October 25, 2005

The Dividing Line Introduction and the Debate Review

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

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good afternoon, welcome to a Tuesday afternoon edition of The Dividing Line, continuing with the review we have done for the past number of weeks of the Shabir Ali-Sam Shamoon debate. But before we start that, I have been listening to some other debates.

I mentioned this on the blog yesterday evening when I announced the time change. And I mentioned that listening to some of these people makes Shabir Ali sound very, very good. And so I guess it would be fair to Mr. Ali to verify that by playing just a couple of clips.

I mentioned, for example, a debate that as soon as we started reviewing the Shabir Ali debate, I started getting all these emails from the fans of a fellow by the name of Nadir Ahmed. And they were all talking about how he had destroyed Sam and Sam ran away from him and all this silliness.

And I started listening to this debate and it was a pal talk debate. Now, one thing's for certain. These debates demonstrate why you should never, ever download, click on, install or utilize anything called pal talk.

I know there are some of you who do, but there was almost always major problems. And this one, there were major, major problems. I remember back many, many, many, many, many moons ago. Yeah, friends don't let friends use pal talk.

If I recall correctly, to get into pal talk, the few times that in fits of insanity I wanted in there, we couldn't go through the program we used to use called midpoint. And so we couldn't use the proper modem and you had to go dial up and you'd get lagged.

And, oh, it was just a mess. Well, you listen to this debate and that's exactly what happens. Sam gets lagged and he starts talking, but then he'll stop talking and then pick up talking. Oh, it's just a mess.

Anyway, there's always these starts and stops and that's what pal talk is all about. Anyhow, but listening to this opening statement anyway, there were just some amazing things that were said. I'm just going to play a little section here, just to give you an idea of almost, well, here.

Listen for yourself and I'll explain on the other side.

Critiquing Misuse of Hadith and the Quran in Anti-Bible Arguments

Now, we go to volume, excuse me, we go to Abu Dawood, volume 9, book 92, number 460. Narrated Abu Huraira, by Abu Huraira, the people of the book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and they explained it in Arabic to the Muslims.

Allah's Apostle said to the Muslims, do not believe in the people of the book nor disbelieve in them, but say we believe in Allah and whatever is revealed to us and whatever is revealed to you. So, we are supposed to say we believe in what was revealed to you, but don't confirm or deny what they're saying from the New Testament.

And I'm asking why, is the New Testament 100 pure word of God? Why did the Rasulullah give us this strong warning? So, here we see another clear proof that the Bible, which is in the hands of the Christians, this book is corrupt.

Now, aside from what sounds to me like a rather obvious misreading of what was just cited, did you hear what was cited? That the Jews would quote from Hebrew in the Torah and that's the context. And then did you hear the application?

To the New Testament. Allah, the New Testament was not written in Hebrew and Jews could not be quoting from the Torah, which is not the New Testament in Hebrew. That kind of level of just completely missing the boat is extremely common in this stuff.

Now, I've got another one here. This was, I think it's Osama Abdullah, was that the name? And I have three sections here and so finding the exact spots could be a little bit, you know, how it is with the things, it's a little bit tricky.

But let me play you just a section here from Osama Abdullah's, this is his opening statement.

The third point, the reason why Muslims believe the Bible is corrupt, is the big gap in the long centuries, not only a few years, but I'm talking long centuries, between the Bible's books is basically quite very confusing and quite ridiculous.

You know, you have hundreds, literally hundreds of years between books. Between this book and that, you know, you have 400, 500 years. So basically taking anything and quoting it would be ridiculous because you'd be taking things out of context because it's not accurate.

Okay, it's not fair to take a book and link a quote from it to another book that is 500 years after it or before it and say they're the same. It doesn't work like that. Okay, because they were not authored by the same person and they were not authored in the same time.

So basically the whole entire Bible is written in a 3 ,500 year span and that's too many years, that's 3 ,500 years.

Okay, so we're told that that's ridiculous and you can't quote from books that were written 500 years apart. Why? Evidently the idea is, well, it has to be written by one person at one time or God can't inspire it.

In fact, isn't one of the miraculous evidences of, for example, the testimony of the law and the prophets referring to Christ, the consistency of those books over time, isn't Allah capable of revealing his word over time to multiple prophets?

Doesn't even the Quran talk about prophets plural? I mean, that's the kind of argumentation that is just, you just sit there going, what? Where did that come from? And so this guy is going on and on and on and just really, really bad argumentation and then finally he gets toward the end of his time and I finally hear something that I'm going, oh, this is going to be, now this is something that interests me because for a long, long time, for example, the vain attempt of finding references to Muhammad in the scriptures, especially this really funny stuff where they do things with the Gospel of John trying to find Muhammad in there.

That sort of interested me, especially when they start talking about things like textual criticism and stuff like that. So he says he's going to start talking about a clear prophecy of Muhammad in the Bible and I'm listening and I'm listening and I'm listening.

Here, let's listen for about three and a half, four minutes here and see if you can figure out. I know that seems like a fair amount of time, but just this is the kind of stuff that's being presented out there and like I said, it really makes Shabir Ali sound good.

So listen to what this argument comes out as.

Isaiah 42, 43, and 48 as a Prophecy of Muhammad

Here's a verse again from the Book of Deuteronomy. Let's see here, maybe I should skip some things here. Actually, I'm just going to move on to, let's see here. Okay, five minutes, great. Okay, I'm just going to move on to Isaiah 42.

Before I start, I'd like to mention a few points about the whole Book of Isaiah in general. In chapter Isaiah 42, there's a direct and clear prophecy about the coming of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Okay, now there's what I heard. There's a direct and clear prophecy of the coming of Muhammad, peace be upon him. And so I'm figuring, okay, here we go. He's only got five minutes, so we're going to get right to it, right?

In chapters Isaiah 43 and 54, we see God Almighty going back and forth between denouncing the Jews and praising them. God Almighty, the third point here, God Almighty made a big statement in Isaiah 48, verse 6 through 9, okay, yeah, 6 through 9, about giving unpredicted future prophecies for or against the people of Israel.

Here I'm reading Isaiah 48, chapter 48, verses 6 through 9. You have heard these things. Look at them all. Will you not admit them? From now on, I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you.

God Almighty is telling the Jews that from now on, I'm going to do things that have not been prophesied, okay? And down the verses here, it says, you have not heard of them before today. And further down, he says, well, do I know how treacherous you are?

And here it says, I delay my wrath. Basically, God Almighty is telling them that stay tuned for the future. I'm going to do things that are not mentioned in the Bible, have not been prophesied, and depending on your deeds, you're going to get to what you deserve.

Actually, if you read the context, we've been reading through this section of Isaiah on Sunday night services at our church. This is, of course, that tremendous passage, the trial of false gods. This is where God demonstrates that he is a true God over against false gods because he knows the future, he can give prophecy.

And, of course, Isaiah 43 .10 has the same type of phraseology in it. Jesus uses it himself in John 13 .19. I'm pretty certain that our speaker here is unaware of that. But so far, we haven't gotten to Isaiah 42 yet.

So I'm sort of hoping, you know, we're running out of time, and I'm all excited.

And Isaiah 43, chapter 43, verse 28. So I will disgrace the dignitaries of your temple, and I will consign Jacob to destruction and Israel to scorn. Basically here. So let me just here quickly jump to...

Quickly? Before I jump to Isaiah 42 here, I want to talk about Jesus, peace be upon him. Thank you, enforcer. God removing his covenant from the people of Israel. Here.

Okay, it's just too painful to continue that. He just continues on with these long... He goes for another two minutes, then he runs out of time. And never gets to Isaiah 42. So finally, eventually, later on, he does.

And the whole argument is about, well, there's this mention of Kedar in Isaiah 42 .11. And Kedar was the son of Ishmael, and Jesus never went to Arabia. Therefore, this couldn't have been about Jesus, so it has to be about Muhammad.

I mean, it is just really super-duper bad argumentation. And so later on in the cross-examination period, and the cross-examination was just... Oh, man. Cross-exam is normally where things really fall apart for people, and things really, really, really fell apart for him during cross-exam.

I mean, you could just... He couldn't answer a direct question if his life depended on it. And he even was sort of apologizing to his followers because, you know, it was just obvious. He shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have ever engaged in this debate.

It was way over his head, and he just shouldn't have done it. But anyways, at this point, though, he gets to this argument about Jesus, and back to Isaiah 42. And, well, just listen to what happens.

God said, I will bless him, and will make a great nation out of him. So the great that was used was actually used in a positive way. So him multiplying into 12 rulers was not just fact, okay? The fact that the blessing will come through Islam, through Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is a prophecy about Prophet Muhammad because the pagans by themselves who came from Ishmael, the Arabs, basically, are not a blessing, okay?

Yeah, they're multiplied, they're big in numbers, but yet they're not blessed. The only blessing that the Arabs got is Islam. Okay, and again, you totally ignored Isaiah 42, and you totally ignored the fact that Jesus, your God, your creator, who escaped, escaped like a rat, like a mouse, from King Herod to Egypt, and came back to it, back to Palestine.

He's never been to Arabia. So again, Mr. Shimon, I ask you, what is, what is, who is the prophet in Isaiah 42? Who is this light of the Gentiles? Who is this, what does it say here? The guy who will, the people of Kedar, Kedar, Ishmael's son, who will rejoice from, who is he?

He can't be Jesus Christ. He can't be your God who escaped like a rat to Egypt from King Herod, okay? He can't be that. With all due respect to you, sir, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I mean, come on here, you know what I mean?

Come on here, you know what I mean?

Sorry. It's just so absurd. It's hard to even, it's hard to keep a straight face at something like that. It would be very difficult to debate something like this without just laughing, because first of all, you read the text, and it's talking about all sorts of Gentile peoples, not just Kedar, but there's others that are mentioned.

It's talking, of course, about, in the context, the rejoicing of the nations, what God is doing in Israel. It has nothing to do with a singular prophet. I mean, it's just the most amazing misreading of the text you could ever have.

And then, he doesn't even seem to realize that Jesus was, like, two years old. He was an infant when they went to Egypt to avoid Herod. What is this rat and mouse garbage? What is that all about? I just, the whole debate was like that.

It was just like, where do these people come from? Now, notice, he got rebuked here. Let's just listen to just a second.

Osama, stay on the topic. You got three minutes. Your time has stopped. You have three minutes. Do not call Jesus a rat. Network, put your hand down. Network, please put your hand down. Network, put your hand down.

Osama, you got three minutes. Your time has stopped. Please, network, put your hand down, or I'm going to bounce you. Please put your hand down. I've already made the announcement three times. Thank you.

Osama, you have three minutes. The topic of the debate is, is Muhammad a true prophet?

Yeah, he didn't want to get into that one. Sam was nailing all sorts of stuff about Muhammad, and he was off talking about, you know, well, the Bible can't really be the word of God because it was written over 3 ,500 years, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It was truly an amazing thing to listen to. It really was. Now, so that's why I say you compare those with Shabir Ali, and there isn't a comparison, you know, because I think some of you have been going, look, are you just finding the worst representatives you can because we've seen so many errors and so many inconsistencies and so much double standards in Shabir Ali's presentation.

No, he's right up there at the top. He really is. I mean, you listen to these other folks, and they don't know anything about the Bible. They don't know anything about history. They don't know anything about using standards that are meaningful.

Nothing like that. And so, no, this is much more representative than some might think. So, anyhow, there is just an example of what those things are. Now, we are in, and I'm looking at the screen. I'm double-checking here.

Okay, this is the second MP3. As those of you who have been listening know, I keep messing up and starting the Shabir Ali thing on the wrong section of the debate, but I'm fairly certain we were right here.

I think also that it is possible to disprove a book as the word of God. We can say, well, it's not the author. We should say that this text is not the word of God, and that we can conclude. If we say, for example, that God would not describe things using a gratuitous mention of sexual imagery, and we find that it's a book, then we can say this is not the word of God, at least in that part.

By disproving that a text is the word of God, if we start with certain assumptions about who God is, we can determine that a certain text is not his word.

A couple of weeks ago, so we'll press on. If you don't understand that, the question that is being asked is, how was the Quran originally recorded? By the way, many Muslims do memorize entire sections, if not the entire Quran, in Arabic, even when they don't read Arabic, which I think illustrates a difference in the fact that Christians have been very quick to translate their scriptures.

When they would be seeking to minister to a people group, they will seek to translate their scriptures so the message can be understood. That has been resisted within Islam all along, for the obvious reason that Islam believes that Arabic is in essence God's language.

That's why I've said many times, Christianity is a religion for all people, Islam is a religion for only the people who wish to become Muslims, in the sense of culturally, because not only do you have the Quran, you have the Hadith, you cannot have Islam adapting itself to a wide variety of cultures, which you can in Christianity.

That is one of the major differences between the two religions, is the ability to, and the means of what evangelism is, the very means by which a person is made a Christian or made a Muslim, very, very different.

Because right from the very start, it was recognized to be the word of God by its followers. Whether the word was taken or not is a different question, but they believed it from the start, that it is coming from Muhammad as a conduit.

Because they believed it to be the word of God, it took the greatest pains to make sure that this book would be preserved, both in writing and in memory. But in the early days, memory was the most important matter in which the text was preserved.

The Arabic text was a continental text, and if we rely on the writing alone, one may not know how to pronounce the text, and this has given rise to many variations in reading over time. Some of the variations which Sam tries to point out to me when he gave me the book of Arbery, I've already read Arbery, and I've seen that he points out minor variations, like instead of saying, someone says, one means owner of the day of judgment, the other one means king of the day of judgment, and to Muslims, one does not make any difference than the other.

Now did you hear that? There he's dealing with a textual variant. It may not be a massively important textual variant, but he's using a different standard for dealing with textual variants in the Quran than he does with the Bible.

If there's a textual variant in the Bible, it has been corrupted and needs to be corrected by the Quran. If there's a textual variant in the Quran, it's no big deal. Clear double standards that we've seen over and over again.

Most Muslims are acceptable reading, but Muslims memorize the text, and by memorizing, even if some people died out, some parts of the text was lost forever. But this is impossible to contemplate, because right from the very start, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was preaching the Quran publicly, he was reciting it from the pulpit, he was reciting it in the public prayer, just as we have done here tonight, and the masses of the Muslims who are hearing that, they knew the contents of the Quran.

It is impossible to claim that some people died, and the Quran died with them. This is what, in fact, the father of that man himself had claimed. Additional verses that the others did not. So memorization did not preserve the Quran.

He also mentioned earlier, that Uthman standardized the Quranic text, and I believe he alluded to the fact also, that Ibn Masud did not accept Uthman's recension of the Quran. He said that for the people of Uthman, they can use it, but the people in my community will follow my reading.

Furthermore, I also documented that one of the memorizers, Mubarak bin Ka 'b, called the master of Quranic reciters, had two extra surahs, that he claimed was revealed from God. Ibn Abbas agreed, in the presence of the Prophet of Islam, without error, claimed that chapter 1 of the Quran, and chapter 113 and 114, although revealed, were not to be part of the text itself, in recitation, and only had 111 chapters.

So if you're talking about memorization, far from it. They couldn't get it right from the beginning. Muhammad sinned in such places as chapter 40 verse 55, chapter 48 verse 1 and 2, as well as chapter 47 verse 19.

About him being bewitched, that's in Sahih Bukhari, volume 4, number 400, it says that Allah's messenger was bewitched. Now some Muslims will say, that no, when the Quran is mentioning that Muhammad sinned, it's not really speaking of him, it's addressing his community.

Surah 47 verse 19 will not allow for that. Yes, the authentic Islamic traditions affirm, he did fall under the spell of a Jew, and needed Gabriel to reveal surah 113 and 114 to break him free from that spell.

My question is this, if you look at the biblical prophets, not one of them ever fell under the inspiration or bewitchment of Satan. How is it that Muhammad, God's final messenger, did? The verses which Sam is referring to, actually speak about God, peace be upon him, to seek forgiveness for his sins.

And Muslims agree that the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as a human being, like the rest of us, do have sins. He said himself, every child of Adam is a sinner, but the best of sinners is the evil repentant after having committed sins.

And he advised his followers to seek forgiveness of God often, and he said that even I seek the forgiveness of God 70 times a day. Now of course it doesn't mean that he sinned 70 times a day deliberately, but as a human being, he realizes that we are fallibles and we have to return to God for his forgiveness.

And the promise of God is that he does forgive sins. And his promise in the Quran is that he has forgiven the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, for his sins past and future. My question is, how could he be bewitched?

Now, what about previous prophets? They were not bewitched. But previous prophets even claimed that they were deceived by God himself. For example, Jeremiah in the Bible says that the Lord Yahweh has deceived me and I was deceived.

So if you want to make comparisons, it should be very clear what we're speaking about. And often Sam is speaking about the Quran with self-knowledge, but what he's speaking about, he has really other two surahs.

I'll tell you where they are. Allahumma inna nasta 'iduka wa nastaghfiruka wa nukhmirukika. This is what he calls the surah, and he's saying that this is missing from Muslim. Muslims are still reciting that today, but Muslims generally agree that this is not part of the Quranic text.

Let me just stop there just for a moment.

In case you're looking for the passage that was just referenced, it's Jeremiah chapter 20 verse 7 in the Masoretic text, and you read it in its context, and you can see, if you read it in context, it says,.

And you, Pashur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity. To Babylon you shall go, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied falsely.

O Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived. You are stronger than I and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day. Everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout violence and destruction.

For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and a derision all day long. So he's not saying it is a gross misrepresentation to try to parallel the Bukhari citation 4400 that Sam gave in regards to falling under the spell of a Jewish, I don't know what you'd call them, magician or something like that, and the context in which Jeremiah is speaking in regards to the reception of his prophetic message regarding judgment and his interaction with false prophets.

There is no parallel. That's a complete misuse of Jeremiah chapter 20 at that point once again. He says, What about Surah Fatiha and the last two surahs? Who has a problem with that?

He says, No, it is part of the review text for pronouncing a key term in the Quran. This is just a misunderstanding, we would say, because the consensus of the Muslims is that it is a part of the Quran.

Do we have a problem with it? No. To include it or not to include it, no Muslim is to leave in the context for... Now notice here.

Here we go again. We're talking about the question that was raised. He's actually going back, I think, to a previous point, which you're not really supposed to do during question and answer, but it happens.

Everybody does it. And he's talking about this issue of the extra surahs, which again, if you believe, as Muslims believe, that the Quran was written eternally and established in the heavens, then variations and differences, it doesn't fly.

Okay? This doesn't fly. And if Uthman was guided by God to do what he did, then I'm sorry, but you have a revision. That's your official text. There can't be variance in it. Now he's going to go back to the New Testament.

You don't have the same situation. You don't have this creation of an official text by a centralized, sort of governmental authority protected by the power of the sword. You don't have the Uthmanian revision.

And now he's going to go after Mark, chapter 16. Not consistent once again. Some people tore it off, suggested by the interpreters once more in the commentary,.

Because they had a problem with it. And they put in instead something else which Christians are reading today.

Well, not quite. We are all well aware of the variant there. And if you take time to find out a little bit about it, you can know what the longer ending is, what the shorter ending is, what the medium ending is.

You have all that information available to you, because no one just went around burning New Testament manuscripts to come up with a single text, which is what happened with the Quran. So he was rushing a little bit at that point.

Maybe he just wasn't making his points very clearly. I don't know. But again, didn't quite do a very good job on that. We are going to go ahead and take our break and then continue up. We're getting toward the end of this particular section of the debate.

And I think the last section of the debate is a good bit shorter. So we might get there eventually.

We'll be right back. Such a remedy today. Many stars strong and true and quickly fall away. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about.

In his book Chosen But Free? A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Pottish Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler,. But the Pottish Freedom is much more than just a reply. It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded.

Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called extreme Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Pottish Freedom, a defense of the Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free, you'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at almin .org.

The Quran, Hadith, and the Transmission of Scripture

Now the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the sun day by day. A walk of grace.

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are actually making some progress here in getting through the debate between Sam Shimon and Shabir Ali. They are in the question and answer period right now. Let's keep them pressing forward.

Question followed by Shabir Ali. How can you refute the inerrancy of the Bible when the Bible was written over a period of 1400 years by 40 different authors and yet no contradictions about a singular message?

Difficult to hear the question, unfortunately, but what it's basically asking is how can you attack the inerrancy of Scripture since it was written over 1400 years by 40 different authors without contradiction?

And, of course, what he's going to do is go after various contradictions as, well, absolutely no difference whatsoever listening to these Islamic apologists and the atheists and, you know, like I've mentioned a number of times, the first people in my adult life to raise Biblical contradictions against me were the Mormons.

So, here we go.

Well, in fact, the message of the Bible is contradictory and it is not a red herring to introduce the Trinity here because the message of one part of the Bible is that Jesus is the Son of God and from that he is promoted to God here and from that people say God is a Trinity and that, in fact, goes away from the message of one God right from the New Testament and, in fact, right all the way to the end in the New Testament.

Yes, the Bible does contradict itself in its main core teaching when the Old Testament taught that in order to be forgiven by God you sacrifice animals and it tells you that human sacrifice is forbidden and that the New Testament tells you that God sacrificed his Son.

God would have done the very thing which he said is wrong and that's not right.

Wow, okay. So, we throw Hebrews out and we completely ignore the difference between child sacrifice which is where you are sacrificing your child as an unwilling victim and Jesus Christ coming in human flesh as the Incarnate One who gave himself for our sins.

Hmm, there's a difference there, isn't there? Yes. I'm not sure that Shabir Ali is ignorant of that. Maybe he's just being dishonest. I don't know. But, again, this kind of argumentation who's it meant for?

It's certainly not meant for someone like me. It's not meant for the listeners of this program. This isn't going to impress anybody, is it? I just don't understand. People always ask me. I was talking with some brothers today about possible travel and debate next year and they're asking, what do you want to accomplish in debates?

And so on and so forth. And I was explaining what really is involved in the need to edify God's people and to speak the truth and things like that. We just operate on a completely different level. There's just absolutely no way around it.

It would just never cross my mind to use this kind of argumentation against somebody else.

It just makes no sense. Now, the Bible is also self-contradictory in many things when it becomes a matter of fact. For example, the Bible tells us about a certain fool in verse 18, chapter 4, verse 26, that his head measures 10 cubits in diameter and 30 cubits in circumference.

And you realize it's impossible. If it's 10 cubits in diameter, it has to be 10 times pi circumference to be 31 .62 something. Now, did you catch that? Now, that...

Wow. So, because it is given in... It's said to be 30 cubits circumference, 10 cubits diameter, and not 31 .4, then it's an error. Wow. I get... Why do people think this is somehow compelling? You really think that's what the author was intending to communicate?

You really think that the author was intending to act as a modern engineer in calculating pi, in describing this laver, as I recall, for the temple? Is that what it was? That's my recollection of what it was.

Again, don't these folks take the time to read our responses to this stuff? I mean, I'm sitting here. I've got all sorts of Islamic stuff. Right up here, I'm reaching up and a whole library worth of stuff.

And if you're going to address what somebody believes, take the time to find out what they believe about it. You know, it would really... It would at least lower their blood pressure when they listen to you talk.

And each one of those goes back in the Old Testament to the fact that there were no numbers that you used letters for numeration. And that then takes you to the issue of transcription, not contradiction, where it says something is X and something is not X.

That's an issue of transmission, not the original text itself. Again, is this the best you can come up with? And if you applied the same thing to the Quran, would we also hear, well, you know, it just doesn't matter.

You can read it either way. Let's have a consistent standard here. Back to the Jesus seminar. Here we go again. We've already addressed all that before. And where there are the reverse of those quote-unquote patterns?

What does that mean? Oh, we don't discuss that part. I would really like to know what the alleged reference to that one is. Because the fact of the matter is, let's be honest, Shabir Ali does not believe anything in the New Testament.