Response to Anthony Buzzard and More

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August 13, 2013

Started off responding to the video I posted yesterday, and recording it for posting on YouTube. Then we moved on to discuss a number of things, including the cowardice of Richard Dawkins, the moral depravity of rebellion against God’s creative purpose in gender, and the depth of darkness one plunges into when one abandons the truth and believes a lie. Then we moved back to fulfilling my promise to try to review the primary comments of Bashir Vania and Yusuf Ismail prior to my trip to South Africa.

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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. And welcome to the Dividing Line. We have a tremendous amount of stuff to get to today.
00:57: The stack of stuff, as they say in the professional circles, is large indeed.
01:03: I want to start off today responding to a brief video that I was directed to.
01:11: I hesitate to call him a student, but he was in the class that I was teaching in Berlin a few months ago, a gentleman who basically,
01:24: I ended up calling him the internet, because every time I would make reference to something, a few minutes later he would say, it's right here if anybody would like to see it, it's right here.
01:35: He made Google look a little anemic. And then when he wrote his paper, it turned out to be a small book on the variant of John 14.
01:46: I'm trying to talk him into, I haven't heard back from him, trying to talk him into allowing me to post that, because I think those of you who deal especially with Jehovah's Witnesses and those who deny the deity of Christ would find
01:56: John 14 to be an important text. This is on the textual data regarding whether the word me is to be included in the
02:07: Greek text. But anyway, that's a gentleman who directed me to a video that Sir Anthony Buzzard posted.
02:15: Now, most of you remember a few years ago, I think it was what, about 2010,
02:21: I think, in the summer, right around this time. I think it might've been September. I know it was very warm that day.
02:29: Dr. Michael Brown and I did a live debate on the Jewish Voice broadcast with Sir Anthony Buzzard, another gentleman.
02:37: And I haven't said a lot about it. I mean, it's out there. It's on YouTube. I hear comments about it all the time.
02:44: But what's getting strange to me is that Sir Anthony Buzzard can't seem to stop talking about it. And I've seen this before.
02:51: Remember, we did, I don't know how many weeks, we did an entire response to Patrick Madrid because they just kept drumbeat, you know,
02:57: Patrick Madrid on the veneration of saints and angels, you know, destroys James White, la la la la la.
03:03: And, you know, and Catholic Answers also with the Jimmy Akin Bible Answer Man debate, which wasn't a debate.
03:09: But we've gone through all of those only because my former opponents just have absolutely demanded that we do so because of the comments they've made about it.
03:21: Generally, when one of my opponents spends a great deal of time talking about a former debate, it's because they don't feel like it went overly well.
03:29: And to be honest with you, one of the comments I got from my daughter after the debate was actually
03:34: I sort of felt sorry for them. It was so lopsided. So, you know, most of the comments that I've gotten have been very strongly positive and that there really wasn't any issues as far as, well, they brought up stuff
03:51: I had never even thought of before. None of that really took place. I felt that it was a pretty straightforward demonstration of the bankruptcy of the
04:01: Unitarian position from the New Testament perspective. But anyway, Sir Anthony Buzzard has posted a number of videos over the past couple of years.
04:11: So finally, I took the time. I really don't have the time. I'm behind on another project and I'm really not gonna be able to follow up on it.
04:19: But I took the time to listen to this. Well, watch, obviously, but this particular video.
04:27: And so what I'd like to do is I would like to I'm just gonna play the whole thing. It's not very long. It's only five minutes long.
04:33: I'm gonna play the whole thing and then I'm gonna go back through it and respond to portions of it.
04:42: And hopefully that will be useful to you in the listening audience. And then I've got a bunch of other stuff to get to today, as well as the whole reason why we're doing these jumbo -length dividing lines to continue on our reviews in preparation for the debates in South Africa, etc.,
04:57: etc. So get a deep seat in the saddle, as they say here in the Western states, and let's take a listen to what he has to say.
05:06: A few remarks about our debate some years ago with Dr. James White and Dr. Michael Brown on the issue of the
05:12: Trinity. That's an ongoing debate. I want to make a few simple points about the unitary monotheism of Jesus and therefore
05:20: I think it follows that since Jesus was a unitary monotheist in Mark 12, verse 29, it must follow that we as Christians would want to follow that unitary non -trinitarian creed of Jesus.
05:34: That's just logical. Now Michael Brown in a subsequent blog says this very clearly.
05:41: He addresses me and says, Anthony, he, Michael Brown, affirms the
05:48: Shema of Israel. Would you think about that very carefully?
05:54: If that is so, Jesus is citing and quoting and affirming, according to Michael Brown, a
06:00: Trinitarian creed. I find that absolutely astonishing. One of the debating techniques is to treat your partner as some lone soul who's come up with a brand new idea that nobody thought of.
06:11: That's absolutely untrue. There are thousands, countless scholars who know full well that Judaism was not a
06:18: Trinitarian religion and is not. I want to make that absolutely clear. The Shema of Deuteronomy 6 .5.
06:24: The Lord our God is one Lord. I'm giving us the Greek version which is appearing also in the
06:29: New Testament as scripture. The Lord our God is one Lord. That is not a Trinitarian creed.
06:36: But Michael Brown has to say that he, Michael Brown, is a Trinitarian, and what's more, that he affirms the
06:43: Shema. That must be a contradiction. If you're affirming the Shema, you're affirming a
06:48: Unitarian creed. Guess what? Jesus, our Rabbi and Lord, is the one who affirms the
06:55: Unitarian creed found in Mark 12 .29, and he's doing it agreeing with a
07:00: Jew. Surely everybody knows that Jews then and now, and in the time of Moses, were not
07:07: Trinitarian. So there's a complete contradiction involved in Michael Brown's statement that he,
07:12: Michael, affirms the Shema as a Trinitarian creed. That's just got to be wrong. The other point that Dr.
07:19: James White makes is that we are assuming— Now, let's go ahead and respond to that portion first.
07:26: I was just going to play the whole thing through, but I don't want us to lose track of what we're listening to.
07:35: Obviously, when—and I haven't talked to Michael about this, but I think
07:40: I'm on pretty safe ground in responding for him at this point. Every Trinitarian, every
07:49: Trinitarian who has read anything, who is self -aware of his theology, who's more than a
07:55: Trinitarian of tradition, but a Trinitarian of conviction, and I will confess that that's a smaller group than one might expect, but every
08:07: Trinitarian affirms the Shema. We affirmed the Shema in the debate, and the debate was about whether you can assume, as Sir Anthony does, over and over and over again, without proving, just assuming that these words are—they demand a
08:25: Unitarian interpretation. They do demand a monotheistic interpretation.
08:31: They do not demand a Unitarian interpretation, and that's what the whole debate was about. I do not understand why
08:37: Sir Anthony can't get that. Sir Anthony cannot even properly understand the position that he's critiquing.
08:43: He has to continuously assume Unitarianism and then, as a result, say, oh, so you're just contradicting yourself, rather than hearing what we're saying and then interacting with it to demonstrate that it's not possible to consistently interpret the
08:56: Scriptures in the way that we're doing. And we all saw in the debate, they cannot deal with the biblical evidence for the deity of Christ.
09:03: They cannot deal with the biblical evidence for the fact that Jesus Christ is described by the writers of the
09:08: New Testament as Yahweh, that the Old Testament texts about Yahweh have to go scurrying off for representative interpretations and stuff that just is far removed from what's actually there in the text itself.
09:23: They can't deal with that. Their big thing is singular pronouns and just assuming that if you have one being of God, God's being must be limited to one person.
09:34: It's just the way that it is. And that's why this is relevant to our apologetic to Islam, because that's exactly, of course, what the
09:44: Muslim does as well, with, unfortunately, in the vast majority of instances, just as little reflection on the part of the person making the argument as we see in Sir Anthony's repetition of the same statements over and over again.
10:02: He mentions the allegedly Unitarian confession of faith, which is just the Shema, Mark 12, 29.
10:09: So he's saying, see, Jesus said the Shema. Well, we all know Jesus said the Shema. And he's going to accuse, he's going to say, there is no discussion of this in James White's books.
10:18: Actually, obviously, I very clearly confess in the book that Christians are not denying the
10:27: Shema. We are not saying the Shema was wrong. We're not saying anything like that at all. What he wants to force us to try to say is that the
10:34: Shema meant, and for those who don't know what Shema is, Shema, Yisrael, Yahweh, Elohim, Yahweh HaKad, it's found in Deuteronomy 6, 4, it's quoted in Mark 12, 29.
10:43: He's trying to put us in the untenable position of saying that when a Jewish person 50 years before Christ said the
10:50: Shema, that made him a Trinitarian. And again, they just won't listen. Well, they can't.
10:56: If they listened and actually interacted with our position as we state it, their arguments would evaporate.
11:03: So maybe that's why they can't do it. But the attempt is to say, oh, well, if you understand it in a
11:12: Trinitarian fashion, then it must always been understood in a Trinitarian fashion. And that ignores the central thesis, which, again, was explained in the debate, but in one ear out the other, unfortunately, that the revelation of the doctrine of the
11:27: Trinity takes place how? I've mentioned this over and over and over again, but I always have to remember we have new visitors to the program all the time.
11:37: If you've not read The Forgotten Trinity, it's certainly one of my books that you have to put at the top of the list because it's so central to our faith.
11:48: But as I point out in the book itself, the revelation of the doctrine of the
11:56: Trinity takes place in the incarnation, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his exaltation, the right hand of the
12:07: Father, and then in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. This is where the revelation of the doctrine of the
12:14: Trinity is made. Are there indicators, pointers to this in the
12:19: Old Testament? Of course there are, just as there were indicators, pointers, prophecies of the ministry of the
12:25: Messiah and the grandeur of the person, the Messiah, and everything else, Isaiah 9, and so on and so forth in the
12:31: Old Testament. But the actual revelation takes place in the incarnation and the outpouring of the
12:38: Holy Spirit. The New Testament then becomes the record of that revelation and the record of that faith that grows out of that great redemptive act and the revelation of the
12:52: God that we worship. Now, what this means then is what we should find in the
12:57: New Testament. Our Old Testament texts that spoke of the one
13:04: God of Israel being interpreted in this way, and that's exactly what we have in one of the key texts in the
13:12: New Testament. And that key text is 1 Corinthians 8, 1
13:18: Corinthians 8, verse 6, 1 Corinthians 8, 6. It is a tremendous text.
13:24: I can only direct you back, I think, maybe, I think it was
13:31: December of 2011, December of 2011, when
13:38: I did a debate with a Unitarian on another webcast, and then we did
13:43: I don't know how many webcasts here, where we went in -depth into many of the key
13:50: Christological passages, many of the key Christological passages. We went very in -depth on them.
13:56: And one of those texts was 1 Corinthians 8, so I don't have time today to go as in -depth as I would like.
14:03: But you'll notice that in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, we have, it's even placed in poetic form in the
14:14: Nestle -Aland Greek text, probably in UBS, I didn't take a look, but I'm assuming that it is. And we have here what many scholars believe to be a fragment of a very early, very, very early creedal statement.
14:31: And notice what it says. But to us, there is one
14:37: God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him, and one
14:45: Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. Now you say, what does that have to do with this?
14:52: Well, to anyone who would know the Shema in the
14:59: Greek text, the Greek Septuagint, which is how the Jewish heritage of the
15:05: Christian people would be known to people outside of Palestine, the Bible of the New Testament Church was the
15:11: Greek Septuagint. There's no question about that. Just look at, even in preaching to Jewish Christians, the book of Hebrews, what's the text that's being cited?
15:22: It's the Greek Septuagint, even when it differs in some substantial ways at times from the Hebrew Masoretic text.
15:28: So when you look at the Shema in the Greek Septuagint, and you look at the words, and you look at kurios being used for the name
15:39: Yahweh, you look at theos being used for the word Elohim, Hebrew for God, then you look at 1
15:47: Corinthians 8 .6, certainly I am not the only person who has seen, many before me have seen and have commented upon, and people, by the way, from a wide variety of backgrounds.
15:58: I know that Dr. N .T. Wright has spoken about this very issue. We would be in a large measure of agreement on this particular subject.
16:10: That what you have in this early Christian creed, and if this is something that was delivered to Paul, then it's as primitive as anything can be.
16:23: It goes to the first years, and I'm talking first, second, third year of the existence of the
16:32: Christian community, right after the death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, then you have here a fragment of a creed that takes the very words of the
16:46: Shema. See, we don't repudiate the Shema. We see the
16:51: Shema as fulfilled in this way. The very words of the Shema, and in light of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the
17:00: Holy Spirit, you now have an understanding that they're looking back and they're seeing kurios, and they're seeing theos, and they're seeing these words
17:09: Lord and God, and what does it come out as? But for us, heis theos hapater, one
17:17: God, the Father, from whom tapanta are all things, and we eis auton, for him, and one
17:26: Lord, heis kurios Jesus Christos, one Lord Jesus Christ, di hu tapanta, through whom are all things, and we di autu, through him.
17:39: You could not use those words in that way about a mere creature, no matter how exalted you might make that creature.
17:48: It would be blasphemy. It would be utterly and completely contrary, well, to a non -believing
17:57: Jewish interpretation of the Shema, which is exactly what Anthony Buzzard gives to us. He demands that we agree with the unbelieving
18:04: Jews, even to this day. That's what he's doing. So when Michael Brown says,
18:10: I affirm the Shema, this is what he's affirming. We affirm the Shema, we just recognize that that's not all there is to it.
18:17: The Bible didn't stop at Deuteronomy 6 -5, and in fact, that Old Testament is filled with prophecies of this coming one, and once we live in the light of that coming, then we have this type of scripture, and we have to deal with it for what it says.
18:37: But Anthony Buzzard can't deal with it for what it says, because he doesn't believe it, doesn't believe it.
18:44: So, but then he turned his attention to yours truly. Yes, a few comments toward Michael, and then a few comments toward me as well.
18:53: James White makes it that we are assuming Unitarianism. I'm not assuming anything. I'm assuming only that the personal singular pronoun,
19:01: I, me, thou, thee, he, him, and so on, thousands upon thousands of times in the
19:06: Hebrew Bible, and also in the New, those singular personal pronouns assume a single person.
19:12: If that's not clear, nothing is clear in language. So I want to say that, Dr. White, if anybody could do this, this extraordinary exercise of turning the
19:21: Bible into a Trinitarian book, he could do it. He struggles hard and long with this, but finally contradicts himself.
19:29: He makes it clear at the beginning of his treatise on the Trinity, the Forgotten Trinity, in which, may
19:36: I say, in his text index, which I had to procure, he makes no reference, please note, no reference to Mark 12, 29, no reference to the
19:44: Creed of Jesus in trying to explain the Trinity. That's amazing in itself. But at the same time, it's very clear that you cannot say that one
19:51: X is three Xs. You must not and cannot say, without contradicting yourself,
19:58: James White says this clearly, you cannot say God is the name for each individual of the three, and God is also the name of all three together.
20:12: That's very, very true, but unfortunately, Dr. James White falls into his own trap.
20:18: So, on page 71 of his treatise on the Trinity, he says this, as long as one recognises that the word
20:25: God can refer to the Father, to the Son, to the
20:32: Spirit, or, please note, to all three persons at once. I want to repeat that.
20:39: James White says, as long as we realise that the word God refers individually to Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and also the word
20:46: God refers to all three at once, then we're okay. We'll get it right. But with great respect,
20:53: James White, you've already told us that three Xs cannot be one X. You've therefore given us a nonsense proposition, and you go on to say that in the
21:01: Bible, this can happen, that the word God refers to all three together.
21:08: But no text is offered in support. There is none. I would invite you to show us.
21:14: Out of about 11 ,000 references to God, the various words for God, Elohim, Adonai, Theos in the
21:20: Greek, where does that word God ever refer to all three persons as a triune
21:27: God? Nowhere. That could strongly suggest, not an assumption, I think an obvious fact, that in the
21:32: Bible, when they say God, they never mean a triune God. And that is the end of the presentation.
21:39: Now, so many things to respond to there. I wish he had actually given a page number for the first thing. I can't find that.
21:47: Certainly, page 71, I was talking about John 2028. And I would invite anyone to look at the amazingly poor efforts that Sir Anthony has put forward to try to explain
21:59: John 2028. It is amazing to listen to people trying to get around the clarity of that text.
22:05: They just can't do it. It's not possible. They can't do it. And that's what I was talking about there.
22:11: A couple things to respond to here. The primary assertion that he makes is, well, if you've got singular pronouns, then that proves
22:20: Unitarianism. And he says, show us one place where God refers to the triune
22:25: God. That's simple. Every single time that the context does not demand that we see a particular individual operating differently than the others would be a reference to the triune
22:39: God. So any time where God's general activities, God's general attributes are in reference can be referred to the entire
22:48: Godhead acting in unity. But what do you do, Anthony, when you have clear texts that identify
22:57: Jesus as God acting in such a way where he's differentiated from the
23:03: Father? Well, you have to engage in the mind games that you engage in to try to avoid being identified as Yahweh and to try to get around the text where he's the, you know, with all this representative stuff.
23:15: Well, he's just like this representative creature and so on and so forth. You have to get around. You can't accept what those texts say.
23:21: And so by assuming, well, if there's a singular pronoun, that must mean Unitarianism. So in other words, since that would always be true of human beings, it must be true of God.
23:30: So we're just projecting our limited understanding of man back onto God. That's what Unitarianism always is.
23:38: You somehow get around the full revelation of who Jesus is, what—well, for example, just a few weeks ago
23:46: I mentioned in John chapter 14 when Jesus says that the Spirit will be sent by the
23:52: Father in his name. Remember, we talked about that. How does a
23:59: Unitarian understand that? So the Almighty God is going to send this lesser creature that is his
24:08: Spirit, but in the name of another creature. That's what you've got going on there.
24:14: Now, would we say that God sent his Spirit? Yes. And yet God there sometimes is going to—would we say the
24:23: Father did that? Yeah, that's what Jesus is. But he did it in the name of Jesus, so Jesus is involved in—well, and of course his Spirit is the one who's coming, and he's personal.
24:29: He's a comforter. See, this kind of simplistic, oh, we just need to—if it's a singular pronoun, we can't let anything else—just simply cannot handle the fullness of Scripture.
24:39: That's why this position has always been a teeny tiny little minority and always will be, as long as the
24:44: Bible's available to God's people. Because when God's people read what the
24:52: Bible actually states, they cannot help but to see the exalted status of Jesus Christ.
24:58: He's not simply a creature. He's not just some exalted, angelic creature.
25:06: He truly is described in Scripture as God. Now, then he says, you contradicted yourself.
25:15: Well, as long as you do not allow my categories, which I've laid out in my book, to be followed—now,
25:23: I would like to respond to the original, you know, when he was talking about three Xs. I was talking there against modalism.
25:29: I was saying that we are not talking about three persons that are one person or three beings that are one being.
25:37: We differentiate between the words being and person, and Sir Anthony will not allow that. He can't live in light of that.
25:46: Allowing for his denial of the distinction between being and person destroys human language.
25:51: He can't talk—I mean, literally, if you follow that way of thinking, he shouldn't be able to tell the difference between himself and me.
25:57: We're both human beings, and if being and person is the same thing, well, then I guess we're the same person, right?
26:02: I mean, it doesn't make a lick of sense. He can't live consistently with that. We make a distinction between being and person, and what
26:09: I've said is the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit. These are distinct individuals.
26:16: Both we see this by what they do, and we see this by their relationships to one another.
26:23: And yet, they fully share the one being that is God. And that's what I was saying in John chapter 20, that we cannot just take—we cannot do what
26:32: Sir Anthony demands. There's only one use of the word God in the Bible. God does not have the freedom to reveal anything more than Unitarianism, and if there's anything more, we'll just dismiss it.
26:46: That will make mincemeat of the Bible, it'll be indefensible, and will leave you in the position that Sir Anthony was when he debated
26:52: Shabir Ali, and it wasn't even a debate, because actually, they pretty much are on the same page. Very similar to one another.
27:01: And so, simply by denying the categories that we ourselves have laid out, that's basically all that Sir Anthony Buzzard and his followers can do in this situation.
27:13: And that was demonstrated in the debate, and I think that's very, very clear, and hopefully that'll be helpful to folks.
27:20: Again, The Forgotten Trinity, it's been out for many years now. Next project, after current project
27:27: I'm working on, second edition. New edition of The Forgotten Trinity. Expanded, and things like that.
27:34: Oh, you didn't know about that. We have many, many, many things to be doing.
27:39: So that will be coming up, and I hope that will be exciting to folks as well.
27:46: All right, with that, one of the reasons you said, boy, you're going really fast.
27:51: Yes, there's a video camera over there, and since he put a video up, I wanted to respond, but I did it this way, and unfortunately, the camera only runs for 28 minutes.
28:03: So I snuck it in there just in time, and that way, well, if his was a five -minute video, you don't want to necessarily put up an hour -long response or something like that, but I'll be able to add that down if it worked, because I forgot to plug it in.
28:19: I hope the battery is still running. Okay, hope the battery was good, and we should be all right with that. So hopefully sometime later,
28:26: I'll get that posted. So anyhow, all right, so many things to do here.
28:34: Let's go ahead and go here real quick. I had to talk about this, talk about shifting gears.
28:42: We'll be talking about some really important stuff today. That was important. This is important, too.
28:48: You've all seen it. We are in danger, my friends, of absolute disgust overload.
28:56: We are at the point where things are happening that are so insane, so immoral, so evil, so twisted, and yet they're being promoted by the highest peoples in our society that eventually we're just like, what can you say?
29:14: I mean, you don't have any hair left to pull out. I certainly don't.
29:21: You all know that, well, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a controversial bill into law
29:29: Monday afternoon allowing the state's transgender public school students to choose bathrooms they use and whether they participate in boy or girl sports.
29:38: The law would cover the state's 6 .2 million elementary and high school students in public schools. A very good reason to not only flee
29:46: California public schools, which, of course, I would say you'd have to flee anyways in light of the fact that your children are forced to celebrate evil in Harvey Milk Day and things like that, but even more so, just another reason to flee
30:01: California in toto. When the big one hits, it just all slides off.
30:08: Who knows? But supporters say the law will help cut down on bullying against transgender students.
30:14: The families of transgender students have been waging local battles with school districts around the country over what restrooms and locker rooms their children can use.
30:24: Okay, look, this is simply evil. It is insane.
30:31: It is reprehensible. It is wicked. I'm thinking about my little granddaughter growing up in a world where some guy might be in the stall next to her in the bathroom because of a very small percentage of people, some of whom are seriously confused, but many others are simply perverted.
31:00: They've been perverted by abuse or they've been perverted because they want to be perverted or whatever it might be, but the fact of the matter is when a society abuses the majority to pander to the small minority, there must be a reason for it.
31:17: There must be a reason for it, and it's called the judgment of God. Here you have people being absolutely turned over to their sin, turned over to their wickedness, turned over to their depravity.
31:31: Demanding that you and I go into restrooms, and this has already happened in the city of Phoenix.
31:40: This kind of insanity is all around us, and, you know, preceding generations would not have even, could not have even conceived that we would be talking about this.
31:54: Could not have even conceived that there would be such a massive denigration of simple, common morality and ethics to this point, to where even if I say this, and nobody in the media knows who
32:10: I am or cares who I am, and so no one's gonna say anything about it, but if they did, I would be the one being called bigoted, hateful, evil, and wicked for standing for simple basic morality.
32:22: They could never have believed it could happen this fast or that it would ever go this far, and yet that is what we are facing in our society today.
32:34: And so, just right along these lines, gospel singer
32:41: Donnie McClurkin, who has said, God delivered him from the curse of homosexuality, did not appear in a
32:46: Saturday evening concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Why? After several gay rights activists objected to his participation in the event.
32:57: You want to see bigotry? You want to see how intolerant the allegedly tolerant people are?
33:04: How absolutely embroiled and enmeshed in hypocrisy these people are?
33:10: Watch a homosexual respond to a former homosexual. You want to see hypocrisy? You want to see hate?
33:16: You want to see intolerance? Look at how the homosexual lobby deals with anyone who says it's something you can get out of.
33:24: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. McClurkin was scheduled to perform the
33:31: D .C. government -sponsored concert with other singers at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial during the
33:37: Reflections on Peace from Gandhi to King event. At the crest of Mayor Vincent C. Gray, Democrat, who fielded concerns from activists
33:45: Friday, the Grammy -winning singer decided not to perform according to the mayor's office.
33:51: That's not what he said. He said, McClurkin disputed that account, saying he was asked not to attend the concert.
33:58: In a lengthy video statement posted online Saturday, McClurkin said Gray uninvited me from a concert that I was supposed to headline.
34:06: Now, again, we just go, yep, that's the way things are. One small, tiny minority can and believes it should determine the ethical and moral stance of all the rest of us.
34:20: They will shove that ethical moral standard down our throats. That is their intention.
34:28: And that's exactly what they're doing. We've been saying this was coming for I don't know how long. And it is here.
34:33: It is here every single day. It is injustice. And that's why you can have
34:39: NPR .org just a few weeks ago posting an article, young people push back against gender categories, against gender categories.
34:56: My friends, what could be more evidence of the judgment of God on this society than our young people don't even know who they are?
35:07: Anymore. They don't even know what a boy is or a girl is.
35:14: They have been given such autonomy to their sinful nature that they get to choose.
35:24: The result, of course, is the utter loss of the very things that make the value of life transcendent and that enrich society.
35:37: That enrich society. What do I mean by that? What does a husband mean anymore? I was watching one of my favorite movies.
35:46: It's a war movie. It's a war movie. And yes, Mel Gibson was in it.
35:55: It was before the complete Mel Gibson meltdown, thankfully. It's called We Were Soldiers. I don't know if you've ever seen
36:01: We Were Soldiers. It's a tremendous Vietnam War movie about one of the first major battles between U .S.
36:06: troops and Vietnamese troops. I've read the book as well. And I was struck, once again, watching it.
36:16: And this is reported over and over and over again in media. When soldiers would be dying, their very last words, tell my wife.
36:30: Tell my wife. Sometimes I wouldn't be able to finish it, but tell my wife I love her. That's one of the first thoughts across the mind as you expire.
36:41: What does wife mean? What does husband mean? I simply cannot come up with any other explanation for what has happened to a society to where you can no longer know what words like husband and wife mean.
37:05: When two men can get together and call themselves either husbands or one says he's a husband and the other says he's a wife.
37:17: Language, morality, right and wrong, good and evil has been turned on its head.
37:26: And you and I are being told, don't you dare call that wrong. I will not deny my human nature, let alone my faith, to call a man a wife or to call a woman a husband.
37:43: I will not profane the language. I will not embrace that kind of depravity.
37:50: And I will be called evil for that. Well, someday those who call me evil and I will stand before the judge and we will allow him to determine.
38:04: But the one who died upon Calvary's tree told us, well, do not, do not deny
38:14: God's law. Yes, sir. I just, going back to the California thing, when are these people going to wake up?
38:21: Is it going to take a young lady going into a bathroom and a young Ted Bundy is in there waiting for them under the cloak of this law, hiding behind it, a
38:34: Richard Allen Davis. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care about individual rights.
38:39: They don't care about safety of children. This is all a, this is, this is a cultural jihad.
38:46: It has nothing to, it actually has nothing to do with homosexuals or transgendered people. It is to destroy anything that is good, moral or ethical in the society so the society can collapse.
38:58: It has nothing to do with keeping children safe. And the collapse will be when the young Ted Bundy gets hauled into court and appeals to this law saying,
39:06: I belonged in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and we have, we will have absolutely nothing to say in response to that either.
39:13: Nothing to say in response to that. I do want to get, I did want to get to this, but there's just so many.
39:22: Let me, let me get to this one real quick, then we'll go to the other one and we'll see if we can fix it, fit it all into 90 minutes.
39:28: I don't know. Now I've got people in channel all amazed that I've actually watched
39:35: We Were Soldiers. Yeah, I did. You don't want to, you don't want to look at any anything. It's actually historically accurate.
39:41: Okay, the ending wasn't historically accurate. All right, read the book. But it was a tremendous battle and battles like that.
39:50: I don't know. This nation really is up to winning anymore because anyways, because of what we're talking about right now.
39:57: To be honest with you, a military, military requires a military that will last and do what's right requires a moral and ethical foundation of the nation it represents.
40:09: And that's why we develop smart bombs and everybody else just blows everything up. But anyways, Michael Brown wrote, for Richard Dawkins, Muslim bashing is different than Christian bashing.
40:21: And that's what I wanted to mention here real quickly was the cowardice of atheists, the cowardice of anti -Christian atheists.
40:33: That's the only way I can put it. I didn't, I didn't have time to queue it up, but I've played on the program before.
40:44: The response of Bart Ehrman to a man asking him about, remember, he asked him when you're going to be writing a book on the
40:51: Quran. And Ehrman's response was when I no longer value my life. And you may recall that he took great offense to my asking him to be consistent in our debate and apply the standards he was applying the
41:08: New Testament to the Quran. Now, you cannot convince me that the head of the Department of Religion and the
41:14: James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, has never read the
41:19: Quran and has absolutely positively no knowledge of its history. You cannot tell me that Bart Ehrman doesn't realize the
41:27: Quran was transmitted by handwritten manuscripts. I'll bet he does know a whole lot more about it, but he's a chicken.
41:36: He's a coward. He's a coward. There's big money to be made in attacking Christianity, but he knows he could lose his position.
41:44: It's not politically correct to then make comments, even if they're factual comments, that could be construed as attacks upon Islam.
41:53: Same thing with Richard Dawkins. Same thing with Richard Dawkins. As Michael says here, in his best -selling book,
42:00: The God Delusion, Dawkins famously mocked the God of the Old Testament, claiming the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction, jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, philicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully, end quote, end quote.
42:29: But, according to the February 24, 2013 article by Douglas Memorial, published in the Jewish Chronicle online, in a recent
42:35: Al Jazeera interview, Richard Dawkins was asked his views on God. He argued that the God of the Old Testament is hideous and a monster, and reiterated his claim from The God Delusion that the
42:42: God of the Torah is the most unpleasant character in fiction. Ready? You know what's coming. Asked if he thought the same of the
42:50: God of the Quran, Dawkins ducked the question, saying, well, um, the
42:56: God of the Quran, I don't know so much about, end quote. Oh, where is my chicken sound?
43:10: Really? Now, let's think about this for just a moment. The great Richard Dawkins, the messiah of the atheists, doesn't have time to read a book that represents a third of the people on the planet that is only 56 % the length of the
43:32: New Testament, and only 14 % the length of the entire
43:37: Bible. Doesn't have the time to do that. Doesn't think it's relevant.
43:44: No, he's a coward. He's a money -grubbing coward, and he knows it.
43:51: In his own heart, he knows it. Every thing, everything that Richard Dawkins hates about the
44:03: God of the Old Testament can be found in the Quran. And if he had a single, meaningful, courageous bone in his body and was consistent, he'd say that.
44:15: But he's a coward, and he won't. He's a coward. That's all there is to it.
44:21: That's all there is to it. Okay, one more to fit in before we get to that last half hour.
44:30: I'm trying to be disciplined. Trying to be disciplined. No, I don't have time.
44:35: I don't have time for a break. I'm just going to have to—you want to hum for a minute? Oh, no.
44:43: Hey, while you're taking—let me say something here real quick. While you're taking a sip, I filled a bunch of orders this morning.
44:50: You did. I saw that. And, folks, you may not realize the things that we do behind the scenes we don't talk about a lot.
44:59: When you donate to Alamo— Because I'm not smart enough to remember to do so. When you support us, we have a small prison ministry.
45:05: We get letters, and the fact is we're getting more and more letters from prisoners who need solid
45:10: Reformed works. They are facing the issues that we talk about on this program, but they don't have the ability to just go out and buy it.
45:19: And they're trying to share their faith with other people in prison, et cetera. Islam has a huge foothold.
45:27: We sent the new book out today, and we have a man who has a heart for these people, and he comes in, he reads their letters, he interacts with them, he writes back to them, and he pulls books off the shelf, and we pack them up, and we send them out.
45:44: And so I just want to mention that. Well, that was actually a good commercial break.
45:50: Well, there you go. But for us, keep that in mind. Most folks do special commercials about that or spots about that, and maybe we should.
46:05: There's nothing wrong with that. We just don't necessarily toot our horn a whole lot, but we try to do what we can do.
46:14: It doesn't mean that everyone who sends in an email, however, or everyone who calls the ministry and wants to talk to me will necessarily—we could fill the rest of the hour with your stories of people who call in,
46:28: I have to talk to Dr. White. I need to talk. I have to talk to him right now. And, well, you know, he's not available.
46:34: Well, I have to—and then you discover that it's something about aliens coming out of the backyard or things like that.
46:40: Sometimes it's pretty wild stuff. It really is. But you got to work hard to get through my firewall because he was just talking, and he's not easily fooled.
46:52: Anyways, one more—Vicky Ann's calling in now.
46:58: She wants to talk to me. One more story, and then we'll get back. I want to try to finish off Bashir Vania's opening statement because I really need to get to the material with Yusuf Ismail so we can make sure that this gets covered before we head for South Africa.
47:16: Once again, many thanks to those of you who have stepped up to help us. That banner ad is still there if you want to help me get to South Africa.
47:25: Well, London and South Africa. We're trying to work on finding a venue in London. I haven't heard back from one of the churches that I contacted yet.
47:32: Trying to find a venue for a solo scriptura debate. We've never done a debate on Roman Catholicism in London, and we're trying to arrange that in London on the way.
47:43: And then we're looking at just an incredible number of debates in South Africa.
47:50: Probably more than we should try to do, but hopefully just the first of more trips there to South Africa.
47:59: No twist about it. Once you abandon the gospel, bad things happen.
48:10: And I was directed to an article called It Is Finished by Jason Stellman.
48:15: And it's sad to read apostasy. It's sad to read someone just utterly denying the gospel of Jesus Christ in favor of falsehood and error, especially so quickly.
48:31: But it shouldn't be surprising. Again, the scripture is clear.
48:37: If you refuse to love the truth, you will be caused to love a lie. And in looking at this article, it was absolutely amazing to read.
48:48: This is a summary of previous articles that have gone before. But fundamentally in this article, there is...
48:59: And again, it's funny. I'm not sure why Jason thinks he understands what
49:04: Rome's position on this is, because there isn't any way of really knowing. I've talked to so many
49:09: Roman Catholics who have so many different understandings of this. The alleged infallibility of the magisterium is of little use here.
49:16: And I have met Roman Catholics who would read this and go, Eh? What's he talking about? But of course, and you've got the liberal
49:22: Protestants joining in going, Oh, this is great. But listen to just some of the things here in the article.
49:31: Jesus' own teaching about the cross and the gospels utterly omits any hint of divine fury being directed at him in his crucifixion.
49:41: Instead, it is wicked humans who would direct violence and anger at Christ and the Father who would raise him from the dead. Think about that for just a moment.
49:50: Think about that for just a moment. Theology matters. I suggest, Jason Stelman, do not be involved in apologetics.
49:55: If you want to just defend Romanism, papism, great. Fine. But the problem is, you just agreed with the
50:05: Muslims. Yeah, you just agreed with the Muslims. Because the Muslims wonder, why was
50:13: Jesus so afraid to die? And I've had many a Muslim reject the gospel accounts of Jesus' prayers in a garden of Gethsemane, his sweating, as it were, drops of blood.
50:30: And the whole reason they do that is because, well, there's been lots of people who've gone bravely to their deaths.
50:37: Yeah. And if God's wrath is not a part of what was going on here, in the sense of becoming sin, becoming that substitutionary atoning sacrifice, if that's not there, then what's going on?
51:00: What's going on? No hint of it. No reason.
51:06: The apostles teaching the book of Acts echoes, confirms, and more detail what Jesus himself taught about the atonement. The Father's only role, according to all of the canonical evidence, was that of passively allowing the crucifixion and then actively raising his son the third day.
51:20: Now, I just read that and go, okay, here is the judgmental blindness coming to fruition.
51:28: The judgmental blindness, which I saw 10 feet from where I'm sitting right now. Here it's coming to fruition.
51:38: All of the evidence, we were told. Here's the book of Acts. And nowhere, anywhere in the book of Acts is there anything.
51:50: All God does is passively, here's the quote again, according to all of the canonical evidence, was that of passively allowing the crucifixion.
52:04: Once you bow your knee to the Pope, to false religion, to a false gospel, you become blind.
52:14: You open up the book of Acts. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant
52:20: Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
52:31: Don't even need to comment on it. It's clear, it's obvious, it's compelling. That's all there is to it.
52:38: Can't see it. Once you no longer believe that this book is enough.
52:44: Fifth, and here's what really caught my attention. Since I've been preaching through the book of Hebrews, we, week before last, set a new
52:54: Reformed Baptist record of doing 21 verses and two sermons. And then got back to being Good Reformed Baptist Sunday in doing one verse and two sermons.
53:05: It's much more comfortable for Reformed Baptists. We go very slowly at things. The Epistle to the
53:11: Hebrews, which by all accounts is the Bible's locus classicus on the issue of sacrifice, quite true, completely fails to mention anything about the cross entailing, notice not hearing anything about wrath, the imputation to Christ of either our guilt or God's punishment due to it.
53:28: And I just go, what book are you reading? I guess that whole section, Hebrews 2, about brothers and association with them and being identified with them.
53:39: And I guess that's nowhere to be found. And I guess the whole concept of the high priest representing the people of God.
53:48: We don't need to worry about the high priest stuff. And then this amazing statement, the very idea that a divine person could judge another divine person as guilty and then punish him as such is impossible from the standpoint of orthodox
54:02: Trinitarianism. That is blasphemy. That is absolute blasphemy. How dare you?
54:07: How dare you? The brakes are off.
54:14: Brakes are off. The more light someone had, the more darkness they will go into. If folks, you need to look at this and see the apostasy of Jason Stellman, when those of you who play around with Rome and you like the smells and the bells, once you abandon the faith, this is where it goes.
54:36: This is where it goes. The father could not possibly function as divine judge, nor could the son possibly become incarnate and become the sin sacrifice and bear the wrath of God and become sin for us.
54:58: No, it's impossible from the standpoint of orthodox Trinitarianism. Blasphemy.
55:05: Absolute blasphemy. Then you have a person defending the blasphemous idolatry of the mass, propitiatory sacrifice, indulgences, all this type of stuff.
55:18: And then comes the lies, just the abject lies, when the actual biblical data is pieced together.
55:24: What we get is a doctrine of the atonement, according to which the cross unleashes the grace of God, by which sins can be forgiven.
55:33: Keep in mind, listen to this, folks. Listen to this. This is possible not because the father took out his anger on the son, so I guess
55:39: God's wrath doesn't need to be propitiated, but because the sacrifice the son offered was judged by the father to be abundantly satisfactory, indeed more pleasing than our sins were displeasing.
55:49: Thus, since a superlative restitution has been made, divine retribution is rendered unnecessary for all who participate, listen to this, in Christ's once -for -all sacrifice through faith, repentance, and what does it have to be?
56:03: The sacraments. Oh, yes. There you go. Because you see,
56:09: Rome has no once -for -all sacrifice. It continues.
56:16: It's represented in a not -complete form, because it's not a bloody sacrifice, and it doesn't perfect anyone for whom it's made, but that's the whole thing, you see, because that grace of God which has been unleashed by the cross is controlled by the sacraments of Rome.
56:37: Then we have this. The irony here should be apparent. For all the Calvinists boasting a hymn in a gospel that extols
56:45: Jesus' sufficiency, the fact is that it's the Catholic view of the cross that actually affirms the sufficiency of the atonement.
56:51: Since the Catholic insists that Christ's sacrificial life and death are in and of themselves able to appease the
56:57: Father without his having to do anything to that sacrifice in order to find a place to vent his anger.
57:02: Now, again, who does Jason Stellan think he is?
57:08: He's not some priest. He's not a bishop. All his arguments about sola scriptura, he's slapping them in the face, showing he didn't believe a word of himself.
57:20: Who are you, Jason, to dare to tell the world what Rome teaches? Is that an infallible interpretation,
57:27: Jason? How come I've talked to priests who don't agree with you? Ah, now we can see.
57:35: Here's why so many of my Roman Catholic opponents do not want to take a positive stance. They just want to attack sola scriptura.
57:44: Because the reality is they can't live within the purview of their attacks upon sola scriptura.
57:51: He's no infallible interpreter. This isn't the only perspective that has been expressed by quote -unquote
57:57: Orthodox Roman Catholics on the matter. But how dare anyone lie to your readers in this way?
58:06: It's a lie. The Roman Catholic view of the cross actually affirms the sufficiency of the atonement.
58:11: Really, Jason? How many times have you been to Mass? Are you perfected? How many times you go to the rest of your life,
58:17: Jason? Will you be perfected? What about purgatory, Jason? Satispatio!
58:25: Don't talk to me about the sufficiency of Christ's atonement. You can't read Hebrews 10 and fit your sacrifice into that because it doesn't perfect those for whom it's made, and you know it.
58:40: Do I get a little passionate about that? You better. If you stand before a just and holy
58:49: God clothed only in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, if you rise in the morning knowing that the only peace you can possibly have with God is because of the perfection of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then you better not close your eyes and your ears to Rome's fundamental blasphemy of the finished work of Christ just because it doesn't sound real good in our society today.
59:17: Yeah, I get passionate about it. Deep breath. Believe it or not,
59:24: I still had more in the stack. I could fill the rest of the program with that, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of why we are doing basically all jumbos, except for that one time last week when, or the week before that.
59:43: The week before that, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a week before that, when we were so busy with other things. All right, still getting a lot of feedback from the
59:50: Janet Mefford show, by the way, and hopefully maybe some folks have found the webcast as a result of that.
59:57: That would be nice. All right, in this last half hour, we have been, again, to explain to everybody why we do this, seeking to help.
01:00:09: Yes, preparation for me, sure. But no, I wouldn't have to do this on the program to prepare for me.
01:00:16: Preparation for my opponent and the audience to deal with the issues that are related to the subjects we're going to be addressing.
01:00:25: Trying to make the issues understandable, trying to help people understand why we need to debate these issues, and of course, to help you to pray for the upcoming debates as well.
01:00:43: And so, we're listening to Bashir Vaniya's opening statement. Once we are done with Bashir's opening statement, we are going to go to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement in a debate with David Secum.
01:00:56: Because, first of all, I think it's almost 40 minutes long. And secondly, it addresses so many of the key issues that I am asking that we address in our debate when we get to South Africa.
01:01:11: And this morning, he suggested that the two debates be, is the New Testament a reliable record of the teachings of Jesus and is the
01:01:19: Quran a reliable record of the teachings of Muhammad? I, what
01:01:24: I'm trying to do is to basically recreate what we did with Adnan Rashid, which we still do not have the videos of.
01:01:31: You haven't heard back from the email you sent? Okay, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to email myself.
01:01:39: I am concerned that we may be facing another one of those situations where we've had an opponent who is going to try to suppress videos of a debate.
01:01:46: And again, it's not Adnan Rashid doing this. It is the organization that he was representing at that time,
01:01:53: IERA, which is a well -known organization. And we are still waiting after nearly a year for them to do what they promised to do.
01:02:03: And if they go back on that, then unfortunately, two debates, which are very, very good, only one of which has been posted, they won't post them on the
01:02:11: Quran. And if it stays that way, then it will be a very clear indication of what's going on there.
01:02:16: We ask them, please, do what's right. Do not begin to introduce into the debate area and the apologetic area this idea of, well, we don't know how that, we don't like, we don't like how that went.
01:02:30: So we're just gonna, you know, since we did the videotaping, we have video, every time we have videotaped any debate, there is absolutely positively not a single debate opponent in the world who will come to you and say,
01:02:42: Alpha Omega Ministries suppressed our debate. This can't. Because when we've been in charge of that, we always do that.
01:02:50: Yes. For what it's worth, Adnan has been of great assistance to me in trying to reach them. He has written on our behalf.
01:02:56: He has been so incredibly polite. This guy is just, he's likable, and he wants this out as much as we do.
01:03:03: Yep. I almost hesitate to say nice things about my Muslim friends on the program, because other
01:03:11: Muslims will think they must be bad people. If we can actually get along. But I do want to emphasize, we are not talking about Adnan Rashid here.
01:03:19: We're talking about an organization that has control of these tapes. Adnan does not have the tapes. He wants them out.
01:03:26: Hey, look, let's face it. If they don't put those out and make them available, that's a shot at him.
01:03:32: Because he was the one representing them. They're saying he didn't do good enough. I mean, that's the only way it could be taken.
01:03:38: And so, you know, I fully appreciate Adnan's participation in those debates.
01:03:46: And after that, and appreciate the fact that Adnan and I have had the opportunity.
01:03:53: I thought that the debates we did in Dublin were just tremendously useful. And I look forward to future encounters with Adnan.
01:04:00: Obviously, he knows this. And every Muslim with whom
01:04:07: I have dialogue must know that, obviously, my desire is that they come to know Jesus Christ, bow the knee to him, find in him their peace with God.
01:04:17: And their fulfillment of true submission to God can only be found in the one that God has set forth as the one that needs to be the object of our faith and our repentance.
01:04:28: And that is my prayer for Adnan and Abdullah Kunda and Shabir Ali and every
01:04:33: Muslim with whom I have encounters. And certainly in the future, Lord willing, with Beshir Vania and with Yusuf Ismail as well.
01:04:42: Okay, with that said, we get back to Beshir Vania's opening statement. We're getting toward the end.
01:04:48: So I might need to be firing up the Yusuf Ismail material. All depends on how much depth we need to get into here.
01:04:57: And I've already spent four minutes of this half hour anyways, so let's get to it. So if Jesus spoke the way
01:05:04: Mark says he does, or he did, then how could he have spoken the way John says that he did? Now, context, context.
01:05:10: If you weren't with us last time, what Beshir is talking about is the fact that Jesus's normal spoken language would have been
01:05:19: Aramaic, but the originals of the Gospels. All of the Gospels, including
01:05:24: Matthew, despite misunderstandings of Papias, including Matthew, there is no question that Matthew was written in Greek, that they're written in a different language, therefore how can we know?
01:05:37: And last time we pointed out that in the Christian understanding of inspiration, that is not an issue, that it is the
01:05:44: Scripture that is inspired, not the individual. That is a fundamental difference between us. It's one of the reasons that Muslims have to come up with a different idea concerning prophethood, that prophets—you know,
01:05:53: David couldn't have done what he did with Bathsheba and her husband, and so on and so forth, and Nathan, and all that stuff, because, well, if you're a sinner, then that impacts what
01:06:05: God can do with you, and that is not a part of the Christian understanding in any way, shape, or form.
01:06:11: So the argument here is, well, the original Gospels have to be written in the language
01:06:16: Jesus was speaking, which ignores, of course, the fact that by utilizing Koine Greek, God is providing us the
01:06:24: New Testament in a language that could immediately fulfill His intention for the Gospel, and that is to go to every corner of the earth, to be utilized in the building of the
01:06:34: Church. And even to this day, the Greek language is a tremendous tool for the correction of many misapprehensions, which we will actually be talking about.
01:06:46: One of the things I had in the stack of stuff was, I found a website of a Muslim who tries to use those sources to argue against Christianity.
01:06:54: Problem is, trying to use Greek sources without being able to read Greek frequently results in some problems, which we'll get to, hopefully, on the next
01:07:03: Dividing Line. Old Testament, not much better. We do have the Hebrew scriptures, but if you look at the revised
01:07:10: New International Version, they will give you all the verses in Aramaic.
01:07:16: For example, Genesis 31 -47, Ezra 4 -8, Jeremiah 10 -11,
01:07:22: Daniel 7 -28, and so forth. Again, what's wrong with that? You say, well, you can't have
01:07:31: Aramaic. Well, I was glad, anyways, that Bashir got the text right, and one of them, that you just heard him quote, was
01:07:40: Jeremiah 10 -11, one of my favorite verses.
01:07:47: Why is it one of my favorite verses? Well, look at what it says. Jeremiah 10 -10 says,
01:07:55: But Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earthquakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.
01:08:03: So there is an assertion of the monotheism of the
01:08:13: Old Testament, the sovereignty of God. Oh, it used wrath.
01:08:20: Oh, I guess I was actually going to spend some time talking about the wrath of God as the background for what happens in the
01:08:27: New Testament is so obvious when you read the Old Testament that Jason Stelman has lost. He's like, whoop, it's gone.
01:08:33: Again, the blindness of papalism there. But I had not made the connection to Jeremiah chapter 10.
01:08:43: Oh, and I did, well, there was something else I was going to do. Oh, drats, drats.
01:08:49: I had it cued up, but it was in a different window, and I minimized the window, and that's why I didn't see it.
01:08:57: Okay, I'm going to have to wait. I'll do it. I'll do it next time, and I'll actually be able to cue it up better anyways. But I wanted to make a comment on intercession and 1
01:09:09: Timothy 2, but we'll just got to stay with the context here. Jeremiah chapter 10, it's a statement of monotheism,
01:09:16: God's wrath against sin, and God's living God, the everlasting
01:09:21: King. And then verse 11, thus shall you say to them, and then it goes to Aramaic and says, the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.
01:09:32: Then it goes back to Hebrew. Now, I noted this, oh, back in the 1990s when
01:09:39: I wrote a book called Is the Mormon My Brother? And I went through this text as one of the texts that I use to demonstrate monotheism.
01:09:49: Why? I think it's so exciting. Why is it exciting?
01:09:54: You go from Hebrew to Aramaic and back to Hebrew. Why does that excite you? Well, I'll tell you, because it says, thus you shall say to them,
01:10:01: God is giving to his people in the language they would use to communicate to those who have taken them captive the very words of apologetic that they were to give to those people.
01:10:16: They don't even have to translate it. God gives them exactly what they are to say.
01:10:25: So in Aramaic, the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth, which would be the gods of the
01:10:32: Babylonian people, because they came out of the heavens and the earth. See, God, it's interesting.
01:10:39: When God refutes other religious viewpoints, he actually knows what they believe. Why do I mention that?
01:10:45: Because the author of the Quran didn't. The author of the Quran doesn't understand the views he's trying to refute, at least amongst
01:10:53: Christians. He may have. I think there might be some accurate refutations of the religious beliefs of the
01:11:01: Jalaliyya, the Jalaliyya Arabs, the period of ignorance, the polytheists there in Mecca.
01:11:09: Interestingly enough, the Quran gets that right. But when it turns to Christianity, the Quran gets it wrong, which would tell me that it was written by a man who lived in Mecca, and hence knew the religious beliefs of the
01:11:21: Arabs there, but did not have a solid understanding of Christianity, and therefore did not refute it correctly.
01:11:28: But here, whoever writes Jeremiah seems to know, hmm, the gods of the
01:11:35: Babylonians actually came out of the creation itself, came out of the physical world.
01:11:42: So the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth or from under the heavens. They're not real gods, and they will perish.
01:11:50: And that is given in Aramaic so that the people you're supposed to be saying it to would understand.
01:11:59: And that's given as an objection by Bashir Vania. That's not an objection.
01:12:05: That's actually a good indication of the inspiration of the scriptures. So the question is, was the original scriptures revealed in Aramaic or in Hebrew?
01:12:16: Hebrew. According to the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Aramaic was around 3000
01:12:22: BC, so it could have well have been revealed in Aramaic. And if it was revealed in Hebrew, was it
01:12:28: Archaic Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew? We just don't know. Actually, we know more than Bashir Vania would give us credit for, but we know that there has been development in the script over time.
01:12:43: But again, notice the double standards. In the
01:12:50: Koran, you have a very recent document in comparison to the Old Testament text. And we're not given a reason as to why.
01:12:58: And it's interesting, in any words of Jesus that we can trace to the first century, he shows the highest respect for the very scriptures that Bashir Vania is now saying we should not actually trust.
01:13:17: I thought he was a prophet. Something to think about. Chapter 14, verse 1.
01:13:26: The Koran tells us that this is a book which God has revealed in order that he may lead mankind out of darkness into light.
01:13:36: If I looked at Dr. H. Hirshfield, in his book, New Researches in the Quran. And by the way, that very same book says that the
01:13:45: Torah and the Injil contain guidance in light. And interestingly enough,
01:13:51: I was having a conversation with a Muslim, had a two -hour conversation with a Muslim on Saturday in our chat channel.
01:13:57: And I saw someone on Twitter saying, where is the chat room? Well, go to AOMin .org, look up the banner, and it says chat.
01:14:07: And that'll tell you how to get into the chat room. And how many? There are 57 NICs in the chat room right now, as I look at it.
01:14:14: That does not mean there are 57 people who are chatting, though this is one of the busiest times is during the dividing line.
01:14:20: If you look at the stats, it gets really busy. It's hopping along there. But some of those folks just park their
01:14:26: NICs, and they're not actually anywhere near the computers. But 57 in the chat room right now.
01:14:36: What did that have to do with what I was saying? See, shiny thing, shiny thing.
01:14:43: I looked over the shiny thing. Let me play this back again, it'll remind me. If one looks at Dr. H. Hirshfield, in his book,
01:14:49: New Researchers to the Composition of the Quran. What? Yeah, I know.
01:14:56: In order that he may lead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. We were having a debate, remember? That's what I was talking about, in the chat room.
01:15:02: That's how I got to the chat room. And we went around for about two hours with this imam from Pakistan, who has been there before.
01:15:11: Razor's Kiss had a debate with him a number of, well, a couple years ago, I think, written form debate.
01:15:18: And it was really interesting, because I asked him straight out, do we possess the
01:15:24: Injeel? And I got him to say, yes, we do. Just not completely.
01:15:31: But he couldn't tell you what was missing. But he did say, we do possess the Injeel. I've had many Muslims say, no, you don't, because the
01:15:37: Injeel is a book given to Jesus, and we don't have a book given to Jesus, and therefore, we don't have it. So there are different viewpoints.
01:15:44: Mankind out of darkness into light. If one looks at Dr. H. Hirshfield, in his book, New Researchers to the
01:15:50: Composition of the Quran, and the Marquee of Dufferin, they tell us, we must not be surprised to find the
01:15:57: Quran the fountainhead of the sciences. It is to Muslim science, to Muslim art, and to Muslim literature that Europe has been in great measure indebted for its extrication from the darkness of the
01:16:08: Middle Ages. To say that that is a disputable assertion would be an understatement.
01:16:18: While certainly the influx of philosophical and literary works from the fall of Constantinople, which of course did not help in the production of such works in Constantinople, was very important, the
01:16:37: Renaissance had already begun at that point. And so it is a highly disputable assertion.
01:16:45: I hear Muslims saying this all the time. But it is highly disputable, and let's just say somewhat exaggerated.
01:16:52: So, thanks to the Quran, the Arabs were led out of the Dark Ages, Europe was led out of the
01:16:57: Dark Ages, and we can see throughout history the Quran has done its job. Let us take an assessment of the
01:17:04: Bible. Well, if we're going to be honest here, was the
01:17:12: Quran doing its job a few weeks ago when Michael from Nigeria is staying there quoting the
01:17:19: Quran with blood all over his hands after murdering a British soldier? I mean, can you blame the
01:17:26: Quran for that? Can you blame the Bible for its misuse over time?
01:17:33: And the same way, now you're making this positive, the Quran led Europe out of darkness.
01:17:40: Really? Can you really substantiate that? That seems like a massive overreach, shall we say.
01:17:49: Second Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16, New Testament. It says, the scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
01:18:05: That is what it says. I say let's put it to the test. This will be interesting. In 1 Samuel, chapter 15, verse 2,
01:18:13: God... Now, folks, what you're going to hear here is the kind of cherry -picking of texts that could be very easily done with the
01:18:24: Quran as well, despite how short it is and how small it is. That was first made famous by a book
01:18:32: I've mentioned to you a number of times before, Itzar al -Haqq. It is a book from the second half of the 19th century written by a
01:18:44: Muslim scholar that cobbles together the most amazing number of allegations of contradiction, but consistently and with an egregious level of dishonesty ignores anything to do with how to read ancient texts, context, and anything else.
01:19:06: So you just rip the Bible apart, you treat it in a way you would never treat the
01:19:13: Quran, and then you can just start cherry -picking stuff. That's what we're about to hear. It reveals and encourages a genocide.
01:19:22: Punish what Amalek did to Israel. Kill both men, women, infant, sheep, ox, camel, ass.
01:19:30: Total genocide. Now what am I, as a Muslim or as a human being, supposed to learn from this?
01:19:39: What are you supposed to learn from so many of the stories of the Hadith that I could quote to you or even from the
01:19:46: Quran? Even when
01:19:51: I look at the less enjoyable sections of the
01:19:57: Quran or of the Hadith, I at least try to think about the validity of some of the arguments that have been offered.
01:20:07: This was a state of war. This was how warfare was waged.
01:20:12: I try to at least consider the context that might explain what is found in the text of the
01:20:22: Quran. Why not consider the context here? Specifically, the context that would have to do with God's bringing judgment upon pagan peoples and ask the question, in light of what we read in Genesis about the iniquity of the
01:20:41: Amorites not yet being full and the commands of God to wipe out certain peoples.
01:20:50: The assumption is, well, you know, all peoples are just nice, loving people.
01:20:55: No, they weren't. A society that would have the worship of Malak, the sacrifice of children, temple prostitution, not only would be a great encumbrance and hindrance to the people of God and a temptation to them, as we see very frequently, but these would be societies that if you simply stand back and again,
01:21:22: I don't understand why Muslims make this type of argument because a Muslim would admit, yes, Allah has the right to destroy a people.
01:21:33: The Quran makes that clear. The Hadith makes that clear. So why, where's the argument coming from? And there is no question, this wasn't, these weren't just, you know, peaceful neighbors of Israel.
01:21:42: They expanded and decided to attack. These were individuals, these were nations with a lengthy history of stacking up, stacking up the wrath of God upon their sin.
01:21:58: They were really bad. Of course, we look around these days and we also wonder about,
01:22:07: God had been gracious toward them and patient toward them for literally, literally centuries.
01:22:14: But God's judgment did eventually come in the form of the people of Israel. Genocide? Judges. Chapter 11, we are told that an
01:22:30: Israeli soldier, he is moved by the Spirit of God. To do what?
01:22:36: To make a pledge to God. If I win this battle, I will sacrifice my own innocent daughter. He wins the battle.
01:22:44: So what does he do? He does what the Spirit of God tells him to do. He sacrifices his own innocent daughter and he's celebrating in Israel.
01:22:51: Clear the account. That's not an overly accurate account, recitation of the situation with Jephthah.
01:22:58: As most of you probably know, there is dispute as to exactly what the status of Jephthah's daughter was to be, whether she was, in fact, sacrificed or whether she was just kept as a virgin her entire life and could not have children, etc.,
01:23:14: etc. We don't know the exact disposition. But in either case, especially in dealing with the
01:23:22: Book of Judges, again, why is the context of the
01:23:27: Book ignored? This is a period of time when men did what was right in their own eyes.
01:23:33: It was the lowest point. And even though God had revealed his law, what the
01:23:38: Book of Judges shows us is simply possession. Having the law does not result in people following the law.
01:23:47: But that can't be allowed because, you see, when you have the Islamic perspective, whatever is found in a scripture is meant to be taken as how you're supposed to live.
01:23:57: And hence, there's no real ability to reveal the depth of man's depravity in that way.
01:24:07: But it is a naive and inappropriate approach to the text of the Bible to say, well, as long as it's there, then that's supposed to somehow be some kind of a guide as to how you're—just imitate these folks.
01:24:21: Just do what this person did. See, many Muslims—I've mentioned this story before, but I listened to a
01:24:29: Muslim convert talking about one of the reasons he left Christianity. Of course, Christianity he left wasn't actually Christianity, but he left
01:24:36: Christianity to go to Islam is because there are such clear rules. Black and white.
01:24:41: It's like going to boot camp, you know? And I can understand that because, you see, the application of the principles of the
01:24:50: Word of God, especially in a complex day like our own, isn't simplistic.
01:24:59: It's sometimes nice to have someone come along and say, use this hand to do this and that hand to do that.
01:25:05: Do this at this time of day and that at that time of day, and this is all you do. And you know what?
01:25:11: That's not Christianity. So, what are we supposed to learn from this episode?
01:25:18: The art of child sacrifice? W .F.
01:25:23: Poole, in his book, Salem's Witchcraft, he says, there are eight words in human history which has done more damage than any other eight words.
01:25:38: Those eight words are to be found in the Bible. Exodus chapter 22, verse 18, thou shalt not suffer a reach to love.
01:25:50: Read your history. Now, remember, this is a Muslim saying this. Think about what's going on in Muslim countries.
01:25:56: Think about pushing walls over on top of homosexuals. Think about stoning.
01:26:05: Ever seen any of the videos? Oh, they're horrible. I wouldn't suggest it to you, but if you have, ever seen the videos of Muslim stonings?
01:26:11: Where they dig a hole, put you up to your waist in the hole, then fill it in, and then stand there and whack you with rocks while you're wearing a mask type thing?
01:26:22: Watching the person bobbing back and forth and bleeding all over. Oh, that's beautiful stuff. Again, why the double standard?
01:26:31: Why the double standard? And, you know, Sharia says you cut off the person's hand when they steal.
01:26:38: And that is practiced in lands all over the place. And so you're saying, well, because of the theocratic rule of Israel, witches were not allowed to live, that that somehow is an argument against the
01:26:52: Bible, over against promoting the Quran. The double standard, fairly, I think, most of us, obvious.
01:26:59: The inquisition, the Christian inquisition. Thousands of thousands of thousands of innocent women burned at the stake.
01:27:06: Why? Because they were supposedly witches. And we know sometimes in our country as well,
01:27:13: South Africa, innocent women are burned as witches. Now, they can quote scripture.
01:27:21: I mean, it was good enough for the Bible. It's good enough for them. Let's talk about the
01:27:30: Prince of Peace. Jesus, peace be upon him. Luke 19 verse 27.
01:27:38: Jesus says, But those enemies of mine, which would not that I should rule over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me.
01:27:49: So Christians tell us, well, it's a parable. Fair enough. But Christians, but Jesus was supposed to teach in parables.
01:27:56: So what is the great moral lesson here? Am I supposed to learn from it? Well, that Jesus will rule the nations with a rod of iron, and that those who die impenitent and unrepentant and who stand against his rulership will eventually find him to be a just judge with the power to condemn them to an eternity separated from God.
01:28:22: That's what you're to learn from that. That when you live your life rejecting
01:28:27: Christ's truth, that eventually Christ will judge and he will judge justly.
01:28:34: That's what we're to learn from that. Well, almost done with that. We will get to Yosef Ismail on the next program and some other neat, cool stuff that I forgot to get to today.
01:28:44: But I think we crammed a lot into 90 minutes. Anyway, as it was. Thanks for listening to the program today. The Lord will.
01:28:50: And we'll see you on Thursday. God bless. Is. The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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01:30:19: Join us again this Thursday afternoon at 4 p .m. for the dividing line. But the goodbye that fades from the pulpit to the pew don't ever fade.