November 19, 2018 Show with David Wood on “Recent Islamic Acts of Terror Examined”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour. And we hope to hear from you, the listener with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnton your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Monday on this 19th day of November 2018 and I am thanking the

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Lord that my cold has gotten better enough for me to conduct today's interview with my friend

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David Wood. I have been suffering from a really bad cold the last three days and would have been unable to conduct an audible interview prior to today.

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So thankfully today was the first program of the week where I am feeling strong enough and well enough and healthy enough to do this.

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But my friend David Wood, at one time at least, he was the most interviewed person on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when

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I had the program broadcasting out of New York on WNYG and WGBB and David would always make it a point to drive from New York City to Long Island to conduct the interviews right in the studio and it was always a joy.

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And he is a former atheist who is now a Christian apologist, a conference speaker and a debater and the founder of acts17 .net

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and answeringmuslims .com and today we are going to be addressing recent Islamic acts of terror examined and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, David Wood.

02:45

Hey, how's it going Chris? It's going great and why don't you tell our listeners, before we go into the theme at hand, a little bit about acts17 .net

02:54

and answeringmuslims .com. Well, as you mentioned,

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I was a former atheist. I grew up, don't recall ever believing in God when

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I was growing up and eventually I became a Christian when I was 20 years old and when

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I found out that there are all kinds of good reasons to believe in God and to believe in Jesus, I was kind of a little upset that no one had told me this before, that this wasn't common knowledge and so I kind of got interested in apologetics mainly to help other people who are, you know, growing up to learn things that I didn't learn while I was growing up.

03:41

As far as Islam, as many of your listeners know or have heard before, in college

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I was best friends with a Muslim until I started studying Islam mainly just because my best friend was a

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Muslim and that's how I got interested in Islam and eventually he became a Christian and once he was a

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Christian I actually thought, hey, cool, I'm done with Islam and it didn't turn out that way. Muslims started challenging both of us to debate and somewhere along the way

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I started thinking, you know, I'm more interested in atheism, I'm more interested in responding to the objections of atheists but there are tons of Christian apologists who are already doing that and there are comparatively very few

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Christians who deal with Islam even though Muslims make up more than a fifth of the world's population so I thought, hey,

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I better keep on dealing with Islam because someone needs to do it and, you know, just so everyone knows, if we eventually have a lot of Christian apologists dealing with Islam, I'm going to be happy to go do something else, something

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I'm more interested in but right now, right now, there aren't enough people dealing with it so I'm going to keep dealing with Islam for a while.

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Praise God and if anybody is wondering that Muslim who David was used by the Lord to lead to Christ was indeed

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Nabeel Qureshi who is now in eternity with that very same Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ.

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Let us move on to the first act of terror that is quite disturbing especially because it involves a very vital and close ally of the

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United States, Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi. Am I pronouncing that right, by the way?

05:28

Yeah, I think that's the one I've heard most. I've also heard people say Khashoggi and Khashoggi so I'm not exactly sure but yeah, the most common one is

05:36

Khashoggi. And he was murdered and dismembered in the

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Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey, am I correct? Yeah. And what date was that, did that occur?

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I believe the 2nd of October, beginning of October, I think, yeah, 2nd of October. Well, tell us something about Jamal Khashoggi because liberals seem to be adopting him,

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I don't know if they all are, but many of them seem to be adopting him as a moderate to liberal

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Muslim, that he was for freedom of speech and so on. But I've also heard from sources like Rush Limbaugh that Jamal Khashoggi was himself a militant

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Muslim, he was no friend of the free republic that we enjoy to live in.

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So tell us about the truth that you know of about this man, about what kind of Islamic faith he adhered to, etc.

06:50

I would tend to lean a little more towards the perspective of the liberals on this one.

06:59

He was certainly moderate by the standards of Saudi Arabia.

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In other words, he was known for, and one of the reasons he had to leave Saudi Arabia was that he was a critic of the

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Saudi government, he was a critic of Saudi Arabia embracing

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Salafi Islam. So Salafi Islam is sort of the view that you get back to the first three generations of Islam.

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If what you're doing or what you're practicing or your beliefs don't line up with the beliefs of those first three generations of Muslims, you're an innovator and you're going to be in all kinds of trouble.

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So he was a known critic of that sort of Islam and the

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Saudi government's arrests and punishments of people who are attempting to disagree with the government or disagree with the policies of Saudi Arabia.

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And so he was certainly moderate by the standards of Saudi Arabia. Now, that doesn't mean that he is, you know, moderate by the standards of Western nations, but some of the attempts to paint him as kind of a radical

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Muslim have been done by, you know, pointing out that he used to do interviews with Osama bin

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Laden and was known for traveling in those circles and doing interviews and so on. But the problem there with pinning him with that was he was critical of Osama bin

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Laden, specifically when bin Laden began turning towards more violent means. And I think people tend to forget that back in the day, back before the late 90s,

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Osama bin Laden was known as a kind of freedom fighter against the Soviet Union, right? So we thought of bin

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Laden as the guy who's leading Muslims in Afghanistan against the invasion of the

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Soviet Union. We funded them, our nation funded their military. Yeah, so and so yeah, back then it was okay that, you know, we want to stop the spread of the

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Soviets. And so if Muslims are on the border there, then you have to support, you know, people like Osama bin

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Laden, who are standing in the way. And so that's how people like bin

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Laden were known back in the day. This is before 9 -11. And Khashoggi was critical of bin

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Laden after the end of the 90s when bin Laden started, you know, turning more and more towards terrorist attacks.

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And so he was critical of that sort of thing. So again, my overall perspective would be, you know, it took a lot of courage for him and put his life at risk and ultimately got him killed to be standing against the

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Saudi government in the on a variety of topics.

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So we're, you know, I would be critical of those. And again, he wouldn't be, you know, a full fledged, a full fledged westerner in his views.

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But I think he was, I don't, I don't like the idea of sort of putting him in the camp of Osama bin

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Laden, because he used to kind of travel in that circle when he was when he was a reporter. And he was not just a different kind of Islamic extremist, for lack of a better term.

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I mean, as you know, better than I do. You can have all kinds of Muslims who even are at war with each other, who even murder each other, who commit acts of terror against each other.

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But it's not because necessarily one is liberal, and one is and one is more faithful to the

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Quran, they have different interpretations of the Quran, and so on and leads to the conflicts that they have.

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So this, you're saying that this is not really an example of that where you just have a different kind of militant, right wing

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Muslim who just differed on certain nuances of Islamic theology.

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I think you could say during in his 20s, when he was in his 20s, where he seemed to be supporting, well, he was supporting, you know, the more

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Muslim Brotherhood type of Islam, but he did seem to genuinely become more and more liberal in his views, as he as he aged.

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So by the time he gets to his 40s, he, you know, you could say, hey, he's trying to trick people or something like that.

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But he doesn't seem to agree with some of the views that he held when he was younger.

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So if we're going to say, you know, hey, this guy was a radical because of these things, you know, he did in his 20s.

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And we should be looking towards more recent years to see what positions he had settled on. I'm not aware of him supporting any genuinely radical groups very recently.

12:08

Well, if you could give us a summary of that account, that horrific account of him being murdered and dismembered at the

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Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey, and give us all the updates that you have.

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And let us know the difference between those that are theories, and those that are now established facts.

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Well, the, so what was originally, so when it when it started coming out that, that he was dead, at first, the, the

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Saudi government was saying, no, this, this didn't happen. He left the

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Saudi, he left the Saudi consulate. And they had pretty, pretty, pretty gutsy move on the part of the

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Saudis actually had someone put his clothes on, and then walk around, walk out of the consulate and then walk around the city a little bit, to make it seem so that he would be caught on camera, at least someone would be caught on camera with wearing the same clothes.

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Unfortunately, for the Saudi authorities, the cameras that that captured these images, were pretty, were pretty good.

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And it was clear that it was not the same, not the same person, which made it even look actually backfired.

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Now it looked more suspicious. Because now you got someone wearing his clothes. So what happened to him? So at first, the

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Saudis were denying they they said that he had, he had left the consulate. And once that once that was known to be false, they were claiming that he died after a fight broke out.

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So, you know, nothing suspicious on their part, supposedly, he came in there got into a disagreement, there was a fight, he died in the fight.

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And then they, they tried to cover it up, because they didn't want people coming to the wrong conclusion.

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That story eventually started falling apart. And then it was then it was clear that he was actually murdered.

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And then the question after that was, who did the murdering and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Salman was claiming that, you know, these guys were just carrying out their own plans in killing him.

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But the CIA has announced that they have evidence that the

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Crown Prince himself was behind this they know that apparently, the claim at least is that there was a phone call from the

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Crown Prince's brother to Jamal Khashoggi, telling him that he would be safe.

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Because, for obvious reasons, Khashoggi didn't want to go to the consulate unless he thought it was safe.

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He was going there to get some paperwork done. Because he wanted to get married. And he received a call from the

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Crown Prince's brother saying, yes, you know, you're fine getting married, just just go in there and there won't be any problems.

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They can do your paperwork. You know, we've had our disagreements in the past, but we have no problem with you getting married.

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And so he went into the consulate and got killed. So the idea is that the

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Saudi royal family was, this was a plot from them.

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And they thought they could, they thought they could get away with it, mainly because they do get away with a lot of these kinds of things.

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So this is just a cold -blooded murder, an ambush, it had nothing to do with an effort to take him back to Saudi Arabia, that ended up in a fight and all that.

15:35

That was just nonsense. Well, it seems like a murder, but yes, there were also reports that they did want to take him back to Saudi Arabia, where he would face some kinds of charges, but I don't know how you would end up killing and dismembering him if you,

15:52

I mean, you could obviously grab someone and tie them up and take them out if you want to. So yeah, it looks like it's, it's, it's looked, now we, all the details aren't out.

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The CIA hasn't released all of the information that they're aware of, but where we stand right now, it kind of looks like just a cold -blooded murder of a guy who was known for criticizing the government.

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And you know, that plan, by the way, it wouldn't have worked out very well. Saudi Arabia would have had massive problems with their relations with Turkey and with the

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United States if they had gone to, you know, to the consulate in a foreign country, lied to get someone in there, and then they were going to take him out and put him on trial.

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That wouldn't have gone very well, whereas a cold -blooded murder, if they could get away with it, then they don't, they don't have anything to answer for.

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Now, are there Muslims who defend this as a completely appropriate and honorable act that had happened to Khashoggi?

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There would, there would be, there would be citizens of Saudi Arabia who would, who would clearly view things that way.

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And there would be, there would be Salafi Muslims who would view his killing as, as a perfectly acceptable act because he's been critical of them.

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But yeah, I'm not sure, outside of Saudi Arabia and outside the Salafi movement, I'm not sure how other

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Muslims would, would view that. I mean, the Muslim comments I've seen, lots of the

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Western Muslims have been critical of his killing because lots of Western Muslims are critical of Saudi Arabia.

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And of course, there's a difference between even in Sharia law, somebody being executed after a trial or some kind of a hearing that takes place, whereas this was an ambush.

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This was a, just as we have already described it, a cold -blooded act of murder.

17:54

Could that kind of killing be at all justified by the

18:00

Quran or the Hadith? Yeah, it depends on what your view of him is.

18:07

So, you know, according to Islam, you're only supposed to kill a

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Muslim in a few different circumstances, right? There are all kinds of circumstances where you can kill a non -Muslim.

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But as far as killing someone who believes in Islam, you are allowed to kill him for adultery.

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You're allowed to kill him for killing another Muslim. So if he's murdered another Muslim, then you can kill him, and you can kill him for apostasy.

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So if you viewed him as an apostate for something he's done or something he's said, then you could kill him on those grounds.

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It is important to keep in mind that Abu Bakr, the first of the rightly guided caliphs and Muhammad's closest companion during life, sort of expanded on what counted as an apostate.

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After Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr launched what are known as the apostate wars, fighting against people who had either left

19:10

Islam or who were simply refusing to follow certain Islamic practices.

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And according to Abu Bakr, if you weren't following the basic five pillars of Islam in the way the

19:22

Islamic government said you had to follow them, he was putting you in the apostate category.

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So in other words, apostasy, according to Abu Bakr, wasn't simply saying, hey,

19:36

I now renounce Islam. I no longer believe in Allah. I no longer believe in that Muhammad was a prophet. If you simply weren't doing things the way the

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Islamic government said you have to do them with regard to the basic practices, then you weren't obeying

19:52

Islam, and therefore you were an apostate. And so Abu Bakr was coming to kill you if you simply weren't paying your zakat the way he said you had to pay them.

20:03

And so you could in theory justify it Islamically by saying he's in rebellion against the central

20:10

Islamic authority, and because he's in rebellion in that way, it's justified to kill him.

20:17

Now, whether that played any part in the reasoning, I don't know. This could simply be a corrupt government not wanting to allow any criticism of the government, because we know that the government of Saudi Arabia is like that.

20:32

They do not tolerate criticism very well. And so, yep, not sure what the reasoning was, but that sort of thing tends to happen to people who get on the wrong side of the

20:45

Saudi government. Now, what is your update on the

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United States government, President Trump and so on, in our response to this as the facts seem to be changing the stories of Saudi Arabia quite rapidly and frequently?

21:09

So what is the latest update that you have in regard to how we plan to react to this, if at all?

21:17

Well, the US has imposed sanctions on individual people, namely the people who are known to be involved.

21:27

It doesn't seem to be relevant at all. Most of the people who are involved were locked up by the

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Saudi government when the Saudi government was trying to show that they had nothing to do with this until all these guys were locked up. So I don't know what effect sanctions,

21:43

US sanctions are going to have against individuals who are already imprisoned. So that seems to be just a kind of show that the

21:51

United States is trying to crack down on Saudi Arabia because of this.

21:59

The sanctions that have been passed down don't seem to have any kind of effect. And I think what we see is that the

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US policy is going to depend on what kind of relationship we have with various groups.

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So you take a group like ISIS, they were known for being brutal, for crushing anyone who disagrees with their understanding of Islam.

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And people around the world had no problem with cracking down on ISIS, with bombing

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ISIS, and so on. And part of the reason for that is ISIS wasn't giving anything back to the world.

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All they were doing was behaving in brutal fashion.

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But you take a different country like Saudi Arabia, where lots of businesses are involved, lots of governments are profiting from partnerships with Saudi Arabia, and various governments tend to be much more reluctant to impose sanctions or to crack down.

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I mean, if you look at the sorts of things that Saudi Arabia does to its own citizens or to people who criticize

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Islam, they're not quite like ISIS, but they're pretty close, right?

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They're closer to ISIS than they are to a Western nation in terms of the things they do.

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But it seems to be because of the relations and economic connections they have to outside nations, governments are more reluctant to impose sanctions or to crack down on Saudi Arabia.

23:40

And so I think that's part of the reason that the Saudis thought they could get away with something like this, right?

23:48

That, hey, we know these Western nations aren't going to impose sanctions because they don't want to interfere with the money they're making from us, and so they're going to let us keep getting away with things.

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But part of the decline of ISIS has been that, you know, two or three years ago,

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ISIS is all that's in the news. So if Saudi Arabia is having public executions, well, it's nothing compared to what

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ISIS is doing with their mass killings. And so Saudi Arabia gets a free pass on some of those things.

24:21

But with ISIS declining over the past two years, now I think people are starting to pay attention a little bit more to what's going on in Saudi Arabia.

24:32

And the reputation of the government is taking a hit. And we can hope that they start learning their lesson that, hey, you can't keep getting away with these things.

24:42

And we can hope that they start adopting policies that are a bit more respectful of people's rights.

24:50

We're going to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for David Wood about Islam, our email address is

24:57

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

25:03

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. I can understand with a theme like this that there would be people who would prefer to remain anonymous for the question, and you will be honored that request, especially if this is a question that would somehow put you in danger of any kind.

25:24

But if you can give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, that would be preferable to us if you're just asking a general theological question.

25:32

I would most love to hear from Muslims. I know that we do on occasion get emails from Muslims.

25:41

Most of the time we get them off the air after the program has aired, but I would love to hear from Muslims who may be listening today.

25:49

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with David Wood right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Hi, Phil Johnson here. I'm executive director of John MacArthur's media ministry, Grace To You, and I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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.nyc. Have a great day. Chris Orenson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

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and he will be discussing his book, Proving the Reliability of the Scriptures.

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And as that ad mentioned, Ravi Zacharias did write the foreword to that book.

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We are returning now to our discussion with my friend David Wood, founder of act17 .net

34:18

and answeringmuslims .com. He is one of the most well -known Christian apologists in the

34:25

United States, if not around the world, debating Muslims today. And we are discussing the recent

34:31

Islamic acts of terror examined. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

34:38

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N -G -M -A -I -L dot com. Tell us what you know about, as far as updates go, how is

34:47

President Trump and the United States government responding to facts that seem to point clearly to the royal family in Saudi Arabia as being guilty of actually ordering this assassination?

35:02

Well, this connects to a lot of the claims on radio shows and on TV programs trying to paint

35:14

Khashoggi as a radical. That's part of the reason I don't trust a lot of the recent claims trying to paint him as a radical of a, you know, just like as if he's part of a different sect or something of Islam.

35:30

Again, you can go back to when he was in his 20s and find plenty of info there.

35:36

But a lot of the attempts are like that he mourned for the death of Osama bin

35:41

Laden, whereas if you look at what he was actually saying, he was lamenting that Osama bin

35:48

Laden took the route that he did. He believed that Osama had a choice, that he took the wrong path, that he became a radical terrorist instead of, you know, doing something else.

36:03

And so he believed that Osama was actually capable of being a better person and not taking the route that he did.

36:10

And so, but if you're the United States and you want to maintain certain relations with the

36:17

Saudi government, it helps you if, you know, that the death of Jamal Khashoggi isn't important because he was a really bad guy.

36:26

And so when I know that certain people in the government are trying to minimize what's just been done, it's got to be a little bit suspicious there, especially when the facts are in short supply about this guy being any kind of radical in recent years, when he's been openly critical of the

36:45

Salafi movement, of the Saudi government, and so on. And so as far as what the

36:52

U .S. government's done, I haven't seen anything really beyond the sanctions against individuals who are already in prison and therefore have no impact, when it seems like this should be a bigger deal to the government and hopefully after the

37:09

CIA releases more information on why it's convinced that this goes all the way to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia himself, hopefully we'll see more.

37:21

Because, I mean, this is a pretty big deal if someone who is, you know, a reporter in the

37:30

United States has fled Saudi Arabia can be lured into a

37:36

Saudi consulate and then just flat out murdered and dismembered and have that government hide it and repeatedly lie about it.

37:46

That should be a really big deal, because if they could do that in Turkey, why wouldn't they do that somewhere else?

37:52

Why wouldn't they do that in the United States? Tell someone that they don't like, that they want to kill, yes, come to the consulate here and there won't be any problem, and then just execute them.

38:02

It seems like there should be, I don't know exactly what would be the best response, but it seems like there should be something bigger than, well, we'll apply some sanctions to people who aren't impacted by it at all.

38:17

That doesn't seem to have any impact. In other words, the message there would be, hey, if you want to kill, if you want to lure someone into an embassy to kill them, go ahead, because we're not really going to do anything about it.

38:28

So it seems like just to prevent, even if you don't like Khashoggi, it seems like there should be a pretty swift response just so the

38:36

Saudi officials realize, hey, we shouldn't be doing that, and we're going to get into trouble over doing that. Yeah, this obviously would further embolden them to commit other equally horrific, if not exceedingly greater horrific acts of terror and murder and so on.

39:01

We do have a listener. We have, let's see,

39:07

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island wants to know, is the form of Islam that is adhered to by the majority of those in Turkey at odds with the form of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia?

39:24

Yeah, there's, Saudi Arabia tends to have a more solifist approach.

39:37

And so Turkey, I mean, just to be clear, you have solifists and you have very, very strict, devout

39:47

Muslims in Turkey. But compared to Saudi Arabia, Turkey is far, far less strict.

39:58

In other words, if you were in Turkey right now, if Chris, if you went to Turkey right now, you might be fine.

40:04

You'd have a better chance of getting into trouble in Saudi Arabia, where they'll crack down much more quickly on something like preaching.

40:15

Now, the government in Turkey has been swinging in a pretty dangerous direction, but still,

40:22

I would say a better, safer place than Saudi Arabia. Well, thank you,

40:28

Ronald. We have John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, how do you use this information that you have just discussed in your apologetics ministry, when you are dialoguing and debating with Muslims and having interaction with them?

40:48

Is this material at all central, or at least a part of your ministry?

40:56

Yeah, but not in the same way that something like, you know, talking about Jesus' resurrection, or the deity of Christ, or even, you know, criticisms of Muhammad would be used.

41:11

The reason information about jihad, or terrorism, or terrorist attacks is relevant in apologetics is that lots of Western Muslims are convinced that Islam doesn't teach these things.

41:24

They've absorbed the idea that Islam is wonderful and tolerant, and believes the same kind of things that they do.

41:31

And because they're convinced that Islam is tolerant, and that Islam agrees with basic Western values and human rights, that there's never really any reason for them to re -examine

41:46

Islam on moral grounds. So, the reason this is important is, hey, when there's a terrorist attack, or when there's, you know, apostates are being killed, or when people are being killed for blasphemy, that these are actually things that Muhammad himself taught.

42:07

And so, this can cause Muslims to rethink their view on Muhammad.

42:15

So, in other words, just so people can see how this relates to apologetics, your average

42:21

Muslim has been convinced all his life that Muhammad is the greatest, most morally perfect man who's ever lived.

42:29

And so, they believe that Muhammad is the greatest man who's ever lived, that if you want to pattern your life after someone, the best thing you can do, even according to the

42:37

Quran, is to pattern your life after the life of Muhammad. But they have a distorted picture of Muhammad.

42:44

They think of him as this great guy who had never heard anyone, who was gentle towards everyone, who was modest, who was loving.

42:52

And so, they're thinking of Muhammad that way. So, if you actually show them that, no, Muhammad had some characteristics that you yourself, as a

43:00

Muslim, would find sometimes horrifyingly bad, this can make them sit back and rethink, hey, maybe this claim that Muhammad is the greatest man who ever lived is actually false, in which case, maybe my belief in Islam is false.

43:17

And just so people know how, you know, practically speaking, my friend Nabil and I, we discussed

43:24

Islam and Christianity for years before we actually started getting into some material that's critical of Muhammad.

43:31

So, we spent the first couple of years that we were having our dialogues, we spent most of that time talking about the reliability of the

43:40

New Testament, Jesus' death by crucifixion, evidence for the resurrection, evidence for the deity of Christ.

43:45

We were focusing on those kinds of things. And Nabil didn't tell me this until later. He didn't tell me until after he'd become a

43:50

Christian. But that even when he was acknowledging that Christians had good evidence for what we believed, he was thinking inside himself, he was thinking, hey, even if they show me with 99 % certainty that Jesus died on the cross, that Jesus rose from the dead, that Jesus claimed to be

44:10

Lord, even if they show me with 99 % certainty, I'm still 100 % sure that Islam is true.

44:17

And therefore, Islam's always going to win. So, if a Muslim has complete confidence that Muhammad is the greatest man who's ever lived, that the

44:25

Quran is the greatest book that's ever been written, it's hard for that Muslim to take anything else seriously.

44:33

It's hard for that Muslim to take the Gospel seriously when he has that kind of confidence in Islam. And so, the role of raising these kinds of issues with Muslims is to cause some cracks in that confidence.

44:48

So, they start thinking, wait a minute, maybe the Quran isn't the greatest book ever written. Maybe Muhammad isn't the greatest man.

44:54

So that now they don't have that confidence, and now they can start thinking for themselves, hey, maybe I need to actually examine the evidence afresh and think about the claims that Christians are making.

45:07

Well, I don't know if you have anything more to say about this specific incident in the

45:14

Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey, but if you have finished basically everything that you care to say about that,

45:24

I'd like to move on as soon as possible to Asia Bibi, the Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, who had that conviction overturned, but is still in danger of being assassinated, murdered by the

45:40

Muslims in Pakistan. And obviously, that might not be under the specific category of terror, but it's still under the very closely related category of persecution, obviously.

45:55

Yeah, and again, that wouldn't fall under the classic definition of a terrorist attack, but the goal is the same, right?

46:06

I mean, the goal of really blasphemy laws in Pakistan and of the arrest of Asia Bibi in particular is really to terrorize other people so that they don't do the same thing.

46:20

So, yeah, it would kind of fall under a looser umbrella there. So, tell us about this

46:27

Christian woman. I understand that this all started when she was getting a drink of water at some common place of getting water in Pakistan, a watering hole of sorts.

46:41

Yeah, so Asia Bibi is a Pakistani woman, and they were,

46:46

I think, doing a fruit harvest, and she took a metal cup and used a cup and a bucket to get some water to drink.

46:58

And the local Muslim women who were around her started pointing out that a

47:04

Christian isn't allowed to drink from the same vessel as a Muslim, so it kind of makes it unclean.

47:11

And now, as a side note, that is like the weirdest thing I've ever heard when you understand other things that Mohammed said.

47:21

So, for instance, Mohammed said that nothing makes water unclean, and Mohammed specifically said that,

47:28

I told his followers that they could drink water even if there's a dead animal floating in the water, because water is not made unclean or impure by anything.

47:39

And there was another time when they wanted to perform their ablutions, their ceremonial washings, and the only water they had was from basically a garbage well where people threw their garbage, and it said that this well was a well where they threw dead animal carcasses, menstrual cloths, and human waste.

48:00

So they dumped their bathroom buckets into this well, and Mohammed's followers asked, hey, we're supposed to do our ablutions for our prayers, can we use this water?

48:12

It's all we have. And he said, yes, water is not made impure by anything. So the idea that, you know, you can sit there and rub water that's got, you know, human waste and used menstrual cloths and all of this in it, and you can rub that all over your body, and you can drink water that has a dead animal floating in it, a dead donkey floating in it.

48:34

But if a Christian drinks out of your cup, it's a huge problem. Very, very strange and inconsistent on Mohammed's part.

48:42

But yeah, Asya drank from a cup, and she was challenged by the Muslim women, and they told her she should convert to Islam, and that way it wouldn't be a problem.

48:51

Asya apparently replied, why should I believe in Mohammed when he's dead? Jesus is alive.

48:57

Why shouldn't you convert to Christianity instead of me converting to Islam? And this started a commotion.

49:03

She was beaten later in her house and taken to court where she was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death.

49:14

Pakistan still has blasphemy laws where you'll be sentenced to death for blasphemy, for criticizing

49:20

Mohammed or criticizing the Quran. Now, she was lucky that she actually made it to jail and prison because very frequently a mob will form and people will just be simply beaten to death in the streets, stripped and beaten to death.

49:35

So she was beaten, but she survived until her trial. She was found guilty, sentenced to death, went up to a higher court.

49:43

That ruling was affirmed. And here, years later, years later, the

49:48

Supreme Court of Pakistan reversed the decision. They pointed out, they said, hey, there's no real evidence here that she blasphemed.

49:59

There's no good evidence. The statements that have been issued against her were inconsistent, and so that decision was overturned.

50:08

Do you think that that had anything to do with outside pressure, or was it just the integrity of the court there in Pakistan?

50:20

No, I think the three judges there during that trial, it may have had something to do with outside criticism of what was going on there, but I think they just may have taken a stand on this and said, you know, we can't do this because the tendency, unfortunately, in places like Pakistan is that if in a case like that of Asia Bibi, is that if you side, if you side with the non -Muslim, or if you rule against the mob that's calling for someone's death, they're going to kill you too.

51:04

And two people were already killed before the Supreme Court ruling. One was a

51:12

Christian, was a Pakistani Christian politician, and one was a Muslim who was killed by his own bodyguard.

51:19

But multiple people were already killed just for speaking out in support of Asia Bibi, saying, hey, she shouldn't be killed over this.

51:27

And so that sends a message to any judges who are ruling on this case, hey, even if you happen to think that she shouldn't be sentenced to death, you better think about your own life here and rule the way we want you to rule, or we'll kill you too.

51:43

And so that seems to have been what's been going on in Pakistan for many, many years.

51:48

You have to fear the violent mob, because if you don't do what the violent mob wants you to do, you're going to be killed as well.

51:57

They're going to rule you some kind of apostate for not doing what they want. So that seems to have been the case in the rulings of the lower courts.

52:06

But once it got to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court went ahead and said, no, no, she shouldn't have been convicted.

52:13

They overturned it. And just as anticipated, there were protests across the country and threats of violence towards everyone, the judges,

52:26

Asi Bibi, Asi Bibi's family, her lawyer. Her lawyer fled Pakistan right afterwards.

52:33

And this did have the desired results. The government, unfortunately, caved and said that they would have the judges reexamine the ruling to decide whether she should have been ultimately acquitted.

52:56

And so Asi Bibi is still in custody now, which is basically a death sentence, because eventually there will be someone over her in the custody situation who will go ahead and carry out the will of the mob.

53:14

But yeah, so her family has pleaded for asylum in various places.

53:19

She's still in custody. The U .K. government, the U .K. government is currently being criticized because the

53:26

U .K. said that they would not grant her asylum in the

53:31

U .K. out of concern for the safety of its own consulate in Pakistan.

53:40

This is actually the U .K. saying, we are worried that our people will get killed in Pakistan, and therefore we cannot offer asylum to this woman.

53:50

Now, unfortunately, other Western nations aren't so cowardly. But just imagine if the rest of the

53:57

Western world said the same thing, said, hey, you know, if we take her in, our people are going to get killed by this angry mob.

54:05

Therefore, no, we won't offer her asylum. I mean, they're being just as cowardly as government officials in Pakistan who bowed before the mob.

54:14

So it's really, really a sad situation in the world when, you know, a place like the United Kingdom can't protect anyone because they're afraid of a violent mob halfway around the world.

54:26

Yeah, really tragic, deplorable. But anyway, we're going to be going to our midway break right now.

54:36

This is our longer than normal break. It's because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break between our two major segments because they air their own public service announcements and commercials in order to make

54:50

Iron Trip and Zion Radio more localized to Lake City, Florida. So please take this time not only to write questions for David Wood to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

55:02

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So please patronize our advertisers as much as you can and write down their information during the station break.

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He is going to be my keynote speaker again at the Iron Sherp Radio Pastor's Luncheon.

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That's going to be held on Thursday, January 3rd, 11am to 2pm at the

01:10:56

Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall. Any man in ministry leadership is welcome to attend, it's absolutely free of charge, and every man will be leaving with a heavy sack of free books, brand new books donated by nearly every major Christian publisher in the

01:11:17

United States and the United Kingdom every year. Each of those publishers donate approximately 100 free books, 100 free copies of a title

01:11:26

I specifically select for the pastors in attendance, and they have been very generous going all the way back to the 1990s.

01:11:36

So if you are a man in ministry leadership, we are not inviting the ladies to this, but if you are a man in ministry leadership, please just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:48

chrisarnson at gmail .com and say, I would like to attend the Free Pastor's Luncheon featuring

01:11:53

Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary. That's at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Thursday, January 3rd, 11am to 2pm.

01:12:04

Then, immediately following that, Dr. Tony Costa will be sticking around these parts for a few more days.

01:12:11

He's going to be preaching at a conference that I have organized along with my friend

01:12:17

Pastor George Jensen of Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania.

01:12:24

The theme of this conference is going to be the most dangerous threats to the

01:12:30

Christian Church in North America. And that conference starts on Friday, the 4th of January, and concludes on Sunday, the 6th of January.

01:12:44

And for more information about that, you can also email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:51

To find more about how to get to the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, you can go to enolacog .com,

01:12:59

enolacog .com, and that c -o -g obviously stands for Church of God, enolacog .com.

01:13:06

You can also call the Enola Church of God, or should I say Enola First Church of God, at 717 -732 -4253, 717 -732 -4253.

01:13:19

Then, coming up later on in the month of January, from the 17th to the 19th, I will be manning an exhibitor's booth at the

01:13:27

G3 Conference, which stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. It's being held, as I said, from Thursday, January 17th, through Saturday, January 19th, at the

01:13:37

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

01:13:43

They're expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people there, so I strongly urge you to register as soon as possible, and also register for an exhibitor's booth, just like I will be manning, because it's of very great advertising value to have an exhibitor's booth at a conference with attendance that size, between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people.

01:14:03

The subject matter is the Mission of God, a Biblical Understanding of Missions, and the speakers include, as always, a very long list of impressive men of God, and some ladies as well.

01:14:18

We have Dr. James R. White, we have John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

01:14:25

Bayway, Tim Chalies, Phil Johnson, Josh Bice, the founder of the

01:14:31

G3 Conference, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J. Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

01:14:39

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many more are on that roster. To register, go to g3conference .com,

01:14:46

g3conference .com, and as I said, I would strongly urge you not only to register to attend yourself, but also register for an exhibitor's booth if you have a church, parachurch, ministry, business, or professional practice, or a special event that you want to advertise in that crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people.

01:15:05

And then last but not least, the Deep South Founders Conference is being held January 24th through the 26th in Laurel, Mississippi at the

01:15:14

Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, and this is my first time in Mississippi ever, let alone the first time at the

01:15:22

Deep South Founders Conference. The speakers include Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, Bobby Crenshaw, and the keynote speaker is my dear friend

01:15:33

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway, pastor of Cobuata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and also chancellor of African Christian University.

01:15:42

The theme will be sanctification. If you'd like to register for the Deep South Founders Conference, go to deepsouthfounders .com,

01:15:51

deepsouthfounders .com. Please mention to all of these organizations and ministries and churches that you heard about their events on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:16:02

Last but not least, if you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and you don't want us to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:16:10

click support, then click click to donate now to donate instantly with a debit or credit card. We are going through some hard times financially again, so please, if you can afford to provide for us, please do so at ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:16:25

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01:16:40

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Never do that. Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and home.

01:16:56

Providing for my radio show is not a command of God, but if you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and you love the show and you don't want us to go away, then

01:17:07

I urge you to go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now and donate as heavily as you can and as frequently as you can because we certainly do need your advertising dollars.

01:17:19

We just had a very large financial setback due to my ad agency losing a client on another radio station on Long Island, New York because this station went through a format change, so please do whatever you can to help

01:17:36

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And now we are back with our guest David Wood. David, for those of you who are unfamiliar with David, he is a very well -known debater of Muslims especially and some atheists as well.

01:17:53

Founder of act17 .net and answeringmuslims .com. We are discussing recent

01:17:59

Islamic acts of terror examined. We do have an anonymous listener who asks, isn't

01:18:05

Pakistan, even though it's doing this horrible thing to this woman, Azia, aren't they known to be more tolerant towards Christians than most other

01:18:15

Muslim nations under Sharia law? Well, that's going to depend on the area.

01:18:22

If you go to the wrong area, Pakistan is probably the last place, one of the last places

01:18:27

I would want to go in the world. So it kind of depends on the area. It's just like Nigeria.

01:18:33

You can go to places in Nigeria where you've got Boko Haram and it might be the worst place in the world if you're a

01:18:41

Christian. So it depends on the area. It's hard to say that Pakistan is actually more tolerant because Pakistan is one of the only

01:18:51

Muslim countries that has a significant Christian minority. But basically, any place you go in the

01:19:00

Muslim world, if you have any sort of significant Christian minority in the country, they're going to be second -class citizens at best, if not horribly persecuted.

01:19:13

So no, I mean, yeah, there are places in Pakistan where you'd be fine and wouldn't have any problem.

01:19:18

And there are other places where the moment you upset any

01:19:24

Muslim for any reason, you'll be beaten and locked up on trumped -up charges.

01:19:32

So horrible, horrible place, Pakistan, at least in many of the areas. We have

01:19:39

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who asks, is Asia Bibi free to leave

01:19:46

Pakistan if a country welcomes her? We already know that, as you said, London, or should

01:19:51

I say England, is not welcoming her. But what about other countries?

01:19:56

Is she free to go to flee this threat of death over her since her courts of her nation have exonerated her?

01:20:06

No, she's not. If she was, she was at first. And there are several countries that have offered her asylum.

01:20:14

But after the protests across Pakistan, and the government submitted to the protests, the agreement was basically, hey, if you guys stop the protest because we know you're going to start killing people, or we're going to have to stop you, in which case we know that, you know, if the government starts shooting these, you know, violent protesters, then the protesters are going to become more violent.

01:20:44

You're going to end up with a bloodbath. So the agreement that was reached was, we will keep her in custody, not allow her to leave the country.

01:20:53

And we will have the Supreme Court re -examine the decision to acquit her if you stop with the protests.

01:21:03

And so that was the agreement that was reached. The protests stopped, but she is not free to leave. So she's going to remain in the custody of the government.

01:21:12

But that's not exactly, that's not terribly different from the situation before.

01:21:20

And the reviews, the Supreme Court reviews take years.

01:21:26

So unless something changes, she's going to be in custody of the government for at least several more years.

01:21:33

And, you know, even if they re -evaluated that decision, I don't see why it would be any different in the future.

01:21:40

They're still, if they change their mind and reaffirm the conviction and death sentence, then, you know, that's a horrible situation.

01:21:50

But if they affirm the acquittal again, then they're going to have to deal with the same thing.

01:21:56

And so there was a period recently where the claims turned out to be false, apparently, but it was claimed that the government had sort of snuck her out of the country, put her on a plane to a

01:22:08

Western nation. Then those apparently turned out to be false claims. So yeah, she's not free to leave, according to the government.

01:22:16

Does she even express a desire to leave? I know that there are some Christians that have such great faith that they do not want to leave a homeland, even if it means certain death for them, because they want to, in some way, be a light for Christ wherever they are from.

01:22:35

But I don't know if that's the case specifically with Aziah, if she wants to remain or not.

01:22:40

But do you know? No, she absolutely wants to leave. Her husband issued a video asking for asylum for him and his entire family, because they're all being threatened with death.

01:22:55

They're all in a state of hiding right now. So her being released, if she's released anywhere where she's going to be seen and known, she's going to be killed.

01:23:06

And so her husband was asking for asylum, even after it was affirmed that she was going to be detained indefinitely in the country.

01:23:16

Her husband was asking for asylum for her entire family. And so that's just a really, really horrible situation.

01:23:26

I mean, think about this. If my wife were under a death sentence, but we were all kind of under a death sentence just by association, her husband has to not only think about his wife,

01:23:38

Aziah Bibi, he has to think about the rest of his family, their daughters and so on. So, I mean, think about being put in that situation where you think,

01:23:47

I don't want to leave my wife here. I don't want to leave her in danger. But I've also got these daughters that I have to protect, and they're being threatened with death as well.

01:23:57

So I can't imagine being put in a situation where you'd have to say, I'm going to leave my wife here in Pakistan.

01:24:05

And just so I can get my daughters to safety. It's a horrifying situation. And one of the reasons

01:24:11

I really have a problem with Islam is that it puts people in these kinds of situations, situations that they just shouldn't be in.

01:24:17

Yeah, that is a horrible, horrific situation.

01:24:23

Nightmarish, unbelievable. Well, very believable in this world that we live in, but I can't even formulate words to express myself right now.

01:24:38

Well, oh, by the way, what is what has if you know of any offer of asylum has the

01:24:46

United States announced to Pakistan or to Aziah Bibi's family?

01:24:54

I'm not aware. I don't know if the US has. I know there were there were several nations, I think

01:24:59

Italy and then several others that offered that offered her asylum. I'm not I'm not aware of whether the

01:25:05

United States has put itself in there yet. Okay, well, obviously, we should be the first ones.

01:25:11

Oh, absolutely. offering that. Well, let's move on to a race, but but wadi or but this is probably gonna be the first name

01:25:26

I butcher today. Rafe, but Dowie. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of it's kind of impossible to butcher the name because Yeah, no, however you however you pronounce it.

01:25:42

I've heard reporters use that pronunciation. So the most the most common is bodily, but I've also heard but always so.

01:25:52

Yeah, and I and several others. So yeah, but this is a this is a bit of an older case. But it really, it kind of ties into both the both the cases we've already talked about with Jamal Khashoggi and Aziah Bibi, namely, that Islamic governments that that take

01:26:10

Islam at all seriously, tend to use these cases to really terrorize the population and keep them from from doing similar kinds of things.

01:26:24

And the Saudi government has even said this when it's been criticized for the public executions, which can be by stoning can be by hit by beheading.

01:26:33

There could be all sorts of ways for the Saudi government to execute people for for all kinds of crimes for first for crimes like, you know, capital punishment for murder or for adultery, but also for things like, you know, criticizing

01:26:50

Islam. So blasphemy cases, apostasy, things like that.

01:26:56

These can carry a death penalty in various Muslim countries. And the situation with right by the way, is is fairly unique in that it achieved a great deal of Western attention, even when

01:27:12

Western attention was focused on ISIS and was sort of turning a blind eye to the things that were being done in Saudi Arabia.

01:27:21

And the reason the reason race by the way, his story got

01:27:26

Western attention is because he's basically a blogger. He was a he's a blogger who was critical of the

01:27:34

Saudi government, and was critical of Islam not allowing freedom of thought or free thinking.

01:27:41

So he started a website where people could discuss these, these kinds of issues. So the reason rice story got

01:27:48

Western attention is because people, you know, bloggers are concerned for their fellow bloggers. And so when that happened, then it was

01:27:57

Oh, look at Saudi Arabia is is has arrested and is putting on trial a guy who does what we do, who does what we do every day.

01:28:08

So he was he was initially charged with a variety of crimes, including apostasy, which carries the death sentence in Saudi Arabia, to avoid the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

01:28:21

He recited the Shahada in court. So he recited that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

01:28:26

He recited this in court so that they could no longer say that he was an apostate. Even if you you are an apostate, you are allowed to convert back to Islam.

01:28:35

So whatever the situation there is, he did declare his belief in Islam.

01:28:44

Now, it was apparently just so to avoid the death penalty. But that did it did work. He the death penalty was off the table.

01:28:50

And so at first, he was first sentenced with attacking the government and with criticizing

01:29:00

Islam, Islamic views. And at first he was sentenced to, I think it was six or seven years and a certain number of lashes.

01:29:11

And when they appealed and had a retrial, the sentence was actually increased, they gave him more.

01:29:17

So the sentence was changed to 10 years in prison, and 1000 lashes.

01:29:23

So he's been locked up for for a good while now. He was only given his they were going to do the lashes and installments of 50.

01:29:33

So he would be lashed because 1000 might might just kill someone. So he was going to be given his lashes and installments of 50.

01:29:40

But he has after the first set of lashes, 50 lashes, they found out that there were medical complications because he has high blood pressure.

01:29:50

And they realized that any, any of these lashings could just kill this guy.

01:29:56

And so they've kept postponing his his 1000 lash sentence after that first 50.

01:30:02

But he's, he's still locked up right now. And until he finishes his sentence, and then

01:30:08

I'm not sure what they're going to do with the lashes. But the problem is these sorts of things happen in Saudi Arabia, all the time.

01:30:16

It's only that the rare instances like right by the way, and Jamal Khashoggi, that happened to get

01:30:23

Western attention. These are the only cases that we actually hear about, but they they're pretty, they're pretty regular in Saudi Arabia.

01:30:32

Well, now let's move on to the noticeable decline in Islamic terrorism globally.

01:30:42

Since the diminishment, if not destruction of ISIS. Yeah, this is a

01:30:50

I'm sure it's I'm sure people have noticed if they've been paying attention. But just a few years ago, it seems like we're hearing about a new terrorist attack every day or every couple of days.

01:31:01

Not just in Muslim lands, but here in the West, as well seem like there's we're regularly hearing about terrorist attacks in the

01:31:09

United States, in the UK, in France, both gun violence, could be bombings, stabbings, trucks, vehicular jihad became popular for a while people just getting in a in a truck or a car or a van and plowing into innocent civilians.

01:31:29

But those seem to be and matter of fact, they are rarer now than they were last year.

01:31:35

And they were more rare last year than they were the year before. And that's certainly a positive change.

01:31:42

We hope that we hope that trend continues to next year and the next year and the next year. But they're basically two main reasons for the decline in terrorist attacks over the past few years.

01:31:54

Because for a while, just so people know, for a while, it was it was it was spiking, and it looked like it was going up at a geometric rate with the with the rise of ISIS and, and certain other groups.

01:32:06

If you look at a at a chart of terrorist attacks, globally, if you look by, you know, terrorism by year, there was a very, very disturbing upward slope up to about 2014, where terrorist attacks were seem to be growing and increasing at a geometric rate.

01:32:26

But they've declined, thankfully, over the past few years, and two basic reasons.

01:32:32

One is that a lot of these terrorist attacks were associated with directly with the rise of ISIS in ISIS controlled lands.

01:32:44

So basically, as ISIS was running, you know, climbing in power, they were launching terrorist directly launching terrorist attacks, bombings, shootings, in, you know, places like Syria, and Iraq.

01:32:58

And so this was this accounted for a huge number of the terrorist attacks.

01:33:03

But so that's one. The other major factor was that because ISIS claimed to be the caliphate, and there were

01:33:13

Muslims around the world who believed them to be the caliphate, that when

01:33:18

ISIS would call for terrorist attacks against Western targets, there were people who are willing to carry out those attacks.

01:33:26

So when the leader when your leader, the caliph says, hey, if you have an opportunity, then you

01:33:31

Westerners, you Western Muslims who are sympathetic towards ISIS, even though you're not over here directly launching a terrorist attack from us as part of our group, you launch your terrorist attack, wherever you are, to help our cause.

01:33:46

There are Muslims who believe that they have to be ordered by the caliphate to carry out terrorist attacks.

01:33:54

And so what's what's disturbing about that is those guys, you know, those guys were already here, right?

01:33:59

The, the jihadi minded people who were willing to carry out terrorist attacks, if they're ordered by the caliphate, they were already in the

01:34:09

United States, they were already in the UK, they were already in France, they were living normal lives, but they were waiting for a command from an

01:34:19

Islamic authority to order them to do that. And so, if they so since they believed that the

01:34:26

Islamic caliphate was ordering them to launch terrorist attacks, they were willing to do it.

01:34:31

And now as ISIS has been declining and weakening, most of these guys, even if they're willing, even if they were willing to carry out terrorist attacks are starting are becoming increasingly hesitant about identifying

01:34:46

ISIS as the authentic caliphate. In other words, they're thinking about when ISIS was sort of booming when they were, when they were exploding in, in Saudi Arabia, I mean, not in Saudi Arabia, in Iraq, in Syria, they had a certain amount of credibility, right?

01:35:02

Namely this, here's a caliphate that's growing and expanding and conquering, and Western nations can't do anything about it.

01:35:10

That gave them a good deal of prestige in the eyes of many Muslims around the world, and gave them a kind of legitimacy.

01:35:17

Look at, I mean, how could, how could this group be rising like this?

01:35:23

And the United States and other Western nations can't do anything about it, unless they were the authentic caliphate.

01:35:28

Therefore, if they're, if they're the authentic caliphate, then if they issue orders, I should follow them.

01:35:34

Whereas now with ISIS declining and shrinking and weakening, now people are a little more hesitant to identify them as the authentic caliphate.

01:35:44

So they're not necessarily the people you're going to go out and lay down your life for. So we're seeing a decline in terrorism.

01:35:53

Unfortunately, you still have plenty of, plenty of people, even in Western nations, who would be willing to carry out a terrorist attack if they're ordered to, but they just, they just, there's no one they're looking to right now as an authoritative caliph who can issue those kinds of orders.

01:36:13

So in other words, just they're, they're basically, you have plenty of Muslims who don't believe that they're supposed to go out and wage jihad.

01:36:21

But among the Muslims who do believe that they are to wage jihad, that they're to launch terrorist attacks, you have some of them who believe they can do it on their own, right?

01:36:29

In other words, they can just read the Muslim sources. And because they're commanded by Muhammad and by Allah to terrorize the enemies, they believe they can just go and do it on their own.

01:36:40

And so they don't have to get orders from Al -Qaeda or from ISIS or any other group.

01:36:46

They'll just do it on their own. And so these guys become kind of lone wolves. But you have many other jihad -minded

01:36:53

Muslims who believe they're supposed to terrorize the unbelievers, but only when they're called upon to do so by Islamic leaders.

01:37:04

And so with the fall of ISIS, ordering Western Muslims to wage jihad attacks, we're seeing that decline.

01:37:13

But sadly, there will eventually be another ISIS -type group claiming the caliphate. And we'll probably see another upswing in terrorist attacks when that happens.

01:37:25

Well, we're going to our final break right now. It's gonna be briefer than the last one. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for David Wood, now is your time to do so, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:37:34

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:37:41

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

01:37:49

Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages. James White here, co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:38:12

I'm so delighted. My friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 Conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

01:38:24

A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Speakers include John Piper, Steve Lawson, Bodhi Balcombe, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Josh Bice, yours truly, and many more.

01:38:37

I hope you all join Chris and me for this phenomenal event. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

01:38:44

That's g3conference .com. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

01:38:57

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

01:39:03

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

01:39:09

Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

01:39:16

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

01:39:24

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

01:39:31

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

01:39:44

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

01:39:50

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

01:39:57

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

01:40:03

Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org. That's providencebaptistchurchma .org.

01:40:10

Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:40:19

Hi, I'm Stephan Lindblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

01:40:28

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

01:40:36

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology, and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

01:40:52

Our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

01:41:05

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

01:41:13

Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

01:41:20

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

01:41:28

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.

01:41:35

We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

01:41:42

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

01:41:48

Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

01:41:55

Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Hello, I'm Dr. Gary Kimbrell, Senior Pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi.

01:42:04

And I'm hoping that many of you who listen to Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program will join

01:42:10

Chris and me at the Deep South Founders Conference, Thursday, January 24th through Saturday, January 26th here in Laurel.

01:42:18

If you love God's Word and love to hear it powerfully preached, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed.

01:42:25

Our speakers at the Deep South Founders Conference this year include Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, Bobby Crenshaw, and our keynote speaker all the way from Zambia, Dr.

01:42:36

Conrad Mbewe, who has received the nickname the Spurgeon of Africa. And I, for one, believe it's a very accurate description of Brother Conrad.

01:42:46

For more details, go to deepsouthfounders .com. That's deepsouthfounders .com.

01:42:54

I look forward to giving a big Mississippi welcome to many Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners,

01:43:01

January 24th through January 26th. Thank you. My name is

01:43:13

Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

01:43:19

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

01:43:25

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

01:43:31

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown

01:43:37

Manhattan. You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc

01:43:44

.nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

01:43:52

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

01:44:02

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

01:44:09

.nyc. Have a great day. Chris Sorensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron radio here.

01:44:20

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01:45:39

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01:45:48

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.

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01:47:09

Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

01:47:22

If you just tuned us in, our guest has been for the last 90 minutes and about 20 minutes to go, well actually about 15 minutes to go,

01:47:31

David Wood. He is the founder of Acts17 .net and AnsweringMuslims .com.

01:47:37

We are discussing recent Islamic acts of terror examined and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:47:45

If you have a question, send it in immediately because we are going to be out of time before you know it. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:47:52

We have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, how much credit does

01:48:00

President Trump and the United States military deserve for this destruction of ISIS that we have witnessed?

01:48:09

Well, some, definitely. But yeah, there have been a variety of problems with the decline of ISIS.

01:48:19

They were able to seize a lot of territory because of a power vacuum that arose when

01:48:28

President Obama pulled out U .S. troops. And the basic idea behind that was, if you're convinced that the population of a place like Iraq is mostly freedom -loving, democracy -loving people, then once you've gotten rid of Osama bin

01:48:46

Laden or the evil, brutal dictator, then all the freedom -loving, democratically -minded people will be able to rise to power.

01:48:57

And terrorists won't be able to rise to power because they're such a tiny minority of the population.

01:49:04

And I believe Obama said something like 99 .9 % of Muslims out there are totally against this sort of violence.

01:49:15

That turned out to be utter nonsense. There were massive, massive portions of the population that wanted an

01:49:24

ISIS -like group. And so we're happy to support them. And there was enough people there to wreak havoc on both

01:49:33

Syria, portions of Syria and Iraq. But after that, there was an effort of tons of nations, including the

01:49:45

United States before Donald Trump, to go after ISIS.

01:49:52

The question was, you know, how quickly you do that. In other words, how much of a rush. Because, you know, the

01:49:58

U .S. government could have sent in the U .S. military and taken control of that in a couple of days and reconquered the territory held by ISIS very, very easily.

01:50:11

But I think the overall Western approach was to let the Iraqi government handle it themselves so that they could get some more legitimacy there, not handle it by themselves completely, because they were devastated by the spread of ISIS initially.

01:50:31

But to sort of support them without, you know, going over and having to do it for them. And so I think most

01:50:38

Western nations wanted to help them, help target

01:50:43

ISIS in individual locations, whether through air support or whatever else. But to let the

01:50:51

Iraqi government do most of the work themselves that way, once ISIS is officially stamped out, that the government would have more legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

01:51:05

And, well, basically what I want you to do now is I want you to summarize what you most have burdening your heart to be etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today before the program is over, just to summarize the main thing that Christians should walk away with knowing all of the information that you've provided today.

01:51:27

Well, you've got a positive trend in terrorism, namely that it's decreasing globally with the decline of ISIS, for the reasons we discussed earlier.

01:51:42

I think in 2000, I mean, if you're talking about the major terrorist attacks, terrorist attacks that kill more than 100 people, there were between seven and 10 over the past three years, not counting 2018.

01:51:54

So in 2015, 2016, 2017, there were between seven and 10 massive terrorist attacks where more than 100 people died.

01:52:04

In 2018, we're almost to the end of 2018 and there have only been three. And so you have fewer minor terrorist attacks and you have fewer major terrorist attacks.

01:52:15

And that's a positive trend that we want to see continue. But, and this is a big one here, we shouldn't think that this is going to continue forever because the main reason for the decline in the attacks is that one specific organization that was committing a number of them, because they understand the early

01:52:40

Muslim sources and believe they could carry out those commands, has been dramatically weakened.

01:52:49

So that's not a long -term solution. So even though it's temporarily good, it can actually have a negative impact in that it can take our attention away from terrorism.

01:53:03

So when ISIS was launching regular terrorist attacks and we're hearing about them on the news on a daily basis, attacks over here in the

01:53:12

West and attacks in Muslim lands, when that was happening so frequently, a lot of people's attention was focused on terrorism and on the

01:53:21

Islamic connection to terrorism. Whereas now with the attacks decreasing, this can give us a false sense of security and a false sense that the threat is going away.

01:53:33

When in reality, the Islamic population globally is increasing and if a group like ISIS fails, as Islam continues to spread and multiply, you're going to eventually see another

01:53:51

ISIS -like group that thinks it has a better chance of doing what ISIS wanted to do.

01:53:56

So they'll look at ISIS and say, okay, they achieved limited success. Here's what they did wrong. And the next time you have an opportunity to rise to power, you're going to see another group rise.

01:54:08

You're going to see that group start issuing commands about launching terrorist attacks in Western nations and we're going to see it again.

01:54:17

So everyone, Christian, non -Christian, Muslims who don't like terrorism, everyone needs to be aware of the ongoing problem that's caused by Muhammad and Allah ordering adherents of Islam to terrorize unbelievers.

01:54:38

Well, I'd like you to give us an update on the recent debate you had.

01:54:44

I believe it was in Jamaica, Queens, New York, if I'm not mistaken. Oh yeah, that was a pretty wild one if people want to watch it.

01:54:56

That was, I think this was like the fifth or sixth time that I've been required to agree to certain debate rules and then the

01:55:03

Muslim debater completely violated them. Yeah, it's happened over and over and what's weird is

01:55:09

I fall for it every time. This time I fell for it specifically because it was the

01:55:17

Muslim Students Association that was requiring the rules. I'm thinking, obviously this guy's going to adhere to the rules when it's a

01:55:23

Muslim organization, not a Christian organization demanding the rules, but the rules were no personal attacks, keep it respectful, keep it friendly, no going off topic, and then the

01:55:36

Muslim debater spent a good amount of his time personally insulting me and attacking me, making fun of me, which

01:55:44

I wouldn't have had any problem with that, right? I understand that I criticized their prophet and criticized their book and criticized their belief.

01:55:53

I have no problem with Muslim debater being upset at me or even wanting to insult me.

01:55:59

I understand, hey, this is where I've taken my stand on these issues and so it's perfectly reasonable to be upset at me, but the idea of just completely violating the rules that were agreed to beforehand, that does bother me.

01:56:16

So it turned into quite a mess, but if you follow my

01:56:22

YouTube channel, there are some interesting nuggets that come out of that exchange.

01:56:30

And the Muslim debater was? That was Mohammed Hijab. I'd never heard about him before, but he's popular for mainly being far more aggressive than other

01:56:43

Muslim debaters. So someone like Shabir Ali, and I've talked about this elsewhere, someone like Shabir Ali, when some

01:56:51

Western organization wants to get a debater, they'll look towards someone like Shabir Ali because he's nice and calm in his presentation and appealing to a

01:56:59

Western audience. Intellectual. Yeah, yeah. But it turns out there are large numbers of Muslims who just want someone who's gonna kind of shout down the debater and insult him and belittle him and attack him and that's

01:57:18

Mohammed Hijab. So I think he's going to be, that debaters like that are actually going to be rising in popularity because even though Christians and Christians in the

01:57:28

West don't want that kind of debate, they want a calm exchange. The Muslim audience, not all of them, to be clear.

01:57:36

There were Muslims who were very upset. There were Muslims who apologized to me afterwards for his behavior in the audience.

01:57:43

So not all Muslims, but I would say the majority of Muslims in these audiences actually want a far more aggressive debater who's going to shout down and insult the

01:57:58

Christian opponent. And so I think, well, you can clearly see that in the debate, but I think we're going to see more of that.

01:58:08

And the positive side is that it shows more of the spirit of Islam, right?

01:58:13

I mean, someone like Shabir Ali, nice, calm, collected, scholarly, he doesn't really represent the heart of Islam.

01:58:23

Shabir, he rejects numerous Hadith. He has an unorthodox view of many of the teachings of the

01:58:31

Quran. And so... He actually believed that Jesus was crucified, does he know?

01:58:38

Yeah, he believed that Jesus was put on the cross. And so that puts him at odds with a lot of the

01:58:44

Muslim population. But it's Western Christians who say, oh, let's get him because he communicates in a style that we can appreciate and pay attention to.

01:58:54

But there are other debaters out there on the rise who are closer to the spirit of Islam, namely in being far more aggressive.

01:59:03

And so we see that recently, and I think we're going to see that more and more in the future.

01:59:10

And I don't think it's an entirely bad thing for people to see a more genuinely

01:59:16

Islamic approach in debate. And I know that your website is, again, act17 .net,

01:59:22

and you also have answeringmuslims .com. How do we get to your YouTube channel? People type in, just go to Act 17

01:59:30

Apologetics on YouTube, search for that, or type in David Wood on YouTube, and you'll get a mixture of my videos and some videos kind of about me by people who don't always like me, but it's still fine.

01:59:43

Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you back, and I want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater