptions that are provided.

51:48

But verse 6 is clearly referring to an action that is based upon the situation of that individual.

51:58

So the idea that no, yeah, whatever Hebrews 6 is saying, it is definitely saying that the sin that is envisioned here is the sin unto death of first John.

52:10

And it's the same thing in Hebrews chapter 10. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to, but I've been preaching through Hebrews for a few years now.

52:19

And if you go to sermonaudio .com and put my name in as one of the speakers, it'll come up.

52:28

And I've, of course, I'm in chapter 11 now. So I've addressed both. Well, I've addressed all the primary warning passages, chapter 3, chapter 6, and chapter 10.

52:38

And so you'd be able to find a little bit longer discussions there. Yeah. But the thing to remember in regards to Hebrews chapter 6 is the overall theme of the book of Hebrews and who it's written to.

52:55

That is the key. It's written to Jews. Well, it's written, no, it's written to Christians who are

53:03

Jewish in the sense that they come out of a Jewish background, yes. And they're being put under pressure to go back to the old ways.

53:12

They're being put under pressure. This is one of the reasons I think very clearly Hebrews is written prior to the destruction of the temple, because the pressure being placed upon them is to offer the sacrifice.

53:23

And by offering the sacrifice, they would be saying the sacrifice of Jesus' death was not sacrificial.

53:30

He was justly condemned. And this is the trampling underfoot the blood of the Son of God, which is mentioned in chapter 10.

53:37

And so this is the pressure that is being placed upon them. And the book is an extended apologetic saying there's nothing to go back to.

53:47

If you keep that in mind all the way through chapter 10, everything makes perfect sense. The scriptural fulfillments, prophetic fulfillments, the fulfillment of the law, the priesthood, everything pointing to Christ points that there's nothing to go back to.

54:02

And so the exhortation is addressed to the congregation as a whole. And obviously they had seen people who had gone back.

54:12

They had seen people who had been amongst them and had been enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and been made partakers of the

54:21

Holy Spirit and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. In other words, they had been in the congregation.

54:28

They had been there for the Lord's Supper. They had been there when the Spirit had come and in power had opened up the understanding to the word of God and all these other things.

54:39

But then they had left. And the assertion that is made is that when that happens, that those individuals, if they offer that sacrifice, they are crucifying themselves, the

54:53

Son of God, and putting Him to an open shame. But then the description that is given says in verse 9,

55:00

But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way.

55:07

The exact same type of assurance comes at the end of chapter 10 when he says,

55:13

But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith in the preserving of the soul.

55:20

So both texts reflect the fact that as I stand before the people of God behind the pulpit,

55:28

I do not have some supernatural capacity of looking into their hearts and minds and knowing which individuals are of the elect of God, which ones have true saving faith, and which ones have not.

55:40

And I'm plenty old enough now to know lots of apostates, to know people who were once in the congregation, but today are either heretics or have completely left the faith and have no interest in Christ or the things of the

55:57

Gospel at all. And I know that they once partook of the table and they once sat in Bible study.

56:04

And so you have to recognize the existence of those individuals.

56:12

Yeah, and unfortunately, that's where I'm classified right now. I'm classified as being an apostate because I joined their church, and now because of the decision

56:23

I made, I have actually been given over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, just because I believe that a person cannot lose their salvation.

56:31

Well, if you believe that because you first and foremost recognize that Jesus Christ is the author of salvation,

56:39

He's the author of faith, that the people of God have been given to Him and that He has been entrusted with their salvation, as He says in John chapter 6,

56:48

I will lose none of them, if you recognize salvation as the work of God in Jesus Christ to God's glory first and foremost, then you don't want to be a part of a church that would put someone out for coming to recognize that Jesus is a perfect Savior.

57:08

And I would encourage you to find a fellowship where that truth is acknowledged and rejoiced in and be very open with them about what your situation is.

57:22

But I know that people have come to our church and, hey, they've come to understand the sovereignty of grace and the fullness of the gospel, and yeah, their old church had put them out, but we didn't.

57:38

Yeah. I'm currently attending a small Plymouth Brethren church not too far away from us.

57:45

Well, I say not too far, I have to take a bus to get there. But the catch is my wife and my older children are still members of the church.

57:53

My older children, they can't even sit at a table and eat a meal with me, or they'd be put in the van as well.

58:00

Well, it sounds like quite an interesting group that you were involved with there. My hope and prayer would be that your wife and children would come to understand the truth of John 6 and John 10 and all the other texts where Jesus is seen as a perfect Savior, and as such the whole group as a family can be restored to proper fellowship with one another and in service to Christ in a church where that kind of teaching does not have that kind of power.

58:33

That's a shame to hear, Chris. It is tough. I bet it is. Well, hopefully our little program can be of some help to you, but we'll pray that the

58:42

Lord will bring a conclusion to that situation and all of you together can worship the

58:47

Lord in peace in a solid church where His truth is taught. Hey, thanks for your call,

58:53

Chris. I hope that was helpful to you. Okay, thanks to be fair. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. Wow, good reason to be thankful for where we are in a situation like that.

59:01

We'll definitely pray for Chris and anyone in his situation. Hope that was helpful to you. Thanks for listening to The Buying Line today.

59:09

No grandchild yet, but who knows? I think by next Tuesday we'll have something to announce.

59:15

I sure hope so. We'll see you then. Maybe. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

01:00:06

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

01:00:12

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

01:00:17

World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.

01:00:25

Join us again next Tuesday morning at 11 a .m. for The Dividing Line. the Dividing Line.