Learning Greek

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. Oh, oh, oh, good morning, morning.

I guess it's time to do this, huh? I've been up since 110 in the morning.

You know, I was sitting on my, it's great. These are, these are the memories of life, but I was sitting in my front room this morning at 230 because I all of a sudden realized, okay, if this is happening and we're going to be, we're going to be going right now, we're going to be, you know, we're dressed, we're ready to rock and roll.

And then I realized, oh no, car seat, oh, it's still in the box.

And I've looked at this thing and it looks like it requires a PhD in engineering to install this thing.

And it does. Oh my goodness, how things have changed. It's been 20 years since, since I had a car seat in my car and there is a car seat in my car now.

I did manage to get it properly installed. I will point that out. But still, that's, it's got, it almost has like a

PDF of instructions. It's just, it's just ridiculous. And you know, it's, anyways,

I got it figured out, but I felt really dumb by the time I got done figuring it out. And maybe the fact that it was 230 in the morning had something to do with it.

I don't know. That's a, that's a possibility, but anyway, so we,

I've got the car seat and here's the phone seat to the phone. Oh, phone. Look at that. The phone cover and my microphone cover are the same, pretty much the same color anyways.

Interesting observation due to sleep deprivation anyways. If that goes off during the course of the program,

I'm going to point at Rich and he's going to play a commercial. One of those awesome commercials that you've heard for almost most of summer's life.

And we are just so on the cutting edge of this stuff, let me tell you. And then depending on what, what it, what

I am told that will, that will tell us whether we're going to be able to finish the program or whether it will be one of those short programs.

It's not a mega, it's not a jumbo, it's not a normal, it's a mini. We've got, we've got mini iPads now, iPad minis.

We might have a mini dividing line today because we're sort of sneaking this in. And Ralph says, if you call my cell phone, just see what happens, which really isn't really, that's, that's not, that's not appropriate.

But anyway, yes, sir. I've queued up a couple of samples here of, of, of commercials

I might run, like, I should have found a sound. Well, what would the sound of lightning, a straw man be?

I would say a match strike, I think that's the closest, or some type of a flame explosion type sound, you know, something like that.

That's what we should have found. And us guys, we're good at making sounds. Every one of us girls can't make sounds.

That's true. She didn't, she didn't appreciate that. That really made her upset. Yeah. So I doubt she's listening right now.

I could have some fun with this. No, no. I don't think we need that. That would confuse me.

But I'm looking for the one where she actually did a little, a little girl. My daddy will be right back.

If you can find my daddy, he'll be right back. And just play that a couple of times while I got,

I can find out what's going on on the phone. Yeah, that would be fine. That would be, I would expect, I would accept that, yes. So anyways,

I did pass out on the couch for a little while after that, but you know what couch sleep is like, it's not real sleep, especially when people are moving around and there's noises and stuff like that.

So I, I am hereby not guaranteeing or affirming the orthodoxy of anything

I say on The Dividing Line today. Hey, you know, the rookie wrote to me this morning.

I think he's excited about this. He wrote to you too? Good. Yeah. I think so.

Yeah. That's the study that I did on, look, background information here for you if you're interested in such things.

I decided to do the study that I did in Bible Studies Sunday morning, which is on sermonaudio .com,

I put on the blog. I decided to do that during the opening exercises, which at PRBC involves reading from Proverbs, right now it's actually

Ecclesiastes. Yes, sir. You have something you'd like to comment about that too? I was just, since you mentioned that,

I had forgotten, you'd asked me Sunday, yes, to put that into the iTunes rotation.

Yeah. I never got around to doing it. I forgot to do it. I will grab it from you.

It's on the blog. Okay. It's on the blog. I think we're good. I think we're good. I did a

Bible study. It's not, it's not a Bible study. It's a sermon. It really is. But it's not three points in a poem.

That's for sure. And during, during the opening exercises where we're reading from Proverbs, actually it's

Ecclesiastes. I decided to do the study that I did and went to Luke chapter 13.

So zero preparation in that sense, but not in the sense that, you know, sometimes having no preparation is a good thing.

Sometimes having no preparation is a bad thing. And in this case, obviously I had been thinking about these things all weekend and I, they just sort of coalesced as on the, on the drive down.

And I went to the material from Luke chapter 13.

And if you've listened, I'm not going to, I'm not going to reiterate it. I'm not, I'm not going to redo it now, obviously. I really wouldn't have the strength really to do so.

But here's, here's the text. And as I read this, just ask yourself the question in light of the fact that in our society now, public opinion, feelings, emotion are the most important thing.

There is nothing more important than we don't want to offend. And what might someone think?

This is not only political correctness, but this is the new style of thought.

Truth doesn't matter. Whether something will have, will have be beneficial in the long run, whether it's good for the society as a whole, all that stuff is now completely irrelevant.

It's, it's passe. It's what feels good is what makes people feel loved and warm in light of that.

Listen to what, listen to how Jesus, the real Jesus, not the, not the guy with the long hair that looks like he's from Norway carrying the, the lamb,

Jesus, but the real Jesus of history. Listen to what he said.

Luke chapter 13, verse one, now on the same occasion, there were some present who reported to him about the

Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, do you suppose these

Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?

I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Now you have two horrible events here. One might be called a tragedy, and I don't consider the massacre in Newtown a tragedy.

A tragedy is, well, when the tower in Siloam fell and killed 18 people.

Now, I don't know if it was what was being constructed or if it was just bad construction or a windstorm or, you know,

I, I don't know. We might know the answer to that, but I call that a tragedy in the sense that it was not the direct result of the malice of men.

But what Herod did in mixing the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices, that's just that's just human evil.

And I don't think the term tragedy accurately describes that. But my point was, my point was,

Jesus does not respond the way that many in churches today are saying we should respond because, well, it's what our society expects.

I mean, I've been hearing people saying, and look,

I realize some everybody's politicizing everything. And primarily,

I think, in one side, but be it as it may, there's a lot of politicalization going on. But I've heard a lot of people saying, well, we shouldn't be talking about abortion and we shouldn't be talking about this or the other thing.

We should just be weeping with those who weep. There's a time to weep and there's a time to laugh and a time for debate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jesus took the, quote, unquote, opportunity of these, quote, unquote, tragedies.

And I know there's such a thing as an unquote. Don't worry about to do what to say.

And unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.

There's nothing here about how bad Herod was. There's nothing about, you know, natural disasters or needing to improve on building standards or any of those things.

Jesus addresses the fact that there was a horrible misunderstanding on the part of people that if God's judgment fell upon you, that meant that you were a sinner.

And if it didn't, then you weren't. And Jesus says, nope, God's judgment could fall on any one of you at any time because you are all sinners and you all need to repent.

And I believe it was Thabiti Anyabwili. I think it was Thabiti. It might not have been.

But a couple of years ago, I saw a video clip and I'm pretty sure it was

Thabiti talking about being on a university campus and someone raising the question of why do bad things happen to good people?

And he said, I won't discuss that with you because you're starting at the wrong place. There are no good people. We need to start at the right place.

And that is, why does anything good ever happen to bad people?

Why does anything good ever happen to bad people? And basically, one of the issues that I raised in the

Bible study slash sermon slash, I don't know, elder talking to his people because they're probably be talking to other people over the course of the next couple of weeks about this issue.

And therefore, we need to think about it and have some guidance, whatever that that's a very long title.

It's almost a Puritan title there, actually, when you think about it. But what

I raised was the fact that we really, really, really in our heart of hearts don't believe what we say we believe about the sinfulness of man and the justice and holiness of God.

We talk about innocent children. There is no such thing.

Biblically, there is no such thing. Read Romans five. There isn't.

We're all the fallen sons and daughters of Adam. We all fell in him. And if you don't like the federal representation of Adam, then you probably shouldn't like the federal representation of Jesus as your head in righteousness and salvation, eternal life, either.

We don't like it. We don't think that way. It was all about.

How we need to think as Christians, because if we're not thinking clearly about it, then we're as my church history professor so well said, and as I have repeated so many times on this program, what is a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.

And what is unclear in your thought will be much more unclear in the thought of the person to whom you are speaking.

If you seek to attempt to really address this issue in our culture today, what we see in our sick secular culture.

Our people who have been cut free from the moorings of their recognition that they are creating the image of God and therefore that there is transcendent value to human life and that therefore evil really is evil.

And what we should do is what is best for the large majority of people. Instead, what you've got are knee jerk reactions of people saying we've got to do something, even if the something we do is a useless and B will result in more deaths in the long run.

But see, that's the knee jerk reaction. That's what happens when law and civilization no longer have a divine foundation.

And that's what we're staring at. That's what we're going to be dealing with. So that little 42 minute sermon slash whatever.

Over the past 48 hours is the most downloaded thing on all of sermon audio dot com. Don't know how that happened yesterday.

Johnny Mac was number one. Yeah, so it's getting around.

I hope that it's useful to folks. I've had a few people comment on it. It's not like it's something people are going to pop in a jail going, wow, just really love that because it's, you know, tough subject, not an enjoyable subject, but I felt like I needed to address it.

So that's what we did. And so that's available on the blog. And I would sort of challenge you to think through what

I what I said there. And hopefully it will be of some assistance. It's an interesting passage.

Luke chapter 13. The Jesus of that text is not a politically correct

Jesus. Yes, sir. I just looked. You are at 2 ,120 downloads. And the closest one to you is

Phil Johnson at 710. Well, so it's it's screaming. Well, and I'm sure that Phil's presentation is an excellent presentation to look at as well.

Finally heard from Phil. It was good to hear from Phil. We have missed Phil. Phil is a great guy, and I'm glad to have heard from him.

All right. Well, I have something queued up to go back to and probably be safest for me.

But John in Fredericksburg has a question that hopefully I can answer fairly quickly. And hello,

John. Hi. How you doing? Pretty good. I have a question. I've heard about the different cases in Greek and I'm starting to learn

Greek. And I have a PDF for a book by Dan Wallace that talks about differences in the eight case versus the five case

Greek. And it says you can come up with a different interpretation based on whether you're using five case or eight case.

And so I guess my question was, how wide do the differences in interpretation get?

I mean, does any doctrinal differences result in one versus the other? You'd have to quote

Dan on that because that doesn't make much sense to me. Oh, OK. In the sense that the only difference between five and eight case is that when you use an eight case system, you're importing more study of syntax into first year than if you use a five case.

Because all it is, is making a further step, which

I was taught the eight case initially. Then when I started using mounts as the text that I taught from, then went to the five.

But all you're doing is taking an extra step that's normally second year syntax stuff and recognizing the various syntactical categories under the dative of locative instrumental and under the genitive of the ablative.

So I don't see how that would impact anything because once you get into second year topics where you're doing syntactical categories, you're looking at the 12 different kinds of genitives or really more than that, depending on which grammar you're looking at.

I'm not sure how many Dan has, but the grammar I had had 12 different kinds of genitives.

And then you've got five to seven different kinds of ablatives. Well, if you have a five case, you're just going to learn those all as different kinds of genitives.

And all you're doing is just making that slight syntactical or study part of first year rather than second year.

I don't understand how it could result in a difference in interpretation any more than...

Well, let me illustrate. I remember very, very clearly many, many moons ago when

Skinny had big glasses and lots of hair, I was teaching an adult

Bible study class at a large Southern Baptist church. And one of the folks who likewise taught there was a man by the name of Dr.

J. Niles Puckett. Dr. Puckett studied under Dr. William Hersey Davis, who stayed under Dr.

A .T. Robertson. Dr. Puckett was an elderly man, and he had taught Greek at Grand Canyon College since the 1950s, maybe 1949 when it was founded,

I don't remember. Anyway, a revered man and obviously one who had taught

Greek for decades. I, on the other hand, was, I believe at the time, a third year

Greek student. And we happened to encounter each other in the hallway during Sunday school after we had taught our lessons.

And Dr. Puckett did me a huge honor by approaching me and asking me the question.

He said, let me ask you a question. He was from Mississippi and he had a very thick

Southern drawl. And he says, let me ask you, he says, how do you understand

Paul's statement that God was en

Cristo, reconciling the world unto himself? How do you understand en

Cristo? And I said, well, I would understand that primarily as communicating the means.

You wouldn't take it as a locative of place? I said, no, no,

I wouldn't. I would take it as means, most definitely. I don't think that Paul's point is that is the spatial location of God in Jesus.

And I've heard Christians who've used it that way. God was in Christ. That means, you know, no, God was by means of Christ reconciling the world to himself.

He says, that's exactly how I understand it. Thank you very much. And he did me great, great, great honor by even knowing who

I was that he would ask a Greek syntactical question in the hallway during Sunday school. But the point is, how you answer that would, you know, you might talk about a locative of means or a locative of place, or you could just do that under the dative.

So once you're in second year, I can't see how that's relevant to the interpretation. I mean, you've got the same categories, whether you're breaking them down to locative of means or locative of sphere or et cetera, et cetera, or using dative and then breaking those down to locative and instrumental categories or something like that.

I don't see how that's, I don't see how that would actually impact interpretation.

The fact that I've taught both five and eight case, and it hasn't impacted interpretation for me,

I don't follow that part. Hmm. Yeah, well, what he says is that in the five case system, occasionally a particular word may have more than one function.

And then he goes to Mark 1 -8 to show a difference. That says on the eight case system, let me see how well my

Greek pronunciation, one must see who to tie as either instrumental or locative, but not both.

But in the five case system is possible to see who to tie as both the means and the sphere, which

John carried out his baptism. Um, so I, well,

I would disagree that, that many of the conversations that I recall with pleasant fondness in second, third through seventh year

Greek for me anyways, um, was on that very issue. Do I take that?

Uh, it was, we were never taught that, uh, because we had these cases that that means that you could not, if you saw the possibility of a instrumental, that you also couldn't see the possibility of a locative.

So I, I suppose, I suppose what Dan might be saying is it's natural for us to think that way.

It's natural for, see, and this is, this is true. And I hope those who are studying Greek aren't, aren't about to fall asleep here.

I'll, I'll try to be brief, but we do have to recognize that very frequently we need to realize the

Greek speaking person wasn't sitting there going, well, I have categories of dative, locative, instrumental, which am

I going to use? They're not thinking that way any more than you and I are when we use the English language.

We're not thinking in those categories. And so there is a danger. And this is probably, I know

Dan well enough personally that this is probably what he's referring to, is that when we make those divisions that we then artificially enforce them upon our interpretation of the text.

And so the problem is from our perspective. And if you're not taught to, to, if you're not taught well, and I was taught very well, then yeah, that, that could happen.

But we were always taught that just because you see the appropriateness of a, a locative syntactical sphere for a term, you also need to look at the possibility of the, of the instrumental or something along those lines as well.

So we wouldn't fall into that type of a trap that he's, he's referring to there. Cause he's right.

The Greek speaker wouldn't be functioning in the way that the English interpreter of the

Greek is. And yeah, the better you are at Greek, the more you think like them rather than forcing your categories upon, upon the language.

So, yeah. Okay. That really helps. Okay. All right. Well, press on with your studies and Lord bless you.

All right. All right. That's after, after a few hours of sleep is great to go back to your old days teaching

Greek. I miss that. I really miss that. I wish I had the opportunity to do it again. But now

I'm seeing folks that I taught Greek and that is, I gotta tell you one of the most encouraging things in my life.

And I turned 50 yesterday, so now I can reminisce anytime I want to. Um, is to see, um,

I hope, I hope someone's not listening. Cause I've got, I've got Evan May in Twitter saying, ah, the waiting, we were in label labor for 30 plus hours.

And then, uh, we now, uh, Deb Martin just said, uh, tell her to hang in there. Same thing happened to me too.

The waiting is the worst. Yeah. Okay. We know, we know. Um, it's not, it's not easy on grandma and grandpa either.

Let me tell you, you're just on pins and needles. But you know, we're, we already went through all this once.

So, um, it's, I guess we're supposed to, well, no, just being parents. Not we, I went through it twice, but once Kelly got to it, man, she just, that was, that was it.

She decided that we're gonna have a baby, gonna have a baby. And that's, there was no stopping and starting. It was just, whoo, here we go.

So anyways, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. What was, what, what was that?

One ping only Vasili. Let's see if that, if that had happened, uh, in, uh,

Hunt for Red October, there would have been nuclear war. So you're lucky that you weren't on that submarine and that you're not a

Scottish Russian. Anyhow, what was I saying? It's always dangerous to do this on a couple hours worth of sleep.

It is always very encouraging to, uh, uh, find out that some of my former students, uh, are now doing for others what

I did for them. So I think of this, I had, there was this one Greek class

I had at Golden Gate back around, uh, when was it? It was, it was, I don't know, late nineties.

And, um, I just remember, uh, toward the end of the first semester, uh,

I mentioned to them, you know, they, they're going to have to turn in this final. And, uh,

I said, now, you know, I'm not saying that this has anything that I would could ever be bought off by a student, but I am only human.

And I love chocolate oranges. And if I have many chocolate oranges, then

I will be in a good mood and grading your Greek finals. But if I have few chocolate oranges, I won't be in as good a mood.

I don't know how many chocolate oranges I ended up with, but I ended up with some serious number of chocolate oranges.

Let's just put it that way. And it was just a, sometimes you just have certain classes that you remember.

Um, and, uh, this group had some really, really interesting, interesting people in it.

And what has happened is one of the guys who, I don't know,

I, uh, had a lot of interesting interactions with.

He was, he was the guy who struggled a lot and, and made it public that he was, uh, I think he just got his

PhD in New Testament, uh, at a well -known seminary. And I'm the one that got him through Greek.

And man, that feels good. That really, really feels good. It feels good. This, you know, I'm seeing the next generation literally in my own life, but there's the next generation in ministry as well.

So that's a, that's a, that's a real exciting thing to me. Anyhow, I better get back to something here that, uh,

I can talk about and have some form where I'm just gonna keep meandering about the landscape, talking about this, that or the other thing.

Now Nana and Channel is talking about, uh, chocolate covered orange sticks are my favorite candy.

And I actually managed to kick someone out of Channel. For mocking the chocolate oranges.

Do you know they have, they have milk chocolate oranges, they have dark chocolate oranges, and then they have the absolutely should be illegal white chocolate oranges.

And, um, wow. Wow. That's just, that's why

I never lose weight in December because that's when they're available. And then come January, we get serious again and get back to it.

And that's, of course, that's when it starts warming up here again in Phoenix anyways, because we, um, well, actually we scheduled winter in between January 1st and 10th.

And, uh, then we, we get to spring after that. And that's just sort of how it, how it works.

Um, last week, sometime, whenever it was, was it last week? Yeah. Last week, last

Thursday, I believe. Were we here Thursday? Yeah, I think we were here Thursday. Good. All right. That's, that's good to know.

Um, we started looking at some of these statements that Sammy Zittati made. And, um, see

Vicky Ann likes dark chocolate oranges too. And I had a, I had a, I had a, I think possibly that, uh, that, uh,

Clementine's coming because, uh, Summer and Kelly together cooked, um, baked me a birthday cake yesterday, but they used

Vicky Ann's recipe and it turned out awesome. Absolutely awesome.

So I think that's probably why we're having a baby today is because the, the cake turned out so well yesterday.

Maybe, um, chocolate covered bacon. Now that's disgusting.

That is, that's just, yeah, no, no. Yeah. Oh, oh, Mrs. Dave Hewitt is right.

Chocolate is good unless on insects or coconut. I agree. I agree.

I cannot stand coconut, even though, uh, Mrs. Dave Hewitt misspelled coconut.

But anyway, I cannot stand, I hate biting into this time of year.

You've got those beautiful chocolates on the plate or something. You bite into it and it's got coconut in it. And I'm trying to find some place to throw it out without looking like a complete idiot.

What? I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to describe this dividing line. Um, the ramblings of a, uh, sleepless grandpa.

That's right. I just skip it. Just, just, just say you just have to listen to it to understand this.

That's the best way to put it. You can, you know, you wrote down what the caller was about the case system.

And there was an introduction to the, to the, uh, sermon audio thing. And now I'm going to get back to Sammy's Autry. Eventually it just, it's just, it's just taking

Satati, whatever his name is. We're, we're good there anyways. Um, now somebody on Twitter is asking about mint chocolate oranges.

That would be good. I'll have to admit a mint chocolate orange would be really good. I should stop looking at Twitter and the channel, shouldn't

I? Because right now I have a really bad case of ADD. So which is better, the five case or the eight case chocolate orange?

That's, that's how I'm going to describe this. It's just all muddled together. And, uh, you see, this is the one difference between me.

Well, there's many differences, many differences between me and R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper.

You would never hear them doing this. They're, they're, they're handlers. Aren't you supposed to be my handler? Aren't you supposed to keep me from doing things like this?

Isn't that your job? I just let you go and we see what happens. Uh, yeah.

Handling you is essentially the five minutes before the show I ask you. So what are we going to talk about today?

The answer is religious stuff. Religious stuff. Yeah. Are we going to take calls? Maybe. Maybe. You never know.

That's it. There are times, honestly, that I, uh, that I walk in here with a tremendous sense of purpose.

But most of the time, nah, not really. Uh, not really. No, I did have these queued up.

So I, I can't say that completely, but I, I really do need to turn, turn this thing off.

I got to turn the, uh, the channel off or something. Cause every time I look over there, there's something else. Turretinfan's trying to get me.

He's now using color, uh, except he's miss misspelling Zatati. So that's really not good either.

I can't, Vicki, and I can't be on a baby girl high yet because I haven't had a chance to hold her yet. But, you know, putting the car seat in the car, that's getting close.

I mean, once you get to that point, you're, you're there, you're pretty much there. And you have to put a 45 degree angle and all this.

So is the car seat actually locked into the car now? It is locked in. Um, and I found the key to getting the thingy through it was you got to be willing to lift all the frou -frou padding stuff up.

So you really find the frame so you can get it through the right channel and get it locked down. Right. And then it just slips back on.

And, and it's good that that's easy to remove cause that's going to get spit up on so many times.

It's not funny anyways. Oh yes. The memories are coming back.

My daughter's 23. It's been a while since we, you know, you did stuff like this, you know, and the, uh, the, the doula kept asking my wife, uh, do you remember when this happened?

And, and, and did this happen to you? And my poor Kelly's sitting there going, nope, don't remember any of that at all.

It's like, it's like, uh, nope. Don't remember that. Nope. Uh -uh. Yeah. So no, now he's misspelled

Zatari the wrong way. It's Z -A -T -A -A -R -I. That's, that's, it's Zatari.

We should play some. Oh yeah. Okay. Why don't we do that? I've got queued up.

It says start here. I mean, that's about as, and you have, you have the thing ready to go.

All right. That's the only way we're getting anywhere is if I hit this button and get started and stop looking at the channel and just talking with folks.

So back to Sammy. You know, you're the Jews. You say you're better than us in following God.

So shouldn't you judge your book? And according to Jesus, remember my opening, even he said, you made the book of God.

So the Quran is even using rhetorical device here when it's saying judge by your book. It's to show under hypocrisy that they're not even judging by their own books.

So they shouldn't even be trying to pretend to be all righteous. Pretending to be all righteous.

Well, I, uh, again, uh, if, since we are now having to shift gears here in case you didn't listen on Thursday, this is all about a text that we have gone through many times before.

In fact, I am proud to say that my audience probably knows more about Surah five, 43rd, four through 47 than the vast majority of the

Islamic community does because we have gone through it so many times before.

But the fact of the matter is that's not what Surah five is talking about. There's nothing here about hypocrisy and all the rest of this stuff and saying that you're pretending to be all righteous.

They have the Torah and they have the NGO and they are to judge by what is there found there in and David would had done an excellent job and laying out the

Muslim quandary. And this is what we finished the program with last time was, I really wonder why we have yet to see a meaningful exegetical

Hadith based companion based early tough seer based whatever interpretation of Surah five, 44 through 48 that can rehabilitate the modern

Muslim apologetic that well known to the gospel had been corrupted by then. And that's when they run off and start quoting various Gnostic gurus from, you know, that are publishing books on Amazon to make money right now because, well, the gospel has been destroyed.

Well, that's not what Surah five, 47 says. Let the people of the gospel judge by what

Allah has revealed there in and whoever does not judge what Allah has revealed, then it is those who are the defiantly disobedient.

Those words, if they had any meaning in, let's say, approximately 630

A .D., they meant one thing and that is the gospel still existed.

And we know what the gospel looked like in 630. We know what it was contained in.

It was contained in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which the writer of the Quran never acknowledges, never shows any knowledge of.

You're exactly right. He doesn't because the writer of the Quran was ignorant. Now, the

Muslim goes, that's impossible because God wrote the Quran. Therefore, there must be something other.

There must be some other explanation. But is that anachronistic way of thought that catches the

Muslim apologist and turns this text on its head? And this isn't a response to what

David said, as I think David will point out as soon as he gets to it. And last but not least, we have a narration from a companion of the prophet narrated by Ibn Abbas, who quoted

Omar. And what did he say? He said, why do you go to the Jews and Christians? Why do you go to their book when it has been revealed that their book has been corrupted and changed?

Now, it's interesting. There are differing views amongst the companions and the early sources on this subject.

But I would just point out, OK, saying Ibn Abbas is quoting from Omar, pretty strong hadith chain.

Why isn't there anything from Muhammad? Why isn't there anything from Muhammad?

I would think, let's put this way, let's put the shoe on the proverbial other foot for just a moment.

Why is it that the emphasis of modern

Islamic apologists is not the emphasis of argumentation of those early companions?

Or even more so, and that's an area that I'm doing some work in and hope to do much more work in the future, is those early encounters between Christians and Muslims.

But let's ask it this way. If the Quran is supposed to be the final revelation, then why is it that the emphasis, the apologetic emphasis of the

Quran against Christianity is a theological one, say not three, rather than a, what it is with every

Muslim you talk to, your scriptures have been corrupted, your scriptures have been corrupted. Even in places like Surah 2 that these folks run to, 79, places like that, those are ambiguous texts as to who's being spoken of.

You look at the context, it's talking about unlearned people. It's not talking about the Christian monks or the

Jewish rabbis or things like that. And even then, there were people who interpreted those words as referring to people who were writing

Jewish traditions and calling them authoritative when they weren't actually a part of the scripture and all that kind of stuff.

It just seems to me that for most Muslim apologists, there would have to be some soul searching to answer the question, why is it that the apologetic of the

Quran is not my apologetic? Now, I think, personally, that my apologetic is the apologetic of the

New Testament. I am not saying that you have to limit yourself only to the questions that were addressed, say, by the apostles, because the apostles never addressed partial birth abortion or genetic manipulation of fetuses.

I think that the application of the worldview of the apostles and their methodology is what we should do.

That's been one of my primary criticisms of a large portion of Christian apologetics,

William Lane Craig and others, is I don't think that the apostles ever argued for the greater probability of the existence of a god.

I have always argued that they predicated the entirety of their presentation on the existence of the one true

God. And so, I think I'm being consistent here in asking my

Muslim apologist friends, those who would even take the time to consider what I'm saying, and I will have to admit,

I only know less than one hand's worth of fingers representing the number of Muslim apologists that I actually think might take the time to consider what

I'm saying. The majority of the men that I have engaged in this subject,

I just don't think would even hear what I'm saying. A couple would.

And so, it's for them that I ask, why is it that your apologetic is so fundamentally different than that of the

Qur 'an? Not just in what you're addressing, but if the Qur 'an is seeking to communicate the concept of the corruption of the text of the scriptures, wouldn't there be a much clearer way to do it than they did?

Than is found, I'm sorry, than is found in the Qur 'an? I really, really think that there would be.

But that's what we have here. So, one of the companions of the prophet is saying their book has been corrupted and changed.

Their book, and I'm referring to the original one, which the Qur 'an is referring to. And yes, nobody can truly corrupt

God's official word. What you can do is you can make your own copy and say, this is from God.

But you can't really corrupt the original work. You can simply plagiarize and make your own books up.

And guess what? People were doing that in early Christianity. It's a fact. In the first three centuries, people would write their own gospel and say, yeah, this is from God.

Now, you know what the irony here is? And it's strange, because I listened to this while rowing.

And so, all of this is bringing back nothing but my back porch. Instead of, oh,

I was at this point, but no, I was just on my back porch. Anyway, that is the problem with that. The irony in listening to this is

Sammy is right that there are people who, quote unquote, made up their own gospels.

You've got the gospel of Thomas, and you have the infancy gospel of Thomas, and you have the gospel of the

Ebionites, and you have the Egyptian gospel. And wow, if you believe certain ladies from Harvard, we even have the gospel of Jesus's wife, which, of course, we don't.

But be that as it may, you've got all these types of things.

And so, doesn't that prove his point? Yeah, some of you are sitting there going, not really.

I'm not sure Sammy wants to go there. You know why? Because the

Quran quotes from a bunch of those gospels. It's reliant upon a bunch of those gospels.

And I point that out rather fully in that upcoming book, which

I'm probably not going to get much work done on today, doing the indexing at all. Sorry, Bethany House, but it's okay, because I think they expected that.

But anyway, I go into that and point out that not only are various Jewish sources, cited as factual within the text of the

Quran, but a number of, quote unquote, Christian and Gnostic influenced sources are quoted as containing historical realities, according to the author of the

Quran. In fact, I think you could argue rather successfully that the author of the

Quran does not show any discernment, any discernment whatsoever in the use of historical sources that have come down to him.

None. Sure, he makes. In fact, let me make a further statement for my

Muslim friends to cogitate upon. I would say, I would say that when it comes to the

New Testament, Muhammad's knowledge of the

Gnostic Gospels is significantly better than his knowledge of the canonical

Gospels. And in fact, I can see almost no evidence that the author of the

Quran has any knowledge of 70 % of the text of the

New Testament that is anything outside of the Gospel stories themselves. Nor do I see any evidence that the author of the

Quran recognized the difference between Gospel, historical, epistles, pastoral epistles, apocalypse, etc.

That is beyond the level of the knowledge of the author of the Quran. Now, he knows more about the

Old Testament because he's had much more interaction with the Hebrew Bible of the Jewish people.

And you'll notice there are all sorts of stories, cleaned up stories, but all sorts of stories told from the

Old Testament in the Quran. Not the New. Not the

New. Clearly, the author of the Quran was significantly more comfortable with the stories he had heard from the

Jews. I was going to say then, but I can't say then. It doesn't seem like he heard much in regards to the content of the

New Testament. Or think with me. What have

I suggested many times before? I have suggested that the knowledge of the author of the Quran comes from having heard stories told around campfires while on caravan at an oasis.

The caravan that young Mohammed is in meets a caravan coming from a

Christian nation, and so there are Christians in the caravan, and so conversations take place. And so he hears about, well, he certainly knows legendary material and stuff like that, but he also, he hears about the stories of the

Jews. But what would the stories of the

Christians be? Because outside of Acts and stuff about Paul and the

Gospels, so stories about Jesus raising the dead and things like that, the stories that the

Quran talks about are not the didactic theological teaching materials of either the

Old or New Testament. The author of the Quran doesn't have a clue what

Paul said to the Corinthians or the Ephesians or the Philippians or anything like it. He probably had no idea there was anything in there other than what he assumed to be monotheism, some kind of Unitarian monotheism.

But what, interestingly enough, does end up in the Quran are the stories that would be the most often told around the campfire.

You're not going to have too many conversations around the campfire about Paul's writing to the church at Corinth to collect the monies for the saints because of the famine in Jerusalem.

Right? I mean, that's just, that's not going to be something that's there. But stories about Joseph and David and Daniel in the lion's den or stuff like that, that's the kind of stuff that gets repeated around a campfire.

And so it just strikes me that the

Quran represents its author well. And its author was a man named

Muhammad who had the average understanding of a person who was raised in Mecca concerning the contents of both the

Old and New Testaments. But if you accept that, what that means is, well, that means the

Quran is not a divine document. Unless you want to come up with some new concept of inspiration, some new kind of, you know, the

Wahi, how something can be Natsal, but it can be done through an ignorant man who is still representing his own ignorances.

But see, all of that stuff, Orthodox Sunni Islam abandoned a long time ago when it was finally decided, hundreds of years after the event, but finally decided with orthodoxy, the stamp of orthodoxy, that the

Quran was eternal. It's as eternal as the law himself. Once you go there, all the possibilities of thinking about Muhammad's knowledge, experiences, cultural context, all that stuff, out the window, you just can't go there.

You cannot even think about it. So I think that's reflected in this.

Now, this is weird. I've just been, again, distracted by Twitter.

I saw a shiny object, but it's our friend Milwaukee Truth. And Milwaukee Truth just said, 12 books for my birthday, all in all, best

Christmas ever. And so does that mean that Milwaukee Truth and I share a birthday?

Or that he, what's birthday and Christmas? I didn't get that. But I think

I do recall that we might have a birthday close to one another. So we should say happy birthday to Milwaukee Truth, because he is a neat guy.

I mean, being from Milwaukee and all, but he's still a neat guy. So if you had a birthday recently there,

Milwaukee Truth, who sometimes calls himself London Truth and pretends he lives in London, and I have run into him in London.

It just so happens every time I have run into him, has been in London. So maybe there's something to that thing.

I don't know. But I thought for certain he was from Milwaukee. I've gotten lost again, haven't

I? Yeah. Do I need to, can you just have a flare? I'm just really glad you didn't get lost on all those tweets about the raspberry chocolate.

I saw that. For Valentine's Day. I saw that. But I don't know.

I saw shiny objects of myself, and so he went there. Oh, now

Turretinfan has moderated the channel again. It wasn't the channel that distracted me. Turretinfan cannot moderate

Twitter. He can moderate the channel and try to stop people from there doing that, but he can't.

Oh, did you notice my shirt today? It's a very nice, thick, red and green flannel plaid shirt.

But check this out. It's got grandpa patches. On the elbows. Oh my gosh.

I don't think I've seen elbow patches on a shirt or a jacket in 30, 40 years.

Well, that's why it's a grandpa shirt. Because that's what grandpas...

I'm not really sure why. Does that mean we always sit on our elbows? I'm not sure. But I like it.

I think it's great. Turretinfan just asked, are you really challenging me to moderate

Twitter? I don't even think Turretinfan could pull that one off.

All right, let's listen a little bit more to Sammy before we get out of here. So it's very easy to make your own book and then say that's from God.

And no, no, no, Sammy, it's not easy to do that. In fact, it's next to impossible to do that.

Let me give you a good example of something that you would recognize. The Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon. Yeah, there's about 14 million people now that think that's a divine revelation.

But there are a lot more people who go, I was clearly written in around 1820, eight -ish, nine -ish, somewhere in New York because it's historically ridiculous.

And it represents all sorts of the key issues of the day. And it represents the influence of the magical world view and stuff getting slippery in the ground.

Some of you are going, what are you talking about? Well, you haven't read the Book of Mormon recently, have you? No, it's very difficult.

When you look at the number of books that have been written by people who tried to make the claim that they were from God, how many of them have ever ended up with more than, come up with an arbitrary number here, a hundred thousand people that believe it.

Or go back in history and you can make the number smaller if you want because there are fewer people. But there have been all sorts of books that people have written.

Very few have ever been accepted as scripture. Very few. So the reality is, this is why, this kind of apologetic is why

Muslim apologists have to keep trying to trot out the Gospel of Thomas and all the rest of it.

That's why we hear Adnan Rashid, bang away on the Gospel of Thomas and the Gnostics and all the rest of this stuff is because this kind of apologetic leads to that.

But it's a dead end. Guys, you got to give it up. You got to recognize your own text says that the

Gospel and the Torah existed in the days of Muhammad. That's what your own text says.

Without any question whatsoever, you got to deal with it and start developing an apologetic that takes that seriously.

Now it's over 48 hours till the next dividing line. So I don't think, but you never know.

I don't think we're gonna have any problem with getting that one in. And maybe I'll have gotten a little more sleep.

But then again, maybe not. So this may be the norm for the dividing line for the future.

Stream of Consciousness dividing lines on the dividing line for the expectant future.

Hey, anyways, we'll see you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. God bless. We must contend for the faith of fathers fought for.

We need a new Reformation day. It's a

Saturday time. Truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm. Don't you lift up your voice.

Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise. I stand up for the truth.

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