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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line
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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
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Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation.
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If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll -free across the
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United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three Three three four one and now with today's topic.
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Here is James white And good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line on a Thursday afternoon got lots of stuff lined up here the phones are already ringing as well, we'll see what we can get to those as Normal, it's always best for me to talk about stuff that I've just been recently
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Studying listening to working on whatever else it might be and this morning During a two -hour ride.
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I listened to a couple things I listened to Shabir Ali and Tony Costa on the unbelievable radio program in London and I have that queued up and once that was finished
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I continued listening to the lectures of yasser khadi and He was lecturing on the subject of intercession in Islam what intercession means in Islam and I found this really very interesting
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Especially as he relates the story. I'm about to play for you. It is a story from the hadith in relationship to the concept of intercession and I've read this story from the hadith, but since he repeats it,
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I'll let him do it. I want you to listen to this I think this might be useful to you If you are witnessing to a
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Muslim you're having a extensive conversation about the role of Jesus Christ and and why Jesus Christ Needs to be who he is in Christianity.
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Take a listen to this. This is Sheikh yasser khadi discussing a hadith story relevant to the subject of intercession
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Just second. We'll try that again. Can we turn on there? There we go on the day of judgment
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Mankind will gather together Muslim and kafir mankind and they will begin
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Becoming scared and terrified there will not ever feel this type of terror that they feel on that day all of mankind and they will
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Talk to themselves. How can we get out of this this terrifying position that we're in and they will say let us go to Adam Our father and let us ask him to ask
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Allah To start the reckoning. Let's get over this stage. They're so scared of the day of turn
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They want to move on to the next stage whatever it might be So they will go to Adam and they will say
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Oh Adam You are our father and you are the one whom Allah created with his own hands and he blew his spirit into him and this and that Make dua to Allah that he starts the hisab be our intermediary that he starts the hisab
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Adam will say I ate of the tree that I wasn't supposed to eat from He will say today
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My lord has become angry and anger the like of which he has never had before nor shall he ever have again
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And I'm scared for myself Nafsi nafsi go to someone else go to Noah and So all of mankind will go to Noah And they will say the same thing to him and Noah will say the same thing back to them is that today my lord has
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Become angry a type of anger that he has never had before nor will he ever have again
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Allahumma na 'udhu bi ridhaka min sakhatik and Noah alayhis salaam will say I Made dua to Allah for something that I should not have made dua.
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What dua is he referring to? To save his son. And so he will say because of this nafsi nafsi go to somebody else go to Who will he go to next?
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Ibrahim so they will go to Ibrahim alayhis salaam. Ibrahim will say the same thing and he will say I lied three times
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In my life, I lied three times and I'm scared for myself nafsi nafsi go to somebody else go to Musa what did
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Ibrahim lie three times number one? He said his wife was his sister and it's not a lie a sister in Islam Number two the idols number three.
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He said he was sick all the innies Hakeem Okay, subhanallah.
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Look at The dangers of the Day of Judgment to the Prophet Ibrahim alayhis salaam. These are not lies.
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None of them are lies There are we call Taudia or you know double meanings none of them are and yet he is so scared in his whole life
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All they can think of are these three things and he's scared that he has done this and he's scared for himself
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Go to somebody else go to Musa alayhis salaam. Now, let me stop just for a moment Just you know understand what's going on a
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Day of Judgment Everyone's gone to Adam and then and they go to Abraham They go to Noah and each one of these people is saying no
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No, don't don't come to me for intercession because I know that Allah is incredibly angry
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He's never been more angry than he is right now, and I'm scared for myself now remember in Islam Prophets are nigh unto sinless not not completely necessarily but nigh unto sinless the the validity of the revelation that they give is dependent upon their personal character one of the major differences between Islam and Christianity is that the the one through whom the revelation comes?
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his holiness is determinative in many ways of the The validity of the the revelation itself, so Here Abraham doesn't can't can only come up out of his entire life with with three things
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They weren't really even lies, but he's saying no do not come to me as an intercessor That's what's going on.
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So we we go from Abraham now to Moses They will go to Musa alayhis salaam and say the same thing.
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Musa alayhis salaam will say I killed somebody I shouldn't have killed meaning the who did he kill? The Egyptian that he shouldn't have killed he just smacked him this
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Musa alayhis salaam He just punched him next thing you know the guy is like KO'd immediately, so he said
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I'm scared for this Go to somebody else go to Isa. Isa will not mention any sin, but he will say the same statements
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But not mention any sin, and he will say I'm scared for myself go to Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam and so on.
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Now just just make sure you caught that Go to Isa and Isa mentions no sins but he still is
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Is afraid of Allah's wrath now why he would be afraid of Allah's wrath if he has no sins I have absolutely no earthly idea, but he refuses this role of intercession and How can that happen well quite obviously because Muhammad probably knew nothing about the biblical teaching of the intercessory role of Jesus Christ and So now we go to Muhammad now listen to how
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Muhammad is described here All of mankind will go to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam And will ask him the same things and he will say ana laha ana laha.
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This is for me This is for me and then he will go in front of the throne of Allah subhanahu wa'ta 'ala this hadith in Bukhari and Muslim and He said
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I will fall into such that for a khoru sajidan and he said Allah subhanahu wa'ta 'ala,
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I love this phrase will teach me a way to praise him that I don't know right now
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He will teach me how to praise him. I don't know this right now. It's beautiful okay, fa yu 'allimuni mahamida la a 'alamuha al -an and he will remain in that position for as long as Allah will
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Praising him and then Allah subhanahu wa'ta 'ala will say ya muhammad irfa ra'sak sal tu 'ata, kul tu sma, ishfa tu shaffa
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Raise your head speak you shall be heard ask you shall be given intercede your intercession
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Will be accepted. What's just happened? The first condition
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Allah has given him permission The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam couldn't just barge and demand
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He couldn't do that He had to be given permission So this is the maqam al -mahmood that the
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Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam will intercede on behalf of all of mankind and That is why it is called the maqam al -mahmood
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All right. So there is the section of the lecture. I was listening to by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi and Again As Has been my experience so many times in listening to this and learning so much
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I had never heard of something I learned in a previous ride and that is that He was talking about the jinn.
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I had been taught. I had read the jinn were basically demons. They're not they're not fallen angels the jinn are made from smokeless fire and There are all different kinds of jinn.
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There are Muslim jinn There are Christian jinn evidently, they can only learn what we human beings know and so I guess if you're a jinn and you learn from Christians and You could be a
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Christian jinn. I Had never heard of that before Please don't ask me any questions about that because like I said,
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I've never heard that before But bit as it may it was fascinating. So but here over and over and over again,
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I Keep running into these places where clearly Muhammad is being put in the place of Jesus now it is
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Is it the later centuries doing that? Yeah, I mean hadith stories are at least 200 years after the time of Muhammad and most of them are being codified 250 270 years later
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So I suppose that's part of it But Certainly The question is how much did those early centuries did the people even know about Christianity or even know about the
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New Testament clearly Muhammad didn't know anything about the New Testament and Sadly may the
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Christians with whom he would have interaction. How many times have I said, you know, what what books emphasize and Explained to us and give us divine revelation on the subject of the intercessory work of Christ Well, one of the key books is which one
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Hebrews And what book would be? absolutely closed and locked
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To a person who really doesn't know the scriptures at all and certainly doesn't have any knowledge of the
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Old Testament but the book of Hebrews and You have it in the high sections of Romans Christ intercessory work there as well but certainly the the idea of high priest and and appearing in the presence of God for us and in this whole concept of Intercession the intercessor the mediator is especially brought out in those beautiful texts in Hebrews and It really seems like if anything had absolutely no impact whatsoever on early
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Islam and Muhammad and and the the early centuries it would be the book of Hebrews and So here you have just utter ignorance of the biblical teaching on this subject being reflected then in this
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I I Mean I when you hear those words about ESA and of course
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Jesus isn't ESA. I mean that is the Muslim Jesus, but Yeshua is is the proper term
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We really don't know why the the Quran changes that but it's it's it's inappropriate to do so But we we hear that and it's troubling to us.
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In fact, it's in in a sense. It's offensive to us. I mean, let's let's face it If you can't even disagree with Muhammad without people riding in the streets, then why can't
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Christians say, you know It's really offensive for a religion coming after us to present Jesus in a way.
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That's completely contradictory to the way the New Testament presents him I mean that is a direct contradiction of scriptural teaching is it not now it's done in ignorance by Muhammad But it's certainly not done in ignorance by the generations that come after Once they have the opportunity of knowing what the
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New Testament teaches and So you you listen to something like that and it should be troubling to you
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But it also should should cause you to realize there is a need in Islam And they're trying to fill that need there is no intercessor with Allah There is none who stands in the gap.
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And so Muhammad has been has been thrust into standing in the gap and and Functioning in a way that he had no right to function.
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I mean from a biblical perspective He has no right to be an intercessor we understand the reason that Jesus has the right to be an intercessor is because of his
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Sinless life and his voluntarily giving himself on the cross of Calvary Muhammad doesn't do anything like this
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He has no ground upon which to intercede in a meaningful fashion
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And again, this was this was biblical revelation that long precedes Anything to be found in in the
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Quran and so I listened to that and I and I hear this exaltation once again of Muhammad the fact that he has made the best of all of God's creations and and the the one who who gives us the model to follow and and and all of these things and I just don't get the feeling that at least the early
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Muhammad ever had the idea that that's what people were gonna be doing In regards to himself, but bit as it may he's being forced into these roles because the theological system itself does not have a
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What it needs to have you have a transcendent God and You have a law that has been broken
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You have this fear which the hadith story itself relates this fear of the Day of Judgment What ground then can you have upon which to have assurance of favor with Allah and so you have
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Muhammad and Muhammad intercedes for his ummah for his people and Later on he's going to say well, you know, what's the what's the greatest way to make sure that you have?
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Muhammad's intercession on the Day of Judgment but obviously it is the
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He says there anyone who says the shahada La ilaha illallah
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Says that with a sincere heart that's How to get
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Muhammad's intercession, but there's a problem because even Muhammad's intercession is not guaranteed to bring about something from Allah and So there's this this
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Uncertainty that is always a part Of one standing before God in the
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Islamic system and so it's fascinating to me to listen to that and to consider the relationship that exists there, let's go ahead and take one of our phone calls and then
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Continue on with some of the stuff. I have queued up here I did a lot of work in preparation for the program today, but let's talk with our old friend
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Adam. Hi Adam How are you doing sir A couple weeks ago on the podcast you were dealing with Peter Enns and Studying to be an
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Old Testament scholar and his work has really rocked the evangelical Old Testament scholarship and They figured maybe
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I could give you a little more perspective on where a lot of this is coming from that the problem as I see it, dr.
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White is that there are a lot of Evangelicals that are Trying to sort of toe the line in between the two you have the left and you have the right and When you look at someone like Peter Enns, for instance,
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I have a professor you mentioned the phrase creole ex nihilo liberals really attack that because they want this to be nothing more than a pagan story, right and The reality is
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I have a professor of mine who? Believes in creole ex nihilo, but he doesn't believe that Genesis teaches it.
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Hmm, and There is this real this real wedding of the two perspectives
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Within scholarship and in fact, I I had I heard it just an awful argument that he used
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He takes the title view of Genesis 1 1 and he says it's been Hashem. I am the 8th hour it is
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Refers to everything but therefore that must Mean not mean creation from nothing because then he goes on and creates everything else
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But I said that would mean that I wouldn't be created by God because I was created after even the book of Genesis That doesn't make any sense that there's really this trying to toe the line
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Within scholarship and a part of it is because of the fact that Well, I I think two reasons number one because It it's very tough to be reformed and be an
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Old Testament scholar today Because you do have the left coming in and saying if you're going to teach at our universities if we're going to quote you you're going
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To have to believe what we have to say But you also have a lot of reformed folks who who do not like studies in the
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Old Testament and a lot of folks who I have found I Just got done with I'm just about done with my first year of Akkadian and learning all these ways in which we can translate
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Words better knowing cognate languages that better fit the context and things like that.
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There are people who say Well, we should you know, we shouldn't do that because you know The Westminster Confession says
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God's words been providentially preserved and if that's the case and God's Word wasn't providentially preserved and so therefore we should just stick with what the
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Puritans and Calvin and then said and There's really I think in a lot of ways in both sides a real
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Throughout church history, in fact a phobia to go into this area and to deal with it and Peter ends,
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I really believe is the fruit of both of these areas working together well,
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I think I think there's really I've said for many many years that we gave the
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The Old Testament area over to the liberals a long time ago and you combine that with the insatiable desire on the part of major theological seminaries to be to have a table at the in secular scholarship to to be at the table to be in the discussion to have the recognition of secular scholarship results in a blurring of the lines of definition there is clearly an issue in regards to the
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Lordship of Christ in the field of knowledge that that gets lost and I understand the the need to have high -level
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Christian scholarship, but that scholarship always has to be done under the Lordship of Christ. I think that's where things get lost
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We we end up with with people who want to be able to cross over from the theological realm into the secular realm and continue teaching and so to do that they have to imbibe certain worldviews and be conversant with certain worldviews and and utilize certain presuppositions that result in exactly what we're talking about here and that is a general decay of a supernatural worldview and a willingness to embrace a
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Naturalistic worldview even if in on the one hand in their minds Even if they know enough about science to recognize the foolishness of naturalism, you know, if they know in their minds, you know someone like myself
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And I'm thinking sort of the debate I've got coming up it's crossing my mind here, but With my science background and and studying the the tremendous complexity of the
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DNA molecule and the Transcription of that molecule and the the coding that it does for human life or any life for that matter
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I see the bankruptcy of naturalism. I see really the stupidity of naturalism there is such tremendous
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Evidence of the Creator right there and yet I Have to spend so much time reading naturalistic materialists listening to naturalistic materialists that I know what the struggle is
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I know the the mindset that keeps coming in and I and I have to pray about that and I have to I have to Rationally recognize the struggle that is mine and recognize the sources that are bringing it into my experience and so I understand where the the
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Old Testament scholar is the vast majority of what has been published over the past 300 years is is from Especially if it's in European Providence is
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Yeah, it's so far out in the woods as far as a rejection of the
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Old Testament And yet you still have these people trying to say well, I you know, I trust in Jesus for my salvation
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But I just cannot possibly look at the Old Testament the way he did and we have all the accommodation theories and everything else
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Well, Jesus was a man of his day and he was just accommodating himself to the Jews and blah blah blah
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You know, I recognize all that stuff and and I I'm certain that at some point in the past and speaking to you
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I've talked about these very things in a sense of you know, if that's direction you're going. I hope you realize that You're you're going to be swimming and you know up, you know upstream big -time
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I guess I guess the thing that has been most annoying is to see
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Men who are good men of God Just go down this road and that yeah when you know
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And that's what's so that's what's frustrating and then to to basically when your own people start
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You know putting you in that category Just because you do have this profession, you know, well,
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I don't just just recognize something I think there's you know, I try to step back and and look at this situation
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I try to step back and look at the at the broader picture as much as I can and One of the things that keeps coming across my mind as I consider this area people sort of going off the deep end in this area or looking at Converts who leave sound biblical faiths and join other
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Religions everyone's talking right now about you know, all is around this time of year. There's always the star converts
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Becoming Roman Catholics, you know newt gingrich has become your own Catholic The fellow from the
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Discovery Institute that co -authored the privileged planet is becoming Roman Catholic And everybody's oh, you know, look at these people what they must have real deep reasons well, actually they generally don't but but be that as it may
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I try to take the the overarching view and ask myself the question
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What is the relationship between the subject of God's blessing upon a nation and upon a church and what happens when the church is
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In a nation or a culture that is under the wrath of God What is my role as a as a
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Christian as an elder as a Christian as an elder in the congregation? One who deals with Christian scholarship.
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What is my role in the context of? God's wrath coming upon a particular culture and it is when you look at it in that way it is not at all surprising that given the
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Hatred that Western culture has for God and his word and his law Which we see being expressed with ever greater
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Ferocity In in frighteningly fast fashion within even our own nation
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Then is it what would it not be a blessing upon our culture if we had a a whole cadre of Faithful scholars that were cranking out just tremendous works on these subjects and not me a blessing upon our culture
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Well, it would be yeah, I have there not been times you know, I think
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Israel becomes a paradigm at times for the the the wrath repentance restoration
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Model that we see so often and have their whether or not many times, you know, I think of the restoration or Josiah where The people had forgotten what the law of God was and you see the revival that comes about when it is
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When it is discovered and believed and yet there are many times even in church history when the
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Word of God has been overlaid with such either tradition or unbelief that It almost disappears, but it doesn't and and God, you know brings his people through those times but The point is how do we respond?
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in a situation where we see the wrath of God coming upon our culture and and I think one of the things we need to Keep in mind is that means that people doing study like I do or like you're doing will have to recognize that We are going to see people
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Who are going to? Go away they are not going to remain because they were not truly of us and there's going to be this degradation and and there are going to be apostasies and if our
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Hope is fixed upon people or if our faith is is based upon You know majority votes and things like that and that's going to be extremely troubling.
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But what it I think does Teach us is that we have to focus upon. What is what is real truth?
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and what is its focus and what are we really believing in and When we do that, then
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I think we can we can learn from these situations, but there's there's no question that the field you're working in is
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You know filled. I mean, I went to fuller for crying out loud. I You know,
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I mean, I mean, I you know, I had I had to read You know the commentary on Deuteronomy that we had to read by Why is the names escaped me?
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I've mentioned it many times for Vaughn Deuteronomy and you know,
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I had to write a pro and con paper on it And the only pro I could come up with was it had a really nice binding on it, you know
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John Frayn has written a review of Peter ends Really prayer really fair and there are a lot of things in here.
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I do think evangelicals need to wake up to but the problem the problem is it was it's it's just I Thought that frame was fair and pointing out that this is really
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Ambiguous the way he puts things. Oh, well, he's not there was no conclusion to the book You get to the conclusion it's like, okay, you know all
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I've worked through all this stuff and now I get the conclusion There's this this pitiful little chapter That basically says well we need to use the incarnational model whatever in the world that means
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I mean you were really left Wondering why in the world he invested that amount of time in the production of something like that.
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There's no question and by the way The reason I was studying that as I was writing an article that will be in a future
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CRI journal A title doesn't Aaron see matter any longer. And so I specifically interacted with ends
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I mean, obviously since it's just an article you can only do so much but you know, but I did interact with some of the especially the
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Stuff that he was doing in Genesis and stuff like that. So that's why I was I was doing that and I finished that last week so Anyway, well, we need what we need.
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I have found that What what I like to see is when we have concert is it who who really come together and get each other's back
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Yeah, you know, you know, that's that's something that I really That's really that's really hard to see and as you mentioned such a such a hard hardcore
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Liberal community is that we not only need a lot of good scholars. We need those scholars to get each other's back
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And so well and they and they need to be let's face it and what we're gonna need to go so we can take the break, but Let's face it.
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They need to be in teaching situations where they are encouraged to be bold in defense of Orthodoxy it really seems to me that the way that since we have borrowed since we have modeled our own educational system on secular education and we only define
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Scholarship is coming up with new ideas. That's not really good for the defensive orthodoxy and You know, it tends to create create the very situation that we're facing here and until we recognize that That Christian scholarship needs to be done in service to the church in service of the gospel within the context of the church itself
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You know, let's let's face it in the in 99 % of theological seminaries. What is the trend over time?
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It is always away from Christian Orthodoxy because we have borrowed the world's model of education until we get rid of it
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We're going to continue having those problems Adam press on. Thank you, brother Alrighty, we're gonna take our break and then be right back with Tony Costa and Shabbir Ali From London on the unbelievable radio program
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Man is sinful and God is holy That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior We are to come before the
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Thank you And welcome back to the dividing line
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I have a cute up excellent excellent call there I go You know, we should pray for folks like Adam We need conservatives in that field that will work through you know
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And it is it's like you're trudging uphill. You are just climbing uphill everything you read Has that tinge of unbelief that tinge of questioning
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God and you're just constantly being hit with well You just you're just thinking in circles and and it's all comes from naturalistic materialism, and it's amazing
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I know the bankruptcy of naturalistic materialism. I know how stupid that is to to be a naturalistic materialist and yet the
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The it there's just so much of it around us that it's that it's it's tough to To fight the to fight the uphill battles
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We need to pray for folks like that that are that are pressing on they'll find great delight And in fact an increase in their faith in in their studies.
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I mentioned that I have queued up here the a portion just a portion of the end portion of The debate between Shabir Ali and the
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Tony Costa from the unbelievable radio program Justin Briarley I was on myself back in November on that program look forward to being on it again in the future but they were discussing the resurrection and We all know
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Shabir's view on this if you have listened to my debate with him. He takes the swoon theory idea
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He doesn't like it when you call the Akhmadiyya view But that is what the they believe that Jesus was crucified, but that he came down from the cross alive
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I've always you know listening to Shabir promote this idea has always just amazed me because the
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Romans were really good at executing people and He has to he has to just dig and dig and it's so sad to see someone as bright and as nice as Shabir Ali Digging through literature to try to find
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Some basis for saying well, it's possible. It's possible That that Jesus did not die on the cross.
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I mean, you know when Josephus found, you know, the three of his friends crucified He went to the
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Roman governor and they took the three down a one did survive Two died but one did survive
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And and and you know, that's not what happened to Jesus Well, but but Pilate Pilate was surprised
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Jesus died so quickly. It was amazing I was and I'm gonna play some portions of it And I don't know if this came before this but one of the things that Shabir says is well
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You realize I'm not approaching this as a historian. I'm approaching this as a Muslim theologian and yet he does not allow a
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Christian To have a supernatural explanation of anything in the text at all. How does
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Jesus die? He gives his life. Oh, no. No, there has to be something that caused his death
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There has to be the the spear thrust or there has to be said he just couldn't die that fast So he's a
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Muslim theologian But the Christian can't have a theological answer for anything that's going on.
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Even when his text says it's theological It is just incredible and then to listen to him
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As you've heard in other debates, we've played he will take the liberals He will take the the farthest left stuff you can find and and what he'll do is he'll cherry -pick a certain portion from Raymond Brown and and something from Barrett over here and he will will string all this stuff together and He ends up with a conclusion that none of the scholars he quotes themselves ever come to and People need to understand that because what
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Shabir likes to do is he likes to say well it is clear The scholars have shown no liberal scholars have speculated about X Y or Z and you've taken all that stuff and strung it together and Created a cloth that no one else has ever come up with none of the scholars that you cite
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Actually see the things that you see in their own writings and make the connections that you do and yet Still you say well scholars have shown
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No individual scholars have speculated about a certain portion of this and I'm putting together a bunch of stuff that none of them ever thought about Putting together and I'm calling that scholarship
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That's that's what you just need to understand is going on. But what caused me to cue this up for today is
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I about rode off the trail today Because Tony Costa was challenging him on something and for the first time now, maybe
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I've missed it. Maybe I've forgotten it You know I've only got a few years so I can get my
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WRP card so I can start making Excuses something like that, but I have never heard
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Shabir Ali cite Robert Price before Robert Price of the incredible shrinking son of man
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Robert Price of the fringe fringe fringe
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Remember when we played Ermine Bart Ehrman on with the with the infidel guy, that's the
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Robert Price they were talking about Remember Irma's going Nobody believes him Just like what?
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Way out there the guy who questions the existence of Jesus all the rest of stuff the guy You know who basically
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I can see why he's doing the very same thing in his field It should be early is doing it is he just ransacks everything finds any fact
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Context is here Irrelevant and just string stuff together in the most amazing ways and here is
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Shabir Ali quoting Robert Price and I as soon as I heard that literally
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Again, it must be funny. I don't think everybody was near me, but I I just I just yelled out you've got to be kidding
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You can't stoop any farther out into stoop reach any farther out stupidly lower
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In in in finding the worst possible sources you could ever come up with then to be quoting
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Robert Price as a Muslim As a Muslim, he doesn't even believe Jesus existed the
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Muslim does I mean does anyone not see the just? fundamental outrageous contradiction here
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But it just seems to me that Shabir is getting farther and farther out there on this stuff It's just it's sad to listen to so I wanted to play some some material from this and get to some of those quotes, but It's not hard to do this and then start and stop and stuff like that So I'll go ahead and we'll throw our our phone call in here and then we'll we'll pick up with that So I apologize for that.
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Let's go ahead and talk with real quickly to Tanner. Hi Tanner Yeah, hi. How you doing Tanner?
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I'm doing good. How are you doing? All right? Good. I was just I know it's a bit off -topic, but I had a question in regards of inscribable errors in the
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Old Testament for example Just one that I've run across 2nd Kings 24 8 and 2nd
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Chronicles 36 9 You have Jehoiachin as 8 and 18 and my question is
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Can the tenacity principle that you've talked about so much in the New Testament apply to these
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Old Testament texts? In trying to because I know you've talked about how we can create the original
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Through textual criticism in that study and I was wondering if it's possible to apply that same
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Tenacity principle to these Old Testament texts here No The transmission of the Old Testament text is is very very different than what you have in in the
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New Testament is far more it's a much longer longer longer period of time first of all and It involves multiple languages to a much greater extent
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Than the New Testament does yes, there's all sorts translations in the New Testament, but they're not as central to the transmission of the text as For example the
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Greek Septuagint is to the transmission of the Hebrew text over time and so the the the methodology of the transmission of the
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Old Testament text not only differs from Section to section for example the Pentateuch over against the prophets even major prophets versus minor prophets and and Completely different for the
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Psalter because it is used as the as the the music the hymn book of the of the people of God so there's it's significantly more complex along those lines and I because it is done within the the the community within Israel itself for a major portion of that time before you have the
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Greek Septuagint going outside the borders and No longer really being under the control necessarily the synagogue Even during after the after the
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Diaspora because of that you you don't have the same kind of Manuscript tradition that would really raise issues of tenacity because you don't just don't you just don't have that number of Early manuscripts to be able to do that kind of thing.
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I mean so much of that early transmission was Before we would have any almost any written record at all
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So no it would you'd have to look elsewhere for something along those lines
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You know the issue you bring up very clearly illustrates the problem in regards to the transmission of numbers in the
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Hebrew text because of the fact that the primitive text Utilized in essence letters for that and some of the differences would be as small as a it's a tiny
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Yod or something like that that would make a difference of a factor of ten or something like that in a number so In brief answer no that's that type of concept
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The two textual transmission lines are are two different from one another and in a complex way
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To apply them across the board like that Okay, how would I go about asserting them to a non -believer?
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I recently had kind of a debate kind of thing with one of my buddies, and we discussed some of these issues
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How would I go about asserting to a non -believer then that we are still able to accurately produce the originals?
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Into in for our writings today because I was reading I'm with Tim Shalley's was talking about That the position of inerrancy is that the
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Bible is inerrant in the original autograph so I How would I go about defending that position and saying okay?
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We have a we've been able to produce the original autographs so that I can then defend the inerrancy position
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Well when you say you've produced the original autographs you have to be extremely careful
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Even when I talk about the New Testament where we have significantly more data upon which to to act
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When I say we have the original readings You need to recognize that there are places where there is going to be disagreement as to what that original reading is in John 118 there is a textual variant between they awesome we
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OS The point of tenacity is that it is either if they ask or we
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OS and not some other term that no one's ever heard of It is not that well.
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Here's the original And and we've we figured out every possible textual variance that that needs to be understood you you need to be careful in saying well here's the
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Here's the originals and exactly as it came from the pen of the of the prophet of the Apostle That's what the
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King James only is once because he doesn't want any of these questions to exist He doesn't want there to be any issues regarding how to read these things and it's ironic that While I understand the desire for that kind of black -and -white a
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Sense of certainty as Dan Wallace's many times said there are many people who are willing to sacrifice truth for certainty
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There are certain of things the Mormons are absolutely certain the Book of Mormon is Word of God, but that doesn't make it true
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So you've got to be careful how you utilize your language so that the reality matches up with what is actually being claimed
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To say that we can we have all of the original readings I believe is Defensible to say that I can tell you exactly what every single one of those is and any particular textual variant is not the case
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I can say well Here's here's the two readings in this particular text one of those two is the original and here's the evidence dealing with whatever aspect of that there is but to For me to simply say well,
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I've made all these decisions and here's the final text That's that's where you can start getting into this or the
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King James only a Perspective of creating one inspired text where you've answered all those questions whether you actually you answer them or not
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So you've got to be careful at that point and so I would if the issue is well
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There has to be perfection of transmission And this is what Bart Ehrman says there has to be perfection of transmission or there's we have no idea what the
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New Testament says That's just simply not the case as he himself admits the application of that Type of an idea to anything in the ancient world means we don't know what anyone said at any point in time
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And in fact you could argue that we really don't know what happened only a few decades ago Until we had videotape and things like that and even then
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I suppose that can be changed these days with the with the magic of Hollywood so the the challenge is
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To to get a person and and if there are many atheists who are not willing to go here anyways And there's nothing you can do about irrationality
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To recognize that we do know what the Apostles taught. We do know what the prophets communicated to Israel we know what they taught in regards to the nature of God and the idea about a textual variant between 8 or 18 is not going to change the presentation of the
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God of Israel and what he's done amongst the people of Israel or anything along those lines and There's nothing to be gained by trying to find a way around Saying well, there's a difference between Chronicles and Samuel or Kings between an 8 and an 18
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Will might we find yet another? Cache of Dead Sea Scrolls that will answer all those questions.
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Well, obviously the Dead Sea Scrolls and others answered a lot of those questions There were many many many more questions 150 years ago than we have today but people are impatient and They they want a photocopy of everything that Isaiah said today exactly as he said it in every single jot and tittle and That just simply is is unrealistic and it simply doesn't work.
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So We have to be careful in the presentation as we make it to make sure that what we're presenting actually lines up with with the facts of the case because as I have warned people and I've used the illustration before but It's good.
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It's good to Mention it again People like to go to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They talk about the
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Isaiah Scroll and how Massively accurate it is to the manuscripts of the
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Masoretic text that we had from 900 years after Christ So there are a hundred years before Christ and the Isaiah Scroll is almost identical letter for letter
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To what you had not a thousand years later That's very true. And that does demonstrate that there is no inherent need for there to be a degradation
50:34
Of the text over a period of transmission. All of that is true But I watched this happen in the
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Ehrman debate and since the DVDs are out you can watch it, too Someone threw that out at Bart Ehrman and as I've always expected
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I had never heard it happen But if I knew it then I knew that other people knew it and I've always just waiting for it to happen
50:54
Bart Ehrman Knocked that one out of the park by going. Well, that's quite true however
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The text of Jeremiah that was found the Dead Sea Scrolls is about a third shorter than the
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Hebrew text of the Masoretic tradition, so what do you do with that and The ninety nine point nine nine eight percent of the people who have heard the
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Isaiah Scroll story Stand there stuttering. They have no idea. They don't know because they've never looked at the
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Greek Septuagint Maybe maybe they've never done any work in that areas They don't realize the Septuagint text represents that shorter text and and Jared there is a actually rather logical reason for that If you read the book of Jeremiah, you know
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That his work was originally destroyed by the king and he had to rewrite everything and that may have something to do with why we have this difference between the
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Septuagint text and the Masoretic text as to what they're drawing from but the point is you can't just throw stuff out there and not be aware of the state of the studies in other areas and so if you're if you're atheist friend wants a
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Text where there's no variation whatsoever Then you have to say well
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God hasn't deigned to give us that and Jesus didn't seem to need it And so I'm not sure why
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I need it either and if is if what you've already said basically is though that we possess that and can identify that with absolute certainty today then you need to say well,
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I misunderstood the the facts of that matter That there is a small percentage
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That does not in any way shape or form affect any of the teachings of Scripture including the one that says that you're a sinner
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And that you need to repent and trust Christ but there is a small percentage of variants where there is you know a
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Need to study we need to be aware of what the variants are and what the probable
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Originations of those readings are Okay, thanks
52:58
Tanner God bless me. Oh well that pretty much trashed any possibility
53:05
Anything with With this I'm going to go ahead and play it anyways because I still you know we've still got a few minutes let's pick up with some comments that Shabir Ali was make of these stories the scholars
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Looking at them observe the manner in which they have the appearance of later legend now written after the fact
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Catch that you know there's there's there's this there's the the Ali ism scholars say
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Scholars say doesn't identify who the scholars are But he just loves to use that term in this broad brush stroke that is generally
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Leftist liberal naturalistic scholars say the ones that I wouldn't allow to touch the Quran with the 10 -foot pole
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But they are they see these things and one of the things that really bugged me about this encounter that he had with With Tony is he's talking about well.
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There's this there's this underlying text in mark There's this subtext in mark that indicates
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Jesus didn't really die Baloney, I just wanted to come straight out and say bah lo knee
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Prove it show me this subtext show me anything historically where you have identified any proto markin text
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Show me where mark is cobbled together from various sources Give me something factual or I can sit here and say well there's a subtext in the
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Quran and the subtext of the Quran tells us that Muhammad was not a prophet or he didn't believe in monotheism or I can come up with Anything it's pure speculation
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He can take a text that is plainly saying that Jesus died on a
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Roman cross and rose again And by just isolating any phrase he wants to because it's the subtext make it say the exact opposite of what the author plainly clearly intended it to say and So it's just so frustrating to listen to that Especially when you know, you're only gonna have a certain amount of time to even respond to him
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Anyway, they're not blow -by -blow accounts of what happened as they happened. We can notice for example if and I was god
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They're not blow -by -blow accounts in Comparison to the Quran they are in other words.
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The New Testament has so much more Historical rooting to it than anything in the
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Quran that again to apply this standard. They don't have to be You know, here's this irrational standard that says well what you need to do is
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You need to have a CNN reporter on scene or this stuff just doesn't make any sense
55:43
They're they're they're mythological. They're later mythological counts. So we can't trust them Well, then what's everything in the
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Hadith and what's everything in the Quran? The Quran doesn't even pretend any meaningful historical foundation for itself in that in that sense again double standard
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Just is so glowing and and it seems to me that since 2006 is only getting worse in Matthew's gospel chapter 27
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That the women went to the tomb early in the Sunday morning. They found a tomb Empty an angel told them the whole story of what happened
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In fact, it appears that they saw the angel coming down rolling the stone away Showing them that the tomb is empty telling them what that Jesus has now resurrected
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They leave the scene with great joy to go and tell the disciples But on the way, they actually meet
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Jesus they they see him and they touch his feet and worship him But in in John chapter 20
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Mary Magdalene Returns from the tomb saying to the disciples they have taken away the
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Lord and we do not know where they have put him now, you know, I heard that and so I took some time this afternoon to take a look at the texts and It is so painfully clear the texts themselves tell us that they are not giving us every appearance of Jesus to any of these people for example in Luke when the
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Two disciples come back and meet with it with the other disciples. What did they say? What are the disciples tell him?
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Yes, we know that he is arisen He's met with Peter, but Luke hasn't told us about that. No one narrates for us this meeting with Peter so we know that That's going on And so I looked at how
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Gleason Archer put all of it together And again, it is it is quite possible to read these and to harmonize them now remember
57:34
Shabir won't allow for the harmonization. But since there's no harmonization, he then says they're wrong and so he does not allow for the women to meet with Peter and John resulting in their going then the women going back to the tomb and the encounter with the gardener
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That's just not allowed you just have to read these as flatly contradictory well because that's what scholars do you just read them as flatly contradictory
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And again, that's one of the reasons that there is that interesting picture of me with Shabir kneeling next to me
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I don't hear the music but Shabir kneeling next to me. There it is and I'm showing him
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Quranic parallels and I think he realizes That the only way for him to answer all the parallels that I gave him in that list is to engage in the same allowing the text to speak for itself and looking for ways of harmonizing it that he simply will not allow
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Christians to do with the synoptic Gospels you won't do it and That double standard is the demonstration of the error of his position
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Well, we didn't get too far into that but we'll continue on with that Dan Barker I've got all sorts of stuff queued up here, but we'll press on Lord willing next
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Tuesday on the dividing line See you then. God bless The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega ministries
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