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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 welcome to The Dividing Line today, lots of topics to get to on a jumbo -sized edition of The Dividing Line, 90 minutes.

And when we do 90 minutes, we actually do 90 minutes. Have you ever noticed how long an actual hour -long radio program is when it's a radio program, when you have all the commercials and stuff like that?

You get a lot more for your money. Oh, wait a minute, this is free. Never mind. Okay, best value in webcasting or something like that.

Anyhow, this morning I saw an article over at Mormonism Research Ministries, Mormon coffee, it's forbidden but it's good.

The blog over there, Bill McKeever and all the guys that do a great job over there at MRM.

And Sharon Lindblom posted a very interesting blog article that I want to start off with today.

And then we have stuff from Tim Staples and getting back to our response to Calvinist Call -In Day and all sorts of neat stuff.

So we've got a lot to do on the program today. And this article posted today says,

What does it mean to be a Christian? A Mormon apostle explains. Now what I really found very interesting about this article is that it really illustrates the nature of the

Mormon church today, which was not what the Mormon church was when

I first started studying Mormonism, yay, nigh unto 30 years ago.

Actually, longer than 30 years ago. It would have been 31 years ago, right about, pretty much right around now.

Right around now, actually, now that I think about it. Anyway, what you have here is in October 2012, so at the

October General Conference, not quite a year ago, Mormon apostle Robert D. Hales spoke regarding what it means to be a

Christian. He defined a Christian like this. So here we have a quote. Here is what he actually said to the

Mormons in conference. Now you need to realize, I'm not going to go back over this, but the conference is considered to be a, really a time of revelation.

It is a time when God speaks through his appointed apostles and prophets by priesthood authority, et cetera, et cetera.

So it is an important time. So what is said in conference is almost always vetted very thoroughly.

You'll may notice it's boring as all get out, but the reason for that, that it's boring as all get out, is because they're all reading it.

They're reading from teleprompters or scripts or whatever, because what they're saying has been very carefully parsed.

And so the point is, if they're saying it, it's representative of what the leadership of the church is saying.

So, quote, a Christian has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the literal son of God sent by his father to suffer for our sins and the supreme act of love we know as the atonement.

Now I stop and I go, when Mormons talk to Mormons, you need to know what

Mormons are saying. And when Mormons say that Jesus is the literal son of God, they mean that. They mean that in the exact way that the

Muslims think we mean it. Okay? They actually believe that God has a physical body and he has sex with females and has offspring and the whole nine yards.

So exactly what the exact mistake that Muhammad made is fulfilled 1 ,200 years after Muhammad's death by Joseph Smith and the

Mormon church, which is irony in its fullest,

I guess. But anyway. So when you hear that, then you need to understand literal son of God means them literally the son of God.

It continues on. Quote, a Christian believes that through the grace of God the Father and his son Jesus Christ, which are two separate gods, according to the

Mormons, I might mention, we can repent, forgive others, keep the commandments and inherit eternal life.

I stop yet once again. That needs to be understood as well. Now, there are more views of this within Mormonism today than there used to be.

But the official view that has been around for a long time, that is discernible in the

LDS scriptures and certainly discernible in the writings of the general authorities of the Mormon church, is that when you talk about keeping the commandments, you really do mean that.

Remember 2 Nephi tells us that we basically have the ability, we put out our best effort and then

God's grace meets us. So this is as close to fully

Pelagian as you can get without being Pelagian. Grace is necessary, but it only avails after you make a full effort, which isn't even what our semi -Pelagian friends actually get to.

And inherit eternal life. What is eternal life? Well, I'm not going to take the time to go back through all these things we've discussed so many times before, but even eternal life means something different to the

Mormon than it means to a Christian. The entire vocabulary is completely different. Eternal life is actually eternal lives, that is the ability and exaltation to procreate spirit children as a god on another planet.

The word Christian denotes taking upon us the name of Christ. We do this by being baptized and receiving the gift of the

Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by those holding his priesthood authority.

And who holds the priesthood authority? Only the Mormon Church. Only the

Mormon Church. Nobody else holds priesthood authority.

So if this is part of what it means to be a Christian, then here this apostle is saying to the

Mormons, yes, we are the only true Christians, because no one else could fulfill that.

A Christian knows that throughout the ages, God's prophets have always testified of Jesus Christ.

This same Jesus, accompanied by Heavenly Father, appeared to the prophet Joseph Smith in the year 1820 to restore the gospel and the organization of his original church.

In other words, in Mormon theology, you have God the Father, who is the father of Jesus Christ, literally, both spiritually and physically the father of Jesus Christ, and you have the apostasy of the

Christian church, and you have the first vision, which has been demonstrated so very, very, very, very, very clearly to be a later development.

It was not, in fact, part of the initial understanding of Joseph Smith.

The first vision comes in much, much, much later than any of that. Don't know if we're going to be taking any calls today.

Probably not. Probably not going to be able to get the calls, but if so, it'll be well toward the end of the program, and I—actually, we just won't—we won't get to them, sorry.

I don't want anybody sitting on hold and thinking we're going to get something when we're not, so just thought I'd let you know about that.

Let's see here. Through the scriptures and the witness of Joseph Smith, we know that God, our Heavenly Father, has a glorified and perfected body of flesh and bone.

Jesus Christ is His only begotten Son in the flesh. Catch that? In the flesh. I'll emphasize that in a moment.

The Holy Ghost is a person of the Spirit whose work is to testify the Father and the Son. The Godhead is three separate and distinct beings unified in purpose.

So you have three separate and distinct beings, exactly what the Muslims think Christians actually believe. Three gods became gods at different times, received exaltation at different times, are at different levels of exaltation.

And despite the identification of this belief as a speculation, a 19th century speculation by people like Dr.

Peterson and others in the BYU hierarchy, you still have the phrase

Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son in the flesh. Without sugarcoating this, what this means is God the

Father in a physical body had sexual intercourse with the Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus. Which means there was no virgin birth, but only a virginal conception, which is not a miracle.

Document that fully, completely, without question in Is the Mormon My Brother from the

LDS sources themselves as the teaching of the LDS Church from the beginning.

And here you have an apostle of the LDS Church once again, within the past year, reaffirming this in the language.

Whenever you hear the addition of those three words, in the flesh, that's what they're talking about. That's what they're talking about.

With these doctrines as the foundation of our faith, can there be any doubt or disputation that we as members of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints are Christian? That's from the end sign.

Now of course, can there be any doubt in light of the assertion of these heresies that Mormonism is not

Christian? Christianity is not polytheistic. Christianity does not have within it a concept of priesthoods, of temples, of temple ordinances, of God the

Father having sex with the Virgin Mary. Any of these things, not all of these, are utter heresies in regards to the

Christian faith, and hence will always mean that Mormonism is separate from the

Christian faith. But notice the clarity of the language when speaking to Mormons in the

General Conference and when publishing this in a magazine that is subscribed to 99 .99

% by Mormons themselves. But, what is really interesting, really, really interesting, is that as this article points out, well let me just read what

Sharon said here because it's very interesting. Therefore, on the face of it, according to Mr.

Hale's definition, only Mormons are Christians. Anyone who believes in the

Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity or chooses baptism in a different church or dismisses Joseph Smith's first vision is not a

Christian. Some of know that this exclusionary list presented by a Mormon apostle in an official church setting is a bit hypocritical in light of the usual insistence of Mormons in the

Mormon church alike that Christian must be very broadly defined. They want it very broadly defined when we're using the term.

Anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world as a Christian, regardless of differences in theology, that seems to be what they would like you to believe.

Perhaps the Mormon church has recognized that Mr. Hale's definition of a Christian tends to dismiss or diminish the validity of other people's religious experiences, something the church on its website claims it does not do.

In the March 2013 issue of the Ensign, readers are encouraged to review the October 2012 General Conference, specifically noting

Mr. Hale's address discussing what does it mean to be a Christian. An edited quote from Mr.

Hale's talk is provided. And what does the edited version say? One, a

Christian has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Two, a Christian believes that through the grace of God we can repent, forgive others, keep the commandments, and inherit eternal life.

Three, the word Christian denotes taking upon us the name of Christ, reduced by being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. Four, a

Christian knows that God's prophets have always testified of Jesus Christ. This edited list, as Sharon notes, this edited list has lost every

Mormon distinctive that is found in Mr. Hale's original. No mention of Jesus being the literal

Son of God, no mention of priesthood authority, no mention of Joseph Smith's first vision, no mention of a

Father God of flesh and bone, no mention of Jesus being the only begotten in the flesh, no mention of the

Godhead being comprised of three gods. As she concludes, the

Mormon Church seems happy to recognize non -Mormons as Christian per the broader, more inclusive definition found online and in the

March Ensign, but to be a Christian Christian, well, that appears to be another story altogether. What this reminded me of was what happened a number of years ago when we were still going up to the

General Conference before the King James Only Fundamentalist Baptist shut all that down, and I remember standing outside the conference listening as Hinckley addressed the issue of the central aspect of Mormon theology in regards to the exaltation of man to the status of a god,

God having once been a man, living on another planet, etc., etc. And he had said in secular interviews, well, we don't know much about that.

But then he says in the General Conference, the Mormons, well, I think we know about who

God is. And there's this sort of ha ha ha ha, chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle. So you've got the inside conversation and the outside conversation.

And they're not the same thing. And they know that there is a language difference between Mormonism and Biblical Christianity.

There has to be. And they will utilize that ambiguity and that language difference to their advantage when it so pleases them.

And so here you have a Mormon apostle, and he has—remember when we played the

Zondervan debacle just a few months ago, where the former president of Fuller Seminary joined together with a

Mormon to bamboozle everybody? Thankfully there were people there who knew better and nailed them to the ground appropriately and properly with the facts and exposed them as the deceivers that they are.

But that's the stuff that's going on out there. That's the stuff that's going on. And the Mormon leadership is in on it.

They're in on it. They really are. And this shows it. So that was a very excellent article at the

Mormon Coffee blog this morning, May 30th, by Sharon Lindblum. You might want to take a look at it, even though I've read the vast majority of it just now.

So you might not need to do that. But there you go. There it is. All right.

Right before the program started, I was sent some sound files.

Sound files are always a scary thing to send right before a program starts, because it makes me change everything

I was going to be doing. But I did want to play these. These are from the

May 21st Catholic Answers Live program. And the first one we'll go through fairly quickly.

I can't spend too much time on it, because there are things I need to get to today. But it is the old consensus of the fathers argument from Tim Staples.

Now I don't listen to Catholic Answers Live all that often. Once in a while if I'm out and about, it sometimes is the most interesting thing on radio at that particular point in time.

If it's a choice between, you know, sometimes Michael Medved has a really boring guest on or something like that.

Or I just get sick and tired of listening to all the insanity of a corrupt governmental system and the abuse of power and everything else that's going on and all the scandals and everything else.

And sometimes it's interesting to tune over and listen to that instead. But I'm not generally out and about that time of day, at least in a car.

So I don't listen all the time. So I don't know if Tim is still making the claim that he made years and years ago about the subject of the consensus of the fathers.

I've heard him claim a consensus of the fathers on a wide variety of things, including making the outrageous claim that every single early church father agreed with Rome on Matthew 16, 18.

Which to anyone with even the slightest knowledge of early church history is a laughable claim.

But it was made in all seriousness by Tim Staples. I don't know if he still makes that claim. I wish somebody would maybe call in and ask him, you know,

Tim, you used to say that all the early church fathers agreed on Matthew 16, 18, do you still make that claim being one of the foremost biblical scholars in the world, according to Catholic Answers?

But I guess that would make you one of the foremost patristic scholars too, I don't know. But be that as it may, it does strike me that the only example that they like to give because they know it's their safest one is the concept of baptismal regeneration, which even then is highly disputable, especially from the earliest sources.

But that's where they want to go. You'll never hear them make this kind of claim, the consensus of the fathers, for stuff such as, and I'm talking about now, this is not a number of years ago, but uniquely

Roman claims, certainly for the Marian dogmas, you know what, I'll take that back. Sometimes they do make that claim, now that I think about it.

As absurd as it is, and as utterly outside the realm of being able to be demonstrated, or I guess

I should put it, so easily demonstrated to be false, they will make that kind of claim. So here's a clip of Tim Staples on the consensus of the fathers.

Anyway guys, my question today is, I actually, on Mother's Day I was meeting one of my good priest friends,

Godson, and we were having a Scottish roast, and he actually learned that I was entering seminary this fall, and basically he gave me some advice, and he said,

Matthew, I'm sure you've touched the tip of the iceberg in Patristics and the early

Church Fathers, which I have, I haven't dived in as much as I would like to, but basically he was saying, just remember...

Oh, oh, there you go. Look up the consensus of the fathers, and learn it, know it, and live it, and it will change your life.

And I was wondering, what is that exactly, and why is it so important, and yeah.

Well since we just learned now that you're entering the seminary, we offer your prayers and congratulations, Matthew. Yes, absolutely.

Thank you. Well, what it is, is the Council of Trent defined infallibly that whenever the fathers of the

Church have a genuine consensus with regard to a particular teaching on faith and morals, it is ipso facto, by that very fact, infallible, can't be wrong.

This is analogous to the teaching of the Church that says, if the entire body of Christ, now this is hard to actually determine, but the

Church has said, if the entire body of Christ holds to a particular teaching, it would be impossible for it to be wrong.

Why? Because it would be impossible for the entire body to defect from the head. Well, the fathers are sort of in microcosm, a representation of the entire

Church. And so if you have fathers east and west, and a great example of this,

Matthew, and by the way, I'd recommend you get a hold of Jimmy Akin's book, which I think is a masterpiece.

Honestly, Patrick, I can't think of a book on the fathers on a popular level that can touch

Jimmy's book. But his book on the fathers of the Church that we have available at our website, he goes into this.

But a classic example of this is baptismal regeneration. You have unanimously taught by every father of the

Church that spoke about it. Now it doesn't mean that every single father of the Church has to speak on it, and by the way, it doesn't mean that there has to be a strict mathematical consensus, as in, you know, every single father of the

Church has to agree. And I should add there, that's a question that many believe needs to be further defined by the

Church. But in the case of baptismal regeneration, you have unanimity east and west, and therefore by that very fact, that is an infallible teaching of the

Church. Now, the Church has since defined it, and defined it, and defined it, and the

Council of Trent, in fact, defined it infallibly as well. But it was infallible by the very fact that there was a consensus of the fathers.

Would that be somewhat analogous to, and all Jerusalem, or all Israel will be saved? It doesn't numerically mean 100%, right?

Exactly. That's right. It's not a strict mathematical, as in, because a lot of folks think, you know, when you think of consensus, hey, we were all 100 % unanimous, everybody that's breathing.

But it's not exactly that. But again, I like the case of baptismal regeneration, because there you do have a strict mathematical consensus.

There's absolutely no—and it's amazing how you have folks who will deny it, because even

Luther himself still believed, he still held the baptismal regeneration, and when Earl Rick Zwingli, his follower, rejected, of course,

Luther hit the roof, along with the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist. Because in the case of—

I would just mention, passing the sound that you're hearing is Zwingli spinning in his grave at being identified in that way.

Baptismal generation, you have the consensus of the fathers. So when you read the fathers of the Church, and you get something that is in consensus like this, you know this is the faith of our fathers, this is the

Catholic faith. Matthew, God bless you, man. So consensus, functionally, for the

Roman Catholic becomes whatever the Church tells him the consensus is. Remember how many times I have presented the statements of early

Church fathers to Jerry Matatix and others, who Catholic answers, you know, Jerry who?

Never heard of that guy. Jerry? I've never—Jerry Matatix? How do you spell that? Anyways, and he simply dismisses them as not being

Church fathers, as being their own personal opinion. Consensus is whatever

Rome says consensus is. That's really the takeaway at that particular point.

But the other one that was sent to me was one that will allow us to transition back into where we were in our discussion, in our reviewing of Reformed Theology and the

Calvinist Call -In Show on the Line of Fire. You may recall that the last subject we were addressing before we broke off our response to the

Calvinist Call -In Show was the subject of prevenient grace. And we had heard, you know,

Michael was asking a question, how does this matter? Why does this—does it matter? Does it have an impact?

And one of the things I said was, yeah, it does. Michael and I could not debate a Roman Catholic together, especially on satirological issues.

We might be able to do something on Mary or something along those lines, but that would be an area we could not team up.

And so hence, it matters. And you can blame whoever for that, but the reality is it does create a division.

And here's a good illustration of it. And that is, the last section that we had been listening to,

Michael had talked about how faith is granted to every man. That by prevenient grace, every man has the ability to accept

God's, you know, offer, in essence.

Well, on May 21st, Tim Staples—that's where the last one was from, by the way, was the

May 21st program. May 21st, here is Tim Staples, and see if this doesn't sound really, really familiar.

I have a friend of mine who grew up Catholic, and he goes to a Lutheran church now.

I try to get him into conversation. And about a week ago, we were talking, he's coming from more of a predestination point of view.

Yes. When I came out with the statement in our sort of, you know, a little bit tense conversation, that God gives everyone enough or everyone sufficient grace to say yes to the gift of faith, which

I believe is a Catholic teaching, I just couldn't point to anywhere in the Bible, because he always then goes, where's that?

Where's that? Because, you know, the Bible's—you know, he's told Scriptura now. Got it. Well, I'll tell you, it's in many places, but the ones that I find to be most—

Now, here, Tim Staples, Roman Catholic, has just affirmed, yes, faith is given to everybody.

And now he's going to affirm his understanding of prevenient grace. Here's where he's going to drive it from Scripture.

Listen to what verses he uses. Powerful are the ones where God wills.

In other words, it's implied in texts like 1 Timothy 2, 4. God will—again, that's 1

Timothy 2, 4. God wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

1 Timothy 2, 4, and then 2 Peter 3, 9. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

And then add, for the trifecta, Matthew 23, beginning at verse 37, where Jesus—in fact, in Luke's version of this, he weeps over Jerusalem, and he says,

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, how oft I would have gathered you as a hen doth gather her chicks, but you would not.

And by the way, that was one—if you read Luther's bondage to the law—in fact, I had a blog post on this a little while ago on our blog site.

It's called Error Begets Error, where I talk about Luther on this point. But Luther's sort of exegesis of that text, because you have to say,

God wills all to be saved. Well, if he doesn't give them sufficient grace to get to heaven, well, then he doesn't will them to go to heaven.

Well, guess what? That's exactly what Martin Luther taught. He said, God does not will all to go to heaven.

He wills some to go to hell. John Calvin taught the same thing. And in fact, Luther, in his so -called greatest work of bondage of the will, he says that that's the human

Christ that is saying that he wills all to be saved, but God doesn't.

I mean, he's got the human Christ pitted against the divine Christ, which I found to be quite disturbing.

Well, you know, obviously what most people in my audience found to be quite disturbing is to hear someone misquote

Matthew 23, 37. Yet once again, it is absolutely amazing how many people simply cannot quote the

Bible accurately because of their traditions. We've listened to Norman Geisler do it, and we've listened to Dave Hunt do it, and we've listened.

How many people have we heard slaughter Matthew 23, 37 and say, how often would

I have gathered you, but you would not? That's not what it says. That's not what it says.

But did you all notice Tim Staples quoted the Big Three? Twelve years ago,

I wrote a book called The Potter's Freedom. There's an entire chapter called The Big Three. What are they?

1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9, and Matthew 23, 37. And how many people have provided a meaningful, interactive refutation of my exegesis?

Very few. Very few have even tried. In fact,

I don't think I've ever had anybody say, well, your interpretation is impossible. It just couldn't be. You're wrong about this or you're wrong about that.

It's always, well, I'm not sure I take it that way, and la, la, la, la, la. But there you have

Tim Staples misquoting Matthew 23, 37, and making the necessary synergistic argumentation.

Now, I know, I know, I know. Immediately you have people saying, you shouldn't be playing

Roman Catholic and making it sound like all the Arminians are Roman Catholics. Please try to think clearly.

Please try to think logically. Do not make connections that I do not make. I really, really, really wish that in public education or in any education today, people were taught the art and craft of logical thought.

Unfortunately, that's not normally what happens. What I am saying is that synergism as a perspective has certain necessary ramifications.

You have to adopt certain perspectives to maintain synergism.

Now, is synergism, is it wrong to talk about synergism?

Well, Michael thought it was. Let me play these two clips and then respond to them.

Brian, here's my problem right off the bat, and we'll stay with this until the break. I absolutely reject some of my

Calvinistic friends using derogatory terms and describing another belief system in derogatory terms so as to argue against it.

I might as well call Calvinism semi -robotic theology. How would my Calvinist friends like that?

You say, well, this is semi -Pelagianism. It's semi -self -saving. I'm not saying you're making that accusation, but those who do, that's completely abhorrent to me.

Completely abhorrent, completely divisive, and utterly inaccurate. And then a little bit later after the break.

So anyway, yeah, so the point I was making before the break is that I've debated people and they say, okay, let's debate monergism versus synergism.

I said, okay, well, what do you mean by that? Well, monergism, that God saves synergism, that it's God and man saving. You're using that already to set up something that's negative in your thinking.

Even when I debated my friend, Pastor Bruce Bennett, we agreed after going back and forth for a while on a title, who makes the final choice in salvation,

God or man? But my premise was God has chosen to give people a choice and to paint that in negative terms when it's clearly throughout

Scripture. Choose, choose, choose, choose. And then God responds based on our choice.

He's grieved based on certain choices we made. He commends us based on other choices. If it was all what he had preordained, then

I understand why some would say it just seems like a divine charade. So I'll respond to that element of it in a moment.

But here you have the assertion, the historical, the church, the terms that have been used in the history of the church, in the study of church history, to identify satirological positions based upon Pelagianism, Semi -Pelagianism,

Augustinianism. These are divisive. You're not supposed to do that. If you use terms like monergism and synergism, you're stacking the deck.

And I simply say, no, you're describing positions, nothing more. It's not a stacking of the deck. Monergism means that there is one power that brings about salvation, and it does so without any necessary addition to it.

Synergism means that there is multiple powers, at least two, and they must cooperate.

And Michael's the one saying that Calvinism is saying that God does not try to save everyone.

And I have affirmed, that's exactly right, because when he tries to save, he accomplishes his will.

Whatever he does in heaven and earth, God accomplishes his will.

Now, I know there are many people that say, no, God does not accomplish his will. Oftentimes, his will is thwarted. Oftentimes, he says to the

Pharisees, you refuse God's will for you, etc., etc., etc. Ignoring the context that the will of God is revealed in the law of God, that's his prescriptive will, over against his decretive will.

If you don't allow—and I think I established very strongly in our debate the absolute necessity of recognizing the difference between the prescriptive will of God and the decree of God.

And in the audience question, or in the cross -examination, I think you will hear Michael having to admit that that's the case.

He may not like the terminology, but you have to recognize that that is an absolutely valid, absolutely necessary distinction, that you cannot even begin to attempt to synthesize the entire teaching of Scripture on this subject if you do not recognize that difference.

It's just not possible. And so, the terms, monergism and synergism, are perfectly valid.

They are not insulting. They are not stacking the deck. They are descriptive and appropriate, and probably the best terms that we have.

The issue of Pelagianism, well, Pelagius was a heretic, so semi -Pelagianism means semi -heretical.

The point is to describe the relationship in the system of theology between grace and to define the kinds of grace we're talking about.

We have this nebulous, unbiblically defined, only implicit definition of prevenient grace.

We heard Tim Staples using it. Michael's used it. But I've never seen an exegetical foundation of it.

Every single one of those verses that Tim Staples quoted, does he have a response to the exegesis?

Love to have him on, and we'll do another program, another debate on that particular topic, and Catholic Answers can then make it available immediately.

Now they have MP3 capacity to make those things available.

But anyway, those texts do not present prevenient grace.

They don't. I nowhere see God's salvific grace defined as God trying to save, and yet in every single situation, he is dependent upon the creature.

Michael says, well, God has chosen to allow man to choose. But combined with that, his assertion, yet he is trying to save every single person equally.

And I said last time, he was not trying to save every single Egyptian in the same way he was trying to save the children of Israel.

He was not trying to save every single Amorite that he then brought the people of Israel in to wipe out man, woman, and child.

He was not trying to save every person in Babylon. He was not trying to save every person in Assyria in the same way he was trying to save the people of Israel, because he accomplished.

And even at that, even at that, you have to recognize in the Old Testament that amongst the people of God, God says,

I have reserved for myself 7 ,000. The remnant is reserved by God.

And here's one of the most serious problems from my perspective.

Again, as I was listening to this when I was writing on Saturday, as I was listening to this, this really pains my heart, because Michael and I would answer these questions very, very differently.

But what about the remnant in Israel? Why were they there?

And my greatest fear, and I didn't get a chance to ask this, and so I'll ask it now, and maybe

Michael will respond. I don't know if he's going to listen to these programs or not. He's a busy man, as am I. But I hope he will.

How is the remnant defined? My concern, because Michael has made some hopefully unguarded statements in the past on this, is that these were people who were particularly sensitive to God's Spirit, who were particularly concerned about holiness, etc.,

etc. And it sounded to me like he was saying that the remnant is defined by the actions of the remnant itself.

And I say to you, the remnant was reserved to God by God Himself.

He, by His grace, kept for Him a remnant. And that clearly is the teaching of Paul as well, when he discusses that.

And I brought that up in the debate. And Michael did not dispute that in the debate, if you'll take a look at it.

He did not. That's why I was pressing a very specific area. Some people were disappointed that I—well, you sound very philosophical.

Well, I wasn't being very philosophical. I was addressing a biblical issue. And the biblical issue does touch upon such things as how

God knows future events and things like that. But in this case, the remnant is reserved by God for Himself.

And if it's actually up to us, if it's a synergistic thing, then God could not say, I'm going to reserve a remnant.

He can only do that in saying, well, a remnant happened to stay faithful to me, and I looked down the corridors of time and saw that that was going to happen.

But it could have been just as equally possible that everyone apostatized and God would be left without a remnant, right?

No, of course not. Of course not. So this is an area of real concern to me, because it does fundamentally provide a light upon the dividing line between synergists and monergists, and that is a very stark difference.

Just before these comments about Pelagianism and Semi -Pelagianism, and this sort of ties in with what

Staples was saying in the previous clip, I guess it sort of helps to put all this stuff together as we transition. Here is a comment about Augustine and church history.

Check this out. Yeah, I appreciate the quote. I agree with a lot of it, but absolutely disagree that Augustine is in harmony with Scripture here.

There's a reason that you don't find his position articulated among any of the other leaders. The disciples of the apostles and their disciples.

Which I disagree with. That's not the primary subject, and there are many sub.

I mean, when you start thinking about the apostolic fathers and the writings, epistle of Barnabas, things like that, there is a lot of sub -biblical soteriology that even

Michael would have to admit is sub -biblical soteriology in that. I don't look to a consensus of the early church fathers, but I also do not say that Augustine's views were unknown, especially when you look at Clement's frequent references to the elect and issues like that.

Diognetius, actually Maltheites writing to Diognetius, has strong language in regards to these issues as well.

So I disagree that Augustine just popped out of nowhere. None of this had ever been seen before or even understood before, but this was the first time that there was a considerable dispute on that subject, and debate will bring much stronger statements on an issue because you're having to clarify, you're having to start delving into something that up until that point in time has not been dealt with to that level.

For several centuries. The views that are spoken of as Calvinism today or that we look at as Augustine, a strict

Calvinist would have to say, he rediscovered what Paul taught. How did everybody else lose it? No, it's actually, it's not what

Paul taught. It's a misinterpretation of what Paul taught. So there is a tension for sure. And there are those who preach in such a way as if a human being could save themselves and God just helps them in that process.

Of course, I absolutely deny that. But then there are those that say that human beings have no choice in the process that God chooses whom he will the salvation and passes by the rest.

And thereby, as Calvin said, some are doomed from the womb. So in that respect, I would differ with the quote.

Hey, Rick, thank you for the. Now, I want to also correct this have no choice thing.

We all believe that men choose. The problem is that a slave can only choose what his nature as a slave provides to him as choices.

That's what Jesus taught. Remember John 8? If you abide in my word, then you shall know the truth.

The truth shall set you free. There is a necessity to be set free.

And as slaves of sin, we love sin. The heart of stone wants to remain a heart of stone.

A heart of stone is not going to make a free choice to be removed and replace the heart of flesh.

So it is, well, it is, it's a straw man to say, well, you say man has no choice.

What your underlying assumption there is, what I'm saying is that man is enslaved to sin and that man is not able to do what is pleasing to God.

Yeah, those are all biblical phrases, directly biblical phrases, directly biblical phrases about the subject we're actually talking about indirectly didactic text to scripture.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. But unfortunately, we can't always assume that a lot of the people we're talking to actually have the biblical context and recognize we're using biblical language, which is a shame, but that's sort of why this discussion normally doesn't rise to the levels that it used to rise to in the history of the church in any particular way.

Now, I mentioned that Michael asked the specific question of callers, and here's just one of those places where he did that.

Just a question for you, and I so appreciate the many great insights in scripture that Dr. Sproul has, but here's a question for you.

Did God do everything in his power to save that one that he passed by?

Now, that's an excellent question, and I have answered it very, very clearly.

There is clearly redemptive love. There is clearly redemptive grace. The issue of the

Reformation is right here. It's right here. And there are many people who are not

Roman Catholic who are taking the position against the Reformation at this point, taking the position against Luther.

At least Staples is consistent here because he's on that other side and open about it, but many of my brothers who recognize that the far side of the

Tiber is a place of tradition and falsehood don't seem to be aware of the fact that when it comes to this fundamental issue, they're actually closer to the far side of the

Tiber than they are over here. They're paddling around the middle, and I'm hoping that they would come back over here.

Same question a little bit later? Right. Yes or no answer. The people that God passes by, did God do everything in his power to save them?

Yes or no? He did. He did? He's done it. He did. But they have—okay, but that's not what a

Calvinist believes. Calvinist believes that God passed by— I'm not a Calvinist, but one gets justice. One gets justice.

But God did not give them an opportunity. Right. God did not give them an opportunity.

That assumes that the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, for God to be just, need to be given an opportunity to do something.

And that assumes that God's condemnation of them under federal headship is unjust.

You ever thought about that? Whenever anybody says, but he didn't give them a chance. Yes, he did, in the

Garden of Eden. Well, that ain't fair. Yes, it is, according to God. And if you are going to stand there and say,

I rejoice in the imputed righteousness of Christ, but I reject that Calvinism stuff, you're rejecting the foundation of why you think you have the imputed righteousness of Christ in the first place.

Well, I'm in Christ, so I have his righteousness. Before that, you're in Adam, and therefore you have his condemnation.

You don't like the one? You better not like the other. It's called consistency. And then it went on.

If God gave justice to one and mercy to the other, and the only way a person can be saved is by God choosing to have mercy on them, and he chose to have mercy on person

A and person A's twin sister, B, he chose not to have mercy on, right?

Then he did not do everything in his power to save both. He chose to save one and chose to pass by the other.

You just have to accept that as a Calvinist. I find that utterly unscriptural, and even the use of Romans 9 to support that I find completely off base.

Well, we will get to Romans 9 because it's smack dab on base, but the point is, if you have two twins, upon what basis can you argue biblically that God is under any obligation to extend mercy and grace to anyone?

Anyone? Well, because he's God. Well, he's just and holy first, right? So it's an assumption that grace and mercy can be demanded.

They're free to be grace and mercy. They have to be free. To demand them can't be done, can't be done for it truly to remain in that way.

Well, I'm going to wait to go to Brian's call.

Uh, my friend Brian from Long Island and, uh, I'm going to,

I'm going to, because that's just too long. I mean, I mean, it was like five minutes long just to play it. Uh, just the,

I want, I want you to hear the entirety of the, of the back and forth on that. And so we will shift gears, uh, once again.

And, uh, I was actually even looked for a sound file today, just briefly. I didn't really put much effort into it.

I will confess. But, uh, I looked for a sound file of a, someone grinding gears.

Um, and it just, it just didn't, the one I found didn't sound very good. So, but I was going to try to find one to play between the various portions of the program that, because you will notice that we started off on Mormonism.

And then we, uh, talked a little bit about Roman Catholicism. And then we have transitioned.

I thought rather seamlessly, pretty good, actually. Thanks to, uh, James Swan's, uh, sound clips there.

Into a subject of synergism and monergism. And, uh, but I have no earthly way of knowing how to make a transition into this next section at all.

But, uh, the last time that we were together on this subject, we were listening to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement on, in his debate with William Lane Craig in South Africa from 2010.

Now I will mention, uh, I'm going to have to put into the rotation the debate I listened to yesterday while climbing

South Mountain, uh, between Yusuf Ismail and Mike Lycona, uh, for many reasons.

And let me, let me just comment on this real quickly. Um, I, you know what

I listened to? I shouldn't tell people this. I really shouldn't. Um, I listened to two things.

South Mountain, if you've ever ridden South Mountain is a, is a pretty challenging ride. And if you do all the upper outlooks, uh, it takes you about an hour from the top bottom to top and then the outlooks and then back down again and stuff.

And, uh, so I, since it's about a half hour drive down, half hour drive back,

I, you know, ended up being about four hours worth of listening. So I only took about two hours to listen to that debate because I'm listening to it at high speed too.

Actually, so it took less than that. Anyway, I get done with that and, and I'm, I'm like, oh man.

You know, sometimes I'm frustrated because it was, there were just so many things I wanted to comment on and, and stuff like that.

So I, I stopped and looked at my, my, uh, iPod and I had picked up a bunch of audio books.

I, I, a member of the audible thing. And so I get like one per month and I hadn't gotten any for many months.

And so I had like six credits and so I've downloaded like six books and I, I got a book on the German battleship

Bismarck and, and, uh, some more, uh, World War II stuff from, uh, the

South Pacific and some civil war stuff and things like that. Cause I like to do some reading outside of just where I am.

But I also picked up another one because, uh, my wife and son and I went and saw a movie last week.

Now I cannot remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater. It just, I just, I don't know.

I don't like going to theaters and seeing movies and it has nothing to do with, oh, that's just terrible. That's horrible. Uh, it, it has to do with the fact that it just takes so stinking long and I want to be doing other things.

And normally I've watched any films on an airplane, on an iPad. I can't tell you how many films

I have seen without sound. And cause I didn't, I didn't want to, uh, either I couldn't rent the headset or I didn't want to bother to get one out.

And I ended up watching it cause I couldn't fall asleep on a flight someplace. Cause I spent a lot of time on airplanes. Anyways, we went and saw the new

Star Trek. I am a Trekkie. And so, you know, I, I had to go see the new Star Trek and it was, it was really, really good.

But anyway, there was a preview. There was a, you know, you have to sit through how many minutes worth of 15 minutes, something like that worth of previews.

And there's some movie coming out called World War Z. Have you heard about that?

Yeah. The zombie apocalypse. Uh, it's, it's another zombie thing. And so I had actually grabbed the,

I found out later it's the abridged edition of, of the book, which I'm not sure is good. Uh, but it's done by a bunch of different people and, and for, for a audible book, it was, it's, it's actually really interesting.

So I started listening to a World War Z on the way, on the way home. So talk about it. I've always said, if I ever get run over by a truck, they're gonna pick up my iPod and start listening to it and go, wow, this is weird.

You know, Arabic vocabulary and, uh, Muslim debates. And then something like World War Z followed by a book on the

Bismarck is really strange. I don't know why I told you that, but, um, anyhow, I've got to put,

I think one of the reasons I chose it is because I was, I didn't want to read anything serious after listening to the

Yusuf Ismail, uh, Michael Icona debate. I was just burned out at that point.

Um, I was, I was burned out because I just listened to someone defend the absolutely indefensible through the use of so many double standards and so many leaps of logic and so many unfounded things.

And yet he had the gall to try to nail Mike Icona on having his cake and wanting to eat it too, using double standards.

Now, on a couple of times he was actually right, because once again, I've got to criticize the William Lane Craig, Mike Icona approach of, well,

I'm not treating the New Testament as an inspired revelation here. I'm just treating it as mere history.

Excuse me, mere history is not sufficient to hold a

Muslim to the inconsistency of Surah 4, 157. So there are a couple of times

I have to agree, but you know what? Yusuf Ismail was right here, but in the vast majority of this debate,

Yusuf Ismail, and by the way, I should have, here's a, here is a, you know, confession from yours truly.

I should have tracked this debate down before I debated in London last year on the same subject.

I should have, I should have done that. Because Sami Zatari basically just borrowed his outline.

I would have, I would have heard the substance of the debate I was going to have before I actually had it if I had tracked this debate down, this debate down earlier.

So I might have done a better job. But basically what the Muslim debate initiative type guys have decided is we can't win on the history of Surah 4, 157.

It's not possible. So what you do is you say you can't disconnect the resurrection from the crucifixion and then attack the crucifixion.

And of course, you know, quote all the liberals you want and all the Raymond Browns and, you know, go with all the liberals.

Again, it's the double standard thing. We will quote your liberals against you, but don't you dare quote our liberals against us, even though we don't really let our liberals live in our countries anyways.

It's the old double standard thing, and you just have to get used to it. That's just the way it is. But to listen to Yusuf Ismail just throw out canard after canard after canard and, you know,

Mike Licona, obviously he has an absolutely winning position historically.

And, you know, he pretty much stuck to his guns. You kept saying, look, you're going off after the resurrection.

You agreed to debate this subject. He was exactly right that he was trying to drag the subject off into other areas that he was obviously just trying to keep his base excited and stuff like that.

But still, at the same time, I was just really frustrated at the end of all that.

So definitely want to put that into the queue to look at. I think it was I think it was there was more of that in that debate on the crucifixion than even in this debate with William Lane Craig, which, by the way, we're not going to even get through the opening statement here in the next half hour.

But I was there a couple of times I was going, whoa,

William Lane Craig put the boxing gloves on in this one, really did.

I mean, he made some statements. I'll be honest with you. I don't know.

I would have made the statement might have crossed my mind, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure I would have made that specific statement.

So for all of you who say that I'm the loose cannon and I'm the one that says, oh, you're just a terrible, horrible, nasty man.

I was I may have to track down a couple of those quotes in there.

And it was it was interesting. Anyways, let's let's get back to Yusuf Ismail in the last half hour of the program here in his opening statement on was

Jesus man or both God and man. Before Gospels in the Christian Bible, if we are to conceive that they are the primary available materials for Jesus, then it's important to note that when we compare one gospel to another, we can see how stories, for example, about Jesus would change to reflect a higher view of Jesus.

Now, that is almost word for word. Almost word for word from Shabir Ali's opening statement at Biola in 2006.

And that's what makes me so confused as to why, if there is literary dependence here.

In fact, I guess if we're going to start talking about the dependence between the synoptic Gospels, I guess we can start talking about the dependence between Islamic apologists.

If that's why I can't understand why, since it was in that debate that I demonstrated the error of what we're about to hear, that Yusuf Ismail hasn't gotten the note on that yet, hadn't caught that and repeats the exact same error that Shabir Ali made and admitted it was an error in our debate in 2006.

After that, he tried to sort of say, well, maybe it's not as bad an error, but yeah, the term kurios is used in both of those.

Strikes me as rather odd. For example, scholars today, the vast majority would state that the Gospels themselves were written not as historical works, but as apologetic works to prove particular theological motifs.

Why can't it be both? This is one of the major problems with naturalistic, and again, why

Muslims abandon their own worldview to attack the

New Testament and don't even see it is amazing to me. It's frustrating. It's sad. It's a demonstration of a lost position, to be perfectly honest with you.

But if you have to abandon your own worldview, which is a supernatural worldview, you believe in divine revelation, you believe

Moses rode a little winged animal to Jerusalem for crying out loud, and yet you are abjectly dependent upon people who would identify that as pure mythology, no history, and would say that the

Quran is not a historical work, but an apologetic work. But that doesn't matter.

I'll reject what they say about my stuff, but I will accept what they say about your stuff. Inconsistency, sign of a failed argument.

Yeah, once again. If you, for example, compare Mark to Matthew, we can see how the later gospel changed individual reports to raise the view of Jesus in the following ways.

For example, passages where people call Jesus Lord. In one occasion when Jesus was transfigured, in Mark, Peter calls him rabbi.

But in Matthew... Again, this is almost word for word. I mean, you would almost wonder if when

Shabir was in South Africa last year, they... Was that before this or after this?

Well, that somehow they had communicated. Because, I mean, there's just clear dependence here.

Now, I suppose someone could argue, well, they're both drawing from the same source. We could get into all that stuff.

But there's still clear dependence. We've heard this almost word for word before.

Master of the house is kurios. There's the error, by the way. I asked

Shabir about this. We looked at the Greek text, and it is kurios.

He's dependent upon English translation, doesn't read Greek. There's the error. Just repeats it. Just throws it out there.

It's been refuted. And you just... It is frustrating to wonder how many of his followers who are going to be clapping wildly or muttering allahu akbar are muttering allahu akbar at something that's actually just simply untrue, if they would check it out.

Improvement. Jesus being called the Son of God. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks Peter who he thought he was.

In Mark, Peter says you are the Messiah. But in Matthew, Peter says you are the Messiah, the Son of the living

God. So you see, Matthew has added the title, the Son of the living God, to have people pray to Jesus.

When Jesus was asleep in a boat and the storm rocked the boat in Mark, the disciples awake. And what do they say? They say, teacher, do you not care we drown?

But in Matthew, they pray to Jesus and say, Lord, save us. We are perishing. Why is that prayer?

I mean, Jesus is addressed as kurios in Mark as well. So why is that all of a sudden prayer? Master and kurios, somehow these are contrasting terms?

No. The rebuke from Mark on the same incident was changed to a particular prayer. Now, see, change.

Now, is he right about that? No, he's wrong about that. It's an unfounded assertion.

But as we've seen with Zakir Naik over the years, as long as you make the unfounded assertion with confidence and speed.

Now, of course, I'm playing this at 1 .2 speed, so not quite that fast. But as long as you make it with confidence and speed, people assume that you're right in what you're saying, when the reality is you're not.

So comparing Mark to Matthew in this particular way, we have seen how Matthew has reworked the material to bring out later

Christian teachings. No, we haven't. We have the unfounded assertion of that that would take significantly more time to actually establish and would be appropriate material of debate.

But that's not how it's being used here. Now, catch that?

Would surely record them. Why? I've always wanted to just stop somebody and say, why? Well, surely.

Stop calling me surely. Why? Why do you assume that if Jesus had had these private conversations, if Jesus had had these conversations, why is it that synoptic

Gospels would have to include everything that Jesus said, especially since,

I will admit, it's fairly obvious that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are earlier than John. Is it not even slightly possible?

Does it even enter into your thinking that there would be a reason why John, writing last, would have more freedom to speak of things that Jesus said, especially things that Jesus said within the context of the apostolic band themselves, which key material in chapters 14 through 17, or in especially conflict with the

Jewish leaders? You can't think of any possible reason why that might have been saved for John's Gospel and not a part of the synoptic

Gospels, which were so clearly to be read as part of the kerygma, the public proclamation of the church in the earliest decades.

No possible thing that you could think of that there might be a reason for that. No, you just simply say, well, if he said these, then these other

Gospels would have to have included that, except that John coming later doesn't include a number of the stories that the synoptics do.

And so he would have to have included that too, right? Got to be consistent. And remember, as we said in the last program, all of this begs the question of why there are differences between parallel accounts in the

Quran. If this is somehow indicative of a lack of reliability, because this is the argument that Yusuf Ismail is making.

These are the sources for your belief in the deity of Christ. They are unreliable because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not verbatim records of each other.

Basically, the argument is, unless Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are word for word the same, then they're not inspired, which would, of course, make them irrelevant if you had four of the exact same thing.

But that's the fundamental argument. Does your book pass the standard that you're attempting to place upon my book?

And the answer, of course, is no, it does not. It does not.

I provide an entire chapter of a discussion. Well, actually part of the chapter is a discussion of parallel accounts in the

Quran where there are fundamental differences, including even the citations of words. What someone said in the exact same situation, you have not only

Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, but you also have the very interesting account of the fall of Iblis, Lucifer, as we would call him,

Satan. Now, what makes that very, very interesting is the fact that the only one who would be able to quote those words accurately would be

God himself, right? I mean, he was the only one there, right?

So why would God change the words? This is found specifically if you've got the book on page 225, the fall of Iblis, and this is a comparison between Surah 7 and Surah 38.

And there are a number of differences between the statements that are recorded for Satan and the statements that are recorded for God, what

Satan's going to do, what God's going to do, order, etc., etc. And so the discussion goes on to page 229.

I've got about four pages of discussion just on that one parallel in the book. So if you're going to apply the standard to my book, which the presupposition is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have to be photocopies of each other, then

Surah 7 and Surah 38 do not match, and therefore your book is to be rejected as well, right? If you say no, then your position is refuted, and you should not repeat the argument in the future, then in essence, you are engaging in dishonesty, okay?

So there you go. And I didn't, again, I brought that up last time, we're responding to what's being said now, but I want to keep that,

I want you to keep that in mind, that whenever you hear a Muslim addressing synoptic issues without addressing the parallel account issues within the

Quran itself, and as I said, I can explain why Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John will have differences because you have different authors addressing different audiences at different times, they have different purposes, they want to communicate different things.

God used men, not a man. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. That's Peter's description of the process. I can explain why two different men speaking from God will describe the same event in different ways because they have different purposes and different emphases and so on and so forth, but how do you explain that in the

Quran because there is nothing about Muhammad here, remember? At least in Islamic orthodoxy. Now, if you want to take a liberal

Islamic perspective, okay, that's cool, take a liberal

Islamic perspective, but the people I debate are not liberal Muslims and so gotta have consistency.

They did not because he did not say such things. The man in which Jesus approaches death has also been reworked.

In Mark, Jesus begs God to save him from the cross, though he submits to God's decision. But in John, Jesus declares that he will not be prayed to be saved in John 12, 27.

Not quite, but do y 'all remember, some of you, I know that Algo would remember this.

But do you remember the rather interesting discussion that I had with a well -known, a world -renowned scholar on the reliability of the

Gospels where this very issue came up, and that was with John Dominic Crossan, and this attempt to portray this massive difference between Mark and John in their presentation of Jesus, and it's just not there.

It's just not there. This, again, is just a standard liberal attempt to create a conflict within the text of Scripture where there is no conflict, where again, if the

Muslim were to use his own worldview, and in fact, if the Muslim were to just listen to what his own text says about the

Injil, that it contains guidance and light, so on and so forth, then you would think they would at least try to read it with some level of fairness.

But the vast majority, especially of the apologists, do not read the New Testament with any level of fairness at all.

And that's a shame. But again, the inconsistency is very, very clear.

So we can see that in this way, when we multiply the examples of how one after another the Gospels went about modifying the image of Jesus for later readers.

And when we compare Mark with the later Gospels, you notice the modifications in the later ones. Which we have not actually found, and we have not found any substantiation of the assertions that are being made.

And as N .T. Wright rather properly said, we don't know the order in which the

Gospels were written. It's a theory at best, and so what you've had is a bunch of theoretical material thrown out without context, some of which was just in utter error, concerning a fact.

I think that, was that the only example that he gave of the kurios thing?

Because I guess he at one point had one other example, maybe, where he was assuming that kurios is somehow an exaltation or something.

But we just haven't, it's just not there. It's meant to sound good, but it's just not there.

If we could compare Mark with its predecessors, then you would find that Mark has also modified his story.

And so this is the actual relationship between the Synoptic Gospels, which I would submit that Dr. Craig would not take any objection to in principle, because he would subscribe to the same view with his scholarship.

Well, I would hope not, but it's possibly true. But Mark's predecessors? Who are

Mark's predecessors? I mean, you can engage in all sorts of speculation, but how about, you know, when

I talk about the sources the Quran uses, I quote them. When I point out that while the

Quran bends over backwards to say, no, we're not using any other sources, we're not borrowing stories from the

Arabic Infancy Gospel or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or from the

Mishnah or Talmud or anything like that. When it bends over backwards to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is all straight from God, when

I dispute that, I quote the sources. So if you're going to say that Mark's using pre -existing stuff, quote the sources.

Show me. I'd like to see them. Give me some manuscripts, some citations, you know, something like that, maybe, possibly.

Doesn't seem to do that. One last point. The death of Jesus after the Passover, during the

Passover. In Mark 14, 12, the disciples asked Jesus where they are to prepare the Passover meal for that evening.

In other words, that's on the day of the preparation for the Passover. But in John's Gospel, we are told that Pilate pronounces that sentence on that particular day of the preparation for the

Passover. Now, Dr. Craig would obviously have to explain that to us. Why? Um, I don't have the, uh, the

URL sitting here, but a few years ago, you know, I, uh,

I actually can get you a little closer. Um, and did I put this on YouTube?

Hmm. When you have almost 600 videos on YouTube, you start, my brain is not a library catalog, you know?

Um, I know at least twice now, one was at Covenant Grace Church in St.

Charles, where I go every December. And one was at the, um, uh,

Jeremiah Cry Conference in, uh, in New York. I did presentations refuting

Bart Ehrman on this very argument. And that is the allegation that John places the crucifixion on a different day than the synoptics.

Now, again, my material is nothing new. A .T. Robertson, the great

Southern Baptist Greek scholar from long ago, included an appendix in the appendices of his

Harmony of the Gospels, a rather full discussion of this very issue, and demonstrated, despite the rampant popularity of this view amongst commentators today, and I think primarily because commentators today only read one kind of theology.

They don't, you know, liberal commentators do not read conservatives. Conservatives read liberals.

That's just reality. I've been there, done that, got the t -shirt. That's a part of the educational situation in the world today, is, uh, liberals do not think there's anything to learn from conservatives.

They don't read them. Uh, but the conservatives read the liberals. And, uh, that's, that's how it is all across the educational spectrum, unfortunately.

But anyway, uh, you can demonstrate beyond, as long as you remember two things.

Preparation day means Friday. That's the name of the day. There is no word

Friday. Friday is preparation in Greek. As long as you remember that, it's real easy to figure out what

John's saying. And as long as you also remember, Passover wasn't just one day. It was a festival of more than one day.

As long as you keep that in mind, it's really not difficult. It's really not that hard. I don't know why so many people today stumble all over it, but it's really not that difficult if you'll just do a little study.

You know why? Because in John's gospel, Jesus is that sacrificial lamb. He is that Passover lamb whose sacrifice brings salvation from sins.

Again, a common liberal understanding. I know he's just getting it from secondary sources. He hasn't done the study himself.

I understand that. Doesn't make it right. It is required that we point it out. So in other words,

John has changed the historical datum to make a particular theological point. Jesus is that sacrifice.

And to convey that theological point, John has to now create a discrepancy between his account and the other particular gospels.

So it's important that you need to look at this in context. Do not decontextualize scripture. Yeah, and do a little deeper study as well while you're at it.

If you do that, you will do violence to the particular text. The article of faith in the first century, according to the apostolic creed, as articulated by Theodore Zun, was,

I believe in God, the Almighty. That was always the case. Between 180 and 210, the word

Father was added before the Almighty, meaning I believe in God, the Father Almighty, which was obviously bitterly disputed by later churches.

Then you have this council. It was church councils that had to declare the divinity of Christ.

Incarnation was defined as a... Now you'll notice, first of all, this is an amazingly simplistic view of the patristic period and development of the creedal statements that is way out of line with serious scholarship.

But anyways, I haven't had any dealings with the direct statements of the deity of Christ to be found in the

New Testament, especially in Paul, who precedes the gospels chronologically speaking.

I don't know what motivates someone. I cannot understand how could

I address... Let me come up with an illustration here. How could

I address what the Quran states on the subject of absolute monotheism without quoting the key texts on the subject?

If I want to dispute... I mean, this is really... I think this is a good illustration. It is about as silly for a

Muslim to dispute that the New Testament teaches the deity of Christ as it would be for me to assert that the Quran does not teach absolute monotheism.

Now, I could go into... I could start raising questions about the sources of the

Quran and the redaction of the Quran over time, and I can quote all sorts of liberal orientalists that'll talk about this, that, and the other thing, and I can say scholars tell us this and scholars tell us that without ever mentioning who the scholars are and just use that wonderful, great, vague term scholars.

That's easy to do. Anybody can do that. And I could start casting doubt into your mind as to the reliability of the

Quran and the transmission of the Quran and blah, blah, blah. That's easy. Deconstruction is very, very simple.

Bombs do deconstruction, and bombs are not intelligent things. Well, I suppose some

American bombs are, but you know what I mean. Once a bomb explodes, the force of its impact is meant to deconstruct.

Deconstruction is easy. Construction is hard. Takes time. And it's easy to deconstruct an ancient text, especially in a debate.

So, I could do that, but if I did not quote and deal with and give a plausible explanation of the direct statements of the

Quran concerning the issue of absolute monotheism, how do you get away with that? And so, how do my

Muslim friends pretend to deal with the text?

Pretend to be dealing with the New Testament, and you've never mentioned a Granville Sharp construction. You've never mentioned

John 20, 28. You've never mentioned the Carmen Christi. You've never mentioned

Colossians 1, 15 through 17. You've never mentioned the all -across -the -canon -of -the -New -Testament -argumentation -where -the -deity -of -Christ -is -asserted -through -the -identification -of -Jesus -as -Yahweh.

How can you do that? It's not that that information is unknown.

You could have picked up Murray Harris's book. I mean, I'm not even going to say you had to have read my book.

I'm not the first one who has said these things. You could have read Athanasius for crying out loud. His works are out of copyright,

I assure you. But you didn't.

So how can you pretend to be dealing with the New Testament when you haven't even provided a semblance of a plausible explanation for why all of the

New Testament writers—I mean, even if you're just going to dismiss Paul as a horrible promoter of shirk or something, just throw him off the bus like so many

Muslims like to do. How about Mark? How about Jesus' son -of -man language?

Why not explain why the Jews respond the way that they did?

Now, this is something that does come up in that later debate. Actually, come to think of it,

William Lane Craig brings it up, too. So they both did. You've got to make an effort.

But no effort's made. No effort is made. And that is very, very troubling to me.

Doctrine only long after the struggles by the particular church council. It's interesting to note that in an email discussion with Udo Carlson, Dr.

Craig refused to discuss the topic, is Jesus God? And he said, well, you have to go back to the actual belief as is found in the

Council of Chalcedon, which defined the two natures of Christ, both human and divine. The vast majority of Christian scholars in the world today actually reject the idea, not because—

Let me stop right there. I remember hearing this. The vast majority of Christian scholars in the world reject the idea of the deity of Christ.

Really? Okay, that makes as much sense as my saying, the vast majority of Muslim scholars in the world reject the idea the

Quran is the word of God and Muhammad's a prophet. Does that make a lick of sense?

No, it doesn't. Why is it that Islam has the right of self -definition and Christianity does not?

Why is that? You don't believe the deity of Christ. You're not a Christian. You may call yourself a

Christian, but you'd have to agree with me. You can call yourself a Muslim, but if you don't believe Muhammad's a prophet, you ain't a

Muslim, are you? No, you're not. There are definitional issues.

And so I just— Again, if you are a liberal Muslim who would not have any problem with someone saying, oh,

I'm a Muslim, but I really don't think the Quran's some divine thing. It's just a good moral guide.

And I don't even know if there was a Muhammad, for crying out loud. Maybe you could be like that German guy who was the head of the

Islamic Studies Department and then came to the conclusion that Muhammad didn't actually exist. If you're a liberal like that, okay.

But you're not going to be doing one of these debates anyways if you're a liberal like that. And Yusuf Ismail is not a liberal like that.

So he's having his cake, he's eating his two, he's using double standards, he's using different weights, he's violating the

Quranic command. But I know this is absolutely necessary to Islamic apologetics.

I mean, I've not debated anybody who hasn't done it. And those who at least try not to do it end up having to really work hard, because the very essence of Islamic dawah is to make the

Quran the standard, anachronistically, and then try to cram the

Torah and the Injil into fitting with what the Quran was actually saying due to the fact that its author was ignorant of the contents of the

Torah and the Injil and actually thought there was a bunch of stuff in there that wasn't. The Quran makes that very clear.

I don't think there's any question about that. So you hear him going, all these scholars reject this, but they're

Christian scholars. I've heard people calling Bart Ehrman a Christian. It is difficult to understand because it cannot be meaningfully expressed.

It is difficult to understand because it cannot be meaningfully expressed. The hypostatic union, really.

This is going to come up, I'm going to have to stop here, but let me warn you about what's coming. One of the things that he's going to say is, I challenge

Dr. Craig to give us a model, an example of the hypostatic union. Craig, unfortunately, complies.

My response immediately would have been, irrational question. I am asserting that the hypostatic union is absolutely unique.

There's only been one incarnate man. That means that there's nothing in the created order that could possibly model it.

And to do so is to immediately compromise it. You give me a model of Allah's eternity.

He is eternal. Well, there's nothing else in the universe that is. So you couldn't give me anything, could you?

No, exactly not. So if you say something's unique and then demand a model for it, that's irrational.

And that should have been Craig's response. Unfortunately, Craig's response was to use Avatar. Well, we'll get to that a little bit later on.

Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord Willen will be back sometime next week. I have a gut feeling it'll probably be at some unusual time.

But follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Facebook. We'll let you know that way. We'll see you then. God bless.

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