January 5, 2006

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon, good evening.
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Welcome to The Dividing Line. I can't believe it. It is January, isn't it?
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January 5th. In fact, as far as I can tell, I was looking at some records today and today in 1950,
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Phoenix recorded its lowest temperature of all time. Well, of all time. You know, was that 1880 -something?
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So past 120, 130 years, somewhere along there as long as they've been keeping records. January 5th, 1950 was the low.
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In fact, January of 1950 must have been pretty incredible because they set the all time low for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, which four days in a row to have the record low.
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And I think there's only four times, five times that the temperature in Phoenix, the low has been below 20 degrees.
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Four 19s and on this date, it was 17 degrees in Phoenix. I think the lowest it's been since I've lived here is 22.
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I think that, and that's been a long time ago now. I don't think it's even frozen in the past six years. Right now, 81 degrees, 81 degrees outside.
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The record for the day was 77. That's four degrees above the record, 81 degrees in Phoenix.
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So if you're in one of those places where it's actually, I've been hearing from a lot of folks where it's just unusually warm.
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It's certainly, certainly is here too. So anyway, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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We have been doing two things based on the dividing line recently.
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We have been responding to the Bart Ehrman interviews on NPR and we will continue that, have that queued up.
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The second interview, we're about 12 minutes into that particular interview.
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Why is everyone, oh, okay. Well, yes, 22 degrees is low
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I've seen and I've seen 122 degrees as the high. So 100 degree, yeah, that's, yeah, 122 degrees in the shade, which means in a car.
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It was, it was, that was a rough day. That was June 26th, 1990,
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I believe was the exact date. And you know why I remember that? Because of the book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, I was writing the book and I was putting real events into the beginning of each of the letters
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I was writing to the fictional Mormon missionary. I broke my arm during that period of time, so I mentioned that,
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I mentioned something my little kids were doing at that time, because back then they were little kids. And I mentioned also, no,
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June, June of 1990, June 26th, did I say July? June 26th, 1990 was 122, not
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July, June, trust me. Hit 121 in July later, but 122 was
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June 26th. You can check it out online. But anyways, that's why I remember those things.
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And for those of you who are, I think it's 50 degrees centigrade, if I recall correctly. I figured that out once, because when you're traveling over in the
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United Kingdom, you have to translate these things, you know, just simply to help people out.
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Anyhow, we are listening to the Bart Ehrman interview, and it actually is about 30, and looking at it here, 38 and a half minutes long.
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I had the window incorrectly sized last time, and so it gave the improper thing.
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So we're about a third of the way through that. And listening to Ahmed Didat, I mentioned on the blog yesterday,
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I had been listening to his debate with Shirosh, and Sam Shimon was right.
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You know, when I first started listening to that, I was sort of like, all right, you know, someone, he's actually presenting some strong passages on the deity of Christ, sounds like he can speak.
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For some reason, halfway through that debate, it's just like he shut down. I mean, just total meltdown, total incapacity to respond, and I don't know what happened.
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I've got the video, I should watch that, maybe I can see something, I don't know. But that was horrible. And then, yesterday
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I was riding my bike, and I was listening to his debate,
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Ahmed Didat's debate with Jimmy Swaggart. Oh my goodness.
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Oh my goodness. And you say, well, why bother with things like that?
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Like I said, this is the common stuff you're going to hear. I mentioned last time, I wish I'd listened to stuff before the
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Malik debate. I would have, I could have finished all the questions that the
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Muslims were asking, because they really, really, really, really do listen to what that man had to say.
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And I asked a serious question. It was in the blog article I posted this morning, it had a bunch of stuff in it, so maybe it won't be seen, and maybe
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I should change that. But I would, I know we have Muslims who listen to this program, because I have been responding to Didat, and to Shabir Ali, and other
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Islamic apologists, and that's ongoing. So I know they're listening. I have a serious question.
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I have a serious question. Isn't there anyone out there who, during the time period of the heyday of Didat, when he was traveling all over the place and doing his thing, isn't there anyone out there, a
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Muslim, Muslim apologist, Muslim scholar, who put their hand up and said, hey, wait a minute, this guy does not represent me.
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His arguments, his misrepresentations do not represent me. I recognize that he is constantly equivocating, he's constantly misrepresenting, he's constantly using all these bad arguments that it's clear he even knows when he's doing it.
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The mockery that he uses, that does not represent me.
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And I rebuke that. Sort of like what I do with Dave Hunt, okay? You know, we take the time to point out when there are people who are representing what's broadly called evangelical
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Christianity, and they are doing so in a way that is embarrassing, that is wrong.
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And we take the heat for that, okay? Who is my counterpart over there?
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That's what I want to know. Who over there back then when he was in his heyday said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, this this stuff he's throwing out about the
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King James, you know, I mean, when people push him and why outside of Josh McDowell, why doesn't he debate anyone who can really challenge him?
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Didn't he? I shouldn't use the present tense. He passed away recently. But why didn't he? I mean,
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I'm sorry, but Jimmy Swaggart, Pastor Stanley, Sharosh, none of these guys even were.
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I mean, the stuff he's throwing out is so simplistic, so basic to anyone who knows anything about.
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I mean, Sharosh couldn't even explain the Trinity, right? Almost sounds like he was oneness, a modalist or something, wasn't even a
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Trinitarian. I just it's extremely frustrating to listen to that stuff.
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And somebody out there has to there's got to be someone with integrity, honesty out there that was saying, hey, don't don't saddle me with this stuff.
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I recognize that what he's doing is is wrong. Let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Phone lines are open 877 -753 -3341 to someone like to send a
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URL to, you know, some apologist out there that was writing that time or has written since then said, you know what?
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You know, I apologize. The misrepresentations that D -Dot put out there and he says this.
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But in reality, this is this is the way it should be stated. You know, maybe even if you agree with some of his objections, but you recognize the examples he's using are just are just ridiculous.
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And we'll listen to some more of that stuff. And it was just just frustrating to listen to.
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So anyway, that's what we're doing. We've already got one person on the online, but I want to continue with with Bart Ehrman here, try to get a little bit more here.
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Yeah. You know, someone's asking about the link to the D -Dot debate. I think Dr. Bill can give you that link because he's going to provide it to me.
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But they are available online and you can listen to them yourself and the very same ones that I'm going to be playing and things like that.
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So yeah, he just said Google Ahmed D -Dot MP3. You'll find it quickly.
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I tried that and ended up a bunch of wrong places, places where I had to spend money, basically.
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So anyhow, let's get back with the NPR interview. We have already been listening to Bart Ehrman once again, talking about really basic stuff, really basic things concerning John 8 and things like that.
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Let's continue on. And compassionate. Absolutely. It's a it's a completely different view. And, you know, one of one of the exercises
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I give my students here at Chapel Hill, my New Testament class, is I have them read through the first six chapters of Mark's gospel and to do a kind of character analysis of who
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Jesus is. And they're really surprised because in these chapters of Mark, Jesus does not come off as the good shepherd of the stained glass window.
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Jesus seems to be getting angry a lot. He ignores his family.
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He rips his followers away from their own families. He's he's associates with a wild man in the wilderness,
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John the Baptist. He himself is driven into the wilderness by the spirit of God, where he does battle with the with the demons.
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He he commands illnesses and he commands demons. He seems to be a very charismatic and powerful figure that isn't to be messed with.
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And this idea of him getting angry when this leper came up to him fits in perfectly well with the way
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Mark is portraying Jesus in these chapters. How does it fit in? Well, because because in these chapters, whenever anybody questions
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Jesus ability or authorization to heal, he gets upset.
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You know, I must I must have put the wrong timing in there because there there's obviously something
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I missed here. I'm sitting here listening is going, I don't
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I'm trying to think back. It's only been two days till Tuesday. Well, what was leading up to this?
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And, you know, when I get done with each program, I have a little note thing, little note program I put in where it was.
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And I, I'm going to I'm going to remember that we're at 1320 there.
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I'm going to back this up a second and see if I did. I just did. I just missed something. So, again, live dividing line.
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So he reached out his hand and touched him. It says Jesus became angry so that it wouldn't be a problem any longer.
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And that that happened. Story has less currency than other stories in the
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New Testament or that we should just see that as forth and later be copied into the text.
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Yeah, that's where I was about six and a half. And I started at 12. Don't ask me how that happened.
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I apologize. But this is interesting. This is very, very interesting because we're getting into the. Again, as I mentioned, hopefully some of you saw
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Dan Wallace's brief response to to Bart Ehrman online bring up a lot of the same issues, pointing out stuff that really given if you just take the
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New Testament as a whole would would demonstrate rather clearly that he's he's really picking on inconsequential things aren't overly relevant.
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But this is going to go into the section concerning the fact that some scribes did not like the idea that Jesus could get angry.
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He would get angry at the hypocrisy. And remember that in modern theology,
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Matthew, Chapter 23, I would say probably if you took a poll of the the wide variety of New Testament scholarship that exists today, that's a large portion of that.
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I'm not sure what the percentage would be, but a large portion of that would would be very uncomfortable. I'd say a majority would be very uncomfortable with even saying that Jesus ever said anything like what's found in Matthew, Chapter 23.
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I would say definitely a minority would believe. That those words were actually spoken by Christ, and so given that within seminaries, it's hardly surprising to hear you have an agnostic, an apostate agnostic by his own confession.
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Those are those aren't insults. Those are his own description. An apostate agnostic who.
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Has problems allowing the entire text to stand as a as a whole, and so, yeah, you know.
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There are a lot of us who've been out here saying Jesus is not the little lamb carrying effeminate guy of the stained glass window, no question about it.
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The Lordship of Christ is not exactly helped and aided in its promulgation by such misrepresentations of Christ anyways.
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But anyhow, unfortunately, he then does this on the basis of text. Let's go ahead and start where I've stopped here and we'll eventually get back to what
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I was just playing in regards to this. This very. I mean, did the scribes have that much freedom in the work that they could just add a story?
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Well, it's shocking, but it's it's it's shocking to my students just how often the scribes would change their texts.
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We tend to think that in our setting today, when a book is produced, it's always the same book.
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So I can go out and buy a copy of the Da Vinci Code and it doesn't matter what city in America I buy the copy.
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It's exactly the same copy word for word the same. And so that's what we expect of our books. But in the ancient world, they didn't expect their books to be like that because they knew that these things were always being copied by hand and that mistakes were always being made so that the very first copy of a book probably had mistakes.
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And then the person who copied that first copy copied the mistakes and added some of his own mistakes.
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And then that third copy was itself copied and its mistakes were replicated then down through the line.
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And so mistakes multiply through the copying process. And that's where we're that's where we stopped.
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And I had a long discussion of what's missing there and so on and so forth. So we're finally where we needed to be.
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Some scribes felt completely free to to change their texts and would add stories or take out stories, would add lines, take out lines.
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We know this happened. This isn't just speculation. The reason we know it happened is because we have these thousands of surviving manuscripts.
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And when you look at these thousands of manuscripts, the striking thing about them is just how different they are from one another.
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So what are you suggesting here that we should that we should just ignore that story of adultery, that that story has less currency than other stories in the
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New Testament? Now, let me just stop before he answers that. How strikingly different they are from one another.
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You could take the most, quote unquote, Alexandrian text and the most Byzantine text.
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And if you apply the same standards of interpretation, you're not going to come up with a different Jesus, at least if you allow for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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Again, applying this kind of spin, how different they are, really, how different they are.
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I mean, to the to the person who's never examined textual criticism, it sounds like, you know, you'd have one manuscript over here, one manuscript over there.
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If you read two of them, you wouldn't even recognize the same Jesus in both of them. And that's absurd. That's just that's that's not the case. That just is not the case.
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And he knows that he's well aware of that for that. We should just see that as as a story that was added later and take it as that.
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I mean, how does that affect your reading of that passage in the Bible? What do you make of it? Well, it's a very good question.
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And I think I think Christians who see the Bible as authoritative have to make a decision. What is it that they think is authoritative?
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Is the original text as it was originally written, is that authoritative?
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If that's authoritative, we have a problem because we don't have the original text in many instances.
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But on the other hand, does somebody want to ascribe? OK, what does he mean by that in many instances?
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What does that mean? Does that mean that if you have four, you have a very difficult variant and let's say.
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Let's say you have really, really difficult variants on one half of one percent of the entire text in the
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New Testament. So is he there admitting that in ninety nine point five percent of the text, then you do have the original and and inerrancy falls if there's half a percent where you have these difficulties and you can still confess the originals there, but you have these difficulties in determining exactly what the original is that is that what he's what he's trying to say?
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I wish he'd just come straight out and say it. I mean, it shouldn't be difficult for him to say it because he claims to have once believed it.
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Now he's apostatized from that. He's he denies that. So it should be pretty clear when I just come straight out and say that that's the authority to a text that was that was clearly and certainly added later to the
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Bible, such as the story of the woman taken in adultery. If you ascribe authority to these stories that were added later to the
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Bible, where do you draw the line? Does it mean that anybody can add something to the Bible and then then it can count a scripture?
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This strikes me as a very difficult theological problem that that theologians probably need to work on a little bit to tell tell people what actually is the
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Bible that's being trusted as the. I hit the button a little bit too quick there, but excuse me, you you aren't aware of how much has been written about this.
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All your time at Moody and Wheaton, you you didn't you didn't run into any of this, I suppose. It's possible.
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I mean, you know, if a person doesn't want to study these things, you can, I guess, avoid it or just, you know, touch on it lightly.
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But I'm sorry, but. Not news to people who have seriously been studying this stuff for a long time or to scripture, you say that scribes also often preferred the text to be easy to understand and nonproblematic.
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What do you mean by nonproblematic? Well, sometimes even today, when somebody will be reading a passage in the
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Bible, it'll be hard to understand or it will sound like it contradicts another passage or it'll sound like it's theologically unacceptable.
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And so people will will often put a question mark in the margin because they can't figure out what it means.
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Scribes have that same situation, but they have the benefit of being able to change the passage so that it wouldn't be a problem any longer.
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And that that happened on a lot of occasions where scribes would make a passage easier to understand rather than harder.
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All that is is saying that it is more likely for a scribe to copy in such a fashion as for his result to make sense and for it to not make sense.
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And that can be purposeful, as in harmonizing Matthew with Mark or Mark with Matthew.
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Or that can be non -purposeful because you know the story someplace else and you harmonize it without even attempting to do so in the process by adding details because you think it's supposed to be there.
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And and you're just copying along and you just do it automatically. You assume this is gonna be the next word because your familiarity with the other passage, whatever it might be.
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All that's saying is, is that it's more likely that the difficult reading is the original than the reverse.
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That's all it is. Nothing new whatsoever as far as that goes unless you take these standard scholarly categories and throw them into a book called
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Misquoting Jesus and publish it by the same people that put all the Jesus Seminar stuff and then all of a sudden you've got, well, what we're listening to here.
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And you offer as an example of this in your book, Jesus Meeting the
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Leper. Yeah, this is a terrific story in Mark chapter 1.
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In most of the English Bibles available today, the way the passage goes is there's this leper who comes up to Jesus.
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So he has some form of leprosy. We're not sure what it is exactly. So this leper comes up to Jesus and says, if you're willing, you're able to make me clean.
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And the text then says, Jesus, feeling compassion for the man, said, I am willing. And he reached out his hand and touched him and he made him clean.
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In some of our earliest manuscripts of this passage, there's a change in the text that is really quite striking.
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In these other early manuscripts, instead of saying Jesus felt compassion for the man.
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So he reached out his hand and touched him. It says, Jesus became angry and reached out his hand and touched him.
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And so scholars have to decide what the original text probably was. Did Mark originally say that Jesus felt compassion or that he felt angry?
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And the way the argument works might sound backwards to some people. But the way the argument works is that since becoming angry is the more difficult reading to understand.
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It's more likely to have been the original reading. The logic is, you have to ask yourself, if you were a scribe changing the text, which text would you have been likely to have changed?
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If you had the text in front of you that said Jesus became compassionate, would you be likely to want to change that to say he became angry?
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Whereas on the other hand, if the text originally said Jesus became angry, would you be likely to change it to say he became compassionate?
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So as it turns out, there's other evidence that in fact is exactly what Mark originally said.
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Jesus became angry and then that opens up then all sorts of possibilities for interpretation.
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And let's stop right there. If you're wondering what in the world's going on here, you might want to turn to Mark chapter 1, verse 41.
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Mark chapter 1, verse 41. I'm looking here at 141, 133 to 139 in the book.
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If you have the book is where the discussion is centered here. Now, you have...
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Let's see, why isn't this showing up here? I see it in the book.
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That doesn't make... Okay, yes. Mark appears to have written it. Mark in places portrays an angry
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Jesus. Unfortunately, he doesn't say anything more about it there.
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Let's see what else he comes up 141, 149 maybe. I'm trying to find his specific citation here because as I look at my text, yeah.
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It is obviously important to know whether Jesus was said to feel compassion or anger in Mark 141. That's all he says.
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That's nice. Let's look at the evidence. The term compassion in Mark 141 is found in everything.
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Greek, Latin, early translations with the exception of D, capital
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D indicating unseal text, small a, ff2, and r1.
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Now, those are... To say that those are minor witnesses is to greatly overstate the case.
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D is notorious for being very odd.
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Copied by someone who frequently had flights of fancy. And let's just put it this way.
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No major witnesses to the gospel of Mark support this reading. Basically, all you can say looking at the text.
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So, this somehow is a major thing as to whether Jesus was a mean, nasty guy or he had compassion.
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And then we have this little issue of parallel passages. And if we look at parallel passages and we allow the entire text to speak, what would be the proper reading here?
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Again, part of me just really gets very upset when people utilize their learning in this fashion.
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I mean, it's shocking to me that someone would look at this text, they would look at this particular reading, and they would look simply at the external witnesses.
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Just what is there externally. And ever put it in a book as if it's somehow relevant in the way that's being presented here.
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It's shocking to me. But again,
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I guess I shouldn't be overly surprised. You know, if you're a happy agnostic, you're happy when you're cashing your royalty check.
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So, why not? But the fact of the matter is that if that level of external witness can be given the kind of weight that Ehrman is giving it, then there's again, once again, if you apply this across outside the
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New Testament, there's no way to know anything about history at all. We don't know what happened yesterday just about.
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I mean, this kind of skepticism, this kind of spin is thankfully not shared by the vast majority of those who are involved in the study of historical texts, or we wouldn't know anything about the past at all.
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Somebody has an agenda here. Somebody has a purpose here. And that's exactly what's going on in this particular situation.
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Anyhow, I wasted a lot of time playing the clip before we got to this clip beforehand.
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And so, what we're going to do here, if the great grand poobah across the way can handle it, let's go ahead and take our break 15 seconds early or something like that.
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And then when we come back, let's get our phone caller taken care of so that he doesn't have to sit on hold forever.
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And I'd like to finish off with this comment from Ehrman before we go to Ddot, who certainly doesn't have
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Ehrman's erudition and scholarship, only he pretended that he did. That basically is the real problem there.
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So let's go ahead and take our break. And other phone calls if you need it, 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll be right back. What is
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Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free, A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?
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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.
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In his book, The Pottish Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler. But The Pottish Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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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.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Pottish Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomin .org.
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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.
30:47
The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
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Bible study begins at 930 a .m. and the worship service is at 1045. Evening services are at 630 p .m.
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on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805
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North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.
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If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
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Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
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In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
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Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
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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.
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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.
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The Same -Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at almen .org.
32:59
And welcome back to Dividing Line. Looking just real quickly before the phone, going to the phone call.
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Interesting to note that two other times in Mark, Jesus is said to be angry,
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Mark 3, 5, or indignant, Mark 10, 14. Those are right there in the text and it is interesting, most probably, when you have such a minor range of external evidence as you have in this situation, especially given the character of D, the only really meaningful source that you have there, what you've probably got going on there as to where that would come up with, especially that it's a completely different word.
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It doesn't even look anything like the word for compassion at all. It starts completely different letters.
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It's totally different. Verse 43, Jesus sternly warned him.
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That term sternly can have the idea of angry.
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And verses 43 and 41 both start with the word chi, as does verse 42.
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But remember, if you're copying from a manuscript that has longer lines or shorter lines, it depends exactly where each of these lines would be ending and where your eye would be hitting the line, things like that.
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If the person was familiar with that term and felt that it was a term of strength, sternly, angrily, maybe that's where the scribe of D got it.
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But the point is we have the entire rest of the manuscript tradition, the entirety of it, that demonstrates, and these are not the earliest manuscripts that we're referring to here that have the word anger in it.
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So to have such a tiny, tiny, tiny questionable group and to blow it up the way that, you know,
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I know what he's trying to do. You know, when you've got, well, you know, it's difficult, that's a more difficult reading.
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Well, you know, okay. But sometimes you just have to go, yeah, but there's just not enough external evidence to substantiate that in any way, shape, or form.
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And that's what the situation is there. We'll continue. Let's just go ahead and finish his thought on this one and then take our phone call real quick.
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But the point that I'm making in my book is just that this problem exists in the first place. Well, yeah, it's a completely different interpretation, isn't it?
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If you think that Jesus became angry when the leper spoke with him as opposed to Jesus feeling compassionate.
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Absolutely. It's a completely different view. And, you know, one of the exercises I give my students here at Chapel Hill in my
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New Testament class is I have them read through the first six chapters of Mark's gospel and to do a kind of character analysis of who
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Jesus is. And they're really surprised. You know, let me stop right there because we never heard this when
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I accidentally played it earlier. Isn't it interesting if you read the rest of the story? He sternly warns him, immediately send him away.
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He said to him, say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer of your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony of them.
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But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas and they were coming to him from everywhere.
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It's possible to me looking at that that the scribe of D was attempting to put out here a almost a prophetic concept that Jesus knew that this was what this man was going to do, even though he sternly warned him against it.
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And therefore he was angry that he was going to do what he was going to do, reading back the rest of the story basically into that term.
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In either case, whatever motivated it, you can understand and you can come up with a motivation for the scribe.
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You demonstrate that he is in the vast minority, that there is just simply not enough external evidence whatsoever.
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And that in essence, putting that there makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the story and in the context of the rest of what the
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New Testament teaches. And that's why only it seems Bart Ehrman and other happy agnostics have big problems with things like this, as if we should totally revamp our view of Jesus based upon a single textual variant in one particular manuscript,
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Greek manuscript, at least that point, unsealed manuscript that carries any weight at all. Because in these chapters of Mark, Jesus does not come off as the good shepherd of the stained glass window.
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Jesus seems to be getting angry a lot. He ignores his family.
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He rips his followers away from their own families. He associates with a wild man in the wilderness,
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John the Baptist. He himself is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, where he does battle with the demons.
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What demons? He commands illnesses and he commands demons. He seems to be a very charismatic and powerful figure that isn't to be messed with.
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And this idea of him getting angry when this leper came up to him fits in perfectly well with the way
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Mark is portraying Jesus in these chapters. What? Why? There's no reasons given, unless we do the circuitous suggestions that I just gave.
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Why would that be perfectly well? Why would he be angry at a leper?
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I can see why he'd be angry after the leper does what he does, but what do you mean it fits in perfectly well?
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All I can say, folks, is don't send your kids to Chapel Hill. It's like sending them to the local community colleges where you run into these folks that just, you know, their whole purpose in life is to shred conservative
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Christians and come into their classes. That seems to be the whole thing. I keep saying we're going to go to the phone calls.
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Go ahead and do that and talk with Michael once again. Hi, Michael. Hello. Thank you for finally taking my call.
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Yes, sir. Moses of the Jewish faith, Joseph Smith of the Mormon faith, and Muhammad of the
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Islam faith all claim to be a true prophet of God. Is there a test to determine if a person actually was or is a true prophet?
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Or to rephrase the question, what are the qualifications that prove or establish that a person actually was or is a true prophet of God?
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Well, the only tests that are given to us as to the issue of the identification of a prophet is twofold.
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In Deuteronomy 13 and 18, we are given two tests. The first test is in regards to a prophet who prophesies as far as prediction of future events, and he is to prophesy accurately in that event.
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And then the one that's missed by a lot of folks is that even if a person were to prophesy a future event accurately, that if they do so and seek to take you after another god than Yahweh, that that makes the person a false prophet.
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There are two examples that are given. That is the accuracy example as far as fulfillment goes, which of course, you know, especially around this time of year, we hear all these people making their predictions for the year.
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They may not call themselves prophets, but they give their predictions for the year. And sometimes people are right, sometimes they're wrong.
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So it's possible for a person to, in essence, come up with something along the lines and come up with an accurate prophecy.
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Obviously not perfectly and over time doing it over and over again, but it's possible to, you know, guess correctly, shall we say.
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I mean, there were people who guessed the score of the Texas USC game, for example, but there are a whole lot more people who didn't get those things correctly.
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And so there is a secondary element of it, and that is in regards to being consistent as to one's teaching concerning the nature, identity, character of God.
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That is one's theology. So when you look at someone like Joseph Smith and you identify various and sundry false prophecies that he made historically, section 114 of the
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Doctrine and Covenants, for example, you can demonstrate that on the level of prophesying future events that he made errors, but far more so on the level of his theology and his teaching did he make errors in regards to the
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God that he prophesied. The same thing is true in regards to Muhammad.
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The primary test for Muhammad is he claimed fidelity to the
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Torah and the Injil. He, according to the Islamic tradition, at one point had the
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Torah placed upon a cushion and confessed his faith that he believed in all of the
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Torah, which would mean that at least the Torah that existed in his day he believed to be an accurate representation and worthy of saying,
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I believe it. Well, the problem is, did he in point of fact then teach the same things as that line of prophets that came before him in regards to who
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God is, and was he consistent in that point? And of course he was not. Now, I think that's primarily due to the fact that he was ignorant.
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He was ignorant of the Bible. He was an illiterate man. He basically functioned on the basis of things he had heard from people, and I think many times his sources were inaccurate, so on and so forth.
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But again, the fact remains that people claim that he was a prophet, and when you in essence ask, all right, does he consistently teach that which the prophets before him taught, then the answer is no.
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Not that he did he have new revelation that is consistent with what came before.
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That's not the issue. The issue is, does he contradict those previous prophets and what he is teaching now?
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And he certainly did, especially when we look specifically at the doctrine of who Christ was, the crucifixion of Christ, resurrection of Christ, et cetera, et cetera.
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And so, you know, those are the two primary tests that are actually laid out in scripture themselves, and they are tests that really require, in essence, they become stronger with the passage of time.
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What I mean by that is the more prophets and the more prophecy and the larger body of revelation that you have upon which you can test someone, then the easier it is to do so.
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It's a little bit more difficult in a situation where you have Moses, and I really think that's why you have the tremendous amount of supernatural activity, and that supernatural activity diminishes when you have a greater and greater canonical authority to testify.
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You don't have to have Jesus parting the Red Sea, because you hear him more often saying, as it is written, as it is written in the
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Law and the Prophets, they testify, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whereas you have this tremendous amount of supernatural activity in regards to Moses, because you don't have the ability to make that kind of reference to the pre -existing revelation that God has already given, because that's where it's starting, in essence, as far as its recording goes.
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So, I think that's one of the reasons you have that kind of situation taking place as well.
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Okay, and also, real quick, are you familiar with Bob Morey? Uh -huh. Okay, I was just going to say, because he has some real good debates with Muslims that I don't know if you're familiar with.
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I've listened to his debate with Shabir Ali, and that's the only one that I've actually had the opportunity of listening to.
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That was an interesting debate indeed. But yeah, in fact, Bob Morey was at the debate that I did with George Bryson at the
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Vineyard in Los Angeles back in 2001. That was the last time that I saw him.
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Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. We just had a major net split on the channel.
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About half the channel just disappeared, and of course, from our perspective, from their perspective, we're the ones who disappeared.
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Anyhow, we continue on with, I'm going to go ahead and make a note to myself as to exactly where we ended with Bart Ehrman there.
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So, this time, we don't make the same mistake we made last time. I apologize for wasting about two minutes of the program there.
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But continuing back to the DDOT debate, this is, as I mentioned, this is the point in time where DDOT is beginning his opening presentation.
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And the last time I ran out of time, right as he got to the point where he was misrepresenting the doctrine of the
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Trinity, and I was deeply disappointed that Shorosh did not correct him.
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Maybe Shorosh is not orthodox. I don't know. I just simply do not know. But we continue with that.
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Hopefully, I didn't make the same errors in writing down the numbers this time.
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Actually, just typing the numbers this time as I did last time. I think
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I did the same thing. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
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This is about where we were, though. Now, why would he be emphasizing my father, your father, your father?
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Because, again, his, and I've started to hear enough of him now to know that he repeats the same things over and over.
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And he has a pretty limited range of arguments here. And so far,
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I haven't found any of them that are even slightly challenging to Christianity, which is what, again, makes it just amazing to me that he was as famous as he was given the argumentation he presents.
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But the idea is that, for example, if we do, if we get around to it, we'll see.
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It depends on time and things like that. But in his debate with Swaggart, Swaggart had listened to maybe this debate or others.
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And so when Swaggart read John 3 and he got to the Greek term monogamies, monogamies, here's where, again,
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I was talking to one of the folks at the church that also does some volunteer work with the ministry and someone people know and channel fairly well.
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I was talking with him last night. He's been talking to one of these Jehovah's Witnesses. He had made some comments on his blog about Jehovah's Witnesses.
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And so he's been going back and forth with this Jehovah's Witness. And the issue of the
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Greek language and specifically the relationship of the father and the son came up in his conversation with this
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Jehovah's Witness. And I had mentioned to him, I said, you know, when you're looking at a book like the Forgotten Trinity or the
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King James Only Controversy or the God Who Justifies, the meat of a lot of my books is in the endnotes.
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Anyone who's read most of my books knows there's a lot of important apologetic material in the endnotes.
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And that's why when you read the Forgotten Trinity, you'll discover a very lengthy discussion of the
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Greek term monogamies in endnotes. And the fact the matter is, you know what? People, they tend to ignore that part.
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Let's face it. In our culture today, endnotes, I don't want to stick my finger in the back there. I don't want to, you know,
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I don't want to stop the flow, blah, blah, blah. If you only read the text of my books and you don't read the endnotes, you're missing a whole bunch of stuff.
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There's a reason why I include it there. Here's a perfect example. Everything I've ever heard so far
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Ahmed Didat say about this term monogamies in the relationship of the father and son is refuted fully and completely just in the endnotes of my book on this subject.
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Everything. If each of the persons he was debating had just had that level of information, I didn't make this information up.
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It's been there for a long time. But the fact the matter is, if these people had possessed that information and been able to enunciate that information and communicate that information, this man would have been blown out of the water every time he walked in front of a microphone in a debate.
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But so far, I've heard none of them that have been able to do so. I'm not done listening to all of them. I hope
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I get to come back to this microphone in the future and go, hey, I heard somebody just, you know, took him apart on this.
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Finally, someone knew but I haven't sadly heard that so far. So anyway, that information is important.
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Monogamies, when Swigert knew this was coming and he knew that Didat was going to go a particular direction, he was going to say, when you tell me and I've heard this at least three times now already and listening to Didat's materials, he'll say, what are you emphasizing when you say begotten not made?
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What is the emphasis? What does this mean? In 40 years, he says, I've never had an
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English speaking man be able to tell me what begotten means. That's what he's gonna say. And it's almost exactly the way he says it, too.
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Now, I'm sorry, in 40 years, he did have people tell him that. He's just not being honest. That's all there is to it.
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I'm not the first person that's come up with this. Christian theology has known this. And if this man wants to actually function on a meaningful, truthful basis, then he's going to study the best of the materials that's there.
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This material is available to him. He read enough Greek to be able to handle the commentaries, to be able to go into this material.
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And all he does is he talks about Anglican bishops. Well, who cares about apostate
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Anglican bishops? I could care less. Whenever he starts using all these leftist liberal apostates out there,
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I don't care anymore. It's obvious he doesn't really want to deal with the truth. He doesn't really want to deal with the issues.
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So, what he'll say is, no one's ever been... I asked a man, I was functioning as a guide for some people, and I asked a man what it means.
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And he says it means Syed. Syed. The God Syed Jesus. That's what it means.
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And he just insists that that's what monogamous means. Well, it's not what it means. It means unique, one of a kind. So, when
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Swigert read John 3 .16, he changed only begotten to unique.
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Now, I found that funny, because he tends to be King James only -ish. Is he still on the air?
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I've heard he's actually still on the air someplace. I may be wrong about that. But anyway.
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Well, D -Dot, of course, jumped on that immediately. Why are you changing the word of God? Why are you a baddest? You know, this type of stuff.
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Then other times he'll recognize, well, I understand translations, different languages, and stuff like that. Well, if you understand that, then why play the game that you're playing?
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Because you are playing a game at that point. So, on cable
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TV. Anyway. So, he'll throw this stuff out. So, Swigert put out that stuff.
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And I get the real feeling D -Dot knew. He certainly had the ability to know what monogamous actually meant.
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That it's not from genao to beget. It's from genos, meaning kind or type. So, only type, one of a kind, unique.
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But then he will over and over again say, begetting is from the lower animal sexual nature, and it's improper to ascribe that to God.
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As if, evidently, again. And this is, how many times have you folks heard me say this? If you're new to the program,
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I'm sorry. But if you've listened to the program for a long time, we have folks who have listened for a long time. How many times, when we were preparing for the
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Stafford debate, when we were talking about, every time we've discussed dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, dealing with those who deny the deity of Christ, dealing with the
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Trinity, what have we had to say over and over and over again? Everybody who comes after the issue of the deity of Christ and the
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Trinity, they almost always, especially when you're dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. But here, we see it with D -Dot as well.
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You see it with Shabir Ali. You see it with all the Muslims. They assume Unitarianism.
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They never defend Unitarianism. They assume it as the very foundation and start of all of their comments.
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And if you'll just listen carefully, you will catch them at it all the time.
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And if you'll just recognize that, and if you'll just focus upon that and challenge that, you will always be in control of the conversation.
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And 98 % of the objections to the doctrine of the Trinity, you will see are all based upon the assumption of Unitarianism and reading that into the definition of terms used and looking at various passages, etc.,
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etc. It happens all the time. And that's what happens with D -Dot as well.
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And that's what he's doing in this context that we are listening to as well. So what he's saying is, he talks about, since Jesus talks about Jesus, the
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Father, as his Father and their Father, then obviously the relationship that is described in the term
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Son of God is not meant to be taken as a unique relationship with the
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Father. In fact, he will in just a few moments, I think. And it's funny, I'm sitting here listening to this, and I was listening to this while climbing
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South Mountain, and so each of these words is associated with a certain turn of the road.
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So I think he said this a few more turns up the road, so it's a few minutes down the road. He will say only 13 times
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Jesus is called Son of God, but 83 times he's called Son of Man. And some of you are going, wait a minute, that's what
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Victor Paul Weirwill did. He took the Son of God, Son of Man thing, and he put them against each other as if they're somehow contradictory, and since it's 70 more times for Son of Man, that means something in relationship to Son of God.
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As if somehow that's how you do serious interpretation. Can you imagine the mess of things we could make with the
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Quran if we use the same type of utterly irrelevant type of argumentation?
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We could make a tremendous mess of it. Well, we only got two minutes worth in on D -Dot today, but oh well,
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I apologize for getting the times wrong on both of those. Don't know how it happens, but we'll do better this next time around.
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Thanks for listening to Dividing Line. We'll be back again next Tuesday morning, 11 o 'clock my time. Hopefully it won't be 81 degrees.
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It's all the way down to 76 already. That's good. The heat wave continues on. Thanks for listening.
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God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:35
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59:40
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:46
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N -DOT -O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.